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Speaker 1: Ah beaut force. If it doesn't work, you're just not

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Speaker 1: using enough. You're listening to software Radio, Special Operations, military

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Speaker 1: news and straight talk with the guys and the community

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Speaker 1: soccrep dot com on time on Target. You know what,

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna mention that the background music figure hearing once again,

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Speaker 1: my friend John Burns did an amazing intro for this show,

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Speaker 1: which I don't mentioned often enough. Oh, I didn't know

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Speaker 1: that he did that. Ross Yeah, that's that's my friend.

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Speaker 1: Like custom theme song, and I remember I mentioned in

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Speaker 1: an email UM that people said it sounded similar to

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Speaker 1: the Top Gun theme and it does because I said, like,

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Speaker 1: think the Top Gun game, because our audience likes that.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, check him out. It's John Burns, but it's

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Speaker 1: John j O h n b y r n e

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Speaker 1: S just because he really hooked it up, did a

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Speaker 1: great job. So I don't I don't mention it every episode,

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Speaker 1: but uh yeah, and I also want to mention, uh

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Speaker 1: correct myself. Last episode while I was editing it edding

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Speaker 1: editing the show, I noticed that I mentioned that uh

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Speaker 1: soldier um who molested those underage girls, I said, Thomas Rosick.

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Speaker 1: I don't know why his name was William Rosick, but

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Speaker 1: I noticed that when I wasn't back, so it might

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Speaker 1: have been his middle name. But regardless, yees I was

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Speaker 1: like the issue point correction if I screw up. So

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Speaker 1: William Rosick getting into everything. I saw via social media

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Speaker 1: that you got to meet favorite of the show, which

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Speaker 1: I believe was the most listened to episode we've ever done.

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Speaker 1: In the first episode with him Mike Vining in person

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Speaker 1: for the first time, Yeah, um, you know, Mike and

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Speaker 1: I had corresponded for years, and um, he had mentioned

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Speaker 1: that he was coming through the city. Uh so we

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Speaker 1: got together and um, you know, met up and had

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Speaker 1: a coffee on Sunday morning before I had to head

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Speaker 1: off to a Yankee game. And uh yeah, it was

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Speaker 1: a great seeing him in person. He's a super interesting guy.

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Speaker 1: He's got like way more stories than even people realize.

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Speaker 1: So why was he in New York? Um just I

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Speaker 1: mean he's he's you know, enjoying his retirement. Um, I

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Speaker 1: guess coming to New York City the um was on

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Speaker 1: his wife's bucket list, something she wanted to do. So

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Speaker 1: they were going off to a play. Um. So yeah,

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Speaker 1: like I said, he's enjoying life. I just wish we

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Speaker 1: would have got him in studio, we have to. It

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Speaker 1: would have been cool. Um. But yeah, and he's telling

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Speaker 1: me a lot of stories about rock climbing and mountaineering

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Speaker 1: and um, he has a whole background. That's his hobbies

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Speaker 1: and so he has a whole background there and just

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Speaker 1: skiing I think too. King. Yeah, there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: interesting stuff that he's done. Um. He's even telling me

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Speaker 1: about how well he took a Delta team UH to

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Speaker 1: climb Denali Uh and he and also r near I believe.

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Speaker 1: And he was telling me this story about how when

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Speaker 1: China opened up on the Chinese side of Mount Everest,

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Speaker 1: he was supposed to go with some S A S

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Speaker 1: guys and climb Mount Everest. Well he's like, I don't

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Speaker 1: know if I would have been on the summit team

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Speaker 1: or not, but I would have gone up there to

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Speaker 1: the base camp at least. Um. And he said that

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Speaker 1: the S A S guys his So he was still

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Speaker 1: in Delta at the time. His commander UH denied him

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Speaker 1: t d Y said he couldn't go. So the S

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Speaker 1: A S guys what's t day temporary duty. Um, So

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Speaker 1: it wouldn't release him because he was an important person

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Speaker 1: in the unit. Like if something happened like you kind

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Speaker 1: of want, like you know, your senior E O D

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Speaker 1: guy there, um so that he was telling me, you know,

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Speaker 1: he he stayed home and the S A S guys

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Speaker 1: went and they got hit by an avalanche and one

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Speaker 1: guy got killed. Another dude broke his back. They lost

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Speaker 1: like all their equipment. How many times does this man

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Speaker 1: escape death? Like between that? It's true, I don't do

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Speaker 1: rally uh Granada just getting raked by machine gun fire.

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Speaker 1: I mean, like I said, he's an interesting guy and

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Speaker 1: that totally humble down to earth quaiet guy. You know,

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Speaker 1: did he say anything about the response to the episode.

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Speaker 1: I'm sure he's heard some people uh not really know.

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Speaker 1: He's kind of off the internet though, right, So yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean he I mean, he stays in touch with

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Speaker 1: his friends and teammates and stuff. But I mean I

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Speaker 1: don't I don't think. I don't know it's crazy because

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Speaker 1: like I do think that episode got a bigger response

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Speaker 1: than any other episode we've ever done, more listens than

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Speaker 1: any episode we've ever done. So yeah, he's it's you know,

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Speaker 1: he's probably unaware of the memes that go around him

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Speaker 1: and all this other stuff. Yeah, I mean That's why

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Speaker 1: when I posted that picture up, people are like, did

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Speaker 1: he ask you if you operate? Yeah? But I'm glad

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Speaker 1: that that podcast got so many listens because you know,

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Speaker 1: Mike Vining was one of the originals and he served

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Speaker 1: this country for a long long time. Um, so I'm

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Speaker 1: god people are getting to hear his story. Does he

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Speaker 1: still talk to Jerry Boykin? I don't know. Yeah, I

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Speaker 1: just wonder because Jerry Boykin is a guy who's very

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Speaker 1: out there in the media and in the forefront, you know,

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Speaker 1: regularly on like Fox News, regularly on radio, and Mike

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Speaker 1: Vining keeps, you know, to himself for the most part. Yeah. Well,

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Speaker 1: I mean, yeah, Boykin is kind of a different, uh,

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Speaker 1: different ballgame, I guess. I mean they came up together,

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Speaker 1: so oh yeah, no, they were in the unit at

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Speaker 1: the same time. But a Boykin is h he's a preacher,

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Speaker 1: you know, so he's out there live from the word

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Speaker 1: of God. I guess, yeah, he's well, he's also very

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Speaker 1: big on that. You know. We tried to get him

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Speaker 1: on one the American Family Research Family Research Count and

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Speaker 1: I think that they like turned us down. I tried

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Speaker 1: to get him on before though, and you know, I

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Speaker 1: do know about the American Family Research Council, And they're

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Speaker 1: like a group that's very vehemently like antire marriage, yeah,

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Speaker 1: very conservative, yeah, and like very yeah social conservative values

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Speaker 1: type of group. And which is interesting because that stuff,

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Speaker 1: whatever your opinion on it, maybe it has nothing to

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Speaker 1: do with the military, which is his expertise. You remember

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Speaker 1: when we interviewed Oliver North and I asked him about

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Speaker 1: that operation in Sudan, and that was Jerry Boykin who's

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Speaker 1: there for that and uh and Oliver North had to

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Speaker 1: get out of jail free said it was actually a

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Speaker 1: letter signed by Ronald Reagan basically I get out of

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Speaker 1: jail free cards and saying these guys can do what

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Speaker 1: they want. We got to get him back on Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I would love to. I't have to get him in studio.

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Speaker 1: He's got some stories for sure, and he really does um.

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Speaker 1: All right, So before we get to Jim Morris, who,

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Speaker 1: by the way, former Green Beret serving in Vietnam. I

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Speaker 1: was looking at our emails and I think, because we've

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Speaker 1: been paying attention to the emails, you're bringing up the

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Speaker 1: big bang in Pyeongong. I'm swear to god, Hey, you

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Speaker 1: brought it. Uh. So we got a ton of emails

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Speaker 1: sent to soft rep dot radio softrep dot com, and

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Speaker 1: I'm gonna try to get to all of them because

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Speaker 1: they're all pretty good questions. Uh. This is from Joseph

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Speaker 1: Gent's first off outstanding job with the site and the

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Speaker 1: podcast specifically. I've been listening to the podcast podcast for

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Speaker 1: quite a long time and noticed that normal content on

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Speaker 1: soft rep is always better reported and oftentimes better written

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Speaker 1: than what is put out on the mainstream media. That

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Speaker 1: being said, I noticed very little has been mentioned about

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Speaker 1: the issues going on in Yemen. From the layman's perspective,

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Speaker 1: it almost seems like Yemen is on the brink of

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Speaker 1: collapsing into another serious situation, but conveniently gets overlooked, under

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Speaker 1: reported because if Saudi Arabia's vested interest in the region.

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Speaker 1: Just wondering if any of you guys had more to

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Speaker 1: say about it, cheers Joe, and then he says, PS

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Speaker 1: haven't listened to most of the earlier episodes. I just

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Speaker 1: wanted to give a quick kudos to e in the

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Speaker 1: overall quality and way out of the show has changed

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Speaker 1: for the better since he was brought on, and I

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Speaker 1: just wanted to say it hasn't gone unnoticed. Great job, dude,

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Speaker 1: So thank you, Joe. It's also funny to say, like

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Speaker 1: since I've been brought on, because there were only like

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Speaker 1: a few early episodes without me and it's been twenty

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Speaker 1: five maybe quite a few years. But thank you, man,

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Speaker 1: I really appreciate it. So anyway, onto Yemen. Totally legitimate

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Speaker 1: point about Yemen. Um. You know, we still are a

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Speaker 1: small news website and there's only so much ground. We

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Speaker 1: try to cover as much ground as we can. But

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Speaker 1: I think he's totally right about Yemen being under reported

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Speaker 1: and that we haven't done enough on Yemen. UM. I

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Speaker 1: think probably the reason why it's gone largely unreported, and

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Speaker 1: quite frankly about this is I think because Americans aren't there.

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Speaker 1: I think if Uncle Sam rolled into town, suddenly had

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Speaker 1: become a big story for the American press. But since

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Speaker 1: it's mostly um, you know, as you mentioned the Saudias,

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Speaker 1: there's a bunch of other people there, um, and you

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Speaker 1: know there there are Americans there but in and out. UM.

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Speaker 1: But I think we could do more on that, and uh,

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Speaker 1: I'd really have to go and invest myself in that

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Speaker 1: or get one of our writers to focus on it.

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Speaker 1: Be great if we could find somebody who really specializes

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Speaker 1: in that area and that subject because it is incredibly complicated. Um.

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Speaker 1: So yeah, I can. You already got the gears turning

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Speaker 1: in my head because there's a couple of stories Yemen

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Speaker 1: related i'd like to work on. One is about the

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Speaker 1: private military companies in Yemen. Um, there's a lot there

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Speaker 1: and it's a it's a very interesting story, very interesting country.

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Speaker 1: To get that out there at some point. Yeah, well

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Speaker 1: we'll have to talk about that. Um alright. This is

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Speaker 1: actually You've been asked this type of question before, but

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Speaker 1: I wanted to get to it because of this guy's background,

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Speaker 1: which I thought was interesting. Uh. Hey, guys, just wanted

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Speaker 1: to start off and say I love the show. It

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Speaker 1: keeps me saying at work while swinging a hammer. Awesome

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Speaker 1: to hear the life stories of the guys you've had on.

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Speaker 1: Favorite recently was Pat McNamara. He's one bad dude. Originally

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Speaker 1: he was listening to Brandon Webbs audio books and got

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Speaker 1: me tuned into the app and eventually becoming a team.

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Speaker 1: Remember my question for Jack, long story short, I'm a

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Speaker 1: professional m a competitor from Pennsylvania and by the way,

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Speaker 1: he is, which is ja hass j H A H

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Speaker 1: A A S. I looked him up, which is pretty

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Speaker 1: cool to see. Although from what I know with like

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Speaker 1: m m A, unless you're in the UFC or bellator, like,

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Speaker 1: there's not a lot of money in being a pro

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Speaker 1: mm A fighter, which you know he's not in the

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Speaker 1: big organization. It's like pro boxing probably yeah, which I

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Speaker 1: would hope we do see him there one day. Uh

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Speaker 1: turn pro at nineteen and twenty seven now, made a

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Speaker 1: deal with myself to give fighting a go until twenty

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Speaker 1: six or a list with eyes on a shot at BUDS.

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Speaker 1: I had a little brother in N s W and

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Speaker 1: a friend in the team, so I was biased there

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Speaker 1: but ended up in the Army office filling out paperwork

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Speaker 1: with intentions on an A T next contract. My guess,

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Speaker 1: I guess. My question is what would you tell someone

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Speaker 1: who's preparing for selection or going in as an SF

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Speaker 1: baby uh p S I N I know you're into

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Speaker 1: m m A and do some training whereat if you're

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Speaker 1: ever in p A looked me up. We running gym

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Speaker 1: down here with a few UFC bellator vets, would love

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Speaker 1: to have you in. Thanks in advance, keep it up,

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Speaker 1: And I did let him know i'd responded my Uh,

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Speaker 1: actually I go to a UFC. Jim, I do not

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Speaker 1: train a m M A or any of that. UM.

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Speaker 1: But it's you know, cool to see. But anyway, I

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Speaker 1: know you've gotten that question before. But yeah, UM, well

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Speaker 1: Jay is in a unique situation. UM, and you know,

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Speaker 1: good for you man going into the military. UM. I

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Speaker 1: think the main question he has to ask himself is

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Speaker 1: what does he want to do in the military. UM.

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Speaker 1: If he wants to go and be, you know, a

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Speaker 1: maritime commando, then should definitely go and join the seals. UM.

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Speaker 1: I think s F would probably be a good fit

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Speaker 1: for him because he's a quote unquote older guy. He's

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Speaker 1: twenty seven. UM. A lot of guys you know are

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Speaker 1: eighteen when they joined the military. UM. It sounds like

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Speaker 1: he were. He has experienced as a carpenter, talks about

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Speaker 1: swinging a hammer. He's probably in carpentry, UM, so he

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Speaker 1: has some work experience. He's probably a little bit more

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Speaker 1: mature than the average dude who's joining the military. UH.

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Speaker 1: For him, I would recommend going in as a Yes,

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Speaker 1: Special Forces is probably good for him, but a good

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Speaker 1: fit because that's a job that requires a little bit

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Speaker 1: more of a cool head, a little bit more of

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Speaker 1: a mature personality, and he could go in and be

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Speaker 1: an eighteen Charlie, which is a Special Forces engineer UM

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Speaker 1: and his carpentry experience will help bring a lot to

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Speaker 1: the table there um And of course in special Forces

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Speaker 1: they also practice army combatives, so his uh mixed martial

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Speaker 1: arts background will also be a big step up, a

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Speaker 1: big leg up for him, and he'll be able to

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Speaker 1: bring you know, this background, he has an m m

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Speaker 1: A and carpentery both and bring that into his military career.

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Speaker 1: And we talked about that at length, the combative stuff

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Speaker 1: with Matt Larson. He was on He's been on two episodes.

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Speaker 1: Actually you were only on one of them and then

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Speaker 1: the other was just me, Jim and Matt. Okay. Cool. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: So if people want to go back in the archives,

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Speaker 1: that was a really cool one. And thanks for the email.

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Speaker 1: All right, So this is from Kirk Whissing. Hello, guys,

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Speaker 1: I'm wondering if there are any foreign military units that

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Speaker 1: operate like green Berets training conventional forces of partner countries,

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Speaker 1: either overtly or covertly. If so, has the United States

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Speaker 1: military engaged these foreign forces during the g Watt through

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Speaker 1: engagement with their proxy forces. To the interested civilian, it

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Speaker 1: seems like this would be inevitable in modern combat. Thanks

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Speaker 1: to your time and then another ps, the George Hand

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Speaker 1: interviews have been awesome. So the answer to the question

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Speaker 1: is yeah, absolutely, there are other countries that have special

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Speaker 1: forces types type units UM that can engage in either

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Speaker 1: foreign internal defense or unconventional warfare. A lot of times

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Speaker 1: what you see is that with foreign countries is they

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Speaker 1: don't have the UM money and resources to have these

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Speaker 1: highly specialized units like we have. So what you'll find

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Speaker 1: is even like the Canadians and the Australians that their

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Speaker 1: version of rangers um SE soar in Canada and the

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Speaker 1: commandos Aussie commandos in Australia will do foreign internal defense missions.

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Speaker 1: So they will be deployed to UH. Like let's see

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Speaker 1: um SE sire UM was quite publicly deployed and sent

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Speaker 1: to Central Africa part of the Flintlock Exercise training UM

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Speaker 1: foreign militaries. The seashore guys will be deployed, you know,

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Speaker 1: over to some areas in their area of responsibility in UH,

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Speaker 1: in the South China Sea and Southeast Asia. UM. So

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Speaker 1: you see a lot of that um as far as

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Speaker 1: like actual like like the same, like replicating the same

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Speaker 1: capabilities as you as special forces. At the only time

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Speaker 1: I've really seen that sort of thing is where US

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Speaker 1: Special Forces, rightly or wrongly depending on your point of view,

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Speaker 1: went and deliberately tried to recreate ourselves. We tried to

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Speaker 1: build a mirror image of ourselves, and I saw that

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Speaker 1: in the Philippines. Um. And but see their special forces,

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Speaker 1: Army special forces, they train, um, indeedge people in the Philippines.

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Speaker 1: They don't go external, they don't conduct external operations, so

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Speaker 1: they're mostly trying to create, you know, a counterinsurgency movement

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Speaker 1: inside their own country. Cool alright, great answer to that question. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And this is from Kyle. Hey, guys, just wanted to

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Speaker 1: say thank you for the podcast. I look for military

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Speaker 1: related talk often. Typically it is for the e O

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Speaker 1: D related material, and it's it's extremely difficult to find.

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Speaker 1: It seems like the only one you have, But I

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Speaker 1: just listened to the one with Mr Raridan, but we

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Speaker 1: also have uh, I should say, Um, Mike Vining uh

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Speaker 1: and enjoyed it during a workout. I'm one of your

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Speaker 1: listeners looking forward to more e O D related content

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Speaker 1: whenever possible, as it is a desired goal in my

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Speaker 1: naval career. Thanks again, p O three Snyder Kyle Cool. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's awesome man. We we love doing those. Uh. And

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Speaker 1: as we said, like brings up a topic that you

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Speaker 1: don't hear about often. So if we get in touch

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Speaker 1: with any other e O D guys will do it

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Speaker 1: or Mike Vining in studio. Yeah, I need to I

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Speaker 1: I know I've said this before, but I need to

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Speaker 1: get ahold of um some guys from psy ops and

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Speaker 1: civil affairs, which are kind of like the forgotten branches

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Speaker 1: of special operations. UM. But and people ask us about

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Speaker 1: that too, like what do these guys do? I'm interested

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Speaker 1: in enjoining that? What? What's what's that job? I know

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Speaker 1: one psy ops guy, I'm sure I could get to

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Speaker 1: come on. UM, I have to find I know some

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Speaker 1: civil affairs people. UM, I'll work on it. Yeah, it's

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Speaker 1: not special ops unless they're are guy. I wouldn't know,

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Speaker 1: but I've said that I'd like to get someone who

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Speaker 1: operates like drone strikes. Oh what do they call rp

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Speaker 1: A pilots and interesting episode I think because it's just

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Speaker 1: a newer warfare. So i'd love to get one of

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Speaker 1: those guys on the show. I'll keep that in mind.

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Speaker 1: That's interesting. Yeah, I think it'd be cool because also

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Speaker 1: you hear about the PTSD these guys go through, and

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Speaker 1: it's different because they're basically they're like operating a video

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Speaker 1: game and a remote location, but they're very real consequence. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and you're watching little people walk around on the screen

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Speaker 1: and then you vaporize them. And not to mention the

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Speaker 1: amount of civilian deaths, you know, as opposed to a

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Speaker 1: sniper like you are for the most part taking out

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Speaker 1: bad guys. Yeah, well, even if you miss, you're gonna

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Speaker 1: take out one innocent person. You're not gonna blow up

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Speaker 1: like a whole houseful of people. Yeah. And you know,

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Speaker 1: just looking at the statistics of civilians killed in drone strikes,

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Speaker 1: it's pretty horrifying. Yeah, especially like Pakistan. Yeah, jeezus, alright, Uh,

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Speaker 1: here we go. This is from Trey and the It's

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Speaker 1: titled settle this argument for me. Hey, guys, a short

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Speaker 1: time fan here, but I love listening to you guys. Uh,

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Speaker 1: please help me settle an argument once and for all.

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Speaker 1: I'm a senior in college that is about to graduate

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Speaker 1: with my bachelor's degree and who's tough for Force Navy Seals?

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Speaker 1: Now it said that my bachelor's degree in criminal justice

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Speaker 1: with a certification and criminal profiling and security management. That's

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Speaker 1: pretty cool. I plan on joining the military after I

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Speaker 1: graduate with my degree because my college is already paid

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Speaker 1: in full. I want to sign up for an Option

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Speaker 1: forty contract, but I've been told by recruiters and people

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Speaker 1: online that if I want to go in as an officer,

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Speaker 1: I will not be able to pick my mls. This

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Speaker 1: has caused several arguments between my mother and I because

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Speaker 1: she wants me to go in as an officer, but

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Speaker 1: I want to be sure that I'm able to get

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Speaker 1: an Option forty contract and so that I can go

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Speaker 1: to GRASP. I hope you guys can help me out here.

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Speaker 1: Keep up the awesome podcast. So the deal is officers

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Speaker 1: don't have an MS. They have a branch. UM. So

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Speaker 1: when they go through their officer training, whatever route they

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Speaker 1: take West Point or Green and Gold and they go

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Speaker 1: to what is it, O, B C and all that

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Speaker 1: kind of stuff, um there will be assigned a branch

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Speaker 1: and um they I was never an officer, never wanted

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Speaker 1: to be. I don't care about them. But if you

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Speaker 1: want to be an officer, I believe the way it

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Speaker 1: works is they take a certain percentage of each you know,

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Speaker 1: they look at like where you graduate, on what your

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Speaker 1: scores are, and they'll take a certain percentage of the

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Speaker 1: A students and the B students and try to evenly

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Speaker 1: distribute them into each branch. That's the way I was

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Speaker 1: told it works. So you don't, because otherwise what would

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Speaker 1: happen is all the studs would just go to the

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Speaker 1: infantry and the other branches would get screwed. Um. So

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Speaker 1: I believe that's how it works. Um. I think maybe

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Speaker 1: if you're like the honor grad at West Point, you

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Speaker 1: get to choose your branch. But otherwise it's kind of

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Speaker 1: like needs of the me right. Um So yeah, I

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Speaker 1: mean what he's saying isn't wrong. I mean, when you

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Speaker 1: join as an officer, your branch is probably gonna be

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Speaker 1: chosen for you. You're probably gonna be able to make

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Speaker 1: a suggestion like this is what I want to do,

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Speaker 1: but it's gonna be more needs to the army. If

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Speaker 1: you go and as enlisted, you're gonna be able to

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Speaker 1: choose your ms. Like you said, you can get that

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Speaker 1: option for d contract, which is just gonna put you

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Speaker 1: right onto the pipeline to be a ranger. Cool. All right, Well,

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Speaker 1: thanks Dray. Keep the emails coming. Soft Up dot Radio

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Speaker 1: a soft up dot com. We got to a lot

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Speaker 1: of them today. We don't usually do all that. But uh,

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Speaker 1: not so much news going on, you know, of course

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Speaker 1: the uh you know, there's Barbara Boush funeral and stuff

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Speaker 1: like that, but nothing really in our wheelhouse. To mention

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Speaker 1: of note, by the way, I noticed it's like quiet

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Speaker 1: and here today. I think everybody because the weather is

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Speaker 1: absolutely beautiful everyone. I think, you know, like we're in

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Speaker 1: and we're moving to a new office, but we're in

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Speaker 1: an office of all these startup companies, uh where I

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Speaker 1: think people it's almost like us. They get to like

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Speaker 1: pick your schedule a little bit. There's those first couple

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Speaker 1: of warm days in New York City, even more so

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Speaker 1: than the summer. It's like those first couple of warm

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Speaker 1: spring days. The girls in this town just stopped wearing clothes.

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Speaker 1: I love it, like all together, like barely wearing clothes.

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Speaker 1: I'm all about it. Absolutely can't complain. I wasn't complainings

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Speaker 1: pointing something out. If you're a tourist coming into the city.

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Speaker 1: You know, it might be a good day to come.

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Speaker 1: I would agree, alright. So with that, let's get over

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Speaker 1: to Jim Morris for the first time on with Us

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Speaker 1: is Jim Morris. This guy's got an awesome background, so

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Speaker 1: we're psyched to have him on. It's cool, Jack, you

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Speaker 1: make contact with a lot of the vets from the

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Speaker 1: Vietnam generation, and we've been bringing a lot of these

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Speaker 1: guys on, so I'm excited to hear the story Jim.

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Speaker 1: Just just a little background, Um from my perspective, is um.

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Speaker 1: You know, Jim is one of those guys who came

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Speaker 1: back from the Vietnam War and articulated his experiences very well.

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Speaker 1: And he wrote one of my favorite books I read

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Speaker 1: while I was in Fifth Special Forces Group called War Story,

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Speaker 1: which is about his experiences as a as a captain

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Speaker 1: and Special Forces in the Vietnam War. And it was

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Speaker 1: just really striking to me how similar our experiences were,

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Speaker 1: even though they are separated by you know, forty something

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Speaker 1: years and him in Southeast Asia fighting you know, communism

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Speaker 1: and maybe in the Middle East fighting terrorism. But there's

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Speaker 1: so many similarities and that's why I'm really happy that

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Speaker 1: I've been able to you know, reach out to Jim

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Speaker 1: and you know, we've been able to correspond over the years.

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Speaker 1: And I saw I should say that Jim has written

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Speaker 1: quite a few books other than War Story, Above and Beyond,

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Speaker 1: a Battle of Sorcerers, um, and and you know, just

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Speaker 1: a white guys know the background. Jim is a former

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Speaker 1: Green Beret during Vietnam, served in three tours. So it's

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Speaker 1: great to have you on, great to be here. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: thanks for coming up. You guys have been a great thing. Um.

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Speaker 1: Soft rep Is is just a major source for me

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Speaker 1: and and I hope for a lot of my guys

427
00:22:54,560 --> 00:22:57,040
Speaker 1: my age, because some of them know about it and

428
00:22:57,119 --> 00:23:00,560
Speaker 1: some of them don't. Yeah, we really, you know, have

429
00:23:00,640 --> 00:23:03,040
Speaker 1: a lot of pleasure in uh, you know, giving you

430
00:23:03,119 --> 00:23:06,440
Speaker 1: guys a voice and you know, like, uh, you know,

431
00:23:06,560 --> 00:23:10,199
Speaker 1: Mike Vining was also a Vietnam veteran. John Striker may

432
00:23:10,320 --> 00:23:12,400
Speaker 1: or another Vietnam vete that we have on the show

433
00:23:12,440 --> 00:23:15,120
Speaker 1: from time to time. Um. So, I mean it's really

434
00:23:15,200 --> 00:23:17,840
Speaker 1: important to me that you know, we we reflect back

435
00:23:17,960 --> 00:23:24,040
Speaker 1: on our past experiences and hopefully learned something from them. Well,

436
00:23:24,280 --> 00:23:28,000
Speaker 1: you know, there's there. It's so instructive to look at

437
00:23:28,080 --> 00:23:31,800
Speaker 1: both the similarities and the differences. I mean, the internal

438
00:23:31,920 --> 00:23:37,800
Speaker 1: dynamics are pretty much the same, but um uh minor changes.

439
00:23:37,960 --> 00:23:40,320
Speaker 1: You know, you change one factor in the formula, you've

440
00:23:40,320 --> 00:23:43,399
Speaker 1: got a different formula. And there are there are a

441
00:23:43,480 --> 00:23:48,080
Speaker 1: few things that have changed that that frankly scare me.

442
00:23:48,960 --> 00:23:53,880
Speaker 1: There's the improvements. Um Like, for instance, when I when

443
00:23:53,960 --> 00:23:57,160
Speaker 1: I first joined Special Forces, I was the first lieutenant,

444
00:23:58,080 --> 00:24:02,000
Speaker 1: and in those days at a long time to make captains,

445
00:24:02,080 --> 00:24:04,639
Speaker 1: so first lieutenant was a pretty good choice for an exit.

446
00:24:05,680 --> 00:24:08,760
Speaker 1: Um now you have to be a captain to join.

447
00:24:09,200 --> 00:24:11,159
Speaker 1: What I fear and this is okay, this is this

448
00:24:11,320 --> 00:24:14,479
Speaker 1: is me asking you, not you asking me about how

449
00:24:14,600 --> 00:24:18,359
Speaker 1: that's working out, because it seems to me that there's

450
00:24:18,400 --> 00:24:21,640
Speaker 1: a danger that the that the newbie on the team

451
00:24:21,760 --> 00:24:25,560
Speaker 1: is the top guy on the team, and that seems

452
00:24:25,680 --> 00:24:29,240
Speaker 1: dangerous to me. Yeah, that kind of is an issue,

453
00:24:29,520 --> 00:24:32,959
Speaker 1: and I think most of the captains, the Special Forces

454
00:24:33,040 --> 00:24:35,719
Speaker 1: captains realized that, and the n c O is kind

455
00:24:35,760 --> 00:24:37,840
Speaker 1: of regard them. I mean, I remember guys on my

456
00:24:37,960 --> 00:24:39,919
Speaker 1: team saying, you know, the captain is just a tourist

457
00:24:40,000 --> 00:24:42,520
Speaker 1: on the team because he's only here for two years

458
00:24:42,840 --> 00:24:45,600
Speaker 1: and then he's off to a staff position or something

459
00:24:45,720 --> 00:24:48,399
Speaker 1: like that. Um, it is an issue. I mean, I

460
00:24:48,480 --> 00:24:51,000
Speaker 1: don't think that you want to take a butter bar

461
00:24:51,320 --> 00:24:54,360
Speaker 1: and put them in charge of an SF team though. Um.

462
00:24:54,560 --> 00:24:56,840
Speaker 1: But maybe what you could do is take a lieutenant

463
00:24:57,600 --> 00:24:59,920
Speaker 1: and make them the assistant team leader, which is current

464
00:25:00,200 --> 00:25:04,320
Speaker 1: a spot held by warrant officers. UM. But I don't know.

465
00:25:04,520 --> 00:25:06,480
Speaker 1: I mean, that's something that you'd have to make a

466
00:25:06,600 --> 00:25:08,960
Speaker 1: very thorough study of. I'm not sure I'm qualified to

467
00:25:09,000 --> 00:25:12,480
Speaker 1: start rearranging the entire force structure like that. Um. But

468
00:25:12,560 --> 00:25:15,240
Speaker 1: it's an interesting question, and maybe it would help alleviate

469
00:25:15,320 --> 00:25:19,800
Speaker 1: some of the problems that you're that you're referring to. Well, Okay,

470
00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:22,879
Speaker 1: my best friend here in l A is Ken Miller,

471
00:25:22,920 --> 00:25:26,080
Speaker 1: who was a ranger in Oh yeah, Ken, and there's

472
00:25:26,160 --> 00:25:32,680
Speaker 1: also a super author and Ken Ken keeps telling me

473
00:25:32,880 --> 00:25:36,440
Speaker 1: that n c o s hate s F being a

474
00:25:36,520 --> 00:25:41,160
Speaker 1: branch and uh, that it's a good deal for the officers.

475
00:25:41,240 --> 00:25:44,119
Speaker 1: And it is because when I when I joined Special Forces,

476
00:25:44,160 --> 00:25:50,040
Speaker 1: it was career suicide. Um. But the what that led

477
00:25:50,119 --> 00:25:55,080
Speaker 1: to was an an officers corps that basically didn't give

478
00:25:55,080 --> 00:25:57,080
Speaker 1: a rats ass man. They were there to work, not

479
00:25:57,240 --> 00:26:01,440
Speaker 1: to not to pad their part or become generals or

480
00:26:01,640 --> 00:26:04,160
Speaker 1: do any of that thing. They wanted to get down

481
00:26:04,240 --> 00:26:06,880
Speaker 1: in the weeds and do the work, and we got

482
00:26:06,960 --> 00:26:10,159
Speaker 1: it done. Yeah. I mean I I agree with you

483
00:26:10,280 --> 00:26:13,119
Speaker 1: for sure on the team level that that's an issue.

484
00:26:13,880 --> 00:26:16,119
Speaker 1: I think part of it. Also, the idea of making

485
00:26:16,160 --> 00:26:18,520
Speaker 1: Special Forces a branch was so that we could have

486
00:26:19,080 --> 00:26:22,920
Speaker 1: Special Forces colonels and generals who could compete for resources

487
00:26:23,040 --> 00:26:26,000
Speaker 1: up at the Pentagon. UM. I think that was also

488
00:26:26,080 --> 00:26:29,200
Speaker 1: a concern because, as you know from your day, special

489
00:26:29,280 --> 00:26:34,640
Speaker 1: Forces is kind of like the redheaded stepchild of the military. Uh. Yeah,

490
00:26:35,000 --> 00:26:40,400
Speaker 1: we'll put Jim, do you want to? UM. I don't

491
00:26:40,440 --> 00:26:42,760
Speaker 1: know where to of course, when I do these interviews

492
00:26:42,760 --> 00:26:45,560
Speaker 1: with people who have such an extensive biography, I don't

493
00:26:45,560 --> 00:26:48,159
Speaker 1: know where to begin. But I guess maybe could you

494
00:26:48,280 --> 00:26:50,440
Speaker 1: begin telling us a little bit about you know, your

495
00:26:50,520 --> 00:26:53,680
Speaker 1: upbringing and how you found your way into the Vietnam

496
00:26:53,760 --> 00:26:57,920
Speaker 1: War by UM. Well, for one thing, I was the

497
00:26:58,000 --> 00:27:03,800
Speaker 1: first lieutenant when it started, so I let's see, I was.

498
00:27:04,320 --> 00:27:07,040
Speaker 1: I was a rocky kid. I went through r OTC

499
00:27:07,400 --> 00:27:10,560
Speaker 1: at the University of Oklahoma, and before that I was

500
00:27:10,600 --> 00:27:17,040
Speaker 1: a PFC in a reserve MP unit. UM and UM

501
00:27:18,119 --> 00:27:22,119
Speaker 1: then okay, this was before the days of training group. Well,

502
00:27:22,119 --> 00:27:24,200
Speaker 1: and it wasn't before training group, but it was before

503
00:27:24,280 --> 00:27:29,120
Speaker 1: selection and all of that. And I had I didn't

504
00:27:29,160 --> 00:27:31,960
Speaker 1: get to jump school when I first went through Infantry

505
00:27:32,000 --> 00:27:35,840
Speaker 1: Officers Basic course, so I went I had to get

506
00:27:35,920 --> 00:27:39,280
Speaker 1: back to it more than a year after I was

507
00:27:39,359 --> 00:27:43,800
Speaker 1: on active duty, so we I was a two year guy.

508
00:27:44,760 --> 00:27:46,720
Speaker 1: I didn't want to stay any army. What I wanted

509
00:27:46,720 --> 00:27:49,719
Speaker 1: to do was go home and join a Special Forces

510
00:27:49,800 --> 00:27:53,120
Speaker 1: Reserve unit, which they had one in Oklahoma City where

511
00:27:53,160 --> 00:28:00,280
Speaker 1: I came from. And um, so I I went back

512
00:28:00,480 --> 00:28:05,440
Speaker 1: and just, um, oh, I'm getting kind of kind of

513
00:28:05,520 --> 00:28:10,080
Speaker 1: off topic here. But in any case, I went to

514
00:28:10,200 --> 00:28:14,480
Speaker 1: the Pentagon to see about getting out. I was afraid

515
00:28:14,520 --> 00:28:16,760
Speaker 1: i'd catch an overseas to her because I had to

516
00:28:16,840 --> 00:28:20,920
Speaker 1: extend to go to jump school. And this major down

517
00:28:20,960 --> 00:28:23,359
Speaker 1: there said, have you been talking to anybody down here, Lieutenant?

518
00:28:23,480 --> 00:28:28,240
Speaker 1: And I said, no, sir, um, I just I just

519
00:28:28,600 --> 00:28:31,119
Speaker 1: need to I need to be getting out and going home.

520
00:28:31,160 --> 00:28:32,639
Speaker 1: And he said, well, I've got a set of orders

521
00:28:32,680 --> 00:28:38,760
Speaker 1: here sending you to Okinawa for three years. And he said,

522
00:28:38,840 --> 00:28:41,560
Speaker 1: now it's not too late. And you know, I felt

523
00:28:41,600 --> 00:28:44,280
Speaker 1: like i'd won a lotto. I said, it never even

524
00:28:44,320 --> 00:28:46,920
Speaker 1: occurred to me that I could even get in Special

525
00:28:47,000 --> 00:28:52,040
Speaker 1: Forces with the background that I had. And um, so

526
00:28:52,200 --> 00:28:54,560
Speaker 1: I said, no, sir, that's that's okay. You just leave

527
00:28:54,640 --> 00:28:57,680
Speaker 1: him alone. And I left the Pentagon and I was

528
00:28:57,880 --> 00:29:01,840
Speaker 1: laughing so hard that I fell down. I mean, I felt,

529
00:29:01,920 --> 00:29:03,920
Speaker 1: I felt that. I mean, I knew that my life

530
00:29:03,960 --> 00:29:10,440
Speaker 1: had changed completely and forever in that moment. And Ah,

531
00:29:11,160 --> 00:29:13,880
Speaker 1: you know, I can't tell you how much I love.

532
00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:16,080
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't. I don't really know what life

533
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:19,440
Speaker 1: is like in the Forces now, but I can tell

534
00:29:19,480 --> 00:29:22,440
Speaker 1: you what it was like in the first Special Forces

535
00:29:22,480 --> 00:29:25,240
Speaker 1: group when I joined it on Okinawa, and it was

536
00:29:25,320 --> 00:29:29,480
Speaker 1: the happiest place I'd ever been. Everybody there loved what

537
00:29:29,640 --> 00:29:32,000
Speaker 1: we were doing. They loved the guy we were working for.

538
00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:35,800
Speaker 1: Um you know, I was at that point of first

539
00:29:35,880 --> 00:29:40,880
Speaker 1: lieutenant and the team sergeants that they had their mostly

540
00:29:41,000 --> 00:29:43,560
Speaker 1: the team sergeants, the senior n c O. S. I

541
00:29:43,720 --> 00:29:46,320
Speaker 1: was in awe of those guys. I was in literal

542
00:29:46,840 --> 00:29:50,680
Speaker 1: all all the time, and I studied them and I learned,

543
00:29:50,800 --> 00:29:56,560
Speaker 1: and it was, um god, it was fun. I mean,

544
00:29:57,280 --> 00:29:59,640
Speaker 1: you know, you kind of get the sense, but God,

545
00:29:59,720 --> 00:30:02,520
Speaker 1: it was fun. Well, what were the Salty Team sergeants like,

546
00:30:02,840 --> 00:30:04,680
Speaker 1: well when you got there, I mean, what what was

547
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:09,880
Speaker 1: their background were? They'd been in White Star. Uh. There

548
00:30:10,040 --> 00:30:15,200
Speaker 1: was Tony Dawarty who was Bill Grace's team sergeant. And

549
00:30:16,080 --> 00:30:18,680
Speaker 1: let's see, he had, as I recall, he had a

550
00:30:18,800 --> 00:30:21,600
Speaker 1: six degree karate black belt and he was also a

551
00:30:21,720 --> 00:30:24,760
Speaker 1: judo black belt. He'd been in I don't know what

552
00:30:24,880 --> 00:30:28,800
Speaker 1: his combat situation was. I know he'd been in Korea U,

553
00:30:29,560 --> 00:30:33,040
Speaker 1: but he was he was This guy was a movie

554
00:30:33,120 --> 00:30:38,040
Speaker 1: star handsome. And there were two big magazine articles about

555
00:30:38,120 --> 00:30:40,280
Speaker 1: special forces that came out in that time, one on

556
00:30:40,320 --> 00:30:43,320
Speaker 1: the Saturday Evening Post and one in Life. And he

557
00:30:43,480 --> 00:30:46,000
Speaker 1: was on the cover of both of those magazines because

558
00:30:46,080 --> 00:30:49,960
Speaker 1: he totally looked the role. And uh, and he was

559
00:30:50,080 --> 00:30:52,240
Speaker 1: the role. I mean, it wasn't that this guy looked

560
00:30:52,280 --> 00:30:56,040
Speaker 1: a part. He was the part. He was terrific. Um.

561
00:30:56,880 --> 00:31:01,120
Speaker 1: Probably the smartest guy I ever met in the army

562
00:31:02,120 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 1: was was Bill Edge, who was an SSD when I

563
00:31:06,320 --> 00:31:10,280
Speaker 1: met him and retired as I think a command sergeant major,

564
00:31:10,400 --> 00:31:16,240
Speaker 1: but I'm not sure. Um and um uh, I just

565
00:31:16,360 --> 00:31:18,800
Speaker 1: love that. Okay, Bill Edge, for one thing, you know

566
00:31:18,960 --> 00:31:21,280
Speaker 1: that saying, yeah, though I walked through the Valley of

567
00:31:21,360 --> 00:31:23,200
Speaker 1: the Shadow of Death. I will for you're know evil,

568
00:31:23,200 --> 00:31:27,680
Speaker 1: because I know I'm the baddest motherfucker there. Ed said

569
00:31:27,720 --> 00:31:31,120
Speaker 1: that he was a guy who said that, and he

570
00:31:31,240 --> 00:31:34,320
Speaker 1: had he had another one. Uh, he was he was

571
00:31:34,480 --> 00:31:38,400
Speaker 1: a It's interesting because when he was dying, his daughter

572
00:31:38,560 --> 00:31:43,840
Speaker 1: was putting out prayer requests, which I hauntored. But he

573
00:31:44,000 --> 00:31:47,560
Speaker 1: was a militant atheist when I knew him. And another

574
00:31:47,720 --> 00:31:49,840
Speaker 1: joke that he he had that I thought was just

575
00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:54,400
Speaker 1: great was biblical quote, which was and the Lord was

576
00:31:54,520 --> 00:31:57,840
Speaker 1: making his way to Jerusalem. While on his way to Jerusalem,

577
00:31:57,880 --> 00:32:00,360
Speaker 1: he came upon a leopard and the left were looked

578
00:32:00,400 --> 00:32:02,920
Speaker 1: upon the Lord and spake unto him, Lord quinsny, for

579
00:32:03,000 --> 00:32:04,840
Speaker 1: I am a leper. And the Lord looked upon the

580
00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:11,880
Speaker 1: leper and said, sit calls an eight o'clock motherfucker. So

581
00:32:12,040 --> 00:32:19,360
Speaker 1: he's a cynical guy, yeah, really really smart. And the

582
00:32:19,480 --> 00:32:23,160
Speaker 1: other one aries Zaki. I can't I can't tell you

583
00:32:23,320 --> 00:32:25,600
Speaker 1: much about Zachie. I just remember what he looked like,

584
00:32:25,840 --> 00:32:29,080
Speaker 1: and he looked like a cross between the tank and

585
00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:35,840
Speaker 1: the Green Beret um and Willie Cards who Willie was.

586
00:32:36,240 --> 00:32:38,640
Speaker 1: I was talking to him one time. A lot of

587
00:32:38,680 --> 00:32:41,640
Speaker 1: these guys incidentally were jumped up to captain from Master's

588
00:32:41,680 --> 00:32:43,959
Speaker 1: sergeant during the course of Oh they were they were

589
00:32:44,040 --> 00:32:49,200
Speaker 1: branched field promotion. Yeah, exactly because they were. They were

590
00:32:49,280 --> 00:32:53,040
Speaker 1: hurting for hurting for officers and uh and here were

591
00:32:53,080 --> 00:32:56,120
Speaker 1: all these guys who were well, look, you know, I mean,

592
00:32:56,240 --> 00:32:59,200
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if this if this is still true,

593
00:33:00,160 --> 00:33:03,120
Speaker 1: but when I imagine it is. When I was in SF,

594
00:33:03,800 --> 00:33:07,200
Speaker 1: the minimum g T or i Q for a Special

595
00:33:07,320 --> 00:33:12,880
Speaker 1: Forces soldier was ten, which was the minimum for o

596
00:33:13,080 --> 00:33:16,880
Speaker 1: c s. And the only difference between the requirements for

597
00:33:16,960 --> 00:33:20,240
Speaker 1: o CS and Special Forces at that time is you

598
00:33:20,400 --> 00:33:24,880
Speaker 1: couldn't get an o CS without I think a high

599
00:33:24,880 --> 00:33:30,520
Speaker 1: school diploma at least. And um, you know, you couldn't

600
00:33:30,520 --> 00:33:32,920
Speaker 1: become an officer with a criminal record, and you couldn't

601
00:33:32,960 --> 00:33:36,200
Speaker 1: get in Special Forces if you couldn't swim. Those are

602
00:33:36,240 --> 00:33:39,760
Speaker 1: the differences. And I always say that, you know, if

603
00:33:41,080 --> 00:33:44,200
Speaker 1: if a Special Forces in C O is not an officer,

604
00:33:44,760 --> 00:33:47,680
Speaker 1: it's because he doesn't want to be, or he hasn't

605
00:33:47,680 --> 00:33:50,840
Speaker 1: gone around to it yet, you know, I mean, in

606
00:33:51,120 --> 00:33:53,400
Speaker 1: in the in the big Army. When I was in

607
00:33:53,520 --> 00:33:55,840
Speaker 1: the Big Army, the officers had a little bit of

608
00:33:55,920 --> 00:34:01,320
Speaker 1: a little you know, hey, we're ledge graduates for blah blah,

609
00:34:01,800 --> 00:34:06,360
Speaker 1: and uh, they kind of felt they were better than

610
00:34:06,400 --> 00:34:08,640
Speaker 1: the n c o s were officer and special forces.

611
00:34:08,719 --> 00:34:13,440
Speaker 1: Who have that idea is an idiot, you know, because

612
00:34:13,920 --> 00:34:16,239
Speaker 1: the officers aren't better than the n c o s.

613
00:34:16,320 --> 00:34:20,320
Speaker 1: They just do a different job. I also wanted to

614
00:34:20,400 --> 00:34:22,920
Speaker 1: ask you, Jim, because I know you're you're a very

615
00:34:23,040 --> 00:34:25,040
Speaker 1: like deep thinker, and even in your book you can

616
00:34:25,120 --> 00:34:27,600
Speaker 1: see it. You know that you know your thoughts about

617
00:34:27,640 --> 00:34:30,319
Speaker 1: the war, and as we have this opportunity to talk

618
00:34:30,360 --> 00:34:32,439
Speaker 1: to you, I wanted to ask you at that time,

619
00:34:33,160 --> 00:34:35,719
Speaker 1: I presume this was like what sixties seven or so,

620
00:34:36,640 --> 00:34:39,080
Speaker 1: what were your thoughts about Vietnam in the state of

621
00:34:39,440 --> 00:34:43,200
Speaker 1: the world and the Cold War? And are our standoff

622
00:34:43,280 --> 00:34:45,640
Speaker 1: with the Soviets at the time, how did you perceive

623
00:34:45,719 --> 00:34:49,600
Speaker 1: the world around you? Okay, your your timeline is a

624
00:34:49,600 --> 00:34:52,320
Speaker 1: little off. I first went to Vietnam in December of

625
00:34:52,480 --> 00:34:56,960
Speaker 1: nine three. Oh jeez, so you were really early. Yeah.

626
00:34:57,280 --> 00:34:59,400
Speaker 1: We were the we were the third team. We were

627
00:34:59,440 --> 00:35:02,719
Speaker 1: going on uh six month tours. So you came right

628
00:35:02,760 --> 00:35:09,520
Speaker 1: after Billy Bowles left. Um, yeah, just well, he was

629
00:35:09,600 --> 00:35:13,720
Speaker 1: in what he was in one of those UMU Tony

630
00:35:13,800 --> 00:35:18,160
Speaker 1: Doherty whom I mentioned was his team sergeant. And the

631
00:35:18,360 --> 00:35:20,839
Speaker 1: article it was not in the Post, it was in Look.

632
00:35:21,600 --> 00:35:23,880
Speaker 1: That was Duardi was on the cover of Look. And

633
00:35:23,960 --> 00:35:26,840
Speaker 1: there was a first time I ever even heard of

634
00:35:26,880 --> 00:35:30,880
Speaker 1: Billy both was he was. He was coming out of

635
00:35:32,440 --> 00:35:36,759
Speaker 1: hooch and saying, somebody was bemoaning their fate of being

636
00:35:36,840 --> 00:35:38,480
Speaker 1: in this horrible place, and he said, it could have

637
00:35:38,520 --> 00:35:44,759
Speaker 1: been worse. You could have been born here and uh,

638
00:35:44,920 --> 00:35:47,080
Speaker 1: and then I kind of got to know him a

639
00:35:47,080 --> 00:35:54,040
Speaker 1: little bit later. Was a great guy and that anyway, Yeah,

640
00:35:54,280 --> 00:35:57,120
Speaker 1: I was. I was there just a little after Billy Bowles,

641
00:35:58,080 --> 00:36:01,520
Speaker 1: um a in. I was the excel on that team.

642
00:36:02,440 --> 00:36:08,239
Speaker 1: And um the my commander had been the okay what

643
00:36:08,640 --> 00:36:12,160
Speaker 1: what it was now in Special Forces battalion was in

644
00:36:12,239 --> 00:36:14,120
Speaker 1: a company and what was you know, you know how

645
00:36:14,200 --> 00:36:20,200
Speaker 1: that that change came into effect. But the my CEO

646
00:36:20,320 --> 00:36:23,960
Speaker 1: had been the company adjutant, and they they told him

647
00:36:23,960 --> 00:36:26,560
Speaker 1: to put two teams together, and they gave him the

648
00:36:26,640 --> 00:36:28,719
Speaker 1: commander for the other one, and he let that guy

649
00:36:29,080 --> 00:36:31,800
Speaker 1: who he wanted as much as he could, and with

650
00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:34,359
Speaker 1: the other team he built his dream team and then

651
00:36:35,719 --> 00:36:38,880
Speaker 1: went in to get the CEO to let him take it.

652
00:36:39,680 --> 00:36:42,799
Speaker 1: And I still consider the highest compliment I have ever

653
00:36:42,920 --> 00:36:45,400
Speaker 1: been paid by anybody is that that man chose me

654
00:36:45,480 --> 00:36:50,440
Speaker 1: to be his ex o H in any case in

655
00:36:50,640 --> 00:36:55,640
Speaker 1: terms of his choices. UM. I later I went over

656
00:36:55,719 --> 00:37:00,279
Speaker 1: to Group personnel and checked everybody g T and the

657
00:37:00,400 --> 00:37:03,360
Speaker 1: average IQ on that team was about a hundred twenty

658
00:37:03,400 --> 00:37:09,680
Speaker 1: five h including Pancho Santiago who didn't speak English when

659
00:37:09,719 --> 00:37:16,600
Speaker 1: he took the test, and Uh, Poncho, I guess he

660
00:37:17,160 --> 00:37:19,480
Speaker 1: later retook the GT because he went to O C

661
00:37:19,800 --> 00:37:22,759
Speaker 1: s he UM. He had a heart attack and died

662
00:37:22,800 --> 00:37:26,840
Speaker 1: as a major in tenth group at Devon SO and

663
00:37:26,920 --> 00:37:29,520
Speaker 1: he was a junior man on the team. And of

664
00:37:29,640 --> 00:37:32,520
Speaker 1: course the thing I remember most about Poncho is he

665
00:37:32,640 --> 00:37:35,600
Speaker 1: could fall in love with the guy with with with

666
00:37:35,719 --> 00:37:37,680
Speaker 1: any girl he saw at a range of about a

667
00:37:37,800 --> 00:37:42,600
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty meters. Really had guys for that UM.

668
00:37:43,000 --> 00:37:45,440
Speaker 1: But all of the all of the junior n c

669
00:37:45,600 --> 00:37:53,040
Speaker 1: os on that team retired his officers. Let's see this

670
00:37:53,200 --> 00:37:55,960
Speaker 1: junior or second junior man owner team was Bill Frutie,

671
00:37:56,640 --> 00:38:00,440
Speaker 1: who is our junior medic and he had been the

672
00:38:00,560 --> 00:38:03,800
Speaker 1: undergraduate of his medical course, and then they came to

673
00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:06,120
Speaker 1: Elkinawa and they made him an armor because they had

674
00:38:06,160 --> 00:38:08,960
Speaker 1: too many medics. So he was the undergraduate of that course.

675
00:38:09,920 --> 00:38:12,719
Speaker 1: And when he retired he was a full colonel in

676
00:38:12,800 --> 00:38:17,959
Speaker 1: the Air Force surgeon. And he started out in the Army,

677
00:38:18,080 --> 00:38:22,960
Speaker 1: but they needed surgeons so bad that the surgeons could

678
00:38:23,000 --> 00:38:26,359
Speaker 1: never go to the necessary school, so the pediatricians were

679
00:38:26,400 --> 00:38:29,480
Speaker 1: being promoted over them, so he just changed to the

680
00:38:29,560 --> 00:38:33,200
Speaker 1: Air Force, where they probably gave him an eagle. Wow.

681
00:38:34,800 --> 00:38:41,000
Speaker 1: So you know, these were really extraordinary people, and we

682
00:38:41,120 --> 00:38:44,040
Speaker 1: had a great team, and we had some good breaks.

683
00:38:45,120 --> 00:38:47,799
Speaker 1: We've been for one thing, we was a third team

684
00:38:48,040 --> 00:38:52,200
Speaker 1: in that area, so you know that it was pretty well.

685
00:38:53,080 --> 00:38:55,560
Speaker 1: We we had a pretty good intel on it. And

686
00:38:55,680 --> 00:39:01,239
Speaker 1: then I had the good fortune to hire um, a

687
00:39:01,480 --> 00:39:06,840
Speaker 1: great quote interpreter unquote uh, Philip Drew in the Cowboy

688
00:39:07,440 --> 00:39:12,640
Speaker 1: and Dan Ford who wrote um the book Incident at

689
00:39:12,719 --> 00:39:16,759
Speaker 1: Muckwaff in which the movie Go Tell the Spartans was made.

690
00:39:18,160 --> 00:39:21,560
Speaker 1: That one writing a book about Cowboy. Now that will

691
00:39:21,600 --> 00:39:26,040
Speaker 1: be up hey, because he was just amazing. And I've

692
00:39:26,120 --> 00:39:32,200
Speaker 1: spent oh maybe four months trying to put together an

693
00:39:32,239 --> 00:39:35,440
Speaker 1: intelligence net and then one day I had this epiphany.

694
00:39:35,520 --> 00:39:37,239
Speaker 1: The light bulb went on over my head and I

695
00:39:38,040 --> 00:39:40,600
Speaker 1: yelled at cowboy. I said, hey, Phil, go hire some spies.

696
00:39:42,600 --> 00:39:45,719
Speaker 1: And the next day I had my intelligence net and

697
00:39:46,600 --> 00:39:52,760
Speaker 1: immediately became the highest scoring team in two corps. Which, okay,

698
00:39:52,840 --> 00:39:56,680
Speaker 1: this was an interesting thing. Um. We had four core

699
00:39:56,800 --> 00:40:02,279
Speaker 1: areas in Vietnam and two corps of Central Highlands the

700
00:40:02,400 --> 00:40:05,840
Speaker 1: land area of Vietnam, and it had twenty six teams

701
00:40:05,920 --> 00:40:11,200
Speaker 1: with one V team over them. So nobody told us

702
00:40:11,280 --> 00:40:16,279
Speaker 1: what to do. You know, there are teams in two

703
00:40:16,360 --> 00:40:21,919
Speaker 1: corps area of responsibility that's correct, with one V team

704
00:40:22,040 --> 00:40:29,080
Speaker 1: over them at that time. And um, so basically they

705
00:40:29,160 --> 00:40:32,160
Speaker 1: gave us what we asked for. We did what we

706
00:40:32,280 --> 00:40:34,239
Speaker 1: had to do and told him what they wanted to hear.

707
00:40:36,280 --> 00:40:41,239
Speaker 1: And you can't do that now because, as I understand it,

708
00:40:41,440 --> 00:40:44,400
Speaker 1: you've got a B team commander emailing you every twenty

709
00:40:44,440 --> 00:40:46,920
Speaker 1: minutes trying to tell you what to do or not.

710
00:40:47,440 --> 00:40:51,160
Speaker 1: He can't smell it. He doesn't know the players, you know,

711
00:40:52,000 --> 00:40:54,440
Speaker 1: so he's working off principles that he learned in some

712
00:40:54,600 --> 00:40:58,040
Speaker 1: other eight team in some other area of operation. That

713
00:40:58,280 --> 00:41:03,919
Speaker 1: is correct, yeah, out, well it's also bullshit. Yes, that's

714
00:41:03,960 --> 00:41:09,759
Speaker 1: also true. That's also true. You know, you've got to

715
00:41:09,800 --> 00:41:11,600
Speaker 1: give it. You've got to pick the right people and

716
00:41:11,680 --> 00:41:15,560
Speaker 1: give them their head. I've heard you kind of make

717
00:41:15,640 --> 00:41:17,600
Speaker 1: that comment before to Jack where you say, like, the

718
00:41:17,680 --> 00:41:23,000
Speaker 1: military decisions aren't made from you know, the starship Enterprise. Yeah. Well,

719
00:41:23,080 --> 00:41:26,120
Speaker 1: I mean they'd like to think they are, um, but

720
00:41:26,320 --> 00:41:29,000
Speaker 1: I mean it's you know, we had that whole conversation.

721
00:41:29,080 --> 00:41:33,239
Speaker 1: We had Dr Leonard Wong on to talk about how, um,

722
00:41:34,120 --> 00:41:37,719
Speaker 1: you know, amongst other things, this technology allows you know,

723
00:41:37,880 --> 00:41:40,000
Speaker 1: colonels and generals to reach all the way down through

724
00:41:40,040 --> 00:41:43,600
Speaker 1: the command structure and tell some you know, staff sergeant

725
00:41:43,640 --> 00:41:45,520
Speaker 1: what to do or what about when we had Michael

726
00:41:45,560 --> 00:41:48,359
Speaker 1: Behanna on, remember who you know was put in Fort

727
00:41:48,440 --> 00:41:51,920
Speaker 1: Leavenworth for decision made on the ground, And I remember

728
00:41:51,960 --> 00:41:55,680
Speaker 1: you kind of made that comment to him as well. Yeah, yeah, um,

729
00:41:56,840 --> 00:41:58,719
Speaker 1: but that is a big difference. And I noticed that

730
00:41:58,760 --> 00:42:01,839
Speaker 1: when I read your book, Jim, because you mentioned at

731
00:42:01,880 --> 00:42:04,560
Speaker 1: one point about you know, your guys on your on

732
00:42:04,680 --> 00:42:07,279
Speaker 1: your A team would take turns going out taking the

733
00:42:07,560 --> 00:42:11,480
Speaker 1: indig people that you're training, the South Vietnamese and going

734
00:42:11,520 --> 00:42:14,440
Speaker 1: out on presence patrols out in the jungle around the

735
00:42:14,520 --> 00:42:16,440
Speaker 1: FOB and I was like, that's something we could never

736
00:42:16,520 --> 00:42:20,640
Speaker 1: get away with today. Really. Yeah, they'd never let you

737
00:42:20,719 --> 00:42:23,680
Speaker 1: do that. Risk assessments would be maxed out. Yeah, some

738
00:42:23,800 --> 00:42:29,840
Speaker 1: colonel would lose his mind. Uh, risk, risk assessment. You know,

739
00:42:30,080 --> 00:42:32,960
Speaker 1: if it's not worth the risk, why are you having

740
00:42:33,400 --> 00:42:37,200
Speaker 1: the war? Exactly? If we want to be safe, let's

741
00:42:37,239 --> 00:42:43,080
Speaker 1: just stay home, Yeah, exactly. You know. Um, well, okay,

742
00:42:44,000 --> 00:42:46,279
Speaker 1: you guys are giving me chances to bitch about all

743
00:42:46,320 --> 00:42:51,640
Speaker 1: the stuff. I was, well, it's it's because you know,

744
00:42:51,880 --> 00:42:55,520
Speaker 1: I mean, we're it's a little mutual exploration here. I'm

745
00:42:55,560 --> 00:43:00,320
Speaker 1: learning a lot about what's what's happening today. Um. But

746
00:43:00,560 --> 00:43:03,960
Speaker 1: at the time I was there, I considered my biggest

747
00:43:04,080 --> 00:43:09,279
Speaker 1: enemy to Joint travel regulations because it took us you know,

748
00:43:09,400 --> 00:43:11,160
Speaker 1: we were there for six months. It took us four

749
00:43:11,239 --> 00:43:19,960
Speaker 1: months to get grounded, and um, our most effective time was,

750
00:43:20,440 --> 00:43:23,759
Speaker 1: um it was the last two months, and we we

751
00:43:23,960 --> 00:43:26,600
Speaker 1: cleaned house in the last two months. I mean the

752
00:43:26,680 --> 00:43:31,239
Speaker 1: first four months we wandered around, UM just you know,

753
00:43:31,400 --> 00:43:34,879
Speaker 1: wandered around until somebody shot at us and we killed him. UM.

754
00:43:36,360 --> 00:43:41,760
Speaker 1: And this second two months, we knew where the roots

755
00:43:41,840 --> 00:43:44,080
Speaker 1: were and we kind of knew when they were running

756
00:43:44,160 --> 00:43:46,880
Speaker 1: on those routes, and we just go sit there and

757
00:43:46,960 --> 00:43:51,000
Speaker 1: wait for him. You know, before we were running. Well,

758
00:43:51,080 --> 00:43:54,439
Speaker 1: we continued to run five day patrols, four and five

759
00:43:54,520 --> 00:43:59,600
Speaker 1: day patrols, but but our greatest success in the last

760
00:43:59,640 --> 00:44:03,400
Speaker 1: two were overnights. We just go out and set up

761
00:44:03,440 --> 00:44:05,600
Speaker 1: on the right trail and hack whoever came down it

762
00:44:06,560 --> 00:44:12,840
Speaker 1: and done. You know, these were like VC supply routes

763
00:44:12,880 --> 00:44:17,360
Speaker 1: and things like that. Well they're okay. Um. For instance,

764
00:44:17,800 --> 00:44:22,479
Speaker 1: the best operation I ever ran, um, and I really

765
00:44:22,520 --> 00:44:24,719
Speaker 1: didn't run it. I just told Cowboy what to do.

766
00:44:25,600 --> 00:44:28,799
Speaker 1: And my contribution to the thing was that we went

767
00:44:28,920 --> 00:44:34,680
Speaker 1: into get clearance from the district chief and he gave

768
00:44:34,760 --> 00:44:38,640
Speaker 1: me a line of rather obvious bullshit about how we

769
00:44:38,719 --> 00:44:41,120
Speaker 1: couldn't go where we told him we were going because

770
00:44:41,239 --> 00:44:43,680
Speaker 1: he had patrols in that area. That's nonsense. He never

771
00:44:43,760 --> 00:44:46,719
Speaker 1: had a night drill out in his life. And um,

772
00:44:48,200 --> 00:44:51,160
Speaker 1: so I could tell right then that that the other

773
00:44:51,239 --> 00:44:55,640
Speaker 1: guys had got to him, and um he was steering

774
00:44:55,800 --> 00:44:59,640
Speaker 1: us away from where we might make contact. So he

775
00:44:59,760 --> 00:45:03,920
Speaker 1: lived in Philly. Cowboys said to me said, uh, we

776
00:45:04,080 --> 00:45:07,439
Speaker 1: cannot go where? He say, uh, there you know there's

777
00:45:07,480 --> 00:45:09,640
Speaker 1: nobody there, and I said, fuck him, We'll do what

778
00:45:09,719 --> 00:45:13,120
Speaker 1: we want to, you know. And so we had coordinated

779
00:45:13,280 --> 00:45:16,000
Speaker 1: and then uh, he lied to me, and I lied

780
00:45:16,040 --> 00:45:17,680
Speaker 1: to him, and we went out and rant a success

781
00:45:19,920 --> 00:45:24,480
Speaker 1: and uh we uh what we did was okay. A

782
00:45:24,600 --> 00:45:27,359
Speaker 1: ten a ten man group came by and they were

783
00:45:28,600 --> 00:45:31,640
Speaker 1: We later found out that the head hauncho was was

784
00:45:31,719 --> 00:45:34,960
Speaker 1: an NBA colonel. Mind you, this was in March of

785
00:45:35,120 --> 00:45:38,840
Speaker 1: sixty four when there when there was when it was

786
00:45:38,920 --> 00:45:43,040
Speaker 1: allegedly all VC and this guy was was coming through

787
00:45:43,160 --> 00:45:47,880
Speaker 1: to do a survey um in advance of their advanced party,

788
00:45:47,960 --> 00:45:51,200
Speaker 1: in advance of their main body which came in out

789
00:45:51,200 --> 00:45:55,680
Speaker 1: a year later. And we whacked this dude and seven

790
00:45:55,800 --> 00:45:57,840
Speaker 1: of the ten of them were coming down the trail

791
00:45:59,520 --> 00:46:03,600
Speaker 1: and they had it was interesting they were They were

792
00:46:04,040 --> 00:46:06,640
Speaker 1: much better uniform than what we usually ran into. They

793
00:46:06,680 --> 00:46:09,399
Speaker 1: were much better equipped than what we usually ran into.

794
00:46:10,440 --> 00:46:18,040
Speaker 1: They had check a case um and um, just a

795
00:46:18,120 --> 00:46:20,560
Speaker 1: lot of Eastern block stuff. So they were they were

796
00:46:20,600 --> 00:46:22,920
Speaker 1: getting a lot of help from a lot of different places.

797
00:46:23,800 --> 00:46:29,239
Speaker 1: And so anyway, we whacked those guys and stopped for

798
00:46:29,320 --> 00:46:31,400
Speaker 1: a beer on the way home, and we're back for lunch,

799
00:46:32,080 --> 00:46:36,799
Speaker 1: you know. And on top of that, just to make

800
00:46:36,880 --> 00:46:42,160
Speaker 1: it wonderfully perfect, Colonel Leonard, the group commander, came in

801
00:46:42,320 --> 00:46:45,239
Speaker 1: with Robin Moore, who was researching the Green Berets at

802
00:46:45,280 --> 00:46:50,200
Speaker 1: that time, and so you know that they happened to

803
00:46:50,280 --> 00:46:55,880
Speaker 1: just show up the day after my best operation. And

804
00:46:56,360 --> 00:46:59,080
Speaker 1: uh and Robin and I stayed friends until he died.

805
00:47:03,280 --> 00:47:06,400
Speaker 1: Is Jim I have to ask, I'm trying to remember now,

806
00:47:06,640 --> 00:47:11,360
Speaker 1: is Cowboy the interpreter, you know who he went and

807
00:47:11,480 --> 00:47:14,000
Speaker 1: told the American military At one point he was with

808
00:47:14,200 --> 00:47:18,600
Speaker 1: like the Airborne Mechanized Battalion or something like this. So

809
00:47:18,719 --> 00:47:23,680
Speaker 1: that was okay, that was full rope. Yes, yeah, okay.

810
00:47:24,160 --> 00:47:28,480
Speaker 1: And in the last a couple of months of I

811
00:47:28,560 --> 00:47:32,000
Speaker 1: can't remember exactly when it was, but the old man,

812
00:47:32,200 --> 00:47:35,600
Speaker 1: my CEO, Cruis McCullough, went on a on a company

813
00:47:35,680 --> 00:47:38,719
Speaker 1: sized operation in the chewed La area down south of

814
00:47:38,760 --> 00:47:44,359
Speaker 1: where we were, which was um it was a VC

815
00:47:44,520 --> 00:47:49,960
Speaker 1: safe area, and so they got in a in a

816
00:47:50,160 --> 00:47:53,200
Speaker 1: pretty big battle down there. Food he got food, he

817
00:47:53,239 --> 00:47:57,360
Speaker 1: got shot in the leg. Ken Miller got shot in

818
00:47:57,440 --> 00:47:59,800
Speaker 1: the hand that he beat out his own evact message

819
00:47:59,840 --> 00:48:04,640
Speaker 1: on UM. And but while they were on that Operation

820
00:48:05,719 --> 00:48:09,800
Speaker 1: Cowboy told told crews that we were that the that

821
00:48:09,960 --> 00:48:15,520
Speaker 1: the yards were going to revolt, and he gave him everything.

822
00:48:15,640 --> 00:48:18,759
Speaker 1: He gave him their table of organization, he gave him

823
00:48:18,800 --> 00:48:21,719
Speaker 1: their constitution, he gave him their assault plan, he gave

824
00:48:21,800 --> 00:48:27,000
Speaker 1: him everything. And so Cruise promptly we called the B

825
00:48:27,080 --> 00:48:29,840
Speaker 1: team commander. He came down. He was pretty excited about it.

826
00:48:30,680 --> 00:48:33,759
Speaker 1: Um and crews went to Saigon and went to J

827
00:48:33,960 --> 00:48:39,080
Speaker 1: two McVie to explain what was going to happen, and um,

828
00:48:39,600 --> 00:48:41,480
Speaker 1: he said, so what do you guys think you might

829
00:48:41,560 --> 00:48:44,840
Speaker 1: want to do about that? And the J two McVie

830
00:48:45,000 --> 00:48:46,920
Speaker 1: officer that he spoke who said, gee, I don't know,

831
00:48:46,920 --> 00:48:49,520
Speaker 1: I don't know who's in charge of putting down revolts around.

832
00:48:52,239 --> 00:48:56,359
Speaker 1: So he came back to the camp and about uh

833
00:48:57,600 --> 00:49:01,880
Speaker 1: two days later, a quote coach tri l anthropologist unquote.

834
00:49:04,160 --> 00:49:06,839
Speaker 1: It was incidentally not Jerry Hickey, who was a real

835
00:49:06,920 --> 00:49:12,400
Speaker 1: cultural anthropologist and wrote I think five books about Vietnamese

836
00:49:12,520 --> 00:49:16,359
Speaker 1: village life in the Mountain York. Great great man. Um,

837
00:49:17,040 --> 00:49:23,640
Speaker 1: but um, this guy was, you know, he was he

838
00:49:24,000 --> 00:49:30,280
Speaker 1: worked for those guys and Um he got Cruise aside

839
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:35,960
Speaker 1: and he said, we traced every report of this impending revolt.

840
00:49:36,200 --> 00:49:40,920
Speaker 1: Back to back to your team and captain, what I

841
00:49:40,960 --> 00:49:42,560
Speaker 1: want to know is what do you hope to gain

842
00:49:42,640 --> 00:49:46,640
Speaker 1: by making up this preposterous story? And the old man

843
00:49:46,719 --> 00:49:48,560
Speaker 1: threw him out of the camp and he flew away.

844
00:49:48,760 --> 00:49:52,359
Speaker 1: And then we went home. And in October here comes

845
00:49:52,400 --> 00:49:58,319
Speaker 1: the revolt and the teams that knew it was coming. Um,

846
00:50:01,120 --> 00:50:04,600
Speaker 1: they did very well and the others had some problems. UM.

847
00:50:05,600 --> 00:50:07,200
Speaker 1: There was a there was a great story in the

848
00:50:07,320 --> 00:50:13,680
Speaker 1: National Geographic. UM. A guy named Howard Socirek, another another

849
00:50:13,880 --> 00:50:19,440
Speaker 1: journalist to them, had friends with their Howard m was

850
00:50:19,560 --> 00:50:22,600
Speaker 1: doing he wanted to do a story for National Geographic

851
00:50:22,680 --> 00:50:25,600
Speaker 1: about the relationship between s F and the Mountain Yards,

852
00:50:26,560 --> 00:50:28,600
Speaker 1: and he happened to show up right in the middle

853
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:31,960
Speaker 1: of the revolt. So he did the story about how

854
00:50:33,000 --> 00:50:36,680
Speaker 1: Verne Gillespie, who had the camp at boon brink Uh

855
00:50:36,920 --> 00:50:41,160
Speaker 1: handled the revolt, and it was a beautiful story. UM,

856
00:50:41,680 --> 00:50:47,600
Speaker 1: and Verne just handled it really well. UM. The B

857
00:50:47,800 --> 00:50:50,919
Speaker 1: team commander was actually made the cover of the Geographic.

858
00:50:51,080 --> 00:50:56,719
Speaker 1: And this was interesting because, okay, you know what I

859
00:50:56,760 --> 00:51:01,000
Speaker 1: said about the joint travel regulations. Well, after after our

860
00:51:01,120 --> 00:51:04,440
Speaker 1: team got back, I tried to do two things. I

861
00:51:04,560 --> 00:51:07,840
Speaker 1: tried to be the CEO of the team that replaced

862
00:51:07,880 --> 00:51:11,359
Speaker 1: our team, and I tried to be the J two

863
00:51:11,480 --> 00:51:13,320
Speaker 1: the or the G two of the BT, or the

864
00:51:14,080 --> 00:51:18,600
Speaker 1: the S two of the B team, And um my

865
00:51:18,760 --> 00:51:26,200
Speaker 1: interview with that with that B team commander was just startling,

866
00:51:26,239 --> 00:51:28,040
Speaker 1: I must say, because I went in there and I

867
00:51:28,120 --> 00:51:31,160
Speaker 1: told him, you know about my intelligence net and the

868
00:51:31,239 --> 00:51:33,520
Speaker 1: contact I had not And he said, I want an

869
00:51:33,560 --> 00:51:40,120
Speaker 1: officer who speaks Vietnamese. And I said, well, I don't speak.

870
00:51:40,360 --> 00:51:43,319
Speaker 1: I can kind of get by in duly and right,

871
00:51:45,800 --> 00:51:49,759
Speaker 1: but I don't I don't really speak Vietnamese, but you

872
00:51:49,840 --> 00:51:54,600
Speaker 1: know the blah blah blah, and I said. He said, well,

873
00:51:54,600 --> 00:51:55,960
Speaker 1: I want to get in there, and you know, do

874
00:51:56,080 --> 00:51:58,880
Speaker 1: this before the war is over. And I said, Major,

875
00:52:00,600 --> 00:52:03,200
Speaker 1: we're going to be in this country for at least

876
00:52:03,239 --> 00:52:10,440
Speaker 1: twenty years. And he was just recoiled. And that's the

877
00:52:11,840 --> 00:52:14,239
Speaker 1: that's the entire career of army officer. And I said,

878
00:52:14,280 --> 00:52:16,160
Speaker 1: this is going to take the entire careers of quite

879
00:52:16,160 --> 00:52:21,400
Speaker 1: a few army and he threw me out of his office,

880
00:52:21,440 --> 00:52:26,240
Speaker 1: as you know, an inflammatory dolt. And boy, this sounds familiar.

881
00:52:27,000 --> 00:52:29,239
Speaker 1: What other what other country are we probably going to

882
00:52:29,280 --> 00:52:33,920
Speaker 1: be in for a while. Well, um, hey, I want

883
00:52:33,960 --> 00:52:37,120
Speaker 1: to ask you guys a question about Afghanistan. All right,

884
00:52:37,239 --> 00:52:40,319
Speaker 1: I'll try. All right, how can you win a war

885
00:52:40,400 --> 00:52:46,759
Speaker 1: in a country where the national sport of civil war? Well,

886
00:52:46,840 --> 00:52:48,520
Speaker 1: how do you? How do you win a war with

887
00:52:49,000 --> 00:52:50,480
Speaker 1: the whole season? But how are you going to win

888
00:52:50,560 --> 00:52:53,040
Speaker 1: the war the whole? The whole premise is wrong because

889
00:52:53,080 --> 00:52:55,480
Speaker 1: we're trying to create an Afghan state where there's never

890
00:52:55,560 --> 00:53:01,240
Speaker 1: been an Afghan state before. Yeah, well that's that's another

891
00:53:01,360 --> 00:53:03,520
Speaker 1: thing that Okay, this is that was that was true

892
00:53:03,560 --> 00:53:07,239
Speaker 1: of the Central Highlands in Vietnam, wasn't it? Uh? That

893
00:53:07,440 --> 00:53:09,880
Speaker 1: wasn't that true of the Central Highlands in Vietnam? That

894
00:53:09,920 --> 00:53:12,680
Speaker 1: they never really had a state, They never really wanted one.

895
00:53:13,560 --> 00:53:16,120
Speaker 1: Oh god, no, they didn't have They didn't have a

896
00:53:16,160 --> 00:53:19,640
Speaker 1: state when we were there. They had basically they had

897
00:53:19,680 --> 00:53:27,239
Speaker 1: a racket. Um but that probably also sounds yeah a

898
00:53:27,320 --> 00:53:31,359
Speaker 1: little bit, but yeah, that's true. There's there's never been

899
00:53:31,400 --> 00:53:34,080
Speaker 1: a national state in Afghanistan. It's just kind of a

900
00:53:35,000 --> 00:53:42,359
Speaker 1: cobble together thing out of tribes, arts and um uh

901
00:53:44,760 --> 00:53:48,759
Speaker 1: so yeah, yeah, that was well, Okay, The point I

902
00:53:48,840 --> 00:53:51,640
Speaker 1: want to make is that, yeah, you can do nation building.

903
00:53:52,320 --> 00:53:55,960
Speaker 1: But you've gotta from the get go, you've got to

904
00:53:56,000 --> 00:53:58,120
Speaker 1: realize it's going to take you at least thirty years

905
00:53:58,200 --> 00:54:02,480
Speaker 1: to do it. Yeah. Generations, Yeah, generation because nobody ever

906
00:54:02,640 --> 00:54:05,319
Speaker 1: changes their mind about anything, and the guys that are

907
00:54:05,360 --> 00:54:07,879
Speaker 1: in charge there are not going to change their mind

908
00:54:07,920 --> 00:54:11,080
Speaker 1: about how they want to run things. What's going to

909
00:54:11,200 --> 00:54:15,600
Speaker 1: happen is you've got to catch him as cadets, and

910
00:54:15,719 --> 00:54:19,200
Speaker 1: by the time those cadets are generals and presidents, you

911
00:54:19,360 --> 00:54:23,640
Speaker 1: might have something. I mean, you can even take away

912
00:54:23,719 --> 00:54:25,920
Speaker 1: the war and it still takes a long time. You know,

913
00:54:26,120 --> 00:54:30,520
Speaker 1: you didn't just automatically decree in democracy in Japan or

914
00:54:30,560 --> 00:54:33,800
Speaker 1: the Philippines after World War Two. It took It was

915
00:54:33,840 --> 00:54:40,160
Speaker 1: a hard slog to mold those countries into and those

916
00:54:40,200 --> 00:54:43,440
Speaker 1: were those were countries that had a tradition of governance.

917
00:54:43,520 --> 00:54:46,160
Speaker 1: I mean, Japan had a you know, a high culture

918
00:54:46,320 --> 00:54:50,160
Speaker 1: and a very institutionalized system of governance. You look at Afghanistan,

919
00:54:50,280 --> 00:54:52,239
Speaker 1: they don't have any They've never had anything like that.

920
00:54:52,480 --> 00:54:55,000
Speaker 1: Everybody wanted to make it work. The indigenous personnel I

921
00:54:55,040 --> 00:54:59,360
Speaker 1: wanted to make it work, and the and the Americans

922
00:54:59,440 --> 00:55:01,920
Speaker 1: wanted to make at work. And it really worked out

923
00:55:01,960 --> 00:55:05,680
Speaker 1: pretty well. Not so much in the Philippines, where you know,

924
00:55:05,880 --> 00:55:09,880
Speaker 1: forty years was not war everywhere, little little wars here

925
00:55:09,920 --> 00:55:13,000
Speaker 1: and there, but not war everywhere. And it's still took

926
00:55:13,640 --> 00:55:19,479
Speaker 1: well except for the I mean, we've been there since

927
00:55:19,560 --> 00:55:22,800
Speaker 1: the Spanish American War when World War two came and

928
00:55:22,920 --> 00:55:26,160
Speaker 1: we hadn't made a country out of it yet, and

929
00:55:27,080 --> 00:55:29,640
Speaker 1: then World War two came and threw things back another

930
00:55:29,719 --> 00:55:35,440
Speaker 1: at least four years. And uh and and that was

931
00:55:35,560 --> 00:55:39,800
Speaker 1: not while fighting the counterinsurgency at the same time. And

932
00:55:39,960 --> 00:55:42,880
Speaker 1: you can see in the Philippines they're still having challenges

933
00:55:42,960 --> 00:55:46,839
Speaker 1: to the to the Philippines state and entire towns, their

934
00:55:46,880 --> 00:55:50,920
Speaker 1: cities taken over by insurgents and Zamblanca in Morrow. We

935
00:55:51,120 --> 00:55:56,160
Speaker 1: just last year. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely, Yeah, Well that's that's

936
00:55:56,200 --> 00:55:59,440
Speaker 1: the Philippines here again. It's like you know, you're we

937
00:55:59,600 --> 00:56:02,560
Speaker 1: can we can change the we can change the form,

938
00:56:02,640 --> 00:56:07,080
Speaker 1: but we can't change the the subject. We can't change

939
00:56:07,080 --> 00:56:10,120
Speaker 1: the culture. You know, we're not going to change the culture,

940
00:56:11,239 --> 00:56:16,600
Speaker 1: uh in um in these places. So yeah, well you

941
00:56:16,719 --> 00:56:19,399
Speaker 1: guys got it. And I've said this many times. You're

942
00:56:19,440 --> 00:56:21,600
Speaker 1: the you're the first people that ever said at the

943
00:56:21,719 --> 00:56:24,719
Speaker 1: enemy it takes at least in generation. What was it

944
00:56:24,840 --> 00:56:30,120
Speaker 1: that was Mark Boot said, like several generations? Was like, yeah, well,

945
00:56:30,400 --> 00:56:32,319
Speaker 1: Mark Boyott. I don't know if you know him. Jim

946
00:56:32,400 --> 00:56:36,040
Speaker 1: he was the third Special Forces Group commander during the nineties.

947
00:56:36,360 --> 00:56:39,200
Speaker 1: He said something like yeah, well he he made the

948
00:56:39,239 --> 00:56:41,560
Speaker 1: point that part of the problem, or he said, you know,

949
00:56:41,680 --> 00:56:44,000
Speaker 1: we haven't been in Korea for fifty years. We've been

950
00:56:44,040 --> 00:56:47,520
Speaker 1: in Korea for one year fifty times, meaning that there's

951
00:56:47,560 --> 00:56:51,080
Speaker 1: never been a long term cohesive plan where each year

952
00:56:51,160 --> 00:56:53,680
Speaker 1: we moved things a little bit further on the plane. Instead,

953
00:56:53,719 --> 00:56:55,480
Speaker 1: it's like every year a new group of people come

954
00:56:55,520 --> 00:57:01,520
Speaker 1: and start over from scratch. Yeah, Roger, that um, that

955
00:57:01,760 --> 00:57:06,040
Speaker 1: is exactly correct. And this is like me and Miller

956
00:57:06,160 --> 00:57:11,319
Speaker 1: having a lunch you know together, will ever run Ken?

957
00:57:11,600 --> 00:57:14,839
Speaker 1: Ken Miller is a super smart guy. I've I've gone

958
00:57:14,880 --> 00:57:16,840
Speaker 1: back and forth with him. He is a very very

959
00:57:16,920 --> 00:57:24,840
Speaker 1: intelligent person. Oh yeah, oh yeah, and so pessimistic. And

960
00:57:25,440 --> 00:57:28,320
Speaker 1: he's a China expert though on on China and Taiwan.

961
00:57:29,400 --> 00:57:35,120
Speaker 1: Oh absolutely, you know, speaks the language, knows, the culture knows. Uh.

962
00:57:36,120 --> 00:57:41,680
Speaker 1: He looked. Ken Miller writes poetry in Mandarin. Really, I

963
00:57:41,760 --> 00:57:47,440
Speaker 1: didn't know that yeah, uh yeah, I just oh, what

964
00:57:47,600 --> 00:57:51,080
Speaker 1: a thrill um I had. I had a friend, Bob McNeely.

965
00:57:51,240 --> 00:57:58,160
Speaker 1: Bob was um a ranger in Vietnam, and then years

966
00:57:58,240 --> 00:58:01,040
Speaker 1: later he was Clinton's White House chief White House photographer

967
00:58:01,120 --> 00:58:06,680
Speaker 1: for six years. Um and um he um. He turned

968
00:58:06,720 --> 00:58:11,280
Speaker 1: me onto Tiger to work dog Kin's first book, and um,

969
00:58:12,720 --> 00:58:15,320
Speaker 1: I was just blown away by it, and then I

970
00:58:15,480 --> 00:58:18,160
Speaker 1: was okay. I worked for Soldier of Fortune for a

971
00:58:18,240 --> 00:58:21,120
Speaker 1: couple of years, and then I edited their principal competition,

972
00:58:21,600 --> 00:58:25,760
Speaker 1: which wasn't really much competition in New York for I.

973
00:58:25,840 --> 00:58:27,760
Speaker 1: Let's say I worked for Eagle that was the name

974
00:58:27,760 --> 00:58:29,880
Speaker 1: of the magazine for two and a half years, and

975
00:58:29,960 --> 00:58:32,080
Speaker 1: then I was a book editor for five years in

976
00:58:32,120 --> 00:58:37,320
Speaker 1: New York. And um uh, so Ken and I got

977
00:58:37,400 --> 00:58:39,320
Speaker 1: to be friends of long distance, and then when I

978
00:58:39,400 --> 00:58:41,320
Speaker 1: moved to l A, he was the first person I

979
00:58:41,440 --> 00:58:46,240
Speaker 1: made contact with and we've been pretty tight ever since. Um.

980
00:58:48,000 --> 00:58:53,160
Speaker 1: It's it's like it's like the brother I didn't grow

981
00:58:53,280 --> 00:58:55,800
Speaker 1: up with, you know, when you hear these stories, it

982
00:58:55,840 --> 00:58:58,480
Speaker 1: almost seems like Soldier of Fortune was like the predecessor

983
00:58:58,560 --> 00:59:02,040
Speaker 1: to what you do. Jack. I feel like I've met

984
00:59:02,080 --> 00:59:04,320
Speaker 1: Bob Brown a couple of Times. And you know, Jim

985
00:59:04,920 --> 00:59:06,960
Speaker 1: wrote for the magazine as he said, and yeah, I

986
00:59:07,080 --> 00:59:09,800
Speaker 1: feel like that that what Bob Brown did. And I'd

987
00:59:09,840 --> 00:59:11,200
Speaker 1: like to hear your take, Jim. But I think what

988
00:59:11,320 --> 00:59:15,000
Speaker 1: Bob Brown did, which is really remarkable, is he gave

989
00:59:15,040 --> 00:59:17,880
Speaker 1: a platform in a voice to a lot of Vietnam

990
00:59:18,040 --> 00:59:20,680
Speaker 1: vets in a time when people did not want to

991
00:59:20,760 --> 00:59:25,880
Speaker 1: hear about the war. Totally true, totally true. I was, Okay,

992
00:59:26,040 --> 00:59:31,000
Speaker 1: what was I doing? I was. I was working as

993
00:59:31,280 --> 00:59:35,200
Speaker 1: a PR guy for the Oklahoma City District Recruiting Command,

994
00:59:35,280 --> 00:59:37,160
Speaker 1: which I have to say is the worst job I've

995
00:59:37,240 --> 00:59:44,000
Speaker 1: ever had. And Um, I heard that some Nut and Boulder,

996
00:59:44,080 --> 00:59:51,480
Speaker 1: Colorado for mercenaries, and so I I had a cardboard

997
00:59:51,600 --> 00:59:54,160
Speaker 1: box full of stuff I'd written about Vietnam that I

998
00:59:54,280 --> 00:59:58,800
Speaker 1: hadn't been able to sell anywhere. So um I called

999
00:59:58,880 --> 01:00:01,120
Speaker 1: him and told him, and and he said, well, I'm

1000
01:00:01,120 --> 01:00:04,000
Speaker 1: going on I'm on my way to a reserve weekend

1001
01:00:04,840 --> 01:00:08,200
Speaker 1: or no, a reserve summer camp, and I'll come see

1002
01:00:08,240 --> 01:00:10,600
Speaker 1: you on the way. It was only five miles out

1003
01:00:10,640 --> 01:00:15,200
Speaker 1: of his way. And he showed up, had dinner with us,

1004
01:00:15,680 --> 01:00:19,200
Speaker 1: um ate his salad with his hands, which kind of

1005
01:00:19,320 --> 01:00:24,720
Speaker 1: kind of crossed out and took my cardboard box and

1006
01:00:24,840 --> 01:00:30,880
Speaker 1: went away and promptly lost it. And so in subsequent

1007
01:00:31,040 --> 01:00:34,200
Speaker 1: years I took maybe four four trips to Boulder just

1008
01:00:34,320 --> 01:00:38,120
Speaker 1: looking for my cardboard box. Finally, he hired Bob Poos

1009
01:00:38,160 --> 01:00:41,360
Speaker 1: as managing editor. Poos went over everything they had, he

1010
01:00:41,520 --> 01:00:44,160
Speaker 1: found my cardboard box, and eventually they bought all of it.

1011
01:00:44,960 --> 01:00:51,160
Speaker 1: And um uh it was it was just I cannot

1012
01:00:51,320 --> 01:00:53,720
Speaker 1: tell you how much fun it was working for those guys.

1013
01:00:54,400 --> 01:00:58,320
Speaker 1: You know, I mean Brown for one thing is he's

1014
01:00:58,560 --> 01:01:05,400
Speaker 1: very smart and just a little uh what what he

1015
01:01:05,560 --> 01:01:11,600
Speaker 1: basically did was he gave um. He was his people

1016
01:01:11,640 --> 01:01:14,880
Speaker 1: don't realize his branch was m I. You know, with

1017
01:01:15,040 --> 01:01:17,800
Speaker 1: us is before we had branches and before there was

1018
01:01:17,840 --> 01:01:21,160
Speaker 1: an s F branch, and his his basic branch was

1019
01:01:21,400 --> 01:01:23,560
Speaker 1: m I. And his contacts were at d I A.

1020
01:01:24,240 --> 01:01:27,200
Speaker 1: And what we did basically was give the the d

1021
01:01:27,400 --> 01:01:31,480
Speaker 1: I A a free m I detachment. Because we sent

1022
01:01:31,600 --> 01:01:34,640
Speaker 1: those guys so much stuff that we couldn't publish in

1023
01:01:34,680 --> 01:01:38,840
Speaker 1: the magazine because it would get people killed or because

1024
01:01:38,880 --> 01:01:42,000
Speaker 1: it was you know, whatever, um okay for one thing

1025
01:01:42,880 --> 01:01:47,680
Speaker 1: or for instance, I my first good story for them

1026
01:01:47,880 --> 01:01:52,640
Speaker 1: is great experience was to go and live live for

1027
01:01:52,720 --> 01:01:56,480
Speaker 1: a month with the with the Christian Militia and Lebanon

1028
01:01:58,680 --> 01:02:01,480
Speaker 1: Lebanese Forces militia. And you talk about the girls at

1029
01:02:01,560 --> 01:02:04,520
Speaker 1: high heels and a K forty seven dashing across the

1030
01:02:04,600 --> 01:02:10,400
Speaker 1: street Roger that that was just oh god, so many stories.

1031
01:02:10,480 --> 01:02:14,720
Speaker 1: But um, they didn't really. I mean, these guys were

1032
01:02:14,800 --> 01:02:18,720
Speaker 1: making it up as they went along. And um, for instance,

1033
01:02:18,760 --> 01:02:22,880
Speaker 1: I visited their artillery FDC and I realized they weren't

1034
01:02:22,960 --> 01:02:29,480
Speaker 1: using artillery terms and um, because they had just captured

1035
01:02:29,560 --> 01:02:31,680
Speaker 1: these guns. And some of them were engineers and some

1036
01:02:31,800 --> 01:02:33,560
Speaker 1: of them are architects, and they did the math and

1037
01:02:33,600 --> 01:02:37,200
Speaker 1: figured out their own firing table and are the guns

1038
01:02:37,320 --> 01:02:41,760
Speaker 1: and and uh they were. They were really good. But

1039
01:02:41,840 --> 01:02:44,920
Speaker 1: they didn't know the lingo, and so I teased them

1040
01:02:44,960 --> 01:02:48,840
Speaker 1: about that and they just you know, gave it back

1041
01:02:48,920 --> 01:02:56,200
Speaker 1: to me. Um. But um, okay, the best friend. In fact,

1042
01:02:56,360 --> 01:02:59,640
Speaker 1: thank god for Facebook. I've Facebook friends with some of

1043
01:02:59,680 --> 01:03:05,160
Speaker 1: those eyes today. And one of them was okay, I

1044
01:03:05,320 --> 01:03:09,000
Speaker 1: called him Jack Tabot. His name is Jacques Tabby um

1045
01:03:10,040 --> 01:03:14,040
Speaker 1: and his father was a Lebanese ambassador to Canada and

1046
01:03:14,160 --> 01:03:19,320
Speaker 1: his mother was Canadian. So um, uh, you know, he

1047
01:03:19,440 --> 01:03:23,720
Speaker 1: had a very different approach. And the first time I

1048
01:03:23,760 --> 01:03:27,960
Speaker 1: saw Jack, he was wearing jeans, sneakers, a T shirt,

1049
01:03:29,360 --> 01:03:33,320
Speaker 1: a French Airborne Camo jacket with an a case slung

1050
01:03:33,440 --> 01:03:37,320
Speaker 1: over his shoulders. And so one day I asked, I said, Jack,

1051
01:03:37,360 --> 01:03:40,760
Speaker 1: why why don't you Why don't you wear a uniform?

1052
01:03:40,840 --> 01:03:43,240
Speaker 1: All these other guys wear uniforms. They don't have rank,

1053
01:03:43,440 --> 01:03:46,120
Speaker 1: but they have job titles and stuff, and they were uniforms.

1054
01:03:46,640 --> 01:03:51,400
Speaker 1: And he said, I don't like him. And I said, well,

1055
01:03:51,720 --> 01:03:53,480
Speaker 1: you know, he said, what are they gonna do. They

1056
01:03:53,560 --> 01:03:57,040
Speaker 1: can't fire me, they can't find me, they don't pay me,

1057
01:03:57,200 --> 01:03:59,880
Speaker 1: they can't bust me. I don't have a rank. You know,

1058
01:04:00,320 --> 01:04:06,520
Speaker 1: I'm a volunteer. And I volunteered to do it this way.

1059
01:04:10,320 --> 01:04:12,040
Speaker 1: And he said, I got a friend. He fights in

1060
01:04:12,120 --> 01:04:15,320
Speaker 1: flip flops. He can't fight in boots. They inhibited his

1061
01:04:15,400 --> 01:04:21,320
Speaker 1: movement or something. Was this? No, that was that? That

1062
01:04:21,560 --> 01:04:30,919
Speaker 1: was in Beyrout. Yeah, and Beyrout And my roommate there

1063
01:04:31,200 --> 01:04:34,760
Speaker 1: was Claude. I can't remember Claude's last name, but he

1064
01:04:34,880 --> 01:04:38,640
Speaker 1: was a one armed Commando platoon leader and he had

1065
01:04:38,680 --> 01:04:40,720
Speaker 1: been he had lost his arm at the Battle of

1066
01:04:40,760 --> 01:04:45,280
Speaker 1: Till's Attar, which was the first major engagements of that war. Uh,

1067
01:04:45,720 --> 01:04:48,240
Speaker 1: and he was always in forever figuring out what he

1068
01:04:48,320 --> 01:04:49,840
Speaker 1: was one of the few guys that carried a M

1069
01:04:49,920 --> 01:04:52,760
Speaker 1: sixteen because he could operate at one handed. You know,

1070
01:04:52,840 --> 01:04:55,080
Speaker 1: he'd just lay it over his forearm and fire it.

1071
01:04:56,240 --> 01:05:00,800
Speaker 1: Um and Uh. One of the things I noticed in

1072
01:05:00,920 --> 01:05:06,520
Speaker 1: their route was that, uh, people had their ladies, had

1073
01:05:06,600 --> 01:05:10,400
Speaker 1: their priorities straight. You know, in most countries, women are

1074
01:05:10,600 --> 01:05:15,320
Speaker 1: attracted to rock stars and sports heroes, but in Beirut,

1075
01:05:16,480 --> 01:05:19,080
Speaker 1: the one armed commando platoon leader got more trim than

1076
01:05:19,080 --> 01:05:24,160
Speaker 1: anybody else. And in the country. I'd be there. One time,

1077
01:05:24,240 --> 01:05:25,920
Speaker 1: I was just I was just hanging out in the

1078
01:05:26,040 --> 01:05:28,280
Speaker 1: room and Clode wasn't there, and there was a black

1079
01:05:28,320 --> 01:05:30,520
Speaker 1: black on the door, and I opened it and there

1080
01:05:30,640 --> 01:05:35,280
Speaker 1: was this young woman standing there, who oh my god,

1081
01:05:35,680 --> 01:05:41,800
Speaker 1: she was. She was gorgeous and um and and she

1082
01:05:41,960 --> 01:05:49,000
Speaker 1: said do they clothe? And I tried to explain to

1083
01:05:49,120 --> 01:05:51,960
Speaker 1: her that he was off with some other chick obie.

1084
01:05:52,000 --> 01:05:54,560
Speaker 1: I didn't want to say that. And finally she you know,

1085
01:05:54,720 --> 01:05:59,640
Speaker 1: she just went away. But that was I mean, this guy,

1086
01:06:00,400 --> 01:06:03,120
Speaker 1: he just he ran through him like kleenex. It was

1087
01:06:03,320 --> 01:06:08,240
Speaker 1: na I've been to Beirut, you know, during peacetime. This

1088
01:06:08,400 --> 01:06:15,200
Speaker 1: is just like what two years ago. It's a beautiful study. Gorgeous, Yeah, gorgeous.

1089
01:06:15,240 --> 01:06:17,920
Speaker 1: But when I went in there were the thing I noticed.

1090
01:06:18,200 --> 01:06:22,600
Speaker 1: I landed at Junior and I didn't have I didn't

1091
01:06:22,600 --> 01:06:26,840
Speaker 1: have a visa, you know. But I was met by

1092
01:06:26,920 --> 01:06:31,640
Speaker 1: the by the local, by the Lebanese Forces. Guy and uh.

1093
01:06:32,040 --> 01:06:33,960
Speaker 1: For a while, I wasn't sure whether I was an

1094
01:06:34,000 --> 01:06:39,760
Speaker 1: honored guest or a prisoner. It turned out to be

1095
01:06:39,880 --> 01:06:41,920
Speaker 1: an honored guest and I had I had such a

1096
01:06:42,000 --> 01:06:44,440
Speaker 1: great time. Did you have a cross paths with a

1097
01:06:44,520 --> 01:06:49,080
Speaker 1: guy named John Conan? I know that name he was,

1098
01:06:49,680 --> 01:06:52,120
Speaker 1: and I hope I'm saying the name right. He was

1099
01:06:52,280 --> 01:06:55,680
Speaker 1: a force recon marine and Nam and then he served

1100
01:06:55,760 --> 01:07:01,400
Speaker 1: with the Rhodesian Rhodesian versus. I can't remember what unit

1101
01:07:01,440 --> 01:07:04,400
Speaker 1: he was with. Um. I think he was with r

1102
01:07:04,560 --> 01:07:08,960
Speaker 1: L I with the Rhodesian White Infantry. And he got

1103
01:07:09,080 --> 01:07:16,560
Speaker 1: kidnapped in Lebanon after the war. Right. No, I knew

1104
01:07:16,600 --> 01:07:18,360
Speaker 1: one of those guys that was kidnapped in Hill for

1105
01:07:18,440 --> 01:07:22,960
Speaker 1: six years, Terry Anderson, who was an ape reporter. Um. No,

1106
01:07:23,280 --> 01:07:25,680
Speaker 1: you know this guy was kidnapped for like twenty four hours,

1107
01:07:25,760 --> 01:07:30,960
Speaker 1: he managed to get away. Ah, well, gee, I don't

1108
01:07:30,960 --> 01:07:34,280
Speaker 1: know when Larry was there. I said, Larry Dring up

1109
01:07:34,320 --> 01:07:37,680
Speaker 1: to go to Lebanon to teach a tank warfare to

1110
01:07:37,760 --> 01:07:41,320
Speaker 1: the Lebanese forces, which he did. He went around Where

1111
01:07:41,360 --> 01:07:45,360
Speaker 1: where do I know Larry drink from? Did you ever

1112
01:07:45,480 --> 01:07:48,520
Speaker 1: read Fighting? Then? My other book Heard Of It is

1113
01:07:48,560 --> 01:07:51,480
Speaker 1: about him? Yeah? Okay, was he like lang Vay or

1114
01:07:51,560 --> 01:07:54,120
Speaker 1: something like that. I'm trying to place it. No, that's

1115
01:07:54,240 --> 01:07:58,600
Speaker 1: that's Paul Long. Oh I'm sorry, I'm getting my names confused. Yeah. Well,

1116
01:07:58,720 --> 01:08:00,680
Speaker 1: you know, I mean you can't tell of players without

1117
01:08:00,680 --> 01:08:03,960
Speaker 1: a scorecard. I mean, you know, you know everybody, you

1118
01:08:04,080 --> 01:08:07,000
Speaker 1: know who everybody you know is. You can't be expected

1119
01:08:07,040 --> 01:08:11,040
Speaker 1: to know who everybody you've read about it. But now Larry,

1120
01:08:11,200 --> 01:08:14,200
Speaker 1: Larry Dring, I mean that name definitely rings a bell. Well,

1121
01:08:14,280 --> 01:08:17,120
Speaker 1: he was Larry was the best combat commander I personally

1122
01:08:17,160 --> 01:08:21,679
Speaker 1: ever knew, and he was he was just an amazing guy.

1123
01:08:22,800 --> 01:08:24,920
Speaker 1: I met him. We used to We used to fly

1124
01:08:25,080 --> 01:08:30,120
Speaker 1: over from Okinawa and jump in Korea at night and

1125
01:08:30,479 --> 01:08:35,760
Speaker 1: there was a big long sand bank by the Han River. Yeah,

1126
01:08:36,160 --> 01:08:38,560
Speaker 1: wonderful staw sand except when we jumped on it in

1127
01:08:38,600 --> 01:08:42,160
Speaker 1: the wintertime, it was frozen solid then and the first

1128
01:08:42,200 --> 01:08:45,000
Speaker 1: time I ever did it, I fractured my coxics. And

1129
01:08:45,160 --> 01:08:47,479
Speaker 1: Larry was a guy that picked me up and took

1130
01:08:47,520 --> 01:08:49,240
Speaker 1: me to the hospital. And the time we got to

1131
01:08:49,320 --> 01:08:53,040
Speaker 1: the hospital, we were buds. I was yeah, I was

1132
01:08:53,040 --> 01:08:56,200
Speaker 1: the first lieutenant, then he was a staff sergeant and

1133
01:08:56,880 --> 01:09:01,439
Speaker 1: um oh. And while at at the hospital, they gave

1134
01:09:01,479 --> 01:09:03,679
Speaker 1: me a chemical heating pad and a bottle of Darvon

1135
01:09:03,800 --> 01:09:07,759
Speaker 1: and I said, that's it. The doctors contrary to personal

1136
01:09:08,240 --> 01:09:10,840
Speaker 1: popular opinion, young man, we cannot put your ass in

1137
01:09:10,880 --> 01:09:16,479
Speaker 1: the sling. I always always thought that was a good line.

1138
01:09:16,520 --> 01:09:19,400
Speaker 1: But anyway, so Larry and I became buddies. And um

1139
01:09:20,560 --> 01:09:27,960
Speaker 1: he Um he had been on the resident team in Korea. Yeah,

1140
01:09:28,200 --> 01:09:31,600
Speaker 1: and he happened to be um. He happened to be

1141
01:09:31,720 --> 01:09:33,840
Speaker 1: back there visiting people and he was trying to get

1142
01:09:34,120 --> 01:09:36,280
Speaker 1: you know, the Koreans didn't play the one jump and

1143
01:09:36,360 --> 01:09:39,200
Speaker 1: you get the wings game. They made you do the

1144
01:09:39,760 --> 01:09:41,800
Speaker 1: seven that they had to do to qualify, and he

1145
01:09:41,880 --> 01:09:44,120
Speaker 1: had six and he was going to get his seventh jump,

1146
01:09:45,280 --> 01:09:49,400
Speaker 1: and they had a they had a revolution, the revolution

1147
01:09:49,439 --> 01:09:51,800
Speaker 1: that installed Chunky Park. While he was there trying to

1148
01:09:52,360 --> 01:09:57,080
Speaker 1: m and so. Um he's walking down the street and

1149
01:09:58,080 --> 01:10:00,840
Speaker 1: a buddy of his Korean captain said, they drink. You

1150
01:10:00,920 --> 01:10:02,840
Speaker 1: know where you going? He said, no place specialties that

1151
01:10:02,840 --> 01:10:05,200
Speaker 1: we'll get in and he said, what's going on, Well,

1152
01:10:05,280 --> 01:10:07,360
Speaker 1: we're having a revolution. This guy here in the in

1153
01:10:07,479 --> 01:10:12,200
Speaker 1: the back of the back of the cars as John Chang.

1154
01:10:12,360 --> 01:10:15,120
Speaker 1: He's a miniature of agriculture. He's my prisoner. Were going

1155
01:10:15,200 --> 01:10:17,720
Speaker 1: to the band of hotel and you know, right out

1156
01:10:17,800 --> 01:10:21,360
Speaker 1: this coup and uh so they're sitting there and they're

1157
01:10:21,960 --> 01:10:25,519
Speaker 1: having a couple of drinks and playing cards and uh

1158
01:10:27,760 --> 01:10:30,240
Speaker 1: this captain says to drink. He said, you know, hey,

1159
01:10:30,680 --> 01:10:34,040
Speaker 1: this guy is still legally the Ministry of Agriculture. How

1160
01:10:34,080 --> 01:10:36,920
Speaker 1: would you like to be the Minister of agriculture? So

1161
01:10:37,800 --> 01:10:42,200
Speaker 1: Larry was for about twenty four hours. I don't think

1162
01:10:42,280 --> 01:10:44,080
Speaker 1: this made it into the history books, but he was

1163
01:10:44,120 --> 01:10:50,080
Speaker 1: the Ministry of Agriculture for the Republic of Korea. Was

1164
01:10:50,439 --> 01:10:52,840
Speaker 1: was this where he correct me if I'm wrong, get

1165
01:10:52,920 --> 01:10:55,679
Speaker 1: Larry have to be sent home ahead of time because

1166
01:10:56,080 --> 01:11:01,960
Speaker 1: he was on inadvertently associated with the Q. Yeah, you

1167
01:11:02,080 --> 01:11:04,360
Speaker 1: just dropped. You just dropped like a huge puzzle. Piece

1168
01:11:04,640 --> 01:11:06,720
Speaker 1: right in there for me because I I know of

1169
01:11:06,840 --> 01:11:09,080
Speaker 1: this incident, I didn't know it was Larry Dring was

1170
01:11:09,240 --> 01:11:17,040
Speaker 1: the guy was Oh my gosh, he said he sent

1171
01:11:17,120 --> 01:11:19,559
Speaker 1: a message back to Hokey when he got when he arrived,

1172
01:11:19,600 --> 01:11:21,720
Speaker 1: he hadn't you know he was. He looked pretty rank

1173
01:11:21,840 --> 01:11:24,439
Speaker 1: because he was wearing the same clothes he's been wearing

1174
01:11:24,520 --> 01:11:28,200
Speaker 1: for three days. And uh, and there were Korean fatigues,

1175
01:11:28,320 --> 01:11:32,120
Speaker 1: which you know we didn't wear on Oklahoma. Jim, I'm

1176
01:11:32,160 --> 01:11:35,639
Speaker 1: gonna I'm gonna have to email you the sergeant major

1177
01:11:36,200 --> 01:11:42,120
Speaker 1: a message, Pappy, I didn't do it. I'm gonna have

1178
01:11:42,240 --> 01:11:46,200
Speaker 1: to email you. The big article I wrote about the

1179
01:11:46,320 --> 01:11:50,360
Speaker 1: history of of SF Detachment K and uh it talks

1180
01:11:50,400 --> 01:11:52,040
Speaker 1: about that, and then it talks about the other Q

1181
01:11:52,280 --> 01:11:55,320
Speaker 1: two where Chuck Randall was like on house arrest for

1182
01:11:55,640 --> 01:11:57,519
Speaker 1: you know, about twenty four hours, and they were like

1183
01:11:57,640 --> 01:11:59,840
Speaker 1: trying to get him to approve the new Korean kind

1184
01:11:59,840 --> 01:12:02,240
Speaker 1: of atitution. He was like, I'm an s F captain.

1185
01:12:02,280 --> 01:12:07,240
Speaker 1: I can't do that, man. I bet, I bet. A

1186
01:12:07,320 --> 01:12:10,680
Speaker 1: big source for that article was Mark Smith. Uh No,

1187
01:12:10,920 --> 01:12:15,080
Speaker 1: I don't believe I ever spoke to that gentleman. Really well,

1188
01:12:15,120 --> 01:12:17,240
Speaker 1: it wants to. I'll set it up. We're in a

1189
01:12:17,479 --> 01:12:20,760
Speaker 1: we have we belonged to an internet group called the

1190
01:12:20,800 --> 01:12:25,519
Speaker 1: Shooter Channel is creaky old starts who reminisce. I'd love

1191
01:12:25,560 --> 01:12:27,360
Speaker 1: to talk to him. I'll send you that article. You'll

1192
01:12:27,360 --> 01:12:29,360
Speaker 1: get to see, like most of the sources are named

1193
01:12:29,400 --> 01:12:31,840
Speaker 1: in it, um and you'll you'll get a kick out

1194
01:12:31,880 --> 01:12:33,720
Speaker 1: of that. It took a while to write, but it

1195
01:12:33,800 --> 01:12:35,920
Speaker 1: was worth it. It was a lot of fun. Well,

1196
01:12:36,040 --> 01:12:39,320
Speaker 1: Mark was the it was the regular Armies, only high

1197
01:12:39,360 --> 01:12:44,799
Speaker 1: school dropouts. Feel great officer and he's he's a character.

1198
01:12:47,240 --> 01:12:50,080
Speaker 1: But I met him in I met him in in Thailand.

1199
01:12:50,160 --> 01:12:54,600
Speaker 1: He'd come over for a jump, and they had a

1200
01:12:54,680 --> 01:13:00,439
Speaker 1: thing they call well, uh, probably pronouncings wrong, but friendship

1201
01:13:00,560 --> 01:13:04,360
Speaker 1: and tis metropop. And they had what they called metropop jumps.

1202
01:13:04,400 --> 01:13:07,760
Speaker 1: And the idea was that a bunch of ties and

1203
01:13:08,360 --> 01:13:14,880
Speaker 1: um and Americans would put on a a demonstration jump

1204
01:13:15,120 --> 01:13:18,600
Speaker 1: and use it to sell tickets and make money to

1205
01:13:19,000 --> 01:13:21,760
Speaker 1: replenish schools in Thailand. And they did this a lot

1206
01:13:21,840 --> 01:13:24,920
Speaker 1: of times. Didn't you and Bob Brown do one? After

1207
01:13:25,000 --> 01:13:28,880
Speaker 1: the war? Uh? He may have. Um, I thought I

1208
01:13:28,960 --> 01:13:32,000
Speaker 1: read about that in your book, But well, Bob jumped

1209
01:13:32,040 --> 01:13:35,519
Speaker 1: the balloon with us. That was when Mark came back,

1210
01:13:35,560 --> 01:13:38,040
Speaker 1: and we went up and jumped the balloon, and then

1211
01:13:38,120 --> 01:13:41,320
Speaker 1: we went out and then jumped a one thirty with

1212
01:13:42,120 --> 01:13:47,360
Speaker 1: the third third. What would they what would they call him?

1213
01:13:47,600 --> 01:13:51,320
Speaker 1: There were second classman the juniors at the Thai Military

1214
01:13:51,360 --> 01:13:55,400
Speaker 1: Academy that afternoon, and uh that was kind of weird

1215
01:13:55,479 --> 01:14:03,240
Speaker 1: because they gave me a steerable T ten and I

1216
01:14:03,320 --> 01:14:07,400
Speaker 1: went out up wind. Uh So before I could even

1217
01:14:07,760 --> 01:14:11,679
Speaker 1: get the get the risers loose, the wind had turned

1218
01:14:11,720 --> 01:14:15,479
Speaker 1: me and handed me right towards the stick that went

1219
01:14:15,560 --> 01:14:18,919
Speaker 1: out the other door, and I ran. I ran across

1220
01:14:19,040 --> 01:14:25,560
Speaker 1: this kid's canopy and my shoots collapsing at his shoots collapsing,

1221
01:14:26,040 --> 01:14:28,920
Speaker 1: and I'm like six ft or like four ft deep

1222
01:14:29,000 --> 01:14:31,600
Speaker 1: in his canopy. You know, it's like building up around me.

1223
01:14:31,640 --> 01:14:33,840
Speaker 1: And then I kind of slide off the other side

1224
01:14:34,439 --> 01:14:37,840
Speaker 1: and our shoots inflated. And it was fine, but it

1225
01:14:38,040 --> 01:14:44,320
Speaker 1: was it really got your attention there for a minute. She's, uh, well, Jim,

1226
01:14:44,680 --> 01:14:46,760
Speaker 1: before I wanted to get into some of the other

1227
01:14:46,840 --> 01:14:49,639
Speaker 1: stuff we had we had talked about before. But before

1228
01:14:49,680 --> 01:14:51,880
Speaker 1: we move on, I do want to ask about your

1229
01:14:51,960 --> 01:14:55,080
Speaker 1: reflections on the Vietnam War because we could talk. I

1230
01:14:55,120 --> 01:14:56,880
Speaker 1: could talk to you for hours about this stuff. But

1231
01:14:56,960 --> 01:14:59,200
Speaker 1: I did want to pin that down. You know what

1232
01:14:59,439 --> 01:15:01,280
Speaker 1: you think when you look back on the war, what

1233
01:15:01,439 --> 01:15:03,519
Speaker 1: was what was the war about? What did it mean

1234
01:15:03,600 --> 01:15:07,080
Speaker 1: for you personally? I wondered about that for a very

1235
01:15:07,160 --> 01:15:10,120
Speaker 1: long time because nobody ever wrote it down anywhere. We

1236
01:15:10,200 --> 01:15:14,200
Speaker 1: didn't have a mission statement. Um, you know, we've The

1237
01:15:15,920 --> 01:15:20,080
Speaker 1: closest thing to a mission statement was Lyndon Johnson saying

1238
01:15:20,160 --> 01:15:25,000
Speaker 1: they'll at coon skin to the wall and what say what?

1239
01:15:26,840 --> 01:15:28,920
Speaker 1: So you know, I did a lot of reading, a

1240
01:15:28,960 --> 01:15:31,759
Speaker 1: lot of research, and the closest thing to a mission

1241
01:15:31,840 --> 01:15:35,880
Speaker 1: statement I came from, which was also from Johnson, was

1242
01:15:36,120 --> 01:15:42,760
Speaker 1: that he wrote Senator Richard Russell, the chairman then of

1243
01:15:42,800 --> 01:15:46,439
Speaker 1: the of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and he said

1244
01:15:46,520 --> 01:15:53,840
Speaker 1: that he couldn't see any strategic reason why we should

1245
01:15:53,840 --> 01:15:57,040
Speaker 1: be in Vietnam, but he went in anyway because we

1246
01:15:57,200 --> 01:15:59,640
Speaker 1: had a treaty with him, and he wanted to demonstrate

1247
01:15:59,720 --> 01:16:02,800
Speaker 1: to Aeto and seto that we would live up to

1248
01:16:02,880 --> 01:16:08,160
Speaker 1: our treaty obligations country, that we had totally made up

1249
01:16:09,280 --> 01:16:14,840
Speaker 1: and that we had what I think was the major

1250
01:16:14,960 --> 01:16:19,439
Speaker 1: mistake was that they staffed the Republic of Vietnam when

1251
01:16:19,760 --> 01:16:22,840
Speaker 1: when it started, and it was an agency project, and

1252
01:16:23,080 --> 01:16:25,240
Speaker 1: they staffed it with guys who had fought for the

1253
01:16:25,360 --> 01:16:28,320
Speaker 1: French and the only in that country that I mean,

1254
01:16:28,560 --> 01:16:32,240
Speaker 1: which was to say, quidlings and losers, and the only

1255
01:16:33,840 --> 01:16:37,759
Speaker 1: the only people in that country, and there were plenty

1256
01:16:37,840 --> 01:16:40,280
Speaker 1: of them who knew how to fight that kind of war,

1257
01:16:40,439 --> 01:16:44,920
Speaker 1: were non communist former vietmin. And all of every competent

1258
01:16:45,040 --> 01:16:48,800
Speaker 1: officer I worked with in Vietnam at that point in

1259
01:16:48,920 --> 01:16:55,280
Speaker 1: time was a non communist former vietmin. And they they

1260
01:16:55,320 --> 01:16:58,280
Speaker 1: were they were clean, they were honest, they knew their stuff,

1261
01:16:59,080 --> 01:17:04,000
Speaker 1: and uh, the other guys would just send us more

1262
01:17:04,080 --> 01:17:08,839
Speaker 1: money so we can steal it. And um. But the purpose,

1263
01:17:09,280 --> 01:17:15,080
Speaker 1: the only actual goal that I've ever seen that we

1264
01:17:15,200 --> 01:17:18,280
Speaker 1: went there to realize, was to convince our allies that

1265
01:17:18,439 --> 01:17:25,560
Speaker 1: we would stand by our treaty obligations. And we did that,

1266
01:17:25,920 --> 01:17:28,880
Speaker 1: and we stuck with it. If we'd stuck with it

1267
01:17:28,960 --> 01:17:31,200
Speaker 1: any longer, they would have just thought we were crazy

1268
01:17:31,960 --> 01:17:35,479
Speaker 1: and that you know, we were recording nuclear war. So

1269
01:17:36,360 --> 01:17:40,040
Speaker 1: we made the point that yeah, we'll sacrifice sixty guys

1270
01:17:40,160 --> 01:17:45,120
Speaker 1: to live up to our our treaty obligations and we're

1271
01:17:45,160 --> 01:17:52,040
Speaker 1: not going to start a thermonuclear war. And so that's

1272
01:17:52,080 --> 01:17:54,840
Speaker 1: the reason I say that Vietnam was not really a war.

1273
01:17:55,080 --> 01:17:58,240
Speaker 1: It was an infomercial and it was really about what

1274
01:17:58,439 --> 01:18:01,880
Speaker 1: was happening in Berlin at the same time frame. Yeah

1275
01:18:02,720 --> 01:18:08,960
Speaker 1: a lot, Yeah for sure. And um, so we accomplished

1276
01:18:09,040 --> 01:18:13,400
Speaker 1: everything we set out to accomplish in Vietnam and then

1277
01:18:13,439 --> 01:18:17,600
Speaker 1: we bailed. Now, we totally betrayed the people that we

1278
01:18:17,680 --> 01:18:20,720
Speaker 1: had led down a garden past for sixteen years in

1279
01:18:20,800 --> 01:18:25,200
Speaker 1: the process of bailing. And I think that was because, um,

1280
01:18:26,200 --> 01:18:28,600
Speaker 1: if we had backed them, now we don't know that

1281
01:18:29,080 --> 01:18:34,519
Speaker 1: you know, uh there. We did not resupply them after

1282
01:18:34,680 --> 01:18:38,240
Speaker 1: we left, you know, and we trained them to fight

1283
01:18:38,400 --> 01:18:44,120
Speaker 1: with an American supply train and the logistics are just operated. Yeah.

1284
01:18:44,320 --> 01:18:48,559
Speaker 1: So so they got you know, overrun in what forty days?

1285
01:18:49,040 --> 01:18:51,080
Speaker 1: Do you think it was dishonorable for us to leave

1286
01:18:51,240 --> 01:18:55,599
Speaker 1: under those circumstances or yeah, how could it be anything else?

1287
01:18:57,880 --> 01:19:00,799
Speaker 1: But what it was was that the democ Credit Congress,

1288
01:19:00,840 --> 01:19:03,479
Speaker 1: which is what we had then, was not going to

1289
01:19:03,680 --> 01:19:10,600
Speaker 1: risk Richard Nixon getting a victory. I'm sorry, but that's it.

1290
01:19:11,560 --> 01:19:14,560
Speaker 1: And so I always and this is I say. This

1291
01:19:14,760 --> 01:19:20,560
Speaker 1: is what I say. If soldiers do not win or

1292
01:19:20,680 --> 01:19:25,599
Speaker 1: lose wars, soldiers either accomplished or failed to accomplish their

1293
01:19:25,600 --> 01:19:30,439
Speaker 1: assigned a mission. If you get accomplishment of all missions

1294
01:19:30,479 --> 01:19:34,040
Speaker 1: assigned and lose the war, the place to look is

1295
01:19:34,160 --> 01:19:37,560
Speaker 1: not at the soldiers, right. I mean one of the

1296
01:19:37,640 --> 01:19:40,680
Speaker 1: things said about Vietnam is that, you know, it was

1297
01:19:40,720 --> 01:19:44,599
Speaker 1: a tactical victory, but a strategic defeat. Yeah, we'll same

1298
01:19:44,680 --> 01:19:48,560
Speaker 1: with the Tet offensive, you know, I mean that was

1299
01:19:49,080 --> 01:19:53,240
Speaker 1: you know I thought in the Tet Offensive for well,

1300
01:19:53,320 --> 01:19:57,479
Speaker 1: actually I was only actually involved in actual combat for

1301
01:19:57,560 --> 01:20:02,599
Speaker 1: about twenty four hours. Um. But in the next couple

1302
01:20:02,680 --> 01:20:05,880
Speaker 1: of weeks, I was all over the country and morale

1303
01:20:06,080 --> 01:20:08,720
Speaker 1: was so high because we had kicked their ass all

1304
01:20:08,760 --> 01:20:13,360
Speaker 1: the way around the block. And then the press reports

1305
01:20:13,400 --> 01:20:16,360
Speaker 1: started coming in, you know. I mean my first clue

1306
01:20:16,360 --> 01:20:19,280
Speaker 1: as I got the Far East edition of Newswork Newsweek,

1307
01:20:20,040 --> 01:20:28,120
Speaker 1: and UM was rather vociferously informed that my the victory

1308
01:20:28,200 --> 01:20:31,160
Speaker 1: of which I was so proud, had been a defeat. Well, no,

1309
01:20:31,600 --> 01:20:34,360
Speaker 1: it wasn't. Why do you think the press reported it

1310
01:20:34,520 --> 01:20:40,240
Speaker 1: like that? Let's book the press all right, Now, I

1311
01:20:40,880 --> 01:20:44,599
Speaker 1: chased around all during the eighties, I was chasing around

1312
01:20:44,640 --> 01:20:47,200
Speaker 1: with S O. F. And I interacted a lot with

1313
01:20:47,360 --> 01:20:52,920
Speaker 1: the press, and um, my first experience with that was

1314
01:20:53,240 --> 01:20:58,080
Speaker 1: in Tom Penn and seventy three, and those were great guys.

1315
01:20:58,200 --> 01:21:04,960
Speaker 1: But they all they all lived together, and um, they

1316
01:21:05,040 --> 01:21:09,000
Speaker 1: all worked for for they all worked for editors who

1317
01:21:10,320 --> 01:21:16,080
Speaker 1: and this is television and um news newspapers both who

1318
01:21:16,600 --> 01:21:20,400
Speaker 1: basically read The New York Times on their way to

1319
01:21:20,479 --> 01:21:24,760
Speaker 1: work on the train into Manhattan every morning, and then

1320
01:21:25,000 --> 01:21:30,680
Speaker 1: whatever the Times had, that's what they wanted. And um, uh,

1321
01:21:30,960 --> 01:21:34,720
Speaker 1: you know, and look for for for fifteen years, I

1322
01:21:34,800 --> 01:21:39,439
Speaker 1: didn't go more than fifteen minutes thinking about anything but Vietnam.

1323
01:21:40,200 --> 01:21:43,040
Speaker 1: I read everything I could get my hands on. I read,

1324
01:21:43,800 --> 01:21:45,720
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, first it was how are we

1325
01:21:45,760 --> 01:21:47,880
Speaker 1: going to do it? And the second was how what

1326
01:21:48,439 --> 01:21:54,000
Speaker 1: what happened? And um, there is a herd mentality in

1327
01:21:54,080 --> 01:22:00,800
Speaker 1: the press. And um. So the all those guys they

1328
01:22:00,880 --> 01:22:05,519
Speaker 1: have they have dinner together, they drank together, they smoked together,

1329
01:22:05,760 --> 01:22:10,040
Speaker 1: they get they reach an agreement on what the story is.

1330
01:22:11,520 --> 01:22:15,760
Speaker 1: And you are not gonna rise in that profession by

1331
01:22:15,840 --> 01:22:20,360
Speaker 1: writing something that runs counter to the story, to the narrative. No,

1332
01:22:20,680 --> 01:22:24,080
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. You can't. You know, that's that's just

1333
01:22:24,240 --> 01:22:28,200
Speaker 1: not going to happen. I mean, well, okay, and I

1334
01:22:28,320 --> 01:22:30,439
Speaker 1: was an outcast from the get go because I worked

1335
01:22:30,479 --> 01:22:37,160
Speaker 1: for that infamous, that infamous Robert K. Brown publication. Yeah.

1336
01:22:38,280 --> 01:22:41,000
Speaker 1: So you think so that's why the Ted offensive was

1337
01:22:41,080 --> 01:22:46,320
Speaker 1: reported as a defeat. Yeah, I think so. Um. Well,

1338
01:22:46,640 --> 01:22:48,640
Speaker 1: that and the fact that the guys who ran to

1339
01:22:48,680 --> 01:22:52,920
Speaker 1: find at five o'clock follies in and Saigon didn't know

1340
01:22:53,000 --> 01:22:55,519
Speaker 1: what they were talking about because they, you know, they

1341
01:22:55,560 --> 01:23:01,840
Speaker 1: were quarters and jerks. Um. And also the fact that

1342
01:23:02,040 --> 01:23:06,080
Speaker 1: the the other guys got on the embassy grounds, you know,

1343
01:23:06,400 --> 01:23:08,479
Speaker 1: I mean, they got six guys over the fence at

1344
01:23:08,520 --> 01:23:13,840
Speaker 1: the embassy and they were promptly hosed down. But the

1345
01:23:13,960 --> 01:23:17,360
Speaker 1: fact that they breached the fence at the embassy and

1346
01:23:17,400 --> 01:23:19,679
Speaker 1: they didn't they didn't draw the conclusion at some clown

1347
01:23:20,120 --> 01:23:22,400
Speaker 1: breached the fence at the White House two weeks later.

1348
01:23:22,479 --> 01:23:27,120
Speaker 1: They didn't think that meant that the but somehow they

1349
01:23:27,400 --> 01:23:32,680
Speaker 1: thought that meant that Vietnam was And then I know,

1350
01:23:32,840 --> 01:23:34,920
Speaker 1: we we had talked about it a little bit before

1351
01:23:34,960 --> 01:23:37,360
Speaker 1: and I wanted to, you know, get your perspective is,

1352
01:23:37,680 --> 01:23:42,080
Speaker 1: you know, since you know, retiring and uh, you know

1353
01:23:42,160 --> 01:23:44,680
Speaker 1: in the civilian world, you talked a little bit to

1354
01:23:44,800 --> 01:23:48,479
Speaker 1: me about, um, your interest in shamanism and how you

1355
01:23:48,600 --> 01:23:52,400
Speaker 1: related that to your military experience. I was wondering if

1356
01:23:52,479 --> 01:23:55,360
Speaker 1: you had a really interesting perspective on that as as

1357
01:23:55,439 --> 01:23:57,320
Speaker 1: far out as it seems to me, because I have

1358
01:23:57,479 --> 01:24:00,400
Speaker 1: nothing to compare it to or no EXPERI varience and

1359
01:24:00,439 --> 01:24:03,919
Speaker 1: what you're talking about. But I related to the feelings

1360
01:24:03,960 --> 01:24:08,880
Speaker 1: that you were expressing. Well, UM, yeah, I you know,

1361
01:24:09,120 --> 01:24:12,880
Speaker 1: if if after after Vietnam, if you had suggested that

1362
01:24:13,000 --> 01:24:16,599
Speaker 1: I had PTSD, I would have hit you. And um,

1363
01:24:17,520 --> 01:24:20,439
Speaker 1: but the truth is, I later realized that I had

1364
01:24:20,720 --> 01:24:24,280
Speaker 1: lived a disordered life after a period of traumatic stress,

1365
01:24:25,160 --> 01:24:28,680
Speaker 1: which kind of sounds like post traumatic stress disorder to me.

1366
01:24:29,560 --> 01:24:34,559
Speaker 1: And um, my third marriage was falling apart. That's another clue.

1367
01:24:35,439 --> 01:24:38,920
Speaker 1: And um, so I was. I had a tech writing

1368
01:24:39,040 --> 01:24:44,120
Speaker 1: job for the Post Office Department, and um, I had

1369
01:24:44,760 --> 01:24:47,080
Speaker 1: I did a little time in motion study because I

1370
01:24:47,680 --> 01:24:50,120
Speaker 1: had six months to do the job, and I finished

1371
01:24:50,160 --> 01:24:52,280
Speaker 1: one third of it by noon the first day. So

1372
01:24:52,400 --> 01:24:54,680
Speaker 1: I thought, you know, I got to slow down, and

1373
01:24:54,760 --> 01:24:58,400
Speaker 1: I started reading in my spare time, and I started

1374
01:24:58,400 --> 01:25:03,440
Speaker 1: reading casting ada um and for people who don't know Castaneda.

1375
01:25:03,960 --> 01:25:08,320
Speaker 1: This might not make much sense, but anyway, Castaneda was

1376
01:25:08,400 --> 01:25:15,960
Speaker 1: an apprentice shaman to a a medicine man named Juan

1377
01:25:16,080 --> 01:25:21,280
Speaker 1: Mattus and Sonara. At least that's the backstory, and um,

1378
01:25:23,200 --> 01:25:26,839
Speaker 1: the backstory is questionable, but the principles he taught are terrific.

1379
01:25:27,640 --> 01:25:32,720
Speaker 1: And Uh. What he always talked about was what he

1380
01:25:32,800 --> 01:25:37,479
Speaker 1: called the Warrior's Way, And basically he said he felt

1381
01:25:37,520 --> 01:25:40,200
Speaker 1: that the attitudes that you needed to take into shamanism

1382
01:25:40,280 --> 01:25:43,320
Speaker 1: were the same attitudes you needed to take into battle.

1383
01:25:43,479 --> 01:25:46,840
Speaker 1: And they had a breakdown of them, and the four

1384
01:25:47,040 --> 01:25:51,240
Speaker 1: that really took hold were loose self importance, your race,

1385
01:25:51,360 --> 01:25:56,240
Speaker 1: personal history, used death as an advisor, and accept responsibility

1386
01:25:56,360 --> 01:26:00,200
Speaker 1: for your own acts. And um, I realized that the

1387
01:26:00,280 --> 01:26:03,160
Speaker 1: happiest I've ever been was my first six months in Vietnam,

1388
01:26:03,720 --> 01:26:08,560
Speaker 1: and that all of those principles were we're opera. You know.

1389
01:26:08,680 --> 01:26:11,560
Speaker 1: I had no self importance because Jesus, you know, this

1390
01:26:11,760 --> 01:26:13,640
Speaker 1: big war was going on around me, and I had

1391
01:26:14,640 --> 01:26:17,160
Speaker 1: no personal history because I just got there. And I

1392
01:26:17,280 --> 01:26:19,439
Speaker 1: had to use death as an advisor because people were

1393
01:26:19,479 --> 01:26:22,240
Speaker 1: shooting at me, and uh, and I had to accept

1394
01:26:22,280 --> 01:26:25,439
Speaker 1: responsibility for my own acts because I was in charge.

1395
01:26:26,360 --> 01:26:28,720
Speaker 1: And a friend of mine who was a he was

1396
01:26:28,760 --> 01:26:32,639
Speaker 1: a c I, a paramilitary contractor in Afghanistan, and he's

1397
01:26:32,680 --> 01:26:37,599
Speaker 1: described that he'd say war was my guru. Yeah, yeah,

1398
01:26:37,880 --> 01:26:40,479
Speaker 1: that's well it was. It was a lot like that

1399
01:26:40,720 --> 01:26:43,320
Speaker 1: for me, because you know, I was your basic squarehead

1400
01:26:44,040 --> 01:26:48,240
Speaker 1: um American ascher Speine when I when I went to

1401
01:26:50,360 --> 01:26:52,960
Speaker 1: I went to Vietnam, and it's just such a weird place.

1402
01:26:53,080 --> 01:26:59,719
Speaker 1: I mean, m everybody there. You could sense spirits there,

1403
01:27:00,320 --> 01:27:03,479
Speaker 1: you know, I could every day as Halloween and Vietnam

1404
01:27:04,320 --> 01:27:07,559
Speaker 1: and um, you know, and and weird things would happen

1405
01:27:07,680 --> 01:27:10,880
Speaker 1: like um. A friend of mine was telling me about

1406
01:27:10,920 --> 01:27:14,760
Speaker 1: this guy that I was going out on patrol the

1407
01:27:14,840 --> 01:27:17,519
Speaker 1: next day and he pounded down a beer and he said,

1408
01:27:17,560 --> 01:27:19,280
Speaker 1: well that's the last one. And the guy said, you

1409
01:27:19,360 --> 01:27:21,680
Speaker 1: mean until after the operation and he said nope, ever

1410
01:27:22,640 --> 01:27:28,439
Speaker 1: and he didn't come back, and um, well, you know,

1411
01:27:28,520 --> 01:27:33,280
Speaker 1: tilt Meyer was was in SOG and um I was not.

1412
01:27:34,000 --> 01:27:37,120
Speaker 1: And at one point I was presented with an opportunity

1413
01:27:37,240 --> 01:27:42,040
Speaker 1: to volunteer for SOG and I really wanted out of

1414
01:27:42,080 --> 01:27:44,560
Speaker 1: the job I was in. So I was sitting in

1415
01:27:44,640 --> 01:27:47,000
Speaker 1: the club thinking about that and all of a sudden,

1416
01:27:47,080 --> 01:27:50,759
Speaker 1: I had liked this perceptual change that I was looking

1417
01:27:50,800 --> 01:27:55,160
Speaker 1: down at corridor that led to looking down a corridor

1418
01:27:55,240 --> 01:27:57,920
Speaker 1: that led to some slot machines back there, and there

1419
01:27:58,000 --> 01:28:02,519
Speaker 1: was a red light back there, and suddenly the corridor

1420
01:28:02,680 --> 01:28:05,000
Speaker 1: was three times longer, and it was just it was

1421
01:28:05,120 --> 01:28:09,439
Speaker 1: just all different. And I knew, I absolutely knew that

1422
01:28:09,560 --> 01:28:13,680
Speaker 1: if I volunteered for SAGA, I would die. And I

1423
01:28:13,720 --> 01:28:18,080
Speaker 1: didn't do it. And um, later I was talking to

1424
01:28:18,360 --> 01:28:19,760
Speaker 1: a guy who was in it, and I told him

1425
01:28:19,800 --> 01:28:21,760
Speaker 1: that story and he said, oh, you would have been

1426
01:28:21,840 --> 01:28:25,040
Speaker 1: a bunch of a bunch of captains they brought into

1427
01:28:25,720 --> 01:28:27,920
Speaker 1: command hatchet teams. And I said, yeah, I guess, so

1428
01:28:28,000 --> 01:28:29,760
Speaker 1: what happened to those guys And he said they all died,

1429
01:28:34,960 --> 01:28:41,680
Speaker 1: So yeah, incredible. Something to be said for gut instinct, huh, absolutely,

1430
01:28:42,240 --> 01:28:43,800
Speaker 1: there is a lot to be said for it. I

1431
01:28:43,920 --> 01:28:47,920
Speaker 1: use it, um. I use logic and gut instinct as

1432
01:28:48,040 --> 01:28:51,559
Speaker 1: like binary vision, you know, but if if, if they

1433
01:28:51,680 --> 01:28:54,479
Speaker 1: really don't line up, I go with the gut instinct. Well,

1434
01:28:54,760 --> 01:28:58,240
Speaker 1: what I found helpful reading over the or maybe a

1435
01:28:58,320 --> 01:29:01,160
Speaker 1: year ago now is the hockey gut, which is the

1436
01:29:01,320 --> 01:29:05,000
Speaker 1: kind of the um their texts about the Way of

1437
01:29:05,040 --> 01:29:09,439
Speaker 1: the Samurai written by Um, you know, a Japanese samurai

1438
01:29:09,720 --> 01:29:13,120
Speaker 1: during the feudal period. Um. And he writes a lot

1439
01:29:13,160 --> 01:29:16,240
Speaker 1: about interesting stuff about the samurai and the right way

1440
01:29:16,280 --> 01:29:18,280
Speaker 1: to live your life and and how to you know,

1441
01:29:18,880 --> 01:29:21,960
Speaker 1: I guess integrate and function in larger society as well.

1442
01:29:22,080 --> 01:29:24,960
Speaker 1: And it sounds like you found some of those answers

1443
01:29:25,160 --> 01:29:31,640
Speaker 1: in u in shamanism. Yeah, that is absolutely true, and

1444
01:29:32,400 --> 01:29:35,360
Speaker 1: in fact I am not the only one. Um. I'm

1445
01:29:35,439 --> 01:29:39,439
Speaker 1: having lunch Friday with a friend of mine, James Morgan Ayres,

1446
01:29:39,439 --> 01:29:44,000
Speaker 1: who was He did a hitch in the in the

1447
01:29:44,160 --> 01:29:48,720
Speaker 1: seventh back in the day and about sixty two I think,

1448
01:29:48,920 --> 01:29:54,320
Speaker 1: and um, he got involved in an investigation and some

1449
01:29:54,439 --> 01:29:59,360
Speaker 1: guys that we're uh diverted, you know, stealing weapons and

1450
01:29:59,439 --> 01:30:03,320
Speaker 1: stuff and did well with that, and so he was

1451
01:30:03,439 --> 01:30:07,280
Speaker 1: kind of snatched out of Fort Bragg and did some

1452
01:30:07,520 --> 01:30:14,439
Speaker 1: things for some guys and um. Then anyway, the thing

1453
01:30:14,520 --> 01:30:17,439
Speaker 1: about the thing about Morgan is that he has essentially

1454
01:30:17,520 --> 01:30:20,760
Speaker 1: the same outlook and similar training, but his is all

1455
01:30:20,880 --> 01:30:24,240
Speaker 1: Chinese martial arts and tai chi and she gung and

1456
01:30:24,880 --> 01:30:27,960
Speaker 1: that kind of stuff. And so we we have a

1457
01:30:28,040 --> 01:30:32,040
Speaker 1: lot of fun Um, you know, comparing principles and finding

1458
01:30:32,080 --> 01:30:35,400
Speaker 1: out that they're just different iterations, so pretty much the

1459
01:30:35,479 --> 01:30:39,639
Speaker 1: same principles. Uh. And and then of course we wind

1460
01:30:39,720 --> 01:30:45,720
Speaker 1: up planning patrols will never run. It's just something you do,

1461
01:30:46,040 --> 01:30:50,840
Speaker 1: you know. I mean, it's it's it's ridiculous, but you know,

1462
01:30:51,000 --> 01:30:54,240
Speaker 1: I mean some of us can barely walk, but that's

1463
01:30:54,280 --> 01:30:57,160
Speaker 1: what we planned, patrols will never run. What would you say,

1464
01:30:57,280 --> 01:30:58,880
Speaker 1: Jim to a lot of the guys who are coming

1465
01:30:58,920 --> 01:31:02,519
Speaker 1: home now or veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and the

1466
01:31:02,600 --> 01:31:04,800
Speaker 1: other little bush fire awards we have going around the

1467
01:31:04,840 --> 01:31:07,880
Speaker 1: world and they're now back on city street living. You

1468
01:31:07,920 --> 01:31:12,479
Speaker 1: know what you referred to as a disorganized life. Well,

1469
01:31:13,200 --> 01:31:17,439
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's a real joke. I mean, that's

1470
01:31:17,439 --> 01:31:19,880
Speaker 1: another thing that Indians have is they have they have

1471
01:31:20,040 --> 01:31:23,200
Speaker 1: ceremonies and stuff for guys coming out of battle. Uh.

1472
01:31:23,640 --> 01:31:29,000
Speaker 1: Kind of bring you back to planet Earth and um

1473
01:31:30,560 --> 01:31:36,720
Speaker 1: uh the temptation is just to go crazy. Um and

1474
01:31:36,840 --> 01:31:43,599
Speaker 1: I kind of did. Um. You know, you immediately discover

1475
01:31:43,760 --> 01:31:46,960
Speaker 1: a that you don't have any any any your strong

1476
01:31:47,120 --> 01:31:50,960
Speaker 1: goal outside yourself. You need that you know, you you

1477
01:31:51,560 --> 01:31:54,120
Speaker 1: That's that's the whole point. Of a spiritual life is

1478
01:31:54,200 --> 01:31:57,600
Speaker 1: to is to have something that's more important to you

1479
01:31:57,760 --> 01:32:02,040
Speaker 1: than you are. And uh, if you don't have that,

1480
01:32:02,360 --> 01:32:06,920
Speaker 1: then your life is horribly unbalanced. But the other thing

1481
01:32:07,000 --> 01:32:12,200
Speaker 1: you learn is that that the social dynamic is different.

1482
01:32:12,360 --> 01:32:17,240
Speaker 1: You know. Um now, I think it's still true that

1483
01:32:17,400 --> 01:32:19,400
Speaker 1: this is true in the military, and it certainly wasn't

1484
01:32:19,439 --> 01:32:22,840
Speaker 1: my day. If you were Alan sack of ship, you

1485
01:32:22,920 --> 01:32:30,040
Speaker 1: were ostracized and um uh. In in civilian life, people

1486
01:32:30,560 --> 01:32:33,160
Speaker 1: will just automatically tell you what you want to hear

1487
01:32:33,280 --> 01:32:35,360
Speaker 1: rather than what you need to know, because they don't

1488
01:32:35,360 --> 01:32:38,200
Speaker 1: want to hassle with, you know, a frown or whatever.

1489
01:32:38,960 --> 01:32:40,800
Speaker 1: And it takes a while to get used to that,

1490
01:32:41,080 --> 01:32:44,760
Speaker 1: you know, I mean you you know, you think, well,

1491
01:32:44,880 --> 01:32:46,720
Speaker 1: somebody told me this, so it must be true. And

1492
01:32:46,800 --> 01:32:49,320
Speaker 1: when you walk into the office and just say the blunt,

1493
01:32:49,479 --> 01:32:54,559
Speaker 1: honest truth, it shocks people there there there, Yeah, what's

1494
01:32:54,600 --> 01:32:57,640
Speaker 1: the term I'm looking for? You? You're grinding against the

1495
01:32:57,720 --> 01:33:00,479
Speaker 1: gears like there there. It's just like you know, you

1496
01:33:00,520 --> 01:33:04,000
Speaker 1: can see a visible reaction on their faces, right yeah,

1497
01:33:04,320 --> 01:33:07,439
Speaker 1: you know, and it's um, it's like the old song

1498
01:33:07,600 --> 01:33:12,120
Speaker 1: Accentuate the positive, eliminate the negative, latch onto the affirmative

1499
01:33:12,160 --> 01:33:15,360
Speaker 1: and don't mess with mr in between. Well, that's that's

1500
01:33:15,600 --> 01:33:18,280
Speaker 1: that's that's a good way to keep people happy, but

1501
01:33:18,360 --> 01:33:22,400
Speaker 1: it's not a good way to get anything done. I

1502
01:33:22,640 --> 01:33:24,600
Speaker 1: think when I when I look at you know, some

1503
01:33:24,720 --> 01:33:26,600
Speaker 1: of the things you did after the war, Jim, and

1504
01:33:26,800 --> 01:33:29,920
Speaker 1: I can see that I did some of the same things,

1505
01:33:30,479 --> 01:33:32,280
Speaker 1: And I just wanted to get your take on it,

1506
01:33:32,520 --> 01:33:34,560
Speaker 1: because you know, you got out and you went to

1507
01:33:34,600 --> 01:33:38,040
Speaker 1: work for Soldier of Fortune magazine and you wrote that

1508
01:33:38,760 --> 01:33:40,000
Speaker 1: What came out of it in the end was that

1509
01:33:40,080 --> 01:33:43,360
Speaker 1: terrific book, The Devil's Secret Name, which recounts a lot

1510
01:33:43,400 --> 01:33:46,080
Speaker 1: of those trips you took overseas, the different war zones,

1511
01:33:46,160 --> 01:33:49,160
Speaker 1: reporting on them. You know, I got out of the military,

1512
01:33:49,400 --> 01:33:52,880
Speaker 1: and like you said, I also worked very working, very hard,

1513
01:33:52,920 --> 01:33:57,960
Speaker 1: almost frantically, um trying to do all these different things, writing,

1514
01:33:58,479 --> 01:34:01,559
Speaker 1: traveling to different war zones, reporting on them. And when

1515
01:34:01,600 --> 01:34:05,400
Speaker 1: I look back on it now, I realized, I think subconsciously,

1516
01:34:05,520 --> 01:34:07,760
Speaker 1: what I was trying to do with all that was

1517
01:34:07,920 --> 01:34:11,080
Speaker 1: makes sense of what I had gone through Interraq in

1518
01:34:11,120 --> 01:34:16,360
Speaker 1: Afghanistan and to try to understand my own experience absolutely,

1519
01:34:16,760 --> 01:34:20,400
Speaker 1: and and it's important that this be done you know.

1520
01:34:20,920 --> 01:34:26,360
Speaker 1: I mean it's important that this be done too so

1521
01:34:26,600 --> 01:34:29,640
Speaker 1: that it won't be done again, you know that, so

1522
01:34:29,840 --> 01:34:31,560
Speaker 1: that the next guy that has to go will have

1523
01:34:31,720 --> 01:34:36,719
Speaker 1: a uh, have a a little bit of a handle

1524
01:34:36,760 --> 01:34:41,559
Speaker 1: on what he's getting into. Now that said, if if

1525
01:34:41,680 --> 01:34:43,760
Speaker 1: that's what you're gonna do with your life, if if

1526
01:34:43,800 --> 01:34:45,920
Speaker 1: you know that, at least at some point in your life,

1527
01:34:45,960 --> 01:34:49,599
Speaker 1: you're gonna soldier and you're serious about it. I mean,

1528
01:34:49,800 --> 01:34:52,080
Speaker 1: I read before I went in the army. I had

1529
01:34:52,120 --> 01:34:55,560
Speaker 1: read From Here to Eternity eight times, and you know

1530
01:34:55,680 --> 01:34:58,960
Speaker 1: that doesn't end well for its hero. And I had

1531
01:34:59,040 --> 01:35:03,240
Speaker 1: read Catch twenty two six times, and you know that

1532
01:35:03,439 --> 01:35:05,599
Speaker 1: was just about guys getting blown out of the sky.

1533
01:35:06,720 --> 01:35:09,400
Speaker 1: And all it did was making me. Yeah, I want

1534
01:35:09,479 --> 01:35:12,640
Speaker 1: some of that, you know, And I got it. And

1535
01:35:13,720 --> 01:35:16,880
Speaker 1: I'm glad. That's the weird thing. I'm glad I got it.

1536
01:35:16,960 --> 01:35:20,320
Speaker 1: I wouldn't surrender it. I would I wouldn't have it

1537
01:35:20,400 --> 01:35:25,240
Speaker 1: any other way, but damn you know. Yeah, are you

1538
01:35:25,360 --> 01:35:30,519
Speaker 1: familiar with Joseph Campbell's work? Oh? Yeah, what do you

1539
01:35:30,680 --> 01:35:33,639
Speaker 1: What do you think of that? Because he talks about Yeah,

1540
01:35:33,720 --> 01:35:37,960
Speaker 1: he talks about the importance of um like rituals and Um,

1541
01:35:38,120 --> 01:35:41,160
Speaker 1: rites of passage for young men, and you know, for

1542
01:35:41,439 --> 01:35:43,640
Speaker 1: for people like us, I mean, war was that right

1543
01:35:43,680 --> 01:35:46,400
Speaker 1: of passage? It seems like as Americans it's one of

1544
01:35:46,439 --> 01:35:50,000
Speaker 1: the few kind of I don't know, like primal ceremonies.

1545
01:35:50,080 --> 01:35:53,280
Speaker 1: I guess you could say that's that's left for us. Well,

1546
01:35:53,400 --> 01:35:56,200
Speaker 1: you know, I had, I had. I went to a

1547
01:35:56,280 --> 01:36:01,879
Speaker 1: military high school and uh so you know, uh segueing

1548
01:36:01,960 --> 01:36:06,280
Speaker 1: into the army, it was the life was not that dissimilar.

1549
01:36:06,439 --> 01:36:11,320
Speaker 1: The army was a little less military. That was about

1550
01:36:11,360 --> 01:36:16,439
Speaker 1: the big change. Um so, um, we you know, we

1551
01:36:16,520 --> 01:36:20,360
Speaker 1: had a rite of passage that basically they just beat

1552
01:36:20,400 --> 01:36:22,240
Speaker 1: the ship out of you for six weeks and then

1553
01:36:22,320 --> 01:36:29,000
Speaker 1: they shook your hand. And do you think we have

1554
01:36:29,080 --> 01:36:31,519
Speaker 1: a problem with that? On the other side, like you mentioned,

1555
01:36:31,560 --> 01:36:37,479
Speaker 1: the Native Americans have you know, sort of like cleansing ritual. Um, yes,

1556
01:36:37,600 --> 01:36:43,000
Speaker 1: absolutely absolutely, that's um. You know, I won't say that,

1557
01:36:43,160 --> 01:36:49,320
Speaker 1: you know, shamanism per se is the is the the answer,

1558
01:36:50,080 --> 01:36:55,519
Speaker 1: but the techniques that shamanism uses are a big part

1559
01:36:55,600 --> 01:37:02,280
Speaker 1: of the answer. And there are other groups Morgan's uh

1560
01:37:02,800 --> 01:37:05,479
Speaker 1: she Gun and all of that that do similar things.

1561
01:37:06,439 --> 01:37:10,240
Speaker 1: And um, yeah, you've gotta find you gotta find a

1562
01:37:10,360 --> 01:37:12,840
Speaker 1: life for yourself. I have a I have a friend

1563
01:37:12,920 --> 01:37:16,719
Speaker 1: here in l a Miguel Rivera, who who does sweats

1564
01:37:17,479 --> 01:37:23,120
Speaker 1: and um, you know, the sweat lodges is a tremendous,

1565
01:37:23,200 --> 01:37:31,240
Speaker 1: transforming ritual experience and it will it won't in itself

1566
01:37:31,360 --> 01:37:36,720
Speaker 1: change your life, but it'll start to change. And you

1567
01:37:36,840 --> 01:37:40,600
Speaker 1: know that you you. I'm trying to I'm trying to

1568
01:37:40,680 --> 01:37:43,840
Speaker 1: think how to explain what the difference is. But I

1569
01:37:43,960 --> 01:37:46,680
Speaker 1: used to have a mechanistic view of the universe and

1570
01:37:46,800 --> 01:37:49,759
Speaker 1: now I have a much more organic view of the universe.

1571
01:37:50,800 --> 01:37:57,680
Speaker 1: And it's, um, it's okay. What I was what I

1572
01:37:57,880 --> 01:38:00,280
Speaker 1: was hoping to find when I started study in this

1573
01:38:01,000 --> 01:38:02,680
Speaker 1: was a way to be as happy as I was

1574
01:38:02,840 --> 01:38:08,519
Speaker 1: at first six months in Vietnam. And and sometimes I am,

1575
01:38:09,479 --> 01:38:11,880
Speaker 1: what techniques did you find we are helpful for you?

1576
01:38:13,960 --> 01:38:16,400
Speaker 1: What techniques did you find were helpful for you? And

1577
01:38:16,720 --> 01:38:21,880
Speaker 1: kind of finding that happiness? Well, the loose self importance thing, um,

1578
01:38:23,240 --> 01:38:27,240
Speaker 1: you know, loose self importance of race, personal history. I

1579
01:38:27,400 --> 01:38:30,400
Speaker 1: use that as a checklist for a long time. UM

1580
01:38:31,840 --> 01:38:35,880
Speaker 1: and uh, you know, if if I was unhappy about something,

1581
01:38:36,439 --> 01:38:43,400
Speaker 1: I knew that UM, I was violating one of those principles,

1582
01:38:44,120 --> 01:38:50,240
Speaker 1: and all I had to do was um go through

1583
01:38:50,320 --> 01:38:54,040
Speaker 1: them and kind of compare what what I why, until

1584
01:38:54,080 --> 01:38:57,120
Speaker 1: I found why I felt like I did that wasn't

1585
01:38:58,040 --> 01:39:01,400
Speaker 1: how I should. And then I would apply that principle

1586
01:39:01,560 --> 01:39:04,599
Speaker 1: and it would just go away. And then later when

1587
01:39:04,640 --> 01:39:07,439
Speaker 1: I started taking courses. I didn't take him from casting Ada,

1588
01:39:07,960 --> 01:39:12,439
Speaker 1: who was a great writer but something of an asshole. Frankly,

1589
01:39:13,160 --> 01:39:17,320
Speaker 1: Um I took him from Don Miguel Ruiz, who is uh,

1590
01:39:18,960 --> 01:39:20,880
Speaker 1: He's just the sweetest guy in the world. And and

1591
01:39:21,080 --> 01:39:27,880
Speaker 1: he is um a different lineage of Mexican shamanism, all

1592
01:39:28,000 --> 01:39:32,920
Speaker 1: coming back from the Toltecs. And Um I learned his

1593
01:39:33,080 --> 01:39:36,360
Speaker 1: four the four agreements. If I was going to advise

1594
01:39:36,520 --> 01:39:39,200
Speaker 1: anybody to do, the one thing they could do to

1595
01:39:39,320 --> 01:39:42,439
Speaker 1: get started on getting their acts squared away is to

1596
01:39:42,560 --> 01:39:46,000
Speaker 1: read the four agreements. And the four agreements are be

1597
01:39:46,120 --> 01:39:50,800
Speaker 1: impeccable with your word, by which he means not just

1598
01:39:51,160 --> 01:39:55,799
Speaker 1: don't be a liar, but don't bullshit yourself. The second

1599
01:39:55,840 --> 01:40:02,680
Speaker 1: one is um okay uh, be impeccable with your word.

1600
01:40:02,760 --> 01:40:05,960
Speaker 1: Don't make assumptions. And they have a saying in the military,

1601
01:40:06,040 --> 01:40:07,960
Speaker 1: you know, assumption is the mother of all funk ups.

1602
01:40:08,400 --> 01:40:13,120
Speaker 1: Don't make assumptions and don't think anything take anything personally

1603
01:40:14,240 --> 01:40:17,439
Speaker 1: because it's not personal. If somebody says something insulting about

1604
01:40:17,520 --> 01:40:20,760
Speaker 1: you or something derogatory about you, all that means is

1605
01:40:21,920 --> 01:40:25,360
Speaker 1: he doesn't know you and he's talking about himself. And

1606
01:40:25,600 --> 01:40:32,120
Speaker 1: the other one is um uh okay. It's always do

1607
01:40:32,280 --> 01:40:34,880
Speaker 1: your best, which is the same as accept responsibility for

1608
01:40:34,960 --> 01:40:38,320
Speaker 1: your own acts. So it's basically it's Miguel's version of

1609
01:40:38,560 --> 01:40:41,599
Speaker 1: the same thing. And I would if if if you're

1610
01:40:41,640 --> 01:40:44,680
Speaker 1: having if you've got problems and with your own attitude

1611
01:40:44,720 --> 01:40:47,600
Speaker 1: in life, pop out and buy a copy of the

1612
01:40:47,640 --> 01:40:52,599
Speaker 1: Four Agreements. It will solve your problems. Right now, It's

1613
01:40:52,600 --> 01:40:54,840
Speaker 1: crazy that Jim's bringing that up because I've I've heard

1614
01:40:54,920 --> 01:40:57,800
Speaker 1: this book reference how many times from different people walks

1615
01:40:57,840 --> 01:40:59,599
Speaker 1: a lot. I mean, like you know him, a guns

1616
01:40:59,640 --> 01:41:02,640
Speaker 1: in a row, a spinatic, uh jack uh. You know

1617
01:41:02,680 --> 01:41:06,080
Speaker 1: the drummer Stephen Adler, so you know, had heroin abuse problems,

1618
01:41:06,160 --> 01:41:08,400
Speaker 1: all this stuff, and I've heard him on a recent

1619
01:41:08,479 --> 01:41:10,800
Speaker 1: interview saying like that that book changed his life. I'm

1620
01:41:10,800 --> 01:41:13,040
Speaker 1: gonna have to go look for life around So but

1621
01:41:13,880 --> 01:41:16,040
Speaker 1: I think you hear a lot of similar principles from

1622
01:41:16,080 --> 01:41:18,719
Speaker 1: different things. Like I think there's like a loudso quote

1623
01:41:18,760 --> 01:41:21,679
Speaker 1: of uh, you know, if you're living in the past,

1624
01:41:22,000 --> 01:41:25,640
Speaker 1: you're depressed. If you're living in the future, you have anxiety.

1625
01:41:26,000 --> 01:41:28,479
Speaker 1: If you're living in the present, you're at peace. It's

1626
01:41:28,680 --> 01:41:30,960
Speaker 1: you know, and I'm probably butchering quote. It's something to

1627
01:41:31,040 --> 01:41:33,880
Speaker 1: that in fact. But like I think from all different

1628
01:41:33,960 --> 01:41:36,439
Speaker 1: walks of white people who are Christians, people who are Buddhists,

1629
01:41:36,479 --> 01:41:39,280
Speaker 1: you hear a lot of these similar principles that you

1630
01:41:39,360 --> 01:41:41,960
Speaker 1: could use in your own life. Yeah. Well, that's one

1631
01:41:42,000 --> 01:41:45,400
Speaker 1: of the great things about the tele Texas Um. What

1632
01:41:45,560 --> 01:41:47,760
Speaker 1: they teach is it's not a religion. They teach you

1633
01:41:47,840 --> 01:41:51,320
Speaker 1: a set of principles that work for you and help

1634
01:41:51,400 --> 01:41:56,120
Speaker 1: you practice them. And I know I know a couple

1635
01:41:56,160 --> 01:41:59,720
Speaker 1: of the Teletech teachers who are Jewish. Uh. I know

1636
01:42:00,000 --> 01:42:08,360
Speaker 1: another one who is a Flamer. He was boy. Um

1637
01:42:10,400 --> 01:42:13,160
Speaker 1: let's but a lot of people like myself, I mean,

1638
01:42:13,240 --> 01:42:15,679
Speaker 1: I don't consider myself a Christian, but I do consider

1639
01:42:15,760 --> 01:42:19,200
Speaker 1: myself a big fan of Jesus. What I'm saying, no,

1640
01:42:19,360 --> 01:42:21,920
Speaker 1: I understand that completely. I mean I was raised Jewish,

1641
01:42:22,000 --> 01:42:23,680
Speaker 1: but I think, like a lot of the teachings of

1642
01:42:23,800 --> 01:42:26,400
Speaker 1: Jesus could be applied to all of us today, and

1643
01:42:27,040 --> 01:42:29,280
Speaker 1: the stuff that you read in Buddhism. That's why, I mean,

1644
01:42:29,640 --> 01:42:33,000
Speaker 1: this is getting totally off software types, but personally that's

1645
01:42:33,000 --> 01:42:36,200
Speaker 1: why I don't like subscribe to any one religion. I

1646
01:42:36,360 --> 01:42:39,360
Speaker 1: like to learn from all of them. And another quote

1647
01:42:39,400 --> 01:42:41,479
Speaker 1: that I love is the Bruce Lee quote to absorb

1648
01:42:41,560 --> 01:42:43,880
Speaker 1: what is useful, to discard what is useless, ad what

1649
01:42:44,040 --> 01:42:46,240
Speaker 1: is uniquely your own. And I do try to live

1650
01:42:46,320 --> 01:42:49,240
Speaker 1: by that, if you know, if I find something useful

1651
01:42:49,320 --> 01:42:52,439
Speaker 1: in what he's saying about shamanism, doesn't mean I'm going

1652
01:42:52,479 --> 01:42:54,559
Speaker 1: to become a shaman, but I could use that principle

1653
01:42:54,600 --> 01:42:58,360
Speaker 1: in your own walk of life. Well, yeah, I I

1654
01:42:58,479 --> 01:43:02,200
Speaker 1: certainly don't consider myself shaman. I just consider myself a

1655
01:43:02,280 --> 01:43:06,439
Speaker 1: guy who um tries to be a little aware of

1656
01:43:06,560 --> 01:43:08,800
Speaker 1: some of these other currents that are floating around that

1657
01:43:09,280 --> 01:43:12,160
Speaker 1: you don't learn about in school. Yeah, and it sounds

1658
01:43:12,200 --> 01:43:15,479
Speaker 1: like these are very like practical pragmatic principles that you

1659
01:43:15,520 --> 01:43:18,880
Speaker 1: can apply in life. It's not oh yeah, totally down

1660
01:43:18,960 --> 01:43:22,920
Speaker 1: to earth, totally down Yeah, it's kind when you get

1661
01:43:22,960 --> 01:43:25,600
Speaker 1: into the esoteric stuff. I mean, I have I have

1662
01:43:26,240 --> 01:43:29,080
Speaker 1: seen and had happened to me and done things which

1663
01:43:30,200 --> 01:43:34,559
Speaker 1: anybody will tell you are not possible, but they're possible

1664
01:43:35,000 --> 01:43:38,320
Speaker 1: and they have you know, And I've concluded that we

1665
01:43:38,439 --> 01:43:43,360
Speaker 1: don't really um that we there. There is a collective

1666
01:43:43,360 --> 01:43:49,280
Speaker 1: consciousness and there is access to it. And recently, Okay,

1667
01:43:50,640 --> 01:43:53,000
Speaker 1: at the start of the conversation, you realized that my

1668
01:43:53,520 --> 01:43:55,400
Speaker 1: you know, I mentioned that my wife is very ill

1669
01:43:56,000 --> 01:43:59,560
Speaker 1: and she's bedridden and we do a lot of you know,

1670
01:43:59,720 --> 01:44:02,439
Speaker 1: that's that's the main thrust of my life right now,

1671
01:44:02,680 --> 01:44:06,400
Speaker 1: just to make her happy. And um, she's in a

1672
01:44:06,479 --> 01:44:09,040
Speaker 1: situation where I would have killed myself a long time ago.

1673
01:44:09,880 --> 01:44:17,280
Speaker 1: Um and um she Um. What I've discovered I started

1674
01:44:17,320 --> 01:44:21,400
Speaker 1: studying some of these alternative healing modalities. I just picked

1675
01:44:21,479 --> 01:44:25,880
Speaker 1: up one called the emotion codes, and you realize that

1676
01:44:26,000 --> 01:44:31,600
Speaker 1: you can access people to Um. Okay. The premise of

1677
01:44:31,640 --> 01:44:34,439
Speaker 1: the emotion codes is that we have trapped in our

1678
01:44:35,040 --> 01:44:37,120
Speaker 1: oric field. I'm sorry, but I have to get into

1679
01:44:37,160 --> 01:44:40,920
Speaker 1: this kind of j jargon. Uh, certain emotions we picked

1680
01:44:41,000 --> 01:44:45,280
Speaker 1: up along the way, and that whenever that emotion is activated,

1681
01:44:45,320 --> 01:44:47,439
Speaker 1: you're not dealing with the crisis that you're dealing with.

1682
01:44:47,840 --> 01:44:49,800
Speaker 1: You're dealing with every time you've ever dealt with it

1683
01:44:49,880 --> 01:44:54,040
Speaker 1: your whole life long. And they have a technique. The

1684
01:44:54,120 --> 01:44:58,480
Speaker 1: guy who invented this at Dr Bradley Nelson for removing

1685
01:44:58,600 --> 01:45:02,760
Speaker 1: these and it involved must testing and magnets and and

1686
01:45:03,800 --> 01:45:07,920
Speaker 1: I've learned to do it for and I have successfully

1687
01:45:08,000 --> 01:45:12,439
Speaker 1: done this technique on people who lived two thousand miles

1688
01:45:12,520 --> 01:45:17,519
Speaker 1: from me. And um, you know since I've stripped. First

1689
01:45:17,560 --> 01:45:20,120
Speaker 1: of all, I did it on myself, and I just

1690
01:45:20,520 --> 01:45:22,960
Speaker 1: felt all of these trapped emotions. I learned to deal

1691
01:45:23,040 --> 01:45:27,559
Speaker 1: with them, but they were just gone. And um, since

1692
01:45:27,640 --> 01:45:29,479
Speaker 1: I've done it, I have one friend who used to

1693
01:45:29,560 --> 01:45:31,439
Speaker 1: call me every couple of weeks to tell me his

1694
01:45:31,600 --> 01:45:34,559
Speaker 1: wife was driving him to suicide. Haven't heard from him

1695
01:45:34,640 --> 01:45:38,439
Speaker 1: since I did that. Not about that. Um My, my

1696
01:45:39,800 --> 01:45:41,640
Speaker 1: daughter in law used to call me every couple of

1697
01:45:41,720 --> 01:45:45,519
Speaker 1: weeks wanting my my help and getting my son committed

1698
01:45:45,560 --> 01:45:51,360
Speaker 1: to psychiatric observation because they fight a lot. But herbiean

1699
01:45:51,400 --> 01:45:55,800
Speaker 1: comanche that has really nothing to do it anyway, that

1700
01:45:55,960 --> 01:46:00,519
Speaker 1: doesn't happen anymore. I did it on them, and on

1701
01:46:00,960 --> 01:46:03,800
Speaker 1: a bunch of other people, including Morgan, my friend that

1702
01:46:03,840 --> 01:46:06,720
Speaker 1: I'm meeting, the guy you used to be in the

1703
01:46:06,960 --> 01:46:10,920
Speaker 1: in the seventh um the she Gung guy and I

1704
01:46:11,040 --> 01:46:14,760
Speaker 1: did it on him and he called me. He said,

1705
01:46:14,800 --> 01:46:17,519
Speaker 1: what time did you do it? And I told him

1706
01:46:17,520 --> 01:46:21,080
Speaker 1: and he said, well, that's when my blocked up nasal

1707
01:46:21,200 --> 01:46:27,040
Speaker 1: passages instantly opened and my eyes cleared up. And I

1708
01:46:27,080 --> 01:46:31,720
Speaker 1: mean at that time when I did it. And so

1709
01:46:31,960 --> 01:46:34,640
Speaker 1: this this sounds kind of fantastic because it's something I

1710
01:46:34,800 --> 01:46:38,120
Speaker 1: learned to do in a day, and but it works.

1711
01:46:38,479 --> 01:46:40,360
Speaker 1: It worked on me, and it worked on everybody I've

1712
01:46:40,439 --> 01:46:43,920
Speaker 1: used it on. Well, I mean, it's one of those

1713
01:46:43,960 --> 01:46:47,639
Speaker 1: things and it works for you, it works for you, right, yeah, yeah,

1714
01:46:48,400 --> 01:46:50,360
Speaker 1: Well I did it. I did it for my wife

1715
01:46:50,400 --> 01:46:51,960
Speaker 1: and she was in there at the time with her

1716
01:46:52,000 --> 01:46:55,160
Speaker 1: caregivers and she was just climbing the walls over something.

1717
01:46:55,240 --> 01:46:57,680
Speaker 1: I forget what it was, but she wasn't having it

1718
01:46:57,840 --> 01:47:01,240
Speaker 1: whatever it was. And I went out there and and

1719
01:47:01,720 --> 01:47:04,200
Speaker 1: did the went out back and did the codes on it.

1720
01:47:04,280 --> 01:47:06,840
Speaker 1: When I came back, they were laughing and smiling and

1721
01:47:06,960 --> 01:47:13,679
Speaker 1: talking and un together. And that was five minutes later. Jim,

1722
01:47:13,800 --> 01:47:16,479
Speaker 1: this is This has been a terrific interview and we've

1723
01:47:16,520 --> 01:47:18,800
Speaker 1: covered so much. I'd love to have you on again

1724
01:47:18,960 --> 01:47:22,360
Speaker 1: sometime because, like We've just scratched the surface here. There's

1725
01:47:22,400 --> 01:47:26,479
Speaker 1: so much more we can talk about. Well, um, guys,

1726
01:47:26,680 --> 01:47:29,679
Speaker 1: I in my present situation, I don't leave the house

1727
01:47:29,720 --> 01:47:34,080
Speaker 1: for more than three hours because I don't want to

1728
01:47:34,120 --> 01:47:36,160
Speaker 1: be away from her more than that. I understand. So

1729
01:47:37,280 --> 01:47:39,800
Speaker 1: you want to talk, I'm here. That's great. Yeah, we'll

1730
01:47:39,800 --> 01:47:42,400
Speaker 1: definitely do this again. And I should let the audience know.

1731
01:47:42,760 --> 01:47:44,640
Speaker 1: You know, first of all, I mean the amount of

1732
01:47:44,680 --> 01:47:47,360
Speaker 1: subject matter here. You know that Jim has written so

1733
01:47:47,520 --> 01:47:50,519
Speaker 1: much great work, So check out his books. Check out

1734
01:47:50,640 --> 01:47:54,920
Speaker 1: war Story is the biggest, the Devil's Secret Name, terrific book,

1735
01:47:55,120 --> 01:47:58,760
Speaker 1: above and beyond the Battled Sorcerers. I mean, there's close

1736
01:47:58,800 --> 01:48:02,479
Speaker 1: to what ten books that you've written, Jim, eight, But

1737
01:48:02,800 --> 01:48:07,360
Speaker 1: there I should make the Battle of Sorcerers is um uh,

1738
01:48:08,120 --> 01:48:10,320
Speaker 1: it's not a war book. It's it's if you're interested

1739
01:48:10,360 --> 01:48:13,840
Speaker 1: in the shamanism stuff, that's that's the place to start.

1740
01:48:13,960 --> 01:48:16,639
Speaker 1: There you go. The only the only concession to war

1741
01:48:16,840 --> 01:48:21,000
Speaker 1: is that my my h uh, my protagonist is a

1742
01:48:21,240 --> 01:48:25,679
Speaker 1: former SF warrant. I just I don't understand other kinds

1743
01:48:25,760 --> 01:48:31,719
Speaker 1: of protagonists. I don't get them. You know, the idea

1744
01:48:31,760 --> 01:48:33,960
Speaker 1: of spending your whole life as a civilian seems like

1745
01:48:34,080 --> 01:48:37,720
Speaker 1: such a waste, I would know. But I know, we

1746
01:48:37,800 --> 01:48:40,200
Speaker 1: appreciate you going really long with us. I know originally

1747
01:48:40,240 --> 01:48:41,920
Speaker 1: you thought you'd be here for half an hour, and

1748
01:48:42,360 --> 01:48:44,680
Speaker 1: an hour and a half later we've covered a ton

1749
01:48:44,720 --> 01:48:46,800
Speaker 1: of ground, and I agree we could we could talk

1750
01:48:46,960 --> 01:48:49,960
Speaker 1: much longer. Um, I love them I go out, you know,

1751
01:48:50,080 --> 01:48:52,679
Speaker 1: I mean, we talked so much soft stuff. What I meant,

1752
01:48:53,400 --> 01:48:55,360
Speaker 1: you know, you guys get me. I appreciate you know,

1753
01:48:55,560 --> 01:48:57,200
Speaker 1: But and I was saying, you know, we talked a

1754
01:48:57,280 --> 01:48:59,040
Speaker 1: lot of soft stuff. But I do love when we

1755
01:48:59,360 --> 01:49:01,880
Speaker 1: enter out I had that realm and talk about different stuff.

1756
01:49:01,960 --> 01:49:04,160
Speaker 1: And when Nick Irving was on, we talked about some

1757
01:49:04,280 --> 01:49:07,240
Speaker 1: actually similar stuff the last time he was on. Well, Jim,

1758
01:49:07,439 --> 01:49:09,920
Speaker 1: Jim has lived life and it's interesting to see where

1759
01:49:10,000 --> 01:49:12,080
Speaker 1: things have taken him. And it's interesting to get into

1760
01:49:12,120 --> 01:49:14,640
Speaker 1: the experience of after the military, and how do you

1761
01:49:14,720 --> 01:49:21,920
Speaker 1: reconcile all of these um extreme experiences. You know, Okay,

1762
01:49:22,040 --> 01:49:25,439
Speaker 1: I guess that's it. Yeah, absolutely, Thank you so much, Jim.

1763
01:49:25,479 --> 01:49:29,160
Speaker 1: If there's anything else you want to plug feel free? Great,

1764
01:49:29,400 --> 01:49:31,880
Speaker 1: thanks a lot. Yeah, thanks Jim, it was really great

1765
01:49:31,920 --> 01:49:35,360
Speaker 1: talking to you. You bet Oh wait a minute something

1766
01:49:35,400 --> 01:49:40,120
Speaker 1: else to plug silent Man Miller's Anna Miller and Ray

1767
01:49:40,600 --> 01:49:46,479
Speaker 1: Martinez and Gary Linderer's history of of the hundred First

1768
01:49:46,520 --> 01:49:52,240
Speaker 1: Alerts Slash Rangers in Vietnam. This is this is a

1769
01:49:52,360 --> 01:49:55,800
Speaker 1: kind of a masterpiece. It's the entire history of the unit,

1770
01:49:56,160 --> 01:50:00,680
Speaker 1: written by staff Sergeant or below who were in it.

1771
01:50:01,640 --> 01:50:04,600
Speaker 1: And it's great. Yeah, I read it. I read it

1772
01:50:04,680 --> 01:50:07,719
Speaker 1: before I came in the military. Actually, it's a terrific series.

1773
01:50:09,320 --> 01:50:13,599
Speaker 1: Super alright. I'm glad we got that in Catch You Later. Excellent,

1774
01:50:13,760 --> 01:50:17,000
Speaker 1: excellent episode with Jim Morris. Really loved having him on,

1775
01:50:17,240 --> 01:50:20,360
Speaker 1: and I didn't expect we'd get into all that material

1776
01:50:20,479 --> 01:50:22,400
Speaker 1: we did. I mean when you said the shaman stuff,

1777
01:50:22,400 --> 01:50:23,960
Speaker 1: and I know we'd go that deep into it. It

1778
01:50:24,080 --> 01:50:26,920
Speaker 1: was cool. And dude, I'm not gonna lie. Speaking of

1779
01:50:27,040 --> 01:50:29,559
Speaker 1: sweat lodge, I feel like I'm in a fucking sweat lodge.

1780
01:50:30,040 --> 01:50:32,519
Speaker 1: The sun coming through the window. Yeah. And also I

1781
01:50:32,560 --> 01:50:34,200
Speaker 1: don't know, it's just the A C and all that.

1782
01:50:34,240 --> 01:50:36,320
Speaker 1: I tried to, you know, put something on. It is

1783
01:50:36,439 --> 01:50:38,680
Speaker 1: very hot in here. So we're gonna wrap this up

1784
01:50:39,240 --> 01:50:43,040
Speaker 1: to our episode. I really enjoyed it, and we'd have

1785
01:50:43,120 --> 01:50:45,920
Speaker 1: to have him back on UM. I wanted to mention

1786
01:50:46,160 --> 01:50:48,960
Speaker 1: that we are holding a raffle on Software dot Com

1787
01:50:49,120 --> 01:50:52,639
Speaker 1: until May sixte and it benefits the Special Children Center

1788
01:50:52,680 --> 01:50:55,400
Speaker 1: in New York City which provides services to families of

1789
01:50:55,760 --> 01:51:00,479
Speaker 1: four fifty children actually with disabilities. UM and with the raffle,

1790
01:51:00,760 --> 01:51:03,439
Speaker 1: you're bidding to win some great gear in this package

1791
01:51:03,520 --> 01:51:07,080
Speaker 1: along with John stryker Meyer's book. The chronicle is appropriate

1792
01:51:07,160 --> 01:51:10,560
Speaker 1: with what we're just talking about. Uh. Currently we're just

1793
01:51:10,720 --> 01:51:13,080
Speaker 1: about at that goal of a thousand dollars, so by

1794
01:51:13,120 --> 01:51:14,640
Speaker 1: the time you hear this, we probably are. But you

1795
01:51:14,680 --> 01:51:16,800
Speaker 1: could still you know, we'll go above and beyond that

1796
01:51:16,880 --> 01:51:19,280
Speaker 1: goal and you could still get raffle ticket and help

1797
01:51:19,320 --> 01:51:22,680
Speaker 1: out a great cause. Uh. There's one club out there

1798
01:51:22,760 --> 01:51:27,439
Speaker 1: with gear handpicked by Special Operations military veterans from several branches,

1799
01:51:27,479 --> 01:51:30,920
Speaker 1: and that of course is Great Club. Past items we've

1800
01:51:30,960 --> 01:51:33,000
Speaker 1: had in our Premium Creates have been an E d

1801
01:51:33,160 --> 01:51:35,920
Speaker 1: C Med kit put together by ben Ghazi survivor and

1802
01:51:36,120 --> 01:51:40,759
Speaker 1: Army ranger Chris Tonto Pronto, and a ballistic shield insert

1803
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Speaker 1: for your backpack made by cry Precision. Well. Create Club

1804
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Speaker 1: is really stepping up its game right now as progresses

1805
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Speaker 1: by putting out custom products that you're not going to

1806
01:51:50,960 --> 01:51:54,400
Speaker 1: find anywhere else. We have different tiers of membership depending

1807
01:51:54,439 --> 01:51:57,439
Speaker 1: on how prepared you want to be, and gift options

1808
01:51:57,560 --> 01:52:00,599
Speaker 1: are available as well. You can check that all out

1809
01:52:00,720 --> 01:52:04,719
Speaker 1: at Great Club dot Us. Once again, that's great Club

1810
01:52:05,200 --> 01:52:08,360
Speaker 1: dot Us for your dog owners. Check this out. You're

1811
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Speaker 1: gonna love this. We've also just launched Kuna and we

1812
01:52:11,760 --> 01:52:14,200
Speaker 1: just sent out our first box. I saw Scott Whitner

1813
01:52:14,280 --> 01:52:17,400
Speaker 1: post it Um, which includes like a multi vitamin for

1814
01:52:17,479 --> 01:52:20,720
Speaker 1: your dog um, which I'm sure it's very helpful. I

1815
01:52:20,800 --> 01:52:22,479
Speaker 1: remember when I had a dog to get them to

1816
01:52:22,600 --> 01:52:24,960
Speaker 1: take pills. It's a little bit of a tough process though.

1817
01:52:25,400 --> 01:52:27,800
Speaker 1: Pain in the ass. Have you ever have you ever

1818
01:52:27,880 --> 01:52:30,600
Speaker 1: heard of a frosty pause, which is like it's like

1819
01:52:30,720 --> 01:52:33,240
Speaker 1: ice cream for your dog they sell at the supermarket,

1820
01:52:33,280 --> 01:52:35,679
Speaker 1: Like it's okay for them dogs like normal ice cream,

1821
01:52:35,800 --> 01:52:37,680
Speaker 1: of course, yeah, but it's not good for them. It's not,

1822
01:52:38,280 --> 01:52:40,960
Speaker 1: no dude, all that sugar and all that, because just

1823
01:52:41,240 --> 01:52:43,479
Speaker 1: like how dogs can't eat chocolate, they definitely should not

1824
01:52:43,640 --> 01:52:46,439
Speaker 1: be eating ice cream, although people do tend to do that.

1825
01:52:47,000 --> 01:52:48,559
Speaker 1: But I was gonna say, like, if you put your

1826
01:52:49,080 --> 01:52:51,920
Speaker 1: you know, pill in that frosty pause or real ice cream.

1827
01:52:51,960 --> 01:52:54,880
Speaker 1: If you want to do that, they'll they'll have it. Um.

1828
01:52:55,200 --> 01:52:57,560
Speaker 1: You know, then they won't know the difference. But we

1829
01:52:57,640 --> 01:52:59,800
Speaker 1: have a train We have a team of trained can

1830
01:52:59,840 --> 01:53:02,200
Speaker 1: i and handlers picking out a box for dog each

1831
01:53:02,280 --> 01:53:05,920
Speaker 1: month of healthy treats, training aids and it's custom built

1832
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Speaker 1: for your dogs size and age as well. The products

1833
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Speaker 1: are US sourced, all natural and they not only promote

1834
01:53:11,560 --> 01:53:14,599
Speaker 1: a healthy diet, but also promote being active with your dog.

1835
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Speaker 1: So whether we're talking to pitbull, Wow, this is just

1836
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Speaker 1: what you're looking for. You can see all of that

1837
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Speaker 1: at Kuna dot Dog. That's Kuna Dot Dog cu n

1838
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Speaker 1: A dot d O G. Like I said, the first

1839
01:53:27,880 --> 01:53:30,000
Speaker 1: boxes out there, and I'm looking forward to seeing how

1840
01:53:30,080 --> 01:53:32,840
Speaker 1: people respond and you know, then we'll send out some

1841
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Speaker 1: new boxes as everything approaches, but I'm sure we're gonna

1842
01:53:36,000 --> 01:53:39,240
Speaker 1: see some great feedback. Um. And as a reminder for

1843
01:53:39,360 --> 01:53:41,160
Speaker 1: all of those who are listening, for a limited time

1844
01:53:41,200 --> 01:53:44,639
Speaker 1: you can receive a fifty percent membership to the spec

1845
01:53:44,680 --> 01:53:48,720
Speaker 1: Ops Channel, our channel that offers the most exciting military

1846
01:53:48,840 --> 01:53:52,840
Speaker 1: content today. The spec Ops channel premier show Training Cell

1847
01:53:53,280 --> 01:53:57,200
Speaker 1: follows former Special Operations Forces as they participate in the

1848
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Speaker 1: most advanced training in the country, everything from shooting schools,

1849
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Speaker 1: you can watch this content by subscribing to the spec

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Speaker 1: ops channel at spec ops channel dot com and take

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Speaker 1: advantage of a limited time offer of fift off your membership.

1853
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Speaker 1: It's only four a month. Um. And I just actually

1854
01:54:21,080 --> 01:54:26,000
Speaker 1: saw that Chris, our web developer, is doing. You know,

1855
01:54:26,120 --> 01:54:29,000
Speaker 1: we now have an iOS app for the spec ops

1856
01:54:29,080 --> 01:54:31,679
Speaker 1: channel and it looks fucking awesome because Chris is great.

1857
01:54:32,120 --> 01:54:34,919
Speaker 1: And in early June that will be available on Android

1858
01:54:34,960 --> 01:54:36,480
Speaker 1: as well, just like how I know when we did

1859
01:54:36,520 --> 01:54:39,480
Speaker 1: the software app. You know, the Apple one was out

1860
01:54:39,480 --> 01:54:41,839
Speaker 1: a little bit earlier and people like whereas the Android.

1861
01:54:42,160 --> 01:54:45,880
Speaker 1: So early June Android people, you'll see that spec ops

1862
01:54:46,000 --> 01:54:49,440
Speaker 1: channel dot com. I don't know if there's anything more

1863
01:54:49,520 --> 01:54:53,080
Speaker 1: to say. We've talked for two hours altogether here and uh,

1864
01:54:53,400 --> 01:54:56,600
Speaker 1: excellent episode with Jim Morris. Really enjoyed having him on

1865
01:54:56,960 --> 01:54:59,920
Speaker 1: and and I think you guys will hopefully enjoy as well.

1866
01:55:00,000 --> 01:55:04,320
Speaker 1: If you did leave us review and Apple podcasts, follow us,

1867
01:55:04,400 --> 01:55:07,800
Speaker 1: follow me at Ian Scotto, followed Jack at Jack Murphy

1868
01:55:07,920 --> 01:55:11,640
Speaker 1: r d R or Twitter, and unless you have anything else,

1869
01:55:11,720 --> 01:55:20,440
Speaker 1: We're out. That's it. You've been listening to self Rep

1870
01:55:20,680 --> 01:55:24,600
Speaker 1: ladi A New episodes up every Wednesday and Friday for

1871
01:55:24,840 --> 01:55:28,200
Speaker 1: all of the great content from our veteran journalists. Join

1872
01:55:28,400 --> 01:55:31,240
Speaker 1: us and become a team room member today at soft

1873
01:55:31,320 --> 01:55:34,760
Speaker 1: rep dot com. Follow the show on Instagram and Twitter

1874
01:55:35,160 --> 01:55:38,600
Speaker 1: at self Rep Radio, and be sure to also check

1875
01:55:38,640 --> 01:55:42,840
Speaker 1: out the Power of Thought podcast hosted by Hurricane Group

1876
01:55:43,000 --> 01:55:47,080
Speaker 1: CEO and Navy Seal Sniper instructor Brandon Webb.