[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was no oil, there was nothing in the water behind this ship after this airplane had gone down. So it was a shock to me, of course, uhm, but


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I think I started out with this mentality that it's always gonna happen to somebody else, you know? Never me. And, uh, and that I'm, you know, I'm, whatever happened, I'm gonna do it better.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uhm, and I think that's, well, you know this better than I. You have to kinda have that mentality in combat. You can't go in thinking you're gonna get killed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Miramar Naval Air Station. Yup. And that's where I helped start Top Gun. That was kind of an interesting experience as well. There was a...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There was a, uh, a pool of students to fly the F-4 Phantom. And I showed up here when they had about a six month waiting list for me to fly this airplane. Well, six months was a long time, you know, for a 23 year old kid. And I wanted to get in the air.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, a buddy of mine, Paul Krucke, and I had gotten our wings at the same time and been assigned the F-4 Phantom. And we came out here and so we were both gonna have to wait for six months to fly this airplane.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a jet, but it's light and slow and kind of stodgy. It's a, it's a Korean warping.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and they were, they were using it in flight training to teach instruments. And the way they did this, the, the instructor would sit in the front seat and the students sit in the back seat and they had a, um, a, a bag that, that covered all the windows, covered, covered you up. All you could see was the instrument panel. You're under this bag. And so, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so we signed on to fly this airplane for test hops and check rides and this kind of stuff just to fly, just to stay in the air. Because we were already qualified to the airplane. Well...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Krookey and I would save a little bit of gas, okay, each time we'd fly these students around and at the end of the hop we would lurk off the coast of San Diego and wait for the phantoms to come out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And uh, so we, you know, we, these guys would come off the runway at Miramar and they were heavy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, and they were stodgy and they were slow as they came off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of course they were much, much faster. We were not supersonic and they were. So they could get away from us in a heartbeat if they wanted to. But, uh, we,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That went on for, I don't know, a couple of months. Until one day, Krookey and I, I mean, we played the role. We had white scarves, you know, and Snoopy goggles and the whole works. And one day we came back and to the instrument squadron and checked in our airplanes back in and, uh, and it was a sign on the bulletin.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Plum, Krookey, report to the F4 commanding officer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, we were in trouble. So, two, two, two guys in their sweaty flight suits, uh, knock on the door of the commanding officer of the Phantom Squadron. I'll never forget this scene.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They go, come in. And we open the door. This guy sits at a long...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's in a sweaty flight suit also, which should have been our first indication.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He said, you two, you two guys out there in the F9s.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Haslund, my fighter pilots? Uhm, yes sir, we were.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, did you follow a phantom through an entire loop?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He said, I was. He said, I just came back from Vietnam. Our kill ratio over there is terrible. They're eating our lunch. We need to learn how to fight this airplane.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] See, the F-4 was designed during the Cold War as a supersonic interceptor. I was never called a fighter pilot. And in fact, I trained in a space suit so I could go above 50,000 feet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Off the aircraft carrier, climb to 80,000 feet, shoot down the Russian bombers and, you know, at 45 degree angle of bank, turn, return to the aircraft carrier. That was my job. I wasn't supposed to be out there hassling because, because it was the Cold War. We did not expect to have a Korean War, World War II type, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The hassle of the fighter pilot, well, of course Vietnam came around and suddenly, you know, they're, they're flying these older airplanes that were eating our lunch. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The CEO looked at us and said, you wanna, you wanna fight with me tomorrow?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Two or three months, Paul Kruke and I, with our white scarves and our snoopy goggles, we had to start about an hour ahead of time, you know, just because they were so fast. But we'd get out to sea, we'd go out to 40 miles out to sea and turn around and here they come and we'd have these two on two engagements and, and that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] became a syllabus within the replacement air group of the F-4s that eventually became the Top Gun School.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it was, it was the start of, uh, of retraining. Well, and it was, it was very successful. We turned our kill ratio around by teaching pilots how to fight this F-4 Phantom.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, it certainly had. And the squadron that I joined was just coming back from Vietnam. And they'd had quite a few casualties. And, uh, and so they were talking about it. You know, the guys were, the guys were giving us instruction on how to work.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Another thing about the Phantom was that we had, uh, we had no indication when a missile was in the air. Uh, because we were faster than the missile, for the most part, or higher than the missile. And so one of the things the guys, the guys told me, the fellas coming back from Vietnam said, go down to Radio Shack and buy yourself a fuzzbuster. You know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, yeah. Radar detector. Yeah, the old fuzzbuster. Yeah, it's uh, he said because the uh, Russian built SAM surface-to-air missiles are on the same frequency as a California Highway Patrol.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] True, true story. Uh, and so we have found that if you, because we have no indication in the airplane when a missile's in the air.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Psychologically. Oh, it's coming. Absolutely. You heard the warble. And boy, you know, you started to turn and jink and, you know, your head went on a swivel trying to figure out where this, uh, this missile is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The F4, of course, again, was considered, was configured and built from the keel up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As a, uh, as an air to air combat machine, alright.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that we could carry bombs on this fighter airplane. Well, we were supposed to be, you know, interceptors. We weren't supposed to be carrying bombs around, but we found out that sure enough, this big old airplane was a pretty good platform for, for dropping bombs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so, we could carry, you know, we could carry twelve, thirteen thousand pounds of bombs into the target.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which was a pretty good load. You know, we could also support, you know, guys like you on the ground. That, uh, with all kinds of various, uh, kinds of weaponry.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, and so what happened was we had a sister squadron on the aircraft carrier, so for a month line period we would be fighters for two weeks and then we would, we would


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We would reconfigure our airplane to be bombers and we'd be bombers for two weeks and we would go back to fighters and then back to bombers.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To answer your question, half the time over there I was dropping bombs and half the time I was, uh, I was doing the air to air mission.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Exactly, yeaah, it was a CAP, a CAP, Combat Air Patrol.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was a big deal, uh, and it was called an alpha strike. An alpha strike was the top priority and we knew that it would be a lot of airplanes in the air and we'd have some pretty important targets to hit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was sanctioned straight from the Pentagon. It was JCS stuff. Uh, and, um, which of course is one of the problems in that war was that most of our instruction came from the guys, uh, back in the puzzle palace. And, uh, it's, you know, they wouldn't, they wouldn't let us decide.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Targets or altitudes or anything else. It was pretty well planned by the time we got the go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I got a call, I suppose three in the morning, something like that, uh, saying that, uh, I was to schedule this flight. I was a schedules officer for the prop, for the squadron. And so I was the guy that figured out who went on what strikes and who went with whom and, and the airplanes that they had. And so, so I got up early to start planning this strike.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, with the airplanes and the pilots and the back seaters, our radar intercept officers are co-pilots. Uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so I did. Then we went to the briefing room and got about an hour brief on these targets. I later found out that the reason for the whole thing, the reason why we were doing an Alpha Strike on the 19th of May,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Was, it was the birthday of their president, Ho Chi Minh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Greats was that we would catch them in celebration of their, of the big day, uh, because they, it was like our president's day. Uh, you know, they had picnics and that kind of stuff. And so we were going to catch them with their pants down. Well,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As most things that happened in Vietnam, they knew we were coming. For whatever reason. And, uh, that day there were eight F4 Phantoms shot down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I'll never forget the beginning of it because uhm, you know, I took off in a rendezvous with a tanker and took on an extra 3,000 pounds of fuel and then joined the squadron. And it was, in fact, a cap mission. It was a combat air patrol. I was not carrying bombs.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we had four of us on one side of the strike group and four of the other. And, uh, just to look.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because it was three aircraft carriers and five air force bases. It was just throwing everything we had at the enemy that day. It was an amazing Aramada. And I could see from one horizon to the other, these airplanes. And I remember


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Feeling really proud, you know, man, you know, just to be a part of this, doing something that very few people in the world would ever do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And flying this airplane, um, at age 24. And, uh, so that, that was how it all began on the 19th of May.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not, uh, not often. I had seen Migs probably four or five times up to that point. And, uh, so they.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They, they really were, they were, they were really good about not showing up until they knew that they could kill something. You know, uh, of course they were, they had the advantage, they had the home field advantage and so they could wait on their bases until we came to them and then they would launch. So if you didn't get close to a MiG base, you probably weren't going to see one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were, they had a very short range, and they didn't stay in the air very long, and so we didn't see them very often.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, you know, uh, my, uh, my best buddy there, uh, Denny Wisely, had already shot down two airplanes, uh, by that time, and he shot down another one after I was shot down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and so, he, it, and, you know, I mean, that's what every fighter pilot wants to, you know, to have a mig to his credit. And I saw this opportunity, you know, five days to go. You know, this is, this is my, this is my day. You know, this is Charlie Plum Day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and, uh, and so that thing was warbling all the time. Uhm, there were, they were, they were salvoing their Sam's that day. They just, they just shoot a bunch of them off at the same time. And so every time they shot one off, and every time their radar would scan me, I would get to Fuzzbuster. But we also had, you know, we had the, uh, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The big radar airplanes in the sky at the same time. And they would call us, and that's how I got that call.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That 20 mile away call was, uh, was from our electronic folks that were flying well above us with the radar.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and that had happened before. Uh, I'd seen, I had seen that happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Before they ever got to me. And, uh, and I was in such a populated area.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I could see that they were, that I was gonna be captured immediately. And so to get those guys...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But them in harm's way was, uh, was kinda silly. So that's why I did that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I did, yes. It was almost like slow motion. And I, you know, I remember thinking, this is unreal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, and I, you know, I, I tried to sense every possible thing because of course I'm thinking escape now, trying to get it, get out of here in some way. And so I'm trying to memorize all the little roads I could see and all the little trees and all the little huts and where are they and where am I that situational awareness.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh, I was 75 miles. Awesome, no chance of that. No chance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We were on the outskirts of Hanoi, the capital city. And, uh, and, and that was the bad news, good news.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The bad news was that I was gonna be captured immediately. There was no chance whatsoever. I mean, they were shooting at me from the ground while I came down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, the good news was I didn't have to go very far to a formalized prison camp like a lot of the guys did. You know, you had Bill Reader on this.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On your podcast, and he was dragged for, I don't know, weeks, uhm, and uh, because he was,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was captured in South Vietnam. The guys that were in Laos or Cambodia who were brought to our prison camps were all just really torn up, not just because of uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Of the enemy, but just because of the rigors of the travel. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who just lost a job or, uh, just lost a child or just had a car accident. I mean that's, you know, there are similarities in normal civilian life, I think, that can be just as impactive as being blown out of the sky.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the entire experience, I never thought I was going to be killed. And I didn't think so at that moment.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were going to feign this, uh, execution and not go through with it. Right. And, uh, it was encouraging to me to think that, yeah, they were going to hammer me around and get me pretty bloody, but they probably weren't intentionally going to kill me. I guess I worried more about that they would kill me accidentally, uh, than intentionally.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, and there were two or three times during the entire experience, one of them as well as being tortured, uh, how,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When I felt like I was losing it and I was close to death and they, they loosened the ropes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, because they saw, I think, that I was getting pretty close to death. And so, uh, and that, you know, again, that was good. Because I thought, alright, uh, this hurts a lot, but it looks like they're not gonna kill me. I may wish I was dead, but I don't think they're gonna do it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] An interesting point here is that in Colonel Reader's, uh, podcast, uh, you found the same thing, that he went to the 23rd Psalm. And, uh, uh, and again, it was just almost like, well, this is what I should do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I do, as a matter of fact, a couple of guys consider themselves atheists.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and you know, faith in the team as well, and we had to have faith in each other, and that was awfully important to, you know, to be a part of a group like that that could trust one another.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Oh no, I knew that there were other prisoners there. I could hear them, uh, you know, some of them were being tortured as I was. I could hear the torture. I could, you know, I could peek out sometimes and see them walking by my cell. So I knew there were other prisoners in the area and they just wouldn't let me, they wouldn't let me talk to them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, I was really never comfortable at all in that. I felt very guilty. Uhm, I was very, I really was very remorseful that I had not been as strong as I wanted to be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, and through the, you know, the first several months of that experience, I, uh, I, I felt like, uhm, I felt very guilty about having given up. You know, fighter pilots are not supposed to give up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the code of conduct of course, name, rank, serial number, date of birth. Uhm, I flew over this, the enemy thinking that I was strong enough and I was good enough and uhm, and suddenly I was thrust into this situation. And I even wondered,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Would I, would I ever be able to go back to my country? Can I face?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My fellow fighter pilots that were stronger, you know, tougher.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I found out that that, that feeling was across the board. Every, every POW that I ever ran into.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Felt guilty. And some guys even considered suicide.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because they felt like they could, they could never live with the guilt of having given up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was, it was quite a revelation to me when I finally made contact.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With another prisoner and confess to this guy. I remember that my first contact and I said, I said, uh, I need to confess something to you and.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When I tell you what I've done, you may not want to communicate with me. You may hate me. And if our roles were reversed, I would probably hate you. If you did what I did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And so he said, this is Bob Shoemaker, he said, what did you do, plum? I said, well, I broke.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I tried to be strong, but I wasn't. I broke.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And his response, and, and we're, we're talking on, uh, on the end of a wire. We're tugging on a wire to communicate with each other with this secret code that I had, that he had just taught me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He said, hell, everybody broke. He said, there's not a man in this camp that is as strong as he wanted to be. He said, so get over yourself, you know. And that was a, that was a great revelation in my mind, you know, to know that I wasn't the only one that had given in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What I didn't know at the time was it was Ho Chi Minh's birthday.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, so that was part of the celebration, uh, was I was being presented to the president of their country as a birthday gift, you know, popping out of a cake. And, uh, and the good news was that


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That I was, I was in the media, that they were taking pictures of me. And so, after a few months,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, my family saw those pictures. Right. And uh, and so that was the good news about being shot down on the 19th of May.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, uh, the, the, the picture that...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, was taken and transferred to my family, has me with my eyes closed and my face was pretty well swollen. And my little brother,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He thought that I was dead. He thought that was a picture of a dead man. And so uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, uh, but I think most people, you know, thought, yeaah, no, he's alive. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Actually I was, I was, uh, being prodded to walk faster.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] By these guys, and I was hurting at the time, you know, I was, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Injured from the, from the ejection. And I wasn't able to walk very fast. And I was blindfolded as well. And so I hit a, I hit a rut in the road and these guards with their bayonet fixed behind me, stabbed me in the, in the thigh.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that was, in fact, that was the worst wound that I had and it festered for months because I had no medical care.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I never really knew if it was intentional.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Or it was accidental, but that was, uh, that was how I got that wound.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] No, they didn't, and uh, they did all that they possibly could do to keep us from communicating.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of the, the interesting, uh, things that are really most difficult to understand is how we had nothing going on. Uhm, you know, I mean, the, the average American has


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Hundreds of thousands of inputs every day, colors and sounds and smells and touch and all these things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and when you're in a little prison cell, especially if you're in solitary confinement, you know, you might, you might hear a bird, you know, and that's delightful. That's a big deal, you know, to hear a bird.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And nothing else. So, uh, again, the good news and the bad news is, your mind goes internal. And you start, you have to, you have to create things, uh, on your own. And so, you think about these intangible things, and you go back through your life, and, and, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and, and you think about the things that sustain life and why we are here, because there's nothing else to do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, uh, in fact, one of the things I did was to go back through my life to the very first memory that I ever had at three years old in Lee Compton, Kansas, when my grandmother came through and wanted everybody to go with her. Well, and I remember that date and then I went from that to the day that I was shot down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As I recall, maybe three months working pretty hard on, on that, uh, that total autobiography in my mind. And after that, then I would


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Continue to go back through those individual days and try to remember something else, you know, a different color that I'd forgotten or a different person that was in the room.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And whenever I would, when I would discover something that I hadn't discovered the first three months, it was like, it was like meeting an old friend. I could think about that one person or that one.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and most everybody did that. And a lot of guys did it much better than I. They could tell you, you know, what was going on, uhm, on this day last year and the year before and the year before. They, you know, they, they, uh, they could remember everything, uh, had it all packed away. But yes, it was very well categorized.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I am. Kay Russell was shot down the same day I was, and so he and I were, uh, he was my first roommate. Uhm, and, and, you know, I was, I was, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In the same cell with a lot of different guys. And they moved us around a lot. About every six months they'd move us around. But they would give us different roommates every few months. Or take them all away that was in solitary confinement again. And uh, we never really knew why.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But we assume that it was, tried to destroy any fraternization with the guards, and tried to disrupt any unity within the prisoners. And so uhm, so the,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In fact, sometimes it's a little bit difficult to describe exactly what it was like because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We were in different camps and different cells and you were different guys for the entire six years.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Absolutely, absolutely. It was, uh, it was glorious, you know, to find, uh, uh, because, you know, he, of course, had all of the stories and he had the movies that he could tell you about and the things that he had learned.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, that he could teach you. So, yeaah, no, it was, it was wonderful. Now, that would last for maybe a few months until you ran out of things, then it became almost like a marriage, you know, where you've got those, those periods of time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, the fact of the matter is, you couldn't, in some of those cells, you couldn't be more than 8 or 10 feet away from a guy 24-7 for months and months and months at a time. And so little things start to bug you, you know?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Not the least of which was, uh, was our toilet. You know, the toilet was a two gallon bucket in the corner and, uh, lots of times it was rusted out of the top with no lid and it was just quite a


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, it stunk to high heaven in a lot of the cases. And, um, and it was quite an irritant. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had, I had not. Now what I did know was that my span


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From my pinky to my thumb was not, was, uh, I could span nine notes on a piano. And so I laid out a keyboard on my board bed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I knew where the black keys were and I had played in the band, uh, and also played guitar. So I knew a little bit about chords and scales and that kind of thing. And I thought, well, I've always wanted to play the piano, you know, now's my chance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And it was serious stuff. As a matter of fact, when we got home, University of Maryland gave us credit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For what we had, you know, the courses we had taught, you know, without books or paper or PowerPoints or instructors or professors or anybody.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because uhm, we, we were so intent on using that time for something of value. And, uh, and, and, and these guys, uh, most of them smarter than I would go back through their minds and recapture all of the subjects that they had learned.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One of the guy, Joe Milligan, uh, was with him, uh, I don't know, the first few months, I guess, and he taught, uh, of course, uh, on, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, chemistry. No, no, biology. It was biology. And I'd never taken a course in biology. And I was very interested. And his course lasted about a week. Uhm, and that's all he knew. But Joe, and I lived with him for a while.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We'll lay back on this rack about an hour a day and just think about biology.


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[Assistant] And it is amazing, you know, what's back in there in your human brain. It's, and we found that out. If you think about something long enough and hard enough, and again, you don't have these distractions of everyday life.


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[Assistant] That, uh, there's, you know, there's awful lot stored back in there.


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[Assistant] Rice balls? Yeah, mostly rice. Uh, that was the mainstay. You'd, um, you know, you get a small bowl of rice twice a day, once about 10 o'clock, once about two o'clock in the afternoon. And then you had a 20 hour stretch with nothing to eat. Uh, sometimes they'd give you a bowl of broth. Uh, and sometimes it would be.


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[Assistant] Uh, some kind of vegetable turnips or, uh,


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[Assistant] Weeds of some kind. One we call sewer soup. You couldn't identify this stuff. But I didn't eat, you know, there was not enough meat to put in a coffee cup for a year. You know, there really was no meat of any variety.


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[Assistant] Uh, I weighed about 140 when I came home, but they fattened us up before we came home. And I figure most of the time I was there about 115 pounds.


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[Assistant] Uh, it went away for the most part, you know, after, I don't know, four or five months.


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[Assistant] Your stomach sort of shrinks, and when you know that there's nothing else to eat, uhm, and so, you know, they, in all fairness, they gave us enough to keep us alive. And uhm,


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[Assistant] Uh, and, and so that, you know, and rice is a pretty perfect food. This is unpolished rice. It wasn't the Uncle Ben's that we have today. And, uh, and there's a lot, there's, there's protein in there and there's nutrients in the rice. So that kept me alive.


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[Assistant] Oh yeaah. In fact, several guys had great plans. One guy was a farmer and he had planned a pig farm. That was his whole thing.


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[Assistant] Uhm, and he did, he came back and he, I live with a guy by the name of Danny Glenn, who uhm, was an architectural student at the University of Oklahoma. And uh, Dan and I were together for a lot of years, and he dreamed about building this home.


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[Assistant] And that's all he thought about was building this dream house. And he had several little things about this home that were very peculiar. One of them was that as the sunlight would come through the top of the wall around our prison,


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[Assistant] The wall was capped with barbed wire and electrical wire and broken glass. The glass was from bottles of various colors.


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[Assistant] And in one particular cell that Dan and I were in, the sun would come through the glass, the colored glass, and onto this, this, this tank of water, and then reflect


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[Assistant] Under the eaves of our thatched roof and into our cell. So we had all these colors and it was a beautiful thing, you know, it was a kaleidoscope of colors. And so he designed a house and he figured this whole thing out, you know, with the, with the azimuth of the sun and, and, and all of this stuff and how he was going to do this.


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[Assistant] But, and he would lay this out and he would draw on the concrete floor with a piece of brick.


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[Assistant] And, uh, he was a great artist. You know, the, the guy could, could design all this stuff.


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[Assistant] Bore me to tears. Charlie, what color do you think my bathroom ought to be?


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[Assistant] I don't know, Dan, I don't know. No, no, Charlie, green or blue? I don't know, green. Dan, green.


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[Assistant] Okay, so we, we get home in about a year after I was living in Kansas and he was in Oklahoma and he called me up. Charlie, I got us something to show you.


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[Assistant] And he picked me up at the airport and we drove outside of town and from about a quarter of a mile away I saw this house that I recognized but had never been in Norman, Oklahoma. And I swear I could have walked in that house and touched any faucet or any light switch, you know, on the whole place because it was exactly as he had designed it, the prison.


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[Assistant] So I went to the bathroom and it was blue. He had gone back, you know, he had built it from building materials that he had remembered. And over the years that we were there, they changed. And so there weren't.


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[Assistant] Some of the, it was not available. And so he went to these old lumber yards and he would find the building materials that he had planned this house with and use those to build his house.


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[Assistant] But it was incredible. But yeaah, a lot of the guys, a lot of the guys wanted to, um, sail around the world. You know, a lot of us Navy guys knew how to sail and that was the big fantasy was to take a sailing trip around the world. And two or three of the guys actually did that when they came home.


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[Assistant] That's true. You know, uh, their music doesn't talk about love except for love of hochi men and love of their country and dedication to that. Uhm, it's really incredible how they just fill the minds of their people with this propaganda.


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[Assistant] And uh, you know, you tell somebody long enough and loud enough and they believe it. And, and that's, you know, that was the whole, that was the whole country.


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[Assistant] True, and they assume that if you had a car, uh, you could carry pigs or chickens or something in your car. I guess that was the whole purpose of any kind of transportation was to haul something around.


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[Assistant] I went back to Vietnam, uh, first time in 43 years, I hadn't been back. And, uh, a lot of things had changed, you know, I mean, they still call themselves a communist country, but oh, by the way, capitalism is alive and well.


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[Assistant] But, the propaganda still exists there.


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[Assistant] And, uh, I took my family with me, uh, my wife and three of our four kids, uh, and in the 11 days that I was there, I never


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[Assistant] Met anyone, and I was at, you know, I was at the embassy, I spoke to the students at the university, I spoke to cab drivers and waitresses and anybody, and they were really, really nice people and very, very nice to me. But nobody knew that Americans had been tortured in the Vietnam War. And in fact, it was just the opposite. They all would tell you that,


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[Assistant] We got better treatment than the soldiers did, and better medical care.


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[Assistant] And the soldiers did. And so, in fact, in one of the...


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[Assistant] And she was missing, uh, one leg. And she was about my age. And so I sort of pieced this thing together. And, uh, she said, want to buy a postcard? Well, I'll buy a postcard, but I want to hear your story. Sit down on this park bench and tell me your story. And she did. I said, how'd you lose your leg? She said, linebacker two.


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[Assistant] Linebacker 2 was the code name for the B-52 bombings that ended the war in the Christmas of 1972.


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[Assistant] But it was a secret code name, you know, and for her to say, she didn't call it an air raid or a bomb or anything else, she called it a linebacker too. That was her, you know, that was her pilot jargon, not her jargon.


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[Assistant] And I said, uh, what, what, what was the date? She said 24 December 1972. So I knew that she wasn't lying to me. She said, uhm,


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[Assistant] B-52. Oh yeaah. Well, so, we talked for maybe 30 minutes on that park bench. And she spoke very good English. And, uh, at one point I said to her,


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[Assistant] You speak excellent English. You could be an interpreter. You could be a guide.


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[Assistant] Why are you out here making a living selling postcards in a park?


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[Assistant] Ah man, what a country. And then I said, well, uhm,


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[Assistant] Uh, do you know about the, uh, the museums? Uh, oh yeaah, I know all about the museums and the Hanoi Hilton Museum. See, they've made a museum out of my old prison camp. The Hanoi Hilton is now a museum.


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[Assistant] And I said, well how were the prisoners treated at the museum? Oh, they were treated great.


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[Assistant] Oh, documentaries. The government shows us documentaries. And so,


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[Assistant] She finally figured out that I was about her age and she said, were you a pilot? I said, yea, I was a pilot.


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[Assistant] She said B-52? I said no, I flew F-4 Phantoms.


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[Assistant] Oh, so were, were you flying, uh, on the 24th of December of 1972? I said no, I was right here with you.


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[Assistant] I was in the Hanoi Hilton and I was being tortured.


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[Assistant] She said, no, that's impossible. That can't possibly be true. I could not convince this lady that I would, or anybody else.


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[Assistant] So the propaganda is alive and well. They continue to tell their people the lies, and the folks have no way of figuring it out.


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[Assistant] When, uh, you know, when folks are indoctrinated to that level, and uhm,


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[Assistant] But it's so prevalent, you know? Uh, and they tried to do the same thing with us. They tried to brainwash us.


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[Assistant] Felt very, very happy about that because their brainwashing techniques were so silly.


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[Assistant] Oh yea, oh yea, I'm sure they would have. But more important than the rice we ate or the water we drank, in every prison cell I was in, the first thing they put in there was a speaker.


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[Assistant] And uhm, you know, lots, lots of the prison camps didn't have any electricity at all, but they had speakers and they were put


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[Assistant] Well above our reach, so we couldn't turn them off or adjust the volume. And uhm,


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[Assistant] Several times a day, uh, they would come on with propaganda.


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[Assistant] And telling us, you know, how bad we were and how terrible our country was and how wonderful they were and, um, and, and it was pretty easy to turn these guys off, you know, just to ignore the, uh, the broadcast.


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[Assistant] Well, that's true, but that was the beauty of it, because that's all we had was time.


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[Assistant] And that was a very good way of wiling away the hours, is tugging on the wires, or tapping on walls, or sneezing and wheezing. We had all kinds of ways to communicate. And we took great pride in our communication effort.


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[Assistant] Coughing. It was the same kind of thing, you know, uh, it was all based around this five by five matrix of the alphabet. Okay. And so a cough would be one, a sneeze would be two, a wheeze would be three, uh, and so forth. So that two sounds would equal a letter.


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[Assistant] And it was, well we called it, we called it a radio station because everybody could hear it. And uh, and so uhm, if, if a new guy came into the camp and


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[Assistant] And we knew who the president was because you know, lots of, we didn't, we had no information at all. Or knew, uh, who won the world series, for instance, why that was really big deal, you know, to get out there and, and chop the wood in a radio station and, and tell the entire camp who was the president.


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[Assistant] Yes, uh, occasionally a couple of guys were tortured to, to reveal the code. But they could, but they were...


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[Assistant] Uncoordinated that they couldn't replicate the code and they, on several cases they tried to trick us and they would empty out a cell and they would go into that cell and try to tap on the wall or tug on the wire in the code. And we knew immediately, you know, that it wasn't an American.


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[Assistant] Well, uhm, you know, first of all, we were just overjoyed to see that our, that our families, you know, that my wife, uh, was, was okay. And, uhm, and that they knew that we were alive.


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[Assistant] And so it was, you know, it was a wonderful connection that we made. Now, we, we call them letters, but actually they were, uh, postcards and, um, and they were highly edited.


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[Assistant] Uh, it began with the postcards were just blanked out and then the Vietnamese decided that's not good enough. They actually would cut out certain words. And so you get a postcard of six lines and maybe of the six lines, there might be.


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[Assistant] 15 words that were just cut out with a pair of scissors.


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[Assistant] So that sometimes you really couldn't figure it out what they were trying to say.


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[Assistant] You know, that the fact that, uh, that was in the handwriting of a loved one, uh, was, was, was very comforting.


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[Assistant] Yeah, they were quick to, uh, to tell us that our wives had filed for divorce or that, uh, you know, our parents had died or that, any bad news. Uh, they were, they were very quick to promote. Yeah.


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[Assistant] It was absolutely our survival, uh, was our chain of command.


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[Assistant] What, what you don't know in reading my book, because it only happened, uh, two or three years ago, a study was done of all the combatants of Vietnam, of all the million and a half people that were exposed to that war. 30.6% had PTSD.


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[Assistant] Almost a third of the combatants in Vietnam, post-traumatic stress disorder, of the prisoners of war, 4% of us have PTSD.


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[Assistant] And it's primarily the guys who were shot down near the end of the war were only prisoners for a few weeks or a month or two.


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[Assistant] And what we really believe, this is spelled out in another book, called Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton, which was written about two years ago.


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[Assistant] Lessons from the Hanoi Hilton explains that the reason why we came back and are in such great shape is because of


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[Assistant] The unit that we had and the leadership that we had in the prison camps. Because of the 591 guys came home.


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[Assistant] And of the 591, and they thought we'd be in baskets, they thought we'd be vegetables.


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[Assistant] They had our families brief to institutionalize us for the rest of our lives. That's what they thought was coming home from prison camp. And what can you expect?


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[Assistant] From 591 guys, we've produced 17 generals, 7 admirals. Most of us retired as senior-grade military officers.


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[Assistant] Healthier mentally and physically than if we hadn't been shot down. And it was primarily because of


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[Assistant] That's what the leadership in the prison camp did for us.


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[Assistant] Jim Stockdale, uh, was our senior SRO, senior residing officer in the prison camp for a long time. And he said, we are no longer victims of circumstance beyond our control. We are not on the defensive here.


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[Assistant] We are military men, we are combatants, and we will pursue this war till our last breath.


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[Assistant] And so what he did, what that did was it gave us a reason to live, a reason to be, a reason to unify.


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[Assistant] And the, the way we fought the war from the prison camp was to try to deny them any propaganda.


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[Assistant] Because as you, as you've already said, Jaco, that this, that propaganda was the mainstay. I mean, that was, that was...


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[Assistant] Numero uno in their world was, was propagandizing and they felt that, that they could use us


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[Assistant] to tell the rest of the world how wonderful communism was and how terrible capitalism was and how they were right and we were wrong. And so they would, they would, uh, force guys


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[Assistant] To make tapes or write letters to the anti-war element and uh, you know, proclaim the, the, the wonderful nature of communism.


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[Assistant] And so our job was to defend against this. And uh, and so we set up.


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[Assistant] All kinds of, of methods so that we would deny, uh, them any propaganda. Or even in some cases we would, we would even go farther than to deny, deny the propaganda. We would use their tools against them.


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[Assistant] And that we would tell the world that, oh by the way, we are being tortured. And oh by the way, you know, this, you know, these guys are attacking our neighbor in South Vietnam. And so, so that was the big effort.


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[Assistant] And uhm, you know, like I said, this whole thing just came out a few years ago that this was the big reason.


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[Assistant] Uh, mentally and physically today was because we had this chain of command.


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[Assistant] It truly is. I, I, but I must admit that when I first heard about this,


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[Assistant] I, I, I was taking it back and I'm thinking, you know, this is really silly. I've got some senior officer down to the in cell of the cell block and he's putting more restrictions on me than I already have, you know. What's he gonna do? You know, take away my liberty card?


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[Assistant] But it, but it truly was, and obviously that's the reason we came out as healthy as we did. It was because we, we, well, you say it better than most. Discipline, you know, discipline brought about freedom.


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[Assistant] And it was kind of crazy because we were being restricted even more and yet because of the restriction we had unity which gave us the freedom.


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[Assistant] That was one of the greatest displays, I think, uh, that really affected the enemy was when they found out


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[Assistant] That when our commanding officer of a camp could say, okay, Rezcon 3, no more bowing to the enemy.


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[Assistant] And so throughout the camp in these individual cells, you know, there might be.


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[Assistant] There might be 75 different cells and suddenly at the stroke of one, one button, you know, nobody would bow to the guards and it really frightened them to know that we had that much control, that much unity.


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[Assistant] There's a little more to that story that I did not know when I wrote the book, that he had been a part of a, of an experiment done by a Cuban.


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[Assistant] Uh, the Cuban came over to the communist country and as near as we could tell, his sole purpose of being in Vietnam was to establish the breaking point of an American fighting man.


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[Assistant] So this guy that I was talking about in the book, and I didn't know his name at the time I wrote the book, Earl Cobiel, was actually tortured to insanity.


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[Assistant] Uh, and that's, and that is why he was insane.


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[Assistant] And, uh, and so his roommates, and he was very belligerent. And, I mean, here's another leadership principle.


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[Assistant] Cause you've got a group of guys in that prison cell that were being threatened and some of them were, had broken bones or lacerations because of this crazy man.


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[Assistant] He goes on a hunger strike and is gonna kill himself by not eating.


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[Assistant] And they had to decide whether or not they were going to force feed him and keep him alive and bring him back to his belligerence or let him die.


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[Assistant] And so, it was, it was quite a dilemma in the prison camp and quite a dramatic time, uh, when that was happening.


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[Assistant] That we had some control and they didn't want us to have that control. They pulled him out of that cell, put him in solitary confinement and, and, and then he died, uh, after that. But, uh, but it was, it was a tragic event, uh, that a guy would, uh, be tortured to the point of insanity.


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[Assistant] Oh no, the purpose was to find the breaking point. Yeah, to find the breaking point and they found it with us, with Kobiel.


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[Assistant] An interesting thing back to the leadership was the, the guy who,


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[Assistant] Promoted this was a very staunch Christian guy. The number two in command


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[Assistant] Was an atheist and, and, and really had no great.


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[Assistant] Uhm, told the Vietnamese that we were going to go on a hunger strike. They hauled him out of there. They took him away. So that the number two guy, the atheist, was suddenly in charge. And it was interesting to watch what was going to happen here.


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[Assistant] And it was very encouraging when the atheist said, continue the hunger strike. We're gonna get this Bible. That's awesome.


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[Assistant] And that's exactly the way we, we thought was that, that they were the prisoners and we, and we weren't, we were always, we were always, uh,


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[Assistant] of the belief that we would go home and they had to stay there. They had to stay in their prison and we would eventually be released.


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[Assistant] And, uh, and I was an optimist. You know, I would think, you know, home. In fact, when I was first shot down, uh, I, I thought we'd had finally given him the big blow. You know, we finally brought them to their knees on the 19th of May.


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[Assistant] And I fly home and my squadron has to take the ship home, I will be there to greet them when they come home.


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[Assistant] It really didn't. And they tried to trick us many times. You know, they would call us and, hey, sign this confession, we'll send you home.


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[Assistant] And, uh, and so even when it happened for real, it, it, it, we couldn't believe it. And it wasn't really until we finally got aboard that, uh, that C-141 and it took off and the wheels in the well.


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[Assistant] Exactly. And that was part of the plums. That was part of all of the rules that we were abiding by. And so, we were in...


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[Assistant] We were numbered. Okay, the second entry guys got, uh, went home. And then it was our turn, but by number of the date of shoot down. And they pulled 20 of us out that were out of order of the shoot down date.


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[Assistant] And, uh, we made a big deal of this. And, uh, they told us, well, Kissinger told us we almost caused an international incident because


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[Assistant] For whatever reason, and we really never knew for sure except that all 20 of us had


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[Assistant] Uhm, had some, some disappointing, uhm, uh, feature to our return.


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[Assistant] And we never knew if that was the reason or not, but we were either coming back to deaths in the family or disease or divorce or that kind of thing, all 20 guys. And so, but we were out of order and we did not know why we were out of order. And so we, we told them we weren't going home.


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[Assistant] And it went back and forth for almost a day, uh, that we refused to go home.


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[Assistant] My, my favorite one was Jerry Coffey wrote a poem. It was called Ode to a Weevil. And the poem was, little weevil in my bread, I think I just bit off your head.


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[Assistant] Actually call my parents first, back in Kansas. Uhm, I tried to call her but it didn't work. In fact, they were very protective. You know, first of all, they thought


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[Assistant] They thought I might be suicidal when I heard the news. And so they were very protective of me. And I, they wouldn't, they wouldn't let me call home. Uhm, even the chaplain and the psychiatrist and psychologist wouldn't let me call home.


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[Assistant] They had this plan of how they were going to explain this to me, I guess. But they wouldn't let me call them. I finally found a social worker in the hospital.


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[Assistant] You know, hey, you got a telephone around here. I found a phone and I, and I call my parents back in Kansas and, uh, and they're the ones that actually told me, you know, never forget my mom's words. She said,


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[Assistant] A son would give ten years of my life if I didn't have to tell you this, but she's engaged to be married to another man.


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[Assistant] She's, she's filed for divorce and judge wouldn't give her a divorce. You know, it's her, the, the uhm,


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[Assistant] The justification was abandonment, you know. Her husband had abandoned her. And the judge wasn't buying that. And so,


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[Assistant] But, no, that was the first I knew was when my mother told me that, uh, she had filed for divorce.


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[Assistant] Well I may be coming off as a white knight here, but it wasn't at all that way. She, I really to this day believe that in many ways the ladies had it worse than we did.


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[Assistant] You know, and it's the, it's the families back here. You know, I mean the military guys are over there and I'm sure you've seen this in your experience as well. Is it, we...


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[Assistant] We believe in what we're doing, we're dedicated, we're focused, you know, we're over there having a high old time.


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[Assistant] The families back here don't have that. And especially my wife.


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[Assistant] Didn't know if I was alive or dead from one day to the next. She went through the same years, 24 to 30, that I did. She was supposed to be


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[Assistant] Or would I be a basket case and a burden to her the rest of her life?


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[Assistant] The other part of this which was, which I didn't know at the time of course, but she lost her support group.


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[Assistant] You know, they had a big wives club, the squadron pilots, all of our wives got together and they would take pictures and send us cookies and make tapes and all these things. It was a very close-knit group, the wives of the pilots.


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[Assistant] Well, when I was shot down or when anybody was killed or captured, that wife was sort of summarily shunned by the rest of the group.


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[Assistant] Not officially, but just because they didn't, you know, they didn't want to, uhm, they didn't know what to say and they didn't want to be associated with somebody who had that problem. They didn't want that to affect their life. So she lost her support group. She, uh,


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[Assistant] She went back to Kansas, went back to school there. And then when she


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[Assistant] Fell in love with this other guy, she lost what support group she had at home. Because her parents were upset. My parents were upset.


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[Assistant] I have a brother 10 years younger than I am that looks a lot like me. And he was of about the same age.


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[Assistant] And he would go over to Moher Lawn in Kansas and she would break out in hives, serious emergency room kind of hives, uh, just at the sight of my little brother because he looked like me.


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[Assistant] And so they finally, the doctors restricted him from ever seeing her because it caused her so much grief.


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[Assistant] So it was tough on the ladies, any way you look at it. And I saw that and I felt that and I felt like I needed to do whatever was necessary to give her a little peace.


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[Assistant] Well, and a lot of people, uhm, you know, didn't understand it then, and even don't understand it to today, and you know, some people want to blame her, uh, but I have no animosity, no blame whatsoever, uhm, for what she did. I mean, it was, uh,


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[Assistant] I have other people that will say, well, don't you wish that you had known early on that she was going to divorce you? No way. Her, her, the thoughts of her kept me alive. You know, that was, I mean, that was my purpose was to go back and be with her. The fact that it didn't happen.


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[Assistant] Of course, it's somewhat incidental, but the six years I was there, it was certainly a positive for me to think about her.


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[Assistant] Again, this sounds like grand high level philosophy, but it was, it was almost a survival technique. It was almost, hey, this is the way that we can


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[Assistant] What makes it through this is believing in the future and believing in ourselves.


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[Assistant] I look back on that six years and it was probably the most important six years of my life because, because I came through this silly experience with, um, with this kind of, this kind of discipline and this kind of thought process that, hey,


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[Assistant] Trying to impress this on people, but the truth is, there's no way that you or I can put people in that situation that we've been in and make them feel the way they feel.


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[Assistant] There's no way I could deny a person a freedom. I, I do corporate workshops as you do and, uh, and I'll put, I'll put a person in a room by themselves with nothing there for 15 minutes and they go crazy, you know.


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[Assistant] Nuts. And so, uh, there's very little, well I should say it this way, it's difficult to make that transfer. To make a person appreciate freedom when they've never lost theirs. And all I can do is tell the story. And I appreciate your helping me tell the story.


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[Assistant] I think the first seed that you have to plant and nurture in your mind is that you still have the choice, that you still are in control.


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[Assistant] Because I think so many people that get bogged down with these challenges we're talking about assume that there's no way out. That it's somebody else's problem or somebody else has to affect their lives and they feel like they have no control over the outcome.


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[Assistant] And so I think that's the beginning part of it is that, uhm, each of us makes decisions every day that control our destiny.


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[Assistant] And it truly is not the things around us. It's, it's our, it's our.


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[Assistant] I have control of my life. I am, I am the master of my fate. I'm the captain of my soul. Uhm, and if you can really believe that.


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[Assistant] Then the rest is just a matter of the discipline it takes to work through it.


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[Assistant] LinkedIn. Yeah, same thing. Captain Plum.


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[Assistant] All on my website, CharliePlum.com. It's all, it's all there. Awesome.


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[Assistant] Since people might be interested in knowing that my ex-wife married the guy she was engaged to and they've been living happily for the last 43 years. I remarried a wonderful lady, had four kids, two grandkids and one on the way.


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[Assistant] I have a wonderful wife that supports me and puts up with me. And I'm living the dream. I really am. I don't know how I could be happier in my life. I could not write a story.


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[Assistant] And I appreciate you for helping me tell my story because, uh, I believe it's an important story. Now, not everybody is going to be a prisoner of war. In fact, I hope, I hope and pray none of the people listening to this podcast will ever be in that eight foot cell.


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[Assistant] That I was in, but we all get into our own little prisons and, and we can be, I'm convinced just as confined in our little eight inch box as I was in an eight foot prison cell. And


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[Assistant] Then the solution is the same. Uh, the solution to...


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[Assistant] The prisons that we find ourselves in. You know, the self-discipline that it takes. The believing that, yes, I am in control of my own life. I am a captain of my soul.


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[Assistant] So you put all those things together and uhm, and you can in fact live the life with the hand that you're dealt.


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[Assistant] This is Jocko Podcast number 84 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.


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[Assistant] Your life expectancy from the day you join your battalion will be precisely three weeks.


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[Assistant] The florid mustached major who addressed us at the small reinforcement camp a few miles from Bayou obviously had misplaced, had a misplaced sense of humor. Or he should have been sacked. On second thought, he definitely should have been sacked.


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[Assistant] Not that any of the dozen infantry subalterns took the slightest notice of what, to us, were the ramblings of an old fool. He was probably no more than forty.


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[Assistant] The 4th Battalion, the Somerset Light Infantry, was in 129 Brigade and was a pre-war territorial army battalion with close links with Bristol and Bath.


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[Assistant] On 5th of July, 3 officers and 62 other ranks were required as reinforcements.


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[Assistant] Between the 14th and the 18th of July, a further 12 officers of whom I was one.


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[Assistant] And 479 other ranks arrived, and even then, the battalion was still below its full strength of 36 officers and nearly 700 NCOs and men.


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[Assistant] This will give some idea of the appalling level of infantry casualties, which had to be accepted in order to enlarge the slender and vulnerable Normandy beachhead.


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[Assistant] Because I had the, had had previous experience of six-pounder anti-tank guns, the commanding officer, Lippy, Lieutenant Colonel C.G. Lipscomb, posted me as second-in-command to the battalion's anti-tank platoon, which consisted of six guns.


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[Assistant] But my stay with that platoon was short, and I was quickly sucked into the real infantry battle as commander of 18 platoon in D company.


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[Assistant] On the 31st of July, immediately after the Battle of Briskassard,


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[Assistant] D company had just lost their commander, Tim Braithwaite.


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[Assistant] Who lost a foot and gained a military cross. An 18 platoon. Their commander.


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[Assistant] So that right there is the beginning of a book that we're gonna look at today. It's called 18 Platoon. It's written by a guy named Sydney Jerry.


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[Assistant] For an infantry subaltern in a rifle company during the campaign in Northwest Europe were slim. Most survived for only a few weeks. Sidney Jerry survived 10 months.


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[Assistant] From July 1944, when he took command of 18 Platoon in Normandy until the end of the war.


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[Assistant] Near Bremen in early May of 1945. So this guy, this is, this is amazing. This guy, Sidney Jerry, he's the only platoon commander.


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[Assistant] In the, in the British second army to survive as a platoon commander from Normandy to the German surrender.


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[Assistant] And you're gonna see that his attitude is, I mean the lessons that he learned, he was young coming in. He was 20 years old.


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[Assistant] There was also a small platoon headquarters with a two inch mortar detachment, a P.O.T. which was an anti-tank weapon.


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[Assistant] The platoon sergeant and the commander's batman slash runner.


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[Assistant] In your platoon, and they have 17 of which 12 are replacements, which means that 29 people.


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[Assistant] Had, had been casualties. There's seven people that had been either killed or wounded. Or sorry, seven people out of this 36 that hadn't been killed or wounded that remained in the platoon right now. So that's what we're talking about here.


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[Assistant] And again, he's coming in, no combat experience. He rolls in and we're going back to the book. I sensed instantly that a tight grip was required.


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[Assistant] Particularly so because those few who survived Hill 112 had witnessed what was, without a doubt, the most horrific tragedy that befell the battalion during the entire campaign.


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[Assistant] So he's about to explain what they had been through. He wasn't there for it, but he knew and he had heard what they had been through. And I'm gonna say that again, this is the most horrific tragedy for the entire campaign. This is what they're coming off of and this is who he's going to take over for.


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[Assistant] This is what they had been through. Back to the book. During a night, during a company night attack, one of our soldiers had been hit in the lower chest by a rifle or machine gun bullet. Passing through his body, it had not killed him outright.


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[Assistant] The bullet's devilish course lay through the soldier's webbing equipment pouch, which contained a 77 phosphorus smoke grenade, which exploded.


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[Assistant] Caught on barbed wire, the poor soldier lay disemboweled for all around to see his writhing body a smoking mass of burning phosphorus.


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[Assistant] responding to his agonized screams to put him out of his misery, his platoon commander shot him through the heart.


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[Assistant] And finally through the head, after the poor man's final frenzied pleas. Not there, sir. Through the head.


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[Assistant] Doug Proctor was witness to this sublimely courageous incident which seared itself upon all our hearts.


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[Assistant] On the shoulders of the men that witnessed that is, is unbelievably, it's hard to imagine what that feels like.


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[Assistant] Sergeant Jim Kingston and Corporal Doug Proctor immediately reported to me


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[Assistant] And explained forcefully and in great detail the poor state of the platoon as they knew it to be. So, you've got these guys, these are the senior enlisted guys in the platoon, Jim Kingston and Doug Proctor, and you're gonna hear a lot about them. And they're coming to him, here's this new guy checking in, and they're coming to him, and they're, you know, telling him how, what a bad state the platoon is in. Back to the book. While they did so, I was conscious of being weighed up. Was I fit to be their platoon commander?


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[Assistant] They were responsible, anxious, and discriminating NCOs. That stands for non-commissioned officer. It's the senior enlisted guys.


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[Assistant] Previously warned by a young officer who'd fought in Tunisia that battle dress was most unsuitable for bra- battle.


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[Assistant] Among my prejudices was an acute dislike of steel helmets. They gave me headaches. On exercises in England, I had been obliged to wear one, but the surge of individualism, which now engulfed me, convinced me that this was an article of equipment best left out of battle.


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[Assistant] So he's, he shows up and he's kinda dressed out of uniform. Doesn't wanna wear his helmet, he's wearing corduroy pants.


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[Assistant] Back to the book, battle schools in England had insisted that off, infantry officers should wear the same equipment and dress as their soldiers. The idea being that they could not be, then be so easily identified by enemy snipers. They also decreed that one should carry a rifle or a Sten gun.


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[Assistant] Clearly, this was ridiculous. How on earth could your own soldiers recognize you in the heat of battle if you went through such lengths to disguise? He had the same, the same attitude as Lieutenant Lee in Korea that was wearing the orange vest, do you remember that?


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[Assistant] By his own men. That's what this guy's attitude is. Like, I'm not gonna dress like everyone else. They need to be- they need to know who- that- that I'm out there. How ca- they need to be able to see me.


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[Assistant] Back to the book. I dispensed with a rifle or a Sten gun too, because I'm hopelessly short-sighted.


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[Assistant] And I did not fancy trying to command a platoon while got up like a Christmas tree.


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[Assistant] Meaning covered in a bunch of gear. As a concession to impending battle, I sported a .45 Colt automatic pistol with two spare magazines.


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[Assistant] The 38 Enfield revolver then general issue throughout the army managed to combine total mechanical reliability with complete ineffectiveness. I once fired six shots.


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[Assistant] From one at a target pinned to a plywood board, none of which even penetrated the board.


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[Assistant] Neither did I hit the target, which gave me little confidence in this weapon. The nine pounds I paid for the Colt proved a sound investment. So, there's a lot of people that like to talk about what type of sidearm. There you've got a big proponent for the Colt 45. The old classic.


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[Assistant] Again, important to remember that he's not even carrying a rifle.


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[Assistant] Because he knows his job is to lead, and I used to do it when we had SEALs, SEAL leaders, that would spend too much time on their gun.


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[Assistant] So give me your rifle. And we take it from him. Like, you need to be leading, not shooting.


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[Assistant] Yeaah, it's very, you know, Leif talks about his mentality, which was, he wants to shoot! He's from Texas!


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[Assistant] You know, he just wants to shoot his gun. And he realized, hey, I'm not here to shoot my gun. I'm here to, you know, be a high port and be off my gun and leading.


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[Assistant] That's my job. And these guys took it to the point where they're not even carrying a rifle.


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[Assistant] Now he's talking about his senior leadership a little bit, his enlisted leadership. Back to the book, Jim Kingston was short, quiet, and shy, with the shrewdness of a countryman, although he had lived and worked in Bristol all his life.


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[Assistant] He barely raised his voice, but had total command over his section.


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[Assistant] There was no argument with Jim. Th-that's another thing you'd find about this book. This book... i-i-it...


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[Assistant] Takes so many stereotypes from, from Sydney Jerry on down. Like, the stereotypes are just out the window of the way this platoon was. And there's a classic example, you know, you picture the senior enlisted guy, this brah.


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[Assistant] Now he, now he talks about Doug Proctor, back to the book, Doug Proctor, although a somerset came from nodding him.


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[Assistant] Also short, he was positive, direct, with unfailing common sense, and like Jim, quietly dominated his section.


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[Assistant] So there's another, and I got to see some great leaders. There's some guys that were in, were in TU Bruiser, that were quiet when they were in TU Bruiser, and when I was putting them through their next workup,


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[Assistant] I was thinking to myself, hey, are they gonna be able to step up and lead? And that's exactly how they did it, right there. They were just like, quiet, professional, and controlling, but they didn't run their mouth to get it done.


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[Assistant] They were quiet, thoughtful, and unabrasive soldiers.


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[Assistant] There was little swearing, and there existed a tranquility in their relationships with one another.


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[Assistant] Two factors were immediately apparent. Firstly, the platoon required quiet, firm and confident leadership.


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[Assistant] So, that's a good assessment. You can see these guys don't need anybody yelling at them. And here's the second point. Secondly, if I failed to use my imagination and slavishly followed the battle school drills, most of the platoon would not survive another major battle.


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[Assistant] So all the things he'd learned, the standard, typical stuff that he'd learned, that wasn't gonna work. And it hadn't worked. That's why they had so many replacements come in.


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[Assistant] Back to the book. In fact, the problem that faced me with 18 platoon was identical to the one facing General Montgomery, our army group commander. How to fight and defeat the cream of the SS Panzer divisions in the close Normandy, Normandy bocage and still retain sufficient infantry riflemen to live and fight tomorrow.


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[Assistant] The problem was a difficult one. Obviously, I must set an example and always lead from the front. However,


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[Assistant] If I became overeager and got myself killed or wounded, the whole object of my previous training and my responsibility to my platoon would be cast away.


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[Assistant] I would, in fact, be letting down 18 Platoon. So, he knows he's gotta lead from the front. At the same time, he knows he's gotta stay alive. He knows he's gotta stay alive.


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[Assistant] And this Normandy fighting here, he talks about Normandy being a defender's paradise, meaning when you're on the defense in Normandy, it's...


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[Assistant] It's a paradise for the people on defense, which was the Germans. Back to the book. We fought from one hedge road to the next, up torturous, overgrown, sunken lanes. Ideal country for the German defender, but appalling for attacking infantry.


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[Assistant] However, no arm but infantry could take and hold the Normandy Bokage. Bokage is like a trees, shrubs, mangled together.


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[Assistant] It was here that I served my apprenticeship, and the platoon developed its character which, despite constant depletion by casualties over the coming ten months, it would retain until the end of the war.


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[Assistant] It was also here that imperceptibly I became possessive with 18 platoon. It was mine to be guarded with an almost maternal jealousy that resented all criticism of my soldiers. That's building at this point. Most important.


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[Assistant] Grip on one's soldiers, and grip on the situation.


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[Assistant] Unlike characters in novels and films, most men react nervously to real battle conditions.


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[Assistant] Discipline and regimental pride are supports, but in decisive moments of great danger, the grip of the leader on the lead is paramount.


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[Assistant] Infantry section platoon commanders must possess the minds and hearts of their soldiers. Strength of character is not enough. Successful leadership in battle, although complex and intangible, always seemed to me to depend on two factors.


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[Assistant] Firstly, soldiers must have confidence in their leader's professional ability, and secondly, they must trust them as men.


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[Assistant] So there you go. They gotta have confidence in your ability and trust.


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[Assistant] And this trust topic comes up all the time, and I use the word relationships, kinda interchangeably with trust. I always have to remind myself to point that out, that when I'm talking about relationships and building relationships and business on the battlefield in life,


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[Assistant] You know, relationships that aren't built on trust, those are like another thing, you know? I have a relationship with that guy, but you know, but that's not what I'm talking about. Talking about good relationships. Those are based on trust and those are obviously


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[Assistant] The mo- the second most important thing to him. So first is confidence in their ability, and second is trust.


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[Assistant] I like this part. It helps too if a leader has the reputation of being lucky.


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[Assistant] Field Marshal Montgomery placed great importance on the principle of making the enemy dance to your tune.


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[Assistant] Nowhere is this more important than in platoon and company battle. It is decisive because if you do not dominate events, your enemy will.


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[Assistant] There you go, that's jujitsu right there. Be first, be first. Yea, you gotta be first, you gotta dictate the pace.


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[Assistant] Back to the book Sound Leadership, like true love, to which I suspect it is closely related, is all powerful.


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[Assistant] It can overcome the seemingly impossible and its effect on both leader and lead is profound and lasting.


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[Assistant] Even after the passage of 40 years, brief mention of the battalion's finest officers and NCOs brings a smile to the faces of the survivors of my platoon.


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[Assistant] Now, he's going into his, so that's kind of his assessment.


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[Assistant] And this is based on his experience, which we're about to get into. And he does more assessments. There's more, more, he talks more about what he learns about leadership as a whole. But you have to kind of understand what he went through and figure out where he learned it from.


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[Assistant] The first, his first command in battle. Here we go, back to the book. We were to attack this rugged hill from the west.


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[Assistant] With the fifth Wilchers on our right and the fourth Wilchers in reserves. The approach march to our forming up place had been a nightmare of swirling abrasive dust, shelling, and the stench of exhaust fumes from the tanks which transported us forward.


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[Assistant] Their forward platoons had barely crossed the stream when concentrated Spandau fire came from the front and from both flanks. So Spandau fire, this is kind of a generic term that the Brits used for German machine guns. They're primarily talking about the MG42, which is a big belt fed machine gun.


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[Assistant] Which lays down the insane amounts of suppressive fire.


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[Assistant] So here we go, they're getting hit from both flanks with these machine guns back to the book. There must have been about 12 machine guns firing at one time.


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[Assistant] This devastating display of firepower stopped the battalion dead in its tracks. There was no way forward or around it, and no way to retire.


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[Assistant] Some of the guns had engaged D company over the heads of B company and Private Morrison 18 Platoon was killed. So there's his first guy. Lost.


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[Assistant] I like this, the way he starts off this next sentence here. First word, powerless.


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[Assistant] So he's in his first combat situation, he's got one man killed and how does he feel powerless? Here we go. Powerless and crouching in a hedgerow, I try to identify the spanned out positions.


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[Assistant] This proved impossible as they still kept up their crushing display of firepower.


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[Assistant] In my ignorance, I expected that the enemy machine gunners would soon expend their ammunition. They did not. Nor did they in dozens of subsequent battles.


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[Assistant] So he's waiting for them to stop shooting? They don't. It just keeps coming.


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[Assistant] Major Thomas, commanding B Company, was killed. Their companies were badly cut up. On our right, the 5th Wilchers had fared no better. With their CEO killed and casualties mounting, their attack also foundered.


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[Assistant] As the afternoon turned to evening, shelling and mortaring increased, much of it passing over our heads, thus isolating us from the reserve battalion. So, the Germans are mortaring over their head so that the reserve battalion can't get to them.


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[Assistant] A troop of tanks arrived, one of which was able to cross the stream and give us some brave close support. Undoubtedly it increased our morale, but it was not enough to get the whole attack underway again.


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[Assistant] Any movement by B company to our front brought down instant and concentrated spanned outfire.


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[Assistant] The same applied to us, a few hundred yards to their rear.


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[Assistant] Fortunately the enemy did not seem to have any anti-tank guns, so our armored friends were comparatively safe. But the fact remained that about 12 spandos had halted a battalion attack without our locating even one of them.


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[Assistant] That's what suppressive fire does. That's what, that's what a big machine gun does. You got 12 big machine guns that's stopping 700 people from moving.


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[Assistant] That's called suppressive fire. That's why, you know when you heard Roger Hayden talk about how, how many heavy weapons, how many machine guns they'd carry? They had, I think they had nine out of a platoon of fourteen. That's why.


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[Assistant] As dusk fell, a new plan was made. C and D companies would advance in single file through A and B companies and, using the cover of dark- darkness, infiltrate the enemy position. Once through them, we would climb to the top of the hill and consolidate.


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[Assistant] A cold and damp mist descended, which with fading light gave us welcome cover, but also wretched discomfort.


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[Assistant] We were still in shirt sleeves which became damp from the sweat of our exertion climbing the steep lower slopes. Alert, with pistol in hand, I anticipated a sudden brush with an enemy post. Not a shot was fired.


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[Assistant] By some miracle we passed right through their positions without being detected. Our luck had changed.


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[Assistant] So you're gonna see quite a bit of that is as they, what the Germans were doing at this point, defending hard, but then instead of staying and dying, in most cases they would retreat.


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[Assistant] They'd advance if they had an opportunity, but you're gonna see a lot of that.


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[Assistant] Back to the book, we now had to advance across a large orchard. So I deployed the platoon with two sections up and urged them forward as fast as possible.


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[Assistant] Suddenly in the middle of the orchard, we came across a young girl in a clean white dress sitting with her back to an apple tree sketching.


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[Assistant] I just talked about this, the muster, the random things that happen in combat, and this is what I'm talking about. And how do you train for that? How would you ever, if you're running a battle problem to train people, what are you gonna do, put a white girl in a white dress and then sitting with her back to a tree sketching? Doesn't make any sense.


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[Assistant] How do you deal with it? Back to the book. She seemed quite oblivious to the mortar fire and 18 platoons warlike appearance. How to stop pretty young girls from interfering with battle had not been part of my training as an officer cadet, nor had it appeared on the curriculum of any battle schools, which, without exception, had despaired of my future as an infantry soldier.


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[Assistant] Fortunately, there was a farmhouse beside the orchard and it had a cellar.


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[Assistant] Where she was persuaded to shelter while we got on with our battle.


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[Assistant] I reported what had occurred to our company commander, who told me that I was being quite ridiculous. Really, Jerry, you're being absurd.


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[Assistant] With that remark, I realized that he had been a schoolmaster, a breed with whom I had been in conflict until quite recently.


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[Assistant] A breed with whom I'd been in conflict with until quite recently. So this guy has the the attitude of a


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[Assistant] Schoolmaster, which in England is a little bit different, and especially in the 1930s and 40s, you know, the strict, I think of Pink Floyd, you know, the headmaster.


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[Assistant] How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat? That guy, that's what he's comparing him to. His next sarcastic remark.


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[Assistant] I would be obliged, Jerry, if you would kindly get on with the war.


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[Assistant] He gave me little indication of what he wanted my platoon to do, nor did it inspire confidence.


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[Assistant] The company, the company commander's not in the game. There's one thing to be detached from your emotions to make sure you're not getting caught up in the mayhem, but there's another thing to be so detached that you're not even aware of what's going on. And actually, I had a name for this when I was running training.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Battlefield aloofness is what I called it. Cause we'd get these guys, you'd get these guys and we'd be running these crazy battlefield problems on them and they'd be not to be crazy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you'd go, I remember one time there's a, the task unit commander, there's all this mayhem going on, the platoons are getting overrun and people are getting, you know, shot with paintball and they're not hitting their objectives.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, I walk over to the company commander, he's sitting in a Humvee, or sorry, the, the, the TU commander, the troop commander, he's sitting in a Humvee.


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[Assistant] And I, like, the window's up, because they're bulletproof windows, but he doesn't want to get shot with paintball. The window's up, he's just sitting in there, he's got his headset on, of his radio. Like, knock on the door. I'm like, hey man, you know, what's going on out there? He's like, well, I'm trying to gather that information right now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Which I talk about being detached all the time. But there's a difference between being, and you see the same thing in businesses. Where the, the, the boss or the leader has no idea what's happening on the ground floor. Right? He doesn't know what the, the workers are doing. So he's so far detached that he's, he's, you know, let them eat cake. Right? Right. That's where, that's where this guy is.


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[Assistant] Right, right. Once they can't, once a team or a platoon or a business unit can't handle it on their own and they're failing, you have to get, you have to go do your job. You have to step up, you have to step down as leader. You have to get in there and square that stuff away.


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[Assistant] This guy's not doing that. Back to the book, he be- behaved like a supercilious umpire on an exercise in England. At any moment I expected him to admonish me for bad tactics, and the schoolboy in me feared that I might be sent to the headmaster for a beating.


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[Assistant] So, they continue on. We seized the highest point which faced the enemy and the other platoons quickly deployed to give all around defense of the other flanks. After being mortared, the company required no encouragement to dig in. It's a real motivator.


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[Assistant] Getting mortared will make you shovel hard. The company commander walked around the platoon positions, eyeing everyone with distaste.


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[Assistant] Nothing pleased him, and he suddenly announced that he must sleep, which he did in my slit-trench.


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[Assistant] Getting not a good feeling about this company commander. Just looking at everyone like-


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[Assistant] I don't like this guy. And of course he sleeps in, in my trench. Now this is good, there's another officer that's there that's present.


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[Assistant] A guardian angel was watching over us in the guise of Dennis Clark.


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[Assistant] Dennis, some years older than me, was exceptionally kind to me and tolerant of my immaturity.


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[Assistant] Pay attention, this is good. He took my- took me by the arm a few paces away from my platoon. Who the hell is in command of this shambles, sonny?


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[Assistant] I muttered the unconvincing explanation that it was our company commander.


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[Assistant] Looking me straight in the eye, he drew a deep breath which managed to express both exasperation at my explanation and sympathy with my predicament. You and I know that he is not. So what are you going to do about it? I asked him if I should take command. His expression hardened. Yes, you bloody well should.


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[Assistant] Some demonstration of loyalty to my wretched company commander was obviously required. I blurted out that he was really a schoolmaster and not a professional soldier, so he's kinda defending him.


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[Assistant] Dennis put his arm around my shoulder and whispered in my ear, So was I, sonny.


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[Assistant] The company commander is not leading. And this, this guy, Dennis Clark, who I think he's an artillery gunner.


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[Assistant] Pulls this guy's head aside and says, bro, you better take charge of this.


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[Assistant] And you better do it quick. Back to the book. We were now well dug in on our objective. The company commander was still asleep. Dennis was arranging defensive fire tasks for me.


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[Assistant] I had assumed command of D company without a word passing between our company commander and me.


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[Assistant] In practice, it made not the slightest difference because, because like a bad preparatory schoolmaster, he saw his role as one of examination and criticism.


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[Assistant] This he continued to do despite the incredulous stares of the NCOs. So he's taken charge. And he hasn't even said anything. He's just done it. He just took charge.