[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just so everyone knows, there is humanitarian work that you can get into. That is. Where you won't be exposed to high ground ISIS with AKs. Yes, yes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The humvees packed with dead and wounded civilians began pouring into the aid station one after the other. What happened?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We handed out water bottles and you could tell they were grateful, but otherwise it was just as if the dead in small sullen groups were marching past. One of the men mumbling to himself led a small group of weeping women toward us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Pulling out my pirate scope I checked the hands from a distance and studied the women to see if their hijabs contained any odd shapes or might indicate a hidden weapon or suicide vest. There were no children.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] David walked into the street to greet a man as the group came closer. The man looked at me and then at my rifle, his expression unnatural in its desperation. I slid my finger to the trigger. He's ready to die.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Delo, what is he saying? David sat down behind the man and put his hand on the man's shoulder trying to comfort him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He says that ISIS was killing everyone all morning. They went into the street and started shooting every person they could. The man continued to tell his story through his sobs. They shot his daughters right in front of him. He watched one of his daughters heads get shot off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Delo listened as the man continued to speak. There was a massacre. Everyone ran.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Allah and Islam were the only words I could make out. As he shook his finger, as he shook his fist in anger, tears streaming down his reddened face, he says that ISIS are not true Muslims. Dilaw was translating quickly. They are not true Islam. Allah does not approve of ISIS. The man continued to weep. There was nothing I could do but walk back over to the Humvee and continued to stand guard.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Some of the, um, news around this time, even prior to this, but you know, the news was there was, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like the recruiting for ISIS. Like they were just... If you were a freakin'...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] In 2000 and, you know, 2016, 2015, it was like, hey, we got a job for you. And we're going to take care of you. You're going to be able to rape women. You're going to be able to do whatever you want. You're going to be able to fight, kill.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a, it's a, like that's what you need for, for to carry out this kind of thing. You gotta get sick, sadistic, evil people and then brainwash them even more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fast forward, hey, we got bodies over here, more bodies, as Sky said, peeking around the edge of the wall to see more of the highway. He pulled back for a moment and looked at us shaking his head. I stayed where I was, scanning the rubble across the street, looking for any movement from an ISIS gunner.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's a whole family, Bernard said. His shoulders hung heavy as he held his camera and reviewed the photos. As we climbed through the rubble of the house to get a better view of the highway, I suspected there were, we were all sensing the same thing. This is just the tip of the iceberg.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Reaching a large second story room with massive windows a highway of death rolled out before us like a movie in the big screen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Other logical assessment. Sky and David also warriors behaved in the same calm manner.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Everyone count how many bodies you see, David instructed. I'm gonna report this. I began counting across the highway bodies lay in twisted heaps of flesh and clothes against a wall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We got a lot more dead over here. Sky called from deeper inside the house. He'd found a room where you could see further down the road toward ISIS, but still concealed from the sniper. There's at least a dozen. Wait, there's, we've got movement. Some of them are still alive.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I moved to take a look as sky pointed them out to us peering through my pirate scope. I took a took in the ghastly scene. A large pile of bodies lay up against a wall bloated and rotting in the sun, heaped in a morbid tangle of blood and body parts. Images of mass graves spring into my mind. Pure evil.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The wandering little girl, only a few feet away, meandered through the bodies and sat next to a little boy who was slightly older than her. He gave her the last of his water. She drank it and then she laid down on the ground.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A couple Iraqi soldiers who had now joined us desperately screamed at the children to run across the highway to us. The children glanced in our direction but seemed to be staring a thousand miles past us. They had passed beyond reason. They were dying. We have to do something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fast forward a little bit. Bullets rained heavier.


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[Assistant] Stooping down, I rolled him to the side, but the highway's median prevented him from rolling far enough. There was nothing I could do. The old man's head was up and he stared at the machine that was about to flatten him, starting with his feet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Moving outside the cover of the tank was suicide. The military taught me never to attempt a rescue under fire without cover. You're no good to anyone dead. Over the past month I'd made my fair share of decisions that had directly resulted in people staying alive. This was my first time I had to make the decision to let someone die. I was sorry but felt no guilt. We didn't kill him. ISIS did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Stepping back to my place on the flank behind the tank, I walked backward. Crack! I felt like someone had just teed off with a sledgehammer against my right calf. I'd been hit. The many stories I'd heard from guys who'd been shot instantly flooded my mind. It's just like they described. Like half of me was a spectator watching the other half of me fall in slow motion.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Bam. The ground came up in full force. I'm hit. I yelled. And I sat up to look at my leg.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What the hell is that noise? I glanced over my shoulder. The tank. Dammit. I sprang to my feet. Two seconds before getting crushed. My leg burned as if someone had stabbed the burning shot, burning hot metal rod through it. But I could walk.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Just don't bleed to death. Reaching for my tourniquet that I kept easily accessible, I walked backwards trying to stay within the tank small cone of cover while cinching the tourniquet, grateful for the many times I'd practiced.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're finally in line with the street that was our escape, but we still had to cross a hundred meters of open ground to get to safety and my leg was quickly locking up the muscle seizing as the adrenaline wore off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] With the smoke all but dissipated, it would be near suicide to attempt to run across the street. The burning pain doubled then tripled. Humvee! David screamed at the Iraqi soldiers who watched us from cover. Bring us a humvee!


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He waved one arm frantically, I joined in screaming in Arabic. It was no use, they weren't gonna budge. And they probably couldn't hear us anyways.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I sprang out. Dammit, that hurts. Skipping was my best option as I tried to pick up speed across the open ground. ISIS gunners immediately opened fire.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I didn't know it at the time, but the heroic driver of the Humvee rushing out into the battle to rescue the team under fire was the French journalist Bernard Guinier.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He had indeed needed to learn how to drive the Humvee. Which is from a previous section where you taught him how to drive a Humvee. My happiness that the Humvee was rescuing my team was short lived.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Aleya drenched a piece of gauze and iodine and twisted it into the entrance of my wound. Clutching my AK and burying my forehead into the dirt, I grunted under my breath. I'm not gonna scream no matter how bad it hurts.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] She trenched the more gauze and iodine, this time forcefully twisting one end into the raw flesh of the exit wound.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Moments later I was in the back of the armored ambulance with Darryl and the Mennonite at the wheel driving away. Out the back window I saw the Humvee coming to a screeching halt and a crowd of medics and Iraqi soldiers rush to help.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was beyond relieved. Mission complete.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I had already read this book when I watched the video. So this was within the past week. And I was like, oh, I'm gonna go watch that video. And having worked around a lot of tanks.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Tanks don't care what they run over and they can't stop and they can't see anything. So it is just like a, it might as well be


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I knew I would have some demons to purge. My sleep was fitful. I wouldn't want to talk to anyone for days at a time. My head ached for seemingly no reason. Sudden noises made my heart rate spike.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There were dreams filled with screaming children. But slowly, my sleep became better. I began to open up to my family about what I saw. The headaches became less frequent and my nerves calmed down. Eventually, I evened out and became my old self again as much as I could be. And the dreams of death and destruction melted away. I gave up the hate.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I knew I simply wasn't gonna make it if I didn't lose, if I didn't focus all my energy on facing these issues head on. Because of this, I've mostly stayed off social media to focus on myself, not because social media is bad, but because I needed to maintain my focus on other priorities. Ultimately, I feel stronger now.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So operator syndrome, this is like bad sleep, this is uh, hormone dysfunction, this is chronic pain, headaches, substance abuse, in your case freaking Oreo abuse.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What was the first move to overcome the addiction or like even the few moves and the 12 steps that Russell Brown would need. I'm gonna link you up with Russell Brown. He would love to hear this from you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How about this, like, internal, deep-seated darkness and internal issues? Like, what was, was this the food stuff? What is this?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So these are the, when you talk about it in that, in that, uh, Instagram post that you did when you talked about the principles that helped you through this. This is like the stoic principles, this is the Russell Bland, Russell Brand 12 step principles, these are the kind of things that you did in order to get your...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Get yourself back on track. You're sat in this hotel room for 30 days, like, and just what looked at the ocean. Expand on that man. I don't get that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Most likely. You're gonna be second guessing like some of the stuff you did, right? You're gonna have those second guessing. You're probably gonna have some bad dreams because you were in a bad situation. Uhm, you're probably gonna do some big contemplation about the meaning of life and what it all means and all that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] May or may not, depending on the situation you're in, have some kind of survivor's guilt where like, oh, I lived and, you know, whether it was an innocent person, whether it was a teammate, I lived and they died, this is something that's gonna


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] As I've been talking to people recently about this, uhm, and as people approach me to ask me about these things,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Like, you're gonna feel this stuff. And I think that reassurance is very, very helpful to people. To say, oh yeaah, you were getting shot at, you almost died, yeaah, you have nightmares about that, yep, that's normal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I'm probably like, hey dude, you're gonna be feeling some stuff and it's like, this is normal for you to feel like that. You saw a lot of death. People aren't meant to see that kind of stuff. They aren't meant to see little girls that have had their face blown out of their heads. Like, that's not normal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This isn't gonna end or it's not gonna get any better and there's something wrong with me because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Understanding that that's normal, you're a human, you care about the world. Like okay, so uhm, these things are gonna leave a mark, right?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] These traumatic situations are going to leave a mark on you and it's okay that you feel a little bit different.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we're, we're there. And so now the full focus is stronghold rescue. This is what we're doing right now. Stronghold rescue. So talk to me about that. What's going on with that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's cool because if you send 20 people in to do something, then they're basically gonna give people fish and not teach them how to fish. Exactly. So that's an awesome, uh, methodology. And then using the locals so it's familiar and it, you know, it's just, it's like a,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And Thailand's across the river, what's, what's preventing all these Karen people from just leaving? Is it cause it's their homeland and they're like, no, this is where I'm from and I'm staying? Or is it the Thai government can't take on any refugees? What's going on with that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] P H R A I M Matos M A T T O S, which we were discussing before we hit record is a Portuguese name. Yes, yes. So, you got some of that Portuguese blood. Yeah. Uhm, and that's where we can find you, that's where we can support you. Again, it's a very interesting system. You got like a,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A Netflix model, except for Netflix, weakens you and doesn't help anybody except for a bunch of weirdos in Hollywood. And this, at StrongholdRescue.org, will actually help people around the world.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, Echo Charles. Yes sir. You got any questions?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, what's interesting is, if you remember, uh, all the conversations I've had with, with, uh, Andrew Huberman, right? And there's a physiological...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And psychological thing that occurs when you broaden your, your spectrum of vision.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you're focused on something that's right in front of you, that's a signal telling your brain and your body that there's an emergency, basically an emergency going on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you're looking at something up close, when you're staring at something, when you're focused on something, it's your, you're telling your body, hey, you got something going on, you got something you need to deal with. You know, this is how we as cavemen survived, like, oh, you know, whatever, saber tooth tiger, focus on that. Blood, uh, uh, sorry, breath goes up, blood starts, you know, pulse goes up, those things happen when you're focused.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's why when, that's why people like to go to the mountains. And they like to look, you know, see the, see the beautiful view of a mountain. There's something, there's a way that you feel because of that. You feel, oh, I'm not worried about anything. Also, think about this, when you're


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, so that allows you to, as Echo said, detach, take a step back and now you can start processing these things. Hey, what about this? What about that? And, and think through them. So those things, it's breathing as well. You can, you can


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can control your physiology to some extent, right? And some of the things you can do is, that's one of them, is broaden your field of view. Another one is, you can manually slow down your breathing, and that, that calms you down. So, again, this is another thing that I've talked about is,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would never want to key up my radio and be like out of breath or panicked. So whenever I was about to key up my radio and say something.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The, the, the collateral impact of that was that I had stepped back, I had looked around, I was taking a breath. What I was doing was being calm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Taking a step back, staring at the ocean from altitude as well. That's a bonus program. Bonus program. What else Echo Charles? You got anything else?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Thanks for sharing your story. Thanks for sharing your lessons learned. It's been awesome. And thanks for your service in the teams.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, uhm, out there getting it done and thanks for the service that you're doing now since you left the team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, putting your life at risk in order to help other people that can't help themselves.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I can't think of a higher or more pure calling. So thanks for what you've done, and thanks for what you continue to do, man.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Lot to process. Yes sir. Lot going on. And as I mentioned many times, I only, uhm, touched on it here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A little bit in the book and he's got another, what, four or five years worth of these things that he's been through over in Burma. Uhm, as he mentioned, you know, he's in situations, these are combat deployments for him and his team. He had one of his


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Love for humanity. Yeah, that's just Amazing. Yeah, you know to continue to do this continue to risk his life Then pour his entire life into helping other people to this extent. It's just it's it's uh, it's amazing amazing guy. Yeah for sure


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A worthy cause. Yes sir. There you go. Uh, with that, if you want to support this podcast and what we're doing and you kind of want to support yourself too, you can go to jockofield.com. You can get yourself, you can get yourself some go, which I've had


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Jockerfield.com. You get everything that you need to be healthy. Go check it out. We got joint warfare. We got super krill oil. We got immunity stuff. We just got everything that you need. You can get it at Wawa. You can get it at Vitamin Shop. You can get it at GNC.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can get it at the military commissaries, afees, hannaford, dash doors.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Wake fern, shop right, H-E-B down in Tay Haas, Meyer up in the Midwest, Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, Shields, that's where you can get this stuff right now. And we're expanding as rapidly as we're starting to get a presence, a good strong presence in Tennessee.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe it's a CrossFit gym, because we're doing CrossFit. Maybe it's a Jiu Jitsu gym, because we're doing Jiu Jitsu. Email JFsales at JacoFuel.com if you want to have the people.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] At your gym, get faster, stronger and better and need a little help with that. You can sell Jocko Fuel too. So there you go, Jocko Fuel.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's why we make jeans. That's why we make shorts. Cause you know you gotta go to the supermarket. You know you gotta take your wife out to dinner. She doesn't, you show, you're gonna go out on a date with someone? You know? You're gonna go out on a date with a girl? Sure. And you show up? You're wearing a gi?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, that's why we make jeans. T-shirts, hoodies, all that good stuff. And it's all made in America. So you don't have to worry about, you know, we're talking to Ephraim, he's talking about people that are getting abused, getting murdered, getting raped. Terrible. Terrible. That's going on in the world. Slavery's going on in the world right now too, by the way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're taking a chance at a minimum. You're taking a chance at a minimum. Unless you buy from originusa.com. Then you're 100% not supporting slavery of other human beings. You're supporting freedom. You're helping the national security of this country.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] OG, that's the one. Well, we're, we're constantly improving them and making them better. Yeah. So, I don't know what your little personal preference thing that you're dealing with over there. Yeah. But I can tell you right now, the new ones? Yeah. Sick.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The Everybody Must Get Stoned, which was about a stoner 63 machine gun. And, uh. Don't fuck it up. Don't fuck it up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Each one of those three shirts, there was a whole group of people that were extremely fired up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Right on. Uh, so there you go also. JockoStore.com. There you go. JockoStore.com. Speaking of uhm, get some. Speaking of getting stronger, get yourself some steak.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] From PrimalBeef.com, this is the good steak. Let's face it, steak comes in different levels, right? You know what I mean? You got steak-um, that you can get technically, I guess it's steak, right? You know what steak-um is?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't even know if it's necessarily steak, but it's on the spectrum. Other end of the spectrum, Primal Beef. Primal Beef dot com, farm raised, you know, so it's raised on a farm, not in a factory, grass fed, and they finish it, this is a good thing, with


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And grain like, little combination they figured out. Cause let's face it dude, I mean look, we like lean meat, I get it. I get it. But, if you're eating a steak, you want it to be, you want it to have a little bit of marvel in there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Origin USA has a YouTube channel, also Jocko Fuel has a YouTube channel, so check all those out. And what else we got? We got...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Psychological warfare. We got flip side canvas, Dakota Meyer making cool stuff to hang on your wall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Those are really good for your kids, man, and your neighbors, and your, your cousins, your nephews, your nieces. Just get them those books. It's such a game changer for kids. Out on the Jocko Live Tour, how many people came up to me and thanked me for those books, and I signed those books. These are game changing books for children that you know. So go get them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We got Extreme Ownership, Dichotomy, Leadership, we got About Face, we got Mike and the Dragons, this is all those books. Check them out. We got Eslam Front, which is...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Our leadership consultancy, we solve problems through leadership. Go to eslamfront.com if you need help inside your organization. If you want to come to one of our live events, whether it's the muster, next muster is in San Diego by the way because the Dallas one sold out. Because everything we do sells out. So if you want to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Come and do one of our things, then go to EchelonFront.com. If you just need help inside your organization, go to EchelonFront.com. We have the Women's Assembly coming up September 14th through the 16th in Phoenix, Arizona. Jamie Cochran, the COO of Echelon Front is running that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Give me some questions for Big H. Yea man, it'll be solid. So, there you go. Uh, go to echelonfront.com for any of that stuff. We also have an online training platform.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Extreme ownership dot com. Check that out. And if you want to help service members active and retired, you want to help.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There are families, gold star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You already heard, for the last three and a half plus hours, what Ephraim's doing around the world. So, go and check that out. Also, if you want to connect with us, or him, on the interwebs, you can go to at Stronghold Rescue on Instagram, also Ephraim's on Instagram at Ephraim Matos.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And thanks to all the uniform military personnel around the world doing your best to help the world be a better place. And thanks to these types of humanitarian organizations like Stronghold Rescue that are out there risking their lives.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Also, to help people around the world and make the world a better place. And also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, and all first responders that are out there right now. Right now. There's no break.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The world's a rough place. The world is a very rough place depending on where you are. And, and just about for everyone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] For almost everyone, no matter where you are in life, someone is having a harder time than you are. Something to remember. Maybe help you stifle some of those complaints. But also it's a reminder that if you can, when you can, try and help people out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But you can still help other people. Maybe you can donate to one of these organizations. Maybe you can donate to Stronghold Rescue. Maybe you can donate to, to America's Mighty Warriors. Maybe you can donate to heroes and horses.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And maybe you can't even do that, but maybe it's just a word of encouragement to somebody that's having a rough day.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's a whole spectrum of things that we can do that make a difference.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if we can all lift each other up a little bit, we can all make the world a little bit better.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Heard the word, kicked around some at Bragg. Uh, no one really knew what it, what it was or what people did. They would just say things like, you know, these guys are crazy. They do really cool things. And nobody knows what, don't look at that guy. Don't make eye contact with him. He's rumored to have been in SOG. Those guys are nutcases.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You make eye contact with him, you may disappear tonight and your body will never be found. They're crazy. Okay.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I did some wacky stuff as it got older too. I mean once, once I had been in SOG, you know, everything else looked relatively tame. You know, whether it was making a halo jump, you know, in the dark, trying to go into a small LZ in the mountains someplace.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You just keep getting smaller and smaller LZs to run the adrenaline level up. It just, whatever. The biggest, one of the biggest issues to deal with was trying to show enough restraint because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you had so much freedom in terms of what you could do or had to do that when, when you came back to the real world, it was a matter of, I don't like what that person said.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I would really like to rip his face off, but I'm not gonna do that. I'd like to make this person disappear, but I'm not gonna do that. And it was just constantly, I'm not gonna do that. I'm gonna restrain myself. And, you know, I had been taught that to some degree.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, in martial arts before I went in the military.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Know you can do it. Know you have the capability to take the guy down, but back away. You don't have to do it because you can. Show restraint, but this was a much more violent type of restraint.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It's up for maybe the doctor ammunition, you know, we had trained for, but to do, uh, in, in Vietnam, to do against whatever enemy. So, the list didn't shock us. It was just, we're, we're gonna go do it, because


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, you know, I had volunteered to go to Vietnam because I thought Vietnam's where it is. I mean, that's where we're fighting the war, that's what's going on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and then when I got into Zog, all of a sudden I realized, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] My mail is going to be sent to Saigon and Vietnam.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And everybody, my family, everybody's gonna think I'm in Vietnam and I'm fighting a war in Vietnam. Really, that's just where I store my gear.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's where I go to train. That's where I go to get my mission. But when I go to war, I'm going to have a combat deployment into other Southeast Asian countries.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, you know, I've been in like six different countries, uh, to go fight in. Everybody thought I was fighting in Vietnam. If you look at the tombstones of the guys who were killed in SOG, all of them say Vietnam.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, you were killed in other countries. Your family, everyone was told you were killed in Vietnam. Uh, when my family sent, uh, mail to me, it went to, uh, post office box and


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, Saigon, it was opened, it was read and scanned and then sent to me to whatever FOB I was in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, and I would get it and read it when I responded back to my family or anyone that I wrote to.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It went to Saigon, it was opened, it was read, uh, to make sure there was nothing in there classified.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If it was that letter, you know, it was just lost. So, Vietnam was just, you know, kind of like a TDY station. I was there to get ready to go fight someplace.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, we, we did some operations in Vietnam. Yea, I was going to say North Vietnam.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, fighting there, just training. Yeaah. Let's, let's go find some guys over here and, and, cause what we wanted in the training


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That I think is missing a lot today and I won't get on that soap box, but.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You just can't imagine the effectiveness of having live fire shoot back targets. You know, you can go out and shoot a silhouette all day, and it doesn't shoot back at you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you can take your time, you can get good side alignment, you can aim, you can shoot at it, you hit it, it falls over and it pops back up. But when it comes back up, it doesn't shoot at you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, you know, in, in the first mission in the book there, I discovered from people, when those targets start shooting back, and there's a whole bunch of them shooting back, uhm, your stress level goes up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And everything changes. Your vision changes. You can't focus on your sight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you can't aim like you were trained to aim. Uh, you can't load your, you know, your magazine in the weapon. You can't even get it out of your pouch with all those bullets coming at you. Because you've never been like that before. Yeah. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They had a list and, you know, it was important that you had a name.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, that would identify you. If you were captured, uh, if you were killed, uh, to have a, a name that, if it was used, we, we knew who it was without telling anything else about you. Uh, if you needed to send some kind of message when you were, if you were captured and still alive,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then, you know, by working that word into whatever you were sending, then, you know, it was, it was sending a message out. And ironically, uhm, you didn't just have the code name, you also had some other questions, uh, about you. The name of your dog. You know, what, what was your first car?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when you think about it, that's the same thing you do now. That's like the internet security questions, right? Yes, that's all those questions. That's where they came from, was back then. You still had to have those, uh, because the likelihood of you being, um,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Captured, you know, was pretty high, you'd probably die most of the time they'd just kill you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You could be captured and they wanted all these different methods. So you had a code name and then the code name, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, who were, who were flying and directing airstrikes, all kinds of things for you. But you, you know, you knew who they were. Uh, they knew the one zeros, you know, because they're up there talking to you, you know, on a regular basis. And sometimes,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, whatever call sign you had for the mission would just go away. You know, all of a sudden, they'd be calling me dynamite.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, we just dropped a call sign, it's a lot easier. You know, I mean, we, we had so many assets coming in that I used my, my left hand and my right pants leg as my information control center.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I didn't get to talk to the Air Force guys very much because our radios, you know, didn't match up, uh, except for our survival radio. But I was talking to the gunships and telling them, you know, where I wanted it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, and, and, you know, the pilots all had names.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I think some of the names kinda came about like, uh, fighter pilot names. You've done something, and everybody starts to call you that. Or, you know, maybe a name that you had before you got there. And I think,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The best I can determine, Tilt had the name Tilt before he got there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If I could just say one thing about the book, uhm, I made it like a journal because what I was trying to do with the book is


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I experienced to some degree what I was experiencing describing it, the screw ups, the fear, the whatever, you know, that was going on. And what I did with my teams was we did our own after action review after every mission.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We get together as a team and we're gonna talk about what we did well, what we didn't do so well, what happened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, what we need to do some extra training on. So I set up post mission training for my teams. Uhm, you know, in one case, uhm, it was being able to throw a hand grenade from the prong.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Laying on your belly, throw a hand grenade, and get hit far enough away from us, you know, that it's not going to hit us, not hit a tree, and have it bounce back at us, because with that team, I would say, they didn't seem to be good at that. And what they wanted to do was raise up. If you raise up, you're going to get hit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I want you to stay alive, uhm, but you gotta use the grenades. So that I put in there things that I saw, I learned, and we started to practice. And as you go through the book, you can see how it progresses across time. There were things I was doing in the beginning that I discovered that's not the best way to do that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're better ways, and we're gonna do it differently. We're gonna, I changed the loadout. I changed the amount of ammunition that people were carrying. Most SOG teams, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And some individuals might not have any claymores. On my teams, I went to an SLP of you carry three claymores per person. That's a lot of extra weight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you use those things right, you just shred the bad guys. I used to set them up. I'd like to have seven daisy chains.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] On the most likely avenue of approach coming into us at night, I could set them all off simultaneously.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when you set off 10 and a half pounds of C4, the concussion from that, the explosion from that, if you're anywhere close to it, it's going to at least knock you out. But when you put 4900 steel balls in there coming at you at 4000 feet a second,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The big bang, people shredded, and the NBA would look at that and say, this is different. This is not what we're used to with the SOG teams. This guy's a nutcase.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Together the survivors and they would start again and I'd have another roll of either five or three claymores the same way.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then they would say, he is crazy, for sure. And then, you know, like other SOG teams, we would, uhm, have some individual claymores that we'd have time fuses on, uhm, and they were randomly going off and you never knew.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, I changed the loadout of frag grenades from 5 to 10.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you have a seven man team, you have 70 frag grenades. And you can chunk those things all night. They can't see where they're coming from and they're just going off all around you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anyway, that's a few of the things that I started doing, uh, and putting together an SOP, you know, for my teams.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If it's, you know, the middle of the night and it's raining and it's dark and you can't see anything and I need to get ammunition or grenades or whatever off of your body, I know where to reach to get it. If you need to get it off of my body, you know where it is.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we, we did a lot of things like that and I wanted to show that how we learn and eventually you get into where we were learning about the enemy and how they react. What do they do?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And there's really interesting things, I won't go into it now, but really interesting things in there that I learned about the enemy. You know, I, I kindly approached it with a scientific mind because that's what I was, you know, training to be before I got there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And why are they reacting that way? What are the chemical reactions that's going on?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was, he was trying to find out more about his father, so he had put a post on a Macsog, uh, Facebook site. Did anyone know anything about my father? So, I saw it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Anyway, we put it off, but, you know, this summer we'll meet, uh, or October we'll meet face to face. Outstanding. So, I mean, we had some phone calls and, you know, a lot of emails and stuff back and forth, but we haven't had a chance to meet face to face yet.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was, uh, it was interesting, you know, it, in the beginning of the book, you see, when I, when I first encountered a SOG team, uh, as I was traveling, uh, up to FOB 4, and it was,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're on the bus. It's a school bus. It was a SOG bus, not just because it was painted black, but because all the windows are shot out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The seats are ripped apart where bullets have hit it. There's probably 200 or more bullet holes, you know, in the bus. And, you know, Bob and I are looking at each other and like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Are we even gonna get there? But, and while we're talking, we were also supposed to pick up a team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And these guys just, it was like they just materialized and there they are. And, and they're coming toward us. And then the last guy was looking backwards the whole time. He's walking backwards and constantly looking for what's going on. And they came up to the bus and they had all this stuff on. Uh, we'd just never seen before. I mean they've got


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They've got grenades on their, in pouches, you know, on their hip. They've got magazines on their hip.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They got some kind of weapon that we hadn't seen before. They had what looked like M79 grenade launchers sawed off so it was just big fat pistols and they had those hanging on them. I mean, it's just amazing. And everything was sterile. There was no name tags.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But when they got on the bus, once, you know, as they are coming on the bus, they're going to defensive position. Everybody had a position on the bus, windows that they were focused on, uhm, anyway.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were scared. They made the hair stand up on the back of your neck. And when we got the FOB-4, they walked off the bus and we blinked and they were gone. Where did they go? How did they do that?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I had, I had seen, you know, Bob and I had seen a team before, and we thought, man, a couple days we're gonna be on one of those.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I go, I go meet my new team and, you know, it was, uh, it was interesting. A team is supposed to have nine indigenous members and three Americans. Most teams didn't have


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Quite that many of, of either type of person, you know, just cause they get shot up all the time or killed or whatever. Uhm, but normally you would go out with two or three Americans on the team and every how many of the, uh, indige that you wanted to carry, you know, based on what the mission was.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, well they, you know, usually they came from the same unit. So they were going back to their little group who were flying these particular missions. They were being pulled out on a regular basis to go out and fly these missions. So they could talk to each other when they went back. Got it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He didn't know where they're going. I just go where the chopper goes and he's sitting there and then he sees this river and he's saying, hmm, I think that's the border. I think we're headed straight for Laos or Cambodia or whatever.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I really thought, you know, we're gonna go out here, get on the ground, we're gonna run around, do this wiretap, we'll probably shoot a couple of guys before we come back. And, you know, once we're in contact, we'll get shot at some, but, you know, we'll come back. Not a big deal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Going back and processing that, you know, on my own, you know, to start with, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was good for me to realize when the targets shoot back, everything changes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And a lot of what I was doing didn't work in that situation. I couldn't get the magazine out of the pouch because, you know, the rule was you take a canteen pouch and you cram six 20-round magazines in there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you had one pounce here with six magazines. The problem is they're in there tight.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If your hands are like this, you can reach in there and grab it and pull it out.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, I don't know, Sergeant Deck had a recommendation for me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How many magazines did you empty? You know, during that couple of minutes or so that we were down the hole. And, and he said, you know, I emptied five. I was almost through with my sixth one. I threw two frag grenades and a smoke grenade. I'm thinking, wow. And then he said,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you don't learn to change magazines faster when people are shooting at you, you're gonna die.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You can't have those breaks, you know, in shooting, not when you're that close, and that many of them. You know, what I had seen, what you saw on cowboy movies, and you saw on army movies, police movies, is...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, you shoot at me, I get down behind the rock. And when you, and then you stop shooting and you get behind the rock and I get up and I shoot. And that's not the way it is. I mean, you know, you might get down to reload or something, but Echo's still shooting at me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, my gun firing, so they know about where I am, and they're shooting at me, and they can't even see me, so there's no break. I mean, someone's always shooting at you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I, you know, I figured, I mean, it should be pretty easy to find them. I mean, if there's 500 of them, it can't be that hard to do. Now, surviving...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, it's a different story, but I was pretty excited because I thought.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm going to learn how to do this. I mean, this is what SOG does. And this is a relatively small group that we've been tasked to go out and find and destroy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We get some. Most of it takes place in the club. In the bar. Yeaah. And, you know, it was like a training center.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you go in there and that's, that's when you get a chance to talk to some of the other ones. Zero, some of the other operators. You know, cause we're just passing each other in the dark. I mean, Tilt, Tilt and I, we're at FOB1 together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We'd wave every once in a while as we'd pass each other in the dark. We, we both went to, uh, Da Nang together and ran missions out of there together. We knew each other, but, and we'd see each other in the club every once in a while.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But we didn't have time for a relationship because, you know, we were always on the move, going out to the field, practicing, whatever. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Three or four times. And if he twitches, three or four more times. Because you can't believe how many SOG guys have been killed by dead NVA.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You have to take them out. The person that shoots first has got the highest chance of survival. I mean, he had a list of things like that, you know, that he would share with me when we would see each other and just, you know, I could ask him about different techniques, different things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You mentioned earlier that you had Cowboy on one of the podcasts, and I was watching that, and he said, y'all were talking about a contact, and he said, yeaah, I catch bullets.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and I could see your face in his and you were, you were kinda looking at him like, what? And he said, I catch bullets.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I felt that I knew a lot more about what was going on. Uh, I knew what to expect, you know, fear wise. I knew it was going to mess some things up. Uh, but I was also learning. Watching what they were doing, watching what Cowboy was doing. Uh, there were some conversations with Dec, uhm, you know, where, Portman told Dec, no go. Too many VC.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Leather face to jump out from behind a tree with a chainsaw and start sawing arms off and stuff because the port man was right, but Dex said no, we're gonna go. And it made me wonder.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, what did, what does DEC know that no one else knew? We all heard the same sounds. Why did DEC decide it wasn't VC? They call them VC, the NBA.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So trying to learn, trying to pick his brain, uh, every time we went out, see what I could learn. And, you know, one thing I was getting to do is I was carrying the radio.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I was having most of the conversations with, with Cubby.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I'm starting to have conversations with the gunships.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and you can see how it progresses in the book to somebody who...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I, I knew how to call artillery. I'd done all that stuff, you know, in training.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But I never talked to a Covey before. I didn't know about working gunships. I didn't know all this stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] What I was starting to learn, each mission we went out, I was doing that more and more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and learning what the NBA were doing, what they expected from us, and how they reacted. So I'm starting to lay this stuff out and put it together.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And in the first time, uh, uh, well this, this, well first time, part of the intel debriefing as soon as we got back, you know, that wasn't all that pleasant either.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I was too busy shooting back at him. And, you know, anyway, uh, I was told that I needed to change my attitude. But, what?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That was part of the learning experience for me because I discovered later that if I listen, I might not know how many bullets were coming.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's a bigger group. This is not four or five guys just out there stemming through the woods. Now we got a larger group. Were there two of them? Do they have RPGs?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, so as I start to hear these other sounds and listen to how they move, it tells me what size force we're up against, what we need to do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you can see how all that stuff worked into, you know, strategy, you know, adapt, like we were talking before. I got to the point where I knew when my foot stepped off the skid, I would have to start adapting whatever plan we had.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, because it wasn't gonna be exactly like we had planned.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But what really upsets people in general about that mission was


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, their, their mission was, uh, to help with the transportation, kinda place a little security around the caches, help rebuild the roads, do things. They were not the hardcore North Vietnamese SOG hunter, killer teams.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So yeaah, it was like chasing rabbits, you know. You just chase them down and terminate them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's when, you know, when Dec and I taught us. We had time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, it didn't matter if they knew the plan or not or what they were supposed to do. They're gone. We still have time to get down there and plant the stuff and do a night extraction.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, I mean, even, I mean, the first, the first time I, uh, actually started doing something carrying the full low down, I mean, it was cutting my shoulders.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean I, I had to stra- I was very strong coming in because I, you know, I'd done all kind of stuff before I got there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, uh, I watched them and I thought, you know, I'm gonna up the claymores, the fried grenades and things like that. So they're gonna have to carry more weight than what they've been carrying. We need to build some strength up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The concept and idea of we're gonna exercise, that did not go over. That did not go over.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They didn't get dehydrated out on the missions. We would start like three days before. They had to drink a lot more water. They had to do more electrolytes, things like that before we went out. I gradually, excuse me, across time, started changing what they were allowed to eat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because even though North Vietnamese and South Vietnamese were similar, ate similar kinds of things, the spices were a little different, and how they ate it was a little different. So,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I could smell the North Vietnamese. I could smell the South ones too, but I could tell the difference because they had different, different spices.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They would get a wealth of spices that they didn't normally eat and, you know, eventually it's like, where did that come from? There's somebody out there, probably South Vietnamese.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we started doing things like that. Eventually we got to the point where no one was allowed to use soap when they took a shower the last three days. So no shaving cream, no soap, no anything that was going to create an odor.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I want your poop to smell like North Vietnamese poop.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I won't go into it here, but invisibility is a lot more than I camouflage or I be careful how I move. Invisibility takes in all the senses.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You have, you have to hide all of the, you know, smell, taste, sound, everything. How you move. Got into, you know, people tended to want to take their weapon and turn the weapon and sweep back and forth like that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you go deer hunting, how do you see that buck when he's coming?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, with, with the coloration and everything, it makes it easier to see them coming at you. The same with you. You start turning your head, I'll see the movement. Even if you're coming straight at me. And particularly if you're moving a weapon. And we started training with, uhm, point shooting.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If I'm looking at it, that's where the bullet's gonna go. And he just, oh geez, that's exactly it. He said, I don't even think about the gun.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I'm looking right where I want that bullet to hit, and I pull the trigger, and that's where it goes. Because I've done it so much, you know, in training. And just shoot, and shoot, and shoot. It's gonna be where I'm looking. And I'm not swerving the gun around except at the last second. Uhm, so I'm teaching the port man.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Look straight ahead with his, with his head. Move your eyes. They're not going to see your eyes. They'll see your face or head if you start turning. Uhm, so it's just a lot of things like that, that we started to put in with the teams.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, and I heard some other teams talking about, uhm, that they were in contact and they didn't realize how many they were up against and they went after them, uh, and, and, you know, heard them say, uh, they started to run from us. And then they realized, you know, it's just a handful of us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if I use the other thing that we talked about about listening, what am I hearing over there? How many people are returning fire and what kind of weapons are they using? Is this a small enough group that we can go after and terminate?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And create a lot of damage, or do we need to stop and, you know, start thinking about getting away? You know, plus, I'm gonna do that anyway. I taught all the guys, if you're hit, I wanna hear you say in English, hit, hit, hit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They let me know you're still alive and you're hit and I have some idea of where you are and we're gonna, we're gonna stop going backwards now. We're gonna come forward to the degree that we can and get you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So uhm, you know, doing that kind of training, and they would back off from us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There is a place where we actually crawled up and listened to an NVA training class where they were teaching, this is how you go after SOG teams. When you encounter a SOG team,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're back there. They have a good idea of where we are. And they've got trackers who can follow, you know, a trail. And if you hear a dog bark,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, now you know they've got dogs coming with them. Uhm, so yeaah, that, that kind of runs the stress level off a little bit, because you know they're going to find you. It's just a matter of time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the dog's gonna smell it. Even if you cover it, the dog's gonna smell it because they are covering it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So you're moving up, we use what we call the fissure technique a lot. You're moving along, and this is where you want your RO in. So we move past it, go up, turn, and come back to it. So if you're tracking us,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You just instinctively step over, or right on the other side of that log, to where that toe fire is going to be.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And just for fun, I'd put two of them over there. So sometimes you'd step over, I'd take that leg off and you'd start to fall, you'd land on the other one, I'd get that one too.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You step on one of those out in the jungle, you're gonna die. Because you can't get you back to the hospital or anything like that. But that lets us know, you know, that you're tracking us. We know where you are. And most of the time, when they would step on one, they assume we're out in front of them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And that's where they initially fire. They open fire out that way. We're back over here a little ways. So we know you're there. We got some idea of how many people are there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, you know, from there, we've got our claymores out on the avenues of approach that you might use to come down, uh, to get us. We've got an evacuation plan on how we're gonna go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So then we take whatever action, you know, seems to be right at that time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, rub a little dirt on your chest. Just rub a little dirt on, you'll be alright. You know, let's keep going. You know, we got things to do. You can't fumble around like this. Just rub a little dirt on, you'll be alright.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, you know, we didn't, we didn't realize what the concussion was doing to us. Yeah. But, I mean, you were getting hit with it, you know, on a regular basis. Then you had Lynn Black, you were getting ready to go on a mission, and he goes out and trying to figure out,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] How big of a piece of C4 do we need to use to knock somebody out? Well, I'm going to chop up these different sizes so that I'm not here on the ground, back up a little waist and set it off and see if it knocks me down. So he kept doing it until, you know, he didn't know who he was. And he said, okay, that's how much we need right there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We tried whenever we could to put them in front of trees, so you got a big tree, and on the other side is the claymore, and then you're back here a ways, but you still gotta, if you're gonna do just that one at one time, you still gotta get back a ways.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I don't know all the answers here, but most of the teams left there and went to CCN or Central or South as the intact team. But for some reason, Alabama got split up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, the team for a while wasn't a team anymore. So, DEC went to a different type of job, a non-operator job, uh, down there. CCN was a, it was a big place, a lot going on.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I talked to him and he got back and he said, I finished my mission requirements, I've been on all these things, they're gonna split the team up, uh, and they're gonna move me to an admin job, they're gonna take me to CCM, they're gonna put me in a,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Jocko can't do this. He's gonna get somebody to kill. Maybe after your first mission, second mission. If the 1-0 is said, no. Thumbs down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He's not an operator taking him out. Then, you know, you could be moved somewhere else. But normally if you've got six missions and you want it, part of the thought was that that's a lot of missions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if we keep you longer in that, then, you know, you might not be okay upstairs. You know, we, we need to, we're gonna try to protect you by getting you out after sick, or at least giving you an out if you want it. But in reality,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, there are people who went on one mission and came back and said, that ain't happening again. I can't do this. Because it was so different when you went across the border.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You, you were just against so many people, every time. You, you all, and it reminds me of Jiu Jitsu. I mean, it seems like every time I see you guys on Instagram or something, you're doing some, some stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One person gets down on the mat. The other person gets on top and gets some kind of hold on him or something. And then that's when you start. And that's kind of what Sag was like. We're, we're going to put the team out there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We're going to surround you with all these NBA, and then we're going to say, go. Because it, you always started out surrounded. Every mission.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, and you get distracted, you get sucked in by, here's a group of rocks. They're coming after us, and here's a group of rocks. You know, rocks are not just concealment, but cover. So we can, down in these rocks, you know, now we can stand our ground and we can get some hit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All that does is fixate you in one little spot in the NVA. It's just like a big amoeba coming down and they just go around you. Now you're not going anywhere.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that, that was, that was a big insight for me. Using napalm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And just seeing, you know, the awesome power of that stuff and, and what it did.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, if you get in real trouble, you bring some napalm out there and, you know, they'll change how they react to you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And as you went north, uhm, the jungle got a lot thicker. So all of a sudden you had double and triple canopy jungle. When you see all of these YouTube videos and things of napalm being dropped, it's out in the open.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And man, it, it forms this beautiful pattern on the ground and everything. And that's cool. When you drop it into a double canopy jungle or triple canopy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Scare me, but I knew I had to have it. But I said, you know, I hope I'm picking the right distance. I hope that pilot that's coming in is gonna put it in the right spot. And I hope I didn't make a mistake, or he didn't make a mistake in our calculations, or it's gonna be on us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you just kind of hold your breath and say, oh jeez, well see what happens, you know, when it comes down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Probably the reason you were going to that team is because of 1-0. I mean, if, when you made contact,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you could survive the first 90 seconds, you might have a chance.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was just amazing how many 1-0s and Americans were killed in the first 90 seconds. Because everybody, you all stand, you're standing up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, I mean, your whole body now is exposed, and when that many people open up with that many AKs on automatic, there's such a barrage coming at you. If you're standing up, you're gonna get hit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, that was one reason I didn't want any more than I had to on the front. I wanted, to the degree I could, to look like an empty pair of fatigues laying out there on the ground. That I was so close to the ground, you know, that I wasn't going to get, my rucksack used to get shot all to pieces. You know, because it was, it was sticking up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You gotta get close. You gotta get down. And I, I still harass.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I think Tilt said on the podcast, the first thing his team said to him when he went to his new team, the interpreter said, you're gonna die. Too tall? Yeah, yeah. It wasn't just too tall.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're too tall and you're too ugly. You're gonna die. And I, you know, I, I harassed him. I said, how can, you know, I used to look at you and say, how can a guy 6'2 survive out here?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, and I'm nowhere near sixty. Uhm, so, I don't know. I mean, I've had my head creased with a chunk of shrapnel and stuff like that. Just, you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Most of them had lived in the jungle and they came from the jungle.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So they had a, a lot of experience and knowledge about the jungle, uh, the creatures, the terrain, everything out there. So, you know, when, when they moved through the jungle, uh, they could, they'd point out a lot of times snakes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They knew where to look to find the snakes, where they were going to be, things like that. Uhm, just, they were really good at moving through the woods or the jungle and not making noise. Uhm, different, just a different mindset than the Vietnamese.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the yard just reaches over and he takes me by the hand. He's holding my hand. And we're kind of walking along and we're swinging our hands.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He said it's not what you think. He's showing you respect and honor. If you turn his hand loose, you're gonna insult him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] The food was a little different that they ate. Uh, they really didn't like Vietnamese. They didn't care if they were North or South. They didn't care. They just, you know. Yeah, I mean they killed each other sometimes in the compounds. Oh yeah, in the compounds.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, you couldn't let them eat at the same time. We had, uh, you know, Cambodians and, and the mountain yards and, and the Vietnamese. They all ate in the same mess hall, but they had to have a different feeding schedule. You couldn't put them in there together because somebody would get shot. Because it was, it was like living in the Old West. Unlike the U.S. compounds, in the South Compounds, you know, you walked around fully armed. I mean,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You could carry grenades around in your pocket. You could carry your Car 15 around in the compound, you know, fully loaded, ready to go.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you're subject to get shot. And one, one thing you didn't want to do, I mean, I didn't want to walk up, you know, to Echo and say something that appeared to be aggressive or derogatory to him when his team was with him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, so you, you had to be careful, even Americans, you know, we all carried weapons too, so you had to be careful with them. Some of them will whack off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Who as a general, instead of walking around with his little pistol, walked around with an AK-47 slung over his shoulder.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And telling, you know, his security team, if anything happens, guys, you take care of yourself, I'll take care of me. I'll be alright. You know, don't get yourself killed trying to take care of me.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, I mean, he was, uh, he was hard. Just, uh, unbelievable, you know, warrior, uhm, smart, and, you know, he was a spec four. And we'd come back to the States, and I see him, and, uh, he was a lieutenant, and I thought, how did you do that? Well, you know, I came back, I went to OCS, okay. Then I see him again, he's a captain.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A major, and he's already a captain. Man, you're doing good. And then the next time I see him, you know, he was a major.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I was about to get promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. I mean, he'd already caught me. And just, you know, he just kept going.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, you know, that was cool, and, you know, I'd see him in different places, and we'd talk, and, you know, when he was in Delta, we were talking and stuff, and it was uhm, yeaah, it was pretty cool just to watch him. He was fascinating, but on these teams,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] His team, it was after I left, the team was hit when B-40 came right into the middle of them. Everybody was wounded. Bargewell took a big piece of shrapnel through the, through the side of his face and lodged behind the aisle on the other side. And it really irritated him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And then they, they, they had to gall about 20 of them to stand up and try to assault the team.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He was pissed. He was. He was carrying the RPD by then. He hosed the whole group down. I mean, he just took out their whole assault by himself.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And he modified an RPD, right? Like, cut it down. There's a mission where he got so excited.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, the bad guys were using it against us, and he just kept talking about...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Then the next thing I know, he tells me this guy's dad at CCC sawed the barrel off of one of these things and he did some modifications to it. It's a lot shorter. And he got one of them.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I carried an M60 one time, holy cow. I got back, I will never do that again. It hangs on everything, it's heavy, and when the bad guys hear


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well, you know, and I told them, I said the good thing, one of the good things about carrying all that ammunition is, the bad, the bad news is, it's heavy, the good news is,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But then it turns into the bad news after a while because it's gone.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He saw, you know, he saw Bargewell's group come in. I mean, everybody there was just...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They were in shock. I mean, you don't see, they didn't see people hanging under helicopters on ropes.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they never saw anybody coming from that direction on the other side of the border. So this was a, this was a big deal. So this guy ran back and got his little camera and came back out, you know, cause he, they could tell another helicopter was coming. So as I came in,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He took the picture of us as they were lowering us down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, you know, it takes about 60 seconds for it to process and everything. And they, uh, put me in the helicopter, and the other two in the helicopter, and we were just starting to lift off, and he came running with his hand stuck out, and I thought, what is he doing?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] That's a 30 second delay or a little more before I hit the ground. I mean.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If I'm gonna go down, I mean, you know, I can do some back loops, some turns and, you know, little things before I splat. Holy cow. You know, just trying to distract myself a little bit. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] One thing that, that helps the helicopter is if you're under double or triple canopy jungle,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, they were not standing, you know, right under it, shooting up at it. They're shooting at an angle, so they're going through the trees and the tree limbs and, you know, canopies and, and they can't see it unless they're really close to it. Because it, you know, we didn't blow a hole or anything. They just dropped it right down through the vegetation. So.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Let me, let me share with you, uh, you know, from his part. I'll tell you what it looked like to me when I was placing all that fire support down there for you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I get to say, well let me tell you what it looked like when it came through, or what came through. Most of the stuff you were shooting down, it never hit the ground. Because it's hitting trees and ricocheting and all kinds of things. It's a very different perspective from the air versus, you know, being on the ground.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So that, I mean that was fun just kind of going back and forth about, you know, what it looked like.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When you're under a canopy like that, you gotta use the flares.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They can see, you might have to shoot two or three, but eventually want to penetrate the canopy and come out and they'll see it. You know, so here's a bright, bright blue, you know, flare up there. And for them to come over and be able to get on that spot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah. Well, I'm giving them a little guidance. I mean, they, they got into the area. You're talking them on a bit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because you had to lay down, you had to lie on the ground, keep from getting shot, try to put that, you got a rucksack on, you got all this stuff on, and you're trying to fit that thing around you, and people are shooting at you, and the longer you don't shoot back,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, the more they're assaulting and coming at you, and when it got down to just the three of us, you know, you didn't have a lot of firepower to start with.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I'm not sure whose idea it was to ask if it was the interpreter, Kintua or it was Hang, the M79 guy. And Kintua says, it says, Hang wants to know why we have to always come out last with you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I said, well, cause that, I need you guys.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're important. You're the interpreter. You and I can talk.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They, they needed us to stay longer. And that was fine. We could have stayed longer.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they were determined they were doing us a favor. If they gave us more.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, water and batteries and stuff like that. We could stay there, because we were, we were across the highway and providing protection


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And support for the hatchet force that was down there. So we were kind of covering this whole area over here. The NBA were coming down from up above.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And they would stop and fire mortars over the platoon. Well, we could hear them. And, you know, I would call the artillery.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Because I had marked targets all around there and tell them, you know, where to, where to shoot.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Definitely. Learned a lot. A lot of things we're going to do different the next time. Uhm, I was just going to say that one of the things that happens is


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] All of this stuff starts to collapse down into sog imperatives.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] When we get into book two, it kind of comes together and here it is. Do these things. You know, if you want to go out on a SOG mission and have a successful mission, here's some things you need to do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, if you want to run a company, if you want to run your life, if you want to do things, these apply.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, there are people out there who didn't sit in on the planning session, and they're gonna mess you up.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you've gotta be able to adapt, adapt, adapt as you go along.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You gotta practice. You gotta do these things that we're talking about here.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] To be successful in everyday life or in your business or military or whatever it is that you're going to do.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is our specialty. Yeah. My, my special, not the teams. You know, I can't put it on them. I just, there are things that happen.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I, I, I knew it could provide me a lot of intelligence, but it just seemed like every time I went out there, something like this happened.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I just think, oh jeez, what are they going to do today to screw my plan up? Are we going to shoot the pilot? That's great.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But we had, you know, we had trees, so we had to claymores in front of the trees, so that, that helped some, but some of the blast is still gonna come around it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Well it was, you know, we wouldn't have ambushed that group.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If the ones coming behind them hadn't reacted on that first ambush site and spooked these guys. So we had to set it off. So everybody, everybody wasn't into Killzone. Right.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, and there were more people than we had planned to do, but sometimes you don't have that option to not do something. So we had to go ahead and set it off and do the best that we could. And then that first little group that went through, they turned and came running back down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, you know, by that time we were out in the killzone searching, bagging, all that stuff. So, yeaah, it got a little gnarly there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, the prisoners, they had rather die.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They'd been indoctrinated so much and told what all horrible things we were going to do to them if we caught them. So they would do anything to prevent us from getting them, you know, to the helicopter. They'd throw themselves on the ground.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, they would take your weapon, they would do anything that they could to try to stop it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uh, and at the same time, their guys are trying to shoot him.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They didn't want them to go out either, so. I mean, they were trying to rock in a hard place. They think we're gonna, you know, carve them up and mutilate them. Their guys are trying to shoot them. They're the only people in the world in the worst


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you get hit in the legs or the, the arms, you know, you can use tourniquets, there's things you can do, you can stop the bleeding, but, you know, if you're hit, you know, in your torso, I mean, you just can't get there easily to stop the bleeding, and eventually you're gonna bleed out, so.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There, I mean, there are ways to do it. Uhm, I mean, while the team's brought the prisoners back. I mean, you were close. You got two on the birds. Yeah.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And, yeaah, uhm, yeaah, I'm sure some of it's me, because I had opportunities, you'll see in book two, that uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It was beginning to build up. The name really didn't come about until, you know, several years later. Okay. With another group, but people had known me or knew about me and some things happened and, you know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It spooks the team as they think about it. If you just give them time off and let them go drink and party, do whatever they want to do, then, you know, those fears can start to come in.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So I started trying to keep them busy and then later on, in book two, uh, Lynn Black, you know, had the same thoughts. So he and I got together and found some interesting things to do. Interesting things to do between missions.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, so I, you know, one of the things like preserved hearing, like you were just talking about, it's so loud in the aircraft.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Your eyes adjust, your smell adjusts, all of those things adjust. Your ears take, can take several hours before you get old.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We had been programmed, those were for the range. Protect your hearing on the range.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Now, after I left, some smart guys said, why don't we wear those things on the helicopter? We can take them out when we, when we get off the helicopter. We take them out, put them in our pocket. So, you know, General Bo Ray, I mean his group did it all the time.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeah, I mean, that was great. And then if you look around now, I mean, all the operators


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Before that, you got off the helicopter and you were deaf.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It just takes, takes it out, so, I mean, you're, you're sucking in nitrogen, but you're not getting the oxygen that you need to breathe.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Choking. You're taking a breath, but you don't feel like you've got any air. You're suffocating.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And you know, it was just a little too close to us.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But it's, I mean if you, if you've ever watched him drop those things, it's, you know, it's in a canister. It's not like a bomb, it's just in a long canister.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And when they release it and they turn it loose, it just tumbles.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And how they get as accurate with it as they do, I don't know. Because it's just tumbling. And then, you know, when it goes into the trees,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] First real hard limb, big limb, it hits. It breaks the canister and it sets it off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] If you're dropping it out in a relatively open area,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, it tumbles and it hits pretty close to where it's supposed to be. It has a nice burn pattern when it comes out. But, you know, I, in fact, I saw, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] A discussion on Facebook, I think it was last week, and people were saying, uhm, that anybody up north use napalm because of the canopy.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Most people are saying, I don't know how you could, and I said, I did all the time. But you know, you take a real chance, you have to put it further away, it's going to scatter, you have to know that.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, it's just, the charred flesh, the burning flesh, it just puts out such a smell that it just invokes that vomit response and, you know, people start to vomit.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He carried, actually, Bargewell gave him his RPD. So, you know, I look back at that and I say, well, gee, Bargewell carried that thing and he became a major general. The lieutenant he gave it to became a major general.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He never really divulged his sources, but I mean, he, you know, once he was out of the service, he became a car salesman.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He could talk anybody into anything. Then somehow he talked his way in to a top secret compound. That mean it was unreal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Squeezing a dog, kind of the feeling of it. That thing's done. It was gonna disappear. They were gonna eat it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They're very, you know, they're nocturnal hunters, they're very quiet, as amazing, as big as they are. They don't make any noise, you know. And, and uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] There's a membrane in their eyes that causes the light to reflect around and it gives them this enhanced night vision. And that's why if you shine a light on an animal that has that great night vision, their eyes show up. They just light up. Like a deer, a raccoon, a cat.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, much higher frequency hearing than a dog.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So like a, a house cat, feral cat, I mean they can hear those little squeaks, little tiny sounds that mice and other animals that they eat make. They can track those things down.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] He honored me by giving me half of his rep. And they do that. Sure.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean they, they, they hunt in a pretty good size area, but uhm.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean, rarely did my teams ever, you know, encounter them. We would see there was another place, I don't remember exactly where it was now, but a place where you could see that uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They had cut down big, uh, pieces of bamboo and really sharpened the ends of them and put them in the ground. So they were pointed out like that. Just kind of made a, like a, uh,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Fence around the area to try to keep the tigers from coming in because they'd walk into the bamboo, but you know.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But we didn't see any actual tigers or any evidence besides that fence in either ear. But this one we did. We saw the scat, we saw the carcass, we heard the dog, you know, being eaten, the handler. But it's quick.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, their, their preference is to grab you by the back of the neck, and just click, and run off with it. They, they can drag a huge animal.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So we had learned from that other experience. Put your Swiss seat on first. Yeah. If you think you might have to use it, put that thing on. Yeah. Now, you know, later, later on, uhm, the stable rig was created.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I mean that was your harness. You wore the thing. So you had one on all the time. You didn't have to start tying a rope around you.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] We have a new company, recon company commander, a guy named Captain Meadows, and he wants to meet with you at twenty hundred.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And the way the hoochies were set up, they were divided in the center, so, you know, you had people living on each side. So on the other end of my hoot, uh, turned out to be now, you know, the new recon company commander.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I was living on this side and there's a little plywood wall between us. So, you know, my room...


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Maybe the size, about the size of this room. Normally there would be two guys here, two guys over on that side. But right now I didn't, I didn't have anybody in there with me. I hadn't had it to myself. And I forgot who was over there, but they went away. And now the new company commander is over there.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] This is the hardest thing I've ever written. You know, we were talking about it when I was here three years ago.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, it's, it's about me, personally, whereas the stress effect has a lot of examples and things in it, but, but this is about what I saw, what I experienced, the people I knew, uhm,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And I had to go back 50 plus years to get the information. Uhm, a lot of the guys, uh, were gone, so I couldn't ask them in some cases. Uhm, some people said, could you give me a different name?


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I don't want to go back there. I left it way back then. I want it to stay back then. I don't want people contacting me and saying, you know, I saw your name in the book.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So there are a lot of different things like that, emotional things with the book, so it just took a lot longer. And then, you know, SOG was a top secret organization, and when it, when it ended in 72, for the most part, all the records and things were destroyed.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, it, it's difficult to go back and, and find information. And I, I realized I had kept some


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, timelines and stuff. Uhm, but when I started to do this and went and started looking for things,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, like I mentioned before, everybody's tombstone says Vietnam. That's not where they died. But some of the dates are wrong. I mean, I got awards for things that the date on the award doesn't match up with the date these guys supposedly died. You know, during this, you know, particular battle and stuff.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, it was difficult. That took a long time and I finally got to the point where I'm going to get it as close as I can get it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And if somebody wants to argue over a week or two or something like that on when a particular event happened, you know, that's fine. You know, I'm telling the story. This is what I saw. And even if the dates are a little off.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Uhm, so it was, it was difficult. And then, you know, I, I wrote the whole year.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It doesn't fit in the, you know, the twenty dollar range. So you gotta do something. So they recommended I'd make two books out of it. You know, so the whole thing was written, but because I put this one out,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] But, yeaah, it'll be out, and I, uh, I think it will get people's attention.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] It, it would kind of depend, uhm, and, you know, to be honest with you, uhm, when I would go back to edit, you know, the different missions and things, uhm, I would find myself there, you know, reading it and realize, holy cow, my heart, you know, is pounded.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] And even though I had read it ten times, you know, working on it, reading it again, and all of a sudden I'm thinking about, you know, what, what was happening.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I think it's, you know, if you look at it as, if you wanna know,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Get some taste of what war is like and what happens on the Special Ops battlefield. I think anybody from at least SOG forward can read through here and relate to


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] Yeaah, you know, these things happen and that's what bullets sound like and all this stuff is going on and the chaos of the battlefield and everything. I think they can relate to it. I spent some time just recently with the fifth group of operators.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] I went up and spent some time with them and, uh, you know, they all had questions about things.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] They look at SOG guys as, this is kind of where our legacy began. Things we were doing now started back with the SOG guys. And, you know, some of them would ask questions like,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] So, you didn't have night vision, you didn't have thermal imaging, and you'd go through all this list of stuff that they have now, and they would, and they'd ask you a question. So, when you went to a building or to a camp and you had to go in and, and, you know, accomplish a mission there, how did you do that if you didn't know where they were? If you couldn't see them? And I said, well, you can.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You just don't do it with night vision goggles. There are other senses that you have and you learn how to use those because on today's battlefield, when that EMP pulse goes out,


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You're not going to have night vision goggles. You're not going to have any of the electronics that you have now. All that stuff is gone. Your headsets are coming off because they're not going to work. And you've got to be able to do it the way we do it.


[User] Please transcribe this text

[Assistant] You know, I can, if you're in the dark and I'm coming up looking for you.