294: The Mayhem and Critical Lessons of Lam Son 719 w/ Huey Pilot, Major Jay Tate.

This is Jocko, podcast number 294 with Echo, Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

Good evening.

Flight. This is Blue Star 6RP, Major Bunting announced as he crossed the release point on the ground, indicating two minutes flight time to the landing zone. With that announcement, Charlie gunships from Crossbows began a slow dive toward the landing zone, prepared to release some of the fourteen 2.75 E inch rockets that each aircraft carried along with their machine guns if it became necessary.

Flight Lead is taking fire, Blue Star 6 announced over the UHF frequency, which was obvious to everyone behind him as the green tracers were coming from all around him. Chalk Two is taking fire. We're hit. Came the next announcement. Suddenly the radio was alive with every aircraft reporting taking fire as they crossed the rp. And the woods around the landing zone were highlighted by and white flashes and green tracers streaming upward.

As each aircraft flew into the cone of fire, attempting to reach the landing zone and discharge their load. The airwaves became garbled as pilots stepped on each other's transmission or in panic, depress their transmit switch to the entire flight so they could. Everyone could hear the conversation between a pilot and his crew. Chalk Six is taking shit. Get on your guns, Chalk Five. Where's the damn guns? Break. Break. Chalk Ten is.

There was so much confusion that no one could get a complete sentence transmitted until. Mayday, mayday. Dutch Master 4 One is going down, said Captain Fox in almost a calm voice. Who the hell is Dutch Master for One? Someone asked over the radio, looking skyward and searching. Everyone had their answer. Dutch Master for One was the command and control aircraft for the Cav screen and was entering an auto rotation from 4,000ft.

What really held everyone's attention was the flames coming out of the bottom of the aircraft. Oh, shit. It was obvious that he'd taken a hit with an explosive round in the fuel cell. But at 4,000ft.

Every aircraft had at least one set of eyes tracking this crippled aircraft. An aircraft in flight on fire was somehow few, something few had ever seen before, and it was horrifying and mesmerizing.

Mayday, Dutch Master 4 One is on fire, was the next call from Captain Fox, his voice a bit elevated. Fire was every aviator's worst nightmare. Shoot me, but don't let me burn. It was a fear that had been with aviators since Orville and Wilbur had first flown.

Before parachutes. World War I pilots were known to use their pistols rather than burn in an aircraft.

As everyone watched, the radios went silent. Slowly. Dutch master 41 began a slow roll, and as it hit the trees, it was inverted. The Cav screen began to converge on the crash site. As Major Bunting entered the cauldron of enemy fire, he turned to Mr. Grossman, get on the controls with me in case I'm hitting. Grossman immediately did so. That with a very light touch, ready to take command of the aircraft. Suddenly, Sauer and Thomas opened fire. Taking fire, they both screamed together, though there was no need, since the sound of a hammer tapping on the side of the aircraft could clearly be heard. As Blue Star 6 continued to press toward the landing zone, decelerating and coming to a hover.

The ARVN soldiers didn't wait for the aircraft to land. They started jumping out as the aircraft came to a slow walk. Before Major Bunting could land, the aircraft was empty. Sir.

Go, go.

We're empty. Sauer yelled as he continued to fire his weapon at the tree line. Talk one on the go. Major Bunting transmitted, lz is hot. His next transmission followed almost immediately. Mayday, Mayday. Blue Star 6 is going in. He had just cleared the landing zone when the aircraft engine quit.

And that right there is an excerpt from book three from a series of books called Undaunted Valor, which were written by Colonel Matt Jackson. And this is the third book of the series, which is subtitled Lam Son 719.

And the first book that he wrote in this series was subtitled An Assault Helicopter Squadron in Vietnam, 1969-1970. And we had the honor of covering that book with Colonel Jackson on this podcast. It was podcast number 275. And that first book is based on Colonel Jackson's experiences himself, as in Vietnam, as a Huey pilot. The Huey, the iconic helicopter of the Vietnam War. And that first book.

It'S written as a novel or a story with the main character. The main character is named Dan Corey, but that character is based on Colonel Jackson, and the events that are in the book took place. And this third book is written in a similar way. It's written from the perspective or focused on an individual named Dan Corey. But.

The events that are written about in this third book, they took place. And it continues to recount some of these incredible heroics from these helicopter pilots and helicopter crews in Vietnam. And this third book in the series tells the story of a massive operation.

Which included the largest helicopter assault of the Vietnam War. This is an operation that lasted 45 days. It was conducted in Laos, and it was an attempt to shut down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And this book, Undaunted Valor Lam Son 719 is filled with incredible details.

That Colonel Jackson got by interviewing and doing intense research to accurately describe what happened. And the book is an incredible read.

But we're actually not going to read the book much today. We're going to touch on a little bit because we have the honor of having one of the pilots who also flew Huey's in Vietnam and who flew missions in support of Operation Lamson 719.

His name is J. Tate. He's a retired major, US Army. He is the recipient of two Distinguished Flying Crosses, 38 air medals recognizing 950 hours of combat flying. The Bronze Star, the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry and the Silver Star for his heroic actions under fire. It is an honor to have him here with us tonight. Jay, thank you for joining us.

Wow. Well, that introduction was put me right back in the cockpit.

The. And that book is filled with those. Those either coming into landing zones or coming out of landing zones. It's just incredible to read and incredible to learn about the history of that operation. As a matter of fact, I was talking to a friend of mine that was in, that was in, in SOG in Vietnam. And I mentioned that you were coming on the podcast and I told him that you flew in Lamson 719. And the look on his face is, whoa, that was a. That was a rough one.

You know, we supported Command and Control north, which was the northern segment of SOG and in Vietnam. And.

I remember several missions that we flew prior to the kickoff of Lamsan 719 on the 8th of February. Prior to that. We were flying out of the Quang Tri Dong Ha area with a group of Command and Control north guys from up there flying.

West towards Khe Sanh, when all of a sudden, in our flood of four, we saw these orange fireballs coming up at us and we immediately took evasive action. 23 millimeter anti aircraft fire coming up at us. We took action to get out of there. Obviously the mission at that moment was called off and we made it back to Dong Ha. One of the guys over torqued his aircraft in the evasive action and it had to be grounded for inspection for tail rotor to make sure that nothing had happened that would cause him further damage or even crashing. But that was in January of 71, before the kickoff of 8, February 71.

Well, before we get into that, let's talk a little bit about the beginning of jt. Where'd you grow up? Where'd you come from?

I grew up in a little town called Hickory, North Carolina. I was Born in Pensacola. My father was a flying chief in the Navy, flew PBYs. He was in charge of a hangar at Pensacola that repaired the skin on PBYs that were shot up. And dad would take him up and fly what we call the idiot. Circle around the airfield and land it and check to make sure the rivets were holding okay on the aircraft.

So he was an enlisted chief? He was a pilot in the Navy?

Yep.

Oh, that's pretty.

He had a background in aviation. Well, not an aviation metalsmith, but in. He was. He was a metalsmith himself and did a lot of work with sheet metal and stuff like that. So obviously it was. It was a skill that the Navy needed. And dad was a real smart guy and picked up on it and loved flying and was. Got his wings. I remember his wings had a gold center with silver wings, which was different than the regular aviator who has all silver wings in the Navy or gold.

Wings in the Navy.

Yeah. So he was kind of disappointed I didn't go in the Navy. But when I went into army aviation, that sort of smoothed it over for him.

How long did he do in the Navy?

He was just a guy that went in in 1942 after Pearl harbor and got out in 45 and serv the rest of his time in the reserves. Got out of the reserves right after the Korean War. He was his own businessman, I was going to say.

What did he do for a living?

Yeah, he was a full time firefighter for the city of Hickory, North Carolina. And he also owned his own business. He had a Shell service station. It was called Tate Shell Service Station. And I remember he had Tate Shell. And it was in great big letters, illuminated letters on top of the service station. And the S letter burned out and had Tate hell up there. And so dad would do a few commercials on the radio and he said, business has been really good. We have sold the S out of hell.

Nice. So what about Mom? She the. What was she doing?

Mom was a typical housewife.

Brought me up as a stay at home. I grew up in a neighborhood where nobody locked their doors. We could go on vacation for two weeks. Doors would stay open.

I remember one time we had a fire in our home. Burned up all. It was in the closet. Burned up all of mother's clothes. And they had no way of getting in touch with us because we didn't have cell service back then. But I remember all the ladies in the neighborhood came down and had the house completely cleaned up when we arrived home. Except for the fact that mother's clothes Were all burned up, but she got the insurance and got to buy a whole new wardrobe.

That's not a bad thing.

That's the kind of neighborhood I grew up in.

Nice. What about you? What were you interested in? What were you doing when you were a kid?

Okay. N.R. it's quite ironic. In our neighborhood, we had a field that was vacant and we called it the battlefield. And you have to understand, this was in the early 50s and all of our parents had served in some form of military service. We had some marines, we had Navy, we had army. Didn't have any Air force, but we did have a Navy pilot that was there. So we would all put on the gear that our fathers brought home and would play army up on our battlefield. And.

We would dig foxholes and we would make our own hand grenades. But we couldn't pronounce hand grenades, so we called them hanker nades. And a hanker Nate was. We would dig up red clay in North Carolina, swatch it and would put water on it and. And fashion it into balls and let it sit out in the sun. And then we would throw those at the enemy. And I remember one time Eric Schufer got a black eye and his mother was not real happy that we were playing battlefield and throwing hand grenades.

And then what about as you got older?

As I got older, I really wanted to go to military school. And my parents were not quite. I was an older kid, so my parents were not quite ready to let me go.

I got into the Scouts, got to wear the uniform. See, that was very important to me then, wearing the uniform, wearing it correctly.

In high school, I got into the band. I was a drummer. But the uniforms are all shaped like the tailored after the West Point uniforms with the high collars. And. And to me, that was just added to the desire to want to do something in uniform. Didn't want to be a firefighter. My father was, but didn't care to be a firefighter. My uncle was a police officer. Didn't care about being a police officer. But there was something about the military that.

Was like a magnet to me. I would watch every. As a child, I would watch every movie, a military movie on TV that would come on. Randolph Scott, you know, played those big he man Marine, kind of like you, except you were in the Navy. But those things, I gravitated toward that. My good friend Don Murphy, who I grew up with, he did the same thing. He went to the Marine Corps, and it was really. He went the NCO route. I was the officer route. So at the times when we would be on leave and come home at the same time, I had to go through this whole rigmarole about being an officer and enlisted men really knew what was going on. And we were just there for showmanship.

So what year did you graduate from high school?

I graduated in 63.

Quite interestingly. I had tried out for the United States of America High school band as a drummer and was offered a trip. So we, these are two to four students from every state in the union. And we met at University of Southern Mississippi to practice. And then we toured all down through the south across over into Mexico doing concert tours all the way to Hollywood. We did a big concert in the Hollywood Bowl. I mean, how many people can say that? And again, in those outstanding uniforms that were similar to the ones that I wore, band uniforms that I wore in high school. And so it just added to the. And I was proud of that. I was very proud to wear that uniform. And I wore it right and I spit shined my shoes. I did that all the way from junior high school when I was in the band all the way through high school. So I knew how to spit shine.

But then I was offered a full scholarship to University of Southern Mississippi and also the University of West Virginia. I didn't like West Virginia because everything was hills. It seemed like everywhere you went, you had to go up a hill. And I know you Navy guys, you like that stuff. But, you know, I wasn't quite into that. So I took the scholarship to Southern Mississippi. There ROTC was mandatory for freshmen and sophomores. And so there again, here I was in uniform, not only and I was at the scholarship I was in at University of Southern Mississippi was a full ride music scholarship and I was a drummer in the University of Southern Mississippi band.

After my first year, I decided I didn't want to be a music major.

So I thought, well, you know, I think I'll go into art design because I like to be creative in this. So I transferred out of Southern Mississippi to my father's dismay, because it was all paid for. And I enrolled at East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee.

And there again, sophomore year. I was in my sophomore year, ROTC mandatory. But the more I got into it, the more I just really gravitated towards that. And I took my oath of office as an advanced corps cadet as a junior. And from there on it's just I cared more about getting that commission than I did about getting my degree. I had transferred majors from music to art design. So at that time we were all in the quarter system. So I had to go an extra.

Quarter.

To take up all the courses that I needed to take. And I graduated in December of 67. First went down the aisle in cap and gown, and then I.

After I got my diploma, then all the cadets go out, take off the cap and gown, and we put on our uniform coats. We already had the pants and stuff on for that under the gowns. So I came down and we were all commissioned then. And I remember my mom and dad pinning those gold bars on my shoulder. Boy, I tell you what, I felt like I had really accomplished at least the first phase of my life.

So that was 1967, December of 67.

I went on active duty in March of 68 as an infantry officer. Brand new, what we call butter bar.

Wearing the gold bar. As a second lieutenant, I went to the infantry school. It's called the Infantry Officers Basic Course at Fort Benning.

Just on the other side of the hill from us were all the OCS guys. They called OCS the Benning School for Boys. And I'll never forget, we were so here we were commissioned officers, and there they were hoping to be commissioned officers. And many times we would march by their area and I recall a big telephone pole. And on top of the telephone pole in the Officer Candidate School area was this black helmet, shiny black helmet with a gold bar in the center of the helmet. It was actually a helmet liner. And.

What they would try to OCS guys had this competition who could get up there and get the helmet first. Of course, the pole was always greased. And I don't know if anybody ever got up there and got that helmet without putting cleats on his shoes. But at any rate. But yeah, that was my first taste at Benning of being a real army officer.

So this is 1967, so you must have pretty much known as an infantry officer you were going to end up going to Vietnam.

Yeah, I was ready. I was prepared. I was mentally prepared.

While at East Tennessee State, I was a member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity.

Practically every one of the advanced corps cadets, juniors and seniors were army advanced corps, Army ROTC cadets and everyone. My fraternity was a big military fraternity and we took great pride in that. And I remember we would inspect each other in the fraternity house before we would leave to go to drill on Thursdays just to make sure everybody was dressed right, dressed, ready front.

And it was an honor to be an advanced corps cadet. And you had all of these underclassmen that you were leading. This was our first time as really Being a leader, giving commands.

Moving orders for platoon and company drill, and this kind of stuff. And so they were instilling in us. They being the cadre was instilling us.

The correct way of.

Being an officer, of showing authority without disrespecting people.

And you can correct people without disrespecting people.

And I learned that through rotc. And that's kind of, kind of interesting because I know that ROTC cadets coming out and being commissioned didn't have the greatest reputation amongst a lot of the NCOs in the army at that time.

So it's 1967, and you mentioned that everyone, freshman and sophomore, had to be in rotc.

It was mandatory at University of Southern Mississippi, and it was mandatory at East Tennessee State University. I can't speak for the other colleges and universities, but I would think that perhaps that was the manner in which every university, at least if a federally funded university, had to operate.

Wow, that's pretty. So what about. What about, like, as far as kind of the social aspects of America at the time, were you, starting in 1967, you. Were you really seeing much of the anti war attitude or anything like that?

No, not. We were not subjected to that. I don't recall that. I recall that on campus, there was no snickering when in uniform. Every Thursday was drill day. And so everyone had to show up for drill day, had to be in proper uniform.

If you were a sophomore or a freshman or sophomore, you were carrying the M1 grand raffle. And every week as a freshman sophomore, you had to go to the arms room and clean your weapon. And it had to be. And you see, you were taking ROTC for credit. So for the two years as freshman sophomore, you were taking ROTC for credit. So you best clean your weapon because if you didn't, you get a demerit. And X number of demerits means you got a drop in grade. So we would actually go through and do inspection before.

On every drill meet, which was on Thursdays. And that's how I learned how to inspect an M1 Garand rifle. And I don't know if you ever fired one of those, but I think.

I actually have fired one. I think I actually have. I fired a bunch of different weapons.

I'm sure you have.

We do like these familiarization shoots and they pull out a bunch of old weapons and new weapons and I can't. But I'm pretty sure I have fired one.

But they used to have this. When you would clean your rifle, when you pull the bolt back and you would have to clean down through the bore and everything. And then what you would do is you would take the little white cloth that you used to stick on the bore rod to clean the bore out, but you'd stick it down there and you'd look through and the light from that would shine up through and you could tell whether or not you, you had any materials in the board that shouldn't be there. But then you had to pull back on.

The charging handle. Yes. And then let it go right quick so it would go forward. Well, if you didn't let it go right quick, you would get what's called M1 thumb because it would get stuck. Right. And many times I had m1th thumb on that. Yeah, but.

So, so you go to the infantry course, what you call it.

The basic infantry course, infantry officers basic course, iobc.

So when, when you're in that, I mean, you must be. These guys are preparing you to go be a platoon leader in Vietnam, correct?

Correct. Yeah. 1542 platoon leader.

And. And this is now, is it 1968 now?

1968 now.

So there's a lot of experienced guys that are teaching you a lot, a lot. How long was that course of instruction?

Nine weeks, if I think correctly. Was it nine weeks or 16 weeks? I think it was.

Might have been 12 weeks. I'd have to think about that because I took my first command at Bragg. I was there in, in March and I took my first command at Bragg in around August.

So when you're going through that course, are you forming up platoons and you're going out and doing training missions and that kind of thing?

Yeah, that's exactly right. Forming in platoons and companies and then they rotated who was going to be platoon leader. I mean, we're all second lieutenants. Well, not all of us. We had some direct commission guys in there. I had a sergeant major who was direct commission to a captain and special forces guy and snake eater. And he was always the company commander.

Great guy, wonderful guy. But we would switch roles around. We participated in all different kinds of maneuvers, whether it be.

An armored column with infantry in it or whether it be squad tactics, whether it be platoon tactics, or whether it was in a company crossing over. What then they called the line of departure, the ld. We don't have that in warfare now. Everything there is no ld. It's like perimeter defense and we're going to that. But we practiced all of that. Not everybody went airborne, but we all did. The, the. Was it a 47 foot tower that dropped you out so you get a feel for what falling with a chute on is like.

But I was on a night combat compass course, and there was four of us. We went out in teams of four, pouring down rain at Fort Benning, Georgia.

Columbus, Georgia. And it was in the early spring and it was cold as hell, and we were sitting there chattering. And it was a night combat compass course. We were dropped off at a point on a road in a deuce and a half and all right, team Alpha out. So we would get out. And we knew where we were. Had a postmark with a number on it, and we had our map, so we knew where we were and then we had our directions. Okay, you're at point A, you got to be at point B. And you had to shoot your azimuth looking at your map, see, Shoot your azimuth with that and then go to point B. And then you go to point B to point C. But pouring down rain, cold tea, chattering. Only one guy in our force smoked. So we would have him light a cigarette and put it in his mouth, and he would go out following the azimuth until we would tell him to stop and light it so that we could make corrections. Okay, go two feet to your right, two feet to your left so that he was directly on azimuth. And then he would stand there with his cigarette lit and puffing on it so we could see the light. And then we would go to him. Then we'd shoot the next azimuth exactly the same way, send him out, and guess what? We made it. We made it. We were one of the first teams to make it through that night combat compass course. Of course, along the way, there were little surprises, like.

An explosion would happen over maybe 20 meters to our right, so we'd have to go down. Well, it was all planned as to where this stuff was going to go. And we didn't realize it, but, you know, there were seasoned troops out there taking care of us. They weren't going to let us get hurt. We didn't know that at the time, but.

During that night compass course, pouring down rain, I heard in the background.

And it got louder and louder and louder and louder and louder. And finally.

Straight over our heads, two Huey aircraft. And I said to myself, those guys are dry.

They have it better than I do. A couple days later, in our company area, they had a sign up. Anyone interested in army aviation, we're going to be given the flight aptitude test on a certain date. I was the first in the order room beside up for that thing.

And then that was it. You got picked up for it.

Graduated from Benning, took my first command at Fort Bragg. I was in interesting. Here I am an infantry officer and my command was a military. And was with a military intelligence battalion, MI Battalion. Here I am an infantry officer. I'll never forget my first sergeant, My first First sergeant, Sergeant Chuck Hawley. I don't think anybody ever forgets the name of their first first sergeant, not officers. And he brought me in, he treated me. I was kind of embarrassed because he had all these medals and here I am, brand new second lieutenant, no combat experience. And he treated me like.

With great respect. And.

He welcomed me aboard. I mean, I'll never forget the first time I walked in the orderly room. He calls the orderly room to a tension. I was sort of baffled. Here I have second lieutenant you looking.

Over your shoulder for a colonel.

Yeah. What in the world is going on? But yeah. And I learned a lot from Sergeant Hawley. My first. First sergeant. Never forget going out on just a maneuver. And here I am. We have our military intelligence with military intelligence. Mybars, Military Intelligence Battalion, Air Reconnaissance, my actual unit. And I was commander of Alpha Detachment. We had a live mission. We would take photographs that were taken by the Air Force, sent back to Fort Bragg. Photographs over Vietnam sent back to Fort Bragg. And my guys an Alpha detachment. And there was Bravo detachment and Charlie Detachment. But the missions given to our guys, we were actually taking the photographs and pulling intelligence out of the photographs using stereoscopes, which you can measure the height of various objects and so on and so forth. Then we would pull all that together and we would get in a bird dog at Fort Bragg and fly that to D.C.

And it was a real live mission. I mean, how many people can say that? We were actually doing a real live mission and in support of Vietnam at that time. Here I was a little second lieutenant, you know, barely dry behind the ears. And my first sergeant kept me straight. I had a bunch of warrant officers who worked for me too, and they really did all the work. I was there just to sign my name and.

Thank my first sergeant for keeping me straight.

How long did you do that job for?

4 months. Orders came down sending me to flight school at Fort Walters, Texas.

So you show up to flight school when we were talking, When I was talking to Colonel Jackson, it sounded crazy. The number of helicopter pilots that were being trained at that time.

It was amazing. Totally amazing. You see, Matt Jackson started off as warrant officer, so he had a whole different experience than I did.

That was for Warren, Officer Candidate School, we called them walks. And people said, well, what's a walk? And we'd say, well, that's something you.

Throw at a wabbit. Well, I think it's funny because when he's talking about you guys, the commissioned officers, they called them rlos. Real life officers.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So we had the real life officers and the walks.

Yeah, yeah. The real live officers. Yeah. And we were all. Each class had a designated color. And my class happened to be the yellow hat class. And you tell different classes by the color of baseball cap that you wore. And you had these funny wings that you sewed on the front of your hat. They weren't aviator wings, but like student aviator wings. And so we had the yellow hats, the walk class, going through. They were a yellow hat class. But we never, never got together. And that was the primary flight training. And that's where we just learned to fly. My first helicopter that I climbed into was a training helicopter 55. It's a Hughes 300 aircraft. But it was small. I mean, you could probably get the whole aircraft into this room, would have to probably knock out part of your wall so the tail rodent would get through. But that's how small it was. I mean, it was smaller than the OH13. And most people remember that when they watched mash or the H23, which was back in that era as well. But that's what I learned to fly on. It was so tiny, and being tiny, it wasn't easy to fly. It was very squirrely. So I remember people I said, man, I wish I was in that 13 or that 23. And they said, well, you know, you're getting some great pilot skills in that TH55, because you're learning how to adjust for wind and so on and so forth. And they said, boy, when you get to Rooker, that Huey is going to be like you're climbing out of a little Fiat into a Rolls Royce. And I remember our first cross country after we'd soloed. I soloed at my 14th hour. You had to solo within 16 hours or you got sent back to another class. So I soloed in my 14th hour. And that's amazing. Getting. You know, the instructor pilot gets out and says, okay, you've got the aircraft and you fly the idiot circle. And you call takeoff, you call turning into the wind, you call based, and you call final. You had to do all the correct call signs and everything, everything. And we were at little staging areas all around Fort Walters, Texas, which was in Mineral Wells, Texas. So we probably had staging areas as much as 50 miles out because you had all these classes and all these various staging areas.

And I'll never forget it was a little anxious when he climbed out of that cockpit and I knew that I was in control and.

But then after you flew your first solo.

Coming back in, the bus didn't stop at Fort Walters. At the fort, it stopped at the Holiday Inn. Tradition is everyone who soloed the bus would stop there. And those who hadn't soloed yet stayed on the bus. Those who had already soloed got off the bus with the new solo guys and they carried you and threw you in the pool at the Holiday Inn. And interestingly, at the Holiday Inn.

At Mineral Wells, they had crossed Huey rotor blades that you walked under to go to the swimming pool. And to have that honor of being thrown in the pool was just incredibly amazing and fulfilling.

Did you have any, did you have any trouble when you were going through aviation school? Did it come pretty naturally to you? Were you, you know, did you figure it out pretty quick or when you said 14 hours, was that about habit?

Well, no, I mean we have some guys that, that soloed at 10 hours. I mean they were, I mean, just incredible. But you have to understand, a lot of the guys I went through with already had their private ticket. Most of them fixed wing. I don't know of anyone in my class that that had a rotary wing private ticket.

And had they done that, they could have probably so load in five hours. It just all depends. But leaving there, here's the other interesting thing. All upon us, we're getting this flight pay plus we're getting our normal second lieutenant pay, which I think was like $247 a month.

How much was flight pay?

Oh, flight pay was. God, I know when I quit getting flat pay at the end, it was like 400 something dollars a month.

So that's kind of crazy, right? Like you're almost doubling your pay.

Oh yeah. Oh yeah. And but the interesting about it is you got all these single guys here. So what do we do? We go to the car dealer. So everybody, I remember a good buddy of mine, that was my roommate. He and I actually lived in a motel right up side the gate of Fort Walters. And he had a Camaro Z28, whatever it was. Z car, Z28. I had the Esmobile 442. And I mean that just goes on all the hot cars, you know, the single pilot, you know, we thought our Sierra didn't stink. We had that stuff, you know, we, you know, we Were just.

There was something about that that just started. The camaraderie just started building. And I remember when we left.

Fort Walters to go to Fort Rooker, Alabama, for our advanced training, there were four of us that convoyed all the way to. And we made our first pit stop in Montgomery, Alabama, but we convoyed all the way down through there, and we all had CBs in our cars. So, you know, it was like we were flying and we were talking to each other and that. And on the back of the car, everybody had United States Army Aviation and a little sticker in the back of your window, you know, and, you know, like I say, we thought our Sierra didn't stink. And we got to. We got to Montgomery. We all checked in that night, and I got a call from the desk that said.

I've got you listed as owning a 1968 Oldsmobile 442. It's black vinyl top with blue bottom. I said, yeah, yeah, that's mine. He said, sir, you need to come to the desk. I go to the desk, and there's a truck driver there. He had pulled his 18 wheeler into the parking lot. The motel where the four of us were all staying. Didn't cut sharp enough and hit the left rear quarter panel of my car and tore it all to pieces.

I mean, Schneider trucking, I'll never forget that. You see, there are trucks on the road all the time, and I'll forget the Snyder. Oh, and he was so apologetic, energetic, and so on. Called his dispatcher, and everything was fine. But anyhow, we had a couple days before we had to report into.

Fort Rucker. So my plan was I was just going to drive the car up to North Carolina, give it to my dad. They'd get it fixed up, he'd give me his car, I'd drive it down to Rucker. Well, we get up the next morning and I get a call from my roommate. Had been my roommate.

In the primary training. And he said, hey, Goomba. His name was John Vagnini. Hey, Goomba. Okay, now the joke's up. I said, what are you talking about, John? Where's my car? I said, john, I don't have your car. Come on. Come on. Somebody had stolen his car that night. Now my car gets hit. Somebody steals John's car that night. Montgomery police does all the. All the investigation. And so the next. So after that was done, I said, okay, throw your gear in my car. We're driving at North Carolina. So we drove to North Carolina, picked up my dad's car in the Meantime, John calls his dad, who owned a company called Superior Plastics, and in water, I'll think of it in a minute. But in New Jersey. And anyhow, John has a new car waiting for him just like that, from that. But yeah, that was the beginning of our.

Advanced course in flying helicopters for the United States Army.

So when you get to Fort Rucker, is that when you start flying the Huey?

Yep, yep, yep, it was. And it was like everybody said, the Huey came natural to me. It was just, I mean, it was amazing to crank that thing up and.

Then to.

Hold the cyclic and pull up on that collective. And I mean, it was just like everybody said, it's like going from a Fiat into a Rolls Royce. And it was so easy. I mean, it was, you know, even though it had a little crosswind, it wasn't shifting like the TH55 did. I mean, the TH55 would shift if you had a three knot crosswind.

But it was an incredible, incredible aircraft. And of course, while we were flying that, we were also getting our instrument training down there. That's the first time we'd been on instruments. So the instrument training was not in the Huey, it was in an OH13.

And that's where we were under the hood and, and flying on instruments and got what we called a TAC ticket, tactical ticket. It wasn't the regular standard instrument ticket that one would normally get, but it was a TAC ticket. And what was interesting about that, and this will come up later in our conversation, is I learned how to shoot ground control approaches very well. GCA approaches very well. And we'll talk about that later on in our conversation.

Is that where you learned originally to shoot it?

That's where I learned to shoot it, yep. And it came in very handy in Vietnam.

So how much longer was it until you. How long was that training?

That training we got there. And so that had to have been about.

Must have been about three, three or so months because I think in July. Yeah, it was in July that that I got my silver wings pinned on me and my mom and dad drove down. It was a wonderful experience. My girlfriend at the time came down with my parents. I was so proud of those wings. I mean, I was so proud of being a Butter Bar in December 67 and so proud of getting those wings.

Later on. That would have been in 69.

Because 68. I took over the command and went to flight school, went through Christmas, graduated in July 69. Very proud of that. I remember every weekend while we were at Fort Rucker, a bunch of us would go to Panama City, Florida. And there was a young couple and their two children, owned a motel there. So we went down, negotiated with them that we would like to come down every weekend and stay in the same suite of rooms.

And they knew that we were. Everybody in flight school was on orders to go to Vietnam right out of flight school, and they were certainly aware of that. And so they took us up on our offer that we would arrive on Friday night and leave on Sunday. And she had a closet in the suite, and she said, you just keep all your beach clothes and everything down here. I'll wash them, I'll clean them up for you, and I'll hang them back up in the suite. And she did that every night. Every Friday night we got down there, she and her family had dinner prepared for the four of us, and we all ate together as a family.

Now, that's people who cared.

Absolutely.

And.

I took my parents there, and right after we drove down to Panama City, after I got the Silver Wings, and we stayed in that hotel that night with them, and we all congregated. The family that owned it, we all congregated together. And then I left out the next day. My parents stayed down on Florida for a while, but the next day was the landing on the moon.

And we watched it after. My girlfriend and I watched it after we got back into Hickory from driving from Panama City, Florida.

Now, one of the things that I. When I first covered.

Colonel Jackson's first book, you know, one of the. One of the statistics that he brings up in the book is there was 5,000 Huey sent to Vietnam, and 3,200 of them were lost in combat.

Did your parents know these kind of statistics? Were they nervous as hell? Were they talking to you about, you know, what was going to happen? How did you feel about it?

My parents.

I never expressed any worry whatsoever about being. In fact, I wanted to go to Nam right after flight school. There were too many infantry officers serving infantry aviators in Vietnam. There were not enough slots for all the infantry aviators. There were infantry aviators who were like, I'm third in line to be a platoon leader.

As a captain. So what happened was all the infantry officers in my flight class out of Rucker, their orders were changed from Vietnam to stateside assignments. So I went to Fort Bragg and flew with Alpha Company, 82nd Aviation Battalion. There I flew with seasoned aviators who had come back from Vietnam. I was a platoon xo. My platoon leader was Captain Fred Dickens, who had flown with the Little bears in the 25th Infantry Division. He had flown over into Cambodia during that incursion. A lot of that's written. Cambodia is written up in Matt's first book there.

But I learned a lot from Fred. I learned a lot from the other. A lot of the warrant officers that were there who just. Jim Foster, for example, he had flown with the 48th Blue Stars and learned a lot about him because we did a lot of tactical maneuvers with the 82nd during that time. And he sort of gave me a feel for what I would be doing when I got to Nam.

Jim ended up being a roommate with myself and Fred Dickens, Captain Dickens. Jim and I stayed friends until this day. He was going to get out of the army, and I talked him into staying in the army and encouraged him to extend his enlistment as a warrant officer, which he did and finally retired out of the Army. I hope sometime Jim can hear this podcast and can smile a little bit about that. What's very interesting is that after I put in my orders to go to Nam again, requested Nam, orders came down sending me to the 7th Infter Division in Korea.

Commanding the 7th Inftor Division was a guy by the name of Hal Moore, who was Lt. Col. Hal Moore in the I Drang Valley with the 1st Cav. And we all know about. We were soldiers once in. Young General Moore at that time was two star general and I was the 7th Aviation Battalion maintenance officer. And when General Moore was a rated aviator, he had to fly four hours every month to maintain proficiency and draw flight pay. I don't know if you tell a general officer you can't draw flight pay, but at any rate, my job was to fly co pilot with him and I got to know him.

So is this in Korea?

This is in Korea. Now, see, I've put in orders. I put in a request to go to Vietnam. Orders come down, send me to Korea.

Okay?

Okay. So I was not that much aware of General Moore. I didn't know about the Idrang Valley back then. I mean, this was in 71. I didn't know much about the. I drank Valley, not 71. I'm sorry, this was in 70 when I got to Korea from Bragg. And so he asked me one day while we were flying how I liked my assignment with the seventh. And I told him, well, it was fine. But I said, if I don't get to Vietnam, sir, I can kiss my career goodbye. Because I mean, you know, I want to be a career army officer. And if I don't have Vietnam time and have performed well in Nam, I'll never Be a career army officer. And he talked a little bit. He said, would you have a particular unit you want to go to? And I said, yes, sir. I'd like to go to the 25th Infantry Division, fly with the aviation battalion. He says, any particular company? I said, alpha Company, sir. They're known as the Little Bears. He said, I know the Little Bears. I've heard of the Little Bears. They're a great unit.

That was on Saturday. On Monday, I got a call from the general's aide, and it said, general wants to make sure you're ready to go to nom. I said, yes, I am. Okay, you want to go to Alpha Company, 25th Aviation Battalion. Oh, the Journal wanted to know if you want to take any leave in the States. I mean, he can only authorize 20 days. But I said, well, sure, if I can get that.

Within three or four days. Orders came down. Now, I've been in Korea now maybe four or five months. By that time, orders came down. And usually orders and probably the same thing in the Navy, you have. You have regulations that authorize such and such. There were no regulations authorizing anything on my orders. It was all Voco, which means voice command. Voco between Commander, 7th Infantry Division, Commander, 25th Infantry Division, Voco. And it went all the way down to even commander of airlift out of Oakland. And my leave, my 20 days leave started. And so anyhow, I go to Kimpo Airport, I get on the airplane, okay, I'll fly home. My 20 days didn't start until I reached my home of record. And the 20 days was up the day that I left my home of record. So I'm not on leave until I reach my point. Left there after 20 days. Flew to Oakland, then Oakland to Nam. I get to Nam, and this was in the fall of.

70. I get to Nam. We're all getting off the airplane. You know, everybody hears about the humidity, how it just sucks the air out of you when you get off the airplane landing at Tan Son Nuke. So get off the airplane, okay. There's a. I think a lieutenant or major, lieutenant colonel out there and a bunch of enlisted men. And they say, okay. All the officers over to my right, okay. And then the sergeant major said, okay. All the NCOs in front of me, and there's another E7 that says, okay. All the list of men down here on this side. So we all get over there, okay. They're calling out names. So the colonel, the colonel major is calling out all the officers names, says, is there any name that I haven't everybody's raising their hand. Said, any name I haven't called out? I said, here I am. He said, you must be Captain Tate. I said, well, yes, sir, I am. He said, well, your chopper will be here in 20 minutes. And a chopper flew in from the 25th from Alpha Company, 25th Aviation Battalion to pick me up.

Oh, mackerel.

So pick me up, take me to Coochie. Where the 25th headquarters. We get out of jeep.

You must have made a hell of a good impression on General Moore. Oh, my goodness.

A jeep picks me up, drives me to the orderly room, and I go in and salute to the company command commander who's a major majors command of companies in Nam. And the major said, I don't know who the hell you are, but welcome aboard. Shook my. Shook my hand. And.

That was my introduction to The Alpha Company 25th Aviation.

That's amazing.

You made a joke about, hey, I don't know if you need to take the flight pay away from a general officer. Apparently those general officers had some power. That's incredible.

General Hal Moore. And I've read the book. I've watched the movie quite a few times. Even General Moore, before he passed away, thought that Mel Gibson did a good job representing him in the Sergeant Major.

But, you know, that was. He was a hell of a man, great leader.

He was not one of these general officers that set himself up on a plateau. He was down with his troops. And I saw that quality in him, and I was in great admiration for that.

So you show up. So you show up. What's the first thing that happens when you show up in Vietnam? Now, what did they. They must have thought you were the best pilot or something. Must have thought you were somebody.

The company xo. Company commander says, xo, get Captain Tate a place to stay. The XO said, well, sir, where would you like to stay? And I said, well, my buddy Fred Dickens, Captain Dickens, he stayed in a hooch called the Holiday Inn. He said, is that still around? He said, oh, yes, sir. The Holiday Inn is right over here. He said, let me say, oh, yeah, there's a bunk available. So I stayed in the same hooch that Captain Dickens stayed in. And after I got everything squared away.

The exit said, now there are going to be cocktails up here at Captain so and so's place. And he showed me where there was. And he said. He said, so, come on up and meet the guys. Well, this captain was great at fixing martinis. So, heck, yeah, I went up there, had a martini, they had some hors d' oeuvres out there. And I thought, wow, this is Vietnam. I said, this is really crazy. So I was with them right at two months into the 1st of November, and.

Orders came down for the 25th to draw down.

And prepare to head back to Hawaii. And I thought to myself, man, this is really great. I've been here two months now I'm going to Hawaii. And I'd already been laying out on top of a bunker in a lounge chair. I had a nice suntan and. And of course, my dermatologist doesn't think it's a nice suntan today. But at any rate, I thought, wow, this is going to be. I said, I'll get to Hawaii. I'll already have my tan. Everything looked good. Well, no. Everyone who had less than six months in country got reassigned. So I found my young rear on a C130 several, about a week or so later, headed to I Corps. There was no. Everything was pacified in three corps where the 25th was. I never flew into one hot LZ. In fact, I never flew into an LZ in three corps that had all been pacified. So, I mean, I had. I never even heard the door gunners work out with the 25th because there was. There was no enemy threat. We thought. At least at that time, it wasn't apparent. Get on the C130, fly me up to Fubai Fu Bai International I Corps, very close to.

The North South Vietnamese border. Got off the aircraft, got my parachute packing bag with me, full of my stuff, pouring down rain. And.

They all loaded us into a building and said we were going to go to Screaming Eagles.

Orientation training. And we did that for about a week. And then I got reassigned to my regular unit now. Interesting. I was with Alpha Company.

82Nd Aviation Battalion. When I got to the 7th. I was actually assigned as a staff maintenance officer, but I was located In Alpha Company, 7th Aviation Battalion, 25th. I go to Alpha Company, 25th. Where did I get assigned with? 101st Aviation Battalion. Alpha Company, 101st Aviation Battalion. Known as the Comanchera flight.

That was a week after I had become 101st.

Air Assault Trooper.

Then how long was it before you started flying missions with them?

Took my check ride. The next day.

I was a Peter pilot. The following day went into a hot LZ. First time I'd ever heard the M60 machine gun. Door gunner and crew chief working out the ship. Literally danced. When they pulled that trigger, you could feel the shake going in and going out. Hot lz. I heard ding, ding, ding. Three Pings on the aircraft came back and I experienced what they call you got your cherry busted. We took three rounds in the aircraft going out. LZ.

Came back that night. Once you got your cherry busted in the unit, a lot of spree de corps. I mean, esprit de corps, like you would. Well, you would because you've experienced that, Jocko. But I hadn't experienced anything like that. And so what do we do? He had to get initiated before you could wear the unit patch. And we had to drink this drink called a Flamin Hooker.

Sounds tasty.

It was Southern Comfort.

And you take a match and you light it. So you got the blue flames coming up.

And Echo's laughing here like he knows hell.

Yeah.

And had to drink it down, all the way down. Set the glass down while the blue flame is still burning inside of it, then turn it upside down. And if more than two flaming drops came out of that glass, you had to drink another one until you got it down. Now, keep in mind, I was an rlo, a real live officer. All of the warrant officers, they had a spree de corps, like you. You've heard of the War Officer Protective association, wapa. They took care of each other. Well, they all. Most of them had mustaches. Well, can you imagine drinking that Flaming hooker and you've got a mustache. And that blue flame was coming up and there were quite a few times that the mustaches had to be put out. And of course, the bartender was there with a glass of water that he could throw over in our little officers club.

I was on a little assignment overseas and we were in a bar and they had like a executive Happy hour from.

4 till 6. So we'd show up there at 3:59 and it was free drinks. It was free drinks. Free drinks for two hours. And I had like half a platoon with me. So we're in there. And this one, I was a young enlisted guy was crazy. And so we drink for the two hours and then we get done. And now, obviously everyone's primed. But I remember telling the bartender, we actually, yeah, we. We had run up quite the tab. But I looked at the bartender, I said, we don't want to drink anything else unless it's on fire. Fire. So every drink he was poured is lighting everything on fire. It was total, total mayhem.

You know, we all got a. We all couldn't wait till a new guy came in to the outfit. And. And that was in the O Club. Hey, the enlisted guys, God knows what was going on.

They were sadistic.

But. But we couldn't wait till a new guy came in.

You know, one of the things that Colonel Jackson talked about and wrote about was, you know, some of the flying that you doing when you're, when you're formation flyer flying and how it's so much closer than it was back in the States. And then the, the whole thing with the hover holes and getting down in there and having to listen to your crews like a hundred percent, you can't see actually what they're telling. You just have to trust them. Did you. Were you up to speed on that stuff or did you have to just get the steep learning curve?

Learn formation flying at Fort Rucker. Fort Rucker. When I left Fort Rucker, I was confident I could fly that airplane. I knew I could fly that thing. And we.

Right where the Jesus nut is on a Huey, which holds the main rotor in, there's like a red rubber gasket. So what you would do is you would. For the helicopter, let's say we're flying echelon lift. All helicopters from the lead are going to the left to fly formation in that. You would come up and you would have, you would put the red rubber.

Grommet right on, right about just below the windshield, just at the lower end. So that would keep your height above it. So you wouldn't get caught up in a rotor wash from the other helicopter, but you would keep it up. And in a staggered echelon left, you've got the lead, but every other helicopter is a little bit higher than the ones in, in front of them. And we flew a lot of formation flying at Rucker, so I felt very comfortable with that. And then, like I say, I was very fortunate to go to the 82nd after infantry, after flight school instead of going straight to nine because I became even more proficient that and more proficient in.

Formation flying.

But there's one thing you learn in formation flying in Nam is you don't want to get too damn close because one round could take out two. Especially if it's 23. Mike Mike or 37. And.

You don't want to be flying through debris. I mean, you know, so you did.

And we'll get talking about Lamson 719. We did 22nd separations in that.

How long were you then with 101st before Lam Son went down?

Okay.

So I got to the 101st.

Got into my unit a week before Thanksgiving of 70.

Quick side story. My cousin Charlie Fingers was with the 501st Signal Battalion, enlisted Guy on his second tour, volunteered for his second tour.

I got a hold of Charlie, brought him over to our unit, took him to the Officers Club. We had Thanksgiving dinner together. Now think about that. You're with your family having Thanksgiving dinner together. November 1970, and.

It was just a wonderful day to see Charlie. I never saw Charlie after that. He deroast went home.

I told him, I said, charlie, I'll come over one night, grab you and you can be my guest at.

The artillery battalion there because they always had the good shows, the USO shows and the Korean shows with all the all girl Korean bands. I said, I'll come over and get you one night. And he said, sir.

I said, charlie, I'm your cousin. He said, sir, it wouldn't be safe for you as an officer to be around our barracks at night.

And you know, fragging was a thing over there. And it was. So I took him to that and. All right, so make a long story short.

I'm flying combat missions. I flew my first command and control SOG missions probably by in December because they just didn't let anybody fly the command and control north missions.

You had a chance to have three R&Rs or you could have two RRs if one of your R&Rs you wanted to go back to the States. So I elected to go back to the States.

A week after Christmas and.

Went back, spent a wonderful time with my family New Year's Eve there with Fred Dickens. He and by the time his wife, my old C.O. captain Fred and I left about a week after that to fly back to Vietnam.

Got into Tan Son Nhut and.

Tried to get a went to flight operation. I said, I need to get up to Fubai. And the guy said, sir, there's a major, major operation, big thing going on. He I don't know when I can get you out of here. I said, I got to get out of here quick because there's a major thing going on. He said, well, sir, just stick around here. And lo and behold, within an hour they had a.

C123 flying.

130. And there's a big difference between those two aircraft. But you'd rather fly on a 130 anyhow. C123 is only two engines.

So when you were flying those, when you flew SOG missions, I mean, I look at the profile, those SOG missions that those guys were doing and it just, it's, it seems just completely crazy. Were you thinking that? Were you thinking, okay, here's whatever, two Americans and four Vietnamese soldiers, I'm going to drop them off in the middle of Cambodia or Laos, and. And we'll see what happens. Did that seem crazy to you?

You know, it didn't. It didn't.

Right on.

And I'll tell you what, man. We would fly down to Da Nang. We flew out of three with sag. Da Nang was the major base. That was our headquarters. There was one at Fubai and there was one at Quantri Dong Ha area.

The ones we flew out of Da Nang were crazy. I mean, it was. I mean, that's like they got the music going, everything. And would flight follow with Covey, the Air Force fixed wing, who would be up above us and vector us into where we're supposed to go?

I don't know how much of this I can. I guess it's pretty declassified by now.

Yeah, well, I mean, it's pretty declassified. It's been 20 years was the time limit.

Okay, so.

Here'S a mission. We go into. We fly a team in.

We put them in an area where Covey has either told us or shot white phosphorus down and landed. And then we spiral and go down into the landing zone. Spiral and go into the landing zone. We drop them off.

Then if they get into contact, then we got to go back in there and pull them out. Which that did happen quite a few times. A lot of times it didn't happen. It didn't happen at all. There were times we went in and they were in contact and we had to pull them up with ropes. McGuire rigs. 120 foot ropes stretched 10ft, 130 foot. They had to strap them on. We had to pull them out of the jungle. Sometimes it was ladders that we would drop down and they climb up on the ladders and get out.

And that was extractions. We never did. Well, we did some insertions with ropes, too, because they were going out on the side of a mountain and there was no way. With foliage and there was no way we could land.

So we would put them down. But I remember times that I pulled guys out on ladders and there would be. There were three guys on my ladders. Now, you got to think about that and the density, altitude, and what that does to the lift of helicopter. So we got them out and got them back into Vietnam. That's when you say, oh, my thank God we're back in Vietnam. You know, that's when you start to realize. And we came in and we had to land in like a rice paddy so these guys could get off the ladders and get back in our choppers. And you Just didn't. And any, any moment you just felt like, this is it, I'm gonna, I'm gonna buy it. And a couple of our guys did on command and crow north missions and died. And a lot of the SOG guys went with them. So that's the bad part. I lost 14 guys the year I was in Nam. But here's one mission we flew in. We were going to insert a team, landed in the LZ, big elephant grass, probably 8ft high, rotor wash laser grass down. And when it did, the whole LZ was ringed with nva. And our door gunner started working out and firing. Everybody's firing and everybody says, sire, get the hell out of here. Get the hell out of here. And we were firing, firing. We were taking rounds too, but nobody aboard our aircraft was injured. I mean, that's just one thing. We would do prisoner raids. Intel would tell us where there was a big NVA battalion headquarters.

We had all the intel on it. We knew the comings and goings had been watched and watched and watched. And we would fly out flight of four.

The third aircraft was always had the medic on it. And the fourth aircraft was the aircraft that would pull your ass out if you got shot down. First two aircraft would go in. I happened to be on the second aircraft. Personal raids where we went in and landed right in the damn middle of a NVA battalion headquarters. The guys on board jump out. I bet you we weren't on the ground 20 seconds and they're coming back in. They've got captives, they've got all sorts of documents in our hand. We get back on that ship and our asses out of there, going to the Nang, I mean, that's the. And it was exciting. I mean, I'm not going to tell you the anxiety wasn't there, but I wasn't scared. It was exciting. And they would come back and have cold beers. I mean, ssog.

Yeah. Another day at sog.

So I guess you did think those missions were a little bit crazy.

Yeah, but it was fun crazy. We were young, we didn't know any better. I guess to fly them today.

I.

Probably couldn't see the damn instruments, but.

So you're flying, you've flying a bunch of those missions and. And now you're. I mean, it sounds like you're racking up some pretty good hours and some pretty good experience.

Yeah.

At doing it. And. And then so. So lam, son. When did you. So you got back from your, your Christmas and New Year's leave. So that's January Whatever.

Yes, it's early part of January.

You come back and now it's. It's. You get told immediately, hey, there's some kind of big operation. We don't really know what it does, but you got to get up there.

No, they just said, there's a big operation going on in I Corps. And I said, I got to get up there. I told them, I'm a platoon commander up there. I've got to get up there. My guys need me up there. So anyhow, I get up there. It's very well the. It's kept quietly.

So when I got into my unit and said, what the hell's going on? People kind of looked at me like, what are you talking about? And I told them all about that. And my company commander knew about it. Major Clue, Bob Cluell, he's in the book. Bob knew about it. But anyway, that's when I told you that prior. And this was in January.

We take a SOG mission out of ccm, mission out of Dong Ha, and we're flying towards Laotian border crossing in the vicinity of Khe Sanh, when those red balls of. Orange balls of fire start coming up at us and we have to take evasive action or get shot down by 23 Mike Mike or 37.

And we knew. And see, as far as I'm concerned, that was reconnaissance in prep four. And that wasn't just one reconnaissance. That was just one of many reconnaissance in Prep for Lamson 719.

So the premise of Lamson 719, and again, the book Undaunted Valor, it's volume three. Lamson the subtitles. Lamson 719. The premise of the operation is that America wanted to go into Laos and shut down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They also, America didn't want to put any troops, any American troops on the ground inside a Laos, because they didn't like the way that looked politically. So they decided, well, we'll run the operation using South Vietnamese soldiers. But in order to actually execute the operation, they were going to need to have American aviation because America was the only one really capable of doing that job of airlifting all these South Vietnamese soldiers into Laos. And then on top of that, if you're going to use the helicopters, then we're going to use the air support, too, in the air assets. So that. That's sort of the. The premise of the operation. And it's a big, big operation. The goal, like I said, the goal is to kind of put a halt on the portion of the Ho Chi Minh Trail that ran through Laos.

And the headwaters of that was in the town of Sapon.

So that was the final objective, was to capture Sapon. It's spelled T, C, E P O.

N E. It's got a weird spelling.

Yeah, it's got a weird spelling.

But yeah, that was the goal. And that was kind of. That Suppone was the furthest away, the deepest into Laos to get to there would be correct.

The furthest north of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Call it the headwaters of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

I would say there's also. And reading about it there was also. The underlying goal was to prove that the South Vietnamese military could conduct these operations, that they were capable. That they were capable of doing these kind of things.

That was part of Nixon's Vietnamization policy. The more that the South Vietnamese could prove that they could take care of themselves and defend their homeland, then the less there was need of US Forces, especially ground forces.

So you're saying that you're. Your company commander kind of knew about it when you showed up there.

I have to think he did, because Major Clue did not seem overly surprised.

In fact, if I recall, and I hope I'm not making this up, but if I recall, he seems surprised that I made it up in as quick a time as I did from. From Saigon.

Now, prior to the actual execution of Lamson 71 9, there was another operation that was to push up to the Caisson Combat base.

Yeah. Off of Route 9. It's called Dewey Canyon 2.

Now, did you participate in Dewey Canyon 2?

You know, I have to think I did, but I'm not. It's kind of hard to.

Because I flew so much. I mean, I flew over 1200 hours in Nam, 950 of which were actual combat missions.

So I have to think that I did.

I never recall flying any. What they call convoy support. A lot of that would have been done by Charlie model and Cobra gunships to take action.

No doubt in my mind did I fly supporting operations for Dewey Canyon 2. But.

I never quite tagged it as Dewey Canyon 2.

Hell, I had so much going on anyhow of trying to keep my warrant officers, enlisted men and 10 helicopters flying.

But the point of Operation Dewey Canyon 2 was to push up into Khe Sanh and get control of it. And then that was going to then be used as a logistics hub and an air hub to conduct this big operation. Lamson 719. That's what the purpose was.

But in addition to that, too, was to put the South Vietnamese army in a position to where they could Readily launch across the border.

So pre staging all these folks, all these soldiers up there, get them ready.

The, the, the area that you were going into had some serious enemy troops in there. You know, the, you know, some of the estimates I read, 7,000 combat troops on the ground in that area of Laos, 10,000 support personnel.

Another, another 5,000 path Lao fighters. So it was, this was. You were going into tough country.

33,000 total is the estimate. That's pretty much kicked around of all. Of all the categories you just described.

So when did you actually find out that this mission was going down?

We got the briefing on it. The mission actually started on 8th February of 71. By that time.

Hunter first command post was in operation at Khe Sanh.

General Berry was up there.

Matt Jackson features a lot of Barry in the book.

And I have some stories about that that I'll share with you later on.

I flew several missions in support of that, taking troops into.

Hill 30, Hill 31. Ranger Arvin Rangers were in 31.

We have pickup zones, PZs, if you will, at various stages. We'd land in and then take them to the LZ around there. But that was just in prep for.

And really.

The big action for me, the thing that I guess.

Made me realize that, my God, there's a real war going on was in lzlolo, which was on the 3rd of March.

Yeah. I'll tell you one thing that's interesting. When you read this book and when you hear about this, this operation, you know.

Most of the time when you think of, oh, that what the, what the Vietnamese are doing, it's sort of like what the North Vietnamese doing, what the Viet Cong are doing. It's sort of like a hit and run. It doesn't seem like these big conventional operations. And if they did do a big assault on a base, you know, they'd kind of do it. They'd. They'd, they'd mess some things up and then they'd leave. They were doing big coordinated attacks against the South Vietnamese forces. This was almost like bordering. In fact, this was like conventional warfare.

Conventional warfare, correct.

But you didn't see that. Right. On the 8th of February. That came later on.

And.

It was devastating to witness. Some of what I witnessed after the 3rd of March, what I witnessed on the ground with the South Vietnamese army.

Especially when we would go into resupply.

Around Hill 30 and Hill 31.

I saw some heroism, but I saw so many.

The ARVN army of the South Vietnamese army saw so many of those soldiers throw their weapons on the ground and run to grab onto our skids so that when we lifted off we'd pull them out of the battle space. That was disheartening. It was horrible.

Yeah, I remember reading one part where it's exactly what you said. A resupply comes in and the helicopters, as they leave, they're overloaded with ARVN soldiers that are just trying to get.

Out of there, throw their weapons on the ground and run and grab onto a skid. I mean, I witnessed soldiers losing their grip and falling 1500, 2000ft to the ground below. And.

Do you feel sorry for them or do you say, you coward, you got what's coming to you. And you know, it got to the point, jocko, where we would, I remember landing in, and I can't remember, I think it was 31 that I landed in, but we were landing where mortars were blowing up right in front of us and we would have to maneuver over and mortars were flying, were hitting Everywhere in that LC and we would literally come to about a 10 foot hover, kick off the supplies. You can't come any lower because they would jump on your ship and even at a ten foot hover they would run, jump on people's back and they would hoof them up onto the skid. I mean, a ten foot hover.

And you start to wonder, well, when's it going to be my day, you know, And I remember having this, having this thing that came through my mind is.

You know, I know I'm going to die, so I'm just not going to worry about dying. I know I'm going to die, just don't let me get shot up so bad. My mother can't.

Recognize me.

But I knew I was going to get it. And then it didn't bother me anymore. It did not bother me anymore.

About dying. I accepted the fact that was going to happen. I knew God take care of me and my mother would recognize me.

Having that feeling though, and then seeing the South Vietnamese just, you're doing all you can to help them out, risking your lives and they're just wanting to get out of there.

We picked up body bags of the South Vietnamese body bags for U.S. forces. And you've seen them, they're sturdy, they're zippered. The body bags for the South Vietnamese forces were like one hour Martinizing bags, little thin plastic bags had bodies in them. They had laid out in the sun for several days. They were all bloated and.

Body fluids filling up inside the body bags. And that's the Only time where we really put skids on the ground so they could load up bodies. And, of course, the Vietnamese didn't run and jump on the aircraft because they didn't want to run and jump on all those bodies that were bloated. And it got to the point where we had to wear gas masks. One of us in the cockpit had to have a gas mask on because of the smell was just nauseating. And we would bring them back into Khe Sanh or lz Brown, wherever a pickup zone was, and the South Vietnamese troops would unload the bodies. And I remember. I remember one. It just. It just. The guy grabbed the arm of a body, and when he tried to pull the body out, the whole arm came out of the. Out of the body. It was just sickening. It was beyond.

It was beyond anything that most humans would ever experience. And.

You know, you go through that and you say, well, what's the purpose?

Why are we here? Why are we doing this? I had a warrant officer who I asked during lamsan to ask. I said, I need more people to fly this mission. He says, I'm not going to fly the mission. I said, I need you. I'm not going to fly it. I said, why not? He said, because nobody cares. Congress doesn't care whether I live or die. And what's the use of. Look what they're doing up there. And I said, well, mister. And I won't say his name, but you got to do what you got to do. He had too many hours. You know, he had over 140 hours flying that month. So he was. He was way within his legal rights to say, I'm not going to fly anymore. But guess what? Most of us had that as well. Most of us were flying.

I mean, dead tired, and we did it. And. But, you know, that started me thinking. Who cares? Who really cares whether we do, whether we do or not, whether we die, or whether we come home alive? I mean, look at what the South Vietnamese are doing. Vietnamization. Yeah, tell me about it. Richard Nixon, why aren't you over here at Lamsan719 looking at this? And then you tell me Vietnamization.

Made me a changed person.

And we hadn't even talked about lzlo.

Yeah, I mean, lzlo came a little bit into the operation. I mean, I just kind of want to run through a little bit of the timeline of. So this. This operation starts on February 8th. There's 4,000 ARVIN that are going in on Route 9. The 39th Ranger Battalion is heloed into LZ Ranger. The 1st Infantry Division's going into LZ Blue and Don and White and Brown and FSB's Hotel Delta and Delta 1. And again, the, the book gives such good detail on all sides. The planning, what the, how the decisions were being made. It's just, it's just a fantastic.

Recounting of what happened.

And meanwhile, it's still Vietnam. You still got bad weather, you still got low clouds, you got heavy anti aircraft fire.

There's a lot of airstrikes are happening. So you know, the B52s are dropping bombs, arc lights. Yeah, but look, there's a lot of NVA up there and they're ready to fight.

Then they start actually attacking. Like I said, like by, by, I don't know, February 16th, 17th, the, the, the NVA starts doing organized attacks.

Correct.

And.

Really bringing it to, to the, to the people, to the, to the South Vietnamese soldiers that are now on the ground.

And here's, here's another thing that I was reading about. By February 24th there, there were reports coming back that the, that the North Vietnamese had completed a new route and they were just going around that area of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They were just, you know, okay, well, you guys want to block that? Cool, we'll just. We had another alternate route.

February 25th, just a massive North Vietnamese assault. And it's combined arms. They got armor, they got artillery, they got infantry assault. They're doing combined arms assaults. Again, this is not what we typically think of in Vietnam. I know it happened from time to time, but it's not what you generally think of in Vietnam. You don't think of pitched conventional warfare like we're dealing with here.

There's just. Yeah, yeah. The one quote I got was, 94, there's a helicopter resupply to FSB 30.

And 94 South Vietnamese soldiers forced their way onto the helicopters to get out of there, including the commander.

That's on March 2nd, by the way.

We get to March 3rd, which, which you've discussed a few times. And, and.

Well, actually, let me jump into this small, small portion of the book here that, that talks about some of what you guys were doing. I'm going to go to the book here. Warrant Officer Doug Womack, Rattler 28 and Chalk 3 considered a board aborting his approach. Watching Arnie being shot down and hearing flight lead calling for mission abort. Not hearing anything else about aborting the mission, he decided he needed to insert his load of Arvin soldiers. Unbeknownst to him was the fact that no Arvin had survived. In the first two aircraft.

Approaching the landing zone, he was subjected to the same intense fire as the Chalks before him. Upon landing, an rpg, the PG rocket was fired, but slammed into a stump and exploded, showering the aircraft with shrapnel when it did. Time stood still for Mr. Womack as it seemed he could count the main rotor passing in front of the aircraft. Several rounds ripped across the aircraft from three bursts of AK47 fire. The rotor blades, cabin lower fuselage and skids all received the damage as the aircraft lifted out of the landing zone and hammer blows were felt by the pilot. Look. And the pilot looked back. Not only were there holes in the floor of the cargo area, but strange sounds told him that the main rotor might have taken some hits as well. Chalk Four followed Chalk Three into the landing zone where it received intense small arms fire. Crashed and burned. Chalk Four crew scrambled back to Chalk Five and rode out. This kept up as each Chalk came into the landing zone to drop off the ARVN soldiers on board. Chalk 16 Comanchero 30, flown by Bob Morris, entered the cauldron of fire and landed. Like everyone before him. He could feel and hear the hits on his aircraft. We're on fire, someone said over the road radio, but didn't identify themselves. Morris pulled in power and initiated his takeoff very calmly. He heard his crew chief say over the intercom, Mr. Morris, you do know we're on fire, don't you? Mr. Morris quickly returned to the landing zone and exited the aircraft. Chalk 18 approached the landing zone at 90 knots airspeed instead of the usual 40 knots. When so close, he picked out his landing point just as a mortar round exploded at that spot. Suddenly his tail dropped low and the nose went high as Captain Tate went into a hard deceleration with numerous hammer taps on the aircraft. Three feet from his touchdown point, there was a loud explosion. A gaping hole appeared in the window frame and there was the smell of hot metal. Engine oil pressure was no longer steady but fluctuating. ARVN soldiers had no desire to wait for him to land and dove out of the aircraft. The safety of a prone position on the ground pulling in and pulling in an armpit of collective. Tate's Aircraft tail number 049, raced out of the landing zone with a hail of small arms. Bullets chafed, chasing after him. His aircraft had flown its last mission. Within an hour, only 19 of the 40 aircraft were able to enter the landing zone.

Nineteen out of 40 aircraft were able to enter the landing zone.

Morris crashed in the landing zone, came back in Crash. We had another aircraft went in, Berg flown by Berg. He crashed in the lc. They were on the ground. One of the co pilots, Captain Jerry Cruz, Comanchero, been a second tour in Vietnam, first tour as a Ranger. Jerry was on the ground with a prick 25 radio calling in airstrikes and actually conducting the ground warfare in the lz.

Cause the ARVIN officer, Major just Jerry knew what he was doing. Jerry was the one that eventually said we got to halt this because there's too much crap going on in here. And Kirk Lautter.

Obviously took it and we stopped the insertion for a while and went back, picked it back up again later on the afternoon. That morning.

We got hit by a rocket propelled grenade. As you've described. The gaping hole in the windshield hit the windshield strut. It was shot at about a 45 degree angle. So when it hit the windshield it exploded out instead of exploding in.

Crew chief said sir, sir, sir. Get the ass out of here. Get the ass out of here. Sir, sir. The nunciator panel, which is all our control warning lights look like a Christmas tree lit up.

And we took off. Within several seconds we started feeling harshness in the controls. The hydraulic system warning light was blinking and within, within another short amount of time we lost all hydraulics. It took both of us on the controls to. It's like going down the highway at 85 miles an hour and the power steering goes out and you're coming up on some major curves. It took us both on the controls.

We were finally able to get it back in called emergency at Khe Sanh.

We were like number two or three emergency at that time, guys ahead of us who had gotten blown up on Lolo. And we got it down.

We had to make a low slow into. And we thought, God, we're going to get shot out of the sky just trying to get in the land at. On the Pierce steel planking Runway at Khe Sanh. But my God, it was a textbook landing. And we were able to get her down. And no sooner than we got it down and unass the aircraft to deuce in half with the chain pull the aircraft right off the Runway. Getting ready for another person calling emergency.

I remember Colonel Fernander, Bobby Fernander. He was our battalion commander, 101st Aviation Battalion, which was part of the 101st Aviation Group commanded by Colonel Davis. You'll see Davis's name in that book. Fernander is also mentioned in that book. But Fernander comes out and sort of throws his arms around us like God, I'm so glad you guys made it. And he said, come on. There's another briefing going on in the tent. Sue.

We all ran over to the.

Big briefing tent, and your aircraft was. Is it the correct word, totaled?

Yeah, it couldn't be flown again.

Couldn't be flown again.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, whether they hooked it out of there and got it repaired or what, but it shot out hydraulics. We had 47 holes in that aircraft that morning. We counted the holes in the aircraft, 47 holes, and lost hydraulics. And the.

Any of you guys, Any of your guys get wounded in the aircraft?

Isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing?

I mean, it just blows my mind. But Fernander came out. I thought it was interesting. Here's a lieutenant colonel coming out, and it's like, welcome us home and hurry up. We got to get in a briefing tent. We got this thing. And we had a briefing tent for the. We were in the briefing tent. Kirk Leiter Kirkland was commander, 223rd Aviation Battalion and told us about the afternoon mission. We got to get back in there. We got more troops to insert into Lolo. And Colonel Fernando looked at me and he said, well, I'm sure you want to go in there and fly. Two of your crews are on the ground in there. I said, yes, sir, I certainly do, but I don't have an aircraft. He said, well, take mine. I said, sir? He said, take mine, but the only thing, you got to take my crew chief with you.

And then he pulled me aside and he said, now, listen, that's a brand new aircraft. Don't you bring that thing back the way you brought yours back this morning. I said, yes, sir.

Well, you didn't obey that order very well, did you?

No. Because 58 holes in his aircraft. When we got back that afternoon, we were able to rescue the guys off the ground.

So talk us through that. So you launched launch again to go back into. This is. By the way, this is LZ Lolo. You call it Lulu Lolo. Lolo, yeah.

It's named after.

Lola, Brigida. They were all named after. Liz was after Elizabeth Taylor. What was the other one? I can't think of a name right now. But they were all named after Hollywood starlets. But.

So you get. You get the briefing of. Okay, we got guys on the ground. We got to go back in there.

Yeah.

And. And you just have 47 holes in your aircraft. You saw a bunch of your friends get shot down. You saw a bunch of other aircraft get shot down that are sitting in the lz. Now you get brought in the briefing room. Hey, you got to go again, you say, I don't have an aircraft. Aircraft. The boss says, you can take mine.

Didn't even have 25 hours on it yet. Brand new Huey. And the only one caveat you got to take my crew chief. Okay.

So.

We get to start. We get to say, okay, let's. Let's crank them. Oh, and by the way, there was no unit integrity anymore. I mean, we were just all kind of a whole big unit, like, whoever could match.

Whoever could. In a bird, whoever could go.

And so.

We take off. We have troops on board. We take off, we put those troops on the ground.

And I'm hovering around for a few seconds to make sure that our guys have gotten off. They were picked up by common chairs in front of me, but I wanted to make sure that we had everybody off the ground. And by that time, as you described the hammer taps on the screen, I mean, it was just all over. And it's like I said earlier, some people say, what was it like? I said, take your bare hand and grab a wasp nest full of wasps. That's what it was like. And so, again, the same scenario, taking all these hits. Thank God, didn't get hit by an rpg. But the annunciator panel listing all the circuit, if a major system goes down or is damaged, you have a little light that flashes on. And on that light, it says, for example, hydraulics. So you know something's happened to your hydraulic system. Tail rotor, know something's happened to your tail. So. But the one that got me that started flashing was main rotor, transmission.

What does that one mean?

Transmission.

Oh, the transmission rotor, yeah. Okay, so it means what it says.

Yeah, yeah.

And.

We got her back on the ground. We were able to come to hover. We put it down at Khe Sanh, and the main rotor locked, seized, turned the chopper almost 270 degrees around from our landing header. There were actually Bell Tech reps up at Khe Sanh.

Looking at damage. And what, because they were writing their reports for, hey, this is what we need to improve on the newer models of the Huey. They were writing their reports. The guy told me, he said, sir, you're very lucky. He said, you could have had that transmission, could have seized in the air. He said, you guys wouldn't be here. And it seized on the ground.

Fernander came over.

58 holes in an aircraft and a locked, seized transmission.

Seized transmission.

That. That. That helicopter obviously didn't fly again that day. That's two of them. One day.

We.

Like to Say we'd lost a lot of aircraft that day and it was getting nighttime.

We had this guy that liked to fix this stuff called Comanchera stew. And.

There were. On caisson, there was actually wild onions that you could pull out of the ground. And he and a bunch of guys had collected that and he always kept this pot and poured a can of water in this pot and throw those things. Then put a bunch of C rations in there and stir all that stuff up and. And you know, anything tastes good with Texas Pete on it. And so.

We were all. He had all that stuff done and you know, we were. Everybody was sort of sitting around. I think he had some paper plates or something with him and, you know, you eat with your fingers and all that stuff. And we were all sort of together around there waiting for Major Clo to come over and tell us what our, you know, next missions were. We'd lost. We took 10 aircraft up that morning and we lost.

Well, we lost, if you count 11 aircraft, Colonel Fernanders Byrd. We lost seven.

We did have one gunner hit, but.

You know, Purple Heart wound, but superficial, but still he got hit. You know, that's bad stuff. But we're sitting there sort of gathering around, and all of a sudden we see coming towards us this figure just tall and lean and just. And I got the glint of the stars on his helmet. And as he got closer to us, he just. He was the epitome of spit shot and boots. And it was General Sidberry.

And he came over and he said.

I just want to tell you common chairs what a great job he did today.

And.

He said, I. I don't want to disturb your child. And we said, well, sir, come on, have some child. He said, no, that. That's your child. I grabbed something to eat up here, but I just wanted you all to know what a great job you did today. And with that he said, colonel Fernander, I'm going to release you all for the night. So we all jumped on the four remaining aircraft and came back to Camp Eagle.

There's a section in here in the book where that gets described a little bit. You're on this flight back to Camp Eagle and I'm going to the book here. It says, sitting mesmerized on the floor of one of the Hueys was Captain J. Tate, Comanchero 26 Tate, the 2nd Flight Platoon leader, was deep in thought, having lost two aircraft this day to enemy fire. The flight was at 6,000ft, flying over. Flying over a cloud overcast, with the sun projecting the aircraft Shadow on the cloud below them. In addition, a halo appeared around the shadow. He was sitting in the doorway behind the right seat pilot with a set of headphones that the crew chief had given him. Wondering to himself why he and his crew had survived this horrendous day. He heard a voice say to him, don't worry, Jay. You're gonna be okay. He looked up to see who was talking to him. No one was. Each passenger was lost in their own thoughts. He heard the voice again. Don't worry, Jay. You're going to be okay. Just then, Amazing Grace played on the Armed Forces Vietnam Radio Network.

And there's a footnote here that says, one week later, Jay received a letter from his mother. She related a dream she'd had the night before in which Jay's father had told her, don't worry, Jay. You are going to be okay. The letter was dated for March.

Jay still has the letter.

Touching.

Yeah, that's. That's an amazing, amazing story.

Emotional.

I watched that shadow. We were actually flying between two layers of clouds.

The sun broke through the upper layer and cast a shadow. And of course, the heat of the chopper, the coolness of that altitude forms sort of a rainbow effect around that shadow.

And.

The. The crew chief actually didn't lend me a set of earphones. I had my flight helmet on and had it plugged in listening to afvn. And because I had been talking about. He said, there's a major action, a major war going on up in Accor. And he said. He said, there's been a lot of.

A lot of helicopters destroyed and said, I want to play this next song for these guys. That's when he played Amazing Grace.

And.

I can tell you, as I sit here right now, I heard that voice.

And to get that letter.

And to hear my mom and to hear her read her words that she thought dad was telling her, don't worry. Jay's going to be okay.

And she woke my dad up. And dad said, oh, honey, you're dreaming. Go back to sleep. She said, no. You said, didn't you tell me Jay's going to be okay? He said, honey, don't worry. You're.

Don't tell me there's not a God.

I mean, if I pretended to be a Christian at one time. But I'll tell you what, that afternoon.

I became a Christian.

That's the only way I can say why I survived. And that's not to say those who died weren't. Because I had prayed. God, I know I'm going to die. Just don't let me get shot up so bad my mother won't recognize me.

And I came home.

Changed person.

When my mother died.

She had the same pastor. She passed away in 2010.

She had relayed that story about the dream to our pastor, and he had made notes about that. That was in his file. And during her celebration of life service, he talked about that.

When you got done, when you guys flew back to Camp Eagle, did you. What, did you stand down for the night and then you went back into it?

Our flight ops guys were monitoring everything on our company frequency, and they had heard all the chaos and.

The horror that was being dealt to us. And.

So of the 10 crew.

We all came back on those four ships, because 11 ships if you count Colonel Fernander's ship.

They were all outside waiting for us to come in, waving their hats. And we all landed. And they all ran up and everybody was getting a hug, and everybody was cold. Beer was on the flood line.

And it was just a big celebration. And especially because we brought hell. Morris and his crew and Berg and his crew, Jerry crews. We got them off of there, and they were sitting on the floor too, plugged in, listening to something.

That's the camaraderie. And as I told Matt Jackson, I said, aviation crews are different.

Rank is superfluous.

Everybody has a specific mission. Crew chief, door gunner, co pilot, aircraft commander. Everybody has a specific mission, but nobody can do that one mission by themselves. It takes all of us working together as a team.

And I don't care if I'm a captain and you're a Spec 4 crew chief. I'm no better than you are. And if it wasn't for you, I couldn't be flying this airplane. Same with the door gunner.

That's a lesson you learn out of it. You learn a lot about team. You learn about personal courage. You learn about personal responsibility.

You learn.

A certain sense of tenacity.

You can't be lazy.

Their dedication's got to be there. And that's what I experienced with these guys in Vietnam.

Every one of them. There was no lacquered every one of them. Even the guys in the maintenance hangar that didn't fly those missions with us. And many of them would jump in to fly a mission just to get out there and do it. But even to the clerk that wrote the awards, there was such a sense of dedication and camaraderie that I have never experienced in my entire life since then. Never.

In my 20 years in uniform and the 13 years that I was fortunate to serve as a civilian with the office of the Secretary of Defense. Nothing, nothing will ever compare to what I experienced, especially in Lamson 719.

Even the command and control north missions, though they were hairy, though they had some twists and turns I would have never expected.

And we lost two crew on Command and control north missions. That's horrible.

But nothing compares with Lampson 71 9. And I think that's, that's where the.

What we now see as air assault. That's where it was born.

It was born there. We had to think on our feet. We did things that weren't written down. We had to think on our feet. And I mean like coming to the ten foot hover versus putting your skids in the ground. How do you learn that? You learn it from experience.

Just things.

I guess they're being learned today and more as they teach our assault at Fort Campbell today.

But my God, that was. I went to a reunion at Fort Campbell several years back.

And the guys are all flying Black Hawks now. Then.

They looked at us like we were World War II pilots flying B29 with low tech, all this. And they were captivated by the stories.

That we could tell.

You know, if it wasn't for gps, I couldn't drive my car from point A to point B. But up in the air I could shoot a vector and I could say pop smoke and identify the smoke and knew exactly where I was going.

Just things you learn.

Probably one of the awards I'm most proud of is an army commendation medal. And I got that from battalion Commander. We inserted his soldiers into the Aishaw Valley.

This was after.

719 and it had been a long day for them and.

Sun was starting to set. And I get a call from something six.

And I answer the phone. He says, could you take a warm war mission? I said, well, yes sir, sure we can. I did call ops because they're expecting us.

He said, well, I want to treat my troops to ice cream.

And they've got ice cream and burmite cans on our log pad back at Eagle. I said, not a problem, sir. And we flew an ice cream mission in there. And he awarded his troops for their hard work.

And I got an ARCOL for that.

I bet you that ice cream tasted good.

Yeah.

Yeah. And.

After that I went with landing in lz.

Many times I'd get out of the cockpit.

Always wore spit shine boots. I was dressed right dress ready front the whole time, always wore spit shine boots. But I made it my goal. I was going to get out of that damn cockpit. And I'D say, okay, Peter, pilot, you got it. Co pilot. And I'd help the troops unload supplies off the ship.

And I want to think they appreciated that.

Here's an aviation captain getting out of the cockpit, and he's doing sweat work.

That's what I learned in Vietnam.

We had.

Just an unbelievable relationship with 101st in the Battle of Ramadi. The first of 506 was there, and.

I could never say enough good things about their leadership. And the soldiers on the ground, the fighting that they did, it was just amazing, amazing courage. And.

One of my guys, Mikey Mansour, was killed doing a mission supporting them. And when we got home, we went out and on their wall where they have the list of the soldiers that they lost in the Battle of Armadi, they have Mikey's name up there with them.

I think we're fortunate, Jocko. We're fortunate that we knew people like that. And there will be people who will go to their graves that never experience that kind of heroism, that kind of commitment, that kind of courage.

That kind of teamwork, the camaraderie. They will never, ever experience it. And I think you and I are very fortunate that we've had that opportunity.

Indeed.

Wouldn't trade it for the world.

Going back to. To Lam Son. Once you had that, did they give you a night of rest and then you started flying missions again?

I had two days down and then started flying again. It was after that, that, during the resupplies, when I think the ARVN knew that.

The NVA had a hell of a lot more confidence in their ability than the ARVN did.

It was after that, doing those resupply missions in there, that I actually experienced them abandoning the battle space.

I didn't experience that before. Lamson719.

I always thought it was interesting when we would go into a pz, early morning, put the. Put the choppers down, waiting for them to load up, the arvin, the South Vietnamese to load up. But I'd see them sitting there and they had water in their still pots, and they were brushing their teeth, and it was like, this is extremely important that I brush my teeth. And I always thought.

Well, that's kind of interesting that they're doing that personal hygiene, and they're going to pour the water out, put their helmet liners back in, put their helmets on. They're going to climb on board this aircraft, and God knows what faces them when they hit the lz, but they made sure that their teeth were clean.

As this goes on, like you said, the tide started to Turn. And.

I think the goal became just to get to. How'd you say it? Chiponi. Is that how they say it?

Chipone.

Chipone. The goal is to get there.

They kind of got there, like, almost like playing tag. Touched it. Yeah, we made it. And then said, let's get out of here.

And by the way, there was hardly anything there by then.

And then as the ARVIN started to retreat, the NVA stepped up the attacks even more.

And it just.

Slaughter.

Yeah.

And that's where I picked up the body bags with the dead ARVIN soldiers in them.

Turns into a bit of a route as the. As the ARVIN are now leaving. You know, there's again. I mean, I'm just gonna. A couple days here. March 21st, the. The NVA, the North Vietnamese attack. Their division attacks the 2nd and 3rd battalions. US air support during the day included 788 Hilo gunship sorties, 157 tactical airstrikes, and 11 B52 strikes.

Fast forward another day. March 23rd. 756 helo gunship sorties, 238 tactical airstrikes, 11 B52 strikes. This is as they're kind of getting back to the border into South Vietnam.

Correct.

March 25th. Finally, 45 days after the start of the operation, all the South Vietnamese forces are out of Laos and.

Well, so to speak.

Yeah, stragglers. Yeah. I guess the ones that they are accounting for are back.

Apruary 6th. The basic caisson is under attack and it gets abandoned.

And to your point earlier on April 7th. So that's April 6th. The operation is over. Khe Sanh is abandoned. April 7th. President Nixon declares tonight I can report that Vietnamization has succeeded.

And announces a further withdrawal of 100,000 more troops.

Friendly losses during this operation?

Seven fixed wing planes. 108 helicopters lost.

618 helicopters damaged, 20% beyond repair. 32 artillery pieces captured. And these are South Vietnamese artillery pieces. South Vietnamese tanks, 71 of them. South Vietnamese armored vehicles, 163 of them. 37 half tracks, 278 trucks destroyed.

South Vietnamese loss. And I couldn't really come up with a great number on this, but it's between 5,000 and 15,000 men killed, wounded or missing, depending on the source that you go to. Americans.

1149 wounded, 38 missing in action. 215 killed in action.

You know, that's the second time we left Khe Sanh. We left it in 68 after the Marines got overrun.

And here we go again. And you often hear combat soldiers say, we fought Hard. We lost guys in our unit to take that hill. And after we took it, we left it. Now we have to go back and take it again.

There it is.

So now this operation's over.

I mean, did attitude start to change? You're hearing Nixon saying that Vietnamization is working, and you see the South Vietnamese fleeing the battlefield.

What was the attitude of you all in my unit?

And that's all I can speak for.

The esprit de corps never ceased. We were still flying command and control north, supporting those guys.

And their mission grew even more critical because they were there judging. Okay, now that Lam Son's over.

What'S the paven, the North Vietnamese army doing now? Where are they? You know, it was during that time, shortly after I left, they overran Quan Tri Dong Ha.

Evans was certainly within their science camp. Evans, which was north of Camp Beagle with 101st Headquarters.

But I never saw any sense of.

Behavior that said, okay, well, 719 is over. I guess the war is over. I never saw that attitude.

Our soldiers remain very professional soldiers. That's amazing, because many of them are just 19 years old. Some of them are 18. I had a warrant officer of 21. I mean, I was an old dude. I was 25.

I never, never once questioned.

Our ability as an aviation unit to do the job, the mission that we were assigned to do. Even after. Even up until the day I left, when I became the operations officer, my last four months in country, I got a chance to look at the battle space in a different way. Because I would go to battalion and battalion ops and look at that, then come back and put that into company ops and.

Work our portion of the mission, our company's portion of the battalion mission. And I'd bring the guys into the briefing room. The guys are going to be flying that mission. And I'd say, okay, this is our objective right here.

Now, how do we get there? We're here. This is our objective. Our mission is this. We got to put so many troops in there. How do we get there? And usually it wasn't just one place. It was if it was a company plus, it would be maybe three different places we'd have to go. And I never would say, okay, this is how we're going to do it. You're going to do. I say, okay, how do we get there?

What's the best approach to make this happen? And I was the operations officer, and I'd have these young warn officers, oh, let's do this. And somebody said, no, no, we can't do that. We got to do this. Somebody said, well, let's do it this way. Well, okay, well, let's take a piece of that. Next thing you know, they had planned the operation. All I did was approve it.

But that.

That's a leadership skill that I learned.

From people like Colonel Bobby Fernander, who never said, you're going to do it this way. He always sort of facilitated, if you will, facilitative leadership. And that's what you're seeing now in business, facilitative leadership, getting people involved. And the more you're involved, the more you take ownership.

And that's what I saw in our guys. That's what I saw in our guys during lamson. That's what I saw in our guys after lam sine. Now, when we were flying command and control north, we did what they told us to do.

They had a very specific way of doing things, and that's the way we were going to do it. And that's fine. And that's fine. But this is the way we did it.

And I mirrored my leadership style after people that I had great respect for.

To include General Halbor, who became Lieutenant General Halbor. And the way that the camaraderie, not camaraderie. I don't want to say I was buddy buddy with General Moore, because I was not. But we had a relationship in the cockpit, and I think he respected my desires, what I wanted to do. Obviously he did, because I wouldn't have gone to Nam had a nob been for that.

Yeah, I don't know if you didn't have a relationship with Hal Moore, but, jeez, if you were friends with him, who knows what he would have done for you.

What a great man he was. But I left Vietnam feeling very good about my unit and about what we did.

I did change my views a bit to think that.

My tournament will be successful if I can do things to support my U.S. troops.

So that changed from supporting the whole concept of Vietnamization.

For example, if I can bring ice cream out to those troops after they've busted their butt off all day inserting, then I've done something that I can be proud of.

And.

That'S where my mind sort of changed. After being in country for about eight months.

To support my soldiers and to do what I could to bring them home.

Yeah, the leadership stuff you're talking about, that's exactly the. The best leaders I had was they would tell us what the mission was, what the goal was, and then say, come up with a plan. And that's what I always Tried to do myself. That certainly is the. The best way to get people on board with the plan is just let them come up with it.

That's right.

Don't have to convince them of anything. It's their idea, it's their plan.

Let them argue it out.

Yeah.

Yep.

So when you did. So what. What. When. When did you leave Vietnam?

It was in October of 71. And.

In Nam, there was four officers that lived in the same hooch.

We all had our little private rooms at the corner of this rectangular hooch. Then the center was our common area. And we had a little seat stove in the common area and so on. But.

Right across from me was an officer, Stan Dodge. He was Comanchero 1 8. And so when we would fly, when I knew he was flying, it was going to be in the air, then he and I would choose a frequency.

That we would come up on and would follow with each other in the air. So sort of looking after each other, you know, in the air. So I came back from noms. It's a very interesting story.

There was me as a Comanchero, and then there were three other pilots who were Kingsmen. They were in Bravo Company, 101st Aviation, which was our sister company. And we all knew each other. And we all came back. We were in our khakis, wearing our flight jackets, and, you know, we thought our Sierra didn't stink. And we get back into Seattle Tacoma and walk through the airport. Nobody's spitting on us, nobody yelling at us, nobody calling us baby killers. We got a taxi. We come in and we say, hey, is there a Holiday Inn? He says, yeah, there's one downtown. So he takes us to the Holiday Inn. We all check in our rooms, we clean up. We come down to the bar to meet before we go have some dinner. We get to the bar, of course, we're all, you know, we've all got flight pay. They've paid us before we leave Nam. And, you know, we're all loaded with money, more than we should have had. And we get into the bar and bartender said, what beef, you guys? And go. We have our flight jackets on, you know, and we're feeling kind of smug, and we all order drinks. And.

One of them said, hey, everybody else's drink. Their next drink. It's on all of us. It's on us. So we all threw in money and we bought everybody in the bar that was sitting there their next drink. And there was a couple, he was playing piano and she was singing. And they were like, the. What's that? The Carpenters. And she was singing. They were doing all the Carpenter song. And so she dedicated a special song to us. He says, excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but the next drink that all of y' all will get tonight are from these four guys standing at the bar in uniform. They all just returned from Vietnam. And let's give them a round of applause. They all stood up, gave us a round of applause. And then she said, I'm going to dedicate this next song to these guys. And it was very special. And we didn't buy another drink that night.

We all had steaks, they were all paid for.

And they quit playing at one o'. Clock. And this guy came up to us and said, hey, a bunch of us are here on the insurance convention. We'd like to take you all out for breakfast. So they took us out to breakfast and we all got to bed about 5 o' clock in the morning. And then we all flew out our separate ways the next day. But I was telling you about Stan Dodge. Stan's parents lived in Arizona, Tucson. And.

He said. And he had left country about a month before I did. So he said, I want to have a little gathering at my house if you don't mind staying over one day before you make it back. So I flew into Tucson and he had a couple donut dollars there who were in the 101st.

They were there, in fact, Stan married one of the doughnut dollars, Barbara. And Terry Diggin was a friend of mine, she was there. And plus one guy from Bravo Company, the Kingsman, and another pilot. But we partied hardy that night. And Stan's parents just did a wonderful job of making us feel at home and so on.

Might have been there two nights. I stayed because I had to have time to get my uniform cleaned up before I wore it home. I wanted to make sure it was strack when my parents saw me. And so I got my uniform, got my shoes all spit, shot, everything, caught the plane out of Phoenix and Terry was with me. And Terry and I had a really nice relationship. I mean, it wasn't a sexual thing. It was just a nice relationship. We understood each other. And she had left Nam two months before I did. And she would write me letters telling me about how the world back in the States was not the world that was not the real world. Her real world. Her what she experienced in Vietnam with the soldier thing, that was the real world. And we would write back and forth about that. And I flew. My flight took us. She was from Downers Grove, Illinois. So we Flew to Chicago and then obviously catch a plane from Chicago to Charlotte. And she wanted me to meet her parents.

And I wanted to meet her parents, too. And I could have probably had a relationship with Terry that would have gone beyond. She ended up marrying an Army Ranger several years later that she had known and known, but kept waiting for her parents to come. And my flight was coming up to go, and her parents hadn't shown up yet, and I never did get to meet her parents. We finally gave a hug and kissed goodbye, and I got on the plane and flew to Charlotte, and that's where my parents met me.

But I think having those couple days to decompress before I got home was probably psychologically good for me.

Yeah, that's one thing they always point out. World War II, the guys, when the war was over, they got on ship, ships and sailed home together for four weeks or six weeks. And they got to decompress and tell stories and get stuff off their chest and whatever. And in Vietnam, it was like, oh, you're in Vietnam today, and then the next day you're home and you don't have your friends with you, and you're in random, you know, main town, usa or Main street, usa. And that. That can be a challenge.

So let's fast forward.

I was home 30 days, reassigned to Fort Dix, New Jersey.

Not in aviation.

I was actually working for a facility that processed AWOL and deserter soldiers that were brought back into the Army.

But every Friday night, all the aviators, they'd go home, take off their fatigues, put on their flight suits, would all gather around in one little portion of the officer club bar, and we'd sit there and we'd reminisce and tell war stories. And it got emotional at times, and we'd smack him on the back. Oh, come on, I'll buy you another beer. But that's a part of the decompression. And those were very special times to sit there and talk about that. And people have often asked me, well, what kind of problems did you have? And I said, well, I really didn't have any problems when I came back. And they, you know, you must have been tough. I said, well, no, I wasn't tough. I said, I think it's just the process of how we all would get together and talk about our experiences. I said, these guys that came back from Nam after being in combat, especially infantry guys, grunts, as we call them, they would come back, they'd go to Fort Lewis, they'd process out of the army, then they'd go home and they didn't have an opportunity to sit around. And many of those were subjected to some very harsh treatments when they arrived home. And I never had. Fortunately, never had that experience.

So I think the Army's learning a lot of that. All the services are learning a lot about that, about how do we take care of our veterans after they've been. I mean, you were in hell of a lot of horrific situations.

That. That could have mentally had. Had a horrible impact on you. But you've worked through that yourself. Jocko.

Yeah, I mean, I think I always talk about the fact that I've talked about it, written about it, talked to my friends about it, and I think that's, like you said, it's what you kind of got to do. And, you know, the. I look back now, and the first from my last deployment to Ramadi, we got home and we were. We were. We were pretty. What's a good word here? We were pretty wild when we got back. We were pretty wild when we got back. And. And. But, you know, we kept it under. You know, we kept. We looked out for each other, made sure that we were wild without, you know, doing anything that's going to cause irreparable damage or caused some kind of major significant problem. But we were definitely wild. I mean, there's no doubt about it. And then, you know, I don't know if it was maybe six months, maybe a year or something like that. You know, we started getting back to kind of just doing what we were doing, a little bit more normal. But, yeah, we were. We were pretty wild when we got back.

Well, you know.

If my. My excuse was, well, you got pretty drunk last night. I said, well, hell, I'm an aviator.

Yeah, we. We had some. You know, we all kind. A bunch of us lived in the. Kind of the same area, too, same little neighborhood. And, yeah, so, yeah, we would go out, we'd meet up and we'd go. We'd go pretty hard.

I think. I think for me, I'm still. It's amazing. The older I get now, and I'll be 76 in August.

The.

Memories become more vivid. Now.

I dream about this more.

I'm hearing from people. We have our own Comanchero website.

And.

You can tell by the comments that Lamsan719 had a major, major psychological impact. Guys. And there were some guys that measure their time of service. Oh, I was. Oh, I came after 719. Or I left just before 719. So. See that? 719 became an anchor.

To describe where one was at one's time flying with the Comancheros.

And when Matt called me up and asked me would I.

Do some collaboration on this book.

In some ways I was pleased. In some ways I was a little frightened to bring up.

The experiences. And I'll be perfectly honest, I had a lot of anxiety coming here today.

Though I have read this book a number of times, read Undaunted Valor 719, quite a few times. I've earmarked it.

I've read After Action reports on it that.

Hopefully Matt and he did, he had some of these After Action reports that he took his data from.

But still sitting here now and talking about it with you, and you weren't there. I can talk about it with somebody that was there.

And not have anxiety, but you weren't there. And I often wonder, I'm telling you this, but what are you actually hearing? Because you weren't there and you can tell me about what you did and I can listen to it, but I wasn't there.

And so there's a difference.

Yeah, yeah, there's. There's always going to be a little gap or a big gap, depending on, you know, the person's experiences. And, you know, one thing I think is interesting about, you know, when you start talking about coming home and what you're going through, I think the one thing that's good is if people actually understand what they're feeling a little bit. And I. I remember, like, you get a new guy that's overseas, and I'd look at a new guy that's overseas now. You could tell they're nervous, right? And, you know, just say something like, hey, man, you're. You know, that feeling you get in your stomach. And they'd be like, you know, try not to tell you. But then they admit to it.

Yeah.

And I go, yeah, you're just nervous and it's your body getting ready to go fight. It's totally normal. That's what you should feel like. And they'd be like, oh, okay. Oh, you. Oh, by the way, you won't be able to sleep tonight because we got an operation tomorrow. You're not gonna be able to sleep tonight. So that's just the way it is. Don't worry about it. And I think it's the same thing coming home. You know, it's like, oh, oh, oh, you're gonna get sad sometimes. This doesn't mean you're weak. It doesn't mean you're trapped in the past. It just means you miss your friends. And that's okay. And so if you are thinking about something and it makes you cry, hey, yeah, that's what happens. That's the way it is. And I think if people understand that, that that's normal, then they go, okay, well, that's just what's going to happen. It's okay. And I think when people don't think it's normal and all of a sudden they think, I can't control my emotions or I'm scared or I'm sad and I shouldn't be sad and I shouldn't be scared, scared. It's like, no, it's fine. No big deal. That's just the way it is. You do your job, you're going to be scared. You got the queasy stomach, you can't sleep at night. Okay, cool. Yeah, Guess what? There's a bunch of other guys that's not sleeping tonight either. No big deal. No big deal. Oh, you get home, you're going to feel sad. You're going to miss your friends. Yeah, we all miss them. That's the way it is. That's okay. And I think that helps people out a lot to be able to just say, oh, okay. What I'm feeling is not an isolated thing. It's just the way human beings process the tough experiences that they go through.

But, you know, we both served in the kind of service that at one time you didn't show that emotion.

Yeah.

And you weren't expected to.

I think the service, and I hope I've read that they have, I've seen interviews that they have that now that's being taken into consideration. It's okay to express what you're feeling right now. It's okay to go seek counseling because it's not going to end up on your officer efficiency report or your annual report or whatever report you're going to get.

And so I think.

That has been a great improvement with the way we receive our war fighting men and women.

Especially those who have come back and been engaged in combat.

One thing I'll say.

About the getting excited and nervous about the upcoming mission.

And I would do the same thing in Vietnam. I mean, people said, were you scared? I said, well, hell yeah, I'm scared. But hey, you know, this is what we signed up to do and this is what we're going to do. And a lot of times, I mean, I said that trying to convince myself. But see, I was a platoon commander. I couldn't sit there and tell my troops, oh, my God, I'm scared to death. I had to put on the show, I had to do that. But the interesting thing about it is once we strapped on that helicopter and we took off in flight, all of that drained. It all drained. I mean, it never amazed me.

Got a job to do.

Well, yeah, I mean, you were busy. You were monitoring three radios, you were talking to the crew there. I mean, it all drained. I mean, even going into. Even going into Lola that morning when we were doing 90 knots approaching, we. We should have been done 60 or 40, and we were coming in there, but you cycle that thing back in, that damn nose pitches up and you're saying, oh, hell, I hope my tail rotor doesn't hit the ground. And then you put that sucker down and you're taking fire all over the place. You don't have time to be scared.

You react by the training that you've had. And by God, that training was good.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's, I think, the same way everybody feels. I mean, if you're gonna be nervous, it's usually before an operation. And for me, I was always just more nervous about my. My friends, my guys. That's what I was always worried about. Hey, I hope nothing happens. The guys, you know, but then once for us, it's. Once the breach goes, you know, where. Once the. Once the breach goes, now it's on. Everybody knows we're here, we're doing what we're doing. You know, once we leave the gate, front gate, you're. You're doing your job, and there's no time to think about that. You can't. You can't waste any mental capacity thinking about what could happen or what might happen, because you got to do your job, and you don't want to have anything else in your head besides, hey, what do I need to do right now? How can I do my best job right now? That's what I'm thinking about.

But again, I seen some nervous new guys and just, hey, man, it's all right. No big deal. Deal. And. And I think that helps people a lot. Just like anything, anytime you can give somebody a heads up about what's about to happen or what. I've had this feeling with train training, MMA fighters, mixed martial arts fighters, to go and fight, and I saw the exact same thing. This is kind of where I started putting it together. Oh, I tell them, hey, oh, your stomach a little queasy? Yeah, I'm super nervous. Yeah, you're supposed to be. You're getting ready to go into a fight. It's okay. And that would put them at ease because they'd realize, oh, this is just normal. This is just me getting ready to go into, you know, that form of sporting combat.

But to add to that, I think it's good to be a little nervous for sure, because you're more on your game for sure. And.

That'S one thing. That's one thing. General John Myers told me he was a mentor of mine and.

Later on in my service and he was the one that actually encouraged me to take the civilian position with the SEC Def.

Because I was doing strategic planning work for him after I had retired from the uniformed service. And we had this big strategic planning conference coming up. And.

I said, sir, I'd like to bring Dr. So and so in from George Washington University.

He's been a big critical thinker. He sort of plans, okay, this is where we have to be. How do we get there kind of a thing. Because we were doing strategic planning. The vision is where you want to be now. How do we go from where we are today to make that vision a reality? And he said, how long have you been working for me? I said, about two years, sir. He said, do you have a PhD? I said, no, sir, Master's degree. He said, well, I trust you. I don't know this guy.

And.

That'S a leadership style.

That breeds confidence in your soldiers, in your employees. I got confidence in you. I don't know this guy. So doctor what's his name? I never hired him to come in and do some work for us, but that made me feel great.

Yeah. So how much longer did you do in the army before you retired?

Like I say, I spent 20 years in uniform, 68 to 88.

Then I immediately before that, General Myers was talking to me about, he said, you're never going to make colonel. God Branch transferred from infantry to the Army's Adjutant General Corps, which is administrative corps of the Army. And he said, I want you to take this job. The SEC Def has been impressed with work you've been doing. And he said, you, office will be here with me, but you'll be working out of the office of the SEC Defense. And at that time I was with the Defense Communications Agency, which became now the Defense Information Systems Agency. But my office was there. I had clients, all military clients all over. It wasn't just communications guys. Undersec Def was one of my clients, the.

Sink US Atlantic Command. General Jack Sheehan. I don't know if you've met, General she had. General she had outstanding, outstanding warrior, great leader.

General Mike still, who commanded US Army Pacific. Just a tremendous guy. The Undersecretary Defense for Logistics. I got a chance to do strategic planning work for him. Quite a few organizations in NATO. Two organizations at shape. And that's all because of a guy by the name of John Myers that supported me and paved the way for me. And he believed in me. And though I didn't have a PhD, he trusted me. Isn't that what leaders are for?

Indeed. And then how long did you, how long did you do that for?

13 years.

And then you went into what, full retirement? Not quite.

Well, then I was offered a. A position in civilian career in the steel business. And I was executive vice president of a steel center. Stayed there from 01 to 09. Thought I'd retire. Went into the insurance business for a little bit.

Wasn't exciting.

Then I decided to retire and now my fiance.

Is still working. She represents a company called Hancock and Moore. It's all custom made furniture, Some of the most high quality furniture you will ever find. It's all custom made to your specifications. Leather.

Upholstery, nails, finish, frames. You pick out the whole thing yourself and they build it to your specifications.

She also represents a line called Jessica Charles and a line called Maitland Smith. And our territory is in North Carolina, so we never go out of North Carolina. But yeah, I say I'm retired, but now I run with Jan and I take my orders from her. And so we man her territory.

That's outstanding.

And she's enjoying staying here today because she, she has nothing she has to do.

That's a beautiful thing. Little vacation day for her.

Little vacation day.

Hey, before we stop, I know there's a couple things that just to mention here. Can you give us the update? I know that Colonel Jackson's been working to sort of turn this into a movie, turn at least some of these books into a movie. I know there's a GoFundMe page out there. What's the update on, on, on these opportunities?

Okay, well, yes, as people should probably know, it takes a lot of money to produce a movie. However undaunted valor lamson719.

Is going to be the movie. And it's our story of those of us who flew in it, who supported it.

We need to have this on the big screen. And it's Colonel Jackson's desire as well as mine that this not become a Hollywood flash in the pan movie. This is going to be an action filled movie because lamson719 was action and he wants the movie to depict what actually happened. And if anyone reads the book, they will know that if the movie depicts a quarter of what's in that book. It is going to be on the edge of your seat kind of a movie. So the events and everything that he's put into this thing are not Hollywood made up events. These are true events. He's changed some names, but these are true events.

He does have several actors who have indicated that they would like to play major roles in the movie. There's already a producer on board and the screenwriters are busy writing this. But it takes money to do this. And the GoFundMe undaunted valor is the place where people who hear this and feel that they want this story told, whether it's them, themselves or their relatives who are involved in this, or they are just very supportive of what our military has done in the past, especially what we did in Vietnam, which a lot of those stories were not very favorable stories. This is a very favorable story of what we did then. I encouraged them to do the GoFundMe undaunted valor.

All this money is being accepted by a 501C3 group at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. And so Matt gets none of this money. Matt Jackson gets none of this money. It's all going towards this movie. Every last cent off is going towards this movie. So the quicker we can get this in, the more we can, faster we can proceed with developing this movie. And I would certainly encourage people to take this in consideration. 501c3. So your donation is tax deductible.

That's outstanding. And.

I look forward to seeing this thing for sure when it comes out. Reading these books, sitting here, talking with you guys, this is just an unbelievable part of history and a true look at the heroism that you all and American soldiers displayed in Vietnam. Echo Charles.

Yes, sir.

Do you have any questions?

I do not.

No questions from Echo Charles. If he doesn't ask any questions, that that means he's going to talk a lot later. So I have to put up with that. But that's just the way it is. That's part of the punishment, I guess, for me.

No, no. It just shows the depth that we went into and, you know, how fulfilled I am at the end, down to the detail.

Well, I want to thank you for asking me to be here and I want to thank Matt Jackson for putting it all together. And I'm finally glad to meet the man that I saw on the.

Dan Bongino show.

Right on. Anything else, Jay?

No, sir.

Well, again, like you said, thanks to Colonel Matt Jackson for introducing us and for his efforts in writing these books and preserving These. These heroic deeds of our combat aviators and soldiers in Vietnam War. And, of course, thank you for joining us and sharing your experiences, your lessons learned. And most important, thank you.

Thank you for your service and sacrifice to our great nation. The bravery of you, of your fellow pilot pilots, of the. Of the air crews, the bravery that you all showed can never be questioned. And we are grateful for your heroism and the example that you set for all of us today.

Thank you.

Thanks for coming on.

And with that, Major J. Tate has left the building.

Not even much to say to follow that up. Just. Just mayhem.

I have a lot to say, actually, but I won't go into as deep as maybe I could, but I will say this. I was talking to Mick outside.

And.

Whatever we were talking about, it reminded me of this. Where, like, nowadays it. Okay, not nowadays, but in the Vietnam War, there are so many people who did so many crazy things, but they don't have necessarily a big spotlight on them. They're just like, just kind of cruising now where you don't. You know, they don't. They're not in the spotlight in any way. They're just like, essentially not now. They're just sort of just living normal people.

Well, it's always interesting to me that, like, Major J. Tate retired in 1988. I came in in 1990. Right. So there's almost overlap there. And there's been plenty of old Vietnam guys in the SEAL teams. Some. But, you know, I'd be meeting some random army dude, you know, and he could have easily been this guy. You know, there are people in Vietnam that did the craziest stuff, and no one knows about it.

Literally. Things that are going to be in a movie. Literally did those things.

Things that are going to be in a movie, and people will be like, oh, I wonder why they wrote it. Just made it so crazy.

All crazy.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Where they got to suspend their disbelief or what is that suspension. They kind of got to do that about something that really happened in real life, that kind. Meanwhile, he's just cruising.

I mean, even. I was talking to Tilt yesterday.

Hell, yeah.

Or actually, Saturday. I was talking to Tilt on Saturday, and. And he was. You know, the amount of times that those guys did crazy things, it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. And no one really knew too much about sog. I. Look, if you were. If you're deeply into the military history and all that, but a normal, everyday person barely knows anything about Sock.

Yeah, I do, for sure. There's one thing he mentioned that was pretty dark, and then he just moved right on. When he's like, you just. You don't want to get burned up.

Oh, yeah.

As a pilot.

Well, yeah, that was in the book. That was in the book. Lam Sawn 719.

Yeah. He said how, like in World War II, like, some men were known.

Yeah.

The World War I, before parachutes.

Yeah.

You carry a pistol, catch fire, just gonna kill yourself.

That's how bad it was.

Yeah, that was interesting. And it was also interesting in the first book by Matt Jackson. He's explaining, you know, basically that a helicopter doesn't want to fly.

Yeah.

Yeah. This thing does. This is a bunch of metal gear and oil, gears and oil and gas that doesn't want to fly. If you just let it go, it's just going to crash. An airplane, Even if you let go the controls, it's kind of. Kind of cruise, you know, you kind.

Of feel like, I'm not a pilot. I don't know if you knew that, but it feels like on an airplane, something goes wrong or whatever. As long as you got wings and the tail, you can kind of just glide that boy in. Yeah, it feels like that.

So I had a car. So my first deployment to Guam.

When we get over there, all the. All the seals, we'd buy Guam bombs, we called them. Just like a piece of junk car, whatever, you know, that you're just gonna drive around Guam for a few. For six months and then sell it to the next. So we bought our Guan Bomb from some other team. Guys that were leaving. We had this.

It was.

I think it was a 1977 Volare, was beige. But here's the thing. Cars are kind of. You'd think cars would be like, oh, you don't really. You know, if you. If you don't touch the controls, it's just kind of gonna go until it's just gonna go straight, like, stops, Right?

Yeah.

This car. I don't know what was wrong. If you let your hands off the wheels, it would go into a full, hard right turn as hard as you could. P. You couldn't turn a car to the right as fast as this car would turn on its own.

Bomb.

That was our. The Valare. It also, for whatever reason, had hot, scorching air. You know? You know, you know the little, like, area underneath the back window on the old school cars, there's a little area. Yeah, yeah. It's like a back dash. Yeah. You could throw like a. A pair of slippers up there or something. Maybe a T shirt or sweatshirt. Right. It's a Little area like that. And there can sometimes be aftermarket speakers be put in there. Right. But there was no. There was no aftermarket speakers, but there was just scorching hot air that came. I don't know. It's like un. Unknown source of massive heat would fire through that thing. So that car was kind of like a helicopter. If you just gripped your fingers off the controls for a second, you were hitting the right guardrail in 0.2 seconds.

Yeah. Oh, yeah.

So. Yeah. When do you get the impression. And me. And you probably know this even firsthand. Where. Just in Vietnam or in wartime, Just in general, like. Just. Things are just loud.

Things are so loud. Things are so much louder in real life than they are in the movies. Yes, I know. That's your reference. For instance, in a helicopter, you can't hear anything.

Yes.

So freaking loud. It's ridiculous. Yeah. It's punishing on your ears. It's so loud in a helicopter. Yeah. The. Everything is louder. I mean, a Humvee is freaking loud.

Yeah.

Tanks are loud. Everything's loud.

And everything's just vibrating.

Just vibrating. Just your whole world is. Yeah, yeah, it's cool. Now we got those new ear, like headsets, right. That block out loud noises.

Yeah, yeah. The noise canceling. The. He said something about when the first. I think it was like the first time where he heard the.

The M60 when. When he was. And how he'd, like, vibrate the. The thing. And that's what I was like, Brad, the whole thing is just loud. No, your whole world is just loud up there because you got the helicopter, then you got the guns, and everything's just vibrating it.

Loud.

Yeah, just a hostile.

The other interesting thing is I think of Huey's. I think of Huey's as being old, right? In my mind, they're old because I flew around on Hueys and they were old. Kind of like when you think of a bomber right now, like a World War II bomber, you think of this old school, you know, Those were the most modern beasts of their time. That was like getting. That was like. Yeah. To a Rolls Royce straight up. So.

Well, listen, obviously, like I said at the end there, guys like Major J. Tate set a great example for us on many levels. Courage. We, you know, like, for sure. Capability, 100%.

I'm not sure what we're doing to improve our courage. What can we do to improve our capabilities? Echo, Charles.

Capability.

There's a softball for you. Knock it out of the park. Do me a favor.

Ability. Hey.

Okay, we're working out. We Are on the path. That's it.

100.

I used to say, on the program, by the way, I'm on the program. You know how like when the we're different now, your wife comes home, it's like, oh, yeah, like, do you want some extra cheese on the lasagna? You know, And I say, no, no, no, I'm on the program. So it's kind of like, okay, I understand, you know, now you're on the path. But here's the thing. The path is more broad, more encompassing. Oh yeah.

The program.

Seems like you can easily be off the program in like three, four weeks or whatever. You know, it's like that kind of feeling. It's not. They're not hard and fast rules. But I'm just saying the feeling is there.

Let's put it this way. If you're on the path, it's a life thing.

Yeah, it's like life. Yeah, you're right, exactly.

Program's a temporary. Yes, somewhat.

Yeah, like a temporary improvement, deviation, whatever. Either way, we're on the path. The good thing about the path is, sure, we have supplementation, but these are everyday supplementation. They're life supplementation elements. See what I'm saying? So some of us, back in the day, we used to drink. Energy drinks. Junk. Energy drinks.

Junk.

Hey, it's a new. It's a new era of energy drinks. There's a new era of energy drinks. Drinks. No, healthy energy drinks. The kind when you drink it, you get everything. Front end, you get everything you wanted energy. Then on the back end, you get everything that you didn't expect but want health.

And you don't get things that you didn't want. Jitters, diabetes, chemical disturbance inside your system.

Some weird addiction.

Addiction.

Weird inflammation and all this weird stuff. Yeah, exactly.

Stuff we don't want.

Yep, none of that. None. Absolutely none. So, okay, so, jocko. Discipline.

Go.

This is the energy drink, if you didn't know already, some new flavors out, which just adds to the choices you have. Hey, look, we all like orange. We all like orange. It's a staple, right? People hard pressed to find someone who doesn't like orange flavor.

True. Yeah.

Cool. But do we love orange?

Maybe some people.

Maybe.

I know Dave does.

I under.

Wait.

Good deal.

Taste.

Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Totally makes sense. But not all of us do. Some of us like more exotic flavors, like mango. Mango has the capability to be like love. I love mango. Orange is more like. Yeah, of course I like mango or orange.

See, I'm saying, what about the other end of the Spectrum. Are people more like, well, mango is not really my thing. I'll drink orange, but mango is not my thing. It's possible. Just saying take one extreme, you got to probably end up with the other one as well.

It's very possible. Nonetheless.

Relationship. Nonetheless.

We're adding to the. The spectrum of desirable flavors in discipline. Go. So now you got a win, win, win situation for everybody.

Three wins.

Three wins.

Okay.

All day, maybe even four later. Just saying, it's always improving. This is good. It's good. You're better off after you drink one of these. What about watermelon?

What about new watermelon? Whoop. Assault watermelon?

Yeah, same, same. Here's the thing.

I think that's closer to orange in terms of people.

It being a more broadly accepted flavor. Watermelon.

Yeah.

You know anyone that does not like watermelon?

I don't know anyone who does not like.

You know anyone that does not like mango?

Yes.

See?

Psychos. But yes, I do know some. Either way, I get it. I get it. And to each their own. I can honestly say that with, with the genuine.

You kind of rolled the dice then with the mango in a way.

Yeah. Actually, no, because when we chose the mango, I chose that because I personally like it. And that's what B. Little kind of said. He said, hey, if it's you, if you like it, that's it. So I was like, cool, I like it.

Right on.

Well, they seem to like it.

Drinks, energy drinks is what you were saying. You can get them.

Yes, sir. It's a new era. Like I said, they're good for you. The thing is, that's a big deal though. Like, come on, you'd be hard pressed, pressed to find a good tasting energy drink that after you drink it, you're better off. It's good for you. You don't have to do a bunch of like health freaking recovery things. After you drink energy, you don't go.

To go on a 14 day detox.

Yeah, I know. Yeah, exactly right.

All right.

I'm super low in calories too, by the way. Also, what else? We got extra protein in the form of a dessert. Best tasting protein in the world pretty much. You'd be hard pressed to find a better tasting protein with that. The health nutrient profile that we have.

The only thing that could possibly taste better as a protein is just steak itself.

It's possible.

Very hard comparison that, as we know you can have a gorgeous, a gorgeous ribeye steak. Well marbled, tasty, cooked to a tea.

Seasoned to perfection.

Seasoned to perfection. And you can still get done with that and be like, I want something.

You want some milk? Yeah.

You want some milk, Brad?

That has been me actually for the last four. Three out of the last four days.

100%.

That's interesting.

Either way, these are all good things that will keep you on the path. And front end and back end benefits. 100%.

There's nothing better than mole. Honestly. There's nothing better than mok. When you get that little.

How's this.

That desire.

Here's a. Okay, so mostly every night, the little routine. Mostly every night I'll eat a salad.

Yeah.

As a meal. Like a big robust chicken. It's a formula. I'll give you the recipe some other time. But it's legitimate.

Talking to me about salad recipes.

I seen yours, I've seen yours. Either way. But.

But I'll mix up a milk in there.

In the salad?

No, not in the salad. With the salad. You know, you drink water or whatever you drink with salad, whatever. For some reason, the milk with the salad is the perfect combo right before bed. That's in my experience.

Either way. Also, we got other stuff too for immunity, for your joints. These are, these are all things we don't want to worry about on the. On this path. We don't want to worry about how strong our immune system is. We don't want to worry about our joints working or not working. We want to just be sure and be assured that these things are all.

The Fire and forget missile.

Exactly.

You just push the button, boom, you're good. Hey. Joint warfare. Super Krill. Vitamin D3, Cold War just. They're fire and forget. Don't have to. You want to be thinking about your immunity system. You don't want to be thinking about your joints if you're firing for Forget.

Exactly. Right. If you're on these types of supplementation elements, there's only two times you're going to be thinking about this stuff is one, when you get on them and they start working or potentially if you accidentally get off. That's the only two times you can think about this stuff.

That's why I subscribe. Yes, subscribe. If you subscribe to these things, you won't go off of them. You won't have that miserable feeling and you'll. You.

We. We.

You get shipping for free, so that's cool. Also, you can get the stuff at Wawa. You can get the drinks, you can get the.

The.

You owned a Wawa and you're like, I need a little energy right now. But I don't Want to crash and feel like crap in three hours. Cool. We got you covered. Go to Wawa. You can get these. You can also get all this stuff at Vitamin Shop.

As well.

Also in the energy drinks, something I forgot to say, which I always know when I drink them, is there's electrolytes in it.

Get a little elevated.

The pre workout element in. In that is. Yeah, it's. It's critical check. So yeah, also you can get them@jockofuel.com that's. You can get everything which is part of origin. Origin usa. So origin usa. What do they got there? American made jeans, boots, jiu jitsu stuff. And when I say American made, I don't mean just American.

Finished. No, you know, you have grass fed.

Yeah.

And then whatever finish. It's not the whole thing.

Grass fed, corn finished or grain finished.

Yeah, whatever the deal is. No, origin's not like that. It's from the beginning all the way to the end. American finished.

American started.

And started. Yes, exactly right.

So boom.

Yes. So you got some good stuff. Stuff. Pete's always making some new innovative things. You know, work pants and what pants are coming.

I have a pair. I have two pairs, actually.

That's cool because I don't even have Delta freaking 68 jeans.

Are you serious?

I am very serious. Yeah.

You got issues.

I got the regular ones which have been doing the job 100, but you.

Might want to try out those Deltas. It's like. You know what? I hate to admit this, it's like the equivalent of a lightweight hoodie.

Boom.

Yeah.

Place for those Delta 68s.

Oh, yeah, sure.

Speaking of lightweight hoodies. We have lightweight hoodies. I'm come out with another one, I think within the next three weeks.

Where.

You can get these things. Okay. So Jocko store is called Jocko Store. We have lightweight hoodies. If you want to represent while we are on this path, you can get T shirts. Like I said, hoodies light and heavy. By the way, got some board shirts on there. Got some tank tops, you know, hats, cool stuff on there. Representative of the path. Discipline equals freedom.

Good.

All these attitudes that we hope that we can.

Run through the path with. Okay, gonna represent jockostore.com we have a shirt subscription situation, new design every month called the shirt locker. That one's been interesting. People who see me part of the street, even today. Even today, will say, hey, I like that. That last design, I really liked it. One guy said he wore it to church and everyone was talking to him about it. Literally, I'm. The design was that the latest one?

What is the latest one?

It says just as check the period.

Has the flag on the sleeve, too. It's good. It looks good, but it's like, you know, there's some layers on there nonetheless. Yes. So subscribe to that if you want one. Every mod new different. Different types of designs than the regular stuff, but. But good nonetheless.

And you can subscribe to this podcast. And don't forget, we also have Jocko Unraveling. We have the Grounded podcast. We have the Warrior Kid podcast. We also have the. The Jocko Underground, where we're doing some alternative podcasts, talking about stuff in the same vein, but maybe a little bit tributary to the scenario that we're usually talking about. Doing a bunch of Q and A. There's a place you can send Q and A, and we're getting through those. So go to Jocko underground.com if you want to subscribe to that cost $8.18 a month and we're using that to create our own.

Area where if we get booted off of the big platforms for whatever reason or they just started interjecting ads. Is that cool? What doesn't seem cool to me, you take this podcast. Let's say they took this podcast today and you're in the middle of hearing About Lamb Psalm 719. All of a sudden there's an advertisement on there for a mattress. Yeah, that's not cool.

It's not cool. No.

So if you don't want that cool, we got you $8.18 a month. If you can't afford it, we still look. If you can't afford that cool, we got you as well. Go to assistance or email assistancecock on the ground dot com. We got you.

Yep. Also, we have a YouTube channel. If you're wondering about the video version of this podcast, we do have YouTube channel official. Got some excerpts on there and the whole episodes. Got some other enhanced episodes as well. Lots of explosions kind of minimize the explosions lately, but it just makes us feel like we're due for more explosions. So you bring up a good point. Nonetheless, if there are explosions, that's where.

They'Re going to be making video where everything explodes.

I'm about to because of how much trash you guys talk to me about the expl. Like, I'll make a regular video and people will be like, I'm. I'm gutted, literally gutted by the lack of explosions. I was like, man, all right, I.

Agree with that person.

I. Yeah, it was hard to disagree at the time. I mean, you know, are explosions appropriate at every single situation. Maybe, maybe not. Unless if they, if the explosions are going to be present, you're gonna find them on this YouTube channel along with everything else. So yeah, look up for that. Also psychological warfare, if you don't know what that is. It's an album with tracks of Jocko. Each track is Jocko telling you how to get through a specific.

And general moment of weakness. So if you're in real, in real life, if you're having a moment of weakness, which we all do sometimes put in this album, boom. Jocko will tell you why you should, you know, not succumb to the weakness.

If you want a visual representation of this stuff, go to flipsidecanvas.com My brother, Dakota Meyer selling all kinds of cool looking stuff that you can hang on your wall. We also have some books. Hey, the books I talked about today, Undaunted Courage is the series. There's three volumes out right now. Covered one. Covered volume number one, which is an assault unit, an assault helicopter unit in Vietnam, 1969-1970. That's episode 275 of this podcast. Covered book three today, Lamson 71 9. Book two is called Medal of Honor. I'm sure we'll get to that book at some point. You can pick up the series of books. They're just an incredible account that you have to read to really, to really understand the kind of chaos that was going on. We have a new book, Final Spin. I have a new book, Final Spin. It is a. We don't really know what to call it.

Literature.

It is literature of some kind. It could be a poem, it could be prose.

Oh, it's prose.

I don't know. There's some very poetic looking things in there. The way it's, the way it's written.

It'S prose elements, I guess.

Yeah, you can check that out. It's available for pre order right now. I'm gonna say the publisher likely won't print enough because they're always looking to minimize any loss. They're looking to maximize profit. Okay, that's cool. They're running a company, I get it. They don't want to print too many copies, nab some copies sitting around. So they're going to minimize, they're. They're low balling it so that, what does that mean to you? It means you end up with second a dish against the will.

Brutal.

Brutal. And it's cool. But at some point you're going to meet me. Me got a comfort. I'm not going to say I'll Sign your second edition. But I'm going to know and you're going to know that you hesitated at the moment of truth. Don't let that be you. That's all I'm saying. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual Code Evaluation Protocols. Discipline Equals freedom. Field manual way the Warrior Kid 1, 2, 3 and 4 Mikey and the Dragons about face by Hackworth. And the OG of my books that I wrote with my brother Leif Babin, Extreme Ownership and Dichotomy of Leadership.

Leif and I also have a leadership consultancy. It's called Echelonfront. Go to Echelonfront.com if you want details on that. We have an online training academy. Go to extremeownership.com if you want to get training. If you want to ask me questions, I'm on there. One, two, three times a week. We have a bunch of courses that you can take about these leadership principles. So check that out. We have a live event called the Muster. The next one is August 17th and 18th. I think we're almost sold out. We're getting there. Las Vegas, October 28th and 29th. So go to echelonfront.com and check events for that stuff. And if you want to help service members active and retired, their families are gold star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization where she helps out people from the military. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org and if you want more of my.

Protracted pronouncements or you need more of Echoes random ruminations, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on the Gram, as Echo calls it, and on that Facebook.

Echoes @ECU. Charles I'm at Jonathan Willink. Thanks once again to Major J. Tate for coming on today, sharing his experiences with us.

But of course, and more important, thanks to J. Tate for his courage and bravery in the service of our great nation.

And to the rest of the military out there right now currently serving with courage, thank you for protecting our way of life. And the same goes for our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service and all first responders, thank you for protecting us here at home.

And everyone else out there.

Our lives that we're living right now.

Are a gift.

And our way of life that we enjoy it is also a gift. It's a blessing and it's a luxury. It's a luxury that we get to be here in this world with freedom and free will and the opportunities that we have which were given to us through the bravery and sacrifice of others.

Do not squander.

This gift and don't waste these opportunities.

Instead, go out there every day.

And get after it.

And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko out.