248: If You Think You're Hot Sh*t, You Don't Know Sh*t. SOG Chronicles with TILT, John Stryker Meyer

0:00:00 - Opening 0:07:10 - John Stryker Meyer. SOG Chronicles. 2:18:57 - Final Thoughts and take-aways. 2:34:59 - How to Stay on THE PATH 2:54:51 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 248 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. As the summer of 1970 evolved, the deadly deadly secret war in Laos raged into its sixth year. The communist NVA and its secret advisors from Russia, China, and Cuba continued supplying growing numbers of light and heavy weapons, state of the art anti-aircraft artillery, missiles, and vehicles. The communist campaign against SOG reconnaissance teams resulted in the Green Berets exceeding a 100% casualty rate.

• 0:40Jocko Willink?

  Meaning of the special forces soldiers who went across the fence into Laos and Cambodia, all were either killed in action, wounded more than once in combat with enemy forces, or they simply disappeared. As of July 4th, 2017, there are 50 Green Berets listed as missing in action in Laos alone from the secret war, along with 105 aviators who died supporting SOG missions. SOG hatchet force operations of platoon or company sized missions didn't fare much better. In an effort to bring a temporary halt to shipping supplies flowing down the Ho Chi Minh

• 1:23Jocko Willink?

  Trail, three separate hatchet force SLAM operations were conducted in Laos, west of South Vietnam, between March 1969 and February 1970. The area of operations was code named Prairie Fire. Again, due to the severe political constraints placed on SOG operations, the Prairie Fire area of operations extended west of South Vietnam about 30 miles. No SOG teams went beyond that area of operations. The three SLAM operations were titled Nightcap, Spin Down, and Halfback.

• 2:04Jocko Willink?

  Each of those operations had a hatchet force company helicoptered to a hilltop on the main segment of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The trips would dig in, set up ambushes, and target NVA trucking. After the lead trucks were hit, there would be a traffic backup along the jungle trail.

• 2:26Jocko Willink?

  Oftentimes, large portions of the Ho Chi Minh Trail were not visible from air due to clever camouflage efforts by the NVA and their conscripted, forced labor of local indigenous tribe people. Thus, when the first trucks were hit, Hatchet Force radio operators would call in tactical air support to destroy as many enemy trucks and soldiers as possible.

• 2:52Jocko Willink?

  Eventually, after a few days, the NVA massed hundreds of soldiers to hammer the Hatchet Force positions, inflicting serious casualties upon the entrenched troops, forcing their extraction from the area of operations. During the last mission, Operation Halfback, an H-34 South Vietnamese Air Force helicopter from the 219th Special Operations Squadron was shot down, killing all passengers aboard the Old Warbird, including Special Forces Medic Sergeant 1st Class Bill Doyle.

• 3:28Jocko Willink?

  Those operations were viewed as successes due to the amount of enemy trucks, supplies, and troops destroyed during the intense battles.

• 3:39Jocko Willink?

  The three SLAM operations were launched from the top-secret SOG base in Kontum, Command and Control Central. The last SLAM operation was run by B Company in Hatchet Force Command. By the end of August 1970, Greenbrier Captain Gene McCarley became the commander of B Company. McCarley was a SOG veteran, having run missions during the last few months of 1967 and into 1968, when he was assigned to RT Florida out of Kontum in 1968.

• 4:15Jocko Willink?

  RT Florida ran a series of successful missions, including a trail watch, wiretaps of NVA phone lines, and planning Air Force sensors alongside a trail.

• 4:28Jocko Willink?

  At the end of August, MacCarley heard through the grapevine that a major hatchet force operation was coming through the chain of command, and he volunteered B Company for it. Assuming it might be another SLAM operation, MacCarley researched the after-action reports from the previous missions. He talked to team members in camp about those operations, their successes, their shortcomings. In the first days of September 1970, the operations order came down and was assigned to B Company under the command of MacCarley. It was dubbed Operation Tailwind.

• 5:10Jocko Willink?

  And much to MacCarley's surprise, Operation Tailwind was targeted for the deepest insertion into Laos ever by a SOG team, 25 to 30 miles beyond the normal area of operations. The operation was designed to take pressure off a CIA operation further southwest bordering Cambodia. Because of the unique nature of this mission, MacCarley drew upon his years of operational experience in Laos for a daring new tactic. Instead of remaining in a static position like the earlier SLAM missions, once the

• 5:52Jocko Willink?

  full element B Company, 15 Green Berets and 120 highly-trained Montagnard tribesmen were on the ground in the deepest penetration of enemy territory during the secret war, he would move day and night, supported by air assets from the Air Force, Army, and Marine Corps. It would be an epic mission. In hindsight, 47 years later, although no one said so at the time, most agreed it was a suicide mission.

• 6:30Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is from the prologue of a book called SOG Chronicles, Volume One, written by John Stryker Meyer, otherwise known by his nickname and code name and call sign, Tilt. And it is once again an honor to have Tilt here with us, as he has been here before for podcasts, 180, 181, 182, 186, 247, and now 248. And if you haven't listened to those yet, go listen to them to understand what SOG was and what

• 7:10Jocko Willink?

  heroes these men were, including this man, my hero, John Stryker Meyer. Tilt, thanks for coming back on.

• 7:20John Stryker Meyer?

  Good evening, sir.

• 7:21Jocko Willink?

  Good evening.

• 7:22John Stryker Meyer?

  Welcome.

• 7:23Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for coming back.

• 7:24John Stryker Meyer?

  It's my honor.

• 7:26Jocko Willink?

  So, um, this is just a story that, you know, you and I had talked about some of the different stories that we've covered and, and, you know, you've kind of, I guess you kind of somehow ended up being a little bit of the SOG historian, capturing a bunch of these stories from different operations, even when you weren't there, but interviewing guys, talking to them, gathering all this information, and then captured and put into these books. But it has the, I mean, since you were in SOG and you operated in these areas of, of operations that these guys were in, the way you're able to tell the story is, is, is powerful.

• 8:05John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, thank you. Um, but this book here is the first one that doesn't have my stories. And that's what I like, because that's what my goal is going to be for SOG Chronicles is my little humble company. And we're going to write these stories until we die, because there's so many that have never been told. And this mission, Operation Tilt, when it was a classic, I'd heard little tidbits about it over the years, but until, and we'll get into details later, how in 98, there were some facts that came out twisted on that due to the Communist News Network. But factually, this is just an amazing mission. And there's so many levels. And, um, it was a classic example of a SOG operation with men on the ground.

• 8:49John Stryker Meyer?

  Doing a mission, got it accomplished. And they worked with Army, Air Force, and Marine Corps air assets. Everything from fast movers to gunships. And Gene McCauley was just outstanding soldier, a soldier's soldier.

• 9:06Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 9:06John Stryker Meyer?

  And he, you know, he started out as enlisted, became an officer. So he never lost that grounding, but just one hell of a commander. And here he just, that was his concept. And they ran with it. And as we get into the story, just amazing stuff.

• 9:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the, the air superiority that we had was really powerful. But you have to remember that it wasn't total air superiority. It wasn't like, look, we have air superiority in Iraq and Afghanistan. We, we, we very rarely will lose an aircraft. And usually it's because there's some kind of an accident or a crash or something like that. But even though we, it's pretty easy to say, oh yeah, we had full air superiority in, in Vietnam. We had a, a certain level of confidence. But at the same time, we didn't have total air superiority because there were still, there were still aircraft getting shot down by either MiGs or getting shot down by surface to air missiles.

• 10:03John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, because you had two separate air wars. You had the air war over North Vietnam. That's the Air Force and the Navy just pounding away, losing hundreds of men. And it had the whole POW where they, many where we turned, I, I forget the exact number. And they came back in February of seventy-three through April seventy-three. They came back. So that is more of a traditional, yeah, there's MiGs that were trained by the Russians, et cetera. And some even said the Russians flew, I don't know. We were more concerned with down south and the Prairie Fire AO in Cambodia. Over time, as the war progressed, particularly after Lyndon Johnson had the bombing halt in seventy-eight.

• 10:45John Stryker Meyer?

  Man, the anti-aircraft stuff, the twelve point sevens, the twenty-three millimeter, thirty-seven mic, mic, and heavier stuff. And one of the stories later here is one of our medics. He remembers flying out and we'll have some, cover that a little bit of his story later. But on the way out, there was AK-AK in the air, just like World War Two. When you see, you know, twelve o'clock high and all those, you see all the AK-AK that shot down all of our airplanes in World War Two. There it was, courtesy of the Russians. And they were shooting at our helicopters. And so Doc Paget was like, oh my God, this is like watching a World War II movie, but it's right here. And so that is our war.

• 11:26Jocko Willink?

  This is like watching a World War II movie, except I think I might get killed.

• 11:30John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah. And in World War II, they didn't have any helicopters that we know about.

• 11:36John Stryker Meyer?

  And so that is the aspect where, like in your introduction, we talked about the MIA's to this day. Missing in action, the Americans that were shot down supporting SOG. That's everything from fast movers down to the smallest helicopters, the Loche. And of course, the Vietnamese Air Force, like, um, uh, with the story we talked about on Tuesday with Lynn Black. On the visual reconnaissance, it's just a little dinky observation aircraft. The copilot gets his head blown off, literally, and his head and helmet lands in Lynn's lap. So those are the casualties that went into our war. That's our side of the air war. So we dominated the air, but that air was full of anti-aircraft weaponry. Deadly.

• 12:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 12:19John Stryker Meyer?

  Absolutely.

• 12:22Jocko Willink?

  Well, I guess we should get into this, this story, because, um, this, this tailwind is, is just kinda crazy.

• 12:32John Stryker Meyer?

  Just another day in SOG.

• 12:33Jocko Willink?

  Another day in SOG. All right, so here we go, going to the book, SOG Chronicles, Volume One. And for everyone that's hopeful out there, there's gonna be Volume Two, Three, Four, Five.

• 12:42John Stryker Meyer?

  The Lord willing.

• 12:45Jocko Willink?

  I know there's, there's more stories than you got time to write. I mean, it's gonna, there's so many stories. Every one of these operations is a, is its own book.

• 12:53John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 12:55Jocko Willink?

  You know, every time I read one of your books and I read one operation, I think there's a whole story, a whole book, a, a three or 400-page book about every single operation. If you start going into the granular detail and the backstory, it's, it's crazy. So, get to work, Tilt. Keep writing.

• 13:17John Stryker Meyer?

  Yes, sir.

• 13:19Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so here we go. Routinely under protocols established in early SOG secret war, most Laotian SOG operators were limited to 20 kilometers west of Vietnam's borders. Operation Tailwind was booked to go approximately 40 kilometers further west beyond that limitation. To go that deep into Laos required formal approval from the Laotian ambassador and from the US commander of all forces in Vietnam, General Creighton at Abrams. McCarley, the B Company commanding officer at the top-secret SOG compound in Kontum, am I saying that right Kontum?

• 13:56John Stryker Meyer?

  Kontum.

• 13:57Jocko Willink?

  Command and control central, got the word from S3 on September 4th, 1970. And he says, "I remember getting called by S3 and they told me that we had a special mission, a mission that was deep into Laos, a mission deeper into Laos than ever before, and a mission bigger than any before in the Prairie Fire AO," said McCarley. "They told me to go heavy on ammo and demo. I knew that such a mission would take special clearance up to the ambassador, who is no friend of SOG, and from Abrams, that's General Abrams, who is no big fan of special forces. In short order, he learned that all of the approvals had been received and signed off."

• 14:40Jocko Willink?

  So this is a massive mission, bigger than any mission, deeper into Laos than ever before, and that means you gotta get, you gotta get approval from the ambassador. And generally, if you don't know this, ambassadors usually aren't fond of military actions inside their, inside their arenas, right?

• 14:58John Stryker Meyer?

  And that one ambassador just made life so difficult for SOG from every day that we were open there.

• 15:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean ambassadors, if you think about it just from a philosophical level, you know, they want to solve things through diplomacy, and, and so generally they have a little bit of a, of friction with the military elements, generally, not always. And then you have Abrams, who's not a fan of special forces, which I believe we've done a good job of moving this in a better direction, but there certainly has been tension from time to time between conventional forces and special forces and special operations guys, generally because special operations guys...

• 15:41Jocko Willink?

  Well, they don't follow the same rules all the time that the conventional guys follow, and they might have a little bit of an attitude, and that can rub them the wrong way. Maybe. And a little bit.

• 15:52Jocko Willink?

  So, you know, you got a guy like General Abrams that doesn't like special forces. Except when he needs them. Except when he needs them. Well, there you go. And he needed them here. So, continuing on, later that day, S3 provided more specific details. Go heavy. Create havoc for the NVA and keep them busy as long as possible.

• 16:13Jocko Willink?

  McCarley, a former team leader of SOG Recon Team Florida, where he ran seven successful missions, transferred to the Hatchet Force where Green Berets ran platoon and company-sized operations across the fence in Laos and Cambodia. So, just so everyone gets a grip on this, these Hatchet Forces, now you have, instead of having 12 guys on the ground. Or six. Or six guys on the ground, like you would with one of your recon teams. Yeah. Now, you're talking about a group of special forces, guys, maybe 10, 12, 15 special forces, American special forces, guys, and then 120 or 150 indig forces. 120, yeah. Locals. Yeah.

• 16:56Jocko Willink?

  And so, in this case, they're Montagnards, and that means you can conduct these bigger operations. And that's really the fundamental mission of special forces, of the Green Berets, is to work with indig forces, train up these guerrilla forces so that they can become a strong fighting unit. The SEALs have a different primary mission. The SEALs' primary mission was always generally considered to be special, uh, direct action and special reconnaissance. Find the enemy, kill them. Yep, that's, that's, that's the SEALs. And the, the special forces was more, hey, find the enemy and then train some of the local populace to go kill them. That's the goal. And it's more of a long-term solution.

• 17:39Jocko Willink?

  You know, you'll hear the Green Berets say it's teach them how to fish, instead of just giving them a fish. SEAL teams, we just killed, we just killed the FIS generally. Now, we both cross over and we both do each one, you know, we do their operations. When I was in Ramadi, we, that's what we did. We trained a bunch of indig forces, a bunch of Iraqi soldiers. And, you know, of course, there were special forces units that were doing all kinds of direct action missiles, missions there as well. So we do cross over, but if you look at the kind of bread and butter, this is just bread and butter, Green Beret operation, a massive indig force going into, to, to do, to harass the enemy.

• 18:16John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:17Jocko Willink?

  This is what it, this is what it is.

• 18:18John Stryker Meyer?

  Take the pressure off of the CIA, which was getting his ass kicked.

• 18:21Jocko Willink?

  Explain that background a little bit about this, what's going on with the CIA there?

• 18:25John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, at that time, Premier Sinok had been ousted. And this is 1970, I forget the exact month, but like May or June, right around there. So he leaves country. There's a political vacuum. And so the communists want to head south en masse to get as many troops in Cambodia just to take it. Uh, because the NVA knew there was a Khmer Rouge element that was on a sideline and, and growing in strength in Cambodia. So the CIA put this operation together, which was further, deeper into Laos, near the border. And the NVA came at them hard. Now, they had 5,000 CIA troops and they were getting their ass kicked.

• 19:08John Stryker Meyer?

  And they said, help. So they came up with this concept, have the team go in. And then Gene McCrally put his little unique spin to it. After talking, because by 1970, uh, particularly out of Kontum, those hatchet forces were good. They really knew how to work with the air assets and, uh, which includes Spectre at night. And so Gene knew all about that stuff. And, uh, so he put that idea together and it worked in terms of drawing away NVA from the CIA, which in the end, mission accomplished. Not only did they draw them away, the CIA could hold. But they also had some major enemy caches in the command post.

• 19:53John Stryker Meyer?

  And that's one of my favorite picture on the front page. There's a picture of our guys from Kontum standing there with a picture of Ho Chi Minh, which was taken from one of the tables in the command center there. That was the NVA command center.

• 20:08Jocko Willink?

  When I was going through what they call SEAL. It was called SEAL Tactical Training. Before that, it was called SEAL Basic Indoc. And then it became SEAL Qualification Training. It's like what you do when you get done with the basic training. We did a raid on a target. And this is up in Fort Lewis, Washington. And so we do a raid on a target. And they're flying a flag on this little compound, right? And they're flying this flag. And sure enough, the officer in charge of our class, which was now the platoon commander of our platoon going to do this hit. He sees that flag, walks over to it, undoes the figure eight, starts pulling it down.

• 20:51Jocko Willink?

  And sure enough, the instructors had booby trapped that thing and it blows up. You're a casualty. So when I see that picture on the cover, I always think, man, I was always scared to touch anything that looked good.

• 21:01John Stryker Meyer?

  Absolutely. Oh, yeah. If the first thing if it looks good, maybe it's too good.

• 21:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. But you know, those, a lot of guys, a lot of guys, I know a lot of guys from, from the war in Iraq, a lot of guys went home with, with paintings of Saddam Hussein. Cause those things were pretty easy to find. They were everywhere.

• 21:21John Stryker Meyer?

  Yes, indeed.

• 21:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. All right, going back to the book with the Hatchet Force. With the Hatchet Force, we were used to going across the fence and getting our ass kicked and then getting saved by Tac Air. On Operation Halfback in Laos earlier in the year, we lost two South Vietnamese Air Force H-34s, which included SF Medic Bill Boyle, who died in one of those choppers. We got hit hard because we were dug in and the NVA pounded our position. With Operation Tailwood, Tailwind, once on the ground, we were going to keep moving day and night to keep the NVA off balance and keep them from massing a large force against our position. It's it's fundamental. It's what we're talking about is maneuver warfare, right?

• 22:05John Stryker Meyer?

  Absolutely.

• 22:05Jocko Willink?

  Instead of saying, hey, we'll do attrition warfare. We'll sit on this this mountaintop and you attack us. Hey, we're gonna move around and you know, won't know where I where we are. But that's tricky too, moving a hundred and fifty guys around in the J.

• 22:17John Stryker Meyer?

  In the jungle, indeed, in the J, as they say.

• 22:23Jocko Willink?

  Although no one said so at the time, at least not outright, the mission that McCarley and the CCC hatchet force were gearing up for to execute could be called a suicide mission. As McCarley briefed the B Company platoon leaders, squad leaders, medic Gary Mike Rose and Company First Sergeant Morris Adair in the CCC compound, operation orders were going out to critical support elements that would play crucial roles in Operation Tailwind. First, there was the long distance to the target in Laos. Because it was so far away, neither the older piston-driven H-34 Sikorsky helicopters of the South Vietnamese armies or South Vietnamese Air Force 219th Special Operations Squadron, nor regular Army Huey Slicks

• 23:09Jocko Willink?

  could be used to insert and extract the 136-man detachment. So you got just a straight-up fuel limitation.

• 23:16John Stryker Meyer?

  Absolutely.

• 23:17Jocko Willink?

  These aircraft, they're not going to be able to fly that deep into Laos. So what does that mean? Back to the book. Thus, SOG brass turned to the Marine Corps Aviation Wing that flew the largest troop carriers in Vietnam, the powerful CH-53D Sikorsky twin-engine helicopters in HMH-463 based at the Corps Marble Mountain Air Facility. Using the bigger, stronger, heavier lift helicopters made sense because three sea stallions with the with the design capacity to hold 55 troops could take the entire hatchet force of 136 men, all their equipment and extra supplies such as explosives and ammunition and insert them into the target area.

• 24:03Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. The the CH-53 helicopter is a massive freaking helicopter.

• 24:10John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 24:11Jocko Willink?

  It holds 50-something troops.

• 24:14John Stryker Meyer?

  With all their gear.

• 24:15Jocko Willink?

  With their gear.

• 24:15John Stryker Meyer?

  And all their rounds for their weapons.

• 24:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a that's an awesome aircraft.

• 24:20John Stryker Meyer?

  And those were the only two engines in them. This is before they came out with a three-engine model like you used.

• 24:25Jocko Willink?

  Ah, see, I got that. I got it easy.

• 24:30Jocko Willink?

  In previous years, Marine Corps aviators from HMH 463 had performed fearlessly in key SOG operations across the fence, and Marine brass knew that flying combat troops and supplies into Laos always resulted in the helicopters getting hit by enemy fire. "In the first day," said McCarley, "it was funny. The Marine brass were a little reluctant to go that deep into Laos because they knew the SOG missions presented extra challenges and dangers to Marine air crews. But once they heard about the unique aspects of Operation Tailwind, they wanted in." Marine Sergeant Larry Groh, am I saying that right?

• 25:09John Stryker Meyer?

  Correct.

• 25:10Jocko Willink?

  Was a door gunner and structural mechanic in HMH 463 when the operations order came into the command shed in Da Nang. "The most dangerous," and he says, "the most dangerous and most interesting missions we flew were Mission 72, and that was SOG Support. We called it going over the fence. For me personally, this is why I joined the Marine Corps, to run special missions against the enemy. I was looking for adventure and wanted to be where the action was." The Marine aviators were told to prepare for a Mission 72 insertion deep into Laos. Groh replaced the 50 caliber machine gun with the M60 because it gave him more maneuverability,

• 25:53Jocko Willink?

  and, "if we got shot down," he said, "and quote, 'if we got shot down, I could carry it and take the fight to the enemy. The 50 was too heavy to carry."

• 26:02John Stryker Meyer?

  Is that a great Marine or what?

• 26:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 26:05John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 26:06Jocko Willink?

  So just so everyone understands what we're talking about, a 50 caliber machine gun is a big gun, and it's, you can't shoot it, you can't, you cannot do it. You can't, you can't carry that thing and shoot it from your shoulder or from your hip. It's, it's meant to be mounted on a vehicle or mounted in an aircraft. But an M60, you can shoot by yourself. You can carry it and you can, you can fire it from the hip or from the shoulder. And so, this Marine's thinking, "Well, we're going out with these freaking SOG guys. Probably a pretty decent chance we're gonna get shot down. I'll go ahead and switch it out. That way, if we get shot down, I'll be able to, you know, unhook that thing and go and fight."

• 26:42John Stryker Meyer?

  Larry's a thinking Marine, boy. He's something. He's one of my all-time heroes in front of this mission. Yeah.

• 26:51Jocko Willink?

  Not far away from HMH 463 at Marble Mountain Air Facility, Marine aviators from HML 367, Scarface, got the op order for Operation Tailwind in a more dramatic fashion, according to Cobra Gunship pilot Joe Driscoll, who was a first lieutenant at the time. And he says, "The duty driver came by our room at 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning and told us to pack our gear as we'd be gone for 5 to 10 days on an operation to be ready at 5 a.m. My first thought was, maybe we're finally going into North Vietnam." Driscoll and fellow pilots flew the early model AH-1G Cobra gunships, with one man sitting

• 27:34Jocko Willink?

  in front seat and a pilot sitting behind him. A relative of the more familiar Huey helicopter, the Cobra gunship had a more narrow profile, designed strictly as a weapons platform. Driscoll's Cobra had two 19-shot 2.75 rocket launchers, two 7-shot rocket pods, one 762 minigun that fired 6,000 rounds a minute, and a grenade launcher that fired 40mm high explosive rounds. That's why they call it a gunship.

• 28:04John Stryker Meyer?

  That's firepower.

• 28:05Jocko Willink?

  "When the early versions of those Cobras were fully armed and loaded with aviation fuel, the helicopter's skids would drag on the runway for a short distance until the pilots gained enough lift to get the bird airborne. However, once in the air, they brought the fight to the enemy with precise gun runs and rocket runs. Scarface and several other Marine helicopter units had been involved in the secret war in Vietnam for several years, usually supporting recon teams and hatchet forces from FOB-1 at Phu Bai and FOB-3 at Khe Sonh, or FOB-4 at Da Nang."

• 28:41Jocko Willink?

  In the northern, and you're just, this, this section of the book is laying out and I'm skipping through it like, I always have to skip through some stuff, get it, get the book so you can get the rest of the details. But, you know, you mentioned that this was a massive joint operation through all these different forces. And in this section, you're laying out the various air platforms that are going to be brought to bear to execute this mission.

• 29:03Jocko Willink?

  You go on here, "In the northern side of Da Nang, at the Joint Military Civilian Airfield, Air Force SPAD pilots who flew the single wing, single wing A1 Skyraiders, received their initial op order for Operation Tailwind." So, the A1, the A1 Skyraider is this old school, World War II era.

• 29:27John Stryker Meyer?

  Right, invented and put together at the end of World War II, used throughout Korean War. And then, uh, the Air Force brass put them all away. And then Jack Singlob and other commanders said, "We want those aircraft back in service." They had this big battle behind the scenes to get the Skyraider, because they were just phenomenal support for SOG.

• 29:49Jocko Willink?

  The nickname SPAD.

• 29:51John Stryker Meyer?

  World War I.

• 29:52Jocko Willink?

  I looked it up, it's an old World War I airplane. And this thing was such an ancient beast, that they, they called it the SPAD, the World War I airplane. Uh, awesome looking bird. Uh, going on here. "The single, the single-engine warplane was loved by American ground pounders." This is kinda like the A-10.

• 30:11John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh yeah.

• 30:12Jocko Willink?

  You know, the A-10's the same thing. People try and get rid of it and all the ground pounders say, "We love that thing."

• 30:17John Stryker Meyer?

  Absolutely.

• 30:18Jocko Willink?

  We love that warhawk.

• 30:18John Stryker Meyer?

  The only thing the A-10 was missing was napalm.

• 30:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that would have been nice.

• 30:21John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh yeah, crispy crit of time.

• 30:24Jocko Willink?

  Uh, "The single-engine warplane was loved by American ground pounders and feared by communist troops because of the havoc and death they rained down on enemy troops. Additionally, through the unique design by Ed Heinemann at Douglas Aircraft Company during World War II, the Skyraider could stay on station over a target longer than any aircraft. And it brought bombs, cluster bombs, 2.75 rockets, 20mm cannons, and two miniguns to the battlefield. Once again, that's a lot of firepower."

• 30:55John Stryker Meyer?

  Plus bombs and napalm.

• 31:00Jocko Willink?

  Over the years, several SOG recon and hatchet force Green Berets were called getting showered with shell casings from the A1 Skyraiders as they flew danger close to the teams they were supporting. Some later reported receiving burns on the back of their necks from hot shell casings that fell from the warbird and landed on the soldiers' necks, burning their skin once they lodged in the collar. However, no one ever complained about those burns, burns that were often life savings. Lieutenant Colonel Melvin Swanson was the group commander when Operation Tailwind Op Order landed on his desk. And here's what he had to say. "To tell the truth, we didn't do anything special when the op order came down. I had no idea where we were going. We

• 31:42Jocko Willink?

  operated like any other SOG mission that we'd supported over the years. We had two A1s armed and cocked, ready to go for SOG missions and search and rescue missions. We prided ourselves on saving SOG teams. SOG missions were our primary assignment with SAR as the other priority. When they called, we answered."

• 32:04Jocko Willink?

  Always.

• 32:08Jocko Willink?

  Back at CCC in Kontum, McCarley restated the mission to his platoon leaders and squad leaders. "Go heavy on ammo, grenades, and C4 plastic explosives, and light on food and water." And he says, "I had every team member, including our in-ditch troops, carry at least one pound of C4 because we were going to blow up any enemy caches and structures we found, and C4 was always good for clearing LZs." Green Beret medic Gary "Mike" Rose went through his mental checklist, preparing to carry enough medical supplies and bandages for a company-sized operation.

• 32:50Jocko Willink?

  He would make sure that each Green Beret team member carried at least one morphine syret in a specific pocket. He also made sure that he packed, that each packed several sizes of bandages and at least one IV. He packed about fifteen syrettes of morphine, five syrettes of atropine. He always carried five for insert and snake bites even in camp, as well as extra bandages, medical tape, rubber tubing, and several NATO surgical kits. Rose worked with his Montagnard Koch, is that right? Cock? Koch?

• 33:22John Stryker Meyer?

  Koch.

• 33:23Jocko Willink?

  Koch, who he described as a loyal, brave soldier and medic who carried a similar amount of medical supplies that I carried. And like many young soldiers, Rose never thought for a minute that he would be wounded during combat. Thus, the stage was set for launching Operation Tailwind on September 11th, 1970, after several weather delays and rocket attacks to the launch site north of CCC. It would be a mission where the sixteen Green Berets would receive a total of thirty-three Purple Hearts for wounds received during the heavy combat that was about to unfold in Laos.

• 34:08John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh yeah. And the fun thing here is we, this is the first time we were able to interview all the aviators, like Mel Swanson, one of the character, and then Joe Driscoll and his cohorts from Scarface, and then met Larry and a couple of other, it's one of the pilots over time.

• 34:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and we'll get to it because you mentioned in the book and you talked through that, but a lot of times you never even see these guys.

• 34:34John Stryker Meyer?

  Never.

• 34:35Jocko Willink?

  I mean, they're stationed in a different place, they're up in the air, you're on the ground, and you never, you just never, you never meet them.

• 34:40John Stryker Meyer?

  Never. And look, I mean, you've, you've, you've heard all the stories, mine, Lyn Black, the Frenchman, Elton Barzwell. We all have Sky Reader stories that loved and saved our bacon. I couldn't tell you one pilot's name, not until we had, until we had this story. And that was even there forty, forty-five years later.

• 34:57Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 34:58John Stryker Meyer?

  Yes.

• 35:02Jocko Willink?

  So here we go. Let's get to it. After seven days of weather delays, false starts and enemy rocket attacks.

• 35:11Jocko Willink?

  At the top secret military assistance command base in Vietnam.

• 35:17Jocko Willink?

  Eugene McCarley, that's the guy in charge, Eugene McCarley gave the order to move out fifteen berets, fifteen green berets and 120 Montagnards mercenaries.

• 35:30Jocko Willink?

  On the morning of September 11th, four of the powerful Marine Corps CH-53D Sikorsky twin-engine helicopters in HMH 463, based at the Marine Corps Marble Mountain Air Facility, landed outside the CCC compound and loaded up the 136-man unit. SOG brass had turned to the Marine Corps Aviation Wing that flew the largest troop carriers to reach into Laos, 25 kilometers beyond the normal SOG area of operations. Escorted by six Marine Corps Cobras, the helicopters headed north to refuel at DAC-2 before heading into the target area. After refueling, they flew north, parallel to the

• 36:12Jocko Willink?

  border, for a while before taking a left turn, heading due west into the target area. Could the Cobras make it all the way in?

• 36:18John Stryker Meyer?

  Yes.

• 36:20Jocko Willink?

  That's pretty impressive.

• 36:21John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, they had extra fuel capacity.

• 36:23Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 36:26Jocko Willink?

  And here's, speaking of the pilots that you got to interview, "It was a hot zone from the moment we arrived," Scarface Cobra Pilot Joe Driscoll said. "We took several hits on the first gun run. During the insertion of the team, Scarface Pilot Sid Baker and I were surprised by the volume of fire. In fact, we took hits in our rocket pods, we had bullet holes in our tail boom, and they shot out our radio. When the Cobras made their final gun run, we followed our SOP, which was to stay in formation and keep an eye out for enemy soldiers firing at us." End quote. Because they had no radio contact, Driscoll and Baker simply flew through the pattern to cover the ship in front of them without firing.

• 37:09Jocko Willink?

  Quote, "The enemy didn't know we had no radios." "I'll tell you one thing, that was a hot target," Driscoll said. "We were moving targets, the CH-53s were static targets, but they went in, dropped off the troops, and got out of there post haste."

• 37:27Jocko Willink?

  Man.

• 37:27John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 37:28Jocko Willink?

  On insert.

• 37:30John Stryker Meyer?

  Okay, see ordinarily, we're done. We get shot at going in unless you're Lynn Black and his ones you're up. But ordinarily, you're done. You just turn around and go home. We're compromised. The idea is to get inserted, do a mission without being compromised. There, by our old standards, we're compromised. Operation Tailwind, we're going in. Come hell or high water. It gets better.

• 37:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 37:57Jocko Willink?

  Continuing, the CH-53s were big targets. McCarley said all of the CH-53s were hit by enemy ground fire while en route to the target. "I'd never received so much ground fire while flying to a target," he said. "It sounded like a BB gun shooting a tin can." But it wasn't BBs that the troops heard, it was enemy rounds. By the time that B Company exited the helicopters, four Monty Yards had been wounded from enemy gunfire. One died while flying back to base with his three wounded comrade in arms. Green Beret Medic Sergeant Michael Rose added, "It was strange exiting the chopper, stepping over wounded in action to get to the ground."

• 38:37John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 38:38Jocko Willink?

  So they haven't even started the mission yet. They got one killed and three wounded. We haven't started the mission yet, but we got, we got three wounded and one killed.

• 38:48Jocko Willink?

  Continuing, "Under ordinary SOG mission SOPs, any recon team or hatchet force that received enemy ground fire and men wounded in action prior to getting to the ground would cancel the mission." This was no ordinary mission. Company B moved off the helicopters and was on the ground in Laos shortly after noon time. "One fundamental truism of the Vietnam War, as well as the eight years secret surfaced, the communist forces fought when they wanted to fight. Thus, when McCarley and the remaining 131 members of B Company settled into the wood line, they found complete and utter silence."

• 39:27Jocko Willink?

  He said, "It was so strange. The aircraft pulled back, we were on the ground, and there were no enemy soldiers, no noise, no birds, nothing." So, once again, you get that, that weird quietness.

• 39:37John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:38Jocko Willink?

  What do you think make the, make the NVA think, "We're gonna shoot when they're inserting, but when, once they land, we're not gonna do anything." What do they think, and what's the enemy thinking at that point?

• 39:47John Stryker Meyer?

  Who knows? Um, their tactics always varied. And I think a little bit of it was just a complete element of surprise. They saw the birds, and so the people shooting at it would be anti-aircraft crews along the way, and probably some ground troops with their AKs. I don't know, I wasn't there. But, uh, once they land, let's see what the boys are up to. That's what the NVA could be thinking, just to see what, and then they knew, with those three helicopters coming in, there's a lot of people, and they wanted to maybe do their own assessment. See who these, what, who they are and what they're up to. Because, um, sometimes the NVA just didn't react as quickly, particularly that far west.

• 40:29Jocko Willink?

  They must have been totally, totally surprised.

• 40:31John Stryker Meyer?

  At, at several levels. Surprised that we were there, or SOG was there, and then surprised at the number of aircraft, and that they actually got in. And so, there's all those three different elements, but they were, you know, they're checking it out.

• 40:51Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on. McCarty, who was serving his second tour of duty in SOG, wasted no time. The company moved out in a northwest direction. And then the men of B Company had another surprise, surprise. After moving less than 400 meters from the LZ, the point element of the company reported seeing huts. The first platoon deployed two squads to search the area. They found an enemy ammo dump, 20 bunkers spread out over 500 meters, hidden in the, under the jungle canopy with vegetation and dark covers. After setting up perimeter security, the B Company troops pulled together a quick inventory of what they had found, picked up samples, while demolitions experts, S Sergeant 1st Class Bernard Bright

• 41:32Jocko Willink?

  and Specialist 5th Class Craig Schmidt photographed, identified the weapons and ammo, and began setting up explosive charges with 13 and a half minute delay fuses in the two larger structures with white phosphorus grenades attached to each charge to better mark the exact location for Covey, who had then direct airstrikes on that position. So here we go. Already on the ground, already found bad guy area, but there was no bad guys there for whatever reason, but a bunch of ammo and whatnot.

• 42:02John Stryker Meyer?

  They found the cache.

• 42:04Jocko Willink?

  So they're gonna blow it up.

• 42:07Jocko Willink?

  And then this happens while while the B company team worked on this cache, Macarley had one of the most unique moments in its 28 in his 28 years of military service as he and a few of the SF soldiers were looking at a map, a telephone rang. Quote, I couldn't believe it. A phone rang in the middle of Laos, Macarley said. Quote, so being SF, one of our guys picked up the phone and answered it. Hello, fifth special forces group, may we help you?

• 42:39Jocko Willink?

  Can you imagine the reaction of the communist on the other end of that phone to this day? Just thinking about it makes me laugh. So there you go.

• 42:47Jocko Willink?

  As the SF men chuckled at the phone call, others were compiling an impressive list of enemy weapons contained in the bunkers. Massive cache of of weapons. Not resting on its laurels, B company moved north with the platoon with the first platoon breaking point in a short distance. The first platoon found a trail, crossed it and were proceeding north when a dare and second platoon squad leader Mike Hagan observed several NVA soldiers on the trail and opened fire on them. An NVA 762 round went through Hagan's gas mask, which he had on his leg and slammed into his leg. So they're carrying gas masks on this operation. Bernie Bright was slightly wounded. The round actually parted his hair, said Macarley.

• 43:32Jocko Willink?

  You can't get much closer than that. The NVA fled the area and B company continued to head north after medic Gary Mike Rose patched up Hagan's wound. As they marched, they heard two large explosions back at the NVA bunkers, white phosphor white phosphorus grenades that bright and Schmidt attached to the demo charges emitted large plumes of white smoke, smoke that Covey readily picked up and proceeded to direct precise follow up airstrikes. Secondary explosions would continue for more than five hours.

• 44:03John Stryker Meyer?

  Can you imagine that secondary explosions?

• 44:06Jocko Willink?

  Crazy. Yeah. Yeah. It's crazy amount of, well, I mean, this is their supply. This is, this is, this is how they're fighting the war.

• 44:14John Stryker Meyer?

  I mean, right there, you go home and say, look what we just did.

• 44:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 44:16John Stryker Meyer?

  They'd be a great mission. And that's the first, what, hour on the ground?

• 44:22Jocko Willink?

  B Company then made contact with the NVA, with an NVA company, which lasted for close to an hour, McCarley said. The hatchet force men used close airstrikes from Scarface Cobras and Spads, skillful squad tact, and skillful squad tactics against the surprised NVA to drive them off. As darkness approached, McCarley and the point element began looking for a location to remain overnight for the night. We stopped for a commo check when they fired one B-40 rocket into our command post.

• 44:57Jocko Willink?

  Rose added, "We were fortunate, we were fortunate in one small way. The rocket flew past all of us before striking a bamboo thicket. Thus, when the shrapnel exploded, those of us injured didn't get the full head-on blunt force of the metal shards, as the forward momentum of the rocket exploded into the bamboo." Forty-five years later, after that rocket explosion, Rose had one lasting mental image of it. He says, quote, "It's funny, I can't remember much about it, except that all of a sudden I was flying through the air. At some point while airborne, I looked up and saw a blue sky. It was beautiful. And then I landed."

• 45:39Jocko Willink?

  And here's McCarley. Rose showed us what he was made of that day. He immediately started to go to work on the wounded because everyone in the CP at that time had varying degrees of wounds. In fact, Rose had a serious foot injury. Somehow, the shrapnel had sliced open his jungle boot and cut into his foot. What did he do? He pulled out an ace bandage, wrapped it around his foot, and used his Car 15 as a crutch and began treating our wounded."

• 46:02Jocko Willink?

  End quote. "The most serious wounded was a South Vietnamese lieutenant. Shrapnel sliced into his right thigh to the bone, in addition to other shrapnel wounds. We stopped and licked our wounds as Rose patched up our people," McCarley said. McCarley's plan was to continue to move at night, and if B Company made contact with the enemy, the special forces men would determine whether to attack them or maneuver around them, or simply pull back and call in fixed-wing gunships that could bring deadly fire from the sky upon the enemy troops on the ground.

• 46:32Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. Finally, Rose rigged two stretchers from rubber ponchos supported by thick bamboo poles and tied them down with six-foot sections of rope.

• 46:42Jocko Willink?

  They would now be able to carry the most seriously wounded indigenous troops. When Rose gave MacCarley the okay, B Company took the bold step of moving out at night. Quote, "I wasn't gonna let them tie us down in one position and then hammer us. By us moving, they didn't know exactly where we were. There were little skirmishes, and a few times we ran into a few NVA. After contact, we'd move on. If there was a larger element, we could pull back and call in the gunship strike. We had flareships over us every night." End quote. B Company continued to march west, deeper into Laos.

• 47:18Jocko Willink?

  The deeper B Company Green Beret and their Montagnards headed west, the more they enhanced their primary goal of being a diversion to the NVA forces attacking the CIA's Operation Catapult.

• 47:31Jocko Willink?

  This wasn't going to be easy. By dawn, nine of the Americans, nine of the 16 Americans had been wounded. So these guys had been on the ground for, what is it? They got inserted around noon. So we're talking a very short period of time.

• 47:50John Stryker Meyer?

  Eighteen hours?

• 47:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, eighteen hours or something like that. And they already have nine of the 16 Americans wounded.

• 47:58Jocko Willink?

  Rose and his indigenous medic, Koch, worked tirelessly on the wounded all night even as they moved throughout the dark jungle. So they got, they got nine wounded, just Americans, and they're still moving.

• 48:11John Stryker Meyer?

  And the two seriously wounded Montagnards?

• 48:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, in stretchers.

• 48:14John Stryker Meyer?

  In stretchers. Improvised.

• 48:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Man, carrying stretchers is no joke. You need to have like a team to carry. If you think, if you think, oh, you just get two guys, one on each side of the stretcher, that works for a little while. But you end up having to either rotate those guys out, or you put four guys on the stretcher. So much harder than it looks. Luckily, the yards are smaller though, right?

• 48:38John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 48:39Jocko Willink?

  They're not like the big amount. Man, when we, when we were going through training, and I was be a down man, the guys would be like, hey, bro. Well, I love you, bud.

• 48:49John Stryker Meyer?

  Could you go on a diet, please?

• 48:50Jocko Willink?

  Here, take this grenade, and we'll see you later. Good luck. We'll mark you with a chem light.

• 49:00Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, Captain Gene McCarley had the men of B Company Hatchet Force moving north well before the sun rose on day two of Operation Tailwind. "We zigzagged a lot during that mission because we didn't want the NVA to get a good fix on our position as we knew they'd try to pin us down and attack us in force if that happened," said McCarley. "Within an hour, NVA soldiers hit the first platoon with automatic weapons, B-40 rockets and mortars. Two squads maneuvered against the enemy while McCarley directed airstrikes against the enemy positions. The tactics worked. Because of thick jungle, they weren't able to get an accurate body count as McCarley continued to march north."

• 49:40Jocko Willink?

  However, SF Medic Gary "Mike" Rose knew the casualties were climbing among both SF and Indige troops of B Company. "We had two yards killed," and yards is the short, the short name for mountain yards. "We had two yards killed when Captain McCarley and I got hit with shrapnel from the B-40. After confirming they were dead, I wrapped them up and we carried them with us as best we could," Rose said. "However, after trying to carry them while tending to the two most seriously injured men, I had to make a decision to leave the two dead men behind because I could see that carrying them as we moved, we were causing too much fatigue for the living. So we

• 50:21Jocko Willink?

  made a decision that has bothered me for nearly half a century. By day two, it seemed as though every day, every hour, I kept getting more and more wounded."

• 50:31Jocko Willink?

  So, the SF Medic Rose, he's looking at the situation and we were just joking about how hard it is to carry guys and clearly he was dealing with that. It's incredibly hard and you think, like I said, it takes, you have to have guys to rotate through. It's taking out a whole lot of your combat power when you're moving wounded. So they probably have, you know, probably takes 10 guys to move these two wounded guys, maybe even more. So that's 10 guys out of the fight and you're moving slower. And so he has to make this agonizing decision that we're going to leave these guys.

• 51:09John Stryker Meyer?

  Nick, when I talked to Mike for that part of the story, his eyes welled up. It was just like yesterday. It really still hurt him. Now fifty, fifty years later.

• 51:23Jocko Willink?

  Rough.

• 51:27Jocko Willink?

  Continues on here. At one point during an attack on B Company, an NVA force of more than forty enemy soldiers, two of the most seriously wounded men that Rose was treating, had both of their IV fluid bags shattered and destroyed during a hail of enemy gunfire. "I learned a lesson right then and there," said Rose. "We kept the IVs flowing from low positions, allowing gravity to work, but not high enough for the enemy gunfire to destroy them." Were you guys using IV bag, were your IVs glass?

• 51:56John Stryker Meyer?

  That's a good question. I forget.

• 51:58Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 51:58John Stryker Meyer?

  That's for the medics, I'm just the comma guy.

• 52:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we, well, the weird thing, well, we all carried IVs.

• 52:03John Stryker Meyer?

  Right.

• 52:05Jocko Willink?

  And we ended up getting smaller IVs, but I don't know if you, he said the IVs shattered, so that makes me think maybe they were made of glass.

• 52:14John Stryker Meyer?

  What, the bags?

• 52:15Jocko Willink?

  IV bags, yeah.

• 52:16John Stryker Meyer?

  Just like big jars or what? Oh, no, they were, we, for the, for our medics, they had plastic.

• 52:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 52:23John Stryker Meyer?

  So maybe because of there, I'm not sure what the hatchet force.

• 52:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 52:26John Stryker Meyer?

  He took what he had.

• 52:27Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 52:29John Stryker Meyer?

  That'd be my assumption.

• 52:33Jocko Willink?

  So you're treating your wounded, you're giving them IV and the freaking bags or the jar gets shot at.

• 52:39John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 52:40Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, as the hatchet force moved north, it was obvious to McCarley that Rose had his hands full as he continually, as he had to continually monitor two most seriously wounded men, men who were being carried by him and other team members in stretchers made of bamboo sticks and ponchos. Because there were so many wounded, McCarley directed B Company to find or make an LZ for a medevac to land and take out the wounded. They found a large bomb crater and began preparing the LZ when the enemy initiated two successive contacts with them, firing small arms, B forty rockets, and throwing CHICOM grenades. As they worked on establishing a clearing, B Company dealt with the two separate attacks from the NVA using squad tactics and tac air.

• 53:22Jocko Willink?

  Both attacks were neutralized only to have Covey report that the weather had turned bad, prohibiting any rescue attempts for the day.

• 53:30Jocko Willink?

  Without hesitation, B Company moved, moved out again, going west for a while, then north, keeping its pattern of movement unpredictable. What I remember most about day two of Operation Tailwind was the disappointment of having the weather turn bad, preventing a much-needed medevac, McCauley said. So, these guys have the goal, like, okay, we got, we got some wounded guys, we need to get these guys out of here, they fight for, to get it, get an LZ, once they get this LZ established under attack, they push the attack back, and then the weather rolls in, and the guys can't, guys can't fly.

• 54:06John Stryker Meyer?

  Southeast Asia weather.

• 54:08Jocko Willink?

  Is there, what's your, what's your confidence on the weather predictions?

• 54:16Jocko Willink?

  Like, the weather predictions in Iraq are pretty easy. It's gonna be hot.

• 54:21Jocko Willink?

  Every once in a while, you would get a, a storm, and you, we, we had some sandstorms.

• 54:26John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, I saw them.

• 54:27Jocko Willink?

  The sandstorms, they're, they're like biblical sandstorms.

• 54:31John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:31Jocko Willink?

  They'd blacken the sky. It's pretty cool to see, but you can't run ops in them, at all. Like, you can't make communications because the sand blocks radio waves. So, basically, if there's that kind of biblical sandstorm coming, everyone just kind of stands down. Now, you could go out and try and get into a good position, but you can't see anything. You, you can see, you know, maybe, maybe 20 yards or something like that, I mean, your visibility is just gone.

• 55:01John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 55:02Jocko Willink?

  But we could kind of know that they were coming. I never got, let me put it this way, I never got sus, I never got surprised by the weather in Iraq. It was, it was sunny and hot 99% of the time. Every once in a while, there'd be some kind of cloud, maybe a little bit of persis, precipitation by, because we were by the Euphrates River, where it was, it was humid, people don't know that. By the Euphrates River is freaking humid. And I'm gonna show you pictures sometime of this area to the to the northeast of the city of Ramadi. It was still in our in our AO.

• 55:37John Stryker Meyer?

  Right.

• 55:38Jocko Willink?

  And it was called uh the uh the MC one or the one MC. But what we called it was Vietnam. Because because it looked like Vietnam.

• 55:49John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 55:49Jocko Willink?

  It looked exactly like Vietnam. Palm trees, rice paddies, dykes.

• 55:54John Stryker Meyer?

  My stepson told me about it. He was in the green zone.

• 55:57Jocko Willink?

  Yep, yep.

• 55:58John Stryker Meyer?

  And he's like, I thought it was back in Vietnam with you.

• 56:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, was he in the green zone in uh in Afghanistan?

• 56:04John Stryker Meyer?

  No.

• 56:04Jocko Willink?

  Oh, in Iraq.

• 56:05John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 56:05Jocko Willink?

  And by green zone, he means areas where there was.

• 56:07John Stryker Meyer?

  The the we always called the green zone, which is the biggest, most secure area in Iraq.

• 56:12Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you're talking about the green zone in Baghdad?

• 56:14John Stryker Meyer?

  In Baghdad.

• 56:15Jocko Willink?

  Okay, yeah.

• 56:16John Stryker Meyer?

  And he was operating southeast and at different locations for near some of which they came into Iraqi jungle.

• 56:22Jocko Willink?

  Yep. In Afghanistan, they called the green zone?

• 56:25John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 56:25Jocko Willink?

  Areas where there's areas where there like heavily fo- there's a lot of foliage.

• 56:29John Stryker Meyer?

  Right, okay.

• 56:30Jocko Willink?

  So in uh in Iraq, the green zone is is the green zone. It's the thing right there in Baghdad, which is big and secure. It's where they had good food and all that stuff.

• 56:39John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, we never had any uh sandstorms in the jungle.

• 56:42Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 56:43John Stryker Meyer?

  Maybe a typhoon or two.

• 56:44Jocko Willink?

  So my question was, when you would get a weather prediction, you're gonna go like these guys, let's say you were going on a four day mission. And and they're telling you, alright, looks like the weather's good. How good did you feel about that? Like, did you give it fifty fifty?

• 56:58John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, fifty fifty, yeah, you just figured, because it could change so quickly.

• 57:03Jocko Willink?

  But the positive thing is that if it gets cloudy, how long does that, how long are you thinking that lasts for?

• 57:10John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, you know, every time was different. Um, could the clouds, a lot of times there'd be clouds in the morning. Sometimes they'd burn off, sometimes they wouldn't. And um, there's just so much moisture around. And um, we were always juggling with the weather. I mean, it was just one of the um, factors that there's just no control. We get predictions, but um, we got socked in a couple of times.

• 57:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 57:38John Stryker Meyer?

  And again, they wanna get us into a hole, so okay, we just go up and try to get into a target, get in and then Mother Nature closes the hole, so I.

• 57:48John Stryker Meyer?

  We just had to lie low.

• 57:51Jocko Willink?

  And wait it out.

• 57:52John Stryker Meyer?

  Wait it out because if you move and make make contact, there's no support. And the NVA know that so they really come at you hard if there's no air.

• 58:01Jocko Willink?

  So they love it when there's bad weather.

• 58:03John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, sure.

• 58:05John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yes. Bad weather was the NVA's ally.

• 58:11Jocko Willink?

  All right. Fighting the NVA, fighting the weather.

• 58:16John Stryker Meyer?

  Mother nature.

• 58:17Jocko Willink?

  Fighting mother nature. It's another day at SOG. Back to the book. Night two in Laos was similar to night one. B Company kept on the move with continued support from Moonbeam, linking the team with Shadow, Stinger and Spectre gunships throughout the night.

• 58:32Jocko Willink?

  During that night, we heard tracked vehicles. We heard trucks, McCarley said. Night two sounded like a lot of trucks heading south, bringing troops and supplies south and some to deal with us. We had skirmishes that night and we directed air assets to assist us directly and to the areas where we heard motor vehicle activity. So now you got the Spectre gunships coming at night, which is a beautiful thing.

• 58:57John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, they had all three variations because you know, you, when I first get there in 68, Spooky was the first one. And then they came out with Shadow, which was a C-119. Whereas Spooky was the old C-47. And they could have maybe two mini guns. And when they came out with the Shadow, because we had one of our recon teams said they came back, they lived through the night and they went through a couple of Shadows and they had more ordnance and they could stay on station longer. And then another team a couple of months later, or maybe you're, I forget the timeframe, then it was the Stingers. Again, C-119s with the with the weapons, the computers to lock in on the strobe light.

• 59:42John Stryker Meyer?

  And then Spectre. And 50 years later, it still dominate the night.

• 59:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that thing's a beautiful piece of machinery.

• 59:55Jocko Willink?

  The NVA also inflicted some more casualties in the company. By the time McCarley moved out at 4 a.m. for day three, September 13th, 1970, Rose was tending to more than 30 wounded men.

• 1:00:11Jocko Willink?

  Two with deadly serious wounds that required almost constant attention, fluid rejuvenation, and pain management. By that time, Rose was also running low on bandages, IVs, and morphine syrettes. Quote, "We were so low on morphine that I reused morphine syrettes, which is a no-no under normal circumstances. But there was nothing normal about this operation, so I would give two or three of the wounded morphine from the same syret. I only gave them enough to dull the pain, but allowed them to be somewhat alert." End quote. As Rose focused on the wounded, the first platoon engaged the enemy as they moved toward a potential LZ for a much-needed medevac, while the third platoon deployed one squad

• 1:00:53Jocko Willink?

  to maintain contact with another squad of NVA attacking the company's rear. After several gun-runs by Scarface and A-1 Skyraiders from Da Nang in Thailand, the rear-action force rejoined the company as it pushed into a good LZ site and began clearing trees with claymore mines and C4 plastic explosives.

• 1:01:16Jocko Willink?

  At noon, after Scarface and the Spads performed gun-runs on enemy positions near a small LZ, the first Marine Corps 53D approached the LZ. As the large helicopter descended into the LZ, the pilot, Bill Bairdall, was concerned that the LZ might not be large enough to land in. As he maneuvered the chopper slowly downward, Rose moved toward the rear tailgate of the CH-53 with his most seriously injured soldier, the South Vietnamese lieutenant, with a horrific thigh and hip injury. Inside the chopper, SF medics John, Staff Sergeant John "Doc" Paget and Sergeant John Brown moved onto the back tailgate as it lowered, with Brown supporting Paget by holding his belt.

• 1:01:59Jocko Willink?

  Quote, "I was trying to reach the patient that Mike was lifting towards us, and just at that moment in time, the pilot pulled pitch and lifted to the left." End quote. Rose said, quote, "The tail rotor struck a tree as I was lifting the patient up towards Doc. The chopper lifted upward suddenly. As it was lifting up, it took enemy small arms fire and a B-40 rocket hit."

• 1:02:26Jocko Willink?

  End quote. Paget said, quote, "When that B-40 hit us, it went through the fuel cell, but didn't explode. There was aviation fuel everywhere. How it didn't ignite, I'll never know, but surely God was riding with us."

• 1:02:45Jocko Willink?

  End quote. Bear Doll, pilot of the CH-53, radioed, "Mayday, mayday, we're going in", as the CH-53 began losing fuel and its hydraulic fuel, uh, few, uh, fluids. YH-14, that's the number of this particular CH-53, crashed without any injuries to the medics or crew members, who immediately exited the wounded bird and set up a defensive perimeter, with Paget overseeing the impromptu team on the ground. As the NCOIC for SOG CCC dispensary at Kontum, Paget could have pulled rank and stayed behind.

• 1:03:23Jocko Willink?

  And he said, quote, "But that, that wasn't how I did things. I usually took my turn riding on the chase medic ship." So here you have a guy that's a senior guy, that could have been, you know, sitting back in the, in the, in the hooch.

• 1:03:38John Stryker Meyer?

  Air conditioned.

• 1:03:39Jocko Willink?

  In the air conditioned hooch, back on base, but he's, he's not that kind of leader.

• 1:03:44John Stryker Meyer?

  No, not at all.

• 1:03:45Jocko Willink?

  Steps up and gets in there. And now, now these guys are getting shot down. Maybe he's questioning that decision right now.

• 1:03:51John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, I'm sure he was. He may not say that for the record, but Doc's a smart guy. He would figure all the angles.

• 1:04:00Jocko Willink?

  As they set up their perimeter, Scarface Lieutenant H E Newton called CH-53 aircraft number YH-20 piloted by Mark McKenzie, met them at a rally point and led them to the crash site where Scarface and Spads made gun runs in preparation for the chase medic aircraft called SAR by the Marines to arrive for the downed crew and SF medics. While en route to rescue the crew of YH-14, said YH Door Gunner Larry Groh, "I was admiring the beautiful countryside and I couldn't help thinking of all the bad guys down there waiting for us. My M60 was locked, loaded and ready for action. As we got closer to

• 1:04:45Jocko Willink?

  the pickup site, I could see that it was surrounded by smoke that was laid down by the Scarface Cobras along with their rockets and 40 millimeters to protect the crew of the downed chopper." End quote. As YH-20 was about to settle into a hover over the downed crew, an NVA 51 caliber anti-aircraft heavy machine gun opened fire on the aircraft's left side. Groh's left side window was only about 25 yards away from it and the muzzle flashes from the gun were huge and the rounds seemed to be the size of basketballs. Groh pulled the trigger on his M60 and held it until the 51 cal was silenced. The CH-53 started to bounce around and I knew, quote, "And I knew we had taken some

• 1:05:29Jocko Willink?

  hits." Sergeant Whitmer was working his gun on the right side as Captain Kipola and Sergeant Spalding were at the rear ramp throwing out the 120-foot aluminum extraction ladder, end quote. Meanwhile, Scarface Cobras were making gun runs, Spads following suit, hitting enemy sights. Quote, "Everything seemed to slow down as the action heated up," Groh said. "Everything was in slow motion." When the ladder landed on the ground, Paget told everyone to climb in, climb it and hook onto it. "There was so much confusion and noise that no one moved to the ladder," he said. "Finally, I said, 'Follow me' and up I went.'" They followed suit.

• 1:06:12Jocko Willink?

  This is just mayhem.

• 1:06:15Jocko Willink?

  Grow said the liftoff from the LZ wasn't easy. Quote, "We had no idea just how bad the battle damage was, but we were bouncing all over the sky and we had a huge beat," meaning that there was something terribly wrong with our main rotor blades, end quote. Now, the crew of YH20 was concerned about the safety of the aircraft and the men below riding on the extraction ladder. So, you have the helicopter gets shot down, and then this other helicopter comes in to rescue. They get lit up with a Dishka machine gun, 12.7mm 51 cal, which is a freaking massive machine gun. They get shot up with that. They throw the extraction ladder out the back.

• 1:06:58Jocko Willink?

  A bunch of the guys don't know what to do. Finally, someone on the ground starts climbing the ladder. They all start climbing the ladder, but they don't get up the ladder, so they're all just hanging on to this ladder. And then this thing starts to try and get out of there, and it's like a car with, you know, with like a piston that's not firing. Exactly.

• 1:07:25Jocko Willink?

  Quote, "In hindsight, there was really no way that we or anyone else could know how bad the damage was," said Grow. "Only when we finally made it back do we learn just how bad our damage was. Numerous rounds had cut the hydraulic lines to the tail rotor. One round from the 50 cal had almost cut the main rotor tail drive shaft in half. That round had hit next to the Thomas coupling, which connects the tail rotor drive shaft sections together. We were extremely lucky to have made it back to base. God was with us that day," Paget said.

• 1:08:06Jocko Willink?

  Man, those helicopters are beasts to take that kind of damage.

• 1:08:10John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:08:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Salute. Salute the 53s.

• 1:08:16John Stryker Meyer?

  Amen.

• 1:08:18Jocko Willink?

  For the rest of the men on the ground during the night of day three, there was no rest. Yeah, by the way, while all that's happened, we still got, we still got what 100 and something guys left on the ground. The NVA intensified its attacks against the men of B Company, throwing an estimated 600 plus hand grenades into the defense positions of the Hatchet Force, even as it moved a few times during the night. So now we're taking 600 hand grenades.

• 1:08:48Jocko Willink?

  By now, the B Company men had gained an important tactical advantage over the NVA. I like this. This is a good attitude to have right here. We got a freaking down helicopter. We got all these wounded guy. We received 600 grenades and you know what? Here we go. By now, the B Company men had gained an important tactical advantage over the NVA. They learned the NVA combat signals during the close in fighting. The NVA would hit two bamboo sticks together or use a whistle for signals. The Hatchet Force men learned that one click or one whistle signaled the NVA to move. Two meant throw hand grenades and three meant withdraw.

• 1:09:32Jocko Willink?

  Hatchet Force men would then radio what signal, what the signal was to the other team members so that they could adjust accordingly. More than once, when the NVA signaled to withdraw, the Hatchet Force men would then attack when they were more vulnerable. It was one more tactical advantage that they used to their advantage against an enemy force that continued to grow on the battlefield despite losing hundreds of men to airstrikes, bombing runs and team ground fire. Meanwhile, back in Da Nang at their airbase, the Marines returned to repair their aircrafts as the warning order came down for day four. The weather and NVA hordes were closing in on B Company.

• 1:10:16John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, because with those hand grenades, one of the things that Lynn Black discovered was that the NVA had hand grenade vests, where they would have four or five hand grenades in one vest, they could get it and throw it forward, hold it, and then all five grenades would launch at one time with the pins pulled, so you'd have four or five hand grenades coming at you at one time.

• 1:10:44Jocko Willink?

  What, they were all like tied together or something?

• 1:10:47John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah. And so when they, when they got the vest and then threw it, but held it, the hand grenades attached would then go forward.

• 1:10:56Jocko Willink?

  Oh, got it.

• 1:10:57John Stryker Meyer?

  And so with this thing that was going on with the 600 plus, I'm sure that was one of the tactics the NVA were pulling, because they had the hand grenade vests.

• 1:11:15Jocko Willink?

  That's a lot of grenades to receive.

• 1:11:16John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, I know.

• 1:11:18Jocko Willink?

  That's a lot of grenades.

• 1:11:19John Stryker Meyer?

  Even if only half go off, because they're Chinese, they're Jai Koms, but still, if only half go off, that's still 300 grenades.

• 1:11:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And that, that also tells you something else, tells you how close the enemy was.

• 1:11:30John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:31Jocko Willink?

  Because that means they're throwing those grenades. So there's, this is close fighting. And not to mention, you want to know how close it was? It's so close that we can hear their signaling when they're banging two bamboo sticks together.

• 1:11:45John Stryker Meyer?

  Primitive, but effective.

• 1:11:47Jocko Willink?

  Primitive, but effective, but also so close that we can hear it, and we hear it so much that we actually decipher their freaking code.

• 1:11:54John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:57Jocko Willink?

  All right. Going back to the, "The morning of Operation Tail, when day four dawned upon B Company Hatchet Force of MACV SOG, moving toward an LZ to lift out the more seriously wounded among the remaining 127 men who could still walk. All 16 Green Berets had been wounded at least once, and about 40 Montney Yard troops were wounded during the first three days of this secret foray, deep into Laos." So there you go.

• 1:12:24John Stryker Meyer?

  That's at least 40, probably more, because nobody, nobody count, everybody's just too busy fighting.

• 1:12:32Jocko Willink?

  B Company Commanding Officer Captain Gene McCarley had the point element moving toward an apparent clearing with one thought in mind, get one Marine Corps heavy lift CH-53 helicopter in to pick up the wounded and then continue to march to destroy any NVA fortifications, supplies, or troops they encountered. By now, the entire second platoon was being used to help care for and transport the wounded under the tireless leadership of medic Gary Mike Rose, including three wounded who were carried on impromptu stretchers. So, there you go. You have an entire platoon of what, 40 guys?

• 1:13:11John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:12Jocko Willink?

  You have an entire platoon of 40 guys that are just being used to-

• 1:13:16John Stryker Meyer?

  For the wounded.

• 1:13:16Jocko Willink?

  Help the wounded. So that's how hard it is to deal with wounded and move wounded.

• 1:13:22John Stryker Meyer?

  And his more- his morphine cigarettes are low.

• 1:13:31Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. The men on the ground didn't know about two startling developments. The weather was closing in with a storm front that would prevent tac air from supporting B Company and Operation Tailwind had rocked the NVA brass into rallying hordes of North Vietnamese and Pathet Lao troops that were moving toward the Highway 165 area near the tiny hamlet of Chavain. So these guys don't know it, but there's massive enemy coming and bad weather. Now, when this bad weather hits, just to be clear, if I didn't make this clear enough, the only thing that really keeps, keeps you guys alive

• 1:14:13Jocko Willink?

  on the ground at a certain point is just the fact that we have air superiority and you can drop bombs. Cause they got hundreds, if not thousands of troops going against you. So if you lose air support, it's a matter of time because the, look, the, the NVA, they don't care. They'll keep coming. They'll come in waves until they finally just overwhelm you with, with just attrition. So if you lose tac air, at some point, you're going to be overrun and everyone's dead.

• 1:14:44John Stryker Meyer?

  Our edge is gone.

• 1:14:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:46John Stryker Meyer?

  Indeed.

• 1:14:51Jocko Willink?

  Here's McCarley quote, "When we started day four, we hadn't thought about an extraction except for getting the wounded out. We took our mission seriously." Meaning he's saying, "Look, we're not even thinking about leaving yet."

• 1:15:01John Stryker Meyer?

  Not at all.

• 1:15:02Jocko Willink?

  "We're thinking about getting our wounded out, but we're ready to go. We're gonna stay." "We took our mission seriously, relieved the pressure on the CIA's operation. Thanks to Tac Air, we had hurt the enemy, no question, and by continuously moving, we had kept the NVA off balance. We were tired, but our morale was good. We'd been on the move about an hour when we heard dogs. These weren't dogs that sounded like tracker dogs the NVA used on us. They sounded like pet dogs. So we moved toward their sound and the first platoon followed them. The dogs led B Company to what would become one of the greatest military intelligence coup of the eight-year SOG secret war in Laos."

• 1:15:47Jocko Willink?

  Here, dogs, they're not tracking dogs, but they're just like pet dogs and the guys follow them back to this camp.

• 1:15:54John Stryker Meyer?

  That's me. I'm going the other way. I don't like dogs anywhere, particularly in the AO. Sorry.

• 1:16:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, the first time, I think it was the first time you were on, we were talking about those tracking dogs about halfway through the conversation after you were talking about these dogs, they're smelling you and they're closing on you. And I was like, Tilt, do you still like, do you not like dogs? And you said, "I hate dogs."

• 1:16:18John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:19Jocko Willink?

  Totally understood.

• 1:16:26Jocko Willink?

  "Before long, the enemy troops fired several B-40 rockets at the point element of B Company and then fell back. It looked like they had gone back to some sort of bunker complex," McCarley said. "After a brief skirmish and a brilliantly executed SPAD gun runs where they had used cluster bomb units on enemy positions, the first platoon led the assault on those bunkers with a well-coordinated attack while second platoon covered our flank and provided rear security." So, so you guys, these guys run up against an enemy position with bunkers and what do they do? Attack it?

• 1:17:01John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:01Jocko Willink?

  Call in for close air support and then attack it on day four. I mean, these guys probably haven't eaten. They're short on water. They're wounded.

• 1:17:11Jocko Willink?

  Third platoon protected our right flank. We caught them napping. We hit the outpost when they were cooking breakfast. There were open fires, fires with cooking pots on them. Hell, they never had anyone mess with them before this deep into Laos. A few NVA, a few NVA hid in a couple of the bunkers, whom the Montagnards quickly eliminated with hand grenades. Those bunkers were nothing but gory blood and guts after the grenade attacks, McCarley said. Again, A1 Skyraiders delivered CBUs precisely along two key enemy lines, instantly silencing enemy gunfire, hand grenades, and rocket attacks. Within a short period of time, more than 70 NVA were killed as B Company swept through

• 1:17:55Jocko Willink?

  the base. As B Company drove the remaining NVA out of the outpost, they discovered a bunker in the base of camp that, quote, "appeared to be like a basement in a regular house", said McCarley. "It was at least 10 feet long and 10 feet wide, with maps on the walls and a footlocker loaded with documents. I emptied my rucksack of everything except for extra Kar-15 ammo. By that time, I had used the extra battery, radio battery, and C4 that I was carrying, and I started packing it with enemy documents, papers, codebooks, transportation logs," end quote. Within 15 minutes, the base camp was overrun. The area was searched for intelligence and photographs were taken as medic Mike Rose continued to treat the wounded men of the company.

• 1:18:40Jocko Willink?

  So, this is a score.

• 1:18:43John Stryker Meyer?

  It's a coup and a half. Oh, yeah. Rich.

• 1:18:48Jocko Willink?

  By now, it was clear to B Company intelligence men that they had stumbled into an NVA battalion base camp that was a major logistical command center and probably the headquarters that controlled the nearby Laotian Highway 165. Remaining true to his original operation order, McCarley had all the intelligence documents packed and ordered B Company and all of its walking wounded to march out of the battalion base camp, while demolitions experts wired 120mm mortar for enemy trucks and more than nine tons of rice for destruction. As usual, after the special forces charges exploded, A1 Skyraiders followed up with gun napalm and bombing runs to completely destroy all enemy structures and supplies.

• 1:19:33Jocko Willink?

  Boom.

• 1:19:35John Stryker Meyer?

  Nine tons of rice.

• 1:19:38Jocko Willink?

  Feed a lot of people.

• 1:19:39John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:19:42Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, back at Con Tomb, fast forward a little bit. Meanwhile, back at Con Tomb, while all that's happening, all the air assets, the A1 Skyraiders of the Da Nang-based operating location Alpha Alpha Scarface pilots and CH-53 pilots were getting a detailed briefing on the weather and a sighting by Covey of hundreds, if not more than a thousand NVA and Pathette Loud troops moving east towards B Company. Quote, "During that final briefing, it was very clear, today it was do or die," end quote from Scarface pilot Joe Driscoll.

• 1:20:25Jocko Willink?

  Quote, "The big thing was the stark seriousness of the moment. Everyone knew they had suffered heavy casualties and now the weather was closing in on them." A1 Skyraider pilot Tom Stump added, quote, "The weather was dogshit when we took off. I wasn't optimistic about getting them out of there," end quote. On the ground in Laos, Macarley pressed forward until he received a disturbing radio call from Covey sometime in the early afternoon of September 14th, day four of Operation Tailwind. Quote, "I believe it was Covey rider Jimmy War Daddy Hart radioed down and told us the NVA were massing and if that and that if we didn't get out of there today, we weren't going to get out, period.

• 1:21:11Jocko Willink?

  That got my attention. Frankly, he mentioned the weather issue too, which up to that point in time, I wasn't aware of because we were in the jungle," end quote.

• 1:21:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that got your attention, huh?

• 1:21:25John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah. And everybody back at base, they know they're getting hammered and they know it's bad and they're getting ready to go.

• 1:21:34John Stryker Meyer?

  They don't know how bad it is. It's like you're in the jungle, like you've heard it before. You don't know what the hell bad the weather is when you're on the ground and you can't tell a lot of times. The difference between sun and no sun, it's just dark in the jungle. And they break loose every once in a while, get an opening they can see. Gene had no idea.

• 1:21:54Jocko Willink?

  No idea.

• 1:21:55John Stryker Meyer?

  That's when Cubby told, because when I interviewed Gene on it, he was like stunned when Cubby told me that. Because he really thought, we're going to kick their ass, we just hit the cache. You say cache or cache, yeah, you're the English major, I'm only an English minor.

• 1:22:09Jocko Willink?

  So I had a, it's cache.

• 1:22:11John Stryker Meyer?

  Cache, oh, thank you, sir.

• 1:22:12Jocko Willink?

  It's cache.

• 1:22:13John Stryker Meyer?

  I'll be more correct now.

• 1:22:14Jocko Willink?

  I got corrected that, I got corrected on that when I was, I think I was like an E5 or something, an E4. And, you know, I was briefing something and I said, well, there's a cache over there.

• 1:22:25John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:26Jocko Willink?

  My officer said, actually, Jaco, it's cache. And I said, no, it's not. I didn't believe him. You had to go to the dictionary and back then you actually had to get a dictionary.

• 1:22:37John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:22:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, I'll tell you what, you're the man, if you want to call it cache, we can change it right now. We will follow suit. I've always preferred cache.

• 1:22:47John Stryker Meyer?

  Me too, I think it's cooler sounding. Could be cache or stas, but cache has got a little bit more.

• 1:22:52Jocko Willink?

  Got a little more to it.

• 1:22:53John Stryker Meyer?

  Bizarre, yeah.

• 1:22:57Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so these guys are in a bad way and, and now McCarley kind of realizes we got the enemy coming. We got weather moving in. Back to the book, realizing they needed a large LZ, a large LZ, large enough to handle a CH-53. Because CH-53s are massive birds. In the light of, and, and by the way, there's no opportunity, you're not going to get 50 guys out on strings. So this thing's going to have to land.

• 1:23:23John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:24Jocko Willink?

  And you got wounded on top of that. In light of losing one of the 53s heavy lift helicopters on a tight LZ the previous day. Yeah, by the way, we already lost one of these things. McCarley moved down a road towards a clearing that was large enough for an LZ. However, the open area was seated too deeply in a valley, which had hills on two sides of it where the NVA gunners would be able to have clear fields of fire on the marine rescue helicopters, as well as the supporting tac air assets, Scarface, uh, Cobra gunships. To facilitate the continued movement of B Company, A1 Spads and Cobra Scarface, Scarface Cobras, quote, "gave us fire protection to the front and to the rear," McCarley said. "The NVA kept hitting us with automatic fire and B40s.

• 1:24:09Jocko Willink?

  The airstrikes kept them back far enough so they couldn't do any real damage." At some point, Covey ran dangerously low on fuel, returned to base and connected SPAD pilot Tom Stump directly with Macarley about future airstrikes shortly before the first CH-53 arrived in the area of operations. Quote, "I'll never forget it. When I spoke to Gene," that's Macarley, "when I spoke to Gene, his voice was as calm as a man at Sunday church picnic," Stump said. "He had that slow southern draw and calmly said he was getting his ass kicked down there. And all the while, I could hear gunfire explosions and hand grenades."

• 1:24:54Jocko Willink?

  He said he needed some separation between the company and the NVA. "We were on station for two hours doing just that, providing close air support. With all the SF wounded and the large number of casualties they had, I couldn't see how we'd get them out." There you go.

• 1:25:12John Stryker Meyer?

  Tom Stump.

• 1:25:14Jocko Willink?

  Man. Macarley and his men were grateful for the close air support of Stump, his fellow SPAD pilot Scarface and Tac Air, but Stump stood out in his mind. Macarley said, quote, "Tom Stump flew so close to us during some of those gun runs, I could tell if he had shaved or not. That's just how close those A-1 Skyraiders flew in support of us. We were extremely grateful for all the air support, believe me, but seeing Stump was something that stuck with me. I also think it's safe to say that because this was a SOG mission deep into Laos, none of the air assets got the credit they should have received for the remarkable coverage they provided to us over four days, from the fast movers right down to Scarface and

• 1:25:58Jocko Willink?

  the Coveys." Continuing on, B Company found a heavily traveled dirt road only wide enough for foot traffic and headed to a second LZ, one that provided better cover and less exposure to enemy ground fire for the helicopters and for the men of B Company. As they moved, Covey rider Jimmy Ward Daddy Heart told Macarley he had spotted another, quote, "horde of NVA," end quote, moving toward B Company.

• 1:26:29Jocko Willink?

  This time Hart told B Company to put on their gas masks and directed A1 sorties flown by Hobo 20 and Firefly 44 based in Thailand to deliver CBU 30 tier gas ordinance on the next horde of NVA while B Company found and secured a second LZ for the Marine CH-53 to land. This drastic tactic worked. It slowed down another NVA horde, but many of the men in B Company, including Macarley, Rose, and others were hit by the gas, which had a lot of our guys crying and choking on that CS. Macarley said, but it also bought them some time. So they called, they called in some, some uh, Cluster bomb units with gas.

• 1:27:12Jocko Willink?

  With uh, some coughing gas in it. Some irritant. Indeed. Right? Which is a lot different. This is where, this is where it gets a little tricky and it comes up later, but that is a chemical, right? Sure. And people say, well, this is a chemical weapon. And it is technically a chemical weapon, but it's a freaking non-lethal chemical weapon. Doesn't kill you. Right. Makes you cry a lot and feel bad.

• 1:27:40Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, the Scarface Cobras led the CH-53s into the LZ with deadly gun runs as an Air Force F-4 Phantom jets pounded two enemy mortar pits that were marching 82mm rounds toward the LZ that was large enough for only one CH-53 to land at a time. Quote, "We escorted the CH-53s into LZ. The first run wasn't as bad as the previous day when I could see dozens of enemy soldiers out in the open firing at us with, and the choppers", said Scarface pilot Joe Driscoll. When Macarley lost radio contact with Covey, Scarface commanding officer Lieutenant Colonel Harry Sexton and his copilot Pat Owen quickly picked

• 1:28:22Jocko Willink?

  up coordinating the air assets with Macarley. The first heavy lift helicopter landed on the LZ, picking up a majority of the wounded B Company men, including the three most seriously wounded, who were carried in stretchers since being wounded on night one of the operation.

• 1:28:41Jocko Willink?

  Since platoon, second platoon placed the wounded on the first marine helicopter before it lifted off successfully and headed back to Comtoom.

• 1:28:51Jocko Willink?

  Scarface again led the second marine corps CH-53 into the LZ, this time taking an increased volume of enemy gunfire, as aviators pointed out to McCarley, another large contingent of NVA moving toward the LZ. Now it appeared that the NVA brass realized that B Company had hit the 559th Transportation's base camp and taken all of its maps, reports, records, and money, and had directed masses of enemy troops towards B Company.

• 1:29:23Jocko Willink?

  Quote, "They told me they could see hundreds of them coming for us," said McCarley. The second marine corps CH-53 picked up the remaining wounded men and several other members of B Company and lifted off the LZ successfully, drawing more enemy fire than the first heavy lift helicopter. Scarface then led the third CH-53. So we got two helicopters have come in, we've gotten most of the wounded on the first one, a bunch of guys leave on the second one, that's all successful. And now we go, Scarface led the third CH-53 into the LZ, taking even more enemy fire than the two previous choppers had encountered. However, for McCarley, Rose, First Sergeant Morris Adair, and the remaining men of B

• 1:30:08Jocko Willink?

  Company, the drama wasn't over. CH-53 Sea Stallion pilot, Don, First Lieutenant Don Persky and his copilot, First Lieutenant Bill Batty, or Beatty, were concerned about the amount of rounds hitting the heavy lift chopper. I like the way they explained that.

• 1:30:28John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:28Jocko Willink?

  I'm a little, I'm a little concerned. I'm concerned about this. Quote, "On our final approach, we took heavy enemy fire," Persky said. "We knew that this was the last element on the ground and we had to get them out." Sergeant first Sergeant or SF Sergeant Mike Hagan said, quote, "I can tell you that big bird was a welcome sight to us. We were all beat, we were all wounded, and we were all ready to go home, believe me," end quote. B Company Commander Captain Gene McCarley, Hagan, Medic Sergeant Rose, and First Sergeant Morris Adair held a tight defensive perimeter with a few Montagnards as others beat a hasty but orderly path into the large Marine warbird

• 1:31:12Jocko Willink?

  as dozens of NVA soldiers surged out of the CS gas clouds towards the LZ. McCarley was on the radio with Covey. He said, "You have to get out of there now." This is so this is a McCarley saying that Covey said, "You have to get out of there now. There's hundreds and hundreds of them coming after you now."

• 1:31:31John Stryker Meyer?

  Now.

• 1:31:35Jocko Willink?

  That's what McCarley is getting told. "You have to get out of there now." And I don't know how many are left on the ground, but it's probably 15 or 20 or something like that.

• 1:31:45John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, because they had the worst wounded in the second bird. They got a lot of the indige out.

• 1:31:53Jocko Willink?

  As McCarley spoke into the PRC 25 handset, a Montagnard team member standing between McCarley and the radio operator was killed by enemy gunfire as he fired his weapon at them. "He got shot in the heads," McCarley said. "There was blood all over the place. Another Yard looked at him, turned to me with a sad look, and simply said, 'He's dead.'"

• 1:32:16Jocko Willink?

  A-1 Skyraider pilot Tom Stump vividly remembers those long moments before the men of B Company boarded CH-53. Quote, "It was a wild scene down there. As we provided close cover to the team on the ground, Air Force F-4s attacked anti-aircraft guns that the NVA had moved into the area."

• 1:32:41Jocko Willink?

  They, meaning the NVA, had really wanted them. They were massed to get them. They wanted to get back what the team had taken from the base camp. Covey Riders told us that NVA 12.7mm and 37mm anti-aircraft weapons were opening up on us. Meanwhile, the Scarface Cobra gunships reacted to enemy gunfire on their aircraft while Gene directed us to enemy troops moving toward them. Keep in mind, we knew all the SF men were wounded and low on ammo. There was a moment in time when I couldn't see how we'd get them out. It was that intense.

• 1:33:27John Stryker Meyer?

  Coming out of the gas fumes.

• 1:33:31Jocko Willink?

  Not everyone was low on ammo. As he was severely wounded in the foot, hand, and arm on day one, Rose had tightly wrapped a torn jungle boot and bleeding foot with an ace bandage to keep it shut, and had used his Kar-15 more as a cane to support his weight than as a weapon because he was so busy treating and tending to more than 60 wounded men. His left hand had suffered a shrapnel wound also, which he quickly wrapped before returning to caring for the wounded team. Now, as he, Adair, and Hagden, or Hagen, moved up the ramp, the semi-mobile medic opened fire on the rapidly approaching NVA after they placed their dead Montney Yard soldier on the helicopter.

• 1:34:17Jocko Willink?

  McCarley was the last man to leave the LZ. Quote, "As we were backing up the ramp, they were coming toward us. They were coming at us hard," he said. "I'm guessing the CS gas had them confused because they were getting close to us as me, Mike, and Morris stood, but none of them threw a grenade into the chopper. I never understood why they didn't. They were that close, and they kept coming even as we lifted off from the LZ while mowing down NVA soldiers."

• 1:34:53Jocko Willink?

  So they go through all that and it looks like we're gonna be in a pretty good spot possibly. But it ain't over till it's over.

• 1:35:02John Stryker Meyer?

  Indeed.

• 1:35:04Jocko Willink?

  As the CH-53 lifted off from the LZ, pilot Persky said he and co-pilot Bat- Batty, what do you think that's Batty or Beatty?

• 1:35:13John Stryker Meyer?

  Batty.

• 1:35:13Jocko Willink?

  Batty, could feel enemy rounds continuing to hit the aircraft. Adair, McCarley and Rose had just sat down next to Sergeant First Class Bernie Bright when someone tapped Rose on the shoulder and pointed to the left door gunner, Marine Sergeant Stevens, who was bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound in the neck. Rose said, quote, "He got hit in the neck. There was blood everywhere. I was coated in blood by then from him and other wounded. He was very lucky. The round had missed the carotid artery and trachea, yet he was going into shock. I rolled him over, got him on all fours and remember telling him, listen, you lucky son of a bitch, if you're gonna die, you'd be dead by now.

• 1:35:57Jocko Willink?

  After that, he started to bounce back. Sometimes as a medic, you have, sometimes as a medic, you have to be harsh with people to break them out of shock. Then I found something to wrap around his neck to get the bleeding to stop."

• 1:36:09Jocko Willink?

  As Rose struggled with Stevens bleeding neck injury, neither realized that the Marine door gunner's helmet, helmet's open microphone was live. So, explain this a little bit, when you're on a aircraft, the people in the aircraft have what they call interior communications, which is basically a, you know, if you're the pilot, you can talk to the co-pilot and then you can both talk to the air crew and everyone's got these little helmets on with microphones.

• 1:36:35John Stryker Meyer?

  And the crew's in the back and they can't see each other, so they have to have verbal call.

• 1:36:39Jocko Willink?

  And if you, I know it looks like in a movie, everyone's talking in an aircraft, in a helicopter, you can't hear anything in a helicopter. You have to scream directly into someone's ear to hear someone, especially in a CH-53. Those things are freaking loud. And so, the air crew has these headsets with these microphones that are built a special way so that they don't pick up the, they don't pick up the external noise, they just pick up the voice. Well, when you key that handset...

• 1:37:06Jocko Willink?

  You're transmitting, you're, you're filling up that interior communications network with whatever noise you're putting into it. And so I'll go back to the book here, communications were almost impossible as he was on a hot mic. A hot mic is when you're keying up your microphone when you shouldn't be. And all I could hear was gasping and gurgling, said Persky, who was having a potentially deadly loss of power issue with the severely damaged CH-53C stallion. As the heavily laden helicopter lifted off from the LZ and went from a hover mode into a transitional lift where the helicopter begins to gain both altitude and speed, engine failure, emergency lights and warning systems screamed alerts of a pending engine failure. Within seconds, one engine died.

• 1:37:52Jocko Willink?

  Persky had only one remaining engine to continue lifting away from the hordes of NVA gathering on and around the LZ, shooting at the sea stallion and at least one anti-aircraft weapon that was firing at the struggling Sikorsky. In addition, he and Batty had another challenge on their horizon. How to avoid the mountains that they were approaching with only one engine? That ridgeline was sheer granite, Persky said. By now, in the back of the chopper, Rose had pulled off Stephen's helmet, giving Persky and Batty improved communications between them and other air assets as the granite mountain loomed larger by the second. Quote, "We were worried as we had to use extra energy from the last engine to get over that ridgeline",

• 1:38:37Jocko Willink?

  Persky said. After narrowly getting over it, a second granite ridgeline came into view. It, it too had to be flown over. Now the big warbird, warbird was struggling. Quote, "There were hydraulic fluids and blood everywhere inside the helicopter," Rose said. "And the tail was lower than it should be. We could tell something was wrong, really wrong. We just didn't know how wrong."

• 1:39:09John Stryker Meyer?

  Can you imagine?

• 1:39:09Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:39:13Jocko Willink?

  No. No, it's uh, it's, it's total mayhem. And then you have these pilots that are getting shot at, their, their aircraft's filled up with a bunch of wounded guys. They're taking rounds, they can feel the rounds hitting, and they still have to fly this thing. And now they gotta fly it under conditions that they've never flown under before, which is having one engine and, and damaged controls and not being able to communicate with each other. This is just mayhem.

• 1:39:45Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, seconds after barely getting over the second ridgeline, the second CH-53D turboshaft engine failed. At that moment, quote, "I can remember First Lieutenant Persky's exact words to this day," said McCarley. He said, "Mayday, mayday, we've lost all hydraulics, we're going down." "I looked out of the back and all I saw were the granite cliffs. They loomed large. To this day, I don't know how we missed them." End quote. Rose echoed the same sentiment. Quote, "All I saw were that those, were those huge granite cliffs with no engines.

• 1:40:29Jocko Willink?

  I fully expected to crash and burn at any moment." End quote. Persky hollered into the radio one more time. "We've lost our second engine, we're going down." The fate of the 2,000, 23,628 pound, 88 foot long helicopter designed to carry 38 combat troops, but now loaded with 40 plus combat troops and weapons, including all the intelligence papers, maps, footlocker, and North Vietnamese currency seized from the NVA's base camp, hinged on Persky's piloting skills and the six 72 foot long rotors that were keeping the 15 foot wide helicopter aloft, biting into the air, descending at a rapid rate, but at a rate better than dropping from the sky like a dead quail.

• 1:41:16Jocko Willink?

  After he got out a second Mayday Alert, Persky said he was hoping a pilot or Covey pilot would say something. After a second engine went out, there was nowhere to go. All we could see was jungle and granite ridge lines. Quote, "I really expected someone Covey, Scarface, the Spads, or Army Cobras to say, 'Hey, go left, go right,' something, but the radio was dead silent." For Persky and Batty, the silence was deafening. Now descending in full auto-rotation with both engines dead, Persky began following jungle-covered canyons. "I followed one gap," he said, "then I followed a second gap.

• 1:42:01Jocko Willink?

  It led to a ravine. My biggest concern at that moment was being able to find a place just to auto-rotate into." Marine Corps door gunner Larry Groh, who was in the first CH-53 that pulled out many of the wounded men from B Company earlier, said, quote, "At that time, no one had ever done a full auto-rotation with a fully-loaded CH-53 with no power." Swanson watched the large warbird descend into a canyon. Quote, "It was like a depression he headed towards. It was trailing smoke. It was ugly, real ugly. I worried that it might explode in midair, or worse, get hit by one of the, or worse,

• 1:42:46Jocko Willink?

  hit one of those granite mountains or the jungle. From my seat up in the old trusty Skyraider, I couldn't see any LZ or any area that was open or large enough for those Marines to land that bird without crashing. By now, I had heard that they were auto-rotating with a chopper full of troops. It didn't look good."

• 1:43:13Jocko Willink?

  So auto rotating.

• 1:43:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:16Jocko Willink?

  So basically, when a, when a helicopter, if a helicopter loses power, you know, if an airplane loses power, you can glide somewhat. You're not going to gain altitude. I mean, I guess you, you could technically, if you get in a, if you get in an updraft or current or whatever, but you're generally going to come down. When a helicopter loses all of its power, what the, what the pilot has to do is let the blades, the rotor blades of the helicopter keep spinning as fast as they can while you're falling. And then basically, when you get close to the ground, you slam those things into the position, it tilts those rotors so they grab as much air as possible in the moment before you hit the ground and you

• 1:43:59Jocko Willink?

  hope that it absorbs enough energy that you don't all die. Echo, you look puzzled. Does that make sense? Not really?

• 1:44:06Speaker 02

  I think there's a lot about a helicopter I don't know about, I think, because you're like, it seems like a helicopter loses power, the, the, the propellers just stop.

• 1:44:16Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm. But there's momentum. So just picture a spinning, just like a spinning top.

• 1:44:20John Stryker Meyer?

  Keeps, keeps, keeps the blades going.

• 1:44:22Speaker 02

  Oh, right. Like a.

• 1:44:23John Stryker Meyer?

  Cause you're descending and the air hits them and it keeps them, they have their angles that make them spin. Not at the rate with the engine. So it slows down, but it's better than like he said, just falling out of the sky.

• 1:44:34Speaker 02

  Right. Like those, you know, remember those windmills you used to buy when you're a kid and you, you see what I'm saying? The wind.

• 1:44:40Jocko Willink?

  Yep. If you went into a room with no wind and you just spun that thing, yeah, it would, it would spin a little bit. But yeah, as you move it, it can spin. Yeah. So that's keeping those things spinning.

• 1:44:51John Stryker Meyer?

  And then the blades are long.

• 1:44:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you know that the blades can tilt. You control the tilt of the blades. You can make them kind of flat or you can make them like at a bigger angle. So they're grabbing more air. So what you do is you kind of make them flat. So they're not getting much resistance, but they're spinning. And this is just like, I'm, I'm, I never.

• 1:45:10Speaker 02

  Jocko version.

• 1:45:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is the Jocko version.

• 1:45:11Speaker 02

  Gotcha. Yeah.

• 1:45:13Jocko Willink?

  This is how I simplify stuff in the, with the rocks up in my head.

• 1:45:16Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 1:45:17Jocko Willink?

  And then when you get close to the ground, you slam that thing. So it grabs a bunch of air right before you hit and it slows you down a little bit.

• 1:45:25Speaker 02

  Gotcha.

• 1:45:25Jocko Willink?

  That's the plan.

• 1:45:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's the plan.

• 1:45:28Jocko Willink?

  And in history. No one had ever done this before. With a CH53. With a CH53. Okay. Filled with troops, because as you can imagine, you're adding thousands of pounds to it with all these troops in there. So no one's ever done this before. So we'll just say that the odds were stacked against us at this point. It ain't looking good. Okay, okay, gotcha.

• 1:45:53Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, and then divine intervention. Persky and Batty saw a body of water with a little patch of beach. It was just blind luck. We didn't know what was there. Or, "We didn't know what was there, or God was with us," Persky said. "With the blood, hydraulic fluid, and aviation fuel leaking and pooling in the passenger compartment, Persky headed in that direction. At first, he thought about landing in the water to buffer some of the impact of the landing. Then I remembered," Persky said, "we had wounded in the back. I didn't want to take the chance of anyone drowning. So he headed the wounded chopper toward what appeared to be a sandy beach next to the water, even though it was slanted to the right. All of this happened in a matter of seconds.

• 1:46:37Jocko Willink?

  We were going down at about 6,000 feet a minute.

• 1:46:42Jocko Willink?

  At that point, we needed high airspeed to use the energy to keep the rotors going. So the autorotation factor would keep the aircraft moving forward instead of dropping from the sky. The plan was to flare, a procedure where the rotor's angle pitch is changed to slow down the rate of descent and minimize the severity of impact upon landing on terra firma. So I was right." Yeah, the rocks worked. The rocks worked. Dave Burks got nothing on me. Good deal, Dave.

• 1:47:15Jocko Willink?

  Quote, "I started to flare, thinking we had enough time to decrease our speed more. I pulled the collective hard. I had it pulled up to my armpit," end quote. In a helicopter, the collective lever is on the left side of the pilot's seat, and it changed the pitch angle on the helicopter's main rotors. In this case, Persky was decreasing the Sea Stallion's speed, hoping to minimize the final impact of landing in full auto-rotation. Persky added, "It didn't slow our airspeed as much as I had hoped it would. It was supposed to cushion us. It didn't. What's more, that beach had a huge boulder on it that slanted to the right."

• 1:47:53Jocko Willink?

  The helicopter violently landed on the angled slope, hitting the slope surface and instantly slamming to the right into the ground, ejecting several of the Green Berets and their Montney Yard tribesmen, team members, while six rotors shattered upon impact with the ground.

• 1:48:12Jocko Willink?

  B Company commanding officer Captain Gene McCarley was violently slammed into the roof of the helicopter before being ejected from it. "I remember hitting the roof of the helicopter. I remember hitting so hard, I felt my teeth crumble into sand."

• 1:48:28Jocko Willink?

  The next thing I knew, I was outside on a rock. We were all dazed, amazed we were still alive. Rose said, quote, "When you pancake in like we did on a helicopter, and when it hits violently upside down, everybody had their bell rung. Trust me, we were all hurting." Gene was bleeding from the mouth, but he could move. "I remember getting thrown out of the bl- throating- thrown out, and the blades were upside down. I was bleary eyed, still not getting all my senses back, and for a moment, I thought the chopper was coming toward me." End quote. McCarley said, quote, "Mike was standing beside us. I was wiping the blood and my crushed teeth from my mouth. Then Mike said, 'We've got people in there. We have to get them out.'

• 1:49:12Jocko Willink?

  I could smell the aviation fuel. There was blood everywhere. There was hydraulic fluids. The helicopter was broken by the severity of the crash, and it was smoking. How it didn't explode, I'll never know. How that young marine pilot landed, albeit a hard landing, I'll never know." End quote.

• 1:49:32Jocko Willink?

  Then McCarley had one of those unique inexplic- inexplicable moments. In wartime, in the middle of all the rubble, the smoke, the dazed confusion at the crash site, he looked to his right and observed First Sergeant Morris Adair, standing in the water with a smile on his face, holding his Car 15.

• 1:49:54John Stryker Meyer?

  In the middle of the jungle.

• 1:49:56Jocko Willink?

  "That scene was unreal beyond description," McCarley said. "Of all the times that I've been in Laos, I'd never seen a scene like this. A body of water, a nice white sandy beach. It looked just like Hawaii. And there's Adair, standing in the water, as though there wasn't a care in the world."

• 1:50:14Jocko Willink?

  Adair says, "To this day, I can't explain exactly what happened that day. I came out on my own, but I've been trying to figure out how ever since. When I came to my senses, I was standing in water. Gene told me later, I was standing there smiling. Can't tell you why I was smiling, maybe I was just happy to still be alive after getting my bell wrong. We were battered around like BBs in that chopper when it crashed. At the time, I didn't realize how much damage had been done to my nerves on my left side of my body, my head, neck, shoulder, arms, and hip."

• 1:50:48Jocko Willink?

  The brief reverie ended when Rose and McCarley headed back into the smoking helicopter. Cause it ain't over yet, cause they got guys in there.

• 1:50:58Jocko Willink?

  And it's fuel leaking everywhere, burning. But what do they do? They go help. Rose helped to carry out SF Lieutenant Pete Landon, who had only been in country one week when Operation Tailwind launched. "Welcome to SOG."

• 1:51:19Jocko Willink?

  McCarley said, "Landon, the platoon leader, had a bad gash on his head that Rose had to tend to as there was a lot of blood flowing from the head wound. McCarley gathered the intelligence materials B Company had collected.

• 1:51:32Jocko Willink?

  That was the first thing I did, recovered the intel documents, maps, currency that we had seized from the NVA base camp. No way we were going back to Kontum without them." After setting up a hasty perimeter at the rear of the broken Sikorsky helicopter, McCarley returned to help Sergeant First Class Bernie Bright get untangled from the wires and debris inside the aircraft. Then they exited the helicopter to strengthen the perimeter around the backside of it. In the pilot's compartment, Persky unstrapped Batty, who had pulled a bad back compression stemming from the crash. "I kinda pulled Bill from the helicopter. He was mobile, but still stunned. When Persky set Batty down on the ground in front of the helicopter,

• 1:52:15Jocko Willink?

  he didn't see any SF men on that side of the bird." My infantry tactics kicked in. We circled the wagon, set up a rough perimeter, he said. Persky said. In the back of the helicopter, Rose, McCarley, and Mike Hagan helped the stunned troops exit the helicopter. Quote, "Before I'd let any of the injured get off the helicopter, I draped their weapons or any weapon near them around their neck so that when they set up in the perimeter, they'd be able to defend themselves," said Rose. "By this point in time, we were strictly working on adrenaline," he added.

• 1:52:54Jocko Willink?

  So even those guys, these guys have been through all this freaking mayhem.

• 1:52:57John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:58Jocko Willink?

  And they still go back and rescue their guys, and then they're still thinking tactically about how to get through this.

• 1:53:06John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, Mike Rose is on top of his game for that whole thing. Just amazing.

• 1:53:14Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, once again, time was working against the men on the ground.

• 1:53:19Jocko Willink?

  "I forget how long it took from the time we crashed until I received radio contact from either Lieutenant Colonel Sexton or Covey," said McCarley. "They told him that the backup helicopter's fuel levels were getting low and that when he came into the LZ, we'd only have five minutes or less to get the hell out, or we might not have enough aviation fuel to make it back."

• 1:53:43Jocko Willink?

  After dodging Russian-assisted NVA attack aircraft weapons, including Russian-manufactured AK-AK weapons that exploded in midair in the fashion of anti-aircraft weapons in World War II, and hundreds of enemy ground forces firing automatic weapons and rocket-propelled grenades at them, pilots in the first Scarface Cobras that led the rescue helicopter toward the LZ were surprised to receive no enemy ground fire. The heavy lift Marine Sea Stallion followed closely behind the Scarface gunships. Due to the heavy enemy ground fire throughout Operation Tailwind to provide extra defensive firepower for the big helicopter, Captain H. Kipola?

• 1:54:26Jocko Willink?

  What do you think? Kipola? Captain H. Kipola was on the rear ramp with an M60 machine gun in addition to right door gunner Sergeant T. McBride on the left, door gunner Sergeant T. Winicki, and crew chief Sergeant Smith.

• 1:54:46Jocko Willink?

  Even though we had our bell rung, when that chase ship backup helicopter landed, we didn't waste any time getting aboard it, said Mike Rose. I remember Hagan, Gene, First Sergeant, helping me, helping people up the ramp. Marine Pilot Persky knew that he had bitten through his lip upon the crash impact, but he didn't realize how severely damaged it was until he moved up the ramp of the CH-53. And one of the door gunners pointed out that his lower lip was merely hanging on by a thin piece of skin.

• 1:55:19Jocko Willink?

  Quote, "He told me that I better hold on to my lip or I'd lose it. I do remember they changed my call sign afterwards to lip."

• 1:55:28Jocko Willink?

  As the Sea Stallion lifted off with the wounded and extremely fatigued men of B Company, Rose made another surprising discovery. Maggots had helped to treat the two most seriously wounded team members who had been carried since day, since the command post was struck by an RPG round during day one. When that RPG hit, Rose had suffered serious wounds in two places, McCarley in several places, and two indig team members had been seriously incapacitated. "The one thing I never thought about or planned for," said Rose, "was for the use of maggots, which in the end proved to be the most likely lifesaver for the two most critically wounded team members.

• 1:56:10Jocko Willink?

  During those four days on the ground, Rose and the Montney Yard medic trainee Koch were kept busy caring for them, giving them extra fluid, morphine shots and IVs. But during those days, quote, "Flies laid their eggs in the wounds of the most seriously injured and a few other yards, and the eggs hatched."

• 1:56:33Jocko Willink?

  According to the doctors at the evacuation hospital, the maggots got to the necrotic flesh before infection could set in and in fact did a better job of debriding the wounds than a surgeon could do. Who would have thought of it?

• 1:56:48Jocko Willink?

  We, we, we've covered a book where that happened with the prisoner war camps in, um, in, in, um...

• 1:56:57Jocko Willink?

  World War II. Yep, the medics would actually utilize maggots. They would get them to plant their maggots there. Get the flies to plant their seeds there. So it would eat away the dying skin. Crazy.

• 1:57:14John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:57:18Jocko Willink?

  The CH-53 returned to DAC 2 to refuel while the A-1 pilots Swanson and Stump destroyed the crashed CH-53. The rescue C-stallion then returned B Company to the LZ outside the top-secret SOG compound in Kontum. An S2 officer approached McCarty and took his rucksack, which contained the enemy currency and some of the intelligence documents collected from the NVA command post in Laos. "I never saw that rucksack again, nor the NVA currency again," McCarty lamented.

• 1:57:52Jocko Willink?

  He continued, "Regardless, the mission was dubbed a success by the folks in Saigon and at SOG headquarters. We were told that thanks to our efforts, the CIA's operation was able to regain control of the strong point atop the plateau 10 days after we were extracted on the final helicopter. We had tied down an estimated regiment of NVA and Pathet-Lao forces while destroying one major enemy ammo dump and an enemy base camp after we removed the enemy documents and maps. A subsequent DOD report confirmed McCarty's final analysis that Operation Tailwind was SOG's deepest penetration into Laos during the eight-year secret war.

• 1:58:33Jocko Willink?

  The final count. Three Montagnards were killed in action. Thirty-three were listed as wounded in action. A total of 33 Purple Hearts were awarded to the 16 Green Berets who served in Operation Tailwind for wounds they received during the four-day mission." McCarty required nine months of dental repair and surgery due to crushing his teeth when the CH-53 crashed.

• 1:59:03Jocko Willink?

  Two days after the Green Berets returned to CCC, completed their reports and got patched up by special forces medics on base, a huge party was held in Kontum Base with food, soda and alcohol for all the participants in Operation Tailwind, including the aviators from the HMH 463 unit, Scarface Cobra Gunship crews, Army Cobra Gunship crews and some Air Force Covey pilots. Somehow, the word did not get delivered to the A1 SPAD pilots and ground crews from the Da Nang Base. Forty-seven years later, Swanson mused, quote, "It's just as good that we didn't get the word because we were busy supporting other SOG and SAR missions.

• 1:59:46Jocko Willink?

  You know, just another day in the prairie fire area of operations for our Sky Raiders." End quote. To this day, Rose can't touch the thumb on his left hand with his little finger due to the serious nerve and muscle damage he received when wounded on day one. On day one!

• 2:00:05John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:06Jocko Willink?

  So all that medical treatment he provided with no thumb in action. For more than two years, his wife pulled pus coated shrapnel and bamboo shards from his body stemming from the many times he was hit with shrapnel while on the ground. Adair still suffers from nerve damage to his neck, left shoulder and arm from Operation Tailwind. But what's crazy is no Green Berets killed in action. That's amazing.

• 2:00:40John Stryker Meyer?

  The recon guys smiled on him. Oh yeah.

• 2:00:43Jocko Willink?

  That's just a, it's an incredible, I mean, it's a beyond incredible operation.

• 2:00:49John Stryker Meyer?

  It is. So successful at so many levels and the, uh, the fact that the hordes were coming. By day four, they finally reacted. When they reacted, it was enough to take the pressure off the CIA operation. So they were mission accomplished with the bonuses of hitting the, uh, command center and then the other cache where they blew up with tons of rice, weapons, trucks, etc. Yeah, the fireworks went on for quite a while. And wipe out a base camp in spare time. Oh, amazing.

• 2:01:28Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, I mean, just the, the...

• 2:01:32Jocko Willink?

  The mission focus from McCarley, just to get, you look, we get shot at while we're, while we're on insert.

• 2:01:40John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:41Jocko Willink?

  We're up, we're still going. We get contacted, we're still going. We get wounded, we're still going. We get more wounded, we're still going. We find an enemy base camp, are we gonna, are we gonna back away? No, we're gonna attack it.

• 2:01:53John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:53Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna keep going.

• 2:01:54John Stryker Meyer?

  He's relentless.

• 2:01:55Jocko Willink?

  Totally relentless.

• 2:01:58John Stryker Meyer?

  Classic example of a guy learned from the AO, applied in the field, and to do it at such a level. Always changing directions so the NVA wouldn't be sure where they're going.

• 2:02:10Jocko Willink?

  And moving at night?

• 2:02:11John Stryker Meyer?

  At night.

• 2:02:12Jocko Willink?

  You guys didn't move much at night normally?

• 2:02:15John Stryker Meyer?

  We caught, we never did. Couple guys may have gotten away with that, but not us. No, when we were at night, we, we hunkered down. And they had good enough weather that they could, uh, click in with, you know, Spectre, Shadow, Stinger. And, uh, it made a difference. And we may have downplayed it, cause Gene and everybody couldn't even remember how many gunships they went through at night, but every night they went through them. They used them.

• 2:02:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. SEALs moved at night during Vietnam. That was, that was like one of the things that they did that was like outside the box, you know? Was they, that's what, that's one of the things that they did, was they moved at night.

• 2:02:56John Stryker Meyer?

  I don't know how they did it, but they did it.

• 2:02:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:03Jocko Willink?

  Now, you kinda, you kinda referred to this earlier. Um, these guys do this beyond heroic operation. Of course, no one ever hears about it cause it's SOG and you, you guys all signed a 20-year.

• 2:03:17Jocko Willink?

  You know, oath of silence on this stuff.

• 2:03:20John Stryker Meyer?

  And all the air crews were told before they went in, everybody. You know, of course, the A1, uh, Skyraider people, they, it was an SOP with them. But there's a lot of new troops coming in, but the helicopter crews, the Cobra gunships. Even though they, you know, Scarface had been doing, uh, cross defense missions for a long time. They were all briefs. When we're done here, you don't talk about it.

• 2:03:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and, and we kinda breezed through it, but also, uh, you, you heard McCarley say that, I think it was McCarley say that. Because it was so secretive, these, a lot of these pilots, they didn't get any recognition at all. I mean, you're freaking flying a helicopter into an LZ where there's massive machine gun fire to extract guys. I mean, that's just insane bravery.

• 2:04:08John Stryker Meyer?

  Right. And you know, again, the beauty of talking to people after you write the book. I talked to Tom Stump and Gene on that one point when they were together. We had a reunion, a tailwind reunion a few years ago in Tennessee. And there Gene McCauley said, had you not done that, we would have been done right then. And because they were really up against the wave attacks by that point. And they're low on ammo and Tom Stump, he said, you literally saved our ass right there. And he came through the clouds somehow, these A1 pilots and Tom Stump and those guys,

• 2:04:47John Stryker Meyer?

  how they get through the clouds to get down to be critical mass, danger close, and to save their ass. I mean, and they're just wonderful. We just love them. That's why we feel like the Sky Raider pilots were saints.

• 2:05:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the SEALs had a relationship like that with the, with the Sea Wolves, the Navy helicopter pilots. And we've had a couple of Sea Wolves on here and, and

• 2:05:14John Stryker Meyer?

  Of legend.

• 2:05:14Jocko Willink?

  Freaking badass. Same thing. They were going. Like if they got the call, they were going. That's all there was to it. Scramble the Sea Wolves. All right, cool. What do you got? We're going to get you out.

• 2:05:24John Stryker Meyer?

  And the Sea Wolf history is they were kind of like treated like stepchildren.

• 2:05:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure.

• 2:05:28John Stryker Meyer?

  They had to go out and scrounge stuff all the time. And yet, when it came time, those guys flew and they were good. They're another legend.

• 2:05:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:05:36John Stryker Meyer?

  Absolutely, man.

• 2:05:37Jocko Willink?

  Freaking heroic.

• 2:05:38John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yes.

• 2:05:39Jocko Willink?

  So these guys do this heroic operation and you mentioned this earlier and I'm going to go to the book. 28 years after one of the most successful operations run in the 1970, run in 1970 during the eight year secret war, Operation Tailwind, CNN

• 2:05:54Jocko Willink?

  That's the cable news network broadcast a disgraceful erroneous story that stained the reputation of the men who participated in that mission portraying them as war criminals. Instead of reporting the facts of the successful mission, CNN accused the Green Berets and airmen of gassing American POWs held captive in Laos with deadly sarin gas. CNN used that error laden work of fiction in an effort to compete with CBS's popular 60 minute program when it launched a new program on June 7, 1998 called Newsstand. The title of the bogus slanderous story entitled Valley of Death.

• 2:06:37Jocko Willink?

  It alleged that 16 Green Berets and 120 Indige troops from Operation Tailwind had destroyed a village and killed innocent women and children while directing US aircraft to drop lethal sarin nerve gas on US war defectors they said were POWs of the communists. To compound the egregious attack against America's finest soldiers and airmen, the next day, Time Magazine repeated the hideous allegations in the news story written by CNN staff members headlined, Did the US Drop Nerve Gas? It was written by CNN producer April Oliver and CNN international correspondent Peter

• 2:07:18Jocko Willink?

  Arnett, who produced the CNN story that aired June 7. The broadcast and Time article smeared the men of Operation Tailwind, which was conducted during the eight year secret war in Laos during the Vietnam War and run under the Aegis of Military Assistance Command Vietnam Studies and Observations Group or simply SOG. There was an additional political ramification stemming from the CNN Time Magazine report in 1998. At a July 21st, 1998 press conference repudiating the CNN Time report, then Secretary

• 2:08:00Jocko Willink?

  of Defense William Cohen said, quote, "The charge would be used to discredit the United States' attempt to curb the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In fact, Iraq immediately incorporated CNN's charges into its anti-US propaganda effort to try and deflect attention from its own outlawed chemical and biological weapons programs." End quote. Cohen ordered a full-scale, across-the-board investigation of the CNN Time story from all military branches involved in Operation Tailwind, while requesting at the same time from the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staffs.

• 2:08:42Jocko Willink?

  Of course, these guys found out, you know, reported what had really happened, and then there's some retractions and some apologies. Secretary Cohen said, "I think all Americans should know that the 16 men who conducted this mission were heroes, but that they had been hurt by this report. I can assure you that you and your colleagues and your families, you did nothing wrong." And he's, obviously, he's addressing the men. Quite to the contrary, "You did everything right. 16 Americans fought steadily for four days. All of them were injured, all got out alive. The documents that they captured provided intelligence bonanza. General Abrams, the commander of our troops in Vietnam, said

• 2:09:23Jocko Willink?

  Tailwind was a valuable operation executed with great skill and tremendous courage." Cohen told reporters that "After rigorous review of thousands of pages of document statements and after-action reports, the military ordinance and weapon storage records, quote, 'We found no evidence to support CNN Time assertions. We have found absolutely no evidence to support these charges.' CNN and Time retracted their reports, noting that they could not support either charge." On July 2nd, 1998, in a CNN retraction, CNN News Group Chairman, President and CEO Tom Johnson said, "An independent investigation concluded that the report, quote, 'cannot be supported.' There was insufficient evidence that sarin or any other deadly gas was used,

• 2:10:08Jocko Willink?

  and CNN could not confirm that American defectors were targeted at the..." Camp as newsstand reported, we apologize to our viewers and to our colleagues at time for this mistake. CNN owes a special apology to the personnel involved in Operation Tailwind, both the soldiers on the ground and the US Air Force pilots and US Marine Corps helicopter pilots who were involved in the action.

• 2:10:33Jocko Willink?

  On July 13th, Time Magazine printed an apology to its readers headlined Tailwind and Apology. They noted that the allegations reported on June 7th and 8th, 1998 could not, quote, be supported by the evidence, end quote. In July 14th, 1998, Ted Turner wrote a letter to McCarty, quote, "I hope you will accept my personal apology for the CNN newsstand's recent erroneous reporting on Operation Tailwind. This entire episode has been very painful for me as the founder of CNN. However, my greatest distress comes from knowing that our coverage upset those on the front line of Operation Tailwind, the soldiers on the ground and the US Air Force and Marine Corps pilots engaged in the action," end quote.

• 2:11:15Jocko Willink?

  McCarty said in a 2015 interview, quote, "I personally spoke to Ted Turner and he reiterated that he wrote what he wrote in the letter. He also told me he was going to call the other members of our team and write them letters of apology. To my best, to the best of my knowledge, that did not happen," end quote. Larry Grow, a Marine Corps helicopter door gunner who survived Operation Tailwind, added, "I felt really betrayed by CNN for allowing those reporters to publish all those lies and twisting the statements from those who were interviewed. CNN showed me how the news media can twist a story to fit its needs and have never really trusted any of the other media 100% in their reporting since then."

• 2:12:02Jocko Willink?

  Interviewed in 2016, retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Mel Swanson.

• 2:12:09Jocko Willink?

  Who is the commanding officer of the daring A1 Skyraider pilots remained brutally bitter about CNN's false story. Quote, "Operation Tailwind was the classic example of interservice cooperation in that area of operations. Think about it. America's finest, the Green Berets and their loyal troops, kicked ass and took numbers on the ground, deep in enemy territory. The tactical air support from the Air Force fast movers, C-130 gunships, our beloved A1H Spads, in combination with Marine Corps Scarface Cobra gunships, Army Cobras, and Marine Corps Dimmers, raised hell in the enemy's backyard. We killed hundreds of these commie bastards, and thanks to that Green Beret medic, all

• 2:12:51Jocko Willink?

  were kept alive until the final extraction, when one Montigny Yard soldier was killed. Until 1998, I occasionally watched the Communist News Network, but after they ruined our reputations, I never watched it again. It was a crime against our warriors, what they did. It was a travesty of justice."

• 2:13:14John Stryker Meyer?

  Amen.

• 2:13:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, obviously, right now, we're living in a, you know, this is 1998, and the media's even more partisan, and they take stories all the time and run with these stories, and a lot of times, it's happened so much that it's, we forget what it does to the actual people that are victims of the stories, these false stories that come out. And so, you know, you get a situation like this, these guys, and you know, I was thinking about, you know, Mike Rose, who had to make that decision out in the jungle, that he's gonna leave, you know, his indig troops out there that were dead, he's leaving the bodies,

• 2:13:58Jocko Willink?

  and he's tore up over that for his whole life since then.

• 2:14:03John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 2:14:04Jocko Willink?

  And then you get a story like this comes out, it's... Yeah, it's a travesty.

• 2:14:10John Stryker Meyer?

  And they knew it was coming. So, I mean, they knew there was a story coming, but they didn't know it's gonna have that negative edge to it. And the distorted inaccuracies. So, some of these guys lined up their families, sat down in front of the TV. Mike Hagan and Mike Rose were two of those that come to mind right away, because they had their families, "Hey, we're gonna be on CNN tonight." And then halfway through the broadcast, when that true tone comes out, and the family looks down like, "You were criminals." And then Mike had to explain to his daughter, Mike Rose, and he was just devastated. And he had to sit there and try to explain it. And these kids see things on TV. TV's never wrong.

• 2:14:56John Stryker Meyer?

  And look at Dad with a little bit of cross-eyed, but horrible impact on a personal level that nobody ever hears about.

• 2:15:13Jocko Willink?

  You alluded to this earlier. Because of the secrecy of SOG and what you guys were doing, there's a bunch of reasons. Because the secrecy of SOG, because the number of guys that were doing turnover, so you've got guys coming in and leaving, and then the number of guys that are wounded, the number of guys that are killed, the number of guys that are missing, there's a lot of SOG operators that, as we mentioned earlier, never met the pilots that were supporting them. And so you'd get these guys that never see them.

• 2:15:46John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:48Jocko Willink?

  But then, and again, you alluded to this earlier, in 2016, going to the book, "The first Operation Tailwind reunion was held at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation, bringing together for the first time in more than 45 years, some of the men from all of the aviation units and some of the special forces soldiers from that unique mission." Featuring B Company Commander Gene McCarley, the commanding officer of the A-1 Skyraiders, Mel Swanson, and the pilots who flew Marine Corps Cobra gunships from Scarface, the CH-53 pilots, and a few forward air controllers. With tears in his eyes, Swanson said, "I hope this is the first of more reunions like it. To see how grateful the men of SOG were

• 2:16:30Jocko Willink?

  for our support during those hairy prairie fire missions touches me through and through. As well as the other pilots here today, we always wondered who those crazy fuckers on the ground were, and now thanks to the reunions and this reunion, we get to meet them. And I can't tell you how much this means to me on a personal level as the commander who sent our A-1 pilots into harm's way every day to learn how much they appreciated us in the AO. It's gratifying beyond words."

• 2:17:03Jocko Willink?

  Scarface pilot Barry Pensick, am I saying that right? Yes. Is it Pensick? Pensick. Scarface pilot Barry Pensick told the audience that when the Marines went across the fence into Laos, quote, "They made us change our call sign for some reason. They called them Mission 72 when we went across the fence. Whenever we ran a Mission 72, for some reason, they had us take off our dog tags, leave our wallet at home, so you couldn't be identified. As if you go down in an American-made helicopter and you're a white, round, right guy, round eye in an Asian country and no one's gonna know you're American. I never understood the logic of that."

• 2:17:45Jocko Willink?

  Then, in a, in a closing note, Pensick turned to the audience and apologized to the ladies in advance for contaminating the spoken word with profanities. To summarize the time he spent during that operation, "I can't think of another way to say this," he said apologetically. "For example, if someone is really good, he's a hot shit."

• 2:18:09Jocko Willink?

  If something was good, it was shit hot. If you get into a bad situation, it was a shit sandwich. Don Persky mentioned the sandwich we got into earlier. If you had your act together, you had your shit together. And I would like to say that I was honored to have a week or so to spend with all these people here and a bunch of others. And that they were a bunch of hot shit guys on a shit hot mission. And then we got into a shit sandwich, but we had our shit together in the end. No shit.

• 2:18:41John Stryker Meyer?

  Airborne.

• 2:18:44John Stryker Meyer?

  Is that a great line?

• 2:18:45Jocko Willink?

  That is a great line. That is a great line.

• 2:18:53Jocko Willink?

  So, you know, one, one thing I want to mention is that Mike Rosen on October 23rd, 2017, received the Medal of Honor.

• 2:19:03John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah. At the White House for President Trump.

• 2:19:06Jocko Willink?

  At the White House for President Trump. And it shows you that, you know, even though it wasn't known about at the time, the heroism of these guys was just, well, that's the highest honor that, that, that a person can be, can receive. So, salute to those guys and, and man,

• 2:19:29Jocko Willink?

  what a mission now. I'm going to jump ahead and, and look, we're, we're not covering all of SOG Chronicles. By the way, that was one mission to cover in this volume one of SOG Chronicles.

• 2:19:41Jocko Willink?

  But one of the things that, when I started reading, I read a quote that said, you know, as of June 13th, 2017, there were still 50 Green Berets listed as MIA in Laos alone, along with at least 105 aviators who died supporting SOG missions. They are among the total of approximately 260 aviators missing, missing in Laos as of this printing. Now, there's a, uh, there's a story in here. And I don't, I don't want to go through the whole thing.

• 2:20:13Jocko Willink?

  Because people should get the book and read through it. But on a high level, because it ties into the, the, um, you know, this, the, the MIAs that are still out there. Can you tell us a little bit about RT Intruder? And, and, and what happened on that, on that operation?

• 2:20:30John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, sure. Um. They went into the target and, um, made enemy contact. And, uh, they had to get pulled out on strings. So the first helicopter came in, pulled out the first half of the team, RT Intruder. Second helicopter came in again with strings to pull them out. And they had two Americans. Three Americans are on, on the strings and maybe one indigenous. I forget about the indigenous. And as they're lifting off, one of the ropes got tangled in the trees and Sammy Hernandez fell to the ground, was knocked unconscious. So he's unconscious. Helicopter continues up, gets hammered. Turns around, spins out of control.

• 2:21:13John Stryker Meyer?

  And then crashed into a granite wall or to a mountain. Killing the entire air crew, everybody on the ropes.

• 2:21:22John Stryker Meyer?

  So the next day, uh, the bright light goes in. And, um, maybe in a day or two days later. The bright light goes in. They get to the crash site. And they're able to recover all the bodies. Sammy Hernandez during the night woke up, played hide and go seek with the NVA. He found a, uh, found a, um, cave or some kind of area where he could get out of the way. And before he went into the cave, he, his shoulder was dislocated. So he pounded his shoulder back into place on a tree. Then he hid for the night. In the morning, at first light, a covey came by and he had his panel. And they were able to extract him out. They came in with the bright light.

• 2:22:07John Stryker Meyer?

  Got all the bodies, put them in the body bags. Moved them to a location. I forget if they got to the top of the mountain or not. But Cliff Newman was on that mission. And, um, they went in. Put together all the bodies. But it was too dark. They couldn't come in and get them out that night. The plan was in the morning, they'll come in early. Well, in the morning, before any aircraft could get there, any air cover, the NVA hit that team hard. And bottom line, they couldn't get the bodies out. They literally left them there. Thirty-five, forty years later, Cliff Newman goes back in an effort to work with our,

• 2:22:47John Stryker Meyer?

  what's now DPAA, Department of PWA, MIA, Accounting Agency, and it was the predecessor. But Cliff went in, tried to find it, the cooperation with the indigenous people, I forget what, the Laotians or the Vietnamese, they put them in too far away from the mountain. So Cliff went back four or five years ago, again, the second time, and again, they're too far away. So Cliff is waiting for the third call to go back and try to help them. And this is the dedication of Cliff, and Sammy Hernandez is still alive, and of course, Cliff Newman was, and Sammy, were on the first team that did the first halo jump in

• 2:23:32John Stryker Meyer?

  the Laos.

• 2:23:33Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's one of the other reasons why I don't want to go too much deep detail right now, because hopefully, we get him on here to tell the story.

• 2:23:41John Stryker Meyer?

  He'll come back.

• 2:23:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, and you think about that, you know, I just was looking through some of this information, Americans unaccounted for in Southeast Asia, right now, total of 1,587. And post-January 1973, they've repatriated 1,059 from Vietnam, China, Laos, and Cambodia. So, we still have work to do there to get these guys back home.

• 2:24:21John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, and even on that missionary, the morning that they went in to get, to pull the recon team out, after the recon teams hit, we had a cubby that went in and got shot down. And they lost all, everybody's killed. And they, um, they couldn't get them out right away. But eventually, I think now would be maybe ten years ago, they got the pilot out, they recovered his body. And, um, so today, yeah, the, the one thousand five hundred eighty-six remaining, uh, MIAs in Southeast Asia, which includes Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and China.

• 2:25:06John Stryker Meyer?

  And there were a few up there, um, pilots mostly, I assume. And, um, September eighteenth will be the P O W, the National P O W M I A Recognition Day. When, uh, there'll be events held across the country. And of course, you have the iconic P O W M I A flag that, that's now, uh, been authorized by President Trump to be flown on all federal buildings throughout the year now, every day, trying to keep attention focused to that, that level.

• 2:25:39Jocko Willink?

  Anything that we can do to help out on that stuff?

• 2:25:43John Stryker Meyer?

  Um, well, there's a lot of issues attached to it, but the most important thing is to keep, um, keep people writing their congressmen and say, please, keep the efforts going forward on this for the, for the Americans from Southeast Asia. Cause what's working against us in addition, Mother Nature again, is the most acidic soil in the world. Eventually eats up bones and maybe teeth. And so, um, who knows how much longer the remains will be. And, um, you know, for my case, Spider, Pat Watkins, Lynn Black, the MIAs, the people we knew, who are teammates, that are now part of that.

• 2:26:26John Stryker Meyer?

  And we still hope that someday at least get the remains back, someday, maybe not. I think there's gonna have to be somebody, somewhere that's gonna have to say, we have to end it. But until they do, um, the, what's really amazing, the young teams that they get out there for D P A, they're dedicated. These kids go out, they're Army, Marine Corps, they usually take a medic, an S F medic.

• 2:26:51Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:26:52John Stryker Meyer?

  With them now, and these kids are dedicated. They really do a great job. We'd like to see a little bit more coming from mid-management at DPAA in terms of the commitment to really push this thing, keep it in the public's eye, and President Trump's been supportive of it, and that's all we can do. We're at the mercy of time here and the efforts.

• 2:27:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know. I know they would send guys. I know guys in the SEAL teams, friends of mine, that would go to Vietnam to support those operations.

• 2:27:25John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah. It's like, there's no inter-service rivalry here.

• 2:27:30Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:27:31John Stryker Meyer?

  For all Americans, no matter what service, and there's been teams that have gone in for over forty years now. You know, I forget the exact date, but I think it's June. You know, they always stopped to talk about the aircraft that was a J-PAC aircraft loaded with people going for a mission that crashed, and we lost several Americans, as well as indigenous people working with us on that. So it's a deadly mission. It's been a long battle, and you have the National POW MIA League of Families, National League of POW MIA Families, who've been fighting this war, the effort to bring home, identify, bring

• 2:28:13John Stryker Meyer?

  home the remains of many Americans we can. And they were the first people in any war we fought that demanded that the enemy treat our prisoners better during the Vietnam War. And then they had another name, I forget what it was, but then they eventually became the National League of POW MIA Families. The director, CEO, is Ann Mills Griffith. She and her father started when her brother went down in September of sixty-six as a Navy backseater in that war, and that family's been involved ever since. And she's been involved when the League was formally founded in nineteen seventy. Fifty years of this effort

• 2:28:57John Stryker Meyer?

  dedicated. It's a nonprofit, and they're down. And she fights our government. She knows is respected by all the, our prior enemies, Laos, Cambodia, North Vietnam, they all know her, they know the League, and they work with DIA very closely.

• 2:29:13Jocko Willink?

  And who do we look up? Where do we go to try and give them support?

• 2:29:16John Stryker Meyer?

  Uh, the National League of POW NYA families, if you just Google and it pops right up. Ann Mills Griffiths is the director CEO, just amazing, tough, strong, relentless woman. She's been through three husbands and but the mission never stops. She just continues to go seven days a week. She works on the stuff. It's just an amazing story.

• 2:29:39Jocko Willink?

  Well, salute to her and obviously a salute to all these, all these, all these that were lost, all these that are mission in action and man, these stories are unbelievable.

• 2:29:55Jocko Willink?

  Well, I know you and I have some plans of trying to get as many of these things captured as we can. Um, I know you're traveling and you're, you, you're, you might start, you know, might get some training from Echo Charles and how to press record on one of these things.

• 2:30:11John Stryker Meyer?

  Absolutely.

• 2:30:12Jocko Willink?

  And get these things, you know, everyone wants to hear as much of these stories as we can. Um, so hopefully we can get that going. We, we left some space on these last couple podcasts. If, if Blackjack wants to come on, if, uh, if Sammy wants to come on, the, the, it's always open. The door is always open here. This is the, this is the most friendly AO that Sog has ever known, right here in this podcast space.

• 2:30:40John Stryker Meyer?

  Again, the trouble is like with you and your, your fellow SEALs, it's, these guys are so damn humble. I mean, even I had to pull quotes out of.

• 2:30:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:48John Stryker Meyer?

  And work at it, but I will, I promise you, I'll go back to Cliff and those guys and Sammy. He's just an amazing guy. He lives down in Texas and, uh, just goes on, did, lives, he came back and did his time in the service, uh, career soldier, um, just a remarkable man.

• 2:31:05Jocko Willink?

  And we got one King Bee pilot we got, we got targeted.

• 2:31:09John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, indeed. We're, uh, talking to Captain On and he hasn't responded yet.

• 2:31:13Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:31:14John Stryker Meyer?

  But when he responds, I hope that we can get him in because, uh, he's in both the books.

• 2:31:20Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:31:20John Stryker Meyer?

  And, uh, so, and his stories are, well, every King Bee pilot, any of that is still alive. And you know, uh, sadly in June, I attended the funeral for Captain Tuong, who saved my ass and our team bacon so many times. I couldn't even count that many, particularly on Christmas Day of all.

• 2:31:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, those guys, um, yeah, I was, I was reading through one of these where these guys were just, uh, was that Captain Tuong who would go in, or was it Captain On who went in by himself?

• 2:31:50John Stryker Meyer?

  By himself.

• 2:31:51Jocko Willink?

  Hey, it's too dangerous. Co-pilot, get out. Air crew, get out.

• 2:31:57John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:57Jocko Willink?

  I'm going by myself to go and rescue these guys.

• 2:32:02John Stryker Meyer?

  So if we get shot down.

• 2:32:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, getting overrun.

• 2:32:04John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:06Jocko Willink?

  What? That's just freaking awesome and heroic. So hopefully it'd be an honor to have him on here and talk to him and, uh, hear, hear about his life story. So.

• 2:32:21John Stryker Meyer?

  We will do that. And, and those King Bee pilots, well, even our Americans, I mean, these young kids that were flying these helicopters so fearlessly and amazingly. I mean, how did they get ice cubes in their blood to be so calm and cool? Cause that wouldn't be me. If I'm up there, I'd be shitting my pants going, let's get the fuck out of here. I didn't just sit like, okay, anytime you want to go, guys, we're ready.

• 2:32:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:42John Stryker Meyer?

  And you know how the cyclic is, you just touch those little controls and the helicopter is going to crash and burn. It's not like an airplane.

• 2:32:48Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna mention when I said, uh, one of the, when I said, you know, First Lieutenant so-and-so was filing this thing, I was, I should have mentioned, hey, by the way, what that means is this guy is 23.

• 2:32:57John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:58Jocko Willink?

  You know, this guy is not an old, experienced pilot with thousands of flight hours. He's 23, but like you said, he might not have time, but he's got ice in his blood. To sit there and hold station with a freaking helicopter while you're taking Dishka 12.7 millimeter rounds into the side of your aircraft.

• 2:33:20John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah. And like, like with the Lynn Black story, the judge and executioner, all year they came to our rescue time and time again. And then with Lynn, they came in front of the team and mowed down a wave attack by the NVA. They couldn't land, took off and came, continued to fight.

• 2:33:37Jocko Willink?

  You know, you, you, you talk with such reverence for all the other service branches and it's the same, you know, when, when, when we were in the Battle of Ramadi, there was just no rivalry whatsoever. And I've never had, and I didn't really have some big rivalry going into it. I'd never really cared. I always thought we were on the same team, but some people, some people take that stuff pretty seriously. But man, on the ground, in the Battle of Ramadi, it was just brothers and, and across the board. And sisters as well, because there's females there fighting and females that were killed in action. And, and, but just nothing but reverence for the soldiers, the sailors, the airmen, Marines that we work with. Salute to all of them. And, and certainly I know you feel the same way.

• 2:34:21John Stryker Meyer?

  Absolutely.

• 2:34:21Jocko Willink?

  As you talk. Um, but hey, once again, thanks for coming back. We gotta get the SOG cast going.

• 2:34:29John Stryker Meyer?

  We will do it. Uh, maybe I'll take the postgraduate course and how to record.

• 2:34:36Jocko Willink?

  I'm telling you, Echo might be able to take, teach you.

• 2:34:42Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for coming on and, and more important, thanks for everything you did to protect our way of life here. And, and thanks for what you continue to do to support veterans here. Talking about the MIA's, what you've done with your veteran organizations. It's awesome. And, um, it's just an honor to know you and it's an honor to call you a brother.

• 2:35:02John Stryker Meyer?

  Likewise, brother. Thank you. Appreciate it.

• 2:35:04Jocko Willink?

  Thanks, man.

• 2:35:05John Stryker Meyer?

  Like a bad dream, we'll be back.

• 2:35:09Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Tilt has left the building.

• 2:35:16Jocko Willink?

  Unbelievable opportunity to sit here and talk to these guys and learn these stories, so many stories. You know, after we, after we turned off the mics, I started getting kind of crazy talking to Tilt. I was saying, hey, when you're talking about 600 hand grenades getting thrown, each one of those hand grenades that gets thrown by the enemy into your position is a whole story. There's a whole story behind it. Hey grenade, all right, where the ground from? I got him over there. Start putting down fire. I'm like, that's a whole story. Each one, oh God, Jimmy's wounded. Each one of these events, 600 grenades. Each one of those events is a, is a micro story.

• 2:36:01Jocko Willink?

  Each one of these, hey, in, in two lines, in this book that we just read, in two lines, it's like, um, hey, there was enemy bunkers who were cleared by the Montney yards. Yeah. Wait, wait a second. That's a freaking chapter, or two chapters, or three chapters, or a whole book in itself clearing up enemy bunker? Filled with the, or, or NVA fighters? What's happening? What are we talking about? So, to be able to sit here and talk to these guys and, and, and Tilt wasn't on that particular mission, but he has, you know, he has firsthand experience in the AO. He lived through it and it's just awesome. So,

• 2:36:44Jocko Willink?

  appreciate the opportunity to do this. And, and one of the reasons we have the opportunity to this is because y'all give us support. Support.

• 2:36:54Jocko Willink?

  As we like to call it. Echo, if somebody wants to support this podcast here, and while they're supporting this podcast, they actually want to provide themselves with some support.

• 2:37:05Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:37:06Jocko Willink?

  Is it close air support? Not really, but it could be considered, on some level, it is, well, let's just say this, it might not be close air support, but it is definitely support.

• 2:37:18Speaker 02

  It is support for sure. And for, you know, for oneself, you know, to support others, you do have to support yourself, right? Like I said, I said it before, I'll say it again. It's like, you know, when you're in the airplane and the oxygen mask comes down, what are they instruct you to do? Put it on yourself, then you help your small infant child or whatever the case may be. So kind of the same situation. Alright, so we're all working out, we're keeping ourselves on the path. On the path isn't just such an esoteric thing, by the way. It's keeping your shit together.

• 2:37:50Jocko Willink?

  Dang, I like it.

• 2:37:51Speaker 02

  It is, a hundred percent. In every way you can, by the way, mental, physical, uh, social, social meaning like just your relationships with people in and outside of your family. Anyway, you understand, you're gonna know if you're doing something off the path versus something on the path, you're gonna know. Pretty clear. So, anyway, so when working out, we could benefit from supplementation.

• 2:38:17Jocko Willink?

  We could use some air support.

• 2:38:18Speaker 02

  Some air support.

• 2:38:19Jocko Willink?

  Some level of support.

• 2:38:20Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:38:21Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 2:38:22Speaker 02

  Support is way better than no support.

• 2:38:23Jocko Willink?

  Yes, it is.

• 2:38:24Speaker 02

  Hundred percent. So, Jaco has you covered. We have you covered. We all have ourselves covered as well. Jaco Fuel supplementation for your joints, important, very important. Okay, so I'm, I'm, I'm not one of these guys who have these crazy joint problems, but from time to time, I'll get jammed up, you know, the kind when you wake up, you walk downstairs. If you walk downstairs too quick, you're like, you can feel it. You see what I'm saying? You don't know what I'm talking about. You don't feel that. That's what you're saying?

• 2:38:57Jocko Willink?

  I certainly don't admit it.

• 2:39:01Speaker 02

  I thought we were all friends here, you know, but I will say, and the point to this quasi-story is that when you think back to those times when you're like all stiff or whatever, just general stiffness, and now you don't have it, it's like, it's, it's a godsend, is what it is. You don't miss those days.

• 2:39:23Jocko Willink?

  We don't want to feel it if we don't have to.

• 2:39:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it's, it's not a big deal when you forget it, when you don't realize it, you see what I'm saying? But anyway, I realize it a lot. So, that's why it is important to keep taking your joint wearfer and krill oil. Those are for your joints. Discipline, discipline, go. This is a brain-body supplement. Keep you mentally in the game, keep you sharp. You have a groggy day, boom, helps you out. That's what that is. Um, also, RTD cans, it's like an energy drink in the form of, uh, no, I got that backwards.

• 2:40:00Jocko Willink?

  It's like an energy drink is something that you drink that makes you feel good for 45 minutes until you crash and burn and you have a freaking insulin level spike.

• 2:40:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:40:08Jocko Willink?

  And you feel like crap.

• 2:40:09Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:40:10Jocko Willink?

  Cause it's filled with sugar and a bunch of chemicals. What's going on here? No sugar, no sugar. Well, how does it taste good? Cause it's sweetened with something else called monk fruit, which is actually good for you. Does it have 700mg of caffeine? No, it's got 95mg of caffeine.

• 2:40:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:40:28Jocko Willink?

  Good for you.

• 2:40:29Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:40:30Jocko Willink?

  Get that little afternoon.

• 2:40:33Jocko Willink?

  Hitter.

• 2:40:35Speaker 02

  Yes. So to sum it up, I guess it's a brain health drink in the form of an energy drink.

• 2:40:45Speaker 02

  Loosely, we'll say loosely.

• 2:40:46Jocko Willink?

  We haven't figured out what exactly we've made. It's a new category.

• 2:40:51Speaker 02

  Potentially, yeah. Well, it's good. Nonetheless, got some good flavors on there. Good, uh, some flavors coming up.

• 2:40:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:40:58Speaker 02

  As well.

• 2:40:58Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yes, who's all excited about their new flavor.

• 2:41:00Speaker 02

  I'm not saying it's my new flavor. I'm not saying it's not my new flavor. I'm just saying we have some various flavors coming up. Anyway, yes, that's a discipline and discipline go. There's also the capsules, you know, if you're in a, in a rush or what have you. Yeah, there's that. Also vitamin D three and cold water. This is for immunity. So keeping your immune system is keeping it up, keeping it strong. That's important.

• 2:41:25Jocko Willink?

  Definitely.

• 2:41:26Speaker 02

  As opposed to unimportant.

• 2:41:28Jocko Willink?

  Especially right now.

• 2:41:29Speaker 02

  Yes. Well, I, I don't want to get into a whole debate. But I think that immune system is important at all times.

• 2:41:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:41:39Speaker 02

  That's what I think.

• 2:41:40Jocko Willink?

  I'm going with it.

• 2:41:41Speaker 02

  All right.

• 2:41:41Jocko Willink?

  I'm concurring with you.

• 2:41:42Speaker 02

  Also, what do we got? Milk, Jaco, milk. Protein in the form of dessert, all different kinds of flavors.

• 2:41:49Jocko Willink?

  In the form of protein.

• 2:41:51Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 2:41:52Speaker 02

  Yes, I do. Yeah, yeah. Same deal.

• 2:41:54Jocko Willink?

  And we got some new flavors coming out. And I'll tell you what, bro. I'll tell you what, we got some flavors coming out.

• 2:42:00Speaker 02

  Oh, for real?

• 2:42:01Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:42:01Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 2:42:02Jocko Willink?

  Yes, and they are legit.

• 2:42:05Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:42:06Jocko Willink?

  Legit. You want to know what one of them is?

• 2:42:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:10Jocko Willink?

  Smashing pumpkin.

• 2:42:14Speaker 02

  All right.

• 2:42:14Jocko Willink?

  It's like a, I didn't even know what this was. Yes.

• 2:42:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:18Jocko Willink?

  I didn't even know what this was. I didn't even know it was a thing.

• 2:42:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:20Jocko Willink?

  Be little sends it to me. He goes, he goes, dude, you gotta try this. And I'm like, send it. So he sends it out. And I wasn't even, I didn't even know I liked this flavor.

• 2:42:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:30Jocko Willink?

  Smashing pumpkins.

• 2:42:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:42:32Jocko Willink?

  But.

• 2:42:33Speaker 02

  Well, smashing, smashing pumpkins is banned.

• 2:42:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay. You already knew that. You're a fan. You're a smash pumpkin.

• 2:42:40Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 2:42:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, me too, actually. Anyway, that's a ban. Pumpkin spice, the flavor is like a thing, like a.

• 2:42:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I didn't know that.

• 2:42:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that makes sense because, I mean, I knew of it, but just in the past, like, few years or whatever, it's been getting a lot of, like, teasing and stuff like, ooh, pumpkin spice.

• 2:43:01Speaker 02

  I don't, you know.

• 2:43:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, I don't know anything about that.

• 2:43:03Speaker 02

  I know, yeah.

• 2:43:04Jocko Willink?

  Wait, are we gonna have to pull this flavor down because it's weak?

• 2:43:07Speaker 02

  No, I think like since it's been in the, uh, what do you call like spotlight or whatever? And people will be like, oh, I don't know. It's like they've been teasing it for some reason. Like you're some preppy or some yuppie.

• 2:43:19Jocko Willink?

  You can tease pumpkin spice, but trust me, you're not going to tease smashing pumpkin.

• 2:43:23Speaker 02

  Well, well, here's the thing.

• 2:43:24Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, you also, you also said smashing pumpkins. That's plural. That's a band. That's not the name.

• 2:43:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:43:29Jocko Willink?

  Smashing pumpkin. We're going singular.

• 2:43:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I dig it.

• 2:43:32Jocko Willink?

  Because, you know, we won't want to infringe.

• 2:43:34Speaker 02

  No, no, no, you don't, you don't want to infringe.

• 2:43:38Speaker 02

  But no, the pumpkin spice, so that's the thing. Where it's almost like part of the reason or part of the whole teasing culture of it, for lack of a better way of putting it. Was that everyone likes pumpkin spice, but you know, like, it's like if you're like tough, you don't want to like admit it. Like everyone, pumpkin spice is freaking delicious. In your cafe latte or whatever, like whatever, it's always, everyone knows that, you know? That's like kind of the thing. That's why I'm, I'm going to be honest, I'm a little bit excited for pumpkin spice.

• 2:44:06Jocko Willink?

  For smashing pumpkin. We're not doing pumpkin spice. We're doing smashing pumpkin because I'm starting to see the connection here that you're making and I don't think I like it. So we're doing something called smashing pumpkin.

• 2:44:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:44:15Jocko Willink?

  And it tastes good, but it's filled with protein that will make you strong, turn you into a destroyer.

• 2:44:22Speaker 02

  There you go.

• 2:44:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there you go. We got Molk. We got it going out there.

• 2:44:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, protein formula dessert. Also, what do we got? J- Jocka White Tea? Can you, are you into deadlifts? Doesn't even matter because once you.

• 2:44:32Jocko Willink?

  You should be.

• 2:44:32Speaker 02

  You, you, you, we, that's true.

• 2:44:34Jocko Willink?

  It's highly recommended.

• 2:44:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:44:36Jocko Willink?

  To deadlift. And if you're gonna deadlift, you might as well deadlift eight thousand pounds. And one of the quickest ways to do that, everyone's looking for a hack. I got a hack for you. You don't want to worry about what your periodization is going to be for your deadlifting. That's kind of a pain. What you do is you drink Jocka White Tea and you're deadlifting eight thousand pounds. By the way, guaranteed.

• 2:44:56Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:44:57Jocko Willink?

  And if you can't, well.

• 2:45:00Speaker 02

  That's kinda on you, really?

• 2:45:03Speaker 02

  And, but, I mean, and that is good.

• 2:45:05Jocko Willink?

  I kinda painted myself into a corner on that one. I had no way out. You saved me. I appreciate it.

• 2:45:09Speaker 02

  Hey, man. Well, hey, look, if you're not into deadlifting, and I get it, I'm not gonna, you can't judge.

• 2:45:15Jocko Willink?

  Well, you can a little bit.

• 2:45:16Speaker 02

  I overtly, can't overtly judge, how about that?

• 2:45:19Jocko Willink?

  You can't.

• 2:45:20Speaker 02

  It is certified organic, and it's very nice.

• 2:45:24Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so you can get all this stuff at originmaine.com. You can also get it at the Vitamin Shop. And pretty soon, you're gonna be able to get the RTD Drink, the Jaco Dispongo Drink at, well, you're gonna be able to get it at Wawa in Florida and Virginia very soon. So, be on the lookout for that. We're gonna have a little, we're gonna have a little operation. Go get some.

• 2:45:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's gonna be good. Also, at originmaine.com, they got some good jujitsu stuff, American-made jujitsu stuff.

• 2:45:56Jocko Willink?

  Where do you just throw the word "good" out there, like, it's, "Oh, yeah, good." When, actually, it's the premier jujitsu stuff in the world.

• 2:46:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I guess it's like one of those things.

• 2:46:04Jocko Willink?

  Little understatement, you may. Don't worry, I'm here. I got your back. I got your six. Cover and move.

• 2:46:08Speaker 02

  Thank you. Anyway, they got jeans as well, good jeans. I say "good" as opposed to "not good."

• 2:46:14Jocko Willink?

  Okay, you can also say "good" as in, "the best things you can put on your legs."

• 2:46:19Speaker 02

  Ever.

• 2:46:19Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:46:20Speaker 02

  In the history of America, pretty much.

• 2:46:23Jocko Willink?

  Jeans, boots, t-shirts, hoodies, what else? I think we're covered it. Anyways, a bunch of good stuff, and it's all made in America. Shorts, that's right.

• 2:46:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. They got some good stuff on there. How about this? Go originmaine.com, look at everything they got over their, all American-made.

• 2:46:42Jocko Willink?

  And you might be thinking like, "Well, you know, that sounds good. You know, I could use some stuff for that stuff or the other thing." But, you know, I, you know, I like to do things that are beneficial to the world. You know, I don't wanna just consume, right? Well, guess what? Go to Origin Main, you get some of that gear, you are contributing to the world. You are bringing manufacturing back to America. Got a bunch of hard-working, American people up there, making it happen.

• 2:47:15Jocko Willink?

  And when you support the cause, you are doing good for humanity.

• 2:47:23Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 2:47:24Jocko Willink?

  That might seem like a big step.

• 2:47:25Speaker 02

  It is.

• 2:47:26Jocko Willink?

  It's true.

• 2:47:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. And it's interesting, we've talked about this before, you don't care that much about it. How well the fit of the jeans are. Delta sixty-eight and?

• 2:47:42Jocko Willink?

  The Factory.

• 2:47:43Speaker 02

  Factory jeans. Yes. Anyway, yes, orjamine.com. Also, Jaco has a store. It's called Jaco Store. And this is where you can get your apparel, as it were, if you want to represent while you're on the path, as we say. So, you know, discipline, discipline equals freedom, t-shirts, hats.

• 2:48:00Jocko Willink?

  Do you know what bona fides are?

• 2:48:01Speaker 02

  Yes, I do. You taught me.

• 2:48:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. So there's a good bona fides when you're just out in the wild. And maybe you want to, you know, if you run into someone else that's kind of on the path, maybe a trooper. But you're going to walk around, hey, hey, how's it going? Hey, are you in the game? It's like, no, just put the flag on, man.

• 2:48:22Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:48:22Jocko Willink?

  Put the flag on, put the Def Cor flag on.

• 2:48:24Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:48:25Jocko Willink?

  And someone, and you know what you get? You're not going to get bothered, but somebody will give you a look, your little head nod.

• 2:48:30Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:48:30Jocko Willink?

  Like, what's up? Yep. Maybe a little, maybe a little.

• 2:48:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. What do you call it?

• 2:48:35Jocko Willink?

  Little heart hitter.

• 2:48:36Speaker 02

  Heart hitter. Yeah, yeah. Oh, yeah. But yes, that's where you can get it. Jaco Store.

• 2:48:40Jocko Willink?

  Jaco Store dot com.

• 2:48:41Speaker 02

  Dot com. We've got some board shorts on there. Summer, we're wrapping up summer.

• 2:48:46Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:48:47Speaker 02

  Are we wrapping up?

• 2:48:48Jocko Willink?

  Well, I mean, no, we are definitely wrapping up summer.

• 2:48:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:48:51Jocko Willink?

  But, you know, I know some of us operate more on a Hawaiian type schedule. So, summer might be kind of past, but some people may still be wanting some board shorts if they're actually in Hawaii.

• 2:49:03Speaker 02

  Well, how about this? The board shorts that we currently have, they're multi-purpose board shorts. You can swim with them, surf with them, do jujitsu in them, or just wear them wherever.

• 2:49:16Jocko Willink?

  Wear them while you're podcasting like I'm doing right now?

• 2:49:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. That's good. That's your new uniform right there. But yes.

• 2:49:22Jocko Willink?

  It did make, they do make the cut.

• 2:49:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're good. But yeah, a lot of good stuff on there. Uh, yeah, if you want, if you like something, get some.

• 2:49:29Jocko Willink?

  Don't forget about that Warrior Kids soap. From Irish Oaks Ranch. You can get it on our, on, on Jaco's store.com, but it's a kid, a warrior kid with a company. Who's making soap because his vision to help humanity is to help people of the world.

• 2:49:47Jocko Willink?

  Stay clean.

• 2:49:48Speaker 02

  Also for the month of September, Irish Oaks Ranch is donating $1 per bar. Of soap. To cancer research. So yeah, it's can, uh, cancer awareness month. So boom, that's what we're doing.

• 2:50:05Jocko Willink?

  Uh, subscribe to this podcast. Check out some of the other podcasts that we have Jaco Unraveling, which used to be called the thread, but we changed the name. So Jaco Unraveling, soon to be on its own. Feed. We have grounded, which we really haven't recorded in a long time. We need to get that done. And Warrior Kid also not recorded in a long time, but you can listen to those podcasts. You can subscribe to those podcasts and this one. We also have a YouTube channel.

• 2:50:30Speaker 02

  I, I think the main value of the YouTube channel, and this is me being kind of serious.

• 2:50:36Speaker 02

  Is for those of us who like to watch the podcasts, two reasons. Want to watch the podcast as it goes on. Like if you have a flat screen or, you know, these, one of these smart TVs. In your office or your gym or whatever you want to play it, boom, you want some visual, uh, what do you call it? Like association.

• 2:50:54Jocko Willink?

  You can see what John Strachan Meyer looks like.

• 2:50:56Speaker 02

  Sure. Yeah. Oh yeah. There's that for sure. But you know, when you have it playing in the background, it seems like you're more in the conversation. Anyway, it's for that. And also the excerpts we have on there. So, you know, like you can get little, little, as you and Theo Vaughn would call them, little. Or big. Hitters.

• 2:51:13Jocko Willink?

  Were you trying to get me to say hitters?

• 2:51:14Speaker 02

  No, I, I wanted you to, you, you understand what I'm saying. Anyway, that in my opinion, that's the value. So yeah, subscribe to that. Also. Psychological Warfare is an album with tracks, Jaco tracks of Jaco, helping you get past your moments of weakness if they come. If they come.

• 2:51:32Jocko Willink?

  Let's face it, they come.

• 2:51:33Speaker 02

  They come. Oh yeah, for sure. And yes, this will help you. So yeah, you can get it on Amazon or wherever you get MP3s from. All good.

• 2:51:40Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Flipsidecanvas.com, my brother Dakota Myers company. And yeah, guess what? Guess what? If you want a little visual representation to kind of keep you on track, check out flipsidecanvas.com. And get something to hang on your wall. Graphic representation of the path.

• 2:52:01Jocko Willink?

  Also got some books, obviously these books here by John Stryker Meyer, Across the Fence, On the Ground, Sog Chronicles. Also, don't forget about Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by Blackjack Lynn Black. We got The Code, The Evaluation, The Protocols. We got Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. We got Waya Warrior Kid 1, 2, and 3. We got Mikey and the Dragons. We got Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. And by the way, there's a new version of that coming out.

• 2:52:29Jocko Willink?

  Extended versions, be advised, a little bit, some additional information for your knowledge. And also, Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership also have a consulting company called Echelon Front, where we teach leadership principles and we solve problems through leadership. We also have EF Online. EF Online, if you have a question that you want to ask me, sure, you could send it into the, into the interwebs, Facebooky, Twitter, the Gram, you could try and ask me questions. Look, sometimes I get to them. Or you can come on to EFOnline.com and come to a live webinar where I am

• 2:53:14Jocko Willink?

  sitting there in front of my computer answering questions. Go to EFOnline.com. Come and hang out. Basically, come and hang out. We have something called The Muster, where you come and physically hang out and learn about leadership. We've had to cancel a few of them because of the COVID virus, but we have one coming in Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th. Go to ExtremeOwnership.com if you want to come to that. We have EF Overwatch, where we take people from the military that have the understanding of the principles that we talk about.

• 2:53:52Jocko Willink?

  And we place those people into the civilian sector, into companies in the leadership position. Go to efoverwatch.com if you're a company that needs leaders. We have AmericasMightyWarriors.org, Mama Lee, Mark Lee's mom. Her mission, since she lost Mark, since we lost Mark, has been to help service members around the world in all kinds of different aspects. If you want to get on board and you want to help out, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org and you can donate or you can get involved. And if you want to hear more from us, you can contact us. If you have questions, if you have answers, if you can fill in the blanks of some of the blanks

• 2:54:36Jocko Willink?

  that we get to, you can find us on the interwebs. For Tilt, for John Stryker Meyer, he's on Twitter @SogJohn. Instagram is @JstrikerMeyer and Facebook is @JohnStrykerMeyer. On the interwebs, he's got sogchronicles.com. And if you're looking for either one of us, two knuckleheads, Echo is at EchoCharles and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks to Tilt, of course, for coming back on to share the stories of Sog, the Sog Chronicles. And more important, thanks to Tilt and all his brothers in arms for their service and their sacrifice, especially those who are still missing in action. We will not forget.

• 2:55:24Jocko Willink?

  And we thank you and all of our military for keeping us free. And to the police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol, Secret Service, all other first responders out there holding the line, thank you for your service and sacrifice to keep us safe here at home. And to everyone else out there.

• 2:55:51Jocko Willink?

  Don't go around thinking that you're hot shit. And that your shit doesn't stink because you're bullshitting yourself.

• 2:56:01Jocko Willink?

  And if you do think that you are the shit. Then things will likely shit the bed and then they'll go to shit and you'll end up in a shit sandwich and likely shit a brick when you realize that you're up shit's creek without a paddle. And that right there is some deep shit. So instead, focus on getting your shit together and then keeping your shit in line. And look, we all have a shit ton of work to do and not just chicken shit either, but the real shit. That can make us tougher than shit and that is no shit Sherlock.

• 2:56:40Jocko Willink?

  So until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.