342: The Incredible Events and Lessons From The Defense Of Charlie Hill, Vietnam.

Col Bill Reeder. Pow in Vietnam. "Extraordinary Valor", the defense of Charlie Hill. 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 342 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:09Jocko Willink?

  The explosion rocked them, the blast deafening in the night. For an instant, it let their, lit their dirty, blood smeared faces, their hollow eyes set in hopeless determination. A few more shells crashed around them, none as close as the first. Each blinding flash shone upon the corpses lying across the battlefield, gruesome evidence of the fight that had raged over the past days. Hundreds lay dead over the hilltop outpost, the bodies of South Vietnamese paratroopers mixed with those of their determined North Vietnamese enemy. The hellacious battle had allowed the paratroopers to recover only some of their fallen comrades.

• 0:54Jocko Willink?

  They'd wrapped a number in their plastic ponchos and placed them in trenches. That was a while ago, earlier in the fight, when there'd been time to render a modicum of respect. Later, they'd stacked bodies in rows as they were able. Most of the dead, though, were strewn where they'd been cut down in the last hours of combat, punctured, torn, dismembered, and shredded, grotesque reflections of their final violent seconds of life.

• 1:24Jocko Willink?

  The explosion stopped, the dark returned. Only the moans of the wounded pierced the silence of the night. The stench of death filled the nostrils of the last two men fighting. Smoke choked their lungs, they waited in anticipation. They heard orders shouted from across the field. They sensed movement as another attack wave swept toward them. The American advisor leaned close to his Vietnamese counterpart and exclaimed, "Shit, here they come again." The reply in broken but well-practiced English was resolute.

• 2:09Jocko Willink?

  "I know, we fight, we fight more."

• 2:14Jocko Willink?

  The enemy once again rose from the darkness, tearing through the night, coming at them as vague shapes, screaming and shooting, throwing grenades as they advanced closer and closer still. Both US Army Advisor, Special Forces Major John Joseph Duffy and South Vietnamese Major Lee Van May, the senior surviving battalion officer, knew this was the final assault. Bullets whizzed by them. A grenade exploded, ripping a hole in Major May's chest. He gasped for air. John Duffy, already wounded several times himself, looked over his left shoulder.

• 2:56Jocko Willink?

  He nodded, satisfied, seeing the decimated force, all that was left of the once mighty 11th Airborne Battalion, escaping down the hillside. John and May, the rear guard, were all that stood between the remnants of the battalion and their annihilation. They'd been out of food for days, they had no water left in their canteens, their ammunition was nearly gone. But still, the American and his South Vietnamese comrade fought. And still the enemy came. There was no talk of surrender. No thought but to kill as many as they could, before they were themselves, cut down where

• 3:41Jocko Willink?

  they squatted on the edge of their abandoned positions. Lee Van May strained to speak. "Fight Duffy, fight." They battled with everything that remained in their hearts and souls, but the end of their road was only minutes away. They knew, they were about to die.

• 4:08Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is the opening of an incredible book, which is called Extraordinary Valor, which is about the defense of Charlie Hill in Vietnam. And this book is written by retired Colonel William Reader, who was a helicopter pilot in Vietnam, who has been on this podcast before, podcast number 63. And on that podcast, we discussed Colonel Reader's first book, which is called Through the Valley, which follows Colonel Reader's combat experiences from flying a OV1 Mohawk in support of secret missions in North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia,

• 4:54Jocko Willink?

  eventually switching to pilot the AH-1G Cobra gunship from the 361st Aerial Weapons Company, callsign Pink Panther. And it was in that duty that Colonel Reader was shot down, evaded the enemy for three days, was eventually captured, imprisoned in a jungle prison camp, tortured, mock executed, and finally forced to march north to the Hanoi Hilton. And in that grueling march, where seven of the 26 POWs in his group were killed.

• 5:36Jocko Willink?

  And upon arriving at the Hanoi Hilton, where he suffered the rest of his, with the rest of his American POWs until he was finally released after 320 days of captivity.

• 5:51Jocko Willink?

  So to hear that story, go listen to that podcast and to get the actual full story, get the book Through the Valley. There are, it's a harrowing story and so many lessons to be learned. But prior to that ordeal, then Captain Reader flew in direct support of Major Duffy and the defense of Charlie Hill.

• 6:20Jocko Willink?

  And he knew that that was a story of courage and valor that needed to be shared. So he spent years compiling data and reviewing records and interviewing participants and giving his own personal account in this book, Extraordinary Valor. And it's an honor to have Colonel Reader here with us again to discuss this new book and his experiences from this battle and how this battle unfolded. Colonel Reader, thank you for joining us again. It's an honor to have you.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  Thank you, Jaco.

• 6:59Jocko Willink?

  So what made you decide to write this book?

• 7:04Speaker 01

  There's a little bit of a story involved, so I will go ahead and share it. When I wrote my first book on my captivity, that book wasn't published until 2016, as I remember. So that was decades after that experience in Vietnam. But it was a book that I had wanted to write. I just never found the time, staying on active duty, commanding units. It was just always too busy. Finally, I found the time, sat down and started to put pen to paper. And all of these memories and recollections that I thought were right there, because I had lived that experience. Well, when I started writing, yes, some of those recollections were right there. I remembered things crystal clear. Other things after all those years were a little bit fuzzy.

• 7:49Speaker 01

  So I wanted to be sure that I had all of my information correct, all my facts correct, particularly in the war that led up to my getting shot down and captured. So I would talk to guys from my unit that I could get a hold of, talk to returned prisoners that I had been with, to be sure I had everything as right as could be. One of the battles that I mentioned, and I think it only gets a few paragraphs in my first book, was this battle at Firebase Charlie. And I talked to the other crew member, Dan Jones, actually led our mission there. I was flying his wing. He shared what he recalled. Another one of our pilots, Forrest Snyder, shared what he recalled. But to get full detail, I think it was Forrest recommended to me, he says, hey, you need to get a hold of the American advisor who was on the ground with that airborne battalion

• 8:34Speaker 01

  and get some information from him. So I tracked down the advisor, John Duffy. I got ahold of John. I hadn't spoken to him since the war, and now this is however many decades later, and said essentially, you know, John, great to make contact with you, and he was enthused that we made contact with him, and as you see, and we may bring out in the discussion later, our mission, that night that he was overrun, that you read that part, we showed up in the nick of time to save the day. So he credits myself and Dan Jones, who was flying lead, with saving his life, as does Le Van May. So he shared the information that I needed to get that battle correct for the few paragraphs I had in the first book. But as I talked to him over, I must have talked to him a half

• 9:18Speaker 01

  a dozen times, getting that material over, over different days, he started dropping a hint, that, you know, that, that was just a really intense battle. It was probably one of the most intense battles in the Vietnam War. And I had no idea that, that only thirty-seven guys had survived out of a four-hundred-and-seventy-one-man battalion, plus a few other stragglers, which later, later showed up, later on. So he started dropping these hints, hey, it's, you know, somebody ought to write the history of, of that battle. And then he found and knew that I had a PhD, and retired Colonel, and had written that book. And so finally, I said, John, okay, I'll, I'll write, I'll write it up. What I was thinking at the time

• 9:59Speaker 01

  is, you know, I'll take care of John, and I'll write this, maybe a twenty-page monograph. I'll get the facts down, and, and I'll be done with it. But as I started talking to him in more detail, and got to meet Le Van May, and talk to him, others involved in the battle, I, I soon saw that there was really a, a substantial story there that needed to be told. And rather than a twenty-page monograph that I would crank out in two to three weeks, I spent four years researching and writing this book to, to get it done. And I'm, I'm very glad that I did. I, I know that it is a story that needed to be shared. And, and also, it, it shines a new light on Vietnamese forces.

• 10:44Speaker 01

  Vietnamese forces during the war and since the war have gotten generally bad press on how they performed in combat. Most of that was well-deserved. A lot of Vietnamese units, though they had some well-intended soldiers... They did not have good leadership, corrupt leadership, incompetent leadership, and there are story after story of Vietnamese units not fighting well, retreating in the face of the enemy. But what I found in researching this book, Extraordinary Valor, is that was not at all the case with their elite forces. Their Marines, their Rangers, and most especially their paratroopers. Their airborne units were the top-notch units that fought well, fought with courage, and

• 11:29Speaker 01

  as I did my research, I confirmed that, and that is the story that I tell in this book. The book follows the life of the American advisor, it follows the life of Le Van May, who ends up assuming command of the unit after the commander's killed, and they're the two big heroes, so the book is their story leading up to the battle. And that was how I came to write the book, and why I wrote the book, and I think the important message that comes out of the book is the Vietnamese airborne, they called themselves, were known in Vietnam as the Mudo, the Red Hats, the Angels from the Sky, fought very, very, very well in just about every single combat they were involved in, and most especially

• 12:11Speaker 01

  the 11th Arvin Airborne Battalion on Charlie Hill was extraordinarily valorous.

• 12:16Jocko Willink?

  In reading your book, you start to realize the way that this unit was held up, and this battle was held up almost like the Battle of Thermopylae, with the 300 Spartans that died to a man trying to protect the city. It's like, the same thing happened here, they were trying to hold this hill, and there's songs about it. In the lore of the Vietnamese at the time, this was, this unit was like the 300 Spartans. Is that a safe assessment?

• 12:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. That battle became a landmark in Vietnamese history. The commander, as I said, was killed, he became a national hero, was promoted posthumously to Colonel, they had banners to him all over Saigon and parades in his honor. There is a book written about the battle, I think it's something like The Red Flames of Summer, and then there was a song that was written about the battle, that is still played at some Vietnamese gatherings that get together, and we'll play that song about Charlie Hill.

• 13:21Jocko Willink?

  The other interesting thing I found is there's recordings of you guys in the air. There's, there's, I listened, I listened to at least probably 40 minutes of these call for fires. And just like, I was, I was a radio man, so I wasn't surprised when this happened. But you can hear the aircraft really well.

• 13:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:38Jocko Willink?

  And you can barely hear Duffy, he's all broken. But, but man, it's amazing to listen to this stuff happening. These recordings are incredible.

• 13:48Speaker 01

  They are, and that, that, that recording in particular was part of the additional evidence. And we may get into Duffy's award situation here later, and I'll, I'll have more comment on that. But that recording surfaced late, just, just several years ago. Two of my principal sources, to be sure that my information was correct, were, were, you know, hard, hard copy or hard vocal sources that couldn't be disputed. One was that recording. That recording was made by one of the helicopter crew members that went in and picked up the survivors of that battle the next morning, after they were overrun on the hill that night. And so, yes, we have audio, word for word conversations between all those helicopters,

• 14:30Speaker 01

  and Duffy talking on, he, he, he had his Prick 77 radio shot off his back. He had two aircraft survival radios with him as well. So he's talking on one of those survival radios on, on the emergency push to those helicopter crews. So we had that recording. Also, John Duffy during the battle, kept a, a log of, a journal of everything that happened, every day, and call signs and coordinates and, and all that. So those two things together helped give me the factual information, or confirmed factual information for the book, as well as, and I'll add this comment now. If you want to get an emotional feel for John Duffy and an emotional feel for this book,

• 15:13Speaker 01

  Duffy turned out to be a poet after the war, and he has a website, epoetryworld.com. John Duffy, if you Google that, you'll get to it. But yeah, all of this is, is captured the emotion of it in, in poems that he has written over the years since.

• 15:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and, and the title of one of those books is, is "The Battle for Charlie", and it's a book of poems, and it's chronological accounting of what happened. Really cool to read.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 15:38Jocko Willink?

  And, I mean, I've got some of that, that we'll read during this, that I highlighted. But yeah, definitely an interesting guy that had, had a cool viewpoint on the world.

• 15:48Speaker 01

  He's a fascinating guy.

• 15:50Jocko Willink?

  Um, with that, let's, let's get into the book a little bit. And the book, like you already said, it staged around the two main leaders in this event, or who ended up being the main surviving leaders in this event, Le Van May and Major John Duffy. So you start off, and again, look, go by the book, because the details that you've got in there are incredible to read. I'm going to kind of give some highlights so people know what we're dealing with. So Le Van May was born in 1942. He's the second of nine children. His father was a farmer, uh, but I guess they raised buffalo. That's what they did for a living.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  They had, but they raised crops, but they had the two buffalo to, to, yeah, whatever you do, plow the fields and, and, yeah.

• 16:36Jocko Willink?

  Okay, got it. So the buffalo were more like the tractors.

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly.

• 16:39Jocko Willink?

  So they were regular farmers. Um, he was a studious kid, hardworking, and he ends up getting accepted into the Vietnamese National Military Academy. Interestingly, he graduates the same day that Kennedy was assassinated, November 22nd, 1963. Uh, and he had, you know, he, he kind of talked about the fact that he looked at Kennedy as this great man, and this was, you know, somebody that he saw as a beacon of freedom and all this. He gets commissioned as a second lieutenant, and he asks for immediate combat assignment.

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 17:15Jocko Willink?

  Um, and with that, well, when you're in Vietnam, I guess it doesn't take that long, if you want to go to combat, to get in it. I'm going to go to the book here real quick. Uh, he's a platoon leader at this point. Contact. Heavy enemy fire stopped their advance. The radio cracked with a call from the adjacent platoon. One, two, one, two. This is one, three, over. May grabbed the handset from his radio operator. One, three, this is one, two, over. 12, we are pinned down here, heavy fire, lots of VC, maybe a company. Roger 13, I'll try and advance and relieve pressure on you. May's soldiers stopped in their tracks. He needed them to advance across an open expanse.

• 17:57Jocko Willink?

  His greatest anxiety in pondering his role in combat was not fear for his life, but rather whether his soldiers would follow his orders. He knew what was expected of him. He worried he might not be able to deliver. He spied two soldiers nearby whom he felt could be key to his budding plan. One carried a 30 caliber Browning Automatic Rifle, known affectionately as the BAR. The other held a 45 caliber Thompson Submachine Gun. Both designs dated to World War I. May boasted a more modern weapon, an M1 Grand Carbine that had seen service in World War II. "Come with me," he called to the pair. "Stay close."

• 18:40Jocko Willink?

  May turned to the platoon, raised his arm and shouted, "Follow me." They moved forward, arcing to the left, circling the enemy's right side. May stayed in the lead, firing his carbine. His two-man assault force made good use of their automatic weapons. The rest of the platoon moved to keep up, placing effective fire as they advanced. They took casualties, individuals fell, wounded, some crying in pain. Still, his soldiers fired and maneuvered behind his lead until he got them into a position to attack directly into the enemy's flank. May led the onslaught. Insurgents fell, dead, dying and wounded. They broke. They ran.

• 19:22Jocko Willink?

  The second platoon pursued until May called them back to consolidate on the position they'd just overrun. He congratulated them on their victory. They looked at him with the respect and admiration he had earned. May exhibited extraordinary leadership on that first mission. Within days, the Army promoted him to First Lieutenant and placed him in command of the First Company and he routinely led Company in Battalion Operations. The actions set his reputation as a respected combat leader.

• 19:58Jocko Willink?

  Earning that, he's earning that rank.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, he is. You know, this reminds me of something to keep in mind, too, that we lose sight of. Americans went to Vietnam for one-year deployments and came home. Infantry guys and aviators got to go two times, some three times. John Duffy ends up going four times. But those Vietnamese, we mentioned his commission date, so we're going back to the early and mid 60s. And those Vietnamese were fighting day after day, year after year, throughout that whole war, as we would do our rotations. I can only guess, I've not even asked May, I should have, you know, what was your attitude looking at these American advisors that would come in for a year or less at a time? And rotate in, rotate out, and see if they've got all the answers for you,

• 20:45Speaker 01

  telling you what to do and how to fight a war.

• 20:49Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's, I think, one of the complaints about that rotational system, is guys come in, by the time they feel comfortable with what they're doing, it's almost time for them to leave again. And I know they did that a lot with company and battalion leadership, where a leader would come in and serve three, four, maybe five months as a battalion commander, as a company commander, and then they'd rotate them out.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:12Jocko Willink?

  Just when you start to get comfortable with what's going on, you're out of there, and then soon after that, you're going back to the States.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:18Jocko Willink?

  Whereas World War II, you were going to deploy until we won, which is definitely a different way to do it. Now, that being said,

• 21:28Jocko Willink?

  it's at least a little bit nice when you go to maybe run some combat operations in the morning, and then that afternoon, you go home and have dinner with your wife, right? And that's exactly what happened with May. He ended up, he met this woman, her name was Sen, and, you know, like, he starts having a relationship, but when he goes to work in the morning, he's going into combat. So that's a little different, too.

• 21:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it is. And as I mentioned in the book, the Vietnamese airborne was the strategic reserve for Vietnam forces controlled by the general staff. Their locations were all around Saigon with one of the units down at Vong Tau, which was not that far from Saigon. So when they weren't deployed off on an operation, yeah, May was going home every night and being with his family. And then they'd usually deploy the airborne. The airborne would get deployed if there was some horrible situation. They'd go up and save the day, spend usually just a few days or at the most, couple, two or three weeks, and then back to Saigon, back with his family.

• 22:34Jocko Willink?

  You know, you've got a section in the end of the book that you talk about where this, these airborne units, these Vietnamese airborne units, the history of them, where they came from.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Right.

• 22:43Jocko Willink?

  Can you talk us through that really quick? Because it's pretty interesting, the way they were originally formed and where they're rooted.

• 22:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wanted to include that in the book because, again, I was really impressed when I did my research and found out the courage and valor of the Vietnamese airborne consistently throughout their history. Yeah, without giving, you're talking to a PhD historian here, so I don't want to go off on an hour and a half lecture on the Vietnamese airborne. But the concise version is, it all began with the French. Vietnam was a colony of Francis since the late 1800s. During World War II, the Japanese invaded and took over Vietnam. We, the Americans, worked with the Vietnamese insurgents fighting against the Japanese during the war. There's a whole nother story there that I won't get into.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  But at any rate, after the war, the French came back trying to reestablish their colony in Vietnam. The Vietnamese, a portion of the Vietnamese under Ho Chi Minh, had a militant arm called the Viet Minh, and they very much saw themselves as an independent country and weren't going to stand for the French coming in to take them over. So we have a conflict between the French and the Viet Minh after the war. The French had Vietnamese that didn't want anything to do with the communists. That ends up becoming South Vietnam. But as the French tried to reassert themselves, looking to the... I want to say friendly Vietnamese, but those who are aligned with the French. They, the French, had airborne units came to Vietnam.

• 24:17Speaker 01

  They saw some advantage to getting Vietnamese military to be part of that airborne. And that's where the whole thing started. They started training indigenous Vietnamese to become paratroopers. Those Vietnamese were trained and molded on the French model. In time, there were Vietnamese airborne companies that would fight as a part of French battalions. In time, by the time we get to the Dien Bien Phu battle, which is going to be the undoing of the French in Vietnam and Indochina in 1954, there are Vietnamese airborne battalions by that time fighting. So that was the start of the Vietnamese airborne. It started on the French model.

• 24:57Speaker 01

  And so they still, to the US involvement in the war, tracked their origins to the French and kept that same proud model. The red berets that they wore came from the French.

• 25:10Jocko Willink?

  And that's what, that's what May ends up volunteering for. You know, after he spent some time in the infantry, he then volunteers for this elite Vietnamese airborne division. And you've got a bunch of good combat stories in there. What did you, you spent a lot of time talking to May retracing this stuff, huh?

• 25:33Speaker 01

  I, yeah. Over a period of four years, I talked to May, I don't know, I should look at my notes. I've got about 10 interviews with May. I've probably got 18 interviews with Duffy. Half, half a dozen interviews with, with Hi, who we might talk about in a little bit. But he ended up being the operations officer of the 11th Battalion. May's the executive officer. Colonel Bao is the commander. He gets killed in, in the battle. So I spent a lot of time talking to, to those guys, principally May, Hi, and Duffy. At one time, I even flew down to San Jose, went to Santa Cruz where Duffy lives. And May and Hi came down and we spent an entire day sitting around Duffy's dining room table. I had blown up some maps.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  I forget, I think I had one to, I don't know, 25,000 or something that I blew up into huge maps we laid on the table. We went over that battle in great detail. So yes, I've spent a lot of time with all of those guys to get this right.

• 26:31Jocko Willink?

  Next time you do that, can you tell me so I can come? Watch and maybe even bring Echo so he can press record?

• 26:37Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh.

• 26:38Jocko Willink?

  That's phenomenal. I know we talked about maybe getting some of these guys on in the future. That'd be awesome.

• 26:44Jocko Willink?

  He ends up getting married. Did you record? Did you record these? Interactions that you had before?

• 26:49Speaker 01

  I did. Well, every single interview I did on the phone, I recorded and I have those recordings. And that entire session we spent that day, I recorded the whole day. Yes.

• 27:00Jocko Willink?

  Oh, there's gonna be some requests for that.

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't, I think when I did those recordings, it was with their understanding that we were doing those in confidence and that that would not be released to the world.

• 27:13Jocko Willink?

  He, so he gets married to Sen, this woman that he had met.

• 27:17Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 27:17Jocko Willink?

  He is enjoying life. He's, um, he's got his comrades. You've got, you've got a section in there. They drink this, this Martel cognac.

• 27:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:27Jocko Willink?

  Which is, uh, very superior old pale. That's what's written on the bottle, VSOP.

• 27:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, VSOP.

• 27:34Jocko Willink?

  VSOP is on the bottle and, and the paratroopers, they say that it doesn't stand for very superior old pale. It stands for very sexy old paratroopers.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  That's a fact.

• 27:45Jocko Willink?

  So there's some good, uh, some good camaraderie with these guys.

• 27:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 27:50Jocko Willink?

  And, and again, it's just wild to think that these guys are working, they're living at home, they're with their family. And then they go on deployment for two or three weeks and do heroic stuff and then go back and get back with their family. It's a whole, it's a whole different kind of war fighting than, I mean, well, yeah, I guess you could say the Civil War, we did that in America, but I mean, other than that, we've been fighting in other countries.

• 28:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:17Jocko Willink?

  We haven't had that just go home to your family at the end of a day of combat.

• 28:21Speaker 01

  Well, most Vietnamese units didn't. This was the luxury of the airborne, but they, you know, they did more risk than anybody else. And you, you mentioned them getting married. They got married, uh, during the Tet or just at the end of the Tet Offensive. And May had gotten deployed up to, uh, to Way City during the, during the Tet Offensive. And fought in his, I think he was commanding a company then, they got down to 25% combat strength, were no longer combat effective, so got sent back to Saigon to re-outfit and refit, get ready for the next deployment. And it was on that break, and after losing so much of your, of your unit and, and all those casualties, Sen and May decided, hey, if we can't wait any longer, we need to get married. So that's when they got married.

• 29:05Jocko Willink?

  Uh, yeah, you've got a bunch of those details in here. Obviously, we're not reading the whole book. Go buy the book and, and get the rest of that story. Um, let's look at John Duffy. The other major character here, I'm gonna go to the book, cause I like this intro. There is no question where John Duffy is from. He was born in Manhattan, moved to Queens at a young age, and then Brooklyn. He never lost his accent, or the peppering of profanities he picked up in the public schools and on the streets of the city. World War II raged during his early years, he was seven years old when it ended, he remembered it well. And then you kinda, you go through some of these, this is, so much of this is just like a, should be a movie. This whole section about him growing up in, in and around the boroughs in New York, you

• 29:50Jocko Willink?

  know, he's like a smart kid, but he thinks school is boring, he's really good at math, but he's skipping school, the whole nine yards, cutting class, uh, just a rebellious kid. Sounds familiar, actually, in some forms. And then, uh, going back to the book, when he was 16, a neighbor, a paratrooper in the 107, 187th Airborne Regimental Combat Team, visited the family. He'd just returned from the Korean War. The war had ended some months earlier, but the soldier was just now being sent home. He stood in the family's living room, his uniform sharp, his pants tucked into his tall, shined leather boots. John was impressed. The stories of war impressed him. The immaculate uniform with its badges and medals impressed him. But the shiny boots impressed John the most.

• 30:35Jocko Willink?

  The boots that only paratroopers could wear with their Class A service uniform. Those highly polished brown jump boots caught his eye and his imagination. In that instant, John was hooked. Yes, paratrooper, that's what I wanna be. As soon as he turned 17, he got his parents' permission to enlist. He entered the Army as a private two days after his birthday, before finishing his junior year of high school. Get some. He breezed through basic and infantry training airborne school at Fort Campbell, Kentucky proved more of a challenge. John endured the verbal abuse and the physical pain, gutting it out until he earned his coveted jump wings at seventeen and a half.

• 31:16Jocko Willink?

  The army assigned him immediately to the 11th Airborne Division in Germany. So.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  That's John Duffy.

• 31:28Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's a pretty cool way to kick things off, but, but what's interesting, and you go into this in the book, like his first tour is not that big of a deal. It's in between the Korean War and the Vietnam War. There's not a lot going on. He does his tour. He decides he's gonna get out. He comes home. He tries a couple of different things. One of them was, what a dancing instructor?

• 31:48Speaker 01

  He, he did not know anything about dancing. He was home, he was out of the army, he was driving around. There's all kinds of stories of what he was doing, driving around. And he, he passes this Arthur Murray Dance Studio and it says Dance Instructor Wanted, I think is the window hiring. And so he walks in and applies for the job and has to scamp around and learn, learn how to dance so he can be a dance instructor. But he turned into a very good dance instructor. And yeah, he still maintains some of that suave, suave nature. If I can tell a little side story. We had many years ago in San Diego, a Vietnam Helicopter Pilots reunion. I forget how, it was a long, long time ago. John Duffy showed up just because he was in town visiting his brother and he heard about the reunion.

• 32:31Speaker 01

  And, and he showed up and I, that's the first time I ever met him face to face and saw him. I had my young daughter with me. I think she was, I don't know, 13 years old, if that, and my wife. One of the events for the reunion was a, a social thing on the midway, up on the deck. And they had a band up there with dancing. So he gets my young daughter and starts dancing with her on the deck of the midway, harkening back to his Arthur Murray Dance Instructor. And it was beautiful and she loved it.

• 33:02Speaker 01

  Okay, fast forward, and I don't want to get too far forward because we'll come to this, I'm sure, but we were at the White House just a week ago, and he had just gotten his medal pinned around his neck, and we were in a social in the, I don't know, the ceremonies in the East Room, one of the other rooms there, and he got Chelsea and curled her around like dancing moves up there. So it was really, really nice and he harkened back to that old time memory, which is just a little further detail on his dance prowess that he got by stepping into an Arthur Murray studio, knowing nothing about dancing and saying, I'd like that job, and there he goes.

• 33:38Jocko Willink?

  What year was the reunion here in San Diego?

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Oh, I'd have to look, I don't know, it was...

• 33:42Jocko Willink?

  I mean, if your daughter was 13.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Then it was like 13 years, she's 27 now, so...

• 33:48Jocko Willink?

  14 years ago. And he still got the moves.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  Still had the moves, and he still has his Brooklyn accent to this day.

• 33:56Jocko Willink?

  Well, following his story, where it goes from there, after his dance, I guess he didn't love it too much because he decided he was gonna go make his fortune as a gambler.

• 34:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, now, he played cards as a kid, that's early in the book too, so he really thought he had the stuff he needed to be a winner at card games in Las Vegas. Yeah, go ahead.

• 34:17Jocko Willink?

  So he packs up his car and goes to Vegas to go and, you know, I mean, clearly just make a fortune in Vegas. You know, this is a pretty common idea, you know, these people are giving away money out there. Well, what, two or three months into it, he's completely broke and he has to sell his car, he doesn't even have his car anymore.

• 34:34Speaker 01

  He's on foot.

• 34:35Jocko Willink?

  Next stop, Army recruiter. So, he goes back into the Army, and when he goes back in the Army still, you know, there's no war going on or anything, becomes a finance clerk, gets sent to Munich, meets a German woman, you know, and then he got orders to 10th Special Forces Group, and he's assigned to an A-Team. Now, when he did that, I tried to figure out, was there any school that he was required to go to, or how did that work?

• 35:07Speaker 01

  No, there was, you know, like today, to get into Special Forces and certainly Navy SEALs, I mean, you had to go, yeah, you gotta pass butts for the SEALs, and Army Special Forces, you have to go through a school, and a lot of guys get weeded out. No, then, he was parachute qualified. And had some jumps. His first tour in Europe was with the airborne division. So he's in Munich, as I remember, doing some clerical nothing job, wanted to get out of there. And so he volunteered to go down to Bad Toltz with the special forces down there. And he had, before he could wear a beret, he had to go through qualification at a whole bunch of just local schools. But it was nothing like what they have today. And once he gained certain qualifications,

• 35:51Speaker 01

  then he was able to get his badge and wear his beret.

• 35:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was pretty awesome to read through that. So he becomes a demolition guy at an A-team. He gets recommended for OCS. And then he breaks his arm three, what is it, two, three times?

• 36:11Speaker 01

  Three times, same arm.

• 36:13Jocko Willink?

  Keeps breaking his arm. Eventually, he heals up his arm. He goes to OCS. He graduates September 11th, 1963. He's now got two kids. Once he graduates from OCS, he gets assigned to the 801st Military Intelligence Detachment at Fort Bragg. He's not loving this.

• 36:39Jocko Willink?

  And this is back when, if you were in special forces, or in like, any special operations, that wasn't a good career move. You know, it's not like now where it can be very good for your career, if you're in the army, or if you're in the Navy, if you're in special operations. It can be, back in these days, it was not good for your career. And the officers that were looking out for you would actually say, hey, you don't want to keep doing this special operation stuff. That's not, that's not going to get you anywhere. So they give him this other assignment. He can't stand it. And eventually, he's, he wants to go to Vietnam. And he gets orders back to special forces. And he gets assigned to 5th Special

• 37:19Jocko Willink?

  Forces in Vietnam. He's sent to Khe Sanh. And then he's sent to, what is it?

• 37:26Speaker 01

  Long Vay.

• 37:27Jocko Willink?

  Long Vay. Gets sent to Long Vay, where he's going to be working with the mountain yards, the Bru tribesmen. And this is where he gets his first combat. So he's actually been in the army for a long time.

• 37:40Speaker 01

  He has.

• 37:41Jocko Willink?

  And, but this is where he gets his first combat. And since we covered May's first combat, let's jump on Duffy's first combat, going back to the book.

• 37:52Jocko Willink?

  The choppers hovered a few feet above the ground. The Bru fighters and their special forces advisors jumped off. The helicopters climbed quickly, departing to the east. The rotor noise faded. All stood in silence. Duffy stayed close to the Bru commander. They moved off the landing zone and set out. They scoured the immediate area before beginning a three-day sweep northward back to their camp at Langvee. They had no encounters the first day, but the next morning they walked into a Vietcong ambush. "Ratatat tat and enemy fire!" The Bru militia leaders shouted orders. The commander turned to Duffy, pointing to his left front. "VC, ten o'clock, maybe platoon, maybe more." The Indig Force spread out and returned fire.

• 38:37Jocko Willink?

  The noise of the firefight intensified. Bullets zipped past John. Men dropped, wounded, others fell dead. A hand grenade landed nearby, shrapnel tearing into Duffy's left knee. A wound that would reward him his first Purple Heart. Another grenade rolled between his feet. He held his breath. "Oh, Christ, I'm dead." It didn't detonate. His heart pounded. He took a moment to bandage his wounded knee. Then, a calm settled over him. He began to methodically appraise the situation to try and make sense of what the enemy was doing, to consider the tactics of his fighters, to assess the project of the progress of the battle. He turned to the Bru commander and firmly directed, "Counterattack! Counterattack now!"

• 39:22Jocko Willink?

  In the face of the Bru advance, the Vietcong withdrew, dragging their wounded with them. Duffy's voice followed the blood, Duffy's force followed the blood trail for a while, but their foe had escaped. They resumed the sweep northward. No further enemy contact. John Duffy had seen his first combat. He'd reacted as he hoped he would, done what he was trained to do, kept his wits about him. He reflected. Scary, but better than expected. This is my destiny.

• 39:57Jocko Willink?

  So there's his first combat situation that he goes into, gets wounded, gets hit with a grenade, has a grenade dud land between his legs, which is a nightmare.

• 40:09Speaker 01

  And he knows that he is a lucky man. That was his first Purple Heart. He has eight Purple Hearts, all the way up through Firebase Charlie.

• 40:24Jocko Willink?

  This was, this was another situation that you talk about in the book that definitely needs to be covered here. It says, "On March 2nd, 1967, a clear day, two silver jets screamed down Route 9, flying low from the east. Many in the Special Forces camp waved. The jets popped up, turned, and dropped bombs on Langvee Village, with some hitting the Special Forces camp. Radio calls went out in vain. No contact with the jets. They returned for another pass, this time with 20mm cannons blazing. The camp opened fire, thinking the jets are hostile. They weren't. They were American. They'd made a mistake. It was possibly the worst

• 41:09Jocko Willink?

  friendly fire incident of the war, killing 112 Brew villagers and wounding 213. Duffy's Green Berets entered the village. The devastation appalled them. They dashed through flames and still exploding ordinance to pull injured families from burning structures. Risking his life time and time again, Duffy rescued survivors. Many still hid in underground bunkers. John and his men crawled into several, begging the occupants to leave. Some did, others didn't. They were so terrorized that they were frozen in place. John went for the village chief. When they returned to the first bunker, it was too late. Everyone

• 41:50Jocko Willink?

  had died. The flames and smoke had made the air unbreathable. The Americans treated the wounded while the villagers retrieved their dead. Team members soon used up most of their medical supplies. When proper sutures ran out, they turned to safety pins."

• 42:09Jocko Willink?

  The team helped bury the dead and arranged for medical evacuation of the wounded. Duffy requested help through channels to make amends as much as that might be possible. Emergency flights brought food, medicine, clothing, and building materials. U.S. Navy Seabees, construction engineers showed up with a backhoe. Together, the tribesmen, Green Berets and Seabees, built a new Lang Vay Village a short distance from the old one. The Brood Chief demanded the old village site be abandoned. His claim, he claimed his people saw it as infested with evil spirits because of the terrible fate that had befallen it. Duffy leveraged circumstances to also have an airstrip built adjacent to the Special

• 42:53Jocko Willink?

  Forces camp. John had commanded A-101 at Lang Vay for a little over three months when he received orders to be the executive officer for A-113, the much larger Special Forces Mobile Strike Force for all of I Corps, the northernmost tactical region of South Vietnam. They called it MIKE Force, MIKE being shortened term for Mobile Strike. So that was a horrible scenario.

• 43:22Speaker 01

  It was, and that remains a nightmare in John's mind to this day. He did what he could do, but yeah, it was the, the jets, and I honestly don't remember now if they were Air Force, Navy, or Marine, but the jets thought that that was an enemy village, and I think they thought it was just across the Laotian border, but it wasn't. It was Long Vay Camp. And yeah, it was, it was terrible. John was the commander of that Special Forces detachment, A-101. Long Vay would later get, and you may get into one of them, but got overrun twice. The second time was, gosh, when, 1967, I think. And there was a book written about that called Night of the Silver Stars.

• 44:05Speaker 01

  And so many of those guys got killed, captured, a few were rescued. I ended up in prison camp with two, three guys, I think, from, from the Long Vay Camp that were captured that second time. It was, it was overrun.

• 44:21Jocko Willink?

  You, you, you go into some of the stuff in the book of what took place during the rest of that deployment and then his tour of duty ends, that first tour of duty ends January 17th, 1968, just before the 1968 Ted offensive.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 44:43Jocko Willink?

  He gets home. He, you know, like oftentimes happens, he gets home, his, his family, uh, his family reunion, getting back together with his family wasn't, wasn't exactly what it should have been, ends up getting divorced. Um, and he, you know, is ready to go back to Vietnam and he, he ends up going back to Vietnam. He gets assigned to the Phoenix program.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 45:13Jocko Willink?

  And we've had, uh, people from the Phoenix program on, on this podcast before. The Phoenix program was essentially an assassination program to kill senior Viet Cong leadership and just assassinate them. It didn't seem like John liked that idea very much.

• 45:33Speaker 01

  He did not like it at all. Uh, he, he claimed two things. One, he said his Vietnamese language capability wasn't good enough, but that was just an excuse. I think he, uh, he didn't want anything to do with, uh, with Phoenix. He set his sights other places.

• 45:49Jocko Willink?

  And so he, he pretty much just had, had, he had heard about SOG at this point?

• 45:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, he, he had, uh, heard about SOG and largely, I mean, he commanded day 101. So special, his special forces experience, uh, and, and SOG missions going into Laos from, from Vietnam, he was aware of it. Uh, so he just got, grabbed his records and, and headed to SOG headquarters in, in Saigon to make his case.

• 46:18Jocko Willink?

  Shows up there, shows up at the SOG headquarters and

• 46:24Speaker 01

  And SOG, I might say, is, as, they, they, the special operations were running SOG, thought they, they had a little covert deal here, because SOG stood for, and the sign on the street out in front of the building was Studies and Observations Group. It was kind of an innocuous, means nothing deal, and who would know, and who would care what went on there. But in short order, their exploits became, excuse me, somewhat known, at least that they were doing sneaky, strange stuff, probably across the border. So, most everybody, when they'd hear SOG, would think of just Special Operations Group, that's what it was. So, their Studies and Observations Group didn't, didn't carry it too well. But yeah, so John found his way

• 47:06Speaker 01

  to their headquarters building, which was just a, a building on a street in Saigon, it wasn't on a, on a military base at all. And, yeah, went in to make his case that he didn't want to have anything to do with Phoenix, and could they help him?

• 47:19Jocko Willink?

  Colonel Eiler, who's one of the SOG commanders, says, "Sat down behind his desk and read through John's military records. They chatted for a while, the Colonel made a phone call, he leaned back in his chair and said, 'You're no longer assigned to the Phoenix program, you're now a member of SOG, welcome aboard. I want you to cut off all the insignia from your uniforms and report back here at 0700 tomorrow morning with all your stuff.'" Duffy responded with a loud "Yes, sir."

• 47:52Jocko Willink?

  He gets an in-brief. "We run MACV SOG missions onto the trail, same as the launch sites in South Vietnam, but we are weather backup. When things are too skosh on that side, we insert and recover teams from here. SOG teams out of Vietnam are normally three US and eight to 10 indigenous. Most of that we work with are two US and four indig, because the helicopter limitations. John asked, 'What exactly do we do?' Mostly reconnaissance behind enemy lines, watching the trail, gathering intel, and sometimes directing airstrikes on enemy convoys or fuel and supply depots. They'll tap into communications lines when they find them. They also conduct ground raids to destroy supplies and equipment, they'll

• 48:36Jocko Willink?

  mine roads on occasion, and snatch prisoners too." He looked right at John, "All highly classified, we don't exist, we're not here." His expression tightened. "It's dicey, we've lost a number of teams."

• 48:51Jocko Willink?

  He turned and motioned to John, "Let's go meet the commander and get you settled in." Major Bill Shetland, the MLT-3 commander, made Captain Duffy his executive officer overseeing operations and intelligence activities. At the same time Duffy functioned as a launch officer, responsible for coordinating individual SOG team missions. He also routinely flew in the OV-10 Broncos as a backseat SOG observer. The front seat US Air Force pilots were all qualified forward air controllers or FACS. The aircraft provided an immediate available overhead capability to synchronize support in real time as a team conducted its assigned mission deep in enemy-held territory.

• 49:34Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, we've had quite a few SOG guys on here, so he's basically flying COVI, right?

• 49:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, they called the guys that flew in the aircraft COVI riders. They were SOG qualified guys, special forces guys, could really appreciate and relate to the mission. And from the air, they would coordinate all support. As that said, the front seat Air Force pilot of the OV-10 was qualified as a FAC, forward air controller. But in time, the backseat COVI riders could do as much adjustment of air as that front seat. I might comment, there was a time a few years ago where I couldn't have put those sentences in that book. It was still sensitive, highly classified information. Thanks goes to another former SOG guy who wrote some books, and the first book, I think, that really

• 50:26Speaker 01

  got this information out in the open, his name's John Plaster, and he wrote a book called SOG: America's Secret Commandos. And he coordinated and cleared to get that information out. But until then, even the involvement I had in my mission before I was shot down and captured supporting SOG, I couldn't, people say, "What'd you do in the Great Vietnam War?" I said, "Well, flew helicopters and gunships, and that's about all I can talk about." So John Plaster got this all out in the open, so we could give that level of detail of what John Duffy was doing. And I don't know if we mentioned, Mobile Launch Team 3 was out of Nankofanam, Thailand. So this part of SOG was on the west side of Laos. Most of their operations ran from forward operating bases or FOBs inside of Vietnam. There were three of them that would launch

• 51:11Speaker 01

  the teams into Laos and recover back into Vietnam. But if the weather was scorch, then all the weight went on Mobile Launch Team Three and Nankafinam to come in from the Thailand side.

• 51:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's crazy. I think it was a 20-year waiting period that they had on the SOG missions. So, nothing was said about it until like 1995 or 1994, before anyone even broached the subject.

• 51:38Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:38Jocko Willink?

  You know, we've had John Stryker Meyer on here a few times. I know he wrote a couple articles early.

• 51:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 51:43Jocko Willink?

  For like Soldier of Fortune magazine or something and started, you know, getting the word out about the insane and heroic operations that the guys at SOG did. Yeah, just crazy.

• 51:57Speaker 01

  So John Duffy was flying Covey Rider on that second tour of duty, in addition to being the launch officer and all the other admin responsibilities in the unit. But he spent a lot of time in OB10s out over the trail, courting those guys or supporting those guys on the ground.

• 52:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and he clearly, which we'll see, I mean, he got extremely good at understanding how to utilize air support.

• 52:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 52:18Jocko Willink?

  No doubt about it. He received five Air Medals for valor during the missions he flew there. Following a year of challenging and rewarding services, second combat tour ended, he got orders back to the United States. So, that ends John Duffy's tour. Meanwhile, May, Levan May, is also continuing to get more and more combat experience, especially now we're after Tet of 1968. He fought in Khe Sanh, he fought in the A Sha Valley. He was in the field fighting when he got radio traffic that he was, that he had a son.

• 52:59Jocko Willink?

  He was part of Lam Son 719, the largest helicopter assault of the war, which we covered on podcasts, 294 with a Huey pilot, Jay Tate, and...

• 53:13Jocko Willink?

  What, what Van May did on that, he was held on, held in reserve. So there was a bunch of, a bunch of Vietnamese troops that went in, in, into Cambodia and he was in reserve. His unit was in reserve. So they didn't go in?

• 53:28Speaker 01

  Into Laos, uh, Lamsan 719. And yeah, he was part of the second brigade and they were supposed to be the final, and they were going to do airborne or air mobile assault at the town of Chapon, which was the end of this, of this attack into, into Laos. But for some reason, his mission got changed and he never did that. Uh, I think the president of Vietnam got a little bit cold feet and decided to withdraw earlier than anticipated. Of course, that withdrawal turned into a rout. Uh, they had some ground forces in there, some rangers trying to hold, uh, some outposts on, on either side of the advance. And that turned into a mess. Uh, but yeah, May's unit never got deployed across the border on Lamsan 719,

• 54:11Speaker 01

  was held in reserve. Uh, the only action they saw was when the Vietnamese forces were coming back across the border, they facilitated that crossing.

• 54:22Jocko Willink?

  And meanwhile, while that's happening, John Duffy, he wants to get back to Vietnam, of course, again. Uh, he, he can't get orders. He's trying to get orders and finally he volunteers to go back to SOG.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:35Jocko Willink?

  And he's thinking, hey, you know what? Great. I'll go back to SOG. I'll get some more combat experience. Well, when he gets back to SOG, he gets told, you're too senior for anything in the field.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:46Jocko Willink?

  So you're basically going to be riding a desk. He doesn't like that. He didn't like being in a combat zone with no combat. It's how you put it in the book.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 54:57Jocko Willink?

  He spends four months there at SOG headquarters and then he asks to get reassigned to MACV's Team 162, which was a team that worked directly with the Vietnamese airborne units. And the colonel that's, he's asking to go and get this transfer from, tells him, you'll, you'll be killed, you ignorant son of a bitch.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 55:21Jocko Willink?

  And Duffy replies, so be it.

• 55:24Speaker 01

  John Duffy wanted to get back into combat badly.

• 55:28Jocko Willink?

  Um, he drives to Red Hat Hill. What's the deal with Red Hat Hill?

• 55:34Speaker 01

  Red Hat Hill is a, are of an Army of the Republic of Vietnam airborne base, uh, on the edge of Saigon, uh, north, northeast of, of the downtown city of Saigon. And that was a, uh, it was the base for the 11th Airborne Battalion, uh, and a small advisory group, uh, and, uh, and they trained there. Uh, their barracks were there and it was from there that they would deploy to their combat operations. And again, close enough, May's family was in Saigon. So it was close enough that he could, again, drive home every night and, uh, and spend time at home and then go back to work in the morning.

• 56:11Jocko Willink?

  He gets up there where he's going to become an advisor and the battalion commander is having a weekly meeting and I'm going to go to the book for when he shows up. Uh, this weekly meeting's happening. As business wrapped up, the six foot three strapping American strode through the door. His look intense, his movement deliberate. He wore a brand new camouflage patterned airborne uniform and the red Vietnamese beret. He scanned the room and spotted the ranking officer, Colonel Bao. He walked over to him. The two spoke. Bao looked over before turning to the group. This is our new senior advisor, Major John Duffy. He is an American special forces officer. All eyes were on John. After a somewhat awkward pause, Bao commented, or Bao continued,

• 56:56Jocko Willink?

  "Why don't you tell us about yourself, Major Duffy?" John briefly recounted his previous tours in Vietnam, highlighting his combat experience. On concluding, he said, "I'm very glad to be here." His sincerity impressed everyone. They all greeted him individually and in small groups. May just stared for a time. He was taken with the fact that John was a special, that John was special forces. He knew their work along the border and had heard stories of their covert operations. He'd seen the John Wayne movie at the Saigon Theater. The soundtrack tune Barry Sadler's Ballad of the Green Berets played in his head. Finally, he stepped forward. In his very best English, he said, "Hello, I'm Major May, the XO." John looked at him, smiled and said in his best

• 57:40Jocko Willink?

  Vietnamese, "I'm Major John Duffy."

• 57:44Jocko Willink?

  I look forward to working with you. May smiled broadly. He wanted to learn all he could from this American. As senior advisor, protocol dictated that John would work principally with the commander, Lieutenant Colonel Bao. Normally, his contact with the executive officer, May, would be minimal. The XO was to pair with an assistant advisor. But from the outset, this was no normal relationship. There was no assistant advisor. John was it. Personnel shortages dictated filling the three-man team with only one person. From the outset, the strapping American intrigued May, and John Duffy saw something in May that immediately impressed him. Thereafter, May took every opportunity to talk to John during breaks in training and

• 58:29Jocko Willink?

  after unit meetings. May drew from John's Green Beret experience while John learned all he could about Arvin procedures and, most importantly, getting a better understanding of Vietnamese culture. Pretty cool introduction, those guys. They kinda hit it off out of the gate.

• 58:49Speaker 01

  Yep, right, immediately.

• 58:50Jocko Willink?

  Uh, not long after that, they start operating. They start doing missions. Um, going to the book here. "At dawn on October 5th, 1971, the North Vietnamese attacked in earnest. A force of over a thousand soldiers hit the battalion hard. Enemy mortars and rockets pounded them. John woke with a start. Officers and sergeants shouted command, bringing a disciplined response to the madness around them. John made his way to Bao. Hai was already there." Who's Hai, the operations officer?

• 59:20Speaker 01

  Hai is the operations officer, the battalion S3.

• 59:22Jocko Willink?

  So Bao is the commander, Hai is the operations officer. May ran up in an instant. Bao calmly passed orders through the radio operator. Seeing his team assembled, he said, "Ground attack come for sure. Hai, get us VNAF." Vietnamese Air Force.

• 59:38Speaker 01

  VNAF, yeah, A1 Sky Raiders.

• 59:40Jocko Willink?

  "Put artillery all around perimeter. May, go to companies, coordinate counter-attack. Duffy, how about airstrikes? Quick and real close." Bao went on in Vietnamese for a moment, providing more detail to his operations officer and XO.

• 59:55Jocko Willink?

  The sound of bugles and whistles and screams filled the air. Small arms fire intensified. The ground attack had begun. "Go!" Baow commanded. They each set about their tasks. John moved a short distance away to a protected spot and got on his radio, attempting to contact American Forward Air Controller, who was airborne in a small, propeller-driven spotter plane. "Any fac, any fac? This is Dusty Cyanide, advisor with Vietnamese Airborne Battalion. Under attack, need air badly. Any fac, any fac? Station calling for fac. This is Chico 12. Roger 12, this is Dusty Cyanide. Been receiving heavy incoming ground attack underway. Multiple enemy battalions, holding as best we can, but need air.

• 1:00:38Jocko Willink?

  Understood Dusty, we'll have fighters for you shortly. What are the friendly locations and where are the enemy targets?" John passed the details for the strike to the Forward Air Controller. Baow approached. As they discussed options for the battle, a rocket blast hit them with the full fury of a shrapnel. Fragments peppered the left side of John's face and tore into Baow's right eye. It looked bad, blackened and bloody. They wiped their wounds and continued the fight. Baow headed toward the sound of the most intense fighting. Duffy looked around and saw several critically wounded nearby. Dismissing his own injuries, he left his protected position, exposing himself to enemy fire, so he could render first aid. He saw the battalion surgeon, Dr. Liu. Is that right, Liu?

• 1:01:23Jocko Willink?

  Dr. Liu. Dr. Liu, doing the same. His uniform turned torn and dirty. His body bloodied from his own wounds. Once the jet fighters arrived, John moved about wherever necessary to best direct airstrikes, remaining calm and focused, oblivious to the bullets flying around him. That day, John Duffy put in more than forty flights of fighter aircraft. Those airstrikes on top of the courageous fighting of the paratroopers saved the battalion from being overrun. May led a successful counterattack with 114 Company in the lead.

• 1:01:55Jocko Willink?

  In the midst of the fray Duffy found time to supervise cutting a landing zone so that VN AF medevac helicopters could get in to pick up the wounded. The NVA killed 10 11th Battalion paratroopers and wounded 74. When it was all over Duffy, Bao, May and Hai stood facing each other, their uniforms soiled with dirt and blood, their faces smudged with filth, their eyes red from exhaustion. Bao studied his team, smiled and nodded in appreciation. May looked at the intensity on John Duffy's face. John returned his glance, softened his expression and gave his friend a knowing wink.

• 1:02:35Jocko Willink?

  These guys are in it.

• 1:02:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was the end of one hellacious battle for those guys and you know Bao's eye injury, he lost his eye in that, in that battle. Would not be medevac, continued to fight with those guys. Yeah, it was quite something.

• 1:02:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and look, I apologize, I kind of jumped towards the end of that battle. There's a whole scene running up to that, so.

• 1:03:04Speaker 01

  We can't read the whole book.

• 1:03:06Jocko Willink?

  Exactly, when you want the rest of those details, get the book. They, you know, you, you go over more operations, you detail them, the bonds between these guys strengthen, they, they really become a real true comrades. And then I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. The 11th Airborne Battalion headed to Kontum on March 31st, 1972. Conditions there grew more intense each day. For months, intelligence reports had warned of North Vietnamese preparations for a major attack. Two Cobra gunships from the US Army's 361st Aerial Weapons Company spotted enemy tanks in late January.

• 1:03:49Jocko Willink?

  Subsequent sightings by other American helicopters and the Vietnamese air force followed. Arvin ground patrols encountered even larger NVA units as the weeks progressed. Prisoners and documents seized in February confirmed the presence of 10 to 20,000 NVA soldiers along with tanks, artillery and large numbers of anti-aircraft weapons, all poised in the tri-border area of western Kontum province.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  Something bad is about to happen, yeah. You know, it's interesting. This is going to turn into, or turn out to be, the 1972 Easter Offensive. This is March 31st of 1972. And nobody had a clue. I mean, we knew that the enemy was up to something, and in our support of the SOG guys out there, they had seen stuff going on. But it is all about to come to a crescendo here in the Central Highlands. As well as, well, the Easter Offensive began, and I think we'll get to that, with an invasion across the demilitarized zone in the north into Ikor, the northern area of South Vietnam,

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  out of Cambodia towards Saigon, trying to thrust to Saigon, and then out of Laos and Cambodia into Kontum Province, into the Central Highlands. And we're going to soon find ourselves right in the middle of the largest enemy offensive of the war while Americans were still there. Now, most, well, most people don't know anything about the Vietnam War anyway, but most who know something about the Vietnam War will tell you that the largest offensive was Tet of 68. That certainly gets the most notoriety. In the spring of 1972, most American ground forces were gone. We were withdrawing from the war. So the Easter Offensive doesn't get quite the notoriety. But it was a significantly larger enemy operation than the Tet Offensive of 68.

• 1:05:48Speaker 01

  And this marked a watershed change. The war was no longer a guerrilla war with the Easter Offensive of 72. It was a conventional war. North Vietnam sent every division they had, save one that they kept in the north. Every other division came south. And it was regular infantry, armor, tanks, air defense, all over the place. And it was something.

• 1:06:14Jocko Willink?

  What did this seem like from your perspective at the time on the ground? You're, well, how old are you at this point? Twenty-five, something like this?

• 1:06:22Speaker 01

  Twenty, yeah, by the Easter Offensive, I was twenty-six. I went to Vietnam on my second tour at twenty-five, had a birthday in late December. So I was a young twenty-six-year-old Army captain.

• 1:06:34Jocko Willink?

  So obviously, now, you know, you look back and you see this big strategic picture. What did it look like for you on the ground when you're twenty-six years old and you're a friggin helicopter gunslinger?

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, we were just flying missions, you know, and the missions up until then were supporting the MACV SOG operations and those were just full of excitement, too, because with the enemy buildup that we were just beginning to have an appreciation for, those teams most often, I don't want to overstate it, but I think I can say most often, after we'd put them in, their extractions were a TAC-E, tactical emergency, because they had made contact with the enemy and the enemy had discovered them and was in hot pursuit, and they were very exciting extractions with us firing Cobra weapons very, very close for their extraction and even their missions inside of South Vietnam now, which, as I said earlier, was primarily what they were doing.

• 1:07:31Speaker 01

  Still, the enemy was in growing strength, so every one of their missions was pretty dicey. Yeah, so what was, I don't know, what is it for a twenty-six-year-old, I mean, you've been there, too, as a young, young guy off in combat.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're getting shot at, aircraft are taking hits, it's exciting for the guys on the ground, trying to get them out of there.

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  There's some, there's some fear on the missions. I mean, you'd be crazy if you're not afraid when you're in the middle of combat, but you're doing what you're trained to do, so you focus on that and you get through it. And for aviators, luckily, at the end of the day, we get to fly back to the airbase and get out of our helicopter and go to our little officers' club and start throwing down, throwing down some drinks to get ready to do the same thing the next day. We didn't really appreciate what this buildup signified. We were seeing more action, we're seeing more enemy activity and so we shifted from support for the MACV SOG guys out of FOB2 to just kind of a general fire brigade in the central highlands. And so it was turning into every day we'd launch in the morning, really not knowing

• 1:08:37Speaker 01

  exactly what was happening, but we'd get calls for support and we'd go provide gun support, rearm, refuel, go back out and spend the days doing that. I guess there was some level of worry even for a 26-year-old that started to mount because then we started having aircraft shot down, we had an OH-58 shot down and the pilot was missing in action, assumed captured, and so there was all that to be concerned about. But that comes back to the attitude that young people have. I realized that things were happening, that things were building up, that people were getting hurt and aircraft were getting going down, but I never for a minute thought that

• 1:09:20Speaker 01

  any of that would happen to me because there's something in our mind, in our psyche, particularly for combat guys, that hey, you know, bad stuff happens but it's happening to someone else. It's not going to happen to me. And that's how you strap into the helicopter every day and go back out and do the same thing again.

• 1:09:38Jocko Willink?

  Now, you got shot down in your first deployment.

• 1:09:41Speaker 01

  I did.

• 1:09:42Jocko Willink?

  To Vietnam.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  I did.

• 1:09:44Jocko Willink?

  And you survived, obviously, and you evaded the enemy and you got picked up. Do you think that bolstered your confidence?

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. I don't want to talk too much about my own psychology because I've had, you know, after I got back from prison, we had to have psychological evaluations and stuff and the psychiatrist saying, "Well, you know, what are some of the things you enjoy?" Well, you know, I was a forest firefighter and I enjoyed that and I did a little college, rode some rodeo and I liked to ride motorcycles and the guy, "Oh, okay, would you have a death?" "No, I don't have a death wish." So, yeah, I don't know. There's something about psychological makeup of some people that they do okay in that type of situation. And, you know, that would come all the way to how I've adjusted since I got back from

• 1:10:31Speaker 01

  Vietnam and I go into a lot of that in my first book of the trials and tribulations that I faced and what today would be called PTSD. But, you know, I got through all of that and I tell some of the ways that I did that and I think I'm... Semi funny today. So, you know, whatever, whatever mental mindset got me through those combat operations on that second tour, also got me through first tour. I was shot down over the middle of Laos. I had injuries to my neck. I rode an ejection seat out, a very short parachute ride down. We were crashing through the trees by the time I punched out. So I got a partial chute deployment and I, and I hit the ground. But as soon, and I got picked up and taken to hospital in Thailand and was in the hospital for a while and then back to the unit.

• 1:11:15Speaker 01

  And as soon as I got back to the unit, I was up reporting to the flight service and say, "Hey, I gotta get back on flight status. I gotta go fly." So, yeah, who knows what's there, but I, I was enthusiastic to fly my missions on the first tour and after a break back to the States and back to Vietnam, I had to fight because the US was withdrawing so rapidly. I had to fight at every level to get assigned to a unit still in combat. Um, yeah, so maybe there's a little duffy inside of me. I don't know. I wanted to get back in the fight.

• 1:11:48Jocko Willink?

  Now, as you're seeing this massive buildup, I mean, you're seeing tanks on the ground.

• 1:11:52Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:11:53Jocko Willink?

  This has gotta change your viewpoint a little bit. It seems like everyone would say, "Oh, something massive is coming."

• 1:11:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, uh, the massive wasn't there for some reason. Something's coming. Uh, I think somewhere in the back of my mind was, "Well, whatever it is, we'll handle it." You know, if the enemy comes out of the woods, we got B-52s and all these airstrikes and we'll just annihilate them in place, similar to what was done up at Khe Sanh in 1968 when they put Khe Sanh under siege. We just bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb and really caused the enemy a lot of damage. So I think that thought was there. Um, yeah, there must've been some concern because some of the attacks, the enemy attacked Route 19, which was between our base at Plac Khu and the coast, and they closed Route 19. We got involved in a bunch of operations down there. So we were cut off in the Highlands.

• 1:12:40Speaker 01

  There was no road transport coming to our base at Camp Holloway near Plac Khu. All our supplies had to come in in C-130s on the runway. Uh, engineer crews came in there to, to improve the PSP runway and make it better. Uh, there was some talk that that was done because if the situation got bad enough, they'd have to get in and extract us and get us out of there.

• 1:13:03Speaker 01

  I don't know, somehow that just, we still had our routine of daily go fly combat missions and come home at night and get drunk and get up the next morning and go do it all again.

• 1:13:11Jocko Willink?

  How long would you fly for in the day?

• 1:13:13Speaker 01

  Oh, gosh, um, I don't know, four, five, six hours, but the day was longer because we would take off in the morning and if we didn't have a mission right away, we'd go stand by somewhere at dock toe or at the FOB pad, the SOG pad. So there was a lot of downtime waiting.

• 1:13:39Jocko Willink?

  Just waiting? Would you wait in your bird?

• 1:13:41Speaker 01

  Well, we'd wait next to, not sitting in the bird, but next to the bird. Sometimes we'd play a little cards, but we'd be right there so we could launch within, within two minutes. That was our routine when we put the SOG teams in too. We'd put the team in, we'd go back to usually dock toe and we'd just sit there and wait because if the team got in trouble, we had to be immediately available for them. So yeah, on any given day, there was some downtime just sitting, waiting for launch. Once the activity started picking up in the Easter offensive though, it was a lot of flying, refueling, flying, refueling. That if you recall in my first book, by the time we got there, now this is going to be three weeks after the Charlie battle, boy, it was all day. I mean, I did

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  three rotations into combat before noon. It was on my third rotation into combat that I got shot down and that was before, before we got to noon.

• 1:14:31Jocko Willink?

  Man, yeah, that's, that's wild how it, how it all looks in, in retrospect, right? What this looks like now. As you're looking back, you think, man, they had all these tanks. They're, they're moving in. There's thousands and thousands of troops massing.

• 1:14:49Speaker 01

  It looks crazy now. I mean, I think about it, here I am, a 76 year old man and wow, who would do, that's nuts.

• 1:14:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you also wonder like, what, what, are you hearing anything from like the strategic leadership, you know, like, hey, this is going to be a big event. And here's, was there any kind of adjustment to the grand strategy or anything?

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  Well, there, there was, as I found out doing, but no, at the time on the ground, no, we didn't know anything about strategic leadership. We're just a bunch of young guys flying Cobras going where we were needed and shooting, shooting up a storm.

• 1:15:25Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so as this is going on, I'm gonna fast forward in the book a little bit to a brigade briefing situation. It says, "The brigade staff briefed the situation. It was not good. Each delivered remarks in English, and this is the Vietnamese airborne brigade. Each delivered remarks in English followed by detailed explanation in Vietnamese to ensure full understanding by all. The presentations emphasized that enemy numbers increased daily, flowing in from sanctuaries across the border in Laos and Cambodia. The tempo of NVA operations inside South Vietnam had picked up. They shelled military outposts and even major installations. That included the vital airfield in Kontum City. The North Vietnamese brought large numbers of anti-aircraft machine guns with them

• 1:16:10Jocko Willink?

  and shot at every aircraft in range. They appeared to be on the cusp of something big. Colonel Leek..." Leek? Uh... Lick? Colonel Lick. Colonel Lick stood up to give his personal appraisal in English. "The enemy will come from Laos on Route 512 and move east to Ton Kha. They come from Cambodia on New Road. They build along Old French Route. That set up attack on Kontum City both from west and north. Once take Kontum, they move to Plek Khu, then turn east and attack through An Khu to coast. They cut our country in half, just like they do to beat French in 1954."

• 1:16:56Jocko Willink?

  John looked questioningly at May. "I'll tell you more about that later," May whispered.

• 1:17:03Jocko Willink?

  He looked squarely up, he looked squarely at those who stood before him, his face firm. "Situation tense. Big US cargo helicopter, CH-47 Chinook, shoot down yesterday at Delta. Helicopter crash. Crew survive and get inside firebase. Another helicopter come for pickup crew. Cannot. Too many VC. No aircraft can get close to Delta. Too many machine gun." Finally, he gave their orders. You, the 11th Airborne Battalion, go on to Firebase Charlie just north of Delta tomorrow. Bow, you are strongest battalion. I know you only 56% strength. You should be 836 paratroopers, officer, and enlisted. You have only 471.

• 1:17:48Jocko Willink?

  Still, you my strongest. I put you in most critical place. Your mission, occupy positions on old Firebase and defend it at all costs. Peter comma turned to John, and Peter comma is the senior, overall senior advisor at the brigade level.

• 1:18:05Speaker 01

  He is.

• 1:18:07Jocko Willink?

  He turns to John Duffy and says, "That string of hilltop firebases, it's known as Rocket Ridge. It is the key to the defense of Kontum and therefore, all of Central Vietnam."

• 1:18:20Jocko Willink?

  After the briefing, comma and Duffy talked outside. John asked, "Why do they call it Rocket Ridge?" Peter explained, "The Americans named it Rocket Ridge years ago. The enemy used to fire 122mm rockets from its heights down onto the highway and villages below. The US Army built a series of firebases to control the ridge line, denying it to the NVA. Now the communists want it back. They need it for their invasions plan, their invasion plans." He went on, "It's April Fool's Day, but this is no joke. Rocket Ridge is vulnerable. Hell, the whole region is vulnerable. We're facing the better part of two NVA divisions plus reinforcements. Friendly forces are grossly outnumbered. 17 kilometers north, the South Vietnamese 22nd Division is not well regarded.

• 1:19:03Jocko Willink?

  Their new commander, Colonel Dat, doesn't have a good reputation. He's not an effective leader. 17 kilometers southwest, who knows how long the Arvin Rangers can hold out against a major attack. In between is over 20 kilometers of Rocket Ridge. And I know the bad guys want it. Arvin artillery along that ridge line impedes their maneuver against Ton Kan and will disrupt any movement south along Highway 14 toward Kontum. The firebases also block his direct path eastward should he choose to advance over those hills. The direction of such attack would likely go right over top of Charlie." Understood Duffy said comma continued.

• 1:19:45Jocko Willink?

  NVA divisions pushed across the DMZ two days ago. Looks like they're planning something just as big here. Intel warns that a thrust out of Cambodia towards Saigon is possible. We're looking at an all out invasion of the south by North Vietnam. And we've got no American troops in the Highlands. We've pulled most of our units out of Vietnam. Here in two corps, there are no American ground forces left at all. They're all gone. We've got only a few US Army helicopter companies and some US Air Force tac air available. And the B-52s out of Guam or Thailand when we get them. That's it. Winning the fight on the ground is now up to the Arvin.

• 1:20:30Jocko Willink?

  Peter's brow lowered. This brigade was a strategic reserve for the nation. It's now been committed. The 11th Airborne Battalion was our reserve within the brigade. Now you're being committed. That leaves nothing. There's nobody else, no one to come in behind you, no reinforcements. You're it. You've got to hold at Charlie and stop the NVA from crossing Rocket Ridge. They cannot take that high ground and gain access along Highway 14 straight into Kontum.

• 1:21:06Speaker 01

  Quite a responsibility.

• 1:21:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and when you've got a map in here that kind of lays it out.

• 1:21:16Jocko Willink?

  It's it's it's sort of like a classic sort of military operation. Where you can see exactly this beautiful high ground, the the the low ground that it gives access to. The way it sets up sort of being able to cut across Vietnam and split the country in two. Control supplies and all this. It's like a classic military. Critical decisive engagement or decisive ground.

• 1:21:45Jocko Willink?

  Peter Comma studied John and noted, "You're the lone advisor with this battalion. That's usually a team of three, two officers and an NCO. You'll need a backup in case you get wounded. Only an American can call in US airstrikes and helicopters. That includes medevac. I've got a special forces lieutenant I'll give you. He's away on mid-tour leave right now, but he'll be back in a few days. He can join you then." John thought a moment. "No, thanks. I've got it. I don't plan on getting wounded. And I've been working alone with these guys for a while now. Not a problem. Okay, but if you change your mind, let me know." Comma's assessment of Duffy, he thought he was nuts, but he took him to be confident and brave very much up to the task at hand. Peter would do all he could to get him the support he knew he'd need to defend Charlie.

• 1:22:30Jocko Willink?

  As an afterthought, Comma added, "Tomorrow's Easter Sunday. God be with you." Duffy smiled. "Thanks. Happy Easter." Did you talk to Peter Comma?

• 1:22:42Speaker 01

  I did, at length. And Peter regrettably passed away this past year. So it's a shame. And Peter's the one that submitted Duffy for the Medal of Honor because of this action. That Medal of Honor got downgraded to a Distinguished Service Cross at the time. With new evidence, and some of that was the voice recording that I talked about, Peter resubmitted the award in 2012 and pushed. He got sent to the No Way Involved, other senators, congressmen, but that whole bureaucracy took years to finally get accomplished. And it's just, it's too bad that Peter didn't live to see all this come to fruition or live long enough to see the book in its final form.

• 1:23:28Jocko Willink?

  I had to read this section here because we do have a lot of military folks that listen to this, and this is a pretty cool gear list. Each paratrooper carried, this is getting ready for this operation to go secure this hill. Each paratrooper carried an M16 rifle, seven magazines of ammunition, hand grenades, a small entrenching tool, a canteen, and combat rations, both Vietnamese and American C rations. The officers also carried 45 caliber pistols. Each company took two M60 machine guns, nine M70s. Grenade launchers and a number of law or anti light anti-tank weapons, claymore mines and 60 millimeter mortars. The headquarters company weapons platoon brought the heavier 81 millimeter mortars and 90 millimeter recoilless rifles, piles of ammo, water

• 1:24:07Jocko Willink?

  cans, medical supplies, along with food provisions, sat ready to be hauled to Charlie on later lifts after the paratroopers were in place. Duffy brought what many thought was overkill, but he knew it was not. He had a carbine and the standard army backpack radio known affectionately as the PRIC 25, the PRC 25 FM radio. His assigned radio telephone operator, RTO, carried that. In Duffy's rucksack, he had a long folding whip antenna for the radio, three extra batteries, and a commercial long-range AM/FM radio to monitor Armed Forces Vietnam Network news broadcasts. He filled the remainder of the space in the pack with

• 1:24:48Jocko Willink?

  Lurp rations, a few cans of sea ration fruit, extra socks, a poncho liner for fragmentary grenades, and four smoke grenades. He stuffed his uniform pockets as well. He filled the four large shirt pockets and cargo pant pockets with two signal panels, compass, signal mirror, strobe light, small flashlight, knife, P38 can opener, map, notebooks wrapped in plastic, pens for writing, plus markers for his map. On his web belt and harness, he'd fastened 28 20-round ammo magazines, four smoke grenades, two fragmentary grenades, flares, snap links, a sharp killing knife, two water canteens, and a medical kit that included compressed bandages, Band-Aids, tourniquets, morphine, and a self-injection blood volume

• 1:25:31Jocko Willink?

  expander. He also clipped on two emergency aircrew survival radios.

• 1:25:38Jocko Willink?

  Pretty good loadout.

• 1:25:39Speaker 01

  It is, and very few other advisors ever carried those aircrew survival radios. John was very insightful, because in the end... One of those survival radios is what's going to save his life and the life of those who survived that battle.

• 1:25:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, having a backup radio and then having another backup radio to that backup radio. The radio that came after the 110 was the 112. So when I got in, in the SEAL teams, we would get issued the 112, which is the same concept.

• 1:26:07Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:08Jocko Willink?

  But I had to use that 112 a couple of times, just in admin situations, but you know, your main primary radio floods out.

• 1:26:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:26:15Jocko Willink?

  And one thing that was nice about those PRC 112s, they were relatively waterproof compared to every other radio we had. So sometimes they would come in handy and apparently Duffy knew that.

• 1:26:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, well, it certainly, it certainly did. Yeah, and his backpack radio was a Prick 25. I think earlier I might've said Prick 77, which was a later radio.

• 1:26:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, Prick 25 for him.

• 1:26:36Jocko Willink?

  Again, you've got a map in, in the book here, as these guys, they get inserted into this ridgeline. It's a ridgeline, that's what it is.

• 1:26:46Jocko Willink?

  And this one battalion gets assigned this one section of the ridgeline. This section of the ridgeline is called Charlie. We'll refer to some of the stuff and again, get the book so you can, you can see this stuff visually, but Charlie 1 is a section of this ridgeline that's sort of a saddle. And then there's Charlie 2, which is a knoll to the south. And Charlie 3 is a little knoll to the north.

• 1:27:13Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:27:14Jocko Willink?

  And there's four companies that make up the battalion. And each one of these companies, at this juncture, has about 100 guys, maybe just over 100 guys each.

• 1:27:24Jocko Willink?

  The companies are 111, 112, 113, 114.

• 1:27:30Speaker 01

  Right. And Headquarters Company in addition to that.

• 1:27:33Jocko Willink?

  And the Headquarters Company is 110.

• 1:27:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:27:38Jocko Willink?

  There, and so they spread out kind of on this ridgeline with 113 on the, on the north knoll. 111's in the saddle, 112's on the south knoll, and then 114 has the far kind of south flank, and, and I guess the 110 is sort of on top of Charlie 2.

• 1:27:58Speaker 01

  Right, yeah, Charlie 2's got the headquarters 110, and then it's got those two other companies, one defending principally the southwest and the other, or southeast and the other, no, southwest and the other, the north, northeast.

• 1:28:11Jocko Willink?

  And again, just to simplify this, if you're only listening, it's a ridge line.

• 1:28:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:28:16Jocko Willink?

  And there's several knolls and some saddles on the ridge line, and these guys get inserted to lock down this whole thing.

• 1:28:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I think it's important to mention that ridge line is rising to the north, and, and some of it, there's, there's high terrain overlooking the, the knolls that you just discussed, uh, from the northwest. Uh, so Bow is going to become concerned that he doesn't like this terrain. Uh, because yes, he's on a ridge, but the ridge is getting higher to the north. There is overlooking higher terrain to the northwest uh, that he's below, and then, and you may get to it, there's a very threatening finger of knolls pointing at his position from the south.

• 1:28:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it is a tenuous position, to say the least. Um.

• 1:29:01Jocko Willink?

  These guys get in position, it relatively smooth, but you, you say here, follow-on helicopter list brought shovels, sandbags, additional ammunition, water, food, as well as medical supplies, headquarters equipment, and a few personal items. I had to, I had to bring this up. Duffy quickly retrieved his folding aluminum lawn chair from the landing zone. It was a small extravagance in which he took pride in having a lawn. Paratroopers duly harassed him as he carried it up back up the hill. And then there was the air mattress he had stuffed into his rucksack. It might turn into a hell of a fight, but John Duffy intended to make it as comfortable of a fight as possible.

• 1:29:37Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 1:29:38Jocko Willink?

  I can't imagine, I can't imagine actually, that aluminum chair. I remember guys occasionally bring like, not, not in a combat, but going to a range or something.

• 1:29:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:29:46Jocko Willink?

  You know, you'd be out on a range all day, sighting and weapons or whatever, and someone would show up, and these days, you know, the aluminum chairs are pretty nice. I remember one guy had one that was like an aluminum recliner, and it had a, a self-contained umbrella on it. So we're all out in the, in getting beat down in the sun.

• 1:30:02Speaker 01

  This is a SEAL?

• 1:30:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. And he's of course, like, got his feet up with a, with a freaking, hell, uh, uh. Umbrella, a sun umbrella over him. And he kinda won. We're all jealous, you know? Of course, we're gonna make fun of him and, you know, tell him he's a wimp, but we were kinda jealous at the same time. So Duffy Duffy's got his aluminum chair.

• 1:30:21Speaker 01

  John was comfortable only for a short time, which I'm sure we'll get to.

• 1:30:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:29Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, and again, you put an incredible amount of research and detail of this. So get the book to understand the full picture. I'm gonna fast forward a little bit to here we go. The radios came alive at dawn. The tense chatter woke May. He grabbed his gear and headed to the command post bunker. He found Bao already there intently listening to radios with high. Duffy soon bent his tall frame through the sandbagged entrance and joined them. Firebase Firebase Delta, only two miles to the south of Charlie, was under attack. It was Monday, April 3rd, the day after Easter.

• 1:31:05Jocko Willink?

  Bao turned to May. Form an assault force of 112 and 114 companies leave the headquarters. 110 Company here to defend Charlie 2. Lead Task Force May along that finger-like ridge to the southeast. If the enemy is there, push him off and kill him. The ridge has three knolls, like knuckles of a finger. Advance all the way to the third knuckle and secure it. We need to control that high ground. It should also take some pressure off Second Battalion. May acknowledged with his usual positive tone, "Yes, sir." He added, "Request, can I take Major Duffy with me?" "No, we've only got one advisor. I have to have him with me. You can call in VNA AF airstrikes and artillery is immediately available. Duffy can coordinate US air power from here."

• 1:31:53Jocko Willink?

  So it's on. And May gets, again, these are like classic infantry assault maneuvers that are happening.

• 1:32:02Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, May ordered a coordinated attack by his two companies. They moved up the hill, shooting and maneuvering to gain an advantage against their foe. They got close enough to see hastily constructed enemy fortifications with overhead cover. May called in a strike of VNAF A1 Sky Raiders. The airplanes carried an awesome load of ordnance, including rockets, bombs, napalm, and machine guns. Before the dust settled, May ordered 114 Company to renew the attack. Cho led with a reinforced platoon. They overran the bunkers with the loss of one paratrooper killed and another wounded. Four North Vietnamese soldiers lay dead. The mangled remains of a 51 caliber machine gun sat nearby.

• 1:32:47Jocko Willink?

  May consolidated his task force around the site and prepared to continue the attack to the top of the hill. The NVA didn't give him time. They shot 75mm recoilless rifle rounds. They swept down from the heights, firing and screaming. More paratroopers fell, but they held their ground. May organized a counterattack of his own and soon pushed the enemy back up the hill, only to run out of steam as the force encountered stiff resistance. The morning turned to afternoon as the battle waxed and waned. So this, this had to be at least a little bit different that these, the, the NVA is, they're ready to fight, they're ready to just engage, when for most of the war, it was when they get contacted, they'll do some damage and run away.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, as I said, the war had changed its complexion. This was a conventional NVA assault. And they're going to find out they're up against multiple NVA battalions. The elements of the 64th NVA Regiment is what they're facing. And then they could end up before it's over and done, facing a battalion from another regiment. So they're outnumbered somewhere in the neighborhood of eight or 10 to one on that hill, Tom.

• 1:33:58Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. Just before sunset, the enemy threw a fresh infantry company into the fight. They slammed down the western flank of the paratroopers, causing them not, causing them to bend but not break. Task Force May held, but would advance no further that day. The progress they'd made had caused a dozen casualties, killed and wounded. Colonel Bao faced a decision. Leave the task force in place with hopes of at least securing the first knoll the next day, or bring them back to Charlie II. The shorthanded battalion spread its limited manpower thinly across Firebase Charlie. Bao had three separate locations to defend along the ridge, stretching over half a mile to

• 1:34:39Jocko Willink?

  end to end. He had further deployed a huge chunk of his force, almost a mile to the southeast, attempting to gain yet more real estate in an increasingly costly fight. The sun set, and all he had left to defend Charlie II was 110 Company, consisting of the Headquarters personnel and Weapons Platoon. Bao issued his order after dark. Task Force May, disengage, recover your dead and wounded, and return to Charlie II. With as much stealth as possible, May brought his force off the knoll and across the wide saddle. He led his exhausted men back onto Charlie II a little after 9:00 PM. 112 and 114 Companies returned to their previous positions on the perimeter.

• 1:35:29Jocko Willink?

  That night, May scratched out a letter to his wife, Sen, by the light of a small flickering candle. He hoped he'd get it out on one of the resupply helicopters. It read, "This may be my last letter for a while. The situation is approaching critical. The Colonel is doing all that is possible. The NVA will surely push forward, and we will do battle. I may soon fight in a ferocious fight. The commanders and paratroopers are ready. Perhaps, all will not return from this fight. That is the fate of soldiers, serving their country." My thoughts will always be with you.

• 1:36:12Jocko Willink?

  My heart will always belong to you. My strength is a tribute to your love. Our children are a testament to our love. Do not worry when you hear reports of the battle. I am ready and I know how to survive in combat. I will come back home to you, my precious love. I will fight the dragons and return to your arms.

• 1:36:41Speaker 01

  And I included his letter in there and that took some discussion with him and his wife to see if we wanted to put that in there. But in the end, we decided to. And it just really, I wanted this story to be as much a human interest story as just a combat account. And that really shows the humanity of May and his family.

• 1:37:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, that's, did, did, did they have like a copy of the letter?

• 1:37:06Speaker 01

  Uh, it was a recollection, I think. I don't know if they have the actual copy, but I was able to get, get the words.

• 1:37:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And again, I mean, I fast forwarded, you, you go through the courtship and the children, like all that stuff. And it's, it is very, obviously a very human story. And here's this guy, what's interesting about that, as I was reading that. You know, I've read plenty of sort of, uh, I guess they call them death letters, you know? In case I don't make it type, type letters. And, and here's May who's writing, uh, hey, look, it's coming, but I'm going to be okay. I know how to survive and I'm ready. That's a, a very positive attitude for him to have going into this situation for sure.

• 1:37:51Speaker 01

  And she gets that letter, uh, and she gets it right, or right after she got it, the, the news, the available public information of what's going on in the Highlands gets very dire and disturbing.

• 1:38:05Jocko Willink?

  All right. I'm going to fast forward a little bit to where. The team has now been on the ground for three days. It's been three days since their arrival. So here we go. Thursday, April 6th, arrived with Charlie. Once again shrouded in fog. Eeriness settled over the hilltop. All wondered what the enemy was up to behind the mist. They could only imagine. An Nam, which is, which means big brother, which is what they called Lieutenant Colonel Bao, one of the nicknames they gave him.

• 1:38:33Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:38:34Jocko Willink?

  Assembled his officers and staff. Save Big Hung because of 113's distance from the rest of the battalion. He summarized their situation and issued an order that he'd relay to Hung by radio. The NVA have us surrounded. They hold the mountain tops. They've positioned their guns to shoot down the helicopters. It is here we must do battle. It is here we must bleed them. Do not let them take our positions. This battle is to the end. Tell the paratroopers to fight bravely. Tell them to aim all their bullets well, for we may lose the ability to resupply. Dig in deep and prepare for combat. Any trooper not ready to fight, I want him off the mountain.

• 1:39:19Jocko Willink?

  I'll not have him die with us. I'll not have him share in our glory.

• 1:39:26Jocko Willink?

  So that's a dire situation.

• 1:39:30Jocko Willink?

  These. These anti-aircraft guns, these 51 caliber.

• 1:39:35Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:39:36Jocko Willink?

  It seems like this is an extreme amount of enemy anti-aircraft weaponry that they have in this situation. Is that?

• 1:39:46Speaker 01

  It was more than we had seen inside of South Vietnam at any point up, up to that battle. Yeah, they had numerous 51 calibers. That's a deadly weapon against, against helicopters.

• 1:39:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that, that's the impression I got as I, as I read that the way this battle unfolds. And it seemed like most of the time there was enough. I don't know if it's called air superiority, but there was enough confidence in the helicopters. Look, sure, there were some landing zones that would be so bad. But it wouldn't last for very long or they could put down fire and eventually get in there.

• 1:40:20Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:40:20Jocko Willink?

  This one is, the, the, the NVA is definitely looking to deny access from the air.

• 1:40:27Speaker 01

  Yep, they were, they were.

• 1:40:32Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, the fog lifted shortly before noon. Duffy went back to the, to work running airstrikes. He teamed with May and Hai to integrate all available fire support onto the most lucrative targets. With the priority of air support going against NVA for off-offensives far to the north and south, little could be allocated to Charlie. So there's other battles that are taking place that are soaking up a lot of the air support.

• 1:41:00Speaker 01

  Yes, and the biggest one was that thrust across the demilitarized zone in the north. That was the, and, and when the south started losing Quang Chi Province, the enemy was just moving rapidly to the south. And then, once they came out of Cambodia towards Saigon, they got as far as Anloch before they were stopped. But yeah, there was a worry on all fronts. Uh, the loss of Quang Chi Province to the north and possibly Way City, which was the old imperial capital. And then that threat against Saigon to the, to the south. So the central highlands, though it was critically important for not getting Vietnam cut in half at the waist, uh, as, as the Vietnamese had done against the French. I mean, we hear about Dien Bien Phu being the decisive battle, uh, but really the, the

• 1:41:42Speaker 01

  thrust across the south and the destruction of French group mobile 100 contributed to the end of that war is, uh, against the French as, as much as any. So yeah, all those worries, but yeah, there's demands for air everywhere. And though the US is there to provide air support and in the north some naval gunfire, uh, it's, it's stretched thin.

• 1:42:03Jocko Willink?

  You say this, John developed a technique of constantly badgering forward air controllers to divert their airstrikes that were not avail, that were not able to hit their primary targets because of weather or situational changes. He got a number of much needed missions that way. So he would just stay on the radio. Hey, what do you got? You got any extra ammo? Is there anybody that can't drop? Is anybody that needs to get rid of some ammo?

• 1:42:23Speaker 01

  And again, that's John Duffy. If you know John, you can see him doing that.

• 1:42:27Jocko Willink?

  He's just like a Brooklyn guy out there trying to make it happen.

• 1:42:30Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:42:30Jocko Willink?

  Wheeling it.

• 1:42:30Speaker 01

  He won't let go.

• 1:42:33Jocko Willink?

  For the rest of the day Duffy worked with forward air controllers Covey 507, 531, and 546 putting in Air Force F4 Phantoms and Navy A7 Corsairs on the finger. May and High added Vienna AF A1 Skyraiders and A37 Dragonflies to the mix along with a number of artillery barrages. The effort produced good effects with the destruction of bunkers and mortars and two dozen secondary explosions. They inflicted pain on their enemy. Fast forward a little bit, the day's good weather ended. Clouds billowed around Charlie and the airstrikes ceased for the day. The paratroopers faced the evening with an ominous feeling that conditions were developing

• 1:43:16Jocko Willink?

  for a big fight on Charlie. Disturbing radio calls at 8 o'clock that night confirmed those suspicions. John received the message in English over his advisor channel at the same time the 2nd Brigade transmitted it on the Arvin Network in Vietnamese. Intelligence indicates the NVA plan to overrun Charlie. Repeat. Intelligence believes the NVA intend to overrun your positions. Bow grabbed the handset from High's radio operator. This is Gray Tiger. Request to maneuver on offensive operations to take the fight to the enemy. I don't want to sit in place on Charlie and wait to absorb the attack the enemy has designed. Airborne doesn't sit and wait, it attacks.

• 1:44:00Jocko Willink?

  I'll consolidate, leave one company on Charlie 2, and launch an attack with the rest of the battalion. The reply came back immediately from the Brigade Commander Colonel Lick himself. Negative. Defend in place. Block any potential crossing of the ridge. Fight to the death on Charlie. Those are your orders. Fight to the death. So Bow, being an airborne commander, wants to go on the attack.

• 1:44:34Speaker 01

  He does, yeah. Light, highly mobile forces just sitting there defending, waiting for the enemy to mass his force and descend upon you. But they get the message loud and clear. That was their mission to stay there to the bitter end and defend that hilltop.

• 1:44:54Speaker 01

  Which they do in fine form and the only reason there's gonna be any survivors at all is they are out of the ability to, to damage the enemy. So the few people left are withdrawn off, off the hill.

• 1:45:11Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. Sunday marked a week since the 11th airborne battalion's air assault onto Charlie. It also marked a new conviction among the paratroopers. The line had been drawn in the sand. They would fight until victory or until death. The weather cleared by noon, helicopters arrived with more ammunition, water and rations, including some live chickens for roasting. They had also brought mail to the delight of the beleaguered paratroopers. Peter Kama even put some candy bars on the aircraft for John. He shared them with the others.

• 1:45:42Jocko Willink?

  April 11th. Fast forward, April 11th, 1972. This day, hell unleashed its fury at a place called Charlie. At midnight, John Duffy's radio came to life. Dusty Cyanide, this is Covey 555. Following message relayed from Blue Chip through Carbon Outlaw. Arc Light inbound to target location per your request. Estimated drop in 30 minutes. John roused at bow and high in the operations bunker. May join them there. High radioed the companies. Commanders alerted their paratroopers. As the drop time approached, each crouched down in a foxhole trench or bunker, held his helmet on his head and opened his mouth

• 1:46:27Jocko Willink?

  hoping to equalize the pressure of the coming blast that he had been told would be very close. Terror rained from the sky. Hundreds of 500 and 750 pound bombs fell from the high-flying B-52s. The closest hit only 300 yards from 114 Company, blasting the nearest knoll of the finger ridge, exploding its shoulders and smashing a swath of obliteration along the ridge line to the southeast. The earth shook. The destruction was horrific and lethal. Debris rained down even on nearby friendlies. The NVA answered the blow with

• 1:47:08Jocko Willink?

  barrages of artillery, mortars and recoilless rifle fire while they licked their wounds and rethought their attack plans. Their shells blasted the hill, but they did little to paratroopers still lying low in their trenches after the B-52 strike. The shelling continued sporadically through the night. Even so, those not standing watch were able to fall back asleep for some moments of rest, fitful as it might have been.

• 1:47:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, those B-52 strikes, John wanted them badly. Of course, priority was going a lot of other areas. One thing that I do point out in the book, Peter Kama, before he became the brigade advisor, was working with the commander of all forces in Vietnam, the deputy commander at the time, General Wayan. So he had a connection to the top levels of the command in Vietnam and was able to leverage that on a couple of occasions to get some B-52 strikes diverted. But yeah, John wanted those B-52s badly and he got that first one that night, just after

• 1:48:18Speaker 01

  midnight.

• 1:48:19Jocko Willink?

  What's the closest you ever were when one of those arc light strikes went down?

• 1:48:23Speaker 01

  Oh, it was a good ways away.

• 1:48:24Jocko Willink?

  It sounds like they were just insane.

• 1:48:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, before the, John thinks that he was the first one, and I have not been able to confirm it, John thinks he was the first one to work B-52 strikes in that close of proximity to friendly forces. Before that, they were always tried to keep them 500 meters away. He brought that down to 300 meters. I think in one case, I don't remember if it was this one or the next one, but they said, hey, you gotta be at least 500 meters away. And John said, yeah, we are, but no one, he wasn't nearly that far away.

• 1:48:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it just turns, I think you said three football fields in length, just total destruction, just destroys everything in that area.

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  It is, a normal arc light would be three B-52s flying in formation and letting all their bombs go. That's quite, quite a massive path of destruction.

• 1:49:19Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. Reports come in of more NVA soldiers only a few hundred yards to the southwest. More helos came in to resupply the beleaguered 11th Battalion, both VN, AF, and American. The 51 caliber machine guns fired relentlessly. The few choppers that braved an approach took debilitating hits before turning away. None were able to get through the deadly wall of bullets. NVA machine guns blazed away at any helicopter that came in range. At least 10 51 caliber positions now ringed Charlie. That's a nightmare.

• 1:49:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:49:56Jocko Willink?

  Duffy turned to May. Those machine guns are out there to kill. They're doing their job. They're good. Yes, big problem for us. Problem for resupply and evacuate wounded. John nodded. I'm worried the fire is too intense. They can't get in. All we're going to do is get more helicopters shot down. I'm closing the LZ. Tell me if you or Colonel Bao have a problem with that. Duffy took the radio handset from his RTO. Cellar 5-1, this is dusty cyanide. I'm closing to the, I'm closing the LZ to Huey resupply and medevac helicopters. They will not survive the gunfire from the ridges, ridge lines above. I repeat, the LZ is closed. There's no reason attempting the impossible. I've got to get rid of some of those 51 cows before we get any more helos in here.

• 1:50:42Jocko Willink?

  He put in more sets of F4s on the surrounding machine gun positions and asked Covey to hit the suspected 130 millimeter gun positions with anything else he had available. John Duffy had two problems he must resolve if the 11th Airborne Battalion was to survive. Kill the anti-aircraft machine guns and eliminate the 130 millimeter guns. And I haven't really mentioned the 130 millimeter guns yet. They're, they're in the book. But there was some heavy artillery that the NVA had that was punishing the guys up on Charlie.

• 1:51:14Speaker 01

  It was just pounded and pounded and pounded that hilltop. And John had, did his best. I mean, that's a, a long range artillery weapon. And he tried to get airstrikes in on them. He will eventually get another B-52 strike out there on them. And never throughout the battle was able to completely eliminate those 130 millimeter guns.

• 1:51:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it sounds like he suspected they were dug in. Like maybe our tracks getting wheeled into caves and pushed back out to shoot.

• 1:51:37Speaker 01

  Exactly. They'd bring them out to fire and then put them in the protection of the cave.

• 1:51:43Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, April 12th, 1972, exploding artillery shells took the 11th Battalion, shook the 11th Battalion paratroopers awake. The 111 Company took the brunt, heavy artillery, mortar, rocket and recoilless rifle rained down on Hill 960. Charlie 1, 75 big 130 millimeter shells slammed onto the hilltop. Oh, so let me give you some perspective here. I was in a, in a combat outpost in Ramadi, and we got hit with three 120 millimeter mortars, and it was a shocking nightmare.

• 1:52:25Jocko Willink?

  And here they are taking 75 130s. That is just, I can't even, I can't imagine what that's like.

• 1:52:35Speaker 01

  On top of one company, and I don't know if we'll get to it, but it's either, I think it's later. Charlie 2 took 300 rounds in just a couple of hours one day.

• 1:52:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I remember seeing from that, from that mortar strike I was talking about, there's 120 millimeter.

• 1:52:57Jocko Willink?

  We found pieces of frag, the pieces of frag are, are, you know, when a lot of times when people think of fragmentation, they think of these little tiny things that are the size of a BB or the size of, you know, like a little quarter inch piece of frag.

• 1:53:11Speaker 01

  There's chunks.

• 1:53:13Jocko Willink?

  There was chunks, we found frag that was nine inches long and weighed like a pound and a half, just gnarly metal shards flying through the air. That's how you see, that's why you see guys sometimes, they lose their entire leg or they lose an arm if they get hit with a piece of that, just not some little, little tiny fragmentation. It is a massive chunk of steel flying through the air. So, and that's, I'm talking about two or three mortars hitting a combat outpost. You're talking about 75.

• 1:53:46Jocko Willink?

  Even bigger shells. It's hard to comprehend what that does to you. I mean, just the concussion alone from that.

• 1:53:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:53:55Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, I was sitting in a concrete building, by the way. You know, I'm not sitting in a foxhole with a poncho over my head.

• 1:54:02Speaker 01

  Right, that they dug. And those figures, luckily, John, as I mentioned earlier, he kept a log, a journal, every day. So I've got all the call signs of the facts, the type of aircraft, number of aircraft, location of aircraft that were brought in, and the counts that they made at the time of the artillery strikes. Charlie one received 70 rounds of 130 millimeter fire.

• 1:54:26Jocko Willink?

  What a nightmare.

• 1:54:30Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, the artillery stopped, and that only means one thing. The artillery stopped, the NVA company rose from the steep gully less than 100 yards to the west of Charlie one trench line. Scores of enemy soldiers raced forward. The fight was on. The 111 paratroopers reacted in well-practiced battle drill. Lieutenant Thinn, the company commander, quickly assessed the situation. Claymore mines had bloodied the lead elements of the attack. His soldiers thinned the advancing enemy ranks with disciplined, well-aimed rifle flyer. They threw hand grenades in close combat. So this is just... It's on.

• 1:55:10Jocko Willink?

  Here's another one. Fast forward past that skirmish. A heavy artillery barrage hit Charlie two at 11:30. The 130-millimeter shells pummeled the hill. One slammed into Bow's bunker with a deafening explosion. It turned the place to rubble. Broken timbers and shredded sandbags covered the commander. Hai got there first. He'd only been several yards away. May joined in seconds. They began pulling debris off An Nam, their big brother. They summoned Doc Liu, who came running with Duffy close behind. With the help of the nearby paratroopers, they pulled Bow clear.

• 1:55:51Jocko Willink?

  Doc Liu went to work, but immediately looked up and shook his head. Their beloved commander was dead. Hai took the loss hardest of all. May didn't have time to grieve. He was now the commander. All responsibility rested on his shoulders. John Duffy looked at the lifeless body, sad that Bao had not been able to utter his final words in death. A feeling overcame John. He sensed what Colonel Bao's last thoughts must have been. He had no doubt. He shared his notion with the others. I know what Colonel Bao wanted to say before he died. I hear his voice in my heart.

• 1:56:32Jocko Willink?

  Tell my wife I loved her true. Tell my children to remember me. Tell my paratroopers to never surrender. To you, my officers, one final salute.

• 1:56:47Speaker 01

  That's John Duffy, the poet, but he felt that in his heart and he noted those words down at the time and those are on his website of poetry, I think probably in his book as well.

• 1:56:59Jocko Willink?

  So now they've lost this, their leader.

• 1:57:02Speaker 01

  Their beloved leader.

• 1:57:03Jocko Willink?

  Their beloved leader, big brother, Colonel Bao, killed in one of these insane barrages of artillery.

• 1:57:15Jocko Willink?

  Things don't get much better. Fast forward a little bit. Covey brought in a flight of A7 Corsairs off a Navy carrier of the Coral Sea. Their first pass on the south perimeter went terribly wrong. They dropped short of the target. Their bombs hit the 114 company trenches, killing three and wounded seven. Frustrated and angry, John moved the strike well to the southwest where he could expend their remaining ordnance before heading back to the ship. He targeted 75mm recoilless rifle and anti-aircraft gun positions. Duffy also forward Duffy also had forward air controllers continue to place strikes on the 130mm gun positions in the hills far to the southwest. He firmly believed those big guns were on rails that backed them into tunnels after

• 1:58:00Jocko Willink?

  they had fired. He figured that's how they had survived all the airstrikes. That made them tough targets, but they had to be killed.

• 1:58:12Jocko Willink?

  At 4pm, 130mm round hit the entrance to Duffy's bunker, knocking him unconscious. He regained his senses, but felt warm, wet blood covering his head and chest. His back hurt too, where more shrapnel had torn into him. His ears rang, he couldn't hear, his head throbbed from a horrendous concussion. Rubble and body surrounded him. John shoved the closest guy and said, "Come on, let's go." The guy lay still, he didn't move, he was dead. John couldn't believe it, all of them dead, save his RTO. Yet John had lived. How could that be?

• 1:58:54Jocko Willink?

  How, in the same space and time, could five men die and he live? He stared at the carnage in shock. Finally, he grabbed his Car 15 and dragged himself from the rubble, not at all appreciating the seriousness of his own injuries. His radio operator followed, stunned, without the radio. He was severely wounded and badly dazed. He wandered off, stumbling and babbling incoherently. John called after him. He started to run after him, hobble after him, actually. He had only taken a few steps, when an artillery round exploded nearby, shredding the young man who'd served John so faithfully.

• 1:59:36Jocko Willink?

  With no time to grieve, Major Duffy returned to his crumpled bunker to retrieve his radios.

• 1:59:48Jocko Willink?

  So he bout gets killed in that one.

• 1:59:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, he ends up, he was wounded five different, five separate times during the battle.

• 1:59:59Jocko Willink?

  This is probably a good time to talk about some of these books, some of these poems that Major Duffy wrote. He ended up writing, he's written six books of poetry, and one of the books, as I mentioned earlier, is called "The Battle for Charlie." And, and it's a chronological book of poems about what he experienced. And I got one of the, here's one of those poems that relates exactly to what happened. The poem is called "Direct Hit."

• 2:00:28Jocko Willink?

  And it says, "The dust is choking. The others are dead. The radio still talks. I must be alive. The loud ringing noise, will it ever stop?

• 2:00:44Jocko Willink?

  I am half buried in someone else's grave. My bunker is destroyed. I crawl over the bodies. All are dead or dying.

• 2:00:56Jocko Willink?

  I must kill that gun."

• 2:01:05Speaker 01

  That's probably his biggest frustration out of that battle is he could not silence those 130mm guns. They kept, they kept firing.

• 2:01:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and when you're talking about again, these barrages that are 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80 shells. That's incomprehensible to me. It really is. It's just, I can't even fathom what that must be like, sitting in a foxhole with 30 or 40 or 50 of these

• 2:01:35Jocko Willink?

  explosions with the metal. It's just, it's insane to even think about.

• 2:01:44Jocko Willink?

  So,

• 2:01:48Jocko Willink?

  now we're going to April 13th. I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. And by the way, I'm fast forwarding past, just about every page is filled with heroic, insane combat. Fast forward a little bit though. "Hi shook John Duffy awake in the middle of the night. VC surround 113. They attack. Big Hung need help." And there's two, there's two characters called Hung, Skinny Hung and Big Hung.

• 2:02:15Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:02:17Jocko Willink?

  They're, they're both leaders in the companies. "John raised up on an elbow. His head still pounded from his concussion. He felt groggy and disoriented. His thoughts not yet totally clear. He ached in every inch of his being. Need to focus." "Hi went on. Hung here, many hundred soldier move in the dark." Then attack. "He think big attack. Maybe whole battalion."

• 2:02:41Jocko Willink?

  Duffy asked, "What time is it?" "0100." "Christ, 1 o'clock in the fucking morning? Do you really think they're coming at him with a major attack in the middle of the night? "We hurt them in daytime yesterday. "Maybe try different tonight, maybe so." "Okay, let me see what I can do. "Can you request artillery flares? "Be ready to go in case I'm able to get some tac air?" John gone on his radio, "Any Covey, any Covey, this is Dusty Cyanide. "Need some help, any Covey, any Covey." He was surprised by an immediate reply. "Hello Dusty Cyanide, this is Covey 521."

• 2:03:16Jocko Willink?

  And eventually that night, he gets a Spectre on station.

• 2:03:20Speaker 01

  AC 130.

• 2:03:22Jocko Willink?

  God bless him.

• 2:03:24Jocko Willink?

  Gets them on and is able to prevent that attack from being overwhelming.

• 2:03:32Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, Duffy moved about the hilltop with what many saw as reckless abandon. The long radio antenna swaying over his head marked him as a target. For Major John Duffy, though he was a man on a mission, he had one purpose in life and that was to direct airstrikes trying to save this battalion, his battalion. That was his task, his duty, nothing else mattered. He'd jump in a trench, work a target, watch the fighters roll in and release their ordnance, then pick up and run to another trench for a better view of his next target. Enemy gunners caught on to his strategy and opened up on him as he ran, shells bursting all around him.

• 2:04:12Jocko Willink?

  So this is one of the things that you see throughout this battles. He just, he's doing whatever he needs to do to get in a position where you can actually see and call and direct this fire in the most effective way.

• 2:04:23Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:04:24Jocko Willink?

  And every time he does it, he's putting his life at risk. And seeing a big ass antenna on a guy, that's no more primary target, especially in this group than an American with a radio on his back.

• 2:04:35Speaker 01

  And he's over, what was he, 6'3"?

• 2:04:37Jocko Willink?

  6'3". Yeah, this guy had to be the most targeted human.

• 2:04:46Jocko Willink?

  imaginable at this point. They only see one American. He's obviously the ones calling in airstrikes and he's running around like a maniac.

• 2:04:54Speaker 01

  Well, that's where I came up with the title for this book. Cause we look at Duffy. I mean, he's the biggest hero of the battle, but also May and Hi and these other guys. And then there's a lieutenant lap that's going to turn up in this too. And Doc Lou and all of them. It just is, as I got into researching and writing, the most extraordinary valor that I had seen in anything that I've, that I've, that I've looked at. That just really one hell of a, a fight.

• 2:05:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, it's like I said, every page. I mean, I guess maybe this battle starts maybe page 110 or 115 or 120 in the book, but like every page after that, there's, there's a heroic scene.

• 2:05:39Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of which, Captain Skinny Hong had a hard fight in the saddle. He pushed two platoons onto the LZ through stiff resistance. A larger enemy force came out of the gully to meet him. The 112 company struggled to hold, but slowly gave ground. A little after 2pm, the NVA moved around their flank, forcing Hung to withdraw back inside Charlie 2. The LZ could not be retaken. May grabbed the radio handset and put in two flights of Skyraiders on the saddle. Major Lay Van May had one last idea for salvation. He summoned Lieutenant Thin. Brother Thin, I need you to take your company 111 to the east. Those who can still fight. I know your numbers are small, but we have to do this. Find a good spot, secure

• 2:06:22Jocko Willink?

  it, establish a new LZ. We are running out of ammunition. We need water. We need food. We need medical supplies. We've got to get our wounded out. Thin displayed his normal paratrooper zeal. Yes, sir. We will get it done.

• 2:06:41Jocko Willink?

  They're trying to establish another LZ because these LZs that they've been trying to secure are just getting overwhelmed. The NVA know that if they establish an LZ, then they'll be able to get resupplied.

• 2:06:53Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:06:54Jocko Willink?

  Um, there's a, you know, a small battle that, I hate to even say a small battle, but they try and secure it, get pushed back, and finally, May decides, hey, let's find an alternate landing zone somewhere.

• 2:07:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe a little quieter out to the east out there, so move east to get one. And I would mention that Lieutenant Ting is, uh, is one of May's favorite, Lieutenant's favorite, favorite commanders. They're, they're close.

• 2:07:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you go into their relationship in the book.

• 2:07:29Jocko Willink?

  So they go out.

• 2:07:32Jocko Willink?

  And I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. At dusk, Hai saw the band of paratroopers returning from the east. He rushed to the far side of the trench line, waiting as the small group moved closer. He saw 114 company soldiers, mixed with a small band of 111 company survivors. All appeared wary but in good order, carrying the wounded and dead. May joined Hai. They looked for Lieutenant Khan. They didn't see him. They didn't see any officers or sergeants from 111 company. May scanned the bodies. Looking down at one, he shuddered. It was Lieutenant Tin. His

• 2:08:12Jocko Willink?

  beloved Lieutenant Tin. With emotion filling his voice, one of the paratroopers reported to May. Lots of NVA. We fought through and got to a good LZ site. Then they hit us in force. Machine guns, mortars, and recoilless rifles. More than a hundred enemy. We fought hard but couldn't hold them.

• 2:08:35Jocko Willink?

  The NVA shot Lieutenant Tin in the head. He's dead. They killed Mr. Ba and Lieutenant Khan and Sergeant Lung. Others are dead too. Many wounded.

• 2:08:48Jocko Willink?

  The 111 Company was gone, destroyed in battle. Between yesterday's fight on Hill 960 and the excursion to secure a new landing zone, the enemy had killed all the officers and sergeants and whittled the unit down to a handful of effective fighters.

• 2:09:05Jocko Willink?

  May placed those few still walking into the perimeter sector manned by Headquarters Company. Soldiers stacked the dead on the growing rows of corpses and carried the severely wounded to the medical aid station where Doc Liu tended them as best he could. Most medical supplies had run out. The badly wounded lay there helpless and frustrated, dealing with the agony of their pain and the guilt of not being further worth in the battle. Hai and May found Duffy, still working airstrikes. May told him, "There will be no new LZ. NVA hit 111 Company hard, many casualty. Ten is dead, all officers and sergeants dead."

• 2:09:52Jocko Willink?

  The news shocked Duffy, but he remained resolute. "Okay, then we fight with what we've got. I'm going to rain airstrikes down on the bastards. Hai, will you do the same with VNAF and Artie?" "Yes Duffy." "Good, let's get to it. We've got some fighting to do."

• 2:10:13Jocko Willink?

  Desperate. It's a desperate situation.

• 2:10:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they do, you know, Duffy, well, and May too. May had a moment of, I wouldn't say despair, that's too much, but a moment where he was just doubting what was going on. Duffy helped rally him and he came right back and stood as the rock of the battalion. And Duffy is raining airstrikes down. And that's all that they could do. I mean, that's their situation. They've got their orders, they've got the situation that they're in, and they'll make the very best of it that they can.

• 2:10:51Jocko Willink?

  April 14th, 1972. Fighting continued through the night. From time to time, friendly artillery flares drifted across the dark skies, swaying beneath tiny parachutes, lighting sections of the battlefield beneath them. Shapes moved on the ground. Paratroopers took care. They only fired when they had sure targets well within range. Each man sighted carefully breathed out and pulled the trigger with an oh-so-steady squeeze.

• 2:11:18Jocko Willink?

  Ammunition had become frighteningly scarce.

• 2:11:22Jocko Willink?

  The North Vietnamese fired with much more abandon. They had ammo. They were being resupplied. The paratroopers were not.

• 2:11:36Jocko Willink?

  The attacks come through the night.

• 2:11:39Jocko Willink?

  A heavy barrage of enemy shelling shattered the morning calm. Artillery, mortars, rockets, and recoilless rifles. The rain of explosions didn't stop. The Battle for Charlie raged into its 12th day.

• 2:11:53Jocko Willink?

  As he'd done so many times during the battle, John Duffy got up out of the trenches and braved exploding artillery to get a view of the enemy gun positions. He moved to the edge of the perimeter, radio on his back with its recognizable antenna high over his head. Enemy fire hit close by. He moved. More fire. He moved again. A North Vietnamese recoilless rifle shell exploded in the ground beside him. Fragments ripped into his left arm. He put pressure on his wound to slow the bleeding and then grabbed his radio handset as a flight of US Army AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters checked in. Dusty Cyanide, this is Cougar 38. Cougar 38, glad to have you on station. I've got enemy troop movement along the Finger to the South, southeast of Charlie.

• 2:12:35Jocko Willink?

  Give me some runs there. A lot of 51 cal fire in the area. If you see any, please engage. The team of three Cobra gunships made several passes over the finger, expending all their ordnance. They headed to Comtum, to Comtum for what, for more fuel and ammunition. Duffy watched them go. What an awesome killing machine, he thought. Cobras carried fifty-two rockets on their stubby wings with four thousand rounds of machine gun and three hundred rounds of grenades in their movable nose turrets. A few mounted a deadly twenty millimeter Vulcan Gatling gun with nine hundred and fifty high explosive rounds. The Cougar Flight called as they departed. "We'll be back, Dusty."

• 2:13:18Jocko Willink?

  Another Covey, five-three-four, came on station and worked more strikes against the several machine guns John identified. Trouble was, when the fast jets dropped their bombs close to the gun positions, they only quieted them for a time. Once the jets departed, the guns were soon back in operation. Only a direct, direct hit really did the job. John concluded that Cobra helicopters were the best in putting ordnance right into the gun pits and silencing the weapons for good.

• 2:13:52Jocko Willink?

  Cobras, coming in hot.

• 2:13:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a heck of a duel. Any Cobra pilot will tell you, going against a fifty-one caliber is not a lot of fun at all. Uh, they were deadly against helicopters, uh, and even Cobras. And, uh, well, a- as you say, there's more in the book to be read, but I, I've got one account in there of one of our Cobras taking a a fifty-one hit and, uh, and the damage that it did.

• 2:14:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, talk us through it.

• 2:14:18Speaker 01

  Uh, well, they were up, uh, I think it was the day before, if I remember where I have it in there. Uh, but it was one of our, our Cobras up there and there was a fifty-one, and they were going against a fifty-one and, uh, took a round through the front seat. The front seater, uh, Dave Mesa was leaning over, working his turret. Uh, and the round came in just over his shoulder. Uh, and would've hit him in the head or the chest if he'd been sitting up straight and not working on his turret. And it went through the armor plate behind his seat, uh, and, and wounded the pilot in the backseat. So they got the thing back over by the highway, by the base where the second brigade was and landed. The pilot was pulled out and medevac and Dave got to spend the night with the Vietnamese

• 2:15:02Speaker 01

  Airborne Brigade Headquarters before he could get back to Plaque the next day. And there's a picture in the book of Dave standing there with the armor plate that they'd removed out of the seat. You can see the hole that the 51 caliber made in the aircraft. It's a bad weapon for helicopters.

• 2:15:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the armor's not doing a ton of good against a 51 caliber.

• 2:15:24Speaker 01

  No, small arms, it helps. Of course, the Cobras in those days, the canopy was just Plexiglas, so you got no protection from that, but it did have armored seat and armor plate behind the seat that would give you some protection from small arms. Of course, the Apaches today, they're well suited to take all kinds of hits. I flew Apaches the last six years of my Army career, but yeah, the Cobra could be damaged by 51 cows.

• 2:15:50Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. The second Airborne Brigade hatched a plan for an emergency resupply. A Huey approached Charlie from altitude. It flew high to minimize the risk from anti-aircraft machine guns. The paratroopers fixed their hopeful eyes on the drama above. Once over Charlie, streams of tracers stretched toward the chopper. The crew kicked out well-packed bundles of food, ammunition, and medical supplies. They missed the mark landing outside the perimeter. The enemy got to them in a flash.

• 2:16:24Speaker 01

  Yep. And they were desperate by this point. They thought out of ammo, no water for days, out of medical supplies. Yeah, very frustrating.

• 2:16:40Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit more. Early afternoon, another flight of Cobras checked in. Chief War and Officer Dan Jones flew lead. I piloted the second Cobra flying on his wing. Firebase Charlie, this is Panther 13. Panther lead, this is Dusty Cyanide. I have multiple targets for you, all 51 caliber machine guns. So what are you thinking when you hear that?

• 2:17:05Speaker 01

  We've got our work cut out for us. Yeah, there's some trepidation. Oh shit. But then again, you get right back focused. We've got to do what we can to help these guys. John Duffy, as I said, we've talked a number of times since and I have always, as I do to all the special forces guys that are down there that we're supporting. I said, whoa, you guys are just hanging it all out down there on the ground. I'm sure glad I'm in a helicopter. John has said every single time, I'm glad I wasn't in that helicopter and I'm glad I was on the ground. You guys have no, you're up there with this little tinfoil around you, taking all these rounds, getting shot right at you. There's no way I would want to do that. Okay, John, I understand that. I still have tremendous respect for you on the ground and I would not, would not want to be there.

• 2:17:53Jocko Willink?

  The crews knew the risk. 51 caliber machine guns seemed designed specifically to shoot down helicopters. They'd done plenty of damage over the past weeks. Panther 1-3 calmly acknowledged Roger Dusty Cyanide. We're inbound. Give us the positions when we get there. The Cobras made several attacks on enemy guns. Bullets streamed past their cockpits as the NVA gunners tried to bring them down. Attack helicopter pilots knew that rolling in on a 51 position was always dicey. Tracers came at them and missed by a few feet. Pilots tried to get rockets onto the machine guns before the enemy got lucky and blasted them out of the sky. The pilots held steady, focusing on controlling their helicopters, lining up the gun sights and shooting. Panther 1-3 fire team took small arms hits, but kept running at their targets again

• 2:18:38Jocko Willink?

  and again and again. John Duffy observed throughout the shootout, taking it all in, commenting to himself, "They're coming in out of the sun, going in, going for the high gun first. That's good. Shit, green and red tracers crossing in front of them. They're taking fire from everywhere." There, they punched off a salvo of rockets right on target. The gunners were surely blown up in that explosion. Wingman rolling in on the second gun. They're keeping at it. It's a danth of death. I love those guys. Badass Cobra pilots, so steady under such heavy fire. God, I'm glad I'm on the ground. The Panther lead radioed, "Dusty Cyanide Panther 1-3, be advised, running low on fuel,

• 2:19:20Jocko Willink?

  out of ammo. We're breaking station for rearm, refuel." Roger 1-3, "Four-gun crews destroyed, four guns taken out. Good work. Hurry back."

• 2:19:34Jocko Willink?

  How long are you on station for in that scenario? Is that like five minutes?

• 2:19:38Speaker 01

  Oh, it's more than, it's probably fifteen minutes or so. Number of runs.

• 2:19:46Jocko Willink?

  How can you tell when you're getting shot at? Cause you're seeing tracers?

• 2:19:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can, you see trace, sometimes you see tracers, sometimes you don't. Uh, that, that first tour, when I got shot down in the Mohawk by a thirty-seven millimeter anti-aircraft, I didn't see anything until my whole right wing exploded, so I didn't even see any tracers. But yeah, we'd, fifty ones, you'd routinely see tracers.

• 2:20:05Jocko Willink?

  Now, we, in the SEAL teams, we would say, tracers work both ways. So you can tell where you're shooting, but people can also tell you where you're shooting from. Is it, when you see tracers, can you start to track them back to where the gun is?

• 2:20:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, in fact, that's how we'd see where the gun position is, where the tracers are coming from, yeah.

• 2:20:21Jocko Willink?

  Is it better to be lead berg or wingman?

• 2:20:23Speaker 01

  I don't know that it much matters. I mean, on the first run, it's probably better to be lead, because they may not see or know you're coming until you roll in and start shooting, and then they're ready for number two. Uh, but once you make more than one run, and we've made several runs that day on different positions, and they know well that you're, that you're there, and they're trying to get you.

• 2:20:42Jocko Willink?

  Is it your speed that, that makes you safe? Like, how, what are you doing to, to, to increase your survivability?

• 2:20:50Speaker 01

  Shooting, um, yeah, I don't think it's speed and a helicopter, it's just luck. I mean, they, they can't, uh, get right at you that first time. Most of the time, they can't. Now, when I was shot down and, and captured, those were fifty-one calibers too, and maybe a couple of things larger, and there were several weapons positions engaged me at the same time. And I saw tracers all around the cockpit, and then we started taking hits. So it's just, I think it's difficult for them to get that first round right on you, and so hopefully you can get some rockets on him before he gets his aim close enough where he can bring you out of the sky. It's not a desired target. A Cobra against a fifty-one is not desired. It has to be, we wouldn't just go out looking for fifty-one positions to engage.

• 2:21:33Speaker 01

  In fact, we were just out on a mission, we saw some fifty-ones, probably turn it over to a FAC or whatever, and we'd just clear, clear the area. But in this case, you know, there were lives on the line, and we had to do what we could do to, to help. Uh, luckily, we got through it okay, not taking any fifty-one hits. As I pointed out, uh, that other Panther flight did take fifty-one hits.

• 2:22:00Jocko Willink?

  What does it look like? Cause I, I, I had the experience where I was up in Fallon, Nevada. We were doing training with the helicopter squadrons and it was, I was in my first SEAL platoon, so I wasn't, didn't know what I was doing. And I was calling in a helicopter to pick us up, my squad. We were out on a training mission and I was calling them in to pick us up. And it's the desert and I'm standing there, kind of standing up and I'm calling this aircraft and this helicopters, I, I think there's, I think it's so obvious where we are. And I said, hey, you know, I'm right here, you know, go ahead and put it down, you know, to our west. And he's like, I don't see you. And I mean, if you, if I would have had to bet money, I would have bet a month's paycheck

• 2:22:43Jocko Willink?

  that this guy easily saw us. He couldn't see us at all because what I didn't realize at the time as a young SEAL is he's looking at, you know, many, many, many square miles of stuff. And I'm just looking up at the sky at one or two helicopters. So it's real obvious. When you're overhead in the, in, in this situation, can you see the friendly forces? Can you, can you get an idea where John Duffy is? Are you close enough to the ground to see the guy's expressions? Like what's it like from that perspective?

• 2:23:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can see guys on the ground.

• 2:23:14Jocko Willink?

  Can you tell who's who? Can you tell?

• 2:23:15Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:23:16Jocko Willink?

  Friendly from foe?

• 2:23:18Speaker 01

  Not usually. I mean, if you get low enough and close enough and can pay enough attention, then you can, because the NVA are mostly wearing either green or tan uniforms. It looks different and a lot of them have PITH helmets on, uh, and some regular, but you, you can. But as you said, it's difficult to focus your view exactly where you need to focus your view. Uh, and so when John was working with us as guns, he's not so much, at least in that situation, going against the guns. He's not so much describing where he is exactly. He's describing where the weapons positions are. So he's keying that off of various pieces of terrain. Hey, you see that ridge? You see that knuckle, that, that direction and, and there? And then, you know, eventually we get the tracers coming up so we can see it.

• 2:24:02Speaker 01

  Now later, when we come back, he is trying to describe his position to us. Of course, it was dark then and we couldn't see him. But we could see fires and adjust.

• 2:24:12Speaker 01

  Routinely to take that back a little bit when we're extracting special forces teams out of the jungle, they would describe to us where they were and all, and we could generally see them on the ground unless they were hidden by the jungle canopy. So we could, we could pick them out. So yeah, the long answer to the question, I can fully understand your situation at Fallon where you say, hey, guys, we're down here. We see you. And we're up, you know, I don't know what altitude they were, but anywhere from several hundred feet up to maybe a thousand or 2,000 feet. They're looking out and especially Fallon over an expanse of desert as far as they can see. And okay, where are you? So they, you need some focus.

• 2:24:49Jocko Willink?

  And I had the aircraft panel sewed inside my floppy hat. And I thought, oh, I'm such a pro. I'll just break out my, you know, this little orange, whatever, six inch square. Can you see me now? The guy's like, you're an idiot.

• 2:25:04Speaker 01

  Now, what does work and is helpful is, is flashing, a mirror. We can, the mirror, you can see exactly. Okay, that's where that guy is. I see his mirror. And we do that with the teams we pick up, use mirrors, or if the jungle is too thick for mirror, they'd get us close by describing where their position was. And then they just pop smoke. And then you say, okay, I see orange smoke or whatever. Yeah, that's us. And you have their position exactly.

• 2:25:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Duffy ends up using a mirror in this. All right. Going back to the book, fast forward a little bit, airstrikes continued. Other teams of Cobras worked. VN, AF, A1, Skyraiders and US jet fighters dropped more napalm and high explosive bombs on the advancing enemy as well. Even so, the NVA attack intensified, pressuring the South Vietnamese defenders. The enemy overran security outpost. They pushed into the perimeter of Charlie II itself. Human waves of NVA came forward, shouting, surrender, you'll live, fight back, you'll die. But the paratroopers fought vigorously, picking up the closest targets, aiming and shooting. Hold the trenches, don't fall back, fire, shoot those guys over there.

• 2:26:12Jocko Willink?

  Chaos ruled the front, it became an inferno of smoke, dust, flame, and noise. The world convulsed in a crescendo of crackling, cracking gunfire and deafening explosions of artillery. The whine of attacking aircraft, the thunderous boom of their bombs, and the sucking roar of the napalm they dropped. Paratroopers fought with all they had, they fought with grit and determination, they fought for their buddies and the pride of the 11th Airborne. They fought inspired by those Vietnamese paratroopers who had gone before, those who had sacrificed so much in historic battles of old. They fought until their bullets were gone. After that, they turned to grenades and knives. Many died swinging their empty rifles as clubs.

• 2:26:56Jocko Willink?

  The brave paratroopers withstood the onslaught with fierce determination. Still, their enemy pushed, taking patches of earth inch by inch, paying dearly for every small gain. Finally, the NVA overran Charlie's southwest perimeter. They occupied much of 114 Company's defensive position and paused to catch their breath among the mingled dead of both sides. Duffy got on the radio to Major Peter Comma at 2nd Brigade. "Cellar 5-1, Cellar 5-1, this is Dusty Cyanide. Prairie fire, prairie fire, prairie fire. I am declaring a prairie fire emergency, we are being overrun."

• 2:27:41Jocko Willink?

  John defaulted to a phrase familiar to him from his earlier special forces work behind enemy lines in Laos. Prairie fire meant a special operations team was about to be overrun and all available assets were brought to bear. Peter Comma knew what John needed and translated the statement into his, into words more commonly understood by conventional military forces. He declared a tactical emergency, or TAC-E, across all of 2 Corps. This required every available asset to be redirected to support the paratroopers on Firebase Charlie. John Duffy would now get everything flying in the skies over central South Vietnam. John, May, and Hi got busier than they ever had been, working flight after flight of supporting aircraft.

• 2:28:30Jocko Willink?

  Prairie Fire Emergency.

• 2:28:32Speaker 01

  Yep, and this is, the end is coming. And it is pretty amazing with all the firepower that they had at their disposal, how determined the NVA were to carry this attack to fruition. They just kept pouring battalion after battalion in there until they carried the day. But they suffered horrendous casualties, which we talk about the impact of that as we get at the end of the book.

• 2:29:02Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. The enemy delayed only a short while before getting back up and continuing their assault. They were about to overrun the 11th Battalion. Dusty Cyanide, this is Cougar 38 inbound. Welcome back 38. Enemy advancing rapidly from the west and southwest. Battalion strength heaviest from the southwest. Expand on that formation. Roger Dusty, we'll give them hell. And again, it's incredible. You can hear some of these calls. I listen to these calls. Cougar 38 and Duffy just sounds calm, cool, and collected. It's hard to hear him sometimes, but when you do hear him, it's like they're talking about, you know, pass me the ketchup.

• 2:29:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, because he knows to survive, he has to be. You can't, you can't get in a panic and start screaming and hollering on the radio and nobody's going to understand what you're saying or what you need. So to survive, he has to stay calm and measured.

• 2:30:00Jocko Willink?

  Cougar 38's heavy fire team of three Cobras came in from the northeast. They drew intense enemy aircraft fire, enemy anti-aircraft fire dropping to just above the trees to minimize their exposure. They flew past Duffy in May, then continued right into the face of the attack. Duffy commented, "What guts those guys have. Never seen anything like it. Right on the deck. Those crazy bastards are going to kill themselves to save us. Goddamn heroes." Each aircraft fired its entire ammunition load on one pass. Pilots launching pairs of rockets as fast as their fingers could press the firing button. Front seat gunners working their turret weapon incessantly, raining death and destruction. They annihilated the breadth of the attacking formation. The enemy staggered. He stumbled. He fell. He

• 2:30:43Jocko Willink?

  pulled back, needing to regroup once again. The courage of those three Cobra crews stalled the NVA attack for now. There was no doubt the resolute enemy would come again.

• 2:30:55Jocko Willink?

  May needed his other company. He ordered them to consolidate hours ago. Where were they? He called 113 Company again. 403, what's your progress? Big Hung responded, "We're trying lots of enemy around us." May sternly ordered, "Break through and get down here. Do it now. We need the battalion together." Roger. May frowned in frustration. Hi used the temporary lull to move about and assess the situation. He ran quickly among the defenders, by then compressed into a much smaller circle. They had something over a hundred effective fighters left of the 471-man battalion. Hi moved from position to position, utilizing trenches as much as possible, but at times

• 2:31:39Jocko Willink?

  dashing into the open from foxhole to foxhole. He spent a few minutes talking to each leader and spoke with paratroopers along the way, bolstering their will to fight by whatever means remained. Hi finished his circuit and rejoined May in the command post trench. Dusk settled in. May called Duffy who joined them there. Blood seeped from a gash in John's right shoulder. He'd been hit yet another, yet again by another shell fragment. Hi shook his head and began his report. "We in bad shape. Many dead, more wounded. I count only a little over a hundred still can fight. Most of them hurt. Not much ammunition. Some have no ammo, even after take from dead.

• 2:32:22Jocko Willink?

  No way to stop next attack. Next attack and 11th Battalion." May looked straight in Hi's eye for, eyes for a time, studying him digesting what he just said. He turned to Duffy, ready to speak, but paused. Both minds churned through options. Hi spoke again. "Casualty high, ammo run thin, cannot stop VC, most of battalion dead. We stay longer, all die. Should leave."

• 2:32:54Jocko Willink?

  He leaned close to May and spoke in Vietnamese. "Gotta get this, gotta get the battalion off this fucking hill before the enemy comes again." May nodded and responded in English. "Yes, we order withdraw."

• 2:33:08Jocko Willink?

  Duffy had a plan.

• 2:33:11Jocko Willink?

  He'd risk his life to try and save what was left of the battalion. It seemed insane, but it made perfect sense to him.

• 2:33:19Jocko Willink?

  "I will stay and try to delay the NVA. Maybe we'll get some more air and time to make a difference." May insisted. "I stay with you. We team. American and Vietnamese, we fight together." John nodded, full of determined grit. John Duffy and Le Van May would form a two-man rear guard to allow what was left of the battalion to break contact and escape.

• 2:33:48Jocko Willink?

  Two men against two enemy battalions. May faced his operations officer with a look of resignation. "You lead the battalion off Charlie High. Major Duffy and I will delay as long as we can. We're your rear guard. Go about 800 meters northeast and wait for 113 Company. I'll tell Big Hung to move east until he finds you. 113 is in good shape, they have ammo, and only a few casualties. You'll be okay."

• 2:34:19Jocko Willink?

  High saluted, responding smartly. "Yes, sir, we go." He rallied the surviving paratroopers. Those who could walk helped others who couldn't.

• 2:34:31Jocko Willink?

  High led the way off the hilltop toward the sanctuary of the jungle below.

• 2:34:43Speaker 01

  Excuse me, it's a little emotional listening to you read all that.

• 2:34:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that is the most heroic part of the whole, and there's heroism throughout the book. But that is the most extraordinary act of the, of the whole story is, is John Duffy and Le Van May deciding to be a rear guard. You know, not knowing what their chances of survival would be, and it looked pretty bleak, but to, to do that, to allow the rest of the battalion to, to try to withdraw and get off the hill and, and survive.

• 2:35:19Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, I don't know what they thought their chances were of survival. I mean, here they are getting crushed for 11 days at this point, 12 days at this point.

• 2:35:31Speaker 01

  Couple of weeks.

• 2:35:32Jocko Willink?

  The NVA is fighting like they've never seen them fight before. They keep coming, wave after wave after wave. The NVA has ammo, the NVA has resupply.

• 2:35:42Speaker 01

  And has that artillery pounding and yeah, the anti-aircraft. And, and you know, some, some would say, hey, guys, you had the order to fight to the death. What the hell are you doing withdrawing off the hill? But they had no further means to resist. They were just down to a few bullets left and guys swinging their weapons to, to fight the enemy. So I think Hi was exactly right. The next wave of attack from the NVA would have just killed, killed all of them and not accomplished anything. So the decision was made to withdraw the survivors that they had, which at that point were just over a hundred people out of a 471 man battalion to go ahead and try and get those guys off, off the hill.

• 2:36:26Jocko Willink?

  So there's two of them left.

• 2:36:30Jocko Willink?

  As dusk turned to darkness, a strange silence brought a chill. It was as if May and Duffy were in the eye of a storm. The enemy had fallen back for the moment. The artillery and mortars fell still. Their battalion had gone. There was no chatter on the radio, not a sound on the hilltop, save the whimpers of the dying. They sat alone on the edge of what had been Firebase Charlie, waiting warily for their enemy's next move, not doubting for a moment he would attack.

• 2:37:02Jocko Willink?

  It was dark. Suddenly the silence broke. Whistling projectiles hurled through the air. Incoming enemy artillery erupted across the hilltop. One shell burst not far to their front. The explosion rocked them, the blast deafening the night. For an instant, it lit their dirty, blood smeared faces, their hollow eyes set in hopeless determination. A few more shells crashed around them, none as close as the first, each blinding flash shone upon the corpses lying across the battlefield, gruesome evidence of the fight that had raged over the past days. Hundreds lay dead over the hilltop outpost. The bodies of South Vietnamese paratroopers mixed with those of their determined North Vietnamese enemy.

• 2:37:50Jocko Willink?

  The explosion stopped. The dark returned. Only the moans of the wounded pierced the silence of the night. The stench of death filled the nostrils of the last two men fighting. Smoke choked their lungs. They waited in anticipation. They heard orders shouted from across the field. They sensed movement as another attack wave swept toward them. The American advisor leaned close to his Vietnamese counterpart and exclaimed, "Shit. Here they come again."

• 2:38:23Jocko Willink?

  The reply in broken but well-practiced English was resolute. "I know, we fight. We fight more."

• 2:38:32Jocko Willink?

  The enemy once again rose from the darkness, tearing through the night, coming at them as vague shapes, screaming and shooting, throwing grenades as they advanced closer and closer still. Both John Duffy and Le Van May knew this was the final assault. Bullets whizzed by them. A grenade exploded, ripping a hole in May's chest. He gasped for air. Duffy, already wounded several times himself, looked over his left shoulder. He nodded, satisfied, seeing the decimated force, all that was left of the once mighty 11th Airborne Battalion, escaping down the hillside. John and May were all that stood between the remnants of the battalion and their annihilation.

• 2:39:17Jocko Willink?

  They'd been out of food for days, they had no water left in their canteens, their ammunition was nearly gone, but still the Americans and the American and his South Vietnamese comrade fought. And still the enemy came. There was no talk of surrender. No thought but to kill as many as they could before they were themselves cut down, where they squatted on the edge of their abandoned positions. Le Van May strained to speak, "Fight Duffy, fight."

• 2:39:44Jocko Willink?

  They battled with everything that remained in their hearts and souls, but the end of their road was only minutes away. They knew they were about to die. John Duffy sensed his mortality as words welled in his soul. "Death's moment is near. I can feel its flame. Soon it will be here. It seems strange no more."

• 2:40:09Jocko Willink?

  Duffy's radio crackled, "Dusty Cyanide, this is Panther 1-3 back with you." Duffy looked at May, "Hot damn." He grabbed his radio handset, "Roger Panther, welcome back. Dusty, we're inbound with Rockets 40 Mike Mike and Minigun. Thought you might need a little more help." Through the blackness, the Cobra crews saw fires and chaos on Charlie. They could only imagine the desperate situation on the ground.

• 2:40:40Jocko Willink?

  Duffy radioed the Cobras, "Enemy broken through on the southwest, Charlie overrun. There are three prominent fires on the hilltop, one big and two small. The large one is on the southwest part of the base. You see one small fire short distance north and another 100 meters east of that. We are on the north edge of that eastern small fire. Need you to shoot right in front of us, just to our west, but real close." Roger Dusty, "We got them." The Cobras rolled in firing. Duffy adjusted their guns closer. The attacking enemy was about on top of them. He cut down several with his Kar-15. May did the same with his M16, but that didn't slow them down a bit. The enemy was still charging, just feet away.

• 2:41:24Jocko Willink?

  As the Pink Panthers began another gun run. The head of the closest soldier exploded, hit by a 40mm grenade from one of the Cobras. His reflexes kept his legs moving for a step or two before he crumbled to the ground, so close that blood and tissue splattered on Duffy and May. "Right there Panther, keep it up."

• 2:41:44Jocko Willink?

  The Cobras kept it up. Duffy delighted in the hot shell casings raining down from above. After a number of attack runs Duffy called, "Panther, Panther Lead, this is Dusty Cyanide. You have broken the enemy attack for now. Hundreds of bodies on the field, maybe a thousand, but we cannot hold." After a short break he continued, "We are leaving Firebase Charlie now. Stop them from following us, whatever it takes. Put your stuff all over the hilltop, now."

• 2:42:14Jocko Willink?

  The two ran for their lives. May 1st followed by Duffy, US Army Special Forces Major. John Joseph Duffy was the last to leave Firebase Charlie.

• 2:42:25Jocko Willink?

  Another Cobra flight joined the team with Lieutenant Forrest Snyder in one of the front seats. That gave Panther 13 a heavy team of four aircraft. Forrest was the best gunner the Panthers had. The team fired everything they had at the hill that had been Firebase Charlie. They turned toward home. The flight picked its way through the mountains and valleys below a worsening layer of scud clouds and a pitch black of night. What was left of the 11th Airborne Battalion moved toward the refuge of the valley below.

• 2:43:00Speaker 01

  That was the end of the fight on Firebase Charlie. Yeah, and I, you know, I flew that. I was Panther 13, was Dan Jones in lead, and I was Panther 36 flying his wing. We knew it was a bad situation at the time, and we did all we could to help, but we had no real full appreciation of everything that was going on down there until I got all this information together to write the book. John Duffy, well, he credits his life to several things, including Cougar 38 that came in there that day, but he said that that night, he is, and Levan May the same thing, they are alive today because of what we were able

• 2:43:40Speaker 01

  to do for them, which was just doing what we could to help.

• 2:43:49Jocko Willink?

  So you're flying, this was, this was in pure darkness?

• 2:43:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, we got there, that second run was night, it was dark.

• 2:43:55Jocko Willink?

  And, and clearly you guys don't have night vision at the time. So it is, you're looking at blackness.

• 2:44:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was awfully dark. The weather was not good and getting worse, and we could see the fires on the hilltop. And yeah, we're out there doing what we can do in that situation. And it was Duffy's description of those fires and where he was in relation to those fires. And we just put our rounds down. And as Dan Jones recently commented to me, he said, hey, We weren't exactly sure of how close we were shooting to him. We couldn't see him. We could see the fire and he was just off the edge of one of the fires. So it was just, you know, by the grace of God, we were able to get those rounds right where they needed to be. And then move him a little bit as he would give us adjustments. And that as close as we were firing to him, particularly rockets, rocket is not, those 2.75 rockets are not a point fire weapon.

• 2:44:47Speaker 01

  It's not like the Hellfire and tow missiles that we've had since. So lucky that we could get him close enough to be doing the good that needed to get done. And not inadvertently do damage to those guys. We could have blown Duffy and May off the map if we'd have been just a few feet off of where we were putting our rounds. And John Duffy says to this day, one of the most glorious feelings he's had in his life is feeling hot brass rain down on top of him.

• 2:45:16Jocko Willink?

  Can you, can you see the targets at all? Or are you shooting just based on, hey, 50 meters in front of the fire to the east? That's what we're doing?

• 2:45:25Speaker 01

  No, we couldn't see any people at all. Just the fires and our rounds were hitting and exploding.

• 2:45:32Jocko Willink?

  And because there's no, there's no like overhead artillery putting a loom up or anything. It's just dark?

• 2:45:37Speaker 01

  Just dark.

• 2:45:39Jocko Willink?

  How long were you on station for?

• 2:45:43Speaker 01

  After the other flight came in, that, I don't, you know, it's hard to say. I don't know, I guess would be the best answer, but I would imagine.

• 2:45:50Jocko Willink?

  Like 10, 15 minutes, 20 minutes at the most?

• 2:45:52Speaker 01

  10, 15, 20, yeah. 20 at the most, 10 to 15 probably. Because we got there, we made multiple runs, the other fire team showed up and joined with us. And they were fresh on ordinance and everything, so they had a lot more to put down on the hilltop.

• 2:46:08Speaker 01

  Maybe 20 minutes, probably closer to 15.

• 2:46:15Jocko Willink?

  You know those cheesy action movies where there's like the hero is barely getting away as you know as the explosion happens like but it doesn't actually happen in real life except for it happens here. Yeah.

• 2:46:31Jocko Willink?

  After this insane moment of hot damn, the Cobras are here to bail us out. Yep. John and May stumbled and fell through the darkness moving quick swiftly in spite of their painful injuries. Once the North Vietnamese had taken the hill, the enemy advanced halted for the moment. The attackers too devastated to continue. The Cobras had saved the day. Amazingly Duffy and May were still alive. They started out again Duffy making an urgent call on the move. Any Covey, any Covey, this is Dusty Cyanide, we are withdrawing off Charlie. Two NVA battalions in the open on a hilltop. Request immediate diversion of a B-52 Arc Light strike to Charlie.

• 2:47:16Jocko Willink?

  This is Covey 531, stand by Dusty. Only a few minutes later Covey transmitted Dusty, affirmative, Carbon Outlaw, diverted Arc Light for your target. ETA 20 minutes. You need to be 500 meters distance. Be in Defilade. Open your mouths and keep your heads down. Duffy knew he was only a couple hundred yards off the hilltop, but he needed his enemy bloodied so they couldn't regroup and pursue. Roger Covey, we will be over 500 meters clear, let the bombs fall. They moved quickly, soon rejoining their battalion. Hai and Doc Lu were shocked they were alive. Tired, exhausted and dragging their wounded, the battalion gained little ground, moving

• 2:47:59Jocko Willink?

  maybe another hundred yards before they heard the whistling bombs of death. Hundreds of 500 and 750 pound bombs demolished the NVA forces on Charlie. The paratroopers hugged the earth. Duffy and May lay prone under a tree that shook like a wet dog showering them with leaves as the ground shuddered violently beneath them. A dark cloud of smoke rose from the carnage of Charlie. John lamented, nothing could have survived. Two weeks of battle end in an NVA funeral pyre. Corpses sit as the victors atop their prize.

• 2:48:39Jocko Willink?

  I mean, what do you think the battle damage assessment was of that?

• 2:48:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it was, it inflicted tremendous damage on the enemy and I think I mentioned later the impact it had on the whole battle in the central highlands. It thwarted their plans to quickly sweep down to take Kontum City and then cut South Vietnam in half. Because of the damage that was done by all those strikes and what it cost them to take Charlie Hill, that delayed their attack plans by a couple of weeks, which gave the South Vietnamese an opportunity to get another division up there and to get all prepared to take on this attack against the city of Kontum. And in the end, the South Vietnamese prevailed with a lot of American air support, but they prevailed and the enemy did not take Kontum City.

• 2:49:27Speaker 01

  Their attack went no further than that and they ended up withdrawing to isolated positions, really, until the peace agreements were signed.

• 2:49:38Jocko Willink?

  The line was held.

• 2:49:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:49:41Jocko Willink?

  These guys aren't out of it yet, though. "April 15th, 1972. In darkness, the paratroopers followed Major Duffy down the mountainside. They carried those who couldn't walk. They struggled through the tangled jungle. Exhaustion numbed their senses. Even so, they still felt the pain that racked their bodies. Infected wounds screamed with every step. In spite of their misery, hope swelled in their hearts as they had left the carnage of Charlie Hill even farther behind."

• 2:50:09Jocko Willink?

  And then, of course, incoming, there's a friendly fire incident that takes place, which is awful.

• 2:50:18Jocko Willink?

  Now they've got more dead, they've got more wounded to carry, they have to leave some dead.

• 2:50:25Jocko Willink?

  "Hi," makes a radio call to his headquarters. "Red River, this is 006. We are off the mountain in a northeast direction from our old home at the base of the ridge. I have about 100, 150 many wounded. Request helicopter extraction, over. 006, this is Red River. Negative. There are no helos available. Walk out, over. This is 006, Roger out." Duffy saw Hi as discuss, "What's up? No helicopter. We walk."

• 2:51:03Jocko Willink?

  This is making me mad right now.

• 2:51:06Speaker 01

  And they're not, they're not out of the, yeah, not figuratively, literally, they're not out of the woods yet.

• 2:51:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and then of course, the enemy struck, rat-a-tat, crack, crack, boom, boom, ambush. Machine gun and rifle fire snapped around them, mortars exploded everywhere, enemy soldiers attacked from the trees. Men dropped, wounded and dead. Many of the younger, green paratroopers out of ammunition and at their wits' end, broke and ran. Mowed down in their tracks. The NVA 320th Division Commander positioned a fresh force east of Charlie to cut off any withdraw. The 2nd Battalion from the 48th Regiment was waiting in concealed positions. They hit the paratroopers hard. John Duffy raised his weapon and shouted, "May Lin, we need to break out of this. Gather all the men you can. I'll lead, you cover me and follow." "Okay Duffy, we no surrender. We fight to death."

• 2:51:55Jocko Willink?

  John cocked his AR-15 and firing a few well-placed rounds led a desperate counter-attack. Amazingly, they broke through the enemy and found a refuge a couple hundred yards north in the trees along the stream. Duffy puffed, "We made it. How many do we have?" May counted, "Thirty-six, plus you, thirty-seven total. We have Captain Hai and Doc Liu and others."

• 2:52:19Jocko Willink?

  May directed Hai, "Set a perimeter, redistribute ammunition to be sure every soldier has at least some. This is where we'll make our stand." Duffy's immediate thought was, "We need air, we need it now." He grabbed his handset to make a call, "Nothing. Shit." May caught sight of his back, "Duffy, you took a hit in the radio, big hole. It finished you, okay?"

• 2:52:41Jocko Willink?

  Duffy, several times wounded, bloody, filthy, tired, head-throbbing, body rife with pain, answered, "Yeah, I'm fine." He took the radio off his back and dropped it to the ground. He grabbed one of the two small aircrew survival radios he had clipped to his web gear, turned it on, and transmitted on the emergency frequency that all aircraft monitored. "Any aircraft, any aircraft, this is dusty cyanide. Tactical emergency."

• 2:53:05Jocko Willink?

  U.S. Air Force Captain Jim Higgins, a forward air controller on his way back to play coup from supporting a special operation near the Cambodian border, heard the call. His fuel is low, but he responded, "Dusty Cyanide, this is Covey 555. Covey, Dusty Cyanide, we withdrew off Charlie last night on northeast of the hill in a small valley, just ambushed, many killed. We broke out, need helicopter extraction. I have thirty-seven, thirty-seven packs, several wounded, need four helos. Roger, Dusty. Stand by. I'll see what we can rustle up." As you guys are out there on these operations like over, does everybody kind of know who Dusty Cyanide is at this point? Is everybody tracking it?

• 2:53:44Speaker 01

  By this time, well, we all did because the Panthers had been supporting him. Now, the unit that's going to end up coming in to now save the day yet once again is 35 Cav. They've not been involved in that operation up there at all to this point, so I don't think that they knew Dusty Cyanide at that point, but they're soon going to find out who Dusty Cyanide is. And once we get into that part of the operation, that goes to that audio recording that I had that was recorded by one of the air crews. So, the dialogue in there is word for word off that audio recording. And I'd comment on the dialogue in general. I mean, it's a technique that I use for a narrative nonfiction, but the dialogue obviously is recreated.

• 2:54:26Speaker 01

  Nobody remembers exactly what they said, but I took great care to talk to each of the participants and they saw all this dialogue as I developed it. And so, they agree that this is very close to the conversations that actually took place. So, I use it to tell, to tell their story. But as we get into the, into the pickup here at the end, that's word for word off that audio tape of what was being said in the, in the aircraft.

• 2:54:51Jocko Willink?

  Is Dusty Cyanide an issued call sign?

• 2:54:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was randomly generated.

• 2:54:57Jocko Willink?

  Randomly generated. Issued, I remember I used to get those. And then for some reason, we started just generating our own. I don't know if that was legal or not, but that's what we did. I'm going to fast forward a little bit. They, they do get the, they get the helos in and again, this is really cool dialogue that you, that you quote in here. Between Undertaker and Embalmer. These are some good call signs.

• 2:55:22Speaker 01

  That's their actual call signs.

• 2:55:23Jocko Willink?

  Good to go. Undertaker 22.

• 2:55:27Speaker 01

  Now, those aren't generated. The aircrew call signs, we had them for our whole tour.

• 2:55:31Jocko Willink?

  Right, that's like Pink Panther, right?

• 2:55:32Speaker 01

  And they are Gladiator was the company's call sign. Oh, for the, for the unit that worked SOG with us. These guys, the Cav, yeah, then Embalmer, Undertaker was their guns and Bomber is their, is their lift ships.

• 2:55:49Jocko Willink?

  So these guys show up. Duffy radioed Cobra, Cobra. They're 25 meters away. They're in that wood line. Go get them. Roger, Dusty, we're inbound. Keep your heads down. The Cobra's laid waste. Embalmer six called short final. The enemy opened up with small arms and machine gun fire. A B-40 rocket streaked past. The Huey pulled up and turned sharply to the left climbing. The right door gunner reported a jam in his machine gun. He was out of action. No more protective fire on the right side. More enemy pressed in on Duffy and May. They moved their group as fast as they could go. Undertaker 22 kept track of them. Dusty, you still on the LZ or moving away from it? We're moving to the November. Roger, I'll be there. I'll be in there with 20 millimeter. Still got small arms.

• 2:56:30Jocko Willink?

  We moved, we moved another 100 meters. We're, we're gonna stop here. We got five people left. So over this period, which I skipped, they're, they're picking up like as many guys as they can. And then they'd get shot out of a LZ and then they'd keep moving. So they're down to five guys left.

• 2:56:46Speaker 01

  Right, this is the last lift, the fourth lift.

• 2:56:49Jocko Willink?

  Embalmer six began another approach. Duffy popped his last smoke. Gibbs transmitted, I got yellow smoke. Duffy warned, still got small arms fire. Still got small arms fire. Automatic rifles, Undertaker added. Still drawing small arms fire from the tree line down there. Across the trees. At your 12 or the friendlies and the bad guys are in the trees. And Bomber six continued his approach. Duffy guided him down to the ground. The last five members of the 11th Airborne Battalion scrambled aboard. Go, go, Duffy shouted. He stood on the landing strut, firing his Kar-15 and helping the others in. An NVA soldier ran toward the helicopter, his arm cocked, ready to throw a grenade.

• 2:57:30Jocko Willink?

  Duffy cut him down. Lieutenant Long climbed in, followed by Corporal Long, Captain High and Major May.

• 2:57:38Jocko Willink?

  Crack, a round blasted through the cockpit. Crack, another passed just behind Dennis Watson's head. It hit Dallas Neeson. Did I say that name right? Neeson, Nielsen, Neeson. Neeson. It hit Dallas Neeson in the back as he fired his door gun, protecting the crew. He pushed his, his intercom button. "Hey, hit." Watson looked back. Their eyes held for a moment, then Neeson's closed. With everyone on board, Duffy gave the other door gunner a thumbs up and the young man hollered on the intercom, "Go, go, go, go, get out of here." Bullets riddled the chopper as it lifted. At a hundred feet, one smashed into High's right foot. He fell backward out of the helicopter.

• 2:58:20Jocko Willink?

  John Duffy, still standing on the landing skid, grabbed hold of his web gear just as he slid by, stopping his fall and certain death. With help from May, he pulled High back in. May rendered aid. Duffy looked across the helicopter and saw Dallas Neeson hanging out the other side, held by his safety tether. John climbed in and moved over to Dallas, pulling him back inside. He patched the wound in Neeson's back with a plastic sealer and a bandage. He turned him over. Dallas had a much larger hole where the bullet exited his chest. It was bad. The wound bubbled. The bullet hit his lung. John started patching and sealing the hole when the bubbles quit. Dallas stopped breathing. John tried mouth to mouth, nothing.

• 2:59:05Jocko Willink?

  Dallas Neeson died in John Duffy's arms. It had been five days since the enemy began their final all-out assault against Charlie. Five days of some of the most intense combat ever fought. Five days in hell, consigned to death but committed to fighting with valor to the end. Indeed, it had been less than two weeks since the 11th Battalion, fresh from its duty in Saigon, had occupied Firebase Charlie on Easter Sunday. But that was a lifetime ago. Their world had changed. It was different from how it had been. And it would never be the same for any of them.

• 2:59:50Jocko Willink?

  Ever again.

• 3:00:00Speaker 01

  And thus ends the battle for Firebase Charlie.

• 3:00:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and as you mentioned, thirty-seven out of four-hundred-and-seventy-one paratroopers made it out, and you did also mention that there were some stragglers that came in.

• 3:00:14Speaker 01

  Right, there's gonna be another group of about, I think, twenty that the artillery FO Lieutenant Lapp rallies. It took them several days, though, to get back to friendly lines and recovered, and that's pretty well it. A few other stragglers, but out of that four-hundred-and-seventy-one-man battalion, most killed or captured or missing and never knew their status.

• 3:00:41Jocko Willink?

  John Duffy wrote a poem. He ended up at the funeral of Colonel Bao, posthumously-promoted Colonel Bao, and he wrote a poem about that funeral. And, again, this is from his book, which is called "The Battle for Charlie." It's called "The Commander's Family."

• 3:01:06Jocko Willink?

  "Can you picture the scene? Incense burning, banners hung, casket draped. The moans and the weeping blend. Sorrow hangs in the atmosphere. The commander's comrades gathered to offer their last salute. The young widow, strong at first, but soon sorrow overcomes her.

• 3:01:36Jocko Willink?

  It's not the smoke which tears my eyes, although I have lit seven Joss sticks. The words are spoken for all to hear. Now it is I who must say the last. I will say the truth and how he died. He died leading the paratroopers he loved. He died fighting for the freedom he cherished. He died a hero of his country."

• 3:02:19Jocko Willink?

  And that is certainly the truth. And I am certainly glad that you, sir, have captured these heroics for, for all of us to hear and understand. And you, you mentioned this earlier. We can be proud to report that Major John Duffy has been properly recognized for his heroics. He was awarded the Medal of Honor on July 5th, 2022. So just a few weeks ago.

• 3:02:58Speaker 01

  Few days ago.

• 3:03:00Jocko Willink?

  Few days ago, really? So you went out there for that ceremony?

• 3:03:03Speaker 01

  I, I did. I was there in the White House with him, with my wife and daughter, the daughter who he danced with on the deck of the Midway, to be present. And it was, it was quite a ceremony, a long, long time coming. I think I mentioned he was put in for the Medal of Honor at the time. Peter Kama submitted him. It was downgraded to a distinguished service cross. Largely, John feels because all the eyewitness statements that he had at the time when Kama submitted it were Vietnamese statements. And, and so it was not supported. Years later, Peter Kama resubmitted with the additional information, had the audio recording now, had some eyewitness statements by others, some of the air crews.

• 3:03:47Speaker 01

  But it took forever to wind its way through the bureaucracy and, and finally got approval and was presented on July 5th, last week, to, to him. Quite, quite an emotional event to be at. Le Van May was there as well. There, there are some, you can, you can find it if you just do a Google search for John Duffy Medal of Honor. They've got some video from the White House ceremony. And as the President was making remarks just before hanging the Medal of Honor on John, he said, and we're, we're honored to have also here his Vietnamese counterpart, Le Van May, Colonel Le Van May.

• 3:04:29Speaker 01

  And May stood up, had a suit on, but his red Vietnamese paratrooper beret, saluted the President. Quite, quite a moving, quite a moving experience.

• 3:04:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:04:47Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's just amazing that they did get it done and that he was awarded properly.

• 3:04:55Speaker 01

  So deserved. I mean, you've read Medal of Honor citations before, and this is so deserving of the Medal of Honor.

• 3:05:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I can't imagine the person that downgraded this thing. I get frustrated sometimes when I think about the people that sit around the downgrade awards. Something tells me they probably shouldn't be in the positions where they're doing that.

• 3:05:18Jocko Willink?

  The, another unbelievable part of this book that I found to be fascinating and inspiring was, you know, going into the aftermath and what happened to everybody after the war. And really, for me, especially the Vietnamese soldiers that,

• 3:05:39Jocko Willink?

  I mean, what, 19, it wasn't very much after this that South Vietnam fell.

• 3:05:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, 1975.

• 3:05:47Jocko Willink?

  And so these individuals that had fought so heroically, they all had to either get out of there or try and get out of there. Some of them served in prison camps. And they all had the goal of making it to America.

• 3:06:05Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:06:06Jocko Willink?

  And it's also incredible what they all did when they got here. I think it was May, is it May that ends up, he's working as a janitor somewhere? Was that May?

• 3:06:16Speaker 01

  He was, yeah, for a while and where'd he end up? He was in Missouri for a time.

• 3:06:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think that was it. And again, read, get the book.

• 3:06:25Speaker 01

  And going to school. He was working, yeah, doing janitorial work, going to school to increase his education. He ends up a highly successful guy out here in Silicon Valley by the time it's all over and done.

• 3:06:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but it kicks off with him being a, I mean, a highly decorated, highly experienced, to say the least, war hero.

• 3:06:43Jocko Willink?

  And he shows up here, hey, hey, well, you can, you can, you know, sweep up and work as a janitor. Okay, that's what I'm doing then. And then talks about that and, and how he made it through that and how all of their, you know, all the Vietnamese came here, all their kids do wonderful.

• 3:06:57Speaker 01

  Kids are all hugely successful, yeah.

• 3:06:59Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's, it's amazing to hear that part of the story. Of, of how it all turns out for these, for these folks. And of course, never forgetting the incredible sacrifices of, of the ones that didn't make it.

• 3:07:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:07:12Jocko Willink?

  The ones that didn't survive, or the ones that didn't make it out of, out of Vietnam. And what a horror, what a horror that is. But man. The book is amazing. Like I said, I, I, I read a small portion of it today, less than 10% of the book today. Get, get the book. So you can learn about it and get the full story. And, and by the way, if you haven't gotten through the valley. That was kind of a, for this podcast, that was sort of like a turning point in my mind in the podcast, just how powerful it was for me to be able to sit here and talk with

• 3:07:53Jocko Willink?

  you and the feedback that I got about that podcast. Because it's hard for a normal person to comprehend the level of suffering that a person can go through. And A, survive, but then go on and thrive and carry on with life and, and, and, and have an amazing attitude, you know? I mean, we were talking a little bit when we weren't recording and, you know, you were, you know, your back's a little bit sore, your knee's a little bit sore.

• 3:08:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:08:31Jocko Willink?

  And you're very thankful to have a sore back and very thankful to have a sore knee. Cause if it wasn't for a sore back and a sore knee, the only way for you to not have a sore back and a sore knee would be, you wouldn't be here right now.

• 3:08:44Speaker 01

  That's right. I'd be laying dead in a Cobra wreckage in the jungles of, of Vietnam. I'm, I'm very grateful for every day that I've had since that. I guess, when you go through something like that, and I know I've talked to John Duffy and Lee Van May, they, they just have pure joy for every day that they've had since then. Every day since Charlie is, is a gift to each one of them.

• 3:09:08Jocko Willink?

  Well, probably a good place to stop for now. Echo Charles, do you have any questions? No questions today. It's hard to have any questions after this. Sir, any, any closing thoughts?

• 3:09:22Speaker 01

  No, it's just, you know, this is an important story. So I'm glad that we had a chance to discuss it at the podcast. I hope the story gets read far and wide for, for John Duffy, for Le Van May, for Hy Dwan, those three central figures of the, of the book. And just for the Vietnamese paratroopers, because they did exhibit extraordinary valor, really, throughout the, throughout the war. And they need to be put in a category separate from the Arvin that are dismissed as, as not being heroic soldiers on the battlefield. These guys certainly, certainly were.

• 3:09:56Jocko Willink?

  Well, you've, you've certainly brought that to light. And everyone that hears this and reads your book will no doubt understand the, the bravery that they had. And thank you once again for, for coming. Thanks for your service and sacrifice. Thanks for your support to the troops on the ground. Now that I have a bunch of friends that were SOG, they, they, they love you guys so much for what you did for them. So thank you for, for supporting those troops on the ground and, and thank you for your, for your sacrifice as a, as a prisoner of war. And the rest of your service in the army.

• 3:10:39Jocko Willink?

  I know that, that wasn't even the end of your career. You know, you went on for, how many years did you end up serving? Thirty. Thirty years. So that was just the beginning. So thank you for all your service and thank you for taking the time and making the effort to share these incredible stories with us, both your own personal experiences and the experiences of these other heroes, so that we all can learn and we can all be inspired by you and by your comrades. And we can all live better lives, knowing and understanding that true heroes exist. Thank you, sir.

• 3:11:20Speaker 01

  Thank you, Jaco.

• 3:11:22Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Colonel Reader has left the building. So awesome to be able to speak with him again.

• 3:11:32Jocko Willink?

  And man, those stories are crazy. When you start talking about having 70, 130 millimeter artillery rounds land on your position on a little knoll on a hilltop?

• 3:11:51Jocko Willink?

  Or you start talking about having 10 51 caliber machine guns shooting at you when you're flying in a helicopter? Those are, those are, those are not possible to explain to a human. I don't think you can do it. I don't think there's words to explain.

• 3:12:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, it doesn't seem, and this is me coming from a perspective of not very much understanding and knowing the magnitude of these things, especially, you know, I know what, I know what a 50 caliber handgun

• 3:12:28Speaker 02

  sounds, feels like.

• 3:12:31Speaker 02

  51 times 10, getting shot at you, and those are way bigger than, obviously.

• 3:12:39Speaker 02

  And then, okay, actually, this is a question I did have though, while I'm listening to the stuff. I, I just dismissed it as something I'll never understand. I'll never, I won't comprehend it. I don't know the feeling. I can imagine it, or I, I can try to imagine it. That's it. I'm not going to imagine it. I understand that. But these terms artillery, what is that artillery?

• 3:13:03Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Artillery is a form of what's called indirect fire. And what indirect fire is, so direct fire is I aim a gun at you. I can see you and I shoot at you.

• 3:13:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:13:14Jocko Willink?

  That's direct fire. Indirect fire is I can't, I don't have to be able to see you because it's going to launch at a high angle up and it's going to rain down from the sky.

• 3:13:23Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:13:24Jocko Willink?

  And that's what this is. These 130 millimeter cannons are, you know, Kilometer, two kilometers away, they can be really far away, you can't even see them. And they're just dropping big giant bombs on you from the sky. That's artillery. And it's really horrifying because you don't know where it's coming from.

• 3:13:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:13:45Jocko Willink?

  And there's nothing you can do to stop it. It's, it's, it, it, the round got fired, you know, a few seconds ago.

• 3:13:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:13:52Jocko Willink?

  Maybe like even, even multiple, like 10 seconds ago.

• 3:13:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:13:56Jocko Willink?

  Like that's how long their flight can be. Their flight can be a really long time. So it's just coming and there's nothing you can do about it. Now, if you're in an urban environment, you can get overhead cover, that's cool, that's, you can survive if you have overhead cover, that's great. But if you're in a foxhole, it's just, it's just a matter of luck.

• 3:14:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, and it, because it kind of seems like in that way where it's like a matter of luck even for the guy shooting it, right?

• 3:14:18Jocko Willink?

  Some level of luck for the guy shooting it as well, except for the fact that when I, I want to hit you, I'm not going to fire one, I'm going to fire 70.

• 3:14:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:14:29Jocko Willink?

  And then my chances, right? Because that's exactly what they were doing.

• 3:14:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:14:32Jocko Willink?

  Like, hey, we're going to hit this whole hilltop.

• 3:14:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, and you know how like, oh, you'd talk about mortars and stuff where it's like.

• 3:14:37Jocko Willink?

  And mortars are also usually indirect fire.

• 3:14:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, so it's kind of like, it's bad, okay, okay, so direct fire, right? Let's say, I don't know, someone shoot and they're getting closer or something like that. Or the, uh, let's say you see, oh, I see a guy pointing a gun at me or whatever.

• 3:14:51Jocko Willink?

  You can shoot back.

• 3:14:52Speaker 02

  I can shoot back, I can move, I can take cover, kind of a thing. Uh, we can relocate.

• 3:14:57Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:14:58Speaker 02

  Then let's just go over there, out of the way, kind of a thing. This is my tactical genius coming out right now, I know.

• 3:15:04Jocko Willink?

  Tactical echo.

• 3:15:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, hell yeah. Uh, but, but artillery is kind of like boom, uh, you know, you hear a mortar, whatever, where are you going to go? You could go into the, to the, in the line of fire or whatever. It's like just how you could like avoid it.

• 3:15:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 3:15:18Speaker 02

  You could go right into it as well, it's like you don't even know.

• 3:15:20Jocko Willink?

  Yep, it's just a horrible, horrible, this is what, you know, World War I, when they would just receive these barrages. That's why they got crazy shell shock.

• 3:15:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:15:30Jocko Willink?

  That's why you see those guys that are absolutely horrified. Because they just got used to this extreme level of horror and this level of, it's like, you might think, oh, well, it's just random, there's nothing you can do about it. But it's not even, when you, when you're receiving 70 rounds, it starts to not be so random anymore. They're eventually, the odds are they're going to get me.

• 3:15:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:15:50Jocko Willink?

  That's what's going to happen.

• 3:15:52Speaker 02

  So then what is ordinance then? Cause I, you know, you hear like artillery, you're old, heavy artillery or the

• 3:15:59Jocko Willink?

  Just ordinance is just the rounds.

• 3:16:01Speaker 02

  Anything.

• 3:16:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:02Speaker 02

  More of a general term.

• 3:16:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, even a bullet for a, for a handgun could be considered an ordinance. But so could the round from a tank or from a howitzer can also be considered or ordinance dropped from an aircraft.

• 3:16:17Speaker 02

  Yeah. Is a tank round? That's like what?

• 3:16:21Jocko Willink?

  Hundred and twenty.

• 3:16:22Speaker 02

  Hundred and twenty. Is that artillery? No.

• 3:16:25Jocko Willink?

  I mean, no, it's not technically. It's a tank round and a lot of times that'll be direct fire.

• 3:16:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what I thought. All right. There you go. Yeah, that's crazy, man. A, a lot of times, even when you talk about it, you know, when you hear, anytime I think of grenades or artillery in this case, or whatever, like you, you know, you imagine like the concussion, right? Cause even shooting a gun is more of a concussion than maybe the average person might think if they haven't been around guns.

• 3:16:53Jocko Willink?

  What's the most scared you've ever been in your whole life?

• 3:16:55Speaker 02

  Scared?

• 3:16:58Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean, I'm sure as a kid I've been scared, but scared, scared.

• 3:17:03Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever think you were gonna die?

• 3:17:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, like in the water. I was at Waimaito one time, like North Shore on Oahu. And it was big. This is in my, the height of my cockiness in the water.

• 3:17:15Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 3:17:16Speaker 02

  And I went out on a day they, I, there was, actually the surf contest wasn't going on in Waimaito, but it was going on at Pipeline, I think.

• 3:17:24Jocko Willink?

  Pipeline, yeah.

• 3:17:25Speaker 02

  And so, but the waves are huge. It was the kind of when the waves hit, like it vibrated the whole beach. And I was like, oh yeah, I'll go out. They had lifeguards, all just, lifeguards just around robin, just saving guys. Yeah, yeah.

• 3:17:37Jocko Willink?

  Were you on a boogie board?

• 3:17:39Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:17:39Jocko Willink?

  Swimming? Body surfing.

• 3:17:41Speaker 02

  So I went out and it, it got ahead of me like for like seconds at a time. I didn't have to get saved, but um, that I was

• 3:17:50Jocko Willink?

  How long did you stay out for?

• 3:17:53Speaker 02

  Like 10 minutes, I'd say.

• 3:17:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so imagine this, imagine all that 10 minutes, how long were you really scared for in that 10 minutes?

• 3:18:01Speaker 02

  Like 2 minutes.

• 3:18:02Jocko Willink?

  2 minutes, okay, now picture that 2 minutes compressed into 5 seconds and then multiply it times 7 hours.

• 3:18:11Jocko Willink?

  Like it's horror, bro.

• 3:18:12Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:18:13Jocko Willink?

  These guys are in horror.

• 3:18:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:18:15Jocko Willink?

  And you just don't know, I mean, and eventually it's like, okay, well, eventually you have to have the attitude of, well, if it hits, it hits.

• 3:18:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:18:23Jocko Willink?

  Otherwise, I'm gonna keep running around with my radio on John Duffy style and just keep calling for fire.

• 3:18:28Speaker 02

  Or you go like, you know how your mind kind of goes in 2 directions where it either gets used to it or it gets like overwhelmed? Yeah, like, yeah, your mind gets overcome, yeah, so like you go nuts, you go crazy kind of thing. Holy cow.

• 3:18:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and then, and then here's something I can't really relate to, but flying in a helicopter while there's 51 caliber machine guns trying to shoot you out of the sky.

• 3:18:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:18:53Jocko Willink?

  And that's like, and you don't even know where they are until they're shooting at you. That's how you get them, is they start shooting, you see their tracers, you cross your fingers that they don't, the tracers don't hit you, and then you engage them back.

• 3:19:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Silver Star Citation for Captain Reader, for gallantry in action against North Vietnamese Army Forces 14 April 1972, while serving as a helicopter pilot supporting the combat actions of friendly Vietnamese forces in Kontum Province, Republic of Vietnam. The outnumbered ground forces were under heavy artillery fire, surrounded by anti-aircraft weapons, and under attack by enemy forces. Captain Reader took out a number of lethal guns, all while under intense fire from multiple anti-aircraft positions and small caliber weapons. After rearming and refueling, Captain Reader's team voluntarily returned once again to engage the enemy. In extraordinarily poor conditions of low clouds, haze, smoke, and deepening darkness, his team prevented the friendly force from being overrun. Captain Reader's actions contributed

• 3:19:55Jocko Willink?

  to the escape of dozens of friendly forces and 1 American soldier. His extraordinary heroism and selfless sacrifice reflect great credit upon himself. The 361st Aviation Company and the United States Army.

• 3:20:11Jocko Willink?

  And what's wild, that doesn't do this any justice at all. Like you would have to go and set up some sort of live simulation where they're shooting 50 caliber rounds near you to understand what this is. But then it's also interesting that he, you know, he obviously received this award and then goes back and just digs out and finds all this more even information about what he didn't even, he didn't even know how bad it was. He said it. He's like, I didn't know how bad it was. He sees darkness and he's shooting. He doesn't even know that he's killing hundreds of enemy attackers.

• 3:20:48Jocko Willink?

  So just awesome to be able to have a person like that here to share stories with us. And if you haven't listened to Podcast 63 yet, go listen to it. That was, that's what he went through is crazy. It's crazy. I was, I was reading through that book again. He thought he was going on, they told him it was going to be an 11 day march to get from the prison camp he was in, in the south to get to the north. They told him it was 11 days and it'd be, he didn't know if he was going to be able to make 11 days. He's like, I don't know if I'm going to be able to do this. He was wounded. He had dysentery. He was famished. He had infections all over his body. His ankle was like destroyed from his plane crash or from his helicopter crash. So he doesn't think he's going to make it

• 3:21:34Jocko Willink?

  for 11 days. It ends up being four months of walking, forced road march. And all that started just a couple of weeks after this happened. So, all right. Thanks for listening to the podcast. If you want to support the podcast and you want to support yourself,

• 3:21:57Jocko Willink?

  get yourself some Jocko Fuel. By the way, the drinks taste good now.

• 3:22:04Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 3:22:05Speaker 02

  I know what you're saying.

• 3:22:06Jocko Willink?

  We we reformulated all Jaco Discipline Go. We reformulated all the tastes.

• 3:22:13Speaker 02

  But noticeably too. That's the thing too.

• 3:22:16Jocko Willink?

  Extreme.

• 3:22:16Speaker 02

  It's not the kind where, oh, okay, you know, you what? You added some more whatever you guys add.

• 3:22:21Jocko Willink?

  We reformulated the flavors.

• 3:22:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:22:24Jocko Willink?

  It's a whole new deal. And it used to be, hey, you may or may not like this flavor. You may or may not like, you might actually not like this. Now it's like, you're gonna like them all.

• 3:22:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:22:34Jocko Willink?

  They'll all be a nine and then one of them's gonna be an 11. And that'll be your go to.

• 3:22:39Speaker 02

  Yep. And we all know which one that is. And but here's the thing though, too.

• 3:22:42Jocko Willink?

  I like the mango now. I didn't like the mango at all before. That was kinda your jam.

• 3:22:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:22:48Jocko Willink?

  Now, now it's our jam.

• 3:22:50Speaker 02

  It's kinda our jam.

• 3:22:51Jocko Willink?

  The sleeper's gonna be Dax Savage Dakota Meyer. That one is just a whole nother level.

• 3:22:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's still, to me anyway, the ones that actually I didn't taste them all. I tasted the mango and one other one. And they taste to me the same flavor, just harder in that that direction where it's like a good, like more robust.

• 3:23:14Jocko Willink?

  Just to be straight up, just to cut through whatever it is you're trying to say. They're all sweeter now.

• 3:23:18Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 3:23:18Jocko Willink?

  They're they're all they all taste sweeter and sweeter taste better.

• 3:23:22Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 3:23:23Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah. Jaco Fuel dot com. If you want to get some good tasting stuff. Molk, by the way. Molk, don't ever forget about Molk.

• 3:23:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:23:32Jocko Willink?

  Can't forget about the Molk. Cause, cause when you thinking I need that sweetness, that dessert style, what is it called? Uh, safe. It's kinda savory and sweet at the same time.

• 3:23:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:23:45Jocko Willink?

  You're getting them both. Uh, Jaco Fuel dot com.

• 3:23:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:23:48Jocko Willink?

  You can get Molk, you can get Joint Warfare, Super Krill. Just good stuff for you. And and and what I'm gonna stand by?

• 3:23:59Jocko Willink?

  We don't cut any corners. There's so many corners to cut when it comes to making supplements. There's so many corners that you can cut. We're not cutting any of them. On the drinks, we're not cutting any of them on Jocko's. There's no corners been cut. We could easily squeeze another six cents out of this or four cents. No, we're not doing that. We're giving you monk fruit. We're pasteurizing. That's what we're doing. It's across the board. So, there you go. jockofuel.com. Good vitamin shop. You can get the drinks at Wawa. You know, we have a, you know, we have a ready to drink protein coming too. Do you know that?

• 3:24:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:24:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:24:33Speaker 02

  The perfect mix.

• 3:24:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:24:35Speaker 02

  Well, then is there such thing? In my household recently, you know, I got just got back from a trip. Smolke is heavy in the rotation now. You know, you get back on the program, we understand. Well, for those of us who may or may not have fallen off the program for a week or two, whatever. Nonetheless, Smolke is back in. But there is, the point is, there is no perfect mix, though. Can there be a perfect mix?

• 3:25:01Jocko Willink?

  If there is, it's in the RTD, the ready to drink that you can roll in and just get one.

• 3:25:05Speaker 02

  That would make sense. Like the most, uh, what do you say? The most accepted, the most desirable mix.

• 3:25:10Jocko Willink?

  The peak of the bell curve flavor.

• 3:25:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Cause sometimes, you know, you want to add a little bit of something in there. You want to add a banana. You want to add, you know, depends on your mood is what I'm saying. But it'll be accepted widely, we'll say that.

• 3:25:23Jocko Willink?

  We're rolling also HEB down in Texas. We're in there. We're starting to hit the major retailers across the country. Convenience stores across the country. We're starting to get in there. So, appreciate the support there. OriginUSA.com. We're making Jiu Jitsu Gis in America. We're making boots in America. We're making jeans in America. And we're making hunt gear in America. Get, come and check some of that out. Support America.

• 3:25:51Speaker 02

  So I was wearing Delta. Okay, so my last day in Hawaii, we're flying out. We had an afternoon flight. So we go, we go, you know, my kids want to get shaved ice. They want to go shopping, but I'm wearing the, you know. So I'm wearing Delta 68 jean. You know how they're like, they look real nice. And you know, you usually know why you wear surf shorts or something like this, right? But I'm wearing the like the jeans and like shoes because I'm going to the airport, you know? It's a whole thing. So my brother's mother-in-law and the cousin, um, his wife's cousin was were, we ran into them at the mall. They're like, oh, what are you all dressed up?

• 3:26:30Speaker 02

  All I had was a Delta sixty.

• 3:26:32Jocko Willink?

  That's the way my, my kids aren't so much anymore, but if my kids saw me wearing jeans, they would be like, oh, daddy, why are you so dressed up? Because they've never seen me in anything else but surf shorts.

• 3:26:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:26:43Jocko Willink?

  Flip flops, T-shirt, uh, Origin USA. Check it out. OriginUSA.com. Don't forget about any of that. Get yourself some Jaco store.com stuff too. Rash guard. What else you got on there?

• 3:26:54Speaker 02

  Got a lot of stuff. Discipline equals freedom. We've got three versions now. Got an updated versions called standard issue.

• 3:27:02Jocko Willink?

  A standard ish.

• 3:27:03Speaker 02

  Standard issue, yeah. It's like, this is the kind, this is the one.

• 3:27:06Jocko Willink?

  Wait, the standard issue is new?

• 3:27:08Speaker 02

  Is new. Yeah. And you see, the concept is new. I will, will, will put it this way. The concept, I feel like should have always been there and we never had it. That's what I felt. I felt like it was lacking. So it's a standard issue.

• 3:27:20Jocko Willink?

  I don't even think I've seen this one yet.

• 3:27:22Speaker 02

  Nope, brand new.

• 3:27:23Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:27:24Speaker 02

  So there's some, some color schemes in there you may or may not recognize.

• 3:27:28Jocko Willink?

  Hey, in the industry, don't they say colorways?

• 3:27:34Speaker 02

  That sounds familiar. So you got some colorways.

• 3:27:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, don't do it, bro. Don't, don't do it to me. Don't do it to me. I shouldn't have brought it up. Not even be throwing it out there.

• 3:27:44Speaker 02

  I'm gonna, I gotta sell more officials sometime. Oh, but you might recognize them. So whichever one, uh, resonates with you, that's the one you're gonna want to get. If, if not, you know, multiple, whatever. Either, either way, we got some, uh, shirts, hats, hoodies. They say good, you know, that you just want to represent. If you want to represent the path.

• 3:28:02Jocko Willink?

  Do you have a hat, a, a hat that says good?

• 3:28:05Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:28:05Jocko Willink?

  That might be a thing to get going.

• 3:28:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, noted. Uh, we also got the shirt locker, the subscription, the one shirt every month. It's, these are different, little bit different designs, a little bit different. People like these designs. Even people who don't know about it, they ask, in my experience, people have asked, where'd you get that shirt?

• 3:28:26Speaker 02

  For real, I'm not joking. But yeah, you get a new design every month. Uh, that one's a good one. So check that out too, if you like that one.

• 3:28:31Jocko Willink?

  All right. Awesome. Don't forget about the underground, JacoUnderground.com.

• 3:28:36Jocko Willink?

  We owe some of those right now.

• 3:28:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:28:38Jocko Willink?

  We owe some jockunderground.com. That means we're gonna dig through, answer your questions. We got a bunch of questions that if you're on jockunderground.com, you can submit the questions. We answer them. So we'll get those out to you soon. We've got a YouTube channel. I'm the assistant director, Echo.

• 3:28:56Speaker 02

  Just post them, I guess.

• 3:28:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. He hits upload. Is that what it's called?

• 3:29:03Jocko Willink?

  Got a bunch of books. Hey, books here. Through the Valley by William Reader. Extraordinary Valor by William Reader. You heard me cover one of them today. You heard me cover the other one in the past. These are just unbelievable books. Only Cry for the Living by Holly McKay. Check that out. Final Spin. You might want to get that book soon before the movie comes out. So you kinda can get that vibe on it, which is cool.

• 3:29:31Jocko Willink?

  I've written a bunch of other books on leadership. Check them out. Speaking of leadership, echelonfront.com. If you need help inside your organization, go to echelonfront.com. We solve problems through leadership. We also have an online training academy. Extremeownership.com. You got a question for me? Get, go on to extremeownership.com. You can ask me that question. If you want to help service members, active and retired, their families, Gold Star families. Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a, an awesome charity organization.

• 3:30:03Jocko Willink?

  Provides veterans with help that they need. Go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org if you want to help out. Also, you got HeroesAndHorses.org. Taking veterans out into the field. Micah, he's up there taking veterans out into the field, getting their, getting their brain-body reset. That's what he's got going on and it's awesome. And if you want to follow Colonel Reader, he's on Facebook, @WilliamReaderJr.

• 3:30:32Jocko Willink?

  And then also on the Twitter, on the Grant and on Facebook, Echo is at Echo Charles. I am at Jocka Willink. Of course, be advised.

• 3:30:42Jocko Willink?

  The algorithm's there and it's looking to grab you. Once again, thanks to Colonel William Reader, such an amazing human being, such an amazing man, such an incredible attitude. And thanks, of course, to the brave Major John Duffy, Major Le Van May, and the rest of our allies, our brave allies in the 11th Airborne Battalion who fought so valiantly.

• 3:31:06Jocko Willink?

  And to all the veterans of that war in Vietnam who did their best to protect freedom in the world. And thanks to all the military personnel around the world right now, fighting to do the same.

• 3:31:17Jocko Willink?

  And the same goes to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, all first responders. Thanks for what you do to keep us safe here at home. And everyone else, I want to leave you with part of Colonel William Reader's witness statement concerning John Duffy's heroic behavior on Charlie Hill. He says, quote, "By the time our fire team of Cobra gunships returned to Charlie, the situation had deteriorated dramatically. When we arrived, it was dusk. Major Duffy had directed other attack helicopters in our absence and employed A1 Skyraiders and jet fighters around the fire base as

• 3:32:01Jocko Willink?

  well. Nonetheless, the enemy continued their attack and the situation for Major Duffy and his airborne battalion was deteriorating. The South Vietnamese defenders were being killed and their positions being overrun. Major Duffy told us he was wounded but would continue to work us. His focus on the radio was entirely on doing what he could for his South Vietnamese comrades. At times, while he had his microphone keyed, directing us, I could hear him giving orders to his counterparts who were fighting for their lives. I could also hear him dealing with casualties that were occurring all around him. I never heard

• 3:32:44Jocko Willink?

  him express any concern for himself. He would not ask for his own extraction. He seemed committed to fighting to the death with his battalion."

• 3:32:57Jocko Willink?

  As the situation deteriorated further, he began asking for us to place our fire within three meters of his position. I have never seen greater bravery displayed in combat. End quote. So there you go. There's the standard. Now go live better. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco, out.