#317 Johnnie Clark - Surviving One of the Deadliest Jobs During the Vietnam War

Johnnie Clark is an American author and Vietnam Veteran, best known for his 1984 Vietnam War memoir Guns Up!. Many of his works fall into the genre of non-fiction military and contain a tough, no nonsense portrayal of combat, courage, and camaraderie. Mr. Clark joined the Marine Corps at 17 years of age after graduating from St. Petersburg High School. He served as a machine gunner with the famed 5th Marine Regiment during the Tet Offensive in Vietnam. He was wounded 3 times, mortar round, grenade, and gunshot. During his rehabilitation from gunshot wounds in Okinawa, Mr. Clark began training in Martial Arts as part of his rehab program. In 2015 Mr. Clark returned from Korea after testing for his 8th Dan in Tae Kwon Do. He was also promoted to 9th Dan in the Ji Do Kwan. Grandmaster Clark owns and operates Johnnie Clark Tae Kwon Do and Judo school in St. Petersburg and has been inducted into the U. S. A. Martial Arts Hall of Fame. Mr. Clark’s books, Guns Up! and Semper Fidelis, are recommended reading by Lt. Col. Madonna, former MCG, to all newly commissioned officers at The Basic School. His books have been required reading in many colleges and high schools around the country as well as the Commandant’s List of suggested reading for all Marines. Many commanders have distributed Mr. Clark’s books to our troops now fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq. He is the recipient of the U. S. Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Association Brigadier General Robert L. Denig Memorial Distinguished Service Award for writing. Mr. Clark has been awarded America’s 3rd highest medal for bravery and gallantry in combat, The Silver Star, 3 Purple Hearts, Vietnam’s highest Medal of Honor, The Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Palm, The Civil Action Combat Medal, The Marine Combat Ribbon among other decorations. Mr. Clark currently resides in St. Petersburg, Florida with his wife, Nancy, and dog, Gunner. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: Go right now to https://sundaysfordogs.com/SRS50 and get 50% off your first order. Or, you can use code SRS50 at checkout. Ready to upgrade your eyewear? Check them out at https://roka.com and use code SRS for 20% off sitewide. Our listeners get the Harry’s Plus Trial Set for only $10 at https://www. Harrys.com/SRS #Harryspod New customers get 15% off Ultra Pouches with code SRS at https://takeultra.com! #UltraPouches #ad Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at https://shopify.com/srs Johnnie Clark Links: FB - https://www.facebook.com/authorjohnnieclark IG - https://www.instagram.com/johnniemclark Website - https://johnnieclark.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:05Shawn Ryan?

  Johnnie Clark, welcome to the show.

• 1:08Speaker 02

  Thank you, Sean. I'm really excited about it. I, it's a great honor.

• 1:14Shawn Ryan?

  It's my honor. Thank you for being here. You know, I say this to all you guys, but you know, the Vietnam generation is what motivated me to join the military and do what I did. And I was just infatuated with you guys from a very young age. And really into G.I. Joes, as we'll get into later.

• 1:37Speaker 02

  I got a story about G.I.

• 1:38Shawn Ryan?

  I've heard, I've heard. And, but, but yeah, it's truly an honor for you to be here. And I was a machine gunner too for a little while.

• 1:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:48Shawn Ryan?

  That's cool, man.

• 1:48Speaker 02

  What, what kind? What was your, your machine gun? What was it?

• 1:52Shawn Ryan?

  Well, we started with the M60, and then it went into the, then they converted it to what the, I think they call it.

• 1:59Speaker 02

  The Bravo Mark 48.

• 2:01Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, the 240, twin 240s on top of a Humvee are fucking amazing.

• 2:06Speaker 02

  Couldn't get any Humvee before I was.

• 2:11Shawn Ryan?

  But uh, but yeah, it is, it's an honor to have you sitting here. Thank you.

• 2:16Speaker 02

  Thanks. This is really fun for my whole family. Cause my, my son, my son's a lieutenant with the fire department at Sun Coast, Indian Rocks, out on Indian Rocks and uh, uh, the whole fire department are huge fans.

• 2:33Shawn Ryan?

  Really?

• 2:33Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. Yeah. They found out, uh, Sean goes in, he goes, my dad's going to be on this podcast, you know, and he said, uh, have you guys ever heard of Sean Ryan podcast? And they all went crazy. What? And then they yelled, who the hell is your dad?

• 2:50Shawn Ryan?

  We'll have to load him up with some stuff to take back to the department.

• 2:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:54Shawn Ryan?

  Um, well, let me give you an introduction here.

• 2:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:00Shawn Ryan?

  Johnnie Clark, you joined the Marine Corps at 17 years old, straight out of high school in St. Petersburg, Florida, arrived in Vietnam at 18, assigned as a machine gunner to the fifth Marine regiment in the middle of the battle for Hugh City. You were wounded three times in combat, a mortar, a grenade and a gunshot, and were awarded the Silver Star, three Purple Hearts and the Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry with Palm. You have written nine books, an off Broadway play, Guns Up and Gunner's Glory are suggested reading at the Marine Corps School of Infantry and Guns Up sits on the command, on the commandant's

• 3:40Shawn Ryan?

  reading list, recommended to every newly commissioned officer at the basic school. Wow. You recovered from your wounds in Okinawa where you began martial arts as physical therapy and spent more than 50 years at it. You are now an eighth dan grandmaster of Taekwondo, a member of the USA Martial Arts Hall of Fame, and you have taught hand-to-hand combat seminars at West Point and the Naval Academy in Annapolis. Johnny, welcome home, brother.

• 4:11Speaker 02

  Thanks, buddy. Thanks.

• 4:15Shawn Ryan?

  Okay, so before we get too crazy and do your life story here, I have a Patreon account. It's a subscription account that's turned into quite the community and they're the they're the reason that I get the opportunity to sit down here with you today. And so they get the opportunity to ask every single guest a question. And this is from a woman named Amber. First off, thank you for your service. What prompted you to write the memoir of your military experience? And can you give any advice to a daughter wanting to preserve with her father's story and/or encourage him to write it?

• 4:54Speaker 02

  I wrote Guns Up out of anger. You know, when I came home from NOM, I was, I mean, my, my first, I, I had gotten healthy in Okinawa, rehab there, been training in martial arts. I thought I was going back to NOM, but anyway, I came home and they threw tomatoes at us. El Toro, I got off in El Toro and they, I was greeted with guys throwing tomatoes and eggs at us. And I was pushing a young guy off, off the plane who, he probably wasn't going to live. A lot of these guys were pretty shot up. I'd been, I'd had time to get healthy, so I was healthy, but some of these boys were a mess.

• 5:36Speaker 02

  And, and they had a red carpet and they were playing the Marine Corps hem for us. And it was, it was fun until we got down the carpet and there, it was at El Toro and there was a big chain link fence and on the other side of the fence protesters were throwing tomatoes and eggs and stuff at us. And that was my greeting home. And they had a bunch of MPs there, we thought to protect us, but it was to keep us from getting to these guys. And so they wouldn't let us get to them because I tried. Then I went into town and I was in town, my first, right away, I got, I went to a bar, like most Marines, me and a kid from California. And there was a sign on the bar that said, no Marines or dogs allowed in the bar.

• 6:21Speaker 02

  Are you serious? I'm dead serious and I, I got angrier and I, you know, I'd already been diagnosed with severe combat fatigue. I take that back, that came, they diagnosed me later, but I was, you know, I was a little antsy and an angry guy because of the way we were being treated. But then we went into, this guy from California says, hey, let's go to my hometown. I, you know, I live down the road here. We'll catch a Greyhound bus. They won't be like LA, you know, we'll get out of here. So I said, let's go. We go to the Greyhound bus station and I'm standing there with my sea bag and, and our dress greens, you know, I've been on American soil for about 11 hours or something like that.

• 7:04Speaker 02

  And these two guys come up, they had on fatigues, you know, army fatigues, they rainbow patches, I don't know what they had all over them, but peace signs and they made a couple of comments and I think, one of them spit on my shoes and anyway, I decked this guy. Well, there were some cops there arresting an old wino at the bus station and they dropped the wino. I'm home, I'm just home just a few hours and I'm on my way to jail. And got me cuffed, they drive down the street and I, I see him looking in the rearview mirror and go, fifth Marines huh? Well, I knew right away I was safe because only another Marine would know that pogie rope, you know? And said, yeah, and they say, yeah, we were in two five. So I, then I knew I was safe.

• 7:48Speaker 02

  They brought me to a bus station, got my sea bag out of the trunk, took the cuffs off me, put me on a bus back to El Toro and I never got, I never got to see anything. That was my, that was my welcome home. So then I, yeah, that was my welcome home. But I, it got worse and worse as I tried to go to college and down the line, I became a mailman and I got injured on the job and I, I lost my job as a mailman with a back injury. That came out of Vietnam. I had to jump out of a chopper, the pilot got killed and. Anyway, uh, so I, I lost my job as a mailman and my job at teaching martial arts at the University of South Florida.

• 8:30Speaker 02

  So my wife said, hey, you can, you gotta make a living another way here. And I said, oh, yeah, I think you're right. So I took this creative writing course at St. Pete College and I kept taking the same course over and over again, cause they would critique 10 pages a week. So I, uh, it was non-credit course, you know, at night. I took this course like, you know, 15 times to get the book published.

• 8:53Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  And it, cause they critique my whole book. But that's how I wrote a book and I'll tell you the rest of that story later. We can talk about other stuff. But I wrote that book out of anger, cause it came from people saying, you need to tell what the Marines were really doing and, um, you know, they weren't killing women and kids and, you know, and that's what they were, the American people really believed that. And, uh, so I, I, I wrote it out of anger and, uh, but God took that and turned it completely around. But I learned, I learned that if you wanted to write something, the, the most important thing I got out of all those creative writing courses was write like you talk. Because I, I barely got out of high school.

• 9:39Speaker 02

  I had like, you know, a D minus average. They only, they only kept me, they kept me in a couple of classes because I was, I was on a really good football team and I was no superstar, but they needed me. So, so they didn't want to flood me. So I got like a D minus in English and I took the easiest math you could take. I, I took, um, what was it? Math, uh, business math. It was the easiest you could take. I mean, even the word algebra scared me. So I, I stayed away from anything like that. And I had a, I had an old football coach and, uh, he had played for the Chicago Bears and he, he picked me up and he shook me and he said,

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Clark, if we didn't need you on this team, I'd fail you, but I'm giving you a D minus.

• 10:28Speaker 02

  So I was least likely to ever write anything, truly. And, uh, but I had a, I had a real purpose for writing Guns Up. And I, I mean, I, I had an inspiration and I had a story to tell. And I, I really wanted to, I wanted to honor God, you know, that was a big, big deal to me. And, but I wanted to honor the guys I served with because they were, they were just outstanding. But if you were going to try to write anything, write like you talk. Take some creative writing courses, you're going to learn a lot. But writing today and getting published, uh, everything's different. The whole publishing world's so different, you know, I, it's, my story is kind of a miracle story.

• 11:13Speaker 02

  But, um, I, I don't know, writing today, write it for yourself and write it because you love it.

• 11:19Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 11:19Speaker 02

  Don't write it trying to be, write a bestseller or trying to make money off it.

• 11:24Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  If you love writing, write it because you love writing and, and you want to write it for family. Cause that's how I wrote Guns Up, really. I, I only wrote it for my kids. I thought they would at least know the truth.

• 11:35Shawn Ryan?

  I'm starting to hear a lot of, lot of people, kids, not kids, they're not kids anymore. A lot of the offspring from the Vietnam generation is, uh, they, they, they want their parents' stories. And, uh, it's interesting, this Patreon question just came in because I literally just interviewed a woman, uh, here for a, a job and she had watched all the Vietnam interviews I had done. And her dad is, uh, a Vietnam vet who apparently had a really rough go and, and, uh, is trying to find some healing, has overcome cancer and she's worried she wants, she wants his memoir before,

• 12:20Shawn Ryan?

  before he passes and, um,

• 12:23Speaker 02

  Write it. Write it, not thinking of getting published. Write it for your family and, and if you wrote, write it and rewrite it. And eventually if you want to get it published now, I mean, you can self-publish on Amazon now.

• 12:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 12:37Speaker 02

  Anybody can.

• 12:39Shawn Ryan?

  Well, let's get into your story. You ready?

• 12:42Speaker 02

  Okay, yeah, it's uh.

• 12:44Shawn Ryan?

  Actually, you get a gift too.

• 12:45Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 12:46Shawn Ryan?

  There you go. Almost forgot.

• 12:49Speaker 02

  Oh, gummies?

• 12:50Shawn Ryan?

  Gummy, but Lepidium's League Gummy Bears, legal in all 50 states. Made in the USA up in Michigan, it's just candy. It's just candy. We'll load your uh, son's fire department up with those too.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  Love them. Hey, I've got uh, I got a gift for you.

• 13:05Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, I love gifts.

• 13:08Speaker 02

  I've seen some of the people, the gifts people have get, I watched Jeremiah Johnson. My wife and I watched it and uh, when he gave you those gifts, the, the papyrus, you know, and that. She said, Johnny, don't even go. You got nothing to give him. So I, I had a Bible, my little Guinea Bible had a shrapnel hole in it that saved my life. And uh, I said, I think maybe if I give Sean that, it'll be impressive enough. And my, my daughter heard this. Dad, if you give that away, I will slit your throat.

• 13:45Speaker 02

  Daughter of a non-vet, but, so I brought something a little less than a Bible with shrapnel hole in it.

• 13:54Shawn Ryan?

  Oh man.

• 13:55Speaker 02

  Sweatshirt.

• 13:57Shawn Ryan?

  I love it.

• 13:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, guns up. And uh, and this one. There, there's a story behind this one. Uh. Years after uh, I'd been home for many years. And one of the corpsmen that worked on me at one time or another, uh, his name was Doc Turley. Uh, he, he, he's dead now, died of Agent Orange. But uh, he showed up at my door. Thirty years after the war. I, I didn't even know who it was, you know, you don't recognize each other after all that. Shows up at my door and he pulls out this. And he goes uh.

• 14:35Speaker 02

  Why waltz when you can rock and roll?

• 14:37Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man, that's awesome.

• 14:39Speaker 02

  So.

• 14:41Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 14:45Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit, that's amazing.

• 14:47Speaker 02

  Some of those made because all machine gunners get it.

• 14:51Shawn Ryan?

  I love that, man. That's awesome.

• 14:54Speaker 02

  And a couple of books.

• 14:57Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 14:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 14:58Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 15:00Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Johnny. So where did you grow up?

• 15:02Speaker 02

  Let's do.

• 15:05Speaker 02

  What do we want to talk about first?

• 15:06Shawn Ryan?

  Where did you grow up?

• 15:08Speaker 02

  Oh, I'm sorry. I grew up in South Charleston, West Virginia. I had a, I lived in poverty. My, my mom was married before she met my dad. And her first husband, she had two kids with the first husband. And her first husband was hit three times and killed in the Battle of the Bulge. And so then she married my dad. And my dad was destroyed in a car wreck and was blind and crippled for the last seven years of his life. And he was real young. And so she had, she had three kids with my dad, but one baby died.

• 15:51Speaker 02

  So anyway, my mom couldn't, she couldn't support us. My dad was totally crippled and blind and, you know, we lived on 70 bucks a month. We lived in a garage for a long time. And actually first, when I was a baby, it was a log cabin out in West Virginia Hills, out in Lincoln County. But then we, we lived in a garage in South Charleston, one car garage. And we had a, had a bedroom that was just curtains for my dad. Cause he was, he was in a body cast for a whole year after this wreck. And it's a pretty awful sad story, but.

• 16:29Speaker 02

  But I, as a kid, you know, you know, you deal with this stuff. So I, I would bring my, my little friends in. I was like about six years old. So I'd bring my buddies in to see my dad, uh, cause he looked like the mummy. Cause he's in a body cast the whole way. And so we'd go in and I'd charge him like a nickel to come in and see the mummy. So, so I'd bring kids in to see my dad, but he finally, he, you know, finally a year after that, he, they, he got out of the body cast, but he lost his memory for a year. He didn't, he didn't know me or my sister. He didn't know the other kids. He didn't know my mom. But he finally got, got his memory back and, uh,

• 17:10Shawn Ryan?

  How long did that take?

• 17:12Speaker 02

  He lived for about seven years and, uh, so I, he died when I was about 10. But in the meantime, my mom had to give up the kids. I was the only one she kept cause I was a baby. So, um, she gave my brother and sister from her first husband, Jimmy and Judy, gave, gave them to grandparents in Wilmore, Kentucky. So they grew up there and she gave my sister to grandparents out in Lincoln County, West Virginia, out on McCullin Farm. It was between the Hatfields and McCoys. And, uh, her name was Evelyn, Evelyn Jane. Well, Evelyn, um, she grew up between the Hatfields and McCoys. She's actually married to a McCoy now. She married Kirby McCoy.

• 17:56Speaker 02

  So, so, uh, that Hatfields and McCoy thing was its own war, buddy. They, they're serious business. So, uh, but yeah, I grew up, uh, then we moved out of that garage. We moved into a Quonset hut, which is kind of funny. Very military, it was an old, it was an old, uh, World War II Quonset hut that this, uh, old lady named Alice White, she had bought it and turned it into like a little house and rented it and, uh, gave, uh, gave us a place to live. So I lived in that and then, uh, my dad died. Then we moved to St. Pete, Florida. When I was 10, just me and mom and, uh, the rest, I, the rest, last 65 years I've lived in St. Pete.

• 18:37Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 18:41Shawn Ryan?

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• 19:23Shawn Ryan?

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• 20:05Shawn Ryan?

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• 20:14Shawn Ryan?

  Did you keep in touch with any of your brothers and sisters?

• 20:17Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, we're still close. Well, my sister Judy died, and we had a baby died. But my sister Evelyn and my brother Jimmy still lives in, he lives in Lexington, and my sister lives in Florence, Alabama. But yeah, we're still close.

• 20:36Shawn Ryan?

  How'd you guys reconnect?

• 20:38Speaker 02

  Well, they would send me every summer. Mom would send me to stay with Jimmy and Judy in Kentucky. Or else she'd send me out to the hills of Lincoln County to stay on the farm with Evelyn. So, we stayed close growing up. So, you know, like, every summer I'd spend a month or two in Willmore, a month and out in the hills. They would come to see mom when they could. And when they got old enough to drive, they would come in and come to see mom. And I'd see them then. Sheesh. Yeah, it was a tough upbringing. I mean, I literally got my food out of old Army,

• 21:19Speaker 02

  they were like C ration cans, you know, we had these big green government cans from World War II that had Spam and, you know, various foods. And that's Salvation Army would bring us a bunch of that kind of food. And that's kind of kept us going. Wow. Yeah. It was poverty, but, you know, I was such a happy kid. It can bother me a bit. I was having fun. What kind of stuff were you into as a kid? I wanted to be a Marine since I was five years old. So, I put together a group

• 21:57Speaker 02

  of kids and I was the leader. And we were the Marines. And we had a place I named Marine Hill. And we had wars with other kids, you know, BB gun wars, you know, this is back when you got away with that kind of crap. You know, we'd wear coal miner helmets and goggles. And we'd have a war with the Blackwell Street gang. And we were the Brown Street gang. And we'd build forts. They'd drive by. And I invented a machine gun. It was a, when kids used to wear the old little red handkerchiefs, you know, cowboy handkerchief

• 22:37Speaker 02

  things. So, I would, you'd fill it full of rocks. And you would hold, you'd hold all four corners, but you'd hold the fourth corner just between there. And you'd...

• 22:50Speaker 02

  And you'd let go and it would spray rocks. You could take out three or four kids. So, so that we invented a machine gun. That was my, my machine gun. But the enemy, you know, stole my design and pretty soon they were using it on us. And, uh, built giant slingshots. We, I'd build a giant slingshot and they'd ride by on their bikes. They were buzz bombers, you know, and they'd ride by on their bikes and throw rocks at us or hit us with machine guns. And, uh, we'd knock them off their bikes with, with this giant slingshot.

• 23:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. Can't do that today. But, uh,

• 23:28Shawn Ryan?

  Well, maybe not in most places. Around here you probably can't.

• 23:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know, Tennessee, you guys.

• 23:34Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What, what, so what, uh, what caught your interest at five years old in the Marine Corps?

• 23:42Speaker 02

  Pardon?

• 23:42Shawn Ryan?

  What caught your interest at five years old?

• 23:44Speaker 02

  Well, my uncle, you know, I, like I said, uh, there wasn't too much beautiful in, uh, in my life. We, I didn't have much. Uh, all my toys came from Salvation Army or somebody, you know, or, or gifts from this group or that group. And, uh, so I had one uncle, I had, I had a few uncles, but I had one who was stood out and he was a Marine. He had, uh, joined the Marine Corps and kind of got out of the West Virginia poverty, you know? And, uh, you know, one of those, one of those no neck guys, you know, stout, could knock people out with head butts, you know, tough, tough Marine. Uh, and I just idolized him. You know, seeing somebody in that Marine Corps uniform, I, and he was a tough guy.

• 24:29Speaker 02

  Well, they all were. All my uncles were pretty tough guys. Uh, but the Marines stood out. And, uh, so he'd come home, you know, get liberty and come home and play with me, do pushups with me and my buddies on his back. And, you know, he just, I just looked up to him and that was the beginning of it. But, you know, remember when I was a little kid, uh, the movies were, uh, Sands of Iwo Jima, you know, the Marines were, they were seen as the best. And, uh, you know, I, all my life, I, I wanted to, I wanted to be in the Marines. I wanted to be a Marine. My mom knew it too. Uh, when I, you know, when I was, I joined when I was seventeen, I got an early entry. And uh, boy, when mom found out about that, she, she was gonna let me

• 25:13Speaker 02

  join anything but the Marines, you know. She, she said, no, you'll be the first one killed, you're not going. And uh, yeah, my poor mom, six hearts, she had six hearts, you know, three from her first husband. So she, she went through that, the guys coming up to the door with the telegram, you know, and they don't tell you how the person is, it's wounded in action, condition unknown. And uh, she, uh, it was rough for her.

• 25:40Shawn Ryan?

  How long had the Vietnam War been going on when you were, decided to join?

• 25:45Speaker 02

  I, I joined in sixty-seven. And uh, it had been going on, I mean, you know, we had guys over there in the fifties. So uh, but um, sixty-seven, sixty-eight, you know, that, that was, it got really hot.

• 25:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm just rewinding a little bit, I've been losing your dad at ten years old.

• 26:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, it was tough, but there's a story, a good story out of that. My dad wasn't a Christian. And um, when, when he was, when he was blinded and crippled, and he finally got his memory back a year, you know, a year being in the ozone, uh, he, he was led to Christ by my grandpa and others. And my dad became a strong Christian. So that's seven years that he lived. He lived seven years as a man of God. And because of that, you know, I came to Christ. And uh, and my whole family. So my, my dad played a role in saving the whole family.

• 26:53Speaker 02

  So, and that might, I don't think that would have happened if he hadn't been blind because he was a hell raiser. And I don't think that would have happened. So it took that horrible tragedy to bring my dad to the Lord. And you know what scripture says? Be better to pluck out your eyes than to miss out on heaven. And in my dad's case, that was the case. I'll be damned. Man, thank you for sharing that. Thank you for sharing that. Let's move into enlisting.

• 27:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I joined at seventeen and I had some bad omens right away. I was going in the buddy buddy system, you know, and I had a couple of buddies from the high school football team were going to go in with me. And had three of them. I signed up, going to show up down at the recruiters, get on the Greyhound bus to Jacksonville, you know, and get inducted and do all that. And I, nobody showed up. You were the only one? My buddies disappeared. So, so I went by myself. But it's funny, those three guys,

• 28:08Speaker 02

  well, one, one went in the Navy and one ended up going in the Army and becoming an Army Ranger. And he went to NOM a year later after. And then the other one went in and he was in 101st. And he went, he stayed in, he went all the way from private to Lieutenant Colonel. Wow. Yeah. So they didn't join with me, but and they both went, none of them went in the Marine Corps. They went in the Army. So. Right on. So how was it?

• 28:44Speaker 02

  Get to Jacksonville. Yeah. And, uh, uh, I've said my goodbyes, you know, got, got a couple of little cheerleaders waving goodbye to me. You know, it was an important moment in a guy's life. And, uh, uh, so at Jacksonville, they tell me, uh, they, they four F me. Said, you, you've got a hernia. And I said, I don't have a hernia. And yeah, you know, this is your out, kid. You don't want to go to Vietnam right now. And I, you know, these Navy doctors are telling me this. And I, I said, no, no, I want to go. That's why I'm here. I want to go. And they said, uh, now this is your out. Don't be stupid, kid.

• 29:24Speaker 02

  And, uh, it said, you got a hernia. You can't go. Well, I started, I said, no way. And I started doing, uh, I was young and strong. And I started doing one arm pushups and I'm doing backflips. And I'm saying, I can do anything. I said, I'm perfectly healthy. And, uh, a couple, one of the guys, one of my buddies from NOM was there that day. His name was Pat McCrery. He saw me doing all this. He, he's a witness to this insanity. He said, we thought you were crazy, man.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  So, so he said, he saw all that because he, so he can verify that this actually happened. But I did everything to make sure they'd let me in. Well, I'm there and we're in this hotel Floridian or something like that. I think of what it was called. And, uh, first night there, you know, before we're going to go to Paris Island, I go up the stairs and, uh, some maniac comes in the lobby. And I'm going up the stairs and there's, there's where you sign in and, uh,

• 30:24Speaker 02

  so this guy starts opening fire in, in, in the lobby of the hotel. He's got a 45 cal and he's blasting away and he's shooting the steps under my feet as I'm going up the stairs. Holy shit. Whoa, I'm not even there yet. They're trying to kill me. And, uh, I, I never did find out what, what that was about. But, uh, that guy took off and a couple of seconds later, these MPs come running in. And I, I never heard what that story was about, but it's a true story. Never. Never heard. But that was, that was my welcome to the Marine Corps. Damn. Yeah. And then, uh, in Paris Island, boy, that was, you know, that was insane.

• 31:05Speaker 02

  I, I was, I was begging to get to NOM just to get out of Paris Island. I mean, they got my attention. Yeah. I saw some crazy stuff there. I saw him PT a guy. Uh, he was, he, uh, he was a fat body. You know that you fat body to the end of the line. Anyway, they, they were gonna drive him out of the Marine Corps. I don't think the Marine Corps likes fat bodies. Oh, boy. They, you either lose the weight. It's more of a Navy thing. They're, they, they, they put this guy, they made him do leg lifts until he got a hernia and he's screaming in agony. And I'm thinking, this is, this is serious. This is awful. This guy's

• 31:44Speaker 02

  in agony. They cussed him out of, out of our barracks, we, the old World War I barracks, the old wood barracks on Paras Island, we're in the upstairs. We were all in attention as they are watching this, as, as the DI's cursed him. They took him out on a stretcher. The, the Navy guys came in and put him on a stretcher. They're taking him out. They cursed him all the way to the ambulance. They, "We told you we'd drive you out of our Marine Corps." Damn. A serious, and then I saw another guy who lost it and he went up the water tower at Paras Island. Well, we didn't know, I mean, I never saw this, but all of a sudden, we're being marched out to the water tower. And, and we're not allowed to look around. If you even

• 32:28Speaker 02

  looked, I, I looked one time and I, I don't cuss anymore, but it was IF in the area. If you were caught IF in the area, you got hit. And they, this DI caught me looking like that because there was, we saw girls and we had, and he came up, he kicked the, my legs out from memory. That was, that was still black and blue when I got the NOM. He kicked me so hard. I thought he broke my leg. Well, you didn't do that. You know, you looked straight at the guy's head in front of you. So I didn't know where I was going, but now I know I'm marching on grass. Pretty soon, they tell us we can look up. And here's all, the whole battalion is around the water tower. And here's this guy, this poor sap is up on the

• 33:13Speaker 02

  water tower screaming, "If, if you don't let me out of the Marine Corps, I'm gonna jump." Holy shit. And these DI's now, they're, you know, they've all got their platoons out there. They go, "All right, we're ready now. I didn't, I didn't bring all these Marines down here to watch nothing. Jump." Holy shit.

• 33:38Speaker 02

  Of course, he came down and he said, if you come down from there and don't jump, we're gonna beat the hell out of you. Well, he, he finally came down. He didn't jump and they beat the crap out of that guy. I know, they just beat the tar out of that guy.

• 33:52Shawn Ryan?

  That probably wouldn't happen today.

• 33:53Speaker 02

  Oh, no, it wouldn't happen today, man.

• 33:56Shawn Ryan?

  They got little chits now, I think they should raise up.

• 33:59Speaker 02

  I, I even heard that the obstacle course, that was, I heard the obstacle course, uh, you know, that we had to do, uh, it's now for display only.

• 34:10Shawn Ryan?

  What?

• 34:11Speaker 02

  That's what I was told by, by A gunner Shawn. Now, talk about Chan, remarkable guy. Uh, he, he went back to PI and he said, yeah, said the obstacle course is for, for display only.

• 34:24Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  And it, and he was told, it makes some people mad with this one, but he was told that, uh, you know, a lot of the women Marines, they couldn't do that obstacle course and

• 34:38Speaker 02

  they got rid of it. I don't know if it's true.

• 34:45Shawn Ryan?

  Wouldn't be far out there. Man. So how, so how was the rest of, uh, how was the rest of basic?

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Um, I went to, from there, went to, uh, machine gun school.

• 34:59Shawn Ryan?

  Is that what you wanted to do?

• 35:01Speaker 02

  Uh, no, no, they just, they just put me there, you know, and you had to, you had to shoot all the weapons and I shot really well with the machine gun. So they threw me in machine gun school. Like, I think that's how they figured it out. And, uh, I was too dumb to have it, an MOS doing anything else. So, so they put me, uh, put me in machine gun school and, uh, you know, and then I, you know, I started seeing the recon Marines there, you know, and, and I came up with this brilliant idea, uh, but Chan and I, he was this Chinese, Chan was, uh, with me all the way from PIs from the day we joined, alphabetical Chan and Clark, you know, and we got stuck together all the way through the Marine Corps.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  And, uh, Chan was Chinese-American, been smuggled out of Red China as a baby. Uh, his dad was a doctor, got him out of China. Uh, he was a genius. He, he, and he had a minor in ministry and, uh, I think from the University of Tennessee. And, uh, so Chan was going to be an open heart surgeon. Now you, you hear one guy say that and you think, yeah, me too. But.

• 36:07Speaker 02

  You know, this Chinese guy was, he was a giant brain, you know, and, and, and for me to get stuck with him, you know, I, I had that IQ of zero, zero. I'm stuck with this giant brain and he had this giant vocabulary and he'd use words. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. I said, what are you saying? But Chan was, he wanted to join the Marine Corps. He wanted to pay America back for taking his family in. I mean, how do you not love a guy like that? It's cool. Yeah, it's cool. I mean, if only some of the immigrants felt that way today, man. I mean, you know, really. But Chan wanted to join the Marine Corps. He could have been an officer. He didn't have to be a dumb PFC machine gunner. I mean, he, you know, he

• 36:50Speaker 02

  had a college degree. He was, he was as smart as heck. So Chan and I were in machine gun. We both fired expert with a machine gun and they, and we're, I, I came up with this brilliant idea. We, I want to go recon. Cause I'm telling him, the recon guys get to wear those little gold wings, man. It's a chick magnet. I mean, we're gonna, we'll pick, we'll pick up girls everywhere. So I, he goes, Clark, do you ever think of anything else? You know, and he gives me some big, you know, ten cent word to describe that I'm not being right. And I said, come on, Chan, go with me, man. I, you don't want, you don't want, you don't

• 37:33Speaker 02

  want to leave me alone. You know, we've been this far. And he goes, all right. So we put in our request to go to recon. And one night, this is a true story. This is right out of a movie, but we had this old sergeant, um, I think it was a master sergeant, but he, he lived in the barracks with us at Camp Lejeune, the machine gun school barracks. Well, got all these racks, you know, regular barracks with all the, all these machine gunners. And he had an office at the end. And about two in the morning, uh, he comes, comes out, takes one of those old metal garbage cans that we had, we didn't have the plastic garbage, and he heaves this metal garbage can

• 38:15Speaker 02

  down the squad bay, and he hits the lights and starts screaming, "Guns up, guns up, guns up!" So everybody out of the racks, standing at attention at the end of your rack, and he's got, he's got a fifth of booze in his hand, and he's angry. He's an angry Marine. And, uh, he's got a bunch of orders. He's got orders in his left hand. And so, and it was transferred, my transfer was to go to recon, and Chance, and I guess maybe a couple of the other guys wanted to go recon. And, uh, so he, he says, "Clark, give me a piece of chalk." He says, "Draw a line down the center of the barracks. Everybody put your

• 38:56Speaker 02

  toes on that line." You know, so we all line up on this line, and he says, "Okay, all you Marines, all you gunners..." At first, he tells us how bad we need gunners, and we did, you know, we really did. Uh, in the 5th Marines, when I got there, they, they told me every machine gunner in the 5th Marines had been killed or wounded. So, we really needed machine gunners. And, uh, and he knew that. He, he, you know, he got all the battlefield casualty list, and they knew all that stuff. And so, suddenly, machine gunners, kind of a critical MOS, but even though you could be as dumb as a stump and still be one. So,

• 39:39Speaker 02

  he, uh, he says, "Okay, all you Marines that joined my Marine Corps to kill the enemy, stand still. And all you Marines that joined my Marine Corps to find the enemy and tell us to go kill them, step over that line!" And nobody stepped over the line. And I, I mean, it was like, I stood there, I mean, he shamed us. It was like being in the Alamo. Wow. Step over the line if you want to leave the Alamo. And, but it worked. Not one guy tried to go to recon. We all just stayed in machine guns. No shit. I saw my little gold wings flying out in Paris. Ah. I really wanted those wings, man. Uh... Wow.

• 40:24Speaker 02

  But yeah, so, we get to, we got to NOM, and... You know, I thought it was baloney, but because they told us in machine gun school, seven to 10 seconds after a firefight begins. And we thought that, you know, that's baloney, it can't be true. Then we get there and all the machine gunners have been killed or wounded.

• 40:47Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I mean, so you went to the Battle of Hue immediately? That's where you showed up? The Battle of Hue, that's where you went?

• 40:58Speaker 02

  Okay, Way City, yeah, it's Way. Um, yeah, I, uh, no, that's a little wrong because I, I mean, I got there for Way. Uh, and I got there when Way was ending. But I just was at the very end of Way City. Uh, all I, all I did in Way City is step in a pungy pit. You know, pungy pits with the, uh, I stepped in it and it, it broke. It didn't go through my boots. You know, God save me. First week of NOM and he's already saving me. So I, but I, I just did patrols, uh, trying to, you know, get the, uh, the NVA that were trying to get out away at the end there. But yeah, I didn't, I didn't really fight in Way City. I

• 41:40Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, you went, but you went straight from machine gunner school to Vietnam?

• 41:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, no, I, I, then I went to Camp Pendleton.

• 41:48Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 41:48Speaker 02

  For jungle warfare school.

• 41:50Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 41:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, uh, you know, that, that little POW thing that school they give you and, um, yeah, jungle warfare. Uh, that was eye opening too, but, uh, you know, I mean, after Paris Island, everything was duck soup. But then there in, uh, in, uh, jungle warfare school after it was over, they gave, uh, they gave us, uh, I think it was 24 or 48 hours liberty. And so I, uh, I talked Chan in, I had a way of talking Chan into trouble. So I talked Chan into going to Tijuana, you know, I said, we, we

• 42:26Shawn Ryan?

  Now, what were you doing down there?

• 42:27Speaker 02

  I wanted to go to Tijuana. So I talked Chan into, we gotta go to Tijuana, man, all these, I hear. So, uh,

• 42:34Shawn Ryan?

  Lots of things.

• 42:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, lots of things. So I talked him into going to Tijuana. So we go to Tijuana and, and, uh, we're in one of those really seedy bars, you know, and there's a bunch of Marines in there, of course, and, uh, There's activity going on. It was pretty despicable. But they bring us over a bunch of drinks and I had, we'd ordered, it was four of us, four Marines, and we'd ordered four drinks. This big Mexican guy comes over with a tray full of drinks. And I said, we don't, we only won four. And he expects us to pay for them. And, well, that led to a confrontation. And so, I, I, a big brawl, big huge fight.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  And I realized, this is getting ugly. Let's get out of here. So me and Chan are trying to crawl out because bottles flying everywhere. People fighting all over the place. And we got to the door and the Tijuana Police were there. And then everybody said, he started it.

• 43:42Speaker 02

  I didn't do anything. But I, I was almost innocent. They put you in the clink? Yeah, well, they, the Tijuana Police threw us into Tijuana brig jail. And then the Shore Patrol came and got us out of there. And threw us into the Navy brig. And then they took me into San Diego, me and Chan. And, oh, he was so mad at me because Chan would never do any of this stuff. So we're in, that was the last time I saw San Diego was Tijuana brig. Then they, then the Marines came and got us. They threw us in a Red Line brig at Camp Pendleton. Have you ever heard anything about those? I haven't. Oh, they're awful. Yeah, the Red Line brig, you stand at attention.

• 44:26Speaker 02

  And there was a, there was a big wall. Of course, you know, there's a war going on. They take, some guys would get in trouble like this and think it was going to keep them going to Nam. But, you know, I, that is, I wasn't doing that. I just, I mean, I just, I hit this guy because he was trying to extort money out of us. So, so anyway, we're, got our face up against the wall. We'd stand at attention. And if you had to go to the head, you know, you had to, they had the MP jailers. They're marching up and down behind you and you got your face up against the wall and if you move your face away from that wall, they hit the back of your head and it drives your face into the wall and that's why it's called a red line brig. There's, there's bloody

• 45:09Speaker 02

  red where everybody's faces would be. There's a red line and there's just drips of blood all the way down this wall. Red line brig. So, uh, that was, they, yeah, those guys, they didn't play games and I, I wanted out of there, but I had orders from Na- for Naom, like the next day. So we didn't, we only, I don't know, we might've spent eight hours in that red line brig and they said, you got orders for Naom, you're out of here and they took us out of there and put us on the Braniff, old Braniff Airlines and flew us to Naom.

• 45:46Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, wow. So what was it like when you landed at Naom? Was it what you expected?

• 45:53Speaker 02

  It was, uh, I, I didn't know what to expect. I mean, I'll be honest with you. You know, I was such a kid. I look back at it, I was such a gung ho dumb kid, you know, and I, but Chan had been reading about Way City. He read newspapers and, uh, he's telling me, yeah, you know, there's a lot going on Way City. I think we're going to be going to Way City. And I said, oh, okay. So we get off the plane and then we filed through this, uh, and as soon as we got off the plane, you know, that heat from Vietnam hits you and you're going, whoa. You know, I'm from Florida, but this was a different kind of heat. And, uh, uh, and we, and we see the, the Phantoms jetting down the airstrip and taking off and we could

• 46:34Speaker 02

  hear artillery and all of a sudden you're going, crap, it's a real war, man. You know, I'm in a real war here. So they, we filed through, uh, they're giving us our orders and I always remember the sergeant, he, uh, he'd go through and hand him your orders and he'd stamp it, big red stamp, Fifth Marines, next, Fifth Marines, next, Fifth Marines. And everybody was getting sent to the Fifth Marines. And I, I said, Chan, why, you know, why is everybody going to the Fifth Marines, man? And I, and he goes, didn't you read in the newspapers I've been giving you? The Fifth Marines are taking Way City. And I said,

• 47:12Speaker 02

  Oh, they need guys. And he goes, yeah, stupid. They need guys. So, uh, fifth Marines it was, but Way City was really ending and, uh, uh, I, uh, you know, I didn't, I really didn't do anything away except patrols around it. Uh, I didn't do anything. So I really was in a way.

• 47:33Shawn Ryan?

  How long were you there?

• 47:35Speaker 02

  In Nam?

• 47:36Shawn Ryan?

  In Way City.

• 47:37Speaker 02

  Oh, in Way? Oh, geez, just a couple of days patrols and then they, uh, brought us back to Phu Bai. Uh, and then they, uh, then they sent, uh, they sent us down to a place called Troy Bridge. And, uh, yeah. Things started getting hot there.

• 47:56Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. Right on.

• 48:00Shawn Ryan?

  You didn't have any, did you, did you know anybody that had been to Vietnam before you or?

• 48:04Speaker 02

  No.

• 48:05Shawn Ryan?

  You were just right, you just plopped right in there?

• 48:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't know, I didn't know anybody.

• 48:10Shawn Ryan?

  Shit. Were you nervous?

• 48:14Speaker 02

  I, I, you know, I, I was, you know, like, super excited. Uh, I mean, the, the, pretty soon, you know, I mean, you can't tell nerves from fear, but, um, but I, yeah, I, I was kind of still, it was a, it was a great adventure. And I, I was so young that I just saw it as just, you know, right now it's a huge adventure. But, you know, once you, once you got out in the bush, yeah, the adventure's over and this is, uh, it's, it's good, it got, it was hard. It was hard. You know, I, first time I got hit, I, I lost, uh, well, I went over there at

• 48:54Speaker 02

  a hundred and sixty pounds, uh, and, uh, first or second time I got hit, I was, uh, they sent me to a hospital in, uh, they sent me to, to Da Nang, but there were so many, uh, wounded Marines that they were, they didn't have any beds. They got guys laying in blood all over the floors. And so they threw a bunch of us on a C-130 and flew us down to an Air Force hospital and, uh, Cameron Bay. And, you know, after six months in the jungle, I get into Cameron Bay, the Air Force, the Air Force, they live a different life. They, uh,

• 49:33Speaker 02

  Air conditioned hospital, uh, they ate off plates and trays and uh, they had flushing toilets and I went into the head once I was able to walk and there's these crazy Marines, crazy, these stupid Marines in the, in the bathroom and he's, he's going, Clark, Clark, come here, man, listen to this. They flushed the toilet. Oh, we, oh my God.

• 50:04Shawn Ryan?

  It's the little things, huh?

• 50:05Speaker 02

  When you're entertained by hearing a flushing toilet, uh, I mean, I'm sorry, but it's, it's true.

• 50:11Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man.

• 50:12Speaker 02

  That, that was, in that hospital, when it, when all the guys started coming out of the morphine and stuff, uh, where uh, you wake up and you're going, hey, who you with, man? Uh, seventh Marines, hey, who you with? Twenty-six Marines. And I'd say, uh, you know, oh, fifth Marines and so the whole hospital is filled with wounded Marines. It, you know, it's a tad offensive. And so, uh, this one kid, couple of beds down, uh, where I was, but the other ward, it was the same story. And so this, this one kid, he's, he's, wouldn't say anything. Think, ah, you know, he's, he's still in shock or something, you know? And then a couple of days later, he hears the same thing, hey, who you with, man? Hey, who you, were you, twenty-six Marines? Who's it?

• 50:57Speaker 02

  Hey, who's that guy with? And he wouldn't say anything. Finally, the guy started harassing him, said, who you with, man? And he goes, I'm in the air force. So, so all these Marines go, what? Then you see these wounded guys sit up and go, what'd you do? What'd you do? Step on a nail? It's so.

• 51:22Shawn Ryan?

  He's like, no, it was a thumbtack.

• 51:23Speaker 02

  He says, he goes, nah, it's my mom's fault, man. You know, he was, he was a nice young guy. He goes, nah, it's my mom's fault, man. My brother's a Marine and she kept sending me letters and she'd been contacting my CO, telling him to make me go check on my brother and see how he's doing. So I finally said, "Okay," and I hopped a ride up to Da Nang and then they threw me on a chopper and flew me out to Anh Wah Combat Base. And he said, "I got off. I didn't even walk off the tarmac and they got hit and I got wounded and I got a purple heart."

• 52:06Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit. Damn.

• 52:09Speaker 02

  So every morning, all the Marines, we'd wake up and we'd sing this kid awake with, "Off we go into the wild blue sky."

• 52:20Speaker 02

  We made his life, although he grew to love us, you know. It was all a good fun, but pretty funny.

• 52:28Shawn Ryan?

  On that note, before we get into the thick of it, let's take a quick break.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 52:33Shawn Ryan?

  And then when we come back, we'll get into your first firefights.

• 52:39Shawn Ryan?

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• 53:19Shawn Ryan?

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• 53:58Shawn Ryan?

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• 54:14Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Johnny, we're back from the break. We're getting in, getting ready to get into Vietnam.

• 54:22Shawn Ryan?

  Where do we go from here?

• 54:25Speaker 02

  Well, I got to Troy Bridge and Troy Bridge. Really, the story about Troy Bridge that I wrote in Guns Up is it's about Big Red. I put it in here because Big Red.

• 54:45Speaker 02

  When I first got there, you know, when we got the food by right before we went up to do a round way.

• 54:53Speaker 02

  There was one guy in this big tent where we came into. And he was coming back from the hospital. He'd been wounded, coming back from NAS. And so Chan and I, you know, we, we wanted to pump this guy because tell us what we're walking into here. And his name was Richard Weaver, but I never knew his real name. I didn't know his real name until 30 years after the war.

• 55:16Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 55:16Speaker 02

  When nobody had a name, you know, I, I, and I was, I've always been awful with names. But it's like everybody had a nickname. You know, I, I mean, I'm sure a lot of the guys, they knew me as that crazy gunner. But, but you know, I didn't think, but I didn't think I had a name sometimes. But he was just Big Red. He was just big red headed guy and he was good looking, you know, looked like the Marlboro man, you know, and the old Marlboro cigarette commercials and, and big, big and strong. He, he had been a bouncer in one of the toughest bars in Cincinnati, Ohio. When he was 15.

• 55:58Shawn Ryan?

  When he was 15?

• 55:59Speaker 02

  That's what, yeah, I found all this out. Way, way later.

• 56:04Shawn Ryan?

  Can you imagine getting bounced out of a bar by a fifteen year old?

• 56:07Speaker 02

  Think about, well, listen to the rest of this. He was raised, uh, his bad upbringing, you know, I, I think his parents basically, I don't know the full story, but he didn't grow up with his parents. They kind of abandoned him.

• 56:19Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 56:20Speaker 02

  And, uh, and I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings that might hear this, but I, you know, that's just the story I got, but he didn't really grow up with his folks that much. And I, I think there were reasons, not, maybe not their fault at all, kind of like my mom. My mom had to give up the kids, you know, and she didn't have any food to feed them. Uh, so anyway, he grew up with this old guy who, an old Marine who had served under Admiral Halsey in World War II and, uh, raised, he raised Big Red, you know, like as a Marine from birth, from, from the time he was a little kid, he was,

• 56:54Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 56:55Speaker 02

  He brought him up a Marine. And, uh, anyway.

• 56:58Shawn Ryan?

  How did they get connect? I mean, how did they, how do they run into each other? Do you know?

• 57:03Speaker 02

  I don't know. I mean.

• 57:05Shawn Ryan?

  That's interesting.

• 57:05Speaker 02

  I don't know, but he, he, uh, he, he read, he became my big brother. And Chance too, uh, cause you know, we're, we're boots, you know? I mean, you got two new boots walking in. We don't know what we're walking into. And, uh, and first time we met him, you know, he, we, he says, trying to get us ready for this. He goes, uh, okay.

• 57:30Speaker 02

  At first he didn't want to be bothered. Then we go, come, come on, man, you know? And then he found out we were oh, three, thirty ones, machine gunners. And he goes, yeah, it perked him up. He goes, oh boy, they're going to be glad to see you, man. And, you know, we'd been told that seven to 10 second crap, you know, and we didn't believe it. Uh, and he's, he said, uh, you know, there's, uh, there's probably, uh, I didn't see, I don't know of any, any gunners left when I got wounded in way. I don't think there's any machine gunners left. Said they were giving the M60 to a mortar man and, you know, bringing up guys, whoever, and handing them the gun and saying, uh, you're the gunner today.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  And nobody liked it because it was like a target on your back. But, and, and let me explain that real quick, you know? We're fighting that war at night all the time. And. The M60 has a tracer round, every fifth round's a tracer round. Well, it looks like a laser beam. Of course, I know you know that, but I don't know who's listening to this, but it it looks like a laser beam. So you see it in all the movies and you see the lasers. Well, that's a whole bunch of bullets with a tracer round is every fifth round. And and so we we had to have that to point out the enemy, had to have that to know where you're shooting. Uh, we used it to call them airstrikes, you know, with pointers, you know, and uh, forgive me.

• 58:54Shawn Ryan?

  So for those those that don't understand what he's saying, a tracer round is is basically it it it for America, it's red. Was it red back then?

• 59:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, red. The NBA were green.

• 59:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. So it's a round that kind of burns red as it's going out of the out of the barrel. And what people will do is exactly what Johnny's saying. They will mark. So if if a airplane, helicopter, somebody's gonna drop some ordinance close to your position, you mark enemy territory where you want them to hit with tracer rounds.

• 59:29Speaker 02

  Right.

• 59:29Shawn Ryan?

  And so they see where the tracer rounds are going, and then they know exactly what they need to hit.

• 59:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. And and we used it, you know, when you're calling them Phantoms. I mean, there were a few times we had a Phantoms had to drop napalm like really close to us. And if I didn't show them where to drop that, we could be frying like eggs, you know. So but you need to.

• 59:50Shawn Ryan?

  A lot of guys still carry, I mean, even even though we had lasers when I was in, I used to carry an extra mag of all tracers. I mean, in that way, if whatever, if the laser didn't, if the laser went down or whatever, then I could throw in a mag tracer and mark target.

• 1:00:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:05Shawn Ryan?

  When I wasn't carrying my 60.

• 1:00:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:00:08Shawn Ryan?

  But.

• 1:00:09Speaker 02

  Well, so I, yeah, so anyway, big red. Oh.

• 1:00:15Shawn Ryan?

  Sorry, go ahead. I was just gonna say, use tracers for a lot of things. I mean, I remember too, they probably don't do this shit anymore either. But, uh, you know, for a dummy like me, I'd put the last five rounds of my magazine as tracer because when you hit that. You know, hey, I'm getting ready to run out of ammo here. Start thinking about a mag change.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  That's a smart move. I, yeah, I know, no, I, I, I never did that. And, and our, uh, our rifleman see, only the gunner had the tracers, only the M16.

• 1:00:43Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, no shit?

• 1:00:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. None, none of the, uh, the M16s, you know, they didn't have tracers.

• 1:00:48Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:00:49Speaker 02

  So it was all up to me. I mean, it was all up to machine gun. So, uh, but anyway, so Big Red's, uh, telling us that, you know, every, because of that tracer round, because it points out who, you know, there's the machine gun. Uh, you'd only see that the, uh, M16s and AK-47s going off like muzzle flashes. It looked like a bunch of lightning bugs in a big shootout. And the only steady target you saw was the, uh, NVA 30 cows, you know, they'd, they'd shoot, uh, green tracers. So it was like Christmas time out there, you know, green and red crisscrossing each other. And, and we were the only targets and, and every good army's taught the same thing.

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  Knock out the, knock out the machine gun first. Back then, anyway, I assume it's the same. Uh, so anyway, machine gunners didn't last long. If you laid on the trigger very long, uh, that's why it was seven to 10 seconds. If you laid on that trigger very long, it was 20 round burst. We were told, unless you're being overrun, unless there's no choice, 20 round burst. Don't, don't be laying on a hundred rounds. You won't, you'll never finish that hundred rounds because some riflemen's gonna pinpoint where your machine gun is and, uh, out of the jungle and you're dead. Well, that's, that's the reason. You became such an obvious target in a, in a battle where everybody else has a lightning bug flashing on and off, that, um, gunners didn't last long.

• 1:02:15Speaker 02

  And, um, but you got no choice. You gotta, you gotta use the tracers. It, it's crucial. And it shows the, uh, it shows the infantry. Where, where to fire, you know, where's the enemy, et cetera. It shows you where your rounds are going. You know, shooting without tracer rounds, you don't know, all your rounds could be running into a tree.

• 1:02:33Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it's really interesting because the M60 machine gun wasn't just a weapon. It was also a communication device.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:41Shawn Ryan?

  You know, because you, it, just like all the stuff we were just talking about, you know what I mean? And then you're marking targets for your own guys. I mean, you really got to be switched on.

• 1:02:51Speaker 02

  Well, some gunners, I, I don't remember doing this, but I know, I know some gunners and, uh, they would talk to each other, you know, you'd be mountains apart.

• 1:03:02Shawn Ryan?

  I think I'm saying.

• 1:03:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, it just, you know, five round burst, five round burst, you know, and, and they talked to each other. To kind of let each other know where they were out in, out in the, uh, you know, the big mountains in what, uh, in, uh, like, you know, Thong Duck and places like that. You know, and when you get near the Cambodian border and everything, you know, we're talking big fricking mountains, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't flat jungle. It was straight up, straight down. And, uh, so you can't see each other. You don't know where the other platoon might be. Uh, but it, but old, old Red tried to tell us that, no, that, that wasn't bull crap, you know, uh, seven to 10 seconds is about right.

• 1:03:47Speaker 02

  And it goes, uh, if you lay on that trigger more than 20 round burst, yeah, you're going to be, you're going to be dead. And, uh, he said, as a matter of fact, there's, as far as he knew, there were no gunners left in the, uh, 5th Marines. They'd all been killed and wounded and.

• 1:04:02Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, what's that like for you to hear that shit?

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  Well.

• 1:04:04Shawn Ryan?

  You're brand new.

• 1:04:05Speaker 02

  That's.

• 1:04:06Shawn Ryan?

  Hadn't fired a round yet, and this is, this is your welcome brief.

• 1:04:09Speaker 02

  It's real now, you know, I mean, all of a sudden, you know, where it was a big adventure and I'm not all that scared. I'm just kind of excited. It dawns on you, man, uh, yeah, I might not be alive next week, you know, this, this is gonna, this could end badly, but, uh, yeah, you got no choice, you know, you're there, you've got no choice, you gotta do it. And, uh, uh, so that woke me and Chan up, but, but he was great about everything. Big Red was, he was like a big brother. I mean, he was like, you know, bend those pins on your frags. You know, we're, we're right off the plane from Da Nang, you know, and they've given us all this equipment. We got grenades where the pins aren't even bent

• 1:04:49Speaker 02

  and we got, and, and we had at that moment, we had M16s. And, uh, you know, he's telling us what to do with the M16s, you know, uh, you know, we had 20 rounds in each clip. Well, you know, you only won 18 and, cause the old M16s, the, it would, it would weaken. And, uh, I mean, the, the magazine would weaken if you kept it filled with 20 round max all the time. And it's gonna jam, cause as the spring gets weak, it's not gonna feed the bullet, you know that. I, I hate to talk to you about this stuff, cause

• 1:05:21Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, it's, uh, yeah. Equipment has changed over the years too, so.

• 1:05:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, true, yeah, no kidding. But anyway, yeah, you, you had to, you had to take, knock a couple of rounds. So he took our magazines, took two rounds out of every, uh, I mean, out of every magazine and, and, uh, uh, threw it back at us. And then he told us about, uh, taking all your, uh, anything of value that you're gonna try to hang on to, uh, that's paper, you know, you know, every, anything, IDs, your MPC, your military payment certificate, your money, anything you got that you wanna try to keep dry. And of course, I have my little Gideon Bible, and I wanna keep it dry. And, uh, you get hold of it, plastic bags, there were a lot of them around, you'd get them from the corpsman a lot of times. And so you'd

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  wrap everything in plastic and, uh, and, you know, and now like my little Bible, like, it was wrapped in plastic, so it was real thick, but it was in my pocket and it was, I had a flak jacket on, you know, and, uh, but we had the old Korean era flak jackets. So, you know, there are panels, bullets could go between the panels, you know, shrapnel could go between the panels. But yeah, we had Korean era flak jackets. Now, the army got the nice new ones. And of course, it was every Marine's duty to steal anything from the army. So we were always trying to steal from the army. If we went into Fubai, as soon as the army heard Those Marines are coming in, in, in, out of the jungle from, uh, they try to hide all their

• 1:06:49Speaker 02

  equipment because we were gonna steal, we stole everything. But they had all the good stuff. You know, like our, our, our M79 guy, our, our blooper man. Uh, the army had these blooper rounds that are nothing today. I mean, I know they got everything today, but back then, the blooper round was still, it was pretty new. All we had was VHS, concussion, little grenade, uh.

• 1:07:12Shawn Ryan?

  Golden eggs.

• 1:07:13Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and, but the army had, they had the buckshot blooper rounds and they, they had blooper rounds that would be like a flare and, uh, I forgot what else they had, but, uh, so our blooper man, who was insane, I called him Sam the blooper man in Guns Up and he's, he's a big favorite of all the fans of that book, but, uh, Sam was, Sam was, uh, he was, he was a character. He was a total character, but God, he was good with that M79.

• 1:07:43Shawn Ryan?

  Real quick, I'm just curious, would you read your Bible out there? Or was it with you to?

• 1:07:49Speaker 02

  Say that again.

• 1:07:50Shawn Ryan?

  Did you read your Bible out there? Would you unwrap it and read it?

• 1:07:53Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I, you know, yeah, I started reading it a lot and Chan, I had Chan there with me, you know, and Chan started, uh, like I said, he had a minor in ministry. So I had, I had a Bible teacher with me, you know, and you'd ask, and that's, that's why he played such a crucial role and it's why he's the main character in, in Guns Up.

• 1:08:16Shawn Ryan?

  It's, that's interesting too, that he came from China as a Christian.

• 1:08:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. It's fascinating. I know. And, and the fact that he, he should have been an officer, he should have been a doctor. And, uh, and his story, you know, at the end, I mean, you know, it, he got blown up with me, uh, got shot up pretty good too. And he, uh, he had to have like 17 surgeries on his arm and so he couldn't tie surgical knots. So, uh, so at the, uh, you know, and he went through a serious depression for a while. He came home and the girl he thought he was gonna marry, that kinda ended. They, that had, that had gone away while he was in NOM, I think. And, uh, and I don't know

• 1:08:59Speaker 02

  all the details, but, uh, that and, and now his dream of being an open heart surgeon, that was gone. But, uh, Chan went on to become the leading cardiovascular perfusion expert in the world.

• 1:09:13Shawn Ryan?

  Are you serious?

• 1:09:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, a dumb machine gunner. Yeah, I know. And I had to go through a war with this guy and his giant vocabulary. He was mad, Nick. It was pretty funny. You know, I mean, he would do things, because he was so smart. And I was, I barely got out of St. Pete High. And still, we'd be, I'd be eating sea rations, and he'd go, "You know, Clark, those sea rations,

• 1:09:45Speaker 02

  they were put in that can when you weren't even a glint in your father's eye."

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  And I'd go, "What?" And I'd look at the date, try to find the date. God, yeah, 1943.

• 1:09:57Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, man. Damn.

• 1:10:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. Anyway, he was, he could be a pain in the butt, but, you know, we're still together. Yeah, we're still together. He came to see me in Florida not long ago, his wife had recently died. And, yeah, I came down and took him out on my pontoon boat, drank some wine.

• 1:10:19Shawn Ryan?

  Nice. You guys are still buddies?

• 1:10:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:10:22Shawn Ryan?

  Where's he at?

• 1:10:23Speaker 02

  He's in New York, in Oyster Bay, New York.

• 1:10:31Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 1:10:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:10:32Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 1:10:33Speaker 02

  He's got a place on Nantucket that we've been to once, and so.

• 1:10:41Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 1:10:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's pretty sweet.

• 1:10:43Shawn Ryan?

  So where do you guys go from here?

• 1:10:45Speaker 02

  Uh, oh.

• 1:10:47Shawn Ryan?

  Vietnam?

• 1:10:47Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:10:51Speaker 02

  Well, in Vietnam, we went, we, let me take Troy Bridge. It got overrun.

• 1:10:59Shawn Ryan?

  Hold on. What was Troy Bridge?

• 1:11:01Speaker 02

  Okay, it was.

• 1:11:02Shawn Ryan?

  Why was it so important? What were you doing?

• 1:11:04Speaker 02

  You know, later, you look at, there's pictures in that book, and there's pictures of Troy Bridge. As a matter of fact, I'll show you real quick. Oh, wow, it doesn't show the bridge here. But that's me on Troy Bridge.

• 1:11:18Shawn Ryan?

  Look at that.

• 1:11:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:20Shawn Ryan?

  Great corfferting picture right there.

• 1:11:28Speaker 02

  Troy Bridge was, it was like an old, I think it had originally been an old train trestle bridge, you know, but it was on Highway One. And it had, like I said, this part of the story really in guns, this is about Big Red. Big Red was a hero on Troy Bridge. You know, I didn't do much. I didn't do, you know. What were we, what was, why were we there? What did we want to do? Okay, it was on Highway One, which is the most important route in Vietnam. All of our supplies went up and down Highway One. So the NVA, Viet Cong, they're always trying to do something to stop Highway One. Yeah, Bush. And blow up the bridges along Highway One was a big deal. And so, bridge duty,

• 1:12:13Speaker 02

  though, was a good deal for Marines, because they meant you weren't out in the bush. You got to come in, you know, when you're on bridge duty, there'd usually be a little vill there. You might even be able to eat some, something besides sea rations. But, and I did that a couple of times, but, you know, there was always critters going through your rice. You'd be eating, they'd burrow through your rice and you'd, you'd close your eyes and keep eating. But, yeah, so anyway, it was, it was an important bridge. It got hit with, they said over four hundred, four hundred NVA and they, sappers finally, you know, got

• 1:12:54Speaker 02

  on, onto the bridge and suicide guys. They had all kinds of satchel charges tied to them and TNT tied to them. And they were all doped up, you know, you'd shoot them and they didn't even know they were dead. They kept coming sometimes and, but they, yeah, they got out to the center of the bridge and, you know, they had to break through the wire on the other side, killed a machine gun team on the other side, but got it, got onto the bridge, hugged onto it, and the bridge blew up and came down on top of another machine gun team that was on the center span, this big cement thing in the river that held up the center of the bridge. And anyway, those guys didn't die right away and during the battle, during this whole

• 1:13:39Speaker 02

  thing, Red didn't stop firing the whole time. I mean, he, he, he just, he just fired, I don't know how many rounds, you know, it just, and that was, that meant everybody knew where he was and everybody tried to knock out Red in that, that gun bunker. But Red was, Red was a hero. He should have gotten crap, you know, he could have, he could have been put up for the Medal of Honor there, but he didn't get anything. Zippity doo dah. Thirty years later, when people read what he did in my, in Guns Up, a congressman and a, a good friend, a couple of good friends of his that went to, to high school with him,

• 1:14:24Speaker 02

  Costasster, and they finally gave him the Bronze Star. You know, he'd been dead for thirty years. He was killed beside me on May 20th, 68. But, but anyway, Red was a hero and he, what he did that night was amazing. And a couple of other guys were heroes that night. We had two guys, Tedesco and Rosalie, both corporals. And Rosalie had been put up in Way City. He had been put up for a promotion to lieutenant, got battlefield commission. And he, he turned it down. He wanted to go home. And so he turned it down. And they came out to say goodbye to the platoon. So they, they, they hopped a ride from Fubai,

• 1:15:06Speaker 02

  which is between Way City, Fubai and Troy Bridge. They hopped a ride from Fubai, which is a great big army base. And that's where the 5th Marines were too, when, whenever we went back, but we never went back. But they, they hopped a ride down Highway 1 to come out to Fubai, I mean, come out to Troy Bridge and say bye to everybody. Well, they were there that, they picked that time to say bye to everybody and the bridge got overrun, blown up. Machine gun team was out there screaming. They hadn't died yet and they were in a lot of agony. And Tedesco and Rosalie tried to get out to those guys and got killed. And they should have been on a, they were due for a flight back to the world the next day. They should have been in Da Nang. They came out there to say bye. And they died heroes.

• 1:15:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, they didn't get anything either, as far as I know, yeah. But, um, yes, a lot of, a lot of brave guys. What did you see there? I mean, this is your first. I, I was just a, an A gunner, just, you know, just feeding the gun. I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything. Still significant. I mean, you've never seen combat in your life. I, I saw more later, uh, uh, after the bridge had been blown up, uh, uh, the next, next day, uh, we started sending out, uh, three man killer teams. So I, I volunteered for these three man killer teams. Uh, and, uh, those, those were pretty fascinating, these three man killer teams.

• 1:16:35Speaker 02

  They, um, the, uh, I keep wanting to call them, you know, we call them gooks. All right, we call them gooks and, uh. I think everybody knows that. Okay. Anybody that's watched any Vietnam movie ever? Well, it came, it came from Korea, you know, that term. I mean, you probably already know that, but yeah, it was, it was, uh, Marines in Korea picked that term up and that's what the Koreans called peasants. And so they, we, we picked that term up and the Koreans brought it to Vietnam and they were gooks. But anyway, so, um, that the NBA would send out kill, a killer squads. They'd send out a squad of guys to go into a ville and, and if the ville wasn't supplying

• 1:17:19Speaker 02

  the communist with rice and supplies, they'd find out who the ville, village chief was and his family, and they would come into that ville and they'd get the, like, let's say he had a couple of kids. They'd get one, one of his kids, cut off their head, put it on a bamboo stake in front of the, right in the center of the ville and, and then leave. And that was their, either start supplying, uh, the commies or, you know, we'll be back. And they would, they'd come back and they, excuse me, they'd, they'd kill a member of his family and finally him or his wife or whoever. And, uh, until that village started supplying them with rice and whatever they needed.

• 1:18:00Speaker 02

  Well, uh, our job on these three man killer teams was to, uh, cause if you went out there with a platoon, you, you couldn't get them, you know, they would, they, you made too much noise, you know, it's, uh, jungle and rice paddies and you, you had to be quiet. And, uh, so I would go out on these three man killer teams.

• 1:18:22Speaker 02

  And that's before I started carrying the 60. So I didn't carry, I mean, I was just an A gunner. I didn't carry the 60 until Red got killed.

• 1:18:28Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:18:28Speaker 02

  Uh, once in a while I would, but a lot of times I didn't carry it till Red got killed. Unless he'd be gone for this or that, you know, and then I was the 60 guy. But, uh, so these three man killer teams, you'd ambush these guys. You'd try to pick them off when they came into a ville. And, uh, one of these, uh, one of these things, I mean, we were successful a couple of times. And, uh, but one of these, one of these three man killer teams I was on, I was out there with this, uh, this funny black guy. I got him, I called him Jackson in the book, but I didn't remember his real name. But he was, uh, he always smiled, you know, he was just big white teeth, boy, he'd smile. We, don't smile out in the bush, you'll get us all killed.

• 1:19:13Speaker 02

  So we were, we were laying in wait and, uh, right at the edge of a, it wasn't really a rice paddy. There were rice paddies out there, but this was kind of just, uh, a lot of brush. And then there was real heavy jungle over maybe 75 yards away. And we were behind a big bush and, uh, and we see a, some guys come out of the jungle. Just two or three of them, we thought, the killer team. So, uh, we get set up, you know, we're gonna, we're gonna blow these guys away. And halfway across this open area, uh,

• 1:19:51Speaker 02

  a platoon comes out. These guys are just a point, two or three guys. They were just pointing it. And pretty soon they're getting closer and closer. And we're going, I don't know if we should open fire on a whole platoon. You know, there were only three of us. And, uh, so pretty soon it's not a platoon. It was two over 200 NVA came out and.

• 1:20:16Speaker 02

  They walked so close to us. They walked, I mean, they could have stepped on us. Because we couldn't do anything. We couldn't run, we couldn't move. We just had to stay still. And we're getting eaten up by ants and mosquitoes. You know, the mosquitoes in NOM were, God, the worst. But we're just getting sucked dry with mosquitoes and getting eaten up. And you can't move. And I tell that story sometimes to other Marines to tell them, this is why parasitium was so horrible. All those stories of a Marine slapping a sand flea on PI back when I went in. If you did that, you were gonna be tortured. I mean, I mean, they tortured guys. They'd make you dig a six-foot grave with an E-tool.

• 1:20:58Speaker 02

  Then they'd make you have an official burial for the sand flea. And then they'd say, what sex was that sand flea you killed? And you'd say, it was a guy. All right, this is a female. Dig another body, dig another grave. I mean, they torture you, but you were scared to death Yeah, yeah. to move, you know, like I was scared to death to even look. It worked. They had my attention. And buddy, it worked. I got to NOM. You know, I had discipline, and all of us did. We laid there, it wouldn't matter. I had snakes crawling over me. I wasn't gonna move. If you moved, you're gonna get everybody killed. So, you know, you just didn't make that mistake. We were well-trained.

• 1:21:42Speaker 02

  It was torture, torture training, but it worked. And this night, 200 NVA went plodding by our noses. I mean, we could smell the garlic. I saw their little ho Chi men's, that's the sandals they wore, they made them out of tires, American tires. But they'd walk by, their little ho Chi men's flopping right by our nose. And we're just going, it was never gonna end. 200 guys, and they're kind of spread out. It went on forever. I mean, it felt like forever. When they finally got away from us.

• 1:22:18Speaker 02

  I had, no, wasn't me, one of the, the guy, one of the guys, we was three of us, I don't know which one it was, but somebody had pulled a frag, he pulled the pin on the frag, thinking, you know, that we gotta do something to get out of here, and squeezed it that whole time. The spoon in, squeezed it, and he was so relieved when these guys went into the jungle, he went, "Oh, God," and let go of, he let go of the spoon, and now we got a live frag, and he goes, "Frag!" And we all dived, flattened out, boom, a grenade goes off right by us, nobody got hurt, we didn't catch any shrapnel or anything, and now we're scared to death, you know, he's

• 1:22:58Speaker 02

  getting, and another guy, then Jackson says, "Oh, I peed my pants, I peed all over myself." Holy shit. And we're going, and I did too, I was peeing, I'm going, "Oh, my God, we're the worst ambush in history." So, we got out of there, but that's what three-man killer teams could be like, you didn't know what you were gonna run into. Damn. They didn't come back for you guys? Huh? They didn't come back for you guys? Oh, no, because, uh, soon, we heard artillery going off out of Fubai. Now, I don't know if somebody else spotted all these guys, and they may have, but somebody started calling in artillery, it wasn't us, I mean, I, if I called in artillery, I'd kill the wrong team. I couldn't call in artillery.

• 1:23:42Speaker 02

  You would've want me to, I didn't even have a sense of direction. If I'd ever walked point, we'd still be there. So, what were some of the success stories with the three-man killer teams? Oh, well, there were, uh, there were times where, you know, they'd only send in a squad, and, uh, uh, you would, uh, yeah, we had a couple of times where you, you know, we killed three or four of them and the rest would get away, but what would happen, that they'd stop going back to the village, because they, you know, they'd leave the village alone, and now you were heroes to the village, and now they're, they're on the allied side, I mean, they're on the American side again, you know, it's, uh, yeah, it's...

• 1:24:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:24:27Shawn Ryan?

  Do you want to talk about the first time you killed somebody?

• 1:24:31Speaker 02

  Uh, yeah, I, uh,

• 1:24:36Speaker 02

  I, I want to, I'll talk, I want to talk about, uh, uh, yeah, it was an ambush and, um, uh, I, I, I, I killed this, uh, NBA officer and, uh,

• 1:24:52Speaker 02

  I guess, you know, it stays with me. Yeah. You know, the shooting was at night. I, I killed him at night. So I, uh, but we stayed in that position all night and we stayed there longer than we usually would. Uh, we were, we'd count the bodies, you know, and stuff like that. And, uh, so I don't know why we'd stay there. Nobody told me I was a PFC, but we, we, we hung around a little longer and, and so I had time to, you know, go up on the trail where I'd killed this guy and, uh, you know, and, and, and look at him and, uh, I, it, it's, it's just always stayed with me. Yeah. I mean, I remember a smell.

• 1:25:32Speaker 02

  It was a hot sunny day, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't the 110 degree hot, but it was hot and sunny and it was grass. It was like tall grass. It was blowing because there'd be some breeze and here's this guy laying on this trail with, you know, a breeze going by and, uh,

• 1:25:55Speaker 02

  yeah, I, I, yeah, I, I think of, I, I think of that a lot. Think of that. I think of this,

• 1:26:03Speaker 02

  uh, this, this woman, uh, I guess she was an NBA nurse. I, we never, I never knew, but, uh, there's a chapter in the book about that. It was called mercy killing. And that was, uh, that one really stays with me. I,

• 1:26:21Speaker 02

  and then I was in a, I was in a little bit of hand to hand combat and, um,

• 1:26:28Speaker 02

  I'll tell you, you want me to tell you, I'm gonna tell you that one. Cause it's really unusual. Not everybody has this war story. We'd been going for about, if I remember correctly, it'd been about seventeen straight days. And you'd be out that long often, but you didn't make contact with the enemy all the time, you know. But this time, we made contact with the NVA off and on for seventeen days. We kept running into them. You know, I mean, it would, short ambushes, big firefights, and it's over. But then the next day, bam, you're running into them again. And we were in a real hot area.

• 1:27:11Speaker 02

  It was, it was up near the Cambodian border, if I remember, or Laotian border. But we were in the mountains at that point. Or at one point, we'd start in the flatland, be in the mountains. I never knew what was going on. But I was going around, we're humping all night. And we'd been going for seventeen days and hadn't had hardly any sleep. You'd set up an ambush. I mean, you'd march, you'd hump all day, you know, stop maybe for some chow. But you were just humping up and down hills all day. That's how I lost forty pounds the first time I got hit. But you'd just hump all day. And then at night, set up ambushes all night.

• 1:27:51Speaker 02

  So we set up this seventeenth day of contact with the enemy. We're going around the side of a mountain. And it wasn't much of a trail, but a tiny, somewhat of a trail around the side of this mountain. And it was way up in the mountains. And our lieutenant was as dead as we were. And we had a great lieutenant. He didn't make mistakes. He'd call in artillery on a dime, you know. You know, Annapolis grad, smart guy. His name, he went on to, his name was Nelson, Lieutenant Nelson. He went on to become the head of the FBI in all of the Northeast after the war.

• 1:28:30Speaker 00

  Wow.

• 1:28:30Speaker 02

  Yeah. He was, he was a hero at that Ruby Ridge thing. He was one of the FBI guys at that, at Ruby Ridge. I think it was called Ruby Ridge. Anyway, but he was a great lieutenant. We were blessed to have that guy. But he, um... Even he was, you know, we didn't know, you were sleepwalking. You reach a point where you, you know, you're just sleepwalking. I got nothing left. Nobody did. So we sat up on the side of this mountain and he put a couple of guys above this tiny trail. And I should have been ambushing the trail. I should have had the 60 on the trail, aiming down the trail one way or the other. And we always did. This night, I believe everybody was just so exhausted. We didn't know what we were doing.

• 1:29:14Speaker 02

  And they set me up on the bottom half of this trail pointing downhill. Well, I mean, it's possible that maybe he, maybe he had a reason to think they were going to come up the hill at us. But normally I'd be ambushing that trail. So I, me and Chan are, we're trying to stay awake and we're, I got poncho over the mosquitoes are eating us alive. So you couldn't use that poncho, you know, any kind of rain or anything because it makes noise. But it wasn't raining. Trying to, he, trying to fight off the mosquitoes and I'm hanging over the 60 and I got it here. So if I, if I fall forward asleep, it, it wakes me up. I hit it. And it was Chance's turn to, you know, take an hour's sleep. Sometimes we'd do two hour shifts.

• 1:29:59Speaker 02

  So, but I think here, we were only doing one hour because you couldn't stay awake more than an hour, you know? And, but anyway, Chance, it's his turn to sleep. And, and I'm hanging over this thing and, and I'm fading out. You know, I'm, I'm, I'm going out. And believe me, you didn't do that. You, we were scared to death to fall asleep on lines. We had an Indian named Swift Eagle. It's his real name. He's a funny story too. Uh, his real name was Swift Eagle. I had to see it on his paycheck to believe it. I think he had another name too, but Swift Eagle. So Swift Eagle, he'd been in Nam, I don't know, a couple of tours, maybe more.

• 1:30:40Speaker 02

  And he would sneak around and if anybody fell asleep on lines, this fricking Indian would sneak up and he'd take a K-bar and, and he'd reach around behind you and nick you, just nick you with a K-bar. Well, in Nam, that nick's going to get infected within a few hours. Everything got infected in Vietnam. So you learned real quick. Don't fall asleep, you know, I don't care how tired you are. So I was scared to fall asleep. He had already nicked me once and I, I almost shot him. I thought it was, I didn't know who it was. But anyway, that guy was a hero. He, he got hit seven times.

• 1:31:17Shawn Ryan?

  Geez.

• 1:31:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he kept, he would return down to Purple Hearts because he didn't want to go home. The Marines were in NOM, the Marines were his family. Why would I want to go anywhere else? My family's here. He would say stuff like that. I mean, how do you not love these guys? So I wasn't gonna fall asleep if I could help it because Swift Eagle would make sure I woke up. But this night, I'm dozing and I'm dreaming and I'm dreaming back home, you know? We call them world dreams, you're back in the world. And I'm back in the world. I'm cruising Steak and Shake. And then I've got, I've got my 57 vet and I'm cruising around Steak and Shake.

• 1:32:00Speaker 02

  And I'm trying to pick up girls and I'm just, I'm having a great time in my dream, you know, it's, you're out in NOM. And my favorite band, this is a true story, favorite band was The Young Rascals. I loved The Young Rascals. Well, all of a sudden, in the middle of fricking Cambodian mountains, Laotian mountains, wherever the heck I was, I start hearing The Young Rascals singing "In the Midnight Hour."

• 1:32:28Speaker 02

  And I'm thinking, oh my God, this is the best dream I've had since I came to NOM.

• 1:32:35Speaker 02

  I'm even hearing the music. And I mean, that's where my mind was, you know, get it? That's where my mind was, man. And, and then bam, bam. And it wasn't M16 rounds. It was M14 rounds. And they're slapping through my poncho and the plastic poncho, the old, we had Korean era ponchos, okay? They were plastic stuff. They would rip through that and it was cutting my face from the rounds. Not the bullets, but the plastic was cutting my face. Bam, bam, and it's going through my poncho. Of course, I was frozen, but I was awake and I'm still hearing the music. I'm still hearing the Young Rascals in the midnight hour and all of a sudden there's,

• 1:33:20Speaker 02

  there's a guy on top of me and uh, it, it, it was an NVA and I have too late to get to the machine gun, too late to get to the 45. I got to the K-bar, I got, I got to my K-bar and uh, and we rolled down the hill and, and uh, yeah. So, so later on, I found out, I found out that, we found the body, of course, and uh, he had a boombox. This guy had a big shiny boombox and what, the uh, the North Vietnamese loved American music too and they would, they would tune into Armed Forces Radio Network.

• 1:34:04Speaker 02

  Well, every night at midnight, Armed Forces Radio Network played in the midnight hour by the Young Rascals. Of course, I knew none of this. I had, I hadn't heard music since I left America, but uh, and we just sure didn't listen to Armed Forces Radio Network, but they did. He had a boombox, he'd been listening to Armed Forces Radio Network and evidently it had caught on a twig going through the bush and turned on his boombox. Holy shit. Well, above him was this kid named Alabama, uh, actually we called him Sugar Bear, but he was from Alabama. Sugar Bear was, Lieutenant Major, one guy in, in every squad or so had an M14 because we, the M16s were crap. They were plastic. We called them Mattie Mattels.

• 1:34:47Speaker 02

  They would jam in the heat and the rice paddies and uh, you know, it, it, there've been, there were episodes like Liberty Bridge. I, I had heard the numbers, if I'm wrong, forgive me, but I'd been, I was told 48 Marines died there and mostly because all their M16s or Mattie Mattels jammed and they ended up using them just as clubs, just, you know, hand to hand. But uh, but anyway, so we didn't trust that Mattie Mattel. It was plastic, you know, we trained through all our training with an M14 and at the last minute, they throw us these little plastic guns and say, go to Vietnam with this. So. One guy would carry an M14 in case these M16s jammed.

• 1:35:31Speaker 02

  Well, you know the sound, you know, you can tell the sound, and you know more about guns than I do. And so we could hear that, I knew it was an M14 firing through my poncho. And sure enough, it was Sugar Bear. It was the only one who woke up quickly. As these guys went down through this trail beneath him. And he had shot the guy, but he wasn't dead. And he rolled down the hill on top of me, and then it was me and him. And so flash forward about 10 years ago. I go to a big party in St. Pete, given by a doctor, and he would, he was wealthy.

• 1:36:13Speaker 02

  And he would have these big, huge parties once a year, and he would hire old rock and roll bands. He hired The Young Rascals, Felix Cavallari and The Young Rascals, to this party. I ended up meeting Felix Cavallari, and I started, I told him this story. Yeah, I knifed a guy to your song in the midnight hour. And he goes, "Oh, God," he goes, "I gotta hear this story." So we spent, we spent the night me telling him this whole story. But it was his favorite story about that song from that point on. And we became kind of friends, but it's a true story. In the midnight hour.

• 1:36:57Speaker 02

  So to this day, every time I hear that song, I mean, I, you know, I'm back in Nam, man. My mind is back in Nam. I'm an old man, but it, some things just don't change.

• 1:37:11Shawn Ryan?

  Wow. Can I ask you a question?

• 1:37:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:37:16Shawn Ryan?

  Why does the officer bother you?

• 1:37:19Speaker 02

  Why does the what bother you?

• 1:37:19Shawn Ryan?

  The officer.

• 1:37:20Speaker 02

  The officer? Oh, no, I, I-

• 1:37:24Shawn Ryan?

  Lieutenant. Did you say-

• 1:37:26Speaker 02

  My lieutenant, oh, I liked that guy.

• 1:37:27Shawn Ryan?

  No, I'm not talking about him. The officer that you killed. That you went to go see in the grass.

• 1:37:39Speaker 02

  Forgive me, I've lost, I'm not sure. Tell me again, let me-

• 1:37:43Shawn Ryan?

  We had just spoken about it, and I'd asked if you want to talk about the first time you had to kill somebody.

• 1:37:50Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 1:37:51Shawn Ryan?

  And you'd brought up an officer.

• 1:37:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, he was, uh, I don't know, I guess, I remembered, I remembered it was, it was an officer. You know, we didn't, we didn't, you weren't killing officers every day, you know, usually it was just peons like me and, uh, yeah, I think, I think because I stayed around the body so long. You know, I, I, I think because I had to stay around that body longer than normal and, uh, yeah, it, uh-

• 1:38:24Shawn Ryan?

  Good.

• 1:38:25Speaker 02

  I think that's why, I don't, you know, I don't know, may- maybe just because it was the first time I saw. I mean, I had been in firefights, but you know, you know, you go out, you find some dead bodies, you don't know if you got them. I mean, it, uh-

• 1:38:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, this one I knew and, uh-

• 1:38:42Shawn Ryan?

  It different.

• 1:38:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's different, it's different. I, yeah. Yeah, some crazy episodes. I, I shot a girl up, uh, that, uh, uh,

• 1:38:55Speaker 02

  once again, we, we just had a, it was about twenty guys, about twenty Marines and, I don't know, I don't know what we were doing. Uh, but we were walking way up in the mountains and, uh, and the word's coming back that we're near the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Well, you know, I'm hoping the rest of the battalion's out there somewhere because twenty guys, you know, there's a lot of, a lot of gooks on that Ho Chi Minh Trail and, uh, uh, so, but we, uh, we, we came across, we're going up the steep hill and we came across this, um, this guy who'd been left behind, an NBA soldier. Well, the guy, they ran into him up at the front of the line first. First our point man comes across him and-

• 1:39:37Speaker 02

  A butt strokes a guy and kicks him back to an elf all the way down to the hill. Marines are kicking this guy back down the hill. And he comes to me, he's like, so I didn't hit him, he was already a mess, but we, he had been left behind. He wasn't, you know, he'd been wounded, his foot was all infected. And I don't know if it was from a wound or what, the jungle, you know. And they had left this guy behind, but we knew they were gonna come back for him. So we, you know, we set up an ambush and it was, I mean, I remember this honestly, you know, if I was a good painter, I could paint this. But it was all, it was steep hills and then there was a little flat area and a little

• 1:40:21Speaker 02

  mountain, a stream going through this little flat grassy area. And heavy woods everywhere else, but there's one little open area and this stream and the trail went through this and right along that side of, beside that stream. And we sat up on a hill beside it. We got up on this hill, had an open, open fire down on this thing. And I, I sat the gun up, looking down on this, this trail, waiting for these guys to come back to get that guy. And sure enough, these little pith helmets, you know, start ditty bopping out of the, out of the bush and we get them in the open. And we, we just open fire blew them away, you know.

• 1:41:05Speaker 02

  I hit, I hit a few of them with the 60. And, you know, 60 does, it'll put a good sized hole in people, you know, I mean, it made a mess out of people a lot of times. But a lot of times, you know, people live through incredible crap. I know you're, one of your guys was showing me a guy over there that was shot 20 times or something and lived, you know, you never know. So I, after this, during this battle, they, they, they were like water bugs, I mean, really, they were like roaches. They weren't gonna stay around and fight, they never did. And they're gone into the, into the woods.

• 1:41:44Speaker 02

  But one by one, they keep coming out of the woods back into the open. They're all trying to get to this one guy. This true story, they're trying to get to this, we realized it was this one, this one gook laying half in the stream and half out that I had hit. And they're all keep trying to get to this guy. And every time they'd come out in the open, you know, we'd kill them. And finally, it's over. And we go down to check the bodies. And we're kicking them over and we kick over this one in, in this, laying in the stream, half in the stream, half out. And kick that pith helmet off.

• 1:42:27Speaker 02

  And it's a girl, it's a beautiful girl, a beautiful Asian girl, beautiful, long hair falls out.

• 1:42:35Speaker 02

  And she's, she's pretty, a pretty girl, you know, and, you know, we haven't seen a girl in a long time. So, and she's alive. She's alive? She's alive. And, and her eyes pop open and she, and she, she starts saying all that, well Chan had been sent to, because I told you, he was brilliant. They sent Chan to, it was called S5 school or something like that, S2 school, some, some S school to learn Vietnamese language. So he could help interpret when we got prisoners and stuff. So Chan knew a little bit of Vietnamese now. He had learned enough to figure out some stuff. And so she keeps saying the same thing, you know, over and over.

• 1:43:20Speaker 02

  And so we, Chan, what's she saying, man? And he goes, she's saying Marines, Marines, Marines, you're evil, Marines are devils, Marines are devils, or something like that, you know, some, something like that, they'd been told about Marines. And

• 1:43:39Speaker 02

  The neat part of the story is, after that shootout was done, we're real close to the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and everybody said so. And I already, I mean, you don't have to, you know, when you're in engine country. I mean, nobody has to tell you, this is a real dangerous zone here. I mean, you'd see, you'd see where they, they'd worn down a path where they were even pulling, you know, box carts full of crap, you know, and, you know, bicycles loaded down with ammo. And, you know, you could tell. And we were in, we were in a place where there are a lot of NVA, and we only got 20 Marines, if that

• 1:44:18Speaker 02

  many. We called in a chopper to come get this wounded girl. Now, there's huge trees, this one little open area, you know, where we got them, but all around, it's these giant trees. And here comes Jolly Green, that usually would carry 105s, you know, one of those great big choppers. Usually, you don't use that for, you know, medevacs, but I don't know if that's all they could get. I don't know if it's because of where we were. But Jolly Green shows up and starts lowering the basket to get this girl out. And we rescued this girl, and she's cursing us and doing everything, you know, saying stuff about

• 1:45:03Speaker 02

  us the whole time. The corpsman did what he could to patch her up. We got her in this basket, and that chopper almost crashed. It's hitting the treetops and everything, trying to, trying to hover and get this thing out. We could hear artillery, you know, you could hear, I mean, we know we're in a bad zone. I always, I think of that, and I, you know, you come home and, and the Americans are calling you a bunch of baby killers and this and that, and you go, if only they knew. We risked all those Marines to get this wounded girl out of there. We risked everybody's life. And I know it, and I, the guys with me knew it.

• 1:45:48Speaker 02

  But, and that chopper pilot, those, those guys. Crap, they're hitting tree limbs and stuff. I mean, they could have gone down at any time. And they, they didn't take off. And they got that girl out of there, and I don't know if she ever lived. But, we tried. And, um, but I always remember that, and I always, when we talk about girls in infantry units. Yeah, I'm real against girls in infantry units. I, I, I won't change. I know I'm old, maybe that's it. But I'm against that. And, uh, I watched, that wasn't the only time. I saw it another time. Where there was an NVA nurse with, uh, and this girl was probably an NVA nurse. You know, she didn't even have a weapon, I don't think.

• 1:46:31Speaker 02

  But, uh, we've had a, we ran into a bunker and, uh, we, it was an, an NVA. We just saw three, three gooks go in this bunker. And, of course, we're open fire, we, we move up on it, start throwing frags in, and, uh,

• 1:46:54Speaker 02

  frags are coming back out. They're throwing them back out before they go off, you know, and. But finally, you know, we, we hold the pin longer, flip it in. And, uh, anyway, finally, there's no way they could be alive, you know. And so we sent a guy in to pull out the bodies. And, uh, he didn't come back out. The, the, the smoke from the grenades, it got him. And so we dragged him out. And send in another guy, and he starts dragging out the bodies. Well, he only dragged out two bodies. We saw three go in there. And they, they, the, uh, eventually, we know there's a third one in there. We don't know, you know, and we couldn't find it. And, uh, finally, uh, I think it was Corporal, uh,

• 1:47:40Speaker 02

  Houston, Corporal Houston, he was another brave guy, I could tell you a story about him too. But Houston goes in and there were wood planks inside this bunker and they had taken, it was a girl and they buried her under the wood planks so she could survive the grenades. And he found her, he drags her out, well, she didn't really survive and her skull is cracked open and we're in combat, we can't get anybody to, it's way too late to try to save her. And so, and you can literally see her brains, you know, from the concussion, her skull's cracked open, we can see the brains and, I mean, no way she was gonna live and that's

• 1:48:25Speaker 02

  why I titled it mercy killing, but it doesn't matter, you never forget that, you never. So, somebody said, hey, you know, come on, put her out of her misery, man, you know, cause she's gasping and everything, you know, but she's still gasping and so a guy shot her with an M16, you know, a round or two and we're ready to walk away and, but we gotta search the bodies for papers. So, she didn't die and then somebody hit me and I, you know, this is where, this is where, like knifing the guy, you know, some of this, I think my mind tries to protect me.

• 1:49:09Shawn Ryan?

  We don't have to go here.

• 1:49:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, and, and so, yeah, I don't, I don't, I remember somebody hit me and saying, shoot her with a 45, you know, shoot her with a 45, you know, it's Matty Mattel's, shoot her with a 45 and, and of course, machine gun, right, I carried a 45 and, yeah, so you live with that, you know, I don't forget that one. And 30 years later, at the Big Red Memorial thing, when they're giving him the Bronze Star 30 years late and all that stuff, a bunch of the guys showed up and one of the guys was Sergeant.

• 1:49:55Speaker 02

  Oh crap. Hey, he's in that, he's in Guns Up. There's a picture of him holding the flag from Way City. Uh, it'll come to me, but anyway. The Sarge was there and he pulls out at this reunion. You know, we're, we're having a few beers in a hotel, kinda trying to come down from a, a pretty emotional time. And I, I had to give a speech at Red's High School and try to tell what he was, who he was. These kids, you know, knew nothing and anyway. So now we're trying to come down, drink a couple of beers and see if we can chill. And Stacy Watson, Sergeant Stacy Watson.

• 1:50:34Speaker 02

  So Sergeant Stacy Watson goes, he opens, he had, he had a little briefcase or something with him and he goes, "Do you remember this gunner?" And he, he's got that girl. He had searched, he had to search the bodies that day. He had her full ID and I mean, it's a full ID. I, and he made copies of it. I've still got it. I don't know if that's morbid, but I do. But with her name, what, where she was born, I mean, all these details. A full ID on this, this girl that, uh, that we, we had to kill. And, uh, boy, that one.

• 1:51:14Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:51:14Speaker 02

  You know, that one sent me, that one sent me real. And after that, and that's, you know, I, uh, real, real close to that is when they, uh, you know, they, they, they found out I, I, all my records had been blown up. A 122 Chinese rocket had hit Anh Hoa Combat Base. And, uh, for those who don't know, uh, 122 is about the size of a telephone pole. I mean, it's a big old frickin' rocket. And it, it, it hit the, uh, record shack at Anh Hoa and killed all the guys in the record shack and blew up all our records. Well, I,

• 1:51:53Speaker 02

  there'd been a, a shootout in a graveyard and, uh,

• 1:52:01Shawn Ryan?

  It's okay, Charlie.

• 1:52:09Shawn Ryan?

  Let's take a break. Let's take a break.

• 1:52:14Shawn Ryan?

  I used to think most razors were basically the same. You grab whatever's at the store, use it until it starts dragging, and then somehow the refills still cost way more than they should. And if it clogs up or irritates your neck, you just deal with it because that's what you're used to. That's why I switched to Harry's Plus. Harry's Plus is their most advanced razor yet. It has an advanced pivoting system to reach every corner of your face, refined blade tech for a closer, smoother shave, and a weighted metal handle that gives you more control. It feels solid in your hand, not cheap or flimsy. And the blades are German engineered, honed at three different angles to cut cleanly without tugging.

• 1:52:56Shawn Ryan?

  The cartridges also have a lubricating strip with aloe and vitamin E to help calm your skin while you shave. What I like is Harry's owns their own blade factory in Germany, so they control the process from steel to shelf and keep the price reasonable. And all of Harry's blades and grooming products can be delivered right to your door. You set your schedule and never have to think about running out of blades again. Plus, if you don't love your shave, Harry's will make it right. For a limited time, our listeners can get the Harry's Plus trial set for only $10 at harrys.com/srs. This set includes the all-new Harry's Plus razor, one refined five-blade cartridge, a two-ounce foaming shave gel,

• 1:53:41Shawn Ryan?

  and a travel cover to protect your blades on the go. Just head to harrys.com/srs to claim this offer, and after you purchase, they'll ask where you heard about them. Please, support our show and tell them we sent you.

• 1:54:17Shawn Ryan?

  See you later.

• 1:54:20Shawn Ryan?

  Looked solid building. What do you think, Sean? We're high.

• 1:54:38Speaker 02

  Anyway, it's been a pretty, pretty big shootout in this graveyard and I do want to tell you about that because it's another incredible hero. I mean, I think he was probably the bravest guy I knew through the whole war and I knew some, I knew some guys that you could make a movie about. I mean, they were, these guys were, some of them were like, I mean, Swift Eagle, we had a gunnery sergeant gunnery at McDermott. He'd been put up for the Medal of Honor. I mean, he, and he didn't get it because he hit, he punched an army officer and they knocked it down to a Silver Star. Anyway, I mean, God, these, these guys were warriors, man. And, um, I mean, way, they all did way more than me.

• 1:55:18Speaker 02

  But, um, anyway, I, uh, this, this, this graveyard incident, uh, they found out, uh, I'd been put up for the Silver Star. Uh, they told me that night, you know, they'd seen something I did and they wanted to put me up for the Silver Star and I, you know, 30 years passed, war's way over, but I always wondered about it, you know? Whether, if, was I ever, was that true, you know, because all the guys came up and told me. And, uh, so 30 years later, they find out all our records have been blown up. And so, uh, you know, I, I, I looked up the old gunnery sergeant, uh, and I didn't know him. Uh, it was gunnery, gunnery sergeant Portner. And he was the, I knew my, my company gunny was McDermott.

• 1:56:02Speaker 02

  So I thought it was him who put me up for it, but it wasn't him. But, um, It was it was Porter. So I I got a hold of Porter. He lived in Virginia and I said, Gunny, I don't know if you're gonna remember this, you know, I and I I said, but I told him the story. I said, do you remember the graveyard that night, you know, when the Undemstock got killed and Sonny got hit 11 times. I said, do you remember? And he goes, I remember every every minute of it. And I and I said, well, it look, the guys told me you put me up for Silver Star. And she said, I did. So, well, okay. Well, I never got it, you know, and I I just always wondered, was it true? It, you know, and I thought it'd end there. But when he found out the records had been blown up, and listen how they found

• 1:56:47Speaker 02

  out, Pat McDermott, the guy who saw me in Jacksonville doing the one hour pushups and the backflips to get in the Marine Corps, he got shot that night in the graveyard. And so he wanted a Purple Heart. He went and he was still lived in Jacksonville and he wanted a Purple Heart license tag. Because they'd just come out with the Purple Heart license tags and he wanted one. And they wouldn't give him one. And he goes, and he goes, he shows him the bullet hole. You look at it. And he goes, it's not on your DD 214. Well, nothing was on our DD 214s. Crap, I didn't have anything. I had good conduct medal, I think. I had not, you know, nothing. So, so he he says, I I I got shot, you know,

• 1:57:30Speaker 02

  and he died, August 3, 68. I can tell you. Well, he started the investigation that found out that all the records have been blown up.

• 1:57:39Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, shit.

• 1:57:40Speaker 02

  And because of Pat McDermott wanting that Purple Heart license tag, he he's the reason I got the Silver Star, you know, because McDermott, I mean, Gunnery Porter found out about it. And one thing led to another. Gunny Porter wrote the whole thing up again. Other guys, Doc Turley, wrote up a thing about it and others did. They're all dead now. But Porter died two weeks after rewriting me up for that. And so I I got it. But but that that particular night, that

• 1:58:19Speaker 02

  That bringing back that, that getting the Silver Star, you know, all that stuff comes back on you. And, uh, and then I go to, that's when Big Red gave him the, the Bronze Star. He deserved a Silver Star way more than Johnnie Clark. He deserved a frickin Medal of Honor. But anyway, they, all that happened and we went to that reunion and that's when he shows me the picture of this girl we had to, had to kill and, uh, and, uh, kinda sent me over the edge, you know, I was-

• 1:58:49Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think he showed you that?

• 1:58:52Speaker 02

  Uh, we, we all been having, we had a few beers and, you know, and I don't know, some guys handle it better than others. And, and he was, his job to search all the bodies. And that, that's how he had the flag that we, the 5th Marines raised over the citadel at Way City.

• 1:59:07Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 1:59:07Speaker 02

  He still had it. I got a picture of it in guns up, him with the flag. But, uh, yeah, I don't, he didn't mean anything bad by it. I, I don't, I'm not mad at him about it, but it, uh, yeah, I kind of, you know, I, I was diagnosed with severe combat fatigue. And, uh, that was, that was a rough ride sometimes, you know, all my hair fell out in one night. And, uh, and up to that point, they had diagnosed it with mild combat fatigue. And then they, I went to the VA and I said, hey, did I catch something in NOM? All my hair fell out one night and, you know, my wife's screaming and I'm freaking out. And I said, uh, oh, you've been misdiagnosed. You have severe combat fatigue. So, yeah,

• 1:59:52Speaker 02

  it was, it's been a bumpy ride at times, you know, it really has, but, uh-

• 1:59:56Shawn Ryan?

  All your hair fell out in one night?

• 1:59:59Speaker 02

  Pardon?

• 1:59:59Shawn Ryan?

  All of your hair fell out in one night?

• 2:00:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:00:02Shawn Ryan?

  I've never heard of that.

• 2:00:02Speaker 02

  Well, it grew back, you know, it was, it was, it was a shock. I mean, you know, I don't know. I don't know why your body does that. But yeah, I'd gone through, uh, I, I couldn't get out of NOM, you know, it's, it's when I first came home. I was like 20, 21 years old. I don't, yeah, maybe 21. I don't even know if I was 21, but around there. And, uh-

• 2:00:24Speaker 02

  And here's what made it really devastating to me at the time. It crushed me. That was when, do you remember the musical Hair?

• 2:00:35Speaker 02

  No? Hair, beautiful hair. Anyway, hair, long hair became this incredible rage in America in the early 70s. And there was this giant musical called Hair, and I think they made a movie out of it even. But anyway, Hair became this, everybody had long hair. And I didn't like that. You know, I'm not a long hair guy, but everybody had long hair. And so if you didn't, I already came home looking, you know, here, I've got a Marine Corps haircut. So I already looked out of it, and you don't fit in with all your friends because now you're 20 years older than them, even if you're the same age.

• 2:01:14Speaker 02

  And so you don't fit in anyway. But now, all your hair falling out one night, it was shocking. You know, it really threw me over the edge there for a while. But the VA, you know, oh yeah, they diagnosed it severe, you got severe combat fatigue. But anyway, enough of that. But all that came about from Pat McCurry wanting a Purple Heart license tag, the Silver Star and all that stuff. It all came out of that. But that night that I got that Silver Star license tag, that I got the Silver Star, it was some...

• 2:01:52Speaker 02

  That night in the graveyard, I wrote that story because of a guy, a kid named Undem Stock.

• 2:02:01Speaker 02

  We had a kid with us that was so terrified, Sean. He, we don't know, nobody could figure out how he got through boot camp. I didn't exaggerate boot camp. It was hell. So we didn't know how he got through boot camp.

• 2:02:16Speaker 02

  Somehow he got through, he was a Hollywood Marine. I know that boot camp's easier than Paras Island. So, he got through Hollywood Marine, but he got through boot camp. He was so scared that if we go on an ambush, you could hear his teeth chattering. And you can't shake, he would shake. And, uh, he would make noise. And he would urinate on himself all the time. Now, we were, we all smelled horrible anyway, but, you know, that makes it even worse when somebody, you're in a hole with a guy and he's peeing all the time, you know, all over you. But he, he was absolutely terrified and shouldn't have been there. And it became obvious, you know, you go out on a ambush or an LP with this

• 2:02:59Speaker 02

  guy, and, you know, he's just, you know, making noise, shaking. He's gonna get everybody killed. So, uh, so we, the lieutenant finally knew and came to him and said, "We're gonna give you an out." And we called him Cowboy. He was from Oklahoma, and we called him Cowboy. And, uh, and he, he had his out from Vietnam. Now, look, a lot of the guys at that point, they weren't letting us win the war. We knew that. It was clear, they weren't gonna let us win the war. Uh, they weren't gonna let us ever go across that river and invade the north, you know? None of that was ever gonna happen. We were just gonna play this stalemate game and end up like Korea. And that doesn't do anything for the guy's morale. So, you

• 2:03:44Speaker 02

  come to a bunch of guys that have put in a tour, maybe two tours, some of these guys, uh, and you say, "Okay, here's your ticket home, back to the world. We're gonna let you go back to the world." That, a lot of guys would, "Get me out of here. You know, I did my time. I'm ready to go home." And, uh, here's a guy who's the most terrified Marine I ever saw, I ever met. And he tells the lieutenant.

• 2:04:38Speaker 02

  I ain't going home. To all the Marines go home.

• 2:04:43Speaker 00

  Fuck, man.

• 2:04:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. Well, flash forward. They, they put him with my gun team. And that, that's a funny story. They put him with my gun team. I.

• 2:04:57Speaker 02

  I got, I got hit again and I was coming back to the unit. And they were flying me back from a hospital and uh. They tried to land me with the guys and the, um. The guys uh were under real intense fire. They were in a big shootout. And so they couldn't get me, the chopper couldn't bring me in. And so they, they dropped me on an artillery base. And uh. So it was all these, they were Marines. It was a Marine artillery base. Uh, one, I think they were mostly 105s. They might have some 155s, but um. It was, uh, this arty base, these guys live behind barbed wire and bunkers and, you know. And various grunt units down there in the jungle to keep people away from this arty base.

• 2:05:42Speaker 02

  But it still is no picnic. They got hit and stuff. I'm not saying these, these guys. But uh. But they lived a different life than the grunts out in the bush. And I uh. I never saw, I never, you know, if you smoked, if you even smoked a cigarette in the bush with the guys I served with. You, you, you might get yourself killed. I mean, there, there were some mean people. They might kill you for something, you know, you, you risking their life and everybody's life. So you, you just didn't do crap like that, you know, and uh. And the idea of smoking pot. You know, I came home and everybody's going, oh, how good was the pot over there? I'm going. You've been watching too much TV, bro.

• 2:06:26Speaker 02

  I don't know. You've been watching the air force over there or something. I could uh. No, there weren't no pot where I was and uh, so. So I landed on this arty base. And I'm still 18 years old. I've never smoked pot. I didn't even, I didn't even know what it was. If I saw it, I wouldn't even know what it was. So, uh, the chopper drops me off with these arty guys to try to, we'll come back and get you, you know, when the heat goes down on your unit. And I say, oh, okay. So I get off and I'm standing alone. It's like guy in a desert, you know, because they're all in their bunkers. So I finally I see one of them come out.

• 2:07:07Speaker 02

  I think he had a Hawaiian shirt on. And he comes out, he goes, hey, grunt. Come on up. So I go, I plot over to this bunker and they go down in and they've got like beads over their bunker and stuff. You know, like a little door and I go down in the bunker and they've got music playing, you know, the Armed Forces Radio Network's on and, uh, and they're drinking. They got, they got whiskey and they're smoking pot. They had pot and, uh, and they offered me some, and I, you know, I've never smoked. And they said, hey, you might go back, back out in the bush and get killed tomorrow, man. At least know what pot tastes like.

• 2:07:51Speaker 02

  Okay. So, so I tried it and, uh, and then, uh, I, I get stoned, you know, I'm stoned. And now, now they're, they're giving me whiskey, shots of whiskey. And I'm thinking, now this is a, this is a pretty good way to spend the war.

• 2:08:06Speaker 02

  I think I'll, I think I'm just gonna sign up for artillery here. Well, about that time, I hear this scream and, uh, hey, where's that grunt? His ride's here. And I go, oh God. So I stagger out of this bunker and I, I go, oh no, this is gonna be bad. And I get over to this chopper and I'm thinking, oh my God. Get in the chopper, you know, and I'm like hanging out thinking, I hope I don't throw up in the chopper. And they, it's, uh, they, they left off and they bring me back to my unit. And I'm thinking, well, the shootout's over, you know, they'll drop me in, they're in a perimeter.

• 2:08:50Speaker 02

  Shootout wasn't over, so they, this chopper comes in and there's all kinds of fire and there's bullets smacking through this chopper and they let me out and I'm like, I'm half buzzed and I'm standing in the middle of a shootout and the Marines are all firing around the perimeter and I'm standing in the open and the gun, he's going, "Get down, you idiot", you know, that's why, "Where's my gun to you", and he said, "Your gun's over there, Clark, take over the gun", so I make it back to my gun. Well, it was during that firefight that, you know, I, I finally had time to square away, because it went on for a while and, uh, so they, uh, I mean, we, we had to call in Phantoms and

• 2:09:30Speaker 02

  they're, they're dropping napalm, oh geez, a couple hundred yards outside our perimeter, you know, and I mean, it's not a perimeter like a buildup area, we're, we're just in an open area, you know, we've behind trees and dug some holes, foxholes, you know, and it's, uh, but we've got a perimeter set up and, uh, so, but about 200 yards out in front of me, uh, a lot of the fire's coming from, and so I got to pinpoint, we're calling in napalm, man, over there and the lieutenant tells me, so I, I show him where the, where the napalm, and just a second I opened up to show him where it's at, man, these Phantoms rip by, I mean, you could see the pilots, they're so low, you know, and that

• 2:10:13Speaker 02

  sounded, and you see these canisters tumbling real slow and then suddenly it all goes up in flames and, uh, of course, you know, Marines are cheering, this is great, you know, and a, a couple of gooks ran out of it on fire and, and so we, we shot them and, um, but this went on for a while, this, this big shootout and, uh, well, later on, uh, we're not going anywhere, clearly, we're not going anywhere, nobody's coming to save us, so we're, we're just hunkered down, you know, and, and so, uh, I, uh, and choppers can't get in, you know, that chopper almost got shot down, so nobody's

• 2:10:54Speaker 02

  coming, so, uh, we've been there, this is going on for hours and Chan, Chan and I are behind this fall, this tree that's been knocked down and we're behind this tree and we got a hold, I got, and he says, "So, uh, you want some coffee?"

• 2:11:13Speaker 02

  And I, I said, "Oh, man, I really need coffee." He says, "Yeah, you smell like you need coffee."

• 2:11:20Speaker 02

  And I go, "Well, it wasn't my fault. It was these arty guys, you know." And he goes, "Yeah, alright, that's just..." So we, you know, break out a C ration can. And we'd take a C ration can, you know, we had these old C ration cans, we punched holes in it. And you'd put a little piece of C4, plastic explosive, for those who don't know. So we peed a piece of C4 in the bottom of the can, light it, and, uh, and, and heat your food. So we heated up some coffee. So we're sitting back leaning against this tree, and there's, there's still lead flying over, but there's nothing we could do. And I don't have any targets, nobody's standing guns up, so it's like, "Let's have some coffee." And Chan says something funny, and we were always saying, so, I mean, it's, you know how everybody deals with this crap a different way?

• 2:12:03Speaker 02

  And, you know, I'm not pretending we weren't scared, or any of that kind of crap. But you deal with fear your own way, and, you know, it's like, you can't do anything about it. Yeah, so, yeah, so we're having a cup of coffee, and, uh, and he says something funny to me, and I started laughing, because I was, I was still kind of out there. And the lieutenant and the gunny hear us over there laughing. And then the word gets around the perimeter, "Hey, Clark and Chan are having coffee."

• 2:12:38Speaker 02

  "Oh, well, pretty soon..." Pretty soon, the gunny, Gunny McDermott, we called him Gunny Magnet, because he drew so much lead. Gunny Magnet comes sliding in like he's stealing second base, and he's going, "What the hell are you guys doing?", you know, and I, "Oh, Gunny, we don't have any targets. You know, we're, we're kind of running out of ammo."

• 2:13:01Shawn Ryan?

  You're like, "I'm drunk, I'm high, and now I'm fucking caffeinated. Let's go to war."

• 2:13:07Speaker 02

  "Just, we wanted to have a cup of coffee." And he goes, he goes, "Oh, gosh, you know, the, he says, you know, the lieutenant's talking about a section eight for you, you guys." And I go, "Oh, man, it's not that bad." So, flash forward, after all this is over, here's Undemstock, the kid that's so terrified.

• 2:13:29Speaker 02

  And the gunny and the lieutenant walk him over to us, you know, the shootout's over, and they walk him over to me and Chan, and they said, Listen, uh, we're gonna put him in with your gun team. Yeah, you, uh, you need another guy anyway, and of course, a machine gun team's supposed to be five guys. A lot of times, it was just me. You know, there were, I didn't even have an A gunner sometimes, so now we have three guys with this kid, you know, being dropped in, and so that was good news. But, once we, we realized it was him, we're going, "Oh, God, you know, he's so terrified." Um, you know, this is gonna be rough. But then the lieutenant came and told, he said, "Look, I'm, I'm putting him with you

• 2:14:10Speaker 02

  guys to see if you can make him laugh, see if you can chill him out a little bit. Uh, otherwise, I've gotta send him home." And so, Chan and I took him in and tried to mother him a little bit, and, uh, started giving him Bible passages. And we, uh, started teaching him the Bible a little bit. Well, I, we gave him a, uh, there's a verse in there, I think, it's out of Romans, I think it's Romans 8. I, I, um, this is where I get mad at myself, I should know these verses. And normally I do, I just, little excited about being on the show and stuff, but, uh, anyway, it was out of Romans 8, and, uh, What's it about?

• 2:14:53Speaker 02

  The one about, uh, "War and famine and pestilence and all that might rise against you, and your parents might, your parents might, you know, uh, dump you, but, uh, but I never will," you know, that verse, and, uh, and I, I, uh, here I gotta slow down on the story because I didn't, gotta be careful what I say about it. But he, he had problems when he joined the Marine Corps, that's one of the reasons he joined the Marine Corps, because evidently his family didn't, they, they thought it was a joke, him trying to be a Marine, and, uh, that he, he could never hack it.

• 2:15:33Speaker 02

  And, uh, anyway, he, he had some issues, but everybody's got issues with their parents. I'm not, you know, I'm not nailing them, but he felt sort of, I think he felt sort of abandoned or something by his family, in the, in the sense that they didn't support him. I don't know, I don't know all the details, and I'm not gonna pretend to, but I know he needed that verse. And, um, and we prayed with him and we, uh, we did what we could, you know, to try to, you gotta lean on the Lord here, you know, all of us are scared. And he'd say, you clowns aren't scared, you look at you and I'd say, oh no, I said, well, this is just the way we deal with it. It goes, everybody deals with it differently. And I go, everybody's scared, it's, this guy's dying out here, man.

• 2:16:17Speaker 02

  Of course we're scared and we'd tell him, you know, hey, uh, let's just pray about it. Every time you get like that, you know, we tell him how to pray. And, and he started getting a little better. Well, uh, right before we went into that graveyard, uh, it was a big, big operation. It was a place called Dodge City in the Arizona Territory. Outside of Anjo Combat Base and it was, it looked like Arizona. That's why they called it the Arizona Territory, you know? It looked like out in the desert in Arizona, kind of looking and, uh, uh, but one part of it was called Dodge City. If you went in there, you were going to be in a shootout. You, you always knew it. Everybody knew it.

• 2:16:59Speaker 02

  Well, we knew when we're doing an op in Dodge City, we knew, uh, we're going to see some crap today and, uh, and we did, but they took him out of the, our gun team right before that and put him in, uh, Corporal Hootson's, H U T E S O N, Corporal Hootson's, uh, squad. And, uh, Corporal Hootson, he'd already, he was already a hero in Way City. I mean, the guy, kind of corporal you want, you know? I mean, uh, uh, anyway, he, uh, we, we started off, when we made this op, uh, we started off, we ran into, uh, three, three gooks had come out of the brush, oh, 50 yards ahead of us, you know, and we saw them.

• 2:17:43Speaker 02

  It was open area up to some brush, uh, and trees, kind of. And, uh, Sam the blooper man, uh,

• 2:17:52Speaker 02

  Boom with his blooper, he, they, they take off running, he hits one square in the back and he flips, but he's not dead. And the other two grab him and they pull him into the trees and I, I shot one and he starts limping in to the tree. So we know we've wounded two and they go into this tree line. Well, the whole company, we got a whole company with us this day and I guess there were even more than that out there, but this, this spot, we had a Alpha Company, Fifth Marines, one five, were, were going up to this thing and we didn't have, usually we were out there with 20 guys. This time we got a whole company, so we knew they're expecting some big crap.

• 2:18:34Speaker 02

  And we get up to that tree line and we see them dragging each other into the tree line across, it's about 75 meters across and it's graveyards and you know, the Vietnamese graves were these little round mounds, uh, that it was significant, they would, they were sent in the back into the womb, you know, when they were buried, they were going back into the womb or something like that. And so anyway, there were little round mounds, a, you know, couple of feet off the ground usually, maybe a foot and a half, I don't know, it depended. And, and that was, that was the graveyard, but there wasn't any other cover other than that, it was open.

• 2:19:15Speaker 02

  And so they told me recon by fire, I was ordered out, so I, I go in the graveyard and I recon by fire. Now at this point, another gunner had been killed and they gave Chan his gun, so now Chan and I aren't together. And Chan's got a gun, I got a gun. So they sent Chan out too. So me and Chan go out and we just spray, we spray the other tree line across the graveyard, we just open fired, maybe a hundred rounds and nobody fires back. So they send, they send across Corporal Hutz and squad.

• 2:19:58Speaker 02

  And now his squad, you know, he'd, we'd taken some hits and I forgot how many guys were in his squad, you know, maybe eight or 10, I don't even, maybe. But anyway, they, they go across and they're spread out, going, you know, going slowly because it's open area, but they, suddenly, when they're halfway out there, everything opens up. And we found out later, it was that, we ran into a battalion. Holy shit. And, I mean, they had, they had everything, they had mortars, they had mortar teams back there, they had everything. And three 30 caliber machine guns opened up from fixed position, they were in bunkers on the other side, spread out, but three of them. And then, there's

• 2:20:43Speaker 02

  fire coming from the right flank, across the graveyard, all on these, this squad out there. Because we're still behind the tree line, the rest of the guys. And, and these guys hit the dirt, but I saw a kid named Sonny, I saw him get blown back by a 30 cal, I just assumed he was dead, but then you didn't see anything. Well, this, they kept firing, and we got, we got orders, they're screaming, "Hold your fire, hold your fire", because if we open fire, we're gonna hit our own guys. They're out in the middle of this graveyard, so, and they're on our side of these mounds, trying to hide from all the fire. And you really couldn't see him, it's starting to get dark, it's, now, now it's

• 2:21:24Speaker 02

  getting late, and it starts raining. And monsoon rain. It, it was a brutal rainstorm starts coming in, but then it eases up. And now these guys, they open up again, and there's just a ton of fire. I mean, we're talking, I don't know, you know, a battalion's worth of AK-47s. And these guys, they, they liked opening up full auto, you know, they didn't have any fire discipline. You know, I mean, Marines didn't do that. If you opened up on full auto, somebody's gonna smack you. So, you know, you only did that. You didn't, you didn't have infinite ammo, you know, you, but anyway, but these guys, these crazy NVA, they were, they were just, everything, lead, tracers, they even, they even threw a couple

• 2:22:07Speaker 02

  of satchel charges out in the middle of this graveyard. So, I don't know what they were, their plans were long range, but they were clearly gonna blow stuff up. But, yeah, and here's eight or nine Marines, 10 Marines out there in the middle of all this. So, it was, it was horrible, and we keep, we want to open fire, and we can't. I ran down and I ran out in the graveyard and I got on top of one of the mounds. So I could shoot over them, you know, without hitting our guys and I, you know, knocked out a 30, I, I, I killed that gun team and, and you knew you killed them because their tracer, green tracers went straight up in the sky for a while and they, and, and then

• 2:22:49Speaker 02

  I, I hit another one, I turned on the next machine gun because you had to knock them out first, which is what, and everybody, they shot my boots out from under me, you know, and so I, I was knocked down and my A gunner at the time, he, he was from Indiana. He ran out there, grabbed my boots and dragged me behind the grave mound. So, you know, another heroic thing, you know, because, because it was crazy. It was, there was so much lead flying and, and then we started taking M79 rounds, bloopers rounds, and we know they're not Marines. They had killed some Marines and took their bloopers, you know, but they

• 2:23:30Speaker 02

  were firing at us from the right flank. Well, anyway, they, he, he pulls me and drags me, we get back, back to the tree line. And, but because everybody tried to shoot me, most of the squad was able to get out. And so this went on though, this, this kept going on. So it went on all night where this fight's going on all night and they, they start calling in their mortars now and we can see the mortar flashes, but the lieutenant moves the whole company around to the left flank and we're behind rice petty dykes and we see the muzzle flashes of mortar rounds, just, you know, I, and I, I can see the flashes and I can

• 2:24:15Speaker 02

  see the guys, I can see the NVA soldiers dropping into mortars from the flash, you can see them standing and they're back there in the trees, behind this, this, there was an old hooch that back there that we had originally blown up. It's where I, I killed one machine gun team. Anyway, they, he wouldn't let me, he opened fire on these guys. We were trying to not let them know where we were because they were pinpointing our old position with mortars, just blowing the crap out of it. So.

• 2:24:43Speaker 02

  The lieutenant was holding our fire until we got some artillery called in, or I don't know what his plans were. But the rain, the monsoon rain got so heavy that we were literally, you could drown behind these rice paddies, that the big dikes were down in the mud, but the water was filling up. That's how much rain came in. And so we had finally, in the middle of this mess, we see a guy running out of the graveyard towards us, not where our old position was, but towards us. And I start to kill it. I mean, I'm gonna blow him away. And I see a flash of a mortar going off, and I see his helmet. It's an American helmet. We had, I'd scream, hold your fire, hold your fire.

• 2:25:28Speaker 02

  Nobody shoots him. And I, and he stands, I was, and I ran out, tackled him, dragged him back. It was Pat McCrery, the one, yeah, the one who got the Purple Heart license tag the hard way. Well, anyway, it was Pat McCrery. And he had stayed out there with Sonny, the one that I thought was for sure dead. So he comes in and he goes, Sonny's still out there, Sonny's still out there. And so Gunny Mack, he comes out, he goes, alright, you gotta take us back to him, but we're gonna go get him. So I went out with him. We crawled out in the graveyard to try to find Sonny. And then, then everybody realizes,

• 2:26:10Speaker 02

  Unumstock's not here too. So we got two, at least two Marines still out there. So, and Corporal Hughton went out with us too. So we're crawling back into this mess, and we couldn't find, we couldn't find him. He wasn't where he'd been left. And, cause Pat knew exactly where he left him. I mean, you know, he knew exactly where, pretty much where he was. Wasn't there anymore. Well, we didn't know it at the time, but the machine gunners came out and dragged him back, dragged his body back up in front of their gun. So that they were waiting for us to come and get him. And so they, and he said, he thought

• 2:26:53Speaker 02

  he was, the next morning, we sweep through. Battle's over, and now we've got artillery coming. We sweep through though, fixed bayonets. It's just, you know, and I got no bayonet on that 60 man. So, we sweep across, sweep with bayonets fixed, and they've, they've deet him out. So, we, but we ended up running into him again later, but they, we find, we find Sonny, and I assume he's dead. And we roll him over, and his, his eyes are swollen, shut, you know, like, like it looks like a, a raccoon. And his eyes suddenly just pop open,

• 2:27:37Speaker 02

  and he goes, "Oh my God, you guys won't believe what happened to me last night." And he starts telling us a crazy tale. And, and he, the, the gooks had come out, and, and they came down at him with, with a, like a K-bar. And he thought they were just gonna kill him, they were gonna finish him off. And they cut off his whip, cut off all of his gear, and took it, and then they dragged him up in front of the gun and left him. And he said, "I almost drowned." "I was, I was doing everything not to drown, because the water was rising, there was so much rain." And he lived. That guy lived. He went on to become a Virginia state senator. Chan went to see him. He went, actually went to see the guy in Virginia, he still lives here.

• 2:28:20Speaker 02

  Not that, not that many, maybe a couple of years back. So, so Chan went to see him, and he's still alive and well. And he lived through that night. But here's a guy with all these bullet holes who lives. And not very far away was Zunusak. He didn't have, we couldn't find a wound on him. Now, later, later, years later, they told me they did, they found a little shrapnel hole. But they said, "That didn't kill him," you know. But he, at the time, the, the corpsman and Chan, who's way more in the corpsman, he was also handy for that stuff. He was like a doctor.

• 2:29:01Speaker 02

  They said that, yeah, they, he died of heart failure. He, he literally died of heart failure.

• 2:29:08Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:29:10Speaker 02

  Didn't have to be out there. Could've gone home.

• 2:29:14Shawn Ryan?

  Shit.

• 2:29:16Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:29:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29:20Shawn Ryan?

  It's a hell of a night.

• 2:29:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29:25Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:30:10Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:30:50Shawn Ryan?

  What was your favorite Bible verse while you were over there? Did you have one?

• 2:30:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, well, I'm afraid it's changed over the years for this reason.

• 2:31:05Speaker 02

  My Bible verse now is Psalm 121.

• 2:31:11Speaker 02

  "I lift up my eyes to the mountains, from where comes my help? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth." And I know the whole verse, but that's the part that is a big deal to me.

• 2:31:25Speaker 02

  That's a huge deal to me. That I wrote, it took me 14 years to write about it because I didn't know what God wanted me to do with this, but it was a miracle. And the story behind it is, you know, I mean, some people want to put me in a funny farm, but Christians will hear it and go, "Yeah, that sounds like God," you know? But it was...

• 2:31:50Speaker 02

  Well, should I tell you, can I tell you about it? Of course. I was writing a book called Gunner's Glory, this one.

• 2:31:59Speaker 02

  And it's about machine gunners, World War II, Korea, Vietnam. Incredible machine gunners, you know, some great Marines.

• 2:32:10Speaker 02

  And some of the men I ran into were just, just amazing.

• 2:32:16Speaker 02

  And one, it started off, I ran into a guy named Ted Elliston. And there's a picture of Ted in this thing. Ted died a few years back, but Ted, Ted was, he, there's a picture of him carrying an old water-cooled 30 on horseback. That's what an old Salty was. He was in the 5th Marines. He was a Nicaragua era. They knew, they knew the war was gonna start. They, he was, he, he hits Guadalcanal. His whole story's amazing. But through Ted, and Ted ran out of ammo on Guadalcanal, ran out of everything.

• 2:32:59Speaker 02

  And had nothing, a Jap came out of the bush and it was him and a Jap soldier, he had nothing but a hunting knife. He didn't even have a K-bar. His dad had given him a hunting knife. And he had, he had to kill this Jap with a hunting knife. He still slept with that hunting knife by his bed. And I still sleep with a K-bar. Still to this day. To this day. There's one by my bed, there's one on my desk. And I, and a 45. I still, yeah, I still do. But, you know, when, when this crap happens in the middle of the night, you just, I don't sleep good without it, you know? When I take trips like this and you can't bring a weapon on the plane and stuff, I don't like that. I know.

• 2:33:44Speaker 02

  I'm still, I bet you do. And I, I, I mean, I'm, I'm old, but I could still surprise some people with hand-to-hand combat and, you know, I'm not dead yet, but, yeah. I don't, I don't, I don't like not being able to go to sleep with something beside me. Especially now I don't hear good. Somebody can sneak up on you. And this, this kind of stuff, you know, I mean, you don't get over it. You know, I'll be that way. And neither did Ted. Ted was 84. He slept with his K-bar and it was all because of this moment on Guadalcanal where

• 2:34:21Speaker 02

  it was no grenades, no pistol ammo, no machine gun ammo, nothing left. Yeah, amazing men. And I gotta tell you how I met him, but him leading me to another guy. I met him at Hassel's Bookstores where I had my book signings for all my books. It used to be the oldest bookstore in the southeast in St. Pete, Florida and fabulous old bookstore. And they, the guys who ran it told me one time, they knew I was starting this book and they said, "You know Johnny, you need to meet Ted. You need to meet Ted." And I said, "Who's Ted?" He

• 2:35:00Speaker 02

  says, "Ted, machine gunner, Guadalcanal, 5th Marines." He says, "You need to meet Ted." And so I said, "I gotta meet him. Let's do it." And so they contacted, they said, "Yeah, he'll meet with you." And they gave me his address and they said, "Look, when you meet him, you're gonna notice his right hand is a real mess. You know, 84-year-old skin. Mine's getting like that, but you'll notice his hand is kinda purple and beat up." And he said, "Ask him to tell you the story behind that." And I'm going, "Oh, I think I'm liking

• 2:35:41Speaker 02

  this guy already." And they said, "Oh no, we gotta tell you." He saw a girl. He thought this guy was roughing up a girl on Central Avenue in this kinda seedy part of Central Avenue. And Ted was walking down the street, he's coming to Hassel's Bookstore. And he thought this guy was being ungentlemanly to this lady.

• 2:36:10Speaker 02

  And he did, I guess the guy missed a slap door or something. I don't know what he did. But Ted goes up to him and says something to him. The guy mouthed off. Ted goes boom, knocked him out, laid him out in the middle of Central Avenue. Out cold. Ted had been a boxer and a fighter, and he was still a big guy, eighty-four, but you know, still a great big guy. You wouldn't want to get hit by him. And this guy found that out. He dropped a dude at eighty-four? Yeah, yeah. Knocked the guy out? No, I'm telling you, these, these old Marines, these old Marines, these old Chinahans, and some of these crazy guys from Korea, and I got some stories that you wouldn't believe some of these guys. I mean, they're absolute nutcases. I just love them. Got to research

• 2:36:54Speaker 02

  it. Francis Hugh Colleen, as Irish as the day is born, played the bagpipes in the face of the Chinese, the first Chinese human wave assault at Sudagni. They told him he was ordered to, and they shot the bagpipes through his throat. When he told me his story, he had throat cancer from that, and he, but he had to write his story to me. If you read these letters from this old Irishman, you'll cry laughing. It's just so beautiful. It's, he's one of my books, too. But he's in No Better Way to Die. I put a lot of stuff about him. But anyway, in this one, Ted tells me about, yeah, you know, Mitchell, Mitch Page was, he was in the Seventh Marines, but he, you know, he

• 2:37:35Speaker 02

  was, he was at Canal Two, and I'm going, Mitchell Page, Guadal, Medal of Honor? And he goes, yeah, I think he did. Yeah, I think he got the Medal of Honor, you know, it was just another guy. And he, yeah, I guess, yeah, you know, you need to talk to Mitch. So anyway, I got, I got Ted's story. I get a hold of Mitchell Page. The short version is this. I see you got a G.I. Joe doll up there? Mitchell Page is the Marine that Hasbro Toys made the G.I. Joe doll in honor of because of what he did on Guadal Canal. And what he did on Guadal Canal is a little crazy. There

• 2:38:16Speaker 02

  was one, one big hit where they caught Japanese barges unloading troops. And the Japs didn't think that the Marines would leave the ridge, Edson's Ridge on Guadal Canal. They thought they'd stay there and hunker down and try to protect the airfield. And the Marines... Some, some crazy Marines said, "No, let's go get, let's go out and find them in the jungle." They went out and they, they saw them offloading, off barges, getting into position, I mean, uh, alignment and marching down the beach where they were going to attack, you know, the Edson's Ridge eventually. And Ted, they, they say he could have had, there could have been 600 Japs killed

• 2:38:58Speaker 02

  in, in this shootout because they had them totally in the open and the Marines had dug in on the beach. They were coming down the beach, they dug in on the beach with water cooled 30s and the Mahoney gun, which had, a lot of these old guys were gunsmiths. Sean, they, they rigged up a 30 caliber water cooled to fire, they said, now this is from them, they said somewhere between 900 and 1200 rounds a minute. Whoa. Different springs, they, you know, they were gunsmiths. They really, they had, these old Marines were, that was their life. They, they, you know, you know, I, they were, they were real, real tough guys. Well, they, this guy named Mahoney had, had done all this work on these guns before the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor.

• 2:39:41Speaker 02

  And they knew it was coming and, uh, he, he had them prepared. Well, these were Mahoney guns. So, that Mahoney gun place is significant in this whole miracle that I was leading up to. But, so I interviewed Mitchell Page and I, uh, more than once, but my final interview with, with him, he was on his deathbed. His wife Marilyn wouldn't, uh, she wouldn't let anybody talk to him because he was, he was going down, it was, he was dying and everybody knew it. And, uh, and, uh, she let me, she, uh, you know, because I was, I was a Marine gunner. She knew I was, I was writing this story about him and,

• 2:40:25Speaker 02

  uh, so I, uh, she let me interview him. Well, on his deathbed, he told me the story. Now, he had told it to the Gideons years before and the Gideons actually put out a little pamphlet about it, but I'd never heard about it. But, uh,

• 2:40:42Speaker 02

  Edson's Ridge was a ridge that defended the airfield Henderson Henderson Field. If we lost Guadalcanal, they say Australia would have fallen. Guadalcanal was that important at that point in the war. And a lot of people think, you know, America was dominating war and nothing would be further from the truth at that point. You know, we we were in major trouble. Midway, you know, had done a lot, but we never won a ground battle against these guys. And they were building this, this, they built this Henderson Field on Guadalcanal and they were going to be able to bomb Australia and it was for taking Australia. And they were gonna, they would have taken Australia. We didn't have enough to stop them at that time.

• 2:41:27Speaker 02

  And, uh, and they, because they were already in the little islands moving up to Australia. So the Marines had to hold Guadalcanal. It was really life and death. I've read old experts that said they, that they think the Japs could have made it all the way past California, maybe as far as Chicago. I've actually heard, read this stuff. Yeah, old history accounts. Have we not stopped them at Guadalcanal? So it was critical. And unless you study history, you know, it's just another battle, but it was fricking critical. And so all that was keeping the Japs off Henderson Field was this one, this ridge, ridge line. And, and on the other side of the ridge line is the airfield.

• 2:42:11Speaker 02

  On this side of the ridge line is all jungle. Deep, thick jungle. The Japs were tremendous jungle fighters and they, they were coming out of the, coming out of the jungle and hitting Edson's Ridge. And at one point, in a mass attack, they, they had almost swamped.

• 2:42:35Speaker 02

  The ridge, uh, the Marines had run out of ammo. They were, they were just getting clobbered. And, uh, we couldn't get any more that, that the Jap Navy had sunk a bunch of the US Navy out there. That's something else. A lot of people don't study, don't realize. We lost a bunch of naval ships and our Navy couldn't help us on Guadalcanal because they, a lot of them got sunk. Uh, it's a big, big battles. I think it was Savo Island or something like that. Anyway, some big gun, I mean naval battles out there where the Navy took some huge losses. Lot of men. Maybe more men died there than on Guadalcanal. I don't even know. But, but it, uh, so at that point, we were going to lose Guadalcanal. At, at one point,

• 2:43:20Speaker 02

  a tipping point in this battle for the ridge, the Marines had the Mahoney guns and even the Japs could tell by the fire, the rate of fire, you could tell by the sound of it. That wasn't a normal water, water cooled 30. That thing, you know, it's like, yeah, it would be like, well, it was like the first time I heard, uh, puff the magic dragon when he'd fire those mini guns. There wasn't a machine gun sound. It was that, you know, well, I don't, I'm imagining it must've sounded, you know, somewhat similar because it didn't sound like, so the Japanese knew these guns were bad news and they were on the receiving end of it. And, uh, but at one point, every single Marine machine gunner had been, uh,

• 2:44:03Speaker 02

  killed or, or wounded and knocked out. All, all the guns, all the machine guns were out of action. There was one machine gun down at one end of the ridge that could cover the whole ridge. If the Japanese got to that gun before Mitchell Page got to that gun, they could turn that Mahoney gun on the ridge. They would control the ridge. They would have won the battle of Guadalcanal. It, it, this is what he told me. Other guys have told me that. I trust them. So at that point, Mitchell Page is in a race to get to that Mahoney gun. He sees it. A Jap soldier sees it. The Jap has a Nambo 30 round clip, the

• 2:44:48Speaker 02

  Nambo machine gun. It's got a 30 round clip, banana clip.

• 2:44:53Speaker 02

  The Japs carrying it trying to race to that Mahoney machine gun. Is it Mitch gets there first, kicks the dead Marines off out of the way and off the gun because they were draped all over the gun. Gun's still in action. It hadn't been blown up or anything. He gets behind the gun. He leans forward to chamber around and you know, the old 30s, he had to put some weight in that. And he leans, gonna lean forward to chamber around and open fire on this Jap before he, it's between him and the Jap. The Japanese soldier drops to the ground, point blank range. This is what Mitch says, point blank range, you know, 10, 20 yards. I mean, point blank range, drops to the ground, opens up with his Nambu.

• 2:45:36Speaker 02

  Mitch, this is what he told me on his deathbed. I absolutely believe him. Now, I really believe him. Now that God's done something similar to me. As he goes to lean forward and chamber around, he said, I was frozen in place. He said, I could not move, front, back, sideways. He said, I couldn't do anything. And he said, but Johnny, I felt at total peace. I wasn't scared. I knew this guy was going to put 30 rounds through my temple. I wasn't scared. I couldn't do anything about it. And for some reason, I had absolute peace. It was not, I was, it's like a tractor beam, you know, like a Star Wars guy. He couldn't do

• 2:46:18Speaker 02

  anything. And he said, the Jap opens fire. He got burned from here down to here with 30 rounds, going under his chin and all down here. Didn't get hit. Had he been able to lean forward and chamber the round, he was dead. But as soon as he fired his last round, he said, I was released. Said, totally released. Boom, fell forward, chambered around, killed the Jap soldier. The battle's still going on, but not in this sector, another part of the ridge. But this, he turns the Mahoney gun now on the Japs. They're in retreat now. They've, they've beat them back a little bit. Uh, later, he had to then lead a bayonet

• 2:47:00Speaker 02

  charge to drive the last ones off, off into the jungle again. But.

• 2:47:06Speaker 02

  He goes at, when the shooting is stopped, it's still dark. I mean, your flares are going up. But he goes over and he said, "I got behind that Nambo, kicked the Jap soldier down the hill." And he says, "Got behind that Nambo and looked." He said, "There's no way he could possibly miss me with 30 rounds." And, and he goes, "God, how could this possibly happen? I mean, how could this possibly happen? You had to freeze me," you know? He's talking to God. Well, as he's doing, as he's pleading with God, he had his little finger had been almost severed in the bayonet fight. So he's bleeding all over the place. So he notices it.

• 2:47:47Speaker 02

  He goes, gets his pack and tries to get his first aid kit out to wrap up this, this hand. And he said, "As soon as I picked it up, my Bible just fell out." Yeah, he had a, like, I don't know if it was a Gideon. I guess it was a Gideon, but he had a little Bible. He said, "It fell out and it fell open." And I'd been asking, "God, how? How could this possibly happen? You know, tell me, how?" And it falls open to a page. He said, "There wasn't any wind, but the pages blew open to a certain page." And he, he said, he said, "One passage lights up." He said, "It was like gold and it would look bigger than all the other letters on the, on the page.

• 2:48:31Speaker 02

  It was big and bright. It showed so bright," he said, "it scared the crap out of me because it, it was giving away my position." He said, "There was, there's still Japs out there and this was like a light." And he reads it, Proverbs 3:5. "Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him and He will lead your path." That was the verse his mother sent him to war with. That was, that was her favorite verse.

• 2:49:05Speaker 02

  Later, yeah, but his favorite verse. Yeah, I know. So he said, I didn't even tell the other guys. He said, if I'd have told them this, they would have thought I was shell, I had shell shock because it wasn't combat fatigue, you know, it was shell shock. He said, they would have thought I had shell shock and, you know, they would have thought I was nuts. They wouldn't have believed it. So he said, I didn't even tell the guys. I didn't tell anybody till years later. And he did tell the Gideons this. And, and so his favorite verse, though, is also, is Psalm 121. I lift my eyes to the mountains from whence cometh my help. My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. That was his favorite verse. And that part of, that part of this

• 2:49:50Speaker 02

  story, I mean, flash forward, Mitchell Page died soon after my interview with him and soon after he told me this, all about this. And I go forward about three years. Well, I was working on another book and I, you know, I finish a book, I never look at it again because if I do, I hate it and I want to rewrite it. So I don't even look at them again. And I, that book was put away. And, I mean, I admired the heck out of Mitchell Page. Like I said, every time I see a G I. Joe doll, you know, that's, that's Mitchell Page. He got some ribbon for that, too. G I. Joe, he's a Marine. But that's, anyway.

• 2:50:32Speaker 02

  So, so, oh, he caught some crap over that. But anyway, so, so he, years later, I, I was going through a rough ride. It was soon, somewhere near when all this crap happened at the big red thing. And I was, you know, I don't like to call, I don't like PTSD. I don't like the term. So I didn't mind when he said I had combat fatigue. I don't know, maybe it's, it's just me, maybe I'm old. But I, I didn't mind that term. You can say that. This PTSD thing, I don't like this lump, you know, rape cases and car wrecks and everybody, you know, into a PTSD file. I don't think it's the same. And I don't like it. So I didn't mind that, but.

• 2:51:17Speaker 02

  PTSD. So I guess I was, you know, you know, they said I had a hundred percent. And I guess I, I guess I did. So I, I was going through a tough span. We have a Bible study at my house all the time. We'd have a Taekwondo at my school and then Taekwondo and Judo school. And afterwards, on certain days, we'd have a Bible study class. And so we, we do it at my house. Everybody go to my house and we do it. And I, I was just having a rough time. I was just, you know, and my pastor came. He came to the Bible study. And I, I talked to him. After everybody left, I told him the situation.

• 2:52:01Speaker 02

  I said, hey, you know, not sleeping good, you know, a lot of remembering stuff. It not forgiving myself for stuff.

• 2:52:14Speaker 02

  He said, I'm doing a study on time alone with the Lord.

• 2:52:21Speaker 02

  He goes, Johnny, it's changed, Phil, Phil Ingleman is his name, Phil and Sue Ingleman. He said, Johnny is changing Phil, it's changing me and Sue's life.

• 2:52:32Speaker 02

  Cutting everything off and just spending time alone with the Lord. He said, you need to go spend time. When was the last time you spent time alone with the Lord? Is what he asked me. And I said, not since I was a little kid. Back in the mountains of West Virginia, I'd go up on a hill, you know. But I said, not since I was a little kid. And he goes, that's, that's what you need. So you need to go spend time alone with the Lord. And I said, well, What does that mean to you? Well, I didn't really know either. And I said, I turned to Nancy and I said, Nancy, let's, let's go get a mountain cabin or something somewhere. And he goes, no, no, no, Johnny, not with Nancy, just you.

• 2:53:17Speaker 02

  Take your Bible, go spend time alone with the Lord, no, uh, nobody else, not, not your family, not your kids, go spend time alone. And, uh, I said, gosh, you know, one of my senior students, uh, had, had moved away. He was a Taekwondo master and he'd moved to North Carolina. He, uh, he's a professor at Montreat College, brilliant guy, you know, really brilliant, um, and a strong Christian. And he, uh, I, I called Tony up and I said, Tony, here's what Phil told me. I'd like to try it. Can, can you think you can find me a cabin or something in North Carolina where I can just, you know, go be alone, something

• 2:54:00Speaker 02

  out in the mountains, something out in the hills? He goes, that's really weird. He, he's, he tells me the, uh, these, these people, uh, he's a doctor from Duke and he, they own a, like a little mountain getaway. And they asked Tony and Jane, his wife, to take care of it while they were, they were gone. And they'd rent it out and stuff once in a while. And he says, you know, they're asking us to take care of this place. And that's unbelievable. You can go there. It, and I, well, how much is it? You know, I, I have, I don't have much money. And he said, uh, no, no, it, it's free. We're taking care

• 2:54:38Speaker 02

  of it. They won't care a bit. So I said, I'm on my way. So I, I hop a plane, go to Asheville, take a ride out to Black Mountain, North Carolina. He sends me out to it's, it's, uh, Montreat, North Carolina, right outside of, uh, Black Mountain. And, uh, so I rent this little, I don't rent it. I stay in this cabin. I mean, it was pretty rugged. It was pretty rugged cabin. This was, I mean, there were spider webs, you know, they have like keeping this place up a whole lot, but it was perfect. It's just what I needed. And, uh, but I haven't been out in the woods alone.

• 2:55:15Speaker 02

  Since NOM, really. And I, once again, I didn't have my, I didn't have my .45, I didn't have a pistol, I didn't have a K-bar. And, you know, out in the woods, sounds. So I, it started, I started feeling a little antsy. And I called Nancy, and my daughter calls, she's all freaking out, my daughter Bonnie K., she calls and, "What are you doing, Dad? I don't know if that's healthy for you. What are you doing out there?" She's already come to me and said, "Is PTSD catching, Dad? Because I'm worried I'm catching it." I said, "Oh, God, honey, I hope not." So she, she knows, she knows the story of her

• 2:56:00Speaker 02

  dad. And, but, but here I am, out in the mountains, called Nancy up, and I said, "You know, I've been here a night or two now," and I said, "I keep hearing noises outside the cabin, and I'm not, I'm not getting anything done, you know, I'm not, I'm just uncomfortable. I'm kind of always watching my flanks, you know, six, nobody there, you know, I got, I don't have a perimeter. I don't feel good out here without a perimeter." And so I had, I said, "So, yeah, I, I set up some punji pits." So I, I set up some punji pits around this cabin, just, just two by fours with nails, sixpenny nails,

• 2:56:42Speaker 02

  you know, sticking up. And so they'll yelp, I'll know somebody's here, and, you know, have some kind of defense ready. And, and it made me feel a little better. What I found out later, it was bears. Bears were banging stuff around that cabin. And, and I didn't know, I mean, you know, but, but I'm still, finally, the third day, I'm, I'm out on the porch. Having a cup of coffee, doing my Bible study, gonna read my Bible, feeling okay, feeling better, you know, now I can really spend some time alone with the Lord and not be thinking about anything else and da-da-da. Well, then the guy who owns the house, he

• 2:57:23Speaker 02

  shows up, he's gonna do repairs on the place. And now I'm going, oh, God. So he's got saws, he's got hammers and saws and he's been, and I go, oh, my God. I call up Nancy and I said, Nancy, I can't believe it. This is a total failure. And she goes, Johnny, just take a walk and cool off. Just take a walk. You need to just take a walk. That's it. I'll take a walk. So I took off walking from down the hill, from this cabin, through Montreat, up this mountain road. I don't know, it's a few miles. And I just kept walking until I came to a trail. It's, it's a Greybeard Mountain. It's a hiking trail. Now, this

• 2:58:07Speaker 02

  was back in 2004, I think. And, and it wasn't as built up then, you know, it was really out there a little bit. And so, anyway, this mountain trail, nobody's there. A storm's rolling in. There's all these warnings, you know, bring cellphone, bring this, bring water, watch out for bears, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, I'm in shorts and a t-shirt. I just took off walking. And I didn't even bring my cellphone. I'm just, I'm just gonna hike. So I start hiking up this trail. And I went and went, I don't know, a couple thousand feet up. It's, it's, I think it's like 4,800 feet to the top. And I'm, I'm just hiking. Well, I had knee surgery not long before that. I shouldn't be doing this. And, but

• 2:58:50Speaker 02

  I don't care. You know, at that point, I don't care. I'm just, I need to walk. I need to hike. I reach a mountain stream, and there's a big rock out in the middle. And I go out and I, I jump over and get on this big rock. The stream's going by me, you know. I mean, it was beautiful. It's, you know, perfect post guard. There's nobody out there. I mean, because the storms, you know, it's, it's thundering like it's gonna rain and it looks terrible. And, and so nobody's there but me. Nobody, nobody's hiking that trail or anything like that. And, uh, I get on the rock and I say a prayer, and I ask the Lord.

• 2:59:29Speaker 02

  What am I doing here, Father? You know, why, why would you have me come out to a mountain in frickin' North Carolina? I've never been in my life. I mean, what's the point? I'm not, I don't feel like I'm getting any better. I feel, you know, still, can I answer? I mean, I don't see any point to this. There's gotta be a reason you'd send me out here, you know? And, and I'm talking to it. I'm talking to the Lord. And then, you know, I start praying and I, and I, it hits me. What's, what's God's favorite trait? It's humility. That's his favorite trait. He loved Moses. "I know, I know you by name," he told Moses. When Moses wanted to see him, he said, "I know you by name.

• 3:00:10Speaker 02

  I will have, I will show mercy and compassion on you. And he will, I will let my goodness go before you," you know? Because Moses, like a little kid, wanted to see God. He wanted to see him. And it's in Exodus 33. So, anyway, but I, I'm, I'm on this rock praying this, and I, I realize Moses was called the most humble man on earth by God. About the best compliment any human being can get. And he used Moses, wouldn't you say, in a pretty big way? And so, so I said, humility. Here I am, I'm hiking a 4,500-foot mountain. I just had knee surgery a couple of weeks back. This is stupid. This isn't humble.

• 3:00:55Speaker 02

  You know, you're being a jerk. And I said, I, I need to learn humility. I, that's what this is about. And I said, okay, Lord, I get it, you know? And I, I felt like, okay, I got it. That's, I, all this, this whole trip to North Carolina, da-da-da, you know? Buying airplane tickets I couldn't afford. It's, here's the reason. And so I start back down that mountain. And I, I'd gone down 500 feet away from the, the big rock in the middle of the stream, and I don't know, maybe more. And it's downhill's harder than going uphill, you know, for, if your knee's kinda screwed up. And, you know, I was, I'm having to take these steps and land on the good foot, trying

• 3:01:40Speaker 02

  to take pressure off the knee. And I'm going down and, you know, go over a tree branch, gives you a little step on the trail, you've been on it. And I, I, at one point, I, I go to step.

• 3:01:53Speaker 02

  And I, I was frozen. I couldn't, I couldn't go anywhere. Now, I've never, I've, I've told this in a church, but I've never, I've never even told this in my church. I've, I've never talked about this because I know what it sounds like. And, uh, you know, and I wouldn't blame anybody for thinking this guy, he does have combat fatigue, you know, he's a total fruitcake. I wouldn't blame anybody for that. Uh, and I've hesitated. I've hesitated. I've never told anybody, you know, this was 2004 it happened and, uh, August 26th. And I've never told anybody except, you know, my personal friends. And of course I told them after, right after,

• 3:02:36Speaker 02

  I went home, told the Bible study and told them what happened and, uh, but I couldn't move. I was just, just like, there was no, no more stepping. I was just, but I was like sitting in a park. I mean, it wasn't uncomfortable. I was just, you know, just, just hanging, just, just kinda hanging mid-step. I mean, I wasn't, wasn't going anywhere, front, back, sideways. And I, I mean, I, I didn't even have, I don't even know what I thought. People have asked me, what, what'd you think? And I, I don't think I was able to think. I just, I mean, I just- Frozen in time. I didn't know what. I, I hadn't, my mind froze the lower the rest of me, I guess. I

• 3:03:19Speaker 02

  don't know. I just, I just stood there, just hung there, mid-step. Well, then I was released. How long? I don't know how long I was here. I mean, I have no idea. Could have been, could have been two seconds, could have been 20 seconds. I don't even know. But I was released and I, boom, now I've, now I'm running downhill. I mean, I fell downhill a little bit, took those steps and stopped, jumped around, thinking, first thought, something had to have held me. There's something behind me. There's nothing there.

• 3:03:53Speaker 02

  There's nothing anywhere. It's, it's, it's just dead silent. It's, I'm out in the woods alone. Nobody. Black clouds rolling over. There's nobody out there, man. And, uh, I, I, I realized this, this is God. This is, this is Jesus Christ here, man. I, I, uh, so I fell to my knees. I just fell to my knees. I said, what do you want from me, God? And I, I don't, I don't even know if I said that. I, I wrote it down, so I, I can show you sometime. But, uh, anyway, I, I just fell to my knees. And I, I think I was, what do you want from me, God? And, uh,

• 3:04:33Speaker 02

  in an audible voice, an audible voice. If it was inside my head, it sure didn't sound like it. It sounded like a voice talking to me. And, and it said, Johnny, get up.

• 3:04:51Speaker 02

  Johnny, I want you to walk a little farther with me.

• 3:04:56Speaker 02

  If you got a Bible, I'll swear to it. I believe you. Yeah. And, uh,

• 3:05:01Speaker 02

  I got up. I couldn't say anything. I mean, I was so overwhelmed. I think back at that moment and I go, God, I wish I could have asked some que- I wish I could have said, tell me how much you love me or something, God. You know, something. Yeah, let me hear something good here. You know, I couldn't say, I just did, I said, yes, Lord. And I got up and I started back up that mountain. I would have walked, I would have gone to Canada. I mean, I was just gonna go until he stopped me. And I went back up that mountain. I reached that big rock in the middle of the storm. I made it over that, jumped to the other side. The, the trail kept on up. I kept going on up.

• 3:05:42Speaker 02

  I, I've taken my kids there. I'm taking my grandkids to this same spot in, in about three weeks. We're going, we're getting, I'm taking, my, my son and my daughter have never seen it either. My wife, I, we've been back two or three times and she, she could tell you what her feelings about this. It was, uh, but anyway, I go, keep going and I'm, I mean, I'm not thinking. I'm just, I'm gonna go until God stops it. I, I would have kept going until I fainted. But I finally, I come to this big boulder.

• 3:06:18Speaker 02

  On the side of the trail, there's a big old boulder. Oh, you know, as big as the bottom half of that whole bar set there. A big. And somebody has put a big round plaque embedded in the boulder. And now I've never been, I've never been there in my life. I've never been in this place in my life, never been to Black Mountain in my life. So if you, you know, somebody's thinking you knew it was there or something. Never been this, never been on this mountain in my life, never been to Black Mountain, North Carolina in my life, Montreat, never.

• 3:06:59Speaker 02

  Here's this plaque and it, the plaque says, I lift my eyes to the mountains. From where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. I knew.

• 3:07:15Speaker 02

  That's what he was leading me to. I, I didn't walk any further. I, I fell down and worshipped.

• 3:07:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:07:27Speaker 02

  Pretty amazing. Uh, then I, when this was over, I went back down off that mountain. You talk about a spring in your step. I went down off that mountain, uh, feeling like, okay, there's two things going on here. I really have gone over the edge and I am crazy. Uh, but I've got to, even if I am, I had to tell Nancy and the kids. So I, I get back to that cabin, find my phone, call them up, tell them the whole thing. I don't know if, you know, she thought I should, my, my husband's gone crazy, you know? I, I don't know what she thought. Then I get in my car and I drive into town and through Black Mountain, through Montreat, through Black Mountain and to where my buddy, Tony Hornig lives. And he's on his front porch.

• 3:08:14Speaker 02

  And I come out and I'm telling him the whole story and I mean I'm a little motor mouth. Tony, my God, you won't believe what happened to me. And I start telling him all this. Well, a friend from our church in St. Petersburg had just happened in on Tony. And was on the front porch with him. So now his name's Gary Ripple and he was he's the leader of music in our church. So now I'm telling these two guys who both went to my old church. I'm telling them what happened. And I don't know what they thought, but Tony told me, you look like Moses who'd seen the burning bush, man. Your face was red. You were flushed, beyond flushed. He says, yeah, I could tell something really dramatic happened to you,

• 3:08:59Speaker 02

  whether it was that or not, whether I believed it or not. But he believed me. He's a close friend. So he would believe it. A stranger would think you're out of your frickin' mind. And I don't even, like I said, I wouldn't blame him. I don't know if I'd believe a guy telling me this story. But anyway, so I go home. Now, I can't wait to get home and tell Nancy and the kids and the Bible study about this. But the more I think about it, I'm going, how am I going to tell them about this? Am I even supposed to share this? Is this supposed to be something just between me and God? I don't, you know, I've got all these questions. Did it really happen? Or am I really crazy? You ask, you don't know. And so I said, God, how do I know this really happened? And I'm asking God, Dad, I'm talking to it. Soon

• 3:09:43Speaker 02

  as I get home, I'm telling Nancy the story all over again. I mean, I'm just just getting out of the car from the airport, right? And I'm already telling her the whole story again. I've told her twice on the phone. And I'm telling her again. And she's patiently listening to me. My wife is very flatlined, which is probably what I need. But I'm telling the whole thing again. I'm thinking, God, Nancy, where's the reaction, man? You gotta see reaction here. And so she's going, I'm listening, I'm listening. And so she's listening, but she's she's also going to the mailbox. And I'm thinking, and I yell at her, what are you going to the mailbox for at a time like this? I'm telling you the most important moment

• 3:10:26Speaker 02

  of my whole frickin' life on planet Earth. You what? And I'm mad at her now. What do you know? And she pulls mail out of the mailbox and she pulls out the sand. She's looking at the mail. And it's, we got this pamphlet. Now, I've given to this missionary journey, missionary. Ventures, missionary ventures. I've given money to this group over the years. You know, they, they help missionaries. I, I've tried to support them over the years, but they've never, ever sent me anything. It's one of the reasons I supported them. They don't send out a bunch of mailings and crap, you know. Never gotten anything from these guys. Today, in my mailbox, as I'm telling Nancy for the third time, I'd just got home, here's this thing from missionary ventures. Nancy goes, "Oh, we've never got anything from

• 3:11:10Speaker 02

  them before." And she opens it up, and on the first page, it says, "My wife Nancy loves to shop." And she goes, "Johnny, this is weird." And there's Psalm 121.

• 3:11:24Shawn Ryan?

  No way.

• 3:11:25Speaker 02

  All right. It gets weirder. So now we have the Bible study. I tell the guys in the Bible study, this whole miracle. You know, trying to, you know, getting ready for anyone who doesn't believe it, thinking, you know, knowing I'm going to sound crazy, and already wondering if I'm supposed to say anything about it. And so, while I'm telling them the whole story, Chris Pegasus, one of Taekwondo instructors, another Taekwondo master, has been with me for many years. His dad was wounded in the head, Iwo Jima. And one of my books is based on his dad. So, he is listening. He's a real studious

• 3:12:05Speaker 02

  guy. And he's, he's listening to this whole story, and he goes, "Johnny, if you got a copy of your last book here, you know, the Gunner's Glory book?" And I said, "Yeah, yeah, I, I think I got one in the bedroom." And, uh, he goes and gets it, you know, and I'm still continuing the story with the guys. And he said, he's opening, searching, he goes, "I knew it." He says, "That Bible verse was in your last book. It's in, it's in your last book, Psalm 121." And I go, "What? I didn't know. I mean, you know, I'd written the book three or four years ago. I, I, you know, I don't know." And he goes, "Yeah, it's in your book. It was Mitchell Page's favorite Bible verse."

• 3:12:53Speaker 02

  And I said, "Oh, my God." I mean, and I'm thinking, "God, is there, is that the connection?" Because I'm thinking back, because I hadn't thought about Mitchell Page since he died. I mean, I, you know, you don't think about those things. I had, I had thought about the fact that God froze him on Guadalcanal like he did and this turning point of the war, you know, and I hadn't thought about any of that and ever since I wrote it. And here I am, here I am, going, "Oh, my God, is there a connection?" And then the guy started talking, a few seconds later, Chris is going through the book. He goes, "Johnny, here it is again. Mitchell Page prayed that verse when, when they were being shelled by the Japanese ships.

• 3:13:37Speaker 02

  And he thought they were going to die and they got blown up but not killed. He said, "He and that other guy prayed Psalm 121. Look, it's on page 66." Gives me the book and I'm going, "Oh, no." And he says clearly, Mitch says clearly, this was my favorite Bible verse and, and I depended on this verse.

• 3:14:01Speaker 02

  The next day, now, I've been asking God to confirm this, so I'm not, tell me I'm not crazy, God. And the next day, I get a book in the mail and some guy, I don't know where he's, somewhere out west, he'd written a book and he was a huge fan of my, my books. And he, he was asking me to endorse his book, write a little blurb, you know, on there and, you know, I mean, I was flattered why anybody would want a blurb from Johnnie Clark. You could go find somebody famous or something, you know, but he did. And he'd sent me this book and he, he wrote a nice letter, asked me to do it. And so, you know, I didn't even look at it at first, you know, I, I was still caught up in this miracle and what to make of it all.

• 3:14:45Speaker 02

  And then Nancy said something, you know, "Aren't you even going to look at it?" And I said, "Yeah, yeah, I gotta, I better look at it." And I, you know, I looked at it and it was, it was based on, it was a World War II, it was about as, it was about World War II, that's all I remember. And so I opened the first page, the first page, Psalm 121.

• 3:15:08Speaker 02

  Nancy can confirm it, but the first page. Then I went to church that Sunday. What's a song we sing? We sing a song based on Psalm 121. I, I got the hint, you know? I'm not the quickest guy out there, but if you hit me enough times, I can finally get it. And I finally, I got the hint, man. And God was telling me, you might be crazy, but you're not crazy on this. You, you, uh, this really happened. And, uh, this is the first time in my life I've ever told anybody that story. And I'm going to tell you right now, I fasted and prayed about saying this story in front

• 3:15:52Speaker 02

  of a million people or whatever, you know? I, I didn't take this lightly and I know, like, they may even want to put me in a looney bin after this, but, uh.

• 3:16:01Shawn Ryan?

  I've had something very similar happen.

• 3:16:04Speaker 02

  I heard some of it. Tell me, I, cause I forgot a lot of it and I heard some of it.

• 3:16:13Shawn Ryan?

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• 3:16:56Shawn Ryan?

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• 3:17:35Shawn Ryan?

  Go to Shopify.com/SRS. That's Shopify.com/SRS.

• 3:17:45Shawn Ryan?

  It's a long story, so I'll, I've told it a couple of times on here, so I'll say it, but yeah, there was, this was two, three, two or three years ago, and um,

• 3:18:01Shawn Ryan?

  I can't say I was atheist or anything like that, but I just, I paid zero attention to Christ. None. And um, this is like when all the, there's a lot of, well, there's always a lot of shit going on in the world, right? But the, uh, the, the gender stuff with kids was really fucking with my head, really bad. And um, in a lot of the child predator shit, sex exploitation, and then, and um, and stuff that had gone on in Afghanistan, it was, there was a lot of shit that was going on that really, it was right after the withdrawal, the Afghanistan withdrawal.

• 3:18:43Speaker 02

  I totally get it, Sean.

• 3:18:44Shawn Ryan?

  And um, so I was in a pretty dark spot.

• 3:18:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:18:48Shawn Ryan?

  And um, went on a vacation with my wife to Sedona, and um,

• 3:18:59Shawn Ryan?

  I'm pretty emotionless, other than anger. You know, I don't, I don't show much happiness, I don't show much sadness. You'll know when I'm really fucking pissed off, but that's about it. And um, for whatever reason, I had a complete breakdown on the flight there. I was just fucking crying, and I didn't know why I was crying.

• 3:19:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:19:18Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I'm just like, the world is a fucking shit place, I hate this place, I don't even know if I'm, I, I wasn't saying I was suicidal, but I'm, I don't even want to fucking be in this world, I don't feel like I belong in this world, like, I don't like eight-year-olds getting their junk chopped off and changing sexes, like, I don't like all these pedophiles and...

• 3:19:40Speaker 02

  That's satanic as hell itself.

• 3:19:41Shawn Ryan?

  It's like everywhere I looked, I'm like...

• 3:19:45Shawn Ryan?

  She's darkness.

• 3:19:46Speaker 02

  Well, especially doing what you do, you're hearing a lot of dark crap and you're hearing a lot of satanic crap.

• 3:19:53Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:19:53Speaker 02

  And you're under attack because you're honoring God. I guarantee you, you're under satanic attack.

• 3:19:59Shawn Ryan?

  I'm aware now. I wasn't at the time, but I'm aware now. And um.

• 3:20:06Shawn Ryan?

  So we go this whole week. It's a shit vacation. It just fucking sucks. My best friend's there with his wife, supposed to be having a great time. Uh, I had met this other seal and if I don't have a lot of friends, I had met this other seal here in Franklin, who was a very successful businessman and and uh our relationship was developing quickly, uh, because he didn't, he didn't need anything from me and I didn't need anything from him and and we could just be with each other.

• 3:20:35Speaker 02

  His friendship.

• 3:20:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. And that doesn't come around often, you know, seems like the older you get, the harder it is to find. And um, and I don't relate with very many

• 3:20:47Shawn Ryan?

  people that haven't been to combat or don't run a business or you know what I mean? I just don't have a lot in common with a lot of people. It's at least it seemed like that at the time. So he had just died.

• 3:20:59Shawn Ryan?

  And um, so we go through this week and just more shit's happening, more stuff, you know, I'm seeing and smoking weed.

• 3:21:10Shawn Ryan?

  Tell them, the, the, the last thing I saw was I saw this country music artist that came out, who I respected, I thought was a person of God and turns out she's like, well, I think that um drag queens should be able to shake their dick in little kids' faces. And I'm like, fuck you. Like, I did not want to see that. And um, totally just threw me off course. And then, which I was already off course. So I tell my wife, I'm like, we gotta go on a fucking, I have to go on a hike. So I

• 3:21:43Shawn Ryan?

  down a joint as fast as I can. We go on this hike.

• 3:21:49Shawn Ryan?

  This is embarrassing, but I was out there searching for something and I had heard that Sedona has all this, these energy vortexes. Yeah. And, uh, yeah, whatever, right? Like weird, whatever. And I was into crystals. I was looking at all kinds of shit, just trying to find some fucking peace. Yeah. And looking in all the wrong places, right? So we hiked this fucking stupid crystal. Most people have. Yeah, this, this mountain. And I'm like, we're gonna feel something. We're gonna take this fucking crystal up to this energy vortex and I'm gonna feel something. We get up there. I don't feel shit. Yeah. And, uh, I'm like, fuck this stupid crystal and this dumb vortex. And I'm like, let's just

• 3:22:33Shawn Ryan?

  go home. You know, the pot did not help at all. And we're hiking down this fucking mountain and like, I'm starting to have like this internal conversation in my head. And, uh, I'm, I'm like,

• 3:22:48Shawn Ryan?

  what the fuck is wrong with you, Sean? Like, I'm, I'm like, all these kids that are getting mutilated. Everybody seems to be for this shit, except for me. What, what? Maybe I'm the fucked up one. Maybe you're the fucked up one, Sean. Maybe eight year olds should be able to change sex and, you know, have their parents fucking throw the dress on the kid, all this shit. And I'm like, what are you worried about? All these fucking pedophiles? Maybe like, maybe you're the one that's fucked up, Sean. Maybe, maybe you shouldn't be standing up. Of course, you know now that's the whole. I know. But just like I said, this is an internal battle. Yeah. Cause I could not make sense of anything that I was seeing. Nothing outside of my family unit made any fucking sense to me at all. Yeah.

• 3:23:30Shawn Ryan?

  How can, like, how can politicians not be going after pedophiles? How can this be, like, how is this even fucking real? And, um, and so I started like, my mind started, like I said, I'm having this internal battle. Like, maybe Sean, you're the fucked up one. You shouldn't be standing up for kids. You shouldn't be worried about fucking China. You shouldn't be worried about.

• 3:23:54Shawn Ryan?

  People dressed in drag men in bikinis and whatever they're wearing like shaking their dick in front of your two year olds face. That's totally normal, Sean.

• 3:24:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:24:03Shawn Ryan?

  But what are you worried about? Everybody, every mainstream media outlet, every fucking magazine, every movie, every fucking Hollywood thing. Like it's just all like, this is the way.

• 3:24:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:24:15Shawn Ryan?

  And I felt like, I felt like I was the only one that was like saying anything about this shit. You know, especially when I saw the fucking country music artist. I was like, whoa, like you're over here spouting Bible quotes and all this other shit.

• 3:24:31Speaker 02

  Say something, I know.

• 3:24:32Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck you bitch.

• 3:24:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've been disappointed in a dude.

• 3:24:36Shawn Ryan?

  Like what the fuck?

• 3:24:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:24:38Shawn Ryan?

  Of course, then they got like some huge fucking TV show, of course. They probably told her to say it and they're like, hey, say this and then we'll reward you.

• 3:24:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:24:45Shawn Ryan?

  And so sure as shit, she's like fucking huge and TV again.

• 3:24:49Speaker 02

  I know.

• 3:24:49Shawn Ryan?

  You know?

• 3:24:50Speaker 02

  I, I think I even know who you're talking about.

• 3:24:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, who cares? Doesn't matter. Doesn't fucking matter. Doesn't even fucking matter who it is. Cause it's a nobody.

• 3:24:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:24:59Shawn Ryan?

  It's a fucking lying piece of shit. Anyways, um. So I'm coming down this mountain and I'm having this internal battle and it felt like there. Towards the end of the hike, when we got back to the resort, I'm like. It, it, it felt like it was a battle for my soul. I really, I swear to God, that's how it felt.

• 3:25:20Speaker 02

  I hear you.

• 3:25:21Shawn Ryan?

  I walked through this gate and you know, we have similar backgrounds. You don't go to bed without a K bar and a forty five and I'm sure you're very aware, you probably don't like sitting with your back to the door. You know what I mean? I'm the same way. I pay attention to security and shit like that. And because of the show, a lot of the guys at this, um, at this gate, these armed guards, they all listen to my show.

• 3:25:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:25:45Shawn Ryan?

  And they're all like, you know, and so I'd interact with them and. And we'd been there all weeks and like I said, I pay attention and I see these. I recognize them all, you know what I mean? When I'm coming through the, hey, what's up Johnny? How you doing? You know? Last night, we're there. Walking through the gate, there's this old man, Vietnam bed. Uh, Air Force guy, don't hold it against him. And uh, he starts trying to talk to me. And I'm like, man, I've never seen this guy before. And I'm not in the mood to talk. I sure as shit don't want to talk about my fucking podcast or anything like that.

• 3:26:25Shawn Ryan?

  And so I'm, I'm, I'm nice and polite, but I'm, I'm giving body language like, Don, I just don't want to talk right now. So, you know, I, I refuse to like square up to him and actually have a conversation. So, oh, nice to meet you, you know, walking away, looking at him over my shoulder. Of course, my wife stops, talks to him, and I'm like, fuck.

• 3:26:47Shawn Ryan?

  So I turn around and I square up to him and he looks at me. And he read my mind from front to back. I had not vocalized any of this shit, nothing. And he goes, he's like, all these kids you're worried about? He's like, that's not your battle, man. That is not your battle. And all the shit you're worried about with China? And that, that's not your battle either. And all this stuff, you know, and I, I, after like,

• 3:27:15Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 3:27:16Shawn Ryan?

  After the first thing, it was after, he said, all this stuff that's going on with kids right now is not your battle.

• 3:27:23Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 3:27:23Shawn Ryan?

  And then my mind went blank. I just caught like little glimpses, because I was like, how the fuck does this guy know? I'm talking to, like, what is happening? This, he's inside my fucking head right now. And it scared the shit out of me. And whatever, we wrap up, he's quit talking. There's only maybe, I don't know, thirty six, kind of like you. I don't know how much fucking time is passed. I'm freaking out. I'm like,

• 3:27:51Shawn Ryan?

  I would. Why the fuck are you in my head? And how are you in my head? And we're walking, so we're walking away and I look at my wife and I said, holy shit, I think that's fucking God. Like, talking to me. And she looked at me and she goes, yeah, no shit, Sean. She's like, God's always been around you. You just don't make time to let him in. Oh. And I was like, Beautiful. What's going on? So keep, keeps getting weirder. Just like here. I know. And uh. I'm remembering some of it, but I've forgotten. So my best friend, uh, in the world, um, was this guy, Gabe Accardi. And, uh, he was a SEAL.

• 3:28:35Shawn Ryan?

  We contracted together at CIA. We did a lot of shit down in Columbia off, you know, not working, having a lot of, doing a lot of debaucher shit down there. Anyways, uh, Gabe, um, succumbed to addiction. He had, he was, um, had some really bad addictions, uh, when he left the agency and I talked him into leaving. And I, I wanted to help him. I mean, I was all fucked up too. Anyways, whatever. Um, I was helping him get over his addiction. He didn't wind up making it. But Gabe was always known as a protector. He's a hockey player, an enforcer on the hockey team. Uh, showed up to the SEAL teams.

• 3:29:19Shawn Ryan?

  Baddest motherfucker in every one of his platoons. Everybody knew, if you're in trouble, Gabe's gonna fucking be there to bail you out. One way or another. You know, went to the agency, reputation, followed him there. Everybody knew it. And, um,

• 3:29:39Shawn Ryan?

  anyways, we get to this resort all week. There's this guy identical, like,

• 3:29:46Shawn Ryan?

  identical. Same jawline, same build. Gabe was jacked. This guy's jacked. Like.

• 3:29:54Shawn Ryan?

  Same brow, everything, like, could have been, like, not identical, but could have been his identical twin. And I, I remember, like, the first thing when we did, when we saw, when we roll up to the resort, I'm like, "That guy looks like fucking Gabe. He even fucking walks like Gabe." And I'm in a vulnerable spot. Everywhere we go throughout this week, this fucking guy is around. We go out in town, this dude's out in town. We go on a hike, he's coming back from a hike. We're at the pool, he's at the fucking pool. And Katie and I both are like, "This shit's weird." You know, and my buddy Dan had just died.

• 3:30:34Shawn Ryan?

  So I'm, Katie's like, "That's Gabe. He's here. You're in a weird spot. You're in a vulnerable spot right now." She's been telling me this shit all week. I'm like, "Yeah, whatever." Uh, so we go from the gate, it's like maybe a one-minute walk to the, this bungalow we're staying in, which is like a duplex.

• 3:30:55Shawn Ryan?

  And we go in to open our door, unlock the door, and this fucking guy winds up being the, he's staying across the way from us. And I'm like,

• 3:31:10Shawn Ryan?

  "What the fuck? That fucking guy is in, he's in the other half of the building." Like, there's only two rooms here. What the, what's the coincidence of that?

• 3:31:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:31:19Shawn Ryan?

  Plus him being everywhere we're at.

• 3:31:21Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 3:31:22Shawn Ryan?

  And Katie looks at me again and she's like, "I fucking told you." She doesn't cuss. "I told you." We get in the room.

• 3:31:33Shawn Ryan?

  I'd have another meltdown. I'm like, "What, what's happening? What the fuck is going on?" You know, I thought, like, I thought this, God is like, "What is hap, what is fucking, what's going on?" You know, and I'm, uh, getting emotional. Again, and like I said, I don't really show much emotion. And, uh, so we talk it out and she's like, "How, how can you keep saying you can't believe it? It's happening right in front of you." I'm like, "I can't believe this is happening." She's like, "What do you mean you can't believe it? It's right in front of your face, Sean."

• 3:32:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:32:09Shawn Ryan?

  My phone dings in the middle of this. And, um, so we wrap up the conversation. I go look at the, my phone to see who texted me.

• 3:32:19Shawn Ryan?

  And it's Dan Surlow's daughter, who doesn't, who's my friend that just died, who doesn't have my number, must have dug it out of her, of her dad's phone, and

• 3:32:36Shawn Ryan?

  I could read it to you, but I'll summarize it. It basically says, hey, Sean, I walked into my dad's gun room for the first time since he'd passed, and the whole room came alive. And he,

• 3:32:50Shawn Ryan?

  he grabbed me and said that I should reach out to you because you would become his new best friend. And he wants you to know that he loves you just the way that you are.

• 3:33:04Shawn Ryan?

  And I was like,

• 3:33:07Speaker 02

  Man.

• 3:33:08Shawn Ryan?

  What is happening?

• 3:33:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:33:11Shawn Ryan?

  Three things. Then I get home, and I'm all, I'm obviously like, okay, holy shit, like, God is real. I've been looking for answers in all the wrong places. So I call this guy up, um, who's, who's

• 3:33:29Shawn Ryan?

  been a huge inspiration and, and a bit of a mentor in my spiritual journey. His name's Eddie Penny. And, uh, he came on and gave, he's a, uh,

• 3:33:40Shawn Ryan?

  uh, he's a SEAL two development group guy, and, uh, shared his testimony with me on the show. And I was, it was so powerful. I said, this has to, this has to be like, we're releasing this on Christmas. Ever since that day, probably for a year, every single person that has come on my show has brought up their faith in Jesus Christ, just like you did, like that, well, I didn't know that was gonna happen, that you were gonna bring this up. And Eddie, like, full, one of the most powerful podcasts I've ever done, if not the most powerful one. It, it, it, it obviously made a very serious impression on me.

• 3:34:23Speaker 02

  Isn't it fun when God starts working in your life?

• 3:34:26Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 3:34:26Speaker 02

  I mean, it's just, it's just fun to go, he's real.

• 3:34:30Shawn Ryan?

  So I call him up. And I'm talking to him like at midnight, like I start a campfire at my house and I'm like Eddie, I gotta talk to you about some shit and uh, he's like, what is, you know, start talking to him, telling him what I just told you and he goes Sean, he goes, a lot of people have been praying for this to happen. And that freaked me out. I'm like, what, what? What do you mean people are praying that like, what? Like this, this sounds like conversations that are happening behind my back that you guys have plans for me that I don't know about. And he's like, I just want you to know that. And um, then he starts talking to me about guardian angels and shit like that.

• 3:35:16Shawn Ryan?

  I'm like, all right, and spiritual warfare and all these things. I'm super tuned into it. So then I go to work the next day.

• 3:35:25Shawn Ryan?

  And uh,

• 3:35:28Shawn Ryan?

  after the campfire, remember midnight, I have a meeting at noon with my IT guy, who's like a super devout Catholic. And I grew up Catholic, but I don't, like I said, I don't, at this, at this point in time, I, I don't, I'm pretty sure if I step foot in church, I'm probably gonna disintegrate. But uh, so I think we're gonna talk about IT shit. And he starts telling me, he doesn't even know anything yet. And he starts telling me about guardian angels for whatever reason.

• 3:36:00Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 3:36:00Shawn Ryan?

  And how you, you know, they knew you before you were ever even born and they're with you and they're assigned to you and da, da, da, da, da.

• 3:36:12Shawn Ryan?

  And that meeting happened at noon. So then I take a late lunch. Drive back home. I want to have lunch with my wife and kid. And um,

• 3:36:24Shawn Ryan?

  on the way back to work, I tell Katie about all this shit. I'm driving back to work. And

• 3:36:32Shawn Ryan?

  My odometer, like the mileage left to empty, 444 miles. Look at the clock, it's 4:44 in the afternoon. Four hours and 44 minutes after my meeting with Guardian, uh, my meeting with Adam, my, I, my old IT guy about Guardian Angels, who I had just talked to Eddie Penny about Guardian Angels. I call up, uh, one of my guys here and I say, just so I don't forget, I said, hey, Google the meeting at 4:44. I'm on my way back. Get back to the office. He's standing there. He opens up Google, doesn't have any idea what I'm talking about. You Google this shit yourself.

• 3:37:17Shawn Ryan?

  4:44 is, means your Guardian Angels wants you to know that they're watching out for you.

• 3:37:24Speaker 02

  Oh, I want a high five. Yeah, no, God, come on, come on. It's just wonderful and it, it's fun to know he's real, you know, it's, he's real. I mean, he's invested in you and he knows you by name. That, that one's all, it's all through the Bible, you know, he, he knows every hair on your head, he knows your name, he knows the day, the second you're gonna die and knew the day and the second you were born. So, you know, worrying about, I've had so many close calls. I mean, I, I'm even in civilian life, I had a Roman candle, uh, jumping out of a plane.

• 3:38:05Speaker 02

  I had a Roman candle, didn't know it, cause I thought I was going slow, I was gonna die and, uh, and it opened by itself. It just suddenly before I hit the ground, it went, and I shot up, saved again. You, you remember that, that character, uh, in the old cartoons, uh, Pistol Pete, where they shoot bullet holes all around the guy's head? Well, I mean, I should be dead so many times. Guardian angels are real. I'm convinced of it. But we walked, I walked into an ambush.

• 3:38:45Speaker 02

  And we got, they, they opened up, machine guns opened up on us. And I went to hit the dirt, but it was pitch black. We're out in the jungle, you know, I don't know where I am. And I, I hit a bank, an embankment, and I just hit this embankment, knocked my helmet off. And I'm just up against the embankment and everybody's shooting at me. And my, and I had, I got burned from all the phosphorescent tips on the tracer rounds. It burned, it burned me. It burned, burned all the way down my neck. It went down to my shirt. It burned all around my, burned my face, my nose. Never got a scratch. I never got, didn't get a scratch.

• 3:39:24Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I've, I just, I have countless examples of that exact same thing. I mean, that door hinge, that, there's a framed door hinge right there. That's from a guy that was at Delta. His name's Kyle Morgan. And he did, he, he, he was in Mali, Africa. Huge terrorist attack at the Radisson Blue. This was supposed to be like a booze cruise for him. Like he had seen a lot of shit. Delta's like, hey, go do, go do this liaison mission in fucking Mali and, I don't know.

• 3:40:02Shawn Ryan?

  Have a good time, sleep with some State Department bitches or so, I don't know, you know, like just take a break. And so he's down there having a good time. Whatever, doing his liaison gig. Al Shabab hits this hotel.

• 3:40:20Shawn Ryan?

  He responds with two other guys. They bitch out. This, he, he, it's super descriptive account. I mean, he talks about, he enters the Radisson Blue. First thing he sees is fucking dead bodies in an elevator shaft and the elevator doors are open and closing. You know, there's fires all over the fucking place. There's terrorists running around killing fucking people. And he's a, a one man, he's one man in a fucking hotel, a massive hotel. Like going door to door, saving people from burning to death, saving, like pulling people out of their hotel room. All by himself. I can't remember how long it was, like 12 hours or 16 hours of some shit he's doing this. Everybody, everybody else is a fucking pussy to include like the head of state.

• 3:41:05Shawn Ryan?

  You know, that's there. He's fucking eating cheese balls out of his belly button because he's a fucking pussy, you know? Yeah. I mean, you know, the types and um, the feds and uh,

• 3:41:18Shawn Ryan?

  so at the very end of this shit, he corners these Al Shabab guys at the top of a stairwell. He, he clears up a stairwell. I guess he can't say it cornered him. They're shooting down at him damn near point blank. And the fucking went all around his body. And then he throws up a concussion grenade, discombobulates him, runs up, you know, finishes him off, rips the door off the wall. And that's the door hinge that was holding the fucking door up.

• 3:41:48Speaker 02

  Wow.

• 3:41:49Shawn Ryan?

  But I mean, it's, you know, it's, and he, same thing.

• 3:41:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:41:52Shawn Ryan?

  He credits Christ.

• 3:41:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:41:53Shawn Ryan?

  You know? Lots of guy, Eddie Penny, he's got another, he's, he's got, the guy was just telling you about this kind of a spiritual mentor for me or, or a, uh,

• 3:42:05Shawn Ryan?

  he's got similar situation where I, it's just like, where I can't remember exactly what happened, like a voice told him like, don't fucking move. And then the building gets leveled. I mean, it's just time and time and time again.

• 3:42:17Speaker 02

  You're not gonna, you're not gonna die until God says so. Uh, uh, he knows the exact second. He knows, a- and there's some confidence is taken that it, that Bible verse that, uh, Proverbs three, five and six, it's, uh, you know, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. When, when I can do that, when I, when I try to figure out. You know, I go through that China worrying about China, worrying about, I worry, worry, worry, you know, and fret not thyself. We're told, don't do it to yourself. Be anxious for nothing. He tells us all through Scripture, quit doing that because it's, it's a waste

• 3:42:56Speaker 02

  of energy. You know, that, that he's in charge, you know. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and he will direct your path. I, I mean, it's always a battle because, I mean, guys like you and me, you know, we believe in doing things and getting it done, you know, go-

• 3:43:17Shawn Ryan?

  And we're contingency planners.

• 3:43:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, right.

• 3:43:19Shawn Ryan?

  What if this happens, then we're doing this. What if that goes to shit, then we're doing that. It goes-

• 3:43:24Speaker 02

  I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I, I just think as, as God's kids, we gotta, we gotta be careful where we, we put too much faith in our own, trust not in your own, our own understanding. And, you know, don't lean on your own understanding. When I have any conflict in my own thinking about, about Israel, about China, about whatever it is, I can go back to the Word now. And this is something that I think Christians have this huge advantage over the world, where we can kind of take the pressure off ourselves. Even in this Iran thing right now, I know that in Ezekiel 38, 39, I know

• 3:44:09Speaker 02

  the Bible says clearly, it gives us the play, the play by play. Have you ever read that, that, you know that, what I'm talking about? It, it gives us the play by play of a final big shootout and who the players are. Iran will become allies with Russia, Libya, Turkey, Ukraine, and Arab peoples. It's in Ezekiel 38. They will come against Israel. Israel will stand alone. They're going to have no allies. And I, so they're going to come against Israel. Israel will have no allies. And in this, this big future shootout, and I'm sure,

• 3:44:50Speaker 02

  you know, you, you have Lee Strobel on here, you got guys who know this 10 times better than, than I do. But, but in my own little studies of, of the Bible, you know, it gives me this-

• 3:45:02Speaker 02

  I know we're not going to knock off Iran. I know we're not. Don't get me wrong. I think we're going to decimate them and maybe knock them down a couple of pegs and they're not going to be a problem for a little bit. And I think that's, I'm all for it. But I know we don't get rid of them because scripture says they're going to be around, they're going to come against Israel with Russia, with Turkey, with Ukraine, with Libya. And anyway, I know that's got to happen. It's prophecy. It's got to happen. Every prophecy, it comes true. All of them. So this is going to happen. And I know it's going to happen. So every time I find myself, you know, getting a little upset about this, you know, why aren't we doing this? Why don't we take Cargill? And, you know, why don't we do this?

• 3:45:46Speaker 02

  You know, I'm thinking that way. I'm thinking militarily. I'm thinking like a Marine. I know I'm wasting energy because the Lord has this all planned out. This is going to happen. Everything's going to happen with or without Johnnie Clark. Although I know I should pray for it. I know I'm commanded to pray about it. And, but I know that in the end, Israel's going to stand alone. And I, I mean, you can see it happening. The whole world will basically abandon little Israel. It's Bible prophecy. And when, when Iran and Russia and all of these nations, they're going to be destroyed. They're, they're going to die on the mountains of Israel. They're going to get destroyed.

• 3:46:28Speaker 02

  And it even talks about the coastlands of, of Russia, you know? Fire falling on the coast. They're going to, they're going to get, no more Russia. No more Russian army. That, that's going to be gone. Iran's going to be gone. But we ain't going to do it. God's going to do it. But even in that, two thirds of the Jews are going to get killed. So God's going to save that third, but they're going to know they were saved by God, not the USA.

• 3:46:54Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm. That's why I understand it too. I think a little differently on you than the Iran war.

• 3:47:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:47:01Shawn Ryan?

  But I mean, and but. The way that I interpret that is that, I mean, the Jews did kill Jesus. And they've always turned their back on God. And the way that I understand this is that God is going to allow them to be fucking decimated. And they're going, he is going to unveil all of the fucking corruption that is going on inside of Israel. And then when Christ comes back, the remaining Jews will accept Jesus Christ.

• 3:47:27Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:47:28Shawn Ryan?

  And they will go to heaven.

• 3:47:29Speaker 02

  And that's basically it.

• 3:47:30Shawn Ryan?

  I don't think Israel is a fucking good guy in this.

• 3:47:34Speaker 02

  I, I, that's it. Oh, I, I, whether, no, I don't. I don't think they're necessarily a good guy. I know. They're the chosen people. I know that I know.

• 3:47:44Shawn Ryan?

  Were the chosen people.

• 3:47:45Speaker 02

  I know that God is going to, uh. Uh, God's gonna take care of these things, not, not us, not any human force. That the Lord's gonna take care of it. And yet, they are. The remaining Jews that survive this are gonna come to Christ. They're gonna realize Jesus Christ was the Messiah. They're, they're gonna, they're gonna come to that decision, but, uh, but in the meantime. Nothing's gonna stop this stuff from happening, you know, it, nothing. My worrying about it. Uh, nothing's gonna stop it. It's, it's gotta happen. It's Bible prophecy.

• 3:48:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 3:48:19Speaker 02

  Let, let me tell you about Guns Up, the miracle with Guns Up.

• 3:48:22Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:48:23Speaker 02

  Okay. It getting published.

• 3:48:27Speaker 02

  I, I told you like, you know, at first I was an angry mess and, uh, I was working as a mailman. And teaching martial arts at University of South Florida at night. And so I was working two jobs, doing okay.

• 3:48:39Shawn Ryan?

  It's like, that's just, I mean, could you imagine how many people if they knew what the fucking mailman was capable?

• 3:48:48Speaker 02

  So, well, so I, so I, uh, well, I was really blessed, Sean. I mean, you know, in Okinawa, I, I, by accident, I end up, I trained with Grandmaster Shimabuku, really famous old Okinawan. I didn't know he was. He was just another Okinawan to me, but I was ordered out in the ville. We had a lieutenant ahead of his time. He ordered guys with certain wounds to go into theville and take martial arts from this, this little Okinawan guy. And it ends up being Grandmaster Shimabuku. He was an amazing character. Uh, then I come home, I can't find a decent Okinawan school, and I switch over to Taekwondo, and I, I, I mean, by accident,

• 3:49:29Speaker 02

  my old neighbor was teaching, uh, he was a language expert for the army in the, in Thailand. He met and trained with Grandmaster Park in Thailand because the King of Thailand asked him to come there and train the Thai people Taekwondo. So this Don Kuhn Park that became my grandmaster that I trained with for the last 50 years, he, uh, he ended up being the, you know, Olympic coach, the 1992 Olympic coach. He's, he's in the Korean Hall of Fame. He was just voted by the nation of Korea as the greatest, uh, Korean master in Korean history. Uh, he had over 280 fights and never lost. He's an amazing little guy. I, I really,

• 3:50:12Speaker 02

  really admire him. And now, my wife just showed me a thing of him. He's washing people's feet as a missionary.

• 3:50:19Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 3:50:19Speaker 02

  In Guatemala. I think it's Guatemala. Uh, yeah, he's, I, I, you know, I just love this guy. And then we've been together forever. We've had some adventures. But, uh, but, uh, yeah. So anyway, I lucked out in getting to train with some, some great men. Uh, and I'm, I'm just another student. But, uh, but I lost, I lost both those jobs when my back, uh, went out on me. And I hurt that back. I was, we were coming in on a hot LZ. Uh, the machine guns, the last one off the chopper, you know, when the old, uh, uh, CH, the 46s, you know, with the back ramp goes down.

• 3:50:59Shawn Ryan?

  Forty-seven, probably 46s back then.

• 3:51:01Speaker 02

  You run off the back ramp. Well, you know, they hover and guys run off the little back ramp. The front of it hovers because we were under fire. And, uh, so all the guys got off. And me and Chan are the last two trying to get to that ramp and the pilot got killed and the pilot, the chopper went out of control and the copilot got control of it, but we're swirling like this, throwing us all over the place inside the chopper and I got all that gear, you know, 25 pound M60 and on and on. So Chan got off. Now I'm, I don't know how high up in the air, but he finally gains control of the thing and I know I've got to, I gotta get with the guys. And I, and I, I don't even know how high up I was.

• 3:51:45Speaker 02

  I run off that ramp. I landed like an anchor, but I, I hit mushy swampy stuff and sank down deep into it and didn't die. Another time, I should have died. And, and everybody's shooting at me and they can't get me out of the mud. Anyway, I, I came out of it fine, but that back was never quite the same. And it finally went. And when it went, now I had to find a way to make a living. And that's when Nancy said, you need to write some of your stories from, you know, Vietnam and, and fight the liberal media who are lying about what the guys did over there and you get so angry about it. You can't,

• 3:52:26Speaker 02

  you can't beat everybody up. You gotta, you know, fight back a smart way and

• 3:52:31Shawn Ryan?

  Set the record straight.

• 3:52:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that's what I tried to do. And, but that book was rejected by every publisher from New York to California for four years. I, I told you how I learned, how I wrote it. I kept taking the same writing class over and over and over. Well, the writing professors at St. Pete College thought it was the best war book they ever read. They were sure it's, you know, it's going to get published here. And they'd give me all these people to send it to. Rejected by everybody. I mean, I, you couldn't, there was very few publishers that I hadn't sent it to. I don't know if there's any. And so in about four years into this, Nancy and I started a Bible study class at my pastor's house and we'd have these memory verses at the end, you know, and you pray for everybody's needs.

• 3:53:16Speaker 02

  You know, there's people fighting cancer, people out of work and da, da, da, da. And, and Nancy, one time she goes, I want prayer for Johnny's book to get published. Well, I've got all these four-letter words in this book. I mean, I wrote it to be nonfiction. I didn't know how I could write the dialogue of Marines in combat without all the words we used. And I, so I did. Well, you know, now, I want my kids to know the truth, but I didn't want my kids to hear all that or read that language. I didn't, just didn't want them, and I didn't, I started realizing, you know, I don't feel comfortable. And the Holy Spirit was really convicting me. And so anyway, one of the Bible verses that sent

• 3:54:00Speaker 02

  me over the edge was, "For those who honor God, God will honor; and those who despise the Lord will be held in little esteem." Well, "For those who honor God, God will honor." That hit me, that really hit me. And you know how you have one verse that just kind of really gets you? That one got me. Convicted me so bad. I finally go to my pastor, I said, "Hey, I'm wanting to crawl in a hole every time the prayer group prays for my book to get published yet. If, nobody's read it. None of these people have read this thing." And so I gave it to him. I said, "Read it." And he did. This thing's really

• 3:54:41Speaker 02

  vivid and, you know, it's got a lot and da-da-da. And I said, "Well, should I rewrite it? Take all the words out?" He goes, "Uh-uh. No, that's between you and God. I'm not touching that one." So I go to my writing professors. They go, "Johnny, if you rewrite Guns Up, it's gonna sound like Howdy, Duty, joins the Marine Corps." You can't, everybody knows Marines don't talk like, you know, they're gonna use the F-word all the time. They're gonna do, and, and so I, I said, "Well, I can't, I can't stand it. It's not getting published anyway. It's gone nowhere in four, over four years. I can't pray about it anymore because I'm so convicted. I'm gonna do it." So I sat down, took six months. I took all

• 3:55:24Speaker 02

  the language out of the book, rewrote the thing, but it's the same words, same stories. I just took the language out. And what I discovered is it made me, made me a better writer. You know, it's easy to describe anger with a quick four-letter word. This probably would have been twice as long. With all those words. Well, maybe, maybe. So I took, I took all the language out, and the day I finished that rewrite, Nancy and I, I got a bottle of champagne. Popped a champagne and said, Nancy, anchors off my back. I pray about the book getting published without, I'm done with it. And the next morning, I get a call from Soldier

• 3:56:08Speaker 02

  of Fortune magazine. And they said, oh, is this Mr. Clark, we've got this, we've got this story you sent us and we want to publish it. I had never had anything published. So I said, what story? I never sent you a story. And they go, yeah, you know, you sent us a story, didn't you, about Troy Bridge, out of a book called Guns Up? And I said, well, yeah, that's my, I wrote that. And then he says, he goes, I said, well, wait a minute. When did I send you this? And he goes, um, let me see. Oh, he sent it to us four years ago. And I go, what? Why are you just now finding it? He goes, I don't know, it just

• 3:56:49Speaker 02

  turned up in our slush pile. Two days later, Eagle Magazine calls. It's the exact same story. Whoa. And I say the exact same thing. Why now? Why four years late? And he goes, oh, I can't answer that. It just turned up in our slush pile. Then, American Legion Magazine calls. Holy cow. It's the exact same story. And there was a fourth one. Okay. Go ahead and tell me, look, baloney. I had honored God, and now God was honoring me. So I sent the book out again. And I, you know, I started to send out to publishers again. Within one month, this book that had been rejected by every publisher in New York, North Carolina,

• 3:57:31Speaker 02

  California, everywhere I could find a publisher. Within one month, nine publishers now wanted the book. What? And the one that bought it was Random House, biggest publisher in the world. Now they want this book. So I get a phone call from Pam Strickler, the head of, she was the senior editor at Random House, at Ballantyne Books. And she, she goes, so I say, well, listen, Mr. Clark, we love this book. We want this book. And, and I said, well, I'm thrilled. But I said, why now? I mean, why do, why do you want it now? And she says, what does, what do you mean? And I said, well, I had wallpapered, this is something the writing teachers told me to do to keep up your spirits.

• 3:58:14Speaker 02

  My whole, I, I, my writing office, uh, once I had it, we had our second kid, I knocked a hole in our roof of our, of our two-bedroom, one-bath house, and I built a conning tower on top. It was basically a conning tower, a little stairs going up to it. Real thrill with Nancy, did, did a lot for our living room, but that was my, that was my writing room. Well, I wallpapered my writing room with rejection notices. Are you serious? I'm serious, the whole wallpaper. That's amazing. I had rejections from everybody. And, uh, and I had grown to know, I could tell when somebody actually read it, or when it was just a stamp, you know, no thanks. She, I had hers there. And I said, Pam Strickler? And she goes, yes.

• 3:58:57Speaker 02

  And I said, I have your rejection letter right here. And I said, you actually read this thing, I can tell. And I read it to her. And she goes, oh, I did read that book. I remember. And I said, well, that was just a year ago. So why do you want it now? Why do you think it's so great now? I said, is it because I took all the cuss words out? And she said, you mean there's no profanity in this book? And I said, no, I, none. And she goes, Mr. Clark, that's incredible. All my readers have read this book and loved it. She said, all my junior editors have read this book. I've read this book. No one at Random House recognized that there's no profanity in that book.

• 3:59:41Speaker 02

  And I said, no, none. And she goes, that's incredible. She goes, we've never heard of a Vietnam War book without the profanity. And I, I said, well, yeah. I said, so we have now. And she goes, she said, gosh, well, we, we, we want this book. And I said, it's yours, it's great, you're the biggest publisher in the world, please. And she says, uh, she says, but you're gonna have to work with us some. And I, you know, I figured rewrites, I don't know, you know, big, I said, well, sure. And she goes, uh, look, uh, no one's gonna believe a Vietnam War book without profanity. She goes, we're gonna need you to put some profanity back in this book.

• 4:00:20Speaker 02

  So I said, oh Satan, you are so good. I don't publish anything for my whole life. Now I got the biggest publisher in the world. If I will put the cuss words back yet. And I, I, yeah, you know, temptation, I, yeah. You turned him down? Oh, you bet. No way. Are you kidding? After all, I, I told her, you had two chances, Pam. Slim and none. It, it never happened. And she goes, well, okay. And she called me back a little bit later. They bought it anyway. It's now been in print for 42 years. It's been published in Lithuania. It's, it, I get, I get email from Lithuanian soldiers. One in particular stands out, but

• 4:01:05Speaker 02

  this Lithuanian soldier sends me an email saying that all his unit of reading, of reading this book. And he goes, Mr. Clark, I just had to tell you that we think this is the greatest war book that God ever wrote. Whoa, wow. I was, I, I mean, come on. I, I don't even feel like I had anything to do with this book. Honestly, I, I feel like this is, you know, it's been on autopilot with God from day one, but I, I don't, the book's a miracle. It just, it's a miracle. It just keeps going and going. Forty-two years. And, and, and now, you know, I mean, crazy things, the stories that come out of it.

• 4:01:50Speaker 02

  I just, I could go on forever, but crazy stories. We had a kid named Frank Burris. He, a great kid. He died, and, and we got hit. He died, but he didn't die right away. He stayed, we stayed with him all night. We didn't even know how bad he was hit. He had some wounds we couldn't see. It's black. And a corpsman didn't find him, but patched the ones he found. But he, he, he carried a picture of his little redheaded daughter. He had, he had a baby he'd never seen. And Frank Burris was from St. Pete. He, he went to the same high school as my wife. I never knew him. Wow.

• 4:02:30Speaker 02

  Uh, but he, he had this baby picture he carried in his helmet because you had to put it in your lining of your helmet to keep it dry. The long story short is this, that picture always stayed up here, you know, and he'd never seen that baby. He wanted to go home so bad, he went to see his baby. Well, he died that night. We couldn't get him medevac. Next day, the 101st Cav or the first Cav or the 101st Airborne, I forgot, but an army unit, the skies dark with choppers, bringing them a noon meal. We can't get him medevac. And bitter, you know, I mean, this is during Vietnam, we only got hand me downs. And you know the story behind that. The Marine Corps had to

• 4:03:13Speaker 02

  stay, we're gonna be defunct. Truman was gonna get rid of the Marine Corps. And the only way we stayed Marine Corps was to prove we could keep a guy, a Marine in the field for a third the cost of the army. And that's how the Marines stayed the Marine Corps. Yeah, he was, great stories about that, that these old, these old Chinahans, old Chinahan Marines, told me incredible stories, man. These guys were a hoot. But, yeah, so Frank Burris, I wrote that story in there, but I didn't have Frank's real name. I forgot what I called him. But I didn't know anybody, we didn't know each other's names, you know,

• 4:03:57Speaker 02

  but I knew him, I mean, I knew him like I know you, but I didn't know his name. But anyway, he, 30, 30 years later, maybe more, maybe 35 years later, I, I hear from this girl, and she, she sends me a picture. She gets my email and then she gets my address and she sent me an email, I contacted her back. She said, I think my dad died in Nam with you. And it's Frank Burris, it's baby red. That's what we called her, baby red, because she had bushy red hair. She had that same picture and she sent me a blow up of it. And it was, it, she had discovered how her dad died, reading that book.

• 4:04:41Speaker 02

  But it just, it doesn't stop. I mean, it goes on and on and on. I mean, the stories that God churns up out of this. And it gave her some peace. Her mom told me, you know, that she needed it so bad.

• 4:04:56Shawn Ryan?

  She had.

• 4:04:56Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, anyway, it, the book's, the book's a flat out miracle.

• 4:05:01Shawn Ryan?

  That's amazing.

• 4:05:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. It's a miracle. I, I don't have much to do with it. I just sit back and marvel.

• 4:05:09Shawn Ryan?

  Pretty cool. Wow.

• 4:05:13Shawn Ryan?

  Would that, I mean, that had to just hit like a ton of bricks.

• 4:05:18Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, what?

• 4:05:19Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I mean, just to be connected with her.

• 4:05:21Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. I know. Yeah, uh, yeah. Family members, you know, that Frank Boris's brother has contacted me and I, you know,

• 4:05:34Speaker 02

  he didn't know how he died and.

• 4:05:38Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, uh.

• 4:05:42Shawn Ryan?

  How'd you meet your wife?

• 4:05:43Speaker 02

  Uh, a blind date.

• 4:05:45Shawn Ryan?

  A blind date?

• 4:05:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Blind date. Uh, I was, uh,

• 4:05:53Speaker 02

  that nom vet that they were a little concerned about. And, uh, so they didn't, uh, yeah, it was, it was her best friend and, uh, a guy that I went to high school with, came over, you know, trying to set me up, you know, I was maybe spending too much time alone, they thought, you know, and da, da, da, da. Well, they, they come over and they've, her, her best friend had take, had stolen her license to show me her picture. Just said, well, I took one, I took one look at this license and I go, yeah, no, thanks. We'll skip this one. And she, they go, no, no, no. She's really beautiful. And I, I think, yeah, thanks anyway.

• 4:06:38Speaker 02

  No, no, she's hot. And now Terry, the guy is telling me, no, no. I wouldn't, I wouldn't leave you alone. She, and it goes, she lives right around the corner down here, you know, just, just about a block and a half away from you. And I said, well, where? I mean, all around the corner. And I said, she's got black hair, da, da, da, you know. I said, wait a minute. Does she, does she have a little brown Toyota? And she goes, yeah. And I said, does she, does she wash her car in a bikini out front sometimes? Oh. And they, they go, well, I guess so. And I go, okay, let's go on that blind date.

• 4:07:20Speaker 02

  So we go to a blind date. I win a free pass and popcorn. Did you ask her when she's gonna wash her car next? Oh, I was quickly dirtying up her car. We, so we go to the old beach theater, which a real old theater out on Sapi Beach. And we go and get, buy popcorn on our first blind date. And in the popcorn, we won a free pass to a second movie. So we had an immediate second date. And, yeah, yeah, the rest is history. You know, we, we just, we just celebrated our 49th wedding anniversary. Congratulations. Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Wow. That's old.

• 4:08:05Speaker 02

  Forty-nine years. Forty-nine years. Man, that's amazing. Yeah, five grandkids. I didn't, you know, how did that happen? Beautiful. Yeah, it is. They make life so much fun. They really keep you young. The grandkids. And now I'm teaching them a little bit of martial arts, you know, some, just, you know, simple takedowns and chokeouts. And I Simple takedowns and chokeouts. I want my, I want my, I got one, I got one little granddaughter that, yeah, I, I think I can teach her how to kill people. She, she's a, she's got potential. Now they

• 4:08:50Speaker 02

  all do. They're all, they're just great kids. And they, I mean, they already know Bible verses, you know, that, it just, you know, I wish I, I wish I had that much scriptural knowledge when I was a little kid. Me too. I really do. I mean, it pays off the rest of your life, you know, they can These tough questions come up or tough times. God tell, he's got a whole instruction manual if you just read it.

• 4:09:18Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. Well Johnny, we're wrapping up the interview.

• 4:09:22Speaker 02

  Alright brother.

• 4:09:23Shawn Ryan?

  But I've got a hot question here for you.

• 4:09:26Speaker 02

  Oh boy.

• 4:09:27Shawn Ryan?

  You ready?

• 4:09:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:09:29Shawn Ryan?

  You were 18 years old when you got to Vietnam. A Marine M60 machine gunner with 5th Marines. Machine gunners had to, had a 10, excuse me. Machine gunners had a 7 to 10 second life expectancy once a firefight started. You were the number one target on the battlefield because every enemy soldier wanted to silence that gun first. Walk me through your combat loadout and be as descriptive as you can for the viewer. And tell me if your loadout ever changed throughout your time in Vietnam.

• 4:10:03Speaker 02

  Wow, that's a good question. I don't know if I can answer it properly. I, I, I can tell you this.

• 4:10:12Speaker 02

  20 round burst if you wanted to stay alive. I

• 4:10:19Speaker 02

  sometimes you couldn't, sometimes you had to, you had to lay on the trigger. And

• 4:10:26Speaker 02

  I, I think

• 4:10:29Speaker 02

  if you, you were so concerned about the other guys, you know, I mean, I mean, the machine gun was really critical to it. You know, to a grunt platoon, you, you had to have the gun. I mean, you could keep the enemy heads down, duck and lead. You could do something to allow your, your grunts to stay alive.

• 4:10:50Speaker 02

  I did fire it a couple of times so much that there were, there were a couple of times where you could see the rounds going through the, the barrel of the M60. Literally you could see it. It would go, it would go red hot. And then you knew you were in trouble and see. The Marine Corps, we, we didn't have any spare barrels. That's another reason. Holy shit, you guys weren't running with spare barrels? My whole time, I never had a spare barrel. So, you know, you, if you had to, you'd pee on that barrel to, and, you know, just to get the temperature down, make that, sorry, you pour your canteens on it, anything to keep it from, cause if, if it melted, now you got a forty-five and a K-bar, you know, and now you, uh, so, but a couple of times, yeah, fired until it, it would go red hot,

• 4:11:33Speaker 02

  and, and then when it went white hot, at white hot, you really, you literally could see the, you know, the round, the, not every round, but you'd see rounds going through that, that barrel. Yeah, you could actually see round, and now it's red or white hot. It's like having a light on you, uh, in the middle of a night battle. A lightsaber. Yeah, yeah, it's, now you've got a big spotlight on you. Did you ever, did you ever blow a barrel out? Uh, I, I, oh, I pulled barrels out, yeah. I mean, like, where the round comes out the side. Did you ever have that happen? No, that never happened to me, but I, I could see where it could happen, but it didn't happen to me. But I did, I did burn out a barrel

• 4:12:16Speaker 02

  and, at one time, and, you know, and then, uh, we had, uh, we had to steal a barrel off a, from a gunner on a chopper. He didn't want to give it up, and, uh, uh, Sam the blooper man convinced him.

• 4:12:34Speaker 02

  How many rounds would you? We need that barrel more than you do. Yeah. And, uh, you're, you're firing from way up there. We're eye to eye. Give us the barrel. Anyway, so, yeah, I, I burned out a barrel. I might have burned out a couple. How many rounds would you carry? I've carried, uh, four hundred myself, uh, and sometimes more, but four hundred was usual, but, so you're supposed to have ammo humpers. Well, that's why you have a five-man team, but I didn't have a five-man team. It was just me, and, and sometimes me and Chan, but sometimes Chan had to take over another gun, and now you're all alone, or they give you a grunt, uh, to try to help, but, uh, but yeah, you're supposed to have a five-man team, and, uh, all of them carry four hundred rounds each.

• 4:13:18Speaker 02

  So the grunts had to carry, you know, I mean, the grunts, they didn't like it. They got enough weight of their own, but now they're having to carry machine gun ammo. So, you know, you know, everybody looks like a Mexican bandit, but everybody's carrying a few hundred rounds. And they hated it until we hit the crown.

• 4:13:36Shawn Ryan?

  They needed.

• 4:13:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and then, but they were always happy to run, throw these hundred round belts. Hey, Clark, here. They're throwing those belts at me. Get this weight off me, man. So, yeah, but, uh, yeah, I, I think, uh, you know, you couldn't waste ammo and I don't know, the low down, I'm not sure if that answers it, but, um, uh, you had to keep that gun cleaned, you know, in the jungle, boy, if you didn't keep that gas cylinder spit shined, uh, it's gonna jam. And if it jammed, uh, you know, you, I mean, you'd catch crap from, you know, your sergeants and so forth, but, but worse than that, you know, Marines are gonna die

• 4:14:21Speaker 02

  if that thing jammed. So really had to be careful about cleaning that thing. And that wasn't easy. I mean, the jungle was everything. It rotted everything. I mean, I, I, I would come in sometimes with all my clothes would been ripped apart, really half naked. We, we would come in, when, walk into Anwar Combat Base, and we had, we'd have Vietnamese laughing at us. Seriously, this truly happened. We're walking, humping in, you know, I got the 60 over my shoulder, we're humping in, and I had to cut the whole part of my trousers out because I had dysentery. So, you, you know, you don't stop and go to the bathroom, you just drain while you walk. Well, a few weeks out in the jungle or more, your, your clothes

• 4:15:06Speaker 02

  are totally shredded. So we, we walked into Anwar a couple of times and, you know, we're half naked, some of us. And, uh, yeah, it, and toothbrush, couldn't use my toothbrush. I, we had to use it to clean the gas cylinder on the 60. Yeah. So when you did brush your teeth, you were brushing with oil, gun oil. And you had to use the right kind of gun oil. You had to be careful there. Sometimes the Marines gave us gun oil that it just wasn't the best. It would, uh, it, it would get, it'd be no good in the rain and the humidity some, sometimes, you know, it wasn't. So, uh, there was. Usually the army had good gun oil.

• 4:15:46Shawn Ryan?

  When's the last time you fired an M60?

• 4:15:48Speaker 02

  Okay, I hadn't fired an M60 since 1968.

• 4:15:54Speaker 02

  Last night in NOM. And a bunch of Marines from Iraq and Afghanistan, young Marines, all machine gunners. They've read the books, you know, they're in machine gun school, they're told to read them. So they contacted me and they flew me to Pennsylvania and wanted me to shoot an M60 machine gun again. And they brought a Marine Corps cameraman, it was a combat cameraman, to come out there and get pictures of it. And so, you know, like, I don't know, 20 to 30 of these young guys, you know, young Marines, all gunners, you know, they were all, most of them were all gunners.

• 4:16:36Speaker 02

  And so, so I did, you know, I was excited about it, but I haven't fired a 60 since 1960. That's 50 years or so, you know, it's hot. So, you know, I don't know, am I gonna embarrass myself or what? And they got it all ready for me, you know, taught me a little bit. It started coming back, some of the ins and outs and then...

• 4:16:57Shawn Ryan?

  Like riding a bike, huh?

• 4:16:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it came back, it came back, but, you know, I had forgotten, you know, just... And so, anyway, that's ready. And so, we start firing it. They had, it's probably 150 yards away. I mean, when you look at the little video, you can blow it up and you'll see that's a truck and a car down there and an old washing machine. And I think that's about it. But it's out on a farm in Pennsylvania and it's down in like a little valley so that the rounds won't, you know, they got sort of something for it to hit if you blow it. And so, anyway, I opened fire on this thing. And... Loved it, but I couldn't see where my rounds were landing because they didn't want

• 4:17:41Speaker 02

  to use tracer rounds. They were afraid it might start a forest fire or something. So I finally said, you know, after a little bit, like, hey, guys, I can't see where my rounds are landing. I, you know, I don't know if I'm hitting the target or not. I don't like that. And so, so this one young Marine goes, I got this, sir. And he comes out with a little jar of, is it Tannerite? Is that what it's called?

• 4:18:04Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:18:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. A little jar of Tannerite. It had a red label on it. And you know, it's just a little jar. I mean, tiny, like a jar of pickles. And he, he runs out there, you know, and it's pretty good distance. He runs out there with his jar and he puts it on, on top of this washing machine. And then runs back and he goes, you'll know if you hit that, sir, you know, and I go, well, okay, you know, and, and, you know, I mean, 76 year old eyes here. And I'm going, God, I think I see a little red dot. And I did, I could see the little red dot that was on that, there was a label. And I say, okay, let's go. And, you know, so I, I go to, I go to shoot and they're all going, nah, sir,

• 4:18:44Speaker 02

  sir, you'll, you'll never hit that, shooting from the hip. You got to go on the bipod. You need a scope to hit that, you know, the new machine guns have scopes and, you know, and I said, yeah, I know, I, I don't like that. I don't like scopes. I said, you know, I need to, I need to feel it, see it. And they said, well, sir, it's just a waste of ammo. Well, let me try it. So I haven't fired one in 50 years. And I opened about maybe 20 round burst. And it blew up and it blew, it blew up, it blew the washing machine, the whole lid up, boom. And that's, that's what you see in the video is me going, ah.

• 4:19:25Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 4:19:26Speaker 02

  So after that, all these young gunners, I mean, they were blown away. They were cheering me and, you know, it was really.

• 4:19:33Shawn Ryan?

  Anyways, about that scope, ladies?

• 4:19:38Speaker 02

  One of those, you know, one of those old men movement moments, you know, where you show the young guys you still got it, but you know, it was fun. It was fun for the moment. But so all the young machine gutters, they all, they got to do this now. And they had like three M60s out there. So, I mean, these crazy Marines, they had a minigun on the back of a truck. I'm not making that up. Crazy guys, I, you know, I love these guys. That's some gangster shit right there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so, so they all tried it with the M60. And all of them tried it from the hip and, you know, because they ran out with another jar of tannery and nobody

• 4:20:21Speaker 02

  could do it. And they kept trying. Then they started shooting from the bipod, you know, down on the ground and aiming, aiming at it. And nobody could hit it. Damn, that's awesome. So finally, some fricking jarhead with a sniper scope, he shot it with a sniper, you know, sniper rifle. Right on. He blew it up. But yeah, so it was one of those fun moments where you get slaps on the back from young guys, which felt good. That's cool, man. Yeah, they, they, they enjoyed it too. They had, they got a kick out of it. Still have the same K-bar? Oh, yeah. I still got a K-bar. Same one? Oh, no, no, not same one. No, they took everything from me. Yeah. I had an SKS

• 4:21:04Speaker 02

  that I tagged, you know, if, if, if you, if you killed an NVA with a single shot weapon, if you had the chance, if you could, you could tag it, you know, send it back to the rear on the, you know, chopper bringing in food or something. And they were supposed to put it away for you. So when you went back to the States, you could take single shot weapons home. And

• 4:21:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, some pogue in the rear stole my SKS.

• 4:21:34Shawn Ryan?

  No figure.

• 4:21:34Speaker 02

  But I, I got one, I got an SKS now. It's, it's pretty cool. It just got the big bayonet.

• 4:21:41Shawn Ryan?

  I got one too.

• 4:21:42Speaker 02

  An SKS?

• 4:21:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:21:43Speaker 02

  Oh, sweet.

• 4:21:44Shawn Ryan?

  I'll pull it out here.

• 4:21:45Speaker 02

  With a bayonet?

• 4:21:46Shawn Ryan?

  Yep, with a bayonet. And a forty-five.

• 4:21:49Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:21:50Shawn Ryan?

  Cold forty-five?

• 4:21:51Speaker 02

  Cold forty-five. Although the truth is, one time I had to pull that forty-five out. Ran out of ammo or something, I don't know, who knows why. And, uh, it was, it was rusted so bad it wouldn't work. Well, I took care of the machine gun, but you know, kinda ignored that forty-five on there because I didn't plan on ever using that.

• 4:22:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. What do you think of nine mil?

• 4:22:16Speaker 02

  Oh, I like them. Yeah. I mean, I like, I, yeah.

• 4:22:19Shawn Ryan?

  Do you have a nine mil?

• 4:22:20Speaker 02

  Uh, I, yeah, I think I do. I got a nine mil, but, uh, uh.

• 4:22:25Shawn Ryan?

  What is it?

• 4:22:27Speaker 02

  I think I've got an old, I mean, it's not a military, it's, it's a civilian nine millimeter. Uh, I think I got an old Beretta.

• 4:22:34Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, right on.

• 4:22:34Speaker 02

  I think it's a Beretta. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's a Beretta.

• 4:22:38Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I got you another present.

• 4:22:46Speaker 02

  Oh, God, a silencer?

• 4:22:48Shawn Ryan?

  That's right.

• 4:22:53Shawn Ryan?

  I tried to get you a machine gun, but I just, I couldn't get the paperwork done in time. So.

• 4:23:00Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh, man.

• 4:23:01Shawn Ryan?

  I got a buddy over at SIG, his name's Jason. He's got a soft spot for Vietnam vets, just like the rest of us.

• 4:23:07Speaker 02

  Oh, Jason, thanks, buddy.

• 4:23:08Shawn Ryan?

  So that is a nine millimeter SIG Sauer P365 macro with a SIG flashlight, the brand new optics line. So it's got a red dot on there, the SIG suppressor from Silencer Shop.

• 4:23:24Speaker 02

  A silencer?

• 4:23:25Shawn Ryan?

  Silencer Shop is awesome. They do, super easy to get the silencers from suppressors from them.

• 4:23:32Speaker 02

  Are you allowed to have silencers?

• 4:23:33Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you're unlucky, you live in Florida. So Silencer Shop's gonna ship you. A brand new can or suppressor down to Florida for you. And be able to put that on that weapon right there. They'll take care of all the paperwork. The other thing I love about silencer shop is they they stand up for gun rights for for us gun enthusiasts. So they're fucking awesome company. Sig is amazing.

• 4:24:00Speaker 02

  God, that's great, man.

• 4:24:01Shawn Ryan?

  Thing, I mean, we're talking some fucking pews.

• 4:24:07Speaker 02

  Oh, disrespect.

• 4:24:08Shawn Ryan?

  Seventeen rounds in the magazine plus one in the pipe.

• 4:24:11Speaker 02

  Oh, seventeen rounds?

• 4:24:13Shawn Ryan?

  Seventeen rounds.

• 4:24:15Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Oh, my son's gonna be trying to steal this from me.

• 4:24:19Shawn Ryan?

  Don't let him.

• 4:24:19Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:24:24Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Gosh, this is beautiful. Man, thanks.

• 4:24:28Shawn Ryan?

  Well, maybe he can sleep with that thing now.

• 4:24:29Speaker 02

  It done. Yeah, dude.

• 4:24:32Shawn Ryan?

  Done.

• 4:24:33Speaker 02

  Nancy won't even know when I've shot somebody.

• 4:24:37Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 4:24:38Speaker 02

  She could still sleep and I'll I'll wake her up the next day and tell her. Oh, by the way.

• 4:24:44Speaker 02

  Oh, gosh, thanks, man. What a great, what a great gift.

• 4:24:48Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome.

• 4:24:48Speaker 02

  I feel cheap now giving you books and a sweatshirt.

• 4:24:52Shawn Ryan?

  No. You kidding? I'm gonna wear that shirt everywhere.

• 4:24:55Speaker 02

  Oh, God.

• 4:24:56Shawn Ryan?

  But, um, all right. One last question.

• 4:24:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:25:01Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think your buddy Chen would want to come on?

• 4:25:05Speaker 02

  Do I what?

• 4:25:05Shawn Ryan?

  Do you think your buddy Chen would want to come on the show?

• 4:25:10Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 4:25:12Speaker 02

  I don't know. He he might.

• 4:25:15Shawn Ryan?

  I'd love to interview him.

• 4:25:18Speaker 02

  He might. I he, uh.

• 4:25:23Speaker 02

  I'll talk to him. I tell you, I know some some great men that probably would do it quicker, but, uh, I was, uh, Major Scott Hughes, do you know him?

• 4:25:36Shawn Ryan?

  No.

• 4:25:36Speaker 02

  He, uh, he wrote Echo and Ramadi.

• 4:25:41Speaker 02

  And uh, he, he said, he, he went from, as a Lance Corporal, he read Guns Up. And now as a retired Major, and uh, he, he came to see me. And Guns Up was huge with him and all the guys. I, I think it was in, I, I know he was in uh, Ramadi, of course, but I think he was in uh, Iraq or the first Gulf War before that. I'm not even sure. Wherever he read Guns Up, they handed out Guns Up and they would tear it in sections for a, a squad to share it. And uh, so he said, now he's, you know, in his 50s and he shows up at my front door and I, I didn't know this guy.

• 4:26:21Speaker 02

  And he goes, um, my name is Major Scott Husing and uh, I've wanted to meet you ever since I was a Lance Corporal. And uh, got to know him real good, uh, with the 4th Marines. And this book Echo in Ramadi, I, you'd probably relate to that a lot more than NOM stuff, but uh, yeah, anyway, yeah, he's one. I will, I'll talk to Chad.

• 4:26:45Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect.

• 4:26:45Speaker 02

  See what he says. Yeah.

• 4:26:47Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you.

• 4:26:48Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. I, uh, God, this is, this has been so, I've been so excited about this.

• 4:26:57Shawn Ryan?

  Me too.

• 4:26:58Speaker 02

  I've, I've been, I've been, and I've been way too anxious. I had to, I had to pray, uh, you know, be anxious for nothing, uh, probably a hundred times. Just, I had to chill out a little bit. I was so excited about it. Well, ever since it started when Jaco came on your show and suggested me. And I, I, all my friends sent me, Jaco told Sean Ryan to have you on, da, da, da, da, you know, and, and I'm, I mean, ever, from that moment, I've been nervous.

• 4:27:27Shawn Ryan?

  Jaco's an awesome dude, man.

• 4:27:30Speaker 02

  I've been excited, but you know.

• 4:27:32Shawn Ryan?

  So are you.

• 4:27:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. God, this is great. I love this thing.

• 4:27:36Shawn Ryan?

  You haven't even shot it yet. How do you know?

• 4:27:38Speaker 02

  I know, but I love it.

• 4:27:40Shawn Ryan?

  Ah, you're gonna love it.

• 4:27:41Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 4:27:42Shawn Ryan?

  It's not raining out there. We can crack a couple of rounds off.

• 4:27:44Speaker 02

  Oh, let's do.

• 4:27:46Shawn Ryan?

  All right.

• 4:27:46Speaker 02

  All right.

• 4:27:47Shawn Ryan?

  You want to end this with a prayer?

• 4:27:48Speaker 02

  I do.

• 4:27:49Shawn Ryan?

  How about you lead it?

• 4:27:50Speaker 02

  Okay. I better put my weapon down. I don't know if God appreciates you.

• 4:28:01Speaker 02

  Father God, we come before you, Lord, to give thanks. I want to, I want to thank you with all my heart for, for taking care of me through all this and getting me, just getting me on this podcast. I, I don't believe in accidents and I know Shawn doesn't either, Lord. We want to give you thanks for a million and one blessings. Thank you, Lord, for the calling you've put on his life. Thank you for using him in such a mighty way and giving him this voice that, that's reaching so many people and giving him the courage to stand up for Christ. That's not easy in this world, Lord. It's really hard sometimes. Father,

• 4:28:42Speaker 02

  keep, keep encouraging Shawn with that kind of courage and don't let any of Satan's attacks, and we know there's going to be some. There's, there's always Satan's attacks, especially when a Christian's doing something. If a Christian's on the sideline doing nothing, Satan leaves him alone. But when you've got a man like Shawn who's stepping up and stepping out front, he, he's, he's walking point, God, and that's, that's hard to do down here and you know it. So bless him, bless this show, bless his family, and we just want to give you all the thanks and the praise in Jesus' name. Amen.

• 4:29:21Shawn Ryan?

  Amen. Thank you, brother.

• 4:29:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, pal.

• 4:29:28Shawn Ryan?

  Johnny?

• 4:29:28Speaker 02

  Yeah?

• 4:29:29Shawn Ryan?

  It was an honor.

• 4:29:30Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 4:29:33Speaker 02

  Thanks, man.

• 4:29:45Shawn Ryan?

  No matter where you're watching The Shawn Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.