186: Taking A Secret War to The Enemy in Vietnam, w/ The Frenchman Doug Letourneau

0:00:00 - Opening. 0:06:32 - The Frenchman, Doug Letourneau 2:05:05 - Closing thoughts and take-aways. 2:10:15 - SUPPORT: How to stay on THE PATH. 2:19:59 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 186 with me Jocko Willink.

• 0:07Jocko Willink?

  Among the newly minted special forces soldiers were Douglas L. Letourneau, a skinny 135 pound California cowboy, John Shore, a blond haired, slightly overweight, baby faced kid from Georgia, and Frank McCloskey, a tough combat hardened veteran of the 101st Airborne Division. McCloskey arrived sporting seepage from a wound in the back of his head. This trio of Green Berets had completed their special forces in-country training program in Na Trang, the 5th Special Forces Group Headquarters. When a sergeant in Na Trang asked for special forces soldiers to volunteer for a secret project, they raised their hands.

• 0:53Jocko Willink?

  In short order, they were flown to FOB 4 in the northern sector of South Vietnam, I Corps. Upon reporting in, they were told Camp Commander Colonel Jack Warren would brief them in the morning on the CNC mission in Southeast Asia. Finally, after more than a year of training for Letourneau, the game was on. How much better could this get? It seems all his life he'd been preparing for this moment. From riding rodeo Bronx and breaking nearly every bone in his body to wrangling animals for television shows like Dak Tari and Cowboy in Africa starring Chuck Connors.

• 1:35Jocko Willink?

  Letourneau knew a little bit about taking a calculated risk.

• 1:41Jocko Willink?

  And after he had gotten his hands on Robin Moore's book, The Green Berets, he knew this was for him. Guerrilla warfare? Check. Counterinsurgency training? Check. Unconventional warfare? Check. Letourneau couldn't wait to write his own story that he could someday share with his dad, a WWII B-17 pilot and former POW.

• 2:07Jocko Willink?

  Nothing however could have prepared him for the sight that greeted him as he entered the transient barracks. There, etched onto the concrete floor and forever in his memory was the charred outline of a man's body, a grisly reminder of the 23 August 1968 attack on FOB 4. That fateful evening, North Vietnamese sappers and Vietcong operatives killed 18 Green Berets in a carefully executed sneak attack. The deadly side of guerrilla warfare was brought home to him right there. He was in a war zone. The enemy didn't play by any set rules. It was an unsettling event. The next morning, after breakfast, the trio walked over to S3 and chose their code names.

• 2:52Jocko Willink?

  Laterno, McCloskey, and Shore now became The Frenchman, Namu, and Bubba, names that would stick with them far beyond their tours of duty in Vietnam. Because S3 was temporarily located in the headquarters section of FOB 4 since the attack, it was a quick shuffle into the briefing room with everyone else. An intense, short, black-haired man wearing pajamas, slippers, and a bathrobe walked in smoking a cigarette. Before a word was spoken, Colonel Warren abruptly pulled a white sheet off a large map with a flourish and tossed it aside and announced, "Welcome to CNC, man."

• 3:33Jocko Willink?

  Turning to the large map that had black tape boxed target designators on it in Laos, the DMZ and North Vietnam, he continued, "This is what you volunteered for. This is why this is a top-secret project. If anybody asks, the President can say we have no men stationed in the AO. That is why you'll wear sterile fatigues and carry no form of identification of any kind on your missions. That's why you agreed not to talk to anyone about this operation for at least 20 years." Our intel reports land in the White House.

• 4:11Jocko Willink?

  Any questions? Not waiting for a response, Warren continued to explain the difference between spiked teams and hatchet force elements, where the different FOBs were located, how FOB 3 at Khe Sanh was closed after the siege earlier in the year, and how Major Clyde Sincere Jr. had opened a site at my lock now designated FOB 3. Following an update on intelligence reports in the respective areas of operations, Colonel Warren asked if anyone had any questions. Laterno raised his hand. "Where do you need help, sir?"

• 4:48Jocko Willink?

  "We need men at FOB 1. We lost a 1-0 on October 5th, and some of the first special forces TDY troops from Okinawa are returning back to the island." Laterno turned to Shore and McCloskey and asked, "How about it? FOB 1?" Shore nodded in the affirmative. McCloskey said, "No, I think I'll stay here." Laterno turned back to Warren and said, "We'll go," nodding toward Shore, surprised at McCloskey's response. Without missing a beat, Warren told the remainder of the SF troops in the room that he'd be right back. He turned to Laterno and Shore and said, "Follow me," as he headed out of the briefing room and into the S3 Operations Center. He told the center staff to get a King B to FOB 4 in an hour to transport Laterno

• 5:32Jocko Willink?

  and Shore to FOB 1 ASAP. Next, he headed to S1 and told the clerk that the newbies were to be processed and cleared to go to Phu Bai. An hour later, PFC Laterno and Spec 4 Shore were in a King B, heading north to FOB 1.

• 5:55Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is an excerpt from the book Across the Fence, which was written by John Stryker Meyer, nicknamed Tilt, who was a special forces soldier and SOG recon leader in Vietnam. And we went deep with Tilt on Podcast 180, 181, and 182. And if you haven't listened to those podcasts, then stop this one right now and go back and listen to those first. But if you have already listened to those podcasts and you heard a little bit about Doug Laterno, codename The Frenchman, and you know that he was also a special forces soldier at Green Beret and was also a SOG team member in Vietnam. And it is an absolute honor to

• 6:39Jocko Willink?

  have not only Tilt back again on this podcast, but he brought with him the Frenchman himself, Doug Laterno. The one and only. Gentlemen, thank you for coming on. Good to see you again. Good evening, sir. Good evening.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Thank you for having us.

• 6:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, great to meet you. Great to have you both here. And yeah, let's talk a little bit about how you ended up there. I mean, you glaze over in the book, we're riding rodeo Broncos, we're working in Hollywood taming animals. What was your upbringing that got you to, that got you there?

• 7:11Speaker 01

  Believe it or not, I was born in East LA in the barrio.

• 7:14Jocko Willink?

  Well, that makes sense. Not?

• 7:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. So, living in the city, I got fortunate enough, when I got into high school, that I got into a program called the Future Farmers of America. And it gave me a whole different way of looking at life. And I ended up becoming a president of the chapter, but I had several Spanish speaking and Spanish people in our chapter, one of the largest in all of Southern California, as it turned out. Well, with these people, I could, became such good friends in their way of life, and still working the fields

• 7:57Speaker 01

  of the San Fernando Valley, which was still open. I tended to lean towards the country way of life, even though I was born and raised in the city. And I knew nothing about anything at all but city life. But I tried to break away from that through the organization and the western end of the San Fernando Valley. Well, one thing led to another, and I learned about, you could go rodeo. And there was a place that I could go ride and practice. We could do bull riding and bronc riding and bareback riding and all the three.

• 8:38Jocko Willink?

  Where was this? Was this in San Fernando Valley?

• 8:40Speaker 01

  This was actually out in Thousand Oaks.

• 8:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 8:43Speaker 01

  At the Paramount Studios.

• 8:44Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, they had a ranch right there and Dee Cooper's is what it was called in those days. And we could go out on a Wednesday night and Saturday and Sunday and ride and have jackpots. And I got into it and then one thing led to another. I got into college and I got on the college collegiate team and we traveled and rodeoed and as I went through college, I became adept to it and got into roping with roping horses and owned my own rope horse and it's just the way of life changed from being a city slicker to a cowboy.

• 9:23Jocko Willink?

  Where'd you go to college?

• 9:25Speaker 01

  I started out at Pierce Junior College in Woodland Hills.

• 9:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 9:30Speaker 01

  In the Shafranata Valley and then ended up with Cal Poly.

• 9:34Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 9:35Speaker 01

  San Luis Obispo, Mustanger.

• 9:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 9:37Speaker 01

  So through courses there and but basically we just just kept on going and then with the TV series that were popular, were a lot of animals, there was an opening to be a wild animal trainer at Africa USA in San Canyon New Hall. So I jumped up there.

• 10:02Jocko Willink?

  How old are you at this point?

• 10:04Speaker 01

  I'm 20.

• 10:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, okay. Wild animal trainer, sounds like, you know. Just another day in college. There you go.

• 10:12Speaker 01

  So I jumped up there and before I knew it, I was handling Clarence the cross-sided lion, Judy the chimp, and then they had a rope horse there that they used and they wanted me, it called Dakota Duke, and they wanted me to go out and capture all these animals by roping them. And they knew I could rope. There's an actual picture of me on the front of the picking string that was produced out of Lancaster, Antelope Valley, of me on the front cover roping a tiger off of this

• 10:41Jocko Willink?

  Off a horse.

• 10:42Speaker 01

  Off this horse. And that's what I did. And I roped elephants and I roped, you know, healed them. And I healed giraffes and I headed a white rhino for them that was coming at us and I turned them back and, you know, they would do all these, what they call a veil. A veil would be open land. It's a, it's a African term. And we just would turn these animals loose, but somebody had to go get them. So I, I actually got to work on the, on the TV series that was very popular called Doctari. And people would see the trucks. They were zebra trucks.

• 11:22Jocko Willink?

  I went on YouTube and checked out some Doctari old footage.

• 11:26Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:27Jocko Willink?

  It's like a classic show.

• 11:28Speaker 01

  Really. And, but it was shot in like Africa, but actually was all done right there in New Hall, Saugus, you know, at the compound. And, and so from there, we ran into a series called Cowboy in Africa. We brought Chuck Connors in it. And he was the star. And Hugh O'Brien had actually done the original movie, there's of Cowboy in Africa. And they shot it in Africa, but here they're going to shoot it here in the United States. And so I got to work with ostriches and all kinds of different animals that they had to have around the, the compound of the house that he was working out of in the series. But one thing left

• 12:09Speaker 01

  to another, but as it turned out, one night, somebody handed me an old ragged book. It's called The Green Beret by Robin Moore. And I looked at it and I read it and I couldn't put it down. And I said, this has got to be something that this Vietnam war's been going on for quite a while. I grew up almost listening to it every day. There's got to be something going on that I need to contribute. And I think this is what I want to do. I went down the next day, very next day, and signed up.

• 12:44Jocko Willink?

  So what year was that and how old were you?

• 12:47Speaker 01

  I was 20. And this was like September, just before, it was like

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Well, I'd say, cause I went in September first, so it was the day before, so, so, you know, August, you know, August thirtieth.

• 13:04Jocko Willink?

  Of what year, though?

• 13:06Speaker 01

  Nineteen sixty-eight.

• 13:07Jocko Willink?

  Nineteen sixty.

• 13:08Speaker 01

  I mean, sixty-seven.

• 13:09John Stryker Meyer?

  Sixty-seven.

• 13:09Jocko Willink?

  Sixty-seven.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Sixty-seven, yes. And I, I actually entered the service in September first nineteen sixty-seven.

• 13:17John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, by that time, he had obtained a college degree by attending classes at night. So, instead of going through the four-year program, the college was three years.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Well, I graduated when I was seventeen.

• 13:28Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 13:28John Stryker Meyer?

  From high school.

• 13:29Speaker 01

  From high school, guy was early.

• 13:31John Stryker Meyer?

  In with the classes at night.

• 13:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 13:33John Stryker Meyer?

  In the spare time.

• 13:34Jocko Willink?

  And, and like the, the attitude towards the Vietnam War in nineteen sixty-seven, you know, from the, I mean, when we think of Hollywood now, we, we think of people that just are, you know, just detest everything that has to do with the military most of the time. And you were kind of in that Hollywood scene, hanging around with all these people, but that didn't rub off on you at all?

• 13:56Speaker 01

  It didn't happen that way. In sixty-seven, sixty-eight, it wasn't like that.

• 14:01Jocko Willink?

  Wasn't like that back then.

• 14:02Speaker 01

  I was shocked when I got back and I actually, uh, visited Bubba in, on Peach Street in Atlanta, Georgia. And there was a anti, uh, rally, Vietnam rally, going down the street. And I looked out the window and I said, "Bubba, what in the world is that?" He says, "Those are anti-war protesters." I'd never seen it, never heard of it. But in sixty-seven, everybody was still pretty patriotic.

• 14:33Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 14:34Speaker 01

  And didn't have that situation.

• 14:36Jocko Willink?

  And, and now, what about your old man? Who was, you know, he, he was, you were raised as a son of a guy that was a B-17 pilot?

• 14:45Speaker 01

  Yes, a, a war hero in his self. He was, he ran thirteen missions. He was actually the first two missions in, were over Berlin. He was on the first two missions to bomb Berlin itself. But he flew thirteen missions. On his thirteenth mission, uh, they gave him a brand-new airplane because his airplane had been shot up so bad with his crew that he brought from the United States and flew it over to England, that they had to give him a brand-new airplane that morning. And he took off and he had nine hundred and ninety-nine planes behind him. He was point that day. And he went over a target called Schweinfurt.

• 15:29Speaker 01

  As it turned out, Schweinfurt in forty-four had lost fifty-six airplanes. And this day, his entire squadron of twenty-two out of twenty-three were to be shot down that day. And he was the first one down. And they were using new tactics, the Nazis were. Would, they would line up, uh, Messerschmitts and one-oh-nines and, uh, in a row and go right through them. Instead of coming around or going on top, they'd just go right through them. They didn't care if they lost the planes or not. And then they had, uh, Falkworth one-nineties behind them.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  And they, they took out all these planes in the very lead, just to start the battle. But no one could ever figure out why Schweinfurt was so protected and so many losses every time it was tried to be bombed. And Garrick, during the Nuremberg Trials, he admitted that it was the only ball bearing factory the Germans owned. Without ball bearings, the war would have been over with in a matter of a few months. And this whole war went on and on and on because neither the British or the US could figure, figure that out. And they should have bombed it every day, is what he said. And if the war would have been over with, they would have had to surrender.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  But just a quirk in the whole situation. But my dad ended up... Being my first airborne person in our family. Involuntarily. Involuntarily, and HALO. And he taught himself. What altitude were they flying at? Ten thousand feet when he jumped because his plane caught on fire and they couldn't extinguish it. His engines were on fire and he couldn't open the bombay doors. The hydraulic system had been shot up. He'd lost, his radio operator had a twenty millimeter right through his stomach and they had to put a parachute on him and just shove him out the bottom door. And it was pretty hectic.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  Plane blew up in midair, but those that could got out and made the free fall to the ground and pulled their chutes. And anyway, my dad was attacked by farmers with pitchforks. And thank God the Gustavo and the SS were there to retrieve him and push the farmers back. He thought he was gonna die right there in the hole. He sprained his ankle and he was kind of out of it. And, but anyway, they hauled him off and strung him up and tried to make him talk. And, you know, the usual serial number, name and rank. And then they put him in Stalag One, which was an all officer camp.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  And it had fifteen thousand officers that had been shot down in that camp. All the enlisted men went to enlisted stalogs. And he served thirteen months in the POW camp. And then one morning they woke up and the Russians were there. The Russians liberated him. And he was taken home and that's the story. And, and he became well known for, in our town, for what he did. Plus he had two brothers. And my Uncle Armin was given a Silver Star by Patton, General Patton himself in France pinned on his chest. And my Uncle Eddie flew Corsairs.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  So the Laterno brothers were quite active. Yes, they were. So I had a lot to follow. Yeah, you did. Jeez. So I ran. Millions there. But I, I ran thirteen missions.

• 19:21Speaker 01

  How ironic, right?

• 19:23Jocko Willink?

  That is.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  I ran thirteen missions in one bright light.

• 19:26Jocko Willink?

  When your dad came home, what did he do? Did he get out of the army? Did he?

• 19:31Speaker 01

  Well, it was Army Air Corps in those days. It wasn't the Air Force. And so he tried doing a little bartending and a little this, a little of that. But he had been in construction. He actually was partnered up with his, my grandfather, my grandparent. And it was Laterno and Laterno Construction Company. And he filtered back into the construction and started building because they needed homes. Every, all these soldiers coming home. And he built most of Burbank and Glendale at the time. And they did, they always did quite well and got into commercial buildings.

• 20:10Speaker 01

  And I sort of followed into those footsteps eventually after I got back from the service.

• 20:17Jocko Willink?

  So when you, when you enlisted, what did your, how did your dad feel about that?

• 20:22Speaker 01

  Well, he was not, not happy about it because he only gave him a day's notice.

• 20:29Speaker 01

  I said, I'm going, I'm going into the service and I'm going to go to Vietnam and I'm going to be a Green Beret. But of course, when we, I enlisted, they couldn't give me that. It was the only MOS that they could not give because it wasn't guaranteed. They could guarantee me anything else. They wanted me to be an officer because I had a degree. And I said, no, I'm not going to go to OCS. I want to, I want to go and be whatever it takes to be in special forces. As it turned out, in the long run, whether you really want to hear the whole story,

• 21:03Speaker 01

  it's up to you. But I did end up being a Green Beret and going through all the processes and going through all the volunteer and being accepted and going into it. And I passed it. But during that time, I'm, you have to realize, I'm just an E2. I went in as an E1. I'm an E2. I'm the lowest ranking there is. And the MOS that I actually graduated with was a prized MOS that only a few would maintain. And that was heavy weapons. They go, you can't be heavy weapons unless you're an E5 or above.

• 21:47Speaker 01

  But when my turn came up to go in front of the panel, my name being an L, that's made it documented. That's why I can say this. I was the first E2 ever to be accepted for weapons MOS training.

• 22:03Speaker 01

  Because I told them exactly what I had in mind. I said, come Monday morning, we've already gone through our phase one and I've got my green beret. And I said, we need to go into MOS and I just, Monday I can start. I said, when that MOS is done, it so happens, phase two of graduation exercise, when you go out in the field for two weeks in survival mode, I said, it will start immediately the following Monday. And I said, and I can be in Vietnam in the next three months.

• 22:38Speaker 01

  And they looked at me and said, you got it. So if you look at the orders, everything from L to Z, there was E2, E3, E4 was in my weapons class.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  Because I started something that couldn't be turned back. The tide had been turned. So when I got to Vietnam and my first assignment to FOB1, I'm now a PFC, E3. And Pat Watkins, who has the DSC, Distinguished Service Cross, from his time on August 23rd, when FOB4 was attacked.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  He told everybody, there must be one bad son of a bitch coming up here because he's a PFC. He's 11 Charlie SF. He said, he's been busted down so far, he's gotta be the baddest soldier working on the land.

• 23:35Speaker 01

  And when I showed up and he looked at me, he goes, you are a PFC. His eyes green as grass and knew nothing. Just been trained hard.

• 23:47Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's a good, that's a good way to kick it off, man.

• 23:51John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, WAC and F will be one.

• 23:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. What did you, when you were going through the, how long was the, how long was the block of training that you, so you go through boot camp? How long was the SF training? What was that total?

• 24:01Speaker 01

  Well, I had to go through boot camp and that's where I had to volunteer to even be, uh, go through the acceptance of trying to be a, a, assigned to SF training. Then I went into advanced AIT, which is advanced infantry training. You had to go through that. And you also had to sign up for airborne training. So you had to go through all, all the basics and come out as an 11B, which was a small infantry, uh, arms. So anyway, uh.

• 24:36John Stryker Meyer?

  Then jump school?

• 24:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, jump school. But I went through the, the nomination part of it, taking tests and physical tests and swimming, everything. And then interviews with the SF guys that were there, that were in charge of selecting who was gonna go. We started out with 350 men volunteering to go through this acceptance. They only took 35 in the end of the deal. I was one of the 35. And I went on to airborne school the next day and went through jump school at Fort Benning, Georgia. They put us after our last jump, which was out of the old boxcar 119s. And then they came in with the new jets and, uh, so I, I, I'm kinda proud of that.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  And we went on a bus that night all the way to Fort Bragg and got there in the early morning hours of Saturday, uh, Saturday morning. And then Monday morning, we were in formation for our very first day of training in, in, in special forces. And that, that block there was. Two weeks out on survival, phase one, then eight weeks of training after that, and then another two weeks of our graduation exercises where we're trained to overtake a government. That's what Special Forces does, is actually overtake over governments and train guerrillas to do so. And so then thirty days later, I was in Vietnam.

• 26:07Jocko Willink?

  Was the, I'm sure the focus must have been like a hundred percent on, hey, you're going to Vietnam. We know you're going to Vietnam. This is what it's gonna be like. This is what you're dealing with?

• 26:16Speaker 01

  When I graduated, the Colonel stood in front of us, the head of all of Trading Group, and said, "I don't want a one of you to volunteer for Fifth Group, Vietnam. We spent too much money on you. You're just gonna go there and die. You stay here. Pick any other group." I'm gonna go down the line with the Command Sergeant Major and he's gonna tell me what group you wanna go to. I had twenty-three graduates in my class.

• 26:45Speaker 01

  All but three volunteered for Vietnam.

• 26:50Speaker 01

  He was not happy.

• 26:53Jocko Willink?

  What, I don't, yeah, you think like, why does, why is someone during the Vietnam War gonna join Special Forces unless they wanna go to Vietnam? I mean...

• 27:01Speaker 01

  Exactly. But in my mind, there was something wrong. It had been going on for years. And Special Forces had been there before it was a war, advising. And I just could not figure that out. And I said, "I've got to go. I've got to see why it's taken so long." It's taken longer than the World War II. And that was five years. So why is it taking so dang long? So I said, "I've gotta get there and do something about it." That's how my attitude was.

• 27:36Jocko Willink?

  Frenchman's coming, he's gonna handle this thing.

• 27:40Speaker 01

  PSC, oh, I see.

• 27:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. All right, I'm gonna go to the book here. This is, this is going back to Across the Fence and, um, obviously, I told everyone to buy this because I've been reading chunks of it, and if you haven't bought it yet, just buy it right now. Um, written by John Strikermeier. So, this is a section where he's, he's writing about the Frenchman. So here we go. "Within 24 hours, Letourneau and Shore were on recon teams at FOB-1 and they immediately began training. Immediate reaction drills, weapons and explosives training, reviewing team SOPs, practicing helicopter extractions on strings, and practicing wiretaps. As October yielded to November, many of the members of the two recon teams began to build a rapport because they were doing so much training together on the Phu Bai range.

• 28:26Jocko Willink?

  In addition, Letourneau and Shore also quickly learned that the veteran indigenous personnel on their teams were highly skilled and fearless warriors. One night while Letourneau was recording a verbal message for his parents on his portable cassette player, Lap, the young point man on ST Virginia, came into his room and spoke into the recorder. "I want to tell you, parents of Private Letourneau, not to worry about him. We respect him and I'll keep an eye out for him. And don't worry, if an enemy shoots at him, I'll catch the bullets with my body. I'll protect your son. Thank you for sending him to Vietnam. He's a good soldier."

• 29:02Speaker 01

  Dad, he was. The kid was like 16 years old, and he was our point man.

• 29:10Speaker 01

  Who knows how many kills he had? He was fearless. His parents had been both killed. He was an adoptee in the SOG. He was raised and lived and fought in SOG. And he prided himself on trying to learn how to speak English because he wanted to be number one interpreter.

• 29:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. How'd your parents like that? Did they ever get the tape?

• 29:39Speaker 01

  They got the tape, yeah. I wish I knew where they were. They passed away and we couldn't find them. But, uh, yeah, it was amazing. And my dad knew right then and there I wasn't coming home.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  He knew I wasn't coming home. And he didn't, he had to try to keep my mother from figuring that out. But he knew that I would not be let come home because of the secret missions. He figured they would, the government would take me out before they would let me come home with what I knew.

• 30:15John Stryker Meyer?

  And LAP is the kind of Vietnamese, South Vietnamese ally that you never heard about? That we worked with every day and we're alive today, thanks to them.

• 30:23Speaker 01

  We owe our lives to them.

• 30:25John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah?

• 30:26Speaker 01

  We do.

• 30:27John Stryker Meyer?

  And a couple of King Bee pilots.

• 30:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true. Extractions.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  I have thirteen string extractions.

• 30:38Jocko Willink?

  Thirteen for thirteen?

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 30:41Jocko Willink?

  Lucky thirteen, huh?

• 30:42John Stryker Meyer?

  I know.

• 30:44Speaker 01

  That's what my dad said. He had thirteen hundred bombing hours, flight hours. But he also had thirteen months in the POW and he was also shot down on Friday the thirteenth.

• 30:56John Stryker Meyer?

  April thirteenth.

• 30:57Speaker 01

  April thirteenth.

• 31:01Jocko Willink?

  No superstition here, huh?

• 31:03John Stryker Meyer?

  No.

• 31:06Jocko Willink?

  All right, continuing on. A few days before Thanksgiving, ST Virginia's one-zero Childress announced that an operation order had come down from the S3. The team had a mission in the western section of the DMZ.

• 31:21Jocko Willink?

  And then I'm gonna fast forward a little bit here to a guy named McGovern. Quiet-spoken McGovern gave him a wry half-smile and said, "We can't have that. You need to have a CAR-15 for your first mission. Follow me." The duo walked over to McGovern's room. He opened his locker and pulled out a clean CAR-15 and handed it to Letourneau. "This is a special CAR-15," he said. According to official Army records, this CAR-15 was written off as a combat loss at FOB III in Khe Son. Meaning as far as the Army's concerned, this weapon doesn't exist. "Someday after a successful tour of duty in Vietnam, if you're so inclined, you can take this baby home with you because it doesn't exist. But as you can see, it does, and it's a sweet weapon."

• 32:03Jocko Willink?

  It never failed me, and I know that since you're a weapons man, you'll take good care of it. Up to this point, Letourneau had used an M16 for all of his training. Now with his Car 15, he was ready to take on the world.

• 32:17Speaker 01

  True. It was a mean weapon.

• 32:21Speaker 01

  You see it in that picture.

• 32:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:24Speaker 01

  The book has the picture of it.

• 32:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the uh. And just those rocking those 20 round mags. I, every time I see those pictures of you guys with those 20 round mags, I just, I just.

• 32:35Speaker 01

  We carry, I carried 25 of them. Stuffed into the canteen covers. We didn't carry food. Per se, all my food, I had. Uh, zippers sewed into my sleeves. Up on my shoulders, left and right. And I would roll up dried, dehydrated rice with electrical tape. Instead of one full ration, I took one full ration of food and cut it into five different. Days for maximum output. And we only ate once a day and we just put, uh, we only had four quarts of water because we didn't want to carry any more weight or any more, anything else but ammunition.

• 33:20Speaker 01

  We carried all ammunition, grenades, M79 shells, because we carried sawed off M79s. And so that's all we carried was ammunition because when we go in. That's our supply. There's no resupply. It's all up to us. And many a time we came back with nothing. And had to resupply ourselves because we got down to the last bullet. Many times.

• 33:48Jocko Willink?

  25, what was your load, do you know how much your loadout weighed?

• 33:51Speaker 01

  Yes. My web gear with all the. Clips and everything in it. And all the water, all that weighed 75 pounds. My rut sack, because I carried the radio, the PRC 25. C4 claymore.

• 34:10Speaker 01

  Blasting caps, everything that you needed. Uh, an extra antenna, all that stuff. Inside was another 75 pounds. I weighed 135. I carried 150 pounds in the field.

• 34:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's crazy. That's, that's crazy.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  But that was everybody's load. The Indig, our mercenaries, they carried probably 130 pounds. And they probably didn't weigh more than 120, 115.

• 34:41Jocko Willink?

  Peace.

• 34:46Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on. The opportunity arrived on Thanksgiving Day, 1968. After the weather cleared at the Qua Tri Launch Site, Quang Tri, is that right?

• 34:59Speaker 01

  Quang Tree.

• 34:59Jocko Willink?

  Quang Tree Launch Site. ST Virginia boarded the King B's and headed west to the target area with three American and four South Vietnamese team members. Lap, the 17-year-old hardcore point man, who had run many missions. Hone, is that right?

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 35:15Jocko Willink?

  Hone, the interpreter. Cho, the M79 operator. And Khan Cowboy Doan, who had fought valiantly besides Lin M. Black Jr. with ST Alabama. As the second Sikorsky turned westward, the 135-pound laterno went through a mental checklist of everything he was carrying. McGovern's Car 15, the PRC 25 FM radio, an extra battery for it, a sawed-off M79 grenade launcher, a 22-caliber high-standard pistol with a silencer, ammunition for all weapons, hand grenades, gas masks, smoke grenades, a camera, and five special bags of dehydrated rice. He quickly realized he was carrying more than 100 pounds of gear.

• 36:01Jocko Willink?

  His inner thoughts were jarred when the door gunner test-fired his 30-caliber machine gun without announcing his intention to anyone. Within a matter of seconds, the King B cut power and began a tight downward spiral into the LZ where Childress, the lieutenant, Hone, and Lap were already waiting. The dizzying downward spiral ended as the pilot revved the engine and landed on the LZ. Cho exited the H34 with laterno and cowboy following him into the wood line, connecting with the remaining members of the team. The King B lifted off, and the LZ quickly cleared the target area. And then, there was absolute silence.

• 36:39Jocko Willink?

  So there's your first, your first mission insert right there.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  My first insert.

• 36:44Speaker 01

  You talk about having poker time. And I'm not knowing what the heck we're doing, but we just dropped out of the sky nowhere. And I mean,

• 36:58Speaker 01

  it was adrenaline rush, but you know, I'd been roping tigers and, you know, rhinos and I'd been riding bulls in Bronx and, you know, it, it just, it just came to me, you know, but it, but it was, I mean, I'm here. All my training, all that time, over a year, and I'm here. This is it. This is the day.

• 37:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 37:21Speaker 01

  Now you question whether you're going to stand up to it because you know the enemy's there. We didn't go there for, because it wasn't, we went there because there was a trail that needed to be followed and find out who's running that trail.

• 37:37Jocko Willink?

  The, uh, the door gunner test firing that 30 cal just is a good wake up call though.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  I'm sitting in the door and it's right over my head.

• 37:50Speaker 01

  And not only that, our king bees were so stripped that they were so light compared to the regular H34 marine ships. They could outfly them in height and we could get up and over into those mountains and those high ranges and stuff. And, but they dripped oil and they had oil going down your neck all the time, you know? And then when he shot that 30 cal over the top of me, the hot brass hit me in the neck, you know? And I'm going, holy crikey, you know, scared the crap out of me. I almost jumped out and I hadn't landed yet.

• 38:26Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, the audio contrast was startling. As Laterno senses adjusted the quiet, he scoped out the LZ, which was in a deep valley between three jungled covered mountains. Gradually, sounds of the jungle resurfaced, birds chirping, bugs humming. After 10 minutes, Childress signaled to Turno to radio Covey with the team OK. The insertion was successful, no enemy activity evident. Childress moved the team toward the first mountain. Movement was slowed by tall elephant grass and the only communication between the team members was hand signals. The team moved in 10 minute intervals, stopping every 10 minutes to listen to what was going on around it. After more than an hour, the team finally emerged from the elephant grass as it continued to climb the first mountain.

• 39:10Jocko Willink?

  Laterno was on hyper alert, his heart pounding hard whether sitting in a long rest period or moving up the mountain. Near the top of the mountain, Lapp pointed out an observation platform that had been cut to the jungle, high off the ground. From that platform, anyone could observe the LZ and the valley where the team was inserted, as well as the other open areas that could be used for landing helicopters. Had a trail watcher been sitting on the platform when ST Virginia flew into the LZ? If so, where was he headed and when would the NVA hit the team? Late in the day, the team finally reached the top of the mountain and found a wide, well-used trail. Laterno's first thought was, how could anyone be out here in the middle of this, in the

• 39:54Jocko Willink?

  middle of nowhere, in this thick jungle? Regardless, the team set up its night perimeter, far above the trail where it could see anyone moving while remaining camouflaged and out of sight. At last light, Childress made the final commo check with Covey as the team settled in for its first night in the jungle. It was an uneventful night. Childress did a midnight commo check with Hillsborough, the night command aircraft that flew high above the Ho Chi Minh Trail and the DMZ, and checked in with Covey in the early morning. After the team ate breakfast and shifts, Childress directed Lapp to move parallel to the trail with Cowboy as the tail gunner in the line of march and Laterno walking in front of Cowboy. The team moved slowly in less than 10-minute intervals before taking breaks to listen to the surrounding sounds.

• 40:38Jocko Willink?

  They did this because moving next to the trail was fraught with inherent risks. So there's your first night out in the jungle.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:49Jocko Willink?

  Relatively mellow.

• 40:51Speaker 01

  It was, but the mosquitoes were huge. And we wore cravats around our heads. We actually used those for tourniquets. Is more as we could pull them down over our ears and face.

• 41:07Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 41:07Speaker 01

  And pick the mosquitoes out the next day because they were like cranes. And I mean, and then you have to realize too, that's the first meal for an entire day with hundred, hundred degree weather and only one quart of water. A sip in the morning, a sip at noon, a little bit for the dehydrated rice at night. And a sip to wash it down with and there's one quart gone for the day. You couldn't allow yourself to drink ever, except on those intervals.

• 41:47Jocko Willink?

  And you didn't, you didn't, did you guys plan to resupply water? Like, did you guys look at the maps and see, and see rivers or anything?

• 41:54Speaker 01

  No.

• 41:54Jocko Willink?

  Streams?

• 41:55Speaker 01

  No, nothing.

• 41:56Jocko Willink?

  So you planned one quart a day?

• 41:58Speaker 01

  One quart a day. We figured.

• 42:00Jocko Willink?

  That is not healthy.

• 42:04Speaker 01

  I know you're, I know you're a trainer, but that's what we had to allow ourselves.

• 42:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 42:08Speaker 01

  Because of the weight, you know, a gallon of water is seven point five.

• 42:13Jocko Willink?

  It is.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  So we had to judge our weight versus ammunition. And we, that's what we trained ourselves to do. And not only that, we also took pills so that we wouldn't go to the bathroom either. Because they could smell you on smelling American. That's why we had to eat rice and eat everything they ate. Otherwise they'd smell you, you know, MRIs and, and can, sea rations, all that stuff. They could smell that for miles. And they had trackers out there. And you had to watch for those, which I think you'll get to.

• 42:49Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 42:50Speaker 01

  But just that water ration is what you have. I, I trained myself for a year to do that. I, I did that all the time because we figured we'd be out in the sixth day. We'd come out in the sixth day, so we'd have no water on the last day. But we could survive the five days.

• 43:07Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever take any heat casualties, guys that went down from lack of water?

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Actually, never did.

• 43:13Jocko Willink?

  That's amazing.

• 43:14Speaker 01

  Never did.

• 43:14Jocko Willink?

  In the desert, we would, even in training, guys, we'd have guys go down, like on a, on a two-day operation, I'd have guys go down from lack of water.

• 43:23Speaker 01

  I've had guys go down in training, in the stateside, but I never had any, our guys were, we were, I'm just gonna say, we were tough.

• 43:32John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, the jungle's a little different in the desert, too.

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, and, because you got shade.

• 43:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 43:38Speaker 01

  You're triple canopy, so you, you actually are got shade under, over the top of you. You're not in open areas, you never go in an open area, you always follow the, the canopy, but you have to move slowly because it's so darn thick, so it takes time. And you have, the tail gunner's job is to cover the trail. Try to put, if you, everybody walks in everybody's footprint, if you try. That's what you're supposed to do. Everybody has a, an area to cover. One guy turns to the right, and the other guy turns to the left. Point man covers the 180 in front, tail gunner covers the 180 in back. And we train like that. We don't turn our backs and look at what the other guy's doing.

• 44:21Speaker 01

  We only concentrate on our area and keep that area clean. Unless we have to move in that direction, then we all turn that way and move. It, it's a precision, it's a precision movement that we practice. We train like that. Every time we were back in camp, we trained how to move.

• 44:42Speaker 01

  That's why RT Virginia and RT Idaho were survivable teams. Besides the, having the luck of the gods with us, you know?

• 44:53Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes you gotta make your own luck a little bit through, we, we talk about that all the time, like, we would train all the time. We'd patrol around in the compound, rehearse, rehearse. We'd rehearse, this always shocks people, rehearse getting in and out of the trucks. Like, you know, we'd have a big, a big, a giant truck to transport troops in, but we'd do raids with those things. And we'd practice getting out, you know, like, okay, because if this takes you seven seconds, if you're in a firefight, I mean, seven seconds is a long, long time to be trying to get out of a truck that people are launching grenades at, you know? And so we'd practice, so we could do it quickly, do it at night, do it in the dark, do it with your gear on, you know, reverse order, do it again, and that's what we'd do, so that we'd be, you know, ready.

• 45:35Speaker 01

  We did the same thing. We actually, working out of F O B four, we had a island called Monkey Mountain. And we'd go over there and we set up a course to walk from one side to the other. And that's how we would train, so that we, we could continually upgrade how we walked.

• 45:58Jocko Willink?

  And you guys didn't, I've talked a tilt about this, you guys didn't bring mosquito nets in the field to wear over your head?

• 46:05Speaker 01

  Never. That would be, what we had was what they called, believe it or not, they had mosquito repellent that was U S Army issue. But we also had Max Factor that did the makeup.

• 46:20Jocko Willink?

  Okay, what's that all about?

• 46:22Speaker 01

  The grease paint.

• 46:23John Stryker Meyer?

  Camouflage paint.

• 46:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 46:25Speaker 01

  Camouflage paint, yeah.

• 46:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:27Speaker 01

  And what we would do is take the repellent and mix it in our palms, squirt it in our palms and put the grease paint in our palms and then put the paint over our face for, to cover our highlights, so there's no reflections. And besides that, I used electrical tape and wrapped up my, my trousers at the bottom around my, my boots, so to keep the leeches out, but also that closed off. And then I also did that around the wrists of my arms. And then we wore, we, our car fifteens were so hot that we had to wear gloves with a few fingers cut out of them. We looked like Michael Jackson. Way before his time.

• 47:14John Stryker Meyer?

  I wish you'd told me about that grease paint idea. I like that.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Oh, you didn't know that?

• 47:18John Stryker Meyer?

  No, I didn't know. See, I learned something today.

• 47:20Jocko Willink?

  There you go. A little late.

• 47:21John Stryker Meyer?

  A little late.

• 47:22Speaker 01

  So the mosquito, the mosquito repellent and the grease paint mixed together made a very gooey mess, but it would keep them off of your face, you know? And when you were at night, when they were at their worst, you could pull that cravat down and then, you know, keep them out of your ears and they would stay off your face. Because they didn't want anything to do with it. And we always carried just a little extra with us to keep it going, you know? Cause being out there for five days, you know? The most, I mean, most of the time we get shot out in a day, two days, three days. But I had the luck of having several five and seven day missions.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  I was able to stay out a long time as our teams progressed further and deeper. They didn't think we'd go that far, but we went deeper than anybody could ever go. We got down to some of our missions and layoffs with one minute on time with the King Bee. There was no bringing us out. Once they dropped us on the ground, it was over with. They had to go back and get fuel.

• 48:28Jocko Willink?

  So no 10 minute station time, they just dropped you and left?

• 48:31Speaker 01

  Had to, had to. But they weren't expecting us that far. We could get right into them, catch them off guard.

• 48:43Jocko Willink?

  All right, going back to the book. As ST Virginia moved up the second mountain, Cowboy and Laterno began to hear women's voices off the trail. Cowboy urged Laterno to go explore the sounds. Laterno shook his head no, indicating they had to stay with the team. Cowboy, who spoke broken English, repeated the suggestion, adding, "It could be a small NVA village. We could kill everyone and make the NVA boku angry. We want to let them know we can hurt them the same way they attack our camps and villages." Laterno again declined and gave him the hand signal to plant some M14 anti-personnel mines on the trail behind them in case the NVA soldiers were trailing them.

• 49:25Jocko Willink?

  As the team moved on, Laterno planted a few more tow poppers and marked their locations on his map for, after covering them expertly. He laid down some powdered mustard gas on the ground for any tracker dogs that might follow their trail. The mustard gas was leftover from World War I. How it landed at Fubai remained a mystery to Laterno. The good news was that it still worked. The fact that it was, the fact was confirmed during the next break when the team heard a dog howl in anguish after snorting some of the old mustard gas.

• 49:57Jocko Willink?

  Maybe it didn't work that well because a few minutes later, the dog was back on the team's trail. Cowboy told Letourneau to use his pistol to kill the dog. Letourneau's mind flashed back to special forces training group where instructors had said the same thing. Letourneau pulled out the 22, quietly moved back down the trail, took off his rucksack and moved a few more feet before lying down on the ground facing the trail. The dog never realized Letourneau was there. When the dog was about 10 feet away, Letourneau fired one shot. It struck the dog between the eyes, killing him instantly. The canine dropped in his tracks out of Letourneau's view. Unaware of what had happened, the dog's handler moved up the trail. He got near the dead dog. When he got

• 50:40Jocko Willink?

  near the dead dog, he stepped on a tow popper. Letourneau and Cowboy heard the NVA screaming in pain and anguish. They left him behind, figuring he would die shortly. The team moved further up the mountain with Letourneau and Cowboy providing rear security. Again, Letourneau and Cowboy heard women's voices below them. Again, Cowboy urged Letourneau to go downhill and attack the encampment. And again, Letourneau declined. That's so, that's so, these guys are on you, obviously, at this point, when, when you, are you guys are still heading up the mountain because, but, but do you think you can get away from them? And what, what is your point? What is your, what is your, what are you trying to accomplish at this point?

• 51:19Speaker 01

  At this point, we're trying to get away from the tracker. But I managed to take care of the tractor, but we don't know how many people are there. We keep hearing the voices of women's voices below us. Cowboy keeps wanting me to go down there with him, trying to confuse the whole situation because he wants to kill him because he says it'll make him mad. Then they'll come after us and we can really get into it. Well, Cowboy just got off a mission on October 5th, which is in the book where they decimated a 10,000 man division of all things. Eight and a half hours, they took down 85% of them with an eight man team.

• 52:00Speaker 01

  Incredible, but it's true.

• 52:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 52:02Speaker 01

  And he, they stacked bodies up for sandbags. That's how many they were killing so fast. But he was insistent, but I told him, we can't do that because I can't split the team. I have to do it my one zero says, I'm, I'm just a one, two. I'm, I'm low man on the totem pole here, you know? And there's even a lieutenant with us, but he's, he's the one, one. He's below, he's actually below my sergeant because there's no rank in SOG. That was one of the things that, that always took me back was there was no rank in SOG. We didn't carry rank, we didn't wear rank. It was whoever was there the longest, that lived the longest was the Ted head man. He's the one zero.

• 52:46Speaker 01

  Whoever lived the longest was the one zero. And that's how it went down the, and then when that one zero was killed, the one, one took over. And he usually took over the team from, from there on until he was killed. And then the next one, the one, two would take over. He would, cause he'd stepped up to the one, one position. And that's how our, we progressed with our teams. Because everybody was killed one as, as it, as we went along. We were just lucky. But I did lose my one zero Gunther Wald. And of course, Childers went home and he was lost to an automobile accident. And so it, it's just, you know, but that's how it progressed.

• 53:30Jocko Willink?

  And at this point, this is your first mission. You got, it's like.

• 53:36Speaker 01

  I'm trying to do everything right.

• 53:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you're getting the full benefit on your first mission. You've got the dog tracking you. You've got the, the NVA encampment down below. You've got the women's voices. You've got the tracker coming up behind the dog. I mean, it's, he's hitting the toe popper. This is like.

• 53:51Speaker 01

  And we know.

• 53:52Jocko Willink?

  Everything, everything you were hoping for. Here it is.

• 53:55Speaker 01

  Here it is. And we know the NVA is there.

• 53:58John Stryker Meyer?

  Welcome to the jungle, baby.

• 54:00Speaker 01

  Cause their families are there. So we know, of course, we're, I'm, we're thinking too, maybe they, they're the trackers families too, you know? Because they would hire trackers. They tell the trackers, you either track for us, we'll kill you. And so they have no choices, but, because they're just indige out there, living, trying to survive.

• 54:20Jocko Willink?

  So you're trying to get up the mountain, get away from the tracker. Was it possible to shake the trackers? Was it possible to like actually lose them? Sometimes.

• 54:28Speaker 01

  Sometimes.

• 54:30Jocko Willink?

  Or did you feel like, once the trackers were on you, you were pretty much heading to your extract?

• 54:35Speaker 01

  Exactly, exactly, because they were, they were communicating in some way of fashion to let the NVA know. We fought regular troops. We never shot, fought the Viet Cong that they call the VC. We, we, we actually fought uniformed, uh, NVA and, uh, the regular army that the North Vietnamese had. But we needed to get off of the, keep off the trail and keep going, because we needed to find out where this trail was going. This was our mission, to try to figure out where this trail went. It, we did accomplish it in the, in the end, because I went on a second mission, which is later in the book.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  And, uh, I found, actually went into North Vietnam and was inserted on Christmas of 68 in North Vietnam on the same trail, but higher up. And that's a whole different story there, but.

• 55:32Jocko Willink?

  Well, going back to this story.

• 55:36Jocko Willink?

  Here we go. By the time Laterno completed his last radio call to Covey, the team was enveloped in darkness and team members began to set up a perimeter for the night. Dawn broke without any enemy activity. When Covey flew over the team in the morning, he warned Childress that a team was being extracted, extracted under heavy fire and another was being inserted into a top priority target. "Sit tight" was the last instruction from Covey. ST Virginia didn't move from its quiet spot alongside the mountain. During lunch hour, the member, each member ate in shifts and Laterno went out to inspect the claymore mines the team had deployed to ensure the NVA hadn't turned the deadly explosive devices around to face toward them. When he completed his inspection, Laterno found a log to sit behind.

• 56:21Jocko Willink?

  The NVA would actually do that? They'd crawl up to your perimeter and turn your claymore?

• 56:25Speaker 01

  Triple canopy. You don't, you could pass them up within two feet of you. They could be two feet away from you and you wouldn't know it. That's how thick the jungle is. And you would see a foot. You know, you think combat? You might see a foot and you shoot the foot. As long as you shot the foot, you know he was down. And he wasn't going to survive. They had no hospitals. You know? So you could count that as a, as a kill. But, you know, but you could see. You, you just had to mow down the jungle. Open it up. Guess where they're at?

• 57:00John Stryker Meyer?

  The green traces coming out gave you a clue.

• 57:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's just shocking to me that they, they would crawl up and try and turn around your claymore mines. So that when you, when they attacked you, then you clack off your claymores and boom, you're actually claymore-ing yourself.

• 57:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, later on, the CIA gave us a piece of equipment that I carried. That had a little thread out of a box. And you could wrap that whole thread around your, your encampment where your AO is right at the moment. And put it in your ear. And if that's thread was broke, it would sound a buzzing noise in your ear. And you knew somebody came through. It could have been an animal, but you knew somebody came through your perimeter. And you just had to put it in front of all your claymores. And then to stop it, you just lit a match and burnt it. And then you use it the next day, the next time.

• 58:00Speaker 01

  But once I had that, my, my perimeters were always covered after that.

• 58:08Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, later in the afternoon, Childers signaled the team to pull in their claymore mines and prepare to move out. Due to the combined weight of his rucksack and web gear, Laterno moved to his knees and slung his rucksack on his back. Just as it landed on his back, AK-47s opened fire. Laterno was slammed to the ground face first. The impact so severe, he thought he had broken his nose. Startled, Laterno jumped up with his Kar-15, pointing toward the AK-47 gunfire that was near the front of the team. Surprised that there was no NVA near him, Laterno removed the rucksack to discover that four AK-47 rounds had ripped through the 23-pound PRC-25.

• 58:50Jocko Willink?

  He reached into an especially, especially tailored pocket on his fatigue shirt, which was sewn with vertical zippers, one on the left side of the shirt and one on the right side, between the top and bottom of the pockets of the shirt. And pulled out his URC-10 emergency radio. And broadcast a general alert for any aircraft in the area. ST Virginia was declaring a prairie fire emergency.

• 59:15Jocko Willink?

  So this is like your first fire from the enemy. You get shot in the radio for four rounds in the radio, knock you down.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't know nothing. All I knew in my butt nose was busted. I thought it was anyway. And, and then I'm going, and I'm having to think, what am I supposed to do? And I, that was my first reaction. Meanwhile, my one zero Childress was mad as hell at me. Cause he says, bring me that damn radio. I said, that hurt too, they ain't gonna do crap for us. He said, I said, it ain't working. I think it shot up. And I said, it don't work. There is no signal. And so I brought it to him. Well, needless to say, I, I was standing up when I brought it to him. And he's laying on the ground and he grabs me, he says, can't you just get down? Well, the AK forty seven rounds are hitting all over us. We're in the middle of a firefight.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  Our work, we're turning fire. Me, I'm still standing there in shock. And he pulls me to the ground, saves my life. And he says, he looks at the radio real quick and he goes, the antenna's been shot off. That was the fifth round. That went through it. A breach between my rucksack and my web gear and pulled out my spare antenna and screwed it on. And we had commo. That radio was good to go.

• 1:00:34John Stryker Meyer?

  Air conditioned.

• 1:00:37Speaker 01

  And we was getting, just then, uh, Pat Watkins is flying over our Covey rider. And he called, we, he, he assessed what was going on and he could see it from where his location was in the air. And he could, he could see we were taking massive amounts of fire. And he called for an extraction from Kwangtri. And they, they brought the King bees in to get us. And we had to, you know, you can read the story.

• 1:01:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, the, the, uh, once he got that, once he got, once he got the radio back for you, it started working. Childress screams into the radio, we need an exfil now. I'm declaring prairie fire emergency. Is anyone out there? Within a second or two, there was a response, calm down, Childress. I realize you're under fire, said a Covey rider. Just at that moment, several AK-47s opened up from the wood line near the log where Laterno had been unceremoniously slammed onto his face. Lap and Cowboy returned fire. Covey Rider continued, "We heard your team declare a prairie fire emergency on the guard frequency, and I've rallied the cavalry. What's your mark? Do you have an LZ in sight?" Before Childress said a word to the radio, he turned to Laterno and said, "See? It works."

• 1:01:44Jocko Willink?

  Suppose we had left it for the NVA? Never. I say, "Never, ever leave a radio behind." As if to emphasize that point, the NVA opened fire again as Lap took, as Lap began looking for an LZ while moving the team down the hill away from the most concentrated NVA gunfire. Cutting Laterno no slack, Childress roared, "Tell Covey we'll give him a fix in five minutes. We'll probably need strings to get out of here. I doubt we can make it into the valley where Kimby can pick us up." Without missing a beat, Laterno, who for the first time felt four burning stings in his back, repeated those words to Covey while he and Cowboy began providing cover fire as the tail element of the team. Then, Laterno nodded to Cowboy, who ignited several claymore mines that the team had

• 1:02:28Jocko Willink?

  set out on its perimeter. Those mines only slowed the NVA for a few seconds. Before the dust and debris from the blast settled, the NVA soldiers were moving through it toward Cowboy and Laterno. Without saying a word, the two men took turns firing at the enemy while moving down the hill, rotating around each other. Cowboy would fire several bursts from his Car-15 and then reload. As he reloaded, Laterno would open fire, providing cover, covering fire for the team. The classic cover and move scenario.

• 1:02:57Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:02:58Jocko Willink?

  Just the way we drill it.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:03:00Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:01Speaker 01

  And it just came natural. Believe it or not, it just came natural.

• 1:03:07Jocko Willink?

  What part of it just came natural?

• 1:03:10Speaker 01

  Load and fire, load and fire. Move, load and fire, move, load and fire. And it just, we, we, we had to get, and the team came together. Our firepower, you can only imagine what a full team of firepower with all Car-15s and M79s and claymore mines going off. They knew they had a battle. But they were overpowering us.

• 1:03:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it's, I talked about this with Tilt as well, like the determination of them, where you think of the insurgents insurgent army, you know, their rule is like, hey, we don't, we don't need to fight, we don't need to win this firefight, we don't need to win this battle because we're going to be here for a long time, we can wait, we will fight when we want to fight. And it's the way that they attacked you guys and took so many losses, but continued to press and continued to press, like their, their fighting spirit was high.

• 1:04:02Speaker 01

  Well, let me give you a backdrop on that.

• 1:04:06Speaker 01

  Maybe Tilt hasn't even got to that. After the war is over with, and history starts evolving in the books and people start asking questions, we find out that they've got 40,000 troops hunting us down, hunting Saugers down. And there's a huge bounty on us. We heard 100,000, 200,000 dollars to kill an American on a Sog team.

• 1:04:32John Stryker Meyer?

  And they had to kill an American award. They kill somebody, they got the award and the bonus, and they were instant heroes in Hanoi forever.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  It meant everything to them to kill us. And they, they put 40,000 troops designated that we had tied up because they wanted to kill us. Because we did so much damage to them. Go ahead.

• 1:04:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:00Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of damage, during one short lull, Cowboy again planted a claymore mine in the direction of the advancing NVA and Laterno dug out another claymore from his rucksack and placed a 10-second delayed fuse in it. When the NVA again advanced, Cowboy ignited his claymore mine, claymore mine. When the NVA moved again toward the team, Laterno ignited his fuse and ran down the hill with Cowboy to catch up to their team. Before they reached the team, two B-40 anti-personnel rockets slammed into the trees above them, showering them with shrapnel. A few more exploded as Laterno and Cowboy moved down the hill. The 10-second, then the 10-second fuse ignited another claymore. It brought, it bought precious

• 1:05:41Jocko Willink?

  time for the gun-and-run team of Laterno and Cowboy to cover ground and catch up with the remainder of ST Virginia. Would you guys drill, pulling out those claymores with the 10-second fuse and hooking them up and setting them up? I mean, you know, it takes like a little bit of time to do that. Did you guys have them pre-rigged where you could just stick them in the ground? How did you guys do that?

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  We did. We had them pre-rigged. Everybody says, well, you can't have your blasting caps with your, you're just, if they hit the blast caps, it's gonna blow you to smithereens. Yeah, but those precious seconds would be, and I had mine in my red sack pre-rigged.

• 1:06:17Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 1:06:18John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, well, thus, Bubba had his pre-cut, so we had the five-second, ten-second, and then longer. And then you had the actual clacker itself with the full standard cord. That you could blow, it would give you more distance. How long was that cord?

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  Fifty feet.

• 1:06:32John Stryker Meyer?

  Fifty feet?

• 1:06:33Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 1:06:33John Stryker Meyer?

  So you could put the claymore down on the tree, pull back, and then you hit it handheld.

• 1:06:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:38John Stryker Meyer?

  Or as we did in that one mission, we were using the five seconds that Bubba put in.

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:43John Stryker Meyer?

  But they were pre-cut, and we had them ready to go. So you just put the fuse in, pull it, and then stick it in the ground.

• 1:06:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the little stakes, the standard claymore stakes.

• 1:06:51John Stryker Meyer?

  Legs on each side.

• 1:06:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, boom, jam it in the ground, and you're good.

• 1:06:54John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:54Jocko Willink?

  So you're setting those things up in like ten seconds.

• 1:06:56Speaker 01

  Of course, you always had to make sure they were pointed the right way.

• 1:06:58Jocko Willink?

  Yes, indeed.

• 1:07:01John Stryker Meyer?

  Point towards the enemy.

• 1:07:02Jocko Willink?

  Front towards enemy.

• 1:07:03John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:04Speaker 01

  Read the back.

• 1:07:07Jocko Willink?

  Uh, continue on. As Childress called in airstrikes, Laterno reflected on how surreal this firefight had been. It wasn't like anything he'd witnessed on television or in any movie. Instead of men charging each other and killing each other in plain sight, here in triple canopy jungle, he observed green tracers from AK-47s first, or at the most, an enemy hand or foot. And somehow, the NVA found firing lanes where they could launch shoulder-held B-40 anti-personnel rockets that slammed above and around them as they raced down the hill for their lives. Again, the voices of the special forces instructors echoed in his mind. They had told the young, aspiring Green Berets at Fort Bragg that the NVA was a tough, resilient opponent.

• 1:07:51Jocko Willink?

  Many had fought against the Japanese during World War II and against the French, driving them from Vietnam in 1954 after the Battle of Den Biên Phu in North Vietnam. The sounds of King Bs in the distance and the crashing thunder of B-40 rockets slamming into trees above his head shook Laterno out of his moment of introspection and turned his undivided attention to a crescendo of AK-47 fire from the enemy. S.T. Virginia responded with volley after volley of full and semi-automatic gunfire, while Laterno and Cho fired several M-79 rounds toward the densest section of the jungle where the AK-47 gunfire was emanating.

• 1:08:30Jocko Willink?

  Through the gunfire, someone popped a smoke grenade which brought the King Bs closer to RT Virginia's location in the jungle. Over the din of gunfire, Childress and Cowboy told everyone to put their Swiss seats on and prepare for extraction. In short order, a King B was hovering over ST Virginia more than 125 feet above the jungle floor. Laterno, Cowboy, Cho, and Hone hooked their D-rings into the old Maguire rig that hung from the end of the ropes and shortly were being lifted out of the jungle. As the quartet of recon men was being lifted into the air, the NVA unleashed another salvo of AK-47 gunfire and several B-40 rockets. Shrapnel from the rockets hit them with varying degrees of size and velocity. All of them were wounded.

• 1:09:16Jocko Willink?

  It was during those explosions that Laterno realized his Car 15 had somehow been caught in a rope above him, just far enough away that he couldn't reach it. He pulled out his M79 and launched a 40mm grenade toward the NVA positions. Now, all he could see of the enemy were hundreds of muzzle blasts from AK-47s and green tracer rounds eerily climbing toward the quartet of ST Virginia men. Before he could reload his M79, the King B began to move away from the target area, surprising him because the men had not yet cleared the jungle. Instead of continuing to climb out of the target, moving straight up until the men cleared the jungle's triple canopy of trees and vegetation, the King B was moving away from the target area due to heavy enemy ground fire.

• 1:10:00Jocko Willink?

  In recent months, at least two King Bs were shot down during string extractions from hot targets, but these facts were unknown to Laterno at the time. Shrapnel from the B-40 rockets exploded around ST Virginia men, stinging them with bits of hot metal, further spooking the King B crew. Laterno began to violently collide with tall jungle trees. Feeling like a metal ball in a pinball machine, Laterno caromed off several more trees as at least one more B-40 exploded in the treetops, again showering him with shrapnel.

• 1:10:32Jocko Willink?

  A tree branch hit Laterno from the side and turned him upside down in his rope Swiss seat. As the rope began to slip down from his hips, Laterno remembered Spider telling him how a 1-0 from another team had recently been shot out of his Swiss seat during a rope extraction. Another tree struck Laterno before he was able to muster a surge of strength and momentum to reach up and grab the rope above him as his body finally cleared the treetop. The only thing between him and certain death below on the jungle floor 200 feet down was the single piece of rope tied into the King Bee.

• 1:11:11Jocko Willink?

  Jeez.

• 1:11:14Jocko Willink?

  Just another day in Sog. Just another day in Sog, huh?

• 1:11:17Speaker 01

  And I had 13 of those like that.

• 1:11:23Jocko Willink?

  How did you guys, uh...

• 1:11:26Jocko Willink?

  When you're getting hit with all that and you're shooting back, hanging from a string, I mean, that's just like completely insane that no one died on that rope, on that extraction.

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  And you're also spinning.

• 1:11:41Jocko Willink?

  Just the rotation from now to up and you're getting knocked around.

• 1:11:44Speaker 01

  And the strings just spinning and the air is flowing past you and you're having, you know, you're just trying everything you do to stick with it. But that was my first mission.

• 1:11:58Speaker 01

  Later on, I finally realized that I didn't have an extra D-ring on my web gear to strap in. That's why I was falling over backwards. I did that twice. Then I finally found out from my good buddy here, Tilt, that I was doing it wrong. Because after my second mission, Childress had left, but he had not given me that information out of all of our training, had not thought about it. He was extracted on another jumper, so he didn't see that happen.

• 1:12:39Jocko Willink?

  It's just, it's unbelievable. When I, when I read these things, I just can't. It's just hard to even fathom the, the mayhem when you're talking about just all these B40 rockets, which is basically like an RPG.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:12:52Jocko Willink?

  An older RPG.

• 1:12:56Jocko Willink?

  It's crazy.

• 1:12:59Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, "With one final urgent pull, Laterno was able to move himself upright in the Swiss seat as the King Bee continued to climb higher into the sky, distancing itself from the fury of exploding B40 and AK-47 gunfire while gaining airspeed. As the King Bee ascended, the heavily sweating Laterno clung to the rope as another sensation overwhelmed his body, chattering teeth. Within a matter of minutes, the King Bee had climbed to an altitude of more than 5,000 feet, where the air is thinner and much, much colder than on the jungle floor, so much colder that Laterno's body began shaking violently from the dipping temperatures as the King Bee continued to climb into the safety of higher altitude. In ordinary circumstances, few people would ever think about freezing to death over Southeast

• 1:13:43Jocko Willink?

  Asia, but for the men in CNC, it was just another hurdle they had to clear. As the King Bee headed east, Laterno looked down on the spots in the jungle that appeared to be good LZs, thinking, why don't you land there? But ST Virginia's collective agony continued until the King Bees finally landed in South Vietnam. By that time, every member of ST Virginia had their circulation cut off to their legs. They couldn't stand or walk. All they could do was unhook from their Swiss seat, grab their stuff, and try and get the circulation going again in their legs while the door gunner helped them to get back to the King Bee.

• 1:14:17Jocko Willink?

  When the team returned to Kwangtrae, Kwangtri.

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  Kwangtri.

• 1:14:22Jocko Willink?

  Launch site before heading south to Phu Bai, Childress pulled Laterno aside and told him, "Take good care of that radio. You're gonna take it on the next mission, whether you like it or not." Was he gonna make you bring the shot up radio?

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, he did. We did. It saved his life, Tilt's life in the end.

• 1:14:39Jocko Willink?

  How's that? That Christmas Day mission. Oh, okay. We had the intel report. Was that the same radio? Yeah. You brought a shot up radio in the field? He did, not me.

• 1:14:50Speaker 01

  I got a hundred mile skip out of it.

• 1:14:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's ridiculous. As darkness fell, the King Bees lifted off from Quang Tree for Phu Bai. When the old warboards landed on FOB 1 landing zone, ST Virginia was greeted by one man, former ST Virginia 1-0 John McGovern. He greeted each of the team members as they exited the King Bees, asking each one, "Are you okay?" After the King Bees departed, bathing them in sand, dust, and LZ debris kicked up by the prop wash, McGovern asked Childress, "Did you hear about Bader Atoll?" Childress shook his head, "No, what happened?" "November 13th, we lost a King Bee with seven SF troops on it. We lost the entire King Bee crew.

• 1:15:39Jocko Willink?

  They were a bunch of strap hangers who volunteered to pull an elder son mission on the trail, but an anti-aircraft round hit the King Bee en route to the target. It exploded in midair. They never had a chance."

• 1:15:52Jocko Willink?

  In silence, McGovern drove the tired, dirty, and hungry team back to the team room. As the Vietnamese team members climbed off the truck, McGovern turned to Laterno and said, "You know what was really scary about that mission? The day before they got shot down, me, Lynn Black, Rick Howard, John Peters, Tim Schaaf, and a few others had volunteered and were actually on the King Bees, suited up, ready to go, only to be canceled last minute by bad whiskey x-ray, which is weather, in the AO that was too close for comfort." After a long pause, Laterno, he asked Laterno, "How did it go out there? I heard you were good on the radio. You didn't get rattled. You ain't a cheery no more.

• 1:16:32Jocko Willink?

  You've joined a small, unique club of SF men, CNC recon men, who went across the fence." It was nothing like I ever could have imagined, Laterno responded. Looking toward the Vietnamese team members, he added, "Let me get some chow for the indige. You were right about them. They have ice in their veins. I'm beat. I'll see you in the morning." Laterno walked through the white sand to the mess hall, picked up some fresh sandwiches and cold sodas for the team. After lingering with the Vietnamese team members, Laterno returned to his room, finally taking off his rucksack and web gear. As he started to undress, Laterno became aware of pain in his back, where, from where the four AK-47 rounds had slammed him face-first into the ground.

• 1:17:16Jocko Willink?

  First, he peeled off his jungle fatigue shirt and was amazed to find four bullet holes in it. Then he took off his undershirt. Ditto, four bullet holes were in it. Laterno picked up his rucksack. Four bullet holes were in it. Both in the front and the back. Something he hadn't realized during the firefight. Then he looked in the mirror and saw four large welts and broken skin up his spine where the AK-47 rounds had hit his body after punching through his rucksack and the PRC-25. Only then did Laterno begin to comprehend just how lucky he'd been hours earlier in the day when the NVA shot him in the back four times. Laterno began to cut away the metal, the black electrical tape around his socks,

• 1:18:00Jocko Willink?

  which he pulled up over his pant legs to keep out leeches and bugs. Then he made a startling discovery. When he pulled his pant leg from the sock and pulled off his right boot, four AK-47 bullets fell on the ground. In the heat of the battle, the Frenchman didn't realize that after he was shot in the back, the four 7.62mm NVA rounds had fallen through his pants and his socks into his right boot. He stood in utter amazement, staring at the four rounds on the floor before picking them up and throwing them in the sand outside his room. Exhausted, Laterno walked over to the shower room. The water stung the wounds in his back. Amazingly, the four bullets had enough energy to penetrate his skin,

• 1:18:44Jocko Willink?

  wounding him, but not enough to get under his skin. Too tired to treat the four bullet wounds in his back and shrapnel wounds in his arm, Laterno finished his shower and went to bed.

• 1:19:00Jocko Willink?

  So that that was mission number one.

• 1:19:04John Stryker Meyer?

  One.

• 1:19:06Speaker 01

  There's a saying that we came to realize later on. Everybody just look at you and say, well, that's just another day in Sog.

• 1:19:19Speaker 01

  My first mission, I had to run 12 more before it was done.

• 1:19:25Jocko Willink?

  And when you got done with it, I mean, were you were you talking to the other guys and they were telling you, hey, yeah, that's that's how it is.

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  Yes, that's how it is. So you couldn't go in the into the bar and go, yeah, this is what I did. You just said, yeah, I I got back.

• 1:19:40John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, and don't forget the footnote on that, because like about what, four or five days later, the medics.

• 1:19:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:46John Stryker Meyer?

  Tell them about the wounds from the shrapnel.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  Of course, I had to ignore everything because otherwise they'd all think I was, you know, just a whooper, you know? So I just had to suck it up and not say nothing. And but all of a sudden, I started getting these boils on me. They were huge. So I went to the medic and and what's his name again?

• 1:20:15John Stryker Meyer?

  Maggio, Lou Maggio.

• 1:20:17Speaker 01

  Maggio says, well, he says, you got shrapnel in you, buddy. That's all that's all swollen. It's infecting you. He says, you're going to have that for quite a while until we can get every piece out of you. He says, I don't know how many holes you got, but this one here needs attention right now, and it's huge. And it was my my arm, forearm, actually. And he looked at the other medic shipping and said, hold him down. And he looked at me and said, don't you look at what I'm doing. Don't you turn your head. He said, because otherwise you're gonna pass out on me when you see what I'm gonna do. He said, so don't you look.

• 1:20:56Jocko Willink?

  Good words of encouragement. Hold him down and don't look or you're gonna pass out.

• 1:21:01Speaker 01

  Well, what he was doing was taking a big stick swab in hydrogen peroxide and burning a hole right through the boil. And then he took forceps and he pulled the strings out with the shrapnel on the end from the B40 rockets because they're all made, you know, in China, they're ChiComs, you know? And so they had a lot of string. That's how they wrapped them. They didn't mold them into metal like we did. And so, anyway, I kept having to go. And then another day I had to go in, he had to do the back of my head. And I had a couple in my head and then I had a couple in my back and another under my arm. And I walked around with bandages until I went out on my next mission.

• 1:21:42John Stryker Meyer?

  I gotta tell you, I witnessed one of those getting pulled out and it was gross.

• 1:21:48Jocko Willink?

  What were you doing? Just wanted to, you know, spectate?

• 1:21:50John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, he had pulled several out. We kept hearing about these things. Let me show you. Oh, thanks. Talk about TMI.

• 1:21:56Speaker 01

  Talk about pus.

• 1:21:59Speaker 01

  Pimple breaker.

• 1:22:00Jocko Willink?

  But hey, you're gonna go back in the field anyways.

• 1:22:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:22:03Jocko Willink?

  It was like, hey, it doesn't matter. We'll do, we'll do what we can right now, but then you gotta go back in the field.

• 1:22:08Speaker 01

  Exactly, because we had another mission lined out for Christmas of 68.

• 1:22:13Jocko Willink?

  So what was the op tempo like? Meaning, how often would you? When you did, you did your 13 missions, how long did that take? What, what time span was that over? Was that a one-year tour?

• 1:22:23Speaker 01

  One-year tour. I had 13 missions and one bright light. And someday we'll talk about the bright light, I guess.

• 1:22:31Jocko Willink?

  Why not today?

• 1:22:33Speaker 01

  Well, if you, you know, it's a, it's a, it's not written in the books because of what it ended up being. But a bright light in SOG is a volunteer situation where a team will volunteer to go in and get another team out that's can't, can't get out. And we had a lot of those. Or to try to find a team that disappeared. We had a lot of teams disappear. I, RT Idaho, Lane and Owens, completely disappeared. They've never been found to this day. No trace. Just completely off the map. People have gone into this day and hunt. The government hunts today and can't find them. Under good circumstances.

• 1:23:15Jocko Willink?

  Are these the guys that you took over for?

• 1:23:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yes. And so, when I got on to Idaho and transferred from Virginia to Idaho because Tilt went home and I became Lynn Black's 1-1. One day, he had been gone for a while up at headquarters and I, I always protected him because I'm the 1-1. I, I protected my 1-0s. I had to know what they were doing all the time. Because you just never knew. Because we had, we had Nungs. We had Cambods. We had Mountain Yards. We had Vietnamese in our camp. They all fought amongst themselves, let alone wondering if they're the enemy. And we also had an entire team of NVA Chu Hoys.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  Chu Hoys being they gave up. And that was Team Cobra. And they were there for a very special mission that they went on. And to get US prisoners out of a camp that was located. But, we got a call. Lynn went up to the headquarters and it'd been a little while. So I went up there to see what was going on. He's walking back down and says, can we go on a bright light? I said, we're ready. We're packed. Because that's just what you did. If you were asked, you went. He said, we got two pilots down. And we, and they're, we think they're alive. We gotta go in.

• 1:24:45Speaker 01

  They brought a jolly green giant in for us, which is very unusual, Air Force. I don't know where they really took us. At this point in time in my life, I, we still don't know. They have all kinds of records, but it's very confusing of where we went. But we came in and that jolly, when we circled over the top of the plane.

• 1:25:10Speaker 01

  It was all intact. It was just sitting there in elephant grass. No one could figure out why. So they brought us down and I jumped out. But when I jumped out, there was a slight lift in the plane and in the jolly green.

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  And it just came down, back down on me, about crushed me. And then it came back up and then Lynn jumped out and our guys jumped out. And each, and it was an O two, it was a push-pull Cessna. Engine in the front and engine in the back.

• 1:25:44John Stryker Meyer?

  That's where it had been shot down?

• 1:25:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. We think it was shot down. We don't.

• 1:25:47John Stryker Meyer?

  Or crashed however?

• 1:25:49Speaker 01

  However, we just don't know how it happened. But what the real deal was is the plane, whatever happened to it was making an emergency landing. And it saw this opening, like an LZ and thought this would be a good place to at least start the landing. Even if it went into the jungle, it would slow it down. Problem was, soon as they hit the ground, there was a bowl. And they hit the front of the bowl with the front engine and stopped dead.

• 1:26:20John Stryker Meyer?

  Like a berm?

• 1:26:21Speaker 01

  It was a berm, yeah. And it stopped it dead, but it bent the engine around to the right. And the man in the right seat was sucked up into the carburetors, into the Lycoming engine. And he was in the fins and he just had his head and his arms sticking out. Said, when I got there on that side, it said 10 minutes after 10 in the morning. His Rolex watch was cracked, the bezel was cracked. And it stopped the watch at 10 after 10. And we didn't get there till about 2:30.

• 1:26:55John Stryker Meyer?

  And don't forget, when the chopper's going down, you're under fire.

• 1:26:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's, we're, we're getting some small arms fire. And Lynn goes to the pilot's side, on the, on the left side.

• 1:27:07Speaker 01

  He looked fine, but we realized the yoke had crushed his chest and killed him in place, but it also had him trapped, and we couldn't get either one out. But at that point in time, that was a trap. They had set. The Jolly Green had backed off, and we started taking tremendous amount of fire. And I looked across the inside of the cabin at Lynn, Lynn looked back at me, and I said, "I love you, brother, but we're not getting out of this." And he, he said, "No, we're not. This is it. Finally got us."

• 1:27:47Speaker 01

  And I looked up and radioed the Jolly Green to come back in, and he shook his head. I could see him plain as day. And he shook his head. "I don't think I can come back." I said, "You better, because I got an M-79 pointed at you. I'll take you down with us." He moved up forward. By that time, there was 200 MVA surrounding us, giving it everything they got. And we managed to crawl into that chopper, because we got up on the wings, and he scooped us up, and I had already called in Tac Air, because they already had Tac Air ready.

• 1:28:26Speaker 01

  And as we lifted off and got up about 50 feet, an A-1 Spad flew right underneath us between the plane and the, and the chopper. And I, he looked up at me like this, was smiling, and he dropped a WP right on top of him. And there was crispy critters running everywhere. And we got out of there and got back, and we walked down, landed us back at FOB4, and we walked down the road back to our hooch, and we just looked at each other and said, "Another day in salt."

• 1:29:10John Stryker Meyer?

  And all the time they're on the ground. They're under fire going in. They put a perimeter around the aircraft while Lynn and Doug went in to try to establish what the status of the pilots were. And the firefight was intense. Cause I remember when I got back, Doug had just left and I came back to know at the end of October of 69. So that bright light was fresh on Lynn's mind. He really talked about it. And I talked to HEP later about that bright light. And they're going, this was crazy. Cause HEP Saudi went in with four and Didge from RT Idaho and that team. And Lynn was like, man, I don't even know how we got out of there. So it was one of those real, another, just a really tight

• 1:29:54John Stryker Meyer?

  one. But like Doug says, in a way, when you now in retrospect, like, ah, just another day in Sog. But that one really stuck.

• 1:30:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. I just thought that, out of all my missions, and you read the book and where Tilt honors me with a few missions in his books between across the fence and on the ground. That one there was, is as tense as it got. And we thought it was over. Physically and mentally, we gave up. We thought it was over. That we just weren't going to get up out of that mess and get into that chopper. Them B-40 rockets were hitting that plate underneath that jolly green. We, we were going up in the air faster than the chopper could get us up in the air. From the pounding we were taking, if it hadn't been for that SPAD, we might not have. To this day, we can't find this bad pilot. We have reunions

• 1:30:48Speaker 01

  we go to, this bad reunions, but we still haven't been able to find that SPAD pilot that did that day.

• 1:30:53John Stryker Meyer?

  Cause what he's saying is like, when the jolly green's pulling out, the B-40 pounded underneath and the armored plane could sustain it. And it was, but it'd give the chopper a jolt like Lynn Black had on October 5th. And this is what they were experiencing again. One October, a year later, same thing.

• 1:31:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. Yep.

• 1:31:11Jocko Willink?

  I'm surprised that they take those B-40 strikes like that. I mean, one lucky shot that hits the tail rotor or something and it's just game over.

• 1:31:20Speaker 01

  Sure. You know, when we get back on missions, we would walk around our King bees and count how many bullet holes. And how many were in the blades? There's clean shots through the blades. And then we caught forty, fifty, eighty rounds in our King Bees when we come back. And pieces of metal gone that they had to put tin over.

• 1:31:43John Stryker Meyer?

  They used beer cans.

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:45John Stryker Meyer?

  Alun of beer cans.

• 1:31:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:50Jocko Willink?

  And what about the, um, what about that operation where you, where you had to go and get the fifty-five gallon drum of, and pull that one over?

• 1:32:02Speaker 01

  Okay. We'll go through that. Somebody would probably like to read it in the book, but we'll kind of go through that. And we were trained. We had a CIA agent come in and train us for a brand new explosive detonator. There was a time device that was shaped on the top end of a bung of a fifty-five gallon drum. It has curls. You put a wrench on it and unscrew it. You've seen them.

• 1:32:33John Stryker Meyer?

  And this is, by the way, this is a SEAL type mission, so you really appreciate this.

• 1:32:37Jocko Willink?

  Well, this is absolutely, yeah. When I read about it, it's, I was like, hmm. This is a good SEAL mission.

• 1:32:43John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:32:43Jocko Willink?

  But oh, well.

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  Well, they didn't let the SEALs do that in those days.

• 1:32:50Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:32:50John Stryker Meyer?

  They were busy on the coast.

• 1:32:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, they were busy on the coast. They really were.

• 1:32:54Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, and this, I mean, everything up to that is in the jungle up until you get to the river, but.

• 1:32:58Speaker 01

  Exactly. But we actually went into a secret lockup. Couldn't talk to anybody. Nobody could come in and talk to us. And we went through these exercises and training. We actually loaded up for it. And they took us out to the, and took us to Kong Tree. And we launched out of there and went into Laos into this huge river that they had. But we had to stay away from it. We had to actually hike in for two days to get to it.

• 1:33:35Speaker 01

  And when we got there and down the hill and to the river, it was night on the second, end of the second day. And then Gunther was my one zero and I was his one one. There was no one, one two. And, uh.

• 1:33:53Speaker 01

  He was a ex marine and he was an E six and he was my one zero. He'd been around a while. And he says, okay, go in and get that drum. And I says, well, you're the marine. You're Navy. Why should I go in and get it? He says, because you're the one. You're the one one. You're a PFC and I'm an E six. So that's how it's going down.

• 1:34:21John Stryker Meyer?

  And don't forget before you get there, they hike through jungle for two days and two nights.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:34:28John Stryker Meyer?

  To meet the CIA agent.

• 1:34:30Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, I forgot that.

• 1:34:31John Stryker Meyer?

  Who gave them specialized charge.

• 1:34:34Jocko Willink?

  So where'd he come from?

• 1:34:36Speaker 01

  He had Chinese with him and he said, I will meet you out there to give you this device because I can't trust anybody to have this device in case you're caught between now and then. And I said, there's no way we're gonna find you out there. This is impossible. He says, don't you worry about it. You get to this coordinate and I will, I will find you.

• 1:34:59Jocko Willink?

  That's impressive.

• 1:35:00Speaker 01

  And he did. We got to that coordinate and we waited and we waited. And next thing we know, he'd come right out of the jungle and there he was. We were gonna kill him. We thought it was NVA.

• 1:35:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:35:11Speaker 01

  He had Chinese with him, you know? Zolanoklis was his name, if you pronounce it right. I probably, I can't pronounce it right.

• 1:35:21John Stryker Meyer?

  Common spelling.

• 1:35:22Speaker 01

  It was, he actually was a renegade CIA agent. He was a desk jockey that wanted to prove that he could be an infield agent, as the story finally went, that we didn't learn about this until, what, about 12 years ago?

• 1:35:40John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  And we had.

• 1:35:42Jocko Willink?

  Did you meet him?

• 1:35:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:44Jocko Willink?

  Later?

• 1:35:45Speaker 01

  No, no. No one knows where he went, what happened to him.

• 1:35:48John Stryker Meyer?

  We met another CIA guy.

• 1:35:50Speaker 01

  We met that was actually a counterpart to a Russian KGB agent that when they, Russia finally admitted and declassified the Vietnam War and admitted they had 3,000 Russians helping the NVA.

• 1:36:11Speaker 01

  And they had a reunion and they did an actual video of the reunion admitting that they had worked with the NVA and the Chinese in helping the NVA go up and down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Well, this Zolanakis had figured this out and got a hold of this device. And how we learned about it was this CIA agent had gone there and helped declassify all the records of special ops stuff that was they were, they had located.

• 1:36:52Speaker 01

  And the whole, here they found my name in the KGB files in Moscow, twice. My code name and my real name and the missions that I ran. They did that twice and they found Lynn because we bumped into a, what we, I thought was a Mexican, Spanish speaking person, speaking broken English, and I'm from California, right? I go back to my old days and I told Lynn, I said, this, this guy's a Mexican, gotta be, what the hell's he doing out here? And he's talking to us on the radio, he's got our frequency. And Lynn says, give me that.

• 1:37:37Speaker 01

  So he goes back and forth with him and, and he says, you gotta move out of the area. And he says, I'm not gonna move out of the area, I'm here to stay. Here's my coordinates. He gave him a five-digit coordinate. I said, no, what are you gonna do? He says, well, nothing, but you need to move out of our... He was trying to save our butts because he, he was from Angola, he was a Cuban, stationed in Angola and had been shipped to Laos and then turned around and he hated the Vietnamese so much, he was trying to help us.

• 1:38:07Speaker 01

  But we could see him on the other side of the river that where we were at on this particular mission. And so that mission was in the KGB files that we had spoke to him and he had our and they knew it was RT Idaho and that we knew it was Lynn and me. And so they had as much because we had spies in Saigon giving all this information out. We had a spy that that they finally caught an American that was giving all this information out. But for two missions, I'm in the KGB files. So on this oil drum mission, we get down there after we've been given the device at night and I go in and I grab a hold of a drum and of course they have those little

• 1:38:51Speaker 01

  lips on there and I can pull that drum and they're full of about three quarters because they gotta be buoyant. And I bring that fuel drum right to the side and I'm holding it there and Gunther unscrews it, the bug off and puts the new one in, screws it up tight. Now I've got to get that drum back out into the flow. Well, the flow is NVA walking it down with bamboo poles, pushing them around. So I get it out there, but I can't get back because here they come. So I had to go under and hold my breath, but I can't hold my breath that long. This water's ice cold, right?

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  But fortunately, I was a great swimmer in my youth and I could I could handle this, but I could get my nose just above the surface, blow out and take a breath and go back under. But because it's dark and they went on by me finally, but I thought for sure they'd stick me with the with one of the poles. But they pushed that drum on down and the few drums that were around me and I came back to the edge and crawled out, but I was so cold, I could hardly move. I'm soaking wet, of course, and Gunther says, come on, we gotta go.

• 1:40:13Speaker 01

  And I finally put my gear back on, my rut sack and the radio and my web gear and everything else back on and up the hill we go, but I'm still just barely making it, just barely making it. I'm so stiff. And we crawled out of there, took two days to get out, but that device was set for two days. But it hadn't gone off yet, but we finally got extraction orders and they came and got us and strung us out. And when we were on strings, it went off. The Covey Rider was there. And it was like an atom bomb. It was a miniature mushroom. And the shockwave, even though we were miles away, came through us on strings and the

• 1:40:58Speaker 01

  choppers and just like this. And we're going like this, back and forth. And the chopper and the Covey plane is shaking like this. And I mean, it was like an atomic bomb just went through us, what you picture when you see. And then, then everything became calm and mission completed.

• 1:41:21Jocko Willink?

  That's a good one. That's a real good one. That's a good one. And they never knew.

• 1:41:26Speaker 01

  Never knew.

• 1:41:27Jocko Willink?

  Well, they didn't know until the Russians knew.

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:29Jocko Willink?

  But other than that.

• 1:41:30Speaker 01

  They never knew who it was. And we weren't allowed to talk or tell anybody in camp when we got back. They just, "What were you doing?" "Ah, just another day in song." And that was what we said. Because we weren't even allowed to tell anybody what we did because of this CIA mission that we ran. But we, everybody had certain things that they did like that. But it was the first time it had ever been accomplished.

• 1:41:54Jocko Willink?

  What did you notice about the one zeros that you had from a leadership perspective that you remember as like, yeah, this is, this is the qualities, some of the qualities that they had from a leadership perspective that you would follow?

• 1:42:10Speaker 01

  Uh, I was most fortunate, I think. I had great one zeros. Some of them not as great as others, but uh...

• 1:42:23Speaker 01

  When you, my first one, he was my idol because my first two missions. And Thanksgiving of sixty-eight and Christmas of sixty-eight. And you can't ever forget those, you know? And uh, so, in fact, the mission of sixty-eight is where I got the skip from the blowed up radio that let him know he was walking into an, letting Tilt know that he was walking into an ambush.

• 1:42:56Speaker 01

  And I'm laying on a trail with the radio on and heard this. My interpreter comes up and interprets what's going on. I managed to get a hold of Spider Parks. He just happened to be going by for a radio check and I told him what was going on. He radios to Tilt to turn around and go back that he had intel and Tilt's going, what?

• 1:43:20John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, it was the first time I ever had like a direct intel report. Do not go to the northeast. This is the Christmas day mission. We were on top of that knoll. And Lynn and I had talked about that was the one quiet area. Probably there's a problem, but we were talking. Then Spider goes, do not go to the northeast. We have an intel report. Do not go there. I'm going, intel report? That never happened before or after on a live mission. We're on the ground. And we didn't know what the hell it was, but they were right. We did, and you know the story. We get extracted and we're back in base a few days later. Him and Bubba could connect and it's going like, were you on the ground on Christmas?

• 1:44:01John Stryker Meyer?

  And we found out that he had that intel report that was confirmed. The one place we could have gone, we shouldn't have. Our instincts were right, but we had the confirmation from the intel report. And it was just amazing. You know, it's just like, to this day.

• 1:44:17Speaker 01

  They got out of it and due to other factors, they got out of it. But just that it saved, the team was walking into an L-shaped ambush and they'd been slaughtered. And they were, they were pushing them that way with trackers, gunfire and everything else. And so they just, just like you say, the gods were always with us sometimes. But at that very next day, I'm still on the trail. We were signed, that was the trail for my very first mission. We, we got into North Vietnam into it called Nickel Steel. And I've been laying there for four days through this process. And God, there was a, I mean, Childress was my one zero.

• 1:45:00Speaker 01

  And we were taking turns and it had been defoliated with Agent Orange. And so we had a pretty good view and. All of a sudden, I saw six point men coming up, NVA. I'm up there at the trail, behind a log, they're down below. I give them the signal. I give them the signal, I got six, and I can see him, and Chilvers right away knows what's going on. So he's preparing the team to fight, and Exfil out of the situation, but he can't with me up above.

• 1:45:39Speaker 01

  But here comes one of the NVA, he comes right up to the log and steps over and steps right on me. I put my Car 15 into his belly and I pull the trigger, all 20 rounds. Made a bit gaping hole, all the way through him, threw him over the log, and I'm on the run. And I've got the radio.

• 1:46:02Speaker 01

  And down the hill we go, and here comes 200 NVA. And their point, chasing us, and we're bringing, I'm trying to get Tac Air on the line, I finally do. We're putting Tac Air between them and us, and I'm throwing smoke over my shoulder. Yes, anything, anything in the smoke, kill it. And finally, they bring some slicks in and pull us out, and get us out of there.

• 1:46:31John Stryker Meyer?

  On strings.

• 1:46:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, on strings, again, and on the run. And so the side note to the whole mission is, I don't know how many we killed, but it was not a good day for them. But that Agent Orange was the only time I was ever near it. And right now, I've got stage four cancer from Agent Orange, with a limited amount of time left. So, that's why I'm glad I'm here to tell a few stories.

• 1:47:01Jocko Willink?

  Glad you're here, too.

• 1:47:03John Stryker Meyer?

  Airborne.

• 1:47:06Jocko Willink?

  The um, so how many tours did you do? Is that what?

• 1:47:11Speaker 01

  One tour. I signed up for one. I volunteered to go into special forces when I was regular army. I volunteered regular army, went through, got special forces, volunteered for Vietnam, volunteered for CCN and SOG and did one tour and went back home and became a weapons instructor for special forces training group and got out.

• 1:47:36Jocko Willink?

  So how many years was the total?

• 1:47:38Speaker 01

  Three.

• 1:47:38Jocko Willink?

  Three years?

• 1:47:39Speaker 01

  Three years. That was it.

• 1:47:42Jocko Willink?

  And then what'd you do when you, when you got out?

• 1:47:45Speaker 01

  Uh, I kinda went back to rodeoing and training horses and things like that. And then I sorta got calm.

• 1:48:00Jocko Willink?

  Got your pilot's license?

• 1:48:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got my pilot's license, fixed wing and rotary.

• 1:48:04Jocko Willink?

  Where you got home, how long did it take to kind of adapt to civilian life?

• 1:48:10Speaker 01

  It took about a year that because I slept with my CAR-15. And then when I was in training group, I always had all the weapons around me. I felt safe. But it, you know, 4th of July was always a hard one with stuff going on. You don't know. And it took me a while to, to calm down and not because I had a lot of kills. And you just have to work through all that all the time. And I was pretty good because not after that uh, period of time, you know, we'd never talked to each other. We weren't allowed to talk about it for 20 years is what I was told.

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  So I never, ever talked to anybody. I never met anybody until 2000.

• 1:48:56Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys, I mean, when you, when you, you guys didn't keep in touch? You guys didn't write each other or figure out each other?

• 1:49:03Speaker 01

  Tilt and I wrote each other, but he, his family moved. I only had his mother and father's address. And I lost contact for 25 years.

• 1:49:12John Stryker Meyer?

  I moved, he moved, my parents moved and uh so the comma would drop but we were down.

• 1:49:19Speaker 01

  And there's no books, no, nobody could say anything.

• 1:49:23Jocko Willink?

  What about other team members, other guys? Was there anyone that you kept in touch with over the next twenty years?

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:49:28Jocko Willink?

  So when you were done, you were done?

• 1:49:30Speaker 01

  I was done.

• 1:49:30Jocko Willink?

  You're didn't, it was over?

• 1:49:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz I couldn't find anybody. I didn't know anybody to talk to. So I was just done and I just let, in my life, just, I never thought about it anymore. You know, I, I knew I did stuff, but I couldn't talk about it. And I had gotten married and I told my wife about it, but uh we just thought that, we didn't know where anybody went. I didn't know where anybody went to. And then all of a sudden, the internet came about. I typed in SF one time and a couple of emails came up, old ones. I typed in, you know, McCluskey. Got, he was working as a, a medevac pilot. And uh he called me and you see, he was on shift and he saw it and he called me.

• 1:50:17Speaker 01

  He gave me Tilt's phone number and I called Tilt the next day was Easter Sunday.

• 1:50:21Jocko Willink?

  What year was that?

• 1:50:22Speaker 01

  Two thousand.

• 1:50:23John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:25John Stryker Meyer?

  We're going to get ready to go to church.

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  I haven't, I hadn't seen him since nineteen sixty-eight, or sixty-nine.

• 1:50:31Jocko Willink?

  And where were you living at the time?

• 1:50:32Speaker 01

  I lived up by Yosemite National Park in a town called Mariposa.

• 1:50:37Jocko Willink?

  Beautiful. And you were just down in, in Oceanside?

• 1:50:40John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, working at the paper, the fish wrapper.

• 1:50:43Speaker 01

  So I said, well, shoot, you know, uh I, so I got the phone number and uh I called him on Easter Sunday. He was going out the door to go to church and I said, you better sit down. This is the Frenchman.

• 1:51:00John Stryker Meyer?

  I did.

• 1:51:03Speaker 01

  And then we've been, we talk every day now cuz we can.

• 1:51:06Jocko Willink?

  What did you, uh, what did you do for a job so you, you, you had to kind of continue to kind of get it out of your system? Were, were breaking horses or whatever, rodeo for another year after you got out?

• 1:51:16John Stryker Meyer?

  Breaking more bones.

• 1:51:17Jocko Willink?

  Breaking more bones. And then you went into the construction business?

• 1:51:21Speaker 01

  I went in the construction business, uh, that my father had gone into a private construction for a particular person. And uh so it left the license open, so I just continued the license and he handed it over to me and I. Built for almost forty-five years. I'm retired now.

• 1:51:43Jocko Willink?

  What, where did you guys overlap? What was that? Did you guys overlap in RT Idaho? Is that when you guys overlapped?

• 1:51:50John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, we were at FUBA when he came in. He came in with Bubba.

• 1:51:53Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:51:54John Stryker Meyer?

  And so McGovern got him fir- first, before I ever talked to him. And I got Bubba. So we were in camp, we're training together at the firing range. Then Bubba and I were doing our targets, they're doing theirs. And, um, then when we moved, he was, he closed out FOB one. He's the last SF troop there, his recon team, closed it, locked the gate. By that time, Lynn and I were down in, uh, Da Nang already. So we were running missions, he went down with, with, uh, RT Virginia, with Gunther Wald. And so they went down and ran their mission, including the famous oil drum one.

• 1:52:30Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:52:31John Stryker Meyer?

  And Lynn and I were doing our thing, and then by April, my time in country was getting close. So Lynn had agreed to be to come to one zero. We had a special mission, we were supposed to go up to Mughia Pass. We brought Doug in, uh, Max Fortenberry, and an officer to go with us on that mission. We trained for the mission, trained right up to it, went to the launch site, on the choppers, took off, and they called us back because two aircraft were shot down over the target area that day. And so I was about four or five days from de-rosing. We, uh, we went back to camp, they put us up to Marble Mountain. So we're up there, we have some pictures from that time there.

• 1:53:15John Stryker Meyer?

  And then, um, I walked off of Marble Mountain, went back, got my gear, and went home. So Doug stayed with Idaho.

• 1:53:21Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:53:22John Stryker Meyer?

  So from April, at the end of April, all the way through to October sixty-nine, he's with Idaho with Lynn, and they ran a load of missions. And when I come back, he had just left base.

• 1:53:33Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:53:34John Stryker Meyer?

  But Lynn's there, so Lynn was the one zero. So he and I took turns, and then finally Sergeant Major goes, there's too much experience here, Black, you're out of here.

• 1:53:43Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:53:43John Stryker Meyer?

  And then I went back to being a one zero for another five months.

• 1:53:48John Stryker Meyer?

  And then by that time, he had come home, but he was in training group.

• 1:53:51Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:53:51John Stryker Meyer?

  So technically, he got out of the army after I did. I got out in April and you got out in June, July.

• 1:53:57Speaker 01

  September first.

• 1:53:58John Stryker Meyer?

  September first.

• 1:53:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:59John Stryker Meyer?

  And so, uh, I went my, I went back to the Garden State and then he went back to California. And separate ways, and we did, we had the cards and some notes. I don't think many phone calls.

• 1:54:11Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:54:11John Stryker Meyer?

  And it just led us back, we had a couple of guys, I had other people I stayed in contact with. And then I just figured he got a job with the CIA or did something somewhere else, you know? And then finally got the phone call in two thousand and the rest is history.

• 1:54:26Jocko Willink?

  And how often do you guys link up now?

• 1:54:29John Stryker Meyer?

  Every day. It's on the phone, like, it's like you and Eccle Charles, you know?

• 1:54:35Speaker 01

  We, we, we talk almost every day and, uh, because we can. We're alive and we try now to spread the story since we've been declassified.

• 1:54:49Speaker 01

  Like you're helping tremendously to spread this story to let people know that we actually, there was a secret war going on. And we were actually taking the war to the enemy because our country had signed a treaty saying that we would not go into North Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Or the DMZ, in which we operated in every day.

• 1:55:12John Stryker Meyer?

  Right, we weren't stationed there, we just flew in by helicopters.

• 1:55:15Speaker 01

  People always ask me, "Well, how long did you fight in South Vietnam?" I said, "I never fought a day in South Vietnam." "Oh, you didn't do anything?" "No."

• 1:55:25John Stryker Meyer?

  That's true.

• 1:55:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, right.

• 1:55:28Jocko Willink?

  It's, what was your reaction as stuff started to kinda come to the surface and people started talking about it?

• 1:55:35Speaker 01

  Uh, it was a slow, it's been a slow process. Uh, I've gotta hold a tilt and then we saw each other for the very first time after all those years, like, he was standing on a corner when I drove by and picked him up.

• 1:55:48John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:49Speaker 01

  And we went.

• 1:55:49John Stryker Meyer?

  In Oceania.

• 1:55:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, we went to an airshow and, uh, we started talking, we had our. Photo albums that we weren't supposed to have because no pictures were supposed to be taken. Look at all the pictures that are out there. Good recon men always do whatever they want, right? So.

• 1:56:08Speaker 01

  But it's been a slow, he says, well, we have a reunion now. Really? We have it in Vegas every October now. And it's been going on, what, forty-five years?

• 1:56:19John Stryker Meyer?

  I think forty-three, forty-four, yeah.

• 1:56:21Speaker 01

  Forty-four years worth. I've been there about eighteen years now.

• 1:56:25John Stryker Meyer?

  Special Operations Association.

• 1:56:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. And so we go there and see each other and sit around and drink and of course, I don't drink, but you know, we, everybody drinks and it's a free bar and and tell old war stories to each other and

• 1:56:41John Stryker Meyer?

  Couple lies.

• 1:56:42Speaker 01

  Couple lies and the stories get more exaggerated and but we, we have, we, we have the op, but problem is we're dying faster than, than you can, we're, we were losing about ten or twelve tops, six, seven in the very beginning. Now we're losing over fifty a year. There weren't that many of us to start with, but this is a combined, all the support troops, actual recon troops, there's probably not but forty-five or fifty there at all, at all. Because we only had, what, four hundred and fifty reconers?

• 1:57:14John Stryker Meyer?

  That's who you talk to, yeah.

• 1:57:16Speaker 01

  You know, and so we have this great reunion every year and I just never miss it because I don't know who's gonna die. It's like, yesterday was our interpreter, Heps', two-year anniversary of his death. And most everybody's going down with Agent Orange of some kind of cancer and stuff. Eldon Bargewell just went down from an accident.

• 1:57:44Speaker 01

  He was our two-star general, very proud of him, but at the time he was, we were both

• 1:57:49John Stryker Meyer?

  Jaco had time with him in Germany, was it?

• 1:57:50Jocko Willink?

  Well, I didn't, I, my, my boss worked directly for him, so I was, I was under his command, but my, my boss at the time, just, you know, just absolutely loved him and, and, you know, tried to tell me, tried to give me quotes when he'd come back from a meeting with Bargewell. He said, "Barge, old man said this, and old man said that," you know, he

• 1:58:07Speaker 01

  He was just at my house not too long before that and In my train room, I've got trains, Lionel. And he was there and had a great time.

• 1:58:19John Stryker Meyer?

  Cause they were roommates for a few months.

• 1:58:21Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 1:58:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, we went on R and R together. I met his first son when he was two months old.

• 1:58:26Jocko Willink?

  Wow.

• 1:58:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:28John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, that's right. Cause you know, remember the story with Eldon getting shot in the chest?

• 1:58:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:58:31John Stryker Meyer?

  So two days later, Eldon and Doug went to Hawaii with their respective wives for R and R. They were there for five days and Eldon met his son for the first time, his eldest son, Brant.

• 1:58:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, Brant.

• 1:58:45John Stryker Meyer?

  Brant was there.

• 1:58:46Jocko Willink?

  So you guys must have watched him, cause he was, you know, a, a, a general in the army. I mean, he was in the limelight for sure for a military guy.

• 1:58:55John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:58:55Jocko Willink?

  And you guys knew the whole time you're looking at him thinking, hey.

• 1:58:59John Stryker Meyer?

  We always called him Specialist Fourth Class.

• 1:59:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:02John Stryker Meyer?

  Cause that's the way we knew him.

• 1:59:03Speaker 01

  I could never call him general. I could never call him barge. Well, I called him Eldon. You know, Spent for Eldon.

• 1:59:10John Stryker Meyer?

  And, and, and, and he was the same Eldon that we met in sixty-eight. It was the same Eldon that went to reunion with us last year.

• 1:59:18Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:59:18John Stryker Meyer?

  He was there in his respective glory and, uh, you know, that's the way we respected him. Like my son got wounded in Iraq, he went and saw him. This care at the hospital picked up for him right away.

• 1:59:31Speaker 01

  They couldn't believe a two-star general walking in for some little grunt.

• 1:59:35John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, some little specialist. He was a scout and he got banged up with a Humvee really bad. But Eldon was there.

• 1:59:42Jocko Willink?

  What year was that?

• 1:59:43John Stryker Meyer?

  Uh, August twentieth, two thousand five, a couple of weeks later. You were in country then.

• 1:59:48Jocko Willink?

  No, I was, I didn't, well, I was in there oh-three, oh-four and then oh-six. Yeah. Where, do you know where it was in Iraq?

• 1:59:54John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, he was southeast of the Green Zone.

• 1:59:56Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:59:56John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:59John Stryker Meyer?

  Small world.

• 2:00:00Jocko Willink?

  What's he doing now?

• 2:00:01John Stryker Meyer?

  Uh, he's up at, doing heavy equipment training.

• 2:00:03Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:00:04John Stryker Meyer?

  Up in, uh, Long Beach, him and Bruno, his faithful companion are there, they're doing it. And just kicking ass, taking nervous. So pretty soon have all the licenses in place. And if you need any, uh, heavy equipment work, give them a call.

• 2:00:16Jocko Willink?

  Right on.

• 2:00:20John Stryker Meyer?

  And a freshman will build a house for you.

• 2:00:22Jocko Willink?

  And then what about, so you got, you got, you got married when you got done? Is that, or along the way?

• 2:00:27Speaker 01

  Along the way, yeah.

• 2:00:28Jocko Willink?

  And did you have any kids?

• 2:00:30Speaker 01

  I have a son and I have a daughter. I've got a grandson and two granddaughters. Very proud of them. I'm really proud of my son. He has his own company in the oil business, doing really well. He repairs all the big fracking machines.

• 2:00:45Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:00:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. I'm, I'm, right now I'm in Texas. I was in Tennessee, but I'm in Texas now. Now that I've found out what my medical health is, I wanna try to get my grandson to, uh, know me before I go.

• 2:01:01Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's, that's awesome. He's gonna be as proud, he's gonna be as proud of you as you are of him, that's for damn sure.

• 2:01:08Speaker 01

  Well, they made an action figure of me, so I've left that action figure for him.

• 2:01:13Jocko Willink?

  And that's the famous picture?

• 2:01:15Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:01:16Jocko Willink?

  The famous Sog, uh, The Frenchman?

• 2:01:19Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:01:19Jocko Willink?

  I've seen it, there's a good review of it on, on, uh, YouTube I watched.

• 2:01:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can go to YouTube and, and look up Frenchman, uh, action figure. And it's done really well by Ryan Peters. Yeah, he, he's did a really excellent job. Even made the box and everything for it.

• 2:01:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, it looks, it's, it's pretty awesome. Well, I'll definitely, I'll definitely post that, uh, that picture when, when this goes up, when this goes out onto the, uh, onto the interwebs, as they say.

• 2:01:50John Stryker Meyer?

  And you got your Frenchman challenge coin?

• 2:01:52Jocko Willink?

  I got my Frenchman challenge coin, yeah, it's right here.

• 2:01:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, the lowest ranking challenge coin out there. Makes the generals envious.

• 2:02:02Speaker 01

  It's a PFC challenge coin.

• 2:02:05Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't get much better than that.

• 2:02:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:08Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 2:02:11Jocko Willink?

  You got anything else? I think this is a good place to be, and, and if you listen to this and you think of more things you wanna say, but, you know, I think this is a good, good spot to wrap up this one. So if you got anything, you got anything else first?

• 2:02:24John Stryker Meyer?

  Uh, no, I, the, these stories, um, you know, it's funny because even when we were in base, we never knew a lot of the details. And so when I put the books together, talked to other people, like, the oil drum story, we learned about forty years later that Lynn Black had done a similar thing with RT Idaho after I had left, right in between these guys. And it's just like... A lot of histories that comes out slowly, like Doug has said.

• 2:02:52Jocko Willink?

  Was anyone tracking, was anyone writing down the history as it was happening? Was anyone taking the operational summaries and compiling them somewhere?

• 2:03:01Speaker 01

  They were all destroyed. That was, when I left FUBI, one of my jobs was to go through and make sure that all the drums had been, the ashes, they'd burnt all the

• 2:03:14John Stryker Meyer?

  All the reports.

• 2:03:15Speaker 01

  After-action reports were all burnt. And then, as we pulled out of every FOB and closed down CCN and CCS and CCC, we closed them all down. Everything was destroyed. There's very few after-action reports. What there are is just miniscule reports. People try to put them out on eBay, but they're fake. There just isn't any.

• 2:03:39John Stryker Meyer?

  And there are out there. We haven't, there are reports of archives that we're even now beginning to look into. But, at a recent reunion, a guy came up to me and said, "Hey, you know, if you've done your books, I'd like to talk to you." Because my job, when we closed Kontum, was to destroy all the records.

• 2:03:59Speaker 01

  Phew.

• 2:04:00John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:02John Stryker Meyer?

  Lot of valor.

• 2:04:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we, that's just

• 2:04:05Speaker 01

  That's why I didn't even receive my Purple Heart for that first mission until 11-11-11.

• 2:04:11Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 2:04:12John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah. Had to go back and do the paperwork on it.

• 2:04:15Speaker 01

  Took six years. And a lot of people.

• 2:04:19John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:20Speaker 01

  And a lot of affidavits, and a lot of this, and a lot of that. And it took six years until Diane Black, my Congresswoman, called me one day. I was coming back from Arlington, from burying Gunther Walde. And my Virginia team, Donnie Schuh and Bill Brown, William Brown. And she calls me on the phone, I don't even know who she is. She says, "Are you Doug Materno, the Frenchman?" I said, "Uh, yes." And she says, "I'm Diane Black, Congressman for Tennessee."

• 2:05:02John Stryker Meyer?

  For your district.

• 2:05:03Speaker 01

  For your district. And I'm in my limousine right now, and I'm holding a Purple Heart in my hand. How do you want it presented? I said, I want you to pin it on in front of our memorial in Gallatin, Tennessee. And she did on eleven eleven eleven.

• 2:05:20John Stryker Meyer?

  Wow.

• 2:05:21Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:05:22John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:05:22Speaker 01

  And my guys came and watched. I had seven of my saugers come to that and watch till it came, everybody flew in.

• 2:05:32John Stryker Meyer?

  We were there.

• 2:05:33Speaker 01

  They were there for witness.

• 2:05:36John Stryker Meyer?

  And even there, we found one of the medics that had pulled that this the string out from the shrapnel.

• 2:05:41Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 2:05:41John Stryker Meyer?

  As an eyewitness, that's that was a key thing. We got the C O to do a letter. But took a while to track it down and put it together, but we did.

• 2:05:49Speaker 01

  Cause all the records have been destroyed, you know, so.

• 2:05:54Jocko Willink?

  Well, this record won't be destroyed right here.

• 2:05:56John Stryker Meyer?

  Indeed.

• 2:05:57Jocko Willink?

  Promise you that.

• 2:05:57John Stryker Meyer?

  Podcast one eight six.

• 2:05:59Speaker 01

  One eight six.

• 2:06:01Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 2:06:02Speaker 01

  But I would like to say as a closing thing, my mom and dad are both gone. My dad was a hero. I he gave me everything he had to give. He was the best father ever. My mother was the best mother. I'm proud of my kids, my daughter, my son, what they've accomplished in their lives. I'm proud of my grandkids and what they do. And I'm glad that I have something to leave behind.

• 2:06:27John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, his mom, when she when she learned that my mother died, I got a phone call the next day. Till your mom is dead, but I'm your mom.

• 2:06:38Speaker 01

  Yep. My mom loved every one of them. Bubba. Bubba came to L A and said, I need to bunk up for a couple of days. Six and a half months later.

• 2:06:54Speaker 01

  And he'd gone through the L A P D and six and a half months later. He even got married and brought his wife into the house. My mom and dad finally said enough's enough, Bubba. For your wedding present, we're giving you an apartment.

• 2:07:13Speaker 01

  But any Sogger was welcomed in my mom and dad's house.

• 2:07:18John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:07:19Jocko Willink?

  Well, that is awesome. And as you both should know, any Sogger is welcome to come here at any time and share their story. This door to this podcast is open. This could just become the Sog podcast as far as I'm concerned at this point.

• 2:07:35John Stryker Meyer?

  We'll work on it. We thank you. We appreciate it.

• 2:07:38Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for coming back.

• 2:07:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, you've opened up a lot of doors to people that will hear this history.

• 2:07:45Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely. And they're, I'm sure you're hearing from him, Till. I know you, Ben. You've been transferring some of the messages to me. What's your, what's the Twitter that you're actually looking at right now? Because you have a couple. You have John Sog, you have Sog Chronicles. Do you know which one it is?

• 2:08:04John Stryker Meyer?

  My daughter's app, there's one that's Jay Stryker Meyer, initial J and then Stryker Meyer. I haven't, I've fallen out of the Twitter thing. You've advised me to do so.

• 2:08:13Jocko Willink?

  So Instagram?

• 2:08:14John Stryker Meyer?

  Instagram.

• 2:08:14Jocko Willink?

  Instagram is what you're doing?

• 2:08:16John Stryker Meyer?

  A little bit, yes.

• 2:08:17Jocko Willink?

  Mr. Social Media over here.

• 2:08:19John Stryker Meyer?

  I'm trying to catch up to you. I might be slow, but I'm slow. We've been so busy the last few weeks. Between work and, yes, responding to a lot of the feedback from folks off of the last podcast.

• 2:08:33Jocko Willink?

  People want to reach out to you. Should they go through John Frenchman?

• 2:08:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, they can go, they go right out through with John, or they can catch me on Train 153. The word Train 1, the number's 53 at hotmail.com. That's my email.

• 2:08:50John Stryker Meyer?

  That's his email. And then my website is sogchronicles.com. And my email's here and I'll connect anybody with Doug. That's the old fashioned way. And Instagrams, we're still working on that.

• 2:09:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:03John Stryker Meyer?

  But my daughter's got to give me another. She went to Tennessee, so she's out of town. I'm struggling, but maybe you can give me a briefing when we hang up here.

• 2:09:11Jocko Willink?

  I don't know. I've done the guy for that, but all good. Hey, it's such an honor to talk to you guys. Frenchman, it's an honor to meet you. And you're welcome back anytime.

• 2:09:20Speaker 01

  I was glad that I could come and meet you and. I told you what happened on the airplane. I'm sitting next to somebody and he goes, "What are you doing?" "Oh, I'm gonna go do a podcast with a guy named Jaco." "Jaco? Oh my God, I got him on my feet." He whips out his phone and there you are and he says, "I got Twitter with him, I got everything with him, he's my buddy."

• 2:09:42John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:42Speaker 01

  How, I mean, why would I even expect that somebody would have, it's such a small world, it really is.

• 2:09:50John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, regardless of our service, we're all part at 1% or less of our country that served the country.

• 2:09:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:57John Stryker Meyer?

  And in combat.

• 2:09:58Jocko Willink?

  And I'll tell you that the amount of feedback I've gotten from when you came on Tilt, I mean, it's been overwhelming, the number of people that just, you know, "Thank you for your service." They're gonna pass the same thing on to you, you know, you guys should know that America loves you guys for what you did for this country.

• 2:10:15John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, thank you.

• 2:10:16Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. You too.

• 2:10:18John Stryker Meyer?

  Airborne.

• 2:10:19Speaker 01

  Airborne.

• 2:10:19Jocko Willink?

  All the way.

• 2:10:20John Stryker Meyer?

  All the way.

• 2:10:24Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Sog has left the building. The Frenchman and Tilt have departed. Awesome. What an honor to have those guys on and I gotta say this, right after we got done, of course, we did some more talking and the Frenchman was explaining the fact that when he would go out on a mission, every mission he would go out on, he would square away his footlocker, make sure everything was ready to be shipped home because every time he went out, he figured he would not be coming back.

• 2:11:09Jocko Willink?

  So, real heroes. And it's awesome to be able to

• 2:11:20Jocko Willink?

  sit here and talk to those guys and

• 2:11:25Jocko Willink?

  What a, what an honor that is and anyways, um.

• 2:11:32Jocko Willink?

  You know, actually, one of the reasons that I can sit here and talk to guys like Tilt and The Frenchman is because of all the support that comes in from all of you. So.

• 2:11:45Jocko Willink?

  Appreciate, you know, that. Because as you know, I don't have any like regular. Whatever they're called advertisements on here. Cause I'm not gonna interrupt. Someone like Tilt or someone like The Frenchman or someone like BTF Tony or someone like Dakota Meyer. I'm not gonna interrupt them. So I can say, you know, hey, buy this or buy that or whatever.

• 2:12:17Jocko Willink?

  And I'm not gonna stop reading.

• 2:12:21Jocko Willink?

  Colder than Hell or I'm not gonna stop reading. The Forgotten Highlander. I'm not gonna stop reading One Soldier's War. So that I can, you know. Mention a product or something like that. So to me, that's not what this podcast is about. The information and. Yeah, the information in this podcast is what is paramount to me and getting it to all of you uninterrupted.

• 2:12:53Jocko Willink?

  Is what matters. Because I will tell you that I wish. That I could have listened to this podcast when I was growing up or even when I was a kid, when I was in the teams. Just to, just to have this information. Would have been. Really helpful to me. So. I'm not keeping it from anyone. So.

• 2:13:19Jocko Willink?

  That's what we're doing here. So if you do want to help out, which like I said, that's, that's what allows us to be able to do this. That's what allows me to be able to fly the Frenchman out here to sit down and, and talk and tell his story. And so it's because of you all out there supporting, supporting my companies or my books or whatever. So it's appreciated.

• 2:13:44Jocko Willink?

  So if you wanna, if you do want to help out, you want to support the podcast, then you can check out originmaine.com where we have gis for jujitsu. We have rash guards. We have clothing of all whatever sorts, including jeans, and we got supplements up there. People used to ask me what supplements I take. I take the supplements that I make. So joint warfare, krill oil, discipline, discipline go, and I drink milk because it's awesome and delicious. And of course, Jaco white tea. So you can get some of that. That's all at originmaine.com. We also

• 2:14:24Jocko Willink?

  have jacostore.com where you can get rash guards, t-shirts, hats, hoodies, all that stuff. If you like the podcast, subscribe to it. And don't forget that I also have a kids podcast called the Warrior Kid Podcast. So your kids can get in the game too. That's called the Warrior Kid Podcast. Check out Warrior Kid Soap from Young Aiden, who's making soap on his farm up in central California. That's at irishoakssranch.com. There's a YouTube channel. That's called Jaco Podcast. And that's where we have the videos of this. So if you want to see what the Frenchman

• 2:15:09Jocko Willink?

  looks like, or you want to see what tilt looks like, you can check out the YouTube channel. There's also little shortened excerpts of this podcast. I got an album called Psychological Warfare. That's on iTunes, Google Play, other MP3 platforms. It's me talking about.

• 2:15:30Jocko Willink?

  How to overcome little interruptions in your game that you're trying to win. So you can check that out. We also have flipsidecanvas.com. My brother Dakota Meyer has that company. And he's making visual artwork for your walls that you can hang up. We also have on it, on it.com slash jock or you can get all kinds of cool stuff on there. Kettlebells, jump ropes, sandbags, things that you can get stronger with. I've also written a bunch of books. If you want to support, you can get some of the books.

• 2:16:13Jocko Willink?

  Way the Warrior Kid is a series of books I wrote. There's three of them. The most recent one is called Where's Where There's a Will. And that book is available right now. And so is War Way the Warrior Kid one and Way the Warrior Kid two, which is subtitled Mark's Mission. Mikey and the Dragons, the book for younger kids that I wrote. So your kids can learn how to overcome fear. The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, which is a manual about how to get after it. All the little questions that you have are answered. If you want the audio version of that, it's on iTunes, Amazon Music, Google Play, other MP3 platforms. And of course, there's Extreme Ownership, which is the first book I wrote with my brother Leif Babin.

• 2:16:57Jocko Willink?

  And then we have a follow on book to that called The Dichotomy of Leadership. And those books are both about leadership and how to lead people. I have a leadership consultancy called Echelon Front and what we do is solve problems through leadership. If you have problems in your company, it is because you have problems with your leadership. So go to echelonfront.com if you want us to come and help you solve those problems. EF Online, this is leadership training online. It's interactive. And I always say that leadership is not an inoculation. You can't get one shot of it and then you know everything. It's like going to one jujitsu class and thinking you know how to choke people out now. No, you have to train continually. That's what EF Online is for. It's online, interactive training, efonline.com. We got the muster events.

• 2:17:45Jocko Willink?

  These are leadership conferences, musters, gatherings where we deep dive and get granular on the pragmatic tools we have for leading people. The next one we're doing is in September, September 19th and 20th. It is in Denver. It is going to sell out. In fact, it's getting close, I think, right now. Yeah, they've all sold out. That one will sell out as well. And then December 4th and 5th in Sydney, Australia. Who knows when we're going back to Sydney, but we're going this time. So if you want to come to the muster, check out extremeownership.com.

• 2:18:24Jocko Willink?

  And then EF Overwatch, EFOverwatch.com. What we're doing there is taking proven spec ops leaders, proven combat aviation leaders, and placing them into companies in the civilian sector that need leadership. So if you need leadership in your organization, go to EFOverwatch.com.

• 2:18:45Jocko Willink?

  And if you want to give me some feedback on this podcast, or you have a question, or you have an answer, or whatever, for me, I'm on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, @Jocko Willink. And then, once again, just the deepest thanks I can give to John Stryker Meyer Tilt,

• 2:19:09Jocko Willink?

  and Doug Letourneau, the Frenchman, for doing everything that they did to fight against the dark tyranny of communism. As it tried to spread through the world, they, they held the line. And it's incredible, the operations that they did, and it's incredible the sacrifices that those operators made in that time, especially and obviously, the ones that did not come home.

• 2:19:47Jocko Willink?

  And to the rest of you that have served or you are serving, thank you for keeping us safe from today's threats, which are vast and equally evil.

• 2:20:03Jocko Willink?

  It is you that keeps us secure.

• 2:20:10Jocko Willink?

  And keeps our way of life secure and to our police and law enforcement, to the firefighters out there, to the paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service and all other first responders. You are on call every day.

• 2:20:32Jocko Willink?

  You are waiting. When we need help, you are there. So thank you for keeping us safe.

• 2:20:42Jocko Willink?

  And to everyone else out there.

• 2:20:46Jocko Willink?

  Remember what the Frenchman, remember what the Frenchman said after his Colonel got done explaining the treacherous situation that they were set to go into.

• 2:20:59Jocko Willink?

  When that Colonel asked if anyone had any questions, the Frenchman replied, "Where do you need help?

• 2:21:09Jocko Willink?

  Where do you need help?"

• 2:21:14Jocko Willink?

  It's a simple question, but it's a powerful one. There's people around you that need help.

• 2:21:24Jocko Willink?

  Ask them what it is they need.

• 2:21:27Jocko Willink?

  Ask them where it is that they need help and then get up and lock and load your sawed-off M79 or whatever tool it is that you need to unleash to give them the help that they need.

• 2:21:43Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Jaco out.