The First Black Special Forces General | Remo Butler | Ep. 358

This podcast features a conversation with General Remo Butler, the first Black Special Forces General. He shares insights from his extensive military career, covering his upbringing, challenging early assignments, experiences in Special Forces, and his role in significant operations like Just Cause. General Butler also discusses the evolution of military training, his historic promotion, and the importance of mentorship and addressing mental health post-retirement. Today's Sponsors: GhostBed⬇️ https://www.ghostbed.com/house FOR 10% off! Mando ⬇️ https://shopmando.com Promo code "TEAMHOUSE" for 40% off your starter pack. For ad free video and audio and access to live streams and Eyes On Geopolitics... JOIN OUR PATREON! https://www.patreon.com/c/TheTeamHouse To help support the show and for all bonus content including: -live shows and asking guest questions -ad free audio and video -early access to shows -Access to ALL bonus segments with our guests Subscribe to our Patreon! ⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse New merch, patches, and stickers! ⬇️ https://theteamhouse-shop.fourthwall.com Support the show here:⬇️ https://www.patreon.com/TheTeamHouse ___________________________________________________ Subscribe to the new EYES ON podcast here:⬇️ https://www.youtube.com/@EyesOnGeopoliticsPod/featured __________________________________ Jack Murphy's new book "We Defy: The Lost Chapters of Special Forces History" ⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/We-Defy-Chapters-Special-History-ebook/dp/B0DCGC1N1N/ —————————————————————— Or make a one time donation at: ⬇️ https://ko-fi.com/theteamhouse Social Media: ⬇️ The Team House Instagram: https://instagram.com/the.team.house?utm_medium=copy_link The Team House Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheTeamHousePod Jack’s Instagram: https://instagram.com/jackmcmurph?utm_medium=copy_link Jack’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/jackmurphyrgr?s=21 Dave’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/dave_parke?s=21 Team House Discord: ⬇️ https://discord.gg/wHFHYM6 SubReddit: ⬇️ https://www.reddit.com/r/TheTeamHouse/ Jack Murphy's memoir "Murphy's Law" can be found here:⬇️ https://www.amazon.com/Murphys-Law-Journey-Investigative-Journalist/dp/1501191241 The Team Room Reading Room (Amazon Affiliate links):⬇️ https://jackmurphywrites.com/the-team-room-reading-room/ Intro music by https://www.youtube.com/user/RemixSample "Karl Casey @ White Bat Audio" 00:00 - Start & Origin Story 10:44 - First Army Assignment 26:26 - Joining Special Forces 38:44 - Operation Just Cause 43:12 - SF Branching & Instructor Role 54:11 - Modernizing SF Training 59:10 - First Black SF General & Retirement Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-team-house--5960890/support?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss.

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

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• 1:28Speaker 03

  Special Operations,

• 1:33Speaker 03

  Covert Ops, Espionage, The Team House, with your hosts, Jack Murphy and David Park.

• 1:48Jack Murphy?

  Hey, everyone. This is episode 358 of The Team House. I'm Jack, here with Dave. And our guest on tonight's show is retired General Remo Butler. Remo had an extensive career in special forces. He was the first black special forces general. He started off his career in conventional forces, served with C-37 down in Panama more than once, and then went on to a number of different commands. Commanded the Special Warfare Center, the deputy at USASOC, and commanded Special Operations Command South towards the end of his career. So there's a lot to talk about here. Remo, welcome to the show.

• 2:29Speaker 05

  Thanks Jack, appreciate it.

• 2:32Jack Murphy?

  So, your origin story Remo, tell us about Egypt, Egypt Mississippi and growing up as a young man.

• 2:40Speaker 05

  Egypt Mississippi, I was born in Egypt Mississippi. Most people have never heard of Egypt Mississippi. It's about forty miles south of Tupelo. When I was a young child growing up there, there used to be a blinking yellow light. And the last time I went back, that blinking yellow light had been replaced by a four lane highway. So there's no sign or anything that says you're now entering Egypt. The only way I know where Egypt is is because I'm related to most of the people that live in Egypt Mississippi.

• 3:11Jack Murphy?

  And so I'm picturing a small town, rural town in my mind.

• 3:16Speaker 05

  It's not a town, it's a rural area, bunch of houses out there. I think there was a gas station across the street by the blinking light, that's all. I mean, we're talking real live, honest to God, small town, America.

• 3:29Jack Murphy?

  And, and so it sounds like you grew up around like a lot of like cousins, brothers and things like that, running around the wilderness over there.

• 3:36Speaker 05

  Well, that's kind of true. Uh, I left Egypt when I was about five years old. And, and I told you earlier about me and my cousin were talking and my wife and my son asked me about my past. And one of the things, one of the vivid memories I have is we used to have hog killings. Once a year, every fall. And my grandparents had a big farm and, and they had hogs, cows, pigs, everything. And all the families, the cousins, the uncles, the aunts, everybody would get together. Now, I was a kid back then, so us kids, we used it as playtime, we just had, lost our minds, had a great time together. And the folks went out and they'd kill two, three big old hogs. And, uh, they had big, huge tables and cast iron pots to clean them.

• 4:20Speaker 05

  And they would take them and cut them up, butcher them. You know, unlike now, you take it to the butcher shop, they butchered themselves and put it in the smokehouse. And that was the meat for the winter. And you know, it was, it was good. And I remember when I was little, I was about three years old. My grandmother had this butcher knife. To me, it looked like it was about three feet long. In reality, it probably was six, eight inches. And my grandma would give me that butcher knife and she'd tell me, she said, baby, go out to the smokehouse and cut grandma a piece of lean. And she would use that for seasoning the meatings, whatever she was cooking. Well, I would go out there and I'd take that knife and I'd cut me a piece. And I'd eat it. Then I'd cut a piece to take to her. And then, you

• 5:04Speaker 05

  know, so I, I really enjoyed that. It was, it was a great childhood. You know, we're in the country, we're country folks, but it was a great childhood.

• 5:12Jack Murphy?

  And you were a third generation soldier, right? Tell us about your dad and grandpa.

• 5:17Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, in reality, uh, my father was my stepfather.

• 5:21Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 5:21Speaker 05

  And, uh, his father was in the military. His father was an E8, retired as an E8. And my father was in, they lived in Texas. And during those days, there was not much for black people to do in Texas. And he told me all the stories about him washing dishes and working in the arena during wrestling matches and so forth and so on. And, uh, he was in the military and he was very proud to be in the military. He was a medic. And I asked him, I said, Dad, why did you become a medic? He said, I always wanted to be a doctor. He said, but my family couldn't afford sending me to school. So, you know, I did the next best thing. I joined the military. Uh, his brother, who was smart, joined the

• 6:01Speaker 05

  air force. And, uh, you know, he, he, uh, taught me things as a father does. You know, you look at your father and, and that's your hero. And I knew how hard he worked, how hard he studied. And he never had the give up mentality. And all those things just kind of bled off to me.

• 6:20Jack Murphy?

  And so as you get older and you become a teenager and you're going through high school, are you already thinking about the military at this point?

• 6:29Speaker 05

  No. Furthest thing from my mind. Vietnam was going on, remember?

• 6:33Jack Murphy?

  Mm-hmm.

• 6:34Speaker 05

  Yeah, so military was furthest thing from my mind. The biggest thing that happened to me when I was a senior, junior or senior. West Point was making, all the military academy were making an effort to be more inclusive. So they were going out looking for students that met all the criteria, had the grades, who could get in. Well, I did. And one of my faculty members, or what do you call them, the principal or somebody from the school, recommended me. So they came and they talked to me and I was, I was pretty excited about it. Oh, okay, West Point. It was me and two other guys. So we had all talked about it and, you know, we were kinda, kind of excited.

• 7:19Speaker 05

  So the day I was supposed to go, we were supposed to go and meet a congressman from Kentucky. Cause my father was stationed in Fort Campbell. We're supposed to meet this congressman from Kentucky and he was gonna be the one to recommend us to go to West Point. Well, I got up that morning and put on a suit, looked good, always looked good, but I looked real good this day. And my father, typical military guy, was up about five thirty, six o'clock, having his coffee.

• 7:45Speaker 05

  And he said to me, he said, well, what are you all dressed up for? I said, well, Dad, today I'm going to meet this congressman from Kentucky. And he's gonna recommend me for West Point. Father didn't say nothing for a minute. He looked at me. And he said, you know, you're my son. I love you. I said, yep. He said, you won't like West Point.

• 8:04Speaker 05

  I said, really? He said, no. He said, you, you're not the kind of guy that goes to West Point. Stick with regular college. I went in my room, man. I took the coat and tie off, went to school. My other two friends were there, wearing their coats and ties. And they said, hey, man. And I said, I'm not going. What do you mean? I said, well, you know, my father told me that he didn't think I was cut out for West Point. And they were like, oh, okay. And one of them decided he wasn't going. The other one, the only way he had to go to college was going to West Point. And he went to West Point and he became a West Point officer. And at the end of the day, I can say this, my father made the right decision telling me that.

• 8:43Jack Murphy?

  That, that it wouldn't have been a good fit for you?

• 8:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah. You know, back in those days, they did a lot of hazing.

• 8:48Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 8:48Speaker 05

  And I wasn't the one to sit around and take that.

• 8:52Jack Murphy?

  And so what school did you end up going to?

• 8:56Speaker 05

  I went to Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee.

• 9:00Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 9:01Speaker 05

  And, uh, you know, it was great. And I had the privilege of going there. And this is one of the things that helped me more than anything. When I got there, Austin Peay had been integrated for two years. Two years. And I remember when I checked in the dorm, it kind of amazed me how, you know, all the black guys, we got black roommates. And one of the guys told me, he said, let me tell you what they do. He said, when you come in the dorm, they take a pencil.

• 9:28Speaker 05

  And if you're black, they take that pencil, put a dot by your name.

• 9:33Speaker 05

  So the next black person comes in, they look for a dot, and they put you all together as roommates. And I remember the football program, the coach, he was adamantly against it. But, you know, he was forced. But he would only have X number of blacks on his team. And, uh, you know, that lasted for a couple of years. And then as time passed and those old people left, died, whatever they happened to them, uh, the school became more normal. And I said, it helped me more than anything in my career because, one, minorities were a minority. We probably were five percent of the population when I went. So consequently, what do you do? You meet people. You get out of your comfort zone. You stretch out, you meet people.

• 10:19Speaker 05

  You know, and I, and I had to look up one time because I was starting to talk like this here.

• 10:26Speaker 05

  And, uh, you know, so you had to do that. And, uh, you know, I had some great friends, learned to drink moonshine with them. And I had some great things happen there. And I'll tell you one of the things that I was on the football team at Austin Peay. And this one guy came in, they called him Big Red. He said to me, and he was from Ohio, he said, hey, we're going over to this house for dinner. And, uh, it was just a regular house, but they served dinner. They cooked. I forgot there's a name for it, but I can't think of it. So we go in there and, you know, a bunch of those football players, probably about five or six of us. We walk in. And, you know, you can feel the atmosphere change. And I looked around, but I was like, hey, you know, five white guys on my team, we were going to eat.

• 11:11Speaker 05

  So the lady or the owner called Red over,

• 11:16Speaker 05

  looked at him and said something, and Red said, "Act down, we're leaving." So we all left, and I went, "What happened?" He said, "Ah, they didn't, he didn't want you in there because he was black." But those guys,

• 11:29Speaker 05

  who were part of the team that I was on, circled around me and would not let that stand. And that teaches you a lot about people. And that affects your judgment on people in the future. So, like I said, it was a learning experience for me. And one of the things I tell my father, I said, "You know," I said, "The good thing about that was when I went through ROTC and everything at Austin P, I had a lot of white friends. And when you come in the military, guess what the majority of the population was? White. Consequently, I already knew how to deal with y'all."

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• 15:43Jack Murphy?

  So you commissioned in, what was it, 1974?

• 15:47Speaker 05

  1974.

• 15:49Jack Murphy?

  Uh, and your first assignment was South Korea Field Artillery Unit?

• 15:54Speaker 05

  Yep, Telkow Korea, first of 15 field artillery, 105.

• 15:58Jack Murphy?

  Tell us about what that first Army experience was like.

• 16:01Speaker 05

  It was the worst experience of my life. No, seriously. Uh, I got there and it was one of those times when they had a bunch of new lieutenants. I think it was three or four new lieutenants came in and they sent us to the units. And I got put in my battery. And, uh, you know, it doesn't take long. You've all been in the military. After a while, everybody understands what the real pecking order is. Who's good, who's okay, and who's not so good. And, uh, there was another guy there and who happened to be a West Pointer. And we became great friends. And it was between me and him for one and two. Today I'd be one, tomorrow he'd be one. You know, it was a rivalry, but we enjoyed it. There was no animosity.

• 16:46Speaker 05

  And we had some other guys there and everybody understood who was who, what was what. Well, during those days, we got what we called a 60-day OER. And they've stopped those. So the first day there in the unit, walked in and they're getting an IG inspection. And back in those days, you know, IG inspections made it or break it. So I was in there, young, good looking, charming. And the IG said to the commander, he said, ah, you know, this, this is all messed up. Your arms room is messed up. Commander looked at me and he said, Lieutenant Butler, your arms room is yours. Got it. When the commander said, oh, your security, security's bad. Key control is messed up.

• 17:30Speaker 05

  My commander looked at me and he said, Lieutenant Butler, key control is yours. Uh, you know, I didn't know. I was clueless. So we went through and I think I took on about three or four things that they had failed.

• 17:43Speaker 05

  And I did business the only way I knew how, the way my father had taught me. I know I didn't know what was going on. I know I didn't understand the military, but I'm gonna find out. So I did into a program, I, I, as they say, I did a deep dive into security, physical security, arms room security, maintenance, all that stuff. And I learned it. I learned it so well, I became the de facto battalion expert on it. So units would have problems, they'd call me in. So it was time after two or three months, we had a re-inspection. And out of all those things that we had failed, all those things we had failed, I had two minor deficiencies. And then, and the next one. You know, so I, I felt good about that, you know, everybody's patting me on the back, hey, you know, you're this, you're that. And, uh,

• 18:30Speaker 05

  a little later, sixty days come up, we got our OER. Now remember, we're all new lieutenants. You know, we're all friends. So we get our OERs in the orderly room, and we all run out back behind the orderly room, pull out our OERs. So my buddy, Mark Westpointer, pulls out his, and he got a ninety something, one ninety something, whatever. But it was what he deserved during that time. Couple more guys came out and they got what they deserved. And we had one guy who wasn't as good, he got a no-er. I opened mine up. I, mine was one point higher than the guy who was, so we'd just say jacked up. One point higher. So everybody's going, oh, no, this must be a mistake, it's gotta be a mistake, but we're all lieutenants, you know, we don't know.

• 19:15Speaker 05

  So the Westpoint lieutenant says, hey, we need to talk to the XO, because this is obviously a mistake. So he went and got with the XO, and the XO came over and he looked at me, he said, ah, boss made a mistake, this is, this is a mistake. You need to go talk to the boss. So I grabbed my OER and I walk in, knock on the door, and he's sitting down at his desk. And he says, lieutenant, what can I do for you? I said, sir, I'd like to talk about my OER. He looked at me and he said, I wanna tell you something, lieutenant. I spent a lot of time working on that OER for you. I said, well, thank you, I appreciate that. But,

• 19:49Speaker 05

  oh, we were looking at our OERs and mine is just one point higher than Smucker Telly's. What do you mean? I said, we were out looking at, well, let me tell you something first, Lieutenant. Your OER is a private, personal thing. You don't share that with anyone. That's yours. You don't show it to anybody. You don't share it with anybody. I'm like, okay. And here it comes. Drum roll. And he said, and I didn't give you that OER because you were black.

• 20:16Speaker 05

  And I said, where'd that come from?

• 20:18Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:19Speaker 05

  Now, remember, I'm a second lieutenant. I've been in the army maybe three months.

• 20:25Speaker 05

  So I didn't know what to do. So there was a black captain there. And this was a time when black officers did not like to talk to younger black officers because they were afraid of what people would say. He called me in. He talked to me. He said, listen, he said, I, I knew this was gonna happen. You know, if you had worked for me, this is what I would have given you, blah, blah, blah. I said, okay. But basically, I can't help you. He understood that. You know, he had a career. Well, there was a captain there. Special Forces Captain. He was the headquarters battery commander. So he called me over. Showed it to him. We talked about it. And he was a great guy, very quiet. You know, as they say, a man amongst men. And he says, no, this is not right.

• 21:09Speaker 05

  And he says, now, let me tell you what you need to do. And he broke it down for me. He laid it out. He said, one, and this was back in the early seventies, and they had thing called EO. Equal opportunity. He said, you need to formal, formal EO complaint. And I was a little concerned. I'm like, well, how will that affect me? And he's like, well, he's already stuck. It tell you what else they gonna do to you. So I did it, filled it out. And I was surprised at the number of people that gave me statements. Some of my commander's friends pulled me to the side and said, listen, you know, uh, I hate that he did that to you. He shouldn't have did that. And I'll write a statement for you. Okay. So I got all these statements from other officers. And, uh,

• 21:53Speaker 05

  the battalion commander knew who I was because I had worked for him in helping to get all the arms rooms and the physical security squared away for the battalion. So one day, I'm out, helicopter lands. And during those days, a helicopter landing was a big deal. So I got a guy came by and said, "Sir, the Colonel wants to see you." Okay, so I go up and thank Commander's there with the guard, the guard commander. And he says, "I got this A O complaint." And he asked me about it, so I told him, just like I told you. And um, he said, "Well, I've talked to several officers here. And they all speak very highly of you and your knowledge." I said, "Well, that's good." He said, "So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna get you out of here.

• 22:35Speaker 05

  I'm gonna take you down to, I believe it was Camp Davis at that time." I said, "Why?" He said, "I, I, I wanna protect you from him." I said, "Well, sir, let me explain something to you. Number one, I don't run from anybody. It's not my nature." I said, "I know what I've done and I know what I can do.

• 22:53Speaker 05

  I want to stay here because I'm not gonna run."

• 22:57Speaker 05

  And he looked at me, you know, and he gave me that look like, "You dumbass O B." And, you know, he said, "Well," he said, "if you stay, I can't protect you." I said, "I understand that." I said, "But I'm willing to take that chance." And I'll tell you, this is what really, really got me, the good, one of the good things about it. Some of my commander's friends pulled me to the side and said, "Listen, we, we know what happened to you and he, he's gonna try to get you back. And if you make a mistake, he's gonna crush you. But we're gonna help you not make any mistakes." And they did. You know, they thought I was doing something wrong or whatever. You know, they would pull me to the side and let me know what was going on. That's what society needs, people to help each other like that.

• 23:42Speaker 05

  So on one side, I'm having the worst time of my life. But on the other side, I'm meeting some great people. And this captain, who was Special Forces, I mean, he really, really helped me. Helped me put together the packet, helped me work. There was a, on the DMZ, there was a company that I was the, um, F, F, F O four. He was also a Special Forces captain out of Vietnam. These guys were super. They were down to earth and if they said it, it was so. And, and I grew to respect them. So after, uh, my, his time was up, he changed command, he called me in. He gave me an O E R, said, "I put a lot of thought in this and I'm thinking to myself, you said that the last time, you moron." But anyway, he gave me my O E R.

• 24:25Speaker 05

  It was not what I thought it should be, but it was very close. And I didn't feel I had grounds to fight, so I accepted it. But- Thanks to Captain Brady, he told me how to do, uh, to reclaim the OER. And this guy told me something. He said, I, I based that, uh, on OERs last year and, and it's, the points were down much lower. So I put that in my paperwork and it's still up there. I'm sure that's public record now. And, um, the army said, okay, based on what he told you and this OER, we're gonna put, we're gonna stamp on this that this is based on an average of whatever, of 130.

• 25:07Speaker 05

  And so it, it overall, it didn't hurt me, but it taught me a lot about people. Now, I look at that same situation now. If I had had the knowledge then that I had now, my company commander, my battery commander would have been selling biscuits on the street because he'd been gone.

• 25:24Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 25:26Jack Murphy?

  And after that experience, uh, you joined Special Forces in 1977?

• 25:33Speaker 05

  Yep. I went to Fort Hood, Texas. I was full of finished with field artillery because I figured, you know, this is a racist and I'm sure there are other racists in field artilleries. I want out. So I went to Fort Hood, Texas, and it's probably the best move I ever made, uh, because I had a battalion commander who was just tremendous. I had a company commander who was super. Uh, and, you know, they liked me and the, uh, battalion commander had already designated me that I was gonna be one of his company commanders. And, you know, it was all great. We all had a good time and I had, you know, great lieutenants I was serving with and it was just a great unit. First and fifth cab, Fort Hood, Texas. Just a great unit. And, uh, we got a new company commander.

• 26:19Speaker 05

  And guess what? He was Special Forces in Vietnam. And he, he, he was made from the same mold these other two Special Forces captains were. And I, I admired and respected him. And one day we're talking and he says to me, he said, Remo, he said, you're the kind of guy that needs to be in Special Forces. And I said, well, how do I do it? He said, first you need to do a 4187. He said, go over to, um, the S1 section, put out a 4187 for Special Forces and I'll, I'll endorse it. I said, okay. I did it. I was in the motor pool about two weeks later and I was in a 113, working on it. And one of the mechanics comes over and he says, sir, the Colonel's down here and he's looking for you and he's mad.

• 27:04Speaker 05

  I'm like, oh my God, what did I do? So I go in, I see him, I say, hey, sir, how you doing? And he takes the four to one eight seven and he holds it up like this and he says, Remo, what the hell is this bullshit about you going to Special Forces? Yes, sir. Why? Well, you know, sir, I met some guys in Special Forces and like, um, you know. He takes that four to one eight seven in front of me, tears it up. And he says, Remo, you're a good officer. I'm gonna make you a company commander. You don't need this bullshit. Special Forces will ruin your career. What do I say? Yes, sir.

• 27:44Speaker 05

  So I went back and I saw my company commander and I told him what happened and he went, ooh. He says, okay.

• 27:51Speaker 05

  This is what we're gonna do. Notice what he said, we are going to do. He said, I got a friend that works in branch. I'm gonna call him. And I want you to call him after I talk to him and tell him you want to go Special Forces and he'll make it so. I was like, oh, this is pretty easy, okay. So he did it and he said, okay, and gave me the number, I called up. And he asked me a question, he said, can you swim? I said, yeah, I can swim. He said, okay. You'll have orders in the next couple of months. Fortunately, my battalion commander had been to change of command. So I had a new battalion commander. And then I get orders going to Special Forces School. So I go to Fort Bragg and, uh, sign up for Special Forces and let me tell you what. It's one of those things that you'll never forget.

• 28:35Speaker 05

  We started off with X number. After the P T test and a day, we had lost about fifty percent of the class.

• 28:46Jack Murphy?

  And back in during that timeframe in nineteen seventy seven, what was the Special Forces? I don't, uh, I don't recall if they even called it the qualification course at that time, but what, what was that training, uh, pipeline like at the time?

• 28:58Speaker 05

  It was, it was called the Q course.

• 28:59Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 29:00Speaker 05

  Um, the first part of it was extremely physical. In fact, during the first part of it, phase one, as they called it back then, I lost about twenty pounds.

• 29:12Speaker 05

  I mean, you know, we were out humping, you were humping that big, heavy rucksack all through uh, Camp McCall, the Uwari Forest, and there was not a swamp that I was not intimately familiar with. And when you did land navigation, you had to cross the swamp going out and cross the swamp coming back. It was purely a physical course. But it tested your desire, how much you really wanted to be in special forces. A- and during those ti- time, they had a seven day, seven night trek where you were by yourself, just you and your rucksack and your food in the Uwari Forest. And in the evening, the cavalry would come up to you and pull out his mat, and he'd say, "All right, you are here. Tomorrow, I will pick you up

• 29:57Speaker 05

  here at six o'clock in the morning." And you're talking fifteen, twenty kilometers across country at night with a heavy ass ruck on. So, yeah, you lost a lot of weight, but guess what? I made it. And I remember one night, I was walking through and I saw a strobe light. You remember the strobe lights, right? Mm-hmm. And it was just blinking. So I said, "Oh, somebody's hurt." So I walked over and I saw this guy. He was laid back on a piece of wood, a log, had his feet propped up, had his rucksack, was eating some sea- sea rations. And I said, "Hey, man, you all right?" He said, "Yeah." I said, "What's, what's wrong?" He said, "Nothing." He said, "I just made a decision." I said, "What's that?" He said, "Tomorrow morning, when it's light, I'm gonna

• 30:40Speaker 05

  find the first road, and I'm gonna sit on the side of the road until they pick me up." A- and that's the kind of course it was. If you didn't want to go to SF, you thought you wanted to be SF, that course told you that you didn't want to go SF. And, and at that course, I'll tell you, Colonel Charles Beckwith was in charge. Mm-hmm. Lieutenant Colonel Ola Mize was his deputy. And we had Major Big Bud Williams there. Let me tell you what, those guys didn't let you slide through. You earned it. And then phase two was what we call the classroom phase and that's where you're learning all about special forces. And phase three was, uh, Robin Sage.

• 31:19Speaker 05

  And of course, when you, we graduated, they told us, they said, listen, you don't know jack about special forces right now. Yeah, you got a beret, yeah, you're going to an assignment. So getting in your mind that you don't know jack. When you get there, your first team is gonna make you a special forces officer. And I left there, went to third to seventh in Panama, and I had the best team sergeant you could possibly get, a guy named Ray Maxby. And when I walked into the team room, the guys were sitting around, it was about three o'clock. He told them, he said, y'all go get a cup of coffee. Now, remember, I'm coming from the conventional army. We didn't do that in the conventional army. So I'm like, okay, what the hell's going on?

• 32:02Speaker 05

  So he sits down in his chair and he looks at me and he said, lieutenant? Like it was a bad word. He said, I want to welcome you to O D A thirteen. He said, just want to tell you, you don't know shit. Okay. He said, but we gonna teach you. He said, now, but I want you to make a decision. He said, I want you to tell me if you think you're gonna run this team? Or you're gonna let me, the team sergeant, run the team and educate you on how the team should be run? Well, to me, that seemed like a no brainer. I looked at him, I said, Sergeant Maxby, I said, good, the team sergeant, I want you to continue doing what you're doing and teach me. And he said, all right. Rest of the guys came over, introduced me to him and told him, he said, this is our new lieutenant?

• 32:45Speaker 05

  And we're gonna make sure he's the best lieutenant in, in, in the unit. Time passed, and this is when we had, um, R Teps. You remember the R Teps? And we'd had several R Teps and he was there with me and we have an R Tep coming up. And I look up and Sergeant Maxby's getting ready to go on leave. So I say, uh, how'd it magby? I said, uh, that RTIP?

• 33:10Speaker 05

  And you're getting ready to go and leave? He looked at me and he said, "Dah we? You can handle it." He said, "And besides, I got Sid I'm leaving with you, Danny, Don, blah, blah, blah." And he said, "They're gonna make sure you pass. But you got it." I said, "Okay." Well, sure, lo and behold, we passed the RTIP. We did well. And those guys taught me about being special forces and about being a special forces officer. They built the foundation that I grew on.

• 33:41Jack Murphy?

  I, I love that your team sergeant was yelling at you in Vietnamese.

• 33:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, they all, you know, all those guys were Vietnamese, Vietnam vets.

• 33:50Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:50Speaker 05

  And when I first went to the, my first unit, I remember there was one guy there who had spent seven tours in Vietnam. Most of the guys on my team had spent multiple tours in Vietnam.

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• 37:02Speaker 07

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• 37:29Jack Murphy?

  So I mean, three, seven down in Panama. I mean, everyone I speak to kind of describes it as this sort of like glorious paradise, the best time of their life. What was your experience like that down there as you kind of ingratiated yourself with your team and you know, you start coming through the ranks?

• 37:45Speaker 05

  It was great. It was for me, it was a learning experience, but it was a great learning experience because they believed in working hard and as some of the guys on the team said, and partying hard. And they put the work in. I mean, they put the serious work in, but when they were off duty, they enjoyed Panama because how often do you get to go to a paradise?

• 38:06Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 38:08Speaker 05

  And the thing about it then, your team was your de facto family. I knew every guy on my team. I knew his wife and I knew their kids and they knew my wife and they knew my kids. Every weekend, we usually did something as a team together, whether it was go to the beach, meet at somebody's house and cook out fish, whatever, but it was a team effort. And I think that's one of the things that Special Forces has lost over the time is that a team family.

• 38:43Jack Murphy?

  Any other, I mean, before we move on to the next thing, any particular experiences down in Panama? I mean, 1977 is a little bit before the counter narco stuff, I think. So it was more, it was more counter Marxism that you were focused on, right?

• 38:56Speaker 05

  Well, it was, we were, we worked with the PDF, the Panamanian Defense Force back then. We sent some MTTs to different places, but mostly it was, it was in local training we did.

• 39:12Jack Murphy?

  Working with the PDF?

• 39:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 39:16Jack Murphy?

  And so a couple of years later, 1980, you're off to Fort Benning?

• 39:20Speaker 05

  Right.

• 39:22Jack Murphy?

  What did you do there?

• 39:23Speaker 05

  I went to the advanced course. Spent a year in the advanced course and when I left, it was time for me to have a company come in and they sent me to a unit called ITG, empty training group.

• 39:39Speaker 05

  And everything that I had read or knew about the military then was it to have, you needed to have a T O and E. Company command. This was TDA company command. And I will say this, I had never seen so many black commanders as I had when I was out working with the uh, with, with the training group. After training group and the uh, basic training unit there. Um, I'm not saying it was an accident. I'm not saying it wasn't an accident, but that's the way it happened. Uh, I was very fortunate.

• 40:10Speaker 05

  I met a guy there who was my commander named Sid Shacknow.

• 40:15Jack Murphy?

  Oh, yeah.

• 40:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, uh.

• 40:20Speaker 05

  Concentration camp survivor and, and the best leader I've ever encountered in my life.

• 40:26Jack Murphy?

  Wow.

• 40:27Speaker 05

  So we got there and uh, you know, he didn't say much. He just kind of walked around and looked. But he identified me as, as one of the players.

• 40:37Speaker 05

  He and his wife took it upon themselves to start mentoring me and my wife for the future. And I commanded and, and I, and I, I did a good job for him and I was rewarded, my O E Rs and so forth. And it was time for me to leave and I could have went to Fort Benning to the uh, as they call it bedroom four. Had one of those soft jobs there, air conditioned. And he came to me and he said, listen, Captain Butler. He said, I'm having some problems with my motor pool.

• 41:09Speaker 05

  And I know you're, you're change of command, you're gonna leave. I'd like you to stay on and be my motor officer. And I was kind of like, uh, be out here in uh, Harmony Church as a motor officer or building four. And I said, okay, sir. He said, now, I know you don't know anything about vehicles. He said, but I'm gonna send you to the motor officer school.

• 41:30Speaker 05

  And he said, now, in saying that, he said, I'm probably going back to Fort Bragg. They're starting USASOC there, and I'm going to be the first chief of staff. And I'll get you back. I was sold. I was going. I said, okay, went and ran the motor pool. Did a tremendous job at the motor pool, had some tremendous people that worked for me, had a motor sergeant. And this was back in 1982. And I still communicate with this guy today, Master Sergeant Bill French. Great guy. I mean, he taught me everything you wanted to know about a wheel vehicle or a track vehicle. Because he knew it. And he was a great guy. Well, I did it, finished. And right about the time I'm finishing my tour, I get orders for Fort Bragg, North Carolina.

• 42:14Speaker 05

  And that's where I went. And guess who I was working for?

• 42:18Jack Murphy?

  So that's, uh, what, around 1984 that you're back to Special Forces?

• 42:26Speaker 05

  Yeah, yep.

• 42:28Jack Murphy?

  And so where did, uh, where did, uh, Mr. Shatnow, uh, set you up?

• 42:33Speaker 05

  I worked for him. He had me there. I set up a, um, he had a conference, commander's conference. And of course, he naturally sent me back to Fort Benning to prepare the commander's conference for it. So I did the commander's conference, all the commanders came. And if you ever have to prepare a commander's conference, it's not fun. But anyway, I did it, went back to Fort Bragg. And about the time I was there, uh, I got moved to, uh, First Battalion, Seventh Special Forces Group. As the three.

• 43:01Jack Murphy?

  Mm-hmm.

• 43:02Speaker 05

  And, uh, we were getting ready to start this program where every six weeks, we would go down to Honduras and spend six weeks, come back, spend six weeks, go back to Honduras. And it was called, uh, I forgot the name of it. But anyway, it was a big exercise. And being a three, moving all those people back and forth, back and forth, it was taxing. But I did it, and I survived it.

• 43:28Jack Murphy?

  The, this is when, you know, Seventh Group is getting involved in like the contra wars down in Central America?

• 43:33Speaker 05

  Yes, it was.

• 43:36Jack Murphy?

  I'd, I'd love to pick your brain a little bit. I mean, what was your impression of that conflict and sort of the Special Forces mission, uh, down there?

• 43:44Speaker 05

  Well,

• 43:47Speaker 05

  let me, I'm trying to phrase this the right way, because as you know, a lot of that stuff is still classified. Um.

• 43:56Speaker 05

  I would just say this, we were influential in the training of the Contras. But not only the Contras, we were influential in the training of the Honduran military. Because the Honduran military served as a blocking force to keep the Contras out of Honduras and out of El Salvador. And we also worked with the Salvadoran army. And you know, at that time, there were a lot of guerrilla forces going on down there. So we were teaching them, you know, guerrilla warfare, how to beat them.

• 44:31Speaker 05

  It wasn't hard for us, but for them coming from the culture that they came from, it was, it was, it was difficult. But I think at the end of the day, we did, we did a pretty good job.

• 44:44Jack Murphy?

  I, and then you, you took command, you went back down to the C-37, right?

• 44:50Speaker 05

  No.

• 44:51Jack Murphy?

  Oh.

• 44:52Speaker 05

  No, I took over Charlie Company 27.

• 44:59Jack Murphy?

  Ah, okay, okay.

• 45:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, Charlie 27.

• 45:04Jack Murphy?

  Um, cool. So tell, tell us about your company commander time in SF.

• 45:08Speaker 05

  That was me, I was company commander.

• 45:10Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. And, and this, this was Fort Bragg rather than Panama, right?

• 45:14Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 45:15Jack Murphy?

  And, and so I imagine it was more of this preparing, you know, what, like you were saying, every six weeks for these missions down to Honduras?

• 45:22Speaker 05

  We were, we were doing, we were doing a lot of missions in, in Central and South America during that time. And we were always, always busy going somewhere, getting ready to go somewhere. And, and the guys loved it. When an SF soldier is traveling on an MTT or TDY, he's happy, he's just happy. And we, we enjoyed it, had, had a great unit. And we did a lot of, a lot of different things.

• 45:45Jack Murphy?

  Care to describe any Remo?

• 45:54Jack Murphy?

  It's alright.

• 45:55Speaker 05

  I guess I could say this one.

• 45:57Jack Murphy?

  Sure.

• 45:57Speaker 05

  I, I, I was the first one, I think, to work with the, my company was the first one to work with the Congress.

• 46:06Jack Murphy?

  That must have been a pretty interesting experience to, you know, your team, you know, Americans and probably some Latinos on your team, I imagine, Seventh Group.

• 46:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, but it was different back then because

• 46:19Speaker 05

  we all supposed to spoke a little bit of Spanish. And traditionally, we would take, you know, we had bunches Latinos from Seventh Group, you know, we had Mexicans and Puerto Ricans and Cubans and everybody was there. So their job was also to teach us Spanish. And I remember we went there and we worked with them one time for about six, seven, six months, I think. And we came back and we had to take Spanish tests and everybody's expecting our Spanish to be off the charts. It wasn't. Why? Because the people we were working with were mostly undereducated or uneducated and we spoke like they did.

• 46:58Speaker 05

  Yeah, so we spoke colloquial, colloquial Spanish.

• 47:02Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, not, not Spain Spanish.

• 47:04Speaker 05

  Not, not, not Castellano.

• 47:06Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 47:08Jack Murphy?

  I, and then 1988, you get a position J3 at Special Operations Command South?

• 47:18Speaker 05

  At SOC South, yes I did.

• 47:19Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 47:20Speaker 05

  I was fortunate because my third battalion commander, Colonel Chuck Fry.

• 47:27Jack Murphy?

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:28Speaker 05

  Yeah. So when I went down there, you know, it was like old home week again. And I went in and held that position. I was only a major, a fairly new major. And I held that position down and then finally, Dave Wilderman, we called him the Beast, he was a O5, he came in and I became his deputy three.

• 47:49Jack Murphy?

  And this is sort of like in the run up to Operation Just Cause, right?

• 47:52Speaker 05

  Yes, it was.

• 47:54Jack Murphy?

  Can you talk to us about like the situation in Panama deteriorating?

• 47:58Speaker 05

  The situation was going down. And I guess we weren't really getting a lot of good, solid guidance.

• 48:07Speaker 05

  And when that guy got killed that night, you know, that was the first thing, he got killed.

• 48:13Jack Murphy?

  Are you talking about the checkpoint that there's a soldier that got killed?

• 48:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, people started to wake up and take notice. So from that, we had meetings with all of the players. And it was decided upon that we needed to do something. So at that point in time, we started working on Operation Blue Spoon, as it was called. And that was the invasion of Panama. And we planned for it, rehearsed for it, planned for it, rehearsed for it, and finally executed it. And, you know, it's hard to say, but it came off pretty flawless. There were some mistakes, some accidents, but it was a good plan and it worked.

• 48:55Jack Murphy?

  What was your experience like on D-Day and H-hour when all of that went down?

• 49:00Speaker 05

  During that period of time, I was working with, I was moved to another mission unit. And we worked out of a Howard, out of Howard Air Force Base, out of one of the hangars. And, you know, so I'm working with professional guys and we're doing our jobs and monitoring the situation and mitigating risks as best we can.

• 49:24Jack Murphy?

  I mean, I think that was the largest airborne operation we did since World War II, for sure.

• 49:30Speaker 05

  I mean, we had 82nd Airborne jump, Rangers jumped in.

• 49:36Jack Murphy?

  And, you know, obviously Manuel Noriega was removed from power.

• 49:45Jack Murphy?

  And what was sort of the aftermath on your end?

• 49:50Speaker 05

  Well, you know, and I'll say it's one of the things we didn't do real well was plan for the after.

• 49:56Speaker 05

  So you had a lot of people kind of running around doing their own things. And it was a time where we used civil affairs and psyops and they came in and they helped tamp down the protests and figured out the right message to send to the Panamanians.

• 50:14Speaker 05

  You know that one thing about it I gotta tell you, cause it's kinda humorous.

• 50:17Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 50:17Speaker 05

  Plan. It doesn't matter how well you plan. Uh, there was a place called David. And it was north part of, um, Panama. And the commander of the unit there was, he was a hardcore guy.

• 50:32Speaker 05

  So they loaded, we loaded a mission up with a bunch of guys on helicopters. Headed up there to take it over. And you told them on the way up, said, listen,

• 50:41Speaker 05

  all the weapons should be stacked up at the north end of the runway. If that's the case, guys will land, go in, take control. If there aren't weapons there, or they're stacked up on the other end, you gotta go in hot. Well, some kinda way, they, they, we had a team already up there, got confused.

• 50:59Speaker 05

  And now they don't, it's, it's backward. So the helicopters that are flying up there, loaded for bear, will be going in hot. But we wanted them going in cold. So what they had to do, we had to launch a helicopter from Howard Air Force Base, flying at Mach one, because we couldn't get commo with the guys. So this helicopter had to fly at Mach one, get within range of the helicopters and tell them, hey, don't go in hot, don't go in hot, it's all taken care of. Yeah, but those things happen. It's called a fog of war.

• 51:32Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 51:33Speaker 05

  We handled it.

• 51:34Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, de-confliction.

• 51:35Speaker 05

  Uh huh.

• 51:37Jack Murphy?

  And then we get to, uh, what was it about nineteen ninety-one? Uh, you did some instructor, Tom?

• 51:44Speaker 05

  Yeah, I, I, um,

• 51:47Speaker 05

  was trying to get back

• 51:50Speaker 05

  to Fort Bragg, because you know, I, I, I consider myself an action guy. I wanted to be where the action was. And I went to Fort Bragg and I saw some old friends of mine there and they said, oh yeah, we can use you. Well, Branch

• 52:05Speaker 05

  said no.

• 52:07Speaker 05

  And Branch was punishing me because I was supposed to go on a, um, fellowship to I think Harvard or something for one of those schools. And I didn't wanna go. So I got, I did something else. I got extended in, in Panama for another year. So since I came back to Bragg, Branch was making sure that no, I wasn't gonna do that. And they sent me up to the Armed Forces Staff College.

• 52:33Speaker 05

  You know, to be an instructor, it was great. I'll tell you why it was great because it gave me time to decompress for a year. Remember, I'd been burning the camera at both ends for years. So now I got a chance to decompress, go to the gym, lift some weights, hang out, drink a beer or two or some scotch. And it was good. I didn't realize it, but it was a blessing in disguise.

• 52:51Jack Murphy?

  Was it around this time, maybe it was a little, a few years prior, that Special Forces became a branch for officers?

• 53:00Speaker 05

  1987 or 85, we became a branch.

• 53:03Jack Murphy?

  Okay. So did that impact your career at all about getting moved in and out of Special Forces?

• 53:08Speaker 05

  Yes, yes, it did. It made it better because I didn't have to worry about going to the infantry side. I stayed with Special Forces and it didn't hurt me.

• 53:16Jack Murphy?

  Oh, I see. And so the next stop for you was commanding 1st Battalion 7th Special Forces Group?

• 53:24Speaker 05

  Yep.

• 53:27Jack Murphy?

  What was your battalion command like?

• 53:29Speaker 05

  Oh, man, it was tremendous. I had some great officers working around me. I had good team leaders. In fact, I'll tell you who one of my team leaders was. His last name is Fenton.

• 53:41Jack Murphy?

  Brian Fenton?

• 53:43Speaker 05

  Yep. And, you know, back in those days, you know, we identified Brian as a go-getter. And immediately, you know, he did his team time. And what did you do to good guys? Once they finished their team time, you bring them up to the free shop. You know, he wasn't happy, but you know, it was great for him. And like I said, I had a great Sergeant Major, Command Sergeant Major named Rich Tudor. And let me tell you what, that was the most loyal, hardworking guy you could run into. So I was fortunate.

• 54:16Jack Murphy?

  And operationally, I'd be curious to ask you, you know, how had the operational environment in South and Central America changed for 7th Group? From, you know, you started off in the 70s into the 80s, and now we're in the early to mid 90s.

• 54:32Speaker 05

  We had gotten what we call Mission Creek. We went from doing some local training to we were actually working counter drug up in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, all those places. You know, we had, we had camps set up. Our guys were working MTTs, working with DEA. And we were tremendously busy. We were always busy. And it was good because it kept the guys were on edge.

• 55:02Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, and it gave them something to do, too. I mean, there wasn't, there wasn't a lot happening at that time, other than, you know, the Gulf, the Gulf War, but.

• 55:09Speaker 05

  Was kicking up Honduras, Nicaragua, we had people in Costa Rica, all over Central and South America, we had teams.

• 55:16Jack Murphy?

  That kept you guys busy.

• 55:19Jack Murphy?

  Uh, how did, so how did you kind of round out your command time at First Battalion? How did that wrap up?

• 55:27Speaker 05

  God, I wish I could tell you.

• 55:30Speaker 05

  Um, I don't remember, but we had, we were having, we had, we were doing stuff and we were having fun in doing it. And I couldn't tell you the last mission that we, we did, but we did something.

• 55:43Jack Murphy?

  I believe you. And from there, they put you up as the Chief of Staff at Special Forces Command?

• 55:51Speaker 05

  Oh, God. Yeah, that was before I went to the War College, yeah.

• 55:56Jack Murphy?

  Okay. Um, and so was SF Command relatively new at this time, or had it been around? It was.

• 56:03Speaker 05

  The whole system was new at this time.

• 56:05Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:07Speaker 05

  Remember, we just became a branch.

• 56:11Jack Murphy?

  Um, so tell us a little bit about SF Command and, and kind of like how it was going through that growing experience at the time?

• 56:19Speaker 05

  It was, as you say, a growing experience. Everybody was trying to find their lane. Remember, this was the first time this was ever done. So everybody's trying to find their lane. And the big part was how much control did SF Command want to exert on the groups?

• 56:37Speaker 05

  You know, SF Command, you know, was the next level up from the group commands. So how do they exercise their command without trying to take over?

• 56:45Jack Murphy?

  Right. How, how did they end up delineating that? Like who, who, what those lanes are?

• 56:50Speaker 05

  Well, you know, it came out pretty good. Um.

• 56:56Speaker 05

  They delineated it with the help of the Command Sergeant Majors and some of the general officers that were there. And they kind of laid out, okay, these guys should do this, and this group should do this. And they put you, they put everyone in the lane. And sometimes it worked out perfectly. Other times you had to make changes. So their flexibility was the key.

• 57:21Jack Murphy?

  I, and you know, also, I should ask you, because this is sort of a, I think, a bit of a theme through your career. From point A to point B, how are you seeing the Army itself change? Where, you know, integration was kind of new when, well, I shouldn't say that, in the Army, integration wasn't new. But some of these things, you know, black soldiers coming into some of these higher officer positions, was it more of a new thing? How were you seeing the Army change?

• 57:50Speaker 05

  Well, the Army was changing a little bit. Because when I was in Fort Bragg, I was there, serving with, at the time, when I was a group commander, there were two black Brigade commanders in the 82nd. And the COSCOM commander was black. So, yeah. But in SF, remember, we've never had a lot of black officers in SF.

• 58:16Jack Murphy?

  And then you were off to the Command and Staff College?

• 58:19Speaker 05

  No, War College.

• 58:21Jack Murphy?

  War College, I'm sorry.

• 58:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:22Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. And where was that at?

• 58:26Speaker 05

  Carlisle, Pennsylvania.

• 58:28Jack Murphy?

  How'd you like it out there?

• 58:30Speaker 05

  It was okay. It just got cold and a lot of snow in the winter. And being a South America kind of guy, I wasn't used to that.

• 58:37Jack Murphy?

  Was that another kind of like, period of rest for you and your family a bit?

• 58:41Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 58:43Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Because after that, they had you as the SWIC commander, the Special Warfare Center commander.

• 58:51Speaker 05

  Before that, I went to 18th Airborne Corps for about six, seven months as the SOCCORD, Special Ops Coordination Officer.

• 59:00Jack Murphy?

  Oh, okay.

• 59:00Speaker 05

  And I worked with 18th Airborne Corps on some of their exercises and so forth.

• 59:04Jack Murphy?

  So now you're kind of getting to see like, the big machine and how it really works?

• 59:07Speaker 05

  Yeah. And I was, I was already on the, the 06 Command List. So I was just kind of waiting for, you know, my command to come out.

• 59:17Jack Murphy?

  And so SWCC Commander, what was that like 1997 or 98?

• 59:23Speaker 05

  1998.

• 59:24Jack Murphy?

  1998. There were some interesting things happening at SWCC at that time, too, that you guys were like, well, Sephardic had already been stood up. Sephalic started to come around towards the tail end of that time, maybe. But what was going on like training wise in SF at that time? How were you seeing that change?

• 59:45Speaker 05

  Well, it was a transitional period. And I'll tell you why.

• 59:51Speaker 05

  You know, in SF, we have what I call the keepers of the tab. I went through the last hard Q course, those guys. And we were getting soldiers were different. We weren't getting as many combat arms guys to come into SF. And we were getting, you know, quartermasters, medics, whatever.

• 1:00:10Speaker 05

  You take an infantry guy, put him on land nav course, he can probably do it. You take a quartermaster guy or a medic and put him on a land nav course, might be a little harder for him. So we had to look at how we were training. And, you know, General Taggney used to tell me, said, "Oh, you know, you're in charge of training. You know how to train, figure it out." So we started looking at some of the things we did during training.

• 1:00:35Speaker 05

  And one of the ones that we looked at was land navigation. Why did we have such a huge land navigation failure? Well, when you got guys who don't land navigate regular, it's hard to teach them. But again, I'm going to ask you this question because you were an SF guy. How often did you go out in the middle of the woods looking for a stick?

• 1:00:56Jack Murphy?

  I, I mean, not often.

• 1:01:00Speaker 05

  Yeah, that wasn't a mission. But that's what we had these students trying to do. Go out in the middle of that swamp and find a stick. And it makes sense. Well, I had some good old retired sergeant majors that liked to talk to me. And, you know, one of them said to me, said, "You know, sir, I've spent this many years in SF. I've had eight tours in Vietnam. I've never had to find a stick in the middle of the woods." He didn't say it that nicely, but that's what he meant. So we looked at what we were teaching and how we were teaching it.

• 1:01:29Speaker 05

  Normally, when you're looking for something, it's a major land feature, a road intersection, let's not forget the church or a main highway. So we started looking at changing our course to incorporate. Common sense into how we were teaching these students. Not lowering the standards, but teaching with common sense. And we started doing that and it, you know, we went, our pass rate went from like forty two percent to forty five percent, which is not high, but you look at that and you say that's putting six more guys a year in SF on a team. So that's how we kind of looked at that.

• 1:02:12Speaker 05

  And we always had to be thinking of innovative ways to train. Because, you know, you keep doing it the same way over and over again, all you do is do the same thing over and over again. So we, we looked at things, how to modernize training, how to update training. And I was very fortunate because like at SWCC at that time, we had a lot of retired sergeant majors working there for me. And let me tell you, those guys were not shy about giving you advice.

• 1:02:37Jack Murphy?

  Were any, any other major training changes that you recall from that timeframe?

• 1:02:44Speaker 05

  There was one, swim test. Remember I told you when the guy?

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• 1:03:46Speaker 05

  Called me up, he said, can you swim? I said, yeah. Well, we were, I'd go to the, to the first day of training and there'd be five, six hundred guys there. And some of the guys looked like they were born and raised inside a gym. And they'd knock out the P T test. Well, a lot of guys didn't knock it out, so they were already gone. And these guys, like I said, looked like they were born in a gym. And they put them in the pool and you know where they went? Straight to the bottom.

• 1:04:13Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:04:14Speaker 05

  So me and my sergeant major looked at it.

• 1:04:18Speaker 05

  And, uh.

• 1:04:20Speaker 05

  Talked about it. Said, you know what is, you know. A lot of these guys would be good S F soldiers, not the majority of them were minorities, cause. And we said, yeah, how can we fix this? So some, we talked about it, a lot of folks did, a lot of, look, and we talked about it. We came up with a concept. If you make it through selection. And we didn't flunk you for the swim test. And you made it through selection, which we were only like a forty some percent pass rate, remember that? We will bring you back two or three weeks early. Teach you how to swim. Once you learn how to swim. You start like everybody else. You get in the pool, you do that hundred meter swim. And.

• 1:05:04Speaker 05

  It wasn't a lot. But we figured that every year we were putting about, I had a split eighteen back into the force because of these guys who would have been gone. And now they were here. Now, when you talk to people about a split eighteen, that's six guys. In the macro sense, that's not many. But when you're talking about an A team. And each company got six teams. And you got two teams or three quarters strength and one team less. Yeah, those six people make a difference.

• 1:05:31Speaker 03

  Yeah. Remo, out of curiosity, you know, because there's always been talk about whether the swim test was intentionally like racist. If the point was, like, do you, do you believe that the swim test is a functional part of that?

• 1:05:47Speaker 05

  I'm gonna go back to the first story I told about Sergeant Major in Panama. Who said. When they were looking for S F guys, all they wanted you to do was be able to squeeze that trigger.

• 1:05:56Speaker 03

  Right, right.

• 1:05:57Speaker 05

  You know, and. There were several of those when I went to, um, third of the seventh. In Panama. Uh, we had, we had several guys who couldn't swim.

• 1:06:06Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 1:06:07Speaker 05

  And, uh, they mostly retired as command sergeant majors in special forces.

• 1:06:11Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 1:06:11Speaker 05

  So I, I think that answers the question.

• 1:06:13Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:06:17Jack Murphy?

  And from there, you became the deputy at USASOC.

• 1:06:22Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:06:23Jack Murphy?

  How did you like that job?

• 1:06:25Speaker 05

  It's a good thing about it. I worked for General Tagney. And I don't know if you know General Tagney, but he's a great guy. And he's a funny guy, too. People wouldn't realize, but he's a funny guy. And yeah, I was there, put in my time and learned a lot. And you know, one thing General Tagney was good about, he'd call me over and he'd say, hey, Remo, come here. Yes, sir. I'm supposed to go to this event tonight. Yes, sir. You're going.

• 1:06:55Speaker 05

  But you know, working with General Tagney was fun for me and he was a great guy. He was a great mentor and I just enjoyed working for him.

• 1:07:00Jack Murphy?

  But the job itself, you didn't really like the staff office aspect?

• 1:07:05Speaker 05

  You know, find a combat arms officer who's a warfighter who likes staff jobs.

• 1:07:09Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, absolutely. And so by this time, around this timeframe, are you also getting looked at to pin a star on?

• 1:07:18Speaker 05

  Uh, when I became his chief of staff, I was already on the list.

• 1:07:22Jack Murphy?

  Okay.

• 1:07:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, I did. I, you know, yeah.

• 1:07:25Jack Murphy?

  Tell us how that came about because I mean, as you mentioned, you were the first black special forces general.

• 1:07:30Speaker 05

  You know, like I said, I've, I've, I always took the hard jobs. Somebody told me that. Take the hard jobs. I always took the hard jobs. And my resume stood on its own. And all I said, you know, somebody gives me a fair chance, who knows? Even saying that, I didn't believe that. Because number one, I had a mustache. And you know, people would talk to me about general. I said, I'll never make general, never make general. And I was at the gym one day and there was another general officer there, friend of mine. And we're just chewing the proverbial fat. And he says, yeah, you know, Remo, I'm leaving. I'm going here and here and you're going to replace me. And I'm thinking to myself, no, that's a general slot and I'm not replacing you.

• 1:08:15Speaker 05

  And you know, we considered the conversation. And then I started hearing the rumors later on that I was on the GO list. And finally, somebody let the cat out of the bag and told me. So there was nobody more shocked than me. My father knew I was, you know, a good officer, but for him, he thought the epitome of my career would be me going to the war college.

• 1:08:38Speaker 05

  And for me to invite him down and then my mother to pin on my star, uh, you know, that was it. That was it for me.

• 1:08:45Jack Murphy?

  Your, your, your dad, who was a retired sergeant major?

• 1:08:48Speaker 05

  He was retired command sergeant major.

• 1:08:49Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. What, about, about what year did your dad join the army?

• 1:08:54Speaker 05

  God, I couldn't tell you. I was in the, uh, early, early 50s, I think.

• 1:08:59Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's such a tremendous amount of change that the entire country, much, much less the army went through during that timeframe.

• 1:09:10Jack Murphy?

  I, okay. And so the position you did take, you know, you became the commander of special operations command south.

• 1:09:19Speaker 05

  Right.

• 1:09:19Jack Murphy?

  Uh, so you're the man in charge now, um, and you know, as we've talked about through all of these progressively, um, you know, more responsible positions that you took throughout your special forces career. And now you're kind of the special ops commander in charge of the, the region. Uh, what was that experience like?

• 1:09:38Speaker 05

  It was a tremendous experience because one, um,

• 1:09:43Speaker 05

  South America, Central America belonged to me. We had troops almost in every country. And I used the opportunity to go and visit, talk to them, meet all the ambassadors. And I established rapport with all the ambassadors I met. You know, some of them, we became personal friends. And then there was the ambassador to Columbia, Columbia, Ambassador Patterson. She was a great lady.

• 1:10:03Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, she's nice.

• 1:10:04Speaker 05

  When the airplane got shot down and the people were taking us hostage, it was during Black History Month and I was in, I want to say El Paso, giving a speech. And me and my aide were on the plane and he says to me, he said, sir, he said, um,

• 1:10:24Speaker 05

  this is what happened in, uh, Columbia and the ambassador wants to talk to you. We're on a plane. I said, okay, well, you know, tell them to let her know. I'll call her when I get to Puerto Rico. And I said, okay, so we fly back to Puerto Rico and I arrived late and they ambushed me. My unit was there. SOCSF was there. My staff was there. And I said, sir, we got a C-130 on the runway waiting for you. Uh, Smucatelli has been to your house and packed your luggage and, uh, you're going to, you're going to Columbia.

• 1:10:58Speaker 05

  So we fly out, get to Colombia, Ambassador Patterson briefed me what's going on. And it was one of those things where nobody really knew what was going on. So we had to get there, had a good staff with me. And we started looking for them.

• 1:11:13Speaker 05

  The thing we made the most inroads with was the Colombian government. And I got to work with and for President Uribe, which was a pleasure. And I worked with the General Ospina, who became the commander of the Colombian military.

• 1:11:34Speaker 05

  These were some great people. And our job was not to take over the mission, but to assist them in doing the mission. And that's what we did. And of course, a couple of years later, came to fruition, they rescued everybody. But the Colombian military was tremendous to work for. The people there were tremendous, and I just totally enjoyed working with that group. And Ambassador Patterson at the embassy, I mean, there's not enough I can say about her.

• 1:12:01Jack Murphy?

  Just to clarify for our viewers, you know, Remo, you're talking about the four American contractors. They had a counter narco mission, you know, taking pictures of the drug plants. And they got shot down by FARC, crash landed. And the pilot, yes, the pilot was executed on the ground and the others were taken hostage.

• 1:12:23Speaker 05

  Right, that's correct.

• 1:12:25Jack Murphy?

  About, about how long was it after the crash that you guys got boots on the ground?

• 1:12:30Speaker 05

  About a day.

• 1:12:31Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:33Jack Murphy?

  Because it was, it was out in bad, bad guy land too, right?

• 1:12:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, yes, definitely was.

• 1:12:37Jack Murphy?

  Yeah. Um, and anything else you recall from those like, kind of like, there must have been some frantic days, you know, busy days, long days, um, as you guys were trying to get up to speed and try to identify what happened?

• 1:12:52Speaker 05

  All the days were frantic. They started early and they ended up late. And, and the issue is this, you have Americans, but they're in a sovereign country of Colombia. How do you go to get them back without trying to take over Colombia? It was a political game.

• 1:13:08Jack Murphy?

  Sure.

• 1:13:09Speaker 05

  And like I said, you, you learn to work with people. Uh, you assisted where you could. And when they said, okay, we got this, you had to be smart enough to back off, but observe what was going on.

• 1:13:22Jack Murphy?

  That was the challenge of that mission.

• 1:13:27Jack Murphy?

  Anything else happen while you were the SOCS South commander that you'd like to talk about?

• 1:13:33Speaker 05

  I spent three years there as commander of SOCS South. And we did a lot of things there. One of the things that I really liked was when we did Cabanas with the Argentinians.

• 1:13:46Jack Murphy?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 1:13:47Speaker 05

  Yeah, it was great. And we had six or seven different countries working with us. And, you know, it was a great opportunity for them to know us and for us to know them. And, you know, different years later, I'd be traveling through South or Central America, and I'd always have somebody come up to me and say, "Hin of Al, you don't remember me, but I was this when you were there at Cabanas." And, you know, that's always good.

• 1:14:13Jack Murphy?

  Anything else from SOCS South?

• 1:14:16Speaker 05

  No, it was just a great time.

• 1:14:20Jack Murphy?

  So tell us a little bit about retirement. You went all the way up to general. How did retirement come about? And how did you feel about that personally?

• 1:14:31Speaker 05

  I was the chief of staff of SOCOM.

• 1:14:34Speaker 05

  Had the pleasure of working for General Brown and Admiral Olson. So it was good. But

• 1:14:42Speaker 05

  having spent all that time in SF, having over 300 jumps, having carried a heavy rucksack for many, many years, my body was breaking down. At that time, I'd had five knee surgeries. General Brown had this thing. Once a month, he would do a unit run, about three miles.

• 1:15:01Speaker 05

  And as the chief of staff, you know, my job was to be on the unit run and finish up front.

• 1:15:07Speaker 05

  And I like to lead from the front because that's where leaders are, in the front. But every time we'd do that, for the next week, I'd be in my office, icing my knees, icing everything, taking Tylenol, and my body was wearing out. And, you know, I spoke to General Brown about it, and he, you know, "Oh, you got it. You know, you can do this." And people were talking to me about...

• 1:15:33Speaker 05

  The next general officer promotion, the major general. And you know, anytime somebody talks to you about promotion, you know, it excites you. But then I thought about my body and I said, you know what? If I did it and I took it, that would be three more years that I'd be killing myself. And I decided that I couldn't do it no more and I was going to retire.

• 1:15:54Jack Murphy?

  And Remo, I, I should point out because we didn't talk about it earlier that like you were a big time gym guy. At the back in the day and I've like met guys who were like a Navy SEAL in the 1980s and like they will mention your name like, oh yeah. Remo Butler could bench press 400 pounds like.

• 1:16:10Speaker 05

  Yeah. And in fact, you know, in Puerto Rico, I had, I had a SEAL platoon with me. And one of the things I used to do was once a month, them guys would do this crazy run and crazy swim. And I was right there with them. And let me tell you, I'd do it and I'd suck pond water for the next week. So anyway, when it got to, got to SOCOM, you know, the same thing was happening. And, uh, you know, I decided, I said, you know what? I can't, I can't do this. I ego says take the promotion.

• 1:16:36Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:37Speaker 05

  But my mind said, no. So I started out putting my name out there that I was going to retire and companies started calling me. And saying, when you put your paperwork in, call us, let us know. And I became retirement eligible on one February, I had time in grade, one February, 2004. Two February, 2004, I submitted my retirement paperwork. And, uh, you know, a lot of people were against it. You know, people were telling, oh, you still got a lot to offer, you know, we got plans and so forth. But, and that's fine, but what about what I want? What about me? What about my health? So I retired and

• 1:17:17Speaker 05

  a week after I retired and took terminal leave, I was in, I was in Kuwait, working for Halliburton. And I stayed there and I came back at the end of June to have my official retirement ceremony at SOCOM. And I went back and I spent the next two and a half years, uh, in Iraq, working for at that time, Halliburton, which changed over to KBR. And, uh, you know, it just found me a niche in the contractor side of the world.

• 1:17:44Jack Murphy?

  You were working like logistics?

• 1:17:47Speaker 05

  I saw, I saw Halliburton was, and KBR was logistics. And I used to tell people, from the moment you wake up in the morning, and go in the bathroom and use the bathroom, to the time you turn your light off at night, everything that has touched you during the day has came from KBR. All the meals you've eaten, the gas you've used, the air conditioner that you have, the fans, the electricity, everything, we provided everything.

• 1:18:13Jack Murphy?

  And you did that for, you said, two or three years?

• 1:18:16Speaker 05

  Two and a half years.

• 1:18:17Jack Murphy?

  Two and a half years. And then what did you get into after that?

• 1:18:21Speaker 05

  Oh, man, I left there, left KBR. Well, no, before I left KBR, I did that, I came back to the States and they made me the business development guy here in Tampa. I finished that up, and I think I went to work for a company called SOC.

• 1:18:40Speaker 05

  It's a security company. I worked with them for about a year, year and a half, and then I worked for Honeywell for a little while. Then I went back to SOC, and I just worked for a lot of different companies in the Mideast and the US consulting and so forth. And I enjoyed it because it gives you a different perspective.

• 1:19:00Jack Murphy?

  What was that perspective as opposed to being an army officer?

• 1:19:04Speaker 05

  Well, from being a general, you know, everything is catered to you. But when you go out as a consultant, everything is not catered to you, and you have to do the nug work yourself.

• 1:19:16Speaker 05

  And the other part was this, the biggest one was this, when you get out of SF, SF and people are different. If you tell an SF guy, I want you to put a coat of paint on that building for me, when you come back, that building is going to have three coats of paint on it, new windows, new doors, etc. You tell a civilian guy, I want you to put a coat of paint on that building, you might get a coat of paint. And you have to learn who you have to watch out for, what they're going to do. And everybody, you know, like I said, I love hiring military people because they would go above and beyond what was expected.

• 1:19:51Jack Murphy?

  Was the transition difficult from, you know, retiring?

• 1:19:54Speaker 05

  No.

• 1:19:57Jack Murphy?

  And uh.

• 1:19:59Speaker 03

  Real quick though, Remo, I want to ask because you know, one, you mentioned sort of, you know, your, your enlisted personnel really kind of, you know, teaching you and boosting you up. And also your fellow officers and sometimes even senior officers with the camaraderie, the mentorship and things like that. And, you know, and, and that is something that's very different, I think, in the military often than the civilian world. But also in the military, like I was never in SF, but in Ranger Battalion, you would have like young lieutenants come in and some of them are like, I'm here to make my career, right? My first tour as my PL. So they would drive and drive and drive without listening to the platoon sergeant, whatever. And then there were other ones who you knew were really on your side. And it was often like, somebody had to pull these officers aside and say, look, these

• 1:20:44Speaker 03

  guys will make you look good if you help them. But if you come down on them all the time, what you think you're doing is actually going to be the opposite of what you want to be done. How, how was that, like learning to, or you obviously seem to have a knack for it, but I'm sure you've seen officers who didn't really know how to work with their enlisted before.

• 1:21:05Speaker 05

  Yes, I have. And, and I used to tell my team leaders when they came in for their team leader briefing, I'd say, listen bud, you don't know jack about SF. And of course they'd look at you with that shocked look on their face. And I'd say, your team sergeant, and I'd tell them who their team sergeant was, he has this experience and I'd read it out for him.

• 1:21:22Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:21:22Speaker 05

  And he's done this, this and this. And this guy, the op sergeant has done this, this and this. Your warrant officer has done, so what you need to do is you need to stop thinking you're in charge and listen to what they say. Now, sometimes they'll say stupid stuff, but you gotta be the mentor for that. You gotta say, uh-uh, we're not doing that. Or if you got a real bad question, come see me, I'll help you sort through it, or my sergeant major will. And you had to teach these guys that. There were a couple of officers that I had to, uh, let go of because they had that attitude. Uh, one of them, if there was a Rambo knife out for sale, he bought it.

• 1:21:57Speaker 03

  Mm hmm.

• 1:21:58Speaker 05

  We would go to the field and he'd have these special high-tech Hummer Hummer boots on that had the tread that was unique. And I, one time I went out in the field and they were out there and I saw his boot print and I followed them into their, um, campsite. I said, how'd you go? How'd you find us? I said, your stupid boots. That's a unique print.

• 1:22:20Speaker 05

  I've also seen officers, unfortunately, I knew them, who did that. They, "All right, team sergeant, I got you. I'm in charge here." And a few months later, you saw them signing out of the unit.

• 1:22:34Speaker 03

  Is there a way, though, that, you know, because officers, obviously, because they've done a tour with a regular unit, where they are in charge a lot of times, and then they come to a unique place like SF, where, how do you get them, aside, you know, how do you like, you know, sort of bring them on and say, "Look, you are the officer, like, the responsibility and authority is ultimately with you, but, but these guys know what they're doing and you can learn from that."

• 1:23:02Speaker 05

  I'll tell you how I did it, just like you just said it. You know, I wa, you know, I made sure they knew the qualifications that their team sergeant and some of the guys on their team had.

• 1:23:12Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:13Speaker 05

  And I let them know, "Hey, this guy's been doing this for 30 years."

• 1:23:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:23:17Speaker 05

  You know, "You've been doing it for six months."

• 1:23:19Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:23:19Speaker 05

  You know, "Listen to him, he's gonna tell you what to do, how to do it. If you get confused, come see me, we'll help you."

• 1:23:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's awesome.

• 1:23:28Speaker 05

  Yeah, but you're, but you're absolutely right. I've seen officers who get there and they come in because they're gonna make their mark.

• 1:23:33Speaker 03

  Uh-huh.

• 1:23:34Speaker 05

  "All right, all you stupid NCOs, you don't know nothing. I went to college and I'm gonna tell you what we're gonna do."

• 1:23:39Speaker 03

  Right. Yeah. And then what about the mentorship and the alliances? You know, because for, you know, friends of that, you know, the officer who gave you the bad NCOR, for his friends to come to you and say, you know, they definitely were, whether they were perfect, putting themselves professionally at risk, they were certainly sort of putting themselves personally, the friendship-wise, at risk. How, how is it for officers, you know, whether it's working with seniors or juniors or whatever, to, you know, to, to create that, that same sort of camaraderie instead of an era of competition?

• 1:24:19Speaker 05

  You know, that's a personal decision that everybody has to make.

• 1:24:22Jack Murphy?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:24:23Speaker 05

  Uh, I've worked with guys who were extremely competitive. And they would tell me, oh, you did this, you did it for six weeks. I'm gonna take guys in, we're gonna do it for eight weeks.

• 1:24:33Jack Murphy?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:24:34Speaker 05

  Okay, that's fine with me. You know, because it kills their people. You have to worry about your people.

• 1:24:40Jack Murphy?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:24:40Speaker 05

  The thing about it is this, officers go to a team for one to two years, right?

• 1:24:45Jack Murphy?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:24:46Speaker 05

  And list of guys are on the team for their whole career.

• 1:24:48Jack Murphy?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:24:49Speaker 05

  So if I start burning the candle at both ends, the list of guys gonna get burned out pretty quick. And the officer's gonna be gone somewhere else.

• 1:24:55Jack Murphy?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:56Speaker 05

  And people have to understand that.

• 1:25:00Jack Murphy?

  So you've gotten into a number of different things in, you know, retirement years. Uh, and you were telling me that you've been recognized for some of your work, kind of passing that on, mentoring others. Um, what are some of those endeavors you've gotten involved in?

• 1:25:14Speaker 05

  Mostly mentoring is my, my biggest one. I, I feel that I've been successful. I feel that I have a lot of knowledge and I take that knowledge and I try to spread it. And especially even today, a lot of young officers, uh, call me because they've read the paper I wrote in the War College. And they thank me, they say, sir, you know, I want to thank you for writing that paper. You know, I read it, it saved my life, et cetera, et cetera. That's what.

• 1:25:39Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:25:54Speaker 02

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:26:05Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you, you're not alone.

• 1:26:10Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:26:16Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:26:36Speaker 05

  What makes you feel good? You've helped someone become successful.

• 1:26:41Jack Murphy?

  And do you want to tell us about Black Ops?

• 1:26:45Speaker 05

  Yeah. Black Ops was started by a gentleman named Ruben Ayala. And what he does is with Black Ops, he takes the stories of black special forces, Rangers, Marine Force Recon, SEALs, and Latinos and females. And he brings those stories to the forefront. And I'll give you an example. One of the guys I used to work for me was a Sante Raider. And everybody knew it, everybody talked about it. And I found out another guy I knew was also a Sante Raider who's black. And nobody ever said anything about him.

• 1:27:28Speaker 05

  And I asked an old retired Sergeant Major Graham, I said, hey Sergeant Major, this guy's a Sante Raider. He said, yes, sir. You didn't know that? No. There are things people don't talk about. So what Black Ops does is tries to take these people and bring them up to the forefront. So everybody can see. So like Ruben said, you know, he watched Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rambo and all this kind of stuff. But he never saw any Latinos doing that. Now you have kids out there who are very impressive, impressionable.

• 1:28:03Speaker 05

  For them to want to go and be special forces,

• 1:28:07Speaker 05

  it would help if they saw somebody who was in special forces, who was successful, who looked like they did. Do you agree?

• 1:28:15Speaker 05

  Yeah. When I was in special forces, many, many times I was the lone black officer. And then when I wasn't the lone, I was the senior black officer. Remember now, I'm just growing up just like these other guys are. So he felt that it was important for people, everybody, to see that there are minorities in special forces, whether you're black, Latin, Asian, or whatever. There are females in special ops. You too can strive for this. Now, the Black Ops, they say it's a platform created for the purpose of telling uncommon stories through film, podcasting, and documentaries.

• 1:29:01Jack Murphy?

  And where can people find it? I mean, if they search?

• 1:29:05Speaker 05

  Um, hmm. You know, that's a very interesting story.

• 1:29:11Speaker 05

  Uh.

• 1:29:14Speaker 05

  It's on YouTube. Type in Black Ops. Uh, they are looking at, let me see something here. They have a roadshow that they've done. They've done one in Atlanta. They've done one in here in Tampa. They've done them in Ohio and other places. And they have this platform called blackops.tv. It's a streaming platform that's that's dedicated to telling the stories.

• 1:29:45Jack Murphy?

  Is there anything else that you've been working on that you'd like to tell folks about?

• 1:29:51Speaker 05

  Yeah. Being a better person.

• 1:29:56Speaker 05

  You know?

• 1:29:58Speaker 05

  When you've done everything that I've done and being soldiers, especially special forces guys, we never want to admit that we have weaknesses. And we do.

• 1:30:12Speaker 05

  And the biggest thing you have to do as a special forces soldier is say, you know what? I might need some help with this.

• 1:30:19Speaker 05

  And get it.

• 1:30:23Jack Murphy?

  And what shape or form did that take for you as a, as a, you know, gentleman who's retired now and?

• 1:30:29Speaker 05

  My wife, I always tell everybody, she's my heartbeat. My wife, uh, told me that I had PTSD.

• 1:30:39Speaker 05

  And nobody ever else had ever said I had PTSD. My wife told me. And of course, I was, uh, looking for that river in Egypt, denial. And I wouldn't admit it. And finally, I went to the, you know, with her pushing, I went to the doctor and said, you know, I think I might have PTSD. And they did a little test and he came back and you know what the doctor told me? Yeah, buddy, you got PTSD.

• 1:31:05Speaker 05

  But once you get diagnosed with it, you have to fix it. Uh, sometimes you can fix it yourself. Sometimes you need help fixing it. We, special forces guys, used to look down on anybody that that was that we considered weak. And if you thought you had a mental issue or something's going on with your family, blah, blah, blah, and, you know, you couldn't handle it, you were just weak. But that is not a weakness.

• 1:31:32Speaker 05

  That is a strength when you realize that you have an issue and fix it.

• 1:31:37Jack Murphy?

  What were some of the therapies that worked for you to fix it?

• 1:31:41Speaker 05

  The biggest one for me was my wife. Talking to her. My, my wife wanted to be a psychologist at one point in time, but she left that and, and she, uh, took another route. And she's very, very intelligent. She's doing a lot of things now. She's one of the smartest humans that I know, smarter than me, even though she won't admit that. But she's the one. And she, as I say, she talked me off that ladder several times. You know, and I think communication is her greatest asset. And I'm happy, if it wasn't for her, I might not be here.

• 1:32:19Jack Murphy?

  I mean, Remo, we've covered a lot here in a relatively short period of time, considering how extensive your career is. Is there anything else that like I left out or that you wish I asked that you'd like to talk about before we get going tonight?

• 1:32:33Speaker 05

  I know, um, you know, I'm really hurt that my Ranger buddy never asked me that I have any experience with the Rangers.

• 1:32:42Speaker 03

  Did you have experience with Rangers and?

• 1:32:45Speaker 05

  I was the Merle Marauder Award winner in my Ranger course.

• 1:32:50Speaker 03

  That's amazing.

• 1:32:53Speaker 05

  I still got the compass.

• 1:32:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:32:55Jack Murphy?

  What, what, what was your Ranger school number?

• 1:32:57Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 1:32:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:32:59Jack Murphy?

  Oh, come on. I was gonna, I, I was just gonna, you know, bust your balls if you went to the last hard class, which I imagine you did.

• 1:33:07Speaker 05

  I did. It was nineteen seventy seven.

• 1:33:08Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, that was probably the last hard class.

• 1:33:10Speaker 05

  And I'll tell you, the worst thing for me at Ranger school was I was, I left three, seven in Panama to go to Ranger school. And all the RIs knew I was a special forces guy. So I was called Special Phases.

• 1:33:24Speaker 05

  Special Fools, you know, all those cute names.

• 1:33:29Speaker 03

  That's funny. So they saw a desert phase back then too, huh?

• 1:33:33Speaker 05

  I did not go through the desert phase.

• 1:33:34Speaker 03

  Oh, okay. Oh, I so they all right, they got, yeah.

• 1:33:38Speaker 05

  Of the other three phases, the city phase, Florida phase, and the mountain phase, that was plenty.

• 1:33:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. Remo, are you still thinking about potentially writing a book?

• 1:33:48Speaker 05

  I am not only thinking about it, I'm going to, and I'll tell you why. My son, for Father's Day, he gave me this little book.

• 1:33:57Speaker 05

  And he put a note on it. And it said, Dad, you know, I really don't know much about what you did in the military and your life.

• 1:34:07Speaker 05

  And this book he gave me asked questions about you.

• 1:34:14Speaker 05

  And I started writing, and some of the stuff I was writing surprised me. So at that point in time, and oh, yeah, by the way, my wife has told me I should write a book too, and several other people. So I've decided that I'm going to start writing a book.

• 1:34:28Speaker 03

  That's fantastic.

• 1:34:29Jack Murphy?

  Yeah, I think it's great. Record some of this history down.

• 1:34:33Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:34:35Jack Murphy?

  Um, Remo, where can people go to find you? I don't know if you're still consulting or not, but if they even want to, they're interested in some of these like mentoring or speaking events, where can people go to find you?

• 1:34:48Speaker 05

  Uh, right here.

• 1:34:51Jack Murphy?

  They should, they should show up at your house and.

• 1:34:54Speaker 05

  You know, I have, um, my phone number.

• 1:34:57Jack Murphy?

  No, no, no, you don't have to give that.

• 1:34:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, don't give that out.

• 1:35:01Speaker 05

  Or email me.

• 1:35:03Jack Murphy?

  Do you want to give out your email? Like, are you okay with the public having that?

• 1:35:07Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't care.

• 1:35:08Jack Murphy?

  Okay, go ahead and let folks know where they can find you.

• 1:35:11Speaker 05

  My email address is R E M O B T L, the number eight, at AOL dot com.

• 1:35:20Jack Murphy?

  Great. There you go. You can go talk to the man himself. Remo, thank you so much for doing this interview and speaking with us for a couple hours.

• 1:35:28Speaker 05

  Hey, just my pleasure. Enjoyed it. It was great. And, uh, you know, Rangers lead the way.

• 1:35:33Jack Murphy?

  Do we have any questions, Steve? Okay, no questions. We're all, we're all good. Okay, Remo, thank you, man. And, uh, have a good night.

• 1:35:43Jack Murphy?

  Take care, man.

• 1:35:45Jack Murphy?

  Hey guys, it's Jack. I just want to talk to you for a moment about how you can support the show if you've been watching it, enjoying it, but you'd like to get a little bit more involved and help us continue to do this. You can check out our Patreon. It is patreon.com/the Team House. And for $5 a month, you can get access to all of these episodes of The Team House ad-free. The same goes with our affiliated podcast Eyes On with Andy Milburn, Jason Lyons, McMulroy. That one, you will also get all of those episodes ad-free. And you support the channel and the show, and we really appreciate it. The Patreon members are literally what has

• 1:36:25Jack Murphy?

  helped this company, this small business survive, especially during our early years. And you are what continues to help this thing going, even as we navigate the turbulent world of YouTube advertising. So we really appreciate all of you guys. There's going to be a link down in the description to that Patreon page. And there is also going to be a link to our new merch shop. So if you guys want to go and get some Team House merchandise, we got stickers, and we also have patches. And I should mention, if you sign up for Patreon at $10 a month, we will mail you this patch as well. So we really appreciate that. But they're also for sale on the merch shop. And additionally, they got t-shirts up there,

• 1:37:10Jack Murphy?

  water bottles, a tote bag, coffee mugs, all that good stuff. So please go and check them out and support the show. We really appreciate it, guys.

• 1:37:20Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:37:34Speaker 02

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic, in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:37:45Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you, you're not alone.

• 1:37:51Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:37:56Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 1:38:16Jack Murphy?

  Thank you.

• 1:38:25Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:38:39Speaker 02

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic in a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:38:50Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:38:55Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:39:01Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more, because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At the Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At the Table and start listening on the free iHeart Radio app today.

• 1:39:27Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At the Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:39:42Speaker 02

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation. I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:39:53Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:39:58Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:40:04Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:40:31Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At The Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:40:45Speaker 02

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation to I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood.

• 1:40:56Speaker 06

  And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:41:02Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:41:07Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:41:33Speaker 06

  Hi, I'm Jenna Oshkowitz. You might know me from Glee. This is At The Table, the food allergy podcast, a show about food, connection, and what it really looks like to live with food allergies. Each episode, we hear stories from real people like Daniel.

• 1:41:48Speaker 02

  People would always think I was lactose intolerant, so I just kind of shortened my explanation.

• 1:41:53Speaker 06

  I'm deathly allergic. In a big way that defined a lot of my childhood. And while there are challenges, there are moments that remind you you're not alone.

• 1:42:04Speaker 07

  One of the best guys that I dated, he made a point to memorize all my food allergies.

• 1:42:10Speaker 06

  So join us and hear their stories and more because living with food allergies isn't just about what you can't eat. It's about still having your seat at the table. Brought to you by Genentech and Novartis. Listen to At The Table, the food allergy podcast on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow At The Table and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today.

• 1:42:30Speaker 00

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• 1:42:43Speaker 01

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• 1:43:26Speaker 01

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