294: The Mayhem and Critical Lessons of Lam Son 719 w/ Huey Pilot, Major Jay Tate.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:07:16 - Major Jay Tate. Army Pilot. Vietnam. 2:32:11 - Final thoughts. 2:43:40 - How to stay on THE PATH. 3:06:33 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 294 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:09Jocko Willink?

  Flight, this is Blue Star Six, RP. Major Bunting announced as he crossed the release point on the ground indicating two minutes flight time to the landing zone. With that announcement, Charlie gunships from Crossbows began a slow dive toward the landing zone, prepared to release some of the 14 2.75 inch rockets that each aircraft carried along with their machine guns if it became necessary.

• 0:35Jocko Willink?

  Flight, lead is taking fire. Blue Star Six announced over the UHF frequency, which was obvious to everyone behind him as the green tracers were coming from all around him. Chalk Two is taking fire, we're hit, came the next announcement. Suddenly the radio was alive with every aircraft reporting taking fire as they crossed the RP and the woods around the landing zone were highlighted by red and white flashes and green tracers streaming upward. As each aircraft flew into the cone of fire, attempting to reach the landing zone and discharge their load, the airwaves became garbled as pilots stepped on each other's transmission or in panic depressed their transmit switch to the entire flight so they could, everyone

• 1:20Jocko Willink?

  could hear the conversation between a pilot and his crew. Chalk Six is taking, shit, get on your guns. Chalk Five, where's the damn guns? Break, break. Chalk Ten is...

• 1:31Jocko Willink?

  There was so much confusion that no one could get a complete sentence transmitted until...

• 1:37Jocko Willink?

  Mayday, mayday, Dutch Master 41 is going down, said Captain Fox in almost a calm voice. Who the hell is Dutch Master 41? Someone asked over the radio, looking skyward and searching, everyone had their answer. Dutch Master 41 was the command and control aircraft for the Cav screen and was entering an auto rotation from 4,000 feet.

• 2:01Jocko Willink?

  What really held everyone's attention was the flames coming out of the bottom of the aircraft. Oh shit. It was obvious that he'd taken a hit with an explosive round in the fuel cell, but at 4,000 feet?

• 2:15Jocko Willink?

  Every aircraft had at least one set of eyes tracking this crippled aircraft. An aircraft in flight on fire was somehow few, something few had ever seen before and it was horrifying and mesmerizing.

• 2:30Jocko Willink?

  "Mayday, Dutch Master 41 is on fire", was the next call from Captain Fox, his voice a bit elevated. "Fire was every aviator's worst nightmare. Shoot me, but don't let me burn."

• 2:44Jocko Willink?

  It was a fear that had been with aviators since Orville and Wilbur had first flown.

• 2:51Jocko Willink?

  Before parachutes, World War I pilots were known to use their pistols rather than burn in an aircraft. As everyone watched, the radios went silent. Slowly, Dutch Master 41 began a slow roll, and as it hit the trees, it was inverted. The Cav screen began to converge on the crash site. As Major Bunting entered the cauldron of enemy fire, he turned to Mr. Grossman, "Get on the controls with me in case I'm hit." Grossman immediately did, so that with a very light touch, ready to take command of the aircraft. Suddenly, Sauer and Thomas opened fire. Taking fire, they both screamed together,

• 3:34Jocko Willink?

  though there was no need, since the sound of a hammer tapping on the side of the aircraft could clearly be heard, as Blue Star 6 continued to press toward the landing zone, decelerating and coming to a hover. The Arvin soldiers didn't wait for the aircraft to land. They started jumping out as the aircraft came to a slow walk. Before Major Bunting could land, the aircraft was empty. "Sir, go, go! We're empty", Sauer yelled, as he continued to fire his weapon at the tree line. "Talk on on the go", Major Bunting transmitted, "LZ is hot." His next transmission followed almost immediately. "Mayday, mayday, Blue Star 6 is going in."

• 4:16Jocko Willink?

  He had just cleared the landing zone when the aircraft engine quit.

• 4:26Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is an excerpt from book three from a series of books called Undaunted Valor, which were written by Colonel Matt Jackson. And this is the third book of the series, which is subtitled Lamsan 719. And the first book that he wrote in this series was subtitled An Assault Helicopter Squadron in Vietnam, 1969 to 1970. And we had the honor of covering that book with Colonel Jackson on this podcast. It was podcast number 275. And that first book is based on Colonel Jackson's experiences himself as

• 5:07Jocko Willink?

  in Vietnam as a Huey pilot. The Huey, the iconic helicopter of the Vietnam War. And that first book,

• 5:18Jocko Willink?

  it's written as a novel or a story with the main character. The main character is named Dan Corey, but that character is based on Colonel Jackson and the events that are in the book took place. And this third book is written in a similar way. It's written from the, from the perspective or focused on a, an individual named Dan Corey. But the, the events that are written about in this third book, they took place. And it continues to recount some of these incredible heroics

• 5:55Jocko Willink?

  from these helicopter pilots and helicopter crews in Vietnam. And this third book in the series tells the story of a, of a massive operation, which included the largest helicopter assault of the Vietnam War. This is an operation that lasted 45 days. It was conducted in Laos and it was an attempt to shut down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And this book, Undaunted Valor, Lamsan 719, is filled with incredible details that Colonel Jackson got by interviewing and doing intense research to accurately describe what happened. And the book is incredible read.

• 6:37Jocko Willink?

  But we're actually not going to read the book much today. We're going to touch on it a little bit. Because we have the honor of having one of the pilots. Who also flew Hueys in Vietnam and who flew. Missions in support of Operation Lam Son 719. His name is Jay Tate. He's a retired major, US Army. He is the recipient of two distinguished flying crosses, 38 air medals. Recognizing 950 hours of combat flying. The Bronze Star. The Vietnamese Cross of Gallantry.

• 7:19Jocko Willink?

  And the Silver Star for his heroic actions under fire. It's an honor to have him here with us tonight. Jay, thank you for joining us.

• 7:30Speaker 01

  Wow, well, that introduction was, uh, put me right back in the cockpit.

• 7:36Jocko Willink?

  The, and that book is filled with those, those either coming into landing zones or coming out of landing zones. It's just incredible to read and incredible to learn about the history of that operation. As a matter of fact, I was talking to a friend of mine that was in, um, that was in, in SOG in Vietnam. And I mentioned that you were coming on the podcast. And I told him that you flew in Lam Son 719 and the look on his face is, woo, that was a, that was a rough one.

• 8:07Speaker 01

  You know, um, um, we supported Command and Control North. Which was the northern segment of SOG in, in Vietnam. And, um. I remember several missions that we flew prior to. The kickoff of Lam Son 719 on 8th February. Prior to that, we were flying out of Quan Tri Dong Ha area. With a group of Command and Control North guys from up there. Flying, uh, west towards Khe Son. When all of a sudden in our flight of four. We saw these orange fireballs coming up at us.

• 8:50Speaker 01

  And we immediately took evasive action, 23 millimeter anti-aircraft fire coming up at us. We took action to get out of there. Obviously, the mission at that moment was called off and we made it back to Dongha. One of the guys over torqued his aircraft in the evasive action. And it had to be grounded for inspection for tail rotor to make sure that nothing had happened that would cause him further damage or even crashing. But that was in January of 71, before the kickoff of 8th February 71.

• 9:30Jocko Willink?

  Well, before we get into that, let's talk a little bit about the beginning of Jay Tate. Where'd you grow up? Where'd you come from?

• 9:41Speaker 01

  I grew up in a little town called Hickory, North Carolina. I was born in Pensacola. My father was a flying chief in the Navy, flew PBYs. His, he was in charge of a hangar at Pensacola that repaired the skin on PBYs that were shot up. And Dad would take him up and fly what we call the idiot circle around the airfield and land it and check to make sure the rivets were holding okay on the aircraft.

• 10:08Jocko Willink?

  So he was an enlisted chief and he was a pilot in the Navy?

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 10:12Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's pretty neat.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  He had a background in aviation, well, not in aviation, metalsmith, but in, he was, he was a metalsmith himself and did a lot of work with sheet metal and stuff like that. So, obviously, it was, it was a skill that the Navy needed. And Dad was a real smart guy and picked up on it and loved flying and got his wings. I remember his wings were, had a gold center with silver wings, which was different than the regular aviator who has all silver wings in the Navy, or gold wings in the Navy. Yeah, yeah. So, he was, he was kind of disappointed I didn't go in the Navy, but when I went into Army Aviation, that sort of smoothed it over for him.

• 10:54Jocko Willink?

  How long did he do in the Navy?

• 10:56Speaker 01

  He was just a guy that went in in nineteen forty-two after Pearl Harbor. And got out in forty-five and served the rest of his time in the reserves. Got out of the reserves right after the Korean War. So, he was his own businessman.

• 11:12Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, what did he do for a living?

• 11:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was a, um, he was a full-time firefighter for the city of Hickory, North Carolina. And he also owned his own business. He had a shell service station. It was called Tate Shell Service Station. And I remember he had Tate Shell. It was in great big letters, illuminated letters on top of the service station. And the S letter burned out and it had Tate Hell up there. And so dad would do a few commercials and on the radio and he said, "Business has been really good. We have sold the S out of hell."

• 11:53Jocko Willink?

  Nice. And so, uh, what about mom? She the, uh, what was she doing?

• 11:59Speaker 01

  Mom was a typical housewife. Um, brought me up, uh, the stay-at-home. I grew up in a neighborhood where nobody locked their doors. We could go on vacation for two weeks, doors just stay open.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  I remember one time, uh, we had a fire in our home. Burned up all, it was in the closet, burned up all of mother's clothes. And they had no way of getting in touch with us because we didn't have cell service back then. But I remember all the ladies in the neighborhood came down and had the house completely cleaned up when we arrived home, except for the fact that mother's clothes were all burned up. But she got the insurance and got the buy-hold-on-your-wardrobe.

• 12:41Jocko Willink?

  That's not a bad deal.

• 12:42Speaker 01

  That's the kind of neighborhood I grew up in.

• 12:43Jocko Willink?

  Nice. What, what about you? What were you interested in? What were you doing when you were a kid?

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Okay, um, in our, and it's, it's, it's quite ironic. In our neighborhood, we had a field that was vacant. And we called it the battlefield. And you have to understand, this was in the early fifties. And all of our parents had served in some... Form of military service. We had some Marines, we had Navy, we had Army. Um, didn't have any Air Force, but we did have Navy pilot that was there. So, we would all put on the gear that our fathers brought home and would play Army up in our battlefield. And, uh, and from, uh, uh, we would dig foxholes.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  And, uh, we would make our own hand grenades, but we couldn't pronounce hand grenades, so we called them hankernades. And a hankernade was we, we would dig up, uh, red clay in, in North Carolina, watch it. And, uh, we'd put water on it and fashion it in the balls and let it sit out in the sun. And then we would throw those, those at the enemy. And I remember one time Eric Schufa got a black eye and, uh, his mother was not real happy that we were playing battlefield and throwing hankernades.

• 14:05Jocko Willink?

  And then what about as you got older?

• 14:07Speaker 01

  As I got older, um, I really wanted to go to a military school. And, um, my parents were not quite, I wasn't all the kids, so my parents were not quite ready to let me go. Um, I got into, uh, the scouts, got to wear the uniforms. See, that was very important to me then, wearing the uniform, wearing it correctly. Um, in high school, um, I got into the band. I was a drummer. Uh, but the uniforms are all, um, shaped like the, uh, tailored after the West Point uniforms. Uh, with the high collars and the, and, uh, and to me that was just added to the, uh,

• 14:49Speaker 01

  the desire to want to do something in uniform. Didn't want to be a firefighter. My father was, but didn't care to be a firefighter. My uncle, uh, was a police officer. Didn't care about being a police officer. But there was something about the military that, that, um, was like a magnet to me. I would watch every, as a child, I would watch every movie, uh, a military movie on TV that would come on. Randolph Scott, you know, played those big He-Man Marine, you know, um.

• 15:19Speaker 01

  Kind of like you, you know, except you were in the Navy. But those things, I gravitated toward that. My good friend, Don Murphy, who I grew up with, he did the same thing. He went to the Marine Corps.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  And it was really, he went the NCO route, I was the officer route. So at the times when we would be on leave and come home at the same time, I had to go through this whole rigmarole about being an officer and enlisted men really knew what was going on and we were just there for showmanship.

• 15:53Jocko Willink?

  When, so what year did you graduate from high school?

• 15:56Speaker 01

  I graduated in sixty-three.

• 16:00Speaker 01

  Quite interestingly, I had trotted out for the United States of America High School Band as a drummer and was offered a trip. So we, this is, these are two to four students from every state in the Union. And we met at University of Southern Mississippi to practice. And then we toured all down through the South, across over into Mexico, doing concert tours, all the way to Hollywood. We did a, we did a big concert in the Hollywood Bowl. And I mean, how many people can say that, you know? And again, in those outstanding uniforms that were similar to the ones that I wore, band uniforms that I wore in high school.

• 16:44Speaker 01

  And so it just added to the, to the, and I was proud of that. I was very proud to wear that uniform and I wore it right and I spit shined my shoes. I did that all the way from junior high school and I was in the band all the way through high school. So I knew how to spit shine.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  But then I was offered a full scholarship to University of Southern Mississippi. And also to University of West Virginia. I didn't like West Virginia because it's, everything was hills. It seemed like everywhere you went, you had to go up a hill. And I know you Navy guys, you like that stuff, but, but you know, I wasn't quite into that. So I took the scholarship to Southern Mississippi. There, ROTC was mandatory for freshmen and sophomores. And so there again, here I was in a uniform. Not only, and I was, the scholarship I was in at University of Southern Mississippi was a full, full ride music scholarship. And I was a drummer in the University of Southern Mississippi Band.

• 17:45Speaker 01

  After my first year, I decided I didn't want to be a music major. So I thought, well, you know, I think I'll go into art and design because I like to be creative in this. So I transferred out of Southern Mississippi to my father's dismay because it was all paid for. And I enrolled in East Tennessee State University in Johnson City, Tennessee. And there, again, sophomore year, I was in my sophomore year, ROTC mandatory, but the more I got into it, the more I just really gravitated towards that. And I took my oath of office as an advance corps cadet as a junior.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  And from there on, it's just I cared more about getting that commission than I did about getting my degree. I had transferred majors from music to art and design. So in that time, we were all in the quarter system. So I had to go an extra quarter to take up all the courses that I needed to take. And I graduated December of 67. First went down the aisle on cap and gown. And then I, after I got my diploma, then all the cadets go out, take off the cap and gown, and we put on our uniform coats. We already had the pants and stuff on for that, so, under the gowns. So I came down, and we were all commissioned then.

• 19:13Speaker 01

  And I remember my mom and dad pinning those gold bars on my shoulders. Boy, I tell you what, I felt like I had really accomplished at least the first phase of my life. So that was 1967? December of 67. I went on active duty in March of 68 as an infantry officer, brand new, what we call butter bar, wearing the gold bar as a second lieutenant. I went to the infantry school, it's called the Infantry Officers Basic Course at Fort Benning, just on the other side of the hill from us for all the OCS guys. They called OCS the Benning School for Boys.

• 19:58Speaker 01

  And I'll never forget, we were so, here we were, commissioned officers, and there they were, hoping to be commissioned officers. And many times, we would march by their, their area, and I recall a big telephone pole, and on top of the telephone pole in the Officer Candidate School area, was this black helmet, shiny black helmet, with a gold bar in the center of the helmet. It was actually a helmet liner. And the, what they would try to, OCS guys, has competition, who could get up there and get the helmet first. Of course, the pole

• 20:38Speaker 01

  was always greased. And I don't know if anybody ever got up there and got that helmet, without putting cleats on their shoes, but at any rate. But yeah, that's, that was my first taste at Benning of being a real Army officer.

• 20:54Jocko Willink?

  So this is 1967, so you must have, pretty much known as an infantry officer, you were gonna end up going to Vietnam.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah. I was, I was ready, I was prepared, I was mentally prepared. While at East Tennessee State, I was a member of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity. Practically every one of the Advanced Corps Cadets, juniors and seniors, were Army, Advanced Corps Army ROTC cadets. And every one, this, my fraternity was a big military fraternity. And we, we took great pride in that. And I remember, we would inspect each other in the fraternity house before we would leave to go to drill on Thursdays, just to make sure everybody was dressed right,

• 21:40Speaker 01

  dress ready, front. And, and it was, it was, it was an honor to be an Advanced Corps Cadet. And you had all of these underclassmen, that this was our, that you were leading, this was our first time as really being a leader, giving commands, moving orders for platoon and company drill, and, and this kind of stuff. And so, they were instilling in us, they being, the cadre was instilling us.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  The correct way of of being an officer of showing authority without disrespecting people. And you can correct people without disrespecting people. And and I learned that through ROTC. And that's kind of kind of interesting because I know that ROTC cadets coming out and being commissioned didn't have the greatest reputation amongst a lot of the NCOs in the Army at that time.

• 22:44Jocko Willink?

  So when it's 1967 and you mentioned that everyone freshman and sophomore had to be in ROTC.

• 22:52Speaker 01

  It was mandatory at University of Southern Mississippi and it was mandatory at East Tennessee State University. I can't speak for the other colleges and universities, but I would think that perhaps that was the manner in which every university, at least if it was a federally funded university, had to operate.

• 23:12Jocko Willink?

  Wow. That's pretty. So what about what about like as far as kind of the social aspects of America at the time? Were you starting to in 1967, you were you really seeing much of that anti-war attitude or anything like that?

• 23:28Speaker 01

  No, no, not we were not subjected to that. I don't recall that. I recall that on campus, there was no snickering when in uniform. Every Thursday was drill day. And so everyone had to show up for drill day, had to be in proper uniform. If you were a sophomore or a freshman or sophomore, you were carrying the M1 Grand Rifle. And every week, as a freshman sophomore, you had to go to the arms room and clean your weapon and it had to be and you see you were taking ROTC for credit. So for the two years as freshman sophomore, you were taking ROTC for credit.

• 24:11Speaker 01

  So, yeah, you best clean your weapon because if you didn't, you'd get a demerit and X number of demerits means you got a drop in grade. So we would actually go through and do inspection before at on every drill meet, which was on Thursdays. And that's how I learned how to inspect an M1 Grand Rifle. And I don't know if you ever fired one of those, but.

• 24:37Jocko Willink?

  I think I actually have fired one. I think I actually have. I fired a bunch of different weapons.

• 24:43Speaker 01

  I'm sure you did.

• 24:43Jocko Willink?

  We do like these familiarization shoots and they pull out a bunch of old weapons and new weapons and I can't. But I'm pretty sure I have fired one.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  But they used to have this, when you would clean your rifle, when you pull the bolt back. And you would have to clean down through the bore and everything. And then what you would do is you would take the little white cloth that you used to stick on the, on the bore rod to clean, clean the, clean the bore out. But you'd stick it down there and you'd look through and the light from that would shine up through and you could tell whether or not you had any, any materials in the bore that shouldn't be there. And, but then you had to, you had to pull back on, on the.

• 25:31Jocko Willink?

  Charging handle?

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Yes. And then let it go right quick. So it would go forward. Well, if you didn't let it go right quick, you would get what's called M1 thumb because it would get stuck. And many times I had M1 thumb on that. Yeah, but.

• 25:49Jocko Willink?

  So, so you go to the infantry course, what'd you call it, the basic infantry course?

• 25:54Speaker 01

  Infantry Officer's Basic Course, IOBC.

• 25:57Jocko Willink?

  So when, when you're in that, I mean, you must be, these guys are preparing you to go be a platoon leader in Vietnam.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  Correct, correct. Yeah. 1542 platoon leader.

• 26:08Jocko Willink?

  And, and this is now, is it 1968 now?

• 26:10Speaker 01

  1968 now.

• 26:11Jocko Willink?

  So there's a lot of experienced guys that are teaching you.

• 26:14Speaker 01

  A lot, a lot.

• 26:16Jocko Willink?

  How long was that course of instruction?

• 26:18Speaker 01

  Nine weeks, if I think correctly. Was it nine weeks or 16 weeks? I think it was.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Might have been 12 weeks. I'd have to think about that because I took my first command at Bragg. I was there in, in March and I took my first command at Bragg in, in around August.

• 26:45Jocko Willink?

  So when you're going through that course, are you get forming up platoons and you're going out and doing training missions and that kind of thing?

• 26:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly right. Forming in platoons and companies and then they rotated who was going to be platoon leader. I mean, we're all second lieutenants. Well, not all of us. We had some direct commissioned guys in there. I had a, I had a sergeant major who was direct commissioned to a captain.

• 27:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh, wow.

• 27:07Speaker 01

  And special forces guy and snake eater and, and he, he was always the company commander. And great guy, wonderful guy, but we would switch roles around. We participated in all different kinds of maneuvers, whether it be an armored column with infantry in it or whether it be squad tactics, whether it be platoon tactics, or whether it was in a company crossing over what then they called the line of departure, the LD. We don't have that

• 27:49Speaker 01

  in warfare now. Everything, there is no LD. It's like perimeter defense and we're, we're going to that, but we practiced all of that. Not everybody went airborne, but we all did the, the, what was it, 47 foot tower that dropped you out and so you get a feel for what falling with a chute on is like and, but I was on a night combat compass course and there was four of us. We went out in teams of four, pouring down rain at Fort Benning, Georgia, Columbia, Columbus, Georgia. And it was in the early spring.

• 30:49Speaker 01

  They have it better than I do. Couple of days later, in our company area, they had to sign up. Anyone interested in Army Aviation, we're going to be giving the flight aptitude test on a certain date. I was the first in the orderly room to sign up for that thing.

• 31:05Jocko Willink?

  And then that was it? You got picked up for it?

• 31:09Speaker 01

  Graduated from Benning, took my first command at Fort Bragg. I was in, interesting, here I am, an infantry officer, in my command, was a military and was with a military intelligence battalion, MI battalion, here I am, an infantry officer. I'll never forget my first sergeant, my first first sergeant, Sergeant Chuck Hawley. I don't think that anybody ever forgets the name of their first first sergeant, not officers. And he brought me in, he treated me, I was kind of embarrassed because he had all these medals, and here I am, brand new second lieutenant, no combat experience, and he treated me like, with great respect. And he welcomed me aboard, I mean, I'll never forget, the first time I walked in the orderly

• 31:54Speaker 01

  room, he calls the orderly room to attention. I was sort of baffled, you know, here I am, second lieutenant.

• 31:59Jocko Willink?

  You looking over your shoulder for a colonel?

• 32:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. What in the world is going on? But, yeah, and I learned a lot from Sergeant Hawley, my first first sergeant. Never forget going out on just a maneuver, and here I am, we have our military intelligence, it was military intelligence, my bars, military intelligence battalion, air reconnaissance. My actual unit, and I was command of Alpha Detachment, we had a live mission. We would take photographs that were taken by the Air Force, sent back to Fort Bragg, four photographs over Vietnam, sent back to Fort Bragg, and my guys in Alpha Detachment, and there was Bravo Detachment, Charlie Detachment, but the missions given to our guys,

• 32:45Speaker 01

  we were actually taking the photographs and pulling intelligence out of the photographs, using stereoscopes, which you can measure the height of various objects and so on and so forth. Then we would put all that together, and we would get...

• 33:03Speaker 01

  And a bird dog at Fort Bragg and fly that to DC. And it was a real live mission. I mean, how many people can say that, you know, they were, we were actually doing a real live mission in support of Vietnam at that time. Here I was, a little second lieutenant, you know, barely dry behind the ears. And my first sergeant kept me straight. I had a bunch of warrant officers work for me, too, and they really did all the work. I was there just to sign my name and, and thank my first sergeant for keeping me straight.

• 33:37Jocko Willink?

  How long did you do that job for?

• 33:39Speaker 01

  Four months. Orders came down, sending me to flight school at Fort Walters, Texas.

• 33:44Jocko Willink?

  So you show up to flight school. When we were talking, when I was talking to Colonel Jackson, it sounded crazy, the number of helicopter pilots that were being trained at that time.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  It was amazing, totally amazing. You see, Matt Jackson started off as warrant officer. So he had a whole different experience than I did. That was for warrant officer candidate school, we called them WOCs. And people say, well, what's a WOC? And we'd say, well, that's something you throw at a wabbit.

• 34:16Jocko Willink?

  Well, I think, I think it's funny because when he's talking about you guys, the commissioned officers, they called them RLOs, real life officers.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:28Jocko Willink?

  So we had the real life officers and the WOCs.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. The real live officers. Yeah. And, and we were all, each class had a designated color. And my class happened to be the yellow hat class. And you tell different classes by the color of baseball cap that you wore. And you had these funny wings that you sewed on the, on the front of your hat. They weren't aviator wings, but like student aviator wings. And so we had the yellow hats, the WOC class going through, they were a yellow hat class. But we never, never got together. And that was, that was the primary flight training. And that's where we just learned to fly. My first helicopter that I climbed into was a

• 35:17Speaker 01

  Training helicopter 55, it's a Hughes 300 aircraft, but it was small. I mean, you could probably get the whole aircraft into this room, would have to probably knock out part of your walls so the tail rotor would get through, but that's how small it was. I mean, it was smaller than the OH-13, and most people remember that by when they watched MASH or the H-23, which was back in that era as well. But that's what I learned to fly on, it was so tiny, and being tiny, it wasn't easy to fly, it was very squirrely. So, I remember people, I said, "Man, I wish I was in that 13 or that 23," and they said,

• 35:58Speaker 01

  "Well, you know, you're getting some great pilot skills in that TH-55, because you're learning how to adjust for wind and so on and so forth." And they said, "Boy, when you get to Rucker, that Huey is going to be like you're climbing out of a little Fiat into a Rolls Royce." And I remember our first cross-country, after we'd soloed, I soloed at my 14th hour. You had to solo within 16 hours, or you got sent back to another class. So, I soloed in my 14th hour, and that's amazing, getting, you know, the instructor pilot gets out and says, "Okay, you've got the aircraft, and you fly the idiot circle,

• 36:42Speaker 01

  and you call takeoff, you call turning into the wind, you call base, and you call final." You had to do all the correct call signs and everything. And we were at little staging areas all around Fort Walters, Texas, which was in Mineral Wells, Texas. So, we probably had staging areas as much as 50 miles out, because you had all these classes and all these various staging areas. And I'll never forget, it was a little anxious when he climbed out of that cockpit, and I knew that I was in control. And, but then after you flew your first solo, coming back in, the bus didn't stop it, Fort

• 37:26Speaker 01

  Walters at the fort, it stopped at the Holiday Inn.

• 37:31Speaker 01

  Tradition is everyone who soloed, the bus would stop there and those who hadn't soloed yet stayed on the bus. Those who had already soloed got off the bus with the new solo guys and they carried you and threw you in the pool at the Holiday Inn. And interestingly, at the Holiday Inn in, at Mineral Wells, they had crossed Huey rotor blades that you walked under to go to the swimming pool. And to have that honor of being thrown in the pool was just incredibly amazing and fulfilling.

• 38:11Jocko Willink?

  Did you have any, did you have any trouble when you were going through aviation school? Did it come pretty naturally to you? Were you, you know, did you, did you figure it out pretty quick? Or when you said 14 hours, was that about average?

• 38:23Speaker 01

  Well, no. I mean, we had some guys that, that soloed at 10 hours. I mean, they were, I mean, just incredible. But you have to understand, a lot of the guys I went through with already had their private ticket. Most, most fixed wing, I don't know of anyone in my class that had a rotary wing private ticket. And had they done that, they could have probably soloed in five hours, you know. It just all depends. But leaving there, oh, here's the other interesting thing. All the pilots, we're getting this flight pay. Plus, we're getting our, our normal second lieutenant pay, which I think was like $247 a month.

• 39:01Jocko Willink?

  How much was flight pay?

• 39:02Speaker 01

  Oh, flight pay was, God, I, I know when I quit getting flight pay at the end, it was like $400 something dollars a month, but...

• 39:09Jocko Willink?

  So that's kind of crazy, right? Like, you're almost doubling your pay.

• 39:12Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And, but, but interesting about it is, you've got all these single guys here. So what do we do? We go to the, to the car dealer. So everybody, I remember a good buddy of mine, it was my roommate, he and I actually lived in a motel right outside the gate of Fort Walters. And he had a Camaro Z, what, Z28, whatever it was, Zcar P28. I had the Osmobile 442. And, I mean, that just goes on. All the hot cars, you know, the single pilots, you know, we thought our Sierra didn't stink. We had that stuff, you know, we, you know, we were just...

• 39:58Speaker 01

  There was something about that that just started, the camaraderie just started building. And I remember when we left Fort Walters to go to Fort Rucker, Alabama for our, our advanced training, there were four of us that convoyed all the way to, and we made our first pit stop in Montgomery, Alabama, but we convoyed all the way down through there. And we all had CBs in our cars. So, you know, it was like we were flying and we were talking to each other and that. And, and on the back of the car, we, everybody had United States Army Aviation and a little sticker in the back of your window, you know, and, you know,

• 40:41Speaker 01

  like I say, we thought our Sierra didn't stink. And we got to, we got to Montgomery, we all checked in that night. And I got a call from the desk that said, I've got you listed as owning a 1968 Osmobile 442. It's a black vinyl top with blue bottom. I said, yeah, yeah, that's, that's mine. He said, sir, you need to come to the desk. I go to the desk and there's a truck driver there. He had pulled his 18 wheeler into the parking lot of the motel where the four of us were all staying, didn't cut sharp enough and hit

• 41:24Speaker 01

  the left rear quarter panel of my car and tore it all to pieces. I mean, Schneider trucking, I'll never forget that. You see their trucks on the road all the time and I'll forget the stock. Oh, and he was so apologetic and so on and called his dispatcher and everything was fine. But.

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Anyhow, we had a couple of days before we had to report into Fort Rucker. So my plan was I was just gonna drive the car up to North Carolina, give it to my dad, they'd get it fixed up, he'd give me his car, I'd drive it down to Rucker. Well, we get up the next morning and I get a call from my roommate that had been my roommate in the primary training. And he said, "Hey, Gumba." His name was John Vagniti. "Hey, Gumba." "Okay, now the joke's up." I said, "What are you talking about, John? Where's my car?" I said, "John, I don't have your car." "Aw, come on, come on."

• 42:32Speaker 01

  Somebody had stolen his car that night. Now, my car gets hit, somebody steals John's car that night. Montgomery Police does all the investigation. And so the next, so after that was done, I said, "Okay, throw your gear in my car, we're driving to North Carolina." So we drove to North Carolina, picked up my dad's car. In the meantime, John calls his dad, who owned a company called Superior Plastics in water, I'll think of it in a minute, but in New Jersey. And anyhow, John has a new car waiting for him, just like that, from that.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  But, yeah, that was the beginning of our advanced course in flying helicopters for the United States Army.

• 43:21Jocko Willink?

  So when you get to Fort Rucker, is that when you start flying the Huey?

• 43:25Speaker 01

  Yep, yep, yep. It was, and it was like everybody said, the Huey came natural to me. It was just, I mean, it was amazing to crank that thing up and then to...

• 43:40Speaker 01

  Hold the cycle and pull up on that collective and that, I mean, it was just, it's like everybody said, it's like going from a Fiat into a Rolls Royce. And it was so easy, I mean, it was, you know, even though it had a little crosswind, it wasn't, it wasn't shifting like the TH-55 did. I mean, the TH-55 would shift if you had a three knot crosswind. So, uh, but it was an incredible, incredible aircraft. And, uh, of course, while we were flying that, we were also getting our instrument training down there. That's the first time we'd been on instruments. So the instrument training was not in the Huey. It was in, uh, an OH-13.

• 44:19Speaker 01

  Uh, and that's where we were under the hood and, and, uh, flying on instruments and, uh, and got what we called a tac ticket, tactical ticket. It wasn't the regular standard instrument ticket that one would normally get, uh, but it was a tac ticket. And what was interesting about that, and this will come up later in our conversation, is I learned how to shoot ground control approaches very well, GCA approaches very well. We'll talk about that later on in our conversation.

• 44:49Jocko Willink?

  Is that where you learned originally to shoot it?

• 44:51Speaker 01

  That's where I learned to shoot it. Yep. And it came in very handy in Vietnam.

• 44:56Jocko Willink?

  So how, how much longer was it until you, uh, how long was that training?

• 45:00Speaker 01

  Um, that training, we got there and, uh, so that had to have been about, uh, it must have been about three, three or so months, cause I think in July, yeah, it was in July that, uh, that I got my several wings pinned on me. And, uh, my mom and dad drove down, uh, it was a wonderful, uh, experience. Uh, my girlfriend at the time came down with my parents. Uh, and I was so proud of those wings. I mean, I, I was so proud of being a butter bar in December of 67 and so proud of, of getting those wings.

• 45:38Speaker 01

  Later on, that would have been in sixty-nine. Because, you know, sixty-eight, I took over the command and went to flight school, went through Christmas, graduated in July of sixty-nine. Very proud of that. I remember every weekend while we were at Fort Rucker, a bunch of us would go to Panama City, Florida. And there was a young couple, and their two children owned a motel there. So we went down, negotiated with them that we would like to come down every weekend and stay in the same suite of rooms. And, and they knew that we were, everybody in flight school was on orders to go to Vietnam, right out of flight school. And, and they were certainly aware of that.

• 46:21Speaker 01

  And so they took us up on our offer, that we would arrive on Friday night and leave on Sunday. And she had a closet in the suite, and she said, "You just keep all your beach clothes and everything down here. I'll wash them, I'll clean them up for you, and I'll hang them back up in the suite." And she did that. Every night, every Friday night we got down there, she and her family had dinner prepared for the four of us, and we all ate together as a family. Now, that's, that's people who cared.

• 46:52Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 46:53Speaker 01

  And I took my parents there, and right after, we drove down to Panama City after I got the Silver Wings. And we stayed in that hotel that night, and with them, and, and we all congregated, the family that owned it, we all congregated together. And then I left out the, the next day. My parents stayed down in Florida for a while. But the next day was the landing on the moon. And we washed it after, my girlfriend and I washed it after we got back into Hickory, from driving from Panama City, Florida.

• 47:30Jocko Willink?

  Now, one of the things that I, when I first covered Colonel Jackson's first book, you know, one of the, one of the statistics that he brings up in the book is, there was five thousand Hueys sent to Vietnam, and thirty-two hundred of them were lost in combat. Did your parents know these kind of statistics? Were they nervous as hell? Were they talking to you about, you know, what was gonna happen? How did you feel about it?

• 47:58Speaker 01

  My parents...

• 48:03Speaker 01

  I never expressed any worry whatsoever about being, in fact, I wanted to go to NOM. Right after flight school, there were too many infantry officers, serving infantry aviators in Vietnam. There were not enough slots for all infantry aviators. There were infantry aviators who were like, "I'm third in line to be a platoon leader as a captain." So what happened was all the infantry officers in my flight class out of Rutgers, their orders were changed from Vietnam to stateside assignments. So I went to Fort Bragg and flew with Alpha Company, 82nd Aviation Battalion. There, I flew with seasoned aviators who

• 48:46Speaker 01

  had come back from Vietnam. I was a platoon XO. My platoon leader was Captain Fred Dickens, who had flown with the Little Bears in the 25th Infantry Division. He had flown over into Cambodia during that incursion. A lot of that's written, Cambodia is written up in Matt's first book there. But I learned a lot from Fred. I learned a lot from the other, a lot of the war officers that were there, who just, Jim Foster, for example, he had flown with the 48th Blue Stars. And I learned a lot about him, because we did a lot of tactical maneuvers with the 82nd during that time. And he sort of gave me

• 49:29Speaker 01

  a feel for what I would be doing when I got to NOM. Jim ended up being a roommate with myself and Fred Dickens, Captain Dickens. Jim and I stayed friends until this day. He was going to get out of the Army, and I talked him into staying in the Army and encouraged him to extend his enlistment as a war officer, which he did and finally retired out of the Army. I hope sometime Jim can hear this podcast and can smile a little bit about that. What's very interesting is, is that after I put in my orders to go to NOM, again, requested NOM, orders came down sending me to the 7th Infantry Division in Korea.

• 50:14Speaker 01

  Commanding the 7th Infantry Division was a guy by the name of Howell Moore, who was Lieutenant Colonel Howell Moore in the Idrang Valley with the 1st Cav. And we all know about, we were soldiers once and young. General Moore at that time was two-star general. And I was the 7th Aviation Battalion Maintenance Officer. And when, and General Moore was a rated aviator. He had to fly four months, or four hours every month to maintain proficiency and draw flight pay. I don't know if you tell a general officer you can't draw flight pay, but at any rate, uh, my job was to fly, co-pilot with him. And I got to know him and uh, So this is, is this in Korea? This is in Korea now. See, I've put in orders, I put in a request to go to Vietnam.

• 50:57Speaker 01

  Orders come down, sending me to Korea. Okay. Okay. So I was not that much aware of General Moore. I didn't know about the Idrang Valley back then. I mean, this was in 71. I didn't know much about the Idrang Valley. Not 71, I'm sorry. This was in, uh, 70, uh, when I got to Korea from Bragg. And, uh, so he asked me one day while we were flying how I liked my assignment with the 7th. And I told him, well, it was fine, but I said, if I don't get to Vietnam, sir, I can kiss my career goodbye. Cause I mean, you know, I want to be a career army officer. And if I don't have Vietnam time and have performed well in Nam,

• 51:41Speaker 01

  I'll never be a career army officer. And he talked a little bit. He said, would you have a particular unit you want to go to? And I said, yes, sir. I'd like to go to the 25th Infantry Division, uh, fly with the Aviation Battalion. He says, um, any particular company? I said, Alpha Company, sir. They're known as the Little Bears. He said, oh, I know the Little Bears. I've heard of the Little Bears. They're a great unit. Um, that was on Saturday. On Monday, I got a call from the general's aide. And it said, um, general wants to make sure you, you're ready to go to Nam. I said, yes, I am. Okay. You want to go to Alpha Company, 25th Aviation Battalion? Oh, the general wanted to know if, uh, you want to take any leave in the States. I mean, he can only authorize 20 days, but, uh, I said, well, sure, if I can get there.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  Within three or four days, orders came down. Now, I've been in Korea now maybe four or five months by that time. Orders came down, and on usually orders, and probably the same thing in the Navy, you have, you have regulations that authorize this and such. There were no regulations authorizing anything on my orders. It was all voco, which means voice command, V O C O, between Commander 7th Infantry Division, Commander 25th Infantry Division. Voco, and it went all the way down to even Commander of Airlift in, out of Oakland. And my leave, my 20 days leave started, and so anyhow, I go to Kempo Airport, I get on

• 53:13Speaker 01

  the airplane, okay, I'll fly home. My 20 days didn't start until I reached my home of record. And the 20 days was up the day that I left my home of record. So I'm on, not on leave until I reach my point. Left there after 20 days, flew to Oakland, then Oakland to Nam. I get to Nam, and this was in the fall of 70. I get to Nam, we're all getting off the airplane. You know, everybody hears about the humidity, how it just sucks the air out of you when you get off the airplane, landing at Tonsonute. So get off the airplane. Okay, there's a, I think Lieutenant, either Major Lieutenant Colonel out there and a

• 53:58Speaker 01

  bunch of enlisted men. And they say, okay, all the officers over to my right. Okay. And then Sergeant Major says, okay, all the NCOs here in front of me. And there's another E7 that says, okay, all the enlisted men down here on this side. So we all get over there. Okay. Now they're calling out names. So the Colonel, the Colonel Major's calling out all the officers' names. Says, is there any name that I haven't, everybody's raising their hand, say, any name I haven't called out? And I said, here I am. He said, you must be Captain Tate. I said, well, yes, sir, I am. He said, well, your chopper will be here in 20 minutes. Jeez. And a chopper flew in from the 25th, from Alpha Company, 25th Aviation Battalion to pick me up. Holy mackerel.

• 54:42Speaker 01

  So pick me up, take me to Koochie where the 25th Headquarters. And we get out of Jeep.

• 54:48Jocko Willink?

  You must have made a hell of a good impression on General Moore, oh my goodness.

• 54:52Speaker 01

  A Jeep picks me up, drives me to the orderly room. And I, I go in and salute to the company commander. Commander who's a major, major's commanding companies in NAM. And the major said, I don't know who the hell you are, but welcome aboard. Shook my, shook my hand and that was my introduction to the Alpha Company 25th Aviation.

• 55:20Jocko Willink?

  Phew, that's amazing. You know, you, you made a joke about, hey, I don't know if you can, if you need to take the, the flight pay away from a general officer. Apparently those general officers had some power. That's incredible.

• 55:37Speaker 01

  General Hal Moore. And I've read the book, I've watched the movie quite a few times. Even General Moore, before he passed away, thought that Mel Gibson did a good job representing him and, and the sergeant major. But, you know, that was a, he was a hell of a man, a great leader. He was, he was not one of these general officers that set himself up on a plateau. He was down with his troops. And, and I saw that quality in him. And I was in great admiration for that.

• 56:16Jocko Willink?

  So you show up, so you show up, what's the first thing that happens when you show up in Vietnam? Now, they, what did they, they must have thought you were the best pilot or something. They must have thought you were somebody.

• 56:28Speaker 01

  The company XO, company commander says, XO, get captain and take a place to stay. The XO said, well, sir, where would you like to stay? And I said, well, my buddy Fred Dickens, Captain Dickens, he, he stayed in a hooch called the Holiday Inn. He said, "Is that still around?" He said, "Oh, yes, sir. A hall dance right over here." He said, "Let me see." "Oh, yeah, there's a bunk available." So I stayed in the same hoots that Captain Dickens stayed in. And after I got everything squared away, the XO said, "Now, there're gonna be cocktails up here at Captain so-and-so's place."

• 57:08Speaker 01

  He showed me where there was, and he said, "So come on up and meet the guys." Well, this captain was great at fixing martinis. So heck, yeah, I went up there, had a martini, they had some hors d'oeuvres out there, and I thought, "Wow, this is Vietnam." So this is really crazy. So I was with them right at two months into the 1st of November. And orders came down for the 25th to draw down and prepare to head back to Hawaii. And I thought to myself, "Man, this is really great. I've been here two months now, I'm going to Hawaii."

• 57:51Speaker 01

  And I'd already been laying out on top of a bunker in a lounge chair. I had a nice suntan. And, of course, my dermatologist doesn't think it's a nice suntan today, but at any rate, I thought, "Wow, this is gonna be..." I said, "I'll get to Hawaii. I'll, you know, I'll already have my tan, everything look good." Well, no, everyone who had less than six months in country got reassigned. So I found my young career on a C-130 several, about a week or so later, headed to ICor. There was no, everything was pacified in 3Cor where the 25th was. I never flew into one hot LZ. In fact, I never flew into an LZ in 3Cor.

• 58:36Speaker 01

  That had all been pacified. So, I mean, I had, I never even heard the door gunners work out with the 25th, because there was, there was no enemy threat, we thought, at least at that time. It wasn't apparent. Get on the C-130, fly me up to Fubai, Fubai International, ICor, very close to the...

• 59:02Speaker 01

  To the north, south Vietnamese border. Get off the aircraft, got my parachute packing bag with me, full of my stuff, pouring down rain, and they all load us into a building and say we were going to go to Screaming Eagles orientation training. And we did that for about a week, then I got reassigned to my regular unit. Now, interesting, I was with Alpha Company, 82nd Aviation Battalion. When I got to the 7th, I was actually assigned as a Staff Maintenance Officer, but I was

• 59:45Speaker 01

  located in Alpha Company, 7th Aviation Battalion. 25th, I go to Alpha Company 25th. Where did I get assigned with 101st Aviation Battalion? Alpha Company, 101st Aviation Battalion, known as the commentary of flight. That was a week after I had become a 101st air assault trooper.

• 1:00:08Jocko Willink?

  Then how long was it before you started flying missions with them?

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Took my check ride the next day. I was a Peter pilot the following day, went into the hot LZ, first time I'd ever heard the M60 machine gun, door gunner and crew chief working out, the ship literally danced when they pull that trigger. You could feel the shake going in. And going out hot LZ, I heard ding ding ding, three pings on the aircraft. Came back and I, I experienced what they call, you got your cherry busted. We took three rounds in the aircraft going out LZ. Came back that night, once you got your cherry busted in the unit, a lot of sprit of corps,

• 1:00:55Speaker 01

  I mean, the sprit of corps like you would, well, you would, because you've experienced that, Jaco, but, but, but I hadn't experienced anything like that. And so what do we do? You had to get initiated before you could wear the unit patch. And we had to drink this drink called a flaming hooker.

• 1:01:14Jocko Willink?

  Sounds tasty.

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  It was Southern Comfort.

• 1:01:25Speaker 01

  And you take a match and you light it. So you got the blue flames coming up.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  And Echo's laughing here like he knows.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  And had to drink it down, all the way down, set the glass down while the blue flame is still burning inside of it. Then turn it upside down, and if more than two flaming drops came out of that glass, you had to drink another one until you got it down. Now, keep in mind, I was an RLO, a real live officer. All of the warrant officers, they had a Spree Corps like you. You've heard of the War Officer Protective Association, the WAPA? They took care of each other. Well, they all, most of them had mustaches. Well, can you imagine drinking that flame and hooker? And you've got a mustache, and that blue flame is coming up.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  And there were quite a few times that the mustaches had to be put out. Of course, the bartender was there with a glass of water that he could throw over in our little officers club.

• 1:02:31Jocko Willink?

  I was, I was on a little assignment overseas and, and we were in a bar. And they had, they had like a executive happy hour from, you know, four till six. So we'd show up there at 3:59, and it was free, it was free drinks, free drinks for two hours. And I had like half a platoon with me. So we're in there, and this was when I was a young, and this guy was crazy. And so we drink for the two hours. And then we get done, and now, obviously, everyone's primed, but I remember telling the bartender, we actually, yeah, we, we, we had run up quite the tab, and I looked at the bartender, I said, "We don't want to drink anything else unless it's on fire."

• 1:03:14Jocko Willink?

  So every drink we poured is lighting everything on fire. It was total, total mayhem.

• 1:03:21Speaker 01

  You know, we all got a, we all couldn't wait till a new guy came in to the outfit. And, and that was in the O Club. Hey, the enlisted guys.

• 1:03:29Jocko Willink?

  God knows what was going on over there.

• 1:03:32Speaker 01

  Sadistic, but, but we couldn't wait till a new guy came in.

• 1:03:38Jocko Willink?

  You know, one of the things that Colonel Jackson talked about and wrote about was, uh, you know, some of the flying that you're doing when you're, when you're, uh, formation flyer, flying, and how it's so much closer than it was back in the States. And then the, the whole thing with the hover holes and getting down in there and having to listen to your crews like a hundred percent. You can't see actually what they're telling you, you just have to trust them. Did you, were you up to speed on that stuff? Or did you have to just get the steep learning curve?

• 1:04:04Speaker 01

  Learned formation flying at Fort Rucker. Fort, Fort Rucker, when I left Fort Rucker, I was confident I could fly that airplane. I knew I could fly that thing. And, um, and we, uh, uh, right where the Jesus nut is on a, on a Huey with it, which, which holds the main rotor in, uh, there's like a, a red rubber gasket. So what you would do is you would, for the helicopter, let's say we're flying, uh, echelon left, uh, all helicopters from the lead are going to the left. To fly formation in that, you would come up and you would have, you would put the red rubber, uh, uh, grommet right on, uh, right about just below the windshield, just at the

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  lower end of the, so that would keep your height above it so you wouldn't get caught up in a rotor wash from the other helicopter, but you would keep it up. And in a, in a staggered or echelon left, uh, you've got the lead, but every other helicopter's a little bit higher than the ones in, in, uh, in front of them. And we flew a lot of formation flying, uh, at Rucker, so I felt very comfortable with that. Um, and, and then I, like I say, I was very fortunate to go to the 82nd, uh, after infantry, after flight school, uh, instead of going straight to nine, because I, I became even more proficient that, uh, more proficient in, in, uh, in formation flying.

• 1:05:28Speaker 01

  But there's one thing you learn in formation flying in NOM is you don't want to get too damn close because one round can take out two, especially if it's 23 mic, mic, or 37. And, uh, and you don't want to be flying through debris. Uh, I mean, you know, so you did, um, and, and we'll get talking about Lamson 719. Uh, we did 20 second separations in, in that.

• 1:05:59Jocko Willink?

  How long were you, how long were you then with 101st before Lamson went down?

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  Okay, um, so I got to, I got to 101st, uh, got into my unit a week before Thanksgiving of 70. Um, quick side story. Uh, my cousin Charlie Finger was with the 501st Signal Battalion, listed guy, on his second tour, volunteered for his second tour. Um, I got ahold of Charlie, brought him over to, uh, our unit, took him to the officer's club. We had Thanksgiving dinner together. Uh, now think about that, you're with your family, having Thanksgiving dinner together, November 1970. And, uh, uh, it was just a wonderful day to see Charlie.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  Uh, I never saw Charlie after that. Uh, he de- roast, uh, went home. Uh, I said, I, I told him, I said, um, Charlie, I'll come over, uh, one night, grab you and, uh, you can be my guest at, um, at, um, the artillery, uh, battalion there, cause they always had the good shows, the USO shows and the Korean shows with all the, all girl Korean bands. I said, I'll come over and get you one night. He's, and he said, sir, uh, I said, Charlie, I'm your cousin. He said, sir, it wouldn't be safe for you as an officer to be around our barracks at night.

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  And, you know, fragging was a thing over there. And it was, so I took him to that. And, all right, so make a long story short. I'm flying combat missions. I flew my first command and control SOG missions probably by in December. Because they just didn't let anybody fly the command and control north missions. You had a chance to have three R and Rs, or you could have two R and Rs. If one of your R and Rs, you wanted to go back to the States. So I left to go back to the States a week after, a week after Christmas. And went back, spent a wonderful time with my family.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  New Year's Eve there with Fred Dickens. He and, by the time, his wife, my old CO, Captain Fred. And I left about a week after, after that to fly back to Vietnam. Got into Tonsonut and tried to get a, went to flight operations. I said, I need to get up to Phu Bai. And the guy said, sir, there's, there's a major, major operation, big thing going on. He said, I don't, I don't know when I can get you out of here. I said, I gotta get out of here quick if there's a major thing going on. I said, he said, well, sir, just stick around here.

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  And lo and behold, within an hour, they had a C-123 flying. That's 130 and the one, there's a big difference between those two aircraft. But you'd rather fly on a 130. Anyhow, C-123 is only two engines.

• 1:09:06Jocko Willink?

  When you were flying those, when you flew SOG missions, I mean, I look at the profile of those SOG missions that those guys were doing. And it just, it's, it seems just completely crazy. Were you thinking that? Were you thinking, okay, here's whatever, two Americans and four Vietnamese soldiers? I'm going to drop them off in the middle of Cambodia or Laos and, and we'll see what happens? Did that seem crazy to you?

• 1:09:32Speaker 01

  You know, it didn't. It didn't.

• 1:09:35Jocko Willink?

  Right on.

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  And I'll tell you why, man. We would fly down to Da Nang. We flew out of Three Lope with SOG. Da Nang was the major base. That was our headquarters. There was one at Phu Bai and there was one at Quan Trang, Ha area. The ones we flew out of Da Nang were crazy. I mean, it was, I mean, it's like, they got the music going and everything. And we'd flight follow with Covey, the Air Force Fixed Wing, who would be up above us and vector us into where we're supposed to go. I don't know how much of this I can, I guess it's pretty declassified by now.

• 1:10:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, I mean, it's pretty declassified. It's been 20 years was the time limit.

• 1:10:18Speaker 01

  Okay, so here's a mission. We go in, we fly a team in, we put them in an area where Covey has either told us or shot white phosphorus down and landed and then we spiral and go down into the landing zone, spiral and go into the landing zone. We drop them off. Then if they get into contact, then we've got to go back in there and pull them out. Which that did happen quite a few times. A lot of times it didn't happen. It didn't happen at all. There were times we went in and they were in contact and we had to pull them out with ropes, Maguire rigs, 120-foot ropes stretched 10 feet, 130-foot.

• 1:11:01Speaker 01

  They had to strap them on, we had to pull them out of the jungle. Sometimes it was ladders that we would drop down and they'd climb up on the ladders and get out. And that was extractions. We never did, well, we did some insertions with ropes too, because they were going out on the side of a mountain, there was no way with foliage and there was no way we could land. So we would put them down. But I remember times that I pulled guys out on ladders and there would be, there were three guys on my ladders. Now, you've got to think about that and the density altitude and what that does to lift a helicopter. So we got them out and got them back in to Vietnam.

• 1:11:46Speaker 01

  That's when you say, oh my, thank God, we're back in Vietnam. You know, that's when you, that's when you start to realize it. And we came in and we had to land in a, like a rice paddy so these guys could get off the ladders and get back in our choppers. And you just didn't, and any, any moment, you just felt like, this is it, I'm gonna, I'm gonna buy it. And a couple of our guys did, and on command and control north missions, and died. And a lot of the SOG guys went with them. So, you know, that's the bad part. I lost fourteen guys, the year I was in, but here's one mission, we flew in, we were

• 1:12:31Speaker 01

  gonna insert a team, landed to the LZ, big elephant grass, probably eight feet high, rotor wash lays the grass down, and when it did, the whole LZ was ringed with NVA. And our door gunner started working out and firing, everybody's firing, and everybody said, sir, get the hell out of here, get the hell out of here. And we were firing, firing, we were taking rounds too, but nobody, nobody aboard our aircraft was injured. I mean, that's just one thing. We would do prisoner raids. Intel would tell us where there was a big NVA battalion headquarters. We had, we had all the, all the intel on it. We knew the

• 1:13:12Speaker 01

  comings and goings had been watched and watched and watched. And we would fly out, fly out of four. The, the third aircraft was always, had the medic on it, and the fourth aircraft was the aircraft that would pull your ass out if you got shot down. First two aircraft would go in. I happened to be on the second aircraft on one of these prisoner raids, where we went in and landed right in the damn middle of a NVA battalion headquarters, the guys on board jump out, I'll bet you we weren't on the ground, twenty seconds, and they're coming back in, they've got captives, they've got all sorts of documents in their hand. We get back on that ship, and we're, our asses out of there, going to the nang. I mean,

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  that's the, and, and it, it was exciting. I mean, I'm not gonna tell you, the anxiety wasn't there, but

• 1:14:04Jocko Willink?

  Sounds exciting to say the least.

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  It was exciting. And they would come back and have cold beers.

• 1:14:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  I mean, that's SOG.

• 1:14:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and another day at SOG.

• 1:14:18Jocko Willink?

  So I guess you did think those missions were a little bit crazy.

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, but, but it was fun crazy. You know, we were young. We didn't know any better. I guess to fly on today, I probably couldn't see the damn instruments, but.

• 1:14:36Jocko Willink?

  So you're flying, you've flying a bunch of those missions and, and now you're, I mean, it sounds like you're racking up some pretty good hours and some pretty good, um, experience at doing it. And, and then, so, so Lam Son, when did you, so you got back from your, your Christmas and New Year's leave. So that's January, whatever.

• 1:14:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's early part of January.

• 1:14:55Jocko Willink?

  You come back and now it's, um, it's, you get told immediately, hey, there's some kind of big operation. We don't really know what it is, but you gotta get up there.

• 1:15:02Speaker 01

  Um, no, they just said there's a big operation going on in I Corps and, and they, and I said, I gotta get up there. Uh, I told them I'm a platoon commander up there. I've got to get up there. Yeah. My guys, uh, need me up there. So, so anyhow, I get up there. Um, it's very well that it's kept quietly. Uh, so when I got into my unit and said, what the hell's going on? People kind of looked at me like, what are you talking about? And I told them all about that. And, uh, my company commander knew about it. Major Clul, Bob Clul, he's in the book. Uh, Bob knew about it. Um, but anyway, that's when I told you that prior,

• 1:15:45Speaker 01

  and this was in January, uh, we take a SOC mission out of, uh, CCM mission out of Donghae. And, uh, we're flying towards the ocean border, uh, crossing in the vicinity of K-Sun when those red balls, orange balls of fire start coming up at us and we have to take evasive action or, or get shot down, uh, by 23 Mike Mike or 37.

• 1:16:14Speaker 01

  And we knew, and, and see, as far as, as far as I'm concerned, that was reconnaissance in prep four. And that wasn't just one reconnaissance, that was just one of many reconnaissance in prep four, Lamsan 719.

• 1:16:29Jocko Willink?

  So, the, the premise of Lamsan 719, and again, the, the book, Undaunted Valor, it's, it's volume three, Lamsan, the subtitles, Lamsan 719. The, the premise of the operation is that America wanted to go into Laos and shut down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They also, America, didn't want to put any troops, any American troops on the ground inside of Laos, because they didn't like the way that looked politically. So, they decided, well, we'll run the operation using South Vietnamese soldiers. But, in order to actually execute the operation, they were gonna need to have American aviation,

• 1:17:13Jocko Willink?

  because America was the only one really capable of doing that job, of airlifting all these South Vietnamese soldiers into Laos. And then on top of that, if you're gonna use the helicopters, then we're gonna use the air support too, and the air assets. So, that, that's sort of the, the premise of the operation, and it's a big operation. The goal, like I said, the goal is to kind of put a, put a halt on, on the, the portion of the Ho Chi Minh Trail that ran through Laos.

• 1:17:39Speaker 01

  And, and, and, and, and, and the headwaters of that was in the town of Sapon. So, that was the final objective, was to capture Sapon. It's spelled T-C-E-P-O-N-E.

• 1:17:55Jocko Willink?

  Right, it's got a weird spelling.

• 1:17:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's got a weird spelling. But, yeah.

• 1:17:59Jocko Willink?

  That, that was the goal, and that was kind of the, that Sapon was the furthest away, the furthest, deepest into Laos, that to get to there would be...

• 1:18:06Speaker 01

  Correct. The furthest north of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, call it the headwaters of the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

• 1:18:13Jocko Willink?

  I would say there's also, and, and reading about it, there was also, the underlying uh, goal was to sort of prove that the South Vietnamese military could conduct these operations, that they were capable, that they were capable of doing these kind of things.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  That was part of Nixon's uh, Vietnamization.

• 1:18:34Speaker 01

  Policy, the more that the South Vietnamese could prove that they could take care of themselves and defend their homeland, then the less there was need of US forces, especially ground forces.

• 1:18:47Jocko Willink?

  So you're saying that your, your company commander kinda knew about it when you showed up there?

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  I have to think he did because Major Clow did not seem overly surprised. In fact, if I recall, and I hope I'm not making this up, but if I recall, he seemed surprised that I made it up in as quick a time as I did from, from Saigon.

• 1:19:12Jocko Willink?

  Now, prior to the actual execution of Lamsan 719, there was another operation that was to push up to, to the Khe Sanh Combat Base.

• 1:19:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, off of Route 9. It's called Dewey Canyon 2.

• 1:19:29Jocko Willink?

  Now, did you participate in Dewey Canyon 2?

• 1:19:32Speaker 01

  You know, I have to think I did, but I'm not, it's kinda hard to, cause I flew so much, I mean, I flew over 1,200 hours and 950 of which were actual combat missions. So I, I have to think that I did. I never recall flying any what they call convoy support. A lot of that would have been done by Charlie model and Cobra gunships to take action. No doubt in my mind that I fly supporting operations for Dewey Canyon 2.

• 1:20:12Speaker 01

  But I, I never quite tagged it as, as Dewey Canyon 2. Hell, I had so much going on anyhow of trying to keep my warrant officers, enlisted men, and 10 helicopters flying.

• 1:20:26Jocko Willink?

  But the point of Operation Dewey Canyon 2 was to, was to push up into Khe Sanh, and get control of it, and then that was gonna then be used as a logistics hub and an air hub to conduct this big operation, Lamsan 719. That's what the purpose was.

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  But in addition to that too, was to put the South Vietnamese Army in a position to where they could readily launch across the border.

• 1:20:58Jocko Willink?

  So pre-staging all these folks, all these soldiers up there.

• 1:21:02Speaker 01

  Roger that, Roger that.

• 1:21:03Jocko Willink?

  And get them ready.

• 1:21:06Jocko Willink?

  The, the, the area that you were going into had some serious enemy troops in there. You know, the, you know, some of the estimates I read, 7,000 combat troops on the ground in that area of Laos, 10,000 support personnel.

• 1:21:25Jocko Willink?

  Another, another 5,000 Path of Laos fighters. So it was, this was, you were going into tough country.

• 1:21:33Speaker 01

  33,000 total is the estimate that's pretty much kicked around of all, of all the categories you, you just described.

• 1:21:43Jocko Willink?

  So when did you, when did you actually find out that this mission was going down?

• 1:21:49Speaker 01

  We got the briefing on it. The mission actually started on 8th February of 71. By that time, 101st Command Post was in operation at Khe Sanh.

• 1:22:06Speaker 01

  General Berry was up there.

• 1:22:09Speaker 01

  Matt Jackson features a lot of Berry in the book.

• 1:22:14Speaker 01

  And I have some stories about that that I'll share with you later on.

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  I flew several missions in support of that, taking troops into Hill 30, Hill 31, Ranger, Arvin Rangers were in 31.

• 1:22:36Speaker 01

  We flew, we have pickup zones, PZs if you will, at various stages we'd land in and then take them to the, to the LZ around there. But that was just in prep for.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  And really.

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  The big action for me, the thing that I guess

• 1:23:05Speaker 01

  made me realize that, my God, there's a real war going on was in El Zilolo, which was on the 3rd of March.

• 1:23:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'll tell you one thing that's interesting when you read this book and when you hear about this, this operation, you know, most of the time when you think of, oh, that what the Vietnamese are doing, it's sort of like what the North Vietnamese do and what the Viet Cong are doing, it's sort of like a hit and run. It doesn't seem like these big conventional operations. And if they did do a big assault on a base, you know, they'd kind of do it, they'd, they'd mess some things up and then they'd leave. They were doing big coordinated attacks against the South Vietnamese forces. This was almost like bordering, in fact, this was like conventional war.

• 1:23:52Speaker 01

  Conventional warfare, correct. And, uh, but you didn't see that right on 8th February. Uh, that came later on. Um, and, um,

• 1:24:05Speaker 01

  it was devastating to, to witness some of what I witnessed. Um, after the 3rd of March, what I witnessed on the ground with the South Vietnamese Army.

• 1:24:18Speaker 01

  Especially when we would go into resupply, um, around Hill 30 and Hill 31.

• 1:24:28Speaker 01

  I, I saw some heroism, but I saw so many, uh, the Arvin Army of the South Vietnamese Army. Uh, saw so many of those soldiers throw their weapons on the ground and run to grab onto our skids so that when we lifted off, we'd pull them out of the battle space. Uh, that was disheartening. It was horrible.

• 1:24:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I remember reading one, one part where it's exactly what you said, a resupply comes in and the, the helicopters, as they leave, they're overloaded with Arvin soldiers that are just trying to get out of there.

• 1:25:02Speaker 01

  Throw their weapons on the ground and run and grab onto a skid. Uh, I mean, I witnessed, uh, soldiers losing their grip and falling

• 1:25:14Speaker 01

  1,500, 2,000 feet to the ground below. And, and you think, do you feel sorry for them or do you say? Oh, you coward. You got what's coming to you. And, you know, it got to the point, Jaco, where we would, I remember landing in, and I can't remember, I think it was thirty-one that I landed in, but we were landing where mortars were blowing up right in front of us. And we would have to maneuver over and mortars were flying, were hitting everywhere in that L C. And we would literally come to about a ten-foot hover, kick off the supplies. Coming to lower, because they would jump on your ship.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  And even at a ten-foot hover, they would run, jump on people's back, and they would hoof them up onto the skid. I mean, a ten-foot hover. And, and you start to wonder, well, when's it gonna be my day? You know? And I remember having this, having this thing that came through my mind is, you know, I know I'm gonna die. Something's not gonna worry about dying. I know I'm gonna die. Just don't let me get shot up so bad my mother can't

• 1:26:31Speaker 01

  recognize me.

• 1:26:34Speaker 01

  But I knew I was, I was gonna get it. I just, and then it didn't bother me anymore. It did not bother me anymore

• 1:26:43Speaker 01

  about dying. I accepted the fact that was gonna happen. I knew God'd take care of me. And my mother would recognize me.

• 1:26:54Jocko Willink?

  Having that feeling, though, and then seeing the South Vietnamese, just, you're doing all you can to help them out, risking your lives, and they're just wanting to get out of there.

• 1:27:06Speaker 01

  We picked up body bags of the South Vietnamese, body bags for U S forces, and you've seen them. They're sturdy, they're zippered. The body bags for the South Vietnamese forces were like one of our Martinis and bags. Little thin plastic bags, had bodies in them. They had laid out in the sun for, for several days. They were all bloated and body fluids filling up inside the body bags and, and.

• 1:27:34Speaker 01

  That's the only time where we really put skids on the ground so they could load up bodies. And of course Vietnamese didn't run and jump on the aircraft because they didn't want to run and jump on all those bodies that were bloated. And it got to the point where we had to, where we had to wear gas masks. One of us in the cockpit had to have a gas mask on because of the smell was just nauseating. And we would bring them back into Kson or Elsie Brown, wherever our pickup zone was. And the South Vietnamese troops would unload the bodies. And I remember, I remember one, it just, it just, the guy grabbed the arm of a body and when he tried to pull the body out, the whole arm came out of the, out of the body.

• 1:28:19Speaker 01

  It was just sickening. It was beyond, it was beyond anything that most humans would ever experience. And, you know, you, you go through that and you say, well, what's the purpose? Why are we, why are we here? Why are we doing this? I had a warrant officer who I asked during Lam Son to ask, I said, I need more people to fly this mission. He says, I'm not going to fly the mission. I said, I need you, I'm not going to fly it. I said, why not? He says, because nobody cares. Congress doesn't care whether I live or die and what's the use? Look what they're doing up there.

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  And I said, well, Mr., and I won't say his name, but you got to do what you got to do. He had too many hours, you know, he had over 140 hours flying that month. So he was, he was way within his legal rights to say, I'm not going to fly anymore. But guess what? Most of us had that as well. Most of us were flying, I mean, dead tired and we did it. And, but you know, that started me thinking, who cares? Who really cares whether we do, whether we do or not? Whether we die or whether we come home alive? I mean, look at what the South Vietnamese are doing. Vietnization? Yeah, tell me about it. Richard Nixon, why aren't you over here at Lam Son 719 looking at this?

• 1:29:41Speaker 01

  And then you tell me Vietnization. It made me a changed person.

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  And we hadn't even talked about LZ Lolo.

• 1:29:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but I mean LZ Lolo came a little into the operation. I mean, I just kind of want to run through a little bit of the timeline of, so this, this operation starts on February 8th. There's 4,000 Arvin that are going in on, on Route 9. The 39th Ranger Battalion is heloed into LZ Ranger. The 1st Infantry Division's going into LZ Blue and Dawn and White and Brown. And, and FSB's Hotel Delta and Delta 1. And again, the, the book gives such good detail on all sides. The planning, what the, how the decisions were being made. It's just, it's just a fantastic recounting of what happened.

• 1:30:42Jocko Willink?

  And meanwhile, it's still Vietnam. You still got bad weather. You still got low clouds. You got heavy anti-aircraft fire.

• 1:30:49Jocko Willink?

  The, there's, a lot of airstrikes are happening. So, you know, the, the B-52s are dropping bombs.

• 1:30:58Speaker 01

  Arc lights.

• 1:30:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the, but look, there's a lot of, a lot of NVA up there and they're, they're ready to fight.

• 1:31:08Jocko Willink?

  Then they start actually attacking, like I said, like, like by, by, I don't know, February 16th, 17th. The, the, the NVA starts doing organized attacks.

• 1:31:21Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:31:21Jocko Willink?

  And really bringing it to, to the, to the people, to the, to the South Vietnamese soldiers that are now on the ground.

• 1:31:36Jocko Willink?

  And here's, here's another thing that I was reading about.

• 1:31:41Jocko Willink?

  By February 24th, there, there were reports coming back that the, that the North Vietnamese had completed a new route. And they were just going around that area of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They were just, you know, okay, well, you guys want to block that? Cool. We'll just, we had another alternate route. February 25th, just a massive North Vietnamese assault. And it's combined arms. They got armor, they got artillery, they got infantry assault. They're doing combined arms assaults. Again, this is not what we typically think of in Vietnam. I know it happened from time to time, but it's not what you generally think of in Vietnam. You don't think of pitched conventional warfare like we're dealing with here.

• 1:32:26Jocko Willink?

  There's just, yeah, yeah, the one quote I got was 94, there's a helicopter resupply to FSB 30.

• 1:32:37Jocko Willink?

  And 94 South Vietnamese soldiers forced their way onto the helicopters to get out of there, including the commander.

• 1:32:47Jocko Willink?

  That's on March 2nd, by the way.

• 1:32:52Jocko Willink?

  We get to March 3rd, which you've discussed a few times and,

• 1:33:00Jocko Willink?

  well, actually, let me jump into this small, small portion of the book here that, that talks about some of what you guys were doing. I'm gonna go to the book here. Warrant Officer Doug Womack, Rattler 28 and Chalk 3 considered aborting his approach, watching Arnie being shot down and hearing Flight Lead calling for mission abort. Not hearing anything else about aborting the mission, he decided he needed to insert his load of Arvin soldiers. Unbenoched to him was the fact that no Arvin had survived in the first two aircraft.

• 1:33:37Jocko Willink?

  Approaching the landing zone, he was subjected to the same intense fire as the chocks before him. Upon landing, an RPG rocket was fired but slammed into a stump and exploded, showering the aircraft with shrapnel. When it did, time stood still for Mr. Womack, as it seemed he could count the main rotor passing in front of the aircraft. Several rounds ripped across the aircraft from three bursts of AK-47 fire. The rotor blades, cabin, lower fuselage and skids all received the damage. As the aircraft lifted out of the landing zone, hammer blows were felt by the pilot, and the pilot looked back. Not only were there holes in the floor of the cargo area,

• 1:34:19Jocko Willink?

  but strange sounds told him that the main rotor might have taken some hits as well. Chalk four followed chalk three into the landing zone where it received intense small arms fire, crashed and burned. Chalk four crew scrambled back to chalk five and rode out. This kept up as each chalk came into the landing zone to drop off the Arvin soldiers onboard. Chalk sixteen, Camanchero three zero flown by Bob Morris, entered the cauldron of fire and landed. Like everyone before him, he could feel and hear the hits on his aircraft. "We're on fire," someone said over the road radio, but didn't identify themselves.

• 1:35:02Jocko Willink?

  Morris pulled in power and initiated his takeoff. Very calmly, he heard his crew chief say over the intercom, "Uh, Mr. Morris, you do know we're on fire, don't you?" Mr. Morris quickly returned to the landing zone and exited the aircraft. Chalk eighteen approached the landing zone at ninety knots airspeed. Instead of the usual forty knots when so close, he picked out his landing point just as a mortar round exploded at that spot. Suddenly his tail dropped low and the nose went high as Captain Tate went into a hard deceleration with numerous hammer taps on the aircraft. Three feet from his touchdown point, there was a loud explosion. Explosion. A gaping hole appeared in the window frame. And there was the smell of hot metal.

• 1:35:46Jocko Willink?

  Engine oil pressure was no longer steady but fluctuating. Arvin soldiers had no desire to wait for him to land and dove out of the aircraft to safety of a prone position on the ground. Pulling in an, pulling in an armpit of collective, Tate's aircraft, tail number zero four nine, raced out of the landing zone with a hail of small arms bullets chasing after him. His aircraft had flown its last mission. Within an hour, only nineteen of the forty aircraft were able to enter the landing zone.

• 1:36:29Jocko Willink?

  Nineteen out of forty aircraft were able to enter the landing zone.

• 1:36:34Speaker 01

  Morris crashed in the landing zone, came back in, crashed. We had another aircraft went in, Berg, flown by Berg, he crashed in the LZ. They were on the ground. One of the co-pilots, Captain Jerry Cruz, Commissar, been in second tour in Vietnam, first tour as a Ranger. Jerry was on the ground with a Pric 25 radio, calling in airstrikes and actually conducting the ground warfare in the LZ. Because the Arvin officer, Major, just, Jerry knew what he was doing. Jerry was the one that eventually said, "We got

• 1:37:14Speaker 01

  to halt this because there's too much crap going on in here." And Kirk Lauter, obviously, took it, and we stopped the insertion for a while, went back, picked it back up again later on the afternoon. That morning, I, we got hit by a rocket propelled grenade, as you've described, the gaping hole in the windshield, hit the windshield strut. It was shot at about a forty-five degree angle, so when it hit the windshield, exploded out instead of exploding in. Crew chief said, "Sir, sir, sir, get the ass out of here, get the ass out of here, sir, sir." The nunciate panel, which is all our control warning

• 1:37:56Speaker 01

  lights, looked like a Christmas tree lit up. And we took off, within several seconds, we started feeling harshness in the controls. The hydraulic system warning light was blinking. And within another short amount of time, we lost all hydraulics. It took both of us on the controls to, it's like going down the highway at eighty-five miles an hour, and the power steering goes out, and you're coming up on some major curves. It took us both on the controls. We were finally able to get it back in, called emergency at K-SUN.

• 1:38:36Speaker 01

  We were like number two or three emergency at that time. Guys ahead of us who had gotten blown up on low-low. And we got it down, we...

• 1:38:49Speaker 01

  We had to make a low, slow into, and we thought, God, we're gonna get shot out of the sky just trying to get into land at, on the pier steel planking runway at K-Sun. But my God, it was a textbook landing. And we were able to get her down and, and no sooner than we got it down and asked the aircraft to do some half of the chain, pull, pull the aircraft right off the, off the runway, getting ready for another, another person calling emergency. I remember Colonel Fenander, Bobby Fenander, he was our battalion commander, 101st Aviation Battalion, which was part of the 101st Aviation Group, commanded by Colonel Davis, you'll

• 1:39:33Speaker 01

  see Davis's name in that book. Fenander is also mentioned in that book. But Fenander comes out and sort of throws his arms around us like, God, I'm so glad you guys made it. And he said, come on, there's, there's another briefing going on in the tent. So we all ran over to the big briefing tent and.

• 1:39:52Jocko Willink?

  And your, your aircraft was, is it, is it the correct word totaled?

• 1:39:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, it couldn't be flown again.

• 1:39:57Jocko Willink?

  Couldn't be flown again.

• 1:39:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Now, whether they hooked it out of there and got it repaired or what, but it, it shot out hydraulics. We had 47 holes in that aircraft that morning. We counted the holes in the aircraft. Forty-seven holes and lost hydraulics and the.

• 1:40:13Jocko Willink?

  Any of you guys, any of your guys get wounded in the aircraft?

• 1:40:15Speaker 01

  None. Isn't that amazing? Isn't that amazing? I mean, it just, it, it just blows my mind. But Fenander came out and I thought it was interesting, here's Lieutenant Colonel coming out and just like welcoming us home and, all right, we gotta get in the briefing tent. We got this thing. And we had a briefing tent for the, we were in the briefing tent, Kirk Lauter, all were, Kirk Lauter was commanding the 223rd Aviation Battalion. And he told us about the afternoon mission, we gotta get back in there, we got more troops to insert into low, low. And Colonel Fenander looked at me and he said, well, I'm sure you want to go in there and fly. Two of your, two of your crews are on the ground in there. I said, yes, sir, I certainly do, but I don't have an aircraft.

• 1:41:00Speaker 01

  He said, well, take mine. I said, sir. He said, take mine, but the only thing, you gotta take my crew chief with you. And then he pulled me aside, he said, now, listen, that's a brand new aircraft. Don't you bring that thing back the way you brought yours back this morning? I said, yes, sir.

• 1:41:16Jocko Willink?

  Well, you didn't obey that order very well, did you?

• 1:41:19Speaker 01

  No, because I, fifty-eight holes in his aircraft when we got back that afternoon. We were able to rescue the guys off the ground.

• 1:41:27Jocko Willink?

  So, talk us through that. So, so you launch again to go back into this is, by the way, this is LZ Lolo. You call it Lulu?

• 1:41:34Speaker 01

  Lolo.

• 1:41:34Jocko Willink?

  Lolo.

• 1:41:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's named after Lola Bridgetta. They were all named after, Liz was after Elizabeth Taylor. What was the other one? I can't think of the name right now.

• 1:41:47Speaker 01

  But they were all named after Hollywood starlets. But Gina Little Bridgetta.

• 1:41:52Jocko Willink?

  You get the briefing of, okay, we got guys on the ground. We got to go back in there.

• 1:41:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:57Jocko Willink?

  And you just have forty-seven holes in your aircraft.

• 1:41:59Speaker 01

  That morning.

• 1:42:00Jocko Willink?

  You saw a bunch of your friends get shot down. You saw a bunch of other aircraft get shot down that are sitting in the LZ now.

• 1:42:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:42:05Jocko Willink?

  You get brought in the briefing room. Hey, you got to go again. You say, I don't have an aircraft, aircraft. The boss says, you can take mine.

• 1:42:14Speaker 01

  Didn't even have twenty-five hours. Brand new Huey. And the only one caveat, you got to take my crew chief. Okay.

• 1:42:24Speaker 01

  So, we get to start, we get to say, okay, let's crank them. Oh, and by the way, there was no unit integrity anymore. I mean, we were just all kind of a whole big unit of mismatched aviation.

• 1:42:40Jocko Willink?

  Whoever could get in a bird, whoever could go.

• 1:42:42Speaker 01

  And so, we take off. We have troops on board.

• 1:42:49Speaker 01

  We take off, we put those troops on the ground.

• 1:42:54Speaker 01

  And I'm hovering around for a few seconds to make sure that our guys have gotten off. They were picked up by common chairs in front of me, but I wanted to make sure that we had everybody off the ground. And by that time, we're, as you described, the hammer taps on the screen. They were, I mean, it was just all over. And it's like I said earlier, some people say, what was it like? I said, take your bare hand and grab a wasp nest full of wasp. That's what it was like. And so.

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  Again, the same scenario, taking all these hits. Thank God didn't get hit by an RPG. But the nunciator panel listing all the circuit. If a major system goes down or is damaged, you have a little light that flashes on. And on that light, it says, for example, hydraulics. So you know something's happened to your hydraulic system. Tail rotor, knows something's happened to your tail rotor. So, but the one that got me that started flashing was main rotor transmission.

• 1:43:53Jocko Willink?

  What does that one mean?

• 1:43:56Speaker 01

  Transmission.

• 1:43:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh, the transmission.

• 1:43:58Speaker 01

  Main rotor.

• 1:43:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, okay, so it means what it says.

• 1:44:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:44:03Speaker 01

  And we got her back on the ground, we were able to come to hover. We put it down at K sign. And the main rotor locked, seized, turned the chopper almost 270 degrees around from our landing head. There were actually Bell tech reps up at K sign. Looking at damage and what, because they were writing their reports for, hey, this is what we need to improve on the newer models of the Huey. They were writing their reports. The guy told me, he said, sir, you're very lucky. He said, you could have had, that transmission could have seized in the air. He said, you guys wouldn't be here.

• 1:44:48Speaker 01

  And it seized on the ground.

• 1:44:51Speaker 01

  Fanfare came over.

• 1:44:56Speaker 01

  Fifty holes in an aircraft.

• 1:44:59Jocko Willink?

  And the locked seized transmission.

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  Seized transmission.

• 1:45:05Speaker 01

  That helicopter obviously didn't fly again that day. That's two of them, one day. We.

• 1:45:17Speaker 01

  Like I say, we'd lost a lot of aircraft that day and it was getting nighttime. We had this guy that liked to fix this stuff called Comaturo Stu. And there were, on K-Son, there was actually wild onions that you could pull out of the ground. And he and a bunch of guys had collected that. He always kept this pot and poured the canned water in this pot and throw those things, then put a bunch of sea rations in there and stir all that stuff up. And, you know, anything tastes good with Texas Pete on it. And so, so we were all, he had all that stuff done and, you know, we were, everybody was sort of sitting around.

• 1:46:00Speaker 01

  I think he had some paper plates or something with him and, you know, you eat with your fingers and all that stuff. We were all sort of gathered around there waiting for Major Claude to come over and tell us what our, you know, next missions were. We'd lost, we took ten aircraft up that morning and we lost, well, we lost, if you count eleven aircraft, Colonel Fernandez-Bird, we lost seven. We did have one, one gunner hit, but, you know, Purple Heart wound, but superficial.

• 1:46:43Speaker 01

  But still, he got hit, you know, that's, that's bad stuff. But we're sitting there, sort of gathering around and all of a sudden we see coming towards us this figure, just tall and lean and, and just, and I, and I got the glint of the stars on his helmet. And so he got closer to us, he just, he was the epitome of spit-shined boots, and it was General Syd Berry.

• 1:47:14Speaker 01

  And he came over and he said, "I just want to tell you, Comancheros, what a great job he did today." And he said, "I don't want to disturb your chow." And we said, "Well, sir, come on, have some chow." And he said, "No, that's your chow. I grabbed something to eat up here, but I just wanted you all to know what a great job he did today." And with that, he said, "Girlfriend Nader, I'm gonna release you all for the night." So we all jumped on the four remaining aircraft and came back to Camp Eagle.

• 1:47:48Jocko Willink?

  There's a section in here, in the book, where that gets described a little bit. You're on this flight back to Camp Eagle, and I'm going to the book here. It says, "Sitting mesmerized on the floor of one of the Hueys was Captain Jay Tate, Comanchero 26. Tate, the second flight platoon leader, was deep in thought, having lost two aircraft this day to enemy fire. The flight was at 6,000 feet, flying over a cloud overcast, with the sun projecting the aircraft's shadow on the cloud below them. In addition, a halo appeared around the shadow.

• 1:48:29Jocko Willink?

  He was sitting in the doorway, behind the right-seat pilot, with a set of headphones that the crew chief had given him. Wondering to himself why he and his crew had survived this horrendous day, he heard a voice say to him, 'Don't worry, Jay. You're gonna be okay.' He looked up to see who was talking to him. No one was. Each passenger was lost in their own thoughts. He heard the voice again, 'Don't worry, Jay. You're gonna be okay.' Just then, Amazing Grace played on the Armed Forces Vietnam Radio Network." And there's a footnote here that says, "One week later, Jay received a letter from his mother.

• 1:49:12Jocko Willink?

  She related a dream she'd had the night before, in which Jay's father had told her, 'Don't worry, Jay. You are going to be okay.'" The letter was dated 4 March. Jay still has the letter.

• 1:49:42Speaker 01

  Touching.

• 1:49:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a, that's an amazing, amazing story.

• 1:49:47Speaker 01

  Emotional.

• 1:49:53Speaker 01

  I watched that shadow, we were actually flying between two layers of clouds. The sun broke through the upper layer and cast the shadow. And of course, the heat of the chopper, the coolness of that altitude formed sort of a rainbow effect around that shadow. And, uh, the, the crew chief actually didn't lend me a set of earphones. I had my flight helmet on and had it plugged in, listening to AFVN, because I had been talking about, he said, there's a major action, a major war going on up in Oddcore.

• 1:50:34Speaker 01

  And he said, uh, he said, uh, there's been a lot of, uh, a lot of helicopters, uh, destroyed. And, uh, he said, I want to play this next song for these guys. That's when he played Amazing Grace. And, uh, I can tell you, as I sit here right now, I heard that voice. And to get that letter and to hear my mom and to hear her, read her words, that she

• 1:51:12Speaker 01

  thought dad was telling her, "Don't worry, Jay's gonna be okay." And she woke my dad up and dad said, "Oh, honey, you're dreaming. Go back to sleep." She said, "No, you said, didn't you tell me Jay's gonna be okay?" He said, "Honey, don't worry, you're, don't tell me there's not a God." I mean, if, I pretended to be a Christian at one time, but I'll tell you what, that afternoon, I became a Christian.

• 1:51:45Speaker 01

  That's the only way I can say why I survived. And that's not to say those who died weren't. Cause I had prayed, "God, I know I'm gonna die. Just don't let me get shot up so bad my mother won't recognize me."

• 1:51:59Speaker 01

  And I came home.

• 1:52:03Speaker 01

  A changed person.

• 1:52:11Speaker 01

  When my mother died,

• 1:52:14Speaker 01

  she had the same pastor. She passed away in 2010.

• 1:52:21Speaker 01

  She had relayed that story about the dream to her pastor. And he had made notes about that. That was in his file. And during her celebration of life service, he talked about that.

• 1:52:39Jocko Willink?

  When you got done, when you guys flew back to Camp Eagle, did you, what, did you stand down for the night? And then you went back into it?

• 1:52:52Speaker 01

  Our flight ops guys were monitoring everything on our company frequency. And they had heard all the chaos. And the horror that was being dealt to us. And so of the 10 crew,

• 1:53:17Speaker 01

  we all came back on those four ships. Those 11 ships if you count Colonel Fernandez's ship.

• 1:53:27Speaker 01

  They were all outside waiting for us to come in. Waving their hats. And we all landed. And they all ran up and everybody was getting a hug. And everybody was, cold beer was on the, on the flight line. And it was just a big celebration. And especially because we brought, hell, Morris and his crew, and Berg and his crew, Jerry Cruz, we got them off of there. And they were sitting on, on the floor too. Plugged in, listening to something.

• 1:54:10Speaker 01

  That's the camaraderie. And as I told Matt Jackson, I said, aviation crews are different. Rank is superfluous. Everybody is, has a specific mission. Crew chief, door gunner, co-pilot, aircraft commander. Everybody has a specific mission. But nobody can do that one mission by themselves. It takes all of us working together as a team. And I don't care if I'm a captain and you're a spec four crew chief. I'm no better than you are. And if it wasn't for you, I couldn't be flying this airplane.

• 1:54:53Speaker 01

  Same with the door gunner. That's a lesson you learn out of it. You learn a lot about team. You learn about personal courage. You learn about personal responsibility. You learn a certain sense of tenacity. You can't be lazy. The dedication's gotta be there. And that's what I experienced with these guys in Vietnam. Every one of them. There was no lackard. Every one of them.

• 1:55:36Speaker 01

  Even the guys in the maintenance hangar that didn't fly those missions with us. And many of them would jump in to fly a mission just to get out there and do it. But even to the clerk that wrote the awards up, there was such a sense of dedication and camaraderie that I have never experienced in my entire life since then. Never.

• 1:56:05Speaker 01

  In my 20 years in uniform and the 13 years that I was fortunate to serve as a civilian with the Office of the Secretary of Defense, nothing, nothing will ever compare to what I experienced, especially in the Lamsan 719. Even the Command and Control North missions, though they were hairy, though they had some twists and turns I would have never expected. And we lost two crew on Command and Control North missions. That's horrible. But nothing compares with Lamsan 719.

• 1:56:50Speaker 01

  And I think that's where the, what we now see as air assault, that's where it was born. It was born there. We had to think on our feet. We did things that weren't written down. We had to think on our feet. And, I mean, like coming to the 10-foot hover versus putting your skids in the ground, how do you learn that? You learn it from experience. Just things. I guess they're being learned today and more as they teach air assault at Fort Campbell

• 1:57:33Speaker 01

  today. But my God, that was, I went to a reunion at Fort Campbell several years back, and the guys are all flying Blackhawks now, then. They looked at us like we were WWII pilots, flying a B-29 with the low tech, all this. And they were captivated by the stories.

• 1:58:02Speaker 01

  That we could tell.

• 1:58:07Speaker 01

  You know, if it wasn't for GPS, I couldn't drive my car from point A to point B. But up in the air, I could shoot a vector and I could say pop smoke and identify the smoke and knew exactly where I was going. Just things you learn. Probably one of the awards I'm most proud of is an Army Accommodation Medal. And I got that from a battalion commander. We inserted his soldiers into the Ashaw Valley. This was after, after 719. And it'd been a long day for them. And sun, it was start, sun was starting to set and I get a call from, and I, something

• 1:58:52Speaker 01

  six. And I answered the phone, he says, could you take a war mission? I said, well, yes, sir, sure, sure we can. I need to call ops because they're expecting us. He said, well, I want to treat my troops to ice cream. And they've got ice cream in burmite cans on our log pad back at Eagle. I said, not a problem, sir. And we flew an ice cream mission in there. And he awarded his troops for their hard work. And I got an ARCO for that.

• 1:59:34Jocko Willink?

  I bet you that ice cream tasted good.

• 1:59:37Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And after that, I went with Landon and LZ. Many times I'd get out of the cockpit. Always wore spit shine boots. I, I was dressed right, dressed ready in front the whole time. I always wore spit shine boots. But I made it my goal, I was gonna get out of that damn cockpit. And I'd say, okay, Peter Pilot, you got it. Co-pilot. And I'd help the troops unload supplies off the ship. And I, I want to think they appreciated that.

• 2:00:16Speaker 01

  Here's a aviation captain getting out of the cockpit and he's doing sweat work. That's what I learned in Vietnam.

• 2:00:28Jocko Willink?

  We had a, um, of, and just an unbelievable relationship with 101st in the Battle of Ramadi. The, the first of 506 was there.

• 2:00:37Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:00:38Jocko Willink?

  And, um, can't, I could never say enough good things about their leadership and the soldiers on the ground. The fighting that they did was just, um, amazing, amazing courage. And, uh,

• 2:00:59Jocko Willink?

  one of my guys, Mikey Monsour, was killed during our mission, supporting them. And, uh, when we got home, we went out and on their wall, where they have the list of the soldiers that they lost in the Battle of Ramadi, they have Mikey's name up there with them.

• 2:01:24Speaker 01

  I think we're fortunate, Jacque. We're fortunate that we knew people like that.

• 2:01:31Speaker 01

  And there will be people who will go to their graves that never experience that kind of heroism, that kind of commitment, that kind of courage, that kind of teamwork, the camaraderie, they will never, ever experience it.

• 2:01:48Speaker 01

  And I think you and I are very fortunate that we've had that opportunity.

• 2:01:53Jocko Willink?

  Indeed. Wouldn't trade it for the world.

• 2:02:02Jocko Willink?

  We, what, going back to, to, to Lam Saan, once you had that, what, did they give you a night of rest and then you started flying missions again?

• 2:02:12Speaker 01

  Uh, I had two days down and then started flying again. It was after that, that, uh, during the resupplies, when I think the Arvin knew that...

• 2:02:27Speaker 01

  The NVA had a hell of a lot more confidence in their ability than the Arvin did.

• 2:02:34Speaker 01

  It was after that, during, doing those resupply missions in there that, that I actually experienced them abandoning the battle space. I didn't experience that before LMSON 719.

• 2:02:51Speaker 01

  I always thought it was interesting when we would, we'd go into a PZ, early morning, put, put it, put the choppers down, waiting for them to load up, the Arvin, the Saffit needs to load up. But I'd see them sitting there, and they had water in their steel pots, and they were brushing their teeth. And it was like, this is extremely important that I brush my teeth. And I always thought, well, that's kind of interesting that they're doing that personal hygiene, and they're gonna pour the water out, put their helmet liners back in, put their helmets on, they're gonna climb aboard this aircraft, and God knows

• 2:03:31Speaker 01

  what faces them when they hit the LZ. But they made sure that their teeth were clean.

• 2:03:42Jocko Willink?

  As this goes on, like you said, the tide started to turn, and, and I think the goal became just to get to, how'd you say it, Chiponi? Is that how they say it?

• 2:03:55Speaker 01

  Chipone.

• 2:03:56Jocko Willink?

  Chipone. The goal is to get there, they kinda got there, like, almost like playing tag, touched it, yeah, we made it, and then said, let's get out of here.

• 2:04:09Speaker 01

  And by the way, there was hardly anything there by then.

• 2:04:17Jocko Willink?

  Then, and, and then as the, as the Arvin started to retreat, then the, the NVA stepped up the attacks even more. And it just slaughtered.

• 2:04:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's where I picked up the body bags with the dead Arvin soldiers in them.

• 2:04:41Jocko Willink?

  Turns into a bit of a rout as the, as the Arvin are now leaving. You know, there's, again, I mean, I'm just gonna, a couple of days here, March 21st. The, the NVA, the North Vietnamese attack, their division attacks the second and third battalions. US air support during the day included 788 Hilo gunship sorties, 157 tactical airstrikes and 11 B-52 strikes. Fast forward another day, March 23rd.

• 2:05:19Jocko Willink?

  756 Hilo gunship sorties, 238 tactical airstrikes, 11 B-52 strikes. This is as they're kind of getting back to the border into South Vietnam. Correct. March 25th, finally, 45 days after the start of the operation, all the South Vietnamese forces are out of Laos and... Well, so to speak. Yeah. Stragglers. Yeah, um, I guess the ones that they are accounting for are back.

• 2:05:57Jocko Willink?

  April 6th, the basic Khe Son is under attack and it gets abandoned. And to your point earlier, on April 7th, so that's April 6th, the, the operation is over, Khe Son is abandoned. April 7th, President Nixon declares, "Tonight I can report that Viet- Vietnamization has succeeded." And announces a further withdrawal of 100,000 more troops. Friendly losses during this operation.

• 2:06:32Jocko Willink?

  Seven fixed wing planes, 108 helicopters, lost. 618 helicopters damaged, 20% beyond repair, 32 artillery pieces captured, and these are South Vietnamese artillery pieces, South Vietnamese tanks, 71 of them. South Vietnamese armored vehicles, 163 of them. 37 half-tracks, 278 trucks destroyed.

• 2:06:58Jocko Willink?

  South Vietnamese lost, and I couldn't really come up with a great number on this, but it's between 5,000 and 15,000 men killed, wounded, or missing, depending on the source that you go to. Americans, 1,149 wounded, 38 missing in action, 215 killed in action.

• 2:07:37Speaker 01

  You know, that's the second time we left Qaishan. We left it in 68, after the Marines got overrun.

• 2:07:48Speaker 01

  And here we go again, and you often hear combat soldiers say, "We fought hard, we lost guys in our unit to take that hill, and after we took it, we left it. Now we have to go back and take it again."

• 2:08:01Jocko Willink?

  There it is.

• 2:08:07Jocko Willink?

  When, so now this operation's over. I mean, did, did, did attitudes start to change? You're hearing Nixon saying that Vietnamization is working, and you see the, you see the South Vietnamese fleeing the battlefield. What was the, what was the attitude of you all?

• 2:08:27Speaker 01

  In my unit, and that's all I can speak for.

• 2:08:32Speaker 01

  The esprit de corps never ceased. We were still flying command and control north, supporting those guys. And their mission grew even more critical because they were there judging, okay, now that lambsdom's over, what's the paving, the North Vietnamese Army doing now? Where are they? You know, it was during that time, shortly after I left, they overran Quan Tridong Ha. Evans, certainly within their sight, Camp Evans, which was north of Camp Bigot, 101st

• 2:09:17Speaker 01

  Headquarters. But I never saw any sense of behavior that said, okay, well, 719's over, I guess the war's over. I never saw that attitude. Our soldiers remained very professional soldiers. That's amazing because many of them were just 19-years-old. Some of them were 18. I had a warrant officer of 21. I mean, I was an old dude. I was 25.

• 2:09:58Speaker 01

  I never, never once questioned our ability as an aviation unit to do the job, the mission that we were assigned to do, even after, even up until the day I left. When I became the operations officer, my last four months in country, I got a chance to look at the battle space in a different way. Because I would go to battalion, in battalion ops, and look at that, then come back and put that into company ops. And...

• 2:10:32Speaker 01

  Work our portion of the mission, our company's portion of the battalion mission.

• 2:10:38Speaker 01

  And I'd bring the guys into the briefing room, the guys are gonna be flying that mission.

• 2:10:45Speaker 01

  And I'd say, okay, this is our objective right here.

• 2:10:51Speaker 01

  Now, how do we get there? We're here, this is our objective, our mission is this, we gotta put so many troops in there.

• 2:10:59Speaker 01

  How do we get there? And usually it wasn't just one place, it was if it was a company plus, it would be maybe three different places we'd have to go. And I never would say, okay, this is how we're gonna do it, you're gonna do it. I'd say, how do we get there? What's the best approach to make this happen? And I was the operations officer. And I'd have these young war nurses, oh, let's do this today. And somebody said, no, no, we can't do that, we gotta do this. Somebody said, well, let's do it this way. Well, okay, well, let's take a piece of that. Next thing you know, they had planned the operation.

• 2:11:36Speaker 01

  All I did was approve it.

• 2:11:39Speaker 01

  But that, that's a leadership skill that I learned

• 2:11:46Speaker 01

  from people like Colonel Bobby Fernander,

• 2:11:51Speaker 01

  who never said, you're gonna do it this way. He always sort of facilitated, if you will, facilitative leadership. And that's what you're seeing now in business, facilitative leadership. Getting people involved, and if, the more you're involved, the more you take ownership. And that's what I saw in our guys. That's what I saw in our guys during LAMSA. That's what I saw in our guys after LAMSA. Now, when we were flying command and control north,

• 2:12:24Speaker 01

  we did what they told us to do.

• 2:12:28Speaker 01

  They had a very specific way of doing things and that's the way we were gonna do it. And that's fine. And that's fine. But this is the way we did it.

• 2:12:40Speaker 01

  And I mirrored my leadership style after people that I had great respect for.

• 2:12:49Speaker 01

  To include General Hal Moore, who became Lieutenant General Hal Moore. And the way that the camaraderie, the, the so, not camaraderie.

• 2:12:59Speaker 01

  I don't wanna say I was buddy buddy with General Moore, cuz I was not. But we had a, we had a relationship in the cockpit. And I think he respected my desires, what I wanted to do. Obviously he did, cuz I wouldn't have gone to Nam had it not been for that.

• 2:13:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't know if you didn't have a relationship with Hal Moore. Jeez, if you were friends with him, who knows what he would have done for you?

• 2:13:20Speaker 01

  What a great man he was. But, but I left, I left Vietnam feeling very good about my unit and about what we did.

• 2:13:32Speaker 01

  I did change my views a bit to think that

• 2:13:38Speaker 01

  my tour in Nam will be successful if I can do things to support my US troops.

• 2:13:48Speaker 01

  So that changed from supporting the whole concept of Vietnamization. For example, if I can bring ice cream out to those troops after they've busted their butt all day inserting,

• 2:14:02Speaker 01

  then I've done something that I can be proud of. And, uh,

• 2:14:08Speaker 01

  and that's where my mind sort of changed after being in country for about eight months.

• 2:14:14Speaker 01

  To support my soldiers. And to do what I could to bring them home.

• 2:14:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the leadership stuff you're talking about, that's exactly the best leaders I had was they would tell us what the mission was, what the goal was, and then say come up with a plan. And that's what I always tried to do myself. That certainly is the best way to get people on board with the plan is just let them come up with it.

• 2:14:41Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 2:14:42Jocko Willink?

  Don't have to convince them of anything. It's their idea. It's their plan.

• 2:14:45Speaker 01

  Let them argue it out.

• 2:14:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. So when you did, so when did you leave Vietnam?

• 2:14:55Speaker 01

  It was in October of 71. And

• 2:15:05Speaker 01

  in Nam, there was four officers that lived in the same hooch.

• 2:15:11Speaker 01

  We all had our little private rooms at the corner of this rectangular hooch. Then the center was our common area. And we had a little stove in the common area and so on. But

• 2:15:23Speaker 01

  right across from me was an officer, Stan Dodge. He was commentary on 18. And so when we would fly, when I knew he was flying, it was going to be in the air, then he and I would choose a frequency

• 2:15:41Speaker 01

  that we would come up on and would follow with each other in the air. So I was sort of looking after each other, you know, in the air. So I came back from Nam. It's a very interesting story. There was me as a commentary, and then there were three other pilots who were Kingsmen. They were in Bravo Company, 101st Aviation, which was our sister company. And we all knew each other. And we all came back. We were in our khakis, wearing our flight jackets. And, you know, we thought our Sierra didn't stink. And we get back into Seattle Tacoma and got walked through the airport. Nobody's spitting on us, nobody yelling at us, nobody called us baby killers.

• 2:16:25Speaker 01

  And we got a taxi. We come into and we say, hey, is there a Holiday Inn? He says, yeah, there's one downtown. So he takes us to the Holiday Inn. We all check in our rooms. We clean up. We come down to the bar to meet before we go have some dinner. We get to the bar. Of course, we're all, you know, we're all got flight pay. They've paid us before we leave NOM and, you know, we're all loaded with money, more than we should have had. And we get into the bar and bartender said, what beef you guys? And of course, we have our flight jackets on, you know? And we're feeling kind of smug and and we all order drinks and

• 2:17:07Speaker 01

  one of them said, hey, everybody else's drink, their next drink, it's on all of it, it's on us. So we all throw in money. We bought everybody in the bar that was sitting there, their next drink. And there was a a couple, he was playing piano and she was singing. And they were like the, what's that? The Carpenters. Okay. That's and she was singing, they were doing all the Carpenter song. And so she dedicated a special song to us. She says, he says, excuse me, ladies and gentlemen, but the next drink that all of y'all will get tonight are from these four guys standing at the bar in uniform. They all just returned from Vietnam and let's give them a round of applause.

• 2:17:52Speaker 01

  They all stood up, gave us a round of applause. And then she said, I'm going to dedicate this next song to these guys. And it was very special. And we didn't buy another drink that night. Uh, we all had steaks, they were all paid for. And it, they quit playing at one o'clock. And this guy came up to us and said, hey, we're, a bunch of us are here on an insurance convention. Uh, we'd like to take you all out for breakfast. So they took us out to breakfast. And we all got to bed about five o'clock in the morning. And, uh, then we all flew out our separate ways the next day.

• 2:18:35Speaker 01

  But I was telling you about Stan Dodge. Stan's parents lived in Arizona, Tucson. And, uh, he said, uh, and he had left country about a month before I did. So he said, I want to have a little of the gathering at my house if, if you don't mind staying over one day before you make it back. So I flew into, into Tucson. And, uh, he had a couple of donut dollies there who were in the 101st. Uh, they were there. In fact, Stan married one of the donut dollies, Barbara. Uh, and Terry Deegan was a friend of mine. She was there.

• 2:19:17Speaker 01

  And plus, uh, one guy from Bravo Company, the Kingsman, and, and another pilot. Uh, but we partied hearty that night. And Stan's parents just did a wonderful job of, uh, making us feel at home and, and so on. And, uh, might've been there two nights I stayed, but, cause I had to have time to get my uniform cleaned up before I wore it home. I wanted to make sure it was strack when my parents saw me. And, uh, so I got my uniform, got my shoes all spit shy and everything. Caught the plane out of Phoenix and, uh, Terry was with me. And Terry and I had a really nice relationship. I mean, it wasn't a sexual thing. It was just a nice relationship.

• 2:20:01Speaker 01

  We understood each other. And she had left NOM two months before I did. And she would write me letters telling me about how the world back in the States was not the world that was not the real world to her, real world to her. What she experienced in Vietnam with the soldier thing, that was the real world. And we'd, we would write back and forth about that.

• 2:20:25Speaker 01

  And I flew, my flight took us, she was from Downers Grove, Illinois. So, we flew to Chicago and then I was to catch a plane from Chicago to Charlotte. And she wanted me to meet her parents and, and I wanted to meet her parents too. And I could have probably had a relationship with Terry that would have gone beyond. She ended up marrying an Army Ranger several years later that she had known and known. But, kept waiting for her parents to come and my flight was coming up to go and her parents hadn't shown up yet. And I never did get to meet her parents. We finally gave a hug and kissed goodbye and I got on the plane and flew to Charlotte

• 2:21:09Speaker 01

  and that's where my parents met me. But I think having those couple of days to, to decompress before I got home is probably psychologically good for me.

• 2:21:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's one thing they always point out, World War II, the guys, when the war was over, they got on ships and sailed home together for four weeks or six weeks and they got to decompress and tell stories and get stuff off their chest and whatever. And in Vietnam, it was like, oh, you're in Vietnam today and then the next day you're home and you don't have your friends with you and you're in random, you know, main town, USA or main street, USA and that, that can be a challenge.

• 2:21:47Speaker 01

  So, let's fast forward. I was home thirty days, reassigned to Fort Dix, New Jersey. Not in aviation, I was actually working for a facility that processed AWOL and deserter soldiers that were brought back into the Army. But every Friday night, all the aviators, they'd go home, take off their fatigues, put on their flight suits, would all gather around in one little portion of the Officer Club bar and would sit there and we'd reminisce and tell war stories and, and it got emotional at times.

• 2:22:29Speaker 01

  And we'd smack them on the back, "Oh, come on, I'll buy you another beer," you know. But that's a part of the decompression. And that, those were very special times to sit there and talk about that. And people have often asked me, "Well, what kind of problems did you have?" And I said, "Well, I really didn't have any problems when I came back." And they, you know, well, well, God, you must have been tough. I said, well, no, I wasn't tough. I said, I think it's just the process of what, how we all would get together and talk about our experiences. And I said, these guys that came back from NOM after being in combat, especially infantry guys, grunts, as we call them, they would come back, they'd go to Fort Lewis, they'd process out of the army, then they'd go home. And they didn't

• 2:23:13Speaker 01

  have an opportunity to sit around. And, and many of those were subjected to some very harsh treatments when they, when they arrived home. And I never had, fortunately, never had that experience. So I think the army's learning a lot of that. All the services are learning a lot about that, about how do we take care of our veterans after they've been, I mean, you were in a hell of a lot of horrific situations that, that could have mentally had, had a horrible impact on you, but you've worked through that yourself, Jacque.

• 2:23:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, I think, I always talk about the fact that I've talked about it, written about it, talked to my friends about it. And I think that's, like you said, it's what you kind of got to do. And, you know, the, I look back now and the first, from my last deployment to Ramadi, we got home and we were, we were, we were pretty, what's a good word here? We were pretty wild when we got back. We were pretty wild when we got back. And, and, but, you know, we kept it under, you know, we kept, we looked out for each other, made sure that we were wild without, you know, doing anything that's going to cause irreparable damage or cause some kind of major significant problem. But we were definitely

• 2:24:35Jocko Willink?

  wild. I mean, there's no doubt about it. And then, you know, I don't know if it was maybe six months, maybe a year or something like that, you know, we started getting back to kind of just doing what we were doing a little bit more normal. But yeah, we were, we were pretty wild when we got back.

• 2:24:49Speaker 01

  Well, you know, uh, if my, my, my excuse was, well, you got pretty drunk last night. I said, well, hell, I'm an aviator.

• 2:24:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we, we had some, you know, we all kind of, a bunch of us lived in the kind of the same area too, same little neighborhood.

• 2:25:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:07Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, we would go out, we'd meet up and we'd go, we'd go pretty hard.

• 2:25:11Speaker 01

  I think, uh, I think for me, I'm, I'm still, it's amazing, the older I get now, and I'll be 76 in August, um, the, the memories become more vivid now. Um, I dream about this more. Um, I'm hearing from people, we have a, we have our own Comentaro website, um, and, uh, you can tell by the comments that Lamsan 719 had a major, major psychological impact on our guys.

• 2:25:53Speaker 01

  And there were some guys that measured their time in service, oh, I was, oh, I came after 719, or I left just before 719. So, see, that 719 became an anchor, um, uh, to describe where one was at one's time, uh, flying with the Comentaros. Um, and, uh, when, uh, when Matt called me up and asked me would I, uh, do some collaboration on this book, in some ways I was pleased, in some ways I was, uh, a little frightened

• 2:26:35Speaker 01

  to bring up, um, the experiences. And I'll be perfectly honest, I had a lot of anxiety coming here today.

• 2:26:47Speaker 01

  Though I have read this book a number of times, read Undaunted Valor 719 quite a few times, I've earmarked it. I've read after action reports on it that, that hopefully Matt, and he did, he had some of these after action reports that he took his data from. But still, sitting here now and talking about it with you, and you weren't there, I can talk about it with somebody that was there and, but, and not have anxiety, but you weren't there.

• 2:27:30Speaker 01

  And I often wonder, I'm telling you this, but what are you actually hearing? Cause you weren't there. And you can tell me about what you did, and I can listen to it, but I wasn't there. And so, there's a difference.

• 2:27:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, there's, there's always gonna be a little gap, or a big gap, depending on, you know, the person's experiences. And, you know, one thing I think is interesting about, you know, when you start talking about coming home and what you're going through, I think the one thing that's good is if people actually understand what they're feeling a little bit, and I remember like you get a new guy that's overseas, and I'd look at a new guy that's overseas, and you could tell they're nervous, right? And, you know, just say something like, "Hey, man, you're, you know, that feeling you get in your stomach?" And they'd be like, "You know, trying not to tell you, but then they'd admit to it."

• 2:28:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:28:28Jocko Willink?

  And I go, "Yeah, you're just nervous. It's your, it's your body getting ready to go fight. It's totally normal. That's what you should feel like." And they'd be like, "Oh, okay. Oh, you, oh, by the way, you won't be able to sleep tonight, cause we got an operation tomorrow. You're not gonna be able to sleep tonight. So, that's just the way it is. Don't worry about it." And I think it's the same thing coming home, you know, it's like, "Oh, oh, oh, you're gonna get, you're gonna get sad sometimes. This doesn't mean you're weak. It doesn't mean you're trapped in the past. It just means you miss your friends, and that's okay. And so, if you are thinking about something and it, and it makes you cry, hey, yeah, that's what, that's what happens, you know?

• 2:29:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:02Jocko Willink?

  That's the way it is. And I think if people understand that, that that's, that that's normal. Then they go, "Oh, okay. Well, that's, that's just what's gonna happen. It's okay." And I think when people don't think it's normal, and all of a sudden they think, "I can't control my emotions," or "I'm scared," or "I'm sad," and "I shouldn't be sad," and "I shouldn't be scared," it's like, "No, it's fine. No big deal. That's just the way it is." You, you do your job. You, you know, you're gonna be scared. You got the, you got the queasy stomach. You can't sleep at night. Okay, cool. Yeah, guess what? There's a bunch of other guys that's not sleeping tonight either. No big deal. No big deal. Oh, you get home, you, you're gonna feel sad. You're gonna miss your friends. Yeah. We all miss them. That, that's the way it is. That, that's okay.

• 2:29:44Jocko Willink?

  And I think that helps people out a lot to be able to just say, "Oh, okay. What I'm feeling is not an isolated thing. It's just the way human beings process the, the tough experiences that they go through."

• 2:29:59Speaker 01

  But you know, we both served in the kind of service that, at one time, you didn't show that emotion.

• 2:30:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:09Speaker 01

  And you weren't expected to. I think the service and a hope, I've read that they have, I've seen interviews that they have, that now that's being taken in consideration. It's okay to express what you're feeling right now. Uh, it's okay to go seek counseling, because it's not gonna end up on your officer efficiency report, or your annual report, or whatever report you're gonna get. Uh, and so I think that has been a great improvement with the way we receive our warfighting men and women, uh, especially those who have come back and been engaged in combat.

• 2:30:53Speaker 01

  Uh, one thing I'll say, uh, about the getting excited and, and nervous about the upcoming mission. And I would do the same thing of Vietnam. I mean, people said, "Were you scared?" I said, "Well, hell yeah, I'm scared." But, but hey, you know, this is what we signed up to do, and this is, this is what we're gonna do. And a lot of times, I mean, I've said that... Trying to convince myself. But see, I was a platoon commander. I couldn't sit there and tell my troops, "Oh, my God, I'm scared to death." They're going, "Huh." I had to put on the show. I had to do that. But the interesting thing about it is, once we strapped on that helicopter

• 2:31:36Speaker 01

  and we took off in flight, all of that drained. It all drained. I mean, it never amazed me.

• 2:31:43Jocko Willink?

  Got a job to do.

• 2:31:45Speaker 01

  Well, yeah. I mean, you were busy. You were monitoring three radios. You were, you know, talking to the crew there. I mean, it all drained. I mean, even going into, even going into Lola that morning when we were doing ninety knots approaching, we should have been done sixty or forty. And we were coming in there and, but you sockle that thing back and that damn nose pitches up and you're saying, "Oh, hell, I hope my tail rudder doesn't hit the ground." And then you put that sucker down and you're taking fire all over the place.

• 2:32:15Speaker 01

  You don't have time to be scared. You, you, you react by the training that you've had. And by God, that training was good.

• 2:32:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's, I think, the same way everybody feels. I mean, if you're going to be nervous, it's usually before an operation. And for me, I was always just more nervous about my, my friends, my guys. That's what I was always worried about. "Hey, I hope nothing happens to the guys," you know? Uh, but then once, for us, it's once the breach goes, you know, or once the, once the breach goes, now it's on. Everybody knows we're here, we're doing what we're doing. You know, once we leave the gate, front gate, you're, you're doing your job. And there's no time to think about that. You can't, you can't waste any mental capacity thinking about what could happen or what might go happen because you got to do your job. And you don't want to have anything else in your head besides, "Hey, what do I need to do right now? How can I do my best job right now?" That's what I'm thinking about.

• 2:33:10Jocko Willink?

  But again, I seen some nervous new guys and just, "Hey, man, it's alright. No big deal." And, and I think that helps people a lot, just like anything. Anytime you can give somebody a heads up about what's about to happen or what. I've had this feeling with train, training MMA fighters, mixed martial arts fighters, to go and fight. And I saw the exact same thing. This is kinda where I started putting it together. Oh, I tell them, "Hey, oh, your stomach a little queasy?" "Yeah, I'm super nervous." "Yeah, you're supposed to be. You're getting ready to go into a fight." "It's okay." And that would put them at ease because they'd realize, "Oh, this is just normal. This is just me getting ready to go into, you know, that form of sporting combat."

• 2:33:49Speaker 01

  But, but, but to add to that, I think it's good to be a little nervous.

• 2:33:53Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 2:33:54Speaker 01

  Because you're more on your game.

• 2:33:57Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 2:33:58Speaker 01

  And, and that's one thing, that's one thing General John Morris told me. He was a mentor of mine and later on in my service and he was the one that actually encouraged me to take the civilian position with the SecDef. Cause I was doing strategic planning work for him after I had retired from the uniformed service. And we had this, we had this big strategic planning conference coming up and I said, "Sir, I'd like to bring Doctor so-and-so in from George Washington University. He's been, he's been a big critical thinker.

• 2:34:41Speaker 01

  He sort of plans, okay, this is where we have to be. How do we get there?" Kind of a thing. Cause we were doing strategic planning. You know, the vision is where you wanna be. Now, how do we go from where we are today to make that vision a reality? And he said, "How long have you been working for me?" I said, "About two years, sir." He said, "Do you have a PhD?" I said, "No, sir. Master's degree." He said, "Well, I trust you." I don't know this guy.

• 2:35:15Speaker 01

  And that's, that's a leadership style that, that breeds confidence in your soldiers, in your employees. I got confidence in you. I don't know this guy. So, Doctor, what's his name? I never hired him to come in and do some work for us. But that made me feel great.

• 2:35:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So, how much longer did you do in the Army before you retired?

• 2:35:45Speaker 01

  Uh, like I say, I spent 20 years in uniform, 68 to 88. Um, then I, immediately, before that, General Myers was talking to me about, he said, "You're never gonna make Colonel." God branch transferred from infantry to the Army's, as in a general corps, which is the administrative corps of the Army. And, uh, he said, "I want you to take this job. The SecDEF has been impressed with work you've been doing." And, uh, he said, "Your office will be here with me, but you'll be working out of the office of the SecDEF." And at that time, I was with the Defense Communications Agency, which became now the

• 2:36:27Speaker 01

  Defense Information Systems Agency. But my office was there. I had clients, all, military clients all over. It wasn't just, uh, communications guys. Under SecDEF was one of my clients. Uh, the, uh, SINK, US Atlantic Command, General Jack Sheehan. I don't know if you've met General Sheehan, or, uh, General Sheehan, outstanding, outstanding warrior, great leader. General Mike Steele, who commanded, uh, US Army Pacific, uh, just a tremendous guy. The Undersecretary of Defense for Logistics, I got a chance to do strategic planning work for him. Quite a few organizations in NATO, uh, two organizations at SHAPE. Uh, and

• 2:37:08Speaker 01

  that's, that's all because of a guy by the name of John Myers that supported me and paved the way for me. And he believed in me. And, uh, though I had a, didn't have a PhD, he trusted me. Isn't that what leaders are for?

• 2:37:27Jocko Willink?

  Indeed. And then how long did you, how long did you do that for?

• 2:37:31Speaker 01

  Thirteen years.

• 2:37:33Jocko Willink?

  And then you went into what, full retirement, not quite?

• 2:37:37Speaker 01

  Well, then I, I was offered a position in a, in a civilian career in the steel business. And I was Executive Vice President of a Steel Center.

• 2:37:51Speaker 01

  Stayed there from oh one to oh nine, thought I'd retire.

• 2:37:56Speaker 01

  Went into the insurance business for a little bit.

• 2:38:00Speaker 01

  Wasn't exciting. Then I decided to retire. And now my fiancee is still working. She represents a company called Hancock and Moore. It's all custom-made furniture, some of the most high-quality furniture you will ever find. It's all custom-made to, to your specifications. Leather, upholstery, nails, finish, frames. You pick out the whole thing yourself and they build it to your specifications.

• 2:38:34Speaker 01

  She also represents a line called Jessica Charles and a line called Maitland Smith. And our territory is in North Carolina. So we never go out of North Carolina. But yeah, I say I'm retired, but now I run with Jan and, and I take my orders from her. And so we, we man her territory.

• 2:38:57Jocko Willink?

  That's outstanding.

• 2:38:58Speaker 01

  And she's enjoying staying here today because she has nothing she has to do.

• 2:39:03Jocko Willink?

  That's a beautiful thing, a little vacation day for her.

• 2:39:05Speaker 01

  Little vacation day.

• 2:39:07Jocko Willink?

  Hey, before we stop, I know there's a couple of things that, just to mention here. What, can you give us the update? I know that, I know that Colonel Jackson's been working to, to sort of turn this into a movie. Turn at least some of these books into a movie. I know there's a GoFundMe page out there. What, what's the update on, on, on these opportunities?

• 2:39:29Speaker 01

  Okay, well, yes. As people should probably know, it takes a lot of money to produce a movie. However, Undaunted Valor, lamson719.

• 2:39:43Speaker 01

  is going to be the movie. And it's our story of those of us who flew in it, who supported it. We need to have this on the big screen. And it's Colonel Jackson's desire, as well as mine, that this not become a Hollywood flash in the pan movie. This is going to be an action-filled movie because Lamsan 719 was action. And he wants the movie to depict what actually happened. And if anyone reads the book, they will know that if the movie depicts a quarter of what's in that book, it is going to be on the edge of your seat kind of a movie. So the events and everything that he's put into this thing are not Hollywood made up events. These are true events.

• 2:40:28Speaker 01

  He's changed some names, but these are true events. He does have several actors who have indicated that they would like to play major roles in the movie. There's our producer on board and the screenwriters are busy writing this. But it takes money to do this. And the GoFundMe Undaunted Valor is the place where people who hear this and feel that they want this story told, whether it's them themselves or their relatives who are involved in this, or they are just very supportive of what our military has done in the past, especially what we did in Vietnam, which a lot of those stories were not very favorable

• 2:41:13Speaker 01

  stories. This is a very favorable story of what we did. Then I encourage them to do the GoFundMe Undaunted Valor. All this money is going to, being accepted by a 501(c)(3) group at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. And so Matt gets none of this money. Matt Jackson gets none of this money. It's all going towards this movie. Every last cent of it's going towards this movie. So the quicker we can get this in, the more we can, faster we can proceed with developing

• 2:41:52Speaker 01

  this movie, and I would certainly encourage people to take this in consideration. 501(c)(3), so your donation is tax deductible.

• 2:42:01Jocko Willink?

  That's outstanding, and I look forward to, I look forward to seeing this thing for sure when it comes out. Reading these books, sitting here talking with you guys, this is just an unbelievable part of history and a true look at, at the heroism that you all and American soldiers displayed in Vietnam. Echo Charles?

• 2:42:21Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:42:23Jocko Willink?

  Do you have any questions?

• 2:42:24Speaker 02

  I do not.

• 2:42:25Jocko Willink?

  No questions from Echo Charles. If he doesn't ask any questions, then that means he's gonna talk a lot later, so I have to put up with that. But that's just the way it is. That's part of the punishment, I guess, for me.

• 2:42:35Speaker 02

  No, no, it just shows the depth that we went into, and you know, how fulfilled I am at the end.

• 2:42:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:42:40Speaker 02

  Down to the detail.

• 2:42:42Speaker 01

  Well, I want to thank you for asking me to be here, and I want to thank Matt Jackson for putting it all together, and I'm finally glad to meet the man I saw on the Dan Bongino Show.

• 2:42:57Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Anything else, Jay?

• 2:43:00Speaker 01

  No, sir.

• 2:43:01Jocko Willink?

  Well, again, like you said, thanks to Colonel Matt Jackson for introducing us and for his efforts in writing these books and preserving these, these heroic deeds of our combat aviators and soldiers in Vietnam War, and of course, thank you for joining us and sharing your experiences, your lessons learned, and most important, thank you, thank you for your service and sacrifice to our great nation. The bravery of you, of your fellow pilots, of the, of the air crews, the bravery that you all showed can never be questioned.

• 2:43:40Jocko Willink?

  And we are grateful for your heroism and the example that you set for all of us today.

• 2:43:48Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 2:43:49Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for coming on. And with that, Major Jay Tate has left the building.

• 2:44:00Jocko Willink?

  Not even much to say to follow that up. Just, just mayhem.

• 2:44:03Speaker 02

  I have a lot to say actually, but I won't go into as deep as maybe I could, but I will say this. I was talking to Nick outside. And whatever we were talking about, it reminded me of this where like nowadays, okay, not nowadays, but in the Vietnam war, there are so many people who did so many crazy things, but they don't have necessarily

• 2:44:30Speaker 02

  a big spotlight on them. They're just like, just kind of cruising now where you don't, you know, they don't, they're not in the spotlight in any way. They're just like essentially now they're just sort of just living normal people.

• 2:44:42Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's always interesting to me that like, uh, Major Jay Tate retired in 1988. I came in in 1990, right? So there's almost overlap there and there's been plenty of old Vietnam guys in the SEAL teams, some, but you know, I'd be meeting some random army dude, you know? And he could have easily been this guy, you know? There are people in Vietnam that did the craziest stuff and no one knows about it.

• 2:45:11Speaker 02

  Literally things that are going to be in a movie, literally did those things.

• 2:45:15Jocko Willink?

  Things that are going to be in a movie and people will be like, oh, I wonder why they wrote it. It's made it so crazy.

• 2:45:20Speaker 02

  All crazy. Yeah. Yeah. Where they got to suspend their disbelief or what is that suspension? They kind of got to do that about something that really happened in real life.

• 2:45:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:45:28Speaker 02

  That kind. Meanwhile, he's just cruising.

• 2:45:30Jocko Willink?

  I mean, even I was talking to Tilt yesterday.

• 2:45:33Speaker 02

  Hell yeah.

• 2:45:33Jocko Willink?

  Or actually Saturday, I was talking to Tilt on Saturday and, and he was, you know, the amount of times that those guys did crazy things. It's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. And no one really knew too much about SOG. And look, if you were, if you're deeply into the military history and all that, but a normal, everyday person barely knows anything about SOG.

• 2:45:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't for sure. There's one thing he mentioned that was pretty dark. And then he just moved right on when he's like, you just, you don't want to get burned up.

• 2:46:05Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:46:06Speaker 02

  As a pilot.

• 2:46:07Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, that was in the book. That was in the book, Lam Son 719.

• 2:46:11Speaker 02

  Yeah. He said how like in World War II, like some men were known.

• 2:46:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The World War One before parachutes.

• 2:46:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:46:18Jocko Willink?

  You carry a pistol there. If you're going to catch fire, you're just going to kill yourself.

• 2:46:21Speaker 02

  That's how bad it was.

• 2:46:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was interesting. It was also interesting in in the first book by Matt Jackson. He's explaining, you know, basically that a helicopter doesn't want to fly.

• 2:46:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:46:31Jocko Willink?

  This thing does. This is a bunch of metal.

• 2:46:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:46:34Jocko Willink?

  Gear and oil gears and oil and gas.

• 2:46:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:46:38Jocko Willink?

  That doesn't want to fly. If you just let it go, it's just gonna crash. An airplane, even if you let go of the controls, it's kind of kind of cruise, you know?

• 2:46:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, you kind of feel like I I'm not a pilot. I don't know if you knew that, but it it feels like on an airplane, something goes wrong or whatever. As long as you got wings and the and the tail, you can kind of just glide that boy in. Yeah, it feels like that.

• 2:46:59Jocko Willink?

  So I had a car. So my first deployment to Guam.

• 2:47:04Jocko Willink?

  Parking the duty. When we get over there, all the all the seals, we'd buy Guam bombs, we call them, just like a piece of junk car, whatever. You know, that you're just gonna drive around Guam for a few for six months and then sell it to the next. So we bought our Guam bomb from some other team guys that were leaving. We had this. It was a, I think it was a nineteen seventy seven Valare. It was beige. But here's the thing. Cars are kind of, you'd think cars would be like, oh. You don't really, you know, if you if you don't touch the controls, it's just kind of gonna go until it's just gonna go straight. It's like stops, right?

• 2:47:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:47:43Jocko Willink?

  This car, I don't know what was wrong. If you let your hands off the wheels, it would go into a full hard right turn as hard as you could. You couldn't turn a car to the right as fast as this car would turn on its own.

• 2:47:56Speaker 02

  Guam bomb.

• 2:47:57Jocko Willink?

  That was our Guam bomb, the Valare. But also, for whatever reason, had hot scorching air. You know, you know, you know, the little like area underneath the back window on the old school cars is a little area.

• 2:48:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:48:13Jocko Willink?

  Like a back dash. Yeah, it's like a back dash. Yeah, you could throw like a a a pair of slippers up there or something, maybe a T shirt or sweatshirt, right? It's a little area like that. And there can sometimes be aftermarket speakers be put in there, right? But there was no, there was no aftermarket speakers, but there was just scorching hot air that came through those. It's like un unknown source of massive heat would fire through that thing. So that car was kind of like a helicopter. If you just gripped your fingers off the controls for a second, you were hitting the right guardrail in point two seconds.

• 2:48:48Speaker 02

  Oh yeah. So yeah, when do you get the impression and me and you probably know this even firsthand where just in Vietnam War in wartime, just in general, like just things are just loud.

• 2:49:00Jocko Willink?

  Things are so loud. Things are so much louder in real life than they are in the movies.

• 2:49:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:49:06Jocko Willink?

  I know that's your reference. For instance, in a helicopter, you can't hear anything.

• 2:49:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:49:10Jocko Willink?

  It's so freaking loud. It's ridiculous.

• 2:49:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:49:14Jocko Willink?

  It it's punishing on your ears. It's so loud in a helicopter. Yeah, the everything is louder. I mean, a Humvee is freaking loud.

• 2:49:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:49:22Jocko Willink?

  Tanks are loud. Everything's loud.

• 2:49:25Speaker 02

  And everything's just vibrating.

• 2:49:26Jocko Willink?

  Vibrating.

• 2:49:27Speaker 02

  Just your whole world is that. Yeah.

• 2:49:29Jocko Willink?

  It's cool. Now we got those new uh ear uh like headsets, right? That block out loud noises.

• 2:49:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. The can't noise cancelling. The he said something about when the first, I think it was like the first time where he heard the um the M sixty when when he was and how it like vibrate the the thing. And that's what I was like, brother, the whole thing is just loud.

• 2:49:52Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:49:53Speaker 02

  Though your whole world is just loud up there because you got the helicopter, then you got um the guns and everything is vibrating it loud.

• 2:49:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:49:59Speaker 02

  Just hostile.

• 2:50:01Jocko Willink?

  The other interesting thing is I think of Hueys, I think of Hueys as being old. Right? In my mind, they're old because I flew around on Hueys and they were old.

• 2:50:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:50:11Jocko Willink?

  Kind of like when you think of a bomber right now, like a World War Two bomber, you think of this old.

• 2:50:17Jocko Willink?

  You know?

• 2:50:17Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:50:17Jocko Willink?

  Those were the most modern beasts of their time. That was like getting on. That was like, yeah, to a Rolls Royce.

• 2:50:23Speaker 02

  Straight up.

• 2:50:24Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:50:27Jocko Willink?

  Well, um, listen, obviously, like I said at the end there, uh, guys like Major J Tate set a great example for us on many levels, courage. We, you know, like for sure, uh, capability, a hundred percent.

• 2:50:47Jocko Willink?

  I'm not sure what we're doing to improve our courage. What can we do to improve our capabilities? Echo Charles.

• 2:50:52Speaker 02

  Capability.

• 2:50:53Jocko Willink?

  There's a softball for you. Knock it out of the park. Do me a favor.

• 2:50:57Speaker 02

  Ability. Hey, okay, we're working out. We are on the path. That's it.

• 2:51:03Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent.

• 2:51:04Speaker 02

  I used to say on the program, by the way, I'm on the program. You know, like when the

• 2:51:07Jocko Willink?

  We're different now.

• 2:51:08Speaker 02

  Your wife comes home. It's like, oh yeah, like, do you want some extra cheese on the lasagna? You know, and I said, no, no, no, I'm on the program. So it's kind of like, okay, I understand, you know? Now you're on the path. But here's the thing, the path is more broad. More encompassing. Oh yeah, the program seems like you can easily be off the program in like three, four weeks or whatever, you know, it's like that kind of feeling. It's not, they're not hard and fast rules, but I'm just saying the feeling is there.

• 2:51:32Jocko Willink?

  Let's put it this way. If you're on the path. It's a life.

• 2:51:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like life. Yeah, you're right. Exactly.

• 2:51:40Jocko Willink?

  Programs are temporary.

• 2:51:41Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:51:41Jocko Willink?

  Somewhat.

• 2:51:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, like a temporary improvement, deviation, whatever. Either way, we're on the path. The good thing about the path is sure, we have supplementation, but these are everyday supplementation. They're life supplementation elements. See what I'm saying? So some of us back in the day, we used to drink energy drinks. Junk energy drinks.

• 2:52:03Jocko Willink?

  Junk.

• 2:52:03Speaker 02

  Hey, it's a new, um, it's a new era of energy drink. There's a new era of energy drinks now. Healthy energy drinks, the kind of when you drink it, you get everything front end, you get everything you wanted.

• 2:52:14Jocko Willink?

  Energy.

• 2:52:15Speaker 02

  Then on the back end, you get everything that you didn't expect, but want health.

• 2:52:20Jocko Willink?

  And you don't get things that you didn't want. Jitters, diabetes, uh, chemical disturbance inside your system.

• 2:52:29Speaker 02

  Some weird addiction.

• 2:52:30Jocko Willink?

  Addiction.

• 2:52:31Speaker 02

  Inflammation and all this weird stuff. Yeah.

• 2:52:34Jocko Willink?

  Bunch of stuff we don't want.

• 2:52:35Speaker 02

  Yep. None of that. None. Absolutely none. So, okay. So Jaco, discipline, go. This is the energy drink. If you didn't know already, some new flavors out. Which just adds to the choices you have. Hey, look, we all like orange. We all like oranges. It's a staple, right? You're hard pressed to find someone who doesn't like orange flavor.

• 2:52:53Jocko Willink?

  True. Yeah.

• 2:52:54Speaker 02

  Cool. But do we love orange? Maybe, maybe not. I understand. Wait, good deal. Oh yeah, that makes sense. Totally makes sense, but not all of us do. Some of us like more exotic flavors. Like mango. Mango has the capability to be like, love, I love mango. Orange is more like, yeah, of course I like mango or orange. See what I'm saying?

• 2:53:16Jocko Willink?

  What about the other end of the spectrum? Are people more like, well, mango is not really my thing. I'll drink orange, but mango is not my thing.

• 2:53:22Speaker 02

  It's possible.

• 2:53:24Jocko Willink?

  Just saying. Take one extreme, you gotta probably end up with the other one as well.

• 2:53:28Speaker 02

  It's very possible, nonetheless. Nonetheless, we're adding to the the spectrum of desirable flavors in discipline. Go. So now you got a win, win, win situation for everybody.

• 2:53:38Jocko Willink?

  Three wins.

• 2:53:38Speaker 02

  Three wins.

• 2:53:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:53:40Speaker 02

  All day, maybe even four later. Just saying, it's always improving. It's good. It's good. You're better off after you drink one of these.

• 2:53:46Jocko Willink?

  What about watermelon? What about new watermelon? Whoop a salt watermelon?

• 2:53:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, same. Same.

• 2:53:51Jocko Willink?

  I think that's closer to orange in terms of people it being a more broadly accepted flavor. Watermelon. Do you know anyone that does not like watermelon?

• 2:54:03Speaker 02

  I don't know anyone who does not like.

• 2:54:05Jocko Willink?

  Do you know anyone that does not like mango?

• 2:54:07Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:54:07Jocko Willink?

  See?

• 2:54:09Speaker 02

  Psychos, but yes, I do know some. Either way, I get it. I get it. And to each their own. I can honestly say that with the genuine.

• 2:54:17Jocko Willink?

  You kind of rolled the dice then with the mango.

• 2:54:20Speaker 02

  In a way, yeah. Actually, no, because when we chose the mango, I chose that because I personally like it. And that's what Belittle kind of said. He said, hey, if it's you, if you like it, that's it. So I was like, cool, I like it.

• 2:54:32Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Drinks. Energy drinks is what you were saying. You can get them.

• 2:54:36Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. It's a new era. Like I said, they're good for you. The thing is, that's a big deal, though. Like, come on, you'd be hard for us to find a good tasting energy drink that after you drink it, you're better off. It's good for you. You don't have to do a bunch of like, health freaking recovery things after you drink energy.

• 2:54:53Jocko Willink?

  You don't go to go on a 14 day detox.

• 2:54:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I know. Yeah, exactly right. I'm super low in calories too, by the way. Also, what else we got? Extra protein? In the form of a dessert, best tasting protein in the world, pretty much. It'd be hard pressed to find a better tasting protein with the health nutrient profile that we have.

• 2:55:12Jocko Willink?

  The only thing that could possibly taste better as a protein is just steak itself.

• 2:55:16Speaker 02

  It's possible. Very hard comparison.

• 2:55:19Jocko Willink?

  As we know, you can have a gorgeous, a gorgeous ribeye steak, well marbled, tasty, cooked to a T.

• 2:55:27Speaker 02

  Seasoned to perfection.

• 2:55:28Jocko Willink?

  Seasoned to perfection. And you can still get done with that and be like, I want something sweet.

• 2:55:32Speaker 02

  You want some milk? Yeah. Brad, that has been me actually for the last four, three out of the last four days.

• 2:55:38Jocko Willink?

  Ah, that's interesting.

• 2:55:39Speaker 02

  Either way, these are all good things that will keep you on the path and front end and back end benefits, 100%.

• 2:55:44Jocko Willink?

  There's nothing better than milk. Honestly, there's nothing better than milk when you get that little.

• 2:55:52Jocko Willink?

  Get that, get that.

• 2:55:54Speaker 02

  How's this?

• 2:55:54Jocko Willink?

  That desire.

• 2:55:55Speaker 02

  Here's a, okay, so mostly every night, the little routine, mostly every night I'll eat a salad.

• 2:56:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:02Speaker 02

  As a meal, like a big, robust chicken. It's a formula. I'll give you the recipe some other time, but it's legitimate.

• 2:56:08Jocko Willink?

  Don't talk to me about salad recipes, bro.

• 2:56:11Speaker 02

  I've seen yours. I've seen yours. Either way, but.

• 2:56:17Speaker 02

  But I'll mix up a milk in there.

• 2:56:19Jocko Willink?

  In the salad?

• 2:56:20Speaker 02

  No, not in the salad, with the salad. You know, you drink water or whatever you drink with salad, whatever. For some reason, the milk with the salad is the perfect combo right before bed. That's in my experience.

• 2:56:31Speaker 02

  Either way, also we got other stuff too, for your immunity, for your joints. These are, these are all things we don't want to worry about on the, on this path. We don't want to worry about how strong our immune system is. We don't want to worry about our joints working or not working. We want to just be sure and be assured that these things are all.

• 2:56:46Jocko Willink?

  The fire and forget missile.

• 2:56:48Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 2:56:49Jocko Willink?

  You just push the button, boom, you're good. Hey, joint warfare, super krill. Vitamin D3, cold war, they're fire and forget. Don't have to, you don't want to be thinking about your immunity system. You don't want to be thinking about your joints. If you're. Fire and forget.

• 2:57:03Speaker 02

  Exactly right. If you're on these types of supplementation elements, there's only two times you're going to be thinking about this stuff. There's one, when you get on them and they start working. Or potentially if you accidentally get off. That's the only two things you think about this stuff.

• 2:57:20Jocko Willink?

  That's why I subscribe. Yes. Subscribe. If you subscribe to these things, you won't go off of them. You won't have that miserable feeling and you'll you we we you get shipping for free.

• 2:57:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:57:32Jocko Willink?

  So that's cool. Also, you can get the stuff at Wawa. You can get the drinks. You can get the the you you own it Wawa and you're like, I need a little energy right now, but I don't want to crash and feel like crap in three hours. Cool. We got you covered. Go to Wawa. You can get these. You can also get all this stuff at Vitamin Shoppe.

• 2:57:49Jocko Willink?

  As well.

• 2:57:50Speaker 02

  Also, in the energy drinks, something I forgot to say, which I always know when I drink them is there's electrolytes in it.

• 2:57:55Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:57:56Speaker 02

  Get a little.

• 2:57:57Jocko Willink?

  Elevated.

• 2:57:59Speaker 02

  The pre workout element in in that is, yeah, it is critical.

• 2:58:03Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:58:04Speaker 02

  So, yeah, also, you can get them at Jaco Fuel dot com. That's when you can get everything. Which is part of Origin, Origin USA. So, Origin USA, what do they got there? American made jeans, boots, jujitsu stuff. And when I say American made, I don't mean just American.

• 2:58:24Speaker 02

  Finished.

• 2:58:24Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:58:25Speaker 02

  You know, you have grass fed.

• 2:58:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:27Speaker 02

  And then whatever fin it's not the whole thing.

• 2:58:29Jocko Willink?

  Grass fed corn finished or grain finished.

• 2:58:31Speaker 02

  Yeah, whatever the deal is. No, Origin's not like that. It's from the beginning all the way to the end. American finished.

• 2:58:40Jocko Willink?

  American started.

• 2:58:41Speaker 02

  And started. Yes, exactly right. So, boom, yes. So you got some good stuff. Pete's always making some new innovative thing.

• 2:58:49Jocko Willink?

  We got all good.

• 2:58:50Speaker 02

  Work pants and whatnot.

• 2:58:51Jocko Willink?

  Pants are coming. I have a pair. I have two pairs actually.

• 2:58:54Speaker 02

  That's cool because I don't even have a Delta freaking sixty eight jeans.

• 2:58:58Jocko Willink?

  Are you serious?

• 2:58:58Speaker 02

  I am very serious. Yeah.

• 2:59:00Jocko Willink?

  You got issues.

• 2:59:01Speaker 02

  I got the regular ones, which have been doing the job hundred percent, but.

• 2:59:04Jocko Willink?

  You might want to try out those deltas. It's like, you know what? I hate to admit this. It's like the equivalent of a lightweight hoodie.

• 2:59:10Speaker 02

  Boom. Yeah.

• 2:59:10Jocko Willink?

  There's a time and place for those Delta sixty eights.

• 2:59:13Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:59:13Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 2:59:14Speaker 02

  Speaking of lightweight hoodies, we have lightweight hoodies. I'm gonna come out with another one, I think, within the next three weeks. Um. Where you can get these things. Okay, so Jaco's store is called Jaco's store. We have lightweight hoodies. If you want to represent while we are on this path, you can get t-shirts. Like I said, hoodies, light and heavy, by the way. Got some board shorts on there, got some uh some tank tops, you know, hats, cool stuff on there. Representative of the path. Discipline equals freedom. Good. All these attitudes that we hope that we can.

• 2:59:45Speaker 02

  Run through the path with.

• 2:59:48Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:59:49Speaker 02

  I'm gonna represent jocko store.com. We have a shirt subscription situation, new design every month called the shirt locker. Sounds been interesting. People see me part of the show even today, even today will say, hey, I liked that that last design. I really liked it. One guy said he wore it to church. And everyone was talking to him about it, literally.

• 3:00:10Jocko Willink?

  Which design was that?

• 3:00:11Speaker 02

  The the latest one.

• 3:00:13Jocko Willink?

  What is the latest one?

• 3:00:14Speaker 02

  It just says check.

• 3:00:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh, the period.

• 3:00:19Speaker 02

  Has the flag on the sleeve too. It's good. It looks good, but it's like, you know, there's some layers on there. Nonetheless, yes. So subscribe to that if you want one every month, new different, different types of designs than the regular stuff, but but good nonetheless.

• 3:00:33Jocko Willink?

  And you can subscribe to this podcast and don't forget, we also have Jaco unraveling. We have the grounded podcast. We have the warrior kid podcast. We also have the the Jaco underground. Where we're doing some alternative podcasts, talking about uh, stuff in the same vein, but maybe a little bit tributary to the scenario that we're usually talking about. We're doing a bunch of Q and A. There's a place you can send Q and A and we're getting through those. So go to Jaco underground.com. If you want to subscribe to that costs $8.18 a month and we're using that to create our own

• 3:01:13Jocko Willink?

  area where if we get booted off of the big platforms for whatever reason, or they just started interjecting ads. Is that cool? What doesn't seem cool to me. You take this podcast, let's say they took this podcast today and you're in the middle of hearing about lamb Psalm 719. All of a sudden, there's an advertisement on there for a mattress. Yeah, that's not cool.

• 3:01:36Speaker 02

  It's not cool. No.

• 3:01:37Jocko Willink?

  So if you don't want that, cool, we got you $8.18 a month. If you can't afford it, we still look if you can't afford that. Cool. We got you as well. Go to assistance or email assistance at Jaco underground.com. We got you.

• 3:01:50Speaker 02

  Yep. Also, we have a YouTube channel. If you're wondering about the video version of this podcast, we do have YouTube channel official. Got some excerpts on there and the whole episodes. Got some other enhanced episodes as well.

• 3:02:01Jocko Willink?

  Lots of explosions.

• 3:02:04Speaker 02

  Kind of minimize the explosions lately, but it just makes us feel like we're due for more explosions. So you bring up a good point. Nonetheless, if there are explosions, that's where they're gonna be.

• 3:02:15Jocko Willink?

  You should make a video where everything explodes.

• 3:02:16Speaker 02

  I'm about to because of how much trash you guys talk to me about the explosion. Like I'll make a regular video and people will be like, I'm uh, I'm gutted, literally gutted by the lack of explosions. I was like, man, alright.

• 3:02:29Jocko Willink?

  I agree with that person.

• 3:02:30Speaker 02

  I, yeah, it was hard to disagree at the time. I mean, you know, are explosions appropriate at every single situation? Hmm, maybe, maybe not. Nonetheless, if they, if the explosions are gonna be present, you're gonna find them on this YouTube channel along with everything else. So yeah, look up for that also. Psychological Warfare, if you don't know what that is, it's an album with tracks of Jaco. Each track is Jaco telling you how to get through a specific, in general, moment of weakness. So if you're in real, in real life, if you're having a moment of weakness, which we all do sometimes, but in this album, boom, Jaco will tell you why. You should, uh, you know, not succumb to the weakness.

• 3:03:13Jocko Willink?

  If you wanna, uh, visual representation of this stuff, go to flipsidecanvas.com. My brother Dakota Meyer selling all kinds of cool looking stuff that you can hang on your wall. We also have some books. Hey, the books I talked about today, Undaunted Courage is the series. There's three volumes out right now. Covered one, covered volume number one, which is an assault unit, an assault helicopter unit in Vietnam, 1969, 1970. That's episode 275 of this podcast. Covered book three today, Lamson 719. Book two is called Medal of Honor. I'm sure we'll get to that book at some point. Um, you can pick up the series of books. They're just an incredible account that you have to read to really,

• 3:03:55Jocko Willink?

  to really understand the kind of chaos that was going on. We have a new book, Final Spin. I have a new book, Final Spin. It is a, we don't really know what to call it.

• 3:04:06Speaker 02

  Literature.

• 3:04:07Jocko Willink?

  It is literature of some kind. It could be a poem. It could be prose.

• 3:04:13Speaker 02

  Oh, it's prose.

• 3:04:15Jocko Willink?

  I don't know. There's some very poetic looking things in there, the way it's, the way it's written.

• 3:04:19Speaker 02

  It's prose elements, I guess.

• 3:04:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, you can check that out. You, you, you, it's, it's available for preorder right now.

• 3:04:29Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna say the publisher likely won't print enough because they're always looking to minimize any loss. They're looking to maximize profit. Okay, that's cool. They're running a company. I get it. They don't want to print too many copies and have some copies sitting around. So they're going to minimize. They're low balling it. So that what does that mean to you? It means you end up with second edition against the will. And it's cool, but at some point you're gonna meet me. Gonna come. I'm not gonna say I'll sign your second edition, but I'm gonna know and you're gonna know that you hesitated at the moment of truth. Don't let that be you. That's all I'm saying. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, Code of Valuation Protocols, Discipline Equals

• 3:05:12Jocko Willink?

  Freedom Field Manual, Way of the Warrior Kit, one, two, three, and four, Mikey and the Dragons, About Face by Hackworth, and the OG of my books that I wrote with my brother Leif Bavan, Extreme Ownership and Dichotomy of Leadership. Leif and I also have a leadership consultancy. It's called Echelon Front. Go to echelonfront.com if you want details on that. We have an online training academy. Go to extremeownership.com if you want to get training, if you want to ask me questions. I'm on there one, two, three times a week. We have a bunch of courses that you can take about these leadership principles. So check that out. We have a live event called The Muster. The next one is August 17th and 18th.

• 3:05:54Jocko Willink?

  I think we're almost sold out. We're getting there. Las Vegas, October 28th and 29th. So go to echelonfront.com and check events for that stuff. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, their families, their Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization where she helps out people from the military. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. And if you want more of my protracted pronouncements, or you need more of Echo's random ruminations,

• 3:06:34Jocko Willink?

  you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on the Gram, as Echo calls it, and on Facebook.

• 3:06:43Jocko Willink?

  Echoes at Echo Charles, I am at Jocko Willink. Thanks once again to Major Jay Tate for coming on today, sharing his experiences with us.

• 3:06:53Jocko Willink?

  But of course, and more important, thanks to Jay Tate for his courage and bravery in the service of our great nation.

• 3:07:03Jocko Willink?

  And to the rest of the military out there right now, currently serving with courage. Thank you for protecting our way of life. And the same goes for our police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all first responders. Thank you for protecting us here at home.

• 3:07:24Jocko Willink?

  And everyone else out there.

• 3:07:28Jocko Willink?

  Our lives that we're living right now

• 3:07:32Jocko Willink?

  are a gift.

• 3:07:36Jocko Willink?

  And our way of life that we enjoy, it is also a gift. It's a blessing and it's a luxury. It's a luxury that we get to be here in this world with freedom and free will and the opportunities that we have, which were given to us through the bravery and sacrifice of others.

• 3:08:00Jocko Willink?

  Do not squander

• 3:08:03Jocko Willink?

  this gift. And don't waste these opportunities.

• 3:08:09Jocko Willink?

  Instead, go out there every day and get after it.

• 3:08:15Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco.

• 3:08:20Jocko Willink?

  Out.