this is jaco podcast number 289 as the seals from zulu platoon inserted into a rice paddy near where they had taken fire nelson’s huey a uh-1 bravo gunship commenced a right turn at 80 feet above the ground to cover them lieutenant junior grade carl nelson a fire team leader at hal three detachment one commanded two sea wolf gunships during zulu’s last mission he already had flown more than 600 combat missions his co-pilot lieutenant junior grade earl shout controlled the m134 miniguns while petty officers michael dobson and tom clavon fired the left and right respectively m60 machine guns from the doors lieutenant junior grade edward dyer would pilot the huey uh-1 lima sea lord transport that would insert and later extract zulo zulu from a very hot landing zone shout worked the lz’s edge with his mini guns while dobson and clive clavon fired their m60s the seals patrolled northeast and then east on a dike separating two rice paddies and then moved north to one perpendicular to the first as they advanced the enemy began firing from well-concealed and in positions on a dike covered with heavy vegetation the seals and nelson’s gunship immediately returned fire as the patrol continued closer toward the tree line the seals took accurate withering fire from both sides of the dike point man roland fell shot through the groin he was hit again as he crawled for cover seconds later telfer was shot in both legs both seals managed to return fire despite their wounds but the severity of their injuries and the immediate necessity to extract them soon took them out of action lieutenant jg richards immediately radioed nelson for fire support as he and lawrence advanced under fire to assist the two seriously wounded seals christened the hulk by his fellow seals lieutenant jg tom richards was well liked and respected and he enjoyed a reputation as a highly capable operator he was a native of bright waters new york and a graduate of bay shore high school where he wrestled and played football following graduation he attended villanova university on a navy rotc scholarship there he lifted weights and routinely bench press 400 pounds he was commissioned in ensign in the naval reserve in 1969 as lieutenant jg richards dragged roland to cover one round passed through richard’s right hand hating the stoner machine guns pistol grip [Music] nevertheless lawrence hedge and futrell returned fire richards continued to expose himself to enemy fire to drag the wounded to cover when the automatic weapons man futrel was shot in the chest he cried out i’m hit i’m hit lieutenant jg richards sensing the rising panic in fruttrell’s voice suspected the man was going into shock to distract him richards ordered futrel to shut up and return fire futrel briefly did so with his m-60 and did not go into shock as futrell became semi-conscious richards pulled him back as well when lawrence and hedge ran out of ammunition minutes later richards passed them the linked 556 ammo for his now inoperable stoner machine gun the squad regrouped behind a dike and richards urged the seals to keep pouring fire into the enemy as he radioed for emergency extraction as the battle raged extraction became imperative including himself richards had four wounded men three of them critical for lieutenant j g nelson and the sea wolves there was no hesitation he said quote my crew knew that leaving anyone behind was not an option when nelson saw richards dragging the wounded seals to cover he alerted dyer to get ready for extraction and descended to cover it from an altitude of about 50 to 70 feet from the ground lawrence and hedge provided covering fire with their stoners nelson’s gunship hit the enemy with devastating rocket and mini gun fire while dyer urgently searched for the seal’s exact location on a second pass dyer spotted them huddled next to a dyke and came in hot bleeding off air speed during his approach as the slick hovered skids wet in the rice paddy richards dragged each of the three wounded seals in turn over the dike then through the rice paddy to the helicopter lifting each aboard with his one good hand richards later wrote with one hand it was probably my heaviest lift i ever made best one too enemy fire intensified during the loading lawrence still providing covering fire was about to climb aboard when dyer began to pull pitch for liftoff as enemy rounds hit the fuselage lawrence grabbed the slick skid and held on for dear life until the hulk reached down with his uninjured hand and hauled lawrence aboard having flown more than 600 combat missions with scores of those flights in direct support of two seal teams nelson vividly remembers the scene unfolding below his gunship as the platoon struggled to survive nelson recalls quote watching a wounded tom richards under intense enemy fire drag each of his wounded seals to safety across a series of rice paddy dikes and load them into the sea lord kilo it was the most heroic act that i have ever witnessed tom richard’s heroism rates a navy cross at a minimum he directly saved the lives of his platoon and that’s an article from the naval institute you can find it online and if you fast forward from that event which took place in 1971 fast forward about 20 years to 1991 and i was a new guy at seal team one and it was a saturday morning and i was in the gym at seal team one alone cranking some metallica on the stereo system and when i say cranking i mean it was ear damaging levels of noise because i was young and stupid and then the hulk the hulk walked in and he was wearing his gym clothes and he was there to get a workout the same guy this now who was lieutenant jg this is now captain richards legendary seal that you just heard about it’s now 20 years later and of course i knew who he was we all knew who he was he was the hulk then he walked into the gym to get his workout on and so i respectfully walked over to the stereo and and turned turned it down turned the dial about halfway back to bring it to a normal listening level and as i did that the hulk shouted hey i looked over at him and he said turn that back up and i said yes sir and i did and you fast forward another six or seven years on top of that and i was walking in to the admiral’s office now admiral tom richards the admiral in charge of all the seals and i was going to interview you with him hoping to get a letter of recommendation for selection so i could get my commission and become a seal officer and he gave me that recommendation and i did end up getting selected and i’m certainly thankful to admiral richards for that but more important i’m thankful for what he did for america and for the teams and for me in the end and therefore i am also thankful for those helicopter pilots and crews for getting him and his platoon out of there and these are the same helicopter crews that risked their lives time and time again to get the seals out of the worst possible situations these were the legendary sea wolves the u s navy helicopter attack squadron 3 and this is a unit is the most highly decorated naval aviation unit collectively awarded in vietnam five navy crosses 31 silver stars two legions of merit 219 distinguished flying crosses 156 purple hearts 101 bronze stars 142 gallantry crosses over 16 000 air medals 439 navy commendation medals 228 navy achievement medals six presidential unit citation citations and two meritorious unit commendations and we have had the honor of having ac wolf pilot on this podcast once before dennis rowley podcast 153 if you haven’t listened to that go and check it out but tonight it is an honor to have two more sea wolf pilots with us john farr and carl nelson the same carl nelson you just heard me read about who provided cover fire while zulu platoon extracted from a serious gunfight our relationship in the seal teams with the sea wolves in vietnam will never be forgotten and therefore it is an honor to have you two gentlemen with me here tonight thank you thank you for coming happy to be here so i know um well i know i could sit here and just listen to you guys tell stories about vietnam for the entire time which is which we will get to but to start off a little bit uh let’s start a little bit about where you guys came from and and how you grew up just so we have some background what do you think john you want to start and john you’re the reason you’re was your son connected us right yes eric my son he was one that’s a marine and he’s big in jiu jitsu so he would love this place so he does quite a bit of that but yeah he’s the one that’s uh was in the military well thanks to him thanks to eric for for linking us up and and it’s outstanding to have you so where’d you guys grow up john i grew up in the chicago area north of chicago went to high school there and i went to a small college in indiana st joseph’s college which is in rensselaer about halfway between notre dame and purdue okay and my senior year there was a navy recruiter came down looking for uh recruiting for the navy uh flight program and i actually so what year is this this would have been 1968 okay so vietnam is full-on yes yes and uh and that was the year they had the lottery for the draft okay and i got the paper i started at 365 looking for my number and i said geez i missed it so i started at the top when i went through it again i said they don’t have my number in here i flip the paper over the first number picked i believe was may 8th the second number picked was april 24th which was my birthday so there’s no doubt where i was going and at the same time i was looking for a job you know graduating from college and everything and one of the first questions they ask is well what’s your draft status i said well let’s say one and most people say well why don’t you come back after your service and then i interviewed with burl’s corporation they never asked the question and i never provide the information and i got hired so i got hired by boroughs graduated started working with them in the meantime i passed this flight exam down in college and he said well now you need to go up to glenview for an interview and a physical and i lived probably 20 minutes from glenview in northern chicago so i said this is great so i went up to glenview my main real reason for going up there was on saturday night i’d go down to rush street for the night and this is back home so i did that went through the physical and everything went fine and i didn’t hear anything for a while because you got to take something go through the process and then i started working at burroughs what kind of company was burroughs burroughs was a computer company sold calculators or vending machines at the time and uh so i started working i was going to say a computer company in 1968 it’s a little bit of a stretch right well well the calculator is at the machine but they did become one of the larger computer companies competing against ibm in fact later in my career i had sold the largest computer that burrows made at the time to the university of chicago medical centers just before they merged with spiri got it but that’s we’re off the track so anyway i uh started working then i got a notice from the army to come in for my army induction physical about a week after that i got a call from the navy saying congratulations you’ve been selected for the navy’s flight program and i says well i just started a job i can’t do this and the guy says son you’re in the navy when would you like to report and i said well what’s the latest stage you could give me and it was october i think october 18th i said okay i’ll take that so now i got to go in and tell my boss i’m going to go in the navy so i went in early one morning because he was always in early and sat down talked to him says joe i went through this program and i’ve been selected for the navy flight program as it turned out he was a marine fighter pilot during world war ii wow and he says hey this is a once in a lifetime opportunity you can’t pass that up girls will always be here so i worked the summer with them and at the end they had a little party for me had this big cake they had a bunch of little airplanes on and and gave me a kind of a nail clipper kit that i have to this day and uh so that’s how i ended up in the navy when you were when you were growing up so you were going to high school in like the early 1960s yes i graduated from 63 from high uh and it sounds like you were pretty uh you said you had a plan you know you wanted a job you kind of had it you you knew what you you knew that you were going to move forward in a positive way yes very much so yes well in my my father was was in a corporate world business and as a side story he was actually eisenhower’s personal mess sergeant all during world war ii he went over as patton’s mess sergeant eisenhower found out about him brought him on his staff and so he was with him for four years and i might as well tell the story yeah finally no no wonder is that cool there was some conflict between eisenhower and pat he took his best freaking cook and so uh then finally before my dad passed away we got him to write his memoirs just for the family and carl many of our friends have read it and in there at one point he was coming back to the states and so he asked people on his staff would you like to come back to the states and of course all his so this was eisenhower was coming back to meet with roosevelt for just like a week or so of course all his movements are top secret so he wrote a letter to my mother and says meet me at dc at this hotel and it’s all coated so he came back and of course nine months later i’m around of course my mother lived in elmira new york that’s where i was born and of course nobody knew my dad had been home and talk in the neighborhood yeah over the back so anyway eisenhower bought me a war bond and at some point they’d cashed that in i wish it had kept it been really worth something today but i do have the letter signed by eisenhower authorizing the purchase of that war bond when i was born outside but my dad served on the staff for about four and a half years i was probably a year old before i ever saw my father but he thinks the world of eisenhower and says he’s never saw eiser do anything that would challenge his integrity his honesty or his reputation it’s impressive you don’t hear that very much anymore these days you know we could use eisenhower now be nice all right carl yes where the heck did you come from i was born a poor black child i actually uh believe it or not i was born and reared in the panhandle of texas between memphis and turkey texas and hall county there was a little spot of dirt and that’s where i was born and maggie and dude’s number three child and i was the first nelson male to graduate from high school so i went to college they thought i was a flipping genius i mean that kid must know everything right so what did your parents do for work uh they were children of sharecroppers and sharecroppers themselves we didn’t own anything but raise cattle and get a cash crop which i always got a kick of the term cash because we never made any money on it and that was cotton and uh how many people that you know i’m sure that drug a cotton sack at five six seven and eight nine years old every fall our school started early like in august let out for a month in september october whenever the cotton was ready to harvest and of course we needed all the family to pick the cotton because there just wasn’t enough labor and uh so dragging a cotton sack was uh and of course the rate going wages those days was when you paid somebody and that wasn’t often was a a dollar a hundred penny a pound for picking cotton and uh my dad picked a thousand pounds one day a long day most i ever got was like 200 but i was a little guy so that’s my roots and we moved to oregon when i was in grade school and and it was a great relief getting away from that damn cotton but the downside was i’m chopping and cutting wood you know the old story goes i was 15 before i knew my name wasn’t get wood i had to get wood all the time and of course being a very wealthy family i carried water too we didn’t have a well we had to get water from a couple miles away so i’m carrying water and uh sounds like a lot of racial ultra stories my kids yawn and roll their eyes they’ve heard them but uh i’m really proud of my roots and and uh it’s interesting i my goal was to be a high school football coach first of all i thought i was going to be a professional athlete i was sure i was going to be an nfl as a middle linebacker well uh i did get drafted but the real world was there was a war going on um i i had just gotten married and i thought you know i had a younger brother in the army in vietnam and this is 1966 when i graduated and uh year after john i’m surprised by the way to hear i was very surprised to hear that tom richards finished high school and and john farr that’s breaking news on the same program you get it choco but uh um i got a dream job i i thought if i don’t if i don’t i’ll do the tryout in san diego i would do the try out if if i don’t get a real job that i really first class job i want i want a first assistant job in a high school and a large high school in in oregon and i got that job so i i didn’t go to camp and uh but then i had the guilt setting in all year long and my brother’s still serving he’s going for another tour in vietnam so i resigned my i was to be the head football coach of springfield high school the following fall and it was like april may and i just i couldn’t do that i resigned that job i went uh my department had dropped boyce pe in chemistry in high school my chemistry department head was a guy named john vogt and john was a naval aviator he says what are you going to do and i said i think i’ll probably join the marine corps i don’t know he said no don’t do that go fly so sandpoint naval air station was open in those days up in seattle washington he says come with me to reserve weekend and and i went flying with him and then we hung on the oak club and i was on the stage dancing with some polynesian ladies and i thought i could do this i could do this job so i i took the test and did the interview and and i i was in class 3268 in the fall of 68 and pensacola office edited aoc class and john you were 38 38 60 it was six weeks later okay okay so here we go so did you guys meet each other but after that when you got into the actual aviation training program yeah we met in vietnam yeah okay yeah we got to be friends there he was always enough far enough behind me that i didn’t really get to know him only three months but you know as you go through his pretty intensive training right and not a big socializer norvis john i don’t think and we worked pretty hard and so i really got to know john in vietnam matter of fact i think we looked in the logbook today my logbook’s somewhere in the bottom of storage in sanger california but i think we flew together probably a couple dozen times oh yeah and he was my as we called the today we called it the clearance pumpkin got it he was my clarence pumpkin so and a damn goodman by the way it’s uh i don’t want to make him feel too good about himself today but he you know it’s critical every job in a cockpit is a critical thing combat or not but uh getting where you’re going and all systems being switches in the right position and when you roll in and put me hot that means we know what we’re going to do with the intervalometer whether we’re going to fly a fire power or two pair and keeping an eye on things as a co-pilot besides operating the miniguns or whatever else he does so john was excellent and then and having a co-pilot knows what he’s doing more than once you have to fly with guys and you probably have too john you look over and say don’t touch i dang bang just don’t touch anything i’ll let you know when i want you to do something but john wasn’t that kind of guy he was a he was uh he was in the mode he was a good guy so when did you guys figure out or get assigned helicopters as opposed to whatever else the navy has to offer is that happening at flight school at the end of flight school yeah well you go through flight school and you go through primary training which is flying to t-34 the advanced training which is flying to t28 it’s after that after you’ve done your carrier landings and your instrument flying your formation flying and stuff like that either go multi-engines jets or helos in my situation my class they were needing heel pilots for vietnam so they took my whole class and said you guys are going helos and for me it didn’t it wasn’t a burning desire for one or the other there were some people that wanted multi-engine because they wanted to go with the airlines or people who wanted to go jets because you wanted to go jets and i told the guy says well i’d like to fly the big transports and he said well you should have joined the air force so so going with heels was fine with me and got through the program i’m glad i did and i think flying in hell-free was probably the last of the world war ii type flying as long as you brought the plane back in one piece they really didn’t care you know what you did there was a lot of there were there were rules and flight rules but you know the job was to get the mission done and that was the main thing whatever it took to get the mission done that’s what you needed to do i i was in flight school in my i had my flight and struck my primary flight instructor was a guy named i’ll say his name johnny henkel johnny’s retired in florida i just called him another day to thank him i haven’t talked to him since 1969 and so like on the seawolf mail list that you get comes in with addresses numbers i said there’s hankel happy gang that’s the same guy bet i called him up a lady answers the phone uh who may have said his calling i said tell him carl nelson’s calling like he knows like he remembers 42 years ago and so more than that 52 years ago i’m sorry so he comes on the phone cautiously like i’m not buying anything tap the voice hello i said johnny henkel and says who’s calling he didn’t admit to anything well like i said hey i’m a flight student yours from february of 1969 softly field 234 he says jesus christ really and i said i’m sure you remember me and he said actually i don’t i said i know you don’t but here’s what he did i i was getting ready to solo and i thought i was going to fly just because i joined i left my teaching and coaching job i went in the military because i wanted to serve in vietnam where my brother was serving and he was serving actually back up the clock i when i got into officer candidate school he was serving sadly he was killed in action in november 23rd 1968 so 22 year old young man second tour infantry 25th infantry and uh so anyway i was in a hurry to get there i wasn’t trying to get even that wasn’t my goal i just wanted to serve and i wanted to get to vietnam and i thought jess was the only way to get there i knew i couldn’t do it in the transport i didn’t want to fly mail to saigon oh god bless the mail guys but and so i’ve read about there was a pool in advanced training in in mississippi i thought oh my god um and then nixon’s trying to stop the war good lord that guy’s trying to ruin my plan so i got i was pretty depressed and what was that what was the pool what do you mean there was well there were in in flight training they try to keep them moving through quickly that they’re on a schedule to get students through the syllabus every flight from primary to advanced and after advanced i mean after primary you go to you go to meridian mississippi to advanced jet training or you you go to uh the ellison yeah the the t28 flying where they’re they’re preparing it for fixed swing or helicopter or for for a multi-engine or helicopter and so that’s where the decision was made after you finish primary and softly field vt-1 they called it the t-34 mentor so i was you know i’m getting down to about three or four more flights to go and i and and a pool would be where there was a weather hold up or a maintenance hold up or whatever and the students were backed up got it and so instead of getting through meridian which was kind of intermediate training instead of getting through meridian in six weeks it might be three four five months and i thought good lord i will never get out of here because after meridian you got to go to kingsville and beeville and then you get your wings and then you go to a rag and it you know it’s a long time i didn’t have much time from the time i started flight school until i got my wings i was 11 months and nine days i was in a hurry it was an 18-month program john went through pretty quickly too i was in a hurry well that day hankel says what’s what’s wrong you seem a little down i said i’m way down here’s the deal they’ve got a pool and meridian i’ll never get out of this damn place and the president’s going to stop the war what am i going to do this is awful and i gave up my great coaching job and he says what are you doing tonight i said i’m studying sir i wasn’t studying he says come to my house give me the address i go to his house my wife and i and this is you know he’s a jg pretty important guy when you’re an ensign yeah and he’s got his wings and everything and i thought wow you know i’m going to an officer’s house and he’s a senior officer i got there and we have i don’t know what we had for dinner i didn’t remember i was just nervous you know and what do i do how do i act trying to remember all the charm school stuff they told us well he brings out eight millimeter movies hal three movies and i went oh my god where what is that and he told me and i went man i would i i flew out of his house and i flew all the way through to get my wings else and and then i sweated elson because at my week to get my wings they only have two slots for hal three can you believe that two slots buzzy bazelle and i buzzy past great guy great friend but dick buzzle and i got the orders so is that the first time you heard of hal three first time i heard of how three was from henkel at vt-1 when he showed me the home movies and uh and i didn’t tell anybody about it like my secret i wanted i wanted to make sure i got the job i’m not giving any leads to anybody so it was a blessing and i’ll tell you i’m i’m talking too much and i’m getting support for john here but greatest thing that probably not outside of the birth of my two daughters the greatest thing that happened to me because of the mission was incredible incredible guys to fly with and working with seal teams and with the boats really i a mission we were needed and it there’s not a better mission on earth than that i thought it was when um when you get assigned to hal three out of flight school where do you go well the first thing we had to do is we had to go to fort rucker for three weeks for gunnery training because the navy didn’t have any gunnery training for the helos or anything the army had that so we spent three weeks in fort rucker which is in alabama went through gunnery training then we had to go through seer school for escape invasion and that so we went through that and that was interesting and i did mine in little creek and actually was out in the field in the coronado and i can remember after that and you’re out there for about three or four days and coming back they were on a bus bringing us back to the base after this then they stopped at this hamburger place and i hadn’t had anything to eat you know for three or days so went and got a cheeseburger and i can taste that cheeseburger until today the best cheeseburger i’ve ever had and uh but then we got back and then you got orders it was actually about six months from the time we finished flight school before i got to vietnam which was the first of august and i got my wings in february there’s two of us that got our wings the other was a marine pilot and uh he was flying cobras and he was actually killed in vietnam did hal three have any presence in america like was there a headquarters here or anything so you didn’t even you was that’s it you’re just kind of on your own working through the system actually squadron was commissioned and decommissioned in vietnam yeah yeah that’s that’s it’s like the only one that’s commissioned and recommissioned in a combat zone right so there’s but there’s no press there’s no headquarters back here nothing no so you don’t even meet your team until you get to vietnam there you go right i just had the pleasure by the way i go back to louisiana annually because and i’ll say it here one of my name to be unnamed but one of my door gunners uh unfortunately is in prison in angola not a good place to be louisiana life and well on this trip um i got to meet a guy 92 year old robert spencer retired navy captain the first commanding officer of hal three he stood the squadron up yes he did and he’s uh if you saw the scramble the sea wolves he’s in there and uh quite a character and he’d go to his house and he’ll smoke 25 30 cigarettes in an hour and i was there and drank eight or ten bottles of beer right there in a little cooler right next to his chair talking to his chair great guy great guy how what’s up what’s the uh oh go ahead well i was gonna say he’s a 92 he’s probably doing pretty well but uh so my first when i got to health free then we got to ben tui and then he had the first part of you have these fam flights just to get familiar with the area and one of my first flights i was just telling kyle about this today that uh one of my first flights was to hoist a three-holer down to debt six expand on that so so then carl says well we built our three hole here so the three holder was it the outhouse okay they didn’t have one down at that six because that six was just kind of forming up and uh so went there and dropped it off and it was uh that was your first combat mission i guess by one of my first missions yes i was in a combat zone so one of my later flights was about a month later was when uh we had one of our helos get shot down and this was at bc lake was down down near where that six was done by son and doc and uh i was fine with a guy that was in his last couple weeks in health three and most of the time they’re just doing easy stuff we got this call the hilo was down we went in to get the people out everybody was killed we it was in the kind of a swamp area we were able to get one of the bodies out and we were at the whole this time we’re taking fire and i was shooting an m16 out of the and i was a co-pilot i’m shooting outside he finally gets one body when we get out some cobras came unable to get us out then they brought in some uh vel4 the black ponies and they kind of cleared the area and then they were able to secure it and get them out then the next day but when we get back and landed probably a foot behind where i was sitting there was a round of five rounds right behind where i was sitting so that was my very first combat that you’ll hear about bc late what was that date john that was uh september 15th big it’s a major major major operation uh we lost four sea wolves that day off from that six yeah so then two weeks later i was assigned to death six was one of the replacement pilots so it was funny i first i take the three-holder down there then they got this mission where they lost some of the pilots and then i’m i am assigned to debt six so i was like destined to be there and you said to them i was the guy that brought you your first three-holer i showed up and i said i brought your three-holder i’m john furrier oh okay come on and so we were there and actually son and doc got blown up so we want to go to that story on the 20th of october i got there the 8th of october and we got mortared and the sonnen dock was on the river and we had we didn’t have any perimeter around where the helo pad was but they had all the barges and that for the swift boats so all the swift boats were down there big barges with fuel and everything was about you know 20 30 you know a couple hundred feet from where the heel pad was and one night you can it’s very distinct sound when you’ve got the incoming so you we heard the incoming ran to the bunkers it was late early evening and i was actually reading catch 22 it was about halfway through it i still have i haven’t still haven’t finished that’s ironic yeah exactly so there was a little lull in the action we ran to the and i was on flight status and i ran to the helos we got airborne and we flew the rest of the night and we caught then health we scrambled that one they were just done i was there liver and earl and carl we flew all night long just putting in strike after strike going back rearing refuel finally in the morning we kind of got it secured we went back and landed on the pad and they had come in and ransacked their shacks and everything we wanted to make sure you get the see if the people were still in the bunker they actually got into the barges and got on smith boats and got out to sea so everybody i think there was only one person that was killed that was on one of the barges but halfway through the night they finally hit the fuel barge you see this huge fireball come up and you could see it from down where that one was which was you know probably 50 clicks away or so and uh easy to navigate there look at a big flight yeah and then the next day we found out there was five rockets pointed at the helos because of your most vulnerable just as you’re starting to lift off and for some reason he messed up they didn’t work but they didn’t go off and we found out afterwards we were first detachment to ever take off during a mortar attack and make it another record yeah and so then so now and now did you ever start to feel like you had some kind of black cloud over your head because right now we got rounds hitting behind you replacing the guys that were killed you got the first person to take off during the war this is only in the first two months or three months and uh no wonder you didn’t finish reading catch 22 because you realized you were freaking crazy yeah for sure but the thing is and we had carl and i were talking about this the other day says you know we were there to do a job and do a mission so you never thought about those things you never thought about the negative you know what could happen you may be years later think boy you had some close calls and we did but not when it was happening when you were it’s like the earth you know when they say the pilots are always so calm you’re always flying the airplane and that’s all you’re focused on is to fly the airplane with the engines go out or that is it why aren’t they screaming or anything because they’re focused on doing their job which is to fly the plane safely and land it how well did you guys feel you were trained when you showed up there highly trained i i think we were some of the better pilots and uh because we’re very trained and we’ve done this a million times and then planning combat it was a little more intense and we’re you’re focused on your job i i think the navy does a great job of training their pilots you know just doing the carolinas was a piece of cake i said what’s so hard about this course we did it on a beautiful day calm seas but we had shot you know probably a thousand approaches simulated at land so you get out to sea and it wasn’t it was nothing hard about it at all of course at night in rough seas that’s a different story but the hal three had nine detachments in throughout the mekong delta strategically placed all the way from cambodian border down to where i was down in the lower kamal peninsula and if you were fly if you got in trouble at night you needed a matter back at night or an advanced tactical support base an atsb kind of a triangle shape and they got concertina all around it and they got hit all the time at night they scrambled the sea wolves and we would fly we were all weather pilots uh in those days yeah and most of the army guys were not all weather pilots they were vlf vfr daylight pods not all of them most of them i was gonna say by all weather that includes night time night time and rain every monsoon season you can barely see in front of your face we’re flying instruments in an old uh-1b but we were all instrument trained and we were heavily instrument trained after we got our through our primary training and t28 we had instrument training there we went through another squadron vt6 nothing but instrument training so we got all we got transitioned to the aircraft precision and acrobatics and then we got over to do instruments and they did instruments again and then went to do fclps field landing carrier practice for a lot of them before you go hit the boat in those days every naval aviator had wings on was the carrier qualified not anymore we’re saving money now so not anymore and and obviously the army’s just not even landing on carriers at all and and you don’t i mean just in the regular navy the you got to fly a helicopter to do a re to do a resupply at sea and there’s that deck’s moving and you got to do all weather anyways and there’s no horizon half the time and everything else whereas right you don’t necessarily have to contend with that in some of the other services it was always interesting to me when an air cav package would come down to where i was solid anchor sea float but solid anchor when we had the runway they would come and get there by nine and they usually leave by five got to get back and when it gets dark you know okay uh but to be fair when you mentioned song and doc i had a memory as i was a co-pilot in those days and i was co-pilot for to go unnamed an onc and we usually flew at 800 feet and he had to be 1200 feet that night i said sir we’re getting nosebleeds up here we our rockets are burning out before they hit the ground but anyway that’s what song and doc reminds me of it so after that they brought in llst and we did we flew off an lst the rest of the time that we’re down here at sun and dark after that so that that base got kind of overrun then mm-hmm yeah but they got it secure and they still kept the the ship boats there and everything but they did overrun that night yeah they did they did and then they left i’m assuming they left well we secured the area we got the area secured again and we went back in but then they moved the helo pads well we didn’t kick the hello pad they brought in an lst and we flew off the lst the rest of the time so so going back to showing up you show up there you feel like you you’re saying you were well trained and then what was the kind of on-the-job training procedure to get you guys where you know you start you start off as a co-pilot every time is every new guy starting off as a co-pilot yes we didn’t have enough time your minimum time for aircraft commander was 500 total flight hours most of us showed up out of training command with 250 260 270 so you transition in any squadron or navy when you get there new you have to transition to the type you go through what’s called a rag replacement a lot of acronyms as you know replacement air group and so you go to the rag set it up on all the systems fly the airplane and you’re a co-pilot when you have enough time and you qualify you become aircraft commander and with hal three uh once you show the capability to manage and control two aircraft and tactically be more knowledgeable you become a fire team leader ftl another acronym so john was an mtl yeah most of us were that yeah and then what at what point did you realize who you who you were supporting when you saw that when you saw the eight millimeter home movies was he saying hey we’re supporting the seal teams over there and let me tell you what the seal teams are yeah he did and i never heard of a seal i had no idea what a seal was and i forgot what it was and i had to ask him the next day what did you say they were and he said well they’re like like frogman i said yeah i know what movies in the world were too i knew what frogmen were and he said well they’ve evolved from that from udt they’re still at udt but they’re and then that was 1968 the seals hadn’t been around a long time as seals and uh yeah and i uh remember going just first of all sea float was a bunch of barges tied together and and there in the in the uh the bot the bode river i think it was and squamous peninsula and uh it was great because they had two seal platoons there we lived on these barges yet the the johns were you the river was rushing down below this way at morning and this way in the afternoon and all night long you couldn’t sleep at first when your new guy because they’re setting off concussion grenades all night and the next morning many mornings there’d be a sapper that was trying to get there to blow the place up laying up they go over on the bank blowed it up in the sun you know and uh and a couple times they got sappers on the boat but they got them the seals got them before they did any damage but it’s amazing uh the perseverance of some of those characters i think the primary mission was were there we were the close air support for the swift balls going up now in the canals and if you ever go i’ve gone to places and talked to somebody and he was on the ship post and he found out i was in hell free and he’s buying me beers rest tonight so they the swift boat guys really and the seals as well supported the sea wolves oh yeah it’s it’s a legendary to to make sure you give nothing but full respect to the sea wolves when you’re in the seal teams for sure uh so what’s that what’s a normal mission look like how are you getting the tasking what are you are you are you meeting with guys beforehand are you meeting with the seal platoons and going over hey here’s where we want to get dropped off well how’s that what does that look like well carl couldn’t speak to that cause he had he was with the seals on debt six we didn’t have any seals with us we just had the swift boats and there wasn’t a lot of coordination with the swift boats except when they got in trouble they called us up and scrambled us for for close air support when they got into trouble but the seals those missions were coordinated and i’ll let carl speak to that they had many types of missions as you know jocko they uh and and many times they would just be advising us look we’re gonna go in at night and we’re gonna go buy a boat you know they’ve got a kit carson scout that’s going to lead him in intelligence says xyz is here and they would let us you know where they’re going to be and then coordinates of where they’re going to be and and uh and i’ll tell a story here about john sandoz i’ll use your name john and an outstanding officer and the good news on him is he operated often and heavy and nightly it seemed like i don’t think he got it there was one purple heart in his group but he was a heavy operator and hats off to him on that one so but he did a night operation one night he let us know where he’s going to be in and i was we were on brady five the scramble aircraft were all our gear is all in we’ve done all the checks we’ve cranked it once it’s ready to go and you literally hop in there and you’re airborne and like you know i’ve heard term three minutes we made we got off a lot quicker than three minutes lots of times and we got airborne and it was black literally black well with pre-brief john we gave john uh what the strobe what was the strobe called that we had john that we carried the little strobes that it had a guard around it and it was oh a directional strobe yeah it was a good and he had one and he had a prick 90 radio of mine that i gave him because it was small and it was easy to operate and so john himself tough seal he’s out there and the enemy is over here and freedom’s over here and john is between both of them and he’s going to defend and he’s out there uh see wolf 1-3 uh uh put some fire in uh northeast about three about uh uh zero three zero and just walk it in and i’ll tell you when to stop okay so we we i rolled in and started laying rockets in and it was hilarious he goes okay a little closer uh a little closer uh and his voice starts racing a little bit closer last closer now and i could hear i could hear rockets going off in the background and i was i hear i am safe and sound at 800 feet or whatever i was 600 feet and it was hilarious and i never let him forget that ever so when you’re flying at i mean it’s really uh how black it can be at night like it can be so dark outside so when it’s that dark you’re just flying pure instruments you’re just looking at yours you’re not even looking out outside because there’s nothing to see unless you’re looking at fire coming up at you okay that in something then it’s real bright sometimes you get lucky and there’s a moon out and there’s a moon out then you get flashes of light off the squigglies and rivers and streams and yeah and but yeah there’s nights out there when you’re like this and that’s when you have to have a co-pilot who knows what he’s doing who can navigate because you’re busy as hell keeping that thing on altitude on heading and realize you’ve got a wingman who’s got to have discipline too he’s got to know the heading you’re on and out you’ve got any collision like top and bottom so you can keep track of each other but it’s uh it can get hairy out there at night and it’s uh you know some guys you look over one time i mentioned earl shot’s name world was co-pilot in mind many times good guy but he was over there like this he got the leans pretty bad because the semi-circle canals kind of getting messed up and you think you’re level but you’re not when you start when you start getting vertigo he’s over there like this i said okay or it was just we weren’t in combat or anything we were just flying he’s over there leaning sideways i said okay earl you got he himself oh that’s okay no errol you got it and i’m over there laughing the crew’s laughing but uh earl excellent pilot but once in a while you can get them like that but uh no it is dark and it’s like um how do you say the inside of somebody’s rectum how do you say that nicely i think you just did it yeah okay but but once again if you do it enough you you know how to do it and you’re comfortable doing it so what were the swift let’s talk about the swift boat operations because those guys were pushing up and pushing the envelope into enemy territory what what was that op tempo like well they’re scrambling to go to where the coordinates were then you were just putting in fire and once again you were they would say shoot right over our heads and say well why don’t you pull back a little bit just to make sure but those would get intense and i think i think you saw quite a bit of that when you did the documentary on scramble of sea wolves and that’s what it was like we were out there supporting them putting in close fire to them just so they could get back out of that situation and you mentioned john you mentioned the the world war ii attitude when it comes to flying and fighting and i mean i i get that but can you can you talk a little bit more about i know that you the way you all felt about a your gunners the guys that were on your birds but also your maintenance crews that were keeping your birds up and running and using beer cans to patch them up and whatever else so that’s that that’s sort of the world war two mentality that you’re talking about where you said there were rules but but you had to do the mission right and i think that’s was part of it every it was a team effort so you talk about that the gunners and the maintenance people we all worked very well together we all had our part to do and it was all coordinated and it all came together and we had to get to make the gunners do their job the maintenance people and it just it was a team effort and everybody supported the team and all had the same mission to do even though it was a different part it’s like a football team you know you’ve got your job to do and it doesn’t work unless you’re doing your part of the job and that’s what we did it just worked i was going to say and you ought to know jacko is that a fire team and most attachments would come on for 24 on 24 off for 24 on you’re on for scrambles you get your meals and you get some rest when you can but you’re on duty from noon to noon usually we did it but wherever but and when you’re and anything that happened during that time uh your your cruise at the radio you’re all briefed and by briefed you go down to what we call toc with the army the the operation center we know where are their where their artillery is at we know where the units all the units are we know what their radio frequencies are we know what the planned operations are we have a general idea where the bad guys are but most of the time when we weren’t actually involved in a combat operation we’d be patrolling and basically looking for trouble that’s what we always did and we’d usually find it and uh sometimes people get it never i can’t i have a hard time thinking about a flight that i was on that we didn’t get shot at i i’m sure there were some but it was rare that we didn’t get shot at and we wanted him to shoot at us because we could shoot back we could know where they were didn’t have to call for a clearance they shot at you could just be in the fire in my aorta down at dead one before i went to that job six was john and the ao we had was literally a free fire zone we could shoot any eligible aged male now we didn’t we were that’s not how we operated you don’t go we didn’t go blowing up hooches and shooting randomly and cheated we didn’t shoot a dam but we didn’t do that honestly ever i mean you do that on somebody’s crew and you’re going to get your butt kicked off and back to back to home garden heartbeat we were professional but elizabeth male could be that we just we might just take his sam pound out under him you know because he’s in the wrong area we don’t kill the guy but he’s swimming and uh if it’s uh a guy who gets stupid and starts shooting back well then we erase that guy and but again we were pre-brief we knew where everything was what was going on and uh more often than not we could brief toc as well as they could bring we get different frequencies from them but the intel we could feed to them we knew what was going on everywhere so in a 24 hour period where you’re on so you said you do 24 hour on and then 24 hour off in the 24 hour period that you’re on how much time are you in the air depends on what kind of operation you have but i honestly i flew a lot because i was in the opinion the more airborne i was the better pilot i was the better my crew was because everybody’s doing their job they loved it i loved it and to better renew our area of operations um i have uh many times flown if you say every other day’s 15 days um i’ve flown many months for 100 to 130 hours a month and during the day maybe eight to ten hours it wasn’t unusual we were looking at your logbook today and we flew together that first month uh at definitely long yeah all day long and everything that was our job is to fly you know sitting in the hooch we’re not doing our job so we were out flying just even if it was just training looking for action or looking for something so when your day off what are you doing you’re doing your job whether it’s hops or admin or maintenance or whatever your job is or sleeping because you know the next day you may not get any sleep so you you sleep and no it was we were jg’s and i remember i was getting a fitness report debrief from my own c very nice man i didn’t know what a fitness support i knew what it was i saw it in class sometime but but i barely know the fitness pro wasn’t and he was stroking me and i didn’t know it but he he says now carl i know you really like this mission you’re really enjoying it oh yeah sir i mean i was just he says but the real navy’s not like this you’re not gonna go to a squadron and have this much authority and responsibility i mean we’re out there deciding who lives and who dies every day and we’re trying to make the right decision every day i think we did so and he was right we got to lakehurst and what was it like i know it was so we were jg’s and you’re a fire team leader you’re responsible for that whole flight you’re in charge of it even if you got a lieutenant commander sitting next to you you’re the one that’s calling the shots as a jg because you’re in charge of it and that was important i think and i look at people say what’s the best period of your life some say oh it was high school or college i can honestly say the best period of my life was the six years i spent on active duty in the navy the rent the friendships you make during that period especially in combat are so close closer than any other friendships i have so like carl and earl and tim ziemer we were all there we’ve done the same thing together and we had a reunion what 10 years ago now was 2009 at my house up 12 years ago 12 years ago he’s not good at math and uh and carl well first of all i invited earl and his wife up to chicago because his wife had never been to chicago so i’ll come up we’ll show you this big city and the bright lights and everything and then an hour later i get a call from carl says well thanks for inviting me because i early talk to him in the meantime and i said well carl you’ve been here before you’re always welcome the next thing i know i had my house full of people coming up for a reunion we had 14 guys showed up yeah this is on the 4th of july far’s got free food and booze oh yeah so we’ve got a big tent put it up in the backyard and everything and we had this little reunion and john santos we always had a seal that every one of our unions were very small it was just a small group of people that were together what i found interesting about the first time that we did it some of these people i hadn’t seen in 40 years and so where you started was a common denominator was vietnam remember this mission remember that guy remember that incident by the end of the evening it was like we just seen him last weekend i was amazed at how fast you could catch up with somebody you should do a study on that well it’s like your family you know these guys know all your crap and they still like you and you they know you on bad days and good days and i’m going to tell the story it’s it’s one of those this this ain’t no no but it’s true i he talked about being when you’re in charge of a fire team you’re in charge and rank matters but rank in the cockpit goes away you may say sir but you’re in charge of the airplane your co-pilot’s the captain okay captain sit there don’t touch anything that you’re in charge and and it’s navy regs that your your aircraft cannot be commandeered by some guy on the ground saying fly over here and do this no the only person that can dominate kendama your commandeer your aircraft your aircraft commander is a flag officer a line officer in your back sitting in a seat is the only guy that can override an aircraft commander flag ops so that in mind one night at that one captain martin twice great guy he’s passed on now he was our seal he came to flag that one and you know he’s you start flying and you don’t mean it in a bad way but you get your chin out and your chest out and you’re aggressive and you and no bs you can laugh and have fun but the mission’s serious there’s no screwing around so captain troy wanted to go on a combat flight so he came down and and he was my co-pilot of course i sat in the left seat and respectfully let him have the right which aircraft commander and a helicopter my wingmen was two other guys i won’t use their names but lieutenant commander and a lieutenant and i’m a jg very very very green jay so you’re the junior guy in rank but you’re the but you’re the first team leader got it and we’re down there at toc and there was this army guy who i didn’t like anyway he was a captain he didn’t like me he was just he was just too good he could shoot goody two shoes and didn’t know squat what he was talking about so he’s up there and he’s briefing those eagles on captain dwight he kept you know kissing up and i just said stop stop brief me this is not the army this is the navy the navy it has nothing to do with rank it’s who’s the smartest guy here and on this mission i’m the smartest guy here brief me captain dwight shook his look down carl he was so nice to me he should have slapped me but he didn’t do that and that army guy was mad but nothing he could do about it but that’s kind of how it is the aircraft commander is the ultimate it’s like the captain of a ship abuse what you say goes and your job is to do the right thing i want i want to try and get a little bit better feel for the some of the operations and i mean just the the first operation that you were talking about going to the vc lake and you’re going to recover a helicopter like talk us through from you get the call to you you’re leaving the scene and you got the body recovered was it you know you’re sitting in your you’re sitting in the in the in the ready room and all of a sudden the call comes in what does that look like no i was on a fam flight so we were out flying just in the general area and we get this call that the gilo was down we got the coordinates and we were close to the coordinates so we were there fairly quickly so we got in and you have are you always you’re always fine with a section of birds of two birds you’re always flying together this is this was a single bird okay because it was a fit it was a well you was john was new in the country and you were flying an admin flight right yes you were flying a slick flashlight so flying a circle you still had you still had door gunners you still had the crew in the back but you might fly alone if you’re doing an admin mission you might fight with just one bird like when you hoisted the three-holer down it was just a single fight that’s right because you weren’t you weren’t looking to be in you know a mission a combat mission per se just trying to get familiar with the error but if something happens you got to respond to it and we didn’t this bill belts was it was his last week in country and he flew in and tried to get these guys out as best we could and the so what else was your was your he was the the helicopter commander pilot the one that went down or the one that you were in the one i was in okay so the one thing it’s his last week in country last week in country he’s getting ready to go home and everything but he was showing me around the area stuff is as a new pilot and then we get this call and it heals down respond to it and the crewmen in the back once we got down low they got they jumped out how long did it take you to get to to find them to find the down hilo those minutes you have coordinates yeah you can see smoke it’s well we wouldn’t there wasn’t any smoke or anything but it was down it was a kind of swampy area so there wasn’t any fire but uh we were close to the area they gave us accordances which we’re kind of right there so we were there within i want to say we’re you know five ten minutes after within five minutes easy and so we just flew in and uh you know then we there wasn’t any fire at times so we’re down there the crew jumps out to try and get the bodies out but they were kind of the hill was turned in they were kind of pinned under it they were only get able to get one body out we got that in the heel in the meantime we started taking fire from the tree line and that’s when i was shooting the m16 at the tree line and then we got enough then we got the body in and then we just then some cobras came because they had heard about the coordinates and then they covered us as we came out let me ask you john where’s on the fly here two guys from debt one we were down to one bird because every hundred hours we had to get a new aircraft from maintenance the major main was done in ben tui so we would do the oil changes and filter changes and so forth but they did all the heavy stuff but two guys from debt one were mike legal i’ll give him rich lambert they came up and they got shot down that day too were they already shot down when you got there or you got their first probably didn’t you i think we got that first you got their first they came in scrambled up went in and they had a gunship and uh the bad guys i think had a 51 caliber and they were knocking them out of the air it was like a setup it was like an ambush because once the first one come down they know we’re going to try and come and get people out so they kind of you were lucky you guys weren’t shut down yeah very lucky when uh when when you’re flying and and carl you mentioned that you can’t even remember operations where you didn’t take fire how often is your aircraft getting hit you know that’s you post flight really heavily when you get back and you can you know when you’re when you’re a new guy you can’t hear certain things but when you’re got experience you can hear gunfire you can hear it from a from 800 feet you can hear it you can dance or hear it when you’re breaking off target at 200 feet but uh uh back on but anyway the bottom line is is that uh uh we would get back on post flight and uh more often than not um and we by the way we’ve we found uh we would find uh the seals would bring in intel stuff and it would be a drawing of a helicopter and in vietnamese telling the bad guys where to aim so they could hit the aircraft because most of the time they’d shoot at us and hit the tail section most all of my hits not all of them but most of them were aft of the cabin there were some in the cabin and they were uncomfortable and sometimes i know john got a purple heart and you can tell that story and i got one earl got one done i mean it’s no big deal i mean you get it because you got shot and it’s not nothing necessarily heroic people think a big a purple heart’s a big deal it’s not a big deal uh i’d give mine to anybody wants it if i can have the hole back period but so since you brought the topic up uh this is something yeah let’s let’s let’s talk about it and i talk about this all the time and uh so we carl was on debt six at that point and we were out and that one only had one of their birds say one in maintenance so we went down to debt one and we formed a three-plane formation and so i was a pilot of one carl was a pilot oneness earl shot was a pilot of the third so we went out took some fire found a target and i’m not sure who was first one to end i think me you he forgot to add it was a heavy fire team and i was a fire team leader so kyle those two guys are doing everything i ask them to do most of the time so carl’s the first so heavy fire team means you got three birds three birds okay so kyle is the first one in and you’re going in to do what what are you going to do putting a strike in so far when you say putting a strike in meaning you’re going to lay fire down rockets is is it close air support necessarily or is it just taking some ground fire and we’re going to put it out basically and so you’re rolling in and then carl was the first one in earl was the second one and so carl peels off and earl’s putting down fire so as he’s peeling off that’s when the plane’s supposed to be turned the second plane is supposed to put down on fire so earl put on fire by that time carl’s supposed to come around then when earl comes off to target i’m putting fire down i came off the target and that’s when i got hit and so so we argued today i said carl you didn’t cover me coming off target and he says well you are out of position i said i wasn’t out of position you were out of position so i got hit so where did you get hit i got hit in the foot so the round came up and knocked the tips of my two toes off tips of my toes off on my right foot and then you saw the scramble of sea wolves my gunner that day was he got it at the same time kid he was a kid uh and the scramble of sea wolves at the end where the round came up cut his mic cord came out dotted his helmet and dotted the eye on kid written on the back of his helmet it was in the movie it was in the movie yeah and it cut the back of his neck like you cut it with a knife yeah and how’s that so so he gets it i look back and i’m trying to call him and he’s not responding i look back and all i see is blood like oh geez he gives me a thumbs up a big smile and starts shooting again and the round just you cut the mic cord just graze the back of his neck and of course when you cut your neck or head and it just bleeds like crazy and then uh so then we go back land carl comes over picks me up and carries me into the infirmary the real story should we hear the real story well that’s so and to this day we argue who’s out of position but we’re the best of friends it’s interesting that’s like in a sealed platoon that’s that’s one of the basic maneuvers we do is like one person shooting as that person rolls out there’s someone that’s picking up fire right behind him as that person rolls out there’s someone picking up the fire right here that’s the way it’s supposed to be carl that’s the way it’s supposed to be in a racetrack in a wrist strike pattern this veteran at that time i probably had 800 missions and far it barely knows how to pre-flight yeah he’s in position and i’m not but what’s funny is we got back and and i didn’t know that purington was wounded and we got back and landed and uh john was oh oh i thought my god he’s he probably has a body shot checked his body checked the blood and i couldn’t find any blood anywhere i’m looking nothing not he’s dry i’m thinking and i picked him up and gently carried him 600 yards down to infirmary the length of the base he’s moaning the whole way meantime purington’s bleeding and he’s walking chatting the whole time but john’s john’s moon moaning not that he must have a brain wound i can’t see or something and so let’s just see what i put up all the time and we get down there he takes his boot off and he shot in the big toe so earl comes a little toes earl calls you earl calls him nine toes that’s his name so then i get medevaced up to ventui to the third surge which is the army hospital up there and i obviously wasn’t that badly wounded and they put me in the back room and that night everybody came over to see me i had a little nightstand table i must have had 30 scotching waters on that little table because everybody brought me a drink do you save your boots the boots i do i do and i was very lucky the doctor said because it came it was he had steel toe boots but he came up to the bottom and he said just missed a steel toe if it hit the seal toe that would ricochet around in it taking all your toes out john has the boot on a nice little stand in his living room where there’s a sprinkler around it and music and so forth he’s got a plaque there but i do and i have actually i have the round that came up okay around from he’s got around so it came up with my foot and then hit me on the side of the leg and i didn’t know you can only feel one pain at a time it will hit me on the sideline when i was getting out of the helo i saw this round down by the collective so i picked it up and put in my pocket was that two days later i was getting out of bed and i bumped my knee and i go geez that really hurts and i had a big welt about this big around on the inside of my thigh there and so you can only feel one pain i just feel my toes at the time a couple days later i was feeling the other one but that was around who was the ceo then oh also the changed command that day i got you out was a change of command and captain bergstrom was taking over from captain twice and the tradition was that the first guy that got shot the co had to buy him a bottle of scotch so he did it for a bottle of scotch so there’s a we had an officer’s meeting i don’t know a month later or something like that and sure enough he gave me a bottle of scotch brought it back to that and shared it with the with the team was it cheap i can’t remember i don’t know drew overs or something like that so what about you carl when did you get shot what happened to you oh earl and i were together and we just we just uh it was minor it was minor stuff but i believe a lot i used uh we took a round through the cockpit what was what was the operation you know actually we were just on a patrol we weren’t actually even put in a strike you could take a round randomly and it happened one time when we were taking a a platoon to insert them the radioman got shot on the way in with one of richard’s guys tom richards guys but we just took a random around as i recall and uh and earl and i took both took flack on the face where it bounced off of the center divider and the windscreen so we got glass in our face and metal in our face and it looked pretty bad until we shaved the beard and actually wasn’t bad at all it was minor so i didn’t limp anywhere i didn’t have to be carried down to third to third search search nobody bought me booze at all nobody cared you know and i didn’t care but when they treat you and you’re wounded and they treat you and they stitch you or whatever you get a purple heart that’s what uh the honorable john kerry figured out it hurt morgan sewing up and it did get in shot because they had to pull the skin around my toes and stuff and i had to soak my foot for about a week to make sure there’s no infection and everything we gave him tons of grief over that and we love john he’s a great guy one of the best guys i know and a gentleman i don’t have many guys i can call gentlemen that i know at least not sea wolves anyway but i was back flying in two weeks and at what point so what point did you guys link up and start we were you at the same debt was that debt six you said yes and what caused that what caused you two to be to start working together what had happened well i i was a very experienced fire team leader and what they do is they when you first get to hal 3 in those days you had a month or two in the home guard and you kind of transitioned you already transitioned to the h1 because you flew the h-1 in flight school but you transition to the mission and build your time get to know the area of operations you fly to every debt taking mail and parts and people and that month or two you do that and then your detachment you make aircraft commander and then you make fire team leader and after a period of time before you go home they bring you back in you fly at home guard again for a couple of months as the aircraft commander like bill belts did for you when you were when he went to vc lake and so the executive officer was one to bring me back to do that and i said it was march and i said hey i got two months march and april i i don’t want to go back i’d i’m just getting good at this leave me alone and so i whined and whined and whined and finally he demoted me he took me to took me to death sex pardon me so they didn’t have a fire team leader uh one and got killed and one had uh reached the end of his tour and so um they had some really really good aircraft commanders and you you were a co-pilot i first got there i think and you became maybe you were an aircraft commander okay well there were there were three or four or five good guys and i’ll name them john farr john barnes uh mack him and paul waters who did i miss that’s it hey mack him with did i miss a mac no he said meg and uh super guys and the exo said go get those those guys are all just they need a little leadership they need a little experience and uh go do it if you gotta go and see not so much he had a bad case of lieutenant commander which is do nothing i i tried to figure out when he went to the navy i’ve tried to avoid lieutenant commander if i could go from lieutenant to commander i’ve been very happy but anyway so i sort of had to be me and a little put my chin out and chest out and have these these great guys that uh took about uh 30 minutes to fire up and get going and all of a sudden we were flying all day every day like we’re supposed to not sitting back at the boat waiting for meals and then what’s on at the movie we don’t give damn once in a movie we’re going to fly it period that’s what you do that’s how you know you’re ao that’s how you support the people out there in the boats and that’s how it happens if somebody gets shot down you’re right there on the spot that’s what we do are you guys flying the same helicopter all the time do you have a particular one or you just whichever one’s ready well whichever one is ready and able to fly and so you got them on debt the two you have on debt you’re flying nose obviously and then you have to take up what you know once a month or so many hours to do the annual maintenance on it then get another one back how much difference is there between you know this one and that one none you know physically flying they’re all the same just like driving a car you just you know what to do they’re all you know i was in our training squadron with earl and bt-3 after our helicopter we went back fix-wing for a while and i remember guys fighting over a aircraft that was smoother and it was a bravo model instead of a charter mile and it’s faster and i mean who gives a crap just go fly you know and that’s what we did we didn’t we didn’t have our name on the aircraft that’s top gun crap you know we didn’t put you i you know i i’ll tell a joke i when i became maintenance officer vt3 i was a boot lieutenant commander unfortunately and we had 400 airplanes and we were starting to downsize taking these old charlie models that were made for carrier landings and they were all beat up from hard landings and they were towing them over and scrapping them well my assistant maintenance officer is a guy named russ combs great guy and he’s he’s boss you want me you’re my new boss you’re going to put your name on one of these airplanes i said you put my name on those airplanes combs and i will break every bone in your body don’t you do it well so one day i get i came back from a flight and he said i got your plane parked up in front sir did you see it i said where i go out and all the lion guys around laughing he took one of those old charlie miles scraped off the exhaust painted lieutenant commander cd nelson rotor head on it and old charlie mall right there in front and it was a big haha and so they’re going to take it the main side and just scrap it anyway so who cares well pretty soon i get a phone call from a guy saying hey i was just in the navy leaf museum and your airplane’s in there they took that plane just at random and reworked that charlie model and put it in the museum and they left my name on it the museum down in pensacola yeah and but i think it’s gone i couldn’t find it last time and thank god for that but uh anyway no we didn’t what we didn’t care what we flew we were going flying all the same let tom cruise get his name on something we did have nicknames for each other and i can’t tell you john’s real nickname because his family’s going to see this i would see wolf68 there you go that sounds like the pg version so you talk about the last weeks in the squadron and people would just come up and kind of chill out the last two weeks before they left and i actually flew the last two weeks that i was in the squadron the cia had sold something on the black market and they this was done in human force there was some kind of communication center in the human force and they couldn’t quite figure out was what it was or where it was so they sold something on the black market they wouldn’t tell us what it was but they knew it would end up to this headquarter area and so they had they picked a a signal or a frequency that wasn’t being used by any other friendlies in the area put that in homemade device and we wish to follow it and we did this for 10 days and then this went on a site and i just go slow and go a couple hundred miles and spend the night go a little further spend the night and finally got to an area oh we were getting a stray signal we never got a real strong signal so we talked and says one night we just followed the signal back and it flew over this church and the needle just did a 180 so he went back told the seals about this and they went and raided that church and they found a huge communication center in the basement of the church so once they knocked that out we had this real strong signal so we flew it everybody says i hope this guy gets the place before i have to leave country so the last day i was in country we finally decided well this is it hadn’t moved for three or four days it must be the place it wasn’t exactly where they thought it was but it must be the place so we were to fly in throughout smokes and they had a couple flights of f-4s off the coast so we went in 100 feet throw the smokes out pulled back and that was the best air show ever seen in my life and that forest came in just bombed down the place and so then i flew back to bentui literally jumped out of one helo they had my bag packed and another hill jumped in another hill through the saigon the next day i flew home well i flew a mission my last day in country when you guys were there you know like um when we like my generation looks looks at the vietnam war and the late 60s early 70s you know it’s all this uh protesters and hippies and and controversy about being in vietnam how much of that stuff did you guys actually experience or think about when you were over there i didn’t think about it at all not at all i we’re doing our job doing our mission we didn’t think about what’s going on back in the states to be honest with you at least for my part i remember going to r r i didn’t go to r r until like in my 11th month cause i won i didn’t want to miss out on flying that’s terrible i’m awful flight hog that’s what they used to call me and that was a nice name they called me but we got i remember we’re flying over to honolulu i’m going to meet my wife my then wife then she liked me then and see girls i mentioned your mom and so um guys are all chatty and all excited and we get on this old bus and we’re going they’re taking us to fort gerusi there on on waikiki and all the women are all lined up and as we drive through ala moana drive past the park and everything as we’re going to fort derussy you could hear a pin drop on that bus all that chatter all of a sudden it died and guys were all a gape because women weren’t wearing bras we’ve never seen that and men had a ponytail longer than mine and they looked funny they had beards and they were funny tie-dye-ty stuff i’d never seen so in 10 months i didn’t recognize where i honestly i was in shock and i also remember i don’t know what the hell i was doing but we went to a movie in honolulu one of the times and it was the movie version of mash okay and i was so offended by the disrespect for officers in the military i got them walked out in about 10 minutes wouldn’t stay it’s funny how are you so offended and and then when you mention up i remember going in and this is 1970 going into leaving me saying goodbye to people and they’re all gung-ho rah-rah but when i came back same guys were was it really bad no oh gee kill babies over there no but some of that stuff and i even 50 years later in my living room one of my relatives asked told me gee carl i didn’t know you’re in vietnam yeah oh well were you what’s your used term what term did she use made a derogatory term she said and uh whatever it was were you disappointed or were you ashamed or whatever she said i said no matter of fact i wasn’t my son-in-law is giving me the cut sign because it’s his step on and he doesn’t want me to blow her away with with my fire and fury but i didn’t i restrained and i and i said matter of fact i don’t know anybody that i serve with who feels that way matter of fact and this is interesting guy friends of mine that didn’t serve and didn’t go to vietnam i’ve yet to meet one and talk to one who’s not sorry they didn’t and i’ve yet to meet one who served that was sorry they did so that’s my little world i guess that’s the people i hang around i hang around mostly good people so did you see anything like that like that john well no when i came home i was welcomed home because you know from a family perspective i got to the house and you know my parents picked me up at the airport and i was in uniform got back to house and they had a sign it was a eight by four board park aboard they had written on it welcome home and they had my sister had painted and she was an artist the sea wolf signia on this uh uh was an eight by eight by four foot board and so i was it was sit up in the front yard hit it in the front yard up welcome home john so uh in my course my my dad being in the army and his history was very supportive of that but i did have one incident where they had me go on some recruit recruiting duty when i first came back for about two months and they had to go down to the university of illinois and we were down there for a couple days doing some recruiting duty not that we got a lot of people signed up or anything but i went to put my pants on one morning the legs and my pants just fell off so when i was there apparently somebody had thrown some acid or something on my uniform that was the only incident i i had with with that but other than not recruiting very well or getting a lot of people into the navy at that time well what about uh you know it’s a question that comes up a lot and i’ve uh working with draftees and from what i’ve looked when i’ve talked to vietnam vets and when i read about them the the common thread is that people that were people that were good leaders and took care of their men they would either not know who the draftees were because they just they just were good um or they liked the draftees and could tell who they were but they had no issues with them because the draftees would say but they kind of had to step up and and the draft you say i don’t like that we were doing this and say well how do you want to do it and they would kind of engage them into the into the planning and then get listen to their input and then you you can read some negative opinions of the draftees when you get someone that’s that you know it’s almost like an excuse well the draftees didn’t want to do what they needed to do what did you guys did you guys notice any difference between draftees and and and guys that were uh i guess for lack of a better term lifers i don’t think i did that i think if you were drafted in it was maybe a specific for the navy i think it may be maybe a different situation because most people they got drafted went into the army they were and i think the people that ended up in the navy were more volunteers and wanted to be in the navy if they were going to pick a service i want to be in the navy or the air force i don’t want it i started to be in the army got it if they’re sea wolves they volunteer and they volunteer to be sea wolves yes i read a book one time i had to give a speech i was asked to reluctantly of course i did to give a speech on memorial day did you come out of your shell for that i did and so uh there’s a cemetery in a little town of gridley california up north of sacramento about an hour and they’ve got a really a mini arlington in the back and i was really overcome it was neat didn’t know this but i don’t know how they know but supposedly the first sailor killed in the pearl harbor attack was from gridley california now i don’t know how they decided who got killed first that configuration but they did and so they built it around that and they have a celebration every year well i met their manager because a friend of mine was on the board of directors i thought the board of directors of a cemetery what do you fight over spots or i mean what do you need a board for that for a lottery for a plant plotter anyway and i met her nice lady engaging she says you know you served that’s the way i did jesus we need a speaker this was like november and i said when she says oh in may memorial day but yeah i mean i’m best i was farming those days i was raising olives for olive oil 500 acres that’s how to stick your toe in the water you’re good toe and so so i got this i got to say oh god how long are me to talk she said whatever you want i said realistically she said 20 minutes i said okay and i said uh do you want to read this piece before i give it because you know i don’t want to be cut no she says whatever you want so i started reading books and kind of going through stuff and i read a book that was pretty neat and well it was well um documented and well referenced at all the pages and and it was written by a guy named bg burkett and the book is called uh stolen valor and about guys who pretend to be a ranked or not or pretend they serve and they didn’t and it mentioned our friend former senator and secretary of state john kerry and other people like that and it was really interesting book because i learned a lot and what i learned was that if i ask you what percentage of men volunteered for vietnam what would you say john down 10 76 according to this research okay yeah a big number and a big number not only volunteered but but you know it was a lot of shocking things and about drugs and well you know people say gee you’re in vietnam you must have a problem with drugs i didn’t smell marijuana until i was at a john denver convert in 1975 i had no i mean if somebody did drugs like that i swear i wouldn’t know we were close we lived side by side we’re like a family we’d have known i’ll agree with it i had no none of the enlisted nobody did drugs i never saw any of that in vietnam might have been some of those guys chasing women with buying them tees and saigon i don’t know but we didn’t have any women to chase where i was and uh just a bunch of butt ugly guys so i think they may be part of that is because of the squadron you know it’s a different level you’re in the navy the training and and people who are selected to go you were just quality people and they were weren’t into those things so the gun the country changed aquaculture because that day i remember my opening line of my speech on and by the way i walked i went to thank god i put a suit on but i went to give that speech on memorial day in gridley 2005 i think was it year i could my daughter’s dropped me off and i said i got to walk and do this saying you know what to say and i walked past this big hedge in this big mini arlington they had 500 people in there and they had every miss whatever county sing of the song and they had a flyover from from the air base in sacramento and they had even had a guy from world war one who could barely walk in his uniform and uh i mean and they had i don’t know honor guard there and she called it a she called it a firearm squad but it was an honor guard so and i remember my opening line and i’ll end with that was the last battle of the vietnam war was fought and won by the swift boat veterans against john kerry and people got on their feet and clapped that’s what kind of crowd i had how’s that for changing the country amazing so that’s coming a long way from 1970 right that is that is definitely heading back in the other direction for sure you know before we uh i know i opened talking about that operation where you were where carl you were you were supporting uh zulu platoon what other what do you remember about that day i mean that had to be sort of it sounds like that had to be one of the more um you know more i guess dramatic operations that you supported we had some we had with the seal teams we had some exciting ones most of them were at night but that was a broad daylight one and when uh the onc of zulu came to me the night before and we sat down and you mentioned about communication we we live we live within 50 75 yards of those guys and so yeah we’d pre-brief the night before and talk about you know where they’re going and most of the time you know they didn’t wasn’t daylight it was a night op and we would stand ready to scramble if they got in trouble and but this was going to be a daylight off and he had intelligence about some supplies or equipment or ammo or something that was north of our of our base probably you know maybe 50 clicks i’m not sure of 20 clicks and uh we briefed it and what he was going to do and he had a had a sea lord slip coming ed dyer was flying that as you mentioned and ed was a former fire team leader up at det9 well experienced understood fire team tactics and so forth and uh so we briefed it and so forth and we took off and uh and my co-pilot my co-pilot was earl and he was well experienced ready earl was ready to be i think he was about this far from aircraft commander and obviously was a very successful fire team leader retired as a navy captain hell of a guy and uh but our but my wingman um to go unnamed was questionable uh but we put him with a nuke with a newer co-pilot who was a pretty solid guy so we always tried to put a solid co-pilot with a pilot maybe not all pilots are actually the bases like john but some guys there are some guys who are good guys but they you know god didn’t give them those skills so that’s the fact so so i knew my wingman was questioned but we briefed off the op and what we’re going to do we’re going to escort this slick in and and uh and i would i would lead we’d lead it into the lz into the landing zone with i’d lead it in and i decided it was going to be a it was going to be a break left because i wanted the right door it was mike dobson gunner to be the outside of the circle we would go down to about 100 feet or less and circle low orbit while the seals exit the slick and cover them we literally lay cover fire down not wait for any fire and uh and then once they’re all out and clear and imposition and the slick wanted to pull pitch and he would call and warn me we would escort him out i’d lead him out the wing would follow him out well as i made my turn and i’m looking across earl i made a i made a left-hand turn so i’m looking across my co-pilot and i’m saying earl do you see sea wolf whatever his number was i know his number but i’m not saying it no call him stay on the radio find him meantime i got a seal team on the ground i’ve got to escort a slick out and my wingman’s missing so he had to be shot down or had a mechanical failure or something but i ended up trying to raise him earl’s trying to raise them i’m communicating with dyer we get dyer out we get him we get him over to a safety area at altitude where he can orbit and wait until we need them because they got to come out sometime so meantime we’re calling for my wingman he’s not answering no answer can’t find him well then i get a call from tom richards and tom’s on the ground and he said um when you’re flying over here did you did you see you know after you put your strike in you want to put a strike and i put a strike and single ship which is against squadron policy do a single single ship strikes because you know but i had no choice obviously that guy’s on the ground and they were taking fire we were taking fire on the way in and on the way out so it was pretty hi they were they were not happy folks on the ground there the bad guys so um tom asks you know do you see anybody i said after i put the strike and i said yeah i got a i got 10 12 guys dead there we and what else you see that says there was a big dyke they were on it they were on the dikes were kind of running uh east west and they were flooded they were little dikes and there was a great big dike and beyond that a tree line and that’s where the fire was coming run from from behind the big dike and the tree line well we knocked out that big dike pretty quickly but the tree line we had a hard time stopping the fire and we we laced it pretty good i mean earl walsh the minigun up and down there many times but i’m i’m starting to get concerned about conserving my ammo and making sure of making sure it counts and we’ve got to find michael but i couldn’t worry about those four guys that were on my trail ship and i lost them but i had six seals on the ground my own four guys and four guys on the other airplane of dyers so you know we got 14 guys i got to worry about of my own before i worry about four more and all of a sudden uh and tom and i were talking and all of a sudden uh they started taking heavy fire and and i uh i didn’t know who it was but it was grant kelper that went down he took a round in one leg and it went up and missed and missed the family jewels and went down the other leg i mean you may have heard about that and he and and he survived it no no femoral artery puncture i mean he could have been gone and and those wounds there was a guy shot in the chest i’m not sure which guy there was a guy shot in the lower abdomen uh tom was hitting the hand and just just it disabled his weapon and uh and i’m talking john it was obvious to me i’m i’m sitting there at low level i’m doing pedal turns literally the aircraft and you know what happens when you’re going slow you get retreating blade stalls called and the aircraft starts kind of bucking but i did that because i wanted to have a flat profile on the aircraft so that my right door and my left door and earl could shoot because we needed every weapon firing meantime it looks like you know and before tom even asked for extraction i could see that they were in extremis absolutely more than i’d ever seen on any mission guys in trouble you know how many guys total did they have on the ground they had six and so that was the the slick carried in all others all the six seals in one bird and and i and i in my haste i mentioned there i forgot the first part of the story on the way in i’m in front ed ed’s in the middle and my trailer ship’s behind and we’re transiting up and about 10 clicks short of the lz the kid sitting on there i think it was the right side of the aircraft got hit in the shoulder radial men got hit in the right shoulder so and that happens when you’re flying in a hostile area so we turned around and flew back we went back landed got the kids some medical help and tom wasn’t the time richard wasn’t even part of the operation and kelper said let’s go back i said okay i’ll cover you and he says and richard says i’ll go and and i know that a couple guys uh and i’m not sure i won’t use their names but a couple other seals said don’t but they wanted to go so tom hops in and off we went but the story got kind of muffled over 50 years because we never got to debrief the op the guys got wounded went to third surge went home they were at the end of their tour most of them had already packed up all their stuff except for their favorite weapon so we never debriefed it ever so come back to the mission here we got loaded got tom on board and off we went back again now the story over the years i remember hearing from other seals well you guys went to the lz and then then you went back to the same lz that’s why they got hit that’s not true it didn’t happen that way we did not even get to the ease lz the first time we didn’t even make an approach to it because again we just got hit transiting the area so we went back inserted they got in place i could see i’m coming back to the extremist part and uh and i called ed in and ed was already on his way in and thank god that ed was a former fire team leader he knew the story he knew he knew how to fly he had a slick with a lot of power and uh because i was about a quarter of an inch from landing and picking up myself now that would have been the last possible situation because as you all know john on a hot day a sea wolf loaded with armament the probability you’re putting six people in taking off is one percent if that if you could even get airborne at all and uh you have to understand that these uh-1 bravos were eight nine thousand pound airplanes and we had them loaded with fuel a little bit of armament and four people in it and on a hot day we could sometimes we couldn’t even hover we had to take off skip along before we got translational lift we had to be into the wind and very careful and be smooth we would say i’d say to my co-pilot you want to hold this collective and this stick like it’s a beautiful woman you don’t want an offender you don’t want to be rough you want to be gentle and just this think it off the ground that’s what i would say don’t pull the pitch think it up and it’ll get up okay and then we did yep and sometimes you you hear the rpm start going down at 6 000 red light comes on and get an oral and then you’ve got to be kicking out boxes of ammo in the river throwing out your rocket pods and hoping you don’t crash i never did did you nope you had some close calls well on the lst’s you know the same thing you’d barely hover you would get it over the edge and then it would dive for the water to get air speed hope you got the earth before you got to the water and use the water to push off the air to get a translational lift and so we were that heavy so i thought crap you know and i my guys knew we may be dumping rockets to the bad guys and a lot of we may need to get these people it will wait well ed came in he got them all i didn’t see the kid hanging on to the skid basically i was busy we were putting fire in but uh thank god for tom richards on that flight but i did see tom dragging guys across several levees under fire and the two guys that weren’t wounded did a heck of a job laying down fire and tom will tell you to cover the extraction of those wounded guys grant telfer telfer’s lucky to be here in this world and whenever i see tom richards uh it never fails he hugs me which is not all that nice but he thanks me for him being on the green side of grass did the same thing at your house last year sure did and and that’s uh that’s a and and my my one of my crewmen mike dobson he was who is a heck of a guy a stellar one of the best and we had some good ones gunners ever and he he says why didn’t we get more awards on that and i said well our reward is if there are six guys that got wounded and they survived and they got families and most of them i think all of them got back on active duty that’s a big award so my wingman what happened to my wingman didn’t answer wouldn’t answer so we’re escorting the slick back to the base with wounded people and that’s on my mind i’m calling to get the ambulance down to get to get the guys ready and so forth and uh earl still calling him on the radio no response and all of a sudden dobson says sir sea wolf black blank just joined up on us he joined up on us well my temperature went to i don’t know a thousand and we landed and uh first of all we had to get the seals taken care of and they were and and you know and you’re kind of coming down from a high after that much adrenaline’s going and i talked to dear letter craft commander he says i don’t know what happened we just got stuck on the ground and that’s that’s all i’ll say but supposedly they just went when we were going in low he just lost it and flew into the ground and got stuck in the mud and couldn’t get out that’s the story i get from the co-pilot’s now dead he passed away and from the crewman it was a sad day for sea wolves because and i reported that that happening to my exo not to seal with the xo who i knew pretty well and uh nothing was done pretty embarrassing if if if one of those i promised the aircraft commander that was my trail ship that if one of those seals didn’t make it he’d he wasn’t going to make it either and i meant it but they all made it so that’s kind of a story that hasn’t been told and when they when mike slattery wrote the wrote the uh award recommendation and i was talking to gordy peterson he was also a seawolf for a while debt one and debt two and cordy says you mean he abandoned you and the face of the enemy i said damn sure did now again the guy was suspect we certainly didn’t think he would do that so i’m conflicted by that one i want to kill the guy still on the other hand uh everybody made it out everybody did their job my four guys tom clavons passed on uh mike dobson i just saw last week earl shot i just talked to him a few days ago he’s close to us uh really good guy uh 100 oxygen by the way copd problems but what a guy yeah he’s probably gonna outlive us both john and and you and i talked and i know you’re still connected to tom richards who you know as i mentioned has played a role in changing my life for me and uh hopefully we can talk to him and i can get him out here to sit down in this room and that would be just an honor to be able to do that tom’s changed a lot of lives one time he was speaking at a seawolf convention in 2004 and somebody is the camera on me now yeah oh and so somebody says you for two hours admiral show me your wound he goes his finger he got shot in the finger but what makes it clever like this uh tom changed a lot he’s one of the again one of the bravest nicest guys i know and uh it’s all because of jackie i’m sure not mine not tom and uh just a good guy uh and happy he’s a friend of mine and happy he’s here any other uh john any operations that stick out in your mind as sort of the the pinnacle of of your tour over there i think the one that when ben toohey got hit or s son and doc that one that was the big one flew all night long you know for like 12 hours just putting strike after strike after strike in so you’re so you’re sitting there and the base starts to get attacked and is it is it the first call is that a contingency plan that you all have hey if we start getting attacked we’re going to get these birds out of here well the first reaction was to get to the bunker just so it could you know then you know assess the situation and then there was that lull and i said now’s the time to go and we we just ran out to the helos and hopped in and took off and how many guys were on base defending the base or did everyone get into either helicopters or swift boats and get out of there well the base was was an open area there was no perimeter around debt six and uh and i’m not sure there was a perimeter around the the barges that were on the river they just had a whole string of barges right there down in the river and it wasn’t a big village or anything but uh we didn’t have any perimeter guards around where we were and we were just a couple hundred yards off from where the the barges were so we just got in the bunker and after we took off and then we went back because we weren’t sure about the rest of the people that were there the crew the other pilots and so but we found out they had gotten to the boats and and got out how much fuel how long can you guys fly for in the huey when you’re loaded out to bear a couple of hours yeah hour and a half two most flights are pretty short but an hour and a half was a long flight and the 20-minute fuel light is very accurate i had one mission where we came back and we literally the 20-minute fuel light came on we went back up to kamau which was where debt 3 was and as we as we touched down the engine shut itself down we ran out of fuel as we were touching down were you flying with me when we had to land and send out for fuel because we ran out no and we ignited yeah well this is this is in scramble the sea wolves right this story yeah and tell us about that one mike dobson was my recruitment again and we didn’t run out of fuel but i but i landed at hattie inn because i was at the end of the 20 minutes and that light gets bigger and bigger and at nighttime it’s huge just like it’s sun at daytime it’s still pretty damn big what was the mission that you were doing we were covering seals that day and i don’t remember what the pacific operation was the missions all come together i remember mike slattery asked me on the phone time uh how about blah blah blah and i said you know they all kind of blend together it’s hard to separate them out i remember the zulu one in detail i i dream about that one and and uh and thank god about it every night not every night but most nights um but we were we were covering uh seals and and mike dobson could give you more detail but uh uh we had to make a call about whether we we ended up with less fuel than my wingman and we ended up swapping stations and refueling one time to cover and back and forth but we i got so low i couldn’t go back at the time the seals were already in we were safe but so you stayed on station to support them absolutely even though you were low on fuel and you you had enough fuel just to get them and then make it to a rice paddy somewhere basically wells no place called hot the end there was even it wasn’t no fuel there and it wasn’t really a landing pad there was a rice paddie near a little town yes and so we set a perimeter up and we sent out for fuel and by sending that sending out for fuel you you grabbed ammo hamilkans and pulled fuel from the other bird yeah and and uh it’s pretty embarrassing you think about how can you let yourself run out of fuel well sometimes you don’t have and you know the big thing is contamination you worry about getting fuel contaminated and but it worked out okay we made it but that was uh it takes mike dobson to tell the story he can tell it without any alcohol he’s a better storyteller than i am mission focused for sure so then when you guys get home from vietnam what what happens with your careers at this point cause whichever whoever was counseling you carl that told you the rest of the navy ain’t like this he was definitely right i know i had some new guys that were on their first deployment when i was in the battle of the battle ramadi and it’s it’s kind of a corrupting thing to be in this situation where there’s very limited bureaucracy we have total control over what’s happening you’re doing the job you always dreamed about and i remember some of the older more experienced guys saying it’s not going to get any better than this this is the best deployment you’re ever going to do so enjoy it and it sounds like you guys got some of that advice but what was the reality when you got back how many of us would we went from how three how many went to lakers well i what i did is that uh i wanted to go to lakehurst but i had orders to quantum point what was lakehurst lakehurst new jersey it was a naval air station and that’s where uh the lamps program started and what was the lamps program online light airborne multi-purpose systems and we were they were had helos the h2s could track submarines and that’s submarine warfare asw as jenny says and so what so the detailer was actually in vietnam and earl and carl had already left and they were going to lakehurst and i had borders to quonset point and so the detailer wanted to go out on a mission so i put him in the co-pilot seat and we went out and found some targets and let them shoot the mini gun and everything and i told the crew if they ran the the mini guns dry he had to buy the crew a case of beer because it was so hard to re restring and everything it’s easy to just clip the next one around and go so i told the crew let him shoot as much as he wants i’ll buy a case of beer if he wants to dry well he ran the many guns dry get back and he says you know i’d really like to go to lakehurst and he says i can’t promise anything but i’ll see what i can do and about i don’t know four weeks later i get my orders and they’re delay cursed beautiful and then i’m in lakehurst that minigun solves a lot of problems on both ends yes but i’m in lakehurst now and i’m walking through the hangar and i see this commander coming the other way and i salute him and i’m still a jg at the time and he sees my name tag he says far he calls me over says i think you were supposed to be in my squadron and i said i don’t know they gave me orders to come here and i’m just following orders but that’s how i ended up in lakehurst and then that’s you know and the three of us were still real close and became closer even then we got the lakers a bunch of hell three guys yeah what was almost embarrassing was most of us had three four rows of ribbons in them we didn’t know what most of them meant we just we we’ve got all these medals you know somebody asked me then well what are your write-ups and i said i don’t know where were your ribbons i don’t know where’s your logo i know it’s in a storage somewhere but but we’re we’re at this base and there’s a bunch of guys that either dodged the vietnam or the unless given the benefit of the doubt they just didn’t get a chance to go but they’re on the east coast and uh they were resentful they were resentful um you know uh and they reward someone as awards were following us there was always quarters and you always get another award and i was like oh crap maybe i should take leave i don’t want to get there and you know sour grapes and you know i i show up there and i got 11 1200 hours or whatever and most of those guys got haven’t you made aircraft commanders yet because we’ve been flying our bus off and they’ve been on a in most well well i think the guys from hell that came back to the squadron like that from hell three we had been in combat we’d seen a lot and you mentioned in the book that you’ve written about you know tactics and strategy about filling the void and just taking charge if you see something’s not getting done you got to step in and take command and i think the guys from hell 3 stepped up and they they did their jobs better than anybody else we just stepped up and started getting stuff done and i can remember at one point i was a night maintenance officer in a squadron and one in the bird there was always birds down but i was night maintenance officer and one night we got every single aircraft in the squadron was up and ready for flight the next day and i went in the wardroom and put on the board it says all aircraft are ready for flight today and uh and i think that was a nice accomplishment to have all the birds up that’s yeah but i think taking charge and working with the chief and the maintenance people and we worked late hours we they actually we worked past midnight one time just to get this last bird up so you could have them all up on that next day that is when i got the lakers they had 10 birds and one up forever and our ceo was a guy and a nice guy the first one i had when i was there mr peanut i told you about him he looked like the guy in the planter’s peanut yard he and i was a line division officer i mean i i was in charge of nothing but a bunch of guys that were yelling at women and doing i tried to keep them all under control high school guys well i really worked on them we trained and we got pretty damn good and they looked they looked almost like a troop well there was one bird up and i had them all trained up and i’m watching them from the line shack on the end which is on the end the big blimp hanger and the commander comes out there’s ceo and he pre-flights the aircraft and it passed the pre-flight all right he climbs in co-pilot climbs in they got through the checklist okay they plugged the power in start one start two all right sounds perfect everything is good they have the guy out here playing captain in front he had the ones and he’s holding the guy short here and so forth we had a guy who was on the apu there auxiliary power you know it’s like a like a like a four-wheeler and he turns you know the and and the seal salutes him he salutes him hops back on and drives off yanks the plug out of the side of the airplane it’s down and i ran and hid so we were flying the h2s we were assigned to a destroyer so that we were landing on the back of destroyers and we were you were like the third dead i was on sixth dead i went over we had lost a bird in the med and i they put in h2 and hc or c5 and we flew it over and they were just the replacement crew so it was two pilots and a crewman and so we got to sit in the cockpit of the c5 flying across the atlantic we flew over and i was sitting the cockpit and they got a a warning fuel light on one of the engines and had to shut it down if i hadn’t been sitting in the thing i would have never known they’d shut an engine down we had to land in madrid wait for we waited a week for a part to finally come then we finally got over to naples and that’s where they unloaded the the hilo then that flew on the the bone and then that fluid you know flew in the med doing asw work well john did one story about tell him what happened why you what you didn’t tell him was the crew that you replaced what they the guys you replaced the aircraft yeah they had crashed in the met lost the entire lost a bird and a crew in the met we had we were our planes were starting to drop like flies at that time and he’s going over there with another approach got to be on your mind john no i wouldn’t i didn’t you know you don’t think about that you know you got a job doing it that you’re thinking about doing there and i was happy to be in the med and we were flying you know working the med and the only place we really wanted to go to was greece and so we were pulling into greece dropped anchor and we were going to go on liberty all of a sudden there was some russian subs coming out of the adriatic we had to pick up anchor and go chase them so we were chasing them across and we were actually at one point they surfaced all their subs and we think they were trying to sneak some nuclear subs in to the med so they had all the surface ones the diesel’s up on and we were like in perfect formation 10 russian shrimps 10 u s ships in formation going across the mid all of a sudden they stay all their subs went under aircraft are flying every which way because we’re trying to keep track of them and so we’re flying again but you could never get a confirmation of where they were because there was just so much noise in the water with all the ships and everything but they’re flying around and they’re helicopters taking a picture of us on our hangers we’re flying around taking a picture of them on their hangers and stuff like that we go all the way across the med and the admiral from the russian ship calls up our ambulance says thanks for the escort across the bed and they peeled off and went into alexandria and that’s of course when we didn’t have good relationships with uh with egypt so but it was an interesting tour across the bed with the russian ships say middle east and then how long did you guys end up staying in the navy for i stayed on well i did a tour at lakehurst and then uh that’s when i met my wife at the end of my tour and i got out of the navy went back and worked for burrows so that job was too late i was still there like you were told hey girls will always be here it was so i went back and worked for burls and then i i joined the reserves so i spent uh 24 years in the reserve so i actually got 30 years and i retired as a captain and i i know that you were in guam for a chunk of time when were you in guam when did you when were you last in guam oh man i was probably lasting while i’m in the 80s i went over there as a maintenance officer and we there two weeks we consider good planning to leave chicago in february and go to the south pacific and guam and do our two weeks active duty good plan so we did that and the unit i was in there was the uganda guam unit in oganaga was the uh where the naval air station was there and uh we won the bartol trophy one year which was the best reserve unit in all the navy and we won that one year i think when i was the training officer we got that and then i became i was ceo of the midway unit actually got to fly out to midway on a p3 okay landed on midway island not many people can say they’ve been on midway island uh then it was the ceo of the uh komnerv airland which was uh down in norfolk and that was a nice tour for me and then the the organic guam unit ran into some tough times and they fired the seal and they brought me back in and we turned that around and i found this this uh marine poster it was a couple a4s and it said on top and so i took this poster and i redid it a little bit and i says put this poster up we’re getting back on top and we took the the ghana guam unit back up and then i went out there as a co with the unit to a ghana guam and uh and captain uh butterfield was a ceo out there and he was involved in that uh debacle when they tried to get the hostages out of iran he says we could have used some good healer pilots on that mission for sure and uh but uh so that was like the late 80s that i was in guam i just know i was in guam in like 1990 late 1992 or early 1993 is when i got there i was thinking maybe you and i were in the navy at the same time a few years you’re looking at 275 year old guys i’m 70s we’re 76 yeah so it’s oh go ahead but i i love guam was a great place i like yeah that’s and i had a nice tour with the with the reserves in my last four years i was on the admiral staff as a deputy for training and readiness up at the great lakes because they closed glenview at the time i thought he had actually talked him into keeping glenview open but i think because we met with some of the senators and that was when brac was going on and everything i had to give a speech about why we should keep glenview open to these people and then i had lunch with them at a table and i thought i thought i felt i had talked them into keeping glenview open but i think they went you know behind doors and says well you can have glenview or you can have great lakes and you so the navy had to make a pick and they took great lakes which now today is the sole training center if you go in the navy as enlisted you’re going through great lakes 100 yep but i was on the admiral staff up there for about four years and then i retired out of there and how long did you stay at burroughs for four i was at burroughs until it merged with sperry and i actually got my picture in the last burl’s annual report because i had just sold the largest computer that burrows had to the university of chicago medical center which was the a15 and it was a big deal then it merged with spiri then they went then i went to digital and i ended up working for saic okay yeah which is this up here in la jolla and uh i was in telecommunica i worked in telecommunications and we did all the software development for the rbox and i had ameritech then sbc bought ameritech and bought pack bell so i had offices in chicago down in san antonio actually had an apartment because that’s where the main executives were then out in san ramon where pac bell was and i can remember i was with our president one day and i said you know if i put all my offices together they’d be bigger than your office and he looked at me and said you know i could fix that so i always had responsibility for all the artbox you know kind of those software operations for their their backend systems and stuff got it and so what about you carl how long did you make it in the navy after you got home from health you know john admitted the part about uh about glenview that’s really important and that was uh i grabbed a t28 i was in that squadron for training squadron for a while and would take off earl and i several times and come one time earl shot and i know the time uh got him tim ziemer zip as she’s referred to by some zip and i would fly up and we’d go up just stay in with john and eat and sleep for free and give him a hard time but uh yeah i i um i was in lakehurst there and i i wasn’t sure what i was going to do i was still a usnr i hadn’t augmented but i was thinking about it and uh and steve schroeder and i were both on track to go into believe it or not going to the fbi steve actually went in i didn’t i was my interviewee i never forget his name was jay wallace leprod he ended up running the new york office one of my questions in my interview i thought has been fun i said well we got you got you know chad hoover and you got jay wallace le prod and would i be carl dean nelson or c dean nelson he didn’t laugh he’s a good guy afterwards he said that was funny so i it came down to go back to school or teach or whatever so but i i went down with flight instructor and went to the west coast uh did hsl 35 um we got picked up early for lieutenant commander commander did my last tour an oppo five uh i got offered a job by a guy on a ship on my last cruise and my wife who at that time and rest her sold she’s passed on but she was not a fan of the navy and didn’t like being a naval officer’s wife because you know that’s some work it’s not easy and uh and uh so uh but we end up getting divorced later but i always kidding say that my i got up because my wife didn’t like the navy but it turned out she didn’t like me i can’t imagine that but so either 10 years 11 months and nine days navy was great to me i can’t imagine anybody was treated better than i was treated by the navy just a a kid from coos bay oregon and literally and john was saying today the navy’s got a great system of evaluating and promoting the right people with some exceptions he was looking at me but other than that but i met my wife when i was stationed at lakehurst oh yes so i was just getting i was just getting ready to get out of the active duty navy and uh i met my wife we dated and then they the ceo wanted me to be the onc would take a detachment out and uh it was the north atlantic cruise detachment on the boat and i says i went to him he says you know there’s people that are more qualified to take this attachment out than me and he says he looked at me says you’re the most qualified and you’re going and he knew i was dating gene at the time so i just met gene so we dated for a couple months and i hit was gone for two months on this north atlantic cruise on the bowen and uh and carl was on with though and sealed that prior to me and so we both know this knew the ceo of the ship which was just a great guy and we were pretty close to him and uh came back and uh god other got out of the navy in december got married in january and started back at burrows in february and somebody says you know you shouldn’t do three life-changing situations like that in succession she put some time between them but so we dated for eight months i was gone for two of those months and we got eight months later we got married and we just had our 47th wedding anniversary last january outstanding great what did you end up doing carl and the rest of your once you got out of the navy uh i got recruited to a train corporation i i ran a office there and then uh uh lived in huntington beach california and and newport beach and then got recruited to uh boise cascade corporation office products division um i was general sales manager i never sold anything in my life i bought some stuff but i hadn’t sold anything so then then i ended up getting recruited to uh to the hershey organization at 11 western states up a snack and beverage and then i did uh a tour of crafts matter of fact a couple times in chicago yeah john and i had dinner there with his dad he was a great man john f farr senior was no reason no wonder that he and i stayed close and communicated through the 50s when ike was president he still had time to communicate with your dad to uh make a couple of uh phone calls for your aunt was it or wrist yeah and just a good guy his dad was absolutely class act i always sat by him at john’s wedding and other times i always was trying to pick that man’s brain because there’s a lot there and just he was a senior executive at canteen corporation which was a contract feeder for um auto companies and so forth vending machines yeah and vending machine and so forth just a good guy but anyway i did craft and then i got recruited and met a guy on an airplane and he had my seat and i had a lot of frequent flyer points and so i had 1a first class in those days united i could roll in after a long week and i commuted from california worked in chicago how about that and uh beat myself up and uh he had my seat and got chat and he hired me to be my first ceo job and so running instead of running a uh a three a 300 million dollar section of craft and on healthcare food service i had a three million dollar muffin company i ran but it took more work and i paid less money and that’s how smart i am so i took a got to be part of a company going public after that we sold that company uh garden burger was a vegetarian garden burger i had a 600 acre ranch they thought i was a cattle ranch i thought that was an ideal candidate but my food background to run a veggie burger company and uh all my employees had earrings and uh and uh uh flip-flops and uh what did they wear what do they call those shoes uh uh those leather shoes birkenstocks i know you’re talking about and so here i’m sitting here on a three-piece and start shirt almost as much starch john’s got and uh anyway it was a great deal it was a lot of fun and then i ended up last year i did was start my own company made olive oil up to 300 000 gallons a year we were the second largest in the u s when i sold i got lucky some some guys came along and made me an offer i didn’t understand and they came back and doubled the offer and then i understood so i sold i’ve been the luckiest guy on the planet i got two grown daughters three grandkids and uh they were the grandkids helping me in the in the plant they were always cubby was born when i when i poured concrete they think they owned that plant but great kids uh great life lucky scout planet i live on a houseboat on pine flat lake six miles from sequoia how do you beat that tough to beat i was talking to to dick couch okay and we were talking and i was and i hadn’t gotten back to him for a couple of weeks he said what happened i said i’m sorry dick i dropped my phone in the lake pine flat he said you know what if you drop your phone in a lake something’s going right that sounds like a good plan yeah and that’s it that’s uh it’s been great and uh it’s great to be connected with john and his family all of them gene didn’t get much ink but gene is the real brains of the outfit and the reason he was nervous about going cruising the real story behind the back story the man is going in is where is where gene worked she’s about to she was a school teacher working the man of swan inn and the summertime good-looking woman and she still got it and she she had lots of suitors and john did not want to leave her unattended i left my car with her when they went on the cruise because i didn’t want to leave with my other roommate great great group john’s got a great family and when i first went to got orders to lakehurst i said well new jersey i just want to get in and out of new jersey without meeting the jersey girl she changed my whole perspective of jersey girls we have three lovely boys and eight grandchildren and so now i’m tired and we’re just traveling the country because one lives in the chicago area that we’re spending some time with one lives in boulder and his family we just spent a week with them we’re out here in california because my oldest son his family are out here so we’re out there out here visiting them so great family if i can add about gene if i had one little trivia thing she’s sort of a celebrity other than the fact that on her id card and military id it says commander gene farr uh i don’t know how she got that but other than that you ever go to jersey mike’s yeah uh subs yeah there’s a picture in there of the original he’s laughing the original jersey mike’s it was on in point pleasant wasn’t it right yes and it’s the first jersey my first sub i ever had in 1970 and there was a picture of the original jersey mics and the ad owns it now worked there and bought it out but there’s a picture there of the beach a point pleasant and there’s a girl is it yellow or red the bathing suit i think it’s red yeah anyway there’s a girl in a two-piece bin suit that’s his wife well that’s outstanding that’s gonna be the most googled picture after this uh after this podcast comes out you’re welcome gene well look we’ve been going for a little over two hours now probably a good probably i mean this is just a good place to wrap it up um barney you got anything else john i just like to say that i think my time in the navy it was the best part of my life especially that six years on this active duty and it’s been a privilege and an honor to have served and supported the united states and i think more people should should feel that way and and to go through and do that and the people we had that we led hopefully we made a positive impact on other people’s lives and made it better but it’s been a privilege and honor to to serve our country carl ditto i i remember as you talked about the question about people’s attitudes and we came back and so forth uh my brother was uh killed in in uh in action uh in 1968 uh i was my last week officer kennedy school i hadn’t we’re getting ready to uh put on the bar and be for real and then they extended us four weeks and we went 16 instead but i met his body in san francisco and escorted the body from san francisco to coos bay oregon and uh in spite of what was going on in the country then it was the most moving experience you can imagine the way the airlines handled his body with respect how they put him on they they put him on first took him i’m sorry put his body on last and took it off first when we landed how the captain held all the people in their seats until my brother was off until i was actually the aircraft uh and since i’ve been retired i’ve done a lot of traveling john she’s more of eenie and earl and tim more than me they like but i see a lot of good in america in spite of what the news programs may put out even today the 24-hour news cycle is our problem i see good people out there that are and i don’t see racism at all i see good people doing good things being kind to each other and particularly to an old man who they’ve got no reason to be kind to and that’s me and i see it in every state i’ve been i have no bad experiences and i’ve driven probably 200 000 miles the last five years around our country i’ve even been to honduras still met a lot of good people i just like to i’ve enjoyed this and i’d like to thank my son eric he’s the one that talked me into doing this i’m not big on going out and touting what i’ve done and things like that so he i’m glad he took the you know took charge of it and came through and you know talked to helen and got this arranged and i’ve enjoyed the two hours that we’ve spent here with you and i’ve looked at some of your broadcasts and enjoyed them as well so i want to thank you for having us and i want to thank eric for helping arrange it for me absolutely thanks to eric and and thanks to both of you um obviously thanks for coming on and sharing your story and sharing the story of of what you all did more important thanks for what thanks for what you guys did for america and um and for going out and holding the line and on top of all that um a profound thank you and a solemn salute to the 44 members of the sea wolves pilots and gunners that were killed in action in vietnam and who gave their lives for us and to take care of my forefathers in the seal teams we will not forget their sacrifice thanks for coming on thank you john thank you and with that carl nelson and john farr sea wolves have left the building always good to hear those stories man i’m glad we’re able to capture them this is a unit that was founded and commissioned in vietnam and then decommissioned in vietnam this the whole life of the sea wolves was in vietnam that’s it i’m pretty sure most highly decorated naval air squadron in history which is also kind of crazy so good to be able to pass on these uh capture these stories appreciate them coming on here and well these guys were always ready to go echo charles yeah i’m thinking that we should probably do our best so we are also always ready to go what do you think yes i agree it’s gonna stay capable that’s kind of the deal that’s the gig so what do we do we’re working out we’re reading obviously we’re doing jiu jitsu thankfully come on you gotta be thankful for that i always think there was a time where we were doing a lot less jiu-jitsu we don’t like that at all capability hit some challenges all good though we’re back we’re doing jiu jitsu we’re reading we’re working out we’re maintaining relationships as well forget about that kind of stuff so through this path that we’re all on you run into some pain yep unfortunately it’s the truth it’s reality pain is part of it we’ll see pain and suffering okay i’m overstating that because it isn’t a level of suffering because you’re gonna suffer regardless if you’re not on the path you’re gonna suffer those consequences of not being on the path if you’re on the path you’re gonna suffer what the path gives you something so you’re gonna need some help we got help choco fuel supplementation for your body and for your brain so first thing we have is jocko discipline go in a can in a powder and in the capsule so speaking of the cans these are your energy drinks of today the real energy drinks modern updated updated upgraded upgraded beneficial benevolent but yeah benevolent sure that’s what they are they’re good they are they’re good for you energy drink that you get all the front end benefits of energy drink and then you get back in benefits rather than back in detriments as it were back in the day i like where you’re going with this not like that so yes this bingo uh you can get them at wawa you can get them at vitamin shop you can get them on jockofill com also with jaco has this stuff for your immunity stuff for your joints stuff for your uh additional protein that you might need keep in mind this additional protein mulch it’s called mulch [Music] is the best tasting protein that there is in fact even if you were to start ranking just straight up desserts like if you just started ranking desserts straight up it’s on it’s in the game i mean it’s beating there’s a lot of desserts in my opinion it’s straight up beating right oh yeah and legit desserts too yeah that it’s beating um let’s see there’s a whole a whole genre of cakes in fact most cakes are getting beat by mulk in my opinion i usually think cakes are dry okay so you’re correct actually and using a little case study so my mother-in-law is in town cool and she likes these things like i they’re almost like shortbread cakes okay and they come in this lavish like container and like half of them are like coated with i don’t know what to call icing or whatever you call that and the one that at some point it was soft and now it hardened and now it’s a shell but it’s like anyway i forget i forget what they’re called but they’re whatever so i’m like okay cool yeah and so my did you get that hitter yeah you know i got into them okay just to see what up you know they look good yeah so i was like cool and i eat one i was like oh yeah yeah it’s like of course good keep in mind i wasn’t evaluating it like this at the time but i’m like cool good thinking back on those things whatever they were called milk is better milk is straight up better milk is better oh yeah and i’m talking about this front end tastes straight oh yeah just the sheer pleasure of drinking milk is better than those cakes and the thing is the cakes weren’t like oh these are like surprisingly junk they’re stale they came through for what they were doing yeah this one’s also better if you start graphing all desserts yeah like moke is is in the upper percentage correct and there’s and it’s absolutely good for you yep yep so there you go that’s the good news right now i think uh the you know belittle for the for the design is going to get a nobel eat prize right hey man we got to put that stuff together it’s hard to make that stuff taste so good it’s not easy yeah i would think we go through iteration after iteration after iteration to make it taste that good it’s not like oh cool here’s you know the ingredients put them in there now it tastes good no it’s hard what’s weird is like i didn’t think about that and one belittle was kind of explaining i was like oh that makes sense and then i realized oh [ __ ] that applies to a lot of stuff then because okay so we’re doing like flavor testing for the energy this is for is this for your drink you know mango mayhem we’re we’re doing some tasting and stuff so he’s like hey what do you think about this is before when we’re doing grape or whatever he’s like what do you think about this i was like yeah i want it to be like more more like i need more of this particular flavor or whatever he’s like okay cool but keep in mind that in turn does this to it and it’s like oh man this is like a balance it’s a balancing act so you gotta balance it perfect yeah and sometimes straight up and this is what happened with that particular flavor he’s like sometimes it simply won’t work given what you’re trying to do just simply won’t work otherwise you’ve got to either add sugar which that’s the main thing you just got to add sugar right which we’re not doing we’re not doing it exactly right so the same thing for milk same thing for like those malt bars like everything i was like oh man you guys got some you have a task that’s a hard job oh yeah but i think the nobel eats prize is gonna go to belittle yeah and the jocko fuel uh what are they the food team they’re making the they’re making it yeah mixing it up fedexing it to me so if you want any of that stuff go to jockofield com by the way look we know that shipping can be expensive and we know that there’s other let’s say global organizations in the world that offer free shipping if you’re a member of their little club [Music] okay cool and that’s good i’m not taking away from that that’s a good business model we know that we have to offer something so that we can also give you the equivalent value so check it out if you subscribe to any of these things you don’t have to pay for shipping shipping is free you know what i thought of actually just now about the some global organizations and their free shipping situation yeah you pay a membership fee for that oh so we’re not it’s not even free it’s yeah it’s not free at all if you buy nothing yeah they scammed you you still pay you’re still paying guess what you’re still paying so that’s kind of the better uh what do you call it like the superior element in this hey if you don’t it’s not weird they trick you pay us money and it’s free it’s one of those switcheroos you know it’s like no no you got free shipping now just for the ability to have free shipping just pay us a membership fee that’s really strange all right with the catch uh yep there you go vitamin shop you can also get it at you can also get it at wawa for the drinks and people are asking a lot about a lot of other retailers across the country we’re working on all of them we got the team is out there all the time there we are we’re getting our our our phone rings all day long which is awesome because people want the the distributors the stores want to have it in there and we are getting it in there we’re being strategic we don’t want to out do our supply chain right now as we build out our logistic capabilities this is a military operation right this doesn’t mean we’re going to be overly cautious i mean we’re going to push the envelope and we’ve been pushing the envelope you know there’s been sometimes running a little bit thin on the logistics train but we’re still pushing forward but we don’t want to totally overwhelm our logistic train so we are we’re getting there it’s taking a little longer than we wanted to understood but we want a solid base to get there so if you we’re working on it and we will be worldwide we’ll be nationwide pretty quick we’re working on it so everyone can have the benefits yeah yeah it’s true i feel kind of bad with all the benefits just in my cupboard also origin usa this is where you can get your american-made stuff denim for jeans yep we got boots got wallets and belts and whatnot jiu-jitsu stuff yep by the way since we’re talking about nam today this if you don’t know this the seals in nam much of the time wore jeans why do they wear jeans because they were more comfortable more durable and better so you can see all kinds of pictures of the seals and nom you can see them in the mekong delta wearing jeans and guess what we have a pair of jeans based on that history and they are called delta 68 and i’m talking about 1968 is there anything cooler than delta 68 for jeans it’s going to be very hard to find they’re they’re they’re the most comfortable genes you will ever put on your body and by the way they’re also as comfortable as whatever else you could put on your legs as a human there’s nothing more comfortable i probably would agree with that if i had some but oh that’s a bummer that’s completely my fault by the way that’s my fault i should have had the whole world revolve around you more probably right well actually technically all i wear is shark fin shorts which are from origin by the way by the way i don’t know if they i think they might be sold out of those so that’s a whole nother story nonetheless they do have ghees and rash guards for jiu jitsu as well yeah all kinds of jujitsu stuff compression stuff like all kind of all made in america too by the way i know i said that one time but the way i said it is indicating that it’s not as big of a deal as it really is not to get crazy here but if you need a ghee get an orange and gee for sure get a rift key because it’s next level it’s another thing it’s another it’s another it’s a complete elevation from whatever kind of gee you’ve ever worn in your life the rift gee is a totally new ball game it’s freaking awesome so if you if you need a ghee get yourself a rift key oh yeah so yeah again originusa com check out all their stuff on there because a lot of stuff for me to go down the list right now and say all this stuff is going to take a long time so go on there check i don’t have that kind of patience right now no and believe me i’m patient to be sitting here with you freaking time and time again as you put me through this but it’s all good bro i understand fully nonetheless that that’s that’s what it is also jacquard has a store is called jaco store the og since day one day five not day one day five uh so you go to jackostore com this is where you can get this one equals freedom shirts and hoodies and hats some rash guards on there get after it shirts hats tank tops good if you know what that means you say good if you know what that means you want to represent that’s where you can get your shirts and hats and hoodies we got shorts on there as well so yeah a lot of good stuff on there um we also have a free shipping subscription situation and it’s not the kind you got to pay for a membership just to have it you get a shirt every month a little bit different designs free shipping on that one as well but yeah it’s called the short locker so that’s on jacko’s store as well so yeah if you want to check out check out that if you like that and by the way all the stuff that we’re talking about if you want to support want to give that support to the podcast this is how you do it otherwise it’s like oh we will run you know people are out there running advertisements for um stuff yeah stuff that you actually don’t want registry cleaner for your uh computer look nothing against registry cleaners for your computer hard drives but you don’t want to hear about that when we’re talking about freaking uh huey gunships and we don’t want to tell you about that while we’re talking about huey gun chips so all the stuff jacofuel com jackostore com originusa com if you want to sell porch we appreciate it you know what’s interesting and this i was talking to jail our boy jill joe moss and yeah and he reminded me of this and i know i know this i know this like it’s the back of my hand is that the expression anyway i know this but every once in a while when i’m reminded of it i’m reminded of the for like a better term interestingness of it where all this stuff origin jeans jocko store stuff jackal fuel stuff this is all stuff that you that we actually use now and have before even like these exist this is like just the better version now like shirt you’re wearing right now oh that’s from dracula store right there the hoodie that i wear jackal store the shorts that i wear literally like these shorts are so worn out because they wear them every single day that like it has the outline from my cell phone like on the pocket or whatever or drinks that we’re drinking oh yeah origin shorts though by the way yeah like it’s all i have i have jacostore com shorts on right now exactly right with the digital pattern oh yeah so it’s not like camo oh yeah that’s one of the options for sure so it’s not like oh yeah support the podcast by um buying some keychains that we sort of just made up or whatever which would be kind of cool i guess these teams are cool because i use keychains but they’re not arbitrary things you’re running around with your black belt keychain now that was a gift yeah charles if you see him maybe you forgot he’s a black belt don’t worry you won’t forget for long because he’s got it on his keychain he’s like hey do you want me here let me put these keys on the table where they’re visible okay okay there you go first off that was a gift from mike from jiu jitsu magazine okay i want him to do disrespect him by putting it somewhere all i’m saying is we know we will all know you’re a black belt when your keys go on the table which is where they always go in front of everyone anyway what i was trying to tell our people is that this is stuff that we use anyway even before it existed so it’s not some arbitrary thing we’re saying hey support the podcast by the way we’ll give you this this moderately valued thing yeah you know it’s like these are things that are like when you’re in the game on the path they’re legitimately there as well so check hey subscribe to the podcast also check out a jocko unraveling podcast that’s me and daryl cooper dc talking about all kinds of stuff grounded podcasts we got the warrior kid podcast we got jocko underground com that’s our own platform right we can’t just be we can’t just be uh parasites on these big platforms cause guess what the the big platform might decide they’re gonna scrape you off and now what are you gonna do starve to death die we’re not gonna let that happen we gotta have a contingency plan if the big platforms decide to scrape off us because we’re over there no we have our own platform it’s called jockonunderground comground com you are helping us build it just in case these people get squirrely and they start injecting their behaviors into what we’re doing that’s one see that’s the cool thing about a podcast the cool thing about a podcast is you can do it well if you are doing the podcast in an in an old-school way which is hey we’re just going to do what we want then you can do whatever you want we can literally do whatever we want on this podcast but what if platforms said well actually we don’t want you to do that or we want you to do this or we’re going to put an advertisement in there whatever that whatever they’re going to do they can do right yeah so we don’t want to allow someone else to control what we are doing so therefore if you want to help us out you can go to jockowunderground com and we’re making we make another little podcast for that we’re talking about interesting topics adjacent topics it costs money it costs eight dollars and eighteen cents a month to keep it rolling but uh if look if you can’t afford that we get it we’re not trying to exclude you from the team we’re not trying to exclude you from the movement you can email assistants at jackonground com and we’ll take care of that appreciate the stop porch we also have a youtube channel by the way yep speaking of platforms we have a youtube channel this is where i put in a lot of work creatively as the assistant director to many of these videos the good ones and if you want to check out my work you want to see what what the the really the pinnacle of assistant directing yeah you can check some of these videos out on jocko podcast youtube channel yeah yeah the epitome is always or the pinnacle of assistant directing so my daughter she’s eight by the way so keep keep that in mind okay before you fly off the handle so she you know she’s like oh yeah you and jack are youtubers and i’m like oh okay ah you know maybe maybe not depends on what you mean or whatever so she’s like hey what is like well what does jocko do then you know i look more he writes books or whatever he’s like yeah but he already wrote those books like what does he do yeah what’s he doing now yeah like what does he do and you know eight years old you hear what do you do you that’s what you think right you think what do you do what do you do when you wake up like what does he do she knows what i do i play on the computer all day she knows that you know kind of thing she understands so anyway so i was like oh you know whatever he does his thing she goes jocko hardly does anything like you she goes she said straight up you do most like you do pretty much everything and then so i kind of laughed i was like yeah you’re right jacob just talks she’s like she’s like yeah he just talks like you’re the one who has to film you’re the one who has to come on with the song you’re the one because she sees everything i do you know so that’s her next time she says something like that i’ll be like well you know um he does he is the assistant director on some of these videos so you know so now we know i am i am i am an employed individual yep my my work is is the pinnacle of effort yes you’re doing your part jack so yes youtube channel we do have one uh also we have psychological warfare it’s an album we made jocko made technically of him helping me through moments of weakness that i might have from time to time then we extended it to other weaknesses that others might have from time to time so what you do pop that in when you’re feeling them all you’re going to skip that workout you put it in he’s going to tell you why why you should not do that it’s a good one if you want something to hang on your wall get something cool to hang on your wall from dakota meyer flipsidecanvas com is going to send you a bunch of cool designs check them out and you’re supporting dakota meyer and if you’re doing that like your whole day is good in my opinion uh got some books final spin this is not a book about leadership there may or may not be some leadership lessons in there it’s more a book about life and death and the and the journey that human beings go through and the pitfalls that they fall into and how they rise out of those or don’t you can check that out it’s coming out if you want to get the first edition get best order now because you know the publisher’s like well you know we don’t want to invest too much and that’s becoming yeah it’s like okay cool so they’re not going to print enough you’re not going to get one unless you’re in the game get in the game also leadership strategy and tactics field manual the code the evaluation of protocol displays freedom field manual there’s a new version out that has my head on it but it’s bigger than my original head sure my head is grown [Laughter] way the warrior kid one two three and four mikey and the dragons about face by hackworth which i was honored to write the forward for extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership the first two books i wrote about leadership with my brother leif babin we have echelon front which is a leadership consultancy and what we do is solve problems through leadership we have an online training platform ef online com on there all the time courses on there get your team aligned you don’t i don’t need to come out to your location good deal dave burke doesn’t need to come out to your location leif babin doesn’t need to come out to you look at where we’re in your location virtually check that out we have some some live events that we do one of them is called the muster and is two day leadership seminar the next one is in phoenix august 17th and 18th and then las vegas october 28th and 29th go to extremeownership com if you want to get in the game there we have something i don’t even know if this will be out yet we have the ftx which is a field training exercise you learn tactics you apply the tactics with laser weapons you apply the leadership tactics that we talk about all the time and they will be ingrained into your brain when you are done with the field training exercise massive lessons learned and if you want to help service members active and retired their families gold star families check out mark lee’s mom she has a charity organization she gets one of the things that she’s doing is getting medical treatment for service members that the government doesn’t cover and she’ll cover the whole bill so if you want to help service members get those medical treatments you can donate or get involved at america’s mighty mightywarriors org and if you want more of my grueling ruminations or you need more of echo’s hypnotic hypotheses you can find us on the interwebs on twitter on the gram and on facebook echoes attica charles i am at jacqueline and thanks once again to john farr and carl nelson thanks to john’s son maureen for getting us linked up thanks for sharing your stories gentlemen and thank you for your incredible service to our great nation and thanks to all the sea wolves themselves that flew in vietnam and risked their lives and sometimes gave their lives for their brothers in arms on the ground and to all our military personnel and veterans around the world thank you for what you do and what you have done to protect freedom and our way of life and the same goes to our police and law enforcement firefighters paramedics emts dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service and all first responders thank you for protecting us when we need you and to everyone else out there you never know when the call will come and you never know how much time you will have in fact you don’t know how much time you have so don’t wait don’t hesitate don’t procrastinate instead like the mighty sea wolves of helicopter attack squadron 3 go out there and get after it and until next time this is echo and jocko out
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