this is jocko podcast number 294 with echo charles and me jocko willink good evening echo good evening flight this is blue star six rp major bunting announced as he crossed the release point on the ground indicating two minutes flight time to the landing zone with that announcement charlie gunships from crossbows began a slow dive toward the landing zone prepared to release some of the 14 2 75 inch rockets that each aircraft carried along with their machine guns if it became necessary flight lead is taking fire blue star 6 announced over the uhf frequency which was obvious to everyone behind him as the green tracers were coming from all around him chalk 2 is taking fire we’re hit came the next announcement suddenly the radio was alive with every aircraft reporting taking fire as they crossed the rp and the woods around the landing zone were highlighted by red and white flashes and green tracers streaming upward as each aircraft flew into the cone of fire attempting to reach the landing zone and discharge their load the airwaves became garbled as pilots stepped on each other’s transmission or in panic depressed their transmit switch to the entire flight so they could everyone could hear the conversation between a pilot and his crew chock six is taking [ __ ] get on your guns chock five where’s the damn guns break break chalk ten is there was so much confusion that no one could get a complete sentence transmitted until may day may day dutch master 4-1 is going down said captain fox in almost a calm voice who the hell is dutch master 4-1 someone asked over the radio looking skyward and searching everyone had their answer dutch master 4-1 was the command and control aircraft for the cav screen and was entering an auto rotation from 4 000 feet what really held everyone’s attention was the flames coming out of the bottom of the aircraft oh [ __ ] it was obvious that he’d taken a hit with an explosive round in the fuel cell but at 4 000 feet every aircraft had at least one set of eyes tracking this crippled aircraft an aircraft in flight on fire was somehow few something few had ever seen before and it was horrifying and mesmerizing may day dutch master 4-1 is on fire was the next call from captain fox his voice a bit elevated fire was every aviator’s worst nightmare shoot me but don’t let me burn there was a fear that had been with aviators since orville and wilbur had first flown before parachutes world war one pilots were known to use their pistols rather than burn in an aircraft as everyone watched the radios went silent slowly dutch master 4-1 began a slow roll and as it hit the trees it was inverted the cavs screen began to converge on the crash site as major bunton bunting entered the cauldron of enemy fire he turned to mr grossman get on the controls with me in case i’m hit grossman immediately did so that with a very light touch ready to take command of the aircraft suddenly sauer and thomas opened fire taking fire they both screamed together though there was no need since the sound of a hammer tapping on the side of the aircraft could clearly be heard as blue star six continued to press toward the landing zone decelerating and coming to a hover the arvind soldiers didn’t wait for the aircraft to land they started jumping out as the aircraft came to a slow walk before major bunting could land the aircraft was empty sir go go we’re empty sauer yelled as he continued to fire his weapon at the tree line choco one on the go major bunting transmitted lz is hot his next transmission followed almost immediately may day may day blue star 6 is going in he had just cleared the landing zone when the aircraft engine quit and that right there is an excerpt from book three from a series of books called undaunted valor which were written by colonel matt jackson and this is the third book of the series which is subtitled lamsan 719 and the first book that he wrote in this series was subtitled an assault helicopter squadron in vietnam 1969 to 1970 and we had the honor of covering that book with colonel jackson on this podcast it was podcast number 275 and that first book is based on colonel jackson’s experiences himself as in vietnam as a huey pilot the huey the iconic helicopter of the vietnam war and that first book it’s written as a novel or a story with the main character the main character is named dan corey but that character is based on colonel jackson and the events that are in the book took place and this third book is written in a similar way it’s written from the from the perspective are focused on a an individual named dan corey but the the events that are written about in this third book they took place and it continues to recount some of these incredible heroics from these helicopter pilots and helicopter crews in vietnam and this third book in the series tells the story of a of a massive operation which included the largest helicopter assault of the vietnam war this is an operation that lasted 45 days it was cut conducted in laos and it was an attempt to shut down the ho chi minh trail and this book undaunted valor lambson 719 is filled with incredible details that colonel jackson got by interviewing and doing intense research to accurately describe what happened and the book is incredible read but we’re actually not going to read the book much today we’re going to touch on a little bit because we have the honor of having one of the pilots who also flew hughes in vietnam and who flew missions in support of operation lamsan 719 his name is jay tate he’s a retired major u s army he is the recipient of two distinguished flying crosses 38 air medals recognizing 950 hours of combat flying the bronze star the vietnamese cross of gallantry and the silver star for his heroic actions under fire it was an honor honor to have him here with us tonight jay thank you for joining us well well that introduction was uh put me right back in the cockpit the and that book is filled with those those either coming into landing zones or coming out of landing zones it’s just incredible to read and incredible to learn about the history of that operation as a matter of fact i was talking to a friend of mine that was in um that was in in sag in vietnam and i mentioned that you were coming on the podcast and i told him that you flew in lambson 719 he and the look on his face is whoa that was a that was a rough one you know we supported command and control north which was the northern segment of sog in in vietnam and i remember several missions that we flew prior to the kickoff of lamson 719 on 8 february prior to that we were flying out of the quantri dongha area with a group of command and controlled north guys from up there flying west towards caisson when all of a sudden in our flight of four we saw these orange fireballs coming up at us and we immediately took evasive action 23 millimeter an aircraft fire coming up at us we took action to get out of there obviously the mission at that moment was called off and we made it back to donghae one of the guys over torqued his aircraft in the evasive action and had to be grounded for inspection for tail rotor to make sure that nothing had happened that would cause him further damage or even crashing but that was in january of 71 before the kickoff of 8 february 71 well before we get into that let’s talk a little bit about the beginning of of jta where where’d you grow up where’d you come from i grew up in a little town called hickory north carolina i was born in pensacola my father was a flying chief in the navy flew pb wise his he was in charge of a hangar at pensacola that repaired the skin on pbys that was shot up and dad would take him up and fly what we call the idiot circle around the airfield and land it and check to make sure the rivets were holding okay on the aircraft so he was an enlisted chief pilot in the navy yep oh that’s pretty good he had a background and uh in aviation uh well not an aviation metalsmith but in it was it was a metalsmith himself and did a lot of work with sheet metal and stuff like that so obviously it was uh it was a skill that the navy needed and dad was a real smart guy and picked up on it and uh i loved flying and got his wings i remember his wings or had a gold center with the silver wings which was different than the regular aviator who has all several wings in the navy or going yeah yeah so uh he was he was kind of uh disappointed i didn’t go in the navy but when i went into army aviation uh that sort of smoothed it over for him how long did he do in the navy uh he was just a guy that went in in 1942 after pearl harbor and uh got out in 45 and served uh the rest of his time in the reserves uh got out of the reserves right after the korean war so he was his own businessman he was going to say for a living yeah he was um he was a full-time firefighter for the city of hickory north carolina and he also owned his own business he had a shell service station it’s called tate shell service station and i remember uh he had uh tate shell it was in great big letters uh illuminated letters on top of the service station and the s uh letter burned out and had tate hell up there and so dad would do a few commercials and uh on the radio and he said business has been really good we have sold the s out of hell [Laughter] nice and so uh what about mom she the the uh what was she doing mom was uh was a typical housewife uh brought me up uh to stay at home uh i grew up in a neighborhood where nobody locked their doors we could go on vacation for two weeks doors to stay open um i remember one time we had a fire in our home burned up all it was in the closet burned up all of mother’s clothes and they had no way of getting in touch with us because we didn’t have cell service back then but i remember all the ladies in the neighborhood came down and had the house completely cleaned up when we arrived home except for the fact that mother’s clothes were all burned up but she got the insurance and got the ball on your wardrobe well that’s not a bad that’s the kind of neighborhood i grew up in nice what what about you what were you interested in what what were you doing when you were a kid okay um in our and it’s it’s quite ironic in our neighborhood we had a field that was vacant and uh we called it the battlefield and um you have to understand this was in the early 50s and all of our parents had served in some form of military service we had some marines we had navy we had an army didn’t have any air force but we did have a navy pilot that was there so we would all put on the gear that our fathers brought home and would play army up in our battlefield and uh and from uh we would dig foxholes and uh we would make our own hand grenades but we couldn’t pronounce hand grenades so we called them hankernates and the hankernake was we we would dig up uh red clay in in north carolina and uh would put water on it and fashion in the balls and let it sit out in the sun and then we would throw that as those at the enemy and i remember one time eric schufer got a black eye and his mother was not real happy that we were playing battlefield and throwing hand grenades and then what about as you got older as i got older i really wanted to go to a military school and my parents were not quite i was an older kid so my parents were not quite ready to let me go um i got into the scouts got to wear the uniform see that was very important to me then wearing the uniform wearing it correctly um in high school i got into the band i was a drummer but the uniforms were all shaped like the tailored after the west point uniforms with the high collars and and uh and to me that was just added to the uh the desire to want to do something in uniform didn’t want to be a firefighter my father was but didn’t care to be a firefighter my uncle was a police officer didn’t care about being a police officer but there was something about the military that that was like a magnet to me i would watch every as a child i would watch every movie a military movie on tv that would come on randolph scott you know played those big he-man marine you know kind of like you you know except you were in the navy uh but those things i gravitated toward that my good friend don murphy who i grew up with he did the same thing he went to the marine corps um and it was really he went the nco route i was the officer out so at the times when we would be on leave and come home at the same time i had to go through this whole rigmarole about being an officer and then list the men really knew what was going on and we were just there for showmanship when uh so what year did you graduate from high school i graduated in 63 um quite interestingly i had tried out for the united states of america high school band as a drummer and was offered a trip so we this is these are two to four students from every state in the union and we met at university of southern mississippi to practice and then we toured all down through the south across over into mexico doing concert tours all the way to hollywood we did a uh we did a big concert in the hollywood bowl and i mean how many people can say that you know and again in those outstanding uniforms that were similar to the ones that i wore band uniforms that i wore in high school um and so it just added to the to the uh and i was proud of that i was very proud to wear that uniform and i wore it right and i spit shine my shoes i did that all the way from junior high school when i was in the band all the way through high school so i knew how to spit shine but then i was offered a full scholarship to university of southern mississippi and also the university of west virginia uh i didn’t like west virginia because it’s everything was hills it seemed like everywhere you went you had to go up a hill and i know you navy guys you like that stuff but but you know i wasn’t quite into that so i took the scholarship to southern mississippi uh their rotc was mandatory for freshmen and sophomores and so there again here i was in uniform not only and i was a the scholarship i was in at university of southern mississippi was a full full-ride music scholarship and i was a drummer in the university of southern mississippi band [Music] after my first year i decided i didn’t want to be a music major um so i thought well you know uh i think i’ll go into art design because i like to be creative in this so um i transferred out of southern mississippi to my father’s dismay because it was all paid for and i enrolled in east tennessee state university in johnson city tennessee and there again sophomore year that was in my sophomore year rotc mandatory but the more i got into it the the more i just really gravitated towards that and i took my oath of office as a an advance corps cadet as a junior and and from there on it’s just i cared more about getting in that commission than i did about getting my degree i had transferred majors from music to uh art design so and that time we were on the quarter system so i had to go an extra quarter uh to take up all the courses that i needed to take and i graduated december at 67 first went down the aisle and cap and gown and uh then i uh after i got my diploma then all the cadets go out take off the cap and gown and we put on our uh uniform coats we already had the pants and stuff on for that so under the gowns so i came down and we were all commissioned and i remember my mom and dad pinning those gold bars on my shoulder boy i tell you what i uh i felt like i had really accomplished uh at least the first phase of my life so that was 1967 december of 67 i went on active duty in march of 68 as an infantry officer brand new what we call butter bar wearing the gold bar as a second lieutenant i went to the infantry school it’s called the infantry officers basic course at fort benning just on the other side of the hill from us were all the ocs guys they called ocs the benning school for boys and i’ll never forget we were so here we were commissioned officers and there they were hoping to be commissioned officers and many times we would march by their their area and i re recall a big telephone poll and on top of the telephone pole in the officer candidate school area was this black helmet shiny black helmet with a gold bar in the center of the helmet it was actually a helmet liner and the what they were trying to ocs guys that was competition who could get up there and get the helmet first of course the pole was always greased and uh i don’t know if anybody ever got up there and got that helmet without putting cleats on their shoes but at any rate uh uh but yeah that’s uh that was my first taste at benning of being a real army officer so this is 1967 so you must have pretty much known as an infantry officer you were going to end up going to vietnam uh yeah i was uh i was ready i was prepared i was uh mentally prepared while at east tennessee state i was a member of the sigma phi epsilon fraternity practically every one of the advanced core cadets juniors and seniors were uh advan army uh advanced corps army rotc cadets and every one this my fraternity was a big military fraternity um and we uh we took great pride in that uh and uh i i remember we would inspect each other in the fraternity house before we would leave to go to drill on thursdays just to make sure everybody was dressed right dress ready front and uh and it was a it was an it was an honor uh to be uh an advanced core cadet and you had all of these underclassmen that this was our that you were leading this was our first time as really being a leader giving commands uh moving orders for uh platoon and company drill and and and this kind of stuff and so they were instilling in us they being the cadre was instilling us the correct way of of being an officer of showing authority without disrespecting people and you can correct people without disrespecting people and and i learned that through rotc and that’s kind of kind of interesting because i know that rotc cadets coming out and being commissioned didn’t have the greatest reputation amongst a lot of the ncos in the army at that time so when it’s 1967 and you mentioned that everyone freshman and sophomore had to be in rotc it was mandatory at uh at university of southern mississippi and it was mandatory at east tennessee state university i can’t speak for the other uh colleges and universities but i would think that perhaps that was the manner in which uh every university at least of a federally funded university uh had to operate wow that’s pretty so what about what about like uh as far as kind of the social aspects of america at the time where you started in 1967 you were you really seeing much of the anti-war attitude or anything like that no not we were not subjected to that i don’t recall that i recall that on campus uh there was no snickering when in uniform every thursday was drill day and so everyone had to show up for drill day had to be in proper uniform um if you were a sophomore uh or a freshman or sophomore uh you were carrying the m1 grand raffle and every week uh as a freshman sophomore you had to go to the arms room and clean your weapon and it had to be and you see you were taking rotc for credit so for the two years as freshman sophomore you were taking rotc for credit so yeah you best uh clean your weapon because if you didn’t you get a demerit and x number of demerits means you got a drop in grade so we would actually go through and do inspection before uh on every drill meet which is on thursdays and uh that’s how i learned how to inspect an m1 garand rifle and uh i don’t know if you ever fired one of those but uh i think i actually have fired one i think i actually have i fired a bunch of different weapons i’m sure we do like these familiarization shoots and they pull out a bunch of old weapons and new weapons and i can’t but i’m pretty sure i have fired one but they used to have this uh when you would clean your rifle when you pull the bolt back and you would have to clean down through the board and everything and then what you would do is you would take the little white uh cloth that you used to stick on the on the bore rod to clean clean the uh clean the bore out but you’d stick it down there and you’d look through and the light from that would shine up through and you could tell whether or not you had any uh any materials in the board that shouldn’t be there and uh but then you had to you had to pull back on um on the uh the charging handle yes and then let it go right quick so it would go forward well if you didn’t let it go right quick you would get what’s called m1 thumb because it would get stuck right and many times i had him one thumb on that yeah but so uh so you go to the infantry course that would you call the basic infantry course infantry officers basic course iobc so when when you’re in that i mean you must be these guys are preparing you to go be a platoon leader in vietnam correct correct yeah 1542 platoon leader and and this is now is it 1968 1968 now so there’s a lot of experienced guys that are teaching you a lot a lot how long was that course of instruction nine weeks if i think correctly was it nine weeks or 16 weeks ah i think it was might have been 12 weeks i’d have to think about that because i took my first command at bragg i was there in uh in march and i took my first command at bragg in uh in uh around uh august so when you’re going through that course are you get forming up platoons and you’re going out and doing training missions and that kind of thing yeah that’s exactly right uh forming in platoons and companies and then they rotated who was going to be platoon leader i mean we’re all second lieutenants uh well not all of us uh we had some direct commission guys in there um i had a i had a sergeant major who was direct commissioned to a captain oh wow and uh special forces guy and uh snake eater and uh and uh he um he was always the company commander and great guy wonderful guy but we would switch roles around um we participated in all different kinds of maneuvers whether it be an armored column with infantry in it or whether it be uh squad tactics uh whether it be platoon tactics or whether it was in uh a company crossing over what what then they called the line of departure the ld uh we don’t have that in warfare now everything there is no ld it’s like perimeter defense and we’re we’re going to that but we practice all of that uh not everybody went airborne but uh we all did the the was a 47-foot tower that dropped you out and so you get a feel for what falling with a shoot on is like and uh but when i was on a night combat compass course and there was uh four of us we went out teams of four pouring down rain at fort benning georgia columbia columbus georgia and uh it was in the early spring and it was cold as hell and we were sitting there chattering and it was a night combat compass course we were dropped off at a point on a road in a deuce and a half and all right team alpha out so we would get out and we knew where we were had a postmark with a number on it and we had our map so we knew where we were and then we hunt our directions okay you’re you’re you’re point a uh you gotta be at point b and you have to shoot your azimuth looking at your map see what shoot your asmus with that and then uh go to point b and then you go to point b to point c but pouring down rain cold tea chattering only one guy in our four smoked so we would have him light a cigarette and put it in his mouth and he would go out following the azimuth until we would tell him to stop and light it so that we could make correction okay go two feet to your right two feet to your left so that he was directly on azimuth and then he would stand there with his cigarette lit so and puffing under so we could see the light and then we would go to him then we’d shoot the next aspect exactly the same way send him out and guess what we made it we made it we were one of the first teams to make it through that night combat compass course of course along the way there were little surprises like an explosion would happen over maybe 20 meters to our right so we’d have to go down well it was all planned as to where this stuff was going to go and we didn’t realize it but you know there were seasoned troops out there taking care of us they weren’t going to let us get hurt we didn’t know that at the time but uh but during that night compass course pouring down rain i heard in the background it got louder and louder and louder and louder and louder and finally straight over our heads two huey aircraft and i said to myself those guys are dry they have it better than i do a couple days later in our company area they had a sign up anyone interested in army aviation we’re going to be given the flight aptitude test on a certain date i was the first in the orderly room to sign up for that thing and then that was it you got picked up for it graduated from uh benning took my first command at fort bragg i was in uh interesting here i am an infantry officer and my command was a military and was with a military intelligence battalion am i battalion here i am an empty officer i’ll never forget my first sergeant my first first sergeant sergeant chuck hawley i don’t think that anybody ever forgets the name of their first first heart not officers and he brought me in he treated me i was kind of embarrassed because he had all these medals and here i am brand new second lieutenant no combat experience and he treated me like with great respect and uh he welcomed me aboard i mean i never forget the first time i walked in the orderly room he calls the oily room to attention i was sort of baffled you know here i am second lieutenant you looking over your shoulder for a kernel yeah what in the world is going on but uh yeah and i learned a lot from sergeant hawley uh my first first sergeant uh never forget uh going out on a just a maneuver and uh here i am we we have our military with military intelligence and my bars military intelligence battalion air reconnaissance my actual unit and i was command of alpha detachment we had a live mission we would take photographs that were taken by the air force sent back to fort bragg for photographs over vietnam sent back to fort bragg and my guys and outfit detachment and there was bravid attachment charlie attachment but the mission is given to our guys we were actually taking the photographs and pulling intelligence out of the photographs using stereo scopes which you can measure the height of various objects and so on and so forth then we would pull all that together and we would get in a bird dog at uh at fort bragg and fly that to dc and that and it was a real live mission i mean how many people can say that you know they were we were actually doing a real live mission in support of vietnam at that time here i was a little second lieutenant you know barely dry behind the ears and uh my first sergeant kept me straight i had a bunch of warrant officers work for me too and they really did all the work um i was there just to sign my name and and uh and thank my first sergeant for keeping me straight how long did you do that job for four months orders came down sending me to flight school at fort walters texas so you show up to flight school uh when we were talking when i was talking to colonel jackson it sounded crazy the number of helicopter pilots that were being trained at that time it was amazing totally amazing you see uh matt jackson started off as warrant officer so he had a whole different experience than i did that was for warren officer candidate school we called them walks and people said well what’s a walk and we’d say well that’s something you throw out a wabbit well i think i think it’s funny because when he when he’s talking about uh you guys the commissioned officers they called them rlos real life officers yeah yeah yeah so we had the real life officers yeah and the walks yeah yeah the real live officers yeah and um and we were all each class had a designated color uh and the uh my class had to be the yellow hat class and you tell different classes by the color of baseball cap that you wore and you had these funny wings that you sewed on on the front of your hat they weren’t aviator wings but like student aviator wings and so we had the yellow hats the walk class going through they were yellow hat class but we never never got together and that was um that was the primary flight training and that’s where we just learned to fly uh my first helicopter that i climbed into was a training helicopter 55 it’s a huge 300 aircraft but it was small i mean you could probably get the whole aircraft into this room would have to probably knock out part of your wall so the tail rode it would get it through but that’s how small it was i mean it was smaller than the oh-13 and most people remember that by when they watched mash or the h-23 which was back in that era as well but that’s what i learned to fly on it was so tiny and being tiny it wasn’t easy to fly it was very squirrely so um i remember people i said man i wish i was in that 13 or that 23 and they said well you know you’re getting some great polish skills in in that th 55 because you’re learning how to adjust for wind and so on and so forth and they said boy when you get to when you get to rucker that huey is going to be like you’re climbing out a little fiat into a rolls royce and uh i remember our first cross country after we had soloed i soloed at my 14th hour you had to solo within 16 hours or you got sent back to another class so i soloed in my 14th hour and that’s amazing getting you know the instructor pilot gets out and says okay you’ve got the aircraft and yeah you fly the idiot circle and you call takeoff you call turning uh into the wind you call based and you call final you had to do all the correct call signs and everything and we were at little staging areas all around fort walters texas which was in mineral wells texas so we probably had staging areas as much as 50 miles out because you had all these classes and all these various staging areas um and uh i’ll never forget it was a little anxious when he climbed out of that cockpit and i knew that i was in control and uh but then after you flew your first solo coming back in the bus didn’t stop it fort walters at the at the fort it stopped at the holiday inn tradition is everyone who soloed the bus would stop there and those who hadn’t soloed yet stayed on the bus those who had already soloed got off the bus with the new solo guys and they carried you and threw you in the pool at the holiday inn and interestingly at the holiday inn in in mineral wells they had crossed huey rotor blades that you walked under to go to the swimming pool and uh to have that honor of being thrown in the pool was just incredibly amazing and fulfilling did you have any did you have any trouble when you were going through aviation school did it come pretty naturally to you were you you know did it did you did you figure it out pretty quick or when you said 14 hours was that well no i mean we had some guys that uh that soloed at 10 hours i mean they were i mean just incredible but you have to understand a lot of the guys i went through with already had their private ticket most of my fixed-wing i don’t know of anyone in my class that had a rotary wing private ticket uh and had they done that they could have probably so loaded in five hours you know it just all depends but um leaving there well here’s the other interesting thing all the pilots we’re getting this flight pay plus we’re getting our our normal second lieutenant pay which i think was like 247 dollars a month how much was flight pay oh flop pay was kind of i know when i quit getting flight pay at the end it was like 400 something dollars a month but so that’s kind of crazy right like you’re almost doubling your pay oh yeah oh yeah and but but the interesting thing about it is you got all these single guys here so what do we do we go to the to the car dealer so everybody i remember uh a good buddy of mine was my roommate uh uh he and i actually lived in a motel right up beside the gate of fort walters and he had a camaro z1 z28 whatever it was zcarp d28 i had the osmo bill 442 and i mean that just goes on all the hot cars you know the single pilot you know we thought our sierra didn’t stink we had that stuff you know we you know we were just uh there there was something about that that just started the camaraderie just started building and i remember when we left um fort walters to go to fort rocker alabama for our pr uh our advanced training uh there were four of us that that convoyed uh all the way to uh and we made our first pit stop in uh montgomery alabama but we convoyed all the way down through there and we all had cbs in our cars so you know it was like we were flying and we were talking to each other and that and and on the back of the car we uh everybody had united states army aviation and a little sticker in the back of your window you know and you know like i say we thought our sierra didn’t stink and uh we got to we got to montgomery we all checked in that night and uh i got a call from the desk that said uh uh i’ve got you listed as owning a a 1968 osmo bill 442 it’s a black vinyl top with blue bottom i said yeah yeah that’s that’s mine he said sir you need to come to the desk so i go to the desk and there’s a truck driver there he had pulled his 18-wheeler into the parking lot of the motel where the four of us were all staying didn’t cut sharp enough and hit the left rear quarter panel of my car and tore all the pieces i mean schneider trucking i’ll never forget this you see there are trucks on the road all the time and i’ll forget the stock oh and he was so apologetic and so on and called his dispatcher and everything was fine but uh anyhow we had a couple days before we had to report into uh to uh fort rucker so my plan was i was just gonna drive the car up to north carolina give it to my dad they get it fixed up he’d give me his car i’d drive it down to to rucker well we get up the next morning and i get a call from my roommate that had been my roommate in in the primary training and he said hey goomba his name was john vagneti hey goomba uh okay now that the joke’s up i said what are you talking about john where’s my car i said john i don’t have your car oh come on come on somebody had stolen his car that night now my car gets hit somebody steals john’s car that night montgomery police does all the all the investigation and so the next so after that was done i said okay throw your guarantor we’re driving at north carolina so we drove to north carolina picked up my dad’s car in the meantime john calls his dad uh who owned a company called superior plastics and uh in uh water uh i’ll think of in a minute but in new jersey and uh anyhow john has a new car waiting for him just like that from that but uh yeah that was uh that was the beginning of our uh our uh advanced course in flying helicopters for the united states army so when you get to wreck uh fort rucker is that when you start flying the huey yeah yeah yep it was and it was like everybody said uh the huey came natural to me uh it was just i mean it was amazing to crank that thing up and uh and then to hold the cyclic and pull up on that collective and that i mean it was just it’s like everybody said it’s like going from a fiat into a rolls royce and it was so easy i mean it was you know even though it had a little crosswind it wasn’t it wasn’t shifting like the th-55 did i mean the th-55 would shift if you had a three-knot crosswind so uh but it was an incredible incredible aircraft and of course while we were flying that we were also getting our instrument training down there that’s the first time we’d been on instruments so the instrument training was not in the huey it was in an oh 13 and that’s where we were under the hood and and uh flying on instruments and uh and got what we called attack ticket tactical ticket it wasn’t the regular standard instrument ticket that one would normally get uh but was a tack ticket and what was interesting about that and this will come up later in our conversation is i learned how to shoot ground control approaches very well gca approaches very well we’ll talk about that later on in our conversation is that where you learned originally to shoot it that’s where i learned to shoot it yep and it came in very handy in vietnam so how much longer was it until you uh how long was that training um that training we got there and uh so that had been about uh i must have been about three three or so months because i think in july yeah it was in july that uh that i got my several wings pinned on me and my mom and dad drove down uh it was a wonderful experience my girlfriend at the time came down with my parents i was so proud of those wings i mean i was so proud of being a butter bar in december 67 and so proud of of getting those wings later on that would have been in 69 because you know 68 i took over the command and went to flight school went through christmas graduated in july of 69 very proud of that i remember every weekend while we were at fort rucker a bunch of us would go to panama city florida and there was a young couple and their two children owned a motel there so we went down negotiated with them that we would like to come down every weekend and stay in the same suite of rooms uh and they knew that we were everybody in flight school was on orders to go to vietnam right out of flight school and and they were certainly aware of that and so they took us up uh on our offer that we would arrive on friday night and leave on sunday and she had a a closet in the suite and she said you just keep all your beach clothes everything down here uh i’ll wash them i’ll clean them up for you and i’ll hang them back up in the suite and she did that every night every friday night we got down there she and her family had dinner prepared for the four of us and we all eat together as a family now that’s that’s people who cared absolutely and um i took my parents there and uh right after we drove down to panama city after i got the silver wings and we stayed in that hotel that night and uh with them and and uh we all congregated the family that owned it we all congregated together and uh then i left out the next day my parents stayed down on florida for a while uh but the next day was the landing on the moon and we washed it after my girlfriend and i watched after we got back uh into hickory uh from driving from panama city florida now one of the things that i when i first covered um uh colonel jackson’s first book you know one of the one of the statistics that he brings up in the book is there was 5 000 huey sent to vietnam and 3 200 of them were lost in combat did your parents know these kind of statistics were they nervous as hell were they talking to you about you know what was going to happen how did you feel about it um my parents i never expressed any worry whatsoever about being in fact i wanted to go to nom right after flight school there were too many infantry officers serving infantry aviators in vietnam there were not enough slots for all the after aviators there were entry aviators who were like i’m third in line to be a platoon leader as a captain so what happened was all the infantry officers in my flight class out of rucker their orders were changed from vietnam to state side assignments so i went to fort bragg and flew with alpha company 82nd aviation battalion there i flew with seasoned aviators who had come back from vietnam i was a platoon exo my platoon leader was captain fred dickens who had flown with the little bears in the 25th emperor division he had flown over into cambodia during that incursion a lot of that’s written cambodia has written up in matt’s first book there but i learned a lot from fred i learned a lot from the other a lot of the war officers that were there who just jim foster for example um he had flown with the 48th blue stars and learned a lot about him because we did a lot of tactical maneuvers with the 82nd during that time and he sort of gave me a feel for what i would be doing when i got to nam um jim ended up being a roommate with uh myself and uh fred dickens captain dickens um gemini stayed friends until this day he was going to get out of the army and i talked to him into staying in the army and encouraged him to to extend his enlistment as warrant officer which he did and finally retired out of the army i hope sometime jim can hear this podcast and and can smile a little bit about that what’s very interesting is is that after i i put in my orders to go to nom again requested none orders came down sending me to the seventh ifter division in korea commanding the seventh after division was a god by the name of hal moore who was lieutenant colonel helmore in the eye drang valley with the first calf and we all know about we were soldiers once and young general moore at that time was two-star general and i was the seventh aviation battalion maintenance officer and when general moore was a rated aviator he had to fly four months or four hours every month to maintain proficiency draw flight pay i don’t know if you tell a general officer you can’t draw flight pay but at any rate uh my job was to fly co-pilot with him and i got to know him and uh so this is this in korea this is in korea now see i’ve put in orders i put in a request to go to vietnam down sending me to korea okay okay so i was not that much aware of general moore i didn’t know about the idrang valley back then i mean this was in 71 i didn’t know much about the i drank valley not 71 i’m sorry this was in uh 70 when i got to korea from bragg and so he asked me one day while we were flying how i liked my assignment with the seventh and i told him well it was fine but i said if i don’t get to vietnam sir i can kiss my career goodbye because i mean you know i want to be a career army officer and if i don’t have vietnam time and have performed well in nam i’ll never be a career army officer and he talked a little bit he said would you have a particular unit you want to go to and i said yes sir i’d like to go to the 25th entry division a flaw with the aviation battalion he says any particular company i said alpha company sir they’re known as the little bears he said i know the little bears i’ve heard of the little bears they’re a great unit that was on saturday on monday i got a call from the general’s aide and it said uh general wants to make sure you’re ready to go to nam i said yes i am okay you want to go to alpha company 25th aviation battalion oh the journal wanted to know if you want to take any leave in the states i mean he can only authorize 20 days but i said well sure if i get that within three or four days orders came down now i’ve been in korea now maybe four or five months by that time orders came down and on usually orders and probably the same thing in the navy you have you have regulations that authorize just and such there were no regulations authorizing anything on my orders it was all voco which means voice command voco between commander 17 for division commander 25th infrared division uh voco and it went all the way down to even commander of the airlift in out of oakland and my leave my 20 days leave started and so anyhow i go to kenpo airport i get on the airplane okay i’ll fly home my 20 days didn’t start until i reached my home of record and the 20 days was up the day that i left my home of record so i’m on not on leave until i reach my point i left there after 20 days flew to oakland then oakland to nam i get to nam and this was in the fall of 70 i get to numb we’re all getting off the airplane you know everybody hears about the humidity how it just kills sucks the air out of you when you get off the airplane uh landing at tonsino so get off the airplane okay there’s a i think a lieutenant a major lieutenant colonel out there and a bunch of enlisted men and they say okay all the officers over to my right okay and then the sergeant major said okay all the ncos in front of me and there’s another e7 that says okay i’ll list them in down here on this side so we all get over there okay they’re calling out names so the colonel the colonel major is calling out all the officers names says is there any name that i haven’t everybody’s raising their hand said any name i haven’t called out i said here i am he said you must be captain tate i said well yes sir i am he said well your charp will be here in 20 minutes geez and a chopper flew in from the 25th from alpha company 25th aviation battalion to pick me up oh mackerel so pick me up take me to coochie where the 25th headquarters is we get out of here you must have made a hell of a good impression generally a jeep picks me up drives me to the orderly room and i i go in and salute to the company to come in no matter who’s a major majors command at companies uh uh and nom and uh the major said i don’t know who the hell you are but welcome aboard shut my excuse shook my hand and uh that was my introduction to the alpha company 25th aviation that’s amazing yeah you know you you made a joke about hey i don’t know if you can if you need to uh take the the flight pay away from a general officer apparently those general officers had some power that’s incredible general hal moore um and i’ve read the book i’ve watched the movie quite a few times uh even general moore before he passed away thought that mel gibson did a good job representing him and and the sergeant major um but uh you know that was a he was a hell of a man a great leader uh he was um he was not one of these uh general officers that set himself up on a plateau he was down with his troops and uh and i saw that quality in him and i was in great admiration for that so you show up so you show up uh what what’s the first thing that happens when you show up in vietnam now they they what did they they must have thought you were the best pilot or something unless i thought you were somebody the uh company xo company commander says exo get captain tata place to stay the echo exo said uh well sir where would you like to stay and uh i said well my buddy fred dickens captain dickens he stayed in a hooch called the holiday inn he said is that still around he said oh yes sir hall dan’s right over here he said let me say oh yeah there’s a bunk available so i stayed in the same hooch that captain dickens stayed in and uh after i got everything squared away uh uh the exit said uh now they’re gonna be cocktails up here at uh captain so-and-so’s place and he showed me where there was he said he said so come on up and meet the guys well this captain was great at fixing martinis so hecky i went up there had a martini they had some hors d’oeuvres out there and i thought wow this is vietnam so this is this is really crazy so uh i was with them right at two months into the first of november and um orders came down for the 25th to draw down uh and prepare to head back to hawaii and i thought to myself man this is really great i’ve been here two months now i’m going hawaii and uh i’d already been laying out on top of a bunker in a lounge chair i had a nice suntan and and of course my dermatologist doesn’t think it’s a nice suntan today but at any rate uh i thought wow this is gonna be i said i’ll get to hawaii i’ll you know i’ll already have my tan everything look good well uh no everyone who had less than six months in country got reassigned so i found my young rear on a c-130 several about a week or so later headed to a core there was no everything was pacified in three core where the 25th was i never flew into one hot lz in fact i never flew into an lz in three core that had all been pacified so i mean i had i never even heard the door gunners work out uh with the 25th because there was there was no enemy threat we thought at least that time it wasn’t apparent get on the c-130 uh fly me up to uh fubai fubai international uh i-corps uh very close to the uh to the north-south vietnamese border uh got off the aircraft uh got my parachute packing bag with me full of my stuff pouring down ring and uh they’ll load us into a building and say we were going to go to screaming eagles uh uh orientation training and uh we did that for about a week and then it got reassigned to my regular unit now interesting i was with alpha company 82nd aviation battalion when i got to the 7th i was actually assigned as a staff maintenance officer but i was located in alpha company 7th aviation battalion 25th i go to alpha company 25th where did i get assigned 101st aviation battalion alpha company 101st aviation battalion known as the commentary flight that was a week after i had become a 101st air assault trooper then how long was it before you started flying missions with them took my check ride the next day uh i was a peter pilot the following day went into a hot lz first time i’d ever heard the m60 machine gun door gunner and crew chief working out the ship literally danced when they pulled that trigger uh you could feel the shake going in and going out hot lc i heard three pings on the aircraft came back and i i experienced what they call you got your cherry busted we took three rounds in the aircraft going that lz uh came back that night once you got your cherry busted in the unit a lot of spree decor i mean there’s a spirit of core like you would well you would because you’ve experienced that jocko but but but i hadn’t experienced anything like that and uh so what do we do he had to get initiated before you could wear the unit patch and we had to drink this drink called a flamin hooker sounds tasty it was southern comfort uh and you take a match and you light it so you got the blue flames coming up and uh echoes laughing here like he knows and had to drink it down all the way down set the glass down while the blue flame is still burning inside of it then turn it upside down and if more than two flaming drops came out of that glass you had to drink another one until you got it down now keep in mind i was an rlo a real live officer all of the warren officers they had a spirit of core like you you’ve heard of the war officer protective association wapa they took care of each other well they all most of them had mustaches can you imagine drinking that flamin hooker and you’ve got a mustache and that blue flame is coming up and uh there there were quite a few times that the the mustaches had to be put out and of course the bartender was there with a glass of water that he could throw over in our little officers club i was i was on a little assignment overseas and and we were in a bar and they had a they had like a executive happy hour from you know four till six so we’d show up there at 3 59 and it was free it was free drinks free drinks for two hours and i had like half a platoon with me so we’re in there and this is when i was a young enlisted guy was crazy and so we drink for the two hours and then we get done and now obviously everyone’s primed but i remember telling the bartender uh we actually yeah we we had run up quite the tab and i looked at the bartender i said we don’t want to drink anything else unless it’s on fire so every drink sport is lighting everything off it was total total mayhem uh you know we all got to k we all couldn’t wait till a new guy came in to the outfit and and that was in the oak club hey the enlisted guys god knows what was going on they were sadistic but but we couldn’t wait till a new guy came in you know one of the things that colonel jackson talked about and wrote about was uh you know some of the flying that you’re doing when you’re when you’re uh formation flying flying and how it’s so much closer than it was back in the states and then the the whole thing with the hover holes and getting down in there and having to listen to your crews like a hundred percent you can’t see actually what they’re telling you you just have to trust them did you were you up to speed on that stuff or did you have to just get the steep learning curve learn formation flying at fort rucker for fort rucker when i left fort rucker i was confident i could fly that airplane i knew i could fly that thing and um and we uh uh right where the jesus nut is on a on a huey which holds the main rotor in uh there’s like a red rubber gasket so what you would do is you would for the helicopter let’s say we’re flying echelon left all the helicopters from the lead are going to the left to fly formation in that you would come up and you would have you would put the red rubber uh grommet right on uh right about just below the windshield just at the lower end of the so that would keep your height above it so you wouldn’t get caught up in a rotor wash from the other helicopter but you would keep it up and in a in a staggered echelon left uh you’ve got the lead but every other helicopter is a little bit higher than the ones in in front of them and we flew a lot of formation flying uh at rucker so i felt very comfortable with that um and and then like i said i was very fortunate to go to the 82nd after uh infantry’s after flight school uh instead of going straight to nine because i i became even more proficient that more proficient in in in formation of flying but there’s one thing you learn in formation flying in nom is you don’t want to get too damn close because one round can take out two especially if it’s 23 mike mike or 37 and uh and uh you don’t be flying through debris i mean you know so you did um and and we’ll get talking about lamsan 719 uh we did 20 second separations in in that how long were you how long were you then with 101st before lamson went down okay um so i got to i got 101st uh got into my unit a week before thanksgiving of 70 um quick side story uh my cousin charlie finger was with the 501st signal battalion ballistic guy on his second tour volunteered for his second tour um i got a hold of charlie brought him over to uh our unit took in the officers club we had thanksgiving dinner to the other uh now think about that you’re with your family having thanksgiving dinner together november 1970 and uh uh it was just a wonderful day to see charlie uh i never saw charlie after that uh he derosed uh went home uh i said i i told him i said um charlie i’ll come over uh what not grab you and uh you can be my guest at uh at um the art the artillery uh uh battalion there because they always had the good shows the uso shows and the korean shows with all the all-girl korean bands i said i’ll come over and get you one night he’s and he said sir uh i said charlie i’m your cousin he said sir it wouldn’t be safe for you as an officer to be around our barracks at night and uh you know fragging was a thing over there and uh it was uh so i took him to that and uh all right so make a long story short um i’m flying combat missions i flew my first command and control sog missions probably by in december because they just didn’t let anybody fly at the command and control north missions you had a chance to have three r r’s or you have two r rs if one of your r and r’s you want to go back to the states so i like to go back to the states a week after a week after uh christmas and uh went back spent a wonderful time with my family uh new year’s eve there uh with fred dickens uh he and uh by the time his wife uh my ceo for captain fred and uh i left about a week after uh after that to fly back to uh vietnam got into uh tons of newt and uh tried to get a went to flight operation i said i need to get up to uh fubai and the guy said sir there’s there’s a major major operation a big thing going on he said i don’t know when i can get you out of here i said i got to get out of here quick if there’s a major thing going on i said he said well sir just stick around here and lo and behold within an hour uh they had a uh c123 flying that that’s 130 and one there’s a big difference between those two aircraft but you’d rather fly on a 130 anyhow c123 is only two engines so when you were flying those um when you flew sog missions i mean i look at the profile those sog missions that those guys were doing and it just it’s it seems just completely crazy were you thinking that were you thinking okay here’s whatever two americans and four vietnamese soldiers i’m going to drop them off in the middle of cambodia or laos and and we’ll see what happens did that seem crazy to you you know it didn’t it didn’t right on and and i’ll tell you what man we would fly down to uh da nang uh well we flew out of three lo with sag denying was the major base that was their headquarters there was one at fuba and there was one at country dongha area the ones we flew out of uh denying were crazy i mean it was i mean it’s like they got the music going everything and uh and would flight follow with covey the air force fixed wing who would be up above us and and uh vector us into where we’re supposed to go uh i don’t know how much of this i can i guess it’s pretty declassified by now yeah well i mean it’s pretty declassified it’s been 20 years was the time level so uh here’s here’s a mission we’re going to we fly team in uh yeah we put them in an area where covey has uh either told us or shot white white phosphorus down and landed and then we we sparrow and go down into the landing zone uh spiral and go into the landing zone we drop them off uh then if they get into contact uh then we gotta go back in there and pull them out which that did happen uh quite a few times a lot of times it didn’t happen it didn’t happen at all uh there were times we went in uh and they were in contact we had to pull them out with ropes mcguire rigs 120 foot ropes stretched 10 feet 130 foot they had to strap them on we had to pull them out of the had the jungle sometimes it was ladders that we would drop down and they’d climb up on the ladders and get out um one and that was extractions uh we never did well we did some insertions with ropes too uh because they were going out on the side of a mountain there were no way with foliage uh and there was no way we could land um so we would we would put them down but i remember times that i pulled guys out on ladders and there would be there were three guys on my ladders now you got to think about that and the density altitude and what that does to lift a helicopter so we got them out and got them back in to vietnam that’s when you said oh my god thank god we’re back in vietnam you know that’s when you that’s when you start to realize it and we came in and we had to land in a like a rice pad he said these guys could get off the ladders and get back in our chompers and you just didn’t and any any moment you just felt like this is it i’m gonna i’m gonna buy it and a couple of our guys did and uh on cabana control north missions and uh died and uh a lot of the uh saw guys went with them so that’s you know that’s the bad part i lost 14 guys uh the year i was uh and um but here’s one mission we flew in we we were going to insert a team landed to the lz big elephant grass probably eight feet high a roto wash lays the grass down and when it did the whole lz was ringing with the nva and our door gunner started working out and firing everybody’s firing and everybody said sorry get the hell out of here get the hell out of here and we were firing firing we were taking rounds too but nobody nobody aboard our aircraft was injured i mean that’s just one thing we would do prisoner raids intel would tell us where there was a big nva battalion headquarters we had we had all the all the intel on it we knew the comings and goings had been washed and washed and watched and we have a flyout flight of four the uh the third aircraft was always had the medic on the fourth aircraft was the aircraft that would pull your ass out if you got shot down first two aircraft would go in uh i happened to be on the second aircraft on one of these prisoner raids where we went in and landed right in the damn middle of a nva battalion headquarters the guys on board jump out i bet you we weren’t on the ground 20 seconds and they’re coming back in they’ve got captives they’ve got uh all sorts of documents in their hand we get back on that ship and we’re our asses out of there going to the nine i mean that’s the co and it it was exciting i mean i’m not going to tell you if the anxiety wasn’t there but i wasn’t scared it was exciting and they would come back and have cold beers yeah i mean that’s sog yeah another day at sog so i guess you did think those missions were a little bit crazy uh yeah but but it was fun crazy you know we were young we didn’t know any better i guess to fly them today i probably couldn’t see the damn instruments but uh so you’re flying you’re flying a bunch of those missions and and now you’re i mean it sounds like you’re racking up some pretty good hours and some pretty good um experience at doing it and and then so so lam son when did you so you got back from your your christmas and new year’s leave so that’s january whatever yes it’s early part of january you come back and now it’s um it’s you get told immediately hey there’s some kind of big operation we don’t really know what it does but you got to get up there um no they just said there’s a big operation going on in our core and and they and i said i got to get up there uh i told them i’m a platoon commander up there i’ve got to get out there yeah my guys uh need me up there stop so anyhow i get up there um it’s very well that it’s kept quiet um so when i got into my unit and said what the hell’s going on people kind of looked at me like what are you talking about and i told them all about that and uh my company commander knew about it major clue bob clough he’s in the book uh bob knew about it um but anyway that’s when i told you that prior and this was in january uh we take a a sock mission out of uh ccn mission out of dongha and we’re flying towards the ocean border uh crossing in the vicinity a caisson when those red balls of orange balls of fire start coming up at us and we have to take evasive action or get shot down uh by 23 mike mike or 37 i don’t and we knew and and see as far as as far as i’m concerned that was reconnaissance in prep four and that wasn’t just one reconnaissance that was just one of many reconnaissance and prep four lamson 719 so the the premise of lam son 719 and again the the book undaunted valor it’s volume three lambson the subtitles lampson 719 the the premise of the operation is that america wanted to go into laos and shut down the ho chi minh trail they also america didn’t want to put any troops any american troops on the ground inside a laos because they didn’t like the way that looked politically so they decided well we’ll run the operation using south vietnamese soldiers but in order to actually execute the operation they were going to need to have american aviation because america was the only one really capable of doing that job of airlifting all these south vietnamese soldiers into laos and then on top of that if you’re going to use the helicopters then we’re going to use the air support too and the air assets so that that’s sort of the premise of the operation and it’s a big operation the goal like i said the goal is to kind of put it put a halt on on the portion of the ho chi minh trail that ran through the house and and and the and and and the headwaters of that was in the town of sapone so that was the final objective was to capture sappone it’s spelled t-c-e-p-o-n-e right it’s got a weird spelling yeah it’s got a weird string but yeah that was the goal that was kind of that sapone was the furthest away the for the deepest into laos to get to there would be correct the furthest north of the ho chi minh trail call it the headwaters of the ho chi minh trail i would say there’s also and and reading about it there was also the underlying uh goal was to sort of prove that the south vietnamese military could conduct these operations that they were capable that they were capable of doing these kind of things that was part of nixon’s uh vietnamization uh policy the more that the south vietnamese could prove that they could take care of themselves and defend their homeland then the less there was need of u s forces especially ground forces so you’re saying that your your company commander kind of knew about it when you showed up there i have to think he did because major clue did not seem overly surprised in fact if i recall and i hope i’m not making this up but if i recall he seemed surprised that i made it up in as quick a time as i did from from saigon now prior to the actual execution of lambsson 719 there was another operation that was to push up to uh to the caisson combat base yeah off of route nine it’s called dewey canyon too now did you participate in dewey canyon too you know i have to think i did but i’m not it’s kind of hard to uh because i flew so much i mean i flew over 1200 hours and now i’m 950 of which were actual combat missions so i i have to think that i did i never recall flying any what they call convoy support a lot of that would have been done by charlie model and and cobra gunships to take action um no doubt in my mind did i fly supporting operations for dewey canyon too um but i never quite tagged it as as dewey canyon too uh hell i had so much going on anyhow of trying to keep my warm officers enlisted men and 10 helicopters flying but the point of operation dewey canyon too was to was to push up into caisson which and get control of it and then that was going to then be used as a logistics hub and an air hub to conduct this big operation um lambson 719 that’s what the purpose was but in addition to that too was to uh put the uh south vietnamese army in a position to where they could readily launch uh across the border so pre-staging all these folks all these soldiers and get them ready uh the the the area that you were going into had some serious um enemy troops in there you know the you know some of the estimates i read seven thousand combat troops on the ground in that area of laos ten thousand support personnel um another another five 000 path of lao fighters so it was this was you were going into tough country 33 000 total is the estimate that’s pretty much kicked around of all of all the categories you just described so when did you when did you actually find out that this mission was going down uh we got the briefing on it the mission actually uh started on 8 february of 71 by that time 101st command post was in operation at k-sun general barry was up there matt jackson features a lot of barry in the book um and i have some stories about that that i’ll share with you later on um i flew several missions in support of that taking troops into uh hill 30 hill 31 ranger arvind rangers were in 31 we flew we have pickup zones uh uh pz’s if you will uh at various stages we’d land in and then take them to the to the lz uh around there um but that was just in prep four and really the big action for me the thing that i guess made me realize that my god there’s a real war going on was in lz lolo which was on the 3rd of march yeah i’ll tell you one thing that’s interesting when you read this book and when you hear about this this operation you know most of the time when you think of oh that what the what the vietnamese are doing it’s sort of like what the north vietnamese do and what the viet cong are doing it’s sort of like a hit and run it doesn’t seem like these big conventional operations and if they did do a big assault on a base you know they’d kind of do it they’d they’d mess some things up and then they’d leave they were doing big coordinated attacks against the south vietnamese forces it this was almost like bordering in fact this was like conventional conventional warfare correct and uh but you didn’t see that right on eight february uh that came later on and it was devastating to to witness some of what i witnessed after the 3rd of march what i witnessed on the ground with the south vietnamese army especially when we would go into resupply around hill 30 and hill 31 i saw some heroism but i saw so many uh of the arvin army of the south vietnamese army uh saw so many of those soldiers throw the weapons on the ground and run to grab onto our skids so that when we lift it off we’d pull them out of the battle space that was disheartening it was horrible yeah i remember reading one one part where it’s exactly what you said a resupply comes in and the the helicopters as they leave they’re overloaded with arvind soldiers that are just trying to get out of there throw their weapons on the ground and run and grab onto a skid i mean i witnessed soldiers losing their grip and falling fifteen hundred two thousand feet to the ground below and and you say do you feel sorry for them or do you say hey you coward you got what’s coming to you and uh you know it got to the point jocko where uh we would i remember landing in and i can’t remember i think it was 31 that i landed in uh but we were landing where mortars were blowing up right in front of us and we would have to maneuver over em and mortars were flying were hitting everywhere in that lc and we would literally come to about a ten foot hover kick off the supplies can’t come into lower because they would jump on your ship and even at a ten foot hover they would run jump on people’s back and they would hoof them up onto the skid i mean a ten foot hover uh and uh and you start to wonder well when’s it gonna be my day you know and uh i remember having this uh having this uh thing that came through my mind is uh you know i know i’m gonna die someone’s not gonna worry about dying i know i’m gonna die just don’t let me get shot up so bad my mother can’t recognize me but i knew i was i was going to get it i just and then i didn’t bother me anymore it did not bother me anymore uh about dying um i accepted the fact that was going to happen and you god take care of me and a mother would recognize me having that feeling though and then seeing the south vietnamese just you’re doing all you can to help them out risking your lives and they’re just wanting to get out of there we picked up body bags of the south vietnamese body bags for u s forces and you’ve seen them they’re sturdy they’re zippered the body bags for the south vietnamese forces were like one hour martinez and bags little thin plastic bags had bodies in them they had laid out in the sun for for several days they were all bloated and body fluids filling up inside the body bags and and uh that’s the only time where we really put skids on the ground so they could load up bodies and of course vietnamese didn’t run and jump on the aircraft because they didn’t want to run and jump on all those bodies that were bloated and uh it got to the point where we had to uh where we had to wear gas met one of us in the cockpit had a gas mask because of the smell was just nauseating and uh we would bring them back into caisson or lz brown where where a pickup zone was and the south vietnamese troops would unload the bodies and i remember i remember one it just it just the guy grabbed the arm of a body and when he tried to pull the body out the whole arm came out of the out of the body it was just sickening it was beyond it was beyond anything that most humans would ever experience and you know you you go through that and you say well what’s the purpose why are we why are we here why are we doing this i had a warrant officer who i asked during lamson to ask i said i need more people to fly this mission he said i’m not going to fly the mission i said i need you i’m not going to fly i said why not he said because nobody cares congress doesn’t care whether i live or die and what’s the use look what they’re doing up there and i said well mister and i won’t say his name but you got to do what you got to do he had too many hours you know he had over 140 hours flying that month so he was he was way within his legal rights to say i’m not going to fly anymore but guess what most of us had that as well most of us were flying i mean dead tired and we did it and but you know that started me thinking who cares who really cares whether we do whether we do or not whether we die or whether we come home alive i mean look at what the south vietnamese are doing victimization yeah tell me about it richard nixon why aren’t you over here at lambson 719 looking at this and then you tell me vietnamization um it made me a changed person and we hadn’t even talked about lz lola yeah but i mean lz lolo came a little bit into the operation i mean i just kind of want to run through a little bit of the timeline of so this this operation starts on february 8th that there’s [Music] 4 000 arvin that are going in on on route 9 the 39th ranger battalion has heloed into lz ranger the first entry infantry divisions going into lz blue and don and white and brown yeah and and fsb’s hotel delta and delta one and again the the book gives such good detail on all sides the planning what the how the decisions were being made it’s just it’s just a fantastic uh uh recounting of what happened um and meanwhile it’s still vietnam you still got bad weather you still got low clouds you got heavy anti-aircraft fire the there’s a lot of air strikes are happening so you know the the b-52s are dropping bombs um arc lights yeah the but look there’s a lot of a lot of nva up there and they’re they’re ready to fight then they start actually um attacking like i said like th like by by i don’t know february 16th 17th the the the nva starts doing organized attacks correct and um really bringing it to to the to the people to the to the south vietnamese soldiers that are now on the ground um and here’s here’s another thing that i was reading about um by february 24th there there were reports coming back that the that the north vietnamese had completed a new route and they were just going around that area of the ho chi minh trail they were just you know okay well you guys want to block that cool we’ll just we had another alternate route um february 25th just a massive uh uh north vietnamese assault and it’s combined arms they got armor they got artillery they got infantry assault they’re doing combined arms assaults again this is not what we typically think of in vietnam i know it happened from time to time but it’s not what you generally think of in vietnam you don’t think of pitched conventional warfare like we’re dealing with here um there’s just uh yeah yeah the the one quote i got was 94 there’s a helicopter resupply to fsb 30 and 94 south vietnamese soldiers forced their way onto the helicopters to get out of there including the commander that’s on march 2nd by the way uh we get to march 3rd which which you’ve um discussed a few times and and well actually let me jump into this um small small portion of the book here that that talks about some of what you guys were doing i’m going to go to the book here warrant officer doug womack rattler 2-8 and chalk 3 considered aborting his approach watching arnie being shot down and hearing flight lead calling for mission abort not hearing anything else about aborting the mission he decided he needed to insert his load of arvind soldiers unbeknownst to him was the fact that no arvin had survived in the first two aircraft approaching the landing zone he was subjected to the same intense fire as the chalks before him upon landing an rpg rocket was fired but slammed into a stump and exploded showering the aircraft with shrapnel when it did time stood still for mr womack as it seemed he could count the main rotor passing in front of the aircraft several rounds ripped across the aircraft from three bursts of ak-47 fire the rotor blades cabin lower fuselage and skids all received the damage as the aircraft lifted out of the landing zone hammer blows were felt by the pilot look and the pilot looked back not only were there holes in the floor of the cargo area but strange sounds told him that the main rotor might have taken some hits as well chalk 4 followed chalk 3 into the landing zone where it received intense small arms fire crashed and burned chalk four crew scrambled back to choc five and rode out this kept up as each chalk came into the landing zone to drop off the arvin soldiers on board choc 16 comment commentero 3-0 flown by bob morris entered the cauldron of fire and landed like everyone before him he could feel and hear the hits on his aircraft we’re on fire someone said over the road radio but didn’t identify themselves morris pulled in power and initiated his takeoff very calmly he heard his crew chief say over the intercom uh mr morris you do know we’re on fire don’t you mr morris quickly returned to the landing zone and exited the aircraft chalk 18 approached the landing zone at 90 knots air speed instead of the usual 40 knots went so close he picked out his landing point just as a mortar round exploded at that spot suddenly his tail dropped low and the nose went high as captain tate went into a hard deceleration with numerous hammer taps on the aircraft three feet from his touchdown point there was a loud explosion explosion a gaping hole appeared in the window frame and there was the smell of hot metal engine oil pressure was no longer steady but fluctuating arvind soldiers had no desire to wait for him to land and dove out of the aircraft the safety of a prone position on the ground pulling in and pulling in an armpit of collective tate’s aircraft tail number zero four nine raced out of the landing zone with a hail of small arms bullets chafe chasing after him his aircraft had flown its last mission within an hour only 19 of the 40 aircraft were able to enter the landing zone 19 out of 40 aircraft were able to enter the landing zone morrison crashed in the landing zone came back in crashed we had another aircraft went in berg flummed by berg he crashed in the lc they were on the ground one of the co-pilots captain uh jerry crews uh commentario been a secretary of vietnam first tour as a ranger jerry was on the ground with brick 25 radio calling in airstrikes and actually conducting the ground warfare in the lz because the arvind officer uh major just jerry knew what he was doing uh jerry was the one that eventually said we got to halt this because there’s too much crap going on in here and uh kirk lotter uh obviously took took it and we stopped stopped the insertion for a while went back and picked it back up again later on the afternoon uh that morning i um we got hit by a rocket propelled grenade as as you’ve described the gaping hole in the windshield hit the windshield strut it was shot at about a 45 degree angle so when it hit the windshield exploded out instead of exploding in um crew chiefs said sir sir sir get the ass out of here get the ass out of here sir the enunciator panel which is all our control warning lights look like a christmas tree lit up and we took off within within several seconds we started feeling uh harshness in the controls um the hydraulic system warning light was blinking and within within another short amount of time we lost all hydraulics it took both of us on the controls to uh it’s like going down the highway at 85 miles an hour and the power steering goes out and you’re coming up on some major curves it took us both on the controls um we’re finally able to get it back in called emergency at k-sun we were like number two or three emergency at that time guys ahead of us who had gotten blown up on lolo and uh we got it down we uh we had to make a low slow and uh and we thought god we’re gonna get shot out of the sky just trying to get in the land at uh on the pier still planking runway at khaesan but my god it was a textbook landing uh and we were able to get her down and and uh no sooner then we got it down and asked the aircraft to do some half of the chain pull pull the aircraft right off the roth runway getting ready for another another person calling emergency i remember colonel fernandez bobby fenander he was our uh battalion commander 101st aviation battalion which was part of the 101st aviation group commanded by colonel davis you’ll see davis’s name in that book fernando is also mentioned in that book but fernando comes out and sort of throws his arms around us like god i’m so glad you guys made it and he said come on there’s another briefing going on in the tent so we all round over to the big briefing tent and uh and your aircraft was is is it the correct word totaled yeah it couldn’t be flown again it couldn’t be flown again yeah yeah now whether they hooked it out of there and got it repaired or what but it shot out hydraulics we had 47 holes in that aircraft that morning we counted the holes in the aircraft 47 holes and lost hydraulics and the any of you guys any of your guys get wounded in the aircraft and that amazing isn’t that amazing i mean it just it it just blows my mind but fenner uh came out and i thought it was interesting here’s a lieutenant colonel coming out and it’s like welcoming us home and hurry up we got to get a brief intent we got this thing and we had a briefing tip for the uh we were in the briefing tent kirk lotter all were kirklarv’s commander 223rd uh aviation uh battalion and uh he told us about the afternoon mission we got to get back in there we got more troops to insert into lolo and uh current financial looked at me and he said well i’m sure you want to go in there and fly two of your two-year crews were on the ground in there i said yes sir i certainly do but i don’t have an aircraft he said would take mine i said sir he said take mine but the only thing you got to take my crew chief with you and uh and then he pulled me aside and he said now listen that’s a brand new aircraft don’t you bring that thing back the way you brought yours back this morning i said yes sir well you didn’t obey that order very well did you no because i 58 holes in his aircraft when we got back that afternoon we were able to rescue the guys off the ground so talk us through that so so you launch again to go back into this is by the way this is lz lolo you call it lulu low low low low yeah therefore uh lo uh lola brigida they were all named after liz was after elizabeth taylor uh what was the other one i can’t think of a name right now uh but they were all named after hollywood starlets but uh so you know you get the briefing of okay we got guys on the ground we gotta go back in there yeah and you just have 47 holes in your aircraft when you saw a bunch of your friends get shot down you saw a bunch of other aircraft get shot down that are sitting in the lz now you get brought in the briefing room hey you gotta go again you say i don’t have an aircraft aircraft the boss says you can take mine brett didn’t even have 25 hours brand new huey and the only one caviar you got to take my crew chief okay uh so uh we get to start uh we get to see okay let’s let’s crank them oh and by the way uh uh there was no unit integrity anymore i mean every we were just all kind of a whole big unit like this match whoever could aviation whoever could go and so uh we take off uh we have troops on board we take off we put put those troops on the ground uh and i’m hovering around for a few seconds to make sure that our guys have gotten off they were picked up by common chairs in front of me but i wanted to make sure that we had everybody off the ground and by that time where as you described the hammer taps on the screen that were i mean it was just all over and it’s like i said earlier some people say what was it like i said uh take your bare hand and grab a wasp nest full of wasp that’s what it was like and uh so again the same scenario taking all these hits thank god didn’t get hit by an rpg uh but the enunciator panel listing all the uh circuit uh if if a major system goes down or is damaged you have a little light that flashes on and on that light it says for example hydraulics so you know something’s happened to your hydraulic system uh tail rotor no something’s happened to your tail so but the one that got me that started flashing was main rotor transmission what does that one mean what transmission oh the transmission chain rotary yeah okay so it means what it says yeah yeah uh and uh we got her back on the ground we’re able to come to the hover we put it down at caisson and the main rotor locked seized turned the chopper almost 270 degrees around from our landing heading there were actually bail tech reps up at ksun looking at damage and what because they were writing their reports for hey this is what we need to improve on on the newer models of the huey they were writing their reports the guy told me he said sir you’re very lucky he said you could have had that transmission could have ceased in the air he said you guys wouldn’t be here and it seized on the ground a fenander came over 58 holes in it aircraft and the locked seized transmission seized transmission that that that helicopter obviously didn’t fly again that day that’s two of them one day we like say we’d lost a lot of aircraft that day and it was getting nighttime we had this guy that liked to fix this stuff called commentary stew and uh there were on queson there was actually wild onions you could pull out of the ground and uh he had a bunch of guys that collected that and they always kept this pot and poured can’t water in this pot and throw those things then put a bunch of sea rations in there and stir all that stuff up and and uh you know anything tastes good with texas pete on it and so so we were all headed a lot of stuff done and you know we were everybody was sort of sitting around i think he had some paper plates or something with him and you know you eat with your fingers and all that stuff and we were all comfortable together around there waiting for uh major clueless come over and tell us what our you know next missions were we’d lost uh we took ten aircraft up that morning and uh we lost well we lost if if you count 11 aircraft colonel fernandez bird we lost seven we did have one one uh gunner hit but you know purple heartworm but superficial uh but still he got hit you know that’s bad stuff but uh we’re sitting there uh sort of gathering around and uh all of a sudden we see coming towards us this figure just tall and lean and just and i and i got the glint of the stars on his helmet and as he got closer to us he just he was the epitome of spit-shine boots and it was general sid berry and he came over and he said uh i just want to tell you common chairs what a great job he did today and uh he said uh i i don’t want to disturb your child and we said well sir come on have some childhood he said no that at your child i grab something to eat up here but i just wanted you all to know what a great job you did today and uh with that he said girl fernando i’m gonna release you all for the night so we all jumped on the four remaining aircraft and came back to camp eagle there’s a section in here in in the book where um that gets described a little bit you’re on this flight back to camp eagle and i’m going to the book here it says sitting mesmerized on the floor of one of the hueys was captain jay tate comenchero26 tate the second flight platoon leader was deep in thought having lost two aircraft this day to enemy fire the flight was at six thousand feet flying over uh flying over a cloud overcast with the sun projecting the aircraft shadow on the cloud below them in addition a halo appeared around the shadow he was sitting in the doorway behind the right seat pilot with a set of headphones that the crew chief had given him wondering to himself why he and his crew had survived this horrendous day he heard a voice say to him don’t worry jay you’re gonna be okay he looked up to see who was talking to him no one was each passenger was lost in their own thoughts he heard the voice again don’t worry jay you’re going to be okay just then amazing grace played on the armed forces vietnam radio network and there’s a footnote here that says one week later jay received a letter from his mother she related a dream she’d had the night before in which jay’s father had told her don’t worry jay you are going to be okay the letter was dated for march jay still has the letter touching yeah that’s uh that’s an amazing amazing story emotional um i watched that shadow we were actually flying between two layers of clouds the sun broke through the upper layer and cast the shadow and of course the heat of the chopper the coolness of that altitude it forms sort of a rainbow effect around that shadow and uh the the crew chief actually didn’t lend me a set of earphones i had my flight helmet on and had it plugged in listening to afvn and because i had been talking about he said there’s a major action a major war going on up in our core and he said he said there’s been a lot of uh a lot of helicopters uh destroyed and said i want to play this next song for these guys that’s when he played amazing grace and uh i can tell you as i sit here right now i heard that voice and to get that letter and to hear my mom and to hear her read her words that she thought dad was telling her don’t worry jay’s going to be okay and she woke my dad up and dad said oh honey you’re dreaming go back to sleep she said no you said did you tell me jay’s gonna be okay he said honey don’t worry you’re don’t tell me there’s not a god i mean if i pretended to be a christian at one time but i’ll tell you what that afternoon i became a christian that’s the only way i can say why i survived and that’s not to say those who died weren’t because i had prayed god i know i’m going to die just don’t let me get shot up so bad my mother won’t recognize me and i came home uh changed person when my mother died the uh she had the same pastor she passed away in 2010 she had relayed that story about the dream to our pastor and he had made notes about that that was in his file and during her celebration of life service he he talked about that when you um got done when you guys flew back to camp eagle did you what did you stand down for the night and then you went back into it our flat ops guys we’re monitoring everything on our company frequency and they had heard all the chaos and the horror that was being dealt to us and so of the 10 crew we all came back on those four ships because 11 ships if you count colonel fernandez ship uh they were all outside waiting for us to come in waving their hats and we all landed and they all ran up and everybody was getting a hug and everybody was cold beer was on the on the plot line and uh and it was just a big celebration and especially because we brought help morris and his crew and berg and his crew jerry crews we got them off of there and they were sitting on on the floor too plugged in and listened to something um that’s the camaraderie and as i told uh matt jackson i i said uh aviation crews are different uh rank is superfluous uh everybody is has a specific mission crew chief door gunner co-pilot aircraft commander everybody has a specific mission but nobody can do that one mission by themselves it takes all of us working together as a team and i don’t care if i’m a captain and you’re a spec four crew chief i’m no better than you are and if it wasn’t for you i couldn’t be flying this airplane same with the door gutter that’s a lesson you learn out of it you learn a lot about team you learn about personal courage you learn about personal responsibility you’ll learn a certain sense of tenacity you can’t be lazy you you’ve their dedication’s got to be there and that’s what i experienced with these guys in vietnam every one of them there was no lacquered every one of them even the guys in the maintenance uh hangar that didn’t fly those missions with us and many of them would jump in to fly a mission just to get out there and do it but even to the clerk that wrote the awards up there was such a sense of dedication and camaraderie that i have never experienced in my entire life since then never in my 20 years in uniform and the 13 years that i was fortunate to serve as a civilian with the with the office of the secretary of defense nothing nothing will ever compare to what i experienced especially in lambson 719 even the command-and-control north missions though they were hairy though they had some twists and turns i would have never expected and and and we lost two crew on and control north missions uh that’s that’s horrible that uh but nothing compares with lamson 719 and i think that’s that’s where the what we now see is air salt that’s where it was born it was born there we had to think on our feet we did things that weren’t written down we had to think on our feet and uh i mean like coming to the ten foot hover versus putting your skids on the ground how do you learn that you learn it from experience um just just things i guess they’re being learned today uh and more as they teach our assault at fort campbell today uh but my god that was i went to a reunion at fort campbell several years back and the guys are all flying blackhawks now then they looked at us like we were war ii pilots 5b29 with the low tech all this and they were captivated by the stories that we could tell um you know if it wasn’t for gps i couldn’t drive my car from point a to point b but up in the air i could shoot a vector and i could say pop smoke and identify the smoke and knew exactly where i was going uh just things you’ll learn probably one of the awards i’m most proud of is an army accommodation medal and i got that from battalion commander we inserted his soldiers into the aishawa valley this was after uh after 719 and it had been a long day for them and uh sun it was start sun was starting to set and i get a call from and and i something six like and i answer the phone he says could you take a warm warm mission i said well yes sir sure sure we can i did call ops because they’re expecting us he said well i want to treat my troops to ice cream and they’ve got ice cream and bermite cans on our log pad back at eagle i said not a problem sir and we flew an ice cream mission in there and he awarded his troops for their hard work and i got an argument for that i bet you that ice cream tasted good yeah yeah and uh after that i uh went with lantern and lz many times i’d get out of the cockpit i always wore spit shine boots i i i was dressed right dress red in front the whole time i always wore spit shine boots but i made her to my goal i was going to get out of that damn cockpit and i’d say okay peter apology got it co-pilot and i’d help the troops unload supplies off the ship and i i want to thank they appreciated that now here’s a aviation captain getting out of the cockpit and he’s doing sweat work that’s what i learned in vietnam we had a um and just an unbelievable relationship with 101st in the battle of ramadi the the first the 506 was there yep and um can’t i could never say enough good things about their leadership and the soldiers on the ground the fighting that they did was just uh amazing amazing courage and uh one of my guys mikey monsoor was killed doing a mission supporting them and uh when we got home we went out and on their wall where they have the list of the soldiers that they lost in the battle armadi they have mikey’s name up there with them i think we’re fortunate jocko we’re fortunate that we knew people like that and there will be people who will go to their graves that never experience that kind of heroism that kind of commitment that kind of courage that kind of teamwork the camaraderie they will never ever experience it and i think you and i are very fortunate that we’ve had that opportunity indeed i wouldn’t trade it for the world um going back to to to lam sawn once you had that did they give you a night of rest and then you started flying missions again uh i had two days down and then started flying again it was after that that uh during the resupplies when i think the arvin knew that the nva had a hell of a lot more confidence in their ability than the organ did it was after that during doing those resupply missions in there that that i actually experienced them abandoning the battle uh i didn’t experience that before lemson 719 um i always thought it was interesting when we would we’re going to a pz uh early morning but put it put the choppers down waiting for them to load up the arvin the suffering means to load up but i’d see them sitting there and they had water and they’re still pots and they were brushing their teeth and it was like this is extremely important that i brushed my teeth and i always thought well that’s kind of interesting that they’re doing that personal hygiene and they’re going to pour the water out put their helmet liners back in put their helmets on they’re gonna climb on board this aircraft and god knows what faces them when they hit the lz but they made sure that their teeth were clean um as this goes on like you said the the tide started to turn and and uh i think the goal became just to get to how did you say it pony is that how they say it japon chapon the goal is to get there they kind of got there like almost like playing tag touched it yeah we made it and then said let’s get out of here and by the way there was hardly anything there by then um then and and then as the as the arvin started to retreat then the nva stepped up the attacks even more and it just slaughtered yeah and that’s where i picked up the body bags with the dead arvind soldiers in them [Music] turns into a bit of a route as the as the arvin are now leaving you know there’s again i mean i’m just gonna a couple days here march 21st the the nva the north vietnamese attack their division attacks the second and third battalions u s air support during the day included 780 helo gunship sorties 157 tactical airstrikes and 11 b-52 strikes fast forward another day march 23rd 756 hilo gunship sorties 238 tactical airstrikes 11 b-52 strikes this is as they’re kind of getting back to the border in to south vietnam right march 25th finally 45 days after the start of the operation all the south vietnamese forces are out of laos and well so to speak yeah yeah stragglers yeah um i guess the ones that they are accounting for yes are back [Applause] april 6th the basic caisson is under attack and it gets abandoned and to your point earlier on april 7th so that’s april 6 the the operation is over caisson is abandoned april 7th president nixon declares tonight i can report that via vietnamization has succeeded and announces a further withdrawal of 100 000 more troops friendly losses during this operation seven fixed wing planes 108 helicopters lost 618 helicopters damaged 20 beyond repair 32 artillery pieces captured and these are south vietnamese artillery pieces south vietnamese tanks 71 of them south vietnamese armored vehicles 163 of them 37 half tracks 278 trucks destroyed south vietnamese lost and i couldn’t really come up with a great number on this but it’s between 5 000 and 15 000 men killed wounded or missing depending on the source that you go to americans 1 149 wounded 38 missing in action 215 killed in action you know that’s the second time we left caisson we left it in 68 after the marines got overrun and here we go again and you often hear combat soldiers say we fought hard we lost guys in our unit to take that hill and after we took it we left it now we have to go back and take it again there it is when so now this operation’s over i mean did did did attitude start to change you’re hearing nixon saying that vietnamization is working and you see the you see the south vietnamese fleeing the battlefield what was the what was the attitude of you all in my unit and that’s all i can speak for uh the esprit de accord never never ceased we were still flying command and control north supporting those guys and their mission grew even more critical because they were there judging okay now that lamsun’s over what what’s the pavon the north vietnamese army doing now where are they you know it was during that time uh shortly after i left they overran quan tri dongha uh evans uh was certainly within their site camp evans which was uh north of uh camp 100 first headquarters but i never saw any sense of uh behavior that said okay well 7-7-1-9 is over i guess the war is over i never saw that attitude our soldiers remain very professional soldiers that’s amazing because many of them were just 19 years old some armor 18 i had a warrant officer for 21 i was an old dude i was 25 i never never once questioned uh our our ability as an aviation unit to do the job the mission that we were assigned to do even after even up until the day i left when i became the operations officer my last four months in country i got a chance to look at at the battle space in a different way because i would go to battalion and battalion ops and look at that then come back and put that into company ops and and work our portion of the mission our company’s portion of the battalion mission and uh i’d bring the guys into the briefing room the guys are going to be flying that mission and i’d say okay this is our objective right here now how do we get there we’re here this is our objective our mission is this we got to put so many troops in there how do we get there and usually it wasn’t just one place it was if it was a company plus it would be maybe three different places we’d have to go and i never would say okay this is how we’re going to do it you’re going to do it i think how do we get there what what’s the best approach to make this happen and i was the operating staffs and i’d have these young award offices oh let’s do this today and somebody said no no we can’t do that we got to do this somebody said well let’s do it this way well okay well let’s take a piece of that next thing you know they had planned the operation all i did was approve it but that that’s a leadership skill that i learned from people like colonel bobby fernander who never said you’re going to do it this way he always sort of facilitated if you will facilitative leadership and that’s what you’re seeing now in business facilitative leadership getting people involved and if the more you’re involved the more you take ownership and that’s what i saw in our guys that’s what i saw in our guys during lam son that’s what i saw in our guys after lam sun now when we were flying command and control north we did what they told us they had a very specific way of doing things and that’s the way we were going to do it and that’s fine and that’s fine but this is the way we did it um and i mirrored my leadership style after people that i had great respect for uh to include general helen moore who became lieutenant general helmore uh and the way that the camaraderie the the so not camaraderie i don’t want to say i was buddy buddy but general moore because i was not but we had a we had a relationship in the cockpit and i think he respected my desires what i wanted to do obviously because i wouldn’t have gone to nam had it not been for that yeah i don’t know if you didn’t have a relationship with hal moore but jesus if you were friends with him who knows what he would have done for you [Laughter] what a great man he was but but i left i left vietnam feeling very good about my unit and about what we did um i did change my views a bit to think that my tour and nam will be successful if i can do things to support my u s troops so that changed from supporting the whole concept of vietnamization for example if i can bring ice cream out to those troops after they’ve busted their butt all day inserting then i’ve done something that i can be proud of and uh and that’s where my mind sort of changed after being in country for about eight months to support my soldiers and to do what i could to bring them home yeah the the leadership stuff you’re talking about that’s exactly the the best leaders i had was they would tell us what the mission was what the goal was and then say come up with a plan and that’s what i always tried to do myself that certainly is the the best way to get people on board with the plan is just let them come up with it that’s right you don’t have to convince them of anything it’s their idea it’s their plan let them argue it out yeah yep so when you did uh so what what when when did you leave vietnam it was in october of 71 and in nam there was four officers that lived in the same hooch we all had our little private rooms at the corner of this rectangular hooch then the center was a common area and we had a little stove in the common area and so on but um right across from me was um an officer stan dodge he was coming to a 1-8 and so when we would fly when i knew he was flying i’m going to be in the air then he and i would choose a frequency uh that we would come up on just and would follow with each other in the air so sort of looking after each other you know in the air so i came back from from knobs it’s very interesting story uh there was me as a comenchero and then there were three other pilots who were kingsmen they were in bravo company 101st aviation which was our sister company and we all knew each other and we all came back we were in our khakis wearing our flight jackets and you know we thought our sierra didn’t stink and we get back into seattle tacoma and got walked through the airport nobody’s spitting on us nobody yelling at us nobody calls us baby killers and we got a taxi we come in to and we say hey is there a holiday in he says yeah there’s one downtown so he takes us to the holiday inn we all check in our rooms we clean up we come down to the bar to meet before we go have some dinner we get to the bar of course we’re all you know we’re all got flight pay they’ve paid us before we leave nom and you know we’re all loaded with money more than we should have had and we get into the bar and bartenders say what beef you guys i’m going to we have our flight jacket zone you know and they were feeling kind of smug and we all ordered drinks and one of them said hey everybody else’s drink their next drink it’s on all of it’s on us so we all throw in money and we bought everybody in the bar that was sitting there their next drink and there was a uh couple he was playing piano and she was singing and uh they were like the uh what’s that the carpenters okay that’s and she was singing they were doing all the carpenter’s song and uh so she dedicated a special song to us she says he says excuse me ladies and gentlemen but the next strength that all of you all will get tonight are from these four guys standing at the bar in uniform they all just returned from vietnam and let’s give them a round of applause they all stood up gave us a round of applause and then she said i’m going to dedicate this next song to these guys and it was very special and we didn’t buy another drink that night we all had stakes they were all paid for uh and it they quit playing at one o’clock and this guy came up to us and said hey we’re a bunch of us are here on the insurance convention uh we’d like to take you all out for breakfast so they took us out to breakfast and we all got to bed about five o’clock in the morning and uh then we all flew out our separate ways the next day but i was telling you about stan dodge stan parents lived in arizona tucson and he said and he had left country about a month before i did so he said i want to have a little gathering at my house if you don’t mind staying over one day before you make it back so i flew into into tucson and uh he had a couple donut dollies there who were in the 101st they were there in fact stan married one of the donut dollars barbara and terry deegan was a friend of mine she was there and plus uh one guy from bravo company the kingsman and and another pilot uh but we partied hardy that night and stan’s parents just did a wonderful job of uh making us feel at home and and so on and uh mata’s been there two nights i stayed because i had to have time to get my uniform cleaned up before i wore it home i wanted to make sure it was strapped when my parents saw me and uh so i got my uniform got my shoes all spit shot everything i caught the plane out of phoenix and terry was with me and tara and i had a really nice relationship i mean it wasn’t a sexual thing it was just a nice relationship we understood each other and she had left nom two months before i did and she would write me letters telling me about how the world back in the states was not the world that was not the real word of her real world her what she experienced in vietnam with the soldier thing that was the real world and we we would write back and forth about that and uh i flew my flight took us she was from downers grove illinois so we flew to chicago and then obviously catching plane from chicago to charlotte and she wanted me to meet her parents and and i wanted to meet her parents too and uh yeah i could have probably had a relationship with with terry um that would have gone beyond she ended up marrying an army ranger uh several years later that she had known enough but uh i kept waiting for parents to come and my flight was coming up to go and our parents hadn’t shown up yet and i never did get to meet our parents we finally gave a hug and kissed goodbye and i got on the plane and flew to charlotte and that’s where my parents met me but i i think having those couple days to to decompress before i got home was probably psychologically good for me yeah that’s uh one thing they always point out world war ii the guys when the war was over they got on ships and sailed home together for four weeks or six weeks and they got to decompress and tell stories and get stuff off their chests and whatever and in vietnam it was like oh you’re in vietnam today and then the next day you’re home and you don’t have your friends with you and you’re in random you know main town usa or main street usa and that that could be a challenge so let’s fast forward i was home 30 days reassigned to fort dixon new jersey um not in aviation uh i was actually working for a facility that uh processed awol and deserter soldiers that were brought back into the army but every friday night all the aviators they’d go home take off their fatigues put on their flat suits we’d all gather around in one little portion of the officer club bar and we’d sit there and we’d reminisce and tell war stories and and uh it got emotional at times it would smack him on the back oh come on i’ll buy another beer you know but that’s a part of the decompression and that those were very special times to sit there and talk about that and people have often asked me well what kind of problems did you have and i said well i really didn’t have any problems when i came back and and they you know well god you must have been tough i said well i wasn’t tough i said i think it’s just the process of what how we all would get together and talk about our experiences i said these guys that came back from nam after being in combat especially infantry guys grunts as we call them they would come back they’d go to fort lewis they’d process out of the army then they’d go home and they didn’t have an opportunity to sit around and and many of those were subjected to some very harsh treatments when they when they arrived home and i never had fortunately never had that experience so i think the army’s learning a lot of that all the services are learning a lot about that about how do we take care of our veterans after they’ve been i mean you were in a hell of a lot of horrific situations uh that that could have mentally had had a horrible impact on you but you’ve worked through that yourself jackie yeah i mean i think i always talk about the fact that i’ve talked about it written about it um talk to my friends about it and i think that’s like you said it’s what you kind of got to do and you know the i look back now in the first the from my last appointment for to ramadi um we got home and we were we were we were pretty um yeah what’s a good word here we were pretty wild when we got back we were pretty wild when we got back yeah and and but you know we kept it under you know we kept we looked out for each other made sure that we were wild without you know doing anything that’s going to cause irreparable damage or cause some kind of major significant problem but we were definitely wild i mean there’s no doubt about it and then you know i don’t know if it was maybe six months maybe a year or something like that you know we started getting back to kind of just doing what we were doing a little bit more normal but yeah we were we’re pretty wild when we got back well you know uh if my my excuse was i was well you got pretty drunk last night i said well i’m an aviator yeah yeah we we had some you know we all kind of a bunch of us lived in the kind of the same area too same little neighborhood yeah so we yeah we would go out we’d meet up and we’d go we’d go pretty hard i think uh i think for me i’m still uh it’s amazing the older i get now and i’ll be 76 in august um the the memories become more vivid now um i dream about this more um i’m hearing from people we have a we have our own commentary website um and uh you can tell by the comments that lambson 719 had a major major psychological impact on our guys and there were some guys that measured their time in service oh i was oh i came after 719 or i left just before 719 so see that someone and i became an anchor to describe where one was at one’s time flying with the commanceros and when when matt called me up and asked me would i uh do some collaboration on this book in some ways i was pleased in some ways i was a little frightened to bring up the experiences and i’ll be perfectly honest i had a lot of anxiety coming here today um though i have read this book and a number of times read undaunted valor 719 quite a few times i’ve earmarked it um i’ve read after action reports on it that that hopefully matt and he did he had some of these uh after-action reports uh that he took his data from um but still sitting here uh now and talking about it with you and you weren’t there uh i could talk about somebody that was there and uh but and not have anxiety but you weren’t there and i often wonder i’m telling you this but what are you actually hearing because you weren’t there and you can tell me about what you did and i can listen to it but i wasn’t there and so there’s a difference yeah yeah there’s there’s always going to be a little gap or a big gap depending on you know the person’s experiences and you know what one thing i think is interesting about you know when you start talking about coming home and what you’re going through i think the one thing that’s good is if people actually understand what they’re feeling a little bit and i remember like you get a new guy that’s overseas and i’d look at a new guy that’s overseas now you could tell they’re nervous right and you know just say something like hey man you’re you know that feeling you get in your stomach and they’d be like you know trying not to tell you but then they’d admit to it yeah and i go yeah you’re just nervous it’s your it’s your body getting ready to go fight it’s totally normal that’s what you should feel like and they’d be like oh okay oh you oh by the way you won’t be able to sleep tonight cause we gotta operation tomorrow you’re not gonna be able to sleep tonight so that’s just the way it is don’t worry about it and i think it’s the same thing coming home you know it’s like oh oh oh you’re gonna get you’re gonna get sad sometimes this doesn’t mean you’re weak it doesn’t mean you’re uh trapped in the past it just means you miss your friends and that’s okay and so if you are thinking about something and it and it makes you cry hey yeah that’s what that’s what happens you know it’s yeah that’s the way it is and i think if people understand that that that’s that that’s normal then they go oh okay well that’s that’s just what’s gonna happen it’s okay and i think when people don’t think it’s normal and all of a sudden they think i can’t control my emotions or i’m scared or um i’m sad and i shouldn’t be sad and i shouldn’t be scared it’s like no it’s fine no big deal that’s just the way it is you you do your job you you know you’re gonna be scared you got the you got the queasy stomach you can’t sleep at night okay cool yeah guess what there’s a bunch of other guys that’s not not sleeping tonight either no big deal no big deal oh you get home you you’re going to feel sad you’re going to miss your friends yeah we all miss them that’s the way it is that that’s okay and i think that helps people out a lot to be able to just say okay what i’m feeling is not an isolated thing it’s just the way human beings process the the tough experiences that they go through but you know we both served in the kind of service that at one time you didn’t show that emotion yeah and you weren’t expected to i think the service and i hope i’ve read that they have i’ve seen interviews that they have that now that’s been taking consideration it’s okay to express what you’re feeling right now uh it’s okay to go seek counseling because it’s not going to end up on your officer efficiency report or your annual report or whatever report you’re going to get and so i think that has been a great improvement with the way we receive our warfighting men and women especially those who have come back and been engaged in combat one thing i’ll say about the getting excited and and nervous about the upcoming mission and i would do the same thing in vietnam i mean people said were you scared i said well hell yeah i’m scared but hey you know this is what we signed up to do and this is what we’re going to do and a lot of times i mean i’ve said that trying to convince myself but see i was a platoon commander i couldn’t sit there and tell my troops oh my god i’m scared to death i had to put on the show i had to do that but the interesting thing about it is once we strapped on that helicopter and we took off in flight all of that drained it all drained i mean it never amazed me got a job to do well yeah i mean you were busy you were monitoring three radios you were you know talking to the crew there i mean it all drained i mean even going into even going into lola that morning when we were doing 90 knots approaching we should have been done 60 or 40 and we were coming in there and but you cycle that thing back in that damn nose pitches up and you’re saying oh hell i hope my tail rudder doesn’t hit the ground and then you put that sucker down and you’re taking fire all over the place you don’t have time to be scared you you re you react by the training that you’ve had and by god that training was good yeah yeah exactly and that’s uh i think the same way everybody feels i mean if you’re gonna be nervous it’s usually before an operation and for me i was always just more nervous about my my friends my guys that’s what i was always worried about hey i hope nothing happens to guys you know uh but then once for us it’s once the breach goes you know where once the once the breach goes now it’s on everybody knows we’re here we’re doing what we’re doing you know once we leave the gate front gate you’re you’re doing your job and there’s no time to think about that you can’t you can’t waste any mental capacity thinking about what could happen or what might happen because you got to do your job and you don’t want to have anything else in your head besides hey what do i need to do right now how can i do my best job right now that’s what i’m thinking about uh but again i seen some nervous new guys and just hey man it’s all right no big deal and and i think that helps people a lot just like anything anytime you can give somebody a heads up about what’s about to happen or what i’ve had this feeling with uh train training mma fighters mixed martial arts fighters to go and fight and i saw the exact same thing this is kind of where i started putting together oh yeah i tell them hey oh your stomach a little queasy yeah i’m super nervous yeah you’re supposed to be you’re getting ready to go into a fight it’s okay and that would put them at ease because they’d realize oh this is just normal this is just me getting ready to go into you know that form of sporting combat i think but but but to add to that i think it’s good to be a little nervous for sure because you’re more on your game for sure and uh and that’s one thing um that’s one thing general john uh mars told me uh he was a mentor of mine and uh later on in my service and he was the one that actually encouraged me to take the civilian position with the sec death because i was doing a strategic planning work for him um after i had retired from the uniformed service and uh we had this we had this big strategic planning conference coming up and i said sir i’d like to bring dr so-and-so in from george washington university and he’s been he’s been a a big critical thinker um he sort of plans okay this is where we have to be how do we get there kind of a thing because we were doing strategic planning you know the vision is where you want to be now how do we go from where we are today to make that vision a reality and he said how long have you been working for me i said about two years sir he said do you have a phd i i said there’s your master’s degree he said well i trust you i don’t know this guy and that’s that’s a leadership style that that breeds confidence and your soldiers and your employees i got confidence in you i don’t know this guy so doctor what’s his name i never heard him to come in to do some work for us but that made me feel great yeah so how much longer did you do in the army before you retired uh like i said i spent 20 years in uniform 68-88 then i immediately uh before that general myers was talking to me about he said you’re never going to make colonel god branch transferred from infantry to the army’s as a general corps which is administrator for the army and uh he said i want you to take this job the sec deaf has been impressed with work you’ve been doing and uh he said your office will be here with me but you’ll be working out of the office of the sec deaf and at that time i was with the defense communications agency which became now the defense information systems agency but my office was there i had clients all military clients all over it wasn’t just communications guys undersec deaf was one of my clients um the uh sink u s atlantic command general jack sheehan i don’t know if you bet general she had or the general she had an outstanding outstanding warrior great leader general mike still who commanded u s army pacific just a tremendous guy the under secretary of defense for logistics i got a chance to do strategic planning work for him quite a few organizations in nato two organizations that shape uh and that’s that’s all because of a guy by the name of john myers that supported me and paved the way for me and he believed in me and uh though i had didn’t have a phd he trusted me it’s not that what leaders are for indeed and then how long did you how long did you do that for 13 years and then you went into what full retirement not quite well then i uh i was offered a position in a civilian career in the steel business and i was uh executive vice president of a uh steel center um stayed there from 01 to 09 thought i’d retire uh went into the insurance business for a little bit uh wasn’t exciting then i decided to retire and now my fiance is still uh working she represents a company called hancock and more it’s all custom-made furniture uh some of the most high quality furniture you will ever find it’s all custom made to to your specifications uh leather uh upholstery uh nails finish frames you pick out the whole thing yourself and they build your specifications uh she also represents a long called jessica charles an alon called maitland smith and our territory is in north carolina uh so we never go out of north carolina but uh yeah i say i’m retired but uh now i run with jan and and i take my orders from her and uh so we uh we man her territory that’s outstanding and she’s enjoying uh staying here today because she has nothing she has to do that’s beautiful things a little vacation day for a little vacation day hey before we stop i know there’s a couple things that uh just to mention here what can you give us the update i know that i know that colonel jackson’s been working to to sort of turn this into a movie turn at least some of these books into a movie i know there’s a gofundme page out there what what’s the update on on on these uh opportunities okay well yes as people should probably know it takes a lot of money to produce a movie however undaunted valor lambson 719 is going to be the movie and it’s our story of those of us who flew in it who supported it we need to have this on the big screen and uh it’s colonel jackson’s desire as well as as mine that this not become a hollywood flash in the pan movie this is going to be an action-filled movie because lamson 719 was action and he wants the movie to depict what actually happened and if anyone reads the book they will know that if the movie depicts a quarter of what’s in that book it is going to be on the edge of your seat kind of a movie so the events and everything that he’s put into this saying are not hollywood made up events these are true events he’s changed some names but these are true events he does have uh several uh actors uh who have uh indicated that they would like to play major roles in the movie uh there’s already a producer on board and the screenwriters are busy writing this but it takes money to do this and the gofundme undaunted valor is the place where people who hear this and feel that they want this story told whether it’s them themselves or their relatives who are involved in this or they are just very supportive of what our military has done in the past especially what we did in vietnam which a lot of those stories were not very favorable stories this is a very favorable story of what we did uh then i encourage them to do the gofundme undaunted valor um all this money uh is going to uh being accepted by a 501c3 group uh at fort campbell kentucky um and so matt gets none of this money matt jackson gets none of this money it’s all going towards uh this movie uh every last synopsis going towards this movie um so uh the quicker we can get this in the more we can faster we can proceed with developing this movie and uh i would certainly encourage uh people to take this in consideration 501c3 so your donation is tax deductible that’s outstanding and and i look forward to uh i look forward to seeing this thing for sure when it comes out reading these books sitting here we’re talking with you guys this is just an unbelievable part of history and a true look at the heroism that you all and american soldiers displayed in vietnam uh echo charles yes do you have any questions i do not no questions from echo charles if he doesn’t ask any questions then that means he’s going to talk a lot later so i have to put up with that but that’s just the way it is that’s part of the punishment i guess for me no no it just shows the depth that we went into and you know how fulfilled i am at the end okay too down to the detail right well i want to thank you for uh asking me to be here and i want to thank matt jackson for putting it all together and uh i’m finally glad to meet the man that i saw on uh the uh uh dan bongino show right on uh anything else jay no sir well again like you said thanks to colonel matt jackson for introducing us and and for his efforts in writing these books and preserving these these heroic deeds of our combat aviators and soldiers in vietnam war and of course thank you for joining us and sharing your experiences your lessons learned and most important thank you thank you for your service and sacrifice to our great nation the bravery of you of your fellow pilots of the of the air crews the bravery that you all showed can never be questioned and we are grateful for your heroism and the example that you set for all of us today thank you thanks for coming on and with that major jay tate has left the building not even much to say to follow that up this just mayhem i have a lot to say actually but i won’t go into as deep as maybe i could but i will say this i was talking to nick outside and whatever we were talking about it reminded me of this where like nowadays it okay not nowadays but in the vietnam war there are so many people who did so many crazy things but they don’t have necessarily a big spotlight on them they’re just like just kind of cruising now where you don’t you know they don’t they’re not in the spotlight in any way they’re just like essentially now they’re just sort of just living normal people well it’s always interesting to me that like uh major jay tate retired in 1988 i came in in 1990 right so there’s almost overlap there and there’s been plenty of old vietnam guys in the seal teams some but you know i’d be meeting some random army dude you know and he could have easily been this guy you know there are people in vietnam that did the craziest stuff and no one knows about it literally things that are to be in a movie literally did those things things that are going to be in a movie and people will be like oh i wonder why they wrote it just made it so crazy all crazy yeah yeah where they got to suspend their disbelief or what is that suspension yeah they kind of got to do that about something that really happened in real life yeah that kind meanwhile he’s just cruising i mean even i was talking to tilt yesterday hell yeah actually saturday i was talking to tilt on saturday and and he was you know the amount of times that those guys did crazy things it’s unbelievable it’s unbelievable and no one really knew too much about sog look if you were if you’re deeply into the military history and all that but a normal everyday person barely knows anything about sock yeah i didn’t for sure there’s one thing he mentioned that was pretty dark and then he just moved right on when he’s like you just you don’t want to get burned up oh yeah as a pilot well yeah that was in the book that was in the book lamb psalm 719 yeah he said uh like in world war ii like some men were known yeah the world were one before parachutes yeah you carry a pistol if you don’t catch fire you’re just gonna kill yourself that’s how bad it was yeah that was interesting it was also interesting in the first book by matt jackson he’s explaining you know basically that a helicopter doesn’t want to fly yeah yeah this thing does this is a bunch of metal gear and oil gears and oil and gas that doesn’t want to fly if you just let it go it’s just going to crash an airplane even if you let go the controls it’s kind of kind of cruise you know you kind of feel like i i’m not a pilot i don’t know if you knew that but it feels like on an airplane something goes wrong or whatever as long as you got wings and the in the tail you can kind of just glide that boy in yeah it feels like that so i had a car so my first deployment to guam barking the dirt when we get over there all the all the seals we’d buy guam bombs we call them just like a piece of junk car whatever you know that you’re just gonna drive around guam for a few for six months and then sell it to the next so we bought our guam bomb from some other team guys that were leaving we had this it was uh i think it was a 1977 velarae it was beige but here’s the thing cars are kind of you’d think cars would be like oh you don’t really you know if you if you don’t touch the controls it’s just kind of going to go until it’s just going to go straight to it like stops right yeah this car i don’t know what was wrong if you let your hands off the wheels it would go into a full hard right turn as hard as you could you couldn’t turn a car to the right as fast as this car would turn off on its own that was ours but also for whatever reason had hot scorching air you know you know what you know the little like area underneath the back window on the old school cars there’s a little area yeah yeah it’s like a back dash yeah you could throw like a a a pair of slippers up there or something maybe a t-shirt or a sweatshirt right it’s a little area like that and there can sometimes be aftermarket speakers be put in there right but there was no there was no aftermarket speakers but there was just scorching hot air that came through those i don’t know it’s like un unknown source of massive heat would fire through that thing so that car was kind of like a helicopter if you script your fingers off the controls for a second you were hitting the right guard rail in 0 2 seconds oh yeah so yeah when do you get the impression and man you probably know this even firsthand where just in vietnam and wartime just in general like just things are just loud those things are so loud things are so much louder in real life than they are in the movies yes i know that’s your reference for instance in a helicopter you can’t hear anything yeah it’s so freaking loud it’s ridiculous yeah it it’s punishing on your ears it’s so loud in a helicopter yeah the everything is louder i mean a humvee is freaking loud yeah tanks are loud everything’s loud and everything’s just vibrating it’s just vibrating it’s your whole world yeah it’s cool now we got those new uh ear uh like headsets right that block out loud noises yeah yeah they can’t noise cancelling the he said something about when the first i think it was like the first time where he heard the um the m60 when he was and i would like vibrate the the thing and that’s what i was like bro the whole thing is just loud though your whole world is just loud up there because you got the helicopter then you get um the guns and everything’s just vibrating and loud like just hostile the other interesting thing is i think of huey’s i think of huey’s as being old right in my mind they’re old because i flew around on huey’s and they were old kind of like when you think of a bomber right now like a world war ii bomber you think of this old you know those were the most modern beasts of their time that was like getting those that was like yeah to a rolls-royce straight up so well um listen obviously like i said at the end there uh guys like major j tate set a great example for us on many levels courage we you know like for sure uh capability 100 i’m not sure what we’re doing to improve our courage what can we do to improve our capabilities echo charles capability there’s a softball for you knock it out of the park do me a favor capability hey okay we’re working out we’re on the path that’s it 100 are you say on the program by the way i’m on the program you know how like when we’re different now your wife comes home it’s like oh yeah like do you want uh some extra cheese on the lasagna you know i said no no i’m on the program so it’s kind of okay i understand you know now you’re on the path but here’s the thing the path is more broad more encompassing oh yeah the program seems like you can easily be off the program in like three four weeks or whatever you know it’s like that kind of feeling it’s not they’re not hard and fast rules but i’m just saying the feeling is there let’s put it this way if you’re on the path it’s a life thing yeah it’s like life yeah you’re right exactly programs are temporary yes somewhat yeah like a temporary improvement deviation whatever either way we’re on the path the good thing about the path is sure we have supplementation but these are everyday supplementation they’re life supplementation elements so i’m saying so some of us back in the day we used to drink energy drinks junk energy drinks junk hey it’s a new um it’s a new era of energy drink there’s a new era of energy drinks now healthy energy drinks the kind when you drink it you get everything front end you get everything you wanted energy then on the back end you get everything that you didn’t expect but want help and you don’t get things that you didn’t want jitters no diabetes chemical disturbance inside your system some weird addiction addiction inflammation and all this weird stuff yeah exactly stuff we don’t want yep none of that none absolutely none so okay so jaco discipline go this is the energy drink if you didn’t know already some new flavors out which just adds to the choices you have hey look we all like orange we all like oranges it’s a staple right you’re hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t like orange flavor true yeah cool but do we love orange some people maybe maybe wait good deal yeah oh yeah that makes sense totally makes sense but not all of us do some of us like more exotic flavors like mango mango has the capability to be like love i love mango orange is more like yeah of course i like mango or orange see i’m saying what about the other end of the spectrum are people more like well mango’s not really my thing i’ll drink orange but mango is not my thing it’s possible just saying take one extreme you got to probably end up with the other one as well it’s very possible nonetheless relationships nonetheless we’re adding to the the spectrum of desirable flavors in discipline go so now you got a win-win-win situation for everybody three wins three wins okay all day maybe even four or later i’m just saying it’s always improving this is good it’s good you’re better off after you drink one of these what about watermelon what about new watermelon what what the salt watermelon yeah same same i think that’s closer to orange in terms of people it being a more broadly accepted flavor watermelon yeah you know anyone that does not like watermelon i don’t know anyone who does not like you know anyone that does not like mango yes see psychos but yes i do know something uh either way i get it i get it and to each their own i can honestly say that with with the ginger you kind of rolled the dice then with the mango in a way yeah actually no because when we chose the mango i chose that because i personally like it and that’s what bee little kind of said he said hey if you if you like it that’s it so i was like cool i like it right on what they seem to like drinks energy drinks is what you were saying you can get them yes sir it’s a new era like i said they’re good for you the thing is that’s a big deal though like come on you’d be hard for us to press to find a good tasting energy drink that after you drink it you’re better off it’s good for you you don’t have to do a bunch of like health freaking recovery things after you drink energy you don’t go to go on a 14-day detox yeah exactly right all right well i’m super low in calories too by the way also what else we got extra protein in the form of a dessert best tasting protein in the world pretty much you’d be hard pressed to find a better tasting protein with that the health nutrient profile that we have the only thing that could possibly taste better as a protein is just steak itself it’s possible very hard compared to that as we know you can have a gorgeous a gorgeous rib eye steak well marbled tasty cooked to a tea season to perfect seasoned to perfection and you can still get done with that and be like i want something you want some milk yeah you want exactly lots of milk bruh that has been me actually for the last four to three out of the last four days hundred percent that’s interesting either way these are all good things that will keep you on the path and front end and back end benefits 100 there’s nothing better than more i honestly there’s nothing better than milk when you get that little get that you get that how’s this that’s the desire here’s a okay so mostly every night there’s a little routine mostly every night i’ll eat a salad yeah as a meal like a big robust chicken it’s a formula i’ll give you the recipe some other time but it’s it’s legitimate talk to me about salad recipes either way but but i’ll mix up a milk in there in the salad no not in the salad with the salad you drink water or whatever you drink with salad whatever for some reason the mulk with the salad is the perfect combo right before bed that’s in my experience check either way also we got other stuff too for immunity for your joints these are these are all things we don’t want to worry about on the on this path we don’t want to worry about how strong our immune system is we don’t want to worry about our joints working or not working we want to just be sure and be assured that these things are all the fire and forget missile exactly just push the button boom you’re good hey joint warfare super krill you know vitamin d3 cold water you just they’re fire and forget don’t have to you want to be thinking about your immunity system you don’t want to be thinking about your joints if you fire and forget exactly right if you’re on these types of supplementation elements there’s only two times you’re going to be thinking about this stuff is one when you get on them and they start working or potentially if you accidentally get off that’s the only two times you think about this stuff that’s why i subscribe yes subscribe if you subscribe to these things you won’t go off of them you won’t have that miserable feeling and you’ll you we we you get shipping for free yeah so that’s cool also you can get this stuff at wawa you can get the drinks you can get the the you you’re going to wawa and you’re like i need a little energy right now but i don’t want to crash and feel like crap in three hours cool we got you covered go to wawa you can get these you can also get all the stuff at vitamin shop as well also in the energy drinks something i forgot to say which i always know when i drink them is there’s electrolytes in it mm-hmm get a little elevated the pre-workout element in in that is yeah it’s critical check so yeah also you can get them at jacofuel com that’s you can get everything which is part of origin origin usa so virgin usa what do they got there american made jeans boots jiu-jitsu stuff i want to say american-made i don’t mean just american finished no you know you have grass fed yeah and then whatever fin it’s not the whole thing grass-fed corn finished or grain finish yeah whatever the deal is no origin’s not like that it’s from the beginning all the way to the end american finished american started and started yes exactly right so boom yes so you got some good stuff pete’s always making some new innovative things you know work pants and whatever pants are coming i have a pair i have two pairs actually that’s cool because i don’t even have a delta freaking 68 jeans are you serious i am very serious yeah you got issues i got the regular ones which have been doing the job hundred percent but you might want to try out those deltas it’s like you know what i hate to admit this it’s like the equivalent of a lightweight hoodie boom yeah there’s stuff for that place for those delta 68s oh yeah for sure speaking of lightweight hoodies we have lightweight hoodies i’m gonna come out with another one i think within the next three weeks um where you can get these things okay so chocolate store is called jocko store we have lightweight hoodies if you want to represent while we are on this path you can get t-shirts like i said hoodies light and heavy by the way we’ve got some board shorts on there got some uh some tank tops you know hats cool stuff on there representative of the path discipline equals freedom good all these attitudes that we hope that we can run through the path with okay i’m going to represent jackalstore com we have a short subscription situation new design every month called the shirt locker that one’s been interesting people who see me part of the street even today even today will say hey i like that that last design i really liked it one guy said he worked to church and everyone was talking to him about it literally and then which design was that the the latest one what is the latest one it’s just just this check oh the period has the flag on the sleeve it’s good it looks good but it’s like you know there’s some layers on there uh nonetheless yes so subscribe to that if you want one every month new different different types of designs um than the regular stuff but but good nonetheless and you can subscribe to this podcast and don’t forget we also have jocko unraveling we have the grounded podcast we have the warrior kid podcast we also have the the jocko underground [Music] where we’re doing some alternative podcasts talking about stuff in the same vein but maybe a little bit tributary to the scenario that we’re usually talking about we’re doing a bunch of q a there’s a place you can send q a and we’re getting through those uh so go to jacounderground com if you want to subscribe to that cost eight dollars and eighteen cents a month and we’re using that to create our own area where if we get booted off of the big platforms for whatever reason or they just started interjecting ads is that cool it doesn’t seem cool to me you take this podcast let’s say they took this podcast today and you’re in the middle of hearing about lam psalm 719 all of a sudden there’s an advertisement on there for a mattress yeah that’s not cool it’s not cool no so if you don’t want that cool we got you eight dollars and 18 cents a month if you can’t afford it we still look if you can’t afford that cool we got you as well go to assistance or email assistants at jockowunderground com we got you yep also we have a youtube channel if you’re wondering about the video version of this podcast we do have a youtube channel official got some excerpts on there and the whole episodes got some other enhanced episodes as well lots of explosions i kind of minimized the explosions lately but it just makes us feel like we’re due for more explosion so you bring up a good point nonetheless if there are explosions that’s where they’re going to be like i’ll make a regular video and people will be like i’m uh i’m gutted literally gutted by the lack of explosions i was like man all right i agree with that person uh yeah it was hard to disagree at the time i mean you know our explosion’s appropriate at every single situation maybe maybe not nonetheless if they if the explosions are gonna be present you’re gonna find them on this youtube channel along with everything else so yeah look up for that also psychological warfare if you don’t know what that is it’s an album with tracks of jocko each track is jockey telling you how to get through a specific in general moment of weakness so if you’re in real in real life if you’re having a moment of weakness which we all do sometimes but in this album boom choco will tell you why you should uh you know not succumb to the weakness if you want a uh visual representation of this stuff go to flipsidecanvas com my brother dakota meyer selling all kinds of cool looking stuff that you can hang on your wall we also have some books hey the books i talked about today undaunted courage is the series there’s three volumes out right now covered one covered volume number one which is an assault unit as an assault helicopter unit in vietnam 1969-1970 that’s episode 275 of this podcast covered book three today lambsson seven one nine book two is called medal of honor i’m sure we’ll get to that book at some point um you can pick up the series of books they’re just an incredible account that you have to read to really to really understand the kind of chaos that was going on we have a new book final spin i have a new book final spin it is a we don’t really know what to call it literature it is literature of some kind it could be a poem it could be prose oh it’s prose i don’t know there’s some very poetic looking things in there the way it’s the way it’s written it’s prose elements i guess yeah uh you can check that out you you it’s it’s available for pre-order right now i’m gonna say the publisher likely won’t print enough because they’re always looking to minimize any loss they’re looking to maximize profit okay that’s cool they’re running a company i get it they don’t want to print too many copies and have some copies sitting around so they’re going to minimize they’re lowballing it so that what does that mean to you it means you end up with second a dish against the will brutal and it’s cool but at some point you’re gonna meet me you’re gonna come for that i’m not gonna say i’ll sign your second a dish but i’m gonna know and you’re gonna know that you hesitated at the moment of truth don’t let that be you that’s all i’m saying leadership strategy and tactics field manual code evaluation protocols displays freedom field manual way the warrior kit one two three and four mikey and the dragons about faced by hackworth and the og of my books that i wrote with my brother leif babin extreme ownership and dichotomy leadership leif and i also have a leadership consultancy it’s called echelonfront go to ashlandfront com if you want details on that we have an online training academy go to extremeownership com if you want to get training if you want to ask me questions i’m on there one two three times a week we have a bunch of of courses that you can take about these leadership principles so check that out we have a live event called the muster the next one is august 17th and 18th i think we’re almost sold out we’re getting there las vegas october 28th and 29th so go to echelonfront com and check events for that stuff and if you want to help service members active and retired their families are gold star families check out mark lee’s mom mama lee she’s got a charity organization where she helps out people from the military if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to america’s mightywarriors org and if you want more of my protracted pronouncements or you need more of echo’s random ruminations you can find us on the interwebs on twitter on the gram as echo calls it and on that facebook echoes that echo charles i’m at jacqueline william thanks once again to major j tape for coming on today sharing his experiences with us [Music] but of course and more important thanks to jay tate for his courage and bravery in the service of our great nation and to the rest of the military out there right now currently serving with courage thank you for protecting our way of life and the same goes for our police and law enforcement firefighters paramedics emts dispatchers correctional officers border patrol secret service and all first responders thank you for protecting us here at home and everyone else out there our lives that we’re living right now are a gift and our way of life that we enjoy it is also a gift it’s a blessing and it’s a luxury it’s a luxury that we get to be here in this world with freedom and free will and the opportunities that we have which were given to us through the bravery and sacrifice of others do not squander this gift and don’t waste these opportunities instead go out there every day and get after it and until next time this is echo and jocko out
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