Jocko Podcast 274: Being The Best. The Cost of Going Against The Grain? Is it Worth It? “Soldier”

this is jocko podcast number 274 with echo charles and me jocko willink good evening echo good evening all right so the last podcast 273 we were with anthony herbert tony herbert also known as and we started off his journey from a kid growing up in pennsylvania so if you haven’t listened to podcast 273 go listen to that right now he tried to join the marines at 14 14 years old credit eventually joined the army at 17 off to the korean war went from private to master sergeant all kinds of heroic actions suffered all kinds of wounds shot hit with frag white phosphorus burns and also bayoneted multiple times including one bayonet stab that broke off in his chest he in the korean war served as a platoon leader even though he was just a young enlisted guy and eventually at the end of that podcast and at the end of that part of his life he was pulled off the battlefield one of the most decorated soldiers of the war sent on a mara it was basically a morale tour and first we got flown back to the to the white house met president truman and then basically went to london and antwerp and brussels and the hague and all the other european allies that were fighting alongside america in the korean war along the way he met mrs eleanor roosevelt she encouraged him to go to college he kind of agreed one of the quotes he says in the book is he he agreed because he was already the youngest master sergeant in the army and he said what am i going to do sit around the enlisted man’s club telling stories about korea so he was sort of not not over it but he realized that he had kind of done what he was going to do so he ends up getting assigned as an rotc instructor at a high school in denver because he liked to ski uh goes to the third ranger class that ever happened he was in he ends up getting married to his hometown sweetheart mary grace starts going to college or he then he gets out of the army then starts going to college at the university of pittsburgh while he’s there he writes a book called conquest to no war nowhere which was his first book about the korean war which he later rewrote which we covered when it was rewritten was called the making of a soldier that was podcast 273 for the most part worked at a steel mill at night while he was going to college and then eventually commissioned as an officer in the pennsylvania national guard shout out to the 228 iron soldiers all right so so then he goes so then he’s back kind of in the army and he gets some warnings that the army’s different now you know the war is over but the good people got out we just left with people that shouldn’t even be in the army that he got those kind of warnings but he stayed in he he loves being a soldier he wants to be a soldier goes to the basic army infantry course wins nine out of ten awards there including the leadership trophy which is the leadership trophy is awarded by the other students like the other students select who deserves this leadership trophy then he gets assigned as a ranger instructor and he starts he starts in the mountain phase and so today we’re going to be reading so the first book that we covered we covered a little bit so he’s written two books well i guess he’s written three one was conquest of nowhere that one got rewritten as the making of a soldier that was the bulk of what we read last time this time we’re going to read from his second book primarily and it’s just called soldier just called soldier and lots of lessons learned but as i mentioned in the first podcast in 273 there’s some serious lessons learned about life and things get really crazy when he goes to vietnam as a battalion commander and we will get there all right so here we go going going to the book soldier written by anthony b herbert and he says this teaching young men the essentials of mountain climbing combat and survival was more of a learning experience for me than for them i began discovering things about the resources in me as well as the way the army was moving i was an alternate instructor at first assigned to teach cliff descents on suspension traverses i took it seriously it was dangerous business if you didn’t the ropes to be used for traverses which were one inch in diameter and 900 feet long cost the army about 300 each i had set up two of the traverses on a 60-foot cliff the day before a new class was to begin and that afternoon i went out to inspect the ropes one of the criteria for determining the quality of the kind of rope that was the present was the presence of a tiny colored strand running all the way through its core i inspected the first traverse and found the strand but the second rope didn’t have it which meant that i simply couldn’t approve its use the strand was an indication that the machines used to put the hemp together into a strong enough cord had worked the way they were supposed to if the strand wasn’t there something had gone wrong and the rope might be faulty i went back to my quarters and wrote an unsatisfactory report on the rope and then went to the chief instructor and told him of my findings the army paid good money for that rope and you want to throw it away he argued we’re not going to do that herbert i explained what i had found or rather what i had not found strand schmann he said you go out there and test it again by going down the traverse if it holds if it holds you it’s okay this is kind of a strange safety check right go ahead and risk your life to see if it’s going to work i returned to the cliff and went down the traverse so he does it it held it was supposed to be sturdy enough to support a jeep i went back and told the captain and he ordered me conduct the class the next day using the rope i filed the unsatisfactory report and went to bed the next morning as we stood at the top of the cliff i ordered the class into two lines the captain nodded his approval from nearby one group would use the traverse made of the rope i’d inspected and approved the other would be would use the traverse of the rope i’d inspected and rejected a young corporal in the second group stepped off the rope snapped and he fell 60 feet to the rocks below i went down quickly on the other traverse his body was so broken it almost crumbled in my hands as i lifted him into a jeep and sent him to the hospital the captain had seen what happened he left the scene running up over the hill the students were nervous they said they weren’t going through with it i made them a little speech on courage and reminded them that they’d all known that ranger training included risks it seemed to work we spent the rest of the morning learning how to use the traverse there were no further accidents and at lunch time i went back to base where colonel byerly and the captain asked me how the kid who fell was going to be he’ll be dead on arrival i said don’t say that the captain said you can’t say that how the hell do you know because i’m the one who put him on on that jeep for the hospital he’ll be dead on arrival the phone rang it was a hospital calling and the captain came back to barely and me with a strange look on his face the hospital says he was dead on arrival he reported it was quiet in the office finally the captain said i was responsible for the accident i realized that sir and i’ll stand whatever comes from it i said you’re responsible you know he said you’re the one who’s responsible i know sir i know i answered so i’m sure it’s pretty obvious why i decided to um pull out that particular quote because that is 100 accurate obviously he’s taking ownership for what happened but it’s not just lip service if you don’t think something is right and you execute it it’s on you it’s on you a little bit more from ranger school and this book look this book is four almost 500 pages long and obviously i’m not reading the whole thing there is so much good information and i’m just i tried to parse it down to some key points along the way but this is a this is a book that is packed filled with knowledge and i try and bring out as much of that as i could some of the war stories that i don’t even go into there’s there’s all kinds of combat scenarios that i don’t even go into just an incredible book um fast forward a little bit here i didn’t develop any really sophisticated theories about teaching and i still haven’t what seemed to be important was that the teacher know what he was talking about and be able to show as well as tell one of the fallacies in army training these days is that kind of experience is no longer part of the tradition kids are taught combat techniques by men who through no fault of their own of course have never spent a moment in combat and we wonder how it is that we turn out soldiers like cali talking about lieutenant cali mila massacre what seemed most important then and still does was that the students realize that the army and war are not really games at all even though they might seem that way at times especially when you hear someone of the bar room tales or when you hear some of the bar room tales of the way it was at incheon or that night in the mekong delta i saw so many army teachers who were trying to make up for the times when they had been down at the bottom of the heap when they had been the ones taking orders they played games with their men building their egos with nip nitpicking orders that produce nothing but dissent and rancor among the men so often i found it that way in the military the rules and the regs and the juvenile cover-ups and the children’s games it had nothing to do with creating a system of discipline or building soldiers it was simply an ego game again i think it’s quite obvious why why why i you know i’m talking about this this is something that we all have to watch out for you get put in that position of authority you gotta watch out you gotta watch out it’s a good good opportunity for you to pump up your ego make them do some stupid stuff that doesn’t make any sense and we’ll do that all day long if you let your ego run the show that’s what you’re doing and by the way it creates what do you say dissent amongst the troops all right so what he does in the next kind of stages of the books he gets stationed in germany he kind of creates this provisional ranger platoon he becomes the commander of the provisional ranger platoon 1962 he gets promoted to captain he’s deployed to africa he’s deployed to well the congo in africa puerto rico dominican republic the persian gulf deployed to bahrain all in the 60s and there’s all kinds of good stories in the book about these different situations that he’s in he’s doing some kind of clandestine type operations he’s it’s just just a you know borderline spy scenarios going down working with the cia enter interacting with the cia intelligence services and this kind of stuff so he does all that 1966 goes back to being a ranger instructor starts working towards his master’s degree in psychology gets his degree in 1968 he gets offered a slot at war college but of course he doesn’t want to go to war college not yet anyways he wants to go to vietnam and the bunch of reasons obviously he he has always felt that he wants to be a combat leader and he sees an opportunity to to lead he also has never worked with helicopters at the level they were used in vietnam so well so he he said quote i wanted to know i wanted to go i wanted to see i wanted to fight ask his chain of command hey can i please go to vietnam and he does he ends up getting orders to vietnam he wants to be a battalion commander because by this time he’s been promoted a few more times he wants to be a battalion commander he but he doesn’t show up immediately in vietnam as a battalion commander he has to pay his dues first and the way he pays his dues is by becoming the inspector general of the 173rd airborne brigade so inspector general what’s an inspector general the inspector general their mission the inspector general mission is to quote provide impartial objective and unbiased advice and oversight to the army through relevant timely and thorough inspections and assistance investigations and training to promote and enable stewardship accountability integrity and efficiency also good order and discipline and enhanced total army readiness that’s what an ig have you ever heard that term before ig inspector general yes you have yeah where did you hear it what movie uh it i don’t remember it might have been like mash or something like this okay okay i was trying to think of a good way to explain all those things and have you ever seen police movies where they have the internal affairs oh yeah that’s kind of i think that’s a good comparison right it’s somebody that’s kind of inspecting us like our team yeah right it’s not it’s not hey we’re out inspecting looking what the bad guys are doing we’re looking at what we’re doing as good guys we’re making sure we’re doing the right things internal affairs they came off as kind of like that wasn’t a good thing when internal affairs is involved it’s kind of like they’re investigating some some some bad yeah something went something bad happened yeah inspector general comes i don’t know it just hits me as something more like hey we’re almost like a compliance officer like kind of like hey just to make sure everyone’s kind of doing the right thing it’s not like it seems like they’re kind of on your side still okay no well let me phrase that if you’re doing the right things they’re on your side if you’re doing the wrong things just like internal affairs if you were doing all the right things and internal affairs came along you’d be like oh cool they’re here to keep people straight if you were if you were a criminal or you were if you were if you were corrupt right well a training day your favorite movie yes sir but train is there is there internal affairs and training day no so there should have been right you got there so there should have been someone tracking hey what’s going on where’s this money going where’s this you know what where are these reports why aren’t they yeah like in the whole scenario for sure but probably not in the movie for giving that particular storyline but yeah yeah overall for sure yeah that’s that guy what’s denzel washington’s character name in that movie do you know alonzo okay alonso would be not a big fan of internal affairs no sir although he was he was such a mover and so manipulative he might have had some internal affairs people that were on his side yeah he kind of did imply that not internal affairs necessarily but kind of like he had some people on the inside kind of backing his moves when they’re talking about getting drug tested and stuff there you go there you go so so that’s what that’s what the ig is and look you know i was in the navy for 20 years obviously i saw some ig inspections go down or the ig would get called in like maybe someone’s uh uh some some ammunition goes missing for an extent it’s not the kind of thing where something happens one time and you know the command would just kind of handle that but if there’s some kind of an ongoing problem yeah the i maybe someone’s falsifying travel claims or something like that okay so bring in the ig who’s gonna give an unbiased look because you know maybe the commander’s wrapped up in it or whatever yeah so okay so they’re not just sort of around all the time or nothing like that you can call them specifically okay and the other the other place they could get used is let’s say you work for me and i’m a tyrannical jerk you could you could then reach out to the ig check so you could reach out to the ig sort of through a anonymous you know yeah that means uh uh email or something and say hey this guy jocko is verbally and physically abusive that’s a good tip to to his subordinates so there you go so this guy shows up as the ig now now like you said it seems like they would be on our side right yeah that was my misinterpretation though i thought inspector general sort of like just another guy who’s there or another department kind of that’s there all the time that’s kind of like oh hey by the way guys you guys are kind of slacking over here so let’s tighten that up we’re all good kind of a thing so if you were doing the right things for the right reasons you’d have no reason to fear the ig but if you were doing some things that were shady you might you might not be very welcoming or you might be scared of them and the ig is obviously it’s a weird role to play right because you’re looking at your team and you’re sort of you can end up in a situation where you’re accusing your team of doing things that are wrong so it’s a weird dynamic and so he shows up as the ig for this brigade and and this is the thing about anthony herbert he seems like a very what’s the word here he’s like a straight shooter right a straight shooter that a little bit of black and white a little bit of like hey right and wrong good or bad good or evil he seems like he’s got that kind of a personality and and actually you can go watch some of his interviews there’s interviews of him on youtube and you can see some of them but you’re gonna start to see that and that’s sort of in the first one that we when i did cover the beginning of this book just to talk about his upbringing you know he’s a church-going guy he’s so he’s a he’s kind of he’s kind of a he’s very straightforward and right or wrong that’s what the personality comes across for the most part to me and so this ig you know he’s gonna kind of he kind of comes out of the gate swinging he kind of comes out of the gate swinging and here we go he’s checking in to this guy he’s checking in with this guy who’s uh who’s the lieutenant colonel who they call the mayor of on k you know some some outpost over there in vietnam the guy is the commander of the brigade support battalion so he’s checking in and the guy’s saying you know i can get you this i can get you that but then he says i i expect some cooperation from you in return he added like what i asked well like talking things over before they go to the general he replied most things never even have to reach his ears if you and i cooperate you know herbert sort of run things ourselves trust each other get along and keep it all in the family you see where this is going i stared at him and said he had to be joking i realized almost instantly he was not i’m supposed to be an ig i said he seemed not to have heard launching instead into a lengthy recitation of his immense responsibilities as the man in charge of the barrack the brigade’s rear area headquarters everything at on k was under his purview he said men slept where he told them to sleep and took their meal wherever he assigned them and enjoyed themselves in his clubs and theaters and bought from his post exchange it suddenly dawned on me that here was a senior lieutenant colonel supposedly a professional soldier who was bragging about his job as a building officer a task generally reserved for a second lieutenant in the states and usually for a not too keen second lieutenant at that he rambled on and on about the scope of his influence and i tried hard to look interested and concerned finally he stopped it was my turn look colonel i i understand your position and if you’ll just assign me a room and a mess i’ll be glad to cooperate i said he smiled and relaxed in his chair but you have to understand my position too i added now he was staring i’m an ig so i work for the commander who by the way is general allen not you since i work for the general i’ll report to the general and if that isn’t a satisfactory remain arrangement for you well then you can talk it over with the general maybe the two of you can work something out more suitable his jawline straighten noticeably in the meantime if you’re finished i have a lot of work to do i concluded he looked ill is there anything wrong i asked rising from the bed no not at all he said rather glumly also rising i have some things to do myself i nodded open the door to the outer roman and he left the place was quiet until the sergeant spoke you just made an enemy sir he said from his desk a real dangerous enemy i walked into the outer room real dangerous real dangerous sir real real dangerous i repeat repeated smiling slightly yes sir he he’s okay sir he said sheepishly when he noticed my grin no kidding sir he’s really bad news i took some papers from his desk and looked at him so am i sarge i asked i said and i’m not kidding either you see where this is going right so you can see where this is going he’s go he’s forming an antagonistic relationship with a guy right out of the gate and you know i i talked about this on ef online the other day we we you know we talk about take the high ground to the high ground will take you but when you’re on the high ground you have to be careful that you don’t that you don’t launch attacks on other people from a position where you feel like you’re superior to everybody else you are in a superior position this is known right you when you’re on the high ground you’re in a superior position but let me tell you this when you start to launch attacks with the attitude that you’re superior you’re giving up some of the high ground so and this is what’s really what’s really a a hard line to walk in this book and as i try and talk through this i’m not going to do a good job of it but just because you’re right doesn’t mean you’re right right and you’re gonna see this over and over again i mean this guy is a like morally at least he appears to be and again there’s some controversy around us everything we’re talking about he certainly appears if you read the words that he writes in this book he certainly appears to be a morally upstanding human being that and look at what he did look at his heroic actions from the last last podcast what he did in the korean war this guy is willing to sacrifice for his brothers in arms he’s an incredible soldier and you’re going to see how much his men how much his men loved and revered him which is awesome but he’s on that high ground and he’s this is this is this is what he’s doing he’s on the high ground and he’s looking down on others from the high ground and when you do that they don’t like it people don’t like it doesn’t feel good yeah yeah that’s interesting what you wha what did you how did you just put it like you just because you’re right doesn’t mean you’re right or whatever you’re right doesn’t mean you’re right yeah there’s got to be a better way to say that it’s like just because you’re right doesn’t mean you should smack people in if it doesn’t mean other people are going to think that you’re right yeah um just because you’re right doesn’t mean you’re right or what you said actually does sound kind of cool i feel like that should be the quote uh i used to like get into little debates whatever with my brother i think i told you this before where you know how he is he’s the kind where there’s no like we understand getting in debates with your brother yeah yeah he’s down for the cause and he goes hard but um anyway so we do we’d get into these things you know sometimes against my will or whatever and so finally i came to the conclusion that i said hey what you’re saying is like right is right but what you’re doing is wrong yeah like i see what you’re saying you’re saying all the correct stuff there’s all true stuff it’s all factual and all this stuff but what you’re doing right now is wrong like you can’t like force people into debates you can’t like so it’s kind of the same concept essentially you know where it’s like yeah this guy is taking that he’s doing the right thing you know he’s he’s right he’s doing the right thing but what you’re doing kind of right now in a big and essentially in a bigger picture there’s just a bigger picture in play yep and look there’s a there’s things that are universally morally wrong so there are things like that well almost universally morally wrong there’s things that you can say that that is not correct that is not right that should not happen when he starts he’s getting into some of this stuff early on look you you’re right colonel herbert you’re right but you’re you’re not gonna make this easy and if you and if you if you run around just slapping people from the high ground what you’re doing is you’re you’re you’re you have to get off the high ground to slap people you’re coming down off the high ground to slap people and well we’re gonna see how this unfolds fast forward a little bit within a few weeks i realized that the desk sergeant had been worth listening to he had it pegged pound for pound the brigade was garbage discipline was lax the troops were slovenly disrespectful and sluggish meant mentally as well as physically it was obvious that on k it was obvious that in anke at least there were no match for either the vietcong or the north vietnamese regulars as the sergeant had said they preferred pot two to one but marijuana was only an expression of deeper more serious failure at on k the troops wore what they damn well wanted to wear including beads and bracelets they capped their teeth with different colors red blue and gold and they called the hierarchy [ __ ] and printed [ __ ] the green machine on their jackets and hats some of them wore earrings a few sported nose rings and the battle flag of the confederacy flew for many of the bunkers the sergeant was right about nobody giving a damn too almost everyone looked the other way on k was a staff in headquarters post crammed with chairborne commando types in every in any other war it would have been ridiculous but not in vietnam every careerist who could weedle his way was over there drawing combat pay while the citizens back home were getting bled for the bill the troops knew best what to call it a humbug the 173rd was the largest brigade in vietnam with over 10 000 men attached to it it was according to the manual a combat brigade with absolutely no dead weight but it was a humbug there were five so-called combat battalions in the brigade and not one of them had more than 600 physically present for duty out of a total of 10 000 men there were no more than 3 000 at the battalion level which means that some seven thousand were assigned to support roles steakhouses pizza huts clubs headquarters the generals mess artillery engineers etc even a pro even among the approximately 3 000 at the combat battalion level not all were looking not all were out looking with their rifles some were of course but the battalions had their own rear areas just like the brigade with their own steakhouses and their own clubs each battalion was composed of five companies one of them a makeshift out outfit responsible for heavy weapons which left four companies for walking no company in the battalion brigade had more than 75 men physically present and ready to go thus each battalion fielded about 300 combat troopers except that each battalion assigned one company to guard its base of operations each day that left a maximum of 225 men available for the field or 1125 on the brigade basis and that would have been on a good day with everybody out and everybody with a rifle but everybody didn’t carry a rifle some toted radios some stayed back and typed some worked in company supply some were fireflies the daily helicopter resupply lifts and some were just plain screwed off so on an average day the 173rd airborne brigade could feel a field approximately 800 men if all of its battalions were out in the year i was in the brigade all the battalions were never out simultaneously we field less than 800 out of 10 000 troops in the brigade on a countrywide basis it meant that out of 500 000 men we had there at the peak of our involvement less than 50 000 were engaged in the business of fighting in the field and that figure applies only if all the other outfits were doing as well as the 173rd as general westmoreland like to say the 173rd was the cream of the whole crop it wasn’t that our kids didn’t fight well in the field it was just that so damn few of them ever got there we had a 500 000 man army fielding less than one infantry division and did in world war ii or in korea on paper we were hell on wheels the reports had a column for it in the field and on paper it was 98 or more every day i’ve filed those reports myself and they look truly magnificent all the guys at the steakhouse in the field all the guys at the club in the field the general’s orderlies in the field the lifeguards at esther williams swimming pool in the field stunning absolutely stunning and from the and from time to time i found myself inclined to go along with it it was so mesmerizing that when i later took over a battalion myself i added another column to my reporting procedure just to keep things straight ass in the grass i called the new column it was no joke it was necessary and as in the grass means you’re actually in the field you can see this guy he’s going hard in the paint and again i’m reading from the book i’m not these i don’t i they’re we’re going to get to sort of some of the pushback against this stuff but we have to we have to take him for what he’s saying well we have to let me rephrase that we have to listen to what he’s saying he goes on here i soon discovered that almost all the problems at any level of the brigade were either the direct or indirect result of piss-poor leadership being an ig so you got he’s got this attitude and he’s the ig oh is he going to be making friends what’s your prediction being in ig was an extremely educational experience i was spending about 20 nights a month with ass in the grass troops blending as well as i could taking every opportunity afforded afforded me to discuss tactics i found that one of the best ways to get to know any particular outfit was to accompany its men on an ambush generally they were a disgrace so this is interesting i i guarantee and i don’t you know i don’t use that word very often he shows up as the ig and what does he do he starts going in the field all the time with the troops because he’s that kind of bro you know he’s that kind of brother that’s just like oh i’m in the army we got troops i’m going in the field so that’s what he starts doing and as he’s going out on patrol well this is what he finds the fault was obvious poor leadership and more specific absentee leadership few of the ambush patrols i accompanied included a senior or non-commissioned officer the enlisted men had humped all day long and carried their load and then at night they were expected to stay awake and cut it again the next day they took their sleep where and when they could get it on patrol and for what most and for the most part the company commanders didn’t know what the hell was going on or worse just didn’t care it was their fault but the real culprits were at the higher level battalion commanders who wrote out the procedures almost verbatim from the fort benning operations and training handbook passed them down to their subordinates and let it go at that they were covered the procedures had no relationship to the realities of combat and you got to remember the the colonel that originally told me about this book this guy is this the same kind of vain as hackworth he’s coming at you and he loves being a soldier and he loves his soldiers but he’s got no love he’s got no love for the upper chain of command you can as you can see uh field standards which apply to combat conditions are important and those were the criteria i applied as i walked through b companies area and then he’s getting into like actually being out there a good soldier wears even the most ragged gear well even in the field he is trim neat and tight with pockets buttoned and no loose or hanging straps or webbing he does not wear sunglasses he keeps a clean face and clean weapon and clean ammunition these kids didn’t cut it the reason i could only conclude was poor leadership leadership’s most important thing on the battlefield good or bad it was strictly a matter of leadership he’s talking about going on patrol with a couple different um companies take the contrast i found between b company and c company it was the same battalion same area of operations with approximately the same number of troops in the same kind of mission yet while b company was a mess c company was strack strategic tough and ready around the clock they were airborne man all the way one night i went along on a platoon sized patrol commanded by a young lieutenant it was like clockwork like beautiful swiss clockwork we moved quietly paused for a silent sea wrap meal and drifted off further into the brush to set up shop nobody smoked nobody talked charlie company and its lieutenant webster were hunters and as i sat tight against a palm tree that night i felt good about being out there with them they had a purpose just before dawn webster received orders this is such a good lesson just before dawn webster received orders to drift back to base about 12 miles away helicopters were unavailable he was told so orders were to foot it back and bring along the mermites the thermal food containers that weighed about 30 pounds of where clumsy as hell to carry webster stared at me in the early morning light it’s stupid he said but it’s an order i replied playing it straight he looked at me steadily and then made up his mind yeah he said well [ __ ] them we’re not carrying no goddamn cans back through the bush he turned to his radio man pass the word to get rid of the garbage cans and all we’re going to take a hike so keep it light and don’t leave anything for charlie the radio man turned to leave and webster stopped him with a hand on his shoulder the first [ __ ] noise somebody gets it in the mouth he warned and then turned to me i’ll take the gig and the ass chewing webster had a real outfit because he was a real leader he had a good reputation and he earned an even larger one by the time we left the captain and b company and webster and c company both had the same raw material yet one was running a sloppy sad ass show that couldn’t cut it the other was commanding a tough tight combat ready and combat able outfit the difference was leadership so there you go that’s a freaking classic case of you get told to do something stupid what’s the good leader do now he could have had that argument maybe said like hey you really want me to carry this stuff that’s just a big pain in the ass and he says you know what there’s a colonel here [ __ ] it we’re not doing that that doesn’t make sense he says this if a legitimate study is made of that war most americans will be stunned to learn that we killed a hell of a lot of our own people once again a failure directly traceable to poor leadership all it took was the sound of a booby trap or the sighting of movement and we were prone to just open up to fire to the jungle and brush in every direction without any idea of who might be on the right or left or behind or ahead we did it over and over again to ourselves here’s an example he gives once again we had killed one of our own in this particular case he had caused his own death it was said he was a young lieutenant out on his first patrol according to the report he had set up the ambush and then left its perimeter to establish security which was completely asked backwards but nevertheless the way he had been trained by the us army when i was in ranger school at fort benning i had seen the example set dozens of times without any criticism training [ __ ] we had too many damn academics we trained not only with blank ammunition but with blank attitudes as well using instructors who had gone through the same kind of blank training men who in their wildest dreams could not relate to a real combat patrol because it had never been part of their own experience the army claimed the instructors were combat veterans and some no doubt were but most had merely been in combat zones because of that kind of training the young lieutenant was dead the report detailed how he had gone out from the patrol’s main body to position the outpost people himself just as he had been taught and then headed back through the deep jungle and at night alone toward his main group in the daylight moving through brush is hard at night it’s a formidable task when his men heard movement to their rear the report related they called him on the the radio at least he had enough sense to take it along so they got an ambush set up he goes to set some security out now he’s walking back and the guys that are in the ambush hear noise so they call them up and say hey you know we hear noise behind us and what does the lieutenant say he says cream and they did he was dropped in his tracks schooled trained ranger airborne and he had ordered his own execution i tried to console myself by thinking that anybody so goddamn ignorant deserved to die but it didn’t work i knew he had been trained by guys like me not me personally but by senior personnel like me it was our fault i tried to imagine myself doing what he had done even several years earlier and i couldn’t he was worse than untrained he was badly trained he had no business being out there in charge on his first patrol and his battalion commander couldn’t be held blameless either it was sickening we were the healthiest wealthiest supposedly best trained soldiers in the world our army had the finest raw material of any country we had the equipment and the experience to do better we fought like a bunch of amateurs i shoved my coffee aside and looked around the talk there were white cloths and flowers on the tables and paintings on the walls it was ludicrous i grabbed a chopper back to on k and on the way constructed the rest of the nights that night’s pitiful drama the dead lieutenant was from a little town in pennsylvania not far from where i had grown up a telegram would soon arrive and the middle-aged mother would collapse on the couch in the living room while the father tried to console her through his own tears i imagine myself walking into the room and standing at the end of the couch looking down on them and saying that i had killed their kid the vision passed and i was grateful that he wasn’t one of my men and i wouldn’t have to explain it even to myself we had much much too much whatever the reason was the nature of war the difference in the attitudes of the personnel the abundance was overwhelming the red cross for instance came up with 15 000 individual christmas packages for the 10 000 men of the 173rd he’s kind of going on a rant here about just what that giant logistical and rear echelon footprint was like sergeant ren the motel they have a motel the motel manager told me and booth that the tab for the brigade’s entertainment ran close to thousand dollars a month so there’s all this stuff is going on and and look i’m he he accounts for a lot of the stuff that he’s investigating with the ig there’s stealing going on there’s fraud going on there’s rape going on sexual harassment and sexual assaults and murder and prisoner abuse people going awol there’s all kinds of criminal behavior happening he goes into this one uh the records of the steakhouse and pizza hut were equally shocking tons of meat were unaccounted for along with thousands of pre-fixed pizzas and truckloads of liquor and beer three years later congress would be pulling the covers off what would become known as the club scandals it would involve generals at the very top and the very top sergeant of the whole army sergeant major woolridge whom general westmoreland himself had hand-picked as the u s army’s first top kick even then the army would be trying to sweep it under the rug it was in our brigade that the investigation which led to the scandal started our investigation launched at general allen’s request the lines were being drawn and the ig shop was no longer sloughed off in dinner conversations it’d become a power and i had become for some of my comrades in arms the enemy fast forward a little bit he’s looking he’s remember he went there as the ig but he’s supposed to get a battalion and become a battalion commander eventually it would be the third battalion and i would get it in april he said this would necessitate an extension of my tour so i could get in my six-month minimum of command time but it would be worth the extension he said the present commander of the third battalion would have six months in by april which was another anomaly of the vietnam war it mattered not that a commander was doing a great job or a crappy job six months was the magic number officers got their tickets punched in six months and then got the hell out to some other assignment to work on another credit or get their another coupon certified general westmoreland had said it a long time before when i was a major that the russians were very envious of the way our officer corps was getting tremendous combat experience in vietnam and even then i knew it was [ __ ] it takes a commander a couple months to become acclimated to his responsibility a couple more to get going and then he’s gone it was crazy besides we were losing in vietnam a fact which the us army officers corps seemed not to want to recognize it would have been better to have fought the whole goddamn war with a hundred honest-to-god commanders than a thousand of the half-assed combat leader types we were producing whatever gave the notion we could build a better mousetrap in six months it was a pipe dream and what was worse was that the leaders quote the the quote leaders we were grinding out would be not an asset but a detriment in a big war should one come then they would be considered experts and the delusion would cost us plenty so you go there your battalion commander for six months you get you get your box checked and then you’re out and by the way now all of a sudden you’re you’re a battalion commander so that means what you say is gold another thing he’s got to deal with fragging fragging the deliberate attack on a non-com or an officer by an enlisted man or men was not unknown in the 173rd one sergeant over in the signal section had made the mistake of raising hell with a trooper about the cleanliness of his area the man wired a claymore mine outside the sergeant’s room aimed it right through the wall of the switch at the switchboard went to a phone and called his victim sergeant lost both legs there was a fragging in 2nd battalion 2 with seven wounded they tried to get nicholson with explosives and on another occasion they tried to blow up his tactical operation center one of the men in 2nd battalion had reportedly blown himself to bits with a claymore mine but my investigation failed to corroborate this it had been in his hands so here’s a guy with a claymore mine in his hands that was certain but there were two men in the nearby bunker handling the handling the controls of the mine when it went off the victim had left the bunker to retrieve the mine at the request of the other two and somehow they said the circuit had been completed i wasn’t a real detective but even though even though two company commanders swore it was accidental i did sign my report with a recommendation that the criminal investigate investigation division check into it they never did 4th battalion had a genuine insurrection herb matsuo the executive the battalion executive officer told me an old colonel living in an air-conditioned trailer had become sort of a father figure for the riff raff and the battalion no kidding tourney tony herb said he’s actually pulled all the freaks in around him and made a personal bodyguard outfit with weapons and all and the old geezer is dumb enough to believe they’re responding to him the colonel called his men the mafioso they’re going to cause serious trouble tony they’re the worst kind of people we have over here they’re killers and i’m not joking you better get word to general allen before it’s too late um uh i think i might be kind of confused so fragging is what fragging is a term where it’s it’s um what it means is you got an officer or you got a senior enlisted person that you don’t like mm-hmm and you kill them okay so that’s a thing that’s a dead there you go there’s two examples damn okay uh they put it in movies in platoon you’ve seen platoon right no what i know here’s the guy i know are you serious i am serious i have never seen platoon okay well go assignment go watch platoon yeah okay so okay okay it’s in movies uh yeah there’s a lot of things in movies but it’s scene that seems really weird obviously that doesn’t happen nowadays well you certainly hope not yeah i mean i’ve i’ve never heard of a creative case of fragging now but yes in vietnam it absolutely like there’s there you go there’s cases of it right there so so imagine this you are a young 21 year old 19 year old 18 year old person you don’t believe in this war you don’t like it you don’t want to die and in comes you know lieutenant rambo that’s like we’re going to go out we’re going to take the fight to the enemy and you think you can get killed yeah and he’s going to charge you with being a coward or whatever you’re killing people that’s what’s happening over there so you’re going out on a combat operation you get into a firefight oh lieutenant young lieutenant happens to get shot yeah i guess on training day technically that’s what he did or was trying to do where it’s like yeah you know we’re gonna see if this guy’s gonna play ball with us in our in our group he doesn’t and then he sets him up to get killed yeah that’s a well yeah that’s a fragging it tries to anyway yeah it’s a real thing it’s a real thing um there’s another he’s doing an investigation of a company that got creamed he said so this company like took massive casualties and he’s talking through it what had happened with uh he’s about to talk through with general allen it had been marijuana i took it back to allen and he didn’t like it one bit the company had been creamed and there wasn’t a single dead enemy i suggested that we write it up as a lesson learned one that even a nitwit trooper could understand no one individual had been at fault i reasoned it had been marijuana and as bad as that was it would serve as a valuable purpose it would serve a valuable purpose as a combat lesson for the living marijuana and guns don’t miss mix the general was staring at me when i finished you must be mad i said sir do you realize what you’re asking he said walking over to his window for another glance at those goddamn flowers he this guy had flowers like panda planted outside of his window can you imagine what you’ve just suggested those were american kids two captains and a hell of a lot of american kids are dead he threw up his hands in disgust and sat down at his desk and you want me to tell higher headquarters and their families that they were on dope not dope sir marijuana and we don’t have to say that everyone was on it just point out that the reason that they had left that that was the reason they had had their asses creamed he stood up again i’ll have to think about it for the time being just keep it to yourself understand i stood up i understand sir he sat back down again and i will consider it later i read about a company’s fate in the stars and stripes and in our own brigade newspaper the sky soldier the two accounts were nearly identical the company had put up one hell of a fight but had been overrun by a numerically superior force at a substantial cost to the enemy it was one more glorious chapter in the glorious history of the 173rd airborne brigade the official accounts of that night on the hill were a goddamn discredit to every mother’s son who fought worth a lick in vietnam the general no doubt believed it saved some face i never mentioned it again so you know you get like this is about mass cover-ups right and no lessons learned by the way so that lesson learned doesn’t get passed on anybody the story of a company’s heroism in gallantry was published about the same day that lieutenant colonel joseph ross franklin joined the brigade as a replacement as the deputy commander franklin had graduated from west point in 1949 won a distinguished service cross in korea his head was completely hairless he shaved it he looked like a badass combat commander he was impressive no doubt and his teeth sparkled they say he’s a breath of fresh air abbott remarked so here comes this guy franklin and i think he’s the most decorated officer from his class at west point this guy franklin and that’s from korea and so you think you know if if you were a decorated highly decorated veteran from korea and i was a decorated highly decorated veteran from korea there’s a good chance that you and i could meet and be like hey bro right on right like we could just be you know have this kind of unified past right sure what else could happen to you a little bit threatened some competition we should have some ego scenarios right we could have that competition between you and me and i think i’m a little bit braver than you my my medals are a little bit you know matt whatever yeah well unfortunately that was the d it ain’t it ain’t going to be brewing out yeah um here we go how about a briefing he finally suggested and don’t pull any punches herbert i finished he had one question we’re that bad huh we’re worse sir but you’ll see it for yourself and it’s not because the caliber of the troops either we have the finest top sergeants i have ever known in the army and we have the healthy healthiest toughest privates you can find anywhere but the worst general he said not really i said allen is okay then leadership sir i said and then he not then as he nodded i related every last error i’d seen in the brigade when i finished i attributed them all directly to lack of leadership how do you mean that herbert franklin asked it was precisely what i wanted him to ask the troops are ragged ass because they have no one to emulate that they respect men are dying because leaders don’t care enough to lead it isn’t allen in particular although he’s included but the real problem is at a much lower level at the level of the battalions and the companies if i followed regulations i’d be recommending quartz marshall for every last battalion commander i’ve seen in this brigade and i’ve seen them all they write policy books have their men initial them and then try and correct any value violations they after they occur nobody leads by example they command from 1500 feet up in a chopper then and they wear spit shine boots like they’re on parade while their men hump through the bush with their asses half out of their trousers everybody plans big but nobody sees to it but they’re that their plans are carried out our lieutenant colonels fight their battalions on paper as if they were chess pieces on a board that’s herbert the office was definitely quiet until he spoke what do you recommend herbert well since you asked kick a couple battalion commanders in the ass get them out of their birds and onto the ground make them spend a few nights out with their units and don’t permit them the right to transfer the men they consider bad news force them to get off their asses and lead and then we’ll have a brigade that’s exactly why why i’m here herbert he said sir to lead he said that’s why the brigade is getting a new general to lead general piers is damn sick of allen and his entire hodgepodge he walked to the door things are about to change herbert for the better he stepped out into the darkness i slipped the files back in the cabinet and sat down for a moment to think about it maybe he was going to make a difference i’m used maybe as abbott had told me franklin would be a breath of fresh air so off to a good start we’ll do a little bit of brewing out uh then we have brigadier general john w barnes took over the 173rd thus making a complete change command that as abbott had said was supposed to be bring a breath of fresh air to that part of vietnam [Applause] so then things start to go sideways there’s a little incident that goes down the next day i was summoned to lz english by franklin the new deputy commander the brigade you’re a no good disloyal son of a [ __ ] he said for openers what are you talking about i asked you insulted one of my battalion commanders one of your battalion commanders i repeated yes god damn it one of mine no sense in trying to lie out of it either because your ass is going to swing i was dumbfounded until he finally explained that he had heard about the call from northington to general allen and northington said you suggested that call franklin said you did it without permission what do you think i should have done i asked come to me that’s what for what reason because i’m the commander that’s why he said and all along i thought general barnes was the new top man in the brigade my eyes were wide but i tried to keep the emotion out of my voice i knew damn well i was treading on very thin ice you sir are not my commander the general is you can you can tell that’s just like a bad move he exploded and the breath of fresh air was gone forever i was he said again a no-good son of a [ __ ] and a disloyal liar i had continued true i had he continued tried to sink angel and others in the brigade for my personal gain as the ig general barnes stepped out of his trailer and franklin hailed him general do you know what this colonel of yours did he said shoving his finger into my chest he illegally warned general allen of an investigation we had talked about so things are going sideways um yeah and that it was sort of the the re i didn’t even cover the the thing that he did because it was like it was almost nothing i called ed northington who had been uh alan’s aid it was now in his new job and asked him if he had heard about the investigation is it general in trouble no that’s what he did he like basically gave a heads up and but it was like a little bit outside the chain of command so uh general or sorry colonel franklin freaks out fast forward a little bit he is in hawaii with on leave with his wife mary grace mary grace finally asked him about vietnam a royal screw up i said you’re anti-war tony herbert no that’s not what i mean i mean i’m just disgusted by what i’ve seen happening to the army i said she looked puzzled i had already told her about getting battalion command and though she knew it meant that i would be more vulnerable to injury or death than i was as an ig she took it as a as she’d always taken my career she was proud she said but now she looked bewildered as i talked about some of the things i had seen this war is not only killing our people it’s ruining our army the whole damn show is run without leaders and we’re losing really losing we talked the rest of the afternoon and finally she asked about what would happen when my vietnam tour was finished wait till you hear this i said grinning you’re going to quit she said throwing me some sand my way right colonel herbert wrong mrs herbert i’ve got orders for the command and command and general staff college at leavenworth oh tony that’s great and after that i’m going to try and finish my doctorate maybe then i can really contribute something to the army fast forward a little bit i kissed mary grayson lay back in bed staring out at the ocean through the glass doors at the end of our room i thought about them all night and about the years that it passed and the things that had happened to all of us now was 1968 and i was 38 years old i had a wife and daughter and i had killed one hell of a lot of people and watched a lot more suffer and cry and die and now ma was gone and paw and sister irene you are what you are you dumb ass lithuanian i thought that night as the moon illuminated the far end of the room you are what you are and what you always wanted to be a soldier gets back to vietnam and i’m just going through so much of this book like i’m just skipping so much there’s so much detail in here about all these different things that he’s dealing with these relationships that he has with colonel franklin and and general barnes and how these things are just going sideways and he gets this one point take a look take a look at this and please read it all before you comment ray said handing me a file folder the investigation had been handled by major henry boyer the executive officer of second battalion i flipped the cover sheet and turned to the first page a three inch by five inch color photograph stared at me it was a picture of a vietnamese male lying on his back in what appeared to be a shell crater his face had been blown away in guilt beneath the picture was engraved peace on earth from the peacemakers c company 173rd airborne brigade or something that effect i glanced at ray c company of second battalion he c company of second battalion he said i turned the page and read it through well he said i put it down on his desk it’s a cover-up you’re you’re damn right it’s a cover-up and little old paul here is not going to be caught in the middle you know what franklin wants he asked without waiting for me to answer franken wants it swept under the rug there are exactly 50 cards out like that he wants them gathered and covered and what if that’s not possible well then i guess we just have to put the burden on christ he said referring to captain christ the company officer of sea company so like it’s just big cover-ups going on make this go away no one everyone’s worried about their career all right through through all through through all this chaos and he’s he’s been the ig at the 173rd and you don’t think he’s gonna get a battalion because he’s kind of created these bad relationships but he ends up getting tasked getting awarded getting tasked getting charged with taking over second battalion so he’s gonna be working for the guy that has hated him as the ig as i walked back to my sack that night i decided to use the next 24 hours as prep time i wanted to work out the second battalion in my mind i laid down and began and in the states you might be able to go in and take your time with changes but not in vietnam in the states you could look around for a bit and maybe take a couple weeks before actually making a change but in vietnam it was a different story take your time in vietnam and men died or lost legs or arms or eyes so i had already been looking and thanks to my opportunities as an ig and and kotra’s help i knew about as much as anybody could know about second battalion and it all boiled down to one primary conclusion like the entire brigade the second battalion was fat in every area except combat the solution was to trim and he goes on about how he’s gonna get rid of people or move people into more combat roles because there’s all these people that are not doing combat fast forward a little bit i didn’t like the way nicholson had handled the men who were on the way home frequently they would come back to the rear as much as 30 days before they were scheduled to depart that was a bunch of crap i had learned my lesson in korea rotation had been established and tigers became [ __ ] so what he’s talking about there and we covered that in in the last podcast in world war ii when you went on deployment for the war you went on deployment for the war you were going to get to go home when the war was over and korea is when they started hey you’re going to deploy for a sixth a year you’re going can deploy for a year and then you get to go home well what does that do well according to him it turns tigers into [ __ ] they had hung back and played it safe until they until we wised up and came up with a new policy he who fought up front went home up front i didn’t have the authority to establish that policy in vietnam but i did have the authority to decide who came back to the rear and when i could make sure that a man kept his ass in the grass until seven days before his departure date and i was determined that the battalion would start rewarding achievement rather than failure under nicholson the last battalion commander if a guy wrapped a sergeant in the mouth or if he refused to fight he came back to the rear sat on his ass waiting drinking seeing shows smoking pot and screwing everything that wiggled downtown until he was court-martialed or given an article 15 at which point he would pay a small fine for his vacation of several weeks or months then he went back to his unit and did it again but not with me every mother’s son was going to hump it and carry his share of the load just like the few already out there there were other so that’s that’s that’s the uh secondary consequences that you got to think about or unintended consequences that you got to think about hey if echo charles you know punches his platoon sergeant well we’re going to send him back to the rear and what’s he going to do at the rear get drunk you know smoke pot get a vacation have to pay a small amount of money then you come back right out and do it again because you don’t want to fight you’re actually giving you what you want yeah it’s kind of like the kid the teenager right with the with the videos like he gets punished and sent to his room but then in his room is like video games and magazines and you know all this stuff his phone internet yeah all this stuff so he’ll go you know when things get tough in real life you know go mow the lawn i don’t know whatever he’ll he’ll act up get sent to his room yeah yeah that’s why the punishment the modern day punishment with kids with teenagers is phone yep give me that phone yeah it’s brutal my my kids like if i say that to my kids they’re like wait wait what squares them away quick dude you ever seen ozark i have not seen it okay so it’s like anyway i don’t go too deep into it but basically they’re they’re put over simplifying it they’re running from these the drug cartels so they’re trying to leave they’re trying to disappear and so it’s like two two kids one is 12 one is like i don’t know 16 17 the girl and then the two parents so the parents are like hey we gotta go we’re changing our identities and all this stuff so here give me your phone the girl just starts flipping out and it’s kind of one of those things where yeah man like some especially kids well it depends on who you are but a lot of times kids are so attached to that phone oh yeah like it’s such a big deal it’s the social thing like you know when i was a kid you know you would get grounded right which meant you you couldn’t see your friends yeah you couldn’t see your girlfriend you couldn’t see your bros like you were grounded well nowadays you like you said you can send it to room but you’re still going to hang out with your friends because you’re going to be on snap chat right that’s what’s going to be happening yeah so sending them to room doesn’t really it’s not really grounding them the way you ground them is you got to get that device get that phone yeah there’s so many kids that are mad at me right now for putting out this word hey what’s article 15 it’s uh if i’m your commander and you you do something wrong then you can be punished under the uniform code of military justice the ucmj article 15 article 15 means that i can dock your pay i can reduce your rank like i can apply punishment to you now you have to op you can you can say you can accept you can accept the ucmj or you can say i want a court martial in which case you’re going to get a lawyer and you’re going to get a jury and all that kind of stuff so article 15 is is it going to be lesser it’s a little bit of a gamble sometimes depending on you know what you did and because you could say you know if i’m your boss and you did something wrong people might be telling you just dude just take just take article 15 and you know jocko’s pretty lenient you know he he’s a pretty or people might be like you don’t want to do ucmj you don’t want to go article 15 with jacqueline he crazy he’s going to throw a book at you so it’s kind of like what like a i guess not like a plea bargain then because you know not like a plea bargain um it’s just accepting your fate gotcha with what your boss is gonna your boss has the the authority article 15 ucmj to say okay echo charles he stole a piece of gear from the platoon we’re kicking him out of the plate well he’s to go to ucmj so you go to you go to me i’m your boss and i say okay you stole gear we’re taking your trident you have to pay back the money i’m busting you down in rank and you’re going to go to the brig for 30 days there you go now you could let’s say you didn’t you thought you didn’t steal it and you you wouldn’t want to make a case you could say i request court-martial in which case and now we go to court marshall now you get a lawyer that says he was just borrowing that gear right and everyone knows that that you’re lying so that’s the kind of similarity to going to trial kind of you know guys like no i’ll take the plea i’ll go to trial so in that case it is except for you don’t necessarily know what the bargain is right so it’s not like a plea bargain it’s almost like a blind a little bit of blind yeah it’s a little bit of blind but it sort of is a little bit of like hey look i know i kind of did this i’m throwing myself at the mercy of the court yeah hey boss i screwed up i’m sorry hit me yeah like pleading guilty essentially in a minor kind of way because the you know you’re kind of yeah it’s up to the judge how he’s like okay you’re throwing yourself kind of that kind of throwing yourself at the mercy of the court that’s right what is forgive me by the way i’m deviating what are you and i’ve heard this i hear you guys say this all the time taking your trident what does that mean you’re not a navy seal anymore yeah just straight up you can’t get it back can’t go through the whole deal yep um yep it’s kind of everything right not kinda that’s everything but you’re still in the navy though you can still be in the navy but that’s not your jam if you’re a seal typically it’s not not your jam i remember there was a guy that stole a pair of sunglasses from who from like another guy yep they had his they had a captain’s mask the next day for a little article 15 took his bird he was gone like that i was i was a pretty new guy because if you’re a thief in the teams oh yeah it’s brutal yeah you are gonna get you are to get crushed yeah like you will get the there’s there’s you can leave anything out in the seal teams you can leave a freaking diamond uh uh encrusted knife yeah and no one will touch it in the teams oh yeah you anything in the teams yeah and that makes sense i mean especially like especially when you’re like a cohesive or supposed to be cohesive team you know oh yeah bro it’s crazy yeah you’re gonna steal something yeah that’s like nuts unheard of and he still still serves his sunglasses too i mean dang i know especially when you get issued sunglasses hey supply guy i need new sunglasses and i don’t even know what all the circumstances were behind it because let’s face it we all have oakley’s back we’re all wearing the same sunglasses so i don’t know if a dude had some engraving on there or scratched his name into it or whatever but man this guy was gone and that makes even less sense when you think about it because it’s not like you’re not gonna wear them what are you gonna do to steal them and put them in your house under your pillow or something like this you’re going to be wearing them around who knows maybe there was other things that i didn’t know about i was a nougat i didn’t know anything they’re just like hey don’t steal [ __ ] i’m like cool got it got it looks like we’re not stealing in the zeal teams it freaking pissed me off one time when we i wanted my first shipboard deployment and a guy stole i had my gear out and a guy stole a knife it wasn’t from my platoon but just somebody on the ship yeah maybe it was a marine maybe it was a navy guy i don’t know oh they didn’t find him no we never found him but same thing like what’s this guy gonna do he’s gonna hide that knife and then take it home and put it under his pillow like he’s not gonna be able to use it yeah because we’ll see him yeah and then we’ll throw him off the ship yeah man yeah and that makes sense you even hear about a guy stealing from someone else on the team it’s like brah like yeah you’re no one’s messing with that guy anymore the bro we had a guy’s name i forget his name he stole a video game systems like a super nintendo or something like that from one of the guys in the dorms on the football team both of them and they were like it was weird because yeah my friend uh his name’s davey he’s the one who got it stolen from him he was like looking around for he’s like you know you’re just confused it’s not like someone’s gonna steal your whole video get out of your dorm room and he lives in the same dorm too so it’s not like what did you set it up four doors down that’s what i’m saying so it was just gone so he was confused and then after a while it’s like no someone stole this you know so they you know they went through the thing and they were like dusting for prince which was like you know that doesn’t matter because everyone comes in and out of the dorm so it just doesn’t didn’t even matter but i think davey was suspicious of this guy i don’t know if he became suspicious or he was already suspicious so and he went to his room and just was like you know what i’m going to get to the bottom of this thing and he was like asking him he was like no what are you talking about all mad or whatever it became this big thing and then he looked and in the dorms there’s these beds right the beds are like that and you can like take there’s like a drawer under the bed and all this stuff right you know everything gotta fit uh gotta fit in the door so he pulled out the drawer of the bed and like took you know you can take out the drawer so he unhooked it and like took it out and boom there it was davey did that davey did that too yeah the guys it was a call out essentially but you know when you call somebody out you better get the stuff because you’re gonna look dumb you must have been super suspect then yeah he was like because that’s weird too imagine accusing someone right yeah but also you can kind of tell well yeah i’m looking at someone you can tell yeah and consider you could smell the freaking lies yeah and usually but and consider even i mean i’m sure it’s like this in the military too where you kind of consider who could or had the opportunity or whatever and if they did what would they have done it’s like oh they he couldn’t you could freddie at freaking practice the other day and i come home and my shit’s gone exactly right yeah so i think there was that kind of going on as well and then he had some circumstantial evidence then he read his face and probably so they arrest him straight up everyone was like oh my god i can’t believe this even happened like why would you do that it just wasn’t computing for a lot of us and boom they arrested him he was in jail so this guy i remember his name i don’t want to call him out it’s too mean but he uh so he calls the coach like you know you know when you’re in college let’s face it like you get into some sort of thing you say hey coach i’m in this thing like what can we do to sort of you know work it out um so he calls the coach and he’s like hey this is what happened i’m in jail i think he needed to get bail out because he didn’t live in hawaii he was from the from the mainland so it’s like you know it’s hard he’s like anyway he’s called the coach and the coach um you know he hears the story and he goes right in there [ __ ] hangs up that’s what i like to do that’s what i like yeah don’t like thieves no don’t be stealing don’t steal otherwise here you’re going to get ucm jade article 15 all right um going back to the book here there were other things running through my mind that night tactics for instance the infantry maxim was just a slogan and i wanted it to be in practice find them fix them fight them and finish them but it simply wasn’t being used i wanted to change that find him use reconnaissance and intelligence the reconnaissance platoon is being used as a special ambush unit rather than for reconnaissance the battalion had to have eyes and ears its area of operations was bordered on the east by the south china scene and on the what south china sea and on the west by a string of mountains running north and south from those ridges a trooper with binoculars could see in most cases all the way to the sea but it wasn’t being used fix them fire and maneuver one pins them down with fire while the other runs up around the rocks and comes in from the flanker from the behind fire maneuver have always been the key to infantry success but in vietnam we were just calling in artillery and backing off to wait the next day we would go in and pick up the pieces and generally there weren’t any except for the women and kids who hadn’t had the sense to make it out of the area fight them close with and destroy the enemy the military enemy kill them or capture him but emphasize prisoners because they give information that leads to more prisoners dead men are just dead men capture them if possible but if not finish them off for good i lay there in my sack that night trying to put it all together in my mind where i had been and what i had done and how i got to where i was at that very moment in time and space i was alive i decided because of two things sheer luck and not forgetting i attributed it to nothing else but i knew that the presence of mind had a great deal to do with one’s fortunes i also knew there were some things beyond anybody’s control they just happened regardless of planning or preparation or skill or courage or cowardice i went to sleep thinking about all that the next day i poured over my battalion plans again and when i hit the sack the next night i knew i was ready as i’d ever been i slept well so i’m gonna jump through some of this stuff right now this is where he starts he takes over the battalion he starts squaring things away he starts going on operations he’s still having it’s not an overnight process it’s not like the battalion oh there’s a new commander like we’re good to go now everything’s perfect it’s not like that um and as he’s starting to dig into the he’s going on some ops he’s starting to dig in to try and find out how to get the get the platoons moving in the right direction um he’s got he sits down to talk to one of one of uh these lieutenants he’s talking this lieutenant and the lieutenant kind of this lieutenant doesn’t want to go in the field doesn’t want to go in the field and he’s trying to figure out why and the lieutenant says you know not with this particular leader and he says why not and he’s kind of doesn’t want to say anything he finally says tell me and he and then he says he opened up he had been a platoon leader and his group had policed up a detainee from a village that had reported the details to a ceo over the company net the platoon began to tie up the the detainee for extraction when the co called back the lieutenant told me the ceo said what they had out there was a kia a dead dink a body count of one to which the lieutenant replied that he did not have a dead person but a detainee in reasonably good health so he says no what we have is a dead dink killed trying to get away the lieutenant continued so what did you say i asked well i told him the guy might be a civilian and what did he say he said that wasn’t hardly possible because once he’s dead he’s a dink which in fact was about the only way it was played in vietnam regardless of what a person might have been before he was killed afterwards he was a dink very very damn few people ever reported killing a civilian regardless of how unavoidable the death might have been and very damn few dead civilians failed to be included in body counts it was time to stop the lieutenant though before his narrative went beyond the point of no return i held up my hand hold do you do you understand did that make sense because i know i jumped into the story so basically this young lieutenant is there they have a detainee that they’ve captured and he calls his company commander and says hey company commander i got a i got a captured individual i got a detainee you know what do you want me to do and this the the commanding officer calls back and says you don’t have a detainee you have a killed in action and you know that the term dink obviously this is a slur and but it doesn’t just mean it means enemy that’s what they’re saying if you kill someone their enemy wait so is he implying that you should he should kill him yep yeah okay and he’s about that’s what he’s he’s about to get to that part and and colonel herbert says hold on yeah and he he says hold it i cautioned him sir look before you get too far there are some other questions but first you have to realize that if you say what i think you may be going to say i’m gonna have to report it therefore it’s only fair in fact by the regulation in fact it’s required by regulations and the ucmj that i make you aware of your rights do you understand yes sir well then let me ask you this do you understand your rights under article 31 yes sir i do well let me go over them again for you anyways you don’t have to say anything anything that you say can be used in court you can stop right now or or you can continue or you can have a military council right here while you do talk if you wish and that’s in that’s it in a nutshell now do you want to go on since i’ve gone this far for christ’s sake lieutenant at least think before you answer my next question okay okay was the execution in fact carried out yes sir it was now lieutenant here comes the big one and let me state again that you neither have to answer nor are you expected to answer just because i’m your commander if it’s going to incriminate you i want you to understand that part for sure do you yes sir i do all right then who actually did the killing he started to answer and then stopped abruptly abruptly sir i prefer not to answer that one right now if it’s okay with you that’s your prerogative you keep this to yourself until i get back to you do you want to put it in writing i think that i think i’d better do that good he said i said handing him a pad bring it back when you finished and forget about going out with c company right now it can wait so obviously bad situation um he starts to run it up the chain of command who’s that include franklin what does franklin say what the hell kind of commander are you he asked it’s none of your business what occurred before you assumed command i’ll back it up with an investigation i said there’ll be no investigation says franklin it’s required sir i god damn it herbert i’ll handle it i said i’ll handle it and i will if anything is done it will be done with the general’s approval and it will be done by me can you understand that much i understand sir do you want a statement from major boyer i want nothing until i’m ready which means i don’t want anyone discussing it either it’s bad um so while he’s dealing with all this and while he’s continuing to create friction and again there’s so much of this and there’s so much in this book so many good lessons here’s here’s a lesson he’s talking about planning and how he planned because he’s still leading troops he’s still they’re still doing all kinds of operations he says this to his troops i want you all to come up with the plans and recommendations i told them and i meant it hell i didn’t profess to be an expert in anything and by the way if you’re a leader just write this whole thing down i didn’t profess to be an expert in anything i was the dumb son of a fine coal miner and i could use all the help i could get if anybody came up with a brainstorm i damn sure wanted to hear about it and that includes suggestions for a commando raid on hanoi from doc talley i concluded i really wanted to listen to them because if a man makes a contribution to a plan he has a material interest in making it succeed so the trick is to forget about taking credit for ideas and to persuade others that they are their own take notes i talk about that very thing all the time he also says i thought out everything and tried not to waste words or time frequently may have appeared to have been spur of the moment response but it was generally prepared even though they were volunteers as all paratroopers are the grunts were different the grunts were by nature different they were not career men in the same sense that officers and most of the senior ncos were career men and they were not sensitive to opportunities for promotion or self-aggrandizement but because individuals are aggressive and competitive by nature the grunts did require an opportunity to express those instincts or in a word a chance to operate i knew the grunt hell i was one of them i promoted grunt to be sure but still a grunt i’d been an enlisted man all over half my entire career i had fought as one and been wounded as one and i understood what made a grunt tick because i knew what made me tick i’d also been fortunate enough to gather enough psychological insight to comprehend them and myself even more deeply and thoroughly at the same time gaining enough military experience to recognize that they were the best raw material in the world they were bigger and healthier and more intelligent and better educated than any soldier the us army had ever had the opportunity to use before and they were superior to any soldier any other country was getting even with our training shortcomings and there were by god plentiful the grunts in vietnam were still the best trained men around as well as the best fed and best equipped moreover i think i recognized something that must have slipped by most of the brass including westmoreland and later abrams that the length of the hair on a man’s head wasn’t nearly as important as the caliber of the brain inside i knew that the grunt was a man just like me and that he was entitled to the same respect i myself demanded his dignity was sacred it could never be changed the commander could scream and rant and rage and curse like a sailor but he could never encroach on the trooper’s dignity if the leader attacks his trooper’s dignity the trooper has but two alternatives to fold up roll over and die or strike back i was determined to follow the pattern that had worked for me in the past to allow my men to make at least as many of the same kind of mistakes as i had made and god knows i had made my share and more to deal with them honestly to to express admiration respect love patriotism and my own conviction that he represented with all my faults with all its faults the greatest country in the history of civilization and the mightiest combat arm this universe ever assembled under a single power to persuade him that it not really been equipment and mass production that had won world war one world war ii and korea for us but rather blood guts courage know-how and a steadfast devotion to a cause respect your people i laid out the strategy for my battalion it was some lousy war when a piddling battalion commander had to lay out a master strategy but that’s the way it was hell nobody else laid out anything for these men either from a national or an international perspective i owed it to them to give them some kind of purpose and a reason at the battalion level at least got to know why you’re doing what you’re doing and he’s saying they’re not even hearing that fast forward a little bit in fact the whole damned u s army in vietnam was crazy the generals westmoreland abrams piers rossen de pew richardson ewell ramsey and the rest were all working on the premise that they were the best and that whatever problems we were having were the fault of the commanders at lower levels not my fault [ __ ] [ __ ] the major leadership problem in vietnam was the generals and the rest of the senior officer corps the colonels the lieutenant colonels and the majors the captains lieutenants enlisted men weren’t to blame the generals were has beens or never bends from world war ii vintage who had paper images built up by the public information people so again you know we’re we’re we’re reading this book and really he’s placing the blame on everybody else which is not good but he’s telling what it looks like from his perspective he says about those generals they walked and talked like leaders and wore ribbons and uniforms it was only reasonable that back in washington they were regarded as leaders and were listened to if you were in the military you must be a great leader right this we still have that anybody that was in the military must be a great leader it’s like i wish it was true it’s not always true unfortunately um again he wasn’t just talking this guy’s not just a talker this guy’s not when he’s talking smack about these other leaders he’s not just talking smack and and saying oh they’re not leading he’s leading he’s actually leading there’s all kinds of stories in here here’s one i crossed the yard they’re out on a mission i crossed the yard to the bunker and nailed myself up against its outer edge chew hoy i shouted using the name of the program we had set up for leniency in return for immediate unresisting surrender chew hoy as always there was no response i waited then stepped back and fired two quick rounds into the sandbags around the doorway then stepping back against the wall i lifted a grenade from my belt the old woman on the porch screamed and there was one hell of a scuffling inside the bunker bunker they tripped all over each other coming out hands first chu hoy chu hoy micho hoy chu hoy they were shouting i figured you were i mumbled to myself there were three of them two in khakis and the wounded guy stripped down to his shorts i nudged them toward warden keep them covered i said i’ll get the bunker i’ll get it sir schmidty said trotting across toward me god damn it keep that group covered i shouted i’ll get the damn damn bunker we all get paid by the same people i don’t think it was bravado it was just that i had learned years before that if you wanted to be followed then you had to get your ass out and lead by setting the example if i expected other people to go down inside bunkers and holes after the enemy then i had better be ready to do it myself this time it was my turn i kept my rifle in front someone shouted grenade and the others hit the dirt i dropped the one knee holding my head down low in front of my shoulders i saw the guy break out of the bush out of the bush with another grenade in his hands i squeezed twice on the trigger and watched the rounds slam into his chest driving him up against one of the palms bouncing him off into the bushes two of our men had been hit by the explosion i didn’t remember even hearing the grenade detonate except vaguely perhaps that’s how unimportant grenades were for me at least i had seen them all over the world and had used them and it had them used against me over and over i did not respect them as a weapon they were charges they blew up and out lay one at arm’s length stay down flat and the worst you would do was give you a concussion run and you got some shrapnel in your ass watch him i said and turn to larae that grenade came from the building you take that side and i’ll take this one i turned the muzzle of the m16 west and followed it around the building i heard larae fire just then a grenade exploded and i got the building just in time to see larae kicking away the reeds and dragging the body from between the false walls the guy had been wedged into a section about the size of a bird cage larae nudged the bloody the bloody body with his foot a loser sir he said quietly gently with that same catch in his voice that you hear in the movies just before tears a goddamn loser dink he rolled it over gently the guy had been a real trooper and he had tried to do just as he’d been told just as so many of our kids had been told and would have tried had they been in his place uncle ho would never even know the poor bastard was dead nor would he have given a [ __ ] if he had known like those on our side he was just another statistic we left them there in the dirt we started back down the trail at a trot an outright run was out of the question because more than likely if you broke out of the bush running you were a dead ass even at our speed it was more than a few seconds before we reached a large grassy clearing the american lieutenant the advisor was on my left as we entered the clearing and the rest of were standing around in no particular formation across the clearing i saw one man a vietnamese holding the young girl’s hair with his left hand bending her head back bearing her throat his right arm was around her neck and a knife in his right hand was dug deeply into her flesh beneath and to the left of her esophagus all he had to do was pull and she was gone one of the children was hanging onto her pajamas screaming and the other child’s face was being steadily squashed into the sand by the foot of another vietnamese soldier the child was suffocating i shoved the american lieutenant out of the way and shouted something staring at the guy with the knife in the girl’s throat he was staring at me too and these these vietnamese these are south vietnamese soldiers and this the first person that he pushed out of the way was a was an american advisor so he he comes on this scene in this um in this clearing and there’s an american lieutenant he pushes that guy out of the way and these vietnamese soldiers that the american lieutenant was an adviser to all this is happening so these are these are south vietnamese soldiers with it with the the young girls yep holding the hold the knife to this young girl’s throat so this is a ally so this vietnamese soldier’s staring at herbert with a knife to the girl’s throat back to the book with great ease he pulled the blade across her blood spurted and gushed down the front of her pajamas and she dropped to the darkening sand pulling the child with her it took no more than a second from the instant he moved the knife until she crumpled in a lifeless heap her baby still screaming still pawing at her legs her killer jumped back into the group of vietnamese pulling with him the guy who’d been suffocating the child i should have shot them on the spot while i could still identify them the rest of the detainees were lined up against the bushes four of the men were already dead lying off in the grass to my right with their heads blown away a vietnamese soldier was parading up and down in front of the survivors waving a pistol i noticed that one of the four dead men was the stud we had captured in the hut i felt myself go empty something drained from me in that moment that you that i have yet to replace you dumb son of a [ __ ] i screamed grabbing the american lieutenant by the by his shirt in that instant i was only a flicker a flick away from killing him it passed i calmed and turned him loose just what the hell did you let happen here lieutenant he was only an advisor he said there they were only doing a job they knew their business guerrillas weren’t protected under the geneva accords they were following orders oh god i thought a big badass american who had never killed anyone in combat or captured a single prisoner legitimately had played hell with these poor devils big bad-assed all-american boy god i was frustrated i raised my hand to slap him clear across the area i lowered it you get all your scrap together and then get the hell out of here i screamed at him sir i have a job i glance down at the four dead men and over to the woman’s body not anymore you don’t lieutenant he was staring at me with what seemed to be disbelief i moved as near to him as possible without touching now get your people out of here out of here i said quietly and calmly you’re finished here the rest of this like the charges will take care back at base so he witnesses this this this atrocity and gets back to base runs it up the chain of command tells to frankly franklin frankly franklin he tells franklin what happens uh franklin finally asked what had happened and i told him every last sword detail right down to the blood leaping from the girl’s throat herbert you’re a goddamn liar he said i assured him i wasn’t lying there are other witnesses sir then you’re exaggerating he said did the american did the lieutenant take part yes sir he was in charge he had assumed responsibility from sergeant warden but did you see him do any killing no sir i didn’t then you’re a goddamn liar there were no u s personnel involved he said god damn it herbert you’re always coming in with these wild ass exaggerated stories trying to make trouble what the hell is wrong with you you’re getting carried away maybe you’re getting too old a day or two so so they start going through and this is what’s really interesting about this book is they have like the the actual documents from this guy ward and i sergeant first class warden during the period of 14 february that’s valentine’s day 1969 was a platoon sergeant for so he explains what he saw happen and you can get this book and read those documents then this happens a day or two after the saint valentine’s day massacre which we just read about a black trooper named white refused to go into the field and offered his refusal loud and clear out in the battalion street where he could be heard by one and all you’re going out white just like everybody else i told him like hell i am you son of a [ __ ] i ain’t fighting for no whities right white you’re going to fight for your country or for your dollars or for anything else you can think of but by god you’re going like hell i am he said taking off his glasses and slamming them against the ground they were unbroken he stepped on them and ground them into tiny pieces now you bastard he said i ain’t going cause i can’t see i shrugged and laughed at him so i’ll have you put on a listening post guys with bad eyes always do better at night you dumb son of a [ __ ] he laughed you don’t understand you send me out there and i’ll desert no you won’t white because out there baby ain’t back here you leave the guys out there and you’re on your own i tapped them on the chest but listen i’ll tell you what i’ll do you go awol out there and make it back here and i’ll give you a bronze star and even if you don’t i’ll see to it that you get a purple heart out there when you’re on your own you’re anybody’s and everybody’s meat if vc or nva don’t get you the locals will you are money and they’re all bounty hunters i’ll cut out as soon as i get back then no you won’t because you either straighten out here you either straighten out out there or when the company returns you’ll be transferred to a unit that replaces them he reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out another pair of glasses he was swaggering away he was swaggering as he walked away toward the helicopter big guy big bad guy you’ll get yours baby the best i could do is hope that the best i could hope for would be that he would do a good job it was his only chance if he didn’t cut it he was going back out with the next unit just as i had promised it was the only way reward the right response and do everything you can to get it most of the time it worked with white it didn’t so just to kind of debrief that we we heard earlier about his policies he doesn’t want to punish people for acting badly so if this guy with his old battalion commander acted this way he’d get okay you’re you know you’re in trouble you need you know you need to go stay in the barracks and you’re gonna go to you know ucmj and whatever but he’s not gonna go fight which is what he actually wanted so his deal is not only are you gonna go fight but if you don’t do a good job when this when this platoon gets back from this mission you’re going out with the next platoon until you do a freaking good job he performed poorly in the field just as he vowed he would and i had him held at the gate when his unit came back i had asked childers which is his senior nco to get the very best trooper he could find to guard white until the replacement unit he was going to join came out someone who wouldn’t scare and he came up with pfc schnelling don’t take any crap from him i told schnelling and watch out the unit coming out will pick him up that was it except that schnelling drilled him through the head and killed him right outside the gate white had some words and schnelling had paid no attention white had made a threat and then gone for his rifle he got it to his shoulder before schnelling squeezed the trigger and the mp at the gate had seen and heard it all thank god it was that cut and dried schnelling had done his job i brought in the criminal investigation division people they questioned everyone took statements and that was it except that later in the day i had schnelling into the office a crowd of white’s friends gathered outside chanting we want schnelling we want schnelling he killed a brother he killed a brother we want schnelling we want schnelling freaking nasty and this is like horrible so again just to make sure everyone’s tracking he puts in the guy comes back he hadn’t white comes back hadn’t done a good job so he’s got him standing by for the next platoon that’s going to go out while he’s standing by herbert puts a guy to guard him this guy named schnelling schnelling’s out there guarding him white makes a move schnelling kills him luckily there’s a witness which is the mp who had seen and heard it all so and now they’re in the office of herbert and there’s a crowd out front of white’s friends saying we want schnelling we watch nelly he killed a brother he killed a brother and here’s what herbert does i reached over and picked up my m16 look schnelling you are now a spec four so he promotes him and says not because you killed a man but because you didn’t fail to do it when it was your job now about that out there that’s up to you i’ll tell you what i’d do i’d walk out there and end it right now i’d pick out the biggest mouth out there and walk up and explain the facts tell them tell them that you just made corporal and if they don’t clear out you might take it into your mind to try for sergeant i jacked around into the m16 chamber i’ll cover you from up here and if anyone so much as raises a weapon i’ll drop him that’s the least i can do i shrugged he stepped through the door and walked over to the group i could not hear what he said but they dispersed and i never heard white’s name again which is sad too that a man could die and snap just fade out of people’s minds and disappear gnarly want to talk about some leadership challenges that’s like insane right oh yeah that’s insane good i mean does this kind of stuff still happen like now no yeah it just seems so almost like wild west ish that that’s that section right there like that’s a that’s an insane the whole thing is freaking crazy yeah yeah yeah that is crazy i mean like there’s so many elements too you know where it’s like all right you you know you have a friend he gets straight up just killed but you know and it’s like it’s hard it’s one of those deals where you kind of got to take sides a little bit or whatever right if you’re if you’re in that mix or whatever so your guy your friend your brother gets killed by another guy so it’s like all right we gotta seek vengeance this is obviously out of line obviously not part of this you know we’re all in the same team where you’re gonna kill this guy all you know no matter what happened it’s kind of like you didn’t have to kill him it’s easy to be like you didn’t have to kill him or whatever so yeah of course so they want vengeance they want justice they want like all this stuff or whatever and and they kind of have a point in in a in a way especially if they don’t know the whole thing they kind of have a point yeah well you’re also let’s face it there’s a huge assumption that the lone mp is just of the the big witness right this one i mean what if what if schnelling’s friends with the mp yeah he says hey i got this issue with this guy yep or hey we just had beef and i shot this guy you got me and he’s like yeah yeah yeah i saw what happened he shouldered his weapon right one guy that’s such a freaking nightmare and then okay and then it gets worse so where you know he’s he’s like hey this is what you should do this is what i would describe go out there let them know and the thing is bro that’s not gonna i mean of course it worked right but we don’t even know what he said we don’t know in the moment before he went out that’s not gonna work bro these guys like they wanna they wanna kill me i already know i already killed their guy like we’re at war right now where there’s a war within the war going on right now here’s what here’s the only thing that makes me think well how it turned out you think well i i wonder if his friends were kind of like look we know white and white was kind of like he maybe he you know maybe they knew what type of person he was and he knew how that he was close to the ragged edge or whatever yeah but god i don’t even know what to say about this like it’s just a freaking nightmare this whole book is freaking crazy like when you think look at what we just read you got this freaking soldier killing another soldier you got the woman getting her throat slashed there’s four other people executed it’s madness it’s madness all right under what circumstances do you slay the girls through because obviously that girl’s not military nothing like this yeah i mean you know oh she’s a vc sympathizer that’s you know probably what their claim was yeah yeah i guess i mean i i will give you no circumstances if that’s what you’re looking for right well i shouldn’t say that you know this you know you could obviously be in some kind of a hand-to-hand combat scenario where you’ve got a enemy fighter that happens to be female could happen with her baby okay yeah i mean there’s okay i guess in this scenario it makes no sense whatsoever in this scenario herbert’s saying look that’s a freaking war crime that’s what he’s saying that’s what’s weird too like herbert he’s you know like on this like he’s a what i say earlier he’s like straight laced guy right he’s like a straight laced guy and so when he sees stuff like that it it’s unacceptable to him and and that’s what’s about the um about the guy white getting killed he’s not the herbert’s not the kind remember herbert remembering korean war they go hey burn down this village he’s like i’m not gonna do it they they bring that up and that’s kind of why i focused on some of that stuff in um when we did the last podcast you know he had had this he he mentioned that they had uh uh the first black replacement showing up and he was like we didn’t you know we don’t what the troops didn’t care if you did a good job you we’re we’re good he talked about the fact that he was raised um by that doctor that was like hey all these people in the world they’re people like you they’re out there hunting trying to feed their families so he’s seems like he’s this kind of straight laced for lack of a better word good person man i’d like to sit down with this dude he’s not alive anymore but i know you haven’t seen the movie platoon you should watch it it shows a lot of chaos mayhem but all these things that you read all the books you read about vietnam and all the movies that you see about vietnam like it’s all wrapped up in this in these scenarios that are just freaking insane i mean one of your soldiers kills one of your other soldiers after you say hey you you’ve got to go out it’s like nuts and then you’re thinking well look then you’re thinking is it worth it like hey this guy white i could have just said all right fine you’re not going out right fine you go i’ll put you on kp duty you can go peel potatoes you know what i mean and then what happens with battalion then other people like well i don’t want to go out either yep so now what are we doing yeah yeah i mean it kind of could be viewed as like yeah man that’s like that’s how it needs to be almost yeah it could be and this is why it’s v you got to be very careful about painting yourself into a corner yeah right you got to be very careful about painting yourself into a corner in life especially as a from a leadership position if you paint yourself into a corner you’re painting in that corner there’s no moving there’s no moving so for me as i look at this like okay i got a guy that doesn’t want to go out what can i get from him what can i do with him how can i talk to him and again we don’t know any of the history of the guy we don’t know how bad of a soldier he was we know his behavior was i mean obviously he’s calling he’s calling his commander like a son of a [ __ ] and all this stuff so he’s not you can tell he’s not down for the cause right so why is that how do we build a relationship with that guy and there’s some guys that are totally overboard right they’re gone like you’re not gonna get him back was he there and if he’s there why are you actually having him out on patrol but if everything to you is kind of black and white you’re sort of you’re sort of like hey this is what everyone this is what you’re gonna do and you have no you painted yourself in that corner and you have no way out of it going back to the book i should never have had any problems in vietnam because it was an infantry war infantry and helicopters with a different quality of commanders the helicopters could have played a very important role in command and control the unfortunate fact was that the commanders kept their butts glued in the seats and the birds i don’t think i can overemphasize the weaknesses inherentness from 1500 feet up war was simply a lot of little guys in green running here and there shooting up the landscape the bird men he’s talking about the commanders fast forward a little bit the bird men may have been commanders in the technical sense of the word but they weren’t leaders and the grunts knew it down there was their world it was a ground war an infantry exercise and as infantry we could have won it man for man we were better and we could have won it with less than half the people we had there all we had to do was get rid of the wasted headquarters chaff get rid of the px’s and the steakhouses and the clubs and the massage parlors and the pools and the pizza houses and the commissaries and get down to fighting an infantry war we had the training and we had the men who could have done the job the problem was not only a lack of command leadership but a lack of distinct mission we didn’t have one before i got there we didn’t have one while i was there and we never had one after i left but an army requires a mission it desperately needs some direction towards a specific goal it was all charts and graphs for us with machine technicians like the west point engineers running the show i don’t think we have to be conditioned to kill we need no training to destroy we’re built for that killing comes easy establish no rules and leave a vacuum and one what you end up with are milai and kuloi the absence of policy and mission was a policy in itself need to need to know what the freaking mission is by the way in war freaking absolutely i guess we’ll in your normal life yes absolutely in your business in your job yes and you know what the freaking mission is fast forward as we continued to score every night franklin began to increase his visits to the field finally he made it a point to be on hand personally to personally count the bodies and i found myself as his constant escort guiding him from one dead man to the next and standing by while he snapped photos it was another syndrome the guys that didn’t kill anybody were the ones who broke their asses to get a picture what the hell it would probably have been the same way with indian scallops if we had cameras back then so franklin is out there kind of coming out and he goes through a bunch of this stuff there’s a guy named grimshaw and we’re gonna hear his name later one of his company commanders grimshaw said a dead vc is a dead vc and a dead nva is a dead nva and a dead vci is a dead vci except of course wind killed by the second battalion then they’re only dead if franklin touches the touches his toe to them and they better be wearing a uniform and have a weapon what the hell was i trying to do franklin asked i had to be an ass to move two rifle companies that distance in the dark why they might have opened up on each other if either of them had become disoriented and besides he said it was one big waste we could have taken them all in accordance search and saved all the inconvenience so meanwhile while this stuff is happening the the the brigade is keeping battalion scores they’re keeping scores to figure out who’s the best battalion who’s the best battalion who’s the best battalion they keep track of a bunch of different things enemy killed an a killed an action body count enemy prisoners of war enemy contacts enemy weapons captured a number of a walls so who’s absent how many people you got absent without lead how many article 15s have you done meaning how many times have you punished somebody how many delinquencies have you had how many malaria cases do you have how many re-enlistments do you have how many special courts do you have and then they take all these different numbers and they put them into like one final number so here’s how the numbers shake out basically they shake out that second battalion so herbert’s battalion is winning in all categories it’s not even close for enemy killed in action it’s uh the other battalions are 14 4 29 and 36 second battalion has 84 so more than twice as much as the next battalion for enemy captured listen to these numbers eight zero zero and three how many does the second battalion have 90 for enemy contacts it’s 34 27 37 60 and 2nd battalion has 66 for enemy weapons captured it’s 15 11 3 and 17 second battalion has 57 so there’s not even it’s almost like it’s not even close for absent without leave so this is this should you want the low number here it’s 14 24 26 and 24 and what a second battalion have eight they only have eight people that have gone awol for article 15s the numbers are 39 56 57 and 52 what does second battalion have 24 for delinquency reports 17 9 11 10 2nd battalion has five malaria they’re all the same re-enlistments listen to this re-enlistments the numbers are 0 0 40 and 0 no one wants to freaking stay in what does 2nd battalion have 53 so the total score and they have whatever they have this way of making all this into one number second battalion for this particular month this is february 1969 has 420 points they’re in the lead and then the other ones are 180 145 70 and 20 i mean just combat ineffective right and they’re and by the way this is so they’re getting graded by franklin and and barnes getting graded and they’re crushing second battalion under herbert is absolutely crushing everything but the hits just keep on coming there’s some military intelligence interrogation rooms that are on their little base and herbert pays a visit i walked into one of the rooms and back and knocked lightly on the door one night who’s there herbert just a moment sir someone answered and second later the door swung inward sergeant carmody greeted me come in sir i squeezed past him and closed the door behind me inside in addition to carmody where captain bowers a vietnamese man and one of the honeys the wild cats had captured in the morning she was seated to my left in a chair against the wall just off the corner carmody was standing to her right my left and the vietnamese man was sitting just off my right foot facing the girl in the chair their knees only a couple inches apart captain bowers was just behind the vietnamese man sitting in a chair and leaning over the viet’s shoulder the girl was moaning and trembling find anything out i asked turning to carmody she claimed she was out picking water bugs sir he said and laughed what patrol where was it headed what about what about the patrol where was it headed carmody turned to her and asked something in vietnamese she shook her head he hit her with the back of his hand raking it down along her face you’re a [ __ ] liar he shouted blood began to rush into the long abrasion on her cheek it began to happen in a rush i turned to bowers thinking he would say something carmody said something in vietnamese bowers nodded the vietnamese man in front of him and touched his shoulder with his hand the girl screamed i glanced down and saw for the first time that there were wires from her body to a telephone between the viet’s knees he was cranking it i grabbed the wires and yanked damn near lifting the viet up with them before the wires separated from the phone it clattered to the floor are you crazy bowers i yelled so just so you understand these these um telephone machines that you can power them by cranking them this is an old-school like telephone and so that’s where he they have these they’re basically electroshock electro electrocuting her are you crazy bowers i yelled sir i what the hell kind of crap are you pulling here sir i go get oh oh kane sir major kane says i don’t give a damn what he says you go get him i said i turn to comedy and knock this off until this thing is settled bowers left and carmody the viet and i followed him out of the hall leaving the girl alone in the little room in a moment bauer’s return major o’cain isn’t here he said where the hell is he he’s gone down to brigade sir and behind him through the open doorway i saw the major getting into a jeep i left too and walked down to franklin’s office where not surprisingly o’kane was still deep in conversation with the deputy commander franklin sigled to me to hold up until he was finished when o’kane left franklin called me in and immediately began screaming we were right back where he left off you son of a [ __ ] he ran it you dirty rotten son of a [ __ ] how many times have i warned you to stay the hell away from am i or have your tap cut off it seemed like the time for accuracy four times sir i said and did you understand yes sir but i understand torture too i don’t give a [ __ ] about that i sir god damn it herbert don’t you sir me i gave you a direct order did you understand it yes sir but they were torturing a vietnamese did you personally see them torturing this girl at least he knew it had been a girl yes sir they us soldiers no sir this vietnamese god damn it herbert how many times must i explain the rules of land warfare to you over here what the vietnamese do is none of our damn business but sir the guy was cranking this phone generator while bowers was who was cranking the generator this interpreter i guess and was he vietnamese yes sir but and was bowers cranking no sir but then god damn it that’s the end of it o’cain said that’s all there is to know he lifted his hand and shook his finger one more goddamn interference herbert and you’re all washed up and am i understand no sir i don’t carmody was did you see carmody crank the phone no sir did you see any u s crank that phone no sir then what’s your [ __ ] it was the first time i’d had to really compose a sentence for one thing i told him it was a violation of u s army directives as well as geneva accords and the rules of line warfare and for another i finished it just is an army oh you son of a [ __ ] he said you’re so goddamn righteous you never did anything like that right no sir i haven’t he slapped the girl in and you never have herbert is that correct that is correct sir i but you saw carmody slapper huh yes sir i did and and so all at once you’re the judge the jury and the executioner is that correct herbert no sir i know sir i know sir i know sir i tell you what you are herbert you’re a disloyal and you’re maybe getting kind of old you just can’t stomach it anymore what the hell is the matter with you look he said with relative benevolence in his voice let me explain these are the enemy even you must be able to understand that right these are the guys who killed your buddies whom did she kill sir god damn it i’m talking about the enemy in general he said raising his hand let me put it this way their vc i decided there was no sense in carrying out this farce any further and we were supposed to be soldiers and we are supposed to be soldiers sir american soldiers i want to make a charge i’d like to charge charge my ass you’ve already made a charge and now it’s an investigation and i’ll take care of that not you you just be able to back your mouth with sworn verified testimony sure i said sir anytime [Music] yeah so again it’s very strange uh not very strange but you can see this guy he’s seems to be trying to do the right thing but man he’s making some enemies and i guess big a big part of it is me trying my best to look at it from all or more than just herbert’s perspective and you kind of gotta admit when you think about it where you know when like okay when you’re in a complex situation and you have like a goal and then you have all these rules and sometimes those rules do get kind of looked over some of them on a smaller level right and sometimes it can be more efficient meanwhile you got this guy who’s kind of by the book and most people are most people i’m i’m pretty i almost want to say everybody’s not going to be by the book hundred percent of the time okay in one way or another yep and you get a group of people and they’re they’re they’re carrying out a goal whatever yeah and and it’s working and it’s working out and they’re okay well that’s an assumption yeah because it doesn’t because because let’s face it if we just look at how well the battalions are doing his battalion’s doing the best and he’s kind of flying the righteous path yeah yeah fully and and yeah this is this particular story aside i’m saying in general okay and then you get uh whether it be a new guy or just somebody there who’s always like how should it’s not in micromanaging but like nitpicking on certain things and it kind of jams up your whole approach to what you’re doing sure it could be better or not or whatever but it becomes kind of a nuisance you know well well okay i mean i i see what you’re saying but let’s let’s remember that this guy is witnessing murders tortures sexual assaults which i didn’t really cover rapes which i didn’t really cover but they’re in here he’s he’s seeing all kinds of horrible [ __ ] this isn’t somebody this isn’t all these people are kind of bending the rules to get the job done this ain’t that mm-hmm this ain’t that yeah fully and that’s what i’m so and that’s what i mean just what you said like people bending the rules to get the job done kind of a thing right we we understand that yes and he understands it right remember the guy that got told hey bring back the mermites on your patrol and and the guy says this is stupid and herbert says well it’s an order and he says [ __ ] them remember that part he’s down with bending the rules if the rules don’t make sense right yeah fully and uh and yes that is true and we got a good bird’s eye view of the whole deal for sure but the guy this guy that he’s talking to franklin yeah franklin from his perspective he might be looking at it as hey we’re bending the rules to get the job done he might be genuinely feeling that he might be he might be now what you have to fall back on is you have to you have to fall back and this is a tough one you have to fall back not only on what is the right thing to do but you also have to bounce that off of what is legal oh yeah okay so for the young leaders out there especially military leaders but this applies to anything this applies to business because look there’s thing there’s things you do in business where oh there’s the right thing to do and then there’s the wrong thing to do and then there’s the legal thing to do yeah criminal yeah and then yeah there’s the criminal thing to do so when you’re doing something hey listen i can explain this you know the the the cnn test have you ever heard of this before look if i can go on cnn and say hey this is why i made this decision and you don’t feel shame because of what you did that’s definitely part of the test the other thing you got to remember is what is legal because if you let and this is something you can tell your your your employees or your troops you got to remember about what’s legal because someone that should steer because look if if if you’re um let’s say you’re you’re in a platoon you’re out on a target and you find somebody that’s killed americans right they freaking kill they have the bodies and you catch them with the bodies and with the freaking bloody knife there’s almost no one that would say oh okay well i don’t feel like killing those bad guys right there’s a guy with a bloody knife you you see them killing americans to say hey do the right thing a lot of people like i know the right thing to do is we kill that guy we execute him you have you have to remember that that is not legal you are not allowed to do that so you have to get your people to understand that regardless of how you feel it’s not just a cnn test because that kind of passed the cnn test hey i showed up this guy had killed a bunch of americans and we freaking we i shot him and you can that’s the way it is and i i feel no shame because of it you pass the cnn test guess what you can still go to you can still go to jail it’s legally wrong so as a leader what you have to do is you have to sort of merge all these ideas into one final thought and you have to take the fact that hey what this is not legal to do this this is not legal to do this now there’s others we could come up with scenarios where doing the legal thing still isn’t the right thing and it’s it’s actually wrong it’s wrong to do that and sometimes you may have to break that rule but what we’re talking about here is they’re doing things that are not legal yeah so regardless of how you feel you’re doing something that is not legal on a very in a very big way these aren’t minor charges these are war crime scenarios which right this isn’t like hey we bent the rules we we left some freaking mermites out in the field which is pretty easy to argue right hey listen my guys were already tired we if we’re gonna carry these things it was gonna bog us down we had a better chance of getting ambushed it was gonna be a problem i left them okay got it that’s not war crimes yeah fully so there’s a there’s a difference yeah yeah there does there comes a point where it gets like you just can’t defend certain things you know and most yeah especially when you’re talking about like you got to remember though it’s not even just that you can’t defend him because if i roll up and i find a an isis fighter that killed three people you can defend that all day you can defend oh yeah i saw him and shot him he killed three americans i saw him doing it you can defend that all day long but it’s not legal so now you got to deal with the ramifications whatever those are yeah yeah you ever seen the movie cobra no come on sylvester stallone cobra i have not seen it dang all right i’ll watch platoon you watch cobra no not deal so there’s a part there’s a part in the beginning where this psycho guy takes over the supermarket or whatever right and cobra is kind of one of these guys he uses excessive force you know kind of like demolition man same actor by the way sylvester stallone either way so cobra ends up killing this guy right and then the the press comes not cnn but the press comes and they’re trying to interview cobra and they’re like he’s like hey did you have to kill him you know did you have to die or did he do you know uh you know he has a right to live and all this stuff or whatever and he’s like yeah he’s you know did you use excessive force and all this he’s like yeah use everything i have and he’s like hey you know like um people are pretty are protected you know entitled to protection by the law or whatever and he says so he grabs the reporter and unwraps or he uncovers like one of the bodies right and he’s like you tell that to his family huh he passed the cnn test is what i’m saying yep i think it was legal too though technically it depends on the situation it was like borderline so yeah yeah i don’t want to go into the movie what happened to to get cobra off the hook or nothing like that but nonetheless that’s the cnn test you see i’m saying yeah no that so so the cnn test is but it’s not a it’s not a unilateral test that just because it passes it’s okay that’s what i’m trying to explain to young leaders it’s not just the cnn test it’s the cnn test plus it’s the legal test is what you’re doing legal or is it illegal and if it’s illegal there are going to be repercussions even if you pass the cnn test so as a leader you’ve got to pay attention those things and what you have to do is keep your troops out of trouble it’s incumbent upon you to keep your troops out of trouble because they they might be reacting emotionally and you’re the one that’s supposed to reign them in and make sure that they’re not getting not not doing things that are illegal and i’m not saying those things aren’t deserved you know you find somebody that just killed three americans that that isis member deserves to die we get it not legal yeah that’s allowed so where did these go and and my original point was like franklin maybe to him it was he was quote unquote like i said um maybe bending a few rules or turning a blind eye to just small minor things and the means kind of justified the end scenario um and yeah you i agree i think that’s true where it’s like but we’ll remember we’re slitting a girl’s throat yeah yeah fully all right we have to leaders have to lead their troops to make sure that they are not just doing the right thing that they’re not just passing the cnn test but they’re also doing what’s legal otherwise there’s going to be repercussions that’s just that’s just the way it is that’s the reality all right back to the book when i remember the folly of it all now i rationalize a bit and tell myself that there wasn’t enough time to be fully sensitive to the finality of death for instance to say that it had not been a very important day because the second battalion had but two nva kills now seems ludicrous it was a damn important day for those two dead men when even just one man died or got his fingers blown off or his leg shattered or his hearing impaired or his eyes bloodied and blinded it was one hell of a costly battle especially if you happen to be the guy who got it that day it’s something generals and presidents can never understand only mothers fathers brothers sons daughters and wives maybe if i were a general or president who never went to war with his men or who never risked paying the same price maybe i’d want to convert the whole damn show into a statistical table to be read solemnly by some broadcaster every thursday night generals and presidents are fine for explaining to all of us those things that we ought to be willing to die for but when the war is over all that’s left are statistics and the generals and the presidents are always among the living if anything has happened to our country as a result of the vietnam war it is that our national infection with the sickness of the numbers game we reduce the blood and the suffering and the death and destruction to mere ciphers and in doing so we reduced our own souls numbers don’t die people do columns of figures don’t disintegrate in the explosion of a bomb human beings do statistics don’t bleed and if you make your war a war of numbers you will have no trouble sleeping most generals and presidents slept well so this stuff is continuing on in another mind-boggling plot twist on april 2nd 1969 barnes gave me a letter of commendation from general connors who had replaced general piers as the commander of the first field force victor he also handed me a letter from piers which had come all the way from the states piers was quite complimentary and barnes added that the second battalion was the best in the brigade and that i was the best battalion commander he had personally ever known so that’s franklin’s boss then he handed me his own letter of commendation the scoresheet for the brigade which again listed the second battalion as the top battalion and the official ig report which listed the second battalion as the tops in the brigade he also assured me that i would very soon begin reaping the awards rewards for my efforts as he called them he said the distinguished service cross was being prepared and the general already had a verbal assurance it would be approved he’s getting some love i went back to the battalion and sat down with warm iceless bourbon my god what was happening two months of nothing but crap and now all this in one day maybe things really were going to be different maybe the brigade was going to shape up with less than two and a half months to go sweetness and light were in the air and there were signs that everything was going to be okay but something else gnawed at me i had reported eight atrocities or war crimes or whatever the hell they wanted to call them the abuse of the detainees at on k the three torture incidents the murders the looting the alleged murder of a young lieutenant and the alleged execution of the detainee in the custody of the hero lieutenant if i could get those things cleared up i’d really be up to date and i knew i’d better get my statements down soon or i’d have to get them in writing from back in the states taking time out of the command and general staff college at leavenworth and i didn’t expect to have that kind of time so yeah this all comes really clear right now i went down on the morning of april 3rd so the next day to talk to franklin about them sir i jokingly said when i entered your best battalion commander of yesterday would like to have a talk with you today okay sure herbert come in he said have a seat i sat down where he indicated he was only it was the only chair in the room what’s on your mind the eight allegations sir the atrocities i reported i want atrocities he interrupted what the hell are you talking about atrocities eight sir and i took them off one by one counting them on my fingers as i went sir i’m going home in less than two weeks and most of the other witnesses have already gone i’d like to get my part wound up now while i still have time and things are going kind of slow god damn it tony he said the investigations are ongoing what more can i do the next morning when i reported barnes was behind his desk and franklin was in the chair to his right it was quick colonel herbert the general said i’m going to replace you as the commander of 2nd battalion i felt the blood drain from my head replace her you mean relieve not relieve tony replace i’m giving you a maximum efficiency report and sending you to saigon it hit me like a ton of rocks it is is it over the allegations i’ve made sir franklin leaped to his feet screaming that’s right you son of a [ __ ] you and your goddamn lies about beechem and crouch and all the rest that poor lieutenant and every other one of your damn lies and exaggerations so clearly they were buttering him up hey you’ve done great you’re our best battalion we’ve got you we give you a maximum efficiency report like you’re the best guy how about you just freaking keep the old mouth shut about these allegations and then when he brings them up again they realize he’s gonna stick to his guns i felt cold and empty then a wave of relief swept over me and calm said and i stared at franklin as though he were an insect and i tried to speak as deliberately and as coolly as i could i’m not talking to you sir i’m trying to speak to my commander general barnes it stopped franklin’s ranting and he gave me the chance to turn back to barnes sir the very least you owe me is a complete investigation to see who really is telling the lies and exaggerating the general had his head down over his desk scribbling on a piece of note paper colonel franklin has already investigated all your charges and i’m satisfied he said reaching out and handing me the note you’ll be out on the landing zone in one hour there are two planes leaving for saigon today you be on one of them your records will be ready for you and on k when you’re in saigon or anke when you get there you report to colonel lou ashley in saigon it’s on the note sir i said i have a battalion i’ve signed for over a million dollars worth of material and equipment i just can’t clear out in an hour franklin broke in one hour herbert one hour you’ll be picked up under arrest and taken out by the provost marshall one hour barnes said again i saluted don’t do me any favors with the efficiency report i intend to see you all again so even though they said we’re gonna like we’re gonna let you out of here with uh a good evaluation he’s saying don’t even this dude does not play bro um as i walked back to the battalion i told myself it was important to remain calm cool and collected i knew i had them both just as long as i didn’t blow it they had gone far beyond their authority in removing me without any grounds for relief i was convinced by then that it had to be something more than any allegations of atrocities hell everybody knew about them anyways somebody else would be bringing them up again and soon if they thought that by getting rid of me they were also getting rid of the shame of what had occurred then they that they had got it under the rug they neither understood me nor the army at that point i still had faith in the system i walked over to the talk ernie had most of the officers gathered in the briefing room he had already told them look i began there’s no time to screw around you know i’ve been given the boot that’s why i wanted to talk to you all right away i’ve only got about 15 minutes more before i have to get out of here but i wanted to take some time to thank you and get the chance to shake as many of your hands as i could before i have to go there were some protests and a few remarks about quitting i stifled that quickly the army has a system of military justice and rules and regs so none of you needs to go off half cocked and try and take things into your own hands nobody quits either just keep thinking about the battalion that’s what’s important not me if you’re if you quit you’re letting down not only me but every last one of those grunts out here they have to stay they can’t quit you can but many of them need you and the guy who replaces me is going to need you it’s not going to be his fault what happened to me so stick with the battalion and stick with him and stick with them i said waving toward the boonies i started shaking hands in the in the landing zone area men all along the ground were lined up pulling off smoke canisters of every color in the rainbow there were maybe a hundred men out there and a hundred smokes it was their honors smoke when the troops were coming back after a kill they buzzed the field with a smoke on each skid and when one of their own left they lit one to five depending on how well he was like liked plus his reputation as a fighter and i was looking down on at least a hundred of them knowing all the time that nobody was that good but choked up with appreciation nevertheless i waved and they waved back the pilot banked the ship again and i sat against the wall rigging and wiped my eyes we landed in saigon a bit before nine o’clock that evening and although i shouldn’t have been feeling like a bastard on father’s day i didn’t although i should have been feeling like a bastard on father’s day i didn’t i was relieved in more ways than one i suppose i reasoned that if barnes and franklin had hated me that much i was better off out of the outfit i had the marbles in my pocket they had nothing to fall back on but their own lies and falsifications i knew i had been lucky i could have had accidental kills of women and children or other non-combatants and they would have had me had the marbles in their pockets i could have ranked second or third on the ig inspection i could have had a high court martial rate or accident rate or a large number of article 15s or delinquency reports from the military police or any one of a number of other things that could have been used against me but i’ve been lucky frankly i’m used i had let franklin i’m used had let his personal dislike for me get the best of him it had forced him into a premature confrontation that i was bound to win i was bound to win well it was not that clear-cut it was not that clear-cut at all and the book goes on and it goes into a lot of detail and there are all kinds of further accusations and counteraccusations and they end up making sworn statements against herbert including him leading the killing of civilians so they start making accusations against him and this is and again these documents are in this book that’s one of the things that makes this book so good is it’s got all this actual documentation here they they recommend revoking his orders they recommend removing his opportunity to to lead or be in command again general russ who’s the overall decision maker on the case agrees with the accusatory statements kills colonel herbert’s career so the the idea that he was bound to win no actually doesn’t work out that way colonel herbert fights it he fights this spends a bunch of his own money so and then he goes on the offense because he wanted investigations before now he goes on the offense charges uh brings charges up against colonel franklin 14 separate specifications including failure to report murders and church torture he does the same thing to general barnes fail up failure to report war crimes on multiple occasions so he’s going on the offense it gets national publicity it’s in the news the lead investigator for the army this guy by the name of major carl hensley according to the book and i hate to say that i’m just because i don’t know what i don’t know what the truth is according to the book this guy major carl hensley had told herbert like look we believe you you’re right we can win this thing and then he kills himself kills himself with a shotgun you can you can look that one up it’s in a new york times press briefing major carl hensley suicide ends up all the charges are eventually dropped against both barnes and franklin colonel franklin eventually relieved from his command for throwing a vietnamese body out of uh out of a helicopter in vietnam and again this guy was the most decorated from what i could find in research’s most decorated officer from his west point class 1950 1991 by the way colonel franklin convicted and spent five years in prison for a securities scheme scam swindled about 100 people out of millions of dollars so there’s like a you know you see these questionable characters characteristics so all the charges so imagine this all the charges against barnes and franklin get dropped but herbert is not charged with making a single false statement so all these things that he had said he never gets charged for making a false statement but the charges get dropped he goes kind of public does a bunch of interviews eventually he’s retired or he retires you know he’s done with the army he gets eventually he gets interviewed on 60 minutes by mike wallace and this is freaking crazy so they have and i’ve tried to find this haven’t been able to find it but i read about it they have herbert getting interviewed by mike wallace he kind of tells his story and then out of the other room they bring major grimshaw who was part of the unit who comes out and says yeah look i i worked for herbert i know herbert i respect herbert but what he said isn’t true so so now who he’s supposed to believe so herbert sues mike wallace in 60 minutes for libel it’s a 13-year court case it’s a 13-year court case eventually gets all the way to supreme court and herbert loses the case herbert eventually made he became a clinical psychologist and also a police psychologist dies of cancer june 7 2014 just the the whole thing is a travesty and i guess the best thing we can do is what can we learn from it what can we learn from it i would say the obvious lesson here is put your ego aside and build relationships with people now you might say well these people are doing wrong okay so what what good do you do when you just build form an antagonistic relationship do you have more influence over them or less influence over them you have less so if you can build a relationship with people now listen this is again this is so freaking hard this is what makes leadership hard if these if there’s people that are doing things that are immoral illegal unethical okay what are you gonna do you can do what herbert did stand up to him and guess what he gets fired now he has no influence over the situation because if you think like you have to stop that that’s my moral obligation to stop this stuff from happening was did colonel herbert stop it from happening no instead he’s gone he has no more influence who took who took over his battalion some yes man one of colonel franklin’s you know boys that came in and started towing the party line so freaking disaster it’s a it’s just a disaster you get you get the high ground great you got the high ground and then you and then you uh uh look down on people and you get an antagonistic relationship with them yeah and there’s all that all the stuff is documented you got to read the book um and i’m sure we could have more discussions maybe we will maybe we’ll bring some maybe we’ll find somebody that was there that knows more about it i know look there’s two sides to every story too i mean you you were you pointed out you know was were they just trying to get the job done is it was he exaggerating some of this stuff i don’t know i don’t know my original take was that this guy is like a hack my original information that i got was this guy was a hackworth type individual from that was from from colonel howe his herbert had worked for his grandfather right so this is like the closest way to get right now that we can go off of i don’t know i don’t know i know that leadership is a freaking challenge i know that and this book proves it [Applause] i hate this feeling echo charles mm-hmm the kind of empty feeling yeah sure don’t like it yeah and so i don’t like when i can’t really identify the truth i can’t like it yeah and that’s kind of why i did think about that where thinking about the other people’s perspective you know and with that kind of you kind of think like how did let’s say that the guy is like all wrong like because in this phase according to the story it kind of sounds like they’re almost like corrupt almost where they’re like hey who cares you know kind of thing so it’s like what so what we just have a straight up corrupt military is that what you’re saying like in that little that’s that’s absolutely what he’s saying yeah so we know uncertain terms he’s saying that yeah but a normal which is horrible for us to think that this entire division or this entire brigade at a minimum was corrupt yeah and that’s and that’s what i’m thinking but the reality is like so these aren’t like bad people like most people aren’t just bad people who are just like destined for corruption or whatever it’s almost like you kind of got to consider how did they get there why is it like that it’s not because they’re just these evil people who finally got their position of power and now can just exploit weakness and nothing like that but you take and you put all these factors in place like the fact that hey if you go do this tour you’re gonna get promoted you’re going to get more money you’re you got to go do this and when you get over there well what’s the best way to get a good evaluation you get a good evaluation by doing what everyone else is doing late you know you don’t want to stick your head up and be the one that gets draws a bunch of attention so if that’s what we’re doing you know it’s an expression that you use you use this expression that’s what we’re doing you know like you’ll say oh that’s i thought that’s just what we were doing yeah you use that expression sometimes well that’s a normal thing for people to feel look that’s what we’re doing okay that’s what everyone else is doing i’m all okay yeah if we’re gonna let the vietnamese kind of run and do whatever they want if that’s what we’re doing cool i don’t want to be the one that’s drawn a bunch of attention to myself it ain’t about me so i’m just going to kind of sit back and let it happen yeah so people get into that mode and you lose vision here’s the other thing like how much confidence do you have in yourself to say like hey everyone here is wrong everyone here that’s letting this happen is wrong you know how do you not feel like wait a second there’s you know a brigade of 5 000 people here and everyone’s kind of down with what’s happening and i’m the person that’s not yeah there’s something wrong here maybe it’s wrong maybe there’s something wrong with me yeah yeah and you get the momentum and the inertia of you get the inertia of hey hey we’re going to get a new battalion commander soon enough don’t worry about this guy he’ll be gone he’s gonna only gonna do be here for six months what what are we trying to do make money right we can run these little scams and make some money we we just wanna have the time passed so i can move on i can just be done with my job trust me that’s that’s a real thing even in today’s military like have you ever heard the zero defect zero defect model where it’s like oh yeah we’re gonna promote someone that has had no mistakes so if you’re over on deployment if you’re in iraq or you’re in afghanistan and you want to get promoted and there’s a mission to go do and you get to decide whether you go do that mission or not do you think you should do it or not oh yeah got it yeah so if you don’t basically if you don’t take that much action you don’t won’t make that many mistakes you can have the zero defect record you have the zero defect record i went on deployment i did four missions they all went well get a bronze star go home get a good evaluation and we’re good to go or i’m gonna go over there i’m gonna do a hundred missions every single one of those missions is a freaking challenge by the way if you’re doing four missions you can kind of hand pick you do 10 missions you do 20 missions you’re hand pick okay this one’s not bad not a bad area we’ve got really good intel looks good all right go we’ll go ahead and execute this one all right if you’re gonna do a hundred missions you’re going okay look this one’s a little bit more high risk but we’re gonna go it seems like it will make an impact we’ll go execute it there’s a tendency well not a tendency there’s a possibility that you say you know what look i i don’t want to have anyone get hurt i don’t want to have any bad you know i don’t have any negatives on my evaluation i just want to get my job done and move on you know i want to punch the ticket so you end up doing 14 missions and you did your job good for you and now you get your ticket punched and you go home and everyone’s good and by the way when you get home guess what guess what everyone says hey he he did it he was a he was a company commander he was a battalion commander he did he’s a combat experienced veteran as he said right so now you’re kind of on a pedestal a little bit yeah even though you really don’t know anything so what i’m saying is the system even more so in vietnam was all set up where hey get over there keep your mouth shut go with the flow fit in with the crew and that’s why hackworth had such a freaking issue with it and so did herbert makes sense it’s almost like they should maybe think about i’m saying this with complete ignorance by the way but they should change the little system to be to have you know like diving ever watch diving like not on olympics or whatever diving right like platform whatever they have they have uh the score level and the difficulty level exactly right so you get a score for difficulty level and if the difficulty level is low bruh you’re not going to get a high score you know yeah yeah it’s true and that’s fine again the system is really it’s very easy for the system to fall back into a zero defect mentality a risk-averse mentality because look i could go on deployment tomorrow and circumstances could be that there’s just not a lot going on and so we did four missions not because we weren’t aggressive but just because there wasn’t that many missions to do yeah and so i come back and you can’t look down on me you can’t say well jocko only did four missions i did all the ones that i could i was aggressive as i could possibly be we only did four yeah you go on deployment there’s you could do a hundred missions but you only do four you come back sad did as many as jocko we’re good to go and i i’m the overall leader i wasn’t there so i’m looking at go hey echo did four jacqua did four hey these guys are equivalent we’re good to go move on meanwhile you were super risk averse didn’t take any chances really didn’t impact the battlefield and you’re gonna get the same recognition so it’s a very difficult thing to do it’s a very difficult thing and you can see you can see that vietnam just got so wrapped up in this this careerism of hey go do your time keep your mouth shut get you know go with the flow yeah and that’s that what the what are the missions that we’re doing okay we’re doing that kind of mission cool oh got it we got guys smoking pot no one’s really seems to notice that okay well i guess we’re smoking pot like it’s just bad across the board and a lot of it has to do with what is our mission what is our mission why are we what what means we want yeah what means we want if you don’t even know what means you want how are you gonna you know if you went on a football field and you didn’t know what how if you didn’t know how to score a goal what would you do yeah what would you do you wouldn’t be able to do anything but as long as you know hey here’s where you’re trying to get to okay got it give me that ball move it foot down the field i’ll i’m moving a yard down the field i’m moving an inch down the field you at least know which direction you’re moving it if you get told hey go out on that field no one tells you where the end zone is right no one tells you so what are you gonna do so as a leader you got to take that into account you got to make sure people know what the mission is you got to know what the strategy is and you better know why you’re going to war and you better make that perfectly clear when you’re going check empty feeling sorry don’t like it all right so what else can we do this is just a freaking well speaking of empty feelings i have one two three cans of empty two and a half so i’m going to take this opportunity to tell our people what discipline goal is all right i’m glad because i’m just i had some too but i still feel empty still so empty it’s all good uh well okay i won’t start with discipline go how about that we’ll just talk about jocko fuel in general okay look we’re on the path we’re learning stuff lessons hard and easy by the way obviously we’re hoping man yeah well you know how they say like there’s hard less like the hard lessons are the ones that are learned like the best yes true he who suffers remembers yeah there you go yeah so boom so we’re on the path right we’re looking for lessons we’re learning from lessons learning from lessons from others that’s one of those efficiency things yeah there’s some great leadership lessons in both these books that’s for sure like some real like that thing about planning if you if you let your team come up with a plan they’re invested they have a material interest in seeing the plan succeed that right there is gold read those books look you come away feeling empty like i did let me fill in that hole a little bit there i just did i just filled in my own hole in my heart from getting to the end of this book by saying hey if you let your team come up with a plan they have a material interest in making the plan succeed there you go i feel better already me too so yes nonetheless we’re on the path and through that path a lot of people know about the path they don’t walk the path i saw that meme today stuck in my head but when we when we do walk the path we may need assistance assistance through whether it be mentorship guidance or supplementation as far as supplementation goes we have jackal fuel so we got stuff for our joints we got stuff for protein we got stuff for our brain and we got stuff for immunity that’s it right shark more or less we’re not just getting stronger with some milk yes that’s the approach that’s the addition oh yeah so and here’s the thing i was thinking about something else i understand fully well here’s the thing here’s the formula for getting strong could you tell i was like not with you yeah okay i’m just making sure i’m very used to that dynamic no usually i’m paying attention to what you’re saying well it depends on what you mean by usually but true you know anyway the formula for getting strong that if you sense that from me it should be a non-verbal cue to talk fast and kind of rap yeah i thought that in the beginning but now you know after a while yeah it’s just weird i don’t care i’m very used to you have no material interest in moving this conversation along which is fine i have a material interest but it’s very small nonetheless okay the the material formula for being strong is three things the correct exercise the correct rest in recovery and the correct fuel nutrition slash fuel slash food whatever yeah molk is part of that last part the fuel for getting strong it’s insane so yeah will make you strong as long as those other two things are in place as well sure anyway go to jackalful com for all these things score score some supplementation for this path that we are walking not just knowing about you can also get it at vitamin shop you can also get it at wawa well you can get the you can get the discipline go drinks at wawa if you need some energy then you can go to wawa and get some and also all these things which is kind of cool you’re you’re gonna want to get you want to going to want to get them and have them there when you need them so you want to subscribe and if you subscribe you get free shipping and shipping can be expensive yeah you know it’s yeah the i think the the main benefit aside from the discount for sure um is you not having to think about it you can think about other stuff no that is a that is a definite benefit so you’re getting paid basically to do something that’s already good for you yeah you’re right you’re right rotation of justice so getting paid you know how they say a penny saved is a penny earned that’s it right yep it’s kind of thing it’s more of a framing thing okay not to go too deep on framing please don’t but if you just said you just said you’re getting paid to do something you’re healthy yeah in a way right you are so if you subscribe you’re getting paid to do something that’s good for you yup which is awesome yeah check that out jackofield com also we’ve got a bunch of jiu jitsu stuff if you are into jiu jitsu which you should be by all accounts you should be into jiu jitsu go to origin usa com you can get jiu jitsu stuff but if you’re let’s say you haven’t gotten into jiu jitsu yet you’re going to but you still need clothing for your body you need jeans you need boots you need t-shirts you need hoodies sure you need hats well there’s a lot of benefits to hats yeah you don’t wear a hat ever pretty much yeah anyways you can get all that stuff american-made made in america made in america yeah origen usa com check it out also jocko has a store as well four more of those shirts and hats hoodies shorts by the way shorts yes which i’m wearing right now oh yeah deathcore shorts oh yeah yeah hardcore condo shirt that’s what i’m wearing today yeah in honor of colonel david hackworth yes sir jack yep that’s a good one uh yeah a lot of stuff on there um i say it’s to represent while we’re on the path that’s what you say and that is true every time but there’s a little bit more to it you gotta find out for yourself also we have a subscription situation on there too for a little bit different types of designs a little bit more creative we enlisted john bozak who just happens to be maybe not happens to be because this is all for a reason but he is the illustrator for the way the warrior kid series and michael the dragons and mike and the dragons and some posters as well anyway this is a good artist we enlisted him for some of the designs on this subscription shirt situation called the shirt locker check anyway look into that if you like that hey man get that jackostore com is where that’s at we got you can you can subscribe to this podcast or the other podcast we got a gut jocko unraveling got a few new episodes of that out there savage grounded pondcast which we haven’t done in a while but warrior kid podcast we got some new of those new of those out if you want to you can check all those out you can subscribe you can also join us on the underground the ug jocko ug jockwoodground com little alternative podcast we’ve been doing some q a on there from people that are on jocko underground if you want to subscribe to that go to jacounderground com it costs eight dollars and 18 cents a month if you can’t afford that it’s okay we don’t want to exclude you because you’re having a financial rough spot if you want to hear what we’re talking about you can go to you can email assistants at jockonunderground com yep also we have a youtube channel video version of this podcast also we have excerpts on there so you can be enlightened in the event of you missing a certain concept or whatever you know we try to post those regularly so um so yeah you can you can check those out we’re verified too by the way on youtube proud of that are we did you ever get that thing weren’t you supposed to get some thing um like a plaque or something oh yeah yeah the play button or something i think that’s when you get to a certain amount of subscribers i did not get it no how many subscribers do you have to have i for there’s different plaques so i think you get one i don’t i could be wrong like after ten thousand or a hundred thousand and then after a million if i’m not mistaken and then after 10 million subscribers how many do we have uh we’re we broke the threshold of one million so technically we should have two play buttons somewhere somewhere around here i don’t know i gotta double check you can play what play button or button icon trophies anyway yeah we have a youtube channel how about that okay accepted uh psychological warfare we got an album with tracks where i talk about overcoming a moment of weakness we have flipsidecanvas com dakota meyer putting out things that you can hang on your wall that look cool books bunch of books soldier which is the book we covered today the making of a soldier the book we covered last podcast they’re both by anthony herbert final spin it’s a story that i wrote might be a poem i’m not sure you’re gonna have to check it out yourself it’s available for pre-order right now i’m sure the publisher is like well there’s probably only going to be you know we’ll probably sell 50 of these so we’ll print 50 if you don’t pre-order don’t be mad pre-order so you can get that first that dish leadership strategy and tactics field manual the code the evaluations of protocols disagree with freedom field manual all the warrior kid books miking the dragon about face extreme ownership of the dichotomy of leadership i have a leadership consultancy it’s called echelon front you can go to echelonfront com for details if you want us to help inside your organization we have online training efonline com we’ve got a bunch of live events including the muster 2021 go to extremeownership com if you want to come to one of those we’ve got ef battlefield we’ve got ftx if you want to help service members active and retired service members their families gold star families check out mark lee’s mom mama lee she’s got a charity organization if you want to donate or you want to get involved go to america’s mightywarriors org and if you want more of my drawn out orations or you’ll need more of echo’s questionable queries you can find us on the interwebs on twitter on the gram and on facebook echoes at equity charles i am at jocko willing and thanks to all the people out there in the service of our nation around the world and the just try and remember that the enemies outside the wire and try and keep the egos in check and support each other and to our police and law enforcement firefighters and paramedics and emts and dispatchers and correctional officers and border patrol and secret service and all first responders out there every single day thank you for doing what you do so that we can do what we do and to everyone else listen antagonistic relationships do not help you in life they don’t help your mission they don’t help your team if you don’t agree with somebody on something find something that you do agree on build bonds instead of breaking them there is enough in the world trying to rip us apart fight that it’s how we all win in the end and until next time this is echo and jocko out