WEBVTT

1
00:00:01.439 --> 00:00:15.800
Special Operations Coberts SB and I the
Team House with your hosts Jack Murphy and

2
00:00:16.039 --> 00:00:25.519
David Bark. All right, so, uh for this episode, I'm here

3
00:00:25.519 --> 00:00:31.960
today with retired Sergeant Major Michael Adams. Mike served in fifth Group, First

4
00:00:31.960 --> 00:00:38.320
Group, seventh Group, any other
group not seven, first, fifth,

5
00:00:38.640 --> 00:00:46.039
third, tenth. I am a
sootback that they Yeah, sorry about that,

6
00:00:46.079 --> 00:00:49.560
so they kept you super busy,
Mike, And uh, thank you

7
00:00:49.640 --> 00:00:52.960
for doing this interview today. And
you know, uh, you know,

8
00:00:52.960 --> 00:00:56.439
we've known each other for years,
and you know, it's uh it's fun

9
00:00:56.439 --> 00:01:00.799
to you know, do this with
you and discuss your career in some length

10
00:01:00.840 --> 00:01:03.799
and depth. Yeah, Jack,
I really appreciate that. Thank you for

11
00:01:03.840 --> 00:01:07.680
having me on. It means a
lot. Thanks. Yeah, absolutely,

12
00:01:08.599 --> 00:01:11.599
so's uh, let's start at the
beginning, man, tell us a little

13
00:01:11.640 --> 00:01:15.079
bit about sort of like what your
upbringing was like and how that led you

14
00:01:15.120 --> 00:01:22.000
towards the army. Yeah. Sure, So my upbringing was very outdoors,

15
00:01:22.079 --> 00:01:26.400
hunting, fishing. Also, my
father went as far as to take me

16
00:01:26.560 --> 00:01:30.959
backpacking a little bit of a limited
amount of food and made me live off

17
00:01:30.959 --> 00:01:34.280
the land and back in the day, he taught me how to navigate with

18
00:01:34.319 --> 00:01:38.840
a map, and a compass.
He gave me all kinds of skills that

19
00:01:38.560 --> 00:01:46.400
all put into you know, become
a Special Forces soldier. As started as

20
00:01:46.439 --> 00:01:51.560
my backstory, what happened was I
went to college very young. Literally the

21
00:01:51.599 --> 00:01:56.680
first day I was walking up this
hill to register for classes, I had

22
00:01:56.680 --> 00:02:01.519
to cross a bridge and there were
two Special Forces guys repelling off the bridge

23
00:02:01.560 --> 00:02:05.840
with a couple of students. Right. Yeah. It turned out to be

24
00:02:06.040 --> 00:02:08.560
Joe Dennison, who was the first
s arm major of the regiment, and

25
00:02:08.680 --> 00:02:16.039
Ken Lanceoloco, was also a Macni
SAG guy. So I managed to stay

26
00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:19.599
in college for two years, but
the whole time, in the back of

27
00:02:19.639 --> 00:02:21.960
my mind, I'm like, I
don't want to fucking do this shit.

28
00:02:22.680 --> 00:02:24.680
So one time I got Joe to
go down to the recruiter with me,

29
00:02:25.400 --> 00:02:29.400
and the only thing they would offer
me was range of regiment. I'm like,

30
00:02:29.840 --> 00:02:32.280
no, I want to be in
Special Forces because by then I knew

31
00:02:32.280 --> 00:02:38.159
what Special Forces was, I knew
the difference, but they weren't accepting people

32
00:02:38.199 --> 00:02:43.479
off the street. So a year
later I went back to the recruiter and

33
00:02:43.520 --> 00:02:46.680
they were accepting people off the street. I think it's similar to they have

34
00:02:46.800 --> 00:02:51.840
a program now call it something.
I don't know what it's called, and

35
00:02:51.919 --> 00:02:54.319
it is what it is. Yeah, And what year was this mic that

36
00:02:54.400 --> 00:02:59.840
you went and signed up in?
Nineteen seventy seven? Was your I saw

37
00:02:59.879 --> 00:03:05.240
it of late seventy seven, and
so I went to you know, basic

38
00:03:05.759 --> 00:03:09.520
Infantry, jump back up the brag. We had what was called pre phase

39
00:03:09.599 --> 00:03:14.439
back then, which was just a
lot of you know, beating the shit

40
00:03:14.520 --> 00:03:19.680
out of you and rucksack marcheses and
running and stuff like that. It wasn't

41
00:03:19.759 --> 00:03:24.199
like that whole organized thing that they
have now. We did stuff kind of

42
00:03:24.240 --> 00:03:30.039
like that, but it was more
of you know, rucksack marches and running

43
00:03:30.080 --> 00:03:34.280
than it was these organized team skills
that they do now, which I think

44
00:03:34.319 --> 00:03:38.479
are great, They're wonderful. But
the way it ended up was in phase

45
00:03:38.560 --> 00:03:42.879
one, I think a lot more
people got weeded out than they probably did

46
00:03:43.000 --> 00:03:46.879
now. I don't know what the
percentage was, but I could tell you

47
00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:57.759
about, Oh, Mike, we
lost your audio. Yeah, I lost

48
00:03:57.759 --> 00:04:01.759
your audio there for a second.
Me, Okay, you're back. You're

49
00:04:01.919 --> 00:04:05.879
talking about how a lot of people
probably washed out in Phase one during the

50
00:04:06.000 --> 00:04:12.719
class, and so I support the
idea of having a structured Brie phase where

51
00:04:12.719 --> 00:04:15.399
they actually you know, weed them
out there instead of wasting much time and

52
00:04:15.439 --> 00:04:19.519
money and putting them in Phase one. You know, right away. I

53
00:04:19.600 --> 00:04:25.040
was also very fortunate. In Phase
one and all the beginning of my career,

54
00:04:25.160 --> 00:04:29.959
pretty much almost every damn guy had
either been in ZOG or he at

55
00:04:30.040 --> 00:04:33.600
least had been on the A team
in Vietnam. Everybody but me, and

56
00:04:33.639 --> 00:04:39.120
so of course they hated me for
what I represented. They did not like

57
00:04:39.199 --> 00:04:43.279
guys come in and Office three at
all. They didn't care for us,

58
00:04:44.680 --> 00:04:47.040
but they came to accept us.
You know. For example, the first

59
00:04:47.040 --> 00:04:50.720
time I went down to the first
to my first company to start major maybe

60
00:04:50.839 --> 00:04:58.040
go out fucking kles before I could
even in process. I mean, it's

61
00:04:58.360 --> 00:05:00.680
it's incredible. And I mean I
didn't know that Joe Dennison was actually he

62
00:05:00.720 --> 00:05:06.240
actually like kind of recruited you in
the SF. He totally did. We

63
00:05:06.319 --> 00:05:12.839
were friends of mine in his own
right. Absolutely, dude. He's a

64
00:05:12.879 --> 00:05:16.199
warrior and a hero altogether. He
did so much for the resident regimen it

65
00:05:16.199 --> 00:05:20.319
was unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah,
he was a real real good man,

66
00:05:20.879 --> 00:05:25.879
real good man. And I ran
across a lot of really good men back

67
00:05:25.920 --> 00:05:30.879
then. I mean, I think
everybody from the group commander down to the

68
00:05:30.120 --> 00:05:34.879
teams. Every single guy was a
VET from Vietnam, right, So they

69
00:05:34.879 --> 00:05:40.319
had all this experience and once they
got over being pissed us, they gave

70
00:05:40.360 --> 00:05:42.720
it to us, you know,
they passed it on that to us.

71
00:05:43.360 --> 00:05:46.759
And that was a unique position to
be in, you know, because these

72
00:05:46.759 --> 00:05:50.839
guys had done the Gambut emissions.
They didn't just do DA or whatever,

73
00:05:51.319 --> 00:05:57.480
or they didn't just do Bence Hoppin, which is cool and really I really

74
00:05:58.120 --> 00:06:01.199
think that's very impressive. But they
also had eight camps out there are noise

75
00:06:01.759 --> 00:06:06.079
and you know they were they had
singletons, you know, guys out there

76
00:06:06.120 --> 00:06:13.040
for a year out in the mountains
of Vietnam and other areas. So they

77
00:06:13.040 --> 00:06:16.199
did the whole full gamut of missions
of Special Forces missions. I think while

78
00:06:16.240 --> 00:06:20.639
they were over there that you w
everything, you know, and that was

79
00:06:20.839 --> 00:06:27.120
that was a generation of of guys
who knew how to patrol and like field

80
00:06:27.160 --> 00:06:31.199
craft. Dude, let me tell
you something. I can't tell you how

81
00:06:31.279 --> 00:06:35.920
many hours we spent working on our
lbe together perfect. I mean, if

82
00:06:35.920 --> 00:06:43.319
they heard one little tiny noisier bought
yeah, but they taught us. They

83
00:06:43.319 --> 00:06:46.720
didn't say you know, unfuck your
LB. They taught us out to do

84
00:06:46.879 --> 00:06:48.920
it, you know, they taught
us out of patrol. Yes, they

85
00:06:48.920 --> 00:06:53.720
were. They were the guys that
could could patrol from help. And I

86
00:06:53.800 --> 00:07:00.240
learned really really ton of stuff about
patrolling from those guys. Really told what

87
00:07:00.279 --> 00:07:03.879
was the your first ODA after you
graduated first group? Where were you?

88
00:07:05.000 --> 00:07:13.279
So? What happened first was they
sent me to the fucking Comma shack.

89
00:07:13.480 --> 00:07:16.639
That great guy's tapping out code.
I'm like, fuck this shit. And

90
00:07:16.680 --> 00:07:21.720
then they sent me up to uh
To. They sent me to the instructor

91
00:07:21.759 --> 00:07:25.759
scores that had to pass up there. I don't know what was called.

92
00:07:26.120 --> 00:07:30.040
And the guy liked me up there, so he talked to the Coma committee.

93
00:07:30.040 --> 00:07:34.040
They kept me up there and then
they man there was another mass charden

94
00:07:34.120 --> 00:07:38.759
up there that was a combat diary
from ODA five forty three in fifth group,

95
00:07:39.120 --> 00:07:42.920
and he was just doing his last
tour and so he got me hooked

96
00:07:43.000 --> 00:07:46.680
up to go back down to ODA
five forty three. And that was my

97
00:07:46.759 --> 00:07:50.480
first team in fifth group, and
it was a fantastic team. We had

98
00:07:50.680 --> 00:07:55.199
so many good people, good team, so are and so Martin Milly was

99
00:07:55.240 --> 00:07:58.600
one of my team leaders from eighty
one to eighty three. He was a

100
00:07:58.600 --> 00:08:01.720
real good man and I know we'll
talk a little shit about him now,

101
00:08:01.160 --> 00:08:05.199
Yeah, you're wrong. He's a
good man. He calls me to this

102
00:08:05.439 --> 00:08:09.000
day to check on me because I
got the stage four cancer, which I'd

103
00:08:09.000 --> 00:08:13.839
like to talk about later. Oh
yeah, And Martin Joy went straight to

104
00:08:13.879 --> 00:08:16.839
the top. I mean he's Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs, right, yeah,

105
00:08:16.199 --> 00:08:18.839
yeah, well he just retired a
couple of months ago, but yeah,

106
00:08:20.000 --> 00:08:22.759
he went all the way up and
he was a real good man and

107
00:08:24.160 --> 00:08:26.319
my team servant at the time.
Some guys will know his name was Massive

108
00:08:26.360 --> 00:08:31.600
Charlton Henry Beck. He ended up
getting the DSc for charge of the machine

109
00:08:31.639 --> 00:08:35.360
gun that's to Vietnam. Yeah yeah, yeah, hardcore. So these are

110
00:08:35.360 --> 00:08:39.159
the kind of guys I was around, you know, they were just amazing

111
00:08:39.240 --> 00:08:45.600
guys. My senior como guy.
I don't know. Somehow he went to

112
00:08:45.639 --> 00:08:50.639
Fort Lewis, I mean Fort Levemarth
after Vietnam, but came back. I

113
00:08:50.679 --> 00:08:54.159
don't know the whole story beyond that, but lots of guys who wants the

114
00:08:54.240 --> 00:08:58.320
stories. Yeah, and I mean
it was it was also at such a

115
00:08:58.360 --> 00:09:03.120
different time, I mean up on
smoke Bomb Hill, and the GB Club

116
00:09:03.440 --> 00:09:07.320
and SF was so small back then, like everyone, My impression is everyone

117
00:09:07.360 --> 00:09:11.120
knew each other. We all knew
each other, Jack, and it was

118
00:09:11.240 --> 00:09:15.639
so much smaller. You couldn't put
together three A teams in my company on

119
00:09:15.720 --> 00:09:20.399
a good day, you know,
because you were there were enough people.

120
00:09:20.039 --> 00:09:24.360
Yeah, and then I want to
sit. I can't swear this, but

121
00:09:24.399 --> 00:09:28.679
I want to say. They took
the tea one eewn to two companies per

122
00:09:28.799 --> 00:09:31.600
battalion for a while. Wow,
that didn't last. I think I can't

123
00:09:31.639 --> 00:09:37.320
swear on it. But then gradually
it started coming back. And then they

124
00:09:37.440 --> 00:09:43.480
opened up a battalion out at Lewis
and reactivated first week and then things slowly

125
00:09:43.639 --> 00:09:48.399
started going. But yeah, it
was tiny. It was tining smoke bomb

126
00:09:48.440 --> 00:09:52.879
Hill. Everybody knew each other when
you were in training, and you were

127
00:09:52.919 --> 00:09:56.200
allowed to have two beers at the
green Bery Club where the stripper was in

128
00:09:56.279 --> 00:10:03.879
a shitty hamburger, you know,
and the ugly stripper. But yeah,

129
00:10:05.080 --> 00:10:09.639
that was the atmosphere. But I'll
tell you when it came down to missions

130
00:10:09.720 --> 00:10:13.799
and stuff, hard as ten motherfuckers, hard as fucking nails, everybody got

131
00:10:15.000 --> 00:10:20.360
immediately serious. Immediately, hard as
nails did not fucking around nobody around.

132
00:10:20.679 --> 00:10:22.480
Could you tell us a little bit
about like your first ODA, like any

133
00:10:22.639 --> 00:10:26.240
any real world missions you may have
gotten, or even training missions that stand

134
00:10:26.279 --> 00:10:31.840
out in your mind? Oh what
stands? God, there's so many.

135
00:10:35.399 --> 00:10:37.639
I hate to talk about my first
team because some of the stuff I could

136
00:10:37.759 --> 00:10:41.279
say I really don't want to say. I mean, let's do a lot

137
00:10:41.279 --> 00:10:45.840
of stuff. We went to Europe, went to after We got to do

138
00:10:45.919 --> 00:10:50.120
a lot of shit. It was
fun, someone was training, some was

139
00:10:50.240 --> 00:10:54.559
kind of you can Sometimes it was
like you couldn't run. There was like

140
00:10:54.639 --> 00:10:58.000
a gray area between training and real
world. If you understand what I'm saying,

141
00:10:58.759 --> 00:11:03.440
You like, you drop a couple
of guys or a few guys off

142
00:11:03.480 --> 00:11:05.919
of the middle of nowhere on a
runway in Sudan. Happen to me,

143
00:11:07.639 --> 00:11:11.879
and you know, you kind of
kind of have a mission you kind of

144
00:11:11.919 --> 00:11:15.879
don't, you know. But there
you are, the Chinese are controlling the

145
00:11:15.919 --> 00:11:20.159
airfield. There's things all around you, and you got a little a little

146
00:11:20.200 --> 00:11:24.279
tent and a couple dage hanging around
there, and you know, like,

147
00:11:24.639 --> 00:11:28.639
what the fuck are we supposed to
be doing there? So we just fucked

148
00:11:28.679 --> 00:11:33.240
around a lot, you know it
was fun. It was really fun.

149
00:11:33.919 --> 00:11:37.960
We had the best times back then
because they're just as long as you did

150
00:11:39.039 --> 00:11:41.919
your job, you could really get
away with a ton of shit. It

151
00:11:43.000 --> 00:11:46.559
didn't have to feel it was fun, you know, And it was all

152
00:11:46.879 --> 00:11:52.720
such a learning experience, it really
was. We were very fortunate to have

153
00:11:52.159 --> 00:11:58.440
such a good learning experience, you
know. It was just totally awesome.

154
00:12:00.120 --> 00:12:03.039
What came after that first? Oh
da? Then what was the next one

155
00:12:03.080 --> 00:12:09.159
you landed at? Well, I
think, let's see, I came,

156
00:12:09.639 --> 00:12:15.840
I went onto my first SPEEDCAP project. I think after that, what's speedcap?

157
00:12:18.320 --> 00:12:22.559
I guess a covert project or something. I don't know, very classified,

158
00:12:24.759 --> 00:12:26.159
that's all. I can't explain it. I don't know what it means.

159
00:12:26.600 --> 00:12:31.000
Special category, I think is what. Okay, I don't know what

160
00:12:31.120 --> 00:12:33.679
it means. Well, what was
the gist of that? Long hairs in

161
00:12:33.759 --> 00:12:39.600
stain clothes and go receipts? You
know, And it was a blast.

162
00:12:39.960 --> 00:12:41.519
We had a great time. But
we had a mission. As long as

163
00:12:41.799 --> 00:12:46.320
as we did the mission, as
long as we you know, kept our

164
00:12:46.360 --> 00:12:50.360
ship together, we were good to
go and we could get away with doing

165
00:12:50.559 --> 00:12:56.039
you know this or that. This
was the RST mission. No, I

166
00:12:56.080 --> 00:13:00.399
don't think, so I don't know
what that stands. I think it was

167
00:13:00.519 --> 00:13:03.960
regional survey teams and like three seven
had one. They were like one of

168
00:13:05.000 --> 00:13:09.480
the early ones. But when you
say like long hair doing intelligence workplaces,

169
00:13:09.519 --> 00:13:16.720
it sounds similar to that early like
like I don't remember that codin I don't

170
00:13:16.720 --> 00:13:20.519
remember those remember it's been a long
time. I don't remember those briefs.

171
00:13:22.519 --> 00:13:28.039
But we had like two oh das
combined together. And as a matter of

172
00:13:28.080 --> 00:13:30.840
fact, I'm still in touch with
a couple of guys. They're really good

173
00:13:30.919 --> 00:13:35.039
guys, Clyde Dogherty and Gordy hop
On. I've been in touch with those

174
00:13:35.120 --> 00:13:39.159
guys recently. Unfortunately, again it
comes back to the cancer shit. That's

175
00:13:41.919 --> 00:13:50.600
sorry, but yeah, yeah,
you know, one time I went to

176
00:13:50.559 --> 00:13:54.919
Jeordian. We thought somebody we did
all this cool shit. We thought somebody

177
00:13:54.159 --> 00:13:58.559
was following us around or something,
and I ended up buying a plane ticket

178
00:14:00.080 --> 00:14:03.039
to go back home and back then
he use cash, you know, to

179
00:14:03.120 --> 00:14:07.159
buy plane tickets. You went to
travel agencies and I get on this fucking

180
00:14:07.240 --> 00:14:13.679
fight man, and just like maybe
a couple hours after it started going,

181
00:14:13.039 --> 00:14:16.679
I don't think anybody else was with
me. I don't remember anybody else being

182
00:14:16.799 --> 00:14:20.759
with me on that trip. All
of a sudden, I hear we're descending

183
00:14:20.759 --> 00:14:26.679
it into Damascus. I'm like what. Back then, we were not friends

184
00:14:26.759 --> 00:14:31.840
with Syria. They were not buddies
of bars. And I was just like,

185
00:14:31.000 --> 00:14:35.519
what the fuck? So the travel
lady had given me a flight that

186
00:14:35.679 --> 00:14:39.639
stopped in Damascus on the way to
New York City. I couldn't believe it.

187
00:14:39.759 --> 00:14:43.080
I was scared. Chillis and made
us get off the plane and made

188
00:14:43.159 --> 00:14:48.159
us sit in the in the lounge
area, and some dudes in plane clothes

189
00:14:48.240 --> 00:14:52.480
were going around looking at passports,
and despite my obvious white boy look,

190
00:14:52.720 --> 00:14:56.320
they did not come over to me. I don't know what they were.

191
00:14:56.360 --> 00:15:01.840
You traveling on a US government passport? Yeah? Yeah, so you're not

192
00:15:01.879 --> 00:15:09.679
going to hide that. No,
And we had a really stupid plane cover

193
00:15:09.879 --> 00:15:15.360
story. Did uh? Did you
do a lot of a lot of missions

194
00:15:15.440 --> 00:15:18.919
like that around that time, going
like by yourself or onesies and twosies.

195
00:15:18.200 --> 00:15:22.480
I did do a ton of onesies
jack in my career, especially in the

196
00:15:22.559 --> 00:15:26.600
Pacific. That's why, as I
told you, I think before the started,

197
00:15:26.679 --> 00:15:31.720
I looked, I sat down down. I deployed over thirty countries in

198
00:15:31.840 --> 00:15:35.799
my career, several of them multiple
times in the Pacific. In particular,

199
00:15:37.120 --> 00:15:41.000
I helped start up the d mining
program in Louns, helped start up the

200
00:15:41.279 --> 00:15:46.519
mining program in Cambodia before I turned
the loaded first group, and then I

201
00:15:46.639 --> 00:15:50.240
did a shipload at onesies to some
really fucking interesting places, some of them

202
00:15:50.360 --> 00:15:56.240
not so cool, like Cambodi was
not cool. The communities were still there.

203
00:15:56.720 --> 00:16:00.639
We were out in the middle of
nowhere with a bunch of Cambodians,

204
00:16:00.759 --> 00:16:06.000
just me and a Mutch Cambodians,
and you know, there was gunfight's going

205
00:16:06.080 --> 00:16:11.919
on somewhere around this but whatever.
And then what was the other one was

206
00:16:11.759 --> 00:16:17.600
Sri Lanka. There's a war going
on there, bombings. I was there

207
00:16:17.679 --> 00:16:23.000
by myself. I just want to
think of other places in the Pacific.

208
00:16:23.559 --> 00:16:29.639
I can't think of a well,
I mean, well's let's jump right into

209
00:16:29.879 --> 00:16:33.200
I mean, what were you doing
in Cambodia. Hey, guys, it's

210
00:16:33.320 --> 00:16:36.159
Jack. I just wanted to talk
to you today about a way that you

211
00:16:36.240 --> 00:16:40.679
can help support the podcast. If
you're not already, we would really appreciate

212
00:16:40.759 --> 00:16:44.720
it if you guys went and reviewed
us on Apple or Spotify. Those reviews

213
00:16:44.799 --> 00:16:48.320
really help people find the podcast and
help it get recognized, and you know,

214
00:16:48.360 --> 00:16:52.840
if you've been enjoying the show,
we really appreciate your support. Another

215
00:16:52.919 --> 00:16:56.799
thing that you can do to support
the channel is to become a Patreon member.

216
00:16:57.159 --> 00:17:02.679
So we have Patreon memberships started just
five dollars a month, and when

217
00:17:02.720 --> 00:17:06.480
you sign up, you get access
to all of our episodes add free.

218
00:17:07.079 --> 00:17:10.079
That's the big bonus for that.
I mean, we also do some Patreon

219
00:17:10.160 --> 00:17:15.480
bonus episodes for our subscribers, but
this is the biggest and best way that

220
00:17:15.559 --> 00:17:21.279
you can support the Teamhouse channel and
podcast if you'd like to, and we

221
00:17:21.440 --> 00:17:23.839
really appreciate that, So go and
check us out at patreon dot com.

222
00:17:25.000 --> 00:17:32.119
Slash the Teamhouse Caimbody was the Dean
mining program, so it was really interesting

223
00:17:33.720 --> 00:17:37.720
and especially with Loolence. I'll probably
confuse some of what happened within one country

224
00:17:37.799 --> 00:17:41.279
and the other because they happened simultaneously. But one time I can remember coming

225
00:17:41.319 --> 00:17:47.839
out of the embassy with their helicopter
going on survey mission up in the mountains

226
00:17:48.279 --> 00:17:52.160
and we were spitting closed. But
we got off the helicopter and some really

227
00:17:52.279 --> 00:17:55.440
old dude came up to us and
said in English, he said, I'm

228
00:17:55.519 --> 00:18:02.319
not seen a soldier since Vietnam War. I was like, damn, so

229
00:18:02.480 --> 00:18:06.640
those dudes were up there, our
precursor guys were up in the middle of

230
00:18:06.759 --> 00:18:11.079
nowhere and looser Cambodia, you know, and this didn't remember them. And

231
00:18:11.200 --> 00:18:14.880
this is in the nineteen eighties,
I take it. Yeah, yeah,

232
00:18:15.160 --> 00:18:18.799
the nineties maybe, and I think
it was the nineties really. And then

233
00:18:19.079 --> 00:18:26.279
another time a league walked up to
us holding a UXO and handed it to

234
00:18:26.480 --> 00:18:30.920
me. I was like, okay, yeah, so I just walk real

235
00:18:32.079 --> 00:18:36.680
slow to the to the edge of
the bill and put it down and marked

236
00:18:36.720 --> 00:18:41.880
it and left a slip. Fuck
man. But the problem was, dude,

237
00:18:41.279 --> 00:18:48.000
we left some insane amount of UXO
in Laos and Cambody. We carved

238
00:18:48.200 --> 00:18:52.039
bombed those fucking countries. And that's
when the CBU first came out, and

239
00:18:52.200 --> 00:18:56.119
they threw these springs out and shit. And if you touch them or removed

240
00:18:56.160 --> 00:18:59.480
them, or if the kids picked
them up, they'd go off. They

241
00:18:59.519 --> 00:19:04.359
were they had a huge Doug rate, what thirty or maybe worse a doug

242
00:19:04.440 --> 00:19:08.839
rate of those things, but they
would still go off oftentimes when you picked

243
00:19:08.839 --> 00:19:12.880
them up. I could relate to
it because I could remember one morning and

244
00:19:14.000 --> 00:19:18.240
desert some them waking up after a
movement at night, being in the middle

245
00:19:18.400 --> 00:19:22.960
of a field of uxocbus. Same
thing. You know, they were still

246
00:19:23.119 --> 00:19:30.079
dropping them duds all over the place
during the Gulf War. And then what

247
00:19:30.200 --> 00:19:33.960
about Sri Lanka, I mean with
the Tamil Tigers. There was a pretty

248
00:19:33.960 --> 00:19:37.319
hot war going on there, you
know, in the into the nineties,

249
00:19:37.000 --> 00:19:42.880
that's right, So in Sri Lanka. Yeah, so when we got when

250
00:19:42.920 --> 00:19:47.440
I got to those countries, I
was supposed to the first thing I was

251
00:19:47.480 --> 00:19:52.960
supposed to do was link up with
the defense attest shack and some at most

252
00:19:53.039 --> 00:20:00.200
every country had a defense attests shame
some didn't, but most of them were

253
00:20:00.240 --> 00:20:04.680
fairly involved. I can remember the
Syrian Lanka at that shape. He introduced

254
00:20:04.759 --> 00:20:08.720
me to the He brought the Syrian
Lankan army guy and he introduced me,

255
00:20:10.000 --> 00:20:12.880
and then he wouldn't leave the embassy. I had to fly out into the

256
00:20:12.960 --> 00:20:18.720
field with this guy. Way up
north. There's a pencil up there in

257
00:20:18.720 --> 00:20:22.640
an island where the war was going
on with the tigers. It was isolated

258
00:20:22.640 --> 00:20:26.079
as ion was cut off and I
had to fly all the way up there

259
00:20:26.119 --> 00:20:30.799
with this dude in a Soviet in
my seventeen or something, something that feels

260
00:20:30.839 --> 00:20:33.200
like it's going to break down every
second, uh, you know, and

261
00:20:33.279 --> 00:20:38.160
there was an active war and gold
uh you know, and there was hope

262
00:20:38.240 --> 00:20:44.240
things go well, right? What
was your mission like reconnaissance at that point,

263
00:20:44.920 --> 00:20:49.640
Yeah, reconnaissance to trying to understand
what value added train could we could

264
00:20:49.720 --> 00:20:55.160
bring to them to help them beat
the meals. That was we were figuring

265
00:20:55.160 --> 00:20:59.680
it out. But that's fascinating because
the dovetails with what others have told me

266
00:20:59.799 --> 00:21:03.000
that around like I guess ninety four
or so, there was a classified MTT

267
00:21:03.519 --> 00:21:07.799
or you know, foreign internal defense
mission to Sri Lanka. The first group

268
00:21:07.880 --> 00:21:11.319
did well. I hope that was
the result of what I found out.

269
00:21:11.359 --> 00:21:14.680
I don't know about it, but
I hope I helped them. What were

270
00:21:14.759 --> 00:21:18.319
your conclusions from your time there?
They needed help from the ground up while

271
00:21:18.359 --> 00:21:22.039
their see it was worn out and
beat up. They need a lot of

272
00:21:22.000 --> 00:21:26.480
money for weapons and stuff. But
they also needed training our country train that

273
00:21:26.599 --> 00:21:30.119
we could give. And so I
imagine that's probably what the first guys did,

274
00:21:30.279 --> 00:21:36.880
was trying them training them up because
they basically didn't really have any training.

275
00:21:36.960 --> 00:21:40.200
I don't know who originally trained the
Syrians. It must have been the

276
00:21:40.279 --> 00:21:44.519
Russians because they had Russian equipment probably
yeah, yeah, you know, I

277
00:21:44.559 --> 00:21:48.079
don't know, but they were very
happy to see a mean and hoping the

278
00:21:48.200 --> 00:21:52.400
more become. So I'm glad to
hear something else came. Yeah. Yeah,

279
00:21:52.440 --> 00:21:56.319
they did send oda's and seals to
do that. Yeah. Not too

280
00:21:56.359 --> 00:22:00.119
many people know about that mission to
this day. Yeah. Well, I'm

281
00:22:00.160 --> 00:22:04.480
glad they did because the to meals. Not only were they and it was

282
00:22:04.599 --> 00:22:10.759
like World War two trench fight and
obviously walking through these trenches, but this

283
00:22:10.960 --> 00:22:15.799
ship man. But in addition to
that, they were doing suicide bombings in

284
00:22:15.880 --> 00:22:18.920
the town and that was fucked up. As a matter of fact, they

285
00:22:18.000 --> 00:22:22.640
blew up the hotel I usually stayed
in, but fortunately that wasn't there.

286
00:22:25.079 --> 00:22:27.039
But yeah, they had a lot
of suicide bombers there. I think,

287
00:22:27.119 --> 00:22:30.839
if memory serves, I think that
Tamil Tigers may have been the first to

288
00:22:30.960 --> 00:22:36.200
use female suicide bombers. I think
so too. Yeah, I may need

289
00:22:36.279 --> 00:22:40.640
to fact check that, but I
think that's that was the case. Yeah,

290
00:22:40.720 --> 00:22:44.319
that was before we were seeing suicide
bombers in the Middle East. They

291
00:22:44.720 --> 00:22:48.920
they were, they were the leaders
in that suicide bombing bullshit. As far

292
00:22:48.960 --> 00:22:52.680
as I know. Yeah, so
I know we're jumping around a little bit.

293
00:22:52.720 --> 00:22:56.680
But so you start off in fifth
group, and then where did you

294
00:22:56.880 --> 00:23:03.680
end up after that? Well,
so I was on to see the the

295
00:23:03.799 --> 00:23:07.880
classified operation, but then I mean, what was kind of the next landing

296
00:23:07.960 --> 00:23:14.599
spot for you? I went to
first? After that, I was going

297
00:23:14.640 --> 00:23:17.720
to tell you something that will get
me in trouble, but don't. Yeah,

298
00:23:17.839 --> 00:23:18.599
tell me the thing, tell me
the thing that's going to get you

299
00:23:18.680 --> 00:23:30.440
in trouble. Never mind. So
after it was over, a few of

300
00:23:30.519 --> 00:23:33.039
us got the opportunities to pick where
they wanted to go. And I've been

301
00:23:33.119 --> 00:23:37.839
in fifth group I think like twelve
years or something by then, so it's

302
00:23:37.880 --> 00:23:40.599
like, let me go check out
first food. So yeah, they sent

303
00:23:40.680 --> 00:23:42.880
me out the first group. When
I got to go out there and check

304
00:23:42.960 --> 00:23:47.559
out the Pacific, I did a
couple of deployments, you know, it's

305
00:23:47.680 --> 00:23:56.079
regular couple goals and that bullshit over
the Highlands and a couple other places.

306
00:23:56.720 --> 00:24:00.480
I can't remember where they were,
but it wasn't much. It was just

307
00:24:00.599 --> 00:24:03.200
it was good stuck though, I
mean, your regular stuff. It's all

308
00:24:03.279 --> 00:24:07.400
good. This is what a lot
of these guys from GA are gonna need

309
00:24:07.519 --> 00:24:12.640
to relearn I think is that you
may not like it. You may not

310
00:24:14.079 --> 00:24:18.359
think or think it's cool or sexy. You may not think you UW is

311
00:24:18.440 --> 00:24:21.559
core sexy. But let me tell
you something. That's our core mission.

312
00:24:22.640 --> 00:24:26.720
That's a mission of special forces and
more the ones that are supposed to be

313
00:24:26.799 --> 00:24:30.039
the expert at that. And if
we don't watch out, people are gonna

314
00:24:30.079 --> 00:24:33.119
take that away from us too.
I already saw before I even left,

315
00:24:33.160 --> 00:24:37.359
I already saw the TAG started to
take it, you know, And you

316
00:24:37.440 --> 00:24:40.160
know, and that's not cool.
That's our mission, not the CAGs fucking

317
00:24:40.200 --> 00:24:44.920
mission. Yeah, whenever they get
bored, they kind of snatch whatever FID

318
00:24:45.000 --> 00:24:49.200
mission they think is the sexiest and
do that. But and now there's also

319
00:24:49.279 --> 00:24:53.559
the s FAB right that does uh
And that was Mark Millie's brainchild. Yeah,

320
00:24:53.599 --> 00:24:56.240
I know, but at the time
you needed it, you know,

321
00:24:57.279 --> 00:25:03.440
Yeah, the war was yeah,
yeah, yeah, you know. Just

322
00:25:03.519 --> 00:25:04.799
because I like, no, it
doesn't mean I agree with that. I

323
00:25:04.880 --> 00:25:11.920
got mixed. I understand you're right, but I mean you're you're directionally right.

324
00:25:11.039 --> 00:25:15.200
And just to point that out to
listeners that with two wars going on,

325
00:25:15.839 --> 00:25:21.000
there was so much FID to be
done that they needed the conventional force

326
00:25:21.119 --> 00:25:23.440
to come in and help out with
that. And even before the s FAB

327
00:25:23.559 --> 00:25:26.799
existed, I mean, it was
just like a mission that would get thrown

328
00:25:26.880 --> 00:25:30.519
to like a field artillery unit or
an MP unit, like, oh go

329
00:25:30.680 --> 00:25:33.720
train these iraqis crazy. They didn't
have they weren't receiving the Americans, weren't

330
00:25:33.720 --> 00:25:38.200
receiving any sort of like foreign internal
defense training. So I mean it made

331
00:25:38.319 --> 00:25:41.079
sense to formalize it, I guess. I mean, I'm just trying to

332
00:25:41.079 --> 00:25:45.720
speak to both sides of that argument
before. I yeah, and I really

333
00:25:45.839 --> 00:25:52.079
think we need as Special Force soldiers
to embrace the mission and show the order

334
00:25:52.119 --> 00:25:56.559
the best and not let these guys
take it away from this. They're supposed

335
00:25:56.559 --> 00:25:59.440
to be the best at what they
do. We're not supposed to be the

336
00:25:59.480 --> 00:26:03.000
best at what they do. We're
supposed to be able to do it proficiently,

337
00:26:03.559 --> 00:26:06.920
but we're not supposed to. We
are supposed to be the best,

338
00:26:07.440 --> 00:26:11.000
So prove it and they won't be
given the mission to somebody else. Right,

339
00:26:11.400 --> 00:26:14.880
And they're fun good missions. They
really can be. It's all what

340
00:26:15.000 --> 00:26:18.240
you make of them, right,
and can have a huge impact as long

341
00:26:18.240 --> 00:26:22.000
as you find a vable partner.
Well, yeah, and what you talked

342
00:26:22.000 --> 00:26:26.279
about about Sri Lanka. Proves it
right there, right, we'll passing it

343
00:26:26.359 --> 00:26:30.200
on to people. It has a
good effect. That's what we're supposed to

344
00:26:30.240 --> 00:26:36.599
do around the world. So first
group, I mean, it sounds like

345
00:26:36.640 --> 00:26:38.079
you were having a pretty good time
over there. I mean there are other

346
00:26:38.440 --> 00:26:44.240
any other missions or any other ops
or anything else that like really stands out

347
00:26:44.319 --> 00:26:47.480
that you think we should highlight here. Well, yeah, that's why I

348
00:26:47.519 --> 00:26:51.559
went on soockpack, you know,
because I knew there was a lot going

349
00:26:51.640 --> 00:26:55.920
on out there. Let me grab
my phone. Sorry, I wrote,

350
00:26:56.480 --> 00:27:03.400
I wrote down to these countries and
they're job memory. Sorry, did I

351
00:27:03.480 --> 00:27:07.359
get all tilted? No? I
got you. Just give me one second,

352
00:27:07.440 --> 00:27:15.400
Jack. So well, here's a
good example that was even earlier was

353
00:27:15.599 --> 00:27:22.599
Urgent Fury. So after Urgent Fury
was over, we got to fifth group.

354
00:27:22.680 --> 00:27:26.759
Teams got to go down there and
spend other I think some guys to

355
00:27:26.480 --> 00:27:32.960
got to go down there and do
FID missions afterwards. And oh yeah,

356
00:27:33.039 --> 00:27:40.119
totally. So almost every major island
in that chain down there had a Special

357
00:27:40.200 --> 00:27:44.200
Forces team or two teams on the
island for the last six months or maybe

358
00:27:44.319 --> 00:27:48.559
longer, I don't know, and
we would train in my example uh.

359
00:27:49.079 --> 00:27:53.160
We took two scuba teams from Fifth
Group down to an island called Saint Kits

360
00:27:53.799 --> 00:27:56.839
and they only had a police force, they did not have a military,

361
00:27:57.599 --> 00:28:03.160
So we were given the weapons and
equipment to re equip them and train them

362
00:28:03.400 --> 00:28:08.960
to become a military force to protect
their island. If the same thing happened

363
00:28:10.400 --> 00:28:15.279
on Saint Kits that happened in Grenada. Because Saint Kitts, I think it's

364
00:28:15.319 --> 00:28:21.240
even geographically close to the United States, then then Grenada was and they really

365
00:28:21.279 --> 00:28:25.960
could not put up a defence against
anybody if they came in there and tried

366
00:28:26.000 --> 00:28:27.799
to take over and put in a
few weapons in there like they did in

367
00:28:27.880 --> 00:28:37.359
Grenada right earlier wherever they but yeah, yeah, and then there were fears

368
00:28:37.400 --> 00:28:38.880
that they would do that in Grenada, I guess exactly. There were fears

369
00:28:38.960 --> 00:28:41.880
they would do in Grenada. And
they had a lot of people on the

370
00:28:41.960 --> 00:28:48.079
ground and kind of heavy weaponry unbelieve
on the ground there too. So yeah,

371
00:28:48.160 --> 00:28:51.400
that was really cool. That was
a fun mission. Like once every

372
00:28:51.480 --> 00:28:56.680
week or two, C one thirty
would make like two loops around the island

373
00:28:56.839 --> 00:29:00.400
so we would know he was there
and then we would I were the runway

374
00:29:00.839 --> 00:29:06.440
he would hot offload a bunch of
shit and we'd take it and it would

375
00:29:06.480 --> 00:29:14.720
be filled with tons of stuff,
training gear, weapons, ammunition, beer.

376
00:29:15.079 --> 00:29:18.240
The first day we got there,
we went to their arms room and

377
00:29:18.319 --> 00:29:23.839
a spilbdanga completely. You couldn't put
any weapons in there because there was too

378
00:29:23.920 --> 00:29:33.200
much weed. I'm pretty positive that
the government was involved in a you know,

379
00:29:33.680 --> 00:29:38.319
drug smuggling business. I think that's
a fair assumption. Yeah, it

380
00:29:38.480 --> 00:29:44.440
was pretty point. That was very
laid back and you know, maybe a

381
00:29:44.480 --> 00:29:47.880
little too laid back sometimes, but
it was a good It was a good

382
00:29:47.920 --> 00:29:52.200
example of a mission. It was
the opposite, i'd say, of Sri

383
00:29:52.359 --> 00:29:56.680
Lanka as far as being laid back. It was if they're on the opposite

384
00:29:56.759 --> 00:30:00.720
ends of the spectrum. But that's
a good examp ample, you know,

385
00:30:00.880 --> 00:30:06.920
of a mission that we did.
You know, it came on he let

386
00:30:06.960 --> 00:30:17.039
me look at my country list mm
hm, Fiji, Tongda. Those were

387
00:30:17.079 --> 00:30:22.799
all trained, trained the military and
Fiji. I remember going there and uh

388
00:30:23.000 --> 00:30:27.839
I met up with the Atja.
He actually participated this time, and uh

389
00:30:27.960 --> 00:30:33.160
we got in the helicopter and we
flew out in the milanoa in the jungle

390
00:30:33.839 --> 00:30:37.200
and we ended up where people were
wearing fucking robes. I mean, you

391
00:30:37.279 --> 00:30:41.680
know, one coss and shit like
you know, way back in the day,

392
00:30:42.319 --> 00:30:45.319
and we ended up in their long
house, you know, drinking cob

393
00:30:45.440 --> 00:30:48.799
but which they think makes them drunk. It's ridiculous. It doesn't make it

394
00:30:48.920 --> 00:30:53.400
drunk. And we sit there for
hours while they're doing their little ceremony,

395
00:30:55.319 --> 00:30:59.440
uh you know, and we laid
the ground and work for the guys from

396
00:30:59.480 --> 00:31:03.519
first to come in hopefully. I
don't know if they did, but we

397
00:31:03.920 --> 00:31:06.680
sent back you know, what they
could use and do, so you're right.

398
00:31:06.720 --> 00:31:11.680
It was kind of like a recond
like yeah, yeah, you know,

399
00:31:11.799 --> 00:31:18.519
one man pol team. But anyway, so that was a really good

400
00:31:18.599 --> 00:31:23.160
one. I'm wanted to a couple
more sells. That was really interesting.

401
00:31:23.680 --> 00:31:30.440
Yeah, Safells are like off the
coast of Africa more than a more than

402
00:31:30.559 --> 00:31:34.920
anywhere else. It's it's a Pacific
island, but it's closer to Africa.

403
00:31:36.480 --> 00:31:40.000
Go ahead, right, I was
just gonna say, I mean alongside major

404
00:31:40.119 --> 00:31:45.359
international shipping routes through the sea,
and occasionally a coup attempt happens there and

405
00:31:45.480 --> 00:31:51.759
we definitely didn't want the Soviets controlling
that island chain, that's right. So

406
00:31:52.119 --> 00:31:56.039
that was the really interesting one because
when I got there that time, a

407
00:31:56.160 --> 00:32:01.599
group commander met me there. That
tells there were taking this and so the

408
00:32:01.680 --> 00:32:06.400
group commander, I can't say his
name, but whatever, me and him

409
00:32:06.480 --> 00:32:12.119
were there and we planned out the
mission to follow on. When we started

410
00:32:12.160 --> 00:32:15.759
playing the mission to follow on about
how they're going to manage the say Sells.

411
00:32:15.160 --> 00:32:20.200
I don't know what the follow up
ended up being. Jack. That

412
00:32:20.359 --> 00:32:23.839
was the problem with my job was
I never knew what happened downstream for whatever

413
00:32:24.000 --> 00:32:30.960
reason. But they considered the Says
a super important place at that time,

414
00:32:30.119 --> 00:32:37.240
and you're right geographically, and the
Russians were all over the place, and

415
00:32:37.680 --> 00:32:43.160
Eric Prince was I don't think it
was there back then, but Eric Prince

416
00:32:43.319 --> 00:32:50.920
definitely found a place to hang out
there later on. Have you heard anything

417
00:32:50.960 --> 00:32:57.680
about anybody going to say Shall as
far as like an sf MTT or something.

418
00:32:57.799 --> 00:33:00.079
No, I don't believe I have. I'd have to dig I've heard

419
00:33:00.519 --> 00:33:05.279
in more recent years in the two
thousands and the Mall Dives. Yeah,

420
00:33:05.480 --> 00:33:07.599
yeah, there you go. So
in the nineties I went to the Mall

421
00:33:07.680 --> 00:33:14.039
Dives and that was a really interesting
place too. And again another one man,

422
00:33:14.799 --> 00:33:19.599
uh there was I don't think there
was an embassy there. There was

423
00:33:19.680 --> 00:33:22.640
some American who met me. There
might be a councilor there or something.

424
00:33:22.759 --> 00:33:25.640
But you got in the Mall Dives. You got to go everywhere by boat.

425
00:33:27.440 --> 00:33:30.759
You get from literally, Yeah,
the airport's and an island, and

426
00:33:30.880 --> 00:33:37.039
the capitals in the Hotel I Stadium
was an island. It was really funny.

427
00:33:37.000 --> 00:33:39.880
But the thing that sticks out in
my mind that was funny about the

428
00:33:39.960 --> 00:33:45.359
Mall Dives and it should be geographically
important because that's where climate change is gonna

429
00:33:45.400 --> 00:33:50.759
sink. That's the first country it's
gonna sink and climate change. To set

430
00:33:50.839 --> 00:33:53.799
up the target range, we had
to put the targets in a boat and

431
00:33:54.079 --> 00:33:59.480
pull them out off shore, and
they have to fire at targets and then

432
00:33:59.559 --> 00:34:04.240
bring them go back to see how
well they hid in that party. I

433
00:34:04.319 --> 00:34:09.480
mean, martsmanship turning would have taken
days or weeks because of that. So

434
00:34:09.599 --> 00:34:15.559
they've gone back there now, h
you know, in the two thousands,

435
00:34:15.559 --> 00:34:19.440
and I'm trying to remember the exact
story, but we had a team there

436
00:34:19.480 --> 00:34:22.639
when there was like a little coup
going on and we had to evacuate the

437
00:34:22.719 --> 00:34:25.920
team off the island. I want
to say it was the mal Dives.

438
00:34:27.000 --> 00:34:31.440
I interviewed a first GROOP officer about
it, but my memory may be a

439
00:34:31.480 --> 00:34:38.039
little bit faulty. Yeah, they
only had a police force too, but

440
00:34:38.159 --> 00:34:42.639
they couldn't have a coup. Who
knows, I don't know. You know,

441
00:34:42.840 --> 00:34:47.719
everybody has a coup, don't in
those places. Yeah, let's see

442
00:34:47.880 --> 00:34:54.360
once, Oh, Indonesia, that's
a big one. So I named Initial

443
00:34:55.519 --> 00:35:02.079
Contact in Indonesia. Now there's a
fantastic shake. Was deeply involved in Indonesia

444
00:35:02.159 --> 00:35:07.119
because there was a huge I forget
the name of the programs of the military

445
00:35:07.159 --> 00:35:10.760
equipment programs, like the twelve o
eight, twelve oh six programs exactly.

446
00:35:12.079 --> 00:35:15.320
They were huge. We were dumping
military equipment and money on Indonesia like it

447
00:35:15.440 --> 00:35:19.400
was the end of the world.
And let me tell you something, dude.

448
00:35:19.960 --> 00:35:22.320
And I think there's probably some CAG
guys and other people that all tested

449
00:35:22.400 --> 00:35:27.440
us too. I think the Indonesian
Special Forces that are among the best that

450
00:35:27.599 --> 00:35:30.559
I've come across, I really do. And I know they've been trained by

451
00:35:30.679 --> 00:35:37.800
TAG two in addition to us.
So what happened was the Prime Minister or

452
00:35:37.840 --> 00:35:42.440
president whatever he was, his son
was the head of the special forces.

453
00:35:42.519 --> 00:35:45.159
Now I know it sounds like nepotism. But he was a badass on his

454
00:35:45.280 --> 00:35:52.079
own and their unit there are copasuits
they were called. There were badasses of

455
00:35:52.199 --> 00:35:55.320
their own Cordinale that we gave them
lots of additional training. We did not

456
00:35:55.559 --> 00:36:00.599
want things to go south in Indonesia
because it's a very you know, between

457
00:36:00.840 --> 00:36:08.400
China and Australia. I believe in
the Australian Says does their own training missions

458
00:36:08.480 --> 00:36:13.719
in Indonesia and and actually interestingly they've
also taken up a lot of stuff in

459
00:36:13.760 --> 00:36:20.119
the Philippines too. Oh the Australian
essays. Yeah, one of the guys

460
00:36:20.159 --> 00:36:23.039
that I had an exchange guy on
my team in First Food from and we're

461
00:36:23.079 --> 00:36:30.280
still friends. From the Australian Essays, he became the regimental major of the

462
00:36:30.480 --> 00:36:37.039
essays. Really good guy, Gary
Kingston. What was what was your experience

463
00:36:37.199 --> 00:36:40.239
in Indonesia? Like, so I
got to go there, I want to

464
00:36:40.360 --> 00:36:46.039
say eight times. Probably what happened
was the commander took our liking to me

465
00:36:46.280 --> 00:36:51.920
forever reason and you know that actually
goes then he starts asking for me by

466
00:36:52.079 --> 00:36:55.760
name whatever, And so I kept
going over there and he treated me like

467
00:36:55.840 --> 00:37:00.639
I can't give him my own little
hud food may. I mean it was

468
00:37:00.760 --> 00:37:05.679
great, you know, and it
helped, you know, me understand their

469
00:37:05.760 --> 00:37:09.039
mission more and help me understand how
we could help them more. Having this

470
00:37:09.239 --> 00:37:14.440
relationship and soock Pack is like,
yeah, go back and forth as much

471
00:37:14.440 --> 00:37:19.320
as you want, you know.
The one thing good thing about Soockpack and

472
00:37:19.559 --> 00:37:22.280
those socks had basically just started up. I don't even think there were other

473
00:37:22.440 --> 00:37:27.199
socks besides Soockpack. I know sod
Pack might have been the first one.

474
00:37:28.000 --> 00:37:30.159
I know, there was, no
I don't think there was any other ones.

475
00:37:30.199 --> 00:37:35.239
There might have been, but I
don't think so. But the first

476
00:37:35.320 --> 00:37:43.559
commander was General Hand who was became
so Calm Commander. I believe he was

477
00:37:43.639 --> 00:37:46.840
an Air Force pilot and he was
a one star when I was there,

478
00:37:47.280 --> 00:37:51.559
and he loved SF guys and he
was like, you guys, do what

479
00:37:51.760 --> 00:37:53.679
you want to do, do what
you need, spend what you gotta spend.

480
00:37:54.239 --> 00:37:58.880
And he would go up to you
know, pay Calm and get the

481
00:37:58.960 --> 00:38:02.400
money that we needed and get the
permissions. You know. He was a

482
00:38:02.599 --> 00:38:08.159
really really good commander. So it
sounds like the you know, so it

483
00:38:08.199 --> 00:38:13.320
would have been the t sock for
pay Coon, uh that they were really

484
00:38:13.360 --> 00:38:16.199
into you like, just going over
there and building rapport. Yes, totally,

485
00:38:16.599 --> 00:38:21.039
they got it. They totally got
it. That's why I ended up

486
00:38:21.079 --> 00:38:25.199
going so many countries, like for
the Cambodia thing. I ended up getting

487
00:38:25.199 --> 00:38:32.679
a huge United Nations award for me
ANDSUS for PECON for starting those programs.

488
00:38:34.159 --> 00:38:37.119
It was a big deal man.
Yeah, of course, of course I

489
00:38:37.239 --> 00:38:40.599
lost the work somewhere in the box. It was a big deal then and

490
00:38:40.719 --> 00:38:47.000
I remember it nowhere. But yeah, yeah, he totally was into supporting

491
00:38:47.079 --> 00:38:53.679
special forces, which which was really
really good. So yeah, that was

492
00:38:53.760 --> 00:38:59.079
Indonesia. They continued to build our
military. Now. I don't know the

493
00:38:59.159 --> 00:39:05.199
situation. You heard anything about guys
going there recently. I haven't heard anything

494
00:39:05.199 --> 00:39:08.719
about Americans going there, And I
mean that doesn't mean anything. It certainly

495
00:39:08.760 --> 00:39:12.719
could be happening, and I just
it hasn't popped up on my radar.

496
00:39:13.320 --> 00:39:19.199
Yeah, I hope they're going because
those guys are good. Thailand, you

497
00:39:19.280 --> 00:39:22.400
know, I went there ten times
or whatever in the same moment. I

498
00:39:22.480 --> 00:39:27.320
mean, Thailand, I don't know
what to say about it. It's a

499
00:39:27.360 --> 00:39:30.599
good country. It's the same training
evolution over and over every years. Exactly.

500
00:39:31.400 --> 00:39:35.840
You need to do it once you
do. It's important to do it

501
00:39:36.000 --> 00:39:39.199
once. The first time I did
it, it was really interesting. We

502
00:39:39.320 --> 00:39:45.199
went up in the mountains and we
went to an old American base that nobody

503
00:39:45.239 --> 00:39:46.679
had been to them like one hundred
years, so it was all grown over

504
00:39:46.760 --> 00:39:53.079
and shit, and we started scraping
away the vines and we could find in

505
00:39:53.199 --> 00:39:59.000
the concrete guys' names from the sixties
and not units they are and it was

506
00:39:59.199 --> 00:40:01.800
so cool. Yeah, yeah,
it was fun to go back and see

507
00:40:01.880 --> 00:40:06.440
that, man. But yeah,
you gotta go go on cover, go

508
00:40:06.840 --> 00:40:14.400
getting under your belt. Mm hm. Congo was really cool. Again.

509
00:40:15.039 --> 00:40:20.280
We trained up them. I think
they had a pseudo military, like a

510
00:40:20.440 --> 00:40:24.440
real one, but halfway between the
police force in a military. I couldn't

511
00:40:24.440 --> 00:40:29.480
swear. I remember we set the
framework though for a real fundamental kind of

512
00:40:29.559 --> 00:40:35.400
train and I don't know if that
was followed up on or not. M

513
00:40:37.000 --> 00:40:40.480
Man, I want to was a
lot like Thiji, you know, a

514
00:40:40.639 --> 00:40:46.320
longhouse out Nola, jungle, sitting
down building report, drinking cob again,

515
00:40:46.599 --> 00:40:51.360
everybody acts like they're fucked up.
I'm like, why are you guys acting

516
00:40:51.440 --> 00:40:53.440
like you're fucked up? It doesn't
do anything to you. Come on,

517
00:40:53.719 --> 00:41:02.639
manh my god, oh easyp was
fine. So we got to train and

518
00:41:02.760 --> 00:41:08.679
tell us about which is the Egyptum
Special Forces Triple seven and we went over

519
00:41:08.719 --> 00:41:13.719
there for a long time. Uh. It was a combat dive team and

520
00:41:13.800 --> 00:41:17.360
we were training them in combat diving. And it was a very long and

521
00:41:17.480 --> 00:41:22.840
extens of course, I think,
I would say, and by the end

522
00:41:22.880 --> 00:41:25.599
of the horse they were pretty damn
proficient, or as proficient as you could

523
00:41:25.679 --> 00:41:30.639
expect them to be as combat divers. H it was funny. And we

524
00:41:30.719 --> 00:41:36.960
got we took them to the Suedge
Canal and did one of those robe The

525
00:41:37.159 --> 00:41:42.280
fucking things are hard man climbing up
those rope uh little some metal ladders upside

526
00:41:42.280 --> 00:41:45.599
of the bat And I think it
was either right before or right after that

527
00:41:45.199 --> 00:41:52.599
that thing happened more that Achille Laro
Uh Yeahrane, yeah, yeah, yeah,

528
00:41:52.320 --> 00:41:55.760
so they have been training now to
do that. Couldn't say if they

529
00:41:55.840 --> 00:42:00.679
did or didn't do it. I
know they did get in on a plane

530
00:42:00.760 --> 00:42:04.800
takedown and pretty much killed everybody.
From what I remember, I remember that

531
00:42:05.639 --> 00:42:09.880
was unfortunate. That could have gone
another line. I can't remember exactly when

532
00:42:09.960 --> 00:42:15.119
that takedown was, but I want
to say it was like eighty seven or

533
00:42:15.199 --> 00:42:17.679
eighty eight. Again this is off
the top of my head. Yeah,

534
00:42:17.800 --> 00:42:21.920
well we would have already trained them
by then, if that's the correct year

535
00:42:22.000 --> 00:42:30.239
when we would have trained them by
that point already. M hume. Oh,

536
00:42:30.400 --> 00:42:37.440
Bosnia. I took a company from
tenthry on their Bosnia rotation. That

537
00:42:37.599 --> 00:42:42.800
was interesting. I think that was
a very very good special Forces measure to

538
00:42:42.960 --> 00:42:47.519
have by Now you're by now you're
a sergeant major. Yeah, company sergeant

539
00:42:47.599 --> 00:42:52.039
major. Yeah, your singleton days
are behind you. Now they have a

540
00:42:52.159 --> 00:42:58.519
lot of responsibilities for you. Yeah. Yeah, And I was kind of

541
00:42:58.559 --> 00:43:01.800
bummed because I got to do our
shit and a lot of super classified cool

542
00:43:01.880 --> 00:43:06.000
shit, you know, and then
it's back to the company. But that's

543
00:43:06.039 --> 00:43:10.559
okay, it is what it is. What was Bosnil like then? So

544
00:43:10.880 --> 00:43:16.159
Bosni was interesting? Have you Hangbay
come on and talk about it. Yeah,

545
00:43:16.239 --> 00:43:22.480
yeah, definitely, people you know
who were free in post nine to

546
00:43:22.519 --> 00:43:27.239
eleven. A lot of guys cut
their teeth there. Yeah. So yeah.

547
00:43:27.360 --> 00:43:30.800
They had these houses set up kind
of around the compass point, you

548
00:43:30.920 --> 00:43:36.039
know, and they had a team
per house. It was a beautiful so

549
00:43:36.960 --> 00:43:40.440
you know, you couldn't ask for
anything more. And every house on the

550
00:43:40.559 --> 00:43:46.559
inside the house was fortified, like
fucking fort knocked. They had heavy weapons

551
00:43:46.639 --> 00:43:52.480
in the windows, they had access
to the rocket launchers, they had everything

552
00:43:52.599 --> 00:43:58.880
they needed to have a gunfight,
you know, and so they would basically,

553
00:43:59.280 --> 00:44:02.119
you know, they were supposed to
patrol around and in face with the

554
00:44:02.639 --> 00:44:08.039
with the civilians a little bit.
You know, I don't know how the

555
00:44:08.119 --> 00:44:14.280
other deployments went, you know,
I only know how disappointment amazonline. What

556
00:44:14.400 --> 00:44:22.000
have other people I told you,
because I'm I'm not really clear on go

557
00:44:22.000 --> 00:44:24.159
ahead. I mean some of them
have told me. I mean some of

558
00:44:24.199 --> 00:44:29.360
the Jasak guys were doing like low
visibility you know, reconnaissance stuff, driving

559
00:44:29.440 --> 00:44:34.840
around some of the SF guys,
I mean, going around drinking Rakia with

560
00:44:35.159 --> 00:44:40.800
the local police and developing rapport with
them. I talked to one guy,

561
00:44:43.960 --> 00:44:50.119
who was it, Mark Giaconio,
who, uh, his team was working

562
00:44:50.199 --> 00:44:55.119
with Russian SPETSNAS in two thousand and
they went and got into a firefight with

563
00:44:55.199 --> 00:45:00.760
the rebels. It was like a
joint operation they did together. Yeah,

564
00:45:00.920 --> 00:45:06.119
Bosni, it was like, I
don't think that I think it could have

565
00:45:06.159 --> 00:45:08.599
been dumb better. I'm not sure
the mission was clear enough for people,

566
00:45:09.119 --> 00:45:13.599
you know, I think like this
is after actually I'm looking back. You

567
00:45:13.679 --> 00:45:16.719
can say anything, but I think
the mission could have been clear for people.

568
00:45:17.199 --> 00:45:22.000
I think they did could have been
better prepared, with more knowledge than

569
00:45:22.239 --> 00:45:27.760
even I didn't get, like or
my company command or I think they could

570
00:45:27.800 --> 00:45:31.880
have passed on more knowledge to us
about what exactly the mission was, what

571
00:45:32.159 --> 00:45:37.400
exactly we're supposed to do there or
not do? What? What was your

572
00:45:37.440 --> 00:45:39.760
impression of the mission once while when
you got there, well, like you

573
00:45:39.840 --> 00:45:45.360
said, driving around drinking booze,
I had a guy get a DUI,

574
00:45:45.679 --> 00:45:50.400
you know, fuck uh, driving
around drinking booze and building a poort.

575
00:45:50.800 --> 00:45:55.320
I mean that's basically what they were
doing. You know, I think that

576
00:45:57.199 --> 00:46:00.679
I think their actual missions should have
been cleared and just driving around billing wereport.

577
00:46:01.079 --> 00:46:06.000
Yeah, yeah, you know,
I don't. I don't blame them

578
00:46:06.079 --> 00:46:08.039
one bit. I don't blame a
single guy on the ground. It's the

579
00:46:08.840 --> 00:46:13.480
chain of command above. I do
not think, in this particular instance,

580
00:46:14.119 --> 00:46:20.519
provided enough clear guidance that people could
understand how serious this was. I think

581
00:46:20.840 --> 00:46:25.559
Bosnia was far more serious than the
guys I took anyway realized. And therefore,

582
00:46:25.599 --> 00:46:30.599
because I was not a tenth guy, I just got there and I

583
00:46:30.679 --> 00:46:34.239
got the mission, and so I
didn't have any history with teenthoup. I

584
00:46:34.280 --> 00:46:38.360
didn't know shit about bossing. So
I knew what they told me. I

585
00:46:38.440 --> 00:46:43.079
knew what people told me, you
know, and I knew what the mission

586
00:46:43.320 --> 00:46:47.880
stated. Uh, and that was
what I knew, you know. And

587
00:46:49.119 --> 00:46:51.960
you guys gotten a There were a
couple of dust stops on the on that

588
00:46:52.079 --> 00:46:55.719
depointment, wasn't there? Yeah?
One guy? Yeah, there was a

589
00:46:55.800 --> 00:47:02.119
couple of dustops. Yeah. The
only casual I know is one bad guy.

590
00:47:02.800 --> 00:47:09.000
There's sure have been a lot more. What what happened there in the

591
00:47:09.079 --> 00:47:14.880
one with the casually? That was? That was a guy in a restaurant

592
00:47:15.440 --> 00:47:22.079
mm hmm. It was legit,
you know, getting threatened, So he

593
00:47:22.239 --> 00:47:28.440
kept the guy like it was.
That's the story I was told Jack.

594
00:47:28.679 --> 00:47:34.159
That's not firsthand information. I'm going
to say, I don't know what happened

595
00:47:34.280 --> 00:47:42.519
except somebody got captain. Yeah,
that's where I know. But you,

596
00:47:42.679 --> 00:47:45.480
as a sergeant major, you had
to go in deal with the aftermath.

597
00:47:45.519 --> 00:47:51.199
Well, the worst aftermath was No. They had Pete Mussey, so I

598
00:47:51.360 --> 00:47:57.119
measured. I believe he was a
buddy of mine. He fought in Pete.

599
00:47:57.119 --> 00:48:00.239
Did me and Pete were peers?
M hm? He said, hold

600
00:48:00.280 --> 00:48:05.320
on, it's our ementery too.
We got out the same day. Both

601
00:48:05.440 --> 00:48:09.360
are majors. BO said, hey, that's good. There was I remember

602
00:48:09.360 --> 00:48:12.719
you tell me a story about how
you had like a dust up with the

603
00:48:12.800 --> 00:48:15.639
Russians over there. I did have
a dust up with the Russians. So

604
00:48:15.880 --> 00:48:22.519
they wanted me to go over to
the Russians and tell them this is when

605
00:48:22.639 --> 00:48:28.639
Kosovo happens, and somehow tell them
not to go to Kosovo. And it's

606
00:48:28.800 --> 00:48:34.360
like, okay, and so I
think that both the conventional people, which

607
00:48:34.440 --> 00:48:38.119
was M and D North first Cap
and we us were both trying to convince

608
00:48:38.199 --> 00:48:43.599
the Russians not to go to Kosovo. But of course that's ridiculous. I

609
00:48:43.719 --> 00:48:45.760
went up to the gate and like, no, you're not coming in.

610
00:48:45.920 --> 00:48:51.440
Oh sorry, I didn't mean to
touch Now I can't see it. I'm

611
00:48:51.519 --> 00:48:57.079
here, okay, and I know
you're not coming in, and then I

612
00:48:57.239 --> 00:49:02.199
want to see It was shortly for
or shortly be after that that one of

613
00:49:02.280 --> 00:49:08.960
our houses got hit pretty hard.
They hit it with rockets, machine guns,

614
00:49:09.159 --> 00:49:14.199
small arms, fire, etcetera,
etcetera. So it got hit pretty

615
00:49:14.239 --> 00:49:19.400
hard, and I wanted I'm thinking
it's like right around the same time,

616
00:49:19.519 --> 00:49:23.880
again. I wish I kept track, but I didn't because it is important

617
00:49:24.159 --> 00:49:29.559
to know if it was related or
not. I don't know if the incidents

618
00:49:29.840 --> 00:49:32.599
of us trying to convince the Russians
not to go to Kosovo and then being

619
00:49:32.679 --> 00:49:38.199
fuck you and what happened to our
house or I couldn't tell you. I

620
00:49:38.280 --> 00:49:43.239
mean, I don't believe in coincidences
myself, but it could have been the

621
00:49:43.360 --> 00:49:49.159
timing was different, and then they
came at the house hard well. When

622
00:49:49.199 --> 00:49:52.480
they did push into Kosovo, that
turned into a ship storm with you as

623
00:49:52.519 --> 00:49:55.880
well, didn't it. What do
you mean? I'm just trying to remember

624
00:49:57.159 --> 00:50:00.920
some of the previous conversations we had. I remember, remember, didn't they

625
00:50:00.079 --> 00:50:04.840
You were at a bridge trying to
oh, yeah, yeah, we're trying

626
00:50:04.880 --> 00:50:07.639
to stop the Russians. Like standard
like, you're not gonna go, You're

627
00:50:07.679 --> 00:50:12.320
not gonna go, and they're like
we're going, We're going. I'm like

628
00:50:12.440 --> 00:50:16.760
fine. But this is one of
the important part I'm trying to think of,

629
00:50:17.000 --> 00:50:21.480
is this is almost the exact same
time the house got shot up.

630
00:50:22.800 --> 00:50:24.960
You know, That's why I think
they might have been connected. Yeah,

631
00:50:25.199 --> 00:50:29.480
making I'm out here is just fucking
making shut up. I don't know,

632
00:50:30.480 --> 00:50:35.440
but I'm sure there's somebody who can
many people who can correct me, probably

633
00:50:35.599 --> 00:50:39.800
hundreds. But that's my recolation is
that they were very close to each other,

634
00:50:42.039 --> 00:50:45.000
you know, and the amount of
firepower they put on the house.

635
00:50:45.079 --> 00:50:50.800
They weren't intending to say hi and
just keep going. They wanted to kill

636
00:50:50.880 --> 00:51:00.559
some fucking people, you know.
So there's a couple other thing I think

637
00:51:00.639 --> 00:51:05.840
we need to hit up before moving
on to So. First, you mentioned

638
00:51:05.840 --> 00:51:09.199
the Gulf War. Mm hmm.
How do you get involved in that one?

639
00:51:10.199 --> 00:51:14.599
So? Yeah, so in the
Gulf War, and this will go

640
00:51:14.719 --> 00:51:19.320
back to ask me how I got
to my next step. I was on

641
00:51:19.519 --> 00:51:25.199
the special project team and my team
started. I had one idea about what

642
00:51:25.440 --> 00:51:31.320
going into combat man and I had
a different idea. So I took my

643
00:51:31.519 --> 00:51:37.639
idea to my start major and he
let me go. I went out to

644
00:51:37.760 --> 00:51:43.639
the field to help a company with
Syrians, some Syrian guys. Because I

645
00:51:43.760 --> 00:51:47.000
spoke everybody, so I went out
there to help them with some Syrian guys.

646
00:51:47.119 --> 00:51:51.679
And I stayed out there for a
while helping them with the Syrians,

647
00:51:51.760 --> 00:51:57.119
and boy, they were fucking assholes. Holy shit, Wow, they were

648
00:51:57.440 --> 00:52:06.639
serious, fucking assholes. Ultimately they
ended up surrounding our well. First of

649
00:52:06.679 --> 00:52:09.760
all, the B team and everybody
else left. The big team was actually

650
00:52:09.800 --> 00:52:15.320
out there and everybody left, and
my team and maybe one another team or

651
00:52:15.360 --> 00:52:20.760
two was still out there, and
the fucking Serians surrounded us with these goddamn

652
00:52:21.440 --> 00:52:23.119
armored vehicles and ship and they're like, get the fuck out of here.

653
00:52:23.559 --> 00:52:29.800
We're like, okay, we're gone, So we packed up and left.

654
00:52:30.800 --> 00:52:39.920
So then what happened. We might
have got an en route an in route

655
00:52:42.760 --> 00:52:45.760
change over to the missions, but
it happened pretty quick, and we ended

656
00:52:45.880 --> 00:52:50.360
up with the Egyptians. Again,
tell it's about huh, but we ended

657
00:52:50.480 --> 00:52:53.800
up with Egyptians who I'd worked for
obviously with obviously in the past. Wasn't

658
00:52:53.840 --> 00:52:58.880
the same year I lived as the
Egyptians, and uh, somewhere in the

659
00:52:58.960 --> 00:53:02.199
period in between the start of major
gave me one team. So I ended

660
00:53:02.280 --> 00:53:06.880
up being a team starter, which
I was, of course throwed out.

661
00:53:06.920 --> 00:53:09.199
The team wasn't, but I was. You know, it's so funny.

662
00:53:09.519 --> 00:53:13.440
I'll just tell you this is on
the side. When I took over that

663
00:53:13.559 --> 00:53:15.440
team, I think there were six
seven I's. By the end of the

664
00:53:15.519 --> 00:53:21.000
fucking war, there were fourteen fucking
people on my team. You know,

665
00:53:21.519 --> 00:53:23.639
Oh my god, I was so
mad, you know, you know,

666
00:53:23.880 --> 00:53:29.079
all of these motherfuckers come out.
Where were you when I was doing all

667
00:53:29.199 --> 00:53:34.440
the shoe work? Oh? But
you know, really, I mean I

668
00:53:34.480 --> 00:53:37.519
want to get in on the war. Yeah, I was fucking bullshit.

669
00:53:37.639 --> 00:53:39.039
Man. I didn't like it at
all. I mean, you got your

670
00:53:39.119 --> 00:53:43.679
team, you train together, you
get ready, and here they throw a

671
00:53:43.760 --> 00:53:47.599
bunch of you know, officers that
wanted to check a box and other guys

672
00:53:47.719 --> 00:53:53.000
that mostly I think it was like
an officer and at least one two warrant

673
00:53:53.000 --> 00:53:59.280
officers and more enless the guys from
third Boot. Maybe you're or something.

674
00:53:59.400 --> 00:54:05.039
I don't know, I just them. I just want to take a moment

675
00:54:05.119 --> 00:54:07.880
to point out, like what you
guys were doing there at that time,

676
00:54:07.000 --> 00:54:10.760
because as I recalled her, in
the Goal War, and I'm sorry,

677
00:54:10.760 --> 00:54:15.800
I can't remember the exact program name, but there was like a military liaison

678
00:54:15.920 --> 00:54:21.760
program where we put SF liaisons with
each of the coalition that HW had put

679
00:54:21.800 --> 00:54:24.559
together. That's what we did.
That's exactly right. And we were the

680
00:54:24.639 --> 00:54:29.920
only reason they made it to Quad
sitting because when we had the first seriously,

681
00:54:30.239 --> 00:54:34.280
we had the first GPS as ever
to come out, we would have

682
00:54:34.400 --> 00:54:38.480
never found the motherfucker. So you
ended up doing the invasion with the I

683
00:54:38.760 --> 00:54:47.239
rode on top of the commanding General's
tank from the trenches to the burning trenches

684
00:54:47.440 --> 00:54:52.039
to the middle Quate city because I
wouldn't get inside that motherfucker because I didn't

685
00:54:52.079 --> 00:54:55.320
want to die, and started burning
fucking tank. So I sat on top

686
00:54:55.639 --> 00:55:01.039
with my M sixteen. I did
and I helped to navigate, and we

687
00:55:01.199 --> 00:55:05.159
get off now and then and do
shit, you know, I'll tell you

688
00:55:05.199 --> 00:55:09.280
them in we saw and this will
come around to cancer layer. We came

689
00:55:09.360 --> 00:55:15.920
across decontamination sites, We came across
store chemical weapons, We came across what

690
00:55:15.119 --> 00:55:21.400
had been spills of chemical weapons.
Dude, we had so much chemical weapons

691
00:55:21.400 --> 00:55:23.559
and exposure. And then on top
of it, at the end, have

692
00:55:23.639 --> 00:55:31.440
you heard Kasmaya. Krismaya is a
place where the conventional guys had gathered up

693
00:55:31.480 --> 00:55:37.320
a fut ton of weapons, having
no idea what they were, conventional engineers,

694
00:55:37.199 --> 00:55:44.039
and bloom all of at once,
And there was this smongus bloom of

695
00:55:44.239 --> 00:55:52.760
smoke that settled back down over the
AAR and virtually almost every and the CIA

696
00:55:52.920 --> 00:56:00.480
went back and did for the government, did an ar and every single from

697
00:56:00.559 --> 00:56:07.599
fifth group that was deploy got hit
by that plume of fucking smoke and dig

698
00:56:07.559 --> 00:56:13.199
I don't care if I bought this
battle with the VA for ten years because

699
00:56:13.280 --> 00:56:16.559
I have terminal cancer. It's gone
on and off for ten years, but

700
00:56:17.039 --> 00:56:21.679
it's you know, I don't have
maybe less than a year left now,

701
00:56:22.679 --> 00:56:28.559
and I lost my turn of thought. I'm sorry the plume of us smoke

702
00:56:28.639 --> 00:56:32.519
coming down on all teams, on
all the teams and there's a Facebook group

703
00:56:32.639 --> 00:56:38.639
now for soft cancer buys. Funny
how many guys were in that fucking plume.

704
00:56:39.239 --> 00:56:45.559
Now. I had to fight the
VA for over a year about disability

705
00:56:45.639 --> 00:56:51.599
for my cancer. Ultimately, after
getting to the BA Administrative Court in DC

706
00:56:52.440 --> 00:56:57.920
with a Navy Carl jag officer who
did for free for me, Barney,

707
00:56:58.679 --> 00:57:02.760
what creates the fucking boxes? Set
them down and we're like, we're not

708
00:57:02.960 --> 00:57:10.719
leaning. So they ultimately gave it
to me for the chemp for the disability

709
00:57:10.760 --> 00:57:17.079
for bone cancer. But they wouldn't
say it was They said it was exposure

710
00:57:17.119 --> 00:57:22.719
to some ship in Africa. I'm
like, really, yeah, it's really

711
00:57:22.760 --> 00:57:28.519
because it would open a huge can
of worms for them. Yeah, well,

712
00:57:28.599 --> 00:57:30.079
I mean, it's unfortunate our government
plays this game. You know,

713
00:57:30.159 --> 00:57:32.920
they did it with age and orange, then they did it with you know,

714
00:57:34.280 --> 00:57:37.360
Gulf War syndrome, which that probably
is what you're describing, that guys

715
00:57:37.400 --> 00:57:44.000
were exposed to low level uh UXO
that was destroyed and it affects some people

716
00:57:44.119 --> 00:57:47.159
more than others. There's I'm only
saying this people than others. Yeah.

717
00:57:47.239 --> 00:57:52.960
Yeah, there was an actual study
that came out last year and they showed

718
00:57:52.039 --> 00:57:55.880
that, like there are certain types
of people their DNA like and it's in

719
00:57:55.960 --> 00:58:01.960
their genetics, their receptor to sarngas
it's higher than some other people. And

720
00:58:02.079 --> 00:58:07.800
that aligns why there may be this
disparity why some soldiers got quote unquote Gulf

721
00:58:07.840 --> 00:58:12.360
War syndrome and others didn't. Wow, I never heard. Yeah. Yeah,

722
00:58:12.400 --> 00:58:15.159
there is some like actual, some
legit medical research on that now.

723
00:58:15.320 --> 00:58:19.039
And I'm sure I'm not explaining it
as a doctor would, but I mean

724
00:58:19.119 --> 00:58:22.440
that's the gist of it. No, I get it. But my opinion

725
00:58:22.599 --> 00:58:25.239
is, at the end of the
day, they don't want to say that

726
00:58:25.320 --> 00:58:30.559
it was due to chemical weapons exposure
in the Golf War because it's going to

727
00:58:30.599 --> 00:58:34.199
open this huge can of worms for
all these guys to make claims. Yeah,

728
00:58:34.360 --> 00:58:40.760
yeah, wow, it fucking sucks. Its bullshit. Honestly, it's

729
00:58:40.920 --> 00:58:45.679
total bullshit. And you know,
I went to Fifth Group. Friends of

730
00:58:45.719 --> 00:58:51.480
mine gone to Fifth Group, you
know, also our majors, and we've

731
00:58:51.559 --> 00:58:54.119
tried to talk to them, but
we don't get the impression Fifth Group support

732
00:58:54.159 --> 00:58:58.440
in this at all, you know, trying to trying to open up an

733
00:58:58.480 --> 00:59:02.840
actual investigation and what happened. There's
so many guys out there who probably don't

734
00:59:02.880 --> 00:59:07.480
even know why they had cancer,
or it doesn't even occur to them that

735
00:59:07.639 --> 00:59:13.559
it could have been chemical chemical weapons, you know, I mean really,

736
00:59:13.880 --> 00:59:17.360
I was so furious when they when
they said Africa. Come on, man,

737
00:59:19.000 --> 00:59:22.960
what chemical weapons were going in Africa? Give me a break. But

738
00:59:24.280 --> 00:59:28.840
the other thing I wanted to swing
back on was your time on the green

739
00:59:28.960 --> 00:59:32.039
Light team. Yeah. Yeah,
that was so fun. I had the

740
00:59:32.119 --> 00:59:39.440
best time. So all right,
I'm going to try to explain this without

741
00:59:39.559 --> 00:59:47.599
offending anybody. But something that offends
me is the distinction between pre post nine

742
00:59:47.599 --> 00:59:54.079
to eleven veterans. I'm not blaming
anyone for doing this, but I'll tell

743
00:59:54.119 --> 00:59:59.760
you, I know an awful lot
of pre nine eleven veterans, like let's

744
00:59:59.760 --> 01:00:05.000
say Magnee Sogg. You know,
I don't know why they made that distinction,

745
01:00:05.280 --> 01:00:08.280
do you, because you're missing a
lot of benefits. I don't.

746
01:00:08.480 --> 01:00:14.079
It goes by eras. So there's
like Vietnam era, there's Gulf War era,

747
01:00:14.440 --> 01:00:17.239
and you may fall into that cohort
but not have served in the war.

748
01:00:17.400 --> 01:00:22.639
I honestly don't understand that shit either. Well, all I know is

749
01:00:22.719 --> 01:00:28.360
I'm trying to get scholarships from my
kids to go to college and seriously at

750
01:00:28.519 --> 01:00:30.599
least half of though, and you
have to be a post nine to eleven

751
01:00:30.719 --> 01:00:36.280
veteran. No clue, why would
you make that distinction? What does it

752
01:00:36.440 --> 01:00:40.760
matter when you served? You know
what difference does it make? Anyway,

753
01:00:42.239 --> 01:00:46.360
I'll let that's lot. So Greenlight
I did Greenlight for I think three years.

754
01:00:46.920 --> 01:00:53.679
Greenlight is infiltrating a Negro weapon that
fits in a rucksack into a target

755
01:00:53.760 --> 01:01:00.360
area and then placing it on a
strategic target in the event of a very

756
01:01:00.599 --> 01:01:04.920
large well, it's going to be
on the event of the World War.

757
01:01:06.440 --> 01:01:10.519
Was what it was brought into service
for was for the Cold War, UH

758
01:01:10.800 --> 01:01:16.280
to stop the coat the Soviets from
coming across and I'm apparently it's still classified.

759
01:01:16.400 --> 01:01:20.760
Some an officer told me I talked
about a couple of weeks ago.

760
01:01:21.440 --> 01:01:29.679
But we were supposed to buy points
like uh, dams, uh cuts in

761
01:01:30.400 --> 01:01:35.079
the mountain passes, stuff like that. Stuff that could stop tanks, bridges,

762
01:01:35.360 --> 01:01:38.800
ports, bridges, big bridges,
you know, and you could implant

763
01:01:38.880 --> 01:01:45.239
them. You could go in and
die and uh you use the combat dive

764
01:01:45.360 --> 01:01:49.119
team to put them on a bridge
or a dam. Was definitely a lot

765
01:01:49.159 --> 01:01:55.480
of damn targets. When you get
halo it in, you get staggering parachute

766
01:01:55.559 --> 01:02:00.719
and you get walking in the big
problem and all talk more about it and

767
01:02:00.760 --> 01:02:04.159
you can ask me questions. The
big problem from the team, well is

768
01:02:04.320 --> 01:02:08.760
depending on how long your appointment is
the operator meaning the guy, there's one

769
01:02:08.800 --> 01:02:13.039
guy who that need the operator.
He's the guy who knows how to work

770
01:02:13.039 --> 01:02:16.000
with the weapon. He has to
carry. He carries the weapon most of

771
01:02:16.039 --> 01:02:20.239
the time, although you're supposed to
rotate it. I'm here to tell you,

772
01:02:20.480 --> 01:02:22.559
Jack, there's a lot of guys
that can't carry it. I mean

773
01:02:22.760 --> 01:02:28.000
just can't carry it. It's just
too heavy for him. And you try

774
01:02:28.039 --> 01:02:30.559
to weed him out. But if
we ever got a real world mission.

775
01:02:30.719 --> 01:02:35.400
We're weirding him out because if he
can't carry it, what good are you?

776
01:02:35.960 --> 01:02:38.480
Because you have to distribute all your
shit, your food, and your

777
01:02:38.519 --> 01:02:43.440
clothes and your mess and among all
the other guys on the team. And

778
01:02:43.559 --> 01:02:47.360
it was usually a split team,
so that's a lot of weight for everybuddy

779
01:02:47.480 --> 01:02:52.119
carry, you know, and so
it makes it hard. So anyway,

780
01:02:52.199 --> 01:02:55.840
maybe you can get a picture one
to put up with this thing. Yeah,

781
01:02:57.159 --> 01:03:01.199
for sure, I have. I
can keep going. I can I

782
01:03:01.239 --> 01:03:07.320
can actually do a share screen thing. Okay, okay, so we the

783
01:03:07.400 --> 01:03:12.400
first thing you had to do was
go to this school up at Fort bell

784
01:03:12.519 --> 01:03:23.960
Bar And ironically enough, it says
Special Forces Special Atomic Demolition Munition Training Course.

785
01:03:24.239 --> 01:03:29.559
I think I sent you a copy
my upon if you haven't, and

786
01:03:29.719 --> 01:03:35.920
it's a conventional error. Do that's
like it's in a museum. Yeah,

787
01:03:36.039 --> 01:03:39.880
that's a I believe it's a National
Atomic Museum in Nevada. Yeah. So

788
01:03:40.239 --> 01:03:45.400
they make a specialized container. That's
not it. It's a hard phone container

789
01:03:45.840 --> 01:03:51.719
that you put the weapon in so
when you drop your rucksack, it's cushioned.

790
01:03:52.559 --> 01:03:55.599
Here is I got this one from
a seal who's part of the program.

791
01:03:58.440 --> 01:04:02.599
Yeah, that's it. That's not
in a rucksack obviously. Maybe they

792
01:04:02.719 --> 01:04:10.320
swim it. Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah. And uh, let

793
01:04:10.400 --> 01:04:12.760
me see what else I might I
might have for you. I have a

794
01:04:12.800 --> 01:04:16.400
couple of pictures of the jump pack. Oh but here, here's a good

795
01:04:16.480 --> 01:04:19.880
This is a this is like an
probably an iconic photo. You could say,

796
01:04:20.559 --> 01:04:25.599
let's see, oh yeah, yeah, that's a good picture. Some

797
01:04:25.800 --> 01:04:30.360
dudey on, Yeah, that's a
real good picture. It's it's really weird.

798
01:04:31.159 --> 01:04:36.719
He doesn't have any rucksack either.
It's a it's on a different it's

799
01:04:36.719 --> 01:04:42.239
a jump pack, you know,
hm hmm. They must not have been

800
01:04:42.320 --> 01:04:48.239
planning to move it anywhere. That's
weird. Anyway, So you went through

801
01:04:48.280 --> 01:04:53.159
the training, and when you got
through the training, if you made it.

802
01:04:54.159 --> 01:04:56.480
If you made it, it was
complicated because there was a ton of

803
01:04:56.599 --> 01:05:00.199
math you and to calculate all this
crap about where the blast is going to

804
01:05:00.280 --> 01:05:03.960
go and where the wind's going to
go. It's a big weapon and the

805
01:05:04.079 --> 01:05:12.679
effect is really far because of the
fall. It's crazy, especially just especially

806
01:05:12.840 --> 01:05:15.840
depending on the win. So you
get through the train, you go back

807
01:05:15.840 --> 01:05:23.159
to your team, and from then
on you're basically you're dedicated green Light team.

808
01:05:23.239 --> 01:05:27.639
You don't do anything else. You
do green light practices and green light

809
01:05:27.760 --> 01:05:31.079
training. You basically just practice a
bunch of missions, but you incorporate a

810
01:05:31.199 --> 01:05:36.000
dummy, a dummy weapon in your
missions, so you can you do da

811
01:05:36.239 --> 01:05:43.480
missions over and over again incorporating the
dummy weapon in a rock sack. Uh.

812
01:05:43.760 --> 01:05:47.559
In addition to that, somebody,
you know, if I say to

813
01:05:47.679 --> 01:05:51.239
the department, it will be the
wrong department. You would think the Department

814
01:05:51.320 --> 01:05:56.920
of Nuclear, Department of Energy I
think it was THEE would come down and

815
01:05:57.119 --> 01:06:02.360
do periodic inspections. I think they
were annual, and that was for the

816
01:06:02.400 --> 01:06:08.400
whole company down to the team.
Everybody had to pass the inspections. I'm

817
01:06:08.400 --> 01:06:13.480
going to tell you everybody did not
pass the inspections. You couldn't. You

818
01:06:13.599 --> 01:06:17.840
were non functional until you could pass
the inspection. So that goes from all

819
01:06:17.960 --> 01:06:23.599
the paperworkans you the battalion company got
to do, which you can imagine whether

820
01:06:23.599 --> 01:06:28.639
of a newgro weapon is a lot
down to the team and all the safety

821
01:06:28.800 --> 01:06:33.280
stuff and all the operational stuff you
have to learn how to do. And

822
01:06:33.519 --> 01:06:38.119
everybody on the team, just like
everybody else, has to know how to

823
01:06:38.239 --> 01:06:43.639
do everything. It's as I've researched
this topic. I mean, one of

824
01:06:43.719 --> 01:06:48.599
the mysteries is around these exercises,
there's always these like civilians floating around.

825
01:06:48.880 --> 01:06:54.840
So guys, a guy wearing a
suit shows up in a briefing, or

826
01:06:56.119 --> 01:07:00.519
you have some guys wearing military fatigues
out on a training exercise. They have

827
01:07:00.639 --> 01:07:04.400
long hair, no military bearing,
they're clearly not soldiers. In another case,

828
01:07:04.440 --> 01:07:11.079
guys in literal sterilized black jumpsuits who
don't identify themselves. So it's a

829
01:07:11.119 --> 01:07:15.360
bit of a mystery sometimes who these
you know, literal MIBs in some cases

830
01:07:15.440 --> 01:07:21.079
are And I suspect that they came
from the Defense Nuclear Agency. Oh yeah,

831
01:07:21.559 --> 01:07:28.480
nineteen ninety seven merged with another agency
and became the Defense Threat Reduction Agency

832
01:07:28.599 --> 01:07:32.559
or DRY, which exists, which
exists to this day. And so I

833
01:07:32.639 --> 01:07:36.199
can't I can't say I know for
a fact that all of those civilians were

834
01:07:38.360 --> 01:07:42.880
with that organization. Some of them
were from Sandia Labs or Lawrence Livermore,

835
01:07:43.639 --> 01:07:47.400
but I think I think the bulk
of them were from the Defense Nuclear Agency.

836
01:07:49.159 --> 01:07:53.840
All Right, so I'll tell you
mine, and prompt me. I've

837
01:07:53.920 --> 01:07:59.679
told you these my exposures to civilians
and weird events that happened to meet when

838
01:07:59.719 --> 01:08:03.760
I was on green light. So, like you said, when you do

839
01:08:03.880 --> 01:08:09.599
the inspection, the MIBs were always
there. You never knew who the fuck

840
01:08:09.639 --> 01:08:13.440
they were. They would tell you
they were You're like whatever, you know,

841
01:08:13.880 --> 01:08:18.880
they were always at the inspections.
So you asked me what weird things

842
01:08:19.000 --> 01:08:24.359
happened to me during green light?
So let me think of them in order.

843
01:08:24.560 --> 01:08:29.239
So the first one I can think
of is one time at Brag.

844
01:08:29.960 --> 01:08:35.119
Now this is really We're at Fort
Bragg and they called us out to do

845
01:08:35.760 --> 01:08:42.359
a green light mission and we mount
the poke broad daylight, and they had

846
01:08:42.359 --> 01:08:46.399
a bunch of MPs surround in the
back of the plane, and the vehicle

847
01:08:46.560 --> 01:08:49.960
backed up to the back of the
plane, and we had a bunch of

848
01:08:50.039 --> 01:08:59.399
guys watching us go through the arming
of the weapon, you know, and

849
01:09:00.960 --> 01:09:03.199
it was weird to have all those
guys there. And then we went out

850
01:09:03.439 --> 01:09:10.159
to and we just went out and
jumped at Sicily. It was really weird,

851
01:09:10.640 --> 01:09:14.920
and there were civilians on the ground
at Sicily and drop zone for the

852
01:09:15.000 --> 01:09:19.079
listeners at Fort Bragg, right right
right in the middle of Fort Brag.

853
01:09:19.359 --> 01:09:23.439
So we'll just assume it must have
been a dummy, because nobody's going to

854
01:09:23.520 --> 01:09:26.720
drop a new field weapon of Fort
Bragge. I mean come on, I

855
01:09:26.800 --> 01:09:31.600
mean right, well, so some
of us would like to drop then you

856
01:09:31.640 --> 01:09:34.960
were a weapon on Fort Bragg,
Like, nobody's going to fall off a

857
01:09:35.079 --> 01:09:42.439
Fulton skyhook and the fucking hows and
area at Fort Brog. You know that

858
01:09:42.600 --> 01:09:45.880
story? Bo. Yeah, they
picked up a guy and when they were

859
01:09:46.000 --> 01:09:49.079
testing the Fulton skyhook and he fell
off right in the middle of the housing

860
01:09:49.159 --> 01:09:54.439
are brag Oh I did. I've
heard the story about how he became so

861
01:09:54.600 --> 01:09:58.520
disoriented he fell off the back ramp, but I didn't know that was over

862
01:09:58.600 --> 01:10:05.319
the housing area. Yeah, isn't
that funny? So I you know that

863
01:10:05.520 --> 01:10:12.960
was whatever it was. The next
one that was weird was in Utah do

864
01:10:13.119 --> 01:10:16.960
Way Proving Grounds where there's so many
chemicals and so much all the chemical testing

865
01:10:17.720 --> 01:10:21.520
and ship goes on out there,
and radiation testing, I believe a whole

866
01:10:21.520 --> 01:10:28.119
the time it's not out there too. So we had a little mission where

867
01:10:28.239 --> 01:10:35.760
we we jumped in. We were
carrying the weapon and we took in for

868
01:10:36.439 --> 01:10:42.159
a company commander was with us,
and uh, some other people were with

869
01:10:42.359 --> 01:10:46.000
us that I not I don't know
who they were, and uh, we

870
01:10:46.039 --> 01:10:53.159
were supposed to detonate it in a
cave at doug wayh So we took the

871
01:10:53.239 --> 01:10:57.319
weapon in there, we infiltrated,
and we went to the cave. We

872
01:10:57.479 --> 01:11:01.840
put it in the cave, and
we detonated the weapon. That's all I

873
01:11:01.880 --> 01:11:08.239
can tell you, except for the
funniest part, which was my commander and

874
01:11:08.399 --> 01:11:13.760
without the without the nuclere pit,
it was the conventional explosives, right correct,

875
01:11:14.520 --> 01:11:18.920
God moly. The funniest part was
my company commander, who I despised

876
01:11:19.520 --> 01:11:26.199
left a fucking radio in the cave. So I was so happy, And

877
01:11:26.319 --> 01:11:32.399
I hope he hears this because he
knows I despised him. Was he relieved

878
01:11:32.399 --> 01:11:38.119
after that? You know? He
wasn't. And I don't know why,

879
01:11:39.479 --> 01:11:45.520
probably because you know, you know
why they keep chipping themselves. Yeah.

880
01:11:47.319 --> 01:11:55.760
So the third one is kind of
more interesting. So we got like a

881
01:11:55.960 --> 01:12:00.239
warning order, I want to say
it, right, and so packed uh,

882
01:12:00.560 --> 01:12:02.319
packed up boxes, packed up everything, you know, like you do

883
01:12:02.520 --> 01:12:08.199
on a roll out, and we
packed everything up and we flew to Morocco.

884
01:12:09.319 --> 01:12:14.560
And in Morocco we did isolation for
a couple of weeks, you know,

885
01:12:14.760 --> 01:12:19.319
for a green light mission, and
it was very serious. The whole

886
01:12:19.359 --> 01:12:25.039
thing was very serious and we were
given everything that we wanted and needed to

887
01:12:25.119 --> 01:12:28.399
ask for, which you know how
wetd that is, to get everything you

888
01:12:28.520 --> 01:12:33.880
want and get everything asked for.
So we knew something was going on,

889
01:12:34.119 --> 01:12:40.119
we didn't know what. So then
we got on to a sea one after

890
01:12:40.199 --> 01:12:45.840
we passed the outbrief by the group
commander. What do they call those debrief

891
01:12:46.000 --> 01:12:51.560
isolation? I can't remember isolation?
Okay, So after we got the blessing

892
01:12:51.640 --> 01:12:57.239
to go on the mission, we
loaded up and UH got picked up by

893
01:12:57.239 --> 01:13:01.239
an M one thirty and Morocco.
We had a new team sergeant who we

894
01:13:01.319 --> 01:13:08.880
didn't really know, and on the
trip over to the UK from Morocco,

895
01:13:09.600 --> 01:13:14.640
the MC one thirty ran into a
lot of turbulence and it was a very

896
01:13:14.800 --> 01:13:19.199
rough flight, and then it lost
an engine, then ast another engine.

897
01:13:20.279 --> 01:13:24.279
I can't remember if it lost a
third, but for sure it lost two

898
01:13:24.319 --> 01:13:30.319
one hundred percent and our new team
sergeant was laying on the floor having some

899
01:13:30.520 --> 01:13:38.359
issues. So we landed in the
UK. The MC one thirty was deadlined,

900
01:13:38.640 --> 01:13:43.119
but we already had another one there. Wait, that's weird, so

901
01:13:43.479 --> 01:13:46.680
we got on the other one.
It was a mill of the night backed

902
01:13:46.760 --> 01:13:50.560
up to. All we could see
was a million MPs around us, and

903
01:13:50.840 --> 01:13:55.960
they loaded. Do you recall what
airfield this was in the UK? I

904
01:13:56.199 --> 01:14:01.439
wouldn't have known. They Yeah,
I want to say, it didn't seem

905
01:14:01.560 --> 01:14:08.039
like it was that long between we
finished crossing the channel and landed. So

906
01:14:08.199 --> 01:14:13.119
whatever's in southern England there, it
was probably and it was probably where they

907
01:14:13.239 --> 01:14:19.880
started weapons there, and I don't
know, so yeah, so we picked

908
01:14:19.920 --> 01:14:25.039
up the weapon and somebody watched this
armament and I don't know who it was,

909
01:14:26.520 --> 01:14:30.119
well, a few people watch.
So then they closed it up and

910
01:14:30.520 --> 01:14:40.359
we flew into our drops. We
parachuted into a blind l Z at night,

911
01:14:40.720 --> 01:14:45.000
which is a sketchy as it always
can be, right, but everybody

912
01:14:45.720 --> 01:14:51.199
made the landing okay, and then
we had a long movement to the target

913
01:14:51.319 --> 01:14:58.079
area. So we made a really
long movement and for some reason, the

914
01:14:58.760 --> 01:15:04.760
team leader was navigating and he managed
to make us half across the autobune with

915
01:15:04.920 --> 01:15:12.600
a fucking nuke at night. I
was just like, you gotta fucking be

916
01:15:12.840 --> 01:15:18.199
kidding me, are you serious?
He got lost, So we crossed the

917
01:15:18.279 --> 01:15:24.159
autobonne with the goddamn Sadom device.
I was scared to death, that's the

918
01:15:24.239 --> 01:15:27.199
most scared I've ever been to my
own career, trying to run across the

919
01:15:27.279 --> 01:15:31.720
audubonn with heavy rocksack man, you
know how those things are very I mean

920
01:15:31.760 --> 01:15:34.960
have you seen them? Yeah?
Yeah, And Hans is driving down the

921
01:15:35.000 --> 01:15:41.880
autobonn at one hundred and fifty kilometers
exactly, like one hundred and fifty miles

922
01:15:41.960 --> 01:15:45.560
an hour. You know they're crazy
over there. So yeah, we managed

923
01:15:45.560 --> 01:15:54.439
to get across the Autobonne. We
got the weapon to the target and some

924
01:15:54.640 --> 01:15:59.800
guys met us there and they took
the weapon. And then well after we

925
01:15:59.880 --> 01:16:05.640
have and place it on the target
and overwash it. So with with Sadem's,

926
01:16:05.880 --> 01:16:13.199
you're supposed to arm the device and
you're supposed to stay within visual distance

927
01:16:13.439 --> 01:16:19.640
of the device until it detonates.
Do that math. It doesn't work out.

928
01:16:20.119 --> 01:16:25.600
It doesn't work No, but on
my life you can find it and

929
01:16:25.720 --> 01:16:30.439
writing I'm positive you're supposed to keep
visual contact with the satum until it detonates.

930
01:16:31.199 --> 01:16:34.840
So once you tell him that Don
Alexander story that he told you,

931
01:16:35.680 --> 01:16:40.479
Oh, he told me that back
in the day. Your favorite joke was

932
01:16:40.560 --> 01:16:43.760
that when you unlocked the sadum and
opened up the lid, that there'd be

933
01:16:43.840 --> 01:16:47.520
twelve medal of medals of honor in
a bottle of Jack Daniels inside. Yeah,

934
01:16:48.000 --> 01:16:54.039
we knew, we knew the deal, but we did it. You

935
01:16:54.159 --> 01:16:57.880
know, what are you going to
do? You do? You do your

936
01:16:57.960 --> 01:17:03.159
mission. Besides that, my personal
opinion was there was no timer. I

937
01:17:03.319 --> 01:17:06.359
felt like the second eatern that button, it was going to go off.

938
01:17:06.439 --> 01:17:11.600
That was my opinion. I have
no proof whatsoever, but why did you

939
01:17:11.760 --> 01:17:15.520
put a twelve minute time or on
or whatever. Why would you do take

940
01:17:15.640 --> 01:17:19.760
any additional risk. It's uh,
you're going to kill the guys anyway.

941
01:17:19.960 --> 01:17:25.079
They're going to be dead. They
know that. It's really interesting. I

942
01:17:25.119 --> 01:17:29.079
think that even with a nuclear weapon
and you have all this doctrine and security

943
01:17:29.119 --> 01:17:33.439
and regulation and stuff, that some
of it just didn't make sense. And

944
01:17:33.680 --> 01:17:38.640
so these these team sergeants, largely
who are Vietnam veterans, you know,

945
01:17:39.319 --> 01:17:42.479
they know how to run a patrol. So like, for instance, the

946
01:17:43.439 --> 01:17:46.359
tactic that only two guys on the
team are supposed to have the combination to

947
01:17:46.439 --> 01:17:49.680
the device to open it up.
One of them has half of the combination,

948
01:17:49.840 --> 01:17:54.319
the other has the other half.
But any guys who I don't remember

949
01:17:54.399 --> 01:17:59.439
that, but go ahead, well
either way, you know, any any

950
01:17:59.760 --> 01:18:02.520
you know, crusty team sergeant who's
been in a lot of combat operations knows

951
01:18:02.720 --> 01:18:06.199
that you have to have contingencies and
everyone on the mission has to know how

952
01:18:06.239 --> 01:18:13.359
to do the mission, because what
if that one guy with that information everybody,

953
01:18:14.359 --> 01:18:19.279
everybody on my team. Yes,
yeah, it's just it's interesting how

954
01:18:19.359 --> 01:18:25.199
the teams start like coloring outside the
lines out of operational necessity because the doctrine

955
01:18:25.399 --> 01:18:29.479
just doesn't it doesn't make sense.
Yeah. Yeah, that's why I thought

956
01:18:29.520 --> 01:18:31.720
there was no time. Why what's
the point? You know. Yeah,

957
01:18:31.720 --> 01:18:36.199
a lot of guys felt that way
and would joke about it. Yeah yeah,

958
01:18:36.239 --> 01:18:39.880
I mean there's no there's no proof
that that's true, but I mean

959
01:18:40.000 --> 01:18:44.079
it was a fairly common belief on
some of these teams. Well, all

960
01:18:44.119 --> 01:18:48.199
it does is add additional risk to
the mission, right, It adds additional

961
01:18:48.279 --> 01:18:55.960
possibility that somebody gets controlled with right, So either way, you're dead.

962
01:18:56.279 --> 01:19:00.439
So whatever, I mean, if
I can see the weapon, it's gonna

963
01:19:00.520 --> 01:19:04.880
kill me. Yeah. In the
extraction, the extraction plans were pretty gonzo

964
01:19:04.960 --> 01:19:08.920
if they existed. Oh, they
were awesome. Man. We were gonna

965
01:19:08.960 --> 01:19:14.680
eat like a thousand clicks and ant
these cachet points along the way. No,

966
01:19:15.319 --> 01:19:19.279
seriously, The E and E plans
were very detailed. I think they

967
01:19:19.319 --> 01:19:26.000
were left from World War Two,
pretty sure, pretty sure, but they

968
01:19:26.079 --> 01:19:30.680
gave them to us. We had
them. I never saw one that wasn't

969
01:19:30.920 --> 01:19:35.840
like a ground evasion plan. So
jumping around a little bit again. Sure,

970
01:19:36.399 --> 01:19:42.640
after your assignment in UH Company Sergeant
major with tenth Group to Bosnia,

971
01:19:42.680 --> 01:19:49.239
what came after that? I was
compelled to medically retired because I couldn't jump

972
01:19:49.359 --> 01:19:54.760
anymore. I had eleven surgeries to
my right knee. I could barely run,

973
01:19:55.319 --> 01:20:00.600
I couldn't jump. I knew I
could bullshit more for some years,

974
01:20:00.239 --> 01:20:04.159
but I wouldn't do it. What's
the point if I can't do what everybody

975
01:20:04.239 --> 01:20:08.720
else is doing, I'm not gonna
fake it till I make a buck that

976
01:20:09.159 --> 01:20:13.199
I'm going to put somebody else in
danger if I say, yeah, I

977
01:20:13.279 --> 01:20:18.199
could ruck run and I can't.
Right, And so I took the medical

978
01:20:18.319 --> 01:20:28.079
retirement. Yeah is what it is. How did retirement treat you? I'm

979
01:20:28.159 --> 01:20:35.960
good? Yeah? So I had
been finishing uh my bachelor's degree by taken

980
01:20:36.000 --> 01:20:40.159
online classes and ship bye blah over
the years, like all of us do.

981
01:20:41.039 --> 01:20:44.520
And then when I uh, when
I was waiting for my medical retirement

982
01:20:44.560 --> 01:20:47.560
paper, which literally took a year, and no shit, Uh, they

983
01:20:47.640 --> 01:20:50.680
let me go to college. So
I was getting my master's degree and by

984
01:20:50.720 --> 01:20:55.760
the time I got out it said
a little Well later I ended up with

985
01:20:55.880 --> 01:21:02.640
my masters and then I went to
work for some technology companies. It was

986
01:21:02.680 --> 01:21:08.560
a great second career. I think
I spent seventeen years in his second career,

987
01:21:08.680 --> 01:21:12.560
which was which was really successful.
I had a really good time.

988
01:21:13.279 --> 01:21:16.199
I got to keep working for the
government. I got to have a way

989
01:21:16.279 --> 01:21:20.079
higher security clearance that I'd ever had
before, and I got to do a

990
01:21:20.159 --> 01:21:25.920
lot of cool shit. Unfortunately it's
all still classified. I can't talk about

991
01:21:25.920 --> 01:21:29.600
it. But it was good.
It was good. And then I'm going

992
01:21:29.680 --> 01:21:33.079
to be honest to you and everybody
out there, because it's hard to say

993
01:21:33.159 --> 01:21:39.840
this. As my knees got worse, I got addicted to oxy and it

994
01:21:39.960 --> 01:21:45.760
fucking took me down. To you
guys out there, I know that a

995
01:21:45.880 --> 01:21:49.520
lot of people are in the same
exact position that I was, where you're

996
01:21:49.640 --> 01:21:55.119
injured, and they'll give you oxy
or whatever if you ask for it,

997
01:21:55.479 --> 01:21:59.239
and if you ask for more,
they'll give you more. You gotta not

998
01:21:59.520 --> 01:22:02.680
do that. Man, You know, eat your life up. Dogs and

999
01:22:02.720 --> 01:22:10.319
alcohol will eat your life up.
Don't do it. Get help if you

1000
01:22:10.479 --> 01:22:15.039
need it. Talk to your buddies
if you need to do what you got

1001
01:22:15.199 --> 01:22:18.880
to do to stay healthy, to
get better. Tons of guys got to

1002
01:22:18.920 --> 01:22:24.920
have PTSD right now, ship tones, ask for help. Don't let it

1003
01:22:25.039 --> 01:22:29.479
eat you up. Don't drink till
you go unconsciously. You know, you

1004
01:22:29.600 --> 01:22:32.119
know it's not it's not gonna work. You're just gonna die from it.

1005
01:22:32.960 --> 01:22:38.000
So I want everybody to take that
away. And a really good friend of

1006
01:22:38.039 --> 01:22:42.279
mine who was a three star.
Have you heard General Fridovich, Dave Fridovich.

1007
01:22:45.560 --> 01:22:49.399
He was the first guy mostly I
met. I knew him from sock

1008
01:22:49.560 --> 01:22:56.479
Pack. He became deputy commander of
use sock and one day when it was

1009
01:22:56.520 --> 01:22:59.880
getting close to his retirement, he
gave a speech and he said what I

1010
01:23:00.239 --> 01:23:04.840
just said, Oxy first back.
It was destroying his life and his family.

1011
01:23:05.960 --> 01:23:10.119
Yeah, it's a serious subject and
you got to take care of it.

1012
01:23:10.319 --> 01:23:15.079
And it's extremely addictive. From what
I understand, any any kind of

1013
01:23:15.159 --> 01:23:18.760
opiates are very addictive. It's horrible, and so a lot of our as

1014
01:23:18.800 --> 01:23:21.279
you point out, Michael, I
mean a lot of our soldiers who've been

1015
01:23:21.319 --> 01:23:26.239
injured during the war. That's how
it starts, right, and it's very

1016
01:23:26.279 --> 01:23:29.479
easy for the you know, those
guys to get addicted. And it's not

1017
01:23:30.079 --> 01:23:32.560
because they're bad or because they're weak
or something like that. No, not

1018
01:23:32.720 --> 01:23:36.880
at all. Yeah, it takes
strength to get the help you need.

1019
01:23:38.520 --> 01:23:42.199
You're not being a pussy. You're
being a strong man, you know,

1020
01:23:42.439 --> 01:23:46.039
to get the help you need.
So that's that. The other thing I'd

1021
01:23:46.119 --> 01:23:51.840
like to talk a little bit about
is there's a Facebook group called Soft Cancer

1022
01:23:51.960 --> 01:23:55.840
Warriors or something like that. I'll
get you the link later and you can

1023
01:23:55.920 --> 01:24:01.039
first it, and it's guys that
have cancer to early from Special Forces guys.

1024
01:24:01.319 --> 01:24:04.600
I think there's five hundred members or
something right now. If you have

1025
01:24:04.880 --> 01:24:11.159
cancer, you need to find this
Facebook group and get everything. They've got

1026
01:24:11.239 --> 01:24:15.479
everything about what's going on currently as
far as the military side of the house,

1027
01:24:15.960 --> 01:24:23.119
the treatment side of the house,
and the historical side of the house.

1028
01:24:24.359 --> 01:24:28.399
We're trying to get the regiment to
get involved in this because there's a

1029
01:24:28.520 --> 01:24:32.159
lot of guys that are dying of
cancer and have already died of cancer when

1030
01:24:32.239 --> 01:24:38.840
they shouldn't have. Way too young, dude, I was forty seven when

1031
01:24:38.920 --> 01:24:44.039
I was diagnosed and told I was
going to die five years didn't. Then

1032
01:24:44.079 --> 01:24:46.199
I was told I was gonna in
three and two years ago. I thought

1033
01:24:46.239 --> 01:24:51.000
I was going to die on one. So, and you know, if

1034
01:24:51.039 --> 01:24:54.960
it's okay with you, Mike,
can you tell us a little bit about,

1035
01:24:55.039 --> 01:24:58.520
like what type of cancer you got
hit with, what you think that

1036
01:24:58.680 --> 01:25:01.439
may have come from, you know
what the treatment has been like. Sure?

1037
01:25:01.960 --> 01:25:06.479
So I started off with prostate cancer, which I found out so late

1038
01:25:08.159 --> 01:25:13.199
that they had to immediatelyank that thing
out. I went to first. I

1039
01:25:13.279 --> 01:25:17.680
went to Songcuttering, which is known
for a huge cancer center, a global

1040
01:25:17.800 --> 01:25:23.600
leading cancer center, and they did
the initial treatment and then it came back.

1041
01:25:24.039 --> 01:25:28.319
And dude, I didn't even know
it could come back. I thought

1042
01:25:28.399 --> 01:25:31.359
when they took that thing out,
I was done. Well. A few

1043
01:25:31.479 --> 01:25:36.840
years later that shit came back.
And it was just during a routine prostate

1044
01:25:38.000 --> 01:25:41.760
annual physical that I found out.
And I said to my doc, I'm

1045
01:25:41.840 --> 01:25:45.760
like, what do you mean?
I had my prostate out? And that's

1046
01:25:45.840 --> 01:25:47.840
when he told me why. I
went out in parking lot and I called

1047
01:25:47.880 --> 01:25:51.720
the American Cancer Society and I'm like, is this for real? And They're

1048
01:25:51.800 --> 01:25:59.680
like, yeah, oh my god, damn, so I ended up this.

1049
01:26:00.239 --> 01:26:03.119
I have to try care because I'm
retired. I ended up at Yale

1050
01:26:03.840 --> 01:26:12.079
and lucky enough to ended up who
the guy who became ultimately the number one

1051
01:26:12.760 --> 01:26:17.920
prostate cancer doctor in the world,
and he started treating me and he put

1052
01:26:18.000 --> 01:26:21.800
me on every clinical trial that came
along. Every treatment. I have a

1053
01:26:23.000 --> 01:26:30.840
radiation and I've had injections, I've
had chemotherapy. I've had so many different

1054
01:26:30.960 --> 01:26:35.279
types of treatment, but each one
has given me a few more years of

1055
01:26:35.359 --> 01:26:40.520
life. You know, I'm on
chemo right now for the third time,

1056
01:26:40.920 --> 01:26:45.399
but it's not going great. But
they've already got something else in the pipeline.

1057
01:26:45.800 --> 01:26:47.000
You know, they're going to give
it to me. And for the

1058
01:26:47.079 --> 01:26:50.640
last five years I've been at the
BA because I like it there. You

1059
01:26:50.720 --> 01:26:56.720
know, they give me a team
of people that helps me. They're connected

1060
01:26:56.760 --> 01:27:00.680
to Yale. They do really good. But the guys in the have all

1061
01:27:00.720 --> 01:27:05.159
different types of cancer and know about
all the different kinds of treatment. So

1062
01:27:05.279 --> 01:27:10.800
it's a huge resource until we can
convince the damn regiment to do something,

1063
01:27:11.159 --> 01:27:16.560
which we need to do. You
know, these one hundred think it's from

1064
01:27:17.840 --> 01:27:25.119
chemical or nuclear weapons, ionizing radiation, not like a not like a nuke,

1065
01:27:25.960 --> 01:27:30.159
which are in weapons. And because
I saw it was exposed to so

1066
01:27:30.560 --> 01:27:34.119
many chemical weapons and decom points,
you know, in Iraq, I can't

1067
01:27:34.159 --> 01:27:39.600
imagine it's not from that. I
know it ain't from some goddamn locusts in

1068
01:27:39.720 --> 01:27:45.479
Africa. So now it's bone cancer, and that's just horrible. It's so

1069
01:27:45.760 --> 01:27:50.039
painful. It's in my fucking spine
and my ribs in my back. It

1070
01:27:50.159 --> 01:27:56.800
sucks. But prostate cancer, you
can go to bone cancer or it cannot.

1071
01:27:57.880 --> 01:28:02.920
Yeah, yeah, man, but
you know I wanted to live with

1072
01:28:03.000 --> 01:28:06.720
it. I just want to tell
my story, get guys to get help,

1073
01:28:08.880 --> 01:28:13.039
not just with cancer, with the
drugs and alcohol. And I want

1074
01:28:13.119 --> 01:28:17.960
guys to help me get the act
duty, guys to pay attention to us

1075
01:28:17.960 --> 01:28:24.399
because they're gonna be in arfcuse.
You know they're gonna inherit whatever we do

1076
01:28:24.600 --> 01:28:28.000
or don't have. All we got
now is one little fucking Facebook move.

1077
01:28:28.600 --> 01:28:31.159
Come on, guys, you can
do better. You know they can do

1078
01:28:31.279 --> 01:28:35.600
better than that. It's it's something
that I'm gonna get on. This year

1079
01:28:35.840 --> 01:28:40.279
actually is going I've been putting it
off and everyone always tells me, you

1080
01:28:40.319 --> 01:28:43.399
need to go to VA and put
this claim in and that claim in,

1081
01:28:43.479 --> 01:28:46.600
and I just been avoiding it.
And thankfully I've been helpful so far.

1082
01:28:46.800 --> 01:28:53.079
But having conversations with with you,
Mike and with others, I mean,

1083
01:28:53.720 --> 01:28:56.520
dude, what I was exposed to
burn pits? You know what? I

1084
01:28:56.640 --> 01:28:59.960
come down with some weird cancer next
year that no one's ever seen, right

1085
01:29:00.039 --> 01:29:02.960
for you know, all these guys
that were in g WAT they need to

1086
01:29:03.000 --> 01:29:06.800
pay attention, you know. And
all these guys that are colonels in generals

1087
01:29:06.880 --> 01:29:10.720
now need to pay attention too,
because they're going to get it too.

1088
01:29:11.119 --> 01:29:15.760
They had long asked appointments over there, you know. And I'm sure I

1089
01:29:15.239 --> 01:29:19.319
still had camel weapons laying around when
they went back in there, because I

1090
01:29:19.439 --> 01:29:24.399
saw tons of them myself. They
must still have them right when they went

1091
01:29:24.520 --> 01:29:29.479
back. Have you heard? I
don't know. I'm sure there's still UXO

1092
01:29:29.600 --> 01:29:35.760
out there. Oh sure there's tons
of you look, so any other uh,

1093
01:29:35.880 --> 01:29:40.119
any questions I failed to ask or
any other like events that you really

1094
01:29:40.199 --> 01:29:44.840
wanted to talk about. No,
I don't think so, Jack. I

1095
01:29:44.960 --> 01:29:48.239
just appreciate your Let me have this
platform, and you know, if I

1096
01:29:48.399 --> 01:29:51.520
help one guy, I've done my
job, right, And if I get

1097
01:29:51.560 --> 01:29:55.439
that link, can you somehow embedd
it? Yes? I can. I

1098
01:29:55.640 --> 01:30:00.800
can put it in the description.
Okay, perfect. So my mod is

1099
01:30:00.000 --> 01:30:06.640
New Day Beyond for real, not
not for the SIF, because I've been

1100
01:30:06.680 --> 01:30:12.880
deplying cancer for so fucking long.
Yeah that's true, man, Yeah.

1101
01:30:13.359 --> 01:30:17.239
Yeah. Oh, and you know
I still get notes and of support and

1102
01:30:17.359 --> 01:30:23.640
textall mill and he's a good man. Yeah yeah, a lot of good

1103
01:30:23.720 --> 01:30:28.479
people in usf Hey, well,
I uh, you know, I hope

1104
01:30:28.479 --> 01:30:30.920
that you're going to stick around for
a little while longer, Mike, and

1105
01:30:30.359 --> 01:30:33.760
I hope. I hope. I
hope we can meet up up in your

1106
01:30:33.840 --> 01:30:36.439
neck of the woods. We both
live in the Northeast. I hope I

1107
01:30:36.479 --> 01:30:40.479
can see you again, you know, sometime this year. All right,

1108
01:30:40.600 --> 01:30:43.640
Jack, thanks for having me on. Yeah, thank you, Mike,