Speaker 1: Special Operations Cobert Spiona The Team House with your hosts
Speaker 1: Jack Murphy and David Park. Hey everyone, this is episode
Speaker 1: three and fifty eight of The Team House. I'm Jack
Speaker 1: here with Dave and our guest on tonight's show is
Speaker 1: retired General Remo Butler. Remo had a extensive career in
Speaker 1: special Forces. He was the first black special Forces general.
Speaker 1: He started off his career in conventional forces, served with
Speaker 1: three seven down in Panama more than once, and then
Speaker 1: went on to a number of different commands. Commanded the
Speaker 1: Special Warfare Center, the Deputy at USASAC, and commanded Special
Speaker 1: Operations Command South towards the end of his career. So
Speaker 1: there's a lot to talk about here and Remo, welcome
Speaker 1: to the show.
Speaker 2: Thanks, Jack appreciated.
Speaker 1: So your origin story, Remo, tell us about Egypt, Mississippi
Speaker 1: and growing up as a young.
Speaker 3: Man Egypt, Mississippi. I was born in Egypt, Mississippi. Most
Speaker 3: people have never heard of Egypt, Mississippi. It's about forty
Speaker 3: miles south of Tuffelow. When I was a young child
Speaker 3: growing up there, there used to be a blinking yellow light.
Speaker 3: And the last time I went back, that blinking yellow
Speaker 3: light had been replaced by four lane highway, so there's
Speaker 3: no sign or anything that says you're now entering Egypt.
Speaker 3: The only way I know where Egypt is is because
Speaker 3: I'm related to most of the people that live in Egypt.
Speaker 1: Mississippi, and so I'm picturing a small town, rural town
Speaker 1: in my mind.
Speaker 3: It's not a town, it's a rural area, a bunch
Speaker 3: of houses out there. I think there was a gas
Speaker 3: station across the street by the blinking light.
Speaker 2: That's all I mean.
Speaker 3: We're talking real, live, honest to god, small town America.
Speaker 1: And so it sounds like you grew up around like
Speaker 1: a lot of like cousins, brothers and things like that,
Speaker 1: running around the wilderness over there.
Speaker 2: Well, that's kind of true.
Speaker 3: I left Egypt when I was about five years old,
Speaker 3: and I told earlier about me and my cousin were
Speaker 3: talking and my wife and my son asked me about
Speaker 3: my past, and one of the things, one of the
Speaker 3: vivid memories I have is we used to have hog
Speaker 3: killings once a year every fall, and my grandparents had
Speaker 3: big farm and they had hogs, cows, pigs, everything, and
Speaker 3: all the families, the cousins, uncles, aunts, everybody would get
Speaker 3: together now I was a kid back then, so us kids,
Speaker 3: we used it as playtime. We just had lost our minds,
Speaker 3: had a great time together. And the folks went out
Speaker 3: and they'd kill two three big old hogs and they
Speaker 3: had big, huge tables and cast iron pots to clean them,
Speaker 3: and they would take them and cut them up butcher them,
Speaker 3: you know, unlike now you take it to the butcher's shop.
Speaker 2: They butchered themselves and put it in the smokehouse, and
Speaker 2: that was the meat for the winner. Wow, And you know,
Speaker 2: it was good.
Speaker 3: And I remember when I was little, I was about
Speaker 3: three years old, my grandmother had this butcher knife. To me,
Speaker 3: it looked like it was about three feet long. In reality,
Speaker 3: it probably was a six eight inches. And my Grandmama
Speaker 3: would give me that butcher knife and she'd tell me,
Speaker 3: she said, baby, go out to the smokehouse and cut
Speaker 3: Grandma a piece of lean and she would use that
Speaker 3: for seasoning the meat and whatever she was cooking. Well,
Speaker 3: I would go out there and I'd take that knife
Speaker 3: and I'd cut me a piece and I'd eat it.
Speaker 3: Then I'd cut a piece to take to her, and then,
Speaker 3: you know, so I really enjoyed that. It was a
Speaker 3: great childhood. You know, we were in the country. We
Speaker 3: were country folks, but it was a great childhood.
Speaker 1: And you were a third generation soldier, right. Tell us
Speaker 1: about your dad and grandpa.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, in reality, my father was my stepfather, okay,
Speaker 3: and his father was in the military. His father was
Speaker 3: an E eight retired as an EA, and my father
Speaker 3: was in They lived in Texas and during those days
Speaker 3: there was not.
Speaker 2: Much for black people to do in Texas.
Speaker 3: And he told me all the stories about him washing
Speaker 3: dishes and working in the arena during wrestling matches and
Speaker 3: so forth and so on. And he was in the military,
Speaker 3: and he was very proud to be in the military.
Speaker 2: He was a medic.
Speaker 3: And I asked him, I said, Dad, why did you
Speaker 3: become a medic? He said, I always wanted to be
Speaker 3: a doctor, he said, but my family couldn't afford send
Speaker 3: me to school. So you know, I did the next
Speaker 3: best thing. I joined the military. And his brother, who
Speaker 3: was smart, joined the Air Force. And you know, he
Speaker 3: taught me things as the father does. You know, you
Speaker 3: look at your father and that's your hero. And I
Speaker 3: knew how hard he worked, how hard he studied, and
Speaker 3: he never had to give up mentality and all those
Speaker 3: things just kind of bled off to me.
Speaker 1: And so as you get older and you become a
Speaker 1: teenager and you're going through high school, are you already
Speaker 1: thinking about the military at this time point?
Speaker 2: No, father's thing. From my mind. Vietnam was going on, remember, Yeah,
Speaker 2: so military was father's thing.
Speaker 3: From my mind. The biggest thing that happened to me
Speaker 3: when I was a senior, junior or a senior. West
Speaker 3: Point was making all the military acatsm We're making an
Speaker 3: effort to be more inclusive. So they were going out
Speaker 3: looking for students that met all the criteria, had the grades,
Speaker 3: who could get in. Well, I did, and one of
Speaker 3: my faculty members or what do you call the mom,
Speaker 3: the principal or somebody from the school recommended me. So
Speaker 3: they came and they talked to me, and I was
Speaker 3: I was pretty excited about it. Okay, what point. It
Speaker 3: was me and two other guys, So we had all
Speaker 3: talked about it, and you know, we were kind of
Speaker 3: kind of excited. So the day I was supposed to go,
Speaker 3: we were supposed to go and meet a congressman from
Speaker 3: Kentucky because my father was stationed in Fort Campbell. We're
Speaker 3: supposed to meet this iressman from Kentucky and he was
Speaker 3: going to be the one to recommend us to go
Speaker 3: to West Point. Well, I got up that morning and
Speaker 3: put on a suit. Looked good, always looked good, but
Speaker 3: I looked real good this day. And my father, typical
Speaker 3: military guy, was up about five thirty six o'clock having
Speaker 3: his coffee and he said to me, he said, well,
Speaker 3: what are y'all dressed up for? I said, well, Dad,
Speaker 3: today I'm going to meet this congressman from Tennis, from Kentucky,
Speaker 3: and he's going to recommend me for West Point. Father
Speaker 3: didn't say nothing for a minute. He looked at me
Speaker 3: and he said, you know you're my son. I love you.
Speaker 2: I said, yep. He said you won't like west Point.
Speaker 3: I said really, He said no, he said, you're not
Speaker 3: the kind of guy that goes to West Point.
Speaker 2: Stick with regular college.
Speaker 3: I went to my room, man, I took the coat
Speaker 3: and tie off, went to school. My other two friends
Speaker 3: were there wearing their coats and ties and they said, hey, man,
Speaker 3: and I said, I'm not going.
Speaker 2: What do you mean?
Speaker 3: I said, well, you know, my father told me that
Speaker 3: he didn't think I was cut out for West Point.
Speaker 3: And they were like, oh okay, and one of them
Speaker 3: sided he wasn't going the other one. The only way
Speaker 3: he had to go to college was going to West Point,
Speaker 3: and he went to West Point and he became a
Speaker 3: West Point officer. And at the end of the day,
Speaker 3: I can say this, my father made the right decision
Speaker 3: telling me.
Speaker 1: That that it wouldn't have been a good fit for you.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, you know, back in those days they did
Speaker 3: a lot of hazing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I wasn't the one to sit around and
Speaker 2: take that.
Speaker 1: And so what school did you end up going to?
Speaker 3: I went to Austin p State University in Clarksville, Tennessee. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 3: and you know, it's great and I had the privilege
Speaker 3: of going there, And this is one of the things
Speaker 3: that helped me more than anything. When I got there,
Speaker 3: Austin t had been integrated for two years, two years,
Speaker 3: and I remember when I checked in the dorm, it
Speaker 3: kind of amazed me. How you know, all the black guys,
Speaker 3: We got black roommates. And one of the guys told me,
Speaker 3: he said, let me tell you what they do. He said,
Speaker 3: when you come in the dorm, they take a pencil
Speaker 3: and if you're black, they take that pencil, put a
Speaker 3: dot by your name. So the next black person comes in,
Speaker 3: they look for a dot, and they put you all
Speaker 3: together's roommates.
Speaker 2: And I remember the football program.
Speaker 3: The coach he was adamantly against it, but you know
Speaker 3: he was forced, but he would only have X number
Speaker 3: of blacks on his team.
Speaker 2: And you know that lasted for a couple of years.
Speaker 3: And then as time passed and those old people left died,
Speaker 3: whatever they happened to him, the school.
Speaker 2: Became more normal.
Speaker 3: And I said it helped me more than anything in
Speaker 3: my career, because one minorities were a minority. We probably
Speaker 3: were five percent of the population when I went. So consequently,
Speaker 3: what do you do You meet people, You get out
Speaker 3: of your comfort zone, You stretch out, you meet people,
Speaker 3: you know. And I had to look up one time
Speaker 3: because I was starting to talk blackness here, and you know,
Speaker 3: so you had to do that. And uh, you know,
Speaker 3: I had some great friends, learned to drink moonshine with them,
Speaker 3: and I had some great things happened there. And I'll
Speaker 3: tell you one of the things that I was on
Speaker 3: the football team at Austin Field and this one guy
Speaker 3: came in. They called him Big Red. He said to
Speaker 3: me and he said, moll hi, and he said, hey,
Speaker 3: we going over to this house for dinner. And it
Speaker 3: was just a regular house, but they served dinner. They cooked.
Speaker 3: I forgot there's a name for it. I can't think
Speaker 3: of it. So we go in there and you know,
Speaker 3: a bunch of football players, probably about five or six
Speaker 3: of us. We walked in, and you know, you can
Speaker 3: feel the atmosphere change, and I looked around, but I
Speaker 3: was with, hey, you know, five white guys on my team.
Speaker 3: We were going to eat. So the lady or the
Speaker 3: owner called red over looked at him. He said something,
Speaker 3: and Richard, now we're leaving.
Speaker 2: So we all left, and I went what happened?
Speaker 3: He said, all right, then he didn't want you in
Speaker 3: there because he was black. But those guys who were
Speaker 3: part of the team that I was on circled around
Speaker 3: me and would not let that stand. And that teaches
Speaker 3: you a lot about people, and that affects your judgment
Speaker 3: on people in the future. So, like I said, it
Speaker 3: was a learning experience for me. And one of the
Speaker 3: things I tell my father, I said, you know, I said,
Speaker 3: a good thing about that was when I went through
Speaker 3: ROTC and everything at Austin p I had a lot
Speaker 3: of white friends, and when you come in the military,
Speaker 3: guess what the majority of the population was right, consequently,
Speaker 3: already knew how to deal with John.
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Speaker 1: So you commissioned in what was it nineteen seventy four?
Speaker 2: Nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 1: And your first assignment was South Korea Field Artillery view.
Speaker 2: Ye tell him Korea first and fifteen Field Artillery one O.
Speaker 1: Five tell us about what that first army experience was like.
Speaker 3: It was the worst experience of my life, no, seriously.
Speaker 3: I got there and it was one of those times
Speaker 3: when they had a bunch of new lieutenants. I think
Speaker 3: it was three or four new lieutenants came in for
Speaker 3: and they sent us to the units and I got
Speaker 3: put in my battery, and you know it doesn't take
Speaker 3: long you've all been in the military. After a while,
Speaker 3: everybody understands what the real pecan order is. Who's good,
Speaker 3: who's okay, and who's not so good. And there was
Speaker 3: another guy there and who happened to be a West Pointer,
Speaker 3: and we became great friends. And it was between me
Speaker 3: and him for one and two. Today i'd be one,
Speaker 3: tomorrow he'd be one. You know, that rivalry, but we
Speaker 3: enjoyed it. And then there was no animosity, and we
Speaker 3: had some other guys there and everybody understood who was who,
Speaker 3: what was what. Well, during those days we got what
Speaker 3: we called a sixty day. Oh we are and they've
Speaker 3: stopped those. So the first day there in the unit
Speaker 3: walked in and they're getting an IG inspection. And back
Speaker 3: in those days, you know, IG inspections made it or break.
Speaker 3: So I was in there, young, good looking, charming, and
Speaker 3: the IG said to the commander, he said, ah, you
Speaker 3: know this, this is all messed up. Your arms room
Speaker 3: is messed up. Commander looked at me and he said, Butler,
Speaker 3: their arms room is yours. Got it. When I said,
Speaker 3: oh security, security is bad. Key control was messed up.
Speaker 3: My commander looked at me and he said, the butler
Speaker 3: key control is yours. You know, I didn't know.
Speaker 2: I was clueless.
Speaker 3: So we went through and I think I took on
Speaker 3: about three or four things that they had failed. And
Speaker 3: I did business the only way I knew how, the
Speaker 3: way my father had taught me. I know, I didn't
Speaker 3: know what was going on. I know I didn't understand
Speaker 3: the military, but I'm gonna find out. So I did
Speaker 3: into a program. I as I say, I did a
Speaker 3: deep dive into security, physical security, arms, room, security.
Speaker 2: Maintenance, all that stuff, and I learned it.
Speaker 3: I learned it so well I became the de facto
Speaker 3: battalion expert on it.
Speaker 2: So units would have problems, they'd call me in.
Speaker 3: So it was time.
Speaker 2: After two or three months, we had a reinspection and.
Speaker 3: Out of all those things that we had failed, all
Speaker 3: those things we had failed, I had two minor deficiencies
Speaker 3: in the next one, you know, So I felt good
Speaker 3: about that.
Speaker 2: Oh, everybody's pat me on the back here, Hey, you
Speaker 2: know you do this? Sure that?
Speaker 3: And uh later sixty days come up we got Oh
Speaker 3: we are now. I remember, we're all new lieutenants, you know,
Speaker 3: we're all friends so we get out o ours in
Speaker 3: the orderly room and we all run out back behind
Speaker 3: the ority room pull out our oars. So my buddy Mark,
Speaker 3: the West Pointer, I pulls out his and he got
Speaker 3: a ninety something one ninety something whatever, but it was
Speaker 3: what he deserved. During that time, a couple more guys
Speaker 3: came out and they got what they deserved, and we
Speaker 3: had one guy who wasn't as good.
Speaker 2: He got it.
Speaker 3: No we are.
Speaker 2: I opened mine up.
Speaker 3: I mine was one point higher than the guy who was,
Speaker 3: so we just say, jacked up one point higher. So
Speaker 3: everybody's going out. I know this must be a mistake.
Speaker 3: It's got to be a mistake. But we're all lieutenants,
Speaker 3: you know, we don't know. So the West Point lieutenant says, hey,
Speaker 3: we need to talk to the XO because this is
Speaker 3: obviously a mistake. So he went and got with the XO,
Speaker 3: and the XO came over and he looked at He said, ah,
Speaker 3: boss made a mistake. This is a mistake. You need
Speaker 3: to go talk to the boss. So I grabbed my
Speaker 3: or and I walked in knock on the door, and
Speaker 3: he said n at his desk and he says, Lieutenant,
Speaker 3: what can I do for you. I said, sir, I'd
Speaker 3: like to talk about my or. He looked at me
Speaker 3: and he said, I want to tell you something, Lieutenant.
Speaker 3: I spent a lot of time working on that or
Speaker 3: for you. I said, well, I thank you. I appreciate that.
Speaker 3: But we were looking at our ors and mine is
Speaker 3: just one point higher than Smuck tells. What do you mean,
Speaker 3: I said, we were out looking at Well, let me
Speaker 3: tell you something, first, lieutenant. Your OER is a private
Speaker 3: personal thing. You don't share that with anyone that's yours.
Speaker 3: You don't show it to anybody. You don't share it
Speaker 3: with anybody. I'm like, okay, and here it comes drum
Speaker 3: roll And he said, and I didn't give you that
Speaker 3: or because you were black? And I said, where did
Speaker 3: that come from?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Now remember now, I'm a second lieutenant.
Speaker 3: I've been in the army maybe three months.
Speaker 2: So I didn't know what to do.
Speaker 3: So there was a black captain there, and this was
Speaker 3: the time when black officers did not like to talk
Speaker 3: to younger black officers because they were afraid of what
Speaker 3: people would say. He called me in. He talked to me,
Speaker 3: said listen. He said, I knew this was going to happen.
Speaker 3: You know, if you had worked for me, this is
Speaker 3: what I would have given you. Blah blah blah. I said, okay,
Speaker 3: but basically I can't help you. Hey, I understood that.
Speaker 3: You know, he had a career. Well, there was a
Speaker 3: captain there, special forces captain. He was the headquarters battery commander.
Speaker 3: So he called me, showed it to him, we talked
Speaker 3: about it. Yeah. He was a great guy, very quiet,
Speaker 3: you know, as they say, a man amongst men. And
Speaker 3: he says, no, this is not right, and he says, now,
Speaker 3: let me tell you what you need to do. And
Speaker 3: he broke it down for me. Later that he said
Speaker 3: one and this was back in the early seventies and
Speaker 3: they had thing called EO Equal Opportunity. He said, you
Speaker 3: need the formal, formal EO complaint. That was a little concern.
Speaker 3: I'm like, well, how will that affect me? And he's like, well,
Speaker 3: he's already stuck, and tell you what else they're gonna
Speaker 3: do for you. So I did it, filled it out,
Speaker 3: and I was surprised at the number of people that
Speaker 3: gave me statements. Some of my commander's friends pulled me
Speaker 3: to the side and said, listen, you know, I hate
Speaker 3: that he did that. Tell you he shouldn't have did that,
Speaker 3: and I'll write a statement for you, okay. So I
Speaker 3: got all these statements from other officers, and the battalan
Speaker 3: commander knew who I was because I had worked for
Speaker 3: him and helping to get all the arms.
Speaker 2: Rooms and the physical security squared away from the battalion.
Speaker 3: So one day I'm out helicopter lands and during those
Speaker 3: days of helicopter landing was a big deal. So I
Speaker 3: got a guy came by and said, sir, the colonel
Speaker 3: wants to see you.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: So I go up and the tank commander's there with
Speaker 3: the PARTI commander and he says, I got this he
Speaker 3: O complaint and he asked me about it. So I
Speaker 3: told him just like I told you, and he said, well,
Speaker 3: I talked to several losters here and they all speak
Speaker 3: very highly of you and your knowledge. I said, well,
Speaker 3: that's good, he said, So what I'm going to do
Speaker 3: is I'm going to get you out of here. I'm
Speaker 3: going to take you down to I believe it was
Speaker 3: Camp Davis at that time. I said why, He said,
Speaker 3: I want to protect you from him. I said, well, sir,
Speaker 3: let me explain something to you.
Speaker 2: Number one.
Speaker 3: I don't run from anybody. It's not my nature. I said,
Speaker 3: I know what I've done, and I know what I
Speaker 3: can do. I want to stay here because I'm not
Speaker 3: going to run. And he looked at me, you know,
Speaker 3: and he gave me that look.
Speaker 2: Like he's dumb.
Speaker 3: That's a little big and you know, he said, well,
Speaker 3: he said, if you stay, I can't protect you. I said,
Speaker 3: I understand that, I said, but I'm willing to take
Speaker 3: that chance. And I'll tell you this is what really
Speaker 3: really got me the good. One of the good things
Speaker 3: about it. Some of my commander's friends pulled me to
Speaker 3: the side and said, listen, we know what happened to you,
Speaker 3: and he's going to try to get you back, and
Speaker 3: if you make a mistake, he's going to crush it.
Speaker 3: But we're going to help you not make any mistakes.
Speaker 3: And they did, you know, if they thought I was
Speaker 3: doing something wrong or whatever, you know, they would pull
Speaker 3: me to the side and let me know what was
Speaker 3: going on. That's what society needs. People to help each
Speaker 3: other like that. So on one side, I'm having the
Speaker 3: worst time of my life, but on the other side,
Speaker 3: I'm meeting some great people and this captain who was
Speaker 3: Special Forces. I mean, he really really helped me. Helped
Speaker 3: me put together the packet, helped me work. There was
Speaker 3: a on the DMZ. There was a company that I was,
Speaker 3: the FO four. He was also a Special Forces captain
Speaker 3: out of Vietnam. These guys were super They were down
Speaker 3: to earth and if they said it, it was so.
Speaker 3: And I grew to respect him. So after his time
Speaker 3: was up, he changed command. He called me in. He
Speaker 3: gave me an or. Shaid I put a lot of
Speaker 3: fun in this, and I'm thinking to myself, you said
Speaker 3: that the last time you wore on. But anyway, he
Speaker 3: gave me my OR. It was not what I thought
Speaker 3: it should be, but it was very close and I
Speaker 3: didn't feel I had grounds to fight.
Speaker 2: So I accepted it.
Speaker 3: But thanks to Captain Brady, he told me how to
Speaker 3: do to reclaim with the OR. And this guy told
Speaker 3: me something. He said, I based that on Oer's last year,
Speaker 3: and the points were down much lower. So I put
Speaker 3: that in my paperwork and it's still up there. I'm
Speaker 3: sure that's public record now. And the Army said, okay,
Speaker 3: based on what he told you and this Oer, we're
Speaker 3: gonna put we're gonna stamp on this that this is
Speaker 3: based on an average of whatever of one point thirty
Speaker 3: and so it overall, it didn't hurt me, but it
Speaker 3: taught me a lot about people. Now, I look at
Speaker 3: that same situation. Now, if I had had the knowledge
Speaker 3: then that I had, now my company commander, my battery
Speaker 3: commander had been selling biscuits on the street because he'd
Speaker 3: been gone.
Speaker 1: And after that experience, you joined special Forces in nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven.
Speaker 2: YEP, I went to Fort Hood, Texas.
Speaker 3: I was full of finished with field artillery because I figured,
Speaker 3: you know, this is a racist, and I'm sure there
Speaker 3: are other racists in field artilleries.
Speaker 2: I went out.
Speaker 3: So I went to Fort Hood, Texas. And it's probably
Speaker 3: the best move I ever made, because I had a
Speaker 3: battalion commander who was just tremendous.
Speaker 2: I had a company commander who was super.
Speaker 3: And you know, they liked me, and the battalion commander
Speaker 3: had already designated me that I was going to be
Speaker 3: one of his company commanders.
Speaker 2: And you know, it was all great.
Speaker 3: We all had a good time and I had, you know,
Speaker 3: great lieutenants I was serving with, and it was just
Speaker 3: a great unit. First of the fifth cav Fordahead, Texas,
Speaker 3: just a great unit. And we've got a new company
Speaker 3: commander and guess what it was Special Forces in Vietnam.
Speaker 3: And he was made from the same mold as these
Speaker 3: other two special Forces captains were. And I admired and
Speaker 3: respected him. And one day we're talking and he says
Speaker 3: to me, said, Remo, He said, you're the kind of
Speaker 3: guy that needs to be in Special Forces. And I said, well,
Speaker 3: how do I do it? He said, first, you need
Speaker 3: to do a Ford one eighty seven. He said, go
Speaker 3: over to the S one section put out a forty
Speaker 3: one eighty seven for special Forces and I'll endorse it. Okay,
Speaker 3: I did it. I was in the motor pool about
Speaker 3: two weeks later and I was in a one one
Speaker 3: three working on it and one of the one of
Speaker 3: the mechanics comes over. He says, Sir, the colonel's down
Speaker 3: here and he's looking for you, and he's mad.
Speaker 2: I'm like, oh my god, what did I do? So
Speaker 2: I go in I see him.
Speaker 3: I say, hey, sir, how you doing? And he takes
Speaker 3: the forty went eighty seven and he holds it up
Speaker 3: like this and he says, Remo, what the hell is
Speaker 3: this bullshit about you going to Special Forces. Yes, sir?
Speaker 2: Why well, you know, sir, I met some guys special Forces.
Speaker 3: You know. He takes that Fortin's seven in front of me,
Speaker 3: tears it up, and he says, Remo, you're a good officer.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna make you a company commander. You don't need
Speaker 3: this bullshit. Special Forces will ruin your career. What do
Speaker 3: I say? Yes, sir? So I went back and I
Speaker 3: saw my company commander and I told him what happened,
Speaker 3: and he went ooh. He says, okay, this is what
Speaker 3: we're gonna do. He knows what he said we are
Speaker 3: going to do. He said, I got a friend that
Speaker 3: works in branch. I'm gonna call him, and I want
Speaker 3: you to call him after I talked to him and
Speaker 3: tell him you want to go Special Forces and he'll
Speaker 3: make it. So I was like, oh, this is pretty easy. Okay.
Speaker 3: So he did it, and he said okay and gave
Speaker 3: me the number. I called up and he asked me
Speaker 3: a question. He said, can you swim? I said, yeah,
Speaker 3: I can swim. He said, okay, you'll have orders in
Speaker 3: the next couple months. Fortunately, my battalion commander had did
Speaker 3: a change of command, so I had a new battalion commander,
Speaker 3: and then I get orders going this Special Forces school.
Speaker 3: So I go to Fort Bragg and sign up for
Speaker 3: Sports and Special Forces. And let me tell you what,
Speaker 3: it's one of those things that you'll never forget. We
Speaker 3: started off with X number after the PT test and
Speaker 3: a day we had lost about fifty percent of the class.
Speaker 1: And back during that time frame in nineteen seventy seven,
Speaker 1: what was the Special Forces I don't recall they even
Speaker 1: called it the Qualification course at that time, but what
Speaker 1: was that training pipeline like at the.
Speaker 3: Time it was it was called the Q course. The
Speaker 3: first part of it was extremely physical. In fact, during
Speaker 3: the first part of it, phase one, as they called
Speaker 3: it back then, I lost about twenty pounds. I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, we were out humping. You were humping that
Speaker 3: big heavy rucksack all through Camp McCall, the UII Forest,
Speaker 3: and there was not a swamp that I was not
Speaker 3: intimately familiar with. And when you did land navigation, he
Speaker 3: had to cross the swamp going out and across the
Speaker 3: swamp coming back. It was purely a physical course, but
Speaker 3: it tested your desire how much you really wanted to
Speaker 3: be in Special forces. And during those times they had
Speaker 3: a seven day, seven night trek where you were by yourself,
Speaker 3: just you and your rucksack and your food in the
Speaker 3: ure forest. And in the evening the cabri would come
Speaker 3: up to you and pull out his map and he'd said,
Speaker 3: all right, you are here. Tomorrow, I will pick you
Speaker 3: up here at six o'clock in the morning. And you're
Speaker 3: talking fifteen twenty kilometers across country at night with a
Speaker 3: heavy ass ruck on. So, yeah, you lost a lot
Speaker 3: of weight. But guess what I made it. And I
Speaker 3: remember one night I was walking through and I saw
Speaker 3: a strobe light. You remember strobe lights, right, And it
Speaker 3: was just blinking. So I said, oh, somebody's hurt. So
Speaker 3: I walked over and I saw this guy. He was
Speaker 3: laid back on a piece of wood a log, had
Speaker 3: his feet propped up, had his rucksack, was eating some
Speaker 3: sea rations. And I said, hey, man, you already said yeah.
Speaker 2: I said, what's what's wrong?
Speaker 3: He said nothing.
Speaker 2: He said, I just made a decision.
Speaker 3: I said, what's that. He said, Tomorrow morning, when it's light,
Speaker 3: I'm gonna find the first road and I'm gonna sit
Speaker 3: on the side of the road until they picked me up.
Speaker 2: And that's the kind of course it was.
Speaker 3: It if you didn't want to go to SF, you
Speaker 3: thought you wanted to be SF, that course told you
Speaker 3: that you didn't want to go SF. And at that course,
Speaker 3: i'll tell you Colonel Charles Beckworth was in charge. Lieutenant
Speaker 3: Colonel Ola Mys was his deputy, and we had Major
Speaker 3: Big Budge Williams there. And let me tell you what,
Speaker 3: those guys didn't let you slide through.
Speaker 2: You earned it.
Speaker 3: And in phase two was what we call the classroom phase,
Speaker 3: and that's where you're learning all about special Forces. And
Speaker 3: Phase through was Robin Sage. And of course when we graduated,
Speaker 3: they told us, they said, listen, you don't know act
Speaker 3: about Special Forces right now?
Speaker 2: Yeah you got a bereat. Yeah you're going to an assignment.
Speaker 3: So getting in your mind that you don't know Jack,
Speaker 3: when you get there, your first team is gonna make
Speaker 3: you a Special Forces officer. And I left there, went
Speaker 3: to thirty to seventeen Panama, and I had the best team,
Speaker 3: sergeant you could possibly get, a guy named Ray Maxby.
Speaker 3: And when I walked into the team room, the guys
Speaker 3: were sitting around as about three o'clock he told them
Speaker 3: he said, y'all go get a cup of coffee. Now,
Speaker 3: Remember I'm coming from the conventional Army. We didn't do
Speaker 3: that in the conventional army. So I'm like, okay, what
Speaker 3: the hell is going on? So he sits down in
Speaker 3: his chair and he looks at me and he said,
Speaker 3: loeu tenant like it was a bad word. He said,
Speaker 3: I want to welcome you to ODA thirteen. He said,
Speaker 3: just want to tell you you don't know shit. He said, no,
Speaker 3: We're gonna teach you, he said, now, but I want
Speaker 3: you to make a decision. He said, I want you
Speaker 3: to tell me if you think you're going to run
Speaker 3: this team, are you gonna let me, the team sergeant,
Speaker 3: run the team and educate you on how the team
Speaker 3: should be run.
Speaker 2: Well, to me, that seemed like a no brainer.
Speaker 3: I looked at him. I said, Sartain magazine. I said, good,
Speaker 3: the team Sergeant, I want you to continue doing what
Speaker 3: you're doing and teach me.
Speaker 2: And he said all right. The rest of the guys
Speaker 2: came over.
Speaker 3: He introduced me to him and told him he said,
Speaker 3: this is our new lieutenant and we're gonna make sure
Speaker 3: he's the best lieutenant in the unit. Time passed and
Speaker 3: This is when we had our teps, remember our tips,
Speaker 3: and we'd had several ur teps. And he was there
Speaker 3: with me, and we have an our TEP coming up.
Speaker 3: And I look up and Sartain magazine is getting ready
Speaker 3: to go on leave. So I said, Magaby, I said,
Speaker 3: said our tep, and you're getting ready to go and leave.
Speaker 3: He looked at me and he said, die, we you
Speaker 3: can handle it, he said, and beside, I got seid,
Speaker 3: I'm leaving with you, dandy don blah blah blah, and
Speaker 3: he said, they're gonna make sure you pass, but you
Speaker 3: got it, okay, Well sure lo and behold we passed
Speaker 3: the art TEP. We did well. And those guys help
Speaker 3: me about being Special Forces and about being a Special
Speaker 3: Forces officer. They built the foundation that I grew on.
Speaker 1: I love that your team sergeant was yelling at you
Speaker 1: and Vietnamese.
Speaker 3: Yeah they all you know, all those guys in Vietnamese
Speaker 3: Vietnam vets. Yeah. Yeah. And when I first went to
Speaker 3: my first unit, I remember there was one guy there
Speaker 3: who had spent seven tours in Vietnam. Most of the
Speaker 3: guys on my team had spent multiple tours in Vietnam.
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Speaker 1: So I mean three seven down in Panama, I mean
Speaker 1: everyone I speak to kind of describes it as this
Speaker 1: sort of like glorious paradise, the best time of their life.
Speaker 1: What was your experience like that down there as you
Speaker 1: kind of ingratiated yourself with your team and you know,
Speaker 1: you start coming through the right it was.
Speaker 2: It was great. It was for me, it was a
Speaker 2: learning experience.
Speaker 3: But it was a great learning experience because they believe
Speaker 3: in working hard and as some of the guys the
Speaker 3: team said, and party in heart.
Speaker 2: And they put the work in. I mean they put
Speaker 2: the serious work in.
Speaker 3: But when they were off duty, they enjoyed Panama because
Speaker 3: how often do you get to go to a paradise?
Speaker 1: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Yeah, And the thing about it then, your team was
Speaker 3: your de facto family. I knew every guy on my team,
Speaker 3: I knew his wife, and I knew their kids, and
Speaker 3: they knew my wife, and they knew my kids. Every
Speaker 3: weekend we usually did something as a team together, whether
Speaker 3: it was go to the beach, meet at somebody's house,
Speaker 3: to cook out fish, whatever, but it was a team effort.
Speaker 3: And I think that's one of the things that Special
Speaker 3: Forces has lost over time, is that a team family.
Speaker 1: Any other I mean before we move on to the
Speaker 1: next thing, any particular experiences down in Panama, I mean,
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy seven is a little bit before the counter
Speaker 1: Narcos stuff, I think. Yeah, so it was more counter
Speaker 1: Marxism that you were focused on, right.
Speaker 3: Well, it was we worked with the PDFP Pataman and
Speaker 3: Defense Force back then. We sent some mptts to different places,
Speaker 3: but mostly it was it was in local training.
Speaker 1: We did working with the PDF.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And so a couple of years later, nineteen eighty, you're
Speaker 1: off to Fort Benning, right, What did you do there?
Speaker 3: I went to an advanced course, spent a year in
Speaker 3: the advanced course, and when I left, it was time
Speaker 3: for me to have a company command, and they sent
Speaker 3: me to a unit called ITG After Training Group. And
Speaker 3: everything that I had read or knew about the military
Speaker 3: then was that to have you needed to have a
Speaker 3: T O and E company command.
Speaker 2: This was TDA company command.
Speaker 3: And I will say this, I had never seen so
Speaker 3: many black commanders as I had when I was out
Speaker 3: working with the with the training group after training group
Speaker 3: and the basic training unit there. I'm not saying it
Speaker 3: was an accident. I'm not saying it wasn't an accident,
Speaker 3: but that's the way it happened.
Speaker 2: I was very fortunate.
Speaker 3: I met a guy there who was my commander named
Speaker 3: Sid Shack. Now yeah, yeah, concentration camps ever and the
Speaker 3: best leader I've.
Speaker 2: Ever encountered in my life. Wow.
Speaker 3: So we got there and you know, he didn't say much,
Speaker 3: he just kind of walked around and looked, but he
Speaker 3: identified me as as one of the players even and
Speaker 3: his wife took it upon themselves to start mentoring me
Speaker 3: and my wife for the future. And I commanded and
Speaker 3: I did good job for him, and I was rewarded
Speaker 3: my o RS and so forth, and it was time
Speaker 3: for me to leave, and I could have went to
Speaker 3: Fort Benning to the as they call it, bedroom four,
Speaker 3: had one of those soft jobs there, air conditioned. He
Speaker 3: came to me and he said, listen, Captain Butler. He said,
Speaker 3: I'm having some problems with my motor pool and I
Speaker 3: know you're change in command. You're going to leave.
Speaker 2: I'd like you to stay on and be my motor officer.
Speaker 3: And I was kind of like, uh, be out here
Speaker 3: in Harmony Church as a motor officer or Building four.
Speaker 3: And I said, okay, sir. He said, now, I know
Speaker 3: you don't know anything about vehicles. He said, but I'm
Speaker 3: gonna send you to the motor officer school. And he said, Now,
Speaker 3: in saying that, he said, I'm probably going back to
Speaker 3: Fort Bragg. They're starting used to sock there, and I'm
Speaker 3: going to be the first chief of staff and I'll
Speaker 3: get you back. I was sold, I'm going. I said, okay,
Speaker 3: went and ran the motor pool. Did a tremendous job
Speaker 3: at the motor pool, had some tremendous people that worked
Speaker 3: for me.
Speaker 2: Had a motor sergeant.
Speaker 3: And this was back in nineteen eighty two and I
Speaker 3: still communicate with this guy today, Master Sergeant Bill Frinch,
Speaker 3: great guy. I mean, he taught me everything you wanted
Speaker 3: to know about a wheel vehicle or a track vehicle
Speaker 3: because he knew it and he was a great guy. Well,
Speaker 3: I did it finished, and right about the time I'm
Speaker 3: finishing my tour, I get orders for Fort Bragg, North Carolina,
Speaker 3: and that's where I went.
Speaker 2: And guess who I was working for.
Speaker 1: So that's what around nineteen eighty four that you're back
Speaker 1: to Special Forces. Yeah, yep, And so where did mister
Speaker 1: shatt now set you up?
Speaker 2: I worked for him.
Speaker 3: He had me there and I set up a He
Speaker 3: had a conference, a commander's conference, and of course he
Speaker 3: naturally set me back to Fort Betting to prepare the
Speaker 3: commander's conference for it. So I did the commander's conference.
Speaker 3: All the commanders came and if you have to have.
Speaker 2: To prepare commander's conference, it's not fun.
Speaker 3: But anyway I did it. Went back to Fort Bragg
Speaker 3: and about the time I was there, I got moved
Speaker 3: to First Battalion, seven Special Forces Group as the three,
Speaker 3: and we were getting ready to start this program where
Speaker 3: every six weeks we would go down to Honduras and
Speaker 3: spend six weeks, come back, spend six weeks, go back
Speaker 3: to Honduras. And it was called I've got the name
Speaker 3: of it, but anyway, it was a big exercise and
Speaker 3: being a three moving all those people back and forth,
Speaker 3: back and forth. It was taxing, but I did it
Speaker 3: and I survived it.
Speaker 1: This is when you know, the Seventh Group is getting
Speaker 1: involved in like the contral Wars down in Central America.
Speaker 3: Yes, it was.
Speaker 1: I'd love to pick your brain a little bit. I mean,
Speaker 1: what was your impression of that conflict and sort of
Speaker 1: the special Forces mission down there.
Speaker 3: Well, let me I'm trying to phrase this the right
Speaker 3: way because, as you know, a lot of that stuff
Speaker 3: is still classified. I would just say this, We were
Speaker 3: influential in the training of the Contrasts, but not only
Speaker 3: the Contrasts. We were influential in the training of the
Speaker 3: Honduran military because the Honduran military served as a blocking
Speaker 3: force to keep the Contrasts out of Honduras and out
Speaker 3: of the Salvadors.
Speaker 2: And we also worked with the.
Speaker 3: Salvadorian army and and you know, at that time there
Speaker 3: were a lot of gorillas forces going on down there,
Speaker 3: so we were teaching them, you know, gorilla warfare, how
Speaker 3: to beat them. Yeah, it wasn't hard for us, but
Speaker 3: for them, coming from the culture that they came from,
Speaker 3: it was it was it was difficult, but uh, I
Speaker 3: think at.
Speaker 2: The end of the day, we did a we did
Speaker 2: a pretty good job.
Speaker 1: I and then you you took command. You went back
Speaker 1: down to the C three seven right, No, oh.
Speaker 2: No, I took over. Uh Charlie company two two seven?
Speaker 3: Ah? Okay, okay, yeah, Charlie two seven cool.
Speaker 1: So tell us about your company commander time in SF.
Speaker 3: That was me.
Speaker 2: I was company commander.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And and this this was Fort Bragg rather than Panama, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and and so I imagine it was more of this preparing,
Speaker 1: you know what, like you're saying every six weeks for
Speaker 1: these missions down to hundreds we were doing.
Speaker 3: We were doing a lot of missions in Central and
Speaker 3: South America during that time, and we were always always
Speaker 3: busy going somewhere, getting ready to go somewhere. And the
Speaker 3: guys love it when that EPI soldier is traveling on
Speaker 3: MTT or TDY. He's happy. He's just happy. And we
Speaker 3: enjoyed it. Had a great unit, and we did a
Speaker 3: lot of a lot of different things.
Speaker 1: Care to describe any remo, H.
Speaker 3: It's all right, I guess I could say this one. Sure.
Speaker 3: I was the first one I think to work with
Speaker 3: my company was the first one to work with the concress.
Speaker 1: That must have been a pretty interesting experience to you know,
Speaker 1: your team, you know, Americans and probably some Latinos on
Speaker 1: your team. I imagine a Seventh Group.
Speaker 2: And it was different back then because.
Speaker 3: We all supposed to spokes a little bit Spanish, and
Speaker 3: traditionally we would take you know, we have a bunch
Speaker 3: of Latinos from Seventh Group. You know, we had Mexicans
Speaker 3: and Puerto Ricans and Cubans and everybody was there. So
Speaker 3: their job was also to teach us Spanish. And I
Speaker 3: remember we went there and we worked with them one
Speaker 3: time for about six seven six months I think, and
Speaker 3: we came back and we had to take Spanish tests
Speaker 3: and everybody's expecting our Spanish to be off the charts.
Speaker 3: It wasn't. Why because the people we were working with
Speaker 3: were mostly under educated or uneducated, and we spoke like
Speaker 3: they did. Yeah, So we spoke colloquial, colloquial Spanish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not Spain Spanish.
Speaker 3: Not Castiano.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I And then nineteen eighty eight, you get positioned
Speaker 1: J three at a Special Operations Command South.
Speaker 2: At Sock South, as I did.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was fortunate because my third IT time commander
Speaker 3: Colonel Chuck Fry Oh yeah, the commander. Yeah, so when
Speaker 3: I went down there, and it was like old Home
Speaker 3: Week again, and I went in and held that position.
Speaker 3: I was only a major and fairly new major, and
Speaker 3: I held that position down. And then finally Dave Wildolm
Speaker 3: and we called him the Beast.
Speaker 2: He was a zero five. He came in and I
Speaker 2: became his deputy three.
Speaker 1: And this is sort of like in the run up
Speaker 1: to Operation just Class right, Yes, it was. Can you
Speaker 1: talk to us about like the situation in Panela, the
Speaker 1: terry rating.
Speaker 3: The situation was going down, and I guess we weren't
Speaker 3: really getting a lot of good solid guidance. And when
Speaker 3: that guy got killed that night, uh, you know that
Speaker 3: was the first thing he got killed.
Speaker 1: Are you talking about the checkpoint that there's a soldier
Speaker 1: that got killed.
Speaker 3: Yeah, people started to wake up and take notice. So
Speaker 3: from that, we had meetings with all of the players
Speaker 3: and it was decided upon that we needed to do something.
Speaker 3: So at that point in time, we started working on
Speaker 3: Operation Blue Spoon as it was called, and that was
Speaker 3: the invasion of Pantama, and we planned for it, rehearsed
Speaker 3: for it, planned for it, rehearsed for it, and finally
Speaker 3: executed it. And you know, it's hard to say, but
Speaker 3: it came off pretty flawless.
Speaker 2: There were some mistakes, some accidents, but you know, it
Speaker 2: was a good plan and it worked.
Speaker 1: What was your experience like on D Day and H
Speaker 1: hour when all that went down?
Speaker 3: During that period of time I was working with, I
Speaker 3: was moved to another mission unit and we worked out
Speaker 3: of a Howard out of Howard Air Force Base, out
Speaker 3: of one of the hangars, and you know, so I'm
Speaker 3: working with professional guys and we're doing our jobs and
Speaker 3: monitoring the situation and mitigating risks best we can.
Speaker 1: I mean that I think that was the largest airborne
Speaker 1: operation we did since World War Two for sure.
Speaker 2: I mean we had eighty second airbo jump rangers jumped.
Speaker 1: In and you know, obviously Manuel Noriego was removed removed
Speaker 1: from power. And what was sort of the aftermath on
Speaker 1: your end after.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, and I'll say it's one of the
Speaker 3: things we didn't do real well was planned for the
Speaker 3: after Uh So you get a lot of people kind
Speaker 3: of running around doing their own things, and uh it
Speaker 3: was a time where we used civil affairs and syops
Speaker 3: and they came in and they helped tamp down the protests.
Speaker 3: And figured out the right message to send to the Panamanium.
Speaker 3: You know that one thing about it I got to
Speaker 3: take because it's kind of humorous. Yeah, plan, it doesn't
Speaker 3: matter how well you plan. Uh. There was a place
Speaker 3: called d VD and it was north part of Panama
Speaker 3: and the commander of the unit there was he was
Speaker 3: a hardcore guy. So they loaded we loaded a mission
Speaker 3: up with a bunch of guys on helicopters headed up
Speaker 3: there to take it over. And he told them all
Speaker 3: the way up, said, listen, all the weapons should be
Speaker 3: stacked up at the north end of the runway. If
Speaker 3: that's the case, you guys will land go in take control.
Speaker 3: If there aren't weapons there, or they're stacked up on
Speaker 3: the other end, you got to go in hot. Well
Speaker 3: some kind of way that we had a team already
Speaker 3: up there, got confused and now they don't.
Speaker 2: It's backward.
Speaker 3: So the helicopters that are flying up there loaded for
Speaker 3: bear would be going in hot, but we wanted them
Speaker 3: going in cold. So what they had to do we
Speaker 3: had to launch a helicopter from Howard Air Force Base
Speaker 3: flying at mock One because we couldn't get como with
Speaker 3: the guys. So this helicopter had the mock one to
Speaker 3: get within range of the helicopters and tell them, hey,
Speaker 3: don't go in hot, don't go in hot. It's all
Speaker 3: taken care of. Yeah, but those things happened. It's called
Speaker 3: the fog of war. But we handled it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, deconfliction. And then we get to what was it
Speaker 1: about nineteen ninety one? You did some instructor time.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I was trying to get back to Fort Bragg because
Speaker 3: you know, I consider myself an action guy. I wanted
Speaker 3: to do where the action was. And I went to
Speaker 3: Fort Bragg and I saw some old friends of mine
Speaker 3: there and they said, oh, yeah, we can use it. Well,
Speaker 3: Branch said no. And Branch was punishing me because I
Speaker 3: was supposed to go on a fellowship so I think
Speaker 3: Harvard or something for one of those schools, and I
Speaker 3: didn't want to go, so I did something else. I
Speaker 3: got extended in Panama for another year. So since I
Speaker 3: came back to Brag, Branch was making sure that no,
Speaker 3: I wasn't going to do that, and they sent me
Speaker 3: up to the Armed Forces Staff College, you know, to
Speaker 3: be an instructor.
Speaker 2: It was great.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you why it was great, because it gave
Speaker 3: me time to decompressed for a year. Remember I'd been
Speaker 3: burning the camera at both ends sure for years. So
Speaker 3: now I got a chance to decompress, go to the gym,
Speaker 3: lift some weights, hang out, drink a beer or two
Speaker 3: or some scotch. And it was good. It didn't realize it,
Speaker 3: but it was a blessing in disguise.
Speaker 1: Was it around this time? Maybe it was a little
Speaker 1: a few years prior that Special Forces became a branch
Speaker 1: for officers.
Speaker 2: Nineteen eighty seven or eighty five, we became a branch.
Speaker 1: Okay, So did that impact your career at all about
Speaker 1: getting moved in and out of Special Forces?
Speaker 2: Yes, it did.
Speaker 3: It made it better because I didn't have to worry
Speaker 3: about going to the infetry side.
Speaker 2: I stayed with Special Forces and it didn't hurt me.
Speaker 1: Oh, I say. And so the next stop for you
Speaker 1: was commanding first Battalion, seventh Special Forces Group.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 1: What was your battalion command?
Speaker 3: Like? Oh man, it was tremendous. I had some great
Speaker 3: officers working around me. I had a good team leaders.
Speaker 3: In fact, I'll tell you who one of my team
Speaker 3: leaders was. His last name is Fetton, Brian Fenton YEP.
Speaker 3: And you know, back in those days, you know, we
Speaker 3: identified brand Brian as a go getter and immediately, you know,
Speaker 3: he did his team time and what did you do
Speaker 3: the good guys once they finished their team time, you
Speaker 3: bring him up to the three shop. You know, he
Speaker 3: wasn't happy, but you know it was great for him.
Speaker 3: And like I said, I had a great sergeant major
Speaker 3: command startant major named rich Tudor. And let me tell
Speaker 3: you what, that was the most loyal, hard working guy
Speaker 3: you could run into. So I was. I was fortunate.
Speaker 1: And operationally, I'd be curious to ask you. You know,
Speaker 1: now had the operational environment in South and Central America
Speaker 1: changed for Seventh Group from you know, you started off
Speaker 1: in the seventies into the eighties and now we're in
Speaker 1: the early to mid nineties.
Speaker 3: We had gotten what we call Mission Creek. We had
Speaker 3: went from doing some local training too. We were actually
Speaker 3: working counter drug up in Columbia, uh Ecuador, Peru, all
Speaker 3: those places you know. We had we had camps set up,
Speaker 3: our guys were working empt T MTTs, working with DEA and.
Speaker 2: We were tremendously busy.
Speaker 3: We were always busy and it was good because it
Speaker 3: kept it kept the guys were on edge.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it gave him something to do too. I mean,
Speaker 1: there wasn't there wasn't a lot happening at that time
Speaker 1: other than the Gulf War.
Speaker 3: It was kicking up Honduras, Nicodagua. We had people in
Speaker 3: Costa Rica, all over Central and South America. We had teams.
Speaker 1: They kept you guys busy. How did so how did
Speaker 1: you kind of round out your command time at first Battalion?
Speaker 1: How did that wrap up?
Speaker 2: God?
Speaker 3: I wish I could tell you. I don't remember, but
Speaker 3: we had we were having we had it. We were
Speaker 3: doing stuff and we were having fun and doing it.
Speaker 3: And I couldn't tell you the last mission that we did,
Speaker 3: but we did something, I believe you.
Speaker 1: And uh. From there, they put you up as the
Speaker 1: chief of Staff at Special Forces Command.
Speaker 2: Oh god, yeah, that was before I went to the
Speaker 2: War College.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay. And so was s F Command relatively new
Speaker 1: at this time or had it been around.
Speaker 3: It was time? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, we just became a branch.
Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit about s F Command
Speaker 1: and and kind of like how it was going through
Speaker 1: that growing experience at the time.
Speaker 3: It was, as you say, a growing experience. Everybody was
Speaker 3: trying to find their lane. Remember this was the first
Speaker 3: time this was ever done, so everybody's trying to find
Speaker 3: their lane. And the big part was how much control
Speaker 3: did s F command want to exert on the groups?
Speaker 3: You know that s F command, you know, was the
Speaker 3: next level up from the group commands. So how did
Speaker 3: they exercise their command without trying to take over?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: How did they end up delineating that?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Who what those lanes are?
Speaker 3: Well, you know, it came out pretty good. They delineated
Speaker 3: it with the help of the command sergeant majors and
Speaker 3: some of the general officers that were there, and they
Speaker 3: kind of laid out, Okay, these guys should do this,
Speaker 3: and this group should do this, and they put you
Speaker 3: they put everyone in the lane, and sometimes it worked
Speaker 3: out perfectly. Other times you had to make changes. So
Speaker 3: their flexibility was the key.
Speaker 1: I And you know, also I should ask you, because
Speaker 1: this is sort of a I think a bit of
Speaker 1: a theme through your career from point A to point B,
Speaker 1: how are you seeing the army itself change? Where you know,
Speaker 1: integration was kind of new and well I shouldn't say
Speaker 1: that in the army integration wasn't new, but some of
Speaker 1: these things you know, black soldiers coming into some of
Speaker 1: these higher officer positions. Was it more of a new thing?
Speaker 1: How were you seeing the army change?
Speaker 2: Well, the army.
Speaker 3: Was changing a little bit because when I was in
Speaker 3: Fort Bragg, I was there serving with it at the
Speaker 3: time when I was a group commander, there were two
Speaker 3: black brigade commanders in the eighty second and but the
Speaker 3: costcom commander was black. So yeah, but in ASSEEF, remember
Speaker 3: we've never had a lot of black officers.
Speaker 2: In this.
Speaker 1: And then you were off to the Command and Staff College,
Speaker 1: no college college, I'm sorry, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: And where was that at Carlisle, Pennsylvania.
Speaker 1: How'd you like it out there?
Speaker 3: It was okay, It just got cold and loved snow
Speaker 3: in the winter, and being a South America kind of guy,
Speaker 3: wasn't used to that.
Speaker 1: What was that another kind of like period of rest
Speaker 1: for you and your family a bit? Yeah, yeah, because
Speaker 1: after that they had you as the UH the Swick Commander,
Speaker 1: the Special Warfare Center commander.
Speaker 3: Before that, I went to UH eighteen the Airborn Corps
Speaker 3: for about six seven months as the so CORD Special
Speaker 3: Ops Coordination also okay eighteen the Airborn Corps.
Speaker 2: Some of the exercises and so forth.
Speaker 1: So now you're kind of getting to see like the
Speaker 1: big machine and how it really works.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I was. I was already on the the
Speaker 3: six command list, so I was just kind of waiting for,
Speaker 3: you know, my command to come out.
Speaker 1: And so Swick commander, what was that like nine ten
Speaker 1: nineties seven.
Speaker 3: Or eight nineteen ninety eight ninety eight.
Speaker 1: There were some interesting things happening at Swick at that
Speaker 1: time too that you guys were like, well, so far
Speaker 1: it had already been stood up. Cephalics started to come
Speaker 1: around towards the tail end of that time, maybe, But
Speaker 1: what was going on our training wise and SF at
Speaker 1: that time? How were you seeing that change?
Speaker 3: Well, it was a it was a transitional period. And
Speaker 3: I'll tell you why. You know, in SF we have
Speaker 3: what I call the keepers of the tab. I went
Speaker 3: for the last hard Q course. Those guys and we
Speaker 3: were getting soldiers were different. We weren't getting as many
Speaker 3: combat arms guys come in there, and we were getting
Speaker 3: you know, quartermasters, medics. Whatever.
Speaker 2: You take an infantry guy, put him on land AV.
Speaker 3: Course, it could probably do it. You take a quartermaster
Speaker 3: guy or a medican, put him on a land AV
Speaker 3: course might be a little harder. For him.
Speaker 2: So we had to look at how we were training.
Speaker 3: And you know, General Tagne used to tell me, should eh,
Speaker 3: you know, you're in charge of training, you know how
Speaker 3: to train.
Speaker 2: Figure it out.
Speaker 3: So we started looking at some of the things we
Speaker 3: did during training, and one of the ones that we
Speaker 3: looked at was land navigation. Why didn't we have such
Speaker 3: a huge land navigation failure? Well, when you got guys
Speaker 3: who don't land navigate regular it's hard to teach them.
Speaker 3: But again, I'm gonna ask you this question, because you
Speaker 3: were an SF guy, how often did you go out
Speaker 3: in the middle of the woods looking for a stick?
Speaker 1: I mean not often.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that wasn't a mission, but that's what we had
Speaker 3: these students trying to do, go out in the middle
Speaker 3: of that swamp and find.
Speaker 2: A stick, if it makes sense.
Speaker 3: Well, I had some good old retired sergeant majors that
Speaker 3: like to talk to me, and you know when of
Speaker 3: them said to me said, you know, sir, I spent
Speaker 3: there's so many of years in SF. I bet eight tours
Speaker 3: in Vietnam. I've never had to find us in the
Speaker 3: middle of the woods. He didn't say it that nicely,
Speaker 3: but that's what he meant. So we looked at what
Speaker 3: we were teaching and how we were teaching it. Normally,
Speaker 3: when you're looking for something, it's a major land feature,
Speaker 3: a road intercession, let's not forget the church or a
Speaker 3: main highway. So we started looking at changing our course
Speaker 3: to incorporate common sense into how we were teaching these students.
Speaker 3: Not lowering the standards, but teaching was common sense. And
Speaker 3: we started doing that and it, you know, we went
Speaker 3: our past rate went from like forty two to forty
Speaker 3: five percent, which is not high, but you look at
Speaker 3: that and you say, that's putting six more guys a
Speaker 3: year in SF on a team.
Speaker 2: So that's how we kind of looked at that.
Speaker 3: And we always had to be thinking of innovative ways
Speaker 3: to train because you know, you keep doing it the
Speaker 3: same way over and over again. All you do do
Speaker 3: the same thing over and over again. So we looked
Speaker 3: at things out of modernized training, how to update training.
Speaker 3: And I was very fortunate because, like a sweak at
Speaker 3: that time, we had a lot of retired sergeant majors
Speaker 3: working there for me, and let me tell you, those
Speaker 3: guys were not shy about giving you advice.
Speaker 1: Were any any other major training changes that you recall
Speaker 1: from that time frame, there was one swim test.
Speaker 3: Remember I told you when the guy called me up,
Speaker 3: he said can you swim? I said, yeah, Well we were.
Speaker 3: I'd go to the to the first day of training
Speaker 3: and there'd be five six hundred guys there and some
Speaker 3: of the guys looked like they were born and raised
Speaker 3: inside a gym, and they knocked out the PT tests.
Speaker 2: Well, a lot of guys didn knock it out, so
Speaker 2: they were already gone.
Speaker 3: And these guys, like I said, look like they were
Speaker 3: born in a gym, and they put them in the
Speaker 3: pool and you know where they went straight to the bottom. Yeah.
Speaker 3: So me and my sergeant major looked at it and
Speaker 3: talked about it. He said, you know what is You
Speaker 3: know a lot of these guys would be good as soldiers.
Speaker 3: Now the majority of them were minorities because and we said, yeah,
Speaker 3: how can we fix this? So some we talked about it.
Speaker 3: A lot of folks did a lot of looking. We
Speaker 3: talked about it.
Speaker 2: We came up with a concept.
Speaker 3: If you make it through selection, and we didn't flunk
Speaker 3: you for the swim test, and you made it through selection,
Speaker 3: which we were only like a forty percent pass rate. Remember,
Speaker 3: that we will bring you back two or three weeks early,
Speaker 3: teach you how to swim. Once you learn how to swim,
Speaker 3: you start like everybody else. You get in the pool,
Speaker 3: you do that one hundred meters swim. And it wasn't
Speaker 3: a lot, but we figured it. Every year we were
Speaker 3: putting about a split eighteen back into the forest because
Speaker 3: of these guys who would.
Speaker 2: Have been gone right now, they were here.
Speaker 3: Now, when you talk to people about a split eighteen,
Speaker 3: that's six guys. In the macro sense, that's not many.
Speaker 3: But when you're talking about an a team and each
Speaker 3: company got six teams, and you got two teams or
Speaker 3: three quarter strength and one team less, Yeah, those six
Speaker 3: people make a difference.
Speaker 5: Yeah, out of curiosity, you know, because there's always been
Speaker 5: talk about whether.
Speaker 1: The swim test was intentionally like racist.
Speaker 5: If the point was, like, you do you believe that
Speaker 5: the swim test is a functional.
Speaker 3: Part of what I'm gonna go back to the first
Speaker 3: story I told them about sarga major in Panama who said, when.
Speaker 2: They were looking for us up guys, all they wanted you.
Speaker 3: To do was people squeeze that trigger right right, you know,
Speaker 3: And there were several of those when I went to
Speaker 3: third of the seventh in Panama. We had several guys
Speaker 3: who couldn't swim, and they mostly retired as command sard
Speaker 3: Majors in Special Forces. So I think that answers the question. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and from there you became the deputy at USUSAK.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: How did you like that job?
Speaker 2: It's a it's a good thing about it.
Speaker 3: I worked for General Tagney and out look, you know
Speaker 3: General tag he's a great guy, and he's a funny
Speaker 3: guy to people wouldn't realize, but he's.
Speaker 2: A funny guy. And yeah, I was there, put in
Speaker 2: my time.
Speaker 3: And learned a lot. And you know, one thing General
Speaker 3: Tagan was good about. He called me over and he said, hey,
Speaker 3: well come in here, Yes, sir, I'm supposed to go
Speaker 3: to this event tonight. Yes, sir, you're going. But you know,
Speaker 3: working with General Tagan was fun for me, and he
Speaker 3: was a great guy. He was a great mentor and
Speaker 3: I just enjoyed working for him.
Speaker 1: But the job itself, you didn't really like the staff
Speaker 1: office aspect.
Speaker 3: You know, find to find a combat arms officer who's
Speaker 3: a war fighter who likes staff job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, and so but by this time around this timeframe.
Speaker 1: Are you also getting looked at to pin Astaron.
Speaker 2: When I became it's chief of staff, I was already
Speaker 2: on the list.
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah I did.
Speaker 1: I you know, yeah, tell us how that came about,
Speaker 1: because I mean, as you mentioned, you were the first
Speaker 1: black special courses general.
Speaker 3: You know, like I said, I always took the hard jobs.
Speaker 3: Somebody told me that take the hard jobs. I always
Speaker 3: took the hard jobs. And my resume stood on its
Speaker 3: own and all I said, you know, somebody gives me
Speaker 3: a fair chance. Who knows even saying that. I didn't
Speaker 3: believe that, because number one, I had a mustache, and
Speaker 3: you know, people would talk to me about John. I said,
Speaker 3: I'll never make general, never make general. And I was
Speaker 3: at the gym one day and there was another general
Speaker 3: officer there, friend of mine, and we're just chewing the
Speaker 3: proverbial fat and he says, yeah, you know, remore, I'm leaving.
Speaker 3: I'm going here and here, and you're going to replace me.
Speaker 3: And I'm thinking to myself, no, that's a general slot
Speaker 3: and I'm not replacing you. And you know, we considered
Speaker 3: the conversation, and then I started hearing the rumors later
Speaker 3: on that I was on the g O list, and
Speaker 3: finally somebody let the cat out of the bag and
Speaker 3: told me. So, there was nobody more shocked than me.
Speaker 3: My father. I knew I was, you know, a good officer,
Speaker 3: but for him, he thought the epitome of my career
Speaker 3: would be me going to the War College and for
Speaker 3: me to invite him down and then my mother to
Speaker 3: pin on my star. You know, that was it.
Speaker 2: That was it for me.
Speaker 1: Your your your dad, who's a retired sergeant.
Speaker 3: Majors, a retired command sard maker.
Speaker 1: Yeah about about what your did your dad join the army?
Speaker 2: God, I couldn't tell you. I was in the ear
Speaker 2: early fifties, I.
Speaker 1: Think, yea, yeah. I mean that's such a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of change that the entire country, much much less the
Speaker 1: army went through during that time. F Rahim I okay.
Speaker 1: And so the position you did take, you know, you
Speaker 1: became the commander of Special Operations Command South right. Uh,
Speaker 1: so you're the man in charge now. And you know,
Speaker 1: as we've talked about through all these progressively, you know,
Speaker 1: more responsible positions that you took throughout your Special Forces career,
Speaker 1: and now you're kind of the special Ops commander in
Speaker 1: charge of the region. What was that experience like?
Speaker 3: It was a tremendous experience because one South America, Central
Speaker 3: America belonged to me. We had troops almost in every country,
Speaker 3: and I used the opportunity to go and visit talk
Speaker 3: to them, meet all the ambassadors, and I established a
Speaker 3: pot with all the ambassadors I met, you know, some
Speaker 3: of them became personal friends. And then there was the
Speaker 3: ambassador to Columbia, Columbia, Ambassador Patterson. She was a great lady.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she's nice.
Speaker 3: When the airplane got shot down and the people were
Speaker 3: taking his hostage, it was during Black History Month and
Speaker 3: I was in I want to.
Speaker 2: Say, El Paso giving a speech.
Speaker 3: And me and my aide were on the plane and
Speaker 3: he says to me, he said, sir, he said, this
Speaker 3: is what happened in from Columbia, and the ambassador wants
Speaker 3: to talk to you. We're on a plane. I said, okay, well,
Speaker 3: you know, tell them to let her know. I'll call
Speaker 3: her when I get the Puerto Rico. And I said, okay,
Speaker 3: So we fly back to Puerto Rico and I arrived
Speaker 3: late and they ambushed me. My unit was there, SOX
Speaker 3: South was there, my staff was there, and they said sir,
Speaker 3: we got to see one thirty on the runway waiting
Speaker 3: for you. A smucker Telly has been to your house
Speaker 3: and packed your luggage and you're going to Columbia. So
Speaker 3: we fly out get the Columbia ambassador. Patterson briefed me
Speaker 3: what's going on, and it's one of those things where
Speaker 3: nobody really knew what was going on, so we had
Speaker 3: to get there. I had a good staff with me
Speaker 3: and we started looking for him. The thing we made
Speaker 3: the most inroads with was the Colombian government, and I
Speaker 3: got to work with and for President Urebe, which was
Speaker 3: a pleasure.
Speaker 2: And I worked with.
Speaker 3: The General of Spina who became the commander of the
Speaker 3: Columbian military. These were some great people, and our job
Speaker 3: was not to take over the mission, but to assist
Speaker 3: them in doing the mission. And that's what we did.
Speaker 3: And of course, a couple of years later came to Fruition.
Speaker 3: They rescued everybody, but the Columbian military was tremendous to
Speaker 3: work for the people there were tremendous and I just
Speaker 3: totally enjoyed working with that group, and then Bastard Patterson
Speaker 3: at the embassy.
Speaker 2: I mean, there's not enough I can say about her.
Speaker 1: Just to clarify for our viewers. You know, Remo, you're
Speaker 1: talking about the four American contractors. They had a counter
Speaker 1: narco mission, you know, taking pictures of the drug plants,
Speaker 1: and they got shot down by fark crash landed, and
Speaker 1: the pilot, Yes, the pilot was executed on the ground
Speaker 1: and the others were taken hostage.
Speaker 2: Right, that's correct.
Speaker 1: About about how long was it after the crash that
Speaker 1: you guys got boots on the ground About a day, yeah,
Speaker 1: because it was it was out in bad, bad guy
Speaker 1: land too.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, definitely was.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And anything else you recall from those like kind
Speaker 1: of like there must have been some frantic days, you know,
Speaker 1: busy days, long days as you guys were trying to
Speaker 1: get up to speed and try to identify what happened.
Speaker 3: All the days were frank. They started early and they
Speaker 3: ended up late. And the issue is this, you have Americans,
Speaker 3: but they're in a sovereign country of Columbia. How do
Speaker 3: you go to get them back without trying to take
Speaker 3: over Columbia? So it was a political game, sure, And
Speaker 3: like I said, you learn to work with people. You
Speaker 3: assisted where you could, and when they said okay, we
Speaker 3: got this. You had to be smart and back off,
Speaker 3: but observe what was going on.
Speaker 1: That was the challenge of that mission. Anything else happened
Speaker 1: while you were the SOX South commander that you'd like
Speaker 1: to talk about.
Speaker 3: I spent three years there as commander of SOX South
Speaker 3: and we did a lot of things there. One of
Speaker 3: the things that I really liked was when we did
Speaker 3: combinas with the Argentinians.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, it was.
Speaker 3: Great and we had six or seven different countries working
Speaker 3: with us, and you know, it was a great opportunity
Speaker 3: for them to know us and for us to know them.
Speaker 3: And you know, different years later, I'd be traveling through
Speaker 3: South or Central America and I'd always have somebody come
Speaker 3: up to me and say mein about You don't remember me,
Speaker 3: but I was this when you were there at Cabanas,
Speaker 3: and you know that's always good.
Speaker 1: Anything else from SOX South.
Speaker 2: No, it was just it's a great time.
Speaker 1: So tell us a little bit about retirement. You went
Speaker 1: all the way off to General. How did how did
Speaker 1: retirement come about? And how did how did how did
Speaker 1: you feel about that? Personally?
Speaker 3: I was the chief of staff of so COME. I
Speaker 3: had the pleasure work for General Brown and Admiral Olson.
Speaker 3: So it was good. But having spent all that time
Speaker 3: in SF, having over three hundred jumps, having carried a
Speaker 3: heavy rucksack for many, many years, my body was breaking down.
Speaker 2: At that time. I had five knee surgeries. General Brown
Speaker 2: had this thing.
Speaker 3: Once a month he would do a unit run about
Speaker 3: three miles and as the chief of staff, you know,
Speaker 3: my job was to be on the unit run and
Speaker 3: finish up front. And I like to lead from the
Speaker 3: front because that's where leaders are in the front. But
Speaker 3: every time we do that, for the next week, I'd
Speaker 3: be in my office, I sing my knees, I sing everything,
Speaker 3: take taking a tiler and all. And my body was
Speaker 3: wearing that. And you know, I spoke to General Brown
Speaker 3: about it, and he you know, oh you got it.
Speaker 3: You know you can do this. And uh. People were
Speaker 3: talking to me about the next general officer promotion to
Speaker 3: major general, and you know, anytime somebody talks to you
Speaker 3: about promotion, you know, it excites you.
Speaker 2: But then I thought about my body and I said,
Speaker 2: you know.
Speaker 3: What if I did it and I took it, that
Speaker 3: would be three more years that I'd be killing myself.
Speaker 2: And I decided that I couldn't do it no more,
Speaker 2: and I.
Speaker 1: Was going to retire, and Remo, I should point out,
Speaker 1: because we didn't talk about it earlier, that like you
Speaker 1: were a big time gym guy at the back in
Speaker 1: the day, and I've like met guys who were like
Speaker 1: a Navy seal in the nineteen eighties, and like they
Speaker 1: will mention your name like, oh yeah, Remo Butler could
Speaker 1: bench press four hundred pounds, like yeah.
Speaker 3: And in fact, you know, in Puerto Rico, I had
Speaker 3: I had a seal patune with me and one of
Speaker 3: the things I used to do was once a month,
Speaker 3: them guys would do this crazy run and crazy swim
Speaker 3: and I was right there with them, and let me
Speaker 3: tell you, I do it and I sucked pond water
Speaker 3: for the next week. So anyway, when it got to
Speaker 3: so calm, you know, the same thing was happening, and
Speaker 3: you know, I decided, I said, you know what, I can't.
Speaker 3: I can't do this, Like the ego says, take the promotion,
Speaker 3: but my mind said no. So I started out putting
Speaker 3: my name out there that I was going to retire,
Speaker 3: and companies started calling me and saying, when you put
Speaker 3: your paperwork in call us, let us know, and I
Speaker 3: became retirement eligible on one February. I had time in
Speaker 3: grade one February two thousand and four to February two
Speaker 3: thousand and four. I submitted my retirement paperwork, and you
Speaker 3: know a lot of people were against it. You know,
Speaker 3: people were talking, oh, you still got a lot to offer,
Speaker 3: you know, we got plans and so forth.
Speaker 2: But and that's.
Speaker 3: Fine, But what about what I want? What about me?
Speaker 3: What about my health? So I retired and a week I.
Speaker 2: Retired and took trumb And to leave.
Speaker 3: I was in I was in Kuwait working for Haliburton,
Speaker 3: and I stayed there and I came back at the
Speaker 3: end of June to have my official retirement ceremony at SOCOM.
Speaker 3: And I went back and I spent the next two
Speaker 3: and a half years in a rock working for At
Speaker 3: that time, Halliburton was changed over the KBR and you know,
Speaker 3: it just found me and Niche and the contractor side.
Speaker 2: Of the world.
Speaker 1: Are you working like logistics?
Speaker 3: That's all that's all Haliburton was and KVR logistics. And
Speaker 3: I used to tell people from the moment you wake
Speaker 3: up in the morning and go in the bathroom and
Speaker 3: use the bathroom to the time you turn your light
Speaker 3: off at night.
Speaker 2: Everything that has touched you during the day is came
Speaker 2: from KBR.
Speaker 3: All the meals you've eaten, yep, the gas you've used,
Speaker 3: the air conditioner that you have, the fans, electricity, everything.
Speaker 3: We provided everything.
Speaker 1: And you did that for you said two or three years.
Speaker 3: Two and a half years, two and a half years.
Speaker 1: And then what did you get into after that?
Speaker 3: Oh man, I left there, left KBR well, No, before
Speaker 3: I left KBR, I did that. I came back to
Speaker 3: the States and they made me the business development guy
Speaker 3: at here in Tampa. I finished that up, and I
Speaker 3: think I went to work for a company called sc
Speaker 3: It's a security company. I worked with them for about
Speaker 3: a year year and a half.
Speaker 2: And then I worked for Honeywell for a little while.
Speaker 3: Then I went back to SOOC and I just worked
Speaker 3: for a lot of different companies in the Mid East
Speaker 3: and the US, consulting and so forth. And I enjoyed
Speaker 3: it because it gives you a different perspective.
Speaker 1: What was that perspective as opposed to being an army officer?
Speaker 3: Well, from being a general, you know, everything is catered
Speaker 3: to you, but when you go out as a consultant, everything.
Speaker 2: Is not catered to you, and you have to do
Speaker 2: the nug work yourself.
Speaker 3: And the other part was this, the biggest one was this,
Speaker 3: when you get out of SF, SFF people are different.
Speaker 3: If you tell an SF guy, I want you to
Speaker 3: put a code of paint on that building for me,
Speaker 3: when you come back, that building is going to have
Speaker 3: three codes of paint on it, new windows, new doors,
Speaker 3: et cetera. You tell a civilian guy, I want you
Speaker 3: to put a code of paint on that building, you
Speaker 3: might get a code of paint and you have to
Speaker 3: learn who you have to watch out for what they're
Speaker 3: going to do and everybody. You know, like I said,
Speaker 3: I love hiring military people because they would go above
Speaker 3: and beyond what was expected.
Speaker 1: Was the transition difficult from you know, retiring No, and uh,
Speaker 1: real quick though.
Speaker 5: I want to ask because you know, one you mentioned
Speaker 5: sort of you know, you're you're enlisted personnel really kind
Speaker 5: of you know, teaching you and inducing you up and
Speaker 5: also your fellow uscers and sometimes even sending your officers
Speaker 5: with the camaraderie, the mentorship and things like that, and
Speaker 5: you know, and that is something that's very different I think.
Speaker 1: In the military.
Speaker 5: Often in the civilian world, but also in the military,
Speaker 5: Like I was never an SF, but in range of
Speaker 5: battalion you would have like young lieutenants come in and
Speaker 5: some of them are like, I'm here to make my
Speaker 5: career right. My first too, are as mypl So they
Speaker 5: would drive and drive and drive without listening to the.
Speaker 3: Platoon of servant whatever.
Speaker 5: And then there were other ones who you knew were
Speaker 5: really on your side, and it was often like somebody
Speaker 5: had to pull these officers aside and say, look, these
Speaker 5: guys will make you look good if you help them,
Speaker 5: but if you come down on them all the time,
Speaker 5: what you think you're doing is actually going to be
Speaker 5: the opposite of what you want to be done. How
Speaker 5: was that like learning to or you obviously seem to
Speaker 5: have a knack for it, But I'm sure you've seen
Speaker 5: officers who didn't really know how to work with her
Speaker 5: enlisted before.
Speaker 3: Yes, I have. And I used to tell my team
Speaker 3: leaders when they came in for their team leader briefing,
Speaker 3: I said, listen, but you don't know jack about SS
Speaker 3: And of course they'd look at you with that shock
Speaker 3: look on their face, and I say, your team's sergeant,
Speaker 3: and I tell him what their team certain was he.
Speaker 2: Has this experience and I'd read it that for him.
Speaker 3: And he's done this, this and this, and this guy,
Speaker 3: the ops sergeant has done this, this, and this, your
Speaker 3: warrant officer has done So what you need to do
Speaker 3: is you need to stop thinking you're in charge and
Speaker 3: listen to what they say.
Speaker 2: Now, sometimes they'll say stupid stuff, but you.
Speaker 3: Got to be the mentor for that. You got to
Speaker 3: say we're not doing that. Or if you had a
Speaker 3: real bad question, come see me. I'll help you sort
Speaker 3: through it, or my sergeant major will. And you had
Speaker 3: to teach these guys that. There were a couple officers
Speaker 3: that I had to let go of because they had
Speaker 3: that attitude. One of them, if there was a Rambo
Speaker 3: knife out for sale, he bought it. We would go
Speaker 3: to the field and he'd have these special high tech
Speaker 3: hummahumma boots.
Speaker 2: On that had to tread.
Speaker 3: That was unique. And I one time I went out
Speaker 3: and the field and they were out there and I
Speaker 3: saw his bootprint and I followed them into their campsite.
Speaker 2: So how'd you go? How'd you find this?
Speaker 3: I said, you're stupid boots. That's a unique print. I've
Speaker 3: also seen officers. Unfortunately I knew them who did that.
Speaker 3: They are a team schargeant, I've got you, I'm in
Speaker 3: charge here, and a few months later you saw them
Speaker 3: signing out of the unit. Is there a way though
Speaker 3: that you know?
Speaker 5: Because officers obviously, because they've done on tour with a
Speaker 5: regular unit where they are in charge a lot of times,
Speaker 5: and then they come to a unique place like SF
Speaker 5: where how do you get them aside? You know, how
Speaker 5: do you like a you know, sort of bring them
Speaker 5: on and say, look, you are the officer, like the
Speaker 5: responsibility and authority is ultimately with you, but but these
Speaker 5: guys know what they're doing and you can learn from that.
Speaker 3: I'll tell you how I did it, just like you
Speaker 3: just said. You know, I want you know. I made
Speaker 3: sure they knew the qualifications that their team sergeant and
Speaker 3: some of the guys on their team had. Yeah, and
Speaker 3: I let them know, Hey, this guy's been doing this
Speaker 3: for thirty years. Yeah, you know, you've been in it
Speaker 3: for six months, right, you know, listen to him. He's
Speaker 3: going to tell you what to do, how to do it.
Speaker 2: If you get.
Speaker 3: Confused, come see me.
Speaker 2: We're helping. Yeah that's awesome. Yeah, but you're but you're
Speaker 2: absolutely right.
Speaker 3: I've seen officers who get there and they come in
Speaker 3: because they're gonna make their mark. All right, all you
Speaker 3: stupid NCOs you.
Speaker 2: Don't know nothing.
Speaker 3: I went to.
Speaker 2: College and I'm gonna tell what we're right.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then what about the mentorship and the alliances,
Speaker 5: you know, because for you know, friends of that. You know,
Speaker 5: the officer who gave you the bad n c R
Speaker 5: for his friends to come to you and say, you know,
Speaker 5: they definitely were whether they were putting themselves professional at risk,
Speaker 5: they were certainly sort of putting themselves personally, the friendship
Speaker 5: wise at risk. How how is it for officers, you know,
Speaker 5: whether it's working with seniors or juniors or whatever, to
Speaker 5: you know, to to create that that same sort of
Speaker 5: camaraderie instead of an era of competition.
Speaker 3: You know, that's a personal decision that everybody has to make.
Speaker 3: I've worked with guys who are extremely competitive, and they
Speaker 3: would tell me, oh, you did this, you did it
Speaker 3: for six weeks. I'm gonna take guys in. We're gonna
Speaker 3: do it for eight weeks. Okay, that's fine with me,
Speaker 3: you know, because it kills their people. You have to
Speaker 3: worry about your people. The thing about it is this,
Speaker 3: officers go to a team for one to two years,
Speaker 3: right and listen to you, guys are on the team for
Speaker 3: their whole career. So if I start burning the candle
Speaker 3: at both ends, the un listen, you guys gonna get
Speaker 3: burned out pretty quick and the officer's gonna be gone
Speaker 3: somewhere else. Yeah, and people have to understand that.
Speaker 1: So you've gotten into a number of different things in
Speaker 1: you know, retirement years. And you were telling me that
Speaker 1: you've been recognized for some of your work, kind of
Speaker 1: passing that on mentoring others. What are some of those
Speaker 1: endeavors you've gotten involved in?
Speaker 3: Mostly mentoring is my biggest one. I feel that I've
Speaker 3: been successful. I feel that I have a lot of knowledge,
Speaker 3: and I take that knowledge and I try.
Speaker 2: To spread it.
Speaker 3: And especially even today, a lot of young officers call
Speaker 3: me because they've read the paper I wrote into work
Speaker 3: college and they thanked me.
Speaker 2: This is sir.
Speaker 3: You know, I want to thank you for writing that paper.
Speaker 3: You know I read it and saved my life centa,
Speaker 3: et cetera. That's what makes you feel good. You help
Speaker 3: someone become successful.
Speaker 1: And do you want to tell us about black ops?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Black Ops was started by a gentleman named Ruben Ayala.
Speaker 3: And what he does is with Black Ops, he takes
Speaker 3: the soul the stories of black Special Forces rangers, Marine
Speaker 3: Force recon seals and Latinos and females, and he brings
Speaker 3: those stories to the forefront. And I'll give you an example.
Speaker 3: One of the guys I used to do work for
Speaker 3: me was a Sante raider.
Speaker 2: And everybody knew it. Let's talk about it.
Speaker 3: And I found out another guy I knew was also
Speaker 3: a Signe raider who's black, and nobody ever said anything
Speaker 3: about it. And I asked an old retired sergeant Major Graham.
Speaker 3: I said, hey, s Major, this guy's a sane raider.
Speaker 3: He said, yes, sir, you didn't know that. No, there
Speaker 3: are things people don't talk about. So what Black Ops
Speaker 3: does is tries to take these people and bring them
Speaker 3: up to the forefront so everybody can see. So, like
Speaker 3: Rubin said, you know, he watched Arnold Schwarzenegger and Rambo
Speaker 3: and all this kind of stuff, but he never saw
Speaker 3: any Latinos doing that. Now you have kids out there
Speaker 3: who were very h impressive, impressionable for them to want
Speaker 3: to go and be Special Forces it would help if
Speaker 3: they saw somebody who in special Forces, who was successful,
Speaker 3: who looked like they did. You agree? Yeah, When I
Speaker 3: was in Special Forces, many many times, I was the
Speaker 3: loane black officer, and then when I wasn't the loan,
Speaker 3: I was the senior black officer. Remember or not, I'm
Speaker 3: just growing up just like these other guys are. So
Speaker 3: he felt that it was important for people everybody to
Speaker 3: see that there are minorities and special forces. Whether you're Latin,
Speaker 3: Asian or whatever, they're females and special aps. You too can.
Speaker 2: Strive for this.
Speaker 3: Now that Black Ops, they say it's a platform created
Speaker 3: for the purpose of telling uncommon stories through film, podcasting,
Speaker 3: and documentaries.
Speaker 1: And where can people find it?
Speaker 6: I mean, if they search, you know, that's a very
Speaker 6: interesting story.
Speaker 3: It's on YouTube type in black Ops they are looking
Speaker 3: at let me see something here.
Speaker 2: They have a road show that they've done.
Speaker 3: They've done one in Atlanta, they've done one in here
Speaker 3: in Tampa, They've done them in Ohio and other places.
Speaker 3: And they have this platform called black Ops dot tv.
Speaker 2: It's a streaming platform that's that's dedicated to telling his stories.
Speaker 1: Is there anything else that you've been working on that
Speaker 1: you'd like to tell folks.
Speaker 3: About, yeah, being a better person, you know, when you've
Speaker 3: done everything that I've done. And being soldiers, especially Special
Speaker 3: Forces guys, we never want to admit that we have weaknesses,
Speaker 3: and we do. And the biggest thing you have to
Speaker 3: do is a Special Forces soldier, is say, you know what,
Speaker 3: I might need some help with this and get it.
Speaker 1: And what shape or form did that take for you
Speaker 1: as a as a gentleman who's retired now.
Speaker 3: And my wife, I always tell everybody, she's my heartbeat.
Speaker 3: My wife told me that I had PTSD and nobody
Speaker 3: ever else had ever said I had PTSD. My wife
Speaker 3: told me, And of course I was looking for that
Speaker 3: river in Egypt denial, and I wouldn't admit it. And
Speaker 3: finally I went to the you know, with her pushing,
Speaker 3: I went to the doctor and said, you know, I
Speaker 3: think I might have PTSD. And they did the little
Speaker 3: test and he came back, and you know what the
Speaker 3: doctor told me, Yeah, buddy, you got PTSD. But once
Speaker 3: you get diagnosed with it, you have to fix it.
Speaker 3: Sometimes you can fix it yourself, sometimes you need help
Speaker 3: fixing it. We Special Forces guys used to look down
Speaker 3: on anybody that was that we considered weak. And if
Speaker 3: you thought you had a mental issue or something's going
Speaker 3: on with your family, blah blah blah, and you know
Speaker 3: you couldn't handle it, you were just weak. But that
Speaker 3: is not a weakness. That is a strength when you
Speaker 3: realize that you have an issue and fix it.
Speaker 1: What were some of the therapies that worked for you
Speaker 1: to fix it?
Speaker 2: The biggest one for me was my wife talking to her.
Speaker 3: My wife wanted to be a psychologist at one point
Speaker 3: in time, but she left that and she took another route.
Speaker 3: And she's very, very intelligent. She's doing a lot of
Speaker 3: things now. She's one of the smartest humans that I know,
Speaker 3: smarter than me, even though she want to admit that. But
Speaker 3: she's the one, and she, as they say, she talked
Speaker 3: to me off that ladder several times, you know, And
Speaker 3: I think communication is her greatest asset.
Speaker 2: And I'm happy. If it wasn't for her, I might.
Speaker 3: Not be here.
Speaker 1: I mean, remo, we've covered a lot here in a
Speaker 1: relatively short period of time, considering how extensive your career is.
Speaker 1: Is there anything else that like I left out or
Speaker 1: that you wish I asked that you'd like to talk
Speaker 1: about before we get going tonight.
Speaker 3: I know, you know, I'm really hurt at my Ranger
Speaker 3: buddy never asked me if I have any experience with
Speaker 3: the Rangers.
Speaker 1: Did you have experience with Rangers?
Speaker 2: And I was the award winner in my Ranger course.
Speaker 1: That's amazing.
Speaker 3: I still got the conference.
Speaker 1: Yeah. What what was your Ranger School number?
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't, come on, I was gonna. I was
Speaker 1: just gonna, you know, bust your balls if you went
Speaker 1: to the last hard class, which I imagine you did.
Speaker 3: I did. It was nineteen seventy seven.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was probably the last hard class I was.
Speaker 3: I left three seven in Panama to go to Ranger School,
Speaker 3: and all the r Eyes knew I was a Special
Speaker 3: Forces guy, so I was called special feces, special fools,
Speaker 3: you know, all those cute names.
Speaker 1: That's funny.
Speaker 5: So he's not a desert phase back then too, huh.
Speaker 3: I did not go through the.
Speaker 5: Desert paced all right, they got murdered.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the other three phases of the city Florida phase
Speaker 3: and the Mountain phase, that was plenty.
Speaker 1: Yeah for sure, Remo, were you still thinking about potentially
Speaker 1: writing a book?
Speaker 3: I I'm not.
Speaker 2: Only thinking about it. I am going to and I'll
Speaker 2: tell you why.
Speaker 3: My son for Father's Day he gave me this little
Speaker 3: book Gosh, and he put a note on it and
Speaker 3: it said, Dad, you know, I really don't know much
Speaker 3: about what you did in the military and your life,
Speaker 3: and this book he gave me ask questions about you.
Speaker 2: And I started writing and some of the stuff I
Speaker 2: was writing surprised me.
Speaker 3: So at that point and oh yeah, by the way,
Speaker 3: my wife has told me I should write a book too,
Speaker 3: and several other people. So I've decided that I'm going
Speaker 3: to start writing a book that's fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's great record some of this history down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, remo.
Speaker 1: Where can people go to find you? I don't know
Speaker 1: if you're still consulting or not, but if they even
Speaker 1: want to they're interested in some of these like mentoring
Speaker 1: or speaking events. Where can people go to find you?
Speaker 2: Uh?
Speaker 3: Right here? They should.
Speaker 1: They should show up at your house.
Speaker 3: And and you know, I have my phone number.
Speaker 1: No, no, you don't have to give that.
Speaker 3: Don't give that out. But are you or email me?
Speaker 1: Do you want to give out your email?
Speaker 3: Like?
Speaker 1: Are you okay with the public having that? I don't care, Okay,
Speaker 1: go ahead and let folks know where they can find you.
Speaker 2: My email addresses are E.
Speaker 3: M O B T hell the number eight at aol
Speaker 3: dot com.
Speaker 1: Great, there you go. You can go talk to the
Speaker 1: man himself. Remo, thank you so much for doing this
Speaker 1: interview and speaking with us for a couple hours.
Speaker 2: Hey, just my pleasure. Enjoyed it. It was great and
Speaker 2: you know, Rangers made the way.
Speaker 1: Do we have any questions, Steve, Okay, no questions, We're
Speaker 1: all We're all good, okay, Remo, thank you man and
Speaker 1: have a good night. Take care.
Speaker 3: Man.
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Speaker 3: M