This is JoCo podcast number two forty eight with Echo, Charles and me, JoCo Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

As the summer of nineteen seventy evolved, the deadly deadly secret war in Laos raged into its sixth year. The Communist NBA and its secret advisers from Russia, China and Cuba continued supplying growing numbers of light and heavy weapons. State of the art, anti-aircraft artillery, missiles and vehicles. The Communist campaign against SOGGE reconnaissance teams resulted in the Green Berets exceeding a one hundred percent casualty rate. Meaning of the special forces soldiers who went across the fence into Laos and Cambodia, all were either killed in action, wounded more than once in combat with enemy forces, or they simply disappeared.

As of July 4th, 2017, there are 50 Green Berets listed as missing in action in Laos alone from the secret war, along with one hundred and five aviators who died supporting SOG missions. SOGGE hatchet force operations of platoon or company sized missions didn't fare much better in an effort to bring a temporary halt to shipping supplies flowing down the Ho Chi Minh trail. Three separate hatchet force slam operations were conducted in Laos, west of South Vietnam, between March nineteen sixty nine and February nineteen seventy.

The area of operations was codenamed Prairie Fire. Again, due to the severe political constraints placed on SOGGE operations, the prairie fire area of operations extended west of South Vietnam about 30 miles, no SOG teams went beyond that area of operations. The three slam operations were titled Nightcap Spin Down and Half Back, each of those operations had a hatchet forced company helicoptered to a hilltop on the main segment of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The trips would dig in, set up ambushes and Target and VA trucking after the lead trucks were hit, there would be a traffic backup along the jungle trail.

Oftentimes, large portions of the Ho Chi Minh trail were not visible from air due to clever camouflage efforts by the VA and their conscripted forced labor of local indigenous tribe people.

Thus, when the first trucks were hit, hatch it force radio operators would call in tactical air support to destroy as many enemy trucks and soldiers as possible.

Eventually, after a few days, the VA massed hundreds of soldiers to hammer the hatchet force positions, inflicting serious casualties upon the entrenched troops, forcing their extraction from the area of operations. During the last mission, operation halfback an age 30 for South Vietnamese Air Force helicopter from the two hundred nineteen Special Operations Squadron was shot down, killing all passengers aboard the old warbird, including Special Forces medic Sergeant First Class Bill Doyle.

Those operations were viewed as successes due to the amount of enemy trucks, supplies and troops destroyed during the intense battles. The three slam operations were launched from the top secret SOGGE base in Khartoum Command and Control Central. The last slam operation was run by B company and Hatchet Force Command by the end of August nineteen seventy Green Beret Captain Jean McCauley became the commander of B Company. McCauley was a SOGGE veteran, having run missions during the last few months of nineteen sixty seven and into nineteen sixty eight when he was assigned to Arte, Florida, out of Kontum in nineteen sixty eight.

Our Florida ran a series of successful missions, including a trail watch wiretaps of NVE phone lines and planning Air Force sensors alongside a trail at the end of August, Mack-Cali heard through the grapevine that a major hatchet force operation was coming through the chain of command and he volunteered the company for it.

Assuming it might be another slam operation, Mack-Cali researched and the after action reports from the previous missions, he talked to team members in camp about those operations, their successes, their shortcomings. In the first days of September 1970, the operations order came down and was assigned to B company under the command of McCawley. It was dubbed Operation Tailwind. And much to McCauley's surprise, Operation Tailwind was targeted for the deepest incursion into Laos ever by a SOG team. Twenty five to 30 miles beyond the normal area of operations.

The operation was it was designed to take pressure off a CIA operation further southwest bordering Cambodia because of the unique nature of this mission, Mack-Cali drew upon his years of operational experience in Laos for a daring new tactic. Instead of remaining in a static position like the earlier slam missions. Once the full Element B company, 15 Green Berets and one hundred and twenty highly trained mountain guard tribesmen were on the ground in the deepest penetration of enemy territory during the secret war.

He would move day and night, supported by air assets from the Air Force, Army and Marine Corps.

It would be an epic mission.

In hindsight, forty seven years later, although no one said so at the time, most agreed it was a suicide mission.

And that right there is from the prologue of a book called SOGGE Chronicles, Volume one written by John Striker Maior, otherwise known by his nickname and code name and callsign Tilt. And it is once again an honor to have you here with us, as he has been here before for podcast one eighty one eighty one one eighty two, one eighty six to forty seven and now two forty eight. And if you haven't listened to those yet, go listen to them to understand what SOGGE was and what heroes these men were, including this man, my hero, John Striker, Maior Tale.

Thanks for coming back on. Good evening sir.

Good evening. Welcome. Thanks for coming back. It's my honor.

So this is just a story that you and I had talked about, some of the different stories that we've covered. And and, you know, you've kind of I guess you kind of somehow ended up being a little bit of the SOGGE historian capturing a bunch of these stories from different operations, even when you weren't there, but interviewing guys, talking to them, gathering all this information and then captured and put in these books.

But it has the I mean, since you were in SOGGE and you operated in these areas of operations that these guys were in, the way you were able to tell the story is is is powerful.

Well, thank you for this book. Here is the first one that doesn't have my stories. And that's what I like, because that's what my goal is going to be for.

Saw Chronicles, my little humble company, and we're going to write these stories until we die because there's so many that have never been told. And this mission, Operation Tailwind, was a classic. I'd heard little tidbits about it over the years. But until and we'll get into details later. How in ninety eight there are some facts that came out twisted on that due to the Communist News Network. But factually, this is just an amazing mission and so many levels.

And it was a classic example of a sarg operation with men on the ground doing the mission. Got it accomplished. And they worked with Army, Air Force and Marine Corps air assets, everything from fast movers to gun ships. And Jim Akali was just outstanding soldier, a soldier's soldier. And he, you know, he started out as enlisted, became an officer. So he never lost that grounding. But just one hell of a commander in here.

He just that was his concept. And they ran with it.

And as we get into the story, just amazing stuff.

Yeah. The the air superiority that we had was really powerful. But you have to remember that it wasn't totally air superiority.

It wasn't like, look, we have air superiority in Iraq and Afghanistan. We very rarely will lose that aircraft.

And usually it's because there's some kind of an accident or a crash or something like that. But even though we it's pretty easy to say, oh, yeah, we had full air superiority and in Vietnam we had a certain level of confidence. But at the same time, we didn't have totally air superiority because there were still there were still aircraft getting shot down by either MiGs or getting shot down by surface to air missiles.

Yeah, because you had to separate air wars. You had the air war over North Vietnam. That's the Air Force and the Navy just pounding away, losing hundreds of men. And it had the whole people w where the many were returned. I forget the exact number. And they came back in February of seventy three through April seventy three, they came back. So that is more of a traditional Yetta's MiGs that were trained by the Russians, et cetera.

And some even said the Russians flew. I don't know, we were more concerned with down south and a prairie fire in Cambodia over time as the war progressed, particularly after Lyndon Johnson had the bombing halt in seventy eight men, anti aircraft stuff, the twelve point seven to twenty three mm. Thirty seven, Mike, Mike and heavier stuff. And one of the stories later here is one of our medics. He remembers flying out and we'll have some as a little bit of story later.

But on the way out to his Aycock in the air, it's like World War Two when you see, you know, twelve o'clock high and you see all the ACHAK that shot down all of our airplanes in World War Two there.

It was courtesy of the Russians and they were shooting at our helicopters. Yeah. As a doc, Padget was like, oh my God, this is like watching a World War Two movie, but it's right here.

And so that's our war.

And this is like watching a World War Two movie, except I think I might get killed.

Yeah. And in World War two, they didn't have any helicopters that we know about.

And so that is the aspect where, like in your introduction, we talked about the mistress day missing in action, the Americans that were shot down supporting Zogu as everything from fast movers down to.

The smallest helicopters, the Lokesh and of course, the Vietnamese Air Force, like with the story we talked about on Tuesday with Lynn Black on the visual reconnaissance, is just a little dinky observation aircraft. The co-pilot gets his head blown off. Lili and his head and helmet lands on Lynn's lap. So those are the cases that went into our war. That's our side of the air war. So we dominated the air, but that air was full of antiaircraft weaponry.

Deadly. Yeah, absolutely.

Well, I guess we should get into this this story, because this this tailwind is is just kind of crazy.

No, Daisaku, it's all right. So here we go.

Go into the book. SOGGE Chronicles Volume one. And for everyone that's hopeful out there, there's going to be volume two, three, four, five.

The Lord willing.

I know there's there's more stories. You got time to write. I mean, it's good. There's so many stories. Every one of these operations is is its own book.

Oh, yeah. You know, every time I read one of your books and I read one operation, I think there's a whole story, a whole book of a three or 400 page book about every single operation.

If you start going into the granular detail on the back story, that it's it's crazy. So get to work to help keep writing. Yes, sir. All right. So here we go.

Routinely, under protocols established in early SOGGE Secret War, most Laotian SOG operators were limited to 20 kilometers west of Vietnam's borders. Operation Tailwind was booked to go approximately 40 kilometers further west.

Beyond that limitation to go that deep and allows required formal approval from the Laotian ambassador and from the U.S. commander of all forces in Vietnam, General Creighton Abrams. Mack-Cali, the B company commanding officer at the top secret CENTCOM compound in Kontum. My saying that right. Kontum, Clinton Command and Control Central got the word from S. three on September 4th, 1970. And he says, I remember getting called by S3 and they told me that we had a special mission, a mission that was deep and allows a mission deeper and allows than ever before and a mission bigger than any before in the prairie fire.

Al, said McCallie, they told me to go heavy on ammo and demo. I knew that such a mission would take special clearance up to the ambassador, who is no friend of SOGGE and from Abram's. That's General Abrams, who is no big fan of Special Forces. In short order, he learned that all of the approvals had been received and signed off. So this is a massive mission, bigger than any mission, deeper and allows than ever before.

And that means you've got to get you've got to get approval from the ambassador. And generally, if you don't know, this ambassador's usually aren't fond of military actions inside. They're inside their arena. That's right.

And that one ambassador just made life so difficult for SOGGE from every day that we're open there. Yeah. I mean, ambassadors, if you think about it just from a philosophical level, you know, they want to solve things through diplomacy.

And and so generally, they have a little bit of a of friction with the military elements generally. Not always. And then you have Abrams, who's not a fan of Special Forces, which I believe we've done a good job of moving this in a better direction.

But there certainly has been tension from time to time between conventional forces and special forces and special operations guys, generally because special operations guys, well, they don't follow the same rules all the time that the conventional guys follow.

And they might have a little bit of an attitude and that can rub the wrong way and maybe add a little bit.

So, you know, you got a guy like General Abrams that doesn't like Special Forces except when he needs them, except when he needs them. Well, there you go. And he needed them here.

So continuing on later that day as three provided more specific details go heavy, create havoc for the VA and keep them busy as long as possible.

Mack-Cali, a former team leader of SOGGE Recon Team Florida, where he ran seven seven successful missions, transferred to the hatch at Force, where Green Berets ran platoon and company sized operations across the fence in Laos and Cambodia. So just so everyone gets a grip on this, these hatchet forces, now you have instead of having 12 guys on the ground or six or six guys on the ground like you would with one of your recon teams. Now you're talking about a group of Special Forces guys, maybe 10, 12, 15 Special Forces, American Special Forces guys, and then one hundred and twenty or one hundred and fifty in the force of locals.

Yeah. And so in this case, they're Montagnards and that means you can conduct these bigger operations.

And that's really the the fundamental mission of Special Forces of the Green Berets is to work with Indian forces, train up these guerrilla forces so that they can become a strong fighting unit. The SEALs have a different primary mission that SEALs primary mission was always generally considered to be special direct action and special reconnaissance. Find the enemy kill. Yeah, that's that's that's the SEALs.

And the Special Forces was more, hey, find the enemy and then train some of the local populace to go kill them. That's the goal. And it's more of a long term solution. You know, you'll hear the Green Berets say it's teach them how to fish instead of just giving them a fish seal teams.

We just kill we just kill the fish generally. Now, if we both cross over and we both do each one, you know, we do their operations. When I was in Ramadi, we that's what we did. We trained a bunch of the Indian forces, a bunch of Iraqi soldiers. And, you know, of course, there were Special Forces units that were doing all kinds of direct action missions, missions there as well. So we do cross over.

But if you look at the kind of bread and butter, this is just bread and butter, a Green Beret operation, a massive force going into two to do to harass the enemy.

Oh, yeah.

This is what this is what it is. Take the pressure off of the CIA, which was getting his ass kicked. Explain that background a little bit about what's going on with the CIA there.

Well, at that time, Premier Sihanouk had been ousted and this is 1970. I forget the exact month, but like May or June right around here. So he leaves country. There's a political vacuum. And so the communists want to head south, enmasse, take as many troops in Cambodia, just take it because the NBA knew the Khmer Rouge element that was on a sideline and growing in strength in Cambodia.

So the CIA put this operation together, which was further deeper into Laos, near the border, and the NBA came at them hard. Now they had five thousand CIA troops and there getting their ass kicked and they said help. So they came up with this concept, had the team go in, and then Jean McCauley put his little unique spin to it and after talking because by 1970, particularly out of Kontum, those hatchet forces were good, they really knew how to work with the air assets and which include Spectre at night.

And so she knew all about that stuff. And so he put that idea together. And it worked in terms of drawing away and HVA from the CIA, which in the end, mission accomplished. Not only did they draw them away, the CIA could hold, but they also has a major enemy cachets in the command post.

And that's why my favorite picture on the front page, there's a picture of our guys from Conten stand there with a picture of Ho Chi Minh, which was taken from one of the tables in the command center.

There was the end VA command center when I was going through what they call Celal was called SEAL Tactical Training. Before that it was called SEAL Basic in dock and then it became SEAL qualification training. It's like what you do when you get done with the basic training. We did a raid on a target and this is up in Fort Lewis, Washington. And so we do a raid on a target and then they're flying a flag on this little compound. Right.

And they're flying this flag. And sure enough, the the the officer in charge of our class, which was now the the platoon commander of our platoon going to do this hit, he sees that flag, walks over to it, undoes the figure eight starts pulling it down.

And sure enough, the instructors have booby trapped that thing and it blows up.

You're a casualty. So I see that picture on the cover. I always think, man, I was always scared to touch anything that looked good.

Absolutely. Oh, yeah. If the first ever looks good, maybe it's too good. Yeah.

But, you know, there's a lot of guys, a lot of guys I know a lot of guys from from the war in Iraq. A lot of guys went home with with paintings of Saddam Hussein because those things were pretty easy to find. They were everywhere. Yes, indeed. Yeah.

All right.

Going back to the book with the hatchet force or that force, we were used to going across the fence and getting our ass kicked and then getting saved by tackier on Operation Half back in Laos earlier in the year, we lost two South Vietnamese Air Force 30 force, which included SSF medic Bill Boyle, who died in one of those choppers.

We got hit hard because we were dug in and the VA pounded our position with Operation Tail would tail wind.

Once on the ground, we were going to keep moving day and night to keep the VA off balance and keep them from massing a large force against our position. It's it's fundamental.

It's what we're talking about is maneuver warfare right now. Instead of saying, hey, we'll do attrition warfare, we'll sit on this mountaintop and you attack us, hey, we're going to move around and, you know, won't know where our where we are. But that's tricky to move in. One hundred and fifty guys around in the GAO, in the jungle, indeed in the GAO, as they say.

And although no one said so at the time, at least not outright, the mission that Mack-Cali in the CCC hatchet force we're gearing up for to execute could be called a suicide mission. As Mack-Cali briefed the B company, platoon leaders, squad leaders, medic Gary Mike Rose and company First Sergeant Morris Adare in the compound, operation orders were going out to critical support elements that would play crucial roles in Operation Tailwind. First, there was the long distance to the target in Laos because it was so far away neither the older piston driven age.

Thirty four Sikorsky helicopters, the South Vietnamese Army's or South South Vietnamese Air Force, two hundred nineteen Special Operations Squadron nor regular Army Huey Slick's could be used to insert in and extract one hundred and thirty six man detachment.

So you got just a straight up fuel limitation? Absolutely. These aircraft, they're not going to be able to fly that deep into Laos. So what does that mean? Back to the book.

Thus, SOGGE brass turn to the Marine Corps aviation wing that flew the largest troop carriers in Vietnam, the powerful S.H. Fifty three D Sikorsky twin engine helicopters in and HMO for sixty three based at the CORES Marble Mountain Air Facility. Using the bigger, stronger, heavier lift helicopters made sense because three Sea Stallions with the with the design capacity hold 55 troops could take the entire hatch it force of one hundred and thirty six men, all their equipment and extra supplies such as explosives and ammunition and insert them into the target area.

So there you go.

The the fifty three helicopter is a massive freaking helicopter. Oh, yeah, it holds 50 something troops with all their gear, with their gear and all their rounds for their weapons. Yeah, that's a that's an awesome aircraft.

And those were the only two engines in this before they came out with the three engine model like you used.

Oh, see, I got that. I got it easy.

In previous years, Marine Corps aviators from Hommage for sixty three had performed fearlessly in key SOGGE operations across the fence. And Marine brass knew that flying combat troops and supplies into Laos always resulted in the helicopters getting hit by enemy fire in the first day, said Macala. It was funny the Marine brass were a little reluctant to go that deep and allows because they knew the submissions presented extra challenges and dangers to marine air crews. But once they heard about the unique aspects of operations Operation Tailwind they wanted in Marine Sergeant Larry Growe, my saying that right growth was a door gunner and structural mechanic, structural mechanic in for sixty three when the operations order came into the command shed in Danang.

The most dangerous and he says the most dangerous and most interesting missions we flew were missions. Seventy two and that was SOGGE support. We called it going over the fence. For me personally, this is why I joined the Marine Corps to run special missions against the enemy. I was looking for adventure and wanted to be where the action was. The Marine aviators were told to prepare for a mission 70 to insertion deep into Laos, grow, replace the 50 caliber machine gun with the M 60 because it gave him more maneuverability.

And if we got shot down, he said and and quote, if we got shot down, I could carry it and take the fight to the enemy. The 50 was too heavy to carry that.

A great Marine One. Yeah. Yeah.

So just so everyone understands what we're talking about, a 50 caliber machine gun is a big gun and it's you can't shoot it. You can't you cannot do it. You can't you can't carry that thing and shoot it from your shoulder, from your hip. It's it's meant to be mounted on a vehicle or mounted in aircraft. But it I'm 60. You can shoot by yourself. You can carry it and you can you can fire it from the hip or from the shoulder.

And so this Marines thinking, well, we're going out these freakin guys, probably a pretty decent chance. We're going to get shot down. I'll go ahead and switch it out. That way, if we get shot down, I'll be able to, you know, unhook that thing and go and fight.

Illawarra's, I think a Marine boy, he's one of my all time heroes for this Mission Day.

Yeah, not far away from four sixty three at Marble Mountain Air Facility, marine aviators from H.M. three sixty seven Scarface got the op order for Operation Tailwind in a more dramatic fashion, according to Cobra gunship pilot Joe Driscoll, who is a first lieutenant at the time.

And he says the duty driver came by our room at two or three o'clock in the morning and told us to pack our gear as we'd be gone for five to ten days on an operation to be ready at five a.m.. My first thought was maybe we're finally going into North Vietnam. Driscoll and fellow pilots flew the early Model H. One G Cobra gunships with one man sitting in front seat and a pilot sitting behind him, a relative of the more familiar Huey helicopter.

The Cobra gunship had a more narrow profile designed strictly as a weapons platform. Driscol Driscoll's COBRA had two 19 shot, two point seventy five rocket launchers to seven shot rocket pods one seven six two mini gun that fired six thousand rounds a minute and a grenade launcher that fired forty millimeter high explosive rounds. That's why they call it a gunship as firepower.

When the early versions of those cobras were fully armed and loaded with aviation fuel, the helicopter skids would drag on the runway for a short distance until the pilots gained enough lift to get the bird airborne. However, once once in the air, they brought the fight to the enemy with precise gun runs and rocket runs. Scarface and several other Marine helicopter units have been involved in secret war in Vietnam for several years, usually supporting recon teams and Hatchard forces from F will be one at Phoo by and F will be three case on or F4 before at Danang in the northern.

And you're just this this section of the book is laying out and I'm skipping through it like I always have to skip through some stuff, get it, get the book so you can get the rest of the details. But you know, you mentioned that this was a massive joint operation through all these different forces. And in this section, you're laying out the various air platforms that are going to be brought to bear to execute this mission.

You go on here in the northern side of Danang at the joint military civilian airfield, Air Force SPAD.

Pilots who flew the single women single wing, a one Sky Raiders, received their initial op order for Operation Tailwind, so they want the A1 Sky Raiders, this old school World War two era invented and put together at the end of World War Two use to our Korean War.

And then the Air Force brass put them all way. And then Jack Sangla and other commanders said, we want those aircraft back in service. They had this big battle behind the scenes to get the Skyview because they were just phenomenal support for SOGGE, the nickname SPAD, World War One.

I looked it up. It's an old World War One airplane.

And this thing was such an ancient beast that they they called it this bad.

The World War One airplane, awesome looking bird going on here. The single the single engine war plane was loved by American ground pounders. This is kind of like the A10 Oja, you know, the attends the same thing. People try and get rid of it. And all the ground pounders say, we love that thing.

Absolutely love that 10 was missing was napalm. Yeah, that would have been nice.

Oh, crispy could attack. The single engine war plane was loved by American ground pounders and feared by communist troops because of the havoc and death they rained down on enemy troops. Additionally, through the unique design by Ed Hineman at Douglas Aircraft Company during World War Two, the sky could stay on station over a target longer than any aircraft. And it brought bombs, cluster bombs, two point seven five rockets, twenty millimeter cannons and too many guns to the battlefield.

Once again, that's a lot of firepower, plus bombs and napalm.

Over the years, several SOGGE recon and hatchet force Green Berets recalled getting showered with shell casings from the A-1 Sky Raiders as they flew danger close to the teams they were supporting. Some later reported receiving burns on the back of their necks from hard shell casings that fell from the warbird and landed on the soldiers necks burning their skin. Once they lodged in the collar, however, no one ever complained about those burns burns that were often life savings, life saving.

Lieutenant Colonel Melvin Swanson was the group commander when Operation Tailwind op order landed on his desk. And here's what he had to say. To tell the truth, we didn't do anything special. When the OP order came down, I had no idea where we were going. We operated like any other SOG mission that we'd supported over the years. We had to a ones armed and cocked, ready to go for SOG missions and search and rescue missions. We prided ourselves on saving SOG teams.

SOG missions were our primary assignment with SA as the other priority. When they called, we answered always.

Back at C.C.C. and Kontum, McCurley restated the mission to his platoon leaders and squad leaders go heavy on ammo, grenades and C4 plastic explosives and light on food and water.

And he says, I had every team member, including our troops, carry at least one pound of C4 because we were going to blow up any enemy caches and structures we found. And C4 was always good for clearing. ELSS Green Beret medic Gary Mike Rose went through his mental checklist, preparing to carry enough medical supplies and bandages for a company sized operation. He would make sure that each Green Beret team member carried at least one morphine threat in a specific pocket.

He also made sure that he packed that each pack several sizes of bandages and at least one I.V. He packed about fifteen cigarettes of morphine, five sets of atropine. He he always carried five for insert and snake bites, even encamp as well as extra bandages, medical tape, rubber tubing and several NATO surgical kits. Rose worked with his Monan Yade, Kotch right cock coach, coach, coach, who he described as a loyal, brave soldier and medic who carried a similar amount of medical supplies that I carried.

And like many young soldiers, Rose never thought for a minute that he would be wounded during combat. Thus, the stage was set for launching Operation Tailwind on September 11th.

Nineteen seventy, after several weather delays and rocket attacks to the launch site north of C.C.C., it would be a mission where the sixteen Green Berets would receive a total of thirty three Purple Hearts for wounds received during the heavy combat that was about to unfold in Los.

Oh, yeah, and the fun thing here is we this is the first time we were able to interview all the aviators like Mel Swanson, one character, and then Joe Driscoll and his cohorts from Scarface, and then met Larry and a couple of other agents on the pilots over time. Yeah, and we'll get to it because you mentioned in the book and you talk through that, but a lot of times you never even see these guys. Never I mean, they're in a different place.

They're up in the air. You're on the ground. And you never you just never you never meet them. Never.

And look at me. You've heard all the stories mine. Lynn Black, the Frenchman, Eldon Bargewell. We all have skywriter, stories that love and saved our bacon. I couldn't tell you one pilot's name until we had to. We had the story and that was even there forty.

Forty five years later.

Yes. So here we go. Let's get to it after seven days of weather delays, false starts and enemy rocket attacks.

At the top, secret military assistance command base in Vietnam. Eugene McCarthy, that's the the guy in charge, Eugene McCarthy, gave the order to move out 15 Beret's, 15 Green Berets and one hundred and twenty Menard's mercenaries.

On the morning of September 11th, four of the powerful Marine Corps, fifty three D Sikorsky twin engine helicopters in HMG for sixty three based at the Marine Corps Marble Mountain Air Facility, landed outside the compound and loaded up the one hundred and thirty six man unit.

SOG brass had turned to the Marine Corps aviation wing that flew the largest troop carriers to reach into Laos. Twenty five kilometers beyond the normal SOGGE area of operations, escorted by six Marine Corps Cobras, the helicopters headed north refuel ADAC two before heading into the target area. After refueling, they flew north parallel to the border for a while before taking a left turn, heading due west into the target area. Could the Cobras make it all the way in? Yes, that's pretty impressive.

Yeah, they had extra fuel capacity.

Got it. And here's speaking of the pilots that you got to interview. It was a hot zone from the moment we arrived. Scarface Cobra pilot Joe Driscoll said we took several hits on the first gun run during the insertion of the team. Scarface pilot Sid Baker and I were surprised by the volume of fire. In fact, we took hits in our rocket pods.

We had bullet holes in our tail boom, and they shot out our radio.

When the Cobras made their final gun run, we followed our S.O.P, which was to stay in formation and keep an eye out for enemy soldiers firing at us, end quote, because they had no radio contact, Driscoll and Baker simply flew through, flew through the pattern to cover the ship in front of them without firing, quote, The enemy didn't know we had no radios.

I'll tell you one thing. That was a hot target. Driscoll said we were moving targets.

The fifty threes were static targets, but they went in, dropped off the troops and got out of there post-haste.

Man, Yeah, on insert see, ordinarily we're done, we get shot at going in unless you're in black and his one zero, but ordinarily you're done, you just turn around, go home.

We're compromised. The idea is to get inserted, do a mission without being compromised. There, by our standards were compromised. Operation Tailwind, we're going in. Come hell or high water.

It gets better. Oh yeah. Continuing the siege.

Fifty threes were big targets. Mack-Cali said all of the fifty threes were hit by enemy ground fire wall and route to the target. I'd never received so much ground fire while flying to a target, he said. It sounded like a BB gun shooting a tin can, but it wasn't BBs that the troops heard. It was enemy rounds. By the time that B company exited the helicopters, four yards had been wounded from enemy gunfire.

One died while flying back to base with his three wounded comrade in arms, Green Beret medic Sergeant Michael Rose added. It was strange exiting the chopper, stepping over wounded in action to get to the ground.

Yeah, so they haven't even started the mission yet. They got one killed and three wounded. We haven't started the mission yet, but we got we got three wounded and one killed.

Continuing under ordinary SOG mission as ops, any recon team or hatchet force that received enemy ground fire and men wounded in action prior to getting to the ground would cancel the mission. This was no ordinary mission company be moved off the helicopters and was on the ground in Laos shortly after noon time. One fundamental truism of the Vietnam War, as well as the eight years secret surfaced.

The Communist forces fought when they wanted to fight. Thus, when Mack-Cali, in the remaining one hundred thirty one members of B company settled into the Woodbine, they found complete and utter silence. He said it was so strange the aircraft pulled back, we were on the ground and there were no enemy soldiers, no noise, no birds, nothing. So once again, you get that that weird quietness. Oh, yeah. What do you think? Make the make the NBA think we're going to shoot when they're inserting, but once they land, we're not going to do anything.

What do they think and what's the enemy thinking at that point?

Who knows? Their tactics always varied. And I think a little bit was just a complete element of surprise. They saw the birds and sort of people shooting in would be anti aircraft cruise along the way and probably some ground troops would hear a case. I don't know, I wasn't there. But once they land, let's see what the boys are up to.

That's what the Navy could be thinking, just to see what. And then they knew with those three helicopters coming in, there's a lot of people and they wanted to maybe do their own assessment, see who does what, who they are and what they're up to, because sometimes the NBA just didn't react as quickly, particularly that far west was never totally surprised at a several level surprise that we were there.

Sogge was there and then surprised at the number of aircraft and that they actually got in and so does all three different elements.

But they you know, they're checking it out and continuing on. Mack-Cali, who is serving his second tour of duty in SOGGE, wasted no time. The company moved out in the northwest direction. And then the men of B company had another surprised surprise. After moving less than 400 meters from the Elzy, the point element of the company reported seeing Hutz, the first platoon deployed two squads to search the area.

They found an enemy ammo dump. Twenty bunkers spread out over five hundred meters hidden in the under the jungle canopy with vegetation and dark covers. After setting up perimeter security, the B company troops pulled together a quick inventory of what they had found picked up samples while demolitions experts as Sergeant First Class Bernard Bright and Specialist Fifth Class Craig Schmidt photographed identify the weapons and ammo and began setting up explosive charges with thirteen and a half minute delay fuses in the two larger structures, with white phosphorus grenades attached to each charge to better mark the exact location for Covey, who had been direct air strikes on that position.

So here we go, already on the ground, already found bad guy area. But there was no bad guys there for whatever reason, but a bunch of ammo and whatnot.

They found a cache, so they're going to blow it up. And then this happens while while the B company team worked on this cache, Mack-Cali had one of the most unique moments in its twenty. Eighteen is twenty eight years of military service.

As he and a few of the SF soldiers were looking at a map, a telephone rang. Quote, I couldn't believe it, a phone rang in the middle of the house, McCauley said, quote, So being ASDF, one of our guys picked up the phone and answered it. Hello, fifth special forces group.

May we help you? Can you imagine the reaction of the communists on the other end of that phone to this day? Just thinking about it makes me laugh. So there you go.

As the men chuckled at the phone call, others were compiling an impressive list of enemy weapons contained in the bunkers. Massive cache of of of weapons not resting on its laurels. Big company moved north with the platoon, with the first platoon breaking point in a short distance, the first platoon found a trail crossing. We're proceeding north when Adare and 2nd Platoon squad leader Mike Hagan observed several inva soldiers on the trail and opened fire on them and inva seven six to round went through Hagans gas mask, which he had on his leg and slammed into his leg.

So they're carrying gas mask on this operation. Berney Bright was slightly wounded. The round actually parted his hair, said Mack-Cali. You can't get much closer than that. The VA fled the area and B company continued to head north after medic Gary Mike Rose patched up Hagan's wound. As they marched, they heard two large explosions back at the VA bunkers, white phosphorus, white phosphorus grenades that Brian Schmidt attached to the demo. Charges emitted large plumes of white smoke smoke that covid readily picked up and proceeded to direct precise follow up airstrikes.

Secondary explosions would continue for more than five hours.

Can you imagine a secondary explosions? Crazy.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, crazy amount of. I mean, this is their supply. This is this is this is how they're fighting the war right there.

You go home and say, look what we just did. They'd be a great mission. And that's a first.

But our on the ground B company then made contact with the VC with an NBA company, which lasted for close to an hour. McCarthy said the hatchet force men used close air strikes from Scarface, Cobras and and spades, skillful squad tact and skillful squad tactics against the surprised and HVA to drive them off. As darkness approached Mack-Cali and the point element began looking for a location to remain overnight. For the night we we stopped for a commo check when they fired one B forty rocket into our command post, Rose added.

We were fortunate. We were fortunate in one small way. The rocket flew past all of us before striking a bamboo thicket. Thus, when the shrapnel exploded, those of us injured didn't get the full head on blunt force of the metal shards as the forward momentum of the rocket exploded into the bamboo. Forty five years later, after that rocket explosion, Rose had one lasting mental image of it. He says, quote, It's funny, I can't remember much about it, except that all of a sudden I was flying through the air.

At some point while airborne, I looked up and saw Blue Sky. It was beautiful.

And then I landed and here's Mack-Cali. Rose showed us what he was made of that day. He immediately started to go to work on the wounded because everyone in the CP at that time had varying degrees of wounds. In fact, Rose had a serious foot injury. Somehow the shrapnel had sliced open his jungle boot and cut into his foot. What did he do? He pulled out an ace bandage, wrapped it around his foot and used his car fifteen as a crutch and began treating our wounded.

And quote, The most serious wounded was a South Vietnamese lieutenant, shrapnel sliced into his right side to the bone in addition to other shrapnel wounds. We stopped and licked our wounds as rose past patched up our people, Mack-Cali said. McCarthy's plan was to continue to move at night. And if the company made contact with the enemy, the special forces men would determine whether to attack them or maneuver around them or simply pull back and call on fixed wing gunships that could bring deadly fire from the sky upon the enemy troops on the ground.

Fast forward a little bit, finally rose rigged to stretchers from rubber ponchos supported by thick bamboo poles and tied them down with six foot sections of rope. They would now be able to carry the most seriously wounded indigenous troops. When Rose gave Mack-Cali the OK, B company took the bold step of moving out at night. Quote, I wasn't going to let them tie us down in one position and then hammer us by us moving. They didn't know exactly where we were.

There were little skirmishes and a few times we ran into a few and HVA after contact, we'd move on. If there was a larger element, we could pull back and call in the gunship strike. We had flare ships over us every night. And quote, Be company continued to march West Deepend allows. The deeper be company Green Beret and their Montoneros headed west, the more they enhance their primary goal of being a diversion to the NBA forces attacking the CIA's operation catapult.

This wasn't going to be easy. By dawn, nine of the Americans, nine of the 16 Americans had been wounded. So these guys have been on the ground for what is it?

They got inserted around noon. So we're talking a very short period of time. 10 hours? Yeah, 18 hours or something like that. And they already have nine of the 16 Americans wounded.

Rose and his indigenous indigenous medic, Kotch, worked tirelessly on the wounded all night, even as they moved throughout the dark jungle. So they got they got nine wounded, just Americans. And they're still moving.

And the two seriously wounded. MONTEJANO Yeah. In stretchers and stretchers.

Improvised. Yeah. Man carrying stretchers is no joke. You need to have, like, a team to carry. If you think if you think, oh, you just get two guys, one on each side of the stretcher. That works for a little while. But you end up having to either rotate those guys out or you put four guys on the stretcher. So much harder than it looks now. Luckily, the yards are smaller, though, right?

Yeah, they're not like the big men. When we when we were going through training and I would be a down man, all the guys would be like, Hey, bro, well, I love you, but could you go on a diet? Here, take this grenade. We'll see you later. Good luck. And mark you with a chem like, uh.

Continuing on, Captain Gene McCarthy had the men of the company Hatchet forced move moving north well before the sun rose on day two of Operation Tailwind. We zigzagged a lot during that mission because we didn't want the NBA to get a good fix on our position as we knew they tried to pin us down and attack us in force if that happened, said McCarthy. Within an hour and VA soldiers hit the first platoon with automatic weapons b 40 rockets and mortars. Two squads maneuvered against the enemy while Mack-Cali directed airstrikes against the enemy positions.

The tactics work because a thick jungle, they weren't able to get an accurate body count as Mack-Cali continued to march north. However, S.F. medic Gary Migros knew the casualties were climbing among both MSF and indeed troops of B company.

We had two yards killed and yards the short the short name, Vermont Yards. We had two yards killed. One Captain Akali and I got hit with shrapnel from the B 40 after confirming confirming they were dead. I wrapped them up and we carried them with us as best we could, Rose said.

However, after trying to carry them while tending to the two most seriously injured men, I quote, I had to make a decision to leave the two dead men behind because I could see that carrying them as we moved, we were causing too much fatigue for the living.

So we made a decision that has bothered me for nearly half a century. By day two, it seemed as though every day, every hour, I kept getting more and more wounded. So S.F. Medic Rose, he's looking at the situation and we were just joking about how hard it is to carry guys. And clearly he he was dealing with that. It's it's it's incredibly hard. And you think, like I said, it takes you have to have guys to rotate through.

It's taking out a whole lot of your combat power when you're moving wounded. So they probably have, you know, probably takes 10 guys to move these two wounded guys, maybe even more. So that's 10 guys out of the fight and you're moving slower. And so he has to make this agonizing decision that we're going to leave these guys.

When I talked to Mike for that part of the story, his eyes welled up. It was just like yesterday. It really still hurt him. Now, 50, 50 years later, yeah, rough. Continues on here at one point during an attack on B company and Vuh force of more than 40 enemy soldiers, two of the most seriously wounded men that Rose was treating had both of their IV fluid bags shattered and destroyed during a hail of enemy gunfire.

I learned a lesson right then and there, said Rose, we kept the IVs flowing from low positions, allowing gravity to work but not high enough for the enemy gunfire to destroy them. Were you guys using the IV bag with your IVs glass?

That's a good question. I figured, OK, that's for the medics. The common guy. Yeah, we. Well, the weird thing. Well, we all carried IVs, right? And we ended up getting smaller IVs, but I don't know if he said the IVs shattered. So that makes me think maybe they were made of glass. What, the bags, IV bags.

Yeah, just like big jars or. Oh, no, they're for the for our medic. So they had plastic. OK, so maybe because they're I'm not sure what I had to force.

He took what he had. Yeah.

That be my assumption.

So you treat your wounded, you're giving them IV and the freaking bags or the jar gets shot at. Yeah, continuing on as the hatchet force moved north, it was obvious to McCallie that Rose had his hands full as he continually as he had to continually monitor two more seriously wounded men, men who were being carried by him and other team members in stretchers made of bamboo sticks and ponchos. Because there were so many wounded. McCallie directed be coming to find or make an Elzy for a medevac to land and take out the wounded.

They found a large bomb crater and began preparing the Elzy when the enemy initiated two successive contacts with them, firing small arms b 40 rockets and throwing grenades as they worked on establishing a clearing. B company dealt with the two separate attacks from the NBA using squad tactics and tackier. Both attacks were neutralized, only to have Covey report that the weather had turned bad, prohibiting any rescue attempts for the day. Without hesitation, B company moved, moved out again, going west for a while, then north, keeping its pattern of movement unpredictable.

What I remember most about day two of Operation Tailwind was the disappointment of having the weather turned bad, preventing a much needed medevac, McCauley said.

So these guys have the goal, like, OK, we got we got some wounded guys. We need to get these guys out of here. They fight to get get an Elzy. Once they get this Elzy established under attack, they push the attack back and then the weather rolls in and the guys can't guys can't fly Southeast Asia.

Weather is there. What's your what's your confidence on the weather?

Predictions like the weather predictions in Iraq are pretty easy. It's going to be hot every once in a while. You would get a a storm.

And we had some sandstorms. Oh, I saw the sandstorms there. They're like biblical sandstorms. Oh, yeah. They blacken the sky.

It's pretty cool to see. But you can't run opposite them at all.

Like, you can't make communications because the sand blocks radio waves. So basically, if there's that kind of biblical sandstorm coming, everyone just kind of stands down. Now, you could go out and try and get into a good position, but you can't see anything.

You you can see, you know, maybe maybe twenty yards or something like that. I mean, you visibility just gone. Oh yeah. But we could kind of know that they were coming. I never got let me put it this way. I never got I never got surprised by the weather in Iraq. Who was there was sunny and hot. Ninety nine percent of the time. Every once in a while there'd be some kind of cloud, maybe a little bit of precipitation by because we were by the Euphrates River where it was it was humid.

People don't know that by the Euphrates Rivers freaking humid.

And I'm going to show you pictures sometime of this area to the to the northeast of the city of Ramadi. It was still in our in our al. Right.

And it was called the the MCE one or the one MCE. But what we called it was Verolme because because it looked like Vietnam. Yeah. They looked exactly like Vietnam. Palm trees, rice paddies, dikes.

My stepson told me about it was in the Green Zone. Yeah. There is like I thought it was back in Vietnam with you.

Oh is he in the Green Zone in in Afghanistan. No. Oh in Iraq.

And by Green Zone he means areas where there was the we always called the Green Zone, which is the biggest, most secure area in Iraq.

OK, so you're talking about the Green Zone in Baghdad and Baghdad. OK, yeah. And he was operating southeast at different locations for near some of which they came into Iraqi jungle.

Yep. In Afghanistan, they call the Green Zone areas where there's areas where they're like heavily. There's a lot of foliage. Right. OK, so in in Iraq, the Green Zone is is the Green Zone. It's the thing right there in Baghdad, which is big and secure.

It's where they had good food and all that stuff.

Yeah, we never had any sandstorms in the jungle, so maybe a typhoon or two.

So my question was, when you would get a weather prediction, you're going to go like these guys. Let's say you were going on a four day mission and and they're telling you, all right, looks like the weather's good.

How good did you feel about that?

Like, did you give it 50/50? Fifty. What? I was just figured because it could change so quickly.

But the positive thing is that if it gets cloudy, how long is that? How long are you thinking that last for.

Oh, you know, every time was different. Could the clouds, a lot of thunder be clouds in the morning? Sometimes they burn off, sometimes they wouldn't. And there's just so much moisture around and we're always juggling with the weather. I mean, it was just one of the factors that there's just no control.

We get predictions, but we got socked in a couple of times. And again, they want to get us into a hole. OK, we just go up and try to get into a target, get in, and then Mother Nature closes the whole site.

We just had to lie low. And wait it out, wait it out, because you move and make contact, there is no support in the NBA. No, that's really, really come at you hard.

There's no air. So they love it when there's bad weather. Oh, sure.

Yes.

Bad weather was the NBA's ally. All right.

Fighting the NBA fight in the weather. Mother Nature fight Mother Nature. It's another day at SOGGE. Back to the book, night two. And Laos was similar tonight. One big company kept on the move with continued support from Moonbeam, linking the team with Shadow, Stinger and Spectre gunships throughout the night. During that night, we heard tracked vehicles, we heard trucks, McCauley said NITU sounded like a lot of trucks heading south, bringing troops and supplies south and some to deal with us.

We had skirmishes that night and we directed air assets to assist us directly and to the areas where we heard motor vehicle activity. So now you've got the Specter gunships come in at night, which is a beautiful thing.

What they had all three variations because, you know, when I first got there in 68, Spooky was the first one. And then they came out with a shadow, which was a C 119, where Spooky was the old C 47, and they could have maybe too many guns. And when they came out with the shadow, could we have one of our recon teams said they came back, they lived through the night and they went through a couple of shadows and they had more audits, make us stay on station longer and then another team a couple months later.

Or maybe you're I forget the time frame. Then it was a Stinger's again. See one nineteens with it, with the weapons, the computers, the lock in on the strobe light and then Spectre and 50 years later still dominate the night.

Yeah, I think it's a beautiful piece of machinery.

The VA also inflicted some more casualties in the company by the time Akali moved out at four a.m. day three, September 13th, 1970, Rose was tending to more than 30 wounded men. Two with deadly serious wounds that required almost constant attention, fluid rejuvenation and pain management. By that time, Rose was also running low on bandages, IVs and morphine. Seurat's. Quote, We were so low on morphine that I reused morphine Seurat's, which is a no no under normal circumstances, but there was nothing normal about this operation, so I would give two or three of the wounded morphine from the same threat.

I only gave them enough to dull the pain, but allowed them to be somewhat alert.

And quote, As Rose focused on the wounded, the first platoon engaged the enemy as they move toward a potential Elzy for a much needed medevac, while the third platoon deployed one squad to maintain contact with another squad of end HVA, attacking the company's rear after several gun runs by Scarface and a one Sky Raiders from Danang in Thailand, the rear action force rejoined the company as it pushed into a good Elzy site and began clearing trees with Claymore mines and C4 plastic explosives.

At noon, after Scarface and the Spatz performed gun runs on enemy positions near a small Elzy, the First Marine Corps fifty three D approached the Elzy as the large helicopter descended into the Elzy the pilot bill. All was concerned that the Elzy might not be large enough to land in as he maneuvered the chopper. Slowly, downward rows move toward the rear tailgate of the fifty three with his most seriously injured soldier, the South Vietnamese lieutenant. With the horrific thigh and hip injury inside the chopper, S.F. medics John, Staff Sergeant John, Doc Padgett and Sergeant John Brown moved on to the back tailgate as it lowered with Brown supporting Padget by holding his belt.

Quote, I was trying to reach the patient that Mike was lifting towards us. And just at that moment in time, the pilot pulled pitch and lifted to the left. And quote, Rose said, quote, The tail rotor struck a tree as I was lifting the patient up towards Doc, the chopper lifted upward. Suddenly as it was lifting up, it took enemy small arms fire and to be 40 rocket hit.

End quote, Padget said, quote, When that B 40 hit us, it went through the fuel cell but didn't explode. There was aviation fuel everywhere. How it didn't ignite? I'll never know. But surely God was riding with us.

And quote Berdahl, pilot of the fifty three radioed, Mayday, mayday, we're going in as the fifty three began losing fuel and its hydraulic fueled fuel fluids.

YHA 14. That's the number of this particular stage. Fifty three crashed without any injuries to the medics or crew members who immediately exited the wounded bird and set up a defensive perimeter with Padget overseeing the impromptu team on the ground. As the NCOIC for SOGGE C.C.C. dispensary at Toome Pageant could have pulled rank and stayed behind. And he said, quote, But that that wasn't how I did things, I usually took my turn riding on the Chase medic ship.

So here you have a guy that's a senior guy that could have been sitting back in the in the in the hooch air, in the air conditioned whose pooch back home base.

But he's he's not that kind of leader.

No, not at all. Steps up and gets in there and now these guys are getting shot down. Maybe he's questioning that decision right now.

Oh, I'm sure he was. I mean, I said for the record, but Doc's a smart guy.

Figure all the angles as they set up their perimeter. Scarface, Lieutenant Newton called fifty three aircraft, no y age 20, piloted by Mark McKenzie, met them at a rally point and led them to the crash site where Scarface and Spades made gun runs in preparation for the Chase medic aircraft called Sarabi by the Marines to arrive for the down downed crew and ASDF medics.

While enroute to rescue, the crew of why age 14 said why each door gunner, Larry Growe, I was admiring the beautiful countryside and I couldn't help thinking of all the bad guys down there waiting for us. I am 60, was locked, loaded and ready for action. As we got closer to the pickup site, I could see that it was surrounded by smoke that was laid down by scart by the Scarface Cobras, along with their rockets and 40 millimeters to protect the crew of the downed chopper.

And quote, as we age 20, was about to settle into a hover over the downed crew and EVA, 51 caliber anti-aircraft heavy machine gun opened fire on the aircraft's left side.

Grows left side window was only about twenty five yards away from it, and the muzzle flashes from the gun were huge and the rounds seemed to be the size of basketballs grow, pulled the trigger on his 60 and held it until the fifty one cal was silenced.

The fifty three started to bounce around and I knew and I knew we had taken some hits, Sergeant Wittmer was working his gun on the right side as Captain Kapela and Sergeant Spalding were at the rear ramp throwing out the one hundred and twenty foot aluminum extraction ladder, end quote. Meanwhile, Scarface Cobras were making gun runs Spatz following suit hitting enemy sites, quote, Everything seemed to slow down as the action heated up. Growe said everything was in slow motion when the latter landed on the ground.

Padget told everyone to climb in climate and hook onto it. There was so much confusion and noise that no one moved to the ladder, he said. Finally I said, Follow me. And up I went.

They followed suit. This is just mayhem, Gross said the lift off from the Elzy wasn't easy. Quote, We had no idea just how bad the battle damage was, but we were bouncing all over the sky and we had a huge beat, meaning that the that there was something terribly wrong with our main rotor blades and quote, Now, the crew of Y 20 was concerned about the safety of the aircraft and the men below riding on the extraction ladder.

So you have the helicopter get shot down and then this other helicopter comes in to rescue. They get lit up with a with a machine gun, twelve point seven millimeter, fifty one, which is a freaking massive machine gun. They get shot up with that. They throw the the extraction ladder out the back. A bunch of the guys don't know what to do. Finally, someone on the ground starts climbing the ladder. They all start climbing the ladder, but they don't get up the ladder.

So they're all just hanging onto this ladder.

And then this thing starts to try and get out of there, and it's like a car with with like a piston that's not firing exactly quote, in hindsight, there was really no way that we or anyone else could know, could know how bad the damage was, said Growe, quote, Only when we finally made it back do we learn just how bad our damage was. Numerous rounds of cut the hydraulic lines to the tail rotor, one round from the 50 callard almost cut the main rotor tail drag drive shaft in half that round.

It hit next to the Thomas coupling, which connects the tail rotor drive shaft sections together. We were extremely lucky to have made it back to base. God was with us that day, Padgett said. Man, those helicopters are beasts to take that kind of damage. Yeah, yeah, salute, salute the 50 threes.

And then for the rest of the men on the ground during the night of day three, there was no rest.

By the way, while all that's happened, we still got we still got, what, one hundred and something guys left on the ground, the envy intensified its attacks against the Manabe Company, throwing an estimated six hundred plus hand grenades into the defense positions of the hatchet force, even as it moved a few times during the night. So now we're taking six hundred hand grenades. By now, the B company men had gained an important tactical advantage over the VA.

I like this is a good attitude to have right here. When we got a freaking downed helicopter, we got all these wounded guy. We received six hundred grenades. And you know what? Here we go. By now, the B company men had gained an important tactical advantage over the VA. They learned the VA combat signals during the close in fighting. The VA would hit two bamboo sticks together or use a whistle for signals the hatchet forced men learn that one click or one whistle signal the end VA to move.

Two men throw hand grenades and three men withdraw hatch forced men would then radio what signal what the signal was to the other team members so that they could adjust accordingly. More than once, when the VA signal to withdraw the hatchet forced men would then attack when they were more vulnerable. It was one more tactical advantage that they use to their advantage against an enemy force that continued to grow on the battlefield despite losing hundreds of men to air strikes, bombing runs and team ground fire.

Meanwhile, back in Danang at their air base, the Marines returned to repair their aircrafts as the warning order came down for day four. The weather and VA hordes were closing in on B company.

It could with those hand grenades, one of the things that the Lynn Black discovered was that the NBA had hand grenade vests where they would have four or five hand grenades in one vest.

They could get it and throw it forward, hold it. And then all five grenades will launch at one time with the pins pulled. So you have four or five hand grenades coming at you at one time.

And so they were all like tied together or something. Yeah.

And so when they when they got the vest and then threw it but held it, the hand grenades attached would then go forward. Oh got it. And so with this thing that was going on with the 600 plus. I'm sure that was one of the tactics, the NBA report. Because they had the hand grenade vests. That's a lot of grenades to resign now that some agreed to fully half go off because the Chinese, the Jakobson, you still have only half go if that's still three hundred grenades.

Yeah.

And that that also tells you something else. Tells you how close the enemy was. Yeah. Because that means they're throwing those grenades.

So there's this is close fighting and not to mention, you wonder how close was it so close that we can hear they're signaling when they're banging two bamboo sticks together, primitive but effective, primitive but effective, but also so close that we can hear it and we hear it so much that we actually decipher their freaking code.

Yeah, OK.

All right. Going back to the book, the morning of Operation Tailwind, day for Dawn to Plan B company, hatchet force of Macfie SOGGE moving toward an Elzy to lift out the more seriously wounded among the remaining hundred and twenty seven men who could still walk. All 16 Green Berets had been wounded at least once, and about 40 yard troops were wounded during the first three days of this secret foray deep in the loose. So there you go.

And at least 40, probably more to nobody. Nobody count. Everybody's too busy fighting.

The company commanding officer, Captain Jim Akali, had the point element moving toward an apparent clearing with one thought in mind get one Marine Corps heavy lift. Fifty three helicopter in to pick up the wounded and then continue to march to destroy any and VA fortification, supplies or troops they encountered. By now, the entire second platoon was being used to help care for and transport the wounded under the tireless leadership of medic Gary Micros, including three wounded who were carried on impromptu stretchers.

So there you go. You have an entire platoon. Of what, 40 guys, yeah, you have an entire platoon of 40 guys that are just being used to for the wounded, help the wounded. So that's how hard it is to deal with wounded and move wounded and his morphine is morphine, serviettes or low.

Fast forward a little bit. The men on the ground didn't know about two startling developments. The weather was closing in with a storm front that would prevent Tackier from supporting B company. And Operation Tail Wind had rocked the NBA brass into rallying hordes of North Vietnamese and path at Lao troops that were moving toward the Highway one sixty five area near the tiny hamlet of Shavon. So these guys don't know it, but there's massive enemy coming and bad weather. Now, when this bad weather hits, just to be clear, if I didn't make this clear enough, the only thing that really keeps keeps you guys alive on the ground at a certain point is just the fact that we have air superiority and you can drop bombs because they got hundreds, if not thousands of troops going against you.

So if you lose air support, it's a matter of time because, look, the VA, they don't care. They'll keep coming. They'll come in waves until they finally just overwhelm you with the with just attrition. So if you lose tackier at some point, you're going to be overrun and everyone's dead.

Our edge is gone. Yeah.

And here's Mack-Cali.

Quote, When we started day four, we hadn't thought about an extraction except for getting the wounded out. We took our mission seriously, meaning he's saying, look, we're not even thinking about leaving yet. Not at all. We're still not getting our wounded out.

But we're ready to go. We're going to stay. We took our mission seriously, relieve the pressure on the CIA's operation. Thanks to Tackier, we had hurt the enemy, no question. And by continuously moving, we had kept the VA off balance. We were tired, but our morale was good. We've been on the move about an hour when we heard dogs. These weren't dogs that sounded like tracker dogs the VA used on us. They sounded like pet dogs.

So we moved toward their sound and the first platoon followed them.

The dogs led the company to what would become one of the greatest military intelligence coup of the eight year SOGGE secret war in Laos. Your dogs, they're not tracking dogs, but they're just like pet dogs and the guys follow them back to this camp. That's me. I'm going the other way. I don't like dogs anywhere, particularly in the. Sorry.

Yeah, no. The first time I think it is the first time you were on and we were talking about those tracking dogs about halfway through the conversation. After you talk about these dogs, their smell in your clothes and on you. And I was like, do you still like do you not like dogs? And you said, I hate dogs. Yeah, totally understood.

Before long, the enemy troops fire fired several, maybe 40 rockets at the point element of B company and then fell back and look like they had gone back to some sort of bunker complex, McCauley said after a brief skirmish in a brilliantly executed SPAD gun runs where they used cluster bomb units on enemy positions. The first platoon led the assault on those bunkers with a well coordinated attack, while second platoon covered our flank and provided rear security. So. So you got these guys run up against an enemy position with bunkers and what do they do?

Attack it? Yeah, call in for close air support and then attack it on day four.

I mean, these guys probably haven't eaten. They're short on water. They're wounded.

Third platoon protected our right flank.

We caught them napping. We hit the outpost when they were cooking breakfast. There were open fires, fires with cooking pots on them. Hell, they never had anyone messed with them before.

This deep into allows. The few and VA, a few inva, hidden, a couple, the bunkers whom the montane yards quickly eliminated with hand grenades, those bunkers were nothing but gory blood and guts. After the grenade attacks, Mack-Cali said again, a one skywriter skywriters delivered KB's precisely along to key enemy lines, instantly silencing enemy gunfire, hand grenades and rocket attacks. Within a short period of time, more than 70 and HVA were killed as B company swept through the base as B company drove the remaining and HVA out of the outpost.

They discovered a bunker in the base of camp that quote appeared to be like a basement in a regular house, said Mack-Cali. It was at least 10 feet long and 10 feet wide, with maps on the walls and a foot locker loaded with documents. I emptied my rucksack of everything except for extra car, 15 ammo. By that time, I had used the extra battery radio battery and see for that I was carrying and I started packing with enemy documents, papers, code books, transportation logs and quote, Within 15 minutes, the base camp was overrun.

The area was searched for intelligence and photographs were taken as medic Rose continued to treat the wounded men of the company. So this is a score as a coup and a half.

Oh, yeah.

Which by now it was clear to be company intelligence men that they had stumbled into an EVA battalion based camp that was a major logistical command center and probably the headquarters that controlled the nearby Laotian highway.

One sixty five remaining true to his original Operation Order. Mack-Cali had all the intelligence documents packed and ordered by company and all of its walking wounded to march out of the battalion base camp while demolitions experts wired 120 millimeter mortar for enemy trucks and more than nine tons of rice for destruction. As usual, after the Special Forces charges exploded, a one skywriters followed up with gun napalm and bombing run ins to completely destroy all enemy structures and supplies. Boom. Nine tons of rice feed a lot of people here.

Meanwhile, back at Carna Tomb, fast forward a little bit. Meanwhile, back at Kontum, while all that's happening, all the air assets, the A1 skywriters of the Danang based operating location, Alpha, Alpha, Scarface pilots and fifty three pilots are getting a detailed briefing on the weather and a sighting by Covey of hundreds, if not more than a thousand, Enova and path that Lao troops moving east towards B company quote, During that final briefing, it was very clear today it was do or die.

And quote from Scarface pilot Joe Driscoll, quote, The big thing was the stark seriousness of the moment. Everyone knew they had suffered heavy casualties and now the weather was closing in on them. A one skywriter pilot, Tom Stump, added, quote, The weather was dog shit when we took off. I wasn't optimistic about getting them out of there, end quote. On the ground in Los Mack-Cali pressed forward until he received a disturbing radio call from Covey sometime in the early afternoon of September 14th, day four of Operation Tailwind quote, I believe it was Covey writer Jimmy War, Daddy Hart radio down and told us the VA were massing.

And if that and that if we didn't get out of there today, we weren't going to get out, period. That got my attention, frankly, he mentioned the weather issue to which up to that point in time I wasn't aware of because we were in the jungle, end quote. Yeah, that got your attention, huh? Oh, yeah, and everybody back at base, they know they're getting hammered and I know it's bad and they're getting ready go.

They don't know how bad it is. It's like you're in the jungle, like you've heard it before. You don't know what the how bad the weather is or you're on the ground and you can't tell the difference between sun and no sun.

It's just dark in the jungle and they break loose every once in a while, get it open if they can see.

Right. Gene had no idea. No idea. That's when covid took because I interviewed Gene on it. He was like stunned when he told that because he really thought we were going to kick their ass. We just hit the cash. You say cash or cash. You're the English major. I'm an English miner.

So I had it's cash. Cash. Oh, thank you, sir. It's cash. I'll be more correct now. I got corrected that I got corrected on that when I was a I think I was like an E5 or something to eat for. And, you know, I was brief something and I said, well, there's a cash over there. Yeah. My officers said, actually, JoCo, it's cash.

And I said, no, it's not. I didn't believe him. We had to go to the dictionary. And back then you actually had to get a dictionary.

Yeah. Yeah.

Well, I'll tell you what, you're the man. If you want to call it cash, we can change it right now. We we will follow suit.

I always preferred cash to school.

Could be cash it, but cash shares got a little bit more and more of bazaars. Yeah.

So these guys are in a bad way. And now Mack-Cali kind of realizes we got the enemy coming. We got weather moving in back to the book, realizing they needed a large Elzie, a large Elzy large enough to handle fifty three fifty. These are massive birds in the light of. And by the way, there's no opportunity. You're not going to get fifty guys out on string's. So this thing's going to have to land. Yeah. And you got wounded on top of that in light of losing one of the fifty threes heavy lift helicopters on a tight Elzy the previous day.

Yeah. By the way we already lost one of these things. Mack-Cali moved down a road towards a clearing that was large enough for Nelsa. However, the open area was seated too deeply in a valley which had hills on two sides of it, where the NBA gunners would be able to have clear fields of fire on the marine rescue helicopters, as well as a supporting tackier air assets, Scarface Cobra gunships to facilitate the continued movement of B company, a one spazzing Cobra, Scarface, Scarface, Cobras, quote, gave us fire protection to the front and to the rear.

Mack-Cali said the VA kept hitting us with automatic fire and before the air strikes kept them back far enough so they couldn't do any real damage. At some point, covid ran dangerously low on fuel, returned to base and connected SPAD pilot Tom Stump directly with McCarthy about future air strikes shortly before the first fifty three arrived in the area of operations. Quote, I'll never forget it. When I spoke to Gene, that's Mack-Cali. When I spoke to Gene, his voice was as calm as a man.

At Sunday church picnic Stump said he had that slow Southern drawl and calmly said he was getting his ass kicked down there. All and all the while, I could hear gunfire, gunfire, explosions and hand grenades. He said he needed some separation between the company and the VA. We were on station for two hours doing just that, providing close air support with all the wounded in the large number of casualties they had. I couldn't see how we'd get them out.

There you go, Tom, stop, and Mack-Cali and his men were grateful for the close air support of Stump, his fellow SPAD pilots, Scarface and Tackier, but Stump stood out in his mind. Mack-Cali said, quote, Tom Stumps flew so close to us during some of those gun runs, I could tell if he had shaved or not. That's just how close those A-1 Sky Raiders flew in support of us. We were extremely grateful for all the air support, believe me.

But seeing stump was something that stuck with me. I also think it's safe to say that because this was a sock mission deep into allows, none of the air assets got that credit they should have received for the remarkable coverage they provided to us over four days from the fast movers right down to Scarface and the coveys.

Continuing on, B company found a heavily traveled dirt road only wide enough for foot traffic and headed to a second Elzy, one that provided better cover and less exposure to enemy ground fire for the helicopters and for the men of B company as they moved Covey writer Jimmy Ward, Daddy Hart told Mack-Cali he had spotted another, quote, horde of inva and, quote, moving toward B company. This time, Hart told B Company to put on their gas masks and directed A-1 sorties flown by Hobo 20 and Firefly forty four, based in Thailand to deliver Sebu 30 tear gas ordinance on the next horde of inva, while B company found it secured a second Elzy for the Marines.

Fifty three to land. This drastic tactic worked. It slowed down another inva horde, but many of the men in B company, including Mack-Cali, Rose and others were hit by the gas, which had a lot of our guys crying and choking on that six, Mack-Cali said. But it also bought them some time. So they called. They called in some some cluster bomb units with some coughing gas in it.

Some irritant, indeed. Right. Which is a lot different. This is where this is where it gets a little tricky and it comes up later. But that is a chemical, right? People say, well, this is a chemical weapon and it is technically a chemical weapon, but it's a freakin non-lethal chemical weapon. Doesn't kill you. Just you cry a lot and feel bad.

Continuing on the Scarface, Cobras lead the fifty threes into the Elzy with deadly gun runs as an Air Force F4 phantom jets pounded to enemy mortar pits that were marching eighty two millimeter rounds toward the Elzy that was large enough for only one fifty three to land at a time. Quote, We escorted the fifty threes into the Elzy. The first one wasn't as bad as the previous day when I could see dozens of enemy soldiers out in the open firing at us with and the choppers, said Scarface pilot Joe Driscoll.

When McCarthy lost radio contact with covid Scarface commanding officer, Lieutenant Colonel Harry Sexton and his co-pilot Pat Owen quickly picked up coordinating the air assets with Mack-Cali. The first heavy lift helicopter landed on the Elzy, picking up a majority of the wounded B company men, including the three most seriously wounded who were carried in stretchers since being wounded on night one of the operation. Since Platoon Second Platoon placed the wounded on the first Marine helicopter before it lifted off successfully and headed back to Kontum, Scarface again led the 2nd Marine Corps fifty three into the Elzy, this time taking an increased volume of enemy gunfire.

As aviators pointed out to McCallie, another large contingent of Enova moving toward the Elzy. Now, it appeared that the VA brass realized that B company had hit the five hundred and fifty ninth transportations base camp and taken all of its maps, reports, records and money and had directed masses of enemy troops towards B company.

Quote, They told me they could see hundreds of them coming for us, said Mack-Cali, the 2nd Marine Corps. Fifty three picked up the remaining wounded men and several other members of B company and lifted off the Elzy successfully drawing more enemy fire than the first heavy lift helicopter. Scarface then led the third 50. So we got two helicopters have come in. We've gotten most of the wounded on the first one. The a bunch of guys leave on the second one.

That's all successful. And now we go. Scarface led the third stage fifty three into the Elzy, taking even more enemy fire than the two previous choppers that encountered however four. McCallie rose for Sergeant Morris Adare and the remaining men of B company, the drama wasn't over.

Fifty three Sea Stallion pilot Don First Lieutenant Don Perski and his co-pilot, First Lieutenant Bill Badeh, or BEEDI. We're concerned about the amount of rounds hitting the heavy lift chopper, I like the way they explain that. I'm a little I'm a little concerned. I'm concerned about this quote.

On our final approach, we took heavy enemy fire, Perskie said. We knew that this was the last element on the ground, that we had to get them out.

Sergeant First Sergeant or Staff Sergeant Mike Hagans said, quote, I can tell you that Big Bird was a welcome sight to us. We were all beat, we were all wounded and we were all ready to go home, believe me, and, quote, be company commander Captain Gene McCarthy. Hagan, medic, Sergeant Rose and First Sergeant Morris Adare held a tight defensive perimeter with a few more yards as others beat a hasty but orderly path into the large marine warbird.

As dozens of NBA soldiers surged out of the six gas clouds towards the McCurley was on the radio with Covey. He said, You have to get out of there now. This is so this is a McCarthy saying that Covey said you have to get out of there now. There's hundreds and hundreds of them coming after you now. Now.

That's what Macala is getting told, you have to get out of there now, and I don't know how many are left on the ground, but it's probably 15 or 20 or something like that. Yeah, going to have the worst wounded, you know, in the second birthday.

Got a lot of individual as Mack-Cali spoken to the PRC. Twenty five handset amont and yard team member standing between McCallie and the radio operator was killed by enemy gunfire as he fired his weapon at them.

He got shot in the head, McCauley said there was blood all over the place, another yard looked at him, turned to me with a sad look and simply said, he's dead. A one Sky Radar pilot, Tom Stump, vividly remembers those long moments before the men of B company boarded fifty three, quote, It was a wild scene down there as we provided close cover to the team on the ground. Air Force, Air Force attacked anti-aircraft guns that the VA had moved into the area.

They, meaning the VA had had really wanted them. They were massed to get them.

They wanted to get back what the team had taken from the base camp. covid Ryders told us that in VA, twelve point seven millimeter and thirty seven millimeter anti-aircraft weapons were opening up on us. Meanwhile, the Scarface Cobra gunships reacted to enemy gunfire on their aircraft while Gene directed us to enemy troops moving toward them.

Keep in mind, we knew all the men were wounded and low on ammo. There was a moment in time when I couldn't see how we'd get them out. It was that intense. Coming out of gas fumes. Not everyone was low on ammo as he was severely wounded in the foot, hand and arm on day one, Rosa tightly wrapped a torn jungle boot and bleeding foot with an ace bandage to keep it shut. And it used his car 15 more as a cane to support his weight than as a weapon.

Because he was so busy treating and tending to more than 60 wounded men. His left handed suffered a shrapnel wound also, which he quickly wrapped before returning to caring for the wounded team. Now, as he adare and he and Haggen, Hagan moved up the ramp. The semi mobile medic opened fire on the rapidly approaching and VA after they placed their dead montane soldier on the helicopter. Mack-Cali was the last man to leave the Elzy quote as we were backing up the ramp, they were coming toward us, they were coming at us hard, he said.

I'm guessing the gas had them confused because they were getting close to us as me, Mike and Morris stood. But none of them threw a grenade into the chopper. I never understood why they didn't. They were that close and they kept coming even as we lifted off from the Elzy while mowing down and Vuh soldiers. So they go through all that and it looks like we're going to be in a pretty good spot possibly, but it ain't over till it's over.

Indeed, as the fifty three lifted off from the Elzy pilot, Perskie said he and co-pilot Pat Battie, would you think that's Badir baby?

Bati Bati could feel enemy rounds continuing to hit the aircraft. Adare Mack-Cali and Rose had just sat down next to Sergeant First Class Berney Bright when someone tapped Rose on the shoulder and pointed to the left door gunner, Marine Sergeant Stevens, who was bleeding profusely from a gunshot wound to the neck.

Rose said, quote, He got hit in the neck. There was blood everywhere, I was coated in blood by then from him and other wounded. He was very lucky the round had missed the carotid artery and trachea, yet he was going into shock. I rolled him over, got him on all fours and remember telling him, listen, you lucky son of a bitch, if you're going to die, you'd be dead by now. After that, he started to bounce back.

Sometimes as a medic, sometimes as a medic. You have to be harsh with people to break them out of shock. Then I found something to wrap around his neck, to get the bleeding to stop. As Rose struggled with Stephen's bleeding neck injury, neither realized that the Marine door gunners helmet. Helmets, open microphone was live, so explain this a little bit when you're on an aircraft, the people in the aircraft have what they call interior communications, which is basically, you know, if you're the pilot, you can talk to the co-pilot and then you can both talk to the air crew.

And everyone's got these little helmets on with microphones and the crews in the back and they can't see each other.

So they have to have verbal control. And if you eat, I know it looks like in a movie, everyone's talking in aircraft, in a helicopter. You can't hear anything in a helicopter. You have to scream directly into someone's ear to hear someone, especially in a fifty three. Those things are freaking loud. And so the air crew has these headsets with these microphones that are built a special way so that they don't pick up the they don't pick up the external noise.

They just pick up the voice. Well, when you key that handset you're transmitting, you're filling up that interior communications network with whatever noise you're putting into it. And so I'll go back to the book here.

Communications were almost impossible as he was on a hot mic. A hot mic is when you're keying up your microphone when you shouldn't be. And all I could hear was gasping and gurgling, said Perski, who is having a potentially deadly loss of power issue with the severely damaged fifty three Sea Stallion. As the heavily Laden helicopter lifted off from the Elzy and went from a hover mode into transitional lift, where the helicopter begins to gain both altitude and speed, engine failure, emergency lights and warning systems screamed alerts of a pending engine failure.

Within seconds, one engine died. Perski had only one remaining engine to continue lifting away from the hordes of NVE gathering on and around the Elzy shooting at the Sea Stallion and at least one anti-aircraft weapon that was firing at the struggling Sikorsky. In addition, he and Badeh had another challenge on their horizon how to avoid the mountains that they were approaching with only one engine. That ridgeline was sheer granite, Perskie said by now in the back of the chopper, it pulled off Stephen's helmet, giving Perski and Battie improved communications between them and other air assets.

As the Granite Mountain loomed larger by the second quote, we were worried as we had to use extra energy from the last engine to get over that ridge line, Perskie said. After narrowly getting over it, a second granite ridge line came into view. It it, too, had to be flown over. Now the Big War Board warbird was struggling. Quote, There were hydraulic fluids and blood everywhere inside the helicopter, Rose said, and the tail was lower than it should be.

We could tell something was wrong, really wrong. We just didn't know how wrong.

Can you imagine?

No, no, no, it's it's it's total mayhem and then you have these pilots that are getting shot at the their their aircrafts filled up with a bunch of wounded guys.

They're taking rounds. They can feel the rounds hitting and they still have to fly this thing and now they've got to fly it under conditions that they've never flown under before, which is having one engine and a damage controls and not being able to communicate with each other. This is just mayhem.

Back to the book, seconds after barely getting over the second ridge line, the second fifty three D turbo shaft engine failed at that moment.

Quote, I can remember First Lieutenant Perskie exact words to this day, said Mack-Cali. He said, Mayday, mayday. We've lost all hydraulics. We're going down. I looked out of the back and all I saw were the granite cliffs. They loomed large.

To this day, I don't know how we missed them, end quote.

Rose echoed the same sentiment, quote, All I saw were that those were those huge granite cliffs with no engines. I fully expect it to crash and burn at any moment. End quote, Perski, Hollard, into the radio one more time, we've lost our second engine, we're going down the fate of the two thousand twenty three thousand six hundred twenty eight pound eighty eight foot long helicopter designed to carry thirty eight combat troops, but now loaded with 40 plus combat troops and weapons, including all the intelligence papers, maps, Foot Locker and North Vietnamese currency seized from the envy's base camp hinged on Purkis piloting skills and the six seventy two foot long rotors that were keeping the 15 foot wide helicopter aloft, biting into the air, descending at a rapid rate, but at a rate better than dropping from the sky like a dead quail.

After he got out a second mayday alert, Perskie said he was hoping a pilot or covid pilot would say something.

After a second engine went out, there was nowhere to go. All we could see was jungle and granite ridge lines. Quote, I really expected someone Covey, Scarface, the Spaniards or Army Cobras to say, Hey, go left, go write something. But the radio was dead silent. For Perski and Battie, the silence was deafening. Now descending in full auto rotation with both engines dead, Perski began following jungle covered canyons. I followed one gappy said, then I followed a second gap.

It led to a ravine. My biggest concern at that moment was being able to find a place just to auto rotate into Marine Corps door gunner Larry Growe, who is in the first fifty three that pulled out many of the wounded men from B company earlier said, quote, At that time, no one had ever done a full auto rotation with a fully loaded 50 three with no power.

Swanson, watch the large warbird descend into a canyon. Quote, It was like a depression he headed towards, it was trailing smoke. It was ugly, real ugly. I worried that it might explode in midair or worse, get hit by one of our Borse hit, one of those granite mountains or the jungle from my seat up in the old trusty Sky Raider, I couldn't see any Elzy or any area that was open or large enough for those Marines to land that bird without crashing.

By now, I had heard that they were auto rotating with a chopper full of troops.

It didn't look good.

So auto rotating. Yeah, so basically when a when a helicopter if a helicopter loses power, if an airplane loses power, you can glide somewhat. You're not going to gain altitude. I mean, I guess you could technically, if you get in if you get an updraft occurring or whatever, but you're generally going to come down when a helicopter loses all of its power. What that what the pilot has to do is let the blades, the rotor blades of the helicopter keep spinning as fast as they can while you're falling.

And then basically when you get close to the ground, you slam those things into the position that tilts those rotors. They grab as much power as possible in the moment before you hit the ground and you hope that it absorbs enough energy that you don't all die. Echo, you look puzzled. Does that make sense?

Not really. I think there's a lot about a helicopter I don't know about.

I think because it seems like a helicopter loses power to the propellers.

Just stop. But there's momentum. So just picture spinning just like a speeding stop.

Keeps, keeps, keeps the blades going. All right. Like a descending in the air hits them and keeps them. They had their angles that make them spin like a way with the engine. So it slows down, but better than, like he said, just falling out of the sky. Right.

Like, remember those windmills used to buy when you're a kid and you see them saying, you know, the wind, you went into a room with no wind and you just spun that thing. Yeah, it would it would spend a little bit. But yeah. As you move it when you're all spin. Yes.

So that's got its thing spinning and the blades along. Yeah. And you know that the blades can tilt, you control the tilt of the blades, you can make them kind of flat or you can make them like at a bigger angle. So they're grabbing more air. So what you do is you kind of make them flat so they're not getting much resistance, but they're spinning. And this just like I've never over the jungle. But yeah, this is how I simplify stuff with the rocks up in my head.

And then when you get close to the ground, you slam that thing. So it grabs a bunch of air right before you hit and it slows you down a little bit. That's the plan is plan.

And in history, no one had ever done this before with a seal, with fifty three, OK, filled with troops, because as you can imagine, you're adding thousands of pounds to it with all these troops in there.

So no one's ever done this before. So we'll just say that the odds were stacked against us.

At this point it ain't looking good. OK. OK, got you.

Continuing on and then divine intervention, Perski and Battie saw a body of water with a little patch of beach. It was just blind luck. We didn't know what was there or we didn't know what was there or God was with us, Perskie said. With the blood, hydraulic fluid and aviation fuel leaking and pooling in the passenger compartment, Perski headed in that direction. At first, he thought about landing in the water to buffer some of the impact of the landing.

Then I remembered, Perskie said, we had wounded in the back. I didn't want to take the chance of anyone drowning. So we headed the wounded chopper toward what appeared to be a sandy beach next to the water, even though it was slanted to the right. All this happened in a matter of seconds. We were going down at about 6000 feet a minute. Well, at that point, we needed high airspeed to use the energy to keep the rotors going.

So the auto rotation factor would keep the aircraft moving forward instead of dropping from the sky. The plan was to flare a procedure where the rotors angle pitch change to slow down the rate of descent and minimize the severity of impact upon landing on terra firma. So I was right. Yeah, the rocks worked.

The rocks worked. Dave Burks got nothing on me.

Good deal. And quote, I started to flare thinking we had enough time to decrease our speed more.

I pulled the collective hard. I had it pulled up to my armpit and quote, in a helicopter. The collective lever is on the left side of the pilot's seat. And it changed the pitch angle on the helicopter's main rotors. In this case, Perski was decreasing the Sea Stallion speed, hoping to minimize the final impact of landing. And for a full auto rotation, Perski added, It didn't slow our airspeed as much as I had hoped it would.

It was supposed to cushion us. It didn't. What's more, that beach had a huge boulder on it that slanted to the right.

The helicopter violently landed on the angled slope, hitting the slope surface and instantly slamming to the right into the ground, ejecting several of the Green Berets and their yard tribesmen team members, while six rotors shattered upon impact with the ground. B Company commanding officer, Captain Gene McCarthy was violently slammed into the roof of the helicopter before being ejected from it, I remember hitting the roof, the helicopter I remember hitting so hard I felt my teeth crumble into sand.

Well, the next thing I knew, I was outside on a rock.

We were all dazed, amazed. We were still alive. Rose said, quote, When you pancake in like we did on a helicopter and when it hits violently upside down, everybody had their bell rung. Trust me, we were all hurting. Gene was bleeding from the mouth, but he could move. I remember getting thrown out of the throating thrown out and the blades were upside down. I was bleary eyed, still not getting all my senses back.

And for a moment I thought the chopper was coming toward me, end quote. Mack-Cali said, quote, Mike was standing beside us. I was wiping the blood and my crushed teeth from my mouth. Then Mike said, we've got people in there. We have to get them out. I could smell the aviation fuel. There was blood everywhere. There was hydraulic fluids. The helicopter was broken by the severity of the crash and it was smoking. How it didn't explode.

I'll never know how that young Marine pilot landed, albeit a hard landing. I'll never know. End quote.

Then Mack-Cali had one of those unique, inexplicable, inexplicable moments in war time in the middle of all the rubble, the smoke, the dazed confusion at the crash site, he looked to his right and observed First Sergeant Morris Adare, standing in the water with a smile on his face, holding his car, 15, in the middle of the jungle.

That scene was unreal. Beyond description, Mack-Cali said. Of all the times that I've been in Laos, I'd never seen a scene like this. A body of water, a nice white sandy beach. It looked just like Hawaii. And there is a deer standing in the water as though there wasn't a care in the world. Adair says, to this day, I can't explain explain exactly what happened that day I came out on my own, but I've been trying to figure out how ever since when I came to my senses, I was standing in water.

Jean told me later I was standing there smiling. Can't tell you why I was smiling. Maybe I was just happy to still be alive after getting my bell rung. We were batted around like beebees in that chopper when it crashed. At the time, I didn't realize how much damage had been done to my nerves on my left side of my body, my head, neck, shoulder, arms and hip. The brief reverie ended when Rose and Mack-Cali headed back into the smoking helicopter because it ain't over yet, because they got guys in there and it's jet fuel leaking everywhere, burning.

But what do they do? They go help Rose, help to carry out. S.F. Lieutenant Pete Landon, who had only been in country one week when Operation Tailwind launched, welcome to SOGGE.

Yeah, Mack-Cali said Landon, the platoon leader, had a bad gash on his head that Rose had to tend to as there was a lot of blood flowing from the head wound. Mack-Cali gathered the intelligence materials B company had collected. That was the first thing I did recover the Intel documents, maps, currency that we had seized from the VA base camp, no way we were going back to consume without them after setting up a hasty perimeter. At the rear of the broken Sikorsky helicopter, Mack-Cali returned to help Sergeant First Class Berney Bright get untangled from the wires and debris inside the aircraft.

Then they exited the helicopter to strengthen the perimeter around the backside of it. In the pilot's compartment, Perski unstrapped Badeh, who had pulled a bad back compression stemming from the crash. I kind of pulled Bill from the helicopter. He was mobile, but still stunned. When Perski set Bati down on the ground in front of the helicopter. He didn't see any SSF men on that side of the bird. My infantry tactics kicked in, we circled the wagons, set up a rough perimeter, he said.

Perskie said in the back of the helicopter, Rose Mack-Cali and Mike Hagan help the stunned troops exit the helicopter. Quote, Before I let any of the injured get off the helicopter, I drop their weapons or any weapon near them around their neck so that when they set up in the perimeter, they'd be able to defend themselves, said Rose. By this point in time, we were strictly working on adrenaline, he added.

So even those guys, these guys have been through all this freakin mayhem and they still go back and rescue their guys and then they're still thinking tactically. About how to get through this, yeah, Mike Rose is on top of his game for our whole thing, just amazing.

Continuing on once again, Time was working against the men on the ground. I forget how long it took from the time we crashed until I received radio contact from either Lieutenant Colonel Sexton or Covey, said Mack-Cali, they told him that the backup helicopters, fuel levels were getting low and that when he came into the Elzy, we'd only have five minutes or less to get the hell out, or we might not have enough aviation fuel to make it back.

After dodging Russian assisted and HVA attack aircraft weapons, including Russian manufactured Achak weapons that exploded in midair in the fashion of anti-aircraft weapons in World War Two and hundreds of enemy ground forces firing automatic weapons and rocket rocket propelled grenades at them. Pilots in the first Scarface Cobras that led the rescue helicopter toward the Elzy were surprised to receive no enemy ground fire. The heavy lift Marine Sea Stallion followed closely behind the Scarface gunships due to the heavy enemy ground fire throughout Operation Tailwind to provide extra defensive firepower for the big helicopter.

Capt. H. Coppola, you think Coppola, Captain Coppola was on the rear ramp with an M 60 machine gun in addition to right door gunner, Sergeant T. McBride on the left door gunner, Sergeant T. Winnik and crew Chief Sgt. Smith. Even though we had our bell rung when that Chase ship backup helicopter landed, we didn't waste any time getting aboard it, said Mike Rose.

I remember Hagon, Gene, first sergeant helping me, helping people up the ramp. Marine pilot Perski knew that he had bitten through his lip upon the crash impact, but he didn't realize how severely damaged it was until he moved up the ramp of the fifty three. And one of the door gunners pointed out that is lower lip was merely hanging on by a thin piece of skin. Quote, He told me that I better hold on to my lip or I'd lose it.

I do remember they change my callsign afterwards to Lip as the Sea Stallion lift it off with the wounded and extremely fatigued men of B company, Rose made another surprising discovery.

Magots had helped to treat the two most seriously wounded team members who had been carried since day since the command post was struck by an RPG round during day one. When that RPG hit, Rosett suffered serious wounds in two places, Mack-Cali in several places, and to engage team members had been seriously incapacitated. The one thing I never thought about or planned for, said Rose, was for the use of maggots, which in the end proved to be the most likely life saver for the two most critically wounded team members.

During those four days on the ground rose in the yard, medic trainee Kotch were kept busy caring for them, giving them extra fluid morphine shots and IVs. But during those days, quote, Flies laid their eggs in the wounds of the most seriously injured and a few other yards and the eggs hatched. According to the doctors at the evacuation hospital, the maggots got to the necrotic flesh before infection could set in and in fact did a better job of debriding the wounds that a surgeon could do.

Who would have thought of it? We covered a book where that happened with the prisoner of war camps in in in. World War Two. The medics would actually utilize maggots, they would get them to plant their their maggots, their get the flies to plant their seeds there, so to eat away the the dying skin crazy.

Oh yeah.

Oh the fifty three returned to d'Arc two to refuel while the Afghan pilot Swanson and Stump destroyed the crashed. Fifty three the rescue Sea Stallion then returned B company to the Elzy outside the top secret SOGGE compound in Khartoum. An S two officer approached Mack-Cali and took his rucksack, which contained the enemy currency and some of the intelligence documents collected from the VA command post in Laos. I never saw that rucksack again, nor the VA currency again, McCurley lamented. He continued, Regardless, the mission was dubbed a success by the folks in Saigon and at SOGGE headquarters, we were told that thanks to our efforts, the CIA's operation was able to regain control of the strongpoint atop the plateau.

Ten days after we were extracted on the final helicopter, we had tied down an estimated regiment of inva, empathic Lao forces while destroying one major enemy ammo dump and an enemy base camp. After we removed the enemy documents and maps, a subsequent DOD report confirmed the final analysis that Operation Tailwind, with Sock's deepest penetration into Laos during the eight year secret war. The final count, three Montana guards were killed in action. Thirty three were listed as wounded in action.

A total of thirty three Purple Hearts were awarded to the sixteen Green Berets, who served in Operation Tailwind for wounds. They were served during the four wounds they received during the four day mission. Mack-Cali required nine months of dental repair and surgery due to crushing, crushing his teeth when the C 53 crashed. Two days after the Green Berets returned to CCC, completed their reports and got patched up by Special Forces medics on base, a huge party was held in Khartoum base with food, soda and alcohol for all the participants in Operation Tailwind, including the aviators from the four sixty three unit, Scarface, Cobra gunship crews, Army, Cobra gunship crews and some Air Force covid pilots.

Somehow the word did not get delivered to the A one SPAD pilots and ground crews from the Danang base.

Forty seven years later, Swanson mused, quote, It's just as good that we didn't get the word because we were busy supporting other SOGGE and submission's, you know, just another day in the prairie fire area of operations for our skywriters.

End quote, To this day, Rose can't touch the thumb on his left hand with his little finger due to the serious nerve and muscle damage he received when wounded on day one.

On day one. Yeah.

So all that medical treatment he provided with no thumb in action for more than two years, his wife pulled pus coated shrapnel and bamboo shards from his body stemming from the many times he was hit with shrapnel. While on the ground, a dare still suffers from nerve damage to his neck, left shoulder and arm from Operation Tailwind.

But what's crazy is no Green Berets killed in action. That's that's amazing, the record a mile long. Oh, yeah, huh?

That's just a it's an incredible I mean, it's beyond incredible operation is so successful on so many levels.

And the the fact that the hordes were coming by day four, they finally react and we react. It was enough to take the pressure off the CIA operation.

So they were mission accomplished with the bonuses of hitting the command center and then the other caché where they blew up with tons of rice, weapons, trucks, et cetera. Yeah, the fireworks went on for quite a while to wipe out a base camp in his spare time.

Oh, amazing. And I mean, just the the.

The mission focus. From Carly, just to get you look, we get shot at while we're while we're on insert. Yeah, we are still going. We get contacted, we're still going. We get wounded, we're still going. We get more wounded. We're still going. We find an enemy base camp. Are we going to are we going to back away? No, we're going to attack it. Yeah, we're going to keep going. He's relentless, totally relentless.

Classic example of a guy learned from the AOH, applied in the field and do it at such a level now. Always change the direction so the NBA wouldn't be sure where they're going and moving at night. At night. You guys didn't move much at night. Normally recon we never did.

A couple of guys may have gone away with that, but not us. Know, when we're at night, we we hunkered down and they had good enough weather that they could click in with, you know, Spector shadow stinger. And it made a difference. And we may have downplayed it could mean everybody couldn't even remember how many gunships they went through a night. But every night they went through them.

They use them. Yeah. SEALs moved at night during Vietnam. That was that was like one of the things that they did that was like outside the box, you know, was they that's what that's one of the things that they did was they moved tonight. I don't know how they did it, but they did it. Yeah. Now, you kind of you kind of referred to this earlier, these guys do this beyond heroic operation.

Of course, no one ever hears about it because it's SOGGE and you you guys all signed a 20 year, you know, oath of silence on this stuff.

And all the air crews were told before they went in. Everybody, you know, of course, they won skywriter people. They it was necessary with them. But there are a lot of new troops coming in with the helicopter crews, the COBRA gunships, even though they Scarface have been doing across offensive missions for a long time. They were all briefed. And when we're done here, you don't talk about it yet.

And we kind of breeze through it. But also, you heard Mack-Cali say that I think it was McCarthys say that because it was so secretive. These a lot of these pilots, they didn't get any recognition at all. I mean, you're freaking flying a helicopter in to an Elzy where there's massive machine gun fire to extract guys. I mean, that's just insane bravery. Right?

And, you know, again, the beauty of talking to people after you write the book, I talked to Tom Stop and Jeanne on at one point when they're together. We had a reunion, a Tailwind reunion a few years ago in Tennessee. And there Jim McCauley said, had you not done that, we would have been done right then. And they were really up against the wave attacks by that point. And they're low on ammo. And Tom Stump, he said, you literally saved our ass right there.

And he came through the clouds somehow these A-1 piles and stomp, stomp those guys, how they get through the clouds to get down, to be critical mass danger close and the save their ass. I mean, and they're just wonderful, we just love them, that's why we feel like the skywriter pilots are saints. Yeah, the the SEALs had a relationship like that with the with the sea wolves, the Navy helicopter pilots. And we've had a couple of sea wolves on here and and a legit freaking badass, same thing.

So they were going like if they got the call they were going. That's all there was to it. Scramble to see. All right, cool. What do you got? We're going to get you out and see Seawolf history.

Is there kind of like treat it like stuff? Oh, for sure. They had to go out scrounging for some time. And yet when it came time those guys flew in, they were good.

Yeah, they're another legend. Yeah, absolutely.

Man in heroic. Oh, yes. So these guys do this heroic operation and you mentioned this earlier and I'm going to go to the book. Twenty eight years after one of the most successful operations run in the nineteen seventy run in nineteen seventy during the eight year secret war operation Tailwind CNN That's the cable new news network broadcast a disgraceful, erroneous story that stained the reputation of the men who participated in that mission, portraying them as war criminals. Instead of reporting the facts of the successful mission, CNN accused the Green Berets and airmen of gassing American POW WS held captive in Laos with deadly sarin gas.

CNN used that error laden network work of fiction in an effort to compete with CBS popular 60 minute program when it launched a new program on June 7th, 1998, called Newstand, the title of the bogus, slanderous story entitled Valley of Death.

It alleged that 16 Green Berets and one hundred and twenty Indians troops from Operation Tailwind had destroyed a village and killed innocent women and children while directing US aircraft to drop lethal sarin nerve gas on U.S. war. Defectors, they said, were using the communists to compound the egregious attack against America's finest soldiers and airmen the next day. Time magazine repeated the hideous allegations in a news story written by CNN staff members headlined Did the U.S. Drop Nerve Gas? It was written by CNN producer all April Oliver and CNN international correspondent Peter Arnett, who produced the CNN story that aired June 7th.

The broadcast and time article smeared the men of Operation Tailwind, which was conducted during the eight year secret war in Laos during the Vietnam War and run under the aegis of Military Assistance Command, Vietnam Studies and Observation Group, or simply SOGGE.

There was an additional political ramifications stemming from the CNN Time magazine report in nineteen ninety eight at a July 21st, 1998 press conference repudiating the CNN Time report, then Secretary of Defense William Cohen said, quote, The charge would be used to discredit the United States attempt to curb the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In fact, Iraq immediately incorporated CNN's charges into its anti use anti US propaganda effort to try and deflect attention from its own outlawed chemical and biological weapons programs, end quote.

Cohen ordered a full scale across the board investigation of the CNN time story from all military branches involved in Operation Tailwind, while requesting at the same time from the CIA and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Of course, these guys wound up reported what had really happened, and then there's some retractions and some apologies. Secretary Cohen said, I think all Americans should know that the 16 men who conducted this mission were heroes, but that they had been have been hurt by this report.

I can assure you that you and your colleagues and your families, you did nothing wrong. And he's obviously addressing to the men quite to the contrary. You did everything right. 16 Americans fought steadily for four days. All of them were injured, all got out alive. The documents that they captured provide an intelligence bonanza. General Abrams, the commander of our troops in Vietnam, said Tailwind was a valuable operation, executed with great skill and tremendous courage.

Cohen told reporters that after rigorous review of thousands of pages of documents, statements and after action reports, the military ordnance and weapons storage records quote, We found no evidence to support CNN Time assertions. We have found absolutely no evidence to support these charges. CNN and TIME retracted their reports, noting that they could not support either charge. On July 2nd, 1998, in a CNN retraction, CNN News Group chairman, president and CEO Tom Johnson said an independent investigation concluded that the report, quote, cannot be supported.

There was insufficient evidence that sarin or any other deadly gas was used, and CNN could not confirm that American defectors were targeted at the camp, as NEWSSTAND reported. We apologize to our viewers and to our colleagues at time for this mistake. CNN owes a special apology to the personnel involved in Operation Tailwind, both the soldiers on the ground and the U.S. Air Force pilots and U.S. Marine Corps helicopter pilots who were involved in the action. On July 13th, Time magazine printed an apology to its readers headlined Tailwind and Apology.

They noted that the allegations reported on June 7th and 8th, 1998, could not, quote, be supported by the evidence and quote, In July 14th, 1998, Ted Turner wrote a letter to Mack-Cali, quote, I hope you will accept my personal apology for the CNN NEWSSTAND's recent erroneous reporting on Operation Tailwind. This entire episode has been very painful for me as the founder of CNN. However, my greatest distress comes from knowing that our coverage of set those on the front line of Operation Tailwind, the soldiers on the ground, and the U.S. Air Force and Marine Corps pilots engaged in the action, end quote.

McCarthy said in a 2015 interview, quote, I personally spoke to Ted Turner and he reiterated that he wrote what he wrote in the letter. He also told me he was going to call the other members of our team and write them a letter of apology. To my best to the best of my knowledge, that did not happen, end quote. Larry Grow, a Marine Corps helicopter door gunner who survived Operation Tailwind added, I felt really betrayed by CNN for allowing those reporters to publish all those lies and twisting the statements from those who were interviewed.

CNN showed me how the news media can twist a story to fit its needs. And I've never really trusted any of the other media. One hundred percent in their reporting since then. Interviewed in twenty sixteen, retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Mel Swanson, who is the commanding officer of the daring A1 skywriter, pilots remained brutally bitter about CNN's false story. Quote, Operation Tailwind was the classic example of inter-service cooperation in that area of operations. Think about it.

America's finest, the Green Berets and their loyal troops kicked ass and took numbers on the ground deep in enemy territory. The tactical air support from the Air Force fast movers, C-130 gunships are believed A1 iPads in combination with Marine Corps, Scarface, Cobra gunships, Armory, Army Cobras and Marine Corps Dimmers raised hell in the enemy's backyard. We killed hundreds of these commie bastards and thanks to that Green Beret medic, all were kept alive until the final extraction when one Montagnard soldier was killed until nineteen ninety eight.

I occasionally watch the Communist News Network, but after they ruined our reputations, I never watched it again. It was a crime against our warriors. What they did, it was a travesty of justice. Amen. Yeah, I mean, obviously right now we're living in a you know, this is 1998 and and the media is even more partisan and they take stories all the time and run with these stories. And and a lot of times it's happened so much that it's we forget what it does to the actual people that are victims of the stories, these false stories that come out.

And so, you know, you get a situation like this, these guys and, you know, I was thinking about, you know, Mike Rose, who who had to make that decision out in the jungle that he's going to leave, you know, his his his engage troops out there that were dead. He's leaving the bodies and he's tore up over that for for his whole life since then. Oh, absolutely. And then you get a story like this comes out.

It's yeah. It's a travesty.

And they knew it was coming. So, I mean, they knew the story, but they didn't know it's going to have that negative edge to it in the distorted inaccuracies. So some of these guys lined up, their families sit down in front of the TV, Mike Hagan and and Mike Rose Battuta that come to mind right away because they had to say, hey, we're going to be on CNN tonight and then halfway through the broadcast when that true tone comes out and if found guilty of selling your war criminals.

And and then Mike had explained to his daughter, Mike Rose, and he was just devastated and he had to sit there, try to explain it. These kids see things on TV. TV is never wrong. And look at dad with a little bit of cross-eyed, but.

Horrible impact on a personal level. Nobody ever hears about. You alluded to this earlier because of the secrecy of SOGGE and what you guys were doing.

There's a bunch of reasons because the secrecy of SOGGE. Because the number of guys that were doing turnover, so you got guys coming in and leaving and then the number of guys that are wounded, the number of guys that are killed, the number of guys that are missing, there's a lot of SOG operators that, as as we mentioned earlier, never met the pilots that were supporting them. And so you'd get these guys had never seen. Yeah, but then and you again, you alluded to this earlier in twenty sixteen, going to the book.

The first operation Tailwind reunion was held at the Tennessee Museum of Aviation, bringing together for the first time in more than forty five years some of the men from all of the aviation units and some of the Special Forces soldiers from that unique mission featuring B Company Commander Gene McCarthy, the commanding officer of the A1 Sky Raiders, Mel Swanson, and the pilots who flew Marine Corps Cobra gunships from Scarface, the fifty three pilots and a few forward air controllers with tears in his eyes, Swanson said, I hope this is the first of more reunions like it.

To see how grateful the men of Sogge were for our support during those hairy prairie fire missions touches me through and through as well as the other pilots here today. We always wondered who those crazy fuckers on the ground were. And now, thanks to the reunions and this reunion, we get to meet them. And I can't tell you how much this means to me on a personal level as the as the commander who sent our A-1 pilots into harm's way every day to learn how much they appreciated us.

And it's gratifying beyond words. Scarface pilot Barry Pen sick, am I saying that right? Henjak Bencic Pennsy Scarface pilot Barry Pinsk told the audience that when the Marines went across the fence into Laos, quote, they made us change our callsign. For some reason they called them Mission 70 to when we went across the fence whenever we ran a mission. Seventy two. For some reason they had us take off our dog tags, leave our wallet at home.

So you couldn't be identified as if you go down and an American made helicopter and you're a white Roundhill right guy roundy in an Asian country and no one's going to know you're American. I never understood the logic of that.

Then in a in a closing note, pen, pen turned to the audience and apologized to the ladies in advance for contaminating the spoken word with profanities to summarize the time he spent during that operation. I can't think of another way to say this, he said apologetically, for example. If someone is really good, he's a hot shit, if something was good, it was shit hot. If you get into a bad situation, it was a shit sandwich.

Don Perski mentioned the sandwich we got into earlier. If you had your act together, you had your shit together. And I would like to say that I was honored to have a week or so to spend with all these people here and a bunch of others and that they were a bunch of hot shit guys on a shit hot mission. And then we got into a shit sandwich, but we had our shit together in the end. No shit airborn.

Is that a great line or is a great line? That is a great line.

So, you know, one thing one thing I want to mention is that Mike Rose on October twenty third, twenty seventeen, received the Medal of Honor. Oh yeah. So at the White House, at White House for President Trump.

And it shows you that, you know, even though it wasn't known about at the time, the heroism of these guys was just, well, that's the highest honor that that person can be can receive. So salute to those guys and and man, what a mission.

Now, I'm going to jump ahead and look, we're we're not covering all saw chronicles. By the way. That was one mission to cover in this volume on Assad Chronicles. But one of the things that when I started reading, I read a quote that said, you know, as of June 13, 2017, there were still 50 Green Berets listed as MIA in Laos alone, along with at least one hundred and five aviators who died supporting SOG missions.

They are among the total of approximately two hundred and sixty Navy aviators missing, missing in Laos as of this printing.

Now, there's a there's a story in here. And I don't I don't want to go through the whole thing because people should get the book and read through it.

But on a high level, because it ties into the the you know, the MIAs that are still out there. Can you tell us a little bit about our intruder and and what happened on that on that operation?

Oh, sure. They went into the target and made enemy contact and they had to pull down strings. So the first helicopter came in, pulled out the first half of the team or intruder. Second helicopter came in again with strings to pull them out. And they had two Americans, three Americans are on it, on the strings and maybe one in which I forget about the ditch.

And as they're lifting off, one of the ropes got tangled in the trees and Sammy Hernandez fell to the ground, was knocked unconscious. So he's unconscious. Helicopter continues up, gets hammered, turns around, spins out of control, and then crashed into a granite wall or to a mountain, killing the entire air crew, everybody on the ropes.

So the next day, the bright light goes in.

And maybe in a day or two days later, the bright light goes in, they get to the crash site and they are able to recover all the bodies. Sami Hernandez, Dawn Night woke up, played hide and go seek with the NBA, found they found a cave or some kind of area we could get out of way. And before we went into the cave, he his shoulder was dislocated. So he pounded his shoulder back into place on a tree.

Then he hid for the night in the morning.

At first light, Covey came by and he had his panel and they're able to extract him out.

They came in with a bright light, got all the bodies, put him into body bags, move them to a location. I forgive they got to the top of the mountain or not. But Cliff Newman was on that mission and they went in, put together all the bodies, but it was too dark. They couldn't come in and get him out that night. The plan was in the morning. They'll come in early well in the morning before any aircraft could get there, any air cover.

The NBA hit that team hard and bottom line, they couldn't get the bodies out. They literally left them there. Thirty five. Forty years later, Cliff Newman goes back in an effort to work with our boss. Now, DPA department appealed to Am I a county agency? And it was the predecessor. But Cliff went in, try to find it. The cooperation with the indigenous people, forgive the Laotians or the Vietnamese, they put them in too far away from the mountain.

They so Cliff went back four or five years ago, again, a second time and again, they're too far away.

So Cliff is waiting for the third call to go back and try to help him. And this is the dedication of Cliff.

And Sam Hernandez is still alive. And of course, Cliff Newman was. And Sammy, we're on a first team that did the first Halo jump in the playoffs.

Well, that's one of the other reasons why I don't want to go too much deep detail right now, because hopefully we get them on here to tell the story. He'll come back.

Yeah. You know, when you think about that, you know, I just was looking through some of this information on Americans unaccounted for in Southeast Asia. Right now, a total of one thousand five hundred and eighty seven. And post January 1973, they've repatriated 1059 from Vietnam, China, Laos and Cambodia. So we still have work to do there to get these guys back home.

Yeah, even on that mission there, the morning that they went in to get to be to pull a recon team out at after recon teams hit, we had a cubby that went in and got shot down and they lost all everybody.

Everybody's killed. And they they couldn't get them out right away. But eventually, I think now would be maybe 10 years ago, they got the pilot out. They recovered his body. And so today, yeah, the one thousand five hundred eighty six remaining MIAs in Southeast Asia, which includes Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and China.

And there are a few up there, pilots mostly, I assume, and September 18th will be the national p0 wmi recognition day when there will be events held across the country. And of course, you had the iconic WMI flag that that's now been authorized by President Trump to be flown all federal buildings throughout the year. Now every day, trying to keep attention focused to that level. Or anything that we can do to help out on that stuff?

Well, there's a lot of issues attached to it, but the most important thing is to keep. Keep people writing their congressmen and say, please keep the efforts going forward on this for the for the Americans, for Southeast Asia, because what's working against us, in addition, Mother Nature again, is the most acidic soil in the world, eventually eats up bones and maybe teeth.

And so who knows how much longer the remains will be and. You know, for my case, Spider Pat Watkins, Lynn Black, the mix of people we knew who are teammates, they are now part of that and we still hope to someday at least get the remains back, someday, maybe not. I think that's going to have to be somebody somewhere is going to say we have to end it. But until they do that, what's really amazing, the young teams that they get out there for DPA, they're dedicated.

These kids go out there, Army Marine Corps, they usually take a medic and SF medic with them now. And these kids are dedicated. They really do a great job.

We like to see a little bit more coming from mid management at DPA in terms of the commitment to really push this thing, keep it in the public's eye. And the president Trump's been supportive of it. And that's all we can do. We're at the we're at the mercy of time here and the efforts. Yeah, I know. I know. They would send guys I know guys in the SEAL teams, friends of mine that would go to Vietnam to support those operations looking.

Yeah.

It's like, you know, interservice rivalry here. We're all Americans no matter what service and have been teams that have gone in for over 40 years now.

You know, I forget the exact date, but I think it's June now.

They they always stop to talk about the aircraft. That was a JPAC aircraft loaded with people going for a mission. It crashed and we lost several Americans, as well as indigenous people working with us on that. So it's a deadly mission. It's been a long battle. And you have the A the National My Family League of Families, National League of WMI Families have been fighting this war. The effort to bring home, identify, bring home the remains of many Americans.

We can and they were the first people in any war we fought that demanded that the enemy treat our prisoners better during the Vietnam War. And then they had another name. I forget what it was, but then they instantly became eventually became the National League of My Families. The director CEO is Ann Mills Griffith. She or her father started when her brother went down in September of 66 as a Navy back seater. And therefore and that family's been involved ever since.

And she had been involved when the league was formally found in nineteen seventy fifty years of this effort dedicated to non-profit and are down as she fights our government she knows is respected by all the our prior enemies, Laos, Cambodia, North Vietnam. They all know her, they know the league and they work with DIA very closely.

And who do we look up, where do we go to to try and give them support of the National League appeal? In my family's face, just Google and it pops right up. And Mills Griffiths is the director CEO. Just amazing, tough, strong, relentless woman. She's been through three husbands and but the mission never stops. She just continues to go seven days a week. She works on this stuff. It's just an amazing story.

Well, a salute to her and obviously a salute to all these all these, all these that lost, all these that are missing in action.

And man, these stories.

Unbelievable. Well. I know you and I have some plans of trying to get as many of these things captured as we can. I know you're traveling and you might start, you know, might get some training from Echo Charles and had a press record on one of these things. Absolutely. And get these things, you know, everyone wants to hear as much of these stories as we can, so hopefully we can get that going. We left some space on these last couple of podcasts if if blackjack wants to.

Come on. If if Sammy wants to come on the show, it's always open. The door is always open here. This is the this is the most friendly eho that SOGGE has ever known right here in Las Vegas.

Again, it's always like with you and your fellow SEALs, it's these guys are so damn humble.

I mean, even I had to pull quotes out of work at it, but I will I promise I'll go back to the Cliff Notes, guys. And Sammy, he's just an amazing guy who lives down in Texas and just goes on the list, came back and did his time to service a career soldier, just a remarkable man. And we got one king bee pilot. We were working. We got targeted.

Indeed, we're talking to captain on and he hasn't responded yet. OK, but when he responds, well, I hope we can get him in because he's in both the books. Yep. And so and his stories are, well, everything be any of are still alive.

And, you know, sadly, in June I attended the funeral for Captain Too Long who saved my ass our team back. And so many times I couldn't even count them any particular Christmas Day of all. Yeah, those guys.

Yeah, I was I was reading through one of these were these guys who just was that Captain Towong who would go in or is it captain on who was on by himself.

By himself. Hey, it's too dangerous.

Co-pilot get out aircrew get out. Yeah.

I'm going by myself to go and rescue these guys so that we get shot.

We're not getting overrun.

Yeah, what? That's just freaking awesome and heroic. So hopefully it'd be an honor to have him on here and talk to him and hear, hear about his life story. So we will do that. And those can be powerful. Even Americans, I mean, the young kids that were flying these helicopters so fearlessly and amazingly, I mean, the how did they get ice cubes in your blood so calm and cool? Could that wouldn't be me. Must be shitting my pants.

But let's get the fuck out of here. I need to sit like, OK, anytime you want to go, guys, we're ready. Yeah. And you know how to cyclic is you just touch the little controls and the helicopters are going to crash and burn.

Yeah. Like an airplane. I was going to mention when I said one of them, when I said, you know, First Lieutenant So-and-so was on this thing, I was I should have mentioned, hey, by the way, what that means, this guy is twenty three. Yeah. You know, this guy is not an old experienced pilot with thousands of flight hours. He's twenty three.

But like you said, he might not have time, but he's got ice in his blood to sit there and hold station with a freaking helicopter while you're taking disk twelve point seven millimeter rounds into the side of your aircraft. Yeah.

And like, like with the blacks through the judge and the executioner all year they came to our rescue time and time again. And then wellin they came in front of the team and mowed down a wave attack by the VA, they couldn't land, took off and continue to fight.

You know, you talk with such reverence for all the other service branches and it's the same. You know, when we were in the battle, Ramadi, there was just no rivalry whatsoever. No, I've never I didn't really have some big rivalry going into it. I never really cared if I was down. We were on the same team. But some people some people take that stuff pretty seriously. But man on the ground in the battle of Ramadi, it was just brothers and and across the board and sisters as well, because there's females there fighting in females that were killed in action and and but just nothing but reverence for the soldiers, the sailors, airmen, Marines that we work with, salute to all of them.

And and certainly I know you feel the same way. Absolutely. As you talk, but hey, once again, thanks for coming back. We got to get the SOGGE cast going. We will do it. Maybe I'll take the postgrads recording, of course. And how to record.

I'm telling you. All right, go Echo might be able to take you.

Thanks for coming on. And more important, thanks for everything you did to protect our way of life here. And thanks for what you continue to do to support veterans here, talking about the MIAs, what you've done with your veteran organizations. It's awesome, and it's just not. No, your honor, to call you brother. Likewise, brother. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks, man. Like a bad dream.

We'll be back. And with that tilt has left the building. Unbelievable opportunity to sit here and talk to these guys and learn these stories, so many stories, you know, after we after we turned off the mikes, I started getting kind of crazy talking to Tilt. I was saying, hey, when you're talking about six hundred hand grenades getting thrown, you know, each one of those hand grenades that gets thrown by the enemy into your position is a whole story.

There's a whole story behind it.

You know, a grenade. You know where to come from. I got him over there. Start pouring down fire. I'm like, that's a whole story. Each one. Oh, Jimmy's wounded each one of these events. Six hundred grenades.

Each one of those events is a is a micro story. Yeah.

Each one of these hey, in in two lines in this book that we just read in two lines, it's like, hey, there was enemy bunkers who were cleared by the Montana Guards.

Wait, wait a second. That's a freaking chapter.

Two chapters are three chapters or a whole book in itself, clearing up enemy bunker filled with vehicles or NVE fighters. What's happening?

What are we talking about?

So to be able to sit here and talk to these guys and it wasn't on that particular mission, but he has you know, he has firsthand experience in the ammo. He lived through it. And it's just awesome.

So appreciate the opportunity to do this. And one of the reasons we have the opportunity this is because y'all all give our support, support, support.

Sure. As we like to call it, Echo, if somebody wants to support this podcast here and while they're supporting this podcast, they actually want to provide themselves with some support.

Yep. Is it close air support? Not really.

But it could be considered on some level. It is. Well, let's just say this. It might not be close air support, but it is definitely support.

It is support for sure and for, you know, for oneself, you know, to support others. You do have to support yourself.

Right? Like I said, I said it before. I'll say it again.

It's like, you know, when you're in the airplane and the oxygen mask comes down, what do they instruct you to do? Put it on yourself, then you help your small infant child or whatever the kids. So kind of same situation. All right.

So we're all working out. We're keeping ourselves on the path. On the path isn't just some esoteric thing, by the way. It's keeping your shit together.

Dang, I like it. It is 100 percent in every way you can, by the way. Mental, physical, social, social, meaning like just your relationships with people in and outside your family.

Anyway, you understand you're going to know if you're doing something off the path versus something on the path that you're going to know. Pretty clear. So anyway, so in working out, we. Could benefit from supplementation, we could use some air support, some air, some level of support. Yes, there you go. Support is way better than no support. Yes, it is 100 percent. So JoCo has you covered. We have you covered.

We all have ourselves covered as well. JoCo fuel supplementation for your joints. Important. Very important.

OK, so I'm I'm I'm not one of these guys who have these crazy joint problems, but from time to time I'll get jammed up. You know, when you wake up, you walk downstairs.

If you walk downstairs too quick, you can feel it seem saying you don't know what I'm talking about.

You don't feel that. That's what you see.

I certainly don't admit it. I thought we were all friends here, you know. But I will say and the point of this quasi story is that when you think back to those times when you're like all stiff or whatever, just general stiffness and now you don't have it. It's like it's it's a godsend. It's what it is. You don't miss those days. We don't want to feel it. Yeah, yeah, and it's not a big deal when you forget it, when you don't realize it seems sane.

But anyway, I realize that a lot. So that's why it is important to keep taking your joint work for an oil. Those are free joints.

Discipline, discipline, go. This is the brain body supplement. Keep you mentally in the game. Keep you sharp. You have a groggy day. Boom. Helps you out, that's what that is also RTD can.

It's like an energy drink in the form of like this.

It's like an energy drink is something that you drink that makes you feel good for forty five minutes until you crash and burn and you have a freakin insulin level spike and you feel like crap is because it's filled with sugar and a bunch of chemicals.

What's going on here? No sugar, no sugar. Well, how does it taste good, because it's sweetened with something else called Monck Fruit, which is actually good for you. Does it have 700 milligrams of caffeine? No, it's got ninety five milligrams of caffeine.

Yes. Good for you. You get that little after noon Hatorah.

Yes.

So to sum it up, I guess it's a brain health drink in the form of an energy drink.

Loosely. Well, I haven't figured out what exactly we've made. It's a new category potentially.

Yeah, think is good nonetheless. Got some good flavors on there. Good. Some flavors coming up as well.

So excited about their new found saying it's my new flavor. I'm not saying it's not my mine. I'm just saying we have some various flavors coming up anyway. Yes, that's discipline and discipline.

There's also the capsules, you know, if you're in a in a rush or what have you. Yeah, there's that. Also Vitamin D three and Cold War. This is for immunity. So keeping your immune system is keeping it up, keeping it strong. That's important.

Definitely. As opposed to unemploy, especially right now. Yes.

Well, I guess I don't want to get into a whole debate, but I think that immune system is important at all times.

OK, so I think I'm going with it.

I'm very curious also what we got Molk, JoCo, Molk, protein in the form of dessert, all different kind of dessert in the form of protein.

Yeah. Uh, you know what I'm saying. Yes, I do. Yeah. Yeah. Same deal. We got some new flavors coming out.

And I'll tell you what, bro, I'll tell you what. We got some flavors coming out of.

Yes. Oh yes. And they are legit.

OK, legit. You want to know one of them is. Yeah. Smashing Pumpkins.

Oh, all right. It's like I didn't even know what this was. Yes. Yeah. I didn't even know what this was. I didn't know it was a thing. Yeah. Be a little sends it to me.

He goes, he goes, dude, you got to try this. And I'm like send it. Yeah. And I wasn't even I don't even know I liked this flavor. Yeah. Smashing Pumpkins. Yeah but.

Mm. We'll be Smashing Pumpkins is a band. Yeah. Yeah. OK, you already knew that you're fat. You're special. Absolutely. Yeah. Me too actually.

Anyway that's a bean pumpkin spice. The flavor is like a thing like.

Oh yeah. Yeah and I didn't know that. Yeah. And that makes sense because I mean I knew of it but just in the past few years or whatever, it's been getting a lot of like teasing and stuff like oh boy.

Oh I don't know anything about that. I know. Yeah. I have to pull this flavor down because it's weak.

You know, I think like since it's been in the political spotlight or whatever, and people will be like, oh, I don't know.

It's like they've been teasing it for some reason. Like you did some prep. OK, so you can you can tease pumpkin spice.

But trust me, you're not going to tease smashing pumpkin. Well, here's by the way, you also you also said Smashing Pumpkins. That's plural. That's a band. That's not the name. Yes.

Smashing Pumpkin. We're going singular. Yeah. Yeah, I dig it because, you know, we won't want to infringe. No, no, no you don't.

You don't want to infringe. But no, the pumpkin spice, that's the thing where it's almost like part of the reason or part of the whole teasing culture of it for lack of a better way of putting it, um, was that everyone likes pumpkin spice. But, you know, like it's like if you're like tough, you don't want to admit it, like this way it's freaking delicious in your cafe latte or whatever, like whatever.

It's always till everyone knows that, you know, that's like kind of the thing. That's why I'm coming. To be honest, I'm a little bit excited for Pumpkin Spice for Smashing Pumpkins.

We're not doing pumpkin spice. We're doing Smashing Pumpkins because I'm starting to see the connection here that you're making. I think I like it.

So we're doing something called Smashing Pumpkins. Yeah.

And it tastes good, but it's filled with protein that will make you strong. Turn you into a destroyer.

Yeah. There you go. We got them all we got to going out there. You got protein from dessert.

Also got chocolate tea. You can you are you into deadlifts. Doesn't even matter because once you should be you. That's true.

It's highly recommended to deadlift and if you're going to dad left you might as well. Dad left eight thousand pounds and one of the quickest ways to do everyone's looking for hacking. I've got to hack for you. You don't want to worry about what your periodization is going to be for your deadlifting.

Well, it's kind of a pain. Well, what you do is you drink Jacobite in your deadlifting. Eight thousand pounds, by the way. Guaranteed. Yeah. And if you can't, well. That's kind of unusual. But I mean, and that is kind of painting myself into I had no way out, you say I appreciate it, man.

Well, hey, look, if you're not into deadlifting and I get it, I'm not going to judge or you can't a little bit.

You know, I overtly can't overtly judge, but that you can it is certified organic and it's very nice.

All right. So you get all this stuff at Origin Main Dotcom. You can also get it at the vitamin shop. And pretty soon you're going to be able to get the RTED drink the geocode this one go drink at. Well, you're going to be able to get it at Walwa in Florida and Virginia very soon. So be on the lookout for that. We can have a little we have a little operation. Go get some.

Yes. Can be good. Also at Orjan Main Dotcom, they got some good jujitsu stuff. American made jujitsu.

Where do you just throw the word good out there like it's only good when actually it's the premier jiujitsu stuff in the world? Yeah, yeah. I guess it's like one of those things. Little understatement, you know, around here.

I got your back, I got your six covered move. Thank you.

Anyway, they got jeans as well. Good jeans I think. Good as opposed to not good. OK, what are they.

Good as in the best things you can put on your legs ever. Yes. In the history of America. Pretty much. Jeans, boots, T-shirts, hoodies.

What else. I think we covered it anyways. A bunch of good stuff. And it's all made in America shorts.

That's right, yeah.

They got some good stuff on the. How about this go Orjan Dotcom. Look at everything they got over over there, all American made.

And you might be thinking like, well you know, that sounds good. You know, I could use some stuff for that stuff or the other thing. But, you know, you know, I like to do things that are beneficial to the world. You I don't want to just consume.

Right. Right. Well, guess what? Good origin. May you get some of that gear you are contributing to the world. You are bringing manufacturing back to America. Got a bunch of. Hard working American people up there making it happen and. When you support the cause, you are doing good for humanity. That might seem like a big step.

It is. It's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's interesting, we talked about this before.

You don't care that much about it how well the fit of the genes are.

Delta 68 and. The factory factory? Yes, you, yes, or do you mean dotcom also JoCo has a store, it's called JoCo Store, and this is where you can get your apparel, as it were, if you want to represent while you're on the path, as we say.

So, you know, this is this discipline equals freedom, t shirts, hats, you know, bona fides. Yes, I do. You taught me. Yeah. So there's a good bona fides.

You're just out in the wild and maybe you want to you know, if you run into someone else that's kind of on the path, maybe a trooper, but you don't want to walk around. Hey.

Hey, how's it going. Hey, are you in the game like. No, just put the flag on, man, you know, put the flag on, put the def core flag on. Yeah. That's and someone and you know what you get, you're not going to get bothered but somebody will give you a look you little head nod like what's up the up. Maybe a little. Maybe a little.

Yeah. What do you call a heart hit her heart.

Yeah. Oh yeah. But yes that's where you can get it.

Jako storico store dot com dot com. We've got some board shorts on there. Summer we're wrapping up summer are we.

Wrap it up. Well I mean no we are definitely wrapping up summer. But you know, I know some of us operate more on a Hawaiian type schedule. So summer might be kind of past, but some people may still be ones on board shorts. They're actually in Hawaii. Well, how about this? The board shorts that we currently have, they're multipurpose board shorts.

You can swim with them, surf with them, do jujitsu in them, or just wear them wherever they go when we're podcasting like I'm doing right now.

Yeah, that's that's your new uniform right there. But yes. Did make they do make the cut.

Yeah, they're good. But yeah. A lot of good stuff on there. Yeah. If you want, if you like something get some.

Don't forget about that. Warrior Kids Soap is from Iris Oaks Ranch. You can get it on, on, on Jokela Store dot com. But it's a kid or warrior kid with a company who's making soap because his vision to help humanity is to help people of the world.

Stay clean for the month of September. Irish Oaks Ranch is donating one dollar per bar of soap to cancer research.

Yeah, that's Cancer Awareness Month. So, boom, that's what we're doing.

Subscribe to this podcast. Check out some of the other podcasts that we have, JoCo Unraveling, which used to be called The Thread, but we change the name. So JoCo unravelling soon to be on its own feed feed we have grounded, which we really haven't recorded in a long time. We need to get that done. And Warrior, your kid also not recorded in a long time, but you can listen to those podcasts. You can subscribe to those podcast and this one.

We also have a YouTube channel.

I think the main value of the YouTube channel, and this is me being kind of serious, is for those of us who like to watch the podcast treasons, want to watch the podcast as it goes on.

Like if you have a flat screen or, you know, one of these smart Tedi's in your office or your gym or whatever, you want to play on some visual, what do you call it, like association jobs require looks like.

Sure. Yeah. Oh yeah. There's that for sure. But you know, when you have a plane in the background, seems like you're more in the conversation anyway for that and also the excerpts we have on there. So, you know, like you can get little little as you and Theophylline would call them, little or big hitters.

Were you trying to get me to say, here's know I want you?

Didn't you understand what I'm saying?

Anyway, in my opinion, that's I, I subscribe to that also psychological warfare, then album with tracks, JOCO tracks of JoCo helping you get past your moments of weakness.

If they come. If they come. Let's face it, they come, they come OIA for sure, and yes, this will help you can get on Amazon and where we get empathies from all the folks on campus. Com my brother, Dakota Myers Company. And yeah, guess what, guess what.

If you want a little visual representation to kind of keep you on track, check out flip side Kamis Dotcom and get something to hang on your wall. Graphic representation of the path.

Also got some books, obviously these books here by John Striker right across the fence on the ground Sock Chronicles. Also, don't forget about Whiskey Tango Foxtrot by Black Lynn Black.

We got the code, the evaluation, the protocols.

We got leadership strategy and tactics. Field Manual. We got way. A Warrior Kid, one, two, three. We got Mikey and the Dragons. We got this Political Freedom Field Manual.

And by the way, there's a new version of that coming out extended version, be advised a little bit, some additional information for your knowledge and also extreme ownership and the dichotomy of leadership. Also have a consulting company called Echelon Front where we teach leadership principles. And we solve problems through leadership. We also have Heff online, even if you have a question that you want to ask me, you sure you could send it into the into the interweb?

You Facebook, Twitter, Twitter, the graem.

You could try and ask me a question. Sometimes I get to him or you can come on to F online dot com and come to a live webinar where I'm sitting there in front of my computer answering questions and.

Go to Heff online, dot com com and hang out, basically come and hang out. We have something called the muster where you come and physically hang out and learn about leadership.

We've had to cancel a few of them because of the covid virus. But we we have one coming in Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th. Go to extreme ownership dotcom. If you want to come to that. We have F overwatch where we take people from the military that have the understanding of the principles that we talk about. And we place those people into the civilian sector, into companies in the leadership position, go to f overwatched dot com.

If you're a company that needs leaders, we have America's Mighty Warriors dot org mumbly Mark Lea's mom, her mission. Since she lost Mark, since we lost Mark has been to help service members around the world in all kinds of different aspects. If you want to get on board, you want to help out, go to America's Mighty Warriors dog and you can donate or you can get involved. And if you want to hear more from us, you can contact us.

If you have questions, if you have answers, if you can fill in the blanks of some of the blanks that we get to, you can find us on the interweb for tilt for John Striker. Maior, he's on Twitter at Sargon. Instagram is at J. Striker Maior and Facebook is at John Striker Meyer on the inter webs. He's got SOGGE Chronicles dot com. And if you're looking for either one of us two knuckleheads, Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocke Willink.

And thanks to of course, we're coming back on to share the stories of SOGGE, The SOGGE Chronicles. And more important, thanks to Tilt and all his brothers in arms for their service and their sacrifice, especially those who are still missing in action. We will not forget. And we thank you in all of our military for keeping us free and to the police and law enforcement, firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol, Secret Service, all other first responders out there holding the line.

Thank you for your service and sacrifice to keep us safe here at home and to everyone else out there.

Don't go around thinking that you're hot shit and that your shit doesn't stink because you're bullshitting yourself. And if you do think that you are the shit, then things will likely shit the bed and then they'll go to shit and you'll end up in a shit sandwich and likely shit a brick when you realize that you're up Schitt's Creek without a paddle.

That right there are some deep shit. So instead focus on getting your shit together and then keeping your shit in line and look, we all have a shit ton of work to do and not just chickenshit either, but the real shit. That can make us tougher than shit, and that is no shit, Sherlock. So until next time, this is Echo and JoCo.