512: Into the Delta. Charlie Platoon, SEAL Missions in Vietnam. With Hal Kuykendal and Tom Boyhan

Summary

JOCKO PODCAST 512: Into the Delta. Charlie Platoon, SEAL Missions in Vietnam With Hal Kuykendall and Tom Boyhan

Episode Overview In this episode, Jocko Willink sits down with two legendary Vietnam-era SEALs: Hal Kuykendall and Tom Boyhan, both from Charlie Platoon, SEAL Team 1. Their conversation is a deep dive into SEAL operations in the Mekong Delta, focusing on discipline, leadership, and the hard realities of combat missions. The episode is rich in first-hand accounts, tactical discussion, lessons learned, team dynamics, humor, and reflection on how their combat experiences shaped their lives and the SEAL Teams’ reputation.

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Main Theme / Purpose

The central theme is an exploration and celebration of SEAL Team 1’s Charlie Platoon and its pivotal role in SEAL operations during the Vietnam War. Jocko, Hal, and Tom discuss not only specific missions but also dive into the evolution of SEAL training, leadership principles under fire, the importance of intelligence, the brutality (and camaraderie) of platoon life, and the enduring legacy of Vietnam SEALs.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Legendary SEAL Missions: Beginnings and Context

• Hal and Tom’s Backgrounds

  • Tom: Joined the Naval Academy (1962), aimed to be a pilot but became a SEAL due to a career detour (06:36).

    “I was two hops away from getting my wings when I had an accident. ... I got kicked out.” – Tom [05:58]

  • Hal: Joined Navy on impulse after a breakup; learned about SEALs by chance (14:21).

    “I decided to punish her [ex-girlfriend], drove to the recruiter’s … the Marine was at lunch, so I joined the Navy.” – Hal [14:27]

• Building the Teams

  • Early BUD/S (Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL) training, its brutal attrition rates, and the origins of rituals like ringing the bell (20:28).

    “We started with 129 Gung Ho people … graduated with 19.” – Hal [20:28]

  • SEALs’ unique culture: camaraderie, knowledge transfer by combat veterans, and early days of training innovation (25:54).

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2. Team Composition and Leadership

• Charlie Platoon’s Makeup

  • Tom as OIC, Enoch (legendary senior enlisted, later promoted to chief), Doc Brown (corpsman), several notable SEALs and new guys, plus Vietnamese LDNN partners (31:18).
  • Platoon handpicked for skills, experience, and attitude; importance of mixing experience with younger, eager SEALs (32:33).

    “Charlie platoon was the pick of the litter.” – Tom [32:41]

• Leadership and Officer-Enlisted Dynamics

  • Officers and enlisted working closely, with mutual respect and minor formalities for external appearances (39:13).

    “…if somebody from the Navy or Army comes around, that makes me less effective in dealing with them.” – Tom [39:41]

• Workup and Training

  • Self-directed workups with no cadre—SEALs trained themselves using after-action lessons from Vietnam (36:58).
  • Aggressiveness and willingness to “do another iteration,” going above minimum standards, marked great platoons (36:58).

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3. Combat Operations in the Mekong Delta

• Environment and AO (Area of Operations)

  • Riverine warfare in a “giant slingshot/funnel” region funneling supplies and men from Cambodia (45:07)
  • Early difficulties securing operational areas due to inter-service politics, reliance on “trading” AO clearances with Army Rangers (54:58).

• Typical Operations

  • Nighttime ambushes, small-unit tactics, using local intelligence, and balancing firepower with stealth.
  • Example: Classic ambush, camouflaged 3-4 meters off the trail, claymore mines, and overwhelming firepower (50:35).

    “If you were going to write a textbook about small unit tactics, this was a classic ambush.” – Tom [50:35]

  • Heavy emphasis on maintaining operational tempo—running multiple ops per week (54:47).

Notable Missions

• Ben Luc, Early Hits, and Aggressive Patrolling

  • First contacts set tone—multiple KIA and valuable documents seized due to excellent intel and training (47:25).

• Mortar Company Ambush (1:00:56)

  • Split forces despite risk; second squad ambushed, boat shot to pieces, survived due to Sea Wolf helicopter support.

    “They shot so many holes in our boat, you can’t believe it … how did we live through this?” – Hal [60:59]

  • Tactical patience: holding fire to avoid revealing position, using new tech (Cyalume grenades), air support to break contact (65:50; 69:07).

• Assault on VC Boat Factory (87:53)

  • Daytime “roll in” assault due to tides, total surprise, high chaos, boats riddled with bullet holes on exfil [87:53 - 92:11]

    “Most chaotic entrance that I remember … I can see one guy looking like, who the hell are these guys?” – Hal [89:53]

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4. Intelligence and Its Impact

• Barn Dance Cards & Metrics
  • Tom manually compiled 3,000+ op reports on index cards, found only 30% contact rate—punctured myths of constant combat (34:08).
• Metrics and Lessons Learned
  • With properly “vetted guides,” contact was 77%; general intel and no guide, only 26% (154:01).

    “If you can have that guide—a trustworthy guide—that’s going to be much more effective.” – Jocko [157:37]

• Integration of Vietnamese Allies (LDNN)
  • Operational partnership, using their local knowledge and language, was critical for deep penetration missions (83:38, 97:07).

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5. Leadership, Valor, and Recognition

• Navy Cross for Barry Enoch (96:46–108:14)

  • Defining op where Enoch, surrounded, held the perimeter, called close air support, led his men through encirclement.

    “…directed airstrikes on the shortest route … then led the patrol through the enemy encirclement …” – Jocko, reading citation [106:08]

• Promotions and Recognition

  • Enoch’s promotion to Chief, meritorious advancement for battlefield performance despite test failure (69:37).
  • High praise from CO: “the most impressive combat record of any SEAL platoon ever deployed” [152:42]

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6. Training, Preparation, and Life in Country

• Logistics, Hardship, and Improvisation
  • Chronic lack of food, proper boats, and living quarters; scrounging and improvising for weeks (76:16).
  • Adaptations: wearing blue jeans (not camo) due to durability and practicality (85:21), walking in streams to avoid booby traps, leeches, and “biblical” rain [118:15].
• Weapons and Firepower
  • Heavy armament on small squads: multiple Stoners, two M60s, extraordinary ammo loads. Mike Thornton would routinely carry 800–1500 rounds (57:43; 206:47).

    “That’s next level. That’s extra capability.” – Jocko [206:47]

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7. Bright Light Missions and POW Rescue

• POW Raid: All-Out Effort
  • Multi-unit joint operation, immense risk: “There’s a 50% chance somebody’s going to get hurt going in on this.” – Tom [111:42]
  • Outcome: Dry hole, emotional letdown but rescued Vietnamese prisoners on a later similar op (151:36).

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8. Postwar Reflections & Legacy

• Transition to Civilian Life & Leadership Lessons
  • Both faced struggles adjusting, financial hardship, but cited SEAL ethos and team lessons as keys to later business and family success (172:37, 176:24).

    “After all of that, the last many years, I had a very successful career … it wouldn’t have happened if it hadn’t been [for] my SEAL Team training.” – Hal [176:12]

• Continued Brotherhood
  • Deep emphasis on veteran reunions, traditions, and supporting younger generations of SEALs (186:35–190:28).
• Building & Supporting the SEAL Museum
  • A mission to not only preserve history, but inspire patriotism and service across all backgrounds (194:08).

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

“If I could go back in any time in history and do anything in history, where would I go? … I’d be a frogman SEAL in Vietnam.” – Jocko [00:00]

“My company officer at the Naval Academy told us he had been in UDT. Turns out … he was not telling the truth.” – Tom [06:48]

“The great news [about being SEALs] … We were really, really well trained.” – Hal [24:48]

“I started with 129 very, very fit guys. We graduated with 19.” – Hal [20:28]

“Every single one of them thinks they’re gonna make it … but it gets cold and miserable and they ring that bell.” – Jocko [20:45]

“You guys are the people that did the things that made me want to join the SEAL teams.” – Jocko [02:55]

“I just would inject that was Charlie Platoon. It was the mix of people in that platoon that made those results possible.” – Tom [153:59]

“The legacy of my teammates’ resolve steadies my resolve and silently guides my every deed. I will not fail.” – SEAL Ethos, quoted by Jocko [204:44]

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Important Timestamps

• Opening Story & Introduction [00:00–04:14]
• Backgrounds: Tom & Hal [04:14–16:02]
• Training/BUDS, Instructor Stories [18:27–25:54]
• Building Charlie Platoon, Team Dynamics [31:18–37:13]
• Combat Operations: First Patrols, Tactics [47:25; 50:35]
• Metrics & Lessons from After Action Reports [34:08; 154:01]
• Mortar Company Ambush, Tactical Decision-Making [59:00–69:07]
• VC Boat Factory Raid: Daylight Assault [87:53–92:11]
• Navy Cross Action: Barry Enoch’s Heroism [96:46–108:14]
• Intelligence Drives Success [154:01–157:37]
• POW (Bright Light) Missions, Dangers [108:31–116:14; 151:36]
• Postwar Transitions, Life Lessons [172:37–184:38]
• Veteran Reunions, SEAL Museum Mission [186:35–198:33]
• Closing Reflections and Legacy [204:44–END]

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Tone & Language

The conversation is authentic, gritty, and rich in the camaraderie typical of seasoned combat veterans, but also deeply analytical—teasing out leadership, tactics, and the psychological journey of war. Jocko’s admiration is overt, and the guests reciprocate with humility, humor, and profound respect for their brothers-in-arms, both living and fallen.

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For listeners and students of leadership, warfare, or SEAL history, this episode is an invaluable oral history—inviting the audience into the heart of one of the most storied SEAL platoons in history.

Transcript

[A]

This is Jocko, podcast number 512 with me, Jocko Willink. One of the few daytime operations we went on took place on Dung Island. We got information that the VC were operating a factory that built junks. We went there to blow the thing up. Mike Thornton was driving the Boston Whaler, and as usual, we wanted to get in there quietly. We were in this little bitty canal that went right down, down alongside the junk factory. We were running on a single engine to make less noise, but it was really hard to drive the Whaler when you didn't have enough speed. They just didn't go where you wanted them to. We kept running into the brush, and finally, since we were making so much racket, we decided to gas it and get on down there. We gassed it, and we were just going balls to the walls. I saw the VC at the junk factory, and they were not running for cover. They were just looking up the canal like they heard something. And they were thinking, what in the hell is that? They were shocked when they saw us and started running everywhere. But before we got out of there, we ended up in a big gunfight. We detonated the explosives we had and just blew the hell out of everything there. So that right there is an excerpt from a book called, called the Men behind the Trident, which is a compilation of stories from seals in the Vietnam War. That particular section was written by a man by the name of Hal Kandall, who was a member of Seal Team 1 Charlie Platoon in Vietnam, which is a legendary platoon, including a legendary group of seals that greatly contributed to. To the proud history and the feared reputation of the SEAL teams. These are the stories that I grew up on. This is when I was asked a little while during an interview, if I could go back in any time in history and do anything in. In history, where would I go? And I said without hesitation, I'd be a frogman SEAL in Vietnam. Well, that legendary history was written by guys like the guys in Charlie Paton, SEAL Team One. And it's an honor to have two of those seals here with us tonight. Hal Kandall and Tom Boyan. The. And Hal wrote the section that I opened with, and they're here tonight to share their experiences and lessons learned from combat. So, gentlemen, it's an honor to have you guys here. I've been reading about you guys for, I guess, maybe 35 years. So it's awesome to sit down with you guys and talk to you.

[B]

An honor to be here.

[C]

Thank you for having us.

[A]

And we're here just a little Side note, we're here because there's. The UDT Seal Museum is opening in San Diego, California. And so you're in town, Tom, you're in town for that? Yes, Hal, you live here in San Diego. So we did a little event last night and, and went and checked out the amazing UDT Seal Museum here in San Diego. It's opening up October 4th. It's. There's already a UDT Seal Museum down in Fort Pierce, Florida. If you haven't been there, you should absolutely go there. It's amazing. It's also in Fort Pierce, Florida, which is a little hard to get to. This one is right in downtown San Diego, and it's awesome. So they've got it here. They did an incredible job. It's incredible tribute to the history of the SEAL teams and the underwater demolition teams and the Scouts and Raiders and the ncdu. So everybody go check out the Navy SEAL Museum in San Diego, California. So you guys are. Like I said, this is. You guys are why I joined the SEAL teams. You know, you guys are the. The people that did the things that made me want to join the SEAL teams. So I guess let's get into a little information about you all and kind of where you GRE and where you're from. So, Tom, I guess you're a little older, right?

[C]

Yeah, I'm 81.

[A]

Okay. How old are you?

[B]

76.

[A]

Okay. So that's why you get. You got a head start on them going. Well, you ended up at the Naval Academy.

[C]

That's right.

[A]

So how'd you end up at the Naval Academy?

[C]

So my, My dad was in the Merchant Marine prior to World War II, and then he was in the army during World War II. And I in high school, I was looking at the military academy, the Naval Academy, and the Coast Guard Academy. Said, what? What do you think? Which one? And he says, go in the Navy. He says, you'll always have a clean bunk and good chow.

[A]

That didn't work out so well.

[C]

Didn't work out with.

[A]

How's that. How's that clean bunk on Dung Island. And so you end up. You end up going to the Naval Academy.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

And. And what you. What year was it that you got there? 1963.

[C]

62.

[A]

62. So Vietnam's not really going yet.

[C]

I didn't know anything about it.

[A]

I've had guys that were at the Naval Academy in 1965, and they didn't know anything about Vietnam, you know, so.

[C]

By 65, I knew about it. And the Bridget Than wa. Which the Air Force and The naval aviation was trying to knock out. That was. That was in the horizon.

[A]

So you. So you were definitely hearing it while you.

[C]

Oh, yeah, while you were there.

[A]

And did you try for the jet pipeline? Is that right?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

You wanted to be a fighter pilot?

[C]

Yes.

[A]

And then what happened with that? We have to. We have to go warts and all right now. Okay.

[C]

So I went down and went through basic training, was selected for the jet pipeline. Did my carrier quals in the T2B, went to Kingsville, did my carrier quals in the TF9. And I was two hops away from getting my wings when I had an accident. I brought a plane in with one main gear, hung up, and I broke the squadron safety record, which very much pissed off the co. The squadron. And so I got kicked out.

[A]

Dang. And you had no. So what did you know about the SEAL teams? Because SEAL teams got started in 1962. You started the Naval Academy in 1962. But Draper Kaufman was what, the superintendent at the.

[C]

He was the superintendent my last year or two at the academy. And I knew about his involvement with NCDU and udt, and I knew he had a Navy Cross. I didn't realize he had two Navy Crosses. And you said wards. I had a company officer at the Naval Academy who had been enlisted in the Navy and then gone through the Naval Academy, and he had told us he had been in udt. Now, it subsequently turned out. I checked this out with DJ Shipley. He was not telling the truth.

[A]

Oh, dang.

[C]

But we thought he was a cool guy because he gave us seniors unlimited liberty, which was against the school rules at the time. But my primary reason for going to the team so was just double hazardous duty pay. I mean, after getting flight pay and training.

[A]

Oh, that's right. And that used to be a huge difference. Like, I remember. I know I've talked to guys where their base pay was like 150 bucks a month, and airborne pay was like another hundred bucks a month. So it's like doubling your pay. So you saw that as another thing to do.

[C]

And I also didn't like shipboard duty. Check.

[A]

Yeah. You were telling you you wrote some notes about going to talk to the detailer in D.C. oh, yeah. Sounded like that was a positive experience.

[C]

Well, so they kicked me out, and I knew I was going to go to a ship, so I flew up to DC on my own dime and got in front of the detailer, and he said, oh, I got a great deal for you. I got. I got a destroyer out of Pearl Harbor. Great Duty. You'll love it. Said, no, I want to go to the training unit. And he says, you. He says, you'll wash out. You won't make. Took me about two hours to convince the guy. He'd get a phone call, he'd do his business. I'd get right back at him. And I just kept working on him. And he finally, finally, his parting words was, when you wash out, you won't be going to Hawaii. You'll be going to someplace like Alaska.

[A]

And what. What class were you in then?

[C]

So I was in class 45.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

And we were augment class. We started training right after class 44. Finished hell week.

[A]

Okay. And what. Need more seals or something?

[C]

ZUMWALT was in Vietnam and had said, we need more seals on these rivers. So they had ramped up, and that's why they started putting more classes through. I talked to some old timer who said the first time that they decided they wanted to put more than one or two classes a year, they said, well, it can't be done. And he said what? They figured out real soon that it could be done. And the only thing was the personnel pipeline hadn't caught up with the ramp up. So we only started with like 40 some guys. I think we had maybe started out with maybe six, maybe seven boat crews. And then we pared down real quick. We started hell week with 12 guys.

[A]

Dang. Dang. What did you even have two boats?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

You must have had two boats.

[C]

Yeah, we had a lot. Two boats. We had two boats for the whole thing. Thing. But we. We finished hell week with eight guys. Two guys got rolled back for medical reasons. And then we got a roll back from class 44. So we graduated nine.

[A]

So what year is this now? Is it like 68? Oh, it's all the way up to 68. Oh, that's right. Because you started Naval Academy in 62, graduated in 66, couple years in the flight pipeline. So now it's 68. So now the Vietnam War is going on.

[C]

Oh, yeah. And you guys all know 68 was going on while we were going through training.

[A]

So you guys all know where you're going.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's a riverine, like, coastal environment. There's no doubt.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Now at that time, they. I know it. I know that certain times they didn't take guys from buds to SEAL team. You had to go to UDT first.

[C]

Well, they. I'm thinking it was probably in the late 30s classes. They started taking guys right from buds into SEAL team.

[A]

Got it.

[C]

Because I know Bob Carey went directly from BUDS to SEAL team. And my classmate at the Naval Academy, Gary Gray, he was in class 44. He went directly to SEAL team from Buds, but they had just commissioned UDT 13 in June or July of 68. So when our class graduated, all nine of us went to UDT 13.

[A]

Okay, and when you get to UDT 13, what is your. Are you immediately just put into a UDT platoon and you're getting ready to go to Vietnam? How'd that work out?

[C]

Yeah, we had to. We had to train up, do the operational readiness inspection in order to deploy, and I got tasked with the Sub Ops platoon.

[A]

And what did that consist of?

[C]

Well, at that time, the Grayback was the operational submarine. I don't remember the sub we trained on here off San Diego, but, you know, we did your lockouts and through the Ford escape trunk and popped up ibss and then practiced being snagged by the periscope and all that stuff.

[A]

And then were you sitting in the boats banging pipes together so the sonar could find you? I know I had to do that because I was a communicator. And that's how you communicate with the subs hanging over the side of your Zodiac, banging pipes together or banging on the tanks.

[C]

Yeah, but then when we deployed, we were in subic and we were literally on the pier, look, getting ready to load stuff into the submarine to go out. And chief of the boat came up to me and he says, we just discovered about a 12 inch crack in the pressure hull. We're not going out. And so we were was like all dressed up, no place to go. I was chafing at the bit. And when Bob Peterson, who was the XO Team 13, we had a morning muster. He says they're looking for volunteers for SEAL team. And I was the first one to step forward and say, send me.

[A]

Nice. So now, Hal, let's get a little background on you. You grew up, what, Texas?

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And then how'd you end up joining the Navy?

[B]

It was kind of an embarrassing story.

[A]

That, like I said, we're doing warts and all.

[B]

I was in the first semester of college and a longtime girlfriend broke up with me, and so I decided to punish her. So I drove over 30 miles away to Palestine, Texas, to the recruiter's office. And I wanted to be a Marine. And the Marine was out to lunch. So the Navy recruiter said, why don't you join the Navy? So I did. I was very impulsive and. And so I went home. My mother and my sisters and siblings were crying My dad tells my mother, he says, oh, hell, Alice, in this war, the safest place to be is in the Navy. Well, so then I went to, you know, boot camp.

[A]

Did you know anything about the SEAL teams when you were in the Navy?

[B]

I didn't know that, no. I'd heard something about frogman, but I didn't know anything about SEAL team, But my dad knew about frogmen because he was a commanding officer of a little sub chaser. And so he was around Saipan and all those areas, and so he saw all these frogmen clearing the beaches for Marines coming in. And he basically, you know, I'm going to a school now, radio and school and all that other stuff. And what happened is the SEALs sent.

[A]

Over two.

[B]

Instructors that did a film, showed it. And again, I'm impulsive. I never thought about joining a SEAL team. In fact, I remember sitting there wondering, I wonder why in the hell anybody does that. But anyway, they asked if anybody wanted to, you know, try screening test. And so the guy next to me said, let's do it. I said, oh, okay. Well, I did it. And so what happened is I passed the screening test.

[A]

Did the other guy.

[B]

He did okay. Rob Wagsland. He passed it. And so. But what happened is. So they told me I needed, you know, there was a class starting up in Coronado and I needed to, you know, get over there. Well, the Navy told me, well, I'm sorry, you know, we've already got. You're going to Yokoska. So I get on the telephone like a payphone, and I call. I thought that the training unit was at north island, so I called North Island Information, asked them to connect me. They gave me the number of the amphibious base. So I get on the phone, I went through about three, I think, trainees who are answering the phone, and basically finally a lieutenant named Dan Sperck. He was in charge of the training unit at the time. He says, well, I could get you over here, I could get you a speed letter. But he said, it's not worth it. I said, why not? He said, well, didn't you say you're a radioman? I said, yes. They all quit. And I said, I'll guarantee you I won't quit. I mean, I don't know if I can swim. You know, I grew up in Texas. There weren't any polo, water polo teams or swim teams. So I said, I don't. And I told him, I said, and I'm not sure I'll jump out of an airplane, but I will never, ever quit. And he Said, well, I will promise you this. If you get through training, you'll damn sure jump out of an airplane. So I. I would love to find him, you know, and thank him for writing that speed letter and getting me over there. Otherwise, I'd have been out on, you know, gray monsters floating around in the ocean.

[A]

How was Buds?

[B]

Well, we. It was tough, you know, Oliveira and Moy.

[A]

We've heard some. We've heard some good stories.

[B]

So. By the way, I was raised, you know, a church going Catholic, and this guy comes out, walks out, it's Oliveira, and on his name tag it says, God. I remember thinking, what have I got myself into here? But anyway, and then mostly Moy stayed on. But, you know, those were two very interesting people. And course, it's great to still see Moy come to reunions and. And he's got. He was tough, but he had a great sense of humor. I really liked him.

[A]

Yeah. Apparently, he's the one that invented the bell or made the bell a thing.

[B]

Yes, that's right.

[A]

So did you have the bell in your class, Tom?

[C]

No.

[A]

No bell.

[C]

No.

[A]

You. You quit and you had to go.

[C]

That was when it was still on the amphib base.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

And you. You went to the back door of the little hut where the instructors were and you pounded on the back door.

[A]

Yeah. And apparently Moy thought that if it was made more public, you would. Less people would quit out of the shame of having to ring the bell.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And that's why he brought it on, made it. Made it into a thing.

[C]

It wasn't a big enough speed bump because rate's still the same.

[A]

People still ring that bell. And your class. Did I get this right? That your class was like the last class that was the UDT replacement class, as opposed to called buds, or was your.

[C]

We were the first BUDS class. And I. I got the pictures to prove it. I showed it to Crawdad Crawford.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Because he said, I heard this. Is this true? I sent it down to him and he says, yeah, you're right.

[A]

Yeah. He was my first XO at Team one.

[B]

You know, by the way, you asked how the training was. The short answer to that is, we started with 129 Gung Ho people who were very, very fit. And we graduated with 19. So it was pretty tough.

[A]

Yeah. It's weird when you think that every single one of those. What'd you say, 140, 129. Every one of those. 129. Every single one of them thinks they're gonna make it 100 and they sign up for the Navy and they show up at that thing and they tell their girlfriend they're going to be a frog man. And, yeah, it gets cold and miserable and they ring that bell. So you get done with training and you. But you got. You went straight to SEAL Team One.

[B]

Yes. So there were a number. So my. I went to SEAL Team 1, Mike Lacaz went to SEAL Team 1.

[A]

Mike.

[B]

Thornton went to SEAL Team 1, Wayne Hampton went to SEAL Team 1, and Kenny Meyer.

[A]

Kenny Meyer seed a pretty good crew of guys.

[C]

Yeah, we did.

[A]

And. And this is when you guys link up. There are. Do you have to go to sbi?

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Okay. Were you guys going. Did you guys go to SBI together?

[C]

No.

[B]

No.

[A]

So you. You were ahead of him?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[B]

So, yeah, we went to, you know, after training, we went to what's now called sbi, called Cadre then. And so we did that. But, I mean, you know, obviously you went to jump school and Sears school, that kind of stuff.

[A]

So you did a jump out of an airplane.

[B]

Yeah, I did.

[A]

Okay, so then you go to sbi. Well, it's called Cadre then.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So Cadre. Then it became SBI, then it became STT, and now it's called SQL. But it's. It's. It was run by SEALs at the SEAL team.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

And do you guys remember any important lessons you learned when you were at sbi?

[C]

Well, that's actually. That was the. The first live fire with other guys around, not on, just a range.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And. And learning how to drink beer out at an island.

[B]

But we also, I remember, you know, we had all those canals out there, so they'd get us in boats, you know, just IBSs, and go down at night and just get a feel for what it was like to be in Vietnam. They also, they. They had a situation. They had these helicopters come in, and so they would talk like a man's down. And of course, they picked Mike Thornton to be down because he was big. And so the helicopter doesn't stop. It's, like, moving. And we're. Myself and a couple other people carrying supposedly dead or wounded Mike Thornton, we're running and trying to chase down the helicopter. Anyway, so we did a lot of things like that, but it was a great place because you could, as Tom said, you could call in helicopters, jets, whatever. So it was a really good place. But the one thing that I remember thinking when I was there, they would show us all these type of operations that we were going to do, and they would say that, you know, we're going to be going in these hooches at night and finding some province chief or district chief or whoever and we're going to like, you know, take him with us. And I remember thinking, I don't actually believe we're going to be doing that well, but it wasn't too long before that's what we were doing. But I just remembered these things that they were telling us we're going to do. I'm thinking, damn, it's going to be hard to live through this, I think. So anyway, the great news is about being a SEAL is that we were really, really well trained. You know, I started boot camp in March of 68 and I finished in somewhere around, you know, summertime, you know, June or something. And then, you know, I went to, I went over to the, to the teams and so then we just trained and trained and trained and trained. So anyway, I was always very appreciative of being well trained. When I read some books like the class of 66, these guys from West Point, when they, some of the officers had written a book and when I read that book about how they had a whole bunch of people that had been drafted, maybe gone through six weeks of training or something. I mean, when I read the book, I'm turning a page and I'm thinking I might have, I might have just walked off and said, I'm getting out of here. I mean, I've never been a quitter, but I was thinking this would be awful. So it was a wonderful thing about SEAL team. We did dangerous operations, but we were so well trained. It really made a difference.

[A]

Yeah, and also you had guys that were doing the same job that you were about to do. That's right, From Vietnam, coming right back, running the training.

[B]

That's right.

[A]

And setting it up. You know, we would do that when I was running training. You know, we'd be getting reports of what was happening three days ago on the battlefield. And when the enemy would make a tactical adjustment, we would add that into training so that the guys were as ready as they could possibly be. And I think that's something that's always been, always been part of the, kind of the core ethos of the SEAL teams is to train as hard as you possibly can. And obviously it starts in buds, but it's the same thing. When you get out to Nyland or any of these, any of these training sites, you are going to train excruciatingly hard to be prepared for the worst case scenarios, then that's the way it's got to be.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So now, Tom, you end up getting assigned platoon commander.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

And how did you feel about that? You must have been pretty. Pretty excited about that.

[C]

Oh, yeah. You know, from the time that I was in team 13 and then to come over to Seal team. Yeah, I would. I was chomping at the bit.

[A]

And because you basically had, like, you went on, you did an entire workup, sub lock in, lockout, you go all the way on deployment, you're getting ready to go do your missions, sub breaks down and you. And they say, hey, you're not doing anything.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So you're freaking crushed.

[C]

Yeah. And, you know, after getting kicked out of aviation, sub breakdown, it's like your.

[A]

Naval careers not what you wanted.

[C]

I was definitely chomping at the bit. And back in those days, there was. You had. In Team one area, you had the. At the end of the hallway, you had the Captain's office, the XO's office, Ops office, and then there was a big office that was called the training office. And they had like, these almost floor to ceiling whiteboards that they wrote on. Okay, here's the guys going to the different training schools. Here's the platoons that are being formed up. And I can remember going in there and seeing, oh, there's my name, Charlie Patoon, and, yeah, I want to get after it. And I, Because I was. My academy classmate, Gary Gray, who was in the class ahead of me, I. I plumbed his knowledge. There was a couple of other junior officers who I was friends with. Yeah, what do we do? Who should I go after? And so I don't. I don't remember how Enoch got in the platoon, whether that was a Captain Shibley thing or. But he got in there and. And then I know I did go after, like, our point man, Solano, and, And a few other guys that they said, yeah, these would be good guys to have.

[A]

Yeah, that's a very similar thing. In the SEAL teams now, they have something called we all. I don't know what they really call, but everyone calls it the Ouija board. And it's. It's basically a big whiteboard, but it's a magnetic board. And everybody in the team has a magnet with their name on it, a little picture of them, and it's usually in the command master chief's office. And so he'll organize those platoons. So there's been times I've heard that people have gone in there and moved magnets on that board to get people they wanted. It sounds like you were doing some of that activity A little bit. So. Okay, so you mentioned Barry Enoch. And am I correct in. Do I understand this correctly, that he was not a platoon. He was not a chief yet?

[C]

No, he was not. He was first class.

[A]

But he was going to serve as your chief, or did you have another guy that was your platoon chief?

[C]

No, we did not have a platoon chief for that. For that platoon.

[A]

So he's your senior enlisted guy.

[C]

Right.

[A]

And he's coming from. He was a plank owner at Seal Team 1.

[C]

Plank owner.

[A]

He. He'd been to Vietnam already. He's a couple of Silver Star recipient, a Bronze Star recipient. So he's a. He's an experienced guy with an awesome reputation.

[C]

And. And he'd been an instructor, so he'd put a bunch of guys through. So, yeah, he was well known throughout the teams and very respected.

[A]

You end up with a guy named Doc Brown. He's your corpsman.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Now, as Doc Brown, I know that there was some corpsmen that didn't go to buds, but were that integrated with SEAL teams and they're considered seals, and no one questions it.

[C]

Yeah. Actually, most of the corpsmen had not gone through training. There were. There were only like a handful of guys corpsmen that had gone through training.

[A]

So was he. Had he been through training?

[C]

No, he had not been through training. He'd done a tour with the Marines in Vietnam, and then he'd done a tour with a platoon in Vietnam.

[A]

Okay. Yep. And just to make it clear, I know talking to many people like, you considered those guys just as much as frogman as anybody else.

[C]

Oh, absolutely.

[A]

So you have this guy Doc Brown, and then you get your new guys, which you went through some of the new guys, but you get Hal, you get Mike Lacaze. Am I saying that right? Lacaz. Wayne Hampton and Mikey Thornton.

[B]

Yep.

[A]

So. So there's your new guys. You get a couple guys from UDT 13.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Mike Sands and Joe. How do you say his name?

[C]

Twiddick.

[A]

Twiddick. I never would have guessed that one.

[C]

Well, it's also pronounced Tavertic.

[A]

Okay. That's what I would have guessed. Lou Lacrosse. Lacrosse.

[C]

Ludacros Cross, who was. He'd made several tours.

[A]

Rich Solano and Rich Doyle. These guys are all your experienced.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Seals, Your kind of experience. What we. We'd call these guys the kind of the. The E5 mafia or the. These shooters. You know, these are kind of guys that are going to get to work. Done.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Your aoic, your assistant platoon commander is John Duger.

[C]

Duggar.

[A]

Duggar. And he's a guy that went to Cornell.

[C]

Yeah. Smart guy.

[A]

So he's smart, but he already did a tour with UDT 11.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

And another good guy that you knew and you, you picked out.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So this is your crew and you know, reading and reading in the books that you guys like clicked, which is. Which is awesome. It doesn't always happen.

[C]

That's true. I had three platoons. I got to say, Charlie platoon was the pick of the litter.

[A]

Sometimes, you know, there's something that happens called a stacked platoon where, you know, they'll take and pick and they want this platoon and, you know, whatever. The platoon chief's a guy that knows good, has good connections. You know, Paul, these all the best, you know, heavy hitters into a platoon. And sometimes it's a great platoon and sometimes it's a total disaster because what he pulls into the platoon is a bunch of people with big eos and they can't get along now. So you guys got a great crew. You start working together Now, Tom, you had been doing some assessments and we started. We were talking about this a little bit before we started recording. But the, the records of what the platoons were doing in Vietnam and the operations that they were conducting, they were all recorded on what, little index cards?

[C]

Little three by five cards. Every after action report was referenced as a barn dance number. I don't know. That went back to the very beginning. So a barn dance was an operation and you had a number and you proceeded the number with the. The letter of the platoon. You know, the west coast guys had lettered platoons, east coast guide had numbered platoons. And in the intel was kind of a side thing. So in the electronics shop, there was a file cabinet that had these three by five carts. Of all the operations that have been run since 1966, how much detail did.

[A]

They have on these cards?

[C]

Very little detail. It was basically, you know, date insertion, extraction grid results and a barn dance number. And I think that was about. Yeah, you can't get much on a three by five.

[A]

No. And you. But you started going through those.

[C]

I took the time I went in there with a yellow legal and there were. It was over like 3000 ops. And I just went through and I had a little grid and check off. Did they make contact? No contact. And it statistically it turned out that 30% of the time they made contact and 70% of the time they didn't was called negative. Intel is still intel, right?

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

You know, there's no bad guys here.

[A]

Yeah. But I'm thinking maybe you didn't like the sound of doing 30%, only getting contact 30% of the time.

[C]

Set me up in terms of context of how, how things were going, because, you know, over a beer, if you listen to the stories, it sounded like every time you went out, you got in this giant gun battle. And obviously that was not the case.

[A]

Now, Barry Enoch wrote a book, and the book is called Teammates SEALS at War. And it's a, It's a fantastic book. It's, you know, I've got three books sitting here today. The Men behind the Trident, Teammate SEALS at War, and UDT SEAL Operations at Vietnam. These are books that I had for a long time, and you can look at them and see how old they are. But he goes into some pretty good detail about what your workup was like. And, you know, we kind of already talked about the fact that seals train as hard as we possibly can. And one thing that's interesting is it's, it's, you know, the, the platoon has to push themselves. And, you know, at the, at 10:00 clock at night, you can either say, hey, do we do this again and do another iteration, or do we, you know, go, go have some beers and go eat dinner and, and it's real easy to say, let's, you know, have some beers and go eat dinner as opposed to, let's do this a couple more times and make sure we get it, get it right. And that's really the difference between what. What will end up being a good platoon and what will end up being an average platoon. And it sounds like you guys would do the extra iterations, push yourselves really hard. And, And Barry Enoch goes into some significant detail about your workup and some of the. Again, just taking things that were happening in Vietnam, things that he had experienced in Vietnam, and applying those to your training. Is there a cadre that's running your training for you guys?

[C]

No.

[A]

So it's just you guys running it yourselves.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

That's one thing that changed over the years is eventually they put a training cell in the SEAL team. And then I guess that's what Cadre was, right? The cadre was that it was.

[C]

It was.

[A]

Yeah. But eventually they put a training cell in the SEAL teams, and then eventually all the SEAL team training cells got confirmed together or put together in one big group called Trade At. There's a trade at west coast and there's a trade at east coast, and the Trade AT would then train the SEAL teams. And I think at that point you kind of needed it because you had more platoons More teams, you needed to run some more centralized training. There's, you know, you needed to get control of ranges. There's ordering ammunition. There's just a bunch of logistics that we could scale when we brought it all together. And it, plus it made, it allowed us to, you know, unify some of our, some of our tactics, techniques and procedures and, and make standard operating procedures that didn't matter what platoon you were in or what troop you were in or even what team you were in. You know, you could still basically count on a guy to know what you were doing. But for you guys, it was you guys kind of training yourselves.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

And I'm guessing that Barry Enoch as the senior enlisted guy was the guy pushing the gas pedal on that.

[C]

Oh yeah. I mean, really, I had, it been stupid not to listen to that experience. Unfortunately, I had not been imprinted too heavily from the Naval Academy on relationships with enlisted.

[A]

Meaning that in the regular military there's a definite, clear and oftentimes fairly wide separation between the officers and the enlisted guys. And in the SEAL teams that is. Isn't very prevalent. And it sounds like you and Barry were. And you know, he talks about, in the book, you know, he talks about the fact that you guys were so close, but he also says you always called him chief and he always called you, you know, LT or, you know, mister, which is kind of the traditional thing.

[C]

Well, you know, what I said to the guys, especially when we were in Ben Luck and Dung island, was look, we're here in our hooch talking planning, Tom. Yeah, but if somebody from the Navy or the army or anybody, military courtesy because otherwise that makes me less effective in dealing with them.

[A]

So yeah, that's a great rule to have. And I know like, even for, for me, I would have guys, you know, when we were in camp, on our camp, I didn't care what you wore. You wore flip flops and a pair of surf shorts and no shirt. I didn't care at all. When we rolled out to go meet with a battalion, meet with a brigade, everyone was in a squared away. As squared away as a, as a teen guy can get with his uniform. But you know, no, cuz guys would get wild. You know, they'd want to wear their dumbest, you know, Metallica T shirt and a pair of jeans to, you know, battalion meeting. It's not happening. It's not happening. So you get you. It's. It's important. And you know, we were talking about that yesterday at the museum. You know, some of the, some of the guys were talking about just the reputation of the SEAL teams. You have to build that reputation. You have to maintain that reputation. And if a Marine sees guys that look like slobs, they don't have basic military bearing, you can't unsee that. A Marine cannot unsee that. An army guy cannot unsee that. And so that's something that you knew, you understood, and that's the way you. The way you ran things. Any. Any significant things that you guys remember from, from the workup and as you're getting ready to go on deployment.

[C]

Well, one big thing was Barry and I had talked about because he was. He was in the armory. We went up to China Lake and we did that for a couple of reasons. Prime Barry had heard about, oh, they're. They're working on this.50 caliber sniper rifle. And, and they had all these whiz bang gadgets that you could booby trap things with, which scared the hell out of me because, oh, here's a Kodak camera. Click boom, click bang. Or here's. Here's an AK magazine. You fire three rounds and then it blows up. But the other one they had was they had developed this sialum grenade. It looked like a smoke grenade. Looked like a standard smoke grenade. And you could clip on a bullet trap that you could then Launch with regular standard 5.56ammo off the end of an M16. And that device wound up saving our butts one night. So. And a great group of guys. I mean, they were like, the. Who's that called the Q section in the Jane Bonds film that come up with all the whist bangs. These guys, you know, they had their pocket protectors and their crew cuts, and they just were having a blast figuring out things. Toys for boys.

[A]

Yeah. How are you feeling as you're getting ready to go to Vietnam? I mean, there's, you know, obviously there's people getting wounded and killed every day there. SEALs are taking casualties. How are you guys feeling about it? How. What's going through your mind? You're getting ready to go to Vietnam?

[B]

I wanted to go. Yeah. I was eager to go, and I was eager to go because. Especially because of the platoon that I was in. I trusted every single platoon mate, especially Tom and Enoch and, you know, and others. So I was, you know, we'd been training for a very, very long time. It's like training for football, and now you finally get to go play the game. I was very excited to be in the platoon and to go to Vietnam.

[A]

I had a Marine From World War II on Dean Ladd and he was. He'd already. I forget what island. He went into one island, fought and. And then he was getting ready to go into Tarawa. And, you know, as I said, you know, they were telling him, hey, there's gonna be a bunch of casualties. You keep going no matter what, you know, leave Marines behind until the assault's done because we're expecting significant casualties. And I said, hey, you know, were you nervous? And he said, no, that always happens to the other guy. Of course, he ended up Getting gut shot 500 yards off the beach, and his Marines disobeyed orders and swam him back to a boat and he saved him. And he was able to heal up on Hawaii for six months. And then guess what he did. The next island.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

But, yeah, so I think the young, testosterone filled men, we never think anything's bad's gonna happen. How do you guys get to Vietnam? You guys unchartered aircraft?

[C]

No.

[A]

How'd you guys get over there?

[C]

Well, there was a squadron called VR21, and they were basically like a ferry squadron, and they were based in Hawaii. And so it was. I forget the date. It was a four engine turboprop plane. And my recollection is that plane flew at a speed that it took about. My recollection is somewhere around 40 to 48 hours of flight time to get from San Diego to Vietnam, with obvious stops in between for refueling.

[A]

Hawaii, Midway or Guam.

[C]

Weight? Yeah, Philippines, just. But the planes always seem to break down in Hawaii for some reason, oddly enough.

[A]

Huh. How's it when you show up in Vietnam? What's the. What. What are you guys thinking about when you get on the ground there?

[C]

Well, we wound up going to a Navy support base in Ben Luck, which was at the confluence of two rivers. The Vam Ko Dong and the Vam Ko Tai. Rivers form this giant kind of slingshot. If you looked at a map, and from the US Perspective, it looked like a slingshot. From the North Vietnamese perspective, it looked like a funnel, I think because it was right at this. They called it the Parrot's Peak in the boundary between Cambodia and Vietnam. And that was one of the. One of the main exits off the Ho Chi Minh Trail was into the Parrot's Peak area. And they funneled men and materiel down in there, which, of course, is why Admiral Zumwalt had said, we need to concentrate on this area. It's a riverine environment and we need more seals. And fortunately also had the Sea Wolves and the. And Black Ponies. The OV10s.

[A]

You guys deployed December of 1969. And I'm gonna go to the book here. This. This is the book Teammates SEALS at War. It's written by Barry Enoch, legendary SEAL who passed away, I think, in 2012. 12. 2012. But it's a. It's a fantastic book. It's out of print. If you're looking for it on ebay right now, it's going to be a lot. So here we go. This is from Barry Enoch's book, Teammates Seals at War. It says, working on our own intelligence network, the second squad ran an operation on January 13, 1970. It gave us our first contact. The squad inserted after dark by lssc. And that's the. That's the light SEAL support craft, which I have another book here called UDT SEAL Operations in Vietnam. And the picture on the COVID of the book shows an lssc. And that is actually a picture of you guys in Charlie Pathoon in Vietnam in an lssc. So the squad inserted after dark by the lssc. And this is just like a small. It's a very small boat and it's got a pretty low profile.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

And I noticed it's got little sloping metal around the. Around where you sit, so hopefully that'll deflect some of the bullets maybe. I don't know if that was the.

[C]

Plan, but had a little bit of ceramic armor on it.

[A]

Okay. They patrolled 1500 meters through rice patties and tree lines. They came upon five large bunkers, and soon they heard voices. They were approximately 30. Were approximately 30 VC in front of our teammates. The squad moved forward and observed nine armed Viet Cong coming out of a hooch. The VC began using a bullhorn, telling those who could hear them that they were going to be operating that night. It was pretty clear they felt totally secure in their own backyard. So here's a. You come up on this Viet Cong camp and they're actually putting out word on a bullhorn. Like, hey guys, we're going to do some operations tonight, so everyone can start getting your gear ready. Lieutenant JG Dugar. Am I saying that right?

[C]

Duggar.

[A]

Duggar. Lieutenant JG Duggar called for the Sea Wolves and then initiated small arms fire on the enemy soldiers and their bullhorn. With the gunships overhead, Hal Kirk and all directed an airstrike on the main body of vc. The Sea Wolves were also used cover. Used to cover the squad's extraction by lssc. Charlie Platoon had drawn its first blood that night with five VC KIA and at least five more accounted for in the same straits now, this was the way it was supposed to be. So there you go, Hal. That's your first. Your first operation, your first contact, and you're calling for fire.

[B]

I don't remember it was the first or not.

[C]

We went out on two orientation ops.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

Which were basically cakewalks. That the. The guy who. We weren't relieving him. We were filling in.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

We were an augment platoon, so we didn't relieve a platoon, but there was a platoon there that said, okay, we'll take you out and just get your feet wet, muddy. So we did two of those. And then this was really the first op solo on our own.

[A]

Yep. How'd you feel calling for fire for the first time?

[B]

Good.

[A]

You've done it. A bunch of nylon. You've done it. A bunch of China Lake. Like, that's what we do.

[B]

It's all about training. And so I felt very comfortable calling for it, so. And I was glad for them to come.

[A]

Continue on the book here. Two days later, the first squad drew more blood from intelligence provided by Chu Hoi. We inserted by lssc, and the Chu Hoi led us up a VC communications trail. Lieutenant. Boy, am I saying your name right?

[C]

Yeah. Bo.

[A]

Bo. Lieutenant Bohan set a guard post at the fork in the trail, and we settled in. Soon afterward, we heard voices and saw two VC with weapons in their hands walking along the trail. The lieutenant opened fire with the rest of us joining in when the enemy soldiers were within 4 meters of the SEAL guard post. So this is you initiating an ambush. You can see these guys. What do you. What's your. What are you guys doing? You guys sitting in ambush? Are you camouflaged? How far off the trail are.

[C]

We were about 3 to 4 meters off the trail. I mean, this was. If you were going to write a textbook about small unit tactics, this was a classic ambush. There was this trail dike line, and we were in these tall reed grass type thing, and you could have been three feet from the trail in this stuff and nobody would see you. I mean, it was just.

[A]

How long were you guys sitting on ambush for?

[C]

My recollection was it was probably less than an hour.

[A]

And you guys had inserted. You patrolled a little bit. You get to this position and. And you set up off the trail. Do you set up claymores?

[C]

Yeah, we set up. We set up claymores. We. We had our seven band squad. We had some LDNNs with us. We had overkill on this thing. The intel had said there's usually two or three guys that come through here. And this is kind of a side note. So Barry had got this information actually from his SEAL buddy, Al Hughey. And Al Huey was a PRU advisor down in Mito. And we were out hustling intel wherever we could, but Barry had actually got that from Al Healy, and it was dead on. Wasn't three guys, it was two guys. But, man, they just. We hit them so bad that the. The weapons they were carrying were destroyed.

[A]

Al Huey, another legendary seal. And I think I want to say it was Admiral Richards when he was on the podcast and he was saying that Al Huey, he never raised his voice, but everyone just did what he said because it was Al Huey, I think.

[B]

Exactly right.

[C]

Yeah. Yeah, he definitely very Enoch caliber guy.

[A]

Continuing on with this, the count was two dead VC with two recovered AK 47 rifles and 90 rounds of ammunition. The dead men's backpacks contained letters from North Vietnam to NVA in the field. Also, NVA money was found on both bodies. Recovered documents would lead us to other operations. It was a good hit. On January 25, a platoon ran an operation meant to target a VC squad leader inserted by LSSC after darkness had fallen. Charlie patrolled only 600 meters before sighting 10 armed Viet Cong. The VC appeared to have entered a hooch. And Mike Lacrosse Lacaze. Mike Lacaz, scrambled gunships overhead. As we moved on the Hooch, only one VC was spotted about 15 meters from the large hut, and he was taking. Taken out of the picture with two stoners. We found a blood trail indicating a second man had been wounded and dragged or crawled away. A search showed the VC had been moving to a weapons cache where the VC had fallen. We uncovered three AK47s, two M26 grenades, and one kilo of documents, all of these wrapped in plastic. During the search, another VC was discovered lying dead, adding to our body count. We wrapped everything we could carry up and moved back to the river. An airstrike was called in on the area we'd spotted. The 10 VC, and the sea wolves covered our extraction by LSSC Ty, who's one of your Vietnamese counterparts. Ty told me the two VC were killed on the commo trail were actually NVA because the mail and money they had on them. So this is like. That is two. That is a page and a half from this book. And you can already see what kind of an environment you guys in. And I thought that gave a pretty cool picture of, you know, kind of what those operations look like for you guys at this time, what you guys were doing.

[C]

And and, and.

[A]

And how it looked, you guys, what was the OP tempo like when you first got there? So how often would you guys be going on. On these operations?

[C]

Well, so the setup here was, again, we were an Augment platoon. Now, there had been a platoon there at Benluck. That platoon had not done a lot. The platoon that had been before them had had some fantastic success. Again, my classmate Gary Gray from the academy, he had run that platoon, and they had. They'd actually taken out a Kosvan, Central office, South Vietnam level vc. And for some reason, the platoon that followed them. I think part of the issue was Gary's platoon had basically caused the Vietnamese to lose face. You know, you had this Vietnamization program starting up. You had a pacification program. The numbers that people were putting in were saying, oh, this province is. It got up to like 85% pacified, which was, you know, I'm going to make this look good because it's going to make my fitness report look good. But in actual fact, again, it was a giant funnel coming from Cambodia into this province. And so when we showed up, we were having a hard time getting area clearances, and I actually wound up working a deal with the Army Rangers in Tanan, said, you guys put in for an AO clearance and we'll use it. And then we'll. If you need some extra guns when you go out on an op, we'll send a couple of three guys with stoners to boost your firepower. And so they would put in for aos for us, because every time we put in for an ao, we'd get denied.

[A]

Dang.

[B]

Because it was the army that was clearing the aos.

[C]

Yeah, they could get them and we couldn't a lot of times. And so that was the context of where we were at there.

[A]

How many stoners would you guys carry with a squad?

[C]

Thanks to Enoch, because he had been in the armory, we had at least. We had at least three stoners in a squad.

[B]

Dang.

[A]

And then how many 60s, one 60 or two 60s.

[B]

Two.

[A]

Good Lord. No wonder. No wonder those enemy weapons were damaged.

[B]

And. And One of those M60s was carried by Mike Thornton, who typically carried 800. A thousand or more rounds.

[A]

That's 70 pounds. Just ammo.

[C]

Yeah, I. I know I'm one. IP had 1500. 15, 1600 rounds. Rounds.

[B]

What a beast he was. But you like having it. That beast in your squad.

[A]

100%. Yeah, those. That's. That's so much firepower. You know, we carried. We carried a significant amount of firepower, and we, we eventually switched from the M60 to the Mark 48. And then the Mark 46 was kind of our equivalent of a stoner. It's a 556 belt fed. So. And we'd have a, you know, a couple 60s and a couple saws. We call them saws. But yeah, for to have a seven guys, to have two 60s and two or three stoners, that is. That is. That is beast right there. So you end up. You're in there. Any other significant things happen when you were down at Ben Luck?

[C]

The other one was the OP where we ran into the mortar company.

[A]

And how'd that go?

[C]

Well, it went well from our side. Fortunately, we had planned an OP to go into this. There was a village that was cut by a stream, and we had intel that there were Viet Cong leaders on both sides of the stream. So we wanted to hit them simultaneously. We decided we'll. Both squads will go in. Second squad will go into the north side. First squad will go into the south side of the stream, which, by the.

[A]

Way, Barry talks about this and he even mentions in the book it was so dangerous for us to split squads.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And I've been telling guys forever, if you can avoid it at all, never split your forces. And I had a guy who's a SOG guy in Vietnam, John Stryker Meyer, and he was tell. He was telling a story, and he said, yeah, so we ended up having to split forces. And I said, you know, hey, I always tell guy, don't. Don't split forces. He goes, oh, you're going to find out why. That's. You should never split force. And he told the story. It's always bad. So just to point that out, if you can avoid, you young, young soldiers, sailors, airmen, and marines out there, splitting forces is something you occasionally have to do. But if you can avoid it, avoid it. Try not to split your forces. All right. But you guys have to. It's two villages at the same time.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Or on two villages or two parts of the same village split by a river. So you end up splitting forces.

[C]

Yeah. And obvious we never even got there. So first squad inserted, we started patrolling, and then second squad got ready to insert, and they got ambushed. I mean, Hal can talk about this. We figure it must have been like the point element or something for this company that we accidentally ran into. And.

[B]

Well, I think they knew we were coming. I do.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

I mean, we're in this LLC and we're being real, real quiet, and all of a sudden the bank of the river lit up. I mean, lit up. So I don't know. We had probably seven or eight of us in the boat, and I think. I don't know how many. There was 40 or. It was a huge number of them. And they shot so many holes in our boat, you can't believe it if you see the boat and we have pictures of it somewhere. I went down and looked at it the next morning, and I'm going, how in the hell did we live through this? I mean, you couldn't put your hand any place on that boat that didn't have a bullet hole.

[A]

Any guy get wounded?

[C]

We had one guy that got some shrapnel from metal from the boat in his hand.

[B]

That was Rich Doyle for appointment.

[C]

Yeah, and.

[A]

And how'd you guys respond to the ambush? Lay down fire, did you?

[B]

We laid down fire, but also, we weren't that far from Ben Luck, where there were Seawolf pilots. And so we had a code, you know, Code three, I guess was, you know, or one. Let's call it one. You know, we're good. We may be getting near, you know, our operation. You know, be ready. Code two is like, you know, go ahead and warm it up. Code three is we're in a world of trouble. Don't even warm it up. Just get over here. So they did. They came over. And I will tell you, I don't. I don't think that we would. I don't think I would be alive if it hadn't been for Seawood pilots. And the reason is, while all of this is going on, we had a problem with our. Our boat basically broke down. And so anyway, the Seawif pilots came in, and of course, you know, we're in the water, but they laid down.

[A]

Like, how many minutes would it take them. Did it take them to show up, do you think?

[C]

They were on a scramble status that night? And so I believe. I never did check this out, but I believe they were literally sitting in the birds, and all they had to do was press the button, and 30 seconds later, they were airborne because they probably were overhead. Our distance was not that far, and I would guess probably within two minutes.

[B]

They got there in a hurry, and we were really, really, really glad to see them. We were getting the crap shot out of us. I mean, when you.

[A]

You.

[B]

When I came down at the next morning and the boat was there, I mean, you basically couldn't put your hand anywhere that there wasn't a bullet hole. I mean, it was just. We were just getting the shit pounded out of us, you know, and they came Over. And they ended all that. And so ran away.

[A]

And then. But you guys were on the ground. Square one's on the ground.

[C]

We were on the ground, and we hear this big gunfight going on, and we start receiving what I'd call probing fire, and I need to set up. So on this operation, before we deployed, Captain Shibley had pulled me aside, and.

[A]

He'S the CO of SEAL Team 1.

[C]

CO of SEAL Team 1.

[B]

Yeah.

[C]

He said, boyan. So you go over there. I want you to make sure that Enoch gets a meritorious promotion to chief. Yes, sir. So this operation, because it was complex and because we were splitting up. Barry. I said, barry, I want you to run Squad one. I'll switch positions with you in the patrol. I'll run rear security. You run the patrol. We plan this op. This is your op. Now, on the way into this op, we had gone down the river, and then we come back up, and, like, we were, I don't know, 2, 3, 4 kilometers away from the op. We actually encountered a sampan and took them under fire. He had weapons, and it was like, okay, do we go, or do we not go? And Barry and I talked about it, and he's, we're far enough away. You know, there's a lot of stuff going on in this province. Let's proceed. Yeah, so we went in.

[A]

Pretty cool. He talks about that in the book, and he says, you know, you had told him he could run the op, and that happened. You get this enemy contact. It's four clicks away, and, you know, you guys are having that talk. And you looked at him as, like, you're up. What do you want to do? And he said, we go. So there you go.

[C]

And that was music to my ears because I. I like. I liked being aggressive. And so we started. I don't know, we'd gone in maybe half a click or so, and we were in this old abandoned rice paddy with clumps of weeds, and we started getting this probing fire. And right away, word comes back the line, hold your fire. Don't make anybody fire. And to me, that was a pivotal decision, because they didn't know exactly where we were. And, you know, if we'd have shot back at them, which would be your natural reaction when someone shoots at you, we'd have revealed our position. And subsequently, with the sea wolves coming overhead and bailing out, the first, the second squad, the fire started picking up on us. Like, really picking up. And we started some B40 started whizzing over there, and this is some mortar rounds started dropping in and again, Barry, hold your fire. And this is where when we were at China Lake and we got that. They called it a Tierra grenade, which sounds a little too princess for me, but that sialum, that glow in the dark stuff. And Michael Cos was a radioman with that squad, so he's up there with Barry, and Barry says, okay, mark their position. And by this time, we were receiving what I would call pretty heavy fire. I don't know how the heck Mike wriggled around and got himself. And he popped that deer grenade and marked where the center of the fire was coming from. From. So when the wolves came over, they made one run on their second. On their second run, they fired rockets. They got a gigantic secondary, which allowed us to get up and get the hell out of there. And they covered us going out. But Barry's decision to hold fire. We didn't shoot back until we were running out and we had the Seawolves covering us. Then we did fire back. But that alone, to me, exemplified the leadership. And I wrote him up for meritorious advancement to chief, and he got his advancement and had his chief's initiation while we were in Vietnam. And he. He well deserved it.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, that's. To have that kind of experience and patience and tactical prowess to be taken and, you know, a little bit, you know, little recon by fire, maybe you can hold off, but when it starts picking up and then to think, you know, because it's. It's difficult to identify where, you know, where one shot comes from and a loom comes from, like, where's that? For the enemy to pinpoint where you are, but to be able to do that and mark the target so now the Sea Wolves can take him out. That's. Yeah, that's epic battlefield leadership right there.

[B]

Well, and speaking of battleship battle leadership, one of the reasons that Barry hadn't made chief is, you know, he. I don't want to say anything. He wasn't a good reader, and therefore he had a hard time making, you know, pass the test. He knew everything there was to know about guns, but he couldn't pass the test. And so he absolutely deserved, you know, the meritorious chief. And that's the kind of guy Tom is that put him in the position. Plus, anyway, that's why we all loved him.

[A]

The CEO of SEAL Team One, he's still back stateside, you guys. He didn't deploy, did he?

[C]

No.

[A]

Yeah. So you. He had told you, get this guy meritoriously promoted. That's awesome. Eventually. So February 1970, you guys are directed to move from Benlock to another place, which is Coastal Navy Base 36. A Long Fu.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

What was driving that decision there?

[C]

I, you know, looking back at the time, it's like we're. We're good and going here and bend luck, things are happening. We're making good, good operations.

[A]

Yeah. The numbers in the book said you guys had done 17 operations at that point, and, you know, you'd racked up a bunch of good intel, killed a bunch of bad guys. So it's been a good run so far.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Feeling comfortable. Know the neighborhood. Yeah, that's a good feeling.

[C]

So now this is hindsight supposition. I believe that the people on the staff, they knew about this Naval intelligence liaison officer in Sak Trang who had a interpreter who would go to the Chuhoi center, where the VC would turn themselves in to come over to the government side. He would go there every day. He'd bring him cigarettes and treats, and he'd drink tea with them, chat them up. And he had compiled this, a bunch of folders on VC I, the Viet Cong infrastructure. And there was a lieutenant commander who was a naval intelligence officer on the staff in Saigon. And he probably saw all this and said, this is what seals really need. And somebody said, okay, well, again, I'm biased. I'm thinking, hey, these guys in Charlotte Platoon, they know how to get after it. Let's send them down there. I don't know if that's the case or not, but that's my story.

[A]

Yeah, we'll stick with it. Yeah, it's the case now.

[C]

And so they, they sent us down there. And it was true. The, the Nilo, the Naval intelligence officer and his. I really give the credit to the interpreter. He, Mr. Locke, he was just with the people in that Chu Hoi center every day. He knew how to elicit information.

[A]

And.

[C]

Make friends and, you know, a good agent handler. And so when we got down there, they not only. They also sent. First time I know that it happened, they actually sent a photo interpreter guy from the Navy down there to help us with the intelligence stuff. When we were up in Ben Luck, John Duggar and I, we'd spend. We could spend eight hours a day, sometimes 10 hours a day, just chasing around trying to get intel in order to start to run ops. And we got down there and here's this big folder of targets. And they'd done photo runs of the area. We had 3D photos. This was high tech stuff for us back then. You know, you'd put these little platform of glasses so you could see 3D what was down there on the island. You didn't have to get on the horn and try and coerced the army into. Hey, can you give me a visual reconnaissance of this area? And so that was. That was great. I mean, we. We spent a lot more time planning operations rather than trying to get the intel to plan an operation.

[A]

Yeah, no, I. You know, fast forward however many years it was when I was in Iraq, you know, we had like entire. You guys would be pissed because you'd see the freaking intel support that we had. You know, we had like whole. They gave it a name. It was like the fusion cell. They'd have people that were doing interrogations and people that were running sources and people that were looking at images and people that were correlating all the data. Like, we had really good systems in place. So we didn't. You know, we, We. We definitely. I'd say we were like people that were shopping in a store. You know, we'd kind of get to look at all the intel and say, like, we like this one. Develop this one more. But they were just great, great people, and that's their job, you know. It's really nice too, because, man, when you're going in the field, you have to be thinking about what you're gonna be doing in the field.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's hard to come back from being in the field and go put your intel hat back on. And for the same, for the guys that are doing intel and I had in Ramadi, we had. We had a group of both SEALS and intel people that were working together, and they were freaking great. They. They would. Just. Because the seals knew exactly what we needed. And we. Those guys would come in the field with us sometimes, you know, like, okay, dude, like, you know this target better than we do. Hey, come. You know, they just load up and come with us. So, yeah, we. We had a very luxurious, luxurious life.

[B]

Compared to you guys was so. So, Tom, I want you. Before you get too off, make sure you talk about our living quarters that we were in and that you. We got sent down there with no food. No. Anyway.

[A]

No, I got some pretty good. And by the way, just you guys. You guys both sent me like long emails of notes. So some of this stuff is coming from notes when I refer back to it. But yeah, you have some pretty significant notes about nowhere to live, no food. Like, it was terrible, terrible living conditions.

[C]

And my biggest blunder. We're getting ready to leave Ben Luck loading up trucks so we can drive up to Load the stuff on a plane to fly down to Bentuh to take it on a boat down to. And the steak truck is loaded and I look on the back and here's a couple of pallets of sea rations, which I know they've stolen. And I'm thinking there's going to be another SEAL platoon here on this base. And if we steal this stuff, that'll leave a bad taste in the chow Hol's mind about seals. And I think you need to take that stuff back, guys. And they did. They were good sailors. They did what I told them. I was a stupid officer for saying that because when we got now, we had an entire army field kitchen. We had pots, pans, silverware. We had these big pots that were like two, three feet across. You could, you could feed a 150 man company with this stuff. But somebody in logistics forgot the food to go in it. So it was like five weeks. We were whatever we could steal, beg, go out on the local economy, cough up our own money and buy baguettes. And I'd send the guys up the river, three guys up the river to Bentuh. One guy to distract the guy in the chow hall and the other two guys to steal number 10 cans of mayonnaise, tuna, peanut butter and jelly. So that's what we basically lived off for about five weeks until this CBs showed up.

[B]

And by the way, so I think I weighed, I don't know, 180, 85 when I went over there. When I left, I got dysentery. When I got left, I weighed like 148. Mike Lacaz is an inch taller than me or so. And he got down to 138.

[A]

Dang.

[B]

And we're still going out on operations. I mean, we're in a POW camp.

[A]

So it took five weeks to get food before you got started getting food down there?

[C]

Yeah, when the CBs showed up. I love CBs.

[B]

Oh, man, that's the best thing that ever happened to us. Yeah, they started building barracks and all kinds of stuff.

[C]

We were living in these, they call them porta campers. Basically it was, you had this big wooden box that you opened up and that became the floor. You had these little Masonite sides and then a tent top. And they said this was a Vietnamese Navy base. And they said, you guys are on the perimeter. And we were literally, there was this little dike line and then here was scrub jungle. We were on that dike line.

[B]

And.

[C]

They loved it because they'll get those brown dice first. If they come and attack the base. And we had a Conex, a small Conex box that we had all the ammo in, which we spent. I don't know, we spent a few days filling sandbags. Barry said, we gotta get that thing covered up or.

[A]

This is where you gave him his nickname, right? Is that you? Yeah, he got the nickname, what, Mama? Knock, knock. You felt he was. He was scared for you guys to get hurt. That's why I had you build this. This bunker for your ammo.

[B]

Yeah, I also called him my sea daddy. You know, he. He was very important as long as he lived. We stayed very close.

[A]

You guys also had no boats to operate from when you got there?

[C]

Yeah, when we got there, the US Advisor there was two US advisors to this Vietnamese Navy base. One was a lieutenant who was scared to death. And then bosun mate, a first class bosun mate. He was a Panamanian guy. He was squared away. The lieutenant was worthless. But we. Because we. Okay, you guys are on the perimeter of the base. I went over to them and I said, hey, you've got this little skimmer. It was like a 16 foot fiberglass, kind of looked like a Boston Whaler, had 240 horse outboards. So I'd like to borrow it so we could operate because otherwise we were. We could get swift boats, which really had a hard time going into the small canals.

[A]

Pretty big, right?

[C]

And we. In that area, we couldn't. We couldn't get PBRs, which were designed for the smaller waterways. And so right away we saw, yeah, we'll. We'll borrow your skimmer for hot grades.

[A]

One boat.

[C]

Just one boat.

[B]

Jeez.

[C]

And Solano outfitted it had these little aluminum rails above the gunnels. And I don't know where he got them, but he put flak jackets on those aluminum rails. That was our armor. Yeah. But we ran some pretty good ops just using that one boat. And then finally my take was, I love the boat support people. There was a guy in Bentuh who was the officer in charge of all the boat people in Vietnam. And I know for a fact that his part of his evaluation as an officer. How many boats are up, how many boats are down? You know, and he was afraid if he sent a boat down to Podunk, that it was going to be down and that would reflect poorly and he wouldn't get it. So I finally sent Mike Thornton and Mike Sands up there, and I said, I want you to go up to this guy's desk. I don't want you to stand in front. I Want you to sit on his desk and don't. Don't let up until he says he's going to send a boat down to us. And. And so he finally sent a skimmer down, and then a few weeks later, we got an lssc. And that man, we thought we were. Yeah.

[A]

And you also. When did the. The platoon of LDNN, which is the Vietnamese SEALs, they showed up where they. Were they living in the same compound as you guys?

[C]

No, eventually they came down. Oh, boy. That was probably. Probably right around the time we got the. The boat, I think.

[B]

I think so.

[C]

And. And they had a. They had a advisor from Seal Team 2 with them. Ron Rogers. Good man. And. And it was the same SEAL platoon that we had operated with up in Venluck.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

So we knew him. We knew him.

[A]

So you. But. So it took you a few weeks before you finally felt like you could start running stuff. But you had a fat target package or a bunch of target packages, and it was kind of go time. Hey, did you get. Did you guys go. Did you get liberty anywhere? Did you go. You know, you see, like, people in Saigon and Vietnam or whatever, and you're like, they're out drinking and there's, you know, girls in the whole nine yards.

[C]

No, I think.

[A]

I think girls on Doug Island.

[B]

I think what happened, though, is, you know, we. We would go up to get paid in Bentui, right? So we'd take the boat up there, and it was a much bigger base, and so, you know, we'd go out and have a few drinks, but we didn't. It wasn't really liberty.

[C]

Yeah. Long fu was the end of the line, really, In a very literal sense, actually.

[A]

Yeah. Do you guys wear jeans?

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

How come you wore jeans?

[C]

Well, that was jeans. The pants.

[A]

The BDU pants just didn't hold up.

[B]

Noisy.

[C]

Yeah. If you bloused them to keep the leeches out, then you had these little weep holes. So you'd get in the water, you'd get out. Now you got a pant leg full of water sloshing around, so if you didn't blouse them, the leeches could come up your legs. And jeans just worked better. And you're working at night, so, yeah, you don't really need camouflage on your legs. Jeans were. They were the way to go. I don't. Maybe one or two guys wore cami pants, but most everybody was wearing jeans.

[B]

Another thing about that is, is that a lot of times when we were on patrols to try and avoid booby traps, we would get down in the streams and walk in there and get lots of leeches on our legs. But anyway, we, you know, I don't know how much time we spent in canals versus, you know, trails, but, you know, quite a bit.

[A]

Well, we are frog men.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

All right, let's get into some of these operations once you get down there. One that you guys mentioned in some of these notes is a, a boat facility on Dung island that you guys had intel about. And they were building, they had like a little boat factory and they're building ocean going sand pans and a junk boat. And these are obviously being used to infiltrate, you know, supplies and people. And so you guys decided to go and go and handle that. And this is kind of the one that I opened up with with your little. I'm pretty sure it's the same operation, the one that you wrote about how, where you guys. This is. These are the, you know, if you haven't heard, this beautiful name for the SEALs in Vietnam is like devils with green faces. And these are the operations that get those. To get that nickname like the one that you talked about, where you're 3 meters or 4 meters off the trail and out of nowhere you slay these vc. And this is the same one where, you know, they just have no idea that you're going to be there. And sure enough, you show up. So what was, what was the overall in that op?

[C]

Well, like Hal was talking about, we're going down this. We had two skimmers on that app. The one that we'd borrowed and the one that had come down and was our SEAL skimmer. And I have this vivid picture in my memory of this one guy. Just, he was working on something and he looked up and his jaw literally hit the deck. It's like, who and where the hell did these guys come from? And before.

[A]

And this was a daytime op?

[C]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

What made you guys do it in.

[C]

The day is because of the tides.

[A]

Oh, got it.

[C]

Yeah. We couldn't, it wasn't going to work out because the timeliness of the information versus what the, the tide schedule was. This was the only time we were going to be able to get in there. And it was, it's. So we hit him. I took a group out to a secondary area. So I wasn't with Barry when he was loading up the junk and the sampans with explosives. Yeah. And I remember taking my little group out and we were, we cleared this hooch. And when I went into this hooch, I, I was the point man. And there was probably a 400 pound sow in a little pen inside this thing. That scared the Jesus out of me. I didn't shoot it, but scared the hell out of me because woke up out of sound sleep and gave a big woof.

[B]

That was about the most chaotic entrance that I remember. I mean, we're coming down, you know, fast. And I remember I can see one guy looking like, who the hell are these guys? And pretty soon, they found out who we were. But it was very, very chaotic, and it was a good op. You know, we destroyed the thing and. But anyway, it was. It was really.

[A]

So we. We would do operations that we would call a roll up, meaning we would drive our vehicles right to the target. And it sounds like. And we would do it fast. It would be like a fast, hard approach and just take over before they could react. Sometimes we would stop, you know, blocks away, get out, dismount quietly, slowly, and approach target. So since this one was a daytime for you guys, you just said, balls the wall. Let's go.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

And then you're taking fire as you're leaving. But you had the. There's a quick reaction for us, like, the whole nine yards. This is. This is mayhem.

[C]

Yeah. Well, the VC owned this island complex area. It was like an R and R area for them because they had access from the sea. They were still. Even though they had navy boats patrolling those coastlines, these guys were still getting stuff down via water. Seawater, not river water.

[A]

There was a quick reaction force that came after you guys.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

You guys know the time fuses are burning, which is.

[C]

Right.

[A]

Got to be a good field.

[C]

And.

[B]

But also, when we're going out, you know, people are. You know, they hear us. They're shooting at us as we're leaving.

[C]

So when we turned to get out on the big waterway, the planes. The boat's up on step, and it's bullet holes. And we took a round right through the bottom of the boat. We heard it hit, but we didn't know where it hit. It wasn't till we got back to the base and pulled up to the dock, so started unloading. And the boat starting to fill up with water, and it was the borrowed boat.

[A]

Well, thanks for.

[C]

So. So real quick. We. Solano said, I'll take care of that, boss. Don't worry about it. So we pulled the boat out, and he put fiberglass patches on it, and.

[A]

And then you guys called for airstrikes, and I think you gave me notes that it took them like, an hour to get the airstrikes because the Vietnamese were at lunch or Something. Something.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, that would. That was because the OV10s were overhead and we couldn't get clearance. It was like, hit him while it's hot, man.

[A]

Ridiculous. As far as the day, daytime operations, am I wrong in saying that, like, you know, we. We would hear about Vietnam, that the Vietnamese owned the night, like the VC owned the night. They would travel at night, and most of the most normal conventional units would not do work at night because the VC were more adept at night. That's correct. Right.

[C]

That's correct.

[A]

And then that's what made seals different was, oh, the. The enemy owns the night. We're going to go out at nighttime, and. And that's a huge. You know, it's a. There's more risk in some ways, but there's less risk in other ways. Yes, it's interesting. So when the last deployment I did to Iraq, the. We owned the night. Americans own the night because we have night vision. We have lasers. Like, the enemy knew that it was just useless to go out at night. So guess what? They didn't go out at night. They went out in the daytime. And. And they used the local populace to mix in with.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So we ended up. We went out in the daytime. So it was sort of the role reversal. And I think you can even go back to World War II, where the. They did all the early beach clearances at night, but they realized they couldn't really clear the beaches at night because they couldn't see anything, and so they ended up having to go during the day. So, you know, those people. When you're in these situations, you might have to do stuff that's, you know, to use a word, that gets used a lot. But this is truly like, you're gonna do stuff that's unconventional. You know, you guys, going out in the nighttime is unconventional. For us, going out in the daytime was unconventional. And, you know, we. It's easier go out at night. I mean, it's immensely easier to go at night. We probably only killed. We probably only killed a handful of people at night, and we killed a lot of people in the day, know, because that's when the enemy would come out. So that's a little interesting historical dynamic that happens March 12th. Hal, what's special about that day?

[B]

It's my birthday.

[A]

It's your birthday. So there's a cool. I. You didn't tell me about this. It wasn't in your notes, but it's in the book Teammate SEALS at War, where you had, like, the day before your birthday, you had a bad Dream.

[B]

It's actually, yeah, the day before my birthday, but it's at night. And there was a Marine from my hometown who had been killed in Vietnam. And it was on the headlines of the Jacksonville Daily Progress that Lon Turn had been killed. Not on his birthday, but he'd been killed. Well, this night I'm sleeping. You know, we did our patrol order. We were ready to go, but I'm asleep. And it looked like a pretty hairy, crazy operation. So I dreamt that last night that the headline of the Jacksonville Daily Progress said, hal Kuykendall killed in Vietnam on his birthday. And so then I'm like, you know, I figured if I missed this one, I'd be a coward and never go anyway. Then Mike Thornton, who still called me cuz for cousin, he said, cuz, I don't think you ought to go on this operation. I had a bad dream about you. I went on it, but anyway, was a bit unsettling.

[A]

Oh, Chuck. Now we get this. This operation. April 9, 1970. This is Operation where Barry Knocker earns the Navy cross. This is four seals and 10 Vietnamese seals targeting leaders on Ong Cha Island. Am I saying that right?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And it's part of the Dung island group. And you. There's. You gave me a great map. It shows what this area is like. And, you know, it's. It's what you think Vietnam is going to be like. Rivers, islands, everywhere, jungle. What do you remember about this operation as you're planning for it and whatnot?

[C]

Well, because it was when the Vietnamese seals came down to Dung island, they integrated with us. We'd go out on ops with them that they had planned. They would come out on ops with us that we had planned. So Ron Rogers, who was the advisor, he said, hey, we got this op going, and Barry and a couple other guys went with him on that. And when they patrolled in and engaged, and we're listening back at the base back at Long Fu.

[A]

What are these? Are you. Are they like two or three clicks away from you guys?

[C]

Probably farther away than that, but not more than maybe 10 clicks at the.

[A]

But you can hear on. You can hear the radio?

[C]

Oh, yeah, yeah.

[A]

Easy. Okay.

[C]

And so we hear, okay, things are, oh, good. They made a hit. And. And then, oh, it's not going so good. And then. And then they were calling for medevac when Tick got killed. And at that time, my recollection is they tried to get some gunfire support from a couple of swift boats, but they were too far away. And I got on the Radio and said, you get those swift boats over here to Long Fu. Rallied up everybody in the platoon, load up. We're going to do whatever we can to help.

[A]

Now, did you guys. Would one squad always be on standby when the other squad was out for to go reinforce them?

[C]

Not in a formal sense. And it broke down. How were we going to get there? Because we didn't have the boats or we had no air support, like kilos or anything.

[A]

So it was like there wasn't much you could do.

[C]

So the only. Fortunately in this case, I could summon those swift boats over to pick us up. And as. As the fight wore on and they were trying to get a helo extraction, I directed the two swift boats. Okay, we're going to go over to this one section of the island and clear an emergency LZ so they can hop out of the target area, drop off, go back and pick up. Because it was going to probably take two loads to get them out and. But the whole fight is unfolding and we're hearing a lot of it. Not all of it, but definitely with the overhead planes. We can hear their transmissions. And it was. It was a heck of a fight.

[A]

Yeah. I mean, Barry Enoch got shot in the radio that was on his back. Three rounds to the battery pack.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And one round to the antenna. And somehow, miraculously, the radio was still working. They don't make radios like that anymore. But the radio was still working. You know, he had to mess with it a little bit. Another really interesting thing that I read in the book and. And in your notes was that Barry said, don't come to us right now. And this was very interesting because he knew that it would be a potential blue on blue, like a potential friendly fire situation because he was surrounded. They ended up surrounded. And, you know, you guys are wanting to go help him, but at the same time, he goes, hey, don't come here right now, because if you're shooting at them, you will be shooting at us.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Again, so his. His tactical prowess on the battlefield was. Was just all time.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Really? Yeah.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So Tick is the. The guy who was killed. And he was.

[C]

He.

[A]

Was he the leader of the ldn.

[C]

He was the LDN platoon leader.

[A]

And he, you know, Barry was close with him. I guess he had worked with him before in the past.

[C]

Yeah. His other tour with Alpha.

[A]

And this was interesting. He wrote in the book is they tied Tick's hands together, and then Barry was able to. Barry carried him like a backpack, put his arms around his neck, and he's on his back. So he's got his radio, he's got tick, and he's surrounded by enemy. And eventually what he gets the aircraft to do is he sees that the. The area that's going to be the only way he's going to be able to get out of this is. I think it was to the east. There was some, like, marsh and bad ground, but it's where there was the least concentration of enemy. And so he had called in the air support, and they came in and just strafed and crushed that area. And then he. Barry, actually, he didn't lead the guys out. He said the guys told the guys, go that way. And he did rear security and picked up the rear. And as he's heading. And I'm guessing he's heading toward the LZ that you guys had said at this point.

[C]

No, this was. They had one bird that got in and pulled out.

[A]

Okay, so he already had them out.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

And then it was. They were starting to close in. They're starting to run low on ammo, and the black ponies had got there. At first, we were working with the medevac helo and army gunships out of Soc Trang when they ran low and they refused to cover another slick that could have come in and potentially pulled them out, but they said it was too hot. We're not going to do it. We had set up that hasty lz. We hear all this stuff going on. So we said, okay, we need to proceed up this little waterway, which the swift boats didn't want to do. But after a spirited discussion, we convinced them to do it. But that was when Barry said, don't come up too quick, quick, because we're surrounded. And then the OV10s got there, and that was. The OV10s were just absolutely amazing.

[B]

I mean, they were like crop dusters coming in.

[C]

So high school classmate, academy classmate of mine, flew OV10s in Vietnam. And I was telling them about this story, and I said, yeah, they call them in 20 meters of their position. He said, tom, no way. We were never supposed to go that close. I said, well, they did there. And I sent them the damn OP and showed it written right out in the post op report that they'd come in within 20 meters of the friendly position. The OV10s.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

And it was accurate.

[A]

It's incredible.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. And this is another point that gets, you know, goes back to training is they had worked out in training how to mark position on the ground with this silk tee.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

And sure enough, Barry has to get out that silk tee and put it on the ground and call for fire, you know, like you said, within 20 meters of his position so that the VC could not continue to close.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Eventually, like you said. Or how does it eventually come to an end?

[C]

So the OV10s cleared a pathway and then they went in and they blew the heck out of that area. And Barry and the LDNNs, they pushed through that area. We moved up with the swift boats and the lssc. And as we moved up, okay, starboard side, which was to the west. No, east, to the east. Said everybody shoots in that direction because this side is our guys. But I want to sound like. Like the entire freaking army is coming and that. So we came up just making noise is all we were doing.

[A]

We were.

[C]

We weren't preventing anything. It was the OV10s that were clearing the way for them and. And they came out and we picked them up and got them back.

[A]

Barry Enoch, Navy Cross the President, United States of America, takes pleasure in presenting the Navy Cross to Chief Gunner's Mate Barry W. Enoch, United States Navy, for Extraordinary heroism on 9th April 1970 in connection with operations against enemy forces in the Republic of Vietnam. While serving with a detachment of SEAL Team 1, Chief Petty Officer Enoch was the senior advisor and radioman grenadier to a combined US And Vietnamese SEAL combat patrol against Viet Cong infrastructure leaders. After insertion and patrolling to the target area, Chief Petty Officer Enoch observed 6th Armed Viet Cong attempting to evade. Rushing forward and exposing himself to hostile fire, he succeeded in accounting for three enemy casualties. The SEALs then came under intense B40 rocket and automatic weapon fire. Realizing that his small force was surrounded, Chief Petty Officer Enoch deployed his men in a defensive perimeter and although under intense fire, continually shifted position to more effectively employ his weapons, relocate his men, and survey the enemy locations and tactics. Although his radio was damaged by enemy fire, Chief Petty Officer Enoch directed fixed wing and helicopter air strikes on the enemy's positions, some strikes as close as 20 meters to his position. With his men running low on ammunition and still encircled, Chief Petty Officer Enoch directed airstrikes on the shortest route between his position and the river, and then led the patrol through the enemy encirclement before the latter could close the gap caused by the airstrikes. By his heroic and decisive efforts in the face of almost overwhelming odds, Chief Petty Officer Enoch was directly responsible for the safe extraction of the patrol members and upheld the highest traditions the United States Naval Service.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Outstanding. Outstanding. So I guess Lieutenant Commander Shabley was happy with that too.

[C]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Got this guy promoted and. And he's awarded the Navy Cross.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

Which he absolutely deserves.

[A]

There's no doubt about it. Bright Light. Tell us about this Bright Light operation. And for those of you that don't know, Bright Light is either down pilot or POWs that need to be rescued right now.

[C]

Yes. Here we are down at this coastal Vietnamese, coastal Navy base. I get this flash message, get up to Saigon to the staff, asap. That's it. So I go up, these guys stay back there. They're still running ops. I go up there. And I did not dress in my class A uniform either.

[B]

Probably had camo on your face.

[C]

Well, I had a pair of jungle boots that had been polished by the Delta mud, and instead of black, they look like suede tan desert boots. Anyway, got up there, staff said, you're going to go see the admiral. Com nav4v. I'm an 03. Yes, sir. So they had information from the U.S. army. He was a U.S. army intelligence asset, had said, there's this POW camp. It was to the north of us, not in the Dung island area at all. And this guy says, there's some American prisoners in this camp. And I'll brief this down a little bit. Anyway, the bottom line was here I am talking to an admiral who's talking to a general who's getting the information from his army intelligence. And ultimately I hear all this information. I said, admiral, I really would like to take this agent with us on the operation. And so he talks to the general and the general says, no way. And I said, admiral, it's so much more effective and we got a much higher chance of success if I please go back and talk to him again. And to the admiral's credit, he went back to that general and asked him again, but the guy said, no way.

[A]

So you wanted to take.

[B]

We.

[A]

You wanted to take the source of the information.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, you. There's someone saying that they know where there's a POW camp. Okay, great. We will take him with us.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Which is infinitely better.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

I mean, first of all, if the person doesn't want to go, that's a red flag. You know, that's. That's a big red flag when the person that's telling you where there's bad guys doesn't want to go on the end. It can happen where he's just scared and he doesn't want to do it. And that's, that's need to be taken into consideration.

[C]

Right.

[A]

But also it's also a little bit of A red flag because what are you getting walked into?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

So you're weighing all that. He. And the admiral goes to the army general twice and says, let us take the guy with us. In both time, he says, no.

[C]

Yep. So ultimately, though, it's like, okay, if there's a possibility of a US pow, we're going to go. And I do remember the Admiral saying, so what's your chance of taking casualties going in on something like this? And they had said, this camp is ringed with concentric circles of booby traps to protect it, to protect the camp and to keep guys from breaking out. And I grabbed. I said, yeah, with that scenario, there's 50% chance somebody's going to get hurt going in on this. But I said, we'll go. Everybody that goes will be a volunteer. And everybody volunteered. There was no question about it. Fast forward. We planned this big, and this was again, my first SEAL tour. This is the most assets I ever saw involved in an operation. We tagged along with a joint Army, Vietnamese army operation that was going to go somewhere near that area, and they were going to go way away from that area and do a sweep, and they were going in by boat.

[A]

And was that operation set up as a decoy for you guys, or was it just something that was already taking place in the general area?

[C]

I think it was something that had already been planned and it just happened, oh, okay. We could tag along with these guys, we could peel off at the appropriate time and then patrol in, which was away from where they were going, and try and hit this target. And they said, okay, well, you'll have airborne assets all the time. You're on the ground, in the water, and it's like, wow, you know, here we were down at Dung island, where we. It was a hard time to get a helo gunship to support us. And now you can have anything you want, lad. So I get left Saigon, came back down, got together with the guys, Barry, Solano, De Cross, and, okay, let's plan this thing out. And so the plan was we're gonna. We're gonna peel off from this big operation. As they're motoring up this waterway, we're gonna do a slow motion cast off this boat and go up this waterway in the water, not swimming, but you could touch bottom most of the time and get up to an area where we could logger and then wait and then go in the next morning. And again they said, we'll have air assets all night long till you go in. And they had already run photo reconnaissance of this Thing. And I had pictures of, okay, somebody, some photo interpreter someplace that said, yeah, here's this down nip, a palm frond, and there's probably a sampan hidden underneath that thing. And here's this.

[A]

Did you see any people in the pictures?

[C]

No. No. And they. There was. There was no kind of infrared imaging or anything like that was all based on this agent, the source. Yeah. And we did the patrol. We. We waited. Rained like crazy. It was. It was a miserable.

[B]

It was the most cold. It was the coldest night I ever spent in Vietnam.

[C]

Yeah, it was.

[B]

By far.

[A]

And the rain was like.

[C]

The rain was like.

[A]

Biblical.

[B]

Yes.

[C]

Biblical, yes.

[A]

Yeah, that's. I mean, Barry talks about in the book. He's just insane.

[C]

Rain Mike. Mike said at one point, goes over to Doc Brown, he says, my hands. Look at my hands. They're all shriveled up. They're all white. Doc Brown says, God damn it, Sands, my hands are white and I'm a black man. Yeah.

[A]

You guys had two black guys in the platoon, huh?

[C]

Yeah, actually, that was to my knowledge that we were the only platoon that had two African Americans.

[B]

And they were both good.

[C]

Oh, top notch. Yeah.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

So we get in.

[A]

Oh, yeah, because that's. That's the story that. That's why. That's why I brought that up. Because the story that Barry tells is like their lap, like everyone's. It's raining so hard that when. Who was it when Doc Brown says, you know, look. Look at my hands, and I'm black. And everyone was laughing out loud because it was raining so hard.

[C]

No one could hear. The noise would not have carried 10ft.

[A]

Okay, the rain lets up.

[C]

The rain lights up. It's. It's getting close to daybreak. We're moving out to hit the camp area. And by God, here's that nipple palm frond just like I saw in the picture.

[B]

We got.

[C]

Nobody had been in this area for 50 years. I don't think that agent. I am sure it was known that if you were an agent and you just said the word American prisoner, you were going to get extra pay. And I don't know why the army didn't vet this guy more strongly, but it was a complete dry hole, which was unfortunate.

[B]

Another thing I remember about that night is, you know, we. We were in the canals a lot, trying to avoid booby traps, and you'd get a lot of leeches. But that night, right under my jean, right in here, when I got out, I had a leash about a little bit longer than my index finger.

[C]

I Remember it as being bigger, actually.

[B]

Yeah, it was huge.

[C]

You know what a banana slug is up in Pacific North? It looked like a freaking banana slug.

[B]

It was huge.

[A]

Did you guys ever wear the pantyhose? Some guys would wear pantyhose to keep the leeches off of that.

[C]

I. I heard about it.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I didn't.

[C]

I guess my male ego was too.

[A]

Just blue jeans. I got a company, we make blue jeans. Do you know that?

[B]

No.

[A]

I got a company. We. It's called Origin and we make American made 100American made jeans with 100American made materials. And we have the jeans. One one set of the jeans. Our most popular jeans are called the Delta 68 jeans. And the reason I named them Delta 68 was for you guys. Being in the Mekong Delta in 68, that was just. I thought it was the best name for a pair of jeans.

[C]

I guess I gotta get.

[A]

I think I can get you guys some Delta 68 jeans since they're named for you guys. So no dry hole. How's morale after that? Just another dry hole. I mean, it's not that big of a deal, but it's a pretty big deal for most Americans.

[C]

Well, there's a letdown.

[B]

It was a big letdown. And the reason is we were so excited that we were going to be able to get an American or two or three or whatever it was. We were really gung ho thinking that this was really going to be great for those guys.

[A]

Yeah, I mean, we kind of skimmed over it. But when the boss is telling the team, hey, listen, we're going to take at least 50% casualties. You know, this is volunteer only and everyone volunteers. You know, that's. That's what frogmen do. Another one that you talk gave me notes on was the frogman. I have frogman boat boat insertion. This was like a. A willing guide that was going to take you guys to a VC camp.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

How'd this one go down?

[C]

Well, I'm sure there was some skepticism in the ranks on this one. So we started out in. What was it? We. I think we started out in a Coast guard boat and then transferred to a Vietnamese junk. And then the skimmer. The problem with the skimmers was they didn't have enough range to get all around the Dung island complex area. And so you had to tow them or they'd run out of gas to get to someplace. So you'd get a towboat to get you someplace so you could start the engines up to get you in and get you back out. And then Tow back. Anyway, this one was the final little waterway that led in towards this target area, was deeply constricted with vegetation, and we figured the only way we're ever going to get in there was the classic old ibs, the rubber boat.

[A]

Get your boat crews together.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And this is what you're picking up from imagery. Is this how you're do. You're planning the operation? Do you have overhead? Did you guys do flyers, flyovers of the year, and take your own photographs?

[C]

No. It was so hard, so hard to get a helo. To get a helo because you'd have to drive into Sock Trang, which recollection served me. That was like an hour and a half, two hour ride to get to Sock Trang, which is where the army had assets. So it was either the photo runs that they'd done with the 3D stuff, but this was so heavily canopied that there was no way you could see. So we were relying on what the.

[A]

Oh, what the source was saying.

[C]

Yeah, got it. And he was right. And we had a hard time finding this little waterway. We actually started up one and then. Oh, no, this isn't the right one. Went back out and reinserted and it was.

[A]

What are you guys using for nav?

[C]

Oh, just the.

[A]

Just the map and compass.

[C]

Map and compass. And that was. That was it. Because the LSSC didn't have anything. And it wasn't until right at the end of the tour, we got a medium which did have some kind of. Some radar.

[A]

Yeah. So you're out there at night. This is at night. Nighttime operation. And you got it. You're on a waterway. Are you just. Is a point man looking at his map the entire time? Are you looking at the map the entire time?

[C]

We were relying on the guide.

[A]

Okay, got it, Got it.

[C]

Because it's like this black.

[A]

Yeah. It's totally dark.

[C]

Yeah. You could. I don't know how the guy found it just because he lived there all the time.

[A]

Yeah, well, that's. That's what I was trying to figure out. Like, how would you be able to navigate? Like, I've been navigating jungle rivers with a GPS and it's easy to get lost. So just being out there with a map and compass at night, there's nothing to shoot bearings off. Like, that's, that's, that's rough. You know, you can get a little terrain nav. You know, when you go around the beach bend, you're like, oh, I know where we are right now, but that's tricky. And so then You. You guys get up this small little river, and then what happens?

[C]

So I actually had to get out of the IBS and tow it. And I had Solano up there at the bow with his stoner, and I actually felt safe in the water. Like, if anybody opens up on us, I'm in the water. That's good. Those guys are in the railroad. So we got up there, we found this camp. It was a deserted base camp. Nobody was home, which was good in a way, but it was like. I couldn't believe. Here we are. It's like triple canopy jungle, and there's no way you'd see this from overhead. And there was sleeping areas, cooking area. It was like we just stumbled into a minicamp. Penalty.

[A]

Was it freshly used, or was it, like, had anyone been that recently?

[C]

It was freshly used in the sense that there wasn't any warm cooking fires or anything. But it had been in use, obviously. And the guides said, well, I know that there's some leaders that are over. So we just kept on patrolling until we. We came down this little tree line, and there was a target who just. Just luck. Just luck. They'd been holding a meeting, and we showed up beautiful. And it was just a mad sprint, Solano and I and the guys following behind and broke up this meeting.

[A]

And so they got a campfire going. Is it night? No.

[C]

By now, we'd gotten through the night. It was early morning. Early morning, early morning.

[A]

And these guys are. They're awake or they're awake.

[C]

They were actually literally having a meeting in this hooch. You know, it was like, here's. Here's the county council. The VC county council is having a meeting.

[A]

And you guys. You know, this is like, when I. So when I got to team one, you know, they would teach us, you know, try and teach us to patrol through the jungle. Right? Quiet. But I never feel like we really got that skill down, you know, because we were. We just didn't get enough time doing it. But for you guys to be quiet enough to get close to an enemy hooch, and they must. Had no suspicion whatsoever that anybody would be in their al.

[C]

Because this litter, this area that we had come through was dense jungle, triple canopy jungle. I don't know. No normal US Force ever come through that.

[A]

And so this is actually devils with green faces.

[C]

They actually had the security force for the meeting, but it was positioned around the areas where they thought conventional forces would have come from. So it was like they were guarding the front door, and we came in the back door.

[A]

So as they're how far away are you when you see this hooch?

[C]

We're probably. I was probably 50 yards.

[A]

50 yards. Do you get closer? Do you get online? What's your call as a platoon commander?

[C]

My call was there were some kids, okay. And these kids were playing, and they looked up and they saw us. And it was kind of like that junk op where it's like, where the hell did these guys come from? And literally, Solano and I took off at a dead sprint to the hooch. And the squad's following us. And Solano. Solano carried a stoner with a drum feed, so. So he could have 150 rounds. And he typically like the first 25 rounds. He made every other round a tracer. So when he opened up, it was kind of like a laser beam. Anyway. We just hit that thing full bore. Guys were spilling out, and we just took him under fire and started policing things up. And then, of course, as we started policing things up, the security force woke up and started reacting. I do remember one guy where this hooch was located, there was a small irrigation ditch. I remember he had a felt hat on, and he was making his way down the irrigation ditch. I don't know why he wasn't using the dike line, but he was making his way down the irrigation ditch. And I could clearly sight him. And I didn't hit him with the first round, but I hit him with the second round. And then they said, hey, come on. There's all kinds of documents and stuff here. Believe there was a radio. There was a pistol that was the exact replica of a.45.911, but it had been made in some jungle gun shop, and the two halves had been brazed together. But it was a functioning. 45 was the. That was the weirdest weapon I ever saw. It was a dead replica of a 1911.45.

[A]

Was the. The reaction from the guards. Did you guys just kill them too?

[C]

No, they. They were covered enough. They were shooting at us, and it was time. It's like, there's a bunch of these guys. We need to get the heck out of here.

[A]

So then you started your break contact drill?

[C]

Yeah. Yeah, so we did. Yeah, we did the classic. Broke up into two elements and cover. Move. Now we cover you. Move. And fortunately, we had the again OV10s. We did get some gunships from Soc Trang, army gunships. They came in and they. They helped us out to get out, and they covered us all the way out. We got back in those rubber boats, and of course, now it's broad daylight. And we even got a picture of the guys in the rubber boat and a gunship about 50 meters above the water.

[A]

Dang.

[B]

I think that I remember trying to get an army helicopter called in. And I can't remember if it was this operation. It was definitely one operation where they said, no, it was too hot. And ov10s who. We didn't even know they were in the air. They could hear us. My call sign was threadbearers. Threadbare, Thread bearer, Black pony. We can't come pick you up, but we'll blow a hole out of there for you. And they come in like these crop dusters. I mean, it was the most wonderful, glorious thing I've ever seen. I don't know if it was that op or a different op.

[A]

What would those guys shoot? Did they have. What'd they shoot?

[C]

Oh, the OV10s, they had a combination of rockets and guns. So they, you know, the. The seawolves had 2.75 rockets and the OV10s had 5 inch rockets. And they also had. They had a. A 20 millimeter. Oh, dang cannon pod.

[A]

Wow.

[C]

And they also had 762.

[A]

Oh, so they're getting it done.

[C]

Yeah. And I. I actually got a ride with an OV10 in Vietnam that supported a SEAL platoon on.

[A]

And while you were in. While you were with them?

[C]

Yeah. Yeah.

[A]

Oh, that's epic.

[C]

It was. I mean, because of my aviation.

[A]

Oh, that's right. I forgot your background, your storied aviation career as a naval almost aviator and.

[C]

The connection we had with the guys in Ventua. I'd gone up there and said, think I could get a backseat ride? And they took me up and it just happened that there was a platoon hitting a target, and I got to watch these guys work out. And it was just awesome. Awesome.

[A]

And they got to go home and sleep in a regular bed.

[C]

They're not covered in leeches and good chow.

[B]

So. Talking about black ponies, I remember being on an operation. Barry was there. We were in a bad situation. I don't remember what the operation was. You probably. I hope you do. And so they came in and they were going to help us, and they asked us to pop a flare and then also to tell them how far from that anyway they were. So they said, how far do you want it? And I gave them some number. And Barry Enoch said, no, make that. I don't know. Some very short distance from us. And I can't remember the operation, but they blew the hell out of everything. And then we got out of there, and anyway, I don't remember. Look through spot reports, I guess.

[A]

Did he cut your number in half?

[B]

He did. I mean, it was like, crazy. I thought, sure, they were going to kill us.

[A]

How hard was it for you when you were up with the black ponies? How hard was it for you to see where friendlies were versus where the enemy was?

[C]

It was. It was crystal clear. It was a daylight hour. The platoon had gone in on a VC radio listening station where they monitored all the US frequencies. And it was interesting. The stuff they pulled out of there was. They knew, you know, back in those days, the prehistoric days. Guys. Yeah. I'm on the little blue. Well, they knew the little blue meant that was a little waterway. And they had a whole glossary of terms that US Troops would use to try and code things. They knew what it all meant. It was like, oh, my God, we better. We better clean up our act here.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. I remember reading about. I think they called them parakeet ops when the. Oh, when the seals would go in on helicopters and just hit targets and usually daytime. And hit them, you know, land basically right on the target, which is something. Again, I never did any helicopter operations, but I know, like, guys in Afghanistan and Iraq, they would do that where they'd fly in, like, hit, land on the target, land right next to target, and land on top of the target. So that tradition carried on. So that's where you were supporting one of those parakeet type operations.

[C]

Well, no, these guys had patrolled.

[A]

Oh, they patrolled him.

[C]

They patrolled into this target and the parakeet ops kind of.

[B]

I.

[C]

We had a hard time getting Hilo support once we moved away from Ben Love.

[A]

Yeah. I was gonna say, it's just your location wasn't optimal. Right.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And you guys were just full frog men in boats and water.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Do you guys ever do an op where you were dry?

[C]

No. Because. Because you had. You had to get. You had to go on water to get to wherever you were going to get, and you were going to get wet and certain.

[A]

Full on.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

What'd you wear for. For footwear?

[C]

Jungle boots.

[A]

Both jungle boots.

[C]

We, Barry, on a previous tour, had gone barefoot on a number of operations, and I don't know. I never tried it.

[B]

I.

[C]

My feet are too tender.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's. That's the American thing, you know, is that we got soft feet. But I did hear about guys going barefoot. I know, like, getting told, like, hey, when you run on the beach, run barefoot. So your feet are Tough. So you can. So the VC won't. They'll take your boots if they catch you. And of course, this is 1990, but, you know, like, you guys thought you were going to Vietnam when you went into 1960. Whatever. I thought I was going to Vietnam in 1990. I read those books. I'm like, there's good. Got to be going on somewhere. So now, as. As we're getting good op tempo, are you starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel of deployment? You know?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Any did how. What did the op tempo do? Did you. Do you stay steady? Did it pick up? Did it. Did it start to taper off as you guys get towards the end of deployment?

[C]

I would say it stayed steady. We ran some more ops after that bright light. Not a lot, though. I think that was really towards the end, the bright light. And then that's kind of. I remember things. The bright light, the letdown. But we still ran some. And I don't know where it fell in that thing. The time that Lacaz got when we were doing the insertion in that.

[A]

Oh, bit by a catfish.

[B]

He didn't get bit. He got stung.

[A]

Stung.

[C]

Yeah.

[B]

I will never, ever forget that, that operation. But I don't remember what the timing was on that, but I just remember, you know, we were on an llc. We go in anyway. We're now extracting and. Oh, I know what it is we'd been in now. I think it was. It was. I don't know if it was an LLC or something bigger than that.

[C]

Was that mssc?

[B]

It was an mssc and it was coming in to pick us up. And so all of a sudden, Mike lacobs goes completely crazy. He is screaming glee. Blue bloody bird.

[A]

Are you guys, like, quiet at this point? Or had you just been in a big gunfight where now? Or are you guys, like a boat's coming to pick us up? Everyone keep quiet.

[B]

I think we were being quiet. I think we. I think I wasn't about waist deep water when this happened. All of a sudden, Michael Goss started screaming blue bloody murder. And what had happened is he was wearing jeans and a little catfish had come up in his jean pants. And it had a little prong on it. And so he went. He didn't know it was a catfish. He hit it. That damn thing hit. I mean, and it scared our. It scared our interpreter. He got so scared because there was a lot of, you know, poisonous snakes. He climbed a tree.

[C]

I don't think he climbed it. I think he shot up out of the Water.

[B]

So anyway, Mike, he gets up on the bow of the boat and he's flopping around, and Doc Brown had to give him.

[C]

Hit him with morphine. Yeah.

[A]

Oh, gosh.

[C]

And that still didn't make it. I think maybe the darn spike hit a nerve or something. He was in serious pain.

[B]

Well. And he thought he was going to die. He told me when I got up there that his first wife's name was Jill. He said, tell Jill I loved her. He doesn't like it when I tell him story.

[A]

So now it's packing up and time to go home.

[C]

Yeah. And so, because. So my aoc, aioc, John Duggar, had left the platoon early.

[B]

He.

[C]

He was getting out of the Navy. I don't know how this happened, but he had a plan. Time to get out of the Navy. And it was before we completed our tour. So I think we were. I think it was like, it was over a month, six, seven weeks before he took off. And again, Captain Shively, CEO of SEAL Team One, he sends me a message. He says, well, I'll send somebody over to act as your assistant. And I sent him a message back. And I said, captain, I really don't think that's feasible because I'd have to break the guy in. We got only six or seven weeks to go. Said, barry Enoch is a chief now. He's totally capable of being my assistant. And Shibley came back and said, okay. So Barry actually wound up being the assistant officer in charge of Charlie Bethune for the last six, seven weeks. And so when it came time for the platoon to head back to the States, I said, barry, you take the platoon back. I'll stay back and break in the next platoon. And Rich Solano, my point man, he volunteered to stay back with me to be this second person to break in the new platoon. And so I'll take off, go to Saigon. Solano, typical. He. He was not a drinker. And he said, I got. I got buddies that I went through training with and that I deployed with on my first trip. I want to go down and see them at Sea Float, which was down at the tip of the Delta, down in the. What they call the Namcan. And he had been stationed down there during his first tour before they built that Sea Float base. So he wanted to go down and see that. He went down there. He guest operated with a couple of the platoons down there and then was going to catch a helo back up. And that was when the. The helo went down. And there was five seals on that Helo. And they lost everybody on board.

[B]

It was so heartbreaking and shocking that he had been on a point man on all these damn operations. And the op is over. It landed on the sea float and now they take off. I mean, we were still in Vietnam when this happened.

[C]

Yeah. We were up in Saigon and we got the word. We got the word. And they asked us to go to the morgue to identify. And I took Cal and Barry and maybe one other guy. Did Mike Lataise go with us? I think.

[B]

I thought it was Mike Thornton, but I don't know.

[C]

Okay, yeah, maybe it was. Anyway, we went and ID'd the guys and that was a really, you know, bitter end to a successful tour. To lose, especially that way. I mean, I know, I know it's a bit of false pride, but the VC never would have got him. He was that good.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Toby Thomas, James Gore, John Durlin and John Donnelly.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The other guys that were killed on that helicopter crash.

[B]

So we knew all of them, you know. Yeah.

[A]

Because there's only, what, 150 guys at team one or something like that actually.

[C]

At that point, because we'd gone through that augmentation thing. So there was probably. My recall was there was. It was probably like 250 guys in the teams. Seal team one.

[A]

Yeah. Yeah. Which is still, I mean, compared to what I lived when I. You know, we had Seal Team 1, Seal Team 3, Seal Team 5, Seal Team 7, Seal Team 2, Seal Team 4, Seal Team 8. So they were tilting 10. So there was eventually, you know, you wouldn't really know everybody on the west coast, you know, a bunch of them, but you wouldn't. You wouldn't really know them. So for, you know, that small group of people, that's just a huge, huge loss. And then you. So you stayed Tom, to do some turnover operations with the platoon that came in.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And didn't you do a bright light in one of those?

[C]

Yeah, yeah, I. So the typical thing was you.

[A]

You.

[C]

The new platoon had come in and the old platoon would take them out, take each squad out on one op. And my mindset was I wasn't ready to go home, so I broke them in. I took them out on two ops, and then I went to other platoons and started guest operating with them. And I actually, I think I went out on three or four ops with three or four platoons. And then I came back to Longfu to Dung island, and they said, oh, we got this. We got this prison camp op. And here was the one where it was like, Mr. Locke, the interpreter for the Nilo, had made friends with somebody at the Chuhoy center. And this guy is willing to take us in. And not only that, but Mr. Locke had built a model of the prison camp. And it was like, oh, my God, this is. This is what we needed. Back when we had the bright light up and the new platoon, one of the guys was sick and he carried the 60, said, Tom, you carry the 60. And we went in on the op. It was ringed with concentric circles of booby traps. There was a hooch that was built over this irrigation ditch, and the hooch was built over the irrigation ditch and extended out. They kept these guys at night in leg irons. They had these, basically a shackle, and they'd run an iron rod through the shackle to keep their legs secure. We thought, well, if we come up the irrigation ditch with the. Which they can't booby trap because of the tidal influence. And we hit him in the dark. The guards supposedly slept over the irrigation ditch and the prisoners were off here that we could hit the guard section. And we kind of. I gave my input and said, you know, let's get in there, log her over. Because it's a long enough slog to get in there that you can't get in there and still be sure you're going to hit them while it's dark. So log her over for a day. Well, the plan changed and we wound up going straight in. And the ditch was so muddy that they got up and started using the dike line. They found the first couple of booby trap tripwires, but the third one they missed. Fortunately, the thing went low order, so the point man and the interpreter got peppered with some shrapnel. But of course, the guards initiated their emergency procedures, so. And they. And they sent a guy towards us and this little irrigation ditch, he come, he's coming down in this little bitty sampan. We smoked him, and then I moved up with a 60 and we hosed the place down. We had air assets overhead. The fortunate thing was that there was. I. I forget whether it was three, four, six people. In the chaos of the evacuation, these guys escaped from the guards and made their way to friendly. So we got some debriefing about. There were no US POWs at the camp.

[A]

So those POWs were Vietnamese.

[C]

They were all Vietnamese, mostly Arvins or local force guys.

[B]

So.

[A]

Incredible.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. And at least some of them got away. And what amazed me again, though, was Mr. Locke's model was just spot on. I Mean, it was. It's the kind of intelligence that you dream of and hope for.

[A]

Yeah, that's pretty impressive.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

And then you end up going home sometime after that operation.

[C]

Yeah, it was shortly after that operation, actually. Captain Shibley showed up for a tour of Vietnam, and he shows up, and I was there, and. Boyan, what the hell are you doing here? You better beat me back to the Strand or you're in trouble.

[A]

Nice.

[B]

What a great, great commanding officer.

[C]

He was. He was a mustang. He was. He was. He was revered.

[A]

Well, speaking of your commanding officer, you guys get back and he. He wrote this, and you're fit rep. He said, as a SEAL Team 1 platoon commander, he established the most impressive combat record of any SEAL platoon ever deployed to the Republic of Vietnam. Vietnam. Lieutenant Boyan deployed with his platoon to the Republic of Vietnam in December of 1969 and has established a most impressive record of aggressive, determined action against the enemy. Completely isolated from supporting arms normally available to US Units in the field, Lieutenant Boyan and his platoon nevertheless regularly conducted clandestine night operations deep into the surrounding enemy base area, returning with valuable intelligence material that has resulted in inflicting heavy losses of men and material upon the enemy. End quote.

[C]

I just would inject that. That was Charlie Patone.

[A]

What I said.

[C]

No, no, no. I mean, I know it's the boys, what the words say, but it was Charlie Patoon. It was not Tom Boyne. It was Charlie Patoon. And it was the mix of people in that platoon that made those results possible.

[A]

Yeah, that's why we call it the SEAL teams.

[B]

Yes, I agree with what he just said, but sitting here doing this interview, you can understand why I wanted him here. And, you know, he was just. He was the best OIC you could ever imagine for a seal, too. You know, we all loved him. We all loved Enoch. We just had a. We just were. I guess we weren't just lucky because you kind of handpicked most of the people that were going to be in there, but we were pretty darn lucky.

[A]

Yeah. Hard work makes things. Makes. Makes good luck. That's for sure.

[C]

That's true.

[A]

You. You had your success rate from 1966 to 1969. You talked about those cards, the barn dance cards. The success rate had been for enemy contact was about 30%. Charlotte Patoons was 46%. With SEAL intel, and with the guides, it was 77%. With good intel and no guide. With good SEAL intel and no guide, it was 54%. General intel, no guide, 26%. So there's the. There's the lesson learned there. Make your intel get your intel.

[C]

When I did my end of tour report, it's not like I discovered that this was the formula, but I didn't feel like anybody had said, hey, here's metrics that bear this out that people should be focusing on in guiding the development of the teams that you need this intel package to go along with the men you got in the direct action platoons to really make it work. And obviously not just me. Lots of. I mean, Bob Peterson from SEAL Team 2, great example of. Yes. The, the importance of the intel and the operations.

[A]

Yeah, we, we had the same type of thing going on where occasionally we would get intel from like up the chain of command. Like, here's this target. Hit this target. And I didn't never did the percentages of it, quite frankly, because we didn't get too many of those. Most of the time we would not get, hey, here's a target. You guys go hit it. That happened to me probably a handful of times. Most of the time it was our Intel, SEALs and the intel shop that were working human intelligence, other forms of intelligence that would then, like I said, it was like going to a store, but they'd always have a sale. Like, you know, they'd come in and go, hey, we got this one right here. This is a source we've used five times before. He's been on every time. He'll go with us. Same exact thing. And if they were going with us, we felt really good about it. It's the same exact thing. So what's nice is I would have liked to have known this before I went on my first deployment to Iraq. It would have been very helpful for me to hear this because there were some times where we hit or we hit dry holes or we hit target buildings. We later, like one, I remember one, we found out later that the we hit this target. I walked into target, I was like, this is a really pretty nice house. And, you know, we end up finding out the guy's a doctor, and we're going, what the heck's going on here? And it turns out that his. He had fired like some housekeeper or someone. She was pissed at him. Well, she was pissed enough to tell the US Military that he was a bad guy.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And so, you know, we had to, you know, repair that situation that we did. But again, it was one of those times where I started saying, okay, let's figure out where this intel actually came from. And that's what you figured out is, you know, if you can have that Guide, a trustworthy guide that's been proven out, that's going to be much, much more effective. And the SEAL Team One detachment golf administrative superior Lieutenant Bruce Dyer. He said this. The analysis of intelligence support versus operational results was well thought out and takes into consideration most of the important parameters that influence the situation. One factor, however, was modestly overlooked. This is an important one, too. Given the same outstanding intelligence support, a less aggressive platoon would not have realized the same results. This is another thing that seems in, in the, in the SEAL teams in special operations, the leadership has to make things happen. Like, you're not getting told, hey, go do this operation. Go do this mission. You know, working with the army company commanders and platoon commanders, they're getting a mission tasking. This is what you are going to do tomorrow. You are going to go out, you're going to patrol this area, you're going to clear these buildings. And of course, you know, they're not being told exactly how to do it. And those guys are incredible, the way they, the way they execute on their missions. But for us, it's like we can kind of, at least for me, and it sounds like for you too, you can kind of pick and choose what you want to do. And it's a different type of pressure because the army guy's going, the Marine Corps guy is going because he's been told to go. And that is a type of pressure because you've got to accept the risk of what you're being told to do. For us, we say yes to a mission or we approve a mission, and, and we go on a mission, it's 100% on us. I mean, most, 99% of the time, it was my call that we were going to go and execute a mission, but it also could have been my call not to go and execute a mission. Be also be my call to say, well, you know, my buddy had a dream about me last night, maybe I won't go on this mission right now. And, you know, that stuff adds up. And I also had. And I wonder if you had this as well. There would be times, you know, we would joke, half joking, half real. You know, you hear the term no go criteria. So if this happens, we're not going. If this happens, we're not going. And I would jokingly, half jokingly say we have go go criteria because we're going. And that being said, sometimes it'd be like, oh, we lost this support asset. Okay, well, we're still going. We just got intel that there might be more bad guys on target. Well, we're still going. Oh, it looks like the aircraft that was going to be able to cover us from this time to this time is not going to be able to be there. Someone's telling me I shouldn't be really doing this hop right now. Maybe it wasn't Mike Thornton having a dream, a bad dream about me, but, you know, you start getting the multiple, multiple no go's, and you start saying, okay, this, this, this is a, you know, the big frogman in the sky trying to tell me this is not a good mission for you to send your boys on and for you to go on.

[C]

So.

[A]

So you might want to rethink this one. So did you experience that as well?

[C]

Yes. My last tour, I had a. Actually, the platoon had finished up and we boxed our weapons up and we were getting ready to fly back. And I had a. I had a SEAL contact me on an unsecure line and say, I want you to get your boys ready because we've got this operation that we want to go on. And I. First thing I said was, can we talk about this some other way?

[A]

So you ended up. But you ended up going back to Vietnam?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

You're a platoon commander again?

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Charlie Platoon again?

[C]

No, Romeo Platoon.

[A]

Romeo Platoon.

[C]

Okay. Anyway, in this case, I've got. He's not my operational commander, but he's telling me they've got this SEAL up and it. Actually, I saw it written up in a magazine. Here was the premise. And as soon as I tell you the premise, you're going to start laughing. They had captured a VC carrier pigeon.

[A]

Okay.

[C]

And the plan was we're gonna go up in a helo and we're gonna release the carrier pigeon and follow it in to where it goes. Interesting. And I'm thinking, I'm sorry, I know a little bit about poultry. And there's no way you're going to release a pigeon out of a hilo and follow it anywhere. If it doesn't get sucked into the intake of the engine, there's no way you're going to follow it. There's no aircraft maneuverable enough to follow a pigeon. And I wound up. I wound up telling this guy there was no way I would do that. And he called me a cowardly Boy Scout and questioned my heredity. But I said, no, sir, not going to do it. And there was not. That never hurt me in any way. And that's the way it should be. And I was given. I've talked to army vets, I've talked to Marine vets, and the Autonomy and latitude that we had as SEAL platoon commanders in Vietnam was just incredible. I mean, basically whoever was operationally in charge of us said, you know, I really don't know what you do. Just go do it and stay out of my hair. Except for Ben Luck. And then on my second tour, which was over on the west side of Vietnam, I even didn't even have any kind of physical or even message contact with my superior, my operational superior.

[A]

That was on your second tour?

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Where were you on your second tour?

[C]

Was in. Over in Rocksoi Rockjaw, which is on the Gulf of Thailand coast up near the Cambodian border.

[A]

And what year is this?

[C]

That would have been 71.

[A]

Did you get home and do a complete workup?

[C]

I got home in. It was early August of 70 and deployed in December of 70. And I had to lobby hard to get that platoon. I actually lobbied Captain Shibley to go over with X ray platoon as the assistant officer in charge. Unfortunately, he didn't do that.

[A]

So how was the second tour in Vietnam?

[C]

So the second tour was because that was the point where things were really winding down. And so having air support was a lot more sketchier. The army was turning everything over to the Vietnamese. The Navy was turning everything over to the Vietnamese. So all the PBR boats were being run by Vietnamese, fortunately had a good boat support group there. And it was. It was harder to get AO clearances again after being down at Dung island, where that was not a problem whatsoever. And again, it was that they had the pacification program. The army colonel who was the province senior advisor, I still remember that guy. He was a white haired, staunch gentleman. My province is 85% pacified, and I can drive from the west side over by Cambodia to the east side. I don't even need to take a weapon. And then he took a boat down to the southern part of the province, which was into the Yumen Forest, and he got blown away. He and a couple other guys got. I mean, they were living in a fantasy world in that respect. And so we did have some decent hits, but we didn't have the same. And I had great intel support within the platoon. I had two guys that had been PRU advisors and they were heavily into intel, but the lack of support was a big problem.

[A]

Yeah, so, like, what did your op tempo get down to? Like, were you doing?

[C]

We probably did two thirds of the ops that we did with Charlie, but was there soon. It was like we'd go sometimes three, four days without an op.

[A]

Yeah, because what Barry says in the book about Charlie platoon, we conducted 70 combat operations, netting 91 VCNVA KIA. By accurate body count, there were 11 VCNVAKA is probable 30 VCNVA wounded in action confirmed by intelligence report, 15 captured, and then numerous documents, weapons, supplies taken. And he also credits you. All of this was the result of Lieutenant Tom Boyan's aggressive and imaginative operational planning. He was, above all else, a professional warrior and the finest officer I ever served with in my 20 years of naval service. Some high praise right there.

[B]

High praise from a very important.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, high praise from. From a true warrior.

[B]

Yeah. But you did not mention on that last OP what happened.

[C]

Oh, so.

[A]

So is this the bright light OP or. No, this is the last stop you did on your second tour?

[C]

No, well, it wasn't the last stop, but it was. So the. Lester Moe was point man, and we went down to the Yumen Forest and we hit the target and he moved out to a secondary area. We had come in from the Gulf of Thailand through jungle, and first of all to come in from the Gulf of Thailand. There was about a quarter mile mud flat just to get to the shore. And we'd previously done an OP in that area where we had some SAS guys with us. By the time we got to shoreline, those guys were puking their guts out and saying, you guys are crazy. Anyway, we moved in on. So we got into the target area and hit the target area. The tax collector wasn't home, but all his tax receipts were there. And Les had moved out to a secondary area. And unfortunately that area was booby trapped and he was killed on that op. So he was the last SEAL killed in the jungles of Vietnam. Later, 72, Spence Dry was killed on that op. Out on the water where they were going in. They were going to use an SDV or something to go into a Mokey Martin. Yeah, Moki Martin was on that.

[A]

That was like a problem with the sdv. Something went sideways with the sdv.

[C]

Well, you were jumping out of a Hilo at night and Spence broke his neck on the jump. But. So, yeah, that was the. We ran some more ops after that, but that was the. That was my last tour. And then we were not relieved. There was. They were cutting down this. I had Charlie Platoon, had been an Augment platoon that did not relieve a platoon. My recollection was SEAL Team 2 had two platoons in country and SEAL Team 1 had four. And they jacked it up to six or seven, and then by 71, that was all winding down. And then 72, they were just down to Guys going over as advisors. And.

[A]

So when you got home, how was. Was that the. Your time in the Navy was done?

[B]

No, when we got back from Charlie Platoon, you know, Barry Enoch, my sea daddy, he went out to something called SAT SEAL Advanced Training in Cuyamaca, and he got me to go along with him. And then after that, he was made a cadre instructor. And so he told Captain Shively he thought I should go be a cadre instructor. And so that's what I did for the last two years was be a cadre instructor out at. Mostly out at Nyland.

[A]

And what made you decide you wanted to get out?

[B]

Oh, it's kind of a long story.

[A]

But basically, another girl broke your heart?

[B]

Kind of. I'm very lucky that I ended up with who I did. But my dad. Well, first of all, about that time, I just remember as a cadre instructor, somebody told me that I was supposed to take. Tell the guys that we were training, that we weren't supposed to shoot at the enemy unless they shot at us first. So seriously, I'm not kidding you, this actually happened, you know, so. But the other thing is, my dad, I was the first of six kids. He was a huge influence in my life. And he, you know, he just said, hey, I really think that you are meant to be, you know, a family man. And basically he said, yeah, I just. I don't think this is a great career for a guy with a family man. But something else had also happened, and that is at that time, I think they now call it a sailor to admiral or something like that. That program, at that time, they had a program called a necept program, Navy Science engineering program. And so I passed the test for that. And then this guy comes and has a talk with other people that had passed it, not in SEAL teams. But at the end, he says, anybody got a question? I said, I have a question. I want to make sure that after I go back east to college and get my degree, I just want to make sure I'm coming back to SEAL team. He said, well, I can guarantee you you're not going to go back to SEAL team. You're going to have to go be riding a ship or somewhere in the Navy for two years, which, you know, for the whole social ostracization between me being an enlisted guy and coming back as an officer, which. So anyway, that and my dad's advice, I left. But I will tell you that, and I think I've already told you, and Tom already knows this. You know, being in SEAL team, it was A short period of time, you know, four years and I was out. But it was a really, really, really huge part of my life. And it continues the things, the lessons that I learned. You know, I'm 76 years old. I still feel like, you know, I have a lot of lessons learned and you know, somehow or another I ended up after I got out of the Navy with several crash and burns. Remember that old ABC Sports thing that said the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat? Well, I experienced those but you know, I recovered from that and I just don't think, you know, so after all of that, I eventually, the last many years of my career, I had a very successful career and I just don't think it would have happened if it hadn't been my SEAL team training and all of that. So.

[A]

And you, you actually, you were like several million dollars in debt after you, what was it? The, the crisis of the re. Of the interest rates in the 70s.

[B]

Yeah, I wasn't several million dollars in bed. What had happened is. So yeah, in 19, I guess it was. Think about this for a minute. About 1977, myself and a couple of other guys, we thought we knew something about home building and so we started building homes and San Diego Federal gave us lots of construction loans and everything was just hunky dory there for a while. And then all of a sudden about 1979 ish, somewhere in that area of time, interest rates just skyrocketed. So they prime rate, prime rate, like that's the good rate that they give to good borrowers. Went to 21%. Well, I had San Diego Fed was our lender and we had a whole bunch of millions of dollars of construction loans. So those construction loans were at prime +1 22. But you can't pay off the construction loan until you sell the house. Mortgage rates are at 15%. Can't sell a house when it's 15%. So anyway, it was just a disaster. We lost everything. I mean we sold our home. We here, I was a home builder and been in the real estate business. Denise and I had to sell our home and we had to go live in the house with another guy who was a bachelor. You know, Denise didn't like living in somebody else's house. But anyway, it was a terrible, terrible mess. You can't even believe how bad it was. But anyway, somehow another I did recover from that. And so a few years later, so we were at a very much of a negative net worth. We didn't have a home. It was terrible. Oh, and oh by the way, the only job I could finally get was I was making $29,500 a year there for a while, but at least it was regular. And we had health care. That's what Denise cared about. But anyway, so, yeah, so I eventually was able to pay off. I had about $965,000 that I owed.

[A]

Not quite a million.

[B]

That was, you know, at a very high interest rate. So anyway, I got, I got lucky actually. But I also had some skills to go with it. And so anyway, in a few years, so I started a business on in May of 1984 and in 1987 I was back to a zero net worth. Hallelujah.

[C]

He paid everybody off though.

[A]

Yeah, nobody.

[C]

He doesn't know anybody. He paid them off. That to me that's the measure of a man.

[A]

Yeah, indeed. And you don't live in a. Someone else's apartment anymore?

[B]

No, I don't. We own our own home. We own our own home now for quite a while. So anyway.

[A]

And how many kids you got?

[B]

I have four kids and I have 10 grandkids and I have one great grandson and one great granddaughter. And so Denise and I have been married for 51 years.

[A]

It's amazing. Amazing. So what, and what about you, Tom? So you get done with your tour to your second tour to Vietnam and what comes after that?

[C]

So when I came back from that second tour, I was, I became the Ops Officer of SEAL Team 1. I also had the collateral duty of nuclear safety officer. That's back in the days when we had the hand delivered nuke, the tactical.

[A]

Yeah, hand carried Nuke.

[C]

Mark 54 Satm Small Atomic Demolition munition. And there's change of command, new commanding officer. We were undergoing an admin inspection and a nuclear safety inspection and they were downsizing the teams. I remember at one point the master at arms, old Claude Willis literally had, I don't know where he found all these push brooms, but he had the guys out in the parking lot line abreast with push brooms, sweeping the parking lot simply to keep them busy.

[A]

And guys to the fleet too.

[C]

Oh yeah, there was the Dirty 30, I think was called, where they sent guys, went through training. You're going to a ship and anybody that had any kind of infraction, it was like, you're out of here. It was some difficult times. So I, and, and I knew that I was not going to be. I was either going to a staff or a ship. And I just.

[B]

You told me you did not want to be a desk jockey.

[C]

Yeah, Yeah, I just couldn't see that. So I got out and I got. Initially I got on my motorcycle. It was February. And I was decided I was going to do a cross country trip on.

[A]

A motorcycle in February starts good in California. Yeah.

[C]

When I got to Texas, I hit an ice storm. I spent three or four weeks there. When I got to Atlanta, they had a freak snowstorm. So I finally got smart, rented a van, took the motorcycle back up to New York, and then I got ready to go on a backpack trip on what was then the Pacific Crest Trail. That was mostly a dream. I did 800 miles of that and then went back to school. I was going to be. Instead of a vet trin, I was going to become a veterinarian and went back to school to pick up all the chemistry and biology microbiology credits I needed. And when I went to Cornell, the admissions officer said, you're too old.

[A]

How old were you?

[C]

I was 31. And if I had been persistent, I could have got in, I'm sure. But it was like, well, I just spent a year and a half in Buffalo, New York, living in a basement apartment through a winter. I think I've had enough school. And I wound up going into farming. And I wound up managing the largest commercial hog operation. New York State. Did that for about 15 years and then wanted to change careers and gears and gotten contact with an old seal buddy who was living in Seattle because I was thinking about going to New Zealand. And he said, hey, come on out, stay with me. I'm going on a backpack trip up in the Cascades. And when I went on that backpack trip is when I met my wife.

[A]

Nice.

[C]

And we met in 86, got married in 88. Been together for 37 years. Done a lot of backpacking. And we got into llamas. We had llamas that we packed in the mountains with. Did another 800 mile trip in the Sierras, one time for three months. And then because I was on the west coast, now I wound up going to work at this little company that made Stone Hearth pizza ovens. And so that's. So my tagline is I was a frogman, a hogman, and a pizza man. He's humble.

[A]

And I know you're humble too, Hal, because you know, you've been very, very successful in your world with what you've done done. And I know you're, you're being humble and, you know, you tell your story, but you're extremely successful businessman and generous.

[C]

I would say, you know, when I.

[A]

Talk to you guys and I I kind of talked about this a little bit before we hit record today, but, you know, a lot of times veterans have the. The image or the reputation. And I will say I. You know, I said this before the podcast. I said, especially Vietnam veterans. But I. I think it's actually my generation of veterans has an equally. An. Equally. An equal reputation of really having problems adapting back to the world when their time in the military is done. What was it like? I mean, both you guys kind of carried on and, you know, carried on with your lives and had businesses and families and jobs and did normal stuff.

[B]

You know what I think is that, again, so a lot of Vietnam veterans never had a welcome home. When we came home, we'll see. We came back to Coronado and team guys gave us a welcome home.

[A]

Yeah, seriously.

[B]

And so I just. I think that we were very, very lucky that we had that kind of support when we came home. For a long time after I got out, I really didn't have anything to do with the military. Finally, I went to a reunion down in Naval Reserve or something in Pearl Beach. That was the first one that I'd been to. And I go in there, and John Ware and Lee Pittman are in there, and. And I laughed and laughed and laughed. And so I, you know, I started going to reunions. And then, actually, Frank Toms used to host a Vietnam UDT SEAL reunion at his house out in kind of Pine Valley. And then his wife had als, and then he sent out an email to all of us that he couldn't do it anymore. And I took the email in to Denise, and I said, read this. She read it. She looked up at me, she said, are you wanting to move this reunion to our house? I said, well, can we? So we lived in Bonita. We had a great big yard, everything. And so we had it there for. In fact, Tom came down and helped us set everything up.

[A]

What years are these?

[B]

I guess this is. Help me out here.

[C]

Early 80s?

[B]

No, no, it was past early. Yeah, it was somewhere around 86 or 87, I think.

[A]

Well, you had a house, a big house with Bonita. So we were at least out of there.

[B]

We had a small house, but we had a great big yard.

[A]

Got.

[B]

And so, anyway, we hosted it there for a few years. And then what happened is my daughter and her husband moved from the Bay Area down to Carlsbad, and they had twins that just graduated from high school, and now they're both in college, but I was working, and I was having to commute to New York City at that Time and because now we had sold our business to Citibank and now I'm having to go back there like every week. And so Denise was in Bonita, they were in Carlsbad, 41 miles apart, and Denise can't drive at night. So when they needed help, you know, they had some childcare, but they always needed Denise to come do something, so she just couldn't do it anymore. So she said, I think we didn't need closer to them. So we sold that house and we moved to Bonita. And I mean, Solana Beach. Excuse me. And so then we didn't have a place to have it. So then I'm running all over the place trying to figure out where we can have this party now. And so I was talking to Paul Plum and he gave. He said, you know what? The Commodore, the Coronado Yacht Club's my neighbor, maybe he can help. So we started hosting it there, and we did for many years. And then what happened is, you know, I talked to Bob Schultz, the Old Frogs and Seals, and saying, how about you take this thing over? And. And so he did. And so. And he's done a great job.

[A]

So you're the origin of the old Frogs and Seals Club?

[B]

No, I'm the. No, I, I was in Old Frogs and Seals with him and I went there all the time. But no, I got him to take over the. It was called the Vietnam era seal part. Got it at the Cornell Yacht Club, and we did that for a number of years. But then, you know, I just couldn't do it anymore. And so I was just too busy. So I asked Bob to take it over and he, he said, well, I'll take it over if you get on my board of Old Frogs and Seals. So that was a good trade. And then he changed it because, you know, the old Frogs and Seals used to have a party in April call the Spouse's Dinner. And so he now calls it the Spouse's Dinner because he moved it around. A lot of the old seals do not like it being called the Spouse's Dinner, but I'm thrilled that he took it over because he does a great job and it's good.

[A]

Yeah, yeah.

[C]

And.

[A]

And then there's the UDT Seal reunion, which when I was a young seal, I would go to and it would be no young seals there. I would be like me and my, my, my running mate and roommate at the time, Chris, who is another seal, and we would go and we would sit around and like little flies on the wall. This is, this was when I Hadn't even deployed yet. But I heard that we could go. And so I was like, let's go. And there's going to be a bunch of Vietnam guys there. Of course, old Vietnam guys at the time were like 40, you know, and. But we'd sit there and listen to you guys talk and ask you guys questions about, you know, whatever we fantasized about, because that's what it was for us, you know, sit around and talk to you guys and. And now we've got this. The museum. The museum. Again, we were all there last night and walking through, man, they did a terrific job with. With the UDT Seal Museum in San Diego, California. Walking through there was your. What was your impression of it?

[C]

Well, I was blown away. I've never been to Fort Pierce. It's on the other side of the country and it's not a convenient place to get to for me. So I'm super glad that they've done this because, number one, it's going to be accessed by a lot of people outside the community. And the message about the history of seals, the origins Vietnam on through to global war on terror, I mean, just the exhibitary is really great and it's going to impact a lot of people. I think as a result, people outside the community, which is what you want to do is communicate about this history and about the. I really like the concept about the service to community. If I was running things, we'd reinstitute a draft, but it would be a national service draft, and that would include teachers and health care workers and garbage collectors and National Park Service and everything just to bring people to have a sense of value for the country and that. Contribute. Contribute to something that's bigger than yourself.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. That's the theme.

[B]

Well, I think, you know, I spent years and a lot, a lot of time and treasure working on this and. And early on we got several seals together and talk about what do we want to have in this museum? What do we want it to show? And one of the things that we wanted to do is when we were in, we were called the quiet professionals. And then along came some people who weren't so quiet. And so anyway, we just kind of want to reclaim the narrative what really seals are. And we wanted to be able to explain that this group of people, frogs and seals, have been around for 80 years. Not many companies have remained for 80 years. Some have, but. And then talk about why have they been able to change with the times for 80 years and remain relevant, you know, in doing a very tough job and so, you know, we think that has a lot to do with selection, training, training, training, training, and teamwork and all that kind of stuff. So I think what I believe is going to happen is I believe that our visitors are going to leave there. And I'm talking about, you know, people from out of state, from wherever. I think people will leave there with sort of a contagious patriotism, good patriotism, about being a good neighbor and serving some way, as you said, you know, there at the end, on the call to action, serve. Everybody can serve. You can do something, you know, help a neighbor, you know, And I really like that message. And I don't think that we in any way acted. I don't think it comes across as, you know, we're a bunch of mean old warriors and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I really like the way it came out, and so I'm very, very happy. I think we. We did a really good job of being able to show through these exhibits all of the history, all of the, you know, the wetsuits that people used long ago and far away and all that kind of stuff, all those dive.

[A]

Rigs, all the old weapons.

[B]

Yeah. And so. And I just think people learn a lot. And, you know, you were there last night. My friend Doug Allred was there. You know, he was in class 22 before there were seals. He was just so proud and so blown away. I mean, I'm getting texts from him, you know, this morning. He just loved it. And I mean, so I think everyone in our community will love it. But almost more important, I think. I think civilians and, you know, people coming in from Iowa or Texas or wherever they are, I think they'll be motivated by it. And so I'm really excited about it.

[A]

Yeah, it's incredible to go down there. If you're listening to this and you're Interested in it, navysealmuseum.org is the website where you can check it out. It's also on social media, Instagram and Twitter. X is Navy UDT SEAL Museum. And then on Facebook, it's at Navy National, Navy UDT SEAL Museum. And it's. It's. It's awesome. There's one in Fort Pierce, Florida. The original ones in Fort Pierce, Florida. That's where the original underwater demolition teams and NCDUs train down there to get ready. And. And so that's where they put the first museum. And that's an awesome museum as well. It's incredible. And then we got this one out here on the West Coast. It's by the USS Midway which is so you can go and do a tour of the USS Midway, which is an incredible, you know, living museum. And you walk a couple blocks and you could be at the UDT Seal Museum, which you can learn about the history of the SEAL teams where we came from. And it's really, really a powerful place. So.

[B]

And I'd like to give credit to the Midway because they were very helpful to us to decide all kinds of things. You know, ticket pricing, you know, estimates of how many visitors we'd have a year, all those kind of things. But one of the most important things they did is they, you know, they have docents on the Midway. Every time I go to the Midway, I think the docents are what make the tour, and they are. And they turned over their whole docent program to us, and we are using their same docent instructions. And so I really, really appreciate all of their help. They've been very, very good.

[A]

And I was an English major, and when I first heard the term docent, I had no idea what they were talking about. That's a tour guide. And I'll have to figure out what the etymology of the word docent is. Do you know what it is? I don't know where it comes from. I never heard anybody say it until I heard Todd Perry say, you know, well, these people are going to be docent. So I'm like, okay, well, yeah, I have to go look that one up. But that's a tour guide. And if you go to the USS Midway, they have these tour guides that know all this information, and they walk you around, they point all these little details out to you. And so they'll have the same thing at the Udtc museums. When you're looking at the Stoner 63, which they have there, and the M60 with the. With the stock sawn off, I mean, it's just. It's. It's epic. So that's it. UDTC Museum. Yeah.

[B]

Yeah. Well, one other thing I want to say, I greatly appreciate you and Leif Babin leading from the front and making very, very generous donations. Thank you very much.

[A]

Well, as I told you when you said that to me, the SEAL teams, I tell people all the time, the SEAL teams gave me everything, and I try and give back what I can and know that. That you do this exact same thing because you feel the exact same way. So likewise. And back at you.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Does that get us up to speed?

[B]

Yep.

[C]

Yes.

[A]

Hal, you got any final thoughts?

[B]

No, except that I hope that everyone understands why when you've asked me to be on the podcast before I end. Insisted on having him here, and I'm so glad, and I'm sure you're so glad that he was here.

[A]

No doubt. And I can see we've only touched on the second tour that you did to Vietnam. So I have to come back and we'll. We'll. We'll rehash that one and then maybe come back with you Hound, give some of your business lessons learned, because, again, you were real humble about going from negative 906, 965,000 to one where you ended up, which is in a much different spot. So maybe we need to learn some of those lessons as well. How you applied the. The seal, the SEAL leadership and SEAL lessons learned to your business world. Because it. It worked.

[B]

It did work.

[A]

Tom, you got anything? Anything else?

[C]

Well, just thanks for having me. I'm impressed with your operation here and got to give a shout out to Echo Charles and his biceps that have their own zip code.

[A]

I'm telling you, you're gonna make him so happy with those comments. Awesome. Well, honestly, it's. It's such an honor for me to sit here with you guys. Like I said, I joined the SEAL teams because of guys like you. That's. That's what I wanted to do. That's what. When I saw what you guys did, the reputation that you had, that's. That's. That's why I joined the Navy, because of guys like you.

[B]

And, well, then you make us all proud, really.

[A]

Well, we did. You know, my generation, I started off living off your reputation, you know, got to live off your reputation. And I've told this to some young guys. You get to walk around with that trident, and you get to be proud of that trident. You didn't do anything. Anything for it. And, you know, I lived off your reputation that, you know, at MCPs all those years being a badass from, man, I wasn't a badass anything then. I'm happy and. And lucky and honored that my generation got to do. You know, we got to do our best to uphold the. The. The reputation that you all built, and we won't forget that. It's an inspiration, you know, to me. It's an inspiration. It was an inspiration to us, and it's a continuing inspiration for all the guys out there, and not just the guys in the SEAL teams, but just to American servicemen and women and just Americans in general across the board. Thank you for what you did.

[B]

I did want to add, because you mentioned one of the things that's very Important to us is we want all veterans, all military, all walks of life, no matter where they came. We're not claiming to be better than any other military force. We just, we want everybody to come and, and everybody to enjoy.

[A]

Yeah, you know, it's one of the, it's, it's one of the most important things, you know, I had, you know, you guys mentioned. How many times did you mention the Seawolves today? How many times did you mention the black ponies today? You know, I know for me, you know, especially in the Battle of Ramadi, we could not have conducted an operation without the support of the Marine Corps and of the Army. And not to mention that, you know, it was a Navy. The, the, the Charlie Med, our field medical center was run by a Navy doctor. There was Air Force people on the staff. It was a true combined fight. And I, I, you know, for us, the grunts, the infantrymen, they were going out. You know, we kind of talked about this from a leadership perspective, but it's not just a leadership perspective. The grunts are going out there. They're going out there every day. They're at massive risk. They suffered massive casualties. They took the fight to the enemy. They were incredibly courageous, incredibly brave. We were humbled and honored to be able to support them. And, and, and our roots, our roots are tied to the Marine Corps, tied to the Army Rangers. And when you read Ben Milligan's book by Water Beneath the Walls, you really learn about all those things. Things. So certainly, you know, this, this museum is not just about us. It's. It's about everybody that served this country and protected freedom. And it's an honor to sit here with two of the legends that did exactly that. Tom, Hal, thanks. Thanks for joining us. Really appreciate it.

[C]

Thank you.

[B]

Thank you very much.

[A]

And with that, Tom and Hal have left the building. I tried to maintain my composure, talking to those guys as best I could. Sometimes I didn't really pull it off.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because I was a little bit giddy.

[C]

Sure.

[A]

And as they were leaving, you know, I reiterated the fact that I, they. So I joined the SEAL teams because of the, these guys. Right. But it's not like I just joined the SEAL teams for these guys. My whole life is steered in a certain direction because of the Vietnam era seals.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

So some legends. So awesome to have him on here. So awesome to talk to him. And I hadn't met Tom before. I've, I've hung out with Hal before because he's a San Diego guy and I see him around at stuff occasionally. And he's. He's. He's friends with Leif as well. And. But that was my first time meeting Tom. Actually met Tom last night at the museum at the UDT Seal Museum. And he came up and he said, you know, hey, I'm Tom. And I said, oh. And I. I said, hey, I know more about you than you do right now because I've been reading all your stuff, you know, going through the. The folders and checking things out. So very cool honor to have those guys. Thanks for coming on, and. Yeah, so appreciate it. Also, physical fitness. You hear about. You hear about Mike Thornton carrying 1500 rounds? Yeah, bro, that's next level. That's next level. Badass.

[D]

Full capability.

[A]

Full capability. That's beyond capability. That's. That's extra capability.

[C]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

And, you know, you hear like, a legendary guy like Mike Thornton, and, you know, in the. You know, maybe you think to yourself, well, hey, I get it. He's a legend. But what's that really mean? You know, tell you what it means. It means 1500 rounds of 762 on your person for operations. And he said he regularly carried 800 to a thousand, so. Hell, yeah. Get some. Be strong. That's. That's what we learned from that. Be strong. Got to be strong. And if you want to be strong, you got to lift. Got to work out, you got to train. And if you're gonna lift, you're gonna work out, you're gonna train. Guess what you need Fuel. We recommend jockey fuel. And by the way, today, normally, at this moment in time, when we get done with a podcast like that, I'm immediately going for 30 grams of protein of ready to drink. We don't have any in the office right now, which is very upsetting to me, and I feel like I'm going catabolic. It's an emergency.

[D]

I took the last one, sorry to say.

[A]

Yeah, that's great. So you're over there getting stronger and bigger and faster, and I'm over here just in a catabolic state. This is. My muscles are being eaten away. Don't let that happen. Hey, Echo left me hanging. Bummer. Don't let it happen to you. Get yourself some protein. Have it on standby. Don't leave home without it. You shouldn't do that. You can also get energy drinks, supplementation, cold war if you're on the road, keep you healthy. Time, war. Every day. I take time. More every day. Yeah, some people. Some people don't take it on an empty stomach. My wife, for instance, she doesn't she takes it like after breakfast. Yeah.

[D]

Oh, about.

[A]

I don't eat breakfast. I wake up in the morning, I drink, I eat time more.

[D]

No worries.

[A]

No factor.

[C]

Okay?

[A]

No factor. And by the way, I'm working out hard in the morning, doing sprints, doing lifting, doing pull ups, working back, bringing. We're recovering. We're in a recovery mode right now. We got situations happening, but we're. We're pushing through. Yeah, that's what we're doing. So you need help recovery. You need help. Be strong, fast, smart. Check out jockofuel.com also check out your local store. Whatever store you go to, there's a decent chance they have jocko fuel there. If they don't let them know, say, hey, we want to get that jockey. We want to get it right here. So there you go. Jockel fuel.com get some also, you heard me today. Talk about something. Talking about something called the Delta 68. Those are a pair of blue jeans. And you heard these guys say their whole platoon was wearing jeans.

[C]

Yeah.

[A]

Well, they said maybe there's one or two. They said maybe there's one or two guys that didn't wear jeans.

[D]

Right.

[A]

But everyone else is wearing jeans in the delta. Damn, dude. This is frogman activity. So origin usa we make our jeans and our hoodies and our boots and our clothing and our T shirts. All of it 100% made in America. Because it's real ironic that you might today be like, oh, I'm going to be patriotic. I'm going to. I'm going to think about the guys in the Vietnam delta, and I'm going to get a pair of jeans and put them on made in America. And you get a pair of other brand. If you get one of the iconic American brands. Iconic American brands.

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

If you get one of them, they're not made in America. They're actually made by communists, which is who these men were fighting against. Communists. So you're trying to be cool, trying to mentally get on board with the program, and you're literally giving money to the communists. So don't let that happen. Here's what you do. Go get a pair of Delta 68s. You want to get in the mindset of the, of the, the frogman in Vietnam, waist deep in the water, bro. These guys got wet every single time. Every single time. Waist deep water, chest deep water. Every single time. Just miserable, miserable, miserable sitting on ambush. Miserable sitting in a boat. Miserable walking up on a hooch. VC everywhere, bro. Let's go. That was Mike R.L. mike R. Was like, if you can go back anytime in any time and do. Do anything in history, what would you do? I was like, Seal in Vietnam. He's like, really? Yeah. I go, yeah, 100%. 100% all day. That's what we're doing. So if you want to get your little, like, fantasy, like I have of being a SEAL in Vietnam, at least get yourself a pair of Delta 68s. And these are the real deal. Made in America. They. They're better than whatever these guys are wearing because they got a little bit of flex to them, right?

[D]

Yeah.

[A]

Or you could get the new 100 cotton if you want to go old school. Maybe we should have called those, like, Delta 64s. Just keep it real. Check. All right, there it is. Origin USA 100 made in America originusa.com check it out.

[D]

It's true. Speaking of mindset. So, Jocastor, this one equals freedom. That's a mindset. Good. That's a mindset. So when we represent these mindsets, we can represent as far as what we wear anyway. We have shirts and hats, hoodies, apparel, merch, all this kind of stuff. We got some new versions of these designs. This one equals three. I'm good.

[A]

Damn.

[D]

Stand by to get some in the next week or two. Get after it. These, like I said, whole mindsets. And so if you want to represent, that's where you go. Jockstore.com also something we call the shirt locker. New design every month. A little bit outside the realm, as far as outside the box, as far as creativity, but people seem to like it anyway. You want to check it out, click on the Join the Shirt locker. It'll open up. You'll see, you know, kind of examples of what it is, what it's all about. Anyway, it's all on jocko store.com chuck.

[A]

Also, Dave Burke has got a book out. I believe it's out when you hear this called need to Lead. Order that thing ASAP. Also, teammates, SEALs at war, written by the great legendary Barry Enoch. So get that book. Hard to get. Also a book called the Men behind the Trident Seal Team 1 in Vietnam by Dennis J. Cummings. And then there's this book here, which is called UDT Seal Operations in Vietnam, which is an book that's like a big account of AARs. So those are the books that I kind of reference for this podcast today if you want to check them out. Also, Echelon Front, we have a leadership consulting company. We talk about the principles that we learned in the military and how they can be applied to your world, whatever that world is, it needs leadership. Doesn't matter if you're in charge of a Girl Scout troop, a peewee soccer team or a giant Fortune 50 company or anything in between. You need leadership in those situations. Your family needs leadership. Your band, you're in a rock band. You need leadership inside that thing. Leadership is not a blessing from on high. It's not an inherited trait that you got from your mom or your dad. It is a skill that you learn. Echelonfront.com we teach those skills and we also have an online training platform that can be found@extreme ownership.com if you want to help service members active and retired Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Momma Lee. She's got an amazing charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org also there's an organization called Heroes and Horses.org and finally, Jimmy May's organization Beyond the Brotherhood.org check all those out. Also, we have the Ramadi reunion. If you were with the 1:1 ad and you know who you are in any capacity, if you were there or you're a Gold Star family of someone that served with the 1:1 ad, check out ramadireunion20.com January 16th and 17th down in Texas. If you want to support the Seal Museum, check out navysealmuseum.org and check out their social media Instagram and Twitter x at Navy UDT Seal Museum and then Facebook at National Navy UDT Seal Museum. And for us you can check out jocko.com and then on social media I'm at Jocko Willink Echoes. But you should keep get pissed. You should get pissed. If you scroll more than four screens or what's it called, more than four posts on the gram, you should be a little bit pissed, maybe even a lot pissed. By the time you get to eight, you should be like, oh, I'm throwing my life away. So don't get caught by the algorithm. Get in there, get out. Don't even go in there. Don't even go in there if you don't have to. Thanks once again to Tom and Hal. Amazing to sit down with you guys sharing your stories. The Charlie Platoon is a legendary platoon from Vietnam. This is one of the important platoons, one of the platoons that we that really built the reputation of the SEAL teams and there's others. We'll try and get the rest of the legendary platoons on here, but thanks to you two for coming on board and talking about that platoon, Charlotte Platoon, thanks for your service to the nation and to the teams and for, as I said, giving us the reputation that we got to give our best shot in carrying on. Also thanks to all of our service members around the world with a distinct salute to those who served in Vietnam. It was a brutal war with incredibly high cost, and there was very little thanks when you all returned, unless you were returning to Coronado as a SEAL platoon, then your brothers were going to be there to say thanks and welcome home. But a lot of veterans from that war didn't get that. So from our current generation to yours, thank you for what you did for freedom and for America. Also thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, Secret service, as well as all other first responders. You also receive very little thanks. So let it be known that we are grateful for your service and sacrifice to keep us safe here on the home front and everyone else out there. There's something that might not apply to everyone directly, but it's. It's worth considering. It comes from the SEAL ethos, and it's the last paragraph, and it says, Brave SEALs have fought and died building the proud tradition and feared reputation that I am bound to uphold in the worst of conditions. The legacy of my teammates resolve steadies my resolve and silently guides my every deed. I will not fail. So you heard tonight from two men that fought to build the reputation of the SEAL teams. But I think this is the connection. There's people in your history. There's people that have fought for you. There's generations of people that have fought for you. They've hunted, they've built, they've worked, they've suffered for you to be here. So think about them. Think about your ancestors who sacrificed for you. Think about what you can do to pay them back. And there's no better way to pay them back than to live a good life. So go live it. And that's all I've got for tonight. Until next time. This is Echo and Jocko. Oh.