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Long Range Reconnaissance Patrol (LRRP) in Vietnam | Gary Linderer (throwback ep)
01:56:43
Gary Linderer is the publisher of Behind the Lines, a magazine that specializes in US military special operations. He served in Vietnam with the LRPs of the 101st Airborne Division, earning two Silver Stars, the Bronze Star with V device (for valor),...
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Gary Linderer
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Jack Murphy
Hey everyone. Welcome to episode 224 of the Team House. I'm Jack Murphy here with Dave Park. Our guest on tonight's show is Gary Linderer. Gary served in the lerps, a long range reconnaissance patrol which became ranger companies later on in the Vietnam conflict. He's author of a number of different books. We have fewer of his here, the Phantom Warrior series amongst others. We're really excited to have Gary on the show. We've had a few of his teammates on before Larry Chambers and Ken Miller. So this is, I feel like a long time coming, Gary. So thank you so much for joining us tonight.
- [01:35]
Gary Linderer
Good to be here.
- [01:36]
Jack Murphy
So, Gary, look man, I mean, it's an honor and a pleasure and I'm going to pitch you the question I pitch all of our guests. Tell us about your origin story, about how you grew up, what your upbringing was like and what, what sort of propelled you towards military service.
- [01:53]
Gary Linderer
I was, I was the oldest of eight kids. My father was a World War II B17 pilot and growing up couldn't get him to tell a lot of stories about his missions in World War II. But I aspired to be a pilot myself. When I graduated from high school, I, I was, I was a primary, I had a primary appointment to the Air Force Academy. And in May of my senior year when I went to take my physical, they found out I had a brain concussion at a football game my senior year in high school. And they informed me at the end of May that I was going to have to wait a year to attend the Air Force Academy. Back then, if you waited a year, you would be drafted. So I ended up applying at the Last minute to Missouri University. I attended Missouri University for two years. I was an Air Force rotc. And at the end of two years I ran out of money. My parents couldn't afford to pay for my junior year. So fearing that I would be drafted, I went ahead and enlisted. I tried to enlist in the Air Force aviation program. At the time you had to have a college degree. Same thing with the Marine Corps and the Navy. So I went to the army and as a last resort and they told me, well, you could be a helicopter pilot, but you can't go to OCS for six months in 1967 unless you had a college degree. Even the army wouldn't send you to OCS. This was in the fall of 67. So I enlisted for Airborne infantry. And I was told by my recruiter that they would probably remove the, the requirement to have a college degree while I was in training and I could reapply. So I went through basic training and AIT and I went, I went to jump school and during job school I reapplied. The army took the requirement away. I reapplied for ocs. My, my orders came down for OCS the day after my orders came down for Vietnam. So I was engaged at the time to my high school sweetheart. And I came home on a 30 day leave and I tried to find out if I could delay going to Vietnam and go to ocs. They said there's no way. Vietnam order supersedes everything else. So I came home and my fiance found out I was going to Nam and she wanted to get married before I left and I said no. We went together for five years through high school and college. I said, let's wait till I get back. So anyway, I went to Vietnam. There were five guys in my group that went over from my jump class. Only five guys I knew on the aircraft we landed. All five of us had orders for the 101st Airborne Division. So during P training, preliminary training, preparatory training that the 101st offered, the week long training course, they had different people come by and speak to us about joining these different organizations, volunteer organizations. And they had a dog handler come by and he talked to the whole group. There was 200 of us in the group. And he gave this pitch about being a dog handler and going to Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia for the training for two weeks. And none of the five guys I had served with volunteered for this. So I passed up on and I, I like dogs. Excuse me, I, I grew up with dogs. So I, I almost went that route. The next guy that came was a. Was a real stud. He was a lerp. He had tiger fatigues on and a red scarf around his neck. Starch cartographer. Really looked like a student. And he gave us a talk about what lurps did and that we were the elite of the army. And you know, we operated behind enemy lines and six man teams and really made it sound exciting. And all four of the guys I went over there with raised their hand to volunteer. And I, not wanting to be left out, I did the same thing. They flew us up north to fubai. Yeah, There was a jeep waiting for us that took us to the company reunion or the company unit. And the first sergeant came out and said, gentlemen, come in here. I want to tell you what you're going to be doing. Well, he didn't make it sound so glorious. We went in and he explained that life expectancy of lurps was. I'm sure he exaggerated it because we hadn't lost that many people. But he made it sound very much akin to being a second lieutenant in a line unit. What didn't sound too inviting to us? I remember writing my first letter home to my fiance and telling her I really screwed up. So anyway, they assigned each one of us to a team as a replacement. And that entire team trained with us daily for two weeks. And they told us any one man on that team could blackball us. And if they did, we'd go to an infantry company immediately, no questions asked. I grew up doing a lot of hunting and fishing and I was pretty, pretty comfortable in the woods. I was an explorer scout and a boy scout, so I could already read a contour map. And I think I did pretty good working out with my team. And at the end of my two weeks I was accepted as part of the team. Not long after I got there, we had a new company commander that came to the unit. And he had come to us from a line company and he wasn't very popular. He, he immediately made us have. We stood two formations a day. We ran in the morning seven miles. We had to wear our uniforms, our fatigues, jungle fatigues with the sleeves rolled down, even on work details. And nobody liked this guy. After about two weeks he stepped on a toll popper mine going into his tent one night and they almost disbanded our company because of it.
- [08:07]
Jack Murphy
That's crazy.
- [08:08]
Gary Linderer
I was still new to the works.
- [08:09]
Jack Murphy
That's crazy how the Viet Congs slipped through your wire.
- [08:12]
Gary Linderer
That's what we thought. Yeah. Yeah. Especially in a warp unit. Yeah. One shouldn't have been able to come in and do that.
- [08:18]
Dave Park
Yeah, trying to take out, trying to take out the leadership.
- [08:22]
Gary Linderer
They had a hard time finding somebody that would volunteer to be company commander. After that they sent a black major over and he refused to stay in the company area at night. He would come over, hold a morning formation and go back up to division headquarters for the rest of the day. We'd see him the next morning again. I guess it was almost three weeks later. Captain Ken Eckland volunteered to take our company. Captain Eckland had been with 1st Brigade with an infantry company with the 327th and he had an excellent record. He didn't lose a man in a year over there. In 1965, West Pointer he became our company commander and he was an outstanding company commander. I didn't really go out on my first mission. I got there in early June of 68. By the time I trained and we went through this rigmarole with the captain that stepped on the toe popper. It was August before I actually went out on the patrol.
- [09:24]
Jack Murphy
Gary, for folks out there who don't know or don't understand, could you explain what your unit did, what a WERP was and what your mission was?
- [09:32]
Gary Linderer
When I was there, primarily we were reconnaissance, long range patrol. We would pull missions that lasted anywhere from three to seven days. Most of the missions were 20 to 40 kilometers away from the base camp. So we were up quite a ways past where the infantry companies were working as opposed to battalion reconnaissance units that worked in much closer. Normally we inserted by helicopter. There were a few missions where we did a walk in or were dropped off along a highway by truck, but normally we were taken in by helicopter and we either hovered just above the ground and jumped out or we repelled in, or there's a couple missions. We actually went in by rope ladder. The insertions were normally at first light or last light and we would hit the ground, usually in a small clearing, run into the jungle and immediately set up a tight perimeter. And we lay dog for up to an hour just listening. Normally, if the enemy had a trail watcher or we were close to a base camp, they would come to see what the helicopter was all about. We had a choice of continuing the mission or if we were compromised, the helicopters were standing off a few miles away, they would come back in and try to pull us out. When we pulled a mission, it was usually in an area, we called it an area of operations, an AO that was anywhere from four to seven cliques, 1,000 meter clicks in diameter or in dimensions. The clicks might Be in a square, they may be oblong. It depended on the terrain. Before mission. The team leader and the assistant team leader would do an overflight and try to locate landing zone, potential landing zones or extraction zones, where the streams were for water purposes and where. Where possibly the enemy might be hiding. So when we went on a patrol, usually our. Our patrol route was. Was predetermined. We based it on contour maps and what we saw on the overflight. So when we went in on a patrol, we weren't. We weren't locked into that patrol route, but we would try to follow it as closely as possible. A team consisted of a team leader, an assistant team leader, two scouts and two radio operators, A senior and a junior radio operator. The senior radio operator, his communication was with either a radio relay team or the company talk Tactical operations center. The junior radio operator. His was set on an artillery base where our artillery support came from. We had a lot of communication problems. Our missions were usually back in the mountains and where we were. The mountains were very similar to eastern Tennessee. Very rugged, very steep. A lot of double canopy water in most of the valleys. But that's where the enemy usually was too, around the water. So we had to be careful trying to resupply water on missions. So that's pretty well what we did. We didn't cover a lot of ground. We moved short distances very silently, did a lot of listening. We tried not to run trails. We would try to parallel the trail far enough off that we could see somebody coming up or down it where we wouldn't make a lot of noise.
- [13:16]
Jack Murphy
Gary, I mean, where do you even begin? I mean, do you want to start? Tell us about your first mission that you. You started to get into a little bit.
- [13:25]
Gary Linderer
My first mission we had an E7 was the team leader. I won't mention any names. I was pretty impressed by him. I thought he was very professional. We landed in this alpine country, or not alpine country, Piedmont country, rolling hills, not a lot of coverage right at the base of these tall mountains. We landed about. I think it was about 7 or 8 in the morning, and there were six of us. I was the new guy. The helicopter came in and was still moving when we jumped out. I remember I hit on my toes of my feet and did a somersault immediately, not realizing that when a helicopter is moving, you don't jump out like that. Really. I felt like a total ass when I did my tumble and came back up on my feet. I thought, they'll probably kick me off the team when we get back from this mission anyway, we ran about 100 meters off the LZ into a bamboo thicket right at the edge of the bottom of the mountains. And there was a trail, high speed trail going up through the bamboo. I was walking slack for the point man who happened to be the team leader at E7. We went up that trail about 100 meters and he announced that we were going to have a break. And we stopped in the middle of his trail and took a 10 minute break. This is right after we had started. And I found out later that he was. We were playing dog at the time. But in the middle of a trail about 15ft above us, above the point man, the trail made a turn to the right, 90 degree turn and you couldn't see down it because the elephant grass and the bamboo was too hot. So we're sitting there, the trail and all of a sudden I look up and here's a. I think he was a Chinese communist. He was six foot tall, came around the bend in the trail. He had khaki fatigues on and a red bandana around his neck and a boonie cap. He. And he had an AK47 slung over his shoulder. And everything froze. Nobody moved. He stopped in mid step and stood and looked at us. And we both looked at him and the guys behind us. I'm not even sure the farther down the trail, I don't even know if they saw him. They were pulling security in different directions. And all of a sudden the guy grabbed for the sling on his AK47. When he grabbed on the sling, the E7 ripped him just across the chest with his eight with his.
- [16:03]
Jack Murphy
Was that he got 15, par 15.
- [16:06]
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- [16:06]
Gary Linderer
I had an M16 and I had, I had my finger on the selector switch, thank God. I flipped it to fire and on full automatic and I, I ripped him again. And every time we hit him, he'd stagger backwards. You could see the dust come off his uniform and you can see the splotches of red coming across his chest. And all of a sudden the guy turns around and runs back around the bend in the trail. And we heard him fall. And we're sitting there. E7 didn't say anything. The guys below us didn't know what was going on. They all stood up and I'm still sitting on the ground. I had fired 20 rounds out of my magazine and all of a sudden it occurred to me, you better reload. I dropped the magazine, put another mag in and a stick came flying over the. The elephant grass and the bamboo and landed in the trail. Then pretty soon a rock came over. So the E7 figured he was a point man for an element. And he jumped up, said, everybody back to the LZ. So we all jumped up and the E7 pulled rear security and we ran 100 meters back to the LZ. The helicopters were still on station, so they came in and picked us up and took us back to the lz. We went through a debriefing, my first one, and we all told what we saw. The other four guys on the team never saw this guy. Even when we fired, they didn't see him. So we reported what happened. And the E7, I wasn't going to say too much. I was still too new. And the E7 said, I think this guy was a Chai cop. He said he had. When we shot him, his hat came off and he said he had a flat top, his hair had been cut recently. The guy was huge for an Oriental. So I agreed with him because I basically felt the same thing myself. That was my first patrol. I wasn't on the ground probably 30 minutes at the most. And I remember thinking, God, I thought these people were little. This guy was as big as I was. That was the first of my 28 missions.
- [18:16]
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Gary Linderer
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Jack Murphy
So Gary, back to you. So that was your first mission. Less than 30 minutes on the ground. An encounter with an unexpected encounter there it sounds like. What was the next step for you as you integrated into your team and get jocked up, I guess for the next mission that's coming your way.
- [21:04]
Gary Linderer
Well, we normally would pull anywhere from two to four missions a month. Coming in from a patrol, we usually get a three day stand down between that mission and another one which was basically spent either resting if it was a long patrol, repackaging our gear, rearming if we fired any ammo on the mission, you know, replacing the LURP rations we took with us, we were always ready. Our rucksacks were always ready to go on another patrol. When you're first in country, you pretty well stay with your team. After you get a little bit of experience, you end up doing a lot of fill in missions where you might go out as an extra man on another team or if somebody's at recondo school or on R and R, you fill in on that team. I was surprised how well we all did the same thing in the field. Normally on another team you'd think you wouldn't fit, but after you had five or six months under your belt, it was amazing you could go out with any team and pretty well be comfortable with them.
- [22:16]
Jack Murphy
How many warp teams? These six man teams, how many were in your company?
- [22:20]
Gary Linderer
Our TOE called for two platoons with six teams in a platoon. Normally we ended up with about four teams in a platoon because of casualties or ETSs, D roses, guys going to recondo school. R and R sick, wounded, so never could run. 18.
- [22:40]
Jack Murphy
So this is a small, tight knit 20 to 25 to 30 man unit. Really?
- [22:46]
Gary Linderer
Yeah, yeah, we had a. We had radio relay teams which usually consisted of three, three to four men that would normally go out on a fire base or actually go out as another team and relay our combo back to the rear. Especially when we were on long way out, like in the Ashaw Valley. Sometimes they would send a spotter plane out at certain periods of time and we'd relay through that spotter plane. So it just depended on where we were and what kind of combo we had. Anyway, Bird dog, I was lucky. I didn't have a lot of hot missions, probably until I was there for four or five months. I think my next hot mission, this was in August, that first mission, I was on a mission, the 3rd of November that turned out to be very hot. Matter of fact, four of us were decorated on that mission. And then November 20th, I was on another very bad mission where we had four killed and eight guys wounded on a heavy team, 12 man team. Everybody got hit.
- [23:53]
Jack Murphy
Let's start with the first one that was pretty hot in November.
- [23:58]
Gary Linderer
The first one, Camp Eagle, our division base camp, was in a huge cemetery in Vietnam. There were graves everywhere, big concrete graves right off of Highway 1, probably seven miles south southwest of the city of Hue from where Camp Eagle was. Oh, maybe seven miles out, the mountains started and there was rolling piedmont up to the mountains. Right along the base of the mountains ran the Song Bo and the Perfume River. So there was a major waterway that came from the ocean into the city of Hu and came to the mountains and then ran south along the base of the mountains. There were a couple of abandoned fire bases right at the near edge of those mountains. One of those was called Nui Kentucky. There were still chopper pads up on top and bunkers. And it was in what we call the rocket belt. We used to catch a lot of 122 millimeter rockets from back behind Nuiki. Radar would pick them up as soon as they launched, but the enemy kept launching them from that proximity. So they were going to put our team out there on top of the mountain and we were supposed to walk off the backside and hopefully be available in that area when the rockets were launched. When we landed, actually, we didn't land. The helicopter came in on top of Nui Key, which was abandoned at the time. And for some reason, our team leader said, don't sit down on the chopper pad. We'll jump off. Well, we jumped off onto this PSP chopper pad, jumped off of that onto the ground and we looked underneath it. There was a 250 pound bomb underneath the metal chopper path. If that chopper would have sat down, it would have blown us all to hell. I don't know what told him not to tell that pilot not to land there, but he did. This was about 10 o' clock in the morning and there was two fingers that came down off that mountaintop. One ran down towards the river and the other one ran down to the south. The other two sides were very steep. We started down the one to the river and it was no vegetation. It had been cleared by the engineers. When they opened up that fire base, a lot of big boulders. We got about halfway down that ridgeline and we started taking mortar fire. And we could hear the martyrs launching from farther down in the valley and on the other side. So they were, they were. It was a very narrow ridge and the rounds were straddling us. They were hitting on both sides. It seems like they couldn't put one on top. So we're sitting there and Ray Zojak, our team leader, he gets on the radio, the artillery radio, and starts calling in artillery on the martyr position. And after about three adjustments, he put it right on top of where those martyrs were launching. I turned around and looked and I saw four NVA going up that other ridgeline and it was also pretty open and they were trying to get to the top of the firebase. I hollered at Zojak and I said, we got company and they're coming up the other ridge. He said, take the rest of the team and get up there ahead of them. So four of us took off running and Zozak and the radio operator, Billy Walkabout, they stayed there and kept calling in artillery on the mortar positions. So we beat the enemy to the top of the fire base and four of us scattered around it because we didn't know where they were coming up from. And so we split up and each one of us took a different point around that firebase. East, west, north and south. About 15 minutes later, Zojak and Billy Walkabout came back up to the top. And we stayed out there for two or three hours and we were. The helicopters came in gunships. They started taking 51 caliber fire from a couple different locations. We were still on top of the mountain. They couldn't get any slicks out to pull us off because they were involved in another team being extracted. So we were kind of struck out there midday. I was sitting there on the south side of that fire base looking down that ridgeline where the enemy had come running up. And all of a sudden we had an F4 Phantom come in dropping bombs right across, coming in perpendicular to that ridgeline, dropping bombs right where the vegetation started. After he made his first pass, I saw four NVA soldiers break cover and run across the ridgeline to get to the other side of the ridge. And I opened fire on them. They were probably 75 yards away from me. And I dropped two of them and I think I hit a third one because he looked like he fell when he got into the COVID And I missed the fourth guy. I hollered to the rest of the team. I had movement out in front of me and Zojak called in artillery on that ridgeline. After that the helicopters pulled him out. They came and got us probably 5:30 in the evening. We flew back to Camp Eagle. We went through a debriefing, told them what we had, and Captain Eckland comes out. He said, I got some bad news for you guys. He said, division called down, they want you to go back in where the martyrs were. And this was off the ridgeline. We had taken martyr fire from down in the valley, heavily jungle. So anyway, one of the guys that was on a mission with us, he, he got kind of baked a little. He got heat stroke after laying on one of those flat rocks that afternoon on the fire base. So he was too sick to go back out. So we had a guy volunteer to take his place. It was probably 8:30 at night, pitch dark. The two helicopters came and let's sit down on our chopper pad. We loaded up. Nobody felt good about this mission. They flew us back out. And keep in mind we were only seven miles away from Camp Eagle and you could see our company area from the Nui Key Mountain. We flew out there and the helicopter came in this valley, the same valley we had taken mortar fire from, and there was a huge boulder, probably the size of a house with a flat top on it. And the helicopter came in and kicked the floodlight on, spotlight on, just as it got to the bottom of the valley. And when he kicked it on, that boulder was right there. So we all, he hovered over the top of the boulder and we all jumped out on top of this boulder. It was probably another 8 to 10 foot drop to the ground. Well, we got off the boulder, we set up security right around the base of the boulder and the helicopters departed for Camp eagle. It wasn't 10 minutes after the helicopters were gone and we heard bamboo sticks clicking on the opposite ridgeline over a distance of probably 400 yards, probably six sets of bamboo sticks. And they were clacking them together, trying to stay on line. So we're sitting there and Zolciak radioed back to the company area and said, they know we're here. He said, they're coming down the ridge forest now. About five minutes later, we heard a Chinese bugle blowing. And then we started hearing whistles, police whistles, and they were covered a pretty long distance. So we realized that. Zojak said, here's the story, guys. Here's the other thing. The ridgeline behind us, the one that we had taken modern fire on, there was also sticks clacking up on that ridgeline to our backside. Zolciak said, the only chance we got, we sent out three claymore mines pointing uphill in the same general area. He said, let them get on top of us. We'll blow these claymores and then we bust through them and fight our way back up to top of Nuiki and get extracted. So that was our plan. We had radioed back and reported all this to the company area, and they said, we're going to try to pull you out where we put you in. And we're thinking, my God, it's pitch black in here. They got gooks coming down both, both ridge lines on us. Those helicopters will never survive coming up this valley. What happened is Captain Meacham, one of our pilots, he comes out and he flies up the valley probably 150ft off the ground and starts taking heavy.51 caliber fire from, from two different locations to try and trace small arms tracers all over the place. While he was doing that, W.T. grant, our other pilot, he comes up the floor of the valley probably 50ft above the floor of the valley below the ridge lines and comes up and. With no lights on, and. And we pulled a pin gun flare. Not a pin gun flare up. Yeah, pin gun flare. And we shot it and stuck a strobe light down the M79 we had. And he got it in on that signal and hovered over the top of that rock that we went in on. Well, we had a hell of a time getting back up on top of that rock. I think only two guys were able to do it standing on the shoulders of the other guys. Well, Grant kicked out a ladder and the ladder was at the base of the rock. So we had to climb that ladder to get into the helicopter. And the two guys on the rock One of them was Zak, the team leader, and the other guy was me. Well, I was the second to last guy up the ladder. Zak was the last one. And while I was climbing up the ladder, Dave Beedran stepped on my fingers. When he stepped back on the ladder and mashed the hell out of my. That was still 6, 6 runs from the Chelt chopper. And I mean, he mashed my fingers good. I finally got in the chopper that one of the door gunners got out and pulled me in. Zojak deringed himself on the ladder and hollered for the door gunner to get out of there. So he's riding the ladder coming out at night. And I remember coming out of there, the 51 calibers picked up on us because we had to climb to get out of there. I remember it looked like somebody was throwing lights through our helicopter. I mean, the rounds were coming all around us. Helicopter never took a hit. There was 251 calibers they pulled off of. Captain Meacham started firing at our helicopter coming out of there and we had to make a U turn to fly back to Camp Eagle. So it was a. Nobody got hit. Amazingly, Meacham's chopper took two rounds. Grant's didn't take any. With all the tracers coming out of there. You know, I don't go to 4th of July shows anymore because I've seen a better one.
- [35:06]
Jack Murphy
It's like, like Star wars, right?
- [35:09]
Gary Linderer
With a. It was, it was a mad minute times 10. It was really something to see. We, we figured there had to be a hundred weapons fired at us coming out of there. And how we got, didn't get hit, I have no idea. That was November 3rd. That was a one day mission.
- [35:25]
Jack Murphy
What was the feeling when you missions in one day? What was the feeling when you guys get back to the FOB And I mean, that's a close call, right?
- [35:33]
Gary Linderer
I'll tell you, I probably had six close calls in Vietnam where, you know, you're not going to survive it. Would you come to that conclusion? The experience I had is a peace came over me, you know, once you accepted I'm going to die here, you know, it's. It's almost like you're not afraid anymore. You know, you've accepted the fact you're not going to survive that. I've had, I've had my share of close calls in my life. I told my wife I just got out of the hospital three years ago with a close call. I said, I think I got two left. I wrote myself off four times Enough.
- [36:17]
Dave Park
Yeah.
- [36:18]
Jack Murphy
And then you mentioned, I think you said maybe it was later on in November that you went in with a heavy.
- [36:23]
Gary Linderer
November 20th we went out on a heavy team. I was the assistant team leader on the second team, the primary team. His assistant team leader was the overall assistant team leader of the operation. We went out in the Run Rung valley, which was a big valley that back in the mountains that ran into the Azhaw Valley. And intelligence had reported that the second NVA regiment had just come into that valley. The second was the regiment that went into way during 1068. They were very, very professional, great fighters, bad reputation. The reason we went out with a heavy team is this regiment had a reputation for hunting down warp teams. They didn't like us. So we went in with a 12 man team. It was a first light mission. We went out and two helicopters and we came into a landing zone that was all elephant grass. The helicopter was in a ravine on top of right, the right at the base of a wooded ridgeline. The first helicopter went in. The guys got out in the skids and they jumped into elephant grass. The elephant grass was 15ft high, plus there was a ravine and it was. The elephant grass was flat across the top. So we thought it was a clear, a flat area. Six guys went in. None of them landed on their feet. I mean, they all hit hard. We saw what happened. So when we went in, we actually got out more, hanging on the skids with our hands and trying to drop, you know, get another four or five feet before we hit the ground. My team leader, Jack Sars, he landed on a log, a teak log, laid in that elephant grass. Broke both his ankles. But he didn't know it at the time, but he found out later they were broken. So all 12 of us were on the ground. Several of us were pretty shaken up, me included. Jack couldn't hardly stand, but we got him up on his feet. We walked probably 40ft through that elephant grass into the edge of the woods. And immediately into the edge of the woods was a high speed trail, six feet wide. I mean, it was big enough for carts. No vegetation on it, pure dirt. And it ran along the base of the ridge. Well, the team leader stopped the team there and he said, linder, he said, you and Sousa go to the right up that trail and do a point recon and find a place to set up an ambush. And he sent two more guys to the left. Susan and I probably went 100ft and the trail made a bend at 90 degrees and went up the side of the ridge, and it wasn't a very tall ridge. It was probably maybe 80ft high. And right at the bend was a trail watchers bunker. Empty. We checked it out. It was empty, and it looked like it hadn't been used recently. And it was probably 60 to 70ft up that trail to the top of the ridge. And it made another bend to the right and went down the top of the ridge. The trail. So we started up that after the trail washer bunker. We started up the ridgeline. We got about halfway to the top, and we heard a gunshot, single shot, about 300 meters away to the. To the east. And Sousa said, they know we're here. I said, yeah. So we went back to the team leader, and they had heard the shot, too. And we told them, well, we found a trail watcher bunker. And right at the top of the ridge, where that trail turns to the right again, there's a knob right there on top of that, looks down that trail. I said, that would be a good spot for an ambush or an observation post. So he called the other two guys back in, and we walked up the trail, and we got to that knob, and he said, this is a good spot. So we all pulled up on top of it. We sat up in a circle around that knob, which was probably only 50ft across, no bigger than that, and it was probably 3 or 4 foot higher than the trail itself. On the backside of it was a bluff straight up and down, probably 80, 90, 100 foot, pretty steep, unclimbable. To the west was a saddle that went up to a higher ridge on the other side of the saddle. And the saddle was probably 80ft across. Below us was the LZ we came in on and. And the trail at the edge of the woods and to our east was the trail where it came up the ridge. So we're sitting right on top of this knob, the trail dog legs around us. There's a bluff on one side and a saddle on the other. We spent the entire day there. This was probably 10 o' clock in the morning when we got up there. We spent the entire day there. Nothing happened that night. There were about four or five groups of NVA came down that trail with lanterns. No flashlights, just lanterns. They were looking for us. We don't blow ambushes at night, you know, unless you knew what you were ambushing, you didn't do that at night. So we let them go by, and we reported it with silent combo with clicks on the radio. And the next morning, Sires, the guy who broke his Ankles, his feet were so swollen he couldn't get his boots on. So we decided that we would take him back to the LZ, which was only 150ft from us, and extract him, medevac him out. So Riley Cox, guy we called Dozer and Frank Souza helped him down to the lz. A helicopter came in, dropped a jungle penetrator and hoisted him out. The two guys came back up to the perimeter and we heard two shots fired. Same area we heard that one shot fired. So we figured that they thought we all left. So it wasn't too long after that, maybe 8, 8:30 in the morning, a single NVA came down the trail whistling, making all kinds of noise. And behind him was about 10 more, about 50ft behind him. Well, we didn't, we didn't try to snatch the one guy, we didn't kill him. And any others came by, he was bait and they didn't come back. They went on down the trail, never came back. So we're sitting there about, I think it was 11 o' clock in the morning. And the team leader said, I heard him whisper, we got company and we could hear people talking. And I was, my claymore was the first one in this ambush. And I'm laying back on my back on the side of this knob and I could see from here on up anybody walking down the trail. I looked over and there were nine NBA at the time I thought they were arvinds because they were wearing green jungle fatigues and boonie caps. One of them had a tiger fatigue booty cap on. And they were talking, making noise. They kept walking down the trail. And I'm laying there thinking this is an ARVN unit, South Vietnamese unit. What are they doing in Rao? Well, about that time the team leader snapped his fingers which was the sign to blow the ambush. I blew my claymore and the other five claymores went off simultaneously. We had a six Claymore ambushed the final Claymore fired down the trail. Well, there were nine of them, excuse me, ten of them. And we killed nine of the ten in the ambush. The point man had gotten out of the kill zone and he had an AK47 slung over his arm. And I had my car 15 in my right hand. I clack her in the claymore on my left. When I blew the claymore I saw him through a gap in the trees running down the trail and I one handed shot at him and shot over the top of him. Frank Sousa jumped to his feet and Frank opened up on him. I saw the guy, he had A towel around his neck, it flew off. So I thought, I think Frank hit the guy. And the guy was running downhill and he. Towards where that trail watcher bunker was. And he drove off the side of the trail on the left and disappeared. Well, we all ran. Four of us ran out to check the bodies. Four of them were nurses, Army, NBA nurses. I immediately, I felt like shit because my claymore had killed two of them. The rest were guys. One of them had a.45 automatic in a holster and he had a map pouch over his shoulder. We found out later he was the XO of the 2nd NVA Regiment. Wow. We took the map case, stripped all the bodies. What made me feel better, all four of the nurses had.45 caliber automatics, 1911 in their rucksacks. So we had five pistols and two AKs. We recovered two of the guys were not armed, and the point man who was armed got away. We pulled back up on top of the knob and the team leader calls in a report, tell them what we got. And we're sitting there. And normally when you blow an ambush, you get the hell out of Dodge. You don't stay there. Well, he decided to stay there. He called for a reaction force or an extraction. And he was pretty proud of himself, having killed nine out of 10 NVA, including a major. And we sat there for 15, 20 minutes, and they finally called us back, says, we can't get you extracted. All of our helicopters have been taken for a battalion sized combat assault. So we have no aircraft available. It was probably going on noon when this happened. That's not true. We blew the ambush at 9. It was probably closer to 11 when this happened. So we're sitting there and he said, we can't get a reaction force to you because the helicopters. We have no helicopters, man. We had a platoon from the 2nd and 17th cab, which was our reaction force, our ready reaction force. They were tied up. They couldn't get out to us. So anyway, the assistant team leader of the team, of the team leader that was in charge of the whole team, we saw him walk over to the team leader and whisper in his ear, and the two of them got in an argument. I mean, the team leader kept shaking his head. And we're sitting there. He went back to his position and Frank Sousa or Frank Souza and I, who were the ranking people on the other team, we went up to him and said, man, we got to get the hell out of here. I said, you know, there's a base camp 300 meters away from us, and we just killed nine people. They're going to be coming for us. He said we're staying here until they get a reaction for us. Then the team leader said this. So anyway, I guess it was one o' clock in the afternoon and he tells his assistant team leader, he said, Captain Eckland's out looking for us, trying to locate us. Go down in the saddle where the trees open up and flash him when he comes over the top with a signal mirror. Jim Venable was the atl. He went down and he's down there flashing his helicopter and we hear an AK47 open up and he goes down. He was hit in the neck and the arm, broke his arm and went through the zeppelin. Frank Souza and Riley Cox ran down and grabbed him and drug him back up into the perimeter. And right after they got him in the perimeter, we about 15 NBA come charging up the hill from where we had come in, the original LZ online. And we opened up on them, drove them back, killed a couple of them. They were probably 50 something, 60 yards away, not quite a little closer than that. And for the next two hours they kept doing this. They hit 5, 10, 15 guys at a time from different spots they'd come across the saddle. Never did try to rush us in a large bunch, but we could tell from the gunfire there was quite a few NVA around us at the time. And we were adjusting artillery as close as we had. Artillery busting, got 50, 60ft away from us, walking it into us. Holy shit. And I remember thinking, boy, we're going to push them right into us. They're going to try to get close to us. But they didn't. There wasn't enough cover for them. I guess after the artillery we had gunships. Finally got four gunships out to us and we went through a total of eight Cobras in the next two hours.
- [49:18]
SpinQuest Announcer
Wow.
- [49:19]
Gary Linderer
They were firing rockets and hovering over the top of us, doing pedal turns and firing rockets down all around us on the ridgeline. We had, I think we burned up two sets of F4s from Danang, came in and fired support for us. And while this was going on that bluff behind us, some NVA somehow or another climbed up that bluff and set up a 40 pound shy comb right along the edge of it. There was a lot of brush right there, it was steep on the other side. We had one guy back there pulling security, leaning against this big tree. His name was Mike Wright from Kansas City, Missouri. And I'm sure he was watching what was going on across the perimeter from him because we didn't expect anything to happen along that steep side. That's where Mike was, right there. About 2 o', clock, 3 o' clock in the afternoon, the team leader said, everybody pull back to the top. He said, I'm going to bring the artillery in closer. And at the time, we had a Cobra sit right over the top of us, doing pedal turns and firing rockets all around us down the ridgeline. I remember I turned around and looked and several of the guys had gotten up into a crouch and were pulling their rucksacks with them, heading back to the top of the knoll. We had been spread out down along round it. I started shinnying backwards. My rucksack was in front of me and I was pulling it with me because I shinned backwards. And all of a sudden everything blew up. I mean, I remember turning my head and seeing this ball of black smoke roll over the top of us dirt. And I couldn't see anything else. Everything finally started settling down and turned around and nobody was up. Everybody was down. And I remember thinking at the time, I'm the only one left. And we had a pact in the LURP so we wouldn't let anybody be taken alive. And I was going to shoot anybody that was still alive and killed myself. I made up my mind to do that. And all of a sudden, Riley Cox, across the perimeter from me, he sat up, he big guy, and when he sat up, his intestines fell out in his lap. And this part of his arm was broken right here and hanging down like an elbow right here. Riley had a shotgun. He was armed with a shotgun on top of it. And he was on the other side of Frank Sousa around the perimeter for me. And Terry Clifton, my best friend who had volunteered, traded with another guy to go out on this patrol because he wanted to be on the team with me. Kerry. He pushed himself up off the ground and his throat was ripped out. And when he looked up, blood just spewed out of his throat right in front of me. And Billy Walkabout, I heard him behind me said, are you hit? Are you hit? He was behind me and he'd been hit through both hands. When I realized there were other guys still alive. It took me a couple of minutes to get myself back together again because I. I had made up my mind. I don't remember thinking. I was just. I was going to shoot the boulder. And I saw Riley Cox over there. He took the towel off his neck. He pushed his guts back in his stomach and stuck that towel in there to hold his guts in and he pulled a bandage out of his rucksack and tied his arm back like this and starts pumping that shotgun one handed and fighting with that shotgun, if he could pump. The enemy didn't come for a while. When they did, they weren't attacking. They were trying to walk up to see what had happened. And Riley starts duking out with that 12 gauge, pumping it with one hand, shooting it left handed. And he had 40 rounds with him. I think he already fired about 10. When that shotgun ran out of ammo, he got Mike Rife's car 15 and started firing that car for his ticket. I mean, I don't even know how this guy, how he functioned. The radio operator, the team leader, was hitting above his ear with a piece of shrapnel, blew out the top of his head. But he was still alive. And Terry Clifton was dead by then. Mike Rife, the guy that was sitting by the bluff, he got hit with a Claymore. He wasn't 10ft from it when they grabbed his arm to pull him away from the tree. He was pinned to this tree. His arm came out of his sleeve. It severed his arm and shoulder. He was killed instantly. I crawled over to the radio operator and he had a chunk of meat as big as my fist taken out of his right above his knee. And he was on the radio reporting what had happened after he got hit and he went into shock, but you could see him going into shock. I took the radio away from him and I got on the radio and in the clear. I didn't use any code. I told him, we're hit, everybody's down. I said, you better get somebody out here quicker. Don't bother with it. Billy Walkabout was the only guy that could walk. He got up on his feet and both his hands were hit pretty bad. They sent a medevac out and it came in well before the medevac got there. I went over to Frank, Susan. I crawled over to Frank Susan. Billy came over and Frank had a little hole right dead in the center of his chest. And I thought, well, he'd been shot. And I remember grabbing a plastic off a battery and putting it over the hole to treat it as a sucking chest bone. And there was no suction. We rolled him over onto a poncho liner and he had a hole in his back about that big around. And I could see inside his right lung. And it was shredded. The ribs were broken. So whatever hit him just tore out. His whole shoulder blade area was gone. We rolled him back over on a North Vietnamese Poncho liner. We had plastic. One of the guys had it, and we wrapped that around him and still tried to treat it as a sucking chest wound, but we never did get suction on it, and he was unconscious. We got a medevac in, and we decided to get Sousa out first because we thought he was hurt the worst. We drugged him over. They dropped the jungle penetrator and we strapped him to it, and they hoisted him out. And the helicopters taking gunfire from surrounding area constantly. And they came back in again, started taking more fire, and the dust off started drifting, and it was drifting down towards that saddle. Well, Billy Walkabout ran down there and grabbed the penetrator with his arms and ran back up to the top of the hill dragging that penetrator with him. And we got Contreras out that way. He did that another time before we got another wounded man out. He ran down the hill towards the enemy, no weapon, grabbed that penetrator and ran back up the hill with it. So we got three of the wounded out, and I told Riley Cox, I said, you're going out next, Riley. He said, no, I'm not. He said, I'm staying here. And at the time he was. He was on the car 15. Anyway, it's probably close to 5 o' clock in the evening, and two pilots had been listening to this on the radio. They. They broke formation, flew back to the company area and radioed ahead, have a reaction force waiting on the chopper pad. We're going to pick them up and take them out to rescue these guys. When they got to the company, everybody in the rear in our company was down on the chopper pad waiting to board. 23 guys got on two choppers, 13 on one, 10 on the other way. Overloaded? Yeah. Huey's were made for six or seven guys, plus the crew. Tony Tessero was going home the next day. He'd already turned in all of his gear and his weapon and was down on the chopper pad playing tag football when the word came in. Tony went up to supply and grabbed a car 15 from the armory and. And, excuse me, an M16 and a bandolier of ammo. And he was in char shoes and shorts and no shirt on. And he got on the chopper like that. He gets out to the. When they got out to us, he found out that that bandolier of ammo was boxed ammo. It wasn't in magazine.
- [58:02]
Jack Murphy
Oh, no.
- [58:05]
Gary Linderer
They flew out. They had a hell of a time getting off the chopper pad because they were overloaded. One of the guys had his arm in a cast. And Bill Meacham, the pilot, turned around and said, son, get off of the helicopter. And the guy stuck a rifle in the back of his helmet and said, just take off, sir. So he comes out with his arm in a cast. They flew those guys out to the same LZ we went in on, which was now no cover. The airstrikes and everything had blasted all the elephant grass away where we had to jump 15ft above the ground. They landed, let these guys out and all 23 of them. As soon as they got on the ground, the pilot told them the direction they needed to run because they could see us up on top of the hill coming in. And they headed up the hill, up on top where we were. Billy Walkabout was behind me and I heard him hollering up here. I turned to him, I said, shut the hell up. You're going to tell him where we are, the enemy. All of a sudden I realized they know where we are. It went along. Clint Guthmiller came running up the trail over the dead bodies with an M60 and sat up looking down that ridgeline on the top of the knob. Then the rest of the guys poured in. They immediately started getting the wounded guys taken care of to get them out. They, they got Billy Walkabout and I went out together on a jungle penetrator and they finally got Riley Cox to go as the last man. He was the last wounded man out. They had to force him to go out. It was dark by then. The 23 man reaction force had to go back down to the LZ in the dark. By. By the time they got to us, the first calf had come in. 35 of them wouldn't get off the landing zone. Not the first cab, second and 17th camp, they wouldn't get off the landing zone. They stayed down there and when the helicopters came in to extract everybody, they pulled them out first. Then our 23 guys went down there. They had no lights, no anything. They had to use Zippo lighters to mark the landing zone for the helicopters. 11 of the 23 guys were wounded. None of them bad, thank God, but they got those guys out. I think it was 9:30 at night, they got them out. That made me an advocate of the brotherhood. I mean, I still love those guys for what they did that day. My fiance had sent me a St. Christopher medal. I remember holding it in my hand out there, realizing that the NVA were going to get this medal when they find my body. And I broke myself off, I'm not coming back from this One. So I probably had three or four more hairy ones after that, as a ranger, he sent me to the hospital, triaged me. Besides the shrapnel in the back of my leg and my calf, sometime during the battle, I'd been shot in the left leg, too. But they think it was a ricochet. It was only. You could almost see the head of the bullet. They pulled it out with tweezers, so. So all my wounds were leg wounds, which I attribute to the fact that I was shitting backwards up that hill when this thing went off. And all that was on top of the hill was my legs. I spent a month in the hospital at Cameron Bay. Almost got killed in a Korean riot. Korean at the hospital I was in, South Koreans had about. There were as many South Koreans in Cameroon Bay as there were Americans. They were there for rheumatism. They couldn't handle the weather, so they were used to cold weather. This hot weather made the cause of rheumatism. So none of them were wounded. They were just there, you know, recovering in the heat down there. Then they were going back up to their unit. Well, there was a riot during a USO show, and I was unprecedented. And these Koreans ended up over a can of beer. There's like 200 Koreans and 200Americans. And the Koreans thought, they're all black belts and they're going to take this beer from this American. So they grabbed a six pack of beer from this guy, and the guy jumped up, went over and took it back. Well, the Koreans didn't care for that. And they got up and was ready doing this stuff, ready to kill some Americans. And one of their NCOs came down and told them all to go back to their company area. So they're all back at the company area and, well, let me tell you what caused the riot. They were hollering back and forth. Nobody was going across the aisle between the two groups. And all of a sudden, from the back of the Americans, a loaded beer can comes flying over and hits this Korean between the eyes and drops him. Well, that really pissed them off, I'll tell you. They were ready to kill after that. Anyway, they sent him back to their company area in about 3, 15 minutes. Later, we were watching this Filipino USO show. One of these Filipino girls was playing Jello Submarine, and we heard this roar in the background. Here come all these Koreans back, and they got shovels and picks and baseball bats. Well, there was a bunch of us in the front two rows on crutches, and we all thought, well, they're not going to bother us all. The Americans jump up and take off running, although wasn't good. The Koreans come wading in and start beating the hell out of everybody with tools and stuff. I crawled up on the stage pushed by a Korean officer and a Korean senior nco. And I crawled behind the drums on the stage. And I'm up there thinking, well, they weren't going to hit me. I saw him take a crutch away from a guy out in the audience and start beating him with his own crush. So I was glad I was behind the drums. Anyway, a few minutes later, five, six MPs come running up with a lieutenant and the lieutenant's blowing a whistle and come running up the aisle and he's hollering at these Koreans and he's got a couple of Korean officers with him. And a Korean buries a pickaxe and he's turned them. Holy. Oh, I'm thinking, my God. I. They sent me here to recover. The next day I talked to my, the colonel in charge of the hospital. I said, I want to go back to my company. And he said, well, he said, you need another two weeks here. I said, put me on a profile and send me back to my company. I want to spend Christmas up there, not here. So anyway, he, he gave me a pass and I flew back up to fubai. I was on profile for two more weeks and ended up flying belly man on a, on a extraction insertion helicopter for a month until my wounds heal.
- [64:53]
Jack Murphy
And so Gary, I'm trying to recall from reading your book many years ago now that that explosive, that 40 or 50 pound explosive that went off, I think that's maybe like what my generation would have called an improvised explosive device. And if I recall correct, the bottom
- [65:08]
Gary Linderer
of a 33 gallon barrel and was,
- [65:11]
Jack Murphy
it was, there were like nuts and bolts in it that they pulled out of some of the guys.
- [65:15]
Gary Linderer
Any kind of metal. It was non directional. It had plastic explosive 4 behind it. It just pushed it out. Not in a fan. You didn't know where it was going to go.
- [65:25]
Jack Murphy
And so, and if I recall correctly from our interview with Larry Chambers, this is. You came back to the unit and find Larry. There is a new guy, right?
- [65:34]
Gary Linderer
No, Larry. Larry actually came to the company in late August of, of 68.
- [65:40]
Jack Murphy
Okay.
- [65:41]
Gary Linderer
He was out, he was out with another 12 man team when we got here.
- [65:45]
Jack Murphy
Because I, I remember there's something in my mind, I remember like you were, you had being wounded, you came back to the unit and he was there as like a, a more Junior Lurp.
- [65:55]
Gary Linderer
Well, I'll tell you what you're confused with. When I got back to the company, I'd been there six months. All the guys that came over with division, who were the old guys? When I got there, they came over in November of. Of 67. Well, they were all de. They all derosed while I was in the hospital.
- [66:13]
Jack Murphy
I gotcha.
- [66:14]
Gary Linderer
I came back to the company. You know, Ken Miller was the first guy I ran into.
- [66:18]
Jack Murphy
Okay.
- [66:18]
Gary Linderer
It was like I went to a new unit. I didn't recognize anybody.
- [66:21]
Jack Murphy
Okay.
- [66:22]
Gary Linderer
A lot of new guys.
- [66:24]
Jack Murphy
Dave, do you need to do this. This read?
- [66:26]
Dave Park
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- [67:44]
Jack Murphy
And while we're here, I want to give a quick shout out. This is not a sponsor of the show or anything. They're friends of the show that I just want to talk about real quick is badger six. We've had guys involved in this charity on the show before. Toby Harden, Justin Sapphire. Really want to what the Badger 6 is, it's a charity specifically to bring back the Afghans who worked with the CIA and special forces in the opening days of the Afghanistan war. And these guys are now working to help their former friends and allies immigrate to the United States. And so they're holding a charity event. It's going to be on September 8th at the Pauling Mountain Country Club. It's. I think there's going to be some shooting clays and then they're going to have a lunch and there'll be a talk. You're going to get to meet some of the original folks who invaded Afghanistan. David Tyson, Justin Sapp, Mark Nooch, Bob Pennington, another former guest on the show, Alan Mack, who's a 160th helicopter pilot. All those guys are going to be there. So I really hope you guys will consider going to this event, supporting this charity. You find out more about them at Badger 6th. So again, that's. That's going to be September 8th. So, Gary, so then you, you come back to your unit after this very interesting stay. Your, your recovery at the hospital. So you, you said that when you got back to the unit, it was sort of like a different cast of characters almost.
- [69:16]
Gary Linderer
I had gone from being a middle guy to being one of the old guys. I was an E5 at the time and 2/3 of the company had D roast while I was in the hospital. So there wasn't a lot of experienced hands on deck. When I got back to the unit,
- [69:35]
Jack Murphy
what was that like? Were you now more of like a mentor and a trainer for some of the younger guys?
- [69:41]
Gary Linderer
I was earmarked to be a team leader. Matter of fact, I had a recondo school date for November 28th, and when I got hit, I was in the hospital. My recondo date came up and in. In the lurps, when you graduate from condo school, you got to have six months left in country or you or you don't get to go. Well, when I got back to the company, I only had five months left in country, so I didn't get to go to MACV recondo school. I got a team, probably more because there wasn't enough qualified people in the company. In late March of 69, they gave me my own team. I was fairly good at reading maps, as good as anybody else in the company. I could look at a contour map, picture what that looked like out in the jungle, and not look at that map again on a mission. Wow. Probably because of my scout training, they gave me a team in March. I think I led five patrols. My last mission was the mission Chambers probably told you about, the one we got hit by lightning on. I was supposed to be the team leader. We actually had four guys on that team that had been team leaders. And there was a shaken bank E6 came into the company who was taking over my team. So I actually Went out as his ATL to break him in. That was April 23rd, that mission was. And that was. I still had six weeks left in country when I got out of the hospital on that one, and I tell you, I was. I was done. I. I wouldn't. I wouldn't have gone out on another patrol after that. I wasn't going to take an R and R because I didn't want to spend the money. I was getting married two weeks after I got home, so I didn't want to dip into my savings. And I. When I got out of the hospital, I took my R R and I was AWOL. Two days getting back, I made sure I didn't have 30 days left. When I got back to the company, I was. I was. I don't say I was afraid. I was finished getting married, you know, four weeks or six weeks after that. I kept thinking, this is a bad time to get killed. And I didn't want to do that to her. So I. I just didn't want to go out again.
- [72:01]
Jack Murphy
Yeah, after that operation where the team got struck by lightning, I mean, I can imagine that that shook everybody up. Ken was out there on that one too, wasn't he?
- [72:09]
Gary Linderer
No, Ken wasn't.
- [72:10]
Jack Murphy
Oh, he wasn't. Okay.
- [72:12]
Gary Linderer
Unfortunately, Kid was in the other platoon.
- [72:14]
Jack Murphy
Gotcha.
- [72:14]
Gary Linderer
I never got to go out with. We were good friends, but I never got to go out with him.
- [72:17]
Jack Murphy
Gotcha. So before leaving Vietnam, any other, like, significant ones that patrols that you'd like to highlight before moving on?
- [72:27]
Gary Linderer
Yeah, I was on a. I was on a patrol with. With Ron Mother Rucker. I was. Matter of fact, I was a team leader on that patrol. There was a Cobra helicopter had gone down south of Fubai, been shot down in the mountains, and Loach went out looking for it and it didn't come back either. So there's two helicopters missing down by Firebase Tomahawk. It's a pretty tall jungle, steep mountains, and it was in a fog on top of it. So they. We got a call with the company and we had two teams on stand down. The rest of them are out in the field. And one of them was my team. And I was sharp, two guys on the team. And see the CEO came in and said, Sergeant Linder, he said, grab two guys and you're going to go out on a search and air rescue mission. And he said, sergeant Fadley's team is going to go out too. He said, you're going to have to repel in. So he said, rig for a repel. So we did we packed our rucksacks? Excuse me, we didn't pack. One guy had a rucksack with a radio. We did. He said, don't take your rucksacks, you'll be out before dark. So we grabbed our web gear. No maps of the area, nothing. One canteen of water apiece, no meals. We go out and they fly us out in sunny weather to Firebase Tomahawk and we land on Firebase Tomahawk and General Melvin Zeiss comes out and his helicopter lands on the firebase and gives both teams a pep talk and tells us there's two helicopters down out there. We got a captain and a warrant officer and one of them, the Cobra and the Loach went out looking for them with a lieutenant colonel, a major and a warrant officer at it and they haven't come back. We think we know where they are. We're going to put you guys in on top of them. If they're wounded, get them out. If they're dead, recover the bodies, get them out. So anyway, off in the distance you could see the fog. Farbase Tomahawk was still in the sun. It was a mountain overlooking Highway 1 out by the coast and it wasn't in the fog at all. So we got on our helicopters and we fly out, we fly into the fog and I remember thinking at the time looking down and seeing the treetops that looked like broccoli sticking up out of mashed potatoes. That's what it looked like. The chopper pilots who were, who were not our chopper pilots either, they flew into this fog and they finally's team went in first and rappelled in. We had no idea how tall the trees were. All we could see were the tops of them. So we didn't know if we had enough rope to hit the ground on. Couldn't see the ground at all. They bring my team in behind family's to a different area. We were 300 yards apart and I was the first one out of the helicopter and my car 15 was slung over my back and I rapelled out of the helicopter. I did a fast repel, I landed in the middle of a high speed trail. I turned around, there's a freshly poured concrete bunker behind me. No, no camouflage on it. Well, you know, my, my butthole had squeezed shut. I was soprano from that end. My radio operator comes down behind me on the same rope and gets tangled about 15ft above the ground with his handset cord and he's stuck on the rope. I'm trying to wave the door gunner to bring the Helicopter down lower and he finally comes out low enough I could reach above him and cut the rope. And he fell about 5, 6ft and hit the ground. And the next guy down ran out of rope and fell about 10ft down. And then the other three guys came down the other rope on the other side. So we're all standing there and I'm pointing at this concrete bunker. And we get off the side of the trail and we set up. And they were supposed to put us in the same place Fadley's team went in. Well, there's no Fadley's team there. And we're going through. The helicopter pilot tried to relay to Fadley's team because we couldn't pick him up on the radio. Then we came to the determination they put us in a different spot. So anyway, Fadley decides to fire his weapon. And he fires one shot. And I could tell he was a long way from us even with the muffled from the fog. And you know, I had to answer him. I fired back twice, real fast, two quick shots. And I told the pilot to tell him to come to me so badly comes to me. It took him a good 45 minutes to get to my location. And it's like 5:30 in the evening. So we get online, 12 of us, and we sweep up the ridge line. And about 6:30 we stumbled into the Cobra. It had gone down through the trees and the tailbone had broken off and the cockpit was open. And there was a boot and a helmet laying next to the helicopter. Oh, man. No pilot, no gunner. And it's almost dark by then. And we swept around that helicopter two or three times online trying to find those guys. Couldn't find them. And we moved about 200 yards straight across the ridge. Not up higher, not down lower. And we found an area where there was depression and four big teak trees, one on each corner with a depression in the middle, just not big enough for 12 of us. So we got in this and it offered a little bit of protection in case we got hit during the night. And we knew there were gooks in the area because the Cobra had been shot down. There were bullet holes in it in that bunker. You know, I didn't. That wasn't a mushroom. Somebody did that. We're laying there at night and Fadley, who was. He was an E6, he decided we're going to have one guy on at a time security. I always posted two guys if we were in enemy territory and we knew they were around Anyway. Family post one guy for 45 minutes at a time at the 130 time, the 1:30, 45 minutes. And I woke. The guy next to me was a new guy. His name was Gillette and he was a radio operator. He had my team's radio. He was laying next to me and I reached over and shook him awake and I laid back and went to sleep. But I think it was 10 minutes to 2. Something woke me up and I was laying on my back and I looked to the right. I remember it looked like a shadow disappeared off this way across the perimeter. And I look over at Gillette and Gillette's laying there with his M16 across his chest, shaking like this. And I reached over and I whispered his ear and I said, what's the matter? He said, 2 NVA came into our perimeter and we're looking down at the guys and they just left. And I said, why didn't you shoot? Shoot him. And he said, there's a sapling next to me. I couldn't bring my weapon around so he had to sit there and watch this go on. Well, I woke up everybody. For the rest of the night we all stayed awake. The next morning we went out and started sweeping again and we got a radio message from the rear that said there was a line company, Charlie Company, first of the 327 was coming out to link up with us. They were walking in. So there was a ridgeline above us that we didn't know at the time. But that ridgeline had been covered several times by U.S. troops. There was a big trail going up the top of it and it was pretty wide open on top. Well, we heard these guys coming and we couldn't get them on our radio yet, but they were above us probably 150 yards up the hillside and we could hear them talking. And all of a sudden an AK47 opened up and we heard those guys fire. They fired a couple rounds. They were hollering and we didn't know what was going on. They finally got to us on our radio and said a trail watcher just shot our four man lead element across the legs. This trail watcher was in a bunker up on top and he left those four point element guys getting across from me and opened up, shot every one of them in the legs. So we're sitting there in this depression, 12 of us, and we hear the brush breaking coming down this ridgeline right at us. I mean dead at us. So we're all, we got one Claymore pointed uphill, that's the only one. We got out and all of a sudden this NBA breaks through the COVID right in front of us. He's not 15ft away. He had his sandals in this hand with his AK47 and he was running with this like this. When he saw us, he lowered that AK47 and empty that magazine right over the top of. Well I. I was sitting back against that tree with my car 15 and before I could shoot him, he fell behind a big log that was uphill from us and it wasn't eight feet from us. Well, a couple of us jumped up and did this and shot behind that log. I don't think we hit him. And Dave Beadren pulled a frag out and dropped it over the top of the log that killed him. Tore up his AK47 too. So of all the places for this guy to run, he runs dead into us 150 yards down that hill. We called the line doggies. He said, we got your assassin. He said he run dead end. We told him what happened. So we went up and linked up with these guys. This was the second day of a one day mission. We spent the next seven days on the ground out there. No food. The only food we got is what we could mooch from the line doggies, which wasn't much. We had plenty of water because it was raining almost all the time. While we were out there, they put in another team because another Loach had come in and located that other helicopter. And it was three miles up the valley from where we were. It was nowhere near that cobra we found. So that was Rucker and Sires on that team. Those guys repelled in and the three pilots were all burned to death. And they landed on top of them. Went right through their bodies. They were fried. They pulled the bodies out in body bags, pieces of them and hoisted them out. And then they told them that you couldn't get them out. They had to walk down and link up with us three miles away. So they came down the stream that was down at the base of the ridge. We went in on. Well, we went down to the stream of the 12 of us and 13 of the line doggies. Recon element were with us. So there was 12 of us and 13 of them. Because with that many enemy in the area, they didn't want 12 guys trying to link up with these six. So we got down to the bottom of the hill that night and we're going up that creek, creek at night, following this creek up. And we found a little knoll next to the creek. And we got on top of the knoll and laid there sleeping, all 25 of us. And that night, I don't know how many times we heard a tree crash. I don't know if it was from the rain or what, but here's something wading in the stream. And we came to the conclusion later that the NVA knew we were in there and if they had enough stuff in there, they didn't want us to find it. So they followed us but didn't make contact with us. We also figured they probably had those pilots. So we ended up linking up with the other team the third day and turned around and come back down the stream. And this was. It wasn't the third day. It was the seventh day of the mission, the last day. We spent four days up on the ridgeline with that line company. We get down the. We're coming down the stream and they told us we're going to have to walk out. They can't helicopter the infantry company up on top of the ridge. The rest of them, they were going to do another sweep and they were coming out. They were going to walk out, too. So we get down to just about where we're down below that infantry company, they're 500 meters up on this hill and they tell us that the fog is lifting. They're going to get helicopters in and pull us out. So we're down there, we find a big spot next to the stream with a lot of dead trees and stuff in it that had been defoliated, and we took our claymores that the line company guys had, and we were knocking down the big trees with a back blast from the claymores and clearing this area out so a chopper could get in. Well, we got it big enough for one chopper, and naturally the line doggies got out first. And there was 18 of us still on the ground and these choppers were coming in. One chopper would leave, fly down the valley. Ten minutes later, another one would come in. So I was on the second last chopper going out, and we had just got off the ground and I heard the door gunner on my chopper holler, gooks on the lz. Well, what had happened is the last chopper had landed to pick up Rucker and SARS team. And Rucker had just gotten on the helicopter and turned around, and an NVA stood up out of the grass about 15ft behind John. SARS, looking at him like this, didn't have. Didn't have a weapon up, just looking at him. Well, Rucker killed him. And Cyrus turned around, shot another one. So they had followed us to the lz, but Weren't messing with us. So those guys got out okay, didn't take any fire. The line company did that final sweep and found the pilot to the Cobra. He had been hiding that whole time.
- [85:59]
Jack Murphy
Wow.
- [85:59]
Gary Linderer
This gunner had broken his ankle on the, on the crash.
- [86:03]
Jack Murphy
That's why I took his boot off.
- [86:04]
Gary Linderer
He got him out of the chopper, took his boot off, carried the guy a little ways and they got separated during the night because the NBA were looking for him. Same night those two found us the same night. That's when they found those pilots or were looking for the pilots. So we spent seven days in there with no maps, no poncho liners. Colder than hell out there in that fog. And that was the most miserable time I had in Vietnam.
- [86:30]
Jack Murphy
I mean it's a. Yeah, it's incredible.
- [86:32]
Gary Linderer
I'm not going to sell any books out of this. You realize.
- [86:35]
Jack Murphy
Well, once you, once you start. Yeah, once you start talking about a, a downed helicopter and your, your boss is telling you it's a one day mission, we all know from army experience it's not going to be a one day mission.
- [86:47]
Gary Linderer
They didn't tell us about the fog and we didn't have time to pack any rooks up.
- [86:52]
Dave Park
Garrett, can you, for people who might not be familiar with it, can you tell us a bit of the difference between like the M16, the car 15, which one you preferred, and, and, and you know how that happened?
- [87:05]
Gary Linderer
I carried an M16 for I guess five months, I think until early November of 68. That's when I got. You couldn't get a car 15 unless somebody went home that had one. Which we traded SF guys for the car 15s and the ones they gave us were, had the boring shot out of it. So I mean they were like a musket. They weren't very accurate past 50, 50 meters. No bluing on them. So you can imagine what, you know, SF guys are.
- [87:35]
Dave Park
Oh yeah, we all do.
- [87:38]
Gary Linderer
I know. So, I mean, they were pretty well shot up. We had, we had a couple of Swedish K's in the company. I think we had four shotguns. We had a couple of, I think we had two grease guns. And it was up to you what you wanted to take as long as you get your hands on it. There was a couple of missions. I carried a Swedish K walking point because the Swedish case had silencers on it. They weren't much for range and we couldn't get enough magazines. I think there was only four magazines per weapon. So you were limited on how much ammo you could carry with A Swedish K. Usually if a guy took a Swedish K out with him, he carried a car. 15 too. Same problem we have with the grease guns. I think there was only three magazines for each grease gun. I don't think I ever carried a grease gun. I don't remember doing it. I did carry a.45 pistol with me a few times. I used to carry. I was known to carry 1800 rounds of ammo. I mean, I humped some ammo and I used to carry eight to 12 frags to my first team. Sergeant told me, he said, it's better to need and to have nothing. To have or to have it need not than to need and to have not. And I took that as gospel. Even when I go deer hunting, I'll take 50 rounds with me. I'm pretty good shot, but I. You can't shoot 50 deer, but I hate to be caught with no animal.
- [89:04]
Dave Park
Was. Was the Swedish KS762 or a 556?
- [89:09]
Gary Linderer
It was a. It wasn't a 556. It was a.
- [89:13]
Jack Murphy
It's 40.
- [89:14]
Gary Linderer
Like a nine millimeter.
- [89:15]
Dave Park
Oh, was it nine millimeter?
- [89:16]
Gary Linderer
Okay.
- [89:16]
Jack Murphy
Live. I'm trying to remember myself.
- [89:19]
Gary Linderer
Yeah, it was. We had. We had two stems. Gun stem guns to look up. Swedish K. Yeah, I've got to pull
- [89:24]
Jack Murphy
it up right now.
- [89:25]
Gary Linderer
Yeah. All I remember is it was. We only had four magazines for each weapon.
- [89:31]
Jack Murphy
I'm. I'm embarrassing myself. Yeah, it's a.45. Oh, no, I'm sorry.
- [89:34]
Dave Park
I'm sorry.
- [89:35]
Gary Linderer
No, no,
- [89:37]
Jack Murphy
it's an M45 Swedish K, but it's 9 by 19 millimeter.
- [89:41]
Gary Linderer
You. You were right.
- [89:42]
Jack Murphy
You were right, Gary. It's not nine mil.
- [89:44]
Gary Linderer
And that's. Yeah, that was the other problem we had. It was hard to get 9 mil ammo over there too. Yeah, yeah. 45ammo and 5.56 was. Was easy to get. Even AK ammo was easy to get. And we had a few guys that carried AKs. John Looney, who looked like an NBA, would often wear black pajamas on patrola Walk Point because he looked like one. He would carry an AK47. I didn't like him because you couldn't tell who was fired and who. When they. When one of our guys was using it.
- [90:16]
Jack Murphy
So, Gary, talk to us about coming home from Vietnam. I mean, you had quite an eventful tour. Coming back two weeks later, you're getting married.
- [90:24]
Gary Linderer
Yeah.
- [90:25]
Jack Murphy
What was it like coming back from. From. From Nam and getting discharged from the army and coming back to civilian life when I.
- [90:32]
Gary Linderer
When I et or De roast. I had a. You know, I told you I got shot in the leg on November 20th. They. When they packed that wound, they removed the packing too fast and formed an abscess. And when I got back from R and R In May of 69, my left leg, my thigh swelled up. A big red spot on the side of my leg that stuck out about two inches. Well, when I was clearing Nam, clearing records, that thing was so painful. When I got down to Binh Wah to clear. To clear Vietnam, I went to a hospital there at night to see the emergency room. And a medic came and he said, jesus Christ, he said, you can't go home like that. And he said, I gotta lance that. Well, when he lanced it, a plug shot out of my leg. Oh, man, about the size of my finger. It was hard, plugged in dust, looked like ivory. It hit the ceiling and fell down on the journey I was on. And he said, man, that thing's under pressure. He said, you can't go home like that. I said, man, I'm getting married in two weeks. I said, I gotta go home. I talked him into wrapping it, and he said, as soon as you get back to the States, you go see the doctor. He said, you got a bad infection. I got to. They flew us to Japan and flew me to Fort Dix, New Jersey, of all places. I flew all the way across Canada. And my next. Next duty station was at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, with the 82nd. But I was on a permanent profile. I couldn't jump anymore. And I thought, why in the hell he's sending me to an airborne unit and I'm on leg now. When I got to Fort Dix, I went to get travel pay to buy ticket to go home. The ticket was 36 bucks. A lot of money nowadays, but 36 bucks back then to fly to St. Louis from Philadelphia. I. They wouldn't give me travel pay because my next duty station at Fort Bragg was only 250, less than 250 miles from Fort Dix. And they won't give you travel pay till you get to your next duty station unless it's over 250 miles. So here I am with $9 on me in Fort Dix, and I went to the Red Cross and told them my story. And they said, well, not much we can do about it. So I had to call home and have my dad wire the money to Western Union in Philadelphia, take my nine bucks to pay for a cab to go down and get the wire and go back, to walk back to the Fort Dix to buy an airline ticket to come home. So I was in the States two days before I got the leave to come home. Wow. Two days in my leave. So I had to call my fiance and tell her what happened. And I had the feeling she didn't believe me, but we're still married. So I flew home, and for some reason, I thought it would be cool to be the last guy off the plane. And I could see them all out there at the airport standing, waiting for me. So I waited till everybody got off the plane, and I waited a little bit longer. And I could see the look of dread on their face. And I come walking off the plane, and I don't think she ever forgave me for that. My parents. Her parents and she were there at Lambert Airport in St. Louis waiting for me. I got home, called a bunch of my buddies. I had one of them say you were Nam. I thought, where the hell has he been? I sent that. 45 I took off that NBA major home in nine pieces. The only part that didn't make it was the box or the magazine. Magazine didn't make it. Rest of it made it. So I stopped by to get that weapon from him. And he told me. He said, I never got a magazine. You sent a magazine? I said, I sent a magazine with ammo in it. He said, I never made it. So I salvaged that from my. And I sent a NBA rucksack home and an NBA flag in the signal mirror that was in my pocket when I got hit by lightning. It shattered when it wrapped me around that tree. So those are my souvenirs from Vietnam. We got married two weeks later. My hair was still too short. They made us get a haircut the day before we left. Everybody, I mean, they buzzed us too. So I wasn't happy with that. But I didn't run into a lot of the only negatives I had. When we got off the plane at 11:30 at night in Philadelphia, there were about 200 hippies lined up on the other side of the cyclone fence with signs hollering at us. And EMP's wouldn't let us at them. I mean, boy, that plane wanted to go after those people.
- [95:10]
Jack Murphy
Peace, creeps.
- [95:11]
Gary Linderer
That's the only negatives I had. Nobody spit on me. Nobody really acted like they gave a damn. But, yeah, I wasn't put down for it.
- [95:21]
Dave Park
What year did you leave Vietnam?
- [95:24]
Gary Linderer
I left June 2, 1969.
- [95:28]
Dave Park
So you were in the. You were still in Lurps, because you were still in Lurps right as they Transitioned to Ranger.
- [95:36]
Gary Linderer
Yeah, I was there. We went to bed one night lurps and woke up the next day. There were orders on our outdoor bulletin board saying you are now Rangers.
- [95:44]
Dave Park
Do you know how that happened? Why that happened?
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Gary Linderer
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
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Gary Linderer
Wish I had a premier group chat.
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- [97:17]
Dave Park
I don't know if you have visibility on that, but how did that come about?
- [97:22]
Gary Linderer
I think they wanted the Heraldry of the Lurps were all different units. 58th Infantry, 51st, 52nd. They wanted to give us a common bond. So somebody came up with a brilliant idea that we all all of a sudden we were rangers and our mission didn't change. I remember getting in an argument with a bunch of young Rangers at third bat in 92. We were trying to get the Lurse accepted into the 75th Ranger association, which my company started that right? It was 101st Rangers that started that association in 1986. These guys said Lurps weren't Rangers. I said what the hell do you think we were in Vietnam? He said, oh, you guys were rangers. I said, I went to bed one night alert, and woke up the next day. I'm a ranger. And I said, these guys did the same thing we did. I said, if you accept us, you should accept them.
- [98:15]
Dave Park
Yeah.
- [98:16]
Gary Linderer
And we formed a Long Range Reconnaissance association in 2015, which now has a thousand members. There are no more ls. So it's. It's an organization that unless they recreate, lur, is going to die out someday.
- [98:30]
Jack Murphy
They. They will one day. They always come back.
- [98:32]
Gary Linderer
Yeah, I agree. Drones don't do well in the jungle.
- [98:37]
Jack Murphy
Yes, sir.
- [98:39]
Gary Linderer
Anyway, the day we formed that association, the president of the 75th Ranger association called us and wanted us to bring that organization into the 75th. And the guys voted. At the meeting, there wasn't one vote in favor of. But a lot of the guys that were worse were Rangers, Gary.
- [98:56]
Jack Murphy
The worst. And WORPS have been accepted into the Ranger Regiment association, though, haven't they? No, they haven't really.
- [99:04]
Gary Linderer
No, we turned it down. They tried to bring our association into it.
- [99:09]
Jack Murphy
I'm sorry to hear that.
- [99:10]
Gary Linderer
We rejected it. The only reason they did that is because, you know, their organizations are losing people, too. The Vietnam vests are dying out, and they saw a chance to pick up a bunch of new members. And, you know, I belong to both organizations, but I'll tell you, we host the annual LERP association reunion right here in Branson every year, and it's. We booked three solid hotels with a park between two of them, and our event is in that park for seven days. So it's a good event.
- [99:42]
Jack Murphy
So as. As time goes on, I don't know if you tried to put the war behind you or if it was something that was always with you, but eventually you and your teammates kind of became. I don't know, what's the term I want to use, like spokesman of a sense for the Vietnam experience and certainly the warp experience and all these memoirs that you publish. Can you talk to us a little bit about how maybe your personal impressions changed or what led you into publishing and writing?
- [100:09]
Gary Linderer
I. 1986, my unit was the first company from Vietnam, any kind of company that organized a company reunion. 1986, I was contacted by our company clerk two years before that. He asked me if I would help locate some of the guys that served in the unit. Well, you know, when you come home from the war, you promise to stay in touch. There were no Internet back then, Right. Right. So we had to. We had to find people by telephone. And I, fortunately, had a company roster with the original homes where everybody was from. I told this guy I'd help him. We spent two years and we put the first reunion together in 1986 at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. We had 186 guys show up, plus 24 from other LURP units that heard about this. They also can from that reunion. We decided to form the 75th Ranger Association. So Bob Gilbert, the next year put that together and we formed that association. Matter of fact, I think the first three presidents were from my unit. I had not thought much about Nam. I hadn't talked to a lot of people about it. I stayed in touch with John Sires, and a couple of the guys from my unit were in my wedding, matter of fact. And I stayed in touch with probably five or six guys. When we had that first reunion, I remember telling my wife, I said, I don't think I'm gonna go. I said, hell, I put on weight. It's been 20 years. I said, they won't recognize me, I won't recognize them. I remember their names. And she said, I saved all the letters you wrote me. She said, they're in a shoebox. Once you read through the letters and it'll refresh your memory. So the night before the reunion, I sat there and read 243 letters.
- [102:04]
Jack Murphy
Wow.
- [102:05]
Gary Linderer
Come to find out, I had described every mission I was on. And not in great detail, but it was like a diary, day by day. And I told who was on the teams with me and basically what happened didn't give details. And I remember thinking when I was done, I thought, my God, I said, when I get back from this reunion, I'm going to sit down and write this out so my sons can read what I did when I was in the war. So I. This was back before I had a computer. I could type. I didn't have a computer, didn't have a typewriter. So I bought 4 legal sized yellow tablets and I hand wrote out my first two books. Wrote it out as one book in six months time. And I'm sitting there and Ken Miller, who had already come out with Tiger, the LARP dog, he called me and he said, how's that diary coming? I said, I'm done with it. He says, why don't you send it to me? I said, jesus Christ, get us on four tablets. And he said, well, send it to me. And so I went down and burned copies of all those pages and I sent him the copies and he wrote back and he said, this is pretty good. He said, I'm going to send this To a publisher friend of mine, Jim Morse. He was at Berkeley Books.
- [103:19]
Jack Murphy
We've had him on the show, too.
- [103:21]
Gary Linderer
Yeah, Jim.
- [103:21]
Jack Murphy
Yep.
- [103:22]
Gary Linderer
Well, anyway, I don't hear from Jim. And Ken calls him. He said, jim's leaving Berkeley. He said, he doesn't want to be a puppeteer anymore. I thought, well, that figures. He said, well, I got another guy. I'm going to send it to Owen Lockett at Ivy Books Random House. And I said, okay. He said, I'm just going to send him a couple chapters. He said, matter of fact, he said, why don't you type up a couple of chapters and send him those chapters? So I went down and bought a typewriter, used typewriter. And I typed out that November 20th mission and the November 3rd mission, the Tua Nuike and the 12 man heavy tube. And I sent him to Owen Locke. He said, it'll take him six months to read it. He said, just tell him that the book's done. Here's two sample chapters. He said, you'll probably hear from him in six months or you won't. So I send those two chapters to Owen Locke. And that was on a Thursday. Next Tuesday, I get a phone call. And he says, gary, he said, this is Owen Locke. I said, who? He said, owen Locke. I said, so he said, oh, and Locke, Ivy Books. I said, you're bullshitting me. I said, who is this? I said, miller, is this you? I said, damn it, this is Owen Locke. He said, I'll buy your books and the rest. I had nothing else typed up. The book was still handwritten. So I sent him my original tablets and he called me back. I guess it was three weeks after that. He said, well, I got some good news and some bad news. He said, you want what you want first. I said, I want the bad news. He said, you got too much here for a book. So I knew it. And he said, we'll make two books out of it. He said, could you type it up and send me the rest of it? I said, yeah, I can do that. So I typed the rest of it up and sent it to him. And they brought the first two books out nine months apart, which upset me because it was the first half of my story till I got wounded. Then the second half of the story I had 5,000 letters of. People called me six months. Within six months, that first book coming out, wanted to know where the hell the rest of the story was. And then a short time later, I get a call from Owen. He says, military Book Club wants to combine your books and bring it out in a hardcover, which is the way I originally wrote it. So they sold the rights to Military Book Club for Black Berets and Painted Faces, which was those first two books. They sold 20,000 copies in six months and applied for another 20,000. Random House wouldn't give it to them because they were competing with the paperbacks. So anyway, I think a year went by and I thought, well, you know, I told my story. My company needs to have its story told. My company lost 76 guys in Vietnam by far more than any other Lope Ranger company. The 1st Cav, I think, lost 42. And they were there a year longer, and we still lost. We were in a bad area. So I talked to Miller and Ray Martinez, and we decided that Ray would write the first Brigade 101st Lerps story, the original Lerps. Ken would write F58, and I would write the L75th part of it. So we did that. I had a bunch of guys from other units calling me and saying, how come none of our guys are writing books? I said, not me. And he said, I thought to myself, by God, I'm going to write a story from every LERP Ranger unit that fought in Vietnam, and I'm going to do two books or three books, whatever it takes. And so I'm going to recognize all of those companies with one story each. And that was the Phantom Warrior series. And I've had publishers call me or Locke, call me. Chris Evans from. He was with. He was with Stackpole Books at the time, wanted me to write more books, and I said, I'm done. I did what I wanted to do. I did what I wanted to accomplish. And I'd rather help other guys get their stories told because nobody can tell the story like you can. You know, if you experienced it, somebody else can't write your story. Yeah, yeah. So I. I've ended up helping a lot of guys get their books published.
- [107:32]
Jack Murphy
I think you said you were involved in something like 86 different books.
- [107:35]
Gary Linderer
42.
- [107:36]
Jack Murphy
42. Well, okay, I doubled it, but that's 42 is still a lot.
- [107:40]
Gary Linderer
Almost. It was. You know, I've helped some seals. I helped one guy that was a school teacher, got drafted when he was 26, married with a kid.
- [107:50]
Jack Murphy
Holy.
- [107:51]
Gary Linderer
Got drafted out of teaching. He wrote Classroom to Claymores. I helped him get published. I helped several seals. Quite a few lurps. John Burford. I helped him get his book published. He'd be another good one to interview. And you.
- [108:07]
Jack Murphy
You said you're involved in another book that hasn't been published yet with Ray Martinez.
- [108:11]
Gary Linderer
Yeah, it's. Ray actually wrote it. I did the editing on it. It's David Dolby. He won a Medal of Honor. And Iodrang, when the first cab got wiped out there, we got a Medal of Honor and pulled four more combat tours in Vietnam after his Medal of Honor.
- [108:30]
Dave Park
Wow.
- [108:32]
Jack Murphy
Incredible. Gary, that.
- [108:34]
Dave Park
That's really unusual, too, especially during Vietnam, because I. I know that, like, once you won a Medal of Honor, the military was very reluctant to let you go back.
- [108:43]
Gary Linderer
Let me tell you, President Johnson turned him down. When he was presented the medal, he told President Johnson, he said. President Johnson said, what can I do for you to send me back to now? He said, I can't do that. Yeah. A year later, he was back in Nam with a Lerbert unit. Wow. So, I mean, he. I don't know how he did it, but he did it.
- [109:02]
Dave Park
Yeah, man.
- [109:03]
Gary Linderer
The man loved to kill NBA. Yeah.
- [109:06]
Jack Murphy
Gary, these. These books have had, like, such a big influence, not just on. On me. You know, I read these when I was, like, in high school school. Then they influenced me to join the army and to. To go to the Ranger Regiment. And I. So many, I think, of my peer group were in the same boat. You know, they read these books as young men and, like, whoa, that's what I want to do.
- [109:26]
Gary Linderer
You know, I've been. I think that's why I got inducted in the Ranger hall of Fame. It was more the books than anything else. There's. There's guys with more decorations than me that have done more for the regiment than I have. But I think that's why I was. You did.
- [109:41]
Jack Murphy
You did such an incredible story of telling your story, telling the warp story and telling the stories of your teammates, you know, And I don't think. Maybe you don't want to say, Gary, but correct me if I'm wrong, you were awarded the Silver star for that November 20th operation.
- [109:56]
Gary Linderer
I was actually put in for a DSC, but they already gave. Two other guys were put in for Medal of Honors and got kicked down to dscs. I was given an impact Silver Star, and it was after it was put in for dsc, they left it as a Silver Star.
- [110:12]
Jack Murphy
Incredible, Gary.
- [110:13]
Gary Linderer
And.
- [110:13]
Jack Murphy
And so do we have questions for Gary?
- [110:16]
Dave Park
Let me check real quick. I. Yeah, I don't. I don't. I didn't see anything.
- [110:23]
Jack Murphy
Check real quick.
- [110:23]
Dave Park
Anything.
- [110:29]
Gary Linderer
I get for telling all those war stories now?
- [110:31]
Dave Park
People are enthralled. Like, nobody. Nobody asks questions because they're just enthralled, thralled out of curiosity, you know,
- [110:41]
Gary Linderer
you
- [110:41]
Dave Park
guys became Rangers and then Rangers, you know, went on. You were the 75th infantry, which the 75th Ranger Regiment came out of. Have you been following the Rangers? Like, what is your. It's quite a legacy that they have, right? Because we talk about World War II and then the LURP units in Vietnam, and then they formed into more of a direct action unit. What, you know, do you have any opinions about that or what do you. How do you think the legacy has followed?
- [111:12]
Gary Linderer
Well, I'm proud to be considered a Ranger, but I'm not a Ranger. You know, in my heart, I'm still alert. They called us Rangers, but we didn't pull a Ranger mission. Some of our missions might have turned into a Ranger mission, but our mission was primarily reconnaissance. We weren't out there to kill people. Usually when we did, it was self defense. We were almost always outnumbered. We, you know, thank God you'll never find an alert that'll let a chopper pilot buy a drink. I mean, that's no joke. They saved our butts so many times. You know, Bill Meacham and W.T. grant both wrote books that I got published for them. They were courageous pilots. Their, their motto was, if we put you in, we'll get you out. And they meant it. And we knew that we probably wouldn't have gone out on those missions.
- [112:06]
Jack Murphy
I'm sorry. Go ahead, Gary.
- [112:08]
Gary Linderer
Sorry.
- [112:09]
Jack Murphy
I was just going to ask you if you could tell people the titles of your books that you authored.
- [112:13]
Gary Linderer
I wrote my first book was Eyes of the Eagle. The second half of my first tour was Ice behind the Lines. You can't get them new, but you can buy a used one once in a while. The combined book is Black Berets and Painted Faces six Island Men's the Series. I wrote book three, Ray Martinez wrote Book one, Ken Miller wrote Book Two, and Phantom Warriors. Book one and two were my final two books.
- [112:43]
Jack Murphy
And you also ran a magazine for, for, for a period of time.
- [112:46]
Gary Linderer
My brother, who was an army journalist, he spent his entire three years in Hawaii, wrote for the Stars and Stripes and some other newspapers in the military. I, he talked to me after my books came. Matter of fact, I hired him to write my first book and my wife read the first 30 pages and she said, you need to fire him. She said, you write, you tell your story better than he does. So I fired him. I still ended up giving him half the front of the front end. Check for it though, since I hired him. But I fired him and he came back to me after the books Came out and he said we had to do a newspaper. So we sat down and we put together a 36 page black and white newspaper which was the first issue. And I got Craig Jorgensen and Mike Martin and several guys that had been published before to write articles for it. And I did the David Dolby interview, the only time he's ever been interviewed. And that came out in black and white. And I took a bunch of copies down to Fort Benning and we ended up, we published it for six years, took it to a. To a green and white in. In black newspaper for the next four issues. Then we took it to a black and white magazine. Then we took it to a full color magazine, ended up with 35,000 subscribers, which isn't a lot. We didn't make any money, but we broke even on it and I made. A lot of the guys that wrote for us became authors. A lot of them got published.
- [114:21]
Jack Murphy
It's wild, man.
- [114:23]
Dave Park
That's fantastic. Yeah. So KM, thank you very much. Great stories, great stream. Did Mr. Gary ever serve with TV actor Nicholas Worth? He had said he was recondo in an interview.
- [114:40]
Gary Linderer
No, there was no Nick Worth in my unit. That doesn't mean he was not recondo. He could have gone to recondo school. There were some battalion reconnaissance units that sent guys to recondo school. And a lot of the battalion recon units call themselves lurps. We call them Slurpees, Short Long Range Patrol. But they didn't do what we did. But they usually operated in a platoon size or double squad size element. And they stayed out longer, not too far from an infantry company. A lot of them refer to themselves as lurps, second of the 502nd with 101st. That battalion, their recon element, they were called recondos. You've heard of Tiger Force? Yeah, Tiger Force, Hawk Recon Recondos. Those were all Battalion Reconnaissance units.
- [115:27]
Dave Park
Paul Janik, thank you. Thank you Team House for bringing us badass dudes like Mr. Lindner. Well, we appreciate Gary for, for spending a Friday night.
- [115:36]
Jack Murphy
Yes, this is. It's been an amazing interview, Gary, and thank you so much for sharing your.
- [115:41]
Dave Park
One more just came in. Jim Scott, thank you so much. Thanks for your service. Gary, did you know a Silver Star recipient named Kinzer? And if so, can you relate any experience you had with him? I can relate, yeah.
- [115:54]
Gary Linderer
I knew a ker. I'm not. I don't think he was in my company. I knew a ker. Who was he with?
- [116:02]
Dave Park
It said he was a Silver Star recipient and Then Jim said I could relay it to him, but he didn't say what unit he was with.
- [116:09]
Gary Linderer
If it was Pat Kenzer, he was in the first brigade of the 101st LARPs. Yes. There's one more question.
- [116:17]
Jack Murphy
One more question.
- [116:18]
Dave Park
Oh, what was the other question? Oh, okay. D.J. sneed. Thank you. How did Lurp and Lurch units differ from MACV sog?
- [116:26]
Gary Linderer
Okay. MACV SOG would across the border and Laos, Cambodia, North Vietnam. We stayed in Vietnam, South Vietnam. That was the main difference. They worked with an indigenous troops. We didn't very often. Sometimes we took a Kit Carson out with us. The experience we had taken out three ARVIN soldiers and three Americans didn't work out well because of the language barrier.
- [116:53]
Jack Murphy
Gary, is there anything else that you want to tell people upcoming, whether it's like a Ranger association event or anything else that you want people to know about?
- [117:01]
Gary Linderer
Well, you know, if you're a Ranger, join the Ranger Association. Go to the rendezvous. The brotherhood is still strong. If you're alert, go to the Long Range Reconnaissance Association. Join it. Come to our rally every summer, every June in Branson. The brotherhood is just as strong there.
- [117:21]
Dave Park
And Jim said it was Pat Kinser that he was talking about.
- [117:25]
Gary Linderer
Well, yeah, I knew Pat Kenzer.
- [117:27]
Dave Park
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [117:30]
Jack Murphy
Cool. So, yeah, Gary, again, man, it's been amazing to hear your stories, and I'm so glad that we could finally do this. It was just great.
- [117:37]
Gary Linderer
Well, I'm sorry it took so long.
- [117:39]
Jack Murphy
Not at all, man. It's worth it. And, oh, and I was supposed to mention Larry Chambers wanted me to mention that he felt he's the most handsome of the three of you.
- [117:50]
Gary Linderer
My hair is still brown.
- [117:56]
Jack Murphy
I had to throw that one out there for Larry, I'll give him that.
- [118:00]
Gary Linderer
He's been married three times. I've been married once.
- [118:07]
Jack Murphy
Gary, thank you, man. And, you know, I really hope that guys will continue to go out and read these books. I mean, they really are just an amazing historical. My novels. Yeah. Thank you.
- [118:18]
Gary Linderer
Thank you.
- [118:20]
Jack Murphy
Thank you, Gary. And I'll send you. I'll send you some copies of my book. And there's a. Like, we were talking a little bit before the show. Happy for any introductions to other works. We love to have you guys on the show. We can talk later about that.
- [118:35]
Gary Linderer
Send me a mailing address. I'll send you one of these because you can't get.
- [118:39]
Jack Murphy
I want it. I want. I want one with your Herbie Hancock on it.
- [118:43]
Gary Linderer
Gary, that's Chambers.
- [118:45]
Jack Murphy
Is it? Me, the handsome one and the smart one.
- [118:48]
Gary Linderer
Stud the warrior.
- [118:54]
Jack Murphy
And for everyone watching, next Friday, we'll be back. We're going to be asking if are
- [118:58]
Patreon Host
there books for sale in the uk?
- [119:01]
Jack Murphy
Are your books available in the uk do you know that, Gary? Yeah, yeah, they're out there.
- [119:06]
Gary Linderer
Australia too.
- [119:07]
Jack Murphy
In Australia. So next Friday we're going to have Alana Barry on the show. She is a former CIA case officer, served overseas during the Iraq war. Now, novelist, wrote a terrific novel I just read recently. I believe it's called the Peacock and the Sparrow. I hope I'm not reversing that. Maybe it's the Sparrow and the Peacock. The Peacock and the Sparrow. Terrific. Terrific novel. We'll be here with her next Friday. Gary, again, thank you so much for taking the time to do this.
- [119:38]
Gary Linderer
Nice to meet you, David. You guys take care.
- [119:40]
Dave Park
Nice to meet you.
- [119:41]
Jack Murphy
Have a nice night.
- [119:42]
Gary Linderer
Thank you.
- [119:42]
Jack Murphy
We'll see everyone next Friday.
- [119:46]
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- [126:57]
Liberty Mutual Female Announcer
We help people customize and save on insurance with Liberty Mutual together.
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Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.
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Gary Linderer
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
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Liberty Mutual Female Announcer
Anyways, get a'@libertymutual.com or with your local agent.
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Liberty Mutual Male Announcer 2
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.
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Gary Linderer
Game night rush.
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Jack Murphy
Or any night of the week, really.
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SpinQuest Announcer
Genius keeps every order moving from online
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SpinQuest Disclaimer
ordering to your kitchen to the front counter.
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SpinQuest Announcer
Big league reliability for any business.
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Gary Linderer
That's genius.
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SpinQuest Announcer
You know what? It sucks to be bored, but when I get on my phone and Play real casino games on spinquest.com the time flies by. That two hour wait at the DMV seems like 10 minutes. Play your favorite slots live Blackjack, live preps with a live dealer. New players 30 coin packs are on sale for 10 bucks. Play spinquest.com and you'll never be bored again.
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SpinQuest Disclaimer
Spin Quest is a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.
- [128:06]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on
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Liberty Mutual Female Announcer
car insurance with Liberty Mutual.
- [128:12]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.
- [128:16]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer 2
Hey everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this your first date?
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Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
Oh, no.
- [128:20]
Liberty Mutual Female Announcer
We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together.
- [128:23]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.
- [128:26]
Gary Linderer
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
- [128:27]
Liberty Mutual Female Announcer
Anyways, get a quote@libertymutual.com or with your local agent.
- [128:31]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer 2
Liberty Liberty Liberty Liberty Dog grooming Genius here.
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Gary Linderer
Most people see a busy dog salon,
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VRBO Announcer
but I see operational excellence thanks to Genius.
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Gary Linderer
Genius from Global Payments Scheduling, personalized checkouts. Instant absolutely genius.
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VRBO Announcer
From game day crowds to every groomer
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Gary Linderer
in this shop, Genius keeps everything flowing seamlessly. Schnauzer is styled flawless execution, big league reliability for any business. That's Genius. Foreign.
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SpinQuest Announcer
Forget everything you had planned for this weekend because you are sitting on your couch and winning from the comfort of your own home. I'm here with spinquest where you can play hundreds of slot games, all the table games you love, and you could even win real cash Prizes. New users. 30 coin packs are on sale for 10 at super spinquest.com Spin Quest is
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SpinQuest Disclaimer
a free to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.
- [129:44]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on
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Liberty Mutual Female Announcer
car insurance with Liberty Mutual.
- [129:50]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.
- [129:54]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer 2
Hey everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?
- [129:58]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
Oh, no.
- [129:58]
Liberty Mutual Female Announcer
We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together.
- [130:01]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.
- [130:04]
Gary Linderer
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
- [130:06]
Liberty Mutual Female Announcer
Anyways, get a quote@libertymutual.com or with your local agent.
- [130:09]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer 2
Liberty Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.
- [130:13]
VRBO Announcer
This plant shop a perfectly balanced ecosystem thanks to Genius from Global Payments. Tracked inventory, seamless payments and reviews in one place. Big league reliability for your business. That's genius.
- [130:40]
SpinQuest Announcer
Forget whatever plans you have this weekend because you're staying at home and playing on Spin Quest. And there's never Been a better time to sign up than right now. New users get $30 coin packs for just $10. All the table games you love with hundreds of slot games and real cash Prizes. That's at spinquest.coms P-I-N q u-e s
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SpinQuest Disclaimer
t.com Spinquest is a free to play social casino void. Where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.
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Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on
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Liberty Mutual Female Announcer
car insurance with Liberty Mutual.
- [131:17]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.
- [131:21]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer 2
Hey, everyone. Check out this guy and his bird. What is this your first date?
- [131:24]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
Oh, no.
- [131:25]
Liberty Mutual Female Announcer
We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together.
- [131:28]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.
- [131:31]
Gary Linderer
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
- [131:33]
Liberty Mutual Female Announcer
Anyways, get a quote@libertymutual.com or with your local agent.
- [131:36]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer 2
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.
- [131:39]
VRBO Announcer
Dinner time. It's where little moments are cherished. With blue cash preferred. Get 6% cash back at US supermarkets and bring everyone together. I did say everyone. Learn more@americanexpress.com Explore bcp terms and cashback cap. Apply. With blue cash preferred.
- [132:03]
SpinQuest Announcer
Forget everything you had planned for this weekend because you are sitting on your couch and winning from the comfort of your own home. I'm here with Spin Quest, where you can play hundreds of slot games, all the table games you love, and you could even win real cash Prizes. New users, $30 coin packs are on sale for 10@Spinquest.com Spin Quest is a
- [132:26]
SpinQuest Disclaimer
free to play social casino void. Where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.
- [132:34]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual, even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.
- [132:44]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer 2
Hey, everyone, check out this guy and his bird. What is this, your first date?
- [132:48]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
Oh, no.
- [132:48]
Liberty Mutual Female Announcer
We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together.
- [132:52]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.
- [132:54]
Gary Linderer
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
- [132:56]
Liberty Mutual Female Announcer
Anyways, get a quote@libertymutual.com or with your local agent.
- [132:59]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer 2
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.
- [133:03]
VRBO Announcer
Are you really buying a car online on Autotrader right now?
- [133:06]
Gary Linderer
Really? At a playground?
- [133:08]
VRBO Announcer
Yeah, really. Look at these listings from dealers.
- [133:10]
SpinQuest Announcer
Wow, your search can really get that specific.
- [133:13]
Gary Linderer
Really? And you just put in your info and boom, car's in your budget. Mom needs a second. Honey, you can really have it delivered. Really? Or I can pick it up at the dealership. One sec, sweetie. Mommy's buying a car. Mommy, look.
- [133:26]
VRBO Announcer
I think your kid is walking up the slide.
- [133:28]
Gary Linderer
Kyle. Again?
- [133:29]
VRBO Announcer
Really?
- [133:30]
Gary Linderer
Autotrader, Buy your car online. Really?
- [133:35]
SpinQuest Announcer
Whether it's slots or live dealers, Spinquest.com has the fun and action you're looking for with Spinquest exclusives. Blackjack, roulette, baccarat, and even live dice. With craps and bubble craps, the games never stop so you don't have to. And right now, new users get $30 coin packs for just 10 bucks. Play now@Spinquest.com Spin SpinQuest is a free
- [133:59]
SpinQuest Disclaimer
to play social casino void where prohibited. Visit spinquest.com for more details.
- [134:06]
Jack Murphy
Lots of places can expose you to identity theft. That's why LifeLock monitors hundreds of millions of data points a second for threats to your identity, which is way more than anyone can do on their own. If we find anything suspicious, like new loans or changes to your financial accounts,
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Gary Linderer
we alert you right away.
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Jack Murphy
All through 10 text, phone, email, or the LifeLock app. Save up to 30% your first year. Visit lifelock.com iheart Terms apply.
- [134:37]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
And Doug, there's nowhere I wouldn't go to help someone customize and save on
- [134:42]
Liberty Mutual Female Announcer
car insurance with Liberty Mutual.
- [134:43]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
Even if it means sitting front row at a comedy show.
- [134:47]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer 2
Hey, everyone, Check out this guy in his bird. What is this your first?
- [134:50]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
Oh, no.
- [134:51]
Liberty Mutual Female Announcer
We help people customize and save on car insurance with Liberty Mutual together.
- [134:54]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer
We're married. Me to a human, him to a bird.
- [134:57]
Gary Linderer
Yeah, the bird looks out of your league.
- [134:59]
Liberty Mutual Female Announcer
Anyways, get a quote@libertymutual.com or with your local agent.
- [135:02]
Liberty Mutual Male Announcer 2
Liberty. Liberty. Liberty. Liberty.