Transcript of Inside MACV-SOG: Black Ops Behind Enemy Lines in Vietnam | Ed Wolcoff | Ep. 407 New

Hey everyone, welcome to episode 407 of The TeamHouse. I'm Jack Murphy here with today's guest, Ed Wolkoff. Ed served in Vietnam with MACV-SOG, spent time in Special Forces, and then served as a nuclear officer. And you were also, was it an EOD company commander, Ed?

I was an EOD detachment commander for quite a while and then, you know, for about 7 and a half years in EOD, but also in ordnance and to include special weapons. Gotcha. You have, yeah.

And he is also the author of the book Special Reconnaissance in Advanced Small Unit Patrolling. I got this book and use it as a reference myself. This is, I think it is the most comprehensive book out there on this topic, the most thorough that really goes deep onto the subject of tactics and techniques and procedures that are necessary, especially in jungle warfare, which we'll talk about, I think, quite a bit later on in this interview. But first, Ed, thank you for joining us on the show.

Thanks. Glad to be here.

So, Ed, I'd like to start at the beginning with these interviews. If you can tell us a little bit about sort of your upbringing and how that took you towards eventually the military.

Okay, graduated from high school and went to college, joined ROTC, was a member of the ROTC Ranger Company at the university where I was, and we had some Special Forces advisors. They took me under their wing and kind of indoctrinated me in special operations. And in hushed tones talking between themselves, they would talk about SOG, and I asked what was SOG, and it was one of these things where they said, we'd have to kill you before we tell you, and but they, you know, they gave some insider information, they said that SOG recon had 70% casualty rate. And I said, oh, that's the place where I want to go. And I dropped out of college and joined the Army as an enlisted man with the intent of realizing that dream, going airborne, volunteering all the way, going airborne and Special Forces and ultimately in SOG. And I achieved that. And at that point, I had no real intent to become a career soldier. But I decided to do that after my experience in SOG and Vietnam.

What year was this that you joined up?

'67.

Okay, so you were hearing from some of your instructors who were there early on in the war probably like '66 or '69?

Well, I joined the Army in '67 and then I got to Vietnam and SOG in March of '69 and then I was there for 25 months and ran 25 missions. Oh, wow. Wow.

So tell us about kind of how you got into Special Forces and going through the training back in those days. I know Camp McCall wasn't quite as built up as it is today.

Yeah, that's quite true. We were intense and it was, there was a big focus on physical fitness, the, and land navigation as it is today. and back then the training for Special Forces was in 3 parts. First was, you know, getting through the basic course and getting qualified. Then the second part was your MOS training, and then the third part was the unconventional warfare training and you had an index, and then you were assigned to a group. And I chose weapons when I was in AIT. I was an 11 Charlie, which was mortarman, and I had an affinity. I wanted to get into close combat operations. So I selected 11 Bravo MOS, which was, you know, infantryman, light weapons actually, and was trained in light and heavy weapons. Later on, after I returned from Vietnam, I went to 11 Foxtrot course and that became my secondary. That was operations and intelligence. But at any rate, my assignment out of training group was to the 6th Special Forces Group. I wasn't there very long. My team sergeant and my sergeant major took a liking to me and they sent me to underwater operations course, scuba school.

Wow. And at that point, I was a Spec 4. And I asked around the more senior NCOs about how I could get to SOG. And I found a guy who was, who was bound for Vietnam, and he gave me the phone number for a woman we referred to as Mrs. A, who was the assignments—

up at the Pentagon?

Not at the Pentagon, but at PersCo, Personnel Command.

And you had to send her flowers?

I didn't have to.

Okay. A lot of guys have told me that.

Yeah, I called her up. I somehow I got a hold of a phone and without anybody listening because I knew my team sergeant, my sergeant major would be pissed off by volunteering for that after, you know, they'd done me the favor of signing me up for scuba school. Anyway, it was You know, when I was on the phone with her, I told her I wanted to go to SOG, and she said, are you sure? Because she knew what the casualty rate was. She had to fill all those slots. And I said, yes, I'm absolutely sure. So she said, okay, I'll get your orders. So I was waiting around, and then the class date for scuba school started. And back then, and probably still, there is a kind of a make or break event in the course, which is called the— it was a pool training Like the shark attack? Yeah, it was a harassment swim. Yeah, yeah. And I had just finished successfully completing the harassment swim, and it wasn't very pleasant for me because they had paired me up with a captain, and they were all after the captain, and I was just kind of like a, you know, a coincidental casualty, you might say.

But anyway, I passed that and we went back to the barracks to get ready for the next class. And I was told that the NCOIC of the committee wanted to see me. And I said, oh shit, I failed the swim. I failed the harassment swim. He brought me in and said, you got orders. and, and he, he knew what the code was on the orders that indicated I was going to SOG, and he said, we'll put you on a, on a bus back up to Fort Bragg, and you'll have to process out, and then you're on your, you're on your way. I didn't know at that point, as a, you know, a lowly Spec 4, that I could have asked for a delay until I completed the SCUBA course. But I didn't know that at the time. So back up to Bragg, processed out, and got to Nha Trang where they gave me— they further assigned me to the specific part of SOG where I was to be assigned, which was Command and Control Central, or also known as FOB 2.

Ed, can I just ask a question real quick? Not that I know everything about this era, but I don't think I've ever heard in the past of someone actually getting orders to SOG from the United States. It always seems like the guys talk about they arrive in country and they'd give them some kind of brief, like very vague, we have this special reconnaissance outfit, do you want to volunteer? and that's kind of how they found their way in it. Was that like a unique situation that you found yourself in?

Apparently it had changed when SOG started, you know, got off the ground. They were actually sending Spec 4s and Sergeant E5s to O&I course to qualify them to go to SOG. And then they would be directly assigned, assigned to SOG. Well, they would have to go to the 5th Group, because the 5th Group was the administrative service for Special Forces there. And then, but on the orders, there was a 3-letter code on the orders within which indicated the ultimate unit of assignment. And I didn't know that at the time, but it was explained to me by the NCOIC of the SCUBA committee. And so So I got to, got to Nha Trang and processed in and then found my way on a Blackbird from Nha Trang to Khantoum. And that was an interesting, they were, my adventure started, you know.

So tell us about that kind of first couple days arriving at CCC and what that firebase was like and the people you met there.

So it was kind of striking flying over Vietnam. It was green rainforest everywhere, beautiful, broken up by the occasional road and village and town and city. French architecture, you know, stucco and with red tile roofs and stuff like that. Very, very attractive from the sky, not so attractive on the ground, but landed at, at Khantoum airstrip, like I said, on a Blackbird. And there was a tractor trailer from the FOB waiting to get the cargo from the Blackbird to take it to the FOB. So I and there was about 4 other folks on board the aircraft who were inbound. and so we were sitting on the pallets as we drove out the road, the access road to the airfield, and right there was the provincial government building for Khan Tum province. Took a right, and in front of the provincial headquarters was this big open field and overgrown with weeds, and right in the middle of it was a French Panhard armored car that had been destroyed. And it kind of resonated with me that the French had been there before us and had failed. And And so, you know, the historical aspect of that kind of rushed in on me.

Up the road about 3 miles, I would say, from Kontum, from the airfield at least, passing over a bridge, and we entered the gate. Now, the FOB, for some strange reason, was divided into 2 by the highway. The highway is called QL-14. And as far as a defensive setting, I thought it was inappropriate to have a highway dividing your compound. You know, not only was it a highway for the Vietnamese, it was a highway for an enemy who wanted to, you know, to attack you on a high-speed route of approach. But I digress here, but drove in the gate and it was chow time and people were coming out of the mess hall. And among them was a guy who had gone through training group with me. His name was John St. Martin. And John recognized me instantly and wanted me to join his team. He was not the team leader, he was the assistant team leader, and, but there was a vacancy on the team, so he took me to see his team leader, and he basically gave me the nod And then I went over and spoke to the first sergeant over at Recon Company headquarters.

The following, so I knighted over in the team room and the following day we went over to see the sergeant major and he gave us the end brief or at least part of it. And gave us the opportunity to decline the operation, indicating hazardous operation, you know, cross-border operations, all that good stuff. And so among us was a medic, and then there was 4 other guys. One was an NCO, and the NCO decided he would go to the exploitation force and the rest of us opted for recon. From there, we got in briefed by the S2 shop and gave us the one over the world thing. We got to see the big map on the wall where the area of operations was. and it was all, you know, just what I kind of expected. My first sergeant at that point was the guy by the name of Bob Howard. Oh yeah. And he was very striking in appearance, extremely well-built, powerfully built, big guy, scar on his face. And St. Martin had told me that he had been submitted for his third recommendation for a Medal of Honor at that point, and that he was going to get it this go-round.

And of course, St. Martin was in awe of Bob Howard, and as was most everybody else that I knew that I encountered. He's very well thought of. For obvious reasons. And so that's kind of was my introduction. Yeah.

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What was CCC, Command and Control Central? What kind of was their area of operation?

The area of operations in Laos were divided between CCN and CCC, roughly 50/50, uh, during— in the area of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. And we also got a piece of northeastern Cambodia, and interestingly enough, that area of— I mean, it was all— there was a major supply route slicing through the southern portion of the Laotian panhandle that went into the tri-border area and part of that road continued on into South Vietnam, although was all overgrown by that point. And then there was at least two branches of that road that went into Cambodia, went south into Cambodia. And everything— and I later found out that that particular area was an NVA base area for, uh, uh, it was called Base Area 609, uh, and, uh, there was a concentration of enemy troops and enemy, uh, logistics located there. And that logistics fed not only into South Vietnam, into the Central Highlands, but it also fed into the border area along the Cambodia-South Vietnam border. So it was a vital area of interest to the enemy, and because of that, it was extremely well guarded and and very hazardous territory for operations. So I later on found out that our S2 shop had failed us in a number of respects by not providing us the intelligence that I that was at MACV headquarters, J2, and never seemed to wind up down at our level and disseminated among the team leaders.

And I can tell you about a couple operations that for me that revealed these kinds of things about what I was really getting into. And it turns out that the casualty rate for our recon company at FOB 2 was 100% or over 100%. Rather than the 70% that I had been told earlier. And of course, casualties include KIA, WIA, MIA. And so the, the reason why the casualty rate was so high was that Guys would get wounded and they would come back to the FOB from the hospital, directly from the hospital. They, many of them were to be medevaced and they declined medevac to Okinawa or back to the States. And, and escaped from the hospital and hitchhiked back to the FOB. An example of that was a guy by the name of Norm Doni. Norm Doni, after Howard became an officer and came back to command the recon company at FOB 2, Norm Doni had been with Delta Project at Nha Trang, and for reasons that I can discuss later, he decided to leave Delta, and he was First Sergeant Recon Company at Delta Project, and he wanted to be First Sergeant Recon Company at FOB 2.

So he was an outstanding individual, brought a lot of experience. He had run recon himself. Before he took the first sergeant's job, he wanted to prove his mettle to the personnel that he would be in charge of as first sergeant. So he took, I think it was RT Texas, and he took several operations, and on one operation he got wounded. and it was his left eye, a fragment, a grenade fragment penetrated his, his, his left eye, and they, you know, evacuated him to hospital, and he just, he hiked his way back to the FOB. They were going to evac him to the States to perform surgery on the eye, and he refused, and he he had optic fluid coming out of his eye and down to his cheek, and his remedy for that was just, he had a hanky and he'd pat it and continued to drive on. And then he did another couple missions with that before he became a first sergeant. So that was the kind of guys that we had there in leadership positions that we looked up to and set the example for us.

Could you tell us about your first mission and kind of jocking up for that and, you know, what the kind of preparation was that your 1-0 gave you before you went out?

Oh, that's a nasty story, actually. There were a couple of guys at CCC who had gotten into Special Forces through the back door. The 5th Group at Nha Trang had a lot of vacancies, A-Teams, B-Teams, and special projects. So they would accept an infantryman with combat experience with the, you know, the rank of Staff Sergeant or above into the Special Forces ranks. You come in the training and they give them a beret. Never went through the selection process, never went through Special Forces training. And A couple of these guys really turned out to be really bad, and among them was my first team leader, and he didn't train the team. He was not particularly involved with the Montagnards, and he, he did some things that were unacceptable as a team leader. The only deployment that I had under him was to a bright light, a week-long bright light assignment. Bright light was conducted out of our launch site, and the bright light operation consisted of a special, you know, a recon team designated to go to the rescue of a team in trouble. Or recover the remains of those who had been killed, or rescue and/or recover crewmen, aircraft crewmen.

And it was often a very hazardous job. So we went up to, to Doctoe, which is the launch site. And we were not called out for any rescue operations or recovery operations, which was fortunate. Because this team leader had never trained us. The training consisted of going out in the helipad and running through an immediate action drill and do that a couple times. And then go to the range and shoot your weapons and not even run battle drills and then come back and that was it. And both St. Martin and I were very concerned about that. Plus his behavior was, I don't want to even talk about his behavior, frankly. I could tell you offline, but at any rate.

Inappropriate for the position.

Inappropriate for a Special Forces soldier, inappropriate for any soldier. At any rate, St. Martin and I went to see Bob Howard and told him what was going on with the guy, and he said, don't worry, I'll handle it. After that bright light, this team leader was going on leave, to Okinawa, where he alleged that he had a wife. And while he was gone to Okinawa, Howard ensured that he never came back, or he didn't come back. And he should have, he should have been ejected from Special Forces, but apparently that didn't happen. And I ran into him later on when I was an instructor at Camp McCall as a student. He was a student and he was, he deserted.

He deserted in the United States?

Deserted the United States while he was going to that course.

Oh my God.

So that gives you some inkling of the character. So, St. Martin took us out on one operation into a very hot area called Hotel Nine.

I'm sorry, just one second, Ed, before that. So when that team leader gets fired by Bob Howard, then St. John becomes the team leader. Is that how that worked?

That was the way it was supposed to work. But St. Martin only had 3 missions under his belt. And that included the mission at the 1-0 school. Gotcha.

So who was in charge?

Realistically, he only had 2 missions on the ground, and the reason why that loser had become team leader was because just before I got there, uh, the team had gotten in, into a contact, and the team leader had been killed, and the assistant team leader had been, uh, severely wounded and medevaced back to the States. So the radio man wound up being the team leader, and he wound up being the team leader because he had claimed to have been a recon team leader in the 173rd. Mm-hmm. And it was just— Yeah.

So Hotel 9, who was running the team when you guys went in?

So St. Martin was given the team. But we already had a designee. Okay, to take over the team.

Gotcha.

Identified. At this point, I think. Well. This was another guy from the 173rd. And. The. He was, uh, bad in a different way from the original, uh, team leader we had. And I was beginning to think that, uh, our team New York was a bad luck team, uh, at this point, uh, because, uh, he didn't train us any better than our first team leader. He was an alcoholic. He would come from training and go directly to the club and start drinking, and that was his practice every day. And we had the first operation with him was a very simple operation. We were going into a very hot area, but the mission was to drop off a transponder into an area called Oscar 3 for B-52s to home in on.

Beacon bombing.

Yes. And it was basically Fly in, jump off the helicopter, hide the transponder, call the helicopter to come get you and go, go back. And that was it. Uh, so the first two people off the helicopter supposed to be the team leader and the radio man, which is what I was at that point. Uh, and, uh He, I lost my balance. I was standing on the skid ready to jump off the helicopter onto the ground. I lost my balance and got to the ground before him. And he was very upset that I got onto the ground before him and chewed me out. And It went downhill from there.

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We were given another mission, and he was, uh, It was an area called Tango 7, which was a very hot area, and he really disliked St. Martin and me. He swore that we were incompetent and would get him killed. That was his point of view. And he would go to the club and talk about those kind of things. And he would talk about other team leaders, give his uninformed opinion about them. And he talked about us, St. Martin and I, like dogs. And we knew about it. But he— we got this mission to Tango 7, and we're up at the, the launch site, and he's— he tells the launch officer— the launch officer tells him, get ready to go. We got a window, and he says, I can't go. I refuse to go. I feel sick to my stomach. And so the launch officer radios back to the FOB. The FOB commander personally comes out and goes to Confronts him and his face is just purple with rage. And he said, are you going to take this mission or not? And the guy said, no, I don't feel good. Wow. So he said, you're relieved.

You relieved him on the spot. Turned to St. Martin and said, can you take the team on this op? And St. Martin looks at me and I nod. We agreed that we were going to take the team shorthanded and go on the op. And it was a successful operation. And this guy, from being relieved, they sent him to the security company to run guard posts and stuff like that. He was relieved for cowardice and he should have been kicked out of Special Forces.

Or the Army.

And the Army. But interestingly, because we were so classified, nobody was ever given an Article 15. Nobody was ever court-martialed, even though some earned it, to include me.

So did RT New York start to get back on track now that It was you two guys kind of running the show?

That's correct. We acquired another radioman by the name of John Blau, and we started running ops, and every one of them was in a hot target area, and every one of them we got into contact, and we ran about 4 ops, I would say, before we got into a, a very serious situation, and John got shot up very badly, and Fortunately, we were, we were able to get out of there in a very dramatic fashion.

Could you expand a little bit about what happened to you guys on the ground?

Okay, so we landed on an LZ Tango 7 near Stream Valley and One of the things that John did that wasn't particularly smart— mind you, John had never been tutored by a decent team leader— so John would, would take an azimuth from the LZ and go straight to his target, which was an invitation to, for the NVA to set up an ambush. Once they realized that you were on an azimuth, they could, they could find you and get ahead of you and, and set up a blocking force for you. Uh, normally within a couple days, uh, we would, uh, be tracked down by, uh, tracker teams, NVA squads typically with Laotian tribesmen trackers, and these were the excellent troops. These were outstanding troops, but at any rate, two days into the op, they had not yet tracked us down. And we came upon an area of dead bamboo. And if you know anything about dead bamboo, particularly if it's fallen, and they make a god-awful noise. It's impossible to get through a patch of dead bamboo, almost impossible to get through without making a hell of a lot of noise. And as cautious as you could be.

And so we entered that area of dead bamboo, which is fairly extensive area, probably had been killed by Agent Orange, and got to the other side and all of a sudden we hear shouting from the green periphery, uh, inside, inside the, uh, the vegetation, uh, and, uh, at this point John being the second guy in, in order of, uh, the file order, he saw and the point man saw buildings, and they gave the sign for buildings, which is basically like that, uh, and I assumed that they were the typical bamboo huts kind of a thing that the NVA used in the field, uh, and, uh, just at that point, uh, there was yelling in Vietnamese from inside this area, and for some reason our translator, our interpreter, did not translate what was being said to John. And I found out later, after John had been all shot up and we got back to the FOB, that they were saying there's Americans in the dead bamboo. So we got into inside the verge, and I was confronted by something I really didn't expect, which is really big buildings under canopy. Heavy log structure, uh, long buildings, uh, a cluster of 4 of them, uh, and the ground surrounding these buildings, uh, was— there wasn't a leaf or a twig on it.

It was totally pleased up. And, uh, right before this cleared area where these buildings were, there was a fallen log, a fallen tree, and we assembled there, and John got this great idea that we would attack the, the largest building in the hopes of capturing NVA officers and documents of you know, of importance and things like that. And I suggested to him that maybe we ought to bomb it first before we assaulted it with an 8-man recon team, you know. And he agreed with that. So he— we got in contact with our communication relay site, and they passed the word back to the FOB. At this point, it was getting near dusk. It was about an hour, a half an hour before dusk, and the order came back from the FOB commander to to bomb the facility and then police up whatever we could. Uh, but we were so close to those buildings, uh, that the only thing that would penetrate the canopy would be a white phosphorus grenade. And if we set off a white phosphorus grenade, then the enemy would know exactly where we were. So we summoned air support, which came in the form of A-1 fighter bombers, and attempted to adjust fire by sound.

We tried to, you know, zero them in to where we were located by the sound of their engines, told them to do a 90-degree turn or, you know, whatever, to get us in the vicinity so that they could then, and we had hoped that they, that would be close enough where they could drop their bombs. They were only carrying heavy bombs, cased bombs, fragmentation bombs, and didn't have anything else to, for, were loaded on those aircraft at that point. Well, they dropped some ordnance and it was totally way off in the distance, not even close. So John decided, the hell with it, we're going to go and assault that building. So we go back to where this fallen log is and he divides the team into uh, two parts. At that, we were running an 8-man team, so there were 3 Americans and the rest were Montagnards, 3 Montagnards. So it was, uh, St. Martin and I and 2 Montagnards, uh, up in the, uh, the front, and the, the, the second, uh, wave was to be our radio man with the 2 N-79 grenadiers and a third Montagnard. And the grenadiers were to bracket our contested area with, you know, HE while the first wave, you know, assaulted this building.

and just at that point, so John and I were up at the, up at that log, and we both, both, uh, pulled pins on grenades, uh, and getting ready to assault the building, uh, and John stepped over the log, and just out at that point, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a squad of NVA infantry with their weapons at high port walking along the periphery of this cleared area pretending that they didn't see us, but they did, and they hit us on the flank, uh, and John fortunately threw his grenade and then fell back from stepping over the log. I threw my grenade and opened fire on this squad of NVA. John had been hit 3 times. He had been hit in the ankle. If you know anything about an AK, it has a muzzle rise as it fires, so it rises up and to the left because the ejection port is on the right. So it hit him in the ankle, hit him in the leg, and then sliced across his abdomen, which emptied his intestines.

Oh my God.

To the ground. And so fortunately, we were sheltered by the, by the log and my firing and possibly the firing of the grenadiers had knocked out some of the NVA squad. So I had not been trained how to administer morphine, but John was in extreme pain. He was screaming and hollering, which of course pinpointed us. The, the team leader in SOG recon teams always called what was called a 1-0 kit, which had medicines, tetracycline, uh, Lamotil, uh, Mercurochrome, all this kind of shit. And, uh, it also had the morphine syrettes in them. And I wasn't taught how to use the morphine syrettes. and, uh, this was like my, uh, maybe my fourth operation on the ground, and everybody who went to, uh, to SOG, to SOG FOBs who were to, who were destined for recon or exploitation force were supposed to go through the 1-0 course at Long Tan, and they forgot about me. So I, it might have been that I missed that course on the serrets because I never went to Long Tan. Everybody else went. For some reason, they missed me. At any rate, I tried to administer the morphine and and it wouldn't eject.

And John was still carrying on and screaming shit. And I said, all right, enough of this. I took his intestines, I piled them back on top of his abdomen, tucked his undershirt in, and tightened down his belt to contain his intestines. and then I, I got his, his rucksack and gave it to one Montagnard to carry, gave his weapon to another Montagnard to carry, and gave his web gear to another Montagnard to carry. And then for the remaining people, I, you know, I tried to get them to help me drag Saint Martin to LZ, which was the dead— the area of dead bamboo where from whence we came. And it turns out that Montagnards could carry a load equivalent to that of an American any day. They, they were really small in stature, but they could really carry a lot of weight. But their upper body strength was absolutely terrible. And they couldn't, they couldn't carry Saint Martin and they couldn't drag him. So I wound up dragging him back to the, to the LZ. And we just reached the LZ just as my strength ran out. I mean, he outweighed me by 30, 40 pounds and it was just How far did you have to drag him?

Oh, 30 meters, 40 meters, something like that. I was dragging him by the— I couldn't put him in a fireman's carry because of his intestines. Yeah. You know, the stuff. And so I dragged him. And all this while he's He's coming in and out of consciousness, and every time he's conscious, he's, you know, he's screaming out in pain and stuff like that. So we get in, you know, about 10, 15 meters inside the bamboo, and two of the Montyards had their street smarts about them, and they went along the periphery of the dead bamboo where there was some live bamboo, and they shook the bamboo away from where St. Martin was to distract the enemy away from where St. Martin was moaning and groaning and where the rest of the team was, and, and attract the firing towards where the bamboo was being shaken. So we called, you know, an emergency for emergency extraction, and by now it was dusk, uh, and, uh, uh, uh, we had a forward air controller by the name of Don Fulton, a captain, And he had a covey rider, which was a senior NCO, an E-7, and who was sitting in the back seat.

And we started taking fire. And so the, the pilot had 4 rockets slung under his wings. And most of them were, they all were, as a matter of fact, white phosphorus. So he did strafing runs with these rockets and fired them into the, where the fire, the weapons fire was coming from. And at dusk, he could now see the muzzle flashes from these weapons. And he estimated that we had a company closing in on us based on the amount of fire. They weren't just firing at us, they were firing up at him because he was making low passes. They ran out of rockets. So the NCO who was sitting in the back of the aircraft opened the window and was firing his M16 out the window at the enemy as they were closing. And the fire, the amount of fire that they were taking as they were doing these strafing runs was increasing, increasing. And then they said, you got a battalion coming at you. And he had summoned, of course, air assets. And by the time they got there, it was starting to rain and it was dark. And the first helicopter came in and they had to turn their landing lights on.

In order to see us and to see how close they were to the ground and to the bamboo, which made them a perfect target, and they started taking all kinds of hits. Now, we at that point, the helicopters would not land because of the bamboo. So at that point in time, we were using an extraction rig called the Hanson rig, and what it was was a, a 12 to 16 foot length of, uh, 1.5-inch nylon, uh, 1.5-inch webbing with a very stout buckle on it. It was used for, you know, to tie down cargo on aircraft and on pallets and stuff like that. And we found a way to use those which, if properly donned, could basically create kind of like a basket arrangement so that you wouldn't fall out of a Hansa rig unless you actually tried. And so we used those at that point. It had replaced something was called the McGuire Rig. And the McGuire Rig was simply a loop, a padded loop that you would sit on. And we lost a pilot that had been rescued because he didn't know how to use it. He thought it was like the CA air rescue where you put it under your arms.

Yeah, yeah. He had to sit on it. He fell out of that. He, you know, he, his circulation was cut off and he just fell out of it while he was being rescued and died. But anyway, so you were supposed to rig these up and carry them on your web gear hooked onto your web gear with a carabiner, and, uh, mine was all hooked up. It was, you know, the webbing was cut, you know, set to the— my length from my shoulders down to my feet, uh, and, um, and was laced through the— this very robust steel buckle and was tied off and all that good stuff, and mine was ready to go. St. Martin had never rigged his, his, uh, his Hanson rig, so it was just a 16-foot-inch belt.

Oh my God.

So I gave St. Martin my stable rig and hooked him up, uh, and when the aircraft came in, they dropped ropes and with loops in them at the bottom and midway on the rope, 5/8-inch rappelling rope effectively. I hooked him into that and 3 of the other Montagnards, maybe 4, and I charged them with, you know, taking care of John, and he was still screaming bloody murder and stuff like that, and that helicopter took off, and that's when I found out that John's— that I didn't have time enough to rig the Hanson rig to my dimensions, so I tied it into a Swiss seat, Never do that, by the way, if you can avoid it. And when the second ship came in, again with landing lights on and taking fire, our radioman and the remaining Montyard hooked on, and I hooked up the radio to another string. And as the helicopter gained altitude, we started taking anti-aircraft fire from 23 Mike Mike and 37 Mike Mike, anti-aircraft fire. And it was starting to rain like hell. And we saw the detonations of the of the anti-aircraft artillery below us as we were. And the— so we were flying back to our launch site over all this rugged rainforest and mountains.

And I started feeling a lot of pain from the, from the webbing, which had bound up and was really slicing into my groin area, and at the same time that was going on, I was dealing with that, the radio, Prick 77, was flying out and like a pendulum and coming back and smacking me repeatedly, so I managed to grab the radio, got a hold of the handset, and begged the pilot to set us down so that I could— because I was in pain and I was afraid that my circulation would cut off and that I would fall out of the harness. He refused to do that. And we flew through a torrential rainstorm at the, the, you know, the, the cruising speed for the UH-1D, which is probably around 120 miles an hour, something like that. So, so that was a, you know, kind of a complementary, complementary effect of the rain hitting you at that speed while you're flying at 120 miles an hour. And the rain was so heavy, the cloud cover was so dense that St. Martin's helicopter entirely missed the launch site and flew all the way to Khantoum Airfield. Oh my God.

And they landed and got St. Martin loaded up on the helicopter. They had a chase medic with him and they got him to the Pleiku Hospital and they had to put an enormous amount of blood into him just to save his life. And they have that, you know, of course, when they got him stable, they medevaced him first to Okinawa and then to the States. That round that hit his thigh shattered his thigh bone. His ankle was shattered. And of course, you know, his intestines, as you can imagine. And so my helicopter was able to see the launch site airfield airstrip because there was a Jeep there that had its headlights on illuminating the airstrip for them. So he kind of comes in, in the usual flight pattern, and he came in too low, and I I hit the asphalt pretty hard, uh, and, uh, then he started dragging me all the way down the airstrip towards where the launch site was. And I had this— I looked like a comet because something metal on, on the— my backpack was dragging on the concrete and there's a shower of sparks all around me. And there I was laying on my back while this was going on.

I'm looking up at the helicopter and there's the crew chief looking out, looking down at me. And I'm going, you know, like, you know, what are you going to do about this kind of a I'm sure he couldn't see my expression, but finally he was able to communicate with the pilot and the pilot gained altitude to get me up off the asphalt close to where the launch site was and then dropped me like a sack of potatoes again. On the asphalt. Well, it turns out that this was the new commander of the 57th helicopter company, and this was his cherry flight. Oh, so he was a, he was a major. And he was— every time you take over a helicopter company, you want to take at least one flight with them. And particularly since this was a deep penetration operation, he'd never been on one before. So this was his cherry flight for SOG. and he comes out of the helicopter, runs over to me and begs my forgiveness. And he said he had lost his— between night vision, the glare of the headlights on the Jeep, and he had lost the It's like depth perception.

Depth perception, thank you very much. He lost depth perception, and it was just, uh, so he apologized all over the place, and I said, don't worry about it, I'm happy to be here, kind of a thing. Uh, we were transported back to, uh, to the FOB. Uh, and, uh, we were met, uh, by the new commander, uh, of, uh, Recon Company by the name of Goulet. Great guy, uh, and the first sergeant, which, uh, I think it was Doni at that point, and the, the tradition for us was you come off an op and you would be taken to the mess hall and fed a steak dinner. So they had to wake up the mess sergeant to cook us some steaks. And me, I was sitting at the table with the commander and the first sergeant, and John Blau was sitting with me. And they wanted an account of what had happened. Uh, and I gave them, you know, the story, and then, uh, it, it kind of hit me how ridiculous this whole thing was about an 8-man recon team attacking, uh, an NVA installation, and I started laughing like crazy. And at some point, Blau saw the humor in it too.

He started laughing. But I caught a strange look between the commander and the first sergeant that I must have gone off my rocker. But at that point, then I became the team leader of R2 New York.

Did they finally send you to 1-0 school?

Never. Really? It was, uh, I was into my, I guess, a year and a half point. Uh, I had basically a full year as a 1-0, and, uh, the first sergeant said, you know, I've been looking at your, your record. Did you You went to 1-0 school, didn't you? I said, no. He said, Jesus Christ, he couldn't believe it. And I said, I'm not going now, you know. And I have my own views about the 1-0 course. I mean, this 1-0 course was taught by former team leaders. But they wound up homesteading, and as the tactical situation on the ground changed, they didn't. And they— so what you got out of the 1-0 course was valuable, mind you, but it was, in my view, a basic special reconnaissance course. Where you got your advanced training was at the hands of a multi-tour team leader.

And what was it like for you running the team from then on out?

It was interesting from the get-go. The Montagnards on the team had really loved Saint Martin. He really could relate to them. They adored him. His physical presence, you know, his muscles and, you know, always had a sense of humor about him. And the Montjuïcs absolutely loved him. And because he was so statuesque, they thought that he was, you know, invulnerable. And then I take over the team and I don't— initially I don't enjoy the same relationship. And I was more— I love the yards and they and we got along great, but not in the same sense, not as close as Saint Mark was with him. And I was more directive in nature, and the first mission that we had was kind of raised their level of concern about me. So that first mission was, at this point, the first sergeant was a guy by the name of Pappy Greenwood, a master sergeant, good guy. He had been in provincial reconnaissance unit under associated with Phoenix program, and he came to SOG and was the first sergeant. And he said, we've got a mission for you. Right at that point, I was on bright light duty, and he called me back from bright light and said, we got a mission for you.

That's the way it went. Uh, he said, there's going to be a B-52 strike along, uh, the MSR, and, uh, we're going to send you in on, uh, a, uh, bomb damage assessment, BDA. And he said, you never been on a BDA before, so, uh, I'll, I'll tell you what it What typically happens, you land, it's tough getting through all the tangle of trees that have been tossed up by the B-52 strikes. You wind up spending, nighting over and then commencing your reconnaissance the following day. And he says, every time the teams get run out of the target area before they can accomplish the mission, because the North Vietnamese have figured out where you are and they're waiting for you. And they know that after every B-52 strike, a BDA would follow. So they were always waiting for us on a BDA. So, uh, I said, okay, well, why don't we do it this way? Oh, why don't you just land me on the beaten zone? I'll conduct my recon right then and there, and then I'll get extracted before nightfall. Rather than landing outside the beaten zone, which was the usual protocol, land me right there.

And he said he was really shocked at that suggestion, and he said, are you sure you want to do it that way? I said yes, and he said, all right, it's your call. And So we were inserted by a CH-34 helicopter and landed down in the stream valley that was at the foot of this ridge, and the MSR followed along at the base basically at the base of this ridge towards the tri-border area. And it was an all, it was an all-weather road and was vital to the enemy. So we landed there and we scaled up the side of this, this ridge to get on top of the road. I started taking pictures. And there was bunkers along the side of the road for North Vietnamese to take shelter from air attack and whatnot. We walked a kilometer in the open along the road after the B-52 strike had cleaned out all the vegetation. So anybody who was on a ridge on the other side of the beaten area, of the other side of the the stream valley could have seen us very easily, but they— but, uh, nothing happened untoward. And we got to a, uh, to a point in the road which kind of, uh, formed a loop around, uh, a finger of this ridge.

And I said— and my Montagnards were getting extremely nervous And my point man kept on drifting back so that I got the message that he didn't want to go any further. And so I decided that we would climb this ridge and get to the top of the ridge and get some more perspective, which is what we did. And we got up to the top of the ridge, uh, and there was this, uh, bomb crater from a 500-pound bomb right where that finger was, uh, and some trees had been knocked out, knocked off, uh, around there. But, uh, this bomb crater, we looked at the bottom of the bomb crater and there was a tunnel. It had breached the tunnel, atop of a tunnel. And that gets me— remind me to come back to this, the, this tunnel issue, because it gets back to the, the intelligence issue that I mentioned earlier on in the conversation. So, so I say to my, one of my grenadiers that I wanted him to go down into the tunnel because he was not only armed with a, with an M79 grenade launcher, but he also was carrying a.45 pistol.

And I had a flashlight for him, and he refuses. So I decide I'll do it. I take his.45 and I go down into the bottom of the crater and go into this tunnel that's been exposed. I'm there with my flashlight and my.45, and I'm crawling in in through the, around in this tunnel and come to a point where there'd been a cave-in and I couldn't go any further. So I was contemplating what I was going to do next. Just then I get a shout from my assistant team leader saying, NVA, and So I have— I can't turn around, so I wind up scooting back until I get even with the opening and I get a hand up and we all get into the bomb crater and they tell me where they see these— see the NVA. The NVA had crossed They said it was an NVA squad that had crossed the beaten zone from the B-52 strike and was now on our side of the road and on the ridge where we were, but at some distance. So I said, all right, that's enough. I've gotten all the photos that I, that I need. I'd taken other photos from this elevation.

Not a single bomb from the B-52 strike had hit the road. Not a single one, which was disappointing to me. So I call for an extraction and they send again the CH-34 to pick us up and the blade length was such that they could not, uh, land or even get close to this finger that was on the ridge. So the forward air controller directed us to another open area that was further along the ridge. Uh, that open area was separated from my open area by a finger of, you know, an isthmus of vegetation. Now, I had tried to knock down a tree with a claymore, and all it did was knock off the bark from the tree. So that wasn't a solution. So I tell the point man, who was a big fan of John St. Martin. His name was Jerome, and he had a brother on the team who was one of my N79 guys. I said, I point him and I said, we go there, LZ over there. And as soon as we get inside the, the green verge, he takes off running. In a panic trying to get to the LZ to get the hell out of there.

And I then become the point man and I'm really pissed off. And, you know, we get, we get through this, this green patch and we wind up where the, the CH-34 had enough room to pick us up. And my interpreter taps me on the shoulder and says, one of the Montagnards says there's NVA. They were in an ambush and an ambush position. That we just walked right past them and they were pointing their weapons at us. And Montyard pretended as though he didn't see them because he was afraid that if he acknowledged them and started a firefight, that they had the drop on us and would wipe us out. The reason why those NVA did not open up their ambush on us was because we had Cobra aircraft flying overhead, and they were— and they had just suffered a B-52 strike, so they were not— they didn't want to invite a fight. Well, that pissed me off because it could have gone all wrong. He should have opened fire on them And because the, if they had been able to initiate the ambush without us initiating first, it would be a, you know, a gunfight at six, you know, the OK Corral kind of a situation.

Better to initiate the gunfight than to, you know, let them have have first shot. That was my view. Anyway, got back to the, to the FOB, and I was going to fire the point man and his brother. Just the point man, actually. He beat me to it. He quit and his brother went with him. And that was my first inkling that my team was a little concerned about my acceptance of risk, you know, and, but I had always tried to measure the risk against opportunity and weigh the the odds kind of a thing based on experience. So to circle back to this intelligence issue. Yes. So my next operation was in the same vicinity, uh, and I'm not going to talk about that operation right now unless you ask me to, but suffice to say that operation with Saint Martin, and I discovered a major— what apparently was not a logistics facility but a major headquarters. These log structures. A regimental headquarters would be constructed of bamboo. A major headquarters would be constructed of log, semi-permanent kind of a thing. I reasoned that out. When we came back from an op, we would go to the S2 to get a debriefing.

And we described these structures. We described how, you know, the, how well kept this whole area was and how it was sheltered by the terrain and how it was sheltered by the canopy. And, you know, gave them all, you know, everything that I could divine from the operation. And they never went back in. S2 or the intel office at SOG could not make the connection. That this was more than just something out in the woods, you know, like a logistics. And Saint Martin hadn't taken a photo, so, which he should have done, definitely should have done. That would have validated everything we were saying about it. But anyway, then the second mission I find an underground tunnel. Now, you, you report an underground tunnel to headquarters that's back in Vietnam, and that's fairly commonplace. That was commonplace in Vietnam. But the North Vietnamese owned the entire length of the Ho Chi Minh Trail. They had no need to build tunnels, go to that effort. What was there in that tunnel that required such care? So it was something spectacular to me. It was not so spectacular to an intel analyst back at SOG headquarters who had never been on the ground, who did not connect the dots that this was an anomaly that you did not see in Laos but did see in South Vietnam.

The third mission was in the same area, again Tango 7, and I discovered on one side of a river, a north-south river, a set of high-speed trails heading towards Cambodia. On the other side of that river, I discovered a, a hidden road. So when I get back from the operation again, I get debriefed and I tell them this kind of stuff. And no one seems to connect the dots because this is another route from the MSR into Cambodia, and no one is reconning that area to find out where it leads, you know, what encampments lie along that river, along those trails and roads, and all that other kind of stuff. And so there was no follow-up to the kinds of things that we discovered, which was appalling because what we were, we were recon, right? We were supposed to discover this kind of stuff and then we expected some sort of follow-up, some sort of action when it was discovered and it wasn't happening.

What do you think led to that analytical failure the S2 side?

Some of the— so what the way I reasoned that this out subsequently was, and I'll make an analogy here. So during the hunt for Osama bin Laden, in Afghanistan, we had special operators who were teamed with CIA analysts because whoever the leadership was at that point in time in the CIA realized that the analysts didn't know what they were looking at but the operators did. So, uh, if something was an anomaly, the, the analyst wouldn't know if it's an anomaly unless the operator told him. He said, oh, this is something unusual, this is something that bears you know, a second look, etc., etc. An example would be the Russians and probably the Chinese, but certainly, so the Soviets and the Russians in Ukraine would use penal battalions, the Russians during Civil War. These were criminals or deserters or slackards who refused to fight, and they were sent to penal battalions. Penal battalions were used as— they were suicide units. They were the pointy end of the spear to draw fire, and they were sent, they were the first ones sent against, you know, the Allied units, and they got slaughtered. And when they were encamped, they were encamped basically in an enclosure, logs, uh, like a fort, barbed wire on top of the, you know, the logs.

But the guards were on the outside looking in. So if you saw that, you might think, oh, the guards are looking out. But no, the guards— the towers were on the outside. Right. They weren't protected by the wall. They were looking inward. And then you would say, oh, all these soldiers that are inside this enclosure, none of them are carrying weapons. Okay. So unless you told an analyst what to look for— not carrying weapons, morale looks low, their comportment transportment is bad and they're being guarded from the outside, you wouldn't know that they're a penal battalion. So that's the same kind of thing that I think is a problem with all intelligence analysts unless they are informed by somebody who has the tactical wisdom. Wisdom is training plus experience. Okay, and so That's— I chalk that up to them and, uh, uh, what do you call it, uh, intellectual incuriosity.

Yeah, failure of the imagination.

Yeah, just, just staring at photos all day, staring at maps all day, uh, you probably don't get it. So, uh, But anyway, that's what I chalked it up to, to be. And I found out other things in my experience. So this disease went all the way up to J-2 at MacV. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And example was a SAD team discovered tank track tracks near the, uh, across the border from the Long Vei A camp in I Corps, reported it back. They bring the team leader down to MACV headquarters and he explains what he's seen and he's got photographs of the tracks. And the staff officer in charge of J-2 was a major general, and he says, not possible, there are no tanks. The North Vietnamese don't have any tanks, and the North Vietnamese could never get tanks down into— through these mountains. That's what— that was his opinion. And the I guess then it was Westmoreland, and Westmoreland listened to him, and then they attacked Long Bay. Long Bay got overrun. Yeah. The funny part about this story was he did it again. Ben Het down in the tri-border area got attacked by tanks. Again, Special Forces, SOG teams had discovered tracks.

On both occasions, this major general says those are Caterpillar tracks from earth-moving equipment, and they attacked Ben Het. Of course, they got wiped out, but they— it was a surprise to Ben Het that they were being attacked by tanks, and they actually fired. They knocked out one of our M47s or M48 tanks. And killed and wounded some. But so it's the same major general says not possible. And this time it's, I don't know if it's still Westmoreland or if Abrams had taken charge at that point.

But so take us through, I mean, the kind of the tail end of Vietnam for you. Did you ever break in service? Or did you re-enlist? What was sort of the next step in your Army career?

Well, I had originally thought that I might get out of the Army and go back to college. That was my initial intent. But I changed my mind. I really enjoyed the military. My experience with SOG was all positive. I never got wounded. Only 2 guys on my team got wounded other than St. Martin. And that was a remarkable— this is a by-the-way comment— it was, that was a remarkable feat because for 2 years, TOG had it, our CCC FOB 2 had in excess of 100% casualties. And not me. And one American in one yard got wounded for the entire 18 months plus that I was a team leader. So all positive, and I really enjoyed my Special Forces experience to that point, and then wound up, you know, re-enlisting, and I became an instructor at the Special Forces Reconnaissance Course at Camp McCall. Now, as I mentioned in the book, at Long Tan, all the POI, primary instruction and lesson plans, were all destroyed. Gone forever. As the United States started this drawdown, they still had the necessity, SOG was still going on, for several months, and they still needed the new folks who were due to come to the FOBs.

Now, at that point, there was two FOBs, I guess, to go through that training. So they had begun at this, this course at Camp McCall. So I was there briefly, but the position actually called for an 11 Foxtrot, and I was, I was not 11 Foxtrot yet, so they sent me off to, to Owen High School, and by the time I got back, they had discontinued the, the course, and again, they destroyed all the lesson plans of POI. So one of my challenges then was to kind of not only come up with the, the old, you know, the tactics, techniques, and procedures, but also make them relevant to today.

Right, right.

And that was why I wrote the first book. Right.

And what job did they give you since the reconnaissance school was shut down?

I went to the 7th Special Forces Group, and I was just a, you know, a team member. And at that point, Special Forces was under a lot of pressure. They had already deactivated the 6th Special Forces Group. They were working on the Third and the Seventh Special Forces Groups to deactivate them. Fortunately, that didn't happen, but I saw the handwriting on the wall and I decided, well, I might as well go to OCS, become an officer, which is what I did. And when I got into OCS, I mean, my experience at the Seventh Special Forces Group was My sergeant major loved me and he sent me to courses. I was number one in the NCO Academy, distinguished honor grad, that kind of stuff. He thought I walked on water. He sent me to HALO school, which at that point was going to that was an exception rather than the routine as it is now. As a reward for my performance. And so I went to OCS, and in my platoon, there was a— one of my fellow candidates was an EOD guy, and he said, you know, you ought to consider going into EOD because as a second lieutenant, you get to command.

Which is probably the only occasion where a second lieutenant would command a unit, actually. Lead a unit, yes, but command, no. So the, uh, so that, and he said, and all you learn some new stuff and, uh, uh, and it's an actual mission and, and all that good stuff. And that appealed me. And I reasoned that if I, if another war came along, I could do a branch transfer and go back to Special Forces. Yeah. And so that was my decision. I went into ordnance and commanded a unit detachment, then had subsequent I was in Berlin Brigade as the EOD officer for the American sector and had a couple of other hats I wore as well. Great assignment, accomplished a great deal, and then commanded a company back in West Germany, which was a very challenging assignment, and I did very well there. So my experience to that point was that I, I really enjoyed my military experience. And so that answers your question, I guess. Yeah.

Did you ever work with the Greenlight program?

No. Interestingly, when the, the, not the Green Light, but Delta tried to rescue the embassy employees from Iraq. Yep. The, I was still in, at SOG. And I knew a number of these, so they decided that they weren't going to use SOG for that raid because they were convinced that SOG had been penetrated.

Wait, wait, are you talking about the Sun Tay raid?

Yes.

Yeah, okay, I'm tracking.

Okay, uh, so by then I knew that we were— we had penetrated, uh, and, uh, so I didn't hold a grudge. But I knew a number of those guys, uh, who went in on that operation who were former SOG, and I also knew that others who were in blue light were former SOG. Yeah, uh, and, uh, so When I was still in the EOD detachment, I got a call from my boss and he said that Delta was looking for a Special Forces qualified EOD officer. And the commander of Delta at that point was Charlie Beckwith. Uh, and, uh, I knew something about Charlie Beckwith. There was a number of guys who were in SOG who left Delta because of Charlie Beckwith. They couldn't tolerate him. Yeah. Uh, and there were other things about Charlie Beckwith that I had learned as well. And among them was he didn't take advice. He thought he knew everything. And I knew that that was a prescription for— that was not— yeah, that was not a guy that you wanted as your commander. And I declined that position. And it would— and That was a good thing because then I went on to the advanced course and subsequently went to Berlin, which was a great assignment.

Great assignment. Yeah.

All the cloak and dagger going on there at the time.

What, in Berlin? Yeah. Yeah. Well, I worked with, with, de, de, They stored their ammunition with us, with me, and I had ammunition depots within the city, and they had some special ammunition, as you can imagine, that had been given to them by the agency, and some of it went over shelf life, and they come to me for disposal of it. Stuff like that. I visited them on a couple of occasions.

Uh, yeah, like subsonic ammo and stuff like that.

Well, here's— this is kind of interesting. So one, uh, not subsonic. I didn't see any subsonic. Uh, they had, uh, uh, incendiary delay, incendiary devices.

Interesting.

But the most interesting thing was they came to me with a can of.45 ammo, special ammo with explosive warheads. And So there was fulminated mercury inside the head of the.45 caliber pistol round. So that was kind of interesting.

Yeah, that's wild.

Yeah.

And tell us about, you know, kind of retirement, how you retired from the military and what you did in civilian life?

Well, on the— to kind of finish off my career story, I worked with Special Forces again when I was at Yuma Proving Ground where I was a test manager. And because of my clearance and my background, I was given any of the projects associated with, with Special Forces. So they had special munitions requirements, and I was the project engineer on those kinds of things. I was also given, uh, some really high-tech, uh, projects to handle— smart, intelligent, brilliant munitions, uh, semi-autonomous munitions and directed energy weapons. And I thought, you know, this is, you know, this was really great. It's another great assignment for me. Yeah, yeah. I didn't expect it to be because frankly, Yuma Proving Ground is the asshole of the world. But it was a good, really good experience. I got to do some interesting, really stuff. And I worked with Special Forces in developing some of the smart, intelligent, brilliant munitions and some of the booby trap devices that are still in their inventory. They also had the munition developed specifically for them. What was the name of it?

There's a pursuit deterrent mine.

Pursuit deterrent mine. Deterrent munition. Yes. I was the project engineer for that.

Oh, no kidding. Yeah, those are still around.

Well, you know, so, yes, I was the project engineer for that munition and wished that I could have had one of those, you know, some of those when I was in SOG. Hell yeah. Yeah. Uh, so, uh, I— and also did some, some work for the agency, uh, where— and it was kind of a curious event. Uh, at this point I was a major, uh, and my boss came in to my office and said He was really flustered, and he said, we've got a problem. We need you in the conference room. We have some folks from the agency here who think they're supposed to be here to run a test, and no one knows about it, you know. So I go into the conference room. I sit down and there's 5 guys from the agency and my boss and my boss's boss, and they described the problem and they asked me if I could handle this because it had been a a cock-up. They had come to the, uh, months prior, uh, and went to the wrong office to coordinate the test, uh, and, uh, and so then they show up with the expectation that it was— the test would be kicked off on time, and no one knew in the test directorate at all.

At any rate, so I said, yeah, I can do this. And I looked across the table, I looked around the table, and then across the table from me was a guy from CCC by the name of Joe Walker. Oh yeah, Joe Walker was probably the best team leader I'd ever encountered and very well respected, formerly with Delta before he came to CCC. And then he had— and the ammunition that they were testing was foreign ammunition, and it was the 122mm rocket. And when Joe Walker was at SOG, He had gone to some of these ammunition holding areas for foreign munitions to police up stuff that he might be able to use. And he saw all these stacks of 122mm rockets, and he started thinking about how he might be able to use those. Time passes, he's in the agency, he has an opportunity to use them. But he had— they don't have launchers. They have to figure out how to, how to use them in an innovative way. So they had to create launchers out of PVC pipe. And then they had, uh, then the— those were propped up by angle iron, well tied together or welded together, uh, in a cross crucifix, you know, like that.

Uh, and then, uh, their handler there, uh, their liaison was a guy who had developed a, a potted timing device. So they wanted to test these and get and figure out elevation, deflection, and range characteristics firing from this, this jury-rigged system. And they also wanted to test a fuse, uh, that was used that they thought might work. They didn't have enough fuses for all the, uh, the.122s that they had, and they wanted to test a different fuse to see if that would work, and it didn't. Um, and so they had a fairly significant inventory of.122s that were were stored here in the United States in bunkers on installation storage, ammunition storage areas. So, so that was my purpose is to try and Joe tried to recruit me into the agency. But I said, I don't have my 20 years in yet, so I don't want to forego my military retirement. And then, so I declined the opportunity but said, check with me later, you know, after I hit my 20. I didn't know how to get in contact with him, actually. Uh, but, uh, years later I, I discovered that he's, uh, he's working out at Harvey Point now.

He had been operational. So this thing with the 122s, that is a legendary op that is never spoken about, I guess, among But Joe Walker became a legend. And at Harvey Point, his picture is all along the hallways in the, in the main building at Harvey Point.

So they used those for some deniable operation somewhere in the world.

Yes. And it was astounding what it did. About 100 Wow. Rockets fired in on timers and basically wiped out an enemy installation with them. So he got a lot of creds for that. I ran into him later and paid a number of visits as a contractor because I had some things that I thought the agency might use. And I had— I basically had a contract working with them, a classified contract. You know what MASINT is?

Signals and Measuring Intelligence.

Correct. So we had a program doing that for them. So my, the people that work for me in my division, my corporate division, were doing that kind of stuff out in Nevada. And then, you know, so it was at the Harvey Point again. And so I met up with him a couple times. And he was running. He had had a, while he was still operational, he had this really serious accident. He was on a railroad platform, fell off backwards and broke his back and that was it. So they hired him at Harvey Point to be an instructor. and then when he reached retirement there at the agency, they hired him back as a contractor to do the same thing he had been doing as an agency employee, and he passed away from Parkinson's a couple years ago, and I helped get him recognized as a distinguished member of the Special Forces Regiment before he passed.

Oh, that's great. Do you want to talk a little bit about your book?

Oh, you asked me about my corporate career. I'm sorry. I failed to tell you. So out of the Pentagon, which is my worst assignment in my career, I absolutely hated it. And then the day after I retired, I went to work for a contractor and I was working in a joint program office for biological defense. And President Clinton had read a book about Ebola and started asking questions about it from his science advisor and was convinced that we needed to up our game in biological defense. And so they started up this office and I was like, very, very early into that program and was there for 4 or 5 years or so. And during that timeframe, I went from, you know, a research analyst all the way up to a senior vice president within my firm and had the biggest division within the firm because I'm naturally aggressive and I went after business Any business that I thought I could win, I went after it. And I left that corporation because they had some unsavory business practices that I couldn't tolerate. And the president of the corporation and I didn't like each other. So I left and became a consultant and kept working on classified programs.

Here and there and worked in business development for, to do proposals to win contracts, mostly defense contracts, and then retired, but have been keeping my hand in, like writing on these issues and giving presentations to people who really care about these things, I hope. And I'm kind of like wedded to these campaigns about getting prepared for the next war.

That's what I wanted to get into with you next was, you know, you're very passionate about jungle warfare and the training and doctrine that we give our soldiers around that. Could you kind of lay out from your point of view what the current deficiencies are, what lessons maybe need to be relearned in the force today?

Well, Americans are particularly bad at forgetting past practices that have worked. They constantly reinvent the wheel, and every time that happens, casualties result, lost lives, lost treasure, and all that good stuff. That's the reason why I wrote my first book there, and in the course of my research for the first book, I literally read hundreds, that's plural, hundreds of books and field manuals and tech manuals. And, uh, and also, uh, non-military authors who wrote on military affairs, uh, and, uh, so I wrote an article for the Marine Corps Gazette, which is kind of sets up my concern about being prepared for jungle operations. Anybody who reads it should take the lesson from that article and say, wow, this happened then, it could happen again, shouldn't we do something about it? Now I'm afraid that it hasn't had enough circulation where it's been sufficient to have an impact. But just, just a couple of brief notes about that would be during World War I, of course, World War II, shortly after Pearl Harbor, the Japanese invaded Malaysia, and at that point, uh, the Brits had a multinational corps in Malaysia, 100,000, something like that, you know, a lot of people, and the Japanese kicked their asses.

So they had Brits, they had Australians, they had Indian, and they had Malaysian troops, and they had some Dutch. 100% casualty rate, uh, and, uh, lost Malaysia within 2 months, something like that. And, uh, and then, then the Japanese invaded, uh, Papua New Guinea, uh, and the Australians had sent 3 divisions to fight in North Africa, and they did a great job fighting in North Africa. They were considered by the Allies as an elite echelon of forces because they— as light infantry.

And it's like the outback, right?

Yes, they had the outback. Yeah, that's true. They, they, they had that kind of territory. So the, the Japanese were after Port Moresby, which was on the southern coast of, uh, Papua New Guinea and right across the channel from Australia. And if the Japanese were able to take Port Moresby, then there would be a major threat to Australia. So Australia called in, pulled back one of its cracked divisions from North Africa. And they had about a week, I think is probably, probably true, about a week, maybe as much as a month before they were committed to combat in North Africa against the Japanese. And the Japanese kicked their asses. This is an elite unit. Now, the New Zealanders weren't equipped. They were still wearing, in rainforest, wearing shorts and knee socks and low-cut boots and short-sleeve shirts, uh, in an infested area, and long story short, 70% casualties for, for this, I think it was the 7th Australian Infantry Division. Then the Americans were called to participate and What they wanted to do was to clean the Japanese from these ports that were on the northern coast of Papua New Guinea. Now, the reason why the Australians eventually succeeded in beating back the Japanese was because our Navy had cut off supply lines to Rabaul and other islands where their bases were, and they weren't getting any supplies, they weren't getting personnel replacements, and the Japanese were starving to the point where they were actually indulging in cannibalism.

Jeez. Uh, and, uh, so they, they were, they retired to these ports that were, you know, on the northern coast. And so the Australians and the Americans teamed up. So there was an American division that was literally, uh, boarding vessels to take them to Ireland heading in the opposite direction when they were recalled, put on trains, sent across the United States, put on boats, sent to Australia, sent to New Guinea. They had a 70% casualty rate. And the story goes on, you know, over and over and over again. These guys were not trained for jungle operations and they paid for it all the way to— and even when they are trained, so I mean Merrill's Marauders were trained by the Chindits in India for 4 months, I think it was. And they were effectively almost a brigade in strength by the time they were committed to Burma. And within 5 months, they were reduced to about 125 people who could still stand on their feet. And these were trained. So I take a look at the Chinese, and the Chinese have got military districts, and 2 to 3 of them are along their southern border, are far jungle and rainforest.

They obviously train in that environment. And we don't.

One thing I would just point out, Ed, before we move on is that right now there's a real focus on drones and everyone thinks drones are the future of warfare, whether it's the larger ones, airplane-sized ones that fly surveillance missions or the small quadcopter drones that you see in Ukraine all the time that fly in and kill kill soldiers or blow up vehicles. If we have to fight in the jungle again, I'm not saying that we won't ever use drones, but it'll be in a very, very different manner than what we've seen so far.

That is an excellent question. So about 3 years ago, I went to the SOF Week here in Tampa.

I'll be there this year.

Ah, good. And I went, they have vendor displays there at their convention center here in Tampa. So I went to every drone manufacturer, US drone manufacturer that was there. There was about 4 or 5 of them. I asked every one of them, do you have a drone that can operate under jungle canopy? And every one of them said no. And I said, why not? And the answer was almost uniformly— some, one of them said, I don't know. But the, the, the answer was because there was no requirement, right, for it, right?

There's no market for it.

Yeah, so there is no requirement for that, for a drone with that kind of a capability, or that wasn't then. And they said they're not going to waste their R&D dollars on something that the military doesn't want, right? Why? They're not. And so I've mentioned this to some a number of people, uh, who ought to be influential at, at the O6 level, so forth. And I said somebody needs to state a requirement for drones that will operate under canopy, whatever that would take. Uh, I, I can think of a number of ways that that could be done. Uh, There are ways where drones could be used in an unconventional warfare setting. Yeah. So, for example, when the Chinese— when the Chinese invade a country in the Pacific Island chain, they have to get there somehow. And that will be vessels, you know, Chinese, the PLAN, the Navy of the— and they'll be loaded with a lot of ammunition and fuel and so forth and so on. So launching drones at those kinds of targets would be very productive because then you're cutting off their logistics chain, right? And, uh, and, uh, so that would be productive.

But how do you resupply, uh, an A-team or a special operation team of any, any service when the— when we don't own the skies and we don't own the water and you don't have an adequate supply of drones, you know, how effective are you going to be? Right. The other interesting thing is, and I asked this a couple of times to military folks, officers, to include officers. I said, have you ever seen an op plan or an op order for that matter that has an annex in it that describes what your unit will do if they're cut off by the enemy, which of course I discuss in my second book because partisans are different from guerrillas. Partisans are conventional troops and conventional units comprised of military personnel who have been cut off from their parent unit. Guerrillas are basically civilians, some of whom may have military backgrounds but are not— no longer military, generally speaking. So if you're cut off and in the island chain someplace from your parent unit, one of your duties is to try and reunite with your parent unit. But if not, then you should be conducting unconventional operations against the enemy, and you should be trained accordingly, and you should have some part of your op order and your op plan indicating what you do in the event that you're cut off.

And everybody that I've asked, Everybody has said they've never seen such a thing. So, you know, their head is not in the game, if you follow my drift.

Yes, absolutely. And your second book that you mentioned, it's going to be sort of a manual. And I'm guessing like your special reconnaissance book, but about unconventional warfare there?

Yeah, there's a cover out on it. Oh, cool. You can see on, uh, Casemate would have a cover.

Okay, so people can, people can probably go and, uh, pre-order it?

They can pre-order. They can pre-order it, uh, from Pen and Sword and Casemate. Casemate is the U.S. distributor for Pen and Sword, which is my publisher. Uh, it was on Amazon for pre-order, but because there's been a delay in, uh, the printing, release of, uh, publish, publication and release of the book, uh, they, they pulled that advertisement down from the, uh, from the page, uh, at Amazon until they have something, a commitment from the publisher on when it's actually going to be available.

What's, uh, the name of the book so people can go find it?

Oh, it's, uh, just, just search under my name. There's only two books though.

Yeah, Lieutenant Colonel Ed Wolcoff, W-O-L-C-O-O-C-O-F-F. That's correct.

Yeah.

Well, And just a few other things as we start to wrap up here. You also have a new article coming out about military intelligence.

I started writing on it, but I've been diverted on writing a novel right now. Okay. I got it working on a deadline to get done. And as soon as I've dropped that, then I'll finish off this article. Okay. And, and that, that is— it goes back to this same issue. You go and ask a military audience of whatever size you like, and you ask them, how many of you know what the, the Chinese Army's TTPs and battle drills are? And you will not get a single hand. I could almost guarantee it. Yeah. And if you don't know how the enemy is going to come at you, and then, but you can be guaranteed that they know how you're going to come at them, but they don't know, you know, we don't know how they're going to us unless we start studying these things and incorporating those into training. So force on force, red on blue kinds of training needs to be done incorporating these Chinese tactics. And so interesting history about the development of their tactics, actually.

I'm actually, yeah, I'm fascinated to read that myself. But you told me this novel you're working on is like 95% 80% done in the ballpark there. Do you want to give people like a thumbnail sketch of what to expect?

Yeah, there's some, uh, as a novel, of course I take some literary license. Some of it is true, some of it is not true. Some of it's based on actual events, some are embellished events. Some of the personalities are by name, some of them are not. And, but it is based on SOG operations and some of the operations that I was involved in that materialized or did not. I know I'm being a little mysterious here, but the core of the book is about a Special Forces SOG team leader who goes off as rocker. And because of the pressures of deep penetration operations, and he has personal tragedy with a wife who committed suicide on him and stuff like that. And he His, uh, his, uh, his team— teammates are thinking that he's suicidal, and he's— they're concerned about not only his welfare but their own. So I mean, that's, that's kind of like the theme of it.

A little bit of Apocalypse Now meets MacVie SAG.

You know, Apocalypse Now, there was actually a character in there from SAG. Yeah, that's right. Captain. Yeah. Which I didn't know that actually for years until I read an article about it. Yeah, the— so that, so that I— there are any number of operations that came out of SOG that could be turned into movies. Yeah. Oh yeah, it could be turned into, uh, series, TV series, uh, that, uh, and, and Apocalypse Now isn't too far from—

I'm shocked that they haven't done that already. And the only reason I can kind of in my imagination chalk it up to is that still to this day, there's gotta be some trepidation in Hollywood about the Vietnam War. But even then, I mean, they did We Were Soldiers, films like that. So I really don't know why they haven't made a South Vietnam—

Well, if it's anti-war, they'll be happy to—

We Were Soldiers wasn't very anti-war. It was fairly, um, no.

You mentioned that We Were Soldiers, which is, uh, I'll tell you at some point, I'll give you a critique of that operation. That kind of dovetails into some of the things I'm doing about intelligence failures. Yep. But the one, not Apocalypse Now, but the Platoon. Platoon. Yes, so Platoon was definitely anti-war. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, and it got how many Academy Awards? I don't know. But if the, uh, if the message is anti-war, then I think Hollywood would, you know, entertain it. Uh, but, uh, if it's to celebrate military operations, then you're probably right. It's poison ivy to them.

Yeah, I think we at least ought to be able to celebrate the bravery and the heroism that some of these guys showed out there.

Oh, yes. Some of it would make really, really dramatic impact. Horrific. I mean, gore-soaked, kind of. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, you know, to kind of give you an example of that before, you know, you run out of time here, is, uh, shortly before I, I arrived, maybe 3 months before I arrived at the CCC, uh, The FOBs were organized differently. There was a commander of all the FOBs, and later on they were separated out to individual FOBs, all under command of Lieutenant Colonel. And it was at that juncture, about a month before I got there, maybe a couple months before I got there, where those, those FOBs were actually separated out under separate command, uh, and there was no capstone, uh, CCC or CNC commander, so to speak, other than SOG headquarters itself, uh, and the So the, uh, you know, forgot, forgot my thread here. Um, all right, so there was a, a team leader whose name evades me who had been on an operation about 3 weeks, 4 weeks prior to the one I'm about to mention. And for that operation, he was put in for the Medal of Honor and received it.

His name evades me right now. And he was, his subsequent assignment was bright light, so he's a DOC/TOE. So a team goes, is sent from CCN, uh, and at this, at this point, CCC is commanded by a major. So this lieutenant colonel sends a team to, uh, CCC to launch into CCC's AO, and the, uh, the team leader is kind of arrogant, thinking that, uh, he's seen everything there is to see based on his, you know, the work that he did up at CCN. He goes into an area near the area that I referred to as Hotel 9 earlier in the conversation. And they, for about a day, they're moving freely And their practice was to, when they make a night defensive perimeter, back then we called it RON, rest overnight, they formed a linear arrangement where the, the Yards and the Americans would sit in a line back to back facing out, which is a horrible thing to do. This was being taught actually at, at Long Tan, and it's literally one rocket or would, would kill most of a team, if not all of them, if fired along the long axis. So very, very stupid in my view.

And you don't have visibility over terrain as it varies from, from where you actually are. So I— you catch my point. So they're in that, uh, and comes dawn, which is normally, uh, a, a period of a point of, uh, extreme caution, ought to be extreme caution, because that's when the North Vietnamese would hit a recon team after tracking them. They would close the distance and get ready to assault as dawn struck, as the sun starts to come up. So it was always, you know, You should always be very careful around that time frame, and this team did not take that care. And one American, the assistant team leader, gets up and he has to go take a crap. Takes off his web gear, his rucksack is laying on the ground, he takes his weapon, and he goes down to take take a crap downslope, and just then the NVA attack, uh, and they kill everybody on the team except for the two Americans, the team leader and the radio man. 2 Montagnards, the guy who's taking a crap, and another Montagnard who managed to break away. These are North Vietnamese special operations personnel, and one of them is carrying a flamethrower, and he lights up part of the perimeter and kill some of the Montagnards with a flamethrower.

They capture 2 Montagnards and the 2 Americans, and they take them off and they tie them to trees, and along comes an NVA officer who speaks perfect English. He knows their names, He knows the name of the team and who's in charge, you know, who's the team leader, all that kind of detail. He knows, and he's happy to tell the team leader and the radio man that he knows this. Uh, and then he said, basically he directs the flamethrower, the guy who has the flamethrower, to use the flamethrower on the two Montagnards who are tied to trees and burns them to a cinder. And meanwhile, the team leader is screaming at the North Vietnamese and telling them, you know, he's trying put the bravest front that he can. He knows he's doomed, so he's basically telling them, you know, fuck you. So the, you know, do your worst. And this officer directs the flamethrower operator to turn the flamethrower on the team leader and burns him to a cinder. He doesn't do anything to the radio man, and he tells the radio man, I'm going to let you go, uh, and my purpose is I want you to tell everybody what you've seen here today.

So the, uh, the guy who's out taking a dump and the other Montagnard wind up getting to an LZ and they're extracted, uh, and the NVA take the radioman to an LZ without his equipment, without his weapon, and so forth. They leave him his, uh, his, uh, his panel, the, uh, VS-17 panel. Yeah. And, uh, so a search is conducted and they, and they see the panel and they recover this guy from LZ. And the NVA don't attempt to bring down the helicopter that retrieves them, and they take him back to the FOB and he tells this story about how they were compromised and the use of the flamethrower and all this shit. And the commander from CCN who controlled all the FOBs flies down by helicopter to Dak To and gets nose to nose with this poor guy, this radio man, and tells him that he's a liar and he's a coward. Meanwhile, Zabotowski is the guy who got the Medal of Honor. Zabotowski is there at the launch site. And Zabitowski goes to this officer and confronts him and says, don't you dare, you know, challenge this young man. I'm convinced that he's telling the truth, and I'm going to go in under bright light and find the the remains of this team.

And by now they were still trying to find the, you know, the, uh, the, the other American and the Montagnard. And he says, and if you got any hair on your balls at all, you'll come with me. And this Lieutenant Colonel refuses to do that. Uh, so he goes in on the operation and he finds the site, you know, he follows the trail from the LZ back to where this incineration had been done, and he finds all these, these burnt-out corpses and retrieves them. Uh, and Chief Sog finds out about how this lieutenant colonel treated this radio man and relieves him for what he did. Uh, and, uh, so wouldn't that make a great episode in a movie? I mean, yeah, it makes a high drama in a movie.

Yeah, totally insane stories that came out of some of these missions. So again, I want to tell folks about Special Reconnaissance and Advanced Small Unit Patrolling written by our guest here, Lieutenant Colonel Ed Wolkoff. This is available now. You can go find it. And his new book about unconventional warfare can be pre-ordered over on the Casemate website. And I'll be looking forward to some of the other works, your novel and your article that you're working on, Ed. And otherwise, I just want to say thank you for coming on the show. We really appreciate it.

Okay. Appreciate it. Thank you.

Any final thoughts before we check out for tonight?

Well, after you check out, then we can have a couple other mentions.

Okay, absolutely. So for everyone else out there, we will see you guys next time. Thanks for joining us. Hey everyone, I want to tell you about my new novel, The Most Dangerous Man, out in June. It is a novel about a regimental reconnaissance company soldier who gets kidnapped while he's on a mission to West Africa. And when he wakes up, he finds that he is now being hunted for sport by a group of tech billionaires through the wilds of West Africa. This book is based on stories that I heard over the years about safari guides taking wealthy clients hunting for poachers on game reserves in Africa. I took that and I took a century-old short story, The Most Dangerous Game, and modernized it. And the product is this book, which I think will feel contemporary and resonate resonate with audiences today. Thank you, and please check it out.