STARRS Podcast
STARRS Podcasts includes the series STARRS & Stripes which interviews military veterans, talks about their careers and military service, and their concerns about what is happening in today's military. See our website, starrs.us, for more information.
STARRS Podcast
Upholding the Warrior Ethos in the Military: Interview with MOH Recipient Drew Dix
STARRS & Stripes host CDR Al Palmer, USN ret interviews retired Army Special Forces Major Drew Dix, Medal of Honor recipient and a member of the STARRS advisory board. They cover his journey from enlisting in the Army at 17 to his experiences as a Special Forces soldier in Vietnam. Major Dix’s narrative highlights the significance of camaraderie, the warrior spirit, and the unbreakable bonds forged in the line of duty.
Major Dix's recounts his covert CIA mission in Vietnam to train and lead indigenous troops against the Vietcong. From navigating the moral complexities of war to employing innovative tactics in hostile environments, this episode provides an insider’s view of the unique challenges faced by the Special Forces in Vietnam.
Dix shares anecdotes, such as an adventurous landing on a bomb-cratered road in Chau Duc and the strategic necessity of recruiting unconventional personnel to dismantle enemy infrastructure.
Reflecting on broader themes of military identity and the warrior ethos, we discuss the current challenges in recruitment and retention within the armed forces and the effect the DEI agenda is having on the military. Major Dix emphasizes the need to uphold rigorous standards and a sense of purpose, courage and sacrifice. This episode is a tribute to the enduring values of toughness, resilience, and dedication, offering valuable lessons on service and the importance of honoring our veterans.
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For more information about STARRS, go to our website: https://starrs.us which monitors and exposes the CRT/DEI/Woke agenda in the Dept. of Defense and advocates a return to Merit, Equality and Integrity in the military.
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Well, good morning America, and happy Labor Day to all of you out there who are hard laborers like we are here at STARS. Stars is an organization that's a non-profit. We're here today, as we are every week now, to talk to you and get you involved in what's going on with the military in our country and finding ways where we can continue to be effective as a force to defend freedom, and to do that we have individuals who here are part of our organization, but also some of our extremely important veterans and other people who make this happen every day for our national defense. So today it's my honor and privilege to have with us one of the members of STARS on our advisory board, major Drew Dix, on our advisory board, major Drew Dix. Drew is a fellow Vietnam veteran and, most notably, a Medal of Honor recipient for some very heroic actions that he had taken when he was a much younger guy, and I'm pleased to have Drew with us. Drew, sir, thanks for being a part of STARS and for being with us today on the podcast.
Speaker 2:Drew. Sir, thanks for being a part of STARS and for being with us today on the podcast. Well, it's great to be here and I'm proud to be a part of STARS.
Speaker 1:It's a great mission and we all like a good mission. Well, good missions are what we're about, isn't it, sir? And yours has been an important one, but just like everybody else that raises their hand and takes the oath to defend the nation and the Constitution, you started out just that way, raising your hand, being a part of the military. Did you know where you were going or what would happen to you at that moment?
Speaker 2:Well no, when you're 17 years old, you don't know much.
Speaker 2:Uh, you think you do, you think you know everything that's true you know, that's quite a few years ago when uh, just down the road from where the center for american values is located was the army recruiter and, um, you know, I just thought that I needed a change and wanted to get uh into the army. My father was in the Army. We come from a long line of family members that have served and I just felt like I wanted to be a part of that. And at 17, you know, I'm ready. I didn't have any idea what I was getting into.
Speaker 1:Yeah, isn't that the case usually for most of us? So when you did that, were you fleeing a draft or were you just volunteering?
Speaker 2:Well, I was 17, so I don't even know if I even knew what a draft was. I hadn't applied or registered. I should say Never have registered for the draft because I was in at 17. But a lot of the guys that I met in Denver, you know, we left from Pueblo, took a trailways bus up to Denver and they were draftees A lot of young guys, a few old-timers from the Korean War. They were bumping 30 and fell to me and we were. You know, we were on our way to Fort Leonard Wood, get into basic training.
Speaker 1:So did you have an idea of what specialty you wanted to get into then, when you were 17?
Speaker 2:Well, sure, I wanted to be the best, I wanted to be Special Forces I'd heard about Special Forces was pretty new in those days 1962, actually it was created in 61. But they already had a reputation of but they already had a reputation of being pretty tough guys and I wanted to be one of them and the recruiter gladly signed me up. Of course I didn't realize at the time you can't sign up for special forces, you can volunteer for airborne school and others and then you apply and then you have to be, 21 years old.
Speaker 2:So you know, I cooled my heels on the 82nd for four years until I hit that magic age of 21.
Speaker 1:so you became a paratrooper then yeah, I did.
Speaker 2:I went right to jump school after infantry training and uh went to got into fort bragg in december 1962.
Speaker 1:and got into Fort Bragg in December of 1962.
Speaker 2:So jumping out of perfectly good airplanes, that's a tough job. Well, I don't know about that. You know, when you see so many of your buddies doing the same thing, you don't look at it as you're tough. You're just part of the group and uh, that's, that's what makes people special when they feel like they want to be involved and um and get involved in in things like that. That that makes you want to excel. And you know, we were told we were tough, so I guess we believed it and that's part of being a warrior. You've got to be tough to do tough things. You can't sugarcoat this stuff.
Speaker 1:Nope, you sure can't, and it's all about individual merit and performance. But, as you say, it's also an awful lot about bonding. I mean, that's such a critical element, especially as you know and everybody that's been there, when the shooting starts, all those other things go right away, right?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I think there's a class of people, or people with a certain character, that want to do things for a greater cause, and I put the law enforcement, firefighters and those in that same category, military guys that join, and men and women that join for that purpose, the true purpose of taking care of each other and the country and the republic. We need those kind of people. It's it's hard to figure out. Um, well, we come from all walks of life and we we have all different cultures and religions, but there is this feeling that you have to be part of something great to defend something you believe in, and that's the warrior class, and we've always had it. We always need it and thank God that we have those willing to do the work.
Speaker 1:So for your journey though, through the military after the 82nd Airborne, where did you go then in Special Forces? I mean, you went through the training. I guess right for that, but where did you go after that?
Speaker 2:Well, when I was at Fort Bragg, at 82nd Station there and Smoke Bomb Hill is what we called Special Forces area compound on Fort Bragg.
Speaker 1:So I didn't have to go far.
Speaker 2:But you know, when I applied, the idea was that you had to have a certain aptitude, you had to have the physical qualifications and you had to have be able to learn languages and so, and then you had to have a clean record, no felonies and and that sort of thing. So once I let me back up a little bit. In those days a lot of people wanted to get into special forces, but they didn't take many.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:And we never had a shortage of recruiting for special forces, because there was always those that wanted to be a part of something special, and that's what this is all about is making people feel good about what they're doing. And so when I went just down the road from the 82nd Airborne Division to not more than a couple of miles to Smokebomb Hill, the world changed for me. We got into, I started meeting the guys that were older, been around. A lot of them were prior service. They had to be 21 years old, I was saying, and most of them, a lot of them, had been in the Army 10 or 15 years.
Speaker 2:Rank was tough in those days in the Army, but Special Forces was able to promote people to the level that their slot and the A-team called for, and so that might have been a draw too. But boy, I just look back on it and those guys I went through training with, they were the best and we didn't lose many. Training with. They were the best and we didn't. We didn't lose many by the time you got to training. The old story about we test today at 100 but only three were the Green Beret, that's about right. Later, after I received the Medal of Honor? They weren't. I knew that to be the case because they weren't sure what to do with me for a while and they put me into worldwide recruiting for special forces.
Speaker 2:And uh, I knew, we went to fort carson, we talked to every soldier on fort carson and we walked away with three that's pretty good right, that's, it was a fact and, uh, you know, I remember the story when, when, when I first got there, bob Howard who's also a Medal of Honor recipient from from Vietnam, quite a guy, just think the world of him we went there and of course the post commander and the post sergeant major were all upset that we were going to take their guys away from them. And we had the authority at that time to just hand somebody orders and call up Mrs Alexander in WashingtonC and they would go immediately to begin the selection for special forces. And I remember they were real upset and I was sitting in that general's office and the sergeant major.
Speaker 2:The general wasn't real talkative but the sergeant major was and he was upset. I said, sergeant major, don't worry, we're not going to take many of your people. We were going to take many, and we took three.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, but, as you say, it's that exclusivity, and it's not only that, but it is the challenge, it's the arduous nature of it, sometimes the actual danger that does draw people out who have that commitment to it. But I think, as you say, it's a two-way street, right, it's the service wanting you to be good, but it's also about you being able to be fully committed to it, right.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and you know, I think the danger excites people. It's one of those things where be careful. What you want you ask for because you get into it and you very was appealing because there was a lot going on in the Cold War all over the world and special forces. That's what John F Kennedy had in mind. It says we're not going to go win wars for people, we're going to help them combat communism with advice and advisors and a little bit of equipment to go in there and let them take care of business. Let them fight for their country, to be force multipliers, so to speak, and not have American soldiers out there risking their lives paying the sacrifice for some other country. Let some professionals and that's what we call ourselves, that's our motto, the professionals to go in there and take care of business. And a lot of times people back home didn't even know what it was we were doing until Vietnam came along and then what it was we were doing until.
Speaker 1:Vietnam came along, and then everybody knew what we were doing there pretty much so so all of a sudden, you found yourself and Special Forces now in Vietnam. And how did how did that go for you initially just getting there?
Speaker 2:Well, so I got into Special Forces in 1966, and the war in Vietnam was starting to get pretty hot and heavy and I wanted to get into the action with, you know, being on a Special Forces A-team that's what you live for to get in there and organize, train and equip and lead indigenous troops to fight the enemy. That's the mission. And the training was so good that we were motivated, we were competent, comfortable that we were competent in our ability to handle anything that came to us. And so in 1967, when I graduated from Special Forces Training, I was ready to go and I didn't get assigned to the fifth group in Vietnam right away. I went to the sixth group, just down the road from training, out in Fort Bragg, and I'm thinking well, I better, we're going to miss this war. You know, didn't realize that. You know, like I said, you sometimes got to be careful what you ask for. But but I was ready. And finally orders came that I was going to Vietnam, to the Special Forces, and in those days we weren't going as a team, we were going as replacements for casualties. They were about that time, I think, special Force had lost about 750, somewhere in that neighborhood, which is a lot when you figure the war had just started and they've been involved in it since about 59. But anyway, I got over there and just went to Cameron Bay and all the infantry guys going their way, special forces guys were met with special forces NCOs from Nha Trang up the road there and my name wasn't called. And I'm thinking what's going on here? You know, two days went by and still hadn't called my name and I'm really concerned now that I missed this war. And finally they called my name and said you're going to Saigon. I'm thinking Saigon, all the special forces guys go to uh natrang up north and uh. So anyway, I got on the c-130 and flew down to saigon. I'm thinking what am I going to do in saigon? I hope they didn't realize that special forces were not special services. I'd be handing out basketballs or something I don't know.
Speaker 2:But when we landed at Cam Ranh Bay not Cam Ranh but Tan Son Nguyen Air Base they didn't unload anybody. We were just sitting there on a a ramp and this vehicle drove up, stuck his head in the crew compartment there and said something I couldn't hear from the noise of the aircraft and somebody came over and pointed to me and said they want you. And I got out of the aircraft and this guy introduced himself and he said I'm here to take you into Saigon and you're going to be part of our program. He didn't know much about it, he was just a driver. But he said I got to stop off and get you some civilian clothes.
Speaker 2:And I'm thinking this doesn't sound good at all. So I got some civilian clothes and they took me to what they call the old embassy house the old embassy, which was a headquarter for the CIA at the time and said that I'll be working with the Central Intelligence Agency with the mission to organize, train, lead and equip indigenous troops. That's our mission. So I'm starting to feel good about it and I'm thinking well, where's the rest of the team? And he says it's a one man team and you're going to go down to your area, chow Duck, and you're going to organize, train, equip and lead mercenaries to eliminate the vietcong infrastructure.
Speaker 1:That was my mission that's a pretty big task for one guy pretty.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and when you think about it, I was a staff sergeant at that time and uh, with the responsibility to uh, to go down there and to be the sole american that um conducted operations on behalf of the the States and the Central Intelligence Agency was. In those days. Working with the CIA was in itself was pretty much classified, not like now where people know that we have a relationship with the Title 50 branch of the government and the Title 10 guys get involved too with them. But in those days it was a big secret. And to even now, when I talk about it, I just wanted to work cia, you know, because it was drilled in our head that we didn't talk about it, and so I got a couple of days of briefing and it's all kind of cool.
Speaker 2:This is what I trained for, but I'm trying to figure out. I'm pretty much a new guy, you know. I've only been in special forces a year, 24 years old, and you know why did I get asked to do this? Why did I get tasked? And I always no one really answered that question, but I guess maybe it was because I was young enough and dumb enough, I don't know. But and then, and one other thing is, I didn't know a lot of folks.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, being a new special forces guy, I didn't know a lot of folks. Yeah, you know, being a new special forces guy, I didn't know a lot, so I could maybe get by under some kind of a cover as a civilian. So anyway, I didn't dwell on that too much. But, um, I got my two days worth of briefings. That it wasn't all that much amount, because they assumed I knew a lot and I did. I was kind of cocky in those days. I knew that I could handle about anything, but then again I didn't know what I was going to be getting into. And we made an intermediate stop at the regional headquarters and the regional officer in charge, jim Ward, was his name, a 50-something-year-old guy, about 50, I guess and really impressive and found out he was in OSS at the beginning, which was the predecessor of CIA and Special Forces.
Speaker 2:And you know, parachuted into burma to organize the kachins to operate against the japanese. So he had my attention. So after we I guess I was there about a day and I went there one night and we he was very much a gentleman, just very, very sophisticated, but you knew he meant business. And so after we had a couple of drinks one evening, and that evening and I said, well, Mr Ward, he said you call me Jim. I said okay, Jim, how am I going to know if I'm doing a good enough job? You know, as a young soldier, you want to be successful, you want to know you're doing right. He said, Drew, your job is to capture the enemy. If you're not capturing them, you're going to know it. That's pretty blunt and I said, well, what are the blunt? And I said, well, what are the rules? He said there are no rules.
Speaker 1:you capture the enemy I don't even know.
Speaker 2:I never heard of the term at that time yeah and he said, um, you know what I thought was pretty cool? Because our own individual, you know what I thought was pretty cool? Because our own individual character and our morals were what was guiding us, and we went after the enemy. And so I flew into Chau Duc, vietnam. Air America was the airline civilian airline flying people all over the country.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we used to fly them in the Air Force too. We called them.
Speaker 2:Scare America. Yeah, and it's a pretty neat deal. They were the airline flying Vietnamese and everybody around the country, but it was also a way to get their operatives out to wherever they need to be. And so I went on down to Chow Duck and there was a guy, this Pilatus Porter. I'm waiting for somebody to tell me what to do, right, the first thing he said he got into this Pilatus Porter, he said is this in?
Speaker 2:Vietnam or Cambodia and I said well, you know he said well, I got this map here and it's right on the border, but the words chow duck or in Vietnam, in Cambodia. I said, well, I think it's in Vietnam. But so, anyway, here I am waiting for people to tell me what to do, and everybody's asking me questions. And so I acted like I knew what I was doing and so we've headed that way. And he got up pretty high, about over 5,000 feet or something he says. Well, last time I was down here I got shot at pretty good. So I'm going to stay up here at 5,000 feet, but as I get into your area, I'm going to stay up here at 5,000 feet, but as I get into your area I'm going to drop down so you can get a look at the layout of the countryside. So that's pretty smart. And I'm looking down as we were dropping down to lower altitude, and I'm seeing nothing but rice fields and a few trees along the banks of the rice. There's no enemy down here. How can they hide? Little did I know they were. They can hide anywhere and they'll lie down there.
Speaker 2:And he said well, I I'm not sure where to land. There's no air airfield right now. Um, we usually land on the rice paddies. When the dry season comes, we can land anywhere.
Speaker 2:So I'm thinking what's he asking me to? For information or decision on where to land? And he said, well, I'm going to land on a piece of road out there and just south of town, and it was where they had just bombed out a crater in the road. It wasn't but 300 or 400 feet of straight roadway and no way to turn around, and water on both sides. And I'm thinking, how in the heck I knew a little bit about flying how in the heck is he going to take off if he can stop?
Speaker 2:And sure enough, he hovered that thing, dropped it down, I got out, he waved at me and he just kept going and just took off the same direction and, uh, there was an american there that met me and he says, uh, welcome, glad you're here, you're gonna, we're gonna take to the embassy house. And there were three Americans at the. I was one of three at the embassy house and my project we had individual projects and mine was the provincial reconnaissance unit, which was an innocuous title for the mission that we had. And so that's where I started my tour.
Speaker 1:So almost by yourself, though still.
Speaker 2:Well, we had someone that ran the embassy house. I found out later he was a lieutenant colonel in the army that had been detailed to the CIA to run the logistics and also he was an advisor to the police. And then there was Jim Moore who was the advisor to the Census Grievance Program and also the Revolutionary Development Program, separate from mine, but he actually ran the CIA operations. It's all back and forth intriguing. Westy, the lieutenant colonel was an older guy you would think he'd be running it. The one that actually was was kind of incognito as far as running it, but he was actually running it as far as the outfit goes. And then when I showed up they said Well, you've got the PRUU and let me know what you need. It's kind of the way it went.
Speaker 1:So did you have any support from the local forces, the ARVN or the?
Speaker 2:Cambodians. No, no support, no support. Actually, the reason why there was the cover of the CIA and that I was actually considered a civilian is because a staff sergeant wouldn't get along too well with the Vietnamese officers, or even American officers, if there happened to be any in the area. So but the other, the thing that's significant was we were to eliminate the enemy infrastructure, regardless where they were, and some of them had infiltrated into the arvin, uh, the vietnamese military. So we didn't, we didn't develop that relationship because we had to be separate, stand away, so go wherever the information took us to get to the Viet Cong, and they had some Viet Cong active members in the military and certainly a few sympathizers, sympathizers yeah, I know, that was a big deal yeah, and the one good thing that that whoever thought this program out did a pretty good job.
Speaker 2:They made the the, the men that we recruited, draft exempt from the millet, from the military, from the Vietnamese military, so they had no obligation to us. Now, a lot of the guys I had a few already and I recruited some more they were former VCs. Some were criminals. I had a pretty lively bunch of guys that were looking for a sanctuary of sorts.
Speaker 2:And that's how I got my folks my folks and turned out pretty good. When you gotta hunt bad people, you gotta use bad people sometimes, and that's the way it is oh yeah, absolutely so.
Speaker 1:So how many did you have under your control then?
Speaker 2:the most I had was, I think, was 137 and and, um, you know, when you look back on it, we didn't develop them with the promise that we're going to make them like us. Yeah, that's a big mistake that we do in this country. We go somewhere, we get our allies and we we try to make them like us, dress them like us. The same weapons equipment we used all world war ii or foreign weapons um, there were no m16s, no us weapons from World War II, considered sterile at the time. But you know the they.
Speaker 2:What we did and what became so effective is we gave them the kind of the autonomy to operate in their environment, but we had protected them with this status of draft exempt or whatever. But it also allowed us to create our little warrior class of people there that were actually, uh, very respected and feared by the locals. You need a little of that. You can't go in there and be nice to everybody. I mean, we weren't brutal and all that. We just were quiet and matter of fact and did our business and they didn't mess with us and that's how we got along, because we were vastly outnumbered when you figure 137 at the max, counting me, in a province that size with five districts and there was already three operational VC battalions in the area and no American units, except one special forces team and advisory that it had.
Speaker 2:It was a special forces camp that was down in the mountains and another one that had just turned over to the, the MACV, which is turned over to the Arvids. So we were the main force there and I'm thinking you know, 137 is enough. We're not in a business to get into a firefight and we didn't have any defensive weapons anyway. So I dispersed my group out into five 18-man teams and put them in the five districts, in areas where they as much as I could, where they came from, so they knew the people, and which turned out to be pretty darn good source of information, because if you sit in a little in the center and never go anywhere you're not going to find out anything. But when I dispersed them out, information started coming back and in no time we started capturing the enemy we got, we were.
Speaker 1:We became a real pain in the ass to the the vc yeah, no kidding, but but, but under man.
Speaker 2:So did you feel that you feel that your troops were then motivated well enough to be able to get into combat and be reliable so you could depend on them? Yeah, here's the thing You're dealing with, mercenaries, basically. So their motives are either for protection, money, prestige, whatever drives them to do this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, a little different than yours.
Speaker 2:Yes and then. But what we had to watch for was once and it worked in our favor once we became successful and these small 18-man team in their pocket. They had to really stick together or they'd be wiped out in no time. And I had with the five 18-man teams and I had a reactionary team. That is something we didn't plan on. We had to plan on it but we didn't count on and that is to react, to go and help. And that is to react to go and help one of those 18-man teams if they were attacked. But we didn't build compounds everywhere. We lived in the villages or they did.
Speaker 2:I did build a compound in one district because it was so far out and right next to the Cambodian border that I had to make a defensive position and had up to 30 guys there and we were in constant attack. But it turned out to be a pretty good move, because whenever you create a target, you don't just sit there and wait. Sure, you've got a target, but you also have people on the edges that can start snatching people that are reconing your area or moving in to attack you. We got quite a few enemy from that Anfu area. But going back to it.
Speaker 2:The interesting part of working with mercenaries is is there's you, you bridge the gap. All right, you've convinced them. They're tough, you, you. I gave them a lot of respect, but I demanded it myself. But we played a few games with them. It's all, uh, a mind game. We had three other groups up there. We had vietnamese, cambodians and some chinese and you know you would tell the vietnamese in private gotta watch those cambodians. They, they got a problem. You tell the cambodians, the vietnamese yeah, you gotta watch that you don't trust them.
Speaker 2:um, and by doing that I was able to get information on somebody that might be thinking of either making a hit on me or, you know, turning somebody in, or or that's a problem when you're dealing with former VC or criminals. And uh, that worked, uh. But then you know, I could never let my guard down. But but when I was out with them I got to where I was really feeling good about being around them and I didn't speak their language. I mean, I knew a few words. They didn't speak English. Interpreters that I tried to get were kind of spineless and didn't really want to be out there. Maybe they were too smart, didn't want to be out there under this hybrid.
Speaker 1:Nothing you got to get caught at, huh.
Speaker 2:But anyway, a couple of the Chinese guys could speak a little bit of English and you know, in the military way I just finished, because in Special Forces you have to have a language, and I just finished Spanish language and they sent me there. You have to have a language, and I just finished spanish language and they sent me there, and so I I had cambodians, vietnamese and chinese that I had to communicate with. We spent more time in special forces in those days. It had to be language capable. The goal is to teach better forces people to speak the language but, more importantly, how to communicate as a soldier to each other, or to know when an interpreter is not interpreting.
Speaker 2:You got to use tricks in order to, because they'll, they'll take over the interpreter, will will in a bad environment, will tell them to go this way. And you wonder why did it go in that way? Well, that's because the enemy's over here, they want it to get out of the way the interpreter. So I signed off using, gave up using those interpreters that someone tried to provide for me and used one of my Chinese guys and from then on they respected him. I knew he would never be afraid of going into the VC, because the more we were close to the VC, the more we were able to get into their backyard and pick them off, the better they felt about their job. Of course, they got paid bonus when they captured somebody and they liked the money too. I mean they got 30 bucks a month is their pay. Chinese got 100. Chinese got a hundred.
Speaker 1:It was a lot of money in those days and but we didn't ruin them we didn't give them, we didn't profit from a lot of but you ended up having to depend on them, which I guess probably was helpful if you were only kind of there by yourself as one of the lone Americans. So tell our viewers, though, a little bit about how that translated then into your battle when you got your Medal of Honor. How did that work?
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's an interesting piece of the history here.
Speaker 1:First of all, we can stop here. Cindy will make it right. What do?
Speaker 2:we got.
Speaker 1:It's like you ran out of battery or something.
Speaker 2:I guess, I don't know.
Speaker 1:I can edit it out. Yeah, that's okay. We'll patch it in, okay. Well, drew, your discussion about using mercenaries and foreign actors is interesting. I think we had a little different view of that in the Air Force because we were in a little different environment, but it's good to know that.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, I look back on when I was in, we figured everybody did their job and we counted on everybody, whether the Navy on the rivers or the Air Force, and of course, in my that, that unit I was in in, I didn't get any support. There was zero, zero support. Um yeah, that's what we didn't. That's what's amazing. There was none.
Speaker 2:Um I, I didn't even carry a radio um because there was nobody to call and I felt comfortable that way, because we only went out with five or six guys and sometimes eight or 10. But once we got bigger like that, then we're more vulnerable.
Speaker 1:Five or six guys can look out for each other and and blend in really nice yeah, and they don't make as much noise going through the jungle and, uh, playing along with stuff. Yeah, so we'll, we'll talk a little bit more about that and your major conflict, but then I think then I want to kind of get in and talk a little bit more about what we talked about earlier, which was the preservation of the warrior ethos. Now, what's the problem? How are we going to handle it? And go back over a little bit about meritocracy and standards. One of the things that bothers me, by the way, is standards, because we seem to be abandoning them now, and when we do that, as you know, then you start losing your lethality and whatever actual performance value you have if you can't measure it, if you can't train to it.
Speaker 2:So we'll get into that, but you want me to finish up through the question that you just asked about the battle and what led up to that yes, if we can't do and we'll do that.
Speaker 1:So we're halfway, halfway point here.
Speaker 2:A little bit more than that right now okay, well, you're gonna edit, you can do whatever you want yeah, we're pretty.
Speaker 1:We're pretty good at editing and and cindy's real good about taking the times out when I'm scratching my nose or something you know. Um, so anyway, so, uh, so looks like you got your battery back here, so we'll just pick up from there.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, you know it's interesting how the development where the action was for the Medal of Honor is and when you think about our mission, was to know what's going on in our area and if, if the you, those listeners that are that understand what.
Speaker 2:Uh, a little bit of history about the, the chinese new year and the ted offensive of 68. Uh, there was this push by both sides to have a ceasefire for the holidays I, I mean, they'd had them over the years before, I guess and there was one looming there and I came back off of patrol and I think there's nothing out there and we're usually always able to run into something across the Cambodian border or whatever enemy soldiers and nothing. I came back and I was talking to Jim Moore and I said, jim, I don't know, there's something going on here. Tet's coming, the Tet, the ceasefire's coming in a day or so, and I just anyway, whatever. And he said, well, there was some, were some navy seals that just showed up. I heard you had some action up here and they didn't have a lot of action because they were not into the they had, didn't have areas so much just along the rivers and things like that.
Speaker 2:And they'd heard we got a little action. They were wanting some and I said, sure, we'll take them in, I'll get a couple of hours sleep and go up towards the Cambodian border and just take another look. And so we did and we unloaded and the PBR, the Navy SEALs, come with all kinds of stuff. They had river boatsats and everything, so shoot rather than a sampan or whatever. We got in those riverboats and went up to above An Phu and they dropped us off. We started heading towards this Cambodian outpost.
Speaker 2:I knew where it was and we got a little bit of fire, but not a lot. And I'm thinking, well, if we get into something, we're going to need to get some support because I have the now I have the Navy SEALs with me and not just four or five of my guys. And so we were going to get some Vietnamese artillery kind of lined up and there was no getting through to the Vietnamese unit and food. And one of the the seals had a radio and said, hey, that something going on in Chowduck and and we don't, we have realized right away why we didn't have any comms with ANFU is there was a major attack.
Speaker 2:The first thing we need to do is get back to Chowduck and see what was going on. I was talking to Jim on the radio of one of the patrol boats. He was saying that VC have overrun the city and he mentioned the nurse. Maggie was probably killed because she was in the middle of the where the action was and all that, and so we headed back and basically what it was is we got into this, uh, went into the town from the river, landed there on the beach, fought our way to the Vietnamese headquarters and they were totally demoralized, given up, and we needed to find out what was going on. So I linked up with Jim Moore and we went and got Maggie out, and I just kind of go over some of this stuff. But to get the idea, I don't wanna dwell on the action too much because it took 56 hours, so where do you start and end?
Speaker 2:But it was pretty big battle and we were able to rescue a lot of the American civilians that were volunteers, that had been captured by the Viet Cong and in doing so one of the SEALs was killed and that resulted in the SEALs leaving the city to one to evacuate him. He hadn't died yet, but they didn't come back and, as a result, we were able to systematically go through with about oh, somewhere around got up to 20 people at one time, because we're talking about a holiday where everybody was off downtown celebrating or whatever, and we're talking about a major battle with half a dozen of my guys and a couple of VC battalions. But we had some good luck and they kept moving along. And then off-duty guys that had belonged to the PRU jumped in behind us and we got up to 20 people and we had some momentum and we captured the leader of that operation that and he was equivalent to a general officer captured him and then things started going our way really fast, and so basically that's what it was. We captured that general officer and 18 other prisoners, rescued the civilians and killed a bunch of the enemy and they decided they better leave.
Speaker 2:And you wonder, how did such a small group become so effective against a larger force? And all I can say is is we didn't have anything to defend, we were just moving and eliminate the enemy in front of us, and the only time we thought about where we had been is when I had somebody wounded. I had to leave them there and they fought on a street corner or somewhere to keep the enemy from coming around us. But you know, a lot of combat is just having the good guys to be with, having the desire to move in there, take care of business, and a lot of luck. You've got to have some luck and they have to have some bad luck.
Speaker 1:It's the way it works, yeah and it's a lot of, it's a lot of innovation.
Speaker 2:You know, dealing with unknowns and things you hadn't expected, and that's where that training and that discipline comes in right, uh, and being good well, that's true and and uh, you know, and I knew the town a little bit, and um, and you know, when you eliminate their commanders and they're not set up to have a chain of command, like the military has been in the past, somebody, somebody's always jumping in there.
Speaker 2:Most of the medals of honor over in World War II and Korea and in Vietnam in conventional units were those that had replaced their company commander, platoon leader, whatever, and if you read a lot of the citations, that's what the bad situation and they took it over and they moved ahead. And American soldiers are willing to do that, unlike a lot of others, because they're afraid to make mistakes. And I'm afraid we may be going down that path a little bit where we're taking the ability for someone to take charge to, to to fill in the void that's created and because you all know what the mission is and not be micromanaged to the point where you're afraid to make a decision. And I'm afraid we're getting that way a little bit.
Speaker 1:So the micromanaging and large and bureaucratic leadership functions get in the way of both the efficiency as well as you know your ability to to develop new things on the spot and take care of problems right. Problem solved.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean the ingenuity of American soldiers and you hear stories about this. What was this farmer that created this plow kind of thing to knock the forest trees down and the hedge groves in World War II? I mean remarkable stories like that and when we had draftees. I later had another tour in Vietnam as a company commander after I got a battlefield commission in 101st and you know the most ingenious guys were those that came off of farms or stuff that knew how to do things and they're all 18 years old. Where do you learn that when you're 18? Except if you work ethics, from being a young guy and growing up. You say being 18 is growing up, but growing up to take care of business like war fighting. But you know, the thing that bothers me a lot is and I've been thinking about it lately is we're losing the focus of the mission, and the mission in the military is the clearest mission of any job you can have and that's to protect the United States. Kill the enemy before they kill you. Everything else is off the table.
Speaker 2:That's the job and we can't get into the business of doing other things that take away from that mission yeah um, quite frankly, we had a draft in those days and I said before we didn't have a shortage of special forces guys. People wanted to join and now we got recruiting problems and people say, well, I don't know why we don't. What is it? Well, it's because we're losing the identity of what makes people want to be warriors, Even people that don't have that experience. They just want to be something. They want to be something important and do important work. And I'll tell you war fighting is important work when the cause is just.
Speaker 1:It really is so to so today, because because of that and we're starting to see the reductions in in recruiting, uh, retention is not, has fallen off, uh, and and you've got problems with people, you know, just wanting to be involved. As you say, we used to create that in families like yours and mine, where we had generations of people who were in the military. They understood a lot of it, if not all of it, but they had the commitment and the willpower to want to serve and to do the things that we're talking about in being a warrior. Today we're seeing less of that.
Speaker 1:There's a lot of entitlement and everything has to be instant gratification, and one of my tenets has always been if you're happy, you probably are getting too easy of a break here. We've worked people night and day during Vietnam and the guys that complain and gripe about it, as soldiers and sailors, airmen and Marines want to do. But I realized after a while they were the happiest when they were involved and it was arduous, it was difficult and they took great pride in the fact that they could do that, and I think you're right. That's kind of what may be starting to be missing here. So that brings us to the question Drew, how do we change that? How do we not to fight it, because we can do it easily in the military when we want to? But how do we get back to that, those values?
Speaker 2:Well, I've thought of that and we're losing the cultural values. But we haven't lost it. I mean, we're just it's getting diluted a little bit.
Speaker 2:The military is one of these organizations that could change it really quick. We used to see, if you recall I'm not going to talk about the Navy or the Air Force or whatever, because I don't know much about them other than they're great services and they do wonderful work. But I'm going to focus on the Army because I saw recruiting posters that showed guys jumping out of airplanes, swimming under the water, doing stuff, rappelling, being tough and, let's face it, you get the guy in high school that wants an identity. That's an identity they can take. I want to be that person and I hope that I'm wrong, but I hope that the first person in an official briefing they don't get in the military is how to be kind to everybody, how to understand everybody's soft points, if you get what I'm leading to.
Speaker 1:I do indeed.
Speaker 2:I'll never forget that sergeant that stood up there in front of us at basic training and said you guys, I don't know whether you come from the farm or you're rich kids or what, but you're going to be the same when I get out of here. You're going to eat the same food. You're going to sleep when I tell you to sleep, doubt it out, all these things and I don't know. But we all looked at Dan and said whoa, this is what it's going to take. He said you're going to do this because if we have to go to war, I want to know that you're going to defend me and my friends and my family.
Speaker 2:I've never forgotten that. I hope that the first briefing they don't get now is some dei briefing that says if you got any problems, come and see the whatever he's wearing, a some kind of a deal that says he's an expert in DEI. What does that tell somebody that just signed up to be to have the toughest job in the United States military or in the United States when the time comes? What does that tell that person?
Speaker 1:Well, I think that's what's wrong. Now, when they're talking about trying to get recruiting solved and retention, it's like, okay, what are we going to do for these folks? Let's give them something. Let's give them a Starbucks in the barracks. Let's give them more money. Let's give them more time off. Let's stop enforcing the standards that are tough on them, like physical fitness and actual combat training, that is, training people to train the way they're going to fight. If we're going to back off on any of that, especially the standards, then you're going to start getting a force that's not very competent and has troubles doing it.
Speaker 1:And I see that where I live here in Central Texas, one of America's military towns, San Antonio. You go onto bases and you see a lot of people who you wonder why they're there. First of all, there's a lot of them are overweight, they're out of shape, they're wearing all kinds of odd things that we didn't used to have to do, and it looks like they just got up out of bed and came to work. You know, look, you know it's not hard, as you say, to make a change. That is done quickly if you just have some good standards, things that make sense and things that are focused again on the performance that people are going to have to do.
Speaker 2:Well, I don't know, I was working. I'm one of these guys that worked. Maybe I haven't quit yet, but just up a few years ago doing some training at Fort Bragg, provided training for special forces in the trades craft department, the basic skills. And I noticed at Fort Bragg when I was there before rush hour at the gates well, there wasn't a gate. Then it's been 9, 11, but the rush hour was six o'clock, five to six o'clock because all these troops living off post coming to work. Now rush hour is eight, eight and you don't need troops doing pt because they say we're going to let them do it on their own. So my uh collection of cadre that I had we were downtown in fable, we'd go have breakfast at seven or eight o'clock and in that waffle house or the denny's was all these soldiers wearing nice clean pt uniforms eaten. They weren't doing pt yeah, there you go.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm not. It was remarkable and you don't know whether they are eating because they just finished it or they're eating before they go run. I don't know, but my guess is that neither one of them. But they'd be wearing that and the rush hour was between 8 and 9. And that says a lot. Right there, we're trying to make soldiers comfortable, and soldiering is never going to be comfortable in the battlefield, never when. I think of those, that rifle company I had in the jungles, vietnam, where we'd go out for 90 days, come back for two or three to get refitted or whatever. And I'm back for 90 days Now, 90 days spent in the jungle living off a rucksack. And those guys could handle it. They could, they did a wonderful job. All of them about 18 years old, some of them 19. And not many sergeants. We had sergeants they were called shaken banks, not many sergeants.
Speaker 1:We had sergeants.
Speaker 2:They were called shaken bakes. They made them sergeants after basic training or individual training, and I'm thinking that's why we take care of troops the best we can in the battlefield, but not make them comfortable in training. I just don't get it. We don't want to go back to the way it was, because I'm an old guy and this is the way it was and everybody should experience it. No, we understand, like you you do that war fighting is serious business and the best way to survive and win the war is to make the people tough. And almost everything that I see, read about the military and I read not just one side of the news, but I read all of it is what they're doing to make soldiers feel more comfortable. Let them pick the pattern of camouflage paternity wear, and we all know if they're pregnant they're not going to be fighting anyway. Camouflage paternity wear, and we all know if they're pregnant they're not gonna be fighting anyway.
Speaker 1:Exactly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is just something I read and I said what is it and how expensive is that? I'd rather see soldiers get ammunition and training and not because staff officers we got a lot of them now, we got more than probably ever before and, versus in ratio, colonels and generals sit around and figure out what to do to make life better for soldiers, and most of them have never been in combat. Combat you cannot lose sight of what the mission of a soldier is, that's, to kill the enemy before they kill you. Period.
Speaker 1:And that's something that rests pretty deeply in people, I think, and some people get it A lot of others certainly don't. But I think you can be trained into doing a lot of the things that you're talking about. It just takes the courage and the willpower on those in who are leaders to be able to do that. Um, and sometimes that's kind of missing. Uh one, here's a quick story, because you mentioned the 101st airborne earlier.
Speaker 1:Back Back right before D-Day in 101st they were packing up, getting ready to go. There were two riggers that were packing chutes who weren't probably going to go because they were kind of new guys. They were qualified jumpers but they weren't senior enough. But they weren't senior enough. So as they're loading up the C-47s to take off and go over to fly over the beaches in Omaha and Normandy, these two guys decide they're going to go along anyway. So they suited up, got everything else, the gear, and they went and snuck on the airplane. They were stowaways on a C-47.
Speaker 1:Took off and halfway there the chaplain who was on board realized hey, these are not guys that should be here. He talked to them and he said yes, sir, but we weren't going to be left out, we wanted to come and he says all right, you stay with me because you're going to be in some trouble when we get back, trouble when we get back. So they parachuted in, landed near St Marigli and the hedgerows and had to fight their way through that town. But these two guys ended up being real heroes in their own right. Both of them ended up with silver stars and purple hearts out of it, but when they got back they were going to be court-martialed, except the chaplain stood up and said, sir, to the general, these are guys who came along not because they had to, but because they thought it was their duty and needed to, and both of them got promoted to sergeant and that was the end of that story. And no one knows who they are, except one of them. I know because it was my father-in-law.
Speaker 2:Well, you know that's the thing that a warrior, if you're in the warrior class, you wanna do things that others that are doing it and you don't want anybody doing it for you. You want to be a part of it. I don't know if they were brave when they did. They just felt like they had to do it.
Speaker 1:The bravery comes after you in it well, it was also that feeling of being a part of the band of brothers, that everybody else is doing it and and you have a responsibility of not an obligation to to to be a part of that if you can. And in that case it was probably just you know, something that they decided to do on their own. I mean, it was a pretty interesting event, but that's well, you know you go.
Speaker 2:You know you think about it. After Vietnam, you know the welcome that the Vietnam veterans didn't get. Okay, I'm in the Special Forces, I didn't care, I didn't need a welcome, right. But I lost a lot of sleep over how those young draftees were treated. When they come home, you know, get rid of your uniforms, put on civilian clothes, forget it never happened. How can you forget that? First of all, they're proud of their service and if we tell them they shouldn't be, we've taken that away from them, which we don't have a right to do after we tell them that they should do it. But how many times have you heard about imposters of people that were in Vietnam, wanted to be part of Vietnam, but never went? I mean, there's more that wanted to be in Vietnam than ever served, probably.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yes. Yes, I know what you're talking about probably, absolutely.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, I know what you're talking about. That's what we we need to to get our recruiting back on track. Make, don't get give these guys identity and these women that want to be in there if they can do the job, but not recruit them under one pretense and then try to make them warm and fuzzy where they lose their identity and and give them, inundate them with classes on. Maybe you've got to understand somebody because they want to be a another gender or something. That's somebody else's job to do that if they want to do that in this country yep it ought to be hands-off in our intelligence services and our department of defense.
Speaker 2:Period. And there's already laws about discrimination. If somebody wants to join, fine, that doesn't mean that you have an obligation, uh, a right, to serve. No serving is you have to make the grade to be a part of the warrior class. You can't just say, oh, I want to be a warrior and put on your makeup and go do your thing. I don't know, but it's.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you what this war fighting has been the same from the beginning of time yeah and it, and we can't make it sterile and we can't just make it for and give everybody a chance. And they're not a warrior and don't want to be one. They they just want to be something. Who knows what they want to be? They don't even know yet, but that sergeant that told me I'm going to make you all the same, so I know that you're going to be able to defend me and my friends and my family. I've never forgotten that, and we shouldn't. That's what the dialogue ought to be when they first get the basic training.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and nor have I forgotten that either, drew. So that brings us kind of to the point where you are now, and you're sitting in a beautiful center in Pueblo, colorado, the Center for American Values. That's the same thing we've been talking about here with the military too. It's American values, and are we on track to keep those? And if not, what are we going to do about it? And you're blessed to be living where you are and doing that. Tell us a little bit about your efforts.
Speaker 2:Well, you know, first of all, when I received the Medal of Honor many, many years ago, Warren, 50 years ago, sure, I got recognition, but you can't just live on what you've done in the past 50 years ago. Can you imagine if?
Speaker 1:I wanted to live on that. What?
Speaker 2:I'd be doing Nothing, but I felt with co-founder of the center, brad padula. You know we've created as remarkable as you can maybe see it here, uh, and the portraits of these malabar recipients 166 now. I knew every single one of them, um, and they are all different people but they share one thing and that's a strong bond that's connected by this thin ribbon. They're all different and they're not a one of a minute that wouldn't. They've already proven they're willing to give their life but would continue to do it. And I feel obligated, for the good fortune that I've had to be recognized by receiving this medal, to put it to good use and let young people know that when times are tough and you believe in what you're doing, you can make, you make right choices and you can do some good. Now we also tell them that you don't have to be in the army, military or have a medal of honor to do good things in this country, our founders were warriors, but they didn't carry a gun.
Speaker 2:You can do, you can fight for what you believe in and you will be a better person for it. And so that's why this center is so important and it's getting some serious legs now, because people need an identity. We're getting fuzzed up here on who we are as an individual, and when young people come into the gallery here, we don't tell them what to think. We just tell them that they can think and how to think. That if they hesitate in making a decision, a split more than a minute or two, they're considering a wrong option here. Like, every one of these folks on the wall made a decision on the battlefield. It was the right decision, they saved lives and they got recognized for it. You don't do it for recognition, but when you do good things, you will be recognized and you'll feel good about it. You'll make your community proud, your family proud and, let's face it, that's what the warrior class is to be proud of, what you're doing, and if we get back to that, we will not have a recruiting problem period.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, we got to get away from trying to give people stuff, so they'll be attracted to it. We need to let them experience it and realize how great it actually is. Um, I just wanted to say I heard giving him stuff.
Speaker 2:I heard a story I don don't know if it's true or not, but it came from a credible source that they're proposing to give soldiers extra money if it got certain temperature cold. I was an ex-Orient Infantry Battalion in Fort Wayne, Alaska. Those guys were proud of the fact that nobody could handle them. Well, you know we talk about, we take care of troops. Everybody knows that. That's the ethos. Every officer noncommissioneded officer takes care of troops. You take care of them by looking out for their basic needs, but don't take away from them the desire to be tough, to be tough.
Speaker 2:But when I had that was excellent at an infantry battalion in Alaska and I had a good fortune of running the battalion quite a bit because the battalion commander was gone quite a bit and those guys up there were the toughest and took great pride into operating at 40, 50 below zero. Nobody could hold a candle against them. Now, even the notion of paying somebody extra money when it hit 20 below, that's a wrong reason. I mean, let's face it, Fighting in the cold is one of the toughest environments that you can be in. Can you imagine treating wounded and everything when it's 40, 50 below?
Speaker 1:zero. Oh yeah, that's a tough environment. You imagine treating wounded and everything when it's 40 50 below zero.
Speaker 2:That's that's. That's tough. It just it's just amazing to even comprehend that. Um, and I did a lot of work on the in the cold I I like the winter, it's just kind of in me. But I've lived in alaska for many years.
Speaker 2:But what to? To want to pay somebody a bonus I don't know if this is true, I hope it's not and then to say that they said well, you don't believe you want to give troops what they deserve? I don't. There's a difference there. What we need to do is give them the training, make them feel good. They'll be prancing around and off-duty and stuff like in the old days and be proud of wearing the uniform. Now they look kind of carefree. You know they deserve it.
Speaker 2:We haven't been in a war in quite a while. Sure, there's folks out there getting shot at once in a while and there's special forces guys and gals doing stuff somewhere, but not everybody. So let's, let's train. Let's, let's train, train hard, because you know you're gonna, if you you've got to be able to train like you're gonna fight, because if you don't train, everybody says, oh, I would do it different if we were in a real war. Bull, if you're going to fight because if you don't train, everybody says, oh, I would do it different if we were in a real war, bull, if you're going to train like you're going to fight yes, because you're going to fight like you're going to fight.
Speaker 2:I absolutely believe that we won the war. The politician just didn't give us the victory. And uh, and I don't know how many young or I get phone calls every now and then from one of my soldiers, from, uh, the rifle company I had, and, and they're troubled. You know, as they get older they wonder what's going on. And, uh, they should be proud of what they've done. And you know, being in war is the most significant thing and it will change you, because if it doesn't change you, life changes people. But war is pretty significant and we need to make it change them for the better. And you do that by appreciating the service Period.
Speaker 1:Well, and the guys that I fall with are that way too. We're still as tight as brothers and sisters, literally, and it's something that just never goes away, uh, even though you might want it to go away at times, it just won't, uh, and so, but on the other hand, it's one of those life experiences which makes you what you are as you go along in life, and I can look back and see people who did amazing things that I never probably would have expected, actually, when I first got to know them, when they were in high school or something. It's a pretty phenomenal thing to see happen. Phenomenal thing to see happen. And I've seen young sailors, young airmen, turned around who I thought weren't going to make it and were going to be out in a couple of days and end up being just great warriors themselves. But it's the training, it's the discipline, it's the leadership, it's the intensity of what you're doing which does make people stick around.
Speaker 2:Well you know, that rifle company when I mentioned that the average age was just under 19?
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I was 28. I'm an old man now. When I went back over that factored my age in there. But what does it take? We're obligated to take high school kids. We're drafting them. We're obligated to to take care of them, not by making them feel good, but we need to make them tough yeah, and not one of them that I know of didn't come out bad because of what they went through.
Speaker 2:Only if they're now like when we brought them back from Vietnam we were told to don't wear your uniforms and all that. That's the problem. It wasn't the war fighting. Everybody understands that pretty fast. You have to have compassion of everybody's ability. You have compassion and respect for your enemy. If you don't, you're not going to lose.
Speaker 2:But those guys, I put them up against anybody. They didn't know anything but they stuck it out with each other and I can think back of what it was like in their minds Because I'm a career soldier, I'm 28. I'm an old guy, I've been through a few firefights. These young guys, when they found out that I'm 28. I'm an old guy, I've been through a few firefights.
Speaker 2:These young guys, when they found out that I'm their company commander greatest leadership challenge I ever had is I took over a rifle company in the jungle and went in by helicopter and there were Stars and Stripes, newspapers being thrown off and on the headlines as Medal of Honor recipient commands, rifle company in Vietnam. Those young guys I didn't realize it right away, what that probably meant, that oh man, he's going to get us all killed because of, you know, wants another Medal of Honor or something. But after a while they realized no, aggressive patrolling, and don't you know, we didn't do defensive positions at night, we took ambushes and on the offense we got the enemy and we didn't lose very many guys.
Speaker 2:I hate to say that if you lose one that's too many, but we brought most of them back and I don't have regrets about how I've operated over there one bit and I hope that and I pray that they all live their life knowing that they had some pride in what they did.
Speaker 1:Well, I think they do, and it's through stories and things like what we're trying to do, drew, that tells why people do it and maybe gives a little bit of inspiration to the younger crowd today to want to take a look at being a part of that. That's my hope, and I know that you feel the same way too.
Speaker 2:Oh.
Speaker 2:I think the younger crowd does want to be a part of it. The problem is, when they get into the military it's like they're hit right between the eyes. Whoa, what am I getting into? I've heard it so many times where somebody joins the military because of their father, their uncle, their brothers or whatever, and they come in and they find out, whoa, all they're more interested in is somebody's special interests. Their only special interest there is is keeping them alive on the battlefield and killing the enemy before they kill you. If we never have to go to war absolutely I'm one of the I'll clap my hands to that. But yeah, me too, being tough, it might keep us out of a war too well, that's, that's the whole idea here is.
Speaker 1:anybody like us that's been to war doesn't want to be one of the guys to have to go fight one again or have our children or grandchildren have to do it. But it is peace through deterrence and the knowledge that the other side knows that we are lethal, that we are able and well-trained and through meritocracy and performance we can be dependent on to do those things. The bad guys know that, especially places like China, except when you get the political element involved in it, that can change that entirely. And we've seen that. We saw that in Vietnam and sadly, we saw it again in Afghanistan. When we don't stay consistent in the way that we conduct ourselves as warriors, then it all starts to evaporate.
Speaker 2:Well, I think we fight these long wars and we get we almost we give the enemy time to meet an escalation right. These long wars. Uh, what we have is overwhelming power to go in and just and eliminate a threat. We've taken that away by giving parody on the battlefield, yep, and it just it doesn't work. It just won't work.
Speaker 1:Well, one of the worst things that I saw was in Vietnam was when we started having uh stand downs, you know, uh bombing halts and stuff, uh stopping the war for a while so that the enemy could come to the table and reason with us and maybe not want to fight us. That's a philosophy that doesn't work very well at all, and it wasn't until the very end of the war when we decided that we were going to stop it finally and did it in a very big way and it worked it in a very big way and it worked Well.
Speaker 2:I think we you know, you and I and so many other people know what we really need to do. It's just not we're too comfortable in making our case Because, let's face it, we'll never, never, hopefully, the vast majority of the population would not have to be in a war. We just have to have a small group of people men and women that are going to make, be willing to make that sacrifice, that want to do it. Let's give them the training and the leadership to do it. Let's give them the training and the leadership to do it. I had the good fortune of being an aide to Hank Emerson the gunfighter. A lot of people on our listeners would probably know the name. He was a wild man and that's how I got back to Vietnam, because he helped me get back.
Speaker 1:They didn't want me to go back.
Speaker 2:I think we kind of froze up again here. He had two DSCs, one from Korea and one Vietnam. Now in the 60s, in the 70s, after the war, we had racial issues in the United States Army military pretty serious. I was a corps commander which was about 100,000 troops Fort Campbell, fort Bragg and I believe, fort Lewis at the time 109,000 troops. He had a program called Pro-Life Didn't take away from the war fighting capabilities or the mission and he said that and I'll never forget this. He said you are going to learn about each other's culture. We're not telling you to to make them special, you're just gonna understand culture and you're gonna do it through music. And he required he. He created this weekend gathering where they had singers, famous singers, well-known singers from every culture, soul music, country, all of it. And he said you're going to listen to it all weekend long on the parade field. And that's where I met Charlie Pride and Loretta Lynn Conway Tweedy, because they came.
Speaker 2:I don't know if it's froze up, but when it was over guys were arm in arm, arm. They came, they were arm in arm, understanding each other better, and he hired a colonel by the name of Colen to spearhead that and I got to know him pretty well. So it takes audacity, it takes the willingness to understand the mission and soldiers, and he was a warrior. That's why he got the nickname gunfighter. I mean he got out of that helicopter, landed there, shooting his .45 off and killed a lot of enemies, saved them till he got shot down again. But he was a real man and we need to do more like him. But general officers need to look out. So I think time to go.
Speaker 1:We're starting to get hung up here somehow, I guess, with the airwaves, drew listen. Thank you, sir, for being a part of us today. We are honored to have you with us as not just a guest on the podcast Stars and Stripes, but also as an advisory board member in STARS, and I hope we'll see you back again another day along with you out there in the audience. We want you to come back and listen to more of the stories that we'll tell about how we're going to keep our military fighting, lethal and deserving of the respect of the American people. Thanks again for being with us. This is Al Palmer, commander United States Navy, signing off Good night.