#260 Dale Hanson - Why MACV-SOG Had an 85% Casualty Rate and 1-in-4000 Odds

34:08I guess it was the only high they had. So it wasn't too long until I realized that we weren't all top tier of recruits up there. Damn. So you passed that. Yeah. Then what happens? Got to leave, then went to training in Fort Bragg for Special Forces. finish phase one which phase one is designed to make you quit or weed you out that's it uh phase two i forget what that was but anyway um and the third one was um for 11f uh uh and that was never done to a someone who was not a high rank uh nco e7 or above um we had a lecture by a major I think he came in and I remember him saying SOG. Other people say no, and they said a highly classified unit, but I remember SOG.

35:16But anyway, he says, we have this program in Vietnam in a special operations group, and you need to be 11F to go. That was your MOS.

35:33and that was hard. You had to be a senior NCO, but we were going to let this small group of us do it. There's 37 of us. But then the proviso at the end of it, he says, at the end of this, all of you people, all graduates are going to be sent directly to Vietnam to Saug, and 85 % of you will be dead in three months. So the first thing I did is I went back and said, well, how many do you have to start with if every three months 85 % die? And it's over 4 ,000. So the odds of living a year in SOG back then was one in 4 ,000. Assuming he wasn't just trying to scare us. But it seems fairly accurate in the sense that of my class, most of them were killed.

36:24Wow. Wow, one in 4 ,000 just to live for one year. Yeah, yeah. And it was a super good class. There's intelligence and spies and all this kind of thing. It even had safe cracking and I mean all that part. You could be James Bond coming out of this thing as well as a commando. And so at the end of it all, we got our leave, flew off to Vietnam, and landed up in the Trang, the headquarters of Special Forces, and CC North, Command and Control. It went by several names. Command and Control, it went by SOG, Special Ops, it went by Studies and Observation Group, and it seems to me there was a couple others too, euphemism that he kept changing the names, you know.

37:15But the first day, North and South flew out, and the next day, my group was at Contum. Wow. Let's just rewind real quick. I mean, what is going through your head when they tell you 85 % of you will be wiped out, you do the math, it's one in 4 ,000. I mean, what's going through your head? For some reason, it might be a characteristic of youth, but you're kind of indefatigable. You think that if there's one that's going to live, that's going to be me. And I don't know how to say it. You want to be in the most worthwhile program of all, accepting the idea that there's going to be tremendous risk involved in it.

38:05And you're willing to take the risk when you're young. You just think, nothing's going to get me. As it was, it popped more than once in my tours. Did they tell you what Mac v. Sog would encompass, what the job description was, what you would be doing? Pretty much. We know mainly it was going to be intelligence gathering, a lot of that. Now we had the mic forces too, the strike forces as a part of us, perhaps to exploit things that we found and so forth. But that was a part of it too. So you get there, and the person who I met first was Bob Howard, and we hit it off really well. And he was first starting to recon because they wouldn't let him go in the field anymore because for the third time they were going to put him in.

39:01He's supposed to get his Medal of Honor. you know it's funny because um in college i knew greek because the new testament was written in greek i had to learn greek you know and i'm walking by the the team house and and there's an outline of a horseshoe up there which in greek is omega and i and i and bob howard said He said, what are you looking at? And I says, Omega up here. I said, was there a project here called Omega? And he says, I need to paint that building. That's all he said. But Bob was, his wife taught Sunday school in Alabama in a little tiny Baptist church, and he's just a great man, you know.

39:49And we talked, you know, and he says, well, I think I've got the guy for you. And we left the headquarters, and there he is, Norm Doney, was my one zero. And Norm had Silver Star and Seven Bronze. And it was his third or fourth tour. And Bob Howard says Doney, he says, I think I got the man for you. And we talked with Norm Doney. And some of those guys can take your measure pretty quickly. They know what you're going to be like, whether you're going to falter in the field and all that stuff. And he took the measure. And it was great. And it was interesting because he had come from the mailbox, and his wife had sent him a magazine.

40:41and the cover of the magazine was men's magazine and the cover was Sergeant Doney, Six-Man Mission Impossible Team, Drive Out and Kill 200 VC. And that was my team leader. Holy shit. Yeah. What's the backstory behind that? Yeah. He was doing his recon and he caught them doing PT on a riverbank and he just called in the airstrikes and stuff and just nailed them, you know. Wow. Wow. Wow. What'd that feel like to be, have that guy as your leader? Yeah. But Dorney was not only was a team leader, but he just, he was going to teach me everything he knew. I was going to be a sponge. And he wound up being my team leader, my father figure, my mentor, and my friend.

41:34And after the war, I would see him in Oregon, you know, and just a wonderful man, a great man. And he retired after, I don't know, 25 years or so in the military. How big was your team? Say again? How big was your team? There were three Americans, and I think we had, I think it was five or six in Dij. And my team was a little bit unique because most of mine were Chinese, so I had Chinese and Vietnamese. And we started to lose some wounds, you know. So we were down to like six and three, you know. Damn. How much training did you guys do before you went out on operations? Oh, constantly. Of course, you'd be prepared well enough that they could grab you and say, we need you to go in right now, and they would be confident.

42:28it. But when you get a mission, the first thing is the talk, the headquarters would find Donnie or me if I was leading it. And they say, this is your warning order. And you've got a mission and the briefing will be tomorrow at two o 'clock. And so now you know something's going on. So you make sure your people don't go to town on leave or something like that. And then the next morning, you get your warning order i mean the mission briefing they'll say this is where you're going this is what you got this is what your mission is all that kind of a thing and that you kind of appraise it is just like one where i'm going to need more defensive things or you know you key it to the mission and so forth and then if it required special training then you take your people and you go to the range or whatever and do that specialized training that they don't normally do.

43:25And then you give a brief back in which it's in a briefing area and all the people are there. The commanding officer's there, the S2, the S3, S4 is there. Everybody's there and anybody can ask you any questions they want about the mission, you know, and the captain and and the colonel and all the rest, you know. And when they're totally satisfied that you're ready and you've got a degree of success looking ahead, then they'd okay it. And then you'd have a time when the choppers are out there and you meet them out there and get inserted into the target area. A lot of people talk about, you know, I did 40, 50 missions.

44:13I don't know how you can do that. If you go through the warning order and all that kind of thing, and the average intelligence mission is seven to ten days.

44:28My missions overseas aren't that many, it's less than ten. But I had a lot of them in country too, which we didn't count. The old timers wouldn't count, only counted SOG. because SOG missions were deep into enemy-denied and controlled territory, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam. Those were our missions. Anything else that we did, we kind of regarded as just training missions. Interesting. Yeah, and Doni, I remember Doni, I used to talk about, oh, it was just a training mission. Doni says, don't forget, 58 ,000 people have been killed in those training missions. You had to remember that because it's in Vietnam.

45:13It's still dangerous. What would some of the missions be in CONUS? Over the fence? Yeah. Intelligence was probably number one. You know, and sometimes it's direct action. My team in particular was specialized to be a prisoner of war snatch. That's what we did. And usually, you'd want to have a couple extra people because you have the snatch, you know, the attack element, and you have somebody behind you with a radio in case something goes south. And then you've got the two wings, you know, security. So the wing can say the coming or something like that. So you're talking about two on each wing in an attack element and then somebody behind.

46:02So ideally, you'd have about ten people. But it's hard to hide ten people, too. But we would have the attack element, and I'm not sure if I'm getting carried away here, but a lot of times we would have a couple of claymores, and we have a claymore here, a claymore here, and in between we have a dead space, not a dead space, but an empty space. And that's where we would time it so the prisoner was right there, and we'd blow the claymores. Everybody down there is done. Then we'd run out there and grab the prisoner while he's still in shock. You know, tie them up, search them, the whole deal, and get off the road quick.

46:41And then get your people to come in. But that's one of the big ones. Ours specialized in POWs. And a lot of them did go for POWs. How many POWs did you guys? Well, we got two, but they both died. One died in the medics, in the bed. He just plain died. And there was one that I believe an NBA sniper shot him at the helicopter. He could have been shooting us, but I think they popped him because we were ready to just lift him on. And he took the shot, and he went down just like that. And I think they took their own guy so that he wouldn't talk. And of course, you had that. You guys were getting our POWs?

47:32No. You were taking POWs. We were trying to catch POWs. Yeah, I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Usually when we are trying to get our own POWs, that's a pretty big unit. Okay. What would you do when we're taking prisoners of war? What are we doing? What would we do? What would you guys do? Well, you want to interrogate if you can. We don't torture. I've never heard of torture. But interrogate, all that kind of a thing. Let the S2 people figure out how to do it. I can't remember what mission it was, but took out this guy, and he was alive and all that stuff. And he looked at me, and he said, we think you'd be dead already, green, all that stuff.

48:21Coming from the ground and come up, and we think you'd be already dead, and we know can kill. you know and so i remember i mentioned in one of the books but i i was um going to go on a mission that i didn't think i was going to survive it and um so i i took the camouflage and i reversed the protocol because you usually you know the shadowed areas you kind of lighten them up a little bit and i reversed it i took the shadowed areas i made them dark with that dark green. And then the highlights of cheeks, I mean, with the lightest. And then I took a bunch of horizontal, that beige kind of a color, and I put horizontal ones out here so I looked like a death mask in green.

49:07And I didn't think I was going to live, but boy, if they came after me, they were going to think they were someone to deal with, you know. Oh, shit. Yeah. Why didn't you think you were going to make it? I don't remember. I don't remember which one that was. That's probably one of those things you try to forget. I think it was simply the intelligence we had, the people who had been there before, things like that.

49:39Did you paint your face like that often? Did I think like that? I did. You talk to the SOG guys, they're a little bit reticent to tell you their anxiety. I don't think many of the guys talk. I'll admit it. There were many times I didn't think I was going to live.

50:01But it's not cowardice at all. What it is is that when you're to go anyway it shows the opposite you know there's a i remember my friend doni um novi um he fought in world war ii against the germans he was in the czech resistance and then he went and uh fought um in another war in korea and then he came to our war and by then he was he was old and i got to know him and actually in training group and he ran the mortar pool because he's too old to go to the field, you know. No shit. And I was doing martial arts big time. You were serving with World War II guys? Yes. Oh, yeah. That's incredible. Inovie fought the Germans from the Czechoslovakia deal.

50:52He's a big Czech guy. He told me once that he couldn't remember how many times he swam the Rhine. You know? It was amazing, you know. But Novi was just amazing. I'll get sidetracked. But Novi says, I was always stealing his employees because I was really into martial arts and doing that nunchaku. Well, we had this teak from Vietnam that was really hard. And I would always get his guys to mill it on their milling machine. You keep taking my guys. I remember I was getting ready to go on one of these really rough ones. I think I was talking to Novi, and he gave me a book of poetry. And I was reading it.

51:40It was poetry of the wars. And this one was, I memorized it. I was really nervous about going out the next day. And the poem was, All night long thrown against a buddy slain With his gnashing teeth bared to the full moon I was writing letters full of love never had a hugged life so dear wow yeah and it's things like that Novi would give me something like that he'd never never suggest for a moment that you're nervous you know but he would do something to encourage you Novi was interesting too because Novi was a friend, you know. And he had the mortar pool, and then there was one who ran the mess hall, and there was another one who ran the club.

52:30And they were going from Contum to Pleiku six miles away to buy stuff for their needs, and Novi was in the jeep too. Well, on the way, the NBA or the VC attacked the jeep and blew it up. I mean, it flew up in the air upside down. And Novi landed sitting up like I am this morning with his back against a tree. And the bullet creased his forehead and just blood was coming down. And the one who was driving the Jeep couldn't get out from the steering wheel and they shot him. And then the other one, when the Jeep flipped over, he was under the Jeep. and he could see the NBA and he tried to move his foot so that they wouldn't see it and they saw the movement and they shot him in the head.

53:20Well they went to Novi and then all the blood there and Novi's eyes were wide open just like that and he's just frozen you know and anyway the one Viet Cong said, him die, him die. So they went over and they saw his ring. They tried to pull off his ring and they couldn't get the ring off. So one of them grabbed a knife and they started sawing on his finger and they sawed his finger off and they held up the ring to the light. And Novi, who is totally cognizant of what's going on, wouldn't move if he could. But he kept I cannot move because these guys will finish me off, you know. But he watched them do it, you know.

54:10And I went and I saw him in the hospital in Pleiku. Just a good man, you know, old. He gave us a couple classes in Levin F. School in Fort Bragg, you know.

54:28What's it like to be able to serve with World War II generation? Sidian. What's it like to be able to serve with the World War II generation? I mean, I would imagine that you guys had a ton of respect. Good. It was really good. There were a couple of them.

54:46I think they thought of it more in terms of service, and it was only the unique aspects of it that were related to what we did that they wouldn't mention at all. World Warfare and all that kind of a thing, and they would mention that. But it was never in the context or it never seemed like they were trying to show that they had an experience that was better than us. It was bigger and all that kind of a thing because of the World War as opposed to Indochina. But there was so much I got from them. And Novi was one, but they never bragged about it, talked about it, really. This is a thing that they knew and they did, they experienced and went through.

55:36And there were lessons to be learned if you as a young guy would talk to them about it. And they'd say, you know, I went through something like that. But there were people, it's like my own father. You know, he did the entire war against the Japanese, you know, and never talked about. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Yeah, there were some good ones there. Very interesting. Let's talk about your first mission. your first mission first mission oh boy um what was it uh it would have been uh recon um would have been with uh um with uh don't donnie and uh jim morris how long were you in country before your first mission oh not long at all um month and a half maybe maybe a month and a half almost right away because they got on team right away uh other some of the other guys took a while to get team um i don't remember which is the first the first ones um do you remember waiting for your first mission yeah and it wasn't fear it wasn't nervousness or anything like that it was anxious were you excited ready to go yeah i want to go and get this done knowing full well of course that the danger is there but uh doni my team leader had such a confidence in his demeanor and stuff you know he knew what he was doing and i was confident he knew what he was doing and uh we're going to do this and um boy i i did maybe the three with doni um i think the the one that kind of stands out but i don't know if it was the first one um was uh ben hat was under siege you know The communists, of course, would siege major places like the French, Dien Ben Phu.

57:36That broke their back. It was like they had no more will to fight and so forth. They tried to do the same thing to the Americans. And, of course, Ted Offensive was a disaster unless you looked at the news. Then they made it out. Oh, they attacked 200 places in Vietnam. And what they don't say is they lost every one. But I was with Dhoni and we were doing a reconnaissance thing on the Ben Hat. We were way behind the lines and our thing was to gather intelligence. And our motto that people don't mention to you is that break contact and continue mission. A lot of times people get in contact and then they want to get out.

58:20and the real motto in SOG is you break contact and then you continue missions. You break contact, you avoid the enemy and all this stuff and you get some distance between you and continue the mission. With Dhoni and there were enemy everywhere. It just totally, just saturated. And they were all going toward Benhat and the big siege was going on and it seemed like I had been watching the siege for quite a while.

58:51Anyway, we come across a trail system and Doni and I went onto the trail. The other guys were security. And it looked really well-traveled. And I looked down here and there were footprints in the mud that was so new that the water was just starting to seep into the footprint. So it had to be like a minute or two minutes ahead. Wow. Yeah. And so anyway, now we're hearing movements down the line, and they're coming again from the other end. And I had the camera, and I took a picture of that footprint with the water just starting to seep in there. And I just barely got off that trail before the first people started going by.

59:36But we don't fire them up because their job is intelligence. So you let them go by, your job is intelligence. intelligence. And so we're continuing on. We're looking for enemy and finding this intelligence. We RON for the night, remain overnight. You use the same term, RON. We RON for the night and as I'm in there I can hear the communists walking all over the place. I even could hear the trucks down the highway farther away and even tailgates going in. Sometimes that's not a good sign because it means they're unloading troops to come after you you know but uh uh as as we're kind of waking up and all this stuff you know i had this smell that brought me back to when i was a boy mowing lawns it was the grass green grass has been mowed it was like it it just was so familiar to me.

1:00:37So I got up and we maneuvered to this trail area and it was probably from me to you, probably six feet wide, eight feet wide, maybe wider, where the people, the NVA were going by battalions toward Manhattan trying to take them out, had mowed it down and walked through it so much. It was all the grass was broken and that smell from grass being down and stuff. It was just strong, really strong. And I'm looking and it's like they are saturated in this area. We're going to be in trouble pretty soon. Well, anyway, Doney and I and the team were maneuvering along this road, about to come off the road.

1:01:23And all of a sudden I looked down and I saw comma wire. It was hidden quite well, but I found comma wire. And so as soon as we got safely off the trail. I mentioned to Dhoni, whispering, I said, Kamalwire, you know. And we went over and sure enough there was Kamalwire. And so I said, there has to be a headquarters up here somewhere. Of course, there's whispering. And so Dhoni and I leave the team and Dhoni and I start following where the Kamalwire is, trying, because then we figured the whole team, we're not going to get there quietly. So Doni and I start working our way along where that comma wire is, and it goes for quite a while.

1:02:07Then all of a sudden, I get to a low area where there's an old river or something like that. And then on the other side, I hear the artillery that they're using to bombard Ben-Hit. It was, I don't know, 50 artillery pieces, 105s, 155, that kind of thing. And they're going boom, boom, boom, and they're camouflaged. But I can see the leaves blowing every time the shell comes out. And we get closer, and I start getting close, and I can see where scores of artillery pieces are left along here. This is what was bombarding Ben had. and it is the place where all the artillery was. So anyway, we start looking for landmarks to get it really zeroed down to exactly where that would be on a map.

1:03:02And I saw like where that old river was where there was kind of a cliff face and I said, that's it on the map and so on. And we isolated, we got, we knew exactly where it was, you know. So we make our way and join the team and do a sit-rep back to the FOB and said, we found the artillery, basically what we're saying, that is bombarding Ben Hat. And they said, immediately, go, I forget what it was, the nearest LZ, and they said, as fast as you can go. And so we get to this LZ where a chopper's going to pick us up. Well, at the same time, we were there, our mic force, our strike force from FOB that's out there with the company but they're a few miles away from us and I was talking to a couple of the guys after the war because what they wanted to do they're going to bomb it and they wanted us out of there because it was going to be a saturation bomb well anyway they told them because they could take a recon team out quite quickly but they couldn't likewise do that to a company So the order that came to them was a maneuver, and I think they said seven clicks fast, as fast as you can go.

1:04:19And anyway, talking to the guys afterward, they were going so fast they could hardly breathe. And about the time they got seven clicks away and we were off in the choppers, 100 B-52s hit the place. A hundred? I didn't know there were that many in existence. But the word came down, 100 B-52s hit the place. Holy shit. And I didn't know we had that many. Me neither. Yeah, and maybe it's hyperbole, huh? Yeah. So anyway, we get out and get back to base, and that is the day the siege of Ben had ended. That intelligence flying that we found, you know, and they dropped in all the B-52s. That ended the siege at Ben Hat.

1:05:09Wow. Interesting, yeah. Wow. You look back and say, we did something. Yeah. And that was the first one? I think it was. Holy shit. We may have had some locals, you know, probably, close by that we called locals. And, of course, Donia had to constantly tell me 58 ,000 have been killed in locals, you know, you know, in country, you know, don't get overconfident, you know. Wow. What can you, um, could you, would you mind, what was the Mike Force? The Mike Force? Well, we had companies of people that would attack targets of opportunity. They went by different names, depending on Mike Force, uh, Strike Force.

1:05:54I forget what they all were. Um, Hatchet Force, I think is what we called ours. And I was on a Hatchet Force for a while. It just went by different names depending on who you were attached to. So you were attached to them or they were attached to you? They were part of the FOB. Were these MAFs, were these SOG guys as well? Some guys, yeah, they're all SOG. Usually there were 15 Americans and about 120, usually Montagnards. In the old days, and these days were about done just before I got there, we had battalions of Chinese. And over the years, the Chinese had about been wiped out. And I had four Chinese on my team, and they might have been the last fighters as far as I know.

1:06:46Who knows if they retired to Pensacola? Who knows? Wow. Wow. Wow. That's a hell of a first mission. You would be a martyr tribesman, huh? That's a hell of a first mission. Yeah. Yeah, it was. Holy shit. Yeah. Yeah. Did you develop any patterns or rituals or anything in particular that you or you and your team would do before operations? I don't think so. Not spiritual or anything like that. I think I would always try to encourage our people. I had a closeness to our mercenaries that I don't think anyone else really had, but I mean, I'm one of the guys that I put my arms on them, and I can hug them, or I can tease them, and all this stuff.

1:07:37And it never interfered with my command, because they knew when the time came, okay, what I said was it. But I think prior to all these missions and all this stuff, I'd always make sure my people were emotionally and ready for the missions. They weren't Christians per se. Most of them were Buddhists, I think. How would you prepare yourself? Well, day by day I always prayed. I tried to read the scriptures every day. But with me, I'd always do the prayer, but it wasn't like a lot of praying. it was almost i don't want to dig diminish what i was doing as you would perhaps say grace to yourself when you eat a meal you know um you've prayed uh uh and it's not a long prayer a lot of times going on a mission unless there's something unique about it um i would pray and god you know be with me help me to be wise help me to be courageous and things like that protect me things like that.

1:08:46But I didn't pray a long time. I think my time there was in a readiness platform, emotionally and spiritually. Gotcha. Did you carry any sentimental stuff, pictures of family? Yeah. Yeah. Anything? Yeah. Usually, never told them what we were doing. and once in a while I might say if somebody died, I would probably be more prone to tell my dad or my brother, definitely not my mom or someone like that. Now what I meant was, did you carry any sentimental type things on your person during operations, maybe a small Bible or pictures of your family or anything that you thought would keep you... Totally sterile.

1:09:41Totally sterile. Totally sterile. I mean, absolutely. But the only thing about me that would violate the sterility of it all is when my Chinese would write my name in Campabio Chin on my back. I don't think we mentioned it, but my name is Hansen, which renders well if you're Chinese, it's Han Sun. And they said, we have to go to the witch doctor, see how best, the most suspicious way to write your name. And so the first half was easy. The Han Dynasty was the warrior dynasty of China. And I forget now after these years about what the sun was. But then they would write, which means never die. So I go out in the field and my Chinese would render, oh han son we forgot and then on my back and usually above my collar where god could see it or their god could see it um they would put the chinese characters dale yeah the han sun come by your chin never die and um in their mind god is going to be looking for me on this mission wow yeah i didn't didn't discourage so you got pretty close with those guys oh yeah no kidding Yeah, go to lunch in town with them or something like that, you know.

1:11:06Yeah, yeah, good people. And they never took advantage of it, ever. Just good people. Let's take a quick break. Okay. This time of year, everyone's putting together their holiday shopping lists. But your personal information is also being gathered and circulated online in ways most people never think about. While you're searching for gifts, try searching for yourself. What shows up might surprise you. Your name, home address, phone number, and even information about your family can appear online without you ever agreeing to it. That's where Aura comes in. Aura protects the one thing people don't think about until there's a problem.

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1:13:08All right, Dale, we're back from the break. Nice shooting, by the way. That was a damn good time. Try that. But we just wrapped up your first mission with SOG. And so I wanted to move into some of the other missions that really stick out in your mind. I mean, I know you did three different tours over there. I think you said 50 missions, 20 of which, if I remember correct, are in combat. Yeah. or in Southeast Asia. Right. And so I'd like to talk about the mission that you did for the Australians. Okay. Of course, South Vietnam was divided up into sectors. The Koreans had some, Australians had some, and Americans, of course, and there might have been someone else in there too.

1:14:09In that mix, the Australians somehow had been very much infiltrated in their headquarters or whatever it was. So anyway, we were tasked with a mission for the Australians, and it was an all-Green Beret team, all five of us. And when it came time to get the mission, I don't remember how we got there, if we went by chopper or by a truck or something. But it's definitely far away from anything. It was in the Thule somewhere. And we went across fields and stuff from when the French were there. And when we went across several of these fields and so forth, there was a huge tent like they had in World War II and so forth, a squad tent or bigger than that even.

1:14:59And that was a makeshift headquarters for the head of the operations for the Australians. so um the five of us went in there and um uh the australian uh commander came out he was a major and he's built he's looked exactly like hollywood uh he had the shorts and all that stuff and the knee high socks and all that and um and uh uh he came out to see us and he had the hat and he had that really trim mustache and all. And he was quite formal, as Asian, I mean, European people are. But anyway, as it turned out, they were so highly infiltrated that this major didn't think he could get any mission started from his own people, from his own headquarters and so forth, because someplace along the line, there were people who were double agents and so forth.

1:15:57So anyway, he gives us this message, this mission. He said that Cosfin, the headquarters for the communists in South Vietnam, they were quite certain had their headquarters centered inside of a rubber plantation from the French. And people were bought off. The French didn't want anyone to know about the presence of the NVA in the Viet Cong because they didn't want the rubber plantations bombed. And of course, the communists certainly didn't want it known by anyone. And so we were tasked with this mission. And the other thing was South Vietnam and some of the other people were being bought off.

1:16:52So there's this triple thing here. Someone is paying the money to look the other way. They have the headquarters in the rubber plantations. The French know it and so forth. So we were given a mission to find that headquarters and report only to that major. And so we were in that tent, and he was giving us all the parameters of the mission. And of course, it's intelligence gathering. It's not about getting a spy or anything like that. So we start on this mission, and we're making our way toward what we think is the rubber plantation. And there's a lot of enemy around, although a lot of it is ex-farmland and things like that.

1:17:35So hard to find places to hide and so forth. But we start making our way toward where I think is the headquarters. And I was the team leader, and I took point. Were you commingled with the Australians? Say again. Were you, was this a joint operation? No, not a joint operation, just for that major. And once we got the information, we'd give it to him, and he'd take over from there. Gotcha. But the closest we would get would be a helicopter, one of theirs. And he would give us only one. And some of the parameters were about what you could shoot and not shoot at, things like that. So anyway, we're going through the bushes and all that kind of a thing.

1:18:18And I've never seen so much bombs and booby traps and stuff all over the place. I couldn't believe it. And it was really moving slow. It was on my knees and stuff like that. And I got to a place I could just sense the enemy was there. I just knew it. and the ancillary sounds or hum or something there's something big close by so i'm on my belly i'm crawling through my belly through the really thick tangle that's there and uh i'm really going slow because i know somebody's in front of me and i i get to a certain spot in this tangle and I smell something and I freeze, I don't move or anything like that.

1:19:08And as it turns out, it was the breath of their sentry that was there on the edge of the line. And I am so close, I can smell his breath. And so anyway, it's like now it's taken me an hour, hour and a half to crawl this far without being heard. Now it's enough information to know that that which I thought was really the headquarters for the Kostman. So now I need to back out of there, and I could barely go forward quietly. And now here I got a guy whose breath distance away, and I got to go backwards. And boy, how do I do that? And I kind of gave a signal to the guys behind. I could get my hand back there, and I could see his shadow.

1:19:53Once I located him by smell, I didn't move until I could kind of see him. And then I could see his head move in the shadow slightly on the other side so anyway i prayed and i did that quick prayer and i says god there's no way i can back out of here quietly can you cover the sound and about the time i said amen a jet took off from someplace um 50 miles away and went directly over the top of us are you serious yeah just absolutely certain and so i backed up as quickly as we could um we got our uh uh tried to make our way back to an LZ. And lessons learned, too, because I know I'm going to give the Major his information.

1:20:37He's going to drop the big bombs, you know, all that, assuming his headquarters will let him. But as I'm going back, just a lesson learned as I'm going back and trying to lead my people to a place where we can pick up. I find an LZ, and it's actually a little bit too big. It's too enticing. You know, it's too big. but they said that they would not pick us up in any LZ unless we had recon all the way around it. These are big LZs. I said, this is crazy. By the time I worked my way all the way around, what's to say somebody didn't go where we started from? It was crazy. And it was an hourglass-shaped LZ, so it was wide on the two ends and narrow in the middle.

1:21:19And I thought the best I can do is to set up right in the middle of it. I can watch both hemispheres and call in for my extraction. And as I'm there, all of a sudden, I see movement across the hourglass from me. And it's NVA, big time movement, a company or battalion, big time, coming across. And I could read their mind almost. They didn't want to cross an opening either. And so they would go across the narrowest place, right over the top of me. And so now it's one of those things of praying that they'll go by and be ready to take out as many. And they had a front element, a patrol element in the front.

1:22:04And I think there was about seven or eight of them. And I thought I was pretty certain I could take that element out. But then the rest of them, we would put them under fire. But once they collected themselves, they'd overrun us, no quit, no prone. Damn. So anyway, long and short, as we called for the extraction, same kind of a thing. God help us to get through this thing. And same thing, an aircraft came by. And the point element took off running as fast as they could, went right past me. And I'm shorter than here to you. And went right past me without looking and took off. And then the rest of the element followed suit.

1:22:46So we're in the mud. and we got as low as we could go. And then we sunk into the mud. And then the chopper came in, and they wouldn't go if we were under fire, etc. Very strict rules of engagement, but they got us out. And I gave the debrief and gave it to the major, and I had no idea what happened. You know, you hope that they took out the place, you know. So... You never got confirmation? Never got confirmation that they did anything. No shit. I suppose entered different countries or something. What did he say when he got them the intel? Very Prussian, if that's a good word. Strict and all that stuff, formal, you know, British, that kind of a thing.

1:23:38They took our information and so forth, and thank you, Yankee. And that was it. We're gone. No shit. Yeah. Did you do any joint operations with any foreign guys? No. No. Not that I remember anywhere. Yeah. Was that a thing back then, or everybody was pretty segmented into there? Yeah. They had their own areas of operation and all that. Gotcha. Yeah. Gotcha. Let's move into Lima 50 mission in Cambodia. The Lima 50 mission in Cambodia. Which we call the biggest intelligent find of any small unit of the Vietnam War. That takes a backstory to bring you to it. The communists had infiltrated headquarters in Saigon significantly to the point where a lot of people were being informed of what we're going to do and so forth.

1:24:38Special Forces had a project called GAMA, and one of the greek letters alpha beta gamma bc in our one um uh it was called project gamma and actually a couple names you would probably know that the finnish uh number one commando uh um uh was was on that and and actually was killed coming out on one of the missions uh and anyway Anyway, we were at the place with this intelligence flying that so many people and teams were being compromised that they actually scrubbed the team, Project Gama, which was really bad. At that time, Gama supplied 75 % of all intelligence for the Vietnam War, those special forces guys that were up to the fence and some of them over the fence into the other countries.

1:25:33but 75 % of all intelligence came from them. So it was a real gut-wrenching thing to cancel the program. So anyway, Project Gamma gets canceled, and then I wind up on a mission. It's Lima 50. If a number ends in two digits, it's Cambodia. If it's a single digit, like India 6, it's Laos. So this was in Cambodia, and that tri-border area where things were really hectic. So this was Lima 50, and we were on this mission, and it was just dense with enemy all over the place. I couldn't believe how many there were. My roommate was from Minnesota as well, because it was his team to start with. As he came back from leave, he took over the team, and then I was there and Bob Garcia, was there.

1:26:34And then we had our indigenous people. And we were sent on this mission to gather intelligence and so forth. So we're on the mission two or three days, really, really hectic stuff, real thick stuff. And bumped into some communists. And one of them was when I lost my fingers on my hand a whole bunch of them and we got into a firefight there was a lot of them and uh i was throwing grenades and we had the m79 grenade launchers really going like crazy and um shooting as fast as i could well anyway um three of them jumped up in front of me and um uh and i and the m16 had the 20 round magazine then the 30 round wasn't invented yet so i got three NVA soldiers, each of whom have 30 rounds in their magazine.

1:27:31And I managed to get two of the three, but the third one still had 10 rounds in his magazine. He's expended 20 of his rounds. So he fires at me. And I was reaching for another magazine. So as I'm reaching for the magazine, his bullets went about there. It took off the middle finger, it was just hanging by skin, and then blew the different bullets, of course. And then one blew the knuckle out of the forefinger. And then a series of bullets took the ends of all the fingers off, and all the fingernails wound up in the back of my hand. So it took a long time to get the magazine, and I'm changing the magazine, trying to put it in the magazine well of the M16.

1:28:15And the finger keeps flopping into the well, and I can't get it changed fast enough. And finally, you know, I swing it into the palm of my hand and slam the magazine in there. And another guy arrives at the scene, and I'm there. We took out the third guy. And there were lots and lots of enemies all over the place, you know. And I'm thinking here, the next day we took out the agent. I'm trying to remember this. get it categorized right in my mind. But anyway, long and short, we RON in the night, and I set up a small perimeter. And in the night, we stayed on the ground, and in the night, I could hear the shouting.

1:29:07I could hear the trucks coming. I could hear the tailgates coming down. So I knew they were lining up in the Ho Chi Minh Trail below us. And I heard dogs, so I knew they had tracker dogs coming at us. And so we're sitting there waiting to be overrun, and I've got four Claymore mines in front of me. And I didn't think I could push the plunger well, so I found something solid on the ground, and I had four Claymore mine plungers right in front of me. And as they were coming up the hill, I had the heels of my hand on the four plungers ready to take them out, and the dogs are coming up. And again, on that mission, I prayed, God, plug up the noses on those dogs.

1:29:53I could hear them coming, and Ba was my tail gunner, and one of my other guys was on the other side of me. And they come up, and you could tell in the dark, Visi come, Visi come. They're really, really nervous. And I know Ba put his Buddha in his mouth. He thought if he was killed, died with Buddha in his mouth. He'd go to heaven. So I could tell the way he was whispering that he had Buddha in his mouth. And so anyway, they came by and they went right up the hill. I could hear the grass and the twigs breaking right in front of me. And then it was kind of quiet. I'm ready to pull these plungers.

1:30:27Next thing I know, I can hear them passing on the backside of me and never heard us, never saw us. And the dogs never smelled us. Wow. You know, it's just incredible, you know. so anyway so i um next day um we get up we start uh ro ending uh relieving the area and all that and we we find a pretty extensive trail system and uh coming down that trail system are several nva and we decide to take them out um two of them were chinese and they were couriers and they were on their way to South Vietnam. And they were the highest ranking people ever killed behind enemy lines in the war. And we got them.

1:31:12They were both colonels. How did you kill them? Huh? How did you kill them? Firearms, and automatic weapons. They shot them all. And actually, I was shooting along with Ken Worthley. And we put them all down, and then I could hear more. And I was actually, I was throwing grenades with my hand, and it was really messed up because I had ace bandages wrapped around it, but it dried like a cast. And so I only had the tip of my little finger and my thumb sticking out. But I was trying my best at throwing grenades with that, and it seemed to manage, and then I killed them. And then it was pretty evident right off the bat that there were high-ranking Chinese NBA-type people, and they had a huge satchel.

1:31:56And so we ran over there, and we started undressing them totally, taking every bit of intelligence we could. Langley could look at the pants and say, well, the cotton was grown over here, and on down the line. They could do a thorough thing. We took samples of hair, everything. They could take his health, everything. And then we looked in the satchel. In the satchel, and I missed some things, too, that you really need to know. in the satchel was, I think they said 200 pages of top secret orders and so forth. Wow. The siege at Ben Hat had just finished, and he had the names of 52 NVA soldiers who shot themselves so they wouldn't have to fight at Ben Hat, you know, wounded themselves.

1:32:46And he was administering discipline. and then there was a location of two underground factories in the Coochie Tunnel System and the coordinates of how this guy could find them to give them their awards and then there was one underground field hospital in the Coochie Tunnel System and how to find them so we had all of that and there was a couple American IDs and I don't know exactly what all happened But to back you up just a slight bit, we found the double agent, basically, we thought, who was turning in all the people and caused Project Gamma to fold. And the problem then was how to get him, because when the project folded, he kind of just disappeared.

1:33:37So what's CIA, you know, this SOG is basically under the CIA. They came up with a bogus brand new program, and they were looking for people to work in it. And this guy, Chuen was his last name, volunteered. Oh, I'll work for you. America's ready to do the same thing he did before. So once they got him, and he was not in a rap, they grabbed him, they arrested him, and they gave him sodium pentothal, they interrogated him. they did torture sodium pentothal yeah what is sodium pentothal truth serum does that work uh-huh does that work apparently it does yeah sodium pentothal yeah truth serum um yeah and they um anyway uh he was i'm not going to tell you americans anything you know he knew he was compromised all help is done you know so the thing then is america The CIA had two projects, the same project, just the names changed, Peru and Phoenix.

1:34:38And once it was called Phoenix, the Phoenix program. And then when press started to find out about it, they changed it to a Provisional Reconnaissance Unit. It sounds innocuous, you know. So anyway, their job, their specific job was to eliminate the fifth column in South Vietnam. The people who don't wear a uniform but are fighting, their job was to put them out, to kill them. So our people bring Chewett over there and say, we've got him. We're going to deliver him to you, and you can do your thing. And they said, he's your baby. You take care of him. And so they just dumped him back in her lap.

1:35:19So Colonel Rowe was the new commander of Special Forces. He'd only been in country a month. And then several of his chief of staff, they said, it's up to us. So they took Chu, gave him sodium pentothal so he was asleep, put him inside of a gunny sack. And then they took him over to Nettring Harbor and started going out to sea. And when they got significantly out to sea and the sharks were thick, they lifted him up so that his head was shown. And with a high standard, with a silencer, they put two rounds in his head, stuck him back into the sack and dumped him overboard into the ocean, ended the problem.

1:36:00But somehow the press got word, and I don't know how, and the United States government went and arrested Colonel Rowe, the commander of all special forces in Vietnam. They put him in stockade prison in Long Vinh outside of Saigon, along with seven of his people, and they were there in Longbin jail for a long time. No shit. Anyway, they were, and even to back up further, Abrams hated Special Forces, and he did not like them at all. For one thing, the people in Special Forces would have been his officer corps because they were the top echelon intelligence and character and all that stuff. If you don't wear no Green Berets, he'd have an officer corps.

1:36:48But anyway, he put them in stockade and kept them there. Well, the mission that we were on when we killed the Chinese couriers, and we brought that back, and actually the mission isn't done yet, because the communists, when we took out those Chinese, they knew they had something really big. We had something big, because there's their two dead bodies, and one of them is stripped skin, and the whole thing they knew, and the satchel charge is gone. So it's like every communist in that part of the country was just charging, trying to get us. And we were trying our best to get out. And then the next afternoon, we had more firefights.

1:37:34And then this one, I got shot in the back of the head, and the bullet went across my head. You got shot in the back of the head? Yeah, but I didn't pass out. I remember just as if it was yesterday, the sound I made was, Nga. I just, Nga. I don't know why you remember some things. But anyway, I reached back with my good hand, and with my fingernails I raked it across, and the shrapnel came out. So there I was again. So then we get to an LZ, and the communists have got us surrounded. There's several hundred of them. They figure 600 to 1 ,000 of them, and we're holding them off. big time, you know, as long as we can.

1:38:15And so we're fighting, we're trying to get airstrikes and all that to get us out. And it's getting pretty wild. I went off on one edge to hold up a flank, they were coming up one flank, the rest of the guys were on the other end, and I was shooting as fast as I could, you know, and then aiming and all that kind of a thing. and one of the guys on the other end his m16 that wasn't working right car 15 and so they thought well hansen is so slow um uh we need to get on this side and when i should have been we we got that i got the carbine and and so forth so i had the carbine and my own rifle and so forth so they come by we need to get your rifle for a while we're it's we're being overrun so like a fool i give them my rifle and i'm holding them off with this M1 carbine, which is interesting, and I mentioned it in the book.

1:39:14Three smells, where it's just like smelling the guy's breath in the thicket. I could smell his sweat. It's like the extreme, I don't know how you explain it, that duress of the sweat. I could smell the sweat, and I could smell the fear. I could smell his fear. I just right there when I had his gun to my face. And then I could smell his thoughts. It was all on the smell. If you've ever heard anyone talk like that. But the minute I started shooting with his weapon, I knew exactly what he was thinking and feeling. It's incredible, but it's true. And I'm not a psychic or anything like that. What was he thinking?

1:39:58Yeah, so I'm holding him off with an M1 carbine, and they're charging from this side, and they're charging from my front left. And all of a sudden, the bullets come from my front left as I'm aiming, because I only got so much ammo. And as I'm aiming, the bullet goes between two fingers on this hand and goes right through the comb of the rifle and essentially breaks the rifle in two, although it's just holding together by a couple pieces. And so it's not my day, you know. And so anyway, in the middle of this firefight, one of my people, Ba, my Vietnamese guy, Ba, he comes running halfway to me and he stands up straight in the firefight.

1:40:42It's just the anguish of his voice. And he says, hands on, hands on, worthily him die, worthily him die, which was the acting was zero. And you think about thoughts and you've done it yourself in combat and you think, what made me think of that? the first thing that went through my mind is that ba wanted me to bring him back to life and i yelled at him i said what do you want me to do about it you know like i can't make him come back alive then i realized okay i understand and and i ran over there a chopper was coming in and i i said take the rope wrap it around ken wardley you know a swiss seat and wrap it around him and take the satchel and put it down his shirt and you and he get out of here because i wanted that out of here so um uh he did he did and then one of the other uh vietnamese from the other end ran to the helicopter too and got on and so then i went back to my place and uh um oh and i get my rifle back um i think it was from him so i got my rifle back now so i'm fighting with him with a one-piece rifle and a wounded rifle, you know, and I'm fighting.

1:41:54And things are getting pretty wild. But then all of a sudden, Bob Garcia runs over, and he says, Where's Ken? Where's Ken? And I said, He's dead. I just sent him out. And then Bob and I are from here to your wall apart. And he gets on the radio, and he looks at me for confirmation. He says, I want, I think it's the big bombs, whatever it is, 500, whatever it is. I want it right on me, and I want it right now. And he says, it's too close. And he says, you'll be killed. And he says, I want it right now. That's an orn. He looks at me, that's okay with you. Yes, because we're about to be dead anyway.

1:42:36And so he runs to his end, and then the bombs start coming like crazy all over the place. And the enemy is still around. You can't kill them all. And so then another chopper comes, and I hear yelling from me. I run over there, and it wasn't that far away, maybe 50 feet, 75 feet. And Bob Garcia and the other Vietnamese are already hooked up, and they say, Hanson, come on, come on, hook up. And I thought in that interval of time I was the only one left on the ground. I thought they were dead because I was hearing nothing at all. and this is before the second chapter come. And so I got on the RT10 radio, the survival radio, which you probably have yourself, or whatever the radio is now, but it used to be a two-piece, then it was a one-piece.

1:43:27And I got on the radio, and I think I'm the only one left alive. And so I don't know who to call. I don't know any call signs and all that stuff. you know and um all i know is that when i push that button every aircraft in the southeast is going to hear it and so i push that button and i say is anybody out there and it was so cool the cubby rider um it was um uh a dear friend of mine uh um one when i prayed for and he lived and and uh and he says i got you dale i got you down the calmest voice in the world that's what i wanted to hear more than anything else. They've got me. We're going to be okay.

1:44:12We're going to get out of this thing, even if I'm the only one left. Then I hear them calling, and there's two of them left. They're already hooked up, ready to go. And then I get in, go over there. And then with my wounded hand, I can't tie the knot. You know how that knot is, bring it through yourself. It's like I don't have a hand to do it with. And so I thought the only thing I can do is I can make the biggest overhand knot and pull it through the loop, snap it in, and hope I did it. It worked. And the chopper lifted off, and it hooked. It's tightened on itself, and that was good. But then it never ends, this mission.

1:44:55Then the chopper is taking heavy hits, and so instead of going straight up until we cleared the forest, he went horizontal and drug us through the foliage. And I hooked up in the branches of the trees that I was about to be pulled off. And my first assumption, and I'm sure it's what would have happened, is that the crew chief would have seen the dilemma and he would have cut the rope. No use losing the chopper and us, you know. So about the time he was probably thinking that in his head, I got the last branches done and we sprung 100 feet into the air it was like it was a bow and arrow we just shot into the air and then uh we headed toward a base um duck peck or ben had one of those and um i remember a couple things one is that i was spinning and spinning and spinning and spinning because the other guys were hooked together on two ropes oh another thing too is that when that chopper came in, there were four ropes.

1:46:04And as I'm looking up, looking for one for me to hook on, the fire was so intense that one of the ropes got shot in two. And I watched it fall to the ground like a snake. And so I got the one, made the biggest overhand lot, stuck in. Then I'm stuck in the trees, and the tree is just bending. And it's just a second or two before he cuts it. But then when I get the last branch done, and I got the rifle over the shoulder, and cutting with my K-bar, you know. And boy, when they gave, we just shot into the air like a bow and arrow. And on the way back, they were low on fuel, so they couldn't make any detours.

1:46:45So they drew us right through a hailstorm. And I remember we were about beat to death by that hail. It was awful. There's one thing after another. And then when we landed, I think it was Ben Hat. But Norm Doney, my old team leader and father figure, and Mike Buckland, who went through all the training with me, 37 of us. And he's about the only one left alive besides me. And they're there waiting for me and hugging and all that kind of a thing. So glad to see us. And I remember, too, because the guys were so glad to see me and hug, I remember I got some Vietnamese there, too. And I'm half drunk, being twisted in the air.

1:47:30you know spinning and spinning as far as it'll spin and then we go the other way and oh so sick and everything else but i went over and i hugged my vietnamese they're important too you know and i went and i hugged them and i said you okay and made sure they were good you know and and uh that was the mission and we were uh i was at a play coup hospital field hospital and uh norm doney and Mike Buckland came to see me. They drove six miles from Khantum to Pleiku to see me and all that stuff. And we went outside and found a table outside under the sun and he gave me the heads up, this is what you guys found.

1:48:15And they're not the highest intelligence find of any small unit in Vietnam. Tailwind was gigantic, but there was about 140 people getting it and it was a whole complex. But what we got was significant. And after that, they had no choice but to release Colonel Rowe and his people out of Long Bend Jail. But they still insisted on trying them and all that kind of thing, just a mockery thing, a control thing, because they wanted to control special forces and it bothered abram because um um he didn't have control over special forces we were under complete different auspices damn yeah holy shit

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1:51:48When you say you could smell his thoughts before you killed him, what was he thinking? Say it once more. When you said you could smell his thoughts before you killed him with his own weapon. Oh, the guy with his weapon. I could do that. I don't know what we transmit. his perspiration and all that kind of thing. I definitely smelled his perspiration for sure. And in that, I could smell adrenaline, the fear adrenaline. I could smell it just as clear as it can be. And the thinking auspices. Of course, you can't write down the sentence that he said, but you can sure factor out the concept of what he's going through his mind.

1:52:36It was amazing. Yeah. Is that the first operation you lost anybody?

1:52:46I think so. I think so. We had several when we lost people. How did you get through that? It was difficult with Ken Worthley. He grew up in a place just 150 miles from me and all this stuff. and I met his, when I was in the hospital, I went and I met his parents and all that. It was so difficult and really difficult. And there were times, I know I was coming back from either the hospital or one of the missions, and I remember Mike Buckland met me, and he says, so-and-so died, and I was on the middle of the compound, and I started to weep. And I just started to cry. you know um and that happened more than once yeah damn yeah what what what advice do you have for today's generation who's lost people and more who are trying to get the families families friends yes people that have lost teammates yeah um if they're christian they believe in an afterlife life, okay, you're going to see him again.

1:54:06We're in sorrow now. But if they don't have those kinds of feelings, all you can share with them is, well, he didn't suffer long, or it was for a good cause, and though you love your son, a grandson, what he did sacrificially is incredible. Actually, The second SOG book is a SOG, Missions to the Well.

1:54:34And in the Old Testament, King David was a shepherd, and he was raised in the town of Bethlehem. And he wound up to the note of the king when he went to visit his brothers, and Goliath was out there, and David killed him with a sling. you know but ultimately he winds up being the king of israel and the people praise him they said saul has killed his thousands but david his tens of thousands but david uh came from bethlehem and the philistine army had invaded the land and got between bethlehem and david's army and he's sitting down at a day of fighting and he says to himself not realizing anyone heard it he says to himself oh what i would give for a drink of water from my hometown in bethlehem and three of his people heard it and out of their love and loyalty to david they fought their way through the entire philistine army went to the well in bethlehem and got a flask of water and fought their way all the way back to David and presented it to him.

1:55:49And that's how I came up with the title of the book, Missions to the Well. When we do things so selflessly, at great cost and sacrifice, and perhaps permanently maimed in some way or give our lives, that's what David did. His missions to the well were sacrificially, you at the cost to yourself, do something for someone else. And that's probably the kind of thing I would share to a family. I'm not sure how many of them would take it. Perhaps not at the beginning, but down the line they might. Thank you for sharing that. Yeah. Do you remember the first time you killed another human being? An enemy?

1:56:42I don't. You don't. I don't. I don't. And I think because of my ethic on taking a life, it's okay to kill for self-defense, capital punishment, and more. And so I don't have that guilt matrix to really make me cry, sorrow, whatever it is. Perhaps sometimes when you take out the first one or two that you got, you figure you got them because the fighting is diminished, but they're on the other side of the branches and stuff, and you know you got them, but you didn't see the dying. Sometimes you go back and think, you know, he came from a family too, and he probably didn't want to go to South Vietnam and fight for Ho Chi Minh.

1:57:36It's really hard to give comfort in that time. Did it ever bother you? No, it doesn't.

1:57:46Only philosophically when you realize that that person probably didn't want to be there or may not have wanted to be there. But as far as my part in it, it didn't bother me. It needed to be done. It had to be done. And so, yeah, there were times, I don't know how many I took out, but there were lots. And I just don't think about it. Yeah, we got plenty of things to worry about on an upcoming mission. Then, you know, same thing with you. Did you ever... Did you stay in Vietnam the whole time or did you come back home at all? Yeah, I came back for a couple months of that. Five months leave. So I was in three hospitals and I wound up in Fitzsimmons Hospital in Denver and one in Japan and one in Saigon, I think it was, but three different hospitals and then convalescent leave at home.

1:58:47And what I did when it was time to go back, I could pick one place to go to en route. And so I put my finger on International Falls, Minnesota, and I put the other finger on the other side of the globe, and it said Cape Town, South Africa. And I said, I want to go there. And then every time the plane stopped, whether it was Greece, Rome, Africa, or whatever it was. I traveled in there. Did you have anybody to come home to? Did you have anybody to come home to? A brother to come home to? Did you have anyone? To come home to. Were you married yet? No, I wasn't married. My family was there. My brother was there.

1:59:30He had a year and a half in the 173rd Airborne. Yeah, that's interesting. On the break, you had told me that your brother was also a Vietnapa. Yeah, it's interesting. I called my mom from Japan and said I had been shot in Vietnam. And my brother was in the room. And she says, Mom, I know where. And she said it was in the head and the hand. And she says, how did you know that? He said, I felt it.

2:00:04Yeah. He said, I felt it. We were pretty close, but he said, I felt it. Wow. Is he still alive? Oh, yeah. Yeah, he's a couple years younger. Good man. Are you guys close? Yeah. Yeah, really close. Very good man. Do you guys talk about the war often? Do you relate with each other? Some, but quite limited. I don't think some of his missions were quite as hairy as mine were, although he had some, but sometimes, usually it's in connection with me writing something or trying to find something out, you know, writing the other two books, you know, the immense amount of time it takes to find the witnesses and the documents and all that.

2:00:51And I remember I was trying to find a witness to see Jabin Head actually, and I called the day he went into hospice. And that's the kind of thing that was more difficult every year, I'm sure. Man, man. So we talked about the Car 15, 30-round magazine.

2:01:23And of course, what I mentioned before was changing the magazines is that they had, after the Tet Offensive, the Viet Cong was essentially wiped out, 35 ,000 Viet Cong. So it had to be, and their primary weapon was the SKS or the captured American, the carbine. So the NBA came with theirs, the RPD and the AK-47 and all the rest, you know. But the AK-47 had a 30-round magazine, so that was one help. We had, well, they had a 16, but we couldn't carry it overseas for a while because we had to go sterile. No tattoos, no laundry marks, no nothing, completely sterile. because if we were captured, granted, the United States will disavow any knowledge of us, you know, the old adage.

2:02:21So in that one firefight I was at, you know, the three of them stood up. There was a whole bunch, but there were three right in front of me, and we were trading bullets, and the one guy emptied his rifle on me. The other one was just about done, but I got the other two, and I don't know if they were finished with their magazines or not, but I got two of them. And then the third one still had 10 magazines. I'm reaching for the magazine. And that is the, we'd already started trying to find a producer to make them because we saw the need when the AK-47s came in. And so we all put in$50 toward it.

2:03:01John Plaster headed it up, and he started finding manufacturers all over the world who can do this for us quickly. And by the time I got back from the hospital and all that, each of us had at least one 30-round magazine. And it wasn't very long after that the United States followed suit and we started having 30-round magazines. But it was crucial for us. Just like the RPD with the drum held 50 rounds. And if you're in the initial firefight and you got 50 rounds to lay down that first assault, uh that's significant that's significant damn well i still can't believe you're the reason we have 30 round magazines that's just yeah and did not be able to carry it in the first place yeah the magazine's a weapon yeah yeah finally we uh we really complained we went to our our our CO, who everybody loved, Colonel Apt, ABT, great man.

2:04:04He should have gotten his star, except he had a heart attack after the war. But we said, look, sir, this is our situation. We're out of ammunition, and they're still shooting. And he says, I'll look into that. And I don't know if he orchestrated the wordage of it all. But basically, they said that the communists had captured enough M16s that the M16 is no longer sterile. And so it doesn't readily identify you as an American. So that's how we got the okay to use it.

2:04:41I mean, it is kind of interesting, right? I mean, if they had 30-round magazines, why would they be picking up weapons that only have 20-round magazines?

2:04:53But did you have any downtime in Vietnam? We had R &R. What would you guys do on R &R? I went to Bangkok every time. I loved Bangkok. Nice people, friendly, courteous people. I totally enjoyed it. You go to the beach and all that kind of a thing. And it was nice. I totally enjoyed it. You got totally away from the war and everything else. and anywhere with the other guys, CCN, CCC, CCS, the other three units, they would come in, and how are things in the north? What do you do differently? Stuff like that. Was it welcoming in Thailand? Yes. Not the Khmer Rouge, but the Cambods and the Thais were the smiling people.

2:05:49very beautiful friendly people what people would would would the enemy send in spies or i mean was i would imagine there was a that was that was that was a hot spot for rnr from yeah to catch a drunk gi and be his friend and find out what he has to say i'm sure that would happen didn't it didn't it's not one of the things that happened to us no no reports of it no warnings nothing like that i think our people were a little bit smarter than that you know if you ever gone back over there since uh been there i went i haven't not anywhere near it no would you would i would you i think i would i think i would um but i don't think i I go to Vietnam afterward, they say, well, they're basically, communism needs capitalism to survive.

2:06:49And so they're into business and all that kind of a thing and welcoming the foreigners and all that. So I don't think they're anti-American in their sentiment, at least when they talk to us. A lot of our guys go over there, especially ones that are looking for MIAs and stuff like that. Let's talk about the post-hospital work in S2 Intelligence at Fort Drum. At Fort Drum. When it got back the second time, we had been, in a way, and I'm gonna insult people, but we had, in a way, lost so many of our Special Forces people. We were somewhat decimated. And our ranks were filled with Rangers and so forth like that.

2:07:41but they didn't have quite our training. And when we would go on a mission, if it was intelligence, we broke contact, continued mission. And I remember one of our guys, Mike Buckley, he said, don't go back to recon yet because there's a new batch of people out there and they don't seem to have the same ethic that we do. And so... The same ethic? Yeah, well, ethic in the sense of your job, your job. You have to go out and collect the information. A lot of our guys would go out. They see the enemy. They get in a firefight. Usually they initiated it. And then they would ask for an exfiltration. So the missions were being cut off simply because they didn't break contact and continue the mission.

2:08:28And so they were saying that our old guys are kind of disappearing. You need to sit back and watch for a while. So I did. And what was happening was Ford Drum. It was a secret program that only about six of us, special forces and six or eight pilots ever knew. They flew bird dogs and all that. And our job was going behind the lines, Laos, Cambodia, Thailand, not Thailand, North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, and look for intelligence. And if it was fruitful, you wouldn't have to send a recon team in there and expose them to being killed. Or if you did send one in there, it was to confirm or deny or find a vulnerability.

2:09:19So we were, Ford Rum, one of us would fly about 4 ,000 or 5 ,000 feet and the other one about 10 ,000, 20 feet. And so the top one up there would say there's a villa and a highway out there that looks like trucks. And so we would come down on the low level, sometimes below the trees, and actually tilt wings to get between trees. And I would be out the window taking the pictures, snapping pictures, and finding enemy intelligence. It would be new segments of road, truck parks, things like that, really important things. And that's what we did. And there were, I think there were four or five of us, special forces.

2:10:06And I was doing intelligence because I didn't want to go on the ground right away until we factored this out. So I was on the ground and debriefing teams so they could go out. And having been on the ground, I certainly knew what they needed to know and so forth. So that was good, you know, as far as intelligence. But as a, and we shared the same office. So that morning, one of the pilots got, the backseat observer was killed. He was taking pictures out of the window, and boy, that looks lucrative. He tells the pilot to go back, and I want to take another picture. The pilot says, no, no, you don't go back twice.

2:10:51You know, that's lethal, you know. But he says, no, I insist. this is really good and he goes back a second time and he gets shot in the head and dies so then uh like the major who was in charge of intelligence was a little bit concerned he says oh no i wonder what we'll do now to replace him so i told him i says i'll do it so i started doing the bird dog stuff uh uh uh mike buckland and some of the other ones would teach me what to do and we had the the Laika cameras and all of that. So it was quite hairy. We were definitely way behind enemy lines for sure. And of course, you had Inor Dam, Sienok, the emperor of Cambodia, and then I forget who was in North, basically leased or gave North Vietnam and China the western 30 % of his country to do their thing, which is where SOG missions were.

2:11:53We knew where they were. So that's what we were monitoring. And so it was densely populated with enemy, the Ho Chi Minh Trail, the figures and all this stuff. And we could put it on a map really, really clearly. And we could find the truck parks and so forth and underground underwater bridges in the rivers. They make a bridge underwater. and you could see on the shore you could see where our truck was and then on the other side there's a exit you know in between there's a there's a bridge you know you know but we did that for quite a while um it was extremely lucrative intelligence wise you know is a very good one you know I did that I suppose only a couple months my other my roommate that was with and in a training group um he stayed with it and i said i got to get back on the ground i feel like i'm not doing anything which is probably silly at that point you know so uh rather than go back to recon right away i went to a company and uh and that's a story in itself but um uh we had uh um Yeah.

2:13:10I went to a company. There were only two Americans instead of 15. And there was a captain and a first sergeant, and now there was me. So the three of us each took a platoon, and we were it. And then just before my first mission out with them, we got one more American, and we put him in charge of mortars. So we had mortars with us now. But it was kind of an interesting deal. The captain was German and from Germany, was a German special forces, made his way to the United States and joined special forces in the United States. I was, we'll test your World War II memory here. I used to go get the mail, go to the post office, and you know, the other guys got something, I'd drop it off.

2:14:05Well anyway, I was picking up a letter for the captain his name was jaime roche and uh anyway as i'm picking them up you know because you look at the back to see who it's for and i said that looks like my grandma's handwriting you know it's she was germany from the old country turn of the last century and um uh so i look at the writing and it's uh otto scorzini i don't know if you know him he is the most decorated commando of World War II. He's the number one guy of Germany. He's the one who parachuted at Normandy, turned all the roadsides backward. He's the one when Tito was in an impregnable fortress prison on the top of a mountain.

2:14:51He's the one that got him sprung, went up there, flew up there with a small plane, busted him from jail, and got out with him. I can't remember all the stuff. it's in the book for sure, but a dozen things that he did. Unbelievable. And after the war, he was the personal bodyguard for Eva Peron of South America there. And one time he was in Egypt and two Israelis came up to him. And of course, he's on the guard because he figures, you know German Nazi all that stuff you know and uh he says are you here to kill me he said oh no no we're not here to kill you we want to hire you and he says uh what do you want me to hire hire you me to do he says they have six Egyptian scientists that are about to make a nuclear bomb to drop on Israel we want you to get rid of those scientists and apparently it was very close to being finished he says okay what do i get out of this he says what do you want and um remember the nazi hunter the jewish guy who caught so many from well anyway he says i want you to get my name off of his hit list and i'll take out these scientists they said okay and well within a week six dead scientists no and otto scorzini's uh name was off the list so and there were so many more i I wish I could remember him.

2:16:27But we're in this company, usually 15 or 16 Americans in a company, and he's the captain and he's Prussian in his attitude. You don't talk to enlisted men and all that kind. He's very Prussian, like old-time Germany. And we would have a mission or something like that and and he would um call the people to attention and they would turn to the first sergeant and said first sergeant take over and they would salute the first sergeant would take over the captain would go to the officers club then the first sergeant would turn to me and say sergeant hansen take over the company and then he would salute i would salute he would go over to the club and sit in the same bar stool he always sat in when we weren't going to the field and so basically for six months at least, I had a company all by myself, and it was great.

2:17:23They were Montagnier tribesmen. Loved them, you know, and it was a reciprocal thing to, you could just see the affection that they had as well. And we had one bad mission as a company, and we had 17 firefights, and I forget three days or something like that that's a lot of fighting you know 17 firefights and we come back and um uh captain goes to the officer's club and first sergeant goes to the bar and then I got the company well anyway I go um uh someplace around the campus and they find me uh an operations center and they find me and they say Dale says we got a mission for you and we just got out he says that mission you were just on saigon says was so lucrative they want you go back in there and so oh man we had 17 fireflies so on the way to the officer's club to tell the captain so he can take charge i um i go by the dispensary and i i asked whoever that the guy is in charge i said we're going back in a difficult mission i said do you have a medic that i can take with me and he said yeah so and so so i find the the captain and uh he stands at attention you know it's like you know you you don't you're never at ease among the unlisted swine and anyway i said sir we got a mission we're going in the same place and i said and i passed the dispensary and i says we can take a medic with us.

2:19:04And he looks at me and he sends Ramrod straight and he says, Sergeant Hansen, you're messing with my Vormachine. It's just crazy. Damn. But it was interesting stuff. It was just a crazy mission, a difficult mission, lots of fun. And there was a place in that mission too where Vietnamization was going strong. Years and years before your military, but Americans wanted Americans out, but we didn't want to abandon the South Vietnamese. So they had Vietnamization where gradually we would teach them and they would take over our jobs and stuff and and so forth, and then leave them at least capable of doing the missions and so forth.

2:19:56Well, a lot of the Vietnamization was really good. Now, there were three of us, plus the guy on the mortars, four of us, with this company. And we find this huge complex. It looked like a western fort, except they had trenches all the way around it, logs and all that stuff and it it it was formidable with the fighting pits and everything so uh when we we found that area my people were the ones that cleaned that out and and so forth and uh um anyway we uh we the next morning it was a difficult time um we actually uh went down the hill and charged them as they were about to have their their breakfast and all that stuff and we basically wiped them out and took over their position the captain and the first sergeant decide that they're going to go all the way around back up the road system to the back side and then do a push and push the people to me back at the old site and that's fine so i get my people so we're all ready for the attack and i'm confident that we can hear them when they come through and we'll take them out.

2:21:12Well, anyway, now I'm hearing them come. I can hear the brush crackle and all that stuff. And there's some shooting up above, and they're coming toward me. And I know any minute now we're going to have a big firefight. I look left and right, and I get my people, and I give them the heads up, this is going to happen. And all of a sudden, I hear shouting. and I looked back beside me and there's two Vietnamese lieutenants who I never saw before. And I, how in the world did they get there? Well, it turns out we had an ammo resupply and Vietnamization and Saigon says we have to have these two guys.

2:21:52So they're here and they're in my element. And I didn't even know they were there. Then all of a sudden they start yelling and shouting in the radio as loud as they can. And I know exactly what they're doing. and they don't want to get in a firefight. And they want to warn off those people so they don't have to be in a firefight. I yell at them as much as you can yell, you know what I mean? Get their attention. I just, shh, shh, shh. And they keep yelling and ignoring me totally. And I get closer, and I yell at them, shh, shh, you know. And they ignore me again. And so I went over there, and I grabbed their radios, and I threw them over the embankment.

2:22:29And then I went back to my position, because they are so close. within two minutes we're going to have a firefight. And I look back at this guy, and I look behind because I'm not sure that they're not going to try to shoot me. Now I've got to watch my back as well. And I look behind me, and I have three of my Montagnier tribesmen, each facing those Vietnamese with their rifles out. Oh, shit. You do not touch hands on. It's great. But a lot of that stuff toward the end of the war. That's loyalty right there. Yeah. No kidding. Yeah. And we had a lot more firefights in that mission too. 17 is a lot.

2:23:0917 firefights. Yeah. We had on that same mission the first night. How did that firefight go down? We won everyone, hands down. I took minor wounds. That's it. Nobody killed or anything like that. So we did well and so forth.

2:23:30The night before, we slept right on the road, which I think that was Cambodia. I don't think it was on the Vietnam side. I think we're in Cambodia, and I think part of the Ho Chi Minh Trail has gone by, and it's really well-traveled, that kind of a thing. and we're there and the first sergeant says we stop here and we are on top of the Ho Chi Minh Trail right on top of the highway system and so I'm here I'm thinking if I don't get shot I'm gonna get run over by a truck one of the two you know and so we did we spent the night there and and then the next morning I assaulted with my platoon down at at that site where the big bunker complex was, you know.

2:24:20Interesting stuff. Yeah. Wow. Damn. How long were you in that unit or? The companies? Yeah. It wasn't that long. I don't think it was six months. Well, maybe it was because it was a full year. What did you like better, SOG or that?

2:24:41Well, most gratifying but also the scariest was Recon. I mean, over there with a half a dozen thousand people in the middle of bad guy country with thousands in between. That was downright terrifying at times. Yeah. I'll bet it was. Yeah. And you look at the guys and they never showed it really. I don't think any of us really showed it well. But it was nervousness, not fear. Some kind of an apprehension and appreciation of what you're about to go through. And you know this is not going to be easy and you're well trained your assets are there they're fine they'll come and get you and no matter what you know we had good support all the way through the people in operations and some of these other places they're they're good people the colonel apt, just a sweet, good man.

2:25:48You could be a commander without being a gruff. You don't have to be unlikable. Just let your people know that what you say is it. And when they understand it, why yell and shout at them and treat them poorly? He was not that way. I remember we made the first a ladder in Vietnam, X-FIL, I forget what you call the ladder. It was the rungs that went across and the three ropes and all of them. And Doni and I made the first ones. And he said that when they were in Delta, which is Delta Project, not Delta Force, he said they used them over there. So Doni and I on some Sunday afternoon, we made Doni ladders.

2:26:35We always called them Doni ladders. And we made those things. They were good. They were really good. to climb a rope ladder. You know, your feet go straight out, you know. It's hard. But these would work. And if you're wounded and so bad off, wherever you happen to be in the ladder, you just snapped off right there. And the people up above could roll the ladder up underneath you. It's like you're in a stretcher. It's just perfect, you know. And we made the first one. And I remember we wanted the CO of the camp to see it. And so Colonel Lamp came over there and, oh, he says, this is just great, you know.

2:27:14And so we had everybody over there. And it got to be the preferred way of getting in and out. Of course, we still did the rappelling. And some of them did the parachuting in, you know. Damn. Yeah. How did you wind up on the Hatchet Force? Hatchet Force? that's when I came back from the hospital. And I wanted to get back on the ground per se, and not just in the bird dog. I actually physically wanted to get on the ground and fight. I don't know if I felt guilty for not being on the ground. I don't know what the reasoning was. But it just seemed that I wanted to be there, you know, where the guys were, where the fighting is.

2:27:58And so it didn't take long to get on it because when I mentioned it to the SEAL, he says, you know, a company really needs you. You know, only had two Americans. You know, a lot of the other missions, you know, were 15, 16 Americans, you know, squad leaders and platoons and companies and all that.

2:28:26Any significant stuff with the hatchet force? Yeah, yeah. It's a good bunch of guys. We had two for a while, and then it was down to one. And then there were Mike forces, and then some of these other ones, depending on who you were attached to, Mike force could be to the B team, and we were on the A team, or in the projects. So the hatchet force is basically a quick reaction force for the SOG guys. Or you're looking for trouble, one of the two. And we could go out as a platoon or a company. So by the time you got into the hatchet, I'm just curious, by the time you had gotten to the hatchet force, you had said that SOG was kind of being infiltrated with inexperienced operators.

2:29:21Yeah, and I don't want to offend people by doing that. And so kind of where I'm going with this is, by the time you were at the Hatchet Force, had you already seen the inexperience infiltrate the SOG? And so what was that like being a reactionary force for a SOG unit that is less capable than when you were at it? Yeah. I think in some ways it showed up in the recon first, because the adage that we had in SOG was, okay, you get in a firefight or something like that, and the adage was always break contact and continue mission. So as much as you can, you overwhelm them, broke contact, E &E to get them out of the way, and then continue the mission if you can because your job is gathering intelligence.

2:30:13And the fact that unless it was overwhelming force and it's imminent disaster for you. You don't call for an expatriation. You continue the mission. That ethic didn't seem to carry over to the new guys because so many of them would get in a firefight and then they pulled out and then went to A &D and got their bronze star or whatever. And we had some missions that it was so dense and so forth. And you had to sneaky Pete so much. And yet you were so successful at it that you didn't have a firefight. And then you come out of the thing and people would think, well, you had a dry hole and nothing happened, because you didn't get in the firefight.

2:31:01And it's like, man, we did what we were supposed to do and didn't get in the firefight. How would the hatchet force work? Would you be co-located with a SOG unit that's on a mission? They could. In other words, if they found something significant, they could radio the information. They could send in a reaction force. So they would turn it over? Yeah, they could do that. Okay. What kind of significance? I mean, I have there that you did a significant cross-border operation. Yeah, things that needed to be acted on right away, or they're going to lose their significance. Perhaps something that stalled the enemy movement going south, wherever they were, that gave you an opportunity right there.

2:31:54If you act right now, you're going to do all right. You know, yeah, I think that's about it. Just it has to be significant for the recon team to pass it over because when the recon team gets pulled out, they may be compromised simply because of the helicopter and all that. I'm just curious.

2:32:21I'm just trying to figure out what the dynamic is between the hatchet or mic force to the song. in and i mean would this be the way i envision it is you know when when i would go out with with a team or every once in a while with uh with um at the agency if there were air assets if there was a blocking force if there was anybody else involved everybody sat in with the same for the same exact brief right but i mean with what you guys are doing i mean i think he signed like it was it was like a 20 or 30 year waiver like like um non-disclosure agreements and i mean you know and so i don't how i guess what i'm asking is how in tune was the hatchet or mike force with the sog unit did they know everything where they're going everything or were they just in a they waiting just to get called secret uh you knew your own mission that's it yeah so if you were captured and tortured that's all you can tell them yeah so um yeah you for the most part you wouldn't know um what the next team is doing so the hatchet force have really has no idea what the SOG unit is doing right unless yeah they're part of SOG yeah we had a reaction for us a different names for it but we had one in the compound okay yeah so they were very in tune with what you guys are doing yeah and they could turn out everything locations the actual the actual mission set the objectives all that the the hatchet force would be right into that would they be out in the field at the same time the sog unit was they could be uh you know like uh um recon people they would like to have six or seven like in ccc in my area they would like to have six or seven teams on the ground all the time.

2:34:14OK. So it's possible all of them can be in trouble. And that happened, and I wrote about it in the book. And then there will be a company as well. Now, if a company or platoon gets in trouble, and a recon team gets in trouble, they're more vulnerable because of their small size. So air action would be deferred to the small one or the most vulnerable one with, I suppose, a platoon with half casualties or something would get some precedence. Gotcha. Gotcha.

2:34:51Well, Dale, let's take a break. When we come back, we'll talk about leaving Vietnam and coming home. Hey, everyone. If you're like me, this time of year, heading into the holidays, life gets busy. My routine can get totally thrown off in trying to maintain a balanced diet and give my body the nutrients it needs can be a real struggle. That's why I rely on AG1. I drink it first thing in the morning, and it's become the single easiest daily health habit that helps me stay consistent. I use this, and you should too. AG1 is the daily health drink that combines your multivitamin, pre - and probiotics, superfoods, and antioxidants all in one simple green scoop.

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2:37:15Alright, Dale, we're back from the break. We have wrapped up your SOG career in Vietnam. What's it like coming home?

2:37:28I think World War II people had parades, you know, and people were excited. When we come home, it was in the matrix of dissatisfaction and hatred and things like that. And I think people coming back from the war, in some regards, were almost treated as criminals by certain aspects of the country. and most places not really regarded at all. It was kind of a sad thing. I remember I sat down at an airport and the first person I saw tried to steal my beret. It was just kind of crazy stuff. But yeah, and I guess the only thing is what now? I think we all have that kind of a feeling. I suppose if you were coming to retirement it and you you you thought okay i've always wanted to have a farm you said what now i got it figured out already and a lot of us are coming through times in which um emotions are at a crescendo um uh extremely exciting things are happening all the time and uh now you're coming home and um And it's like, what now?

2:38:45You know, it's... How old were you when you came home?

2:38:5325, maybe? 25 years old? I think so. Holy... All that by age 25. Yeah, yeah. Wow. And we only touched the top of the iceberg. The rest of it is in the books and so forth, you know.

2:39:37What, um... I mean, what did you... Did you hide out when you came back? I mean, we've all seen... We've all... I mean, we haven't experienced it. And I wasn't alive back then, so I don't, you know, I don't know exactly what that was like, but, you know, from the people I've talked to and what I've seen and footage and the way Hollywood portrayed it, which who knows if that's fucking realistic or not.

2:40:12but it looked horrific the way that you guys were greeted when you came home looked horrific i don't know how anybody could handle that i don't know how i would have handled that i probably would have left the country i would have been so disgusted and um it was this was that bad wasn't it it's kind of and um i think you go home if you got a home like my parents, you know, because I wasn't married. And you go home to your parents and so forth, and you see all the people that you're glad to see and so forth. And it's always, what now? What now? What's next? You know, life hasn't ended. It's starting.

2:40:53It's a new, you know, not matrix, but it's a new thing that is happening. And it's a little bit difficult. And you kind of don't want to go uptown to the store and bump into people. You kind of don't know what to expect in your world. I thought of going back to college again, and I really didn't want to. I don't know. I think it was Teddy Roosevelt. He says, he who knows the scriptures thoroughly has a college degree in his mind. Yeah. So anyway, I never went back to college. I studied, studied all my life, but it was on topics I wanted to learn, you know, and became well-versed in some things, you know.

2:41:47What did you get into? I mean, what was reintegration into civilian life like? Yeah, civilian life. Who did you gravitate to? Yeah, it wasn't too long, and I figured I needed to work. It was a reality thing. And so the old paper mill where I worked in college, in the summertime, that was one thing to do. It's like, I don't want to spend my life in the wood room watching a bark peel off of logs. There's something better in life than that. It's a difficult transition. Some people had no choice. You know, they went home. They took the welcome home, and then they had to go to work, and that was it.

2:42:39They continued life from that point, you know. That was it. Kind of difficult in a way. Hard to explain, too. You know, one of those things you experience but don't articulate. So you got into martial arts. Yeah, still did some of the martial arts. I didn't teach it, though. But I kind of kept up with it personally, remembering the katas and all that stuff. I couldn't tell you a kata today. It's just so far removed. But back then I did. Yeah, when I got back, that's right, I was a cop. I think that's after I got back. Yeah, I was. Didn't you use the GI Bill to become a pilot? I did. I did. I used the GI Bill to become a pilot.

2:43:29with the idea of being an airline pilot. And I took the courses and got my commercial in San Francisco area. And I passed the commercial, and the only thing left was instrument and whatever else you had to do. And when I was doing that, they discovered that the guy who gave me my commercial checkride had also given me a lesson at some point in the past. and there was some kind of a conflict and they wouldn't count my commercial test because he had given me a test I mean a lesson so anyway I had to wait until we got to Alaska to get it done and uh went to Alaska and uh signed up for this guy who's going to give me a um the pilot check ride and so I'm sitting at the airport waiting for him to get a student in front of me and I'm waiting for him to give the test and whatever he's doing or lesson to this student and I watch him take off I think it's the student was driving flying and I watch him take off and it goes straight up in the air into a hammerhead stall and it crashes on the edge of the runway into the ocean and they never ever find the plane and they never find the pilot but the girl comes up and she actually become two broken legs and uh she comes up and becomes an alaska airlines pilot and then um it took six months before they had somebody to replace this guy and when i would go to get my sign off on the test he'd never show up he's just not reliable and after a while i said this is this is just crazy it's not going to work and so i'm uh i was still teaching martial arts and the college and all that and uh uh over time uh all the cops and the state troopers were my students and so um uh there was an opening and it was in the police department they come and got me they all but kidnapped me said dale you got to be a a cop you got to be a cop and so i went down and I took the test.

2:45:46Where is this? Sitka, Alaska. And it maxed the test. It maxed the test. And of course, they thought there was something wrong with the test. But I passed it. And then I went through the academy, and they had four categories, academic, physical fitness, driving, and shooting. And I got number one in all four. It had never been done before. What a badass. That's when I was shooting more. Never been done before? No, no. People would get one, but not two, something like that. So anyway, I became a cop. My problem as a cop is that I enforced the law. If you wound up speeding 20 over and I got you, you got a ticket, period.

2:46:34And they hated me for that. You're not supposed to enforce the law. But anyway, I was there one day. And to give you a background leading up to it, the Vietnam War and communism was really big in the United States. It still is, but I believe it's sub-Rosa. But they had the Black Lives Matter was a big thing. Martin Luther King was a member of over 120 communist front organizations, the most of any American. And so that was going big. The fifth column dividing America. Well, in Alaska, they were trying to segregate the natives from the rest of the people. And it was kind of an easy fix for them because we have 300 villages and some of them only have 100 people and stuff.

2:47:29There's no way they could have school, high school and stuff for all of their kids. So Alaska has regional schools, had five regional schools. and one of them was in Sitka. Well, they had people inside who would try to indoctrinate them into communism. And I would go as a cop, I would go into these rooms to see something from a student, some complaint or something. And I would go in there and there was these red and black, that's the native colors, the red and black posters. They were all the same size and everything. And they would be in a row, either in the hallway or in a room. It would be Geronimo, chief joseph red cloud and they would be through two or three more and that would be stalin and maozi don and all the rest in other words these are your heroes red cloud and all the rest of them and it's just factored right into the rest of it in other words stalin and and all the rest of those people are equally your friends and they were they were getting this big deal well anyway uh in in the Dakotas about that time, there was an uproar in one of the reservations, and they were barricading themselves against everybody, and the citizens were furious.

2:48:46So, they had, it was surrounded by, believe it or not, special forces, I don't know how they got that, and state troopers, and they surrounded the camp, and everybody said, oh, they're under siege, but no, were facing outward so that citizens wouldn't come in and end the problem well anyway i won't say the name because he's still alive and and i've had contracts on me uh this man headed it up well in sitka alaska his sister headed up the the native uprising in alaska and uh

2:49:23she was really wild, virulently anti-white and all the rest, and pro-communist and so forth. Her boyfriend parked his car along the highway just before all the people would go to work. The mill site was three or four miles down the road along the ocean, and he parked his car there. And every time a car came by, he would stand out of the car, stand in the highway, and put his gun out with both hands. And then when they stopped, he would go like this and urge them out of the car. And it was absolutely clear in everybody's mind they were going to be executed by this guy. There's no question in their minds.

2:50:05And so they would gun it, and they would take off, and he would empty the gun on the car. Holy shit. And he shot at eight carloads of people. and uh so i got the call and and the call was this guy shooting at people he had a rust colored pickup and camp canopy and he was heading toward town at a certain speed and um i had this image in my mind rusty old truck rust colored they said you know and so i was looking as i went and i had a maroon car uh it was the investigator's car that they gave me because i was a shift commander So I'm heading down the highway as fast as the car can go. And all of a sudden, I see this car at one of the turnoffs, you know, where people can pull off and watch the sunrise, you know.

2:50:51And it was not rusty. It was rust-colored pickup and canopy. And I looked in. I thought, it's got to be him. And I stopped about 35 meters away. And, in fact, I know that it's 35 because they paced out the scene. And off to my right, I would have got closer probably, but off to my right was another car and i didn't know but that the two of them were together on what they were doing so i had to make sure i wasn't between the two cars so i stopped about 35 meters i got out of the car and uh he did the same thing to me come out put the guns up and started to do this number and i uh yelled at him to drop it and he started to shoot and one of those bullets hit the sign above my car.

2:51:37And then another one went whizzing by, and I yelled at him, I said, drop it. And he started to shoot. So I was kind of lucky in a way. Standard automatic transmission, but the shift is in the right. I'm left-handed, so I can get the car stopped. I can get it into park. I can throw the door open with my elbow, and with a good hand, I can pull the gun out, and it's only just a couple seconds. And anyway, he's still shooting at me, so I yelled, drop it, and I shot twice, and he went down, straight down. And it was kind of an interesting thing because Army experience, Special Forces experience, I always kept my eye on that other one.

2:52:25He went down with both hands underneath him, and I didn't see blood, and I thought, this guy's faking. And so I basically rolled across the road so that when he came up, I wouldn't be where he saw me last. And I'd take him from there. And so anyway, another squad car comes as fast. He's so fast, he slammed on the brakes and was skidding sideways. And he comes out with a shotgun, you know. And in the meantime, I got traffic coming from the mill. And I don't want them in the middle of our ambush. You know, so we're stopping these cars. An ambulance finally comes, and we haven't even checked him out yet.

2:53:05And I won't let him through there. My scene is not done yet. I don't want this guy to go over and get shot. And I just held him back. So anyway, when the other cop came, he had the shotgun on him. I rolled him over, and his hands were underneath, but the gun was off the side. When he went down, it went just a few feet to the side. I didn't see it. But anyway, he went down and all that stuff. and called for the ambulance, and called the ambulance, so you can have them now, and we put them in the ambulance. And at the hospital, the surgeon, who's a friend of mine, I knew him pretty well, a very sharp man, he said both my bullets went in the same hole and came out an inch apart on the back.

2:53:49Yeah. I'm glad to hear that. So anyway, he's down there, and he also said that by denying people to come to him for his aid, which what could they do? He said if he was in the surgeon's gown with his gloves on and he was shot on the bed, he couldn't have saved him. That's perfect. And so there he is. And of course, I got a certain amount of time I got to deal with the crime scene and all that. Then I get back to the station and and it's about 7 o 'clock. And I call my wife because I figure she's going to hear something on the street. And I want her to be assured that this is a good shoot. So I called her up, and she answers the phone.

2:54:40And I says, Kath, I just don't want you to worry about what you might have heard. But I said, I had to kill a man last night. And my wife, Special Forces wife, says, I just have one question. Why did it take you two shots? Holy shit. Are you serious? That is perfect. That is just absolutely perfect. You picked a good wife. A good woman. Oh, wow. It's perfect. She knows exactly what you need. Damn. And then it's 7 in the morning. I couldn't think of a better question to ask. I should have thought of that. Yeah, I couldn't either. I should have thought of that as an interviewer. It's 7 in the morning.

2:55:21Why did it take you to? Huh? I wanted to see if I could get both in the same hole. Nice. Then 7 o 'clock in the morning, 11.30 on Alaska Airlines, three hitmen come to kill me. That fast. They were coming on a private jet, and they got onto this one. It wasn't Alaska Airlines. They came on a private jet, and they were flown here specifically to kill me. And they made it here within four or five hours of the shooting. And the gal who was heading up the uprising, so to speak, in Sitka, her brother was the one that headed the one up in the Dakotas. And so they are very anti-white, anti-American in a lot of ways and so forth.

2:56:11So then the bullets started flying for a year, probably a year. had contracts on me. Once they almost got me, my wife and I would help in the Trooper Academy, and she would play the harassed wife or the beaten wife or something, and the new students would come in and interview her and all that. And she was at the graduation ceremony, which was across the road from me, about 100 yards in, and their graduation was now. So she was asked to be there for the graduation. And so we have a new baby. And I was carrying the baby in my arms. And as I'm walking past the window, my dog barked. It was a funny bark.

2:56:59It was like something, a warning type bark, you know. And I turned like this to see what my dog barked at. And the bullet went through the window and right where my head was. and we had a stained glass seashell in an opposing window and it went right through the center of the seashell so he thought the seashell was my head so it was just like that so i would have run him down except i had a baby you know what do you do i would run him down without a gun i would have taken him out um but then i asked one of them i called the dispatcher said someone just tried to shoot me and i said but i'm worried my wife is across the road at the graduation ceremony for the police.

2:57:39And I said, could you make sure she doesn't come back until this is all solved? So one of the cops, a friend of mine, his name was Ernie Starr, went over there. And he was walking down the aisle. And my wife was on the aisle seat. And serendipitous, this is the way things happen in life. He goes up to her and he's going to whisper to her, that Dale, they just shot at Dale, don't go home now. And it was that auspicious moment when the entire place just happened to be totally silent at that second. And the entire place heard it, they just shot at Dale and don't go home. But this is a trooper and cop graduation ceremony.

2:58:24So within two or three minutes, we had 50 cops and troopers charging into the woods across the road from me, trying to get this guy. They never did. And like you, I've had the contracts on my life and all that stuff too. And for a whole year, I had to have the mirror that goes around so you don't have bombs under your car. Damn. Be careful. But the big thing with me is you can give them a victory by acting scared and nervous. Act confident and they haven't got a victory at all. and um uh i just took the normal scares um god will take care of me i hope and i just took the normal precautions and uh uh carried through life and i think my confidence kept people from trying things that they would otherwise want to do they did crazy things like invite me to go snowmobiling guy i didn't know at all he's gonna wants me to go snowmobiling with him you know things like that and lots of stuff that happened for about a year you know and then the department says i'm politically hot you know not that they did anything for me really and i should look for more work and i uh i quit and i gotta tell you this too um how we got into carving and and so forth um um i was uh you know what do you do what do you do when people don't are afraid to hire you and figure their business would be assaulted or boycotted.

3:00:01You've got to start your own business. Yeah, it's pretty difficult. I carved a lot when I was a kid. My mom says I carved up all the soap. But I was carving, and four things happened in one week. And one was my friend. He was one of the best painters in Alaska, my hunting partner. and Keith came by and I was carving a soapstone seal. I was going to make it for my wife. I don't know where I got the soapstone or anything, but I'm carving that. And he goes, whoa, he says, that's really good. He says, that's worth about$1 ,200. Whoa, and that's the first time I ever put a dollar value or figured that there was a monetary value on something I did.

3:00:46I never thought of it. you know then um uh about two days later i was carving uh um a whale in ivory again i don't remember where i got the idea but i was carving this whale and uh i must have done a pretty good job because i didn't have it on a base yet and i didn't have an accent under it and and he said uh dale he said that's really good he said let me have that for a minute it. He went down to one of the gift stores, and he sold it to them for$100. He'd come back, gave me the$100, and he called me up that afternoon to say the gallery had already sold it for$200. And then there was a fourth thing that happened that same week, a guy I never met before, who was the premier carver in Alaska, a really great carver, a good man.

3:01:37And he came by house he knocked on my house i never met him in my life and i i opened up the door and he come in headed for my table my kitchen table and he says my name's jim fleshman and and uh he walked over there and and uh he had a lard can those big ones they had in the old country full of lard and they're about that tall they must hold five ten gallons here it was full of ivory scraps and he dumped it all on my table and he says pick out what you can use pick out what you want and i had no idea how much this was going to cost you know so i picked out as much as i dared that was labor conscious rather than material conscious that make sense i'm saying so i picked out a whole bunch of pieces and uh and he says well you're going to need some some accents and bases he started pushing a whole bunch more stuff to me.

3:02:35And I said, well, how much is this going to cost? And he takes his arm and what I didn't pick, he slid it all back into that big metal can. And I said, how much is this? And he says, nothing. God told me to bring it over here. and i told my wife as dumb as i am after four things happening in one week i said cat there's something to this but I said if I'm going to do this I'm going to do an honest show of it this guy's the best carver in the state and uh he does people call him all the time but he's a peddler and the rent comes to he does the carving and sells the carving pays the rent I says I'm not going to be a peddler I says I'm going to carve faithfully all winter long and when spring gets here I'm going to ask all the stores to come by and see what they want to buy and I did it I carved all winter long and when spring got there, I could fill the table pretty much with carvings and invited the store owners to come by and they picked out virtually everything.

3:03:42And at the end of about three hours, four hours, something like that, there wasn't a single piece on the table at orders for 450 more carvings. Whoa. Yes. And it stayed like that for the next 20 years. Just I never caught up in 20 years just or year after year and i would do a show maybe or um call a store and they say can you get this this this and they knew the quality level and they knew i would deliver and all that it was like that for 20 years and i basically i raised the family on carving and i still carve um it's been great and um with everything there's little anecdotes that you can pick up in life you know it's like I see people that do carvings with ivory and I look at the carvings and they're not necessarily good you know they're he's got some years to go you know and but I look at that and what's going to happen and it does happen is that the media the ivory carries over poor work you know so people want desperately want an ivory carving and if anything that the store can say it's primitive art and excuse the poor carving, you know?

3:04:56And so that works, and I can sell things that way. But when I started doing wood, I did soapstone, and I actually started doing bronze and silver, pewter, all the cast pieces too, and about 250 casts. But when I started doing the wood carving, my greatest gratification was there because i'm starting with something that is intrinsically worthless you burn it in your stove and so forth and um i take this this thing and it's only what i do to that that makes a difference that makes someone want it and uh that is the gratification i get on the carving is that you uh it's it's the ultimate reward when i was the cop I don't care how many crimes you did, they let you out on your OR and it's worse today by far.

3:05:58It's like there's no, I feel sorry for the cops and some of these other people who can see no reward for their labor, but the wood is the one that I can see. I look at the piece and i say that that is good and i'm satisfied and um for me to say i'm satisfied yeah that's a it's a unique word you know i pulled up your website those carvings are incredible that's about 15 years old too man yeah it's yeah you have a lot of talent yeah how long How did you meet your wife? It's interesting. I was just telling them. When I was in San Francisco, we were going to flight school to be an Alaska airline pilot.

3:06:49I was working in a mill, Fraser and Johnson, I think it was, just assembly line stuff. Anyway, Mike and I were out flying. I said, we were flying together. We were doing touch and goes on that bank of San Francisco Bay, just on the bank. And I said, I got to go to work. And he said, well, I'm going to do one more touch and go and go in. So I went to work, and I'm punching in the clock, and the foreman comes out. He says, Dale, your roommate just crashed his plane, and he's at the emergency room in the hospital. He wants to know if you could come out, of course. And he let me go in the time and all that.

3:07:32So I went to the hospital, and he was messed up. He really was. He said his leg was broken. I said, the other one doesn't look too good either. Not what he wants to hear. But he had cuts on his face and all over, and broken this and that. It was in pretty bad shape. But he says, could you send for Kathy Carlson? Maybe she would come up from Seattle and see me. I said, sure. And I did. And I called her. and I said Mike Buckland was in a furious plane crash he was wondering if you'd come and see him and Kathy was a beautiful gorgeous woman she was like Miss Alaska and all that stuff because the college president and his wife wanted her to do it she's not that way but and brilliant brilliant lady and um anyway she came down and picked her up at the airport went straight to the hospital and all that and would take her to dinner and then you know um and when the time came to take her back to the airport and she went next weekend she came again and uh and mike is starting to slowly get a little bit better um and then the third week uh she comes up and i'm seeing my mike is starting to improve a little bit and and i i'm sitting in the kitchen as she's packing up with lots of her things to go to the airport and um i had no idea i was going to say it but i said kath marry me and she says okay that's it wow no flowers no nothing just and uh just a good woman beginning to end you know and we've been married for 52 three years i think 53 years yeah what's the secret to a successful marriage huh what's the secret to a successful marriage she has to obey me I'm kidding you I'm kidding yeah cut that part out oh man never sees that um I don't know um we we love each other uh very much um she's um consideration maybe I don't know because they don't know what I do right you know what does she do right what does she do right oh she just kept you around for she's just a good woman she takes care of me for everything If I'm doing something wrong, like on this trip, she says, Dale, you're dehydrated.

3:09:54You need to drink more water. You're not thinking clearly. Okay, hook me up to a hose. Always watch it out for you. Always watch out for me. Yeah. Yeah. Good woman. And you became a pastor at a small Baptist church. Probably for at least 25 years. Are you still doing that? I'm still doing it. I love to study the Bible. and my sermons are really Bible-based. And there's a website, Sitka Bible Baptist Church, and the sermons out there, not the last 10, 15 years because I don't know how to do it myself, but we have maybe 200 or 300 sermons on there. But my people are just great. They want to hear truth from Scripture.

3:10:44They want to hear the Scripture. They want it articulated in a fashion that's understandable. logical and so forth. And I haven't lost anybody other than moving away from town. That's about it. But just good people. I'm just so honored to be their pastor. And we're small because we're on the college campus, and sometime later they close off vehicular traffic on the campus. so you can't have a sign out that people are going to see come to church you know so uh it's uh word of mouth things like that you know yeah but um uh just i have just good people you know all down the line you know what is what is what is one truth from scripture that you one truth uh everybody know um since you say one truth from scripture i would have to relate it to not the plan of salvation i'd have to relate it to the starting point the scripture is true and reliable so when you look at it you can count on it being true and then find all the other answers does that make sense it does yeah because i i see so many people um um sound reasoning logic um some of these things that are missing they're not taught in school absolutely people don't know how to think they listen to the propaganda and all that kind of a thing and uh um they believe it without thinking you know and it's so sad it's sad that america's beginning as it was um no longer has the ability to think clearly even even ivy league colleges you know you're getting propaganda mills yeah rather than how to think logic i taught logic a couple times logic and thinking and it is a it's sad it is critical thinking is departing this country at a rapid pace and you know but i will say that that um it looks like the younger generations are smart and up to the ship so that that gives me hope for my kids yes yeah you could be a good dad how old are your kids how old are my kids yeah they're both toddlers they're both what toddlers toddlers yeah four and two cool but that's that beautiful age too it's a fun age oh gee going camping this weekend yeah oh good that's good yeah Yeah.

3:13:25Well, Dale, once again, I'm honored to be able to share your story. And it was an honor to meet with you and shoot with you and get your story and just get to know you. So... Thank you. And I appreciate it. And I hope there's something of help to somebody out there. Yeah. A lot of nuggets in there. Good. Thank you. God bless. You too.

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