#317 Johnnie Clark - Surviving One of the Deadliest Jobs During the Vietnam War

29:19I said, I'm perfectly healthy. And one of the guys, one of my buddies from NAMM was there that day. His name was Pat McCrary. He saw me doing all this. He's a witness to this insanity. He said, we thought you were crazy, man. So he saw all that, so he can verify that this actually happened. But I did everything to make sure they let me in. Well, I'm there. We're in this Hotel Floridian or something like that. I think it was what it was called. And first night there, you know, before we're going to go to Parris Island, I go up the stairs and some maniac comes in the lobby. And I'm going up the stairs and there's where you sign in.

30:04And this guy starts opening fire in the lobby of the hotel. He's got a.45 cal and he's blasting away. And he's shooting the steps under my feet as I'm going up the steps. Holy shit. And I'm like, whoa, I'm not even there yet. They're trying to kill me. And I never did find out what that was about. But that guy took off. And a couple of seconds later, these MPs come running in. And I never heard what that story was about. But it's a true story. You never heard. Never heard. But that was my welcome to the Marine Corps. Yeah, and then in Parris Island, boy, that was insane. I was begging to get to NAM just to get out of Parris Island.

30:51I mean, they got my attention. Yeah, I saw some crazy stuff there. I was on PT a guy.

31:01He was a fat body. You know, fat body to the end of the line. Anyway, they were going to drive him out of the Marine Corps. I don't think the Marine Corps likes fat bodies. Oh, boy. You either lose the weight. It's more of a Navy thing.

31:15They put this guy, they made him do leg lifts until he got a hernia, and he's screaming in agony. And I'm thinking, this is serious. This is awful. This guy's in agony. They cussed him out of our barracks. The old World War I barracks, the old wood barracks on Parasite Island. We were in the upstairs. We were all at attention as they were watching this. As the DIs cursed him, they took him out on a stretcher. The Navy guys came in and put him on a stretcher. They're taking him out. They cursed him all the way to the ambulance saying, we told you we'd drive you out of our Marine Corps. Damn. A series.

31:55And then I saw another guy who lost it, and he went up the water tower at Parris Island. Well, we didn't know. I mean, I never saw this, but all of a sudden, and we're being marched out to the water tower. And we're not allowed to look around. If you even looked, I looked one time, and I don't cuss anymore, but it was IF in the area. And if you were caught IF in the area, you got hit. And this DI caught me looking like that because we saw girls. And he came up. He kicked my legs out from enemy. That was still black and blue when I got the nom. He kicked me so hard. I thought he broke my leg. Well, you didn't do that.

32:38You look straight at the guy's head in front of you. So I didn't know where I was going, but now I know I'm marching on grass. Pretty soon, they tell us we can look up. And here's all, the whole battalion is around the water tower. And here's this guy, this poor sap is up on the water tower screaming, if you don't let me out of the Marine Corps, I'm going to jump. Holy shit. And these DIs now, they've all got their platoons out there. They go, all right, we're ready now. I didn't bring all these Marines out here to watch nothing. Jump. Holy shit. Of course, he came down. And he said, if you come down from there and don't jump, we're going to beat the hell out of you.

33:25Well, he finally came down. He didn't jump. And they beat the crap out of that guy. I know. They just beat the tar out of that guy. That probably wouldn't happen today. Oh, no. It wouldn't happen today, man. They got little chits now, I think, that's a brazo. I even heard that the obstacle course that we had to do, it's now for display only. What? That's what I was told. My A-gunner, Chan, talk about Chan, remarkable guy. He went back to PI and he said, yeah. He said the obstacle course is for display only. Wow. And he was told, and it makes some people mad with this one, but he was told that a lot of the women Marines, they couldn't do that obstacle course.

34:18And they got rid of it. I don't know if it's true.

34:27wouldn't be far out there man so how so how was the rest of uh how was the rest of basic um i went to from there went to uh machine gun school and is that what you wanted to do uh no no they just they just put me there you know and you had to you had to shoot all the weapons and i shot really well with the machine gun so they threw me in machine gun school like I think that's how they figured it out. And I was too dumb to have an MOS doing anything else. All right. So they put me in machine gun school. And, you know, then I start seeing the recon marines there, you know. And I came up with this brilliant idea.

35:11But Chan and I, he was this Chinese. Chan was with me all the way from P.I. from the day we joined. Alphabetical, Chan and Clark, you know. and we got stuck together all the way through the Marine Corps. And Chan was Chinese-American, been smuggled out of red China as a baby. His dad was a doctor, got him out of China. He was a genius, and he had a minor in ministry, and I think from the University of Tennessee. And so Chan was going to be an open-heart surgeon. Now, you hear one guy say that, and you think, yeah, me too. But, you know, this Chinese guy was, he was a giant brain, you know, and for me to get stuck with him, you know, I had that IQ of zero, zero.

35:59I'm stuck with this giant brain. And he had this giant vocabulary. And he'd use words. I didn't know what the hell he was talking about. I said, what are you saying? But Chan was, he wanted to join the Marine Corps. He wanted to pay America back for taking his family in. I mean, how do you not love a guy like that? That's cool. Yeah, it's cool. I mean, if only some of the immigrants felt that way today, man. I mean, you know, really. But Chan wanted to join the Marine Corps. He could have been an officer. He didn't have to be a dumb PFC machine gunner. I mean, he had a college degree. He was a smart as heck.

36:37So Chan and I were in machine gun. We both fired expert with a machine gun. And I came up with this brilliant idea. I want to go recon. Because I'm telling him, the recon guys get to wear those little gold wings, man. It's a chick magnet. We'll pick up girls everywhere. So he goes, Clark, do you ever think of anything else? And he gives me some big 10-cent word to describe that I'm not being right. And I said, come on, Jan. Go with me, man. man, you don't want to leave me alone. We've been this far. And he goes, all right. So we put in our request to go to recon. And one night, this is a true story.

37:26This is right out of a movie. But we had this old sergeant. I think it was a master sergeant. But he lived in the barracks with us at Camp Lejeune, the machine gun school barracks. Well, got all these racks, you know, regular barracks with all these machine gunners. and he had an office at the end and about two in the morning he comes out takes one of those old metal garbage cans that we had, we didn't have the plastic garbage and he heaves this metal garbage can down the squad bay and he hits the lights and starts screaming guns up, guns up, guns up so everybody out of the racks standing at attention at the end of your rack and he's got a fifth of booze in his hand And he's angry.

38:14He's an angry Marine. And he's got a bunch of orders. He's got orders in his left hand. And it was my transport to go to recon and chance. And I guess maybe a couple of the other guys wanted to go recon. And so he says, Clark, gives me a piece of chalk. He says, draw a line down the center of the barracks. Everybody put your toes on that line. So we all line up on this line. And he says, OK, all you Marines, all you gunners. At first, he tells us how bad we need gunners. And we did. We really did. But in the 5th Marines, when I got there, they told me every machine gunner in the 5th Marines had been killed or wounded.

39:00So we really needed machine gunners. And he knew that. He got all the battlefield casualty list, and they knew all that stuff. And so suddenly machine gunners, kind of a critical MOS, but even though you could be as dumb as a stump and still be one. And so he says, okay, all you Marines that join my Marine Corps to kill the enemy, stand still. And all you Marines that join my Marine Corps to find the enemy and tell us to go kill them, step over that line. And nobody stepped over the line. And I mean, it was like I stood there. I mean, he shamed us. It was like being in the Alamo. Step over the line if you want to leave the Alamo.

39:48And, but it worked. Not one guy tried to go to recon. We all just stayed in machine guns. No shit. I saw my little gold wings flying out to Paris. I really wanted those wings, man. Wow. But yeah, so we got to NOM, and, you know, I thought it was baloney, but, Because they told us in machine gun school, seven to ten seconds after a firefight begins. And we thought, that's baloney, it can't be true. Then we get there and all the machine gunners have been killed or wounded. Man, I mean, so you went to the Battle of Hue immediately? That's where you showed up? The Battle of Hue, that's where you went?

40:40Okay, Way City. Yeah, Way. Yeah, I know. Way City. That's a little wrong because I mean, I got there for Way and I got there when Way was ending. But I just was at the very end of Way City. All I did in Way City is step in a punji pit. You know, punji pits with the I stepped in it and it broke. It didn't go through my boots. You know, God saved me. First week of NOM and he's already saving me. But I just did patrols trying to get the NVA that we're trying to get out of way at the end there. But, yeah, I didn't really fight in Way City. But you went straight from machine gunner school to Vietnam?

41:27Yeah. No, no. Then I went to Camp Pendleton. Okay. For a jungle warfare school. Gotcha. Yeah. And, you know, that little POW thing, the school they give you. And yeah, Jungle Warfare, that was eye-opening too. But, you know, I mean, after Parris Island, everything was duck soup. But then there in Jungle Warfare School, after it was over, they gave us, I think it was 24 or 48 hours liberty. And so I talked Chan into, I had a way of talking Chan into trouble. So I talked Chan into going to Tijuana. You know, I said, we... What were you doing down there? I wanted to go to Tijuana. So I talked to him, we got to go to Tijuana, man.

42:14All this, I hear... So... Lots of things. Yeah, lots of things. So I talked to him to go to Tijuana. So we go to Tijuana and we're in one of those really seedy bars, you know, and there's a bunch of Marines in there, of course. And there's activity going on. It was pretty despicable. But they bring us over a bunch of drinks. And we'd order, it was four of us, four Marines. And we'd order four drinks. This big Mexican guy comes over with a tray full of drinks. And I said, we only won four. And he expects us to pay for them. And, well, that led to a confrontation. And so a big brawl start, a big, huge fight.

43:03And I realized this is getting ugly. Let's get out of here. So me and Chan are trying to crawl out because bottles fly everywhere, people fighting all over the place. And we got to the door, and the Tijuana police were there. And then everybody said, he started it. I didn't do anything. But I was almost innocent. They put you in the clink? Yeah. Well, the Tijuana police threw us in the Tijuana brig jail. And then the shore patrol came and got us out of there and threw us in the Navy brig. And then they took me into San Diego, me and Chan. Oh, he was so mad at me because Chan would never do any of this stuff.

43:48So that was the last time I saw San Diego was Tijuana brig. But then the Marines came and got us. They threw us in a red line brig at Camp Pendleton. Have you ever heard anything about those? I haven't. Oh, they're awful. Yeah, the Red Line Brig, you stand at attention. It was a big wall. Of course, you know, there's a war going on. They take—some guys would get in trouble like this and think it was going to keep them going to NOM. But, you know, I wasn't doing that. I just—I mean, I just—I hit this guy because he was trying to extort money out of us. So anyway, we got our face up against the wall.

44:30We'd stand at attention. And if you had to go to the head, you know, you had to, they had the MP jailers, they're marching up and down behind you. And you got your face up against the wall. And if you move your face away from that wall, they hit the back of your head and it drives your face into the wall. And that's why it's called a red line brig. There's bloody red where everybody's faces would be. there's a red line and there's just drips of blood all the way down this wall red line brick so uh that was yeah those guys they didn't play games and i yeah i wanted out of there but i had orders from not for nom like the next day so we didn't spend we only i don't know we might have spent eight hours in that red line brig and i said you got orders for NAMM, you're out of here.

45:18And they took us out of there and put us on the old Braniff Airlines and flew us to NAMM. Oh, wow. So what was it like when you landed at NAMM? Was it what you expected? It was, I didn't know what to expect. I mean, I'll be honest with you. I was such a kid. I look back at it and I was such a gung-ho, dumb kid, you know. But Chan had been reading about Way City. He read newspapers. And he's telling me, yeah, you know, there's a lot going on in Way City. I think we're going to be going to Way City. And I said, oh, okay. So we get off the plane, and then we follow through this. And as soon as we got off the plane, you know, that heat from Vietnam hits you, and you're going, whoa.

46:04You know, I'm from Florida, but this was a different kind of heat. And we see the phantoms jetting down the airstrip and taking off. And we could hear artillery. And all of a sudden, you're going, crap, it's a real war, man. I'm in a real war here. So we filed through. They're giving us our orders. And I always remember the sergeant, he'd go through and hand him your orders. And he'd stamp it, big red stamp. Fifth Marines, next. Fifth Marines, next. Fifth Marines. And everybody was getting sent to the Fifth Marines. And I said, Jan, why is everybody going to the 5th Marines? And he goes, didn't you read in the newspapers I've been giving you?

46:50The 5th Marines are taking Way City. And I said, oh, they need guys. And he goes, yeah, stupid, they need guys. So 5th Marines it was, but Way City was really ending. And I really didn't do anything away except patrols around it. I didn't do anything. So I really wasn't at Way. How long were you there? In Nam? In Way City. Oh, in Way? Oh, geez, just a couple of days patrols. And then they brought us back to Fubai. And then they sent us down to a place called Troy Bridge. and uh yeah things started getting hot there right on yeah right on you didn't have any did you did you know anybody that had been to vietnam before you or no you were just right you just plopped right in there yeah i didn't know i didn't know anybody shit were you nervous

47:56I was super excited. I mean, pretty soon, you can't tell nerves from fear. Yeah. But I was kind of still, it was a great adventure. And I was so young that I just saw it as just, right now, it's a huge adventure. But, you know, once you got out in the bush, yeah, the adventure's over. And this is, it got, it was hard. It was hard. You know, first time I got hit, I lost, well, I went over there at 160 pounds. And first or second time I got hit, I was, they sent me to a hospital in, they sent me to Da Nang. But there were so many wounded Marines that they didn't have any beds. They got guys laying in blood all over the floors.

48:55And so they threw a bunch of us on a C-130 and flew us down to an Air Force hospital. And Cam 'ron Bay. And, you know, after six months in the jungle, getting to Cam 'ron Bay, the Air Force. The Air Force. They live a different life. They had an air-conditioned hospital. They ate off plates and trays, and they had flushing toilets. And I went into the head once I was able to walk, and there's these crazy Marines, these stupid Marines in the bathroom. And he's going, Clark, Clark, come here, man. Listen to this. He flushed the toilet.

49:45Oh, my God. It's the little things, huh? When you're entertained by hearing a flushing toilet. I mean, I'm sorry, but it's true. Oh, man. In that hospital, when all the guys started coming out of the morphine and stuff, you wake up and you're going, hey, who are you with, man? Seventh Marines. Hey, who are you with? Twenty-six Marines. And I'd say, you know, fifth Marines. And so the whole hospital is filled with wounded Marines. You know, it's a tad offensive. And so this one kid, a couple of beds down where I was, but the other ward, it was the same story. And so this one kid, he wouldn't say anything.

50:27I think, yeah, you know, he's still in shock or something, you know. And a couple of days later, here's the same thing. Hey, who are you with, man? Hey, who are you with? Well, you had 26 Marines. Hey, who's that guy with? And he wouldn't say anything. Finally, the guy started rasking. He said, who are you with, man? And he goes, I'm in the Air Force. So all these Marines go, what? Then you see these wounded guys sit up and go, what did you do? What did you do, step on a nail?

51:03He's like, no, it was a thumbtack. He says, he goes, no, it's my mom's fault, man. And he was a nice young guy. He goes, no, it's my mom's fault, man. He said, my brother's a Marine. And she kept sending me letters. And she'd been contacting my CO, telling him to make me go check on my brother and see how he's doing. So I finally said, OK. And I hopped a ride up to Da Nang. And then they threw me on a chopper and flew me out to Anwar, Anwar Combat Base. And he said, I got off. I didn't even walk off the tarmac, and they got hit. And I got wounded, and I got a purple heart. Holy shit. Damn. So every morning, all the Marines, we'd wake up, and we'd sing this kid awake with, off we go into the wild blue yard.

52:00Oh, shit. We made his life. Although he grew to love us, you know. It was all in good fun, but pretty funny. Well, on that note, before we get into the thick of it, let's take a quick break. Okay. And then when we come back, we'll get into your first firefights. Most gear looks good until you actually start using it. Then you find out pretty quickly what holds up and what doesn't. That's why I keep coming back to Roka. These aren't just lifestyle sunglasses pretending to be performance gear. I've worn mine training on the range, traveling, and outdoors for long days, and they stay locked in place the entire time.

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54:07Well, I got to Troy Bridge. Troy Bridge, really the story about Troy Bridge that I wrote in Guns Up is, it's about Big Red. I put it in there because Big Red.

54:26But when I first got there, you know, when we got the foobie right before we went up to do a round way, there was one guy in this big tent where we came into. And he was coming back from the hospital. He'd been wounded, coming back from NAS. And so Chan and I, you know, we wanted to pump this guy because tell us what we're walking into here. And his name was Richard Weaver. but I never knew his real name. I didn't know his real name until 30 years after the war. No shit. Nobody had a name. You know, I, I, and I was, I've always been awful with names, but it's like everybody had a nickname. You know, I, I mean, I'm sure a lot of the guys, they knew me as that crazy gunner, but, but, you know, I didn't think, but I didn't think I had a name sometimes.

55:19But he was just big red. He was this big red-headed guy, and he was good-looking, you know. Looked like the Marlboro Man, you know, in the old Marlboro cigarette commercials. And big, big and strong. He had been a bouncer in one of the toughest bars in Cincinnati, Ohio, when he was 15. When he was 15? Yeah, I found all this out way, way later. Did you imagine getting bounced out of a bar by a 15-year-old? think about well listen the rest of this he was raised uh his bad upbringing you know i i think his parents basically i don't know the full story but he didn't grow up with his parents they kind of abandoned him gotcha and uh and i don't want to hurt anybody's feelings that might hear this but i you know that's just the story i got but he didn't really grow up with his folks that much and i think there were reasons not maybe not their fault at all kind of like my mom my mom had to give up the kids, you know, she didn't have any food to feed them.

56:18So anyway, he grew up with this old guy who, an old Marine who had served under Admiral Halsey in World War II and raised, he raised Big Red, you know, like as a Marine from birth. I mean, from the time he was a little kid, he was, he brought him up a Marine. And anyway. How did they get connected? I mean, how did they, how do they run into each other? Do you know? I don't know. I mean... That's interesting. I don't know. But he read, he became my big brother. And Chance, too. Because, you know, we're boots. You know, I mean, you got two new boots walking in. We don't know what we're walking into.

57:02And first time we met him, you know, he says, trying to get us ready for this. He goes, uh, okay. Uh, at first he didn't want to be bothered. Then we go, come on, man. You know, and then he found out we were O331s machine gunners. And he goes, yeah, it perked him up. He goes, oh boy, they're going to be glad to see you, man. And, you know, we'd been told that seven to 10 second crap, you know, and we didn't believe it. Uh, and he, he said, uh, you know, there's, probably, I didn't see, I don't know of any gunners left when I got wounded in way. I don't think there's any machine gunners left. So they were giving the M60 to mortarmen and, you know, bringing up guys, whoever, and handing them the gun and saying, you're the gunner today.

57:52And nobody liked it because it was like a target on your back. But, and let me explain that real quick. You know, we're fighting at war at night all the time. And... And the M60 has a tracer round. Every fifth round is a tracer round. Well, it looks like a laser beam. Of course, I know you know that, but I don't know who's listening to this. But it looks like a laser beam. So you see it in all the movies and you see the lasers. Well, that's a whole bunch of bullets with a tracer round is every fifth round. And so we had to have that to point out the enemy. We had to have that to know where you're shooting.

58:30We used it for calling in airstrikes, you know, with pointers, you know. And forgive me. So for those that don't understand what he's saying, a tracer round is basically, for America, it's red. Was it red back then? Yeah, red. The NBA were green. Yeah. So it's a round that kind of burns red as it's going out of the barrel. And what people do is exactly what Johnny's saying. They will mark. So if a airplane, helicopter, somebody is going to drop some ordnance close to your position, you mark enemy territory where you want them to hit with tracer rounds. Right. And so they see where the tracer rounds are going and then they know exactly what they need to hit.

59:16Yeah. And we used it, you know, when you're calling them phantoms, I mean, there were a few times we had to, phantoms had to drop napalm like really close to us. And if I didn't show them where to drop that, we could be frying like eggs, you know, so. A lot of guys still carry that. I mean, even though we had lasers when I was in, I used to carry an extra mag of all tracers. I mean, in that way, if whatever, if the laser went down or whatever, then I could throw in a mag of tracer and mark target. when I wasn't carrying my 60. Yeah. But. Well, so anyway, big red. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. I was just going to say, use tracers for a lot of things.

1:00:00I mean, I remember, too, they probably don't do this shit anymore either. But, you know, for a dummy like me, I'd put the last five rounds of my magazine as tracer because when you hit that, you know, hey, I'm getting ready to run out of ammo here. Start thinking about a mag change. That's a smart move. Yeah, I know. No, I never did that. And our riflemancy, only the gunner had the tracers, only the M16s. Oh, no shit. Yeah. None of the M16s, you know, they didn't have tracers. Gotcha. So it was all up to me. I mean, it was all up to the machine gun. So anyway, so Big Red's telling us that, you know, because of that tracer round, because it points out who, you know, there's the machine gun.

1:00:44You'd only see the M16s and AK-47s going off like muzzle flashes. It looked like a bunch of lightning bugs in a big shootout. And the only steady target you saw was the NVA 30 Cals. You know, they'd shoot green tracers. So it was like Christmas time out there, you know, green and red crisscrossing each other. And we were the only targets. And every good army's taught the same thing. knock out the machine gun first. Back then, anyway, I assume it's the same. So anyway, machine gunners didn't last long. If you laid on the trigger very long, that's why it was 7 to 10 seconds. If you laid on that trigger very long, it was 20-round burst.

1:01:27We were told, unless you're being overrun, unless there's no choice, 20-round burst. Don't be laying on 100 rounds. You'll never finish that 100 rounds because some rifleman's going to pinpoint where your machine gun is out of the jungle when you're dead. Well, that's the reason. You became such an obvious target in a battle where everybody else has a lightning bug flashing on and off that gunners didn't last long. But you got no choice. You got to use the tracers. It's crucial. And it shows the infantry where to fire, where's the enemy, et cetera. It shows you where your rounds are going. You know, shooting without tracer rounds.

1:02:11You don't know. All your rounds could be running into a tree. I mean, it's really interesting because the M60 machine gun wasn't just a weapon. It was also a communication device. Yeah. You know, because just like all the stuff we were just talking about, you know what I mean? And then you're marking targets for your own guys. I mean, you've really got to be switched on. Well, some gunners, I don't remember doing this, but I know some gunners, they would talk to each other. You'd be mountains apart. Like I'm saying. Yeah, it just, you know, five-round burst, five-round burst, you know, and they'd talk to each other to kind of let each other know where they were out in the big mountains in, like, you know, Thong Duck and places like that.

1:03:02But when you get near the Cambodian border and everything, we're talking big freaking mountains. It wasn't flat jungle. It was straight up, straight down. And so you can't see each other. You don't know where the other platoon might be. But old Red tried to tell us that, no, that wasn't bull crap. You know, seven to 10 seconds is about right. And he goes, if you lay on that trigger more than 20-round burst, yeah, you're going to be dead. And he said, as a matter of fact, as far as he knew, there were no gunners left in the 5th Marines. They had all been killed and wounded. I mean, what's that like for you to hear that shit?

1:03:46You're brand new, hadn't fired a round yet, and this is your welcome brief. It's real now. You know, I mean, all of a sudden, you know, where it was a big adventure, and I'm not all that scared. I'm just kind of excited. it dawns on you, man, yeah, I might not be alive next week. This is going to end badly. But yeah, you got no choice. You're there. You got no choice. You got to do it. And so that woke me and Chan up. But he was great about everything. Big Red was like a big brother. I mean, he was like, bend those pins on your frags. We're right off the plane from Da Nang, and they've given us all this equipment we got grenades where the pins aren't even bent and we got and and we had at that moment we had m16s and uh you know he's telling us what to do with the m16s you know uh you know we had 20 rounds in each clip well you know you only want 18 in because the old m16s the it would it would weaken and uh i mean that the magazine would weaken if you've kept it filled with 20 around max all the time, and it's going to jam because as the spring gets weak, it's not going to feed the bullet.

1:04:59You know that. I hate to talk to you about this stuff because I know you - Oh, equipment has changed over the years too, so. Yeah. Well, true. Yeah, no kidding. But anyway, yeah, you had to knock a couple of rounds. So, he took our magazines, took two rounds out of every magazine and threw it back at us. And then And he told us about taking all your anything of value that you're going to try to hang on to that's paper, you know, anything, IDs, your MPC, your military payment certificate, your money, anything you got that you want to try to keep dry. And, of course, I have my little Gideon Bible, and I want to keep it dry.

1:05:41And you get hold of plastic bags. There were a lot of them around. You get them from the corpsman a lot of times. And so you'd wrap everything in plastic. And, you know, and now like my little Bible, it was wrapped in plastic. So it was real thick, but it was in my pocket. And it was, I had a flak jacket on, you know. But we had the old Korean era flak jackets. So, you know, they're panels. Bullets could go between the panels. You know, shrapnel could go between the panels. But, yeah, we had Korean era flak jackets. Now the Army got the nice new ones. And of course, it was every Marine's duty to steal anything from the Army.

1:06:19So we were always trying to steal from the Army. If we went into Fuguay, as soon as the Army heard those Marines are coming in and out of the jungle, they'd try to hide all their equipment because we were going to steal. We stole everything. But they had all the good stuff. You know, like our M79 guy, our blooper man, the Army had these blooper rounds that are nothing today. I mean, I know they got everything today. But back then, the blooper round was still, it was pretty new. All we had was EHE's, the concussion, little grenade. Cold necks. Yeah. But the Army had, they had the buckshot blooper rounds, and they had blooper rounds that would be like a flare.

1:07:03And I forgot what else they had. But so our blooper man, who was insane, called him Sam the Blooper Man in Guns Up. And he's a big favorite of all the fans of that book. But Sam was a character. He was a total character. But God, he was good with that. M79. Real quick, I'm just curious. Would you read your Bible out there? Or was it with you to— Say that again. Did you read your Bible out there? Would you unwrap it and read it? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I started reading it a lot. And Chan, I had Chan there with me. And Chan started, like I said, he had a minor in ministry. So I had a Bible teacher with me.

1:07:52And that's why he played such a crucial role. That's why he's the main character in Guns Up. That's interesting, too, that he came from China as a Christian. Yeah, I know. It's fascinating. I know. And the fact that he should have been an officer. He should have been a doctor. And his story, you know, at the end, I mean, you know, he got blown up with me. He got shot up pretty good, too. And he had to have like 17 surgeries on his arm. And so he couldn't tie surgical knots. So at the, you know, and he went through a serious depression for a while. He came home and the girl he thought he was going to marry, that kind of ended.

1:08:37that had gone away while he was in NOM, I think. And I don't know all the details, but that and now his dream of being an open-heart surgeon, that was gone. But Chan went on to become the leading cardiovascular perfusion expert in the world. Are you serious? Yeah. Yeah, a dumb machine gunner. Yeah, I know. And I had to go through a war with this guy and his giant vocabulary. He was mad, Nick. It was pretty funny. You know what I mean? He would do things because he was so smart. And I was, I barely got out of St. Pete High. And so I'd be eating C-rations and he'd go, you know, Clark, those C-rations, they were put in that can when you weren't even a glint in your father's eye.

1:09:33And I'd go, what? And I'd look at the date, to try to find the date. God, yeah, 1943. Oh, man. Damn. Yeah, I know. Anyway, he could be a pain in the butt, but we're still together. Yeah. Yeah, we're still together. He came to see me in Florida not long ago. His wife had recently died, and yeah, I came down and took him out on my pontoon boat, drank some wine. Nice. You guys are still buddies. Yeah, yeah. Where's he at? He's in New York, in Oyster Bay, New York. Right on. Yeah. Right on. He's got a place on Nantucket that we've been to once. Nice. Yeah, it's pretty sweet. So where do you guys go from here?

1:10:28Vietnam. Oh. Well, in Vietnam, we went... Let me take a Troy Bridge. It got overrun. Hold on. What was Troy Bridge? Why was it so important? What were you doing there? You know, later, you look at... There's pictures in that book, and there's pictures of Troy Bridge. As a matter of fact, I'll show you real quick. Oh, wow, it doesn't show the bridge here. But that's me on Troy Bridge.

1:11:00Look at that. Yeah. Green Corp. Green Corp. Grading picture right there. Yeah.

1:11:09But Troy Bridge was, it was like an old, I think it had originally been an old train trestle bridge, you know, but it was on Highway 1. And it had, like I said, this part of the story really in Guns, this is about Big Red. Big Red was a hero on Troy Bridge. You know, I didn't do much. I didn't do, you know. What were we, what was, why were we there? What did we want to do? Okay, it was on Highway 1, which is the most important route in Vietnam. All of our supplies went up and down Highway 1. So the NBA, Viet Cong, they're always trying to do something to stop Highway 1. And blow up the bridges along Highway 1 was a big deal.

1:11:52And so bridge duty, though, was a good deal for Marines because it meant you weren't out in the bush. You got to come in. When you're on bridge duty, there would usually be a little vile there. You might even be able to eat something besides sea rations. And I did that a couple of times. But, you know, there was always critters going through your rice. You'd be eating a burrow through your rice and you close your eyes and keep eating. But, yeah, so anyway, it was an important bridge. It got hit with, they said, over 400 NVA, and they, sappers finally, you know, got onto the bridge, and suicide guys.

1:12:39They had all kinds of satchel charges tied to them and TNT tied to them, and they were all doped up. You know, you'd shoot them, and they didn't even know they were dead. They kept coming sometimes. But they got out to the center of the bridge, and they had to break through the wire on the other side, kill the machine gun team on the other side, but got onto the bridge, hugged onto it, and the bridge blew up and came down on top of another machine gun team that was on the center span. It was a big cement thing in the river that held up the center of the bridge. and uh anyway those guys didn't die right away and uh during the battle during this whole thing red didn't stop firing the whole time i mean he he he just he just fired i don't know how many rounds you know just and that was that meant everybody knew where he was and everybody tried to knock out red in that that gun bunker uh but red was red was a hero he should have gotten and crap.

1:13:42You know, he could have been put up for the Medal of Honor there, but he didn't get anything. Zippity-doo-dah. 30 years later, when people read what he did in Guns Up, a congressman and a couple of good friends of his that went to high school with him caused a stir, and they finally gave him the Bronze Star. and, you know, he'd been dead for 30 years. He was killed beside me on May 20th, 68. But anyway, Red was a hero, and what he did that night was amazing. And a couple other guys were heroes that night. We had two guys, Tedesco and Rosalie, both corporals. And Rosalie had been put up in Way City.

1:14:30He had been put up for promotion to lieutenant at Battlefield Commission, and he turned it down. He wanted to go home. And so he turned it down. And they came out to say goodbye to the platoon. So they hopped a ride from Fubai, which is between Way City, Fubai, and Troy Bridge. They hopped a ride from Fubai, which is a great big Army base. And that's where the 5th Marines were, too, whenever we went back. But we never went back. But they hopped a ride down Highway 1 to come out to Troy Bridge and say bye to everybody. Well, they were there. They picked that time to say bye to everybody, and the bridge got overrun, blown up.

1:15:12Machine gun team was out there screaming. They hadn't died yet, and they were in a lot of agony. And Tedesco and Rosalie tried to get out to those guys and got killed. And they were due for a flight back to the world the next day. They should have been in Da Nang. And they came out there to say bye, and they died heroes. Yeah, they didn't get anything either, as far as I know. Yeah. But, yes, a lot of brave guys. What did you see there? I mean, this is your first shoot. I was just an A-gunner, just feeding the gun. I didn't do anything. I didn't do anything. Still significant. I mean, you've never seen combat in your life.

1:15:55I saw more later after the bridge had been blown up. The next day, we started sending out three-man killer teams. So I volunteered for these three-man killer teams. And those were pretty fascinating, these three-man killer teams.

1:16:19I keep wanting to call them, you know, we called them gooks. All right? We called them gooks. I think everybody knows that. Okay. Anybody that's watched any Vietnam movie ever? Well, it came from Korea, you know, that term. I mean, you probably already know that. But, yeah, it was Marines in Korea picked that term up, and that's what the Koreans called peasants. And so we picked that term up from the Koreans, brought it to Vietnam, and they were gooks. But anyway, so the NBA would send out killer squads. They'd send out a squad of guys to go into a ville, and if the ville wasn't supplying the communists with rice and supplies, they'd find out who the village chief was and his family.

1:17:08And they would come into that ville, and they'd get the—like, let's say he had a couple of kids. They'd get one of his kids, cut off their head, put it on a bamboo stake in front of the—right in the center of the ville, and then leave. and that was their either start supplying the commies or, you know, we'll be back. And they would. They'd come back and they'd kill a member of his family and finally him or his wife or whoever until that village started supplying them with rice and whatever they needed. Well, our job on these three-man killer teams was to—because if you went out there with a platoon, you couldn't get them.

1:17:51You know, you made too much noise. You know, it's jungle and rice paddies. And you had to be quiet. And so I would go out on these three-man killer teams. And that's before I started carrying the 60. So I didn't carry, I mean, I was just an A gunner. I didn't carry the 60 until Red got killed. Gotcha. Once in a while, I would. But a lot of times I didn't carry it until Red got killed, unless he'd be gone for this or that, you know. And then I was a 60 guy. But, uh, so these three man killer teams, you'd ambush these guys. You try to pick them off when they came into a ville. And, uh, one of these, uh, one of these things, I mean, we were successful a couple of times.

1:18:34And, uh, but one of these, one of these three man killer teams I was on, I was out there with this, uh, this funny black guy. I got him, I called him Jackson in the book, but I didn't remember his real name, but he was, uh, he always smiled. You know, he was big white teeth boy. He smiled. Don't smile out in the bush. You'll get us all killed. So we were laying in wait. And right at the edge of a... It wasn't really a rice paddy. There were rice paddies out there. But this was kind of just a lot of brush. And then there was a real heavy jungle over maybe 75 yards away. And we were behind a big bush.

1:19:14And we see some guys come out of the jungle. Just two or three of them. And we thought, the killer team. So we get set up. We're going to blow these guys away. And halfway across this open area, a platoon comes out. These guys are just a point, two or three guys. They were just point men. And pretty soon, they're getting closer and closer. And we're going, I don't know if we should open fire on a whole platoon. There are only three of us. And so pretty soon, it's not a platoon. It was over 200 NVA came out, and they walked so close to us. They walked. I mean, they could have stepped on us because we couldn't do anything.

1:20:04We couldn't run. We couldn't move. We just had to stay still. And we're getting eat up by ants and mosquitoes. You know, the mosquitoes in Nama were, God, the worst. But we're just getting sucked dry with mosquitoes and getting eaten up. and you can't move. And I tell that story sometimes to other Marines to tell them, this is why parasailing was so horrible. All those stories of a Marine slapping a sand flea on PI back when I went in, if you did that, you were going to be tortured. I mean, they tortured guys. They'd make you dig a six-foot grave with an e-tool. Then they'd make you have an official burial for the sand flea and then they they'd say what sex was that sand flea you killed and you'd say it was a guy all right this is a female dig another body dig another grave i mean they were they torture you but you were scared to death yeah to to move you know like i was scared to death to even look it worked they had my attention and uh buddy it worked i got to nom you know i had discipline, and all of us did.

1:21:11We laid there. It wouldn't matter. I had snakes crawling over me. I wasn't going to move. If you moved, you're going to get everybody killed. So, you know, you just didn't make that mistake. We were well-trained. It was torture training, but it worked. And this night, 200 NVA went plodding by our noses. I mean, we could smell the garlic. Like, I saw their little Ho Chi Mins. That's these sandals they wore. They made them out of tires, American tires. But they'd walk by their little Ho Chi Mins flopping right by our nose. And we're just going, it was never going to end. 200 guys, and they're kind of spread out.

1:21:50It went on forever. I mean, it felt like forever. When they finally got away from us, I had, no, it wasn't me. One of the guys, there was three of us. I don't know which one it was, but somebody had pulled a frag. He pulled the pin on the frag, thinking, you know, that we've got to do something to get out of here, and squeezed it that whole time. The spoon in, squeezed it. And he was so relieved when these guys went into the jungle. He went, oh, God, and let go of the spoon. And now we've got a live frag. And he goes, frag. And we all dive flat down. Boom! A grenade goes off right by us. Nobody got hurt.

1:22:36We didn't catch any shrapnel or anything. And now we're scared to death. And another guy, then Jackson says, oh, I peed my pants. I peed all over myself. Holy shit. And I did too. I was peeing. I'm going, oh my God, we're the worst ambush in history. So we got out of there. But that's what three-man killer teams could be like. You didn't know what you were going to run into. I mean, you think you're going to knock off the door? They didn't come back for you guys? Huh? They didn't come back for you guys? Oh, no, because soon we heard artillery going off out of Fubai. Now, I don't know if somebody else spotted all these guys, and they may have, but somebody started calling in artillery.

1:23:17It wasn't us. I mean, if I called in artillery, I'd kill the wrong team. I couldn't call in artillery. You wouldn't want me to. I didn't even have a sense of direction. If I'd ever walked Point, we'd still be there. So what were some of the success stories with the three-man killer teams? Oh, well, there were times where, you know, they'd only send in a squad. And you would, yeah, we had a couple of times where, you know, we killed three or four of them and the rest would get away. But what would happen, they'd stop going back to the Ville because, you know, they'd leave the Ville alone. And now you were heroes to the village.

1:23:58And now they're on the Allied side. I mean, they're on the American side again. You know, it's, yeah, it's, yeah. Do you want to talk about the first time he killed somebody? Yeah.

1:24:17I want to talk about, yeah, it was an ambush. And I killed this NBA officer. And I guess, you know, it stays with me. Yeah, you know, the shooting was at night. I killed him at night. But we stayed in that position all night. And we stayed there longer than we usually would. We'd count the bodies, you know, and stuff like that. And so I don't know why we'd stay there. Nobody told me I was a PFC, but we hung around a little longer. And so I had time to, you know, go up on the trail where I'd kill this guy and, you know, and look at him. And it's just always stayed with me. Yeah. I mean, I remember a smell.

1:25:14It was a hot, sunny day, but it wasn't, you know, it wasn't 110 degree hot, but it was hot and sunny. and it was grass. It was like tall grass. It was flowing because there'd be some breeze. And here's this guy laying on this trail with a breeze going by. And yeah, I think of that a lot. I think of that and I think of this woman. I guess she was an NVA nurse. I never knew. But there's a chapter in the book about that. It was called Mercy Killing. And that one really stays with me. And then I was in a little bit of hand-to-hand combat.

1:26:11I'll tell you, you want me to tell you? I'm going to tell you that one because it's really unusual. Not everybody has this war story. we'd been going for about, if I remember correctly, it had been about 17 straight days. And you'd be out that long often, but you didn't make contact with the enemy all the time. But this time, we'd made contact with the NVA off and on for 17 days. We kept running into them. I mean, it would short ambushes, big firefights, and it's over. But then the next day, bam, you're running into them again. And we were in a real hot area. It was up near the Cambodian border, if I remember, Laotian border.

1:26:57But we were in the mountains at that point. Or at one point, we started to flat land, be in the mountains. I never knew what was going on. But I was going around, we were humping all night. And we'd been going for 17 days and hadn't had hardly any sleep. You'd set up an ambush. I mean, you'd march, you'd hump all day, you know, stop maybe for some chow, but you were just humping up and down hills all day. That's how I lost 40 pounds the first time I got hit. But you'd just hump all day. And then at night, set up ambushes all night. So we set up this 17th day of contact with the enemy. We're going around the side of a mountain.

1:27:42And it wasn't much of a trail, but a tiny, somewhat of a trail around the side of this mountain. And it was way up in the mountains. And our lieutenant was as dead as we were. And we had a great lieutenant. He didn't make mistakes. He'd call in artillery on a dime, you know. You know, Annapolis grad, smart guy. His name, he went on to, his name was Nelson, Lieutenant Nelson. He went on to become the head of the FBI in all of the Northeast after the war. Wow. Yeah. He was a hero at that Ruby Ridge thing. He was one of the FBI guys at Ruby Ridge. I think it was called Ruby Ridge. Anyway, but he was a great lieutenant.

1:28:24We were blessed to have that guy. But even he was, you know, we don't know where you're sleepwalking. You reach a point where you just sleepwalking. I got nothing left. Nobody did. So we sat up on the side of this mountain, and he put a couple of guys above this tiny trail, and I should have been ambushing the trail. They should have had the 60 on the trail, aiming down the trail one way or the other, and we always did. This night, I believe everybody was just so exhausted. We didn't know what we were doing. And they sent me up on the bottom half of this trail, pointing downhill. hill. Well, I mean, it's possible that maybe he, maybe he had a reason to think they were going to come up the hill at us.

1:29:07But normally I'd be ambushing that trail. So I, me and Tanner, we're trying to stay awake and we're, I got poncho over the mosquitoes are eating us alive. And so you couldn't use that poncho, you know, any kind of rain or anything, because it makes noise, but it wasn't raining, trying to heat, trying to fight off the mosquitoes and I'm hanging over the 60 and I got it here. So if I fall forward asleep, it wakes me up. I hit it. And it was Chan's turn to take an hour sleep. Sometimes we do two hour shifts. But I think here we were only doing one hour because you couldn't stay awake more than an hour.

1:29:47But anyway, Chan's, it's his turn to sleep. And I'm hanging over this thing and I'm fading out. I'm going out. And believe me, you didn't do that. We were scared to death to fall asleep on lines. We had an Indian named Swift Eagle. It's his real name. He's a funny story, too. His real name was Swift Eagle. I had to see it on his paycheck to believe it. I think he had another name, too, but Swift Eagle. So Swift Eagle, he'd been in a couple of tours, maybe more. And he would sneak around. and if anybody fell asleep on lines, this frickin' Indian would sneak up, and he'd take a K-bar, and he'd reach around behind you and nick you, just nick you with a K-bar.

1:30:35Well, in Nam, that nick's gonna get infected within a few hours. Everything got infected in Vietnam. So you learned real quick, don't fall asleep. I don't care how tired you are. So I was scared to fall asleep. He had already nicked me once, and I almost shot him. I thought it was, I didn't know who it was. But anyway, that guy was a hero. He got hit seven times. Jeez. Yeah. And he kept, he returned down to Purple Hearts because he didn't want to go home. The Marines were in NOM. The Marines were his family. Why would I want to go anywhere else? My family's here. He would say stuff like that. I mean, how do you not love these guys?

1:31:17So I was going to fall asleep if I could help it because Swift Eagle would make sure I woke up. But this night, I'm dozing, and I'm dreaming, and I'm dreaming back home. You know, we call them world dreams, back in the world. And I'm back in the world, I'm cruising Steak and Shake, and I've got my 57 vet, and I'm cruising on Steak and Shake, and I'm trying to pick up girls, and I'm just, I'm having a great time in my dream, you know, it's your out and no. And my favorite band, this is a true story, My favorite band was the Young Rascals. I loved the Young Rascals. Well, all of a sudden, in the middle of frickin' Cambodian Mountains, Laotian Mountains, wherever the heck I was, I start hearing the Young Rascals singing in the midnight hour.

1:32:09And I'm thinking, oh my god, this is the best dream I've had since I came to NAMM. I'm even hearing the music. And I mean, that's where my mind was, you know, get it. That's where my mind was, man. And then, bam, bam. And it wasn't M16 rounds. It was M14 rounds. And they're slapping through my poncho. And the plastic poncho, the old, we had Korean-era ponchos, okay? They were plastic stuff. They would rip through that. And it was cut in my face from the rounds. Not the bullets, but the plastic was cut in my face. Bam, bam, and it's going through my poncho. Of course, I was frozen, but I was awake.

1:32:55And I'm still hearing the music. I'm still hearing the young rascals in the midnight hour. And all of a sudden, there's a guy on top of me. And it was an NVA. And I have too late to get to the machine gun, too late to get to the.45. I got to the K-Bar. I got to my K bar and we rolled down the hill. And yeah, so later on, I found out, I found out that we found the body, of course, and he had a boom box. This guy had a big, shiny boom box. And the North Vietnamese loved American music too. and they would tune in to Armed Forces Radio Network. Well, every night at midnight, Armed Forces Radio Network played in the midnight hour by the Young Rascals.

1:33:52Of course, I knew none of this. I hadn't heard music since I left America. We sure didn't listen to Armed Forces Radio Network. But they did. He had a boombox. He'd been listening to Armed Forces Radio Network. And evidently, it had caught on a twig going through the bush and turned on his boombox. Holy shit. Well, above him was this kid named Alabama. Actually, we called him Sugar Bear, but he was from Alabama. Sugar Bear was—Lieutenant made sure one guy in every squad or so had an M14 because the M16s were crap. They were plastic. We called them Matty Mattels. They would jam in the heat and the rice paddies.

1:34:32And, you know, there were episodes like Liberty Bridge. I had heard the numbers, if I'm wrong, forgive me, but I was told 48 Marines died there. And mostly because all their M16s, their Matty Mattel's, jammed. And they ended up using them just as clubs, just, you know, hand to hand. But anyway, so we didn't trust that Matty Mattel. It was plastic. You know, we trained through all our training with an M14. And at the last minute, they throw us these little plastic guns and say, go to Vietnam with this. So one guy would carry an M14 in case these M16s jammed. Well, you know the sound. You know. You can tell the sound.

1:35:15You know more about guns than I do. And so we could hear that. I knew it was an M14 firing through my poncho. And sure enough, it was Sugar Bear. It was the only one who woke up quickly as these guys went down through this trail beneath him. And he had shot the guy, but he wasn't dead. And he rolled down the hill on top of me, and then it was me and him. And so, flash forward about 10 years ago, I go to a big party in St. Pete given by a doctor, and he was wealthy. And he would have these big, huge parties once a year, and he would hire old rock and roll bands. He hired the Young Rascals, Felix Cavallari and the Young Rascals, to this party.

1:36:07I ended up meeting Felix Cavallari, and I told him this story. Yeah, I knifed a guy to your song in the midnight hour. And he goes, oh, God. He goes, I got to hear this story. So we spent We spent the night me telling him this whole story, but it was his favorite story about that song from that point on. We became kind of friends, but it's a true story in the midnight hour. So to this day, every time I hear that song, I mean, I'm back in nom, man. My mind is back in nom. I'm an old man, but some things just don't change. Wow. Wow. Can I ask a question? Yeah. Why does the officer bother you? Why does the what bother you?

1:37:01The officer. The officer? Oh, no, I... Lieutenant. Did you say... My lieutenant? Oh, I like that guy. No, I'm not talking about him. The officer that you killed, that you went to go see in the grass.

1:37:20forgive me i i've lost i'm i'm not sure tell me again let me we had just spoken about it and i had asked if you want to talk about the first time you had to kill somebody oh and you'd brought up an officer yeah he was uh i don't know i guess i remembered i remembered it was it was an officer you know we didn't i mean you weren't killing officers every day you know Usually they were just peons like me. Yeah, I think because I stayed around the body so long. You know, I think because I had to stay around that body longer than normal. And yeah, I think that's why. You know, I don't know. Maybe just because it was the first time I saw.

1:38:12I mean, I had been in firefights. But you know, you go out, you find some dead bodies, you don't know if you got them. I mean, this one I knew. Hit different. Yeah, it's different. It's different. We had some crazy episodes. I shot a girl up that... Once again, we just had about 20 guys, about 20 Marines, and I don't know what we were doing, but we were walking way up in the mountains and the word's coming back that we're near the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Well, you know, I'm hoping the rest of the battalion's out there somewhere because 20 guys, you know, there's a lot of gooks on the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

1:39:01So, but we came across, we're going up the steep hill and we came across this guy who'd been left behind, an NVA soldier. Well, they ran into him up at the front of the line first. First, our point man comes across him and butt strokes the guy and kicks him back. And now, all the way down the hill, Marines are kicking this guy back down the hill. And he comes to me. So I didn't hit him. He was already a mess. But he had been left behind. He had been wounded. His foot was all infected. And I don't know if it was from a wound or the jungle, you know, and they had left this guy behind, but we knew they were going to come back for him.

1:39:47So we, you know, we set up an ambush and it was, I mean, I remember this, honestly, you know, if I was a good painter, I could paint this. But it was all, it was steep hills. And then there was a little flat area and a little mountain, a stream going through this little flat grassy area. and heavy woods everywhere else. But there's one little open area in this stream, and the trail went through this right along that side, beside that stream. And we sat up on a hill beside it. We got up on this hill, had an open fire down on this thing. And I sat the gun up looking down on this trail waiting for these guys to come back to get that guy.

1:40:33And sure enough, these little pith helmets, you know, start diddy bopping out of the out of the bush and we'd get them in the open and then and we we just open fire blew them away you know I hit I hit a few of them with the 60 and you know 60 does it'll put a good-sized hole in people you know I mean it it made a mess out of people a lot of times but a lot of times you know people live through incredible crap I know you're one of your guys was show me a guy over there that was shot 20 times or something and lived. You never know. So during this battle, they were like water bucks. I mean, really, they were like roaches.

1:41:18They weren't going to stay around and fight. They never did. And they're gone into the woods. But one by one, they keep coming out of the woods back into the open. They're all trying to get to this one guy. It's a true story. They're trying to get to this. We realized it was this one gook laying half in the stream and half out that I had hit. And they're all trying to get to this guy. And every time they come out in the open, we'd kill them. And finally, it's over. And we go down to check the bodies. And we're kicking them over. And we kick over this one in this laying in the stream, half in the stream, half out, and kicked the pith helmet off.

1:42:09And it's a girl. It's a beautiful girl. She's a beautiful Asian girl, beautiful. Long hair, falls out. And she's pretty, a pretty girl, you know? And we haven't seen a girl in a long time. So, and she's alive. She's alive? She's alive, and her eyes pop open, and she starts saying all that. Well, Chan had been sent to, because I told you he was brilliant. They sent Chan to, I think it was called S5 school or something like that, S2 school, some S school to learn the Vietnamese language so he could help interpret when we got prisoners and stuff. So Chan knew a little bit of Vietnamese now. He had learned enough to figure out some stuff.

1:42:57And so she keeps saying the same thing over and over. And so we go, hey, Chan, what's she saying, man? And he goes, she's saying, Marines, Marines, Marines, you're evil. Marines are devils. Marines are devils or something like that. Something like that they'd been told about Marines. And the neat part of the story is after that shootout was done, we're real close to the Ho Chi Minh Trail that everybody said so. And I already, I mean, you don't have to, you know when you're an engine country. I mean, nobody has to tell you this is a real dangerous zone here. I mean, you'd see where they'd worn down a path where they were even pulling, you know, box carts full of crap, you know, and, you know, bicycles loaded down with ammo.

1:43:51And, you know, you could tell. And we were in a place where there are a lot of NVA. And we only got 20 Marines, if that many. We called in a chopper to come get this wounded girl. Now, there's huge trees, this one little open area where we got them. But all around, it's these giant trees. And here comes Jolly Green that usually would carry 105s, you know, one of those great big choppers. Usually you don't use that for medevacs, but I don't know if that's all they could get. I don't know if it's because of where we were, but Jolly Green shows up and starts lowering the basket to get this girl out.

1:44:39And we rescued this girl, and she's cursing us and doing everything, you know, saying stuff about us the whole time. the corpsman did what he could to patch her up. We got her in this basket, and that chopper almost crashed. It's hitting the treetops and everything, trying to hover and get this thing out. We could hear artillery. You know, you could hear, I mean, we know we're in a bad zone. I always, I think of that, and I, you know, you come home, and the Americans are calling you a a bunch of baby killers and this and that. And you go, if only they knew. We risked all those Marines to get this wounded girl out of there.

1:45:25We risked everybody's life. And I know it. And the guys with me knew it. But, and that chopper pilot, those guys, crap, they're hitting tree limbs and stuff. I mean, they could have gone down at any time. And they didn't take off. And they got that girl out of there. And I don't know if she ever lived, but. Wow. We tried. And, but I always remember that. And I always, when we talk about girls in infantry units, I'm really against girls in infantry units. I won't change. I know I'm old. Maybe that's it. But I'm against that. And I watched, that wasn't the only time. I saw it another time where there was an NVA nurse with, and this girl is probably an NVA nurse.

1:46:10She didn't even have a weapon, I don't think. But we ran into a bunker and it was an NVA. We just saw three gooks go in this bunker. And of course, we're open fire. We move up on it, start throwing frags in. And frags are coming back out. They're throwing them back out before they go off. But finally, we hold the pen longer, flip it in. And anyway, finally, there's no way they could be alive. And so we sent a guy in to pull out the bodies. And he didn't come back out. The smoke from the grenades, it got him. And so we dragged him out. And sent in another guy. And he starts dragging out the bodies.

1:47:03Well, he only dragged out two bodies. We saw three go in there. and they they the uh eventually we know there's a third one in there we don't know it you know and we couldn't find it and uh finally uh i think it was corporal uh houston corporal houston it was another brave guy i tell you i could tell you a story about him too but houston goes in and there were wood planks inside this bunker and they had taken It was a girl, and they buried her under the wood plank so she could survive the grenades. And he found her. He drags her out. Well, she didn't really survive, and her skull is cracked open.

1:47:45And we're in combat. We can't get anybody to—it's way too late to try to save her. And so—and you can literally see her brains, you know, from the concussion. Her skull's cracked open. and we can see the brains. I mean, no way she was going to live. And that's why I titled it Mercy Killing. But it doesn't matter. You never forget that. You never. So somebody said, hey, come on, put her out of her misery, man. You know, because she's gasping and everything, you know, but she's still gasping. And so a guy shot her with an M16, a round or two, and we were ready to walk away. but we got to search the bodies for papers.

1:48:37So she didn't die. And then somebody hit me. And this is where I, this is where, like, knife in the guy. Some of this, I think my mind tries to protect me. We don't have to go here if you don't. Yeah, you know. And so, yeah, I remember somebody hit me and saying, shoot her with a.45. You know, shoot her with a.45. You know, it's Maddie Mattel's, shoot her with a.45. And, of course, machine gunner, I carried a.45. And, yeah, so you live with that. You know, I don't forget that one. And 30 years later at the Big Red Memorial thing, when they were giving him the Bronze Star 30 years late and all that stuff, a bunch of the guys showed up.

1:49:30And one of the guys was Sergeant—oh, crap. He's in that—he's in Guns Up. There's a picture of him holding the flag from Way City. It'll come to me. But anyway, the Sarge was there, and he pulls out at this reunion. You know, we're having a few beers in a hotel, kind of trying to come down from a pretty emotional time. And I had to give a speech at Red's High School and try to tell what he was, who he was. These kids knew nothing. But anyway, so now we're trying to come down, drink a couple of beers, and see if we can chill. and Stacy Watson, Sergeant Stacy Watson. So Sergeant Stacy Watson goes, he opens, he had, he had a little briefcase or something with him.

1:50:22And he goes, do you remember this gunner? And he, he's got that girl. He had searched, he had to search the bodies that day. He had her full ID. And I mean, it's a full ID and he made copies of it. I've still got it. I name, where she was born, I mean, all these details, a full ID on this girl that we had to kill. And boy, that one sent me real in after that. And real close to that is when they found out all my records had been blown up. A 122 Chinese rocket had hit Anwar Combat Base. And for those who don't know, a 122 is about the size of a telephone pole. I mean, it's a big old freaking rocket.

1:51:23And it hit the record shack at Anwar and killed all the guys in the record shack and blew up all our records. Well, there had been a shootout in a graveyard. or, and, uh...

1:51:42It's okay, Joey.

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1:53:58See you later. What do you think, Sean? We're high.

1:54:19Anyway, it's been a pretty big shootout in this graveyard, and I do want to tell you about that because it's another incredible hero. I mean, I think he was probably the bravest guy I knew through the whole war. And I knew some guys that you could make a movie about. I mean, these guys were, some of them were like, I mean, Swift Eagle. We had a gunnery, Sergeant Gunnery at McDermott. He'd been put up for the Medal of Honor. I mean, and he didn't get it because he hit, he punched an army officer and he knocked it down to a silver star. Anyway, I mean, these guys were warriors, man. And, I mean, way—they all did way more than me.

1:55:00But anyway, I—this graveyard incident, they found out I'd been put up for the Silver Star. They told me that night, you know, they'd seen something I did. And they wanted to put me up for the Silver Star. And I—you know, 30 years passed. War's way over. But I always wondered about it. You know, was I ever—was that true? You know, because all the guys came up and told me. And so 30 years later, they find out all the records have been blown up. And so, you know, I looked up the old gunnery sergeant, and I didn't know him. It was Gunnery Sergeant Portner. And he was the—I knew my company gunny was McDermott.

1:55:43So I thought it was him who put me up for it, but it wasn't him. But it was Portner. So I got a hold of Portner. He lived in Virginia. And I said, Donnie, I don't know if you're going to remember this. And I said, but I told him the story. I said, do you remember the graveyard that night when the Undamstock got killed and Sonny got hit 11 times? I said, do you remember? And he goes, I remember every minute of it. And I said, well, look, the guys told me you put me up for a solar star. And he said, I did. He said, well, OK. Well, I never got it. And I just always wondered, was it true? And I thought it'd end there.

1:56:24But when he found out the records had been blown up, and listen to how they found out. Pat McDermott, the guy who saw me in Jacksonville doing the one-hard push-ups and the backflips to get in the Marine Corps, he got shot that night in the graveyard. And so he wanted a Purple Heart. And he still lived in Jacksonville, and he wanted a Purple Heart license tag. Because they'd just come out with the Purple Heart license tags. And he wanted one. And they wouldn't give him one. And he goes, and he goes, he shows him the bullet hole. And he goes, it's not on your DD-214. Well, nothing was on our DD-214s.

1:57:00Crap, I didn't have anything. I had good conduct metal, I think. I had nothing. So he says, I got shot. And then when he died, August 3rd, 68, I can tell you. Well, he started the investigation that found out that all the records had been blown up. Oh, shit. And because of Pat McDermott wanting that Purple Heart license tag, he's the reason I got the Silver Star. You know, because McDermott, I mean, Gunny Portner found out about it. And one thing led to another. Gunny Portner wrote the whole thing up again. Other guys, Doc Turley wrote up a thing about it, and others did. They're all dead now.

1:57:46But Portner died two weeks after rewriting me up for that. And so I got it. But that particular night, that bringing back that, getting the Silver Star, you know, all that stuff comes back on you. And then I go to—that's when Big Red gave him the Bronze Star. He deserved a Silver Star way more than Johnny Clark. He deserved a frickin' Medal of Honor. But anyway, all that happened, and we went to that reunion, and that's when he shows me the picture of this girl we had to kill and kind of sent me over the edge. Why do you think he showed you that? uh we we all been having we had a few beers and you know and i know some guys handle it better than others and and he was his job to search all the bodies and that that's how he had the flag that we were the fifth marines raised over the citadel at way city he still had it i got a picture of it and guns up him with the flag but uh yeah i don't he didn't mean anything bad by it i I'm not mad at him about it, but it, yeah.

1:59:00I kind of, you know, I was diagnosed with severe combat fatigue. And that was a rough ride sometimes. You know, all my hair fell out in one night. And up to that point, they had diagnosed it with mild combat fatigue. And then I went to the VA and I said, hey, did I catch something in Nambit? All my hair fell out in one night. And, you know, my wife's screaming and I'm freaking out. and I said, oh, you've been misdiagnosed. You have severe combat fatigue. So, yeah, it's been a bumpy ride at times. You know, it really has. All your hair fell out in one night. Pardon? All of your hair fell out in one night.

1:59:43Yeah. I've never heard of that. Well, it grew back. You know, it was a shock. I mean, I don't know. I don't know why your body does that. But, yeah, I'd gone through... I couldn't get out of Nam. You know, it's when I first came home. I was like 20, 21 years old. Yeah, maybe 21. I don't even know if I was 21, but around there.

2:00:06And here's what made it really devastating to me at the time. I mean, it crushed me. That was when, do you remember the musical Hair? Mm-mm. No? Hair, beautiful hair. Anyway, long hair became this incredible rage in America in the early 70s. And there was this giant musical called Hair. And I think they made a movie out of it, even. But anyway, hair became this—everybody had long hair. And I didn't like that. You know, I'm a long hair guy. But everybody had long hair. And so if you didn't—I already came home looking—you know, here I've got a Marine Corps haircut. So I already looked out of it, and you don't fit in with all your friends because now you're 20 years older than them, even if you're the same age.

2:00:56And so you don't fit in anyway. But now all your hair falling out one night, and it was shocking. You know, it really threw me over the edge there for a while. But the VA, you know, oh, yeah, they diagnosed severe combat fatigue. But anyway, enough of that. But all that came about from Pat McCreary wanting a Purple Heart license tag, the Silver Star and all that stuff. It all came out of that. But that night that I got that Silver Star license tag, that I got the Silver Star, it was that night in the graveyard. I wrote that story because of a guy, a kid named Undamstock. We had a kid with us that was so terrified, Sean.

2:01:46He, we don't know, nobody could figure out how he got through boot camp. I didn't exaggerate boot camp. It was hell. So we didn't know how he got through boot camp. But somehow he got through. He was a Hollywood Marine. I know that boot camp's easier than Parris Island. So he got through Hollywood Marine, but he got through boot camp. He was so scared that if we go on an ambush, you could hear his teeth chattering. and you can't shake. He would shake and he would make noise and he would urinate on himself all the time. Now, we all smelled horrible anyway, but that makes it even worse when you're in a hole with a guy and he's peeing all the time, all over you.

2:02:30But he was absolutely terrified and shouldn't have been there. And it became obvious. You go out on an ambush or an LP with this guy and you know he's just you know making noise shaking he's gonna get everybody killed so uh so we uh the lieutenant finally knew and came to him said we're gonna give you an out and we called him cowboy he was from uh oklahoma and we called him cowboy and uh and he he had his out from vietnam now look a lot of the guys at that point we were they They weren't letting us win the war. We knew that. It was clear they weren't going to let us win the war. They weren't going to let us ever go across that river and invade the North.

2:03:17You know, none of that was ever going to happen. We were just going to play this stalemate game and end up like Korea. And that doesn't do anything for the guy's morale. So you come to a bunch of guys to put in a tour, maybe two tours, some of these guys. And you say, okay, here's your ticket home. Back to the world. We're going to let you go back to the world." A lot of guys would just get me out of here. You know, I did my time. I'm ready to go home. And here's a guy who's the most terrified Marine I ever saw, I ever met. And he tells the lieutenant.

2:04:19I ain't going home till all the Marines go home. Fuck, man. Yeah. Yeah. Well, flash forward. They put him with my gun team. And that's a funny story. They put him with my gun team. I got hit again, and I was coming back to the unit, and they were flying me back from a hospital, and they tried to land me with the guys. And the guys were under real intense fire. They were in a big shootout. And so they couldn't get me, the chopper couldn't bring me in. And so they dropped me on an artillery base. And so it was all these, they were Marines. It was a Marine artillery base. I think they were mostly 105s.

2:05:10They might have had some 155s, but it was this Artie base. These guys live behind barbed wire and bunkers and, you know, and various grunt units down there in the jungle to keep people away from this Artie base. But it still is no picnic. They got hit and stuff. I'm not saying these guys. But they lived a different life than the grunts out in the bush. and I never saw, you know, if you even smoked a cigarette in the bush with the guys I served with, you might get yourself killed. I mean, there were some mean people. They might kill you for something. You know, you're risking their life and everybody's life.

2:05:52So you just didn't do crap like that, you know? And the idea of smoking pot, you know, I came home and everybody's going, oh, how good was the pot over there? I'm going, you've been watching too much TV, bro. I don't know. You've been watching the Air Force over there or something. Because, no, there were no pot where I was. And so I landed on this Artie base. And I'm still 18 years old. I've never smoked pot. I don't even know what it was. If I saw it, I wouldn't even know what it was. So the chopper drops me off with these arty guys. We'll come back and get you when the heat goes down on your unit.

2:06:39And I say, oh, okay. So I get off, and I'm standing alone. It's like a guy in a desert, you know, because they're all in their bunkers. So finally I see one of them come out. I think he had a Hawaiian shirt on. And he comes out. He goes, hey, Grunt, come on up. So I go, and I plod over to this bunker, and they go down in, and they've got like beads over their bunker and stuff, you know, like a little door. And I go down in the bunker, and they've got music playing, you know, the Armed Forces Radio Network's on, and they're drinking. They got whiskey, and they're smoking pot. They had pot. And they offered me some, and I, you know, I've never smoked.

2:07:23And they said, hey, you might go back out in the bush and get killed tomorrow, man. At least know what pot tastes like. Okay. So I tried it. And then I get stoned. You know, I'm stoned. And now they're giving me whiskey, shots of whiskey. And I'm thinking, this is a pretty good way to spend the war. I think I'm just going to sign up for artillery here. Well, about that time, I hear this scream and, hey, where's Ed Grunt? His ride's here. And I go, oh, God. So I stagger out of this bunker and I go, oh, no, this is going to be bad. And I get over to this chopper and I'm thinking, oh, my God, get in the chopper.

2:08:16And I'm like hanging out thinking, I hope I don't throw up in the chopper. and they lift off and they bring me back to my unit. And I'm thinking, well, the shootout's over. You know, they'll drop me in. They're in a perimeter. Shootout wasn't over. So this chopper comes in and there was all kinds of fire and there's bullets smacking through this chopper and they let me out. And I'm half buzzed and I'm standing in the middle of a shootout and the Marines are all firing around the perimeter. and I'm standing in the open and the gunnies go, get down, you idiot. You know, so I, where's my gun team?

2:08:55And he said, your gun's over there, Clark, take over the gun. So I make it back to my gun. Well, it was during that firefight that, you know, I finally have time to square away because it went on for a while. And so they, I mean, we had to call in phantoms and they're dropping napalm. Oh, geez, a couple hundred yards outside our perimeter, you know. I mean, it's not a perimeter like a build-up area. We're just in an open area, you know, behind trees and dug some holes, foxholes, you know. But we've got a perimeter set up. And so, but about 200 yards out in front of me, a lot of the fire's coming from.

2:09:37And so I got to pinpoint, we're calling in napalm, man, over there. And the lieutenant tells me. So I show him where the napalm is. And just the second I opened up to show them where it's at, man, these phantoms rip by. I mean, you could see the pilots. They're so low. You know, and that sound. And you see these canisters tumbling real slow. And then suddenly it all goes up in flames. And, of course, you know, Marines are cheering. This is great, you know. And a couple of gooks ran out of it on fire. And so we shot them. But this went on for a while, this big shootout. And well, later on, we're not going anywhere.

2:10:23Clearly, we're not going anywhere. Nobody's coming to save us. So we just hunkered down, you know. And so I and choppers can't get in. You know, that chopper almost got shot down. So nobody's coming. So we've been there. This is going on for hours. and Chan and I are behind this tree that's been knocked down and we're behind this tree and we got a hold I got and he says, so you want some coffee? And I said, oh man, I really need coffee. He says, yeah, you smell like you need coffee. And I go, well, it wasn't my fault. It was these already guys, you know? And he goes, yeah, all right, let's do it.

2:11:07So we break out a C-ration can And we'd take a C-ration can. We had these old C-ration cans. We punched holes in it. And you put a little piece of C-4, plastic explosive, for those who don't know. So we'd put a piece of C-4 in the bottom of the can, light it, and heat your food. So we heated up some coffee. So we're sitting back, leaning against this tree. And there's still lead flying over, but there's nothing we could do. And I don't have any targets. Nobody's saying guns up. So it's like, have some coffee. And Chan says something funny, and we were always saying something. You know how everybody deals with this crap a different way.

2:11:46Usually it's dark humor. We weren't scared or any of that kind of crap. But you deal with fear your own way, and it's like you can't do anything about it. So we were having a cup of coffee, and he said something funny to me. And I started laughing because I was still kind of out there. And the lieutenant and the gunny hear us over there laughing. And then the word gets around the perimeter, hey, Clark and Chad are having coffee.

2:12:20Oh, well, pretty soon, pretty soon the gunny, Gunny McDermott, we called him Gunny Magnet because he drew so much lead. Gunny Magnet comes sliding in like he's stealing second base. And he's going, what the hell are you guys doing? you know and i said oh gunny we don't have any targets you know we're kind of running out of ammo i thought you're like i'm drunk i'm high and now i'm fucking caffeinated let's go to war just need it we wanted to have a cup of coffee and he goes he goes oh gosh you know that he says you know lieutenant's talking about a section eight for you you guys and i go oh man it's not that bad.

2:13:02So flash forward after all this is over, here's Undemstock, the kid that's so terrified. And the gunny and the lieutenant walk him over to us. The shootout's over and they walk him over to me and Chan and they said, listen, we're going to put him in with your gun team. You need another guy anyway. And of course, a machine gun team is supposed to be five guys. A lot of times it was just me. I didn't even have an A gunner sometimes. So now we have three guys with this kid being dropped in. So that was good news. But once we realized it was him, we're going, oh God, he's so terrified. This is going to be rough.

2:13:48But then the lieutenant came and told me, he said, look, I'm putting him with you guys to see if you can make him laugh, see if you can chill him out a little bit. Otherwise, I've got to send him home. And so Chan and I took him in and tried to mother him a little bit and started giving him Bible passages. And we started teaching him the Bible a little bit. Well, we gave him, there's a verse in there. It's out of Romans. I think it's Romans 8. This is where I get mad at myself. I should know these verses. And normally I do. I just a little excited about being on the show and stuff. But anyway, it was out of Romans 8.

2:14:33What's it about? The one about war and famine and pestilence and all that might rise against you. And your parents might dump you, but I never will. You know, that verse, and I, here I got to slow down on the story because I didn't, got to be careful what to say about it. But he had problems when he joined the Marine Corps. That's one of the reasons he joined the Marine Corps, because evidently his family didn't, they thought it was a joke, him trying to be a Marine, and that he could never hack it. and um anyway yeah he he had some issues but everybody's got issues with their parents i'm not you know i'm not nailing them but he felt sort of i think he felt sort of abandoned or something by his family and in the sense that they didn't support him i don't know i don't know all the details and i'm not going to pretend to but i know he needed that verse and um and we prayed with him, and we did what we could, you know, to try to—you've got to lean on the Lord here.

2:15:45You know, all of us are scared. And he'd say, you clowns aren't scared. Do you look at you? And I say, oh, no. I say, well, this is just the way we deal with it, because everybody deals with it differently. And I go, everybody's scared. This guy's dying out here, man. Of course we're scared. And we tell him, you know, hey, let's just pray about it. Every time you get like that, you know, we tell him how to pray. And he started getting a little better.

2:16:13Well, right before we went into that graveyard, it was a big, big operation. It was a place called Dodge City in the Arizona Territory, outside of Amwa Combat Base. And it looked like Arizona. That's why they called it the Arizona Territory. You know, it looked like out in the desert in Arizona kind of looking into, but one part of it was called Dodge City. If you went in there, you were going to be in a shootout. You always knew it. Everybody knew it. Well, we knew when we were doing an op in Dodge City, we knew we were going to see some crap today, and we did. But they took him out of our gun team right before that and put him in Corporal Huteson's, H-U-T-E-S-O-N, Corporal Huteson's squad.

2:17:02And Corporal Huteson, he was already a hero in White City. I mean, the guy, kind of corporal you want, you know. I mean, anyway, we started off when we made this op, we started off, we ran into three gooks had come out of the brush, oh, 50 yards ahead of us, you know, and we saw them. It was open area up to some brush and trees kind of. And Sam, the blooper man, boom, with his blooper, they take off running. He hits one square in the back and he flips, but he's not dead. And the other two grab him and they pull him into the trees. And I shot one and he starts limping in to the trees. So we know what we've wounded to.

2:17:50And they go into this tree line. So, well, the whole company, we got a whole company with us this day. And I guess there were even more than that out there. But this spot, we had Alpha Company, 5th Marines 1-5. We're going up to this thing. And we didn't have, usually we were out there with 20 guys. This time we got a whole company. So we knew they're expecting some big crap. And we get up to that tree line and we see them dragging each other into the tree line across. It's about 75 meters across and it's graveyards. And, you know, the Vietnamese graves were these little round mounds that it was significant.

2:18:34They were sending them back into the womb, you know, when they were buried. They're going back into the womb or something like that. And so anyway, there were little round mounds. A couple of feet off the ground, usually, maybe a foot and a half, I don't know. It depended. And that was the graveyard. But there wasn't any other cover other than that. It was open. And so they told me, recon by fire. I was ordered out. So I go out in the graveyard, and I recon by fire. Now, at this point, another gunner had been killed, and they gave Chan his gun. So now Chan and I aren't together. And Chan's got a gun.

2:19:18I got a gun. So they send Chan out, too. So me and Chan go out, and we just spray the other tree line across the graveyard. We just open fire maybe 100 rounds, and nobody fires back. so they send across Corporal Huteson's squad and now his squad we'd taken some hits and I forgot how many guys were in his squad maybe 8 or 10, I don't even maybe but anyway they go across and they're spread out going slowly because it's open area but they suddenly when they're halfway out there everything opens up and we found out later it was a we ran into a battalion and uh i mean they had they had everything they had mortars they had a mortar teams back there they had everything and three 30 caliber machine guns opened up from fixed position they were in bunkers on the other side spread out but three of them and then there's fire coming from our right flank across the graveyard all on the squad out there, because we're still behind the tree line, the rest of the guys.

2:20:33And these guys hit the dirt, but I saw a kid named Sonny. I saw him get blown back by a 30-cal, and I just assumed he was dead, but then you didn't see anything. Well, they kept firing, and we got orders. They're screaming, hold your fire, hold your fire, because if we open fire, we're going to hit our own guys. They're out in the middle of this graveyard. And they're on our side of these mounds trying to hide from all the fire. And you really couldn't see them. It's starting to get dark. Now it's getting late, and it starts raining, and monsoon rain. It was a brutal rainstorm starts coming in, but then it eases up.

2:21:15And now these guys, they open up again, and there's just a ton of fire. I mean, we're talking, I don't know, a battalion's worth of AK-47s. And these guys, they liked opening up full auto. You know, they didn't have any fire discipline. You know, I mean, Marines didn't do that. If you opened up on full auto, somebody's going to smack you. So, you know, you only did that. You didn't have infinite ammo, you know. But anyway, but these guys, these crazy NVA, they were just everything. Lead, tracers. They even threw a couple of satchel charges out in the middle of this graveyard. So I don't know what their plans were long range, but they were clearly going to blow stuff up.

2:21:56But yeah, and here's eight or nine Marines, 10 Marines out there in the middle of all this. So it was horrible. And we want to open fire and we can't. I ran down and I ran out in the graveyard and I got on top of one of the mounds so I could shoot over them without hitting our guys. And I knocked out a 30. I killed that gun team. And you knew you killed them because their green tracers went straight up in the sky for a while. And then I hit another one. I turned on the next machine gun because you had to knock them out first, which is what—and everybody, they shot my boots out from under me. So I was knocked down.

2:22:43And my A-gunner at the time, he was from Indiana. he ran out there to grab my boots and drag me behind the grave mount. And so, you know, another heroic thing, you know, because it was crazy. There was so much lead flying. And then we started taking M79 rounds, blooper rounds, and we know they're not Marines. They had killed some Marines and took their bloopers, you know, but they were firing at us from the right flank. Well, anyway, he pulls me and drags me. we get back to the tree line. But because everybody tried to shoot me, most of the squad was able to get out. And so this went on, though.

2:23:33This kept going on. So it went on all night where this fight's going on all night. And they start calling in their mortars now. And we can see the mortar flashes. But the lieutenant moves the whole company around to the left flank. And we're behind rice paddy dykes. And we see the muzzle flashes of mortar rounds. Just, you know, and I can see the flashes and I can see the guys. I can see the NVA soldiers dropping in the mortars from the flash. You can see them standing. And they're back there in the trees behind this. There was an old hooch back there that we had originally blown up. It's where I killed one machine gun team.

2:24:12Anyway, he wouldn't let me open fire on these guys. We were trying to not let them know where we were because they were pinpointing our old position with mortars, just blowing the crap out of it. So the lieutenant was holding our fire until we got some artillery called in, or I don't know what his plans were. But the rain, the monsoon rain got so heavy that we were literally, you could drown behind these rice paddies. The big dikes were down in the mud, but the water was filling up. That's how much rain came in. And so we had finally, in the middle of this mess, we see a guy running out of the graveyard towards us.

2:24:55Not where our old position was, but towards us. And I start to kill him. I mean, I'm going to blow him away. And I see a flash of a mortar going off, and I see his helmet. It's an American helmet. I scream, hold your fire, hold your fire. Nobody shoots him. And he stands out. And he was, and I ran out and tackled him, dragged him back. It was Pat McCrary. Wow. The one, yeah, the one who got the Purple Heart license tag the hard way. Well, anyway, it was Pat McCrary. And he had stayed out there with Sonny, the one that I thought was for sure dead. So he comes in and he goes, Sonny's still out there.

2:25:34Sonny's still out there. And so Gunny Mack, he comes out and he goes, all right, you got to take us back to him. but we're going to go get him. So I went out with him and we crawled out in the graveyard to try to find Sonny. And then everybody realizes Unumstock's not here too. So we got at least two Marines still out there. And Corporal Hudson went out with us too. So we're crawling back into this mess and we couldn't find him. He wasn't where he'd been left because Pat knew exactly where he left him. I mean, you know, he knew exactly pretty much where he was. He wasn't there anymore. Well, we didn't know it at the time, but the machine gunners came out and dragged him back, dragged his body back up in front of their gun so that they were waiting for us to come and get him.

2:26:32And so they, and he said, he thought he was, the next morning we sweep through. battle's over and when uh now we've got artillery coming we sweep through though fix bayonets it's just you know and i got no bayonet on that 60 man so we sweep across sweep with bayonets fixed and they've they've deed him out so we we uh but we ended up running into him again later but uh They, we find, we find Sonny and I assume he's dead. And we roll him over and his eyes are swollen shut, you know, like big, like it looks like a raccoon. And his eyes suddenly just pop open and he goes, oh my God, you guys won't believe what happened to me last night.

2:27:23And he starts telling us a crazy tale. And the gooks had come out, and they came down at him with like a K-bar. And he thought they were just going to kill him. They were going to finish him off. And they cut off his web gear, cut off all of his gear, and took it. And then they dragged him up in front of the gun and left him. And he said, I almost drowned. I was doing everything not to drown because the water was rising. It was so much rain. And he lived. That guy lived. He went on to become a Virginia State Senator. And Chan went to see him. He actually went to see the guy in Virginia. He still lives here.

2:28:02Not that many, maybe a couple of years back. So Chan went to see him, and he's still alive and well. And he lived through that night. But here's a guy with all these bullet holes who lives. And not very far away was Zundersak. We couldn't find a wound on him. Now, later, years later, they told me they found a little shrapnel hole, but they said that didn't kill him. But he, at the time, the corpsman and Chan, who's way more than a corpsman, he was also handy for that stuff. He was like a doctor. They said that, yeah, he died of heart failure. He literally died of heart failure. Damn. Didn't have to be out there.

2:28:53Could have gone home. Shit. Wow. Yeah. It's a hell of a night. Yeah. Ever notice how many guys have a pouch in basically all day, then stack caffeine on top of it just to stay focused? And at a certain point, you start asking what you're actually relying on to get through the day. That's what made Ultra Pouches stand out to me. They still give you the pouch experience, but they're completely nicotine-free and caffeine-free. I like having something I can use when I'm working, traveling, or trying to stay locked in without feeling wired or dealing with a crash later. Ultra partnered with leading neuroscientists to design these pouches with nootropics and adaptogens for focus, mental clarity, and smooth energy.

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2:30:25Please support our show and tell them our show sent you. What was your favorite Bible verse while you were over there? Did you have one? Yeah, well, I'm afraid it's changed over the years for this reason. My Bible verse now is Psalm 121. I lift up my eyes to the mountains from where comes my help. My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. And I know the whole verse, but that's the part that is a big deal to me. that's a huge deal to me. It took me 14 years to write about it because I didn't know what God wanted me to do with this, but it was a miracle. And the story behind it is, you know, I mean, some people would want to put me in a funny farm, but Christians will hear it and go, yeah, that sounds like God, you know, but it was...

2:31:32Should I tell you? Can I tell you about it? Of course. I was writing a book called Gunner's Glory, this one. And it's about machine gunners from World War II, Korea, Vietnam. Incredible machine gunners, some great Marines. And some of the men I ran into were just amazing.

2:31:59And one, it started off, I ran into a guy named Ted Elliston. And there's a picture of Ted in this thing. Ted died a few years back, but Ted was, there's a picture of him carrying an old water-cooled 30 on horseback. That's what an old Salty was. He was in the Fifth Marines. He was a Nicaragua era. They knew the war was going to start.

2:32:29He hits Guadalcanal. Canal. His whole story's amazing. But through Ted, and Ted ran out of ammo on Guadalcanal, ran out of everything, and had nothing. A Jap came out of the bush, and it was him and a Jap soldier. He had nothing but a hunting knife. He didn't even have a K-bar. His dad had given him a hunting knife, and he had to kill this Jap with a hunting knife. He still slept with that hunting knife by his bed. And I still sleep with a K-bar. Still to this day. To this day. There's one by my bed, there's one on my desk, and a.45. I still do. But when this crap happens in the middle of the night, I don't sleep good without it.

2:33:19When I take trips like this and you can't bring a weapon on the plane and stuff, I don't like that. I know the people. I'm still, I bet you do. And I, I mean, I'm, I'm old, but I could still surprise some people with hand-to-hand combat. And, you know, I'm not dead yet, but yeah, I don't, I don't, I don't like not being able to go to sleep with something beside me. Especially now, I don't hear good. Somebody can sneak up on you. And this kind of stuff, you know, I mean, you don't get over it. Yeah. You know, I'll be that way. And neither did Ted. Ted was 84. He slept with his K-Bar, and it was all because of this moment on Guadalcanal where there was no grenades, no pistol ammo, no machine gun ammo, nothing left.

2:34:09Yeah, amazing men. And I got to tell you how I met him, but him leading me to another guy. I met him at Haslam's Bookstores where I had my book signings for all my books. It used to be the oldest bookstore in the southeast in St. Pete, Florida. And fabulous old bookstore. And the guys who ran it told me one time, they knew I was starting this book. And they said, you know, Johnny, you need to meet Ted. You need to meet Ted. And I said, who's Ted? He says, Ted, machine gunner, Guadalcanal, Fifth Marines. He says, you need to meet Ted. And so I said, I got to meet him. Let's do it. And so they contacted, they said, yeah, he'll meet with you.

2:34:58And they gave me his address. And they said, look, when you meet him, you're going to notice his right hand is a real mess. You know, 84-year-old skin. Mine's getting like that. But you'll notice his hand is kind of purple and beat up. And he said, ask him to tell you the story behind that. And I'm going, oh, I think I'm liking this guy already. And they said, oh, no. He said, we got to tell you. He saw a girl. He thought this guy was roughing up a girl on Central Avenue in this kind of seedy part of Central Avenue. And Ted was walking down the street. He's coming to Haslam's bookstore. And he thought this guy was being ungentlemanly to this lady.

2:35:52And he did. I guess the guy must have slapped her or something. I don't know what he did. But Ted goes up to him and says something to him. The guy mouthed off. Ted goes, boom, knocked him out, laid him out in the middle of Central Avenue. How cold. Ted had been a boxer and a fighter, and he was still a big guy. 84, but still a great big guy. You wouldn't want to get hit by him. And this guy found that out. He dropped a dude at 84? Yeah, yeah. He knocked a guy out. No, I'm telling you, these old Marines, these old China hands, and some of these crazy guys from Korea. And I got some stories that you wouldn't believe some of these guys.

2:36:32I mean, they're absolute nutcases. I just love them. Got a research at Francis Hugh Colleen, as Irish as the day he was born, played the bagpipes in the face of the Chinese, the first Chinese human wave assault at Sudang Nee. They told him he was ordered to, and they shot the bagpipes through his throat. When he told me his story, he had throat cancer for that, and he had to write his story to me. If you read these letters from this old Irishman, you'll cry laughing. It's just so beautiful. He's one of my books too, but he's in No Better Way to Die. I put a lot of stuff about him. But Anyway, in this one, Ted tells me about, yeah, you know, Mitch Page was, he was in Seventh Marines, but he, you know, he was at Canal 2.

2:37:18And I'm going, Mitchell Page, Medal of Honor? And he goes, yeah, I think he did. Yeah, I think he got to Medal of Honor, you know. And it was just another guy to him. And he goes, yeah, you know, you need to talk to Mitch. So anyway, I got Ted's story. I get a hold of Mitchell Page. The short version is this. I see you got a G.I. Joe doll up there. Mitchell Page is the Marine that Hasbro Toys made the G.I. Joe doll in honor of because of what he did on Guadalcanal. And what he did on Guadalcanal is a little crazy. There was one big hit where they caught Japanese barges unloading troops. and the Japs didn't think that the Marines would leave the ridge, Edson's Ridge on Guadalcanal.

2:38:10They thought they'd stay there and hunker down and try to protect the airfield. And the Marines, some crazy Marines said, no, let's go get them. Let's go out and find them in the jungle. They went out and they saw them offloading off barges, getting into position, I mean, alignment and marching down the beach where they were going to attack, you know, the Edson's Ridge eventually. And Ted, they say he could have had, there could have been 600 Japs killed in this shootout because they had them totally in the open. And the Marines had dug in on the beach. They were coming down. They dug in on the beach with water-cooled.30s and the Mahoney gun, which a lot of these old guys were gunsmiths.

2:38:53Sean, they rigged up a.30 caliber water-cooled to fire. They said, now this is from them. They said somewhere between 900 and 1 ,200 rounds a minute. Whoa. Different springs. They were gunsmiths. They really, they had, these old Marines were, that was their life. They were real, real tough guys. Well, this guy named Mahoney had done all this work on these guns before the Jaffs bombed Pearl Harbor. And they knew it was coming. And he had them prepared. Well, these were Mahoney guns. So that Mahoney gun place is significant in this whole miracle that I was leading up to. So I interview Mitchell Page, more than once, but my final interview with him, he was on his deathbed.

2:39:45His wife, Marilyn, she wouldn't let anybody talk to him because he was going down. He was dying and everybody knew it. And she let me, she, you know, because I was a Marine gunner. She knew I was writing this story about him. So she let me interview him. Well, on his deathbed, he told me this story. Now, he had told it to the Gideons years before, and the Gideons actually put out a little pamphlet about it, but I'd never heard about it. But Edson's Ridge was a ridge that defended the airfield, Henderson Field. If we lost Guadalcanal, they say Australia would have fallen. Guadalcanal was that important at that point in the war.

2:40:40And a lot of people think America was dominating the war and nothing would be further from the truth at that point. We were in major trouble. Midway had done a lot, but we never won a ground battle against these guys. And they were building this—they built this Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, and they were going to be able to bomb Australia, and it was for taking Australia. And they were going to—they would have taken Australia. We didn't have enough to stop them at that time, because they were already in the little islands moving up to Australia. So the Marines had to hold Guadalcanal. It was really life and death.

2:41:20I've read old experts that said that they think the Japs could have made it all the way past California, maybe as far as Chicago. I've actually read this stuff. Yeah, old history accounts. Have we not stopped a Guadalcanal? So it was critical. And unless you study history, you know, it's just another battle, but it was freaking critical. And so all that was keeping the Japs off Henderson Field was this one, this ridge line. And on the other side of the ridge line is the airfield. On this side of the ridge line is all jungle, deep, thick jungle. The Japs were tremendous jungle fighters. And they were coming out of the jungle and hitting Edson's Ridge.

2:42:08And at one point in a mass attack, they had almost swamped the ridge. The Marines had run out of ammo. They were just getting clobbered. And we couldn't get any more. The Jap Navy had sunk a bunch of the U.S. Navy out there. That's something else a lot of people don't study it, don't realize. We lost a bunch of naval ships. and our Navy couldn't help us on Guadalcanal because a lot of them got sunk. It's a big, big battle. I think it was Savo Island or something like that. Anyway, some big gun, I mean, naval battles out there where the Navy took some huge losses, a lot of men. Maybe more men died there than on Guadalcanal.

2:42:55I don't even know. So at that point, we were going to lose Guadalcanal. At one point, a tipping point in this battle for the ridge, the marines had the mahoney guns and even the japs could tell by the fire the rate of fire you could tell by the sound of it that wasn't a normal water water cool 30 that thing you know holy shit yeah it would be like well it was like the first time i heard uh puff the magic dragon when he fired those mini guns there wasn't a machine gun sound it was that you know well i i'm imagining it must have sounded you know somewhat similar because it didn't sound like So the Japanese knew these guns were bad news and they were on the receiving end of it.

2:43:39But at one point, every single Marine machine gunner had been killed or wounded and knocked out. All the guns, all the machine guns were out of action. There was one machine gun down at one end of the ridge that could cover the whole ridge. If the Japanese got to that gun before Mitchell Page got to that gun, they could turn that Mahoney gun on the ridge. They would control the ridge. They would have won the Battle of Guadalcanal. This is what he told me. Other guys have told me that. I trust them. So at that point, Mitchell Page is in a race to get to that Mahoney gun. He sees it. A Jap soldier sees it.

2:44:26The Jap has a Nambu 30-round clip, the Nambu machine gun. It's got a 30-round clip, banana clip. The Jap's carrying it, trying to race to that Mahoney machine gun. Mitch gets there first, kicks the dead Marines out of the way and off the gun because they were draped all over the gun. The gun's still in action. It hadn't been blown up or anything. He gets behind the gun. He leans forward to chamber around. You know, the old 30s, he had to put some weight in that. and he leans, going to lean forward to chamber around and open fire on this Jap before he, it's between him and the Jap. The Japanese soldier drops to the ground, point blank range.

2:45:07This is what Mitch says, point blank range, you know, 10, 20 yards. I mean, point blank range, drops to the ground, opens up with his Nambu. Mitch, this is what he told me on his deathbed. I absolutely believe him. Now I really believe him. Now that God's done something similar to me. As he goes to lean forward and chamber around, he said, I was frozen in place. He said, I could not move front, back, sideways. He said, I couldn't do anything. And he said, but Johnny, I felt at total peace. I wasn't scared. I knew this guy was going to put 30 rounds through my temple. I wasn't scared. I couldn't do anything about it.

2:45:52And for some reason, I had absolute peace. It was like a tractor beam, you know, like a Star Wars guy. He couldn't do anything. And he said, the Jap opens fire. He got burned from here down to here with 30 rounds going under his chin and all down here. Didn't get hit. Had he been able to lean forward and chamber the round, he was dead. But as soon as he fired his last round, he said, I was released. He said, totally released. Boom, fell forward, chambered around, killed the Jap soldier. The battle's still going on, but not in this sector, another part of the ridge. But this, he turns the Mahoney gun now on the Japs.

2:46:35They're in retreat now. They beat them back a little bit. But later, he had to then lead a bayonet charge to drive the last ones off into the jungle again. But he goes, when the shooting is stopped, it's still dark. I mean, your flares are going up. But he goes over and he said, I got behind that Nambu, kicked the Jap soldier down the hill. He says, got behind that Nambu and looked. He said, there's no way he could possibly miss me with 30 rounds. and he goes, God, how could this possibly happen? I mean, how could this possibly happen? You had to freeze me. He's talking to God. Well, as he's doing this, he's pleading with God.

2:47:19He had his little finger had been almost severed in the bayonet fight. So he's bleeding all over the place. So he notices it. He gets his pack and tries to get his first aid kit out to wrap up this hand. And he said, as soon as I picked it up, my Bible just fell out. He had a, like, I don't know if it was a Gideon. I guess it was a Gideon, but he had a little Bible. He said it fell out and it fell open. And I'd been asking, God, how? How could this possibly happen? You know, tell me how. And it falls open to a page. He said, there wasn't any wind, but the pages blew open to a certain page. And he said, one passage lights up.

2:48:07He said, it was like gold, and it would look bigger than all the other letters on the page. It was big and bright. It showed so bright. He said, it scared the crap out of me because it was giving away my position. So there's still Japs out there, and this was like a light. And he reads it, Proverbs 3, 5. Trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge him and he will lead your path. That was the verse his mother sent him to war with. That was her favorite verse. Later, yeah. But his favorite verse. Yeah, I know. So he said, I didn't even tell the other guys.

2:48:53He said, if I'd have told them this, they would have thought I had shell shock because it wasn't combat fatigue. It was shell shock. He said, they would have thought I had shell shock, and they would have thought I was nuts. They wouldn't have believed it. So he said, I didn't even tell the guys this. I didn't tell anybody until years later. And he did tell the Gideons this. And so his favorite verse, though, is also Psalm 121. I lift my eyes to the mountains from whence cometh my help. My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. That was his favorite verse. And that part of this story, I mean, flash forward, Mitchell Page died soon after my interview with him and soon after he told me this, all about this.

2:49:42And I go forward about three years. Well, I was working on another book and I, you know, I finish a book, I never look at it again. Because if I do, I hate it and I want to rewrite it. So I don't even look at them again. And that book was put away. And I mean, I admired the heck out of Mitchell Page. Like I said, every time I see a G.I. Joe doll, you know, that's Mitchell Page. He got some ribbon for that too. G.I. Joe, he's a Marine. But anyway, so he caught some crap over that. But anyway, so years later, I was going through a rough ride. It was soon, somewhere near when all this crap happened at the big red thing.

2:50:29And I was, you know, I don't like to call it, I don't like PTSD. I don't like the term. So I didn't mind when he said I had combat fatigue. I don't know. Maybe it's just me. Maybe I'm old. But I didn't mind that term. You can say that. It's PTSD thing. I don't like this lump, you know, rape cases and car wrecks and everybody, you know, into a PTSD file. I don't think it's the same. And I don't like it. So I didn't mind that, but PTSD. So I guess I was, you know, they said I had 100%. And I guess I did. it. So I was going through a tough span. We have a Bible study at my house all the time. We'd have a Taekwondo at my school, and then Taekwondo and Judo school.

2:51:20And afterwards, on certain days, we'd have a Bible study class. And so we'd do it at my house. Everybody'd go to my house and we'd do it. And I was just having a rough time. I was just, you know, and my pastor came. He came to the Bible study, and I talked to him. After everybody left, I told him the situation. I said, hey, you know, not sleeping good, you know, a lot of remembering stuff, not forgiving myself for stuff.

2:51:56He said, I'm doing a study on time alone with the Lord. he goes Johnny it's changed uh Phil Phil Engelman is his name Phil and Sue Engelman he said Johnny's changing Phil it's changing me and Sue's life cutting everything off and just spending time alone with the Lord he said you need to go spend time when was the last time you spent time alone with the Lord is what he asked me I said not since I was a little kid back in the mountains of West Virginia I'd go up on a hill you know But I said, not since I was a little kid. And he goes, that's what you need. So you need to go spend time alone with the Lord.

2:52:38And I said, well. What does that mean to you? Well, I didn't really know either. And I said, I turned to Nancy and I said, Nancy, let's go get a mountain cabin or something somewhere. And he goes, no, no, no, Johnny. Not with Nancy. Just you. take your Bible, go spend time alone with the Lord, nobody else, not your family, not your kids, go spend time alone. And I said, gosh, you know, one of my senior students had moved away. He was a Taekwondo master, and he'd moved to North Carolina. He's a professor at Montreat College, brilliant guy you know really brilliant um and a strong christian and he uh i i called tony up and i said tony here's what phil told me i'd like to try it can you think you can find me a cabin or something in north carolina or just you know go be alone something out in the mountains something out in the hills he goes that's really weird he tells me the uh these these people he's a doctor from Duke, and they own like a little mountain getaway.

2:53:55And they asked Tony and Jane, his wife, to take care of it while they were gone. And they'd rent it out and stuff once in a while. And he says, you know, they're asking us to take care of this place. And that's unbelievable. You can go there. And I said, well, how much is it? I don't have much money. And he said, no, no, it's free. We're taking care of it. They won't care a bit. So I said, I'm on my way. So I hop a plane, go to Asheville, take a ride out to Black Mountain, North Carolina. He sends me out to it. It's Montreat, North Carolina, right outside of Black Mountain. And so I rent this little, I don't rent it.

2:54:41I stay in this cabin. I mean, it was pretty rugged. It It was a pretty rugged cabin. I mean, there were spiderwebs. You know, they have been keeping this place up a whole lot. But it was perfect. It's just what I needed. But I haven't been out in the woods alone since NAMM, really. And once again, I didn't have my.45. I didn't have a pistol. I didn't have a K-bar. And, you know, out in the woods sounds. So I started feeling a little antsy. And I called Nancy. My daughter calls. She's all freaking out. My daughter, Bonnie Kaye, she calls. And what are you doing, Dad? I don't know if that's healthy for you.

2:55:25What are you doing out there? She's already come to me and said, is PTSD catching, Dad? Because I'm worried I'm catching it. I said, oh, God, honey, I hope not. So she knows the story of her dad. But here I am out in the mountains, called Nancy up, and I said, you know, I've been here a night or two now. And I said, I keep hearing noises outside the cabin, and I'm not getting anything done. You know, I'm just uncomfortable. I'm kind of always watching my flanks. Six, nobody there. You know, I don't have a perimeter. I don't feel good out here without a perimeter. And so I said, so yeah, I set up some punji pits.

2:56:15So I set up some punji pits around this cabin, just two by fours with nails, six penny nails, you know, sticking up. And so they'll yelp. I'll know somebody's here and, you know, have some kind of defense ready. And it made me feel a little better. what I found out later, it was bears. Bears were banging stuff around that cabin. And I didn't know. But I'm still, finally, the third day, I'm out on the porch, having a cup of coffee, doing my Bible study, going to read my Bible, feeling okay, feeling better. Now I can really spend some time alone with the Lord and not be thinking about anything else.

2:57:02Well, then the guy who owns the house, he shows up, he's going to do repairs on the place. And now I'm going, oh God. So he's got saws. He's got hammers and saws. And I go, oh my God. I call up Nancy and I said, Nancy, I can't believe it. This is a total failure. And she goes, Johnny, just take a walk and cool off. Just take a walk. You need to just take a walk. That's it. I'll take a walk. So I took off walking from down the hill, from this cabin, through Montreat, up this mountain road. I don't know, it's a few miles. And I just kept walking until I came to a trail. It's a Greybeard Mountain.

2:57:46It's a hiking trail. Now, this was back in 2004, I think. And it wasn't as built up then. You know, it was really out there a little bit. So anyway, this mountain trail, nobody's there. A storm's rolling in. There's all these warnings. You know, bring cell phone, bring this, bring water, watch out for bears, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, I'm in shorts and a T-shirt. I just took off walking. And I didn't even bring my cell phone. I'm just going to hike. So I start hiking up this trail. And I went and went, I don't know, a couple thousand feet up. I think it's like 4 ,800 feet to the top. And I'm just hiking.

2:58:26Well, I had knee surgery not long before that. I shouldn't be doing this. I did. But I don't care. At that point, I don't care. I need to walk. I need to hike. I reach a mountain stream, and there's a big rock out in the middle. And I go out, and I jump over and get on this big rock. The stream's going by me. I mean, it was beautiful. It's a perfect postcard. There's nobody out there. I mean, because storms, it's thundering like it's going of rain and it looks terrible. And so nobody's there but me. Nobody's hiking that trail or anything like that. And I get on the rock and I say a prayer and I ask the Lord, what am I doing here, Father?

2:59:14Why would you have me come out to a mountain in freaking North Carolina? I've never been in my life. I mean, what's the point? I don't feel like I'm getting any better. I feel, you know, still kind of antsy. I mean, I don't see any point to this. There's got to be a reason you'd send me out here, you know, and I'm talking to him. I'm talking to the Lord. And then, you know, I start praying and it hits me. What's God's favorite trait? It's humility. That's his favorite trait. He loved Moses. I know you by name, he told Moses. When Moses wanted to see him, he said, I know you by name. I will have, I will show mercy and compassion on you, and I will let my goodness go before you.

3:00:01Because Moses, like a little kid, wanted to see God. He wanted to see him. And it's in Exodus 33. So anyway, but I'm on this rock praying this, and I realized Moses was called the most humble man on earth by God. About the best compliment any human being can get. And he used Moses, wouldn't you say, in a pretty big way. And so I said, humility. Here I am, I'm hiking a 4 ,500-foot mountain. I just had knee surgery a couple of weeks back. This is stupid. This isn't humble. You know, you're being a jerk. And I said, I need to learn humility. That's what this is about. And I said, okay, Lord, I get it, you know?

3:00:48And I felt like, okay, I got it. All this, this whole trip to North Carolina, buying airplane tickets I couldn't afford, here's the reason. And so I start back down that mountain. And I'd gone down 500 feet away from the big rock in the middle of the stream, and I don't know, maybe more. and it's downhills harder than going uphill, you know, for if your knees kind of screwed up. And, you know, I was, I'm having to take these steps and land on the good foot, trying to take pressure off the knee. And I'm going down and, you know, go over a tree branch, gives you a little step on the trail you've been on.

3:01:29And I, at one point I go to step and I was frozen. I couldn't go anywhere. Now, I've told this in a church, but I've never even told this in my church. I've never talked about this because I know what it sounds like. And I wouldn't blame anybody for thinking this guy, he does have combat fatigue. He's a total fruitcake. I wouldn't blame anybody for that. And I've hesitated. I've hesitated. I've never told anybody. You know, this was 2004 it happened, and August 26th. And I've never told anybody except, you know, my personal friends. And, of course, I told them right after. I went home and told the Bible study and told them what happened.

3:02:21But I couldn't move. I was just like there was no more stepping. And I was just, but I was like sitting in a park. I mean, it wasn't uncomfortable. I was just, you know, just hanging, just kind of hanging mid-step. I mean, I wasn't going anywhere front, back, sideways. And I didn't even have, I don't even know what I thought. People have asked me, what'd you think? I don't think I was able to think. I just, I mean, I just. Frozen in time. I didn't know what. I hadn't, my mind froze along with the rest of me, I guess. I don't know. I just stood there, just hung there mid-step. Well, then I was released.

3:03:07How long? I don't know how long I was here. I mean, I have no idea. Could have been two seconds. Could have been 20 seconds. I don't even know. But I was released and I, boom, now I'm running downhill. I mean, I fell downhill a little bit, took those steps and stopped, jumped around. thinking first thought something had to have held me there's something behind me there's nothing there there's nothing anywhere it's it's it's just dead silent it's i'm out in the woods alone nobody black clouds rolling over there's nobody out there man and uh i i i realized this this is god this is this is Jesus Christ here man I I so I fell to my knees I just fell to my knees I said what do you want from me God and I don't I don't even know if I said that I wrote it down so I I can show you sometime but anyway I just fell to my knees and I think it was what do you want from me, God.

3:04:12And in an audible voice, an audible voice, if it was inside my head, it sure didn't sound like it. It sounded like a voice talking to me. And it said, Johnny, get out. Johnny, I want you to walk a little farther with me. If you've got a Bible, I'll swear to it. I believe you. Yeah. And I got up. I couldn't say anything. I mean, I was so overwhelmed. I'd think back at that moment, and I'd go, God, I wish I could have asked some questions. I wish I could have said, tell me how much you love me or something, God. You know, something. Yeah, let me hear something good here. You know, I couldn't say it.

3:05:01I just did. I said, yes, Lord. And I got up, and I started back up that mountain. I would have gone to Canada. I mean, I was just going to go until he stopped me. And I went back up that mountain. I reached that big rock in the middle of the storm and made it over that, jumped to the other side. The trail kept on up. I kept going on up. I've taken my kids here. I'm taking my grandkids to this same spot in about three weeks. We're going, I'm taking, my son and my daughter have never seen it either. My wife, we've been back two or three times and she could tell you what her feelings about this. It was, but anyway, I go, keep going.

3:05:47And I'm, I mean, I'm not thinking, I'm just, I'm going to go until God stops. I would have kept going until I fainted. But I finally, I come to this big boulder on the side of the trail. There's a big old boulder, you know, as big as the bottom half of that whole bar set there, big. And somebody has put a big round plaque embedded in the boulder. And now I've never been there in my life. I've never been in this place in my life, never been to Black Mountain in my life. So if somebody's thinking you knew it was there or something, never been on this mountain in my life, never been to Black Mountain, North Carolina in my life, Montreat, never.

3:06:40Here's this plaque, and the plaque says, I lift my eyes to the mountains. From where does my help come from? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth. I knew that's what he was leading me to. I didn't walk any further. I fell down and worshiped. Yeah. Pretty amazing. Then I, when this was over, I went back down off that mountain. Talk about a spring in your step. I went down off that mountain feeling like, okay, there's two things going on here. I really have gone over the edge and I am crazy. But I've got to, even if I am, I had to tell Nancy and the kids. So I get back to that cabin, find my phone, call them up, tell them the whole thing.

3:07:36I don't know if, you know, she thought I, my husband's gone crazy. You know, I don't know what she thought. Then I get my car and I drive into town and through Black Mountain, through Montreux, through Black Mountain and to where my buddy Tony Horning lives, and he's on his front porch. And I come out, and I'm telling him the whole story. And I mean, I'm a bit of a motor mouth. Tony, my God, you won't believe what happened to me. And I start telling him all this. Well, a friend from our church in St. Petersburg had just happened in on Tony and was on the front porch with him. So now his name's Gary Ripple, and he's the leader of music in our church.

3:08:17So now I'm telling these two guys who both went to my old church, I'm telling them what happened. And I don't know what they thought, but Tony told me, you look like Moses who'd seen the burning bush, man. Your face was red. You were flushed, beyond flushed. He says, yeah, I could tell something really dramatic happened to you, whether it was that or not, whether I believed it or not. But he believed me. He's a close friend, so he would believe it. A stranger would think, you're out of your freaking mind. And like I said, I wouldn't blame him. I don't know if I'd believe a guy telling me this story.

3:08:55But anyway, so I go home. Now, I can't wait to get home and tell Nancy and the kids. And the Bible said about this. But the more I think about it, I'm going, how am I going to tell him about this? Am I even supposed to share this? Is this supposed to be something just between me and God? I don't, you know, I've got all these questions. Did it really happen? Am I really crazy? But, you know, you ask, you don't know. And so I said, God, how do I know this really happened? And I'm asking God that. I'm talking to him. As soon as I get home, I'm telling Nancy the story all over again. I mean, I'm just getting out of the car from the airport, right?

3:09:32And I'm already telling her the whole story again. I've told her twice on the phone, And I'm telling her again. And she's patiently listening to me. My wife is very flatlined, which is probably what I need. But I'm telling her the whole thing again. And I'm thinking, God, Nancy, where's the reaction, man? You got to see reaction here. And so she's going, I'm listening. I'm listening. And so she's listening, but she's also going to the mailbox. And I yell at her. What are you going to the mailbox for at a time like this? I'm telling you the most important moment of my whole freaking life on planet Earth.

3:10:10And I'm mad at her now. What do you know? And she pulls mail out of the mailbox, and she pulls out the sand. She's looking at the mail, and we got this pamphlet. Now, I've given to this missionary journey, missionary ventures, missionary ventures. I've given money to this group over the years. You know, they help missionaries, and I've tried to support them over the years, but they've never, ever sent me anything. It's one of the reasons I supported them. They don't send out a bunch of mailings and crap, you know. Never gotten anything from these guys. Today, in my mailbox, as I'm telling Nancy for the third time and just got home, here's a thing from Missionary Ventures.

3:10:50Nancy goes, oh, we've never gotten anything from them before. And she opens it up, and on the first page, it says, my wife Nancy loves to shop. And she goes, Johnny, this is weird. and there's Psalm 121. No way. All right, it gets weirder. So now we have the Bible study. I tell the guys in the Bible study this whole miracle, you know, trying to, you know, getting ready for anyone who doesn't believe it, thinking, you know, knowing I'm going to sound crazy and already wondering if I'm supposed to say anything about it. And so while I'm telling them the whole story, Chris Pegas, one of the taekwondo instructors, another taekwondo master, has been with me for many years.

3:11:37His dad was wounded in the head on Iwo Jima. And one of my books is based on his dad. So he is listening. He's a real studious guy. And he's listening to this whole story. And he goes, Johnny, have you got a copy of your last book here? The Gunner's Glory book? And I said, yeah, yeah, I think I got one in the bedroom. And he goes and gets it, you know, and I'm still continuing the story with the guys. And he said, he's opening, searching, he goes, I knew it. He says, that Bible verse was in your last book. It's in your last book, Psalm 121. And I go, what? I didn't know. I mean, you know, I'd written the book three or four years ago.

3:12:25I don't know. And he goes, yeah, it's in your book. It was Mitchell Page's favorite Bible verse. And I said, oh my God. I mean, and I'm thinking, God, is that the connection? Because I'm thinking back, because I hadn't thought about Mitchell Page since he died. I mean, you don't think about those things. I hadn't thought about the fact that God froze him on Guadalcanal like he did and this turning point of the war, you know, and I hadn't thought about any of that ever since I wrote it. And here I am, here I am going, oh my God, is there a connection? And then the guys start talking. A few seconds later, Chris is going through the book.

3:13:09He goes, Johnny, here it is again. Mitchell Page prayed that verse when they were being shelled by the Japanese ships. and he thought they were going to die and they got blown up but not killed. He said, he and that other guy prayed Psalm 121. Look, it's on page 66. Gives me the book and I'm going, oh no. And he says clearly, Mitch says clearly, this was my favorite Bible verse and I depended on this verse.

3:13:43The next day. Now, I've been asking God to confirm this, so tell me I'm not crazy, God. And the next day, I get a book in the mail. And some guy, I don't know where he's, somewhere out west, he'd written a book, and he was a huge fan of my books. And he was asking me to endorse his book, write a little blurb, you know, on there. And, you know, I mean, I was flattered why anybody would want a blurb from Johnny Clark. You could go find somebody famous or something. But he did, and he sent me this book, and he wrote a nice letter asking me to do it. And so I didn't even look at it at first. I was still caught up in this miracle and what to make of it all.

3:14:26And then Nancy said something like, aren't you even going to look at it? And I said, yeah, yeah, I better look at it. And I looked at it, and it was based on World War II. It was about World War II. That's all I remember. And so I opened the first page, the first page, Psalm 121. Nancy can confirm it, but the first page. Then I went to church that Sunday. What's a song we sing? We sing a song based on Psalm 121. I got the hint. You know, I'm not the quickest guy out there, but if you hit me enough times, I can finally get it. And I finally, I got the hint, man. And God was telling me, you might be crazy, but you're not crazy on this.

3:15:21This really happened. And this is the first time in my life I've ever told anybody that story. And I'm going to tell you right now, I fasted and prayed about saying this story in front of a million people or whatever. You know, I didn't take this lightly. And I know they may want to put me in a loony bin after this. I've had something very similar happen. I heard some of it. Tell me. Because I forgot a lot of it and I heard some of it.

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3:17:26it's a long story so i'll i've told it a couple of times on here so i'll say it but yeah there was this was two three two or three years ago and um i can't say it was atheist or anything like that but i just i i paid zero attention to christ none and um this is like when all the there's a lot of well there's always a lot of shit going on in the world but the uh the the gender stuff with kids was really fucking with my head really bad and um in a lot of the child predator shit sex exploitation and then and um and stuff that had gone on in Afghanistan. There was a lot of shit that was going on that really, it was right after the withdrawal, the Afghanistan withdrawal.

3:18:25I totally get it, Sean. And so it was in a pretty dark spot. Yeah. And went on a vacation with my wife to Sedona.

3:18:39And I'm pretty emotionless other than anger. You know, I don't show much happiness. I don't show much sadness. You'll know when I'm really fucking pissed off, but that's about it. And for whatever reason, I had a complete breakdown on the flight there. I was just fucking crying. I didn't know why I was crying. You know, I'm just like, the world is a fucking shit place. I hate this place. I don't even know if I'm... I wasn't saying I was suicidal, but I don't even want to fucking be in this world. I don't feel like I belong in this world. I don't like eight-year-olds getting their junk chopped off and changing sexes.

3:19:18I don't like all these pedophiles. That's satanic to tell itself. It's like everywhere I looked, I'm like, it's just darkness. Well, especially doing what you do, you're hearing a lot of dark crap, and you're hearing a lot of satanic crap. Yeah. And you're under attack because you're honoring God. I guarantee you, you're under satanic attack. I'm aware now. I wasn't at the time, but I'm aware now. And so we go this whole week. It's a shit vacation. It just fucking sucks. My best friend's there with his wife. Supposed to be having a great time. I had met this other SEAL. And I don't have a lot of friends.

3:19:59I had met this other SEAL here in Franklin who was a very successful businessman. And our relationship was developing quickly because he didn't need anything from me. and I didn't need anything from him and we could just be with each other. His friendship. Yeah, and that doesn't come around often. You know, seems like the older you get, the harder it is to find. And I don't relate with very many people that haven't been to combat or don't run a business. You know what I mean? I just don't have a lot in common with a lot of people. At least it seemed like that at the time. So he had just died. and um so we go through this week and just more shit's happening more stuff you know i'm seeing and smoking weed told him the last thing i saw was i saw this country music artist that came out who i respected i thought was a person of god and turns out she's like well i think that um drag queens should be able to shake their dick in little kids faces and i'm like fuck you like i did not want to see that and um totally it just threw me off course and then which i was already off course so i tell my wife i'm like we got to go on a fucking i have to go on a hike so i down a joint as fast as i can we go on this hike this is embarrassing but i was out there searching for something i had heard that sedona has all this these energy vortexes yeah and yes yeah whatever right like weird whatever and i was into crystals i was looking at all kinds of shit just trying to find some fucking peace yeah and looking in all the wrong places right so we pipe this fucking stupid Most people have.

3:21:55Yeah, this mountain. And I'm like, we're going to feel something. We're going to take this fucking crystal up to this energy vortex. I'm going to feel something. We get up there, I don't feel shit. And I'm like, fuck this stupid crystal and this dumb vortex. And I'm like, let's just go home. You know, the pot did not help at all. And we're hiking down this fucking mountain. and like i'm starting to have like this internal conversation in my head and uh i'm like what the fuck is wrong with you sean like i'm like all these kids that are getting mutilated everybody seems to be for this shit except for me why what maybe i'm the fucked up one maybe you're the fucked up one sean maybe eight-year-olds should be able to change sex and uh you know have their parents fucking throw the dress on the kid all this shit and i'm like what are you worried about all these fucking pedophiles maybe like maybe you're the one that's fucked up sean maybe maybe you shouldn't be standing up of course you know now that's the whole i know but just like i said this is an internal battle yeah because i could not make sense of anything that i was seeing nothing outside of my family unit made any fucking sense to me at all yeah how can like how can politicians not be going after pedophiles how can this be how like how is this even fucking real and um and so i started like my mind started like i said i'm having this internal battle like maybe sean you're the fucked up one you shouldn't be standing up for kids you shouldn't be worried about fucking china you shouldn't be worried about people dressed in men in bikinis and whatever they're wearing like shaking their dick in front of your two-year-old's face that's totally normal sean yeah but what are you worried about everybody every mainstream media outlet every fucking magazine every movie every fucking Hollywood thing like it's just all like this is the way yeah and I felt like I felt like I was the only one that was like saying anything about this shit you know especially when I saw the fucking country music artist I was like whoa like you're over here spouting bible quotes and all this other shit say something i know fuck you bitch yeah i and um been disappointed in a dude like what the fuck yeah of course then they got like some huge fucking tv show of course they probably told her to say it and they're like hey say this and then reward you yeah and she's so sure as shit she's like fucking huge in tv again i know you know i i think i even know who you're talking about yeah who cares doesn't matter doesn't fucking matter doesn't even fucking matter who it is because it's a nobody yeah it's a fucking lying piece of shit anyways um so i'm coming down this mountain and i'm having this internal battle and it felt like there towards the end of the hike when we got back to the resort i'm like it it felt like it was a battle for my soul i really i swear to god that's how it felt i hear you i walked through this gate and you know we have similar backgrounds you don't go to bed without a k-bar and a 45 and i'm sure you're very aware you probably don't like sitting with your back to the door you know what i mean i'm the same way i pay attention to security and like that and because of the show a lot of the guys at this um at this gate these armed guards they all listen to my show yeah and they're all like you know and so i interact with them and And we'd been there all weeks.

3:25:33And like I said, I pay attention. I see these. I recognize them all. You know what I mean? When I'm coming through the gate, what's up, Johnny? How you doing? You know, last night we're there walking through the gate. There's this old man, Vietnam, Air Force guy. Don't hold it against him. And he starts trying to talk to me. And I'm like, man, I've never seen this guy before. And I'm not in the mood to talk. I sure as shit don't want to talk about my fucking podcast or anything like that. And so I'm nice and polite, but I'm given body language. Like, I just don't want to talk right now. So, you know, I refuse to, like, square up to him and actually have a conversation.

3:26:19I'm like, oh, nice to meet you. You know, I'm walking away, looking at him over my shoulder. Of course, my wife stops, talks to him, and I'm like, fuck. so i turn around and i square up to him and he looks at me and he read my mind from front to back i had not vocalized any of this shit nothing and he goes he's like all these kids you're worried about he's like that's not your battle man that is not your battle and all the shit you're worried about with china and that that's not your battle either. And all this stuff. You know, and I, after like, after the first thing, it was after, he said, all this stuff that's going on with kids right now is not your battle.

3:27:05Wow. And then my mind went blank. I just caught like little glimpses. Cause I was like, how the fuck does this guy know I'm talking to like, what is happening? This, he's inside my fucking head right now and it scared the shit out of me and whatever we wrap up he's quit talking this is only maybe i don't know 30 seconds kind of like you i don't know how much fucking time has passed i'm freaking out i'm like i would why the fuck are you in my head and how are you in my head and we're walking so we're walking away and i look at my wife and i said holy shit i think that's fucking god like talking to me and she looked at me and she goes yeah no shit sean she's like god's always been around you you just don't make time to let him in oh and i was like beautiful what's going on so keep keeps getting weirder just like here i know and uh i'm remembering in some of it but i forgot so my best friend uh in the world um was this guy gabe a carty and uh he was a seal we contracted together at cia we did a lot of shit down in columbia off you know not working having a lot of doing a lot of debauchery shit down there But anyways, Gabe succumbed to addiction.

3:28:33He had some really bad addictions when he left the agency. And I talked him into leaving. And I wanted to help him. I mean, I was all fucked up too. Anyways, whatever. I was helping him get over his addiction. He didn't wind up making it. But Gabe was always known as a protector. He was a hockey player, an enforcer on the hockey team. Showed up to the SEAL teams. Baddest motherfucker in every one of his platoons. Everybody knew if you're in trouble, Gabe's going to fucking be there to bail you out one way or another. You know, went to the agency. Reputation followed him there. Everybody knew it.

3:29:20And anyways, we get to this resort all week. There's this guy, identical. identical. Same jawline, same build. Gabe was jacked. This guy's jacked.

3:29:35Same brow line. Everything could have been not identical, but could have been his identical twin. And the first thing we did, when we saw, when we roll up to the resort, I'm like, that guy looks like fucking Gabe. He even fucking walks like Gabe. And I'm in a vulnerable spot. Everywhere we go throughout this week, this fucking guy is around. We go out in town, this dude's out in town. We go on a hike, he's coming back from a hike. We're at the pool, he's at the fucking pool. And Katie and I both are like, this shit's weird. You know, and my buddy Dan had just died. So Katie's like, that's Gabe, he's here.

3:30:19You're in a weird spot. You're in a vulnerable spot right now. She's been telling me this shit all week. I'm like, yeah, whatever. So we go from the gate. It's like maybe a one-minute walk to this bungalow we're staying in, which is like a duplex. And we go in to open our door, unlock the door, and this fucking guy winds up being the – he's staying across the way from us. and i'm like what the fuck that fucking guy is in he's in the other half of the building like there's only two rooms here what's the coincidence of that yeah yeah plus him being everywhere we're at wow and katie looks at me again and she's like i fucking told you she doesn't cuss i told you we get in the room i'd have another meltdown i'm like what what's happening what the fuck is going on you know i thought like i thought this god is like what is what is fucking what's going on you know and i'm uh getting emotional again and like i said i don't really show much emotion and uh so we talk it out and she's like how can you keep saying you can't believe it it's happening right in front of you i'm like i can't believe this is happening she's like what do you mean you can't believe it it's right in front of your face sean yeah my phone dings in the middle of this and um so we wrap up the conversation i go look at the my phone to see who texted me and it's dan surillo's daughter who doesn't who's my friend that just died who doesn't have my number must have dug it out of her of her dad's phone and

3:32:17I could read it to you, but I'll summarize it. It basically says, Hey, Sean, I walked into my dad's gun room for the first time since he'd passed, and the whole room came alive. And he grabbed me and said that I should reach out to you because you would become his new best friend, and he wants you to know that he loves you just the way that you are. And I was like, what is happening? Three things. Then I get home and I'm obviously like, okay, holy shit. God is real. I've been looking for answers in all the wrong places. So I called this guy up who's been a huge inspiration and a bit of a mentor in my spiritual journey.

3:33:16His name's Eddie Penny. And he came on and gave. He's a CL2 development group guy and shared his testimony with me on the show. And it was so powerful. I said, this has to be like, we're releasing this on Christmas. ever since that day, probably for a year, every single person that has come on my show has brought up their faith in Jesus Christ, just like you did. I didn't know that was going to happen, that you were going to bring this up. And one of the most powerful podcasts I've ever done, if not the most powerful one. It obviously made a very serious impression on me. Isn't it fun when God starts working in your life?

3:34:07Yeah. I mean, it's just fun to go, he's real. So I call him up, and I'm talking to him, like, at midnight. Like, I start a campfire at my house, and I'm like, Eddie, I got to talk to you about some shit. And he's like, what is it? You know, I start talking to him, telling him what I just told you. And he goes, Sean, he goes, a lot of people have been praying for this to happen. And that freaked me out. I'm like, what do you mean people are praying that, like, what? Like, this sounds like conversations that are happening behind my back that you guys have plans for me that I don't know about. And he's like, I just want you to know that.

3:34:53And then he starts talking to me about guardian angels and shit like that. and I'm like, all right, and spiritual warfare and all these things. I'm super tuned into it. So then I go to work the next day and after the campfire, remember midnight, I have a meeting at noon with my IT guy, who's like a super devout Catholic. And I grew up Catholic, but I don't like I said, at this point in time, I'm pretty sure if I step foot in church, I'm probably going to disintegrate but uh so i think we're going to talk about it shit and he starts telling me he doesn't even know anything yet and he starts telling me about guardian angels for whatever reason wow and how you you know they knew you before you were ever even born and they're with you and they're assigned to you and da da da da da and that meeting happened at noon so then i take a late lunch drive back home i want to have lunch with my wife and kid and um on the way back to work i tell katie about all this i'm driving back to work and And my odometer, like the mileage left to empty, 444 miles.

3:36:21Look at the clock. It's 444 in the afternoon. Four hours and 44 minutes after my meeting with Guardian, my meeting with Adam, my old IT guy, about Guardian Angels. Who I just talked to Eddie Penny about Guardian Angels. I call up one of my guys here and I say, just so I don't forget I say, hey, Google the meeting of 444 I'm on my way back, get back to the office he's standing there, he opens up Google doesn't have any idea what I'm talking about Google this shit yourself 444 means your guardian angels want you to know that they're watching out for you Oh, I want to high five. Yeah, no, come on.

3:37:12Come on. It's just wonderful. And it's fun to know he's real, you know? He's real. I mean, he's invested in you. He knows you by name. That one's all through the Bible. He knows every hair on your head. He knows your name. He knows the day, the second you're going to die. I knew the day and the second you were born. So, you know, worrying about... I've had so many close calls. I mean, even in civilian life, I had a Roman candle jumping out of the plains. I had a Roman candle, didn't know it. Because I thought I was going slow. I was going to die. And it opened by itself. It just suddenly, before I hit the ground, it went...

3:37:59And I shot up, saved again. You remember that character in the old cartoons, Pistol P, where they shoot bullet holes all around the guy's head? I mean, I should be dead so many times. Guardian angels are real. I'm convinced of it. But I walked into an ambush. And we got—they opened up—machine guns opened up on us. and I went to hit the dirt, but it was pitch black. We're out in the jungle. I don't know where I am. And I hit a bank, an embankment, and I just hit this embankment, knocked my helmet off, and I'm just up against the embankment. And everybody's shooting at me. And I got burned from all the phosphorescent tips on the tracer rounds.

3:38:55It burned me. It burned all around my neck it went down to my shirt it burned all around my burn my face my nose never got a scratch i never got i didn't get a scratch i mean i've i just i have countless examples of that exact same thing i mean that door hinge that there's a frame door hinge right there that's from a guy that was at Delta. His name's Kyle Morgan. And he did, he was in Mali, Africa, huge terrorist attack at the Radisson Blu. This was supposed to be like a booze cruise for him. Like he had seen a lot of shit. Delta's like, hey, go do this liaison mission in fucking Mali and I don't know.

3:39:43Have a good time. Sleep with some State Department bitches. I don't know. You know, like, just take a break. And so he's down there having a good time. Whatever. Doing his liaison gig. Al-Shabaab hits this hotel. He responds with two other guys. They bitch out. Super descriptive account. i mean he talks about he enters the radisson blue first thing he sees his dead bodies in an elevator shaft and the elevator doors are open and closing you know there's fires all over the place there's terrorists running around killing people and he's a one man he's one man in a hotel a massive hotel like going door to door saving people from burning to death saving like pulling people out of their hotel room all by himself i can't remember how long it was like 12 hours or 16 hours of some he's doing this everybody everybody else is a to include like the head of state you know that's there he's eating cheese balls out of his belly button because he's a you know yeah i mean you know the types and um the feds and uh So at the very end of this shit, he corners these Al-Shabaab guys at the top of a stairwell.

3:41:06He clears up a stairwell. I guess he can't say he cornered them. They're shooting down at him damn near point blank. And the fucking went all around his body. And then he throws up a concussion grenade, discombobulates him, runs up, finishes him off, rips the door off the wall. then that's the door hinge that was holding the fucking door up wow but i mean it's you know it's and he same thing yeah he should be dressed yeah you know lots of guys eddie penny he's got another he's got the guy i was just telling you about this kind of a spiritual mentor for me or or uh he's got a similar situation where it's just like where i can't remember exactly i have like a voice told him, like, don't fucking move.

3:41:54And then the building gets leveled. I mean, it's just time and time and time again. You're not going to die until God says so. He knows the exact second. He knows. And there's some confidence to taking that. That Bible verse, Proverbs 3, 5, and 6, it's, you know, trust in the Lord with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. understanding. When I can do that, when I try to figure out, you know, I go through that China, worrying about China, I'm worrying about, I worry, worry, worry, you know, and fret not thyself. We're told, don't do it to yourself. Be anxious for nothing. He tells us all through Scripture, quit doing it because it's a waste of energy, you know, that He's in charge, you know.

3:42:43trust in the Lord with all your heart and he will direct your path. I mean, it's always a battle because, I mean, guys like you and me, you know, we believe in doing things and getting it done, you know, go. And we're contingency planners. Yeah, right. What if this happens, then we're doing this. What if that goes to shit, then we're doing that. It goes, you know. I don't think think as God's kids, we got to be careful where we put too much faith in our own, trust not in our own understanding, and don't lean on your own understanding. When I have any conflict in my own thinking about Israel, about China, about whatever it is, I can go back to the Word now, and this is something that I think Christians have this huge advantage over the world where we can kind of take the pressure off ourselves.

3:43:42Even in this Iran thing right now, I know that in Ezekiel 38, 39, I know the Bible says clearly, it gives us the play-by-play. Have you ever read that? Do you know what I'm talking about? It gives us the play-by-play of a final big shootout and who the players are. Iran will become allies with Russia, Libya, Turkey, Ukraine, and Arab peoples. It's in Ezekiel 38. They will come against Israel. Israel will stand alone. They're going to have no allies. So they're going to come against Israel. Israel will have no allies. And in this big future shootout, and I'm sure, you know, you have Lee Strobel on here, and you got guys who know this 10 times better than I do.

3:44:38But in my own little studies of the Bible, you know, it gives me this. I know we're not going to knock off Iran. I know we're not. Don't get me wrong. I think we're going to decimate them and maybe knock them down a couple of pegs, and they're not going to be a problem for a little bit. And I think that's, I'm all for it. But I know we don't get rid of them because Scripture says they're going to be around. They're going to come against Israel with Russia, with Turkey, with Ukraine, with Libya. And anyway, I know that's got to happen. It's prophecy. It's got to happen. Every prophecy, it comes true.

3:45:16All of them. So this is going to happen. And I know it's going to happen. So every time I find myself, you know, getting a little upset about this, you know, why aren't we doing this? Why don't we take Cargill and, you know, why don't we do that? You know, I'm thinking that way. I'm thinking militarily. I'm thinking like a Marine. I know I'm wasting energy because the Lord has this all planned out. This is going to happen. Everything's going to happen with or without Johnny Clark. Although I know I should pray for it. I know I'm commanded to pray about it. And, but I know that in the end, Israel's going to stand alone.

3:45:51And I, I mean, you can see it happening. The whole world will basically abandon little Israel. It's Bible prophecy. And when Iran and Russia and all these nations, they're going to be destroyed. They're going to die on the mountains of Israel. They're going to get destroyed. And it even talks about the coastlands of Russia, you know, fire falling on the coastlands. They're going to get no more Russia, no more Russian army. That's going to be gone. Iran's going to be gone. but we ain't going to do it. God's going to do it. But even in that, two-thirds of the Jews are going to get killed. So God's going to save that third, but they're going to know they were saved by God, not the USA.

3:46:36That's the way I understand it, too. I think a little differently on you than the Iran war. Yeah. But the way that I interpret that is that the Jews did kill Jesus, and they've always turned their back on God. And the way that I understand this is that God is going to allow them to be fucking decimated and he is going to unveil all of the fucking corruption that is going on inside of Israel. And then when Christ comes back, the remaining Jews will accept Jesus Christ and they will go to heaven. And that's the way I understand it. I don't think Israel is a fucking good guy in this. That's it. Oh, no, I don't think they're necessarily a good guy.

3:47:21I know they're the chosen people. I know that God is going to take care of these things, not us, not any human force, that the Lord's going to take care of it. And yeah, the remaining Jews that survived this are going to come to Christ. They're going to realize Jesus Christ was the Messiah. Yeah, they're going to come to that decision. But in the meantime, nothing's going to stop this stuff from happening. You know, nothing. My worrying about it, nothing's going to stop it. It's got to happen. It's Bible prophecy. Yeah. Let me tell you about Guns Up, the miracle with Guns Up. Okay. Okay. It getting published.

3:48:08I told you, like, you know, at first I was an angry mess, and I was working as a mailman. and teaching martial arts at the University of South Florida at night. And so I was working two jobs, doing okay. That's just, I mean, could you imagine how many people, if they knew what the fucking mailman was capable of? Holy shit. So I, well, I was really blessed, Sean. I mean, you know, in Okinawa, by accident, I trained with Grandmaster Shimabuku, a really famous old Okinawan. I didn't know he was. He was just another Okinawan to me, but I was ordered out in the Ville. We had a lieutenant ahead of his time.

3:48:49He ordered guys with certain wounds to go into the Ville and take martial arts from this little Okinawan guy. And it ends up being Grandmaster Shimabuku. He was an amazing character. Then I come home. I can't find a decent Okinawan school, and I switch over to Taekwondo. And I mean, by accident, my old neighbor was teaching, he was a language expert for the army in Thailand. He met and trained with Grandmaster Park in Thailand because the king of Thailand asked him to come there and train the Thai people Taekwondo. So this Dongkun Park that became my grandmaster that I trained with for the last 50 years, He ended up being the Olympic coach, the 1992 Olympic coach.

3:49:38He's in the Korean Hall of Fame. He was just voted by the nation of Korea as the greatest Korean master in Korean history. He had over 280 fights and never lost. He's an amazing little guy. I really, really admire him. And now my wife just showed me a thing of him. He's washing people's feet as a missionary in Guatemala. I think it's Guatemala. Yeah, he's, you know, I just love this guy. And we've been together forever. We've had some adventures. But yeah. So anyway, I lucked out in getting to train with some great men. And I'm just another student. But I lost both those jobs when my back went out on me.

3:50:26And I heard that back. We were coming in on a hot LZ. The machine gun's the last one off the chopper. You know, when the old CH, the 46s, you know, with the back ramp goes down. 47, probably 46s back then. You run off the back ramp. Well, you know, they hover, and guys run off the little back ramp. The front of it hovers because we were under fire. And so all the guys got off. And me and Chan are the last two trying to get to that ramp. And the pilot got killed. And the chopper went out of control. And the co-pilot got control of it. But we're swirling like this, throwing us all over the place inside the chopper.

3:51:06And I got all that gear, you know, 25-pound M60 and on and on. So Chan got off. Now, I'm, I don't know how high up in the air. But he finally gains control of the thing. and I know I've got to get with the guys. And I don't even know how high up I was. I run off that ramp. I landed like an anchor, but I hit mushy, swampy stuff and sank down deep into it and didn't die another time. I should have died. And everybody's shooting at me and they can't get me out of the mud. Anyway, I came out of it fine, but that back was never quite the same. And it finally went. And when it went, now I had to find a way to make a living.

3:51:55And that's when Nancy said, you need to write some of your stories from, you know, Vietnam and fight the liberal media who are lying about what the guys did over there. And you get so angry about it. You can't beat everybody up. You got to, you know, fight back a smart way and - Set the record straight. Yeah, and that's what I tried to do. But that book was rejected by every publisher from New York to California for four years. I told you how I wrote it. I kept taking the same writing class over and over and over. Well, my writing professors at St. Pete College thought it was the best war book they ever read.

3:52:34They were sure it's going to get published here. And they'd give me all these people to send it to, rejected by everybody. I mean, you couldn't—there was very few publishers that I hadn't sent it to. I don't know if there's any. And so about four years into this, Nancy and I started a Bible study class at my pastor's house. And we'd have these memory verses at the end, you know, and you pray for everybody's needs. You know, there's people fighting cancer, people out of work, and da-da-da-da-da. And Nancy, one time, she goes, I want prayer for Johnny's book to get published. Well, I've got all these four-letter words in this book.

3:53:12I mean, I wrote it to be nonfiction. I didn't know how I could write the dialogue of Marines in combat without all the words we used. And so I did. I said, well, you know, now I want my kids to know the truth, but I didn't want my kids to hear all that or read that language. I just didn't want them. And I started realizing, you know, I don't feel comfortable. And the Holy Spirit was really convicting me. And so anyway, one of the Bible verses that sent me over the edge was, for those who honor God, God will honor. And those who despise the Lord will be held in little esteem. Well, for those who honor God, God will honor.

3:53:54That hit me. That really hit me. And do you know how you have one verse that just kind of really gets you? That one got me. Convicted me so bad. I finally go to my pastor. I said, hey, I'm wanting to crawl in a hole every time the prayer group prays for my book to get published yet. If nobody's read it, none of these people have read this thing. And so I gave it to him. I said, read it. And he did. This thing's really vivid and, you know, it's got a lot and da-da-da. And I said, well, should I rewrite it, take all the words out? He goes, uh-huh, no, that's between you and God. I'm not touching that one.

3:54:34So I go to my writing professors. They go, Johnny, if you rewrite Guns Up, it's going to sound like howdy-doody joins the Marine Corps. You can't. Everybody knows Marines don't talk like, you know, they're going to use the F word all the time. They're going to do. And so I said, well, I can't stand it. It's not getting published anyway. It's gone nowhere in over four years. I can't pray about it anymore because I'm so convicted. I'm going to do it. So I sat down, took six months. I took all the language out of the book, rewrote the thing. But it's the same war, same stories. I just took the language out.

3:55:12And what I discovered is it made me a better writer. You know, it's easy to describe anger with a quick four-letter word. This probably would have been twice as long. With all those words. Well, maybe, maybe. So I took all the language out, and the day I finished that rewrite, Nancy and I got a bottle of champagne, popped a champagne, and said, Nancy, anchor's off my back. I pray about the book getting published without. I'm done with it. And the next morning, I get a call from Soldier of Fortune magazine. And they said, oh, is this Mr. Clark? We've got this story you sent us, and we want to publish it.

3:55:59I had never had anything published. So I said, what story? I never sent you a story. And they go, yeah, you sent us a story, didn't you? About Troy Bridge, out of a book called Guns Up. And I said, well, yeah, that's my, I wrote that. And then he says, he goes, I said, well, wait a minute. When did I send you this? And he goes, let me see. Oh, he sent it to us four years ago. And I go, what? Why are you just now finding it? He goes, I don't know. It just turned up in our slush pile. Two days later, Eagle Magazine calls. It's the exact same story. Whoa. And I say the exact same thing. Why now? oh, why four years late?

3:56:44And he goes, oh, I can't answer that. It just turned up in our slush pile. Then American Legion magazine calls. It's the exact same story. And there was a fourth one. Okay, go ahead and tell me luck, baloney. I had honored God and now God was honoring me. So I sent the book out again. And I started to send it out to publishers again. Within one month, this book that had been rejected by every publisher in New York, North Carolina, California, everywhere I could find a publisher. Within one month, nine publishers now wanted the book. What? And the one that bought it was Random House, biggest publisher in the world.

3:57:25Now they want this book. So I get a phone call from Pam Strickler, the head of—she was the senior editor at Random House, at Ballantyne Books. And she goes, she said, well, listen, Mr. Clark, we love this book. We want this book. And I said, well, I'm thrilled. But I said, why now? I mean, why do you want it now? And she said, what do you mean? And I said, well, I had wallpaper. This is something the writing teachers told me to do to keep up your spirits. It's my whole, my writing office, once we had our second kid, I knocked a hole in our roof of our two-bedroom, one-bath house, and I built a conning tower on top.

3:58:06It was basically a conning tower, little stairs going up to it. Real thrill with Nancy. Did a lot for our living room. But that was my writing room. Well, I wallpapered my writing room with rejection notices. Are you serious? I'm serious. The whole wallpaper. That's amazing. Of rejections from everybody. And I had grown to know, I could tell when somebody actually read it or when it was just a stamp, you know, no thanks. I had hers there. And I said, Pam Strickler? And she goes, yes. And I said, I have your rejection letter right here. And I said, you actually read this thing. I can tell. And I read it to her.

3:58:46And she goes, oh, I did read that book. I remember. And I said, well, that was just a year ago. So why do you want it now? Why do you think it's so great now? I said, is it because I took all the cuss words out? And she said, you mean there's no profanity in this book? And I said, no, none. And she goes, Mr. Clark, that's incredible. All my readers have read this book and loved it. She said, all my junior editors have read this book. I've read this book. No one at Random House recognized that there's no profanity in that book. And I said, no, none. And she goes, that's incredible. She goes, we've never heard of a Vietnam War book without the profanity.

3:59:30And I said, well, yeah. So we have now. And she goes, she said, gosh, well, we want this book. And I said, it's yours. It's great. you're the biggest publisher in the world, please. And she says, but you're going to have to work with us some. And I figured rewrites, I don't know. I said, well, sure. And she goes, look, no one's going to believe a Vietnam War book without profanity. She goes, we're going to need you to put some profanity back in this book. So I said, oh, Satan, you are so good. I don't publish anything for my whole life. Now I got the biggest publisher in the world. If I will put the cuss words back yet.

4:00:15And I, I, yeah, you know, temptation. I, yeah. You turned them down. Oh, you bet. No way. Are you kidding? After all, I told her two chances, Pam, slim and none. It ain't, it never happened. And, uh, she goes, well, okay. And she called me back a little bit later. They bought it anyway. It's now been in print for 42 years. It's been published in Lithuania. I get email from Lithuanian soldiers. One in particular stands out, but this Lithuanian soldier sends me an email saying that all his unit of reading this book, and he goes, Mr. Clark, I just had to tell you that we think this is the greatest war book that God ever wrote.

4:01:03Whoa. Wow. I mean, come on. I don't even feel like I had anything to do with this book. Honestly, I feel like this is, you know, it's been on autopilot with God from day one. But I don't—the book's a miracle. It's a miracle. It just keeps going and going. 42 years. And now, you know, I mean, crazy things. The stories that come out of it. I could go on forever, but crazy stories. We had a kid named Frank Burris. He's a great kid. He died, and we got hit. He died, but he didn't die right away. We stayed with him all night. We didn't even know how bad he was hit. He had some wounds we couldn't see.

4:01:51It's black, and Corman didn't find him, but patched the ones he found. But he carried a picture of his little red-headed daughter. He had a baby he'd never seen. And Frank Burris was from St. Pete. He went to the same high school as my wife. I never knew him. Wow. But he had this baby picture he carried in his helmet because you had to put it in your lining of your helmet to keep it dry. The long story short is this. That picture always stayed up here, you know, and he'd never seen that baby. He wanted to go home. so bad he went to see his baby. Well, he died that night. We couldn't get a medevac.

4:02:32Next day, the 101st Cav or the 101st Airborne, I forgot, but an Army unit, disguised dark with choppers, bringing them a noon meal. We can't get a medevac. And bitter, you know, I mean, this is during Vietnam. We only got hand-me-downs. And you know the story behind that. The Marine Corps had to stay. We're going to be defunct. Truman was going to get rid of the Marine Corps. And the only way we stayed Marine Corps was to prove we could keep a Marine in the field for a third the cost of the Army. And that's how the Marines stayed the Marine Corps. Yeah, he was great stories about that, that these old China hands, old China hand Marines told me incredible terrible stories, man, these guys were a hoot.

4:03:24But yeah, so Frank Burris, I wrote that story in there, but I didn't have Frank's real name. I forgot what I called him, but I didn't know anybody. We didn't know each other's names, you know, but I knew him, I mean, I knew him like I know you, but I didn't know his name, but anyway, he, 30 years later, maybe more, maybe 35 years later, I hear from this girl. And she sends me a picture. She gets my email, and then she gets my address. And she sent me an email. I'd contact her back. She said, I think my dad died in NAMM with you. And it's Frank Burris. It's baby red. That's what we called her, baby red, because she had bushy red hair.

4:04:13She had that same picture, and she sent me a blow up of it. And she had discovered how her dad died reading that book. But it just doesn't stop. I mean, it goes on and on and on. I mean, the stories that God churns up out of this. And it gave her some peace. Her mom told me that she needed it so bad. Yeah. Anyway, the book's a flat-out miracle. That's amazing. Yeah, it is. It's a miracle. I don't have much to do with it. I just sit back and marvel. Pretty cool. Wow. What did that mean? That had to just hit like a ton of bricks. I'm sorry, what? I mean, just to be connected with her. Oh, yeah. I know.

4:05:05Yeah. Family members, you know, that Frank Burris's brother has contacted me and, you know, he didn't know how he died. Yeah. Yeah. How'd you meet your wife? A blind date. A blind date? Yeah, yeah. A blind date. I was that NOM vet that they were a little concerned about. And so they didn't, yeah, it was her best friend and a guy that I went to high school with came over. They're trying to set me up. Maybe spending too much time alone, they thought. Well, they come over and her best friend had stolen her license to show me her picture. Well, I took one look at this license and I go, yeah, no thanks.

4:06:10We'll skip this one. And they go, no, no, no. She's really beautiful. Yeah, thanks anyway. I said, no, no, she's hot. And now Terry, the guy, is telling me, no, no, I wouldn't lead you off. And he goes, she lives right around the corner down here, you know, just about a block and a half away from you. And I said, well, where? I mean, all around the corner. And I said, she's got black hair, da-da-da-da. I said, wait a minute. Does she have a little brown Toyota? And she goes, yeah. And I said, does she wash her car in a bikini out front sometimes? And they go, well, I guess so. And I go, okay, let's go on that blind date.

4:07:03So we go on a blind date. I win a free pass. Did you ask her when she's going to wash her car next? Oh, I was quickly dirtying up her car. So we go to the old Beach Theater, which a real old theater out on St. Pete Beach, and we go and buy popcorn on our first blind date. And in the popcorn, we won a free pass to a second movie. So we had an immediate second date. And yeah, the rest is history. We just celebrated our 49th wedding anniversary. Congratulations. Yeah, thanks. Yeah. Wow. That's old. 49 years. 49 years. Man, that's amazing. Yeah, five grandkids. You know, how did that happen? Beautiful.

4:08:00Yeah, it is. They make life so much fun. They really keep you young, the grandkids. And now I'm teaching them a little bit of martial arts, you know, some just simple takedowns and choke outs. Simple takedowns and choke outs. I got one, I got one little granddaughter that, yeah, I think I can teach her how to kill people. She's got potential. They all do. They're just great kids. I mean, they already know Bible verses, You know, I wish I had that much scriptural knowledge when I was a little kid. Me too. I really do. I mean, it pays off the rest of your life, you know? These tough questions come up or tough times.

4:08:56God tells—he's got a whole instruction manual if you just read it. Yeah. Well, Johnny, we're wrapping up the interview. All right, brother. But I've got a hot question here for you. Oh, boy. You ready? Yeah. You were 18 years old when you got to Vietnam. A Marine M60 machine gunner with 5th Marines. Machine gunners had a 7 to 10 second life expectancy once a firefight started. You were the number one target on the battlefield because every enemy soldier wanted to silence that gun first. Walk me through your combat loadout and be as descriptive as you can for the viewer and tell me if your loadout ever changed throughout your time in Vietnam.

4:09:44Wow, that's a good question. I don't know if I can answer it properly. I can tell you this, 20-round burst, if you wanted to stay alive, sometimes you couldn't. Sometimes you had to lay on the trigger. And I think if you were so concerned about the other guys, you know, I mean, the machine gun was really critical to a grunt platoon. You had to have the gun. I mean, you could keep the enemy heads down, duck and lead. You could do something to allow your grunts to stay alive. I did fire it a couple of times so much that there were a couple of times where you could see the rounds going through the barrel of the M60.

4:10:40Literally, you could see it. It would go red hot, and then you knew you were in trouble. And see, the Marine Corps, we didn't have any spare barrels. That's another reason you had it. Holy shit. You guys weren't burning with spare barrels? My whole time, I never had a spare barrel. So, you know, if you had to, you'd pee on that barrel just to get the temperature down, make that sugar, you pour your canteens on it, anything to keep it from, because if it melted, now you've got a.45 and a K bar. You know, and now you—so, but a couple of times, yeah, fired until it would go red hot. And then when it went white hot, at white hot, you literally could see the, you know, the—not every round, but you'd see rounds going through that barrel.

4:11:26You could actually see rounds. And now it's red or white hot. It's like having a light on you in the middle of a night battle. A lightsaber. Yeah, yeah. Now you've got a big spotlight on you. Did you ever blow a barrel out? Oh, I pulled barrels out, yeah. I mean, like, where the round comes out the side. Did you ever have that happen to you? Oh, no, that never happened to me. But I could see where it could happen, but it didn't happen to me. But I did burn out a barrel at one time, And then we had to steal a barrel off from a gunner on a chopper. He didn't want to give it up. And Sam the Blooper Man convinced him.

4:12:16How many rounds would you get? We need that barrel more than you do. Yeah. Oh, shit. You're firing from way up there. We're eye to eye. Give us the barrel. Anyway, so yeah, I burned out a barrel. I might have burned out a couple. How many rounds would you carry? I've carried 400 myself, and sometimes more, but 400 was usual. So you're supposed to have ammo humpers. Well, that's why you have a five-man team, but I didn't have a five-man team. It was just me, and sometimes me and Chan, but sometimes Chan had to take over another gun, and now you're all alone, or they give you a grunt to try to help.

4:12:52But, yeah, you're supposed to have a five-man team, and all of them carry 400 rounds each. So the grunts had to carry, you know, I mean, the grunts, they didn't like it. They got enough weight of their own. But now they're having to carry machine gun ammo. So, you know, everybody looks like a Mexican bandit, but everybody's carrying a few hundred rounds. And they hated it until we hit the crown. Until they needed it. Yeah, and then, but they were always happy to run, throw these 100-round belts. Hey, Clark, here! They're throwing those belts at me. Here! Get this weight off me, man. So, yeah, but, yeah, I think, you know, you couldn't waste ammo, and I don't know, the lowdown.

4:13:38I'm not sure if that answers it, but you had to keep that gun clean. You know, in the jungle, boy, if you didn't keep that gas cylinder spit shined, it's going to jam. And if it jammed, you know, I mean, you'd catch crap from, you know, your sergeants and so forth. But worse than that, you know, Marines are going to die if that thing jammed. So really had to be careful about cleaning that thing. And that wasn't easy. I mean, the jungle was everything. It rotted everything. I mean, I would come in sometimes with all my clothes would have been ripped apart, really half naked. We would come in, walk into Anwar Combat Base, and we'd have Vietnamese laughing at us.

4:14:26Serious, this truly happened. We're walking, humping in. You know, I got the 60 over my shoulder. We're humping in. And I had to cut the whole part of my trousers out because I had dysentery. So, you know, you don't stop and go to the bathroom. You just drain while you walk. Well, a few weeks out in the jungle or more, your clothes are totally shredded. So we walked into Anwar a couple of times, and we're half naked, some of us. And toothbrush? Couldn't use my toothbrush. We had to use it to clean the gas cylinder on the 60. Yeah. So when you did brush your teeth, you were brushing with oil, gun oil.

4:15:07And you had to use the right kind of gun oil. You had to be careful there. Sometimes the Marines gave us gun oil that it just wasn't the best. It would be no good in the rain and the humidity sometimes. You know, it wasn't. So there was usually the Army had good gun oil. When's the last time you fired an M60? Okay. I hadn't fired an M60 since 1968, last night in NOM. And a bunch of Marines from Iraq and Afghanistan, young Marines, all machine gunners, they've read the books. You know, they're in machine gun school. They're told to read them. So they contacted me, and they flew me to Pennsylvania and wanted me to shoot an M60 machine gun again.

4:16:01And they brought a Marine Corps cameraman. cameraman, it was a combat cameraman, to come out there and get pictures of it. And so, as you know, like, I don't know, 20 to 30 of these young guys, you know, young Marines, all gunners, you know, they were all, most of them were all gunners. And so, so I did, you know, I was excited about it, but I haven't fired a 60 since 19, that's 50 years or so, you know, it's, so I, you know, I don't know, am I going to embarrass myself or what. And they got it all ready for me, you know, taught me a little bit. It started coming back, some of the ins and outs.

4:16:37And then... Like riding a bike, huh? Yeah. Yeah, it came back. It came back. But, you know, I had forgotten, you know, just... And so anyway, I was ready. And so we started firing it. They had... It's probably 150 yards away. I mean, when you look at the little video, you can blow it up and you'll see that's a truck and a car down there and an old washing machine. And I think that's about it, but it's out on a farm in Pennsylvania and it's down in like a little valley so that the rounds won't, you know, they got sort of something for it to hit if you blow it. And so anyway, I opened fire on this thing and loved it, but I couldn't see where my rounds were landing because they didn't want to use tracer rounds.

4:17:24They were afraid it might start a forest fire or something. So I finally said, you know, after a little bit, hey, guys, I can't see where my rounds are landing. You know, I don't know if I'm hitting a target or not. I don't like that. And so this one young Marine goes, I got this, sir. And he comes out with a little jar of, is it Tannerite? Is that what it's called? Yeah. A little jar of Tannerite. It had a red label on it. And, you know, it's just a little jar. I mean, tiny, like a jar of pickles. and he runs out there, you know, and it's pretty good distance. He runs out there with his jar and he puts it on top of this washing machine and it runs back and he goes, you'll know if you hit that, sir.

4:18:07You know, and I go, well, okay. You know, and, you know, I mean, 76-year-old eyes here and I'm going, God, I think I see a little red dot. And I did. I could see the little red dot that was on that. It was a label. And I say, okay, let's go. And, you know, so I go to shoot, and they're all going, no, sir, sir, you'll never hit that shooting from the hip. You got to go on the bipod. You need a scope to hit that. You know, the new machine guns have scopes. And I said, yeah, I know. I don't like that. I don't like scopes. I said, you know, I need to feel it, see it. And they said, well, sir, it's just a waste of ammo.

4:18:47Well, let me try it. So I haven't fired one in 50 years. And I opened about maybe a 20-round burst. And it blew up. Holy shit. It blew the washing machine, the whole lid up. Blew it. Boom. And that's what you see in the video is me going, ah! Nice. So after that, all these young gunners, I mean, they were blown away. They were cheering me. Look out of me. Anyways, about that scope, ladies. One of those old men moments where you show the young guys you still got it. But it was fun. It was fun for the moment. So all the young machine gunners, they got to do this now. And they had like three M60s out there.

4:19:39So, I mean, these crazy Marines, they had a minigun on the back of a truck. I'm not making that up. Crazy guys. I love these guys. That's some gangster shit right there. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, so they all tried it with the M60. And all of them tried it from the hip, you know, because they ran out with another jar of tannerite. And nobody could do it. And they kept trying. Then they started shooting from the bipod, you know, down on the ground and aiming at it. And nobody could hit it. Damn, that's awesome. And so finally, some freaking jarhead with a sniper scope. He shot it with a sniper rifle.

4:20:20Right on. He blew it up. But yeah, so it was one of those fun moments where you get slaps on the back from young guys, which felt good. That's cool, man. Yeah. They enjoyed it, too. They got a kick out of it. Still have the same K-bar? Oh, yeah. I still got a K-bar. That's fucking cool. Same one? Oh, no. No. Not same one. No, they took everything from me. Yeah. I had an SKS that I tagged. You know, if you killed an NVA with a single shot weapon, if you had the chance, if you could tag it, you know, send it back to the rear on the chopper bringing in food or something. and they were supposed to put it away for you.

4:21:03So when you went back to the States, you could take single-shot weapons home. And yeah, some pogue in the rear stole my SKS. Go figure. Yeah, but I got an SKS now. It's pretty cool. It's got the big bayonet. I got one too. An SKS? Yeah. Oh, sweet. I'll pull it out here. With a bayonet? Yep, with a bayonet. And a.45. Oh, yeah. Colt.45? Colt.45. Although the truth is, one time I had to pull that.45 out, ran out of ammo or something. I don't know who knows why. And it was rusted so bad it wouldn't work. Well, I took care of the machine gun, but, you know, kind of ignored that.45 on there because I didn't plan on ever using that.

4:21:54Yeah. What do you think of 9mm? Oh, I like them. Yeah. I mean, I like, yeah. Do you have a 9mm? Yeah, I think I do. I got a 9mm, but... What is it? I think I've got an old... I mean, it's not a military. It's a civilian 9mm. I think I got an old Beretta. Oh, right on. I think it's a Beretta. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's a Beretta. Well, I got you another present.

4:22:27Oh, God, a silencer? That's right.

4:22:35I tried to get you a machine gun, but I couldn't get the paperwork done in time. Oh, gosh, man. I got a buddy over at SIG. His name's Jason. He's got a soft spot for Vietnam vets, just like the rest of us. Oh, Jason, thanks, buddy. So that is a 9mm SIG Sauer P365 macro with a SIG flashlight. the brand new optics line so it's got a red dot on there the sig suppressor from silencer shop a silencer silencer shop is awesome they do super easy to get the silencers from suppressors from allowed to have silencers you're in luck you live in florida so silencer shop's going to ship you a brand new can or suppressor down to florida for you and you'll be able to put that on that weapon right there.

4:23:27They'll take care of all the paperwork. The other thing I love about Silencer Shop is they stand up for gun rights for us gun enthusiasts. So they're a fucking awesome company. Sig is amazing. God, that's great, man. That thing, I mean, we're talking some fucking pews. Oh, no spit. 17 rounds in the magazine plus one in the pipe. Oh, 17 rounds? 17 rounds. Oh, man. Oh, my son's going to be trying to steal this from me. Don't let him. Okay.

4:24:05Oh, yeah. Gosh, this is beautiful. Man, thanks. Well, maybe you can sleep with that thing now. Done. Yeah, I did. Done. Nancy won't even know when I've shot somebody. Right on. She could still sleep, and I'll wake her up the next day and tell her. Perfect. Oh, by the way. oh gosh thanks man what a great what a great gift you're welcome i feel cheap now giving you books and a sweatshirt no you kidding i'm gonna wear that shirt everywhere oh god but um all right one last question yeah do you think your buddy chen would want to come on doing what do you think your buddy chen would want to come on the show Oh, I don't know.

4:24:55He might. I'd love to interview him. He might.

4:25:05I'll talk to him. I'll tell you, I know some great men that probably would do it quicker, but Major Scott Husing, do you know him? No. He wrote Echo and Ramadi. And he went from, as a Lance Corporal, he read Guns Up. And now as a retired major, and he came to see me. And Guns Up was huge with him and all the guys. I think it was in, I know it was in Ramadi, of course, but I think it was in Iraq or the first Gulf War before that. I'm not even sure. Wherever he read guns, they handed out guns up and they would tear it in sections for a squad to share it. And so now he's in his 50s and he shows up at my front door and I didn't know this guy.

4:26:02And he goes, my name is Major Scott Husing and I've wanted to meet you ever since I was a Lance Corporal. And I got to know him real good with the 4th Marines. And this book, Echo and Ramadi, you'd probably relate to that a lot more than Nam stuff. But yeah, anyway, yeah, he's one. I will, I'll talk to Chad. Perfect. See what he says. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, this is, this has been so, I've been so excited about this. Me too. I've been way too anxious. I had to pray, you know, be anxious for nothing probably a hundred times. Just I had to chill out a little bit. I was so excited about it.

4:26:51Well, ever since it started when Jocko came on your show and suggested me, and all my friends sent me, Jocko told Sean Ryan to have you on, da-da-da-da, you know? And I mean, from that moment, I've been nervous. choco's an awesome dude man i'm excited but you know are you yeah god this is great i love this thing you haven't even shot it yet i know but i love it ah you're gonna love it oh yeah it's not raining out there we can crack a couple rounds off oh let's do all right all right you want to end this with a prayer i do how about you leave it okay i better put my weapon down I don't know if God appreciates that.

4:27:42Father God, we come before you, Lord, to give thanks. I want to thank you with all my heart for taking care of me through all this and getting me on this podcast. I don't believe in accidents, and I know Sean doesn't either, Lord. We want to give you thanks for a million and one blessings. Thank you, Lord, for the calling you've put on his life. Thank you for using him in such a mighty way and giving him this voice that's reaching so many people and giving him the courage to stand up for Christ. That's not easy in this world, Lord. It's really hard sometimes. Father, keep encouraging Sean with that kind of courage.

4:28:29And don't let any of Satan's attacks, and we know there's going to be some, There's always Satan's attacks, especially when a Christian's doing something. If a Christian's on the sideline doing nothing, Satan leaves him alone. But when you got a man like Sean who's stepping up and stepping out front, he's walking point, God. And that's hard to do down here. And you know it. So bless him. Bless this show. Bless his family. And we just want to give you all the thanks and the praise in Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thank you, brother. Yeah, pal. Johnny, it was an honor. Oh, shit. Thanks, man.

4:29:27No matter where you're watching The Sean Ryan Show from, If you get anything out of this at all, anything, please like, comment, and subscribe. And most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, head to Apple Podcasts and Spotify and leave us a review.