February 3, 2024 • 51 mins
Joe Muccia is a former US Marine and co-author of Cry Havoc! He is a veteran of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003 where he was awarded a Navy and Marine Corps Achievement Medal with Combat Distinguishing Device, the Combat Action Ribbon, and a Presidential Unit Citation.
He shares his friendship with the late Thomas Greer, a former special operations commander who wrote under the pen name "Dalton Fury," and how he finished Greer's manuscript after his fight with cancer. Muccia is proud to share the fighting spirit of the individual rangers who parachuted into Grenada in ‘83 and how they lived up to the legacy of their brothers who served in WWII and the Korean War.
Get your copy of Cry Havoc!: https://amzn.to/3SK7glm
Learn more about Joe and his books:
Website - https://ssgtmooch.wixsite.com/joe-muccia
Join the SOFREP Book Club here: https://sofrep.com/book-club
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:15):
Mute force. If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
You're listening to Software Radio, Special Operations, Military Nails and
straight talk with the guys in the community.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hey, what's going on? Welcome back to another wonderful episode
of soft Rep Radio. I am your host, rad and
today I have a special guest. But first you know
what it is. It's time to go visit our merch store.
That's right, soft Reap dot Com Forward Slash Merch We
have all sorts of new items. I just got back
from going to shot show. We have a lot of
suppliers bringing stuff into the merch store, so be sure
(00:57):
to go check out your favorite branded soft Reap item
from our merch shop and keep us going. Also, our
book club, we have soft rep dot Com Forward Slash
book hyphen Club. If you go there you can check
out the books from the authors that come on the show,
as well as others from the operators who run the
site soft Rep. They put books into this library that
they think you would enjoy. And my next guest, without
(01:19):
any further ado, is Joe Muchia who has written a
book called cry Havoc with the late Tom Greer. Joe
is a former United States Marine Corps gunnery sergeant, and
we're going to get into it with him. Welcome to
the show, Joe.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Hey, Rad, great to be here, man.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yeah, it's great to have you. You know, I got
to drop Cyrus's name, all right, Cyrus Norcross. He is
one of our guests Navajo Nation journalists. He's like, Rad,
you got to get Joe on the show and talk
about as a grenada, right and Operation Urgent Fury and
now let me piggyback on that real quick, Operation Urgent Fury. Well,
there was a movie called Heartbreak Ridge that is kind
(01:56):
of like they're going into Grenada, you know, to go
into that in Heartbreak Ridge with Clint Eastwood. How close
to life are you? Like? Clin Eastwood?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
I was probably one of the most easy going gunnery
sergeants out there, So I would say I was on
the opposite end of the spectrum.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Did you show up with a colored shirt? And if
they didn't, they all had to go do extra pt No.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Now, my guys were pretty good. I didn't have to
worry about doing stuff like that. They self policed.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Were you Can you tell me a little bit about
what you did as a gunnery sergeant. Was it a
mos style job. What was that.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Yeah, when I first started out in the Corps, I
was a communicator, and then I moved into the intelligence
field and I stayed there until I retired.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Intelligence. So in the military, that's a word that doesn't
really get used often.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
A little oxymoor on there. But yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Tell me a little bit of what intelligence you would
be dealing with during Operation Urgent Fury, Like, what is
it that you and your guys were.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Like, Well, I wasn't there, so I'm well after the
after the fact. But when I first joined the Corps,
one of my first NCOs was a grenade a bay
root bet and so I kind of grew up on
that lore of the core or where they talked to you.
You know, they kind of, hey, we're expeditionary. We you know,
land on islands, we do we storm beaches, we do this,
we do that. It's the kind of thing you're brought
(03:08):
up with. And my NCO, a guy named Danny, was
really good and really smart. He had already been Grenada
bea route Desert Storm. I came in on the tail
end of Desert Storm, and he kind of raised me
as a young devil pup into into something useful for
the core. But I mean, it's interesting that you asked
me about intelligence and urgent fury, and that was one
of the key issues in preparing our forces for going
(03:31):
into Grenada was the lack of substantial intelligence on the
ground about what we were facing. So that was a
big black hole for a lot of the guys going in.
But but definitely I was not there, but was lucky
enough to serve with a bunch of folks that were.
And then eventually taking some college courses, I took a
creative writing and it became a history. My major. Ended
(03:53):
up talking to a bunch of rangers who actually jumped
into Grenada, and that kind of set this age for
my interest in that operation.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, I actually got to interview a friend of mine
who jumped into Grenada, Howard Max Mullen, Mad Max, Mad Max. Yeah,
I got to give him a shout out, you know,
and marchin die rad. What's up doing? Everybody? What's up?
Mad Max Mullen? Here, I could see you in the
ranger pit. You want to do combatives, you want to
go to Grenada, Let's go. You know, he is a
great guy, and obviously you know who he is.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Ranger Hall of Famer. Max is actually featured in the
book in Cry Havoc. Okay, you'll you can read a
little bit about him in there, but yeah, those guys
are phenomenal. Max is just a legend.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah. You know what's funny with Max is he brings
his his story and his trials and tribulations of the
Ranger and being in the army and now out and
he does war games with us where he's my commanding
officer for like the last thirteen years, fourteen years of
these Lion Clause games that we go to with airsoft guns.
And it's no joke though, right, you know, it's just
(04:57):
no joke. There's armored personnel carriers, tracked vehicles, there's tanks.
There's people with like lots of experience of hunting people
for a living that are getting paid to other people
for a living out here. So I mean, and Matt
Max Is usually like all right, Rad, first lieutenant, Rad,
what's your platoon want to go do? And I'm like this,
He's like, I'm gonna go with you guys, Let's go
And it's like let's go fight, right. I love that.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Yeah, if you're gona learn, you're gonna learn for the
best and Max is outstanding. He is so good. I
love that guy. I've known him for a long time.
Just got to see him in Savannah for the fortieth
anniversary of Urgent Theory, which is great. Yeah, I love
that guy is He is phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
He's like, rad, you should clear your schedule for April
and come out to the best Rage of Competition with me.
And I was like, well, Max, slide into my DMS bro.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
I'm probably actually going to be down there. I've been
in contact with the coordinators for the BRCO. I'll probably
doing a signing.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Down there, So if it happens I might be there,
then we can at least like give each other a
high five and say it was nice to meet each
other in real life. Yeah, Ursus definitely these virtual introductions
and quick friendships that are made very fast. I mean,
this is what I want my show to be about.
Is my listener to hear like, hey, you're just a
normal dude, like we all are, and uh, we have
(06:10):
mutual friends and we can have conversation so as a
marine though as a devil pup, you know, and as
chesty you know, chesty as your lord and savior in
the Marine Corps. Right, Okay, so I learned to love
Chesty even not being a marine. He is my Lord
and savior of war. I just want you to know that.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
I mean, how could you not?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
How could you not?
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Guys just straight legend. I mean, you know, another another
more laura of the cores we're brought up on as
young marines, the legend of Chesty as five Navy crosses.
I mean, the guy's just again another ledge out there.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
He didn't want to get any hot. He wanted to
go back down and rank, and then he went right
back up in rank. You know, it's like, what just
the Marines polar? Right? It's polar, right, isn't it. So
any of my listener's Chesty Polar? Yeah, he's He's lore
of the Marine Corps. So go look up Chesty Polar. Yeah,
if you want to know who we're talking about. And
then say, why didn't he not get a Medal of
(07:05):
honor at any point even posthumously?
Speaker 3 (07:07):
I don't know, but it's pretty impressive when you see
that ribbon rack and you see all those Navy crosses
with the you see the Navy cross ribbon with all
the stars on it.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, it's like cluster cluster, cluster, cluster, cluster cluster.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
It's like you'll never see anything like that again in
your lifetime.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
So no, he's yeah legit, And that's why the Marines
hold him in such high regard as a marine, because
he really did what marines need to do, which is
be the tip of the tip of the blade of
the spear. I love it. Now. Is your hat? Is
that like a recon hat with that spade on it?
Speaker 3 (07:38):
No? Actually, it's just a patch of friend of mine
got made up a while back with the spartan helmet
and the spade on it.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Oh, I see, because I know, like the first recon
out of like what is it Hollywood style side over
here they have like the spade as their logo. I
think it is.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Yeah, then I think you know, the marsk and the stuff. Yeah,
I think they us some of that imagery in their
and their logos.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yeah, just trying to give him a shout out that
I hold me over in Japan. And first, what's up?
How you do about it? You're so tell me this
book that you put together called cry Havoc with the
late Tom Greer. Tell me about Tom Tom.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
I'm sure a lot of your listeners are aware of
who Tom was. He was at Tora Bora. He wrote
Kill Bin Laden was probably his most well known book,
but he wrote a series of fictional books based on
a character just like himself, New York Times bestseller, Great
Human Being, Great Patriot. Tom and I overlapped in our research.
I had originally started working on by myself to write
(08:36):
a book about Grenada, and Tom was really wanting to
do the same thing but focus on the ranger missions
during the operation. And then we started having a lot
of overlap and talking to the same people, and it
was kind of like, you mind if I passed this
information over to a friend of mine who's also writing
a book, and we cross decked a lot of information,
and after that we came became friends. And then he
called me up one day and he said, listen, I
(08:58):
have cancer. I'm I'm not gonna make it. I'm gonna
send you all the material I have. He's like, you
can do what you want with it. So that kicked
off that and the and the fortieth anniversary approaching really
kickstarted the effort to get this thing written and published
in time. So working with Tom at first was great
because there was a lot of it was very collegial,
(09:19):
it was very friendly. We just passed in information back
and forth, and then it was like getting the rug
pulled out from underneath you with your writing partner, essentially.
But Tom had sent me his manuscript and it was about,
I would say, about fifty percent done and needed some work.
There was great material there, and it's a very large
cast of characters. I think we included almost one hundred
(09:41):
Rangers that we had interviewed, not to mention other members
of like Knights, Doggers and eighty second Airborne guys and
so there's a nice swath of service members for this.
But it just covers the Ranger operations during Urgent Fury.
But we had to whittle it down to focus on several,
you know, protagonists, like in most books you have a
single protagonist. Thought I lost it there for a second.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Oh no, I'm listening. No, I look frozen. I'm like
listening though. Here the fireplaces, the fireplaces movement. You got me, bros. Hypnotic.
I know right, You're like, I'm just listening. I'm I'm
just putting together Tom Grier's Dalton Fury. You know what
I'm saying. And I remember he passed. He passed maybe
like three few years back, right, and uh yeah a
(10:26):
few years back. Yeah, it was a big deal and
everyone's talking about going to his funeral. In fact, I
was in twenty sixteen. I was in London with Hobbitt,
who was fighting for the Special Forces team with Soft Rep.
We went, we go over to London and he had
just said that Dalton Fury had just passed away and
he was needing to go back to his funeral and everything. Yeah,
about the same time.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Yeah, but he was He was awesome. The stuff he
had left was really dynamic. He has a certain writing
style to him, and I tried to match that as
best I could and then finish finish the work, which
obviously we're able to do. But again most books have
a single pre antagonists. We kind of tried to pick
like a key personality from each one of the Rifle
Companies and First and Second Ranger Battalion just to carry
(11:07):
their the stories a little bit. But we bolted on
a lot of the other stories from a lot of
the other guys. So, like I said, there's input probably
from over one hundred veterans into the book. So it's
and it's very detailed. It's not one of these red
arrows blue arrows on a map kind of thing from
a general's point of view. This is from the individual
rangers point of view. I find that that kind of
(11:27):
writing is very popular nowadays, especially like with the advent
of Band of Brothers and books like that that focus
it from the foxhole view. These guys are like guys
you've known, especially for your audience, which as a I
would assume it was a big, significant soft representation in it.
I guarantee you there's a lot of familiar names into
in this book that to your listeners and.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Viewers that they would just love to check it out. Yes,
and I want them to, so they should go check
out cry Havoc. And where would we be able to
go see and find this book? Is it going to
be something that's on the bookshelf? Is it something that's
to be like, you know, uh, internet specific for a
certain website.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
I sell it on my own website and I'll provide
you the link later on.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
And it's also site right now too.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
What is that I got to pull the r L.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
I'm sorry, that's funny. Well you used to do that
while we're talking it's a week site.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
You know how their URLs are like long and stupid.
But anyway, I'll provide you the link and then you
can also order it off of Amazon and Barnes and
Noble and stuff like that online, so it's available there.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
But if anybody wants a book, leave a review, right.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Yeah, please, And if you buy it from me usually
I'll sign it for everybody. And if you want an
inscription in there, I'll throw it in there as well.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Oh well that's awesome. Well, once we get the link
from you, we'll have that put up in the notations
on the website and people will build just like hyper
click it and then go check out your book, you know,
if they're on the website. And if you don't have
the soft reap app already for your phone, go ahead
and go download the softwarep app and that way you
can just click on the story, click on software radio
and then just go right to it with your thumb
(12:58):
and me use your other handing she's your thumb instead
of this one, right yeah, instead of this one right yeah, exactly.
That's great, And let's go back to the timeline. How
old were you when you enlisted?
Speaker 3 (13:12):
I was twenty when I enlisted. By the time I
got to boot camp, I was twenty one. I was
in the delayed entry program, so I was one of
the old guys in my boot camp. Most of the
guys were seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old. It was me
and one other guy was twenty one, and we were
like the We were like the grand grand old men
of the platoon. But I went in when I was
twenty one. I graduated in from boot camp in August
(13:32):
to ninety two, and I retired in February twenty twelve.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
So of twenty twelve, Wow, I've been.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Out for a little bit, A little older, little paunch here,
little little slower.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Gunnery sergeant was the rank you achieved. Yeah, yeah, which
is a respected rank in the Marine Corps. You know,
everyone like double pups want to be a gunny sergeant,
gunnery sergeant.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Yeah. If I would have stayed in just a little
bit longer, I probably could have pinned on master starrent.
But I really at that point in time, I knew
it was time to go. They wanted me to mostly
in staff positions at that point, and I really wasn't
down with that. I wanted to be with the breens either,
lead and number training them and you know.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
The point above. A master sergeant.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Yes, yeah, so gunnery starts an E seven, Master starts
an E eight, or a first sergeant uh, and then
a sergeant major or a master gunny starts E nine master.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Yeah. Now, if you're a technical skill, like intel is
a technical skill, you'll go to the master start and
the master gunnery sargeant route. But if you go to
administrative or or you know, an infantry, you'll go first
start and sergeant major route like that. But I was
on a master startain track because of my mos.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
So is an intelligence mos is that like an O
three eleven, an O three, O two thirty one, O
two thirty Just shout out the numbers three those of
you that wait, what's intelligence is? Yeah, oh two thirty one. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
And obviously the Army has a different mos uh number
alpha alpha numeric numbering system with it, so we're a
little bit different, just you know, for just four numbers. Well, Marines,
just keep it simple, Marines. You know, look at the
Army and the Marines in seventeen seventies. Okay, right, hasn't
even been the warrior seventeen seventy six, right, Okay, we
(15:12):
get it. We know when the Marines and everybody were created,
but they had such insignias throughout time that were so
close to each other that they had to put the
guns on the chevrons for the Marines so that they
had these guns on them that didn't look like the
army chevrons. Yeah, that was a later development, I think.
If you want to talk in signey, I think one
of my favorite one is for the officers dress covers.
(15:34):
Now they have what's called a quadrifoil on the top
of it. That was because during that timeframe there were
Marines sharpshooters up in the riggings of ships, and so
when they do boarding actions in order that they so
they wouldn't shoot their own officers accidentally, they could be
spotted from above with this quadrifoil on the top of
their cover. So that's one of my favorite that in
the blood stripes obviously for Marine NCOs and officers as
(15:58):
it had to Battle of Chappol to pull.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
The chick explain it is that the points on the webbing.
Is that what you're talking about.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Now, if you look at the top of the cover,
the round cover, you'll see it almost looks like a
cruciform on there. It's a braided cruciform. It's called a quadrifoil.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Wow, and that's to identify that that's their officers.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Yeah, during boarding parties.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Yeah, oh, that's cool to know. They're like they're coming.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Up either they're boarding or they're repelling borders. It's easy
for to see if the sharpshooters can look down and go, okay,
that's one of mine. Don't shoot them in the head,
you know.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah, that's right, that's crazy. Yeah. And all the little
things that they had to do just to like make
themselves the Marines versus confusion with the army, right, because
it was always you know, a little blending in and
then now the Army has pinks and greens back in style,
and then the Marine Corps have like a green jacket.
It's not your class a's what is that?
Speaker 3 (16:48):
No, that's well, it's it's considered. It's our We call
them our alphas. It's our alpha service, our service a uniform. Okay,
it looks somewhat like a green business suit. I think
the thing that I love about Marine Corps units they
really haven't changed very much like some of the chevrons
might have changed or the positioning of things, or this
and that and the other. But for the most part,
the marine uniforms have not changed dramatically for quite a
(17:11):
long time, and I think that's one of the things
I love about it. I do like the Army's pinks
and greens. They're based off of World War Two uniform,
which is very sharp looking, especially if you have it tailored.
And then any I gotta give a lot of props
to any of the guys that are in the units
that have jumped status because you're wearing the Corcoran jump
boots and they're when they're shined like glass, they look fantastic.
(17:33):
So we had to those guys. They look great, dynamite
looking uniform when it's done right.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
You know, I grew up with those boots on my
dad's feet my entire life, and I just was a
normal thing, you know, pants bloused and tucked into boots.
We'd go to these like little assemblies where he had
a dress up and all these guys come over and
shake his hand and it's like, why are you guys
bothering my dad so much? Man? Can we just Yeah,
it's the green beret bro in boots.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Yeah, gotta wear them gotta wear it right too?
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yeah, right, I had my own for a long time.
He got them from me for Christmas, like in my twenties,
and I would try to shine him, you know, and
just ar them as like a punk rock kid. So
so Dad.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
I love to place him with Doc Martin's later on.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Yeah, you know. And I saw some really nice brown boots, right,
these cochranes that they're wearing with those pinks and greens,
they're like this nice brown. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Have you shined them with this polish it's called cordivon.
They had this really nice deep brown color to them.
They're really good looking.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Oh it really does look good. Yeah, I just I
was just looking at that earlier today. How crazy? Now,
what are you doing to stay sane? Is it writing
a book? Are you doing some kind of hobby? Are
you your own business owner as a veteran? What did
you do to transition from the Marines with your intelligence
knowledge and everything? I see you wrote a book we're
all talking about it. Is that your goal? Now?
Speaker 3 (18:53):
I still work for the government. I got a few
more years left to go to retire again. But they
allow me to have my side hustle, and that's that's
writ in books. So I have an LLC built, and
I do battlefield tours in Europe. I do some World
War II battlefields, which is I do pretty good, one
or two tours a year, which is nice. It's nice
to get out and do that. And I'm working on
a couple more books, actually a companion book for cry Havoc.
(19:16):
It's called Old Scrolls. I am interviewing rangers that pre
dated Urgent Fury, so from like the reformation of the
two Battalions in seventy four, and I'm actually overlapping urgent
theory to about eighty four. I'm stopping short of the
formation of the modern Regiment and the third Battalion. So
I just want to get those because these fellas, I
(19:37):
think they've been from what I've been talking to, the
guys I've been talking to, they've been waiting for a
long time to have that story told. And these are
some there's a lot of I would call them ranger legends.
They would probably not like being called legends that were
involved in those startups of both the first and second
Ranger Battalion. And these guys have some nominal stories and
(20:00):
I think that the I think not only will rangers
enjoy these stories, but just folks that enjoy military history
will enjoy them because, frankly, some of them might find
them completely outlandish and fantastic considering what has become the
standard nowadays in the military versus what the standard was
back then. And I don't mean it there was a
(20:22):
degradation and standard. I mean some of the things they
just they did was they were wild, wild, and those
stories need to be brought brought forward. And I think
it's a it'll be a fine tribute to those guys,
because not only will I there's a lot of these
fantastic stories like oh my god, I can't believe they
did that, but there's a lot of how the battalions
were formed, what their initial missions were, and then as
(20:45):
the battalions developed and evolved, they became more of a
special operations force where they started doing raids and airfield
seizures and things like that, which when they first stood.
The battalions back up, they're more like the as General Abrams,
who wrote they called the Abrams Charter, stated they were
going to be the finest light infantry unit in the world.
(21:07):
Were they morphed, they still are some of the best
light infantrymen on the planet, but now they've morphed into
more of a special operations force. And this covers this period,
covers that build up, that change, that evolution, and shows
changes in tactics and uniforms and equipment and weapons. So
I think military history buffs and history buffs in general
(21:30):
will probably probably enjoy it, and it'll make a nice
companion book to go with. Cry Havoc.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Are you going to go after guys as far back
as like any living lurps that are still around? Is
that what you're looking for? Guys that had been in
the muck.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Yeah, well, you know, the fantastic thing about that period
of time, especially in that into seventy four, there were
so many guys left who were part of those lurp
units or part of Special Forces A teams where there
were the lerps became the rangers. Later on in Vietnam
were still a lot of those guys in the ranks,
and when the two battalions stood up, a lot of
(22:04):
them came to them. So, yeah, there's gonna be a
lot of that. How that the Vietnam experience influenced the training,
Oh yeah, it's it is.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
It's amazing.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Some of these stories. Yeah, there's it's amazing like talking
about legends, like like Donald Purdy. I mean, there are
so many ranger legends in this thing that I think,
especially like folks who like to read about special operations
for US are really going to enjoy this.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Well. As a young man myself growing up in an
SF household, I had a book and it was called
Lurps Okay, and I was in my bathroom and I
didn't have a phone, and so here's little Aaron flipping
pages through the LURP book reading about like and there
we were. It's been two weeks and we've only had
three days of rations with us, and you know, we're
just out there in the darkest jungle spots behind enemy lines.
(22:54):
Alert stands for I believe, long range reconnaissance patrol or
yep right.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Yep correct. Yeah. You know, as a young marine, when
I was stationed like a twenty nine Palms and then
I went to Campa June, you could walk into any
quick Mart on base, so you could walk into the
exchange and they have racks of these paperbacks. And it
seemed like every soldier who had served as ALERP or
a ranger was writing books at that time, and you
could literally because we didn't have these things. No, you
(23:23):
could literally have your own portable entertainment throw in your
cargo pocket. Like two or three of these paperbacks and
my favorites were written by a man that I'm very
happy to have contact with on Facebook, guy named Gary Linderer,
who really spearheaded a lot of that and he served
in f Company fifty eight Lerps and then it went
on to the rangers when the unit transformed. But I
(23:44):
think Gary was a catalyst for a lot of his
fellow lurps and rangers to write these books. And like
I said, to carry two or three of them around
my cargo pocket. You know, if we rucksack flop, just
sit there, pull out your books, start reading. Wait until
you move.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Out outside yourself and read somebody else's thoughts and see
what they went through, you know. Yeah, these So I
also read a command manual all the time. I had
a Green Beret how to run an eighteen manual in
my bathroom and alert book that was up. So you
see kind of what was influenced in my life, right sure?
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yeah, yeah, I mean my dad's a Vietnam ERAVET, so
I know I get it. I completely get it.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yeah, and let's talk about that parachute that you have
behind you. That's from where? What year is that?
Speaker 3 (24:27):
That's in nineteen forty four. It's a swath of a
nineteen forty four dated parachute. I was blessed for your
listeners who met a band of brothers. When I was
in Kuwait getting ready to go over the border into
Irock and O three, I started writing veterans of easy Company,
the band of Brothers, and the first veteran I wrote
was was Dick Winners. So I have a great affinity
(24:47):
I grew when I once I came back and I
left active duty, I became friends with a lot of
these guys. Some of your listeners will probably recommen the IZ, say,
like Buck Compton, Bill Garnier, and it was guys from
the mini series. A lot of the more well known
ones I knew them. I knew a lot of the
lesser known ones as well. But anyway, I collected a
bunch of stuff over the years, and that that swath
of nineteen forty four dated shoot is one.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Of them from Dick Winters.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
No, this isn't from Dick. This is it's just a
forty four dated Swath.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Sure no, I was just like, wait, wait, wait, no, Dick, No,
that's Major Winters right.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
Yeah, I actually do have a piece of Bill Garnier's
reserve shoot from the Normandy Drop.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Oh. So when you go over to these places, how
how did you wind up being that.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Guy oh leading the tours?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Yeah, you go to Guarantee and like all of those
types of places. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
So so my wife when I got when I got
back and I left active duty, my wife wanted me
to get a hobby, basically because I was driving crazy
and a buddy of mine had done Civil War reenacting,
which I really had no interest in doing. You dress
up and we'll you march around for a little while,
you fire one shot and you fall down. You lay
around in a field for three hours sweating. I say,
(25:56):
I don't really want to do that, and another buddy's like,
well you could do you know, you could do World
War Two? And I said, wow, Yeah, IVE always had
an interest in World War Two. So I re enacted
Easy Company for a number of years and I was
able to become friends with a lot of these guys,
and because I was a fellow combat that they would
open up to me about their experiences. And it just
(26:17):
started initially just writing down things that they would tell me,
and then I wouldn't say they became formal interviews. These
guys are my friends, so we'd sit down over beers
at a reunion and they would just tell stories and
I would just remember as much as I could before
I got foggy brained, and then I would write it
all down. So I kind of use that as the
basis to start doing tours. So I do a two
(26:37):
week tour in September where we start in Normandy. We
work our way all awaycross Easy Companies Fights through Normandy.
Then we go to Holland we do the time that
they were there, the bridge too Far, all that stuff
down into best Stone. We do all the foxholes around
the perimeter and tell all the stories there, and then
we finish up in Burke to god and at the
(26:57):
Eagle's Nest. So we'd try to Mimi make the path
all the way through. It's called the Path of Easy
Company Tour.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Do you take Bangalore's with you or no? No, Bangalore,
I'm sorry, bring up the bring up the Bangalores said
Alpha one is not open. I say again, Alpha one
is not open.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
I'm pretty sure customs wouldn't let me bring any Bangalores,
but we do do the beaches, and the beaches are fantastic,
by the way.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
You know, the closest I've been to Normandy was the
Isle of Wight on the Southampton coast in England. We
were there and you can see France from that that
like base that I was at. I was getting toured
with some SAS and SBS guys over there. They're like
rad this right here, you know, seventeen hundreds, you know
over there, France, Normandy, Isle of Wight, you know, And
(27:42):
I'm like, bro, this is crazy.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Yes. And then to go up on like the Point
to Hawk and then walk through Rudders Rangers going you know,
the attack on D Day and doing things like that.
It's a really special place. All of it is special.
There's always all of it. There's always a special location
to go to, and there's and because of things like
saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers and the Pacific
and then now The Masters of the Air, which is
(28:05):
the new series that's out too far right, all those
there's always a location to go and visit and something
special that occurred and something tangible, so I usually bring
pictures of like the vets, so we can tell our
stories and they can actually see the guys that we
were involved in these actions. But yeah, it's it's a
great trip. I love doing it every year. I don't,
(28:26):
like I said, I kind of fell into it a
little bit of a side hustle. But I love doing it,
love telling their stories.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Yeah, I was over there and there was a huge
crew going over to you know, do exactly what you're
talking about is a bunch of veterans from you know,
I think that we're still alive going over to see
it's about three years ago. Yeah. I think they're escorted
by this author named Jack Carr. I think he went
with him and did this whole housting over there and
oh yeah, no, wonderful.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
I know Jack is. I've read his books pretty pretty outstanding,
great seal.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, right right right, And we'll get
him on the show. You know, he's in the same
circle here, so just like you, right, you're on here.
I've had all these guys come through here. So you're
a rock star, bro. I just want you to know
that now. Yeah, it took time to write your stuff out.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Yeah, well, you know, I think the guys that I've
been writing about, they deserve to have their story told.
I mean, the Ranger community back then and still is
very insular, so it did take time to build up trust,
but it was great to get their stories out. And
now most of the guys are in there, you know,
somewhere in their fifties to sixties, and and now they're
kind of happy because they've got kids and grandkids and
(29:31):
they want them to know, you know, they didn't sit
on the sidelines. They actually did stuff. So and was
really proud that they entrusted me with their story. And
you know, Tom and I did our very best to
make sure we got it out there the right way.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
You know. It's like a lot of them don't want
to talk about it. It reminds me of mister Miagi
and Karate Kid that whole time he's training him and
then he passes out and he looks and he's like
medal of honor, mister. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
I think these guys are like, you know, they're more
of a like the if you know, you know crowd,
you know what I mean, right, Like when they're amongst themselves,
they all know the stories and and but I think
I think it's good for America to see these these
guys for what they did and understand the hardships they
were through went through, especially like Grenada. It always, for
(30:17):
some reason it gets like used like a punchline when
it comes to talking about our operations. And if if
people actually knew what these guys went through, they wouldn't
say that kind of thing, like and although we didn't suffer,
you know, like casualties like Ewejima or something in Grenada.
I know a lot of the gold Star families and
they are they are a very tight knit group because
(30:39):
there there weren't a lot of casualties, but the ones
that that did occur hit home and affected so many people.
I mean you could see when I would talk to
the rangers, you could see how much they love these
guys that were killed in action. I mean they were
It's very tough for them to talk about their brothers
and to open up to me and allow me and
Tom to to tell that story. Like I said, I'm
(31:01):
very very proud of it and honored to be the
guy that just the vehicle to get get that story told.
But I mean, these were fantastic people and I'm glad
people are reading the book too.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
You know, right, and as a conduit of Tom, which
is what you've helped become, you know, to help put
his He's like, do what you can with it, right.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
His family has been great, great supporters of the project too,
and and so yeah, Tom was a great writing partner.
And I'm I'm and I missed talking to him about
this stuff.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
And sure, yeah, sorry for your loss of your friend.
I'm sorry for me to you just to let you
know that. And to his family, our condolences. And you
know he served and you know, climbed the rinks and
kicked button you know, thank you for that.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
If I know he'd appreciate it, he's yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
And to his friends, you know, there's a lot of
friends that listen to this that are all his buddies,
that are all in the small little circle that I
seem to to tread water in. Right, My head is
above water. I'm like, okay, special Forces, Okay, special operations, Okay,
special assignment, special ed, we're all special together. They got
no problem with that, you know. So it just goes
(32:07):
to show that as long as you're just a good person,
genuine you can talk to anyone and just have a
good day.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Yeah, I think so. I think that's that's definitely a
thing I think. You know, nowadays there's such a alliance
on pressing buttons on these things, and people are so
remote these days. They lost a little bit of social skills.
So I think that those of us, you know, like yourself,
that that have an easy rapport, a quick and easy
rapport with people, tend to build relationships pretty quick. But
(32:34):
you know, the guys that I've written about and that
I'm writing about, they didn't have that to as a problem.
They knew how to talk to each other. And you've
been around these types of guys when they start ribbing
each other and the you know, the banter gets gets fast,
hot and heavy and they and they're ripping each other apart.
But that's only something that that brothers can do, you
(32:56):
know what I mean, or people who shared the same
experiences can do.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
One hundred percent agreed, you know, And uh, you know,
when I found out that Dalton Fury had passed, you know,
it wasn't someone in my normal name. Now it has.
You know, I've learned about who he is and Tom
and everything through over these years. But you know, Travis,
do you know Travis Kross.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
I don't. I don't, unfortunately hop it.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Okay, So he was a Delta guy, and he was
also Torbora, you know, and right after Bin Lauden, and
like they were like we found like the pot still burning,
you know, and he had gotten into Pakistan and we
couldn't go and all this kind of stuff. And so
I'm pretty sure your guy was all around that.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
You know.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
The funny thing about Tom was we were I was
kind of guarded when I when I first got in
notes from other people about him working on a Grenada project,
and I'm like, I didn't know who he was. And
then he sent me a copy of Kill Ben Lauden,
and he goes, if you don't want to work together,
I'm cool with it. If you do, great regardless. I
want you to have a copy of this. I think
(33:56):
you'll enjoy it. I mean, that's just the kind of
guy he was, right, he would just he didn't have
to send me a copy of the book. He just
he could have just and he could have just gone
on his own and with his connections in the communities,
written a fine book all by himself. He did not
need me to do it. But in this case, I
feel like I'm just finishing up the work he started.
He needed he knew we needed each other. We needed
(34:18):
each other. We motivated each other to talk to two
different people and get in touch with people, to dig
deeper into the stories to make sure we got the
details right, you know, like I said, so we did,
so we would do right by These guys were writing about.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Do you have something that you can share that is
just like you know, a detail that you know about,
some little excerpt out of your book. Do you have
something you can tell us about like a story?
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (34:44):
I think for for me, like with I think that
the jump sequences to me are the real The jump
sequence going in is the is the was the hardest
part to write about because the chalk sequence got thrown
out of whack and when the AC one thirties were
doing the wreki of the drop zone, they started taking fire.
(35:06):
A couple of the planes waved off and the entire
sequence got through aunt of whack. So there were twelve
C one thirty slash MC one thirties that were flying
the ranger force in and by the time the first
plane dropped its rangers over the drop zone, the entire
chalk order was out of whack, and putting that whole
thing together and then writing about rangers on each one
(35:29):
of those chalks and their individual experiences was probably one
of the hardest things to do. But I think we
did a really good job with it because we used
their words, you know, when they were telling me about
you know, getting tossed around while they d rigging then
re rigging, and then you know, you don't get handed
back your same shoot, your your same harness. So you're
(35:51):
a small guy. You get a guy who's you know,
five inches taller than you and twenty pounds heavier than you,
and you've got to re rig and you know, and
you're getting your hearing things from the crew chiefs going,
Rangers are fighting, Rangers are dying, the jump is on,
and these guys are scrambling to get themselves back back
together again so they could they can get put out
over the DZ and in good order. I think that
(36:13):
I think people are really going to enjoy that reading
about that because it's very tense. I felt like writing
My pulse rate was going up when I was writing.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
It, So I think it is.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
I think, tell me, yeah, I think your listeners really
get a kick out of it again because it's very
very intimate details of what happened in those planes that
was largely unknown up until the last couple of years.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
And a chalk for someone who doesn't know what a
chalk may be listening, right, That is like the group
of guys or gals that are airborne together standing together
to jump out together. Right, that's the chalk. That's the
lineup right.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Well, it's also the aircraft itself. So if I say
chalk twelve, that's the aircraft plus the jumpers in that chalk,
so it counts for both. But yeah, it started with twelve,
and I had to number them because the Air Force
had its own numbering system, the rangers had their own
numbering system, and the MC one thirty crews had their
(37:11):
own numbering system, so it was all very confusing. So
I just basically made I'll call it I arbitrarily made
the decision to number them one through twelve because it
was just easier for the reader to understand where they
were supposed to be in line. So oh, and then
the two battalions had their own numbering system as well.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
So was there jump injuries on that? Did they get
dragged I don't remember if there were.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
There were a few guys in fact. In fact, next
time you talk to Max, ask them about Ean Cowfold
going into the water. Okay, Max will tell you the story.
But yeah, there was a guy named Harold Hagen broke
his leg. Sean Powers broke his leg. There were a
number of guys who suffered jump injuries. And not only that,
the entire second Battalion didn't jump with reserve shoots. Now
(37:56):
they have their rucksacks rick below them, but typically what
happens is when you make your eggs that if the
ruck flips up a little bit, your reserve tends to
pad you against it flipping up. Well, second of time
didn't jump with their reserves, and a lot of guys
had broken nose or smashed nose and nosebleeds from getting
hit by their own rucks hitting them as they came
out of the aircraft. Like my friend doctor Hio came
(38:18):
out of the aircraft, hit the side of the aircraft
and it ripped his helmet right off of him, and
he just when he said, I was knocked senseless. By
the time I got down to the ground, I was
wondering where the hell I was. You know all these
stories are in there. These guys they recover and then
quickly take the fight to the enemy, and that's the
that's the best part they did, just like their their
(38:40):
World War two forefathers did. They hit the ground, got
themselves together, put their weapons systems in action, and got
to fight.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
In the enemy and got their bearings and just started
heading on their do bearings and just moving out. They
were not I mean, they might have had something technical
back then, but really that was really like trivium style compasses.
And you know, I hope you studied the sand table
before you dropped it into.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
The Yeah, I mean the jump clearing team which didn't
get to jump first, which is the guys that came
in right behind him, just started doing that job because
the Cubans and the Grenadians had cluttered the runway so
you couldn't land planes on it. So they're pulling light
towers off and hammer and rebar into the tarmac to
get it to clear it. Your oil drums and stuff
(39:26):
all over the place. And these guys just to go
to work clearing the runway so the subsequent flights can
come in.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
So was the rangers job to seize air fields at
the time, was that their their task.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Yeah, at that time they had been training for that
particular thing, and it culminated with First Ranger Battalion executing
an exercise called Demo three, which they did for a
bunch of VIPs to show that they could clear the runway,
and then they immediately went off of Ranger Ready Force
one status and passed it to Second Ranger Battalion. But
the mission expanded. Originally they thought it was only going
(39:59):
to be one battalion mission, and then they expanded it too,
so you had both First and Second going in. Now,
some of the rosters repaired down for the battalions because
they had limited aircraft space and they had to basically
designed a second wave to come in, which they didn't
really need. A partial second wave came in, but they
had enough Rangers to accomplish the mission at that point.
(40:20):
So yeah, I mean, they just they just went in
and they went and got after it. And that's the
that's the best part about writing about this is to
show that the that fighting spirit from World War II
to Korea to Vietnam to urgent fury, it never let up.
These guys just they they they had that same fighting
spirit and at the end of the day, they just
went after the enemy and accomplished their missions and rescued
(40:43):
these these medical students.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Right, that's the it was the hostages, right, they were
going into rescue the students. They had been taken over
by like guerrillas and Grenada.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Like the Grenada military, there was a shoot on site curfew.
There had been an overthrow of the government, and Reagan
did not want to have a repeat of the Iran
hostage situation. So basically, you had an overthrow of a government,
you had the building of a runway that could service
long range bombers, and you had a American students that
(41:11):
could have been taken hostage. So that's basically a three
for And I don't think Reagan had the appetite to
sit down and want and wait for that situation to
work its way out and.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
See what happened. So he just is like, we're going
to go in. We're not going to let this go
any further because of what happened. Now. I think Grenada
was colonized by Britain until like the sixties, and then
it was maybe released back to its own nations people
in sixty seven seventy.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Essentially and then they had the British representative on the islander.
Island was called the Governor General, and that was a
guy named Sir Paul Scoon and he was actually the
focus of another special operations mission on the island. I
don't cover it in cry Havoc. Cry Havoc is the
first of several books about the grenade operation. The Governor
General rescue will be covered in a different book. But yeah,
(41:59):
that's that's a whole other kettle of fish in terms
of operations. Yeah, right, right, operations within an operation, you know.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
All the time. Well, like I was talking to like
even Cyrus right as a ranger, and he said, well,
we'd go out on a mission and that mission turned
into second mission, and that second mission turned into third
mission and that third mission and pretty spin, I did
fourteen missions in a day.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
And yeah, you know, if you did that in Iraq
and three when I went in, we just called it
going frag o to frag O to frag go to Frago.
So you're just getting fragmentary orders to execute an ad
hoc mission. But you go into your mission planning cycle
the same way you would for regular mission. It's just
very truncated and very short compared to your your a
full length op order that you would.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Get who'd you go in with in the Marine Corps intelligence,
But you guys went in and did frags like were
you guys, you know, combative house to house and you
were just gathering intel that way.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
So I was I was the assistant intel chief for
second Marine Regiment. We were the ground combat element and
for Task Force Tarawa. The big battle we took part
in that we're probably most well known for is the
battle in nazarea, you know three. We did a lot
of intelligence collection and triaging, assessments, and then you write
reports up. We did have a couple of sporty gun
(43:14):
fights in there from time to time. Later on, as
the ground campaign was kind of wearing down, we did
some house to house work, but that was mostly because
we were doing security patrols around where wherever our camp was.
Our position was essentially security patrols to make sure we
don't get you know, ambush or surprise or anything. But
we did a lot of intelligence collection and then assessment
(43:36):
and passed it on to Special Operations Forces for the
rescue of Jessica Lynch.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Yeah, so the private who was contribute to that driver
that was taken captured in her convoy and uh, that's right,
that's right. Dang dude, this is crazy. You know. Was
it biblical over there for you? Did you feel like
like this is so like this is biblical area because
you see the stones and like the sandstone and like,
(44:04):
you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
I didn't. I don't know if I had that kind
of deep thought about it at the time, because I
was responsible for, you know, about twenty five marines, so
you kind of you've got your you've got your work
to do, and then you've got your marines to look after,
so kind of pre you're preoccupied with that kind of
stuff most of the time. So I did have an
appreciation for that, especially when we started getting up near Baghdad.
(44:26):
We got to go to Babylon, which was right here
to see this stuff.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
I got to see like the original ruins of Babylon,
which was I mean, it was just yeah, I mean,
it's it's mind blown when you think about the age
of that stuff and and the historical it's place in history,
like the hanging gardens of Babylon and the you know,
all of that stuff and.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Well a lot of a lot of what's in these
Bibles are written from yeah, Babylon and stuff, you know.
So I'm just like, you know, you're going over there,
and you know, we grew up I grew up you know,
in a religious families, so we hear all these you know,
stories and told all these songs and everything, and then
it's like marching left right left. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
I think in the later portions of the campaign, because
I was only there for f one, you can be
a little bit more introspective as the as the the
really dynamic combat starts to wind down and you got
a little bit more time to take in the surroundings
and do a little more deep thinking. Yeah, especially like
I said, up in their Hilla and Babylon was was
(45:28):
pretty pretty uh surreal real to be there. Yeah, But
you know, you hear at the land of the Two
Rivers or the Fertile Crescent and all that, and when
you get to that land in between the Euphrates River
and the Tigris River and you see, you know, how
fertile it is there, and you know, you don't expect
to see that much green in places and palm trees
(45:51):
and things like that, and you know, it kind of
blows your mind a little bit.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
But a little beauty of the land right at, Beauty
of the land is what you're seeing versus And I was.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
Down South most of the time, and most of those
folks are just farmers trying to make it day to day.
So I have real affinity for some of the the
folks down there. They're all Shia, they're all you know,
very family focused. They got a chance to talk to
some of them as as the campaign was winding down,
and most of them the same thing. They just want
to raise their families and you know, live in peace
(46:21):
and not not get blown up and not be oppressed.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
And you know, blown up and oppressed. Who wants that.
Speaker 3 (46:27):
Nobody. Nobody's trying to raise their kids and not be
in danger. I mean, I thought that was And they're
just farmers. They're simple people. They don't have a lot
of you know, don't have a lot of money. Their
families everything that focus for them.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
So we're at war. I'm just farming my land, bro, Like,
where'd you come from? What is that?
Speaker 3 (46:44):
Like?
Speaker 2 (46:44):
Space?
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Aliens?
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Yeah? Aliens, dude, that'd be crazy. It's not like you're
knocking on doors too much. You know, Yeah, can we
come in. Do you want to hear about our word
of wisdom? Like how you do it? How you doing?
Speaker 3 (46:59):
Yeah, trying not to fear with them too much in
their their life. You know, we had things to do,
and we did them, and we tried to you know,
if they came up to us and wanted to talk
or you know, we we brought out our turps and
we chat with them for a little bit and then
we'd be on our way.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
Yeah, that's crazy. Well, I'm glad you made it through
all of that, and I'm glad that you were able
to get home and to your wife and you know,
thanks family. You have kids and things like that.
Speaker 3 (47:22):
Yeah, got two of them. Yeah, they were they're adult now,
so I don't you know, Dad's not cool to with anymore.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
Before you enlisted, did you did you I mean excuse me,
did you have when you were enlisted or did you
have when you got out?
Speaker 3 (47:34):
No, we had them when I when I was still
in the service.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
So you had to deal with the separation from your family.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
And yeah, I know three my daughter was three years old.
It was really weird coming back and her not really
recognizing me at first, But you know, dad was gone
for a while, and you know, after a while, Yeah,
she figures it out after a while, you know. And
then we had our school son a little while a
little while after that.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
So well, I'm sure that there's others out there who
are listening who can relate to separation from their loved
ones to deploy, right, Yeah, whether they're I'm just saying.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
And I'm always gonna plug. If you're having trouble reconcile
and adjusting, et cetera, you talk to somebody. Talk to
the guys and gals you were over there with, talk
to your family. Don't be afraid to unload just because
they didn't have the same experience as you you did.
Let them hear you, Let them be there for you,
and stick around because people want you to stay around.
(48:28):
The world's better place.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
So in it.
Speaker 3 (48:30):
Don't don't take don't do something drastic that you and
everybody else will regret.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Right, it just doesn't work out for the best as
you might think it would. So we love you. And
if you have problems out there and you're deciding on
your life, you want to hit me up on Instagram
or anything. I've talked to folks all the time and
how you doing. You know, They're like, hey, Rad, did
you really mean that? And I'm like, I don't know you,
but yes, yes, I did mean that.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
There's plenty of outlets to do it too, don't you know.
Don't feel like you're painting yourself into a box and
you can't get out of it.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
I think the VA actually has like an eight eight
eight number now, I believe is what it is, and
they're pushing that out there. So you know, hey, if
you needs want to talk to you can hit the VA.
Someone there probably knows what's going on. Go hang out
with the canteen or they're smoking, Come up with the
come up with your own book. There you go.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
I thought, I you know, funny you say that. I thought,
you know, writing I wrote a lot of my own
stuff down, not for publishing, but just for one it
was just good to get it out on the page.
And two, I've always felt like if something did happen
to me, there would be a record for my family
to understand. So sometimes just putting pen to paper, hitting
the keys provides a little relief.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
So a little dear diary is not a bad thing.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
Find find an outlet, find something that makes you feel good.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
I love that. I love that, and I love you
and I want you to know that I appreciate you,
and you spran forward in your smile, and I know
we just really have met in this last hour of
our lives. But I just want people to know that
they can talk to strangers, have positive conversations with one another,
not get waving flags right this whole tote in your
(50:08):
flags and stuff. Let's just remember that we all believe
the same blood on this earth, and we should all
just be trying to get along so we don't have
to use the Marines, even though the Marines want to
get used. I know, I know.
Speaker 3 (50:21):
We want to get out there and do the job.
That's the thing.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
Oh, I know, Oh I know, and I want you
to as well. But if it means that you get
to stay alive and don't have to fight but you're
ready to fight, I'm good with that too, right because
all right, Well, I want to say thank you to
Cyrus for linking me up with you, Joe, and you've
been a wonderful guest. Yeah, And when you get your
other book going and you want to come back on
the show, you're always welcome to, you know, jump onto
(50:45):
the soft Rep family here and the soft Rep mafia
as we call it now. Joe Muchiya gunnery sergeant, retired author, father, husband, son,
you have been an outstanding individual. We'll talk to you today.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Thanks brother, it's been great.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
It's been really great. Now on behalf of me and
behalf of Joe. I want to say thank you from
all of us here at soft Rep and especially to Brandon.
Thanks for always having me run the show and trusting
in me. Bro I really appreciate your brother. So fist
pump to Brandon and get outside of nature. Go out
and breathe some fresh air. Go for a hike, surround
yourself with some water around your feet. Go take a
(51:25):
swim at the local pool. There's nothing like water and
the surroundings to help clear your thoughts. And I like
to say thrills before pills, so believe in that. Get
out and go enjoy yourself and check on your battle
buddies and your neighbors. And this is rad saying. Check
out the book club at soft rep dot com.
Speaker 1 (51:44):
Peace, you've been listening to self red Radia
Mute force. If it doesn't work, you're just not using enough.
You're listening to Software Radio, Special Operations, Military Nails and
straight talk with the guys in the community.
Speaker 2 (00:36):
Hey, what's going on? Welcome back to another wonderful episode
of soft Rep Radio. I am your host, rad and
today I have a special guest. But first you know
what it is. It's time to go visit our merch store.
That's right, soft Reap dot Com Forward Slash Merch We
have all sorts of new items. I just got back
from going to shot show. We have a lot of
suppliers bringing stuff into the merch store, so be sure
(00:57):
to go check out your favorite branded soft Reap item
from our merch shop and keep us going. Also, our
book club, we have soft rep dot Com Forward Slash
book hyphen Club. If you go there you can check
out the books from the authors that come on the show,
as well as others from the operators who run the
site soft Rep. They put books into this library that
they think you would enjoy. And my next guest, without
(01:19):
any further ado, is Joe Muchia who has written a
book called cry Havoc with the late Tom Greer. Joe
is a former United States Marine Corps gunnery sergeant, and
we're going to get into it with him. Welcome to
the show, Joe.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
Hey, Rad, great to be here, man.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
Yeah, it's great to have you. You know, I got
to drop Cyrus's name, all right, Cyrus Norcross. He is
one of our guests Navajo Nation journalists. He's like, Rad,
you got to get Joe on the show and talk
about as a grenada, right and Operation Urgent Fury and
now let me piggyback on that real quick, Operation Urgent Fury. Well,
there was a movie called Heartbreak Ridge that is kind
(01:56):
of like they're going into Grenada, you know, to go
into that in Heartbreak Ridge with Clint Eastwood. How close
to life are you? Like? Clin Eastwood?
Speaker 3 (02:05):
I was probably one of the most easy going gunnery
sergeants out there, So I would say I was on
the opposite end of the spectrum.
Speaker 2 (02:11):
Did you show up with a colored shirt? And if
they didn't, they all had to go do extra pt No.
Speaker 3 (02:16):
Now, my guys were pretty good. I didn't have to
worry about doing stuff like that. They self policed.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
Were you Can you tell me a little bit about
what you did as a gunnery sergeant. Was it a
mos style job. What was that.
Speaker 3 (02:27):
Yeah, when I first started out in the Corps, I
was a communicator, and then I moved into the intelligence
field and I stayed there until I retired.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Intelligence. So in the military, that's a word that doesn't
really get used often.
Speaker 3 (02:37):
A little oxymoor on there. But yeah, right, yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:40):
Tell me a little bit of what intelligence you would
be dealing with during Operation Urgent Fury, Like, what is
it that you and your guys were.
Speaker 3 (02:47):
Like, Well, I wasn't there, so I'm well after the
after the fact. But when I first joined the Corps,
one of my first NCOs was a grenade a bay
root bet and so I kind of grew up on
that lore of the core or where they talked to you.
You know, they kind of, hey, we're expeditionary. We you know,
land on islands, we do we storm beaches, we do this,
we do that. It's the kind of thing you're brought
(03:08):
up with. And my NCO, a guy named Danny, was
really good and really smart. He had already been Grenada
bea route Desert Storm. I came in on the tail
end of Desert Storm, and he kind of raised me
as a young devil pup into into something useful for
the core. But I mean, it's interesting that you asked
me about intelligence and urgent fury, and that was one
of the key issues in preparing our forces for going
(03:31):
into Grenada was the lack of substantial intelligence on the
ground about what we were facing. So that was a
big black hole for a lot of the guys going in.
But but definitely I was not there, but was lucky
enough to serve with a bunch of folks that were.
And then eventually taking some college courses, I took a
creative writing and it became a history. My major. Ended
(03:53):
up talking to a bunch of rangers who actually jumped
into Grenada, and that kind of set this age for
my interest in that operation.
Speaker 2 (04:02):
Yeah, I actually got to interview a friend of mine
who jumped into Grenada, Howard Max Mullen, Mad Max, Mad Max. Yeah,
I got to give him a shout out, you know,
and marchin die rad. What's up doing? Everybody? What's up?
Mad Max Mullen? Here, I could see you in the
ranger pit. You want to do combatives, you want to
go to Grenada, Let's go. You know, he is a
great guy, and obviously you know who he is.
Speaker 3 (04:23):
Ranger Hall of Famer. Max is actually featured in the
book in Cry Havoc. Okay, you'll you can read a
little bit about him in there, but yeah, those guys
are phenomenal. Max is just a legend.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Yeah. You know what's funny with Max is he brings
his his story and his trials and tribulations of the
Ranger and being in the army and now out and
he does war games with us where he's my commanding
officer for like the last thirteen years, fourteen years of
these Lion Clause games that we go to with airsoft guns.
And it's no joke though, right, you know, it's just
(04:57):
no joke. There's armored personnel carriers, tracked vehicles, there's tanks.
There's people with like lots of experience of hunting people
for a living that are getting paid to other people
for a living out here. So I mean, and Matt
Max Is usually like all right, Rad, first lieutenant, Rad,
what's your platoon want to go do? And I'm like this,
He's like, I'm gonna go with you guys, Let's go
And it's like let's go fight, right. I love that.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Yeah, if you're gona learn, you're gonna learn for the
best and Max is outstanding. He is so good. I
love that guy. I've known him for a long time.
Just got to see him in Savannah for the fortieth
anniversary of Urgent Theory, which is great. Yeah, I love
that guy is He is phenomenal.
Speaker 2 (05:34):
He's like, rad, you should clear your schedule for April
and come out to the best Rage of Competition with me.
And I was like, well, Max, slide into my DMS bro.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
I'm probably actually going to be down there. I've been
in contact with the coordinators for the BRCO. I'll probably
doing a signing.
Speaker 2 (05:48):
Down there, So if it happens I might be there,
then we can at least like give each other a
high five and say it was nice to meet each
other in real life. Yeah, Ursus definitely these virtual introductions
and quick friendships that are made very fast. I mean,
this is what I want my show to be about.
Is my listener to hear like, hey, you're just a
normal dude, like we all are, and uh, we have
(06:10):
mutual friends and we can have conversation so as a
marine though as a devil pup, you know, and as
chesty you know, chesty as your lord and savior in
the Marine Corps. Right, Okay, so I learned to love
Chesty even not being a marine. He is my Lord
and savior of war. I just want you to know that.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
I mean, how could you not?
Speaker 2 (06:31):
How could you not?
Speaker 3 (06:32):
Guys just straight legend. I mean, you know, another another
more laura of the cores we're brought up on as
young marines, the legend of Chesty as five Navy crosses.
I mean, the guy's just again another ledge out there.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
He didn't want to get any hot. He wanted to
go back down and rank, and then he went right
back up in rank. You know, it's like, what just
the Marines polar? Right? It's polar, right, isn't it. So
any of my listener's Chesty Polar? Yeah, he's He's lore
of the Marine Corps. So go look up Chesty Polar. Yeah,
if you want to know who we're talking about. And
then say, why didn't he not get a Medal of
(07:05):
honor at any point even posthumously?
Speaker 3 (07:07):
I don't know, but it's pretty impressive when you see
that ribbon rack and you see all those Navy crosses
with the you see the Navy cross ribbon with all
the stars on it.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
Yeah, it's like cluster cluster, cluster, cluster, cluster cluster.
Speaker 3 (07:17):
It's like you'll never see anything like that again in
your lifetime.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
So no, he's yeah legit, And that's why the Marines
hold him in such high regard as a marine, because
he really did what marines need to do, which is
be the tip of the tip of the blade of
the spear. I love it. Now. Is your hat? Is
that like a recon hat with that spade on it?
Speaker 3 (07:38):
No? Actually, it's just a patch of friend of mine
got made up a while back with the spartan helmet
and the spade on it.
Speaker 2 (07:46):
Oh, I see, because I know, like the first recon
out of like what is it Hollywood style side over
here they have like the spade as their logo. I
think it is.
Speaker 3 (07:54):
Yeah, then I think you know, the marsk and the stuff. Yeah,
I think they us some of that imagery in their
and their logos.
Speaker 2 (08:02):
Yeah, just trying to give him a shout out that
I hold me over in Japan. And first, what's up?
How you do about it? You're so tell me this
book that you put together called cry Havoc with the
late Tom Greer. Tell me about Tom Tom.
Speaker 3 (08:16):
I'm sure a lot of your listeners are aware of
who Tom was. He was at Tora Bora. He wrote
Kill Bin Laden was probably his most well known book,
but he wrote a series of fictional books based on
a character just like himself, New York Times bestseller, Great
Human Being, Great Patriot. Tom and I overlapped in our research.
I had originally started working on by myself to write
(08:36):
a book about Grenada, and Tom was really wanting to
do the same thing but focus on the ranger missions
during the operation. And then we started having a lot
of overlap and talking to the same people, and it
was kind of like, you mind if I passed this
information over to a friend of mine who's also writing
a book, and we cross decked a lot of information,
and after that we came became friends. And then he
called me up one day and he said, listen, I
(08:58):
have cancer. I'm I'm not gonna make it. I'm gonna
send you all the material I have. He's like, you
can do what you want with it. So that kicked
off that and the and the fortieth anniversary approaching really
kickstarted the effort to get this thing written and published
in time. So working with Tom at first was great
because there was a lot of it was very collegial,
(09:19):
it was very friendly. We just passed in information back
and forth, and then it was like getting the rug
pulled out from underneath you with your writing partner, essentially.
But Tom had sent me his manuscript and it was about,
I would say, about fifty percent done and needed some work.
There was great material there, and it's a very large
cast of characters. I think we included almost one hundred
(09:41):
Rangers that we had interviewed, not to mention other members
of like Knights, Doggers and eighty second Airborne guys and
so there's a nice swath of service members for this.
But it just covers the Ranger operations during Urgent Fury.
But we had to whittle it down to focus on several,
you know, protagonists, like in most books you have a
single protagonist. Thought I lost it there for a second.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Oh no, I'm listening. No, I look frozen. I'm like
listening though. Here the fireplaces, the fireplaces movement. You got me, bros. Hypnotic.
I know right, You're like, I'm just listening. I'm I'm
just putting together Tom Grier's Dalton Fury. You know what
I'm saying. And I remember he passed. He passed maybe
like three few years back, right, and uh yeah a
(10:26):
few years back. Yeah, it was a big deal and
everyone's talking about going to his funeral. In fact, I
was in twenty sixteen. I was in London with Hobbitt,
who was fighting for the Special Forces team with Soft Rep.
We went, we go over to London and he had
just said that Dalton Fury had just passed away and
he was needing to go back to his funeral and everything. Yeah,
about the same time.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Yeah, but he was He was awesome. The stuff he
had left was really dynamic. He has a certain writing
style to him, and I tried to match that as
best I could and then finish finish the work, which
obviously we're able to do. But again most books have
a single pre antagonists. We kind of tried to pick
like a key personality from each one of the Rifle
Companies and First and Second Ranger Battalion just to carry
(11:07):
their the stories a little bit. But we bolted on
a lot of the other stories from a lot of
the other guys. So, like I said, there's input probably
from over one hundred veterans into the book. So it's
and it's very detailed. It's not one of these red
arrows blue arrows on a map kind of thing from
a general's point of view. This is from the individual
rangers point of view. I find that that kind of
(11:27):
writing is very popular nowadays, especially like with the advent
of Band of Brothers and books like that that focus
it from the foxhole view. These guys are like guys
you've known, especially for your audience, which as a I
would assume it was a big, significant soft representation in it.
I guarantee you there's a lot of familiar names into
in this book that to your listeners and.
Speaker 2 (11:49):
Viewers that they would just love to check it out. Yes,
and I want them to, so they should go check
out cry Havoc. And where would we be able to
go see and find this book? Is it going to
be something that's on the bookshelf? Is it something that's
to be like, you know, uh, internet specific for a
certain website.
Speaker 3 (12:04):
I sell it on my own website and I'll provide
you the link later on.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
And it's also site right now too.
Speaker 3 (12:08):
What is that I got to pull the r L.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
I'm sorry, that's funny. Well you used to do that
while we're talking it's a week site.
Speaker 3 (12:14):
You know how their URLs are like long and stupid.
But anyway, I'll provide you the link and then you
can also order it off of Amazon and Barnes and
Noble and stuff like that online, so it's available there.
Speaker 2 (12:28):
But if anybody wants a book, leave a review, right.
Speaker 3 (12:30):
Yeah, please, And if you buy it from me usually
I'll sign it for everybody. And if you want an
inscription in there, I'll throw it in there as well.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
Oh well that's awesome. Well, once we get the link
from you, we'll have that put up in the notations
on the website and people will build just like hyper
click it and then go check out your book, you know,
if they're on the website. And if you don't have
the soft reap app already for your phone, go ahead
and go download the softwarep app and that way you
can just click on the story, click on software radio
and then just go right to it with your thumb
(12:58):
and me use your other handing she's your thumb instead
of this one, right yeah, instead of this one right yeah, exactly.
That's great, And let's go back to the timeline. How
old were you when you enlisted?
Speaker 3 (13:12):
I was twenty when I enlisted. By the time I
got to boot camp, I was twenty one. I was
in the delayed entry program, so I was one of
the old guys in my boot camp. Most of the
guys were seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old. It was me
and one other guy was twenty one, and we were
like the We were like the grand grand old men
of the platoon. But I went in when I was
twenty one. I graduated in from boot camp in August
(13:32):
to ninety two, and I retired in February twenty twelve.
Speaker 2 (13:37):
So of twenty twelve, Wow, I've been.
Speaker 3 (13:40):
Out for a little bit, A little older, little paunch here,
little little slower.
Speaker 2 (13:44):
Gunnery sergeant was the rank you achieved. Yeah, yeah, which
is a respected rank in the Marine Corps. You know,
everyone like double pups want to be a gunny sergeant,
gunnery sergeant.
Speaker 3 (13:56):
Yeah. If I would have stayed in just a little
bit longer, I probably could have pinned on master starrent.
But I really at that point in time, I knew
it was time to go. They wanted me to mostly
in staff positions at that point, and I really wasn't
down with that. I wanted to be with the breens either,
lead and number training them and you know.
Speaker 2 (14:10):
The point above. A master sergeant.
Speaker 3 (14:13):
Yes, yeah, so gunnery starts an E seven, Master starts
an E eight, or a first sergeant uh, and then
a sergeant major or a master gunny starts E nine master.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
Yeah. Now, if you're a technical skill, like intel is
a technical skill, you'll go to the master start and
the master gunnery sargeant route. But if you go to
administrative or or you know, an infantry, you'll go first
start and sergeant major route like that. But I was
on a master startain track because of my mos.
Speaker 2 (14:38):
So is an intelligence mos is that like an O
three eleven, an O three, O two thirty one, O
two thirty Just shout out the numbers three those of
you that wait, what's intelligence is? Yeah, oh two thirty one. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
And obviously the Army has a different mos uh number
alpha alpha numeric numbering system with it, so we're a
little bit different, just you know, for just four numbers. Well, Marines,
just keep it simple, Marines. You know, look at the
Army and the Marines in seventeen seventies. Okay, right, hasn't
even been the warrior seventeen seventy six, right, Okay, we
(15:12):
get it. We know when the Marines and everybody were created,
but they had such insignias throughout time that were so
close to each other that they had to put the
guns on the chevrons for the Marines so that they
had these guns on them that didn't look like the
army chevrons. Yeah, that was a later development, I think.
If you want to talk in signey, I think one
of my favorite one is for the officers dress covers.
(15:34):
Now they have what's called a quadrifoil on the top
of it. That was because during that timeframe there were
Marines sharpshooters up in the riggings of ships, and so
when they do boarding actions in order that they so
they wouldn't shoot their own officers accidentally, they could be
spotted from above with this quadrifoil on the top of
their cover. So that's one of my favorite that in
the blood stripes obviously for Marine NCOs and officers as
(15:58):
it had to Battle of Chappol to pull.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
The chick explain it is that the points on the webbing.
Is that what you're talking about.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Now, if you look at the top of the cover,
the round cover, you'll see it almost looks like a
cruciform on there. It's a braided cruciform. It's called a quadrifoil.
Speaker 2 (16:13):
Wow, and that's to identify that that's their officers.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
Yeah, during boarding parties.
Speaker 2 (16:18):
Yeah, oh, that's cool to know. They're like they're coming.
Speaker 3 (16:21):
Up either they're boarding or they're repelling borders. It's easy
for to see if the sharpshooters can look down and go, okay,
that's one of mine. Don't shoot them in the head,
you know.
Speaker 2 (16:29):
Yeah, that's right, that's crazy. Yeah. And all the little
things that they had to do just to like make
themselves the Marines versus confusion with the army, right, because
it was always you know, a little blending in and
then now the Army has pinks and greens back in style,
and then the Marine Corps have like a green jacket.
It's not your class a's what is that?
Speaker 3 (16:48):
No, that's well, it's it's considered. It's our We call
them our alphas. It's our alpha service, our service a uniform. Okay,
it looks somewhat like a green business suit. I think
the thing that I love about Marine Corps units they
really haven't changed very much like some of the chevrons
might have changed or the positioning of things, or this
and that and the other. But for the most part,
the marine uniforms have not changed dramatically for quite a
(17:11):
long time, and I think that's one of the things
I love about it. I do like the Army's pinks
and greens. They're based off of World War Two uniform,
which is very sharp looking, especially if you have it tailored.
And then any I gotta give a lot of props
to any of the guys that are in the units
that have jumped status because you're wearing the Corcoran jump
boots and they're when they're shined like glass, they look fantastic.
(17:33):
So we had to those guys. They look great, dynamite
looking uniform when it's done right.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
You know, I grew up with those boots on my
dad's feet my entire life, and I just was a
normal thing, you know, pants bloused and tucked into boots.
We'd go to these like little assemblies where he had
a dress up and all these guys come over and
shake his hand and it's like, why are you guys
bothering my dad so much? Man? Can we just Yeah,
it's the green beret bro in boots.
Speaker 3 (17:59):
Yeah, gotta wear them gotta wear it right too?
Speaker 2 (18:02):
Yeah, right, I had my own for a long time.
He got them from me for Christmas, like in my twenties,
and I would try to shine him, you know, and
just ar them as like a punk rock kid. So
so Dad.
Speaker 3 (18:13):
I love to place him with Doc Martin's later on.
Speaker 2 (18:16):
Yeah, you know. And I saw some really nice brown boots, right,
these cochranes that they're wearing with those pinks and greens,
they're like this nice brown. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (18:25):
Have you shined them with this polish it's called cordivon.
They had this really nice deep brown color to them.
They're really good looking.
Speaker 2 (18:31):
Oh it really does look good. Yeah, I just I
was just looking at that earlier today. How crazy? Now,
what are you doing to stay sane? Is it writing
a book? Are you doing some kind of hobby? Are
you your own business owner as a veteran? What did
you do to transition from the Marines with your intelligence
knowledge and everything? I see you wrote a book we're
all talking about it. Is that your goal? Now?
Speaker 3 (18:53):
I still work for the government. I got a few
more years left to go to retire again. But they
allow me to have my side hustle, and that's that's
writ in books. So I have an LLC built, and
I do battlefield tours in Europe. I do some World
War II battlefields, which is I do pretty good, one
or two tours a year, which is nice. It's nice
to get out and do that. And I'm working on
a couple more books, actually a companion book for cry Havoc.
(19:16):
It's called Old Scrolls. I am interviewing rangers that pre
dated Urgent Fury, so from like the reformation of the
two Battalions in seventy four, and I'm actually overlapping urgent
theory to about eighty four. I'm stopping short of the
formation of the modern Regiment and the third Battalion. So
I just want to get those because these fellas, I
(19:37):
think they've been from what I've been talking to, the
guys I've been talking to, they've been waiting for a
long time to have that story told. And these are
some there's a lot of I would call them ranger legends.
They would probably not like being called legends that were
involved in those startups of both the first and second
Ranger Battalion. And these guys have some nominal stories and
(20:00):
I think that the I think not only will rangers
enjoy these stories, but just folks that enjoy military history
will enjoy them because, frankly, some of them might find
them completely outlandish and fantastic considering what has become the
standard nowadays in the military versus what the standard was
back then. And I don't mean it there was a
(20:22):
degradation and standard. I mean some of the things they
just they did was they were wild, wild, and those
stories need to be brought brought forward. And I think
it's a it'll be a fine tribute to those guys,
because not only will I there's a lot of these
fantastic stories like oh my god, I can't believe they
did that, but there's a lot of how the battalions
were formed, what their initial missions were, and then as
(20:45):
the battalions developed and evolved, they became more of a
special operations force where they started doing raids and airfield
seizures and things like that, which when they first stood.
The battalions back up, they're more like the as General Abrams,
who wrote they called the Abrams Charter, stated they were
going to be the finest light infantry unit in the world.
(21:07):
Were they morphed, they still are some of the best
light infantrymen on the planet, but now they've morphed into
more of a special operations force. And this covers this period,
covers that build up, that change, that evolution, and shows
changes in tactics and uniforms and equipment and weapons. So
I think military history buffs and history buffs in general
(21:30):
will probably probably enjoy it, and it'll make a nice
companion book to go with. Cry Havoc.
Speaker 2 (21:35):
Are you going to go after guys as far back
as like any living lurps that are still around? Is
that what you're looking for? Guys that had been in
the muck.
Speaker 3 (21:43):
Yeah, well, you know, the fantastic thing about that period
of time, especially in that into seventy four, there were
so many guys left who were part of those lurp
units or part of Special Forces A teams where there
were the lerps became the rangers. Later on in Vietnam
were still a lot of those guys in the ranks,
and when the two battalions stood up, a lot of
(22:04):
them came to them. So, yeah, there's gonna be a
lot of that. How that the Vietnam experience influenced the training,
Oh yeah, it's it is.
Speaker 2 (22:15):
It's amazing.
Speaker 3 (22:16):
Some of these stories. Yeah, there's it's amazing like talking
about legends, like like Donald Purdy. I mean, there are
so many ranger legends in this thing that I think,
especially like folks who like to read about special operations
for US are really going to enjoy this.
Speaker 2 (22:31):
Well. As a young man myself growing up in an
SF household, I had a book and it was called
Lurps Okay, and I was in my bathroom and I
didn't have a phone, and so here's little Aaron flipping
pages through the LURP book reading about like and there
we were. It's been two weeks and we've only had
three days of rations with us, and you know, we're
just out there in the darkest jungle spots behind enemy lines.
(22:54):
Alert stands for I believe, long range reconnaissance patrol or
yep right.
Speaker 3 (22:59):
Yep correct. Yeah. You know, as a young marine, when
I was stationed like a twenty nine Palms and then
I went to Campa June, you could walk into any
quick Mart on base, so you could walk into the
exchange and they have racks of these paperbacks. And it
seemed like every soldier who had served as ALERP or
a ranger was writing books at that time, and you
could literally because we didn't have these things. No, you
(23:23):
could literally have your own portable entertainment throw in your
cargo pocket. Like two or three of these paperbacks and
my favorites were written by a man that I'm very
happy to have contact with on Facebook, guy named Gary Linderer,
who really spearheaded a lot of that and he served
in f Company fifty eight Lerps and then it went
on to the rangers when the unit transformed. But I
(23:44):
think Gary was a catalyst for a lot of his
fellow lurps and rangers to write these books. And like
I said, to carry two or three of them around
my cargo pocket. You know, if we rucksack flop, just
sit there, pull out your books, start reading. Wait until
you move.
Speaker 2 (23:59):
Out outside yourself and read somebody else's thoughts and see
what they went through, you know. Yeah, these So I
also read a command manual all the time. I had
a Green Beret how to run an eighteen manual in
my bathroom and alert book that was up. So you
see kind of what was influenced in my life, right sure?
Speaker 3 (24:18):
Yeah, yeah, I mean my dad's a Vietnam ERAVET, so
I know I get it. I completely get it.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yeah, and let's talk about that parachute that you have
behind you. That's from where? What year is that?
Speaker 3 (24:27):
That's in nineteen forty four. It's a swath of a
nineteen forty four dated parachute. I was blessed for your
listeners who met a band of brothers. When I was
in Kuwait getting ready to go over the border into
Irock and O three, I started writing veterans of easy Company,
the band of Brothers, and the first veteran I wrote
was was Dick Winners. So I have a great affinity
(24:47):
I grew when I once I came back and I
left active duty, I became friends with a lot of
these guys. Some of your listeners will probably recommen the IZ, say,
like Buck Compton, Bill Garnier, and it was guys from
the mini series. A lot of the more well known
ones I knew them. I knew a lot of the
lesser known ones as well. But anyway, I collected a
bunch of stuff over the years, and that that swath
of nineteen forty four dated shoot is one.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
Of them from Dick Winters.
Speaker 3 (25:10):
No, this isn't from Dick. This is it's just a
forty four dated Swath.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
Sure no, I was just like, wait, wait, wait, no, Dick, No,
that's Major Winters right.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
Yeah, I actually do have a piece of Bill Garnier's
reserve shoot from the Normandy Drop.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Oh. So when you go over to these places, how
how did you wind up being that.
Speaker 3 (25:30):
Guy oh leading the tours?
Speaker 2 (25:32):
Yeah, you go to Guarantee and like all of those
types of places. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (25:36):
So so my wife when I got when I got
back and I left active duty, my wife wanted me
to get a hobby, basically because I was driving crazy
and a buddy of mine had done Civil War reenacting,
which I really had no interest in doing. You dress
up and we'll you march around for a little while,
you fire one shot and you fall down. You lay
around in a field for three hours sweating. I say,
(25:56):
I don't really want to do that, and another buddy's like,
well you could do you know, you could do World
War Two? And I said, wow, Yeah, IVE always had
an interest in World War Two. So I re enacted
Easy Company for a number of years and I was
able to become friends with a lot of these guys,
and because I was a fellow combat that they would
open up to me about their experiences. And it just
(26:17):
started initially just writing down things that they would tell me,
and then I wouldn't say they became formal interviews. These
guys are my friends, so we'd sit down over beers
at a reunion and they would just tell stories and
I would just remember as much as I could before
I got foggy brained, and then I would write it
all down. So I kind of use that as the
basis to start doing tours. So I do a two
(26:37):
week tour in September where we start in Normandy. We
work our way all awaycross Easy Companies Fights through Normandy.
Then we go to Holland we do the time that
they were there, the bridge too Far, all that stuff
down into best Stone. We do all the foxholes around
the perimeter and tell all the stories there, and then
we finish up in Burke to god and at the
(26:57):
Eagle's Nest. So we'd try to Mimi make the path
all the way through. It's called the Path of Easy
Company Tour.
Speaker 2 (27:03):
Do you take Bangalore's with you or no? No, Bangalore,
I'm sorry, bring up the bring up the Bangalores said
Alpha one is not open. I say again, Alpha one
is not open.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
I'm pretty sure customs wouldn't let me bring any Bangalores,
but we do do the beaches, and the beaches are fantastic,
by the way.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
You know, the closest I've been to Normandy was the
Isle of Wight on the Southampton coast in England. We
were there and you can see France from that that
like base that I was at. I was getting toured
with some SAS and SBS guys over there. They're like
rad this right here, you know, seventeen hundreds, you know
over there, France, Normandy, Isle of Wight, you know, And
(27:42):
I'm like, bro, this is crazy.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Yes. And then to go up on like the Point
to Hawk and then walk through Rudders Rangers going you know,
the attack on D Day and doing things like that.
It's a really special place. All of it is special.
There's always all of it. There's always a special location
to go to, and there's and because of things like
saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers and the Pacific
and then now The Masters of the Air, which is
(28:05):
the new series that's out too far right, all those
there's always a location to go and visit and something
special that occurred and something tangible, so I usually bring
pictures of like the vets, so we can tell our
stories and they can actually see the guys that we
were involved in these actions. But yeah, it's it's a
great trip. I love doing it every year. I don't,
(28:26):
like I said, I kind of fell into it a
little bit of a side hustle. But I love doing it,
love telling their stories.
Speaker 2 (28:32):
Yeah, I was over there and there was a huge
crew going over to you know, do exactly what you're
talking about is a bunch of veterans from you know,
I think that we're still alive going over to see
it's about three years ago. Yeah. I think they're escorted
by this author named Jack Carr. I think he went
with him and did this whole housting over there and
oh yeah, no, wonderful.
Speaker 3 (28:51):
I know Jack is. I've read his books pretty pretty outstanding,
great seal.
Speaker 2 (28:55):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, right right right, And we'll get
him on the show. You know, he's in the same
circle here, so just like you, right, you're on here.
I've had all these guys come through here. So you're
a rock star, bro. I just want you to know
that now. Yeah, it took time to write your stuff out.
Speaker 3 (29:10):
Yeah, well, you know, I think the guys that I've
been writing about, they deserve to have their story told.
I mean, the Ranger community back then and still is
very insular, so it did take time to build up trust,
but it was great to get their stories out. And
now most of the guys are in there, you know,
somewhere in their fifties to sixties, and and now they're
kind of happy because they've got kids and grandkids and
(29:31):
they want them to know, you know, they didn't sit
on the sidelines. They actually did stuff. So and was
really proud that they entrusted me with their story. And
you know, Tom and I did our very best to
make sure we got it out there the right way.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
You know. It's like a lot of them don't want
to talk about it. It reminds me of mister Miagi
and Karate Kid that whole time he's training him and
then he passes out and he looks and he's like
medal of honor, mister. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (29:56):
I think these guys are like, you know, they're more
of a like the if you know, you know crowd,
you know what I mean, right, Like when they're amongst themselves,
they all know the stories and and but I think
I think it's good for America to see these these
guys for what they did and understand the hardships they
were through went through, especially like Grenada. It always, for
(30:17):
some reason it gets like used like a punchline when
it comes to talking about our operations. And if if
people actually knew what these guys went through, they wouldn't
say that kind of thing, like and although we didn't suffer,
you know, like casualties like Ewejima or something in Grenada.
I know a lot of the gold Star families and
they are they are a very tight knit group because
(30:39):
there there weren't a lot of casualties, but the ones
that that did occur hit home and affected so many people.
I mean you could see when I would talk to
the rangers, you could see how much they love these
guys that were killed in action. I mean they were
It's very tough for them to talk about their brothers
and to open up to me and allow me and
Tom to to tell that story. Like I said, I'm
(31:01):
very very proud of it and honored to be the
guy that just the vehicle to get get that story told.
But I mean, these were fantastic people and I'm glad
people are reading the book too.
Speaker 2 (31:10):
You know, right, and as a conduit of Tom, which
is what you've helped become, you know, to help put
his He's like, do what you can with it, right.
Speaker 3 (31:18):
His family has been great, great supporters of the project too,
and and so yeah, Tom was a great writing partner.
And I'm I'm and I missed talking to him about
this stuff.
Speaker 2 (31:28):
And sure, yeah, sorry for your loss of your friend.
I'm sorry for me to you just to let you
know that. And to his family, our condolences. And you
know he served and you know, climbed the rinks and
kicked button you know, thank you for that.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
If I know he'd appreciate it, he's yeah.
Speaker 2 (31:44):
And to his friends, you know, there's a lot of
friends that listen to this that are all his buddies,
that are all in the small little circle that I
seem to to tread water in. Right, My head is
above water. I'm like, okay, special Forces, Okay, special operations, Okay,
special assignment, special ed, we're all special together. They got
no problem with that, you know. So it just goes
(32:07):
to show that as long as you're just a good person,
genuine you can talk to anyone and just have a
good day.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
Yeah, I think so. I think that's that's definitely a
thing I think. You know, nowadays there's such a alliance
on pressing buttons on these things, and people are so
remote these days. They lost a little bit of social skills.
So I think that those of us, you know, like yourself,
that that have an easy rapport, a quick and easy
rapport with people, tend to build relationships pretty quick. But
(32:34):
you know, the guys that I've written about and that
I'm writing about, they didn't have that to as a problem.
They knew how to talk to each other. And you've
been around these types of guys when they start ribbing
each other and the you know, the banter gets gets fast,
hot and heavy and they and they're ripping each other apart.
But that's only something that that brothers can do, you
(32:56):
know what I mean, or people who shared the same
experiences can do.
Speaker 2 (33:00):
One hundred percent agreed, you know, And uh, you know,
when I found out that Dalton Fury had passed, you know,
it wasn't someone in my normal name. Now it has.
You know, I've learned about who he is and Tom
and everything through over these years. But you know, Travis,
do you know Travis Kross.
Speaker 3 (33:17):
I don't. I don't, unfortunately hop it.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
Okay, So he was a Delta guy, and he was
also Torbora, you know, and right after Bin Lauden, and
like they were like we found like the pot still burning,
you know, and he had gotten into Pakistan and we
couldn't go and all this kind of stuff. And so
I'm pretty sure your guy was all around that.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:35):
You know.
Speaker 3 (33:35):
The funny thing about Tom was we were I was
kind of guarded when I when I first got in
notes from other people about him working on a Grenada project,
and I'm like, I didn't know who he was. And
then he sent me a copy of Kill Ben Lauden,
and he goes, if you don't want to work together,
I'm cool with it. If you do, great regardless. I
want you to have a copy of this. I think
(33:56):
you'll enjoy it. I mean, that's just the kind of
guy he was, right, he would just he didn't have
to send me a copy of the book. He just
he could have just and he could have just gone
on his own and with his connections in the communities,
written a fine book all by himself. He did not
need me to do it. But in this case, I
feel like I'm just finishing up the work he started.
He needed he knew we needed each other. We needed
(34:18):
each other. We motivated each other to talk to two
different people and get in touch with people, to dig
deeper into the stories to make sure we got the
details right, you know, like I said, so we did,
so we would do right by These guys were writing about.
Speaker 2 (34:33):
Do you have something that you can share that is
just like you know, a detail that you know about,
some little excerpt out of your book. Do you have
something you can tell us about like a story?
Speaker 1 (34:43):
Uh?
Speaker 3 (34:44):
I think for for me, like with I think that
the jump sequences to me are the real The jump
sequence going in is the is the was the hardest
part to write about because the chalk sequence got thrown
out of whack and when the AC one thirties were
doing the wreki of the drop zone, they started taking fire.
(35:06):
A couple of the planes waved off and the entire
sequence got through aunt of whack. So there were twelve
C one thirty slash MC one thirties that were flying
the ranger force in and by the time the first
plane dropped its rangers over the drop zone, the entire
chalk order was out of whack, and putting that whole
thing together and then writing about rangers on each one
(35:29):
of those chalks and their individual experiences was probably one
of the hardest things to do. But I think we
did a really good job with it because we used
their words, you know, when they were telling me about
you know, getting tossed around while they d rigging then
re rigging, and then you know, you don't get handed
back your same shoot, your your same harness. So you're
(35:51):
a small guy. You get a guy who's you know,
five inches taller than you and twenty pounds heavier than you,
and you've got to re rig and you know, and
you're getting your hearing things from the crew chiefs going,
Rangers are fighting, Rangers are dying, the jump is on,
and these guys are scrambling to get themselves back back
together again so they could they can get put out
over the DZ and in good order. I think that
(36:13):
I think people are really going to enjoy that reading
about that because it's very tense. I felt like writing
My pulse rate was going up when I was writing.
Speaker 2 (36:21):
It, So I think it is.
Speaker 3 (36:23):
I think, tell me, yeah, I think your listeners really
get a kick out of it again because it's very
very intimate details of what happened in those planes that
was largely unknown up until the last couple of years.
Speaker 2 (36:36):
And a chalk for someone who doesn't know what a
chalk may be listening, right, That is like the group
of guys or gals that are airborne together standing together
to jump out together. Right, that's the chalk. That's the
lineup right.
Speaker 3 (36:49):
Well, it's also the aircraft itself. So if I say
chalk twelve, that's the aircraft plus the jumpers in that chalk,
so it counts for both. But yeah, it started with twelve,
and I had to number them because the Air Force
had its own numbering system, the rangers had their own
numbering system, and the MC one thirty crews had their
(37:11):
own numbering system, so it was all very confusing. So
I just basically made I'll call it I arbitrarily made
the decision to number them one through twelve because it
was just easier for the reader to understand where they
were supposed to be in line. So oh, and then
the two battalions had their own numbering system as well.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
So was there jump injuries on that? Did they get
dragged I don't remember if there were.
Speaker 3 (37:35):
There were a few guys in fact. In fact, next
time you talk to Max, ask them about Ean Cowfold
going into the water. Okay, Max will tell you the story.
But yeah, there was a guy named Harold Hagen broke
his leg. Sean Powers broke his leg. There were a
number of guys who suffered jump injuries. And not only that,
the entire second Battalion didn't jump with reserve shoots. Now
(37:56):
they have their rucksacks rick below them, but typically what
happens is when you make your eggs that if the
ruck flips up a little bit, your reserve tends to
pad you against it flipping up. Well, second of time
didn't jump with their reserves, and a lot of guys
had broken nose or smashed nose and nosebleeds from getting
hit by their own rucks hitting them as they came
out of the aircraft. Like my friend doctor Hio came
(38:18):
out of the aircraft, hit the side of the aircraft
and it ripped his helmet right off of him, and
he just when he said, I was knocked senseless. By
the time I got down to the ground, I was
wondering where the hell I was. You know all these
stories are in there. These guys they recover and then
quickly take the fight to the enemy, and that's the
that's the best part they did, just like their their
(38:40):
World War two forefathers did. They hit the ground, got
themselves together, put their weapons systems in action, and got
to fight.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
In the enemy and got their bearings and just started
heading on their do bearings and just moving out. They
were not I mean, they might have had something technical
back then, but really that was really like trivium style compasses.
And you know, I hope you studied the sand table
before you dropped it into.
Speaker 3 (39:04):
The Yeah, I mean the jump clearing team which didn't
get to jump first, which is the guys that came
in right behind him, just started doing that job because
the Cubans and the Grenadians had cluttered the runway so
you couldn't land planes on it. So they're pulling light
towers off and hammer and rebar into the tarmac to
get it to clear it. Your oil drums and stuff
(39:26):
all over the place. And these guys just to go
to work clearing the runway so the subsequent flights can
come in.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
So was the rangers job to seize air fields at
the time, was that their their task.
Speaker 3 (39:37):
Yeah, at that time they had been training for that
particular thing, and it culminated with First Ranger Battalion executing
an exercise called Demo three, which they did for a
bunch of VIPs to show that they could clear the runway,
and then they immediately went off of Ranger Ready Force
one status and passed it to Second Ranger Battalion. But
the mission expanded. Originally they thought it was only going
(39:59):
to be one battalion mission, and then they expanded it too,
so you had both First and Second going in. Now,
some of the rosters repaired down for the battalions because
they had limited aircraft space and they had to basically
designed a second wave to come in, which they didn't
really need. A partial second wave came in, but they
had enough Rangers to accomplish the mission at that point.
(40:20):
So yeah, I mean, they just they just went in
and they went and got after it. And that's the
that's the best part about writing about this is to
show that the that fighting spirit from World War II
to Korea to Vietnam to urgent fury, it never let up.
These guys just they they they had that same fighting
spirit and at the end of the day, they just
went after the enemy and accomplished their missions and rescued
(40:43):
these these medical students.
Speaker 2 (40:45):
Right, that's the it was the hostages, right, they were
going into rescue the students. They had been taken over
by like guerrillas and Grenada.
Speaker 3 (40:51):
Like the Grenada military, there was a shoot on site curfew.
There had been an overthrow of the government, and Reagan
did not want to have a repeat of the Iran
hostage situation. So basically, you had an overthrow of a government,
you had the building of a runway that could service
long range bombers, and you had a American students that
(41:11):
could have been taken hostage. So that's basically a three
for And I don't think Reagan had the appetite to
sit down and want and wait for that situation to
work its way out and.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
See what happened. So he just is like, we're going
to go in. We're not going to let this go
any further because of what happened. Now. I think Grenada
was colonized by Britain until like the sixties, and then
it was maybe released back to its own nations people
in sixty seven seventy.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
Essentially and then they had the British representative on the islander.
Island was called the Governor General, and that was a
guy named Sir Paul Scoon and he was actually the
focus of another special operations mission on the island. I
don't cover it in cry Havoc. Cry Havoc is the
first of several books about the grenade operation. The Governor
General rescue will be covered in a different book. But yeah,
(41:59):
that's that's a whole other kettle of fish in terms
of operations. Yeah, right, right, operations within an operation, you know.
Speaker 2 (42:09):
All the time. Well, like I was talking to like
even Cyrus right as a ranger, and he said, well,
we'd go out on a mission and that mission turned
into second mission, and that second mission turned into third
mission and that third mission and pretty spin, I did
fourteen missions in a day.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
And yeah, you know, if you did that in Iraq
and three when I went in, we just called it
going frag o to frag O to frag go to Frago.
So you're just getting fragmentary orders to execute an ad
hoc mission. But you go into your mission planning cycle
the same way you would for regular mission. It's just
very truncated and very short compared to your your a
full length op order that you would.
Speaker 2 (42:44):
Get who'd you go in with in the Marine Corps intelligence,
But you guys went in and did frags like were
you guys, you know, combative house to house and you
were just gathering intel that way.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
So I was I was the assistant intel chief for
second Marine Regiment. We were the ground combat element and
for Task Force Tarawa. The big battle we took part
in that we're probably most well known for is the
battle in nazarea, you know three. We did a lot
of intelligence collection and triaging, assessments, and then you write
reports up. We did have a couple of sporty gun
(43:14):
fights in there from time to time. Later on, as
the ground campaign was kind of wearing down, we did
some house to house work, but that was mostly because
we were doing security patrols around where wherever our camp was.
Our position was essentially security patrols to make sure we
don't get you know, ambush or surprise or anything. But
we did a lot of intelligence collection and then assessment
(43:36):
and passed it on to Special Operations Forces for the
rescue of Jessica Lynch.
Speaker 2 (43:42):
Yeah, so the private who was contribute to that driver
that was taken captured in her convoy and uh, that's right,
that's right. Dang dude, this is crazy. You know. Was
it biblical over there for you? Did you feel like
like this is so like this is biblical area because
you see the stones and like the sandstone and like,
(44:04):
you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (44:05):
I didn't. I don't know if I had that kind
of deep thought about it at the time, because I
was responsible for, you know, about twenty five marines, so
you kind of you've got your you've got your work
to do, and then you've got your marines to look after,
so kind of pre you're preoccupied with that kind of
stuff most of the time. So I did have an
appreciation for that, especially when we started getting up near Baghdad.
(44:26):
We got to go to Babylon, which was right here
to see this stuff.
Speaker 2 (44:29):
That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
I got to see like the original ruins of Babylon,
which was I mean, it was just yeah, I mean,
it's it's mind blown when you think about the age
of that stuff and and the historical it's place in history,
like the hanging gardens of Babylon and the you know,
all of that stuff and.
Speaker 2 (44:48):
Well a lot of a lot of what's in these
Bibles are written from yeah, Babylon and stuff, you know.
So I'm just like, you know, you're going over there,
and you know, we grew up I grew up you know,
in a religious families, so we hear all these you know,
stories and told all these songs and everything, and then
it's like marching left right left. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:07):
I think in the later portions of the campaign, because
I was only there for f one, you can be
a little bit more introspective as the as the the
really dynamic combat starts to wind down and you got
a little bit more time to take in the surroundings
and do a little more deep thinking. Yeah, especially like
I said, up in their Hilla and Babylon was was
(45:28):
pretty pretty uh surreal real to be there. Yeah, But
you know, you hear at the land of the Two
Rivers or the Fertile Crescent and all that, and when
you get to that land in between the Euphrates River
and the Tigris River and you see, you know, how
fertile it is there, and you know, you don't expect
to see that much green in places and palm trees
(45:51):
and things like that, and you know, it kind of
blows your mind a little bit.
Speaker 2 (45:54):
But a little beauty of the land right at, Beauty
of the land is what you're seeing versus And I was.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
Down South most of the time, and most of those
folks are just farmers trying to make it day to day.
So I have real affinity for some of the the
folks down there. They're all Shia, they're all you know,
very family focused. They got a chance to talk to
some of them as as the campaign was winding down,
and most of them the same thing. They just want
to raise their families and you know, live in peace
(46:21):
and not not get blown up and not be oppressed.
Speaker 2 (46:23):
And you know, blown up and oppressed. Who wants that.
Speaker 3 (46:27):
Nobody. Nobody's trying to raise their kids and not be
in danger. I mean, I thought that was And they're
just farmers. They're simple people. They don't have a lot
of you know, don't have a lot of money. Their
families everything that focus for them.
Speaker 2 (46:39):
So we're at war. I'm just farming my land, bro, Like,
where'd you come from? What is that?
Speaker 3 (46:44):
Like?
Speaker 2 (46:44):
Space?
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Aliens?
Speaker 2 (46:46):
Yeah? Aliens, dude, that'd be crazy. It's not like you're
knocking on doors too much. You know, Yeah, can we
come in. Do you want to hear about our word
of wisdom? Like how you do it? How you doing?
Speaker 3 (46:59):
Yeah, trying not to fear with them too much in
their their life. You know, we had things to do,
and we did them, and we tried to you know,
if they came up to us and wanted to talk
or you know, we we brought out our turps and
we chat with them for a little bit and then
we'd be on our way.
Speaker 2 (47:13):
Yeah, that's crazy. Well, I'm glad you made it through
all of that, and I'm glad that you were able
to get home and to your wife and you know,
thanks family. You have kids and things like that.
Speaker 3 (47:22):
Yeah, got two of them. Yeah, they were they're adult now,
so I don't you know, Dad's not cool to with anymore.
Speaker 2 (47:29):
Before you enlisted, did you did you I mean excuse me,
did you have when you were enlisted or did you
have when you got out?
Speaker 3 (47:34):
No, we had them when I when I was still
in the service.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
So you had to deal with the separation from your family.
Speaker 3 (47:39):
And yeah, I know three my daughter was three years old.
It was really weird coming back and her not really
recognizing me at first, But you know, dad was gone
for a while, and you know, after a while, Yeah,
she figures it out after a while, you know. And
then we had our school son a little while a
little while after that.
Speaker 2 (47:56):
So well, I'm sure that there's others out there who
are listening who can relate to separation from their loved
ones to deploy, right, Yeah, whether they're I'm just saying.
Speaker 3 (48:06):
And I'm always gonna plug. If you're having trouble reconcile
and adjusting, et cetera, you talk to somebody. Talk to
the guys and gals you were over there with, talk
to your family. Don't be afraid to unload just because
they didn't have the same experience as you you did.
Let them hear you, Let them be there for you,
and stick around because people want you to stay around.
(48:28):
The world's better place.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
So in it.
Speaker 3 (48:30):
Don't don't take don't do something drastic that you and
everybody else will regret.
Speaker 2 (48:35):
Right, it just doesn't work out for the best as
you might think it would. So we love you. And
if you have problems out there and you're deciding on
your life, you want to hit me up on Instagram
or anything. I've talked to folks all the time and
how you doing. You know, They're like, hey, Rad, did
you really mean that? And I'm like, I don't know you,
but yes, yes, I did mean that.
Speaker 3 (48:53):
There's plenty of outlets to do it too, don't you know.
Don't feel like you're painting yourself into a box and
you can't get out of it.
Speaker 2 (49:00):
I think the VA actually has like an eight eight
eight number now, I believe is what it is, and
they're pushing that out there. So you know, hey, if
you needs want to talk to you can hit the VA.
Someone there probably knows what's going on. Go hang out
with the canteen or they're smoking, Come up with the
come up with your own book. There you go.
Speaker 3 (49:18):
I thought, I you know, funny you say that. I thought,
you know, writing I wrote a lot of my own
stuff down, not for publishing, but just for one it
was just good to get it out on the page.
And two, I've always felt like if something did happen
to me, there would be a record for my family
to understand. So sometimes just putting pen to paper, hitting
the keys provides a little relief.
Speaker 2 (49:40):
So a little dear diary is not a bad thing.
Speaker 3 (49:43):
Find find an outlet, find something that makes you feel good.
Speaker 2 (49:47):
I love that. I love that, and I love you
and I want you to know that I appreciate you,
and you spran forward in your smile, and I know
we just really have met in this last hour of
our lives. But I just want people to know that
they can talk to strangers, have positive conversations with one another,
not get waving flags right this whole tote in your
(50:08):
flags and stuff. Let's just remember that we all believe
the same blood on this earth, and we should all
just be trying to get along so we don't have
to use the Marines, even though the Marines want to
get used. I know, I know.
Speaker 3 (50:21):
We want to get out there and do the job.
That's the thing.
Speaker 2 (50:23):
Oh, I know, Oh I know, and I want you
to as well. But if it means that you get
to stay alive and don't have to fight but you're
ready to fight, I'm good with that too, right because
all right, Well, I want to say thank you to
Cyrus for linking me up with you, Joe, and you've
been a wonderful guest. Yeah, And when you get your
other book going and you want to come back on
the show, you're always welcome to, you know, jump onto
(50:45):
the soft Rep family here and the soft Rep mafia
as we call it now. Joe Muchiya gunnery sergeant, retired author, father, husband, son,
you have been an outstanding individual. We'll talk to you today.
Speaker 3 (51:00):
Thanks brother, it's been great.
Speaker 2 (51:02):
It's been really great. Now on behalf of me and
behalf of Joe. I want to say thank you from
all of us here at soft Rep and especially to Brandon.
Thanks for always having me run the show and trusting
in me. Bro I really appreciate your brother. So fist
pump to Brandon and get outside of nature. Go out
and breathe some fresh air. Go for a hike, surround
yourself with some water around your feet. Go take a
(51:25):
swim at the local pool. There's nothing like water and
the surroundings to help clear your thoughts. And I like
to say thrills before pills, so believe in that. Get
out and go enjoy yourself and check on your battle
buddies and your neighbors. And this is rad saying. Check
out the book club at soft rep dot com.
Speaker 1 (51:44):
Peace, you've been listening to self red Radia
Popular Podcasts
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
The Nikki Glaser Podcast
Every week comedian and infamous roaster Nikki Glaser provides a fun, fast-paced, and brutally honest look into current pop-culture and her own personal life.