Warfighter Wisdom: Patrick Naughton Author of Born from War

Originally from Hawaii, Patrick Naughton is a United States Army officer and a Military Historian. He is currently teaching at the Command and General Staff College at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. In 2012, he received the Army’s General Douglas MacArthur Leadership Award. He has had unique opportunities to serve as an Interagency Fellow with the Department of Labor, a Legislative Liaison to the U.S. Senate, and a Congressional Partnership Program Fellow with the Partnership for a Secure America—all in Washington, D.C. He also served as a Senior Leadership Fellow with the Center for Junior Officers at West Point. Patrick holds a Master of Military Arts and Science degree in History from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College, where he was recognized as an Art of War Scholar. He also holds a Master of Science in Crisis and Emergency Management and a Bachelor of Arts degree in History, both from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, where he was named an Army ROTC Distinguished Military Graduate. Patrick Naughton’s first book, “Born from War: A Soldier’s Quest to Understand Vietnam, Iraq, and the Generational Impact of Conflict,” is now available in hardcover or eBook format through Amazon, directly from Casemate Publishers, and from a variety of other booksellers. The book compares his father’s time in Vietnam with the 82nd Airborne and advising the South Vietnamese Army, to Patrick’s own experience during the Global War on Terror and in Iraq. Though decades of history and politics separate their service, the similarities between their experiences are undeniably striking. The result is an engaging and eye-opening narrative that weaves together the combat experiences of two generations of soldiers. From the failure of grand strategies to personal combat stories, the memories of those lost, and the evolving social challenges facing today’s military—America’s wars against communism and terror are laid bare through the lens of one family’s service.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
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Go check out our book club. We have great authors
that are all curated from the special operations team behind
the scenes here at soft reap dot com. So without
further ado and I'll introduce you to his bio here

(01:44):
in just a moment. But let me introduce Patrick Nnton,
who has written Born from War. Welcome to the show.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. Rad really
looking forward to the conversation.

Speaker 2 (01:55):
Wonderful And I just want you to know I'm clapping, right,
I always clap. I am the studio audience. Okay, so
when we go back and listen to it, just know
that I am your studio audience. Well, welcome, former lieutenant
or lieutenant actually current lieutenant colonel. Correct, not retired. You're
still in huh, still dabbling, still going for it. After

(02:17):
I'm going to read a little bit about you and
then we'll get into you, Okay. Patrick W. Nutton, Junior
is lieutenant colonel in the US Army and a military historian. Currently,
he is an instructor at the US Army's Command and
General Staff College, CGSC at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Patrick is
also currently serving as a Fellow at the Simons Center
for Ethical Leadership and Interagency Cooperation, a program of the

(02:41):
CGSC Foundation. In addition to various tactical, operational, and strategic
assessments held over twenty eight years in the Army, Patrick
has also served as a legislatively as a Legislative Liaison
to the US Senate, an Interagency Fellow with the Department
of Labor, and a Congressional Partnership Program Fellow with the
Partnership for a Secure America. He has also served as

(03:03):
a Senior Fellow with West Points Center for Junior Officers.
Patrick is also the recipient of the General Douglas MacArthur
Leadership Award. He holds a master's degree in history from CGSC,
where he was an Art of warst Scholar, and a
bachelor's degree in history from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Patrick has published with over a dozen peer review history

(03:26):
and national security journals, and he lives in Fort Leavenworth, Kansas,
with his wife, Sheila, and son Thomas. Patrick's work can
be found at www dot patnot dot com. That's worldwide
web period patnot dot com. Okay, so you want to
learn more about him after the show, you can go
check out that website. But welcome again to the show.

(03:47):
What a great uh, what a great bio.

Speaker 3 (03:50):
Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I hear that bio,
and I'm like, is that me? Is he talking about
It's been a long twenty eight years, that's for sure
it is.

Speaker 2 (03:59):
And so you're how old are you today?

Speaker 3 (04:01):
I am forty six. I'll be forty seven in a
couple of weeks.

Speaker 2 (04:05):
Yeah. So I was born in nineteen seventy seven. Okay, yeah, yeah,
so what's up? We know about Zelda right, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:12):
We didn't have any video games growing up. We didn't
have that kind of money, but.

Speaker 2 (04:15):
My dad had to have it. How great. So you've
got some reviews of your book here, Captain Dale Dye wrote,
like a nice description about your book. Should I read it? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (04:32):
Sure if you liked to.

Speaker 2 (04:33):
Yeah. As a father and a multi tour Vietnam veteran,
I struggled to explain my war and my voluntary service
in it to my children. Reading about author Patrick Nnton
similar experiences in his family helped me understand that broad
generational gap that confounded so many of us between our
war and what was faced by younger veterans of America's
global War on Terror, what we had between seminole events

(04:55):
was more than a simple failure to communicate. The insights
provided by Naughton's Born from War are enlightening and invaluable.
Captain Dale Die USMC retired author, actor, filmmaker. So many
things he's been a part of, from Platoon to Saving
Private Ryan, that we'd all know him if we saw him.

Speaker 3 (05:12):
Yep, yep.

Speaker 2 (05:13):
And you may not have seen him, but he's made
all the movies tried to be accurate and depict you know,
great you know, oscars and things like that. And he's
saying that he enjoyed your book because he had issues
to try to talk to his kids. You have a dad,
and not only are your military, but your dad. You're like, hey, dad,
talk to me, what's up? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (05:33):
Yeah, yeah, no, you know that was that was definitely
an amazing endorsement from from from Dale Died. You know,
I didn't, I didn't. I just reached out to him
cold and and he responded right away, and I was
I was quite shocked by it. And uh, and I
guess he really he really liked the topic of the book,
as you can tell from from his endorsement, and so
I sent him a coffee and he that's what he provided.

(05:53):
And uh, you know, I always tell all of my
students here at at at CGSC that one of the
things to to live by life is to make people
tell you no. So you know, people were always like, oh,
you know, you shouldn't reach out to you know, Dale
Die and all these other people that I reached out
to that are and that are also endorsed the book.
You know, he he or she will never respond, you know,
don't worry. So I was like, well, I'll make them

(06:15):
tell me no. You know, I'll just I'll reach out
to them. And the worst thing that's gonna happen is
they're just not going to respond. They're not gonna say anything,
or they're going to respond and say, hey, it's not
for me. Uh So, yeah, you know, I really got
some amazing endorsements from some really interesting people, which you
can see on the on the back cover of the book,
you know, especially Dale Died being kind of the leading one.
But you know, doctor Craig Venter, he was a Vietnam veteran.

(06:35):
He also wrote an endorsement and he's he's the guy
who invent or discovered the human genome. You know, he's
like a really huge guy as well. And I was
very shocked by you know, but yeah, you know, and
and all of them, I think what what enticed them
or what interested them about the book was that that
that family piece of it, that that energet generational connection
of service. I mean you yourself, your your your your

(06:58):
father was what was a Green beret, correct, and that
influenced you. Yeah, but you know, and that he had
influenced you heavily in life. Whether you know that parent
wanted it to influence you or not, it did, you know.
And so I will say that to all the listeners
out there who have warned uniform or still still wear
in a uniform, that you really have no idea how
much your service influences your kids, whether you are talking

(07:20):
about it all the time or whether you never talk
about it, and you have all this stuff hidden in closets,
closets like my dad did, who never talked about it
and never was something that he tried to encourage with me.
You know, it has a huge influence on your kids
and you probably don't. Don't don't even.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
Realize it one hundred percent. You know, before my father
passed away, you know, he saw that I got into
this like wargame lifestyle and he's like, you know, I'm
sorry that this is the business he chosen that you
love and that I introduced it to you at such
a young age. And I was like, why, Dad, I
love it and he's like that's why. And he's like
that's why. And you know, he never really bragged about it.

(07:54):
I think I brag about my dad more than he
ever would, or like it came full circle for me
to about my dad when all the cops in Leyton,
Utah would come and hang out and I'm on my
skateboard and I'm like skating in the street and you're
not supposed to skat in the street, and all the
cops are there and my dad's on the curb and
they're talking and I'm just like skating, being a little
punk kid, like you can't stop me. My dad's right there.
I didn't realize that he was the coolest guy on

(08:16):
the block. Okay. So they weren't just there harassing anybody.
They were there to stop by and say, hey, what's up, Jack?
How's it going? You run the armory over here at
the junior high school with all the other a team,
you know, that kind of thing. They knew who he was.
I just thought eleven year old me was like, oh,
dad's just talking to the cops. No, there's you know.
And he did influence me so heavily, you know, taking

(08:37):
me up in the mountains with his team without ever saying,
why is your ten year old tagging along with us?
Why do we have a moguli going up these hills
with us? And they were in uniform. They were just
in like jeans and plaid shirts and tucked in with belts,
you know, just like out of uniform. So my dad
always asked me why did you want to go Air Force,
you know? And I was like, well, you know, if

(08:58):
I get through, they have a blueber and it's not
as hard as a Green beret. He just looked at
me and said, that's all I wanted to know, you know.
So there is that generational gap, like you were saying,
where he never talked about it. My mom said, here's
his file if you want to know what he told
the therapist at the VA, and I opened up page one,
and I might have turned to page two and then

(09:18):
I just shut it. It's like, you know, if my
dad wanted me to know these things, he would have
told me these things, you know, And so I still
have that file of not cracked into it. So I
just want to bring that to you on this because
I feel like a little bit of that's what we're
getting at here is like what did dad? You know,
the generational gap?

Speaker 3 (09:37):
Yeah, yeah, you know he growing up, he never talked
about Vietnam. Once in a while, a little story would
sneak out or something would sneak out, and that was
the only way that you knew. I mean, he never
you know, he never wore like veterans hats or had
bumper stickers or was part of the VFW or any
of those types of things. This is something he never
talked about. And then as a kid, you know, you

(10:00):
I was sneak around looking through your parents' stuff and
you know, digging through their closets or whatever, and so
in doing that, you know, I would discover pieces of uniform,
old medals, ribbons, you know, things like that. And so
that's kind of like that was the influence on my life,
is that it was always in the background that I
knew my father was a Vietnam veteran who never talked
about it, So you know, that really influenced me to

(10:20):
then join the army. And then, you know, decades later,
we found all these letters that he wrote home from Vietnam,
as well as a diary that he kept for the
year that he was there, and so being able to
you know, dig through all that stuff, and by that
point I had already you know, written a whole bunch
of articles. It was really into writing, and it always
wanted to write a book, and so that was kind
of the genesis of the book ideas, coming from finding

(10:42):
all that stuff and then going through it. And then
you know, like you mentioned just a second ago, you know,
we never really we we think we know our parents,
but we don't.

Speaker 2 (10:51):
You know.

Speaker 3 (10:51):
The only way we know them is from like growing
up and you know, how they disciplined us or whatever.
We grew up with them. But when you get a
chance to, like and I hope one day you do
open that file and read it, because and then you'll
really discover who your dad is, you know, Yeah, and
that can be quite quite powerful.

Speaker 2 (11:05):
Page one was kind of nuts, you know, it talks
about Vietnam and some things that he had seen, and
what turned him into a Green Beret was the things
he had seen done to other Green Berets that they
were finding. And so I can see the crossover from
him being a young seventeen year old Navy he did
Morse code radioman too, being a nineteenth Special Forces Group

(11:27):
Guy eighteen echo radio guy right, Morse code. So I
could see how he just went from one to the
other because he's like, I'm just gonna wear the beret
that I was finding around in his file. It's interesting.
I have to read more of it. I only read
one page and I stopped.

Speaker 3 (11:44):
Yeah, I would highly encourage you to read it. I mean,
I think it would be quite moving for you.

Speaker 2 (11:47):
Maybe it's been time, you know. And at the time,
I was just so fresh and I was just like,
you know, he had just passed, and Mom was like, well,
here's his file and stuff, and.

Speaker 3 (11:55):
I was just like, I think that's probably a good
I don't know, you know, TP A technique for our
Some of the people listening to this who have served
is you know, they don't want to talk about it,
maybe to their kids and so on, but maybe leave
something behind, you know, maybe maybe leave some some letters
that they write to them. What I'm doing with my
son is my wife and I are doing is we

(12:16):
created an email for him all right now. He's only
three years old right now, so we created an email
for him, and then every so often we email him,
you know, our thoughts and what we're doing in our
lives and things like that, and thoughts of him. And
then when he's eighteen, we're gonna give him the password
and he'll be able to look back through, you know,
eighteen years of our thoughts and love for him and
experiences that we're going through.

Speaker 2 (12:36):
In our own lives. That's cool to journal, you know.
You guys uploading some images of him?

Speaker 3 (12:42):
Are I mean just writing whatever? You're like, hey, we
just PCs again after a year. We're at Ford Levenworth.
You know, you've already lived in three places and you're
only three years old. So just things like that, you know,
and so it's kind of so I think you'll leave
leaving that for your your your kids and so like
like you know, you have file that you can read
one day, or these emails that you give him the

(13:03):
shirt when they're eighteen, or even all your old ribbons
and your medals and your and you're write up maybe
in your evaluations, you know, keep all that in a
folder somewhere. Give it to them when they're an adults.
I think that might be quite interest.

Speaker 2 (13:12):
I still have pops uniform, his full classes with his
blue cord and everything. I looked at it and I
was like, how did how did he fit in this?
He got got bigger, a little bigger after you know,
and stuff like that, and then I look, I'm six five.
I'm like, there's no way I could even fit in this,
you know. And I still have his camouflage pants from
his woodlands, and I have some of his old greens

(13:35):
with his name on it from when he was first
in the eighties, you know, the old Odie green uniforms
with the slant pockets. So I still have some of
that and I and I cherish it, you know, and
sometimes I'll smell it. Yeah. And I have his helmet,
his kpot that has his woodland cover and it's got
like C seventeen six jumps and he's got like all
these slashes of different aircraft. I'll smell the interior of it. Okay.

(13:57):
I just want you to know that's what I'm always
looking for. Wasn't trying to have a session with you
today on therapy.

Speaker 3 (14:03):
But yeah, well it's good. It's good conversation. I mean,
I think it's important for for you know, veterans and
people who serve to realize that the impact that it
has on their their their children and their spouse too,
and then to you know, save something for them that
they can then look on later in life, you know,
when they're adults themselves, and get a better understanding of
you when you were young and raising them and soul.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
Like his ring right here that my mom gave me
when he passed in twenty thirteen. It's his Special Forces
ring right here. So my kids all look at her like, hey,
can we put that on our thumb? Can we try
it on dad? You know my daughter she's you know,
it's like do I leave it to her? Do I
leave it to my son? To leave it to my
other daughter. It's like they can figure it out, but
it's here here, it is. Yeah, you know Grandpa's you know,

(14:46):
handed down Yeah, yeah, and you know they.

Speaker 3 (14:47):
Have all these recordings too from this podcast.

Speaker 2 (14:50):
One hundred percent, well, you know, immortalized, right as long
as the internet's not cut at the bottom of the
ocean on us. Then you should have so so born
from war? Right, you yourself enlisted at what age or commissioned?
Do you mind telling a little bit about how you
decided to join the military at what age that was?

Speaker 3 (15:10):
Yeah? So, you know, like I said, growing up, there
was always kind of an influence. So it was always
kind of the back of my mind that I would
join the army because my dad was in the Army,
and they have a long history of family members so
went all the way back to the American Revolution, who
had fought in pretty much every single war. But I was,
I was a teenager. I got into a lot of trouble,
you know, I was. I was a really bad kid,
and so I really didn't know what I was gonna

(15:30):
do with my life. Thankfully, up until that point, I
hadn't gotten any serious trouble that would have, you know,
kept me out of the joining the army.

Speaker 2 (15:36):
Right, But I was.

Speaker 3 (15:38):
I was in school, and I was in a special
program for like trouble maker kids, and so I was
acting up and one of the teachers was like got
frustrated with me and was like, what the heck are
you gonna do with your life. And I was like,
if you, I'm gonna join the army whatever. And then
she was like okay, and so she went. And then
about a couple of minutes later, she's like, oh, there's
there's a phone call for you, and they had phones

(15:58):
in the classroom that in case she acted out. And
I was like okay, and I got it, and it
was a recruiter, and the recruiter was like meet me
at the flag pole after school, and I was like, oh, okay.
And you know, so I was seventeen. Joined my dad
signed a delayed entry program and so that that's seventeen,
and then about I think three months later, went off
to basic, joined the infantry like my dad. My dad

(16:19):
was an infantry officer, but I was an infantry listed
at that time. Joined the infantry, did about six years,
did some hundred first time I got out, did some
Hawaiian National Guard time still in the infantry, became an NCO,
went back into ROTC, got my degree, you know, had
my gi bill, had all that stuff, everything all paid for.
Was really awesome, and then got commissioned and then you know,

(16:40):
like my bio, done a whole bunch of really cool
things since then. So it's been it's been quite a ride,
for sure.

Speaker 2 (16:47):
I understand the class. Can I tell you that the
special class. I was in that class. Yeah, we had
a timeout box. So yeah, so if the kid acted
out or said, you know, fu there, like go to
timeout and you'd have to go on your own course.
Or they brought the second grader in one time and
just put him in there. He's kicking it. He's like,
you guys suck. This teacher sucked all these schools he
needed to be in there, and then he went to sleep.

(17:08):
That's so funny that you yeah, yeah, oh, I was
a second year senior in high school and always skateboarding
and always doing things and just out there. So funny enough,
you know, just not bad enough to have a record.

Speaker 3 (17:19):
Yeah, yeah, at least record, you know. Yeah, I mean
the Army. The Army really saved my life had I
not joined the army. I know, I have I have
this reoccurring nightmare where I wake up and I wake
up in a jail cell and like all and everything
happened in my past life was all a dream and
really all along I've been in this, in this, in

(17:41):
this jail cell. So that's kind of you know where
I was and the army really redirected me, thankfully, And
I think it does that for a lot of people
who joined the UH the military. Thankfully.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
They can give a lot of people a direction left, right, straight,
U turn, start over, do something a little different, you know,
whatever the case may be. It's like it does give
you a direction though in life, and and it helps
you to get out and understand a little bit of
a chain of command makes sense. You know, you're like, oh, hey,
you know what, I get why that? I get why
there's a hierarchy in my job, right, you know, it

(18:13):
kind of makes sense, you know, go up the chain.
And so what was the questions that you had about
your dad that inspired you to want to write you know,
the the Born Born from War Vietnam, IRAQ, Global War
on Terror, you know, blended? What was that in you?
I know you're a historian, Okay, I know you makes
sense with the emails to your son, right.

Speaker 3 (18:36):
Yeah, No, it was it was you know, once we
had all that material, I mean, it was it was
just really wanting to know more about that war, you know,
your Vietnam. You know, I'm a historian, so you know,
but Vietnam. Most of us don't know much about Vietnam.
All you know is from a bunch of corny eighty
movies that show us that it was all bad. And
then you know, even in professional military education for the military,

(18:56):
we kind of skip over Vietnam a little bit. You know,
we jump right from the World War two to Desert Storm, etcetera,
really focusing on that large scale combat operations. So I
really wanted to know more about that war and then
my dad's experience in that war. And you know, during
the process of writing the book, you know, I was
able to I tracked down, you know, all the influence
that Vietnam had when he was growing up, and the

(19:18):
people that died in his neighborhood. You know, how that
I talked to those families, and how that influenced their families.
You know, even fifty sixty years later, they still missed them.
And then all the people that he served with. I
was able to track down a lot of them and
actually interview them. So I was able to cold call
these you know, social media you could find anybody, and
I was able to find these people, you know, so
they're like fifty sixty years later, the the son of

(19:40):
somebody that they served with, you know, decades ago out
of nowhere has reached them and asking them about you know,
his father and their experience in the war and all
that played together. And I had the same name as
my dad, so you know, to them getting this random
email from a guy they knew learning that it's his son,
so that was really interesting. And then just taking all
the lessons from Vietnam, you know that that that on

(20:01):
counter insurgency fight, and then looking at you know, g Watt.
I mean I was in Iraq, so that's really what
I focused on, but g Watt overall as a whole,
and looking at some of the same bear traps that
that we walked right into, you know, and had we
really studied and understood what we did, what we tried,
what we applied in Vietnam, we probably could have avoided
some things that we did in Iraq and Afghanistan and
other theaters. So you know, all that's together in the book.

(20:24):
So it's it's it's kind of it's not just a
dry history. You know, it has some historical chapters if
you like that kind of stuff, but it really is
takes a a personal look at both wars, from the
human experience and then historically combines, you know, both of
the lessons that we missed and so on and all
of that together. So I'm hoping that it appeals to
a much broader audience, and not just to you know,

(20:45):
military audience, and not just to like a historian audience,
hoping that it appeals to like a broader society understanding
how that influences people who serve intergenerational and how that
that that impact on society as a whole.

Speaker 2 (20:58):
Now, now, now, Patrick, tell me what your dad did
in Vietnam. Like, I know he was an infantry officer.
I might have heard the hundred first maybe from you
or from him. Tell me again, what was his detail
in Vietnam that you can recall.

Speaker 3 (21:12):
Yeah, so he was in the eighty second Airborne as
an infantry officer. And what's funny is, you know, the
eighty second was that strategic reserve that was kept back
from Vietnam. They were supposed to be the ones that
would answer if Russia or Soviet Union at a time
something like that happened. But after ted, they needed more
force flow to come in very quickly, and so they
broke glass and they sent to eighty second, So my

(21:34):
dad was not airborne. He went straight from IOBC and
then went to jungle training and then went to Vietnam
and then was plugged into eighty second even though he
was an airborne because eighty second wasn't airborne airborne tag
at the time in Vietnam. But he came in on
the tail end of that deployment of the eighty second,
So he did six months with the eighty second, and

(21:54):
then the eighty second redeployed back to Brag but he
didn't get to go because he still had six months
that he the big Green machine. So then he became
an ARBON advisor and he advised the South Vietnamese Army
with the twenty fifth Arvin Division. So he did six
months with the eighty second, and he did six months
as an ARBON advisor, and he did it right in

(22:14):
from nineteen sixty nine to nineteen seventy, which is right
when the Vietnam War was changing from pacification with the
US and the lead to Vietnamization to the Vietnamese in
the lead. So he literally was like right at that
gap when that happened at that strategic level, that's when
he joined at that tactical level and was doing exactly
the same thing that was being briefed strategically. So it's

(22:35):
a really interesting perspective of the Vietnam War to see
it from you know, large American unit that he's leading,
you know, as a platoon leader in the eighty second,
to then going and advising the Arbon to now take
the war, take take charge of the war, and be
the front while the Americans take a step back. So
that's that's what he did. And he saw with the

(22:56):
Arvon he saw way more combat than he did with
the eighty second, which kind of flips that narrative on
its head. Is that most people when they think about Vietnam,
they think that the Arbon units were very poor performing
and you know, they dropped the rifle, you know that
that joke that I can sell you an Arvin rifle,
you know, never fired, only dropped once type of thing.
But he found that the Arbon battalion that he was

(23:18):
advising was extremely, extremely ferocious and they really fought like tigers,
and he saw with them. Yeah, then he did with
the eighty seconds.

Speaker 2 (23:26):
He probably appreciated being with them because that's their that's
their backyard.

Speaker 3 (23:31):
Yeah, yeah, oh absolutely, you know what.

Speaker 2 (23:33):
I mean it' second come this way, no, no, no,
this way, no, just between these trees, bro Yeah, pungee
sticks are here, There's none here. It's like and you.

Speaker 3 (23:41):
Know what's funny is like my dad, you know, I
talked to a lot of the other advisors on his
team that he was with, and they said exactly what
you just said. You know, they would like the Vietnamese
would stop and say, hey, I smell something, yeah, and
the American would be like what you know, and they're
they're smelling things that are out of place in their
native environment that shouldn't be there.

Speaker 2 (23:58):
You know.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
My dad was six two, so uh, the Vietcong would
hang up booby traps you know, at his level, trying
to hit the American advisors. And so that was something
he had to watch out to you that the ARB
taught him to duck down in certain places and things
like that. So really really fascinating experience. And like I said,
he kept the letters and he kept his diary, so
I have a real detailed time of that year. Wore

(24:20):
that that that that he did, and then anything that
was missing I was able to fill in the gap
from you know, the others that I found that.

Speaker 2 (24:25):
He served with. They're so unconventional warfare, right, I mean,
like these guys that were lurps and everybody that went
into the to the jungles, people have talked to and interviewed,
getting like some real accounts from them, you know, walking
on trails and then just their guys drop, but they
just see the enemy and then they shoot the guys
who like didn't say nothing behind them. They're like what

(24:46):
mind readers. You know, it's like, oh, don't forget watch
out for your head because there's booby traps hanging from
the trees. You know, I'm trying not to step in
a tiger pit.

Speaker 3 (24:55):
Yeah, it's an operational environment that I think, you know,
US veterans from from around in Afghanistan, it would just
be so foreign to us. You know, what special operations
and line units faced in Vietnam was just so different
than what you know, we saw in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Speaker 2 (25:09):
Oh yeah, so.

Speaker 3 (25:10):
It's just really interesting. Yeah, those guys were tough.

Speaker 2 (25:12):
Man the rain alone, Yeah yeah, man, I read about
that too.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
You know, the rain My dad got trench foot all
kinds of other things from from constant immersion. So yeah, really,
you know, it really really hard war. Really, Vietnam was
really really ugly in that sense, in the conditions that
they had to fight under.

Speaker 2 (25:32):
Well, yeah, and today we have more of a technological
war going on, you know, but they're still you know
what I call the snow piercer element, the human element
that has to keep the machine going right, even though
we wanted to just be like androids fighting each other
with no souls going up to heaven and hell and stuff.
But you know who's controlling those and then once you

(25:53):
get to that element you take out those guys, so
someone there's got to be this human element in combat.
It's just crazy. Yeah, you know.

Speaker 3 (26:01):
You know what's interesting is, uh, you know, Vietnam tried
to use technology too. We don't really realize that they
tried to use technology as that I guess combat enhancer
or whatever a way to to keep soldiers and to
keep boots off of the ground. They tried things like
dropping sensors that would embed into the ground and they
would set off an alarm anytime somebody walked by it.
I mean, they tried all kinds of things like that.

(26:21):
Cause you don't give no credit for and you're exactly right,
you know, it's still required. It's still required troops on
the ground, no matter how much technology they tried to
apply in Vietnam. And then you know later at Afghanistan.

Speaker 2 (26:32):
Yeah, because I mean, you know, jade ams and whatnot,
don't just like they have to like be guided in it.
It's like like someone's looking at something. You know, it's like,
you know, don't turn the binoculars. You know, it's like
a movie where he looks with the layer. What. So,

(26:54):
you know you've written so much, you're you're a historian
of the military. What is your fate favorite genre that
you like to focus on.

Speaker 3 (27:04):
Yeah, you know, American Civil war is probably my most favorite.
That's one of the least selling genres.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
Unfortunately, such a repeating of history genre.

Speaker 3 (27:15):
Yeah, it's such a saturation. You know, there's so many
civil war books and things that it's it's hard to
get something out on that. But you know, I enjoy
any any military history. And you know, one of the
things I've discovered, you know, as I write all these
articles and then now my book working on my second
book now, is that when you look at military history,

(27:36):
you know, uniforms change, the reason for the conflict change,
you know, the weapons, technology, things like that. But that
common military experience is like so timeless. I mean, you
can write, you can read something. If you could find
it about like a Roman centurion and that common military
experience and bring it all the way forward to raack
in Afghanistan, you would find that that common timeless experience

(27:56):
of being in the military, you know, joining up, being
subjected to that suppline, shipping out overseas, just the common
hardships that you face when you put on a uniform.
I mean, it's so timeless that it's always shocking when
I whenever I read into those historical narratives.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
And stuff, right, because I mean you do have you know,
a degree in the art of war, right, and so
it's like you know, attack at night and fall back,
you know, and then attack when they retreat and then
like you know, don't attack in the daylight kind of thing.
And just like the simplest thought process un Sue wrote.
You know, like the book is about I can't remember
how many pages, but it's not very very big. Yeah,

(28:33):
it's like just you know, move out of the way.

Speaker 3 (28:37):
Yeah, there's there's some common you know, some very common
strategic themes that are also timeless as well, which you
can you can glean from that from that that study
of history too.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
I had a marine I interviewed yesterday that'll come out
here in a few you know, probably right before your show,
if anybody's listening. But we're talking about how he didn't
quite know what to you know, hold on to in
a conflict. And so his instructors before they went to
go to Iraq and in two thousand and six said
you know, let me tell you about Valhalla. And so
he wound up writing a book called Valhalla Voice, and

(29:07):
so yeah, yeah, and so Valhalla was something that he
was able to. They talked about the warrior ethos of
a Viking and the Norse and how they believed in
transcending through battle, and he's like that kind of gave
me a good sense of grounding, you know. So you know,
it's hard because you come from you know, we all

(29:29):
come from somewhere. Some people don't have a faith that's
been taught to them. Some people just come from you know,
maybe like an orphanage into the military and never had
anybody but a drill sergeant loved them the most. And
then that drills, you know, and so it's like what
do they what do they have to latch onto how
do they find that grounding mechanism And so like you said,
it can go all the way back to a centurion.

(29:51):
You can go all the way back to Norse. You know,
like that's an importance.

Speaker 3 (29:56):
It's an importance some military unit history especially is uh
you know, Sir Michael Howard, he's really the most famous
historian to really latch onto that that idea that you
just that you just uh you just mentioned is that
you know the importance of history is you can use
it to to to build that that commanderie, that that history,
that that pride in your unit, which can help you,

(30:19):
you know, survive and thrive in combat situations. So you know,
soldiers in one hundred first, I was one hundred first,
you know, you know, Infantruman, we can always no matter
what hardship you find yourself in, you can always think
back to oh man, think of those guys in World
War two, you know, battle the bulls, all that type
of stuff, and you can you can pull forward that
sense of pride, that sense of cammaderie, and that it
gives you that strength to to further push forward, you know,

(30:40):
and you can find that like you said, you know,
with Valhalla, but you can find that, you know. The
eighty second, I mean, any any any unit you want
to name out there, and that's really that power of
that history. So you know, as as a leader informations
out there, you know, I would suggest not to overlook
that that power of that history and then use it,
capture it, you know, And you're almost doing like a
propaganda type thing. And isn't it to help you know,

(31:01):
instill some some pride, some some ability to to be
resilient and to push forward, you know, within your formations.
I think it's a really powerful tool that a lot
of people overlook.

Speaker 2 (31:13):
Yeah, what would you suggest to somebody who's thinking about
going into the military right now? You know a lot
of my listeners will be the younger kids looking up
to you. You know, maybe someone in their twenties is like, ah,
maybe this is my moment. You know, it's like I'm
a little older, I got some college, but I want
to enlist. You know, what's your advice to somebody who's
thinking about this from your perspective? You know, Yeah, you know, I.

Speaker 3 (31:36):
Would say I always tell every young person, you know,
if you don't know what you want to do, you know,
you're you're seventeen eighteen, and you don't know if you
want to go to college, you don't know, if you
want to go to trade school, you don't know, if
you just want to go to work. Whatever, you know,
consider the military. I mean, now, the way the military
is set up, it's no longer that you know that
a twenty year system. Now it has a blended retirement

(31:56):
system where you can do three years or whatever it is,
and then you can walk away with like a four
oh one K. So that's that's huge, you know, So
I would suggest, you know, go to the military for
a couple of years. It'll help you find yourself. You'll
get to see the world, you'll get some amazing experiences,
some amazing exposure and all that. But also, you know,
I would say, make the military work for you. So
you want to serve, right, you're already giving yourself to

(32:19):
that service to our nation. So that's huge. But also
take back a little bit too, So take advantage of
the of the g I bill, take advantage of anything
else that they're offering. You know, if if you want
to be a door kicker and you want to go infantry,
and or you want to go special forces, you know,
get after it awesome, but also consider, hey, what's some
other things that I could use that are gonna things
that I could learn? They are gonna make me marketable,

(32:39):
you know, maybe learning about computers or radios or AI
all that that that cutting edge stuff that the military
is working on. So, you know, my biggest advice you
take advantage of whatever the military is offering. Gi Bill.
If you can get a couple of college classes out
knocked out of the way with the education center on posts,
do that get some good you know, some some training,
whether it's uh ivory type stuff or some type of

(33:01):
trade or whatever it is. You know, all of that
so that when if you do decide to get out
and not do you know, twenty plus years, then you've
got stuff. You know, you've got a four oh one K,
You've got givil you can fall on, You've got that
trade skill or whatever it is that you can also
leverage as well when when you're getting.

Speaker 2 (33:16):
Out VA home Loan VA homeland.

Speaker 3 (33:18):
I mean, there's all kinds of benefits that are available
right now. So take advantage of all that stuff you're
gonna give. So give yourself, be selfless, you know, do
that selfless service, that sacrifice, but also take back as well.
Whatever they have to offer, take it. So you walk
out with a whole bunch of stuff in your kit bag,
ready to move on to your next career. Take on
the world. You know, all that's going to help you out.
So that's my suggestion.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
Yeah, that's great advice too, you know. And just going
in and talking to someone at a career center for
the military is just your first step, right, You just
got to take that step over the door, say hey,
what's up. Someone I was interviewing one time. They said
they went into the army, they were pretty committed to
the army, but then all of a sudden they went
maybe seal next door. And they didn't mean to like
offend anybody, but they just said, well I felt a

(33:59):
different direction.

Speaker 3 (34:01):
But they're still well yeah, yeah, check them all out.

Speaker 2 (34:03):
Yeah, And you can ask for what you want if
you like, you know, say you want to be a
truck driver and you want to get the best truck
driving training. You can go in as that and you
can come out with the creds of you know, an
Army eighty eight mic truck driver that knows how to
do it all. I mean really, you know, and.

Speaker 3 (34:20):
That's good advice to Yeah, shop around. Definitely hit hit
hitoped service and see what they're gonna make them offer.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
TV because they're called career centers now they are.

Speaker 3 (34:30):
They're all most of them are co located so they
don't have to walk far.

Speaker 2 (34:33):
No, you don't. You can check them out and you
could just like, you know, or just act out in
class and you'll get a phone call. You'll see, you know.

Speaker 3 (34:40):
I don't even know if I don't even know if
that teacher legally was supposed to do that, Like I'm
not sure she could, you know what I mean, Like
it's ship. I don't know sure if that would be
allowed today, that you could just like call a recruiter
and link them up with a student, you know.

Speaker 2 (34:50):
I don't know. I don't think the timeout box is
allowed anymore today. Yeah, but there's a lot of things
that aren't allowed anymore, you know, the level system, eating
lunch in the room or in the cafeteria. Come come on,
But I mean I get it. There's some kids out there,
you know, and we love you, okay, my troubled kids.
Alternative high school, all the day, all day right here,
A second year senior but you know what a second

(35:12):
year senior means that I pushed through. I still kept going.
My friends were sleeping in while I was going to
school at seven in the morning every single day. Because
I had to graduate, I had to get credits. I
had to I had to just push forward. And I
think I get a lot of that from my dad
and my mom, you know, instelling in me. You know,

(35:32):
like a lot of Okay, let me just really quick,
just hijack this conversation. So I had a skateboard shop
when I was thirteen years old, and so I was
selling skateboards out of my garage. My dad was like
really impressed with me selling you know, grilled cheeses at first,
and all the kids were selling lemonade, and I sold
grilled cheeses. And I was making like thirty forty bucks
a day selling grilled cheeses. He ran an armory at

(35:53):
a junior high school that had a candy machine in it,
and all the guys would buy it. He's just super
smart and just had a vending machine and I would
take his apply and sell it out front. Okay, so
out front moms are sending their kids over to pick
up diet cokes you know, oh, go buy them from Radel.
Go buy the diet cokes down the street from Radel.
You don't have to go to the store. So I
would just sell them two for a buck, two for
a buck. And my Dad's like one day he comes

(36:14):
up to me. He's like, let me ask you something.
How much you make today on those diet cokes. I
said about thirteen dollars. He's like, well, you know they're
sixty cents now, right, because they're not fifty cents. I
was like, oh, bro, I forgot. They went up to
sixty cents at the vending machines, so I had to
pay him back. But he said I was doing so
well on the grilled cheeses that I was making money
minus the bread, the cheese, the rent, the refrigerator that

(36:34):
cost electricity, the stove that had natural gas. He broke
it down, like, you should owe me this much, but
I'm going to just charge you X. So I said,
buy me a business license in Layton. Let me open
a skate shop. I know I can sell these skateboards.
And he had a business degree in human resource and
business management. As a Green Beret, and he was working

(36:56):
all the way to his doctorate public speaking and business
communications and stuff. So I think he just really instilled
in me this business mentality of just like go after
it that, like you said, was hidden the whole time.
It wasn't like he just kind of groomed me into
this businessman that I am today. I have multiple shops.
I'm successful entrepreneur. You know, same mentality I had with

(37:20):
my skate shop. Except what happened to my skate shop
is I didn't have any insurance. So as a seventeen
eighteen year old kid now from thirteen to eighteen, I
got like sixty thousand dollars in inventory. I got snowboards
and skateboards. I have a whole arcade with like Tron
and Mortal Kombat and all these different games paying the rent.
And what happened was some skaters that got TD wide
with their dad to Hill Air Force Base, so I'd

(37:41):
never met crowbarred the front door, stole everything. I just
broke all my glass cases, took all the wheels, all
the trucks, took all my stuff that was on layaway,
and I was just like, oh man, right for Christmas.
So that pretty much ended it right there, which is
what gave me a direction to go to college at night.
And then I joined the Air Force and I was

(38:02):
supposed to have a skate shop, right, So he just
instilled in me this business. So later in life, I
said to myself, Okay, I'll always open a business, but
I'll do it the three ways. Okay, location, location, location, insurance, insurance, insurance,
and location location location. So you know, thanks again to
Dad for you know, inspiring me to be a businessman,

(38:22):
you know, at such a young age, which is why
I was always not in school. You see, I was
running my skate shop. So at ten am, dude, you'd
find me opening the shop and I'm just slinging skateboards
to all the skater dudes that are like nineteen right
at fifteen sixteen, So I'm like, who needs school? Well?
I needed school because what happened. I got broke into

(38:43):
everything got snatched out from underneath me, and I still
had a chance to graduate. Yeah, so that's you know,
thanks Dad and Mom for you know, inspiring me there.

Speaker 3 (38:52):
Yeah, fort's have a plan B that so that lesson is, but.

Speaker 2 (38:56):
We don't have a planet B, so we got to
take of what we got here. We got to be
good Stewards today. No, yeah, just to give you some
backstory on the skate shop, right, and how I was
getting there. That's what it is, you know. So anybody
can open a business. You just got to be out
of a job. You're like, how do I hustle? How
do I do this? You know a lot of folks

(39:18):
getting out of the military, they're like, how did you
do it? And I was like, well, when you don't
have a job, you become an entrepreneur. You're like, how
do I eat? Yeah? How do I eat?

Speaker 3 (39:28):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (39:28):
That's the trick about being an entrepreneurs. You got a
risk yourself, and yourself is something you're so selfish about,
you know. I know we're selfless swear oaths, but at
the end of the day, it's you that cares about
you the most. So I'm you know, and I would
love to tell everybody all about your book. There's chapters
in your book Born from War that are like, I

(39:49):
think chapter nineteen, let me see here real quick, is
that the one that says killing was killing people is
the easiest thing in the world.

Speaker 3 (39:58):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a Derek. So all the
chapter chapters start with a quote from somebody that I
interviewed or or Yeah, so that was a that was
one of the advisors that my was I was with
my dad. That was one of the quotes that uh
that during our conversation that that that he said.

Speaker 2 (40:16):
To me, that is the easiest thing in the world.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
Yeah, dude, Yeah, there's some really interesting stuff. I mean,
you know, talking to these guys who fought in Vietnam.
I mean, some of the things they said, you know,
and all of us in the book, it just kind
of blows your way. You know, today's today's PC world,
it would uh not fly, you know, and you're just like,
whoa smokes can't believe you just said that. So it
was really interesting to talk to them because they were
really really honest, you know, about what they experienced in

(40:43):
the in the war, and really bared their souls to me,
which I was very surprised by. I did not expect that.
And so, you know, all that's in the book. I
tried to you know, obviously, I treated it respectfully and
I did leave a lot of things out that you know,
some of them talked bad about other people and things
like that. I left some of that stuff out just
because there was there's no there was no need for
that but yeah, so really really heartfelt, deep conversations that

(41:05):
I had with them, which I hope really come across
in the books.

Speaker 2 (41:08):
Yeah, and one more chapter i'll call out here is
where was it red white? Was it red white and
blue on blue? Is that what it's called? Red white
and blue? Let me find it here?

Speaker 3 (41:19):
Yeah?

Speaker 2 (41:20):
Sorry, I don't mean to, but it's like red white
and blue on blue, probably talking about you know, friendly fire.

Speaker 3 (41:28):
Yeah, that's not one of mine. I'm not sure.

Speaker 2 (41:31):
Let me see here. I'll find it real quick. I
was just reading Killing People the Battalion. Should I read
all your chapters real quick? Do you want me to
say them? Done? Let me tell you them. Let me
tell you the should I take some quotes? What are
you going to do with your life? That was.

Speaker 3 (41:47):
Talked about that one.

Speaker 2 (41:48):
Get out of this house? He never wanted to worry
me singing when the lights went out?

Speaker 3 (41:56):
Yeah, that was about one of the guys that died
in my dad's neighborhood.

Speaker 2 (42:00):
A little piss at war.

Speaker 3 (42:02):
Yeah, that's my dad said. That was lbj's quote, said,
what about that little piss at war in Vietnam?

Speaker 2 (42:07):
He cried on the way home.

Speaker 3 (42:09):
And that was my grandfather drafting my dad off the Vietnam.

Speaker 2 (42:12):
Oh is that right off the airport? Yeah, I finally
had my war.

Speaker 3 (42:17):
Yeah that was me interac.

Speaker 2 (42:19):
Oh yeah, yeah, you finally did. Oh yeah, no, I
love that, nough, I love this. This is actually super fun.
A breaking point.

Speaker 3 (42:29):
Yeah, that was between sixty nine and seventy when Vietnam
hit that point where he decided in America has to
get out and Viti he's got to take take the lead.

Speaker 2 (42:36):
So the year my dad went in as a Navy
as seventeen was in sixty eight. Sixty Oh yeah, same time.
Ye never knew his dad was coming out at sixty nine,
but my dad never knew his dad. My dad was adopted, Okay, yeah,
his dad was. His dad was ending the National Guard
Service as my dad was enlisting as a Navy radio guy.
And he never knew this. He never. I found this
out doing DNA afterwards and everything genealogy. I'll see here

(43:00):
looks like Vietnam. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (43:02):
That was the pictures I sent home of flying over
a rack to my dad and he was like, it
looks like Vietnam.

Speaker 2 (43:09):
Well he sees what he sees.

Speaker 3 (43:11):
Yeah, because you know, my daddy fought in the area.
So a lot of people and they see Vietnam, they
think of the jungle, and a lot of Vietnam is
actually rice patties. So my dad primarily fought against the
Viet Kong and the rice paddied areas around Saigon, so
different than what most people think. They think of these
dense jungles, which some units DIAD serving, but most of
the most people fought in jungle, the rice paddied areas

(43:32):
around the population areas. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (43:34):
Yeah, there's been some depictions in films I've seen where
that's exactly what it's. The battle is in is in
the rice patties and mortars going off and land mines
strung everywhere throughout the probably still to this day.

Speaker 3 (43:46):
Oh yeah, yeah, there's still uh you know, Vietnam, Cambodia
allows people are still losing limbs to that stuff.

Speaker 2 (43:52):
Oh yeah, it really is. Man, My men are a
strange group. Let me get my dad.

Speaker 3 (44:01):
That's both of us actually, So most of the chapters
are comparing contrast. So it's like my dad talking about,
you know, the bunch of draftees that he has, and
then me and the you know, when I was in
the one hundred first and stuff.

Speaker 2 (44:10):
But that's what I'm like going back and forth here,
like the grenade belonged to him.

Speaker 3 (44:16):
Yeah, that was my dad. He had they were doing
a patrol and they had this captain. He thought he
was a hot shot and he ended up the pin
in his grenadian it getting caught in a bush and
he blew himself up. You know, they still got a
purple heart. Tried to hide it and made it like
it was it was contact with the enemy when it wasn't.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
And maybe I was dreaming that red, white and blue
arm blue. I don't know why I was thinking that.
You know, maybe I was just like, you know, thinking
something outside myself. But you know, I would say that
if anybody wants to know the rest of these chapters,
like chapter nineteen, the killing people is the easiest thing
in the world, or the equal of the VC who
said the equal of the VC who said that?

Speaker 3 (44:55):
Yeah, so that was the the Arvin. So people talking
about my dad talking positively about the Arvin is that
they held their own against the Viet Cong, at least
the guys that he advised for sure.

Speaker 2 (45:06):
And then this one, I'm gonna mention this chapter. Your
dad did some really heroic stuff. Which dad you or him?

Speaker 3 (45:15):
Yeah, my dad. Yeah. So what was interesting, You know,
my dad is a Bronze star with the Valor winner
in Vietnam. And what was interesting is that, you know,
as I was doing the research for my book, I
came across a retired lieutenant general, General Richard Keller, as
he was a Yukon commander at one point I retired,
but he was getting interviewed as part of a Boy
Scout project way back in like twenty twelve. So, and

(45:37):
I actually met him, and he's actually one of my
mentors right now. But so I found this online through
the Library of Congress, and so he made this comment
in twenty twelve, well before I met him. I didn't
meet him til twenty seventeen. Anyway. In the interview, one
of the boy Scouts asking him, you know, from your
long experience in military thirty something years, you know, three
wars under his belt, what is one of the most

(45:59):
things that stand out to you the most. And to
my surprise and shock, what he said, you know, after
all this time the military and all this time, you know,
three different conflicts, what he mentioned was what my dad
did in Vietnam and how he won that bronze Star
would be. And so that was like very shocking to
me to come across that video, you know, me totally
out of the blue. That's the one thing that this
retired lieutenant general remembered of all his years of service

(46:21):
was what my dad did in Vietnam when he was
a major in terge of my dad. So so that's
that's where that that comes from.

Speaker 2 (46:28):
It just stands out. He just remembers that. Yeah, yeah,
that's wild. So he was his commanding officer that Yeah,
he was.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
A team leader for the Urban Advisory Team. He was
a major at that point.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
My dad was a lieutenant So I'd imagine he'd have
to have seen and been involved and you know, witnessed
because a lot of these accreditations or medals that are
given are signed off you know. You know, I think
what you get combat Action badge or Infantry badge if
it's the CIV. Yeah, yeah, you know, if it's been
witnessed or there's like contact, et cetera. So to get
a valor on the bronze stars though, right there are

(46:59):
that's not a cluster, right. That's the difference between a
cluster and a v is for valor.

Speaker 3 (47:03):
Yeah, V is for valor. You know, you can get
to get a bron star, you have to be in
a theater of combat, theater of operations. But the V
is what you know separates it, yeah, from from just
being a you know, high performance in a combat zone
to a act of valor.

Speaker 2 (47:20):
I mean it's only like a congressional medal of honors
above that I think.

Speaker 3 (47:23):
Is the Silver Star and the Middlener after that.

Speaker 2 (47:26):
Yeah, right, so it's it's something that was like, I'm
gonna make sure that you get a device.

Speaker 3 (47:31):
Yeah, and that's what you know. It's in the book too.
It's interesting is that, uh, General Keller at a time,
Major Keller, it took a long time to get my
dad this award and my end so Major Keller is like,
where is this award? So he goes to headquarters and
he goes to the personnel clerk there and he's like,
where's this award? And the guy's like, oh, you know,
and he starts ripping through. He starts ripping through this

(47:52):
guy's desk and he finds a c ib bronze stars
and all these things in that guy's name. And this
guy was like a personnel clerk, you know, E four
never left the base when in any combot operations or anything.
And so he was because he was a personnel clerk,
he was able to put himself in for all these
awards and so on and had them and so general

(48:13):
you know, Richard Keller discovered him and basically told on
this guy and got him in trouble. But what's more
interesting about this this guy he's in the book. I
won't give his name out. He got to go by
the book if he want his name, but yes, yes,
he's Later he ends up at CGSC as a major.
And then one of the other guys my dad served
with on that advisory team in Vietnam ends up at

(48:33):
CGSC and runs into him, and it's like, how the
hell are you a major when you were an E
four personnel clerk with all these fake ribbons and badges. Yeah,
and now you're a major, And so he told on
him and ended up he had this guy. You know,
this was before computers and all this stuff, so he
was able to fake a commission and end up at
CGSC and get away with it. So then he gets
kicked out of the army for this. And so then

(48:54):
several years later this guy turns up on the cover
of Soldier of Fortune magazine as a mercer in Rhodesia,
presenting himself as a three time Vietnam veterans, you know,
special Forces, everyone, arranger, all this other stuff, and he
was all made up.

Speaker 2 (49:09):
I know this, I know this story. I interviewed the
FBI agent that did the sting operation. Yeah, yeah, on
soft rep. He had a bar. This guy had a bar.
Oh there's another person I'm going to say that did
the same exact thing you're talking about. And the only
way it was found out was somebody had to like say,
well the citation and the citation don't match up with

(49:32):
the date of the account. Something was just off, you know,
and it was Otherwise it would have been scott free.

Speaker 3 (49:38):
Yeah, he would have got away with it. Yeah, it's
all bunch of stole I mean, I myself was a
commander caught a guy who stolen beler wearing a fake
tab and a couple of other things and got him kicked.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
Out of the air. Oh that's real stolen valor. That's
not the guy going to the thrift store buying a
jacket and going outside on the street and getting some
food or something. That's not what you're talking about with
intent with ye per premeditated.

Speaker 3 (50:01):
Yeah, that happens, Man, it happens. I would say it's common,
but I mean it happens. You know, everybody has an experience,
I think with that. Anyway, all that stuff's in the book,
and it's oh yeah, you know, all kinds of things
like that that I discovered, you know, in the research
of the book that really makes it I think interesting.

Speaker 2 (50:15):
You know, I think you're really a cool dude, sir dude,
And uh, I.

Speaker 3 (50:21):
Appreciate it, Thank you, Thank You're cool.

Speaker 2 (50:23):
Thank you very much. And you know I've had your
time for just about an hour on this episode, and
and it's just been banter back and forth about you know,
Born from War, and I hope it much success and
just I hope it sells out. And if it hasn't already,
h when when is it out already? Am I saying it? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (50:40):
It came out last week, April fifteenth, out now, and
it's on it's through Casemate Publishers. There are big military history,
military type books most people will.

Speaker 2 (50:51):
Know shout out to Casemates.

Speaker 3 (50:53):
Yeah, all kinds of book, good books, so you know
they're they're probably the biggest in the industry as far
as that John both in the US and the UK,
so its available through them, but also, uh, you know,
any other books on a bookseller. You can think of
Barnes and Noble, Amazon, all types of different booksellers. And
it's also an ebook as well, so you can get
get a that's your thing as well.

Speaker 2 (51:12):
Are you gonna voice it? Are you going to do
an audible for it? You're gonna sit behind?

Speaker 3 (51:15):
I think I think if it does well, I think
that's when they make that that that leap to that
that audible book. But right now it's right now it's.

Speaker 2 (51:22):
Not available as that, right, I mean, but like, are
you going to do the read? Oh?

Speaker 3 (51:26):
Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (51:27):
I don't know. They have to say about that from
your Don't you get to choose that choice, isn't it
like you don't know?

Speaker 3 (51:33):
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, you know, I've been
a little bit, so I don't know how that would
work out.

Speaker 2 (51:37):
Oh, I think you'd be great. I think you'd be great.
I think you'd be fine. You sound great. You know,
it'd be cool to hear it from you, you know.

Speaker 3 (51:43):
Yeah, that's pretty cool.

Speaker 2 (51:45):
Yeah, because it's your account.

Speaker 3 (51:47):
Yeah, yeah, I know, Yeah, I hope it's I hope
people like the book. It's uh, I know, I definitely
poured my heart into it. Took me about three and
a half years, uh to write it from you know,
putting actual keystroke to to word document. Sure, And like
I said, it's a whole. You know, it's got everything.
It's got that larger strategic history piece if you like that.
You know, it's got the human experience if you like that.
It's got the societal piece across society as a whole,

(52:08):
the intergenerational piece between two conflicts. It's got war stories
as well. So if that's your jam and you want
to you want to read some war stories, it's got that.
You know, It's got like everything in it, And so
I hope it appeals, Like I said, to a broader audience.

Speaker 2 (52:18):
You could probably make a series out of every chapter.
You could.

Speaker 3 (52:22):
That's what I tried to do. I tried to make
it in a way I like to read books. Is
I don't like really long chapters.

Speaker 2 (52:27):
Yeah, I like them.

Speaker 3 (52:28):
Shorter chapters that kind of neatly wrap it up so
that when I want to go to sleep, I could
be like, Okay, yeah, I could put a pin in
there go to sleep. Otherwise, like people will leave you
hanging and you're like, oh my god, I gotta keep reading,
and it's like, you know, four in the morning. So
I try to try not to do that as much.

Speaker 2 (52:42):
And if you want to know the rest of the chapters,
I encourage you to go check out Born from War,
A Soldier's Quest to Understand Vietnam, Iraq and the Generational
Impact of Conflict, written by Patrick W. Notton Junior. And
you know, a selfless server to our nation. You've done
a lot of oaths in your life, so thank you

(53:03):
for holding on to those. I feel that from you,
and I encourage everyone out there to find your book,
get the e book, and if you do read his book,
leave a review for his book wherever you bought it.
If you bought it on you know, the Big River website,
then you know, feel free to leave a review right
there so that it can rise up and be picked

(53:25):
up even further.

Speaker 3 (53:26):
So I definitely appreciate that if anybody could do that.

Speaker 2 (53:28):
Yeah, yeah, that's a big deal, and I know that.
And you know, the only other secret I would tell
you is as I look over my shoulders, if you
go to the airport, okay, and you want to see
your book. This is a trick I heard from another
very very very very very renowned author. I won't say
his name, okay, but he said he always takes one
of his books with him and he'll just have him
scan it if he doesn't see one of it already

(53:50):
on the shelf at the airport. And what the UPC
does is says, oh, last one, negative one out of
stock reorder.

Speaker 3 (54:00):
I've never heard of that.

Speaker 2 (54:02):
I just let you know, okay, So if you have
to carry one, you know, I'm not saying just set
it up there, just try to buy it. Say hey,
I'd like to buy this book, and just slide it
there and let them scan it and they might charge
you nineteen ninety nine, twenty one ninety nine. That cool. Thanks,
and just know that you get your book back and
they might have to restock your out of stock book.

Speaker 3 (54:18):
Oh man, I'm gonna try that. I've never heard of that.

Speaker 2 (54:20):
That's a good TV right there, Thanks to good maybe mom.
Actually I know who it was. He's the author. He's
a good dude, so good. You know, I think i'd
like to wind down our time. You're always welcome back
on the show. We can talk anything you want to
talk about, historic history wise, your own service wise, you know,
anything that's you know on your mind. We can talk

(54:42):
more about your book, your new book that you're going
to have coming out. I just want to say you
have a welcome platform here at soft Rep Radio. And
you know, you've been a really cool gem and a
cool lieutenant colonel to have on the show. Sir no.

Speaker 3 (54:54):
I appreciate that so much. And you know, I really
enjoy enjoy Softwrep. I mean, you got your guys, your
guys venues. It's really awesome. You know, I love reading
reading your articles and the podcast, and you know, I'll
put a plug for you guys. Anybody out there who's
you know, kind of overwhelmed by the by the by
the the media escape right now and you're trying to
get to the truth. You know, you're looking at maybe
left wing media, right wing media, and then you're you know,

(55:15):
come go to you guys for any type of national security,
military type stuff. Yeah, that's really kind of a really
good place that I found that you can get really informed.

Speaker 2 (55:23):
Well, so I appreciate that.

Speaker 3 (55:24):
That's off to y'all, and I appreciate you guys having
me on.

Speaker 2 (55:26):
Thanks Patrick, And with that said, on behalf of Brandon Web.
I always got to shot him out right. Go check
out his books as well. Uh, you can find those everywhere.
And to callum my producer, and to April who's on
the back end, and Chris who's out there, and Martin
and we know you're chasing everybody out there to sponsor us,
So thanks so much, bro. And if you are a
sponsor or, you want to advertise on Software where you

(55:48):
want to sponsor the show, reach out to us. We'll
bring you on board if you're if you've got what
it takes, that's what it is. I'm gonna be real,
you know, hit us up, let us know, we'll we'll
vet you. So on behalf of Patrick Junior. My name
is Rad and this is SOFTWAREP Radio saying peace.

Speaker 1 (56:20):
You've been listening to Self Rep Radio.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
H