COMBAT STORIES: Captain Dale Dye

Watch this interview here https://youtu.be/CfZAHMQFdnc

 

Brought to you by the Gettysburg Museum of History Foundation, we happily present to you an episode from a series of shows that we usually keep for our Patreon subscribers only. It's called "COMBAT STORIES". Typically, I interview someone affiliated with the show (Eric "The Producer" or Colby Sumner) or a listener who has experienced combat and leave those episodes on Patreon. I do this because I want to de-romanticize war, as I think too many of us fall prey to the "hurrah-ness" of war movies. That is, we DID, up until Saving Private Ryan came out. Due to the good-nature of Gettysburg Museum of History owner Erik Dorr, I was able to sit down and interview a man who not only experienced combat, but a man who has made sure that film audiences experience it too. He is Captain Dale Dye, Vietnam Vet, founder of Warriors Inc, writer, filmmaker, actor and all-around great guy to talk to. This interview has information that he rarely speaks about in the myriad interviews available online and, for that, I am grateful, and I hope you are too. So sit back and have a chat with the legendary Captain Dale Dye. Support the Gettysburg Museum of History Foundation- www.gettysburgmuseumofhistory.com Help Addressing Gettysburg grow- www.patreon.com/addressinggettysburg for our premium content and more or www.dhpioneers.com to help us fund our videos projects.

 

**This episode begins with our discussions off-mic. The interview itself morphed from our traditional warm-up banter into the interview itself once I realized that our conversation flowed so effortlessly that to stop it in order to officialy begin the show would have killed the momentum. Once I realized we were in it, you will hear my voice come in clearly. - Matt

Episode Transcript

(01:00:00):
That made my month, Eric.
Thank you for everything.
Sure, man.
That was a lot of fun.
You know, and I'm not kidding when I say
you are a great
interviewer and you do your homework.
I appreciate that.
And no notes, by the way, guys.
No notes.
Believe me, I've done 9,000 of these
things and that was a good one.

(01:00:21):
Hey, this is Eric Dorr from the
Gettysburg Museum of History.
This interview is pretty amazing to me
also because we've probably heard, or at
least his fans have heard, a lot of
interviews that has to do with his movie
roles and his contributions to film and

(01:00:42):
the series Band of Brothers and Saving
Private Ryan and Platoon.
But this particular
interview is really amazing.
He talks about his military service and
there's not a whole
lot of that out there.
And I learned several things that I
didn't know about him.
It was absolutely an
incredible interview.

(01:01:04):
But I wanted to let you know that he also
has come on board with the Gettysburg
Museum of History in the
capacity of our board of directors.
So he's going to be assisting us as we
develop the new exhibits
over at the new building.
And we're going to build a world-class,
easy company, Band of Brothers exhibit.

(01:01:25):
And I can't think of anyone better to
direct us in this
endeavor than Captain Dale Dye.
So we give you Captain Dale Dye.

(01:02:14):
I gotta tell you, I admire your gumption
just going out to Hollywood and figuring
out a way to make that work.
Because my friends and I, when Private
Ryan came out, we were,
what year was that, 97?
Yeah, 97, yeah.
We were 19, I think.

(01:02:35):
Yeah, 19.
And we saw, you know, the previous four,
and we were like, "Oh yeah, let's go see
a one more two movie, we're
all about it and everything."
And when we, when it was over, we went to
a diner to get coffee,
and four of us were there.
And two of them were these big jock
types, you know, the real tough guys.

(01:02:55):
Sure.
No one could speak for half an hour
because they were ready to cry.
And I remember that was the first, I
don't know if it was the first movie I
saw with Surround Sound, but it was the
first one I saw that
really made good use of it.
Yeah.
And the sound of a bullet whizzing past
my ear and hitting a piece of metal or

(01:03:19):
dirt or someone's head,
and that cold, just it means business and
it does what it does sound.
Yeah.
I sort of got, I can't watch that movie
but once a year, if that,
because it's so realistic.
You have to credit
Steven Spielberg for that.
He's a huge believer in sound.

(01:03:40):
Yeah.
And I remember when we were through with
the film, we shot the initial sequence in
a beach called CuraClo
in southwest Ireland.
And he called me when we got home, he
said, you know, "Thank you very much for
everything, but I still need you."

(01:04:00):
And I said, "Well, what's up?"
And he said, "We're really
going to juice the sound."
And I said, "That's good news.
Now what?"
Yeah.
And what we did was we went to a range up
in the Bay Area and we
arranged microphones down...
Down range.
Down range.
And then I locked up a machine gun so

(01:04:21):
that the mics would pick up the Doppler
effect up around, calling by, you know,
when you hear it close.
Yes. You know when it's close.
Right.
And then I went out and bought a side of
beef and we hung up a side of beef on the
range and we used a
suppressed MP5 with subsonic ammo.

(01:04:43):
And I fired into that beef and we'd hit
the meat and then we hit the bone and he
got...it was miked in there.
Yeah.
So he got all the sound.
And then we put up some angle iron and I
fired at that and he
got the ricochet effect.
Yeah.
I knew it was going to be
wonderful when he cut it in.
And then obviously it was used again in

(01:05:05):
Band of Brothers and
everybody's copied it since then.
And
it's...I'm
it's...I'm it's...I'm it's...I'm it's...I'm it's...I'm And I took it down to get the sound of

(01:05:35):
Civil War artillery rounds because we
were live firing artillery.
And that was really cool.
But again it was chilling because it just
comes in and it thwaps against whatever
it hits and it doesn't
care what's in the way.
It just goes through whatever.
And you know
it...I've

(01:06:02):
And it always upsets me because I've
fired a lot of flintlock weapons.
And you hear the snap before you hear
they went in on the frisson.
The frisson ignites
and there it goes around.
But you never hear that.
You know the sound guys don't get it.
I think...didn't the Patriot get that?
I don't know.
I can't remember.
I feel like one of them is
the first time I noticed that.

(01:06:23):
Where you hear it.
Snap bang.
But you're right.
Civil War and Revolutionary War.
Well any black powder movies drive me
nuts with the sound.
Master and Commander was good.
Because they did what you guys did.
And they took period
cannon out to a range.
They set up a foe side of a ship.

(01:06:44):
A hull of a ship.
And shot into it.
Get the wood.
I love that.
But I don't know.
I just love that.
To me the visual can be whatever.
But you get that sound right.
And that's what gets me to the core.
It creates...fires the imagination.
And you can see things that aren't really

(01:07:05):
there but the sound is
telling you what to do.
Right.
Right.
Yeah.
No.
It's really good stuff.
It's so innovative and it's...
I just noticed from that
moment on when Ryan came out.
Every war movie tried to be it.
Some came close but not too many.
The brilliant sound thing.

(01:07:26):
And I didn't realize it.
Spielberg told me he was going to do it.
And I got to thinking about it.
And what it is essentially is how when
Tom's character Captain Miller submerges.
Dead silence.
Because he's under war.
And when he reemerges he
whacked with that sound again.
That was brilliant.
It was brilliant.
And it's not only

(01:07:46):
just the sounds back on.
It's like a whoosh as
the water clears your ear.
Oh it's so good.
He's the best.
You can't beat him.
He's fantastic.
Yeah I've enjoyed watching interviews
with you for the last day and a half.
Because I've always...

(01:08:07):
When I...
Again it had to be Ryan.
When I saw like a
behind the scenes thing.
That's the first time I'd heard of you.
And I thought the actor
boot camp was the coolest idea.
And I was like that's
why this movie is so good.
Because these guys went through it.
Sort of.
You know.
They went through
something where they have an idea.
And a good actor can fill in the rest.

(01:08:29):
Right.
But I just...
That's such a brilliant idea
that you went and did that.
Thank God you did that.
I really think because you
de-romanticize war for me.
And I'm so glad of that because...
The guy was asking me the other day.
He said look.
If you died tomorrow

(01:08:49):
what would your legacy be?
What would your...
I said look.
As far as I'm concerned the epitaph that
would be most rewarding to me.
Is simply he changed the way
Hollywood makes war movies.
And if I did that then good on me.
I agree.
Honestly the way I look
at it is unfortunately.

(01:09:10):
Good or bad.
Whatever.
Most people get their
history from movies.
Yeah.
Yeah they do.
Or at least the spark
is lit from a movie.
And a war movie.
I get why they did it
in the 40s and the 50s.
During the cold war and
World War II and all that stuff.
I get why they did the hurrah stuff.

(01:09:33):
And all of that for political purposes or
propaganda purposes.
But I'm glad that hippie
generation got into realism.
Because I think war is one thing that is
just so heartbreaking and horrendous.
And I don't care what anybody tells me.

(01:09:54):
But maybe I care what you
tell me if I'm wrong here.
But my theory is putting
myself in a soldier's shoes.
Is the first time.
Either the first time a
bullet is fired at him in anger.
Or he sees his body die.

(01:10:15):
Or he takes a life.
He dies.
A part of him dies.
He's not that kid who went into basic.
And he'll never be that person again.
That's right.
No matter how well he
does in civilian life.
I mean I remember my grandfather.
He was in World War II.
And he told me that he came home.
The war was over.
And he spent the first

(01:10:36):
seven days locked in his room.
And he would only come down for dinner.
Didn't even shower.
Just stayed locked in his room.
And his sister and mother
were like Jackie come on.
Come out with us.
Everything.
He's just no no no.
And in that I said well
what'd you do for seven days.
And he goes.
I thought what the hell

(01:10:56):
did I just go through.
And he goes because you're not thinking
about it when you're in it.
You just got to.
It's do or die.
You got to do it.
But when I finally was back home.
I didn't feel like I was home.
I didn't feel like I was me.
I didn't feel anything.
And I was just like what the
hell did I just go through.
And then finally by day seven he said.

(01:11:17):
I go well.
Whatever I went through.
I went through it.
It's in the past.
I am 30 years old.
I have a whole life ahead of me.
Let's make it happen.
And he did.
But there's other guys who came back and
they lost themselves in the bottom of a
bottle or whatever the case may be.
And they never were able to.
Yeah it's it's a.
You know in my own case there was about

(01:11:38):
10 years after my war when you and I
wouldn't be talking.
I had no time for any
scum sucking civilian.
I mean I just I was angry.
Yeah.
Because nobody got it.
Nobody but another veteran.
And so I just isolated
myself on base and stayed there.
Yeah. 10 years I went through that.
So you were in Vietnam.

(01:12:00):
How many tours did you have in Vietnam.
Three tours.
One Purple Heart tour.
Per tour.
Right.
But three.
But it was it was no tour.
No 68 was a really bad year.
There were two in that year.
And the last one in in early 70.
So the first one you.
Well how bad were they.

(01:12:21):
Were they bad enough.
You got a Purple Heart.
Yeah.
And you went back.
So here's here's the explanation.
I've thought about this for 50 years.
You know what.
Why in the hell did I keep going back
when I didn't have to.
And when everybody else was scrambling
not to do a repeat performance.
And it occurred to me that the real

(01:12:43):
reason there are two real reasons.
The first one was because in retrospect I
considered myself a pro.
OK.
I'm a professional.
OK.
And you know professionals got to play.
They want to play.
I don't want to be on a bench.
I want to be in the game.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I get it.

(01:13:04):
So so that affected me.
And along with that came
a certain feeling that.
If I went and use my experience maybe I
could keep some people alive who
otherwise wouldn't have been.
So that occurred to me.
And the other thing and here's here's one
that will probably surprise you.

(01:13:25):
I came to realize that.
I liked it.
OK.
I enjoyed it.
All right.
That business of living out on the
razor's edge adrenaline charge razor's
edge made everything
else pale by comparison.
I can imagine that. Yeah. And so it was a matter of trying to beat

(01:13:45):
the odds the decreasing
odds of staying alive.
It was it was it jacked me right up.
I was I was ready to do this.
No I can understand that.
Yeah.
It's like why people go
skydiving or bungee jumping.
It's that risking life.
Except yours was
actually risking your life.
And you know there are moments because I

(01:14:07):
began to think about this.
I mean I'm not prone to a lot of fuzzy
headed navel gazing but but I am
introspective when it comes to the war
experience and I because I have to be.
I'm in the business of communicating with
people what the
combat experience is like.
Right.
And there's a unique.
There's a unique experience I guess.

(01:14:31):
And I call it the come to Jesus moment.
OK.
And I remember when it happened.
What happens is you get
into a close combat situation.
And a lot of times you're just you know
you're firing at shadows in the bush or
you see muzzle flash
and you shoot at that.
And then you get into fights like way

(01:14:53):
what was Ted of 68
where it was close combat.
I mean you were looking in his BDS
eyeballs and you were looking and he was
looking in your right.
And that was the first time I'd ever seen
a guy that I killed that
I shot believe him apart.
And what happened that evening.

(01:15:13):
I was laying on in some rubble building
and looking up at the moon.
And I said oh my God I
think I have just doomed myself.
I think my soul is gone.
And I was brought up you know as a
Christian kid and went to
church and all that sort of thing.

(01:15:35):
You know the big big commandment is thou
shalt not kill and I just did.
Yeah.
And I saw the result of it.
No question that I blew that guy away.
And you sit there and say oh Jesus.
I'm not going to deal with this.
You know you really
reach a crisis of conscience.
Yeah.
And it took me I didn't say much about it

(01:15:58):
because it sort of embarrassed me.
But as I went along and talked to more
people and became really intimate friends
with people they would tell me this.
Yeah I had the same thing.
I get it.
Yeah.
And that experience is something that
I've often tried to get on film and I'm
not I've failed so far because it's so

(01:16:19):
it's so internal it's so visceral that
it's very hard to take a picture of it.
You know you'd have to show the guy
breaking down or something.
Yeah.
Yeah you can't.
Because when you do the breakdowns the
combat fatigue sequence everybody says
well of course you know he's been through
a lot of dangerous things and he's very

(01:16:41):
tired and he's
exhausted so he falls over.
In many cases it's because he's suffering
that crisis of conscience.
Yeah.
And and that's something that is kind of
unique to the combat experience.
The only other people I've talked to who
who sort of had to deal with it were
police officers law enforcement.

(01:17:02):
Sure. Yeah.
They've shot somebody in a line of duty
and the guy died and there you are
sitting and you know looking at your
handiwork if you will.
Right.
And so I've talked to policemen who tell
me they've they've had
that come to Jesus experience.
I actually once in a while I'll go down a
rabbit hole on YouTube and
I'll watch cop body cam videos.

(01:17:25):
And I have seen a number of them where
they have had to shoot somebody and they
immediately break down and start crying
and their buddies have to try to buck
them up and make sure they're okay.
But what I always found to be the
strangest is that you know law
enforcement is different the military.
Yeah.
But when they when they shoot somebody
the first thing they
have to do is render eight.
Yeah.
Which.
Yeah.

(01:17:45):
And it's funny that's the difference
really between the combat experience and
the law enforcement experience.
That's usually a one time shootout.
It's one guy against another guy down he
goes and now you have
time to deal with it.
You know to render aid or to or to break
down and all that sort of thing.
In combat you can't do that.
No. No.

(01:18:05):
You can't stop.
You've got to keep going.
His buddies will shoot you.
And I've talked to guys who tell me that
they had to come to Jesus moment but it
was weeks later when you know their mind
got around to review it.
Right.
Right.
So there there's a little
bit of difference there.
So when you when you have that moment
where you've taken your first life that
you know you've taken.
Yeah.

(01:18:26):
Is is at some point the thought.
Well there's no turning back now.
I might as well keep going.
But you know what I'm
saying when I said yeah I do.
And I guess there is some of that.
Because you're concerned
with survival beyond this.
You know this is one thing
and you've got to deal with it.
Right. But you have to push on.

(01:18:47):
You have to get on.
And I think your training takes over if
you're well trained.
What happens is okay.
I've done this.
I'm either doomed or I'm not.
But I can't stop and contemplate it.
I've got to get on and
that really saves you.
Yeah.
So let's go.
Let's go back to the beginning.
Not the very beginning but the beginning

(01:19:07):
of your military career.
I think what were you
19 when you went in.
Yeah.
No I was 18.
18. Yeah. Okay.
So many you were able to you signed up.
Yeah.
Originally I had I
went to a military school.
I was a military academy in Mexico
Missouri and I was I was bound to
determine to make my military career.
Even at a very young age.

(01:19:29):
I thought that's what I want to do.
But I chased too many girls and you know
played too much sports.
And yeah. So when I came to take the I want to go
to the Naval Academy at Annapolis.
And when it came to taking the exams I
went swirling toward the toilet.
I mean I was couldn't handle the

(01:19:49):
engineering and the
math and all that stuff.
Yeah.
So I took these gammon
failed it not only once but twice.
And I had that you know oh my God what am
I there's no money for college.
You couldn't get loans or
scholarships like you can now.
And so what am I going to do.
You know what's
what's my life to be here.

(01:20:11):
Am I going to be a farmer.
Am I going to you know am I going to work
in the AP green fire brick
plant for the rest of my life.
Most of my buddies did.
Right.
And I said it just isn't right.
I can't accept this.
And one winter evening right right either
before right after Christmas in 1963.

(01:20:32):
I was crying the poor ass sitting on a
curb in Cape Girardeau Missouri.
And I happened to be at the time right
outside of the post office.
You know just it was sleeting and raining
and I was wet and I was cold and I was
miserable and I said you
know my life is over at 18.

(01:20:54):
Yeah.
And I looked around and here was this A
sign right outside the post office and it
had this picture of this lantern jawed
rugged looking marine
and dress blue uniform.
And it just said one
word right over the top.
It said ready.
And I said you know by God I think I am.

(01:21:15):
And the next day I enlisted.
So when you're at that but before you're
at that point as you're growing up you're
watching John Wayne movies you're
watching all types of
war movies are sure right.
And it's and it just draws you in.
What was it about those.
And I know this is this is kind of like I
said this is in a lot of your interviews

(01:21:36):
but I want to at least establish this.
So what is it about
those movies that got you.
And then tell me about
what happened once you got in.
Look I think I think what happened as I
recall it and it's you know at my age I'm
80 now it's hard to
remember those things.

(01:21:58):
As I recall it my father
used to be a liquor salesman.
My most to any other store.
Best job he could never keep.
And because he drank most of
what he was supposed to sell.
But he would take me around to the bars
with him when he was
making his deliveries.
And I would sit and
listen to these old veterans.

(01:22:20):
Guys who'd been on Iwo Jima and who'd
been at Normandy and and I just you know.
In all of them I would sit and look and
listen to those stories and I think
that's what lit the spark.
I suddenly began to I had this vivid
imagination as a kid and I still do.
And what happened was I began to see

(01:22:40):
myself in that flag waving scene you know
from Mount Suribachi and Iwo Jima.
And then I began to consume John Wayne in
the movies and all that sort of thing.
So what's your favorite John Wayne movie.
Favorite favorite John Wayne movie.
Well I really like
Stagecoach one of his first one.

(01:23:02):
And a number of them I
hate the Green Berets.
Yeah I didn't like that.
It's a horrible piece of work.
A little bovine excrement there.
Was it was the sands of Iwo Jima one of
the movies that got you wanting to do it.
Sorry it's a striker.
Yeah I mean anybody who's ever worn the
marine uniform knows
that movie inside and out.

(01:23:23):
Right.
Right.
Right.
And it's very easy once you think of
yourself as either wanting
to be a marine or being one.
Very easy to put yourself in
the sergeant striker position.
Yeah.
And I did.
I certainly did.
OK so I derailed you there.
I'm sorry.
So you were saying you were before the

(01:23:43):
movies and you were listening to these
veterans talking and you were and you saw
yourself in the Iwo Jima.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And I think there was just a spark in me
and it fired my imagination.
You know the flint hit the fritzing pan
and suddenly I saw myself in all these
situations and I wanted to be that guy.

(01:24:03):
Or I wanted part of that.
What was it about that though.
I guess it seemed to
me that it was purpose.
OK.
Working in a fire brick plant or you know
change the truck tires down at the local.
There never seemed to
be any purpose to that.
Sure.
Everybody else thought it was great.

(01:24:24):
You know I'll get married and have a
couple of kids and I'll work a couple of
shifts at the fire
brick plant and I'm good.
Not me.
There was something on the other side of
that hill and I wanted to
see what the hell it was.
Yeah.
And it was insatiable.
It was a drive. I just knew that I could not sit there in
Southeast Missouri and be happy unless I

(01:24:44):
had seen everything there was to see.
And so I embarked on it and I told myself
look some way I'm going to
see what this is all about.
I'm going to see what the throbbing heart
of this experience is
not just superficially.
I want to know what it means viscerally.
Get down in the gut.
And that's what I pursued.

(01:25:05):
You're like an artist.
I guess.
Yeah.
I mean.
Interesting analogy but.
Well no because you want an artist wants
to know everything about life.
Yeah.
Right.
They want to know
what makes people people.
You know if I'm writing a
novel I need to understand people.
Yeah.
Right.
Otherwise all my characters the same.
So you're you are kind of like an artist.

(01:25:30):
You just you just chose to experience
these things and
later turned it into art.
I mean you you are an artist.
You know you might not
think of yourself that way.
You know that's a compliment.
Thank you.
You're welcome.
I think I've always had
this vivid imagination.
You know I think I hit 12

(01:25:51):
years old and stop drawing.
It was just it.
And my imagination would take me places.
And like an artist day.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I mean I write books I make movies and
all of that is painting a picture and I'm
somewhere in that picture.
And that's I almost

(01:26:11):
can't do without that.
Yeah.
I mean it just is a drive in my life.
Yeah. OK.
So when you get in what was the first
moment where you realized John Wayne's
movies are bullshit.
What was the first thing

(01:26:32):
that kind of said to you.
Oh man this is completely different. Well look I think anybody will tell you
the boot camp experience of the Marine
Corps is an eye opener.
Yeah.
And especially in those days because it
was brutally physical.
Yeah.
They're not allowed to do that stuff
today but they were then.
And you you begin to.

(01:26:53):
It's a challenge to that that that
insatiable artistic urge that you have.
Say wait a minute.
Is this is it worth this.
Can I do without it. And it's not worth it. Can I do without it.
And the answer is you can't.
But I didn't have it bad in boot camp
because of my military school experiences
I knew the drill and
all that sort of thing.
So I very quickly became you know a

(01:27:13):
leader a private
leader in one of the things.
So it wasn't it wasn't a
horrible experience for me.
And initially I was assigned as an 81
millimeter Morterman.
Frankly oddly enough
because I understood geometry.
Okay.
And trigonometry and that's essentially

(01:27:33):
the fire control solution for mortars or
indirect fire weapon.
You mean you inherently understood it or
you did well at any school.
The trig and geometry told me the
solution and I could see it.
Okay.
Yeah. And so everybody said oh this kid this kid's going to be a Morterman. And I did that for a couple of years.
But once again it

(01:27:55):
wasn't scratching my urge.
Once I knew how to fire a mortar and how
to solve the gunnery solution and for indirect fire and all that sort of thing said okay now what.
Now what. Yeah. And so I ended up through a buddy of mine. I found out that the Marine Corps had a

(01:28:15):
thing called combat correspondent.
And if you had a journalism background or
if you were creative or you could write a
little you know hometown newspaper story and do it well do it in an interesting fashion.
There was a lot of work to do. And I think that's a very interesting thing. I think it's a very interesting thing. I think it's a very interesting thing. I think it's a very interesting thing. Kinda real torture story.
There is death, and but it's MAT apes a pain in the entropy.
I read that I was inwan he said, do what you wanted to do. Find more about your story and do it
well, do it in a Trop cu fishing fashion
your say you could literally write ui te
your own ticket, work whatever the hell

(01:28:36):
you wanted to do as long as you can
produce the story there was favorable to
the Marine Corps and celebrate the kid
and that sort of thing.
after it.
And it worked out that way.
I mean, they literally, they said, okay,
I took a typing test and I had to rewrite
a lead sentence a few times.

(01:28:58):
And I said, well, this kid's good.
And I had some high
school journalism experience.
Okay.
So, they changed my MOS, my military
occupational specialty, and I became a
combat correspondent.
At that point, though, I discovered that
in the Marine Corps, and these double
handful of these guys
throughout the Marine Corps.

(01:29:19):
And I found out very quickly that when
you talk about a Marine Corps combat
correspondent, the emphasis
is on the first word, combat.
So very shortly thereafter, I found my
ass in Southeast Asia, and here we are.
Okay.
But it was great because I got to run
with the grunts, and they used to call me
Jar, or just another rifle.

(01:29:40):
And that's essentially what I was.
But it was, that's where
I began to really observe.
And what I discovered was that I had an
insight, I had a catbird seat to observe
the absolute best in human nature and the
absolute worst in human nature, right on

(01:30:02):
a firing line, in extremis.
And I think that finally did it for me.
That said, you know, this is so unique.
This experience is so unique.
And I didn't think about the thousands of
other veterans from
World War II or Korea.
I said, no, this is unique.
And so I pursued it.
And it always came to me that somehow I

(01:30:26):
had to find a way to paint that picture
and let other people who hadn't had that
experience know about it.
Yeah.
What a good, bad, and
indifferent, let them know about it.
And that kind of is, you know, the candle
that I kept burning for 20 years.
You said the best and the worst of
humanity that you witnessed, right?

(01:30:48):
And we, that's one of the common themes
in our show that we try to remind people
of is that, you know, in war, in the
middle of a battle here out in
Gettysburg, there's stories of, you know,
guys just opening each other's skull with
the butt of a musket and another of
enemies giving each other kindness by
crawling out into the middle of no man's

(01:31:08):
land to give water to a guy crying for
his mother and everything in between.
And it is, it's, would you agree that
it's the war is humanity,
human nature in its most extreme?
Well, sure it is.
I mean, look, war is hell
and it always will be that way.
And there it is.

(01:31:30):
But I think it's important that people
understand it, if not
from personal experience,
understand it viscerally.
And by painting pictures
of that, we can do that.
One of the reasons that I'm so happy and
proud to be invited to be an advisor to
the board of directors
at the Gettysburg Museum of History is

(01:31:52):
simply because they
have that similar mission.
They want to keep history alive,
introduce it to people in a very visceral
manner, because those artifacts and
things that you see here at the museum,
boy, that's a reminder.
And they're very unique too.
They are unique.
And in some ways, there are things you

(01:32:14):
would never see any place else.
Absolutely not.
And I find that that's educational.
I agree.
And by that, I mean, not so much that it
gives you an introduction to
history, the history of warfare.
It certainly does that.
But I think it's also a reminder.

(01:32:36):
And this is one of the things that
attracts me so much.
It's a reminder of
what war is really about.
Here at the Museum of
History, we don't have flags.
We have flags with bullet holes and
bloodstains on them.
And that sort of thing.

(01:32:56):
You see a youngster.
I've seen youngsters down in the museum
walk in here and look
around and see that.
Is that blood?
Yeah, that's blood.
And there's a reason that that's blood.
So that's an invaluable asset and an
invaluable mission, I think.
It absolutely is.

(01:33:18):
And the Gettysburg Museum of History to
me is, first of all, it's a very unique
place, like we've said.
But it's a place that I wish more museums
would take a cue from.
But at the same time,
I'm glad they don't.
Because then if you go and see a museum

(01:33:40):
like this everywhere else,
it loses its specialness.
But you come here and you see a museum.
And you're in Gettysburg.
And it's not just Civil War artifacts.
It's from all over.
And it's amazing all the stuff that he
squeezes into that small space.
Yeah, it is.
And I'm urging Eric
Dordham to spread it out.
And I think he's got plans.
Yeah, he does.
He does.

(01:34:00):
But it's overwhelming.
It's so much.
It is.
It is.
So when you, going back to Vietnam, and
you're a journalist, but at some point,
you get into just full combat, right?
You're not a journalist, or are you a
journalist throughout Vietnam?
Well, yes and no.

(01:34:22):
So the thing is, the thing about being a
Marine Corps combat correspondent, as I
said, the emphasis is on the word combat.
And when you get an extremist, you're not
sitting back there
taking notes and pictures.
You're shooting back and getting with it.
And you have to do that so that the
people with whom you're traveling, the

(01:34:42):
people that you really want to talk to
and you really hope will open up to you
about their personal experience,
if you don't do that, if you don't pull
your own weight, if you're just a maggot
that's hanging onto the corpse, they'll
have nothing to do with you.
And we knew that very quickly.
Yeah. So you had to pull your weight.

(01:35:05):
And often, the job was secondary.
Well, I need to take some notes here.
Well, piss on that.
First of all, I got to deal with this
machine gun up here.
Right, right.
So it was always a balancing act.
And sometimes, I would come back from a

(01:35:26):
bad combat operation
and that sort of thing.
And I would say, you know, I don't even
know what the hell happened.
Yeah.
I got to make something up
here because I got nothing.
Well, so that's okay.
So that's something there.
You know, you get in
a car accident, right?
Everything's in slow motion
when you remember it, right?
Or if you can remember it at all.

(01:35:47):
And I hear that a lot when I hear or read
or hear accounts of combat where it's as
if everything happened
in slow motion, right?
But you're not in slow motion, obviously.
What do you think that is?
I don't know.
It's a form of tunnel vision, I think.

(01:36:07):
Okay.
Your focus becomes so tight on what's
happening around you.
Your focus is lost on
what's happening around you.
Your focus is on what's happening
directly in front of you.
Sure.
And I think that tends to make it seem as
though the action was slowing down.
It's not.

(01:36:28):
It's hot and heavy and
furious and going on around.
They're flying in both directions and
tracers are arcing through the sky.
And that's happening all across the
firing line, if you will.
But not to me.
Right.
To me, it's happening.
This guy and me right
here are trading shots.
And I think that tends to be a slow
motion effect with you.

(01:36:50):
One of the most brilliant things that we
saw in Saving Private Ryan, for instance,
was the 90 degree shutter angle that the
director of photography was using.
So you could see the
shrapnel fly and that sort of thing.
Whereas if it was a 45
angle, you'd just miss all that.
A blur.
All going.
Yeah.

(01:37:10):
And Spielberg did that very deliberately.
He wanted that, you know, to slow it down
without slowing the frame rate.
Yeah.
And he did.
It was brilliant.
And he took the coating
off the lenses, too, I think.
Yeah.
I did.
So when you...
Okay, so tell me, if you
will, about your first wound.

(01:37:34):
Okay.
The first one was
I was firing...
It was in way.
I was firing cover for a squad that was
trying to cross an intersection in the
city of Hue, south
side of the city of Hue.
And I don't know, actually
it was on the north side.

(01:37:55):
And because I'm left handed, I was able
to kind of peek around the corner without
exposing myself too much and engage this
weapon that was firing at the guys who
were trying to cross the street.
So I was in a cover position.
Oh. And unfortunately, I was so focused on
suppressing the fire that was coming in,
I didn't look off to my left.

(01:38:16):
And off to my left, about
two stories up, was a sniper.
And he fired at my head, but he hit the
receiver of my M16, and
it literally exploded.
I got...
The weapon just exploded.
It almost tore my thumb off because my
thumb was around the pistol grip.

(01:38:37):
That exploded.
Pieces of plastic were everywhere.
And I has one sliver of plastic that went
up under my chin, and it pinned my tongue
to the roof of my mouth.
And so I'm bleeding all over the place.
You know, the head
wounds just bleed terribly.

(01:38:59):
And I staggered back toward the rear, and
I was looking for a corpsman.
You know, somebody had helped
me, and I finally found one.
He was in a casualty collection point,
and he looked at me, and it was covered
in blood, and he threw me down, and he
said, "Where you hit?
Where you hit?"
And he said, "What's the matter?"
He couldn't talk.

(01:39:19):
He finally said, "Oh, I see."
And he spotted the piece of plastic under
my chin, and the bastard reached up and
put his boot on my chest and just jerked
that piece of plastic out of...
I exploded all over him.
Oh, God.
And interestingly, one of the things that
I will always remember about that
incident was this corpsman, Doc Fred

(01:39:43):
Geiss was his name, looked at me, and he
looked around at the casualties, and
literally just 20, 30 guys
full of holes just laying around.
And he said, "Damn, you know, trying to
get through this waste city without
getting hit is like trying to run between
the damn raindrops and not get wet."

(01:40:06):
And I said, "Whoa, quote that."
And so the title of my first book
is about Vietnam, and it's called "Run
Between the Raindrops."
Perfect title.
Yeah.
That's where that came from.
So you received that when they take you
back, patch you up
and everything you get?
Do you get your Purple Heart right away,
or does it come later on?
It's paperwork and it has to flow through

(01:40:28):
the system, and eventually they show up
and hang it on you, and you send it home
to mom or something.
Right, right.
Yeah.
Which, of course, isn't
going to worry her, right?
You got a Purple Heart.
So you receive it.
Now, do you have an option after you're
hit to be done, or do they...
It depends.

(01:40:49):
If you're badly hit, I mean, to the point
you're not going to recover in a month or
two, yeah, they're going to send you.
You're gone.
Sure.
They don't want you.
And in the days of, say, 67 to 68, if you
were hit three times,
that was it for you.
You beat your odds.
Okay.
So out you go.
Okay.
So there's three purples and a plane

(01:41:10):
ticket, essentially what it was.
But I wasn't going to have any part of
that, and I was willing to do a lot more
than that, but I
didn't say a thing about it.
So you go back.
So this wasn't your worst wound?
No.
I was hit in the belly and once again in
the head that were worse than that one.

(01:41:30):
Really?
Yeah.
So, I mean, do you mind
talking more about them?
I don't like to get all gory, but I'll
tell you about the torso wound.
And I went to Vietnam with one navel and
one asshole and came
home with three and two.
So you do the math.

(01:41:53):
Okay.
Gotcha.
We'll leave the wounds alone now.
Thank you for that.
Okay.
So you get the three purple hearts and
then they send you
home, is what you're saying?
Well, and I was going to fight it anyway,
but I had been hospitalized and and they
want him to keep me back in the States

(01:42:14):
and that sort of thing.
And I said, no, I'm no,
I'm not having any of it.
And one of the things that convinced me
that I needed to go back.
They sent me while I was essentially on
recovery in the hospital, they sent me on
a, what's called a casualty call.

(01:42:36):
And I went and assisted an officer who
was going to notify a family.
And the family was in Georgia, that their
son had been killed.
And we did that.
And God, it was the hardest thing I'd
ever, oh, Jesus, just,
and a mother just went

(01:42:57):
nuts, poor lady.
And the dad was trying to be stoic and
the little brothers
and sisters were weeping.
And I said, I can't do this.
I just can't.
I would rather it be me.
And that's what made my decision.
I'm going.
That's gotta be the
toughest job being that guy.
Yeah.

(01:43:18):
Casualty assistance contact officer.
Now the scene of Private Ryan, when the
telegram comes to the mother, is it in
any way inspired by that?
Well, I didn't write it.
Well, I wish I had.
I mean,
both Bob Rodat and Steven Spielberg, I
had told that story too.
So I think there was something in that.
Yeah.

(01:43:39):
And they did it very well.
They didn't dwell.
When the car drives up and the mother's
looking out the window, she knows.
Yeah.
And you don't need to go any further than
that, cut onto the next scene and you
know what's going to happen.
Now, if that doesn't choke you up, I
don't know what does now.
And then so, okay.

(01:44:01):
You stay in the
Marines for 20 years total?
20 years. 20 years.
You're in Beirut.
Yeah.
So what's going on there?
God, I wish we knew.
I mean, it was, we were put in an
absolutely impossible situation.
And those of us who'd been in

(01:44:21):
combat, and this was 1982, 83.
So there were still a lot of us more
senior guys who had been in
Vietnam and been in combat.
I don't know.
We could see it coming.
We could see it walking down the road
that we were going to get nailed.
And the problem was we had this
impossible mission called presence.
Be a presence so that the

(01:44:42):
bad guys will not raise health.
Well, look, we didn't even
know who the bad guys were.
Right.
We would hear the Marabi tune is out
there raising, what's a Marabi tune?
Who the hell are they?
Yeah.
Sounds like something out of, you know,
Walt Disney cartoon.
Yeah, right.
So we were really badly advised in terms
of the threat because we weren't allowed

(01:45:05):
diplomatically to talk to the Israelis or
talk to the Lebanese and who had this
intelligence that we could have used.
Yeah.
And then we had this, the business, there
was a diplomatic fear about increasing
the US footprint that would make it look
as though we were taking sides in an

(01:45:26):
international conflict.
And the Brits were under the same
problem, and the French were under the
same problem, and the
Italians were under the same problem.
And we couldn't even talk to each other
and share that sort of information.
So why be there?
Well, just because some people are jerks,
you know, they just don't get it.
Yeah.

(01:45:46):
And you can't rob a combat situation or a
potential combat situation
by striped trouser diplomats.
No.
You just can't do that.
No, you're right.
Yeah.
They don't get it.
And so essentially, we were forced to
disregard all the basic infantry stuff,
like being on the high ground instead on

(01:46:06):
the low ground around the airport, about
controlling access to your own perimeter,
about patrolling
outside your own perimeter.
We weren't allowed to do that.
And, you know, we sold salts.
We'd get together and look at this as,
boy, this is about to turn into a shit
sandwich right quick.
And here it comes.

(01:46:27):
And in October of 1983, it came, killed
241 of us, one
gas-enhanced truck bomb, essentially.
And were you right there?
No.
No.
No, I had gone.
I rotated through a couple of marine
amphibious units, and I stayed there
because I thought that
was where I should be.
But about May, they
decided, no, you need to go home.

(01:46:49):
And so I was there from
September of 82 through May of 83.
I meant to ask this
before, so I want to go back.
You know, now, so you're
of my parents' generation,
and the stories that I heard about how
the soldiers were treated
when they came back from Vietnam.

(01:47:11):
And even while they were over there, how
people back here were working against
them, in my estimation, even though they
were saying they were working for them,
it doesn't help when you're in country
and people are undermining your mission.
Did you get any of
that when you came home?
Yeah, I did.

(01:47:31):
And look, the old wives tale about being
spit on and all that sort
of thing, I didn't get that.
But I certainly got protests, and I
certainly got people who didn't want to
have anything to do with me because I
wore a uniform and all that.
That's what I meant.
Ten years that went on.
It upset me and angered me.
And I encountered these people and said,

(01:47:55):
"Well, you're full of crap, and I'm going
to knock that," because I'd had done
that, and I've killed somebody.
And you don't want that.
That's bad for your career.
And so I just isolated myself.
And I think over the years, one of the
things I've learned is that bad juju,

(01:48:16):
that horrible feeling in your gut,
you've got to find a way to get that out.
You have to sort of talk
about it in some fashion,
in some way.
If you write about it, if you make motion
pictures about it, if you make TV shows
about it, you write books, you've got to
exorcise those demons.

(01:48:37):
And if you don't, what happens is they
sit in there and they poison your system,
and you become a crotchety old bastard
nobody wants to talk about.
And there were a lot of
those, a lot of those guys.
And I think what happened over the years,
America recognized that they had confused
the war with the warrior.
And there was a knee jerk sort of

(01:48:59):
swinging the other direction.
And I think that was a good
thing, but it was too late.
And a lot of us had learned to ignore it.
We'd learned to live with it.
It became like a scam.
You mean the swing back?
No, no.
The misery of the anti-Vietnam situation.

(01:49:21):
We either crawled into the closet and
said we were never in
Vietnam, even though we were.
Did you do that?
No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
That would be beyond me.
I couldn't do that, but some did.
And I think the problem there is that it
took a while to get out of that closet,
sometimes years, a decade, until people

(01:49:44):
would say, okay, you guys pissed me off
and you hurt me, but
I'm going to forgive it.
I'm going to forget about it.
I'm going to go on with my life, or I'm
going to sort of just
say, okay, that's you.
This is me.
Here we go.
And if there's a good thing that came of

(01:50:05):
that, it's that my generation of veterans
who fought in Southeast Asia suddenly
became big advocates for the kids who
went to Iraq and Saudi
Arabia and all that sort of thing.
We were the ones who were there sending
them off with sage advice and celebrating
their service and meeting the airplanes

(01:50:26):
when they came in and welcome home and
all that sort of thing.
And that's probably the
best thing that came out of it.
We took our lumps.
We got the snot beat out of us
psychologically, viscerally.
But we said, it'll never happen again.

(01:50:46):
We're not letting this next generation of
kids go to an interminable war in the
Middle East and have that happen to them
when they come home.
So we stepped up, I think, in my
generation of veterans, if we did
anything right, and there's some who say
we didn't do anything right, but if we
did anything right, it was probably that.
You had empathy for them.

(01:51:09):
So now this is, when you get now to the
80s, when you get into Hollywood,
is the attitude towards
Vietnam veterans still negative?
Because Hollywood's pretty liberal.
So yeah.
It just permeated.
And look, I knew that the truth of the

(01:51:30):
matter was so much more
interesting than the bullshit.
I was seeing it from the
screenwriting, sort of thing.
The problem is when you're, I guess it's
not a problem, it's a solution, but when
you're ignorant, you can do a lot of
things people tell you you can't do.
And that was certainly my case.

(01:51:51):
I'd seen every war movie there was, and
the common denominator
was, they pissed me off.
So I said, I'm going to fix this.
I'll go out to Hollywood and I'll find
the guys who make these movies and I'll
just unscrew their head.
Things aren't done that way.
And so I really found myself in a

(01:52:11):
Sisyphean mission, trying to push a rock
uphill all the time.
And I just wasn't getting any traction.
But I was learning some things, how
movies are made and
all that sort of thing.
But what gave you the, I mean, okay, I
understand being pissed that Hollywood's
not getting it right.
A lot of Americans are pissed that
Hollywood doesn't get war movies, right?

(01:52:31):
Especially if you're a
history buff or a veteran.
But what is it that makes you, where were
you living before you moved to Hollywood?
Well, all over the place, really.
I was in Louisiana and in Texas and...
But like the last place
before you went to California.
I think it was Houston, Texas.
So you're in Houston, Texas and you're

(01:52:52):
sitting there and you go,
"Ah, you know what?
I think I'm going to go to Hollywood and
I'm going to tell them
that they need me to advise."
A little more to the story than that.
Okay.
Yeah.
But what was the story?
Look, and I've said this
before, but it's really true.
I was sitting in a Motel 6 in Houston,
Texas, out of a job, out of prospects,

(01:53:16):
disgruntled, pissed off, didn't know
really what I was going to
do with the rest of my life.
So I said, "All right, I
got to figure this out.
I'm capable of thinking I
need to figure this out."
So I went down to a 7-Eleven, Circle K it
may have been in those days, and I bought
a yellow legal tablet and a box of

(01:53:40):
crayons and a case of beer.
Of course.
And I went back to the Motel and I said,
"Now I'm going to sit here until I figure
out what my assets and what my
liabilities are and what I'm going to do
with the rest of my life."
So I broke out a crayon and I drew a line
down the center of that yellow legal pad

(01:54:01):
and I wrote assets on one side and
liabilities on the other side.
And then I started drinking beer.
And by about dawn, the beer was gone and
I looked over my notes and I had
something like 15 pages of liabilities
and about three lines of assets.
Sounds like me.
Yeah.

(01:54:21):
And the upshot was that this business
always being a movie fan of seeing every
military movie there
was, was kind of an asset.
And I said, "Wait a minute, if I get
involved in that business, I'll just go
out there and I'll change everything and
I'll have a great time and go give me a
bunch of money and I'll
just be famous and wonderful."

(01:54:43):
As I said, it didn't work quite that way.
I would go on to movie lots and find the
first guy carrying a briefcase and
wearing a tie and a costume.
"Come here, you're a producer, you make
war movies where you're screwed up and
here's how I'm going to unscrew you."
Because everybody loves that.
That's the best approach.
Jesus.
And so they'd arrest me

(01:55:05):
and throw me off the lot.
Right.
But I had learned to read the trade
papers, Daily Variety and Drama Log and
all that sort of thing.
And I saw this little blurb in, I think
it was Army Archer's column in Daily
Variety, that said a relatively
heretofore, relatively unknown

(01:55:25):
writer-director by the name of Oliver
Stone is going to do this war movie based
on his own experience as a combat
infantryman in Vietnam.
And I said, "Yes, if anybody's going to
know what I'm trying to
do here, it'll be Stone."
So through a series of machinations I
can't really tell you about because the

(01:55:45):
statute of limitations
may not have run out yet.
I was able to get a couple of minutes
with Stone and I did my
best three-minute pitch.
I said, "Here's what's
wrong with war movies.
Here's why it's wrong.
You know this.
I know this.
And here's how we fix it."
And that was really the genesis of

(01:56:08):
the business of immersive training prior
to any footage being shot at all.
So you didn't have a program yet.
This is where you developed the program?
I mean, except for being a Marine.
It was in the back of my mind.
I knew that if I used the way we train
Marines to train actors with certain

(01:56:29):
limitations, that they
couldn't miss the message.
And so I began to develop that and expand
it and come up with how
I was going to do this.
And one of the things that I did, which
is kind of unique to the Captain Dye
method, is I would, once a

(01:56:50):
day, and a day was 24 hours.
We worked all night, night
ambushes, all that sort of thing.
I would do a thing called stand down.
Usually just before or
just after evening, chow.
And I ate twice a day if they
didn't piss me off that day.
If they'd piss me
off, they only ate once.

(01:57:11):
And the stand down was their one
opportunity in every day to ask me any
question they'd always wondered about.
And I said, "I don't
care how deep you get.
I don't care how psychological you get.
I don't care what kind of
babble you want to come up with.
If you've got that question, you need an
answer, and I will try
to provide that answer."

(01:57:32):
And that turned out to be the magic.
And the weirdest damn things, they'd
think about what they were going to do in
the movie, and it was the only time
during the day they were allowed to do
that, and then say, "You know, he's going
to inject me with morphine.
How's that done?
What's a morphine-serret look like?
What does it feel like?"

(01:57:54):
And actors are like little dry sponges.
If you give them that information, pour
that water on it, the sponge
expands and becomes useful.
And that really was, I think, was the
magic of the whole thing.
I've heard in some of the interviews,
actually probably all of the interviews
I've watched with you, you said something

(01:58:15):
like you want to get into the actors, you
want them to get into the heart, mind,
and guts of a soldier.
And I love that term.
People usually say heart, mind, and soul,
but you said guts, which is pretty good.
Because it's that kind of internal

(01:58:36):
visceral experience that I'm trying to
get them to understand.
Look, you can sit and
lecture them all day.
You can have dog and pony shows that tell
them how to handle a weapon, how to wear
their equipment, and that sort of thing.
And where does the mud go?
That's all superficial.
I wanted to get in their guts.

(01:58:59):
I wanted them to understand that diary,
churning, gut feeling that when the
defecation hits the oscillation around
you and you're focused here.
I wanted them to have
some inkling of that.
And I would often say, I'd pull them
aside one on one and I'd say, "Listen,

(01:59:20):
what's the most dangerous
thing you've ever done?"
Well, I fell out of a
tree one time and...
Okay, look, do you remember how terrified
you were on the way down?
Yeah, I cried.
I said, "Yeah, that's it."
And so you teach them that kind of lesson
because to be a leader in the military,
you really have to be a part-time shrink.

(01:59:42):
You really have to understand people.
And I had made a study of this.
And each man, each individual, later I
started training females and that was all
a different story, but each individual
has a set of buttons,
psychological buttons.

(02:00:03):
You got to find those buttons and they're
often very well hidden.
And then you mash that button, you mash
that bastard until he
understands what the deal is.
And that was really the key to it, I think.
And you're putting them in, like with
Platoon, for example, you're out in the
bush for like, what, three weeks?
Three weeks in the
jungle of the Philippines.
And you've got guys setting up

(02:00:25):
pyrotechnics and you actually have no
idea that you're about to call in a
mortar attack or
something like that, right?
Nope, they don't.
To me, that's, you know what that's like?
Hondo, movie Hondo.
John Wayne picks a little boy up when he
finds out he can't swim and
he throws him in the water.
That's what you're doing there.
That's a Hondo method.

(02:00:45):
That's what you're doing.
But I think for, you know, I've met some
actors in my day and it's amazing to me.
Actually, I interviewed Tom Berenger and
he speaks so highly.
I was interviewing him about the movie
Gettysburg and he kept
talking about Platoon and you.
He has a lot of respect for you and a lot

(02:01:07):
of these guys seem to have a lot of
respect for you because you, I mean, dare
I say, it might be the first time they
come close to being a man, right?
You know, I become uncle captain.
Yeah.
The Dutch uncle and you'd be surprised.
What surprised me was
how this imprinted on them.
I don't know what many of their home
lives were difficult, but

(02:01:30):
they would imprint on me.
And, you know, 10 years after I'd trained
a kid for a certain movie and hadn't
heard from him, the phone rings and it's
one of my kids and he's wondering about a
part and he wants to talk to uncle
captain about that part.
How do I do this?
Yeah.
And that that's tremendously gratifying.

(02:01:51):
That's tremendously rewarding.
I would imagine so.
And so Platoon, you say that's the first
movie, but wasn't there a movie about
Martians and Marigans?
Yeah, there was.
Yeah.
Thank you for bringing that up.
Well, you brought it up.
I was trying to figure out
how the movie business worked.

(02:02:12):
And I had this buddy from Vietnam who was
a storyboard artist.
Okay.
And he was working for the old Canon
films, a lot of B-movie grind outs.
And he said, well, you know, I'm working
on this film called Invaders from Mars,
which was a remake of
a 1952 trash classic.

(02:02:33):
And he said, in this version, the Marines
killed the Martians.
And I said, well, shit, I got no
compunction about killing Martians.
Let me go to work on this.
And so he got me an introduction to Toby
Hooper, who was the director,
a wonderful little curmudgeon.
And he said, well, I don't know how
Marines go about killing Martians.

(02:02:54):
Well, I do, Toby.
Let me do this.
And I started, I would create these
combat scenes with these fake Martians.
And that kind of what it did, was it, I
went to school during that production of
that film to learn, you
know, what does a prop guy do?
What's a gaffer?

(02:03:14):
You know, what's a grip?
And I learned all that stuff.
So I had that, I thought
I had the basic school.
I just had to find somebody
who would let me put it to work.
And I found that when I
got stone and platoon.
But didn't you go to the local Marine
base and like, I did.
Yeah.
I threw my Marine card on the table and I

(02:03:36):
talked this reserve officer, who was down
in Long Beach running a reserve unit.
And I talked him into
lending me about 50 Marines.
Yeah.
And he made it their duty to come up and
report to me on the set.
So I had my own company there and I just
ran them through this stuff.
And they had a great time.

(02:03:57):
Sure.
And I said, Oh man, listen,
there's something to this.
I just have to find the opportunity to
show them the way I want to do it.
So that was your, that was your pilot
program kind of just to
see if it was worth pursuing.
Yeah.
Right.
Cause it was a low budget film.
I'm assuming.
Like a no budget film.
I don't know.
I don't know what the hell it was.
They didn't pay me anything.

(02:04:17):
Right.
But then, so you go on.
So platoon wins some Oscars, right?
Best picture, best director.
Yeah.
So you and Oliver Stone are set, right?
It's a skyrocket from that moment on.
Good luck talisman, I think.
Yeah.
And I think I've done
five pictures with him now.

(02:04:37):
And, and I just saw him not long ago in
Phoenix at another film festival, but
next time you see him, tell
him he's one of my favorites.
I'm sure, I'm sure he won't care.
Please tell him he's one
of my favorite directors.
And he's always, and he'll be like, Oh,
yeah, he's, he's an interesting guy.
And he, he would put me to
work when nobody else would.
And he's got to turn me into an actor.

(02:04:59):
Yeah.
He said, look, you're a natural.
The camera loves you.
And if you ever take an acting lesson, if
you ever go to school,
I'll never hire you again.
I said, shit, really?
And he said, yep, absolutely.
You do what you do.
You be you.
And it's best advice I ever got.

(02:05:19):
Really.
So that was the next thing I wanted to
get to was you are an
actually very good actor.
And so there's no lessons there.
This is just you.
There's every time I'm on a set, there's
lessons, uh, not formal.
That's right.
That's what I mean.
Yeah.
But I observe.
I mean, I'm that consummate observer.
See, that's again, artists.

(02:05:41):
And I listen and, and watch and I'll see
the little things that they'll do.
And I said, damn, I
got to incorporate that.
I can, I can use that.
Uh, so some of the best actors in the
world taught me to be an actor.
They just didn't know they were doing it.
Yeah.
That's so cool.
Um, what was the first
speaking role you had?
It was in platoon.
Uh, to guess it was.
Yeah.

(02:06:01):
Yeah.
Yeah.
And, uh, now you gotta, you ever, well,
what are the roles you've had?
Private Ryan, Colonel Sink in band of
brothers, which I thought actually was
perfect casting, um, that whole show, but
you, you as Colonel Sink was great.
And you know, again, knowing by that
point, when that came out, knowing that

(02:06:21):
you're the guy that does the boot camp.
And I was like, that's really cool that
they put him in the, in the show like
that as their commander.
Yeah.
It's, it's funny.
The, um, my reputation precedes and
exceeds me, but, uh, sure.
But it really, you know, I've, I've tried
throughout my career to find that odd

(02:06:43):
homosexual
hairdresser part that, you know,
you can't get it.
I don't get a lot of offers.
Um, so, I mean, between me and Lee Army,
we were the most
typecast guy in the world.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Um, but we love you guys.
I mean, we love seeing
you guys in these roles.
Well, I've, I've finally come to realize,
and, and so I don't bitch about it.

(02:07:03):
We don't want to see you as the
homosexual hairdresser.
We want to see you as the army guy, you
know, or now, oh, that's
what I wanted to ask you.
So you're a Marine.
Okay.
Um, I can't remember in platoon where
they were, they were Marines.
No army.
They were army.
Okay.
So then what is
the difference in the manual between the

(02:07:24):
army and the Marines?
And, and does, is that,
there's a world of difference.
Look, I have, we've done, I mean, the
motto of my company, Warriors Global is
from the Peloponnesian Wars to Star Wars.
We will do it all.
And we have done it all.
Yeah.
Um, Starship Troopers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But it, it really takes research.
Um, and that's the problem.
Most kids who want to do what I do had

(02:07:46):
four years in the army
and that's all they know.
Right.
I've been an
inveterate student all my life.
I mean, I know how the Navy does things.
I know how the air force does things, the
coast guard, the army, and I know those
details and I study those details.
So you have to, you
have to be a playmaker.
You have to know it all.
You have a team, obviously.

(02:08:07):
It's not just you.
Yeah.
I mean, look, I run my company and I run
a publishing company.
And I hire guys that, I mean, my, my
executive officer has
been with me for 50 years.
We were, we were young corporals together
in Vietnam and I talked
him into becoming my guy.
That's great.

(02:08:28):
So, and, and we hire, I hire some people,
mostly it's piecework because, um,
military movies are on
a kind of a sign curve.
You have a bunch of them for a while and
then nothing for 10 years.
So you got to find a way to keep busy.
Um, and so my guys are piecework.
I call them in when I need them.
Um, and, and I quickly realized that

(02:08:49):
because of that sign curve, uh, if I'm
going to have a successful company, uh,
I'm going to need to do something besides
movies and television.
So I started doing video games.
I started doing a themed entertainment
for parks and, and, and that's led to
some really smart, interesting stuff.
Yeah.
I don't know how smart it is.

(02:09:09):
It matters.
Survival, I think.
Well, but it's still, well, some people
wouldn't come up with that
and they wouldn't survive.
So, you know, that's very smart.
So you get, you get a
phone call from Las Vegas.
The Las Vegas Hilton has this, uh, uh,
ride experience, the
Star Trek experience.
And they call me and they want me to come

(02:09:30):
up and train their, make
the cue video for them.
And then, uh, train the people how to be
Starship troopers, you know, in the 25th
century and that sort of thing.
Right.
So you get weird calls
like that and I love it.
Yeah.
So what, what was your, do you have a
favorite project you worked on?
Like one that was
just the best experience?
Oh, look, that's got

(02:09:50):
to be Band of Brothers.
Yeah.
The mini series format, you know, 10
episodes and that sort of thing.
You can, you can really
deeply get into the
story and the characters.
Uh, so that format is great.
I love that.
I loved doing, uh, um,
Rough Riders with Tom Barris.
Oh yeah.

(02:10:10):
Yeah.
I played Tom's, I played,
uh, Colonel Leonard Wood.
That's right.
Rough Riders Commander.
Yes.
Um, that's a good one.
Uh, Platoon will always have a close
place in my heart because it started my
career, it started my career.
Right.
But I think, I think Band of Brothers,
Saving Private Ryan, um,

(02:10:32):
and all of those movies.
And, and I've, I've done an interesting
bunch of, uh, work with Tom Cruz.
Uh, I worked with him on, uh, Born on the
4th of July, uh, where I got to know me
and I didn't realize it,
but Tom really liked me.
Okay.
Um, I wasn't in any mood to be
a buddy or anything like that.
Yeah.

(02:10:53):
But you're a Scientologist now.
Yeah.
And I'm not sure how much Tom is anymore,
but, um, but lo and behold, um, when we
started doing Mission Impossible, I found
out that Tom wanted me to be one of the
agents that chased him across the
country, around the globe.
Um, and then I get a call one day and

(02:11:14):
it's Tom's people saying, look, Tom wants
you to play his father in a
movie called Night and Day.
Hmm.
And it turns out I, I played his dad.
That's awesome.
Yeah.
It was so those, those
relationships are long lasting.
See, it's always who you
know, after the beginning, right?
After you prove yourself,
then it's just who you know.
Right.

(02:11:34):
That's how a lot of jobs come about.
Well, yes.
Um, but there's so much
money involved in making a movie.
I mean, 130 million is chump chain.
Yeah, I know that, um, you
do have to campaign for it.
You have to, I mean, the phone rings
usually when they need me, but if I want
something, I have to go out and chase it.

(02:11:55):
But you're legendary.
I mean, forgive me for flattering you too
much here, but you, you know, how are
people not knocking
them out to God's you?
I do have a bit of a
legendary baggage, I guess.
Um, but that's great.
I mean, that, but that
bring me, bring me captain die.
He's not a, well, bring me
somebody that looks like captain.
No, wait a minute.

(02:12:15):
Bring me somebody that
says big as captain die.
You know, give me a die type.
Yeah.
Yeah. I feel like a die type.
What would you say is the acting role
that you had that you're most proud of
that you think is your best work?
Uh, I guess, I guess
it would be two things.
Um, one was, uh,
Leonard Wood and rough riders.

(02:12:38):
I love that, that experience.
And the other is Colonel
Cenk and Vanda brothers.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Colonel Cenk is great.
My favorite scene is when, cause you're,
you're relationship with Winters or
Cenk's relationship with Winters.
I think you and Damien
Lewis do it really well.
We understood that really.
Yeah.
Well, because in bootcamp,

(02:13:00):
right, you're in charge of all of them,
but he's in charge of that.
And he used every bit of that.
Yeah.
Which is great.
And when, uh, in the foil scene, when
you're attacking the village and he goes
with your voice, you just yell at him.
Yeah.
And he reacted instantly because he,
recognized that voice.
They're very fine actors out there, but,
uh, to put them through the bootcamp like

(02:13:23):
you do, I think it shows
more in the performance.
It's almost like a documentary.
You're documenting.
And that's my Oscar.
Yeah.
That's my Academy Award.
When I see those guys
sing out there like that.
Well, captain Dale, die, you, uh, or
someone I've always admired.
And this is a true honor and
pleasure for me to talk to you.

(02:13:44):
And I, I, I do not exaggerate when I say,
I believe you are a national treasure.
I, I, I'm so glad that you came here,
but, uh, I have to say
that because you know what?
Eric door is going to
put me in the museum.
Let's just stack him up here.
Put you behind Plexiglas.
Eric door is also here.
And I don't want to say goodbye to
everybody without
acknowledging Eric, Eric, go ahead.

(02:14:05):
Sit, sit in front of
that mic there real quick.
Let us know.
So captain die, uh, alluded to before the
fact that he is on your board.
That is correct.
And we're really honored and
happy to have him on board.
And, um, he's already, uh, giving me
orders and motivating me.
And I greatly appreciate that because

(02:14:27):
we're a little bit behind schedule.
So I, I needed to, um, have someone, uh,
light me up and that's what he's doing.
Maybe he needs to put the board through a
boot camp so you guys can snap.
Hey, that's a great idea.
Uh, please let me document that.
Well, Eric, uh, again, you are once
again, my hero for the umpteenth time

(02:14:49):
for, for doing this.
I really appreciate it.
Well, thanks man.
No, thank you.
You're very welcome for that compliment,
but thank you very much.
Cause I, I love this.
This was fantastic.
Thank you so much.
Both of you guys.
Sure.
And thank you all for watching.
Yep.
Thanks guys.
All right.
That was a good interview.
Now let's get to the meat.
I'm sorry.
I got to go.

(02:15:09):
I'm running out.
We're not a stuff.
I appreciate it so much.
Thank you so much for coming.
Captain sir, if I may get you to sign, Oh
my gosh, his hands gonna fall.
I'm so sorry.
It's the last one.
Let me get away here.
Did you go outside and see

(02:15:30):
Bob Smith's right as my name.
I hope you enjoyed that amazing interview
with captain Dale Dye.
If you want to help the Gettysburg museum
of history expand, you can either go to
our website, buy some military antiques,
or if you go to the website, there's a
section there that says foundation and
you can donate to the Gettysburg museum

(02:15:51):
of history foundation.
And there's a link there that you can
directly donate, or you can always send
in a check and that would be payable to
the Gettysburg museum
of history foundation.
That'll go directly to our
building and development fund.
Thanks again.
Have a great night.