The Secret War's Invisible Heroes

Host Sam Alaimo dives into the shadows of Vietnam with John Stryker Meyer, Studies and Observations Group (SOG) veteran and author. From volunteering for the deadliest missions to facing 10,000-strong North Vietnamese Army (NVA) divisions, Meyer's gripping tales of heroism, loss, and unbreakable bonds will leave you in awe. Discover the untold story of America's most secretive warriors and the sacrifices they made in the name of duty and brotherhood.

Episode Transcript

Sam Alaimo (00:03):
This is the No Bell podcast where we talk about how
to optimize your technology,life, and mind. We're joined by
special operations veterans,entrepreneurs, investors, and
others who have overcomedifficulty to make it to the top
of their craft by staying in thefight. Welcome to the No Bell

(00:24):
podcast. I'm Sam Alaimo, and I'mjoined with, John Stryker Meyer,
SOG legend, author, and host ofthe SOG cast podcast. John,
welcome.

John Stryker Meyer (00:34):
Thank you, Sam. Good to be here.

Sam Alaimo (00:35):
Let's start where we always do. Where did you grow
up?

John Stryker Meyer (00:38):
Well, Trenton, New Jersey, just a few
miles north of your AO there inPhiladelphia. And, my dad was a
milkman. Mom was a piano teacherand a choir director and a
church organist. And so I hadmusic and, grew up in a milk
truck with dad. And then,graduated from high school at
64.

(00:59):
That was the same year thatRoger Donilon earned the 1st
Medal of Honor in the VietnamWar. And, in history classes, we
had read about Southeast Asiaand Vietnam was beginning to get
more headlines. This is backwith David Haberstom and some of
his cohorts were doing someexcellent reporting from
Vietnam. So in 'sixty 4, Igraduated. Roger Donnell earned

(01:22):
the Medal of Honor the followingmonth.
Took me 2 years to flunk out ofcollege at Trenton State
College. When I flunked out, Iwas working in Yosemite National
Park. And I've read the book,The Green Berets. And, my dad
told me, he says, The draftboard's coming. I read the book.
I said, well, you know what?These guys, they sound crazy. If

(01:44):
I could qualify for them, I'drather go to Vietnam with these
guys. Went down, talked to therecruiter. And back then, used
us to list it for airborneunassigned.
And so after basic training,which was 8 weeks at Fort Dix,
we were down at Fort Gordon,Georgia. And about the 3rd or
4th week through, they have oneof these career days. Like, it's

(02:06):
always a rainy day. You go to abig gym or an auditorium.
Everybody's sitting on thefloor, like, 5, 600 guys.
And it had a stage up front withstaircases on it on each side,
and the cooks would come up, thecommo guys, the military police,
and the cooks, this is the bestjob. You'll never be hungry. And

(02:29):
they're all fat slobs. Right?And so the very last guy to come
in was a Greenbrae and it wasraining because we were inside
because it was raining.
And this Greenbrae came in. It'sa little bandy rooster of a guy,
no rain jacket. His fatigueswere wet because he obviously
walked in the rain. He walked upto the stage, did a vertical

(02:49):
jump up on the stage, turnedaround and said, I'm the Special
Forces recruiter if you'reinterested. How many are
interested?
Well, I read the book. I jumpedup off the floor, me about 5 or
6 under guy other guys, Andeverybody else is just sitting
there going like, you guys arecrazy. After AIT, you're going
to Vietnam. I'm a city slicker.I need a lot more training.

(03:13):
So then we went through thetest, and, at the end of it, the
recruiter told me, Meyer, you'relucky. We've lowered the
standards. So then from thatjump school, training group for
7 months, And then we had TDYfor the radio teletype training,
which was early 68, landed atthe end of April 68, had the in

(03:39):
country training. And they toldus some of our, you know, once
we were in these classes withthe special forces, we had guys
have been to Nam 2 or 3 timesalready. And all of them said,
when you go to Vietnam, go to anaid camp, learn how the country
works.
And at the end of your incountry training, some guy's
gonna come out and say, we needvolunteers. Don't do it. They

(04:02):
all die. So sure it up. We're incountry.
We did the 3 weeks of in countrytraining. At the end, here comes
this little guy out. We'relooking for volunteers. And so
my buddy, Johnny McIntyre goes,for what? He goes, can't say.
Either you're in or you're not.Well, we all volunteered. And
next day we were in Da Nang, wegot the top secret briefing in

(04:24):
the room with the curtains onthe windows and the curtain over
this map. And we've beenstudents for over a year. And so
we're pulling our pads and pensout and the Sergeant Major goes,
put that shit away.
This is a top secret briefing.And it says, in front of you is
an NDA. You can sign it orleave. So we all signed it, then
we got the briefing. There's themap.

(04:45):
Vietnam, I Corps, II Corps, IIICorps, IV Corps. On the left was
Laos and Cambodia, all in 6 by 6target boxes. And welcome to the
SEC award, Dean went on toexplain it. And then, Johnny Mac
and I, after the briefing, wewent up, we flew up on South
Vietnamese Air Force H34 KingBee's. The code name was King

(05:08):
Bee's, and that was like cultureshock because we had all these
American helicopters.
We didn't even know what a CH 34was, let alone have it flown by
some South Vietnamese guy. Well,it turned out those guys were
really outstanding. But we flewup, get off the helicopter and a
recon team gets on anddisappears It was Spike Team

(05:31):
Idaho and that's why as ourintroduction to the secret war.
And so it was an instant openingon recon and we're just very
fortunate. Spider Parks had beenon the team, he'd gotten
promoted to his own team andHEP, the interpreter, didn't go.
He was sick, and the teamleader, the Vietnamese team
leader hadn't it was not hisrotation. They rotated on

(05:54):
missions. So HEP and Sal werestayed back at the base. After
the team got wiped out, Spire tobecame the team leader, and we
rebuild it around Hep and Sal.Hired 3 new 15 year olds, and I
have myself, green as grass, andthen Don Wolkan.
And that was the beginning ofthe entrance to the secret war.

Sam Alaimo (06:14):
I wanna back up and then come back to this point.
Were you Sure. Don't you enlistin the military anyway? Or did
the draft make the military anoption for you?

John Stryker Meyer (06:24):
Oh, well, I knew they were coming. And with
the draft, you know, I wasn'tsure how it's gonna pan out, but
I wanted to enlist because the,recruiter said that, you enlist
for airborne unassigned, andwhen you're in AIT, you'll get
the option to volunteer there.You'll have a a moment in time.
And, I was surprised. They camethrough, we did it, and that's

(06:47):
when we, volunteered there, wentthrough all the tests and this
and everything else.
Britain, physical, swimming,whatnot.

Sam Alaimo (06:54):
It's interesting. So you knew what was happening in
the Vietnam War at the time. Wasit unpopular then when you
enlisted?

John Stryker Meyer (07:01):
There was growing dissent in the country,
and this is I enlisted inDecember of 66. So on the
college campus where I'd been,there was, like, some of the
what I would call, I guess, theleft or some are a little bit
more flaky people, the marijuanasmokers, they were beginning to

(07:21):
be anti anti war, which I didn'treally understand that much
other than we had the communistup north that wanted to subvert
people down south. That was allI knew about it. By 66 and then
the 67, we're we're learningabout the we had the Idrang
Valley in 65. There were acouple egg camps that were

(07:41):
historic.
And then, of course, in 68, whenwe were going through our,
special training for radioteletype, they had the Tet
Offensive. And, Johnny Mac and Iwere up in a bar in Washington
DC like January or February 1,68. Here on TV, like CBS, they
had film of an NVA tank in LangVe, the uppermost a camp in

(08:07):
Vietnam, a 101, and the tank wasright on top of the command
bunker. Somehow they got videoof that, and I was like, woah.
WTF.
We went home, took our money outof the bank, because we don't
wanna leave any of our moneyleft for our relatives to fight
over, and we spent every pennybefore we went to Vietnam. And
so, yeah, we knew in thetentative, they launched a lot.

(08:31):
Of course, it was interestingbecause some of the media,
particularly after WalterCronkite came out and said
there's no light at the end ofthe tunnel, and he was, like,
portrayed it in a negative waywhere every unit that had
contact with the enemy, the VietCong were viscerated. They were
never as effective as they wereagain for the rest of the war,

(08:52):
but that part never gotreported. But that was what's
going on, and then by the timewe got there, by time I got the
FOB 1, there was still someactivity.
They rocketed our base, we gotmore than once in a while, but
nothing like Lang Veith, when hewould come in and attack the
base head on.

Sam Alaimo (09:11):
Yeah, stories from Lang Veith are incredible. Oh,
my gosh. Yes. When you first goton the ground, you talked about
you were making your way aroundthe country. You heard from a
few SF guys, special forcesguys, that an entire recon team
at FOB 4 vanished in Laos, andthat a spike team Alabama from
FOB 1 lost all Americans but 1,sergeant John Allen.

(09:31):
I think your book, you it itmade it sound like this made it
very real to you, but can youcan you get into what what that
did to you as you're justgetting into Vietnam, green as
grass?

John Stryker Meyer (09:41):
Yeah. I mean, on top of Allen and the
recon team, there were, like, 2recon teams in late March of 68
that we knew about. One wasbefore and another was I forget
the name of the team, but JohnGallagher had been the, I think
it was the 10 and he died on theLZ. He let all the team members
get out and then he stayed onthe ground because he took care

(10:05):
of the team first. There was acouple other teams that we'd
heard about.
In addition to that, when we hadgone through training group, we
went through his comma guys andwe had to do Morse code. And
there was a sergeant first classnamed Villa Rosa. And he was our
trainer and me, McIntyre, a fewother guys, we got recycled for

(10:28):
Como. And he brought us in onthe weekends, at night we would
go back just to get us up to themandatory word group per minute
that you needed in order tograduate. And, he did it.
He got us through it. When wewent through our top secret
briefing, at the end of it, theysaid that we've had some bad

(10:49):
cases, and then they asked, doesanybody know Paul Villarosa?
Well, me and Mac, we're like,oh, yeah. Of course, we know. He
was one of our heroes backbefore Bragg.
He said, well, he went out ofFOB 4, the first new mission out
of FOB 4 in Da Nang in earlyJanuary 68, and he was KIA. And

(11:09):
what they didn't tell us was notonly was he KIA, but they
tortured him and they burned himwith a flamethrower, and they
kept 1 American alive who waswounded, kept him alive, and
they knew we'd come to get him.And they kept him alive, so he'd
go back and tell everybody whathappened. So that's one of our
heroes that we heard about inaddition to all the teams that

(11:31):
had been hit. And we knew bythat time, like we had our first
mission briefing in July for atraining mission, and then we
had another one in August.
And each time they said, we'veheard that the NVA are training
sappers or teams that are justdesigned to find SOG teams in

(11:55):
Laos and Cambodia and to killthe Americas, but leave the
indigenous troops alive. Andthen on August 23, 68, there was
a sapper attack of FB 4, andthey killed 16 Green Berets in 1
night. It was a night, no moon,and they hit after midnight.
They were in the camp, and, itwas the most, severe loss of

(12:17):
Green Berets in SF history. Andnobody fortunately, nobody's
come close to that since then.
So that was our introduction.Now it's all going on, and we
knew we were up against adetermined foe.

Sam Alaimo (12:27):
It's interesting to me that you you knew how
hardcore it was, you andeverybody else there. And I
wonder if there's some sort ofcommonality among yourself and
all the other guys who fought inSOG. I know there's radically
different backgrounds, differentmotivations, but do you see some
sort of threat of similarity inthe way that they approached the
world and why they were stillwilling to lean into that unit

(12:48):
and that combat.

John Stryker Meyer (12:49):
Absolutely. I mean, to this day, anybody I
meet, I judge the men I servewith, including Hep and Sao. I
mean, they were just outstandingand we knew what the mission
was. And my team was all SouthVietnamese. There are 3 guys
that were on the team.
Their families came South in1954, 1955 after Dien Bien Phu

(13:12):
fell. They came South becausethey didn't want anything to do
with communism, and they're allin recon, our team, Spike Team
Idaho. They said we would ratherlive in South Vietnam. We know
the government's corrupt. We canlive with it.
And when we have issues withthis government, we work around

(13:34):
it. And they were willing to diefor it as opposed to living
under the Communist thumb. Andthat's like, okay, man. We're in
this thing together. And in thejungle, man, we always well,
anybody that I served with onour team, we always deferred to
if they ran Point, they ran tailsecurity.

(13:55):
And, we just went with theirinnate skill set in the jungle,
and try to keep up with them.

Sam Alaimo (14:02):
The King Bee pilots. So they're piloted, you said by
the South Vietnamese guys. Canyou talk about what lies at the
the root of that relationship?Because it doesn't seem like it
would be patriotic. It doesn'tseem like it would have that
sort of value.
There's some, I think, deeperdeeper brotherhood there that's
maybe forged in the combat, inthe hardship, but what do you
think about that relationship?

John Stryker Meyer (14:23):
Well, I'm alive today, because thanks to
the King Bee Piles and otheraviators. But in my first 7
months running missions with,Spy Team Idaho, there are so
many times that our team was inunder contact. We were extracted
under enemy fire each time. On,October 7th, we had been in

(14:47):
contact for 4 hours, and CaptainTin came in with the king bee
and hovered there in theelephant grass for 10 minutes
until we got to it. And thebottom line, we were down to our
last magazines over 600 roundsout of hand grenades, out of
them 79 rounds.

(15:07):
He pulled us out. That King Beehad 48 bullet holes in it, and
somehow none of our

Sam Alaimo (15:13):
guys were wounded. So did the entire recon team
Idaho vanish and that's how youended up joining? Nobody knows
what happened?

John Stryker Meyer (15:20):
No, it was the 2 Americans, Glenn Lane, who
was the team leader, and RobertDuval Owen was the assistant
team member. Even his story,like a little quick sidebar, he
had been to Vietnam previously.So in early May, he he could
have flown to Washington Statefrom South Carolina, but he had

(15:43):
to leave, he hiss tike toWashington, send his money home
to his wife, goes to Vietnambecause he had been in country
before. He gets assigned to SOG,gets on our, Spy Team Idaho, and
within 20 days from May 1st toMay 20th or May 22nd, he, they

(16:04):
get inserted, he disappears. Hepromised his daughter he'd be
home for her birthday, but henever made it.
And I'm still in contact withhis daughter, but that's just
one of those little sidebars.And so it was the 2 Americans
that 4 or 5 in did that were wewe lost. So we hired right away
3 South Vietnamese that were 15years old, and Spider brought us

(16:27):
together with Sal and Hep, andwe trained up really hard.
During June July, we ran acouple of night ambushes, a
couple of practice missions, andthen we started doing a real
thing.

Sam Alaimo (16:40):
Who on your team had combat experience since you were
new? Spider Parks

John Stryker Meyer (16:45):
and Hep and Sal. I mean, both of them had
been this is 68. They had bothbeen running solid recon
missions for over 2 years now.Oh, rock.

Sam Alaimo (16:53):
And do you say they were 15 years old?

John Stryker Meyer (16:55):
Yeah. We hired 3 15 year old kids. And by
the end of the year, 2 of the 3were really sharp. In fact, one
song was so good, he beganrunning point. That's
remarkable.
Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're serious.And we had one other team
member, Fuchs. So we had Hep,Sal and Fuchs who all had combat

(17:19):
experience. And so Fuchs was thepoint man for our first few
missions that we had Fuchs, Sal,HEP, myself, and Don Wilkin.
And so we had those thosemissions. And, again, we just
learned, grew together. Theywere the experts in the jungle.
I always did the tac air and allthe camo Do the prick 25, FM

(17:41):
radio or an emergency, we hadthe, ultrahigh, year arc 10 for,
talk to the air crews and thingslike that. But they were great.
I mean, our staff, we had themeans, were and they were just,
they were absolutely fearless. Imean, Sal and or Hepp or Fook,
they always initiated contactwhen the enemy was approaching

(18:02):
us. We never got ambushed. Weknew when they were coming for
us and we were we were veryfortunate. They we we always
somehow had high ground or had atactical situation where we were
able to work with TAC Air orthings like that to to hold them
back.

Sam Alaimo (18:19):
You're you're with these guys, like combat hard in
South Vietnamese, 15 year oldVietnamese, and it would just be
you, maybe another 1 or 2Americans, and a handful of
these South Vietnamese inCambodia or Laos, knowing full
well that if you get caughtbecause Geneva Convention
doesn't apply, you would nevermake a home.

John Stryker Meyer (18:38):
When you're in, you can't talk about this to
anybody. And they were serious,like after my first book came
out, dad read the book, he goes,you know, I always wonder why
the guy came by and picked upour trash. And we used to have
trash collection 3 days a week,Monday, Wednesday, and Fridays.
And dad saw this guy pick up thetrash. He got my dad got a job

(19:00):
at the post office a coupleyears later.
He saw the guy, and he workedwith the FBI, and they're
picking up our trash to makesure we didn't violate that NDA.
That's how serious they wereabout it.

Sam Alaimo (19:11):
So you're out there, Cambodia with with the South of
Indian of his partner forces.And I I can't wrap my head
around that that tight knitpartnership you had because I
didn't see anything to thatextent in our in our wars in the
Middle East. Was it just thefact that you were surrounded
out there completely on your ownwith hopefully some aircraft
that you got into a troops incontact? Is that what enabled

(19:32):
you to bond with these SouthVietnamese partner force and
basically become brothers withthem?

John Stryker Meyer (19:37):
We were all into the mission, and they knew
that they were in a specialmission with us going across the
fence. They got paid more thanany others, South Vietnamese
military unit to a good pay.Like our first few missions,
everything was with Sal, Phuc,and Hep because they were
hardcore. And then as time wenton, we ran missions bringing out

(20:00):
some of the younger guys to seehow they were. As time went on,
we had a bunch of missions, sowe always had plenty of
opportunities, but we always hadhep and Sal or hep and Fook
because hep was our interpreter.
I'm alive again today. Thanks toto them and, of course, to King
Bees and our aviators that wereAmerican. When I first came on

(20:21):
to the team, when Spider Parksintroduced me to the team, Sal
looked at Hepp, and he saidquietly, he says, he's too tall,
his feet are too big, and helooks stupid. This is, like,
May, right, of 68. After thatmission, when we're on a
helicopter, after after captainTim pulled us out, I looked over

(20:44):
at Sal.
He went like he gave me a littlenod. As the first time, he gave
me a nod like that. So that waspart of us building our bonding.
And from that day on, we weretight. And Sal was a farmer.
All he wanted to do was go backwith his wife, get a little
patch of land somewhere, plow upsome rice. And he was just a

(21:05):
cool guy, but man, he couldsmell the NVA before we did. He
knew what they were doing. And,he kept us alive on the ground.

Sam Alaimo (21:14):
I think this is probably your your first major
firefight, if I remembercorrectly. Correct. You had a
prairie fire emergency, whichmeans you're at risk of being
overrun. And, the the commsguy's worst nightmare, you
couldn't get anybody up on theradio. Your teammate said to you
at one point, look, they'restacking up dead bodies against
us, to get to us.

(21:35):
Can you pick up the mission fromthat point there?

John Stryker Meyer (21:37):
Earlier in the day, we had been we had
moved all in the morning. In theafternoon, we went out of the
jungle because we wanted to getwe're trying to get to the
secondary mission was we hadheard there was American POW
camp in Laos, and we wanted totry and move in that direction.
So at one point, we left thejungle to get to a a a trail

(21:58):
that's right at the end of thejungle. It was a steep drop off,
and we went up this trail formaybe an hour or so. And at one
point, around 1:30 or so, Iheard Sal because I was back Sal
was a tail gunner.
Fook was running point, DonWilkin, Hepp, Davidson, who was

(22:18):
the other American with us,myself, and Sal. And I hear Sal
hissing. I turned around andback way down this trail, we
could see 2 NVA in full not inuniform, but I think they had,
like, black shirts and hats. Andtheir AKs were at Port Arms. I
was stunned.

(22:39):
And Sal was like, number 10. Iwant to throw an m 79 round at
him. He said, no. No. No.
Let's keep moving. So we toldDon, and we left the trail, went
straight up a little knoll andgot on top of a knoll. And when
we were in our perimeter upthere, I was trying to make

(23:00):
communication, no luck, hep andhep and Sal opened fire, and
they kept coming up. So luckily,the knoll was small enough that
they can only send so manypeople up at a time. So they
come out, we blow them back inthe jungle.
A lot of times, I wouldn't evensee who we're shooting at. You
see the weapon, the weaponsfirst, and, this went off for a

(23:24):
while and at some point, we hadno comma yet. Don came by and we
had this little break sometimes,you know, and, that's when he
said, look what they're doing.And I couldn't really see it,
and he says, look. They'restacking up the bodies because
Hepps showed him, and they werestacking up the bodies because

(23:44):
they're gonna climb on top ofthe dead bodies to shoot down,
to get an angle to shoot down atus instead of us shooting down
at them all the time.
And that, I'll tell you, thatgot my undivided attention, and
that's also indicator of howserious they were.

Sam Alaimo (24:00):
I think at some point during that mission, you
had a couple of napalm runs,right?

John Stryker Meyer (24:04):
Oh, yeah. We we used everything they had.
Some of the first gun runs wehad were, I think, A1 Sky
Raiders. So that's a singleengine aircraft developed at the
end of World War 2 used inKorean War, and it was an
aircraft single engine thatcarried tons of orders. They
could carry the same amount oforders that a B 17 bomber could

(24:28):
carry, and they carried bombs,CBU, napalm, weapons.
They had, everything from aminigun to 20 mic mic. It would
depend on what the configurationfor each plane was. And so my
first napalm run, Covey hadleft. Covey was our Ford Air

(24:48):
Controller and the code name forthat was Covey and Covey would
be an Air Force pilot with aGreen Beret Covey rider. And so
when I talked to Covey, it wouldbe to the rider, and the rider
would always be a veteran SOGsoldier, the Green Beret,

(25:09):
because that way they'd befamiliar with what it was like
to be on the ground.
And, in this case, it was SpiderPark's, but Spider had to leave
to go refuel. I'm talkingdirectly to the SPAD pilot
directing him in for a napalmrun, and I'll never forget it.
He goes, now y'all put yourheads down. It's crispy critter

(25:30):
time. And he was right.
It was the first time I eversmelled burnt human flesh. He
brought it in that close andjust took the oxygen to right
out of our lungs tight, butright. Then he came back with
CBU, gun runs. Then we hadScarface, which was the Marine
Corps gunships that supportedSOG throughout the entire 8 year

(25:51):
of SICU War, and then we hadthe, the judge and the
executioner who were flying withthe muskets out of oh, they were
down south at 2 corps, And theMuscles were with the, 176, the
Merical division, but they weregood. The judge and the
executioner came in, and thenthey all refueled and came back.

(26:16):
So by the time captain 10 camein, we had the muskets doing gun
runs around us to suppress enemyfire because we were in elephant
grass. It took us almost 10minutes just to go maybe 10, 15
yards, but it was elephantgrass. It's just hard going.
Like I fell down, woke and ranover me. He fell down, I ran

(26:36):
over him, but we pushed thegrass down getting to the King
Bee that was sitting therewaiting for us.

Sam Alaimo (26:41):
You wrote at one point that once the NVA heard
the propellers of the a one e's,they started getting even closer
trying to negate the firesuperiority of the bombs.

John Stryker Meyer (26:51):
Besides the mission mission briefings, the
clubhouse was where we learned alot. And there were several
senior NCOs, all of themexperienced Green Berets, couple
had been in the Korean war. Theyknew about it, and they called
it. The NVA will get close tothe bell. If they hear your
helicopter gunships coming, oreven a helicopter, they'll try

(27:11):
to come and shoot thehelicopters down, or an a one
Skyraider.
They knew the difference, andthey hated the Skyraiders. As
much as they hated them, weloved them because they could
bring it in really close, andthey could stay on station for
an hour or 2 hours sometimes,coming back, making repeated gun
runs. And their tacticalstrength was they were always

(27:33):
close to the treetops, and, theywere just amazing.

Sam Alaimo (27:37):
So that mission was wrapping up. He said captain Tin
came in cool as a Rocky Mountainbreeze. On the ride back, he
said you just you were happy tobe able to drink water because
you were still alive to drinkit. The king bee had 48 holes in
it, which you said earlier. AndI I'm just marveling at the
captain Tim being that cool,just hovering under fire,
knowing what you were in themiddle of, actively in the

(27:58):
middle of.
How does someone become thatcalm and that cool under what
might be the worst casesituation?

John Stryker Meyer (28:07):
That's a $64,000 question. I mean, not
only with the South Vietnameseaviators like captain Tin,
captain Tuong. I mean, these areall guys that came in at
different time and pulled us outunder fire. As part of that
aviator ice in the blood thing,they're just amazing. I mean,
even the Americans, they're thesame way.

(28:29):
All of our aviators, they'rejust fearless, and I I never
understood it because you evertouched the controls of a
helicopter to send it a copilotseat and try to do it sometime
because, you know, the thecontrols are so sensitive. Like,
what you see the movies, we haveairplanes, we have pilots, they
get the they get the stick andthey're moving it and they're

(28:50):
fighting it and all this, notwith the helicopter. You just
barely touched that main stickin the front, and it moves
because the captain too long tolet me fly in the copilot seat,
so I knew how sensitive theywere. I could almost take off in
a King Bee, almost, but, it wasreally delicate flying. But an

(29:12):
answer to your your question, Idon't know.
There's just something aboutthem being able to focus on
keeping that bird flying, thatsomehow they were able to do it
time after time.

Sam Alaimo (29:26):
So after that mission, you became 10, which
means you you took command of RTIdaho, and you you had a part in
the book that it made me stopand think. You said one team
member decided to leave SOG atthat point in time, and he spoke
to him 32 years later. And hesaid that he'd never been the
same since that mission. Why doyou think that some people have

(29:48):
such radically differentexperiences from the the same
the same mission, the samecontact? What what are your
thoughts on that?

John Stryker Meyer (29:55):
It just comes down to the individual's,
individual strengths. I mean,Jim, Davidson, when he came on
the team, he had a tour of dutywith the 173rd first. So he was
familiar with contact and, youknow, fighting the communist
with the 173rd, which was aunit, a really highly respected

(30:15):
unit in Vietnam. And he came tothe team, and during and during
that time we were on the ground,Jim was rock solid. He never he
never quenched.
He never yielded. He stayedright there, held his position
time after time with right withbetween hep and Sal. We never
word, so I always credit him,and he just knew it's an

(30:39):
individual thing. He said, I'venever seen anything like that. I
said, Well, welcome to SOG.
I didn't say it that way, butthis is where our missions are.
And he said, well, I I can't doit. I said, well, thanks for
telling that. I'd rather haveyou tell me now than to be on a
mission and have you break.Because 2 days before that
mission, when we had our fire,Lynn Black had his, where a 9

(31:03):
man team went in and came upagainst an NVA division at
10,000.
1 of the Americans, the SF guy,never fired a round in anger. He
prayed and did a bunch of crazystuff, but never fought, and
somehow Lynn was able to surviveall that. So we never had that
problem with Idaho, and thanksto Jim, he did he got us

(31:25):
through. He fought through thethe battle. He just knew he
couldn't do it, so it was avolunteer organization.
So anybody who wanted out, theycould leave anytime they want
it.

Sam Alaimo (31:33):
Let's roll that example of 9 versus 10,000. I
wasn't gonna go to the path ofof Lynn Black, but would you
mind talking about that?

John Stryker Meyer (31:40):
Are you kidding? This is one of the,
during the 8 year secret war,Lynn has got to be one of the
top 3 to 5 SOG missions, whichis just incredible. It started
out, they had a a mission, Ithink it was just an area recon,
and they went in with 2helicopters. And we have a brand

(32:00):
new team leader who'sinexperienced. He had been in
Europe with the 10th crew, buthe hadn't been on the ground.
But because he had more rank,the people in s 3 or whoever
made him the team leader, theypulled off the experienced team
leader, sent him to anotherteam, and on this day, October

(32:22):
5, 1968, when the team gotinserted, the second helicopter
had contact with the enemy, andthey saw an NVA flag. Well, Lynn
Black goes Lynn had a tour withthe 173rd. Beforehand, he and
his brother had been with the173rd, And so he knew that if

(32:42):
you see an enemy flag, there'sat least a battalion which would
be 3,000. He told the teamleader, Look, this is not gonna
be good. We have 9, there's acould be 3,000 NBA here.
And the team leader refused. Andthen he walked them down a
trail. Well, the golden rulewith us, we never walked on
trails. Some teams did, but ourteam never walked on a trail. We

(33:07):
would cross a trail, photographa trail, set up ambushes on a
trail, but not walk down it.
It's just an invitation for realtrouble. Anyways, he walked him
into an l shaped ambush. Asthey're going down the hill,
there's like an embankment up inthe front and on the right, and
he walked him into an ambushwhere he was killed instantly.

(33:29):
The point man was killedinstantly. A third was wounded,
And they were in that firefightfor for a long time, then they
finally backed out, and then theNVA began doing wave attacks
with them.
And then these people beganbuilding a wall of cundivers,
dead NBA soldiers. At somepoint, they all ran Alabama with

(33:52):
the CAR 15s, and they begantaking AK 40 sevens. Well, at
one point, when Lynn had movedthe team, he literally got hit
with a with a concussion grenadethat destroyed his car 15,
knocked him unconscious, andwith Burns and some other Taurus
pants, and, Cowboy and the teammembers were literally kicking

(34:18):
him kicking him and pouringwater on his face to wake him up
because he was doing all theradio comms at the time. And,
they woke him up, got him backon his feet, and, they continued
on for the rest of the day. Andthey finally, at the end, after
an all day engagement, numerousair strikes, fast movers, spads,

(34:40):
They lost 2 king bees.
They were shot down there. Theyhad 1 jolly green giant that was
shot down next to the l z, andthen ultimately, a jolly green
giant came in and hovered for hecame into a wooden section,
chopped the trees down, justliterally hovered there when
Minh took the remaining 6 backto the helicopter, and they

(35:04):
lifted off. As lifting off, theyhad these RPG rounds hitting the
bob just lifting it up, and itflew over 1 of the 2 mountains,
and it had to do an emergencylanding because it couldn't fly
anymore. They set out some airassets to pick up the remainder
of the team, but they didn'thave enough for Lynn and the and

(35:24):
the one one. And so a Cobra camein, and you know with a Cobra
gunships, they have those doorson the left side that fold down
to the gun racks and everything.
Well, there's an area there withseat belts or safety belts and
you strap yourself in. Well, Linand the one one flew back to Da

(35:47):
Nang, Phung Leos strapped tothose things, froze their balls
off. But they're going up at5,000 feet after being on the
ground sweating all day. 20 someyears later, America went back
to try to find the 10, the teamleader. And Linda helped them.
He got a phone call from an NVAofficer who is now an NVA

(36:09):
general, high ranking, and heintroduced himself as, I was the
colonel that ambushed your team.And he said, that was and they
talked, you know, and Lynn wasjust couldn't believe he's
talking to the guy that theyambushed him on October 5th.
They're back and forth, and thenat one point, Lynn goes, that
was a bad day. We lost 3 men.And then the general go, well,

(36:33):
it was a bad day for us because,you know, between you and Tac
Air, we you inflict a 90%casualties on us.
Lingo's, well, we saw the flag.That's the battalion. He was,
no. No. That was an NVAdivision.
We had 10,000 men there. Heinflicted 90% casualties on us.

(36:53):
They talked a little bitfurther, and then the general
goes, hey. Who was the radiooperator? And Lynn goes, well,
that was me.
He goes, yeah. You're the onlyguy that didn't go to the ground
when we opened fire on yourteam. He goes, Yeah, that was
me. I was just stood thereshooting. I changed magazines,
and when I interviewed Lyn, Iremember him saying, Sometimes I
shoot a guy.
I'd spin him around. I'd justshoot him a second time before

(37:15):
he go down. So the general istalking to Lynn. He says, so
you're the radio operator? Isaid, yeah.
You shot me 3 times. He said theworst thing about it, I was
lying on the ground watching youkill my men, and I could do
nothing about it. So you shot methree times. That's one of my

(37:38):
favorite lines. But that wasLynn Black, October 5, 1968.
And, that was one of ourhistoric missions. He got out 5
other team members. They lost 3.

Sam Alaimo (37:49):
That's incredible.

John Stryker Meyer (37:50):
Yeah. Yeah. And they get a hat off to I
mean, there was a time and againwhere they were right up
against, the enemy, several waveattack. One time, an a one
Skyraider came in flown by acaptain Don Denene or lieutenant
Don Denene. It was so close thatLynn and them, they had all
kinds of debris, tree branches,stuff like this from the gun

(38:11):
runs.
And then at one point or anothertime, one of the judge came in
with his helicopter and hoveredin front of the team as there
was a wave attack coming at himand mowed down that wave attack
and then left. He couldn't land,but that was just some of the
heroes and the jolly green. Andthat's where we heard for the
first time what the jolly greengiant motto is, that others may

(38:35):
live. And that day, they lostone helicopter, 2 KIA's there,
as well as other, I thinkthere's a total of 19 casualties
that day. If you include theKing Bee pilots and the other
aircraft that was shot down orpeople wounded during that
battle.

Sam Alaimo (38:54):
You said at one point they used concussion
grenades. Why did they not useshrapnel grenades?

John Stryker Meyer (38:59):
Good question. The chaikon grenades
that they had were not as goodas our American grenades. And
the concussion ones, I mean,thankfully, it was a concussion.
If it had been a shrapnel, Ithink Lynn may have been KIA,
because there were times whenthe grenades didn't work. I
mean, we had a time where Lynnand I got inserted, and we were

(39:21):
moving in the jungle, and we hadlike a little rise above us and
we were going to go around thisrise.
Fook was running point. I wasbehind fook number 2 in line and
Lynn was back. He He's number 4or 5. I forget where in the
back. But as Fook was walking,he's a little bit more ahead of
me.
The vegetation was not as thickas it usually was, and I could

(39:45):
see one of those grenades comedown from top of that little
rise. It came down. I yelledgrenade, and I tried to pull get
the fuck to pull him back, andthe grenade went off. And but it
wasn't if that had been theAmerican grenade, Fook would
have been dead. As it turnedout, he he was stunned, but no

(40:08):
wounds.
So that's getting back to yourquestion, I think there there
are hand grenades just weren'tas good as ours were in 1968.

Sam Alaimo (40:15):
You wrote about another mission in, Target Echo
8 Operation. Actually, this wasin John L Plaster's book. It was
about you in Plaster's book. Youyou had NVA on your trail and
they had tracker dogs with them.And at one point of the mission,
you heard a tow popper, whichwas kind of a stay behind bomb
explode behind you.
You heard diesel trucks with thebacks coming down and then dogs,

(40:38):
which is almost like the worstcase scenario. Can you Oh, yeah.
And then how you ended upgetting out of that pickle?

John Stryker Meyer (40:43):
We had a couple days where in the
morning, we would go out with ateam, get shot out of the
primary, secondary, and thealternate LZs. Go back, have
lunch, give you a new targetfold and say, Here. Because they
wanted to get a team on theground. So we go out, same
thing. And so this had happenedon and off.

(41:04):
And, one morning we go out, getshot off, come back, have lunch.
I rotated some of the teammembers around because just the
idea of flying out, having thatbrief contact, and then the
flight back, just, you know,just the it wears on you after a
while. And so in this case, wegot inserted, and we got

(41:26):
inserted into a part of thejungle where the Laossians had
formally done some slash andburn of agriculture, so it
wasn't thick jungle. And we gotthe team and we said moved up
the hill. Normally when we wereon the ground and thick
vegetation, we would move 10minutes and wait 10.

(41:47):
Well, here, because we gotinserted and we had this open
area, I pushed the teen, we wentup that hill and never took a
break. Maybe have one breakalong the way where I would talk
with my assistant team leader,John Bubba Shore. We came to a
major road, we crossed the road,they had telephone wires, we had

(42:07):
set up a a wire tap, and then weset up an ambush on the road.
And we had developed an ambushwhere you had plastic explosive
in the center of the ambush,would be 6 feet from the trail,
and there'd be enough c 4 thatit would knock out that person,

(42:28):
and then on the other side ofeach would be claymores that
would kill everybody else. Andwe practiced that time and time
again, inserting it, and so youput in the plastic explosive,
have the claymores, haveclaymores on flank security and
1 or 2 in the back, and our backwas up against the hill.
So Sal was monitoring the, thewire tap and Spider finally came

(42:52):
out for a commo check. And so meand Bub are like I mean he
envier walking up and down thistrail. They got their AKs on
their shoulders. One guy was anofficer with his pistol, but
they didn't know we were there.And we had gone so far so fast,
they just didn't realize that wewere there.

(43:12):
So Spider comes in, I gave himthe code, says, hey. Get in 1
hour, I'll be back to theprimary l z. I'll have a POW. I
gave him the code for POW, andthen Spider just told us, hey.
I'm at 10,000 feet.
I can't see the mountain you'reon. Well, the fucker factor
tightened up real fast. Andright about then, up the

(43:34):
mountain from us, we could hearsome tanks starting up. And then
on the road, now all of a suddenthe NVA are on the road. They're
running past, they got theirweapons, and they're going
different directions.
And so we pulled the wiretapdown, pulled in the ambush, we
moved out and moved away fromwhere we had been, and, we moved

(43:56):
until dark. And when dark came,we came to a little stream bed
because now Sal climbed a treeand we could hear the dogs and
there was, I don't know how manywere too many, and he said, Buku
dogs, maybe over a 100 peoplewith lanterns. So we got into
the stream and it wasn't reallydeep, and we went up it for an

(44:19):
hour or so in the dark, and wefinally came in at one point,
had the guys going out. So ifthe dogs came, they'd follow the
false trails, then we put downpepper, and we had the pattern
mace and put that out, and thenat some point, we finally broke
and we went up the bank, It waslike in the bank, maybe 10, 12,

(44:41):
14 feet up, and we set up theRON for the night, rest
overnight. So at that time, wehad 8 men on the team.
I was facing the creek or thislittle little stream, whatever
it was there. About midnight, 1o'clock, 2 NVA walked past with
a lantern, and they went pastus, and the lantern ran out of

(45:02):
fuel. They turned around andcame back. We're going down the
stream, and they passed me, hepcoughed. And, so that guy, the
NBA came up the hill towards me.
And I'm sitting there and myfeet spread in my car 15. I'm
I'm assuming he could hear myheart. But he came up, but only
when the wind moved. He came up,and when the wind moved, I hear

(45:24):
him move. He finally got closeenough, we touched my boot, and
I heard him catch his breath,but he's cool.
He waited. When the wind blew,he backed up, finally got down
to the stream. He and his buddywent that way. At first light,
we were out of there, and wewent up to the top of the
mountain. It took us all day.

(45:45):
We got up to the mountain top,set up that night, and that
night we had a, a Russianresupply in Laos. It was just a
weirdest damn thing because herewe are on a mountain top, it's
dark, and 2 or 3 mountains over,the whole side of the mountain
lit up with lights, And we couldhear the Russians on the radio.

(46:09):
We got them, but I couldn't getany tack air or anything. They
came in, they did their resupplyand left. So we knew that we
knew the Ivan and the boys werethere.
So that was that mission. And wewe stayed there for, like, 2 or
3 more days. Sal and Asone hadrun into some woodcutters, but
the woodcutters were justcivilians. They saw Sal and and

(46:33):
they didn't say anything. Theywent their way.
The Sal came back to our r o nand then we got pulled out. We
got pulled out under heavy enemyfire. It was the first time we
had an American come pick us up.Could we have been this was
November and every all of ourtransportation had been King
Bee. So this time when theythere was a 101st airborne and

(46:54):
when the ship came in, I toldBubba, you go out and tell them
we got Vietnamese.
So Bubba was the first one out.We took half the team. The
second helicopter came in andthen, Henry King was the other
team member for that mission.Henry went out first, then the
Vietnamese salad have went withhim. And then I was the last one

(47:16):
on the last bird.
You know, we're always the firstone out, last one off for a team
leader. Left under heavy enemyfire, and Scarface got shot up
really bad. And the, they theyhad 2 gunships. One was flown by
a lieutenant colonel, and, hisplexiglass got shot out. And

(47:37):
that night, we get back to thebar, and he's, like, cussing up
a storm.
I said, I'm sorry about yourhelicopter. He said, you guys,
every time I go in, myhelicopter just gets shot up.
It's hard to get them fixed. Hesays, bitch in the middle. I
bought them several rounds, and,still kept groaning and said,
look, colonel.
I'm sorry. That mean it wasColonel ro Lieutenant Colonel

(47:58):
Robinson. So I'm sorry, sir.Does that mean the next time
you're not gonna come? He said,no, we didn't say that.
Scarface always came for us. Weneeded him.

Sam Alaimo (48:07):
Why did the NVA tracker get so close to you that
he could touch your boot? I getwhy you didn't kill him, but why
didn't he try to kill you orraise the alarm?

John Stryker Meyer (48:17):
You know, I'm not sure. That's the $64,000
question. I think they knew theywere by themselves, and maybe he
didn't wanna die right away.Yeah. Because I know the I'm not
I'm not sure if he was the onethat was carrying a lantern.
Because those teams sometimeswhen they have maybe, again, I'm
not speaking from experiencebecause tonight you just can't
see them. But we had Lantusbefore it get close to us, and

(48:41):
that was really close. And Icould see them, but I just
forget because, like, after whathappened afterwards, I forgot
everything that happened before.We could see them when they
walked past. You know?
And I thought the other teammembers saw, but nobody else saw
but me.

Sam Alaimo (48:56):
You wrote at one point, I'm gonna quote you, I
had heard tiny droplets ofmorning dew landing on the
leaves above us. 6 months ago, Iwouldn't have heard a freight
train roll past me. Now dewdrops were my wake up call, end
quote. And that that youperfectly encapsulated the
sensory experience of being in acombat environment. I I wondered

(49:18):
with how intense your tourswere, did you ever try to
replicate that sort of extrasensory awareness?
Did you ever Were you able toreplicate it? Did you want to?

John Stryker Meyer (49:28):
No, never per se. I was just amazed
because that was that we had acouple other missions, but that
one mission on October 6th, thatwas the one. We we were up all
night, and we took turns, and atone point during the night, it
was my turn, and I heardsomething moving, because when

(49:53):
we set up our RON that night onOctober 6th, there had been a
tracker that got really close tous. He fired 1 round from his
his, SKS, and so we werehypersensitive. And around 2
o'clock, I I could hear somemovement.
And at one point, I heardmovement right in front of the
claymore that we had out. So Iwhispered in Don's ear. I said,

(50:18):
hey. We got something in frontof the claymore. Can I blow it?
And, he said no. I thought hesaid go. So it was 2 o'clock in
the morning, I blow off thisclaymore. Hep and Sal were
pissed, Don was pissed, butwhatever was in front of that
claymore, it went away and thatwas part of that, that mission.
So I was asleep when first lightcame, and that was when I had

(50:43):
that for I will never forget it.
I could I wonder what that noiseis. It sounded like a noise, but
that sensory amplification, inmy mind, it was the dew drops,
and that's what I could hear,and that's what woke me up. And
that happened time at the timewhen we'd be on the ground for
nights when there'd be moisturecoming down through the jungle.

Sam Alaimo (51:05):
One thing that strikes me when I listen to your
your SOG cast podcast or readthe books about SOG is the
willingness to accept casualtieson the American side. If if in
Afghanistan or Iraq, a tunedisappeared, there would be a
complete overhaul of tactics.What happened? What went wrong?
But the Vietnam in the VietnamWar, it seemed like a like a

(51:26):
grinder.
It was just full speed ahead. Nomatter what, we're not letting
up. I don't even know how tophrase it as a question, but
what what what did thatexperience feel like? Like, how
did it hit you to know thatrecon teams would vanish and
never be seen again, and juststill have to go out there on
missions voluntarily because youwere a volunteer the entire
time? What was that experiencelike?

John Stryker Meyer (51:47):
Well, we grew up watching World War II
and Korean War movies. So we hada sense of people like Audie
Murphy, Sergeant York andwartime stories where Americans
would stand tall for the rightcause. We knew we were the tip
of the spear at that point forour government and for those
missions. The top secretmissions having gone through all

(52:11):
the background, everythingchecks. So it was a big deal.
We knew that we were special,although we didn't talk about
that much. So regardless of whatthey threw at us, we had to
continue on with the mission oneway or the other, try to figure
out ways to improve the time onthe ground, to improve our odds,

(52:32):
what could we do? I mean, someguys like Dick Thompson, they
got to the point where, theywould not eat American food 3
days before mission, and theywould not shower or shave. They
wanted regular body odors. Andso that the regular body odors
would smell like anything else.
Whereas me, I wasn't brightenough like Dick. I was still

(52:56):
eating blurps and things likethat on the mission. And, there
was a couple of times wherewe've been training hard. I
would take a shower and then thenext day in the jungle, now on
afterthought, I think, well,that's pretty stupid. But back
then, we just didn't know anybetter.
But that was part of that. We'rehere. This is what the odds are
against us. How can we furtherthe mission unless let's keep

(53:20):
going? God and country, firstand foremost, you know?

Sam Alaimo (53:24):
So you were 1 0, that is the cream of the crop.
That's the God mode in SOG. Thatmeans you were the leader of a
team out there with completeautonomy. Did you have, or do
you have now like principles ofleadership that you exercised
while you were boots on theground that you tried to live up
to and tried to embody?

John Stryker Meyer (53:41):
Well, I learned from Spider Parks and
Pat Watkins, our senior NCOsfirst and foremost, and wants
them not to be a rigid militaryguy, particularly with special
forces, because we work withour, we call them the little
people, but it's a term ofaffection of affection. We would
work with them, but also we getto know them on a personal

(54:03):
basis. Like when Lynn was withthe America with with the 173rd
and a couple of other guys withtraditional American units, they
wouldn't get to know guysbecause they would lose them
maybe. They didn't wanna have afriendship to go through that
that terrible experience.Whereas with us on a team, we

(54:23):
got to know each other and thenany Americans that we lost, that
was part of the, unfortunatepart of the game.
I mean, Sam, today we're talkingin Southeast Asia from the
Vietnam War is 1573 Americanswho are still listed as missing
in action. Out of that, you'vegot 98 Green Berets that are

(54:47):
still listed as missing inaction. So we have out of 9858
are from SOG. Those are reconguide that includes Lane and
Owen from Idaho. These are GreenBerets that we'll never gonna
see again or hear from.
Their families will never hearanything. The 5th Special Forces

(55:07):
Group is putting together a 5thSpecial Forces Group War
Memorial at 5th Special Forcesat the at the Fort Campbell.
There's almost 800 Green Beretsthat are gonna be on that list.
So, yeah, it's it's a big never,and it hurt, but we had to go
on. We knew that if those guyswere there with us, they would

(55:29):
urge us to go on, try to improvethe battle, try to get a leg up
on the NVA anytime we could.

Sam Alaimo (55:35):
Who is your greatest mentor and how do they help you
grow?

John Stryker Meyer (55:38):
In spite of progress, first and foremost. I
mean, those 1st couple of weeks,I did so many things so wrong.
And, he was like a big brother,more than a team leader. Haley
raised his voice at me maybeonce or twice. And it was only
when I did something reallystupid as opposed to just being
regularly stupid.
He, and then later on when Ibecame the 10, and talking with

(56:02):
Sal through HAP about themission, mission prep, after
action, about the the men, tryto take care of them any way we
could. Everything from notnecessarily Sal, but some of our
younger guys, it could beanything from, getting their v d
taken care of, to give themweekend passes, whatever. But

(56:22):
you come together as a team. Andover time, you had that bond
there.

Sam Alaimo (56:27):
If you had to boil it down, what are 1 or 2
attributes of your SOG teammatesthat you most admired?

John Stryker Meyer (56:35):
Just the absolute sense of resolve to do
the mission, even though we wereup against, and we knew we were
up against harsh odds, but wehad Tac Air, we had our King
Beast, and we really thought wecould make a difference. We
tried our own way. Theleadership thing was we never

(56:56):
have a team member do somethingyou wouldn't do. Say the whole
thing about leading from thefront, in my case, I wouldn't
lead from the front because Iwas too big to be the point man.
So, and my V and the means werebetter.
So, but to listen to them andjust to watch the way they would
interact with their people, youtake care of them once in a

(57:18):
while, you got to crack the whipa little bit as a team leader,
but when you did it, you wouldexplain why. Now on missions,
once we were on the ground, youknow, the job was the mission. I
mean, sometimes you wouldn'ttalk for 2 or 3 days. And it
would be strictly hand signals,set up the RON, who's gonna take
watch, and then Sal would takecare of that because he would

(57:41):
tell everybody when. And, if Salwasn't there, it'd be FUC or
hep, and all of that stuff wasjust, prioritized.
And all that training just justpanned out and spent went
through thousands of rounds onthe range. So whenever you made
contact, now you weren't worriedabout your weapon or a bit other

(58:02):
than keeping it clean and, youhad muscle training. So if
you're in the middle of afirefight, you're doing things
as quick as you can to changethe magazine or whatever it
took. Use the m 79 round,grenades, and of course, tack
air. Use it to its bestadvantage.
Try to leave from the front.Never ask people to do things
you you wouldn't do. And again,I was very impressed with SPIRE

(58:26):
because when we were on theground, the team was so smooth
because we had worked so hard onthe range at night, did the 90
ambushes and all that kind ofstuff.

Sam Alaimo (58:36):
We talked about Lynn Black. Do you have another
mission that's kind of famous inthe SOG world you you think is
worth, talking about?

John Stryker Meyer (58:43):
Well, there's one that's more fun than
anything with, Lynn and theFrenchman, Doug Letourneau. They
had been in a target area, andthey're up there. And after the
2nd day, they could hearactivity in the jungle, and they
thought it was a path thatallowed because the path that
allowed were not as good as theNVA. So path that Lao was the

(59:07):
Laotian equivalent of the VietCong, but they weren't trained
as well as the Viet Cong, andcertainly not as well as the
NVA. So the second or third day,they moved, they could hear this
activity.
So finally, like on the 4th day,Lynn said he had enough. He put
the team online and they couldhear the movement coming towards

(59:28):
him. And they figured they hadthe hand grenade pins are
pulled, car 15's on fullautomatic, and it was
orangutans. A flock or group oforangutans have been following
the team. If they get donebreathing a sigh of relief,
meaning orangutans had neverseen white guys before, let

(59:48):
alone Laotian orangutans everseen in South Vietnamese.
So at one point, Lin was thereand he he scratched his armpit,
and the orangutans scratched hisarmpit. And so wherever Lin did,
the orangutan did. So at onepoint, Lynn flipped in the bird,
and the orangutan flipped in thebird back. But that's one of my

(01:00:09):
favorite, that's another LynnBlack story. And then on on
another occasion, the team hadbeen He and Doug were on a
mission in Laos, and they werenear Invisalign, and Doug had
somebody come up on a radio witha with a Spanish accent, and
said, RT Idaho, we know whereyou are, and we're going to come

(01:00:32):
and get you.
And Doug was going, who is this?Because it wasn't a combo check,
he thought maybe at first wasCovey coming for a combo check,
but the guy had a Spanishaccent. Well, Lynn turns to Doug
and goes, WTF. And Doug goes,oh, this guy's talking to me. He
says he knows where we are.
So Lingo's on the phone with aguy. He was a Cuban. And the guy

(01:00:54):
says, we know where you are.We're gonna come get you. And
Lingo, he goes, I got yourcoordinates.
So he read off the 6 digits andLingo, no. Let me give you the 8
digit coordinates. Come and getus motherfucker. Oh, he said, by
the way, your mother was a pisspoor prostitute because if she
was any good, you would have hada better job instead of landing

(01:01:14):
a layoff. The guy never came forhim.
Unbelievable. Oh, yeah. Lynn wasamazing.

Sam Alaimo (01:01:20):
Come up to the SOG cast. Do you have a podcast
where you interview people whoare in SOG or who are tangential
to SOG, air crew pilots? Whathas that meant to you, I I
guess, personally? Like, how hasthat deepened your tie with the
community? What have you learnednew from it?

John Stryker Meyer (01:01:35):
Well, learned a lot. Again, Sogcast
happened and is fundedcompletely by my favorite Navy
Seal, Jocko Willink. As youknow, I've had the honor of
being interviewed by Jocko 8times. And during the 7th 8
interviews, he kept talkingabout, let's do a thing called
SOGcast where we'll do more SOGinterviews. So the very last

(01:02:00):
interview that I did with Jockowas with a king bee pilot,
captain Ahn, who was one of hisamazing King Bee pilots.
At one point, he lost both handsafter a helicopter crashed, but
he had saved other teams. Hesaved Lynn Black, and, he may
have saved us once or twicebecause sometimes we get pulled

(01:02:22):
out, dropped off at the launchsite. We wouldn't even have a
chance to to interact with theair crews. At the end of it, On
leaves and Jocko goes, okay,let's get this podcast going. I
said, great.
I said, I'll get you some greenberets. We'll get some fat
pilots in here. He goes, no. No.No.
You're gonna interview. I go,me? I said, Jocko, with your

(01:02:43):
skill, your talent, and yourmoney, we could do this. He
goes, okay. I just realized thatI just bit off a little bit more
than I could chew.
So he and Echo and I, we weworked it out. And every saw a
cast, all the expenses, flyingpeople to, my house in Tennessee

(01:03:05):
for the interviews, aircraft,hotel reservations, meals, or if
they drive out, he'll pay forit. He's covered all of those
costs, and we've got 52 posted.Now they go up first on Spotify
and Apple as audios, and thenlater they'll post it as,
YouTube. So we've got 52 now upon on, Spotify and Apple, and

(01:03:30):
number 29 just went up on,YouTube.
27 and 28 were with Lynn Black.We went into that mission
further there. So an answer toyour question is for me, it's
really been fascinating. We'veinterviewed John Mullins who
spent time with the, OperationPhoenix, the Phoenix project,

(01:03:53):
and he was one of the the onlyguy we've interviewed who could
talk about it, and Phoenix wasthe great program. We really
hurt the Vietconginfrastructure, and John had
several tours of duty there.
And we talked to the king, 1king b pilot 2 king b pilots
now, and, Covey Riders, and, ofcourse, fellow Saw Guys, Dick

(01:04:15):
Thompson, Pat Watkins, SpiderParks. He's just so damn humble.
You know? He just I couldn't gethim to go far, but we talked
about the basics, and we had anhour plus interview with Spider.
That, of course is one of myfavorite because if he's just my
big brother, also my one zero.
If I stepped out of line, man,the sergeant major hat would go

(01:04:36):
on and I hear about it rightaway in clear on certain, very
certain terms.

Sam Alaimo (01:04:42):
I've listened to probably 45 of them, and I'm
about to finish up the rest. SoI I couldn't Enjoy. As well as
your book, Across the Fence.We'll do the last few questions
here. You've been through a lot.
You're still getting after it.What do you do to kinda prime
yourself for the day, for forpodcasting, for writing, for
everything you do?

John Stryker Meyer (01:04:58):
We live in Tennessee now, we have 5 acres.
We love it here, we love thepeople, and, so there's a lot of
work with the land. We got somefamilies nearby, and, those are
our top priorities. And then thepodcast, we try to pull them
together whenever we can. And Iget them over to Echo.
Echo puts it up online, and it'sjust been a wonderful

(01:05:19):
relationship. When I'm longgone, pushing up daisies in the
wilderness somewhere, thatpeople will turn to those with a
sense of appreciation forhearing, honest people talk
about the missions on theground.

Sam Alaimo (01:05:33):
What about 1 or 2 or maybe 3 books that have changed
your life?

John Stryker Meyer (01:05:36):
The Green Beret by Robin Moore. I mean,
holy smoke. Reading that book,it just changed my whole
attitude, and I figured I wouldlike to think I could fit in
with them. And even when Igraduated, it was like I just
stood there going, holy shit.I'm a real Green Beret now.
I can't believe it. You know? Ikept waiting for somebody to say

(01:05:59):
wake up from the, your dream,knucklehead. A book called
Bodyguard of Lies, which was thefirst major book about the,
World War 2 encryption with the,encryption devices that were top
secret. And there was, like,scenes that he portrayed,
including Winston Churchill,realizing that the Germans were

(01:06:24):
gonna bomb the town of Coventry.
And so there are people, whowere it was the Enigma project.
So the Enigma staff had brokenthe code, and they came and
said, look. We gotta tell peopleof Coventry, and Winston
Churchill said no. Because if wetell the people of Coventry,

(01:06:45):
there's German agents there, andthey'll all wanna know what led
to us warning the people aboutthe raid. And the bodyguard,
Elijah, had phenomenal detailson the enigma, the early days,
how they broke the code, and,what its impact was helping find
the German submarines andetcetera.

(01:07:06):
Amazing book.

Sam Alaimo (01:07:07):
Alright. How can people follow you? How can they
get your book? How can theyfollow the Sawcast?

John Stryker Meyer (01:07:12):
All the books are up on, Amazon. Just
punch in the John Stryker Meyeror Cross the Fence, it should
pop. And I have a website, aSog, s o g, chronicles.com. All
the books are there. We have alistings for all of our MiAs,
and most of the podcasts arethere.

Sam Alaimo (01:07:32):
Alright. I I can't tell you how much I appreciate
your time. I really do. Iappreciate everything you've
done for your service and, andeverything else.

John Stryker Meyer (01:07:38):
Well, thank you, Sam. Keep up the good work
there and, your other projectsthat we talked about before we
turned on the microphone. Keepup the good work. God bless you,
sir.

Sam Alaimo (01:07:47):
Likewise. Thank you.

John Stryker Meyer (01:07:48):
You're born.

Sam Alaimo (01:07:50):
That's it for this episode. If you wanna check out
more from the podcast, head to0eyes.com/nobell, where you can
see show notes, read more aboutour guests, and suggest guests
or topics of your own. Untilnext time, stay in the fight.
Don't ring the bell.