October 2, 2022 • 60 mins
Mark Heathco was born and raised in North Hollywood, California, went to North Hollywood High school, and played football for the North Hollywood Huskies In 1978. He joined the Army and went to Basic and advanced training at Fort Benning. Upon completion, his assignment was to South Korea, where he served in the 2ND Infantry Division from 1978 to 1991 with nine rotations to the Demilitarized Z or the DMZ. He had 385 patrols inside the DMZ. Mark now resides in Xenia, Ohio, with his family and writes books about his encounters with the North Koreans inside the DMZ, the U.S. Sector.
Mark Heathco is the author of “CALL SIGN PURPLE THREE” and “DEFCON 4”
Links:
https://www.facebook.com/mark.heathco /
http://callsignpurplethree.com/
https://www.instagram.com/callsignpurplethreellc/
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/can-a-playa-play--3433224/support.
Mark Heathco is the author of “CALL SIGN PURPLE THREE” and “DEFCON 4”
Links:
https://www.facebook.com/mark.heathco /
http://callsignpurplethree.com/
https://www.instagram.com/callsignpurplethreellc/
Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/can-a-playa-play--3433224/support.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
God is good, good good.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Yeah, I could have not been to the door of
my running through.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
The toy track.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
That's one another one to epipom God good and she's brother. No,
I'm till I'm about to drap, giving up a never.
Oh Mama didn't know me.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I can do on me.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
You haven't swing on me from above, felt the love,
the power who was there from the bell re beginning.
They never left the never. Never have the rn A
shop to the clothes on my back wood on my table.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
What is over me at night?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Walter, I'm gonna drip pup.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I should have been crazy by now, Daddy.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
I'm a grave by now good, should have been locked for.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Now, should have been talking for now.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
All the time, all the time, all the time. Set down.
But the B is a power And what li dude,
you don't talk about done wrong? But I don't do
the blues. I gotta dorong when I'm thinking I want
the boss.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
But just be.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Rest.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Yes, I'm I come, my brother of gods, and you'll
do the less. That's fine.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I'm about to talk about.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
This thing about it.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
They get some rook.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
I haven't shout about it.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I try to cut him off, but it's too many.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I'm talking Bennies.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
There's never any thing that I need. Indeed, I know
he will supply first over, I gotta should have been
broke for now year at the end of my rope
for now.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, it should have been throw for now.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I should have been a.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah. Welcome everyone, I'm a pump the brakes, right man, God,
it is good. I woke up today. And if you're
hear in my voice, guess what you woke up? Also,
welcome to the show you listen to kind of player
play And as usual, we had a fantastic show lined
up for you, very educational show. We're gonna be talking
(02:16):
about patrolling the US sector of the South Korea and
the military rise zone. You know, a lot of us,
well a lot of us. Let me just say that
they didn't have the opportunity to serve. We take a
lot of things for granted, you know, we wasn't there.
We really didn't know what happened, how it happened, and
(02:40):
it seemed like today we get a whole lot of misinformation,
you know, from the politicians that used to be politicians,
but nowadays they politicians. And that is you can tell
everybody you heard it from me anyway, I guess today
mister Mark heathcow actually from North Hollywood, He's gonna be
(03:03):
joining us and he's gonna be telling us about his
experience in South Korea, North Korea and what it was really, really,
really Like Mark's author, he has a book I'll call
calls Signed Purple three and Death Coon four. So with
that being said, let me see, is mister Heath co
(03:25):
with us? Mark? Are you with us now? I'm here, brother,
Thank you, sir, I appreciate you. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
All right, I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Well, I'm glad to.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
Have you, man.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
So you know, I know you got a wealth of
experience and like I just mentioned a moment ago, you
know a lot of things that went on and it's
still going on, and a lot of us people that
haven't been there, man, we don't really know what it's like.
So you get the opportunity to wait, that's up.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Well, a lot of stuff that happened over there when
I was there, it was all covered up man.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Well, like I said, I can imagine, man, because seemed
like we're living in the world today. You know, people
tell us what they want us to hear. And not
what we need to hear.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah, that's true, that's so true.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
So you went out, well you went out straight out
of high school. Correct in what seventy eight?
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah, August seven. I ended up in Korea in November
of seventy eight.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Tell us a little bit about what is it, because
I don't really know what it is. When you hear
people hear about boot camp and all that kind of stuff,
but they think boot camp is similar to you know,
the regular exercise people do at the gym and you know,
CrossFit training stuff like that. What lot of preparation did
you have to go through before going out and doing
(05:04):
your thing.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
We went through basic training, and that's just a medical, mental,
and physical training to get you prepared for the military.
It's a way of transforming you from the civilian life
into the military life. A lot of exercises, like you said,
(05:27):
but a lot of mental stuff. When I was in,
they were allowed to get in your face and do
whatever they wanted to do or if you didn't, if
you still didn't change, they could take you out back
behind the shed. Yeah, make you change.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
I meant actually putting hands on you, being physical. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Yeah, Well, the training most of the non times that
I had to train me in basic. Well, Vietnam vets,
so they had been in the Vietnam War, so they
knew what war was all about. So they knew what there.
They knew what they needed to get you trained up
to be like to be prepared manually and physically physically,
(06:20):
to you know, survive. H Well, it's very.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah, I can imagine. I can imagine. I kind of
wonder what if if I had a went into the service,
would I have enjoyed it, because you know, I like
to you know, blow up stuff and toys and stuff.
I kind of hate I kind of hate now that
I didn't go, you know, in hindsight, because when I
(06:52):
did sign up for the draft, you know, that was
like the beginning of the Vietnam situation. But when I
was filling out my little paperwork, you know, I had
hoop and cough, gang Green every other thing else I
could think of to keep from going because I was,
you know, submerging my music and that's what I really
wanted to do, and I didn't have to see myself.
(07:13):
I couldn't see myself going. But I really hated now
because I always wanted to fly planes and I figured
if I go ahead, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
I did about everything in there, and from driving tanks
to going to live fires, blowing stuff up. Everything. We
were cross trained with the well in Korea, I got
coss streams. The units were had in uh people embedded
from Special Forces and the Rangers and stuff when we
(07:49):
got there. That taught you different methods of how to
do your missions. So it was pretty exciting.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah. I was going to ask you that the different
branches of the service, I mean, did they all go
through the same type of training or different types of training.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Different? They're different. Like in the infantry levels I was in,
you had your basic infantry soldier. Then the next step
up would have been a ranger, okay, and then you
would have had Special Forces. And in between those tiers
you could have went airborne, you know, and and and
(08:33):
did the Then the rest of the other tiers that
been they were doing Special Forces or they're doing the Rangers.
It was it was I had scheduled myself when I
first came in to go airborne and then the arranger school,
but Korea stepped in and they they wanted me now
when I when I when I graduated from my advanced
(08:55):
training they they wanted me to come. Now. So there
I was one.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Airborne. I like you jumped out of an airplane to
see if the parachute work.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah, that's what it is. And you know when they
line up in the planes, When they line up in
planes like that, airborne guys, they line up real close
to each other. I mean you're you're you're real close
to each other.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
And when the when the jump master says go, you
don't have an option to step out of line, out
of the line, or hold up the line. It's just
like a candle of peas being pushed out of the
can just they just all you just get pushed out
all the way to the last guy.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
You can't change your mind and say no, I don't
want to go.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
You can't change your mind. There You're going regardless if
you want to go or not.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
That's pretty interesting. That's the rest. Well, Mark, I want
to ask you what type of patrol did you pull
in the DMZ? But I first want you to explain
to our listener is exactly what the DMZ is. I
know it stands for the Military's Eye zone, but what
is that exactly?
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, it's stands for the the military zone.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
But in South Korea it's one hundred and fifty one
miles long and about four meters wide, okay, and the
four meters is split in.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
The two four meters two kilometers. I'm talking about full
comes one and those two those four kilometers split into
two by two, okay. So there's a there's a US
sector and a rock Army sector, South Korean sector, and
then the North Korean said on the other side of it.
(10:55):
There's no fence line, it's just some signs the demarcation line, okay.
The demarcation line means you know, if you step over
that line, you're in North Korea and you could be shot.
So you have to know the terrain and you have
(11:15):
to know the area really good, okay, or know your
map ringing skills that we really sharp to know where
you're at on the map so you don't get disorientated,
you know, while you're inside the d m Z.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
So basically that's d m Z stands for a boundary
that you have to stay within because once you step
outside of that be fair game.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
That's it. It's a boundary. It's a it's an o
man's boundary. Okay. Anything can happen inside there. Okay, whatever
you want to imagine that to take place in the
military could happen inside the zone. They don't allow tanks
or heavy weapons inside the DMZ, but they will they
(12:07):
do let you patrol, okay inside although technically by the
armistice went off just the patrol the DMZ, but we did.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
So what type of patrols jump off in there?
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Uh, you have a day in the in the during
the daytime, you have day recons recon, you go on
your recon the area for your night ambushes, which take
place in the ninth there, your patrols run. They're twenty
four hours long. Used to be at the one time
there were three days long, but they gave it up
(12:46):
for twenty four hours and you do your day recon
and your night ambush in one day.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
So with that twenty four hours, I mean you basically
up all the time or you rest during that time.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yeah, we went in, we went into we had two
guard posts inside of the military zone, guard Post Colliered
and guard Post Sallet. My patrols that I ran, we
always went up into guard Post Olet. We'd get done.
The day recome would start like at ten or ten
thirty and you had to four o'clock or four point
(13:22):
thirty to go into the guard post select and then
you had downtime till about ten thirty at night, eleven
eleven o'clock at night to do your night start to
night ambush. And then your night ambush went end four
thirty five o'clock in the morning. And you had two
(13:43):
night ambushes that you did, two different locations, and you
would set up the patrol and the ambushes, and you
would basically you were doing every con at night, but
you were setting up an ambush because you were moving around.
You weren't you weren't static. You just seemed going to
one ambush and stay there all night you had to
(14:05):
move to another ambush.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
So question for you, Mark, is when I think about ambush,
it's almost like, I mean, I don't know if this
is the same, but when I think about ambush, it's
like I'm laying in and waiting for somebody to come
through where I could pounce on them. It's just the
same type of ambush or is it different.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
That's the same thing that we did, except for we
had snipers in our patrol and we had another set
of optics that we use inside the patrol to scan
the area. And if you saw an unidentified person out
(14:48):
there and it looks like he was coming towards the
patrol when he got within a certain distance of patrol
I'm thinking one hundred meters, maybe even fifty meters. And
then you had to request permission to fire from the
milk from the DMZ talk okay, and that had that
(15:08):
was the best to do that to fire on unidentified personnel,
you had to request permission to fire from three different
Oh so I want to say, oh so, okay, you
had a DMZ talk, the brigade talk in the division.
They had to all agree or actually brigade would give
(15:32):
you the permission to fire, okay, okay, but they would
have to unfight division that you were firing unidentified personnel.
And by the time that happened, if you were in
a firefight, it was over. A firefight maybe last like
fifteen seconds, twenty seconds, but if you're in that firefight,
(15:53):
it last forever. What I used to do is, well,
my guys, if we were taking hostile fire from from
your little krebs and they were taking potshot with us,
I didn't go through all that red tape, but it
was danger close to me and I didn't want my
guys to get hurt, so we just I just had
(16:14):
my snipers and everybody else following them, and I bit
the bullet on that. In the next one of them,
they came out in inspect. They got asked to whatever,
Well I wasn't you guys, you know, take a chance
to getting shot or die or not to.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Them, We're doing zero, which makes sense. So question again,
does the ambush come first or do you guys have
to see perpetrators a movement before you set it up?
Sound like you set up the ambush before you even
really know where you're setting it up at, or do
you know that prior.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Toe recon You go out and you roll locate you
do you do uh some checkpoints and then go to
your ambush site, the first ambush and the second ANU
the second ambush first, and then the first ambush okay,
and then you RP or release you release into the
yard past, and then you come out and do your ambush.
(17:12):
And what you what you just said is right. You
go into the ambush and you will lay wait to
see if anybody is going to any kind of movement
or somebody's trying to infiltrate across the border. Okay. If
they try to do that or attempt to do that,
then then you have to go through that whole rigor
(17:33):
more of asking for Rensing to fire. If he doesn't
shoot on you, you have to go through that, okay.
But they carry grenades, so you always can get away
with it. Well, they were, they were throwing grenades at
us or something, you know, and you can they turn,
you know, shoot at that individual. You're not allowed to
shoot towards the north. You're not allowed to point your
(17:57):
weapon towards the north, which I don't understand the whole
thing about that, but I pointed, I laid my ambushes
in and we were pointed north.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Okay. That's interesting as well, because if you're not allowed
to point your weapons north, who's to say that they
won't attack from the north.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
That's that was the theory of me. I said. And
during the daytime, during the day we gon I tried
to stay in hide, you know, the high positions when
we walked, like on the other side of the the
mountain or the other side of the little hills that
are in there, Okay, so they couldn't see us. So
it was cool to point our weapons that way, is
(18:41):
that towards the towards the north, so they couldn't. They
would take pictures of you if you did, and then
you'd end up in the armistice meeting and they try
to say that you would break the armies by pointing
the weapons, that doing the hospital act war.
Speaker 6 (19:02):
And so at night they they had a night vision
where they'd watch you come out, and what they did
is they'd count you guys in the patrol of them.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Then they would set up to use their tactics to
try to infiltrate into your patrol or watch you know,
shag your patrol, or even if they could kill a
US member and drag them back across the border and
then say that we were in North Korea and that
that they that's where they killed us, that's where they
(19:37):
killed that individual, and then that all that all goes two.
A big MAC meeting is a military armisis command meeting,
and we have to basically prove that we didn't do
it to the north, Okay, wasn't an active in other words,
where we'd have to go in there and apologize and
then for something that you didn't do.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
H well, I was just trying to figure out how
they're going to investigate that, what do they do, try
to find shellcasings or what they're looking at footprints? I mean,
how they're going to take somebody else's word or question
what you tell them.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
But once once you get into fireplace, they usually lock
it into that position for seven till morning. Okay, okay,
and then the whole patrol, your patrol you're in, comes
under the investigation for seventy two hours and break everybody
up so that they get a story from every individual
(20:36):
on the patrol, so that if so that the story matches. Okay.
In the meantime, they're out on the ambush site where
you're at out there, and like you said, they're collecting
shellcasing and they're trying to figure out which way we
were aiming to shoot. Okay, and if there's a body,
(21:00):
then that's a different story. You have to you have
to wrap the guy with a poncho and then put
a security perimeter around him, and you have to stay
you know, you're stripping down and get all important paperwork
and stuff off, but you have to basically guard this
(21:22):
guy who's dead until they come out the next morning.
And then you're still wrong. They're going to do the
seventy two hour thing, you kid uh and find out
if the story is right. And from that, from that
location where he's where he's lying in the in the
rice paddy or on the rice paddy guy, they can
(21:42):
get an idea of which way you're shooting.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Like I said, remember, they don't lie you to shoot
no more.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
That's interesting. They shall do it a whole lot of
investigation because that stuff that you just shared with us,
you know, we don't really see that on TV. You know,
some of the war stories and war movies, and still
get to see y'all hear about all of that. Well,
how many men are usually in a patrol?
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Usually you can have twelve, no less than six. The
reason you can't go less than six is to do
the Rock Army. They go out with four men patrols okay,
and they go out with six man patrols okay. So
if for some reason you were drifting to the Rock sector,
the Rock Army sector, the South Korean sector, and you
(22:37):
four men okay, they would probably take you as one
of their patrols. Or they may not. They may fire
you up. They might fire fire that patrol up. So
that's why we stated six. Now, the North Koreans always
infiltrated in they come out in five and then released
(23:01):
three into the sector, the US sector, and two would
go back to the guard post that they came from.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
And what was the purpose of that?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
The purpose of the three man patrol, I think, you know,
two of them, two of the guys of the three
was actually shagging a patrol or doing trying to get
a US soldier and dragging back across the border, or
(23:37):
watch the patrol. But the other guy that was in there,
I think he had a radio and he was mounting
in guys to make sure that they were doing look
they were supposed to be doing. That's the final phase
for their special forces in Korean special forces. So we
had a bunch of special forces rock our North Korean
(23:58):
special forces trying to infiltrate through a sector. Okay, and
one of them, I'm thinking one of them was probably
a greater or watch them to see what their tactics were,
how they were going about shagging the patrol or getting
in actually getting into the patrol, or just or watching
(24:22):
the patrol, you know, to get information, to gather information
how the US the patrols were operated. He was there
more practically just to keep it, keep an eye on.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Dragging dragging American across the border. Was that for uh?
Is that was that for like a trophy? Or was
that in order to start some type of conflict?
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Well that that's starts some kind of conflict. And they
they would take the body and take it to the
MAC meeting, okay, and put it out on display in
the macamine and saying that we UH tried to provoke
war against them by tossing the border and come into
(25:09):
the to the North Korean inspector. Okay. In actuality, what
the story would be is that they infiltrated into the
patrol one of the patrols, God forbid, and stab somebody
close whenever close to the MBL military do marcation line
and then just drug them back across the border. And
(25:37):
in the middle of it, it's just the military do
marcation line. We've got scient set up because on one
side it's in Korean and English. You know that this
is his origin. Go okay, that's what it means. And
on the other side is in Chinese and North Korean. Mhm.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Very interesting. Let me give a brief announcement for those
that just joined the show and listening. If you have
any questions, just press number one on your phone and
we'd be glad to let you join the conversation. And
if you're at home and like to join the conversation,
to call it number six for six nine to nine
twenty eight seventy. Just press number one on your phone
(26:21):
and we'd be glad to let you join in and
ask whatever questions you may have. All right, thank you
very much, Mark. Was there an A team and a
B team and what's the difference between the two.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Yeah, there was A and a B team. And that's
the reason you have an A and a B team
was the A team went first and they would give
fire or cover fire for the B team, which would
cross over the Rice Petty Dykes first. Okay. You never
crossed both teams over right open field or open Rice
(27:01):
Becky at the same time. Okay, because you never knew
it was on the other side. It could be an
ambush waiting for you on the other side. So you sent.
What I did with my patrol is I sent the
B team across first to set up security, and then
when they were set in place, you know, they would
flash me on the threshold and then I would go
(27:22):
at night, I'd bring my guys the A team across,
and then we continue on like that.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
So the A team and B Team is basically the
same training. It's just that they designated A and B.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
It's correct. You had in the patrol that we ran
in the DMZ. You had inside the makeup of the patrol.
You had two of each. Okay, you had a B
team sniper, an eighteen sniper, you had an eighteen R
TiAl to a regular operator, and a B team radio off.
(28:02):
You had an assistant patrol leader for the B team,
and you had the patrol leader in the A team,
So it did. You had a medic, only had one
medic though, so the medic was just we had to
pro take that guy.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Yeah. I was kind of wondering about that because if
you if you if you lost him, what did you
guys do? Because every man for himself.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Uh No, if we lost, if we got if you
gotten a real bad firefight, uh what I would do?
You know, we got in a bad fire firefight, and
I was taking candidly, Doc would have to be running
around under fire trying to take care of these guys.
But once you want to do is suppress the enemy.
(28:52):
You want to suppress him as best you can so
that he can do what he has to do. If
somebody gets ended while we're in the firefight. And I'm
telling you the medic brave man, well, I made mind
carrying them sixteen uh, but most of them carried at
forty five.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Yeah, forty five is good for about fifty meters.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Hit. That's what I was thinking, fifty minutes to hit
something or hit yourself. I mean, I don't think it's
gonna do much damage to somebody out there. Is fine.
Automatic weapons, you know, machine guns and stuff.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Another thing about them weapons that we had, the M sixteen,
the battalion that I was in, you had to have
the trigger mechanism, you know, the trigger mechanism in the
M sixteen. You had to have a tape them, okay,
and the the animal that you had had to have
(29:56):
a piece of tape one hundred miles hour tape what
do you call it? Duct tape over the top of it.
And the reason for that is they didn't want to
lose any rounds inside the DMC. So if the northcoreagees
they collect any kind of evidence that we're patrol in
that sector. Okay, then they can bring it to the
(30:19):
armistice meeting and say that they're violating the armistice agreement.
But they're they're they're violating too by patrolling and infiltrating
into our side that way. So we're both in the wrong,
but we're both doing it. The reason for the trigger
mechanism to be taped down they didn't want you to
(30:41):
discharge you all.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
So if you encounter the enemy and get in a fight,
you have to worry about untaping the trigger before you
can engage.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
You got it.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Okay, that might that split second, might be once that
second too much.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Yeah, that's right. So what I did is I had
my snipers not tape their weapons out. Okay, they were
in fourteens. I made them not tape the trigger mechanism down,
and I had myself and my ATL assistant patrol leader.
(31:24):
We didn't tape our weapons out, and these did the rtos,
but everybody else I had to tape out that the way.
We had some kind of fine form.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Wow, they sure made you guys follow a whole bunch
of rules, but the suspected enemy didn't have to go
by them. Same rules.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
No, No, we had to tape the equipment that we
carried into the DMZ had to all be taped down
and tied down. The canteen, the AMMO pouches, your compasses,
your flash lights, whatever you had on that equipment, go
(32:04):
bury equipment, the harness that you were had to be
all taped down and tied down. And that's for noise.
They said it was for noise depression for the you know,
which makes sense to me. Okay, But like you said,
you get in a firefight, they it come becomes a
(32:24):
paint in the butt.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
I can imagine, so or a bullet in the butt, what.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
You know, and you try to they they asked for
They don't ask for feedback from the patrols. They just
kind of what I thought was there were just kind
of c ya and their ass. Okay, we're covering their ass.
We're just trying to come up with stuff that there's
you know, guys sitting behind the desk saying, well, what
else do we need to do? What else do we
(32:55):
need do? What else? Will you know what I'm saying
who hadn't actually been out of the patrol.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
But isn't that the way it always is? I mean,
we're dealing with the same thing now with the government,
the people making decisions for how we live and not
actually living that way.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
So yeah, yeah, we didn't. We didn't have officers with us,
I really believe and to this day we didn't carry
We didn't. They didn't send officers out into the DMZ
because there has been too much red tape to say,
(33:33):
you know, if he got shot and died, or if
he lost the leg or something, to explain to the
parents why that happened, you know, and they couldn't just
say it was a training mission. Where the leadership inside
the patrols usually was an E six or an E
five and you had a spect for as the alternate
(33:55):
patrol leader and or any five if you're lucky.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
A plate play play like, we don't know what that
is because we don't, okay.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Well, in the rank structure, uh, an E six is
a just a staff sergeant okay. Okay, he's one step
higher than an ephive just a regular sergeant okay. And
then especialists respectful was a specialists. It's just the right
name specialists, okay. And those were the makeup or the
(34:31):
leadership inside the patrols. Because E seven's the the staffs
are are the seven I want to say, I can't
think of later now I've been out Solow. But the
E sevens they didn't new patrols. Uh, the the eights,
(34:53):
the they didn't new patrols. All the upper rank, all
the upper listed did not patrol the DMZ Okay.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
And that's the one I always wanted to know. How
is that determined? How is those ranks determined by a test?
I mean, how are those ranks determined?
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Oh, you get promoted by your time and service, and
then you have to go before the board, which is
a panel of enlisted soldiers. Okay, you have to go
before board, and like for East six, it goes up
to it goes you take a picture and you go
(35:36):
before the board. It goes before the board in DC
or something Arlington or somewhere that goes before the board
and they they decide if you become an E six
or this is when I was in Okay and the
same with these seven's and the eights, which was was
(35:57):
your those would have been your these sevens would have
been like your platoon services been there and that's a change.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
What makes you what qualifies you for that. I mean
just the time you've been it's in service or a
certain training or.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
At that time there was time and service.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Okay, So if I spend more time in service, I
could have a higher rank than you.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Yeah, And it doesn't mean it doesn't necessarily mean that
I'm more qualified than you. This means that I've been
in there longer than you.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Correct. Yeah, oh wow.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
That means you could have a dummy and it's been
in there a long time, and then it's not very
knowledgeable and could create some harm because you know he's
been in there a while. You know, you know a
lot of times, you know how people are just because
they got more time and they feel like they can
call shots don't necessarily mean that they qualified to do that.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
If we had a first round, it once months time
I was in we had a first arm. Okay, he's
the he's the top dog in the n c O
rotten list. Okay as a lost arm ranks Okay, he
was a rifted major. Okay. In other words, he got
kicked out and they broke him down to an EA.
(37:27):
He was, but he worked at a ro OTC school
or something like that, and he's r O T C
or something, and he was there and then he got
rifted out. He did something wrong and instead of kick
came out totally. They made him an eight. Okay. And
this guy didn't know nothing, Okay. All he knew was books,
(37:51):
that's all I got. The books on how to walk
around and complain about everything he did.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
M hm.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
And the officers weren't no better. You get your officers there.
You got some officers that had some experience and were
willing to listen to the n CEO. But a lot
of them from West Point. They were from West Point
and they were books smart, but they weren't hands on smart. Okay.
In other words, they believed in the book that they
(38:28):
got from West Point and the books that they read
and went to school and that they got in West Point.
But they actually didn't do any hands on training for me,
actually hands on. I mean they may have did it
at West Point in a controlled environment, but you put
them in the DMZ and all hell breaks. So that's
got a control the environment, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Yeah, that's what you find out where the heart is.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Yeah, that's why I think. Also I didn't then, we
didn't have, like I said, officers didn't do betrosal of this,
and neither did the senior n c os. We didn't
have reporters embedded with us. We didn't have none of
that good stuff. It was just just us and what
what what happened? What we used to say, what happened
(39:19):
to the tide of the DMZ is then standing for
the DMZ because you take it back to the to
the intelligence officer and he takes a report from you,
and he might end up in file for their team.
That can the garbage can?
Speaker 2 (39:35):
So tell me tell well, not me, but tell us.
The difference between a non commission officer and a commission officer.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Non commissioned officer is an n c O. He gets
his commission is through the ranks. Okay, you come up
through the ranks and the company commander promotes him, okay.
Officer a commissioned officer, it's commissioned through going through either
West Point or you're in combat or something and they
(40:08):
give you a field permission commission to be an officer. Okay.
They they get their commission once they finish the school
and stuff like at West Point. You just can't you
just can't go in like an n c O. I
think an NFL can become an officer, but he has
to go through the same kind of schooling that those
(40:33):
officers went through them and once that happens, he can
become an officer. But the difference is an uncommissioned officer
is an NFL is is You're You're more like the trainer.
You work with your guys all the time, You're always
around them in in naming term of like a supervisor,
(41:00):
and the officer is like the manager.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Okay, seemed like the non commissioned officer got more hands
on experience than the commission officer.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
That's correct. Usually what happened when an officer comes to
you union, Like in Korea, we get new officers every
year because it's a one year tour and you know,
they never been in correct before, some of them. So
it was it's up to the non commissioned officer to
(41:35):
kind of train him and guide him and show him,
you know what to do. Is in dunts are in
South Korea. Okay, if he listens, see nine times out
of ten they won't listen to you.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
But I see how the ego would be an issue
because they come out of school thinking they better and.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
It's funny because we would get we would be doing something,
some kind of training during the day, and you would
think the manager the officer would come around and see
what's going on. Right. Never, when I was there, every
(42:18):
dividual officer I was under but most of the time
they were never around. They were always doing some kind
of schooling or something okay, and so they were never around.
So it was it was the supervisor, the n c
O that was making sure the job was getting done
and done the right way and how to do it.
(42:39):
We would show guys how you show everybody how to
do it and what to do, and you know, you
go from there. In other words, then the n c
O guy, the n c O is the guy's got
his hands booty and the officairs you know if he
get didn't get his hands duty, but.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
You definitely gave me something. So now when I watch
some of these war movies and stuff, I have a
better understanding of how the players play because I can
see the commission officers coming out of West Point. They're
coming out with a ego and this book knowledge, but
they have no hands on experience. And then I can
see that the non commissioned officer and done a bunch
(43:20):
of tours and patrols and stuff and seeing people die
over the place, so he has a whole different level
of experience. And then here come this young whippo Staffords
snapper trying to tell him what to do, and they
don't really have a clue. But then because of their commission,
he has to kind of listen to him to a
certain extent. So I can see that'll be an issue
(43:42):
right there at big time.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
That's so true. And me, I spent ten years in
South Korea, okay, and I had a lot of patrols
up on the DMV too many to explain, okay. And
every time we went up on that, they would always
try to do it this way, that way, this way,
and I'm like, I would always bump heads with it.
(44:06):
He said, that's not gonna work. This is the way
it's done. This is the way it's supposed to be done.
And they're like, I'm going to change you right here.
You're going to change the DMZ regulation right here. You're
going to change butter borrowing tenants. Who gives you the
authority to do that? And he's like, well, Congress gives
(44:27):
me the authority to change it. And I'm like, no,
it doesn't work that way.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Wow, that made you his favorite person, didn't it? Oh?
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Yeah, I ended up Yeah, a lot of favorite persons
other mind, because you know it was I was basically
also when my guys were my men were around me,
they were seeing that somebody was sticking up with them,
you know, we just weren't rolling over and letting them
(45:03):
get away and do whatever they want to do with us.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
So, so when you were out on patrol, mark who
was who was in charge? Who was the leader? I was?
Speaker 1 (45:18):
I was the patrol leader, and and your rank was
five promotable D six.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Was there was there a second person?
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Yeah? Uh, my second person was in E five and
he was promotable D six. His name is Alan Hines.
He's in He lives in Virginia. Were keeping contact?
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Did he still a lot of action as well?
Speaker 1 (45:51):
When we did patrols, We didn't when I was with him,
when we did our bet there, we didn't see so
much action that time. But we saw a lot of
infiltration attempts, a lot of where they were trying to
just hassle us, you know, kind of scare us and
(46:14):
stuff with them. There was one time, one incident where
one tried to jump into my patrol. We were right
on the md L and he walked right up on
one of my guys and my guards pointed as him
sixteen at it was getting ready to shoot it when
the guy ran on too golf.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
So when they so when they do that, I mean,
do they have on the same type of clothing attire,
I mean gear that you have on when they try
to infiltrate it, They've got their stuff on. I can't
see him just walking up with their uniforms on trying
to do that.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
Or do they they they when they walk in when
they're infiltrating. It depends what the weather is. If the
moon's out a little bright, then they're gonna they're gonna
wear the same kind of guard our boat, the same
kind of pose that we have. Okay, same kind of
the uniform. Okay, so they can get close and get
try to get into a patrol. But if there's no
(47:10):
room and it's pitch black, then they were black. Okay,
they were black uniforms.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
So what's the distance between man and man and the patrol.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
Arm arm LA at the night? During the day, it's like, uh,
five to ten meters, it could be more than that.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Yeah, I was just wonderful. Seem like they'd have to
they would have to be kind of ballsy to try to,
you know, just walk up in there and play like
he's one of y'all.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
You know, well, what it is, Well, remember I told
you that when we came to a Rice Penny dyke,
B team will go across, and then Alpha team will
go across. Okay, what it is is they lie in
the dyke or they lie on the other side, and
while they're business setting up security. You know, they kind
of scramble into the security, into the into the formation,
(48:12):
or they'll the line on the dykes and as you're walking,
the last guy across is supposed to be pulling the
rear security keeping the line on the rear. He'll get in.
He'll get in between you and try to walk that way.
Then we always every time I did a rice Paddy
dyke cross me, I always got a head count. Okay,
(48:33):
where you just count heads how many people are in here?
You should have twelve people, that's what you said.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Now.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
It was the one time I crossed the dyke and
I had the radar site give me it because I
just had you know, you have a gut feeling in
your gut. I just had a gut feeling, and I
asked him to pull a head count for me, how
many people seeing my pool? And they go, well, you
got fourteen and I'm like fourteen, I only got twelve,
(49:01):
and they go, well, there's two stragglers behind you. Okay.
So we set up on the ambush side on the
other side, real fast of that bike and waiting for
these guys to come. And they never came across because
they they knew, they knew I would have shot them.
I want to shine with you.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
How big a danger was? How big of danger was landmines?
You know, because we see a lot of that on TV.
I mean, is that a concern for you guys when
you're doing that walking across an open spaces?
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Well they had yeah, they had all the minefields marked
when they had a marked and they didn't have a
mark okay. But for the most part, we never I never,
in all the three hundred and eighty five patrols that
I've done, I've never had a problem with running in
the mind, but in the Petralia.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
So I guess that was a blessed Yeah. Did you
always hear you always hear about my mind? Or some
vehicle running over a land mine.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
Well what yeah, those were like back in the day
before I got there. The North Koreans they had box
mines and two sticks and he and t in there
and stuff and their pressure pressure mines and they go
out there and dig a hole or something put it
in your patrol on so somebody would step on them
and lift your foot boom it goes off. They call
(50:30):
them box mines. Uh. But then I never seen run across.
I mean I ran in. I ran across some of those, okay,
but I haven't. I didn't ever run across like a
tank mine or a vehicle mine or something like that.
Although we had we had the trucks standing bag down
(50:53):
in the flingline, so.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Wow, it seemed like those tanks. Uh, it would be
fun to drive, you know. I spent a little time
down at Fort Bliss. I was a physical instructor for
one period, and I used to see a lot of
those big tanks and all the gear that was at
(51:17):
their disposal. The only thing I didn't understand is why
they had all these other countries used to come to
Fort Bliss for training, And I'm like, why you let
these countries in your house, and then you always talked
about espionage and spies and stuff. If I don't want
you to know what I had going on in my house,
I don't think i'd invite you in my house. I
(51:37):
never did understand that about you see all these other
different countries down in Fort Bliss training on US equipment
and artillery, different devices. I never did understand that.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
That's it. I don't understand it. But it's diplomatic, that's
all I can say. That's something that they do. And
let them people, even these people would go to war with,
have been to our schools and learned how to our
war schools and stuff, and learned how to fight wars
and stuff, you know, and then we we end up
(52:13):
going to war with.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
I mean with our equipment stuff, equipment.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
It's like you said too, I mean we've we've given
equipment to some of these rogue states out there that
have our equipment and they've had they've got our war
training behind them, and then they want to go to wars. None.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
Yeah, it makes absolutely no sense to me. Did you
take that? Did you take a report? Did you guys
have a reporter out with you?
Speaker 1 (52:50):
No, we never had no report reporters with us at all.
The only reporter we had was a pen and a
piece of paper. Lope, Pad, I'm telling you the government
this truthfully, this is the truth. Uncle Sam had his
own private war going on. When I was there inside
(53:12):
the de Militaris of South Korea, there was there was.
I mean, they had that so bottled up, man. You
you you couldn't get a leak out at all. It was.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
Unfortunately, the government continues to have their own war going on.
They just tell us about it after the fact.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
Yeah, yep, yeah, after the fact.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
Well, Mark, we got a few minutes left on the show,
But I want you to talk a little bit about
your book called Signed Purple three and Death Kind for.
Speaker 1 (53:50):
Well, those two books are about patrolling the US center
of the DMZ, of the South Korean DMZ. That's the
oft time. Purple three is an actual memoir of one
of one of the patrols that I put. Okay, just
one death Come four is kind of like it's a story,
(54:15):
but it's it's it's got actual events in it that happened.
But I had to make it a fiction book because
I didn't want Uncle Sam knocking on my door saying,
why are you writing all this stuff up. They told
me twenty five years I could write it was clear,
so I didn't think it would happen, but I didn't
want to take any chances. But both books, Death Cop
(54:38):
four is just a little book. It's it's only made
sixty seven pages long, but it's action packed, okay. Call
Time Purple three is like two hundred and some pages long,
and it it breaks down how we prepped, how we
rehearsed inspects and doing actually doing the control, the day, recons,
(55:04):
the night ambushes, the guard pods and warriorbaks, where we stayed.
That it breaks down everything.
Speaker 2 (55:12):
Okay, Well, let everybody know where they can go get
a copy.
Speaker 1 (55:16):
All those books are available everywhere on the det Uh.
You can walk in any bookstore and request it and
it's print on the man. I mean, they're they're they're
available everywhere, and I have also for the military folks,
they're available on one hundred and forty four military PSS
and b x's across the around the world.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
Well, that's fantastic, and everybody out there, let everybody know
where you heard the show with mister Mark Haith Cole
and hopefully he was able to answer some questions and
give you some insight on really what took place there,
and I know I definitely learned some things.
Speaker 1 (55:59):
M Mark.
Speaker 2 (56:00):
We definitely gonna appreciate you, man, and wish you the
best out there, man, and continue telling a story. And
I hope we don't end up backing another World war
no time soon. So unfortunately, seem like this country only
prospers when they fighting somebody.
Speaker 1 (56:18):
Yeah, well, I appreciate being on the show, and I
appreciate passing information. Hopefully people learn something from it, not
just thinking we just pulled guard duty up on the DMCON.
That's the only thing that takes me off is a
lot of people I run into, Oh you only pulled
guard duty up there. I don't get in to fight
(56:41):
with him or argue with them. I just walk away.
Speaker 2 (56:45):
Well, you know, people that don't know don't know. Unfortunately,
that's the crime in this country in which we live.
You know, people actually think they know more than what
they do. But you asked them a question, when was
they there? When were you there?
Speaker 1 (57:01):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (57:02):
And then they mouth drop open because they have nothing
to say.
Speaker 1 (57:06):
Yeah. Yeah, but we'll just give you to wish.
Speaker 2 (57:11):
You the best, man, and you be safe out there
and continue to pass your message. Man again, we'll appreciate
you spending time with us. Man, it was great, all right.
Speaker 1 (57:23):
I had a great time with you guys. God blessed,
and keep preaching for the stars.
Speaker 2 (57:29):
Man will do, We'll do. And for those of you
to join us late. This show will be available worldwide
in about two minutes, so you have no excuse not
to hear the show. And if you have any problems,
ask your mama, ask your daddy, ask your neighbor across
the street. And if he don't know, as the man
at the gas station it's the supermarket, somebody'll be able
(57:50):
to tell you. We can hear this show. So it's
available everywhere. Like I said this guys, you guys next
week and put you on on this on the.
Speaker 4 (58:02):
A loading bass go softegue bars. I give the call
to pet the cars on my buffet. Yet my life
was tossed and from the top of the seat of
paint again a strange I refrain the tom.
Speaker 3 (58:13):
I couldn't make it, couldn't take it.
Speaker 1 (58:15):
Didn't want to fake it. I had to break it.
Speaker 4 (58:17):
I was stuck and.
Speaker 1 (58:18):
Couldn't shake it.
Speaker 4 (58:19):
I tried to keep it on the wather for my
life of me all I try to stuff trouble her
the misery. Why day I heard saking patient sitting there
down and.
Speaker 1 (58:28):
And he will come with no dinner if.
Speaker 2 (58:29):
You will all I said, okay.
Speaker 4 (58:31):
I told him I was sorry for the way I lived.
He said there that everyone I've done, he would forgive
now no weapon.
Speaker 1 (58:37):
Want driving the get the hell? Can something down it
from his word, I'm gonna swell it.
Speaker 4 (58:42):
Come, highly recommend it. If you think, release, but deny
and you'll believe.
Speaker 1 (59:08):
I did that three almost upon a time I.
Speaker 2 (59:12):
Was flying and couldn't find I don't wait.
Speaker 1 (59:15):
No the past.
Speaker 4 (59:16):
The peoples of mind stepping, said tim and study good
there it said things.
Speaker 1 (59:20):
I had no wiss.
Speaker 2 (59:21):
Yeah, I was selling.
Speaker 1 (59:22):
I didn't give it.
Speaker 2 (59:23):
You know what.
Speaker 1 (59:24):
I didn't care for self control any time or anywhere.
Speaker 4 (59:28):
One went to the dead like he was my homey
sawbody session from the mirror and didn't know anything but
God bless oh my.
Speaker 1 (59:37):
I let me go. He took control.
Speaker 2 (59:39):
Not forever.
Speaker 4 (59:40):
They never put together for the promise never to forsake me,
a play me.
Speaker 3 (59:44):
There's nothing bad in the presence of one, and only
stay in the.
Speaker 4 (59:49):
Proper place and that's for me. Love me unto thee
I bout I'm never humble it to the one who
gave me.
Speaker 1 (59:55):
Flye up under me makes a bot
God is good, good good.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Yeah, I could have not been to the door of
my running through.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
The toy track.
Speaker 3 (00:21):
That's one another one to epipom God good and she's brother. No,
I'm till I'm about to drap, giving up a never.
Oh Mama didn't know me.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
I can do on me.
Speaker 3 (00:33):
You haven't swing on me from above, felt the love,
the power who was there from the bell re beginning.
They never left the never. Never have the rn A
shop to the clothes on my back wood on my table.
Speaker 2 (00:47):
What is over me at night?
Speaker 1 (00:48):
Walter, I'm gonna drip pup.
Speaker 2 (00:51):
I should have been crazy by now, Daddy.
Speaker 4 (00:54):
I'm a grave by now good, should have been locked for.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Now, should have been talking for now.
Speaker 3 (01:06):
All the time, all the time, all the time. Set down.
But the B is a power And what li dude,
you don't talk about done wrong? But I don't do
the blues. I gotta dorong when I'm thinking I want
the boss.
Speaker 4 (01:24):
But just be.
Speaker 1 (01:26):
Rest.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Yes, I'm I come, my brother of gods, and you'll
do the less. That's fine.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
I'm about to talk about.
Speaker 4 (01:32):
This thing about it.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
They get some rook.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
I haven't shout about it.
Speaker 3 (01:35):
I try to cut him off, but it's too many.
Speaker 2 (01:37):
I'm talking Bennies.
Speaker 3 (01:38):
There's never any thing that I need. Indeed, I know
he will supply first over, I gotta should have been
broke for now year at the end of my rope
for now.
Speaker 1 (01:49):
Yeah, it should have been throw for now.
Speaker 3 (01:52):
I should have been a.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
Yeah. Welcome everyone, I'm a pump the brakes, right man, God,
it is good. I woke up today. And if you're
hear in my voice, guess what you woke up? Also,
welcome to the show you listen to kind of player
play And as usual, we had a fantastic show lined
up for you, very educational show. We're gonna be talking
(02:16):
about patrolling the US sector of the South Korea and
the military rise zone. You know, a lot of us,
well a lot of us. Let me just say that
they didn't have the opportunity to serve. We take a
lot of things for granted, you know, we wasn't there.
We really didn't know what happened, how it happened, and
(02:40):
it seemed like today we get a whole lot of misinformation,
you know, from the politicians that used to be politicians,
but nowadays they politicians. And that is you can tell
everybody you heard it from me anyway, I guess today
mister Mark heathcow actually from North Hollywood, He's gonna be
(03:03):
joining us and he's gonna be telling us about his
experience in South Korea, North Korea and what it was really, really,
really Like Mark's author, he has a book I'll call
calls Signed Purple three and Death Coon four. So with
that being said, let me see, is mister Heath co
(03:25):
with us? Mark? Are you with us now? I'm here, brother,
Thank you, sir, I appreciate you. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
All right, I'm glad to be here.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
Well, I'm glad to.
Speaker 4 (03:41):
Have you, man.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
So you know, I know you got a wealth of
experience and like I just mentioned a moment ago, you
know a lot of things that went on and it's
still going on, and a lot of us people that
haven't been there, man, we don't really know what it's like.
So you get the opportunity to wait, that's up.
Speaker 1 (04:04):
Well, a lot of stuff that happened over there when
I was there, it was all covered up man.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Well, like I said, I can imagine, man, because seemed
like we're living in the world today. You know, people
tell us what they want us to hear. And not
what we need to hear.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah, that's true, that's so true.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
So you went out, well you went out straight out
of high school. Correct in what seventy eight?
Speaker 1 (04:35):
Yeah, August seven. I ended up in Korea in November
of seventy eight.
Speaker 2 (04:42):
Tell us a little bit about what is it, because
I don't really know what it is. When you hear
people hear about boot camp and all that kind of stuff,
but they think boot camp is similar to you know,
the regular exercise people do at the gym and you know,
CrossFit training stuff like that. What lot of preparation did
you have to go through before going out and doing
(05:04):
your thing.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
We went through basic training, and that's just a medical, mental,
and physical training to get you prepared for the military.
It's a way of transforming you from the civilian life
into the military life. A lot of exercises, like you said,
(05:27):
but a lot of mental stuff. When I was in,
they were allowed to get in your face and do
whatever they wanted to do or if you didn't, if
you still didn't change, they could take you out back
behind the shed. Yeah, make you change.
Speaker 2 (05:50):
I meant actually putting hands on you, being physical. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (05:55):
Yeah, Well, the training most of the non times that
I had to train me in basic. Well, Vietnam vets,
so they had been in the Vietnam War, so they
knew what war was all about. So they knew what there.
They knew what they needed to get you trained up
to be like to be prepared manually and physically physically,
(06:20):
to you know, survive. H Well, it's very.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Yeah, I can imagine. I can imagine. I kind of
wonder what if if I had a went into the service,
would I have enjoyed it, because you know, I like
to you know, blow up stuff and toys and stuff.
I kind of hate I kind of hate now that
I didn't go, you know, in hindsight, because when I
(06:52):
did sign up for the draft, you know, that was
like the beginning of the Vietnam situation. But when I
was filling out my little paperwork, you know, I had
hoop and cough, gang Green every other thing else I
could think of to keep from going because I was,
you know, submerging my music and that's what I really
wanted to do, and I didn't have to see myself.
(07:13):
I couldn't see myself going. But I really hated now
because I always wanted to fly planes and I figured
if I go ahead, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1 (07:28):
I did about everything in there, and from driving tanks
to going to live fires, blowing stuff up. Everything. We
were cross trained with the well in Korea, I got
coss streams. The units were had in uh people embedded
from Special Forces and the Rangers and stuff when we
(07:49):
got there. That taught you different methods of how to
do your missions. So it was pretty exciting.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
Yeah. I was going to ask you that the different
branches of the service, I mean, did they all go
through the same type of training or different types of training.
Speaker 1 (08:09):
Different? They're different. Like in the infantry levels I was in,
you had your basic infantry soldier. Then the next step
up would have been a ranger, okay, and then you
would have had Special Forces. And in between those tiers
you could have went airborne, you know, and and and
(08:33):
did the Then the rest of the other tiers that
been they were doing Special Forces or they're doing the Rangers.
It was it was I had scheduled myself when I
first came in to go airborne and then the arranger school,
but Korea stepped in and they they wanted me now
when I when I when I graduated from my advanced
(08:55):
training they they wanted me to come. Now. So there
I was one.
Speaker 2 (09:03):
Airborne. I like you jumped out of an airplane to
see if the parachute work.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Yeah, that's what it is. And you know when they
line up in the planes, When they line up in
planes like that, airborne guys, they line up real close
to each other. I mean you're you're you're real close
to each other.
Speaker 2 (09:24):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (09:25):
And when the when the jump master says go, you
don't have an option to step out of line, out
of the line, or hold up the line. It's just
like a candle of peas being pushed out of the
can just they just all you just get pushed out
all the way to the last guy.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
You can't change your mind and say no, I don't
want to go.
Speaker 1 (09:50):
You can't change your mind. There You're going regardless if
you want to go or not.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
That's pretty interesting. That's the rest. Well, Mark, I want
to ask you what type of patrol did you pull
in the DMZ? But I first want you to explain
to our listener is exactly what the DMZ is. I
know it stands for the Military's Eye zone, but what
is that exactly?
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Yeah, it's stands for the the military zone.
Speaker 5 (10:23):
But in South Korea it's one hundred and fifty one
miles long and about four meters wide, okay, and the
four meters is split in.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
The two four meters two kilometers. I'm talking about full
comes one and those two those four kilometers split into
two by two, okay. So there's a there's a US
sector and a rock Army sector, South Korean sector, and
then the North Korean said on the other side of it.
(10:55):
There's no fence line, it's just some signs the demarcation line, okay.
The demarcation line means you know, if you step over
that line, you're in North Korea and you could be shot.
So you have to know the terrain and you have
(11:15):
to know the area really good, okay, or know your
map ringing skills that we really sharp to know where
you're at on the map so you don't get disorientated,
you know, while you're inside the d m Z.
Speaker 2 (11:33):
So basically that's d m Z stands for a boundary
that you have to stay within because once you step
outside of that be fair game.
Speaker 1 (11:44):
That's it. It's a boundary. It's a it's an o
man's boundary. Okay. Anything can happen inside there. Okay, whatever
you want to imagine that to take place in the
military could happen inside the zone. They don't allow tanks
or heavy weapons inside the DMZ, but they will they
(12:07):
do let you patrol, okay inside although technically by the
armistice went off just the patrol the DMZ, but we did.
Speaker 2 (12:20):
So what type of patrols jump off in there?
Speaker 1 (12:24):
Uh, you have a day in the in the during
the daytime, you have day recons recon, you go on
your recon the area for your night ambushes, which take
place in the ninth there, your patrols run. They're twenty
four hours long. Used to be at the one time
there were three days long, but they gave it up
(12:46):
for twenty four hours and you do your day recon
and your night ambush in one day.
Speaker 2 (12:51):
So with that twenty four hours, I mean you basically
up all the time or you rest during that time.
Speaker 1 (13:00):
Yeah, we went in, we went into we had two
guard posts inside of the military zone, guard Post Colliered
and guard Post Sallet. My patrols that I ran, we
always went up into guard Post Olet. We'd get done.
The day recome would start like at ten or ten
thirty and you had to four o'clock or four point
(13:22):
thirty to go into the guard post select and then
you had downtime till about ten thirty at night, eleven
eleven o'clock at night to do your night start to
night ambush. And then your night ambush went end four
thirty five o'clock in the morning. And you had two
(13:43):
night ambushes that you did, two different locations, and you
would set up the patrol and the ambushes, and you
would basically you were doing every con at night, but
you were setting up an ambush because you were moving around.
You weren't you weren't static. You just seemed going to
one ambush and stay there all night you had to
(14:05):
move to another ambush.
Speaker 2 (14:07):
So question for you, Mark, is when I think about ambush,
it's almost like, I mean, I don't know if this
is the same, but when I think about ambush, it's
like I'm laying in and waiting for somebody to come
through where I could pounce on them. It's just the
same type of ambush or is it different.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
That's the same thing that we did, except for we
had snipers in our patrol and we had another set
of optics that we use inside the patrol to scan
the area. And if you saw an unidentified person out
(14:48):
there and it looks like he was coming towards the
patrol when he got within a certain distance of patrol
I'm thinking one hundred meters, maybe even fifty meters. And
then you had to request permission to fire from the
milk from the DMZ talk okay, and that had that
(15:08):
was the best to do that to fire on unidentified personnel,
you had to request permission to fire from three different
Oh so I want to say, oh so, okay, you
had a DMZ talk, the brigade talk in the division.
They had to all agree or actually brigade would give
(15:32):
you the permission to fire, okay, okay, but they would
have to unfight division that you were firing unidentified personnel.
And by the time that happened, if you were in
a firefight, it was over. A firefight maybe last like
fifteen seconds, twenty seconds, but if you're in that firefight,
(15:53):
it last forever. What I used to do is, well,
my guys, if we were taking hostile fire from from
your little krebs and they were taking potshot with us,
I didn't go through all that red tape, but it
was danger close to me and I didn't want my
guys to get hurt, so we just I just had
(16:14):
my snipers and everybody else following them, and I bit
the bullet on that. In the next one of them,
they came out in inspect. They got asked to whatever,
Well I wasn't you guys, you know, take a chance
to getting shot or die or not to.
Speaker 2 (16:32):
Them, We're doing zero, which makes sense. So question again,
does the ambush come first or do you guys have
to see perpetrators a movement before you set it up?
Sound like you set up the ambush before you even
really know where you're setting it up at, or do
you know that prior.
Speaker 1 (16:50):
Toe recon You go out and you roll locate you
do you do uh some checkpoints and then go to
your ambush site, the first ambush and the second ANU
the second ambush first, and then the first ambush okay,
and then you RP or release you release into the
yard past, and then you come out and do your ambush.
(17:12):
And what you what you just said is right. You
go into the ambush and you will lay wait to
see if anybody is going to any kind of movement
or somebody's trying to infiltrate across the border. Okay. If
they try to do that or attempt to do that,
then then you have to go through that whole rigor
(17:33):
more of asking for Rensing to fire. If he doesn't
shoot on you, you have to go through that, okay.
But they carry grenades, so you always can get away
with it. Well, they were, they were throwing grenades at
us or something, you know, and you can they turn,
you know, shoot at that individual. You're not allowed to
shoot towards the north. You're not allowed to point your
(17:57):
weapon towards the north, which I don't understand the whole
thing about that, but I pointed, I laid my ambushes
in and we were pointed north.
Speaker 2 (18:09):
Okay. That's interesting as well, because if you're not allowed
to point your weapons north, who's to say that they
won't attack from the north.
Speaker 1 (18:21):
That's that was the theory of me. I said. And
during the daytime, during the day we gon I tried
to stay in hide, you know, the high positions when
we walked, like on the other side of the the
mountain or the other side of the little hills that
are in there, Okay, so they couldn't see us. So
it was cool to point our weapons that way, is
(18:41):
that towards the towards the north, so they couldn't. They
would take pictures of you if you did, and then
you'd end up in the armistice meeting and they try
to say that you would break the armies by pointing
the weapons, that doing the hospital act war.
Speaker 6 (19:02):
And so at night they they had a night vision
where they'd watch you come out, and what they did
is they'd count you guys in the patrol of them.
Speaker 1 (19:14):
Then they would set up to use their tactics to
try to infiltrate into your patrol or watch you know,
shag your patrol, or even if they could kill a
US member and drag them back across the border and
then say that we were in North Korea and that
that they that's where they killed us, that's where they
(19:37):
killed that individual, and then that all that all goes two.
A big MAC meeting is a military armisis command meeting,
and we have to basically prove that we didn't do
it to the north, Okay, wasn't an active in other words,
where we'd have to go in there and apologize and
then for something that you didn't do.
Speaker 2 (19:58):
H well, I was just trying to figure out how
they're going to investigate that, what do they do, try
to find shellcasings or what they're looking at footprints? I mean,
how they're going to take somebody else's word or question
what you tell them.
Speaker 1 (20:14):
But once once you get into fireplace, they usually lock
it into that position for seven till morning. Okay, okay,
and then the whole patrol, your patrol you're in, comes
under the investigation for seventy two hours and break everybody
up so that they get a story from every individual
(20:36):
on the patrol, so that if so that the story matches. Okay.
In the meantime, they're out on the ambush site where
you're at out there, and like you said, they're collecting
shellcasing and they're trying to figure out which way we
were aiming to shoot. Okay, and if there's a body,
(21:00):
then that's a different story. You have to you have
to wrap the guy with a poncho and then put
a security perimeter around him, and you have to stay
you know, you're stripping down and get all important paperwork
and stuff off, but you have to basically guard this
(21:22):
guy who's dead until they come out the next morning.
And then you're still wrong. They're going to do the
seventy two hour thing, you kid uh and find out
if the story is right. And from that, from that
location where he's where he's lying in the in the
rice paddy or on the rice paddy guy, they can
(21:42):
get an idea of which way you're shooting.
Speaker 2 (21:45):
Okay.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Like I said, remember, they don't lie you to shoot
no more.
Speaker 2 (21:50):
That's interesting. They shall do it a whole lot of
investigation because that stuff that you just shared with us,
you know, we don't really see that on TV. You know,
some of the war stories and war movies, and still
get to see y'all hear about all of that. Well,
how many men are usually in a patrol?
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Usually you can have twelve, no less than six. The
reason you can't go less than six is to do
the Rock Army. They go out with four men patrols okay,
and they go out with six man patrols okay. So
if for some reason you were drifting to the Rock sector,
the Rock Army sector, the South Korean sector, and you
(22:37):
four men okay, they would probably take you as one
of their patrols. Or they may not. They may fire
you up. They might fire fire that patrol up. So
that's why we stated six. Now, the North Koreans always
infiltrated in they come out in five and then released
(23:01):
three into the sector, the US sector, and two would
go back to the guard post that they came from.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
And what was the purpose of that?
Speaker 1 (23:15):
The purpose of the three man patrol, I think, you know,
two of them, two of the guys of the three
was actually shagging a patrol or doing trying to get
a US soldier and dragging back across the border, or
(23:37):
watch the patrol. But the other guy that was in there,
I think he had a radio and he was mounting
in guys to make sure that they were doing look
they were supposed to be doing. That's the final phase
for their special forces in Korean special forces. So we
had a bunch of special forces rock our North Korean
(23:58):
special forces trying to infiltrate through a sector. Okay, and
one of them, I'm thinking one of them was probably
a greater or watch them to see what their tactics were,
how they were going about shagging the patrol or getting
in actually getting into the patrol, or just or watching
(24:22):
the patrol, you know, to get information, to gather information
how the US the patrols were operated. He was there
more practically just to keep it, keep an eye on.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
Dragging dragging American across the border. Was that for uh?
Is that was that for like a trophy? Or was
that in order to start some type of conflict?
Speaker 1 (24:48):
Well that that's starts some kind of conflict. And they
they would take the body and take it to the
MAC meeting, okay, and put it out on display in
the macamine and saying that we UH tried to provoke
war against them by tossing the border and come into
(25:09):
the to the North Korean inspector. Okay. In actuality, what
the story would be is that they infiltrated into the
patrol one of the patrols, God forbid, and stab somebody
close whenever close to the MBL military do marcation line
and then just drug them back across the border. And
(25:37):
in the middle of it, it's just the military do
marcation line. We've got scient set up because on one
side it's in Korean and English. You know that this
is his origin. Go okay, that's what it means. And
on the other side is in Chinese and North Korean. Mhm.
Speaker 2 (25:58):
Very interesting. Let me give a brief announcement for those
that just joined the show and listening. If you have
any questions, just press number one on your phone and
we'd be glad to let you join the conversation. And
if you're at home and like to join the conversation,
to call it number six for six nine to nine
twenty eight seventy. Just press number one on your phone
(26:21):
and we'd be glad to let you join in and
ask whatever questions you may have. All right, thank you
very much, Mark. Was there an A team and a
B team and what's the difference between the two.
Speaker 1 (26:39):
Yeah, there was A and a B team. And that's
the reason you have an A and a B team
was the A team went first and they would give
fire or cover fire for the B team, which would
cross over the Rice Petty Dykes first. Okay. You never
crossed both teams over right open field or open Rice
(27:01):
Becky at the same time. Okay, because you never knew
it was on the other side. It could be an
ambush waiting for you on the other side. So you sent.
What I did with my patrol is I sent the
B team across first to set up security, and then
when they were set in place, you know, they would
flash me on the threshold and then I would go
(27:22):
at night, I'd bring my guys the A team across,
and then we continue on like that.
Speaker 2 (27:31):
So the A team and B Team is basically the
same training. It's just that they designated A and B.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
It's correct. You had in the patrol that we ran
in the DMZ. You had inside the makeup of the patrol.
You had two of each. Okay, you had a B
team sniper, an eighteen sniper, you had an eighteen R
TiAl to a regular operator, and a B team radio off.
(28:02):
You had an assistant patrol leader for the B team,
and you had the patrol leader in the A team,
So it did. You had a medic, only had one
medic though, so the medic was just we had to
pro take that guy.
Speaker 2 (28:21):
Yeah. I was kind of wondering about that because if
you if you if you lost him, what did you
guys do? Because every man for himself.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Uh No, if we lost, if we got if you
gotten a real bad firefight, uh what I would do?
You know, we got in a bad fire firefight, and
I was taking candidly, Doc would have to be running
around under fire trying to take care of these guys.
But once you want to do is suppress the enemy.
(28:52):
You want to suppress him as best you can so
that he can do what he has to do. If
somebody gets ended while we're in the firefight. And I'm
telling you the medic brave man, well, I made mind
carrying them sixteen uh, but most of them carried at
forty five.
Speaker 2 (29:12):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (29:13):
Yeah, forty five is good for about fifty meters.
Speaker 2 (29:18):
Hit. That's what I was thinking, fifty minutes to hit
something or hit yourself. I mean, I don't think it's
gonna do much damage to somebody out there. Is fine.
Automatic weapons, you know, machine guns and stuff.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Another thing about them weapons that we had, the M sixteen,
the battalion that I was in, you had to have
the trigger mechanism, you know, the trigger mechanism in the
M sixteen. You had to have a tape them, okay,
and the the animal that you had had to have
(29:56):
a piece of tape one hundred miles hour tape what
do you call it? Duct tape over the top of it.
And the reason for that is they didn't want to
lose any rounds inside the DMC. So if the northcoreagees
they collect any kind of evidence that we're patrol in
that sector. Okay, then they can bring it to the
(30:19):
armistice meeting and say that they're violating the armistice agreement.
But they're they're they're violating too by patrolling and infiltrating
into our side that way. So we're both in the wrong,
but we're both doing it. The reason for the trigger
mechanism to be taped down they didn't want you to
(30:41):
discharge you all.
Speaker 2 (30:44):
So if you encounter the enemy and get in a fight,
you have to worry about untaping the trigger before you
can engage.
Speaker 1 (30:52):
You got it.
Speaker 2 (30:54):
Okay, that might that split second, might be once that
second too much.
Speaker 1 (31:02):
Yeah, that's right. So what I did is I had
my snipers not tape their weapons out. Okay, they were
in fourteens. I made them not tape the trigger mechanism down,
and I had myself and my ATL assistant patrol leader.
(31:24):
We didn't tape our weapons out, and these did the rtos,
but everybody else I had to tape out that the way.
We had some kind of fine form.
Speaker 2 (31:34):
Wow, they sure made you guys follow a whole bunch
of rules, but the suspected enemy didn't have to go
by them. Same rules.
Speaker 1 (31:43):
No, No, we had to tape the equipment that we
carried into the DMZ had to all be taped down
and tied down. The canteen, the AMMO pouches, your compasses,
your flash lights, whatever you had on that equipment, go
(32:04):
bury equipment, the harness that you were had to be
all taped down and tied down. And that's for noise.
They said it was for noise depression for the you know,
which makes sense to me. Okay, But like you said,
you get in a firefight, they it come becomes a
(32:24):
paint in the butt.
Speaker 2 (32:27):
I can imagine, so or a bullet in the butt, what.
Speaker 1 (32:33):
You know, and you try to they they asked for
They don't ask for feedback from the patrols. They just
kind of what I thought was there were just kind
of c ya and their ass. Okay, we're covering their ass.
We're just trying to come up with stuff that there's
you know, guys sitting behind the desk saying, well, what
else do we need to do? What else do we
(32:55):
need do? What else? Will you know what I'm saying
who hadn't actually been out of the patrol.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
But isn't that the way it always is? I mean,
we're dealing with the same thing now with the government,
the people making decisions for how we live and not
actually living that way.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
So yeah, yeah, we didn't. We didn't have officers with us,
I really believe and to this day we didn't carry
We didn't. They didn't send officers out into the DMZ
because there has been too much red tape to say,
(33:33):
you know, if he got shot and died, or if
he lost the leg or something, to explain to the
parents why that happened, you know, and they couldn't just
say it was a training mission. Where the leadership inside
the patrols usually was an E six or an E
five and you had a spect for as the alternate
(33:55):
patrol leader and or any five if you're lucky.
Speaker 2 (34:00):
A plate play play like, we don't know what that
is because we don't, okay.
Speaker 1 (34:05):
Well, in the rank structure, uh, an E six is
a just a staff sergeant okay. Okay, he's one step
higher than an ephive just a regular sergeant okay. And
then especialists respectful was a specialists. It's just the right
name specialists, okay. And those were the makeup or the
(34:31):
leadership inside the patrols. Because E seven's the the staffs
are are the seven I want to say, I can't
think of later now I've been out Solow. But the
E sevens they didn't new patrols. Uh, the the eights,
(34:53):
the they didn't new patrols. All the upper rank, all
the upper listed did not patrol the DMZ Okay.
Speaker 2 (35:03):
And that's the one I always wanted to know. How
is that determined? How is those ranks determined by a test?
I mean, how are those ranks determined?
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Oh, you get promoted by your time and service, and
then you have to go before the board, which is
a panel of enlisted soldiers. Okay, you have to go
before board, and like for East six, it goes up
to it goes you take a picture and you go
(35:36):
before the board. It goes before the board in DC
or something Arlington or somewhere that goes before the board
and they they decide if you become an E six
or this is when I was in Okay and the
same with these seven's and the eights, which was was
(35:57):
your those would have been your these sevens would have
been like your platoon services been there and that's a change.
Speaker 2 (36:09):
What makes you what qualifies you for that. I mean
just the time you've been it's in service or a
certain training or.
Speaker 1 (36:19):
At that time there was time and service.
Speaker 2 (36:23):
Okay, So if I spend more time in service, I
could have a higher rank than you.
Speaker 1 (36:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (36:30):
Yeah, And it doesn't mean it doesn't necessarily mean that
I'm more qualified than you. This means that I've been
in there longer than you.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Correct. Yeah, oh wow.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
That means you could have a dummy and it's been
in there a long time, and then it's not very
knowledgeable and could create some harm because you know he's
been in there a while. You know, you know a
lot of times, you know how people are just because
they got more time and they feel like they can
call shots don't necessarily mean that they qualified to do that.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
If we had a first round, it once months time
I was in we had a first arm. Okay, he's
the he's the top dog in the n c O
rotten list. Okay as a lost arm ranks Okay, he
was a rifted major. Okay. In other words, he got
kicked out and they broke him down to an EA.
(37:27):
He was, but he worked at a ro OTC school
or something like that, and he's r O T C
or something, and he was there and then he got
rifted out. He did something wrong and instead of kick
came out totally. They made him an eight. Okay. And
this guy didn't know nothing, Okay. All he knew was books,
(37:51):
that's all I got. The books on how to walk
around and complain about everything he did.
Speaker 3 (37:59):
M hm.
Speaker 1 (38:05):
And the officers weren't no better. You get your officers there.
You got some officers that had some experience and were
willing to listen to the n CEO. But a lot
of them from West Point. They were from West Point
and they were books smart, but they weren't hands on smart. Okay.
In other words, they believed in the book that they
(38:28):
got from West Point and the books that they read
and went to school and that they got in West Point.
But they actually didn't do any hands on training for me,
actually hands on. I mean they may have did it
at West Point in a controlled environment, but you put
them in the DMZ and all hell breaks. So that's
got a control the environment, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
Yeah, that's what you find out where the heart is.
Speaker 1 (38:57):
Yeah, that's why I think. Also I didn't then, we
didn't have, like I said, officers didn't do betrosal of this,
and neither did the senior n c os. We didn't
have reporters embedded with us. We didn't have none of
that good stuff. It was just just us and what
what what happened? What we used to say, what happened
(39:19):
to the tide of the DMZ is then standing for
the DMZ because you take it back to the to
the intelligence officer and he takes a report from you,
and he might end up in file for their team.
That can the garbage can?
Speaker 2 (39:35):
So tell me tell well, not me, but tell us.
The difference between a non commission officer and a commission officer.
Speaker 1 (39:46):
Non commissioned officer is an n c O. He gets
his commission is through the ranks. Okay, you come up
through the ranks and the company commander promotes him, okay.
Officer a commissioned officer, it's commissioned through going through either
West Point or you're in combat or something and they
(40:08):
give you a field permission commission to be an officer. Okay.
They they get their commission once they finish the school
and stuff like at West Point. You just can't you
just can't go in like an n c O. I
think an NFL can become an officer, but he has
to go through the same kind of schooling that those
(40:33):
officers went through them and once that happens, he can
become an officer. But the difference is an uncommissioned officer
is an NFL is is You're You're more like the trainer.
You work with your guys all the time, You're always
around them in in naming term of like a supervisor,
(41:00):
and the officer is like the manager.
Speaker 2 (41:02):
Okay, seemed like the non commissioned officer got more hands
on experience than the commission officer.
Speaker 1 (41:13):
That's correct. Usually what happened when an officer comes to
you union, Like in Korea, we get new officers every
year because it's a one year tour and you know,
they never been in correct before, some of them. So
it was it's up to the non commissioned officer to
(41:35):
kind of train him and guide him and show him,
you know what to do. Is in dunts are in
South Korea. Okay, if he listens, see nine times out
of ten they won't listen to you.
Speaker 2 (41:50):
But I see how the ego would be an issue
because they come out of school thinking they better and.
Speaker 1 (41:58):
It's funny because we would get we would be doing something,
some kind of training during the day, and you would
think the manager the officer would come around and see
what's going on. Right. Never, when I was there, every
(42:18):
dividual officer I was under but most of the time
they were never around. They were always doing some kind
of schooling or something okay, and so they were never around.
So it was it was the supervisor, the n c
O that was making sure the job was getting done
and done the right way and how to do it.
(42:39):
We would show guys how you show everybody how to
do it and what to do, and you know, you
go from there. In other words, then the n c
O guy, the n c O is the guy's got
his hands booty and the officairs you know if he
get didn't get his hands duty, but.
Speaker 2 (42:58):
You definitely gave me something. So now when I watch
some of these war movies and stuff, I have a
better understanding of how the players play because I can
see the commission officers coming out of West Point. They're
coming out with a ego and this book knowledge, but
they have no hands on experience. And then I can
see that the non commissioned officer and done a bunch
(43:20):
of tours and patrols and stuff and seeing people die
over the place, so he has a whole different level
of experience. And then here come this young whippo Staffords
snapper trying to tell him what to do, and they
don't really have a clue. But then because of their commission,
he has to kind of listen to him to a
certain extent. So I can see that'll be an issue
(43:42):
right there at big time.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
That's so true. And me, I spent ten years in
South Korea, okay, and I had a lot of patrols
up on the DMV too many to explain, okay. And
every time we went up on that, they would always
try to do it this way, that way, this way,
and I'm like, I would always bump heads with it.
(44:06):
He said, that's not gonna work. This is the way
it's done. This is the way it's supposed to be done.
And they're like, I'm going to change you right here.
You're going to change the DMZ regulation right here. You're
going to change butter borrowing tenants. Who gives you the
authority to do that? And he's like, well, Congress gives
(44:27):
me the authority to change it. And I'm like, no,
it doesn't work that way.
Speaker 2 (44:33):
Wow, that made you his favorite person, didn't it? Oh?
Speaker 1 (44:40):
Yeah, I ended up Yeah, a lot of favorite persons
other mind, because you know it was I was basically
also when my guys were my men were around me,
they were seeing that somebody was sticking up with them,
you know, we just weren't rolling over and letting them
(45:03):
get away and do whatever they want to do with us.
Speaker 2 (45:08):
So, so when you were out on patrol, mark who
was who was in charge? Who was the leader? I was?
Speaker 1 (45:18):
I was the patrol leader, and and your rank was
five promotable D six.
Speaker 2 (45:28):
Was there was there a second person?
Speaker 1 (45:31):
Yeah? Uh, my second person was in E five and
he was promotable D six. His name is Alan Hines.
He's in He lives in Virginia. Were keeping contact?
Speaker 2 (45:49):
Did he still a lot of action as well?
Speaker 1 (45:51):
When we did patrols, We didn't when I was with him,
when we did our bet there, we didn't see so
much action that time. But we saw a lot of
infiltration attempts, a lot of where they were trying to
just hassle us, you know, kind of scare us and
(46:14):
stuff with them. There was one time, one incident where
one tried to jump into my patrol. We were right
on the md L and he walked right up on
one of my guys and my guards pointed as him
sixteen at it was getting ready to shoot it when
the guy ran on too golf.
Speaker 2 (46:34):
So when they so when they do that, I mean,
do they have on the same type of clothing attire,
I mean gear that you have on when they try
to infiltrate it, They've got their stuff on. I can't
see him just walking up with their uniforms on trying
to do that.
Speaker 1 (46:48):
Or do they they they when they walk in when
they're infiltrating. It depends what the weather is. If the
moon's out a little bright, then they're gonna they're gonna
wear the same kind of guard our boat, the same
kind of pose that we have. Okay, same kind of
the uniform. Okay, so they can get close and get
try to get into a patrol. But if there's no
(47:10):
room and it's pitch black, then they were black. Okay,
they were black uniforms.
Speaker 2 (47:21):
So what's the distance between man and man and the patrol.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
Arm arm LA at the night? During the day, it's like, uh,
five to ten meters, it could be more than that.
Speaker 2 (47:38):
Yeah, I was just wonderful. Seem like they'd have to
they would have to be kind of ballsy to try to,
you know, just walk up in there and play like
he's one of y'all.
Speaker 1 (47:47):
You know, well, what it is, Well, remember I told
you that when we came to a Rice Penny dyke,
B team will go across, and then Alpha team will
go across. Okay, what it is is they lie in
the dyke or they lie on the other side, and
while they're business setting up security. You know, they kind
of scramble into the security, into the into the formation,
(48:12):
or they'll the line on the dykes and as you're walking,
the last guy across is supposed to be pulling the
rear security keeping the line on the rear. He'll get in.
He'll get in between you and try to walk that way.
Then we always every time I did a rice Paddy
dyke cross me, I always got a head count. Okay,
(48:33):
where you just count heads how many people are in here?
You should have twelve people, that's what you said.
Speaker 2 (48:38):
Now.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
It was the one time I crossed the dyke and
I had the radar site give me it because I
just had you know, you have a gut feeling in
your gut. I just had a gut feeling, and I
asked him to pull a head count for me, how
many people seeing my pool? And they go, well, you
got fourteen and I'm like fourteen, I only got twelve,
(49:01):
and they go, well, there's two stragglers behind you. Okay.
So we set up on the ambush side on the
other side, real fast of that bike and waiting for
these guys to come. And they never came across because
they they knew, they knew I would have shot them.
I want to shine with you.
Speaker 2 (49:23):
How big a danger was? How big of danger was landmines?
You know, because we see a lot of that on TV.
I mean, is that a concern for you guys when
you're doing that walking across an open spaces?
Speaker 1 (49:35):
Well they had yeah, they had all the minefields marked
when they had a marked and they didn't have a
mark okay. But for the most part, we never I never,
in all the three hundred and eighty five patrols that
I've done, I've never had a problem with running in
the mind, but in the Petralia.
Speaker 2 (49:54):
So I guess that was a blessed Yeah. Did you
always hear you always hear about my mind? Or some
vehicle running over a land mine.
Speaker 1 (50:09):
Well what yeah, those were like back in the day
before I got there. The North Koreans they had box
mines and two sticks and he and t in there
and stuff and their pressure pressure mines and they go
out there and dig a hole or something put it
in your patrol on so somebody would step on them
and lift your foot boom it goes off. They call
(50:30):
them box mines. Uh. But then I never seen run across.
I mean I ran in. I ran across some of those, okay,
but I haven't. I didn't ever run across like a
tank mine or a vehicle mine or something like that.
Although we had we had the trucks standing bag down
(50:53):
in the flingline, so.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
Wow, it seemed like those tanks. Uh, it would be
fun to drive, you know. I spent a little time
down at Fort Bliss. I was a physical instructor for
one period, and I used to see a lot of
those big tanks and all the gear that was at
(51:17):
their disposal. The only thing I didn't understand is why
they had all these other countries used to come to
Fort Bliss for training, And I'm like, why you let
these countries in your house, and then you always talked
about espionage and spies and stuff. If I don't want
you to know what I had going on in my house,
I don't think i'd invite you in my house. I
(51:37):
never did understand that about you see all these other
different countries down in Fort Bliss training on US equipment
and artillery, different devices. I never did understand that.
Speaker 1 (51:50):
That's it. I don't understand it. But it's diplomatic, that's
all I can say. That's something that they do. And
let them people, even these people would go to war with,
have been to our schools and learned how to our
war schools and stuff, and learned how to fight wars
and stuff, you know, and then we we end up
(52:13):
going to war with.
Speaker 2 (52:15):
I mean with our equipment stuff, equipment.
Speaker 1 (52:21):
It's like you said too, I mean we've we've given
equipment to some of these rogue states out there that
have our equipment and they've had they've got our war
training behind them, and then they want to go to wars. None.
Speaker 2 (52:40):
Yeah, it makes absolutely no sense to me. Did you
take that? Did you take a report? Did you guys
have a reporter out with you?
Speaker 1 (52:50):
No, we never had no report reporters with us at all.
The only reporter we had was a pen and a
piece of paper. Lope, Pad, I'm telling you the government
this truthfully, this is the truth. Uncle Sam had his
own private war going on. When I was there inside
(53:12):
the de Militaris of South Korea, there was there was.
I mean, they had that so bottled up, man. You
you you couldn't get a leak out at all. It was.
Speaker 2 (53:27):
Unfortunately, the government continues to have their own war going on.
They just tell us about it after the fact.
Speaker 1 (53:34):
Yeah, yep, yeah, after the fact.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
Well, Mark, we got a few minutes left on the show,
But I want you to talk a little bit about
your book called Signed Purple three and Death Kind for.
Speaker 1 (53:50):
Well, those two books are about patrolling the US center
of the DMZ, of the South Korean DMZ. That's the
oft time. Purple three is an actual memoir of one
of one of the patrols that I put. Okay, just
one death Come four is kind of like it's a story,
(54:15):
but it's it's it's got actual events in it that happened.
But I had to make it a fiction book because
I didn't want Uncle Sam knocking on my door saying,
why are you writing all this stuff up. They told
me twenty five years I could write it was clear,
so I didn't think it would happen, but I didn't
want to take any chances. But both books, Death Cop
(54:38):
four is just a little book. It's it's only made
sixty seven pages long, but it's action packed, okay. Call
Time Purple three is like two hundred and some pages long,
and it it breaks down how we prepped, how we
rehearsed inspects and doing actually doing the control, the day, recons,
(55:04):
the night ambushes, the guard pods and warriorbaks, where we stayed.
That it breaks down everything.
Speaker 2 (55:12):
Okay, Well, let everybody know where they can go get
a copy.
Speaker 1 (55:16):
All those books are available everywhere on the det Uh.
You can walk in any bookstore and request it and
it's print on the man. I mean, they're they're they're
available everywhere, and I have also for the military folks,
they're available on one hundred and forty four military PSS
and b x's across the around the world.
Speaker 2 (55:42):
Well, that's fantastic, and everybody out there, let everybody know
where you heard the show with mister Mark Haith Cole
and hopefully he was able to answer some questions and
give you some insight on really what took place there,
and I know I definitely learned some things.
Speaker 1 (55:59):
M Mark.
Speaker 2 (56:00):
We definitely gonna appreciate you, man, and wish you the
best out there, man, and continue telling a story. And
I hope we don't end up backing another World war
no time soon. So unfortunately, seem like this country only
prospers when they fighting somebody.
Speaker 1 (56:18):
Yeah, well, I appreciate being on the show, and I
appreciate passing information. Hopefully people learn something from it, not
just thinking we just pulled guard duty up on the DMCON.
That's the only thing that takes me off is a
lot of people I run into, Oh you only pulled
guard duty up there. I don't get in to fight
(56:41):
with him or argue with them. I just walk away.
Speaker 2 (56:45):
Well, you know, people that don't know don't know. Unfortunately,
that's the crime in this country in which we live.
You know, people actually think they know more than what
they do. But you asked them a question, when was
they there? When were you there?
Speaker 1 (57:01):
You know what I mean?
Speaker 2 (57:02):
And then they mouth drop open because they have nothing
to say.
Speaker 1 (57:06):
Yeah. Yeah, but we'll just give you to wish.
Speaker 2 (57:11):
You the best, man, and you be safe out there
and continue to pass your message. Man again, we'll appreciate
you spending time with us. Man, it was great, all right.
Speaker 1 (57:23):
I had a great time with you guys. God blessed,
and keep preaching for the stars.
Speaker 2 (57:29):
Man will do, We'll do. And for those of you
to join us late. This show will be available worldwide
in about two minutes, so you have no excuse not
to hear the show. And if you have any problems,
ask your mama, ask your daddy, ask your neighbor across
the street. And if he don't know, as the man
at the gas station it's the supermarket, somebody'll be able
(57:50):
to tell you. We can hear this show. So it's
available everywhere. Like I said this guys, you guys next
week and put you on on this on the.
Speaker 4 (58:02):
A loading bass go softegue bars. I give the call
to pet the cars on my buffet. Yet my life
was tossed and from the top of the seat of
paint again a strange I refrain the tom.
Speaker 3 (58:13):
I couldn't make it, couldn't take it.
Speaker 1 (58:15):
Didn't want to fake it. I had to break it.
Speaker 4 (58:17):
I was stuck and.
Speaker 1 (58:18):
Couldn't shake it.
Speaker 4 (58:19):
I tried to keep it on the wather for my
life of me all I try to stuff trouble her
the misery. Why day I heard saking patient sitting there
down and.
Speaker 1 (58:28):
And he will come with no dinner if.
Speaker 2 (58:29):
You will all I said, okay.
Speaker 4 (58:31):
I told him I was sorry for the way I lived.
He said there that everyone I've done, he would forgive
now no weapon.
Speaker 1 (58:37):
Want driving the get the hell? Can something down it
from his word, I'm gonna swell it.
Speaker 4 (58:42):
Come, highly recommend it. If you think, release, but deny
and you'll believe.
Speaker 1 (59:08):
I did that three almost upon a time I.
Speaker 2 (59:12):
Was flying and couldn't find I don't wait.
Speaker 1 (59:15):
No the past.
Speaker 4 (59:16):
The peoples of mind stepping, said tim and study good
there it said things.
Speaker 1 (59:20):
I had no wiss.
Speaker 2 (59:21):
Yeah, I was selling.
Speaker 1 (59:22):
I didn't give it.
Speaker 2 (59:23):
You know what.
Speaker 1 (59:24):
I didn't care for self control any time or anywhere.
Speaker 4 (59:28):
One went to the dead like he was my homey
sawbody session from the mirror and didn't know anything but
God bless oh my.
Speaker 1 (59:37):
I let me go. He took control.
Speaker 2 (59:39):
Not forever.
Speaker 4 (59:40):
They never put together for the promise never to forsake me,
a play me.
Speaker 3 (59:44):
There's nothing bad in the presence of one, and only
stay in the.
Speaker 4 (59:49):
Proper place and that's for me. Love me unto thee
I bout I'm never humble it to the one who
gave me.
Speaker 1 (59:55):
Flye up under me makes a bot
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