American Hero's: Marine Corp Vietnam Veteran Gregory Meacham

The American dream is built on freedom, and that freedom comes at a cost. American Heroes Stories presented by Life Liberty Happiness is a new series honoring the men and women who've sacrificed to protect that dream. We're proud to play a small part in preserving their stories for future generations. Life Liberty Happiness, a media squatch podcast, presents American heroes stories. All right, folks, we are welcome today by Marine Corps veteran Gregory Mitcham. Welcome to the show. Thank you, glad to be here. You go by Gregory or greg greg just Greg? Okay, all right, So tell us a little bit about where your humble beginnings began. Where were you born and raised? I was born in Cedar rappas Islwa, stayed most of mighty years in a rural area and four kids, mom and dad, but a biological father was in the army. My uncle's were in the Marines, which had a great influence on me in latter years. My uncle came back from Korea wounded in the last day of the fight for soul, and I saw him in his dress blues and it kind of ruined me. Wow. So what year did you decide to sign. Up right out of high school in nineteen sixty seven. I signed up in June and I went to boot camp at San Diego because I was on the western side oh wow, of the Mississippi River. And I spent eight weeks there. Eight week time was a lot of things were going on. They pushed it to boot camp pretty quickly, and then I was I went to radio school. I became a radio operator. You want went back in Vietnam? Okay, wow. So once you're done with boot camp, do you know in boot camp that you're you're going to be going to Vietnam at some point? Or is it? At that time? It's kind of up in the air. And when we finished boot camp, they give us all orders. Okay, And at that time, being from Iowa, I had pretty clear speech. Not so much now, but I remember getting my orders. Is your twenty five thirty one. You'll be a radio operator. You'll be carrying a seventy five pound radio on your back. I weighed one hundred and thirty three pounds. Good, and you'll be going Fleet Marine Force. You will be going to Vietnam, They told us, Okay, camp, Yeah, we'll be. Going all right, So what was your first interaction. I guess they drop you off in Vietnam? I mean, are you with her group at that point? Now? Sadly, and this is what I have a lot of us talk about Vietnam vests, World War One and World War Two. You trained with your guys, you tamed with your squads, your fire teams, your platoon, your companies. But in Vietnam it was fractured and we literally went over there as individuals and never saw except for very few situations, we ever saw any of the guys were in boot camp with Again. Right now, how do you think you were selected for the radio part of it? That? I mean you said you were kind of light, but you got to carry a seventy five pound radio with you. How do you think they how do you think you got selected for that? Well, it was a clear speech. But I was always as a farm boy. It was a hard worker. I've always worked out and yeah, pretty good care of myself. But how much training did you get on the radio before you had to go to Vietnam? Actually quite a bit. We started out with a little what they call bricks, which your PR sixes and little handheld bricks, and then we went to twenty five, which was primary of what we carried, and land Air was a PRC forty seven, and we actually got into TSC fifteen vans where we could skip with ham RADI woppers a lot of the world. We learned to operate those, but the entire time it was there, all I had was the twenty five and forty seven. So how long are you there? Before you start? Are you? Do you end up in the combat zone? I'm imagining? Well, I got into Danang and there's this big board of Vietnam and it's broken up in cores. In I core's the most heavily fought area up on the DMZ. And this guy, I guess he thought it was funny. He said that you're clear down here. The far as you go north, the worst is going to be for you. And you see you're right up there on the DMZ. Good luck, buddy. Oh wow. So I flew up and I got out at Danh and was assigned to fourth Patan towards Marines, and I spent the majority of my time on fire basis up on the DMZ. We moved almost monthly in support and we fired a one five five superfinal howitzer and you just don't get to be a radio operator. You've got to work the guns too. You got to put fuses on those ninety two pound rounds. You got to throw them up in the chamber of the breech, put the powder charge behind him, close the fire and lock. Put the primer in there. Everybody does that because during those massive fire missions, people start passing out. The cordite powder that comes from those artillery rounds are like pellets, and they're basically black powder. And after you ingest enough of that smoke, you can see the guys starting coming through their nose as they breathe. It's all coming other long. Wow, Pull somebody out, put somebody else in there. I never knew that. I see firing of howarzer's all the time, you just see it on video. I never thought about the inhalation up with a well, you've. Got two kinds of a howitzer. You've got a toad howitzer and the self propelled looks like a tank with a big barrel and a big flash pressure on the end of it. At a nighttime, you don't want to be seen, so you're working off a global inside. Not the kind you're talking about, but some other ones. We had, and you might fire twenty five thirty rounds, get a two minute break, and another fire mission comes up, and you're backing it again. And you know it was it was pretty challenging for one hundred and thirty three pound guy. It was Wow. And what eighteen years old? Nineteen yeah, nineteen from home. I'm sitting here thinking like it's how many years ago? Has this been? Forty fifty? Yeah, and yet you're sitting here talking about how you loaded it like it happened last night. I mean, the just it's amazing to me, just all the things you remember. You remember things that if you don't, if you forget them, get you killed. Right. And when I went over and I was embedded in a rack with special Forces, we used, of course you know the FINEC alphabet and they asked me that I know it and I can decided backwards for us. I just can't forget it. Wow. And those are the types of things you learn, and you know if you don't do those things, somebody gets killed. Yeah, so you're trained to live. When you were at the howitzer like that, and you said you also were radio and you had to help fire it, My question is is the radio one way. I mean, what I'm saying is are you giving commands? Are you also listening to help fire the howitzer in the right spot? Is that? What does the radio guy do? The radio guy in that situation is strictly in the guns. Okay, He's got nothing to do with the fire direction center, which is underground in bunkers. We live like hobbits up there in your fire direction center. The fire mission comes in from the units that wants the support, and once that comes in, it comes in basically with their nature of target and asthmus what you're going after North Novenmber, Victory ALF and the open VC whatever, And then you decide what you want in adjustment, whereas two hundred meters births of one phosphorus what you want for effect which is an h with a surface impact, or you want a thirty meters burst over the top of the tree line. Once that all comes up, then the fire direction center calculates exactly based upon the grid that you receive from the man in the field, how to set the elevation to quatern on the weapon systems? And can you see what you're firing out? Is it that far too far away that you don't even. Know, very seldom we fired direct fire. Several times we got beat pretty bad at a rock piled by a howitz or a pack seventy five howarch. So we ended up knocking it out with a four phantom naped it. But he would roll that thing, well, five of them would roll it out and they would pound us. But because the entrance to the cave was not on a gun target line, we couldn't shoot into it. But we wanted to make them miserable. Yeah, so we'd shoot back at it, you know. But places like Cason I was at the very end that wasn't nearly as bad as the beginning. But those guys were they went through it. They were. They were sleeping up underneath their howitzer and because of so much income in twelve hundred and fourteen hundred rounds, oh wow, and the enemies just pounding them. And so they ended up shooting a lot of the barrels. Out of four Patao twarf marines one five five self propels. It took the flash of pressures off. I'm of the muzzle breaker, as they called it. They went, I got a bucket eyebolts. I took the eyebolts off aware, unscrew them off the rounds to put fuse in. Four of us, put a light dream bag charge and shot them back in the jungle about three pound eye bowls coming. Wow. Wow, yeah, it was. So How long was your first did you? Did you have multiple tours or just one? Well? I had two tours, and after about seven or eight months, I was no longer the new guy, and I wasn't eating the ham and line of beans. I was eating chicken the noodles. But that taste is something we'll talk about when we're not on the air. And I became a I got combat marchoice, wanted to corporal and it was different, but some of the realities were still there, things like everybody has to take their take their chances. And as an example, when the enemy would fire around in on us, we start taking a lot of rounds. We want to find out where the enemy. Example, we have nobody in the sky to see whether they're shooting. So one lone marine And I've done this several times. It's not fun. You run out with a like a broomstick and a protractor. You pin that to the side of that broomstick so to swivel what you do is you look at the spray from the shrapnel and you find the center and that's your direction. Wow. Fire And then you read the mark on the protractor and I write it on the back of my hand, so if I go down, they can at least have my hand to go by. And you go on the underground bunker and they're able to coordinate those two very simple things, your direction with a Lindsay compass and the protractor on the stick, and they can fire counter battery back on the enemy. Now did you learn that from boot camp? Did you learn that from the States? Or is that just on the fly that somebody I. Learned that They did it when there was no incoming and showed me how to do it. Yeah, and I remember them saying me, great analysis and so little, you know, because those rounds come in and they're there are no joke, that's uh. We lost quite a few guys. Well, man, we lost quite a few guys didn't coming around. And the bravery just the bravery man. But we all take your take, take our chances, you know. Yeah. Wow. Uh So the second tour back was it as so you guess you're there for seven months? And did you rotate out thirteen months. Oh so you were there for thirteen Yeah, yeah, that was the first tour. First or second tour I was there for eleven. Gave me a choice to either stay and train the Arvins the Army of Public of Vietnam, and go home with the Marines. And I wasn't about to stay with the army's arms, so I went home. But my first tour, I got injured. I was We're in the middle of a fire mission and I caught the blast of a house or my left ear at the same time we were getting incoming rounds. Well, all I remember is waking up, looking around. I was laying on the ground, and I went to the underground bunker, the fire Russian Center and just passed out. Well, I laid there in my bunk for two days underground because we had no hues, no meta facts coming, and it had blown my ten panic memory and my summer circular canals had been torn out, and so they menovacked me out the USS sanctuary. I was out there, I think fifty six days. And I love the Navy, I love the Army, I love them all. All of them have had a profound impact on my life. And these Navy corman just worked over me. Man. Wow, they filled my teeth, they made new glasses for me. They make sure my IV's were constantly going in so the infection could come out of my face was also enough infection. And they wheeled me down to the mess hall at the bottom of this and literally, except for Christmas and Thanksgiving, we ate sea rations. We weren't into Dang, we weren't in Dongha. We ate sea rations. So I got to go in the belly of that ship and I got to have cold milk, pork chops and beef and this is heaven. Oh man, that's nice. It's the things. It's the things that we've noticed when we've been doing these interviews. A lot that they speak of is just finally getting to eat something warm. It was incredible. Yeah. Well, the Marine Corps got part of its priorities, right. The part they got is two beers a day. So if you were out someplace for four days, you better come back and there better be eight bees or beers there soon's probably gonna bleed. But the rest of the time we drank. I'm not joking. I can't stand the stuff they lime green kool aid. Oh okay, and it was warm. We didn't have ice, and we put our beers in the creeks to keep them cool in net bags and stuff. But it was different. There was no table set for us up there, indifference in a rack. When I went up to a talifar with my Special Forces team thirteen fifteen, I said, we're gonna We're gonna eat MRIs up here and aircraft hangar and we put sixteen foot tear beerriers around us because this was not a good place. This is right at the Syrian border and we are target package operations from there. And this guy comes up to me and he said, I'm Dave Garcia. He said the cook. I said, okay, what do you got to cook? He said, I've got two tractor and trailers coming up. One of them has all of my stoves and my cooking equipment. The rest is full of food. What do you want for breakfast? What do you mean what I want? So I realized that I should have joined the army. Now, let me ask you back to when you were getting worked on and you had gotten a blast and had to be under your howartzer. Was that at the end of your your run or did you have to go back, did you? It was about that was about eight months into my first tour. Wow, and they shot me right back and you go right back to what you were doing, right back to it. Yeah, now is that Are you regretting that or you can't wait to get back with your guys and do it and keep going. Well, I regretted the fact that when we're drinking ice cold milk, but also you know, it's it's kind of like that team concept you're worried about. Yeah, you know, while I was gone, uh Santiago, we had one of our guns struck a direct yet and we had four big round powder bags and they caught fire, they burned, they burned white hot, and he got burnt up. Draggon on the guys out of there. So it really bothered me because I liked him a whole lot. He's really really nice, nice guy. And then we went up to Carrol Camp. Carroll took our battery up there, and then one day there were four radio oppers. It was Dave bill Berry, Michael Ivery, and Philip Enman and myself. Philip and Michael was killed by the same artillery around just with him all the pieces, and then Dave came running across the ground. I was in a fighting hole and he kept falling down and I realized he'd taken a piece of trapping through his back and collar bone. So I had to put him in a fighting hole with me, put a bottle, put addressing on him, and then wait for the archery attack to abate and get him over to the underground bunker because he lost a lot of blood. And you know, that was just one day and now we're down to one radio offer. Wow, you know this guy, but it was you know, it's kind of a fascinating to me how life works sometimes, because when I went to the Wall for the first time, I searched for their names, obviously, and I can't remember. I know it's on the west side. It might be twenty three, might be thirty three. But the wall is set up based upon day to death and then alphabetized. Well, Michael Ivory and Philip Edmon, both their names begin with I. They died side by side, and their side by side. On the wall. Oh man, they gave me chills. Yeah, it was pretty cool. And I actually spoke to Philip's sister she had called me, and actually Dave Bilbray, who got his mother and he called me, and so things work out sometimes. Yeah, So you finished your first and second tour Vietnam and then you come back, what's after that? What does life look like for you? Then? Well, I wanted to get as far away from the military as possibly could. And I don't know why, because I've always loved the Marine Corps. I love it today. But just so much turmoil up in DC. And when it came back, they stationed me a quantica. When the first thing we do is in May seventy one, is we get on the bridges. And that was during the time this revolutionaries had decided to meet in d C and go through downtown d C coming out of Georgetown and set cars on fire and throw trash cans through windows. So the next thing I know, my job was to do physical conditions for oss candidates. And all our leaves were canceled and fifteen thousand marines gott in cattle cars went up to Fort Belvoir and next morning we were waiting on those bridges, for there were two hundred and fifty of us armed with them sixteen's bayonets, live animal and there were about eight thousand of them trying to cross the bridge. The Lord, and I remember my captain told them, ceasing desist this legal activity. This bridge is being held by the Marines. You're not going to cross. Their answer to throw a gas grenade on us, we eat gas. I mean, that's not a big thing for the Marines. Then we went to order arms expand its foured arms, magazine and twenty rounds locking load or to march ready to engage. And they weren't so brave then, which pushed them down Georgetown Avenue to where the Banana Republic is now and we had him blocked off a metro and had him blocked off with GC. I'm sorry, the Maryland State Police. We funnel them right over into a fifteen foot wooden wall that went to or three hundred yards and it's the rest of fifteen thousand Marines were waiting for. I don't know the history. I don't know this story. So the people who are the people that you're funneling, who are the revolutionaries? They are? They are these the Americans? Oh yeah, they're absolutely just anarchists. They're against the government, Okay, they're absolutely against the military. Wow. And I always felt like a lot of that was because they just didn't stand up and go to war. And they've tried to convince themselves. Was this would this be like Jane Fonda, something. Would be that these were all They met in Chicago, met in La I'm sorry, and then they met in Chicago, and then the final meeting was here in d C. And they're going to cause much turmoil. There's actually a picture of them on the White House steps mooning. So for you fighting for our country and now you're fighting our country, I had to be tough. I mean, you're our own citizens. Well it is, but you I kind of felt like that they what they were doing was and I firmly believe this. When they got together, the more they pounded each other on the back, the braver they became. Yeah, okay, yeah, and we're going to fight. And my my least a lot of them came from my least favorite college in the world of Berkeley. Oh yeah, yeah, boob, and they came up there and they really thought they were tough. Yeah. Well they didn't know tough, all right, that's right, and they found out real quick. So anyway, Yeah, that answers that question. I guess. So you after that, how long before you're now out and you're not. About a year and a half. A year and a half, I had the best job. I went over and ran with that little twenty five pound radio. I'm sorry, seventy five pound radio, but nighway one hundred and fifty five pounds. I ran three, five, seven, nine eleven miles from that on the hill trails with OCS candidates trying to catch me. Wow, And I loved it. Yeah, it to me was probably one of the funnest things I've ever done. So Brian doesn't know this, but I went to OCS training in Quantico, and if you were training OCS candidates, you were a badass. And it sounds like you are anyway. But I was always impressed. They always brought the baddest dudes for us to go with, and I was like, these are the toughest guys I've ever seen. We would. I enjoyed it so much because I stayed in the gym. I've always lifted, I've always ran. I was a long distance runner from almost twenty years. Yeah, and you've met Steve Boseman, I get yes. Yeah, Steve and I have run many many marathons, fifty milers, We've done iron Men, double iron Men together, and stuff, and he's a real bad ass. He's my he's my favorite athlete. That's a great Yeah. Yeah. Did you win any awards? Accommodations medal, I've got my Well, I had three campaign medals because I was there two years I've been in service. One of the most proud of them, most surprised by was my good Conduct Medal across the Gallantry or unit got across the Gallantry and the National Offenses. I think it's seven or eight of them, but I have to look at my D two fourteen tell you what they are. Yeah, all right, So what is your career after the military at that point in time? Well, I only wanted to be two things in my life. I started. I wanted to be a farmer, but I knew that wasn't going to work out because I didn't like the frozen ground and I was six months of the year and I love Virginia. So I thought about law enforcement, okay, and I ended up taking a physical fort and the doctor cot me some slack because this year was trashed, and I got the job and I policed for twenty five years. Then where were in? You were Insburg? City of Lynchburg, Okay, would Bennett be the captain then or then. It was my chief, my last chief chief Chief Yeah, yeah, by a great chief, probably him and one of the probably my favorite chief legend when when when Chuck was over dealing with the heads of state in Europe, I was dealing with I was in Afghanistan Iraq and we'd go back and forth. What are you doing, man? Oh I just had some meskin of go with the president of swaleaty Land or something. Like, yeah, wow. Well he's a he's a great man, goodly. Yeah, yeah, he was wonderful. So you spent twenty five years there, So how do you end up back? How do this happened? I believe and I've always tried to tell all the young officers, do your career, do the twenty five years, and while you're there, go to as many schools as you possibly can. So I got to go. I became a hostage negotiator. You know. We did command and control, we do your tacticle. I was on the first SWAT team, an advanced tactical and then you take combat life saver, you know, and that kind of stuff. Well, all that stuff along with your weapons calls, you know, And I think my last sixteen years, I shot hundreds a day and night, spring and fall of all that comes into it, plus my Marine Corps combat history. And I get a call from a guy who was my rookie at the police department. He said, there's a unit, a company. It's well known, and they're going to call this year two thousand and five the year of the Police. Come over here on a mentor, monitor and advice program. When you got boots on the ground, let me know there's some things I want to do with you. So I didn't like the company I worked for, and I'm going to. Tell you who. They were, just a bunch of egotistical fools that had inflated the resumes and didn't know the first thing about combat. So as soon as I got away from them, I ended up in Mosl when nobody was going out on the street with the military and civilians, and I said, well, this I find. All I'm going to do is to train the Iraqi police. I'm going to do the best job I can, And so I started. Thirty two guys had gone to what's called Gyptick and Jordan and had basic police school, and they showed up and they were some of the smartest and the brightest of those guys. Actually, I know I'm talking to a Special Forces commander. I get a call from this police officer I told you that I trained. He's in a rack up in northern Iraq. He's up in review. And next thing I know, I'm embedded with Special Forces. Wow. And so together we've continued to train. And the reason that I ended up is not because I'm all that in the box of chips. It just was the fact that I had a real, quantifiable and real resume. Yeah. And I could help Special Forces cleaning rooms and a farms instructor and ascent and it was just a marriage maid in heaven. I mean, I love those guys. They were I worked with four teams and I stay in contact with him now. Wow. And they are consummate professionals when it comes to blowing doors and going after bad guys. And we did Muslim Talif over six hundred explosive entries. Good lord. Yeah, So mosl And you had told me when I met you about the movie mosl. Uh, and I watched it, and. I guess a my first question is and what your thoughts are and this this really has nothing to do with the training that you did, but just your opinion of this. When I watched the movie that one of the things that stood out to me the most is it was a land of rubble. I mean, it looked like the Lego set that you see that they just spill out there and it's a lot like yeah, so and it was so I mean to me, it did it once? Was it beautiful? And then this is a recent explosion or is this fifty years of it being torn up like that? And most of it came from well a lot of it was during the battle in three four or five. And you can see all the pock marks. This is the second biggest city of the country. Yeah, oh wow, and it's two point seven million people, sixteen thousand police. But you can see all the damage to the vehicles and you can see what's amazing is these traffic circles. How little concrete is left around those traffic circles because they put so many IEDs out over the two three years. It just incredible. But isis came in the very first thing they did was they blew down Juna's tomb, which is in Moslim. Then they blew the famous gates in thennaw were down, trying to make a fashion statement to the people. Then they butchered a lot of the population, in some gross and in the main ways, a lot of them. So you're right, it is it's just a nightmare. They went in to establish their dominance. They would literally go down the street and I've got the videos, Well I gave them up. I don't want them anymore, an my computers. Just shooting in family cars, just killing people, just shooting and killing, you know, pushing boys. That they had five ton trucks pushing boys, you taking them up to the sand where Oude and Kus used to have their hair, them shooting them in the back of the head, pushing them, the tigers literally that it was the Red Sea up there, and their brutality was unbelievable. That and the fact that he took five, six, seven, eight year old child rides, you know, those types of things that America can't really wrap their head around. But that is the difference between radical Islam and moderate Moderate is a whole different ball game. So when you're when you're breaking down these doors, what exactly what are you looking for at that point in time. Well, we've evolved a little bit since the Lynchford Police Department. We take a little bit of sea forward, a dead cord and an IV bottle and we paste it all together, stick it on a sticky pad, and then we roll it up. We quietly set up order movement. We dismount, We didn't fill on foot. We push our guys over the wall. We go to the door we're gonna blow, and you stick that sticky thing. On the door. Then you look a shot cord to it. When that goes off, that ivy bottle shrinks the center of the metal door and all four corners come in and blow the doors off. It's called a water impulse charge. That's a blister, it's an explosive breach. Inside, you've got a ballistic breach with a breaching shotgun, and then you also have a mechanical breach. We didn't do any mechanical breaches. We blew the doors because we wanted them to be really scared when we came through that smoke. So when you bust through or blow through the doors, you're you're are you looking to for people bad guys at that point, or you're trying to get intel. What's well, a target package is a lot more than that okay, the target for the Pacific individuals gotcha. One of the proudest missions we did. We got Mohammed Unus who had killed six of our guys with a sniper rifle, and it was a big deal. Uh. You go after an individual, you meet with your ground, air, ground and air assets. Everybody sits in on the brief it's the primary briefing, and then the briefing before we actually go out that night. Everybody knows a role and we go up with the Blackhawks and we take pictures of the blocks around the objective and we number them. So if you take fire from thirty two and we're at number one the objective, we could actually laze it with our green beams and there are air support just range. Heck down, man, go out to. How how old are you at this time? I mean, what about what age range are you at? That's time? Went over there? Fifty six? So I'm fifty five. I was hot today because from my office to my truck. Well, holy cow, you know fifty five was It depends on what kind of fifty five you are? Yeah, well I'm not that kind. If you if you go if you go over there and you look like this, when you're sifty two. Yeah, I don't look like that. Okay, well, don't show that to Emma. No, all right. So I'm curious at this point. You're a contract how what do you describe yourself as that? Then you're working with special forces, but you're I'm a I'm a contract contractor, but I'm not that guy. I'm not that guy that builds the roads. No. Yeah, and. I'm a contractor. But what I I say a tactical contractor. You know, I'm there to train, but I'm also What happened was once we got these guys trained, you know, every so often stuff, guys are going home. So I got to take over the team and hold the team sure and kind of make the transfer from the next team seamless. Sure, show them where the bad guys are neighborhoods Now. I become a swat team commander. Yeah, and which is right here? And I have to take care of those guys. I have to feed them, make sure they got water, make sure I got the best equipment. And I gave them the best equipment. Uh. And we actually activated acid forfeiture, which is a form I got from the Lynchburg Police Department, and we took the OPG heading off and we put special Forces whichever team we were with, and when we I would get calls from Rotary. We got guys trying to go through the point entry and they don't want to be caught. We get it in. The black Hawks go out and we stop them, jump out on it. First two times we got two of Eco trucks with two five trucks full of American cigarettes. So we took them up to a bazaar up in the hook where it's safe, where the curds are. I came back with three hundred and eighty four thousand dollars. I gave ten percent of the Special Forces team well a credit card ten to I'm sorry, thirty percent of her gade. I kept the rest of it for my guys, so my guys didn't have raggedy equipment. I had great weapons and three hundred wind mags, thermals, silencers, all that stuff. But we regularly did that, and when we would capture somebody, we would take everything they owned and we take it up to the bazar and we sell it. And that way the American public did not have to fund TEA. Yeah, so these are Iraqis that you're training trying to keep their country from isis is that essentially? No, No, this is from isis is after me? Okay, all right? Isis is? Probably four iterations after me. Yeah, and they we're dealing with it. We made a big mistake, the country did. And saying that, you know, people that worked in the Bath Party couldn't have anything to do with the government and certain and a lot of the people that were in the military could no longer have anything. How many millions of people you put out there trained to fight now they don't have a job and they can't feed their families. That's a good point. Is I'm sorry, I'm jumping in with some questions, but I can't. I can't. I'm curious. Is it is it normal to have a contract work with special forces or is this an abnormal situation? I would say it's happen normal, okay, yeah. Uh. And actually the first time I met General Petraeus, because of operational security, I didn't know who was coming in and any way, buddy Mike won't say they want you eat with the colonel to night. So I went in there and I saw this first ergent work in the door, and I said, what did you do first, Argeant, don't work the door to mess on, he laughed, and his friend of mine and everybody calls me Pops. That was my name. Most of these people don't know I have any idea what my name is, even the closest guys. I walk in and there's Malachi, the president, there's a Salaw, there's Wathick and uh. They're sitting at a table this way facing forward. The head table up there has got command sergeant major. I can't remember his last name, patreyas it's got my SF regional and Sam Fields my captain at that time, and there's my name up there. I said, what is this all about? I hope I'm not in any trouble. But he actually took me aside and he asked me. He said, why don't you come down to Bagdad and train and teach people to do what you do? Because you don't like that pretty much do And I didn't want to do that. I don't do good around the flag pole. And I said, well, I said, you know, I thought it was command such a major's gonna kill me. I said no, I said, I don't want to do that. I said, but understand, and Tray I saw he thought it was funny. He got of chuckle. I said, I can't teach people from a podium. I can't observe him, I can't certify him when I've got to have him go through a door with me with the bad guys and watch me do it enough times. Then I'll t turned my team over to them. I'll have oversight and then they learned to do what I do. Then I'll start of find and sent them to You thought that was a great idea. Oh yeah, but no, to answer your question, very few people. There were a few people I never expected to live with them. I was with them all the time training and they loved my guys. It was really funny how much they liked my guys. Are you Are they speaking Persia or a Persian? What do they'd speak? And how Parsi? How are you? How are you able to get over that? I have this awesome, awesome interpreter who was an Egyptian. His name is Amir Banub. He's been an American citizen for twelve years. Emir couldn't hit that wall with a rifle. He was quite possibly the worst shot of them. But you haven't haven't met Brian hot Season. Well, as it turns out, I got him a big, old, beautiful cole steel knife, which would come back to bite me in the tale later. But Emir translated for me, and because of his age, like my age, he was my age air of respect age. And most of my guys would call me grandfather or something didn't bother me, and my favorite one would call me daddy, you know. But that interaction between the SF guys they come over to my I had a compound built just for the team, four towers up there with bel fez, four fighting positions to get to it, because everybody hated my guys. You know, they're bad voys. My guys from Special Forces. We drive over and play volleyball with them. We'd eat with them. Well, and I'll tell you something that's really struck several people. I didn't strike me too much. But before we go out, we take turns, you know, just thanking the Lord for deliverance, please bring us back and on one piece, nobody gets harmless, do our job, do the mission, bring everybody home safe, and we come back in and somebody would say, thank you Lord for deliverance, and everybody h r and off we go. Well, the aarbs were so impressed by that. They came to me said, Pops, can we pray with you? Oh? Wow? Man. So we let them get into the circle or SF guys and they would pray first, and then we would pray two totally different religions. You know, that's beautiful. And it was. And Big o'sama not no relation, but been a Lotted was a great big guy. He had sixteen five e feet. He had never worn shoes, he had sandals. So one day I convinced him I wanted to outline his foot and I told him I'm going to make a set of wooden shoes for you. And then I went on ahead and I took my I took to his space with my team nogging, and I sent it to dinner. Boots. It maybe two pair of boots free of charge. Oh my goodness, you have to sing those things they were boots. Well, he was just a great big guy. He literally sit there and cried, put those boots on somebody. I got a bunch of Thorolow socks for him too, and he's I have boots. I have boots. And the boy he was when I would stay with my guys, which is not really smart and not sleep with my SF team once in a while. Once a while, I he's on over there. They psd me over there, and I had a room up there, and my room had a bed and a table on my computer and everything, and I was in constant contact with SF Eyver fifteen minutes away. Beg Osama would lay with his back against my door. My hinges are inbound. When his mattress was rifle to get to me, they had to get through him. People talk about the lack of camaraderie between the herbs and the soldier. You just don't know the herbs, and when you actually sit down and talk to him, you literally become part of their family. When you're feeding their wife and children. When they get married. They gave money. They don't want ribbons, they don't want medals. They want money. Barricot, Hammish, Sardan Saudi, all three got shot. We got ambushed. Hammish is laying there. We're blowing the windows out of this little compound. Barricott grows out and grabs Hammish. He's dragging him backwards. He brings his rifle up to shoot at this guy in this far left corner window. The guy shoots him. There's the river. His rifle familiar with an ak. There's a release block. It's pressured in there. You left that and your receiver comes out. Shot him right through it. I got that at home, by the way. Wow. Barricott drops to one knee. He takes Hamish's rifle, shoots the guy in the window, and then drags Hamish back down to me. And I had some frags and he kept trying to tell me. Mir says, give him the fags, giving the friend. So he shot not badly, He's got pieces. He goes up and throws the franks through the windows. Wow, you know tough when you do stuff, he's occurred. Yeah, Churchy, you when you do stuff for those guys, when you show them you care about them. You can sit down as a as a Christian and you can talk to them. But you don't want to do that unless you're really close to him, because it offends them. But we would go through things like poss What do you know? What do you know about about my people? I said, what do you want to know? I said? Abraham had a wife. Her name was Sarah. She couldn't conceive, gave her hand. Maybe Hagar had Ismael. They're going crazy, And I said, and then they went fussing back and forth like they're going to do to the wives and the child. And God promised her that their children be like the sands of the earth and the seeds of the earth. And off they go. I said, why do you hate the Jews? I said, you have the same fun Abraham. He's buried, and he's buried in Iraq, and they think about that, but they've been told there's no Holocaust. Well they've been like to by everybody. So I'm curious just for my own curiosity. Uh, I'm a fan. Or listen to John McFee. Did you ever come cross paths with the guy? I guess it was named the Sheriff of Baghdad for his Special Forces stuff over there. I was just curious if he'll cross paths. No, we stayed up in Moses. None of us wanted to go out to Baghdad. Yeah. Too many stars down there. Ah, you know that makes sense? Do you do you do you see mosill ever? I mean when I look at these cities, when I look at Gayza, and I look at what Lebanon, When I look at these these cities of rubble. I wonder is there a hope are those people? Are there foundations good enough that it could be built back? Could can it ever be built back? It could be built back. The actual mechanics are building a build and can be It can be built back, and they can have a structured government. But you're always going to have the tribal difficulties between this. Yes, of the Kurds, you know, as soon he's and you're going to have that. That's that's in their lineage, and they're always going to try to work together to the point where they can come out on top. Yeah, it's just they've been that way their entire life. Yeah, you can rebuild, but you'll always have that issue going on. I wonder a city of two point seven million, I mean they built it at one time, they had those things up, you know, and it just doesn't I just want to when did it all start looking like that? Well? Can you cover? I guess what's what you've got to worry about is who's in charge of the who's in charge? Yeah? As Saddam was unbelievably brutal. His uh he had a castle. Uh. We took his castle and we used it for our headquarters. Beautiful, unbelievable, gorgeous mosaics and marbles, just extraordinary. And the people are out there going through plastic looking for some kind of little food in it. You know. In New dan Cuse, they just did whatever they wanted. They raped, they murdered, they did anything they wanted, and the people despised them when we killed them. They actually made a dump sight where their house was. But then again it's based upon was Sada I'm. Good to you? Or was he not good? Huh? Yeah, wow, you mentioned before we came on air, you mentioned a rescuing or saving a rich a wealthy person's daughter. Can you talk about that a little bit? Well, we were We didn't do a lot of things in the daytime. A few things we did all our target packages at night, but occasionally we had to go out for different things. And I can't remember which team this was. I think it was my second team seventy one. We were traveling parallel to the Tiger's River her and we called it Root Lexus. It was a code name for it. We had roots named for vehicles and stuff. And a white ASV crossed over, crossed over from two lanes and hit our asv and blew up and it was a suicide. Well it spun its sideways, but it didn't hurt any of our guys. But we dismounted and we could see people were injured. Two adult mothers were dead, child was dead. One child was wounded in her torso. And I got to a little girl and she had a yellow sun dress on and she was missing pretty much everything above her knee and big junk with calf out of her right leg. And I'm just a simple combat lifesaver. I'm not a medic, but I know enough skin and DearS how the femararity works. And we had talked many times about this, the medics and stuff, trying to update us and give us a hand. So first time I put a fernicut on, she's still believing. So I have to go farther up, and again she's still believing. Next time it comes up and starts dribbling. Well, I can see something, and I realized when I clean it off, it's ephemeral. So I take a hema stat and I pull it. When it comes out in pieces, go a little bit farther. Same thing happened the third time out. It comes as whole so I put another heema stat on it, clamping down and put bloodstoppers on it, wrap it real good and deal with her calf. And I told the medic and he agreed. So she won't make it because if she goes to the Algebray Hospital and Mosell, that's a slaughter house. And I feel such pretty little girl cuts about. She was about nine, maybe ten. So we fast forward a few months and when we get a call through Brigade and Brigade wants to talk to me and the captain and we go down and we talk. Shak Abdullah, who controls all the points of entry into a rack, is the go to this little girl, and he was able to find out which team you know, and then also never really who it was. It passed up, So we ended up going out in the desert four hour trip on the most miserable trip of my life. Two of my guys in the back seat, two of my operators heat exhaustion, passed out and so hot. It was so hot that I took my Nomax gloves off and touched my rifle and it burnt my hands. So I pulled around out of the chamber, dropped the bag and everything same thing with my hand go I got the other guys and the inner vehicles did the same thing. And then we had to take these guys out and deal with them. But that's definitely a story for off the air and make sure that they were hydrated. And then we went to this guy's I mean all I can say. It was just an oasis palace. It was this huge, thick walled, heavily machine gun torrents on top with this great, big thick gate, big gears and stuff. And the closer you get to it, you see these pipes coming out of the ground. That's his irrigation pipes going to his I don't know what other than the oasis guys. And they opened the gate and we come through and we get out and we take our body arm or out and we throw it in the trunk or battle helmets out, block our weapons in the trunk, just take our side arms with us. And this guy comes out and he just introduces himself. He has an American interpreter there of course, the mirrors with me, and then his brother comes out and his brother wants to find me inf and he starts crying, and you know she was sent to Austria. Keeps saying Switzerland, but she was sent to Austria. Threw it right out of the country and saved her life, you know. So we spent several days there. I got to watch him fly falcons, and he had beautiful Rabian horses, He had butlers and waiters and the most beautiful gardens you've ever seen, KYLEI was gorgeous. And then of course we to go back to. That's a great story. Yeah, wowty cool. Well, before we get you out of here, because we do appreciate you coming in. We always finish off our interviews with a question, if you could pick anybody in history, who would you pick to spend twenty four hours with and where would you spend with them? Well, that's absolutely no problem answering that. Jesus up in heaven. That's where I want to be. Absolutely, that's fantastic. Well, you're listening to life, liberty, happiness in their American hero stories. Marine Corps Vietnam veteran Gregory meets him. Thank you,