John Pighini (feat. Scott Gearen)

In this episode, John Pighini and Scott Gearen sit down to recount stories of John's career in uniform — from flying combat rescue missions over Laos and Thailand during the Vietnam War, to becoming the founding Pararescuemen at the classified JSOC unit known as Det 4 NAFCOS (later known as the 24th STS). John recounts:

Flying 100+ combat missions in the Jolly Green Giant, picking up downed pilots under fire, and earning the Silver Star. 

Lima Sites and what life was really like in Udorn and NKP during the Vietnam War

Being hand-selected by a general to establish Pararescue's presence within JSOC alongside Delta Force and SEAL Team Six

A harrowing helicopter crash on a training mission when a C-130's tire clipped their rotor blades on a darkened runway. 

How he fought to define Pararescue's combat identity — pushing for CQB training, combat medicine, and independence from the aircraft commander

John's story is one of a man who was voted "least likely to succeed" and went on to shape the modern Pararescue career field — driven by the motto: "That Others May Live."

Transcript

John 0:05

Well, I, um- Wasn't a good student for starters, you know? Came from a family that, uh, you know, everybody has their struggles. And, uh, when I got to be about 16, you know, it got a little bit tedious for me to do schoolwork. And I was in and out of, uh, one high school from another. And, uh, and I finally, one day I said to my mom, I says, "You know, you're the head rosary bead sayer at the church there." I says, "Get me back in the Bishop Egan High School 'cause I need to get a high school education." Well, that didn't last very long. I got in and, uh, the Cuban Missile Crisis was starting up. So me and a buddy of mine, we, uh, we joined up on the Buddy Program. And, uh, off we went to Lackland, and got through basic training and everything, and I got stationed at Orlando Air Force Base, and that's where headquarters rescue was. And, uh, it was a missile maintenance base, no flight line or anything. There was a hospital there, and a lot of lakes, but that's where, uh, rescue was hanging its hat at that time. And, uh, I was a clerk. They made a clerk typist out of me. Now, I couldn't type type, let alone spell spell. You know, I wasn't the, the greatest student, and I disliked the military, I mean, because it was a challenge. Here comes this little guinea boy from Philadelphia, and I'm in the barracks with a bunch of hayseeds, you know? And all they wanted to do was bounce my head off the wall, you know? So I was in and out of struggles there for a while, and, and got a little bad time, and I'll tell you about that and the reason I'm bringing it up. I got 10 days in the wire cage, you know, where they let you out to go mow the lawn and shit. So, uh- I'm walking down the street, and here comes three guys walking up, and they got these black ball caps on. And they had this patch on that had a diver's flag on it, jump wings, and, uh, the medical medic cross, you know? And I stopped them. I said, "What do you guys do?" "Well, we're PJs." And I'm like, "What's a PJ?" And come to find out it was Bob Wheeler, who you probably never heard about, but I can talk to you about him for years to come. But, uh, I ran over to personnel. I got my buddy, Dave Slager. We used to hang around together. He was a sky cop. And, uh, we went in there and inquired about it. So they pulled out my records, and they said, "Well, your GED scores are not high enough." So I go, "Okay, I ought to retake the test." And she says, "Okay. Well, you're not gonna be able to go." I says, "Why?" She says, "Because you got 10 days bed time. You can't qualify." So I looked at her with a tear in my eye, and she said, "Wait a minute." And she took my records and went off and came back. She says, "No, you're good to go. We got rid of that." So she pulled that 10 days out of my record. So God was blessing me right then. So Slager and I, off to jump school we go. Now, he went at a different date than I, and every time I'd come back, I would come back to the unit where I was at headquarters. I was in Materiel Squadron, but they came down there when they were getting ready to kick me out of the Air Force for unadaptability, and they didn't fill out my OJT records properly, you know, so I wasn't getting the training. And, you know, this old sergeant was sitting over there going, "Yeah," shaking his head like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. Tell him you did it." And I'm like, "No, that's not my signature. I'm not... You know, I didn't do that." So a chief master sergeant named Cisco and Begonzio, these two chiefs, got me and brought me to headquarters. And, uh- I wound up working in the mail room, and I was a delivery boy. I went around in this big truck, and they, uh, it was like, you know, like a UPS truck, and it had all these shelves. And this is how we did distribution back in those days, you know, after we got rid of the horses. So then we went, and I'd have to go into each unit and drop off mail and pick it up and whatever. And I got accepted to go to pararescue, and everybody told me I wasn't gonna make it. "You're not gonna go. You're not good enough. Da, da, da, da, da." Well, I had fun. I went, and I enjoyed every minute of that, going to Fort Benning, come back from Fort Benning, back on the mail truck. Same thing with scuba school. Off to US Navy... I went to San Diego for my training, second class Navy diver school. So we went out there, came back. Every, all the other PJs, students, they went into the barracks at Orlando. Me and Sliger, Sliger went back onto the gate, waving cars through, and I went back to distributing the mail. And then when we finally graduated from pararescue, we got our beret. We were the first class to be issued the beret, and General Brooks gave us that, and he, well, he was a colonel then. And we were the first class to get the beret that came out of May of that year, I believe it was. So off we went to Vietnam. Went home, changed clothes, said hi to everybody, and there I am in Udorn, Thailand, with all kinds of expectations and what's gonna go on. But my younger days were, uh, like I said, they were gonna throw me out for unadaptable to military service. What saved me was My personal hygiene. My shoes were always spit-shined, my uniforms were starched out, my hair was right, and they couldn't figure out why I was so good with 3510, which is the regulation that covers your uniforms, that they couldn't figure out why I was so sharp and why I liked... I don't know, I grew up killing Nazis and, and Japs when I was a kid, you know, running around through the job sites where they were building houses, and rolling down the hills, and had my Daisy air rifle, and World War II hat, you know, and all that stuff. Back then it was a lot of, you know, paraphernalia left over, and us kids used to get it and go out and play war. We used to make grenades out of little sandwich bags and fill them full of dirt and wrap a rubber band around them, you know. So we conducted war there in, in Philly for a while. Yeah.

Nick 6:17

I think they're still on the streets doing that in downtown Philly.

John 6:21

Yeah. So I... We-

Scott 6:23

John, John.

John 6:25

Yeah.

Scott 6:25

John, what, what year was that you went to Orlando and, and graduated? What year was that?

John 6:31

Well, I, I went, got to Orlando in, in like January or Febru- January of '63. I went in the service November of '62. So you go to basic trainings, I think it was six to eight weeks or whatever that was, and then I wound up at Orlando Air Force Base. Then when we went to jump school, I was in for... I was in, uh, going through pararescue training in 1966, so that's when I started in the pipeline. And the pipeline wasn't really established, it was, it was coming along the way. I mean, there was guys that were in the career field that hadn't completed scuba school and whatnot, had been PJs for years, and now it was a requirement that you had to be scuba qualified. Due to the space shuttle and other things, you know, as it materialized that, that we started doing a lot of water work, you know?

Nick 7:25

So you got to, you got to Thailand, and then how long did you spend-

John 7:30

I got to Thailand in January, uh, right after... Well, on the way over I had to stop off in the Philippines for a little R&R, and a jungle survival school there. And, uh, that was fun. Enjoyed that. And then we got in country in January, I believe it was, and, uh, went right in, met Big Willie and, you know, World War II guy. And he, you know, he was really something else. Everybody looked up to him. He was a flight officer during World War II, you know. There was a lot of enlisted pilots back in those days, and that's what Malcolm Williams was. Gentle giant, you know. Uh, and there was Charlie D. Smith was in my class, too, and Charlie was a senior guy. He was a tech sergeant back then, which, you know, I was a two-striper. You know? I n- I never got promoted all the way through because promotions came from the squadron level from up to E5, I think. An E5 came from hierarchy or whoever. But so the 1360th Air Base group at Orlando wouldn't promote me 'cause they didn't wanna give a stripe to somebody that was leaving. So consequently, I showed up there as a, uh- E3, I guess it was. Two stripes back in those days. So it didn't take me long to get promoted to E4, and then they changed it and I became a sergeant. The E4 rank was designated a sergeant for some reason. They started playing around with the ranks. So I got in there in, in, like, late January, and, uh, I was there for about a week, and we were still taking tags out of our uniforms, and next thing you know, Hackney goes down. And, uh, I'd never met Duane Hackney until we took him off the airplane when he came in after being picked up from that mission. And me, and Dave Slagger, and, and Trujillo, Pancho, was there with us, and we toted him up to the emergency room, and they took some shrapnel out of his ass, and tended his burns, and... 'Cause he had his sleeves rolled up, and his arms got flash burned, you know? And then, you know-

Nick 9:41

is that the first time you treated a patient outside of training, was Duane Hackney?

John 9:45

Yeah. I, I never, I never even got to treat Hackney. I mean, we just wrapped him, sacked him, and took him, carried him from the, uh, helicopter up to the emergency room, and that was it. I never got to... I mean, we got him in there on the table and everything, and then the med- medical people came in and, you know, asked us to leave, so. So that was that. Uh, and then I flew my missions, and then we, you know, stayed there at Udorn, and they brought in the 53s within, I don't know, halfway through my tour. And, uh, they moved the, the H3 down to Nakhon Phanom. So all the guys that wanted to stay with the H3s, which was me, and S- Slagger, and a few other guys, we went down to NKP, 'cause the, uh, 53s were, were there at Udorn.

Nick 10:34

Mm-hmm.

John 10:35

And that's when Fisk and the class that was behind us, I think those guys, Roy Taylor, Furboni. Man, it's amazing. I can remember these guys' na- Not Baratt I can remember, but Roy. But Furboni and Patalir, a lot of these guys came in, uh- And we were already there flying missions and, and doing the job, and it was fun. And I remember when KO Kelly came in. You ever hear of KO Kelly?

Nick 11:01

No.

John 11:02

No, KO is a, you know, pretty good guy, and everybody knew him. He was well-liked, but he was kind of funny, too, 'cause I'll never forget it. When he showed up, we were pretty lackadaisical there because we were in a war, and, you know, we went and did our thing and came back and went and drank our beer and chased mahanes or whatever. And KO shows up. He's a tech sergeant, and he was new, and he was put- this, putting his things away and whatnot, and then he, uh, unpacking. And I can't remember who was there with me. I don't know if it was Danny Broughton or one of the other guys. And KO says to us, we said to him, you know, "Hi, hey, I'm... my name's John Figini." And then he says... I said, "What's your name?" And he goes, "Well, most people call me Tech Sergeant Kelly." You know, and he started losing points real quick with that. So we loved him ever since then 'cause we just laughed and said, "Listen, uh, KO," or we didn't, we... or I forget his first, Kerry. Said, "Kerry," we never called him Tech Sergeant after that. Could never get it out of us, you know? But it was a motley crew, and everybody did their part. I mean, there wasn't no loose link in that barracks where we lived. A lot of fun went on, a lot of harassment with one another. I mean, you go out and get shit-faced and come back, and you fall asleep in your rack, you never know what they're gonna do to you. You know, they used to set up IVs and let it drip on you all night. You wake up in the middle of the night soaking wet, freezing, you know. So we had a lot of fun, you know. We enjoyed it. And then we'd had some missions, you know. We'd come in, and, and how Slager and I got on, on a mission was, uh- We was first there and it was Hackney. Got shot down, and Big Willie's like, "I need some PJs." And there's Slagger and I, and we're still pulling out, you know, inspected by 32, you know, in the pockets of our uniforms that were so new. And they told us to get our gear, you're going. And we just looked at one another and went, "Okay. W- where's our gear?" They hand us a A3 bag, and we started throwing shit in it, and the next thing you know they fly in a Gooney Bird. Do you know what a Gooney Bird is?

Nick 13:10

No.

John 13:11

I do not. C- C47. Yeah. So the C47 comes in and lands, and the runway was made of PSP. You know what that is? Yeah. You ever see the, the metal runways with the holes in it, like, you know?

Nick 13:24

Yep.

John 13:25

And I'm like, I'm saying to myself, "This is like Victory at Sea." We used to have a w- war program that came on that I watched all the time, and it was like going back in history. Loaded us on that, and they flew us down there, me, Slagger, and, and Big Willie, and then they put us on other H3s, which was from a H3 outfit called Pony Express. And these were the guys that ran a lot of secret ops and whatnot, you know. And they did- they had a hoist, but it was one that they had to erect, you know? It wasn't like the one on the jolly with the handle and stuff, you know? So, you know, we're kinda looking at one another going like, "What's going on?" You know, never... Welcome to the war. So the next thing you know they landed, and, uh, they had Hackney. They picked him up, so we didn't get to fly out on that one. And I think the PJ that picked him up, his name was Luther Davis, and he, uh... We had two Luther Davises and, uh, Luther T. Jones, or was it? Used to... Jonesy. I can't say what he used to say. It'll ruin your, your, uh, podcast. But anyway, Luther had two or three Purple Hearts already, and I was reading about him the other day, and I remember him. He f- he was in an- another battle where he was really in the thick of it, and his helicopter crashed, and he kept running back inside to pull out the pilots that were getting burned up in there, and he got himself burned up, and he later expired at O- at, at the hospital in Okinawa. But what a hardcore dude he was, you know? So, you know, that's, that was my first, like, year in the war type thing. And then, you know, the, you get a mission and you gotta go, and you're either high bird or you're low bird. And the low bird gets to pick up, and the high bird- Place SAR to them in case they get in trouble, you can go in and, and pick them up. So all in all... shouldn't talk about this, but all in all, we had a really good time, you know? Yeah. I don't wanna expose a lot of fun things that we did that would probably our mothers wouldn't- All right approve of, you know?

Scott 15:36

Do it. Do it.

John 15:38

Do it?

Scott 15:39

Yeah, of course.

John 15:40

We had a place that was called the Sugar Shack, and we all lived off base at the Sugar Shack. And there was like six rooms in this building, and then a center thing, you know? And you had a all the way around the end. And, you know, like, let's say me and Scott, we, we paid for this bedroom. So, so let's say you- Okay and I are good buddies. We share this room, we pay for that one, right? Well, there was always, you know, six PJs, four to six PJs gone. So there was always rooms there. So that was running water, hot and cold, you know, whatever you wanted was going on in that sugar shack. A lot of fun. A lot of, you know, street... Little fights here and there, you know. Uh, but all in all it was a pretty motley crew and, and we enjoyed it. And that's about all I'm gonna talk about that, you know? So, so it wasn't all war, and it wasn't all blood and guts. In fact, you'd pray for missions. There weren't that many that... You know, there were, but they were being shifted around, you know? And, uh, my first mission, I got, uh, two pilots punched out, one of them hanging in a tree, and I thought I was gonna have to go down and get him out of it 'cause he was kinda loose in the head and just hanging there, and he wouldn't respond. Then he finally responded, and we were able to get him on the penetrator without me going down. And we picked those two up, and we picked up some ground fire on that one. And, uh, nobody got hurt, thank God. And off we went, uh, and brought them back. So that was my first, uh, rescue mission. And, uh, and we went on, and I'd had other assists. I was a high bird on, on several missions, and one was with my friend Randy McComb. I don't know if you ever heard that name or not. Yeah. Randy was a really good guy, and he was down on the ground picking up an F-105 pilot, and somehow I knew that 105 pilot. I don't know if I had picked him up before or something, but anyway, his bird got shot up, went over the, the hill, and crashed. And I had to go in and, and my bird went in and picked up the crew. And I got famous that day because the engineer tried to get on board, and he didn't bring the M60 with him. So I made him go back out and get that M60 off of that H-3 'cause they'd be shooting it at us the next time we come up, you know? I didn't care. I mean, it was... He brought the ammo can, too, which was great, but leaving that M60 on there didn't... You know, it, I made him go get it. But, uh, we got them, and then they got Randy, and I picked him up off the ground over there. And, uh, that was a very exciting mission that day. We were busy, you know.

Nick 18:34

Is that, is that, was that, uh, July 3rd, 1967? Or is that the same- Yes mission?

John 18:39

Yeah. These were all in 1967, yeah. And there was another time when Duffy was on a mission, and I remember that, and his plane was on fire. And they're scooting across the top of the, uh... His helicopter was on fire, and, uh, flames were coming out of that thing. And I'm like- I'm intense and I'm pushing my mic bu- button and I'm saying, "Joe, get out. Get out," you know? And the pilot had to tell me to get off the mic, you know? So it's crazy how, what's going on, you know, at the time. But they seemed to control the fire, and they landed at one of the forward operating bases. They were all over Laos. You know, there was little, little sites here, there, and everywhere that you went. And we predominantly worked out of Lima Site 98 at nighttime. That's where Air America had their hooch there, and we would go and spend the night there. And then we'd move up to 36, which is right up along the North Vietnam border not far from the, uh, Maggia Pass. And, uh, we'd sit alert there and waiting for them to be shot down. And then when they get shot down, we go get them. I had an exciting one in, in July. It was a two-day mission where, uh- The pilot was down and we went out, and our High Bird, I think it was the first day out, the High Bird crapped out and they had to go in. And we, we all decided to stay and, you know, on the helicopter we talked about it. You know, look, if we go down, we're fucked, you know? So instead of having that happen, we, we stayed and we tried to get in and get this guy, and, uh, no luck, 'cause they threw everything at us but the kitchen sink. I mean, when we first entered that, uh, area, we were receiving, you know, first time I ever saw a ball tracer coming at me, you know? And, uh, 37 millimeter, little flak flying here and there. And then they, they were saying that colleague I was calling in that MIGs were in the area. So the pucker factor just went up im- immensely on, on that. So we didn't get him the first day, so we go back to the base and we land, and Colonel Britton was the commander there, and he comes in and debriefed us all. And then he turns around and says, uh, "All right, you guys, you go back and get some good rest 'cause you're going back in tomorrow." And I, I'm looking at him went, and he's like, "Yeah, 'cause you know the area." And I'm like, "We know the area." Okay, yeah, you know, the area is nothing but a bunch of jungle, you know? And, and I gotta go back in there tomorrow. Okay, great, you know? So I went back and I took all my magazines except my personal ones in my little, you know, ammo pouches. We used to wear those ones on our belt, you know. And I, we had a can, an ammo can full of 20 round magazines, and I went down to the thing, got all tracer rounds and replaced all the ball ones with tracer. 'Cause that .50 caliber balls coming at me really lit up my life, you know? So I figured I'm gonna load my gun with tracer 'cause they don't know that all I got is an M16. So I blasted out of there with the firing all tracers. So they must have thought I had a mini gun or something like that because every round was a tracer that was coming out of there. And, uh, we went in to get this, this guy, Pritchard, and time after time we kept going in and getting shot off, shot off. And the A-1s were going in, bombing, scraping. Everybody had their fingers in the pie. And, uh, it's really a, a good narrative on it if you read the writeup for Greg Edsall, who just passed away. Uh, he was the H3 pilot. He did that around the world trip too, flying the, uh, H3. And his narrat- narrative has got all the- All the stuff that went on i- in there and while we were in the back, I guess, watching cartoons. So, you know, uh, my, what they said is they said that I exposed myself, and I felt a little bit embarrassed about that because it's not often that I'm exposing myself.

Nick 23:00

I think, uh, you're referencing the writeup to your Silver Star, yeah. You exposed yourself to enemy fire.

John 23:08

I think they didn't want, you know, they didn't wanna... I don't know why, you know, but I think it's a, I hate to say it, but, you know, there's professional jealousy in the officers, you know? They write up what they want. I almost got in trouble really bad one time 'cause I came back off a mission, and we had taken some ground fire, and the, and the rotor blades, there was some holes and stuff. And this young captain comes by and said, "Hey, Pagini, what'd you do, shoot a hole in a rotor blade, you know?" And I just looked at him and I says, "Well, no, sir." I says, "I, if you weren't an officer, I'd tell you to go fuck yourself, but seeing how you are, I can't." And he, and he went and got Colonel Britain and, and to get all over me, and Britain told him to mind his own business or something. I don't know, but they never filed any charges on me, you know. Good. So that was one time when I loose lips, you know. So, but pretty much we'd fly into 36. We had a hooch up there. I have pictures of it, and every once in a while I'll put it online when they start talking about Laos here and there. It was a little shack made of plywood, and that's where we'd s- bunk out during the day, and they'd hook up a PRC-47 to the, off the sponson of the Jolly Green. They'd hook into their antenna, and we'd listen to the, uh, to the bombing missions all day long, you know. And then I've had a mission where a guy came in, and this is funny. It was pouring rain, and the guy punched out and he was injured. You think he broke his leg or something. So we find him, and it's in quasi-hostile territory. You know, that means it is and it isn't, you know? So we go in, and we decided to land, 'cause it's pouring rain. And I said, "I'll go get him," you know? So I go to jump out the helicopter, and my mic cord was around my ankle. And boy, I went in the mud that quick in the rice paddy, upside down. So this pilot's sitting over there watching me come out of there, you know, hero of the day. So I drag I get up, get the mud off me, go over to him, and he tells me what's wrong with him a- and I see it. Okay, great. Pouring rain. Take out my radio and I call for the engineer to come over and help me. We're gonna carry this guy over. So he comes over, and this one-man dinghy's inflated. You know, you ever seen it inflated, the little one-man raft, right? So I said to the engineer, I says, "How did..." He says, "How do you wanna carry him over?" And I go, "Put him in the dinghy and we'll pick it up." So we put him in the dinghy, and we both got on both sides, and we lifted him up, and we ripped the handles off of the fucking dinghy. And the pilot's sitting there looking at us, like, "You two fuck ups." Okay, hear me? Guy goes out, lands headfirst in the mud, and then so we just picked his ass up, 'cause we were being shot at, they said. And we just lugged his ass over and threw him in the helicopter. Splinted his leg and got him back, you know? But that's pretty funny.

Nick 26:07

You invented the Polish litter. You should have gone to North American Rescue.

John 26:12

Yeah. That was, that was, uh, one eventful one. And then I had another mission where, um, this Navy helicopter crew, it came across north of Vietna- of, uh, Hanoi. Came across there, and, uh, made it in, into Laos. They were shot up pretty good, and I tended to the engineer and one other guy on there. I think I had to take care of him. Guy's fingers were fucked up. He took a round in the hand. Lucky it wasn't his head, you know? It's the way you look at it, you know? So patched them up, and then they had to leave the helicopter there, and got all the paraphernalia out of it. And then we took the crew, I forget what we did with the crew, but they came in and blew up the helicopter. The SA-3s came in and sh- blew up the helicopter that they were in. And then we dropped those guys off at, at some site up there where they were picked up by Air America and flown back out to wherever they needed to go, you know? So when you're there at that time, I was, probably did get promoted to E4. Uh, you didn't get much intel. Y- you know, you're just a young airman and, uh- You didn't hear everything that went. I got selected by Colonel Britton to go on a mission, and it was to go up north, but they called it some ridge up there where there was, like, several pilots that were shot down. And, uh, Colonel Britton thought that I'd be the, a good guy to send up there to work it, and I felt that I was pretty proud of that. I thought maybe he thought I had my shit together or he was just trying to get rid of me 'cause, you know, we didn't, we didn't know if you're gonna make it back from going up there. That's, you know, a big helicopter ride. I did make it across the Black River, but not the Red. You know, they had these two rivers up there, and the Red River, you cross that, you're in Indian country times 50, you know. So from what I can remember of it. And frightening things would be, like, when you're in the middle of a mission and you're flying and they start calling in colleague I, which is a Super Constellation with a dish on the roof, and they pick up MiGs, and they start calling it in. You know, colleague, "Bandit, bandit," bu- "bullseye," you know. And then the pilots get nervous and, you know, naturally you're gonna have a MiG coming up your butt, you know, in an H3. And that has happened. We've had guys get waxed on that, so. And when you're at those Lima sites, you run- When I used to go to Lima Site 36, I used to go down and pick up all outdated medicines and stuff and take it up there, 'cause a French doctor used to come in. And their little hospital, which was like a, they had a piece of plywood on some log stumps, and they had a pot belly stove cooking instruments. They'd boil their instruments. And the wounded Laotians would come in there to that clinic, so I would help them out with treating them. And, you know, there's guys sitting around on the floor smoking opium pipes and stuff like that, you know, to keep their head straight.

Nick 29:17

Is, is this photo from that Site 36?

John 29:20

No, that one is from one where I got shot up. The, the airplane, we were going in on a mission, and we got shot up. That's way up. That's, like, you know, two miles from the North Vietnam border, and we took some battle damage in our fuel pumps or whatever. We were leaking all over, so we limped into that. And if you look at that picture, you'll see the Laotian flag on the flagpole. And then at the helicopter, you'll see that's, you'll see the little square plate that where the, the stars and stripes would be. Y- And it's tilted. And what they did, they used to have a, a Laotian flag on some of them on one side and the American on the other, and when we would land there, you'd slide that plate up and flip it over 'cause we weren't supposed to be in country. We're not supposed to be in Laos. That, that war never happened, you know?

Nick 30:09

Oh, wow. Okay.

John 30:10

Yeah, so it was... You only went there, you had a dog tag on, and, you know, name tags, no nothing. You just had your dog tag, and that was it. You were not allowed to take cameras, okay? So I had a, one of those little spy cameras from James Bond. I finally got one of them a- and took some pictures. But you were hanging it out 'cause they told us you weren't allowed to take pictures or I would've had, had more, you know, of, of stuff that went on. Uh, dead bodies and stuff like that, they were all over the place at Lima 36, you know, when they tried to overrun the base. I've got some other pictures of, of that village, and as I'm going through them as I was getting ready for this, and I'm, like, looking at that, and I'm like, "Oh, boy." You know what I mean? They were really messed up places. You know, it wasn't like... They're not buildings. They lived in shacks, you know, and the kids just ran around with no britches on and pooped where they wanted to, you know. And it was all lined with punji stakes and concertina wire and whatnot.

Nick 31:09

Oh, wow. That's crazy

John 31:11

So it, it, you know, and then there's a half a guy laying in a, in a bomb crater and you know, just different gore here and there, you know, and it's... You're exposed to all of that, you know? And in spite of that, you're out there doing stupid things like walking around in a rice paddy that's been mined, you know, and I did that like a dumb fuck. I, I didn't know it was till they started yelling at me to get out of there, you know? So, you know, so am I lucky to be alive? Yeah, I guess I am. So is everybody else who did things there. 'Cause they-- When we go back to Lima Site 98, at nighttime we had copious amounts of, uh, beer in T-1. So, you know, everybody drank, you know, and then went to bed. I had to sleep on the helicopter a couple of times 'cause they were worried about insurgents coming in, and I'm like, you ever try to sleep on a lonely little dirt runway in a helicopter in bad land? How much sleep you think you got, you know? So you're up all night sweating it out, you know. So that was fun Not really. Then what happened was, uh My grandfather died, and I had a ver- I was very close with my grandfather. My father was a, uh, great guy, but he was a drunk. And, you know, that made life miserable, you know? So I kinda clung to my grandfather and, you know, he was Italian from the day go, you know, so he was a Dago, Roma Dago, you know? So I, he died, and I spent a lot of time with him. And my cousin Freddy, who was a Marine, and what a war record he had. He was with the Second Marine Division. He did Tinian, Saipan, and Okinawa. They were some of the worst battles. He was a BAR operator, and he came back and he started telling everybody that he just drove a Jeep. He drove the general around. He didn't do nothing. Well, that... I got his records, and that was bullshit, you know? And it, what's really amazing too is he wrote a couple of poems and a letter that he wrote that was read to the group. They're all about post-traumatic stress. And when you get back f- and you see these guys having a hard time and whatnot, he was kinda like letting people know that they should, you know, help these people and not put them down. So they had the same struggles that we had here, you know, with post-traumatic stress. And, and I would venture to say, I mean, PTSD in combat, it all has its effects on everybody a certain way, and they carry it and they handle it. And a lot of those guys, they never got any help. You know, the VA was really not... Like Born on the Fourth of July, did you ever see that movie? Mm. No. This movie called Born on the Fourth of July, and it's, it stars, uh, Tom Cruise. And, uh, it came out long time ago, you know, in the '70s. But it's all about the VA hospital and how he was treated after he got his legs messed up and whatnot. So, you know, it's, there's a lot that the guys go through and, and the, and the older you get, the smarter you get, and, but you gotta trudge forward. We got guys out there now, and it's like every time I go to the doctor's they say to me, "Do you ever think about suicide and whatnot?" And I go, I says, "Everybody thinks about that." And I says, "You can't tell me they don't." I says, "But they don't wanna be remembered that way. I don't wanna be remembered that way." You know? I mean, I, I don't know, you know, I, I'd have to really be suffering bad before I'd put a bullet in my head, you know? But people choose to go out that way, and it's a, it's a darn shame. It's really a shame. So I wish they could do more for it

Nick 35:09

Yeah. I, it's kind of hard when they're like they're wanting to have the suicide prevention top priority, and the first thing when you're calling the VA, it's like you don't even have to... You can't even press zero for the operator. They're like, "Hey, press one if you're gonna kill yourself." I know. And then, and they're like, "Oh, yeah, you wanna talk to the dentist? That's three."

John 35:29

They still, I mean-

Nick 35:30

Like, thanks for reminding me.

John 35:32

Yeah. Y- you know, it, it's really ironic 'cause I got this COVID pneumonia four years ago, and we had just moved here and closed on the house. We're staying in a hotel, and the next day, two days later, we went to dinner that night. I don't know if it was Christmas Eve or New Year's Eve, and I'm in an ambulance on my way to the hospital with COVID pneumonia. And I'm in Shands Hospital, and they had me in intensive care for about five or six days. And I called the guy over. I go, "Look, th- this shit ain't coming up. You know, we gotta get it done." I says, "Go ahead and intubate me and do it." "You sure? You sure?" And I'm like, "Yeah, do it," you know? So they did it. They intubated me, and I had an exciting out-of-body experience, but, uh... You wanna hear about that?

Nick 36:16

Yeah, absolutely.

John 36:17

Okay. I'm gonna go on- God, that's true. I was like, let's figure this out I'm

Nick 36:20

gonna go on with the

John 36:22

story now, okay? My trooper there, Scotty Garren, you know, he, he was, like, in the first batch or second batch, first, second batch of guys that got selected to come to the, to the two-four. And he was up jumping with, uh, Seal Team Six guys up at Dam Neck with some combat controllers. And they were... I don't know if you know his story or not. And he had a mid-air collision and all of that, you know? So s- I was down at Fort Rucker or somewhere working, doing something with the Army or whatever. So I got wind of it. They flew me right up there. I get in there, and I thought I was gonna have to call his wife, man, and I was gonna lose this guy, 'cause his head was as big as a pumpkin. And he had a hose or w- in every orifice of his body. I mean, this guy was l- lined up, and I'm looking at him like, "Oh, man," you know? And I really appreciated Scott. I, I, I appreciated all my men, 'cause they made it through. You know, we really sift the fly shit from the pepper in the beginning to get the guys up there, and then they continued doing it, I'm sure, after I left. And I'm sitting there watching him, and I'm like, okay. I stayed there for that day, and the next morning I checked on him, and I left. I had to get back to the unit. I got back to the unit, and I was maybe there a day or two, and I went back up to see Scott. So I get up there, and he's like, "Hey, boss," you know? Everybody called me Boss, you know? Emilio started that. Uh, rather than Sergeant, you know, Boss was fine with me. I liked it. It's fine. He said, "I gotta tell you something. I gotta tell you." I said, "Okay, Scott, tell me. What, what do you got?" He says, "I saw my..." I can't remember what relative it was, but it was grandparents first or it was mom first. But, you know, you can ask Scott. He'll tell you. And he starts telling me this, you know, and I'm looking at him and I'm like, "Sh, quiet, Scott," you know? I says, "Don't tell nobody." I says, "I believe you. I believe you, but do not tell nobody." And he's looking at me, and I'm like, "They'll think you're off your rocker, and you'll lose your top secret clearance, and you won't get back. So hush up with it." So he did, you know, and that was that. So I'm going through COVID pneumonia, and I'm in the hospital there, and they got me on the ventilator. And the whole time I was in there, I threatened to kill my wife, my ki- my daughter, everybody, anybody that was there. I was fighting the whole time, they said. And they had me wrapped up in a sheet like, like a mummy. And how did I know this? Well, I'm floating around over t- the operating room looking down at them there, and they had knocked my front tooth out, which was a crown, and I saw the nurse pick it up off the floor and put it in an emesis basin. So when I told them that, then they believed me that I was floating around, and I started to leave. And I started yelling for Scott, "Tell 'em I don't wanna go," because he told me that he had started to put his hand through this cloud or, or whatever, and he was getting ready to go to the other side, and he decided, "Whoa, no, I don't wanna go." And he says, "I immediately then left." You have to get the straight story from him, but he said, "No, you know, I don't wanna go." So while I was hovering over my body and everything, I'm saying the same thing, "I don't wanna go." And it worked. I didn't go. I went right back down, pshh, right into my body, and here I am today. So you know, that's... Me and Scott have been thicker than I, you know, can be all that time. You know, we've been really close. So that was, uh, was a, a pretty exciting thing to float around. So I believe in, you know, people that do see themselves when they're out there, have an out-of-body experience. Now, his was more intensive and lasted longer than mine, but I made it through all of that. And then I came home, and, uh, six months I was on oxygen in the bed, on a walker for almost a year, and I fought my way back from that. And then the next year, I started h- I started getting fit, walking out there, doing my thing. Started having heart attacks. I had, uh, three occasions to, to get a ride in an ambulance, you know? One time they had the siren on. It was pretty cool. You know, took me to the hospital and did a stent in me, and cleaned out my tubes, I guess, or whatever. So it really kicked my ass, and then I have a hard time breathing. I lost 30% of one of my lungs, but I finally got a clean bill of health on that, that it'll never grow back, but it ain't getting any worse, and I should do fine. It's 'cause Beasley lost a whole lung, and he stayed in pararescue with one lung for years, so... But, uh Here I am now just starting to, like, I'm remembering everybody's name. I lost my cognitivity of things. It was incredible. I couldn't remember anything, and now I'm getting it back. I can remember different guys' name, like Michael Dean. I was thinking about him this morning. I'm always going through, especially with, we just had Memorial Day, and we were starting to think about the guys, and they had put some stuff out. And I know a lot of PJs that are long gone, you know, passed by, and some of the old-timers, too. I knew them, the guys that started the career or pushed the career field along, like Nick Clemons and, you know, Big Willie and just all these different guys, you know, that really made pararescue in the early days, you know? So- Yeah and it's, yeah, has continued to e- evolve to what it is today.

Nick 42:10

What, what got, what do you think is helping your cognitive function come back?

John 42:16

I don't know. I think it, it's- The clarity of, uh, me not taking medicine. I take no heart pills. I take supplements. I work with a, one of, of a guy that is really a herbologist, you know? And I shy away from surgeries, which I have had. Just before I got COVID, I had to have a total hip put in and eye surgery, and then I did a prostate surgery thing, and they screwed it up on me. I mean, it was awful. I've had three surgeries on my... since then. So I'm real shy of, of that stuff. So I've been on all these drugs, and I, and it... you gotta stay off of them. Anything that comes from the pharmacy is not probably good for you, you know? And I take a lot of different supplements and whatnot. And this herbologist, his name is Donny Anson. He's the leading oncology herbologist in the country, and he speaks at all of these Moffitt Cancer Center places and everything. And, uh, his formulas work. I had, uh, kidney stones, and he gave me a bottle of this juice, got rid of the kidney stones. I have a gallbladder stone. I know exactly what a gallbladder problem is 'cause when I was out of the service, after I retired, I worked in the orthopedic business. And by, on a fluke, I got a job working for a laser company 'cause they wanted people to know how to use the camera that we did the knees with. And I wound up at Baptist Hospital in Nashville, and that's where they pioneered lap chole, which they go in and take out your gallbladder using a camera and whatnot. So we used to have the pigs, and of course, I worked with the TJ medical school, and I... we did goats. So I had all that history. So it was a very high-paying job, and so I jumped on it. And, uh- You were

Nick 44:12

in, were you in sales, med sales?

John 44:15

Medical sales, yeah.

Nick 44:16

Yeah. I did that, too, as soon as I got out. Who'd you work

John 44:19

for?

Nick 44:20

Smith Nephew. I did or- orthopedic trauma.

John 44:24

Well, I used to be the distributor for Smith Nephew Orthopedics in Tampa, Florida.

Nick 44:30

No way.

John 44:31

Way. I

Nick 44:31

worked in Phoenix. Yeah.

John 44:33

Yeah. I was a distributor there, and I, I got the... 'cause I knew that this job was gonna go away, working for LaserScope, because what they did with this- $89,000 laser you could do with a Bovie. You could cauterize the gallbladder and whatnot and take it out. We used to take it out through a condom back in those days, you know, pull it out the, out the abdomen, you know? And it, I'm sitting there looking at that saying, "I can do that with a $20,000 Bovie." You know what a Bovie is, electric cautery, what they use in the operating room. So I knew that was coming. So I went and got a headhunter and I said, "Find me a job," you know. So I, I interview well with these guys, and I got this job. They offered me a, a place in Indianapolis, I think it was, or someplace else. They wanted me to go and run that, and I says, "No, I'll take Florida." They said, "Florida's number 58 out of 58, man. It's at the bottom of the pile. It's got one way to go, up." In two years, I won the trophy. I got it sitting right up there, distributor of the year, man. My picture's on the wall up there, the whole nine yards. You know how I did it? I got rid of all the civilians. All they all wanted to do was make $100,000 a year, and that was a lot of money back in, in the '80s, you know? And I got rid of the guys that didn't know how to work, and I hired- Two PJs. I had a Marine and an Army guy, and then I had a guy that used to be a, a distributor, not a distributor, but a, a sales rep for another company, and he didn't have a non-compete, so he could come over and brought me, you know, business. And then another young man came in, and he talked to me. He sat down. He wanted a job with me, you know, and I says, "You know, you're talented. You got all the right things." I says, "But unless your father is an orthopedic surgeon, I, I don't, I can't use you." He goes, "Well, how about a brother?" I go, "Your office is right over here." You know, I hired him on the spot. Two weeks later, another guy shows up. The word must have got out. His brother is an orthopedic surgeon. One's father and brother. Man, I racked it up. You know, we just knocking it out like you wouldn't believe. And then managed care came in to Florida. So I see the handwriting on the wall here, you know? They came in and, and they're gonna sole source it, where they c- went down and they said, "You're only gonna be able to use these two companies." And the companies had to get in there and bid it, and I took it up to, to, to Memphis, I think is where their headquarters was, and I told them, "Look, you know, you gotta do something, you know, with this." Isn't that where it was is in Memphis, the headquarters for Smith Nephew?

Nick 47:25

Yep, yep, right by that

John 47:27

big- See, my, my brain's coming back

Nick 47:28

it, it's right by that big pyramid, the Bass Pro Shops pyramid.

John 47:31

Exactly. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, oh, they had a B-50, not a B-52, one of the old World War II planes parked out there, too. I think it was the Enola Gay. But anyway, God, look, see, I'm getting my brain back. The, uh- So I go up there and I convince them because they weren't doing it. They didn't do what I told them. "We better do something. You need to bid this out." And they just kind of ignored it, you know, ignored me. So I went, and I used to have long hair, tie and suits, you know? I went to Brooks Brothers, bought me the best suit, you know, wingtip shoes. You know, cut my hair, striped tie, you know, real Mr. Businessman. Went up there and convinced them that I wanted to be, work at corporate. "I wanna come up here and work for you guys in corporate." Well, they came in and bought me out, bought everything I had except my delivery truck, and I managed it. I signed a contract to manage it for two years. Well, Sole Source came in and we lost business. Now, my numbers were up, but the dollars were down. So what we used to get a total hip, I'd get $6,000 for the implants and, and I'd get another $500 instrument rental fee, and then a delivery fee, and then a restocking fee. So all these fee, fee, fees all went away, and my sales guys were total commission. And that was it. They were on their own. And, you know, and I told them, "Be careful. Don't be buying boats and cars and shit, 'cause the bottom's gonna fall out of this market." And it did. And they went and they took the guy in Miami, who was a, a pretty senior guy, not senior old-wise, but, like, he'd been with the company for a while, and he did real well down in Miami area. And I says, "If it was me, I would give all of these units to one guy, cut his commissions from 20% down to 18%, and then give him the whole state of Florida to manage and run." And that's exactly what they did, you know? And I got out of it. I mean, we were at the, uh, a hotel in Disneyland, one of them there with the dolphin all over in there, and these guys are walking around smoking their cigars and drinking their cocktails or whatever, you know, whiskey. And I'm sitting there, and I'm like, "I can't take this shit. This ain't me." You know? So I turned to the, to the regional guy, says, "Work me up a package. I'm done. I ain't putting up." I, I... 'Cause, you know, here you come out of the two four, you know, you're a tier one operator, and, you know, I- I didn't fit, I didn't fit with this life, you know? It just wasn't for me, you know? So I got out of it. You know, it was great. The money was great. Uh, I met a lot of fun people, but so many phonies out there. I mean, these guys are all patting each other on the ass, you know? And I'm like, "I ain't got time for this bullshit." Yeah. I don't know how you found it, but you know, I just like... Then

Nick 50:35

there w- I, I was never, I was never at the 2-4. Um-

John 50:38

Oh

Nick 50:38

but I did, I, I did it for about six months, and people said, like, "You wanna be in orthopedic trauma, you're gonna do it for a year, and then you're gonna go get hired by somebody else." So I was having... I liked a fast-paced environment. All the doctors liked the fact that I had a pararescue background. I was in there, talk to them, talk to anybody. Uh, think really fast, be able to adapt. Uh, 'cause I couldn't... When you were doing it, you could scrub in, in the OR and help. I couldn't. So there's a lot more liability issues now. So I had to tell the scrub tech, the nurses, everybody what to do when. So I'm lining up this 100-part surgery with 64 different devices and drills and

John 51:25

everything- Right. Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Nick 51:27

with my voice. Yeah. And they're like, well, you know, this kid that, you know, barely has a high school degree, not saying that's a bad thing, but it's definitely not a thing that translates well into, like, sophisticated medical talk, and they're trying to understand what you're doing. And you get really frustrated, and then the expectation is you are 100% ready to go when that doctor walks into the room. Sometimes it's not, and it's all someone else's uh, fault. Um, and that, that person's fault is al- 100% of the time the medical sales rep.

John 52:05

Well, I-

Nick 52:06

So, yeah. We digress into this all the time, but yeah, yeah

John 52:10

we weren't allowed to t- tell people what we did at the 2-4 when I left. You know? You were... That was classified. You can't talk about it. You can't tell them shit, you know? And it being new to that environment and everything, you, you pay attention, you know? So they used to ask me what I did and, you know, I said I was a pararescue, you know. "Oh, what is that?" You know, you drive an ambulance, you know, this, that, and the other. And I just kinda muddled through it, you know, and I'd tell them a little bit, but, but I didn't want anything to come back to bite me in the ass. But, uh, they, um... Yes, we scrubbed in, and we not only scrubbed in sometimes, you, you got... I got very much involved, you know? Uh, especially at East St. Louis. They had a hospital there, and, uh, that was on my... I don't know if you're familiar with that area or not, but East St. Louis was, is like- I mean, Philly's bad, but East St. Louis is real bad, you know? I mean-

Nick 53:08

Okay

John 53:08

the cops are driving around with the donut spare on their car, you know? I mean, they didn't have... And their guns falling out of their holsters. But, uh, they had two orthopedic surgeons there, and one was a big gentleman. He was, he was African American, and, uh, they shot and killed him three days after I got that hospital. It was my, part of my business. And the other guy that was there, he was from Havana. He was Cuban. The nurses were s- no, they didn't have their shit together, you know? They didn't know. So whenever... They were calling me all the time to be there f- during the surgeries so that I'd go in and teach them how to do stuff and, and even... Shouldn't say, I'm not gonna get that in print, but, you know, took care of business, you know? And, uh- Yeah I have letters. I ran across one that this one doctor wrote me a, wrote a letter of thanks to me for being his rep and doing such as... You know, all my training came out w- how you handle things. I mean, I, I lived in downtown St. Louis in the historical district in a mansard townhouse, 'cause Barnes Hospital was real close, and I was Johnny on the spot when I, when I was a rep. When I started, I started with Zimmer. You familiar with Zimmer?

Nick 54:27

Yeah, yeah.

John 54:28

Yeah. I, the reason- They're my,

Nick 54:29

they're my competition, but- Yeah

John 54:30

yeah. I, the reason I chose Zimmer, I was offered jobs with several different places, 'cause, you know, I, I kinda... I have this big butcher block that I got in Italy, and I had that in my kitchen. And what I did when I was getting ready to get out is I'd get up, shave, shower, put on a suit coat, tie, get all dressed, got my briefcase, went into the kitchen, took off my jacket, hung it on the back of the chair, put my briefcase down, set the phone on the butcher block, and then pulled out my portfolio thing, opened it up, and started calling distributorships. So there I was using my kitchen as my office, and put me in a business in my mind, and I'd call around, and I've got these appointments to go visit guys. My wife at that time was an airline stewardess, so I got free tickets. So I would fly. I'd go, I flew from Fort Bragg out to gosh knows where, St. Louis, you know, different places to interview for these, these orthopedic jobs, you know? But I took Zimmer because their catalog was, like, this thick. They sold everything, the beds, the traction, and I figured, it's gotta be something in there I can be good at selling. 'Cause when you first start, you don't know your ass from your elbow, you know? The, knowing about the hips and the knees and all of this stuff, you know? And, uh, so I did well, and I linked in with a couple of surgeons, and I'm not gonna use their names, but the one guy was the attending. He was a big wig up there. And he and I got along real well- And I used to take all the residents, the doctors that were the one of, the wannabes, you know, wanna be an orthopedic surgeon, and I'd take them out at night for wings and beers and, and then I'd have come in and we'd do sawbones. We would do them, uh, there, and I'd bring the child and all that, and I'd set it up for them, and I got to know all the residents really well, you know? And they would get in trouble, they'd call me, "What's this? What's that?" And it was great, but anyway, this letter I got from this guy, and I just ran across it the other day trying to find papers to make sure I got to you and stuff, and, uh, he really complimented me off the ass, 'cause, you know, uh, you don't show up to the airplane without your parachute, 'cause it's a hell of a jump. So I used to teach my guys to make sure you got everything you need when you get there. And, uh, they could call me night and day, and I would respond. I kept things at my house, and then also at the office, you know? And, uh, oh, they did call them, guys in trouble, you know, in the operating room, and they, they're in there, and they need the Midas Rex. Midas Rex is a high-powered drill to go into the intramedullary ca- canal and take out cement and everything else, 'cause I can give you a story if you're inclined to listen to it. The, Eric's grandmom shows up, needs a, the, you know, fracture, tr- trochanteric fracture. Mm-hmm. So we need to do a bipolar. You know what a bipolar is? We're gonna put in a fr- Yeah Thompson, you know, the little, like, I've got them in the closet as bookends, you know? And you just cut off the femoral head, and you put one in there, and you measure the legs, and you make sure she's right, pump in a little cement, put it back in, everything's kosher, and you're out of there in 45 minutes, skin to skin. Well, this young doctor wouldn't believe me. I kept telling him that methyl methacrylate, which you know is bone cement, that stuff is temperature sensitive, and you're gonna pull it out and use it, you better have the temperature down real cold in that room, or you better hurry up. And I kept telling this one guy, "You need to hurry," and he kind of gave me a dirty look, you know, like, shut the fuck up. Well, he got that stem halfway down, and it locked up on him. So now he's in trouble. So now I tell him, "Don't mess with it. Don't take an osteotome and go in there." He did it. I'm watching him, part of the femoral head, everything, the neck, you know, he's just busting away, and I'm like, oh, my God. So I finally got him to stop, and again, I got the Midas Rex in there and cleaned it all out. Took a, an 80-minute, tops, 45 to 50-minute surgery, took eight hours.

Nick 58:39

Oh, my gosh.

John 58:40

On granny. I don't know if she lived or died. I didn't want nothing to do with... The doctor wouldn't even look me in the eye afterwards, 'cause I know he felt so bad, but he didn't listen to me, you know?

Nick 58:50

I, it was pretty new to being in the room with a physician, and I was... It was one of my first, like, solo surgeries, and there was a guy who was in a shootout with the cops. Killed a female cop, like ambushed her at a gas station, shot her in the head. She died. He was in the OR 'cause they had shot him so much. They, it essentially just blew up his entire, uh, like proximal femur into his hip, so they needed to do a hip nail, which I sold for Smith&Nephew. It's the Intertek And the doc who was on call for the OR that day was like, he comes in, I'm, I'm setting up the room. The, the prisoner's in there, not knocked out. He looks like crap 'cause he's been shot like 10 times, chained to the bed, and he's like, "Hey Nick, good to meet you. Never used this product. I don't want you to say a fucking word." I was like, "Okay." And he's like, this is a, at, at best it's like 45 minutes. You're reaming, you're taking a drill straight through someone's femur, then you're going up the other way to get the, the, the ball of the hip back into, for, for like an intertrochar fracture. It's not easy to do. And there's like guides, there's, you know, stuff to do when, uh, you don't want to have like a visible cut down someone's leg. And he finished the surgery, and he just like looks at me and he's like, Fuck that guy," and just walked out. And I was like, "You gotta be kidding me." This is like insane. But I mean-

John 1:00:30

Yeah

Nick 1:00:31

do no harm, but it was

John 1:00:34

like- Yeah street justice. Now I, I'm just gonna tell you, the best compliment I ever got in that orthopedic business was they were getting ready to do a total hip, you know, and the, uh, oh God, I forget what they call him. He's the attending or whatever, the, the, the senior, uh, resident that's doing the hip, right? So he calls, he's in the room and he's getting ready to start, so he has to call the attending who is in charge of it all, and his name is Clayton. I'm not gonna tell you his last name. I don't want that to be out there, but Clayton's a great guy. We had a lot of fun together, but he was in charge of all these guys, okay? And he's in there, and this, he's ready to start this hip, not Clayton. So Clayton calls up, Dr. So-and-so calls up and says, "What's going on? Okay. You guys..." He says, "Yes, sir. We're ready to start." And he says, "Is John Pagani in there?" And he goes, "Yeah. He said, "Okay, you can start." That was the best compliment I ever got as a rep, that those fucking guys- Amazing.

Nick 1:01:35

Yeah

John 1:01:35

I, I was calling the shots in the room. That was a really good kudo. And, you know, if you're a good rep, you know, you save their ass. I mean, I have... I mean, I could... Oh, God, we'll be here all day, but let's get back to pararescue. You know, we- No. have to have some beers sometime, and we can tell these stories.

Nick 1:01:54

We stopped at... So y- your grandfather died when you were at NKP. Yeah,

John 1:01:57

yeah, yeah. And

Nick 1:01:59

then you moved through.

John 1:02:00

So I got to get out of country about, I don't know, 37 days early before my tour was over, you know? And so I got to come out of there, and they sent me to, uh, Hamilton Air Force Base is where I was gonna be stationed in California. But I got to go home and bury Grandpop and all the rest of that stuff. So it was like I didn't get a end tour DFC. Like, they used to give you medals, you know, like a, a Distinguished Flying Cross. You put a year over there flying combat missions and in and out of this, that, and the other, and, uh, they'd give you one. I didn't get mine. I got mine for a mission. I got it for heroism on, on a mission, and I didn't get that. And that kinda rubbed you a little wrong, you know? Like, 'cause the officers always got what they needed, you know, but some of the enlisted guys didn't, you know? That was just my opinion, you know? So- Yeah not that you were in there hunting for medals, but, you know- They all counted for promotion. I don't know if they still do, but back then you get 25 points, you know, that's on your... You- do they still have that, do you know?

Nick 1:03:08

Yeah, they do. They count. They're all scored differently, but yeah, it's, uh, it counts for promotion for enlisted, but not for officers, so.

John 1:03:16

Yeah. So that's right, you were- Yeah junior. Yeah. Forgot about that.

Nick 1:03:24

You just... I, for me, I just sat in the seat and-

John 1:03:26

Yeah, I, uh, I, uh, if... I had just got my degree before I got out and, you know, I s- if we would've had PJ officers, I would've stayed in, you know? And I should've went, became a combat controller, but I, I wasn't up for that, you know? Well, I went from there to, uh, the base at Hickam, and then Nick the Greek came in, and he was gonna send me and Dennis Craft and Bill Flower to Spain, and that would've been, like, at Rota where... You know, boy, I'm remembering a lot today. Um, down by Madrid. But then Bill Flo- I forget what happened, but I didn't go there. I'm trying to think of what happened. No, they gave me a, they changed... 'Cause my mother had terminal cancer, they reassigned me to Pease Air Force Base in New Hampshire because that was the closest place to Philadelphia where they had PJs. And this is how well Pararescue takes care of people, you know? And these guys got me assigned there so I could go home and visit my mother on a certain weekend. You know, I'd drive from New Hampshire all the way to Philly, visit my mom. Usually try to get a three-day pass. I don't know if they still have that or not. You get 72-hour pass. And I did that for almost a year, and my enlistment came up in that November, and I got out, and it was like '70, 1970. And I got out, and, uh, went back to Philadelphia. And I s- went down to, uh, sign up to be a cop. Took the tests and everything and- What I didn't do, my brother told me, 'cause he was a cop, is I forgot to register as a Democrat. 'Cause Philadelphia was nothing but Democrats, and he s- says, "You didn't get picked because you didn't register to be a Democrat." So I wound up being a park policeman in Bucks County for that year that I was out. And I said, "Fuck this." Mom had died, and after she died, you know, I went back in the service, and they stationed me back at Pease Air Force Base until... And that was really good, man. In fact, I went to come back in, and the recruiter told me, "We don't have any slots for you. We c- you can't come back in the, in the Air Force." And at that time, I was staff sergeant looking for tech. And I called up, and Lou Roberts of PJ, he's... I called him up and I says, "Lou, they won't take me back in." He goes, "Let me handle that." He says, "Give me an hour." I called him back an hour, he says, "You go back to that recruiter. They're waiting on you." And I did, and they were waiting on me. He pulled some strings somewhere and, "Sign right here." And off I went, back in again. Went to Pease, and when I finished up, when I was at Pease, my mom died in February of '71. She was 54 years old. And, uh They asked me where I wanted to go, you know, and I said, "If you need me in Vietnam, I'll go, but I'm not volunteering." You know, I volunteered the first time. Second time, I'm not gonna volunteer. And they said, "Well, we'll see." And the next thing you know, they gave me a hardship tour, and I went to, uh, Hawaii, and I spent three years in Hawaii. I was on a four-year tour, and I had to get out of there because all we did, you know, I was gonna make the pararescue a career now, and I needed to get promoted, and I had to stop chasing and partying and, and doing all those things. So I traded assignments with a guy named Kimball, who wanted to stay in Hawaii, and I wanted to leave. So, uh, I wound up going to, uh, Eglin. So when I got to Eglin, you know, I was a tech sergeant, I believe, or just newly tech. I'm making this a career, and the one thing that really bothered me about pararescue was we never really got combat training. You know, we got a taste of it when we went to Army Ranger School. We were allowed to go out there and played, uh, what do you call it, aggressors to those guys. But we were never taught, you know, the sneaky peek shit, you know, the stuff that you learn on the street playing war and you saw on TV, but we never got CQB. And, uh, and probably they didn't figure we needed it because all we did was down-the-hoist business. Well- It was playing in, on my radar that when they started closing down our Huey detachments in the United States, especially up in Montana and these different places, they weren't... We used to go and cover civilian automobile accidents and everything, and the Coast Guard started getting into doing more things that we used to cover. Well, you know, where ships were lost and whatnot, and all of that was going away 'cause the Coast Guard was taking up those jobs. And it came to me that we weren't gonna have a career field anymore unless we became, you know, really valuable asset. So what is your valuable asset? You be a good medic, and you gotta be, uh, physically fit, and you gotta know your, your combat, your CQB. Mm-hmm. So when I got to Eglin, I brought that with me in my head, and there was a guy assigned there. His name was Heineman, and there-- We had two Heinemans, but this Heineman, his name, I can't remember his first name right now, but he was ex-Army. So I got ahold of him, and I started talking to him about combat tactics. What do we do? So the next thing you know, I go over to the Army Ranger camp there, and at, in, in, at, at, um... I can't remember the name of that Army Rangers, the jungle portion. And I talked with them over there, and they said, "We'd be delighted to have you guys come over and, and work as aggressors to start it out with, and maybe give us some medical classes or whatever." So we started doing that, and then the next thing you know, that grew into doing SAR work, where we bring in the 53s to support the Rangers over there doing SAR work. Mm-hmm. And, and there came the concept of, you know, pararescue and combat medicine. So when- I was starting to do, we started to do medical problems. We used to do Hollywoods. You know what a Hollywood is, means?

Nick 1:10:14

Like a Hollywood jump? Slick jump?

John 1:10:16

Yeah, with nothing, right? Well, you go in there and you're in your, you're in your bathing suit or T-shirt or whatever, and you're doing a medical problem, right? No, no, no. We're not doing that anymore. So I made everybody wear their H harness with their weapons, all their ruck, everything, and here's your medical problem. So we, behind the section there at Eglin, we had a little fenced-in area. We would put smoke on them and things of that nature, and slowly started to metastasize into more and more of combat medicine. And then I started, I did a thing, there's a letter in there signed, an LOE by J- uh, Gil Martin, and I don't know if you saw that or not. Now, he used to be a commentator on a lot of the, uh, military, uh, historical pages and whatnot. And, uh, Joe, I put together a SAR-X, one of the first combat tactics, uh- S- uh, not a SAR X, but a, uh, you know, a war plan, and we trained on it. And I forget what it was called, Nimble Tow, if m- my memory serves me. And I built this whole thing where I brought in B-52 pilots and a- all these different players to come in, and we did this SAR X. Dino Nardi was there, and a whole bunch of us, you know. And we set this up, and we started learning combat tactics. Well, Chief Walters was in charge of pararescue at that time. And, and, uh, he, these, developed a position at headquarters for combat tactics, and they brought in Stu Stanlan, and Stu was gonna be in charge of the combat tactics thing. And, uh, that was fine. And then they took me and shipped me to, uh, Zaragoza, Spain, and I did the same thing over there. When I got in, I took over that as the NCIC, and, uh, I started combat tactics there and brought in the guys from England. I brought in the Spaniards and included them on it, so it was i- you know, inter-service type things going on with them, and we did combat tactics. So it was all growing from there. And the medical portion, I increased, you know, the different things that... I forget what we did, but we did them better. And the problems were, and you were, you were doing combat training, and you, but you were also having to plan n- navigation routes and, you know, just as complicated as hell for the PJs to handle it. So it, it came across really, really good. And then there, there was a fire in a hotel there in Zaragoza. I sent you pictures of that. And, uh, what happened was, uh, Charlie Hart, and Charlie's still with us, he's a hell of a guy, was on alert that day, and a hotel was on fire downtown Zaragoza, so they alerted us. We sent Charlie down there, and he's down there, and he's, like, got people jumping off the will- out the windows, and... I mean, there's a lot of flyers that night, you know, people, poor lady, you know. And it was before all those other Los Angeles, or, no, in, uh, Las Vegas, they had a big hotel fire there, and we had already had this one over there. But we went in there on that one, and, uh, Charlie was up on the roof, and his penetrator broke. So I said, "I'm going down. I've got, I gotta assess the situation. I can't do it from sitting at my desk." So I got on a helicopter, and down I went. Charlie was on the roof. I picked up Charlie. We got him on board the chopper. The place is burning down, smoke's all over the place, and there's a guy hanging out of a window And he's slumped over, and smoke's pouring out that window. So Ken Reese was the helicopter pilot, and he flies over, and they lower me down. Charlie says, "I'll go." I go, "No, you ain't going. This is my..." Not because it was my mission, but I'd, I'd really feel awful if Charlie went down and he got killed, and it was really my... I'm the PJ on the helicopter. I need to go, you know? So that his wanting to do it lasted about 30 seconds. I'm like, "No, I'm doing it." So I went down and I got him, and I'm putting a strap over, under his arms, this gentleman. He weighed a lot o- He was pretty sportly. And I hooked one up, and then I had to hook another one up, and I ran it down his backside and brought it up and hooked him. Now I'm standing on a l- my toes on a ledge about two i- not even two inches, and my toes are on that, and I'm holding on to the curtain, and I'm tying this guy up, and the smoke's coming out all over. And I, I go to give a l- a thumbs up, and I look, and the cable is like this. It, it's down by my feet, you know? And I'm thinking, "Jesus, they cut the cable on me." And the next thing you know, I'm jerked out of the window And I went straight up, and that yellow thing that you see there, that goes on the top of the penetrator head, and you see where it's bent. That caught on the inside of the window, and my helmet hit the, hit it, and my shoulder. And at that time, Ken Reese was backing up. He pulls out back, and then pulled me out of the window, and then he pulled forward. So now he's going that way and I'm going this way, and then I'm back up almost eyeball to eyeball with the helicopter. And Charlie's sitting there in the window looking out at me, and, uh, got a eight ticket ride on that cable. What happened was there was an explosion on the roof, and it sucked the oxygen or the air out or something, where something happened where the helicopter pilot, Ken Reese, had to pull forward. So he pulled forward and we got the guy down on the roof. Me and Charlie tried to resuscitate him and then some Spaniards broke through and, and then we went back out again and continued to try to rescue people and, and whatnot. And then, uh, that was the end of it. But why am I telling you this story was I was... won the Chaney Award, and that's a award that I don't see people getting anymore, and why? I don't know. It sh- I'm sure there's plenty of people that would qualify for it. Other PJs have gotten the Ch- Chaney Award. Hackney got it, and Tom Newman also got the Chaney Award. So Ken and I shared it. Ken Reese and I won the Chaney Award for that mission. And part of the things that happens with that is you, you get a $500 check. You know, they pay you money, and you get choice of assignment. So there's, uh... Ken Reese wanted to be a fighter pilot. He didn't wanna fly helicopters. Well, now he's gone to go fly F-18s or 16s or whatever plane he got, and John Pagini got the chance of a lifetime to be curtailed six months off of my tour, and I wanted to be in charge of the medical at Scott Air Force Base. And Joe Duffy was there then, and they were ready to rotate him anyway, but they, that job was mine. And nobody, you know, I didn't have to kiss anybody's ass to get the job because it was, I said, "This is what I want." I told the, the- The Secretary of the Air Force, Hans Mark. You know, when I was having lunch, my whole family was there, you know. It was a big deal. And, um, you get this beautiful bronze, so it's up over here on, there. It's k- uh, award, you know, big round award. So I was going th- there, and when I got up to there, Dr. Brunstetter came in, and he was a new doctor, and I took over Joe Duffy's job. And one of the first things I did was I went down and I changed all the medical problems to combat medical problems at the schoolhouse. Everything would be done in a combat environment. And I got the guys all lined up for that, and then, you know, pressed forward, and I came up with, uh, the KED board. It, it is a backboard, you know? It is... And it's flexible. These slats run perpendicular up and down, but you wrap it around the guy and you hook it up. In fact, I had them manufacture one to be used for the space crew for the shuttle, so we could just slide it down and get it on them, and then lift them straight up and out of the, out of the seat. And, uh, we ordered that KED board, and that was one terrific piece of equipment that we utilized back in the day. And, and I'm, I, I don't know what they use today, though.

Nick 1:19:00

The SKEDCO. It's a different, it's a different flexible litter that can do- Okay vertical and horizontal raises.

John 1:19:07

Right. So we brought the KED board over, and, uh, you know, and I just started, like, this... The other thing that my job was as, as chief of pararescue medical was to go and visit all the units. And when I did, the physical fitness test fell under the, the medical guy. So I'm the guy that has to go out and give everybody their PT tests. So we had a lot of old dogs, you know, and they'd go DNIF, you know? And they didn't get to take the test because Bigini shows up, and, you know, they know I'm not gonna cut them slack. I don't care if you fought in the fucking Civil War, you're gonna take the PT test, you know? So I got a really good reputation for being an asshole, you know? So that is one. In fact, I actually went into a reserve unit. And you don't have to sell this, but I shut down Miami. The commander got fired, the NCOIC, and those are ARC jobs. Those are civilian jobs. And that PJ NCOIC, he lost his job. The commander lost his job, and it went all the way to the Pentagon. But what happened was I went in there on a Thursday, and I talked to the NCOIC. And I told him, "All your OJT records are up to snuff. All your medical gear is all... Everything's perfect. Everything's done. Please, these are the things I'm looking for, and I wanna give some PT tests." Well, I didn't give any PT tests. I just shut the unit down. When I came back in on Monday, the trash cans in there were full of beer cans. They went out and jumped and had their fun day, and that was it. The medical gear was completely out of date, even their backup stuff. Narcotics, everything out of date. Just terrible. OJT records, the only thing that was ever logged in there was the, uh, jumps. If I'm having to toe the mark, you gotta toe the mark, you know?

Nick 1:21:10

Yeah,

John 1:21:10

yeah. The reserves, they used to... You know, they'd fly. You know, they'd do their thing, and they kinda like, you know, "Well, we don't put up with that. We don't need to button our shirt, you know? We're in the reserves. If we leave our shirt open, you know, fuck 3510." And it didn't fly with me, you know? And I treated everybody equal. I didn't have any favorites, but I, I expected you to know your medical, and I expected you to be physically fit. And that's what I would tell the men at the 2/4 too. "You come down here, you are going to be the best medic that walk on the face of the earth, and you are gonna be physically fit," you know? Even though I had gotten out and came back in, and I wasn't peak perfect physically fit, but I could make it, you know? And I made it, and I kept going and going, and finally got back. 'Cause I was in my 40s then, you know?

Nick 1:21:59

Yeah. So you were, what, 43 when you went out to the 2/4?

John 1:22:04

Uh, no. I turned 40 in the PTP pit my first- When I first got there, and when I left there, I think I was 43.

Nick 1:22:15

Okay.

John 1:22:16

Yeah, I think I was 43 when I left.

Nick 1:22:18

Did you... Was that your next assignment? Did you retire and then retract your retirement

John 1:22:24

or- Oh, yeah. The, what happened with that was, uh, and this is really funny because there's guys out there that you hear, you know, I don't know. "Well, they asked me to go and I turned them down." You know, there's all that kinda shit that goes on out there. Mm. And Dave Milsten knows the real story and, you know, of course he was there, and General Mall was there. But Randy McComb, who I, I heard me mention him before, he was driving down a road with his wife, Peach, in the car and he had one of those t- tank tops or whatever they're called, do you know? Where one side, you know, they take the pieces off and you, you know. You know what I'm talking about?

Nick 1:23:03

Yeah. The roof- Yeah

John 1:23:04

and the c- car. Well, a big tree- Yeah, a T-top fell down, T-top it's called, and it hit there, broke off, and crushed Randy's head and killed him. And his wife's sitting next to him, she didn't even get a scratch. And that happened at Scott Air Force Base area. Okay? So Randy gets killed. So I go out to the base a couple days later to find out about the funeral services. What are we gonna do for Randy, you know? And I'm s- I'm on terminal leave, okay? So General Mall... I'm sitting there talking to, to, to Dave, and General Mall sticks his head in the door and says, "Hi, John. How you doing?" You know. And I said, "I'm, I'm doing fine, sir." You know. And he's chatting to Dave a little bit, then he turns to me and he goes, "John, what do I have to do to get you back in the Air Force?" And I was very matter of fact and I said, "You need any more generals." And then he shook his head and he told Dave, he says, "Talk to him." So, uh, Dave talked to me and he gave me, uh, the information that everybody needs to know, was I can't tell you what the job is. All I can tell you is you don't have to wear a uniform and you don't have to cut your hair. And I laughed. I'm like, "Okay, Dave. What is it?" "No, that's it. Nothing." It was a Friday afternoon, and he says, "When you come back here on Monday, we'll swear you back in and then we'll tell you what it is." So then I'm back in the Air Force again. I can't get out of it. Now, I had a job lined up with Ethicon. I was gonna go out to California and interview and go through their school, you know, and start selling medical products. So- I'm there and I got my suit coat and tie on, and I go in, and Colonel Dutton, I believe, was, uh, the wing, the runner up, what do you call, vice commander, and he swears me back in at Scott Air Force Base. And then John Carney shows up, Colonel Carney, and he sits down and tells me that they just did that, uh, Grenada opera- I guess it... Was that the medical school, Grenada, right?

Nick 1:25:17

Yeah. Yep.

John 1:25:18

Yeah. And he had SEALs drowning, jumping with too much equipment, and all this shit and people getting shot up and all of that. And he said, "I would have gave my left nut for a PJ." I didn't have any pararescue. The combat controllers were there on the runway and all of that. So he wanted me to come in there and establish the pararescue entity of the Two-Four. And at the first time, it was called Nafcos. "Okay," you know? And here I go off to there. They pulled my retirement papers and, uh, I show up down there and, and Carney told me, he says, uh, "They don't want you." I said, "Who don't want me?" He says, "The, uh, the troops don't want you there, the combat controllers." And I'm like, "Is it me they don't want?" "No, they don't want PJs. They don't want you guys there, you know? This is their show and they don't want you." Well, that, you know, that didn't go over. And naturally, I got to pick one man to go with me, Emilio Jasso. And we got down there and we were sort of, like, in a selection process, uh, along with some combat controllers. Then after the six months was up, we actually got alerted to go on a mission, and the mission didn't come to pass, so we never got, and we weren't even trained. For what, I don't know, but we were medically trained. We knew our job as PJs, so we could have pulled it out of our ass if we had to. But, uh- Then We finished up the selection portion. Some of the controllers didn't make it through. Me and Emilio did, and, uh, I started to develop. And in fact, they actually tried to tell me when I got there, some of the controllers, Mike Lampe for one of them, was saying that, "Your job is gonna be to be our medics. You guys are there to be our medics," and, uh, you know, et cetera, and that's not the way I read the story, so I just let it go. I didn't wanna get in pissing contests with anybody. But Emilio, what an ace trooper that guy is. He was hard rock, and everybody couldn't figure out why I picked Emilio. You know, this guy was all over his game, was a very intelligent individual, and he could do things that, you know, just bright as could be, and he was young. He was a staff sergeant at that time. And he, you know, he- he's got his ear to the, to the ground, and he knew what was going on, and he'd, you know... He's the create- he's the one that created the BOSS thing too. Emilio was a lot of fun also. Tough too. Man, you wouldn't wanna get in a fight with him. He was a, a really stun- really good guy. Loyal as can be. Very loyal. And, uh, in fact, there was an issue one time when a colonel asked Emilio... Or not Emilio. He asked one of the troops, uh, "What was the relationship between John and, uh, and Emilio?" And they said, "Well, sir, if John told Emilio to take one of us out, shoot us, we'd be dead," you know? And that, that didn't go over really big for me later, you know. But anyway.

Nick 1:28:31

I, I had a couple questions about just the, the beginning of PJs at the 2/4. So you obviously go there, and was it true, like, the controllers made you a little bit of an outsider from the beginning, or is it just the leadership? I'm sure, like, I'm sure the guys you went through six months of OTC with were very happy to be with you, they were like your buddies, or were they just like, "F PJs"?

John 1:28:55

All of them. No.

Nick 1:28:57

Really? There was

John 1:28:58

a couple of guys. There was one... I think there was one or two controllers that were there or one was trying to be there that didn't make it through pararescue training and then became a combat controller. And but to a, to a man, I mean, I got this from a controller even after I retired. I was at Emilio's funeral, and there was a controller there that was very good friends with Emilio. He said, "You know, n- they never wanted you guys." Nothing personal. Hmm. Wasn't about me. It was PJs. They did not want PJs there. So they first, when they took a tally on it in the beginning, and he, Carney told me that going in before, that these, you guys didn't want. It's gonna be a hard road. They're gonna, you know, they did not want PJs there. Why? I don't know. I, I don't know. Just 'cause I called them a tomato head or something, huh? I don't know what it was. But you know. Yeah. I knew controllers when I was stationed at headquarters, and they were good guys. I got along- Really good with all of them. Never, you know, didn't suspect that there would be this animosity, you know? And what was it about? I don't know, maybe awards and decorations. I don't know, 'cause pararescue, you know, we were getting them because we were in the war. They were in the war. They got them, too, you know? I don't know what the animosities were. Uh, and then the SEALs, they don't help you out. Y- there was an interview on that guy that, he was an ex-Navy SEAL, I believe, and he, he... something. Scott knows his name. And there was a SEAL on there that had gotten a letter of somebody was asking him about the different career fields to go in, you know, and he went through the different ones, Delta, MARSOC, all this. He says, "They're all pretty much so, the same." He says, "PJs? No, man, they are off the chart." And he says, "Combat controllers, well, the first two weeks of PJ school, become combat controllers." You know? So after they flunk out in the first two weeks, they become controllers. And I'm like, oh, boy, that's gonna be good for relationship. So that's- on Facebook now. It's, it's out there. But anyway, so there we are there, and I had to put together, uh, what we're, our job and mission was gonna be within that confines of supporting SEAL Team Six and Delta. Uh, the SEALs were very receptive to us, and Delta was kinda like standoffish, quiet about it. And, you know, y- you learn it's what you do today that counts, not what you did before, you know? So there's no... You know, I don't think anybody knew anything about my awards and decorations. I never brought them up to nobody, you know? You were there, and you had to perform today for that. And the SEALs, I did some things with those guys. Uh, they taught me close quarter battle, you know, in the kill house, all of that stuff. And we had to do what they did. And you took your rucksack and put it on with your med kit, and you climbed up that little ladder on the side of a ship. And you're with them, and you fall in line, and we carried back then 686s. They're seven shot, seven shot Smith Wessons. And, uh, that, we put paraffin wax in the, in the cartridge, and we would shoot you with a para- if you were a, a terrorist, you know? The guys that volunteer to be terrorists get shot with the paraffin wax, you know? So you go clean, clear out. So you're in line with the SEALs, and you gotta take down that room. You're going right in with them, you know, so you learned with them. And, uh, uh, and then people get hurt and different things, and got a lot of compliments for our medical skills, and those guys wanted us on their team. And, uh, that's how it went. I got

Nick 1:32:41

a couple questions too on, on kind of like the, the integration aspect of it.

John 1:32:47

Well, whenever they went anywhere- How did you like start? they wanted a combat controller naturally, which is a smart thing- Yeah to do because he's got that air power. And they wanted the PJs because of, of the medical, and we're able to shoot and scoot right along with them, you know? And most of our guys, I used to tell them, "Keep your mouth shut. Do what you're doing, you know? Don't that," you know. "You're in their ballpark. You know, it's their game." You- I'd say, "You wanna go blow something up, then you go become a Seal," you know. "Or you wanna do this, go be- become there. But you're a PJ, you know your medical, and that's what you're there for, you know, a high-speed medic." And, uh- You know, we did all the jumps with them, nighttime deployments over the beach, you know, everything there was. And, and it was kinda fun because when they found out how old I was, they couldn't believe it. You know, this one SEAL, I remember Emilio, s- we're sitting there and, and we, we got picked up by a fast boat, came in and got us after we jumped in and went over the beach and did this exercise shit. And we're coming out, and this one Navy SEAL's sitting there, and he's going like, "Oh, I'm really just getting too old for this fucking shit." And Emilio says, "How old are you?" And the guy goes, uh, "31." And he looks at me and he goes, "He's 42." The SEAL fucking looked at me like, oh, boy, you know? And, uh, I was kinda like the old guy. But anyway, we started to create and build a medical package for JSOC. Okay? So I wrote up all the how-tos and coordinated it with the hospital and with their, the Army medics and doctors, their PAs and all of that. And I would train with them guys. I would get them involved in, with things. And, uh, I also created what they call the SAR package, where we were down at Rucker, I guess, someplace, and we had, like-

Scott 1:34:47

Hunter

John 1:34:48

five or six 53s there, and there was an H3 there also. And I went up to those guys and I said, "Well, what are you here for?" And they said, "We're just here," and they wouldn't have a job, you know? I go, "You do now." And I went and I got this Army captain that I met in... Scott fall asleep there?

Nick 1:35:11

Oh, no, he was just trying to tell you, Hunt- was it Hunter, not Rucker?

Scott 1:35:15

Yeah, it was Hunter Army Airfield.

John 1:35:17

Hunter Ar- oh, you were there, okay. So, uh, I go and I get this captain who I went through HALO school with, and I says, "You," uh, "What are you doing?" He goes, "I don't know. We're here. I got my men," you know. I says, "Well, I need a squad, a rifle squad." And I said, "I need them to be litter bearers, and also for protection." And I put the SAR package together where I had The, the eight or nine Rangers, 10, whatever it was, and, uh, combat controller and two PJs, and that was our SAR package. I believe it was two PJs that were on it. And, uh, I put that into an H3, and of course they had the 53s, they had all their crews with the Delta guys and the SEALs on them and all that. And we go into this bre- briefing hall, and they got a big thing up on the wall, and there's all this stuff where this nomenclature's for different things that are going on, whatever, you know, who's gonna handle this, who's gonna handle that, and all. It goes down to the... And there was a thing up there that said, I think it was SAR or something like that. And General Steiner goes, "What's this SAR thing here?" And, uh, I had to stand up, and they go, "Where's your officer?" I said, "We don't have any officers in pararescue." And I explained to them what I had set up was a, a rifle team with the Army Rangers and two combat controllers. And I says, "And, uh, you know, and, and two..." Not two combat, one combat controller and two PJs, "And we're there to take care of any wrecks or shots up or whatever, you know." So that was kinda like... And Steiner just looks at me and looks around the room, and he goes, "That sounds good to me," you know? So that was it. And I did that, and nobody told me to do it. Nobody asked me to do it. I just did it. And I found out that within that arena, at that time, it's better to do something that you think is right and worry about it later, you know? And if th- they didn't like it, they'd tell you. But everything we did, they liked. And, uh, we were moving right along, and this, it got to the point where, like I said, the SEALs would call up, and they'd want PJs to go with them on a mission, and, uh, and they did. And sometimes they didn't ask for a combat controller, which created a little bit of heartburn, and, uh, we got past that. So we set that up, and r- the roles and mission were that we would deploy, and we would not be attached to the airplane, and my guys could lo- log air, flight time on every airplane, whether it was Army, Navy, Marine Corps. I don't care if they had a balloon, we were gonna lo- log flight time. And I got that through Air Force and everything else, so we didn't lose our flight pay. And so I don't know where it's at with that today, but, uh, we collected our, our flight pay, and at whatever plane we got on, we were crew. Uh, and so we got that going. And we, then it came time to set up a selection How are we gonna get the new guys, you know? So was just Emilio and I, and a combat controller named Tim Brown, who just passed away last year. Terrific guy. I mean, just a really, really good sergeant, you know? I mean, a, he, he... Really honest man. And he and I went out, and they wanted to pick a place to do the selection process, and I had a place. I knew a really ugly place that we could do this at. So we went and we checked out where Tom wanted, wanted to go. Tim, Tim Brown wanted to go. And I said, "Now we're gonna go to Dahlonega," which the, is the Army Ranger School in Dahlonega, Georgia. So we go up there, and of course, they had everything. You got the 60-foot cliff for rappelling. They had water, so you could do, you know, water ops off there, you know, rope things. The mountains were there. The terrain was just terrible, you know? I mean, you, you bust your ass orienteering through that stuff, you know? So everything was there, and the barracks were there, and the chow hall. E- everything was really great there. So that's where we got selected to go. So our first one we did, uh, was with the cadre, where all, everybody came up, the combat and, uh, Major Tapero at that time. Uh, he actually came through up, and everybody went through the selection process and got a taste of what the people were going to, to do, you know, have to do to get to that team, and it was a lot of orienteering and I guess the controllers had to, you know, play with their, their equipment. They had radios. We had that that you rappelled down off the mountain. You had to go do something with the radios, and the- and then with weapons would be all apart in a box, and you had to put them together. And medical problem for the PJs, you know. And just all these different things that, you know, do your skills, you know. Show your skills and see where, how you, you performed under stress. So we put the selection process together and started running it, and slowly but surely, you know, we got guys to come in to do the, do the test and, uh, and come on board. That's when Scott and Larry Hiakamoto and, uh, Al Mora, and it was one other. Who was the other guy? Wasn't there four of yous we took? Just the three of yous? Just the three of yous came in, and, uh, we started OJT-ing them on what goes there after they got through selection, and, uh- Deploying on all the missions, and we deployed on every hijacking, starting with the one that they went into Beirut. They killed a sailor. It was a TWA flight, and they killed that sailor and threw him out onto the tarmac, and we were deployed on that, and we were supposed to go downtown and, uh, take that plane out. We had trained on a TWA plane. Uh, we were hid out in the, in the Meds somewhere, and that's when I d- developed the, uh, battle pack, uh, where we gave a fi- 500cc bag of ringers, an IV setup, and Kerlix, uh, airway, Berman airway, uh, different things that I built into this bag, and a, a Ziploc bag that every man got. And they got two syrettes of morphine. Each guy had two syrettes of morphine, and I told them put them in their shirt pocket, one on one pocket and one on the other in case you get hit. You can't figure out where it was. Everybody knew where the other guy's, uh, drugs were, so they could administer them if they needed it. And then we r- ran classes. Uh, Emilio and I r- ran classes and taught these guys what we needed to do, and we got up, and we were flying in. We trained on another TWA, was in the hangar where we went, and we got up and trained on that. And, uh, one of the Delta guys, he was a machine gunner, M60 guy, he slipped and fell down off the wing of the plane and, uh, slid off, and he fractured his, uh- His, uh, ulna right here, his, uh, wrist, above his wrist. And I had at that time these little cans that had a, a device in it. Looked like a grenade can, but it was a, it was full of, uh, rosin, I guess it was. I don't know that really... It hardens real quick. I can't remember the name of the stuff that was in it, but you'd pop it. You would dress the thing, put a Kerlix on the arm. You splint it, like in other words, you reduce the fracture as best as you can, and then you put this thing on his arm and, uh, and it hardens up, and he's got a cast. It's 'cause he, he wanted to go on that mission really bad. And so we got th- we got that guy squared away, and that was when, you know, the relationship started to work with the, with the Delta guys and the SEALs. They saw that we had our shit together, you know? And, uh, we deployed on that mission, and, uh, I was on headset 'cause I convinced everybody that pararescue was in charge of precious cargo. That's, that was our forte. Once we got there, we take control of, of the casualties, and, you know, 'cause they're gonna wanna know, you know, what's going on, and they're gonna have to get it from the medic. So we go through this thing, and so we don't go. We RTB, you know? M- mission done. Whatever happened, they, they solved it. We did not... We coulda took them down. I mean, the odds were great. There was, like, 35 of us and five of them, you know what I mean? It would've been no, no problem whatsoever. I think Scott fell out of his chair, but- He took a nosedive. But, uh, so that was the first time we really intermingled with them, and that's when I became friends with, uh, this Army Delta guy. Uh, he was a major at that time. In fact, he and I used to have beers together at Bennigan's later, and I'm not gonna mention his name, but his father was a four-star general, too. But it really clicked with him in, in planning and stuff like that, so they started really looking to us for, for info on the medical and, and what we would do with casualties. So then we got deployed on another one, hijacking, and the Achille Lauro, which Scotty was talking about. And by then we had him and Larry Hiokamoto and Al Mora on board. And, um, We're out there and we're hid out again, you know, and yet you couldn't go out during the daytimes 'cause the Russians were sending satellites over looking for us, you know. So we would go out at night and go to the firing range and, you know, go down by the ocean and dive in and swim a little bit or something. And we're in there eating beans and bangles or whatever the hell the-- we were getting fed. So, uh, almost a month, I think, it was a long time. I think it was this mission. So they killed Mr. Klinghoffer and rolled him off the ship, okay? And that's common knowledge. So we-- we're gonna take that ship down. So we got the... I believe we, we had Black Hawks. They were new helicopters that were out. And, uh, we were loaded up and we're getting ready to go in and take that ship down, and then all of a sudden They turned themselves over to the Egyptians. Somebody leaked it out that we were coming. Typical shit that goes on today, that there's always some mouth up in Congress or somewhere, some politician somewhere leaks it that the boys are on their way, right? Like they got people killed on this last operation. Same dude, same stuff. So I give Ritalin to all the SEALs and everybody, and we're RTB-ing. We're going back to Bragg, right? So I give them Ritalin 'cause it's a sleeping pill. So I give all these pills out. Everybody's snoring away, and I hadn't taken mine. And the next thing we know, that the Secretary of the Navy, I can't think of his name right now, he has the Tomcats force down that airliner in Sigonella But they land on the Italian side. How convenient was that? So we land, we're in a 141, a jet. I mean, we used to jump it all the time. But, uh, we land and we had the cracker box there, you know, that like the UPS truck, you know? And Colonel Downing, it's amazing how these guys that come out of the woodwork that want to... They're not operators, and they wanna get in- involved. They gotta get on that plane somehow. But anyway, Colonel Downing, I think it was his name, he became the truck driver. You know, when all us operators are in it. So we go out to the airplane, and we drive up, and we get out. And Emilio's with me, and Steiner's right over here about 10 feet away from me, along with, uh, Bucky Burris, who was a big name back then with the, with the Army Delta guys. And, uh, Gormley, he was the Seal Team Six commander, you know, Bob Gormley. Terrific guys, really down to earth men, and really appreciated who you were and what your job was and what you were doing. And so they're all there, and Steiner. And there's Abu Abbas. There was this guy, he's a real badass terrorist, I don't know if you ever heard about. And any one of us could have put a fucking round through that window that he was peeking at and took that son of a bitch out. But they got the, the ramp way going up, and the door comes open, and out comes this ambassador, I guess, of Egypt or whatever, and Steiner starts chit-chatting with him. And I'm like, "Okay," you know, "Let's go. We gotta shitter get off the pot." You know? And they're chatting away, and then they start pushing and shoving and everything. Everybody backs off, and they come back down the ramp. And I'm like, "Oh, boy." Then Emilio comes up, says, "John, here come the Italians." So the Italians are coming down the road, and they get there, and Emilio... I says, "Find out what they want." Emilio comes back and he says, "They wanna know if that's an Italian airplane. Whose airplane is that?" So I waved the guy over, and the guy comes over to me and he goes... He looks at the airplane and he says, "That Americana Alabasa." That's how I learned how to speak Italian, see? And I looked up at that Egyptian flag, and I looked at him and I said, "Si, Americana Alabasa." You know? So he went and got... And Emilio's looking at me. And he went, he got in his car. "Bueno." You know, off they went. So I went over and I told Steiner, I remember, I went, "Hey, sir. You know, we probably got six minutes to do this 'cause the Italians just left and they're coming back, you know?" So, uh- That's what happened. The SEALs were out around the whole airplane, and they were in my other ear. I have one ear for most our guys, and the other ear was... Anyway, I could hear them out there, and they had the whole thing covered. That little movie that they made about it was bullshit, you know? Uh, it's not the way it went down. So anyway, what happens is, is, uh, they get the terrorists off the plane and they put them on another smaller airplane. And of course Bucky Barris went along with whatever in another plane to follow that plane that went to Rome or wherever. I don't know. But the whole fucking thing disappeared. You know, it was over and, and done, and they finally ironed it out with the, that crap, and we didn't get to kill any terrorists. But what we did get to do was we sat on that fucking flight line in that 141 For probably 70 hours they would not let us take off. So we were all there. The honey bucket was overflowing. We were out of food. We were lucky that we didn't run out of water, but it was a real clusterfuck, you know, and they, we couldn't take off until the Italians gave us permission to use their runway, which we were parked on, to take off.

Nick 1:51:17

Oh, my gosh.

John 1:51:17

It's gonna be, "There goes another fucking one that..." We could have been heroes, but we were zeros, you know? Now, that's- Second total prom I got to go to that we didn't get on the dance floor, okay? So then-

Nick 1:51:33

Well, just maybe a comment more than a question. You got promoted to senior master sergeant in '85. You were doing all this as a senior master sergeant.

John 1:51:42

Yeah.

Nick 1:51:43

That's, I mean, it's just, like, shocking to me in a way that you were just out, you were at such a, a... You were at the top of your game as a, as a 40-something senior master sergeant, and you were out there doing it, and you were the first PJ at the two four, as the guy that, like, won the trust of both Delta and Seal Team Six to be able to do that. As a senior master sergeant, being an advisor to Seal commanders and everything, like, that is so-

Scott 1:52:16

And the Ranger, and the Rangers

Nick 1:52:18

and the Rangers. That is awesome. Yeah.

Scott 1:52:20

You know, it's all, like John didn't mention some of it, you know, him and Emilio, then me, Larry, and Al. There was five of us. So the bread, was the bread and butter mission of, of the unit then was airfield seizures. Every quarter, a different Ranger battalion was doing an airfield seizure exercise, and we were on every one of them, landed on runways, and then doing those round-robin iterations, and that's when John really got the SAR plan going, was just, called it a burn and bust scenario, because that's what every Ranger would take through that, uh, burn and bust scenario with the actual busts and tires, and learn that how self-SAR went when you had that helicopter with the two PJs, controller, and about 10 Rangers on it when we would do those missions, which evolved into what Black Hawk Down pretty much, uh, scenario was with the SAR package that went in. Because that was Scotty and him and, um, then the combat controller. I can't think of his name right now.

John 1:53:24

That SAR bird that we put together, there was this five or six 53s and we were going on training mission. So we're out there f- taking off, and here we go. We got the SAR bird, yeah? And everybody were going. And I actually had a doctor that I, that used to... He was a wannabe, you know, and he wanted to be involved, so I took him on the H-3 with me, what, for, let the guy some flying time. He turned green with all the yanking and banking, you know? We go out there and we're zinging along, and all of a sudden, one of the 53s was too tight on the guy in front of him or the guy in front of him slowed down, and he couldn't make the turn around the mountain, and he crashed into the mountain. So now I got this H-53 rolling down the mountain, you know, with crews on board, et cetera. So we hit it right away, quick. Boom, I'm on top of that shit out there. The doctor, he was lost. I mean, I had to, you know, s- sat over to the side here, take care of this. And we went in and cleaned that up, took care of all that. And Steiner was on... He was on top of that. He was there right after it went down. I guess they brought him in on a Little Bird or something like that. And he really complimented the hell out of, out of the pararescuemen and whatnot that went in there and, and cleaned that mess up. And in fact, I think he gave me... I got a achievement medal or something, not that I care. But I mean, I do. It was nice. It was a nice award. But that bird functioned that night right then and there, that we had that SAR bird. And the pilot of that 53 got killed. He was a Medal of Honor winner in a, in a, in a... And he got killed in that. The combat controller that was on board that helicopter, he survived it, uh, Jerry Bennett. Terrific combat controller. Really a good squared-away guy. And his call sign was Ragman. I don't know why we called him Ragman. But that was a night to remember, you know? So Steiner had a firsthand view of pararescue in operation cleaning that mess up. So that was that story. So where, where, where were you going now? What was the next thing you asked me?

Nick 1:55:37

You'd mentioned the, the C, C-130 crashing into the 60 on a airfield seizure training.

John 1:55:44

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. That one. Yeah. That was one... You know, they used to deploy us, and, uh, they wouldn't tell you whether it was real or it wasn't real. So we were on a C-5A and we loaded up Little Birds in there and, and also the Black Hawks, I think they had them on there. And we fly across the fucking world, and, uh, we hit the operation base that we're gonna operate out of and, you know- My job on there was to go and set up the casualty collection point on the runway that we're seizing, and there was a building there that Delta was gonna take down. And I had three rangers Actually, I think it was four, four or five Rangers in the helicopter with me, and Tim Brown, controller, and Mike Lampey, controller, and there was a Ranger sitting in the middle of those two, and there was two or three on this side. So I'm sitting on two five-gallon jerry cans full of gasoline with some of that mohair stuff for padding, and I'm sitting on that, and I had my sit harness on. You know, your climbing harness, you know, for rappelling. I hook into the floor, right? 'Cause we s- where everybody stopped at safety in the real world, we started there. You know, nobody's tied in, none of the shit, which I thought was silly. But we're hover taxiing down the road. I'm listening to one ear, it's on within the team, and the other one is back at the headquarters, and I'm hearing all this stuff going on. And the guys are jumping out, and they're... Well, actually, on the way in, uh, we were about 30 knots and 30 feet, one of the controllers went out the door, and we had to s- take care of that later. But anyway, we kept on going and we get, get down there, and we're getting, taxiing along. Let out the Rangers, and they go out and move some obstacles off the runway, and back in, and we're hover taxiing down, I'd guess maybe four feet off the runway. And the next thing you know, I had my nods on, it got real bright, and I'm like, "Jesus, Delta must have blew something up," you know? Well, then I'm like a BB in a ping pong m- ball. The helicopter is shaking to death. The blades are cr- crashing. The blades are flying off. The Rangers are jumping out. I grabbed one guy by his harness. They don't know better than to go out until that thing shakes itself to death, unless it's on fire, you know? And they got chopped up pretty good. The pilot and the co-pilot got their arms tore up because it was such a violent crash that their arms were flying around in the cockpit and hitting all the instruments and stuff. It just ripped them up. And, uh, so then, you know, I got n- I got my foot smashed by one of the jerry cans, I guess, they, both of them. But I got a cut in the ass, and I had hydraulic fluid and on all over me, and I'm thinking I'm gonna go up and be a Krispy Kreme here in a minute. But it's finally settled down a- and we got out, and Delta showed up or somebody... I remember one of the Seal Delta guys was there. And, uh, we started cleaning up, you know, getting the guys. And, uh, they, they had a hold of it. And this one lieutenant colonel Army guy, I rem- can't think of his name, but they named the road after him up there. Super guy. And, uh, God, I can't remember his name. But anyway, I left and I ran down the end of the runway to, to find my teammate that was in that helicopter, the combat controller. And he had fractured his arm and, you know, and got some lumps and bumps all over him. And, uh, I didn't know what happened. And then a- another helicopter came in, and it picked u- picked us up. It was an H3, I guess. I don't know what... To this day, I don't know what helicopter it was. And I get inside of it. I knew I could stand up in it on my feet, so it had to be an H3 or something like that. And I get, I got this controller in there, and I'm gonna start an IV on him, and I look up, and here's one of the PAs from the med package that we had put together with the surgeons and all that. And I looked at him and I said, "What the hell happened?" He says, "You got hit by a C-130, stuck his tire in your rotor blades." I'm like, "What?" And he... I said, "You're shitting me." And he's like, "No." I handed him the IV. I says, "You start this fucking IV." And went over in the corner and lit up a cigarette. went back in. Holy shit. That, that C-130 stuck his tire. I mean, that's how close he got. You know, I mean, a hair one way or the other, I would've been a dead man. You know what I mean? Yeah. And that C-130, everything. What a catastrophe that would've been, and nobody knows about that. Now you know. Now you got a picture. But that was a pretty exciting evening, let me tell you. That was really, really, um, something to write home about, you know? I never, uh- Never really think about it, you know? Like, it's frightful, you know. I mean, I still see it now and then, you know. You see, see yourself running down a runway on fire, you know. How do you put out hydraulic fluid, you know? Roll in the dirt, you know? By the time- Yeah then you're singed. Thank God, uh, nobody got burnt, you know?

Nick 2:01:26

You basically got that one patient into that, uh, helicopter, possible age three, and then you figured out maybe after the adrenaline wore off, like, "Oh, I got hurt," in the midst of this whole thing. Yeah. Or did you know immediately you were hurt, you were just pushing through it?

John 2:01:43

I, I just pressed through it, you know? I mean, my foot hurt, and you know, of course, you get your toe broke, it stings a little bit, but that's not a big deal. You know, you do that playing pop football, you know? Yeah. But no, that didn't, didn't phase me that much, you know? And you know, you just think about the cut on my ass is, when I put my hand back there, my pants were torn too. I don't even know how the, the seat of my pants was ripped out. But when you stick your hand back there checking, you feel that slime, you think it's blood, you know, and it's hydraulic fluid until you taste it. And then you find out it's... You thank God you're tasting hydraulic fluid and not your ass, you know?

Nick 2:02:22

Another day you exposed yourself from the beginning.

John 2:02:25

Yeah. Here I am exposing myself again, you know. So we got through that one. And, uh, there was something else too I wanted to tell you about, uh- We got alerted for another mission in Malta, I guess it was, Scott. And we go down there and we... And here we are, you know? And, and back in those days, it was, uh-

Scott 2:02:48

That was a, that was a Egyptian airliner that was hijacked. Was taken down on Malta.

John 2:02:54

In Malta? So we show up there and, and I'm, General Steiner and I had a, became pretty good buddies, you know? He, he had me right there with him. And, uh, all of a sudden we get the call to back off, you know? We're out there on a runway getting ready to go down and get all lined up around this airplane. So we backed off, and we backed off about, you know, I don't know, 500 or 600 yards or more. And next thing you know, the Maltese went in there and blew the fucking airplane up. Killed the passengers and everything. It was terrible. What a mess that was.

Scott 2:03:35

Yeah.

John 2:03:36

Were you on that, Scott? Scotty, you were there for that one.

Scott 2:03:41

Yeah, I was there. I was o- I was there with you. Yeah.

John 2:03:43

Yeah. That's what I thought, that you were there. There's just so many stories. We, when we were hit out one time, we were getting ready to go in downtown Beirut was it, somewhere, and I had to go out, 'cause this was gonna be a real clusterfuck. We were in planning, and we're planning on going in, and, uh, we had different people going different places. And I was with, uh, Captain Gormley and Billy Ackerlin, who was their, their senior, uh, non-commissioned officer. And w- we were gonna go in and, and take down the, where they supposedly had some of the, the hostages. Where some were in the library, some were at the fire station, and I know we were going in the fire station. And, uh, and the other places, other, other birds were going in too. And we were all ready to go do this, and the plan for if your chopper got shot down, we carried our fins with us 'cause we were gonna go. And the, the Navy would come in and lay down CBU and cut a path for us to the ocean, and we were gonna go out there and, and swim out and get picked up by boats out there, you know? And that was another, like, uh, holy shit time.

Scott 2:04:59

Well, that was the primary, um, uh, exfil pickup plan, was get to the beach and swim.

John 2:05:05

Yeah. Yeah, it was really, uh... That was f- that was a fun one, and I had to go out to the aircraft carrier and, uh- talk to them about, you know, so I'd know where to send the casualties and everything. So I get out there on there with that, and, uh, I did a little thing, but I, I never told anybody about this. When I get on the carrier they didn't know who I was, but they knew somebody was coming. And, uh, I had a a black full bird colonel's, uh, metal insignias, you know, that they wear. Mm-hmm. And I had that in my pocket. So when I got off the heli- helicopter I pulled my wallet out or something and purposely dropped that full bird colonel's tag on the floor, and these guys were standing around. And they saw, I just bent down, picked it up, put it back in my pocket. Well, I got the red fucking carpet treatment on that carrier, let me tell you. I got to go and sit with the commander of the fucking carrier, the Guam or something. I ate and they bought me food and I got to see everything. And the chow hall was what they used, the mess was gonna be the emergency casualty collection point. And they had one room that was like a dental place, but that was gonna be the operating room. And I, I went down to the geedunk, what they called, and that's where you buy games, you know. And I bought all these games and shit and put 'em in the helmet bag and took 'em back for the guys and stuff. But man, I just, you know, I set the precedents for who we are and what we are and, uh, you know, I just didn't wanna hear any bullshit, you know. And so it's- I

Scott 2:06:53

think it wa- I don't think it was the Guam, John. Whatever it was, I don't know what you were on, but I was on the Guam.

John 2:06:58

I, I know. I forget m- it was a mount plate 'cause they had all those landing, uh, those things that they have that, uh, that they put the Marines in and take 'em ashore. I forget what they call those things, but they were in the back of it, down there in the back of, they had a bunch of them there. But that was fun. And that was a whole lot of nothing. We didn't do anything to get done. And then I took my guys and we all RON'd at some base, I forget where it was, but it was in, out there in the Med. And Emilio comes in and he goes, "Hey boss," he says, uh, "Can we, can we have some beer?" And I'm like, "All right, one can of beer. That's it, one can." Gotcha. Well, the cans were quarts. They had quart cans in the machine over there. Do you remember that, Scott? Were you there for that

Scott 2:07:56

one? I remember Hackberry.

John 2:08:00

Unbelievable. And then we hijacked the Seals, hijacked the bus and took us somewhere. They hot-wired a bus and we went someplace. I can't remember where the hell we went. And then we went on another one out to California. We hid out in a hangar out there in California for, I don't know, 48 hours or so, and then RTB'd. I can't remember what that was all about

Scott 2:08:28

You know, I think some of the stuff, John, um, during that time period, you, you know, when you got, uh, to, uh, was ki- at that time it was DET 4 NAFCOS. That was a critical time in, uh, Air Force, um, you know, history where, like Nick was saying, not, uh, really comprehending that a senior master sergeant is out there doing these things. But we had no officers in the career field, and so we'd always come under whatever, um, unit squadron that we were located with, helicopter or C-130 or, uh, early on a composite unit, and they split those up. So that wa- those were our commanders and our chain of command. So we really, you know, we didn't... We did whatever they said we would do to- for the most part, or whatever monies came down to us. So during that time period in the mid-'80s, um, pararescue was- Floundering a little bit. You know, there wasn't a war going on, uh, peace time, and it's like, well, we're spending all this money for guys that are just sitting around having fun, jumping out of airplanes, and scuba diving. So going there at that time when you did, through the Debt Four, really was a big boost for what pararescue evolved into now in Air Force Special Operations Command. So, I mean, I don't know if you wanna talk any about that. I just, you know, I don't know all the- Well- the management side at the Upper Air Force, but I know those things were going on

John 2:10:01

Well, the thing is too that when... I was glad that I got picked to do it because I was fulfilling a, a dream that I had, if you could call it a dream or a wish, that pararescue would get the combat training, and that we didn't need to be attached to an airplane, you know? And they were getting ready to close the career field down. I mean, I heard scuttlebutt along those lines that, why do we need PJs anymore? You know, they're, uh, were attached to the airplane, but yet there were some senior NCOs in pararescue that didn't wanna do halo work, that didn't, you know, that, that wanted to stay attached to the airplane to go down and pick up a casualty and go. And, and I knew the future was gonna change, that you just couldn't do that. If you wanted to, uh, keep pararescue alive, you, you had to concentrate, and when I was at headquarters medical was on, you're physically fit to handle any medical situation they got out there, and that's what's paramount. 'Cause all the rest of the stuff, they got other people that can do that stuff, you know? And, and have done it, you know. Guys would go down, and, and the m- Army does, they'll send a guy down the hoist to go get his buddy and bring him back up and, you know, pick people up and whatnot. But if pararescue wanted to stay alive, they needed to get into combat tactics, and that's where we headed and that's what we did. And unfortunately, I retired and didn't see it to where it could've, where it's at today, but it was on its way, and it is what it is today, so.

Scott 2:11:41

Well, yeah, during that time period there was that talk of, why do we need s- to spend all this money on pararescuemen to do all these other things when we can just have a, a emergency medical technician, a DMT, assigned to the helicopter to do that, that job? And when we expanded into, uh, HAFSOC and Special Operations Command was a really, uh- The conventional side of pararescue and air, AFSOC side of pararescue benefited from that move

John 2:12:16

Well, one of the things was, was we were attached to the airplane, and that commander of that airplane controlled what the PJ did. And I just listened to a, a young pararescueman, uh, I think he might've been, I don't know, an E8 or something, that he... Something awful happened. A guy got drug out the door, he got smashed. You know, he might've been dead on the way out, you know, and all of that stuff, but he got into an argument with the pilot 'cause the pilot wouldn't let him jump in with his men, and that was not the way with us there. We ra- I ran If I was on that air or a PJ, we were on that helicopter, that pilot in special operation, he had no say. You know, like I'd say, "Put us in," he'd put us in. You know, "Do this," and they did that. Uh, and that's the way it should've been. And, you know, whether, whether the PJ wanted to jump in 10 foot of snow or water or what, the PJ's making that decision. It's not resting upon that pilot. He's not in charge of the pararescueman. His, his job is, I hate to say it, but you're a taxi driver. You take me and get me in there and get me out of there, and, you know, let me do my job. And that's where we still have it today. I couldn't believe it when these guys couldn't jump in and, and the, the pilot wouldn't let them go.

Nick 2:13:42

I think that the, the fight between PJs, Crows, controllers, STOs, and a pilot is just a tale as old as time. R- And, uh, yeah, I, I always approached it as like, "Hey, I'm, I'm the one inheriting the risk to jumping, to fast roping, to doing anything. Once I hit the ground, my shoes touch the ground, I am the supported commander." I think the pilots have, like, this impression that they have to be like our moms sometimes, and they're like, "Oh, you know, we need to take care of them. We don't want to put them in that situation." Well, we're, we're freely accepting the risk, and we're, we're giving ourselves the own authority to do that too. So it, it's a t- it's a tough thing.

John 2:14:24

Well, y- you know, that's, that is a trouble spot with me, and it always was, and that's why when I got in there, I made sure that I called the shots. Pararescueman, whoever was the PJ called the fucking shots when we were in, in those types of situations, not the pilot of the airplane. Now, if there was a, a, an Army guy that was involved and they're a Delta operator or something, you know, or, or SEALs guys and they control the, the say whether we go or not, you know, then I can understand that. We'd roll with whatever they were doing. But to have the aircraft commander who is worried about whether he's gonna get, you know Promoted or he don't wanna have that on his rap sheet or something. He, he's a taxi driver, and that's what they were, you know? I mean, you hate to say that, and they have a very important job and, you know, et cetera, but they put them in charge of stuff that they don't know, you know, un- un- as long as you got sane PJs too. Now, you get some cowboys, you know, and we have them in pararescue like anywhere else that can really screw things up, you know? Mm-hmm. But if you got a good trusted guy out there, that's what you train him for. And, and you guys have went through now this time and this, this last decade are unbelievably in- trained more in a lot of aspects than, than our seniors were, you know? And to make these decisions, and I think that it's, it's a good place to have the officers to defend the PJs. 'Cause the guys were out there and, you know, they, they didn't really... They used to say, "We can't trust the PJs," you know? The enlisted guys. I mean, that was just an enlisted-officer-type thing. But, you know, if you're a combat rescue officer, I'd assume that those guys were on top of it, and they took the oath, and they believed in the career field, and they wanted to do the job and do it correctly, you know?

Nick 2:16:20

Yeah.

John 2:16:20

So I don't know what the- Yeah, it was- relationship be- between them was ever, you know?

Nick 2:16:24

Yeah, so that's what I, uh, that's what I came as. I mean, I came in as a second lieutenant, combat rescue officer all the way through. I guess I am the, uh, being medically retired, I'm a perfect example of why, uh, people, enlisted and officer relationships sometimes, uh, it's just like a fun jabbing contest. 'Cause I, people tell me like, "Hey, you should've s- put the officer in officer a little bit more. You wouldn't have gotten hurt on those jumps." Uh, but, uh, um, I, it was always advocacy. I, I knew I was a CRO, and I knew PJs are the guys that are always to do the mission. And, and when I was young and leading as a team commander in like, uh, in Afghanistan a- and other deployments- It was nice to run with the guys um, but I always knew that there was going to be a point in my career where I would have to step back, advocate, make sure the guys got the mission a- and do that. With, it, it, during your time as a PJ, the absence of an officer, it sounds like you, when you were at the two-four, you really took that role of advocacy and, and, like, promoting, uh, the PJs' work to get to the highest level of our military, like, really well. Like, y- it seems like you just took that and ran with it. With the SAR packages, um, ma- MAP, I'm reading, like, your performance report, you instituting the MAP team. Um, so I, I think it's awesome. It's awesome that we're able to talk to you right now too. Yeah.

John 2:18:00

Well, you brought up I had a eight APR. Well, we had a PJ on the team And he couldn't run past his PT test. And the NCO at that time was in charge of the unit-

Nick 2:18:16

Yeah, yeah

John 2:18:17

was a master sergeant, and he told me to take him out and pass him on the PT test. So I took him out, and he ran, and he failed the PT test. So he says, "Well, take him out tomorrow." So I took him out tomorrow. He didn't pass the PT test. He told me again, "Take him out and pass him." I'm like, "Okay, I got the message." I took him out and brought him back, and I flunked him. That's, yeah. And that guy gave me an eight. You gotta do your PJ. And I... It cost me.

Nick 2:18:49

What John is referencing right now is he has a flawless performance report record. Got him. It was all nine out of nine except for one eight your entire career. Yeah. Which is hilarious. Yeah. Um, but I'm sure you wear that as a badge of honor maybe as well.

John 2:19:09

Well, y- you know, you just have your... I just don't, like, I don't do stuff like that. Y- you know what I mean? Now, if it's between, you know, it depends on what it is, you know? And that's detrimental to the mission. Y- you know? And you go out on a... I've never been on a jump mission, but back in the day, when you jumped, they always put a launch over the side. Now, you don't know who's picking you up. You don't know if he's bilingual, or he speaks English, or he's talking Turkish. You have no clue. And you're getting picked up by these guys, and the water's rough, and they got hard boats. They're out there not picking you up in a soft boat. You know, if you get banged up, killed, whatever, and I know people have gotten hurt on, on, on jump missions. You gotta have your shit together.

Nick 2:19:56

You've probably developed, like, a leadership philosophy in your time in the Air Force and leaving the Air Force. Is there any advice you would give to a young PJ right now, um, in their career with some of the struggles that you had, some of the, the, the, the good moments and missions that you had?

John 2:20:17

My advice is make sure you stay physically fit. Make sure that you know how to do your job. If you're not a good medic, you're not w- the, you're worthless. If you don't know your medicine, and you're not physically fit, and a team player, you know, you gotta b- be a team player. Um, it's not all about you, you know? Uh, some people, it goes to their head, and it's about them, and other guys could care less, you know? And if you're going on a survival trek or whatever, you know, don't pack along a canned ham, you know? I mean, that's been done before, you know? And keep your weight, a- and, you know, be what's expected of you. You know, when people wanna see a pararescueman, they wanna see a stud like Scotty Geren, you know? He's standing there with muscles popping out his earlobes, you know? And he's pushing- 70 years old, you know? So that's what they expect from pararescue, I quit really drinking 36 years ago. I just said, "If I gotta quit drinking to quit... If I have to quit s- drinking to quit smoking," that was it. I stopped both of it cold turkey. Now, I'll still have a beer with you, you know, but I don't get inebriated anymore. You know, maybe a beer once a month or a year or whatever, you know. No more. But that's, you know, get caught up in that, and they continue it as they go on, and you wonder why we, we kill ourselves.

Nick 2:21:47

Yeah.

John 2:21:48

But going in, I, my daughter called me up yesterday, and she's got a friend that, he's g- he's really physically fit, and he wants to go be a pararescueman. "And, Dad, what can you tell him that that's..." What I can tell him is, you know, learn everything you can about what pararescue's about so you know what you're getting into. Stay physically fit- And know your job. You gotta know your medical. You gotta be into it. If you're going in it just to be a skydiver, forget it. You know, if you're going in it to be a shooter or something like that, go in the Army or the Marines or something, you know? That's not what pararescue's about. Pararescue is saving the lives. You're in there to be a person who gives someone a chance to live, and that's what your job... That's why we do these things, that others may live, you know? And a lot of men have, you know, done it. We've done it, and we got a hell of a reputation, a good one, you know? And there's, there's always a loose link somewhere, and you gotta find it and fix it, you know?

Nick 2:22:48

Well, well said. Well said

John 2:22:50

and, and telling a young guy, I mean, um, I have a nephew that just, uh, joined the Space Force, you know? And he, before that, he was talking about going in the Coast Guard, be a Coast Guard diver, you know? And he was ask- you know, wanted to know different things, and I would tell him what I, if I did tell him. I didn't tell him anything, but, you know, there's not much you can tell them. I mean, what'd they tell you before you became a PJ? You gonna meet a lot of girls or...? Now, that's a bonus now. That comes with the career field.

Nick 2:23:24

Yeah. No, I mean, uh, I guess- Had trouble

Scott 2:23:28

staying away.

John 2:23:30

I had a chief tell me, and he's a good friend of mine, people would ask him, like, when he was running the, uh, selection program for pararescue or a, um, and combat controllers at Lackland, you know, he'd, he'd go along and he'd, he'd, he'd tell the guy, you know, "You're gonna be a PJ. You're gonna be a controller." You know, he'd pick them. And they said, "How, how did he do?" He said, "Well, he always picked the handsome guys for PJs." You know, I said, "You did that shit?" I laughed, you know. Scotty was a chick magnet. We'd go out to Bennigan's or somewhere, and Scott would come in there with them big blue eyes and built like a M- Marv, uh, what do you call that? Marvel Man or whatever the hell that they are. You know, he was built like a brick shit house, you know? And the girls were on him with those eyes of his. You know, he'd look at them and, man, you just hang around and pick up the remnants, you know? Well, you know, it's just that couple of things that are important that there I was, a high school dropout, voted least likely to succeed in life, and I get out of the military 20-some years later with a college degree and a h- you know, a high school diploma and accomplished all that I did accomplish, you know, while I was in. And it tells me that the military needs to look at when you tell someone they're gonna be a clerk typist, y- you know, you need to find more out about that man or woman and make sure that's really their genre, whatever they're gonna get into, you know? If the guy's a wrench bender and he loves to work on automobiles, why don't you send him to material ma- maintenance, you know? Back in my day, they just slammed you with it, you know? You're this, you're that, you're gonna go do this, you're gonna do that. You'll learn it, you know? And now I was put in the wrong career field. That's, that's what I would, would say lessons to be learned that, that you find your slot in life to what you wanna be, and I wanted to be in military and, uh, I enjoyed it, you know? I liked being a soldier or airman or whatever, but I needed to find the right job. So that's what it's about. You know, you gotta like it, you know?

Scott 2:25:52

Working for John, John was a great boss. He was a hard ass, he was perfectionist, a perfectionist, and wanted you to be the best that you could be, so he pushed his guys hard, but he would take care of the guys. You do what you're supposed to do, John's gonna take care of you. I can remember one of the times, you know, like back in early day there when there was only five of us in there, and we were in our medical room that we had there, and he have a little briefing to us, and he's like, "Look, you guys need to do your job as a pararescueman. You be the best you can do. Don't get involved in any of the other, um, arguments or any of the problems that are going on. You just focus on your job. I'll take care of the top cover and take care of administrative side." And so, you know, that's what it was. He was a hard ass, and he'd be hard on us, but nobody else could be hard, would, could step in and do that kinda, uh, actions to us or belittle us or anything. He was gonna take care of us there, so he was a good boss.

John 2:27:05

Thank you, Scott You got a lot of ink. Did you have that before you became a PJ?

Nick 2:27:12

No, nothing. I got my first tattoo at, like, 18, and then, yeah, I just kept, kinda kept going with it.

John 2:27:21

I, I have a- That's why- tattoo on my ass of a Playboy bunny head. When, when I was going through PJ school, me and, uh, two other PJs, Walter White and, and Troidel, we went down to Pensacola from Eglin and got Playboy bunny heads tattooed on our ass. And, uh, we had this thing, you remember the bunny butt club, you bet your left cheek I am, you know? And, yeah, that was a beer thing. And then, then they came up with the green feet, uh, over there, and that was really cool. Guys got green feet. Roadrunner, you saw all kinds of... I never would really got into the tattoos because I was, I was all about survival. You know, if I get shot down, I become a prisoner of war, I'm gonna lie my way out of it, and I'm gonna tell them, like, what Neil Black did. He t- told them I was a medic, so they called him Baby Doc, 'cause he was a little guy, you know, smaller man in stature, and he kinda got through it, you know? And that's was always gonna be my MO. I, I was either a 702 administrative clerk that couldn't type, and, or I was a medic, you know, and that's it. I'm not some high-speed guy. So I never, y- I'd been wanting to get tattoos for years, years, and I just never lived really close to a... I mean, uh, I was going through a marriage and a divorce and a custody battle and all that shit, and I just never got the ink that I wanted to get. So on April Fools' Day of this year, a buddy of mine who lives near me here, civilian, he had just bought himself a, uh, that high-powered Mustang., "I wanted it. I bought it." He said, "I'm 68 years old or 60 behind." I'm like, "Fine." And I said to myself, "Fuck it, man. I want it. I'm gonna get it." And it was like 7:00 at night on April Fools', and I went in and I got my ink. There it is. There, you see it?

Nick 2:29:25

Oh, nice. Look. All right. Hell yeah.

John 2:29:28

Yeah. So that's the start, and I've, I've got some others that I got and I'm gonna lay out. One of them is too, I haven't seen anybody with it, but when I went to the first, uh, what we call Founders for the 2/4, if you belonged to the 2/4 you went into special operations, and there's a, uh, a knife with wings on it, you know, and I think that they've adopted that now into the overall, uh, patch. But I just wanna get that, that thing on there. And then I was thinking about getting my Jolly Green patch with my 100 mission tab. You know, you get a tab, you put 100 missions, so I think I might do that. You know, and some other, and, you know, but I'm... You know, my wife thinks I'm crazy, but I don't care. I'm, I'm, I'm still a kid. I'll be 82 in August, and, you know, I'm s- planning on being around till 102 maybe.

Nick 2:30:22

Well, you're doing a good job.

John 2:30:23

Long as the- Hard to kill quality of life is still there, you know? Yeah. This whole COVID bullshit is really a rude awakening to me, you know? Take 10 steps forward and go back five, you know? So I just gotta keep hammering away.

Nick 2:30:37

This has been awesome. Is that, is there any outstanding, like, kinda things in your career? We kind of brushed over Hamilton and Pease Air Force Base, but-

John 2:30:45

Well, we did all the space shots and stuff. I mean, I had... I was the team leader for the first moon landing in Panama City, Panama, and I got to party my ass off down there with the civilians. It went nuts when we landed on the moon. So that was a rough job, man, you know? So it does have some perks, you know? Uh, there's a lot of missions that I can't think of that we did. I mean, I've picked up bodies, got guys, crashed planes and stuff, you know? I've lost some really terrific guys that were killed and, you know, and it happens. You know, it just happens, you know? But, uh, good men, good men. And the last one, which is kinda really, when I was vice president of the PJ Association, um, I, my job, part of that was that I would always call the family and talk to them and stuff, you know, and, and get- The information about the funeral and that. And I was, that was getting to me. You know, I'm getting older myself and whatnot, and the, the last one was Fredzo Jenkins, who was a really top-notch PJ, you know? But Fredzo was like championship handball, racquetball. You, nobody could beat him, you know? But he beat himself because he had to have his knees replaced, right? Well, he got his knees replaced, and we were burying a PJ, Greg Lepley. We were burying Greg- At this place up in Pennsylvania there, at military cemetery. And he showed up, and how you doing, whatever, whatever. And he lives not too far from where my ranch was in Virginia. And his wife Holly, well, Fredzo was out hookah diving. You know what that is, with a tube? Mm-hmm. Like you're hooked up to the thing, and I, I don't know if they were grabbing lobsters or gigging flounders or what. And they say he popped to the surface and yelled something and then was gone. He died. And I had to call Holly, Hilly up, his wife, who I've known for 40 years or more or whatever, you know? And Fredzo's no longer there, you know, and she's crying, and it, it gets tough. And that's why I, I kinda walked away from that job after doing it for five and a half years. My tenure would've been up six months, but at the same time I was having surgeries done. You know, I had a prostate problem, I had a hip problem, I had eyes, you know, all this shit going on, and it was just getting to be too much. So I walked away from being the vice president anymore, and they hired, got somebody else to take it over. But that becomes tough when you get to that point when you're calling up the wives and you're, you're having to tell them. And, and what killed Fredzo was, I believe, and I told her, that I think what happened is, is he had an air embolism and it killed him because he had the total knees done. And you're down there, and you get down below one atmosphere and it changes your whole function in your body, and he threw a, threw a clot. So that's why, you know, she says, "Do you think I should have it orthosc-" "Do what you want," you know? But, you know, that's... I don't think there was anything that they... illicit was going on with her. But that's just an example of, you know, what, what goes on, you know, with that job, and that's gets tough after a while. I buried my buddy Dave Slager, where they used to say if, if... You see Slager, Pagini's right there, too. We were asshole buddies, you know? And, uh, you know, I had to bury him not too long ago, too, a couple years ago right here in Florida, you know. So when you start kissing your buddies goodbye, you know, it kinda gets on you the older you get and, you know, it's kinda like I said to somebody recently, you know, drinking a beer for all my friends, you know. For each one of them. I've lost count, so I guess I'll start over, you know?

Nick 2:34:50

Wow. Yeah.

John 2:34:51

So I go all the way back to Nick Clemons, man. I mean, that's a long time ago. I remember them. I, I remember meeting a PJ that he was at the Bridge of Remagen. You know, he was a medic in the Army, you know, became a PJ later. And then we lost guys along the way for, like Crusher Jones. He was in the class behind me. Um, he's... Another guy placed fourth in the Mr. America over, over 40 contest. I have a picture of him. He was built like a brick shit house, Luther, but he was no way that he was gonna free fall. And he called me, "John, I'm not..." I said, "Well, I can't help you, man," you know? And that they wanted me to try to see if I could work in the fact that, you know, I mean, I'm in special operations now, and I can't control anything there, but I wouldn't have anyway. You know, if you're required to be a pararescue, in the pararescue, man, you're supposed to free fall now. So a lot of guys had to go through HALO school and, you know, or they pulled a fast one, and they s- they changed it, and they, uh, they didn't have to go to the Army. They started training you. Like, where did you go to HALO school at?

Nick 2:36:00

I went with the SEALs out in Otay Lakes, just east of S- uh, San Diego.

John 2:36:05

Well, see, that's something new. They, they started, you know, qualifying guys for free fall somewhere else. I don't know. Scott, do you know where it was?

Scott 2:36:14

Well, the, I thought the schoolhouse now was out in, uh, was it Marana? Marana?

John 2:36:20

I know that- Yeah,

Nick 2:36:20

they're doing that, and then Yuma as well. They're doing Coolidge, Marana, Yuma

John 2:36:24

Yeah.

Scott 2:36:26

Yuma's what I meant.

John 2:36:27

Yeah. Well, that, that's the thing, you know, like guys... And even scuba. You know, scuba came on with the space program more or less. You know, when the guys started working on Gemini and Mercury and Apollo and that, and if you couldn't do scuba, you, you couldn't be a PJ. So it had to be strict across the board so you didn't have a half a PJ out there. And, and that all PJs should be trained the same. I don't think you should have a, a micro or a mini or an almost, you know? You need to keep the career field fervently in line with what the job is, and they can go anywhere under any climatic condition and do the job.

Nick 2:37:07

Yeah.

John 2:37:08

So especially if it's on a Hawaiian beach, you know, next to Fort DeRussy where the tennis courts are, and Honolulu Bar over here. We're real good at that.

Nick 2:37:21

I said it, like, many times, I don't know where we went wrong. You guys got, like, Miami, Hawaii, like, all these great places, and we're like, "Hey, you know what? Let's move to Tucson, Arizona-" No thanks and Valdosta, Georgia. What did we do? Come on.

John 2:37:35

Patrick Air Force Base, man, where the space shots were. Oh, what a great place to be stationed. You know them guys you got down there, you couldn't get them out with a, with a crowbar, you know? That's, you know, you... They get a good place, you know? Uh, the guys in New York too, people, you know, I don't know, I like the city. I don't like to live in the city, but I liked going to s- believe it or not, I liked going to Broadway shows and stuff like that back in the day. You know, Doobie Brothers, I was really into them. And, like, in Hawaii, I got to go to a lot of concerts and stuff, you know? So, uh, enjoyed it, you know? Life is- Yeah is still good.

Nick 2:38:11

Yeah.

John 2:38:11

Even though I haven't done shit in the last four years, and this is one of the best conversations I've had in a long time, where my cognitivity is still here. I can't, can't believe I'm remembering the names that I'm telling you right now, when I'm pulling out these guys' names. I mean, Scott'll tell you, I've been brain dead, and it's coming back. My gosh, yeah. They're good for me You know? I'm

Nick 2:38:34

sure we'll see you again too.

John 2:38:35

It's been great. I enjoy it, though. The, I, this is kinda like a reunion.