529: Firebase Kate Was Under Siege, Surrounded, Outgunned. With Capt. Bill "Hawk" Albracht

This is Jocko Podcast No. 529 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. All that I knew of this war was that America was fighting communists, and it was my duty to help my country.

At age 21, I believed that I was seven feet tall, bulletproof, invisible when needed, and that Vietnam was to be the greatest adventure I could ever hope for. I had had three years of service, but not a minute in combat. My troops were very young, many still in their teens. Like me, most had enlisted or been drafted straight out of high school. A few had several months of combat under their belts, but even they could not have been prepared for what awaited us in late October nineteen sixty nine.

And so we went. more or less happily onto the isolated hilltop called Kate, ignorant of the misaligned forces that controlled our fate, never expecting a bloody five day monsoon of steel and fire. And that right there is an excerpt from a book called Abandoned in Hell, written by William Bill Albrach and Marvin Wolf. And Bill Albrach, call sign, Hawk, served as the youngest Greenberry captain in Vietnam, where he experienced significant combat, not only at Firebase Kate, but later as a Mike Force leader. He is the recipient of three

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