This episode is sponsored by a company I've used for well over a decade and that is 511.
I wore their uniforms back in Anaheim, California and have used their products ever since.
From their incredibly strong yet light footwear to their cut uniforms for both male and female
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or in the stores every time you make a purchase. And if you want to hear more about 511, who they
stand for and who works with them, listen to episode 580 of Behind the Shield podcast with
511 regional director Will Ayers. I'm extremely excited to announce a brand new sponsor for the
Behind the Shield podcast that is Transcend. Now for many of you listening you are probably
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Now I came across Transcend because they have an altruistic arm and they were a big reason why the
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one of their wellness professionals as they guide me through my results and the supplementation that
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and been very diligent with my health my testosterone was actually in a good place. So I went down the
peptide route and some other supplements to try and maximize my physiology knowing full well the
damage that 14 years of shift work has done. Now I also want to underline because I think this is
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of the Behind the Shield podcast with founder Ernie Colling. Welcome to the Behind the Shield
podcast as always my name is James Gearing and this week it is my absolute honor to welcome back
onto the show marine actor, author and renowned military technical advisor Captain Dale Dye.
Now in this second conversation we discuss a host of topics from his experiences visiting Normandy
beaches, his project No Better Place to Die, reflecting back on the band of brothers, mental
health and his powerful perspective of his latest project Masters of the Air. Now before we get to
this amazing conversation as I say every week please just take a moment go to whichever app
you listen to this on, subscribe to the show, leave feedback and leave a rating. Every single
five star rating truly does elevate this podcast therefore making it easier for others to find
and this is a free library of almost 900 episodes now so all I ask in return is that you help share
these incredible men and women stories so I can get them to every single person on planet earth
who needs to hear them. So with that being said I welcome back Captain Dale Dye. Enjoy.
Well Captain Dye I want to first say thank you so much for coming on the show, the last time we
talked I think was six years ago over six years ago you were one of I think you were episode
I forget what it was 34 I think so that's literally within the first year of the podcast so firstly I
just want to welcome you back today. So where are we finding you on planet earth? Well I'm in
South Central Texas, I finally had to give up Hollywood Richard I mean I just the rat race and
you know the plastic banana lifestyle out there years ago when I started all of this I kind of
had to be in LA but I no longer do that I'm at a position where they'll come get me wherever I am
so we moved to Texas to a little town just south of Austin the state capital and a house
that was built in 1950 in a beautiful old place and got some land on it and so I'm
enjoying myself out of the Hollywood rat race. Absolutely it seemed like
we'll get to this the the COVID era kind of reframed the way some people saw the cities that
they lived in and also though I think it really empowered a lot of people in the virtual world
that you didn't have to be chained to your workplace that you could be a little bit more dynamic.
Yeah if there's a bright side to that whole COVID nonsense that's it I mean
people just realized that they could work from anywhere assuming the technology works and helps
out and I guess I'm part of that. So I would love to kind of unpack that listening and obviously
this is fresh from my mind because I literally just listened to it this morning but you were
optimistic about community coming together about the strengthening of the first responder
professions and you know the way that we view law enforcement and we talk about the
first responder professions and you know the way that we view law enforcement and we talked six
years ago so obviously as the last few years unfolded I witnessed you know a fragmentation
of our community and a demonization of our law enforcement so what has been your observation
through that lens of the last few years? Well it's been precisely that and it's disappointing
it's tremendously disappointing. You know I think like a fish that's been left out too long it tends
to rot from the head and I think in many of our major urban police departments that's been the
case it's even been the case in our military in a lot of ways. We've somehow and I'm kind of
trying to explore this so I'm not sure that I'm going to get a definitive answer here but in some
ways it seems to me that we have done something in our society that has caused us to lose confidence
in the one thing that we were always so confident in the one place we could turn for help the one
place we could turn for kindred spirits if you will and that was our major law enforcement folks
up to and including the FBI and the department of the attorney general and our military and I
can't really pin down why that happens but it's clear to me that it has. I mean Lord you look at
our major urban police departments they can't keep cops on the street and who can blame the cops?
I mean they're literally on the chopping block every time they roll out of the station house
so I don't know where that comes from but I do know that it's got to be correct.
Now with this kind of lens that you have obviously from the military to the film
professions I mean you have pretty diverse lens on a lot of things now. What do we need to do next?
I mean the problem I think that we see a lot in news stations and on social media is blamestorming
everyone's pointing their finger at someone else. What can we as a nation do to help
get our feet back under us from this last pandemic? Whatever people's experience was
and rebuild those communities and get behind the men and women that leave their families to go
protect either their communities or their country. Well look I perceive there is a
pendulum effect to this thing. We've gone so far out to the extreme on the liberal side that really
eroded support for superstructures like the American law enforcement establishment,
the military and so on and so forth. We've gone so far out that I'm gradually seeing it swing back
and people understand and this is where the answer to your question comes in. People are now beginning
to understand that we're in a circular firing squad here. I mean we're shooting ourselves in
the foot continuously. We're a nation of laws and part of that is a responsibility to respect those
laws and in doing so you've got to respect the people who enforce those laws. So the direct
answer to your question is I think we have to have patience. It pisses us off. I know that. I get it
and we're losing massive amounts of really fine police officers at all levels and that's going to
be a shame because we're going to have to rebuild and the answer to your question is we've got to
A, recognize that that's a problem and B, embark on whatever is necessary to rebuild those forces,
law enforcement, the military and that sort of thing and rebuild those communities.
And that's sort of thing and rebuild them in the image that America expects, not in some liberal
dream of you know kumbaya and dance around the maple. That's just not the way it works
and I think Americans, you and me and that great unwashed area out there that we call
the American public are going to have to A, recognize the problem and B, embark on rebuilding
and that involves money as everything does. But more importantly what it involves is when we ask
a young man or woman to become a police officer or engage you know be a law enforcement officer or
Leo or when we ask them to join the military they need to feel confident that this is a noble
profession and they're not sticking their head in the lion's mouth just to get it chopped off.
So we've got to restore that confidence and then communicate that confidence to the young men and
women who we expect to do the job. Absolutely. Well I mean that it's funny when we talk about
masculinity I always go back to Banda Brothers which you were deeply involved with. The facade
of masculinity of some of our you know superheroes I grew up with you know the Schwarzeneggers and the
Rockies and all those. When you look at Banda Brothers you know not only do you see the
dramatization of their heroism but you also see the vulnerability. You have these men that decades
and decades and decades later are still moved to tears by what they saw, who they lost, what they
had to do. And so I had the absolute honor recently of interviewing three World War II veterans. One
was Frank Wright who was on Iwo Jima. That was a full podcast like this and then I did a fireside
chat, a live interview on stage with two other Marines. Don Graves was a Marine and then John
Boswell was a Navy corpsman. But ironically enough Frank had written a book on his mental health
which was a really interesting thing. When I spoke to Don and John presenting this description that
we give them, the greatest generation, they just rolled their sleeves up, you could see the pain in
these men's face to this day and how it was buried down. So I didn't have this perspective last time
we spoke but now you know here we are we're losing our World War II veterans. We've kind of projected
on them that they were fine, they just went back to work and now I meet some of these men in person
you realize that there was a lot of pain. It was the same experience that other soldiers have
coming home. What is your view on that generation and you know the post-traumatic stress as we
talked about before, moral injury and their ability to heal from that even though we're really having
this conversation way too late? Well look I agree with you. It's a misinterpretation and I was born
during the war and that's how old I am and I know hundreds of these young from my family and from
other families and so on and so forth and it's wrong for us to assume or to depict that that
experience at war, regardless of the state of the national psyche, was not painful and psychologically
damaging. It was and practically across the board in some fashion it was psychologically damaging.
The key is, the difference is, that those young men as they aged handled it better.
You know bravery is not the absence of fear, it's the ability to handle that fear and to continue
what you're doing and that's what they had. They realized that now a lot of them were relatively
uneducated and so they couldn't have told you that definition but they realized it inherently
that part of masculinity, part of your responsibility to a nation is to handle that fear
and it doesn't mean you don't have it, it means you learn to handle it and get on with things
and we need to re-examine that lesson I think. Well it's interesting as well because you hear a
lot of them did dive into alcohol for a while and Don and John both talked about that. There was a
period where they really went the wrong way arguably but then they were able to navigate.
Obviously some people don't and it's been an eye-opening where Brandad, a lot of these
guests that come on the show, actually was an alcoholic, was abusive. So I think that
post-traumatic growth would have been so invaluable to them as well as it is today rather than
they kind of shove it down and just get on with life because for some of us we're able to process
it and I absolutely agree that processed trauma becomes a strength, it truly becomes a superpower
but if it's unaddressed it becomes cancerous. Yeah it does, you're correct. Self-medicating,
whether it's with alcohol or today is more likely to be with drugs, is not an uncommon thing,
especially on people who have been through trauma. The key is not to try to do it alone
and Lord knows how many people I've talked to and my own experience, you cannot do this alone
and you must not try to do it alone. That's a dark path and you'll just continue on it
till you kill yourself. It has to do with, I think we may have touched on this the last time we talked
but it has to do with your ability I think to say that, to recognize that you're on the wrong path
and to go to somebody and you know don't let that traumatic experience sit inside your guts
and eat at you to the point that you seem, self-medication seems to be the only outlet.
We had that experience in World War II, we had that experience in Korea, we had that experience
in Vietnam and we certainly had it after the Middle East. The difference is we now recognize
it for what it is whereas back then, well he's a little shell-shocky and there's a whole lot more
to it than that and this business of self-medicating, this business of trying to pull yourself up by your
bootstraps, you got to have some help and look, you know, you're not going to be able to do it
without self-medication. So what I'm discovering today and I think it probably goes across the board
is that so many veterans and police officers who faced trauma in a gunfight or in a shooting or in
a high-speed chase automobile accident, there is a tendency to swallow that. There's a tendency to
say, I'm in a risky profession, I should be able to handle this sort of thing, I shouldn't talk about
it, that's a weakness. Well that's silly, you've got to talk about it. Now you don't need to lie
down on a fainting couch and clutch your pearls and talk to some professional but you need to
talk to somebody who gets it and who gets it. Well other soldiers get it, other police officers get
it and those support groups, although that's formalizing them, it's really just an individual
thing. Let me talk to you about what I went through. Maybe you went through it or maybe I can,
in just talking about it, maybe I can broom some of the horror and I find that that works
and it takes you away from the self-medication thing which is disaster. Absolutely. Another
interesting element and this goes all the way through to modern day warriors is the homecoming
and again I think we romanticized about World War II, yes some of our military did come back
to ticker tape parades but some of them went back to smaller towns where they just went home.
But the worst stories that I've heard and Major James Capers has been on the show, that's one,
I mean an incredible man and his homecoming story is horrendous, lying there wounded on a tarmac
as when he gets back on home soil and gets urinated on. And then Rich Rice is another one,
he was a Delta guy at the time and came back and similar thing, getting spat on. What was your
homecoming like from Vietnam in contrast to maybe what you'd heard some of these military
members coming back from World War II? Well look, I'd heard those stories and especially
Vietnam which was my major homecoming thing, the nation had turned against the war and there was
great anti-war sentiment running throughout the nation and I knew it was coming. I could see it
right outside the gates and I said you know what, if I get out there and get angry I'll kill somebody
or kill myself or something so I'm not going to do it. And for 10 years, much to my detriment,
for 10 years I didn't. I absolutely would not, I wouldn't talk to civilians regardless of who they
were. I just wasn't interested in what I knew or presumed I knew they were going to say. So I avoided
it and that led to self-medication and that led to some pretty horrible experiences and eventually
I understood that it's not their fault. They can't be expected to understand what I went through.
Hell, what I went through and what most people at war or police officers who's been in serious
situations on the streets, what they've been through, you can't expect the average Joe
citizen to understand that and you shouldn't expect it. That doesn't mean you shouldn't expect them
to respect it, you should. But in order to build that respect you've got to explain it to them.
You've got to say listen, this is what happened, this is how it felt and that bites me, it hurts me.
You do that and you'd be surprised at the support that emerges. Absolutely. I had no idea, it was
the typical reaction that you get. Well this happens with my profession, the fire service,
you know people are so disconnected from what we actually do, you know to the point where they ask
in 2024 why is there a fire engine on my medical call? Well because it's full of paramedics, that's
why you know an ambulance is coming as well. So where was I going to go with that? Oh my god,
I just lost my train of thought. Oh there we go. So since we spoke we had the withdrawal from
Afghanistan that was very jarring, kind of parallel Vietnam. What was your perspective of that and
what would you say to the men and women that served in that conflict now as we're sitting here on the
other end of it? Well I've said a lot to them, not so much publicly because it's not a public thing,
it's a private thing. But you're right when you say that the parallels between our withdrawal in
Vietnam, our withdrawal in the Middle East and Afghanistan were very similar. It leaves you
frustrated, it's coitus interruptus, you know I mean nothing, there's no end in sight, you don't
know what the hell did all this mean and that's deadly. If you can't find a meaning to your
sacrifice, a purpose to your sacrifice, if that's jerked out from underneath you as it was by
the Nixon administration in Vietnam and as it did in the Biden administration in Afghanistan,
that makes it tough, that makes the road really rough, really rugged. And the key is, if there is
one, it's an individual thing. But the key is to talk about it, the key is to find somebody,
one of your mates that was with you in this sort of thing, you know just that commiseration,
just that validation that comes from the other guy, the guy that you know so well saying yeah I feel
the same way, isn't that a bitch, now what? Just that validation that what you're feeling
is okay, what you're feeling is perfectly human, perfectly logical and he feels that way too.
Absolutely, yeah when I ask you know stories from deployments and again not the you know
did you kill the usual stuff that we actually touched on last time, but you know the things
that you witnessed that justify what you were doing regardless of politics and then the kindness
and compassion on the battlefield too which you never hear. And when you hear those over and over
and over again, they did so much when they were there and I think it's just reminding themselves
because there's nothing worse than being betrayed by the very organization that you swore an oath
to join. Sure and that brings you to kind of why I got involved in motion picture storytelling
and television storytelling to begin with. It occurred to me that that's the kind of experience
that people have either in law enforcement or in the military that never gets any light.
Nobody ever understands that and that's you know what look we're a media saturated society,
you're part of that and the deal is that they're going to you know if it bleeds it leads and they're
going with the headlines and that sort of thing and it's to the detriment and to the totally
ignoring of those good things that happen during the deployment. I want to shine some light on those
good things. It's a difficult task because some of that is not very exciting and doesn't make
great movies or great reading or great listening but it needs to be done because it validates the
experience and I think that's something that's we desperately need. Absolutely. Well again Band of
Brothers, I mean when I ask you know favorite TV show or film on this this is Band of Brothers over
and over and over and over again, I actually got Shane Taylor on the show probably about a year
ago now who played Doc Rowe. So before we move into you know the more recent film that you're
talking about, before we move into you know the more recent projects, what were some of the memories
of working with Shane because it was so interesting hearing him talking about you. It'd be kind of cool
to hear the other way. Okay well look he was a bit confused going into this. Shane had no military
background, no military experience and I was literally shoehorning him into the business of
you know a medic and I had to make him soldier first and then medic second and he was really open
to it but he had a seminal moment. He had one of those epiphanies when I talked to him and I said
look Doc what you've got to do is assume that you're a doctor who's just hanging out his
shingle in some remote village in England and you're the only game in town. People are going to come
to you of everything from a bee sting to you know a brain surgery. You got to be that guy and in
order to be that guy you got to really get to know better than anybody else. You've got to get to know
your soldiers. What are their foibles? What are their weaknesses? What are the things they are
subject to? Is there somebody here with asthma and something that you've got to watch? And when I did
that you could see his eyes light up. He got the analogy. He said oh I'm the neighborhood doc and
I said that's right and you're the first line of defense and the additional burden that you have
and this really got to it. This additional burden you have is you're all they've got to talk to.
You're all they've got. They're not going to talk to the guy in the foxhole next to them.
They're not going to tell him that they've got a headache or that they feel lousy but they will
tell you and that's a very special burden. And so once we got to the point with Shane where he
understood that that was his take on being a company medic his eyes light up. I mean everything
else then made sense and he really he got on the horse. I mean he rode it and he's been a great
friend ever since we had him in training and I've seen him at reunion events and all that sort of
thing and he's just a good man. He's a terrific man. Very talented but he sees those he's a
dramatist. He understands those things and he always did. I could always look at him when I was
conducting classes during training for Band of Brothers and I could if Doc was getting it,
if Shane was getting it then everybody else was. He was kind of my thermometer.
Yeah it was amazing hearing him talk. I mean he mentioned about the medical bag becoming
the nucleus of his whole world to the point where even when you weren't shooting people were coming
to him with boo-boos and he was having to dress them. Yeah oh yeah absolutely. That scene with
the Belgian nurse was it Bastogne I think. I mean just those two.
As a paramedic myself even though it's not in wartime that bond between you know medics and nurses in a hospital when we've just fought to save someone.
You're not the first paramedic to tell me that. In fact I talked to some EMT guys here in little Lockhart, Texas
and they were talking about oh we recognize you from Band of Brothers and I said yeah.
He said who is that medic? I said it was Shane and I would tell them the story about it
and they've always I guess paramedics just gravitated that and they'll talk about that
the Belgian nurse and how he was it was the only other person who was performing the acts of mercy
that he was and so they just immediately meshed and she by the way was brilliant in her role.
I saw they just had a reunion recently didn't they where they met each other I think 20 years later.
Yeah I was with Shane in Bastogne in Belgium and she showed up and it was magic absolute magic.
They were just boom together and they were the grave side of the real look.
It was the angel of Bastogne. Beautiful. So we're going to get to COVID and the impact of shooting
your most recent project but what was interesting was I didn't realize that Band of Brothers was
initially released in 2001 shortly before 9-11 so and he was kind of indicating that really it was
a 10-year anniversary that gave it this massive boost. Talk to me about that through your eyes.
You put all this you know work in you've been working since the inception of the project.
It's finally done and again no one's going to have any ill feeling about the tragedy apart from you
know the actual event itself but from a filmmaker's perspective what was that journey like and then
what was that kind of second upsurgence like for you? Well the phone lines lit up all of the young
guys who'd worked on Band of Brothers and all that sort of thing said god they've blown us off the
stage here nobody will pay any attention and I said you know I think you're wrong and I said the
reason you're wrong is it's a tragic moment like this like 9-11. People are looking for reassurance.
They're looking for righteousness and Band of Brothers shows that and it turned out I was right.
It didn't despite the depravity of the incident it didn't bother us at all and the ratings people
were tuned in. Well I think it was perfect timing in a way because especially you know when you had
the 10-year anniversary it really got put in front of us again by that point you'd had a lot of Americans
in you know in combat wearing our uniform so I would hope that it was you know an asset to them
knowing their story was being told even though it was a previous conflict but also educating the
civilians of the world of what combat actually looked like and a version of what our men and women
were experiencing now in the Middle East. It's probably one of the one of the most gratifying
experiences I have. I talked to a lot of people in uniform and the amazing thing to me is they'll all
say you know Band of Brothers was a big thing. I said well why? Well it just it was the
right stuff. Yeah it was the right stuff and you're the right stuff too.
And so I kind of use that to shoehorn my opinion and help them regain a little self-confidence.
Look those were you. Those were you in the 1940s at 19, 18 years old. You remember being 18 or 19
years old don't you? And of course they do and I said well it's the same deal you know.
It's the same deal. You're that guy and one of these days we're going to be involved in doing
a mini-series about you and what you did. So where Band of Brothers sort of sheds shine some light
on that our lack of understanding it's great stuff and believe me I have gone nowhere in the military
that I don't hear about it. I mean everybody loves Band of Brothers and they'll get right down to an
individual incident and scene and say well what was this? Sometimes I can't remember but I'll
try to come up with something. What about Generation Kill? I had Bobby Burke on a couple of times now.
He's become a good friend and then Rudy Reyes another you know amazing Marine. I saw if I'm
not mistaken you guys shared a stage in a fireside chat you and Rudy. Did you have any interaction
with that project? I didn't and I would have liked to have but I think they had the authors
and the real guys there and they kind of filled my role. So I've become kind of the history of war guy
not the current guy because I didn't serve in Afghanistan. Closest I got was Beirut, Lebanon
in 82, 83. So I'm not that guy. Now I have been called on to work on some of those projects and
when I do I always try to call somebody or talk to somebody who's actually been there and say look
this is what I think. This is what I believe. What's the real deal? And they'll tell me and
then I try to translate that to film. So as I touched on the beginning of the interview when we
spoke last you were just crowdsourcing for No Better Place to Die. So walk me through where
you got with that project and then if we can still expect it or if it's kind of on the hold
pattern at the moment. It's been on a hold pattern for 10 years and it continues to be. I've had
every producer who has a sympathetic bone in his body tell me that that's a great story.
That defense of Lafayere by the 82nd Airborne is a story that needs to be told and I said yeah
and here it is. The problem is and I'm hoping that in some ways Masters of the Air will help
solve this. The problem is that you know to do it right and I wouldn't want to do it if we didn't
do it right. It takes 30-35 million dollars. That's a lot of money. We're in an era of streaming
so theatrical release is not a big thing or not the big thing it used to be.
And so it's difficult to get people to cough up that much money. They'll cough up a little
bit but I have to turn that down because the last thing in the world I would I should ever do
is to bring out something that I wrote and something it's a story like that and then just
make it garbage because we didn't have enough money to you know we had to do it on a shoestring.
I won't do that. So it remains active, it remains alive and it remains without a guy who's got enough
faith to raise 35 million dollars to give it to me to do this.
Now what about the crew you've been working Tom Hanks and Spielberg that's that's not something
that they've grabbed onto yet? I have been pitching it regularly to them and Tom
and Tom Hanks signed on as executive producer just to see if that would help the process along
and it got it got us some more interest but it didn't get us a big check.
And you know I've talked to Saw Stephen and Tom in LA for the premiere of this thing a week ago
and I was hesitant to kind of take the shine off Masters of the Air to talk about
No Better Place to Die, my project, but they're aware of it and I'm hoping that if Masters of
the Air really lights it up, if folks really love this thing then I'll be the first kid right
outside the door with this script and saying how about this one now and hopefully I'll get
it done before I croak but we'll see. Well I think there's more of a demand now,
it's funny I'm writing my second book, first one was a non-fiction, the second one is a fiction
and it's going to tell the multi-generational trauma story. Modern day is a firefighter but
two generations back now you're in World War II era because I think you know that's just it.
The way that you get to the hearts and minds of people is through the screen,
not many people are reading these days so I think but I think there's a real desire for
real stories, powerful and more often than not true stories but in the military vein as well
because in the British SAS origin story we've had a mini-series already I think there's a film
coming out now so I think it's a really good environment and when Masters of the Air really
lands that hopefully will be the right time for No Better Place to Die. Yeah absolutely and you
know it's a strange thing, Hollywood wants to count itself as a literary area, doesn't want to be the
great unwashed wasteland out there, they read books and many times they'll grab a book and option
it and then turn it into a script and off it becomes but they want that truth, they want that book
so somebody's reading, not everybody that we'd like, for us as authors we'd like everybody to
have their nose buried in a book all the time especially the book that we wrote, that's not
happening, I get it but there's a squeeze on in Hollywood production as I mentioned the
theatrical experience, the business of going every weekend to see a movie on a big screen,
COVID put paid to that for the most part and it has never come back, it struggles to come back
and movies will get a week-long run at some metroplex but for the most part people want to be
watching that stuff at home and what that means for us as writers is that we've got to make sure
what we write will fit on that screen rather than demand the huge IMAX or widescreen treatment,
it's unfair, it's unfortunate but it's the nature of our beast, we've got to make sure that we're
beast, we've got to modify what we're doing, hell I've talked about no better place to die, I have
pitched it not only as an epic widescreen theatrical release, I've divided it up into
10 episodes so that we can do it as a mini-series and that'll probably be the way it happens
depending on a lot of things like the success of Masters of the Air.
Will Barron Well let's get to that then, so talk to me about
who initially picked up that story and then walk me through the beginning of it and then let's get
to the impact that COVID had on production. John Mallow Well as usual, I had read Don Mallow's book,
Masters of the Air, simply because that's what I read, I read that stuff for fun and typically
as it was with the Pacific, as it was with the Band of Brothers, the phone rang and it was Tom
Hanks and he said, hey listen, we got this thing and I said what thing? And he said we're gonna do
the 8th Air Force in the European Theater of Operations and I said ah I know where this comes
from, Steven Spielberg's dad was a flight crewman, a combat flight crewman in World War II so I said
that's it isn't it? He said yeah he finally got to me, we gotta do this. But he said it's gonna be
huge, you know 50-100 people all the time and you know 11 people in an aircraft and it's gonna take
a lot of money so we don't want to screw it up, we don't want to short-shrift it, we want to get it
right. And I said well what do you know, I'm not an aviator Tom and he said yeah but you're a soldier,
he said and the theory is and he believes it because Tom's a military historian and his own
right, he said they had to become soldiers before they became airmen and I said that's right.
Well that's what we do, we train them to be soldiers and then let the experts
take over and teach them about flying in a 17 and all that sort of thing and I said well
and I said well yeah I guess that's a good idea and I went we put together my exo and I put
together a 12-day syllabus and every day in that classroom in UK we had 50 people
and we did we approached it with a sort of a crawl walk run. So we'd ever think from you know
what kind of knot do you put in your khaki tie and we got through all of that. What's the difference
between the way a civilian carries himself and the way a soldier carries himself, how do you
detect that? And then all the way up to right up to putting them in the aircraft, teaching them
emergency escape routes and how to load bombs and all that sort of thing and for that part since we
had no practical experience in that stuff we had to do a ton of research and fortunately we had a
bunch of experts that were over there who'd flown B-17s and had maintained them and to give you an
idea of the extent that they went on this thing, I can't tell you what the budget is because that's
still classified information but we had two full-scale B-17s built and had them constantly on the
runway out there at the location that we made to be Thorpe Abbotts in East Anglia and
those things you could do them like a remote control car, you could actually drive them around,
they'd do everything to fly and they were correct down to the absolute to the rivets were correct
and so when the kids would get in those aircraft in one of the gunnery positions or in the pilots
or co-pilot seat, bombardier navigator up in the nose, they were surrounded by the real stuff
and so I think that added to our ability to force versus millitude and then we did,
most people nowadays are used to the business of acting to green screen, you project a green screen
behind the actors and then later on by computer magic you could put whatever you want to on that
green screen and it serves as a background. Well we took a huge leap beyond that in this thing we
called volume unit and it was literally the whole section of the aircraft involved was a
whole section of the aircraft involved was surrounded by monitors and you could, the
airplanes were flying from various directions and fighters were coming in and Flakwish was exploding
and you were in it, you were right there in the middle not just a one-dimensional looking, you
were right in the middle of that and it was amazing to watch it and fortunately you know
I think I was 10 and a half months in UK on that film and I watched it every day and it was just
absolute magic but that's it, making that film was also, it was a technical nightmare but the
guys who can do that stuff were able to do it. The problem was we had this COVID thing hanging over
our heads and the UK took it very seriously so everybody had to be mashed constantly, we had to
stay away from each other in a lunch line, every day we had three or four tests you know to see if
we were COVID positive and God forbid one of the actors would be and then we were shut down for a
week you know while he got cleared to get back on the set or we had to scramble the schedule so it
was absolutely a nightmare to get it done. The neat thing is we had the right people, everybody was
feeling the same pain in the ass over this thing so they understood what was going on and they
were attempting to get by it but I'll tell you we called them the COVID cops and I mean there must
have been a hundred of them, you couldn't swing a cat in UK without hitting one of these COVID
specialists and you know I don't want to, well maybe I do want to be a little to panic over this
sort of thing but it was a bit much and I can understand the liability situation and so on and
so forth you don't want to you know get somebody really sick and but we were all healthy young
people or they were healthy I wasn't young but the point is that you know to me it wasn't that big
a threat it was like getting the flu so you had to stay in bed for a week and then you went back to
work but it grinds and it stays with you you know it's like a burr under your saddle if you will
or that one weird noise in your car you know what the hell that is but it's always there
that's what the COVID deal is like. I've had this discussion with a lot of people I mean actually
ended up putting an extra episode out each week when COVID first emerged just because I wanted to
give people tools you know actionable things when they were told they couldn't leave their house and
the beaches and the parks and the gyms were closed so I bring on you anyone from nutritionists to
sleep experts you name it things that they can action and where I mean firstly we're across the
line for me is when we realized that there wasn't the efficacy from the vaccines that we were being
told and yet they were taking uniform jobs from people people that have served for 10, 20, 30 years
the other thing was though that I think was so irresponsible is we did have a captive audience
and whatever your views on it because it was a real virus like you said but it was the underlying
health of the individual that dictated if you just got sick and then were okay again or you died.
Two, three years later there were no you know grand changes to improve the nation's health
they weren't you know boosting local farmers again giving them incentives to grow clean food
there weren't PE programs you know return to schools and real food being cooked in in school
lunches so this is what I really struggle with is the middle ground was yes it's a real virus but
yes it's also killing people who are sick so the answer is let's make people healthier and that
message was completely disregarded not only here in the US but in the UK as well. Yeah it's certainly
true I mean I certainly did get that message you know as a guy who had to stay in shape all his
life it occurred to me that we need to get to the root of this and be healthier going in
or being on on exposure rather than you know being in such sorry shape that you know we're
going to get sick and die that occurred to me but you're right I didn't hear a lot of people
talking about it I didn't hear a lot of people saying look improve your diet be healthier you'll
it'll stave off the potential effects of COVID and they were right they're right you're right
and they were right all along. Yeah yeah and the thing is this is going to affect the next virus
you know it's this is the point is that that conversation is going to reduce all the deaths
so whether it's virus related suicide overdose obesity related I mean all the things you're just
pushing for a healthier country but what we did is we ignored that and if you look at statistics
we're still getting more obese more overweight and the mental health crisis is growing. Yeah we've
got a real short memory and I'm worried as clearly you are that what what lessons we were able to
wrinkle out of the whole COVID experience like being healthier going in and so on and so forth
I don't know that we're going to remember that we have a really short-term memory about those
things and and you're you're in the middle of them and people are falling over every day before you
said oh I like this in COVID so why don't we do this yeah I and and I don't know the answer to
that I don't know that the government is the answer it rarely is but I don't know
medical practitioners like you guys you know can can advocate for that sort of thing and I hope you
do. Absolutely well going back to the boot camp in our last conversation we talked about platoon in
the jungles we talked about bander brothers I think saving private Ryan separating Matt Damon
from the cast and creating that kind of palpable dislike what was unique about this boot camp and
what was some of the notable stories you remember from the cast you work with this time? Well we
did typically what I do in order to get their attention young young men are sometimes like mules
you know you've got to hit them right between the eyes with a two by four and then suddenly they're
awake and they're paying attention so my my two by four is physical training and so we did a lot
of that every day we we did physical training and and I think that piqued their interest why am I
doing physical training when I fly a B-17 in my character because you need to soldier first
because you need to understand this group mentality that there's something more important than you
there's a mission and there's a unit and that's more important than you as an individual so we
use PT as I typically do to start building that sort of relationship and also as is typical with
us I insisted that nobody ever has their real name they are that character and they begin to
address themselves as that character and they understand what that character is now the one of
the weird things about Masters of the Air is we were tremendously officer heavy in
Banner Brothers and in the Pacific for the most part we dealt with enlisted men the guys on the
pointy end of the bayonet the guys doing the fighting but in this case with the 8th Air Force
in a B-17 heavy bomber group in this case the 100th bomb group heavy flying B-17s everybody was an
officer practically the only enlisted men were the gunners and the mechanics on the ground and all
that sort of thing so we were we were tremendously officer heavy and I was worried going in
that the people who worked 24 hours a day to keep these aircraft flying to repair them and so on
and so forth would be underrepresented we were fortunate to have Raph Law whose Jude Law's son
plays a senior enlisted maintainer a real character in the 100th bomb group and he brought
like to that sort of thing and that was that was fun but the difficulty was that what I really needed
was to get them in those B-17s those ones that we had built that god knows how much money
and I wasn't able to do that now I really wanted to do a situation with our basic training element
boot camp if you will I wanted to do it the way we had always done which is I own them for a period
of two weeks or whatever it is and they live with me if they're an infantryman they live in a hole
that they've dug in the ground or they live in a barracks and that I think that full immersion
sort of really helps keep them in the mentality in the mindset because the 1940s is a long time ago
to these young men so we needed or we're looking for the opportunity constantly to remind them
of the mindset that the young men they're portraying had but we could do it for scheduling
purposes and production purposes they just weren't available we couldn't pull them out of the mill
for two weeks and have them live with us in a barracks now we got to thinking about it my
my ex-o Mike Stokey and I got to talking about it we said yeah and he by the way he he had his dad
was a b-29 pilot and I had a an uncle who was a reluctant tail gunner on a reluctant tail gunner
so we'd had we'd had a few stories
but we got to talk about this you know this is unusual we always own them and we're always able
to manipulate the training center to fit all that whatever we see a hole we fill it but we're not
going to have that opportunity and Mike came up with something interesting he said look
isn't it true that the men in the 8th Air Force based in East Anglia at I don't know 20 40 years
at at I don't know 20 40 US bases former ref bases they flew eight ten hours into a very dangerous
mission and assuming they made it back they were literally in a in a peacetime environment they
were there in the UK and they could go to the pub and they could have good food and they could sleep
in a bed and all that sort of thing so he said let's just apply that let's make that an element
of our training I said yeah yeah I get that that's uh so we we say the training day is your mission
mission is over now you can go down to the hotel bar and do whatever you want to do and show up the
next morning ready for PT so we incorporated that element of what it was like to to fly in the ETO
into our training casual it's interesting looking back when you did the boot camp for us for Terminator
2 in Japan the cohesion that was formed by the time I think it was three days we did it was very
short but um that team building and when I compare it now to the lowering of standards in some of the
fire and police academies or orientations here that's one of the missing pieces the moment you
lower standards you lose that shared suffering you lose that um you know that unbreakable bond
that for example when I was in California Anaheim those men are still my brothers to this day I
literally saw my old captain about three or four days ago so with shifting to kind of military
first responders for a second with this uh you know World War II lens moving forward talk to me
about the importance of that shared suffering and keeping that bar where it should be yeah the
the hard part um and and you could do physical and psychological approaches to that team building
sort of um you know running and chanting and feeling the power of that unit as boots in
in rhythm strike the ground that's that's a physical part of it that's a sensory part of it
and and you you focus on that sort of thing but the difficulty lies in saying look um you've got
to think of it that way you've got to think of this group as your family and you've got to think of
this group um as the most important thing in the world to you uh never mind Suzy to home and never
mind mom and dad and everything else it's right in those 11 men that are in that B-17 with you
and you live or die depending on your ability to trust them to your for your ability to uh to be
reassured that they've got your back that they've got your they're on your right and on your left
and you know that and that gives you strength so it's that strength of of community it's that
strength of structure that it's the most difficult thing to build but you must do it um if you don't
then anything else you try to teach them is going to be superficial absolutely well we talked before
we hit record you know compared to some projects that you've worked on there's been less promotion
and so i'm so honored that you came onto this podcast so i can help tell the story so for
people listening you know probably aren't aware of the story give us an overview of these incredible
men and what we're gonna you know watch as we start diving into the series well you're gonna
watch a jaw-dropping visual experience and and i know that sounds like hyperbole and i guess it is
but damn it that's what it is i mean you just you you gasp at some of the things you'll see in this
thing uh and that's the special effects guys and the special effects are really this the star of
the show but masters of the air tells the story of the 100th bomb group heavy a B-17 uh bomb group
uh within the the american eight air force and uh and you get to know you get you get a view of
that story by getting to know the characters and the characters were were some pretty weird ducks
there was a reason that um the 100 bomb group was called the bloody 100 because they took some
casualties and you get to see you get to see the effect of taking those casualties on the
unit and unit morale and how how they had to struggle so hard to keep that morale up
and that goes back to having built that team so that when in the fictional area when somebody
dies or when a crew is lost you feel it you feel it because you trained right next to those guys
um and so that that was handy but i think i think the overall emphasis was to tell the story of a
of a bomb group involved in the air war in the etl european day of operations uh and flying those
long missions across the channel into nazi-occupied europe western europe um and how desperately
dangerous that was um the you hear a lot about casualties in one operation one military
operation it it pales in comparison with what the average b-17 bomber group suffered i mean they lost
aircraft right left and indifferent sometimes crew got out of them most times they didn't
uh and so they one one bomber goes down that's 11 11 souls lost if not more um and and you see
or i think the purpose of making the series was to shine that light on those guys here's an aspect
of the war that big war that maybe you didn't know maybe you didn't understand unless you're
history nerds like you and i are you know buried your face in all that history and you know
i've buried your face in all that history um you'd have you're going to have no idea
how dangerous and deadly it was to fly those b-17s over occupied europe through acres and acres of
flex so that you could walk on it and uh through uh german luftwaffe aircraft that were attacking
you and buzzing in and out of the in and out of the uh the formations firing rockets uh it was a
deadly business um and you're flying at 10 000 feet that was all other structure i mean half the
time you see these actors they're wearing an oxygen mask well they have to i mean because
they're above 10 000 feet there's no oxygen um but that makes the the storytelling difficult
you got to do it all with your eyes um and they did a great job at it uh they really did but
i think people will have no idea of that they wore electric suits that were actually plugged
into the electrical system of the aircraft just to keep them they you couldn't you couldn't
handle anything without gloves and if you had a wounded man in the aircraft hit by a piece of
shrapnel or something the business of keeping him alive was going to be
was going to be vastly complicated by the fact that you're up at 10 15 000 feet
so all of those are insights i think that uh the masters of the air is going to bring and i think
that uh as well as just being a special effects extravaganza which it is
audiences will come away with a little understanding of that and say my god was it
really that dangerous and the answer is yeah it was someone made a comment one of my guests recently
that a lot of you know certainly high school but even college level people that are entering the
workforce a lot of our members of the military weren't even born when 9 11 happened so it's
history to them you know and so you go back all the way to world war i mean that's history to me
but at least you know my my father and mother grew up during the the bombings in london they
were evacuated to the countryside my grandfather shot down the first german bomber over the oakney
island so i had you know at least some kind of connection to this but i think this is what's
so important about these you know stories being told is especially that conflict i mean i think
most of us would agree that if there was one one war that was truly justified it was world war two
to stop the horrendous atrocities i mean my family would be speaking german if we'd failed
it's that simple so uh you know to educate the people and when i spoke to don graves the world
war two marine um you know he was kind of heartbroken about what he was seeing in the us at the moment so
i think by being reminded of the true true sacrifice you know that protected our shores
of the men and women um in the world war two era i think is is imperative so that we have gratitude
for what we're experiencing today well i hope so i mean certainly in in my personal case
or the the mission statement of my company uh that's what we're after i mean to shed some
long overdue and richly deserved light on those very aspects and i think i think we've done a good
job at it and i think masters of the air is a great addition absolutely i want to hit one more area
then we'll go to some closing questions correct me if i'm wrong it was either this this last year or
maybe the year prior i remember seeing you posting where you were talking you were actually on the
beaches in uh i believe it was in normandy for the d-day anniversary so talk to me about that experience
well it's i've had it i've had that experience more than once i've been fortunate to be invited
to bastone uh to uh the the point to hawk area uh to uh utah and uh and umaha beach
uh and there's something awe inspiring i guess is is the word when you stand there and you look
around and you say jesus this place was absolutely chock-a-block with dying men and and people trying
to charge inland uh when when all this happened or there's the area that the rangers had to climb up
uh at point to hawk um or or frigid as hell in bastone in the winter and you're standing out in the
washak and and looking at the holes where they where they were and that's awe inspiring i mean
if you know the story um and i think because of band of brothers and pacific and and now masters
of the air you will know the story uh you wouldn't be there if you didn't understand there was
something special here uh so i think i think that's handy uh but it never ceases to uh
to create within me a desire to walk away from the madding crowd and to just stand there for a
minute and say god thank god they did what they did i don't know how they did it but thank god they
did i always find that moment and and when you're standing on those beaches in normandy
or you're standing on the island of pelalu in the pacific or you're you're uh you're trying to
figure out how to stay halfway warm at the washak in bastone i always find that moment i said back
off from the minute back off and look and just thank the lord that they did what they did
absolutely and especially when you kind of look at the where technology was back then there was no
gps i mean all these things that we rely on now it really reframes you know the incredible
you know um task that was given to them so i want to transition to closing questions um last time
we spoke you'd already had it you know a host of books out so between six years ago and now
talk to me about your books have you added to your collection yeah uh i've got a great uh
korea korean war book i've always felt that uh the korean war was underserved in literature
because the guys who fought in korea to chose the reservoir and the naktong pocket and uh the
pusan perimeter those guys were the ones who taught me and taught me to stay alive when i had
my own uh wartime experience so i thought they were underserved and i wanted to tell a story
about i wrote a book called uh korean odyssey which has done very well i'm i'm gratified that
it has um and made one of these days become a movie when we can move into korea for more war too
and i have continued to uh uh get my recurring character shake davis uh the retired marine gunner
into more and more adventures i think since we talked i probably added four books to the
the continuing uh shake davis saga uh so i mean i'm and i'm staying busy i'm writing uh
we've started a new uh online essay uh that i guess people call it a blog but i hate that word
that word um so it's it's a an essay a screed some thoughts that i that we're putting online
so i'm i'm taking this opportunity i think uh and now that i'm almost 80 i'm taking this opportunity
to uh reflect a bit and that that comes with uh the business of telling your story now with korea
firstly why did it become the forgotten war why you know after such um celebration of the
triumphs of world war ii did our men and women that served in korea have almost that kind of
the opposite like it seemed like it was buried a little bit in history well i think people wanted
to ignore it they've been through four years of uh and in the case of the uk uh eight years of war
um and and serious sacrifices that people had to make on the home front and uh and the constant
flood of casualties coming in from various worldwide battle fronts i don't think they wanted to they
didn't ignore it completely but they didn't want to saturate themselves in it like they did with
what was happening in world war ii and it was a little difficult most people couldn't find korea
on a map it was a little difficult to uh to identify with what was going on there
uh stop the demon communist incursion from china i don't care what i care about can i get
tires from my car um and and so i think it just got sort of shuffled into the background
uh and that's unfair because it was a brutal difficult fight and um and and well fought
uh there were some strategic mistakes made up on the eisenhower turnin level
but for the guys you know trying to survive in korea and and fight off the north korean and chinese
communist it was a brutal war and i think underserved for a lot of reasons that we discussed
so i said what the hell i'll write a book about it and i did uh it's fiction follows one um
one marine rifle company from spool up from post-war skeleton existence post-world war
two skeleton existence spooling up into becoming uh a solid fighting force it follows one company
and uh and the characters i think are i like to think i write good characters in particular
when i when they're marines and i have an affinity for that sort of life so that's uh
that's why i think the korean war is underserved and why i was prompted to write a book about it
beautiful well what about books that other people have written the last six years is there's one or
two that you'd recommend that you've read recently well i've you know i i think i read everything that
that uh is written by vietnam and there's been a couple that have really uh tripped my trigger
there's one called a silent cadence that has come out which is terrific uh just just a wonderful
uh bit of storytelling um that one's caught my eye and you know i'm reading all sorts of
uh i'm kindle addicted and so i've everywhere i go i've got this thing in front of me and i'm
researching it but i think i think probably uh a quiet cadence probably is is the one that has
caught my eye most recently and what about documentaries and films well you know for a
you know for a guy like me and a guy like you you can't get enough documentaries i mean there's not
enough time in the day but i'm eclectic about those things i try not to focus on one area because
because of what i do and the nature of the films i work on or the television series i work on
you have to have a really broad-based knowledge uh just because i was a marine doesn't mean i don't
need to know the army i don't need to know the air force or uh because i fought in vietnam doesn't
mean i don't need to know world war two or korea and so when there's such a plethora of those
documentaries out there um hell they the just the history channel alone uh will take you all over
the world uh in in you know everything from you know the peloponnesian wars right up to today in
afghanistan um so you can pick and choose and if if i'm feeling like well i don't i don't know that
i know enough about uh the uh hindu kush and uh i'll find some money some documentary and go after
it beautiful all right well the next question is there a person that you recommend to come on this
podcast as a guest to speak to the first responders military and associated professions of the world
you know i'm not sure i do uh it would be great i've i've the whole first responder law enforcement
thing here in texas has been a revelation to me um it's it's the last one of the last bastions of
that great respect for law enforcement you know i if i were you i'd go find a retired texas ranger
and say well you want to you want to know what's behind the badge how about that you know fantastic
and i'm sure beautiful all right within the very last question before we make sure where people
can find you what do you do to decompress these days well i'm still uh doing p.t at my age i'm still
running uh three four and five miles three times a week um it's still lifting weights um
still lifting weights um and uh you know i've i've found a whole new audience here in small town texas
so they all want to hear the war stories and they all want to hear the movie stories and everything
so i'm i'm i'm pretty popular in a small town you know big fish in a small pool uh and so i spent a
lot of time getting to know uh these folks uh i didn't meet many of those kind of folks in in la
so it's a revelation here uh and i'm i'm doing a lot of sort of
inadvertent sociological research i guess uh and and enjoying it quite a bit beautiful yeah my in-laws
live in san antonio so next time i'm over there i'll have to give you a call and see if you're
around you should yeah in that far a couple hours absolutely all right well then the very last
question if people want to learn more about masters of air or find you online where are the best
places well i think you know without getting into the alphabet soup here um really all i've got to
do is look up masters of the air or uh we have changed the designation of our company we used to
be warriors incorporated we're now warriors global because we work all over the world
uh and i think you know if you go to warriors global it'll take you right to uh some stuff about
the making of masters of the air and and uh and then you you plug yourself into the podcast network
like this one and uh and god knows how many i've done uh so it's out there if you want to hear about
it beautiful well i want to thank you so much yeah firstly for originally coming on i mean that was
i think 15 years after i'd worked with you in in japan but here we are now 2024 the uh the show
will be out by the time this airs so i think january 26th was the date but uh i want to thank
you so much for being so generous with your time and coming back onto the podcast so always a
pleasure it's it's nice to spend time with a kindred spirit and you're one well done