All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
And now, your host for today's program, Dale Throneberry.
Hey, welcome to Veterans Radio.
My name is Dale Throneberry.
I'm a CW2-type helicopter pilot in Vietnam in 1969.
Welcome to our program.
We are, I'm really excited.
We've got some great guests on.
We're going to be talking with an author book called
Dan the Valley, William Yeske.
This is a heavy book, not heavy by size.
It's just heavy.
An emotional story.
So I'm excited to talk to Will about that.
We've got another segment later on in the program where we're going
to be talking to Scott Lopez and Scott is a member of the NVBDC,
which is a national veterans business development council.
And he's going to be talking about his business and his connection
with NVBDC.
Also, toward the end of the program,
we're going to be playing a little tribute to Toby Keith, who's a.
Many of you know, is a musician, country Western musician who passed
away earlier this month, true patriot.
And so we're going to play one of their songs at the end of the program.
It kind of say goodbye to him.
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All right, so let me get right into the show today.
My guest that I'm introducing is William Yeske.
And his book is Damn the Valley.
And it's the story of a first platoon Bravo company,
second over the 58th.
I don't even know what all these things are anymore.
Yeah, we are of the 82nd Airborne and the Argonne
Argonne River Valley in Afghanistan.
Will welcome the veterans radio.
Dale, it's great to be here.
I'll tell you, this this book really knocked my socks off
when I was reading this thing.
It's it's a really intense story about.
Enlisted personnel, more than anything else.
You only have a few comments in there about commanding officers and so forth.
But this is the story of enlisted folks.
Yeah, I tried to I know there's been so many different ways that people have,
you know, what they've gleaned from the book.
But yes, I wanted to keep this one from the ground, the ground up where
normally you'll get a lot of the books out either these days.
It seems to be, you know, a myriad of special operations books,
which is good and everything, you know,
and then a lot of the other stuff, you get a lot of the books out there
that are written from the officer's perspective, whether it be that general
level officer to where, you know, a lot of this might be written either
from accounts or, you know, historical things, the A.R.s they bring in and whatnot.
So it's a little different when you get a view from the guys on the ground,
especially just a private at the time, you know, going through what's essentially
and what was essentially a really rough time in Afghanistan at that time.
Yeah. And let's go there.
Well, as I mentioned, we're talking with William Yeski, better known as Will.
And Will, you joined the volunteer army at the age of 26.
What kept you?
That was so I was actually looking into the Marines at 18.
And, you know, we weren't at war at the time and my parents had kind of
kind of talked to me out of it.
You know, they were like, hey, look, go the college route.
And then from there, you know, if you still want to join up,
you have a full blessing to go in as an officer.
And of course, that sounded pretty good to me.
Of course, all they were doing was running a PSYOP campaign
because they knew I was going to get distracted in in college
and whatnot, the type of person I was at the time.
And, you know, I just ended up to where I was at a point in my life to,
you know, there was there were some things going on to where I had to
make some decisions and I decided to hit the reset button.
And I wanted to join up and do some time in the service as sort of that.
The hard reset.
It was something I always wanted to do.
It was something that had, I always had that purpose instilled in me
to do something greater than myself.
And that's kind of what led me to look at that more seriously and go, you know,
like, if I'm going to do it, I don't want to regret not going that route.
So let's just go and let's go be the best that I can, you know,
and do the best that I can, especially while we were in a time of war, you know.
Well, you're from a small town in Connecticut.
Right?
Very small town, very like 8000 people strong.
OK. And so you went in and you didn't just you didn't just go in and just
vaguely go through basic training, did you go in with a specific purpose of getting
involved with special forces or airborne or what are your what were your thoughts?
At the time when I signed up, I, it was 2008 when I actually went into the service
and I kind of could feel that Afghanistan was, it was winding down.
And I mean, a little did I know everything at the time, but I wanted to
get away into the fight and was like, hey, what's the best way to do that?
Should I, you know, be going back to look at the Marines?
What are my options here?
And really looked at the best way to go is to sign up for the 18 X Ray program,
which was civilian to Green Beret.
You still have to go through the entire pipeline, just like everybody else does.
But they have a preparatory class in between that surprisingly, a lot of the
guys that take the SOPSE course, which is Special Operations Preparatory and
Conditioning, they end up pretty strong.
You know, they, there's some of the stronger out of the lot to where they lean
on the NCOs and some of the E fours and stuff that have been in the army going
through that particular course for the experience.
So it's almost a little bit of a, a meshing there, but I ended up doing, you
know, your basic training pipeline into airborne school because anybody that's
looking at going special operations, they, they have to go through airborne.
And I've talked to quite a few people about the psychology behind that end,
you know, in where it quite honestly, the airborne is a little different than
a lot of the other soldiers that you'll find out there.
And it, it doesn't really have to do with the fact, you know, hey, I jump out
of perfectly good airplanes, but it's that repeated exposure to hire a general
in events to where you're actually, your body's learning to deal with cortisol spikes.
So when that adrenaline starts going, when a, when a firefighter, a gun
fight's going on, and you really need to be thinking about what's happening,
you're already sort of conditioned.
You've already had a leg up on other people that are out there in that, in
that way, you've been exposed to that.
So your body has a quicker regulation time.
Um, but yeah, I went through airborne school, uh, got hurt in SOP C, but
still completed that portion, but then ended up in, in med hold.
And, uh, the Sergeant Major came through and cut everybody from the program.
You know, that was sitting in medical hold just all at once.
I was like, Hey, I've not even been here a week.
Like, it doesn't matter.
You're out of here.
You know, and a lot of us found ourselves in the, in the 82nd.
And within a year's time, you know, overseas and, uh, fourth brigade got sent to
Afghanistan.
I don't feel about that.
You know, I know you, you sound like you're in a state of emergency.
Sound as though you were really kind of excited to get, you know, to get deployed
and, you know, go down range and actually see what this whole thing is all about.
And absolutely, that's the strengths to do it.
Yeah.
No, I knew I had the strength to do it and, and get out there.
I mean, our, our command team at fourth brigade in, in the 82nd there, and that
to fury was awesome.
I mean, we were, and it's, it still is a great unit.
It was a lot of times they, uh, they're the whipping boys of the 82nd.
And they seem to get a lot more of the crap, but the thing is, it's almost like
they're made for that wartime type of mentality that it needs to be.
They're a little bit of a wild card there, you know, some of them and stuff, but, um,
they're everything that airborne should be.
Wow.
Right.
So, all right.
So you, you end up, you know, you're getting to the port.
When did you go to Afghanistan?
So that was, well, I got to the unit, uh, in December of 2008.
And then, you know, by September, 2009, we're, we're leaving.
So we were actually slated for Iraq.
So a lot of our train up was a lot of that kinetic CQB,
building to building, um, type of things that you'll see.
Cause that's what we were headed into.
So when we got the orders that came down, Hey, you're going to be part of the
surge into Afghanistan.
Um, and executive orders were actually signed by President Obama to, to switch
our deployment.
Hey, you know, they're the next ones out.
They're going to Afghanistan instead.
We sort of, uh, I for one was sort of relieved.
I was like, Oh, cool.
No more of this.
Urban fight type thing will have a little bit more standoff.
And little did I know the situation we were heading into.
I mean, the, so the beginning of the deployment was sort of your typical,
typical type, you know, it was helmet province and we had gotten word
from the people who went on ad bond parties.
So the advanced party that went over there, they were like, Hey, we've
already been involved in some firefights, but this is great.
This is great.
This is going to be awesome.
It's, uh, it's been a heck of a time.
It's everything that we've looked forward to.
And we were stoked.
And then we got over there.
And it was very much that hurry up and wait type scene that you see.
And you're like, what, what happened?
So you guys just take care of all the, all the bad guys right in the beginning.
And, um, you know, really it was essentially driving up down the
highway until that first firefight that we got into on Halloween.
Back in 2009.
So, you know, up until that point, again, it was a lot of just driving dusty
highways, uh, working hand in hand with Afghan police, but let's face it, a lot
of times it was just sitting around, uh, waiting for something to happen,
which nothing ever did.
Yeah.
No, it wasn't no one, but you, then you moved.
Um, then we moved.
So this, the driving up and down the roads that you're talking about,
were you just acting as, as courts for convoys or what were you doing?
No.
So a lot of that had to do with the advise and assist mission that we ended
up picking up to advise and assist the Afghan national police.
So there's checkpoints and stuff up and down all of these highways.
And we would basically roll down the highway, hit the, hit the checkpoint.
There might be a lot of traffic.
Hit the checkpoint.
There might be, uh, a training mission that day where, you know, you might have, uh, a
company or two and stuff that you, that you're working with.
And that was the beginning.
So during that time, that was where a lot of the other more experienced guys,
they were doing all the training and we were sitting back in the trucks most of
the day doing nothing, essentially like, Hey man, why are we having here?
We're just guarding a bunch of stuff.
The priority is work, you know, and again, a lot of, a lot of waiting around.
When you, when did you get sent out into the valley?
So the argan dobb came when, uh, you know, we had our, our command team there for
battalion, they kept, you know, hammering at the time, the ISAF commander.
So the commander over that part of the theater was General Stanley
McChrystal and our battalion commander had been his aid at one point or part of
his team somewhere.
So they, they were on terms and he basically sent him something that, Hey, I
got a bunch of hungry paratroopers who are doing nothing in Helmand province.
You know, I can't get him into Margeau, which is what he was trying to do
originally.
What can we do here?
Do you have anything?
And that's when we, you know, he was like, Oh yeah, I've got something for you.
And that's where we ended up replacing 117 strikers, uh, out of Fort Lewis, Washington.
And you can actually look up, there's some news articles and stuff.
I think it's, uh, Colonel Harry Tennell's bill fated striker brigade.
You can look up and hand those guys, when we got there to replace them, you could
just tell, you know, you could look at these guys when we were doing our side by
side, left seat, right seat missions to kind of show us the area we were taking over.
These guys were beat, you know, and one of the guys before we even left,
he kind of, uh, you know, he was a, he was a lower unless he was another private at the
time and stuff.
And I kind of asked him like, Hey man, like what's, uh, what's this place all about?
And stuff.
And he was like, man, we haven't even, we haven't even left the wire in X amount of time,
you know, the last month or so.
He's like, this place is hell.
And, you know, we, even during that side by side patrol into the valley, that first look
of everything, we had a Kiowa mission.
So these smaller helicopters come by and they called in fire on two guys that were just
digging in the river bed.
You know, we all kind of looked at each other and we're like, Hey, you know, it's not our
area of operations, but what the heck was that?
You know, and they kind of looked at us and we're like, Oh no, man, they, uh, they're
digging in landmines.
This has been an issue before.
In a river bed.
And you know, can you describe, you know, we've all read the stories, we've seen the news
and everything like that about Afghanistan, but can you describe your AO, your area of
operation and what it was like and you know, like the temperatures and so forth.
I don't think many of us are really, really aware of just the weather in Afghanistan, plus
the terrain.
So where you look at some of this stuff from Helmand province, where you have that typical
Lawrence of Arabia type, you look at it and you're like dusty, arid desert region you
can see for miles.
And then you turn to the Argendob.
And you have every bit of environment known to man there that between the mountains in
the distance that just spanned across here to where we have guys where we put them up
on an observation point.
There was a two specific ones.
There was OP one, six, zero and one, six, five and we would man one, six, five and we would
have, you know, some sniper rifles up there and a clue and a javelin.
And everything as well as thermals and whatnot.
So they would provide overwatch, but in bringing them up there and going up to that, you know,
that little cave and that point on the summit to where they would sit for, you know, we'd
put four or five guys up there for about five days at a time.
When they were up at that height, you'd see helicopters underneath you and you were like,
whoa, what's going on?
And they're like, hey, they're up max altitude.
I think it was only Chinooks were the only ones that could actually fly over the mountain passes.
Yeah.
So you go from that huge mountain down into this valley to where there's just sectioned
off farmer fields and different compounds and stuff, eight to 10 foot walls and you'd
have to cross, you know, 10 to 20 of them depending on your length of control of patrol
every time.
Springtime was muddy.
So either you're slipping around or slopping through mud, you know, irrigation systems.
Really a lot.
It was just surreal because you have to where they're using ancient farming techniques and
whatnot, but sometimes they're they're crop sharing and they're pumping these fields full
from the river, but using modern equipment.
So it's just crazy to see this mesh of what we ended up dumping.
You know, it's just a very ingenious mess of methods.
Well, you mentioned it a book a number of times in different time periods.
You know, like if you're, you know, you're coming from 21st century America, you know,
1000 AD in Afghanistan and that, you know, habits and cleanliness and sanitation and,
you know, you're going to have to go to the
you know, our kind of all over the place.
And there's a shepherd coming by with his livestock, but he's wearing Adidas slides
in a G-Shock watch and you're like, this is the most mind blowing strange thing here.
I can only imagine, you know, and it had to be culture shock for probably both sides.
Oh, I'm sure.
I'm sure we, I mean, just the interaction though in between.
Yeah, they had some interaction and stuff with Americans, but a lot of times it just
depended. It depended who the guys were.
Some of them wanted nothing to do with sitting down with the Afghans and other guys were like,
yeah, man, let's buy that, you know, we'll buy the interpreters some lunch today because for
five dollars, you get a stack of foot bread that was maybe 20 non deep, you know, and what it would
feed the interpreters for a week's time, you get some of our guys in there and it's gone immediately.
But, you know, but we'd occasionally buy for them and sit down and have a meal and stuff with them.
And as well as I always made it a point to converse with some of the local contractors or people that
we would have passed through. And there's even an instance to where that fact may have even
ended up saving some lives.
Could you explain that a little bit more?
Yeah, sure. That's the point to where they started having these local work parties that they would
use on the compound. I mean, there was so much work to be done within base improvement on cop
wear, which was where we originally ended up when we went into the Argendob. We established it,
basically. So this is in a farm field. They had to bring in rocks, you know, because everything
was sinking down into the mud. They had to fill the Hasco barriers. So I mean, there was heavy
equipment that needed to be brought in for that. There was just a multitude of different things.
And, you know, we had to bring a guard out there to kind of watch these guys and everything.
So I would always make it a point to either share a smoke with them or, you know, have a
limited conversation and stuff with them, but always say something to them one way or another.
Later on in deployment, when I was out of cop Johnston, we were down by one of the bazaars.
And from across the way, they had a nickname for me because of the camel on my cigarettes.
So whoosh in Pashtun is camel. So they and I hear this, hey, whoosh from, you know, across the way.
And it was one of the guys that I had talked to and was like, oh, hey, kind of call him over.
And, you know, again, in a limited and broken conversation, he's basically like, oh, you guys
are going down this way. And he's like, ah, I wouldn't go down that way today if I were you.
And what do you mean? And I said something to the squad leader about it, which was Sergeant
Hackers at the time. And we, of course, we did go that way. We just went into a bounding overwatch
to where we were really watching everything around us. We had other guys, you know, checking us as
that element moves forward and vice versa, maybe just due to that, that diligence or that extra
oversight, you know, it's very possible that that guy might have just saved us from an ambush.
Right. It's not like you never quite know. It sounded like he was warning you.
Yeah. Yeah, something. Now, we're talking with with Will Yeske. His book is entitled Damn the
Valley about his experiences in Afghanistan. And, you know, you mentioned these. I'm trying to,
you know, include as many parts of our audience as I can. There's so many stories in here. I know,
I know. But you're talking about these, these forward observation. Well, I don't, I guess they
weren't called that then. But, you know, these cops, the combat outposts that you went out to,
and you had to build from from nothing. So that has to do with size is like, so there's actually a
whole thing to where you have your main operating bases like Kandahar airfield. And then some of
your forward fobs, so forward operating base, which is like, Bob Walton was mentioned as to where we
refitted. And it was a larger one. They had a flight line where helicopters could come in and
out and stuff, but not an actual airfield, you know, and then that breaks it down to these combat
outposts. So that one that we established, we literally took that area by force, which means
we just rolled in and overnight. It's like, Hey, this is now our spot, you know, and push out
security and bring in everything. And, you know, basically, top where was usually plus or minus
about 100 people at any time. And then it broke down to where later on in the deployment,
you know, second, but tune was originally over at cop Johnston, but we replaced second, but tune
at cop Johnston and second, but tune was pushed out to an area of a town called Diocage. And
third, but you stayed back at cop where it was just, it was really because the entire area was so
saturated, you know, so we ended up on at one time, we were only 28 guys on cop Johnston, but
really it was anywhere from 34 to 28 guys, it was we operated independently as platoons.
And you had these smaller patrols of maybe 12 men out as a, you know, operating as a squad
or a squad plus with somebody from weapons, you know, and what not, depending on what exactly
your mission was. So very small elements just because of the amount of, you know,
enemy within that territory and the limited, the limited movement just due to the amount of
landmines and stuff that were put in. This is where I was in trouble reading continually
with the, the, your exposure to the landmines and IEDs that were, you know, not only built into
the road every 200 feet or so, but also they were built into the buildings. And can you,
can you tell us a little bit about that? Yeah, sure.
The dread. I mean, I wouldn't, I mean, it was definitely an adventure. That's for sure. It's,
so I know the one that you're referring to in particular is kind of one of the more
harder to read chapters in the book. And it has to do with sort of the techniques that the enemy
would use. They were really masters their craft, the, the team that would replace these landmines
and explosives. And these guys would use anything from to where the footpaths would have
like a tow popper type mine to where there wasn't enough metal in it for our mine detectors to pick
up. It was just a very trace small, maybe something the size of a safety pin. And that smaller charge
would initiate a larger charge that you could put remotely somewhere else. So this particular one
was a landmine to where we came in and we float into this compound and I had literally stepped
over this area, maybe 30 seconds prior. And the rest of the squad is coming in. And one of the,
one of the guys stepped on the initiator charge and ended up blowing up the main charge in the wall,
which was right underneath where specialist Johnston was. And quite honestly, in looking at
some of the stuff, and who really knows for sure, but quite honestly, I think the fact that Johnston
being directly over where that mine was placed and took the brunt of that explosive charge is what
ended up saving the squad because that landmine was ended up, that was really meant to be a squad
killer. So just the different techniques that they would use and the different
ways that they would, you had to constantly adapt out there. It's where we were talking before in
Vietnam, where guys would be walking in the footsteps of others. And that's where we had to
move from moving in a wedge through areas to collapsing down into a single file for that very
reason, minimizing the amount of ground that we were putting over because that's what the fight
essentially was. Yeah. And you guys are exposed to this every day, every day. That's why.
And your unit had so many casualties. I mean, not necessarily that many,
cavalier of me, not that many killed. Oh, no, I know.
So many damaged. Yeah. And when you start to spread out across, as through researching the book
and talking to other people, I mentioned it in here that when we went to leave and going
to talk to the guys over at the Pedro hangar. So the medevac guys that were pulling us out,
you know, they would usually be there. So it was Air Force PJs. And I want to say was Pedro 54 and
66 that were the two that were pulling us in and out and finding out things like Pedro 66 was one
of the ones that got shot down, you know, over that time when we were there and finding out just
the sheer scope of how many people were affected. It was just absolutely mind blowing.
You know, and really just a heavy thing when you start going through it and finding out how
many people were affected from this thing. Even the social media campaigns and stuff when people
look across. I mean, we've got things, you know, it goes from Instagram, Facebook,
YouTube Reddit, but damn the Valley book and people are just coming out of the woodwork that are like
Argonne Dobb. I remember that place left and right. And that that specific area is a hot
button topic for a lot of these guys. A lot of people that were there hold the exact same stories,
you know, or at least the same sentiment that we did. Well, one of the things I think that's
so interesting, we touched on this before we came on the air is in this world of all these
different connections with social media and so forth, is that you are are able to get these
stories out now instead of 3040 years from now. And some of the people you know, you've had,
you know, in listening to other interviews, you had a 52% casualty rate in your platoon.
Approximately that's over half of people were either wounded or killed in the company. But yeah,
yeah, that's still a lot of baggage to carry with you when you come home.
Yeah. And really, I've kind of found that through sharing these stories, it's been good not only
for myself, but it's been good for a lot of the guys that you talk to that peer to peer type support
to where there happens to be a lot of veterans out there and you hear it quite often, you know,
they don't want to see a therapist or they don't want to go to therapy. They don't understand me.
They've never been through this type of stuff. Quite honestly, trauma is trauma and they do
know how to treat those responses to that stuff. But if it's the fact of somebody sharing their own
story, in order to start opening up to that idea of facing this sort of thing, then there's definite
value in it. And I know that again, for myself, when in writing this book, slowing down enough to
be able to process everything that had happened to myself and some of the other guys, I ended up
being a really good thing for myself. And in talking with, you know, some of the other guys that were
there, the majority of the guys that were over there, and hearing these stories, but then also
from one in particular hearing, you know, this has been really good for me. I feel like a burden
has been lifted off my soul, because it's been so long since I've been able to talk about this sort
of thing. Thank you. And that to me has meant everything.
You know, it gives you a clearer understanding of what you went through sometimes, because you
don't, you block out some of the terrible things. And you kind of asking yourself, did that really
happen? And you know, then you talk to somebody who was there and they go, I remember when you
did this, I did. These stories come out of the woodwork, too. Like, it's multiple times. Oh,
my gosh, I forgot about that. I can't believe you wrote that down. Oh, my God, like, you know,
and they come flooding back with things. So it's, it's, it is cool in that aspect, too, of, of,
you know, these guys are remembering this stuff as well that they had blocked out with fond memories,
you know, so that end is good to hear as well. I mean, the book has a lot of serious and some
scary parts in it, but there's also some humorous things that go on in here. You know, and you
mentioned, you know, care packages from home, and, you know, the sharing of the wealth when some of
these things were came in and, and, you know, one particular thing that I liked was you were,
I think it's cup Johnson and you had some pancake mix, but you didn't have any way of cooking the
pancakes. Yeah, I did. At one point they sent out, I had asked, you know, hey, can you send me a
bunch of instant bisquick? And they did, you know, and then I had no way to cook it where we were.
There was just, it was so austere of an environment, there was nothing. And then we ended up getting
one of those cooking trailers, but nobody, nobody used it to use it, no food, no freezer
connex or nothing to cook on it. So it was like we were living off MREs for most of the time.
And we finally ended up getting stuff out and then getting a food source and everything. And I
was able to one morning, you know, as a particular, I think it was within the last month we were there.
One morning I was able to treat the guys coming in to a stack of, stack of hot cakes and they were
just like, what in the, and I think I used a whole, you know, a whole package of butter that the
Coke had. He was furious at me, but you know what, the guys loved it and it was just a little taste
to home, I guess. Well, I think so. You know, I don't think the military exchange is that much
either because you talk in the book, the book is the Damned the Valley by William Yeske. I encourage
our audience to go out and get this book, but you, you have the thing where you guys broke into the
freezer unit and scarfed down most of the ice cream. No, no, no, no, it wasn't most of the ice
cream, but myself, myself along with Weapons Squad, commandeered a five gallon Ben & Jerry
that they had in there for us. And man, I don't think we've been sicker, sicker since, but it was
worth every bite.
All right. We have a couple of minutes to go. I'm so happy that you survived and I'm sure that you
are too. Absolutely. But you've been carrying this message along with you since you got out of the
service and have been helping veterans in many different ways. And I know that you are, you
know, kind of a entrepreneur marketing guru out there that's been, you know, helped small
businesses and so forth. Who is it or what is it that you've been involved with so much since
you got out? I mean, really, it's been that race to become, I guess, useful. You know, I went to
business school after I got out, finished business school in two and a half years and then went
forward to do some graduate classes with Columbia Business School. So I just actually just finished
up fairly recently, putting all that stuff to use, you know, it's through the thing with a book, but
helping other people along the way, really these collaborative efforts and everything has been
where I've found the most use of everything. You know, it's guys from Charlie Company,
I mentioned it in the book, Across the River from Us, got them a publishing deal and they have a book
next year or early 2025, actually, by the name of Devil's Playground by Andrew Bragg coming out.
There's, you know, between that, there's other stories from other guys, there's a few other
authors that have helped out there, but people within Maryland were doing some stuff with Warrior
WOD, where we're laying that mental health foundation through the physical end of things,
which I found myself to be very helpful as well. And then there's Racing for Heroes,
which has been phenomenal in the way of getting these groups of guys together, but the same thing
is really, that's their whole thing as well is that the physical health end of things and rolling
into the mental health and creating that group around you, that is that it's your community,
you know, you're back up in your support that a lot of us lose when we when we leave out of the
service. That's been one of the one of the best things about this is reconnecting with the other
guys, but then also using that and using this group of guys and going forward and moving forward
together. I think that's such an advantage that you have right now again with the social media
and everything is that all of you were able to maintain contact. And because you know, you went
over together, most of you came back together. And I know that there's usually a little down
period before they even let you go home, which is very smart. I mean, no, I mean, we had, I mean,
we were home in 24 hours, you know, you're still wearing your fatigues when you leave, you know,
you left Saigon and you arrive in Detroit, your fatigue. And it was kind of a strange, strange
world out there. So what is the name of your company and how could people contact you?
So no limits marketing group. I mean, you can get me no limits marketing group.com.
You got William Yeske on LinkedIn, W Yeske on Twitter, and then damn the Valley book
is basically the link tree to everything. There's links to all the social on the book
and the Amazon stuff Barnes and Noble where you can find the book, but also how to get in touch
with me. I mean, really honestly, the easiest way to do it would just be to go to damn the valley
book.com and go from there, which is what I did. That's smart, man. Yes, I think so. All right.
Well, I want to, you know, we've been talking with William Yeske. That's why he has K.E. The book is
damn the Valley. It's just a it's a great story and inspiring story, a scary story. It's everything
that anybody who's ever been in the military probably went through at one point or another, and
puts it in in context and from the from the enlisted man's viewpoint. And I think that's what's so
important and what I found so interesting about the book. So I want to thank you so much, Will,
for being on Veterans Radio. Let me know if you write another one or let me know about the group
that's coming across the river. Absolutely, Dale. It's been real. Thank you so much for having me
on and I absolutely will. Okay. Thank you very much, Will Yeske. All right, we're going to take a
break right now for our Medal of Honor segment. And when we come back, we're going to be looking at
the the NVBDC organizations business of the month. So we'll be right back after this.
The Medal of Honor is the highest award for valor in combat given a member of the armed forces of
the United States. There have been over 3400 recipients of the nation's highest award.
This is one of them. First Lieutenant John Fox called in artillery fire on his own position.
Details after this. If you have a VA claim denied by the Board of Veterans Appeals,
contact Legal Help for Veterans at 1-800-693-4800. They're experts in handling cases before the
U.S. Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims. Their number again, 1-800-693-4800.
On Christmas night in 1944, enemy soldiers in civilian clothes gradually infiltrated the town
Fox and his men were in. And by early morning, the town was largely in hostile hands.
An organized attack by uniformed German units began at 4 a.m. Being greatly outnumbered,
most of the American forces were forced to withdraw from the town. But Fox and other members of his
Observer Party voluntarily remained on the second floor of a house to direct defensive artillery fire.
Fox reported the Germans were in the streets and attacking in strength. He then called for
defensive artillery fire to slow the enemy advance. As the Germans continued to press the attack
towards the area that Fox occupied, he adjusted the artillery fire closer to his position.
Finally, he was warned that the next adjustment would bring the deadly artillery right on top
of his position. After acknowledging the danger, Lieutenant Fox insisted that the last adjustment
be fired as this was the only way to defeat the attacking soldiers. Later, when a counterattack
retook the position from the Germans, Lieutenant Fox's body was found with the bodies of approximately
100 German soldiers. The Medal of Honor series is a production of Veterans Radio.
We want to welcome to Veterans Radio today Business Owner Visionary Scott Lopez. He is the
driving force behind Zepo Production Inc. Better known as ZPI. We have him on today because we have
a relationship with National Veteran Business Development Council and VBDC.org as it's better
known. To spotlight, companies involved with NVBDC, which is the nation's leading third-party
authority for certification of veteran-owned businesses, really of all sizes. This 501C3
nonprofit was established back in 2013 and it addresses the growing need to identify and certify
both service-disabled and veteran-owned businesses for the commercial and government marketplace.
NVBDC has a rigorous certification process designed to withstand the scrutiny of governmental
and corporate entities in seeking to use veteran-owned businesses. So, Scott Lopez and ZPI are NVBDC
certified. Scott, why don't we start with this? Tell us why a nice kid from Texas went from
high school to the US Army to driving around M181 Battle Tanks. Yeah, actually, I grew up in Southern
California. I live in Austin now, but I grew up in Southern California and I think like most
combat arms soldiers or anybody in the military, I don't know, college wasn't for me, right? So,
wasn't great in high school. It wasn't my favorite thing. So, I also want to say thanks to the
country. I remember being in basic training and every day, the dozer just get in front of you
and what do you hear for? And some of the guys were ordered to be there. Some were there for
just the G.I. Bill and the dozer got in front of you and he goes, what do you hear for? I was
only 17 years old in basic training. He goes, Lopez, why'd you join the Army? I said, just to
say thanks. He said, God, that's the best answer I've ever heard. Get up here. You're our platoon
leader. So, I don't know. I've always just been very patriotic. That's a little reason, but
I didn't have a lot of options, I guess, but worked out really well for me. Well, as we're going to
hear later as you figure, life after service has been great and you're in a great position now and
you get to not only thank the country, but also recognize your Hispanic heritage and we'll talk
a little bit about that. But tell us what ZPI does. So, ZPI actually is Zepo Productions Inc.
And Zepo is just Lopez backwards. Everyone I was asked with Zepo and I grew up, my best friend
growing up, his name was Scott. So, he was long, I was Lopez. So, since I was a really young, I
always been called Lopez. And then when you join the Army, no one uses the person's name. So,
everyone just always called me Lopez. So, I went with Lopez backwards to Zepo. So, Zepo Productions
Inc. We actually produce private labels and exclusive brands of services or hardware for
distribution partners or reseller partners in the IT space. So, Ingram, Microtek,
Datast, NXDNH, these are all big gigantic computer distributors that don't have smaller
groups within them. We offer an opportunity for them to offer, other than alternative to OEM,
service and support to their customers and have a little bit of arms distance from their OEM
partners. I gotta say Cisco and Dell and HP, these big guys, right? We offer a third-party
support to be able to support those, that hardware, further on down the road, right? Legacy gears.
So, we call it extension of life for, again, supporting of legacy equipment.
And when you go to the website, which is Z-P-I-A-O-M.com, you'll learn more about
Zepo Productions or ZPI. And this whole IT space is interesting and how you get help.
Maybe the smaller businesses, not the biggest businesses in the world, get that IT support
that we all need nowadays. It's imperative. And we need the latest and greatest at the best cost
possible. Why was it important after you started the business, you've been at this a while,
to become a veteran-owned certified company? Yeah, so it's funny. So, I worked,
luckily when I got out of the Army, I was 26 when I went to work for a company called Ingram
Micro. Ingram Micro is the world's largest IT distributor. They were at one point, I think,
another couple of guys emerged, but anyway, still $50 billion global gigantic company. And I got to
go work for them. And they support, they're kind of the biggest unknown company out there, right?
They support every reseller in the world. So, a reseller would be companies that you might be
familiar with like CDW or SHI or Insight on the on the IT, pure IT play, but even guys like
Best Buy and Staples and any of those retail guys as well, right? They're actually shipping
only IT products for the reseller that we know and we partner with. So, working with distribution,
I wanted to break out and start my own company, have my own brand offering, alternative to OEM
product, right? Just ways to save money. So, a lot of things are privately labeled these days,
and I'm able to source product from the exact same contract manufacturer as the big names that we
mentioned before. With my name on it, I had a huge discount hardware and support, right? So,
because we do that, we offer that through a sales channel. I thought it would be important for me
to be able to let my other partners utilize my certifications as well, right? So, we're minority
owned, Veptronone, SB88A certified on the Texas DIR contract, but I don't sell to end users. So,
those certifications really didn't help me out very much, but bigger partners, and again, like
CDW or Insight, these big resellers that have been around for 40 years, they don't have any diversity
status and their enterprise customers are asking for diversity spend. Well, how can they do that
if they're not? They need to partner with guys like me. So, when they partner with me, now their
end user gets to retire tier two spend, and their reseller gets to retire tier one spend. And some
of these partners like Dell and CDW are actually part of the billion dollar roundtable who takes
prior diversity very seriously. And we both have a really cool solution and some really cool software
around letting partners use my software and I do life as a manager for them, and they get to
share diversity spend with me, even if they're not diverse partners. And NVBDC.org is sort of a
leading certification entity nationwide for veterans. It's a rigorous certification, really
have to prove yourself up. And you've done that, and in fact, you're actually on their board of
advisors, I guess they're so impressed with you and you're so impressed with them. Tell us what
does impress you about NVBDC? Well, like you said, you know, there's a certification process.
There's a few other companies out there, not NGOs, they call them non-governmental organizations that
offer certifications for other than just veteran as well. It could be minority, right? But there's
only several that are recognized by the billion dollar roundtable. And the billion dollar roundtable
is where the Fortune 500 companies are all members of the BDR. And that's the certifications they
accept are NVBDC for veteran, WeBank for women, and NMSDC. Even there's other ones out there,
these are the three. And the reason the BDR chose them is because of that stringent
process to get certified, right? One of the things that we've seen with NVBDC is its ability to
I think I always use the network and I get corrected. It's really not networking, but sort
of networking between the veteran businesses and guys on the billion dollar roundtable of
putting folks together. It's more of a matchmaker than maybe networking. But have you experienced
that sort of value from NVBDC? Yeah, it was actually just in Louisville for their annual show
and absolutely, right? You've got the biggest names out there. Dell and gigantic logos are there,
and the people from their supplier diversity groups are there, and they're speaking at the event and
talking to veterans and explaining them how do you do business with companies our size? You
realize that most veteran owned businesses are small businesses, right? We're all small businesses.
So how do you go? How do you work with Apple? Pretty hard to get into Apple, right? But if you
got that NVBDC logo in there, it opens the door for you at least, right? It gives you the conversations
and they can help you navigate a little bit easier than having doing it on your own, right?
It's not very easy to open those doors these days. So do you get asked by other veteran owned
businesses, hey, is it worth going through this process? And if so, what would you tell them?
You know, like you said, I'm on the board of advisors and like I just said, it's not easy to
open doors at companies like Dell and Apple and Disney and these gigantic companies, right? So
you need to have everything you can possibly do to get your foot in the door. And because these
gigantic logos are members of the BDR, it incents them, they have these goals that they put on
themselves, by the way, right? They're not like the government where they've got these government
mandated goals for supplier diversity. These are things that they put on themselves. So it only
makes sense for them to back their investment, if you will, right? So, you know, I let everybody
know, like, yeah, if you're an veteran owned company, join the NVBDC, you'll work the system
and you'll get business out of it. All right. That was Jim Falso talking with Scott Lopez and
talking about NVBDC. So if you are a veteran owned business and you want to learn what you need to
do, contact these people at NVBDC.org. Next week on our program, we're going to be doing our benefits
program. So if you have any questions to, you know, that you want to put to our group, let me know.
That's dale at veteransradio.org. We're going to go out with a song by Toby Keith today, and that's
because Toby passed away on February 5th, that only 62 years old says during his career, which
spans three decades, he sold over 40 million records, thanks to his patriotic hits like
should have been a cowboy made in America, and of course, courtesy of red, white and blue. Pro
military stance wasn't just fodder for songs. He went through 11 USO tours to visit and play for
the troops overseas. So we're going to say thank you very much, Toby Keith. We're going to miss
you, your true patriot. And I think that for our audience, we want to let them know that these songs
is really for them. And this is what he did for us here in America during our time of
terrible times. So you're listening to veterans radio. We'll see you next week. You're dismissed.
Sugarpunch came flying from somewhere in the back. Soon as we could see clearly who our big black
Man, we lit up your world like the four of July
Hey, I'm gonna say I put your name at the top of his list
And a statue of liberty is starting to shake in her face
And an eagle will fly and it's gonna be healed
When you hear mother freedom start to ring in her bell
And it'll feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you
I'll brought to you courtesy of the red, white and blue
Justice will be served and the battle will rage
This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage
And you'll be sorry that you mess with the new reservation
Cause we'll put a boot in your ass, it's the American way
Hey, I'm gonna say I put your name at the top of his list
And a statue of liberty is starting to shake in her face
And an eagle will fly and it's gonna be healed
When you hear mother freedom start to ring in her bell
And it'll feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you
I'll brought to you courtesy of the red, white and blue
Of my red, white and blue
I'm gonna say I put my name at the top of his list
And a statue of liberty is starting to shake in her bell
And it'll feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you
I'll brought to you courtesy of the red, white and blue
Justice will be served and the battle will rage
When you hear mother freedom start to ring in her bell
And it'll feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you