
Sign up to save your podcasts
Or


By The Vanguard Wall Podcast
The Vanguard Wall is a long-form interview podcast rooted in the world of combat veterans, special operators, and first responders — the people who did the hard things and carry them home. The host
... more5
2020 ratings
The podcast currently has 57 episodes available.
The most played episodes among Podcast App listeners.

Send us Fan Mail Chris McCoy served in the 75th Ranger Regiment alongside Pat Tillman and speaks plainly to the cover-up of how Tillman died. He recovered bodies inside the Pentagon after 9/11, fought through the high mountains of Afghanistan, then walked off the battlefield and onto a Bering Sea crab boat — one of the deadliest jobs on Earth. He returns to The Vanguard Wall for Part 2: the war stories he’s never told, the modern face of drone combat almost no one understands, and what it actually costs to come home. His first appearance became the most-watched episode this show has ever released. This one goes further. ▶️ Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/S5H_9VieDH0 CHAPTERS 00:00 Chris Is Back — The Most-Viral Guest Returns 08:06 Recognized in the Wild — Life After the First Episode 22:06 The Pentagon After 9/11 — 28 Days at the Hole 36:22 He Stood Next to Pat Tillman 43:13 The Truth About the Cover-Up 1:09:40 Mourning Their Own — What Really Happened in the Platoon 1:24:29 Winter Strike 2003 — Sent Into the High Mountains 1:43:51 Living at Altitude — The Body Breaks Down 1:53:20 Honoring the Ones Who Didn’t Come Home 2:09:07 The First Time He Got Shot At 2:19:04 John Owens — The Hardest Man He Ever Served With 2:49:01 Do We Even Need Navy SEALs? — Redundancy in Special Ops 3:06:21 An E-4 Ranger vs. SEAL Team Six — The Warlord Capture 3:24:48 The Car Bomb — When the CNS Burns Out 3:36:32 The Book “Unseen Worlds” — Why He Wrote It 3:50:10 What a Team Actually Costs the Men In It 4:06:49 Onto a Bering Sea Crab Boat — The Deadliest Job on Earth 4:53:04 The High Seas, the Money, and the Men Who Break 5:05:20 Things You Only See at Sea — The Jellyfish Bloom 5:27:38 Becoming a Master of the Craft — Competitive Shooting 5:58:58 Six Years Inside a Drone Program — The Department of War 6:10:53 The $400 Drone That Kills a Tank — Where War Is Headed 6:27:01 Leadership, Recovery, and Coming Home 6:43:26 Why He Keeps Telling These Stories 🔗 More from Chris McCoy 📖 Book — “Unseen Worlds” (Amazon): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H7Z6JMWP 🌐 Website: https://chrismccoyauthor.com 📰 Substack: https://chrismccoyauthor.substack.com 📸 Instagram: @rok275 Sponsors: Thinking about buying a home or refinancing? Nuwave built a dedicated page specifically for Vanguard Wall listeners so you can connect directly with the team assigned to our audience: https://nuwaveanchor.com/i/thevanguardwall Serious supplements “For Those that Run Towards” www.hoplitenutrition.com Use Code VANGUARD15 for 15% off 🔗 Connect with The Vanguard Wall Podcast 🏪 Merch: https://www.thevanguardwall.com 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheVanguardWall ⚔️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheVanguardWall 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thevanguardwallpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61569106772297 📧 Connect/Sponsor: [email protected] 📡 The Weekly SSE intel brief (free): https://intel.thevanguardwall.com Support the show 🔗 Connect with The Vanguard Wall Podcast 🏪 Merch: https://www.thevanguardwall.com (code VANGUARD15) 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheVanguardWall ⚔️ Patreon (early access + Discord): https://www.patreon.com/c/TheVanguardWall 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thevanguardwallpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61569106772297 📧 Sponsor Inquiries: [email protected] 💪 Hoplite Nutrition — veteran-built supplements made in the U.S. Code VANGUARD15 for 15% off Subscribe & Save → https://hoplitenutrition.com

Send us Fan Mail The Marine Corps turned him down at eighteen. Twenty-four years later, CSM (Ret.) Donald "Mac" McAlister retired at the very top of the enlisted ranks — a Legion of Merit, two Bronze Stars, and a Purple Heart, with five combat tours behind him: two in Iraq, three in Afghanistan. This is one of the most honest conversations we've ever recorded. Mac takes us from a self-described "heathen redneck" childhood in Hammond, Louisiana to carrying caskets at Arlington with The Old Guard — where he learned the lesson that made him: "none of the honors are for you; they're for the family." From the invasion of Iraq and the 82nd's biggest firefight since WWII, to October 8th, 2003 — the roadside bomb that nearly killed him, and the medical retirement he refused so he could fight his way back to war. Into the Arghandab, the valley no army in history ever held, and the men he lost pieces of himself beside. And through all of it, the demons he still carries — and the wife and daughters who saved his life. A warrior, a philosopher, and a wild card — metalhead, horror-film actor, and one of the few senior leaders of his generation still reaching back to the soldiers who once feared him and now line up to hug him. Follow Mac: Instagram @don_mcalister_aka_mac ⏱️ CHAPTERS 0:00:00 Cold Open 0:04:17 Meet CSM "Mac" McAlister 0:04:40 Growing Up a "Heathen Redneck" in Hammond, Louisiana 0:07:50 The Father Who Rode a Kid's Bike 15 Miles to Work 0:09:52 Expelled — and the Lesson That Made Him 0:15:24 Metallica, Metal, and Music as Therapy 0:22:49 The Warrior Bloodline — and an Uncle Lost to War 0:25:45 Suicide, Reframed 0:44:44 Basic, Airborne School & the Road to the Old Guard 0:45:35 The Old Guard — Carrying Caskets at Arlington 1:00:33 "The Funeral Isn't for the Soldier" 1:22:49 The Colonial Musket That Blew Apart 1:34:57 Hawaii and the 25th Infantry 1:59:53 9/11, Re-Enlisting for the 82nd, and Going to War 2:16:44 As Samawah — the 82nd's Biggest Firefight Since WWII 2:33:03 "I Think They're Shooting at Us" 2:52:54 Clearing the City 3:29:03 The Metallica Hat They Found in Iraq 3:32:23 October 8, 2003 — the Day That Changed Everything 3:47:21 The Photo He Posts Every October 8th 4:14:16 Coming Home — Reunited With His Unit 4:30:00 Rules of Engagement and Real Leadership 5:00:45 Into the Arghandab — the Valley No Army Could Hold 5:20:50 98 IEDs, 11 Amputees, One Company 5:50:55 Losing SSG Brunkhorst 6:27:27 Leadership Lessons Forged in Combat 7:00:00 Retirement and the Hardest Transition 7:11:06 The Intervention That Saved His Life 7:22:13 Diane — 33 Years, and the Family That Saved Him 7:27:01 His Daughters, His Grandbaby & Who He Is Now Sponsors: Thinking about buying a home or refinancing? Nuwave built a dedicated page specifically for Vanguard Wall listeners so you can connect directly with the team assigned to our audience: https://nuwaveanchor.com/i/thevanguardwall Serious supplements "For Those that Run Towards" — hoplitenutrition.com Use Code VANGUARD15 for 15% off 🔗 Connect with The Vanguard Wall Podcast 🏪 Merch: thevanguardwall.com ⚔️ Join The Wall: youtube.com/channel/UCJ8K3O-n9Mdcxv0mtV4xdCw/join 🎥 YouTube: youtube.com/@TheVanguardWall ⚔️ Patreon: patreon.com/c/TheVanguardWall 📸 Instagram: @thevanguardwallpodcast 📘 Facebook: facebook.com/TheVanguardWall 📧 Connect/Sponsor: [email protected] #82ndAirborne #CombatVeteran #Army #MilitaryPodcast #Afghanistan Support the show 🔗 Connect with The Vanguard Wall Podcast 🏪 Merch: https://www.thevanguardwall.com (code VANGUARD15) 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheVanguardWall ⚔️ Patreon (early access + Discord): https://www.patreon.com/c/TheVanguardWall 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thevanguardwallpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61569106772297 📧 Sponsor Inquiries: [email protected] 💪 Hoplite Nutrition — veteran-built supplements made in the U.S. Code VANGUARD15 for 15% off Subscribe & Save → https://hoplitenutrition.com

Send us Fan Mail Colonel (r) Max Krupp will be the first to tell you he doesn’t tell war stories — you have to pull them out of him. Over 28 years he became the first Texas Army National Guardsman in history to earn the Green Beret, wore a Bronze Star with Valor for a single day in Kandahar Province that by rights should have killed him and the Afghan company he was advising, and was on the Army’s fast track to general — then walked away from all of it to raise cattle in Texas. This is the full conversation: the kid nobody bet on who did the hardest thing on offer every single time, then chose the quiet work. ▶ Watch the full conversation on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Nsg0OY-8RhY Retired U.S. Army Colonel Max Krupp sits down with The Vanguard Wall for a full-length interview spanning 28 years of service: enlisting in the New Mexico Army National Guard at 17, Ranger School, Long Range Surveillance, and becoming the first Texas Army National Guardsman to earn the Green Beret and Special Forces tab. He walks through a 13-month Afghanistan deployment as a combat advisor embedded with an Afghan National Army company, the day in Kandahar Province that earned him a Bronze Star with Valor, the Special Forces Q Course and SERE school, commanding the only airborne infantry battalion in the Texas National Guard, and why he traded a general’s track for a one-man cattle ranch raising black Angus beef. A rare, honest veteran story about leadership, service, and the quiet work after the uniform comes off. CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold open 2:22 Meet Max Krupp 4:36 Growing up on the El Paso border 16:03 Where the military got in his blood 19:44 Military school in Roswell 26:00 Enlisting in the National Guard at 17 40:58 Long Range Surveillance & G Company 1:07:33 Ranger School 1:17:13 The Army kills the LRS program 1:38:52 Afghanistan: the advise-and-assist mission 1:44:08 Riding with the 82nd Airborne 2:13:27 The day in Kandahar 2:26:00 Aftermath, medevac & the Apache pilots 3:05:52 The Green Beret Q Course 3:11:09 SERE school 3:46:14 ODA life: the Guam jump mission 4:34:04 Walking away from a general's star 5:19:02 Raising the beef: grass vs. grain 5:56:48 Inside the cattle business 6:28:24 Leadership: the best and the worst 6:45:11 His kids, and the through line Sponsors: Serious supplements “For Those that Run Towards” www.hoplitenutrition.com Use Code VANGUARD15 for 15% off 🔗 Connect with The Vanguard Wall Podcast 🏪 Merch: https://www.thevanguardwall.com 📰 Free Weekly Intel Brief (The Weekly SSE): https://intel.thevanguardwall.com 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheVanguardWall ⚔️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheVanguardWall 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thevanguardwallpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61569106772297 📧 [email protected] Support the show 🔗 Connect with The Vanguard Wall Podcast 🏪 Merch: https://www.thevanguardwall.com (code VANGUARD15) 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheVanguardWall ⚔️ Patreon (early access + Discord): https://www.patreon.com/c/TheVanguardWall 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thevanguardwallpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61569106772297 📧 Sponsor Inquiries: [email protected] 💪 Hoplite Nutrition — veteran-built supplements made in the U.S. Code VANGUARD15 for 15% off Subscribe & Save → https://hoplitenutrition.com

Send us Fan Mail Hugh Mills flew the OH-6 “Loach” as a low-level aeroscout in Vietnam — statistically the most dangerous flying job of the war. Shot down 16 times, three Silver Stars, four Distinguished Flying Crosses, three Purple Hearts. Author of the classic memoir Low Level Hell. 📖 Low Level Hell: https://a.co/d/0glrcnww CHAPTERS 00:00:00 Introduction — how Greg Coker connected them + “Low Level Hell” 00:02:59 Growing up across the street from Bill Clinton 00:29:49 Officer Candidate School — marching inside a dumpster 00:49:50 He promoted himself with drugstore mercury 00:52:00 Stepping off the plane — what Vietnam smelled like 01:20:23 His first mission at 20 — adjusting live artillery 01:35:49 The minigun and the grease-pencil gunsight 01:47:48 “That’s not Mr. Jones” — the burned pilot 02:07:59 Thunder Road — “orange basketballs” and getting shot down 02:14:36 The “dead” NVA officer and the map case 02:42:48 Capturing an NVA major — the tax collector (Bronze Star) 02:58:25 The Silver Star mission — an AK-47 between his pedals 03:06:00 “Bad Day for the ARPs” — 28 men vs a regiment 03:19:39 Three Purple Hearts — shot through both cheeks 03:31:43 Losing Jim Amy and Jimmy Slater 03:43:43 He landed his helicopter on a sinking plane’s wing 03:55:42 Margaret — the love he found and lost 04:26:44 The A Shau Valley — “the worst place I’ve ever been” 04:51:32 His own rocket blows off his tail rotor 05:10:31 “Where’s your hat?” — “Somewhere in Laos” 05:16:04 The rescue — the blind PJ, “I’m 701” 05:28:32 Third tour and the general — “check your grid” 05:32:51 He attacked an NVA flag from inside North Vietnam 05:46:03 Pony One Six — the name he hid for 30 years 06:03:17 His wife of 52 years 06:15:31 Why none of his pilots ever took their own life 06:21:24 My Lai — the real hero nobody remembers 06:24:54 The OSS medic who saved Ho Chi Minh 06:40:18 “The way I fought a war is gone” Sponsors: Thinking about buying a home or refinancing? Nuwave built a dedicated page specifically for Vanguard Wall listeners so you can connect directly with the team assigned to our audience: https://nuwaveanchor.com/i/thevanguardwall Serious supplements “For Those that Run Towards” www.hoplitenutrition.com Use Code VANGUARD15 for 15% off 🔗 Connect with The Vanguard Wall Podcast 🏪 Merch: https://www.thevanguardwall.com 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheVanguardWall ⚔️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheVanguardWall 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thevanguardwallpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61569106772297 📧 Connect/Sponsor: [email protected] 📡 The Weekly SSE intel brief (free): https://intel.thevanguardwall.com Support the show 🔗 Connect with The Vanguard Wall Podcast 🏪 Merch: https://www.thevanguardwall.com (code VANGUARD15) 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheVanguardWall ⚔️ Patreon (early access + Discord): https://www.patreon.com/c/TheVanguardWall 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thevanguardwallpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61569106772297 📧 Sponsor Inquiries: [email protected] 💪 Hoplite Nutrition — veteran-built supplements made in the U.S. Code VANGUARD15 for 15% off Subscribe & Save → https://hoplitenutrition.com

Send us Fan Mail Thinking about buying a home or refinancing? Nuwave built a dedicated page specifically for Vanguard Wall listeners so you can connect directly with the team assigned to our audience: https://nuwaveanchor.com/i/thevanguardwall In August of 1968, Travis W. Mills was shot five times in a single engagement at FOB 4 — the deadliest night in the history of U.S. Army Special Forces. He survived. And then he went back to Vietnam. A Green Beret who served with one of the most classified units in American military history, Travis Mills sat down with The Vanguard Wall Podcast to document a story that couldn't be told for nearly three decades. Assigned to the 5th Special Forces Group and then to Military Assistance Command, Vietnam — Studies and Observation Group (MACV-SOG), Travis led small recon teams deep into denied territory along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, conducting cross-border operations into Laos and Cambodia during the most dangerous years of the Vietnam War. After surviving the FOB 4 sapper attack that left 16 Special Forces soldiers dead and over 30 wounded in a single night, he recovered aboard the USS Sanctuary — then returned to Vietnam, not as a patient, but as a leader. He was tasked with building the next generation of warriors, founding and commanding the MACV-SOG Recon Leader School, known as the One-Zero School. MACV-SOG's existence stayed classified for nearly 29 years. Travis carried that history quietly until 2001, when the unit was finally awarded the Presidential Unit Citation. In this conversation, viewers will hear: What it was like to serve in a unit whose missions "officially weren't happening" A first-person account of the FOB 4 sapper attack — 16 SF killed in one night Why Travis chose to return to Vietnam after being wounded rather than rotate home The operational structure of MACV-SOG recon teams and the Hatchet Force What Travis witnessed in Vietnam that still shapes how he thinks about service today How he and his wife Bobby have stayed married for 62 years His message to the next generation considering military service Watch the full episode and subscribe to The Vanguard Wall Podcast to hear more conversations that preserve the history of those who served. 🔗 Connect with The Vanguard Wall Podcast Youtube Channel https://www.youtube.com/ @TheVanguardWall Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/c/TheVanguardWall The Vanguard Wall Merch: ⬇️ https://www.thevanguardwall.com Social Media: ⬇️ The Vanguard Wall Podcast Instagram https://www.instagram.com/thevanguardwallpodcast/ The Vanguard Wall Podcast Facebook https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61569106772297 Want to sponsor the show? Email: ⬇️ [email protected] #MACVSOG #VietnamWar #SpecialForces #GreenBeret #VanguardWallPodcast #VietnamVeteran #MilitaryHistory Hoplite Nutrition — Veteran-built supplements. Code VANGUARD15 for 15% off subscribe-and-save. https://hoplitenutrition.com?utm_source=podcast&utm_medium=description&utm_campaign=ep32_macvsog&utm_content=sponsor_hoplite Support the show 🔗 Connect with The Vanguard Wall Podcast 🏪 Merch: https://www.thevanguardwall.com (code VANGUARD15) 🎥 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheVanguardWall ⚔️ Patreon (early access + Discord): https://www.patreon.com/c/TheVanguardWall 📸 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thevanguardwallpodcast/ 📘 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61569106772297 📧 Sponsor Inquiries: [email protected] 💪 Hoplite Nutrition — veteran-built supplements made in the U.S. Code VANGUARD15 for 15% off Subscribe & Save → https://hoplitenutrition.com
The podcast currently has 57 episodes available.

228,039 Listeners

11,026 Listeners

6,458 Listeners

46,188 Listeners

1,667 Listeners

2,401 Listeners

1,277 Listeners

2,189 Listeners

2,889 Listeners

122 Listeners

1,802 Listeners

662 Listeners

347 Listeners

582 Listeners

119 Listeners