Chuck Bryant

We were like, hey, we're going to trim this tree so we can have a better line of sight.

And you'll have a better line of sight.

And no one said anything, you know, to the contrary.

So the whole thing was really a provocation by the North Koreans.

Yeah, absolutely.

That was the first time when Captain Boniface and Lieutenant Barrett got murdered, right?

Yeah, exactly.

Which, again, made it sort of seem like it was planned to begin with.

Yeah, for sure.

So at 0700 hours, that's 7 a.m., on August 21st, 1976, Operation Paul Bunyan commences.

And like you said, I mean, basically what we described, there was an order not to engage.

I mean, essentially, if the North Koreans started unloading with sniper fire or machine guns, then yes, we're going to engage.

And

It was a very tense operation, but they got in there.

The military engineers cut the tree essentially down to a 10-foot stump.

They were using, I read, Vietnam-era issue chainsaws that weren't in very good shape.

So it took them a little while, but it took them about 45 minutes to complete the whole thing.

They should have sent out Leatherface.

They should have.

He could have gotten that done in 10 minutes.