233: Pressure-Test Yourself and Your Methods. Are you Moving In The Right Direction. The Boer War.

0:00:00 - Opening 0:00:47 - The Boer War. By Jay Stone and Erwin Schmidl 1:29:11 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 1:33:05 - How to stay on THE PATH. 1:53:10 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 233 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. So, the last podcast, we were reviewing a book about the Boer Wars and we're going to pick up where we left off last time, which is what the British did with the lessons that they learned, the military reforms that they made and how they, how they made this transition and then where it ended up in, well, in World War I. So, the name of the book is The Boer War and Military Reforms by J. Stone

• 0:38Jocko Willink?

  and Erwin Schmidl. And let's take it back to the book. So, picking up where we left off, this is the, this is, this is when they start talking about the, the reforms that got made. "From the top down, appointments were made in a casual, random manner that often resulted in matching of poor, and poor matching of personalities, skills, or personal inclinations, inclinations to the demands of a particular post."

• 1:12Jocko Willink?

  So, the way that they were appointing officers was just kind of random. And then the way they were matching up teams was also kind of random. And then you take the wrong personalities and mix them together, you're not going to end up with good leadership. Continuing on, "If locating and assigning qualified officers to proper posts proved a problem, the same must be said of the selection of individual units and even private soldiers. What unit cohesion had existed vanished quickly in South Africa. Littleton's division, for no apparent reason, shrank in a few weeks from eight battalions to five and a half. Regiments were broken up into smaller units, then reconstituted into mixed battalions. This was done with a seeming disregard of structural

• 1:55Jocko Willink?

  and historic uniformity with adverse consequences on esprit de corps in an army with strong wrench of mental ties." So, they take a bunch of teams, they get to South Africa and they split them all up and mix them all up. This is just a bad move. I used to be, I used to feel like I was kind of cheating a little bit when it came to, when Task Unit Bruiser was going through our pre-deployment workup because...

• 2:21Jocko Willink?

  I would, we would, we would train, we'd split up and we'd mix up, but when we had to do a training operation, we'd get in our units and we'd stick to them for the most part because it was just so much better. Yeah. So much better when you're working with people you work with. And, and they just threw that out the window here. Yeah. Wait, you said you felt like you're cheating? Yeah, I felt like I was cheating. Yeah. Because it wa- it was so much more effective. It was like an advantage. It was just such an advantage. Yeah. And they'd try and give us, you know, multiple targets where it would, where you could kind of convince yourself that it would be a good idea to take these guys and move them over to this platoon and take these, and it just don't. No, we'll, we'll just stick with the platoon integrity. Yeah.

• 3:03Jocko Willink?

  And I'm not saying that you shouldn't do interoperability because you should. And you should be able to mix people up, but you should also have that kind of baseline. And there's a reason, they're like the regimental historical esprit de corps, that's real.

• 3:18Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, bureaucratically, the system was a nightmare as an official account of manpower was oss- was sometimes lost for months at a time. The lack of coherence was not due to want of paperwork, for if anything, the pre-war structure was overly centralized. In 1898, the Broderick Committee on Decentralization, Decentralization, heard testimony from the general commander, commanding at Aldershot that it took 12 signatures, including two orders from London, to return an unsatisfactory driver. So you've got some micromanagement going on, some centralized command, that's never good. Fast forward a little bit, staff work thus fell on about 70 officers, some well-trained,

• 4:03Jocko Willink?

  but many useless, although pleasant aristocrats. Buller later claimed that in Pretoria, I found Roberts sitting in one building with his Hindu staff, Kitchener in another with his Egyptian staff, and Kelly Kenny in a third with an English staff, all pulling against one another. With so many centers of control functioning at once, it should come as no surprise that time and again, key points would be left unguarded, isolated battalions unsupported, or critically needed guns unassigned. The saving grace to an otherwise chaotic system was Robert's phenomenal memory and attention to detail. So you've got these guys that have their own little silo set up. You know, you've got Kitchener that had worked in Egypt

• 4:44Jocko Willink?

  and worked with the Egyptians, and he brought them into South Africa. And same thing with um, with Roberts, with his Hindu staff, they all had their own little cliques. That's not going to work out good. You're not working together.

• 5:01Jocko Willink?

  Troops, and because of that, fast forward a little bit, troops sometimes went hungry, cavalry sometimes lacked horses, and hospital arrangements rarely proved adequate. Kitchener's misunderstanding of staff principles was best demonstrated when he wrote about the battlefield, imposing his will rather than staying at his headquarters and manifesting it through properly organized staff channels. So again, that means he doesn't trust his people, he's out there on the battlefield trying to tell people exactly what to do, and what kind of oversight are you giving when you're out there on the battlefield barking orders at people to tell them exactly what to do?

• 5:38Jocko Willink?

  Not going to work out well.

• 5:41Jocko Willink?

  Allen B. summed up the view of a commander of a subordinate column by noting, "One is always at high pressure, one is probably under the same general for about a month at a time. When he has played about and knocked one's column to rags, he goes off." That's what the subordinates were saying. "Oh, you're going to show up here for a month, you're going to bark orders, you're going to yell at us, tell us to do stuff, and when we're all worn out, you're going to bail."

• 6:05Jocko Willink?

  The drawbacks of Kitchener's system are obvious: over-centralization, isolation from the field, and time lags. After a year of frustration, Kitchener agreed to the appointment of Ian Hamilton as chief of staff. This was an admission that given the greater size, complexity, and distances of modern warfare, coupled with extreme dispersion of forces that no individual could single-handedly run an entire war. But that was a year deep!

• 6:33Jocko Willink?

  This is something that I see a lot, is people that are, people that, they're too egotistical to say, "Hey, you know what, I need some help. I need to hire a number two." That's all it is. It's just ego kicking in.

• 6:48Jocko Willink?

  They talk about running the railroad. Because that was a big part and the British really didn't have the capability, they didn't have that in their, in their, in their capabilities of, hey, we need, we need to run this rail. The British military needs to run a railroad. And they didn't really have that capability. Also circled one note in here about the fact that what Roberts ultimately did was resorted to having hostages, civilians on the trains to try and keep them safe.

• 7:21Jocko Willink?

  Interesting advancement here. The soldiers benefited from the first individual field dressing kits and identification cards. This information proved so useful. That in 1906, dog tags were introduced. So there's the introduction of dog tags in the world. I thought that was interesting. They also founded the Royal Army Medical Corps. So they, they realized some of the things that they needed to do from a medical perspective. Another thing they say here, a major complaint of medical officers with the enormous amount of red tape. Surgeons spoke of an inability to operate because of long hours spent behind the desk.

• 7:59Jocko Willink?

  Check out this statistic. Over the course of the war, poor water and sanitation were largely responsible for an annual sickness rate of 958 men per thousand. So almost every single person you are going to get sick. And they're not reporting like minor colds. They're reporting, hey, this guy was out of duty.

• 8:21Jocko Willink?

  So that's why all the support people out there that are listening to this, all the military support people out there. Doesn't happen if you're not there. Logistics wins wars. You can't win a war if everyone's sick.

• 8:35Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. In all the, in all areas, the changes wrought by the Boer War were by no means limited to higher organization nor to big ticket items such as larger guns, hospital ships, or armored chains, trains. Many seemingly minor changes occurred as well. What stand out are the changes in the mundane items of soldierly life such as uniforms and personal equipment. Perhaps the most obvious of these was the evolution toward uniformity of battlefield attire among all types of troops. This led to the adoption of the India-inspired khaki-colored drill field uniforms by all except the Highlanders.

• 9:16Jocko Willink?

  Economy and camouflage potential became the new standard of production, yet it was only with the widespread use of smokeless powder that these qualities could take precedence. Previously, rapid-fire weaponry had been restricted by the heavy smoke that would cover a battlefield. Under those circumstances, camouflage uniforms seemed superfluous and needlessly unattractive. So this is where you start getting camouflage uniforms. Because before, there'd be so much smoke on the field that it was just pointless to even have camouflage. No one could see you anyways. So you might as well look good. If you're a Brit. Pre-war dress standards in the British Army had always emphasized excessive smartness to the point of making it the most unserviceable and unworkable in the world.

• 9:59Jocko Willink?

  In the eyes of some contemporaries. Perhaps the most pernicious effect of smartness. So they had these really nice-looking uniforms, which were totally unfunctional. However, there was a need to discipline men to take cover during pre-war training. Having to pay for damaged uniforms discouraged ready to use the ground. So these guys would have these uniforms that were so nice that during training, they wouldn't want to get on the ground. Regarding the rest of the kit, wherever possible, it's lightened, including the adoption of aluminum canteen first developed in Germany, so they're making stuff lighter. This is why some of these things, this is where you start getting the first modern war. You know, there's a couple of wars that you can talk about that were the first modern war.

• 10:44Jocko Willink?

  These are some of the things that make you start saying, hmm, this is, these are legit movements forward toward modern war. To outfit an entire army in the same manner had advantages aside from ease of supply and economy. Now, this is, this is, I made a quick note here.

• 11:05Jocko Willink?

  I always talk about decentralized, right? Decentralized command, everything's gotta be decentralized. And it does. That being said, some things should be centralized, and if they're not centralized, there's gonna be problematic. So, for instance, do we want everyone in our platoon of forty guys, do we want everyone to have different weapons? What do you think?

• 11:31Speaker 01

  No.

• 11:31Jocko Willink?

  No, we do not. We want everyone to have the same weapon. So, where are we gonna get that weapon from? A centralized place. So, when we all have the same weapon, we all have the same parts, we all have the same ammunition. That's what we want. We don't want everyone carrying their own different type of weapon. Uniform, same thing. We want everyone to look the same. Medical kit, where is that medical kit gonna go on your gear? You want it in the same spot. So, if you get shot, I can come over, I know where your medical kit is. So, there's some things that absolutely have to be centralized. So, occasionally, like I'll be working with a company, and there's someone that doesn't wanna, kinda, you know, doesn't wanna use whatever standard, doesn't wanna follow some procedure.

• 12:15Jocko Willink?

  And I always have to bring this up. You know, that there's some procedures absolutely have to be centralized. When you're in the Battle of Ramadi, you have near and far recognition signals. You want everybody to know what those are, you know, and we had, everybody in Ramadi knew what the recognition signal was from a long ways away. We all, everybody knew it. Army, Marine Corps, everyone had the same thing. Believe me, you want that centralized. You don't want twelve SEALs going out on an operation, and they have a different recognition signal than the Army guys. So, yes, there are times when things must be centralized.

• 12:57Jocko Willink?

  Of course, fast forward a little bit, the essential piece of equipment for all ranks in virtually all services was now the rifle. More potent powders and improved smaller caliber bullet design made possible higher velocities and more precise shooting at ever increasing ranges. So this is, we're using the rifle, that's what we're doing. Both sides realized the potential of bicyclists as the boers distributed a company of cyclists among their generals and the British called cyclists from very units, various units and retrained two full battalions. Out there on their, on their bikes, getting after it. Imagine if they had modern mountain

• 13:39Jocko Willink?

  bikes and you know now, they have the mountain bikes with the electrical, with the electric boost. Have you seen those things? John Dudley, the hunter, archer, he uses one of those things to get out to different hunting locations. Why? Very, it's quiet, it's silent, can take it anywhere, it's light. It's viable. Yeah, it's totally viable. Communication was perhaps one of the most consistent problems encountered in a swift moving war fought over tens of thousands of square miles of terrain. For messages to Europe, the oceanic cables sufficed, but within South Africa, telegraph cables were

• 14:22Jocko Willink?

  often cut. Thus, signal flags were used but had limited ranges of eight kilometers and transfer rates of eight words per minute. Much preferred was the heliograph with a range of over 40 miles on clear terrain and a speed of 12 words per minute. Heliographs had the advantage of being undetectable if not indirect line of sight. What's a heliograph, you might wonder? It's a mirror. It's a mirror. You're using a little mirror to reflect and send Morse code or whatever. 40 miles.

• 14:57Jocko Willink?

  You gotta have some altitude to do that.

• 14:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:59Jocko Willink?

  Cause the horizon is 12 miles.

• 15:01Speaker 01

  So how big is that? What like this?

• 15:03Jocko Willink?

  I have no idea.

• 15:04Speaker 01

  Three inches.

• 15:05Jocko Willink?

  I think it's bigger. It must have been some kind of machine with a little timer on it.

• 15:10Speaker 01

  Well, shoot, if you're talking four miles, that's like huge.

• 15:14Jocko Willink?

  Forty miles.

• 15:14Speaker 01

  Forty miles.

• 15:15Jocko Willink?

  Forty miles.

• 15:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, that's like huge then.

• 15:18Jocko Willink?

  I don't know.

• 15:18Speaker 01

  That's not the kind you're carrying in your pocket.

• 15:20Jocko Willink?

  Maybe not. We'll have to, we'll have to take a historical look at the heliographs of the past.

• 15:24Speaker 01

  Forty miles.

• 15:26Jocko Willink?

  Forty miles.

• 15:26Speaker 01

  Well, then again, it would have to be trash can size at least, I think. Trash can lid, I mean.

• 15:32Jocko Willink?

  Could be.

• 15:33Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 15:34Jocko Willink?

  Could be.

• 15:35Speaker 01

  Look into that one.

• 15:36Jocko Willink?

  Can you imagine the number one form of communication that you have is using a mirror and reflecting it towards your buddy who's 40 miles away?

• 15:45Jocko Willink?

  By the way, this is what? A hundred and

• 15:49Jocko Willink?

  hundred years ago, 110 years ago, something like that. And now we got an iPhone in our pocket. We can talk to people in space.

• 15:59Jocko Willink?

  Wartime experience clearly showed the need for better equipment for reconnaissance, communication and ranging. So there you go. Those are some of the reforms. Now we dip into a little bit, a little bit um more tactical stuff. During the course of the Boer War, every branch of the British Army experimented,

• 16:20Jocko Willink?

  experienced change and nowhere was this more evident than in tactics. For the infantry, the foremost consideration was the enormous increase in firepower. Proper maneuvering and deployment, which could lead to initial superiority of position or psychological advantage, became even more important. As concentrated rapid fire had become so devastating that once battle had been joined, it was nearly impossible to rectify any initial error errors without suffering serious casualties. Battles were now resolved at an uneven pace. A few minutes at a tactical disadvantage could prove more decisive than hours of marginal superiority. What are we talking about there? What we're talking about is all of a sudden, if you got the tactical advantage,

• 17:05Jocko Willink?

  you were at a massive advantage, not a little one, a massive one. And you could get yourself to a position through vi- this speed, surprise and violence of action, you could get, if you use speed, surprise and violence advantage and you got the advantage, you were at a massive advantage, a massive advantage.

• 17:24Jocko Willink?

  Marksmanship was be could fast forward a little bit marksmanship was becoming a matter of soldier selecting individual targets and ranges rather than collective mass volley fire and this in turn necessitated a new type of training for one as for as one Bueller noted of 35 men whom we took prisoners after they had fired up to at us up to 350 paces not not a single one had his site correct most of them had kept their sights at 800 and 850 yards because no order to change had been given oh that's centralized that centralized command you're at 350 yards can you imagine you're capturing by the way just in case you

• 18:05Jocko Willink?

  don't know this when you have your site set for 850 yards or 800 yards and you're shooting at someone that's 300 yards away you're not gonna hit him that's not happening you're gonna miss him so imagine you come you capture your your opponent and they don't even have their their site set and you ask them why not well we didn't get ordered to

• 18:27Jocko Willink?

  crazy

• 18:30Jocko Willink?

  keep your keep your weapons doped in is what I'm saying the British infantry drill of 1896 had placed too little emphasis on the firefight and too much on depth of formations at clenso the boers were outnumbered four to one yet less than a third of the British Army was involved in the attack the boers understood modern small arms Captain Reichman an American military observer noted I did not learn of any case when the boers had determined to hold their ground that the frontal attack succeeded by its own power

• 19:07Jocko Willink?

  so what what are we hearing right here we're kind of hearing a little bit of that flanking movement coming in to play big time never heard of the frontal attack working Am I gonna tell you the frontal attack never works? I'm not gonna tell you that. I'm gonna tell you though, you best be leaning towards flanking maneuvers. The futility of the old attacks and frontal assault was compounded by an infantry termed by the times, by the times history as being indifferent shots, careless of cover, slow to comprehend what was taking place, or to grasp the whereabouts of the enemy, always surprised or lost, helpless without their officer, in a word, well disciplined but ill-trained. One might say untrained.

• 19:51Jocko Willink?

  Think about those descriptions. How would you like your military unit to be described as indifferent shots, you can't hit anything, careless of cover, you're not, you're not protecting yourself, slow to comprehend what was taking place, needs no explanation, or to grasp the whereabouts of the enemy, you don't even know where the bad guys are, always surprised or lost? That's a nightmare. Helpless without their officer. These are the worst descriptions, like amongst the worst descriptions that you can give. And then what's interesting, he says, in a word, well disciplined, and you know me, discipline's at the top of my list. But if you're so well disciplined, but you can't think for yourself, you're worthless.

• 20:35Jocko Willink?

  The provisional, the provisional course of musketry for the year 1902 took the bold step of abolishing the volley. So now we're not gonna get online anymore and shoot on command, as well as encouraging fire from cover, and the use of any kind of rest, natural or artificial. So now that's the first little step they're taking. And I want you to pay attention to this a little bit. 1902. So now they're starting to take the lessons from the Boer War and say, okay, guess what? We need to learn how to fire from cover, we need to start shooting individually. And the reason I say pay attention to that date is that they're gonna make changes and then they're gonna regress back. They're kinda gonna go to what you know.

• 21:17Jocko Willink?

  It's like, you know, when you get the, you get the wrestler and he's going against a sick jujitsu guy, and you say, look, don't take this guy down, you got better hands? And then he gets caught with a little shot, and what does he do?

• 21:34Speaker 01

  Take down.

• 21:35Jocko Willink?

  Goes right back to what he kinda knows. That's a trap.

• 21:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:40Jocko Willink?

  It's a trap, your habits are a trap.

• 21:47Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, "The defense's increased power drastically reduced troop densities." So, how many people do we have on the battlefield? We're starting to spread out. Wellington had fought Waterloo with 69,000 men on a two-mile frontage. The Boers had held their front with only 300 men to the mile. Did you hear that? 69,000 for two miles and 300 men to a mile? That's how much different it was. That's how dispersed they got.

• 22:25Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on a little bit, "Larger, more dispersed battlefields destroyed the ability of a single general to command a battle."

• 22:34Jocko Willink?

  And even in the most broad of terms, I'm gonna say that again. Larger, more dispersed battlefields destroyed the ability of a single general to command a battle even in the most broad of terms. So you've got all these people, they're spread out over 300 miles. And you've got to communicate with a freaking mirror. Right? You're not gonna... So you need to learn how to use decentralized command, you need to learn how to give commanders intent.

• 23:01Jocko Willink?

  Greater reliance had to be put on lower echelon officers and NCOs. Frequently, non-professional officers were expected to lead by personal example in battle. This disproportionate... Their disproportionate losses testified to this role. Under South Africa's fluid battle conditions, small unit command became more critical. And this is the same way the military is now. You can't expect a platoon commander that's out there in the Battle of Ramadi. He's out there. He's making decisions. He's making calls.

• 23:35Jocko Willink?

  At least that's the way it should be. Does communication, modern communication, start to allow for micromanaging to take place? Yes, it absolutely does. Which one? Alpha two, which direction are you moving? I want you to move 200 meters to the north, take the platoon 200 meters north. Roger that.

• 23:56Jocko Willink?

  That's what can happen nowadays. It's not good.

• 24:02Jocko Willink?

  In self-protection and for the good of the army, officers began to leave their accoutrements behind and play a less conspicuous role in advance. So now we're not wearing our, you know, our badges that say we're in charge. Role models such as Buller, who remained in the thick of the fighting at Calenso until wounded, became a thing of the past. Senior officers now kept further to the rear and the tactical role of junior officers was enhanced. In the early months of the war, the British were fortunate in that their unique organizational pattern of eight small companies per battalion allowed them to have sufficient complement of officers to weather the heavy early losses.

• 24:42Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, so now we're moving more towards decentralized command.

• 24:47Jocko Willink?

  Interestingly, it was the volunteers and militia. So the volunteers and militia, if you remember, these are like the reservists, people that were doing part-time. They proved most adaptable to new forms of warfare, probably because of their closer ties to civilian mode of thinking. They have open minds. At the Battle of Dorn Comp, the City of London Imperial Volunteers advanced by rushes and used covering fire while the Gordons were still moving in forward in relatively dressed lines. Cover and move.

• 25:20Jocko Willink?

  I love getting to the root of things.

• 25:23Jocko Willink?

  Like, that's, that, isn't that incredible? You have these civilians that are reservists, and they go, hey, guess what? You shoot, I'll move. They hadn't been taught that. They figured it out. You shoot, I'll move. When I get in a good spot, I'll shoot, you move. Ready, go. Meanwhile, the pros, the Gordons, were all ready, all rise, all forward, march. That's what they're doing. Yeah. It's like their, their, their creativity was trained out of them or something. Their creativity was trained. I always have to give that warning about discipline inside of a unit. Because if you have so much discipline inside of a unit, people stop thinking. Yeah. And that's the last thing, as a leader, that's the last thing you want. It's the last

• 26:05Jocko Willink?

  thing you want anywhere, right? You have a company. You don't want people to stop thinking about how to do things better. You have a jujitsu school. You want everyone just to learn the moves that you teach them and not think of anything? No. Creativity should be nurtured. Creativity should be watered, grown, and, and, and rewarded.

• 26:27Speaker 01

  You know, I keep thinking back to that, what you just said about like they, they didn't adjust their sights. Cause they weren't ordered to. So you ever watched Coming to America?

• 26:36Jocko Willink?

  So. Yes.

• 26:37Speaker 01

  So the, in the beginning, he was.

• 26:40Jocko Willink?

  Eddie Murphy.

• 26:41Speaker 01

  Eddie Murphy.

• 26:42Jocko Willink?

  Arsenio Hall.

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. So he was gonna get married. Uh, what do you call it? Uh, uh, an arranged marriage. Marriage. Where the, his wife is gonna be like the ultimate servant wife, right? And essentially she was like those people not adjusting the sights. Because they weren't ordered to because, because this lady was gonna do everything, like everything that he wanted, every single thing. And she proved it or whatever, just real briefly, it kinda, kinda went unnoticed this little part, but it made it kinda basically the same point. So.

• 27:13Jocko Willink?

  This movie had a lasting impact on your philosophies continuing.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Bro, I'm telling you, there's nuggets and Easter eggs in there, all in there. So he was like, hey. So you're gonna do everything, you know, he was like, hey, let me talk to you for a minute, right in the middle of the marriage ceremony. Let me talk to you for a minute in the back room, whatever. And he's like, she's like, yeah, at your service, whatever. And he's like, hey, um, so. I wanna get to know you. And he, she, she's like, yeah, I've just been raised to serve you. He's like, what kinda stuff you like? She's like, whatever you like. He's like, dang. He's like, so anything I tell you to do, you'll do. She's like, yep. It's like, anything I tell you, you'll do. She's like, yep. Like happy too. She, she, so he's like, hey, bark like a dog. She starts barking like a dog. He's like. Uh, who like orangutan or something like this. She starts doing, he's like, just hop on one leg. She starts doing it all at once, right?

• 28:00Speaker 01

  And he's like all confused. His dad walks in, he's like, oh, you guys are getting along, whatever. And he's like, um, he's like, oh. Please excuse us to the wife, right? Meanwhile, she's still hopping on one leg and who didn't like orangutan? Still, didn't get ordered to stop, that's why. He's like, hey, can you excuse us? You'd think she'd be like, okay, thanks. So walk out, she hops out. Still doing the orangutan thing. You see what I'm saying? She didn't get ordered to stop. Same thing. Even though it'd be kinda common knowledge, but she was trained her whole life to follow his orders. See what I'm saying? Same thing.

• 28:33Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting that that scene from that movie from nineteen eighty-four. Or eighty-six.

• 28:40Speaker 01

  Or whatever.

• 28:40Jocko Willink?

  Has just been floating around in your brain, waiting to get grabbed on to by the Boer Wars.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Bro, I'm telling you.

• 28:47Jocko Willink?

  And the London Imperial Volunteers.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Yes, same thing. Well.

• 28:52Jocko Willink?

  And their creativity versus the Gordons who are just hopping on one leg and hooting like harangatangs.

• 28:58Speaker 01

  Or yeah, or whatever.

• 28:59Jocko Willink?

  Cause they weren't ordered.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, the point there is these concepts are everywhere. You gotta watch out.

• 29:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying? So I'm with you.

• 29:08Jocko Willink?

  Be careful. The la- just like, was that Eddie Murphy's character or Arsenio Hall's character?

• 29:15Speaker 01

  In that scene?

• 29:16Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 29:16Speaker 01

  Eddie Murphy.

• 29:18Jocko Willink?

  Just like Eddie Murphy didn't want someone that lacked creativity, you as a leader do not want people that just are gonna follow orders.

• 29:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:27Jocko Willink?

  I know it's hard to understand that. But it's true.

• 29:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, after watching that movie, I understand it more clear for sure. But that's what was part of the point, though, of the movie, literally.

• 29:38Jocko Willink?

  Your, your analogy is proved by all authorities in present.

• 29:46Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on.

• 29:49Jocko Willink?

  The agile infantry of nineteen oh, the av- the agile infantryman of nineteen oh one, who ran and crawled across the battlefield relatively unencumbered by bulky equipment and directed primarily by whistles, was in marked contrast to the eighteen ninety-three image of the professional soldier, which still pervaded many of the regulations. So by nineteen oh one, they had advanced. They were, they were moving. They were, they were traveling lighter.

• 30:17Jocko Willink?

  Advances were now made under the cover of rolling barrage. And what is that? That's when you're launching artillery at people. So the other, so the enemy gets their head down and that's how you're gonna move. That's covered move. First demonstrated at the Battle of Peters Hill. Early, earlier methods that depended on accurate low angle of fire of shrapnel and high explosives on enemy positions proved ineffective. The avoidance of independent affrontal attacks wherever possible became matter of universal consensus as presented in infantry drill. So they have by the end of the war, realized frontal attacks no good.

• 30:54Jocko Willink?

  Psychological preparation for the bayonet assault went far beyond the military training and was reflected in numerous contemporary accounts and drawings. That such occurrences were rare was of little relevance. Interestingly, the boers claimed contempt for cold steel as no position or piece of terrain seemed worth dying for. Europeans used to fighting in far more restricted areas under strict discipline would on occasion stand and defend a position to the death.

• 31:25Jocko Willink?

  So this is the weird thing that they, they, they kept, they kind of kept this idea behind the bayonets and the cold steel. So there's an American journalist named Julian Ralph, and he had this little quote, "We have learned that even British valor displayed by a number of men equal to the foe is of no conclusive value under the new condition, and that if all modern armies could entrench themselves and then, and could then compel their enemies to meet them in frontal attack, war would be abandoned as soon as possible." Or sorry, would be abandoned as impossible. What he's saying there is if you could get,

• 32:09Jocko Willink?

  if you could get in an entrenched position and get your enemy to attack you, war would be abandoned because it would seem, it's impossible. You're not going to be able to take out these positions, not against. And, and, and what's crazy, this is what World War I is. Entrenched positions, attack, it doesn't work. A trench position attack doesn't work, doesn't work, doesn't work. And this guy, this American journalist is saying this in, in, you know, 1902.

• 32:38Jocko Willink?

  "Previously, the British were hesitant to adopt field entrenchments despite numerous contemporary experiences. To the contrary, they feared that a defensive psychology bred by reliance on field works, and by field works, they mean trenches and ditches and foxholes, did not bode well for a victorious army." Like that's a, that's a negative attitude. That's patent, right? We're not digging in. That means we're, we're defending. We're not defending, we're going on offense.

• 33:05Jocko Willink?

  Buller's famous pre-war Jack-in-the-Box memorandum, which I looked for, I couldn't find it, is perhaps the most indicative of the English way of war. Battles he felt could not be won by officers or men who ducked in action. Think about that. That's when you're telling your MMA fighter, "Hey, bro, don't, you need to just go out there and throw punches. And if you get hit, that's part of it. That's how you win, because you're a man. Don't, you don't need to, you don't need to move, you don't, don't worry about head movement.

• 33:40Jocko Willink?

  Pre-war army regulations recognized two types of entrenchments, the half-hour and the one-hour type, both of which were earth embankments and the one-hour,

• 33:53Jocko Willink?

  the one and a half feet high differing in width. So the only, they only had, the most you're gonna dig is a half an hour. You can't dig an effective foxhole in a half an hour. It's not happening. The British infantrymen did not even carry a shovel and was accustomed, per regulations, to native laborers or engineering building any necessary entrenchments. The final proof of this change in doctrine was the issuance of shovels to two-thirds of the infantry and light picks to the remainder by 1903. So by 1903, they realized, you know what? We gotta give two-thirds of these guys shovel, and the other guys, we gotta pick axes.

• 34:29Jocko Willink?

  Entrenching tools.

• 34:32Jocko Willink?

  It is ironic how many of the war's lessons for infantry could have been learned during peacetime. Be they the value of well-constructed entrenchments or lightened combat loads, the enhanced difficulty of reconnaissance, or the new dangers of the fire zone, the misplaced faith in the firing line as self-sufficient protection at long ranges, or the essential nature of the turning movement in combination with all frontal attacks.

• 34:59Jocko Willink?

  If they would have trained, that's saying if they would have trained harder, they would have been able to figure a lot of this stuff out.

• 35:09Jocko Willink?

  Now, as they looked at this, it's, there's a quote here, "The bulk of the British officers preferred to believe that failure was due to a lack of training and discipline." So, we start to get back, we start to head back in the wrong direction, that saying, "Hey, look, if our guys would have been more disciplined, then they could, they could, they could have done better."

• 35:31Jocko Willink?

  We're, we're not quite so 100% sure about that.

• 35:39Jocko Willink?

  It's, uh, it's the idea of, you know, when a jujitsu move isn't working? Like, if, if I'm showing you a footlock, and you're, you're saying, "Hey, the guy, you know, the guy's not tapping." And I look at your footlock and I say, "Do it harder." That's my, that's my recommendation.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Same deal.

• 35:59Jocko Willink?

  It's not good.

• 36:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:01Jocko Willink?

  Go harder is not an effective, uh, uh, way of correcting something that isn't working. I, I have, I run into this with businesses. Businesses will show me their, the strategy that they're using, their marketing plan, their growth plan, or whatever, and it's not working.

• 36:18Jocko Willink?

  And I say, "Well, so what are you gonna do now?" "Well, we're gonna do it, you know, we're gonna put more money into it, we're gonna do it harder." Look, sometimes you need to be overwhelming force, sure. But sometimes you gotta look at that and say, "Wait, we really haven't gotten to anywhere. And now we're just gonna go harder, pour more assets into this, squeeze harder on the foot? How hard should you have to squeeze on the foot for it to work? There's a different mistake that you're making, let's figure out what that is."

• 36:43Speaker 01

  Yes, when is the time to go harder? Maybe when it's kinda working?

• 36:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's why I'm saying, what ROI are you getting? Cause if I'm, if you're, if you're putting a footlock on me and I'm not barely even reacting to it, we're, we're, we're judging that as ineffective.

• 36:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:59Jocko Willink?

  And you start to squeeze hard, maybe I, maybe I feel it a little bit, but I'm barely, still not even reacting. If you see me start to react.

• 37:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 37:07Jocko Willink?

  What do you always say when you get a, when you get some little moment of, of beauty with me? You always go, "Ah, sense of urgency."

• 37:14Speaker 01

  Sense of urgency.

• 37:15Jocko Willink?

  So, if you see a sense of urgency, you know, you think, "Oh, okay, maybe I could go a little bit harder and make that, make something happen there."

• 37:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, then it does feel like it depends kinda on how hard you're going to begin with. Cause if you're maxing out and I sense a slight sense of urgency, I'm like, "Man, if I go harder, that's, might not be, you know, might be diminishing returns on that one." So it's like

• 37:37Jocko Willink?

  So yes, contrast your output with your ROI and see if you should just go harder.

• 37:46Speaker 01

  Because sometimes it's face it, Brad, just go harder and it'll work, you know?

• 37:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, sometimes it does. But there's probably a mistake that you're making, right? Most jujitsu moves, you shouldn't have to, you shouldn't have to, you shouldn't get tired doing a jujitsu submission.

• 38:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:04Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 38:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:05Jocko Willink?

  I mean, occasionally you like maybe some weird choke that your grip is getting tired.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, or even like in a competition where you're kind of like, maybe like you're focusing too hard on conservation or something like this. And this guy's kind of picking up the pace on you and it's a competition. So it's like, you know, a little different environment. You know, in a way, and then yeah, so maybe go a little bit harder. Even then, it's like, man, you could, you could think your way through that, you know? Unless you're admittedly, admittedly being lazy, then you could, you'd go harder, at least a little bit.

• 38:40Jocko Willink?

  When you're gonna go harder, you have to make sure that the direction that you're going is gonna be fruitful.

• 38:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:51Jocko Willink?

  You ever, when you're training, like you get, like, let's say someone's arm?

• 38:56Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 38:57Jocko Willink?

  You know, you know, you know who I do this to? Kind of Greg Train.

• 39:01Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 39:01Jocko Willink?

  Nick, he'll get a good, he put a bow and arrow choke on me. And I mean, it was legit, like he, and I had, you know, I had like a little bit of his gi and a little bit of my gi.

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:15Jocko Willink?

  And I just sat there. And you know, he went, and we were probably doing like six minute rounds.

• 39:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:21Jocko Willink?

  And he got it pretty quick.

• 39:24Jocko Willink?

  You know, he got it within, let's say, probably within two or three minutes. So he had three or four minutes of me.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:32Jocko Willink?

  And I just kind of had the, you know, bit down and kind of flex my neck and I'm holding his gi and my gi.

• 39:41Jocko Willink?

  And I had, I had pretty good grips on both. You know what I mean? Like, you know, you happen to get like the, you ha- I happen to get a good grip. And Greg Train admittedly is smaller than me as well, but he went hard.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Went harder.

• 39:54Jocko Willink?

  For four minutes.

• 39:57Jocko Willink?

  And let's face it, what is the drop dead time for a bow and arrow choke to work? Like, at what point do you say, hey, it's been forty five seconds? And this guy did not tap and I put my knee in his back and I arched hard and I pulled hard and this guy didn't tap. The rest of probably from forty five seconds on is a waste of energy.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially if you're pull, if you're, if.

• 40:23Jocko Willink?

  You're maxed out.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  The strategy is to pull, you know, like that's it right there. I mean, that's not counting like, you know, cause you can make adjustments. And it could take like a good three minutes sometimes. Let me adjust here. Try, okay, that didn't work.

• 40:35Jocko Willink?

  He had entered the submission attempt. He was no longer setting up. He had entered the submission. This was to make me tap.

• 40:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:44Jocko Willink?

  And I just sat there. And so anyways, uh, I can't remember if he held on till the, the round ended. I don't think he did. I think, you know, with thirty seconds left, he let go and we, you know, but he was just done after that. He was so gassed. He was gassed like he just did a twenty minute MetCon.

• 41:09Jocko Willink?

  Check your ROI.

• 41:10Speaker 01

  Whatever, man. I can't, I can't help but kind of relate to him a little bit. Cause you get into that position where the manual submission's in on Jaco? Shoot, you think I'm gonna risk adjusting or abandoning you? No, no, no, no, no. I'm going for it straight up. I'm beelining for that submission.

• 41:28Jocko Willink?

  You're just gonna maintain.

• 41:29Speaker 01

  Do or die.

• 41:30Jocko Willink?

  But seriously, you get me in a bow and arrow choke and there's, it's been forty five seconds. Think about how long forty five seconds is. That's a long time. And it doesn't work? You're gonna keep pulling?

• 41:44Speaker 01

  No, no, not at all. But, but I am saying that I can relate for sure with the attitude for sure. The, well, I wonder, did he see you? Uh, did you, did he see that you had that grip?

• 41:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  Yeah. So a lot of times, yeah, after the forty five seconds, you're like, bro, that grip is jamming me up. So that's the issue. The issue is in my choke. It's that grip right there.

• 42:03Jocko Willink?

  How good of a job did I do?

• 42:07Jocko Willink?

  Of giving him a false sense of hope.

• 42:10Speaker 01

  That's a good question.

• 42:11Jocko Willink?

  Like, how much did I go?

• 42:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 42:14Jocko Willink?

  Right? How much did I? Like, give that to him, where he's thinking it must be close and it's not close.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  I know, bruh, that's, yeah. That's such an interesting strategy to do.

• 42:24Jocko Willink?

  I do that with Dean, and Dean just laughs. Dean knows that I'm lying.

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, sometimes when you do it, it's like you have a tone of condescending.

• 42:31Jocko Willink?

  I do it to you, I, when I do it to you, I absolutely will have a tone of condescending. I'm, I'm just saying your move is ineffective.

• 42:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:42Jocko Willink?

  You know, and then you go.

• 42:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, bruh, that's my, that's my torment, for sure.

• 42:51Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. There was, this is a fast forward, there was, however, one aspect of British pacification policy that did cast lasting disgrace upon their methods, the concentration camps. The military gave three pretexts for their existence. First, they were meant to protect the isolated Boer families whose men had gone off to fight. Second, they were meant to separate the commandos from the supplies and intelligence that their families could provide. And third, it was claimed that the subsequent isolation would force the Burgers to surrender. Twenty-eight thousand whites and fourteen thousand Africans died in these camps of various diseases. The reasons for this disaster were many.

• 43:33Jocko Willink?

  Again, modern war, this is our first real look at, at concentration camps.

• 43:39Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, I, I don't know, I don't know what the intent is, and we'll have to study more to find out the intent.

• 43:51Jocko Willink?

  I could see both sides. I could see the intent of being those things that they talk about. Hey, we wanted to protect them, we wanted to keep their supply lines separate. Like, I could see that as the intent. I could also see the intent as, we, we've been here for two and a half years, and we're not winning, and we're gonna break their will to fight by, by killing them, by putting them in these, in these camps and making their lives miserable for their families. That's a- I mean, that's, I don't know what 27 movies you're about to bring up. But you know, the movie where the movie is like, hey, you know, the cops ready to, ready to, you know, do something to the bad guy and then they pull, pull up in the car and there's the, there's the cops kid.

• 44:34Jocko Willink?

  Right? Like they, they go to the family and that's what breaks the guy. That's what makes him have to comply. So it seems like maybe, and again, I don't have the research on this, but I could see it being either way that, that the, the, the, the public facing, hey, we're just trying to protect them. But behind the scenes, guess what? We're gonna, we're gonna take their families and see how much they want to fight. Once we've got their families and that is jacked up and they admitted that that's why they kind of broke. It's one of the major reasons why they broke. True lies. True lies. That's one of the movies where they do that. Um. Arnold. But they have Jamie Lee Curtis in the end. Who do they do? No, they took the daughter.

• 45:17Jocko Willink?

  Oh, isn't it in one of the Lethal Weapon movies too? Yep. Yeah. See, this is a common theme. Brother, that's how. Yeah, that's a good move. Really? When you think about it, it's a good move. Yeah. It's effective. You get that. So that's what I'm saying. People go, you know what? This is a good move. We're gonna get their families. And it's, and, and it's messed up. Even if their intent wasn't to let him die and starve and die of disease, even if their intent was to, we just have your families. And that's just jacked up in its own right. Some leverage in that one. Male boo or prisoners of war generally fared better than their families since the army had at least some experience in this area. And was aiming at reconciliation.

• 45:59Jocko Willink?

  So you got soldiers that go into prisoner of war, at least they understand how to soldier. At least they understand how to, you know, clean and, and, and stay disease free. Whereas the families had no idea.

• 46:15Jocko Willink?

  By May 1902, after two and a half years of fighting, the cost in morale, physical and monetary terms had made itself felt on both sides. The guerrilla war had inflicted more than twice the casualties of the conventional phase on both sides. Attrition became the critical factor, the deliberate destruction of 30,000 farms.

• 46:37Jocko Willink?

  Hundreds of square miles of farmland, three, or sorry, 6.3 million sheep, filled Britain with a sense of guilt. The leader of the opposition was moved to question the supposed methods of barbarism in Parliament. Stripping the country had only hardened the Boers' reserve. Concentration camps proved both expensive and debilitating on the British's will to win. So, you know, this is sort of like a Vietnam situation where the, the people back in America are looking at what's going on in Vietnam and seeing it, seeing it as a nightmare. And that's sort of what they're saying here, that the British are seeing what's happening or hearing about what's happening. And they're starting to have a sense of guilt about it.

• 47:25Jocko Willink?

  Not even the vast wealth of Britain could sustain the seemingly endless struggle in South Africa in the face of increasingly uneasy domestic and hostile international opinion. So you also got the world looking at him going, hey, what are you guys doing down there? You got the, you got the women and children dying in concentration camps? We're not okay with that.

• 47:47Jocko Willink?

  The cumulative effect of these various factors was to soften the terms ultimately offered to and accepted by the Boers in May of 1902. The reasons given for their surrender included the devastation of country, fear of those in concentration camps, an increasingly hostile native population, loss of property, and an inability to keep British prisoners.

• 48:08Jocko Willink?

  From the British perspective, these were more psychological than military causes for victory. As late as, so think about that. And we've covered that multiple military strategy tactics, like you break the will of the people. It's not a, hey, we beat you on the battlefield here, there, or wherever, but when you break their will, psychologically, that's how you're gonna win, and that's exactly what happened here.

• 48:35Jocko Willink?

  As late as December 25th, 1901, the Times of London still spoke of large areas of South Africa where columns of less than 600 men could be overwhelmed. Over 21,000 boers now laid down their arms to the British, a force equal in numbers to that with which they started the war. Of the 24,000 boers who died in the war, only 4,000 could properly be judged as dying in combat. The remaining 20,000 consisted primarily of women and children, victims of the camps.

• 49:07Jocko Willink?

  The British lost 22,000 men, two-thirds of whom died from disease. In the end, superior numbers, wealth, and will to power had won out in conjunction, conjunction with a radically reformed approach to modern warfare.

• 49:25Jocko Willink?

  And, and, and,

• 49:28Jocko Willink?

  yeah, again, this is a modern war where, you know, you've got civilians dying. It's a freaking nightmare. And you also have the big imperial power with all the strength and all the might and all the people and all the supplies.

• 49:45Jocko Willink?

  You know, kind of coming to a draw with a bunch of peasants, with farmers, with untrained guerrillas. You know, like we're gonna see, well, like we're gonna see in Vietnam, like we're gonna see in Afghanistan, like we're gonna see in Iraq.

• 50:12Jocko Willink?

  The last section really gets into how this, how those things that were learned are put into play. And they talk about Roberts here and, and what his emphasis was on administration and communication. And they actually started bringing naval officers in to help because naval officers had a good reputation for being, you know, good at communication, good administration. You know, the Navy,

• 50:44Jocko Willink?

  the Navy is a very logistically heavy organization. You've got ships at sea. They have to be fueled. You have sailors on board that need to be fed. Like, there's an administrative part of it that is incredibly challenging. And you've got to do all this while you're on the ocean.

• 51:05Jocko Willink?

  So they're good at that. The Navy is very good at that. Roberts also eliminated outdated exams and encouraged personal evaluation of senior officers in order to get people advanced. So that was solid. Greater importance was placed on field work during the increasing numbers of maneuvers held in the decade after the war. So after the war, they're looking around going, "We better train. We better fix the way we're training and we better fix who we're putting into these good positions, these officer positions, who we putting in there."

• 51:43Jocko Willink?

  It was claimed that of the 40,000 dead or wounded suffered by both sides in the war, only 50

• 51:50Jocko Willink?

  were a result of the sword or the lance. "In the light of the Dickinsons committees finding that a more prominent position must be given to the training of cavalry soldier and the use of the fire weapon. The carbine, despite its greater lighter weight, gave way to the longer ranged Lee Enfield short rifle and the British thus became the only rifle armed cavalry in Europe in 1914." The survival of the sword as a secondary weapon. So they kept, they kept, they kept the sword on hand.

• 52:23Jocko Willink?

  Listen to this. You know that term stick in the mud?

• 52:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:26Jocko Willink?

  Like, oh, that guy's a stick in the mud, doesn't wanna change. No, doesn't wanna change. Hey, he's, hey, we're doing this new, we're gonna start working, you know, go-go plata. And like, oh, I like to stick with the old stuff. You know what I mean? Like, stick in the mud. They don't wanna change.

• 52:39Speaker 01

  Holy cow, I thought that meant useless, like, this whole time.

• 52:42Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no. Stick in the mud. Yep. Stick in the mud. Means you don't wanna change.

• 52:50Jocko Willink?

  The survival of the sword as a secondary weapon was a testament to its original pervasiveness and the disinclination to waste all the material and training previously invested. So they'll also have, what's that bias called, Mr. Bias?

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Which one?

• 53:04Jocko Willink?

  You invested a lot into, oh, it's what is it? The lost investment bias?

• 53:09Speaker 01

  Oh, sunk cost fallacy.

• 53:10Jocko Willink?

  Sunk cost fallacy. So here we go. They invest, they bought all these swords, and then they trained all these people on how to use the swords. They're like, hey, we bought them, we trained people, we're gonna stick with them. It was claimed that the lance interfered with a very cavalry funk function, saved the charge for encumbered dismounting, firing, and concealment. Regarded as inferior to the sword and protracted melee's and difficult to master when little time or money could be spared for a third weapon, the lance was consigned to the dustbin of history. Maintenance of the sword, on the other hand, rested upon tradition, its cheapness as compared to a pistol, and the fact that it was always loaded. Like, I can, I can, I can poke myself in the room to the

• 53:50Jocko Willink?

  military group that's sitting around talking of discussing, should we get pistols or should we give swords? And someone's, someone's in the back. You know, some old school guys in the back saying, what are we gonna give these? Another gun? They already have a gun. What happens if they run out of bullets? You know, what happens if they need to take time to load that thing? Your sword is always loaded. You know, and it's, hey, well, you can't really argue with that. And the old man in the back wins. And we keep, we keep making swords and keep training people in the swords. So I, I thought that that was interesting.

• 54:23Jocko Willink?

  We also have a section here saying in snow, fog and dusk or dawn, the, the, uh, they still thought that the sword could win battles.

• 54:31Speaker 01

  How big is that sword?

• 54:32Jocko Willink?

  I don't know, probably just the normal length you'd think a sword to be, like, you know, three, three or four feet.

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know, seems big.

• 54:40Jocko Willink?

  I have a Navy sword.

• 54:41Speaker 01

  Seems cumbersome.

• 54:42Jocko Willink?

  It's ceremonial.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, you don't can carry it around though, right?

• 54:46Jocko Willink?

  I did not carry my, my sword into combat.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, that makes sense.

• 54:52Jocko Willink?

  The return to more traditional cavalry tactics was fraught with difficulties. Years of training led to broad fronted attacks to avoid concentric fire. Concentric fire, meaning we're surrounding the area and we're starting to have blue on blue situations taking place.

• 55:07Jocko Willink?

  By 1911, it was clear that the reactionaries had won the day in the matter of cavalry tactics. Other armies constricted, conscript infantry, it was believed could never stand a charge. That's an arrogant statement. Hey, look, we will continue to do these mounted charges because a bunch of conscripts, draftees, they're not going to withstand the charge. You can hear the British talking about, no, no one would be able to withstand one of our charges, a bunch of conscripts.

• 55:37Jocko Willink?

  Furthermore, faith was placed in tactical imponderables such as ammunition giving out or that some local condition would lead to surprise or a major battlefield role despite evidence to the contrary provided by the Boer War. So they, they would, they would still talk, I, I, I've been in so many of these conversations as things start to, new tactics come out. I've been in so many of these conversations because I was in training for a long time. I mean, I was in training as a, as a young enlisted SEAL for, I don't know, a couple of years. I was at, at training cell at SEAL Team One, which was a good crew of guys.

• 56:22Jocko Willink?

  Master Chief faculty was in charge. It was just legit. But, you know, we had all these little discussions, some new tactic or whatever. And then once the war started, it was on because now we had to make sure we figured out our tactics and make them right. And there's always, you know, people with differing opinions.

• 56:41Jocko Willink?

  I'll tell you what, I used to sit, I probably pulled so much leadership, understanding from sitting in those meetings and not saying anything, just seeing two people dig in. And getting a fight over, should you do this, or should you do that? I could, that's why these, as I hear these things being talked about, I can, I can picture it. You know, I can picture someone saying, there's no way no could stand a charge from our cavalry unit. It's impossible to think. Cause you do think that, you know, you know where else this happens? You ever, uh, like, like I'll, I've trained fighters. And you think there's no way that this could ever happen. And sure enough, it happens. Because it's a fight.

• 57:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:27Jocko Willink?

  And anything can happen in a fight.

• 57:29Speaker 01

  Way more wild. The, you know how like when someone does like a self-defense demonstration? It's like, sure, okay, someone's holding your neck here, so you hit them to the rib cage. And that'll bring their hands down here, right? So like their whole instruction or demonstration kind of relies upon the enemy to react or not withstand certain charges that you're throwing at them, you know? And so, and then you compare it to like a real fight or whatever, like every once in a while, yeah, like you'll hit a guy in his liver and his hands will come all the way down, he'll recoil in this like way or whatever, but yeah, every once in a while, but probably hardly ever, really, when you consider how many punches and kicks are thrown to the, to the ribs, you know?

• 58:13Jocko Willink?

  Totally.

• 58:14Speaker 01

  It's like, bro, that's not gonna happen.

• 58:15Jocko Willink?

  And here's what's even worse than that. When I say to you, hey, you, when you grab me by the neck and I punch you in the ribs, your grip is gonna get loose for a second.

• 58:29Jocko Willink?

  And then you say, well, it might not, and I go, okay. Hold my neck and then I just punch you in the ribs. And you know, cause we're not in a fight, we're just kind of standing there and I catch you off guard and punch you in the ribs, you know, I gave you a nice body shot. Yeah, your hands get a little loose, but you're not trying to kill me at that moment. You're, you're got, you weren't even ready for it. And so therefore I reinforce the idea. It's like if the, in this situation, if I said, okay, I'll tell you what, mate. I'll tell you what, why don't you go down there and stand with your troops? And I'm just gonna charge at you and see who can stand there. It's like, no one's gonna stand there.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I remember my wife's brother one time. I don't know if he was just openly refuting the effectiveness of jujitsu or what, but he was like, he like, basically like, I just do pressure points on you.

• 59:25Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  But not the kind of I'm gonna hit you in a

• 59:28Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no, no, I know exactly.

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Like, I'm gonna put my finger.

• 59:30Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna put my finger on you.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  And then

• 59:31Jocko Willink?

  Dimak.

• 59:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, all these things. And then, so you kind of think like, first off, like, you kind of consider it for a second, you know, like, man, what if, what if he does really put it, the pressure point on me or whatever. And I'm thinking, okay, all the times I've been training and competing or whatever, like, what if someone put a pressure point on me? Like during jujitsu, I don't think I would ever, I don't think you'd even feel it in a competition. That's what I'm thinking, right? I was like, even the most, I mean, really, what's a pressure point? The one behind your ear, you know, your jaw and like these other, he did one like by my neck, like in the center. And I was like, hmm, interesting. So I was like, okay. And I realized like, yeah, bro, you won't feel pressure points when you're for real fighting. So I was like, all right, even when you're just training.

• 1:00:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:13Speaker 01

  Like, bro, you're not gonna feel that. So I was like, all right, do it. And I just, I was like, okay, like, we're kind of fighting. Just in my mind, I wasn't getting like fired up outwardly or nothing and did it. I was like, oh, pressure point. And Brad, all you have to do is be like, okay, this pressure point is dumb. And then when he puts it on, you don't feel it. But put it this way, like, if I'm just cruising next to you or something, even like you, and I start like digging into the back of your ear, you're gonna be like, oh, it's gonna make you move. Just because it's like, bro, your mind's not like on that thing right now.

• 1:00:43Jocko Willink?

  I had a guy, this was, this was, I might have been training jujitsu for like,

• 1:00:49Jocko Willink?

  maybe six months. And I had a, you remember this term, traditional martial artist?

• 1:00:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I forgot about the, I forgot about the abbreviation. So I had a traditional martial artist who is talking to me about, well, you know, I pressure point this and you know, this blah, blah, blah. And of course, bro, you think I'm fired up for jujitsu now? You should have seen how fired up I was for jujitsu when I'd been training for six months. I mean, I was ready to rock and roll at any time. And so this guy, who, he was a SEAL too. And you know, he, you know, you know how, he had like the whole thing going on, the whole kind of, you know, mystical sort of vibe, you know, talking about how well.

• 1:01:39Jocko Willink?

  And you know what I'm saying? I have no mystical vibe whatsoever. I'm like, let's fight.

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that doesn't.

• 1:01:44Jocko Willink?

  Let's fight.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:01:46Jocko Willink?

  And, and we actually, in this particular situation we were in, I had mats, because as soon as I started training, I got mats. So I had mats three feet outside of my office in the day in where I was working at the time. So, you know, he starts talking to us, I'm like, hey, let's fight. Okay, so cool. And I think I actually started in the bottom, on the bottom. And he tried to pressure point my neck, you know, my neck, and I arm locked the shit out of him. You know, just, you know, he's in my guard. He's giving me, you can't give, you can't deliver anyone a more beautiful arm lock.

• 1:02:28Jocko Willink?

  Then holding your arms straight on their neck and trying to dig your thumb into their trachea or whatever, whatever the pressure point is.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:36Jocko Willink?

  And of course, I was like, whack. You know, I made like a face like it, like I cared. And then just slapped the psycho arm lock on. And yeah, that was my, the end of my belief in pressure points.

• 1:02:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:51Jocko Willink?

  They would, you know, there'd always be guys that would have, some of the prisoner handling techniques would be, what they call it, they called it pain compliance.

• 1:03:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:03:01Jocko Willink?

  Right? Oh, you can do this like under your nose, but you know, above your lip and above, under your nose is like, oh, you'll make people, but man, if you're at all fired up to use your term.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:03:12Jocko Willink?

  You can just grit through that, you know? And it's different because if you have, because they used to use that, if you want to choke someone, you put your finger under the nose and you can lift their chin. Try that to somebody that's angry.

• 1:03:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:03:25Jocko Willink?

  No, what you have to do is, and what, what's lame is, all you have to do is actually just choke their face. You just put a rear naked choke on their face and then it'll open up and you'll crush their jaw and it's all nasty and it hurts. That's pain compliance.

• 1:03:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, and so, yeah, when you kind of think about it, because like you're right, like, okay, so doing that, the, the nose thing, like when you want to lift up their head. Oh, yeah, I do that.

• 1:03:47Jocko Willink?

  Did you learn that jujitsu?

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it, it does work in jujitsu in training.

• 1:03:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  And it can work in competition too, but you're, you make a good point when you say try do it to someone who's mad.

• 1:03:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:58Speaker 01

  Usually even in competition, people aren't mad.

• 1:04:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  It's like, it's like sport, like it even feels like a sport, especially the more you train. Like in the beginning, it kind of feels like a little fight because you're like, oh, whatever. But in training, it'll work because you're not, no one's mad. It's like, oh, that, that like, that's more pain than this whole role has presented. So like your head just kind of naturally does it.

• 1:04:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:19Speaker 01

  But if you're mad or if you're ready for it, like if someone's like, oh, I know this guy always does this and you don't let it affect you, it won't affect you.

• 1:04:27Jocko Willink?

  Here's what's really jacked up. It, you know, you and I both pretty much agree that it doesn't work if you're mad.

• 1:04:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:34Jocko Willink?

  And when it happens to you, you get madder. So it works even less.

• 1:04:38Speaker 01

  Even less, I know, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can see that little, little sequence for sure.

• 1:04:43Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 1:04:47Jocko Willink?

  Continuing forward, volley fire was obsolete as the skirmishing infantry were now limited to using it only as ranging techniques, reconnaissance, observation, dispersion, and above all marksmanship were now stressed. So this is still right after the war.

• 1:05:04Jocko Willink?

  Roberts, the ever proponent of marksmanship, eliminated the old bullseye and replaced it with modern, smaller, moving and disappearing head and shoulder targets that appeared at unknown ranges and forced the men to judge distance for themselves. By 1907, the, the qualification involved 180 shots, over half of which were at range of between 300 and 600 yards. So that's awesome. That's, that's an incredible improvement to go from shooting bullseyes. And you know, I always heard that this came in America after World War I, that that's when they started shooting so man saved silhouette targets and moving targets. But here you go, this is pre-World War I.

• 1:05:53Jocko Willink?

  Had the British responded to increasing firepower by a recourse to harsher discipline and a ready acceptance of higher losses, as did some of their continental brethren, they would no doubt have evolved a different set of principles. So, so the British, instead of responding to increasing firepower by harsher discipline, because you know, what I could say as a leader is, hey, when the machine gun shoots, we need to go. And when it doesn't work, we go harder and it's still not going to work. That's what some of the Continentals did. So, as it was, they preferred to recast their system into a more intelligent, less mechanical soldiery. Following Robert's dictates first proclaimed

• 1:06:35Jocko Willink?

  in November of 1900, the British solution was a reasoned response to the realization in South Africa that officers could no longer be heard and dared not be conspicuous. This is just such an important aspect. Every aspect of modern warfare emphasized the individual. Dispersion, which means spreading out. Independent fire, which means selecting your own targets. Use of cover, which is sacred. Intermittent rushes, which means we're going to go whenever we feel like it's the right time to go, not just when everyone tells us to go, not just when we're ordered to go. And the sheer scale and intensity of the battle. The greater psychological isolation

• 1:07:18Jocko Willink?

  on the battlefield had to be overcome so that the loss of five men in 25 advancing over 250 yards would hardly stop and advance, while it was known that 50 out of 250 would. So, this is just, this, this whole little paragraph is, is so important to understand that the British had learned lessons and had actually come up with an effective way of fighting in a modern way.

• 1:07:48Jocko Willink?

  An indication of the new British attitude was the substitution of infantry training for infantry drill in the 1902 manual. The combined training manual which applied to all ranks addressed this issue directly. Success in war. And here it is, success in war cannot be expected unless all ranks have been trained in peace to use their wits. We want people to think generals and commanding officers are therefore not only to encourage their subordinates in doing so by affording them constant opportunities of acting on their own responsibility. They will also check all practices.

• 1:08:31Jocko Willink?

  So that means stop all practices which interfere with the free exercise of judgment and will break down by every means in their power, the paralyzing habit of an unreasoning and mechanical adherence to the letter of orders and to routine when acting under service conditions. Can you believe that? That's, that's what we talk about all the time. That's what we talk about all the time at Islam front. That's what decentralized command is. Every leader is a thinking person. We want everybody to lead. That's what they're talking about. We want to set a culture where if you, where we want you to think outside the box and we want to stop anything that prevents people from making decisions and showing initiative.

• 1:09:16Jocko Willink?

  Captains, so that's a pretty low ranking officer, were not only granted more independence, but were also forced to take a hand in the education of subalterns, a role traditionally managed by the Colonel. So now we're looking at our, our, our captains and saying, you better train these young lieutenants, get them up to speed with anticipate, with the anticipated isolation of the battlefield. And just to reemphasize what they mean by isolation of the battlefield, we're all spread out. There's 300 people over, you know, a mile front. We are not close to each other. So you get psychological isolation. How are you going to act when you're alone? And you get the actual isolation of being separated from, maybe from the other people that are with you, maybe from your squad, but definitely from the senior leadership.

• 1:09:59Jocko Willink?

  With the anticipated isolation of the battlefield and constantly intermingled lines, it seemed a necessity to develop informed and assured officers to prevent rearward drift.

• 1:10:13Jocko Willink?

  Smaller British companies with 120 men as compared to continental units twice their size seemed especially well suited to increased individual training now required. So they made the units a little bit smaller. Key elements of new training for infantrymen included practice at various intervals and pacing, accuracy of maintained direction, use of cover and independent fire, familiarization with intermixed units, and the development and acceptance of interchangeable command necessitated by casualties sustained among leaders. This is everything we used to run and trade at. Oh, we're gonna put all your leaders down. You're gonna use cover, you're gonna use independent fire, you're gonna mix up your units. The post-war developments entire thrust

• 1:10:56Jocko Willink?

  was toward a simplification of techniques that would allow for mastery by the lowest ranking soldier, keeping things simple. The Provisional Infantry Manual of 1902 went so far as to eliminate several traditional drill positions and all field bugle calls except the charge. So they're getting rid of, the reason you have a field bugle call is so that you can tell a mass of people to do everything at the same time. And they're getting rid of all those to say, hey, individual leader, you know, subordinate leaders out there make things happen. The only one they keep is the charge. And why is that? Probably because that British bravado and courage is still, is still a

• 1:11:40Jocko Willink?

  real thing. And because if you have one emergency situation, you want to at least be able to say, hey, look, we better freaking just charge, hit the call. Physical and bayonet drills were brought down to the squad level and the company replaced the battalion as the training tactical unit since it was regarded as the largest force commandable by an individual under battle conditions. So they used to try and direct 500 or 700 people by one man. Now they're down to a company of 120. The new manual stressed the many lessons of the war and was so recognized even at the time noted, for example, the tasks allotted infantry upon the occupation of a position,

• 1:12:25Jocko Willink?

  the forward placement of skirmishers with an eye to maximizing firepower, camouflage, utilizations of rests, determination of ranges and clearing of fire zones. So many tasks on so low a level necessitated a soldier who could think for himself. All those things, we still do those things. We get into a position, we get into a perimeter, machine gunners are checking out, they're getting in position, they're camouflaging themselves, they're getting covered position. You've got the point man figuring out where the extract will be, everyone's doing this stuff decentralized. So many tasks on so low a level, that's what we're talking about.

• 1:13:08Jocko Willink?

  But the initiative, the impetus toward greater initiative by all ranks in the tactical sphere was one of relatively short duration as military emphasis began to shift toward continental warfare. So you had all these great changes taking place, the lessons learned from the Boer War. And they started to get influenced by, they started to get influenced by what the continental armies were doing, the French, the Germans, the Russians, which was the old school stuff. The newer tactics were based on the belief that success in war depends on morale, depends

• 1:13:51Jocko Willink?

  more on morale than on physical qualities. Same thing. So they're saying, look, it doesn't matter, it doesn't matter, these little running around in skirmish lines and all that and taking cover, that's not what's important, what's important is the morale. Skill, this is what they thought, skill, this is a quote, "Skill cannot compensate for want of courage, energy and determination." Boy, is that a lie. No one wants to hear this, that's a lie.

• 1:14:25Jocko Willink?

  You think your skill, that's like the tough guy, right? That rolls into the gym. Hey dude, this you have a courageous guy rolling in off the street. You know, he's courageous, he's fired up, so he has energy, he's super determined. I'll take someone in here. Cool. Roll with Jeffy Glover over there.

• 1:14:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz guys will say that too, right? Like, oh, I don't, I don't care how trained you are. Like, I'm like ferocious.

• 1:14:50Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. That used to be, I mean, there was, there was definitely a time when that was a much more prominent thought, right? Well, if it really went down, bro, I would just get nuts on you, you know? And you're just looking at him going, I'll tell you what, why don't you get nuts right now?

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  Well, and you know, when you really think about it, though, it's like, okay, you can kind of understand why someone who doesn't know any better would think that. Because remember back in the day when you're like a little kid? And the guy can be bigger than you, but in Hawaii, I mean, I'm sure they say they have an expression. In Hawaii, they call it amping out. So if you just amp out on a guy, you can, you could take him for a couple of reasons. One, you're just going like you feel less pain and you're just going and whatever, and you have all this crazy energy or whatever.

• 1:15:40Jocko Willink?

  Well, you know what that is? That's surprise violence of action.

• 1:15:43Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:15:45Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna get nuts.

• 1:15:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, get nuts.

• 1:15:47Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna amp out on a dude. It's gonna be surprised, it's gonna be violence of action. You're gonna get the upper, the tactical upper hand, and now this dude's days and that's how you win. That is a factual thing.

• 1:15:56Speaker 01

  And you just go and, yeah, and you can even.

• 1:15:58Jocko Willink?

  It's a factual thing with two untrained.

• 1:16:02Speaker 01

  People, exactly.

• 1:16:03Jocko Willink?

  I just realized, hey, I just said that's a factual thing, and it sounded like I was saying that that would work. It works if you're, if you're going against someone that's equally as untrained as your dumb ass is.

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  Exactly right. And that's the point. So you get a guy off the street, bro, that's usually how they are. They don't know. They have no idea what like, they think that if you get a choke on them, that they did some sneak attack lucky thing or something like that's what I feel that they just don't know. So yeah, it makes sense that they think that, you know, you can kind of understand.

• 1:16:30Jocko Willink?

  That's where let's go again comes from.

• 1:16:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, big time.

• 1:16:33Jocko Willink?

  When someone's like, oh, I'll take that jujitsu stuff, whatever. You're not gonna, it's not gonna work on me. Cool. You choke him, and then they get up and they go.

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  Let's go again.

• 1:16:43Jocko Willink?

  You're like, cool, let's go again.

• 1:16:45Speaker 01

  Yeah. Remember those, those Gracie in action videos, remember those like that was how, how they, and the guy was like, they'd be like, oh, let's go again. I just need to just go harder. Really? That's literally what they'd say, you know, and it's like the same deal, the same deal, the same deal.

• 1:16:59Jocko Willink?

  The outcome is always the same.

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  But I can't, you know, can't do nothing. You know why though? And I remembered, I remembered this too, where, you know, before you know jujitsu and someone winds up in a good posi-, like let's say you just get in a big scramble in a real fight. And you just wind up in this weird and they get you deep in some headlock or something like that, right? Cause you were just scrambling and whatever, you wound up in a headlock. A lot of times jujitsu positions feel like randomly like landed on positions. If you don't know jujitsu. So if someone has you like in the mount or on your back or whatever, and you feel like real like kind of helpless, you're like, oh, this seems like we just sort of landed here, you know? So if I just go harder and maybe keep my, my eyes open a little bit better or whatever.

• 1:17:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I see what you're saying. So, so you're saying for the victim of jujitsu.

• 1:17:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:50Jocko Willink?

  That person doesn't understand that the position that you ended up in is a position that you know.

• 1:17:57Speaker 01

  Very, it's deliberate. Yes, very.

• 1:18:00Jocko Willink?

  And that it has an outcome.

• 1:18:01Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:18:02Jocko Willink?

  Which is known.

• 1:18:03Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly right. But yeah, if you don't know jujitsu, it feels like, oh, he, we just sort of wound up there. Cause we don't have like jujitsu is like this map, even though the map and I talk about this like, you know, if we're talking to people who don't have training yet. The map of jujitsu side mount, mount guard, like half guard, like all this stuff or whatever, super clear. When you know jujitsu, it's super clear. You know exactly where you are at, at pretty much every moment of a jujitsu situation, winning or losing. But if you don't know jujitsu, it all just seems like kind of like a whirlwind. Like you, you ask somebody, oh, do you remember like if your leg was over his leg or under his leg?

• 1:18:38Jocko Willink?

  They would have no idea what you're talking about.

• 1:18:40Speaker 01

  But if you're, if you know jujitsu, you'd be like, no, I remember one leg was over, one leg was under. It was total half guard situation. Like I don't, there's a lot of things that I don't remember. I do remember every single position for sure.

• 1:18:50Jocko Willink?

  And you know what's cool? When I would train young leaders, SEAL leaders and put them through dynamic situations where they had to make calls and make decisions and it's this exact same thing, you know? And I'd say, well, where, where were you getting shot at from? Was it from this building or this building and they would have no idea? Or, you know, where did you place your machine gunners? They would have no idea what happened. Or, do you think you have all your people? And they would have no idea. And then the better that they got, the more training we put them through, the more they understood the positions, the more they would recollect what was happening, the more they could see what was actually happening as it was happening.

• 1:19:29Jocko Willink?

  And that's the way you need to train. The more time you spend training for these pressure situations, the more you're gonna see, the better control you're gonna have. The better mind control you're gonna have. Cause that's a whole part of it. You know, that's one of the best reasons for jujitsu being so good for self-defense is you're used to getting, you're used to having somebody grab a hold of you and grind on your freaking head. And grab hold of you. That's why also you need to spend some time boxing and doing Muay Thai. Cause if you don't know what that little crack feels like, and it happens to you for the first time, you're gonna, you're gonna get, you're gonna get beat down.

• 1:20:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially in the face.

• 1:20:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:20:19Speaker 01

  Get someone punch you in the nose or whatever, it's like, it's not nothing.

• 1:20:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:23Speaker 01

  It'll jam you up for sure.

• 1:20:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Guts to be careful.

• 1:20:29Jocko Willink?

  Uh, continuing on. New criteria had to be drawn as to which qualities were desired in the infantry. By 1906, Ian Hamilton, and you gotta read the book if you wanna get all the background on Ian Hamilton, was unfavorably equating initiative and intelligence with smartness on the parade field. As a cause of rapidity and cohesion of movement. And so what he's saying is, hey, initiative and intelligence is, is kind of moving us away from cohesion. When we're, when we're on the drill, when we're on the drill field. Another guy Hague's belief that the war of masses necessitates mass tactics led to a tightening

• 1:21:14Jocko Willink?

  up of British formations to mean a density of one man per yard in an advancing line by 1911. So we can see that this is a nightmare. So this guy is saying, this guy Hague is saying, hey, mass, war of masses means mass tactics. We need to function together. And that leads to if we're going to function together, we better be close together to the tune of one man per yard. That's a nightmare. This in turn was recognized as an overreaction to the South African extension, since it seemed far easier to concentrate men on the battlefield than to spread them out. This is what we call modern day dispersion. You got to spread out.

• 1:21:58Jocko Willink?

  And I wrote about in Leadership Strategy and Tactics, there's all these different reasons why you want to get close to someone else when you're, when there's shooting going on. All kinds of reasons, subconscious reasons, actual tackle, like I want to hear what you say. I'm a little bit nervous. I want to get close to you. We stick together. And all those things, all of a sudden you look at, look around you and you've got five, six, seven, eight guys right next to you. And that's an odd, it's not good. One grenade, one machine gun fire can, can take you all out, or at least several of you out. And it's already hard to fight it, but when you go into the battle situation, already tight grouped, it's going to be a, it's going to not work out well.

• 1:22:42Jocko Willink?

  The French and then the British began to consider frontal attacks the most decisive of all. So you see where now this is again, this is like 1911, they're starting to regress. This regressive theory was given official sanction in the 1912 FSR, which is Field Service Regulations, and marked the greatest split with the Boer War experience, whereas the Boer War led primarily to a modern approach to warfare, downgrading battlefield cavalry and fostering initiative and firepower, Manchuria proved regressive. And so what Manchuria is, the Russo Japanese War.

• 1:23:24Jocko Willink?

  Which was the, another big war that took place and they were using the old school tactics. But they were also fighting old school against old school and

• 1:23:39Jocko Willink?

  they were both playing by the rules.

• 1:23:45Jocko Willink?

  So if you and I decide to have a war of attrition, if you and I decide, hey, we're gonna have a boxing match and the rules are we can only punch, then we stand there and punch each other in the head. And if you're bigger and stronger than me, then you can win. And if, and so what, what, and so then it looks like you're better than me, right? Hey, you're bigger and stronger than me and you will beat me. And we bring on the next challenger and you're bigger and stronger than him and you beat him. And then we bring in a 300 pound guy and he's bigger than you and he beats you. How did he beat you? He was bigger and stronger, but he used the same tactics, but he was just bigger and stronger. So what are we gonna do? We're gonna make our military, our groups bigger and stronger.

• 1:24:27Jocko Willink?

  What happens when you go out and throw a punch and someone does a double leg takedown, puts you on the ground, gets side control, gets mounted and chokes you?

• 1:24:35Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't matter how big that person is. Simplicity and elasticity of movement were among the prime lessons of South Africa. Formalism was on its way out, but individual responsibility was still quite a way off.

• 1:24:48Jocko Willink?

  So this, this part here runs through a little bit of timeline that we've been tripping through. I've been kinda jumping around a little bit. By 1904, both the scale and complexity, going back to 1904, by 1904, both the scale and complexity of military exercises had increased. For the first time, the army and the navy cooperated in trial invasion and reembarkation under fire. The troops were now, were by now scarcely visible. So they were, they were using camouflage. They were hiding by virtue of improved technique and equipment. No attack on entrenchments was considered successful at odds of less than six to one. And there was no volley fire. So that, that's 1904. By 1905, maneuver battalion and brigade training had become considerably more decentralized,

• 1:25:32Jocko Willink?

  increasing responsibility of low rank. So, so 2005, or sorry, 1905, we're still moving in the right direction. 1906, exercises featured controversies over the effectiveness of machine guns. So that was when we start.

• 1:25:46Jocko Willink?

  This is like traditional martial arts. And, and someone saying, hey, man, if you get, if you get punched in the face, um, you'll give this reaction. And someone saying, well, with machine guns, you'll have this reaction. People are saying, well, I don't know about that. Right? So now they're having a little debate about what's going to work and what's not going to work. 1907 experience was marked by complaints from the territorials that despite expectations of their ability to perform on a divisional level, they never trained as such.

• 1:26:15Jocko Willink?

  So, so now we're starting to see that the training's fallen off maybe a little bit. 1908, the problem uh consisted of mobilization and concentration of an entire army of four divisions, attached cavalry, ancillary services in a friendly area, senior roles, the roles of senior personnel, large formations and logistics were coming to force. So now they're focused on the big movement. The big logistics. In deference to private property, which is where they were running these big exercises, tapes were laid down to demonstrate positions. So that they're just saying, hey, this is our position. Lay down some tape here. Because they didn't want to dig in because it's private property.

• 1:26:54Jocko Willink?

  Far more would have been achieved with actual digging, but that had to await the acquisition of larger government owned training areas. 1909, the maneuvers marked a contrast to those of 1904 to 1906. As the infantry was adopting appreciably denser formations. So they're going backwards. Denser formation. Less dispersion. Greater commitment to reserves. And more emphasis on the counterattack. By 1910, there could be little doubt that the British tactical practices had largely drifted. From those evolved during the Boer War to those of the more conservative French.

• 1:27:36Jocko Willink?

  The memorandum on army training 1910 emphasized winning the preparatory action through strong advance guards to be followed by a commitment of a central reserve. Central reserve. This is like, oh, the commander's in the back and he's, he's going to commit the central reserve under the direct control of the commander.

• 1:27:58Jocko Willink?

  Who was to apply them at the decisive point as part of a prepared plan? You see where this is going? We're doing kata. We're doing kata. This is what we're gonna do. This is the plan. Once you hit here, then you follow up with this. It's all prepared.

• 1:28:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's another thing. It reminded me of like when I, when I talk about that martial arts demonstration. When they demonstrate on an actual like victim, right? Where it's like, you're gonna hit him here in the ribs, their hands or their hands and they buckle over. You know, then you employ, you know, employ the knee, you know, here and whatever. It's not only that they're predicting the other guy's movement. It's they're predicting it and then their next move is dependent on that very prediction.

• 1:28:41Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  So when it like doesn't happen in real life, it's like, man, it'll jam you up big time.

• 1:28:46Jocko Willink?

  Yes. And this, this is actually the, the last section of this book we're gonna read. The last thing, and this supports what you just said. Concentrations were to be completed before and not during the battle. Meaning, we already know what we're gonna do and we're not gonna make adjustments. Which is, which is the idea that you're talking about. This idea that this is what we're gonna do. This is the reaction we're gonna have. And the, the, the Mike Tyson statement of no survive, no plan survives the first punch in the face. The common military, which is no plan survives the first enemy contact. That idea is thrown away.

• 1:29:28Jocko Willink?

  And we've gotten to a point through doing these fake, you know, drills, where you start believing your own ideas. They don't work. And this is why when we started using simunition and, and paintball in our SEAL training, we started changing the way we were doing business. Because when, when we started that, it was like 1992, 1993. They used it a little bit in the eighties, but on a broad level, to actually go to, you know, to run drill after drill, iteration after iteration, really didn't start until the nineties. And then it really took hold after, after the war started. Because then people are saying, wait a second.

• 1:30:12Jocko Willink?

  This is more, the, the drills that we did with paintballing with simunition.

• 1:30:19Jocko Willink?

  When the war started, they were, they were validated even more.

• 1:30:26Jocko Willink?

  It wasn't the opposite. You might think, well, you know, once the war started, the real bullets started flying. The, the, the things got more validated.

• 1:30:37Jocko Willink?

  And what's, what's horrible about reading this and seeing the, seeing the regression is that we know where it leads. We know that it leads to World War One. We know that it leads to trenches. We know that it leads to not a, not maneuver warfare, but to attrition warfare. We know that it leads to 10 million,

• 1:31:02Jocko Willink?

  10 million military deaths and 7 million civilian deaths. That's, that's where all this goes.

• 1:31:14Jocko Willink?

  Because we didn't learn from history. We let arrogance get in the way.

• 1:31:24Jocko Willink?

  And, and you know, like I was saying with the two people deciding to fight, right? The Russo, the Russo Japanese war, right? If you and I both, let's say, have conservative minds and we're kind of stuck in the past, we're both the stick in the mud. That's okay, right? That's what we're gonna do. You and I are gonna stand there. We're gonna go blow for blow.

• 1:31:46Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna box. That's what we're gonna do. And, and that's what, that's what the Brits were kind of looking around the world saying, saying, oh, you see boxing does work. Because look at how the Russians fared here and look at how the Japanese fared here. We, we see that boxing does. See what happened over there?

• 1:32:04Jocko Willink?

  But it doesn't mean that grappling doesn't work. It just means that you're not paying attention to it. Means that they decided that they were gonna box.

• 1:32:14Jocko Willink?

  And if, if you decide you're gonna box, guess what? You're gonna get punched in the head a lot. And when you come against a force that's equal to yours, it's gonna be very, very hard to overcome them without taking massive damage. And that is World War One. And we need to make sure that we don't let that happen. Test yourself.

• 1:32:42Jocko Willink?

  Evolve.

• 1:32:47Jocko Willink?

  In every aspect of your life, test yourself, evolve. Make sure that you are making progress, make sure that you are continuing to learn.

• 1:33:03Jocko Willink?

  And continue to progress and not regress.

• 1:33:09Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Echo Charles, if we want to continue to learn, if we want to progress rather than regress,

• 1:33:18Jocko Willink?

  what do you got for us?

• 1:33:20Speaker 01

  Progress, always get better, always progress, try to, step forward, not backward. Stay in the game, get in the game, stay in the game.

• 1:33:33Speaker 01

  Get in the games, stay in the game, that's it. Anyway, we do that by what, working out, we're working out, we're doing jujitsu. We are eating healthy.

• 1:33:46Jocko Willink?

  Guess what? You know, you know how people sometimes go, hey, you know, Echo Charles, what did you learn? What have you learned from Jaco over the past five years doing the podcast, right? You know, the first thing that I learned from you?

• 1:33:59Speaker 01

  What's that?

• 1:33:59Jocko Willink?

  You want to know what it is? You said, "Exercise is the singular thing that will impact the most aspects of your life." And I never really thought of that before, maybe because I was too close to it and exercise is just kind of part of, been part of my whole adult life and much of my youth was like focused around exercise. But when you said that and you laid out, hey, it helps you here, it helps you there, it helps you somewhere else. I recognized, yes, this is a, something I had never really thought of. I never thought of the impact, because I, because exercise was just part of my life, I never thought of the positive impact that it had on my life. But when you pointed out that exercise is the most universally complementary.

• 1:34:47Jocko Willink?

  Thing that you can do for your life and and look, there's people right now, oh, what kind of idiots, you know, would you say, well, you, you meathead saying that, which we take as a compliment, but a meathead saying that, right? You think exercise gonna, you know what? Exercise is gonna. It's gonna. So when you, when you kind of go over, oh, you know, we want to work out like, no, think about what, think about how that impacts every part of your life. Get in the gym, start lifting, start training, start working out, run, swim, do calisthenics, get after it, man. It's gonna make your whole life better.

• 1:35:26Speaker 01

  Yep, it is. That is true.

• 1:35:29Jocko Willink?

  Little interlude.

• 1:35:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's, yeah, fully. And man, it's like, okay, so we're in quarantine 2020 right now. So you can kind of fall into a thing. I mean, if you're really in touch with like your feelings or whatever, like sometimes you feel kind of stale, like inside, because you're not out, you're not doing anything or and not only you're not out and doing anything, you're not out and doing anything for kind of extended periods of time. You know, some, some people straight up haven't left their house, months, haven't left the house. So that can like weigh on you, of course, psychologically, but I think it's like physiologically too, like in your brain, like chemically, it, it's got to have some kind of weird effect.

• 1:36:10Jocko Willink?

  Definitely. I think that's scientifically proven that there's some kind of weird effect. I think that's actually the literature that I read, said that there was some kind of weird effect.

• 1:36:18Speaker 01

  Okay, so obviously I don't know the literature, but I know the feeling. So like the other day, right, where I was like, you know, focusing, you know, doing some stuff on my computer for a long time. And I felt like off, I didn't feel good. And not to mention, there's some negativity out there in these streets right now. So man, I was, I was feeling like off, like, man, I don't know, man, is this all worth it? I don't know what I really meant by thinking that, but it was those types of feelings, you know? I was like, man, I'm gonna go outside and my home gym is outside. There's a little covering there. It's cool. It's nice, but it's outside nonetheless. So I go outside and I feel like the sun. I'm like, okay, you know, it's cool, something, it's the sun, but I'm still kind of feeling it.

• 1:37:02Speaker 01

  Bro, I did my first two sets, which are warm up sets, by the way. And it was like my brain just like switched back on to like. Living mode like, oh man, life is like here now.

• 1:37:15Jocko Willink?

  Here's the problem with that. The problem with that is that a lot of people don't make the transition to the gym. That's the hard, once they get there, they know they're gonna feel better. And if they don't know they feel better, they should know that they're gonna feel better. But they don't, like you're at least have that thought in your mind, you know, you kind of know. You kind of know, sometimes you're, I feel, I don't, what'd you say you felt? You felt off?

• 1:37:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:43Jocko Willink?

  You kind of know that to feel on, you gotta go out there and just jack some steel.

• 1:37:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true.

• 1:37:51Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 1:37:52Speaker 01

  Well, okay, so when you do lift weights and you have to lift weights a certain like intensity or whatever, and it's pretty low. Especially if you're used to lifting weights, it's pretty low intensity that you have to pass that threshold that it'll trigger a biological physiological response. That is positive. Endorphins and there's other things, but, but these are, I always hear like when people, the way some people, you know, whatever, not everybody, but some people, the way they use endorphins, almost like it's like this just throwaway term like endorphins, you just sort of feel better in this and like ambiguous sort of way. But it's a real thing.

• 1:38:25Jocko Willink?

  It's a real thing.

• 1:38:26Speaker 01

  It's like makes you like, like, just like depression is a real thing, like the opposite of depression, like that boost you get from working out is literally a real thing. Oh yeah. Um, so yeah, the critical and then consider that notion that affects everything you do. So if you, if you're uh, stronger, healthier and have a better attitude. I don't know one thing, I mean, maybe I could think of one, but right now off the top of my head, I don't know one thing that that won't improve. Like, like tangibly measurably improve.

• 1:39:01Jocko Willink?

  Totally good to go.

• 1:39:02Speaker 01

  Oh yeah.

• 1:39:03Jocko Willink?

  So anyway, so we want to be working.

• 1:39:05Speaker 01

  We want to be working a hundred percent.

• 1:39:07Jocko Willink?

  Which means we're gonna need some fuel.

• 1:39:08Speaker 01

  We will need some for sure. So we gotta eat right, but.

• 1:39:13Jocko Willink?

  Supplementation supplementation if you're into it and here's the thing there's all kinds of supplementation here's in my opinion the most important type of supplementation currently for me and I do I am one of those people like I would I do wish I was on this train be like a while ago before I ended up getting on it so this is the kind of fuel we like Jocko fuel Jocko fuel right anyway joint warfare for your joints krill oil for your joints and antioxidants in there general health this is good life this is gonna help you for sure omega-3s all day also discipline and discipline go kind of the same thing yeah yeah we have some options there to

• 1:39:58Jocko Willink?

  kind of get you up on step whether it's the powder discipline go Jocko Palmer ice teeth lemonade mix every day every day um discipline going to can you got that we just came out with the D yeah wait vitamin D oh yeah yeah yeah just came out with a D I thought that's where you're going you were talking about sunshine well that's true that's a that's a big yeah sometimes we have to kind of fake that sunshine a little bit get that vitamin D but one of the reasons I made the vitamin D is cuz I did my blood work and the area I was lacking the vitamin D so guess what I know I'm not the only person I'm living a healthy lifestyle I'm I live in San Diego sunny San Diego

• 1:40:43Jocko Willink?

  I surf I'm outside I shoot my bow outside I run outside I'm in the sun and I still had so guess what I know there's other people that need to get on the D yes the D train D train get yourself some vitamin D that's good man Molk but by the way um one thing I know you look at situations they put you in a certain scenario you want to take advantage of it how's the Molk train recipes going in your house because in my house because both my daughters are home from college They're on the milk.

• 1:41:20Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. They're making all kinds of stuff with milk. Yeah. Raw milk that put it in the everything. I never tried the raw milk yet. You, well, it doesn't taste like anything. It's just. Just gives you protein, but you can put it in whatever you want. It's like a cool little base. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Is that sweetened with monk fruit or anything like this? It's just plain. It's plain, but you can put it, you know, my middle daughter, she likes to make some smoothies with fruit. You know, so put the blueberries. Oat milk. She's doing all kinds of radical things. Oat milk. Just different kinds of milks and stuff. And so she's on that raw, raw milk train. My son, on the other hand, he told me

• 1:42:03Jocko Willink?

  that the best flavor, which this was weird, is the darkness. Yes, I understand. That's what he's down with right now. Yeah. So he mixed one up this morning as I was on my way here and I took a little hitter. Of course, I don't know if it was like this. What do you have? You have your twin brother Jade. You got your little brother. Mm hmm. Kenyatta. And then you have your sister. I have an older sister. Okay. Did you guys fight and like want to stab each other when it came to food at all? No. Okay, so that's what it was like in my family when I was growing up and with my kids, absolutely. Everyone is ultra like dog wolf pack protective of their own food. Gotcha.

• 1:42:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So, you know, I, my son was mixed up the darkness. He put, he put it down on the counter and he was going to turn around and kind of put the stuff away. And he saw that I was in the vicinity and he immediately turned back around and grabbed it, got it into his own protective custody. And I looked at him and said, give me some of that milk. And he, you know, he kind of, he recognized. Debo style. I had to Debo his, uh, his milk, but I just had a little hitter and, and I kind of went into an agreement. Look, it's not my favorite, but that's it. It's good. Yeah, the darkness. Oh, yeah. The dark. So anyways, get some milk, some strawberry milk, some mint milk, some, some peanut butter, get some chocolate white tea. Get some, get some D three. You can get it all at the vitamin shop.

• 1:43:32Jocko Willink?

  Or you can get it online at Origin Maine. com. You can also get these there. Jiu Jitsu, let's face it, Jiu Jitsu is coming back. I think it's gonna be like the economy. It's gonna come back even stronger.

• 1:43:44Speaker 01

  Yes, very possible. Actually, that seems to be the case even in theory. Not to mention my practical practice, but think about it. Like, you know how like when you take some time off, you want it when it's time to go back. You're like, oh, man, I can't wait to get back, bro. That's the they've been freaking stringing us along for a long time, you know, us wanting to get back and stuff. So yeah, it's gonna be way more strong. And that's not to mention the people who, hey, I'm gonna start, I'm gonna start Jiu Jitsu, I'm gonna start Jiu Jitsu, I'm gonna start Jiu Jitsu. Oh, I was just gonna start Jiu Jitsu. Now they're really gonna start.

• 1:44:16Jocko Willink?

  Pent up, pent up demand. So Jiu Jitsu is gonna come back strong. These jeans, boots, t-shirts, whatever you need. We're getting there.

• 1:44:28Speaker 01

  Made in America, by the way.

• 1:44:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no big deal, but every single thing I just said is 100% made in America. There's nothing being imported. There's no little parts. They're not just be not just flying in a bunch of parts from all over the world and sewing them together. No, they're growing it and sewing it.

• 1:44:43Speaker 01

  Growing it and sewing it. It's true.

• 1:44:45Jocko Willink?

  Originmain.com. Go check it out. And that does provide the support.

• 1:44:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, big time. Also, more support, more uh items for to represent and maintain yourself on the path.

• 1:45:00Jocko Willink?

  You know, sometimes the way you say the that like in a lot of things that you say, especially during this support section.

• 1:45:07Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:45:08Jocko Willink?

  You kind of wind it up and you kind of say it like you're gonna have a new approach.

• 1:45:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:14Jocko Willink?

  But there's not.

• 1:45:15Speaker 01

  But that's the gift that keeps on giving for sure. First time, every time, as we say in the industry.

• 1:45:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So I, you know, when when you say

• 1:45:24Jocko Willink?

  there's clothes that you can represent. And I'm thinking, what is he gonna say? It sounds like he's thinking, he's making a move. He's gonna try something new. Represent while on the path. And I'm, okay, I guess we're going with, we'll go with what you know. All right. So we're gonna go with you, you know, if you need to represent while on the path.

• 1:45:40Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:45:42Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, wait, how can you do that?

• 1:45:43Speaker 01

  Should we not represent while we're on the path?

• 1:45:45Jocko Willink?

  We should definitely represent while we're on the path.

• 1:45:47Speaker 01

  If we can represent, eh? That's what I think too. I don't know, I might be alone.

• 1:45:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:51Speaker 01

  But I'm probably not alone, you know why? Cause I see them. I see the, I see the people, you know? I see the, the people representing in the wild is what I see.

• 1:46:00Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:46:01Speaker 01

  Anyway, if you want to represent on the path, in the wild, in private, wherever you like, jocko store.com. That's where you can get your shirts, hats, hoodies, discipline equals freedom. Good. Take the high ground or the high ground will take you.

• 1:46:18Jocko Willink?

  Ain't that the truth?

• 1:46:20Speaker 01

  It's all there at jocko store.com. Yeah, man, if you see something that you like, get something. Some patches on there too. Women's stuff, women's stuff on there too. Get something for, you know, your, your lady, uh, personnel in whatever capacity. Is that in like, is that not good personnel? Personnel, right?

• 1:46:38Jocko Willink?

  Sure.

• 1:46:38Speaker 01

  Mothers, wives, girlfriends, daughters, cousins that may be female. Neighbors that might be female. Represent, they can represent too. Boom. All day. Anyway, yeah. Jocko store.com.

• 1:46:50Jocko Willink?

  Also, you can subscribe to this podcast if you feel like it.

• 1:46:56Jocko Willink?

  You can do that wherever you listen to podcasts. We also have some other podcasts. We got the thread. Why is it taking so long for me to figure out the new name for the thread? The reason is because the thread, I like the name and now I want to get hit with a bolt of lightning for the new name. It hasn't hit me yet. Normally I get hit with bolts of lightning. You know how it's a rare occasion that you get, I actually get hit on a fairly regular basis. Whack. Here's a new idea. Whack. Here's a new idea. So, we're a little bit, we're waiting. I got my lightning rod out. I'm waiting to get cracked, but we'll, we'll bring that back. Grounded podcast where we talk about, you should do Warrior Kid Podcast for the warrior kids in your life. And don't forget to get yourself some Warrior Kid Soap

• 1:47:41Jocko Willink?

  from Irish Oaks Ranch.com. Is that available on jocko store.com?

• 1:47:44Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:47:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh, is that a hundred percent?

• 1:47:46Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. Boom. Well, actually technically Warrior Kid Soap, I think that's a new one.

• 1:47:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:52Speaker 01

  That's coming out. But Jocko Soap, Trooper Soap, Killer Soap.

• 1:47:55Jocko Willink?

  Killer Soap.

• 1:47:56Speaker 01

  All there, yeah.

• 1:47:57Jocko Willink?

  All different kind of options so that you, your family, the people you know, you can all...

• 1:48:04Jocko Willink?

  Stay clean.

• 1:48:06Speaker 01

  You gotta stay clean.

• 1:48:07Jocko Willink?

  Uh, we got a YouTube channel.

• 1:48:09Speaker 01

  Yep, YouTube video version of this podcast.

• 1:48:13Jocko Willink?

  You can subscribe to that.

• 1:48:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you want.

• 1:48:16Jocko Willink?

  If, you know, if you're walking down the street and you're thinking you wish that things were exploding, you're wishing that things were just shaking, you wish that there was military vehicles smashing into walls. Well, you can, you can subscribe to the YouTube channel. You can see all that stuff.

• 1:48:35Speaker 01

  Sure, sometimes, and robots.

• 1:48:37Jocko Willink?

  Robots.

• 1:48:38Speaker 01

  You know, every once in a while, throw a robot in there.

• 1:48:40Jocko Willink?

  And there's, if you wanna, you can watch this video. There's also little excerpts that you can, if there's a little point that got made, you go, I'd like to share that with Fred.

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:48:51Jocko Willink?

  You can share it with Fred. You don't have to share him a two hour and forty-two minute podcast. You can just give him a twelve minutes, maybe seventeen minutes, because Echo doesn't like to edit things down. Well. He's not gonna make it into a three minute video, not without putting some damn Star Wars effects in it.

• 1:49:10Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:49:13Speaker 01

  Anyway, yes, sometimes I do that, you know, it's fun. Also, Psychological Warfare, if you don't know what that is, it's an album with tracks. Yep, album with tracks, Jaco tracks. Anyway, when you're having moments of weakness, Psychological Warfare will factually help you through those moments of weakness as if Jaco is there personally, helping you through that moment, same thing.

• 1:49:37Jocko Willink?

  Flipsidecanvas.com, Dakota Myers Company, he's selling Psychological Warfare for your wall. Check that out. I also got some books. We got The Code, The Evaluation of Protocols. We got, that has a very direct methodology for you to grade yourself, for you to know exactly what you're trying to do, for you to project your path, write your path, follow your path to victory. Get The Code, The Evaluation of Protocols. We got Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. We got Way of the Warrior Kid One, Two, and Three, for all the way of the warrior, for all the warrior kids out there. We also have Mikey and the Dragons, which is just live.

• 1:50:24Jocko Willink?

  Teach your kids, your young kids, how to overcome fear. Think of what that does to a little kid's life. It changes their life. Get a Mikey and the Dragons, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership, the books that started it all. Also, we have Echelon Front, which is my leadership consultancy where we solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details. If you want me or one of the guys at Echelon Front to come and talk at your company, or to come and start working with your company, or start consulting at your company, don't go to a speakers bureau. Go to echelonfront.com.

• 1:51:07Jocko Willink?

  EF Online, if you want to interact with me, go to EF Online. I will be live. I am live multiple times per week, pre-scheduled. You come on, you can ask me questions, you can ask the rest of the team questions. It's not overloaded with people. It's not like when I do an Instagram Live where there's 87,000 questions coming in every second. No, these are, this is much more controlled. So if you want to interact, if you want to ask me a question, go to EFOnline.com and come and get some. Also, we have the muster, which is our leadership conference, our leadership event.

• 1:51:49Jocko Willink?

  We're going to be in Phoenix, Arizona on September 16th and 17th. And then we're going to be in Dallas, Texas, December 3rd and 4th. ExtremeOwnership.com, if you want to come. Every event that we've ever done has sold out. So if you want to come, go and register. And of course, now we have EF Overwatch. If you are in a company and you want leaders that understand the principles of extreme ownership that we talk about here, go to EFOverwatch.com. And if you're a veteran that wants to get hired by a company that understands these principles, same thing back at you. If you want to support a charitable organization, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org.

• 1:52:33Jocko Willink?

  It is Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. And she works all the time tirelessly to help service members, their families, Gold Star families.

• 1:52:46Jocko Willink?

  And military personnel that are deployed around the world, you can go to that website to either donate or get involved. And if you haven't heard enough of my monotonous monologues, or you need more of Echo's uncoupled orations, then you can find us both on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on Facebook. Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. And thanks to our military men and women who signed on the dotted line and wrote a check with their lives in the service of our country.

• 1:53:30Jocko Willink?

  And thanks to police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service, who do the same, write a check with their lives for our safety here at home. And everyone else out there, make sure you build on your lessons. Do not regress. Check with the past. Question what you're doing. Pressure test yourself and your methods. Question your methods, your old methods, your new methods. Make sure that you never get complacent.

• 1:54:10Jocko Willink?

  And that you never allow your ego to overrule moving in the right direction. It is easy to slip. It's also easy to think that just because you're getting after it, just because you're training hard, just because you're pushing yourself, that you are doing it correctly. Don't settle for that. Yes, get after it, but do so in the smartest possible way with humility and an open mind to learn. Until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.