181: "WE CAME TO DIE". Mayhem, Bravery, and Leadership "On The Ground" in Vietnam w/ John Stryker Meyer.

0:00:00 - Opening. 0:05:05 - John "Tilt" Stryker Meyer: "On the Ground" 2:37:57 - Aftermath and Lessons learned. 2:50:47 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 2:53:07 - Support: How to stay on THE PATH. 3:31:17 - 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 181 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. Diddy Mao. We were in Cambodia alone with no fixed wing aircraft. Sal's eyes were as big as saucers. I told Bubba to give me a claymore mine with a five second fuse. I gave Bubba and Fuck the move quick signal. As we moved back to the LZ, I stayed at the rear of the formation with Sal hastily, with Sal hastily covering our tracks. We'd only gone a short distance when Sal hissed, "Boku VC, Boku VC." I could see the Pith helmets in the distance coming from the south.

• 0:42Jocko Willink?

  I radioed the Green Hornet CNC helicopter and told them to return with their gunships and to pick us up at the primary LZ ASAP. CNC said they'd have assets on site in 10 minutes or less. Now, even 10 minutes seemed like a long time. Tuan and I fired our M79 as two high bursts which slowed the NVA down for a few seconds. Sal opened fire, shooting single shots and moving backwards, no longer bothering to cover our tracks. I yelled to Bubba to move out at double time. The race for life was on.

• 1:21Jocko Willink?

  Sal hissed to Hip and pointed north. Damn. There were Pith helmets and NVA uniforms coming at us from the north too. And at a dead run.

• 1:36Jocko Willink?

  Sal and I placed a claymore behind a tree, pulled the fuse lighter and ran. The NVA were now running and shooting wildly. We sprinted to catch up to the team as the claymore exploded. The NVA kept on charging. Sal quickly placed his claymore in front of a tree and ran while Tuan and I provided covering fire. We sprinted toward our team as the second claymore detonated. We felt the blast on our backs as we ran. As Fuck and Bubba pushed toward the LZ, Hip, Tuan, Sal and I fired back using the immediate action drills the entire team had practiced for hours on end.

• 2:19Jocko Willink?

  Tuan's M79 rounds were deadly effective. Those combined with my M79 rounds and the Kar-15 fire from Hip and Sao temporarily stalled the hard-charging NVA troops.

• 2:33Jocko Willink?

  We reached the LZ quickly in comparison to how cautiously we had exited it. As the team set up a hasty perimeter, Hip placed another claymore in the path of the NVA that were charging us from the south. To the north, Bubba rigged a claymore with a contact detonator on a tripwire. As the tide of pith helmets flowed toward us, Bubba and I opened fire with our M79s, and Sao and Hip opened up on full auto with their Kar-15s. More NVA emerged from the smoke of the M79, high-explosive rounds, and tripped Bubba's claymore.

• 3:12Jocko Willink?

  That's when the first Green Hornet gunship arrived. I popped a smoke canister and directed a gun run to the west of our perimeter. Within seconds, the gunship roared in front of our perimeter, shredding the NVA ranks, slowing them down for a few seconds. The Green Hornet's firepower was incredible. Finally, the Green Hornet slick that inserted us into the target area arrived on the LZ as close to our position as possible, with his left door facing us, the nose pointing north or northwest. Fortunately, the Air Force had made it to us in less than 10 minutes. The relentless NVA kept coming after us.

• 3:53Jocko Willink?

  As Tuan and I each unleashed one more M79 high-explosive round at the NVA, Bubba led the team toward the Air Force Huey. We always had an American lead the team's approach to an American helicopter to avoid any confusion in regard to South Vietnamese team members on ST Idaho. I fired the last claymore as the wave of NVA troops got in front of it. The last claymore blast gave me a few precious seconds to make it to the Huey.

• 4:26Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is another glimpse into the insanity that John Stryker Meyer, known as Tilt, lived through as a special forces soldier in Vietnam, a recon team leader for MACV SOG Studies and Observation Group Command and Control. And if you have not listened to Podcast 180 yet, then go listen to it. Tilt was on that podcast, and as soon as he walked out of the studio, I knew that I needed him to come back as quickly as possible. And I asked him, and he graciously agreed. And here he is once again, John Stryker Meyer, Tilt.

• 5:10John Stryker Meyer?

  Good evening, sir.

• 5:12Jocko Willink?

  Good evening. Yeah, you know, you kind of mentioned that, that one operation right there when you were out there facing three divisions after you got fat, dumb, and happy on Thanksgiving Day with a big meal. Then you guys rolled out into the field, right?

• 5:29John Stryker Meyer?

  Indeed.

• 5:30Jocko Willink?

  And then, and then, so how did that, how did that operation go down? You guys got inserted? How did you end up in that situation where you're running away, putting five-second fused claymores facing the enemy? What was, what led up to that?

• 5:43John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, we had a briefing the night before, and they were hyper concerned because the three NVA divisions, 30,000 men, were MIA, literally. And the CIA, DIA, whoever else is out there had lost contact. So that night, myself and the CO and S3 went over the maps, latest reports, all the intel reports. We were up until after midnight.

• 6:10Jocko Willink?

  So, so they, they came to you and said, hey, we're missing 30,000 men, three divisions of NVA.

• 6:16John Stryker Meyer?

  The first, the third, and the seventh NVA.

• 6:18Jocko Willink?

  And we've got the CIA looking, we've got the DIA, we've got spy planes and all that stuff, we can't find them. So then they come to you.

• 6:23John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 6:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay, and you're like, cool, we got this.

• 6:28John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, yeah, and at the time, I was still a spec four, an E4. So, and I hadn't met the CO yet. So the first thing was, he looks at me, he says, "You're an E4. This is an E8, E9 billet, what, WTF?" I go, "Look, sir." Long story short, I said, "Look, I've run a bunch of missions up north. We're here TDY, how can I help you?" And he settled down. Then we were up all night looking at those intel reports. And then, they also had pictures that were from 70,000 feet. We had never seen anything like that. My mom was a piano teacher. And one of her students' dad worked on lenses for aircraft to shoot from 70,000 feet. He talked to me about them as a young kid. I go, "Oh, that's really cool."

• 7:10John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, now I knew what he was working on and why he couldn't really talk about it much. But they, that was the first time the SRS-71s were used over flights.

• 7:19Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 7:20John Stryker Meyer?

  And I say, "Where the hell these come from?" Because like, this is mind-boggling. You used to have seen, you know, little pictures close by, people smiling. But for 70,000 feet, we had a good estimate as to where they might be. And they said, "We can't tell you this stuff. Shut up, you haven't seen it." And so we put it all together, "Let's try this area." And we went in, we were only on the ground a short while, maybe an hour or so. And then, all hell broke loose.

• 7:46Jocko Willink?

  And did you, didn't you, you stumbled upon their camp? Or like a camp that they had recently left?

• 7:51John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, well, they have, they would have way stations along the way. And so we walked into them before, we found some, but never with fires burning. The one still had a pot on it. And so, and when we got back, Sal and the guys estimated that one division had just left. And their point, their tell-all was what came back at us. And the other, from the north, was just moving into the base camp.

• 8:17Jocko Willink?

  Oh, little sandwich.

• 8:19John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 8:19Jocko Willink?

  Little NVA sandwich.

• 8:20John Stryker Meyer?

  There we go, we were the baloney. Your basic baloney.

• 8:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Did you go into that one real heavy in terms of, is that, because if I remember correctly from the book, how common was it that you carried the five second fuses on the claymores?

• 8:39John Stryker Meyer?

  Uh, we started doing that a month earlier, um, early part of November, I mean, because we had a couple of targets where, um, the numbers were just incredible when they came at us. So I always wanted to have those just in case. So here we took a few extra fuses, you know, John had his fuses and Sal and Fuck, they all knew how to work those. And so, um, here I said, because we saw how open the area was, we were used to triple canopy up north. So now we're in Cambodia, you could see three or 400 yards away, maybe 500 yards WTF times two, and then you see the fifth helmets running at you. It's like, whoa.

• 9:19Jocko Willink?

  How does it feel when you see the NVA in an open run towards your position?

• 9:23John Stryker Meyer?

  At port arms, yeah.

• 9:24Jocko Willink?

  Good lord.

• 9:25John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, it was, it was an experience. I'll take it to the grave with me.

• 9:28Jocko Willink?

  That's a nightmare.

• 9:30John Stryker Meyer?

  It's your worst one.

• 9:31Jocko Willink?

  How, how, how did you, did you, did you in a situation like that, you're, you're, you've got, I mean, thousands of, potentially thousands of enemy soldiers, some of them are blatantly running towards your position. What are you thinking in the back of your mind? Are you thinking, hey, we're not going to get out of this? Or are you just, I know from me and my experiences, which are nothing close to that, but I was always just thinking about getting my job done. Like, okay, this is what, this is the best thing I can do right now. Hey, we need to put some people over here. Let's get some machine gunners up on the roof. I would never get to a point where I was, or maybe I didn't have enough time, or I wasn't smart enough to think about what big consequences were coming. But when you see, when you see those helmets running towards you at port arms,

• 10:14Jocko Willink?

  you gotta be thinking, this isn't looking real good for, this isn't looking real good for Tilt and the boys.

• 10:19John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, no, I had my first Jaco moment, which was, the good news is, we found these fuckers. The bad news is, they're coming to kill my ass.

• 10:29John Stryker Meyer?

  Really, it's like, well, I'm glad we did our homework last night. This really worked out well, maybe a little bit too well.

• 10:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 10:35John Stryker Meyer?

  And just thank God for the Green Hornets. Man, if they didn't get back there, it's just only a question of time.

• 10:40Jocko Willink?

  And they could, you would, you would keep them on station gen- generally like for like 10 or 15 minutes?

• 10:46John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, this is Cambodia. Everything was different there. First, we had no, uh, uh, no fixed wings. All we had was the helicopters, but they were the Green Hornets Air Force. At that state, at that point in time, November 68, they were, they had the state of the art Hueys. They were the fastest. They could carry more loads and their miniguns. Uh, I think they had mounted miniguns that they could handle manually. Some of the early ones we saw were mounted and so the helicopters would have limited maneuverability. But the one, the air, the air force was just really on top of the game. Well, that's what came in. And when they came in with their minigun runs, that really bought us a couple of valuable seconds.

• 11:29Jocko Willink?

  Seconds.

• 11:31John Stryker Meyer?

  They were coming. And you could see them. It's just like.

• 11:35Jocko Willink?

  And I was looking at some pictures of you yesterday and you guys still had 20 round mags.

• 11:40John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 11:40Jocko Willink?

  Which you went, which you'd load out to 18 rounds because you didn't want to compress the spring too much and cause a jam.

• 11:45John Stryker Meyer?

  Right. And we would have run over your mother to get one of those 30 round jobs.

• 11:52Jocko Willink?

  Man.

• 11:52John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah. It was, it was different. So we always had at least 600 plus rounds. All in the magazines, then a couple of extra Bandoliers just in case.

• 12:02Jocko Willink?

  And you guys did make it out that time, obviously.

• 12:07John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, yeah. And then, you know, here too, when we left, the chopper pulls out and as we're lifting off, the NVA come out of the jungle, the thin jungle, and it was muddy. It had rained the day before. And these guys are coming out, they're, they're at port arms and they're trying to stop. And the mud comes up from their boots as they're trying to stop, come down to port arms. So me and a door gunner just, and I forget if it's sour fuck, we're just getting these guys and they just stop like a cartoon and they go back. This is what happened. It just blew these guys back and the mud from their boots is going up into the props as they're trying to stop. And they hit them and they just go back into the jungle and then we got the hell out of there.

• 12:47Jocko Willink?

  It strikes me as strange because as I keep reading about the NVA, well, I mean, we know that these, you know, this is an insurgency. These guys are looking to not fight when they don't have to, right? That's why it always surprises me in your, in your stories, how determined they were. Like those guys, hey, look, okay, the Americans, they're getting on the helicopter. We'll let them go, whatever. Uh, we'll come back next time, you know, we don't want to die right today because we don't have to, we can wait. We can wait 10 years, we can wait 20 years, you know, we're going to be here forever. For them to have that kind of determination where they were just coming and coming and coming. And like you said on the last podcast, literally stacking up bodies so they could get to you. That would have been just a crown jewel to capture a little, a little special forces team.

• 13:29John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah. They had to kill American award. So if they, if they confirmed that they killed one of us or got the body of a dead body, they would get their, killed an American award. And they would get a bonus of some sort and they'd be world heroes up north for the rest of their lives.

• 13:48Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. Okay. So that book, and we talked about it on the last podcast. And I said it last time, we, we touched less than 10% of the book. The stories are completely insane and you can get that book on Amazon. Uh, you, but you've written, that's not the only book you've written. You've written another one. Another book is called On The Ground. And this book, again, you're, it's, it's just the same level of, of insanity. It feels strange for me to be sitting here talking to you because every time I read a story, one of your stories, I'm like, how's this guy making it out of this? Uh, there's, you, you kicked this one off with an interesting story. These guys, one of the, it's, you're not with them, but it's a recon team on the ground. A guy named Watkins is in charge.

• 14:33John Stryker Meyer?

  Pat Watkins.

• 14:34Jocko Willink?

  And they're set up on a road and they're doing a recon. And I think they set up an ambush too, like a, an ambush to take out some troops. But they end up with this massive NVA convoy. And when I say massive, I mean massive. It takes hours to get by. And there's people and there's trucks and there's bulldozers and there's tanks.

• 14:57John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 14:59Jocko Willink?

  And again, I gotta point this out. So we're probably talking, you know, a thousand enemy soldiers at least that are patrolling by you for now, for three hours, they're walking by you. And meanwhile, you got a team of six guys, eight guys, something like that.

• 15:13John Stryker Meyer?

  I think it was seven or eight, I forget, but yeah. And they're, and they're monitoring this. And Pat was familiar with all the Russian tanks. So he knew what the Russian tanks were and he had all the intel together. And just one of those, another night in SOG.

• 15:28Jocko Willink?

  Another night in SOG. So they're sitting there waiting and they eventually they go by. And, and eventually now, one of the, one of the Indig soldiers that was working alongside Watkins, one of the members of the team was named Rong. R O N G. And he comes up after this convoy goes by, he comes up and this, this is what happens. I'm going to the book here. Rong said he'd been watching the road traffic, just like Watkins. And it had been taken, taken, had been taken, as taken with it as he was. Meaning he was like lost and like, oh my God, I can't believe there's so much stuff. While he was staring at all the vehicles passing by, a hand had reached out and given his arm a shake.

• 16:07Jocko Willink?

  A Montignyard soldier, one of those the NVA had pressed into unwilling service, said, it's your time for guard duty.

• 16:18John Stryker Meyer?

  Is that close to the enemy or what?

• 16:21Jocko Willink?

  That's nuts.

• 16:22John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 16:23Jocko Willink?

  Completely nuts. The Montignyards, which you guys called yards, the Nungs, the South Vietnamese, even sometimes former NVA soldiers. What was it like? Who did you mainly work with? What were the differences between the different groups, their different ethnic personalities? And I know we didn't talk about it last time, you talked about in the book, but those, those different ethnicities didn't always get along.

• 16:47John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, no.

• 16:48Jocko Willink?

  Especially when it came to playing poker, apparently.

• 16:50John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah. Cause my first, like the first few days at Fubai, they had a poker game that went awry. And, and the Cambodian lost, he goes to his room, gets a frag grenade, comes back and dumps it on the Montignyards. So we had an instant firefight in the compound. And you know, you always going through the training, you turn about the different groups. Well, that case, we had the Cambodians, Montagnards, Nungs, and my team was South Vietnamese, which included at least four guys that came south in fifty-four. Uh, when there was eighteen month truce, where anybody in the north could go south. When thousands did, the Navy had a special operation where they had ships going up to Hanoi and shipping thousands of people south. Nobody went north.

• 17:34John Stryker Meyer?

  Nobody wanted to be up with the Commies. But we had those, had four of them on my team. They were just outstanding troops. And, uh, so that was Phu Bai. And, uh, his team was the Brew, which was the lowest of the Montagnard tribes. Cute, they couldn't throw a hand grenade worth a shit. But fearless and they hate, they hated the North Vietnamese.

• 17:55Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's one of the key points that I, and you talk about in the book is how much, you know, what, what the North Vietnamese had done to the Montagnards and how much they fiercely hated them and how fiercely loyal they were to you guys.

• 18:09John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah. Amazing troops. And, uh, they would just fight to the end. And there's more than, there's more than one guy who like a one zero, who had a, we called them affectionately, our little people. The little people said, I'll take a bullet for you. That's how dedicated they were.

• 18:27Jocko Willink?

  And they proved that over and over again.

• 18:28John Stryker Meyer?

  Over and over again. Now, some teams had troubles, but we never had it. Like on my team or with the, the Frenchman, most majority of the teams, the, the little people took care of vetting their own. So like when Idaho was wiped out, Sal and HEP went out and recruited and they were young kids, fifteen years old, we brought on the team. But they vetted them and we never worried about them. So we didn't have to worry about the friendly fire or what they call it today, whether it's blue fire.

• 18:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they call it, uh, they call it.

• 19:01John Stryker Meyer?

  Friendly fire.

• 19:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 19:02John Stryker Meyer?

  This is called.

• 19:03Jocko Willink?

  They have another, they have another word for it too.

• 19:05John Stryker Meyer?

  They do.

• 19:06Jocko Willink?

  I can't think of what it is. Cause friendly fire is like a mistake, right?

• 19:08John Stryker Meyer?

  Right.

• 19:08Jocko Willink?

  What we're talking about is when, you know.

• 19:10John Stryker Meyer?

  One of your own.

• 19:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, one of your Taliban forces or one of your, your local forces is actually a Taliban person and turns on you, or is actually a, a, a Mahdi militia guy and turns on you. So those things, those things are scary.

• 19:24John Stryker Meyer?

  Very.

• 19:24Jocko Willink?

  Cause they build up trust and all of a sudden the guy turns on you.

• 19:27John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, cause early on, some of our aid camps had trouble with that. With their, uh, the Montigny Rats that turned, who had been, uh, more loyal to the communists for some reason. But then there was others that had issues because they, they like special forces, but they were pissed off working with the South Vietnamese. And they didn't, they were just, they don't kill, they would have to kill South Vietnamese, our allies, or the commies up north. And sometimes you had like, guys, don't, don't kill our allies, not today, please.

• 19:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 19:58John Stryker Meyer?

  But I never had that. My team was all South Vietnamese.

• 20:01Jocko Willink?

  Ah, man. So one of the, one of the other crazy parts of, of this book that you open with, or you start one of the early chapters, is this, this attack on FOB four, which was just, it sounded completely, completely horrible. And here, here's a quote from the book. "The entire compound," this is after this attack happens. "The entire compound was now a swirling battleground with dozens of small but ready deadly dire firefights in progress. It was difficult to tell the scantily clad Americans and indigenous personnel from the enemy. And there was no command coordination, just a lot of individuals struggling against uncertain and overwhelming odds.

• 20:45Jocko Willink?

  The air was filled with enough chaos to overload the senses. Screams, shouts, bullets, dust, smoke, the smell of cordite, burning wood, rubber and fuel, and lastly, the smell of seared flesh."

• 20:58Jocko Willink?

  And this, this attack resulted in seventeen special forces soldiers were killed. And I, I don't know the number of, of indigenous forces that were killed, but this sounded like just a complete, I mean, it's obviously it was a big win for the enemy. And what was your perspective on all that? Where were you when that happened?

• 21:20John Stryker Meyer?

  I was safely ensconced in FOB one because uh, uh, FOB four had opened at the end of sixty seven and it was at the base of a mountain and there's a whole lot of political reasons why they're at the base of a mountain. But anyways, they were there, they had a, a test attack by the Viet Cong right around Christmas time of sixty seven and on August twenty third, after the dust settled, the men who were there like Pat Watkins estimated that that test, that attack in December was a test to see what, could they had minimal defenses up, minimal wire, the internal security force was riddled with Viet Cong.

• 22:00John Stryker Meyer?

  And they planned this attack for over a year, the Sapper attack with the NVA sappers as well as Viet Cong, highly trained sappers and the conventional troops that went in just wearing a loincloth and carrying a weapon or a satchel charge and hand grenades. And uh, so I was at FUBI, they hit after midnight. There's always a discussion about what time they hit and since then we've had a, a military intelligence officer came back and one of the people that we said was seventeen, it's actually sixteen, but still the highest number of Green Berets killed in one battle in our special forces history. And uh, fortunately we had a recon team up on the hill on Marlboro Mountain that night

• 22:45John Stryker Meyer?

  that took out the uh, the mortars. Cause the enemy were just dropping mortars off the mountain into the camp on top of everything else.

• 22:53Jocko Willink?

  Cause they don't care about friendly fire. Speaking of friendly fire, the enemy doesn't care?

• 22:57John Stryker Meyer?

  No.

• 22:57Jocko Willink?

  They, they don't care if they're dropping mortars on their own people as long as they're killing some of their enemy as well.

• 23:02John Stryker Meyer?

  And some of them had their bandanas and said, "We came here to die" and they did.

• 23:08Jocko Willink?

  What did that, what were the repercussions that went through your community after that happened?

• 23:16John Stryker Meyer?

  Everybody, you know, it's one thing to talk about being hit by an enemy force at night. They fight when they want to fight. That's a classic example of them doing it. They planned it for over a year. They even came in and took over the indigenous mess hall for a final briefing in the base. That night, before they launched the attack. And so that's how well planned it was.

• 23:40Jocko Willink?

  So they went in to the indigenous camp, the friendly camp, and gave their final briefing for the attack inside of the friendly camp?

• 23:49John Stryker Meyer?

  Yep. And they had two of our loyal indigenous troops that saw something suspicious. When they went up, the NVA killed them right away and left their bodies lying there. And so it was really well planned. They knew the camp. We had a promotion board. So all of the, at that time, there were six FOBs, one through six. This was FOB four in Da Nang. And so all of the people up for promotions came in that day. Most of them stayed that night. On top of that, we had, they had monthly command and control briefing. So every CO, as well as this S3 or the XO from each of the FOBs was all at FOB four.

• 24:33John Stryker Meyer?

  And then the, we had a command and control element that was based at the Da Nang Air Base. And they had just moved on to base. So had increased population, and they knew it. And that's the way they planned it. And they planned it on a night when there's no moon.

• 24:51Jocko Willink?

  Got to always respect your enemy.

• 24:56John Stryker Meyer?

  Always. And then we always carried a weapon no matter where we went. It's one thing to be like FOB one, we had a good security there. But even then, you don't know, because they, the VACOM would come and we found mortar markers on the roof of the clubhouse. And they had come in and walked it out. There's part of their VACOM would come in and help do whatever it was in base, but they were also there. Marking targets for future mortar attacks on our, on our compound.

• 25:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that would happen at my first deployment to Iraq. I was in Baghdad and we would, they would occasionally roll up guys that had their GPSs, you know, the little contractors, guys that did everything from empty out the porta potties. There was guys that cut hair. These were just, you know, there was, there was civilians, Iraqi civilians that worked on the base. And occasionally they'd get rolled up, they'd look at their phone or look at their, what, what did they carry? And they'd have a GPS with them. And sure enough, they're out there trying to figure out where, where's a good place to drop them mortar. I actually like kicked all the contractors out of our compound. Completely. And that's something that I had heard from the Vietnam vets was like, nope, you don't, you don't know who's who.

• 26:03Jocko Willink?

  You just don't let them in. And so when I showed up, we actually moved the porta potties outside of our compound. We had to go outside if we wanted to use, they were still in Americans area, but they were not inside of our compound. So they, so there was no locals inside our compound at all, zero. That's what we, that's what we did when I showed up. And that's why I did it because I was, I had heard, hey, look, there's going to be people that will be gathering intelligence on you. If they're in the compound, you can't, you can't vet every single civilian that's going to come out there, contractors. Scary.

• 26:34John Stryker Meyer?

  It is.

• 26:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was, that's, that is a, the, the chapter that you, you actually covered in two chapters because it's such a horrible incident. But that's incredible read to see what those guys went through.

• 26:48John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 26:48Jocko Willink?

  How many, did you just go interview people? How did you get all that information?

• 26:52John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, um, several of our guys from FOB one were there that night. So on the 24th after, by noon time, everything had settled down. They had, you know, they had failed in their attack. We had control to camp. A relief force from FOB one went down, led by Colonel Barr, Lieutenant Colonel Barr. And they went through and cleaned up any of the left, last pockets of enemy soldiers. And there was a POW camp right next to us. And this lead, there was an effort to free the 500 so POWs that were going to break loose to come in to further help overrun our base.

• 27:30John Stryker Meyer?

  But a couple of people made a key effort along that line to the north to stop the, the pending escape of the NVA there.

• 27:43Jocko Willink?

  That would have been a tipping point in the wrong direction.

• 27:46John Stryker Meyer?

  There's a good, that's a good one to miss. So anyway, in answer to your question, we had a lot of things in my mind. And then we closed that FOB one in January, went south. So several of the guys that had performed that night or survived it, we're all there. So I talked to them, just had mental notes. And then when I worked on the book, we came back and I did a piece for Soldier of Fortune. I usually wrote under a nom de plume. And we did a first story written about that back in the day. And Soldier of Fortune printed back in the eighties sometime or early nineties. So I used that and then built on it. And then John Peters, the co-author on that book, On the Ground, he was there that night.

• 28:27John Stryker Meyer?

  And he was in the hooch. He and Doug Godshaw SF were too drunk from that night, like many of the people that were there. And, but the young Bill Brick charged out of the hooch. It was gunned down immediately because they had machine gun positions set up. So anybody came out, they would gun them down.

• 28:48Jocko Willink?

  And that one element that was up on top of the mountain there?

• 28:52John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 28:52Jocko Willink?

  And there was, there was one American with multiple, is that right? There was one American?

• 28:57John Stryker Meyer?

  There was two. Ed Ames was up there. He was the one zero. And then Larry Trimble was actually the one doing a lot of the operational stuff because Ames was monitoring the radio. And it was he, Larry and his people that took out the mortars that night. Or the casualty rate would have been much higher.

• 29:13Jocko Willink?

  And then their indiges said, hey, we're going back down.

• 29:17John Stryker Meyer?

  The next day.

• 29:18Jocko Willink?

  The next day.

• 29:18John Stryker Meyer?

  Because Ed Ames went out, the King became in, lifted him out, they put in a replacement. Who sprained his ankle or something, getting off the helicopter. So he could not move. But he, so he worked the radio, but Larry was the guy taking care of everything on top. And, yeah, so the indiges said they wanted to go down that day. And Larry said, well, you might run into ambushes going down Marble Mountain. Because what we didn't know was underneath Marble Mountain, there was layers of, of stories. They had hospitals down there, Vietcong, training grounds, everything else, which we learned about years later. Right along with the Buddhist monks that were all down there. They co-existed peacefully. And so, uh, yeah, they went down and Larry's for a while was by himself up there.

• 30:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 30:02John Stryker Meyer?

  They got into a firefight.

• 30:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, those guys get a firefight, they come back.

• 30:06John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 30:06Jocko Willink?

  But when they left, he's up there by himself. He's just low, hey, I got this.

• 30:11John Stryker Meyer?

  He's the Lone Ranger.

• 30:12Jocko Willink?

  Lone Ranger, gonna defend this thing until he's dead? That was his attitude.

• 30:15John Stryker Meyer?

  That was, that's Larry.

• 30:16Jocko Willink?

  Freaking unbelievable.

• 30:17John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah. Absolutely.

• 30:19Jocko Willink?

  You, you gotta get this book and read these, these parts. They're, uh,

• 30:24Jocko Willink?

  they're epic. Epic heroism. I mean, and, and crazy and, and incredible lessons learned as well. And I know you and I were just talking about lessons learned and how easily lessons get forgotten in the military. And it happens in any organization, but in the military for sure, you know, because guys are going there in a command for two or three years or maybe four years. And then they're somewhere else and then someone else comes in and different experiences and no one agrees on what's right and what's wrong. And next thing you know, you, you, the lessons are gone. You forget them. So these books right here capture some incredibly important lessons for anyone on the battlefield or even close to it.

• 31:02Jocko Willink?

  I want to get down to kind of the end of your first tour here.

• 31:07Jocko Willink?

  And I'm going to the book. When I, when one April 1969 arrived, I was a conflicted man. The end of my tour was slated for 27 April. So far, I had avoided the short timers attitude because after all, it was Vietnam and we were engaged in guerrilla warfare across the fence. Nonetheless, I couldn't believe I was still alive. I looked forward to going back to the world and yet I felt incredibly guilty about leaving sow, hep and fuck and the other men at CCN behind, which is CCN is what they renamed.

• 31:45John Stryker Meyer?

  FOB 4.

• 31:45Jocko Willink?

  FOB 4. I believed in the SF mission, but how long could RT Idaho go on without a casualty? We hadn't lost a man to hostile fire since May 1968, when the previous incarnation lost six men in Laos. RT Idaho had run a lot of missions, been in a lot of firefights. It wasn't a stay behind team that schemed to remain in camp. I was alive thanks in large part to the skills and courage of Sao, Hip, Tuon, and the other Vietnamese team members, as well as to the courage and flying skills of the Vietnamese King B pilots and the American pilots, the Marines in Scarface,

• 32:29Jocko Willink?

  the Judge and the Executioner, as well as TAC Air pilots who always responded to our calls for help. We were alive because the recon gods had smiled on the reassembled RT Idaho. Somehow, the magic elixir of trust, training, instinct, guts, timing, and God's good grace had fallen into place. There were other things that were collectively wearing on me toward the end of my first tour of duty. By April 1969, both Lynn Black and I were frustrated with having enemy soldiers shooting us out of so many targets as the helicopters approached LZs for landing. And, when we weren't in the field, we found

• 33:10Jocko Willink?

  RT Idaho getting frequently assigned to guard duty atop Marble Mountain because Black and I had continually butted heads with the rems. To add insult to injury, there conveniently were never any choppers available to airlift us to the top. We had to hump all of our supplies ourselves, which was still a dicey business in the light of all the VC activity in the village to the south of the mountain and in the caves deep inside it. We always moved up Marble Mountain on full alert. On one such trip, Sao was training Hung to run point. Hung earned his pay that day as he found and deactivated more than a dozen booby traps, including a claymore mine that had a pressure-released firing device on

• 33:54Jocko Willink?

  it. So you're sort of downtime, like, "Hey, we're back in camp. We're just gonna pull a little easy duty here, just stay on some guard duty. Oh, we gotta go up to Marble Mountain. Oh, there's no one to take us up there, so we're gonna have to patrol up there." And you're going up there and you find, on your way up there, more than a dozen booby traps.

• 34:13John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 34:14Jocko Willink?

  That's trying to get to your guard duty.

• 34:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I guess that could wear on you a little bit.

• 34:20John Stryker Meyer?

  That, that was a significant day. We didn't sleep well that night.

• 34:25Jocko Willink?

  And so this Marble Mountain, how long was the patrol to get there from base?

• 34:28John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, it was close by and we, we would usually walk around to the south side of the mountain. And there were stairs that you'd go up before you get to the trails because it was so steep to get to the top. That there's only a certain number of ways you could walk up. And we, you know, you always try to alter how you go, but there's only so many times you can alter it. And so that day, the way we went, so Sal and Hung really earned their pay. I mean, he, and they, they follow these damn things. If that had been me, now Lynn's, Lynn was a little bit more sharp and keen eyed than me. But that had been me, I would have been hamburger meat on that first claymore.

• 35:11Jocko Willink?

  And so that stuff, like I said, it's wearing on you, obviously would wear on anyone. But that's the end of your tour. You get done with that tour. And we touched on this a little bit on, on the last time. But I wanted to go a little bit deeper on it. You, you're coming back to America. After your first tour in Vietnam, how old are you?

• 35:30John Stryker Meyer?

  Uh, let's see, sixty-nine, twenty-three.

• 35:32Jocko Willink?

  Twenty-three years old. And when you get back, again, you touched on this a little bit, but they assign you, they assign you to, um, like a

• 35:42John Stryker Meyer?

  A signal

• 35:43Jocko Willink?

  A signal company, meaning you're not an operational guy. And you're in with some, and you're just coming out of Vietnam and you're, you're, you're hearing people are saying like, hey, what do you, you know? Was it even, was it even, there's, there's guys that are actively avoiding going to Vietnam.

• 36:00John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh yeah, this is the 10th Special Forces Group. And they'd been in Germany since fifty-two. And they had, they were actively involved in a cold war and those guys earned their pay there. Uh, in fact, one of the first books just came out on Dead A, which was there in the Cold War.

• 36:19John Stryker Meyer?

  But this is a special forces unit. So companies A through D were active. E, because of my MOS, comma.

• 36:29Jocko Willink?

  Oh, because you were a radioman.

• 36:30John Stryker Meyer?

  I was a radioman. They stuck me there. And we had four or five platoons. And they're new officers. They're butter bars, like right out of OCS. They're young and They treated everybody like was basic training. And my first thing was, excuse me, this is an SF unit, even though it's Signal. So we had-

• 36:51Jocko Willink?

  So the Signal, the officers inside that platoon, they're not, they're not SF guys. They're like communications officers?

• 36:59John Stryker Meyer?

  You know what? I'm not even sure. I just knew they were young and dumb. And not respected. And then we had the platoon, other platoon serges, each one was fat and out of shape, and had avoided going to Vietnam and was proud of it. And made fun of me and a couple of guys from D Company, because we weren't smart enough to figure how to get out of going to Vietnam. I'm going like, wait a minute, what are you wearing on your head? And so we had some difficult moments dealing with those guys. And my, and so we had routine training, a single company with trucks and all this stuff to go and do these things. I said, whenever we do one of these little practice runs for a weekend or a mission, we will win. Cause we're gonna get out of here and let everybody else do the KP and stuff.

• 37:43John Stryker Meyer?

  And that just pissed everybody off a lot more. And I pushed our young guys and pushed them hard in base. Cause we, you know, they do these training missions. You're out there three or four days. Oh, this is just commo. And, uh, but the way we did it, I, I, I can't even tell you the details now, cause I just hated it. But we won. We were the first ones back to the base. We had the most signal contact. All the criteria and we met and we beat the fat reps.

• 38:10Jocko Willink?

  Now, uh, and, and so you're back, where, where, where were you stationed at that point?

• 38:15John Stryker Meyer?

  Fort Debs, Massachusetts.

• 38:17Jocko Willink?

  So then you gotta, I mean, and some people that weren't ever in the military don't realize this, but even when you're in the military, when you're back in America, you go and interact with normal civilian. You know, you go to restaurants, you go to bars, you, you live a normal life, except for your job. You know, whatever the hours, you gotta work your job. Then you're living-

• 38:33Jocko Willink?

  How was that transition? Like now you're just going out for a pizza on a Thursday night. Now you're going out to have some beers on a Friday night or Saturday night. How was that transition?

• 38:44John Stryker Meyer?

  Um, it was difficult because actually we didn't transition. Basically I hung out mostly with the SF guys up there because it's Massachusetts. Didn't know much about the small towns and I bought a 442 W30. Had to get a job just to pump gas on the weekends, just to get extra cash. I hopefully be able to pay for the insurance.

• 39:06Jocko Willink?

  Did you buy it brand new?

• 39:07John Stryker Meyer?

  No, used.

• 39:08Jocko Willink?

  Even used?

• 39:09John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 39:10Jocko Willink?

  That thing was expensive, huh?

• 39:11John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, it could go. I blew it up on the turnpike at 130 miles an hour, but it was a great car in between. And so I'm working and you know.

• 39:21Jocko Willink?

  And what was your, what was your side job?

• 39:24John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, pumping gas.

• 39:25Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 39:26John Stryker Meyer?

  They had a local shell station at one of the little towns outside of Fort Devens. And the guy was a, um, he was a World War II vet. And he had put up a sign, I bought gas and there's a sign, help one. I said, hey, I need cash. Can I work for you on weekends or if I get a day off? He said, yeah, come on in. So I was highly trained. I could do oil changes. I could grease them up and it was fun and.

• 39:50Jocko Willink?

  So here you were, Green Beret, Special Forces, Vietnam, just got done with your first tour.

• 39:58Jocko Willink?

  And you're pumping gas on the weekends. That had to be a little bit of a, of like a tough thing to swallow.

• 40:06John Stryker Meyer?

  It was, but you know, we swallowed it. Cause that's like, I, I gotta survive. And at the time I was just, I still had a, a sweet thing down south.

• 40:14Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 40:15John Stryker Meyer?

  And so, uh, she was dealing some issues. I'm up there, this whole thing's falling apart and Boston, Boston was so anti-military. I mean, it was just peace freaks galore. I went to town twice and I never went back because it was, they could tell that we were in the military. Cause our hair was still shorter than the average hippie in Boston. Not a good time. So we just stayed with our guys. Um, there are bars, we had a few engagements in the bars, but, uh, yeah, I was glad to get out of there.

• 40:46Jocko Willink?

  And you ended up getting in trouble for some of those engagements.

• 40:48John Stryker Meyer?

  Yes, we did. I'm told that the MPs came, I cleared base the day before they got there. And, uh, that's, I can, that's all I know. Taking the fifth amendment on that one.

• 40:57Jocko Willink?

  This is the SOG operation that will remain secret.

• 41:00John Stryker Meyer?

  Indeed.

• 41:02Jocko Willink?

  So you were a little bit on the lam. You were a little bit on the run.

• 41:04John Stryker Meyer?

  Yes.

• 41:05Jocko Willink?

  And so you run to uh to your to this woman in DC. Is that where she was?

• 41:12John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah, at the Pentagon. There was a woman in charge of SF orders for Southeast Asia. Her name is Billy Alexander. She's one of our saints.

• 41:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 41:20John Stryker Meyer?

  Patron saints.

• 41:21Jocko Willink?

  There was, there was a woman that, that ran the officers, that detailed the officers and the SEAL teams for a long, long time. I want to say she did it for forty something years.

• 41:30John Stryker Meyer?

  Really?

• 41:31Jocko Willink?

  And, yeah, I mean, it's the exact same thing. Like, if you, if you knew her, and she was always great to me, and I mean, she was very nice to me, and she took great care of me, probably because I was just lucky enough to have some senior people that knew me and, you know, put in a good word, but she was always very nice to me. But I saw what happened to some guys that maybe she didn't like so much. It was rough. So it sounds like, you know, you showed up with some flowers.

• 41:55John Stryker Meyer?

  And a bottle of wine, is she like, and you went, this is in the Pentagon, in the Puzzle Palace at the Pentagon?

• 42:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:01John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, same thing.

• 42:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, same thing. Yeah, this, no, this, and like I said, this woman was always, uh, super nice, but she, she wielded a lot of power, you know, and inside, inside the SEAL officer community.

• 42:13John Stryker Meyer?

  Wow.

• 42:14Jocko Willink?

  Cause if she didn't like you, well, she was writing your orders.

• 42:17John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 42:17Jocko Willink?

  And if she liked you, then, you know, it was like, you know, and if you were neutral, then what, you know, she gonna do what she's gonna do. But, yeah, it sounded like Mrs. Billy Alexander was, uh, the same type of thing.

• 42:26John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah, I drove down all night, got there right in the morning, the Pentagon opened, walked in, this is before any metal detectors. Walked in, asked the guy where she was, went down, gave her the wine, the flowers, please give me orders. Came back at the end of the day, drove back all night.

• 42:40Jocko Willink?

  How many people were just going all the way to the Pentagon to try and get orders back to Vietnam?

• 42:44John Stryker Meyer?

  Uh, not many. I'm told not many, but there were some. There were other SF guys that really felt more comfortable and they wanted to be there. And there's, there's, uh, I wish I could line up the stories, but there's like Billy Wall and others that have gone to her over the years and gotten their assignments they wanted. She took care of SF.

• 43:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, I, I've, I told the story the other day, I was kind of, I, there's an, there's, so there's that, that woman who's the civilian that handles the detailing, but then there's a, there's a, a SEAL officer that would kind of. Work with her side by side and he would get rotated out every couple of years. Well, when nine eleven happened, I knew that guy. And he was, he was a guy that I had worked for. He was an officer and he was a great guy and I, I had a lot of respect for him and we got along very well. And as soon as nine eleven happened, I called him and said, hey, you know, I was going to college at the time. I said, sir, please get me out of college, send me back to, send me back to a team right now. I don't need to college. I'll finish it online or whatever. I said, just please get me back to a team. And, you know, he said, listen, this war is going to last a long time, but I was having a conversation with him. A few months ago, with him and his wife, actually.

• 43:48Jocko Willink?

  And I was saying, oh, yeah, remember when I called you and I asked you to please send me? And he said, he said, everyone called him. And it made me feel like that's pretty awesome. Like it wasn't like, you know, I, I guess in my mind, I didn't think I was special, but in my mind, I thought, you know, I really wanted to go. So did everybody else. Every other SEAL that, that wa- that wasn't in a, at a SEAL team. Everyone wanted to go. And when the war happened, everyone wanted to go do their part, you know?

• 44:12John Stryker Meyer?

  Esprit de corps.

• 44:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 44:13John Stryker Meyer?

  Absolutely.

• 44:14Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, he was right. The war lasted a lot longer than any of us thought it would. So you get your orders back to Vietnam. You're, what'd you do with the car?

• 44:25John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, but, um, I had to get rid of four, four, two, traded in, got a little F eighty-five, three speed on the column. This is survival vehicle, right? And so, uh, so I just parked that and dad took care of it when I was gone. And, um, um, so I went back, just went home and said, hey, I'm going back to Nam. I had no leave time. Cause I burned it all up previously. And so I went home and broke my mom's heart and told dad I'm going, going back to my, my sister ran me to the airport the next day. And then, uh, we're back to heading back to Vietnam.

• 45:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, your mom must have been. What'd your dad think?

• 45:03John Stryker Meyer?

  Uh, well, you know, dad was, uh, I'll support your son. And that's to, he was, to his credit, he never, he never had an opinion. Never asked him for an opinion because he had a, he had deferment during the war, family deferment, because he had to run the family business. And then my uncle flew over the hump. So we had family service. And, um, but he says, good luck. If you need anything, let us know. And then mom was just like, she's a little bit more emotional, but, uh, tough old farm girl from central Jersey, Dutch farm girl, you know?

• 45:34Jocko Willink?

  And, and even, even then, did they know anything about what your last deployment was like?

• 45:39John Stryker Meyer?

  No. No, we never talked about it. Just glad you're home. Yep, glad to be home.

• 45:44Jocko Willink?

  They had no idea what kind of, what kind of situations you'd been in?

• 45:48John Stryker Meyer?

  No, we really couldn't talk about it. And um, like I don't know if I mentioned this before or not on air, but you know, many years later, my dad came up to me and said, you know, I finally read across the fence and it says, now I know why this guy came by and took our trash. So he said, yeah, so they got the news guy. He's a tall, black guy. He'd come by and pick up our trash. So he had to be from the FBI because they were checking my trash to see if I wrote anything. That is a violation of the uh, the agreement that we signed in Da Nang. The twenty year agreement. You won't talk about it. We won't write about it. And they checked on you. So dad, and they, this guy picked up the trash boy at once because dad recognized him.

• 46:31John Stryker Meyer?

  He saw him down at the post office once near the FBI office. So he figured, oh, an FBI guy's checking on my Johnny.

• 46:40Jocko Willink?

  That's uh.

• 46:41John Stryker Meyer?

  Sidebar.

• 46:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, that's, that's, that's kind of crazy that they're, they're putting all that effort to do that. And, and yet you, you, they're, you're out pumping gas. That's crazy to me.

• 46:54John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, yeah. But I gave a, I gave a great new job though, buddy. You came, you got a drop of grease you needed.

• 47:00Jocko Willink?

  That's, yeah, it's awesome. Yeah. That's crazy. You know, like, and that's, that's, that's uh, I guess when I'm older now, like, you know, when I was a kid, I worked at fast food restaurants. You know what I mean? Like, and, and now I think, man, I would not want to do that right now.

• 47:16John Stryker Meyer?

  No, the funny thing was, I had a little twenty five, like a little brownie twenty five, always carrying in my pocket. This is Boston. There's still some people that were like less than friendly up there. I said, I hope I get robbed. I just want to kill me a robber. But nah, it didn't happen. So.

• 47:32Jocko Willink?

  Well, what did happen is we got you back to Vietnam.

• 47:35John Stryker Meyer?

  Indeed.

• 47:37Jocko Willink?

  So you get back to Vietnam, going back to the book here, the casualty rates for SOG recon teams were the highest for any unit in Vietnam.

• 47:46Jocko Willink?

  We all had our close calls and thus each of us was given ample opportunity for the truth of this observation to be incised on his soul. None perhaps so more so than the young, hard-charging 1-0 of RT Michigan, Sergeant Eldon Bargewell. No one who ever met him doubted his professionalism or determination. He was not only meticulous when preparing his team for a mission and a fearless leader when on the ground, but he also possessed a biting wit and an absolute intolerance

• 48:20Jocko Willink?

  when it came to fools and rems, fools and rems being a redundancy to his way of thinking. So this was interesting because you, you, you talk about Bargewell and in the story that you tell, he, they're, they're out on an op and he finds a, a vest, an AK-47 vest and he wants it and he wants the AK. He just found them laying around in a bunker or something. So he puts on the vest and he gives the AK to one of his, one of his indig guys. And, and then he ends up getting shot in the chest and that, that vest actually saved his life because it hit one of the magazines that was in the vest. Correct. Crazy story.

• 49:01Jocko Willink?

  And what was interesting, so when I was in, I was in Germany in 1998, I was stationed at Naval Special Warfare Unit 2, just outside of Stuttgart. And my boss, who is the commander of Naval Special Warfare Unit 2, he obviously directed to the guy that was in charge of Special Operations Command Europe. And my boss, who I had a ton of respect for, who's an incredible guy, a great guy, and taught me a ton, he would tell me, hey, the, the, you used to saw Commander, this guy, he's awesome. His name is Bargewell. He would tell me stories about him. He just absolutely loved Bargewell and talked about him with the highest respect possible. And

• 49:47Jocko Willink?

  And he was, it was awesome. And I mean, I knew about Barshwell. I mean, I basically learned about him initially from him.

• 49:53John Stryker Meyer?

  That's amazing.

• 49:53Jocko Willink?

  And then later on.

• 49:55John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 49:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, I would read about him.

• 49:56John Stryker Meyer?

  Small world.

• 49:57Jocko Willink?

  And what a, what a, you know, a great guy he was and what an epic soldier he was and what a great example. And you know, so many people say he's the, like one of the foremost examples of how you'd want to be as a soldier, just a great guy. And I was lucky enough to have, you know, a little degree of connection to, to have my boss work for him. When, and he must have been, he must have been a two star at the time. I think it was a two star ballot at the time. So there he was. And I think he did forty something years.

• 50:23John Stryker Meyer?

  Almost forty.

• 50:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 50:24John Stryker Meyer?

  Couple of months shy.

• 50:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 50:28Jocko Willink?

  So that's pretty awesome to, to, uh, to read about Barshwell.

• 50:32John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:35Jocko Willink?

  You get to this point here where you're, you're talking about how crazy and I, I often try and explain how in combat unexpected things happen. Things that you, you can't make it up. Things happen are so crazy. And you've got a section in here where you're talking about Lynn Black, who's your running mate for a while, for a long time.

• 50:54John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah. Then when I left, he took over the team. He ran it. And when I came back, I went on a team and then he, we brought him up to speed with what the AO had changed in five months.

• 51:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 51:04John Stryker Meyer?

  And then we took turns and then they said, hey, you guys got too much experience. So Lynn went to did some more snooping and pooping and I took over Idaho again.

• 51:12Jocko Willink?

  And, and this is when he's solo on the ground. Or he's, you're not there. He's not solo, but he's with his team. He's in Laos and they're on patrol. They're deep in enemy territory, which is just like, just the way you guys rolled. And he, you know, the team starts to hear people following them. And now they start, you know, stepping up their pace. They're trying to move. They're trying to do things to disguise their trail and all that. And, and finally they, they really like, okay, we're definitely getting followed.

• 51:41John Stryker Meyer?

  After two days.

• 51:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. After two days of being followed.

• 51:43John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 51:43Jocko Willink?

  And so here we go, going back to the book. However, before Black could give the word to change course, the, the noises suddenly returned. Only now it sounded as though a large number of enemy soldiers was headed straight for them and the troops were not in the least trying to hide their movement. This is it, fought Black. The trackers have linked with reinforcements and they're about to try and overrun us. He immediately told the team to head for the ridge, form a line, and get ready for a fight. Claymore mines were put in a quickly into place and Black dug out the radio handset in anticipation of calling Covey. Black was totally convinced he would soon be declaring a prairie fire emergency.

• 52:23Jocko Willink?

  Back when Black was with RT Alabama, he had faced a ma- he had faced massive frontal assault waves by determined NVA. So he knew what to expect and he knew what needed to be done. Having moved the team up onto the ridge line, he knew he had the tactical advantage. If the enemy wanted a bloody fight, and it certainly sounded as though they did, the NVA could charge uphill and RT Idaho would give it to them. Everyone had placed their weapons on full automatic and begun unbending the metal pins on their hand grenades. The ends were bent in order to keep the pins from accidentally being pulled, should the ring end hang up on a branch or something else.

• 53:01Jocko Willink?

  High explosive rounds in the M79 were replaced with rounds containing large buckshot capable of blasting a devastating hole in the enemy's ranks. With everything in place and ready, RT Idaho faced the jungle and waited for whatever was coming. The Frenchman caught sight of something approaching, but the vegetation was such that he couldn't get a clean shot at it. He figured it was someone moving in a crouch because it only stood about four feet off the ground. He could see other similarly poised figures behind it, all moving noisily toward the team. In a few more feet, they would reach a point where the jungle thinned out and he'd figured he'd have a good shot at them.

• 53:41Jocko Willink?

  Like any recon man, Latourneau had fought about such a moment, the moment when an outnumbered team was forced to make a stand. Thus, like all the other RT Idaho members, he was very tense but ready for anything.

• 53:58Jocko Willink?

  Anything that is, but what stepped into the clearing? He couldn't believe his eyes. He found himself staring not at an Oriental gentleman in pith helmets armed with AK-47s, but long-armed hairy reddish-orange creatures with decidedly human features. It was a small band of orangutans, probably a family of them. They had been tracking the team out of natural curiosity, trying to figure out what these hairless apes were up to in their territory. Yeah.

• 54:29John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:31Jocko Willink?

  That's probably the happiest monkeys they ever saw.

• 54:35John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 54:36Jocko Willink?

  On both ends.

• 54:37John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, yeah. For sure.

• 54:39Jocko Willink?

  I was in Sri Lanka and we got to see that. You would hear them coming and they would be moving through the trees and it was really cool. Just how, but yeah, you'd hear all this noise and it would be a bunch of monkeys coming through the trees.

• 54:55John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, we had that at Echo Four. Yeah. We got online, we were ready for the assault and it's like we got overrun by monkeys.

• 55:02Jocko Willink?

  All right, now we're getting to the point where you, so that was Lynn Black working on his own and now we're getting where you return. When I returned to CCN at the end of October 1969, I immediately reported to Sergeant Major John Hobbs and asked if I could rejoin RT Idaho. He said that Latourneau had just completed his torn return stateside. There was an opening for an American and I could fill it. But Lynn M. Black Jr. is still the 1-0 and you two are both experienced 1-0s. I reminded him that I'd been away for five months and needed some time to get back in the flow of things. I added, "I'd be happy to serve as Black's 1-1 for a while because I respected his judgment." As I, now you go and meet with the team.

• 55:47Jocko Willink?

  As I approached, I saw Black and Sal leading the team away from the range. Once they caught sight of me, their faces lit up and there was a rush of feelings, of greetings. As I shook Black's hand, the team surrounded us dancing about almost like children and the good-natured taunts instantly began flowing hot and heavy. The gross insult being one of the most accepted ways a recon man can show affection. I was subjected to a whole litany of them aimed at everything from my intelligence to my sexual orientation. In the midst of it all, Black, totally cool as usual, asked if I was back on the team. "Yes, Sergeant," I replied. "I'm reporting for duty. I am your new 1-1."

• 56:29Jocko Willink?

  I know more about the team, the A.O., and the bullshit in camp. Oh, sorry, you know more about the team, the A.O., and the bullshit here in camp than I do. I want, I wanted Black to understand I was willingly putting myself under his command and that my goal was not to challenge him, but to learn from him. A recon man who thinks he knows it all is a recon man headed for trouble. And if I could capture those, that attitude right there and distill it among every person that's moving into a leadership position, like this, the humility that you show here, the willingness to subordinate your own ego is like the best sign of a great leader. When you check into a situation, you go, "Oh, you know what? I don't know everything.

• 57:13Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, if I think I know everything, I'm wrong. And, oh, there's someone that's been here for a while? Guess what? Cool. I got no problem working for you. I'm here to support. I'm here to, I'm here to look out for the team. I'm here to help the team win, not here to look out for my own little agenda." So, that was awesome.

• 57:29John Stryker Meyer?

  And that was Lynn Black. He's just an amazing man. And so I totally respected him and was glad that it worked out. Thanks to Billy Alexander, orders are cut, get over there pretty quick. And with Lynn, you know, he had done a tour of duty with the 173rd. And he lost a brother there. And he still came back because he wanted to get his fair share of NVA dead just to take some personal revenge. And, you know, we had that mission where he came up against a 10,000 and survived it. Amazing. Mother, one of our amazing heroes. And so, yeah, I respected him. And then later on, we began, there's no SOP. The Sergeant Major Hobbs asked us to do an SOP.

• 58:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that sounds like a, that's something that we need to start doing in the SEAL Teams too. You, here's another, here's another section in here where you start talking about, well, it it appeared to me, and we were actually talking about this before we started recording, and that's when you go to meet the new commander. And here we go back to the book, because I hadn't met the C N commander, I polished my jump boots to spit shine, hoping they might make a positive impression when I met him. Later that afternoon, the call came down to meet him. I put on the last pair of starched fatigues I had in my possession, put on my new green beret, and the spit shined boots. So there you go, you're getting squared away. And again, this is one of those things where you're in your second tour in Vietnam, you know, you're an SF guy, you've been in all kinds of really tough situations, but you're going to meet the commander? Okay, cool. Be humble, get

• 58:59Jocko Willink?

  squared away uniform on, try and make a good impression. The commander of C N made it a point to say that he ordered recon teams to break contact with enemy forces and continue the mission.

• 59:11Jocko Willink?

  I knew that several other recon teams had been unsuccessful in getting the tanker. So this guy's a tanker. This guy was a tanker. He, I don't know, what do you want to, you want to give us a little briefing on what that new commander was like?

• 59:22John Stryker Meyer?

  Um, yeah, he was assigned there, and he was a friend of General Creighton Abrams, who was the overall commander. Abrams had seceded Westmoreland as the, as the top commanding officer for all of Vietnam. And so he was one of his buddies. And so, in order to build up his career, Abrams sent him to an SF unit, so he'd get his, build up his medals, get the time. And at that time in the Army, if you served in special forces for much longer than six months as an officer, your career was done. You would not get to promotions, the West Pointers, and the other guys would get, your, your career was just finished. But if you had a certain amount of time, and he

• 1:00:02John Stryker Meyer?

  came up there, which we learned later, was to build his medal portfolio. And we had some other stories that go on later on. So, he never really adjusted, nor did he apparently understand SF, and the way we worked, particularly on the recon teams. And the whole thing about, uh, break contact, continue mission. Well, sir, if you're with me on the ground, and you want to say that, that's cool. But if you're up there 5,000 feet and telling me to break contact, continue mission with a six man recon team, we got 10,000 guys, we want to party, no. But well, you can't quite say it that way.

• 1:00:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:39John Stryker Meyer?

  So you go into extreme PC mode.

• 1:00:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:42John Stryker Meyer?

  And we're just meeting each other too. It's like, I heard he was a, uh, he was lacking compared to this previous commander we had here.

• 1:00:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And the idea, you know, I think it's Patton said the commander in the field is always right, which is a great thing to lean towards from your perspective when you're up at 5,000 feet or back in attack cooperation center, you gotta assume that your guy in the field is making the right call and try and support him. And there's so many times where I read the stories that you write or the stories of the other guys that you're writing about, the, the, the, the difference between the team being overrun and killed is a minute. It's two minutes. Sometimes it's seconds. You know, it's like these, uh, the time when you got, when, when the fire, as you're taking off, the fire consumes the area we're just, and that's followed by the NVA. So often, these situations,

• 1:01:34Jocko Willink?

  as soon as they started to go bad, even in the slightest way, it's like, okay, we gotta, we gotta start figuring out how we're gonna get out of here. Cause if we try and fight, by the time we make the decision, so if you try to do this idea of his, which is break contact and then continue the mission. I mean, you, is it really possible for you to break? So you lose a bunch of your ammo? What do you figure? A third of your ammo, half of your ammo in a quick gunfight? And now you think the enemy's just gonna walk away?

• 1:01:59John Stryker Meyer?

  And the fundamental flaw here is, this is a secret mission. It's a clandestine operation. If you make contact with the enemy, quote, you've been compromised, but somehow that didn't compute with the tanker.

• 1:02:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. So you're in there, you're talking to him and, and here we go back to the book. I knew that several other recon team members had been unsuccessful in getting the tanker to change his mind on that topic. So I approached it from a different angle. I asked him to place himself in the one zeros position in the field because most of the one zeros I knew would do anything within their power to successfully complete a mission if the tactical situation was conducive to it. But once compromised, it was often militarily difficult to do so with a six man recon team against large numbers of NVA soldiers. He promised me he'd think more on the topic. I saluted and returned to the team room, leery of the new CO. So you did, you, even at a, even at a young age, you had the, had the kind of understanding, maybe I'm not going to

• 1:02:57Jocko Willink?

  approach things head on. Hey, you're not trying to, sir, you're dumb. That's a bad idea. No, it's like, hey, you know, sir, from my perspective as a one zero, this is what we see. It's a little bit different. I just was impressed with the fact that you were playing the game a little bit, try and build a relationship with this guy, try and

• 1:03:13John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, my time with Spider Parks and Pat Watkins at FOB One, we had a couple of officers there that were real dickheads in the beginning. And when they took over command of, they would be making bad decisions and didn't understand the situation, but at least majority of the senior officers, meaning a major or lieutenant colonel in our case, majority, once they'd been there and saw what we were up against in the field, it just took a while to that little time gap from when they land, they want to prove they're a hard ass, they want to be a good CO, and they got to worry about their career too. And between that reality and what we're dealing with on the ground. And usually, most of them came around. This guy was not one of those that was, didn't have that capability.

• 1:03:56Jocko Willink?

  You were just seeing it in his, his own perspective.

• 1:03:59John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, I learned from the pros, you know, Spider, Pat Watkins, John McGovern. These were all senior NCOs. And I watched them in situations, dealing with sergeant majors and S3, particularly on mission stuff, before the mission and afterwards, how they would talk. And I picked up a lot of, I like to think I absorbed some of their PC skills because I had none.

• 1:04:23Jocko Willink?

  And the, and the, what would you say the goal was from a leadership perspective as you're talking to these guys? I mean, I always say, look, if I got a boss, my goal is to try and form a relationship with me so that he listens to what I'm saying. Because if I go there and butt heads out of the gate, they're not going to listen to me. If I tell this boss, this tanker, hey, you don't know what you're talking about. Well, he's not going to listen to another word I say. But if I say, hey, sir, Roger that, I want to give you some perspective on this that I've, you know, whatever, just trying to talk to him respectfully, try to build a relationship. That's what I try to do.

• 1:04:53John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, and with the CO, you just try to stay a hell away from them. Deal with the sergeant major because they've all been on the ground. They had experience and they appreciated what we were doing. They knew what we were doing day by day. Our sergeant majors were squared away. With exceptional one, but most of the ones I dealt with. And we're just really lucky. So I try to deal with them, keep the CO out of sight. Stay away from is the best way.

• 1:05:17John Stryker Meyer?

  Officer avoidance, sir.

• 1:05:18Jocko Willink?

  Officer avoidance, that's a good one.

• 1:05:23Jocko Willink?

  Moving forward a little bit. In the late afternoon, as Black and I went over the final mission preparations, Junkins came running into our hooch with bad news. RT Maryland has been hit. Walt and Brown are down. Jesus H. Christ, I can't believe it. Walt told me they, that they told him it was a dry hole. Give me your PRC 25. Someone said they heard Brown on the radio. As I screwed the long antenna into the PRC 25, Black asked Junkins, "Any word on the bright light team?" He turned to me with a frown on his face. "No word yet," replied Junkins. "But I want to go if there is one." We all moved outside to get better radio reception on our FM radios. The news got worse. Junkin said he could hear Covey talking to Brown.

• 1:06:08Jocko Willink?

  All the Americans were down and being overrun. Junkin said he heard Covey's last conversation with Brown, when a wounded Brown told Covey they were being overrun.

• 1:06:21Jocko Willink?

  He said he heard AK-47 firing. And then there was radio silence. All communications with RT Maryland were lost.

• 1:06:32Jocko Willink?

  The weather over the target closed in, precluding any bright light missions for 10 days. When a bright light finally went in, team members found only American web gear near the last lone location of RT Maryland. No further evidence of the team was ever located. Wald, Brown, and Sergeant Donald Monroe Shu, the newly appointed team member, were listed as presumptive killed in action.

• 1:07:01Jocko Willink?

  The loss of Wald, Brown, and Shu was a reminder of just how deadly the AO continued to be in SOG. As always, the recon men talked to each other afterward to see if there were any lessons to be learned from their loss.

• 1:07:16Jocko Willink?

  While the weather was bad Sergeant Major John Hobbs suggested to Black, myself and a few others in recon that perhaps a recon book should be written containing and documenting the team's standard operating procedures. So there you go, that's when you got started on that.

• 1:07:32John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, on our spare time. Yeah, Lynn was a phenomenal, he is a phenomenal artist. And so he would do a lot of sketches and then we worked on every SOP from, everything from just getting pre-mission, what you would carry, break it down between the Americas and the indige, batteries, claymores, five second fuses, and then adapting to the AO you're going in. Some of the areas on layoffs, they had a lot of water, so you only carry one canteen of water and purification pills. Other times it was dry, you had to carry more water, which is more weight. So we tried to stay low as possible on that as one of the fluctuation weight factors that we had some control over.

• 1:08:13Jocko Willink?

  How much were you usually carrying?

• 1:08:16John Stryker Meyer?

  At least eighty to ninety pounds back then. And we waited.

• 1:08:22Jocko Willink?

  How much was your body weight?

• 1:08:23John Stryker Meyer?

  Uh, I think it was about one seventy soaking wet, maybe one seventy-five at the most after R and R.

• 1:08:31Jocko Willink?

  And you were carrying eighty pounds, ninety pounds?

• 1:08:37John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, because I carried the radio plus the six hundred plus rounds for the car, M79 rounds and the frag grenades.

• 1:08:45Jocko Willink?

  And you guys wore no body armor?

• 1:08:48John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, no.

• 1:08:49Jocko Willink?

  No helmet?

• 1:08:50John Stryker Meyer?

  The body armor back then was this clunky stuff. And it was just, you know, and the helmet just made too much noise and it was weight. And in the jungle, we'd just get caught up in stuff, whereas I just wore the cravat all the time. And then try to cover my blonde hair.

• 1:09:08Jocko Willink?

  Again, this is a, you know, every time I read one of your, one of the stories that you write about, you know, you made it out, you know, you, you, you had that extra claymore that gave you enough time to get on the bird. You laid down that extra fire. The, the, the airships showed up in time to put down cover fire and, and here with these guys with RT Maryland, like those seconds didn't happen. Those aircraft didn't show, whatever the case may be. And that's what was at stake every single time you guys went out there.

• 1:09:38John Stryker Meyer?

  Right. And just like we said in across the fence, all the Americans were killed. The indige were left alive. So they were hit by, we assume sappers. And with the indige, that's a psychological thing on all the troops in camp. You had to deal with that again. But like with my team, we just pulled the team together and said, hey, tell us what you heard. We don't, we don't have a problem with you guys. But when this happens, just be advised. Keep Lynn and I appraised of anything you hear that could be negative or troublesome. Then we'll squelch it right away or deal with it.

• 1:10:12Jocko Willink?

  In this case, did the indige, the indige make it out? Or they never heard from again?

• 1:10:16John Stryker Meyer?

  No, two out of three made it out. Uh, one was killed as they came out of the forest. They were near a marine compound of some sort. And because they were indige, when they came out armed, the marine took them out. And the other two were able to surround or surrender and make gestures of some sort that they were able to get picked up, came back, then they took them down to Saigon for the full debrief and everything.

• 1:10:40Jocko Willink?

  And did you guys ever get word on that debrief?

• 1:10:44John Stryker Meyer?

  Way late.

• 1:10:44Jocko Willink?

  Way late.

• 1:10:45John Stryker Meyer?

  Uh, only thing we heard was from Covey. And Covey said that they had, the team had set up for his rest overnight spot too early. And he thought it was a dangerous spot, but the 1-0 didn't listen to him. And, uh, so everybody was, um, surprised that we, he did it because Walt had been a 1-0 for a few months. He had been in Marine Corps first, came to SF, and then he ran a few missions out of FOB 1. And FOB 1 shut down. Uh, he came down to, uh, FOB 4, CCN.

• 1:11:18Jocko Willink?

  Would you guys always know who the Covey was, who the Covey rider was gonna be?

• 1:11:23John Stryker Meyer?

  No, no, uh, sometimes it fluctuated, uh, particularly after we went down to FOB four. Cause the air force changed their pilots and all the covey riders we had at FOB one got reassigned somewhere else. So none of them carried on as covey riders. Now, Pat Watkins came home. He de-roast out. Spider Parks came to CCM, but he had another assignment and I saw Spider very little, uh, because I couldn't even tell you what his assignment was. We just saw each other so little there because Lynn and I were busy running.

• 1:11:55Jocko Willink?

  Would the covey rider do all the mission planning with you?

• 1:11:58John Stryker Meyer?

  No. Uh, the, he, the covey rider and the pilot would be in for the final briefing at base or at the launch site. And it would just talk about LZs, uh, any anti-aircraft because they continued to bring down more anti-aircraft, everything from the, uh, thirty-seven Mike Mikes to the heavier anti-aircraft artillery that came in later.

• 1:12:24Jocko Willink?

  Did it, did they ever get, did the, uh, coveys ever get shot at and shot down?

• 1:12:29John Stryker Meyer?

  Always. We had several that went down. And, um, there is a...

• 1:12:34Jocko Willink?

  What altitude would they fly at?

• 1:12:37John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, um, they would do everything from way up high when they're just doing a general recon to when the team would be on the ground. They would have to spot the team either through smoke or mirror or from a location. You have, you'd be on a prominent point that they could pick us out. Well, most of the times it'd be signal mirror that we'd flash you up to them. They'd lock in on us that way. But once they got to doing actual coverage, they would come down really low and sometimes nappy to earth stuff. And there would be O2, they're slow movers, the little push-pull.

• 1:13:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:10John Stryker Meyer?

  Um, yeah, we lost several coveys.

• 1:13:13Jocko Willink?

  It seems like those, I mean, I can't imagine being the covey rider in this one for our team Maryland and you're, you're there and you're, you're basically watching your guys get overrun. And I mean, it isn't even after you maybe made suggestions that they moved somewhere else, but you know, well, they don't, but you're still supporting them. I mean, what a helpless feeling that's gotta be.

• 1:13:34John Stryker Meyer?

  Rough.

• 1:13:35Jocko Willink?

  And most of the CUVI riders were guys that couldn't operate for whatever reason?

• 1:13:41John Stryker Meyer?

  No, they were, well, they were former SF. So sometimes it would be SF men that had been in country for eight or nine months. And then they would be signed to CUVI riders. So they had experience on the ground. They were short timers. So it was viewed as, as a, a job that was not quite as dangerous as being on the ground, but it had its own hidden dangers.

• 1:14:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. And,

• 1:14:06Jocko Willink?

  it seems like you would, you would just want like someone that you really knew and trusted as your CUVI rider.

• 1:14:11John Stryker Meyer?

  Right. And so like in my case, we had a bunch of new ones. So this CUVI rider was great. Uh, he just picked everybody up, ran us well. We had a couple others that we dealt with. And some of these guys like Spider Parks, there was a couple of times when there's no air available. So you say, what, how low did they get? They would make a gun run with a car 15. Spider would hang out the window firing his car 15 at the NVA.

• 1:14:37Jocko Willink?

  I don't even know what to say to that.

• 1:14:39John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah. And he wasn't the only CUVI rider that did that. I mean, other guys would drop around for an M 49.

• 1:14:47John Stryker Meyer?

  That's what they tried to do to, to give us support while we're waiting for the air force and the other air assets to get there.

• 1:14:53Jocko Willink?

  You know, I always thought, so when I went to SER school, you know, they taught us, they taught us how to signal with the mirror. And in my mind, cause I'm dumb, I would think like, I would think like, how well is this really going to work? I can't believe every, that's like your primary signal device.

• 1:15:08John Stryker Meyer?

  Absolutely.

• 1:15:09Jocko Willink?

  Was the signal mirror.

• 1:15:10John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah. Every time that we had been on the ground for a period of time, had to reconnect, everything was all signal through the mirror. And we had to get the flash, you get the CUVI on the right side so he could see us, you know, everything. Oh, yeah.

• 1:15:25Speaker 02

  How big is that mirror?

• 1:15:26John Stryker Meyer?

  That was just a regular signal mirror like a maybe five by three, three by five. Like a cellphone.

• 1:15:34Jocko Willink?

  Did you have, I, I, I had this, even though I didn't really believe in signal mirrors, I guess. I had this like special signal mirror that when you pointed it at the thing, it got like a little shade. There's a little circle in the middle that got a little shade on it when you'd be in the right spot. You know what I'm talking about?

• 1:15:50John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah. I, I don't know. I never figured out how that quite worked. I just want to get the flashy up so they could see it.

• 1:15:56Jocko Willink?

  Did you do like the technique where you're aiming at your hand and pointing at the thing at the aircraft?

• 1:16:01John Stryker Meyer?

  No, I would just make sure we had the flashy and just point it in general. I didn't get that high level training you had, sir.

• 1:16:09Jocko Willink?

  Well, thank God I didn't ever have to do it. Cause I probably would have been able to pull it off.

• 1:16:13John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, triple canopy is a little different than a desert.

• 1:16:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. And so in the triple canopy, that had to be a challenge too.

• 1:16:20John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, yeah, you had to find a hole in the jungle to get through with the flashy in the first place. Then you had to get the cubby lined up with your hole and then with the mirror flash.

• 1:16:29Jocko Willink?

  You would, you would look at us nowadays and think we were, we were weak with all the crap that we've got. We got laser pointers. We got little signaling devices, transponders.

• 1:16:39John Stryker Meyer?

  I know. We envy your equipment. There's no question about that. Not to mention your knob. We would have run over both of our mothers for those knobs.

• 1:16:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah. Yeah, for sure.

• 1:16:47John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh yeah.

• 1:16:49Jocko Willink?

  And you guys had some starlight scope. Didn't you guys have some starlight thing?

• 1:16:52John Stryker Meyer?

  They were big and heavy. We never carried it in the field. No, we only used them for, well, a couple of teams did. And I couldn't even tell you which ones. Uh, I never heard about it much, at least with FOB one or our time at CCN. But we used it for ambushes. And they were so bright and you, they ruined your night vision. So one eye would be blown out from, from the green sensors that they use to amplify the light. And then your other eye was for night vision.

• 1:17:20Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Awesome stuff.

• 1:17:24Jocko Willink?

  You, after this, after RT Maryland disappears, going back to the book, next morning Hobbs asked me if I would courier a packet of sensitive information to Mac V Sog headquarters in Saigon. You end up going to Saigon. You end up doing a little bit of Thailand as a time in Thailand as well because you had a little pass.

• 1:17:45Jocko Willink?

  Sounds like you had a good time there, of which you don't remember a lot.

• 1:17:48John Stryker Meyer?

  True.

• 1:17:51Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you get back to Saigon and you're waiting for a return flight to Da Nang. You'd spent all of your poker money, which remind me never to play poker with you. And here we go back to the book. For some reason, I couldn't fall asleep that night in Saigon. I lay there on my bed, looking at the ceiling, watching the ceiling turning, still not believing that I had returned to Vietnam and a Sog. At some point, I remember thinking, when I was in Nam during my first tour of duty, I dreamed of returning to the States. When I finally got home, I found myself drawn back to Nam. Of course, there were pressing legal matters at Fort Devens that can contributed to my leaving

• 1:18:32Jocko Willink?

  the US of A. As I lay there, I found myself asking myself, what the hell are you doing here? You could die.

• 1:18:43Jocko Willink?

  It's like realization.

• 1:18:44John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, that's the identical scene from Apocalypse Now.

• 1:18:47Jocko Willink?

  It is, it is.

• 1:18:48John Stryker Meyer?

  The Martin Sheen.

• 1:18:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. That mental tape replayed many times in my mind that night in many different forms. But the essence of the issue was, when I was in Nam, I wanted to go home. When I was home, I wanted to go to Nam. Once again, I thought of home where, other than my family, there was no compelling reason to return. I had no job waiting. I had no job, no career to speak of. I imagined going to one of those county employment centers and saying, hi, I was a one zero in a secret war that I can't talk about. I can fire my Car 15 from the hip real good and I can hit a target at 400 meters with my sawed off M79 and I could bring napalm so close that it'll suck the air out of your lungs.

• 1:19:35Jocko Willink?

  Thus, at the age of 23, I had my midlife crisis.

• 1:19:42Jocko Willink?

  There's a picture that one of my platoon chiefs told me about. He had this mentor Vietnam SEAL who was a mailman in Imperial Beach, California. And, and you know, he had come home from Vietnam and become, you know, what am I gonna do? He became a mailman. And he had, and my platoon chief said that that guy had a picture on his wall. And it was a, it was a taken from the behind of a guy in fatigues with his web gear on and his weapon slung. And, and you're, and he's looking at a, like a corporate guy in a desk. And the corporate guy's looking up at him and the caption underneath it says, I'm sorry, sir. We don't have a job here for point men.

• 1:20:27John Stryker Meyer?

  Exactly.

• 1:20:28Jocko Willink?

  Which is, sounds like how you were feeling.

• 1:20:30John Stryker Meyer?

  It's, it's perfect, on point.

• 1:20:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. And

• 1:20:37Jocko Willink?

  you're, you got this, and this is, you know, it's interesting. I was just talking to one of my buddies. And he was saying, look, you know, sometimes I hear people say, oh, I loved being in combat. And when they say that, I kind of get pissed at them. And I think, you know, if you loved it so much, or he's like, he says, I don't, I didn't love it so much. You know, I had a hard time with, you know, it was hard. And I'll do, I would do it again if I had to, but I'm not dreaming about it. And so we had this little conversation. What I ended up saying to him was, I said, well, when I was on my last deployment to Iraq. And you know, there's, you know, we had some guys wounded. We had, we had, had had one guy killed at this point.

• 1:21:17Jocko Willink?

  And there starts to be like, you start seeing those negative feelings start to, start to grow a little bit. You know, guys start questioning stuff, guys start, hey, you know, what, what are we doing this op? Hey, who, who's, who, what, why are we doing this mission? And then, and you start to feel that. And then guys start, can, can be, start to become negative. And one of my platoon commanders came to me and said, you know, hey, man, you know, this is gonna be rough. When we get home, these guys are gonna be, you know, we, we might not, they're gonna be mad about this. They're gonna be mad about that. They're gonna be mad about something else. And I said, let me tell you what's gonna happen. I said, when we get home, when you talk to them three days after we get home,

• 1:22:00Jocko Willink?

  they will have forgotten 10% of the bad stuff. And in a week, they'll forget 30%. And in a month, they'll forget 50%. I said, in a year, the only thing they'll remember about this deployment is the fun, cool stuff. That's, and that's kind of what I think makes guys like me say, man, I, I had it. It was awesome. I would love to go back, of course. Because we block out, you know, some of the hard memories. And for me, I also always say, the absolute best time of my life was being a tasking commander in the Battle of Ramadi. And the worst time of my life was being a tasking commander in the Battle of Ramadi, because there's nothing worse than losing your guys.

• 1:22:40Jocko Willink?

  And so it sounds like you, that was hitting you sort of mid-deployment of, hey, look, when you were home, when you were back in America, you got, you got money problems, you got girl problems, you got law problems, you got what, all those problems, and they can all go away.

• 1:22:59John Stryker Meyer?

  Yes.

• 1:23:00Jocko Willink?

  And they can all become insignificant as soon as you get on that C-130 and fly back overseas.

• 1:23:05John Stryker Meyer?

  And I thought about Hep, Sal, Hong, Tuon, and the team. I genuinely had that guilt feeling of them there and me not being there with them. I felt as a, as a Green Beret, I should have been there with them all along. But we had the tour duty, as you know. And so I was, in a way, I was really glad to be back on the team. But yes, a little bit more mature now and thinking a little bit, maybe too much. But that night in that hotel, and then 20 years later, when Apocalypse Now comes out, I go like, how the hell they get in my head for that scene?

• 1:23:40Jocko Willink?

  You, obviously, you, you, you get through that, that Apocalypse Now scene.

• 1:23:49Jocko Willink?

  Of staring at the ceiling and thinking, you know, every minute that I'm in the bush, every minute I'm in this hotel, Charlie gets stronger. Cause he's out in the bush. You get back, um, and you're on another mission and I'm jumping into it right now. As I snapped out of my snooze, you're asleep in a helicopter. As I snapped out of my snooze, I looked at out the starboard door, just as we flew over the two star to lay ocean farmers, a woman and two water buffalo. The big chopper then hopped over the hedge row and landed in an adjacent field as Ingalls and I frantically awakened the rest of RT Idaho. I was mad as hell. It wasn't bad enough. They hadn't bothered to alert us as we approached the target area,

• 1:24:30Jocko Willink?

  but now they were compounding that faux pas by flying too close to indigenous farmers and then depositing us in the middle of an open field, far from our primary LZ and farther yet from the bridge that was the primary objective of our mission. That this particular mission was a pretty simple one, at least on paper. Which I, I take it with a serious grain of salt when you say a mission is a pretty simple one.

• 1:24:55John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:57Jocko Willink?

  By early 1970, the brass had become aware of something new and rather creative on the part of the NVA underwater bridges. These were being put in, in place at strategic spots along the Ho Chi Minh Trail where it ran through Laos. From the air, it would appear as though the trails were interrupted by water in some places several feet deep. Yet it was apparent that the trucks heading south were crossing these streams with ease. A closer review of aerial photographs, however, had revealed that the ever inventive NVA had come up with an underwater structure that could support heavy trucking while remaining virtually unobservable from the air. It was a devilishly clever idea and well executed to boot.

• 1:25:40Jocko Willink?

  So that's pretty, they just built these like, where they're like, maybe like six inches underwater, the bridge?

• 1:25:46John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah. And we, and looking at the pictures, you couldn't tell. Uh, they had really done it well. And, um, so that was the mission. Simple. Go in, find out what they are, take pictures and blow them the hell up.

• 1:25:58Jocko Willink?

  Simple mission.

• 1:25:59John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah. It'd be more fun to blow them up with a truck on it.

• 1:26:03Jocko Willink?

  And you were, you guys were asleep and the helicopters heading there. No one woke you up?

• 1:26:08John Stryker Meyer?

  And the reason why, we had launched from Thailand. The weather had been socked in in Vietnam. So it was a bad weather spell, which was February of 1970. And they flew us by, um, Blackbirds, which were the, um, uh, clandestine service airlift for us. Flew us to Thailand. We land in Thailand, which is neutral, at the Air Force Base and a black truck comes up. We get in, has curtains, they can't see us. We go back to the base. And my old commander from FOB1 was the CO at that launch site, which was the, uh, 46th Special Forces Group. And they were there just to be in country, but they had their side of the secret war. Spads came out of there, they had Cubbies out of there.

• 1:26:50John Stryker Meyer?

  And so, we launched, and the Air Force had the HH3s, the bigger helicopters, like the Jolly Green Giant, but a scaled down version, without the armor plating. So we launched from there and we flew for two or three hours. Cause it's a long flight from Thailand across, uh, western Laos. And then we launched, we landed at a fuel dump, in the middle of Laos. Yeah, it was run by the agency.

• 1:27:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. So you refueled?

• 1:27:18John Stryker Meyer?

  Yes, we refueled, but you get off, you go like, "Hey man, who are you?" He goes, "I'm not here." I go, "Well, I'm not here either." He says, "Have a good day while you're not here." And we continue to go in, and then the Air Force put us down in that canyon.

• 1:27:32Jocko Willink?

  And that's one thing, that's always interesting when you're using helicopters. The helicopter, when you're supposed to insert at one spot, for them, they, they, they missed that spot by a minute or whatever. For them, it's no big deal. Like, hey, they just flew a minute a little bit long. For you on the ground, that minute is a long time. I mean, that can be a kilometer, it could be like a really massive amount of space that you just missed.

• 1:27:56John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh yeah, and this is like the dip between the valley and the, the peak that we wanted to go in on, so we could run at night a little bit, cause there's some open areas that we could cover. And then get down, maybe at the middle of the night, to check this thing out in the morning at first light. That's where our plan was. Just didn't happen. We're in the valley. And it's like, uh, okay, we've flown out here. I certainly don't want to just fly back pissing everybody off. Let's give it a shot. We're here. We're on the ground. Let's go. So we had to get out, put our gear on first. We didn't even have a routine insert where everybody goes out on full alert. We get out, put the damn equipment on. And then we're like, okay, we're in the valley and the mountain we want to be on is several thousand feet above us. And we're in this valley.

• 1:28:38Jocko Willink?

  Are you carrying a regular topographic map? Is that your primary means of navigation?

• 1:28:44John Stryker Meyer?

  Yes, and they would have the big map and then our target where we plan to go, they would cut a 10 by 10. Cut it out and that's also all we carried. So if we got caught, there would be nothing else besides just that, that grid that we were in.

• 1:28:59Jocko Willink?

  And did you ever use any imagery as well to, to complement that?

• 1:29:04John Stryker Meyer?

  Nope, strictly map, the CUVY pilot, if they did a VR, visual reconnaissance prior to the mission. But here it wasn't. We, uh, the CUVY had told them, here's the target area. And for some reason, the air force just went down to the valley and dropped us there.

• 1:29:23Jocko Willink?

  All right, continuing on, given the rather undistinguished nature of our arrival, or sorry, undisguised nature of our arrival, we knew it was only a matter of time before hundreds of NVA troops, trackers and dogs would be purring down on us on that road looking for us.

• 1:29:41Jocko Willink?

  So you know what, so we get to work with dogs. So like, I can't imagine knowing going in that I'm going to be facing dogs that are coming after us. And obviously you guys work because you guys carried mace and pepper and all this other stuff to throw them off, but what a nightmare that is.

• 1:29:55John Stryker Meyer?

  I still hate dogs.

• 1:29:58John Stryker Meyer?

  My wife loves them, but and the kids love them.

• 1:30:00Jocko Willink?

  Do you have any dogs?

• 1:30:01John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, we got a flea bag running around the house.

• 1:30:07John Stryker Meyer?

  His name is Gunny, by the way. It's just like, we got him from a, from a gunny.

• 1:30:14Jocko Willink?

  Ours was no tourist jaunt. Furthermore, it's very unsettling to be moving through this beautiful valley in broad daylight. At what for a recon team passed at breakneck speed. It was not a comfortable way to proceed. We took no breaks, not wanting to spend a moment longer than necessary in such an exposed position. So you're just hauling ass.

• 1:30:31John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:30:32Jocko Willink?

  Trying to get out of this valley as fast as you can. And you end up going up a hill. A big hill.

• 1:30:40John Stryker Meyer?

  And we had split the team too for a while. I put the angles on one side of the valley and me on the other. It wasn't that big in terms of width, but wide enough that I could see him. He could see me. Just I wanted to divide and then the the tail gunners took care of our foot footprints.

• 1:30:55Jocko Willink?

  And what was your reason for that call?

• 1:30:57John Stryker Meyer?

  Um, I just wanted to split the team up to see what was on the other side of the valley. We couldn't tell with either side what was there. So I figured we could if there's any enemy, we wanted to find out on both sides at once and try to get to a point where we could begin to find a spot to get up the mountain. Could be we were gonna run out of daylight.

• 1:31:16Jocko Willink?

  Got it. So it was a little bit of a of a of a panic, not panic move. It was a it was, hey, we're in a tough situation. One of the best ways we can get out of this is we put teams on both sides of valley. We're looking for a way to get to the top of this thing. I I knew you talk about this earlier and I used to warn guys all the time about splitting forces.

• 1:31:32John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:31:32Jocko Willink?

  And it's like really risky.

• 1:31:34John Stryker Meyer?

  Really?

• 1:31:35Jocko Willink?

  Really risky.

• 1:31:35John Stryker Meyer?

  It's the one rule you never do. I I did it twice.

• 1:31:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so I just wanted to confirm that.

• 1:31:41John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah. No, absolutely. And the the situation was such that we couldn't tell what was on either side. So I figured we're gonna have a firefight. At least now there'll be minimal forces. Our four, we we went in on an eight man team that time.

• 1:31:54Jocko Willink?

  So it's four and four?

• 1:31:55John Stryker Meyer?

  Four and four. And John had been on the ground with me previously, so he I wasn't worried about John. And so if we're gonna have a firefight, let's do it with minimal forces. We can survive and then get the prairie fired and worry about getting out of here. Otherwise, just proceed be and the cover is much ground because that mission where we set up the ambush, we had we had a great success by not stopping. Because the NVA knew that we would go 10, stop 10. So they would anticipate how far we traveled here. It's like we covered maximum ground.

• 1:32:25Jocko Willink?

  Hauling ass.

• 1:32:26John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:28Jocko Willink?

  All right. Now you end up finding a place to go up this hill. And here we go back to the book. By now, we were out of breath. The grueling climb with all our combat gear was starting to wear on us. And each additional step seemed to bring an increase in the steepness of the incline. It was growing painfully clear that those periodic volleyball games we had played back at camp weren't sufficient physical training.

• 1:32:53Jocko Willink?

  Did you, would you guys, what'd you guys do for PT back then?

• 1:32:55John Stryker Meyer?

  Not enough.

• 1:32:59Jocko Willink?

  Volleyball. Get some.

• 1:33:01John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, that was it. Yeah. Because we're so busy, you know, between the mission, mission prep. And then they started sticking us in isolation.

• 1:33:07Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna ask you that. Would you, would you be tired when you were going into the field? Or would you be well rested? Because like on this one, you fell asleep. You guys were all asleep.

• 1:33:14John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:33:15Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna tell you right now, like when we would go in the field, most of the time when I would go in the field, especially in Ramadi, I would be exhausted by the time I went in the field because we'd spend all this time planning and deconflicting and briefing and doing all this stuff. By the time I went in the field, it was like the time for me to go, okay, hey, someone, someone stand watch. I'm going to sleep for an hour or two hours. You know, that happened a lot.

• 1:33:31John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, we usually had a nice rest prior.

• 1:33:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's nice.

• 1:33:34John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's a luxury.

• 1:33:37Jocko Willink?

  Very nice. Um, going back to the book, however, any thoughts of letting personal pain slow us down were not so subtly overridden by noise, noises we could hear from the north of us. The menacing sounds made us forget our dry throats, heaving lungs, pain knees and knees and aching backs. The enemy was out there and the game, as they say, was on. The forces might not yet be joined, but the fight was in the offing. So you knew it was coming. And then you guys go into like a serious, this sal lead you guys into like a serious thicket of vines, thorns, undergrowth.

• 1:34:14John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, we went in and then we went in deeper and then he pushed us the third time. I was pissed because I tore my fatigues. I'm going, Sal, you know, dinky dial, like you're crazy. You're pushing it. He was right. I was wrong.

• 1:34:29John Stryker Meyer?

  We went in the third level.

• 1:34:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:31John Stryker Meyer?

  And.

• 1:34:31Jocko Willink?

  And, and then you get in so deep, eventually settled down and tried to get as comfortable as possible. On a 40 degree slope, around 2200, we heard numerous trucks on the main road. In just a few minutes, several had driven slowly past our remain overnight position. Unfortunately, the happy times were spoiled when we soon heard the barking of tracking dogs.

• 1:34:56Jocko Willink?

  Around 0100, we heard enemy troops move north on the road. While on the east side, someone opened fire with a few AK-47 bursts. The distinctive bark of the Russian-made weapon jarred us into full alert. How long could they keep it up? In which direction would they move? We sat in the inky darkness, a darkness so complete, I couldn't see my hand in front of my face. It sounded as though they were making their way north. That's how dark it is. And you have no night vision, it's just pitch black.

• 1:35:28John Stryker Meyer?

  Again.

• 1:35:33Jocko Willink?

  It didn't take long before we had enemy troops on both sides of us. As dense as our cover was, we could see the flickering light from the lamps the NVA carried. As the enemy soldiers began probing the bottom tip of the finger we were on, vehicle activity on the road picked up noticeably. This gave us a very uneasy feeling. Had Sal not driven us on, the NVA might well have spotted us. But as it was, we were ensconced so deep in that god-awful thicket that the one enemy soldier who approached our position hesitated and then gave up, defeated by the thorny vegetation. We could almost feel him thinking better of it and deciding to return to his comrades. Little did he appreciate how close to death he'd come

• 1:36:19Jocko Willink?

  with five Kar-15s and an M79 aimed in his direction. Slowed the NVA troops, tired of their frustrating and uncomfortable search and called it off. RT Idaho could finally release the collective breath it had been holding. The danger was not gone, not by a long shot, but just briefly retired from the field of play. So, thank God you were deep in that bush.

• 1:36:44John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah. And, you know, I forgave Sal. Because it's like, this is, we don't need to go that far. It's like, look at my fatigues, I'm bleeding here. He's right. Sal was always right. I always listened to him.

• 1:37:00Jocko Willink?

  So, the night goes by. At first light, our options were severely limited. We couldn't move north, south, or east, which left us one choice. Not wanting to spend another day and night tied to trees on the side of a hill, we opted for the obvious and moved out in a westernly direction. For the rest of the day, we climbed the side of this steep mountain. Did you guys ever move at night?

• 1:37:24Jocko Willink?

  Or do you guys try pretty much to remain in one position at night?

• 1:37:28John Stryker Meyer?

  Try to stay in one position, particularly in the triple canopy, because there's just too much noise. In Cambodia, when we were on flat territory, we could have moved, we thought about it. But, uh, no, not in Laos.

• 1:37:43Jocko Willink?

  Several times, the rock face was so steep, we had to tie together six-foot strands of rope we used for Swiss seats to make rope long enough to advance up to the next level of rocks. So we're talking serious terrain.

• 1:37:54John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, horrible.

• 1:37:56Jocko Willink?

  Just as last light was fading into darkness, we reached the top of the mountain. I was physically beat. My pants were torn and my hands, knees, and legs were covered with cuts, scrapes, and bruises. We were a mess. We set up our RON quickly and took turns eating rations before settling into the night watch rotations. After the previous night's RON, this mountaintop site was paradise. We could see enemy trucks moving south, but did nothing about it. We were almost too tired to think, an extremely dangerous condition to be in when on the ground. Rest was what we needed, not confrontation.

• 1:38:32Jocko Willink?

  You guys are exhausted.

• 1:38:34John Stryker Meyer?

  Beat.

• 1:38:38John Stryker Meyer?

  When we climbed, we had to take our web gear off, rucksacks.

• 1:38:41Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 1:38:42John Stryker Meyer?

  And we tied all the Swiss seats together, because we're going straight up. So, one guy would go up, and then you shipped up the backpack, then the web gear, put it back on, go to the next level. We had to take that, we had to shuck it several times, and just to get up, because it was so steep. But it was covered with enough vegetation that they couldn't see us in the valley. So they weren't quite sure where we were, and we had put out the mace and stuff in other locations, which fouled some of the dogs' noses. So it was an all-day climb, and with only a couple, well, we broke for lunch and whatever, but, yeah, that was a nasty, nasty climb.

• 1:39:21Jocko Willink?

  When morning came, we awoke to a beautiful sunrise and found that we are atop an unbelievably gorgeous Laotian mountain range. The next few hours were the most spectacular ones I ever had spent on the ground in any AO. Moving north along the ridgeline, we began gradually descending, often encouraging one beautiful new, encountering one beautiful new vista after another. Around twelve hundred, we found an area overrun with thousands of wild orchids in full spectacular bloom. Back home, each plant would be worth five to fifty dollars. We decided to take a break in the field and soon everyone, with the exception of Sal,

• 1:40:01Jocko Willink?

  was in the middle of them and acting like a delighted child, picking the flowers and sticking them in their hair, teeth, and behind their ears, or in the buttonholes of their fatigues. It was like a spontaneous outburst of happiness, and while it was somewhat foolish, it was also refreshing. I think we all felt better for it.

• 1:40:20Jocko Willink?

  You just take any pictures?

• 1:40:22John Stryker Meyer?

  No.

• 1:40:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh, man. I'd like to see those, yeah.

• 1:40:24John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:40:25Jocko Willink?

  You had the camera for the underwater bridge, you didn't get the orchids.

• 1:40:30Jocko Willink?

  But Sal was all business.

• 1:40:31John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, always.

• 1:40:32Jocko Willink?

  He's looking at you going, "Come on." What was your nickname? Did they call you Tilt as well?

• 1:40:38John Stryker Meyer?

  No, they usually called me Mai, because the Vietnamese couldn't handle ours. So instead of Mai, it was Mai.

• 1:40:44Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:40:47Jocko Willink?

  I could see him looking at you thinking, "Mai, what are you doing with that damn flower in your hair?"

• 1:40:55John Stryker Meyer?

  Their phrase was "bukudinky down," very, very stupid.

• 1:40:58Jocko Willink?

  Very stupid, very crazy?

• 1:40:59John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:59Jocko Willink?

  How good did your Vietnamese get?

• 1:41:02John Stryker Meyer?

  It sucked. I had hep. And that was why we didn't have language training, because they knew that with SF, with four years, like from sixty-four to sixty-eight, there were interpreters in place. And we just lucked out with Hep. He was the best one. He spoke, you know, good English, and he corrected my English. And he spoke French.

• 1:41:23Jocko Willink?

  What was his background that he had all that good language skill?

• 1:41:25John Stryker Meyer?

  His dad had sent him to school in Paris, so he had some education in France. He spoke four languages.

• 1:41:31Jocko Willink?

  And now he's an interpreter in Nam?

• 1:41:33John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:37Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, we came to a narrow strip of land that headed down from the hill. I singled Ingles and Chow to set out to scout ahead while the rest of us remained in place. Chow was 16 years old. He'd been on the team nearly two years. So these kids have been on the team since he was 14 years old?

• 1:41:53John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, when the team got wiped out, Chow, Cal, and Sohn were the three that we'd hired and brought on. Then we let a couple others go.

• 1:42:01Jocko Willink?

  He'd been on the team nearly two years ever since Spider Parks had helped rebuild the team in 68. Chow's sensitive ears heard the NVA moving up the mountain. He warned Ingles with hand signals and the two of them abruptly stopped moving with the enemy less than 10 meters away. Ingles quietly broke squelch on his URC-10 emergency radio several times, alerting me to the danger. The rest of us were about 50 meters away. The shit was about to hit the fan. Because we were so far removed from all air support, there was no time to waste, none at all. We needed the jump on, we needed all the jump we could get on things. So I quickly contacted a nearby OV-10 Bronco and declared a prairie fire emergency,

• 1:42:44Jocko Willink?

  setting in motion the string of responses that could save our lives and get us out.

• 1:42:52Jocko Willink?

  Does everybody, did everyone know, was that like a pro word, prairie fire emergency? Did everyone know exactly what that meant?

• 1:42:58John Stryker Meyer?

  Tac Air knew it, right? And then we also had the airborne command control, but they weren't always over our, they couldn't pick up the Fox Mike FM. So in this case, we lucked out that OV-10 was, I think they were one of the Ravens, who had, they were supporting another CIA operation that was further west in Tel Aos. And he had been up, heard the call and came over. That was the first time he worked with OV-10s.

• 1:43:30Jocko Willink?

  Man, lucky.

• 1:43:32John Stryker Meyer?

  Very.

• 1:43:35Jocko Willink?

  While I was talking to the pilot, Chow, Sal, and Ingles sprang a hastily arranged ambush that startled on the startled enemy troops. When their point man was less than a meter away, Chow hit him with a full automatic burst from his Kar-15, blowing him backward. Chow, Sal, and Ingles then hit the remaining enemy soldiers so hard and fast that they didn't have time to fire a single return shot. Ingles threw down a hand grenade down the hill to discourage anyone who might be around. So this is all of a sudden that's happening. A meter away?

• 1:44:10John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, he was really close. I mean, he came up the hill, he was white. Because that was the first really real firefight that Chow had been in. And because he was trained up and like he had to earn his spot in the team. So this was his mission and that was, he was down there with John. And he was ahead of John.

• 1:44:31Jocko Willink?

  As the fight began to unfold, I took stock of the situation. There weren't too many places for us to go. Within minutes of the Bronco's arrival, the pilot had spotted us. He said he could see more enemy activity north of us along the hill Ingles and Sal were on. He made a run on the enemy concentrations, firing his rockets into their position. Then he said, somewhat laconically, "I've got two bits of bad news for you. First, Nam is socked in. No assets can launch from there to extract you, which means Thailand assets, which means at least three hours before the birds arrive on station. Second, to your south, there are approximately a dozen troops about 800 meters out and moving towards you.

• 1:45:15Jocko Willink?

  I think you better sit tight until we get some help." By 14:30, a covey aircraft replaced the Bronco and repeated the "sit tight" suggestion. He agreed. The eastern and western faces of the mountain were too steep to descend. He also confirmed the NVA were coming at us from the south and north. They were clearly visible as they moved cautiously through the sparse vegetation. For the next half hour, the enemy troops tried to locate us. To discourage them, I directed several AE, A1E Skyraider gun runs south of our position. So this is another one of these things where I gotta like... When you get, you got the NVA moving to your position and you get told, hey, the closest

• 1:45:59Jocko Willink?

  extract, the earliest we're going to be able to get you out of here is three hours from now.

• 1:46:04John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, we were up on an area where there's minimal escape routes or the jungle because everything was so steep on several different sides of that little, we were like a little bit of a plateau. There had been like a trail that came down and then John and Chow had gone down further, another little finger. And that's where they had the firefight. They came back up. We put the perimeter out and luckily we made radio contact right away. So

• 1:46:30John Stryker Meyer?

  the OV10 went in with his rockets just to say it was 2.75s. And then that's when he gave us the good news.

• 1:46:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, good news that it's gonna be three hours at a minimum before they can get you help.

• 1:46:42John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, that's why we carried a lot of bullets.

• 1:46:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a lot of that.

• 1:46:46John Stryker Meyer?

  It could be a long day.

• 1:46:47Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if you can carry enough bullets for a three hour firefight. That's a nightmare.

• 1:46:56Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, a 12.7 millimeter enemy gun in the valley opened up on the A1Es. I was sitting on the east side, looking down at the valley floor. After making another gun run, the A1E pilot told me he was pissed because the enemy gunner was coming too close to him and his wingman. He wanted to nail him ASAP. I gave the pilot what I thought was clear, what I thought were clear verbal directions to where the enemy gunner was located, but he couldn't find them. So I told him simply to watch the ground for my, and follow my tracers. At that, I fired a short burst toward a clump of trees in the valley that were maybe 500 meters away. The pilot had no trouble seeing where my tracers hit. Thanks, partner, he said in a low southern draw, and then rolled in for the kill. It was the

• 1:47:40Jocko Willink?

  most beautiful napalm dive I've ever seen. The pilot came out of the sky pointing straight down his engine screaming. It reminded me of dive bombers I'd seen on the television series Victory at Sea. I really thought I was watching a World War II movie because I was so high up in the mountain, I was looking down on the Skyraider when, at the absolute last second, he released a napalm canister and pulled out of his gutsy dive. It was a perfect strike. The impact generated a secondary explosion, which was probably the gunner's spare ammo going off around him. Black oily smoke billowed up. There was not a whisper of sound from the former gun emplacement. For the next three hours, I directed airstrike after airstrike around our position and in the valley.

• 1:48:27Jocko Willink?

  At seventeen thirty hours, we heard the very welcome sound of the HH3s coming our way. As they approached in the distance, the NVA pushed up from the north and hit Sal's Claymore. Further south of us, another machine gun opened up from the valley. As I gave Covey the compass heading to its position, I caught sight of an enemy soldier climbing a tree about a hundred meters away. He had handed his RPG launcher to a nearby comrade while he got into that position. It was clear he was looking for RT Idaho or hoping to nail an Air Force chopper. I was too far away to shout in alert to the other team members. For the first time in my sixteen months of running missions, I extended the collapsible stock of my Car 15.

• 1:49:10Jocko Willink?

  Normally, it remained compressed to minimize the length of the weapon, but now I wanted it extended to help stabilize my aim. Once I was ready, I carefully put the NVA soldier in my gun sight. In that fleeting moment, I felt like God. I had the power of life and death concentrated in my fingertip. As I grounded my elbow to steady my arm, I found myself silently hoping the NVA troop would be unable to find the team and simply climb back down the tree. He didn't see either me or my Car 15. In a troubling way, it seemed unfair or unsportsmanlike. But war is not designed to be a sporting contest.

• 1:49:56Jocko Willink?

  If the situation were reversed, I had little doubt what he would opt to do. Although these reflections took less than a moment to form, they caused deep soul searching on my part. I found myself recalling my third grade Sunday school teacher, Mrs. Myrtle Reichert, and her treatment of the Ten Commandments, especially the one that proclaims, "Thou shalt not kill."

• 1:50:23Jocko Willink?

  Hell, if I had met this treed soldier on the streets of Hanoi without guns and beyond the rhetoric of politicians, we'd probably be able to find lots of common ground between us and dozens of purely human things to talk about.

• 1:50:37Jocko Willink?

  But that could not be, not now, not at this given moment. Also in my mind was the knowledge he would receive a medal if he ever managed to kill me or one of my team members. As I watched and reflected, his comrade reached up and handed him the rocket launcher. I could tell it was unloaded. What I had, what I had come to think of my personnel, my personal NVA moved a little farther up the tree, craning his neck to find us. From the corner of my eye, I could see Sun move towards Sal. And at that very moment, someone passed up a round for the RPG. I still refused to yield to the inevitable.

• 1:51:19Jocko Willink?

  I continued to hold on to the stubborn hope that he would abandon his cause, climb down the damn tree and walk away. Instead, he fitted the round into the end of the launcher. I still watched, still I waited, even after he'd put the weapon to his shoulder. As he nestled his neck against it and began to take careful aim toward us, I leveled my sight on his head, I pulled the trigger. A single, yet timeless shot.

• 1:51:47Jocko Willink?

  He dropped from the tree, out of sight, but not out of my mind.

• 1:51:57John Stryker Meyer?

  One of those moments.

• 1:51:58Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 1:52:03Jocko Willink?

  How far was he away? What was the range?

• 1:52:06John Stryker Meyer?

  He was well over maybe a football field and a half, two fields. Cause I was like on the cusp of the hill, he was around on the side, I could see, there was like a tree he climbed up, that was above the regular vegetation. So I'm not sure how high he went, but I could see him in the beginning. And I just waited.

• 1:52:28John Stryker Meyer?

  Cause then when he got that damn RPG.

• 1:52:31Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm. Yeah, then it's time to do what you gotta do.

• 1:52:34John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:52:39Jocko Willink?

  And, once again, I'm gonna make this claim. I'm not reading this whole book. I'm jumping around. And you should read this whole book, if you're listening to this, because I'm getting 10% of what's going on in here.

• 1:52:54Jocko Willink?

  Uh, this part continues on. Seconds later, one of the approaching HH-3 pilots broke...

• 1:53:01Jocko Willink?

  Broke into my reverie by commenting somewhat frantically on the heavy ground fire he was taking from the mountains south of our position. There was a moment's hesitation before he sadly announced, "I think we have some mechanical problems. We're going home." We could see the helicopters and they looked fine to us. They were less than 2 kilometers out when they turned and disappeared into the fading sun. Our morale sank as they vanished. After cursing our lack of... After cursing our lack of look and the pilot, I told the team to take a nap. It's gonna be a long night.

• 1:53:35Jocko Willink?

  So there goes your ride out. You've already been there for freaking ever. And, you see those guys, "Hey, we got some mechanical problems, we're outta here."

• 1:53:44John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, it was a very unhappy moment.

• 1:53:50Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so you guys, uh, you tell the guys to take a nap, you take a little nap.

• 1:53:56John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:53:57Jocko Willink?

  And, back to the book. Around 19:30 Ingles roused me. "Wake up, you're not gonna believe this shit." As I came around, he was pointing south up the mountainside. From about 30 meters from our perimeter, and as far as we could see, there were dozens and dozens of lanterns bouncing and swinging along. Each lantern was carried by an enemy soldier, and between each lantern were many more soldiers. The same scene was unfolding to the north of us. The NVA were coming up the hill en masse. We could see at least a dozen trucks unloading hundreds of NVA troops in the valley. Also across the valley and up on the plateau to the east, there were hundreds of lights moving everywhere.

• 1:54:40Jocko Willink?

  Like swarming fireflies, flitting around in the night. In a smaller valley west of us, still more lights, more NVA, more trouble, just more, more, and more of everything we did not wanna see. I felt the tremendous weight of just how small RT Idaho was, how terribly isolated and alone we were, how incredibly vulnerable.

• 1:55:07Jocko Willink?

  All of a sudden, I found myself praying. For reasons only he understands. My prayer was answered. As a few minutes later, the first Spectre C-130 gunship arrived on target with its two 20mm cannons and four 7.62mm miniguns, ready for action.

• 1:55:32Jocko Willink?

  That had to be the most horrifying thing that you could ever think of. You wake up and you see these enemy lights surrounding you, hundreds of them. And you know that they're looking, those hundreds, maybe thousands of enemy personnel are looking for you and your six man team.

• 1:55:53John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh yeah, they're coming for us. And I was just like, yeah, I'd never forget when John woke me up. I mean, it's just one of those moments, he's just like, oh my God, fuck me to tears.

• 1:56:07John Stryker Meyer?

  And help me, Lord.

• 1:56:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:09John Stryker Meyer?

  Please.

• 1:56:10Jocko Willink?

  Wake up, you're not gonna believe this shit.

• 1:56:11John Stryker Meyer?

  Grandma, keep praying right about now. If you're not praying back in New Jersey, please start praying now.

• 1:56:16Jocko Willink?

  And then, what, do you have any idea, did you ever find out what, where the C-130 came from, where the Spectre came from?

• 1:56:22John Stryker Meyer?

  It had to be out of Thailand.

• 1:56:24Jocko Willink?

  And so it just randomly showed up?

• 1:56:26John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh no, they, the Cubby that we had talked to earlier, who brought the helicopters out. Uh, because the Cubby was still trying to work with us for other air assets. And when it got dark, we lost everything, conventional. So all the A1s, Phantom jets, um, were gone. And they didn't have helicopter gunships out of Thailand, just transport vehicle, uh, aircraft. So we had that quiet spell. And, um, so they had notified Spectre and they had told me that they're gonna try to get a Spectre out. And, uh.

• 1:57:01Jocko Willink?

  Had you worked with a Spectre before?

• 1:57:03John Stryker Meyer?

  Uh, yes, we used before, um, but nothing like this night.

• 1:57:09Jocko Willink?

  So for anyone that doesn't know what a, uh, C-130 Spectre gunship is, it's a, it's a C-130, which is like a big transport aircraft, but they put some big weaponry, in this case, two 20mm cannons and four 7.62 miniguns, which fires 6,000 rounds a minute?

• 1:57:27John Stryker Meyer?

  Correct.

• 1:57:27Jocko Willink?

  Something crazy.

• 1:57:28John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh yeah.

• 1:57:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's like, it looks like a laser beam when the tracers come out of these things.

• 1:57:32John Stryker Meyer?

  Or a dog pissing from the sky.

• 1:57:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, or that.

• 1:57:37Jocko Willink?

  And uh, so these guys show up and here we go back to the book. This was this awesome way of array of weaponry could be made to form a magic link with my emergency strobe light. Once that link was established, the gunner could dance the incredible firepower of his four mini guns, just 24,000 rounds per minute total within five feet of us. It was wondrous, it was miraculous, it could save us. On this particular night, however, we were faced with a highly unusual, if not unique problem. The pilot circling over us reported he couldn't pick out the team's strobe light because there were so many other lights surrounding us. The myriad of lanterns must have made the dark earth look like a pincushion illuminated

• 1:58:22Jocko Willink?

  from within. "No problem," I said. "I'll turn off mine, you get the rest. Hit the ridgeline west of the valley, give me a minute to put my team on the safe side of the mountain." The Spectre commenced to putting on an amazing display of firepower. Once again, we gave thanks for being on the right side of the fight, the one that had Uncle Sam's Air Force and Spectre on its team. After ripping up scores of body and carving out large patches of empty darkness on the ridgeline, the Spectre directed his deadly fire into the valley. More lanterns were snuffed out and the darkness spread like a stain as lights and lives were extinguished. The Spectre crew finally expended all of its ordnance and the pilot apologized for running out of ammo.

• 1:59:06Jocko Willink?

  The next Spectre arrived seconds later. So they they were just, they knew you were in a bad way and they were coming.

• 1:59:13John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh yeah, we were so happy that the second one showed up because now the lights were out, so we could turn the strobe light on and have direct commo.

• 1:59:21Jocko Willink?

  Did they have night vision back then in the Spectres?

• 1:59:23John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh yeah. They had everything. It's the Air Force.

• 1:59:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yes, it is. Yeah, I mean, the Spectre gunship is just the most awesome asset to have overhead for ground support because the capability, the visual capability that it has and then the accuracy of fire.

• 1:59:40John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, this is 1970, you'd think how accurate that was.

• 1:59:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 1:59:44John Stryker Meyer?

  That's what they can do now.

• 1:59:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, yeah.

• 1:59:49Jocko Willink?

  The next Spectre arrived seconds later. He quickly locked on to our strobe and worked the southern slope with a vengeance, marching his guns right up to the trail, right up the trail to the top of the ridge beyond our line of sight. He worked, then he worked the valley and the southeastern mountain ridge. A third Spectre arrived and worked our southern perimeter again systematically, walking its fiery lead up the mountain. Around us, there was no longer any light. Above us, no moon, no stars. The only sound was the roar of the C-130 overhead. In the absolute darkness, he could not be seen until his guns opened up. Then tongues of fire seemed to erupt out of nowhere like spontaneously generated bolts of lightning, and the outlines of Spectre's fuselage would appear in brief flashes as a

• 2:00:33Jocko Willink?

  pale and ghostly silhouette, an airborne grim reaper. When Spectre moved to other targets, we could hear the enemy dragging away his dead. At 00:45, Sow said some NVA were in the grass about 20 meters south of us. A few minutes later, he blew the claymores. We all instinctively flinched. For some reason, claymores always sounded more thunderous at night and caught you by surprise. After the dust settled, we again heard NVA troops dragging away their bodies. They never spoke. We heard no cries of pain. Their silent execution of grim

• 2:01:13Jocko Willink?

  duty was at once eerie and admirable. Jesus, they were tough. They fought hard and died hard.

• 2:01:25Jocko Willink?

  So you wouldn't even, you'd hear these guys getting wounded, getting blown up, and they wouldn't even scream, they wouldn't cry, it was just silence.

• 2:01:32John Stryker Meyer?

  It was amazing. To this day, it's mind-boggling to think that all those guys that were wounded were just dead. Okay, they're dead, we know, but there had to be some wounded in here.

• 2:01:43Jocko Willink?

  Of course.

• 2:01:44John Stryker Meyer?

  Not a sound, but you could hear them dragging the bodies. And we, I don't know how many we killed that night.

• 2:01:55Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book shortly before the next Spectre arrived, I moved my team away from the edge of the slope and into the high grass as Sal placed one more claymore down on the northern slope in short order Spectre locked on to our strobe light. He reported that cloud cover was beginning to roll in the AO. When Spectre dropped, when Spectre then dropped illumination flares over us, Sal's eyes turned as big as pizza tins. NVA troops were within five meters of us, all of about fifteen feet. Blinded by intense white light, they could not immediately make us out as we nestled into the high grass. But this was of little real consolation, they would spot us soon enough.

• 2:02:38Jocko Willink?

  I whispered into the radio asking Spectre just how close he could bring the ordinance to my strobe light. "As close as you want it." He first replied. "I want it five feet in front of my southern perimeter," I responded. "Well," he hesitated, "I can't bring it in any closer than twenty-five meters from your perimeter unless you're willing to accept responsibility for any casualties we may accidentally inflict." We have to record you saying it. I wanted to scream, "You dumb fucking idiot, they're five meters away and you're going to quote, and you're quoting regulations to me? Just kill the fuckers before they kill us." Instead, in feeling like a complete fool, I whispered that I was fully willing to accept

• 2:03:21Jocko Willink?

  responsibility for any and all casualties that may or may not result from his efforts to save our lives. I followed up by saying, "Now bring it in as tight as you can to the light, I'm holding it up now, move south from my light, I'll take my chances with you." The gun crew finally opened fire and their fusillade cracked over our heads. The ground in front of us erupted as thousands of rounds ripped into it, kicking up stones and dirt and tossing NVA soldiers around like rag dolls. Again, Spectre slowly marched his stuff southward from our strobe light, moving up the ridge.

• 2:04:00Jocko Willink?

  Danger close.

• 2:04:02John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:04:04Jocko Willink?

  So the flare goes off. And Sal sees that the enemy are five meters from where you're at.

• 2:04:12John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, I didn't realize they were that close. They were that quiet. I mean, they kept coming. All night.

• 2:04:20Jocko Willink?

  And because it was pitch black and they were just so quiet. And they just probably moved during the wind or moved during when rounds were hitting or whatever. And they made it to within five meters.

• 2:04:32Jocko Willink?

  I mean, that's when you're making this radio call. It's a miracle. They couldn't hear you when they just didn't start shooting towards your direction when you make the radio call.

• 2:04:40John Stryker Meyer?

  That's what I was waiting for. I was waiting for that next AK to open up. On my voice.

• 2:04:46Jocko Willink?

  Especially when they're asking you for the.

• 2:04:49John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah. Oh.

• 2:04:53John Stryker Meyer?

  You talk about moments.

• 2:05:00Jocko Willink?

  That's insane.

• 2:05:01John Stryker Meyer?

  Totally.

• 2:05:02Jocko Willink?

  I wonder what the, I mean, that's. I I'm actually surprised that they could pull off five meters. It was just for anyone that's listening that doesn't understand this, this aircraft, I don't know what, what altitude were they at? Do you have any idea?

• 2:05:15John Stryker Meyer?

  They had to be at least three, two, three thousand feet above us. So I, and I don't know what the height of the mountain range or that. That little plateau that we were on there. But several thousand feet above us, they locked in.

• 2:05:29Jocko Willink?

  They locked in and put rounds within five meters of you.

• 2:05:31John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:05:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, I could see they do it now because now they've got computers and they've got all these, I mean. Just incredible. Systems up there. I mean, I've been in the modern AC 130. They're ridiculous.

• 2:05:45John Stryker Meyer?

  Was that right? You've been in them?

• 2:05:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, they're crazy. Like they're, they're the. The capability that they have is just completely ridiculous. But I can't, no, I mean, I mean, I know there's no way they had that same technology back in 1970. It's impossible, you know? There's more technology in my phone than is in a 1970 bird.

• 2:06:06John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, those Air Force guys were good. And, uh, no, we just kept the strobe light right pointing at the aircraft. So when it circled, the, uh, whoever had the M79, I did it for a while. Then we'd take turns with it, but we always followed the aircraft. So it would be directly linked into that strobe light.

• 2:06:22Jocko Willink?

  That's right, because you had your, you put the strobe into the M79, right?

• 2:06:25John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:26Jocko Willink?

  So it was only directional.

• 2:06:27John Stryker Meyer?

  Right. So we'd go straight up.

• 2:06:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:30John Stryker Meyer?

  So anybody on the ground wouldn't see it.

• 2:06:33Jocko Willink?

  So that's what's happening as these guys are five meters from you.

• 2:06:37John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:06:45Jocko Willink?

  This is ridiculous.

• 2:06:49John Stryker Meyer?

  That's what I thought that night also.

• 2:06:52John Stryker Meyer?

  Send me a King Bee, please.

• 2:06:58Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, between bursts of fire, he dropped more flares. This time, the illumination revealed no movement south of us. Instead, Chow gleefully reported that there were Boku dead VC. With a south quiet specter started on the northern flank and marched his fire down the finger of land. When I reported hearing more trucks in the valley, the gun crews pounded them into silence. Another specter circled us and laid down its deadly ring of fire, again, bringing it to within five feet of our strobe light. Somewhere around 0400, some early morning fog and haze moved in as the last specter moved out. Once the specter was gone, the NVA started moving toward us once more from the south, only this time with real vengeance.

• 2:07:40Jocko Willink?

  Spectre had killed a lot of their comrades and they were in no mood to back off. But we managed to hold them off by employing what we called our guess whether I'm throwing a grenade or not tactic, which had a way of making almost enemy, almost any enemy think twice. What was that all about? I didn't cover it in the book, but you wrote about it, but what?

• 2:08:01John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, it's another version of hide and go seek with, uh, uh, cause we only had a limited amount of grenades. We had used some already and so we knew that when we threw the grenade, when it landed, you would hear them run. That you would hear. So we knew we were getting low. So Sal went out and got stones and Chow and had the team went out and got stones somehow. They came back. So we'd wait until he would tell us, cause somehow he, Sal could just tell where they were. I could, I didn't have that kind of definitive skill set. So, uh, his signal, he would let us know, or he would just throw the rock. He'd throw the rock and hear him scurry away like rats. Cause they thought the grenade was coming.

• 2:08:46John Stryker Meyer?

  So we throw another rock. So it'd be less scurrying. So then we wait, throw another rock, it'd be less scurrying. And then we throw another hand grenade. So in that, this went on for quite a while, you know, we always carried at least 10 hand grenades. I always carried at least 10. Our Didge had-

• 2:09:03Jocko Willink?

  You carried 10 yourself?

• 2:09:05John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah. Sure. I had a couple on a strap and always in the rucksack.

• 2:09:13Jocko Willink?

  And that's why, just for that mission?

• 2:09:15John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, apparently.

• 2:09:16Jocko Willink?

  Little did I realize you needed 30.

• 2:09:18John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:22Jocko Willink?

  We abstained from firing our weapons because the muzzle flashes would have marked our position too clearly for the RPG gunners who had fired several inaccurate rounds at us during the night. Fortunately, they hadn't come very close. We played these deadly games with the enemy until sunrise. At one point, we broke a major thrust by tossing a white phosphorus grenade, grenade, one of the most fearsome things I know of. We couldn't see them, but we could smell burning flesh. At around 0630, we heard an NVA officer or senior NCO calling roll in the distance. It appeared few people answered him. As the sun finally burned off the fog, we worked tactical airstrikes with Phantoms and

• 2:10:05Jocko Willink?

  Skyraiders. A couple of machine gun positions opened fire and hit one of the A1Es. A Phantom blew one of the gun crews to hell with a 500-pound bomb. The A1E knocked out the second one minutes after it opened fire. Because there were no more Spectre aircraft to call on, I continued to working with a pair of A1Es, having them make run after run. I could talk directly to the lead pilot, and he and his wingman executed my every request or direction flawlessly. Damn, you had to love those A1E pilots. Finally, we could hear in the distance the sweet, sweet sound of approaching helicopters, big HH3s churning their way our way. It was time

• 2:10:50Jocko Willink?

  to pull out all the stops. I used every available support aircraft, F4s and A1Es, to raise hell and suppress enemy fire. As they roared in with guns blazing, we could see the HH3s tagging along in their wake. I told Covey to have the HH3 gun crews focus their fire on our southern perimeter, and we'd handle the northern side. I also requested they land as close as possible to the north slope, and not pay any attention to the claymores explosions we'd be setting off. I didn't want to spook these guys off.

• 2:11:21Jocko Willink?

  So the helos land. Every one of the team, once aboard, immediately went to the starboard window or faced out the tailgate and began firing on full automatic as the HH3s revved up to full power. I was the last to leave, and before heading for the LZ, I set off the last claymore we had put on the northern perimeter. Then I ran like hell, bent over like a cripple, and cursing the prop wash that was trying hard to push me backward. As I made my dash, I remember being surprised at not seeing a single dead body, although I passed a slew of blood trails and saw a lot of dark, wet stains on the ground. The second I was through the door, the HH3 lifted off the ground. There was nothing but sporadic,

• 2:12:01Jocko Willink?

  small arms fire coming at us, and in the end, the extraction was a relatively calm one.

• 2:12:09Jocko Willink?

  It seemed as if the enemy was dispirited and just going through the motions.

• 2:12:15Jocko Willink?

  I had a feeling they wanted us out of the AO as badly as we wanted to leave. Nonetheless, we all continued firing on full automatic. We also launched at least one M79 round as we gained altitude. I dropped my last hand grenade into the under bush. A little something for someone, I hoped. Then, just as suddenly and miraculously, all gunfire ceased. The only sound was that of the churning Sikorsky HH3 engines and the increasingly cold air rushing through the aircraft. I looked over my shoulder towards Sal, who was retrieving warm Air Force blankets for the long ride. When I made contact with him, he gave me that quick nod of his and a slight smile.

• 2:13:00Jocko Willink?

  We made it again.

• 2:13:05Jocko Willink?

  That's just...

• 2:13:08Jocko Willink?

  Just, this is just an insane mission.

• 2:13:10John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:13:11Jocko Willink?

  And I'm sure you, you know, why didn't you just break contact and continue mission?

• 2:13:19Jocko Willink?

  So, um, yeah, crazy. They need to, yeah. I know that you're putting some of these books on audiobook.

• 2:13:28John Stryker Meyer?

  We're working on it.

• 2:13:29Jocko Willink?

  You're in the process of doing that, and these are gonna be great when you, when you release those.

• 2:13:34Jocko Willink?

  I know you talk about in a little bit in the book, you were putting for, you, you requested one of your guys be putting for a Silver Star for this operation?

• 2:13:42John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, John Engel.

• 2:13:43Jocko Willink?

  And then you got put in for a Silver Star as well, and actually, your, the, the CO said he was gonna upgrade that.

• 2:13:53John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, he said he was gonna upgrade, which I didn't agree with, but I'm not gonna argue either.

• 2:13:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, to a distinguished service cross, which if you don't know that, what that is, that's the...

• 2:14:03Jocko Willink?

  The second highest military award for for valor. And so, but but at the same time, and and again, this is, I kind of have to just tie this back into the book a little bit, but you had been going through this kind of hassle with the commanding officer about carrying the uh carrying a new encryption device.

• 2:14:23John Stryker Meyer?

  We didn't have it for that mission.

• 2:14:24Jocko Willink?

  And you didn't have it for this one.

• 2:14:25John Stryker Meyer?

  Correct.

• 2:14:26Jocko Willink?

  But you had, but then he started turning up the heat like, hey, you gotta carry this thing. And this thing is no joke. I mean, I was looking at I used, even when I got the SEAL teams, we used a PRC 77. Were those around for you?

• 2:14:38John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, that's what we started with.

• 2:14:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:14:39John Stryker Meyer?

  For for that uh encrypted transmissions.

• 2:14:43Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. So the PRC 77 is an old radio. It's an FM radio. And it's, uh, how big would I say it is? What's it, what's something you have to compare it to?

• 2:14:51John Stryker Meyer?

  A Prick 25.

• 2:14:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but I'm trying to think of something that a civilian would know. Can I, so I can describe it. It's like a big, it's like two lunchboxes, maybe?

• 2:14:59John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:14:59Jocko Willink?

  Maybe like a a briefcase that's a little bit more square, a little bit thicker. So it's like that. Maybe two shoeboxes.

• 2:15:05John Stryker Meyer?

  There you go. That's better.

• 2:15:06Jocko Willink?

  Something like that. That's what, that's how big a PRC 77 is. The KY 38, which is the encryption device, is basically the same size as that, right? It's like, again, and it doubles the weight. You gotta carry double the batteries.

• 2:15:20Jocko Willink?

  It cuts down your range because it takes away from the penetration of the of the uh radio waves coming out.

• 2:15:26John Stryker Meyer?

  And you had to carry the encryption uh punch.

• 2:15:30Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so that's what you're getting told to carry. And you keep coming back and saying, hey, this isn't that great. Hey, we we've been trying and it's not working.

• 2:15:44Jocko Willink?

  You you you keep getting told, nope, carry it, carry it, carry it. Finally, you you say to your boss, you say to the commanding officer, hey, look, I'll carry it. But if we get in one of these bad situations, I'm gonna destroy this thing.

• 2:15:55John Stryker Meyer?

  If it doesn't work.

• 2:15:56Jocko Willink?

  If it doesn't work, I'm gonna destroy this thing.

• 2:15:58John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:58Jocko Willink?

  And he kind of says, okay, whatever, you know, but you carry it.

• 2:16:03John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:04Jocko Willink?

  So you go on an operation, you, you, and you actually were gonna leave it in the helos, you asked the helos to take it, you end, you asked them to come back and get it because it didn't work. You said, helos, come back and take this thing because it's 50 pounds.

• 2:16:17John Stryker Meyer?

  Yes, the weight, and we had, I wanted to try, we were, the target was the ashaw, and there was, there was something specifically in the ashaw, they wanted us to confirm. So, I went in with a four man team, the theory being we'll go in light, we can move quicker, because the ashaw valley didn't have triple canopy, at least the part that we were looking at. So like, single or double canopy, and a lot of open areas because there'd been so many bombs, there'd been aid camps that had been overrun, deserted, and I'd been in the ashaw, we put the sensors in, and plus we'd fly over it every time. So, generally familiar where we were going. So I said, I want to do a four man team, please don't force me to carry it. Well, we had to carry it,

• 2:16:59John Stryker Meyer?

  and that's when I said, if it doesn't work, we went in, tried it, didn't work.

• 2:17:03Jocko Willink?

  Tried it a few times.

• 2:17:05John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, and they wouldn't come back.

• 2:17:06Jocko Willink?

  And you've been trying it on other operations as well.

• 2:17:08John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, we tried it on one, and it was just a complete failure, but I brought it back.

• 2:17:13Jocko Willink?

  And so this time, you start getting tracked.

• 2:17:15John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:15Jocko Willink?

  And, and you say, okay, I'm not carrying this thing anymore. So you put a thermite grenade, did you put a thermite grenade on it?

• 2:17:20John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:20Jocko Willink?

  So you put a thermite grenade on it, you destroy it, and then you, again, by the skin of your teeth, you got, you get you and your guys out of there, and when you are coming back to, you're flying back to base.

• 2:17:35John Stryker Meyer?

  And just so you know how close they were, at one point, I'm looking to the north, and I see a young face come through the jungle at me, within two or three feet or so. So I can see his outline, I can see his AK is down, he sees me, and we just stop and look at each other. And it's all through the jungle, the grass, he backed out, I just kept my car at him, but he didn't open fire, and he was young, I mean, a young kid with a gun. He backed up, he went away. So I knew that this, okay, this mission is now compromised and we hit the thermite.

• 2:18:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like I said, you, this is another mission where you are getting out of there by the skin of your teeth. It's a damn miracle that you, you bring all your troops back, that you don't get overrun, that no one gets killed. It's crazy.

• 2:18:25John Stryker Meyer?

  And they, the CO was flying in a helicopter close by. We asked for a tactical withdrawal.

• 2:18:31Jocko Willink?

  That's right.

• 2:18:31John Stryker Meyer?

  He goes, break contact, continue mission, our favorite words. So we destroyed the, the encryption device.

• 2:18:40Jocko Willink?

  Roger that, sir.

• 2:18:41John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah. And we had more contact. Well, he finally ran out of fuel, went back. We were on the ground for a few more hours. We continued to move. But we hear more activity, particularly at the, we thermite at the damn radio. I thought we'd be getting extracted. He didn't. So now they know where we are, because anybody within 10 miles can tell, there's the thermite grenade. And any ARs, it's those guys, and they were coming for us. But there weren't a lot. But we had a new Cubby rider came out, Dallas Long Street. And we started running A1s across me, because we could hear the enemy to the west. And so the A1s made a couple of gun runs.

• 2:19:19John Stryker Meyer?

  And the last gun run, the pilot came in and then he flipped his aircraft. So like, I'm looking at the A1 making a gun run. And earlier you could hear when they go by, you know how the aircraft makes these noises, these crack noises when the wings change and the, whatever the strokes is in the plane are. So I'd heard him go by before. This one, he came by, he wanted to make sure where we were. He came by so close, I could tell you he was smoking a Philly charoot. He just looked over, he nodded, I saluted. And he did a couple more gun runs and they brought in this, and they, they, slicks couldn't land. So they dropped the ropes, they pulled us out on ropes. And of course, whenever you go out on ropes, they're shooting at you. It's like target practice for them.

• 2:20:02Jocko Willink?

  How did no one ever get shot on the ropes? I mean,

• 2:20:04John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, no, we had a lot of guys that got shot.

• 2:20:05Jocko Willink?

  Your team never got shot on the ropes?

• 2:20:06John Stryker Meyer?

  Knock on wood.

• 2:20:07Jocko Willink?

  Just, just luck.

• 2:20:08John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, sure luck. I mean, I always felt like they're just coming through your legs to get your balls.

• 2:20:14John Stryker Meyer?

  Or Mr. Happy, worse, you know, brain damage. I'm worried about brain damage here.

• 2:20:24Jocko Willink?

  So you go through all that and again, the people need to buy this book so they can read that full story because even what you just said is a portion of it.

• 2:20:34Jocko Willink?

  You get back, you get taken out on strings, which again, that's something we didn't talk about a lot, but a lot of times when helicopters couldn't land, they'd drop down the ropes with the sandbags on the end and you guys would clip in and they'd drag you out through the jungle and get you up to altitude and get you out of there. Yeah. And that's what happens here. Finally, you get back and here we're going back to the book. When we landed on the helicopter pad at CCM, the CO's biggest REMF, a rude arrogant, a rude ignorant sergeant major told me to report to the CO ASAP with the KY-38 and all attachments for it. When I walked into the CO's office, the REMF sergeant major ordered me to stand at attention, which I did. Then the CO asked a $64,000 question, where is the KY-38?

• 2:21:17Jocko Willink?

  I explained to him that per our earlier conversation, when we had made contact with the NVA, since it didn't work, I destroyed it. He flew into a rage, telling me that I had violated a direct order from him not to destroy it under any circumstances. I stated once again what I had said prior to the mission. Because this was a four man team, he simply said he didn't remember it that way. It was just me, him, and the REMF sergeant major who knew that the CO was of course telling the truth.

• 2:21:49Jocko Willink?

  So the sergeant major's supporting the skipper, of course. Oh, yeah. He's telling the truth. I didn't like the way this was going. So as I had in the past with the CO, I tried to explain my actions from the position of the man on the ground, which was different from a man sitting in a command and control helicopter as he had earlier in the day while ordering me to break contact and continue mission.

• 2:22:13Jocko Willink?

  Then he got really pissed and told me that he was going to write me up for an Article 32 criminal allegation under the military code of conduct for willfully destroying US government property in direct opposition to his order not to destroy the KY-38 under any circumstances. The REMF sergeant major then whispered something to the CO. As they whispered back and forth to each other, I found myself growing extremely calm. Unbelievably calm.

• 2:22:43Jocko Willink?

  Finally, the CO stepped from behind his desk, leaving the REMF Sergeant Major behind it. "I'm going to ruin your special forces career. I want you out of CCN at first light tomorrow." He went on to tell me to report to 5th Special Forces Group Headquarters in Na Trang, where he'd have me drummed out of SF within the next month. Privately, I smiled, because the CO hadn't done his homework. He failed to realize that my service in the Army ended in 2 weeks, due to the fact that I had extended my time in service to return to CCN. The CO only knew the date when I had arrived at CCN,

• 2:23:25Jocko Willink?

  and had assumed I had a traditional 1-year tour of duty that would end in October, not April 1970. My SOG days ended right there. I knew that when I went to Na Trang, I could get any assignment in Vietnam, where there was an opening for an experienced SF soldier. But as I stood there, I believed that God had sent this asshole into my life for a reason. Granted, it wasn't a reason I didn't completely understand. Granted, it was a reason I didn't completely understand at this precise moment in time, but maybe it was time for me to get out of Uncle Sam's Army altogether, while my body, if not my mind, was relatively intact.

• 2:24:10Jocko Willink?

  Who knew what the future held for SF in Vietnam? Finally, he finished and asked me if I had anything to say. "You're a disgrace to West Point. Fuck you, sir." I turned and exited without saluting. The REMF Sergeant Major caught up to me as I exited the door and told me to return and salute the CO. I bent toward his ear and quietly said, "Fuck you too, Sergeant Major." Before leaving the CCN Headquarters area, I stopped by the awards and decoration desk to see if the CO had begun paperwork for flying that day east of our team. Embarrassed, the clerk simply nodded his head in the affirmative,

• 2:24:51Jocko Willink?

  meaning that the CO was in the process of getting himself written up for an award for telling us to break contact and continue the mission, while he was flying out of harm's way safely in South Vietnam.

• 2:25:09John Stryker Meyer?

  That was him.

• 2:25:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Wow.

• 2:25:14John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah. Just unbelievable. But, you know, it's just like, you knew it. I just felt it, and plus he'd had a reputation already by that time. And we had talked to the A and D people previously about some other things he put himself in for, or had somebody put him in for. And, uh, yeah, this is just a total disgrace.

• 2:25:35Jocko Willink?

  And it's just the luck of the timing was the fact that you knew that you could get out of the Army.

• 2:25:40John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, because at that point, I was juggling the thought of re-enlisting. Um, a friend of mine who was a captain, who we had run one mission together.

• 2:25:50John Stryker Meyer?

  Uh, he was gonna, he was in the process of putting me in for a direct commission to lieutenant. And, uh, so the paperwork had been placed. And I don't know if it ever got to Saigon or not, but I know that he had a separate office. The paperwork was done. We had completed everything. We had letters of recommendation, all that stuff. And, um,

• 2:26:12John Stryker Meyer?

  so in fact, he and I had talked about what we were gonna do. I was gonna stay in for a few months to see if the direct commission, even though the reductions in force were coming. You know, because they had already started the Vietnamization process. The maximum manpower we had in Vietnam was at the end of sixty-nine, I believe it was, we had five hundred forty-three thousand Americans in Vietnam. So by April seventy, when this all happened, we had reduced the numbers. You could do more of what was coming, even within SF. And so, all those things were being juggled. So if I got the direct commission, I had thought about that. Two years of college, I knew I had to get two more years if I was gonna try for a career. And, um, and I didn't want to go back to Fort Devens.

• 2:26:57John Stryker Meyer?

  So, uh, those were the things I was juggling at the time. And when this all happened, I just, like I said, I was really calm. I just thought, God gave me an answer here.

• 2:27:07Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:27:14Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, I continued down to the team room, where I gave Sal $500 to buy food and drink for the biggest party RT Idaho had during my tenure on the team. We partied late into the night. One by one, each team member passed out until it was just Hep and me, standing outside RT Idaho's Vietnamese team room. Hep asked me if I needed him for any more interpreting. When I said no, he passed out in the sand. I picked him up, dusted him off as best I could, and carried him into the team room, where I gently placed him in bed. Before I turned the lights out, I stood in the doorway for a moment longer, reflecting on my 18 months with these men,

• 2:27:56Jocko Willink?

  with a special affection and admiration for Sal, Hep, Phauk, Quang, and Hung. Then, the guilt pangs washed over me. What did the future hold for them? And that had to be the hardest part of this departure.

• 2:28:14John Stryker Meyer?

  Ah, brutal. Really was.

• 2:28:17Jocko Willink?

  And these guys were just doing this continually for years. They didn't rotate out.

• 2:28:24John Stryker Meyer?

  No.

• 2:28:24Jocko Willink?

  That was their job.

• 2:28:25John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, Hep had rotated up to headquarters. He asked for permission to go there for a better-paying job. And after three and a half years running recon, he said, "Sure." And we had a, the guy who was interpreter of Virginia came over. Not as good as Hep, but he was a good interpreter. And by that time, we had worked on two other South Vietnamese. Hung and Chow were speaking good enough English, where if I got shot, they could pick up the radio and take over. Because we cross-trained them on radio procedures, SOPs, how to run everything. So Hep knew how to do it, then Hung, and then Chow later.

• 2:29:04Jocko Willink?

  And they must, from their perspective, this must have seemed completely insane.

• 2:29:07John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, yeah, absolutely. And they were like, "Really?" But they knew the way, but this is 70, so SF had been there in force for six years by then. And they knew enough and talked to each other, plus being in the secret war. How things were operated and that, you know, we all reported to a commander somewhere. And it was still one of the points, it's a sticking point was like, oh God, I'm alive thanks to you and now I'm leaving you guys here. And so this is April 70 without ever thinking about what April 30th, 1975 would be like.

• 2:29:46John Stryker Meyer?

  The day of Saigon fell. Just horrible.

• 2:29:52Jocko Willink?

  So you, you finished with that, you know, you, you pack up, you reported to Na Trang.

• 2:29:59Jocko Willink?

  During, during the next two weeks, the most traumatic event was having the ice cream stand severely damaged by enemy mortar fire.

• 2:30:05John Stryker Meyer?

  That was serious. That's really messing with your head. You destroyed the ice cream stand.

• 2:30:13Jocko Willink?

  The reps had to go, they got PTSD from that one.

• 2:30:16John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh yeah. They had to go downtown for their ice cream.

• 2:30:23Jocko Willink?

  On April 25th, so that was April 1st. So now it's April 25th.

• 2:30:27John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:28Jocko Willink?

  I mustered out of the army at Fort Lewis, Washington, again with mixed emotions. I flew to Denver, Colorado to spend a few days with my sister Linda and to enjoy some spring skiing in the Rockies. At the end of April, she got a rental car for me to return to New York City. I drove from Denver to Sutherland, Ohio to visit my cousin Doug Conrad and his wife, Sandra, before heading home to Trenton. The drive was about 1300 miles, including pit stops and a long wait in Ohio for food and few phone calls. I made it home in less than 15 hours.

• 2:31:01Jocko Willink?

  So you were averaging over a hundred miles an hour, basically.

• 2:31:04John Stryker Meyer?

  That's all it could do though. It was just a rental.

• 2:31:09Jocko Willink?

  When I arrived at 20 West Paul Ave, that's your house.

• 2:31:14Jocko Willink?

  Where you grew up, it was around 3am. Times had changed in my absence. My parents now locked the front and back doors of the house. So, wearing my jump boots and class A uniform, I went around to the back of the house where I climbed up to the window.

• 2:31:30Jocko Willink?

  Grabbed the metal roof of the shed and stepped on the metal clothesline hook to push myself up to the red metal roof dampened by the morning moisture. After I climbed through the back window, I went over to my little brother David and gave him a big hug. Hell, he was taller than me. Then I went down to my parents' bedroom. Moving first to my mother's side of the bed, I touched her face but didn't say a word. "Groggy," she murmured, "David, is that you?" Then she reached up to my face and felt my beard. "John," she said, as she stirred from her sleep. "John, is that you? John, you're home?

• 2:32:13Jocko Willink?

  Henry, it's John, he's home." She reached around my neck with the urgency and pain only mothers know and said, "Johnny's home. Johnny's home."

• 2:32:32John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh yeah.

• 2:32:44Jocko Willink?

  So, you made it home?

• 2:32:50John Stryker Meyer?

  Only body, grace God.

• 2:32:52Jocko Willink?

  And what came next? What did you do after that?

• 2:32:56John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, um, went to, uh, went back to school because it took me two years to flunk out. So that summer, uh, I, uh, took classes and then my dad got me a job right away driving school buses. And so like within the first two or three days of me getting a driver's license, this is Trenton, New Jersey, there's still some race rides that were going on. So things were, they had a curfews, which is like, this is like mind boggling in Trenton of all places. And so they said, um, "We got a run for you. You're going to go to Chambersburg," which was the Italian section of Trenton. And they were just starting new integration

• 2:33:37John Stryker Meyer?

  program. So I picked up a busload of young black kids that were mostly elementary school.

• 2:33:45John Stryker Meyer?

  Pick them up, take them into Chambersburg. On the way in, there's protests and I'm getting rocked and stoned. And I don't have my car 15 because those Italians or whoever they were that were hitting us with those rocks. It was really making me very unhappy. But here it was like, this is Trenton. I go from one war zone to this and they're doing this integration stuff. And so the curfew, so we had all that going on. And within a couple of weeks, the church softball team was reactivated. Softball season was here. So did that, school, did some driving. And eventually got involved in the school newspaper, became editor. We had a period of time where the student government voted itself out of office. We had the SDS

• 2:34:29John Stryker Meyer?

  on campus. The communists were in there doing their thing behind the scenes. They burnt down a couple of buildings just for good luck, played dominoes in the library, knocked over all the books there. Stupid stuff. And then

• 2:34:42Jocko Willink?

  You had to just be thinking to yourself, are you serious?

• 2:34:47John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:48Jocko Willink?

  This is what I just, you know, saw my friends get killed, took risk my own life, saw what the Vietnamese people were actually fighting for, what they wanted.

• 2:34:57John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:58Jocko Willink?

  And you had these people back here in America do, acting like this.

• 2:35:01John Stryker Meyer?

  And the student, you know, we knew the SDS were, were backed with the communists and they had their, all their propaganda, but it was never reported. They were just like, well, here's like another group protesting in the streets without any kind of active definition as to who these people really were, what they really hated America. And so, you know, we're involved with school, trying to get going. And, you know, during this time, we got very active with the paper. I was editor for two years. So I worked on the paper for every day for two straight years. And we had our moments, you know, they had the first faculty strike in the state. So before that, I was really excited because

• 2:35:45John Stryker Meyer?

  me and two other SF buddies were going to shut the campus down. Because the faculty there and the teacher unions told us, we will support you students and we're going to get things for you. And they made other promises, which, okay, I'm all for it. And it'd be the first strike in history in New Jersey. And so me and the guys put together a plan because there's basically three major entrances and one couple clandestine routes. So we had everything planned. We're going to overturn an empty fuel tanker at one gate. The other gate, we were just close it down with cars and things. So we'd take them at least a day or two to clean it up and clear it out. We shut that school down. So we're putting our plans together, right? So now here comes

• 2:36:30John Stryker Meyer?

  Mr. Editor. I get a copy of the state. I go to the State Department of the Higher Education and the chancellor gives me what the state is proposing. Says, look at this, read this. He says, have the union give you their proposal. Well, they wouldn't give it to me, nor would the chancellor. He felt it was a violation of their fiduciary, whatever the hell it was that they're dealing with these union people. So the union guy had his Volkswagen in the parking lot. Long story short, I borrowed his contract. I got it, photocopied it. While I'm photocopying it downstairs at the administration building, he walked by. I salute, say hi,

• 2:37:11John Stryker Meyer?

  continue to photocopy his, his negotiating paper, which is many pages long. I went back and printed them side by side. There's two mentions of what the union was going to do in over 20 or 30 pages of documents. One was to give them more time off and the other was for class size. That's all they had in those pages. We printed it, did an editorial and said, screw the union and opposed it. And then we went to war with the union editorially. And from there, and they went on strike, but they didn't close the campus down. I pulled our, I pulled our, I was brokenhearted, man. Because I really wanted to get some, some guillotine warfare here at Trenton State College, you know. But they lied to us.

• 2:37:56Jocko Willink?

  What were you studying at the time?

• 2:37:58John Stryker Meyer?

  Um, well, you know, uh, I was a, remember I was a freshman in sixty-four and I finally graduated in seventy-four with a political science degree with a minor in English. Cause English was still my foreign language at the time.

• 2:38:10Jocko Willink?

  And did you, did you, I know you were working at the paper, again, that's what you ended up doing for your career, your second career.

• 2:38:16John Stryker Meyer?

  Much to my amazement, um, you know, cause at the Signal, that was our school paper. I did everything, photography, editorials, news stories, and uh, went down to the Trenton Times, a local paper. They were owned by the Washington Post. Dick Harwood was the editor and during the Woodegate stuff, he was the voice that was skeptical of Woodward and Bernstein. But he was my editor. So I got down and I went in uh, for an interview. I, I said, I had, my hair is on my shoulders now. I hadn't had a haircut for a couple of years. Blue jean jacket, T-shirt, jungle boots, old blue jeans, going for the first interview. He's interested. Says, come back for a second. I went back for a second interview, had a clean T-shirt at this time.

• 2:38:59Jocko Willink?

  Stepped it up.

• 2:39:00John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:02John Stryker Meyer?

  I even thought about polishing the jungle boots, but I said nah. So I got hired, went to work at the Trenton Times. I was there for ten years. And uh, then went to San Diego for ten, ten years with the San Diego Union, which is about eight years. Moved out to California nineteen eighty-five.

• 2:39:18Jocko Willink?

  What made you decide to move out to California?

• 2:39:20John Stryker Meyer?

  Um, the Washington Post sold the Trenton Times and it, the quality of the newspaper just diminished incredibly. I was fighting more with the editors to get stories into the paper. Cause I covered the courts and I was doing investigative stuff. We did a story about the, we broke the story about um, the FBI investigating Philadelphia Police Department corruption that went to the top. Wyatt interviewed a Marine who was a Vietnam vet, who was the undercover guy working with the fan belt inspectors for eighteen months. I see this guy at night, he's, we did this today, we did this. He made fun of the FBI.

• 2:40:00John Stryker Meyer?

  And so he told me, when they were getting ready to, to go out, get the search warrants and do the raids. So I called up the fan belt inspectors and said, hey, heard you got a little case going on. I don't want to jeopardize your investigation, but I'm going to write about it before you guys do it. Let's talk. Turns out the chief FBI guy was a.

• 2:40:20John Stryker Meyer?

  As a Spectre pilot.

• 2:40:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh geez.

• 2:40:23John Stryker Meyer?

  He had flown in Laos. Now, we couldn't determine if he was my savior that night on February nineteen seventy or not, but we had an interesting exchange. So I gave him two days. They put all the paperwork together and they put up wiretaps on the key suspects in the Philadelphia Police Department. Monday morning, I broke the story. Scooped the Philadelphia Inquirer, every major paper in the world. This is before the Communist News Network and Fox News and all this stuff. Did the story and it was amazing. And they, and they did the whole thing with the follow up. So that was my, one of my major coups. We had the other story about the Philadelphia Phillies that were under investigation.

• 2:41:05John Stryker Meyer?

  So we had, uh, law enforcement was my, was my main source. Then I did the courts and in between we do these investigative pieces for fun. Came to San Diego, was there for eight years doing law enforcement, covered our beloved Border Patrol. And then from there, I went to North County, uh, and I, I always lived in North San Diego County. And they had a paper called the, uh, the Oceanside Blade Citizen. So I went to work there. The editor's job paid ten dollars a week more than a reporter's job. So I was like, became an editor, assistant city editor. Up in Oceanside, which eventually became the North County Times. And so I went to work there in October, met my future bride in December. She had, uh, two boys, had two girls.

• 2:41:50John Stryker Meyer?

  Ten months later, we're married and so we'll be celebrating our twenty-fifth anniversary this, uh, this October. And, uh, we went for the tiebreaker. So the tiebreaker, she's twenty-two now. And I worked at the paper until, uh, two thousand eight. Then I've worked at a couple of nonprofits, helping veterans over the last eleven years. In between that, a couple of books for good luck.

• 2:42:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, no, awesome books. It seems like, and this is something that I always do, like, uh, uh, obviously. You know, you, you went through some, uh, just completely insane, intense stuff. You come back. It seems like you got back into society fairly well, fairly quickly. I mean, you, and, and what I always say to guys is like, you need a new mission, like, cause what happens when I think guys fall apart is when they come back from wherever they're deployed to. And they don't, when they come back, they don't know what to do. They don't, they don't, they don't go on to the next mission. Whereas you're like, okay, I'm gonna go to college. I'm gonna work at the newspaper. I'm gonna organize these, you know, we're gonna fight this fight. And it seems like you got focused on what your next mission was, where I think that's when a lot of guys don't do well.

• 2:42:55Jocko Willink?

  And I was wondering if you saw anything with your friends, other Vietnam guys that you served with, the guys that seemed to get back on track and carry on with their life as opposed to guys that don't?

• 2:43:07John Stryker Meyer?

  Yeah, majority of our guys, I like to think, came back and they adjusted one way or the other. We had a couple tragic cases that didn't. I mean, when I went back for my second tour, I went back with Jeffrey Junkins, who was going back for his fifth tour duty, second or third with SF. And so we howled on the plane going across, went back, we land in Cameron Bay. And instead of going through the process, we got our duffel bag, went out, stole Jeep, drove to the Trang, but didn't go to headquarters, went downtown and partied for a little bit, then reported to the Trang, and then went up to CCN there, because we were both returning. So there's no in-country training, none of that stuff. And, and my order specifically said CCN.

• 2:43:52John Stryker Meyer?

  And I got back to the team right away, which you covered earlier.

• 2:43:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:43:56John Stryker Meyer?

  And the other sidebar, which really helped was at Trenton State College, I was a point man for the POW MIA Concern Center. They came out with the bracelets and the whole thing was that effort. They had American citizens that were, and the family members. It's the first time American family members petitioned an enemy to treat our prisoners better.

• 2:44:21John Stryker Meyer?

  And so our prisoners weren't related, released until February of 1973. We had two years that I worked at the POW MIA Concern Center. We had a POW, an Air Force POW from Trenton. We supported him, his, well, his family, wrote letters, everything we could do for, in our spare time, between classes, putting out newspapers and things like that. So it was like a, really a sub rosa mission. And when the prisoners came home, that was just a great moment. And so, but it really was helpful, like I said, another mission that we went into, the newspaper, going into it. And there's a period of time the student government voted herself out of office.

• 2:45:04John Stryker Meyer?

  So the paper was the only student voice. So we took a much more

• 2:45:08Jocko Willink?

  What does that mean that student government voted themselves out of office? What does that even mean?

• 2:45:15John Stryker Meyer?

  Hey, this is nineteen seventy one. We had people that were just too busy. They didn't think the student government was was could address issues that were apropos to true needs of students or whatever the hell that meant. I forget the real reasons, but they just disbanded themselves. So the signal was the only voice on campus. And so we became much more active. And of course, we had affirmative action that was starting then. And the teacher's strike, we had a outbreak of meningitis. We killed three students, had to cover that. And of course, deep in my mind, I wanted them to strike. I wanted to go out and shut the campus down.

• 2:45:59John Stryker Meyer?

  But it didn't work out.

• 2:46:01Jocko Willink?

  How about the, you know, how was the treatment? You know, you know, as a modern day veteran myself, like we get treated just unbelievably, ridiculously good.

• 2:46:13John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, that's the benefit from Vietnam. We weren't treated well, but today our citizenry treats our soldiers, sailors appropriately, regardless of the politics. They thank you for the service mostly. Yeah, we had, we had cases. I mean, I wore my fatigue jacket for years just to say, fuck you. I'm wearing, if you don't like it, talk to me about it. And we had a few parties with the newspaper. And so everybody, almost everybody, except for one or two people were very liberal, of course. This is the college nineteen seventy one, two. And we had this one freak. He's like six, three, had his long hair. And he came up to me and said, you know, you guys, I know about you Green Berets. You're fucking baby killers, you know, you've gone on.

• 2:46:57John Stryker Meyer?

  The whole party comes to a stop. So it's mean as creep. And so he said a few more things and then finally says, aren't you really a baby killer? And I said, look, the only time we killed babies was when we ran out of rations. Whoa. He just, that kid was never the same. And everybody was kind of like laughing, realizing how ridiculous this asshole was. So it's like, why get your hands dirty?

• 2:47:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:47:24John Stryker Meyer?

  So, yeah, we had someone that, like Lynn Black, when he came back, he was trying to get out of the airport quick and took the door, got outside and wound up in a long corridor. Well, three or four guys came up to him and said, hey, man, you're back, you got cast, we're gonna relieve you of that burden. So Lynn pulled out his 25 caliber Browning, the little ones, you know? You put it in your palm? And Lynn goes, no, I'm not giving it to you. And the guy goes, I recognize a cigarette lighter when I see one. Lynn put it around between his legs, right there at the airport.

• 2:47:57Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 2:47:58John Stryker Meyer?

  They left.

• 2:48:00John Stryker Meyer?

  But again, there's no respect, you know? Lynn just didn't want to get his uniform.

• 2:48:03Jocko Willink?

  Where was that? Where was Lynn?

• 2:48:05John Stryker Meyer?

  See, up in Seattle. Yeah.

• 2:48:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and then, how did you start getting re-involved with like the, the, the special operations group that you're with now?

• 2:48:18John Stryker Meyer?

  I got a phone call from, well, there's two. I got a phone call from Spider Parks in 1983. I'm living in Trenton, uh, my first wife, first daughter, and, uh, he said, we got this group, Special Operations Association. It's our guys, it was formed by Green Berets that ran recon and we had some Hatchet Force guys that were the platoon, company-sized operations like Mad Dog Jerry Shriver. And, uh, they had formed up, um, a few years earlier. So I signed up, probably living in Trenton, and their reunions were at different places. So I never, I didn't bother to go for several years, but Spider and I talked, paid my dues and finally went to, and they started having them in Vegas.

• 2:49:00John Stryker Meyer?

  Uh, me and Jeff Junkins would drive, go to Vegas, get into the hotel, wait till the security guard left and sneak into the reunion, hang out with the guys for a day, pick one of our guys, crash in their room for the night, and then drive home the next day. But we get to see the guys and no money. We get the free food, free drinks, a little gas, right? So we did that for a couple of years. It was a lot of fun. And then, uh, when I finally met Anna, my s- my current wife and my sweetheart forever, uh, that kinda came to a close. And I took Anna one time, and the first time was not a really completely good experience. Some of our guys are still pretty wild and then the hotel wasn't that cool. But now, it's more of a, our guys have slowed down a little bit. We've lost some along the way.

• 2:49:44John Stryker Meyer?

  So we happen to be in, this will be our forty-third reunion. Then I'm also involved with the Special Forces Association, Chapter Thirty-Eight up in Orange. And I went to their restroom two years ago at Christmas time. I came back, I was president. So I'm wrapping up my, my second year of duty with those gentlemen.

• 2:50:03Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, what's the, what's the, uh, the nonprofit group that you have?

• 2:50:07John Stryker Meyer?

  Uh, we have the Veterans, uh, uh, Veterans Affordable Housing Program, that's out of Orange. And then we have a separate, uh, uh, nonprofits called the American Veterans Assistance Group, where we work with programs within our communities. We have forty-five communities in the five western states that are, uh, are owned by our company and by our nonprofit. And so, uh, we encourage to help veterans that have fixed income to get them into affordable housing. You know, the, uh, manufactured homes are less expensive than stick houses. And then we have programs with, through our, uh, the AVAG program, we have programs for meals, meetings, have bringing in guest speakers and things like that. And we're doing that in about nine of our communities now.

• 2:50:51John Stryker Meyer?

  So that's what my other job is, than do the newsletter.

• 2:50:55Jocko Willink?

  Busy.

• 2:50:56John Stryker Meyer?

  Always.

• 2:50:57Jocko Willink?

  Always busy.

• 2:50:58John Stryker Meyer?

  Can't, like Clint Eastwood said, can't let the old man in.

• 2:51:03Jocko Willink?

  Well, I'll tell you what, um, we just hit three hours or something close to that.

• 2:51:08John Stryker Meyer?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:51:08Jocko Willink?

  Uh, I know I need to let you get out of here, obviously, um.

• 2:51:14Jocko Willink?

  Anything else? Any other closing thoughts?

• 2:51:16John Stryker Meyer?

  Uh, no, just as I said the first time, is I could have done any of the books without my sweetheart. My dear bride, you know, we had, uh, you know, four teenagers and, and, and a relatively newborn in the house. She said, go write. And God bless her. Without her, I couldn't have done it. So. And the family today, we just learned we got two, two, two or three girls are pregnant. So we're getting excited about being grandparents. We're practicing. And we're still working with our nonprofit. So moving forward.

• 2:51:45Jocko Willink?

  Anything, can people donate to that nonprofit? Do you have that kind of thing? Is there a website or anything like that? Or is you guys just run it locally?

• 2:51:52John Stryker Meyer?

  No, they, uh, I'll have to check the website, but they could, um. I've got my email, my website, sogchronicles.com. And they could punch in there my emails there and I'll be glad to forward them the, uh. Uh, we're going through some changes with our website, web design. You know how that goes.

• 2:52:10Jocko Willink?

  But sogchronicles.com is how people can talk to you, reach out to you through that.

• 2:52:15John Stryker Meyer?

  Gladly. And, uh, yeah, come on in and we'll say hi and take it from there.

• 2:52:21Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. Awesome. Well.

• 2:52:23John Stryker Meyer?

  Well, thank you for this opportunity and your books, man. We love.

• 2:52:25Jocko Willink?

  Thank me at all.

• 2:52:26John Stryker Meyer?

  Absolutely.

• 2:52:27Jocko Willink?

  This is, this is, the honor is 100% and completely all mine, uh, to hear the stories, which are completely insane, to learn from your experiences.

• 2:52:38Jocko Willink?

  Obviously, or maybe it's not obvious, anytime you want to come on the podcast or you shoot me a text, you let me know and we'll just open the door. You can come in. I don't need to say anything. You can just talk. It's fine with me. I'll just listen.

• 2:52:48John Stryker Meyer?

  Like a bad dream, I'll be back.

• 2:52:50Jocko Willink?

  I look forward to every second of it.

• 2:52:51John Stryker Meyer?

  Likewise.

• 2:52:52Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, so thanks for coming on and, and, you know, more important, and of course, thank you for what you and what your teammates did for the service of our great country.

• 2:53:04John Stryker Meyer?

  Likewise, sir. Thank you.

• 2:53:06Jocko Willink?

  We're always indebted to you and men like you. So thank you for what you've done. Appreciate it.

• 2:53:12John Stryker Meyer?

  Airborne.

• 2:53:13Jocko Willink?

  All the way.

• 2:53:15John Stryker Meyer?

  Until next time.

• 2:53:18Jocko Willink?

  And once again, John Stryker Meyer Tilt.

• 2:53:24Speaker 02

  Tilt.

• 2:53:24Jocko Willink?

  Has left the building. What an incredible human being. And it's a complete honor and just lucky to be able to sit here and talk to him and hear his stories and hear him reflect on stuff. And it's been a while. It's been three hours. So anyways, if you liked this conversation, this podcast that we just did,

• 2:53:53Jocko Willink?

  if you got something out of it, which I know I did, if you want to support the podcast, while you actually support your own self.

• 2:54:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:54:04Jocko Willink?

  I think Echo can give you some help in making that happen.

• 2:54:08Speaker 02

  Yep. Yes. So let's go into it. Jiu Jitsu, obviously. Doing Jiu Jitsu. If you're not doing Jiu Jitsu, I, I would say Jocko and I strongly recommend.

• 2:54:19Jocko Willink?

  I thought you were gonna say we were disappointed.

• 2:54:21Speaker 02

  No, see, yeah, maybe, maybe part, but not really. At the end of the day, there is some understanding to be exercised here. Cause not every, okay, you ever rolled, you're different, but sometimes people roll into a Jiu Jitsu gym or see it on TV or even think about it. Two people wrestling all hard or whatever. Some people just don't automatically want to go do that. You know, just automatically.

• 2:54:44Jocko Willink?

  On its surface, you might think, oh, well, that's not really for me. I don't really want to gravel, grapple with some other dude.

• 2:54:53Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:54:54Jocko Willink?

  What you don't see is what's beneath the surface.

• 2:54:56Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:54:57Jocko Willink?

  Cause what's beneath the surface is fitness, flexibility, mobility, mental stamina.

• 2:55:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:55:06Jocko Willink?

  Physical stamina.

• 2:55:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:55:08Jocko Willink?

  Cardiovascular improvement, strength improvement. On top of all that, you guess what you get? Legitimate skill.

• 2:55:15Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:55:16Jocko Willink?

  That you can actually choke another person that's bigger than you, that's stronger than you.

• 2:55:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:55:21Jocko Willink?

  You can take them.

• 2:55:22Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:55:23Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:55:23Speaker 02

  And, you know, if I speak for myself, the reason I started and continued with jiu jitsu is because it's the skill that you're talking about that you learn. That skill is this, if someone, if someone insists on fighting you, you can win the fight.

• 2:55:41Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:55:41Speaker 02

  You win the fight. And before you learn how to fight, and I'm, I'm speaking, generally speaking, before you learn to fight, you think, ah, you know, I'm, I'll just do this.

• 2:55:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:55:53Speaker 02

  You know, I'm stronger than that guy, or I'm bigger than that guy, whatever. Yeah, you know, and you don't realize how, how untrue, how un-

• 2:56:01Jocko Willink?

  You know how I've said we lie to ourselves?

• 2:56:02Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:56:03Jocko Willink?

  Like, we lie to ourselves, this is a whole nother category of lying to yourself.

• 2:56:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:07Jocko Willink?

  Cause one category is like, we lie to ourselves, like, oh, it's just one donut, it's not that big of a deal. That's just a lie, you're lying to yourself, or, well, I don't, I can't make it to the gym today, cause you know, my, you know, it's, it's getting a little late, that's a lie, you know, it's a lie. But an even bigger lie is, I'm more capable, I'm capable-

• 2:56:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:25Jocko Willink?

  In certain situations, and you're not, and you think, and you still talk to people like this. People are like, oh, you know, well, if it really came down to it.

• 2:56:32Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:56:33Jocko Willink?

  I, you know, and I lift too.

• 2:56:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:37Jocko Willink?

  And I got strong cardio. Who's gonna be able to take me? I'll tell you who. A fourteen year old girl-

• 2:56:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:45Jocko Willink?

  That knows how to, you know, choke you.

• 2:56:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:56:49Jocko Willink?

  That's who.

• 2:56:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, just like in pool, right? You play pool?

• 2:56:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:56:54Speaker 02

  Bucket billiards?

• 2:56:55Jocko Willink?

  Billiards, snooker.

• 2:56:57Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:56:59Speaker 02

  And it's like, yeah, I know, I see what's going on. All I can do is hit this ball to hit that ball and go in the thing, that's no problem for me.

• 2:57:05Jocko Willink?

  Put money on this.

• 2:57:06Speaker 02

  Me, I'm pretty smart, I'm pretty coordinated, you know, I'm just like, that's just how my mind is.

• 2:57:10Jocko Willink?

  How hard can it be?

• 2:57:12Speaker 02

  Exactly, right. And you go play against a guy who really, who knows how to play pool, you'd be like, bro, how do you even do that? Like, how did you even like, figure that? But they know, they just know, it's not like it's this magic thing, they just sort of know. Same thing with jiu jitsu, it's like, man, in fact, it's such a mystery, when you actually do it, how easily they beat you. It's such a weird magic mystery that-

• 2:57:32Jocko Willink?

  That you don't even comprehend it.

• 2:57:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, at first, you're like, oh, oh, I just slipped. No, bro, you didn't slip, he put you there on purpose. Yeah, yeah.

• 2:57:39Jocko Willink?

  And you think, oh, well, next time I'll just stop him from putting his arm there.

• 2:57:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:57:44Jocko Willink?

  He's got one billion other things that he's gonna do.

• 2:57:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:57:47Jocko Willink?

  That you don't know nothing about.

• 2:57:48Speaker 02

  Same thing with basketball, by the way.

• 2:57:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, same thing with all sport, basketball. Right?

• 2:57:53Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Yeah, it goes deep. Anyway, when you do jujitsu, when you do jujitsu, because you're doing it, we're doing it, and you're gonna do it, you should. Get a gi, because you don't, you want to gi, I know gi. So the kind of gi that you get is an Origin gi, best gi in the world factually and made in America, which is a huge deal, by the way. Also, Origin, the brand that makes these gi's, they make jeans, American denim.

• 2:58:16Jocko Willink?

  You didn't even get yours yet, did you?

• 2:58:18Speaker 02

  No, I didn't.

• 2:58:18Jocko Willink?

  Ah!

• 2:58:19Speaker 02

  I totally haven't, and I talk to B Little all the time.

• 2:58:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, B Little just got his.

• 2:58:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, we sure.

• 2:58:25Jocko Willink?

  You know why we take care of the customer first?

• 2:58:27Speaker 02

  Well, you're not really the customer.

• 2:58:29Jocko Willink?

  Mine were T and E.

• 2:58:32Jocko Willink?

  You know what that is?

• 2:58:33Speaker 02

  Uh, research and development.

• 2:58:35Jocko Willink?

  Test and evaluation.

• 2:58:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:58:37Jocko Willink?

  So I got test and evaluation pair.

• 2:58:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:58:40Jocko Willink?

  And I just got another test and evaluation for the next phase.

• 2:58:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:58:43Jocko Willink?

  Because I'm making another phase.

• 2:58:46Speaker 02

  We lie to ourselves, as a wise man once said. Anyway, no, I don't have jeans, but I, from what I imagine, from what I see and gather, you know, from the field, they're good jeans.

• 2:58:57Jocko Willink?

  Z, now, this is, this is a good psychological, good flanking maneuver you just did right now.

• 2:59:02Speaker 02

  No, man, I'm just.

• 2:59:03Jocko Willink?

  Because Pete and Brian will hear this and they'll be like, oh, Echo doesn't even have jeans?

• 2:59:06Speaker 02

  No, no, I will get a hundred percent.

• 2:59:08Jocko Willink?

  We better get them to them.

• 2:59:09Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 2:59:09Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you text them and say, hey, can I get a pair of jeans, size, whatever?

• 2:59:12Speaker 02

  Me and Brian share text and pain, by the way, how like, we're the last, we're the only ones that we literally know that don't have the jeans that are, you know? And then, so he texted me the other day, or, or even worse, tags me in the Instagram story about his jeans, and you know, me, I'm over here. Well, then again, I'm, I wear the, the shark fin short, you know, what do you call the shorts that they make? That's all I wear. So whatever.

• 2:59:37Jocko Willink?

  Representing.

• 2:59:38Speaker 02

  Representing big time, but they happen to be the best shorts.

• 2:59:40Jocko Willink?

  You wear jeans very often?

• 2:59:42Speaker 02

  Me? No, not as much.

• 2:59:43Jocko Willink?

  Maybe that's why not, not why you're too vocal about it.

• 2:59:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:59:46Jocko Willink?

  But you would be, if you had them on.

• 2:59:48Speaker 02

  If I knew.

• 2:59:49Jocko Willink?

  You'd be like, yeah.

• 2:59:50Speaker 02

  Maybe I'm just sour grapes, like, I don't even want any.

• 2:59:52Jocko Willink?

  Cool. All right. Well, I do have them.

• 2:59:56Speaker 02

  How are they? Are they good?

• 2:59:57Jocko Willink?

  They are totally good to go. They are the next level.

• 3:00:01Jocko Willink?

  Squared away. Awesome. Yep, you can get jeans, you can get t-shirts, you can get supplements. We have supplements. We got we got joint warfare, which you should take. We got krill oil, we got discipline and discipline go. Discipline go is like uh get your

• 3:00:17Jocko Willink?

  cognitive wheels spinning, turning, moving quickly, sharp. So we have discipline go in a can coming out. I think it's actually out right now.

• 3:00:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, the little

• 3:00:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:00:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, see that those are the same formula, the one, the test one that they they

• 3:00:33Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 3:00:34Speaker 02

  Okay, good. Yeah, that's that one's good. Here's the thing about all of these, right? So you have joint warfare, krill oil, right? The combo, that's the best way to go for your joints and stuff. And then, you know, uh, discipline and then the mulk and and everything. Okay, consider this, right? As you get older and you still want to fight, because man, I gotta, I gotta be honest with you. Um, you know, you feel, you know, you catch the wave of just consistency. I know you're a consistent person and discipline.

• 3:00:59Jocko Willink?

  I've been on that wave.

• 3:01:00Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:01:00Jocko Willink?

  It's a tsunami.

• 3:01:01Speaker 02

  Right? So you're the, you're the poster child of

• 3:01:03Jocko Willink?

  Although I do have the, I do have the ding knee right now.

• 3:01:06Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:01:07Jocko Willink?

  Which is we're almost there.

• 3:01:09Speaker 02

  Yes, but you know how, okay, you know how some people can catch uh various levels of how should I say flourishing, flourishes of activity?

• 3:01:19Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:01:20Speaker 02

  You know, um, where they'll catch the wave of consistency, meaning like everything they're doing in their life is like, I'm being disciplined and I'm in the zone where it's like just second nature now. Boom, boom, boom, everything, right? So if you take all of these supplements, that's gonna keep you on there.

• 3:01:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:01:37Speaker 02

  Especially as you get older.

• 3:01:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I don't know about the older part because I'm just kind of the same as I was.

• 3:01:43Speaker 02

  Right, right. That's just how for you. But take it from someone who's getting older, actually getting older, uh, these I think I, as far as my workouts, like they're hard, they're harder than most of the workouts I did when I was young. And I'm just maintaining big time. As far as like staying in the game.

• 3:01:59Jocko Willink?

  Check, check.

• 3:02:01Speaker 02

  Anyway, you get the consistent combo. That's, that's in my opinion, how you do it. Also, I mentioned milk.

• 3:02:06Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:02:07Speaker 02

  Additional protein in the form of a dessert.

• 3:02:09Jocko Willink?

  In the form of a delicious like drink. That's just so tasty.

• 3:02:13Speaker 02

  Yep, exactly.

• 3:02:14Jocko Willink?

  Who was it was telling me like the, they were saying, oh, it was Dave.

• 3:02:19Speaker 02

  Good deal Dave?

• 3:02:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Good deal Dave was, was saying he's at a point now where he's drinking strawberry milk. He goes, listen, it's one thing to be, okay, it's time for dessert or hey, I'm a little bit hungry. It's another thing to just be sitting around or walking through your house and be just, just think for no reason.

• 3:02:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:02:39Jocko Willink?

  Other than I want to taste.

• 3:02:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:02:43Jocko Willink?

  The goodness.

• 3:02:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:02:44Jocko Willink?

  I'm just gonna go have a strawberry milk.

• 3:02:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:02:46Jocko Willink?

  Strawberry slayer right now.

• 3:02:48Speaker 02

  And you know why I understand? Because I've done that before and this is what I thought to myself. The thing is you, there's no guilt in that, but here's the thing, the concept kinda made me feel a little bit guilty when I was doing that.

• 3:02:59Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 3:02:59Speaker 02

  Because you know how the kind where you're like at home bored and you see the cookies and you're like.

• 3:03:04Jocko Willink?

  It was an easy path and you took it.

• 3:03:05Speaker 02

  It was an easy path.

• 3:03:06Jocko Willink?

  It was a desire that you succumbed to.

• 3:03:08Speaker 02

  Yes, so that mindset.

• 3:03:09Jocko Willink?

  Can be a bad pattern to go down.

• 3:03:11Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:03:12Jocko Willink?

  So you gotta be careful. Don't get, don't allow the goodness of milk to start to train your brain to accept things that you just want.

• 3:03:20Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 3:03:21Jocko Willink?

  You can make an exception with milk. You can be like, hey, I really want this right now just for, just for the sake of wanting it.

• 3:03:27Speaker 02

  Yes. Don't let your mind.

• 3:03:29Jocko Willink?

  But don't think, hey, donut.

• 3:03:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:03:31Jocko Willink?

  There's a slippery slope, bro.

• 3:03:33Speaker 02

  It is a slippery slope, right? Yep. It's kinda, yeah, that's true. So just beware the mindset essentially.

• 3:03:39Jocko Willink?

  There's other flavors too, if you don't like strawberry, which some people don't. Who is it? Jason Gardner. Jason Gardner.

• 3:03:44Speaker 02

  Jason Gardner.

• 3:03:45Jocko Willink?

  Don't like strawberry. Good job, Jason. He's over there, but he he takes that little hitter with his coffee in the morning. He's got his little, he's got his little ritual scenario. He's got going on.

• 3:03:59Speaker 02

  That makes sense, though. Strawberry and coffee.

• 3:04:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, strawberry coffee is no good, no. The vanilla there. Then you got mint peanut butter. The peanut butter is also off the hook. So is the mint. That's the, that's the OG. Did we just say OG?

• 3:04:13Speaker 02

  Yes, we did.

• 3:04:14Jocko Willink?

  We did, big time. And then don't forget about the Warrior Kid Milk. Which is the Warrior Kid Milk for your kid. Either that, or you can give them poison. You can give them poison, which, oh, you got a bunch of corn syrup in this drink. I'm gonna give it to my child so that, so that I give them type two diabetes. Or you can get them something that makes them stronger, smarter, faster, better.

• 3:04:32Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:04:33Jocko Willink?

  Warrior Kid, Warrior Kid Milk, strawberry and chocolate. Get some.

• 3:04:36Speaker 02

  Also Jaco White Tea. Certified organic, by the way. Very good. Micro, I wouldn't even call it micro doses of caffeine. There's like many, many doses. That's what it is.

• 3:04:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's sixty milligrams per can. It's sort of like a cup of coffee. It also has the antioxidants in there. It also tastes good. Refresh.

• 3:04:55Speaker 02

  Very refreshing.

• 3:04:56Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. And, well, obviously.

• 3:05:00Speaker 02

  Obviously.

• 3:05:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, if you wanna deadlift eight thousand pounds.

• 3:05:03Speaker 02

  Obviously, yes.

• 3:05:04Jocko Willink?

  The Jaco White Tea.

• 3:05:05Speaker 02

  That's the one. Also.

• 3:05:06Jocko Willink?

  Certified.

• 3:05:08Speaker 02

  Yep. Also, we have a store. Jaco has a store. I say we have a store, we all have a store. If you wanna get your merchandise. I haven't said that word.

• 3:05:17Jocko Willink?

  Merch.

• 3:05:18Speaker 02

  I don't really say that word that much.

• 3:05:20Jocko Willink?

  You just said it. And you said it in a real kind of explicit kind of way.

• 3:05:25Speaker 02

  You know why? Cause my daughter watches YouTube videos, which I had to block her. Not block her, but you know, you know how you gotta put the block on YouTube so only they can only see certain things? Anyway, I had to do that.

• 3:05:36Jocko Willink?

  She's like, you're like, okay. The only thing she's allowed to watch is jujitsu videos, Jaco podcasts, Warrior Kid podcasts.

• 3:05:43Speaker 02

  I don't know, man. She can take it to, anyway, the reason I did that was because she was following some girl on there who was real, she was just real sassy. She wasn't, it wasn't like derogatory. She just had a sassy way of talking. Maybe fifteen, maybe sixteen years old. Man, that's my estimate. And my daughter's six, so this girl's talking about this and that and it, my, my daughter. It's starting to say this stuff, which is cute at first, in my opinion, but after a while, you're like, hey, you can't talk like that.

• 3:06:09Jocko Willink?

  This is not, this is not what we're doing over here.

• 3:06:11Speaker 02

  We're doing exactly right. So she, anyway, so recently, within the last past like two days, we had to block her. Anyway, one of the things she kept saying was like marriage and she'd say it all sassy like, I'm not going to do it again. I'm not going to say it again, but that's how she was saying it. So.

• 3:06:27Jocko Willink?

  And it just slipped into your head and slipped right out of your mouth. So you're talking about the.

• 3:06:33Speaker 02

  So that's why.

• 3:06:34Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So what can you get at?

• 3:06:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, at Jaco store.com. Yeah. So Jaco store.com is where you can get discipline equals freedom shirts, lightweight hoodies, which are really nice, man. I had it on the other day and every once in a while I'll flash into it and be like, hey, this is good.

• 3:06:51Jocko Willink?

  You know what's interesting about Jaco store.com?

• 3:06:54Speaker 02

  What's that?

• 3:06:55Jocko Willink?

  Is we sell T-shirts.

• 3:06:57Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:06:57Jocko Willink?

  For one thing, we sell discipline equals freedom T-shirt. We sell good T-shirt. We sell T-shirts. There's also people that come up to me and say, oh, I just got an awesome T-shirt. I got one of your T-shirts and I'm like, sweet, man. And I just had a guy say to me, hey, I just got one of your T-shirts. I wish I was wearing it right now. And I was like, cool. He goes, it's the, uh, don't talk, just get after it shirt.

• 3:07:24Speaker 02

  Oh, okay.

• 3:07:25Jocko Willink?

  And I go, cool, man.

• 3:07:29Speaker 02

  We don't have that.

• 3:07:29Jocko Willink?

  I don't even have that shirt.

• 3:07:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:07:32Jocko Willink?

  So there are, what do we call them?

• 3:07:34Speaker 02

  Uh, knockoffs.

• 3:07:35Jocko Willink?

  Knockoffs.

• 3:07:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're knockoffs. They're, what do you call like, yeah, there's like a word for it.

• 3:07:41Jocko Willink?

  Disapproved.

• 3:07:41Speaker 02

  Kind of junk. Yeah, they're disapproved, but they're kind of worse than unapproved. They're like worse. This is why, because people will, they don't know the layers. You know how like, remember the layers, right?

• 3:07:53Jocko Willink?

  Bought a shirt and you paid nineteen dollars for it and it has no layers, came with no layers.

• 3:07:58Speaker 02

  No layers, man. And that's bad. So.

• 3:08:01Jocko Willink?

  And it's a piece of crap shirt.

• 3:08:03Speaker 02

  Yes. So it's kind of like when you buy something for the, okay, you have a reason to buy something, right? And this is generally speaking, I know different reasons vary from just person to person, but you have a reason you buy something, right? Let's say there's two reasons to buy a shirt, one of these shirts. No, let's say there's one reason, straight up, one reason. The main reason is the layers. You can't, you know, and literally you can spray paint discipline equals freedom on your shirt. If you want discipline, you can have that on. Yeah, you can do that. Totally can. You can have one printed, you can go to a website and whatever font you want, you can make it look however you want. Literally, so why won't you do that, right? Cause you want more than just that, there's something else, whatever that reason is, you're in the game. Whatever that reason is, we'll call it X, reason X.

• 3:08:48Speaker 02

  If you go buy stop talking, get after it shirt, you literally bought something else. You didn't buy a shirt, an X shirt.

• 3:08:56Jocko Willink?

  Check you out, bro, you've been thinking about this one.

• 3:08:58Speaker 02

  You know, because, uh, I, there's a whole reason I was thinking about it, but, but nonetheless, here's the thing though. No, because I saw something.

• 3:09:07Jocko Willink?

  Shirt kind of creator, you feel like people are kinda.

• 3:09:11Speaker 02

  No, maybe, but.

• 3:09:13Jocko Willink?

  Kind of offending you.

• 3:09:14Speaker 02

  In this way though, because there is a, there's a shirt thing called like, it's tea red spring or I don't know, something where basically you can go online, take a JPG of a picture, I can get any one picture of you online. Submit it to this website, it'll make a mockup of the shirt, like the, you know, the cheap shirts, you know, the buy in bulk, maybe secondhand. Whatever shirts, make a mockup and be like, hey guys, buy my shirt, right? And I saw your face on it and it was like kind of a, literally the wrong design, right? They were trying to copy exactly, but there's.

• 3:09:50Jocko Willink?

  You've already seen this?

• 3:09:51Speaker 02

  Yes, I saw this a while ago, yeah, and I saw it and I was like, man. You know how down in TJ like they'll knock off like Louis Vuitton purses and stuff? At least it looks like the Louis Vuitton logo, you know? And you gotta look close to see, you know, the, the, the quality, the lapsing quality. But this one was like flagrantly wrong design, you know, whoever. Meanwhile, they're like selling it like their thing, yeah, it was offensive for sure. And it's offensive on two levels because offensive kind of to us is like, hey, that's not our stuff, don't misrepresent. That's A, B, the person who doesn't quite, you know, they're just new and fired up, they can be like, hey, there's one, here's the first one that popped up on Google, they're gonna get the junk one. They're gonna go out, try to represent in the wild and that's just not gonna work, man.

• 3:10:32Jocko Willink?

  That's a bummer.

• 3:10:33Speaker 02

  That is.

• 3:10:33Jocko Willink?

  And there's no support.

• 3:10:34Speaker 02

  No support and you know, I get it, support isn't the primary reason when you think about it. Like you gotta go out there, if someone buys a shirt, they, they wanna represent.

• 3:10:43Jocko Willink?

  There, no, but that being said, there are some people that they don't really need another shirt, they're literally just to support.

• 3:10:49Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 3:10:49Jocko Willink?

  Plenty of people that are just, hey, we appreciate. The time, the effort, the whatever, appreciate it. Here's a little thank you, little support.

• 3:10:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:10:58Jocko Willink?

  Nothing wrong with that. That's appreciated. That's, you know, that allows us to, that allows us to have Echo make all these videos.

• 3:11:10Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:11:10Jocko Willink?

  All right, all right.

• 3:11:12Speaker 02

  Nonetheless, the jocko store.

• 3:11:14Jocko Willink?

  By the way, you know who's listening to this right now? No one. We're three hours, three, three plus hours.

• 3:11:19Speaker 02

  They signed off.

• 3:11:20Jocko Willink?

  You and me dogging, yeah.

• 3:11:21Speaker 02

  All right, well.

• 3:11:21Jocko Willink?

  So whatever you're gonna say, you might as well say it. No one cares.

• 3:11:24Speaker 02

  Well, it's all still true. How about that? And yes, the mid, the stuff that you really want to represent the authentic certified, there's no certification process.

• 3:11:34Jocko Willink?

  Approved, approved.

• 3:11:35Speaker 02

  Approved.

• 3:11:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:11:36Speaker 02

  Is all on jocko store.com. IWA active.co.uk. That's if you're in the UK, that's where you get it.

• 3:11:45Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 3:11:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I, and here's the thing, I meant to say this.

• 3:11:48Jocko Willink?

  Someone needs to buy another URL for that.

• 3:11:49Speaker 02

  Well, it's dot co dot U at UK.

• 3:11:52Jocko Willink?

  Still.

• 3:11:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's, you gotta be like that.

• 3:11:55Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:11:55Speaker 02

  Anyway, cause you know, cause shipping in certain parts in like the UK, the shipping is crazy from here is what I'm saying. So boom, you wanna, you wanna sidestep the shipping a little bit? You can do that. Might take a little bit longer, I think, maybe. I'm not sure. I don't live in the UK, but nonetheless, some people were asking me about that. Uh, yeah. Anyway, hoodies and stuff, all the legitimate approved stuff. Check it out. If you like something, get something. Also, uh, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, wherever you listen to pop. iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts, that's what I meant to say.

• 3:12:27Jocko Willink?

  And the Warrior Kid Podcast, which.

• 3:12:29Speaker 02

  Is not dead.

• 3:12:30Jocko Willink?

  Is not dead.

• 3:12:31Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 3:12:32Jocko Willink?

  Which is more episodes are brewing. They're brewing in my mind. Should I, you know, I make for the Warrior Kid Podcast, I do the last, I don't know, six episodes, perhaps I've done the story from Uncle Jake.

• 3:12:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:12:46Jocko Willink?

  That takes not just time, cause it takes a little bit of time to prep, but it also takes the spark of inspiration, right? Okay, here's the deal, right? And you can't manufacture inspirado, as we know.

• 3:12:58Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:12:58Jocko Willink?

  So sometimes I'm like, well, I could just do a Q and A for the kids, which is what it started out as, which is fine, which I, I get it. So, but sometimes I feel like I'm letting everyone down if I don't do the story from Uncle Jake's childhood.

• 3:13:12Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:13:12Jocko Willink?

  Cause I really like doing the stories from Uncle Jake's childhood.

• 3:13:15Speaker 02

  So do I.

• 3:13:16Jocko Willink?

  Now.

• 3:13:18Jocko Willink?

  I will, like I said, we're back on it. Maybe I'll release some with no story from Uncle Jake's childhood, just to, because I get so many good questions from young Warrior kids around the world, and I mean that. Think about that, the world. Little Warrior kids all over the place. Getting ready to get up and get after it. Do some pull-ups. So yeah, check out the Warrior Kid Podcast, and also, if you want to support a actual Warrior Kid, go to IrishOaksRanch.com, where young Aiden is making soap that allows you to stay clean. Check.

• 3:13:50Speaker 02

  Also, we have a YouTube channel, Jocko Podcast YouTube channel, if you're interested in the video version. You'll see what John Stryker Meyer looks like, Tilt, AKA Tilt. Or if you want to see what Jaco looks like if you don't already know, or if you don't have a shirt with his face Ari on it, and you want to see what he looks like on, you know, YouTube. And also, there's some excerpts on there. You know, if you want to listen to, or revisit, specific ideas, or, or concepts, lessons, you know, individually, and share them with your friends, you know, higher likelihood of them watching it. That's where you get them on our YouTube channel. So yeah.

• 3:14:30Jocko Willink?

  Echo thinks his videos are good. You can leave a comment on his videos. He does read them. I read them. Allegedly. Everyone likes to say that Echo is jacked. So, check that out. Psychological Warfare, that's an album with tracks where if you got a little moment of weakness, you might be approaching, and you want to get out of bed, or you want to get your workout done, or you want to say no to a donut. Press play. Psychological Warfare, iTunes, Google Play, MP3. Don't forget about the visual version of Psychological Warfare from Dakota Meyer, Flipside Canvas. Dakota Meyer is making art.

• 3:15:11Jocko Willink?

  That you can hang on the wall that says all your excuses are lies makes all kinds of cool stuff. He's stepping up his game with that. It's really cool stuff. And if you haven't listened to podcast 115 with Dakota Myers, check it out and then go get some of his gear from good old flip side canvas.com.

• 3:15:31Speaker 02

  Yes, that's a very good one. There's I was talking with Bo John Bozak. AKA illustrator of Warrior Kid book series.

• 3:15:40Jocko Willink?

  And Mikey and the Dragons.

• 3:15:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, Mikey.

• 3:15:42Jocko Willink?

  What was he saying?

• 3:15:43Speaker 02

  No, we're we're he was talking about, yeah, I got some good stuff that, you know, I'm going back and forth with Dakota Meyer. So he's gonna be designing some of those.

• 3:15:49Jocko Willink?

  Yes, we have some Warrior Kid posters canvases, wall hanging stuff from Mikey and the Dragons. Which Mikey and the Dragons artwork, let's face it, this stuff is legit. You you consider yourself kind of an artist, right?

• 3:16:03Speaker 02

  Yes, I do.

• 3:16:04Jocko Willink?

  Yes, you do. You and Pete Roberts are just over there creating color palettes. Right? Yes, you are. I see you over there with your color palettes.

• 3:16:12Speaker 02

  Anyway, your point, sir.

• 3:16:13Jocko Willink?

  Your my point is that we have to admit that Mikey and the Dragons artwork is awesome.

• 3:16:18Speaker 02

  I will.

• 3:16:19Jocko Willink?

  We're taking it. We're putting it on to some legit sized canvases. And you can hang it up in your kid's room. So your kid learns to overcome his or her fear. Check.

• 3:16:32Speaker 02

  Agree. Also on it. So on it.com slash Jaco. So this is where you can get any kind of fit like additional fitness gear. Awesome fitness gear, including kettlebells, which I recommend. Battle ropes, maces, clubs. So I've been talking to some of the guys there. He was telling me about the he was just a mace or a club. You have both, right? Which one is the one with the?

• 3:16:58Jocko Willink?

  Longer is mace.

• 3:16:59Speaker 02

  Okay, yes.

• 3:17:00Jocko Willink?

  Club is short.

• 3:17:01Speaker 02

  Yes, the mace. So I was like, yeah, no, I don't. I don't really do that workout, but I looked into it. And that one might be beneficial.

• 3:17:09Jocko Willink?

  The mace is definitely beneficial.

• 3:17:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:17:12Jocko Willink?

  The, well, the mace and they're both beneficial. The thing that's beneficial about them, they're awkward.

• 3:17:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:17:19Jocko Willink?

  They're hard to handle.

• 3:17:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:17:20Jocko Willink?

  You know?

• 3:17:21Speaker 02

  Bro, I've been doing like a lot of kettlebells, like heavier for as many reps. You know, it's like that. You know how there's different, you know, you can do a light kettlebell for a long ass. Anyway, the more awkward kind of the thing, and you've been doing those sandbags too, huh?

• 3:17:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:17:35Speaker 02

  You were sandbagging.

• 3:17:36Jocko Willink?

  I was sandbagging.

• 3:17:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. So man, those awkward thing.

• 3:17:39Jocko Willink?

  Here's a good exercise with a sandbag. You just take your sandbag, just heave it over your head, turn around, heave it over your head, turn around, heave it over your head. That's actually tiring.

• 3:17:46Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:17:46Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna find that to be more tiring than you expect, especially because the first one, you're like, oh, Jaco said this was gonna be tiring. It's not.

• 3:17:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:17:53Jocko Willink?

  Then you do the number three and you're like, Jaco's not right. You do number five and you're like, why am I breathing hard?

• 3:18:00Speaker 02

  And then you do it like seven times. You're like, why am I even doing this?

• 3:18:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:18:02Speaker 02

  Cause it's too painful.

• 3:18:03Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 3:18:04Speaker 02

  That's my experience. Nonetheless, I can't, I've been doing it and consistently, kind of for the first time in life for, I'll be like, oh yeah, I tried the workout. It's cool for a week or two. And so it's a cool workout. It's a good workout. I get it. But I've been doing them for like a long time now. Kettlebells, like these awkward things. And in jujitsu, I feel this, it's not weird. It's weird because it's new. So it's this new like lack of tiredness. You know how there's like different tirednesses in jujitsu where you're like, okay, I'm winged. Well, you know, various people, you know? Yeah, not you. Your knees out. I get it. And you know, when you come back, we can roll or whatever. And maybe I can really put my non-tiredness to the test. But like I'm saying, you get a few different types of tirednesses. You have the kind where you're breathing real hard.

• 3:18:44Jocko Willink?

  Eskimo that has nine, like a hundred and fifty different names for snow. You have different, different styles of tired.

• 3:18:51Speaker 02

  Negative. No, because there's, uh, think about it. There's the kind tiredness where you're breathing real hard, but you know, you can still generate kind of force with your muscles. You know, your muscles aren't like noodley and, and weak, but you're like.

• 3:19:02Jocko Willink?

  You're not talking muscle failure.

• 3:19:04Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:19:04Jocko Willink?

  Which is different.

• 3:19:05Speaker 02

  It's different. And then.

• 3:19:06Jocko Willink?

  What do you call that type of tired? Muscle failure.

• 3:19:09Speaker 02

  Muscle fatigue.

• 3:19:10Jocko Willink?

  You need to make up Eskimo words for all these different things. All your different forms of fatigue.

• 3:19:14Speaker 02

  Anyway, or you can be like, dang, I'm not breathing hard, but I just, I'm just so weak. My body, I can't lift my arms.

• 3:19:20Jocko Willink?

  You've trained with me. How much have you trained with me?

• 3:19:22Speaker 02

  I don't know. Uh, infinity times.

• 3:19:24Jocko Willink?

  What, what, how do you describe my tired?

• 3:19:31Speaker 02

  Alright, here's the

• 3:19:32Jocko Willink?

  I'm trying to think, have you ever seen me get tired?

• 3:19:34Speaker 02

  I have, with me, no.

• 3:19:36Jocko Willink?

  I've been tired. I'll tell you, there's a couple of times I totally remember getting tired. I was, we did gi, no gi, holiday training here one time. We started with no gi, we went to gi. We had six, I think it was six 10-minute rounds. No. It was six, six-minute rounds, no gi, six, six-minute rounds, gi. And I was tired at the end of that. Everyone's, you know, everyone does the like, I'll take a rest round and then I'm gonna go get Jaco.

• 3:20:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:20:05Jocko Willink?

  I was tired then.

• 3:20:07Speaker 02

  Fully. But nonetheless, I didn't, after doing all these workouts, I don't feel the like, body tired. You know, like I don't feel it, like not even nearly as, like I really gotta get pushed to feel a bit, so. Anyway, anyway, the point is, yeah, go to onnit.com slash Jaco, look at all the cool stuff on there. Grab something from there, that'll really help you, I'll keep you in the game big time. Books, Jaco, what do we got?

• 3:20:32Jocko Willink?

  Got a bunch of books. Will, Where There's a Will. That's the latest Way the Warrior Kid book, Where There's a Will. Getting some really good reviews from people.

• 3:20:44Speaker 02

  From one of them.

• 3:20:44Jocko Willink?

  Have you finished it yet?

• 3:20:45Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:20:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you're still working through it, huh? Anyways, if you wanna help your kids, or any kids that you know, get on the path, these are, these are books that everyone tells me, and I will tell you, I wish I had these books when I was seven years old, eight years old, nine years old, 10 years old, 100%. Way the Warrior Kid, Mark's Mission, and Where There's a Will, check them out. They're in multiple different languages too, check that out. If you speak a different language, or your children speak a different language, you can get that. Also got Mikey and the Dragons. Mikey and the Dragons is the book that should be read to every kid at least once a day, from the ages of one until six.

• 3:21:24Speaker 02

  I agree.

• 3:21:25Jocko Willink?

  I just read it in a first grade class.

• 3:21:29Speaker 02

  You went in the first grade?

• 3:21:31Jocko Willink?

  I went into a first grade class.

• 3:21:31Speaker 02

  Dang, alright.

• 3:21:32Jocko Willink?

  And read it.

• 3:21:33Speaker 02

  How'd that, uh, that happen?

• 3:21:34Jocko Willink?

  I went in there, I got nuts. I told all the kids, cause you know, it's like, they're trying to, their, their goal of a teacher is to keep the kids calm, right? I come in there, no, it's not happening. So I'm like, good morning, children. And like, they're like, good morning. And I'm like, what? Good morning, what? I can't hear you. What? I'm not sure what you're saying. Can you please be louder? And they're like, ah! So they're amped. And as I was getting them all amped up, I started getting nervous. Cause I said, wait a second. I'm getting these kids completely just jacked up and getting crazy and hyper.

• 3:22:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:22:05Jocko Willink?

  And then I'm gonna expect them to sit and listen to me read this book, which is a fifteen, maybe an eighteen minute read. It's not, it's not short.

• 3:22:12Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:22:12Jocko Willink?

  It's not short. And so I was, I was like, ooh, I might've overstepped my bounds. I might've, I might've made a wrong tactical call.

• 3:22:21Jocko Willink?

  So then I crack open the book, and this is after, you know, I'm answering a couple of questions. I crack open the book, I read it, boom, silence and total attention. For eighteen minutes while I read the book. So that book. And I was explaining to the kids, and I put, I put words in there, I said, listen, there's words in this book that you, when you read them. People were saying, that, that word's too big of a word for a little kid. I said, these people wanna make you stupid. I wanna make you smart. When you see this word, and I opened up poise, there's a thing where I, we use the word poise.

• 3:22:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:22:54Jocko Willink?

  I rhyme it with noise. And I said, these people don't want you to know what the word poise is.

• 3:23:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:23:00Jocko Willink?

  And I read it to them again, that little section. I said, what do you think that means? And, you know, some little kid, little, little Billy up front. Does it mean like, he said something really smart. He says, does it mean you keep your feelings inside? And I said, yes, Billy. That's what it means. Don't let the man keep you down. They wanna, they wanna give you the dumbest book you can read. This book's got a couple of words you're gonna, you're gonna have to, you have to try and figure out what they mean, but you will. Poise, you just figured it out, Billy. You set an example for everyone in this room. Salute. Salute, William.

• 3:23:35Speaker 02

  I know, dang, yeah, that's advanced, man.

• 3:23:38Jocko Willink?

  So that's Mikey and the Dragons. Get that for the library.

• 3:23:42Speaker 02

  This is what you did there. What, well, this is my theory, hypothesis, you know, okay, so you're, you're.

• 3:23:48Jocko Willink?

  I made you train to the next belt level up.

• 3:23:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:23:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay, what were you gonna say?

• 3:23:53Speaker 02

  No, with, with, with the kids, when you're getting them all fired up. Here's what you did. You didn't necessarily get them. You, there's a difference between being loud and fired up and being at attention. So you got, like, the, the trouble, from what I understand, that teachers and babysitters or what, if you're looking after a big group, and coaches and stuff like this, looking after a big group of kids, is they don't, they're, they don't, you don't have their attention. Yeah, they're fired up, and a lot of the time with kids, they're so fired up that they can't give you their attention.

• 3:24:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, their attention's going somewhere, but yeah.

• 3:24:26Speaker 02

  Everywhere, yes, exactly right. So what you did is you just basically wrangled, like a big horse wrangler, wrangled all of that fired up in this that these kids naturally have anyway, but you got their attention. So they, you didn't have to, like, go against the grain with them at all. All you did was sort of funnel it, funnel it towards you. So all that fire that was towards you, so when it was time, they'll do anything you say now.

• 3:24:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, you've actually, you've actually seen we do this before.

• 3:24:50Speaker 02

  Firsthand, and the effects lasted like weeks afterwards, which is weird. I'm gonna show you both videos, side to side.

• 3:24:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's right.

• 3:24:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, so I'm gonna tell the people, if I haven't already. I don't know, I might have said it before. Okay, so, we're at, uh, Dave Burke's house.

• 3:25:05Jocko Willink?

  Good deal, Dave.

• 3:25:06Speaker 02

  Good deal, Dave Burke's house, exactly right, and we're leaving. It's time to leave. So it's like, my kids, my two kids, um, your kids were not there.

• 3:25:14Jocko Willink?

  One of my kids, my youngest kid.

• 3:25:16Speaker 02

  Yes, your youngest was there. Um, Dave Burke's kids.

• 3:25:21Speaker 02

  Jamie and Flynn Cochran's kids and who else was there anymore? It was a lot. This is a lot of kids.

• 3:25:28Jocko Willink?

  Lot of kids.

• 3:25:28Speaker 02

  Yes. And Jaco's there. You did the exact same thing. You did the exact same thing with them as you did with the kids in the class. See, I see what you're doing right now, which is good, by the way.

• 3:25:37Jocko Willink?

  So you're going. You're detached. I like it. You're detached. You're giving your assessment.

• 3:25:41Speaker 02

  And I have the video to revisit too. I have one and my wife has one. So my wife's one. She's videoing you and you're, it cuts in where you're going like this. You're going hookah, hookah, hookah with your hands side to side. And you're going hookah, hookah, hookah, ha. And the kids are trying to keep up. They're like, oh, what are we doing? Okay. And slowly they start doing, and you're like, and then you start yelling at them. You say, you're not doing it loud enough. And then same thing, hookah, hookah. And they all start doing it. They fall in line. They're doing it louder or whatever. And you're like louder. And of course they want to be louder. So they get, so they can, and they fall in line and they do it. You're like, good. And then you give them high fives, right? Good job. Give one high five and you're like harder. Give one high five, just whichever random kid. So you say harder, then they hit you with a harder high five, then you go, ah, real loud.

• 3:26:26Speaker 02

  And you go, mean. Of course, that gets everyone else fired up like they want to do the same thing. So you're like going from kid to kid, high five, saying, ah, mean. And everyone's trying to do it harder than the last kid or whatever. Meanwhile, when other kids, if you notice, when other kids are giving you high five, the ones that are not giving you high fives are just watching. Full attention, just waiting, waiting for the next thing. Now, the point of this story that made it significant to me was because two, not even two weeks later, maybe like a week later, right? My son, who's two, my daughter, who's six. My daughter accidentally, and my wife has this on video too, because they're playing and doing little dances, whatever. On accident, my daughter steps on my son's wrist. Just on accident, when they're kind of, you know, in the, in the scramble.

• 3:27:10Speaker 02

  So my son gets up, he's like, he goes, ah, and hits my daughter, right? And goes, mean. And we were like, what the heck? That was kind of weird. You know, that was a weird outburst right there. So I'm like, cool. And then, but my wife, clever, she kind of remembered something about it, right? So she revisits the video that she took of you going, ah, mean. So it was like a hit and then a point, ah, mean, right? That's what you did. They hit in your version with a high five. Sure enough, I see my son's little head watching the whole time, just in the corner. He didn't do any high fives. He was watching the whole thing. Go revisit my son and daughter's version, same exact thing. Boom. Incident, right? Steps on the wrist.

• 3:27:51Speaker 02

  Instead of high five, he does a hit to her shoulder or whatever in a high five fashion and goes mean, the exact same tone as you.

• 3:27:59Jocko Willink?

  Your children are always learning.

• 3:28:00Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:28:01Jocko Willink?

  So if you want your children to learn properly,

• 3:28:05Jocko Willink?

  the right stuff, read them Mikey and the Dragons.

• 3:28:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, but see what you did there with the attention wrangling. It's totally effective. That's a good note, man. That's a good little anecdote.

• 3:28:17Jocko Willink?

  Technique.

• 3:28:17Speaker 02

  I'm gonna use it. I'm gonna use it.

• 3:28:19Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 3:28:20Speaker 02

  Don't do it before bedtime, by the way.

• 3:28:22Jocko Willink?

  Don't forget about the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. This is the graduation gift, right? Get it for your kids. What are they? Fifteen, seventeen, nineteen, twenty-two, twenty-four, getting done with their masters? Get them the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. They got work to do. We all do. If you want it on audio, it's on iTunes, it's on Amazon Music, Google Play and all that. Then you got Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership, written both by me and my brother Leif Babbin. They are books about leadership and they will give you some principles that you can apply to every single situation you are in, in business and life. Dichotomy of Leadership and Extreme Ownership.

• 3:29:07Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of Leif, we have a leadership consultancy. And what we do is solve problems inside organizations and we solve them through leadership because that's where the problem is. So it's me, it's Leif Babbin, JP Danelle, Dave Burke, Flynn Cochrane, Mike Sorelli, Mike Byma, and Jason Gardner. If you need help in your organization with leadership, go to EchelonFront.com.

• 3:29:32Jocko Willink?

  And also we have EF Online. Because leadership training is not an inoculation. It's just like jujitsu. You can't just show up one day, now you know jujitsu. You can't just show up, read one book and/or go to one seminar and now you're a good leader. No. You have to continually train and that's what EF Online is. Interactive leadership training, new modules coming out monthly. It's got me and the rest of the Echelon Front team working with you to give you pragmatic skills. Go to EF Online for that.

• 3:30:09Jocko Willink?

  Also the muster, Chicago, done. It was sold out. Next up, Denver, it's gonna sell out. Sydney, Australia, December 4th and 5th. The Denver one is September 19th and 20th. Go to extremeownership.com if you want to come to these events. Cause they are going to sell out. So go there early. And EF Overwatch, where, when you're looking to hire someone, don't think, oh, I gotta find the person that has the specific skills that I want. No, what you want is to hire the right person with the right kind of character. And the most important skill that they can have is leadership skills. And then you can teach them the technical skills that they need to know for the job.

• 3:30:51Jocko Willink?

  We have people with character and with leadership capability from special operations and combat aviation. And we can put them into your organization. It's our company EF Overwatch, it's EFOverwatch.com. If you need leadership in your business or team. And if you want to hear more from myself and Echo Charles, we're on the interwebs. We're on Twitter, we're on Instagram, and we are on that.

• 3:31:26Jocko Willink?

  Facebook. Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. And once again, thanks to all the veterans out there.

• 3:31:37Jocko Willink?

  Men like John Stryker Meyer, who fought for the American ideal and who himself represents that ideal.

• 3:31:47Jocko Willink?

  True American hero, humbled to sit here and talk to him. And to those of you that are out there on the front lines right now, thank you for fighting for our ideals as well. And also thanks to police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, first responders. Thanks to you for living a life of service and sacrifice so that we can live our lives in safety and security.

• 3:32:23Jocko Willink?

  And to everyone else out there, remember.

• 3:32:30Jocko Willink?

  John Stryker Meyer has written about and told us stories that he lived through and some of them are just hard to believe. But also, remember that for every story of bravery and heroism that he tells, there are an infinite number of stories that never got told. Stories from the men who did not come home. Soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines who gave away all their stories.

• 3:33:12Jocko Willink?

  Past, present and future. They sacrificed all those stories, the stories of their lives, for us. Never forget them. And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.