162: Seconds Count: Urban Combat Lessons Learned From Hue City to Ramadi.

0:00:00 - Opening: A Letter from General Kelly to Gold Star families. 0:24:44 - Interview with John Olson, Combat Photographer. 0:27:33 - Lessons Learned, Charlie 1/5, Operation Hue City, 31 January, 1968 to 5 March 1968 1:50:00 - Support: How to Stay on THE PATH. 2:21:48 - 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 162 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  On the 22nd of April 2008, two Marine battalions, the 1st Battalion 9th Marines, the Walking Dead from Vietnam fame, and the 2nd Battalion 8th Marines were switching out in Ramadi, Iraq. One battalion going home in a few days and the other just starting its seven-month tour. Two Marines, Corporal Jonathan Yale and Lance Corporal Jordan Herder, 22 and 20 years old respectively, one from each battalion, they were assuming the watch together at

• 0:55Jocko Willink?

  the entrance gate to an outpost that contained a makeshift barracks housing 50 Marines. The same broken-down, ramshackled building was also home to 100 Iraqi police. They were my men in this fight against the terrorists in Ramadi. Yale was a dirt-poor, mixed-race kid from Virginia with a wife and a daughter and a mother and a sister who lived with them and he supported them as well on $13,000 a year.

• 1:37Jocko Willink?

  Herder was a middle-class, white kid from Long Island. The two of them were from two completely different worlds in our country. Not good, not bad, just different. Had they not joined the Marine Corps, they would never have known each other. They would never have even understood that multiple Americas exist simultaneously, depending on your education level, your family's income status maybe, but they were Marines. They were combat Marines.

• 2:18Jocko Willink?

  And because of this bond, they were brothers, as close as if they were born to the same woman.

• 2:28Jocko Willink?

  The mission orders they received from the sergeant, their squad leader, I am sure went something like this.

• 2:38Jocko Willink?

  "Okay, you two clowns, stand this post and let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass. You clear on that?"

• 2:48Jocko Willink?

  I'm also sure that Yale and Herter then rolled their eyes and said in unison something like, "Yeah Sergeant, we got it." "We know what we're doing." With just enough attitude that made the point without saying the words, "No kidding sweetheart." "We know what we're doing."

• 3:10Jocko Willink?

  They then relieved the two other Marines on watch, who it turns out were probably the two luckiest Marines on earth that day.

• 3:21Jocko Willink?

  And they assumed their post at the entry control point at Joint Security Station Nassar in the Sofia District of Ramadi, Iraq.

• 3:34Jocko Willink?

  A few minutes later, a large blue truck turned down the alleyway.

• 3:41Jocko Willink?

  The alleyway was no more than 100 yards in length and sped its way through the serpentine of concrete Jersey walls.

• 3:52Jocko Willink?

  The truck stopped just short of where the two were posted and detonated,

• 3:59Jocko Willink?

  killing them both catastrophically.

• 4:03Jocko Willink?

  If you know what combat is like, you know what I'm talking about when I say catastrophically.

• 4:10Jocko Willink?

  24 brick masonry houses were damaged or destroyed by the blast.

• 4:18Jocko Willink?

  A mosque 100 yards away collapsed.

• 4:23Jocko Willink?

  The truck's engine came to rest 200 meters away, knocking most of a building down before it stopped.

• 4:33Jocko Willink?

  Our EOD guys, our explosive guys reckoned the blast was made of at least 2,000 pounds of explosives.

• 4:43Jocko Willink?

  Two died.

• 4:45Jocko Willink?

  And because these two young infantrymen didn't have it in their DNA to run from danger, 150 men, 50 US Marines, and 100 Iraqis were saved.

• 5:02Jocko Willink?

  When I read the situation report about the incident a few hours after it happened, I called the regimental commander and I asked him for details of what had happened.

• 5:12Jocko Willink?

  It seemed different to me.

• 5:16Jocko Willink?

  Unfortunately, Marines dying or being seriously wounded is common in combat.

• 5:23Jocko Willink?

  We expect Marines, and for that matter, soldiers, sailors, airmen, and coast guardsmen, regardless of rank or MOS, to do their duty. To stand their ground and do their duty.

• 5:39Jocko Willink?

  And to die. If that's what the mission requires.

• 5:47Jocko Willink?

  The regimental commander had just returned from the site and he agreed with me, but reported that there were no American witnesses to the event, just Iraqi police.

• 5:59Jocko Willink?

  I figured if there was any chance of finding out what actually happened, and then to recognize and decorate these two young Marines and acknowledge their bravery, I'd have to do it myself. Because I understood that the bureaucrats back in Washington would never accept Iraqi statements for what had taken place.

• 6:21Jocko Willink?

  If getting these Marines properly awarded had any chance at all, it had to come under my signature. As a general officer.

• 6:34Jocko Willink?

  So I traveled to Ramadi the next day and spoke individually to a half dozen Iraqi police, all of whom told the same story.

• 6:46Jocko Willink?

  They said the blue truck turned down into the alley and immediately sped up as it made its way through the serpentine jersey walls.

• 6:56Jocko Willink?

  They all said they knew immediately what was going on, particularly as the Marines began to fire.

• 7:06Jocko Willink?

  The Iraqi police all began firing as well.

• 7:11Jocko Willink?

  Then, to a man, they ran for safety just prior to the explosion.

• 7:20Jocko Willink?

  They all survived.

• 7:23Jocko Willink?

  Many were injured, some seriously injured.

• 7:30Jocko Willink?

  One of the Iraqis said to me that they had all run from the danger like any normal man would to save his own life.

• 7:42Jocko Willink?

  What he didn't know until then, what he learned that very day, was that Americans are not normal.

• 7:52Jocko Willink?

  With tears welling up, he said, "Sir, in the name of God, no sane man would have stood there and done what they'd done."

• 8:01Jocko Willink?

  No sane man.

• 8:05Jocko Willink?

  They saved all of us.

• 8:11Jocko Willink?

  What we didn't know at the time, and what I didn't know at the time, and only learned a couple of days later, after I wrote a summary of this bravery and submitted it, and submitted them both, Yale and Herder, for the Navy Crosses, which is the number two award for Marines and sailors in combat.

• 8:33Jocko Willink?

  What I didn't know was that one of our security cameras that we had at the location that was damaged initially in the blast had caught everything.

• 8:47Jocko Willink?

  It had happened exactly as the Iraqis had described it to me.

• 8:54Jocko Willink?

  It took exactly 6 seconds by that recording from when the truck entered the alley until it exploded.

• 9:03Jocko Willink?

  6 seconds.

• 9:08Jocko Willink?

  And you can watch.

• 9:11Jocko Willink?

  And I did watch many, many times on this recording the last 6 seconds of their young lives.

• 9:22Jocko Willink?

  When it first started, I suppose it took a second or so for the Marines to separately come to the same conclusion about what was going on.

• 9:33Jocko Willink?

  They had no time to talk it over.

• 9:37Jocko Willink?

  Only enough time to take half an instant and think about what the sergeant had told them to do only a few minutes before. Let no unauthorized personnel or vehicles pass.

• 9:50Jocko Willink?

  At that point in the recording, the two Marines had about 5 seconds left to live.

• 9:58Jocko Willink?

  It took maybe another 2 seconds for the two jarheads to raise their weapons, take aim, and open fire on the truck.

• 10:07Jocko Willink?

  By this time, the truck was halfway through the barriers and gaining speed the whole time.

• 10:14Jocko Willink?

  Here, the recording shows a number of Iraqi policemen, some of whom had fired their AKs now scattering like the normal and rational men they were. Some running right past the Marines.

• 10:31Jocko Willink?

  The two Marines had about 3 seconds left to live.

• 10:38Jocko Willink?

  For about 2 seconds more, the recording shows the Marines weapons firing non-stop.

• 10:47Jocko Willink?

  The truck's windshield exploded into shards of glass as their rounds took it apart and undoubtedly tore into the body of this terrorist that was trying to kill their brothers.

• 11:01Jocko Willink?

  Unaware of the danger at the time, the other Marines and Iraqi soldiers in the barracks could take comfort in the fact that 2 Marines were on watch and would die before they ran.

• 11:17Jocko Willink?

  The recording shows the truck careening to a stop immediately in front of the two Marines.

• 11:25Jocko Willink?

  In all of this instantaneous violence, Yale and Herder never hesitated.

• 11:34Jocko Willink?

  They never stepped back.

• 11:37Jocko Willink?

  They never even started to step back. They never even shifted their weight.

• 11:44Jocko Willink?

  With their feet spread shoulder width apart, they leaned into the danger, firing as fast as they could.

• 11:55Jocko Willink?

  They only had one second left to live.

• 12:02Jocko Willink?

  Then the truck explodes.

• 12:06Jocko Willink?

  The camera goes blank.

• 12:10Jocko Willink?

  And the two young men go to their god.

• 12:22Jocko Willink?

  Six seconds.

• 12:27Jocko Willink?

  Not enough time to think about their families, their country, their flag, or about their lives, or their deaths.

• 12:39Jocko Willink?

  But more than enough time for two very brave young men to do their duty

• 12:50Jocko Willink?

  into eternity.

• 12:59Jocko Willink?

  That is the kind of people who are on watch all over the world tonight

• 13:08Jocko Willink?

  for you.

• 13:19Jocko Willink?

  And

• 13:22Jocko Willink?

  that was a speech

• 13:26Jocko Willink?

  that was given by Marine Corps

• 13:30Jocko Willink?

  General, General Kelly. And he gave the speech to

• 13:36Jocko Willink?

  Gold Star families. These are families who have lost a service member, killed in action.

• 13:45Jocko Willink?

  And he gave that speech on February 21st, 2014.

• 13:53Jocko Willink?

  And General Kelly was obviously speaking from the heart.

• 14:02Jocko Willink?

  Not only was he the commanding general in charge of those Marines,

• 14:13Jocko Willink?

  but he also understands loss on a very personal level.

• 14:20Jocko Willink?

  Because on November 9th, 2010, General Kelly's oldest son,

• 14:27Jocko Willink?

  First Lieutenant Robert Michael Kelly,

• 14:32Jocko Willink?

  was killed in action by a landmine while he was on patrol leading a platoon of Marines in Afghanistan.

• 14:50Jocko Willink?

  And that story of those two Marines is

• 14:57Jocko Willink?

  yet another example

• 15:02Jocko Willink?

  of the dedication and the devotion of the Marines.

• 15:10Jocko Willink?

  And we know full well that there is example after example after example from all our branches of service.

• 15:23Jocko Willink?

  Examples

• 15:26Jocko Willink?

  of sacrifice.

• 15:34Jocko Willink?

  And you can think about those six seconds.

• 15:46Jocko Willink?

  Six seconds. We throw those away all the time.

• 15:55Jocko Willink?

  We can waste hours and days. We can even waste weeks.

• 16:02Jocko Willink?

  As if we have an endless supply.

• 16:10Jocko Willink?

  But we don't.

• 16:17Jocko Willink?

  If you were given six seconds to live,

• 16:23Jocko Willink?

  what would fill your mind?

• 16:29Jocko Willink?

  Would you be okay with that?

• 16:33Jocko Willink?

  Would you nod your head and think, "Okay,

• 16:39Jocko Willink?

  it's time"?

• 16:46Jocko Willink?

  Or would you be filled with regret?

• 16:51Jocko Willink?

  In those last moments, would you think about what you should have done?

• 16:57Jocko Willink?

  What you should have said? Who you should have been?

• 17:11Jocko Willink?

  And in

• 17:14Jocko Willink?

  the end,

• 17:18Jocko Willink?

  would you realize that there's no reason ever to waste six seconds of your life?

• 17:35Jocko Willink?

  That is one lesson.

• 17:39Jocko Willink?

  We can take away from General Kelly's speech.

• 17:47Jocko Willink?

  Six seconds can be an eternity.

• 17:55Jocko Willink?

  Another lesson we can take away from this speech. And from its author. Knowing that General Kelly had lost his son is that we have to move forward.

• 18:10Jocko Willink?

  We have to move on, and this isn't to say, don't feel anything. Because that's wrong, and that is not what we are doing.

• 18:24Jocko Willink?

  I mean, who can fathom the pain that General Kelly felt at the loss of his eldest son?

• 18:33Jocko Willink?

  As his eldest son pursued a career that was no doubt inspired by the general himself.

• 18:45Jocko Willink?

  But he moved on. He drove on.

• 18:55Jocko Willink?

  I was talking to a friend of mine.

• 19:00Jocko Willink?

  And we were talking about survivor's guilt.

• 19:06Jocko Willink?

  Which is something that we all feel on some level.

• 19:13Jocko Willink?

  When we're in the military.

• 19:17Jocko Willink?

  And sometimes I think people feel as if there's something wrong with them.

• 19:23Jocko Willink?

  Or they feel like they're weak because they let their emotions get a hold of them sometimes.

• 19:31Jocko Willink?

  And I could see my friend feeling that. And I told him about an interview that I did

• 19:39Jocko Willink?

  with Colonel Tom Fife on this podcast. He was an army officer that had served in World War II, Korea, and Vietnam. He'd gotten a Purple Heart in all three wars.

• 19:53Jocko Willink?

  And I explained to my friend that as Colonel Fife and I were discussing the men that he lost in Vietnam,

• 20:05Jocko Willink?

  Colonel Fife got choked up.

• 20:09Jocko Willink?

  Colonel Fife got choked up despite the fact that 51 years had passed since he lost those men.

• 20:23Jocko Willink?

  51 years,

• 20:26Jocko Willink?

  but he still got emotional.

• 20:33Jocko Willink?

  Why is that? It's because we care about our men, because we care about each other.

• 20:40Jocko Willink?

  And it's because while we hear that time heals all wounds, time does not remove the scars. They are going to be there and they are going to hurt.

• 20:53Jocko Willink?

  And that's okay.

• 20:58Jocko Willink?

  And that's normal. It's normal to feel the pain and it's normal to feel the guilt. And I think that's one of the hardest things for vets that I talk to is that they don't think that this is normal.

• 21:15Jocko Willink?

  But I am telling you, it is normal.

• 21:20Jocko Willink?

  Every vet that I've talked to from World War II, Vietnam,

• 21:29Jocko Willink?

  the guys that have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, everyone feels it.

• 21:36Jocko Willink?

  It's part of the deal. It's part of the job.

• 21:40Jocko Willink?

  It's part of the aftermath of war. It's always existed.

• 21:49Jocko Willink?

  And if you're feeling that,

• 21:55Jocko Willink?

  then you should know that you are not alone.

• 22:07Jocko Willink?

  What else do we learn from this speech?

• 22:14Jocko Willink?

  Well, another thing opens up a whole,

• 22:21Jocko Willink?

  a whole box, a whole Pandora's box of lessons learned. We're talking about urban combat and how

• 22:30Jocko Willink?

  fast things can unfold there. Urban combat is exceptionally stressful. The, the space-time continuum in urban combat is very compressed. The threats are 360 degrees. The enemy can be, they can be 500 meters away, but they can also be five meters away.

• 22:50Jocko Willink?

  And one of the ways that we can mitigate that stress and thereby mitigate casualties and thereby mitigate the guilt that we all carry is by knowing and understanding that form of combat to the best of our ability.

• 23:11Jocko Willink?

  And as always, history has much to teach us.

• 23:19Jocko Willink?

  And I want to go now to a direct source.

• 23:25Jocko Willink?

  The leadership from Charlie 15.

• 23:31Jocko Willink?

  Charlie Company, First Battalion, Fifth Marines. Charlie 15 fought in the Battle of Way City.

• 23:38Jocko Willink?

  A brutal battle that took place during the Tet Offensive, Vietnam, 1968. The battle lasted from January 30th to March 4th. It included 11 Arvin battalions, four US Army battalions, three US Marine Corps battalions, support from the Air Force. And they were fighting against a strength of about 10 enemy battalions. It was a massive battle in Way.

• 24:07Jocko Willink?

  Was a built up city.

• 24:10Jocko Willink?

  It had a population of almost 150,000 people. It had typical urban terrain and also some unique terrain like the Citadel, which was a massive walled portion of the city.

• 24:25Jocko Willink?

  By the time it was over, the enemy had lost thousands of men killed, the South Vietnamese

• 24:33Jocko Willink?

  had lost 452 men and America suffered 216 men killed in action and 1,584 wounded in action.

• 24:46Jocko Willink?

  And here are some quotes from an interview

• 24:51Jocko Willink?

  from The Digital Journalist with a guy by the name of John Olson, an Army Combat Photographer, who was in Way during this battle. He said, "I was in Way for five days. I'd been in Vietnam for one year at this time. I'd seen a lot of battles and I thought I was pretty experienced, but I'd never seen anything like Way.

• 25:17Jocko Willink?

  There was tremendous bravery.

• 25:20Jocko Willink?

  A lot of dead.

• 25:22Jocko Willink?

  There was a situation in Way where we had Marines in a courtyard. They'd been moving from house to house and transitioning across this courtyard.

• 25:32Jocko Willink?

  They had rocketed.

• 25:35Jocko Willink?

  A lot of them were wounded. There was no radio contact. We were pinned down and in pretty bad shape.

• 25:43Jocko Willink?

  We had an element that eventually came in to relieve us and he'd had a priest and he gave last rites to the dead and he was a very generous priest.

• 25:53Jocko Willink?

  He offered to give the last rites to any of us that wanted them, dead, wounded, or not scratched at that point.

• 26:02Jocko Willink?

  In context, it was such a horrific battle with such horrific images. Way was different.

• 26:10Jocko Willink?

  There were tremendous casualties and no way to treat them, no way to get them taken out.

• 26:18Jocko Willink?

  There were reports and as shown in this image, there was a Marine who was badly wounded, so badly he couldn't be treated and he was zipped up in a body bag while he was still alive.

• 26:34Jocko Willink?

  That's what Way was like.

• 26:37Jocko Willink?

  I was in Way for five days and we were under heavy fire all the time.

• 26:43Jocko Willink?

  One of my favorite quotes was a journalist asking a Marine how many times he had been wounded in Way. And he said, "Today, sir."

• 26:59Jocko Willink?

  So it was a brutal battle. And there was

• 27:05Jocko Willink?

  just incredible heroism and sacrifice. And of course, there were many lessons learned.

• 27:13Jocko Willink?

  And while the lessons focus on urban combat and they focus on the Battle of Way City, I think as you hear some of these lessons learned, you'll see they apply broadly to leadership as a whole. And as we know, if we understand the Way, we can see it in all things. So let's go to this document. Lessons Learned Charlie 15, Operation Way City, 31 January 1968 to 5 March 1968.

• 27:49Jocko Willink?

  "Even under the best of circumstances, street fighting is a bloody business. This was, in the end, the ultimate lesson learned by the United States Marine Corps personnel who participated in this historical battle, considered by many to be the bloodiest of the Vietnam War.

• 28:08Jocko Willink?

  The Marine forces involved in Operation Way City lost 142 Marines killed in action during the month-long battle, including the initial fierce clashes involving primarily fighting throughout the southern sections of the city and the climactic full-scale battles inside the Citadel Fortress itself.

• 28:27Jocko Willink?

  Hundreds more Marines were wounded and had to be medevaced on both sides of the river. Enemy casualties estimates range well into the thousands."

• 28:39Jocko Willink?

  Although Operation Way City will long be remembered as an overwhelming victory over the best conventional forces the enemy could throw at us, and although the 5th Marines overcame very unfavorable odds and ultimately triumphed in the finest traditions of Marines in combat, in truth, this battle was a very close thing.

• 28:59Jocko Willink?

  At the squad, platoon, and company levels, casualty rates were very severe, as high as 75% or more in some units.

• 29:10Jocko Willink?

  This was especially true during the first day of, day or two of each unit's initial experience in full-scale urban combat. There's an important piece right there.

• 29:22Jocko Willink?

  "Especially heavy casualties during the first day or two of a unit going into combat." What does that mean? That means, then that first day and two, day or two, you are learning a ton. And that also means that if you can find out and figure out how to simulate that combat before you enter into those situations, you'll be able to overcome, or at least mitigate, some of those initial shock things that happen, that shock your system, and you're not ready for them. And, you know, I talk about this with, with doing jiu-jitsu, for instance, for females, right?

• 30:05Jocko Willink?

  If you're a female that wants to learn self-defense, and you, you know, you start training jiu-jitsu. If you don't train jiu-jitsu, and some guy grabs a hold of you, you're, you're in shock. You're not used to it. You haven't, you, you have to contend with that, something that you're unaccustomed to. If you train jiu-jitsu, guess what? You have guys grabbing you every single day. They're grabbing you, they're grinding on you, they're trying to move you, you're used to that. You don't have to overcome that. Same thing with combat. The closer you can get to simulating what you're gonna face in combat, the better you're gonna do in combat, and you don't have to learn these horrible lessons your first entry. And, you know, you and I have talked about this too.

• 30:48Jocko Willink?

  If you get, if, if, let's say I learned a new move in jiu-jitsu, and I did it to you. You you I'd catch you and then I show it to you and now all of a sudden I can't barely catch you anymore, right? That's all it took. All it takes is you knowing and understanding. And it's the same thing when we talk with businesses and we do, we do role playing exercises as a leader and how do you talk? How do you tell someone that they need to improve their performance? You do a couple of role plays and you get good at their objections that they're going to give you or the reactions that they're going to have, you can get better. If you wait until the real thing, you're not doing yourself any favors.

• 31:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like an ambush, right? Like ambush is so effective, but if you know the ambush is coming, pretty much not effective.

• 31:34Jocko Willink?

  It's not even effective at all. Yeah. And once you've been ambushed, like imagine, I mean, it happens all the time. Any, anytime you, you know, and understand what's going to happen, you, you're infinitely more equipped to handle that thing.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:48Jocko Willink?

  As opposed to, I have no idea what's happening and I'm going to go and figure it out on the fly.

• 31:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:54Jocko Willink?

  So, experience is the best, but guess what? Experience is expensive. It takes a lot of time. So what you have to do is you have to train. That's what you have to do. What if the only time you, what if you wanted to get good at street fighting and the only time that you got to practice was when you got in a street fight?

• 32:12Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah.

• 32:13Jocko Willink?

  Even if you literally went out every day and got into street fights, two things would happen. Number one, you'd get arrested. But number two, you'd get all, the first street fight, you might pick the wrong person and die.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  Yes, that is true.

• 32:24Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:27Jocko Willink?

  So what you want to do is you want to get into a training environment.

• 32:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 32:30Jocko Willink?

  And then you want to get yourself skilled.

• 32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:33Jocko Willink?

  Same thing with the military, same thing with fighting, same thing with shooting, same thing with business, anything that you're doing. It's another thing. I see like business people, there's business people that have been through, let's say they've been through an acquisition, an acquisition before. They know what to expect. They're anticipating what's going on and it makes them that better at foreseeing what's going to happen and mitigating the risk to it. How do you, if you can't go through the acquisition, well, what do you do? Read about them. You know, interview people, learn about them, figure out what to expect, hire someone onto your team that has been through an acquisition before. So you get, can capitalize on their experience.

• 33:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's crazy. I guess when you think about it, not crazy, but it's interesting. So you know how like sports teams, for example, like, um, well, I guess football, say football for an example. You practice for like five or six days. Just practice, practice, practice, two, sometimes more hours every single day. You know, maybe a day off, maybe. And then, yeah, for one game.

• 33:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 33:34Speaker 01

  So it's like there's training, then there's performance kind of thing. And they go kind of hand in hand, like you got to perform in training and then, you know, the game or whatever that you learn stuff during the game too, but it's, it's interesting where one game is predicated on so much training.

• 33:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 33:52Speaker 01

  So much training, but then when you go to work, it's like you, you kind of expect to have gone or they expect you or whatever. Um, the expectation is that you went through your training already and then they'll add sprinkles of training.

• 34:05Jocko Willink?

  You're talking about like work, just normal work.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, work when you go to work. Yeah. Exactly. So every once in a while you'll have a yearly training.

• 34:12Jocko Willink?

  Quite honestly, that's, that's one of the reasons Echelon, Echelon Front is doing well. Because people are realizing that if you want your leaders to know how to lead, you actually have to train them how to lead. And, and that you can actually do that.

• 34:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:24Jocko Willink?

  So that's one of the reasons that it's Echelon Front is in such high demand because we can actually train your leaders to handle these situations that they're coming up against. And when you do that, you have this massive advantage.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:41Jocko Willink?

  And we see the companies that we work with, they, they, their, their performance just improves immensely. Because their leaders are working together and learning how to lead. And it's the most powerful thing you can have.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, it's weird because I, you know, I'm kind of a behind the scenes guy with Echelon Front. And I see like, you know, any video that's been done, I've probably seen it, you know, and I'm around, you know, all the time. So essentially I'm getting the course too, you know? And it's interesting where I, I think probably in a lot of cases, I probably am more trained in it than most people, even most people, companies that you work with or whatever, because I'm kind of getting it secondhand and listening because it applies to everyday life, you know, like this whole deal. It's not just work. It's in fact, for me, I mean, yeah, it applies to my quote unquote work, but it applies to like family stuff, you know, wife stuff.

• 35:34Jocko Willink?

  And the big thing, this is the big thing, this is the big difference. You know the material, you, but you, because your position, you use it on your family, but you don't use it in a work environment. And therefore you get to learn the technique, but you don't get to roll, you don't get to spar.

• 35:51Speaker 01

  Not as hard.

• 35:52Jocko Willink?

  And, and here's the thing, when we work with companies, it's not like, oh, here's this information and then they go apply it perfectly.

• 35:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:58Jocko Willink?

  It, no, they come back and say, hey, this didn't work.

• 36:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:01Jocko Willink?

  I went and talked to a guy and he said this, it's like, okay, cool. Here's how you got to overcome that. So there's, you've got to get the initial information, yes. But you still have to apply it. Even if you train a group for combat as much as you possibly can, they're still going to have a certain delta that they're going to need to rise to when the real thing occurs. And so we see that with companies. We see that with individual leaders that are part of companies where they're, they're, and I show up sometimes, you know, there's some people out there that are just straight up in the game.

• 36:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 36:35Jocko Willink?

  And they're in the game before I even show up, like it's the icing on the cake. And even people that have read Extreme Ownership 10 times, they've read Dichotomy of Leadership 12 times, they've listened to every single podcast. And they'll still ask questions about things because they haven't quite put it together.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, but like they haven't mapped it perfectly on their situation yet. And just like I said, like it takes, it takes like, okay, how you say, I don't really get to spar. I do, I do get to spar, but they're real easy, super easy sparring partners. Who do I got? I got you. I got my wife, you know?

• 37:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 37:10Speaker 01

  Like, you know,

• 37:11Jocko Willink?

  You just call me an easy sparring partner?

• 37:13Speaker 01

  Technically, yeah, for this.

• 37:14Jocko Willink?

  For this stuff.

• 37:14Speaker 01

  It is. I mean, technically you're the easiest sparring partner because you're just like, you're doing the same thing, you know? So it's like, there's no friction. I mean, very little friction, maybe on some levels, but.

• 37:25Jocko Willink?

  Christmas songs.

• 37:28Speaker 01

  But the, you know, these people at work, when they apply it, well, you know, when you have a, whether it be a corporate job or whatever, you know, anytime where you have bigger teams, different personalities, you know, you care about people on different levels. It's like, it's way more.

• 37:43Jocko Willink?

  It takes more effort and more time on the mat for people to get proficient. To where you look at a situation, you go, oh, here's what this, here's the problem going here. This guy's ego is getting a little out of control. I'm going to massage his ego a little bit. And it will let him have some more control and that'll make him feel better and they'll do a better job. Like it, it takes a little bit of experience to get to that point. And, and you know, a lot of times, like I said, when we go and work with a company that this is fully in the game. And they'll be batting, they'll be nailing nine out of 10 things. And then there'll be one more thing that they need a little adjustment on. And they, they make that adjustment and they go, oh, yeah, you know, and everything makes sense. So, training

• 38:22Jocko Willink?

  is how you get good. Don't waste your time getting beat up in street fights in order to learn. It doesn't make sense.

• 38:33Jocko Willink?

  All right, moving on. The ultimate success of this operation could have been significantly improved, in our opinion, by several factors, including, one, improved, less restrictive rules of engagement, including situational flexibility down to the platoon level. This is something we hear about all the time. Here's the deal. What that, what that really means is decentralized command. You need to trust your troops. You need to explain to them what is important and what is not. Rules of engagement to tell someone, you cannot do this. What, what I'm saying, if I say echo, you cannot shoot at this type of building.

• 39:15Jocko Willink?

  If I tell you that, what I'm telling you is I don't trust you to make a good decision based on the information I give you. If I was to say, hey, listen, some of these buildings that are marked with a star, those buildings are historical buildings that will cause the civilian populace to, um, you know, get angry at us. So don't shoot at them.

• 39:35Jocko Willink?

  If I say that to you and I say, tell you, explain to you why it's important. And then I say, hey, look, then again, remember you're in the field, you need to protect your men. And you say, got it. And now you go in the field and if you're a good leader and you trust me and I trust you and I've explained the commander's intent well, and you understand the strategic impact of of disobeying or of of going outside the rules that that are not the rules, but the direction that I've given you. Then you understand that. That's great. And you'll make a good decision because what that decision might entail is you're getting shot at from one of these buildings. And now you have to take it down. If I don't trust you to make that decision, what do I do? I put strict rules of engagement on you.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:18Jocko Willink?

  And now you can't do something.

• 40:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:20Jocko Willink?

  And that is. That is not decentralized command.

• 40:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:24Jocko Willink?

  And it's not generally good. Do you have to put some broad rules in place? Yes, you absolutely do. But you have to make sure that the people on the ground understand that those rules can be bent if they have to, and they have to have the authority and the leeway to do that. Next, two. Improved communication of intelligence information to all levels of command. Of course, communicate. Communication is one of those things. And again, I feel I always feel when we go to work with a company. It's one of the first things I have to ask is what are your methodologies of communication through your company? How do you communicate with your frontline troops? How do you communicate with your mid-level managers? How do your mid-level managers and your frontline troops communicate with you? Because sometimes the frontline troops might see something out on the battlefield that you don't see because you're up in the ivory tower.

• 41:09Jocko Willink?

  And how do they communicate that back to you? Do you have a methodology? Oftentimes, communication is ineffective. Or it's, they don't have procedures around it. They don't have protocol on how to communicate. That's bad. So communication up and down the chain of command. Simple, clear and concise. That's the way it's got to be. Three, acquisition of improved intelligence data, in particular concerning the disposition and size of enemy forces.

• 41:36Jocko Willink?

  That's cool. That's a little bit of a universal fantasy for military people that we want great intelligence. We want to know where the enemy is. If we knew who the enemy is,

• 41:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 41:48Jocko Willink?

  Our jobs would be a lot easier. Yeah. So that's a, that's a universal fantasy and we should always strive to achieve that fantasy, but it's very difficult to get to. But then they go to this reconnaissance and small unit probes to fix enemy positions are critical. What, what that means is when you want intelligence, go get it. Go find it. Gather the intel yourself as much as you can. Four, improved supporting fire plan, access to artillery, naval gunfire, direct fire from armored vehicles and air support should be judiciously employed, deployed. So what does that mean? We need to cover, we need cover from big guns. Cover and move. Five, significantly increased training for urban conflict, street fighting, practice and

• 42:32Jocko Willink?

  preparation. I think we just covered that. Training is always paramount. Six, deployment of available chemical weapons, in this case tear gas for offensive operations during early stages of the operation. These guys use tear gas and it worked well. The North Vietnamese army had, didn't have gas masks and they didn't like it.

• 42:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:01Jocko Willink?

  Of course, you know, there's people, when you, when you say chemical weapons, what do we think of? We think of mustard gas. There's other, you know, there's nerve agents and nerve gas. That's what people generally think of when you think of chemical weapons, but chemical weapons are also tear gas. And tear gas can be very effective. There's also some people that can just BTF through, through tear gas.

• 43:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:28Jocko Willink?

  Continuing. Seven, improved dissemination of operational plan details down to the fire team level.

• 43:41Jocko Willink?

  Fire team leaders, these fire team leaders. If the fire team leaders and you're talking about someone that's in charge of four guys or six guys or something like that, really small little element. If those people understand what you're trying to accomplish as a team, that means they can execute at their level and make things happen. They can move the ball in the right direction. If they don't know where they're supposed to be going, guess what? They can't help you. Yeah. They can't help you. So broad guidance needs to be given, needs to be updated. People need to understand, hey, we're trying to move forward. We're trying to take this area. We're trying to move across this line. Everyone needs to understand that.

• 44:23Jocko Willink?

  If they don't understand that, they're, they're actually no good to you. If you've got a fire team leader out on the flank somewhere that has no idea that you're trying to move forward or move east or west or north, that person is just sitting there waiting for you to tell them what to do. They're almost worthless. So, and, and this also means if you're a fire team leader and you don't know if you're supposed to be going northeast, southwest, whatever, you should be raising your hand and saying, hey, what are we doing? Tell me what we're doing.

• 44:53Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on the other side of the scale, small unit experience, individual marine determination, the buddy system, the quick learning capacity of Marines under combat conditions, the combined leadership officers, staff, NCOs and NCOs of one, five at all levels and the ultimate ability to coordinate fire support and execute street fighting tactics under heavy fire were factors that won this pivotal battle despite incredible odds, high casualty rates and the resulting turnover of officers and NCOs. So it comes down to your individual Marines and your, your frontline leadership that make these things happen.

• 45:36Jocko Willink?

  Which no doubt the military or the US military is awesome and in their frontline leadership and their frontline troops. They make so many things happen. Even in many cases, despite poor leadership, you just, you just have great frontline leadership. I mean, I would see that a lot. You know, you'd get a platoon that had kind of a marginal and if not, maybe even a bad platoon commander, but you just get some guys in that platoon that are awesome. The platoon would be awesome. As long as the leader was humble enough to take guidance. If the leader wasn't humble enough to take guidance, they would fail because he would just drag everyone in his terrible ways down. If he, if he had the common sense to say, you know what? I'm going to listen to these guys. I'm going to let them kind of run with it. Platoon would do

• 46:21Jocko Willink?

  fine. Continuing on, certainly using 2020 perspective of hindsight, this battle could have been decided in even more timely and decisive fashion, reducing friendly casualty rates in the process by paying attention to the fundamentals of planning marine operations. Proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance. And they actually edited out piss because they're squared away Marines. Yeah. Got to come up with a good plan. And had they done that better, this is the typical situation. Hindsight's always 2020. And I, I always avoid

• 47:00Jocko Willink?

  becoming a armchair post-game critic. In the military. I mean, I'll criticize someone like a fighter in the UFC or whatever, but when it comes to military operations, it's real easy to sit back and throw darts and say, well, you know, I would have done this. You weren't there. You didn't see it. I didn't see it. I wasn't in the situation. I have all the facts now. They didn't have those facts. So. I'm always very cautious about hucking darts into the past.

• 47:36Speaker 01

  And you deal with like that kind of situation, you it's and you kind of use it, you actually do. You use this as, you know, when you say you can sit back and be a tactical genius or whatever. Yes, like if, I don't know, if I make a video, you can like sit back and be like, look at these like 10 mistakes or 10 things or whatever. Meanwhile, there's like a thousand elements. So 990 elements have had to be created well and work and all this stuff. And then it's, you can just be like, yeah, those, because essentially those are created for you. You know, you don't have to create those things. All you have to do is poke holes in the tent.

• 48:11Jocko Willink?

  I can focus, instead of having to focus on a thousand things, I can take a broader look and see the 10 things that you screwed up.

• 48:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, or one thing, or two things. No, no, no, in my case, like probably just one, maybe two.

• 48:23Jocko Willink?

  All right. The following details regarding the lessons learned from Operation Way City are offered from the former members of Charlie Company, First Battalion, Fifth Marine Regiment, First Marine Division, who served in combat during Operation Way City and who were directly involved in the battle with NVA forces inside the Citadel Fortress from 13 February 1968 through 5 March 1968. Situation, terrain.

• 48:46Jocko Willink?

  There is an infinite variety of possible landscapes that may be confronted by a marine force, given the mission of attacking an enemy force in urban terrain.

• 48:57Jocko Willink?

  Infinite variety of possible landscapes. What does that remind me of? That reminds me of life itself.

• 49:06Jocko Willink?

  When the Tet Offensive broke out on 31 January 1968 and conventional NVA forces overran major sections of the largest cities in South Vietnam, marine forces were literally knee deep in rice paddies and jungle mud. Since first establishing a beachhead in 1965, Marines had been assigned the mission of conducting a counterinsurgency, a rural conflict, fighting, for the most part, a guerrilla army. The Tet Offensive changed all of that, and for the first time since the height of the Korean War in 1954, Marines found themselves with a mission that involved urban combat.

• 49:45Jocko Willink?

  So you have to be able to, you should never turn your back on something. I had a fighter I was training for a fight and I was like, hey, let's do some groundwork, you know, with you on the bottom. And the dude was strong. He wasn't, he wasn't a good wrestler. Well, let me just say a decent wrestler, but not by any stretch, you know, not a call, not a competitive college wrestler or anything like that. But solid, strong, very strong. I said, hey, man, let's put you on the bottom. And the response was, I'm not going to be on the bottom.

• 50:26Jocko Willink?

  Gotcha.

• 50:28Jocko Willink?

  Hey, well, even if you don't think you're going to be on the bottom, let's train for the unlikely event that you happen to end up on the bottom. Because it's a fight and anything can happen. I don't need to, I'm not going to be on the bottom.

• 50:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So we can tell where the story is going. Yeah. He went to his fight and fought and was on the bottom, basically the whole fight. It was a three round fight. It was on the bottom almost the whole time. So it was horrible. Yeah. And why? Because you can't, you can't neglect one part of the possibilities that can unfold. And even, even for us, when we would get ready to deploy to Iraq, we're going to Iraq, we're literally going to a desert and going to be in the middle of the desert. And we would still do dive operations. We'd still do maritime operations while we were getting ready to deploy. Why? Because we don't know what's going to happen. We don't know whether the next war is going to break out. So just don't neglect anything. And I'll tell you what else.

• 51:27Jocko Willink?

  If you're good at a variety of things, you will be better at everything. So if all we knew how to do is enter rooms, what happens when, when that, when we, when we enter a building and instead of being a bunch of rooms, it's a giant warehouse that needs to be cleared. Like you've got to think about these things. But the more flexible you are, the more capabilities you have, that's what I'm looking for. The more capabilities you have, the more flexibility you have. So learn different skill sets. Don't neglect things.

• 52:01Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, preparing to remove an enemy battalion that has captured a 40-story skyscraper or a college campus is much different than, is a much different mission than getting the enemy squad out of a house, school, or church in a small town. The common factor in all these variations, however, is that in all cases in urban combat, structures dominate the terrain.

• 52:23Jocko Willink?

  Studying and assessing terrain is a fundamental issue for marine commanders when planning missions. This, this idea of terrain is so important. The way, the advantage that terrain gives you is, I don't know what to compare it to in other, in anything else. If you understand terrain,

• 52:48Jocko Willink?

  you can dominate. It's like trying to do jujitsu and not understanding arm position.

• 52:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:53Jocko Willink?

  Like where, that you need underhooks. If you know, if, if you're going against people that don't understand underhooks, you will destroy them.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:00Jocko Willink?

  If you're going against someone that doesn't understand where to position their hands, where to position their arms, you will destroy them. If you're going against someone that doesn't understand how to utilize the terrain, you, you will destroy them. If you don't know how to utilize the terrain, you will get destroyed. And by the way, that doesn't matter if you're in the city or in, in a rural environment, doesn't matter where you are.

• 53:24Jocko Willink?

  Studying and assessing terrain is a fundamental issue for marine commanders when planning missions. This is even more critical in planning house-to-house combat operations. Building materials vary worldwide and their ability to provide small arms cover to a very high degree. Through the use of reconnaissance and intelligence, we recommend conducting a serious assessment of each building or structure that is within your unit's area of operations, because tactics involved in taking each objective, building, structure, et cetera, may be different in each case. A small wood frame house may offer the illusion of cover from small arms, fire, but little else. In some places, walls are paper thin. Even houses that use some form of plaster or concrete construction can prove to be unexpectedly porous and at the worst possible times.

• 54:12Jocko Willink?

  This is something to consider all the time. Things are not always what they seem. That's, that's what's important there. Things are not always what they seem. You, you think you're hiding behind a wall and now you're safe? No, bullets will go right through it.

• 54:30Jocko Willink?

  Continuing, know the basic layout of a structure as much as possible before entry. This is something that I would say our standard operating procedures in the US military now are so good that we don't really need to know the, the layout of a structure. We're gonna go in and be able to handle whatever the structure, however the structure is laid out. That's what we do. If you don't train to enter rooms regularly and you don't train to enter buildings and you don't train to be able to contend with all these varieties of things that you could face, you won't be able to, if you try and say, okay, we need to know what the, the building looks like inside before you go in there, that's a horrible, horrible idea. It's not gonna happen.

• 55:12Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, when you go in there, the first thing you're gonna come across is a barricade. Where you can't go down the hallway and you gotta go through these other rooms that you weren't expecting.

• 55:23Jocko Willink?

  Continuing, approach each structure with an entry plan and a search plan and make sure each member of the fire team and squad is well versed in these plans. What I say instead of that is not plans, these are standard operating procedures. You develop standard operating procedures so you know what to do when you enter a building and so does everyone on the team. Establish voice codes and commands and communicate regularly with each other. Yes. Consider entryways, existing doors and windows to be extremely dangerous, likely locations for booby traps and to be avoided if at all possible. Wherever possible, blow entry holes using satchel charges or rockets. Once the entry plan is finalized and understood, it must be executed with fierce determination. Be prepared for anything and be ready to improvise.

• 56:09Jocko Willink?

  Be systematic and check everything basement sewer access addicts rooftops trashcans thoroughly before establishing that the objective is secure. So what I one of the most important things I take away from that is that the the existing entryways you got to consider them dangerous. How do we translate that into life? What that means is these well established patterns are exactly that. And it I'm not saying you can't ever use a pattern that's someone else used. But you at least at a minimum have to be aware of the fact that when you're doing something, when you're using a path that someone else has already

• 56:48Jocko Willink?

  gone down, it's a known path. And so you can't expect to be able to surprise your competitor when you're doing something that's always been done the same way.

• 56:58Speaker 01

  Gotcha. Yeah.

• 57:00Jocko Willink?

  So think of how you can approach things in a different manner. And if in fact, that manner might be better. Sometimes you look at things from a different angle. And you you realize that the reason that everyone does it this way is because that's the best possible way. And to make some huge Herculean effort to try and do something just to be different. Sometimes that's the wrong answer. I get that. But consider it.

• 57:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, a lot of times those like certain industries are like this, but they're they're so used to doing it a certain way because that's sort of like what they learned. Yeah, it's almost like it's almost like as an industry, they don't think of like what why they're doing it that way.

• 57:41Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, that's why that's why there's been so many disruptors, right? In the last few years. I mean, you can look at any of these disruptors, companies that have come out of nowhere, that you know, you can look at the ride sharing applications. If you were a taxi driver, you were thinking, Okay, how can we get more dispatchers? How can I hire more cars? These you know, these ride sharing people said, Oh, we're not going to own any cars.

• 58:08Speaker 01

  It's great.

• 58:09Jocko Willink?

  Same with Airbnb.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:12Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 58:12Speaker 01

  Same deal.

• 58:13Jocko Willink?

  We're not gonna build a hotel. We're gonna use a random people's houses and put you in there. That's looking at it from a completely different angle.

• 58:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:21Jocko Willink?

  Seeing a problem and coming up with a completely different solution. If you looked at a city and said, oh, wow. There's no rooms in that city. There's no hotel rooms in that city. Where am I gonna put everyone? Okay, well, let's do what everyone else does. We'll build a building and we'll put rooms in there and we'll staff the building and we'll put a restaurant. That's what you do.

• 58:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 58:40Jocko Willink?

  That's what's been done. Guess what?

• 58:44Jocko Willink?

  Someone else looked at that and said, you know, there's nowhere to stay in that city. But some people might have empty rooms in their house. Let's, let's see if we can access those rooms. Boom, there you go.

• 58:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wonder how it was, where the guy, one of the guys was like, hey, shoot, I can't find a hotel room. When I go to San Francisco and then the friend was like, hey, just come stay with me.

• 59:04Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  And then when he stayed with them, he was like, you know, next time you come, if you, if you can't find a hotel room, you can always stay with me. Be like, oh, yeah, hey, I'm not the only one.

• 59:12Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, I'm coming up here, I'm coming up on, you know, um, my company's paying me to come up here so I can get them, you know, they'll give me money for the room, so maybe I could just pay you.

• 59:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:21Jocko Willink?

  And you go, oh, cool, we're kind of, we're kind of getting a little

• 59:24Speaker 01

  That helps us.

• 59:25Jocko Willink?

  Kickback from the company.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, cool.

• 59:27Jocko Willink?

  And then the next thing you know, hey, I bet other cities have.

• 59:30Speaker 01

  I know a guy down the road, he has a room he doesn't really use, so if you have any coworkers or know, and if you know anybody, you know that guy too. Oh, alright, alright.

• 59:38Jocko Willink?

  Simple as that.

• 59:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:40Jocko Willink?

  Simple as that. But it's looking at it from a different angle. So look at things from a different angle. Then once you come up, you know, fierce determination. Fierce determination is always good.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, makes sense.

• 59:55Jocko Willink?

  Is there a dichotomy to fierce determination? Yes, there is. Can you have someone that's too?

• 59:59Speaker 01

  Fiercely determined?

• 1:00:00Jocko Willink?

  Fiercely determined? Yes, you can.

• 1:00:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:03Jocko Willink?

  Yes, you can. They don't know when to stop.

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:00:10Jocko Willink?

  Next. The other aspect of urban terrain are the spaces between buildings, streets, alleys, and other pathways are normal routes for humans and therefore must be sus- must be must be suspected to be under observation and possible enemy firing lanes. Whenever possible, take the most difficult route from house to house. Same thing we just talked about. Look for a different path.

• 1:00:36Jocko Willink?

  Establish and there's obviously there's a dichotomy to that because if you're constantly just taking the hard road all the time, you might not make any progress, which is also bad. Establish in advance a plan of what to do in the event noncombatants are found in urban zones and for marking buildings that have been cleared. It's kind of crazy that they didn't have an idea of how they're going to mark buildings that were cleared.

• 1:01:00Jocko Willink?

  Continuing. Make absolutely sure that your Marines are aware that while inside a building being secured, they are at risk from both within and without. Always assume that every room of every floor in each and every house contains enemy soldiers. Always move very quickly when moving in front of windows or doorways. Always know where enemy positions may be in buildings that are adjacent to yours. As in all marine operations, watching your buddies back. Watch your buddies back and run as fast as possible when traversing open ground.

• 1:01:36Jocko Willink?

  Can't let your guard down.

• 1:01:39Jocko Willink?

  Can't let your guard down.

• 1:01:43Jocko Willink?

  Where do you let your guard down?

• 1:01:44Speaker 01

  Me?

• 1:01:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Can't tell you.

• 1:01:46Jocko Willink?

  It's it's probably a pretty broad area.

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  100% of my life, probably, yeah.

• 1:01:53Jocko Willink?

  Is there any time where you feel like, hey, I need to get my guard up? This is probably an easier question for you.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:01Jocko Willink?

  You're not just running around hyper paranoid like I am.

• 1:02:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, no. What, in life, you mean? Or in jujitsu, what, like everything?

• 1:02:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, I would say. I don't know. It, put it this way, my guard's always up, but it's only kinda up. I think, you know, it's like a 25% up and it kind of fluctuates from moment to moment.

• 1:02:22Jocko Willink?

  It fluctuates up from like zero, but he stays at 25. Sometimes it goes up to like 30.

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, sometimes.

• 1:02:28Jocko Willink?

  Certain scenarios.

• 1:02:28Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:02:30Jocko Willink?

  Check. Multiple-story structures present an even greater challenge than single-story buildings in medium-sized village or town or small city. That is dominated by one, two, and three-story buildings. Be very particular about the taller buildings, which are naturally used by the enemy as high ground. If possible, make entry to taller multi-level buildings via the roof and work systematically and thoroughly downward. Always look for the high ground.

• 1:02:56Speaker 01

  So is that sort of the thing, you know, cause the high ground kinda seems simple, straightforward or whatever, but is there like a blueprint, like a simple blueprint for like, I remember you told me a story where your son was talking with like a neighbor or something who had, um, I don't know if he went to Vietnam or something like he was in, he was in the military, whatever. And you get, and they played like laser tag or something and your son like whooped him because he knew like some something.

• 1:03:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, my son knew some fundamental tactics. It was when he was younger, so he wasn't really up to speed yet. He was like seven or six. But you know, we started, you know, he was, he was already through, I think, I think it was through level seven of my tactical course.

• 1:03:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he's probably around level seven.

• 1:03:48Speaker 01

  What tactical course?

• 1:03:49Jocko Willink?

  Just I have like some tactical lessons that I run, you know.

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  What do you mean that you run like as a father or as a what, like echelon front as a tactical course?

• 1:03:58Jocko Willink?

  No, I have tactical concepts that I teach.

• 1:04:01Speaker 01

  Who do you teach? Cause you didn't teach me nothing.

• 1:04:05Jocko Willink?

  You're only over there at 25% cruising mode.

• 1:04:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, cause you know, that's just the standard right now. If, you know.

• 1:04:11Jocko Willink?

  So there's certain things you have to learn in order to be tactically proficient. And I, my son had learned, like I had gone through seven of the. Courses to understand the tactical things. And there was a friend of my wife's friend came over. He, yes, he was a prior marine, or actually he was active duty marine. And yes, my son challenged him to a laser tag competition. And yes, my son was victorious three times in a row. And he just did simple fundamental tactics and it wasn't even team sport. It was a one on one.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:49Jocko Willink?

  So how do you defeat someone one on one? Well, you maneuver very quickly. You don't fire from the same same position multiple times. You get the high ground. Cause you like, he knew. If you get onto my garage roof, which had access with a ladder. You're going to be able to defend that position very thoroughly. And the person that's below you, cause all you have to do when you're on the garage roof is dock. And you're hidden. It's a, it's a parapet roof. So all you have, there's a deck up there.

• 1:05:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:20Jocko Willink?

  There's one access point. How are you going to beat me? You don't have grenades with the, you don't have laser grenades. So I have the high ground.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:28Jocko Willink?

  I'm seven years old or six years old. I have the high ground. I have a laser weapon. You're trying to attack me, you're going to die.

• 1:05:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:34Jocko Willink?

  And then the next round, when you're trying to get up on that thing, I'm not there anymore.

• 1:05:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:40Jocko Willink?

  I'm in the alleyway up, the alleyway up behind the fence.

• 1:05:44Speaker 01

  Higher still.

• 1:05:44Jocko Willink?

  Higher still.

• 1:05:45Speaker 01

  So the high ground is kind of like the golden, golden room. Yeah, interesting. You know, when the first time I, I found out that the high ground is the, is the spot to be.

• 1:05:56Jocko Willink?

  Where?

• 1:05:57Speaker 01

  When I watched the movie called The Rock. You watched that one, Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage? Where the Navy SEALs come up, you know, they gotta go to Alcatraz. They come up through the wherever, the drain or something like this. Yeah. And they get, you know, boom, they're sort of surprised by the, the, I think they're Marines.

• 1:06:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  The, the terror, they're mercenaries at this point, but nonetheless.

• 1:06:17Jocko Willink?

  Or patriots depending.

• 1:06:19Speaker 01

  Patriots, right? Exactly right. Yeah. And he was like, hey, you're guys are surrounded from an elevated position.

• 1:06:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:26Speaker 01

  It's kind of like, this is a no brainer. You know this kind of thing. I'm like, hmm, I guess that's a thing.

• 1:06:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:31Speaker 01

  And.

• 1:06:31Jocko Willink?

  It is a thing.

• 1:06:32Speaker 01

  You know, huh? And they, and they killed them all.

• 1:06:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:06:36Speaker 01

  Except for Nicholas Cage. He didn't die. He lived.

• 1:06:41Jocko Willink?

  That's that's chemical agent, by the way, right?

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  VX gas. That's what I was gonna say, yeah.

• 1:06:46Jocko Willink?

  But you know, that was a real or you.

• 1:06:48Speaker 01

  I, yeah. Let's face it.

• 1:06:51Jocko Willink?

  I'm surprised you didn't just dive deep right into that.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  I was gonna, but you know, those little pearl, the little pearl balls are kind of interesting.

• 1:07:00Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book.

• 1:07:03Jocko Willink?

  The mission assigned to marine forces during Operation Way City was to remove enemy forces that had captured major sections of the ancient imperial capital of Way during the surprise NVA offensive that was quickly dubbed the Ted Offensive. Due to the historic, listen closely, due to the historic aspect of many of the buildings in Way, the usage of heavy weapons was significantly restricted during the initial days of fighting on both sides of the river. As friendly casualties mounted and as initial estimates of the size of the enemy force in Way City area was significantly increased, fire restrictions were ultimately lifted. So they didn't want to damage these historical buildings and so they said, hey, don't, don't

• 1:07:48Jocko Willink?

  use 50 cal, don't use whatever, whatever weapons they said they couldn't use. And then eventually when the casualties got so bad, they said, okay, go ahead and do what you gotta do. I say rip the Band-Aid off, right? If you're gonna go, you go.

• 1:08:06Speaker 01

  Go, yeah.

• 1:08:07Jocko Willink?

  If you're gonna go, go. Don't play around.

• 1:08:11Jocko Willink?

  That's a, a good lesson America learns over and over and over again. If you're gonna go to war, go to win. Your number one priority over everything else should be to win. And by the way, if they would have done that, I guarantee this city would have been in better shape at the end. Because the enemy is gonna drag this thing out and it's gonna take longer. You're gonna have to end up destroying every single building that's there.

• 1:08:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, makes sense.

• 1:08:34Jocko Willink?

  They continue, "In our respectful opinion, our ability to successfully complete the mission was initially severely impacted by the rules of engagement." Again, this is a lack of trust up and down the chain of command. If I have to impose strict rules of engagement on my people, I haven't trained them well enough, I don't trust them, they don't trust me, they don't understand the strategic mission, and we have a real problem.

• 1:09:02Jocko Willink?

  Continuing, although it is understood that mission and rules of engagement are not the exclusive responsibility of marine leadership at the platoon, company, battalion, or even regimental level, it is strongly recommended that every effort is made at every level in the chain of command to ensure that balance has been achieved between the demands of the mission and the effect of the rules of engagement on the ability of the command to perform the mission successfully.

• 1:09:30Jocko Willink?

  Yes, you do have to have balance.

• 1:09:33Jocko Willink?

  But what you really should have is trust and understanding of the situation so that people don't need to be constrained by rules.

• 1:09:45Jocko Willink?

  If I have, if I, if my leaders understand what I want them to do,

• 1:09:52Jocko Willink?

  and they understand the constraints, and they understand the mission, and they understand the impact, they don't need any rules at all. They just need to get told to go.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, I think about like certain laws where if, if this is gonna be the law of the land, that this law applies to everybody. Same thing with rules of engagement where they got it, because they kind of got to apply to everyone, right? In a certain way. So that's why they wind up being so strict, or they can, and I'm thinking about laws too, where there's certain groups or individuals that's like, man, that law kind of shouldn't apply to me because I know better, you know? But where like, you know, like the guy who's like, okay, on Kauai, there's this red light, right? This is, or the stoplight on Kauai, where the crossroad of that stoplight is a dirt road. And on both, if you turn in the dirt road, either direction, there's a gate that's always

• 1:10:44Speaker 01

  closed. It's only click, oh, it's for like cane trucks and stuff, or it was, I don't know what it is now, but, and the cane truck guys have the key to the gate. This big long gate, you can't even turn in there, but there's still a stoplight, right? So it's never red, because it only turns green when the kid, but every once in a while it'd be red, and the gate would be closed, you know? And all that sort of happens. And here's the thing, you can see the gates closed, no truck is coming. Even if a truck was coming, like they gotta stop that open the gate, whatever. Should you stay at that red stoplight? Or can you just blow through the light?

• 1:11:18Speaker 01

  You would think any irresponsible adult should have the authority or whatever to see that and just go through the light, right? But the rules got to apply to everybody. That's the thing. It has to apply to everyone. What about the new driver who's like, they can discern quite as well where a safe red light running situation versus a not so safe red light running situation? And then there's a spectrum, you know? So when these rules get put in place, they got to apply to everybody. The lowest common denominator person and unfortunately these highest higher denominational people got to apply to them too, because you know, you can't just go down the line and

• 1:12:00Speaker 01

  be like, okay, this rule applies to you, but kind of, kinda, you know, just maybe 30%. This rule applies to him 100% of course, and him too. You 1% because you're this elite dude. So you can, you know, you have ultimates like, you know, it's hard to do that, especially when you deal with like a bunch of people. So that's why that can be a pain in the ass sometimes. See what I'm saying?

• 1:12:19Jocko Willink?

  Dude, apparently that's been bothering you for quite some time. How long have you lived in America for or in the mainland?

• 1:12:25Speaker 01

  Like, think about like the court system or like, you know?

• 1:12:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, well, rules, well, rules get put in place for sure because people don't trust the subordinates that have to follow the rule, right? You tell your kids, you're not allowed to go in the yard because the pool's out there, right? What you're really saying is I don't trust that you're not going to go in the pool or I don't trust that you're, that you can swim well enough. If you're a good leader, you'll be like, okay, we got it. We need to work on this. You need to understand the dangers. And that's a little bit of a weird thing to talk about because drowning in a pool for a little kid, you obviously have to err towards the side of safety. That's probably not the best example. But if you tell your kid, no one's allowed to come to, okay, I'm going on a trip Friday night, no one come over to the house. Those are the rules.

• 1:13:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:13:09Jocko Willink?

  You know? If my kids actually understood what I really meant is like, hey, if you want to have a couple of kids over, that's cool. Don't get crazy. Don't eat my food. Stay away from the mulk. No weirdos, no, you know? If they understood all that, which actually that's what my kids were. They're like, hey, got a couple of kids coming over. It's all good. If they broke the trust. Then things might be different than I have to go and implement rules.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, but on top of that, you're you're talking about like your kids or like, you know, in the military, if you're dealing with like one unit or one little group of people. But if the rules of engagement or in your case, like the rule of people coming over, what if? What if it didn't just apply to your kids? What if it applied to the whole block or the whole town or whatever? So it's like, just to keep everyone safe, we gotta set this is the standard.

• 1:13:55Jocko Willink?

  Which is why we don't want communism.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:13:58Jocko Willink?

  Because they just make rules that are blanket over everyone.

• 1:14:01Speaker 01

  Well, that's how laws are even here, you know, like, like the gun laws, consider the gun laws. They're like, hey, we need background check, but the rules got applied to everyone. You know, you can't like discriminate kind of thing. They have to apply to everybody. So it's like, man.

• 1:14:14Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, that's the gun rules are a perfect example because they don't trust the the people, everyone.

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, certain people, yeah.

• 1:14:24Jocko Willink?

  Oh, everyone just can't have a gun. You have to get a background check. Okay, fair enough. Why? But then it goes, then it continues. See, that's that's where that's where you run into probably so much debate about gun laws. Because pretty much everyone says, hey, I get it. You should probably get some kind of a background check before you get a firearm.

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:41Jocko Willink?

  Everyone goes, hmm, okay, I don't want somebody that's been, I don't want somebody that's a felon or a violent criminal to be able to get a gun. Cool. I agree with that. The problem is, where does it stop?

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:52Jocko Willink?

  And and then the problem on top of that is because of the where does it stop because of the slippery slope thing? The people that don't want any gun laws, they just say, we don't want any. Like every single, you know, well, we think we the the background check should be an extra three days. No way.

• 1:15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:12Jocko Willink?

  And meanwhile, on the other side, people are saying every single thing that they can do to restrict firearms from being had by anybody, they try and move it there.

• 1:15:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:23Jocko Willink?

  So both sides are are just taking extreme position and no one will actually have a normal logical conversation about what's going on.

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:15:32Jocko Willink?

  It's just.

• 1:15:33Speaker 01

  And even when you do, man, it.

• 1:15:35Jocko Willink?

  Yelling and screaming.

• 1:15:36Speaker 01

  Yes, and that and.

• 1:15:37Jocko Willink?

  From the. Polarized positions.

• 1:15:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and a lot of times, even if you're in that in the moment, like you can step back and see that when that happens. When people are just like, hey, you're just defending your position, just just kind of blindly or whatever. You can see that happen. I'm not saying like it's so terrible. It's natural. I get it. But even if you can have like a civilized discussion, it's still hard because it's based on.

• 1:16:01Jocko Willink?

  Because like for me, I should absolutely be be able to have whatever guns I want. Right? That's that's the way I feel. I feel that I should be able to, and I, yes, you can check my background. You can see if I am a felon or a violent criminal. You can see that I'm not okay. You should be able to, I should be able to get whatever guns I want. And but there's some people that think, hey, you know, but as strongly as I feel about that. As strong as I feel like I should be able to get whatever guns I want. If someone says, oh, well. Then you agree that everyone should be able to get every gun they want. No, actually, I don't agree with that.

• 1:16:45Jocko Willink?

  I think that there's some people that don't need guns. I can say that. I can say that without without thinking, without saying, oh, well. Jaco believes in gun control for everyone. It's like, no, I just said what I believed. So the rules are about trust and you have to figure out where the trust lies.

• 1:17:07Speaker 01

  With everyone, by the way.

• 1:17:08Jocko Willink?

  And you have to figure out what the minimum amount of trust is that you can overlay on people everywhere. And that's where, that's why governing a giant country is so hard. And depending on where you live too, because depending on where you live, you have different needs. You have different, like, there's some people that live, yeah, the culture's different, but depending on where you live. Like if you live in a state where there's predatory animals. And you live out in the bush somewhere, you're damn right, you need guns. If you live in a state where there's predatory animals that are human beings that will break in your house and kill you, guess what? You also need to be able to protect your family. That's good to go.

• 1:17:48Jocko Willink?

  You know, somebody asked me the other day is like, is, is.

• 1:17:53Jocko Willink?

  It's actually Tim, it's actually Tim Ferriss, who was asking me if pepper spray is good home defense. I'm like.

• 1:18:00Jocko Willink?

  Pepper sprays good home defense against a person that isn't carrying a weapon. I said, but if someone's breaking into your house or coming to attack you, are they not going to have a weapon? Do are they following some kind of a rules of engagement where they're, I am, I am going on a basic B and E tonight. I'm only going to bring, um, you know, I'm only going to bring my, my, my pillow to hit people with. Like, no, they're breaking into your house to kill you, or they're breaking into your house to, to assault your family.

• 1:18:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:29Jocko Willink?

  Or whatever they're breaking into your house to, they shouldn't be breaking into your house.

• 1:18:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:32Jocko Willink?

  And they're probably going to be able to defend themselves because they don't want to get caught. So what do they do to defend themselves? They got a knife or they got a whatever. They got a gun. So pepper spray, great. The problem with pepper spray is you're, you don't, you don't, they're not following rules of engagement. There's no rules of engagement.

• 1:18:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a good question too, but like pepper spray, why would you use, like, think of a real scenario where you would use pepper spray as a, as a huge. Girl, I, I get it because you have valuable goods regardless of where you go. You know, you can be at the post office, you've still got those valuable goods that, that predators might want as a girl. But let's say, okay, I'm Tim Ferriss or I'm, you know, I'm me or whatever. Why, when would I use the pepper, pepper spray realistically? I'm sure there's one, one scenario.

• 1:19:14Jocko Willink?

  Asking that because it's a legitimate question because if someone says, look, I'm not really comfortable with guns. But if someone wants, comes into my house, I want to be able to defend myself, I'm going to get pepper spray. And the, the real quick answer is like, yeah, okay, cool.

• 1:19:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, better than nothing.

• 1:19:28Jocko Willink?

  It makes you go, oh, that kind of makes sense, right? At least you got something. The reality is the person's coming to your house, it's pepper spray is great as long as they don't have a knife.

• 1:19:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:38Jocko Willink?

  As long as they don't have a gun, in which case the pepper spray is doing you no good.

• 1:19:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:44Jocko Willink?

  Because you pepper spray me and I have a knife, I'm going to grab a hold of you, I'm going to, I'm going to cut your head off.

• 1:19:49Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:19:49Jocko Willink?

  Like, that's what's going to happen.

• 1:19:51Speaker 01

  In a situation that you, you got to use a pepper spray. So like, if someone's like burglarizing you and you turn on the light and they scatter, you don't need pepper spray for that kind of situation, you know, pepper spray is for someone who like.

• 1:20:01Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, but you don't know that they're going to scatter.

• 1:20:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:04Jocko Willink?

  Just like, you don't know if they have a gun or not.

• 1:20:06Speaker 01

  Yes. Yeah, yeah.

• 1:20:08Jocko Willink?

  And if you're prowling around in someone's house, you're going to be in a serious situation.

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think you should be, yeah.

• 1:20:14Jocko Willink?

  You're going to be in a real bad situation. Yeah, so that's what rules are and rules of engagement. So going back, we're trying to bring this back. Rules of engagement. That's exactly, that's exactly why rules of engagement can be tricky, but they shouldn't be. If you train your people well, if the people understand what the strategic mission, if they understand what the parameters, you put the parameters in there and they're loose enough that people can maneuver inside those parameters. Then occasionally they got to call you up and say, hey, I had to break the rules. And you say, oh, what happened? And they explain it to you. Okay. Good call.

• 1:20:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. People need to understand that.

• 1:20:54Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, urban combat is nearly always conducted at very close quarters. It is not uncommon to have opposing forces fighting from positions a few dozen meters apart. Most of the fighting is done from a distance between 50 and 500 meters. Due to this close in nature, it is critical to know where the enemy is and how they are deployed. Again, this is a fantasy, like knowing where the enemy is and how they're deployed is really hard to do. Even when you have, even when you have overhead coverage, looking in the city. I'll tell, I'll give you an example. I was watching my guys out on a mission. I was watching on a UAV feed. So we're watching, we're watching and looking for enemy.

• 1:21:37Jocko Willink?

  And all of a sudden we see weird activity. There's a vehicle. The vehicle stops, the vehicle kind of moves a little bit, stops again. Guys get out, they look around, open up the trunk. And now we're totally focused like, oh, these guys are getting ready to attack. Open up the trunk and as they're starting to pull stuff out of the trunk. My guys get hit from a different spot that we weren't looking because you can't see everything. Especially in a city, because think of it with buildings. As soon as you go off angle a little bit, you can't see the street anymore because it's down in the building. So we're, we actually are totally focused on this one thing and maneuvering the, the air asset to look at these people in a car.

• 1:22:17Jocko Willink?

  And as as they're as we're monitoring these guys, these suspected enemy personnel, all of a sudden, my guys get shot at from somewhere else and we completely miss it. And we continue to watch these guys and they pull out a jack and a tire and they lift up the car and they change the tire and they leave. Like you it's just normal, but it looked very suspect. So to think that you're ever going to know where the enemy is and how they're deployed is very, very challenging at best. You do the best it doesn't mean you don't try. You definitely try, but you you don't get all that information. You just don't get it.

• 1:22:51Speaker 01

  Hey, those UAVs. How how high are those?

• 1:22:55Jocko Willink?

  Depends on the UAV.

• 1:22:56Speaker 01

  So like, can you can they see them? Like, can people see them? Or are they just?

• 1:23:00Jocko Willink?

  Depends on the UAV. Yeah. And like, I'm I don't know what the classification of all that stuff is. So I'm not talking about it.

• 1:23:06Speaker 01

  Got it.

• 1:23:07Jocko Willink?

  I don't know what the I just know that they go at different heights. I'll I'll leave it at that.

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, because on the internet, you can see those, you know, those videos every once in a while. Like, they'll just have them.

• 1:23:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  And then it's like, dang, those guys don't even see that. Or, you know, I don't know if they do or don't or.

• 1:23:20Jocko Willink?

  Good optics, too. Yeah. Like, real good optics. I mean, just imagine, you know, the optics that we have in the civilian sector.

• 1:23:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:27Jocko Willink?

  Even those are good enough to be pretty amazing.

• 1:23:30Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 1:23:30Jocko Willink?

  So. Uh, talking about knowing where the enemy is. This lesson was learned the hard way during the initial stages of the battle inside the Citadel during the first two major clashes between Marine and NVA forces on the morning of thirteen February nineteen sixty-eight. The enemy surprised us and wreaked significant damages very quickly. This is because we weren't exactly sure where they were. Although the the Arvin, which is the uh, the South Vietnamese Army, had been in several major battles inside the Citadel. I don't recall receiving any intelligence attributed attributed to them regarding the enemy's exact location. Further to my knowledge, no Marine recon unit was sent to check out the situation before attacking on the morning of the thirteenth. So that's rough. And I'll tell you

• 1:24:14Jocko Willink?

  one thing that from my mind, where's the enemy? The enemy's everywhere. And you have to approach things as if the enemy can be anywhere. And the only way you can know that they're not where they're not everywhere is when you take something down and you secure it. That's when you know you're not there, then you move on.

• 1:24:31Jocko Willink?

  We recommend that all intelligence assets, recon units and surveillance devices that can be made available are deployed in a significant effort to fix the exact location of enemy soldiers and units. Again, this is, you can see where this is coming out of this for these guys. They must have been completely outflanked all the time where they were thinking, where is the enemy? We need to know where the enemy is. And it's really hard to know that. The enemy combatant, who knows where his enemy is hiding, experiences this experiences a decided advantage in surprise and the deployment of firepower, of course. Now, again, this doesn't like I'm saying it's hard. That definitely doesn't mean you mitigate. It doesn't mean you don't put up UAVs. So you can see maneuver. It doesn't mean you don't gather intelligence. It doesn't mean people shouldn't

• 1:25:15Jocko Willink?

  report back and and explain where they think the enemy is. We at least have an estimate.

• 1:25:22Jocko Willink?

  Continuing the combat, urban combat tactics. The tragedy of urban conflict is that the battlefield for each firefight is a neighborhood. Each objective taken is someone's home or a school or church or some other structure that has value and for and more or less significant meaning to its inhabitants. Considering the possibilities, it is not difficult to imagine tank battles across mall parking lots, mortar fire hitting a church, a hospital, a community center, heavy small arms, firefights between homes and artillery barrage on a schoolyard. While these images may be grist for the mills of Hollywood, when we think about them in in relevance to our homes and our neighborhood, schools and churches, the tragedy is somehow

• 1:26:05Jocko Willink?

  increased. However, it is our collective belief that the life of one Marine is more precious than 10, 100 homes, schools, churches, shrines, shopping malls, or any other building known to man. Therefore, all effort should be made using any and all weaponry available to stun the enemy and support Marine advances through the use of supporting arms and without regard to damage to buildings. So clearly, the whole idea that this started off with of the rules of engagement that were restricting heavy firepower because of the historical nature of the city. A, if you

• 1:26:48Jocko Willink?

  don't want historical buildings destroyed, don't have a war.

• 1:26:54Jocko Willink?

  And if you think we should save a building and that's going to cost the life of one of our brothers, not happening.

• 1:27:05Jocko Willink?

  Continuing, at the same time, the use of heavy weaponry in urban combat is an assuredly two edged sword as are many assets in modern warfare. Rubble can be nearly as effective as a building for protecting enemy firing positions. Further artillery and other flat trajectory weapons may be somewhat restricted by the height of buildings and their distance from each other. In many cases, mortars, although smaller in caliber, were superior because of their higher trajectory. So, interestingly, indirect fire.

• 1:27:39Jocko Willink?

  Indirect fire, taking the indirect approach is often better than the flat trajectory. I'm going to shoot through your front door. No, we're going to lob in some rounds on you. So, so we think about that when we're dealing with people. Punching them in the face is not as good as coming from an indirect position where they don't quite see where it's coming from, but it still gives them a little crack. And it's even to the point where he says the, even though they're smaller in caliber. So even though somebody does something that you want to straighten them out on, when you hit them in the face, we know what the reaction is. They get defensive and all that things. When we come from a flank, indirect fire, it's smaller caliber. It's not even as, it doesn't hit as hard, but it's more effective.

• 1:28:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:25Jocko Willink?

  Just more effective.

• 1:28:29Jocko Willink?

  Indirect fire all day long. Continuing, supporting arms, supporting arms, the most effective, are most effective prior to danger close to minimize the potential of friendly casualties and maximize preparatory fires to support the infantry's attack during Operation Way City. The most effective indirect fire during danger close was from an eight inch gun. We recommend that the supporting axis of fire be perpendicular as well as parallel. Finally, in the event, as in the case of Operation Way City, that due to political considerations, that proper preparatory fires would not be allowed, that a variety of artillery fires such as smoke, delayed fuses, high angle can be incorporated with the infantry's attack. Combined arms training for urban combat is critical.

• 1:29:13Jocko Willink?

  Cover and move. That's what supporting arms do. They lay down cover so you can maneuver. Other advantages of preparatory fire include the destruction of the camouflage of enemy positions, the psychological shock factor against enemy troops, and the fact that heavy weapons can create new avenues of attack and egress for armored vehicles. Pretty straightforward.

• 1:29:36Jocko Willink?

  One of the most effective aspects of supporting arms during the Battle of Wei were the killer teams that evolved. The M48 tank and the, and an Ontos, and the Ontos is like a, it's, it's actually a pretty crazy looking machine. It's got 160, 106 millimeter like cannons on it, and it's got six of them. And they're kind of like sticky now. And it's a light armored vehicle. It's like a tank, anti-tank vehicle. But um, Ontos would pair up and maneuver together as a team. This would allow either the tank or the Ontos to maneuver into a good fire position where, while the other covered.

• 1:30:13Speaker 01

  Cover and move.

• 1:30:13Jocko Willink?

  Cover and move. Thank you.

• 1:30:16Jocko Willink?

  Further, the devastating firepower put out by the 90 millimeter tank cannon and the six 106s of the Ontos turned out to be extremely beneficial because of their capabilities to deliver pinpoint firepower. Armored vehicles can provide many benefits to the infantry engaged in urban combat as they provide some cover from enemy small arms fire. However, armored vehicles can also become rocket magnets, producing casualties for infantry troops in close proximity. The enemy's gonna see that target.

• 1:30:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:48Jocko Willink?

  And they're gonna like it.

• 1:30:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:30:50Jocko Willink?

  And there's advantages to having that power, but there's also disadvantages. So you have to always weigh those things out. As a leader, you have to pay attention to those things. As a leader, you have to think of every advantage that you have. There's gonna be some negative to it. There's gonna be some disadvantage. When you bring an advantage to the table, there's gonna be some disadvantage. In Jiu Jitsu, right? If you're gonna be super flexible, you're not that strong.

• 1:31:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:12Jocko Willink?

  If you're gonna be super strong, you're not that flexible. Your cardio doesn't last very long, right? So, there's gonna be advantages and disadvantages that come with each asset that you have.

• 1:31:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:22Jocko Willink?

  So you have to think, you're gonna go for full locks, that's cool, you're giving up position.

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:26Jocko Willink?

  There's all kinds of things. You have to weigh those out, and as a leader, you have to look at, don't get, don't get wrapped around the positives of something.

• 1:31:32Speaker 01

  Right, like just the.

• 1:31:34Jocko Willink?

  Just the positives. There's not just positives for, for really anything.

• 1:31:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:38Jocko Willink?

  There's nothing that's just straight positives across the board, I, I, I guess, right?

• 1:31:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:43Jocko Willink?

  I'm sure we could think of something.

• 1:31:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 1:31:45Jocko Willink?

  I'm sure you could.

• 1:31:50Jocko Willink?

  Continuing, other than instances of harassment and interdiction fires, buildings that are hit by heavy weapons should be attacked immediately. This is good. Buildings that are hit by heavy weapons should be attacked immediately. Don't hesitate. You catch people off guard, don't hesitate. Don't hesitate. This happens, this happens in, in everything. We, we get a good, a good position, or something advantageous happens and we hesitate.

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:14Jocko Willink?

  Instead of taking advantage of it.

• 1:32:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:16Jocko Willink?

  We go, oh, I gotta hear.

• 1:32:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:18Jocko Willink?

  And then, then we, then we let it go. It happens in business, too. We get to a situation, oh, we finally get the, we finally get our competitor to make a mistake. Or we get in advantage position, and we celebrate instead of just finishing the job.

• 1:32:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:36Jocko Willink?

  Which is a big, bad thing to do.

• 1:32:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:41Jocko Willink?

  Remember that when calling in fire missions, you can request splash so your friendly troops have time to take cover immediately prior to impact. These guys were calling bombs right on top of them, a lot. In daytime operations, the use of covering smoke is often helpful when Marines must attack across open areas.

• 1:33:01Jocko Willink?

  As was learned during Operation Way City, even with proper support of heavy weapons, which was ultimately provided to the Marines, we faced hardcore North Vietnamese Army troops who fought from prepared positions, moved to secondary positions, fought again, and finally very reluctantly died. In the capture of each room, each floor, each rooftop, each building, each street, it was ultimately the Marine riflemen who won the battle.

• 1:33:31Jocko Willink?

  It's as a leader, as a leader, you always have to remember that line right there. In the capture of each room, each floor, each rooftop, each building, each street, it was ultimately the Marine rifleman who won the battle. As a leader, if you think that all you need to do is make a good decision and then you're gonna win, you're wrong. The folks on the front line have to truly understand what is happening and they're the ones that are gonna carry the day. And you could come up with the best battle plan ever, you could come up with the best strategic business plan ever, and if you don't have folks that are engaged and willing and are gonna take

• 1:34:14Jocko Willink?

  the fight to the enemy and are gonna win that foothold, they're gonna enter that room, they're gonna go out and sell into whatever industry you're trying to get into. If you don't have people that you trust, that are trained, that are ready, that are prepared, if you don't have them, best battle plan in the world isn't gonna work.

• 1:34:39Jocko Willink?

  It's critical for infantry units to know both the capabilities as well as the limitations of supporting arms.

• 1:34:47Jocko Willink?

  Know your limitations, right? This is again, there's positives and there's negatives.

• 1:34:54Jocko Willink?

  Another aspect of supporting arms limitations has to do with helicopter support. Urban terrain is not very forgiving to helicopters that may be forced to make an emergency landing. Helicopter pilots might be reluctant to fly over urban terrain.

• 1:35:09Jocko Willink?

  Know these things.

• 1:35:12Jocko Willink?

  One very tragic aspect of using supporting arms in urban combat is that the likelihood of civilian casualties is very high. In at least two situations that we are aware of, the NVA used civilians as screens for their infantry troops and fire missions were of necessity called in on those positions.

• 1:35:35Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:35:41Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:35:43Jocko Willink?

  Expect. Pre-discuss these things. Let your troops understand. Put them in role-play scenarios where they have to make a decision on what's happening. It's better to think through it 20 times. And make 20 mistakes. While we're doing some kind of a role-play scenario. Than it is to have to be making that decision for the first time. When you're on the battlefield and you can't discuss, you can't debrief.

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Not to mention the stress that's gonna kinda...

• 1:36:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

• 1:36:15Jocko Willink?

  Use of chemical weapons. During 1-5's battle inside the Citadel Fortress, which was kicked off on 13th February 1968, the battalion progressed a total of four blocks along our avenue of attack and had secured a total of 16 city blocks within our assigned area of operations. After nearly two weeks of heavy street fighting and after suffering nearly 50% casualties at the hands of a well-prepared, determined force of NVA soldiers, a force that finally estimated, that was finally estimated to be nearly 11,000 strong in the Waycity area of operations. On February 25th, 1968, Marines from Charlie Company shot off three E8 gas launchers. Carrying about 40 CS gas grenades toward the enemy's last known position.

• 1:36:59Jocko Willink?

  The next morning, 1-5 took control of the remaining 12 city blocks in about three hours without a single casualty because the NVA was not equipped to deal with tear grass attack and was forced to withdraw.

• 1:37:13Jocko Willink?

  So we're going from 50% casualties to zero.

• 1:37:21Jocko Willink?

  Taking a different approach. Utilizing weapons that no one was used to utilizing. The enemy had never, had not seen. They even have gas masks, they just had to get out of there. And that E8 gas launcher, it's like a suitcase-looking thing. And it's got eight tubes that have eight rounds at each in them. And it fires them like five seconds apart, so we're talking a lot of gas. Especially, they shot off three of them.

• 1:37:51Jocko Willink?

  You don't want none of that.

• 1:37:55Jocko Willink?

  No one can ever be certain that the use of chemical weapons would have made a difference in the initial stages of the battle. But many of the veterans of that battle have often wondered what might have happened if the E8s had been deployed in the early stages of the battle. We recommend the judicious use of chemical weapons such as tear gas, etc. for combat operations. Administration, planning and preparation, the inherent complexities of urban combat are such that special attention needs to be paid toward planning and preparations. Training, training, training. Practice makes perfect. A coordinated marine attack on an enemy-held position in a town or city can be equated

• 1:38:34Jocko Willink?

  to an intricate opera or Broadway production, although the stakes are a bit higher. Entry techniques, room search and clearing techniques, voice commands indicating movement or progress, fire discipline, the use of grenades, rockets, supporting fires, communications, all of these must be rehearsed and improved until they are second nature. Second nature. I was talking to you the other day. You were saying something about my guillotine choke. That it was there quickly.

• 1:39:14Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:39:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I was saying it's second, it's, I should have said it's second nature because what I did tell you is, sometimes I become aware, like we'll be rolling and all of a sudden I'll be like, oh, I've got a guillotine right now.

• 1:39:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:28Jocko Willink?

  I didn't even, this way, it just showed up there.

• 1:39:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:31Jocko Willink?

  With zero thought whatsoever.

• 1:39:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:34Jocko Willink?

  That's how you need to be.

• 1:39:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:37Jocko Willink?

  If I have to think about putting a guillotine on someone, then that means they have time to think about defending.

• 1:39:42Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:39:43Jocko Willink?

  If I didn't even think about it and it just happened.

• 1:39:45Speaker 01

  Just sort of, yeah, and, and not to split hairs, it's less about the guillotine specifically, it's just about your head, like, what do you call it, head control, you know, you know how you get that chin strap?

• 1:39:55Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:39:56Speaker 01

  It's that, where that just arrives and then, sure, it'll become a guillotine, for sure, or a cobra, or one of these other treacherous moves that you like to implement from time to time. Yeah. But yeah, it's like, your head, well, I feel like, I feel like it's second nature for my head to just land in there, that's what it feels like, for sure. But obviously, it's, it's your thing.

• 1:40:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no.

• 1:40:20Jocko Willink?

  But that's the way we want to train. That's the way we want to train. And I would say, I'll add to this. That what we want to train is we want to train for chaos. We want to train for mayhem. We want to train for the enemy to do things we're not expecting. That's what we want to train for. Because when you train for things that the enemy is not that you're not expecting the enemy to do, you actually get good at reacting to it. You know, you can get good at scrambling.

• 1:40:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:43Jocko Willink?

  In jujitsu.

• 1:40:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:40:45Jocko Willink?

  You can get good at ending up in positions that are beneficial through no conscious thought, but because you've scrambled enough that now you just know what you're looking for. These little these little things are gonna happen. I'm gonna get the underhook. I'm gonna get my hips in the right spot. I'm gonna move my head over here.

• 1:40:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:00Jocko Willink?

  That's what we want to do.

• 1:41:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, like the old almost cliche saying to like get comfortable being uncomfortable kind of thing, you know, it's like, yeah, you train yourself to be uncomfortable. Or to be trained in being uncomfortable, you can just deal better.

• 1:41:16Jocko Willink?

  But I'm trying to get something. I'm trying to reach a different point here. My point is this. If I, let's say, let's say

• 1:41:26Jocko Willink?

  here's, there's A through Z situations I can put you in. And they're all different. If I train you for A and B all the time, when I throw F at you, you're, you're lost.

• 1:41:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:40Jocko Willink?

  If I throw Q at you, you're, you're lost.

• 1:41:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:45Jocko Willink?

  If I train you, so I get you good at A and B, but then I start training you at D, I start throwing you at F, I start throwing you at M. You will start to realize that even in these disparate scenarios, there are some commonalities and there are some base positions that you can go to that will allow you the time to assess and make decisions.

• 1:42:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:42:10Jocko Willink?

  So you can, you can get good at chaos. That's what I'm saying.

• 1:42:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:16Jocko Willink?

  You can get good at chaos.

• 1:42:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:21Jocko Willink?

  You can get good at it. You can say, oh, when I see things happening that I don't understand, here's what I need to do.

• 1:42:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:42:29Jocko Willink?

  I need to find a good covered position, hopefully elevated where I can look around. I need to figure out where my troops are. I need to do it very quickly. I need to identify a prominent terrain feature that I can move all of us to in a rapid manner so that I can get control of the situation. Right there. Now, with those things that I just said, hey, I'm gonna get in a position where I can look around. I'm gonna look for, I'm gonna try and figure out where my people are. I'm gonna look for a prominent terrain feature that I can utilize as a stronghold. Guess what I just solved for? Just about any scenario that unfolds that I don't understand.

• 1:43:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:43:08Jocko Willink?

  I have a plan. I have a plan that I can actually implement against any situation.

• 1:43:16Jocko Willink?

  Think about that. So, oh, if I get a contact front, I have a plan. Oh, we start getting shot at from the front and we're in open ground, I have a plan. It's a standard operating procedure. Oh, I start getting shot at from the front and we're in closed terrain, I have a plan. There's a specific immediate action drill we're gonna perform. Oh, wait a second. I'm getting shot at. I'm not sure where it is. I hear screaming. I know that we're getting hit from multiple locations. What do I need to do? I have an immediate action for that too. I'm gonna find cover. I'm gonna look around. I'm gonna try and figure out where my troops are. I'm gonna look for a prominent terrain feature that we can move towards.

• 1:43:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:57Jocko Willink?

  There. Now all of a sudden, the chaos isn't really chaos.

• 1:44:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:44:01Jocko Willink?

  Now all of a sudden, I have a plan.

• 1:44:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kinda.

• 1:44:04Jocko Willink?

  And I can actually apply that plan to almost any scenario.

• 1:44:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:09Jocko Willink?

  So, the more that you train people for things that they don't expect and don't understand, the better they will get at dealing with those things.

• 1:44:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:17Jocko Willink?

  And that's very positive.

• 1:44:22Jocko Willink?

  Moving on.

• 1:44:26Jocko Willink?

  Further, all plans must be communicated and rehearsed at each level of command from the fire team to the company and above.

• 1:44:36Jocko Willink?

  It sounds like these guys did not have good decentralized command in terms of actually knowing what the overall plan was because it sounds like the fire teams were, even the platoon and fire team levels were a little bit lost at points. In particular, platoon commanders, platoon sergeants and squad leaders and fire team leaders must be aware of each man's assignment. This should include who goes into a structure first, who covers. Cover and move.

• 1:45:02Jocko Willink?

  Nowadays, because we've done, in the US military, we've done so much urban combat in the last, what has it been, 17 years? Every military unit in the US military, they can take down a structure and they do it well.

• 1:45:20Jocko Willink?

  And they do it off of standard operating procedures, not off of a specific plan of who goes where.

• 1:45:26Jocko Willink?

  Continue on, hand and arm signals as well as vocal commands should be established and practiced.

• 1:45:36Jocko Willink?

  And the last section is called command and control.

• 1:45:42Jocko Willink?

  In full-scale urban conflict, especially in situations where enemy dispositions are not well-known, initial contact with the enemy can be A, unexpected, B, at very close range, and C, massively devastating.

• 1:45:57Jocko Willink?

  Command and control, the basic Marine's connection to his leadership can disappear in the blink of an eye. During Operation Way City, Charlie 15 lost all of its officers except for two. Sergeants became platoon commanders, PFCs were squad leaders.

• 1:46:17Jocko Willink?

  In urban combat, it would not be at all surprising to find PFCs as platoon commanders, given the potentially high casualty rates. The critical factor for unit survival in these situations is that unit's ability to immediately determine the enemy's position and to return a high volume of sustained fire on those positions, allowing maneuverability despite the situation with the chain of command. So, two critical things there. Cover and move is one, and decentralized command is two. That's what they're talking about. You need to be able to put down a heavy volume of sustained fire on positions so that you can maneuver, and at the same time, you need to be able to do that regardless of the situation with the chain of command.

• 1:47:01Jocko Willink?

  Decentralized command. During the first day of 1-5's involvement in Operation Way City, Alpha Company lost its CO, its XO, and much of the company CP group. Of necessity, Alpha was pulled back to the battalion rear for reorganization. Loss of a few leaders effectively eliminated an entire company. This also delayed the battalion's attack, blunting our initiatives. You gotta have a plan if people go down. Who's taking over? That's gotta be, that's gotta be ready.

• 1:47:43Jocko Willink?

  The individual Marine who is under heavy enemy fire from very close range, who may now be cut off from his team and/or squad leader, needs to have been thoroughly informed of communications codes, lines of departures, lines of stoppage, friendly unit dispositions, and the ability to call in supporting fires and conduct contingency plans. What does that mean? That means the troops need to understand what is happening. In short, in urban conflict situations, command and control needs to be understood at every level down to the basic Marine.

• 1:48:19Jocko Willink?

  Based on our experiences during Operation Way City.

• 1:48:24Jocko Willink?

  Expect the unexpected, expect chaos and plan for all possibilities. And it's signed Scott Nelson, First Lieutenant, Commanding Officer, Charlie one five, Nick War, Second Lieutenant, Platoon Commander, Charlie one five. Travis Kurd, Second Lieutenant, Artillery Forward Observer, Attached to Charlie one five. And John Mullen, Staff Sergeant, Platoon Sergeant, Charlie one five.

• 1:48:55Jocko Willink?

  Nick War is his name, W A R R.

• 1:49:02Jocko Willink?

  Pretty stoked to be born with that name. Nick War was, he's in the Marine Corps. What's your name? My name is actually War.

• 1:49:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:49:11Jocko Willink?

  So. Uh, yeah, and, and to hear from these guys and, and this is, this, this document, which is now, well, it's 50 years old, 1968. And there's still lessons learned in this that apply to, really apply to everything. Apply to life, apply to urban combat, apply to business, apply to leadership. So. There you have it. And of course. When we see the way broadly. We can recognize it more. We can see it in more things.

• 1:49:52Jocko Willink?

  And it makes us more effective leaders regardless of the battlefield that we're on.

• 1:49:59Jocko Willink?

  So read. And appreciate the lessons of the past and echo.

• 1:50:05Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:50:06Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of.

• 1:50:09Jocko Willink?

  The way. I know, I know Jiu Jitsu is sort of beneficial, sort of helpful in allowing us to understand the way more clearly and perhaps even more broadly. I don't know if you have any recommendations of how we could sort of get in the game?

• 1:50:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, and stay in the game. Yeah, it's funny. You mentioned Jiu Jitsu is like a way to recognize. Things like it's so it's such a metaphor even to use the word metaphor seems like it's like detail it like it is life in so many ways like all even this thing that I'm listening to read I'm like oh yeah Jiu Jitsu every single one I just don't want to bore everyone with okay more Jiu Jitsu stuff

• 1:50:52Jocko Willink?

  Well, as I said on that on the Judo podcast that we did I was talking about the fact that I I have to give credit some credit to Jiu Jitsu for sort of revealing to me the thread that tied all these things together was JP was in town

• 1:51:10Speaker 01

  Sure

• 1:51:10Jocko Willink?

  And we were rolling Jiu Jitsu yesterday and I was thinking as like well actually when we were done I was thinking man when we were in Ramadi

• 1:51:22Jocko Willink?

  12 years ago I was a black belt in Jiu Jitsu like I like it was beneficial for me then to have been a black belt in Jiu Jitsu not because I wasn't going out and grappling against the enemy but I had already started to connect some of these dots and it's very, very helpful in life

• 1:51:44Speaker 01

  Yeah

• 1:51:46Jocko Willink?

  It's also helpful because it is a physical representation that you can feel and you can see

• 1:51:59Jocko Willink?

  it's not a theory there's theory behind it but it's not a theory it's happening to you and therefore when it happens to you you have something physical something concrete something that you actually experienced on a physical level and if you and that allows you to understand it metaphorically better

• 1:52:20Speaker 01

  Yeah

• 1:52:21Jocko Willink?

  Like when you get caught when someone's trying to choke you and then boom they unlock you and you just got flanked

• 1:52:26Speaker 01

  Yes

• 1:52:27Jocko Willink?

  That just happened to you it's not metaphorical

• 1:52:29Speaker 01

  Right

• 1:52:30Jocko Willink?

  You you truly understand what it feels like to get flanked

• 1:52:35Speaker 01

  Yeah

• 1:52:35Jocko Willink?

  If I explain to you hey when I'm telling you this thing over here and then I come at you from another angle you understand it you're you're you're just starting to grasp the concept but it didn't happen to you but when I'm trying to choke you and you go for the defense and then boom you get unlocked and you didn't see it coming at all you feel a flank you feel the effectiveness of it

• 1:52:58Speaker 01

  In real time

• 1:52:59Jocko Willink?

  In real time

• 1:53:00Speaker 01

  Yeah

• 1:53:01Jocko Willink?

  And that's why it's very Beneficial.

• 1:53:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:04Jocko Willink?

  To train some of that jujitsu.

• 1:53:06Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:53:06Jocko Willink?

  Feel, experience.

• 1:53:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:10Jocko Willink?

  The laws of combat.

• 1:53:11Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 1:53:12Jocko Willink?

  Feel them.

• 1:53:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:53:13Jocko Willink?

  You'll have a better comprehension of them.

• 1:53:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's on like a profound level too, like that's like a. That's good if you can keep that in mind and then you can go on the other side of the spectrum where it's like. So you're just fighting with your friends with no consequence, you know, where I think a lot of the time.

• 1:53:34Jocko Willink?

  What does that mean?

• 1:53:35Speaker 01

  Like if me and if you go, hey, let's go train right now. What we're gonna do when you say, let's go train, sure, we might go over some.

• 1:53:41Jocko Willink?

  Oh, oh, oh, yeah, we're fighting, but without real consequence.

• 1:53:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, we don't lose friendship, we don't get injured, uh, we don't get, you know, arrest all that stuff that, but we get to like fight, you know? I don't.

• 1:53:52Jocko Willink?

  That's also good.

• 1:53:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, so and here's the thing, like, here's a thing, like some people and I think we, most people. Like, we like fighting, but we don't wanna like fight people, like I don't wanna fight everyone, you know?

• 1:54:09Jocko Willink?

  Well, because then you can get arrested.

• 1:54:11Speaker 01

  Well.

• 1:54:13Speaker 01

  Sure, most people, like I said, we don't wanna just fight, you know, because there's all kinds of different reasons or whatever. But when you can just, when you have the opportunity to, to fight someone with no consequence, just to see how it would go.

• 1:54:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:28Speaker 01

  You know, like if he's, you know, these huge, huge men, you know, guys who are like seven feet tall, four hundred pounds, just huge and strong man and stuff like that. You don't wanna necessarily fight them, but you're like, I wonder, I wonder what that would be like.

• 1:54:41Jocko Willink?

  You wanna roll with them.

• 1:54:42Speaker 01

  To fight with that guy, you know? When you do jujitsu, you get that, you get that opportunity straight up, you wanna, you wanna try fight. There's, I wonder how many people out there are wondering, I wonder how it would be to fight Jocko.

• 1:54:53Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:54:53Speaker 01

  Not to say I would beat him up, not to say I wouldn't, but I wonder how it would be that.

• 1:54:56Jocko Willink?

  Well, a lot of people show up at the gym and.

• 1:54:59Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, oh, and that's exactly why.

• 1:55:01Jocko Willink?

  And the funny thing, if funny thing is, it doesn't matter if they're white belts or black belts.

• 1:55:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:05Jocko Willink?

  They still like, hey, can I roll?

• 1:55:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, see what up, see how that experience is, you know?

• 1:55:10Jocko Willink?

  They're usually, they're usually smiling.

• 1:55:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully, and really, when it comes down to it, I mean, unless you're trying to hurt someone, you know, and there's a bunch of different ways to hurt someone if you wanna hurt them. Cause you don't like them or you think they should, you know, they deserve it or all this stuff, it's not about that. It can be about that for sure, but that's not ultimately what it is, it's more about like, I wonder. I wonder how it'd be to fight that person and then when you start to learn more and more and more, you just you really just enjoy that activity like why get to fight like right now if I wanted to, if you had the time or whatever mean you we could go we could go fight right now.

• 1:55:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:45Speaker 01

  And it'd be like in a good safe way.

• 1:55:47Jocko Willink?

  Let's wrap this up then.

• 1:55:51Speaker 01

  No, but you see what I'm saying though. That's the way to do it. Anyway. Okay. All right. Back to the path. That's the path. Inappropriate part of the path, by the way.

• 1:55:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:00Speaker 01

  You wouldn't be you without jujitsu.

• 1:56:02Jocko Willink?

  I would not.

• 1:56:02Speaker 01

  You wouldn't even be like happy, especially if you knew.

• 1:56:06Jocko Willink?

  I wouldn't be happy at all.

• 1:56:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:09Jocko Willink?

  Especially if I knew, but on top of that, I wouldn't have connected things that I that jujitsu connected for me.

• 1:56:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:21Jocko Willink?

  There's something else. I would not be who I am. I'm gonna straight up say it.

• 1:56:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:30Jocko Willink?

  I would not be who I am without jujitsu.

• 1:56:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:33Jocko Willink?

  And you wouldn't be who you would not be on this podcast without jujitsu.

• 1:56:36Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:56:37Jocko Willink?

  I couldn't even talk to you. I mean, believe me, it's a stretch anyways.

• 1:56:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a struggle.

• 1:56:41Jocko Willink?

  It's a stretch anyways, but without jujitsu, I mean, at least there's something, right? Without that, you'd be talking about TV shows and I'd be like,

• 1:56:48Speaker 01

  Well, yeah.

• 1:56:48Jocko Willink?

  I'd be like muting your microphone or something.

• 1:56:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, man. See, so jujitsu, hey, it's a lifesaver. See what I'm saying?

• 1:56:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:55Speaker 01

  Get you into all kinds of different things. But yeah, you don't and and even if you're trying to like it stay on the path. Okay, I'm dragging it. I dig it, man. But it's important when you're when you're trying to get on the path, stay on the path, be be

• 1:57:09Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 1:57:09Speaker 01

  On the path. It's only fitting for real. It's only fitting. Okay, let's say, okay, let's say you have weapons training. Sweet. Let's say you can drive a car really well. Cool. You can hunt. You can you're capable. You can, you know, all this stuff, right?

• 1:57:27Speaker 01

  But if you're stripped away of like your tools.

• 1:57:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 1:57:33Speaker 01

  Then what?

• 1:57:34Jocko Willink?

  And it's just man on man?

• 1:57:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, just.

• 1:57:36Jocko Willink?

  If you don't have the jiu jitsu, that's a bummer.

• 1:57:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, and this is more of just a real general like way to look at it. So it's like, you ever watch um Men in Black? Remember, you know that one, right?

• 1:57:46Jocko Willink?

  I can't really remember too much about it.

• 1:57:48Speaker 01

  This might not even be the the movie, but it's it's a movie with one of the it's like this big rope creature, right? And then they find out it's just a suit and in the inside, there's just this little worm type person thing, you know? That kind of, you know?

• 1:58:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so you're saying if I didn't knew jiu jitsu, I would just be like a little worm?

• 1:58:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, you would, yeah, yeah, big, you know, a strong guy or whatever. But then like if all your tools were taken away, what are you left with kind of thing?

• 1:58:14Jocko Willink?

  Isn't it weird when you meet people that are that like they do they're like big?

• 1:58:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:20Jocko Willink?

  Maybe even they're strong, maybe even they're aggressive.

• 1:58:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:58:25Jocko Willink?

  But they they don't have. They don't have a skill, they don't have the skill.

• 1:58:28Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:58:29Jocko Willink?

  That's kind of a bummer.

• 1:58:30Speaker 01

  That's essentially.

• 1:58:31Jocko Willink?

  Here's this, here's the situation that people might be listening and think, okay, well, let's say you're in the situation where you don't have the skill. Well, you have two options. Option one is the easy path, which is I'm just never gonna get that skill. I'm never gonna go near jiu jitsu. I'm never gonna get in a confrontation with anybody because I don't want to be proven to myself that I'm a worm inside of a suit.

• 1:58:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:58:56Jocko Willink?

  Or you can take the hard path, which is even though I'm thirty seven years old. I'm bummed that I missed out on the bar, you know, I took me a while, but you know what? I'm gonna go figure this out.

• 1:59:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:10Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna go at least learn some of it. I'm gonna at least learn some of it.

• 1:59:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:15Jocko Willink?

  I would take that.

• 1:59:16Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:59:17Jocko Willink?

  Even though I know it's hard. Because people, you know, when you're when you get older, you don't want to try something new.

• 1:59:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:59:23Jocko Willink?

  Even though it's proven that learning something new is completely beneficial for your mental and physical health.

• 1:59:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, and how you say, and yeah, it's not all like pleasurable roses and stuff.

• 1:59:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no.

• 1:59:41Speaker 01

  There's some, there's some struggle in there.

• 1:59:43Jocko Willink?

  Bruh.

• 1:59:44Speaker 01

  But.

• 1:59:44Jocko Willink?

  Tell me about it.

• 1:59:45Speaker 01

  There's, there's.

• 1:59:47Jocko Willink?

  I had Dean Lister, I was, I was in turtle position. Dean Lister's shoulders healing back up. I was in turtle position, mount and side control for 22 minutes the other day.

• 1:59:58Speaker 01

  And that's a struggle.

• 2:00:00Jocko Willink?

  And also he was pushing my face into the mat and saying, what color is the mat?

• 2:00:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, see, like I said.

• 2:00:09Jocko Willink?

  You see what I'm saying?

• 2:00:10Speaker 01

  Well.

• 2:00:10Jocko Willink?

  Was that fun?

• 2:00:11Speaker 01

  That.

• 2:00:11Jocko Willink?

  The answer is no.

• 2:00:12Speaker 01

  No, that's high level struggle.

• 2:00:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:14Speaker 01

  Because the typical person you go into, that's not going to happen to you. So that's, that's like the struggles you have to look forward to.

• 2:00:20Jocko Willink?

  That's going against someone that has a personal vendetta on your existence.

• 2:00:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:25Jocko Willink?

  Dean has on mine.

• 2:00:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I think he has a CD called Kill Jocko.

• 2:00:29Jocko Willink?

  He does indeed.

• 2:00:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, factually. Nonetheless.

• 2:00:31Jocko Willink?

  All right.

• 2:00:31Speaker 01

  There's going to be some struggle in there. You get it, but you jump in there, just like everything. When you learn golf, there's going to be a struggle.

• 2:00:37Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:00:38Speaker 01

  You're going to miss that hole sometimes. Bruh, I know.

• 2:00:40Jocko Willink?

  That's a different kind of struggle.

• 2:00:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, but on a profound, fundamental level, it's all the same struggle. Nonetheless, you're going to need a gi. And when you get your gi, you're going to go to originmaine.com, get an origin gi. It's the best kind made in America from the cotton grown in America, loomed or weave woven.

• 2:00:59Jocko Willink?

  Woven.

• 2:00:59Speaker 01

  In America, assembled, sewn, stitched, presented, enjoyed.

• 2:01:06Jocko Willink?

  In America.

• 2:01:07Speaker 01

  Utilized.

• 2:01:07Jocko Willink?

  Utilized in America.

• 2:01:08Speaker 01

  In America, actually it can be utilized wherever, but nonetheless, I mean, in America. And they are factually now, not my opinion, sounds like an opinion, but it's factually. They're factually the best gis in the world.

• 2:01:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. What's cool is, um, the gis are awesome, but there's a problem.

• 2:01:27Speaker 01

  What's the problem?

• 2:01:28Jocko Willink?

  The problem is you can't wear a gi to the store.

• 2:01:32Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:01:33Jocko Willink?

  You cannot wear a gi to the restaurant.

• 2:01:35Speaker 01

  No, not really.

• 2:01:36Jocko Willink?

  And yet you wear the Origin pants and you think, man, I wouldn't mind, you know, if they had a pocket, I would roll out, right?

• 2:01:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:42Jocko Willink?

  Especially if you get the black ones.

• 2:01:44Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 2:01:44Jocko Willink?

  You know, like, it's not, it's not crazy to think, hey, maybe I'll just kind of roll out to the store or maybe go take my wife out for dinner.

• 2:01:53Speaker 01

  No, yeah.

• 2:01:55Jocko Willink?

  But that's okay, because guess what we got now?

• 2:01:58Speaker 01

  Denim?

• 2:01:58Jocko Willink?

  Origin jeans.

• 2:02:00Speaker 01

  Dig it.

• 2:02:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:01Jocko Willink?

  So, those are coming.

• 2:02:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:02:03Jocko Willink?

  They're not quite out yet, but I got mine.

• 2:02:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't have mine and, you know, and.

• 2:02:08Jocko Willink?

  You should be texting Pete, bro.

• 2:02:09Speaker 01

  I know, I don't want to buy, you know, Pete's, he's busy, man, he does a lot. And I don't want to, I don't want to, hey, my personal interests start to create roadblock or, or speed bumps in this whole thing.

• 2:02:20Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 2:02:21Speaker 01

  But I do want those jeans, though, that's the thing. So I got to balance the little dichotomy, my personal interest and the interest of Pete and his discourse. Nonetheless, I will have them, we will have them. When do they come out then?

• 2:02:33Jocko Willink?

  They're in the process of coming out right now. We have the material, we are cutting the material, now we're selling the material.

• 2:02:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's interesting because I don't really get excited about jeans or I don't get it like new jeans coming out or the new iPhone car. I don't get excited about that kind of stuff, but for some reason, I'm kind of excited about.

• 2:02:54Jocko Willink?

  Let me tell you why I'm a little bit excited about it.

• 2:02:56Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 2:02:57Jocko Willink?

  Because of this, jeans are American, right? Jeans represent America. Let's face it, if you wanted to draw a stereotypical American human, they'd be wearing a pair of jeans.

• 2:03:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:09Jocko Willink?

  Here's the problem, jeans were made in America, jeans were invented in America, jeans became famous in America, and then we sold our soul and put them overseas. Let them get manufactured overseas, something that shouldn't have happened. And so to bring it back to America, does that feel good? Indeed, yes it does.

• 2:03:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, makes sense. I dig it.

• 2:03:35Jocko Willink?

  Bring back the soul. Um, other clothes, their t-shirts and stuff from Origin. If you can get, even if you don't want jeans, you can get joggers right now.

• 2:03:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 2:03:44Jocko Willink?

  Which apparently are quite comfy. Supplements too. Joint warfare, krill oil, discipline. Discipline go. Discipline go. So when I work, sometimes I have to work for two, three straight hours without any interruptions.

• 2:04:02Speaker 01

  Oh, gotcha.

• 2:04:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. You see what I'm saying? So I would be drinking discipline and all of a sudden I'm an hour and forty minutes in and guess what? I gotta hit the head.

• 2:04:10Speaker 01

  Oh, restroom break, yeah.

• 2:04:11Jocko Willink?

  So that's why we made Discipline Go. Discipline Go is just a, a, a pill. Is that what it's called? A capsule?

• 2:04:18Speaker 01

  Capsule, yeah.

• 2:04:18Jocko Willink?

  And it's got the, uh, it's got the goodness in it. And we also have coming the Discipline Go in a can.

• 2:04:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, that's like the.

• 2:04:27Jocko Willink?

  Have you had it yet?

• 2:04:28Speaker 01

  Yes. And that's, that's really the one where like where, where was I?

• 2:04:32Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did I give you one in New York when we were, did the New York?

• 2:04:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I had, I had one before that though. I had a couple. They sent me some. Yeah, it's good.

• 2:04:39Jocko Willink?

  I got, I got more coming today. Hopefully it'll be here. But, um, yeah, so that'll be coming. Of course we got Molk, which apparently Dr. Luke hates mint chocolate chip passionately. And so we heard him going off the other day like, why would you want anything that tastes like toothpaste? Mint is toothpaste.

• 2:04:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:59Jocko Willink?

  So we have a little disagreement. We'll have to settle that one on the mat, but he's just going with peanut butter or vanilla gorilla or something.

• 2:05:04Speaker 01

  Amen. Good.

• 2:05:05Jocko Willink?

  And don't forget about the Warrior Kid Molk. No kidding.

• 2:05:12Jocko Willink?

  It tastes like strawberry Nestle's strawberry quick. That's what it tastes like.

• 2:05:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:17Jocko Willink?

  Can I say that? Is that legal?

• 2:05:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:05:19Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Whether it's legal or not, I can say it. I did say it. And it tastes exactly like, I'm using that. Exactly like strawberry Nestle's quick, but it has no sugar. It's got awesome protein and it will make your kid into the next.

• 2:05:37Speaker 01

  You're about to say something illegal right now.

• 2:05:40Jocko Willink?

  The next squared away athlete.

• 2:05:44Speaker 01

  Alright, there you go.

• 2:05:45Jocko Willink?

  Yes, I was gonna name names, but I'm not gonna name names. But so that's origin main.com.

• 2:05:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:05:51Jocko Willink?

  Props to all my people, all my people up at Origin that are working every day sewing, cutting, stitching, moving, shipping, and making, pretty much getting after it.

• 2:06:02Speaker 01

  Yep, big time. Also, we have a store. It's called Jaco Store. You know, stuff a little bit more formulated for representing the path itself, you know, a little bit skewed, but some good stuff on there, some new stuff on there too, by the way.

• 2:06:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 2:06:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, they uh, the traveler travel mugs.

• 2:06:19Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:06:20Speaker 01

  Kinda new. Got a, I'm putting a hoodie up there, the black on black.

• 2:06:25Jocko Willink?

  Hmm, I like that subtle.

• 2:06:27Speaker 01

  Heavy, okay.

• 2:06:28Jocko Willink?

  Oh, heavy? Is it heavy?

• 2:06:29Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:06:30Jocko Willink?

  Is it legit heavy?

• 2:06:31Speaker 01

  Legit heavy.

• 2:06:32Jocko Willink?

  Legit, like it's the hea- is it the heaviest?

• 2:06:34Speaker 01

  Heaviest one in existence, I'm sorry to say, no, but.

• 2:06:37Jocko Willink?

  Is it the heaviest one that you've ever made?

• 2:06:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:06:40Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:06:40Speaker 01

  It's heavy, it's noticeably heavier than the original. Yeah, it's black on black. Alright, you got it. Two of them nonetheless. Good stuff on there. Rash guards on there too. Four jujitsu, four jujitsu, representing the path big time on that one. Also, you can do other stuff with rash guards as well, but um, yeah, some good stuff on there. If you want to represent, support, stay on the path, that's where you go. JacoStore.com. Here's the thing about getting new stuff too, and this is, this is something that.

• 2:07:11Jocko Willink?

  This is where six year old echo brain comes out.

• 2:07:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, and here's the thing.

• 2:07:14Jocko Willink?

  Straight up.

• 2:07:14Speaker 01

  But it still applies, it still applies. And if this dawns on me from time to time, especially when it hits me, when you get like a new thing, right? I've talked about this before. When you get a new rash guard.

• 2:07:24Jocko Willink?

  You are six years old.

• 2:07:25Speaker 01

  Bro, you don't even act Eli. You know what I think? I think you think the same thing. I think you feel the same way. You won't necessarily admit it, especially not to me.

• 2:07:32Jocko Willink?

  I'm thinking.

• 2:07:33Speaker 01

  I think you feel the same way. Okay, if you got a new.

• 2:07:37Jocko Willink?

  I'm thinking of something that that excites me to get new. And um, you keep doing what you're doing. I'll think of something over here.

• 2:07:43Speaker 01

  Well, think surfboard, think whatever. Nonetheless, there you go. So if you get a new rash guard, a new gi. Um, even new socks sometimes, new shoes.

• 2:07:53Jocko Willink?

  I haven't gotten new socks since like eighteen forty-three.

• 2:07:56Speaker 01

  I get the socks from Onnit, I get fired up. Nonetheless, you get something new, get a rash guard that says get after it if you don't have one already. You will be looking forward to going to jujitsu that much more. And that's the good thing about like these things that it.

• 2:08:11Jocko Willink?

  My name is Zachary Charles and I'm seven.

• 2:08:15Speaker 01

  It's hundred percent correct. Try it. Try. Actually, I would say for anyone who has like, you know, a shirt or whatever, they they felt it. Oh, that's what I that's I predict.

• 2:08:24Jocko Willink?

  No, I I I I understand what you're saying and it actually is true when people. When you get the, you know, that's the classic, the classic scene from literature.

• 2:08:38Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:08:38Jocko Willink?

  Is the, I think it's like the dawning of the uniform of the of the warrior.

• 2:08:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:08:44Jocko Willink?

  And they do it in movies too, the collage, they know the the hero is putting his boots on and then he's putting his web gear on and even just when people see, you know, the superhero's secret thing opens up and all this gears in there. It's all fired up.

• 2:08:59Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:08:59Jocko Willink?

  Or like the the old vet that has to go into that chest in his or like in in Mikey and the Dragons, you know, when he's open opening up the chest filled with war gear.

• 2:09:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:09:12Jocko Willink?

  You know, everyone got a little fired up.

• 2:09:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz they understand. Exactly, right.

• 2:09:17Jocko Willink?

  There we go.

• 2:09:17Speaker 01

  So same deal. Anyway, Jaco store dot com. You wanna represent on the path. Get fired up about stuff. There you go. See something you like, grab something. Also, Jaco White Tea. We're still doing that. I'm still doing that big time because I was never a tea person. I mean, I'm saying that's that's saying something cuz I was never a tea person. But guess what? Look at me, tea person. Well, kind of. I only drink this tea, but you know, I'm into it.

• 2:09:43Jocko Willink?

  You're a Jaco White Tea person, apparently.

• 2:09:45Speaker 01

  Big time.

• 2:09:46Jocko Willink?

  How's that deadlift?

• 2:09:47Speaker 01

  Huge. Eighty-one hundred pounds, actually. You know, I've been sticking with it.

• 2:09:52Jocko Willink?

  Hey, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't. iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, leave reviews so I can read them.

• 2:09:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you want.

• 2:10:00Jocko Willink?

  If you want, if you don't want, then don't whatever.

• 2:10:03Speaker 01

  Also Warrior Kid Podcast, subscribe to that one.

• 2:10:06Jocko Willink?

  I was on a podcast yesterday and they asked me to say subscribe to their podcast.

• 2:10:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:10:11Jocko Willink?

  And I said, I don't even ask people to subscribe to my podcast. And I was like, well, actually I guess I do. And now I just did.

• 2:10:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, maybe it's, you know, yeah.

• 2:10:20Jocko Willink?

  Actually, you and I had this discussion many times. I was like, why do we need to do you? You're like, well, people need to subscribe. Maybe they haven't subscribed. I mean, we're 162 podcast deep. That's gotta be four, 500 hours of listening. You don't think someone hit subscribe yet?

• 2:10:36Speaker 01

  Well, I, I agree with you fully.

• 2:10:37Jocko Willink?

  So we can, can we cut this out now?

• 2:10:39Speaker 01

  We, yeah. You wrote this by the way, but yeah, of course we can.

• 2:10:43Jocko Willink?

  Well, this is, this is a carryover.

• 2:10:47Speaker 01

  Yes, carryover. Oh yes. Look, it's us doing what we talked about before earlier today about doing things like, because that's just how, you know, we gotta think.

• 2:10:58Jocko Willink?

  Gotta think.

• 2:10:59Speaker 01

  Why do we want to waste five seconds of someone's time telling them, you know, it just sounds kind of like, what is it like, what are you called redundant or something? It's kind of like, um.

• 2:11:08Jocko Willink?

  You think everyone, do you think anyone ever got to this point, three hours deep into the podcast and you or I said, and subscribe to them and they reached down to their phone?

• 2:11:18Speaker 01

  Yes. Oh my gosh. Yeah. Oh shoot. I, we can do that. Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:11:22Jocko Willink?

  Well, hey, you're right. Let me tell you what you might forget. You might forget to subscribe to the Warrior Kid Podcast because it's not coming out quite as consistently at this time, but it is a great podcast for you or for your kids to listen to, to get them on the path.

• 2:11:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:38Jocko Willink?

  They can also.

• 2:11:39Speaker 01

  If you have kids, that's a good one.

• 2:11:41Jocko Willink?

  Oh, if you have kids, it's definitely a good one. If you don't have kids, it's not a bad one.

• 2:11:44Speaker 01

  Yeah. You can learn some real fundamental. Those are lessons that you kind of forget.

• 2:11:52Speaker 01

  That's what I think.

• 2:11:53Jocko Willink?

  Also get to Warrior Kid Soap, IrishOaksRanch.com. Got young Aiden Warrior Kid.

• 2:12:00Jocko Willink?

  Making soap.

• 2:12:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, interesting.

• 2:12:02Jocko Willink?

  Having his own business.

• 2:12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:04Jocko Willink?

  Throw him some support. Whatever, Irish Oaks Ranch dot com.

• 2:12:09Speaker 01

  Real soap too, by the way.

• 2:12:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:10Speaker 01

  This like, oh, let me buy the soap kit online and put my flavor in there and sell it. You can do that.

• 2:12:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I didn't know you could do that. How the hell do you even know that?

• 2:12:20Speaker 01

  I, I, you know, I know some things.

• 2:12:22Jocko Willink?

  Kind of weird knowledge.

• 2:12:25Speaker 01

  Nonetheless.

• 2:12:26Jocko Willink?

  All right. Don't forget about YouTube. And that's where you can see Echo's legit videos. And when you get done watching the video, make sure you hit some K.

• 2:12:36Speaker 01

  Nonetheless, we do have a YouTube channel. That's the point.

• 2:12:38Jocko Willink?

  That is the point.

• 2:12:39Speaker 01

  Cause you know, if you like the video version, or you didn't know there was a video version.

• 2:12:43Jocko Willink?

  You can leave comments there too. I read them. I read YouTube comments, even though Joe Rogan tells me not to.

• 2:12:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, cause you do, that's a slippery slope. Cause if a comment comes and it like, it's, what's the, the worst can comment is the kind that's true or kinda true that like, what do you, just like you're saying, like, it won't hit you. It's not a hard punch.

• 2:13:04Jocko Willink?

  It's a little indirect fire.

• 2:13:05Speaker 01

  It's an indirect fire, but more effective, like, you know, in your neck or something. You know, it's like that guy. It has to be a little bit true.

• 2:13:12Jocko Willink?

  I actually, I think I've told you this before, but I was, one night I was reading YouTube comments to my oldest daughter about me. Cause they were, and I forget it was, it wasn't our podcast. It was, it was a different podcast, a podcast that maybe people weren't as much on board with the program. So that's a lot of really colorful things to say about me.

• 2:13:32Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I think, I think just Joe Rogan saying to you, like, don't read them. And this is why.

• 2:13:37Jocko Willink?

  He doesn't say, he doesn't say it like that. He just, he doesn't say it like, hey, hey, Jocko, don't know. He's like, oh, you can't read the YouTube comments, man. He'll say it like that.

• 2:13:45Speaker 01

  Yes. And that's what I mean. So you just knowing that allows you to go in and, and know like, okay, you can read them and you just gotta know that that's accessible.

• 2:13:52Jocko Willink?

  But it freaks me out when Jordan Peterson like says he reads them, but like they impact him.

• 2:13:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. He just didn't know. He just didn't know.

• 2:13:59Jocko Willink?

  No. Joe Rogan need to tell him?

• 2:14:01Speaker 01

  That you gotta tell him, hey, that's like, that's not a normal comment section is what I'm saying. It's not like on Instagram where it's like, hey, you know, it's like, it's just. Different the dynamic, bro, I used to make these videos, you know this, but I used to make these videos like, you know, parodies of like Darth Vader goes on dates and then I made this one.

• 2:14:18Jocko Willink?

  You should put those on my channel, on our channel, on your channel.

• 2:14:21Speaker 01

  People still watch, I mean, they're funny.

• 2:14:25Speaker 01

  But I made this one bikini lightsaber battle. It's like, you know, um, Glory and them, they're just fighting with lightsabers at the beach or whatever.

• 2:14:36Speaker 01

  Well, you know, you know, people watch them, but man, I look at the comments on that, man, it's like people, I think someone wanted me to die. He said, whoever made this should die. Like literally said that. I was like, damn.

• 2:14:47Jocko Willink?

  What was they hating about it? What were they hating about?

• 2:14:50Speaker 01

  That it was dumb.

• 2:14:51Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:14:51Speaker 01

  Which it is, by the way. Yeah, it's like two girls, they're mad at something. Then they fight lightsaber and then like she, one girl kills the other one and then like Spider-Man comes out is basically all the props that I had at my house. I was like, let me make a video, you know? And so it was like, yeah, it was dumb for sure, but bro, you don't have to say that kind of comments like, bro, I gotta die now because it's dumb.

• 2:15:17Speaker 01

  The point, the point is, yeah, you gotta, you gotta kind of know that that's not a normal comment section on YouTube there, but you know.

• 2:15:23Jocko Willink?

  I get, I get good entertainment out of it. It's pretty fun. Also got psychological warfare. That's on iTunes, Google Play, MP3 platforms. And that is a album with tracks about how to overcome various stages of weakness that you might occur, that might occur during your day. That's all we're gonna say about that one.

• 2:15:39Speaker 01

  Good. That's very concise.

• 2:15:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:41Speaker 01

  It's Jaco though, by the way, on the track. So that's something. Also on it, on it.com slash Jaco. This is where I get all my kettlebells and socks. Like I mentioned, it seems odd, like why would you just get socks from on it? Because they're freaking dope. You ever watch, you ever look at the socks on on it? They're freaking good. Yeah, really good. You want to flex on the guys?

• 2:16:01Jocko Willink?

  What pattern?

• 2:16:02Speaker 01

  I got all of them, so.

• 2:16:05Jocko Willink?

  Weird flex, but okay.

• 2:16:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, when you wanna flex at the with uh at the people at the TSA.

• 2:16:12Jocko Willink?

  I keep, I keep wanting to use the term flex like in its modern way cuz my kids use it.

• 2:16:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:17Jocko Willink?

  And and I keep wanting to use it.

• 2:16:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, keep trying, man. Yeah, I think you're doing pretty good.

• 2:16:23Jocko Willink?

  But no, I haven't really appropriately used it yet.

• 2:16:26Speaker 01

  Well, you used weird flex, but okay on to me, not about me, like you're you're saying about someone else.

• 2:16:32Jocko Willink?

  No. No, cuz Casey had a video that was called that.

• 2:16:36Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 2:16:37Jocko Willink?

  Weird flex, but okay. And that's when I realized it was a thing that that that's an actual thing.

• 2:16:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:16:42Jocko Willink?

  Weird flex, but okay. No, you told me it was a thing.

• 2:16:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, I like that.

• 2:16:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:47Speaker 01

  I don't use it. I wanna use it, but.

• 2:16:49Jocko Willink?

  It's sort of humble brag, right?

• 2:16:50Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:16:51Jocko Willink?

  Like weird flex.

• 2:16:52Speaker 01

  Almost. It's yeah, it's like you're bragging about something kinda weird to brag about, but cool, man, do do what you do kinda thing.

• 2:16:58Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's what the that's what Casey's video was weird flex with okay was about. He was in a he's in a movie. And he was kinda like flexing that he was in a movie.

• 2:17:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:08Jocko Willink?

  And he was like, but okay.

• 2:17:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:17:10Jocko Willink?

  He was all fired up.

• 2:17:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it'd be more like, hey, like, I can turn my eyelids inside out. Okay, weird flex, but okay.

• 2:17:20Jocko Willink?

  That because flex was a little stronger.

• 2:17:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, you see what I'm saying.

• 2:17:27Jocko Willink?

  I see what you're saying.

• 2:17:27Speaker 01

  Nonetheless, on it, this is where you get your your fitness that you you know how we're we all have home gyms, most of us.

• 2:17:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:35Speaker 01

  And you know, you wanna day, you want some more kettlebells, you want some jump ropes, battle ropes, like stuff, more good stuff to keep you on the path, keep you in shape. That's where you go on it dot com.

• 2:17:45Jocko Willink?

  If you wanna get your mind in shape, your brain in shape, then you should read. If you wanna read some books that I wrote, then cool. You can read Mikey and the Dragons, best children's book ever for children under the age of six, voted by me and you.

• 2:18:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, and our children.

• 2:18:04Jocko Willink?

  And our children. Actually, someone asked my daughter, my middle daughter, the other day, what's your favorite book of your dad's? And she said, Mikey and the Dragons.

• 2:18:14Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 2:18:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:15Speaker 01

  My daughter didn't, we didn't have any kind of official, like, oh, what's the best one? But the one that she always reaches for or pushes for is Way the Warrior Kid Two, Mark's Mission.

• 2:18:24Jocko Willink?

  She likes Mark's Mission. So there's that. So there's Mikey and the Dragons, there's Way the Warrior Kid Two, Mark's Mission, there's Way the Warrior Kid One, which is called Way the Warrior Kid. Soon to be Way the Warrior Kid Three, writing is complete. John Bozak is knee deep in the art right now. And that will be coming out in the spring. I'm gonna get it on Amazon for preorder as early as I possibly can, so we don't have another scenario like we had with Mikey and the Dragons where we bought, you all bought a lot of them. And I didn't have them on hand, let's say. Did get them everybody, everybody by Christmas. So, uh, look for that one. Way the Warrior Kid Three will be coming out.

• 2:19:06Jocko Willink?

  And then, of course, we got Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, which is awesome to see that impact people. And it's also a good gift to give to people that maybe need a little help.

• 2:19:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:19Jocko Willink?

  Just kind of steer them in the right direction. Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy in Leadership, those are the leadership books that I wrote with my brother Leif Babin. And they will help you with your organization and in your business and in your life. Lead and win. Also, we got Echelon Front, which is my leadership consultancy. It's me, it's Leif Babin, JP Denell, Dave Burke, Flynn Cochrane, Mike Shirelli, Mike Byema. There's a picture that echoes into.

• 2:19:53Jocko Willink?

  He's randomly in the picture on the website.

• 2:19:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 2:19:55Jocko Willink?

  But he's not, he's not one of the leadership instructors. He is one of the leadership instructor filmers.

• 2:20:05Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:20:08Speaker 01

  Uh, hey, man, I'm on the website. So that's really all.

• 2:20:10Jocko Willink?

  So what we do is we solve problems through leadership. Go to Echelonfront.com for that. We also have the muster coming up 2019. It's going to be May 23rd and 24th in Chicago, September 19th and 20th in Denver and December 4th and 5th in Sydney, Australia. Check out a tree ownership.com. They all have sold out and this will sell sell out as well. And when you go to that, you're going to get granular. Explanations, multiple angles on how to work and apply this stuff. And if you can't come to muster, guess what? You can go somewhere else. You can go to efonline.com. This is what we put together.

• 2:20:53Jocko Willink?

  Took us about nine months to film, put together, design. It's me and the rest of the Echelon front team training, leadership. Through technology and it's available for we originally designed it for enterprise, for companies that we work with that have.

• 2:21:10Jocko Willink?

  Forty eight thousand employees and we can't travel the globe and train them all. So we put this stuff online and it's also available now direct to consumer. The F online.com and also we have EF Overwatch. EF Overwatch.com where we are connecting proven leaders from combat aviation and from special operations. And we're plugging them into companies that need leadership. To win at their mission. So get it. Go to EF Overwatch.com. If you need that. And if you want to pass on lessons learned to us.

• 2:21:50Jocko Willink?

  We are kicking it on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram and on Facebook.

• 2:21:59Jocko Willink?

  Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink and of course. Thanks to all of our military personnel around the world.

• 2:22:10Jocko Willink?

  Who stand their ground to protect us.

• 2:22:16Jocko Willink?

  And also thank you to our police and law enforcement, the firefighters, the paramedics and EMTs, the correctional officers, the folks on border patrol and all the first responders who stand their ground here at home to protect us.

• 2:22:34Jocko Willink?

  And to everyone else, I always say that time is short.

• 2:22:42Jocko Willink?

  But most of us have more than six seconds.

• 2:22:50Jocko Willink?

  The six seconds that Corporal Jonathan Yale

• 2:22:55Jocko Willink?

  and Lance Corporal Jordan Herger had to make the ultimate decision and the ultimate sacrifice. They could have had more time.

• 2:23:07Jocko Willink?

  Had they run away.

• 2:23:11Jocko Willink?

  But they sacrificed it all.

• 2:23:17Jocko Willink?

  They gave up their time, but we, we still have time, the time they gave to us.

• 2:23:26Jocko Willink?

  So don't waste it.

• 2:23:30Jocko Willink?

  Not six minutes of it, not six seconds of it, not one second of it, none of it. Get out there every second of every day.

• 2:23:41Jocko Willink?

  And get after it.

• 2:23:44Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco.

• 2:23:50Jocko Willink?

  Out.