71: Heroes are Not Perfect. Never Judge. The Will to Overcome REAL Hardship: "A Helmet for my Pillow" by Robert Leckie

0:00:00 - Opening 0:04:14 - "A Helmet for my Pillow" by Robert Leckie http://amzn.to/2peoxX7 0:07:49 - Stripped Down to Nothing in Boot Camp. Surrender and Discipline. 0:18:53 - Advanced Training. 0:28:48 - Guadalcanal: Time to Fight. 1:07:38 - After the Battle: R&R, Partying, and Getting in Trouble. 1:23:05 - Assault on New Britain. 1:39:46 - Physical Complications and Conditions. 1:52:03 - Medical treatment / Don't Judge The Intellect of a Man by his Job. 2:00:17 - Back to Fighting - Peleliu. 2:21:18 - Battle was Won, but with Great Sacrifice. 2:26:00 - Take-away: Who are we to Judge? 2:34:57 - Support, Cool Onnit http://www.onnit.com/jocko, Amazon https://www.amazon.com/?&tag=jocko20-20&camp=216797&creative=498533&linkCode=ur1&adid=1DKYGWXQBV0KNEZ3MZZX&, JockoStore http://www.jockostore.com stuff, with Jocko White Tea http://www.jockotea.com and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes) https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/psychological-warfare/id1183222322. Extreme Ownership (book) http://amzn.to/2jonHTx, (Jocko's Kids' Book) Way of the Warrior Kid http://amzn.to/2n9k6I9, and The Muster002 http://www.extremeownership.com 3:11:01 - 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.

• 0:01Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast Number 71 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:17Jocko Willink?

  A helmet for my pillow, a poncho for my bed. My rifle rests across my chest, the stars swing overhead. Into your holes and gun pits, kill them with rifles and knives. Feed them with lead until they are dead and widowed are their wives. Sons of the mothers who gave you honor and gift of birth. Strike with the knife till blood and life run out upon the earth. Marines, keep faith with your glory, keep to your trembling hole. Intruder fuel of nip-on steel can't penetrate your soul.

• 1:02Jocko Willink?

  Closing, they charge all howling, their breasts all targets large. The gun must shake, the bullets make a slaughter of their charge. Red are the flashing tracers, yellow the bursting shells. Horse is the cry of men who die, shrill are the wounded's yells.

• 1:28Jocko Willink?

  God, how the night reels stricken, she streaks with orange spark. The mortars lash and the cannons crash have crucified the dark.

• 1:41Jocko Willink?

  Saint Michael, angel of battle, we praise you to God on high. The foe you gave was strong and brave and unafraid to die. Speak to the Lord for our comrades, killed when the battle seemed lost. They went to meet a bright defeat, the hero's holocaust. False is the vaunt of the victor, empty our living pride. For those who fell, there is no hell, not for the brave who died.

• 2:24Jocko Willink?

  And that's a excerpt from a poem that opens a book called Helmet for My Pillow. And the book was written by a guy named Robert Leckie. Otherwise known as Lucky. Everybody called him Lucky.

• 2:45Jocko Willink?

  And he was a machine gunner. And then a scout with the first Marine Division in World War II. And he's a decent part of the HBO series, The Pacific. Which is, if you haven't watched that, just buy it right now and watch it. It's awesome. And it's based on a bunch of different books and a bunch of different events from the Pacific. And a lot of them, Eugene Sledge, that's another one with the old breed. There's a lot that he plays a main role. John Baslow plays a plays a large role in that series.

• 3:25Jocko Willink?

  And there's other, a bunch of other books. We've done a bunch of them on this podcast. And this one is another one. And you think to your, and I was thinking to myself like, well, you know, should I do Helmet for My Pillow? I'd read it a long time ago. And I thought to myself, you know, we've kind of covered, you know, the Pacific pretty well. And I'm just straight up wrong, so wrong, because everyone's experience is different. There's things that are the same. And his viewpoint on things is, is just a different viewpoint. And equally important to understanding not only the war, not only what they experienced in war,

• 4:07Jocko Willink?

  but also a whole nother side of human nature that we need to learn about. And

• 4:16Jocko Willink?

  yeah, there's a lot to go over. So a little, there's a little introduction here. And just to give you a little background on, on Lucky Leckie. He enlisted on January 5th, 1942. He tried to join up the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, but a surgically correctable condition disqualified him. Now he was back and acceptable. Just that tells us a lot. He was a civilian, not a professional fighting man. But he became a warrior.

• 4:48Jocko Willink?

  The author was one of those young men, many not yet 20,

• 4:55Jocko Willink?

  who were gentle human beings that were transformed by training, hardship, and the war into fighting Marines. These were the boys who became men, then stood against and then beat back two of the world's most vicious fighting machines.

• 5:16Jocko Willink?

  They left behind them a heritage of decency

• 5:23Jocko Willink?

  that hopefully will live

• 5:27Jocko Willink?

  forever. And that's from the introduction. And

• 5:35Jocko Willink?

  so again, after Pearl Harbor, there were so many, you've seen pictures, you've seen pictures of guys wrapped around the block waiting to go to the recruiting office and he goes to recruiting office, he can't go in at first, eventually he gets in, it takes him a month to get in, and then he's off to boot camp. And we've seen all kinds of representations in books and in movies of Marine Corps boot camp and in boot camp in general, but I just had to hit on this one a little bit because it's just another perspective that shows you, shows you his view of it and gave me a, not even a better understanding, a clearer understanding of what people are going through when they're going through boot camp. And I remember, actually, I remember this about boot camp.

• 6:20Jocko Willink?

  I, they wrote, we had to write something when I was going through boot camp.

• 6:26Jocko Willink?

  And I don't know if I've talked about this before, but we were going through boot camp, they said, hey, write down, you know, the top three things you're learning, right? You had to? We all had to. Okay. This is Navy boot camp. And I wrote down something along the lines of

• 6:41Jocko Willink?

  I wrote something along the lines of the brainwashing seems very effective. Right?

• 6:47Speaker 01

  How old, how old are you?

• 6:48Jocko Willink?

  I was eighteen, eighteen or nine, I think I just turned nineteen. And that's because I was a rebellious kid, right? And so I'm thinking they're brainwashing us and I wasn't against it. I, I, it was kind of one of those statements where I was saying, I was kind of being sarcastic, but I was also kind of being

• 7:04Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 7:04Jocko Willink?

  True, truthful.

• 7:05Speaker 01

  We call that cracking, but facking.

• 7:08Jocko Willink?

  Okay, we'll roll with that. So that's what I was doing. And, and I remember they didn't say anything about anything anyone had written about what we were learning or whatever. They called that one out. The, the, the chiefs that were running my boot camp company, they were, you know, said, and if you think you're getting brainwashed, you know what? This is what's going to save you. And they went on this big thing to counter my, my assessment. So there's a little bit of that here in what, what, what Lucky's saying. He says the same kind of thing and he gets the same kind of, he gets to the same place. But here we go, going to the book. They're at boot camp, Marine Corps Boot Camp Indoc.

• 7:50Jocko Willink?

  And here we go. Sergeant Bello marched us to the quartermasters. It was there, we stripped off all vestiges of personality. It is the quartermasters. So if you, if you don't know, a quartermaster in the military is someone that basically runs supply. They give you gear. That's what they are. So it is the quartermasters who make soldiers, sailors and Marines. In their presence, one strips down. With each divestment, a trait is lost. The discard of a garment marks the quiet death of an idiosyncrasy. I take off my socks. Gone is a propensity for stripes or clocks or checks or even solids.

• 8:35Jocko Willink?

  And it is a tendency to combine purple socks with a brown tie. My socks henceforth will be tan. They will neither be soiled nor rolled nor gaudy nor restrained nor holy. They will be tan. The only other thing they may be is clean. So it is with it all until one stands naked, struggling with an embarrassment that is entirely lost on the laconic shades who work in the quartermaster sheds. Thus naked, thus quivering, a man is defenseless before the quartermaster. Character clings to clothes that have gone into the discard.

• 9:18Jocko Willink?

  As skin and hair stick to adhesive tape, it is torn from you. Then the quartermaster shades swarm over you with measuring tape. A cascade of clothes falls upon you, washing you clean of personality.

• 9:34Jocko Willink?

  When you have emerged from this, you are but a number. Three, five, one, tree, niner, one. United States Marine Corps.

• 9:46Jocko Willink?

  Twenty minutes before, there had stood in your place, a human being surrounded by some sixty other human beings, but now there stood one number among sixty others. The sum of all to be a training platoon. But the parts have no meaning, except in the context of the whole.

• 10:10Jocko Willink?

  So there's a little psychological reason why they do that, how they do it. And you can see it works. You know, all those little things that you have, all the little things that make you you? We're gonna take them away. That's what we're gonna do. And there's so, there's this weird thing. Because when I went through boot camp, I wanted that. Take it away from me. And, and I've said this before on the podcast. You, you, it's a blank slate. When you get, when you go into boot camp, they shave your head, they take your clothes, they take all, all that personal stuff and you get a blank slate. They tell you like, this is all you need to do to succeed here. All that stuff you've done in the past, you're knucklehead, we don't care. Here's what you gotta do now. And, and it's awesome.

• 10:56Jocko Willink?

  And for a lot of people, myself included, you're now, you're, you're becoming part of something that's bigger than you. And that's a good feeling. You know, it's a good feeling.

• 11:07Jocko Willink?

  I liked it.

• 11:10Jocko Willink?

  I'd go so far as to say, I loved it.

• 11:15Jocko Willink?

  And they do the same thing, by the way, they do the same thing to you. When you get to your SEAL training class, to your BUDS class, you get your head shaved again. You get another set of uniforms. You're all gonna dress the same. You're all gonna look the same.

• 11:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think that head shaving thing would really do it for a lot of people.

• 11:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

• 11:33Speaker 01

  Cause that's some people's whole personality. You know, their hair.

• 11:35Jocko Willink?

  Sure.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  It's like, dang.

• 11:37Jocko Willink?

  They like that hair.

• 11:40Jocko Willink?

  Now, of course, fast forwarding a little bit, but I found this interesting. Back to the book. In six weeks of training, there seemed not to exist a single pattern apart from meals. All seemed chaos, marching, drilling in manual of arms, listening to lectures on military courtesy, and saluting, "The right hand will strike the head at 45-degree angle midway from the right eye." Listening to lectures on Marine jargon. From now on, everything, floor, street, ground, everything is the deck. Cleaning and polishing one's rifle until it's shown like an ornament. Shaving daily, whether hairy or beardless. It was all a jumble. What are we gonna do? Salute the Japs to death? No, we're gonna blind them with spit and polish. Yeah, or barber the bastards.

• 12:26Jocko Willink?

  All the logic seemed to be on our side. The Marine Corps seemed a madness. So they're thinking, what are we getting out of this? You want us to polish? How about you teach us how to shoot the rifle?

• 12:38Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on. It was a madness. But it was discipline. Apart from us recruits, no one in Paris Island seemed to care for anything but discipline. There was absolutely no talk of war. We heard no fiery lectures about killing Japs, such as we were to hear later on in New River, which is the place where they go to train. Everything but discipline. Marine Corps discipline was steadfastly mocked and ridiculed, be it holiness or high finance.

• 13:14Jocko Willink?

  These drill instructors were dedicated Martinettes, like the sensualist who feels that if a thing cannot be eaten, drunk, or taken to bed, it does not exist. So were these Martinettes and their outlook. All was discipline.

• 13:31Jocko Willink?

  There you go. I actually, that word struck me, Martinettes. So I did a little, you know, I looked it up. And the etymology of it is, there was a French general that created a certain type of drill, close order drill procedures, and his name was General Jean Martinet, Jean Martinet. So that's where that's where that word comes from. And it means that you're a strict disciplinarian.

• 14:01Speaker 01

  Wouldn't it be martine?

• 14:03Jocko Willink?

  Martine, I guess so, for those that speak French.

• 14:06Speaker 01

  French Canadian background.

• 14:10Jocko Willink?

  Did not know that. Oh, that's right, because you were friends with Jody Middick, you and him bonded over your Canadian roots.

• 14:19Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 14:22Jocko Willink?

  Another great example or great paragraph about what this feels like. Back to the book, "It is a process of surrender. At every turn, at every hour, it seemed, a habit or a preference had to be given up. An adjustment had to be made. Even in the mess hall, we learned that nothing mattered so little as a man's own likes or dislikes." And I think that's what it is. That's what's so cool about, that's what I loved. Right? When you join the military, all, it's all stripped away. All these little comforts that you have, they strip them away.

• 15:02Jocko Willink?

  And you're left with the raw self, right? The raw self, that's what you're left with. You, and you start putting everything else above yourself. It's a very humbling process.

• 15:15Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, worst in all this process of surrender was the ruthless refusal to permit a man the slightest privacy. Everything was done in the open, rising, waking, writing letters, receiving mails, receiving mail, making beds, washing, shaving, combing one's hair, emptying one's bowels. All was done in public and shaped to the style and stricture of the sergeant. So, that, that one right there, going to the bathroom, and you get to like in Navy bootcamp, you, the first time you go in the bathroom, there's just toilets, there's no doors, there's no walls, just, just thirty toilets in a row.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Damn, prison style.

• 15:58Jocko Willink?

  A prison style, and you're, actually prisons have your only, in there with your little roommate.

• 16:02Speaker 01

  Not even prison style.

• 16:03Jocko Willink?

  You sit down to go, and by the way, you can't say I'm gonna wait till no one else is in there, because they give you, you know, you have to go from this to this to this, and then, okay, we're back in the barracks, you can go to the bathroom now. So there you go, you're gonna sit down eighteen inches from some other dude that's, that's going to the bathroom, that's emptying his bowels.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:24Jocko Willink?

  And there's no privacy. And, and those, I mean, you may have never taken a crap in front of another human being. Most people haven't, why would you? So you have this, you have this little sanct- sanctuary, right? Where you're gonna get a bit private. Gone.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:44Jocko Willink?

  It's gone. All, all exposed, stripped away.

• 16:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's kinda how football is, by the way.

• 16:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 16:50Speaker 01

  But, thing is, football, that's kinda like, it's cool to do that, you know, like the coaches don't make you do that. It's just like, if you're shy, you know, or that kinda thing, like some guys-

• 17:00Jocko Willink?

  But they, they didn't have stalls?

• 17:01Speaker 01

  They did, but, yeah, they did, they did, but like, um, the point is like, it was kinda like the cool culture, so, guys wouldn't close the stall.

• 17:09Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 17:10Speaker 01

  If there was a shy guy who didn't wanna shower, he'd go to his like room and shower, they'd be like, ah, like, you know, so, it was like, the more open and like whatever you were, the cooler it kinda was. But that's what it did, just the, so if you're shy-

• 17:21Jocko Willink?

  A little cohesiveness, yeah.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So if you came in shy, it's like you'd have that feeling, you know?

• 17:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 17:27Speaker 01

  But, man, I dig it, it's true.

• 17:28Jocko Willink?

  I, I actually remember that, because I had never, I was, whatever I was-

• 17:34Jocko Willink?

  19 years old. Sitting down next to a dude for the first time, taking a crap. I'd never done that before. Why would you do that? Yeah. You have your own little private world. You have your own little private space. This is my little time. As it should be. Not your private time.

• 17:52Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. If you are undone in Paris Island, which is where Marine Corps boot camp is, or one of them, there's also one here in San Diego.

• 18:00Jocko Willink?

  If you are undone in Paris Island, taken apart in those first few weeks, is at the rifle range that they start to put you together again. So that's, and he goes into some pretty good. He talks about now the rebuilding. And finally, and again, it's great details, great information, very cool read, very cool perspective.

• 18:24Jocko Willink?

  That's why you get the book and read it. Back to the book. In five weeks. They had made us over. Another week of training remained, but the desired change already had taken place. Most important in this transformation was not the hardening of my flesh or the sharpening of my eyes, but the new attitude of mind. I was a Marine.

• 18:55Jocko Willink?

  Now, that's the big transformation. And now, like I said, they go, they go to start their advanced training. So in boot camp, you don't, you're not learning, you're learning some technical stuff, but you're basically just learning a new attitude, right? You're learning to be a Marine. And then they go from there. They go to a place called New River where they're gonna do some more training. And they're gonna start learning to be actual fighting Marines. So, here we go back to the book. He's talking about New River. Here. The only talent was that of the foot soldier. The only tool, the handgun. Here, the cultivated, the oblique, and the delicate soon perished.

• 19:39Jocko Willink?

  Like gardenias in the desert. So, we're starting to get into some hard living. And they form up into companies and he ends up in H Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Marine Regiment.

• 19:56Jocko Willink?

  And they get some other veterans that come to start help them prepare for combat. And here's what he says about that. The first, and this is the first Marine Regiment, the first also received a vital leavening of veteran NCOs, that's non-commissioned officers. So, these are like the mid-level enlisted guys that run the show. They would teach us, they would train us, they would turn us into fighting troops. From them, we would learn our weapons. From them, we would take our character and temper. They were the old breed.

• 20:38Jocko Willink?

  And we were the new, the volunteer youths who had come from the comfort of home to the hardship of war. For the next three years, all of these would be my comrades, the men of the First Marine Division. And that's true, you know, they always try and take veterans, I shouldn't say always, because actually in D-Day, they wanted a bunch of new guys. They wanted people that hadn't been in combat before. But, you know, in the SEAL Teams, we do that. When I got back from Ramadi with my task unit, they took my task unit, we didn't, and they split them up, all put them in all different task units. So, we had all these guys with all this experience going to these other task units.

• 21:22Jocko Willink?

  This is pretty normal. And that's where the true learning comes from, right? You're going to get that, that face-to-face, that, that hands-on, and that true connection to what's going on overseas. And here's some of the things that they did. Back to the book, gun drill and nomenclature. Know your weapon, know it intimately, know it with almost the insight of its inventor. Be able to take it apart, blindfolded or in the dark, to put it together. Be able to recite mechanically a detailed description of the gun's operation. Know the part played by every member of the squad, from gunner down to the unfortunates who carried the water can or the machine gun boxes, as well as their own rifles.

• 22:07Jocko Willink?

  So you're gonna learn this weapon like

• 22:13Jocko Willink?

  better than better than the inventor is what they're saying. That's how well you need to know it. And you know what? I believe that. That inventor doesn't do what these guys do with that machine gun. I'll tell you if you if you like the guys that I the pig gunners, we call them guys that carry to mark 48, which is our big, heavy weapon. Guys that carry that when you watch them. It's beautiful. It looks the most. It's beautiful. The how quick and how fast and how they combat load that thing and hit the ground and clear reloads. It was like magic, magic.

• 22:46Jocko Willink?

  Love that.

• 22:50Jocko Willink?

  Now there's not just learning about weapons, right? There's other things you gotta do. You gotta get you still gotta continue to live a hard life. You still gotta get mentally and physically conditioned for combat. And what better way to do that than some road marches? Some road marches, which we've talked about many times here. Back to the book, a whole battalion was on the march and my poor squad was tucked away somewhere at the center or center rear. Clouds of red dust settled upon us. My helmet banged irritably against the machine gun that was boring into my shoulder. Or else it was bumped forward mattingly over my eyes by the movement of my pack.

• 23:32Jocko Willink?

  Mile or so out, I dared not drink anymore from my canteen. I had no idea how far we had to go. My dungarees were saturated with sweat, their light green darkened by perspiration. There had been joking and even some singing the first mile out. Now only the birds sang. But from us, there was just the thud of feet, the clank of canteens, the creak of leather rifle slings, the occasional horse cracking of voice raised and breath wasted in a curse. Every hour we got a 10 minute break. Then came the command off and on.

• 24:12Jocko Willink?

  It means off your behind and on your feet cursing, hating both command and commandant. Straining, we rose to our feet and began again the dull plotting rhythm of the march.

• 24:27Jocko Willink?

  The old road march.

• 24:32Jocko Willink?

  That's and and so they're doing this type of hard training and they're going, they're doing maneuvers. They're preparing, they're doing mock beach landings, they're doing all those things. And they're also getting some occasional liberty. Do you guys know, do you know what liberty is as a civilian? See, it's a word that I throw out there sometimes. It means time off.

• 24:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:54Jocko Willink?

  Liberty means time off and I don't and it's it's it's from the Navy, but the Marine Corps uses as well. It means time off. And so these guys, even though they're working hard, when boot camp, you don't get any liberty. No, you just stay in boot camp for 13 weeks. You don't get any liberty. And once you're, you know, a fleet marine or you're in the regular Navy, you get liberty. So you can go and do, you know, go out and do some stuff. And so these guys are going out and doing stuff. And what do you think they're doing? 18 years old, getting ready to go to war, they're gonna go out and get after it.

• 25:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:26Jocko Willink?

  In a, in the classic, in the classic 18 year old sense of the word.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Actually, that's when I got, in that context is how I got turned on to the expression, get after it.

• 25:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, from the context of of going out and partying.

• 25:39Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, exactly.

• 25:40Jocko Willink?

  And I don't know that I, partying is what we're talking about. That's a, that's a term that it sounds pretty lame, but that's what we're talking about. I think everybody understands that term, drinking, chasing girls, partying. That's what, that's what we're talking about. And I guess it's a commonly used term because you hear people say, like, I remember seeing an article about some school, some college being the number three ranked party school.

• 26:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:03Jocko Willink?

  So, so party implies, party doesn't imply birthday cake.

• 26:07Speaker 01

  A party.

• 26:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, party, party implies drinking, getting crazy.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:13Jocko Willink?

  But which is different, getting crazy is different from getting nuts, right?

• 26:17Speaker 01

  No, getting nuts is is fighting for sure.

• 26:19Jocko Willink?

  Getting nuts is fighting for sure in Hawaii.

• 26:21Speaker 01

  Yes, yes, for sure.

• 26:23Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so we're just talking about getting crazy and partying, and that's what these guys were doing. Getting after it, yeah. So, here we go back to the book. We were impatient. We were wound up. We could no more relax than we could think. In those days, there was not an introspective person among us. We seldom spoke of the war, except as it might relate to ourselves, and in an abstract way. The ethics of Hitler, the extermination of the Jews, the yellow peril, these were matters for the gentlemen of the editorial pages to discuss. We lived for thrills, not the thrills of the battlefield, but of the speeding auto, the dimly lighted cafe, the drink racing the blood,

• 27:06Jocko Willink?

  the texture of a cheek, the sheen of a silken calf. Nothing was permitted to last. All had to be fluid. We wanted not actuality, but possibility. That's a pretty interesting statement. We all had to be fluid. We wanted not actually, they didn't actually want that. They wanted to chase that thing. Right, right. We could not be still. Always movement, everything changing. We were like shadows, fleeing, ever fleeing. Condemned men, souls in hell. Soon the spate of sixty-two hour liberties was ended. Mid-May of nineteen forty-two saw me go home for the last time.

• 27:51Jocko Willink?

  My family would not set eyes on me again for nearly three years.

• 28:02Jocko Willink?

  And, again, obviously, there's some very important experiences in that section.

• 28:11Jocko Willink?

  That's why you read the book.

• 28:14Jocko Willink?

  It's great, it's great to hear his perspective. You're gonna see Robert Leckie, he's a very, he's a very intelligent, and he became a writer. I mean, he became a writer. This isn't the only book. I think he wrote forty-plus books in his life. He worked for big newspapers, and he's a, he's a writer, so he's a very smart guy. And, and he talks about that, and we'll get to that point in here, but that's why his perspective is so interesting. And he brings a lot of that in this book.

• 28:45Jocko Willink?

  But eventually, obviously, they finished their training. No more partying. And now, it's time to fight. Back to the book. Fires flickered on the shores of Guadalcanal Island when we came on the deck. They were not great flaming, leaping fires, and we were disappointed. We had expected to see the world alight when we emerged from the hatches. The bombardment had seemed fierce. Our armada, for such, we judged it to be, seemed capable of blasting Guadalcanal into perdition. But in the dirty dawn of August 7th, 1942, there were only a few fires flickering, like the

• 29:28Jocko Willink?

  city dumps, to light our path to history. We were apprehensive, not frightened. So, in case you haven't gathered, these guys are about to do the landing at Guadalcanal. And, they get into the, the little Higgins boats, the little landing craft, and here we go, the assault began. Now I was praying again. I had prayed much the night before, carefully, deliberately, in, in, in betraying God and the Virgin to care for my family and friends should I fall. In the vanity of youth, I was positive I would die.

• 30:10Jocko Willink?

  In the same vanity, I was turning my affairs over to the Almighty. And I think, what he means by vanity, that he was sure he would die, you'd think, somebody that's vain would be like, hey, I can't be killed. But I think what he means by that is, the vanity that, there's some determined outcome, that, that you can control, or that there's, that it's, that there's some way it's gonna go. Like, he's gonna die. No, you don't even know that.

• 30:39Speaker 01

  Right, right, it's that he knows, you know, I know what's gonna-

• 30:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. I know what's gonna happen, I know I'm gonna die. That's vanity in its own right, that's what he's saying. So they hit the landing, back to the book, but there was no fight. The Japanese had run. From somewhere, came the command, "Move out." We formed staggered squads and slogged off. We left our innocence on Red Beach. It would never be the same.

• 31:15Jocko Willink?

  They spend a night, they're now patrolling in and in the night they're in security positions and they hear a little gunfire and we're going to the book, "At dawn, we learned the import of the gunfire. A medical corpsman had been killed. He had been shot by his own men. When the sentry had challenged him, as he returned from relieving himself, he had boggled over the password Lilipution. And so met death. Eternity at the mercy of a liquid consonant." Now, little heads up, Lilipution is not a good challenge and reply password for everyone.

• 31:58Jocko Willink?

  You don't want to come up with something that's not totally obvious, but don't make a guy that's scared out in the middle of the jungle, remember the word Lilipution. And, and you know, we talk about blue on blue, there you go. Like their first casualty is blue on blue. Their first casualty is blue on blue. Their first casualty is a medic, a corpsman being killed by sentries. That's a nightmare. And I wasn't going to read this, but I'm going to. "I peered at the captain. Anxiety was on his face as though carved there by the night's events. It startled me. Here was no warrior, no veteran of a hundred battles. Here was only a civilian like myself.

• 32:43Jocko Willink?

  He was a man hardly more confident than the trigger-happy sentry who had killed the corpsman. He was much older than I, but the responsibility of his charge, the unknown face of war, had frightened him past trusting the evidence of his senses." So imagine you're going into combat, you're in charge, you're a civilian, but now you're in charge and you're going out on your first combat patrol, you lay up and your first thing you do is you kill one of your, one of your own guys kills one of your other guys. It's a nightmare and he can see it on his face.

• 33:18Jocko Willink?

  They spend the rest of the day out there, still no heavy enemy contact. Back to the book, that day was a dull, lost witness to the cycle of the sun, of which I have neither memory nor regret. The night I shall never forget. I awoke in the middle of it to see the sky on fire. So it seemed. It was like the red mist of my childhood dream when I imagined judgment to have come while I played baseball on the castle grounds at home. We were bathed in red light, as though fixed in the eye of Satan. Imagine a myriad of red traffic lights glowing in the rain and you will have a replica of the world in which I awoke. The lights were the flares of the enemy.

• 34:02Jocko Willink?

  They hung above the jungle roof, swaying gently on their parachutes, casting their red glow about. Motors throbbed above. They were those of Japanese seaplanes, we learned later. We thought they were hunting us. But they were actually the eyes of a mighty enemy naval armada that swept into Sea Clark Channel. Soon we heard the sound of cannons and the island trembled beneath us. There came flashes of light, white and red, and great rocking explosions. The Japs were hammering out one of their greatest naval victories. It was the Battle of Savo Island,

• 34:44Jocko Willink?

  what we learned to call more accurately, the Battle of Four Sitting Ducks. They were sinking three American cruisers, the Quincy, Vincennes, and Astoria, and one Australian cruiser, the Canberra.

• 35:00Jocko Willink?

  As well as damaging one other American cruiser and a US destroyer.

• 35:07Jocko Willink?

  And so they then during this, they moved towards the beach.

• 35:13Jocko Willink?

  And here we go. It was dusk when we reached the beach. We saw wrecked and smoking ships, a clean, unshipped expanse of water between Guadalcanal and Florida Island. Our navy was gone.

• 35:28Jocko Willink?

  Gone.

• 35:30Jocko Willink?

  So. If you don't know anything about the Pacific campaign, you're taking down islands. And your lifeline is the Navy. Cause that's who's gonna bring you ammunition, food, water, gun support, fire support. That's where you're gonna take your casualties. So you have total reliance on the Navy. And these guys wake up in the morning and the Navy's gone. Other than sunken ships.

• 36:01Jocko Willink?

  Horrible. And what, what can they do? There's nowhere to run to. You can't back, you can't, there's nowhere to go. The Navy's gone.

• 36:11Jocko Willink?

  So they get ordered.

• 36:14Jocko Willink?

  To. Take up position where they think an attack might come from. And here we go back to the book. We were ordered up from the beach to new positions on the west bank of the Teneroo River.

• 36:26Jocko Willink?

  Our orders commanded us to urgency. The enemy was expected. The Teneroo River lay green and evil like a serpent across the Palmye coastal plain. It was called a river, but it was not a river. Like most of the streams of Oceana, it was a creek, not 30 yards wide. So they're placed there to set security. And they're there for a while. And finally, one night.

• 36:56Jocko Willink?

  Here we go back to the book. A man says of the eruption of battle. All hell broke loose. The first time he says it, it is true. Wonderfully descriptive. The millionth time it is said, it has been worn into meaninglessness. It has gone the way of all good phrasing. It has become cliche.

• 37:20Jocko Willink?

  But within five minutes of that first machine gun burst of the appearance of that first enemy flare that suffused the battlefield in unearthly greenish light and by its dying accentuated the re enveloping night within five minutes of this, all hell broke loose. Everyone was firing, every weapon was sounding voice, but this was no orchestration, no terribly beautiful symphony of death, as decadent rear echelon observers write. Here was a cacophony. Here was a cacophony. Here was dissonance. Here was wildness. Here was the absence of rhythm, the loss of limit for fires.

• 38:06Jocko Willink?

  What, when, and where he chooses.

• 38:11Jocko Willink?

  Here was booming, sounding, shrinking, wailing, hissing, crashing, shaking, gibberish noise. Here was hell.

• 38:21Jocko Willink?

  Yet each weapon had its own sound. And it is odd with what clarity the trained ear distinguishes each one and catalogs it, plucks it out of the general din, even though it is intermingled with coincidental with the voice of a dozen others. Even though one's own machine gun spits and coughs and dances and shakes in caloric fury.

• 38:47Jocko Willink?

  So it was that our ears pricked, prickled at strange new sounds. The lighter shingle snap and crack of the Japanese rifle, the gargle of their extremely fast machine guns, the hiccup of their light mortars.

• 39:07Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, the movie The Pacific or the series The Pacific shows the battle scenes of the Teneru River and they're phenomenal. They do a great job of representing what's just what he's talking about right there. Back to the book, we dived for our holes and gun positions. I jumped the gun, I jumped to the gun with which Chuckler and I had left standing on the bank. I unclamped the gun and fired, spraying my shots as though I were handling a hose. All but one fell. The first fell as though his underpart had been cut from him by a skith. And the others fell tumbling, screaming. Once again, our gun collapsed and I grabbed a rifle.

• 39:48Jocko Willink?

  I remember it had no sling, which had been left near the gun. The Jap who had survived, who had survived was deep in the coconuts by the time I found him in the rifle sights. There was his back bobbing large and he seemed to be throwing his pack away. Then I fired and he wasn't there anymore. Perhaps it was not I who shot him, but everyone had found their senses. For not everyone had found their senses and their weapons by then, but I boasted that I had. Perhaps too, it was a merciful bullet that pounded him between the shoulder blades. For he was fleeing to a certain and horrible end.

• 40:30Jocko Willink?

  Black nights, hunger and slow dissolution in the rainforest. But I had not thought of mercy then. Modern war went forward in the jungle. Men of the first battalion were cleaning up. Sometimes they drove a Japanese toward us. He would cower on the riverbank, hiding, unaware that opposite him were we. Already the victors, numerous, heavily armed, lusting for more blood. We killed a few more this way. The fever was on us.

• 41:11Jocko Willink?

  Yet, it's interesting that he's looking back and thinking to himself that when he kills this Japanese soldier, that that was a merciful thing to do. Because they haven't suffered yet. They've been on the island for a few days, even though they're scared, even though they've received fire. They haven't gone to the full length of suffering that they're gonna go through.

• 41:32Jocko Willink?

  So when the battle's over and Leckie gives everyone in the book, he just gives them these really kind of easy to understand nicknames based on their personality. So he talks about this guy here who he calls Lieutenant Ivy League, which doesn't take a lot of explanation to picture what that guy's like. So here we go back to the book. Lieutenant Ivy League strode up to our pits in the morning. So this is the battles over. He sat on a coconut log and told us what had happened. He smoked desperately and stared into the river as he talked. The skin around his eyes was drawn tight with strain and with shock.

• 42:14Jocko Willink?

  His eyes had already taken on that aspect peculiar to Guadalcanal. That constant stare of pupils that seemed darker, larger, rounder, more absolute.

• 42:28Jocko Willink?

  And he kind of gives them a debrief on what happened with the battle, that where the Japanese had come from. And then he says, when he spoke again, it was to tell us who had been killed. There were more than a dozen from each company besides more than a score of wounded. Four or five of the dead were from our platoon. Two of them had been hacked to death. A Japanese scouting party had found them asleep in their hole on the riverbank and sliced them into pieces.

• 43:04Jocko Willink?

  Our regiment had killed something like 900 of them.

• 43:09Jocko Willink?

  Most of them lay in clusters or in heaps before the gun pits commanding the sand spit, as though they had not died singly but in groups. One of the Marines went methodically among the dead armed with a pair of pliers. He had observed that the Japanese have a penchant for gold fillings in their teeth, often for solid gold teeth. He was looting their very mouths. He would kick their jaws agape, peer into the mouth with all the solicitude of a Park Avenue dentist, careful, always careful not to contaminate himself by touch, and yank out all that glittered.

• 43:52Jocko Willink?

  He kept the gold teeth in an empty Bull Durham tobacco sack which he wore around his neck. Souvenirs, we called him. That's another nickname. They called this guy Souvenirs.

• 44:08Jocko Willink?

  Now,

• 44:11Jocko Willink?

  they're holding in that position and for a few nights, while they were holding this position on the river, they would see, they didn't know what it was. They would see sort of a V in the calm water. They would see like a V, a disturbance in the water, and they couldn't figure out what it was. They were scared out of it. A couple of times they shot towards it. They didn't know what it was. They thought it was a spy or a scout trying to check them out. But they were crocodiles.

• 44:39Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. I took the glasses from him and focused on the opposite shore where I saw a crocodile eating the fat Japanese. I watched in debased fascination, but when the crocodile began to tug at the intestines, I recalled my own presence in that very river hardly an hour ago and my knees went weak and I relinquished the glasses. That night, the V reappeared in the river, so they could see the little ripple in the river. Everyone whooped and hollered. No one fired. We knew what it was. It was the crocodile. Three smaller Vs trailed afterwards, so there's even more crocodiles coming.

• 45:22Jocko Willink?

  They kept us awake, crunching. The smell kept us awake. Even though we lay with our heads swathed in a blanket, which was now, which was how we kept off the mosquitoes, the smell overpowered us. Smell, the sense which somehow seems a joke, is the one most susceptible to outrage. It will give you no rest. One can close one's eyes to ugliness or shield the ears from sound, but from a powerful smell, there is no recourse but flight. And since we could not flee, we could not escape this smell and we could not sleep.

• 46:05Jocko Willink?

  We never fired at the crocodiles, though they returned to their repast, day after day, until the remains were removed to mass burning and burial, which served as a funeral pyre for the enemy we had annihilated.

• 46:25Jocko Willink?

  Our victory in the fight, which we called the Battle of Hell's Point, was not so great as we had imagined it to be. It was to be but one of the many fights for Guadalcanal, and in the end, not the foremost of them. But being the first in our experience, we took it for total triumph, like those who take the present for the best of all worlds, having no reference to the past nor regard for the future.

• 46:56Jocko Willink?

  It's a mistake we all make. You know, something good happens, and you think you're the victor.

• 47:04Jocko Willink?

  From the high plateau of triumph, we were about to descend into the depths of trial and tedium. The Japanese attack was to be redoubled and prolonged and varied. It would come from the sky, the sea, and the land. In between every trial, there would stretch out the tedium that sucks a man dry, drawing off the juice from body and soul, as a native removes the contents of a stick of sugarcane, leaving it spent, cracked, good for nothing but the flames.

• 47:37Jocko Willink?

  And there is terror, coming from the interaction of trial and tedium. The first shaking a man as the wind in the treetops. The second eroding him as the flood at the roots. So he's got these two things that are working on him.

• 47:57Jocko Willink?

  Trial, which is the actual fighting, the actual attacks, and tedium, which is the boredom and the waiting.

• 48:05Jocko Willink?

  And again, if you watch the Pacific, it does a great job of showing this. And one of the things that really got me when I watched that for the first time is it shows this landing and there's nothing happening. Then you're waiting for it to happen and you know it's gonna happen. And you're waiting for it and that was a real, that, that, that, I remember that feeling. Of being in the streets and you're waiting for it to happen and you're just waiting and it's a, you want it to happen. Cause then you can go. Yeah, let's get it over with. Yeah. But here's, he's describing it as like a tree being eroded. So. The first shaking a man as the wind in the treetops.

• 48:46Jocko Willink?

  The second, so that's, that's what, that's what the, the actual thing does to you. It shakes you around, but the tedium? The second, that's the tedium, eroding him as the flood at the roots. Each fresh trial leaves a man more shaken than the last and each period of tedium. With its time for speculative dread. Leaves his foundations worn lower, his roots less firm for the next trial.

• 49:16Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes there is a final shattering. A man crouching in a pit beneath the bombardment of a battleship.

• 49:25Jocko Willink?

  Might put a pistol to his head and deliver himself. Sometimes it is partial. Another man might break at the sound of a diving enemy plane and scream and shudder and wring his hands and rise to run.

• 49:43Jocko Willink?

  This is the terror I meant. This is the terror that strangles reason with the clawing hands of panic. I saw it twice. I felt it pluck at me twice, but it was rare. It claimed few victims.

• 50:01Jocko Willink?

  So, so that's a really, I think that's just a phenomenal way to understand what these guys were going through. The waiting and then the trial and then the waiting and then the trial. And that's a great description. Speculative dread. Just, just thinking about, okay, what's the next attack gonna be like? Are we gonna be able to get through it?

• 50:27Jocko Willink?

  And you know, he's talking about guys killing themselves.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:30Jocko Willink?

  Being so, they just can't take it anymore.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:34Jocko Willink?

  They can't take it anymore. And

• 50:39Jocko Willink?

  the only way out they can figure is to kill themselves. Which is just, it's horrible, horrible thing.

• 50:46Speaker 01

  A lot of times criminals will do that, like if they're on their, like fugitives, if they're on the run.

• 50:50Jocko Willink?

  True, yeah.

• 50:51Speaker 01

  And they're like, when are they gonna break down my door and find me? And they get that speculative dread and they just turn themselves in.

• 50:58Jocko Willink?

  Right. Or, I thought you were gonna say that sometimes, you know, guys once they're surrounded by the SWAT team.

• 51:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, then.

• 51:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, then they just know there's, they just can't take it anymore, they kill themselves.

• 51:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I feel like that's more of them, like, I'd rather die than go to jail almost kind of thing, but that speculative dread that you're talking about?

• 51:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 51:15Speaker 01

  Even in like Jiu Jitsu tournaments, you know, when you're waiting around like, oh, am I up, am I up? That's like, can be part of the chat, I mean.

• 51:21Jocko Willink?

  Waiting.

• 51:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I mean, obviously way more lighthearted than this, but, you know.

• 51:26Jocko Willink?

  This, and, and he, so he says this, and he says, it claimed few victims.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:32Jocko Willink?

  Meaning it didn't actually, most guys sucked it up. And you're gonna hear him, you know, cause he says he felt it.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:38Jocko Willink?

  Twice. It plucked at him twice.

• 51:42Jocko Willink?

  But it wasn't, it was rare. He says it, but it was rare. And then he says, courage was commonplace. So that was what was normal. What was normal was courage.

• 51:54Jocko Willink?

  And this is just such a good paragraph or two here. Courage was, was a commonplace. It formed a club or corporation, much as do those other common things upon which men, for diverse reasons, place so great a value, like money, like charity. For it is in the common on which the exclusive rests. Our muddy machine gun pits were transformed into courage clubs. When bombs fell or Japanese warships pounded us from the sea. There was protocol to be observed too, and it was natural

• 52:36Jocko Willink?

  that the poor fellow who might break into momentary terror should cause pained silences and embarrassed coughs. Everyone looked the other way, like millionaires confronted by the horrifying sight of a club member borrowing five dollars from the waiter.

• 52:56Jocko Willink?

  And then he says this, "But there was a bit more charity in our clubs, I think. We were not quite so puffed up that we could not recognize the ugly thing on our friend's face as the elder brother of the thing fluttering within our own innards. You today, me tomorrow."

• 53:24Jocko Willink?

  And that's such a powerful thing to think about. When you see someone going through some trouble, to be able to recognize like, hey, you know, Echo's going through some issues right now, and I'm not looking down at you. I'm not judging you. I'm recognizing that what you're going through today could be what I go through tomorrow. And they all felt, he felt that, you know, I see Echo losing it and curling into a ball and not wanting to fight. And I recognize that as the older brother of the thing that I actually feel too, but I've got it under control today. Tomorrow I might not, but today I got it under control. That's why I'm not looking down my nose at you. And that's why I'm not judging you.

• 54:06Jocko Willink?

  And I think that forms such a tight bond that these guys had, you know, these guys had respect, enough respect and enough mercy on each other to say, "Look, Echo's having a hard time right now. It's okay. We're gonna get him through today. I'm not gonna look down on him. And tomorrow it might be me, and he's not gonna look down on me." Powerful stuff. We tend to judge.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially, yeah, it seems like they, so they can relate, you know, like Echo's at level eight right now. He's losing it. I'm over at level two.

• 54:42Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 54:43Speaker 01

  And luckily I can keep the two inside, you know?

• 54:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but I don't even know when two's gonna become eight or 10.

• 54:48Speaker 01

  Yesterday I was at one, so I could very well be at, you know, eight.

• 54:51Jocko Willink?

  But the idea that when you're dealing with other people, you try and have their perspective, you try and take their perspective and understand what they're going through and have empathy for what's happening to them.

• 55:04Jocko Willink?

  Powerful.

• 55:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, man.

• 55:05Jocko Willink?

  Instead, we tend so often just to wanna judge.

• 55:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:13Jocko Willink?

  Judge.

• 55:16Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. At night, Washing Machine Charlie picked up the slack. Washing Machine, Washing Machine Charlie, so named for the sound of his motors, was the nocturnal marauder who prowled our skies. So these are Japanese bombers.

• 55:35Jocko Willink?

  Like the dog whose bark is worse than its bite, the throb of Charlie's motors was more fearsome than the thump of his bombs. Charlie did not kill many people, but like Macbeth, he murdered sleep. To these trials was added the worst ordeal, shelling from the sea. Enemy warships, usually cruisers, sometimes battleships, stand off your coast. It is night, and you cannot see them, nor could you if it were day, as they are miles and miles away. We could see the flashes of the guns far out to sea. We heard the soft "paboom, paboom" of their salvos.

• 56:20Jocko Willink?

  Then, rushing through the night, straining like an airy boxcar, came the huge projectiles. The earth rocks and shakes upon the terrifying crash of the detonation. Though it be hundreds of yards away, your stomach is squeezed as though a monster, a monster hand were kneading it into dough. You gasp for breath like a football player who falls heavily and has the wind knocked out of him. Flash, paboom. They're lowering their sights. It's coming closer. Oh, that one was close. The sandbags are falling. I can't hear it. I can't hear the shell. It's the one you don't hear, they say. The one you don't hear. Where is it? Where is it? Flash, paboom.

• 57:06Jocko Willink?

  Thank God. It's lifted. It's going the other way. It's daylight now, and there are only the bombings to worry about, and the heat, and the mosquitoes, and the rice lying in our bellies like stones.

• 57:27Jocko Willink?

  So, again, the, the unknown and uncontrollable experience of getting, you know, hit with mortars or artillery, or in this case naval gunfire, a- and again, there's no US Navy out there. They're just having their way. It's a nightmare.

• 57:47Jocko Willink?

  They continue to press on, but things are not looking good. Back to the book, everyone kept saying, hopefully, that the army was coming in next week to relieve us. Everyone was in despair. We heard that the army relief force had been destroyed at sea. Chuckler and I visited the cemetery. It lay to the south, off the coastal road that ran from east to west through the coconuts. We knelt to pray before the graves of the men we had known. Only palm fronds marked the place where they were buried, although here and there were rude crosses, on which were nailed the men's identification tags. Some of the

• 58:31Jocko Willink?

  crosses bore mess gear tins affixed to the wood like rude medallions, and on those, the Marines had lovingly carved their epitaphs.

• 58:44Jocko Willink?

  He died fighting. A real Marine. A big guy with a bigger heart. Our buddy. The harder the going, the more cheerful he was.

• 59:04Jocko Willink?

  There was also this verse, which I had seen countless times before and since, the direct and unpolished cry of a Marine sardonic heart. And when he gets to heaven, so St. Peter he will tell. "One more Marine reporting, sir. I've served my time in hell."

• 59:31Jocko Willink?

  Now, part of that, part of that

• 59:38Jocko Willink?

  despair that they felt came from the fact that they began to feel expendable. Then he goes into that here. "All armies have expendable items. That is a part or a unit, the destruction of which will not be fatal to the whole. In some ordeals, a man might consider his finger expendable, but not his hand. Or, in extremity, his arm, but not his heart. There are expendable items which may be lost or destroyed in the field, either in war or in peace, without their owner being required to replace them. A rifle is so expendable,

• 1:00:19Jocko Willink?

  or a cartridge belt. So are men. Men are the most expendable of all. Hunger, the jungle, the Japanese, not one, nor all of these could be quite as corrosive as the feeling of expendability."

• 1:00:40Jocko Willink?

  "This was no feeling of dedication, because it was absolutely involuntary. I do not doubt that if Marines had asked for volunteers for an impossible campaign such as Guadalcanal, almost everyone now fighting would have stepped forward. But that is sacrifice, that is voluntary. Being expended robs you of that exaltation, the self-abnegation, the absolute freedom of self-sacrifice. Being expended puts one in the role of victim, rather than sacrificer. And there is always something begrudging in this."

• 1:01:29Jocko Willink?

  So luckily, they do end up

• 1:01:36Jocko Willink?

  getting some help, getting relieved. The army shows up to help them out and here we go. "So we were glad to see the soldiers when they came trudging up to our pits. They came after another air raid, a very close one. But the thing had not infected them yet. War was still a lark. Their faces were still heavy with flesh, their ribs padded, their eyes innocent. They were older than we and averaged 25 to our average 20. Yet we treated them like children."

• 1:02:17Jocko Willink?

  Now even though they get relieved, they're still working and still fighting. And they're still suffering. Back to the book, "We were growing irritable, our strength was being steadily sapped. And a sort of physical depression afflicted many of us. The rain, the rainy season was upon us. On our exposed ridge, it fell upon us in torrents. A man was drenched in seconds, his teeth chattering and his hands darting swiftly to his precious cigarettes, transferring them to the safety of his helmet liner, cursing bitterly if he had waited too long before becoming conscious of their peril. After cigarettes, we were concerned about our ammunition.

• 1:02:59Jocko Willink?

  On the downward slope of the hill, the rainwater ran into our pits and holes as though they were sewer receivers. We had to dash for the pits and lift the boxes of machine gun belts out of the water's way, piling them atop one another on the earth and gun platform. Any dry place in the pit was reserved for ammunition. He who sought refuge from the rain had to sit on the water cans."

• 1:03:26Jocko Willink?

  There were whole days of downpour where I lay drenched and shivering, gazing blankly out of my hole, watching as the sheeted gray rain whipped and undulated over the ridge.

• 1:03:40Jocko Willink?

  At such times, a man's brain seems to cease to function. It seems to retreat into a depth, much as the red corpuscles retreat from the surface of the body in times of excitement. One ceases to be rational, one becomes only sedentary, like a barnacle clinging on to a ship.

• 1:04:02Jocko Willink?

  One is aware only of life, of wetness, of the cold gray rain.

• 1:04:09Jocko Willink?

  But without this automatic retreat of reasons, a man can go only one way. He can only go mad.

• 1:04:23Jocko Willink?

  Certain level of detachment there, just checking out, just checking out, you're just there but you're not there.

• 1:04:31Jocko Willink?

  Good place to, it's a good place to visit sometimes. You know, I don't think you want to live there, you certainly don't want to live there, but it's a good place to visit.

• 1:04:41Speaker 01

  Why?

• 1:04:42Jocko Willink?

  I just think, I think it's important to get to a point where you're just detaching from your physical suffering and your physical pain and you just say, you know what, I'm just turned off. And you just retreat, like he said, you just retreat into almost like nothingness. I think it's important.

• 1:04:59Speaker 01

  Maybe to gain clarity or something.

• 1:05:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think you gain some clarity and I think it's a, I think it's a very important defense mechanism to have.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  Oh yeah.

• 1:05:07Jocko Willink?

  You know, sometimes when you're doing stuff, you just have to do it, like you can't think about it anymore, you just have to turn your brain off and go. And I think that's what, that's what he's talking about right there. He's not, he's not participating in it, he's just attaching from it and doing what he's got to, his body is doing what he's got to do.

• 1:05:29Jocko Willink?

  Now...

• 1:05:34Jocko Willink?

  They

• 1:05:36Jocko Willink?

  there there's this whole time they're expecting to be relieved they're expecting to get get pulled off the island

• 1:05:43Jocko Willink?

  and one of the sergeants comes out and and makes an announcement to him stand by to move out in the morning yeah we moving out into a new offensive

• 1:05:56Jocko Willink?

  get all your foul weather gear ready and be sure your guns is oiled up and your ammunition belts dry eight marines will be up to relieve us in the morning

• 1:06:06Jocko Willink?

  so they they they think they're gonna get relieved and go to a ship and relax and get get get into get some relief that's what relief is right but they get told no you're going on a new offensive so they're in well here going back to the book after nearly five months by the way a lot of times you think of the island campaigns japan these are little islands you know ten miles long you think all that probably took a week two weeks five months after nearly five months this runner and he's gonna name all the different guys the different nicknames you can hear him runner had malaria brick barely stirred from the pit except at night

• 1:06:50Jocko Willink?

  hoosier and oak stump were subject to long periods of depression red had long since left us I had dysentery chuckler was irritable all of us were emaciated and weakened beyond measure but we were to move out on the attack we could not move to chow without gasping for breath but we were to move on the enemy

• 1:07:15Jocko Willink?

  we despaired in the morning we crouched by our guns and waited for the order to dismantle them and move out

• 1:07:24Jocko Willink?

  It did not come, nor did it come the next day or the next, and hope came creeping back, blushing, ashamed of her loyal dis- of her disloyal flight, but commending herself to us once more with the promise never again to desert the ramparts. Then one morning, the word came to move out. Sergeant Dandy gave it to us. "Leave the guns behind," he said. "Take only your rifles and foul weather geared." He grinned. "We're being relieved." It was December 14th, 1942. We had been on the lines without relief since August 7th.

• 1:08:08Jocko Willink?

  My battalion, the 2nd Battalion, 1st Regiment, was the last of those in the 1st Marine Division to come out of the lines. Guadalcanal was over. We had won. And, next he's, they get pulled back off the island now and he's climbing aboard the ship, aboard cargo nets. He's exhausted. "I was able to reach the top of the net but could go no further. I could not muster the strength to swing over the gunnel and I hung there, breathing heavily. The ship's hot sides swaying away from me in the swells, the very perdition lapping

• 1:08:52Jocko Willink?

  beneath me until two sailors grabbed me under the armpits and pulled me over. I fell with a clatter among the others who had been so brought aboard and I lay with my cheek pressed against the warm grimy deck, my heart beating rapidly, not from this exercise, but from happiness." And he ends up having a sailor, a conversation, him and his buddy Chuckler, who's like one of his best friends, they, they are, end up having a, a conversation with one of the sailors. And he says, the soldier seems surprised, he says, "You mean Guadalcanal?" A guy says, "Was it rough? How was it? Rough?"

• 1:09:37Jocko Willink?

  "Rough," we answered mechanically. Then Chuckler spoke up, "You mean Guadalcanal?" The soldier seemed surprised. Started the conversation with the soldier that was on the ship that hadn't been to Guadalcanal.

• 1:09:51Jocko Willink?

  The soldier seemed surprised. "Of course I do." Chuckler hastened to explain. "I wasn't being wise. I meant, "Had you ever heard of the place before you got here?" His astonishment startled us. An idea was dawning. "You mean, hell yes. Guadalcanal, the first Marines. Everybody's heard of it. "You guys are famous. You guys are heroes back home."

• 1:10:17Jocko Willink?

  We did not see him leave, for we had both looked away quickly, each embarrassed by the quick tears. They had not forgotten.

• 1:10:29Jocko Willink?

  And, again, I kind of breezed through that part in, in the book. But, a lot of times when they're in those moments of despair, they'd be thinking, "No one knows what's going on here. They don't know how bad it is." But the reality was, was this, this war, or this battle that lasted five months, there was all kinds of reporting and the glory of the, of the Marines and what they were doing. And so, they were, I guess, you know, they were, they were just overwhelmed with the fact that this, this soldier had said, "You guys, are you kidding me? Guadalcanal. This is it."

• 1:11:02Jocko Willink?

  Now, after they leave Guadalcanal, they get some much-needed R and R. Rest and relaxation. They get to go to Australia to do this. And, they, they go into the book. "Of all the regiments, ours, the first, was in the most advantageous position for the great debauch." "Discipline, already dissolved in the delicious squeals of the girls, all but disappeared that night." "We'd received part of our six months arrears of pay in Australian pounds,

• 1:11:44Jocko Willink?

  "but we were issued no clothing. We still wore our disheveled dungarees." So you can imagine, these guys are coming off of Guadalcanal, hell! And now they're rolling into Australia. And, and they describe it here, the girls are waiting for them. These are the heroes of Guadalcanal. So they roll in and they get after it, in the way that we talked about earlier. They start, they start just, they're, they're going crazy. And...

• 1:12:14Jocko Willink?

  He, and this is one of the things I loved about this book is that this, that Robert Leckie is so real. He's so real. He's just a, he's just real. And, and guess what he likes to do? He likes to get after it. He goes out, he drinks, they drink, they chase women, he goes hard. And he ends up getting in some, getting a little, getting in some trouble. And he talks about brig rats, basically guys that have been thrown in the brig, which is, which is the military jail. And on a ship, they actually have a little brig, you know, a little jail room and you can get thrown in there. And so he talks a little bit about that.

• 1:12:58Jocko Willink?

  It is most especially a marine sentiment, sentiment. And when analyzed, it turns out to be not shameless or shocking, but merely this. "A man who lands in the brig is apt to be a man of bold spirit and independent mind, who must occasionally rebel against the harsh and unrelenting discipline of the camp. I am not attempting to exalt what should be condemned. I'm not suggesting that because of their boldness or independence, the brig rats be forgiven and escape punishment. Brig'd they must be, and brig'd they were. Nor am I speaking of the habitual brig rat.

• 1:13:42Jocko Willink?

  The steady maligner, who, the good for nothing, who is more often in the brig than out of it, and who seeks to avoid every consequence of his uniform, even fighting. I speak of the young, high-hearted soldier whose very nature is bound to bring him into conflict with military discipline and to land him unless he is exceptionally lucky in the brig. I speak of chuckler, and chicken, and oak stump, and a dozen others. And of course, of myself." So, he's saying, "Look, you got guys that are high spirited go-getters, and they're gonna, they're gonna get after it on the battlefield, and they're gonna get after it on liberty,

• 1:14:25Jocko Willink?

  and sometimes they're gonna get rolled up unless they're super lucky, and that doesn't make them bad people." And I had one of my buddies get in really big trouble. This is when we were young guys.

• 1:14:38Jocko Willink?

  Back in the day, back in the day, one of my bros, he got in big trouble. And I thought that our officer, who's one of the best officers I ever worked for, I thought he was gonna really, you know, just crush him and, and I thought he was gonna be really disappointed in all these horrible things. And this is a guy, the officer was a guy that we all loved and wanted to always impress and we wanted to do a good job for him. And so when my buddy had this big incident that he did, which, you know, he was drunk and got crazy and, you know, got arrested and all that, all that bad stuff. And I talked to our OIC about it and I said, hey, sir, you know, is, I mean, what's gonna happen with my buddy? And the officer goes, hey,

• 1:15:22Jocko Willink?

  you guys are young warriors and things like this are gonna happen. Don't let them happen much, but they're gonna happen and we'll deal with it. And I was saying to myself, I wonder why I love this guy so much, but that's, that's exactly it, you know? He was, he knew that, that, you know, you had young, rambunctious guys full of testosterone. And then you add alcohol into the equation and you add chaos into the equation. Some guys might get in trouble. Again, I hate to, to give that credence to this type of stuff. Cause when I look back, I wish I would have been a better leader. I wish I would have been doing other things, you know? But if you're in a leadership position and you've got guys like this and you condemn them instead of trying to help them,

• 1:16:07Jocko Willink?

  you're not helping them. It goes back to this judgment thing that we talked about earlier. If I'm looking at you saying, oh, you don't, you don't, uh, you, you got in trouble, you're a bad person, I don't want you on this team. Instead of saying, hey, look, we gotta get you under control, you got the right attitude, you got the lot of energy. Let's focus it on somewhere correct. Let's focus it on something good. Let's get you doing something positive instead of doing something negative. Instead, sometimes guys go into the judgmental mode, you know, I'm just gonna judge you. And oh, you got in trouble, so you're bad. That's the wrong attitude to have. How about you got in trouble? How about me as the leader, I let you down? I didn't show you the right way to expend your energy.

• 1:16:48Jocko Willink?

  I didn't give you the opportunity to give you an outlet for this, this aggression that you have. Cause you, aggression you're gonna have, that means fighting. You, you don't think, you get a, you get a guys that are in the military. You want someone in your platoon? Do you want them to be not aggressive? Of course you want, I want the most aggressive bastard you can imagine. And guess what? If you don't give them something to do with that aggression, they're gonna find something to do with it, and it's not gonna be good. So as a leader, let's find something positive we can, that they can do with their aggression.

• 1:17:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not like he's out there, not like it's known, you know, like in your case. You, you, you thought he was gonna get severely punished, you know? So it's like, it's not like he's out there publicly saying, "Nah, that's cool, do what you gotta do, player."

• 1:17:34Jocko Willink?

  You're right, you're right. But when it happened?

• 1:17:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like...

• 1:17:38Jocko Willink?

  And I think truly, that officer who is a great guy, he truly probably felt exactly what I just said, I should have given them a better outlet for this aggression. You know, I should have let, I should have figured something better out for them to do. We gotta do something. You give us idle hands? And pockets full of money? Can you imagine, these guys are getting six month pay? And rolling, they were the richest guys in the world, I guarantee it. Especially rolling into wartime Australia, I mean, you know how stringent they were with, with the restricting, the, the money that people were using and spending all over the world to save money for the war? And here come these guys in, richest guys ever, heroes of Waddle Canal.

• 1:18:21Jocko Willink?

  Think they're gonna get after it? They're gonna get after it. So, as leaders, what we need to do is give them a proper outlet.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 1:18:27Jocko Willink?

  Because those guys wanna get after it, but you gotta give them the right way.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:18:30Jocko Willink?

  You know, you gotta give them something positive that they can work on. And if you're gonna let them do something negative, then let's put some barriers around them, so they don't get into trouble.

• 1:18:41Jocko Willink?

  Wish I would have known this when I was a, when I was coming up. I would have done more positive stuff instead of more negative stuff. So now we get into the trouble piece. And these, he's got so many great stories about how these guys, what these guys were going through. And this, so they're out, he's out drinking. And one of his buddies, guy that I mentioned before, his name is Chuckler. Chuckler's actually on duty. So he's, he's standing duty, which means he's in uniform. He's not allowed to drink. He's watching and he's being, you know, he, he's, he's on duty.

• 1:19:19Jocko Willink?

  And so here we go. I found Chuckler standing glumly outside the slop chute entrance. He'd hoped for the interior guard where he might sneak a beer or two. I'll get you one, I promised. I returned with a big glass out of which Chuckler might take a surreptitious sip. There were more side L's until Chuckler said, I gotta go to the head. Here, cover for me. He gave me his pistol belt and helmet and made off. So now, Leckie's drunk right now.

• 1:19:54Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so. But, but Chuckler says, hey, man, I gotta take a piss. Here, take my helmet, take my pistol. Cover for me.

• 1:20:05Jocko Willink?

  For a sentry to be drunk and then to desert his post and surrender his weapon is to combine cardinal sin with unforgivable offense. I was anxiously hoping that he would hurry back. But then, an unfortunate thing happened. Lieutenant Ivy League came striding down the corridor. I say it was unfortunate because Ivy League was the officer of the day. More than that, he was still the man who had filched my cigars, the enlisted men's cigars, if you will. So at one point he had gotten a hold of some cigars and this officer had taken them.

• 1:20:43Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, also, you know, uh, uh, Robert Leckie, he's an Irishman. And I'm not gonna, you know, make a generalization. Okay, yes, I am. He's a hot tempered Irishman. And so he sees this, he sees this guy, and again, he's drunk, he just got off Guadalcanal. And here's what happens. Back to the book. My anger was nourished by the alcohol within me, and I drew Chuckler's pistol and pointed at him and said, "Stop where you are, you lousy cigar stealing son of a bitch, or I'll blow your gentleman's ass off."

• 1:21:24Jocko Willink?

  So. Not, not good. And he ends up, uh, getting in pretty significant trouble. And he actually gets bread and water, which they still do that in the military. They get bread and water. You can get, he gets bread and water for five days. So in the brig, bread and water for five days. That's, that's the punishment that he gets. And he gets docked pay and he gets busted down in rank. One time, I was on a ship, deployed, and we were in a SEAL platoon. And I think I've, I've told this story before. It was the one where the Marines, like, we would stay on the ship when we pulled into port. And

• 1:22:10Jocko Willink?

  it would, it would take like an hour to get off the ship because everyone would be waiting in line. And so what we would do is we would just work out for that hour, hour and a half, and then we'd go up. We could just walk right off the ship. Well, in that hour and a half, the Marine, this, this young Marine had gone off the ship and was getting carried back onto the ship like passed out drunk, covered in puke in an hour and a half. So that's what I think of when I think of these poor guys. Can you imagine coming off of Guadalcanal? You haven't even had water for six months, never mind alcohol. It's a nightmare. But and of course, they don't punish him too bad. Well, they punish him, but they gotta keep him. You know, I mean, he's an able-bodied Marine. They're not gonna, they're not gonna waste an able-bodied Marine.

• 1:22:53Jocko Willink?

  And hopefully, the Colonel in the back of his mind was thinking to himself, you know what? I want this guy in my, I want this guy with me, you know, this guy that's just gonna, you stole cigars from me? Yeah. Cool. He gets nuts. Threaten your life. Yeah, he's getting nuts. So they, but now Australia ends, they roll back out, and it's time for them to start getting prepared to, they go to, they go to New Guinea, and if you remember New Guinea, another hard battle was fought there, primarily by the Australians. I don't know if it was primarily, but the Australians definitely fought.

• 1:23:28Jocko Willink?

  Because I read that letter from the Australian soldier to his two-year-old daughter. That's where he died, was in New Guinea. But now New Guinea is, is owned by the Allies, and they go there to train, to start to prepare for their next big push. And here we go back to the book. "The truck climbed a series of small hills and finally deposited us in the middle of a field of kunai grass, our new home.

• 1:23:56Jocko Willink?

  This is how the Marines train their men. Keep them mean and nasty like starving beasts, says the Corps, and they will fight better. When men are being moved from one place to another, spare no effort to make it painful. And before they've arrived at their destination, dispatch a man ahead to survey the ground with an eye toward discomfort." So you hear this all the time, that that's what the Marine Corps, the Marine Corps is gonna make you so pissed off. By the time you go into battle, you're just gonna kill everybody. Cause you're so sick of living in the dirt.

• 1:24:32Jocko Willink?

  Now, they do a decent amount of training and now they're preparing to assault another island called New Britain. And this is, I found this very interesting, so...

• 1:24:46Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, "The Commander called us together that night and delivered an eve of battle speech." "He spoke in deliberate but angry tones. He spoke like a man who hated the Japanese, as though he had suffered a personal affront at their hands and was bent on personal vengeance."

• 1:25:06Jocko Willink?

  "As though this were a personal, not mechanical war." "His harangue seemed unreal. It was unreal, because it could never produce the desired effect." "Kill the Japs," the Commander was saying. "I want you to kill Japs, and I want you to remember that you're Marines." "We've got a tough job where we're going, and where we're going, you won't have much room for ammunition, so you'd better be sure you see something before you shoot." "Don't squeeze the trigger until you've got meat in your sights, and when you do, spill blood." "Spill yeller blood."

• 1:25:49Jocko Willink?

  "That was all." "We walked back to the tents." "It was Christmas Eve." And I find this, it's Christmas Eve, he gets this speech and you can see like, he's sitting here, they're thinking, "Okay, this guy's trying to get them all riled up and it's not having any impact." And this is what I found to be the real dichotomy here, at the tents, Father Strait was preparing to say midnight mass, so they have a chaplain there, Catholic chaplain, Father Strait.

• 1:26:23Jocko Willink?

  And here's what he says, "Father Strait spoke gently."

• 1:26:29Jocko Willink?

  "He reminded us that not all of us would live to see another Christmas, that perhaps some of us might die this very day." "He told us to be sorry for our sins, to ask the forgiveness of God, to forgive those who had wronged us, to prepare our souls for death."

• 1:26:51Jocko Willink?

  We sang hymns.

• 1:26:54Jocko Willink?

  Nineteen hundred and forty odd years ago, the babe had been born in Bethlehem, and we celebrated him this night in a dark and misty forest that his father had wrought.

• 1:27:08Jocko Willink?

  We sang hymn. We sang hymns to him. Silent night, and hark the herald angels sing, mild he lays his glory by, born that man no more may die.

• 1:27:27Jocko Willink?

  And tomorrow, our hands would be stained with the blood of our brothers.

• 1:27:34Jocko Willink?

  But we sang on, half-heartedly, half-hopingly, sometimes mechanically, sometimes with a desperate, driving poignancy. One hand on the heart, the other on the hilt of a bayonet.

• 1:27:54Jocko Willink?

  In the morning, we marched down to the ships.

• 1:28:03Jocko Willink?

  So much more impactful on him was what Father Strait, and much more than the fiery Colonel that said, "We're gonna go kill Japs here these guys are."

• 1:28:16Jocko Willink?

  I mean, can you imagine you go in for comfort to midnight mass, Christmas Eve, and you get told

• 1:28:25Jocko Willink?

  that

• 1:28:27Jocko Willink?

  many people, many of you may die this very day, and to prepare your soul for death? That's what these guys are facing. That's what their most trusted, the most trusted person in their lives, right? Their spiritual counselor is telling them, "Prepare for death."

• 1:28:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, kinda like, kinda like what we talk about sometimes where... You get a guy, like if you're watching a video, you know, and it's a guy getting you fired up, you know, he's getting fired up to get you fired up. Sometimes it could work, but a lot of times that won't really work because you kind of feel like he's trying to sell you something.

• 1:29:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:01Speaker 01

  But then if you hear someone maybe even talking to someone else or talking about something else, and you just kind of extrapolate certain things that get you fired up because it's so authentic, you know?

• 1:29:13Jocko Willink?

  It's basically the indirect approach on your own mind.

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, on your own mind, yeah.

• 1:29:21Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, on the sunless shores of New Britain, where the rainforests crowded steeply down to the sea, we of the First Marine Division came back to the assault, and it was here that we cut the Japanese to pieces, literally, when that devouring jungle did not dissolve them. And it was here that we pitied them. Now, to pity the enemy is either madness, or is it a sign, or it is a sign of strength. I think that with the First Marine Division on New Britain, it was a sign of strength.

• 1:30:00Jocko Willink?

  We pitied him in the end, this fleeing foe, disorganized, demoralized, crawling on hands and knees even, in that dissolving downpour.

• 1:30:14Jocko Willink?

  For, in the end,

• 1:30:18Jocko Willink?

  it was we, the soft of feet Americans, who had learned to get along in the jungle, and who bore up the best beneath the ordeal of the monsoon. And in these things lay our strength.

• 1:30:40Jocko Willink?

  And I'll tell you what I think that boils down to. So what they're saying here is, you know, the Americans, what do people around the world think of the Americans? Even in 1943, Americans are soft, Americans are lazy, Americans, they have too much comfort. And you think the exact opposite of the Japanese, especially in World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army. It was highly disciplined, it was extremely strict, it was a Spartan lifestyle. But look at what happened here, and why is that? And I'll tell you why. In my opinion, I will tell you why. Because you have men that are fighting for freedom. They're fighting for freedom. And that makes all the difference in the world. Fighting for individual freedom.

• 1:31:25Jocko Willink?

  Fighting for their personal freedom and fighting for their nation's freedom. And fighting for their nation's freedom. And it's a nation that is based upon freedom. That right there is stronger than any tyrannical government. Or any fanatical idea. The idea of freedom is stronger than them all. And that is why these quote "soft" Americans. That is why they were able to conquer and defeat this enemy. This hardened enemy, this well-trained enemy.

• 1:32:12Jocko Willink?

  And this talks a little bit about what we were facing.

• 1:32:18Jocko Willink?

  "To the north, one patrol discovered the body of an E Company scout who had been reported missing. The area bore the marks of a struggle, as though he had fought hand to hand. His body bore dozens of bayonet wounds. They had used him for bayonet practice.

• 1:32:37Jocko Willink?

  In his mouth, they had stuffed flesh they had cut from his arm.

• 1:32:43Jocko Willink?

  His buddy said he had a tattoo there, the Marine emblem, the fouled anchor and the globe.

• 1:32:51Jocko Willink?

  The Japs cut it off and stuffed it in his mouth.

• 1:32:57Jocko Willink?

  The commander was angry.

• 1:33:01Jocko Willink?

  Again, to the north, two Japanese officers had been caught snooping around our positions and had been killed.

• 1:33:09Jocko Willink?

  An E Company outpost scouting the terrain at their front had discovered a Japanese force in platoon strength, sleeping. Sleeping on the ground, sleeping.

• 1:33:19Jocko Willink?

  They fired into them, into these sleeping supermen of the jungle. Withdrawing upon the approach of another enemy platoon."

• 1:33:35Jocko Willink?

  And after this, after the bulk of the battle takes place, and it was a fair, it was, it was, it was not a fair fight, and you're about to find out why. Back to the book, four Japanese soldiers and one officer had been taken alive and had been brought down to the CP, their arms bound behind them, knives at their throats, and from them we learned that the 3rd Company, 53rd Regiment of the Japanese 17th Division had been dispatched from the main body at Cape Gloucester to defend against our landing. Their passage had been through near imprentable jungle, and they had not arrived on the scene until two days after our own coming.

• 1:34:20Jocko Willink?

  Nevertheless, they attacked us. They attacked us, some 100 of them against our force of some 1,200, and, but for the prisoners, we had annihilated them. Were they brave or fanatical? What had they hoped to gain? Had their commander really believed that a company of Japanese soldiers could conquer a battalion of American Marines, experienced, confident, better armed, and placed on higher ground? Why had he not turned around and marched his men home again? Was it because no Japanese soldier can report failure, cannot lose face? I cannot answer.

• 1:35:01Jocko Willink?

  Our dead were six men, among them the stubby intrepid Obi, whom I'd last seen in Melbourne, so drunk he could barely stand, whose gun pit had been overrun when the Japs overwhelmed a section of the lines in their first silent rush up the hillside. Obi, who had helped to drive them out in the counterattack, and who had been alternatingly firing and hurling imprecations at them until one of their bullets took him squarely in the forehead. May he rest in peace. The Japanese dead lay in heaps on the hillside, and they filled the trench where Obi's gun had been located.

• 1:35:48Jocko Willink?

  So, that shows the will of the Japanese fighters, no doubt about it. They were hardcore. And they got told to attack with a hundred guys against nine hundred or twelve hundred? And they said, "All right, let's do this."

• 1:36:06Jocko Willink?

  Now, the... Life, the existence in this jungle was harsh. "Back to the book. The puffing of my lips and eyes symbolized the mystery and poison of this terrible island. Mysterious, perhaps I mean to say New Britain was evil, darkly and secretly evil. A malefactor, an enemy of humankind. An adversary, really, dissolving, corroding, poisoning, chilling, sucking, drenching, coming at a man with its rolling mists, green mold and ceaseless downpour, tripping him with his numberless roots and vines, poisoning him with green insects and bugs and treacherous tree bark,

• 1:36:49Jocko Willink?

  turning the sun from his bones and cheer from his heart, dissolving him. The rain, the mold, the damp steadily plucking each cell apart like tiny hands tearing at the petals of a flower, dissolving him. I say, into a mindless, formless fluid like the sop of mud into which his feet forever fall in a monotonous slop suck, slop suck. That is the sound of nothingness, the song of the jungle wherein everything falls apart in hollow harmony with the rain."

• 1:37:26Jocko Willink?

  "Nothing could stand against it. A letter home had to be read and reread and memorized for it fell apart in your pocket in less than a week. A pair of socks lasted no longer. A pack of cigarettes became sodden and worthless unless smoked that day." Pocket knife blades rusted together, watches recorded the period of their own decay. Rain made garbage of the food, pencils swelled and burst apart, fountain pens clogged and their points separated, rifle barrels turned blue with mold and had to be slung upside down to keep out the rain. Bullets stuck together in rifle magazines and machine gunners had to go over their belts daily, extracting and oiling and re-inserting the bullets to prevent them from sticking to the cloth loops. And everything lay damp and sodden and squishy

• 1:38:11Jocko Willink?

  to the touch, exuding that steady musty reek that is the jungle's own, that individual odor of decay rising from vegetable life so luxuriant, growing so swiftly that it seems to hasten the decomposition from the moment of birth. It was into this green hell that we were inserted a day or two after the march, and here was fought that battle with the rainforest. Here, the jungle and the men were locked in conflict far more basic than our shooting war with the Japanese, for here, the struggle was for existence itself.

• 1:38:51Jocko Willink?

  The war was forgotten. Who could comprehend it?

• 1:38:56Jocko Willink?

  Who cared?

• 1:39:01Jocko Willink?

  And...

• 1:39:04Jocko Willink?

  Rupf, what do you say? And I have not spent that much time in the jungle. I spent some, I think the longest I've been in the jungle is maybe a month. And it wasn't as bad as this. It wasn't raining as that much. But I can't even imagine just that constant, there's no escape from it. There's no escape from it. And it's even worse for Leckie, and I'll tell you why. Back to the book. I would be wet, not only from the rain, for sometimes it stopped, and at other times it did not fall so fast that a jungle hammock could not repel it. But because an affliction which I had begun, which had begun the moment I left Australia, was now

• 1:39:49Jocko Willink?

  again active.

• 1:39:52Jocko Willink?

  It had begun during the discomforts of Guadalcanal, had disappeared in the civilized living of Melbourne, and had reappeared.

• 1:40:02Jocko Willink?

  On Good Enough Island, New Guinea, and now on New Britain.

• 1:40:09Jocko Willink?

  I learned later from doctors to call it enuresis. When asleep, the bladder empties. And that is that.

• 1:40:22Jocko Willink?

  So, he puts that really nicely. But here's what's going on. Because of the stress that he's under, when he goes to bed, he pisses in his pants. And it's just, he can't stop it.

• 1:40:41Jocko Willink?

  And there's nothing he can do about it.

• 1:40:44Jocko Willink?

  And it won't go away.

• 1:40:48Jocko Willink?

  In fact, it went away, it will go away when the stress stops. When he went to Melbourne, it's all good, it stops. Get back out there in the stress of combat, the stress of the environment, and when he goes to bed, he pisses himself.

• 1:41:04Jocko Willink?

  And

• 1:41:07Jocko Willink?

  certainly, he made a decision to put that in this book for a reason.

• 1:41:14Jocko Willink?

  And it does fall into the story a little bit, but the reason I love that he put it in there is because it's just another thing that he's dealing with. And he's not even ashamed of it. He said, "Yeah. Can't, yeah, I'm stressed out. I'm scared. And I'm pissing myself. But guess what? I'm still going on patrol."

• 1:41:41Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. The last patrol was a prolonged one of several days. We were taken by landing boat down the east coast to a place called Old Natamo. And there deposited. The place had once been inhabited by the Japs, but all their emplacements were now empty. Those of the enemy who were discovered were in the last extremities of ordeal.

• 1:42:08Jocko Willink?

  Some were overtaken crawling on their hands and knees, some so badly decomposed it was as though their feet were rotting off. Some weighing perhaps no more than eighty pounds, some without weapons, all without food, and all possessed of that indomitable fighting spirit that was the Japanese Imperial Army's greatest asset. The one single factor that made a poorly equipped soldier a first-rate foe. They all resisted, and they were all destroyed, bayoneted for the most part.

• 1:42:47Jocko Willink?

  For it was file, for it was folly to fire on patrol in unfriendly, unknown territory. One of these stragglers was strangled in cold blood by the kid, a youngster who, although already a veteran of Guadalcanal, was hardly acquainted with a razor. He would go mad two months later. So they come up across these Japanese total eighty pounds. Malnourished. Some of them didn't even have weapons and they're just trying to fight anyways. He ends up with a hernia.

• 1:43:31Jocko Willink?

  So Leckie ends up with a hernia and he gets pulled off to go take a look at his hernia. And they say, "Yeah, you got a bad hernia, but it's not bad enough. You're going back to the front." Then the army comes and replaces their, them there and, and next thing, next move is they go to train at a place called Pavuvu. Pavuvu Island, they're doing another training to get ready for another island campaign.

• 1:44:04Jocko Willink?

  And here we go back to the book. "The food was bad too, and the tents were rotten and punctured with holes. There was no water except what was caught in our helmets during the night. We bathed by dashing naked into the rain, soaping ourselves madly in a race against the probability of the rain ceasing and being left streaked with sticky soap. And we washed our clothes by boiling them in cans of rainwater. Our jungle rot had become so bad, so persistent, that there was an appointed time each afternoon for the men to take off their shoes and socks and to lie out on their sacks with corrosive feet thrust out into the sun.

• 1:44:42Jocko Willink?

  But we had borne all this before, and we could bear it again. Nor could mere bad food or leaky tents press upon the ardor of my comrades. It was the death of hope that bore us down.

• 1:44:58Jocko Willink?

  There had always been hope, hope of relief, hope of the sun, hope of victory, hope of survival, but when they came and told us that none of us were going home on rotation, we strangled hope and turned into wooden soldiers. The future looked to innumerable enemy-held islands and innumerable assaults, and we had already noticed how the ranks of the new River Originals were dwindling with every action. There were even a few suicides to suggest how despairing some could find the situation.

• 1:45:38Jocko Willink?

  Then, the thing changed. They came and said, 'Half of the Originals could go home.'" So these guys get the word. "Hey, look, we're preparing for another assault, but half of you Originals are gonna go home." There was joy, and then, once the method of selection for the stateside bound became known, there was anger. There would be a drawing, a stateside lottery, in which men's names would be pulled from a hat, but only the names of those who had never been in trouble. I was among those whose name did not go into the hat, and so was Runner, and Hoosier,

• 1:46:20Jocko Willink?

  and Chicken, and Souvenirs, and a host of others. It seemed that the originals of the 2nd Battalion 1st Marines had been neatly divided into good guys and bad guys. Among us there raged a profane anger. I know now how a convict must feel upon being turned down a job after, being turned down a job after job because of his past. That was what disqualified us, our past. It made no difference that we had been punished, yes, punished again and again for it to become customary to solve all problems of selection this way, by marking brigrats for dirty duty

• 1:47:02Jocko Willink?

  and excluding them from special benefits. Nor did it matter that we had good war records. In retrospect, it's easy to forgive my commanders this, but then it was hard. It was too much like being unfairly condemned to death. The injustice of it overwhelmed me and I burned with a resentment that was dangerous to carry around. So, what a, what a, what a nightmare. They say, "Look, we're gonna have a little lottery, some of you guys are gonna get home, everyone's happy," and they say, "By the way, if you've been in any trouble, you don't

• 1:47:47Jocko Willink?

  get on the list." And that's a death sentence, the way he's seen it right now. They're seeing it as a death sentence, like, "Oh, we're gonna keep doing this island hopping campaign, we're gonna keep going." There's all these innumerable islands that need to be taken down, you're gonna be on all of them, and you've already seen X number of guys that you had killed, and you're gonna keep going until you're killed. And so this was like a death sentence.

• 1:48:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, meanwhile, the guys who might be able to go, they're just, they're right there.

• 1:48:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're right next to you.

• 1:48:17Jocko Willink?

  And those guys probably did a lot of the same crap, right?

• 1:48:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:48:25Jocko Willink?

  So, back to the book, my enuresis was more noticeable than before. Perhaps too, the agitation of the moment aggravated it. I know that the men in my tent had been urging me to report it to sickbay. I did. The doctor who knew of my case ordered me to Benica. I was leaving in the morning, so. With that, he basically says, okay, you know what? I'm pissing on myself. The guys have been telling me to go see the doctor about it. I haven't done that. I have a hernia. I'm gonna go to medical. So he goes to medical and the doctor says, okay, you're gonna go to Benica. And Benica is a, is a island where they just are set up to handle wounded.

• 1:49:12Jocko Willink?

  And when he gets to Benica, it's, it's kinda shocking.

• 1:49:18Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, Benica was a flesh pot. Benica was the big town. Benica was Broadway. Benica had women. It had buildings of steel and wood. It had roads. It had thousands of sailors as sleek as campons. It had movie amphitheaters. It had electric lights. It had canteens overflowing with candy and comforts. And Benica had beer. Walking with the others from the beach to the Navy hospital, I felt like a hick on his first visit to New York. Jeeps and trucks and staff cars swept over the island's roads, raising a busy cloud of dust. Cranes croaked and cranked on the beach, loading and unloading the boats.

• 1:50:03Jocko Willink?

  MPs patrolled a stockade of pointed sticks behind which dwelt the women. The Navy nurses and Red Cross workers. Everyone was well-fed and unworried. The seat of every pair of pants was filled and happy.

• 1:50:23Jocko Willink?

  We, the lean ones, who wore our discontent on our faces and carried our nervous impatience in our hands, must have been a disturbing presence in that purring island incubator. Yet as I walked along, I was filled with the uneasy suspicion that it would be the image of Benica and not Pavuvu that would be presented to America as the Pacific War.

• 1:50:53Jocko Willink?

  They do the pretty good job of this in the Pacific, in the series. Not as good as they maybe could have done, because they show, they show the guys coming on to a beach and there's nurses and they're dressed in like beautiful, clean white and they're literally handing out lemonade and it's such a contradiction to what they've been living. So you get that, but, but this image is even crazier in my mind of coming on this island. You'd be coming off Pavuvu, you're living in the hell and here these guys are, whatever, a quick flight away and they've got movie theaters and they've got beer and they've got women running around. It's just totally, totally different. And I've talked about that a bunch of times on here. Like, you could be, you could be in World War II, but if

• 1:51:35Jocko Willink?

  you were on the island of Benica, wasn't that much of a sacrifice as it was compared to somebody that was on the island happening campaign. Just, it's not. And it's the same thing, you know, there's places I was in Iraq where I would say, God, this is crazy how nice this is. They got a swimming pool.

• 1:51:50Jocko Willink?

  The base, some of the base said swimming pools. They got a nice gym, they got a nice chow hall. Then you'd go out to some, some outstation in the middle of some forward operating base and these dudes would be living hard. Totally different for different people.

• 1:52:09Jocko Willink?

  Now, Leckie gets put basically into a psych ward. They want to look at him and he's, he starts having this conversation with a psychologist and I think this is a very important conversation. Back to the book, "He began to question me about my experiences in war and as I told them to him, he shook his head from side to side as though to indicate that my whole division, not only myself, ought to be psychoanalyzed." Then we talked of books, for he was well-read, and philosophy. Suddenly he broke it off and said, "What did you say you were?" Meaning, what was he saying? Like, what did you say you did in the Marine Corps?

• 1:52:53Jocko Willink?

  "A scout," I said proudly. "I used to be a machine gunner." And the doctor says back, "But that's no place for a man of your caliber." Now I was shocked. The old shibboleth, intelligence. Had not our government been culpable enough in pampering the high IQ draftees as, as though they were too intelligent to fight for their country?

• 1:53:24Jocko Willink?

  Could not Dr. Gentle see that I was proud to be a scout? And before that, a machine gunner? Intelligence, intelligence, indelligence. Keep it up, America. Keep telling your youth that mud and danger are fit only for intellectual pigs. Keep on saying that only the stupid are fit to sacrifice. That America must be defended by the lowbrow and enjoyed by the highbrow. Keep flaunting head over heart, and soon the head will arrive at the complete folly of any kind of fight

• 1:54:04Jocko Willink?

  and meekly surrender the treasure to the first bandit with enough heart to demand it.

• 1:54:16Jocko Willink?

  Be careful.

• 1:54:19Jocko Willink?

  And it's...

• 1:54:21Jocko Willink?

  I, I think that we do a really good job now in America. You get kids that are, you know, there'll be enlisted kids with bachelor's degrees and master's degrees in the Army, in the Marine Corps, in the SEAL Teams. I don't think we have that as much, but it's definitely something that you need to watch out for. And I think especially, this goes back to judgment.

• 1:54:46Jocko Willink?

  I posted that the other day. I, I met some young Marine, not, not a young Marine, but you know, a guy's probably 25, 27 years old. And he came into the gym and, you know, someone's like, "Oh, he was in the Marine Corps. That's awesome, man." "What'd you do in the Marine Corps?" He was like, "I was a machine gunner." I'm like, "Yes." Like, "Yes, that's awesome."

• 1:55:07Jocko Willink?

  But to have somebody think, oh, you were just a machine gunner, you must, no, no. Being a machine gunner should be a vaunted and elevated position in the world.

• 1:55:25Jocko Willink?

  Bless the machine gunners out there.

• 1:55:29Jocko Willink?

  You want to talk about a person that can get stuff done, go talk to a machine gunner.

• 1:55:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:55:34Jocko Willink?

  They will make some stuff happen. They're carrying a big pig of a gun around. They're laying down fire under pressure.

• 1:55:43Jocko Willink?

  Put him up, I'll put the, I'll put the machine gunner up against one of these intellectuals any day of the week. Bring it.

• 1:55:49Speaker 01

  But the machine gunner can be an intellectual.

• 1:55:51Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely. Absolutely. That's the point. That's the point. Just because someone chooses to do something that's hard doesn't mean that they're not smart.

• 1:56:01Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:56:03Jocko Willink?

  In fact, I'd go so as far as to say they are searching for and, and discovering and becoming something that takes a level of mind power to do.

• 1:56:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Kind of like the, the weak superficial assumption is that, oh, you're going to choose that kind of that hard thing. Cause it's not really intuitive to just, I'm going to go for the hardest thing. It's, it's intuitive to be like, I'm going to get this easy thing to do. Cause it's easier. So when someone chooses the hard thing to do, the, the kind of that assumption is that, ah, you had no other choice.

• 1:56:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. Yes. Perfect. Yes.

• 1:56:46Speaker 01

  No, man, I think that's, I had a guy in high school where he was a year older than us and he was like a, a smart guy and had all his stuff to get a good family. And he went into the army and I remember some people were like, kind of surprised because like, oh, you're going just to the army that, you know.

• 1:57:01Jocko Willink?

  Just like Dr. Gentle here. Oh, what are you doing that for? Cause I want to be a machine gunner.

• 1:57:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:07Jocko Willink?

  That's why.

• 1:57:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:09Jocko Willink?

  Props to the machine gunners.

• 1:57:12Jocko Willink?

  Now, out on this island, he's there, he spends like a month. And

• 1:57:20Jocko Willink?

  they're sitting down to watch a movie. At the theater. I remember one time we had the awesome CBs that that worked for, were in Ramadi with us. And so they're building, they're building bunkers. I'm not kidding. Like, what were their priority builds when they were in Ramadi with me on our little camp, Camp Mark Lee? The priorities that they were working on were bunkers. Were security walls on the river, getting barbed wire. Those were the priorities they were working on. And my lead CB, my CB chief. He's, he had to go to our headquarters. For a couple of days to get money and get equipment and whatever. And when he came back. He was a great dude.

• 1:58:04Jocko Willink?

  His nickname was Biggie. And he was big.

• 1:58:09Speaker 01

  Another one of those things.

• 1:58:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, no, his, he would, he would, he would, like his warm up sets on bench were 315. He was big and he was strong. Yeah, he was strong. And he came back. And, you know, he says, he says, hey, sir, coming back from Fallujah. And I was like, oh, everything cool out there? He goes, let me tell you something. I was like, what's that, Biggie? He says, you know what they're building out there? I said, no, I have no idea. I don't care what they're building out there, because they're building a theater.

• 1:58:40Jocko Willink?

  I said, what? He said, they're building a theater. I said, you mean a movie theater? He goes, yes, a theater. And, and he was just beside himself. Because here we were trying to build bunkers and security walls, and they were building a theater. Biggie didn't like that. But those CBs, man, they kept us, they kept everything rolling and rolling. Props, once you, props to the machine gunners, props to the CBs, for sure. So. They're in a theater that had been built out here. And the movie began, there was an interruption. Over a public address system, a voice announced, allied troops have just invaded northern France. The second front has been opened.

• 1:59:26Jocko Willink?

  Cheers and shouts rose into the soft night to be followed by a buzz of excitement. But then the film began and silence was restored. I arose and left the amphitheater, my heart throbbing in excitement. It was difficult to comprehend this excitement. It was a mix of thrill and pride, but predominating was the heartbeat of anxiety. For suddenly it had been borne in upon me that great events were happening. That the war was now rushing downhill to victory. And here I was clad in pallid pajamas and robe lounging around the hospital.

• 2:00:06Jocko Willink?

  Yearning came upon me in a rush and I wept hurrying along the dark road back to the hospital. I wanted to rejoin my comrades.

• 2:00:17Jocko Willink?

  So he goes into, see Doctor Gentle goes into his office and basically they work it out. Back to the book, "There's not much we can do for this trouble of yours, the hospital commander told me. There's no curing it out here. What you need is a change of climate and a less nerve wracking assignment." "You're shipping me back to the States, sir?" I asked. He smiled wainly, "Ordinarily, yes. Unfortunately, you Marines can't go home unless you're carried home. So we're sending you back to duty with the suggestion that your commanding officer have the sentry wake you during the night." I laughed and he laughed and Doctor Gentle laughed.

• 2:01:01Jocko Willink?

  Cause they knew that's not something that's feasible. What they're basically saying is you're gonna go back and you're just gonna piss yourself and you're gonna fight. And that's exactly what he wanted. Gets back there and now back to the book, we left Pavuvu. Victors of Guadalcanal in New Britain, we went out to fight again, marching into the open jawed landing craft driven up on the beach. Never before were we so confident of victory, never again would its price be so high.

• 2:01:36Jocko Willink?

  Pelaloo was already a holocaust.

• 2:01:41Jocko Willink?

  The island, flat and almost featureless, was an altar being prepared for the immolation of seventeen thousand men.

• 2:01:56Jocko Willink?

  So they're going on to Pelulu and here we go, right into it. They're in their landing craft. The water began to erupt and little geysers in the air became populated with exploding steel. The enemy was saluting us. They were receiving us with mortar and artillery fire. Ten thousand Japanese awaited on the island of Pelulu. Ten thousand men as brave and determined and skillful as ever a garrison was since the art of warfare began. Skillful, yes, it was a terrible rain and it did terrible work among us before we reached the beach.

• 2:02:30Jocko Willink?

  Our Amtrak was among the first assault waves, yet the beach was already a litter of burning blackened amphibian tractors, of dead and wounded, a mortar garden of exploding mortar shells. Holes had beer scooped in the white sand, ore had been blasted out by the shells. The beach was pocked with hulls, all filled with green clad, helmeted Marines. We were pinned down. We were pinned down, but not by mortars alone. Machine gun fire came from an invincible outpost which the Japanese had blasted out of a coral, jutting into the bay. We found an opening in it and even then were filling it with all manners of small armed fire.

• 2:03:14Jocko Willink?

  Grenade, sticks of dynamite hurled by men who had crept up to it, or billowing fire from the flamethrowers who had also gained the hole. But the answering fire continued to rake our deadly picnic ground.

• 2:03:34Jocko Willink?

  And the reason for that is here, for the Japanese had possessed Pelulu for two decades and had blasted into the coral a network of mutually supporting caves. So that, so these, they'd been there for 20 years, preparing for this. And so they've got this massive cave network and even every time they hit one of these locations, the more guys would just pop up.

• 2:04:00Jocko Willink?

  And they also, the Japanese also had tanks on Pelulu. Back to the book, their tanks swooped in suddenly upon us. They came tearing across the airfield, a dozen or so of them. It was startling. They'd come out of nowhere, and here were only riflemen and machine gunners to oppose them. There was a violent outburst of gunfire. I poked my head above the crater. Through the lacy branchwork of the scrub trees, I saw an enemy tank streaking along with snipers and camouflage hanging on to the rear. It was but a moment's glance, but at the time, my eye caught sight of a Marine from F Company, a veteran, running bow-legged to the rear, his face writhing, shouting, "Tanks, tanks!"

• 2:04:42Jocko Willink?

  An officer grabbed him and spun him around and kicked him and propelled him back to his post. In the crater, we'd prepared for defense like a caravan, attacked by Indians. The enemy tanks whizzed past, their little wheels whirling within the tracks. Machine guns clattered, bazookas whammed, our airplanes came screeching down from heaven. And there rose the detonation of their bombs and the roar of exploding tanks. To my right, I saw a line of our tanks advancing, firing as they came, seeming to stop each time their guns stuttered. Then it was over. The Jap tanks had been destroyed.

• 2:05:26Jocko Willink?

  I turned to go, and as I did, nearly stepped on someone's hand.

• 2:05:32Jocko Willink?

  "Excuse me," I began to say, but then I saw that it was an unattached hand, or rather, a detached one. It lay there alone, open, palm upwards, clean, capable, solitary.

• 2:05:48Jocko Willink?

  I could not tear my eyes from it. The hand is the artisan of the soul. It is the second member of the human trinity, of head and hand and heart. A man has no faculty more human than his hand, none more beautiful, nor expressive, nor productive.

• 2:06:09Jocko Willink?

  To see this hand lying alone, as though contemptuously cast aside, no longer a part of man, no longer his help, was to see war in all its wantonness. It was to see the especially brutal savagery of our own technique of rending. And it was to see men, at their eternal worst, turning upon one another, tearing one another, clawing at their own innards with the maniacal fury of the pride possessed. Not much I can comment on that one.

• 2:06:52Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, our casualties were extremely heavy. Before the day was done, they would total 500 in the first regiment, something like 20%. This on the first day. We were advancing again. Our objective was Bloody Nose Ridge. This was the high ground, visible from across the airfield. It gave the enemy perfect observation. Advancing across the flat table of crushed coral, on which there was hardly a single depression, as we were easily sighted as clay ducks in a shooting gallery.

• 2:07:29Jocko Willink?

  But there was no other route, and we had to take it. Grass-cutting machine-gun fire swept the airfield. Mortar shells fell with the com regularity of automation. Marines fell. They crumpled. They staggered. They pitched forward. They sank to their knees. They fell backwards.

• 2:07:53Jocko Willink?

  They kept advancing.

• 2:08:04Jocko Willink?

  The mortars had stopped.

• 2:08:08Jocko Willink?

  The first F Company wave was advancing across the airstrip, running low with ranks scattered, breasting a withering machine gun fire that had begun to rake the runway.

• 2:08:19Jocko Willink?

  They were falling. It seemed unreal. It seemed a tableau, like a scene from a motion picture. It required an effort of mine to recall that these were flesh and blood Marines, men whom I knew, whose lives were linked with mine. Still more was required in facing up to the fact that my turn was next.

• 2:08:47Jocko Willink?

  And here is the point in battle where one needs the rallying cry. Here where the banner must be unfurled, or the song sung, or the name of the cause flung at the enemy like a challenge, here is the mounted charge. The thing as old as warfare itself, that either overwhelms the defense and wins the battle, or is broken and brings on defeat.

• 2:09:11Jocko Willink?

  How much less forbidding might have been that avenue of death that I was about to cross had there been some holy irrational shout, like "Viva la Emperor!", or "The Marine Corps forever!", rather than that educated voice, which in a sang Freud, that was at all odds with the event, said, "Well, it's our turn now."

• 2:09:42Jocko Willink?

  That's all you're gonna get. That's all you're gonna get. These Marines are getting tore apart by machine gun fire, by mortar, they're getting tore apart, Marines are falling left and right, they're continuing to advance.

• 2:09:55Jocko Willink?

  They're continuing to advance, and he's watching this group go across this airfield, getting mowed down.

• 2:10:06Jocko Willink?

  He wants some kind of motivation. And what does he get? Well, it's our turn now. Crazy. I bade goodbye to the artist. He looked at me sadly from beneath his helmet. His face made darker and more angular by its shadow. He cast a ruleful glance in the direction of the airstrip and the still falling men. "Good luck, kid," he said, and turned away. I began to run. The heat rose in stifling waves. The bullet whispered at times, and other times they were not audible. I ran with my head low, my helmet bumping crazily to obscure my view,

• 2:10:49Jocko Willink?

  like waves rising around a small ship. In a moment, I could not see Lieutenant Deep Chest or Filthy Fred. I was alone and running. There were men to my left, still falling. I ran and threw myself down, caught my breath, rose again, and ran again. Suddenly, I ran into a shell crater full of men, and I stopped running. So, the only cover that they have is a shell crater. And he dives into this shell crater, and there's ten guys or so in there. And one of them, he's calling this one guy Walkie Talkie. Back to the book, Walkie Talkie sat below me on the crater floor.

• 2:11:32Jocko Willink?

  He hunched his shoulders toward me and asked me to twirl certain dials. I did, but he could not seem to get through. There came the screech of a shell. I braced my back for it, even though I knew that the ones you hear are not the ones to be feared. But how fear the one that gets you? The one you do not hear. Another voice was audible now. The Fifth Marines Lieutenant, who was wounded, who was, in fact, dying, as I learned later, was speaking by Walkie Talkie to his regimental commander. "The glorious Fifth Marines have gone through, sir," he was saying,

• 2:12:16Jocko Willink?

  "and have achieved the objective. We are now in contact with the First Regiment."

• 2:12:31Jocko Willink?

  Now, there's ten guys in there. And finally, one of the captains speaks up. "How many men, how many men here from the first Marines?" he asked. We raised our hands. "Six, eh? That ought to be enough. We better take that blockhouse over there. That's where all the machine gun fire seems to be coming from. As soon as this shell fire stops, we'll move out against it."

• 2:12:58Jocko Willink?

  Just like that. The blockhouse had resisted even naval gunfire. It had taken bombs point blank and remained standing. It was obviously covered by a maze of pillboxes. We, six of us, were to take it.

• 2:13:16Jocko Willink?

  The captain might be stupid, but no one could say that he was not gallant.

• 2:13:22Jocko Willink?

  "I felt disgusted and resigned myself to an unprofitable death.

• 2:13:29Jocko Willink?

  I looked at the men from the fifth, who were regarding us with wonder and envied them for having retained diplomatic relations with the state of sanity.

• 2:13:42Jocko Willink?

  Their commander was hardly conscious now, but he had heard. He waved a hand weakly in our direction and grinned as though to say, 'You'll never make it, but there's no harm in trying.'"

• 2:13:57Jocko Willink?

  And of course, to a dying man, I suppose there was no harm.

• 2:14:07Jocko Willink?

  So, you think they're gonna do it? Yep, they're gonna do it. They're gonna charge this blockhouse, six guys, this blockhouse, it's just concrete blockhouse, massive machine gun fire coming from it. They're gonna charge this thing. That took bombs straight up. That took, that took direct hits from bombs.

• 2:14:25Jocko Willink?

  They make a run for it. Back to the book. The shells drove us back to our crater. Once again, walkie talkie had difficulty with the apparatus. He could receive but not send. Battalion was asking for positions. You better report back to command post, Captain said to me. But come back out. So Lucky wants to go tell command post what's going on. Imagine, there's just machine gun fire, mortars going off everywhere. He runs back. He gets back to the major at the command post. How is it out there Lucky? The major asked. Bad sir, I said, adding nothing. For my notion of this battle was still a confused jumble of men and movement and explosions

• 2:15:08Jocko Willink?

  in which blistering hot, in which a blistering hot airfield was somehow involved. Then I arose and said, I better get back out. The major nodded and waved, good luck.

• 2:15:23Jocko Willink?

  I took firm hold of my Tommy gun and adjusted my pack, secured my map case, and circled the pile of shell casings to return to the shell crater. It was my last warlike act. For the last time, I set my face toward the enemy. About a hundred yards out, a shell exploded in front of me. I veered to the right. Another shell exploded in front of me. I veered more, another shell, another, but closer. Four more, another, closer still. I halted. A horrifying fact became clear. I had inserted myself between the enemy artillery and their target. They were hunting something. Perhaps the ammunition dumped behind me and were walking their fire in its direction.

• 2:16:06Jocko Willink?

  There was no cover. To go forward was to die. I could only run away from this approaching death, hoping to get out of the target area before it caught me. I turned and ran. I ran with the heat shimmering in waves of, from the coral, with the sweat oiling my joints and the fear drying my mouth with the shells exploding behind me, closer, ever closer. The airfield, the air filled with the angry voices of shrapnel demanding my life.

• 2:16:35Jocko Willink?

  I ran with an image in my mind of the Japanese gunner atop his ridge, bringing each burst carefully closer to my flying rear, chasing me across that baking table in a monstrous game of cat and mouse, gleeful at each greater burst of speed called forth by a closer explosion, and then tiring of sport, lifting the gun and dropping one before me.

• 2:17:01Jocko Willink?

  A shell landed alongside me, perhaps five feet away, but it did not explode, or at least I do not think it did. One cannot be certain at such time. There is a different space and time with fear. But there was a shell, a two-foot blob of burning red, which struck the coral with a thunderclap and seemed to glance off into the air and go wailing away into the bay. With that, I called upon my remaining strength, and also, then, the Japanese gunner hit his target. The ammunition dump was hit. The war ended for me. I had been shattered, no good, a dry husk.

• 2:17:41Jocko Willink?

  Modern war had had me. A giant lemon squeezer had crushed me dry. Concussion, heat, thirst, tension, all had had their way with me.

• 2:17:54Jocko Willink?

  I must have stumbled about, unable to speak, until at last I sank my knees beside two men scratching a foxhole in the sand. They were startled. As though from afar, I could hear them discussing me. "He can't think. What he thinks the matter with him? Search me. He don't look wounded. Maybe he got a near miss. Hey, fella, what's wrong with you? Can't you say something? What do you think we ought to do with him?"

• 2:18:22Jocko Willink?

  They rose and pulled me erect, got a shoulder apiece beneath my armpits and dragged me like a dummy through the sand, like a life-sized doll in whom the spring had been broken. They dragged me to the doctor. A corpsman laid me on the blanket, tied a ticket to me. He thrust a needle into my arm which was attached, a running hose to a bottle of liquid suspended upside down on a wire frame.

• 2:18:49Jocko Willink?

  The pair who had brought me crouched beside me. "What's wrong with him, Doc?" one of them asked. "I don't know," the corpsman answered. "He's pretty beat up, though. Blast concussion. I'm sending him back to the hospital ship." One of the pair looked longingly at the Tommy gun beside me. His glance seemed to say, "You won't need that anymore." I told him with my eyes to take it. And he slung it over his shoulder with immense satisfaction. Then they left. They had their reward. Mortars were falling as they carried me onto the beach with about a half a dozen other casualties. We lay there and I wondered dully if the Jap gunners were to catch me after all. At last, a landing boat took us aboard and roared off for the ship.

• 2:19:32Jocko Willink?

  I began to feel shame. The others were badly wounded. Some put out of pain by morphine, and here I lay in a corner, quietly retching like a frightened kitten. Intact, my face unblemished, my bones unbroken.

• 2:19:49Jocko Willink?

  The war was ending. I was ashamed.

• 2:19:55Jocko Willink?

  My spirit crept away from the eyes staring... From the staring eyes that fastened upon us as the boat was drawn up out of the water to the deck. People in white coats thronged the rail, and two of these at the center gazed with authority into the boat, searching for the wounded most in need of aid.

• 2:20:17Jocko Willink?

  I shrank from that expert stare when suddenly one of them pointed at me and said, "Him! Get him downstairs right away."

• 2:20:25Jocko Willink?

  They grasped me, stripping me naked as they did, and hurried me down a ladder, laying me on a table, and again thrusting a needle into my arm. With the liquid flowing into my body came the warm flood of returning self-respect. The dull, dispiriting shame had have disappeared the moment that pointing finger singled me out. I had been hurt. I was in need of aid. With a healing power of which he had no inkling, the doctor had restored my spirit to me.

• 2:20:58Jocko Willink?

  So the war ended for me. Each day for a week, I ascended the ladder to the deck and gazed in morbid fascination at Peluloo a mile or so away.

• 2:21:10Jocko Willink?

  They were still fighting. One could hear the sound of the firing.

• 2:21:16Jocko Willink?

  Each day, the news was bad. We were winning.

• 2:21:22Jocko Willink?

  But at a fearful price.

• 2:21:27Jocko Willink?

  And then, the battle had been won. Extermination had come to the Japanese ten thousand on Pelulue, and my regiment, the first, was licking its wounds on the beach. Of my battalion? A force of some fifteen hundred men. There remained but twenty-eight effectives when the command came for the last assault on that honeycomb of caves and pillboxes which the Japanese had carved into bloody-nosed ridge. In men, and blood, and agony, the most costly spit of land in the wide Pacific.

• 2:22:07Jocko Willink?

  When the command came, they rose from their holes like shades from sepultures, and advanced. They could not run, they could barely walk, and they dragged their weapons. But they obeyed,

• 2:22:27Jocko Willink?

  and they attacked.

• 2:22:31Jocko Willink?

  They were taken from the line on the brink of collapse.

• 2:22:40Jocko Willink?

  Rutherford was killed. He'd been hit by a mortar shell and blown to bits. A white man had been killed.

• 2:22:49Jocko Willink?

  And the artist. The artist was dead, a brave man. May he rest in peace.

• 2:22:59Jocko Willink?

  Captain Dreadnaught fell, dead of a sniper's bullet.

• 2:23:06Jocko Willink?

  It had become a Holocaust in the fullest sense. Scores of others in the battalions perished.

• 2:23:18Jocko Willink?

  There were those that have not been mentioned in this book, friends who did not fit the narrative, men whose faces I have not forgotten and whose bravery and sacrifice has deposited a vast spiritual credit for our nation to draw upon.

• 2:23:37Jocko Willink?

  These two fell, wrestling that island rock from the grasp of its most tenacious defender.

• 2:23:49Jocko Willink?

  May they rest in peace.

• 2:24:00Jocko Willink?

  Sacrifice says, "Not the blood of your brother, my friend.

• 2:24:08Jocko Willink?

  Your blood."

• 2:24:13Jocko Willink?

  That is why women weep when their men go off to war. They do not weep for their victims.

• 2:24:22Jocko Willink?

  They weep for them as victim.

• 2:24:28Jocko Willink?

  That is why,

• 2:24:31Jocko Willink?

  with the immemorial insight of mankind, there are gay songs and colorful bands to send them off to fortify their failing hearts.

• 2:24:46Jocko Willink?

  Not to quicken their lust for blood.

• 2:24:52Jocko Willink?

  That is why there are no glorious living,

• 2:24:57Jocko Willink?

  but only glorious dead.

• 2:25:03Jocko Willink?

  Heroes turn traitor, warriors age and grow soft,

• 2:25:10Jocko Willink?

  but a victim is changeless.

• 2:25:15Jocko Willink?

  And sacrifice

• 2:25:18Jocko Willink?

  is eternal.

• 2:25:34Jocko Willink?

  Sacrifice is eternal.

• 2:25:43Jocko Willink?

  And I'll close with the book there.

• 2:25:50Jocko Willink?

  Obviously, it's an incredible book

• 2:25:54Jocko Willink?

  about incredible men

• 2:26:01Jocko Willink?

  and their eternal sacrifice.

• 2:26:10Jocko Willink?

  And it's so humbling to hear of their sacrifice and I say it over and over and over again and I will continue to say it, that we must live lives worthy of their sacrifice.

• 2:26:29Jocko Willink?

  The 7100 killed at Guadalcanal, the 2336 killed at Pelluloo.

• 2:26:41Jocko Willink?

  And all the soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who, as Robert Leckie said later in his life, who fought or who foremost fighting,

• 2:26:58Jocko Willink?

  fell.

• 2:27:04Jocko Willink?

  And I think it's also important to remember the example of Robert Leckie, who by his own admission was no angel,

• 2:27:17Jocko Willink?

  no plaster saint,

• 2:27:21Jocko Willink?

  but who was truly a hero.

• 2:27:27Jocko Willink?

  And remember that, that people, all people, have good and bad qualities. And people make mistakes and they do dumb things. And yet those very people are capable of so much.

• 2:27:47Jocko Willink?

  And yet, so often,

• 2:27:51Jocko Willink?

  we judge.

• 2:27:55Jocko Willink?

  We judge and we judge and we judge and we cast stones.

• 2:28:06Jocko Willink?

  But, but who are we to judge?

• 2:28:13Jocko Willink?

  Who are we to judge when a man like Robert Leckie, Lucky Leckie?

• 2:28:23Jocko Willink?

  Who not only drank to excess and chased girls and pulled a pistol on his superior officer? And who got so nervous?

• 2:28:35Jocko Willink?

  So scared? Yes, I'm gonna call it scared, who got so scared that he would lose control of his bladder every time he went to sleep?

• 2:28:48Jocko Willink?

  And yet, he overcame that fear with more bravery in his heart than most of us can even fathom.

• 2:29:04Jocko Willink?

  So, who are we to judge?

• 2:29:09Jocko Willink?

  We shouldn't judge people, we should help them.

• 2:29:16Jocko Willink?

  And there's probably nothing more we can do to live a worthwhile life than to help people.

• 2:29:28Jocko Willink?

  To help other people. And in helping other people, I promise,

• 2:29:35Jocko Willink?

  you will be rewarded and you will be helping yourself too.

• 2:29:46Jocko Willink?

  And one more thing that we see in this book once again is the strength of human will.

• 2:29:56Jocko Willink?

  We see men tested beyond anything we can imagine.

• 2:30:06Jocko Willink?

  And then, when they pass that test one time, they get given that test again, and then again.

• 2:30:17Jocko Willink?

  And still, they overcome.

• 2:30:22Jocko Willink?

  They overcome the pain and the suffering and the fear.

• 2:30:31Jocko Willink?

  And yet we can't get ourselves out of bed in the morning? We can't move toward a goal we've set for ourselves?

• 2:30:40Jocko Willink?

  Don't allow that.

• 2:30:47Jocko Willink?

  Remember

• 2:30:50Jocko Willink?

  the Teneroo River. Remember the airfield at Guadalcanal. Remember the discipline instilled in every Marine at Paris Island.

• 2:31:04Jocko Willink?

  And remember what you

• 2:31:09Jocko Willink?

  you remember what you are capable of if you mobilize your will. And if you keep moving forward, you keep advancing.

• 2:31:23Jocko Willink?

  Remember what you are capable of if you keep attacking and keep attacking and keep attacking and don't stop.

• 2:31:41Jocko Willink?

  Don't stop moving forward. And don't stop attacking and don't succumb

• 2:31:57Jocko Willink?

  to the suffering and the pain and the fear. Don't succumb.

• 2:32:03Jocko Willink?

  But instead,

• 2:32:06Jocko Willink?

  move forward and attack.

• 2:32:17Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's all I've got for tonight.

• 2:32:25Jocko Willink?

  So Echo Charles.

• 2:32:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:32:28Jocko Willink?

  While I'm over here.

• 2:32:31Jocko Willink?

  Doing a little decompression.

• 2:32:33Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:32:33Jocko Willink?

  Maybe you could mobilize your will.

• 2:32:36Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:32:37Jocko Willink?

  To let people know.

• 2:32:40Jocko Willink?

  I don't know how to support this podcast or something.

• 2:32:43Speaker 01

  I do, I will make the disclaimer, it doesn't take much will to do this, but I do see it as a time to decompress a little bit.

• 2:32:51Jocko Willink?

  Bro, seriously.

• 2:32:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:54Jocko Willink?

  Can you even imagine? You're getting tested over and over again. You're going through the hardest possible test.

• 2:33:01Speaker 01

  With dysentery and a hernia.

• 2:33:02Jocko Willink?

  With dysentery or hernia, you're pissing yourself, your friends are getting killed, you pass that test through some miracle. And they're like, yeah, you got another test.

• 2:33:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33:13Jocko Willink?

  Right, yeah, but to prepare you for the test, we're gonna make you suffer more. And then, so you get tested again? That's cool, but does not, doesn't matter, it's not the final exam, you're gonna do it again. And, and you know, again, I say this all the time, this is thousands and thousands and thousands of people did this. It's not, it's not, that's what's, that's what's important to remember. This isn't, this is a civilian, this guy was a civilian.

• 2:33:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it sounds like this crazy extreme case, and this is all the cases.

• 2:33:45Jocko Willink?

  Yes, this is all the cases. This is all the cases. He talks about, he says, look, courage was common. There was a rare case where we'd get touched by this fear and it would overtake guys and if we bolster them back up the best we could, but this isn't an anomaly. This isn't the story of the singular hero.

• 2:34:02Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:34:04Jocko Willink?

  This is the story of thousands and thousands of heroes, and this is the story of what people are capable of. People are capable of this, it's proven.

• 2:34:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:12Jocko Willink?

  And when you think you can't take anymore, guess what? You can.

• 2:34:18Jocko Willink?

  Amazing.

• 2:34:22Speaker 01

  Well. If I got dysentery, I wouldn't get out of bed, straight up. Don't, let alone all this other stuff. Yeah, I'm in bed. Maybe I'd go to the hospital or something like that, but then I stay in the hospital bed.

• 2:34:35Jocko Willink?

  Even Echo Charles.

• 2:34:38Jocko Willink?

  Could employ the will and carry on with dysentery.

• 2:34:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:42Jocko Willink?

  With, I, I didn't say he got malaria too, by the way, you know.

• 2:34:45Speaker 01

  Was he? I thought it was his friend.

• 2:34:47Jocko Willink?

  He got it too. His friend got malaria, but he got malaria too. Got it. That's when they went to look at his hernia. They're like, hey, you gotta go back to front. Oh, but you got malaria. Suffer through that for whatever it is.

• 2:34:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:34:57Jocko Willink?

  That's four days. Okay, now you can go back.

• 2:35:01Speaker 01

  Okay, you're good now? Okay, okay.

• 2:35:03Jocko Willink?

  Guys are just unbelievable.

• 2:35:07Speaker 01

  Alright, well. I feel like we should talk about on it then.

• 2:35:11Jocko Willink?

  That sounds like a great.

• 2:35:12Speaker 01

  It is.

• 2:35:13Jocko Willink?

  Thing to talk about. I'll let you talk about it. I'm gonna sit over here and decompress.

• 2:35:17Speaker 01

  Well. Okay, so I'm, I'm really glad, and this kinda goes without saying, but I'm gonna say it. I'm glad that. We kinda got aligned. Well, I mean, I already took Shroom Tech before this, but. Actually, I get technically it was you who really made me take krill oil. You know?

• 2:35:35Jocko Willink?

  I didn't make you.

• 2:35:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, but. You, let's say you influenced.

• 2:35:39Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:35:39Speaker 01

  Me enough to actually take action, as, as they say. But anyway. So it's like. Kinda I compare like the post krill oil and the pre krill oil situation. So I was, you know, you know, I was into lifting weights and stuff. And you know how like weights is a good. Kinda. Which is cool because you know how strong you are, kinda thing, you know? Yeah, it's pretty black and white. There's the number. So. You can kinda judge like, yeah, this, that guy's strong, or I'm strong, or I'm not strong, whatever, right? So I considered myself pretty strong in the weight room. But. Okay, this one time, one of my, one of our friends came in, into town. We have, you know, we have the weights at the, you know, outside and stuff. And. They're like, oh yeah, you got the weights and, um.

• 2:36:24Speaker 01

  So he gets under there and he, and he, you know, he grabs a weight, not heavy, but he grabs them and I'm thinking in my head. Like, I can do way more than that. But then. I was like, I can, but I have to warm up a lot first, you know, cause it's so really how strong am I, you know, really? Anyway, um, the point there is. That was pre krill oil. I'm not saying I could jump underneath my max, no, I'm not saying that, but I'm saying like my actual strength.

• 2:36:51Speaker 01

  Is closer to my no non-warm-up strength now.

• 2:36:55Jocko Willink?

  That's a good thing.

• 2:36:56Speaker 01

  You ever, you ever seen those videos um where?

• 2:37:00Jocko Willink?

  Probably not, but go ahead.

• 2:37:01Speaker 01

  I don't know, you may remember, you know, the one where they, they dress up the, the young professional basketball player or something.

• 2:37:09Jocko Willink?

  Oh, to look like a nerd or something?

• 2:37:11Speaker 01

  No, an old, an old man.

• 2:37:12Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:37:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, so there's this one, it's like, uh, I think he's like a pro CrossFit guy or a pro weight lullaby lifter or something. So he goes to this beaches, this old man. And he's, hey, you guys are strong and stuff like that. I think he kind of overdoes it in my opinion with acting, but whatever. And everyone's believing like, oh, this old man, you know, he probably used to be a weightlifter. And he um, and he gets under the weight and he's just killing, he's embarrassed, he's, he's just showing up all the guys, beating them, you know, lifting more weights than them and whatnot. Um, so then he kind of like does his old man walk away. That's how I felt. Before the krill oil. When it's time to lift, like, oh, I can lift a lot, but like my everyday life, I'm like kind of stiff, you know, like, oh, I gotta like get up after all, you know.

• 2:37:57Speaker 01

  That's it. That's the krill, krill oil comparison. Speech.

• 2:38:02Jocko Willink?

  And where would you recommend people get the krill oil that you speak of so highly?

• 2:38:05Speaker 01

  Anyway, on it.

• 2:38:08Speaker 01

  But here, and I looked into that Strongbone.

• 2:38:10Jocko Willink?

  All my prompts lead towards closure. That's my goal.

• 2:38:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, sure. No, but I'm saying like, you know how, you know.

• 2:38:19Jocko Willink?

  You don't care about my goal. You got your own goal. You got stories to tell. You got things people want to hear about.

• 2:38:24Speaker 01

  But I think when I, when I saw those videos, I was like, that was me before krill. I really thought that, like, oh, that's how it feels, you know, kind of fun. It's a funny video. It's a funny thought even really. But that's kind of how it feels. But I don't have that problem anymore, you know, I don't feel like that anymore. So.

• 2:38:40Speaker 01

  If someone has seen that video and they might be feeling that, that way, maybe I can solve their problem. I wish I knew that a long time ago. Anyway, looked into Strongbone. Remember we were talking about it last week or whatever? And I was like, hey, does it make your bones strong? Yeah, did it. Went on there, on it. Very resourceful. I am a resourceful person. On it is very good resource. The website. And the answer is yes, it does. Helps like even like the onset of like osteoporosis, like all this stuff. It's like that's, that's what it's like. I didn't memorize all the terms, but I know the point, but it's um, oh yeah, strontium.

• 2:39:19Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's what they name it after.

• 2:39:20Speaker 01

  Yes, because strontium, calcium, all these things like make it so when you get older and you know, degeneration, you lose that.

• 2:39:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:28Speaker 01

  In your natural deal, you know?

• 2:39:30Jocko Willink?

  Maybe.

• 2:39:31Speaker 01

  And you get the strong bone, boom, strontium back in your bones. Easy money. So you take the krill oil.

• 2:39:36Jocko Willink?

  Back in your bones or back in your joints?

• 2:39:39Speaker 01

  Well, your joints are made up of your bones, tendons, ligaments.

• 2:39:43Jocko Willink?

  Does it go into everything?

• 2:39:44Speaker 01

  It goes into your bones.

• 2:39:46Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:39:46Speaker 01

  So you figure the tendon connection to your bone, that's, that's the part that can jam you up. Yeah, that can jam you up.

• 2:39:53Jocko Willink?

  That's what you heard, right? In your bicep?

• 2:39:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:39:55Jocko Willink?

  When that happened?

• 2:39:55Speaker 01

  That's what I heard. Yeah, I heard it one day. It ripped off my bone. My bicep ripped off my bone.

• 2:40:02Speaker 01

  Anyway, if I had some strong bone, that wouldn't hap- that wouldn't happen. Maybe it would have, I don't know, but nonetheless, that is what Strongbone helps. So guess what I did? Got some. No worries.

• 2:40:14Speaker 01

  But yeah, there's, there's not just that. There's all kinds of cool stuff. Warrior bars, that's another, I've got more of those. Shroom tech for performance and the pro- here's the thing, I, I think sometimes people will kind of mistake the shroom tech when, you know, because it helps your oxygen uptake. They think that like, I'm gonna, when I breathe, it has something to do with your breathing. You know, it's not your breathing or your lungs. It's the, the amount of oxygen you take up when you breathe, you know? So they can go to your muscles' oxygen. Anyway, that's what it helps. So if you go hard, like super hard or grappling, long, what do you call them? Wads, right?

• 2:40:52Jocko Willink?

  Workout of the day.

• 2:40:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It helps. Keeps you out of the red. Uh, but yeah, go on there, there's uh, for whatever you do, you know, they even have workout stuff and whatnot. It's actually kind of a fun website. You'd be on there for, for a while looking at the cool stuff. That's my opinion and my experience.

• 2:41:10Speaker 01

  Anyway, subscribe to the pod. Actually, you know what? We'll talk about Amazon first. So Amazon click through, this is a good way to support podcasts.

• 2:41:20Speaker 01

  What you do, if you don't know already.

• 2:41:24Speaker 01

  Before you do your Amazon shopping, go to jockopodcast.com. Either on the tab on the top left in green, or in the top menu, or on the side, kinda towards the bottom. There's a place to click on just support through, either support Jocko Podcast or Amazon Click Through. Anyway, before you do your Amazon shopping, click through there, then do your shopping. I actually did that the other day. And I don't know if you're watching this on YouTube, but if you are, this is what I bought.

• 2:41:59Jocko Willink?

  Which is totally necessary. And also, also, if you, this book, I didn't, I don't know if I made it clear enough. The book that we read today is called Helmet for My Pillow by Robert Leckie. You can get that, Amazon. You're gonna put it, Echo will have it on the website. And when you click that and you buy it, boom, you'll be good to go.

• 2:42:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:42:20Jocko Willink?

  You will support the podcast, you will support the Leckie family in some way, because they'll be somehow being supported, right? Because they're own, I'm sure this book. So it's a good way to support this hero, this hero's family. And also, get The Pacific. I don't know if we could put that, I don't know. But anyways, like if you could put it on Click Through, unless maybe someone bought the DVDs, but, but, but watch that. And, and you know what? When you watch it, like prep yourself mentally and don't watch it while there's other things going on. Sit down.

• 2:42:55Speaker 01

  Right, right, get into it.

• 2:42:56Jocko Willink?

  On a nice situation, you know, logistically with a good TV set and a good speaker system.

• 2:43:04Speaker 01

  Throttle.

• 2:43:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And then watch The Pacific. And you only, they're like, maybe you can watch two at a time, maybe?

• 2:43:11Speaker 01

  What, two episodes?

• 2:43:12Jocko Willink?

  Two episodes, but watch them close together too, so you kind of maintain the continuity of the situation.

• 2:43:16Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:43:17Jocko Willink?

  Because that's good too. And when you see it, man, it's just incredibly well done. Thing.

• 2:43:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:43:23Jocko Willink?

  It's awesome. And then when you have the background of the podcast of the books and you read the books, man, it's really, really powerful.

• 2:43:30Speaker 01

  Like comes, you actually get more, more into it.

• 2:43:33Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure.

• 2:43:34Speaker 01

  You know, like when you kind of know the story.

• 2:43:35Jocko Willink?

  Yes, exactly. You're more invested in the characters.

• 2:43:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:43:39Jocko Willink?

  And you realize that, that when you see Lucky Leckie in the thing, you have his whole backstory of his whole life when you've read the book.

• 2:43:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:43:47Jocko Willink?

  And it's awesome.

• 2:43:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Um, there's a, um, by the way, on the podcast website, there's a whole section, whole page with all the books of all the podcasts. Make it easy for the book situation. But yeah, so yeah, before you do your Amazon shopping, click through this, the, click through the Amazon link and then do your shopping. And yes, I did buy this item, which I'm showing. So if you look on YouTube, you can see it. It's to add to our little collection on the table here. It's awesome. So yeah, speaking of YouTube, we have a YouTube channel. It's good. People have been telling me. For real, people have been telling me, not just one person, but they say, hey, you should take, cause

• 2:44:33Speaker 01

  on YouTube channel, we have the podcast, of course, the video format. Excerpts, just like, you know, excerpts from the, so you can like share them and stuff like that. And then there's like, uh, what do you call them? The what artistic pieces, stuff that I put some like time into, put some track, a soundtrack.

• 2:44:51Jocko Willink?

  Echo Charles videos.

• 2:44:52Speaker 01

  Sure. I just called it, I forget what I called it, like discipline, something, I don't know.

• 2:44:58Jocko Willink?

  So you made three categories or two?

• 2:45:01Speaker 01

  Two.

• 2:45:01Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:45:02Speaker 01

  Play, so basically people have been asking me, hey, you should separate them and make them into playlists, which I kind of knew about, but I'm not deep into the YouTube thing.

• 2:45:11Jocko Willink?

  Well, we know that.

• 2:45:12Speaker 01

  Well, no, as far as the customization and you know, all that, which, which I kind of looked into.

• 2:45:17Jocko Willink?

  See, so this is good. What I like about this is people gave you a suggestion.

• 2:45:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:45:20Jocko Willink?

  Which I saw too. You, you looked at it, you explored it and now you executed on it.

• 2:45:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, totally did.

• 2:45:26Jocko Willink?

  So if there's any other good ideas that people have, they should post them. And so that way you can improve even more and we can improve and, and serve for them better.

• 2:45:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think so. I think that's, and, and of course. Someone gonna be like, hey, you know, and they'll say an idea might not be all that good. But if, or it may not seem like it's all that good. But if another person says it, kind of unrelated, you know? Not the kind where some guys are, hey, do this, you know, make this or create this. And then someone just likes it or puts a like on it or says, yeah.

• 2:45:56Jocko Willink?

  So you're asking for multiple?

• 2:45:59Speaker 01

  Well, not the split hairs, but I'm not asking for anything.

• 2:46:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh, but that's what you act on.

• 2:46:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, so if some, someone says a suggestion, maybe the next day, two days, three days later, another person says the same suggestion, suggestion unrelated. And that tend, you know, the tendency, I see a tendency coming up, then that's when I'd start taking action. See what I'm saying?

• 2:46:19Jocko Willink?

  What about the 14,000 people that told you to make more videos?

• 2:46:22Speaker 01

  I'm making more videos, Jessup. Those are.

• 2:46:25Jocko Willink?

  No, because I was watching, I realized I was watching somebody, I can't even remember who it was, but I was watching chunks of someone speak the other night, someone that I was, I don't know who it was. And, and I was so happy that they were in short clips. I was like, this is why we need more short clips.

• 2:46:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:46:40Jocko Willink?

  Because it's really convenient to go, what's this idea here? Boom, you see the name of the video, you go, here's the idea, I want to think about that idea. Boom, you're good to go.

• 2:46:48Speaker 01

  And YouTube is good like that where if there's a bunch of them, which I think we're kind of coming up with, our, our collection's kind of growing now. There's, I'd say there's a bunch of them.

• 2:46:57Jocko Willink?

  How well did you execute when people said, make, when people were like, episode 42, make a video from this to this? How, how did you do any of that? Or did you blow everyone off?

• 2:47:06Speaker 01

  No, no, no, yeah, that's.

• 2:47:07Jocko Willink?

  You did some of them?

• 2:47:08Speaker 01

  That's mainly what I base it on.

• 2:47:09Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:47:10Speaker 01

  Um, so, but those are, they're everywhere, you know? So some of them don't quite translate. Some of them I just, I mean, I don't want to upload like five in one day. And I've read some stuff that it's like, I don't know, it's not good to do that, but I don't know. That's a, that's a long story.

• 2:47:26Jocko Willink?

  I bet, I, I don't know, let's not just. Let's not think about what's good to do and what's not good to do.

• 2:47:32Speaker 01

  You just gotta get, we're trying to get, so yeah, you're trying to, yeah, I dig it, man. But yeah, YouTube's good like that where if you listen to just the, like an excerpt or just a clip, two minutes, three minutes, four minutes, and you're like, dang, I want to, I want to listen to some more. They, not only are they there to listen if you want, but they'll suggest. So you'll have a bit of continuity there. Instead of like, oh, I'm locked into this three hour thing right now.

• 2:47:54Jocko Willink?

  Right. Well, that's, and that's one thing that's a little bit tricky about this is that when I, when I'm thinking, when I'm talking, I'm thinking in the context of this giant two hour thing. So sometimes it's hard to snip out something. And you lose a little bit, in my opinion.

• 2:48:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:48:10Jocko Willink?

  But you also gain a lot because you can get it quick.

• 2:48:13Speaker 01

  Right. And you can share it with the next guy who's more likely, or the next person to more likely listen to it. Cause even now, man, people will send me, you know, whether it be funny videos, there's this sodium video that, you know, a guy skipping a piece of sodium across the lake.

• 2:48:30Jocko Willink?

  Pretty awesome.

• 2:48:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, you saw that video, right? It's been going around. I don't know if people look for it and then sent it to me, or it's been going around, so now more people are sending it to me. Because the last like two weeks, everyone's been sending it to me.

• 2:48:43Jocko Willink?

  And I want to actually do that. I want to get the sodium metal and I want to throw it into the water.

• 2:48:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're doing it at your house.

• 2:48:49Jocko Willink?

  I do. If we can find it, I want to do it and film it and then just.

• 2:48:54Speaker 01

  See what up.

• 2:48:55Jocko Willink?

  See what up.

• 2:48:56Speaker 01

  Alright, I gotta start looking for a way to get some sodium metal.

• 2:49:01Speaker 01

  But yeah, that's, you know, these are good things. These YouTube situation. Made the playlist, they're on there. Excerpts, I'm putting more on there.

• 2:49:14Speaker 01

  There it is. Subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher or Google Play and all the podcast platforms.

• 2:49:23Speaker 01

  You know, that's a good way to support because you're essentially just kind of in the game in general, you know? And that's really the thing. Because like the more people, you know, they'll hit us up on Twitter or just like kind of knowing and knowing what you're talking about or submitting questions, this kind of stuff. It does make that circle of like, it's not just Jocko telling us what to do. It's kind of like we're all in this group, you know?

• 2:49:48Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, and we end up with like a common, it's like hanging out with your friends, basically.

• 2:49:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:49:55Jocko Willink?

  Like when I go on the road now, like I was just out with some firefighters and, and like, we're all, everyone's telling the same jokes, but they're all, you know, we all get it, you know what I mean?

• 2:50:05Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 2:50:06Jocko Willink?

  So it's cool hanging out with them because it's like as if they were here. Yeah. And I was actually talking to them about that. Like, well, you know, when it first happened, it would be a little bit strange to me.

• 2:50:14Speaker 01

  Right. Cause you don't remember them sitting right there.

• 2:50:17Jocko Willink?

  Because no one was sitting there actually. And I was like, well, sometimes it seemed like the podcast was like, was me and Echo sitting in a room alone.

• 2:50:24Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:50:24Jocko Willink?

  But then you realize, no, there's a lot of people sitting in here with us and they have their own spins. This is what's funny is people have their own variations on the jokes and on the inside things and on what we're talking about. So it's all, and it, you know, they've already taken stuff and spun it out somewhere. Now they're bringing it back to me. So I'm part of their, right? I get in, get inside their game. So it's, it's pretty funny.

• 2:50:47Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that's not to mention the questions that, that you answer. It's all everyone's questions.

• 2:50:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 2:50:52Speaker 01

  It's not like you're like, hey, let me think up this question that I think people have.

• 2:50:56Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:50:57Speaker 01

  You got it from certain people and you know, you answer them, they're like, hey, you know, it's like a two, three way street. Or something. Anyway, so yeah, when you're, when you're, when you're subscribed, you're, you know, you're kind of in the group. Good way to support. Um, also Jocko has a store called Jocko's store. Good store.

• 2:51:17Jocko Willink?

  Isn't more like the podcast has a store? Cause I don't actually have a store. It's the podcast has a store.

• 2:51:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, I guess technically.

• 2:51:26Jocko Willink?

  But you always make it sound like I have a store.

• 2:51:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause it's called Jocko's store.

• 2:51:29Jocko Willink?

  We have a store.

• 2:51:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. It's not Jocko podcast store. It's Jocko's store. Jocko's store, Jocko's store. It's Jocko's store.com.

• 2:51:36Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:51:37Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying?

• 2:51:37Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna concede to the point.

• 2:51:39Speaker 01

  There it is. Boom.

• 2:51:40Jocko Willink?

  I have a store. That's what I don't like about it. It sounds weird to say that.

• 2:51:45Speaker 01

  But when I say it, I think it sounds cool.

• 2:51:48Speaker 01

  Shirts on there. If you want to wear T-shirts and represent.

• 2:51:53Speaker 01

  Got a new design out there. Well, kinda new. Two weeks, three weeks, maybe. I'm gonna put a rash guard on there.

• 2:51:59Jocko Willink?

  And actually, it's a new t-shirt design.

• 2:52:01Speaker 01

  T-shirt design, yeah.

• 2:52:01Jocko Willink?

  It can be found in other places.

• 2:52:04Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:52:05Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 2:52:06Speaker 01

  Sure. What do you mean?

• 2:52:08Jocko Willink?

  I mean...

• 2:52:09Speaker 01

  Oh, right, right, right, yes.

• 2:52:10Jocko Willink?

  It can be found in other places.

• 2:52:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, it's good. But hey, look.

• 2:52:14Jocko Willink?

  Like on the Get After It mug. That's where it can be found, straight up. I don't wanna try playing this little game here like I wasn't gonna say anything. It's the Get After It mug. We got a shirt that says Get After It.

• 2:52:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that one came highly recommended. Perfect, perfect example of people saying, you know.

• 2:52:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:28Speaker 01

  People were saying it so like, um, like matter of fact. Is, yeah, where it was to the point where they were like, hey, you should, you should do a Get After It shirt. They weren't saying that anymore. They were saying, when are the Get After It shirts come out? When do they come out? I didn't know we were doing that yet, but apparently we are, so boom, they're out. And I'm glad.

• 2:52:47Jocko Willink?

  They got you with psychological work.

• 2:52:49Speaker 01

  Good, man, I'm glad they did, cuz I think they turned out good. Real simple, like most things. Anyway, these shirts are cool, I think, but go to jocko store dot com and look at them. You think they're cool? You think you wanna wear one? Represent? In the wild?

• 2:53:05Speaker 01

  Go ahead, get one, support one that way.

• 2:53:08Speaker 01

  Also, some, you know, some women's stuff out there. Women might be underrepresented overall, but I think that the women that are kinda in the game, that listen, that get after it, they get after it hard to make up for the numbers, you know, you see what I'm saying? Like the quality.

• 2:53:26Speaker 01

  Greater than the quantity. Anyway, got some patches on there too. The rash guards, of course, I'm gonna put a new one out. It's in the works. It's like re- ready to be pushed out here in a few days, I think. Maybe a week. Um, so yeah, if you're into jiu-jitsu, that's why I think that's the primary reason I made them, but they're actually for surfing,

• 2:53:48Speaker 01

  body boarding, what Jocko calls sponging.

• 2:53:51Jocko Willink?

  Sponging.

• 2:53:52Speaker 01

  Cycling, CrossFit, any kinda workout where you need, you know, like maximum mobility, but you still wanna go with like a shirt on. Sometimes you just go no shirt.

• 2:54:03Speaker 01

  But yeah.

• 2:54:04Jocko Willink?

  If you'd go no shirt, you're not supporting the podcast.

• 2:54:07Speaker 01

  Correct, correct. And you know, the, the, I think, you know, we kind of did some calculations. I think the new rash guard might, I'm not saying it will because we don't know yet. They're not here. They might yield. Was it 24?

• 2:54:21Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so Echo did, he's got the sample one.

• 2:54:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, one sample.

• 2:54:25Jocko Willink?

  And the sample one, you said, gave you like 27% advantage?

• 2:54:31Speaker 01

  24, but you know what? Now that you mention it, I think it was 27. Yeah, yes.

• 2:54:36Jocko Willink?

  Up from 19.

• 2:54:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is a lot, but that's only one case study. So that's what I'm saying. We're really gonna, um.

• 2:54:43Jocko Willink?

  Double blind tested.

• 2:54:44Speaker 01

  This is actually true where I went and I practiced, I did some rounds and you look at when you're done rounds and you're kind of talking with the boys afterwards.

• 2:54:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:54:51Speaker 01

  And girls in our case, because Haley was there too. We're talking and I thought we were done. We were done.

• 2:54:56Jocko Willink?

  Somebody called you out.

• 2:54:57Speaker 01

  Hey guys, and then David, that's me is Bolivia. He's like Hulk Hogan's nephew, like.

• 2:55:06Jocko Willink?

  Actually?

• 2:55:07Speaker 01

  Actual nephew, like, like his dad's brother or something. I might get that part wrong, but it's, yeah. Anyway, that's a side note.

• 2:55:14Jocko Willink?

  He called you out.

• 2:55:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, he asked, is anyone still rolling? And guess what? I still had rounds left. Shroom tech, rash guard. And I said, yeah, we're old.

• 2:55:22Jocko Willink?

  Got it on with Bolivia.

• 2:55:23Speaker 01

  Anyway, yeah, good, good deal, good experience, but.

• 2:55:26Jocko Willink?

  He's got a good deep half guard.

• 2:55:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, he has good, everything.

• 2:55:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, you gotta do everything else, but.

• 2:55:31Speaker 01

  Brown belt, solid respect.

• 2:55:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, but his deep half guard, he's got, because he's, he's a bigger dude, but he got the Jeff.

• 2:55:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's bigger than Jeff. He's trimmed up a little bit, but nonetheless, yeah, good, good training. Also, psychological warfare. So if you know what that is, it's an album with tracks, Jocko, talking, but he's not just talking.

• 2:55:56Speaker 01

  He's talking with the intent of getting you through any moments of weakness that you might have in your getting after it journey.

• 2:56:05Jocko Willink?

  It goes beyond might have.

• 2:56:06Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:56:07Jocko Willink?

  It goes into actual moments of weakness. Not that you are in a moment of weakness. You're looking at actual donuts that are in front of you.

• 2:56:14Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 2:56:15Jocko Willink?

  They're breaking you down mentally.

• 2:56:16Speaker 01

  Right, boom, click that.

• 2:56:17Jocko Willink?

  No, hit play.

• 2:56:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, hit play, yes.

• 2:56:19Jocko Willink?

  Hit play. Get the track in there. The actual, not a potential moment of weakness. The moment of weakness is upon us. We're gonna feed it.

• 2:56:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:56:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:56:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:56:27Jocko Willink?

  Psychological warfare.

• 2:56:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:56:28Jocko Willink?

  And we're getting requests now for the second one.

• 2:56:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:56:32Jocko Willink?

  So I'm gonna start thinking about that, what that's gonna be like.

• 2:56:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:56:35Jocko Willink?

  And if you want recommendations of what particular moments of weakness that you might have that need to be overcome, and there's a common theme, as Echo referred to. We will, and if it's gotta be something that I've dealt with before.

• 2:56:47Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:56:47Jocko Willink?

  Right? Because I can't just make up some way of overcoming a weakness that I've never experienced. Now, I've experienced a lot of weaknesses, but if you come up with something that I've never experienced, then we're gonna have to just forego that one, because I'm not gonna make it up. I'm not gonna make up what's about, it might not work.

• 2:57:04Speaker 01

  Right, it's hard to manufacture, you know?

• 2:57:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you can't manufacture inspirado, as, as the great Tenacious D said.

• 2:57:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I think that's a good idea. I got some. We'll talk about it later.

• 2:57:16Jocko Willink?

  It comes from a quietude. That's where it's gotta come from.

• 2:57:18Speaker 01

  Sure, yeah.

• 2:57:19Jocko Willink?

  A stillness, a quietude. That's the D.

• 2:57:22Speaker 01

  But yeah, that's a good one. Psychological warfare, Jocko Willink, iTunes, Amazon Music, all those good. It's probably any music outlet.

• 2:57:30Jocko Willink?

  A bunch of music outlets.

• 2:57:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:57:31Jocko Willink?

  It's there.

• 2:57:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, just jump on that. It helps, man. I, and I use it, I don't recommend this, but I used it when I was like, I don't feel like working out. This is a big thing for me, because I kinda had it like that where I'll be like, oh, I'm just gonna rest, because I don't feel like it. I didn't get nine hours of sleep, so I'll just do it tomorrow.

• 2:57:48Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:57:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it really worked with that, the workout one.

• 2:57:52Jocko Willink?

  A guy, you know, you said it works a hundred percent of the time?

• 2:57:55Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:57:56Jocko Willink?

  Like the wake up one? Yeah. Cause there's three wake up tracks. A guy on Twitter said, hey, number, a wake up track didn't work. It failed.

• 2:58:05Speaker 01

  Interesting.

• 2:58:06Jocko Willink?

  And then he said, but I made it to the number two wake up track, which is the way they're set. They're set like you listen to one, that's gonna get you up, but if it doesn't, number two's waiting.

• 2:58:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:58:15Jocko Willink?

  And you got the number two and then he woke up. So we're still batting a thousand? Overall.

• 2:58:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, the overall campaign, right?

• 2:58:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the campaign is a win, but we did take a, we did take a digger from one dude that just didn't get out of bed after listening to psychological warfare, get out of bed, track one. He had to go to track two.

• 2:58:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:58:33Jocko Willink?

  But we're there. We had some reserve, got some backup.

• 2:58:35Speaker 01

  You had the backup, yup, you had the spot.

• 2:58:37Jocko Willink?

  I don't think anyone's made it to three yet. No one's made it to the wake up track three. They haven't been there yet.

• 2:58:42Speaker 01

  That must, to make it, even to make it to two, you must be one tired dude. You must have had like a hard night, the night before. And you must have a hard workout waiting for you or something. But yeah, man, my experience, a hundred percent success rate. But I don't, and then I started doing it just cause, just cause I wanna get fired up.

• 2:59:00Jocko Willink?

  For no reason?

• 2:59:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's weird because it's not, chuckle, roll, roll, roll, get this, you can, it's not that. It's, it's almost like this.

• 2:59:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and some people say to me, hey, can you do one of you yelling? I'm like, well, I don't really yell a lot, man. Like I didn't yell, I'm not a yeller.

• 2:59:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:59:15Jocko Willink?

  Now, I, I, let me, let me rephrase that. If we're in the gym and like I'm pushing someone like a MMA fighter that's in a workout, I'm gonna be like, come on. You know, I might raise my voice a little bit, but I'm not gonna yell at you like, you know, the drill instructor type thing. It's not, it's not really what I do.

• 2:59:31Speaker 01

  And I could see maybe like how that could be effective, but in these cases, that's not the mood you're in anyway.

• 2:59:36Jocko Willink?

  You know what? It could be effective for certain instances. Yes. And actually, like I've been doing some little videos in the morning. And, and, and I realize when I watch them, that I'm getting a little bit aggressive with the way I'm talking and it's not, it's not like I'm saying, okay, I gotta, no. I'm just starting to talk and then I start getting, I start escalating my own situation because I'm starting to think about when I'm, when I'm saying.

• 3:00:02Jocko Willink?

  It means something to me.

• 3:00:03Speaker 01

  Right.

• 3:00:03Jocko Willink?

  So when I'm saying, hey, you know, you're wasting your life right now, I, I start thinking, I'm feeling that way because I know that there's someone that's actually wasting their life right now. And so it starts, you know, getting a little bit escalated. And so maybe on psychological warfare too, there'll be some situation that, that I personally escalate on.

• 3:00:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. It would have to be natural, right? Kind of thing.

• 3:00:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because you can't manufacture inspirado.

• 3:00:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, there you go. Boom. But yeah, it's, it's good. It's like, because you just kind of explain, like, kind of the, the logic behind it, like, see what you're doing right now? But do you see that? And, well, I guess, now I do? Shoot, then you, you get up or you, anyway. Yeah, I use it when it's now, sometimes I abuse it. Well, I don't know, I'm feeling fired up and just put it in, get more fired up. Get talked into feeling even better. That's how.

• 3:00:52Jocko Willink?

  Dangerous, dangerous.

• 3:00:53Speaker 01

  Good one.

• 3:00:54Jocko Willink?

  Also, when you're clicking through Amazon, you can also get Jocko White Tea. Which, it may not seem like a big deal. And maybe it isn't, but maybe it is. I tell you, judging from some of the, some of the reviews on Amazon. I'm, I'm reading one. After drinking Jocko White Tea, I found I was overcome with the insurmountable urge to get after it. So much so, that I was able to defeat all my foes in a short amount of time.

• 3:01:26Jocko Willink?

  On a side note, I have found that Jocko White Tea is best served over ice and consumed from the skulls of dead enemies. Now, you know, I don't know what situation this individual's in, right? But obviously he's in combat situation. He's got foes that need to be killed and he's drinking from their skulls. And even in that really stressful environment, you know, the tea's helping him.

• 3:01:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:01:48Jocko Willink?

  Which is cool. I'm glad that it's helping him, doing positive things against the enemies of, of good in the world. Also, good evening, Echo and Jocko. I woke up weighing 115 pounds the day the white tea arrives. Two cups later, I reweighed myself and I was now roughly 250 pounds. So he more than doubled his body weight after two cups of, of Jocko White Tea. I think my tea was a little loaded and obviously gave me more than the 20% increase in gains that was promised. And I, I don't think we actually promised anything. I didn't promise that, but I think it kind of speaks for itself.

• 3:02:24Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:02:25Jocko Willink?

  And this is the important, this is why I wanted to make this one's very important. Also. Cruising went up roughly 200% so there's that as well.

• 3:02:35Speaker 01

  Oh yeah.

• 3:02:35Jocko Willink?

  So you know and and there you go. Scientific cruising is up 200% which is positive. Also, way of the warrior kid. I got the first hard copy. I got it in my hands. They sent me one, they're sending me more. But you know, dang, it's three hours right now. We've been talking for three hours.

• 3:03:00Speaker 01

  That's my fault.

• 3:03:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh, man, that's a long time. And I was gonna read a little excerpt.

• 3:03:07Jocko Willink?

  And I think I'm going to anyways, it's already been three hours. But but so. Young Mark is. He's gonna jump off this bridge. He's he couldn't swim in the beginning of the book. Now he knows how to swim, but his goal is to jump off the bridge into the river. And he's goes up there to do it. And he's scared, he gets scared, he's not gonna, he's he just can't jump. So Uncle Jake, who used to be a SEAL, who's now with his young nephew, trying to show him the warrior way, goes up on the bridge and he said, what's going on, buddy? He said in a calm voice, I don't know. I said, I'm just, I'm just, you're afraid, aren't you? Uncle Jake asked. But he wasn't even asking. He knew. He knew I was scared.

• 3:03:53Jocko Willink?

  There was no point in denying it. Uncle Jake knew it as plain as day.

• 3:03:59Jocko Willink?

  Yes. I finally said in a quiet tone, too embarrassed that I was afraid. Then, to my surprise, Uncle Jake said, that's normal.

• 3:04:09Jocko Willink?

  What? I responded shocked at Uncle Jake's statement. I said, that's normal. You're doing something you've never done before, so it's normal to be a little hesitant. It's called fear. It's a normal emotion and it's okay. Then he added, well, it's okay as long as you can control it. This made no sense to me. How am I supposed to control fear? And how would you know? You're not afraid of anything.

• 3:04:38Jocko Willink?

  Uncle Jake sat quietly for a minute.

• 3:04:42Jocko Willink?

  Then he said, "I wish that were true." "What do you mean?" I asked him. "Well, you said, 'I'm not afraid of anything,' and that is just not true. Fear is normal. In fact, fear is good. Fear is what warns you when things are dangerous. Fear is what makes you prepare. Fear keeps us out of a lot of trouble. So there's nothing wrong with fear.

• 3:05:09Jocko Willink?

  But fear can also be overwhelming. It can be unreasonable. It can cause you to freeze up and make bad decisions, or hesitate when you need to act.

• 3:05:22Jocko Willink?

  So you have to learn to control fear, and that's what you need to do right now." "Okay, that sounds great, and I would really love to make you happy and overcome my fear, but I don't know how."

• 3:05:36Jocko Willink?

  Uncle Jake thought about that, about what I had just said for a few seconds, and then he said, "Okay, well, the first part of controlling fear, you have already done, and that is preparation. You've done plenty of preparation to be ready for this moment, to face this fear. Starting with dunking your head, all the way up to swimming all around and back and forth across this river, you've done little jumps off the riverbank. All of the last several weeks have been preparing you for this, this jump.

• 3:06:10Jocko Willink?

  And all that preparation works to help overcome the fear. Imagine how scared you would be if you still didn't know how to swim. You would be horrified. But you have prepared." "Then why am I still scared?" I asked Uncle Jake. "Simple," he said. "Because there's still an element of the unknown. You've never jumped off anything this high before, so you don't know what it feels like." "People are afraid of what they don't know, or what they don't understand, but you have prepared. You know it is safe. You know you are ready. It's just this last little bit of fear that has to be overcome, and you know how you do that?" "I have no idea," I told him.

• 3:06:56Jocko Willink?

  "You go." "Just go?" I asked Uncle Jake, now partly thinking he was just joking. "Yes, you just go. You see, fear lives in the moment, that powerful moment between when you decide you are going to do something and when you do it. Once you go, once you start, you won't be afraid anymore. You overcome fear by going. And it is the same in many aspects of life: parachuting, talking in front of a crowd, taking a test, running a race, competing in jiu-jitsu. The fear is in the waiting.

• 3:07:32Jocko Willink?

  So, once you have planned, once you have prepared and trained and studied, there is only one thing left to do: go. And that's it? Yes, that's it."

• 3:07:48Jocko Willink?

  As soon as Uncle Jake finished those words, he stood up, looked at me, yelled out "hoo-ya", and jumped off the bridge.

• 3:07:56Jocko Willink?

  "Just go," I thought to myself. I stood up, stepped up onto the edge of the wall, and looked down at Uncle Jake who had just come back to the surface and was looking up at me with a big smile on his face. With all my heart and lungs, I yelled out "hoo-ya!" and stepped off the bridge, past my fear and into the unknown. I felt myself falling for a while, and then whoosh, I was in the water. I came to the surface and had a big smile on my face. "I can fly," I yelled. "I can fly."

• 3:08:33Jocko Willink?

  So, little excerpt. "Dang, that was good, man." From "The Way of the Warrior Kid," it comes out May 2nd. So, go and go. Order the book for you, for your kid, for your neighbor, for your nephew, for your niece, for the school, the library, whoever. Order them. So, the publisher that's making this book, we want them to know that they need to print a bunch of these.

• 3:09:03Jocko Willink?

  They don't know that right now. They don't know how many kids want to get after it. They don't know that. They don't know that. And it's, they're not going to print enough. It's the same thing that happened with Jocko White Tea, right? You remember that? That shortage, the anger, the frustration, the nationwide 19% drop in performance across the board. We remember that. Don't let it happen here. Same thing. You can order that. You can also preorder Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. Comes out October 17th. Seventeen seventeen. That's the book that you asked for. So you can order

• 3:09:43Jocko Willink?

  that one too. And of course, Extreme Ownership. You can get that one. People buy it and then they buy it for their team and it spreads. So pick that up for you and your team up and down the chain of command. Extreme Ownership. Beyond that, if you want some direct action and interaction with your company that you work out, you can contact our company, Echelon Front, me, Leif Babin, JP Donnell, Dave Burke. We can get in the game with you. [email protected]. Lastly, if you don't know, we have muster002 coming up at the Marriott Grand Marquis in

• 3:10:23Jocko Willink?

  New York City, May 4th and 5th. Leadership, Strategy, Tactics. Again, me, Leif, JP, Dave Burke. And of course, and probably most important, Echo Charles. He's going to be there. And he might try and hide, but he can't. Because none of us can, because there's no green room. There's no backstage. There's just all of us together getting after it. And of course, before the muster, you can find us. We're cruising kinda hard on the interwebs, on Twitter,

• 3:11:00Jocko Willink?

  on Instagram, and in the Facebook. Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink.

• 3:11:13Jocko Willink?

  And finally, thanks to all the servicemen and women out there who...

• 3:11:19Jocko Willink?

  In this uncertain world. And it certainly is an uncertain world today, filled with evil. All of you that walk away from the comforts of home and into the unknown.

• 3:11:35Jocko Willink?

  To face our enemies.

• 3:11:39Jocko Willink?

  Thank you, and to the firefighters, police and law enforcement, EMTs and the first responders here at home. Thank you for what you do day in and day out. Putting yourself at risk for us.

• 3:11:55Jocko Willink?

  And to everyone else out there.

• 3:11:59Jocko Willink?

  Facing what you're facing.

• 3:12:02Jocko Willink?

  Challenges at work and challenges with family and challenges with yourself and challenges in your head and challenges with life.

• 3:12:14Jocko Willink?

  Remember what you as a human being are capable of. Remember what your will.

• 3:12:24Jocko Willink?

  Is capable of.

• 3:12:27Jocko Willink?

  And then.

• 3:12:30Jocko Willink?

  Keep moving forward. Keep attacking.

• 3:12:38Jocko Willink?

  And keep getting after it.

• 3:12:42Jocko Willink?

  So until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.