339: Winning The War After The War: Braxton McCoy Fighting and Defeating Insurgents, Addiction, and Lies

After being wounded in The Glass Factory S-Bomber incident, Braxton McCoy Fights his way out of the darkness. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 339 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo.

• 0:06Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:10Jocko Willink?

  I awoke face down in blood soaked sand. The world spun around me. What little sounds I could make were muffled and indistinct. It was like I had been twirled around on an old tire swing, then flung into a swimming pool. I couldn't gather my wits any more than I could get my bearings. The harder I tried to get a handle on the world around me, the more slippery my grip became. My eyes strained to adjust to the scene. Pain sunk its fangs permanently. We have just been hit by rockets, I assume. This must be a coordinated attack. My confusion turned to panic. Oh, God, oh, God, please, God. The sounds that surrounded me became clearer.

• 0:56Jocko Willink?

  I could decipher some individual words, but they seemed only to add uncertainty. Who is groaning? I heard gurgling as someone tried to force air through a blood filled throat. The wounded and dying were bellowing in both English and Arabic. Screams of death filled the air. Rage filled our hearts. Medic, medic, Al-Wakbar.

• 1:22Jocko Willink?

  I propped myself up as much as I could. The inch or two that I was able to manage was not enough to make a significant difference in my field of view.

• 1:33Jocko Willink?

  I thought I heard the reports of rifles. Is that AK fire? I need to start helping my guys, I thought to myself. We're being ambushed.

• 1:41Jocko Willink?

  Shock was setting in. I desperately tried to locate my weapon and return fire, but I was totally unable to move. I wanted to figure out why, but I couldn't get my body positioned in a way that would allow me to look toward my legs. I could see both of my arms and my chest. My arms were definitely broken. Osmosis was spreading blood throughout the sleeves of my uniform, but I could still move them, sort of.

• 2:09Jocko Willink?

  I propped myself up again onto my side and peered down toward my legs. But when I finally looked downward in the direction that my legs should have been, all I could make out was thick, black blood and a pile of muddy entrails.

• 2:23Jocko Willink?

  "I am cut in two," I said aloud, unsure whether I was talking to the dying men around me or to myself. I ran a bit of organ through the fingertips of my left hand. I was certain that it once belonged to me. Where did it fit in this mess? I searched the jumbled human remains that rested underneath me and wondered exactly where this little organ went, but I couldn't complete the puzzle.

• 2:50Jocko Willink?

  My mind drifted.

• 2:53Jocko Willink?

  Distractedly, I wondered what it was going to be like to die. Certainly, there would be no way to save a man who had been cut in half.

• 3:04Jocko Willink?

  "Oh, God, oh, God, oh, God!" The screams filled my ears again. "I'm hit! Johnny, medic!" Was that me yelling, I wondered? I tried to look for the frantic American voice, but all I could see was dark red sand, limbs which had been flung from their torsos, bloody men writhing on the ground begging for death to end their suffering, and hundreds of empty sandals.

• 3:32Jocko Willink?

  Lying there, still rubbing that piece of what I believed to be a pancreas between the tips of my fingers, I again contemplated what it was going to be like to die.

• 3:44Jocko Willink?

  Was I going to cross over into some other dimension and meet Jesus like I had been taught my entire life? Or was it all just going to go black, like slipping quietly into a slumber? A sleep that one never comes back from?

• 4:02Jocko Willink?

  "Please, don't let this be my final resting place," I thought. "Not this shithole.

• 4:10Jocko Willink?

  Not now."

• 4:16Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is an excerpt from a book that is called "The Glass Factory", written by Braxton McCoy. And the shithole that he was referring to was a shithole that I'm familiar with, a place called Ramadi, Iraq. And the title of the book, "The Glass Factory", is a title that anyone who served in Ramadi instantly knows. And I have talked about "The Glass Factory" on this podcast a couple of times. I've talked about it on the Unraveling podcast as well.

• 4:55Jocko Willink?

  "The Glass Factory" was the place of a horrific attack where suicide bombers detonated themselves at a police recruiting event, killing over 50 Iraqi police recruits and also two Americans. The Americans that were killed, Lieutenant Colonel Michael McLaughlin of Mercer, Pennsylvania, and Sergeant Adam Khan from Davie, Florida.

• 5:32Jocko Willink?

  And there were scores of wounded Iraqis and Americans as well, many of them severely wounded. One of them was a young soldier, who is also the author of this book, Braxton McCoy. And it is an honor to have Braxton here with us tonight to talk about his experiences in war and, perhaps more important, his lessons learned after the war and how he followed the path toward the truth.

• 6:12Jocko Willink?

  Braxton, thanks for joining us, man. Thanks for having me, Jaco.

• 6:17Jocko Willink?

  Great to meet you, and I know you sent us this book a while ago, years ago. And somehow, look, I get sent hundreds of books, actually. And I just, it slipped past my radar, and it wasn't until I was on Twitter, and I think someone tagged you and me and said, "Hey, Jaco was just talking about The Glass Factory on the podcast." And you came back and said something like, "He got it mostly right, couple errors," which, you know, of course, I- I said minor, minor errors, though. Yeah, minor errors, but, you know, of course, I know I'm not gonna know everything.

• 6:59Jocko Willink?

  I don't ever claim to know everything, but as soon as I saw you had a book called The Glass Factory, and you were wounded there, you know, I said, "Hey, man." You know, you said, "Hey, do you want this book?" And I said, "Absolutely." And said, "Let's talk about it on the podcast." So, here you are, man. Thanks for coming down. Yeah, thank you. It's really kinda crazy to be here. Karen, you read my book is kinda weird. Man, it's a great book, and I should start off by saying this. You never know what you're gonna get when you read a book. And I think one thing that, one thing that you can measure a book by is how vulnerable someone is willing to be

• 7:43Jocko Willink?

  in order to convey what happened to them. And this book is raw, and you talk about things in this book that I know had to be hard as hell to write. And that's one of the things that make it so powerful. And the other thing that makes it so powerful, even though, look, it's a book, definitely, there's a chunk of it that has to do with war, and there's a chunk of it that has to do with the struggles after the war. But the most powerful part of the book is you-

• 8:20Jocko Willink?

  Figuring out how you needed to live in a proper way. And it's, it's just an epic book. It's an outstanding book. And so anybody that is listening right now, jump on there. We'll, we'll, we'll have it on our website and go, go buy this book immediately. We're going to read some of it today. There's no way I could read the whole book. I know that you're working on an audio book right now.

• 8:45Speaker 02

  No.

• 8:46Jocko Willink?

  So eventually you'll be able to buy that. But you know, actually never mind the audio book for now. The, the cover of the book is awesome. And what's the deal with the cover? I read a little bit about the cover of the book, but where'd it come from?

• 9:00Speaker 02

  Uh, the guy who designed it was a medic there that was at the glass factory with me. And, uh, we, I told him I wanted, I told him I wanted it to be, look like the windows, you know? The, the brass over the windows over there and the copper stuff. But with, I wanted a buffalo on there. So he kind of worked it in.

• 9:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's a, it's a very distinct cover. And plus it's, well, this version is hardcover. So are there still hardcovers available?

• 9:25Speaker 02

  There's like maybe 300 you can get on my website.

• 9:29Jocko Willink?

  Those are as good as gone. Those are as good as gone. Anybody that, if you can get the, one of those 300, get it, order it. What's your website so people can order?

• 9:36Speaker 02

  BraxtonMcCoy.com.

• 9:37Jocko Willink?

  BraxtonMcCoy.com. So there, we just sold all those 300 books. Um, and then the other ones are available on Amazon. Those are soft cover, I'm assuming?

• 9:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. And we, we, we actually, you know, without getting goofy political right off the bat, we tried, we tried to work on getting another print run. And white paper stock is short like everywhere. So, or at least the publishers that we had before. And then we tried to use a different publish, publishing company out of Idaho and they couldn't do it.

• 10:02Jocko Willink?

  Check. We might have to talk to other publishing companies that other people know, like mine. Figure out what we can do. Uh, all right. So the, again, this is a very interesting book. And one of the things that's interesting about the book is it, it basically starts off. With the attack on the glass factory. But and and it doesn't, you have flash, some flashbacks throughout the book, pertinent flashbacks, but there's no detail. There's not much detail on how you grew up. And probably that's the next book you should write. Is just some of the experience that that made you who you are. But before you write that book, since you're sitting here, let's talk a little bit about,

• 10:44Jocko Willink?

  you know, how you did grow up and where you came from and how you ended up being who you are. So where'd you grow up?

• 10:52Speaker 02

  I grew up in, well, I lived before Utah, Salt Lake Valley started to get expanded. There was a place called Rose Canyon Estates up. There's a bunch of just small ranches and ranchettes up south of Salt Lake. It's now kind of all the same valley, but back then it was like, I don't know, 25 miles of town or so that I'd go to school every morning. And we had just a little horse operation out there. My, my mother and father divorced, so my mother married my stepfather when I was four. And so we were, you know, pretty much been in my life.

• 11:23Jocko Willink?

  And so what was going on in the horse ranch? Like what were you doing?

• 11:27Speaker 02

  Uh, when I was a kid?

• 11:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 11:29Speaker 02

  Man, uh, feeding and watering and hitting golf balls and shooting arrows into the haystacks and shooting rabbits and lizards. And man, I'd get home from school and get my chores done and go grab a backpack and throw a water bottle in there and get my BB gun and just head up the mountain because there was nobody behind us. And there was this creek, it's called Yellow Fork. And you can go up Yellow Fork all the way up and just shoot every bird in the mountain. I must've smoked 500 woodpeckers this time I was 13. And my grandpa had a thing for songbirds. He just loved songbirds. And I kind of get it now as I age. I like having them around my place too. So if I got cops shooting songbirds, I get in big trouble.

• 12:09Jocko Willink?

  But woodpeckers all day?

• 12:11Speaker 02

  All day.

• 12:13Jocko Willink?

  Did your stepdad have any military experience?

• 12:16Speaker 02

  No, no, his father's, um, his father was a, he grew up on a ranch in Cipio, Utah, which is where we ended up moving when I was 13. But he, World War II, or right after World War II, I guess, he joined the Navy, ended up an air traffic controller, eventually ended up air traffic controller out here at Top Gun. And then he got out and, uh, came home to the ranch and sold it. He said, I never want to do another day of farm work in my life. And moved up to the city and, uh, he was a air traffic controller for, uh, Delta Airlines or something, I don't know, Salt Lake International for years. And then he ended up moving back after he retired.

• 12:53Jocko Willink?

  And, and, and what about your mom? What did she do?

• 12:56Speaker 02

  She was, uh, she worked for Cisco as like a food sales rep for a while. And then she went to, into real estate. Now she's a real estate broker.

• 13:05Jocko Willink?

  And you're, what, what grandfather, the grandfather that you write about in the book, primarily what was his background?

• 13:12Speaker 02

  He was a marine and then a plumber. Uh, he's a plumber my whole life, just big time outdoorsman. Uh, he was all, like, everything for him was hunting and fishing. I mean, work, working just so he could get out and hunt and fish with his grandkids mostly. Dude, I got pictures of me, I'm like two years old in his cowboy hat with a damn deer leg in my hand, like walking around deer camp. Like that was his jam, so. And that was my mother's dad.

• 13:36Jocko Willink?

  And then you said you moved from one ranch to another ranch when you turned 13?

• 13:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, we moved down, we sold, uh, we sold out up there and then moved down to Cipio, Utah. And my stepdad had about 40 head of horses down there and, or yeah, roughly 40 head. And then he's an electrical contractor and helped make ends meet. And then the horse market went bust pretty hard back in 20, 2000. Let's see, what was that, 2002, maybe? I can't remember the first time anyway, when they passed the, the no kill bill.

• 14:07Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 14:08Speaker 02

  I can't remember if it was two thousand two or two thousand four. And anyway, it hit hard. I mean, there was good horses on the market for nothing. People were just taking their horses out and turning them out in the desert and stuff like go on, live free. I mean, those horses just die.

• 14:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 14:22Speaker 02

  They have no idea what to do.

• 14:23Jocko Willink?

  No, I, I, the reason I said, oh yeah, cause I read an article about that not too long ago about how people were just letting their, I guess their domesticated horses go.

• 14:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 14:32Jocko Willink?

  And they're not ready to survive out there.

• 14:34Speaker 02

  Well, especially most, everybody has gildings and no, no wild horse herd is going to let a gilding in. I mean, the stud's just going to kill them. It's not a mare and it's, you know, it's a eunuch and he doesn't need that around. So. I, I mean, if you, maybe mares could make it, but, but even then it's doubtful their hooves are not, they're just not built for it anymore. You know, it's really bred out.

• 14:56Jocko Willink?

  How does a horse kill another horse?

• 14:58Speaker 02

  Uh, they kick, but like, so a lot of times they'll break their backs, like stud horses. They'll get up on their hind ends like this and flip them. Break their necks or backs and bite and kick. And I mean, they can kick, uh, if they kick, a horse kicks another horse in the head, it'd kill it easy for sure. I had a horse kill one of my cows last fall. Kicked it. At least that's all we can figure out too. Cow was fine. Next day.

• 15:22Speaker 02

  There was a horse around there, so.

• 15:24Jocko Willink?

  Uh, now you were, you were pretty into sports too, right? When you were going, when did you start like wrestling and what other sports did you play?

• 15:31Speaker 02

  I didn't start wrestling until I was a freshman in high school. Um, I played baseball growing up. I did some boxing. My family's friends with, uh, Jim Fulmer was a family friend or Gene Fulmer. I'm sorry. I was a family friend growing up and so. Did a little getting punched in the head for a bit. Uh, and then I got in, it was a, it was, I think there was like a middle school. That's what it was. It was a middle school PE, you know, uh, where you'd go through like all the different sports to be like badminton and shit like this. But then there was like a red wrestling section. I was like, man, I like this. So.

• 16:04Jocko Willink?

  Well, compared to badminton.

• 16:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's right. So then, uh, my mom signed me up at the tree house with Yvonne Evenoff for a while. Uh, that was in Draper, Utah. And that was like maybe an hour drive. And so I was taking his classes for a bit with like Cam Jones and some of these other studs from, like high school wrestling studs and Cam went wrestling college. Uh, and then, uh, then we moved and I went, oh no, I wrestled that first year at Riverston High School. And then after that I went, moved down to. Fillmore.

• 16:33Jocko Willink?

  And did you still wrestle when you got to Fillmore?

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I said, yeah.

• 16:36Jocko Willink?

  What, what year was this? What year did you graduate from high school?

• 16:39Speaker 02

  Two thousand three.

• 16:41Jocko Willink?

  How did you do wrestling and did you make the state or anything?

• 16:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, I won districts my senior year and then at state, uh, I ended up, I was, man, it sucks so bad. I got super sick. I had to drink. Yeah, my wrestling, my wrestling coach, I still talk about this all the time, but I was weighing in with a gallon jug of water, trying to get up to weight. So I was wrestling at eighty nine and I just was burnt. I just didn't weigh enough. You know, you gotta make the one sixty weight limit. I wasn't making it to state. Well, plus two pound allowance, I guess, so. Anyway, yeah, I struggled that year.

• 17:13Jocko Willink?

  That's still pretty impressive that you only started wrestling your freshman year and you made it to state your senior year? That's pretty impressive, man.

• 17:21Speaker 02

  My, man, my junior year, I think I was probably a better wrestler, but I got in trouble. I was kind of an idiot and.

• 17:28Jocko Willink?

  What'd you do to get in trouble?

• 17:29Speaker 02

  Um.

• 17:31Jocko Willink?

  This is where the good stories come in.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  So, well, I, uh, I got, me and my stepdad got in a fistfight and I got kicked out. We, he and I had butted heads since I was little, big time. And I ended up, we got in a pretty good scrap. And anyway, we had, we couldn't live in the same places anymore. So I wanted to live with my other grandpa in Salt Lake and I went back to Riverton that year, Riverton High School. And, uh, I just was an idiot, you know? I was like, just not going to school. Man, and my dad, my whole life, my biological father was like in and out of jail and stuff, in and out of prison and.

• 18:11Jocko Willink?

  For what? What was he doing?

• 18:12Speaker 02

  Man, I, you know, I don't know. I, I get stories. I don't know what's. I know at least one thing was a white collar thing. I know there were some violent things, but I, I don't know what, you know? Anyway, uh, I don't know. I don't. So, uh, he, he was out for a minute and so I was like, well, I'll just live with him then. And that was about it. I did that lasted for like, man, he was out for like a month or something and then.

• 18:36Jocko Willink?

  Being a stepdad's like a tough, like a really tough job.

• 18:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he's, man, he's, I don't want him sitting. He had some issues of his own, so. And like whiskey bottles in the damn grain bins and shit. He can be out trying to feed horses. Like, oh, here's some rich and rare.

• 18:55Jocko Willink?

  When did you, so you were hunting your whole, as growing up, your whole life?

• 19:00Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 19:00Jocko Willink?

  Bow hunting too?

• 19:01Speaker 02

  I started bow hunting at about fourteen. My cousin Cody Hassan got me into it. He's, uh, actually, I think last week, I think it was, he went and tried out for the world team.

• 19:10Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  For, uh, uh, stick bow.

• 19:12Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Yeah, he's pretty solid.

• 19:14Jocko Willink?

  At what point did you start thinking about joining the military?

• 19:18Speaker 02

  Uh, I, you know, GI Joe and shit as a kid. I always thought about it, you know? But I was, you know what, I thought for sure I was gonna go in the military, but then, like, there was nothing going on. You know, I'm like, I don't, I mean, I don't understand why anybody would join without a war. Like, what's the hell's the point? So then I was just, I, you know, for, so anyway, I went through a stretch where I thought, I won't do this. And I was an F off and just riding bulls and just being dumb and partying and every other thing that young cowboy kids do. Chasing girls and such. And then, uh, nine eleven happened. And I was, this is when I was actually at Riverton High School.

• 19:54Jocko Willink?

  So you were a sophomore, maybe? Just starting your sophomore year?

• 19:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, sophomore year, yeah, sophomore year. No, junior.

• 20:00Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, cause you said you graduated in oh three.

• 20:02Speaker 02

  I was a junior. Yeah, cause I was at Riverton, cause my sophomore year I was at Millard. Yeah, and we were sloughing school. And which, you know, it's like the first period of the day, but we were all over at my cousin's house. And one of the kids that was there was a, uh, I can't remember if he was from Pakistan or whatever, but anyway, friend of ours was from the Middle East and he was there with us, you know? Watching this stuff go down and I feel like that always kinda helped me. Like, view things differently. Cause he was still a buddy, you know? But we, so we saw the towers come down, I was like, man, I'm gonna go, I wanna go fight over there, you know? So I finished up school and then, or well, actually I enlisted as a junior. Uh, it was the first recruiter that talked to me. I'm just enlisted.

• 20:48Speaker 02

  I was going as soon as over.

• 20:50Jocko Willink?

  And you just, the first recruiter you talked to was an army recruiter?

• 20:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 20:54Jocko Willink?

  That was that?

• 20:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, I didn't know crap, man. My grandpa didn't really like the Marine Corps very much. And the only thing he says, I'll kill you if you join the Marine Corps. He told me that at least a dozen times growing up. And so I thought, well, it's not the Marine Corps.

• 21:10Jocko Willink?

  Wait, did your grandfather fight, which war?

• 21:13Speaker 02

  No, he, he's, he split Vietnam and Korea. And then his bro, his two little brothers went over to Vietnam. And I think he was bitter about that. I mean, I've never, I never asked him why he hated the Marine Corps, so I really don't know. I know he had a tattoo of a bulldog over here. And when he was older, he used to say, I used to say, grandpa, or when I was little and he was older. Say, grandpa, what's that? You know, he said, it's a picture of your grandma.

• 21:42Jocko Willink?

  So you, did you know what kind of job you were having in the army? Did you even know that the army had jobs or?

• 21:48Speaker 02

  No. Well, I mean, not really, no. So he shows me this video, okay?

• 21:53Jocko Willink?

  This is the recruiter?

• 21:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. I almost want to say his name, but he, uh, he's not a bad guy. He just did bad things. So he shows me this video and he's like, check that out. And these dudes are like jumping out of planes and shit. I'm like, oh yeah, that looks badass.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  He's like, that's what you want to do? I'm like, hell yeah. And he's like, see that one guy? And it's like the, I'm assuming it's the Echo, the eighteen Echo or whatever. And he's like, see that guy with that radio? I was like, yeah. He was like, he gets paid six extra grand to join if he carries that radio. I mean, that's not exactly how he said it, but he's like, you get a signing bonus. And all you gotta do is carry this extra twenty pounds of gear or whatever, you know? He's like, you're tough enough to carry twenty extra pounds, aren't you? I'm like, oh, hell yeah.

• 22:33Jocko Willink?

  Run that racket before, huh? Playing psychological warfare. You're tough enough, right?

• 22:39Speaker 02

  I was just, yeah, I still, it still frustrates me some. I mean, I don't hate the guy. It worked out, but.

• 22:45Jocko Willink?

  So that, so what did you enlist as? Did you have an MOS when you enlisted?

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a comm job. It's a thirty-one series comm job. It's thirty-one, uh, uniform. They changed it, but I think it was a thirty-one uniform at the time. And it's like, signal something. I honestly goodness did not a single thing of signal.

• 23:03Speaker 02

  Like I had, I had dudes, I, I could barely feel a singar when we were over there.

• 23:09Speaker 02

  In fact, one time I was dating a girl and she was like, what's the smartest thing you ever did when you were over there? And I was like, what are you talking about? She's like, what's the thing took like the most brain power? And I was like, I set up a tax at one time on this island. And then I was, I was thinking about it. I'm like, oh shit, I just carried it. But I really, you know,

• 23:29Speaker 02

  but, but really in my head at first I had thought I did, but then I remembered I gave it to Adam.

• 23:36Jocko Willink?

  And you joined the National Guard, right?

• 23:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:38Jocko Willink?

  Did you know the difference between the National Guard?

• 23:40Speaker 02

  No, I, I don't, I, I swear to you, I think maybe 20% of kids at that time had any idea what was going on. It's like small town Utah has a bunch of those National Guard recruiting stations. They don't know. Uniform says the same thing. You don't know shit. Unless you have like a family member that's in or something and then that's different. Which my buddy who I enlisted with had a family member that was in, so that would have been.

• 24:03Jocko Willink?

  Did they tell him what was up? Did he know what was going on?

• 24:05Speaker 02

  Here's what I think happened there. His, his brother-in-law, really good dude. I think was like, let's not get you guys sent over into a meat grinder.

• 24:17Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  I think that's, if I had to guess.

• 24:19Jocko Willink?

  Little did he know.

• 24:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, right? And you know, it's funny, the, the guard thing works out better for me because had I been in an active unit with that shit MOS, I would have never did anything. I'd have been stuck in a freaking comm cage the entire time. So it kind of worked out.

• 24:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you, did you go to bootcamp in between your junior and senior years?

• 24:39Speaker 02

  No.

• 24:39Jocko Willink?

  You, so you had to fully graduate?

• 24:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:42Jocko Willink?

  You fully graduated?

• 24:43Speaker 02

  Delayed, delayed entry or whatever they called it.

• 24:46Jocko Willink?

  And you, so you fully graduated. At what point did you know that you were going to be activated and sent overseas?

• 24:53Speaker 02

  I volunteered for it. So we, I got to, so I went through basic training and then they.

• 24:58Jocko Willink?

  What'd you think when you got to basic training?

• 25:00Speaker 02

  I'll tell you. So my recruiter.

• 25:04Jocko Willink?

  I always tell people like when you get to boot camp, you're not gonna like me anymore. There's gonna be two to three weeks where you're like, Jaco, I hate that guy. If I ever see him, I'll take a swing at him. Cause no matter, almost no matter who you are, when you get to boot camp, you think, uh oh, this was a mistake.

• 25:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, especially them first three weeks, but then toward the end it starts to be kind. You're like, this is cool. And so I went to Fort Benning, but Pogecide Fort Benning. And again, you wake up every morning screaming infantry and all this shit. You don't know what the fuck you're doing. And then so, um, my recruiter had also, he put me through MEPS with the airborne physical and all this stuff. Told me I had airborne on my contract, all this shit. I get into boot camp and you know, like two weeks before, when you're at Benning, they call up and they're like, everybody with airborne on your contract, come in here and line up. I come line up, you know, I go in there and he's like, what the fuck are you doing in here? It's like, what are you talking about? He's like, you ain't a fucking airborne on your contract. Get out of here. So.

• 26:05Jocko Willink?

  It wasn't even in your contract?

• 26:06Speaker 02

  He, he went as far as to put me through the airborne physical.

• 26:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but it wasn't in your contract?

• 26:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, like why go through the physical if it's not like, why, no one else does? Um, so anyway, I felt like I got kind of, but it worked out, you know, I'm, I'm not trying to complain, but I do feel like he, I'm a little irritated. So I'm salty.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  Like almost 20 years later about this.

• 26:26Jocko Willink?

  Um, but when you're going in, when you're going through boot camp in the National Guard to be reservist, you must also, that's like make it a little bit more comfortable. Because you can find some comfort in the fact that like, God, well, at least I didn't go active duty.

• 26:40Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 26:40Jocko Willink?

  Whereas if you're active duty, you're like, oh, this is the rest of my, this is the next six, four years of my life is to be in the, surrounded by these crazy people yelling and screaming, cause you think that's what the military is like when you go to boot camp.

• 26:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean, I guess, but I just wanted to go to the war, man. So as soon as I got back to my unit after AIT and all this stuff.

• 27:00Jocko Willink?

  So you went to boot camp, AIT. Were you kicking ass in AIT since you killed so many freaking woodpeckers growing up? Were you like, did you, were you marksman expert and all that stuff?

• 27:10Speaker 02

  I mean, I shot fine, you know, I don't think I was, but, but the, the triggers on those were really hard to get used to. The M16 trigger first, but I mean, I shot fine.

• 27:18Jocko Willink?

  What about, what about just like being out in the woods and just feeling good about all that?

• 27:23Speaker 02

  That was great. Yeah.

• 27:23Jocko Willink?

  Did you kind of kick ass in AIT?

• 27:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, especially like the FTX stuff. I mean. It was like nothing, man. It's like all these dudes are all worried about like three days in the mud. It's like camping, man. The only time it sucked is when it, uh, at Benning on our final FTX, it rained, which I think is true for like almost anybody that goes through Benning, but it rained for like the entire time. So all of our hasties were like water up to our chest and stuff like that, you know? In fact, uh, one time during night guard, my buddy, you know, we had your ankles interlocked in hasties or whatever. Well, he was on, he was sleeping and I was up and it was his turn. I turn around and there's a wolf spider like this big.

• 28:02Jocko Willink?

  Gee.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  And I put that sucker on his chest, right? And I just tapped him. I woke up. His eyes were like, you know, you can't make noise, you know?

• 28:14Speaker 02

  Trying to get it off and shit. Anyway, yeah. Um.

• 28:17Jocko Willink?

  I was in Fort Lewis, Washington. I was going through SEAL tactical training, which is what, what you do when you're a new guy. Then we, there's some pretty heinous mosquitoes where we were and I had learned to carry a mosquito. I would just carry like a, like a one yard square of mosquito netting. And that way, if we laid up, I could just take that thing out and just put it underneath my floppy hat and, and tuck it in my collar and I'd be good to go. Well, my, my, the officer that was in charge of us bought, brought like a full on mosquito net like you see, I don't know, like maybe in some British, uh, colonists would wear in like Africa in like 1875 or something.

• 29:02Jocko Willink?

  You know, this big giant screen with the wicker, uh, bands around it, pushing it out. And so we're in this layup position and this other friend of mine didn't have any net and a lot of guys actually didn't have any net. And so my buddy was sitting there catching mosquitoes and putting them into the stings while he was sleeping, catching mosquitoes. And so the mosquitoes were actually trapped inside this guy. He woke up in the morning.

• 29:30Speaker 02

  I gotta kick out of that one. That's brutal.

• 29:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, what were you gonna say though? So you, you, you put the spider on the dude?

• 29:39Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah. It just, it was just funny to watch him spaz out when he knew he couldn't make noise, you know?

• 29:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, this mosquito was better though.

• 29:50Jocko Willink?

  So you're feeling good at A I T and the war is in full swing right now, right? So what year is this?

• 29:56Speaker 02

  Uh, this would be two thousand, two thousand three, or no, uh, what was that? Two thousand four, two thousand three?

• 30:01Jocko Willink?

  Probably getting, you, you said you graduated in two thousand three?

• 30:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:04Jocko Willink?

  And you went right to boot camp?

• 30:05Speaker 02

  Uh, there was a couple month break because I was doing concrete.

• 30:11Speaker 02

  So I did con, so I must've went to boot camp around October, something like that.

• 30:15Jocko Willink?

  So it's probably two thousand four.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Could have been, well, that would have, no, because, no, because, well, maybe it was. I can't remember. I'm sorry. It could have been two thousand four.

• 30:23Jocko Willink?

  I'm just trying to think timeframe, what timeframe, what was going on in Iraq at the time?

• 30:28Speaker 02

  Because we shipped.

• 30:32Speaker 02

  Oh shit, maybe. I'm sorry. I keep doing this. Now, now I'm thinking, we shipped out on January. Twenty first of, uh, two thousand and five for Iraq. So it probably was two thousand four.

• 30:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 30:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 30:46Jocko Willink?

  So you got, when you got done with it, it's like two thousand four. So the war is going, but it's not gotten crazy yet in two thousand four. It's still like, pretty low level conflict happening in Iraq.

• 31:02Jocko Willink?

  Then you got, so you got done with A I T. Then what happened? Did you go home and you get attached to your unit, but you didn't deploy right away, did you?

• 31:11Speaker 02

  Uh, it wasn't very long. I can't remember how long, but it wasn't very long at all. I went to the first drill thing.

• 31:19Speaker 02

  And I was like, this is horrific.

• 31:22Jocko Willink?

  What? Going to drill?

• 31:23Speaker 02

  It was just. I, dude, it was terrible.

• 31:27Jocko Willink?

  Because you wanted to be.

• 31:28Speaker 02

  Well, and it's also just, yeah, and it's just like sitting, doing radio shit and like, in a, a, like a office and stuff and. Like, no, I'm not about it, man. So as soon as there was somebody deploying, uh, they said they had, they, so I was in drill. I can't remember which iteration drill was, but I was in drill and they, they said they had someone downstairs doing S R P to go, or it wasn't S R P.

• 31:58Jocko Willink?

  What's S R P?

• 31:59Speaker 02

  This is, I'm trying to remember, I'm trying to remember if that's the right, well, it's like where you're getting all your, checking all your paperwork, vaccinations, getting stood up to. Go out, I can't remember if the right, if that's the right acronym, but anyway, they were downstairs doing that crap. And they said that they had slots and so I went and talked to my first line leader and I was like, I want to go, you know, I want to go on this. And he was like, fine, you know, so he let me go down there and go.

• 32:24Jocko Willink?

  How long did they do extra training? Who'd they attach you to to get ready to deploy?

• 32:29Speaker 02

  Gronski's 28th ID. They sent us to, so after we, yeah, and so that was actually, yeah, so we went straight from there to, from Utah to Mississippi, just north of Hattiesburg, what the hell is that, Camp Shelby? And we did a couple of months at Camp Shelby and then we did a month rotation at NTC and then we shipped.

• 32:51Jocko Willink?

  And how was that? Did you feel like you were getting pretty well prepared?

• 32:54Speaker 02

  Yes, well, because by then they put us, they set up an actual PSD element and so we had a separate training cycle, same cycle, but separate training pathway. So other than like company live fires and stuff like this, we were all getting spun up by, and most of the OCs were like Rangers because they were the only ones that had really been doing PSD for real. So we had good OCs, I felt like, and training was pretty good. It was better training than I got anywhere else.

• 33:20Jocko Willink?

  So you immediately got attached to a group that was going to be doing PSD, which is Personnel Secured Detail. That's what they told you your job was going to be.

• 33:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, they pulled from within the unit and developed a PSD element because they didn't have one.

• 33:34Jocko Willink?

  And then you went to, you ended up going to NTC, which is in Fort Irwin, California, which is freaking awesome training. I mean, they have whole cities set up and villages and role players and pyrotechnics. Did they have all that stuff for you guys?

• 33:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 33:50Jocko Willink?

  Were you feeling pretty good about it?

• 33:51Speaker 02

  Man, we were living in those circus tents for like 30 days.

• 33:55Jocko Willink?

  That part's not fun.

• 33:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, the training was good, I feel like.

• 33:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 33:59Speaker 02

  But the two uniforms for like 30 days in that circus tent was not my favorite.

• 34:03Jocko Willink?

  Now, at this time, Ramadi is start, do you know, when do you find out you're going actually to Ramadi?

• 34:08Speaker 02

  Like, day before we shipped.

• 34:11Jocko Willink?

  Gets up.

• 34:13Speaker 02

  They were just, they just kept telling us, take this training serious, man, because you might have to use it, you know, that kind of stuff. You'd hear like grumblings, Sunni triangle, you'd hear this kind of stuff.

• 34:24Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 34:24Jocko Willink?

  You're ready, rock and roll.

• 34:25Speaker 02

  Dude, I want to.

• 34:26Jocko Willink?

  How, how old were you at this point?

• 34:27Speaker 02

  Nineteen.

• 34:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, hell yeah.

• 34:29Speaker 02

  Just young and dumb, man.

• 34:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 34:34Jocko Willink?

  And so then you get done with that, now it's time to leave. Did you freaking blow it out before you went overseas?

• 34:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, we, yeah, we went, we spent some time in Louisiana for a minute.

• 34:49Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, and, and when you feel, when you're leaving, what's your, what's your parents saying? What's your mom saying? What's your grandfather saying? Are they worried sick?

• 35:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, my mom for sure was. My grandpa just didn't say much, honestly. Um, he really never did about any of this, but my mom was definitely terrified the whole time for sure. She wasn't happy and.

• 35:16Jocko Willink?

  I just like kinda laughed a little bit, I don't know why.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 35:20Jocko Willink?

  I'm horrible, because I'm thinking you're nineteen, like, there's nothing else in the world you wanna do and your mom's just horrified by the whole thing. Sorry, mom.

• 35:27Speaker 02

  And honestly, as a father now, I got three boys now, I have a daughter and three boys and I think about it all the time.

• 35:34Jocko Willink?

  I think it must be much, much, much worse to send a kid off to war than to go to war yourself.

• 35:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, it would have to.

• 35:41Jocko Willink?

  And I've also always felt that it would be worse. Like, when I was overseas, I think it was worse for my wife than it was for me. Cause I know what's going on.

• 35:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 35:52Jocko Willink?

  If I die, it's kinda, like, I mean, I don't, you know, I'm not really gonna, like, care too much. I mean, I guess I'm gonna be bummed for that split second, but, but, you know, my wife is gonna be, you know, stuck with all these kids and everything, so. I don't know, I always felt like, uh, it was much harder for the people that are staying home than it is for the people that are going overseas.

• 36:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, but worse even still for kids, I think. Like, the children of.

• 36:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, I think my kids were actually too young to even understand. They were, mm, between the ages of like, I guess, seven and three.

• 36:35Jocko Willink?

  Is that right? Yeah, seven and three or something like that. So I don't think they really even comprehended. And I don't know, you know, like one thing with me is I never, I never like wore a uniform home. In the SEAL teams, you just don't, you just, you know, you got all your shit at work and you just put your uniform on to get there. When you get done, you put on shorts and a T-shirt and flip flops and you go home. And your kids just don't even know what's hap- they don't understand any of it, you know?

• 37:03Jocko Willink?

  They just think you just go to work sometimes and you travel. I don't know. I don't think my kids really connected it too much. That they were, that I don't think they had the mental capacity or understanding to actually worry. I don't think they worried at all. I don't, I don't think they worried one second. Not like my, my wife did. You know, especially when she's going to, you know, going to hospital, visit guys and stuff like that.

• 37:27Jocko Willink?

  I guess when the kids are a little bit older.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, you're probably right about all that though. Yeah, it's like when I think even now, when I go hunting for a week or so, I probably worry more than my kids do, or miss my kids more than they miss me.

• 37:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  Like at home.

• 37:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I had my buddy Leif, uh, you know, he's got young kids right now and he was talking, he's like, I don't know how you, I don't know how you went on deployment, like with, you know, he feels bad when he goes on a work trip for a week, you know? And, and I get it, you know, and maybe it's because, you know, he's older than I was at the time and, and I guess I had a that like kind of mindset that was a little bit maybe not super good.

• 38:10Jocko Willink?

  So you find out a day before you find out you guys are going to Ramadi?

• 38:13Speaker 02

  It was, it was either like a day or two before, it wasn't long. I mean, I don't think it was a week.

• 38:18Jocko Willink?

  Did you know anything about Ramadi?

• 38:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, we were watching the news, I mean, and yeah, flu shit happened about eight months or so before, something like that. Maybe a full year. When was Phantom Fury? May?

• 38:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, something like that.

• 38:34Speaker 02

  So yeah, about a year before Fallujah happened. So we had, you know, we had some idea.

• 38:39Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh. And every, all the bad guys pushed into Ramadi at that time.

• 38:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. At least that's the story we always heard.

• 38:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, I think it was pretty accurate. Just when you look at the level of violence from Fallujah. And then the level of violence in Ramadi at that time, it definitely flared up a lot. Uh, do you guys just fly over in like a C seventeen or something? How'd you get over there?

• 39:01Speaker 02

  No, we flew over in like Delta or something. It was like a civilian jet.

• 39:06Jocko Willink?

  To where? To Kuwait?

• 39:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, we flew into Kuwait. We, yeah, we went from Mississippi and then fueled up in Maine. And then from Maine to Shannon, Ireland, and then from Shannon, Ireland to Kuwait.

• 39:18Jocko Willink?

  And then you get to Kuwait. Now they throw you on C one thirties to bring you into Ramadi?

• 39:22Speaker 02

  No, I drove up.

• 39:23Jocko Willink?

  You drove up? Huh.

• 39:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, we, we.

• 39:25Jocko Willink?

  Your whole unit?

• 39:26Speaker 02

  No, they flew them up, but our team was security for the log pack and all that.

• 39:31Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 39:32Speaker 02

  So we drove up. So I drove through Navstar.

• 39:36Jocko Willink?

  And so now it's two thousand and?

• 39:38Speaker 02

  Five.

• 39:39Jocko Willink?

  Five.

• 39:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, now it's two thousand. But what month?

• 39:44Speaker 02

  I think May, no, June. It was June, I think.

• 39:47Jocko Willink?

  June of two thousand and five.

• 39:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:50Jocko Willink?

  You're rolling up. So that's a freaking transit right there.

• 39:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 39:54Jocko Willink?

  Cause speaking of the Sunni triangle, you're going right through that shit.

• 39:58Speaker 02

  It's a whole SOB, yeah. Yeah, we, uh, the first day was not, I mean, it was interesting. You know, once you cross those gates in there, it's like oil wells on fire and stuff. And bullet hole cars here and there scattered, but there's really not like anything going on in the south of Iraq. So for the first day, the first nine hours, I can't remember if it was, uh, so we left Buring is where we rolled out of in Kuwait. And was it Skania? Might, might have been the first stop. Um, I think Skania was the first stop. And anyway, so throughout that and like nothing happened. And then, but other than, you know, just kind of taking in the culture and it is, it is a for real culture shock.

• 40:38Speaker 02

  Like southern Iraq, you know, you, anyone who's spending time in Mexico, you've seen poverty that's different than poverty in America for sure. Like, but the poverty in the south of Iraq is a whole new level. I mean dudes like stealing pieces of tarps from Americans just to like patch holes in their tents and stuff. So that was kind of a shock. And then, you know, kids coming up asking for water and food and, and this kind of shit, you know, that was like new or if you get slowed down somewhere dudes wanting cigarettes tapping on your window, you know, like, so it was, um, it was interesting to just sort of, it was kind of, it was, in some ways it was good to get acclimated, but nothing really happened on that first two days.

• 41:18Speaker 02

  And then on day three, we ended up hitting, um, well, I mean, it didn't detonate, but ended up discovering an IED, the lead truck did. And this was between Fallujah and Baghdad. And so that was like our first real experience with doing anything for real in country, you know?

• 41:33Jocko Willink?

  How many vehicles, like, just estimate, like, how many vehicles are in this log pack? Is this like a forty vehicle?

• 41:39Speaker 02

  I, it could have been more than that.

• 41:41Jocko Willink?

  So it's massive?

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, it took, it took like six hours or so, I can't remember, three, it took hours and hours to fuel up, you know, all these, I can't, it took a long period of time.

• 41:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh, man.

• 41:54Jocko Willink?

  So what, so when did you finally pull into Ramadi? How many days did it take you to get there?

• 41:58Speaker 02

  Three.

• 41:58Jocko Willink?

  Three days you pull into Camp Ramadi?

• 42:02Jocko Willink?

  And they, what, what's that like? I mean, settling in, you've get, get moved into a barracks or where, where'd you, where'd you guys stay at?

• 42:09Speaker 02

  No, yeah.

• 42:10Jocko Willink?

  Town city?

• 42:10Speaker 02

  No, they didn't have any of that yet. There was a big, there was a big MWR building at the front and they just put us up in that. You know, where they had that boxing ring and that stuff in there. They just put us up in that and cots for a week or two, I can't remember. But it was easier, I think it was easier for us in some ways to transit, for, for the people that were going to go outside the wire. I think it was easier for us for the first like mentally for that first week because when we hit that, when we hit that, uh, or didn't, you know, when I say hit, it didn't detonate, but when we hit that IED, it's kind of like. You know, uh, bathed in fire in some ways, like you just see all like what this war is really

• 42:51Speaker 02

  about to be for the next year. You know, it's like middle of the night. They can't, the Marines that were helping us, they came, you know, tapped on the door and were like, hey, we need help, you know, and you want to go? I'm like, oh, hell yeah, I want to go. So it's like AT4 and you know, like, let's go. And so it was me and Johnny and these two Marines went out up this deck cord. So what they'd, they'd found an IED and you know, it's like honestly, after I'd been there for a while, looking backwards, it's a very obvious setup, right? There was an IED and then the student's prayer rug and his driver's license was just left there, you know, it's like, or his ID card, not driver's license. But, um, so we were

• 43:34Speaker 02

  told, we don't have time, you know, EOD can't make it, whatever. Uh, just trace that deck cord and if it goes into the house, because it was going out into this compound, you know, like olive orchard type stuff. It's like, uh, if it goes into the house, just frag the house and come back. And I was like, oh yeah. I was so freaking stoked. So we, we hit the edge of this compound, you know, under nods. And this is you and then two Marines and your buddy Johnny? Yeah, my first line leader at the time. Well, I guess he stayed my first line leader, but it was before I got promoted. Um, and it was, you know how they'd have those big, obviously you know, but they'd have those walls, you know, center block walls. Well, there, this one had a gate that was locked and then it had a, you could see there was

• 44:17Speaker 02

  a hole in the sides where I would just go through the hole. So we go around and as we come around that hole, you could hear a generator running. Uh, I just assumed that it was in the back or something, but you could hear a generator running and then this dog starts barking, like this little yappy dog. And we're like, in my mind, the only thing we got going for us right now, just four men is that nobody knows we're here, you know, within this compound. I don't exactly want to take plunging fire in this compound with just four dudes very badly. So now I'm like, I can't wait to blow that effing dog up, man. I'm trying to hit that dude with my frag. So I'm thinking that as we're

• 44:58Speaker 02

  coming around toward the front of the, toward the front of the home. And then once we take the right, you know, so we skirt in the house here and then take a right towards the actual front and you could see the deck cord going into the house. And I was like, oh yeah, man, this is, it's about to be on. So we go around the deck cord and then there's a like, kind of a half ass, like a stoop, not a, not a true porch, but like a stoop. And on that stoop was these sandals all laid out in like succession. You could tell us like dad, mom, you know, son, older daughter, and then baby daughter with like these little two inch pink sandals. Man, that, I had a, I had a little sister, I still do, but I was very close to her at the time.

• 45:40Speaker 02

  She was like six or seven at that time. And man, that hit me like a freight train, you know, like whoa, you know, it's not, it's, you're not just killing bad guys all the time, you know? So what ended up happening? We went, we went all the way around. It ended pretty good, actually. We went all the way around and the deck cord came out and went into his orchard in the back. So we traveled through it a little bit. And then one of the Marines said, hey, I'm going to pull a pin flare out or pop a pin flare. And Johnny didn't hear him. So I'm like over here, like in the small echelon and Marine pops out the pin flare and Johnny just hits the deck. So I got a good kick

• 46:22Speaker 02

  out of it. But we stopped there for a minute. We just see that the deck cord was going out somewhere. And there was two dudes up in another home on a balcony, smoking cigars, you know, with AKs. It was like,

• 46:36Speaker 02

  Well, anyway, depending on the situation, but uh, we weren't, you know, we didn't, nothing happened.

• 46:43Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 46:43Speaker 02

  But.

• 46:43Jocko Willink?

  So you just walked back to the vehicles?

• 46:45Speaker 02

  Basically, yeah. But the thing is like, almost guaranteed, those dudes were waiting to see what we would do. Like, almost guaranteed, they were the ones that set it up and everything. And, I mean, what are you doing smoking cigars on your deck at two forty?

• 46:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, you can't, you, unfortunately, you can't even answer that question, because they would be doing the most wild, crazy, like, unknown things that you'd ever have imagined in a million years.

• 47:09Speaker 02

  That's true.

• 47:10Jocko Willink?

  You know, like, like, for instance, two forty in the morning. I mean, I had a guy approach a target one time, and my terps yelling at him, and the guy's like, carrying a box with him, and he's walking towards, we're assaulting a target, this was in Baghdad, we're assaulting a target, and this guy's walking up, looking super suspect, and my terps like, hey, there's fifty cows pointed at him, and like, like, hey? And so finally, I just like, wa- I just like aggressively approach him, and, or no, we told him to put the box down, so he sets the box down at his feet, and I get over, I, so I, so I go like, grab this guy, and as I'm going to grab him, he like pulls something out of his pocket, and I'm so close to him, I had my weapon, I like smashed his hand with my weapon,

• 47:54Jocko Willink?

  and he dropped this little remote that he was carrying.

• 47:57Speaker 02

  Oh shit.

• 47:58Jocko Willink?

  And, yeah, it sounds all cool. Here's the deal, though, this dude was drunk, you know, once we got to the bottom of it, he was drunk, and in the box was a video machine, and he had been over at his buddy's house watching porno, and getting drunk with his buddy, you know, he, I almost smoked him.

• 48:13Speaker 02

  He might have deserved it.

• 48:14Jocko Willink?

  But they do some dumb shit, man, and so you never know. Uh, so what you're saying is, since you had a little bit of experience driving up there, the guys that, the guys that arrived via air were sort of, had to get used to going out in town?

• 48:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, they didn't, they didn't experience any of the culture, you know, or at least even, not necessarily that we experienced, but even get a taste of it. So their first time interacting was maybe not the best day.

• 48:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 48:38Speaker 02

  You know, and we gotta have, kind of ease into it a little bit.

• 48:41Jocko Willink?

  So then what was your date, what was your, what was your mission? So your mission as a PSD guy was to protect people, you know, important people, whether that's a battalion commander, a brigade commander, support, I don't know, support EOD clearances, that was basically what you were doing?

• 48:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, yeah, but then.

• 48:59Speaker 02

  Command, the, our principals never really left, so we ended up just doing whatever. Came down, lots, lots of QRF stuff, lots of EOD support, uh, quite a few like log packs. Those are the most miserable missions on the entire, you gotta drive all the way around Lake Havenia. And absolutely nothing's gonna happen, except for you're gonna get smoked with an ID. Like they're just, yeah, those were terrible because they're boring and it's just like a crap shoot. Yeah, boring and waiting to die at the same time. Yeah, it's like the worst. So we, that's like mostly what we were doing. Uh, and then we, you know, a few raids come down here and there and need somebody and we go do that stuff. What was your op tempo like? Uh, it's, it varied a lot. Uh, yeah, it just varied a ton.

• 49:44Speaker 02

  It depended, or like if we're doing like prisoner transport, then that would be like a two day boring ass thing. Same kind of thing with log packs, but then if we were back home and there was none of that going on, then we might have a little higher op tempo. You know, just wherever it's coming in. But you were basically work, would you say you were working every day? Yeah, for sure. Definitely working every day. Yeah, uh, yeah, for sure. Rolling outside the gate every day. Yeah, uh, yeah, I don't think we had a day off until they brought in, I don't know if they did this, you guys probably not, but they ended up bringing in shrinks. Uh, I can't remember what month, it might've been December. I can't remember what month it was. Anyway, they ended up bringing in shrinks to, like that the army was starting to have a problem with PTSD stuff on at home, but they were still calling it PTS back then, I think.

• 50:29Speaker 02

  And so they brought in these shrinks and it was like, if you've done this many missions outside of the wire in this amount of time, then they were pulling you off the line and putting you like on a guard tower. For how long? Two weeks, hit it off the line. Yeah. And when they did that with us, I was telling my first son, I'm like, top, this is the stupidest shit I've ever heard in my life. You can't, I mean. Yeah, you don't want to come in and just get soft, you know.

• 50:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, and then also you might start to not want to go back out again because you know you get that you get time to too much time to think about it.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  And ha chow.

• 51:08Jocko Willink?

  Uh, was there any missions that you did that stood out to you that were particularly uh interesting or important missions?

• 51:17Speaker 02

  Not really, man. We did like, I was a normal dork guy, man. I did a lot of cool stuff. We did a raid with we just supported first marine recon one time on a raid between Ramadi and the Syrian border. They'd someone, once we got Predator drones, they discovered this compound out there that nobody even knew existed. It was like out in sand dunes.

• 51:37Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 51:37Speaker 02

  They call it uh Big Wadi Farm, I think. I hope that's not I hope that's not like some classified shit or something. I don't know, but.

• 51:45Jocko Willink?

  I don't think Big Wadi Farm could be that classified.

• 51:50Jocko Willink?

  If it is, they need to work on their freaking classification.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  Well, I know that's what we called it.

• 51:54Jocko Willink?

  Okay, then you're good.

• 51:56Speaker 02

  So, uh yeah, I mean, that was cool. Watching recon take that down was pretty cool, but like we just did normal like day to day. Try not to get blown up, you know, try to shoot the people that need to get shot and not the ones that don't.

• 52:12Speaker 02

  I mean, just really, it was kind of, that's why when I was writing the book, you know, I I just like a very basic, normal guy's soldier's story. So I don't think there was any, for me, it didn't seem like there was any sense in going into all these little minor, you know, this day we got shot at here. Like the first time I took sniper fire was for sure memorable.

• 52:34Speaker 02

  In fact, I'll tell you that story real quick. We were out on, do you remember Trooper Recon? It was just outside of the the North Gate.

• 52:41Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 52:41Speaker 02

  Before they had fortified that, we just had a we just had like a big Texas barrier up there. And we were just sitting there waiting. I can't remember where the heck we were going, but we were staged to go somewhere.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, and anyway, we just take two or one round first and then another round, but goes right over my gunner's head who was sitting in the Humvee on the gun, you know, but he's just daydreaming, you know, and it goes right through, they had a piece of camo netting, goes like right through the camo netting and he hit, and he looked like, uh, when you, if you ever slaughtered a bull and you shoot them and it's almost like their legs come up and they hit the ground like a cartoon, that's like what he did, we thought he was dead, man, like it sounded like he just piled up in that Humvee. And so I was like, where's he shooting from, where's he shooting from, and I was like trying to find where he was coming from, but also not keep my head out for, you know, five minutes at a time, like moving from side to side, up and down, just trying to

• 53:41Speaker 02

  peek, and then finally I said, the only thing this could be is this covert, like there's nothing else it could possibly be. So, we radio up and we radio up and we're like, hey, we're gonna go get this, you know, this, this is, or we're gonna go check this covert, it's the only place we can figure that we got shot at from. Now, it's also possible that he was just like out in the desert somewhere and shooting further than we thought they were capable of, but when you see a handful of Iraqis shooting at you with like AKs with no front sight posts.

• 54:09Jocko Willink?

  You're not thinking they're pulling off the 1100 yard shots, you're looking at that covert, that's 200 yards away, there he is.

• 54:18Speaker 02

  So, we, the captain is like, I wanna go out with you guys, I'm like, oh my gosh, okay, so we wait and we wait, it had to be 15, 20 minutes, had to be.

• 54:30Jocko Willink?

  Waiting for the captain to show up?

• 54:32Speaker 02

  Had to be, could have been longer. So by the time he gets there, we're all talking, we're like, there's no way this dude's still there, there's no freaking way, he's just gonna lay there for 20 minutes, like, they're dumb, but they're not that dumb. So the captain gets there and we roll out and he's like, okay, you know, we, so we got truck here, truck here on this side of the covert, and I was like, I'll go in, and I pulled the flashbang out and he goes, McCoy, don't you throw that flashbang in there, I'm like, what are you talking about? And he's like, could be a UX or, or, excuse me, an IED in there, and I was like. Okay, he's like, I want you to set this ID off while we're standing on it. And I was like, dude, I'm not going in that without throwing a banger, bro.

• 55:12Jocko Willink?

  I think I'd much rather have the flashbang set the ID off than McCoy.

• 55:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 55:19Speaker 02

  I'm like, it's not happening, man. And he, he goes, uh, if you, if you throw that flashbang in there, I'll write you an article fifteen. And I said, get your fucking pen out. I swear, I know it sounds pretend, I swear to God. So I throw it in there and this how you know it's a true story, cause I throw that sucker in there. And I jump off, Johnny comes in, I mean, we're going in and I panicked myself. So I saw my own banger and I thought it was UXO. So I was like UXO, UXO, but I'm trying to back out and Johnny's like, what? I'm like UXO, he's like, you sure as hell ain't fucking flashbang? What's UXO? Unexposed or unexploded ordinance.

• 55:56Jocko Willink?

  So he flew his flashbang in there, it went off, but there's still like little chunks of it, you know, that are sitting there.

• 56:04Jocko Willink?

  Backed out to get his freaking article fifteen.

• 56:10Jocko Willink?

  Classic.

• 56:10Speaker 02

  He, he, and that captain was a good dude, he just, I don't know what he was thinking on that one. He didn't write me an article fifteen.

• 56:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, man, it's hard, I'm assuming that he was fresh in country as well.

• 56:21Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, and he was young, man.

• 56:23Jocko Willink?

  You have no idea of like what's going on when you first get in country, you have just no idea. It's hard.

• 56:30Speaker 02

  And a young guy like, was he twenty five or something? Twenty four, I don't know, how old are they roughly when they?

• 56:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he's probably something like that, probably maybe twenty, maybe twenty six, something like that, but yeah, he's not old, takes four years. Takes four years to make captain or make O three, so he might've been twenty, yeah, so he's like twenty four, maybe twenty five.

• 56:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he doesn't know anything, he doesn't leave the wires, you know, he's running a battery, like he's, you know.

• 56:56Jocko Willink?

  You know, uh, just on what you said earlier about, hey, you were just a regular soldier, all of my guys, we all just, we all looked at you all. Like, damn, cause you guys were out going out there, like you said, every single day you're going out there to do random searches of culverts where you were just taking five from it, just like shit like that on a daily basis. And you, uh.

• 57:20Jocko Willink?

  We we just held all you guys in the highest regard for what you guys were doing every single day. You know, we'd come back and we'd go out and off and come back and we had good chow and a place to chill out a little bit. And if a guy was like tired, it was like, okay, you know, and you guys are just getting that tasking every single day. There's another thing I've talked about where it's like, I don't know which one of these, there's, there's a different psychological impact. A lot of times, army guys, like we'd be working with army platoons and they're like, oh, this is what we're getting tasked to do. But we're gonna go out and patrol this area. We're gonna go out and clear this, this block. We're gonna go out. They're just getting tasked with what they're gonna do. They don't have any real say in it. And we had a complete, we had complete control.

• 58:05Jocko Willink?

  Like, oh, this is what we want to do, then we'll go do it. If we didn't want to go do it, we wouldn't go do it. Like, pretty much, we just made up what we wanted to do. And there's pros to that because, you know, you can say, hey, I don't think this is a good time to do that. But also, when something happens, it's a hundred percent because you said, hey, this is what we're gonna do. So there's a different psychological impact, depending on who you are, of how it ends up in your brain. Because for us anyways, on that deployment, we did what we wanted to do. We picked and chose exactly what we wanted to do. We watched army guys getting tasked, hey, you're gonna go out, you're gonna, you know that road you got IED'd on yesterday? Yeah, you're going down it again today. You know, the one you got IED'd two times before that? Yep, you're going down that one as well.

• 58:50Jocko Willink?

  And guys just had to grit their teeth and oftentimes, just that was the mission, they'd go execute it. We had more flexibility, but then again, like I said, that means when something does go wrong, there's only, it's a hundred percent on me. As, yep, that's my mission. I'm approving it. Let's go.

• 59:09Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, you guys, you know, you talking about you just being a normal, oh, I didn't do, didn't do much, it's no big deal. Going out there every single day into that city is a freaking salute to all you guys. How often would you say you were, you were taking contact when you guys would go out?

• 59:26Speaker 02

  Um, we, we didn't, a lot of guys got way worse than us. We didn't take it a lot.

• 59:33Speaker 02

  We really didn't take it a lot because we would also end up on dumbass like log pack shit. You know what I'm saying? So then we're way out in to quantum, but even on stuff like that's like ID every single time or every other time or something. Uh, but in town, I mean, I don't, I don't know if, I don't know if anybody didn't at least get shot at every single like, you couldn't, you sure as hell could not go down Route Michigan and not at least have someone shoot at you.

• 1:00:01Jocko Willink?

  I had some guys over in Eastern Ramadi and I was briefing the Colonel of the Siege of Sodaf, awesome guy. And I was just briefing them on what we were doing, how we were doing it. And I said, you know, sir, my element that's out in Eastern Ramadi, they've, they've been, they've been contacted by the enemy the last 23 operations in a row. And then my intel guy or my talk guys came in like while I'm saying that and they're like, sir, just to let you know troops in contact and the guys in the house like, I said, sir, make that 24 times in a row. Uh, so yeah, you were definitely going to, the enemy was there. Yeah. The enemy was definitely there.

• 1:00:39Speaker 02

  Well, it didn't help that everyone was just retaking the same ground every day. I mean, and every, every idiot on the line was saying that, you know, this makes absolutely no sense. What are we doing? You know, we eventually ended up starting setting up cops and stuff like this, but in the beginning it was just essentially glorified presence patrol, under the presence patrol. It's just very stupid stuff. But yeah, I mean, like I say, other guys are doing way more than we were too. So like way more, so.

• 1:01:09Jocko Willink?

  From a leadership perspective, what'd you see from the good leaders that you work for? What'd you notice about them? What made you want to follow them?

• 1:01:18Speaker 02

  For integrity is huge. When somebody, from a leadership perspective, it's, well, actually maybe integrity is not the right word. Yeah.

• 1:01:28Speaker 02

  If, when you start seeing your, like your brass bullshitting you, you know, it's, I mean, it's really hard to get that trust back. Like just don't bullshit me. Tell me what it is. I mean, I don't want to name anybody or even tell certain stories, but there was a couple where it was like, man, what are you doing? You know?

• 1:01:49Jocko Willink?

  And here's just a little warning for leaders. If you think that your frontline troops don't know when you're lying to them, you're so wrong. You tell that frontline troop that, hey, they'll know this is no, don't worry, because we're gonna do this later. Or this is what's really happening. Everybody can see right through it. So if you're lying to your people, they're gonna know. You're not smarter than them. They know exactly what's happening and you can't bullshit these guys. So don't try and do it.

• 1:02:18Speaker 02

  Yeah, like one time, one of them came up with this plan. I don't want to say who, but he called it Operation Decoy. And we had Apache gunships for the day, you know, but it was like supposed to be two weeks out or something. And the plan was that our team would just take our trucks and roll through until like IEDs went off. You know, like hopefully you see them, right? But we're like, listen, man.

• 1:02:46Jocko Willink?

  You're going in lead vehicle, bitch.

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  Like, what is this? You know, like, you're just happy you got some helicopters?

• 1:02:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, we ended up not having to do that one, but that was legitimately the plan. And my, my NCO was like, no, you can bust me. We're not doing this.

• 1:03:04Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:03:07Jocko Willink?

  With that, that kind of covers some of the stuff leading up to, anything else you want to cover leading up to Glass Factory? All right, let's get into this book, man. Again, book is called The Glass Factory. You're gonna hear me read parts of it. That it has got.

• 1:03:26Jocko Willink?

  It's great. It's great story. You're a great storyteller, but the internal dialogue that's going on in here of what your thoughts are, the progress you're making as a person is, it's an outstanding book. So get the book. Here we go. The Glass Factory.

• 1:03:46Jocko Willink?

  Starts like this, "The whole recruitment push had gone smashingly thus far, but we were on our fourth day of this same drive and we had already hugely surpassed our initial goal of 200 new recruits. The men of Ramadi had lined up in droves for the opportunity to become one of the guys chosen to fly to Jordan for the high-speed training the US government had funded for them and later return to their hometown to clean it up. In fact, we had processed hundreds of candidates already. The catch was this was going to be day four of this particular mission and we had only been promised three peaceful days. The problem was all the spots that we had for these future Iraqi police had been filled

• 1:04:29Jocko Willink?

  days ago. This was all just for show. No one on our team felt like it was a good idea to put ourselves at risk for almost nothing, but we were soldiers and that's just part of the job, or so we are told." When we got into our Humvee, I cracked a joke, "Well, let's go get blown up, boys." I was just trying to cut the tension, probably mine more than any others, but I'm not sure it had the desired effect. Actually, talking to General Gronski on here, you know, he talks about the fact that as he looks back, he's like, "I... Four days in a row, didn't need it. Shouldn't have done it." You know, that's his, that's

• 1:05:10Jocko Willink?

  what he feels. That's what he said. And, you know, you're in a... I mean, hindsight's always 20/20.

• 1:05:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, I know why he did it, though. We... The thing that was frustrating for us was, day two, they had shot us, I mean, they missed wildly, but they'd shot at us with rockets. And then day three, and that's just, I mean, maybe they were just shooting at Camp Ramadi, but, like I said, they missed wildly. Day three, two dudes sat at the bus stop for like four hours. And we reported it up. Like, I mean, who's, first of all, what are they waiting for? You know? Um, so anyway, we reported that up and but the reason, you know, to defend Gronski here, the reason that he went on with it is we had guys processing clear up until like midnight and it was dark. And we turned away a couple hundred people.

• 1:05:56Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:05:57Speaker 02

  So he didn't want them to feel like they didn't have the opportunity, even though no one was having the opportunity by then. But just the show of that, at least that's, that was my take.

• 1:06:05Jocko Willink?

  And, and then just from a strategic perspective here, the goal was to have the local people from Ramadi, join the, our Ramadi police and then police up their own city. So they could, they could fight against the insurgents there. And as you said, there's hundreds of them that showed up. So that's pretty awesome. That's a pretty great feeling as all those people are showing up, you want to help them. And the call was made, try and get these guys in there.

• 1:06:34Jocko Willink?

  You actually, and again, I'm not reading the whole book right now, let people get your audio book, but you had an uneasy feeling about this op.

• 1:06:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think we all do.

• 1:06:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. In fact, you wore like your winter, your shitty winter warfare boots, right?

• 1:06:48Speaker 02

  Those boots sucked. Yeah.

• 1:06:50Jocko Willink?

  Cause you knew they were going to get cut off you at some point?

• 1:06:53Speaker 02

  I mean, that's the, that's what you're thinking anyway, you know, at least if you're going to live, I, you know, I want to keep my good boots. Uh, yeah. I mean, there was just too many things. And then I, I do, I don't know if it's premonition or what, but you, I just, I just felt like I knew, just knew.

• 1:07:12Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, we put our team members in their places inside the glass factories walls and went outside and went out ourselves. I was oddly calm as we walked out the gate, not that I generally feared of being among Iraqi people. It's just in a situation like this where you're surrounded by roughly a thousand men, whom you have no ability to directly communicate with, things can spiral out of control very quickly. The otherwise peaceful crowd could be overtaken by the chaos of the mob in an instant. And that should be frightening to anybody. Up and down the line of Iraqis, we walked checking the crowd for threats as we went. We stopped frequently to interrogate Iraqis who looked eager, agitated, or uncomfortable. Honestly, most of them looked nervous and unsettled, which was perhaps the most reasonable way to feel in that moment.

• 1:07:55Jocko Willink?

  These guys knew they were in danger just as well as we did. After all, they've lived in the city that we fought in. The danger of terrorist attacks had become just another part of daily life to the citizen of western Anbar province. At one point, a man approached us uneasily, instantly causing my blood pressure to rise. He stood close to me as he began to talk. "Too close, back up," I said. "He has something to tell you, Carlos," and Carlos is the nickname that you guys gave to your interpreter. Carlos leaned in and told me defensively, "Grenade? You found a grenade?" Our interpreter continued the conversation. "Yes," the man responded. "A grenade with a wire," Carlos relayed to us in English. "You gotta be shitting me," I said. "There's a fucking tripwire out here somewhere? Ask him where the hell it is, Carlos."

• 1:08:40Jocko Willink?

  Carlos turned to the man and asked, but we... But they were having a hard time communicating because the guy was so scared. It was like watching a kindergartner tattletale on his classmates on the playground. "God damn it, we are out here in a crowd of a thousand unpredictable Iraqis, and there's a fucking booby trap somewhere," I said aloud, "but to no one in particular."

• 1:09:02Jocko Willink?

  So there's a... This is just... And I'm only, again, I'm only reading chunks of this thing. Um, but this is a, this is a rough situation to be in. How many people you guys got, like?

• 1:09:12Speaker 02

  Uh, we had 12 that day. And then, yeah, we had 12, and then they had, um, the 17 deuce had an Abrams on the road. And then the Marines had a little bit of security. I mean, we probably... Anyway, our team had 12 people.

• 1:09:28Jocko Willink?

  How many to... What do you... What was the total coalition forces?

• 1:09:30Speaker 02

  Probably 40, I bet.

• 1:09:32Jocko Willink?

  And there's a thousand?

• 1:09:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:34Jocko Willink?

  Something like that?

• 1:09:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, something roughly, yeah. I mean, you know that, that joint recruitment checkpoint up the road by the bridge from the glass factory?

• 1:09:42Jocko Willink?

  I don't know.

• 1:09:43Speaker 02

  It's like, it's gotta be a third, it's gotta be a third of a mile or so, maybe even a half a mile? Or maybe it's a quarter mile. Anyway, you know?

• 1:09:51Jocko Willink?

  It might have changed, too.

• 1:09:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, they could have took it out, that's true. Um, anyway, they were lined up damn near to, like, damn near to their three, three deep. I got pictures of it, I should send you. There was a lot of people there.

• 1:10:05Jocko Willink?

  So you're, at this point, you're trying to locate the IED, you're kind of like, you're focused on that. Of course, you can't just totally focus on that. You've got all these other guys walking around. You're asking questions. And then, uh, going back to the book, "I heard a strange sound to my left, followed by the report of rifles and bursts from the machine guns set atop the Abrams tank that had been positioned to block a street. I dropped to knee and began to scan for targets. Bang, bang, bang, crack, crack, crack. The rounds sounded off as they hit, struck their target. Men began shouting in two different languages. The confusion of combat sets in rapidly. Iraqis were running around frantically screaming in high pitched tones and flailing about in the streets.

• 1:10:46Jocko Willink?

  Others stood frozen as if in fear and curiosity had stiffened them. Still scanning for a target that I could positively identify and engage, but be, but coming up with none, I was getting worried that I was missing some obvious ambush coming from the buildings to our south. Then I saw it. A semi truck had crashed through our perimeter a few hundred meters away. Our fellow soldiers and Marines had immediately recognized the threat and eliminated it before it could do any more damage to our position. That's one hell of a V bit, I thought to myself. The acute problem had been solved. I hoped, for all I knew, that thing might be filled with explosives. But an even larger threat now loomed, a terrified mob. Civilians were running around horrified, shoving each other, climbing over the Jersey barriers,

• 1:11:31Jocko Willink?

  screaming, lost in the confusion of the moment. It did not take long to decide that we could not allow them to get any more riotous. It was time to start wrangling non-combatants. Johnny was within earshot, so I asked him what the new plan of action was. He radioed the talk and briefed them on the current situation. Our commanding officers verified that reinforcement troops were now en route. All we could do in the time being is keep the Iraqis contained until we had enough help to reorganize them.

• 1:12:03Jocko Willink?

  So there's a big vehicle approaches. Machine gun on the tank, the coax or something stops that vehicle.

• 1:12:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, a couple. Yeah, we had a, we had a machine gunner set up in a position, kind of a blocking position too. And so they were, that was in, you could, you know, hitting the engine block and disabled it. And it ended up, turned out, it was just a, you know, Iraqi being an Iraqi and he just drove through our Constantine wire.

• 1:12:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:28Speaker 02

  But you can't, I mean, a situation like, especially when you're being told all morning, that's a V-bid.

• 1:12:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, and by the way, that means there's Constantine wire. That means there's signs in Arabic that say, "Don't pass here. Deadly force will be used." There's several layers of that stuff.

• 1:12:45Jocko Willink?

  Which is why I was saying earlier, like, you could never imagine that someone would do that. And, and oftentimes also they're, well, and in this case, likely true, and probably a distraction to get people distracted from what else was happening. So they, maybe they didn't have time to build a V-bid, and so they just sent this guy in there to start the distraction, which is what it looks like to me.

• 1:13:08Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, "We started yelling at the civilians to get back in line as Carlos translated for us. A few listened, but most pretended not to hear what he was saying, or just plain too afraid to move. We ratcheted up our anger a little and looked them dead in the eye and let them know we were still in command of this circus, but it was of little use. Whether we wanted it to be or not soon became apparent that we were going to have to be more forceful. Some of the men had to be physically dragged off of the tops of barriers. Some had to be shoved. Others conformed when they saw that we were no longer messing around. Still, others ran away and escaped the scene altogether."

• 1:13:49Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. "Two of our new Marine friends were there, asking whether we wanted them to get their dogs. Roger, please do. These two Marines were canine handlers and by reputation, damn good ones. One of them was Sergeant Can."

• 1:14:06Jocko Willink?

  He had already deployed to Iraq before. This round for him had started at a small base out in western Iraq near the Syrian border. But that area lacked the action he longed for, so he had requested transfer to the hottest area of the fight, Ramadi. He was a true badass warfighter and in my experience, the military has no better tool for safely changing the minds of stubborn Iraqi men than a canine warrior at one end of a leash and a cocksure Marine at the other.

• 1:14:37Jocko Willink?

  So you got dogs on station now.

• 1:14:42Jocko Willink?

  At one point, you sort of lighten your load a little bit. What, did you go back into the gate to do that?

• 1:14:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, to the man gate and just started off, because there were so many grab hands going on, we were so undermanned and I started worrying about, especially my smoke up here getting hit with flak, you know, I just didn't want to burn the shit out of my face. So I started offloading the stuff and then I chose to keep my shotgun, which I still, it's still weird to me that I, but I didn't know, like, my shotgun is what I really needed in the moment for the crowd, but you know, what if we had to push out and anyway, I talked about that a little bit in there.

• 1:15:22Jocko Willink?

  I mean, if you had to push out, maybe you go back and get your rifle, you know, like,

• 1:15:31Jocko Willink?

  but you, but you made yourself a little slicker. This is basically what you did, so that you could do more crowd control without worrying about one of these guys grabbing something. There's some Iraqi policeman with you.

• 1:15:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 1:15:43Jocko Willink?

  And these guys started getting, they started getting hyper aggressive.

• 1:15:49Speaker 02

  That was the best one we had, by the way.

• 1:15:52Jocko Willink?

  This one, this one that's going off here, here you, so, so this guy like basically is. Pointing his AK at everybody, you know, he's getting ready to freaking, looks like he's getting ready to start shooting people.

• 1:16:04Speaker 02

  Well, when I found him, they had him encircled. And he was in the center of the circle and they were hauling back and forth. I don't know what the hell they're saying. And then I see him jack around out of that. I was like, oh shit, man. He's about to light these dudes up. And I mean, I don't know. I didn't, I don't know if I'd have hated him for doing it in that moment. I was pretty frustrated, everything. I didn't want him to shoot civilians, making a joke. But yeah, he was scared. You know, they, they don't respect other Iraqis and there's a really weird customary thing. I don't know if this was throughout the whole of Iraq, but for sure in Ramadi, where they're really like not afraid of AKs. You pull out a pistol and those mofo's get all kinds of like, you know, it's an attitude changer.

• 1:16:48Speaker 02

  And I've always heard that maybe it was because of like hit squads and stuff like that. But yeah, so if you just have like an AK pointing at them, they're like, man, I've been doing that to my brother since we were five, you know? Not even, not even worried about it, you know? So that he was like jacking that round in to be like, no, I'm seriously gonna shoot you.

• 1:17:07Jocko Willink?

  So then all of a sudden, hey, I heard yelled in an authoritative and powerful new American voice, we don't fucking act like that around here. That's Saddam's tactics. We don't pull that shit. Lieutenant Colonel Mack had arrived and he was not pleased with the behavior of our Iraqi comrade. Apparently Colonel Mack had heard that things were getting out of hand and had decided to gather up his personal security detail and come see the mission through. With the help of Mack's team, the dog handlers, we began to, and the dog handlers, we began to regain control of the crowd. We separated civilians into three lines, heading east and west along the large concrete wall that formed the outer border of the glass factory.

• 1:17:49Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, the entire morning, my good friend and medic whom we affectionately called Z had been hounding me to have him relieved of his post. He was manning our 50 caliber machine gun within the walls of the glass factory, which we had set up to defend us from the crowd and from potential attacks. For me, though, the problem at hand was a personal one. Z was, so he's, he's like requesting to get out of there.

• 1:18:13Speaker 02

  He'd been hollering at me for an hour by then.

• 1:18:15Jocko Willink?

  And your basic thought was, "Don't come out here." You just want to, A, he's a medic. If something happens, you don't want him to be involved in it. Um, so you're, you, you basically, you're basically like, "Okay, just a minute, just hold on." And you're basically just trying to put it off until the...

• 1:18:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, I told him no for hours and he just wanted to shut the hell up. I'm like, "All right, man, just give me a second, give me a second." Try that tactic.

• 1:18:39Jocko Willink?

  Slow rolled him.

• 1:18:43Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. "Hey, Corporal McCoy, get over here," Lieutenant Colonel Mack yelled at me. "I'll be right back. You know what to do," I told Rick before I jogged over to the Colonel. And again, this seems a little bit like, stilted when I read it. Maybe you don't recognize all these characters. That's because I'm not reading the whole book, so buy the book. Um, "Hey McCoy, you got any dip?" "Yes, sir." Mack was a commanding but warm leader. You could not help but feel a little stronger when you talked to him. He was straight to the point and would, and I would not use the word friendly per se, but he was certainly not the typical overbearing, massively insecure curmudgeon that some officers or even NCOs for that matter can be. He was a warrior, a man you respected and admired.

• 1:19:25Jocko Willink?

  He went on to give me a new set of instructions that I cannot quite recall and then sent me off, each of us heading back to our positions about 50 meters apart. When I got back to Rick and stood in front of him with my back turned to his direction and picked up instruction right where I had left off. Then Z called me on the radio again to say he was on his way out there because he had found relief. I reached up with my left hand to key the microphone on my left shoulder and bent my neck to respond. "Raj, see you out there." Suddenly, there was a loud bark, followed by a violent growl coming from somewhere just in front of me. I peered under the brim of my helmet to figure out what was going on,

• 1:20:08Jocko Willink?

  neck still bent to the radio mic. Sergeant Cahn's dog, Bruno, had grabbed an Iraqi man in the midst of the first line by the arm and began to shake him violently. Sergeant Cahn threw himself at the guy. Boom, boom.

• 1:20:26Jocko Willink?

  Deafening blasts rumbled out back to back accompanied by two rapid white flashes. A burning, stinging sensation shot through my entire body. It was as if I'd been struck by lightning. I felt my muscles and bones contort fiercely, almost like they had flexed in succession so swiftly that their mere compression had been enough to shatter my skeleton.

• 1:20:52Jocko Willink?

  Then followed an unimaginable pain. It felt like every nerve in my body had been set ablaze at the same instant. Then, blackness.

• 1:21:13Jocko Willink?

  It's, you have a pretty good memory of that.

• 1:21:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:21:17Jocko Willink?

  Surprisingly.

• 1:21:17Speaker 02

  Up into that moment, I think I have a pretty solid handle. And then afterwards, it's a little looser for a period, because when Johnny and I talked about it, he had said that he thought he got to me within like a minute or so, which is totally plausible, given the distance. But in my mind, it seemed like it was quite a bit longer than that. So I don't know, after getting your head bell rung, that, you know, it's hard to... But my psychologist told me that the reason, that that's actually not uncommon, as far

• 1:21:58Speaker 02

  as like leading up into something, it's called a flashbulb memory or something like this. Your brain like imprints, you know.

• 1:22:07Jocko Willink?

  Like a one moment in time?

• 1:22:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, like apparently this often happens to people in violent situations. I think it's called a flashbulb memory. I should have my phone on Google. Yeah, and so, and again, like, it's only as accurate as I can be. I'm sure there's mistakes.

• 1:22:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, no, I mean, I've got friends that got blown up and they don't, literally don't remember anything. I mean, it's just, they don't remember anything. They don't remember, you know, they maybe remember fifteen, twenty minutes before it happened, and then just blank until they wake up in a hospital somewhere.

• 1:22:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and that's, you know, from that moment, that's where I started the podcast, you know, when you were faced, you wake up face down in the, in the, in the sand and covered in blood.

• 1:22:58Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book here, fast forward a little bit. You say, "When the blast went off, they had thrown dozens of men, including me, some tens of feet. When we had all landed, I met up at the bottom of one of the piles of dead and wounded. Johnny pulled the bodies off me as he continued to shout. Corpses lifted one by one. I believe there were three bodies on top of me. The weight lessened. I could move a little more freely. Then, when one of the corpses was pulled off of me, I saw the mangled parts which had blocked the view to my own hips leave with it. For the first time since the initial blast, my waistline was exposed. I was able to see that my hips and at least my, the upper portion

• 1:23:38Jocko Willink?

  of both of my legs were still intact. I had not been cut in half after all. Great news in the darkest of moments. But, I still could not see below my knees. Johnny grabbed my body and rolled me over. I realized my legs were still fully attached and fully articulated from feet to hip. The pain was extraordinary, but things were looking up. My friend kept on talking to me as he patched me now, my now exposed wounds. He assured me that both of my legs were still there and that they were not missing any joints. Which I thought I saw with my own eyes, but his reassurance sure didn't hurt anything. He did his best to keep me calm and relaxed. I did my hardest to tough it out for him.

• 1:24:21Jocko Willink?

  On every mission, I wore Nomex gloves, which I had the fingers cut out of early on deployment. Because my right hand was so mangled, Johnny and Lyle, another soldier who had, who was helping administer first aid, fought it best just to get the bleeding stopped. So they bandaged my hand right over the top of the glove. They had my right hand elevated and bandaged it up by the time I saw it, but both bandages and the glove quickly ran through with blood. There was a three inch long gash across the top of my right forearm, just above my wrist. It had been opened up so wide that it revealed the bright white bones and my warm and pink muscle fibers, which twitched on either side of the wound as it bled.

• 1:25:06Jocko Willink?

  There were approximately seven holes in that arm and eight more in my left. They were all leaking. Hot, thin-looking blood traced ghastly lines down each arm from shoulder to hand. I had still yet to see what my legs looked like under my uniform, but it was obvious that even though all of each leg was still attached, the situation was dire. Every time I shuddered, convulsed, or worse yet was bumped by someone else, I grunted and moaned in agony. Otherwise, I either gritted my teeth to get a handle on the pain or babbled incoherently. "I'm sorry, Johnny. I'm trying not to be a pussy, but this shit really hurts." "I know it does, bro. You don't have to apologize." When Z, our medic, finally reached us, he looked over at me and said,

• 1:25:51Jocko Willink?

  "Mac, I've gotta go help a Marine. He's worse off than you are. I'll be back as soon as I can." His voice was stricken with panic. I heard it, but I felt a deep sense of pride at how well my friend and teammate defeated that trepidation and did his job right. Z stood up and hustled over to Sergeant Can's side to begin treating, treatment on him. Z was worried about my future as any close friend would be, but a basic Army medical procedure had a very strict rule of progression. A medic is to start with the American who is most gravely injured.

• 1:26:24Jocko Willink?

  And you gotta, one thing that's cool about this book, you got a bunch of footnotes in there where you'd kinda just add some detail. And I don't know how many of them I'm gonna read, but this one is pretty, pretty cool, uh, pretty interesting anyways. "I just want to reiterate this point. It could have been upsetting to watch a close friend walk away while I was clearly on the brink of death, especially since he left to go help a warrior who had almost surely already passed away. But that's not how I felt at all. All I remember feeling was a deep sense of respect in the strength of character that my friend had just displayed. He had been forced into an extremely uncomfortable and complex situation with nearly no time to think it over. And he had demonstrated the courage to put personal loyalties aside and do the right thing."

• 1:27:08Jocko Willink?

  Just imagine the world we would live in if more people had that kind of fortitude.

• 1:27:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:18Jocko Willink?

  Cause Z's like your boy.

• 1:27:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:27:21Jocko Willink?

  And, and he has to just be like, "Hey, I'll be back, man."

• 1:27:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and my buddies that were there trying to, I mean, you could tell just from reading that, they're not exactly medics. You know, if you couldn't get hands to quit bleeding, you know, I mean, they're doing their best.

• 1:27:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:38Speaker 02

  They're just like wrapping gauze over, like, you know, you got a hole all the way through my hand right here and then all the way through my knuckle and my thumb and, you know, I mean, I can't even move my finger. Like, so it's like this is all mangled and they're just like wrapping gauze around it like we're going to work out or something. You know what I mean? It's like, I mean, they're trying, but you know what I'm saying? And then like this one up here, you know, that was all opened up. They were just like wrapping it, you know? And that was from just a ball bearing and just ripped the, you know what I mean? So they just didn't really know what they were doing. And so it's not like Zane could, what I'm saying is not like Zane couldn't see that when he first looked, you know?

• 1:28:16Speaker 02

  And the one thing I, I can't remember if I wrote about it, but I will say is the, the compartment syndrome part, which maybe, which maybe you might read, but with the, with the legs sucked up, probably saved my life, really. Cause it's like creating an internal tourniquet on your femurs, you know? So at least my, my legs were not bleeding as badly as they could have been in that moment.

• 1:28:40Jocko Willink?

  Tell us about that compartment syndrome.

• 1:28:43Speaker 02

  So when your femurs break, especially if they break in multiple places, but if, any, any, anytime they, your femur is always at risk of a compound fracture anytime it breaks because your glutes and your quads are just strong. So my femurs were broken multiple places. So they just folded like a, you know, almost, they just folded up anyway, and they went beside each other like this. And then you're just cutting all kinds of blood vessels in there and potentially arteries and all of that. But, so that creates some internal swelling and pressure. And then you get like blood that gets locked into, in between two, like it can't go above or below that spot. So it's like a, a blood

• 1:29:28Speaker 02

  that's trapped in an area, but it was almost acting like a tourniquet.

• 1:29:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You, you, basically you got lucky in the fact that you had compartment syndrome that swelled around your arteries and shut some of that bleeding down.

• 1:29:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:42Jocko Willink?

  Cause otherwise.

• 1:29:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:49Jocko Willink?

  At this point, Z's back working on you. And you say, "My clothing all removed, I could finally see the multitude of holes in my legs clearly. Z began to patch what he could, but they were even worse condition than my arms were. Each leg had more than 10 different holes in it, some of which were nearly two inches in diameter. Most were not that big. They were the size of, they were about the size of a small marble on average, but they had gone straight through both sides of my quadriceps. At this stage, the wounds were not pumping out as much blood as one might have expected. It was more like a steady leak."

• 1:30:24Jocko Willink?

  He says, "I lay there watching them bleed for a while, thinking to myself, holy shit, Saving Private Ryan really got it right. These wounds look exactly this they do in the movie."

• 1:30:42Jocko Willink?

  So they are now packing you up and they're trying to get you onto a, onto a damn litter. Eventually they get you on the litter. They get you on the litter now. It's each time the truck would bounce in and out of potholes. My bones would rattle and rub together. The pain at this stage was so intense that when combined with my heavy blood loss, it caused me to pass in and out of consciousness. But because of the condition I was in, Z was doing everything in his power to keep me awake. "Mac, Mac, don't you go to sleep," he yelled. I moaned a response as best I could and then forced my eyes open.

• 1:31:18Jocko Willink?

  This is fun. When we finally reached the rear entrance of Camp Ramadi, we ran into a whole new set of problems. Our own soldiers ineptness. We rolled up only to be immediately stopped by the soldiers who ran the gate. They would not let us in because we did not have a convoy number.

• 1:31:35Jocko Willink?

  Can't make this shit up.

• 1:31:36Speaker 02

  That's 100% true. Yeah, Z was losing it on those boys at that point.

• 1:31:44Jocko Willink?

  Back and forth, our driver argued with the gate guards until eventually Z, standing in the bed of the truck, lost his cool. "We don't have a fucking convoy number." "I can't let you in without one. This isn't a fucking convoy, you idiot. We got a wounded American here." Eventually the soldiers at Ogden Gate let their better sensibilities take over. We allowed to enter our own home.

• 1:32:03Speaker 02

  And the, the evac that we were using by that point, medevac, was a five-ton. You know, it's like-

• 1:32:09Jocko Willink?

  So that's where you run you in the back of a five-ton?

• 1:32:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:32:11Jocko Willink?

  That's a comfortable.

• 1:32:13Speaker 02

  It's like riding on a brick with wheels.

• 1:32:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:18Speaker 02

  The litter stretched between those two benches.

• 1:32:21Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 1:32:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was, it was misery. And then some sort of major had this, you know, bright idea. He was gonna, you know, too many guys were rolling over. I got, I never heard of a single person rolling over. Uh, I mean, maybe they did, but anyway, he put speed bumps all the way down, you know? So it was like speed bumps all the way to the damn, uh, Charlie Med.

• 1:32:40Jocko Willink?

  Each one of those freaking personally built for Braxton.

• 1:32:44Speaker 02

  Sometimes I wonder if any of those guys ever read some of this late, these kind of books that come out later on, you know? And just think, man, maybe that was stupid.

• 1:32:53Jocko Willink?

  I remember. Well, when I first got to Baghdad, this is like 2003. And there are all these potholes on like the road around the base. And like deep potholes are kind of jacked up. And then they filled in all the potholes. And then they built speed bumps.

• 1:33:10Speaker 02

  No way.

• 1:33:10Jocko Willink?

  I was like, bro, you had it and then you filled it in. And now you're building speed bumps. Come on, man.

• 1:33:22Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, I began to pass in and out of consciousness so frequently that I was having a hard time telling the difference between reality and whatever dream world I was off to in between. Once they carried me to the medical facility, they realized there was another problem. It was already filled with wounded Iraqi men in one side of Charlie Med. We went in one side of Charlie Med and right out the other. Down the road a little way is another aid station, which belonged to our brigades engineers. So we headed there. Once inside, the first thing they did was was only start transfusing blood. In the beginning, they only had lines containing a quart or so a piece into each arm. But eventually they had to stick an IV into my jugular and start pumping in fluid that way. Damn.

• 1:34:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, they put a pick in.

• 1:34:09Jocko Willink?

  After establishing a steady stream of flesh, fresh blood into me. They fixed as many bandages as they could and rushed me out to the PLZ to board a medevac flight containing several other wounded people bound for Balad. While en route to Balad, the flight crew decided that because some of us had lost so much blood, an emergency landing in Fallujah was necessary to save our lives, mine included. I was passing in and out of consciousness again. My grip of reality, if you could call it that anymore, was so slippery. That it was like I was, that was like trying to squeeze a wet fish. The harder I tried, the worse it became. The darkness that awaited me each time I passed out was becoming more and more welcoming. I was exhausted. All I wanted to do was sleep.

• 1:34:53Jocko Willink?

  To put it into a sentence, I was starting to give up.

• 1:34:57Jocko Willink?

  What will death be like?

• 1:35:00Jocko Willink?

  Everyone always talks about a white light near the end of a tunnel, but I am not seeing shit.

• 1:35:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, and it was cold too.

• 1:35:10Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 1:35:11Speaker 02

  This is January. I know, like, it's Ramadi, but it's still cold. It's like sixty-five or something. And when it's been a hundred and twenty for eight months, sixty-five feels cold as hell, you know? And then you run out of blood, so you're just even colder. It was, at that point, I was, I was pretty close to just saying hell with it, you know? Whatever that means. I don't, like, I don't know if you really have control of that or not, but.

• 1:35:35Jocko Willink?

  I think you do have some level of control of it. I mean, I've heard plenty of stories of people that had that will to survive and are able to stay alive and, you know, you know what I actually think of that the most is hearing stories from guys that were in prison of war camps?

• 1:35:49Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 1:35:50Jocko Willink?

  And the difference between someone that lives and someone that dies, like, this person was just like, I'm gonna make it, and this other person said, I'm not. So I think there's definitely something to that.

• 1:36:08Jocko Willink?

  You get here where the guys are braxton, braxton, stay with us. I know it hurts, but we've gotta stretch your legs out again, or you're gonna lose them. Okay, I moaned. Then I passed out again, blunt stain, tears running down both cheeks. I'm not sure how long I was out for, and I was not fully awake, but the next thing I distinctly remember was the sound of my flesh tearing under a scapple, scalpel. The surgeons were slicing the side of each quadricep to relieve my compartment syndrome. Blood and pus practically spewed out of my swollen legs, split wide open. I will never forget the way that cutting sounded inside my head. It was reminiscent of a muddy zipper being forced open. Something stick with you forever. Hearing your own flesh being cut apart is one of them.

• 1:36:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, that shit sucked, man. And it's, it's knee to hip on both sides, like, point of the knee all the way up to the point of my hip. And they split, and then they, once they got me in that traction splint, and then they put in these wound vax. It's like a big sponge. Uh, and then they wrap it. So it's like a, a big spongy-looking thing, and it's got a vac set up across the back that, like, pulls the shit out of the sponge.

• 1:37:20Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 1:37:20Speaker 02

  So I think this, the way it works is the sponge sucks up the, you know, moisture, whether it's, you know, the liquid, whichever liquid it is, pus, internal, like, water from you, I don't know what the hell it is, blood and all that. And then the vacuum sucks it out of the sponge, I think. So they cut you open and then they slip that in to the wound and it's like, it's like this big, you know, as far as width wise. And then they put like a plastic thing over it and then just pump that.

• 1:37:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you got some pictures on your website of like your legs splayed open like that. It does not look, doesn't even look survivable. I mean, how much they cut you open, it's freaking crazy.

• 1:38:00Speaker 02

  It's crazy. Yeah. I'm just wild. My IT bands are still like, you know, your, your IT bands are like supposed to be one band, right? And I got like two of them or four of them, I guess.

• 1:38:16Jocko Willink?

  What did they like, did they cut the IT band open or did they just stretch open?

• 1:38:20Speaker 02

  No, they had to cut through it to get to the, to be able to get that wound back in there. At least that's my understanding of it. You can stick your finger through it, like you can go all the way to the muscle. Yeah, it was, it was nuts, man.

• 1:38:33Jocko Willink?

  And you were conscious during this?

• 1:38:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, well.

• 1:38:36Jocko Willink?

  No one hurt you with any morphine or anything?

• 1:38:37Speaker 02

  By then I was starting now, once they got me stable, then they could start hitting me with stuff. But in Ramadi, they weren't going to give me anything because my blood pressure was super low. And they just didn't want to, you know, zonk me, which I think is probably a good idea. Glad to be here.

• 1:38:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we'll take it. Uh, whatever call got made, apparently it was the right one.

• 1:38:57Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I, you know, I think probably what happened is I had been, another thing is I'd been, I don't know if Gronski's talked about this, but they had, I was one of the last people getting evac because they just, it was just a wreck. And they had a bunch of Iraqis that were already in Charlie Med by the time they got me there and stuff. So they just screwed up the triage.

• 1:39:23Speaker 02

  So I think probably the call was made because it had been quite a while before they got me in there. So they were like, well, if he's, you know, making up, like, why don't just, like, why risk it now? He's made it this long without it, you know? And so then they, they, I'm sure they hit me with it in Fallujah. Cause I don't really remember Fallujah to Baghdad, or I mean, Balad hardly at all. And all of this, I'm still pretty hazy, you know?

• 1:39:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you say I was put and wrote in route to the big Air Force Base Hospital in Balad. I guess I'm still alive, I thought. The question became a common theme throughout the following hours and days.

• 1:40:02Jocko Willink?

  And like you said, you know, you write about in the book, you're, you can hear doctors talking, but you're like partially coherent, you're tired, you, you're just like in and out of sleep, um, for a while. That's pretty much your memory of Balad is just, you know, in and out of consciousness, little bits and pieces. Um, you say, I woke to the loud rumbling of an airplane engine. I was being pushed across an airstrip towards a C-130, medevac flight headed for launch dual Germany.

• 1:40:34Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, I had to read this part because it sounds freaking horrifying. Later, I woke up choking and in sheer terror. I felt like I was drowning, but how instinctively I tried to turn my head to one side to get a breath, but I couldn't because it was so tightly fastened to this bed. I wiggled as much as I could, gagging, hacking, trying desperately to draw, still unsure of what was happening. Left and right, I moved my head, only managing a centimeter or less in either direction. I groaned for help, still too tightly restrained to move. Help, I screamed inside my head. I desperately needed to breathe. I couldn't hold my breath much longer. Yes, you can toughen up. My thoughts ran wild. Help, I gurgled aloud this time. It was completely unintelligible

• 1:41:15Jocko Willink?

  because my mouth and nose were filled with water. Fear turned into anger. Inside my head, I had screamed a series of idle, senseless threats and cuss words. Suddenly, I felt the strap loosen. My head shifted to one side. As soon as I felt cleared, I coughed and hacked out all the fluids that were lodged in my throat. I was still in a daze, but at least I could breathe. I gasped for air and muttered, "Thank you" to the nurse who had just saved my life. Inside my head, I was calling this flight and all the unwounded people on it, every combination of curse words I could dream up.

• 1:41:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I I I think I probably threw up.

• 1:41:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:41:56Jocko Willink?

  While you were and that just woke you up as you probably drowned in your own vomit.

• 1:42:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, like probably like I thought about this later on and that's probably what happened. And you know, they strap your head to that that litter, you know, so you can't move. And then being on drugs and in the air and and she's who knows how many, you know, people she's attended to. I mean, because I can't say shit except for the roof of the aircraft, you know? And you're all drugged up, so you're barely even coherent anyway. And yeah, I would not that's scary.

• 1:42:27Jocko Willink?

  How old are you? Are you 20 yet?

• 1:42:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I turned 20 over there.

• 1:42:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I turned 20. I turned 21 back home.

• 1:42:36Jocko Willink?

  And you had gotten married when was like, did you go home on leave?

• 1:42:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:42:40Jocko Willink?

  And get married?

• 1:42:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, I did.

• 1:42:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:43Speaker 02

  Oh, man.

• 1:42:45Jocko Willink?

  That's um always a tough, but understandable call that soldiers can make from time to time.

• 1:42:54Speaker 02

  Everybody in the whole world tells you not to do it. But you're like, oh, man, I know what I'm doing.

• 1:43:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:43:04Jocko Willink?

  I have personally given that advice to many, many young men over the years and have almost never been listened to.

• 1:43:14Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so is it you went for you went home for two weeks of leave? During deployment?

• 1:43:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:19Jocko Willink?

  And that's when you got married?

• 1:43:20Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:43:20Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:43:21Speaker 02

  Um, World Series and the Deer Hunt.

• 1:43:23Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm. Check.

• 1:43:28Jocko Willink?

  Later on, a surgeon came and told me that they had planned on trying to put rods in my femurs while I was in surgery there. So now you're in Germany. But the doctors thought it would be best to wait for the infection to clear up. He explained as I lifted it as he lifted the sheets and showed me my legs for the first time since I left Iraq that they had instead placed external fixators on each one of them. These metal cages were implanted just to get me stable enough to be flown back to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC. He told me I was headed there that night.

• 1:43:56Jocko Willink?

  So they put these freaking external fixators on your legs to try and let them heal up more before they would eventually put internal rods inside your legs.

• 1:44:06Speaker 02

  They're trying to get the bacteria out. Uh, there was uh, some bacteria that they had discovered that guys were coming home with from the sand in Iraq.

• 1:44:16Jocko Willink?

  Some moose freaking bacteria.

• 1:44:18Speaker 02

  Yeah. So when you, yeah, when you get to Walter Reed, if you have that, they put a blue, like a blue label on your door or whatever. So they can't put a, a rod in your femurs while you have an infection because it could, it risks introducing the infection to the inside of your femur and then you're really in trouble. So they had to get that cleared out and then they could get rods and end up taking like a month or something to get everything.

• 1:44:47Speaker 02

  Oh, oh, sorry, really quick. And the way that those things work is.

• 1:44:51Jocko Willink?

  What, the external fixators?

• 1:44:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's like a big cage, like you're saying, almost like a series of halos. But then those halos have a, uh, like rods that come out of them. And those rods have screws, like drill bit screws or drill screws, wood screws on the end looking thing, more like a machine head screws. And those are screwed into your bone and to keep your bones stable. And then they go back out through that halo and they bolt into that halo. So it's like, that thing's actually screwed to your bone.

• 1:45:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I had a friend of the family, little girl, she was probably nine years old and she broke her femur. She had an external fixator on her femur.

• 1:45:30Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:45:30Jocko Willink?

  You don't even think, you don't think that seems like a good idea, right? Like, if you're a, if you didn't know anything about medicine, which I don't, that you told me, hey, what would it do is when I screw rods through the skin into the bone and have a whole contraption on the outside, you'd be like, you're an idiot.

• 1:45:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:49Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't make any sense.

• 1:45:51Speaker 02

  It's true, yeah.

• 1:45:51Jocko Willink?

  Like, it's crazy. It's a crazy idea.

• 1:45:53Speaker 02

  You'd think you'd just, it'd be infected.

• 1:45:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:56Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking crazy. Um.

• 1:46:02Jocko Willink?

  This is you go into talking about little like what's going through your head at this point, I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. This feeling of helplessness and confusion lasted in varying degrees for days, if not weeks. During this period, I had surgery nearly every morning to clean and irrigate my wounds and change the bandage that swathed my body. From what I, from what I understand, the doctors had to put me under for these daily hygiene sessions because the sheer number of open wounds and their depth made scrubbing too intrusive and time consuming to do while I was awake. I had a dozen or more wound channels which were through and throughs, a term used to describe a wound that starts on one side of the body and passes through its other side, exiting entirely. Usually

• 1:46:45Jocko Willink?

  on a limb, I also, usually on a limb. I also had dozens more wounds caused by projectiles which had penetrated my flesh, but it stopped in something more dense like bone or thick muscle.

• 1:47:04Jocko Willink?

  What do you think they, this, this S vest was just like filled with ball bearings or something? And that's what you got shredded with? Man, I'm packing like eight or 10 of them still. How big are they? Are they all the same size? Yeah. So it's like a uniformed kind of professionally built S vest? Well, so we found some before where they were, they were just filling up water bottles with wheel bearings. So, and then just taping those, that, those water bottles to the front of the explosives. So I guess like professional, trained by the Iranians, I think probably. Yeah. I got one in my ass that really messes with me when I'm riding horses sometimes. Like tried to get him to cut it out, but it's like too deep, I guess.

• 1:47:55Jocko Willink?

  You say this, "I spent the next few weeks in the same bed lying around and thinking about what my new life was going to be when, if, I got out of the hospital. When I was not caught up daydreaming about what my long-term recovery was going to look like, my mind was on my brother's back in Ramadi. I knew the morale-crushing war that they were living every day, and I had begun to feel an enormous amount of guilt at the thought of them facing those trials without me. The thought was only made worse when I considered that they were doing it while I lay safely in a bed back in the States. I felt grief, as I think anyone would, for the memories of lives lost and my role, actively or passively, in their deaths.

• 1:48:37Jocko Willink?

  I also felt guilty for being the one, for being one of the people who survived. I could have, should have, done more, I often thought. By this point, the story in my mind had cleared through to recall the scene at the glass factory in detail. I remembered seeing Sergeant Can and Bruno confronting the suicide bomber. I remembered Zee telling me that he had to go check on the Marine who was injured worse than I was. I remembered almost everything from that morning, including the courageous action Bruno and Sergeant Can had taken, yet somehow ridiculously and unfairly to Sergeant Can's heroic memory. I had saddled myself with the guilt of his death. It was not in any way my fault that he had chosen to give his life trying to protect

• 1:49:22Jocko Willink?

  the Marines and soldiers around him, but that was, but that is much easier to write now with the rationale of hindsight than it was to convince myself of it in the hospital bed." That's like the, the, the, they interview all these wounded soldiers, you know, and they all say, "Just want to get back to my unit. Just want to get back to my unit. Just want to get back to my unit."

• 1:49:58Jocko Willink?

  Did, as you, so as time went on, your memory of what happened, did it become more clear?

• 1:50:03Speaker 02

  Uh, as far as the suicide bombing, I didn't, I don't think, not really.

• 1:50:12Speaker 02

  It's hard, it's hard to, it's really hard to know because I, I got into psychology for a minute and now I know that your bot, your brain often like rewrite stories back or backfills, you know? So, I, I don't know. It's like, it's one of those questions that seems really easy to answer, but if you're, you know, if you're being honest with yourself about the way the human brain works, you really, it's really not that easy of a question to answer, you know? Cause you do backfill.

• 1:50:39Jocko Willink?

  Uh, do you backfill with memories that are subconscious there? Do you backfill with like sort of what you assemble? From what you can kind of put together logically as to what happened?

• 1:50:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, it could be that and then also talking to your friends and hearing their version of stuff over time. And then maybe your brain just fills in gaps. I got, I don't really know.

• 1:51:01Jocko Willink?

  No, that's, that I actually do, we, I did a podcast about that. The way you're, the way you can hear part of a story and part of a story and your mind will fill in the gaps. It will fill in the gaps where things, they'll kind of just figure it out and then take the best guess and then you'll kind of, you can very easily believe, oh, this is what happened. This is what I saw.

• 1:51:19Speaker 02

  Yeah. And that, and you know, I can't say that didn't happen because there's no way for me to know, but I feel like, I don't, I don't, I don't know that it really ever changed. I know that, um, you know, I talked to Johnny, he's before we ever put this out and he's like, yeah, man, that's how I remember, you know, sans this or that detail. The one detail I know that I absolutely did lose was a friend of mine, Casey was out there and I don't even remember him being there. We were just driving to Texas to do a long range course the other day. Well, a couple of months ago and he was like, dude, I was there. It's like, well, I knew you were there later. He's like, no, man, I got to you quick. It's like, he's like, I was to you in like minutes, you know?

• 1:52:01Speaker 02

  And I didn't remember any of that. So I know there's gotta be problems, you know, with, with my memory.

• 1:52:07Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. Well, it's also everybody's memory, you know, there's a. Everybody's memory is different from witnessing the same things I know of. You know, Leif and I have memories of things that we did where he literally remembers something and I literally remember something else. And we're both there and our viewpoint and there's no reason, it's not like, there's no reason we should remember different things, but we just do.

• 1:52:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:52:31Jocko Willink?

  Um, people just have a different perspective of what's going on and that locks into their memory.

• 1:52:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. And then you can only store so much shit in there.

• 1:52:39Jocko Willink?

  True. That freaking hard drive gets filled up.

• 1:52:42Speaker 02

  Yeah. So if you do a whole bunch of dumb shit when you're young, man, you're gonna be, you're gonna suck it like this stage of your life. You're gonna lose all the good stuff.

• 1:52:53Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, you got surgeries, you got doctors, you got psychologists, uh, physical therapists. Just lots of things going on. And again, I'm fast forwarding through it, not because it's not a really interesting read. Cause there's all kinds of, I was learning all kinds of things and, and, and you know, the, the story itself is just, it's an awesome. I hate to say we use the word awesome, it, I don't know what other word to use. It's a very well told story. So get the book. I'm going to fast forward a little bit to where you say, these new training aids, or you're doing this physical therapy.

• 1:53:32Jocko Willink?

  You're, these new training aids were useful and they did help me pass the time, but at this stage in my recovery, the only lofty goal I had left to look forward to was getting ex, getting the external fixators removed and moving into a wheelchair. Not more than a month before I'd been a young man, a warrior in his prime. Now I lay in bed, doing my level best to avoid sleep and my grandest physical aspirations were to have the cages removed from my legs and be fitted for a wheelchair.

• 1:54:05Jocko Willink?

  Twenty years old.

• 1:54:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, and because like my hand was messed up, I only had one hand that when my left humerus was broken. So I had like a plastic, they didn't cast it because they wanted to leave me with a limb that would was like still functional. So I'd like a spiral fracture here and they just put like a plastic, almost like, I almost like the stuff motocross guys wear. You know, so I didn't really, I don't know that it really did anything, but other than like remind you your shit was broken. I don't know what it was doing, but so the, the what was occupational OT, occupational therapy, they, they bring like these tools and you learn how to like pull a sock over this kind of conical shaped thing.

• 1:54:50Speaker 02

  And it's got a couple of strings hooked to it and throw that shit at your foot and so you could pull like your own sock on and get started. Or yeah, they'd bring like this kind of circle conical shaped deal with buttons on it and zippers and try to learn how to manipulate stuff with one hand. And I don't know if they were doing that to prep me because they weren't sure how much my hand would ever work again. That, I mean, that could honestly be possible, but I don't know if, so I'm saying, I don't know if it's routine. I don't know if everybody does this, but they brought me all these aids that I was, you know, trying, trying to learn how to do shit with one hand, which anyway. So I was like, yeah, I was passing my time that and watching like Dukes of Hazzard on a DVD thing and Seinfeld and shit.

• 1:55:33Jocko Willink?

  By the, by the time you were aware of what was going on, were you, was it seem like pretty solid that you were going to keep both your legs?

• 1:55:40Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, it did for sure by that point. Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:55:49Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book here, fast forward a little bit, I laid in bed for the next few days, a little more beaten down than I was before. I raised the sheets now and then with my left arm, my only limb that sort of functioned and wondered whether this was finally going to be the thing that took my legs from me. I was physically tough and was tolerating pain, but the roller coaster of emotions and the all around uncertainty surrounding my life was starting to get me down. I was nearing that breaking point again. I spent most of my time just watching the yellow green pus ooze out of my thighs. They look like Swiss cheese that had been aged way too long and the smell radiated throughout the room. This was a gnarly infection that you had.

• 1:56:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, getting green.

• 1:56:33Speaker 02

  That was, that was like my third infection too. And I don't know if you're, I'm not trying to throw Walter Reed under the bus, but right around that time was when CNN did that. Uh, that, or maybe it was right after that, when CNN did that, uh.

• 1:56:48Jocko Willink?

  Like an expose.

• 1:56:49Speaker 02

  Time deal. Um, and I remember some perhaps unsanitary stuff, but you know, Walter Reed was like loaded with people at that point. There were a crap load of dudes there. So like, I don't wanna, you know, I'm not trying to throw anybody under the bus, but there was definitely some stuff. That was not being, like, there's too much infection going around to not be having some procedure. Something's being screwed up here.

• 1:57:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:57:14Speaker 02

  So.

• 1:57:16Jocko Willink?

  Um, but they rescheduled the surgery, um. They get done, they, they take off the fixators and then they put rods inside your femurs. Remove the freaking spongy vacuum machine things.

• 1:57:31Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:57:33Jocko Willink?

  Let the wounds close, um, hundreds of stitches, you say staples. And, and you had been in bed at this point that you so long, you had a bed sores.

• 1:57:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:42Jocko Willink?

  Like gnarly bed sores.

• 1:57:44Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. Yeah, they're still scarred.

• 1:57:46Jocko Willink?

  God.

• 1:57:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. And when they put those rods in, they, uh, because of the way the breaks were on my right leg. Uh, I think they called it a retrograde nail, but they went, they flip your kneecap over and come up through the bottom. And then it screws up into your hip. But on my left leg, they put a rod, excuse me, in my left hip as well. So they put that rod through the hip into the femoral head. And then it has like an eyelet at the top and then they put the other rod through that eyelet. So it's like tied together. And then that one screws down into your, the head of your femur on the bottom head. I don't know what the proper, I felt anatomy.

• 1:58:25Speaker 02

  But it down here, so they went both directions. So it's kind of a like, like my hips sucks and my right knee sucks. Like at this point, you know.

• 1:58:35Jocko Willink?

  So they gave you, they gave you one of each.

• 1:58:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:58:37Jocko Willink?

  One, they went from the bottom, one, they went from the top down.

• 1:58:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yep. But they didn't put a rod in my, my right hip because it wasn't broke as bad, so.

• 1:58:48Jocko Willink?

  At one point, your uncle, Justin, comes to visit you. And you call him Juddy, that's his nickname. He says to you, one of the days he was there, he discovered some information that had been kept from me. "Hey, bro, I need to tell you something." "Okay," I said, expecting the worst. "Colonel Mack died." "Nobody wanted to tell you because they were not sure how you were, whether you were healthy enough to hear that." "How?" "He was killed by shrapnel from the suicide bomber that hit you." "Oh, thanks for telling me," I said, slightly in shock. "It was particularly devastating news. I already knew that Sergeant Cannon had passed away, but Colonel Mack's seemed impossible.

• 1:59:32Jocko Willink?

  But he was way too far away to have been struck by any significant amount of shrapnel, I thought. As it happened, he had been quite a ways away, and he had only been hit by a few pieces of shrapnel, but those ball bearings had hit him in the back of the head, killing him virtually instantly. Survival in wars, random, I have learned."

• 1:59:54Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, that one tripped me out, man. He was, he seemed like a long ways away, like seventy yards or fifty. I mean, it seemed like a long ways. I don't know how far it actually was, but it seemed far. And, you know, I was a twenty-year-old kid. I didn't really have shit to lose, you know? And he had three kids at home. Probably like the age I am now is probably how old he was then, you know? I think back at stuff like that, and I don't know if I'd have had that kind of sand at this age, you know, with all that, to put that much on the line, especially when, you know, you're a light Colonel, or you're a lieutenant Colonel out there with a bunch of E4s, E5s, and the highest ranking guy is an E6. I mean, that's quite a gap.

• 2:00:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:38Speaker 02

  That was a stud.

• 2:00:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, even when I got there, because I got there, this was in January. I got there in April, and people talked about him, like, totally revered him as a leader, and what he was doing, and what he was making work, and the effort that he was putting forth. I mean, he just was, everybody revered the guy.

• 2:01:03Jocko Willink?

  You say learning of the death of Colonel Mack was another psychological setback in time rife with them. My bout with survivor's guilt was getting more aggressive. By the day, I was still having serious trouble sleeping, and my overall emotional well-being while awake was so fragile that even I was beginning to recognize it. This was roughly the time I began to use physical recovery as a distraction from mental anguish. I have often heard the phrase fake it till you make it. I'm not exactly sure where it originated, but I was about to take my term at the strategy and would do so for years to come, flagrantly unsuccessfully.

• 2:01:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think that fake it till you make it shit is bullshit. It's complete bullshit, man. You gotta fix your foundation, you know? That's the problem. You can't just fake shit. You gotta go all the way to the root and start working there.

• 2:02:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, when someone's talking about going to do some job somewhere, they think they can fake it till you make it. And it's the same thing I said earlier. I wrote about this in Leadership Tragician Tactics. If you don't know something and you're trying to fake it, everybody can see it. Like even from a leadership perspective, it doesn't work. But then when you start trying to put together your psychological well-being by faking it, it's not gonna work out good. It's not gonna work out good.

• 2:02:32Jocko Willink?

  The physical therapy, you got this guy you're working with named Solomon. I'm fast forwarding. Now you're starting to, you know, you're starting to heal up a little bit. Hey, man, when do I get to walk down those bars? My remark was said purely in jest because I'd already been told several times it would be 18 months, if ever, before I was gonna be able to walk again. "You're gonna use him right now," he said, obviously seeing through my lame bravado. "I can't walk, Solomon," I said coldly. "Yes, you can. I'm gonna help you." "I was starting to get irritated at him because I knew I could not walk. I can't even stand, for hell's sake." "I was frustrated and embarrassed by the whole situation. I was frustrated because I thought that this guy,

• 2:03:13Jocko Willink?

  "I liked and admired assumed I was capable of more than I actually was, and I was about to let him down." "Does he not know how badly injured I am?" I wondered. "I was embarrassed that I couldn't dress myself, embarrassed that even if I could have, I could not wear clothes "that were not several sizes too big because that had to fit over my casts and braces." "I was embarrassed by the fact that I could not do up a button on my own underwear or use the bathroom without help "throughout the entire process. I was literally unable to wipe my own ass, as they say." "Little more than a month before this moment, I had been a roughly six-foot-tall, 190-pound warrior in the prime of his life, "proud and full of all the arrogance of youth."

• 2:03:55Jocko Willink?

  "But there I was, a few months later, sitting before a man who wanted to help me, deeply wanted to help me, "but I just physically could not do what he was asking."

• 2:04:04Jocko Willink?

  "Then there was the fear, fear that if, by some miracle of the imagination, I was able to stand up and try to walk, I might fall. "And if I fell, I would surely lose all the independence that I had fought so hard to achieve. "It felt like an exercise in futility to even speculate about what it would be like to walk again already." "Then Saul loosened the braces on my chair, bent down in front of me and said, 'Are you ready?'"

• 2:04:31Jocko Willink?

  "I reached out, put what I could of my arms on his shoulders, "and lifted, and he lifted me out of the chair. My heart raced as I stood up for the first time, a feeling of anxiety, fear, and triumph washed over me. "Though they were hardly supporting any body weight, my legs shivered beneath me." "Then we started walking. We only covered a few feet distance, but I could hardly contain my joy as Saul half-dragged me over to those parallel bars." "The instant the cold stainless steel touched the fingertips of my left hand, an invigorating dose of adrenaline shot through my body. "Even though Solomon was bearing most of my weight, I had to overcome an obstacle I had not at all anticipated." I don't know if it was because of my brain injury or just because it'd been so long since I had last walked, but I couldn't make my muscles move my legs like they were supposed to.

• 2:05:14Jocko Willink?

  I knew how walking was supposed to be done. You just lift up and step out in front of your lead foot, then repeat on the other side. I could have drawn you a picture or described what walking is supposed to look like. I knew how to do it, but I didn't know how to make me do it. Each confusing attempt at the process sent intense bursts of pain to my brain that I was quite, that I was not quite ready for. But the torment mixed with the excitement of discovery kept releasing more of that ever intoxicating adrenaline.

• 2:05:50Jocko Willink?

  That's gotta be freaking weird when you

• 2:05:53Speaker 02

  It was weird.

• 2:05:54Jocko Willink?

  You like your body doesn't know what to do.

• 2:05:56Speaker 02

  It was, it was weird. I, I still don't know how to really describe how that felt. It is weird. And yet you have a guy like Solomon there who I still to this day admire. He was, he was a really freaking neat guy. I'm not sure he's still alive, but you know, out of my life, because thank God I'm not still there in the hospital, but um. Yeah. And you got a guy like that with you that you really care for and yeah, or uh, respect or whatever you wanna. Do as good as you can and, and you know, your body's just like not, not working. It's almost. It's almost like, you know, when you put a limb to sleep, sitting on something. But like do it bad, not just kind of a little bit of sleep.

• 2:06:37Jocko Willink?

  Like fall down kind of asleep. I've done that before. It was like, I'm gonna fall down.

• 2:06:41Speaker 02

  Exactly. That's kinda how it was. Like I knew it was supposed to work. I just couldn't, or you know, you could feel, I don't, that's the best I can describe is if it was something like that. And the muscles are not firing properly. And then the, my right quad had a, a real good hole through it and that one. Even my physical therapist that I got later on as a civilian was not quite sure if that femoral, or excuse me, uh. Which head is that? Anyway, if, if, if the actual head of that part of the quad would ever fire again, because it was just not. Like the muscles were not going around the way they should have. It does kinda now, but. So there could have been like some muscular damage involved too. I mean, there was muscular damage involved, but that could have been part of it too. I don't know.

• 2:07:26Jocko Willink?

  Wow. Freaking crazy. Um.

• 2:07:29Jocko Willink?

  It's hard and you know that it's not like uh you're you're making progress but the progress is so slow that you still feel like you don't even know if how how much you're gonna be able to heal. And at one point you're talking to your cousin Juddy again and you say uh you say Juddy, I meant I might never walk again and if I do I'll probably be assisted in some way. I don't want to push around a walker for the rest of my life. I can't help hunt elk on a cane. I'll never feel that icy mountain water roll past my waders as I cast flies at fall browns. I'll only have memories of sliding into a saddle on a crisp October morning.

• 2:08:10Jocko Willink?

  When at dawn you can see your breath and by noon you're you've sweat through your hatband. I've done my last bow hunt. No more dirt bikes or bull rides. I basically just started up my twilight years in my early twenties.

• 2:08:25Jocko Willink?

  I'm in a fucking nursing home for soldiers right now and I may always be. I was being a negative, whiny child. There was no doubt about it. But I was trying to explain to him everything that made me me was gone. Those were not just activities that I liked to do. That was my identity. I hunted, fished, cowboied and soldiered. Those were my essence. If I was too broken to do those things that distinguished me, then I was too broken to live as far as I was concerned.

• 2:09:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's everything you like to do. Yeah, I think a lot of guys. You may do do never do it again. Yeah, I think a lot of guys go through that. And even I think some you like you look at guys when they're getting ready to retire from MMA. You know, I feel like everything's I mean, maybe not in the same circumstances. There are some guys that are in similar circumstances with their brains, but you know, maybe not exactly the same kind of circumstance, but they're going through a similar like period. Yeah. Like everything that they are is in some sense being taken away from them because father time's undefeated, right? Mm hmm. It's a similar. You know, I think it's similar and so I I'm definitely not alone in having experienced these sorts of feelings, but

• 2:09:43Jocko Willink?

  it's a it's a really weird place to find yourself in for sure. Yeah, and I think the fact that you're 20 at the time, you know, at least an MMA fighter that's retiring or can't fight anymore and he's 37, 33, whatever.

• 2:09:59Jocko Willink?

  You know, that's, that's a different deal. Um, this is a real important conversation that you have here. Uh, fast forward a little bit, a member of the surgical team which monitored my progress walked in near the tail end of this conversation. He was just there to do routine checkups and to introduce himself. He was a young guy who seemed very well put together and high speed. I, he checked my limbs one by one for circulation and feeling. Juddie put a question to him, "Hey Doc, Braxton has been told that he may never walk again. He thinks he is never going to be able to stand in a river to fly fish or hunt or hike or ride horses again. Can you talk to him?" I concentrated on him, hoping to read his expressions for tells of lies.

• 2:10:43Jocko Willink?

  He proceeded to give me all the reasons why I may be able to do those things again. He covered every angle, including some caveats, such as, "I may have to use a cane to hike or limit the distance that I traveled, and only fish shallow holes, etc." But, he was telling the truth. Then at the end of his answer, he said the most important thing I have ever been told either before or since.

• 2:11:07Jocko Willink?

  "Braxton, I think you can walk again, but you are going to have to do it soon. You have too much soft tissue damage to risk allowing your muscles to atrophy any further. If you don't start now, you may never walk again, at least without the use of a cane or a walker. Even in everyday activities. It is all up to you."

• 2:11:29Jocko Willink?

  "It is all up to you," I repeated. "It's all up to me, even in a situation like this one. My body may have been badly bruised, but it's one spirit that determines the outcome of a tragedy, not a doctor's prognosis." That was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment. I needed decisive language and a kick in the ass, not some sugar-coated version of what may or may not happen. There was probably not anything that young surgeon said which would, which I had not been told before. But I'd never heard that truth until right then. The words he said, the order he chose to use, and the conviction with which he said them were as perfect for me as if the universe had handcrafted that message.

• 2:12:15Jocko Willink?

  It's on you.

• 2:12:20Jocko Willink?

  I can see how, you know, when someone, when someone says, "Well, you know, you could, you know, it could happen. You know, you could walk again, or, "Yeah, you might be able to do this." And it's almost like people are inviting you just to leave it up to fate.

• 2:12:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, it's almost like they're, they're trying not to tell you that it's not possible. You know, like, almost like how women will sometimes do with their kids, you know, like, "Oh, yeah, you, you're great. You draw great. That's beautiful. Man, we might send you to art school." You know, it's kind of like that, kind of, uh, it feels like that a little bit, especially coming from a primary care or a surgeon or something. "Yeah, yeah, you probably can do this." Because they're, you know that they're pushing it off on to the next guy. They're pushing down the timeline, you know. So when you get a guy that's like, "No, man, you can do it. If you want to do it, you can do it. You know, just figure it out." It's really, which is the truth. I mean, it's true of virtually everything in life. You know, I mean, if you're, if your

• 2:13:14Speaker 02

  spinal cord's severed, you know, you're in a different circumstance, you know. But if it's not, you can probably get out of that, whatever the circumstance, you know, or whatever that health situation is, you can probably change it.

• 2:13:30Jocko Willink?

  So, at this point, I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. You're still, you're still not, it's not, I'm not fast forwarding that far, but you go to Arlington Cemetery. And, and you're not really truly walking yet, um, but you go there and you decide you're gonna, you're gonna walk. You say, "My, my legs trembled underneath me. I saw another sign that read simply, 'Silence and respect.' My arms shook as I pressed into my canes to grind myself forward another step. It felt like my bones were going to explode under the force of my body each time I transitioned my weight. We trod on slowly. We made our way by the rows and rows of heroes sacrificed on

• 2:14:15Jocko Willink?

  the altar of freedom at a snail's pace, but with the same determination they had brought into combat. I was either going to walk the entire way or die trying. I don't know how far we walked that morning exactly, but it was at least a mile from the gate to section 60, and I had trekked every step of it. My arms ached and shook as my quadriceps just quivered their way through the steps. The rest periods between legs of the journey grew longer as we went along, but I never went back to that wheelchair." When we reached the sign that said Section 60, I did not want to stop anymore.

• 2:14:54Jocko Willink?

  "Braxton, you should probably take a break here. Don't overdo it." "No, I'm okay," I responded, the sweat pouring from my face. "When we were inside Section 60's boundaries, it must have taken us another hour to reach Sergeant Cahn's graveside."

• 2:15:12Jocko Willink?

  Along with the slow pace we traveled due to my fatigue and the weakening pain threshold, I read nearly every headstone I walked by on the way, each one adding more time and new significance to the journey, but also giving me a little more fuel to feed the desire to remain erect.

• 2:15:32Jocko Willink?

  Every step made me miserable. Pain radiated from my hips to my knees. The agony had grown so immense that several times I thought that I might throw up because of it, but we never gave up.

• 2:15:45Jocko Willink?

  I trudged every torturous pace of that march out of respect for Sergeant Cahn and the 250,000 fallen warriors he lay with.

• 2:15:56Jocko Willink?

  When we finally reached his graveside and read, "Adam Lee Cahn, Sergeant, United States Marine Corps, January 25th, 1982, January 5th, 2006,

• 2:16:12Jocko Willink?

  BSM with the Purple Heart, Operation Iraqi Freedom."

• 2:16:20Jocko Willink?

  I lowered myself to a knee and wept.

• 2:16:24Jocko Willink?

  Not because of the pain I was experiencing, but because I had the nerve, the flat-out audacity, to complain about it.

• 2:16:33Jocko Willink?

  These hundreds of thousands of heroes had given their lives to provide me with a safe place to recover, and all I had thought about up to that point was how hard my time had been.

• 2:16:46Jocko Willink?

  Whatever I had given in service to my country and my brothers paled in comparison to what they had done. Who was I to feel so sorry for myself? Who was I to complain about my situation? I was above ground.

• 2:17:00Jocko Willink?

  There was not a soul laid to rest in that holy shrine who would not have gladly taken my place if they could have.

• 2:17:10Jocko Willink?

  It became clear to me in that moment that I really did have nothing to complain about. And every time I did complain, it should be seen as a slap in the face to far better men than I will ever be.

• 2:17:27Jocko Willink?

  When I had finished paying my final respects to Sergeant Khan and the men immediately surrounding him, I stood up on both canes and began my long walk out of the cemetery.

• 2:17:40Jocko Willink?

  A brand-new sense of urgency to recover, a newfound pool of motivation to draw from. I was going to beat this thing. I was going to fight to take my life back again, not just because I wanted to, but because I had to, because they couldn't.

• 2:18:06Jocko Willink?

  Now, that pledge was not an easy pledge to take, not an easy pledge to keep.

• 2:18:21Jocko Willink?

  Even coming back from that, I mean, you started swelling up. Everything started swelling up from doing that long walk.

• 2:18:36Jocko Willink?

  Later on, you say oddly enough, just sitting there trying to knead the pain from my legs did help ease the frustration a bit. I stopped thinking about the things I couldn't do, like open a cab door on my own and started thinking about what I'd just accomplished, walking some real distances, distances no doctor who had operated on me had ever imagined possible. How did I do that, I wondered? It took me years to get to the bottom of that question. The truth is that the only reason I had walked that far in that condition was because I had read a sign that reminded me that Arlington was not about me.

• 2:19:11Jocko Willink?

  I didn't care enough about myself or my future to grind through that kind of torment. Self-gratification nor self-improvement was enough to motivate me. My own ego was nowhere near big enough to carry me through that. I had done it because I did not want to disrespect Sergeant Can or any of the rest who had given their lives at war. I made that journey because I had a reason bigger than myself. I needed to cling to that maxim.

• 2:19:47Jocko Willink?

  When I read that, and that's one of the, one of the points in this book, when I'm, when I'm talking about these sort of internal thoughts that you've had and things that you've figured out along the way. I was thinking about the fact that oftentimes, we don't mind letting ourselves down, but we just wouldn't want to let down our friends, our teammates. I mean, I know for a fact, in the military, in the SEAL teams, the worst possible thing you want to have happen, you know, look, if you disappoint yourself, okay, that's bad, that sucks, but you don't want to let down your teammates. And to me, that, you know, you said it took you years to get to the bottom of that question, and that helped me get to the bottom of that question.

• 2:20:29Jocko Willink?

  Of how, what is it that these guys will do anything for their friends? They'll do anything for their friends. They'll take better care of their friends than they will of themselves. Which is, which is a crazy thought. I mean, I, I know you, you listen to some Jordan Peterson or read some Jordan Peterson, and one of the things that he says is, well, it's like, treat yourself as if you were someone that you would want to take care of. It's a similar thought.

• 2:20:59Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, it is. I guess I'm probably where I got it, and just had never put the two together, actually. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's, it's also true, like, anytime you're doing anything hard, like, if you're ready to quit, if you can find something, you know, like, find some other reason, it'll put, like, your ego is just only so big. And it's also really easy to be like, man, no one's even gonna know I quit right now.

• 2:21:25Jocko Willink?

  Rationalize.

• 2:21:26Speaker 02

  Yeah. Like, man, no, no one knows that bull's out down there. I'm the only one that knows that bull's in that canyon, you know? No one's gonna know if I don't hike down there. You just gotta find something to force you, you know? Like, for me, it's like, I gotta go home and tell my buddy that I pulled that bull out of that canyon, you know? It's like, I gotta talk shit to my buddies, too. You know? Like, just as much as you love them. It's like, it's kind of like that give and take of the relationship, you know, both ends.

• 2:21:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was a, that, that was a moving, uh, section of this book, man. That whole section was, uh, rough to read.

• 2:22:04Speaker 02

  And those canes are the ones with the four ends on them, you know, not like a regular cane. I ended up getting regular canes later from Walter Reed, but those were the different kind. And so it gave me like a little bit more stability. I think on a regular cane, I'd probably fell a few times for sure.

• 2:22:24Speaker 02

  And you know, that road is, it's like a good, good road and everything. So it's like the walking wasn't that bad. It's just, it's pretty busted up and, and yeah, and I had never, I'd never been to Arlington before. I'd never seen it and there really is.

• 2:22:43Speaker 02

  I don't know if spiritual is the right word or, or what, but it really conveys some sense of reverence, especially once you get into the actual grounds. You know, the, the, the tourist center is one thing, but the, you know, once you actually get in there, it's a very powerful, moving place. And then you start to realize like every one of these stones is an actual person. Not just like a picture you saw in a movie or something, you know? It's like, here's his name and in many cases, here's his wife on the other side, right? You just see like generations of dudes who have died, you know, and, and, and women too now.

• 2:23:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's, it's really, it's one of those places in the world where, or in this country where you just have to go experience it. And there's really, I don't think anyone can write powerfully enough to explain what it's really like there.

• 2:23:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I, I think, um, you know, when you know guys, when you know guys that are buried there and you can kind of relate, relate that individual and you look at all those graves, you just, you know that every one of those is, like you said, a person. It's like, that's a, that's a mother, a father, a son, a daughter. It's like, like.

• 2:24:02Jocko Willink?

  Someone that was known and, and I think it's easy to fall, it's easy to just call a soldier, a soldier, right? And not remember that that soldier's a person. And I think when you know, when you know some of those people in those graves, it's easy to expand and connect that personal side to each, each and every one of those gravestones. Um, knowing the, the sacrifice isn't just somebody in a uniform, it's a person. Like I said, it's a, a brother, a sister, a father, a son, a daughter, a mother. And it's freaking heartbreaking to be in there.

• 2:24:48Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, um, a- as this is going on, you still have, um, you know, you're still working through like your physical issues. And it sounds like your hand was just like, like, I can't, when I look at your hand now, when I was reading this, I, I, I didn't think your hand was going to be in the kind of shape looks pretty freaking good to go. When, when I read stuff like this, large, this is from the book, "Large chunks of skin were falling away from my hand. They were not thin and dry shit strips like those shed from snakes, but thick and wet like scales floating away from a rotten

• 2:25:28Jocko Willink?

  fish that's washed up into the shallows. I couldn't help but feeling like this part of my body belonged to a corpse. The visual is bad in Ramadi, but that day it looked as if it were dying. This day it looked like the hand was already dead."

• 2:25:46Jocko Willink?

  "Like it was foreshadowing all that was to become of me if I were to succumb to my wounds. And though I was still doing much better, the fate of my, I was still, the fate was still far from out of the question. I still had an infection in my body, blood clots in my legs, and IVC filter that could break apart at any minute. And no one's addressing my brain injury yet. Even if I did live through the whole ordeal, I would be doing it with most of the function, uh, without most of the function of my right hand."

• 2:26:16Jocko Willink?

  All that I had ever done in my life, which I had found worth doing, whether it be shooting, working, weightlifting, boxing, wrestling, cowboying, bull riding, or even warfighting, had required not just two hands, but two strong and capable hands. This hand, which had once defined me, now looked as if it were gone forever. I had not given it permission to give up yet. Yet there it was, and sat crippled atop my wrist, a symbol of not just what could become of me, but of how little control I had over my fate. The futility of resistance can be maddening. Yeah, and that's another thing that's interesting about this book is, you can tell it's not

• 2:27:01Jocko Willink?

  a Hollywood movie, because in a Hollywood movie, it's like there's some point where everything turns, and everything's that good now, you know? They write the book with that perfect story arc, and this ain't a perfect story arc. It's like up, down, up, down, up, down. Sometimes the down is way lower than the up. And that's one of the things that makes it powerful, is it's freaking, it's like, realistic. And it's also, it makes it powerful, because like, every time I read something, and I'd be like, oh yeah, there it is. Like, I'm like, brainwashed by Hollywood, you know? I'm reading, like, oh yeah, he went and visited the grave, here's the turnaround, and then, no. You know?

• 2:27:43Jocko Willink?

  Or like, oh, you know, this happens, and we're gonna hit some more of those, but that's life, right? Yeah. That's the real thing. Yeah, there's a couple even after the book was over that happened too, but... Yeah, that's gonna be in the second book, I guess. Yeah, I don't know. Uh, dude, what about this, there's one section where this physical therapist is, she comes in to bend your finger. This one? Yeah. She says, hey, I'm gonna bend your finger, and you say, don't, it's fused. Yeah. And she says, no, no, it's not, you need to just suck it up.

• 2:28:19Speaker 02

  She was trying to get me to do this church and steeple thing.

• 2:28:22Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 2:28:22Speaker 02

  Do this, but this finger, this knuckle doesn't move.

• 2:28:27Speaker 02

  She's like pulling on it.

• 2:28:28Jocko Willink?

  So you're telling, you're telling her it's fused, it's a funny part of the book. Dude, how bad did she feel?

• 2:28:34Speaker 02

  I think she felt pretty dumb. I was, I was sitting there waiting like.

• 2:28:38Jocko Willink?

  For it to break.

• 2:28:39Speaker 02

  Yeah. You know, when you got a cyst when you were a kid and your grandpa was go get the Bible and whack it with a hammer? You know, I was just waiting for her to come hit it with a book.

• 2:28:48Speaker 02

  I was like, whatever. I can't really feel it worth it. Shouldn't anyway.

• 2:28:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh, man. Um, yeah.

• 2:28:55Speaker 02

  Yeah. Cause I, my, right here in my wrist is where that median nerve was transected. So I really couldn't feel this part of my hand like hardly at all at that time. So it wasn't like really hurting. I mean, a little kind of sort of like.

• 2:29:10Jocko Willink?

  The way you describe it, she's like getting tired. She's like getting tired. Cranking on your freaking knuckle.

• 2:29:16Speaker 02

  She was like this big man. Yeah. And yeah, she was. And kind of attractive too. So I was just like, hold on. Go for it, man.

• 2:29:25Jocko Willink?

  Oh, there it is. Sucker.

• 2:29:29Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna eat all kinds of sympathy when that thing crack.

• 2:29:34Jocko Willink?

  You end up getting this deal where they're gonna send you the community-based healthcare organization, which is, which is, you get to go back home basically to heal up.

• 2:29:43Speaker 02

  Yeah. I think they've since ended the program, but.

• 2:29:46Jocko Willink?

  But it seemed to you at the time, like freaking awesome. You didn't have to be stuck out there at Walter Reed anymore. You could, you could head home and.

• 2:29:56Speaker 02

  Cause it's, I'm sorry to cut you off. The traditional path at Walter Reed is you're inpatient and then you're an outpatient, but you stay on Walter Reed campus in like, you know, these barracks and stuff. And then you're just doing all of your outpatient work at Walter Reed. So guys are there for like two, three years. Sometimes they go through all their outpatient. And so the army is like, well, let's just send them home, do outpatient care at home. And that's kind of how the.

• 2:30:19Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I, you were stoked. You were stoked to get the hell out of there.

• 2:30:23Speaker 02

  Hell yeah.

• 2:30:24Jocko Willink?

  And go back home.

• 2:30:25Speaker 02

  Freaking hate cities, man. Get me out of this boy.

• 2:30:30Jocko Willink?

  You've got some, again, there's so many, so much stuff that people gotta get the book for. As you're, as you're making progress and as you start driving across the country and as, you know, you get a new car, you get in some situations that are all in here that are. Good reading, man. Not always the, not always the most positive thing, but it's at least it's good reading.

• 2:30:50Speaker 02

  Smartest kid.

• 2:30:53Jocko Willink?

  Uh, fast forward a little bit. Now you're driving across country. You're getting home. Even in the dark night, the green agricultural fields of home seemed to glow as our headlights shone on the little mountains in the valley. It was too late to see my family. They were all in bed long before we arrived. For most of our drive, I'd been communicating with my two closest friends, Dan and Josh. They had planned to meet us at the house when we arrived. I hope they were still awake. I sent them another message. We're just getting into town.

• 2:31:19Jocko Willink?

  The words, "Welcome home," Corporal McCoy, were written in big block letters across a banner that spanned the two rain load and the, or two, two lane road at the northern most end of town, at the southernmost end of town. "Home at last," I belted out through a grin. The steps to my house had been covered with a homemade wheelchair ramp engineered by my stepfather. My wife went to the door, opened it, and carried our bags inside. Another bit of my pride died as I helplessly watched her do the heavy lifting. I reached across my body and jerked the lever, which bound the vehicle's door. My right hand was still too weak to perform the tasks.

• 2:31:58Jocko Willink?

  So, of course, what's the smart move at this juncture? Start drinking with your friends. We just want you to.

• 2:32:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, opioids and every other kind of thing in there. Yeah.

• 2:32:10Jocko Willink?

  Um, you start drinking with your friends. And this is, again, when I talked about, like, one of the things that makes this book so good is just the fact that you're just gonna tell the truth of what you did and how you did it. And this is one of those things where I was reading, I was like, okay, check. Um, so you're drinking with your friends. This is literally the first night you're back. And finally someone says, you know, so what happened? How'd you get hit? And you say in the book, "I started the story with why the, why my team had been at the glass factory in the first place. I tried to inform them of the political climate in Almbar and how the arguments at home were shaping the battlefield over there. I gave them as much backstory as I could, hoping to give them enough to gather a layman's understanding of our experiences.

• 2:32:54Jocko Willink?

  Then I got to the, to January 5th and the buildup to the explosion that crippled me and killed our brothers. I'd been descriptive and honest up to that point, but for some reason that I may never fully understand, I started lying. I said that I acted in heroic ways after being wounded by the suicide bomber when I didn't. Maybe it was just the whiskey, maybe it was insecurity, maybe it was survivor's guilt screaming in my head that I could have, should have done more. Whatever the motivation was exactly, I will never know, but there I stood in my kitchen, pants down to my ankles, leaning awkwardly on my canes, pointing at the scars covering my limbs, and lying about battlefield heroics I never exhibited."

• 2:33:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, shit makes you cringe still, um, but I is true, so.

• 2:33:48Jocko Willink?

  You want to hear my assessment?

• 2:33:51Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:33:52Jocko Willink?

  Of this situation? I think this is what happens to dudes.

• 2:33:58Jocko Willink?

  You, what, when you're trying to tell somebody a story, what your goal is, is to make them feel what you felt. And so, if I'm looking at you and I'm telling you a story and I want to tell you that like, a mortar hit.

• 2:34:17Jocko Willink?

  Let's say a mortar hit 50 yards away from me. Which mortars have hit 50 yards away from me? It's scary and it scares the shit out of you. It goes, "Bob!", and you're like, "Whoa", and like, it can kill you, even 50 yards away, it can kill you, but it didn't. So if I'm telling you a story, and especially if you're a civilian, I want you to know. I want you to feel what I felt. That freaking explosion scared the shit out of me. So when I tell you some of the details, I think there's a tendency to say, "This freaking mortar hit five feet from me."

• 2:34:54Jocko Willink?

  And I'm just trying to let you feel what I felt in the best way that I can. So when I'm thinking, you know, even going out like going outside the gate, going outside the wire, walking out there, trying to capture what it's like, it's hard to convey those. And you want someone to feel it so bad, what you felt. I don't know. I think that drives guys sometimes to say things that maybe aren't a hundred percent on point. They're not a hundred percent true. The spirit of what they say is true, but the, but the facts aren't, you know? So I, I think that's some of it, you know, just when you, when you rattle through the like,

• 2:35:38Jocko Willink?

  you're not really sure why you did it. I think part of it is cuz you want people to feel at least some of what you felt. And we know, we're not always the best at, at conveying the feelings. And especially when people are looking at you and you can see that they're not quite getting it, you know, and you go, ah, some, you can see the look on some civilian's face. That's like 50 meters away. That doesn't sound like a big deal, you know? I'm looking at Echo right now. He's kind of like 50 meters. What are you kidding me? Across the football field? Yeah, yeah. Half the football field. Are you kidding me? What a joke.

• 2:36:11Jocko Willink?

  So that's what I, that's one of the things. Look, other, other candidates, sure. But when I've talked to guys, um, when I've heard stories from guys where I'm like, hmm, where I'm suspect, I usually just take into account, oh, they just want me to feel what they felt. They just want me to feel what they felt. And I think that adds to it a little bit. This is a really interesting perspective I've never considered. Yeah.

• 2:36:37Jocko Willink?

  And this is what's weird and you, this is what you say, the lies and embellishments I was telling were chipping away at what was left of my pride, even as I spouted them. But really, what did I have left to be proud of? That, see, that's the other crazy thing is like, you're talking to civilians, like you, you don't, you don't need to say like, you're like, hey, I got blown up, man. Like that's good enough of a story as you're gonna get, you know?

• 2:37:02Jocko Willink?

  I was a shortened, pasty, frail and morally compromised shell of whatever kind of man I had been once before. Pride, what pride could be expected of a man who's forced to urinate in a plastic bottle next to his bed because he's too weak to walk to the bathroom at night? So again, in your mind, you think you gotta build up like yourself, but bro, I mean, anybody that's sitting there looking at you like, hey, man, you obviously freaking, you know, got after it.

• 2:37:32Speaker 02

  Or in front of it or something.

• 2:37:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, I don't know. You're right. I had really never considered that, but you're right.

• 2:37:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's weird when there's civilians involved too, because they literally have no idea, you know, like it's only in your head, you know, it's only in your head that you think, maybe, you know, I need to tell them that I did this. They're, they're, bro, you went to Iraq. These people were sitting around in freaking Utah, whatever, drinking beers, you know?

• 2:38:08Speaker 02

  Well, I, I'd been, you gotta remember too, I've been in the hospital, living in my head 24 hours a day for months at that point, because I can't really talk to anybody, even though they're army nurses and stuff, they're, they might as well be civilians too. They never, I mean, they just work in a hospital. I'm not saying they don't do powerful and great things. I just mean, so far as like being able to relate or understand, they can't, you know, they can't relate. And the, when I was in the neuro world at Walter Reed, the, a kid got, a kid, not a kid, a soldier that was like my same age, got put into a room next to me that got shot through the throat in Afghanistan. And once he got to where he could talk again, at least every once in a while, we'd be able to both, you know, shoot the shit a little bit.

• 2:38:52Speaker 02

  But outside of that, and he couldn't talk, you know, he was struggling. I mean, he got like a 54R, I think it was through his, through his neck. But, so yeah, so you, you're also just constantly living in your own head. So maybe when I was home, like that perspective that you shared earlier, I'd, I'd never considered, maybe I was doing exactly that, uh, but to myself, you know, like, I don't know.

• 2:39:18Jocko Willink?

  Um, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna fast forward a little bit again. You go to visit your, you go to your mom's house and your grandma and your granddad are there. And, you know, you, you make it in, your, your grandma's there, she's like glad you made it home. You are, you're, you know, hey, where's grandpa? He's over on the couch, she pointed. I plopped down beside my childhood hero and clung as tightly as I could manage. His arms felt weaker than they once had, but not a thing could diminish his mountainous stature in my eyes. We sat there for a while and embraced.

• 2:40:00Jocko Willink?

  I almost felt like a kid who had fallen down and scraped his knees. I just wanted to hear him tell me that I was gonna be alright. "I'm so proud of you," he whispered. "I love you, grandpa. I'm sorry." Tears welled up in my eyes. He told me that he was proud of me, just like I had hoped he would, but it didn't make me feel good. I didn't deserve that accolade, and I knew it. When he said he was proud of me, he was talking about who I was as a man, not what I had accomplished physically. I knew that. The very night before, I had demonstrated a lowly character. Why should he be proud of me? He wouldn't be if he had known that I was the kind of man who lied to his friends. "Oh, you dummy, what the hell are you sorry for? Knock it off before I kick you right in the ass," grandpa responded.

• 2:40:43Jocko Willink?

  I buried my head into his once broad and muscular shoulder, trying to hide my shame. "I don't know how long I stayed there for, but I would've stayed longer if you'd let me." "I spent the better part of a week building that damn wheelchair ramp, and you didn't even use it," my stepdad quipped. "I'm never getting back in that goddamn chair again," I bellowed. "Braxton, watch your mouth," mom yelled. "Watch it or I'll sock you one," grandpa joined in.

• 2:41:14Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward, like many other soldiers at war, my my home front had changed considerably during my absence. My great grandmother, whom I had been very close to, passed away, but she had written a letter while I was in Ramadi saying she expected to go soon. Her death was not so unexpected. My step grandpa never seemed to age a day in his life before I left for the war, but while I was gone, he developed prostate cancer. The chemotherapy aged him dramatically in just one year, but even this was less jarring than the sight of that wheelchair. Everyone's life has an event horizon. My grandfather's had just come earlier than I anticipated. That was all there was to it. I just wasn't ready for the sight of my hero, the man who raised me when no one else wanted to, crawling into a chair.

• 2:42:07Jocko Willink?

  And that's because he's, you know, basically, he's now in a wheelchair.

• 2:42:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I'd watched him battle his back injury for, since I was like 14 years old. And he just kept working because he had to pay for his family, you know. And so I knew exactly how he ended up in that chair. So it kind of hit even harder, you know.

• 2:42:31Jocko Willink?

  So the whole reason that you came, the whole reason you were able to come home, was this community-based healthcare organization. It's two and a half hours you had to drive to get there. Kind of checking in here. Corporal McCoy, how the hell are you? A deep, familiar voice boomed out from behind the vehicle. I'm rolling along, top. How you been? It was Sergeant, it was First Sergeant K, a senior NTO that I knew well. In fact, he had been the guy that approved my request to volunteer for deployment to Ramadi. I've been well, cowboy. I wanted to introduce you to your new platoon sergeant, Master Sergeant Dillinger. Hello, Sergeant, I said, extending my hand. He grabbed my hand, a proclaimed young man. I expected me to soldier in a wheelchair. You seen him around anywhere?

• 2:43:16Jocko Willink?

  Uh, yeah, well, I'm doing my best to stay out of that damn thing, Sergeant. He's a grizzly old bastard, Corporal. Most of us around here just call him Bulldog. First Sergeant Kay chimed in. Master Sergeant Dillinger, Bulldog, was a short, stocky combat veteran of the Vietnam War. Usually he paced around briskly with a cigarette in his lips, looking for someone's ass to chew. He didn't beat around the bush about anything. If he had a thought, you were liable to hear it. But he cared about the men in his platoon. He played no games, especially the Army's. Later on in our relationship, when there was a mandatory formation upcoming that he didn't think I needed to drive up for, he simply called me on my phone and asked me where I was and whether I was okay.

• 2:43:57Jocko Willink?

  Then he told the commander that I was accounted for. Over time, I developed a deep admiration and respect for that man, the kind that no rank or ribbons can earn. He sounds like a character.

• 2:44:07Speaker 02

  He was so funny. And just the best guy. He got me my first job after I got out. And he's just a really good guy. Ended up dying a couple of years, five years ago, six years ago, just lung cancer. He was 70 years old by then. Yeah, he was a hell of a guy. And he was the kind of leader that expected you to do whatever you were supposed to do, but he would really shield you from nonsense that you didn't need to be involved in, you know?

• 2:44:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You say in the book here, Corporal, I know you've been through a lot of shit in the last year. I'm old enough to know what this shit is like. I did my time in Nam. Our war wasn't squat compared to yours, Sergeant, I interrupted. Shut the fuck up, McCoy. You cut me off. I've seen plenty of war. It's all the same shit. Our wars might have been different, but you did your time in the shit. You don't owe me any, you don't owe me or anyone else a fucking caveat. Understood? I nodded. What I'm trying to say is this unit is different. This is a medical holdover company. We're not a line unit. But don't get it wrong. This is still the Army. There's still enough bullshit here to pack. Ten, five tons. I will do my best to make sure you only eat the shit you have to, but I swear to God, if you fuck with me, I will have your crippled ass on the next fucking flight to DC. Understood?

• 2:45:26Jocko Willink?

  Roger, Sergeant. I will call your cellphone anytime I feel like it and if I want to, and if you don't answer, you better be dead, dying, or in the middle of a medical appointment. Understood? Yes, Sergeant. You call me first thing in the morning, I will know everything, I will know about every medical appointment on your schedule, and if you leave your house for any reason, I don't give a shit if it's just to go outside to piss on a tree, you will ask permission first. Copy? Roger, Sergeant. Alright, now get that pretty little wife of yours home and let her relax, Corporal. You're free to go. Roger, Sergeant. I'd only made a few steps when I heard his voice call out again. Corporal McCoy? Yes, Sergeant? Welcome home, son. Glad you made it.

• 2:46:01Jocko Willink?

  Thank you, Sergeant. So, there you go, man. Freaking... Jesus, stud. Stud. Stud.

• 2:46:13Jocko Willink?

  Again, you know, that sounds all cool. I'm all happy I'm reading that part. I'm like, oh, here's the good turning point.

• 2:46:21Jocko Willink?

  Then you fast forward a little bit. "I told myself that my, none of my behavior was an overreaction when taken in context. After all, these little bursts of extra pain may have been slight when considered on their own, but when piled on top of the constant and never-ending aches I endured, they seemed excruciating. I hurt every second I was awake, and nighttime brought me no reprieve. When I lay in my bed at whatever time seemed appropriate that evening, I didn't sleep. What's more, I never expected to sleep. How could I sleep when I hurt so much? What had, what had I become? I was being weak. I had once thought my mental toughness was as sure as the sun coming up in the morning, but I was broken down again. Before I was wounded, I used to claim that I had never quit in my life and nothing could make me, but I was wrong. I had hit

• 2:47:06Jocko Willink?

  many, many breaking points during recovery. The internal dialogue whirled about my head in an endless cycle. I was being soft and I knew it, but rationalizing the pain was so damn easy to do. I had made it, I had made all sorts of excuses over the course of the past few months, and although it should have been the last time I'd made such justifications, it wasn't."

• 2:47:36Jocko Willink?

  So, you mentioned in a brief moment, a little bit ago, opioids.

• 2:47:45Jocko Willink?

  Scary thing. They've been in the news a bunch.

• 2:47:50Jocko Willink?

  You say on the question of addiction, "Many of us had little to say to begin with." This is an interesting point. "I didn't choose to be addicted. I didn't even understand the degree to which I was addicted. There was no true first time, so to speak. I never had the, an opportunity to debate the potential pitfalls of drugs with a sober mind. The fact is, like with so many other soldiers, my addiction was little more than the tragic side effect of healing. I left Walter Reed taking a hundred, taking hundreds of milligrams of OxyContin a day."

• 2:48:28Jocko Willink?

  One civilian doctor told me that I had been prescribed dosages in multiples of what he wrote his terminal cancer patients. I didn't choose that. Neither did thousands of others, thousands of other men and women who found themselves in similar circumstances. I did, however, make things much worse. And that can't be hung on anyone but me.

• 2:48:54Jocko Willink?

  This caveat to the story is meant to be read as a sort of table setting, not an evasion of personable, personal responsibility. I have learned many lessons through my journey, probably the most important of them being, taking ownership of one's failures is the best way to avoid making the same mistakes in the future. If there's a way to rationally place blame on another, or on fate itself, that is all the more reason to look inward for a culprit, because that knave is the only one you can reliably alter.

• 2:49:29Jocko Willink?

  Little bit of extreme ownership going on there.

• 2:49:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, I took that from you. Sorry, man.

• 2:49:37Jocko Willink?

  By all means. You can't take what's free.

• 2:49:42Speaker 02

  It is true, though. It's one of those deals. I'm sure you've, I know, I know you wrote similar things in your first book.

• 2:49:52Speaker 02

  And there is a way to view this, these sort of situations where you can look at it like, well,

• 2:49:59Speaker 02

  sure, maybe I was forced into this and that wasn't my fault. But the only way I get out of this is if I just control the parts that I can control. And I can't, I can't do that without taking ownership of the things that I'm screwing up. So you almost have to just say, okay, the first play doesn't matter anymore. Now it's, you know, third and 10, and I gotta figure out how to crunch these yards. That's it.

• 2:50:25Jocko Willink?

  That's it. That's it. And I, you know, you say you stole it from me. You actually talk about, you, you give credit to Extreme Ownership, the book in this. So I appreciate the shout out and I'm glad that it was able to, something that you were able to connect to.

• 2:50:44Jocko Willink?

  So that's sort of the, the opening that you give on this dealing with OxyContin and whatnot. You say, "The hardest part of managing pain was not dealing with the sharp, often crippling surges. It was the constant aching. In retrospect, I think the most profound effect of the OxyContin was on my sanity. The continual, never-ending dull aches that engulfed my lower extremities, spine and right hand were psychologically torturous. It wasn't exactly excruciating, but the utter lack of respite was brutal."

• 2:51:20Jocko Willink?

  And that's um, you know, you, you, you kind of go into that, but I, I wanted to highlight the fact that you say a couple of times, like it was just absolutely constant, unending pain all the time.

• 2:51:31Speaker 02

  Hmm. You think about that, what, what would this, if it's, let's say the Soviets had the ability to inflict this kind of thing, like invisible damage, I mean, it's not invisible, but like, let's say they could make invisible damage and chronic pain, that's the, that would have been the preferred torture mechanism, you know? Cause then they could just send you back into the real world and be like, whenever you're ready, we can push the button or, you know, remove the device or whatever and.

• 2:52:01Jocko Willink?

  Make the pain stop.

• 2:52:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:52:03Jocko Willink?

  But you gotta do what we told you to do.

• 2:52:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. But that's how a lot of these guys are living for months and years at a time. And I, I think we don't really, I, I, I don't think, we don't go deep, deep enough into the psychology of that often enough when we tell our own stories, we sort of kind of gloss over that achy, you know, dull, almost maniacal pain. And a lot of dudes, even just like construction guys are living like this.

• 2:52:29Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 2:52:30Speaker 02

  You wonder why they're drinking like 30 pack a night or whatever. It's cause their back's jacked up or their whatever, hip or something.

• 2:52:36Jocko Willink?

  And like you said, they still got the bills to pay, the family to feed.

• 2:52:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:52:41Jocko Willink?

  And speaking of drinking, at this point, you say you're drinking a half a fifth of bourbon a night.

• 2:52:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:52:46Jocko Willink?

  On top of the painkillers. Um, at one point, one of your friends, I guess.

• 2:52:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:52:58Jocko Willink?

  Teaches you how to snort OxyContin.

• 2:53:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, some things had changed while I was gone and um, yeah, I mean, I'd like seeing this kind of stuff done as a kid, like you'd see people, you know, you had a party or something, you see people like roll up a dollar bill or something, you're all just drinking, but there's like a whole process to be able to snort OxyContin and that was, that was news to me, but.

• 2:53:22Jocko Willink?

  You, when you, so you do it. This guy kind of shows you what's up, teaches you how to snort OxyContin. Once you do it, you feel like, you, you feel like you're gonna puke. He tells you, go puke, you go puke, and then you say from the book, after I vomited, I felt better than I have ever had in my entire life.

• 2:53:43Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:53:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, that I, when I was speaking at schools for a while, I used to tell teachers and like the worst thing you can tell a kid is that it's not fun because then they know you lied to them. Like, because it is, it's, it really is like the most invigorating. It's, it's really is bliss. It's a, it's, it's honestly, it's difficult to put into words how good it feels. It's like euphoric. But if you, if you lie to people and say drugs are all terrible and you know, and then their first experience is like, what have you been hiding from me, dude? Like, this is amazing, you know? Then they're more likely to, you know, it's much better to focus on how bad things can get rather than tell them it's not fun.

• 2:54:31Speaker 02

  You know, same thing with like drinking. I mean, how many preacher's daughters end up, you know, doing preacher's daughters things?

• 2:54:41Jocko Willink?

  The guy I knew, um, a friend of mine told me, he, he ended up in jail and whatnot, but he said the first time he ever did crystal meth was the only thing he ever wanted to do for the rest of his life. It was just like, so, he just loved it. Very first time, done. He was done. He was addicted and he ended up, you know, addicted until he went to jail.

• 2:55:05Jocko Willink?

  You say, "My desire to continue on was eroding. Many factors were contributing to this, like the impossibility of finding refrain from the physical torment, but my inability to come to terms with the fact that my best friends were still in harm's way, living in the hell that was Ramadi in 2006 without me, and my own poor behavioral choices were the worst of them. Once I had scrawled the timeless military mantra, 'Death before dishonor', "Death before dishonor" on the walls of my hooch in Iraq. Now, here on the home front, where that code should be easiest to live up to, I failed and I continued to fail every day over and over. The surest form of justification ran through my head, what does it matter anyways?"

• 2:55:59Jocko Willink?

  Once I started abusing pain medication, my mental health went downhill rapidly, but I didn't care. I felt nothing. Even chasing the dragon became a sort of mundane routine. Doctor-appointed visits, doctor appointments, visits with specialists and physical therapy sessions were too similar to tell apart. The only piece of me that had grown was my opioid addiction. And it had metastasized. In the morning, I'd wake up, wheel into the bathroom, grind up another OxyContin, eagerly devour it as if it were the cure to, rather than a cause of, my self-hatred. After my usual half-days' work at the hospital, I stopped by the liquor store and picked up a fifth of bourbon. Oftentimes feeling safely away from the presence of the local law enforcement,

• 2:56:44Jocko Willink?

  I opened the bottle the moment I exited the freeway. Most days, I drove right past my house, headed for the nearest solitude I could find. I longed for a place where I could be alone, just me and my thoughts. My thoughts nearly never left Ramadi. It was almost as if I still lived there in my mind. I'd become bitter and angry. I hated everyone and everything around me. "Don't any of these assholes realize we're at war right now? Good men are dying in ungrateful countries, half a world away. What the fuck is everyone smiling about?" The only people I still loved were thousands of miles away, and I had no way to talk to them.

• 2:57:22Jocko Willink?

  I slid my way out of the truck, placing most of my weight on the cane in my left hand and the rest on my left leg, as I had become my new normal. Pain shopped through my body. My hip wobbled.

• 2:57:37Jocko Willink?

  It couldn't handle the redistribution of weight. I let out a short groan, "Fuck this shit."

• 2:57:45Jocko Willink?

  I yelled aloud, broadcasting my complaint to God, the universe, and whatever else may be listening. I emerged from my home a short while later with my semi-automatic .45 caliber handgun and a fresh bottle of pills in tow. I climbed into my truck, yanked the lever into reverse, and started for my favorite little mountain valley in those east hills.

• 2:58:09Jocko Willink?

  I pulled my truck back up to the edge of the valley in front of the old cabin, hoping that someone might find me before my decomposing corpse began to bloat. I didn't want my mom to have to deal with that image for the rest of her life. I retrieved my lighter, bill, credit card, CD case, and OxyContin.

• 2:58:28Jocko Willink?

  I was ready to get on with it.

• 2:58:31Jocko Willink?

  I kept pounding whiskey while I crushed up my narcotics. I was anxious to feel the warm blanket of euphoria their imperceptible chains would bring.

• 2:58:42Jocko Willink?

  Lines spread across the CD case placed in the middle of my center console. I rolled up an already chalky bill and snorted the first line. "I feel better already," I thought to myself as I chased it down with another swig of the bottle I was holding between my knees.

• 2:58:58Jocko Willink?

  My pistol sat on the passenger seat beside me. I reached over with my right hand, wrapped its two working fingers around the grip, and pushed the frame into my thigh to stabilize it.

• 2:59:11Jocko Willink?

  Then I racked the slide with my left hand. The gun, now main ready, I set upon my lap, muzzled toward the front of the cab.

• 2:59:23Jocko Willink?

  Never point a weapon at anything you are not willing to destroy. I took up the bottle again and had another slug. I retrieved the loosely-rolled bill and tightened it back into a cylinder. Then I placed it at the tip of my other nostril, leaned over and softly breathed in the last of my respite.

• 2:59:41Jocko Willink?

  Calm.

• 2:59:44Jocko Willink?

  I stared over the dashboard at the valley that at once held many of my fondest memories. The world around me slowly closed in. My eyes darkened. I fumbled for the pistol in my lap. I longed desperately for the bite of its cold barrel on the side of my head and the hot leaden delivery it could bring. Every ounce of my soul begged for its one-way ticket to anywhere but the nihilistic hell I lived in.

• 3:00:15Jocko Willink?

  My eyes opened sometime later. A near-empty bottle of whiskey on the floorboard and the song "I Just Got Back From Hell" by Gary Allen reverberating throughout the cab.

• 3:00:37Jocko Willink?

  So thankfully,

• 3:00:40Jocko Willink?

  you passed out.

• 3:00:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:00:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd had a had this mix that I'd made. That truck just had a CD player, so I'd had like this mix of songs and they were all those kind of songs. And I drove up to this valley that I used to go, you know, go shoot rabbits or hunt snakes or party with the girls and this kind of stuff and I just wanted to be done with it. Just frustrated and

• 3:01:14Speaker 02

  done.

• 3:01:17Speaker 02

  And luckily, like as you said, I passed out, man. It could have been really bad. And luckily I didn't, you know, like acute liver failure or some shit from opioids and alcohol and

• 3:01:33Speaker 02

  and yeah, like physical therapy every day. I was just setback after setback and then, you know, my whole, my entire recovery was like setback after setback and everybody was in Ramadi and I was on like all kinds of fucking drugs. And, you know, psych drugs and opioids and every other, you know, and my body didn't work and I was just, I was just over it, man. I was just completely over it.

• 3:02:01Speaker 02

  Didn't that, you know, wasn't like in the best marriage at the time, which how could you be? You know, when you, like, how could your marriage be good when you're behaving like this every day, right? So just like everything is, it like spiraled down the toilet.

• 3:02:16Speaker 02

  And that's, it's not an uncommon, it's really unfortunately not an uncommon occurrence. Uh, this is kind of why eventually I wanted to write the book in the first place was I was reading these other books here and there and I just didn't, I didn't feel like I didn't see anybody that was going. Is, was, they weren't being like, the, the stories weren't reflecting everything that I was seeing, you know, in my own life and my friends and you know, some guys were doing great and then other guys were really not doing great.

• 3:02:52Jocko Willink?

  How is it that no one like saw? I mean, if you're drinking that much and you're free, are they not blood testing you to see how much opiates or opioids are in your system or shit like that?

• 3:03:03Speaker 02

  So I was getting blood tested every day for, uh, I think, I can't remember if I was off of blood thinners by then or not. When I was on blood thinners, I had to get tested every day, but they don't test for anything but like the, I don't know if it's viscosity or what, but how like how thin your blood is. And so then they just adjust your blood thinner medication to that. So no one was like piss testing me for alcohol.

• 3:03:27Jocko Willink?

  And you're not talking to any freaking therapist or psychologist or chaplains or anything like that? Just they figured, oh, he's fine?

• 3:03:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I was probably, I mean, I was definitely trying to bluff everybody all the time. But no, I wasn't, you know, I had to speak to a therapist. I can't remember if it was three times a year. It was something like that. It was some very, that might've been a VA thing. I can't remember. There's anyways, there was at some point, there was a requirement to speak to a therapist like three times a year.

• 3:03:57Speaker 02

  And I was, I was really, yeah. And I wish, I really wish I knew why it got that bad, but it didn't.

• 3:04:07Jocko Willink?

  Well, you, you just kind of breeze through it and I'm breezing through the book. I mean, I've skipped through a bunch of stuff where the daily grind of what you're doing, you're missing your friends in Ramadi. You're, you're not healthy the way you want to be. The, the downward spiral of, oh, I'm addicted to this shit. And the only way to stop feeling shitty about feeling addicted to this shit is to do more of this shit that I'm addicted to.

• 3:04:34Jocko Willink?

  So I think you, you, the way you lay it out is actually very helpful. Because people might be able to identify where they are on that downward spiral.

• 3:04:45Speaker 02

  Yeah. And what, for me, what finally got me there, I'm saying, I wish I knew what was at the very, very bottom of it. But, but the final catalyst was I injured my leg at physical therapy again. And I was just like, fuck, man. You know, I can't, like, I'm, I'm like this, I've had enough roller coaster at this point, you know? So I think if you're, if you're one of these people that's going through addiction and you're.

• 3:05:09Speaker 02

  What they call like functionally addicted, whether it's heroin or like, there's only a handful of drugs that people can really do it on. Alcohol mostly. If you're one of these like functional addicts, you should really know that you might hit that one catalyst that sends you to a whole nother level of it, you know what I mean? Cause maybe you can ride that for a while, but eventually something goes wrong and you're going to turn to that substance to help you get over that. And that's going to go, you're going to be at a whole new, whole new level of addiction. Cause now you just conquered another thing, you know, with it, so.

• 3:05:47Speaker 02

  And yeah, like, you know, back to your other point, thankfully I didn't shoot myself. I'm pretty happy about that now.

• 3:05:54Jocko Willink?

  You know, I've, I've said before, like, uh, when people get in these modes and these situations, like there's like a storm cloud around their head that they think is the whole world is a storm cloud and like anyone on the outside can look at it and say, "Bro, you're just, it's just around you. Like you come over here, you'll be okay. You'll get out of it." But from the perspective that you're in at that time, all you see is just freaking darkness everywhere.

• 3:06:25Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book here, the 15 mile drive back home dragged on. This is after you got your shit back together. "My thoughts drifted back to Arlington, the last place in time where I felt strong and accomplished. I remembered again how it felt to recognize how mine or my complaints truly were in the grand scheme of things. My sacrifices were so little when compared to those, to what those heroes had given. I was kicking away the blanket of freedom and security that they provided me. "It is my duty to live for those who can't," I had once said. "Who am I to be so selfish? I was going to throw away my gift of life due to a little suffering? Who among them would not gladly trade places with me?" I said to myself, hoping that it would sink in again.

• 3:07:09Jocko Willink?

  My commitment to those heroes rekindled. Shame, the right kind of shame, the kind that expedites transformation washed over me. Not long ago, I had stood above their sacred resting places, offering whatever small vicarious redemption I could. Yet I had failed at that promise. I had tried to quit my duty in its infancy. Never again." I renewed my vows to them before God and whatever else was listening. I promised never to give into the darkness again. Now, as I write this today, I wish so desperately that I could tell you honestly that I made good on this second oath, but I can't. That was not the last time I failed them. In fact, it was just one stumbling among a multitude.

• 3:07:53Jocko Willink?

  I was starting to feel a little better about myself. I had made a grave mistake, but luckily, it hadn't been final. "I've gotta get my shit together," I said.

• 3:08:08Jocko Willink?

  So, you, um, like you said, you,

• 3:08:15Jocko Willink?

  you redo this vow kind of thing. And, you know, and then again, you freaking fool me into thinking like, "This is it, this is it. You made it out of the darkness." I'm like, "Cool, we're good."

• 3:08:32Jocko Willink?

  And you do, you know, you go up, you start squaring some shit away. Fast forward a little bit, these cold fronts and winter weather kept me shut up inside day and night. In my waking hours, I stared out the window at dark and frigid skies. When I lay down to rest, the freezing world around me was replaced by 130-degree memories and nightmares. I felt as if my life was constantly on the brink of an unforeseeable but impending doom. Depression brought me back to the blanket of the bottle and the brief bliss of medication. My hospital visits were shrunk from five days a week to three, but physical therapy was virtually nonexistent. The only thing that got me out of bed each day was my hatred for the sheets. I did nothing but watch movies, play my guitar, and drink whiskey. Rock bottom is a slower and softer landing than one may think.

• 3:09:18Jocko Willink?

  That's why we keep chiseling away at the bedrock.

• 3:09:25Jocko Willink?

  That's some good writing. It's freaking depressing writing, but it's good writing.

• 3:09:33Jocko Willink?

  Another good, good, piece of good writing right here. "If there's such a thing as the Christian's concept of the devil, opioids and alcohol are some of the best tools he employs to capture weakened men. The instant euphoria softly whispers its lies to the heart. There are no problems I cannot solve. Addiction snags you at your weakest times like the wolf kills a buffalo. The wolf waits until the bison's gait is crippled, or the snow is deep enough to entrap him, then he pounces. Usually he hamstrings the animal first, then slowly and methodically he gnaws away the flesh until his prey expires."

• 3:10:12Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit more. "When I returned home, it was about noon and I was already an inebriated mess. I walked through the door, canes and bourbon in tow. The smell of whiskey radiated from my pores. 'Hey Braxton, I have something to tell you,' my wife said. She must be leaving for good this time, I thought. She's unemotional. This time it's for real. Am I okay with that? I've wanted her to leave dozens of times, but am I really okay with it? Yeah, I think I am. How will her family take it? I will remain friends with, will I remain friends with her brothers, her dad? No. Maybe they already know that we fight all the time. They must." Thoughts swirled about my head.

• 3:10:54Jocko Willink?

  "I think I'm pregnant," she said. "What? I'm pregnant. Aren't you happy about that?" she said, smiling. "Of course I am." I acted as if I were. I took another shot of bourbon. I wanted to be a father badly. God only knows why. I wasn't fit to be one. Still, I was indeed very happy that I may be fulfilling that wish, but was this really the best time? Was I with the best person for me, or the best per, or was I the best person for her? The answer to both of those questions was clearly no. Less than a week before, we had been fighting nearly every day. We told each other that we hated one another, and we meant it. Each of us had uttered the word divorce aloud. Now we were going to have a baby."

• 3:11:46Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 3:11:50Speaker 02

  You couldn't have predicted that one when you read it early on though, right?

• 3:11:52Jocko Willink?

  No, no, it's uh, yeah, it's.

• 3:12:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, rough, man, rough.

• 3:12:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:12:04Jocko Willink?

  You guys were married young and then you go through all this, like you said, it's hard, what you just said, you know, it's hard to have a good marriage when you're drinking bourbon and, you know, doing drugs and all that.

• 3:12:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:12:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, you can't, you can't put the blame on her for this. That's the way I look at it anyway.

• 3:12:27Speaker 02

  Well, I, you know, the cliche answer, which is the real one though, is that I have my, I got my daughter out of the deal. And she lives with me and life's great, you know, I mean, this is now fourteen years later.

• 3:12:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:12:41Speaker 02

  Uh, but yeah, it, it sucked there for a stretch and it is, it's just really easy to get back down in that hole, especially when you're, you really still don't, you still feel like you don't have anything to live for, you know, that's why I always say that like gratitude, you've really got to cultivate gratitude in your daily life.

• 3:13:04Jocko Willink?

  When I read that part, well, when I read this like part where she's actually born and, you know, she's healthy and um, you say it's amazing how much a parent can love a child. I already loved her.

• 3:13:17Jocko Willink?

  I would have, I would have happily died for her. I still would, but in that moment, as I sat there watching them, I realized something was still wrong, not with her, with me. So like, I'm like, okay, cool. Here we go. You know, we're gonna kinda make it through this.

• 3:13:34Jocko Willink?

  You talk about PTSD, you bring it, you bring it up earlier than this, but this was the time, this is where you started like kinda conveying your thoughts on it. You say, "I previously mentioned other times when I thought that I may have been afflicted by PTSD. Many times, my subconscious registered a symptom of the disease that I'd read about, or my therapist, therapist had mentioned. Who could miss the unwelcome memories at inopportune times, or the never-ending need to suppress unprovoked anger, or the nightmares, or the illogical moments of panic. I had denied the existence of my illness for many reasons, but most important was that I just did not want to be associated with many of the others I had seen at the VA pensions for the disease, or sorry, had received VA pensions for the

• 3:14:16Jocko Willink?

  disease. I knew of a guy who had worked in the laundromat in Iraq. He got a rating of 80% disability for PTSD. For what experience exactly?" I wondered. Another guy I had heard of, had been found 100% disabled from the trauma of answering radio transmissions from soldiers in combat. "How could a person be so soft that they were damaged by the sounds of combat?" I wondered bitterly. During my transition, there seemed no less noble an act than claiming to suffer from PTSD. It wasn't just that, it wasn't just seen as an illness that plagued the weak. It was, in many cases, an illness claimed by liars. Whether they were weak or not was unimportant. I had made many mistakes and acted cowardly

• 3:14:59Jocko Willink?

  and lied many times in my life, but I had no desire to have those descriptors permanently enshrined in my records. At least that was the way I saw it back then."

• 3:15:17Jocko Willink?

  Interesting thought. I mean, it's a very, it's a very interesting thought, you know, that you're having, because you're a freaking tough cowboy.

• 3:15:26Jocko Willink?

  And these guys that are saying they have PTSD because they worked in the laundromat in Iraq. You're like, no bullshit.

• 3:15:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. Yeah, but, but I wasn't, a lot of guys thought that at the time. Well, and because it's a lot of truth to it. You know, I mean dudes really game the shit out of that system and we all know it. I understand that the VA is in a tough position because you know, how do you really weed out people that are gaming it? I get it, but from a soldier's perspective, I didn't want to be, still to this day, really don't want to be labeled in that same way. Like, I'm happy to talk about, you know, PTS and working through stuff and acknowledging that it's definitely had profound impacts on my life. And I would like to try to help people through whatever suffering they're having.

• 3:16:12Speaker 02

  But I don't necessarily want to be associated with it and that's for that same reason today, you know? I mean luckily, I don't have to, you don't have to worry, in a lot of ways, I don't have to worry about being associated with that crowd. Just for obvious reasons. But yeah, it's, you know, people talk, especially in the veteran community, we want to de-stigmatize the term PTSD. I don't know.

• 3:16:40Speaker 02

  I, I think we need to de-stigmatize mental health for sure. But PTSD sort of took on a life of its own. And so like, maybe it's time to just shed that label and go with something new. And or stigmatize the shit out of it and tell people we really, really need help, don't want to be associated with it. I don't know. I don't know the right answer.

• 3:17:01Jocko Willink?

  I don't know either, man.

• 3:17:06Jocko Willink?

  As you're working through that shit, you and your wife end up getting divorced. And initially, you, her and, and your daughter leave for her home, which is like middle of the country, thirteen hundred miles away.

• 3:17:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:17:29Jocko Willink?

  And then you say, if you thought that the heartache of divorce and the departure of my beloved child would have caused me to take a long, hard look at myself, you'd be wrong.

• 3:17:40Jocko Willink?

  Because hedonism and self indulgence provide immediate gratification. The rush and excitement and euphoria make it difficult to dig in one's heels and change course. And why would you want to change your lifestyle if you've got no respect for your future? The simple, perhaps sad truth is of it is that debauchery can be good, old, plain fun for a while. For about seven years, I lived in hell and sometimes I relished in it. You, you basically,

• 3:18:10Jocko Willink?

  you basically went hard for seven years.

• 3:18:14Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I'm not so much on drugs, but alcohol and partying and chasing girls. One, one of those times I was in San Diego, actually. Yeah, we went out of friends that were a bachelor group and we were all doing okay, making pretty good money. And we're just like, we're just gonna party. Yeah.

• 3:18:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The evenings, like my descent, always started out in an exuberance and ended shamefully. I was not myself. I didn't know who I was. All I knew is I didn't like the man I saw in the mirror. And given the option, I would destroy him. My chief mistake was that I didn't realize there was a cure for my illness. The truth. Had I only been willing to accept that I could have been freed of my hide, as in Jekyll and Hyde, much sooner. There were more girls and more parties than I care to remember. Not that I could remember them all if I wanted to. My first steps onto the slippery slope were enjoyable. It can be great fun to lose control momentarily, but once that, on that slope, I couldn't keep myself from careening to the bottom. I hardly had control of anything in my

• 3:19:15Jocko Willink?

  life, let alone, let alone my alcohol habit. I had ripped the moral substrate out from under my world and descended into nihilism. Nihilism is not without benefits, though it simplifies life. There's a problem with nihilism. It leads to depravity and uncontrolled chaos. If nothing else matters, then that's that. Why care about health for the future? Unbridled pleasure was the closest thing I could find to happiness. I sought only hedonistic satisfaction, which I think is the logical conclusion of nihilistic ideologies.

• 3:19:56Jocko Willink?

  It's important to note that my life wasn't all that bad either. It rarely is. That's what makes it so hard to crawl back up the slope. I was still making very realistic, very real physical milestones. I had a bend in the cane altogether. I still stretched every day and did light workouts. My physical body was healing and aside from the infrequent brushes with the law, I was having fun.

• 3:20:19Jocko Willink?

  The most dreadful part was that somewhere buried deep down in my subconscious, in the land of all that shadow, was the truth. It was all my fault. War, no war. The problems I faced were my own creation and I knew that.

• 3:20:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:20:41Speaker 02

  I think sometimes we use these things, uh, some people will use these things as a way to escape from the shame of knowing that you're not what you could be. You know, like people talk about potential all the time and no one knows your potential better than you. Like you know who you really are way down in there. And so you just come up with distractions, like useless and senseless distractions, parties and, you know, girls and whatever other venture, just to avoid becoming what you're, you know, what you could be.

• 3:21:16Jocko Willink?

  And you said you were making money at this time. What were you doing?

• 3:21:19Speaker 02

  I was working in outreach for a not-for-profit company.

• 3:21:24Jocko Willink?

  But you were getting paid.

• 3:21:24Speaker 02

  They were paying me pretty good.

• 3:21:26Jocko Willink?

  And, and then at some point, um, you kind of realized, you said my life was falling apart, my credit score was tanking, my job was on the rocks. Every close relationship I had once depended on was virtually demolished. I was having too much fun to see it. You decided you quit your job.

• 3:21:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:21:47Speaker 02

  There was

• 3:21:48Jocko Willink?

  And you wrote about that in here. Um, it's an interesting, basically, there was like an integrity issue with the place you were working for.

• 3:21:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:21:58Jocko Willink?

  And you, at one point, you're talking to a Medal of Honor recipient. And you just couldn't, couldn't lie to him, basically.

• 3:22:06Speaker 02

  Well, this is just such an obvious, flat out bullshit lie, like, straight up. And not like one of these white lies or stretches of the, it was just a straight up falsehood at the expense of, you know, other veterans and this, you know, trying to fundraise essentially, you know, like the lie was attempt to raise more funds. And so, yeah, I quit.

• 3:22:29Jocko Willink?

  And you quit, so you quit your job. You still have, I mean, obviously, you're getting your disability pay. And did you get medically retired? So you're getting a medical retirement?

• 3:22:37Speaker 02

  You don't get both of them.

• 3:22:38Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you only get one?

• 3:22:39Speaker 02

  Mm hmm. Yeah.

• 3:22:42Jocko Willink?

  But at least that was enough money to survive on?

• 3:22:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, especially in Cowtown, Utah. Man, my freaking mortgage is like 700 bucks. I was doing fine.

• 3:22:52Jocko Willink?

  So you quit that job and you want to talk about unexpected, didn't see that coming, was a...

• 3:23:00Speaker 02

  I don't know where this is going now.

• 3:23:01Jocko Willink?

  What, comedian?

• 3:23:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:23:03Jocko Willink?

  So you started doing stand-up comedy?

• 3:23:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:23:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, like, I was going to college and I was like, I've always wanted to try it. So I started doing it.

• 3:23:12Jocko Willink?

  And, and you must have done all right. You did it for a while?

• 3:23:16Speaker 02

  I mean, it's still Utah, even in Salt Lake. It's like, so, yeah, I did it for like-

• 3:23:22Jocko Willink?

  You were a big fish in a small pond in Utah comedy scene?

• 3:23:25Speaker 02

  A medium sized fish in a very small pond. Um, yeah, I mean, we did okay. And I got to be buddies with a guy that was really good. And so that helped. You know, I mean, I was terrible. Like, everyone is, but I got, you know, I get, it was fun. I did enjoy it. Um, but it, you know, looking back, even, even the jokes that I would write and stuff were reflective of like a different person than I'd ever been. Cause I was like- And especially like as a young open mic'er and then he progressed to like a middle act and stuff, you're you're just really reaching for stuff and you're just saying horrific shit sometimes, you know?

• 3:24:02Jocko Willink?

  Just like shock value.

• 3:24:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I look back at some of that stuff and like completely embarrassed by it.

• 3:24:07Jocko Willink?

  You think you're able to take a crack at it again, come out of retirement?

• 3:24:11Speaker 02

  Live in central Idaho, just go post up at the bar in Idaho Falls or something.

• 3:24:21Jocko Willink?

  Look, you're making us laugh, man. You got it, still got it.

• 3:24:28Jocko Willink?

  Uh, one of the best things that happened was you actually ended up meeting a girl. And the girl that you meet, uh, she has a son who was a few years older than your daughter, but you, but he's like playing baseball and you didn't think that the baseball was really getting him what he needed. So you signed him up for wrestling and it turned out that his wrestling coach was your communications professor in college.

• 3:24:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:24:58Jocko Willink?

  And he knew who you were as a wrestler. Is that right?

• 3:25:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, and then I coached at Millard for a while after that. I was an assistant coach.

• 3:25:04Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. So he, but he knew you had a wrestling background. So he basically said, hey, if you don't freaking coach wrestling, it's gonna hurt your grave.

• 3:25:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, he, he straight up said it, yeah.

• 3:25:15Jocko Willink?

  So you, you start coaching and as you're coaching him, wrestling sees his end, season ends, then he's going into baseball. So you decide you're going to coach baseball too.

• 3:25:28Jocko Willink?

  And then this happens, this is pretty cool. I flipped the pitch. So you're, you're coaching these little kids. I flipped the pitch to the little batter. He softly, he hit it softly in the air. I lightly trotted to it and reeled it in. Another pitch. He hit a hard ground ball a step to my right. I fielded it with ease. Somewhere in my subconscious, the thought rang dang, that felt good. I served him another. This time he hit a hard ground ball about three steps to my left. My glove hand side. I sprinted to it and scooped it up with a spinning motion.

• 3:25:58Jocko Willink?

  A smile as wide as Montana creased my face. "Holy crap, you just ran," his mother shouted. "I know!" I couldn't contain my excitement. I started charging at every ball he hit, even the ones I didn't need to. A rush of love filled me. I'd forgotten how good it felt to be somewhat capable and likely never would have run toward a ball if I hadn't been tired and losing focus. The lack of attention allowed my subconscious mind to unshackle the chains my conscious mind bound my legs with. On the next pitch, he ripped a line drive over my head. I tried to jump for it. Nope, still can't jump. "Well, I guess basketball's out of the question," I yelled, grinning widely. We called it quits and I immediately grabbed

• 3:26:38Jocko Willink?

  my phone out of my ball bag. I sent out several text messages that read "I just ran" in all caps. A few war buddies who received it called me later that night demanding to hear the full story. When I reiterated it to them, he cried.

• 3:26:57Speaker 02

  Pretty awesome discovery, right there. It really was. Yeah, I wonder how much sooner I would have figured that out if I wasn't screwing everything else up. You know what I mean? If I'd have just been dedicated to working on my body, I could have probably had five years that I lost, you know, partying.

• 3:27:22Jocko Willink?

  Near the end of his baseball season, at about 4:00 PM,

• 3:27:28Jocko Willink?

  got a message. "Grandpa was just rushed to the hospital by ambulance. Read a text from my mother that would alter my course forever. I called her on the phone to get the details and comfort her if there was some way that I could. She was clearly anguishing. What can a son say to a mother who is witnessing her rock wash away?"

• 3:27:49Jocko Willink?

  That night, sitting on the balcony of my apartment in West Jordan, Utah, staring at my tomato plants, I wondered what I would do in a world without him. I wished to be away from the bright lights and noise of the city, sitting by a morning campfire, drinking coffee with him again. I knew I had long since begun to rediscover myself, but could I stay properly aimed without him? I had started hunting and fishing again. I went back to my roots. I read A Little Young, and became convinced of the importance of symbols, not just in a socio-cultural sense, but personally. I'd begun to wear my cowboy hat in public instead of only on the weekends,

• 3:28:29Jocko Willink?

  when I was away from the prying eyes of onlookers. Still, though this was a positive step backward, I had not truly returned home yet. And I didn't know exactly what that meant. I only knew that the answer lay somewhere in my history, somewhere in my roots. I think it is true that clothing does not make the man, but a display of what it is inside the heart. A cowboy hat may have been a trivial thing, but before I had descended to the underworld, I had worn it with pride. It was a symbol of honor, hard work, and respect of heritage. It had been so closely attached to that symbol that I'd worn one nearly every second of my life before I strayed. As a

• 3:29:11Jocko Willink?

  boy, it was no strange event for my mom to remove a hat from my head as I slept. My hat was the first thing my ex-wife brought to me when I was in Walter Reed recovering. I wore it nearly all the time after that. It was not a fashion statement, but a symbol of all my grandpa believed in. I thought a lot about all that my grandfather had taught me as a boy. He thought there were concrete skills and lessons required of a man from the West, and he made damn sure that I learned them. And in your footnote, you say, "By the West," you mean the Rocky Mountain West. I remembered his knuckles pressing into mountain mud to show me how a mature mule deer

• 3:29:52Jocko Willink?

  buck's weight causes depressions much different than a young buck or doe does. He showed me how to read the difference between an elk track that had just slid down a wet, muddy hillside, and one who was on a dead run. He tied his own flies for catching trout out of our mountain creeks, rivers, and lakes, all of which were different flies and weights of flies by his estimation, and he made sure I could do that, too. He taught me how to skin an animal by showing me how he did

• 3:30:19Jocko Willink?

  But he only let me practice on the lower legs of elk and deer he killed. He taught me how to trap and clean fish in game. He spent time on more abstract things like what it really means to be a man. That's a much harder concept to pin down on page. On one deer hunt, when I was about 10 years old, he handed me a raw liver from a buck he had just killed. He told me that taking a large bite of it was the only real rite of passage to manhood. When the metallic tasting fleshy substance filled the entirety entirety of my mouth and thick warm blood ran down my cheeks and neck, he let out a deep belly laugh. I realized the joke was on me. He was trying to teach me two lessons there.

• 3:31:02Jocko Willink?

  One, that no single physical act makes a man. And two, not everything an authority figure tells you is worth believing. Sometimes you're just the butt of a joke. You say that the positive step backward, normally we think step backward, we think of a negative connotation. But for you, like the cowboy hat was going back to your roots in a positive way. Yeah, not all progress is progress. It's a good note. A couple of days later, my girlfriend and I were back in my hometown at the church where his funeral would be held. The hallways were lined with pictures of him and my grandma, the love of his life and his best friend.

• 3:31:48Jocko Willink?

  He believed that family was the most important thing in life. There were dozens of pictures of him and his brothers, his kids and his grandchildren to prove it. Table sat on the other side of the doors to the chapel where his service would be held. Each was decorated with his prized belongings, his fly fishing pole, flies that he had tied and his hunting knife. On one table, atop a rack that held his recurve bow and leather quiver filled with wooden arrows, rested his brown cowboy hat.

• 3:32:20Jocko Willink?

  If it is true that you can tell the character of a man by the company he keeps, then I think it equally true that you can tell the type of man by the possessions his company believes he values.

• 3:32:33Jocko Willink?

  I stood staring at the hat for awhile. I remembered asking him if I could wear it around our deer camp when I was a young boy. He dropped it on my head and smiled. I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around with that hat like I was, like it was a crown fit for, for the king of kings.

• 3:32:53Jocko Willink?

  My great uncle, Uncle John, grandpa's younger brother, came up to us while I was daydreaming and asked how I was doing. John was a combat controller in Vietnam. He had seen more than his share, fair share of fighting. I knew intuitively that the question was meant to get at something deeper than how I felt at present. I answered it honestly. "Getting better, I think," I said. "How long have you been back now?" "About seven years or so." "Give it ten and you will be fine," he said. "You may be a mess for those ten years, but you'll be okay after that. It will always be there. It doesn't go, go away, but one day, all of a sudden, you'll have it under control." "Okay.

• 3:33:39Jocko Willink?

  Thank you."

• 3:33:42Jocko Willink?

  The host called the children and grandchildren up to the casket to pay final respects. Reluctantly, I walked up and put my arm around my mother. She was sobbing uncontrollably. Between gasps for air, she whispered, "Aren't you going to say goodbye?" "No. I'd rather this not be the last image I remember him by." She grabbed my hand and dragged me up to his body. Up until that point, I had hardly shed a tear. Grandpa taught me that men ought not to cry anyway.

• 3:34:21Jocko Willink?

  I tried to keep my composure. When I saw him lying there, hair combed perfectly, body, body dressed in his Sunday best, I broke down in a way I never have before or since.

• 3:34:37Jocko Willink?

  The flood of grief and despair twisted my face. I felt like I had been struck by an avalanche of emotion. It seemed as if every little bit of anguish I had collected throughout my lifetime welled up at once.

• 3:34:51Jocko Willink?

  I raised my black cowboy hat up to cover my face and wept. This was a different kind of pain than I had felt before. The kind that a person only encounters when he knows he had failed another that he loved and revered.

• 3:35:09Jocko Willink?

  For years after returning home from the war, I had lived less than two blocks away from grandpa and grandma, but I seldom visited them.

• 3:35:18Jocko Willink?

  When my mother asked me why I wasn't going to see my grandpa when I... More often, I always gave the same selfish pathetic excuse. "It's just too hard for me to see my hero withering away in a bed. I don't want to remember him like this."

• 3:35:37Jocko Willink?

  I think the full gravity of my selfishness hit me at that moment. It should never have been about me.

• 3:35:46Jocko Willink?

  What an ignorant wretch I was. As for the excuse that I had been using to avoid the situation, that was only half true anyway. The whole truth was, yes, it was hard to see him like that, but I was running from everything in my life after the war. I was running from my emotions, from my responsibilities as a man, and from my own mind.

• 3:36:08Jocko Willink?

  My mistakes, as happens to all of us when we fail, were too often thrust onto other people I loved most around me. Sure, I was paying for them too, but so were they.

• 3:36:20Jocko Willink?

  And they had done nothing to deserve it.

• 3:36:23Jocko Willink?

  I failed a man that I loved more than life itself. My selfishness had hurt him when he needed me most, and it was too late to make up for it.

• 3:36:37Jocko Willink?

  All I could do is weep. And that's all I did.

• 3:37:05Jocko Willink?

  Well, it does seem like the, um, these, these moments throughout the book that, um,

• 3:37:16Jocko Willink?

  when you read them, you think of this, this, this, is this the one, is this the one that's gonna kinda get you up on step, get you to kinda transition away from this, this negative path. And it certainly seems like this one had a big impact.

• 3:37:38Speaker 02

  Yeah, I definitely wish he could see where we're at now.

• 3:37:49Jocko Willink?

  Well, I wish he could've seen you when you walked into my gym today, um, down here in Southern California in San Diego, sporting a cowboy hat. I'm sure he'd be, he'd be hella proud.

• 3:38:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he loved his grandkids and I wish he could see my kids, you know, and

• 3:38:08Speaker 02

  see how good life is now. Obviously, I can't, you know, I can't go back and be there for them when I should've been, but...

• 3:38:21Jocko Willink?

  Well, one thing that is, uh, another thing that's positive is, someone sitting here listening right to this right now, I guarantee, at least one person, I don't know how many, but I know at least a minimum of one, is gonna, is gonna make that move and go and spend time with people they care about that they should.

• 3:38:39Speaker 02

  I hope so.

• 3:38:39Jocko Willink?

  So, um, that lesson that you learned now gets passed on.

• 3:38:51Jocko Willink?

  You um, as you, as, as you go through that, you start to realize that you missed what, like the various things that you missed about being in the military, the various things you've missed about being in combat specifically. Uh, and you realized you missed even training and getting ready and preparing, which are really positive things in life. Um, you say, you say in the book, "I, I miss training. I love the feeling of conquering a particularly difficult day at work. The kind of satisfaction that one only gets when he thinks it improbable to overcome the challenge before he begins.

• 3:39:35Jocko Willink?

  That reminded me, I did run a while back, maybe I can run a full mile now. I decided to call up my old friend and first line leader Johnny. I knew he had been running marathons and triathlons since he returned from Iraq. Surely, he would love to be there when I ran my first mile since the suicide bombing crippled me. I called him up, "Hey, bro, I wanna run a mile." Uh, you, you, so you go out, you do it, um. "We finished the mile loop in about seven minutes and thirty seconds. I was proud of my pace, but something else struck me after we finished. My ego was the problem. I had discovered that I was the root of most of my psychological problems years before this, and I had taken some measures to get better.

• 3:40:18Jocko Willink?

  What I hadn't realized was the role ego was playing in all my suffering. I started to look back at every ill-advised decision I had ever made, every argument I'd ever been in, and the grudge against the army that I had held. Nearly all of them could be traced back to my ego." And you, you, you, you talk about those. I mean, just like the, well, an example is, you're pissed that the army didn't keep you in.

• 3:40:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:40:47Jocko Willink?

  And yet, you say in the book, you're like, "Hey, I wasn't capable. I couldn't freaking, you know, like, carry a rock. I couldn't shoot a gun right now, how are they gonna keep me in?"

• 3:40:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:40:57Jocko Willink?

  But in your mind, your ego was like, "They should've kept me in."

• 3:41:01Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, I mean, how stupid can you possibly be? But I, yeah, I don't know what I thought, other than that I was pissed at them for a long time. Yeah, I mean, you're right, and it, it's...

• 3:41:18Speaker 02

  And I think it's really easy to, and it is a hundred percent of your ego, but it's really easy to start doing that thing where you're like, wow, do you want me to just treats me like a number and all this stuff. I was like, whoa, yeah, man, they got like a half a million people they got to, bro. What do you want them to write you a letter?

• 3:41:37Speaker 02

  Yeah. But yeah, really, it's, it is, everything is ego. Even still today, when I screw something up, which is, you know, a daily occurrence, it's almost every time, my own ego, like almost every time. Yesterday, I got pissed at something. I don't even remember what it was now. About a half hour later, I was like, yeah, that was me. That was me too.

• 3:41:57Jocko Willink?

  The path is not an easy path.

• 3:42:01Jocko Willink?

  The path is not an easy path.

• 3:42:05Jocko Willink?

  This is my wife's birthday today. And she's, she's overseas right now. And I like woke up in the morning. So she's in a different time zone, right? I woke up in the morning and like, I got shit to do, right? You know what I'm saying? I got, I got to take a call, work up, work out. So I wake up and there's a family group text. And it says, um, you know, happy birthday. It's from my daughter that's overseas with my, with my, you know, happy birthday, mom. Group, family group text. And I'm like, okay, cool. You know, I'm, hey, cool. But I, you know, I'm not gonna like, I didn't text at that moment in time. Right? So I wake up, work out, uh,

• 3:42:48Jocko Willink?

  you know, do my morning stuff, go for a run, ice bath, right? Do the whole nine yards. And I look at my texts and there's a text off the family group texts only from my wife.

• 3:43:02Jocko Willink?

  It says, thanks for the birthday text today.

• 3:43:07Jocko Willink?

  That's not the end of the story, bro. So in my mind, I was like, oh, that's interesting. I was kind of a little bit surprised and I was all, and here's the funny, so in my mind, I was like, I just got home from a trip, from a work trip. I was gone for four days. I worked, how many hours a day did I work at the muster?

• 3:43:28Speaker 01

  Sixteen.

• 3:43:28Jocko Willink?

  Sixteen hours a day at the muster. Uh, just constantly on the go, talking to people, shaking hands, delivering up on stage, doing all this stuff. Get home from that. I gotta finish reading your book, Braxton. Then it's Father's Day. What do I do on Father's Day? Prep this podcast. So that's what I'm doing on Father's Day. And then I wake up, I did, I gotta, I know I gotta record this day. I had another call, a big call in the morning. And now I'm thinking my wife is like texting me like, oh, you know, she's on vacation.

• 3:44:01Jocko Willink?

  But you know what? I was like, you know what? Just, I'm just gonna, you know, just text her and say, hey, you know, sorry about that. I was, you know. And then before I could even respond, cause I was gonna sit on it for a little while, breathe, you know, take a breath. Then my wife sends me a text on the, not the family group text, just hers. And it says, that was Rana, my daughter. So my daughter tricked, she tried to trick me. I laughed about it. I was like, yeah, I knew. I said allegedly, oh yeah, I knew. I will say, I was kinda, it was kinda strange that she would have written that. That's why I was kinda surprised.

• 3:44:37Speaker 01

  Like was out of character.

• 3:44:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was out of character. I thought maybe something bad had happened, like some annoying thing, you know? Like whatever made Braxton mad, something like that. Something that made her mad. But luckily I didn't respond. Imagine if I would have responded in anger?

• 3:44:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:44:53Jocko Willink?

  Don't do that.

• 3:44:53Speaker 01

  That goes to show.

• 3:44:54Jocko Willink?

  That's ego. Gotta keep that ego in check. I kept the ego in check is what I'm saying.

• 3:44:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:44:58Jocko Willink?

  But it sometimes can be tricky.

• 3:44:59Speaker 01

  Good, good thing you, uh, relaxed, uh.

• 3:45:01Jocko Willink?

  Looked around, made a call.

• 3:45:03Speaker 01

  Step back, yeah.

• 3:45:04Jocko Willink?

  Step back, put my ego in check. But that's the thing. What was causing my, like all that little, that little trail of thoughts that I had? I was doing this and I was doing that. I was working so hard and you're making, it was just ego, ego, ego, ego. So before I even responded, I was just like, okay, you know what? And you know what I thought to myself? And I do this a lot. Good. I want my wife to be at a point where if she can be on vacation in a foreign country, by the way, that I'm paying for. And she could be mad because I didn't send her a birthday text at four thirty-four in the morning when I woke up.

• 3:45:37Speaker 01

  That's a good.

• 3:45:37Jocko Willink?

  That's a good, that's you know, that's when you know things are good for her. So I was kinda a little bit stoked. But you gotta watch that ego, man. You gotta watch that thing. It's ready to bite.

• 3:45:51Jocko Willink?

  This is cool. This is where we start going. Man, you say, "From that point forward, my life began to morph rapidly. When I was a younger man, I thought courage, strength, and tenacity were traits that made a man worthy of the title, but by exercising each of those traits at different times during and after the war, I realized they were not enough. They are important, highly important, but they are not sufficient enough to make life worth living. I realized that what grandpa had been trying to teach me all along was that a good man and a good life are made of balance, growth, and selflessness. If those three things are a person's substrate, everything else will take care of itself. Strength is important, but it must be balanced with caring. Selfishness, as hard as it may be to spot,

• 3:46:34Jocko Willink?

  erodes the purveyor, or sorry, selfishness, as hard as it may be to spot, erodes the purveyor, the victim, and all those caught in between. If a person is focused on growth, no matter the challenge, he or she will always come out better than they were before the impetus. A mindset of growth helps us internalize our mistakes and craft better strategies for the next bout of trouble. If we can do it without crushing our spirits under the weight of our own self-judgment, that is."

• 3:47:05Jocko Willink?

  Here's where we get rocking and rolling. "I decided to quit smoking cold turkey. It was difficult, but by no means excruciating. I limited my drinking to a couple days a week and started each day at 5:00 a.m. This latter bit being the key to squashing low-key alcoholism most abruptly. The change in my habits helped expedite what was already the most rapid physical change my body had gone through since Walter Reed. Every morning, I stretched out, then ran a mile. Soon that turned into two miles. I was lifting weights in my garage, yeah, every morning and doing a 30-minute workout at night. I couldn't exercise enough to satisfy my lust for health and vigor. Once my body was strong enough

• 3:47:46Jocko Willink?

  to endure a little hiking, I set out looking for the teacher who had taught me the most valuable lessons in my youth: the mountain. Each mile up, those blustering ridges cut through my delusions. The mountain is indifferent to our existence. We are nothing but another speck upon its rims, no more or less important than the rock beneath our feet or the deer we chase. Ego is no currency in the wilderness. That's a lesson we can all stand to learn."

• 3:48:14Jocko Willink?

  I rediscovered God, or at least, or at the very least, you could say that I had rediscovered meaning, but I think that's a distinction without any real difference in the vastness of the wild. The indifference of the Rockies humbled me. Humility and truth set me free. I'm starting to feel pretty good about this book now. You started speaking, and you had been speaking. But, you know, it's weird, you talk about when you're speaking, you kind of felt like a fraud, like you'd be telling people like, "Yeah, you can overcome anything," and you'd be like, "I'm full of shit."

• 3:48:50Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100%.

• 3:48:52Jocko Willink?

  Those people hopefully claw back their money, come and get their money back.

• 3:48:55Speaker 02

  Well, that was for, uh, that was for that not-for-profit, though, so they weren't like paying me.

• 3:48:59Jocko Willink?

  Got it, got it.

• 3:49:01Speaker 02

  The not-for-profit was hiring me.

• 3:49:03Jocko Willink?

  You doing corporate events, you were talking to, you know, professional athletes. Then you went to this summit in Vail. There was a bunch of academic people there. One of those people was a monk who taught ethics at MIT. You say this, "He taught us the most valuable lesson I had ever learned. Life is suffering. It is only by accepting that fact that we can lessen it." I'd been saying something close to that in speeches for years, but he helped concretize it for me. I was done laying my problems at the feet of others. I got online and searched for any information I could find on brain injuries. I found that I had demonstrable signs of TBI. I remembered that the VA sent me a letter listing all the most common symptoms of both

• 3:49:46Jocko Willink?

  brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder. I wasn't gonna read these, but I actually am going to, just because it's important for people to know these things. Common symptoms of PTSD. One, re-experience the event over and over again. You can't put it out of your mind, no matter how hard you try. You have repeated nightmares about the event. You have vivid memories, almost like it was happening all over again. You have a strong reaction when you encounter reminders, such as a car backfiring. Two, you avoid places or feelings that remind you of the event. You work hard at putting it out of your mind. You feel numb and detached, so that you don't have to feel anything. You avoid people or places that remind you of the event. Three, you feel keyed up or on edge at all times. You may startle easily.

• 3:50:31Jocko Willink?

  You may be irritable or angry at all, all the time, for no apparent reason. You are always looking around, hyper vigilant of your surroundings. You may have trouble relaxing or getting sleep. And then this thing that you looked up goes on to talk about TBI. Common signs of brain injury. Difficulty organizing daily tasks. Blurred vision or eyes tire easily. Headaches or ringing in the ears. Feeling sad, anxious, or listless. Feeling irritated or angered. Feeling tired all the time. Feeling lightheaded or dizzy. Trouble with memory, attention, or concentration. More sensitive to sounds, lights, or distractions. Impaired decision making or problem solving. Difficulty inhibiting behavior. Impulsive. Slowed thinking, moving, speaking, or reading. Easily confused.

• 3:51:15Jocko Willink?

  Feeling easily overwhelmed. Change in sexual interest or behavior.

• 3:51:21Jocko Willink?

  And then you say this. The last 150 pages of this book and the decade it took to live it. Look in retrospect like an aggregate of those symptoms played out in one person's experience. I had long understood that the VA wasn't taking my brain injury very seriously. But after reading that paper, it became immediate that I. It became immediately apparent that I had not taken the brain injury I incurred seriously enough.

• 3:51:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'm pretty sure that was actually straight from the letter that they had just mailed me.

• 3:51:52Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:51:53Speaker 02

  Like, that's the chart from or whatever the memo.

• 3:51:57Jocko Willink?

  Isn't it kind of interesting to take all those symptoms? And just send it to on a letter to someone that has these symptoms? Like, you won't be able to do exactly what it says. Like, this makes no sense whatsoever. Like, you wouldn't even be able to read this thing because you'd be irritated. You'd be confused. You're having trouble like organizing shit. They want you to do all this? What's wrong with them?

• 3:52:19Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking ridiculous.

• 3:52:27Jocko Willink?

  You know, this is important section. What was I to do with the fact that my brain, the organ we use to process reality, was permanently damaged? I didn't want to blame my own personal failures, and there were many. This is such a key point. I didn't want to blame my own personal failures, and there were many, on something that was out of my control. I knew that was too simple an answer. The temptation to use this new information as a scapegoat was strong. But deep down in my core, I knew that taking that path would only lead me toward more suffering. I wasn't going to do that again. I decided that the best I could do was accept that I had incurred an injury that had made and would continue to make my life harder than it was before. It was time to move forward with that fact fully internalized.

• 3:53:11Jocko Willink?

  Scapegoating would be another cop out, more cowardice. I was done with that road. So you had a realization that, okay, you read through all this stuff and instead of saying, well, okay, that's why I've been behaving this way. It's like, no.

• 3:53:26Speaker 02

  No.

• 3:53:26Jocko Willink?

  No, no scapegoat.

• 3:53:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, you can't, you, I mean, you can, maybe you can give yourself a little bit of a, like, cause I tend to carry a lot of, I tend to place a lot of burden on myself, like, for shit I've done in my life and making, makes it a little easier to be like, all right, whatever. You know, let some of that stuff in the past, it makes it easier to let things in the past go. But you can't use, you can't use it moving forward or you just fuck your life up.

• 3:53:53Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:53:54Speaker 02

  You have to just accept that this is a thing. And really, like, even like, let's say the impulsivity stuff or the trouble organizing, well, you get a fine to work around.

• 3:54:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:54:04Speaker 02

  That's it.

• 3:54:05Jocko Willink?

  And just think, if you, if you think to yourself, well, oh, I have PTSD and TBI. That's why I'm impulsive. Now you're just like, oh, and I'm cleared hot.

• 3:54:15Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:54:15Jocko Willink?

  To be even more impulsive.

• 3:54:17Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 3:54:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:54:18Speaker 02

  We can stand up again, like, I'm up.

• 3:54:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, or, oh, I have trouble organizing things. That's why I'm late to the, you know, whatever. That's why I didn't turn in this thing. Like, yeah, you can use that excuse, or like you said, you can say, oh, I know I have trouble organizing, so I gotta write stuff down. I gotta make a plan. I gotta put reminders there, whatever.

• 3:54:34Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:54:35Jocko Willink?

  Freaking actually take ownership of it.

• 3:54:41Jocko Willink?

  A good friend of mine in a Green Beret we call preacher stopped over around the time I discovered this problem. While we were visiting, I shared with him my new worldview about the importance of humility and acceptance and how I felt the mountain could teach a man both things. Then he tells you this, there is a forbidden mountain hike on the big island of Hawaii that you have gotta do. You have to start your ascent around midnight so you can reach the peak before sunrise. The view is incredible. Echo Charles?

• 3:55:11Speaker 01

  I don't know which one.

• 3:55:12Jocko Willink?

  Not familiar? Not familiar?

• 3:55:14Speaker 01

  Not off the bat.

• 3:55:15Jocko Willink?

  It's overlooking Hilo. Is it a name?

• 3:55:18Speaker 02

  Monica. It's Monica and he was being totally full of shit. It's not, he was just trying to get me to go. It's not forbidden hike.

• 3:55:25Jocko Willink?

  Oh, he just called it that?

• 3:55:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, he just, he was like, yeah, there's this trail. It's illegal, man. You gotta just jump on it. I was like, alright.

• 3:55:33Speaker 01

  Tell you something about Monica. That's the first time I ever saw snow in my life. Monica.

• 3:55:39Jocko Willink?

  What's the altitude? Do you know the altitude?

• 3:55:40Speaker 02

  Thirteen three.

• 3:55:41Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it's thirteen three, damn.

• 3:55:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's high. And there's like, at the very top, it's hard there. You know, there's, there is, there's like nine or 10 different peaks, like small ones, you know, whoops. Like so, cause it's a volcano, right? So there's like lots of little, like extra. It's hard to tell which is like the real peak. I mean, there's an observatory, but.

• 3:56:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:56:04Speaker 02

  But then there's all those, I mean, I'm looking at you like you're fucking.

• 3:56:08Speaker 01

  A little bit.

• 3:56:08Jocko Willink?

  He knows a little bit. He's from Hawaii.

• 3:56:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm.

• 3:56:13Speaker 01

  Still not an expert on Monica though, so you know.

• 3:56:18Jocko Willink?

  So you get this goal, you start freaking training, cause you're gonna go climb the forbidden mountain.

• 3:56:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:56:27Jocko Willink?

  On your way there, you, you, you get on the, the dating app.

• 3:56:33Jocko Willink?

  And you swipe right.

• 3:56:37Jocko Willink?

  And on, on a, on a female, a girl named Randee, R A N D E.

• 3:56:45Jocko Willink?

  That's why you're sitting in the airport at Salt Lake. And then you land and you find, you land in Kona. You find out that you had, she had matched.

• 3:56:57Jocko Willink?

  Dude, I did this, I'm, I'm too old for all that. Like I, I mean, I was married and I'm just too old and missed that whole. That whole thing. The whole thing.

• 3:57:09Jocko Willink?

  To think back in the day, you had to just randomly meet a female out of all the millions of females. And now you can just literally go on and Access upon access. Access upon access.

• 3:57:25Speaker 02

  Well, and the problem I didn't have

• 3:57:26Jocko Willink?

  And kind of a pre-screened access too. Like, hey, like, you're writing about, you're looking at her little profile and she's like shooting a bow, right? And like, whatever, she's got a dog, she's shooting her bow. Yeah. You're like, check.

• 3:57:44Jocko Willink?

  Pre-screened, hey, I want someone that, I want a female that is brunette and knows how to shoot archery. Like, good to go.

• 3:57:51Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 3:57:52Jocko Willink?

  But I cut you off, what were you gonna say?

• 3:57:53Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no. I had, you know, I tried like the bar, like, if you're in your mid, mid, mid to late twenties, I mean, I don't know really where you meet chicks, you know, it's like the bar or the grocery store. And so, like, I tried the bar thing, that shit don't work. So, I was like, willing to try just about anything at that point. And a lot of people say, like, go to church, and I guess that's probably a good answer, but I, I didn't go to church, so.

• 3:58:20Jocko Willink?

  But I mean, even if you went to church, you could meet, how many girls at church? Nine?

• 3:58:24Speaker 02

  Right.

• 3:58:24Jocko Willink?

  You know, maybe like twenty, twenty, thirteen? I don't know.

• 3:58:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:58:28Jocko Willink?

  But you go on the app and it's like you can meet, how many? A million? A million girls? Right, Echo Charles?

• 3:58:35Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 3:58:35Jocko Willink?

  I know, you don't either, but I'm saying, because you're the technical expert here, you're the tech guy.

• 3:58:39Speaker 01

  I would guess one million, yes.

• 3:58:42Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 3:58:42Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 3:58:43Jocko Willink?

  Am I wrong?

• 3:58:44Speaker 01

  I don't know if you're wrong or not.

• 3:58:45Jocko Willink?

  It's gotta be a lot, right? A lot of people use the interwebs.

• 3:58:47Speaker 01

  It's gotta be a lot.

• 3:58:49Jocko Willink?

  You know what? I actually do know. You know why? Because I got friends that are kind of in the game still. And they'll be like, bro.

• 3:58:56Speaker 01

  There's a lot.

• 3:58:57Jocko Willink?

  There's a lot. It's a million.

• 3:59:00Jocko Willink?

  Well, of those millions, you swipe right on the bow hunter.

• 3:59:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:59:05Jocko Willink?

  And, or at least the archery.

• 3:59:08Jocko Willink?

  And you land there.

• 3:59:12Jocko Willink?

  You end up sending her like a, just a text back and then you end up climbing this mountain.

• 3:59:20Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna fast forward past the details of the climb, it's pretty cool to read about the climb and what, what happened on that. You have another, like, you have some more, let's say, moments of discovery in that and, and.

• 3:59:37Jocko Willink?

  I'll say this, you say the Forbidden Mountain, allegedly Forbidden Mountain is the gateway to the grandest sunrise on earth. I reflected on my life atop that volcano, all 29 years of it.

• 3:59:51Jocko Willink?

  And um, I'm gonna, I'm gonna fast forward now to the, to the, kind of the, I guess it's this, a little bit of the summation of what you talk about towards the end of this and the things that you figured out. And again, I'm hitting the highlights. This is a book, almost 300-page book of lessons for, for anyone, for any human being, filled with lessons for any human being. Here are some of them. I spent almost a decade suffering things in my youth I never could have imagined. Some caused by life, some were caused by associating

• 4:00:31Jocko Willink?

  with the wrong people, other bouts by society, but most can be laid directly at my own feet.

• 4:00:42Jocko Willink?

  So many more, so many of our problems. It's a lot more than we think. The problems that we caused, the problems that we initiated. Yeah, look, like you said, life's gonna bring some at you. Some, some, some people are gonna bring them at you sometimes. Sometimes society's gonna bring these problems to you. But way more than we think are because of us.

• 4:01:09Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. When I was wounded, I made a clear choice, one of the few choices I ever made that I'm deeply proud of. I decided that I would rather put my flesh in harm's way than have a friend of mine put at risk for reasons that I did not think were worthy. When I was lying on the ground bleeding to death, I was in a great deal of pain, torment that you cannot imagine if you've not endured it. But it wasn't suffering. I was serving my country, my family, and my brothers. I didn't truly suffer until I started lying to myself and to others about my problems with nightmares, stress, and sleep. Those

• 4:01:54Jocko Willink?

  lies built into other lies, and those lies built into more, until one day, I was a suicidal, nihilistic addict.

• 4:02:05Jocko Willink?

  I created my own hell and it nearly destroyed my soul.

• 4:02:13Jocko Willink?

  You continue on a little bit further. You can't hide from a dragon or he will burn down your entire village and all that you love and care about with it. You must face him.

• 4:02:25Jocko Willink?

  When I ran from the dragons, my life crumbled, the spirit split apart and burned. It was like my soul itself was fractured.

• 4:02:35Jocko Willink?

  Then one day I decided I would face my problems one at a time. I wanted to own them. When I did, or at least started to, I improved almost instantaneously. Then more popped up, more dragons. I think this is why we feel overwhelmed when we try to take on our problems. There are always dozens more than we thought there were. And it's not until we emerge from our cowardly little hiding places that we can see them all clearly. This overwhelming feeling can crush us if we had not stiffened our spine for combat. That is why I think it's important that we crush our most pressing physical obstacles before we try to take on the mental ones. If we can stop eating terrible diets that we know are killing us, if we can run when

• 4:03:17Jocko Willink?

  others say we can't walk, if we can put down the bottle that is drowning our soul, then we know we can do anything.

• 4:03:25Jocko Willink?

  The lessons we learn on the physical journey will steal our resolve for the longer, much harder fight for our mental and spiritual health. Sometimes when we first emerge and feel completely overwhelmed, we run back to our hiding places. We see so many little dragons that we are afraid of the aggregate of issues that will demolish us. Maybe that isn't the worst thing. Sometimes armies must retreat in order to regroup and acquire some help before they fight another day. We can use this philosophy as well, but we can't make it a habit. We must go back into the fray again the moment we are ready, and again.

• 4:04:05Jocko Willink?

  Then we become practiced. We have dulled our swords on so many small dragons that we understand their weaknesses as well as we do our own. This gives us the ability to take them out more easily, to see them for the miniscule issues that they often are. Fear makes the wolf bigger than he is. The best antidote for fear is experience. The first step then is to get the physical body in order, no matter what that takes, no matter how steep the climb may be. The next is to stand up for truth in your own life, all the time. I swore an oath to my brothers in Arlington. I failed to keep it many times and probably will fail again, but I am on the course right now.

• 4:04:46Jocko Willink?

  Those failures will happen less and less often as I gain more and more experience. You may not have a national shrine to cling as your guiding light, but maybe you're a mother or a father. You have your children and their futures. Certainly, my kids are the centerpiece of my life now. What better thing could you do for them than to get yourself together? To lead by example? To face your mistakes, fears, and the chaos of life with a steel spirit and selfless heart? What better thing could you do? Nothing. Teach them to manifest courage, integrity, honor, and selflessness in their own lives

• 4:05:25Jocko Willink?

  by living those virtues so fully that they cannot help, but to see them displayed. Slay your dragons, or they will consume you. Slay your dragons, or they will consume you. Have you ever read my book, Mikey and the Dragons?

• 4:05:51Speaker 02

  No.

• 4:05:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh, God, okay. I'll be giving it to you shortly. It's, how old's your youngest?

• 4:05:58Speaker 02

  Uh, my youngest is eight months old. Uh, my daughter's 14 years old and my sons are three and four.

• 4:06:07Jocko Willink?

  Okay, cool. So, eight months. We got Mikey and the Dragons candidates there.

• 4:06:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:06:15Jocko Willink?

  So, the book is just outstanding. Um, so like I said, so many lessons learned in there. You did it. Did you, you, did you go to college?

• 4:06:25Speaker 02

  I went for like, a minute.

• 4:06:28Jocko Willink?

  What'd you study?

• 4:06:29Speaker 02

  Um, it was all like the, you like the stuff that you have to do, pre-rec stuff, you know, like your two years.

• 4:06:37Jocko Willink?

  How long did it take you to write this?

• 4:06:39Speaker 02

  Like, eight months, a year, something like that. I wrote a lot of that out of a backpack and a leather, I wrote the whole thing in a leather bound, in two leather bound, journals with a fountain pen, because I'm a fucking nerd. And then, transferred that onto a computer.

• 4:06:59Jocko Willink?

  Leather bound notebook in a fountain pen. You still have that?

• 4:07:02Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, I got both of them, so.

• 4:07:04Jocko Willink?

  That's pretty legit.

• 4:07:05Speaker 02

  That's pretty cool.

• 4:07:06Jocko Willink?

  That's pretty cool. I don't have any cool stories like that. Like a, like a sitting there with a word processor. I have no, none of that stuff. You talk about a little in the book, what, but what made you decide to start writing this?

• 4:07:22Speaker 02

  I started writing it at first, almost right after they retired me, but it was just bad. And I, you just like knew I wasn't ready. Like what, I don't know, I just knew I wasn't ready and, um, and then when I was doing all those corporate gigs, uh, you know, you're always constantly getting prompted to write a book and I was, I kind of thought like, why, for what, you're like, I don't know, I just didn't feel like there was a story in there. And then, a good friend of mine kept pushing on me and I finally thought, well, maybe I'll give it a shot and, kind of looked around and, the,

• 4:08:03Speaker 02

  you know, the other, the other stories that were around just didn't seem to be filling that.

• 4:08:08Speaker 02

  They just didn't seem to be conveying exactly what I was seeing my friends go through. You know, like, or me. I had some friends that were doing really great. And then I had some friends that were going to jail. And some, you know, one committed suicide, you know, and I just felt like no one was telling the full story. And I also didn't want, it felt like the two genres of Iraq war book were either like heroism or super whiny crybaby shit. And then just, the heroism stuff is great and, I mean, every culture has always done, that's great.

• 4:08:49Speaker 02

  And that should continue, but like the super whiny bitch shit, we just, there's no reason for that. But I understand the attempt to kind of try to write something different. And I said, well, I'll just try to tell my story and hopefully it will fit somewhere, not on the whiny bitch scale. You know, and like fill that other gap. And you know, I mean, I knew that I couldn't be the only guy that had had, I gotta think that there's at least 10,000 guys from the GWAT that have had similar stories, you know, maybe not exact same wounds, but.

• 4:09:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're, they're definitely out there. So then, so you finished the book, this got published in 2017?

• 4:09:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:09:29Jocko Willink?

  And so what are you up to now? So obviously you married Randy, how do you say her name, was Randy?

• 4:09:34Speaker 02

  Randy, yeah.

• 4:09:34Jocko Willink?

  So you married Randy, you got kids, and what are you doing?

• 4:09:40Speaker 02

  I start cults, um, full time, I'm a cult starter. And hold on, can really quickly before we go on, I just want to point out that I did say in the book that he bullshitted me, that it wasn't really forbidden on the hike. I just want to clear that out. Yeah, sorry. Anyway, that was eating at me.

• 4:09:57Jocko Willink?

  No, yeah, no.

• 4:09:58Speaker 02

  So.

• 4:09:59Jocko Willink?

  Wait, when did he say that? When did he tell you it was bullshit, that it wasn't forbidden, before you hiked it?

• 4:10:04Speaker 02

  Well, he didn't have to tell me, once I got.

• 4:10:05Jocko Willink?

  Oh, once you got there, there was a big trail line?

• 4:10:09Jocko Willink?

  So it was before you got there, he said, it's not really forbidden?

• 4:10:11Speaker 02

  No, no, no, I'm saying I put in the book that he was bullshitting me.

• 4:10:17Speaker 02

  Does this make you sense? What I was saying is I just don't want someone out there listening thinking that I was calling this a forbidden hike because people would be like, "What the hell is he talking about?"

• 4:10:24Jocko Willink?

  Apparently, the only person that thought was a forbidden hike was me.

• 4:10:30Speaker 02

  No, yeah, so, uh, but I'm a colt starter, so I train, train horses to start colts and, and train some horses and I've been working on another book for a while. Uh, nothing to do with me, to do with, uh, the roots of, um, like, America.

• 4:10:49Speaker 02

  The best way I think I would articulate it is when people, when you ask somebody what it means to be American, they have all of these ideas of where that, that sort of ethos came from. And my contention is that it was born on the pioneers, in, uh, excuse me, on the American frontier by pioneers from, you know, Kentucky all the way to California. I mean, like, you can point to, like, let's say like this, if you were to ask an American to describe what it means to be an American, they're going to talk about shit like fortitude, perseverance, loyalty, dedication, love of family, country, you know, spirit, right?

• 4:11:33Speaker 02

  I mean, you can point to like Valley Forge and maybe a couple of battles, but other than that, the Eastern Seaboard was like pretty much Europe 2.0. You know, I'm saying it's glorious, lots of war glories there and we fought, our forefathers fought hard to steal Europe 2.0 from them, but everything that happened on the frontier was new. It had never happened in, well, hadn't happened in 10,000 years, anything like that before. And so that's why America felt so different because it had really had a totally different birth than any of these other nations. So I've been working on that for a while. Uh, and then, you know, like I say, ride colts and then I run this bunkhouse deal where I take guys out once a month to

• 4:12:18Speaker 02

  train on different things. And like last weekend, we were doing some advanced home defense training in Utah with a Green Beret dude working in shoot houses and.

• 4:12:31Speaker 02

  Stuff like that and we've taken dudes up hunting and we've run, I just facilitate all these courses, but we've done field med courses and yeah, we've done long range rescuing courses with some guys and yeah, we just, so anyway, these are basically my main focus and so far as work goes and then after that it's just family.

• 4:12:54Jocko Willink?

  How big is your ranch?

• 4:12:56Speaker 02

  So as a horse trainer, I can only ride, well, it used to be I could ride about 10 a month, but now I kind of have too many other things. So now I can only ride about six a month. So I keep about 15 head of horses at my house at any one time and then once they're ready, I sell them and move on.

• 4:13:12Jocko Willink?

  And what's the name of the company that does all like the tactical training?

• 4:13:18Speaker 02

  Bunkhouse. It's the Bunkhouse LLC, but it's not just tactical stuff. Like I've taught basic horsemanship with them. I did a backcountry navigation course with some people, taught how to hunt basics course to people like how to hunt the mountains, basic stuff. So we try to spread out like jack of all trades type skills as much as we can, kind of become more generalist.

• 4:13:43Jocko Willink?

  Who are your clients?

• 4:13:44Speaker 02

  These guys, well, it's all, it's just a membership deal. So it's members and then they just come and we just take them out. And every Wednesday, we have some expert from somewhere come on and we'll just do a quick zoom call and they'll have an hour like usually me and that guy or girl, we'll just have a back and forth and then we'll open it up and they can ask questions and cover different, you know, whatever.

• 4:14:08Jocko Willink?

  How many people are members of the Bunkhouse?

• 4:14:10Speaker 02

  We don't have a lot, like 350, something like that. So it's easy to get into courses, you know, it's super easy. But yeah, I do that. It's kind of like a side passion project thing.

• 4:14:21Jocko Willink?

  And if people want to do that, where do they go to sign up for that?

• 4:14:24Speaker 02

  bunkhouse.braxymcroy.com.

• 4:14:26Jocko Willink?

  Check. So you said that's your side project. What's your main project?

• 4:14:31Speaker 02

  Riding colts.

• 4:14:32Jocko Willink?

  That's the deal, huh?

• 4:14:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's my jam. I love that shit. I love it. Yeah. So I've always loved it. But now I think it's really good for me mentally now too. Cause you can't like young horses. You gotta stay present and focused. You can't, you can't be thinking about other shit or worrying about other shit. You gotta be on that horse, like with him all the time. So I think it's good for me too.

• 4:14:59Jocko Willink?

  How long does a transition take before they're ready to go out? To, to, before you're ready to give them to somebody else or sell them to somebody else?

• 4:15:07Speaker 02

  It depends a lot on the horse. Uh, it depends a lot on the horse. So if I'm riding like an outside horse, it'd be like a client's horse. I'll usually ride him for sixty to ninety days for him and then send him off. But I only do a little bit of that now because I, I rode so many for people that they would take him and then just not ride him after they left. And the problem is like you get a two-year-old that you put sixty days on and then the owner goes and just parks it in a pasture for like six months and then goes to try to get on it the next spring. It's like the horse doesn't even remember anything, you know? So now I only ride colts, outside horses for, for one big ranch that's a neighbor of mine. They, they run a big old spread. But I'll, I'll ride them for them because they'll take them and use them as soon as they get them back.

• 4:15:52Speaker 02

  But so the average, I would say, it depends on what you're asking that horse to do. But if you're trying to build like a safe trail horse, you could get a lot done, depending on the age of that horse, but you could get a lot done in a summer. As long as the other person will take him back and use them. Now, if you're sending it off to somebody who's like good and knows what they're doing, then usually they'll ask for sixty or ninety days riding on them and then take them. But like my stud horse, I bought him from that ranch I was just talking about because I was starting him for them. And I'd, uh, well Dwight Hill, probably the best horse trainer in the country, came out to help me with him, roping for me that first day. He wanted to show me some tricks.

• 4:16:34Speaker 02

  And so we, I rode him that day. I put that first, Dwight roped him for a bit and then I rode him. And then I took him out, roped him myself the next day. And then I rode him two more times. And then that fifth time, I took him out, moving cattle for like twelve miles for that ranch.

• 4:16:49Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 4:16:49Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he has one, he's a two-year-old. So it really depends on the horse, what you can get done. Now, he wasn't, he sure as hell wasn't broke by then, but he was, he was easy compared to a lot of other ones.

• 4:17:00Jocko Willink?

  He was getting there. What about your hunting? Uh, I mean, what's September looking like?

• 4:17:06Speaker 02

  I'm, you know, I'm hammered September. I got a New Mexico buck tag that I'm super excited about. I got a, a friend of mine gave me, actually he's, he's a mutual friend of Micah and I's. Gave me a, a wine cup bull elk tag. So that's, I'm so for that. And then obviously I got my elk out in Idaho and I got one buddy coming up to hunt in Idaho that I promised I'd take for a week. So I really don't have a day off in September.

• 4:17:31Jocko Willink?

  Is that, is that all bow?

• 4:17:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, for me, yeah.

• 4:17:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:17:38Jocko Willink?

  Freaking awesome. Uh, what else, man? What, does that get us up to present day? Is there anything else you need to tell us about?

• 4:17:46Speaker 02

  No, I mean, no, so a couple of things did happen that weren't in that book. That IVC filter, that it's like up in your, being a cave, a kinda behind, behind your kidneys essentially.

• 4:18:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just so everyone, I didn't read this part, but they, they had to put like a filter in your body to prevent clots from getting, what, to your lungs?

• 4:18:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:18:09Jocko Willink?

  And it's a, some kind of mesh filter that they put in. It just prevents blood clots from going through that screen. It's basically a screen and they had to put it in. And so you've had that in you for what, freaking a long time, 15 years?

• 4:18:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, well, yeah, well, I had it in for 12. Um, and that I went in, so I was, I was running endurance races for a while, doing really good. And actually like competitive in every race. I should have won the first one.

• 4:18:39Jocko Willink?

  How many, how far?

• 4:18:40Speaker 02

  The first one I ran was a duathlon. So it was a two mile run or it might've been a, yeah, it was a two mile run. And then I think a 20 mile bike ride and then a two mile run was the first one. And then I was training for an ultra when I had this issue with my heart. And I went in and they said I had a heart attack. I was like, whoa, that's great. So then I I had to quit training because, you know, heart attack. Well, it ended up that it wasn't a heart attack, which is great. So I go up to the University of Utah. Oh, and this the filter, the way this filter ties in here is the, I could get that out of my hands. What the fuck?

• 4:19:24Speaker 02

  And my doctor's like, it's, there's a potential that your filter is just like releasing protein into your blood, you know? Because like, I guess the way, like it's damaging that blood vessel in there and it's releasing protein. Because I guess the way that it's like a heart attack is protein in your bloodstream, a certain type of protein in your bloodstream. Uh, and that's what they had detected. So he's like, I said, can we get this thing out then? You know, like, because I'd really like to do this whole alter deal. And he said, no, you're stuck with that. It's been in there for too long. There's no way it's coming out. So I came home and got, you know, on Google, start looking and look like probably right. Like you probably couldn't get it out. So then I went.

• 4:20:06Jocko Willink?

  That's what I do when the doctor tells me something to I go home and Google it. What up? This dude doesn't know what he's talking about. We got Google, son. WebMD, what?

• 4:20:16Speaker 02

  So I went and got on J store and started looking for any article I could find in a turn or any paper, rather, I could find. And then turned out there's a doctor up, a radiologist, I think he is, I'm pretty sure, up in Penn State that had done, had to had removed like three or four of them or some shit, uh, at like, I forget, seven or eight years in. And I was over that, but, you know, so the max that I could find that had been length of time that I could find that had been removed was like seven or eight years. So meanwhile, I'm doing all this hard shit in between trying to figure this out. Well, finally, my my wife was like, why don't you just call the University of Utah and just ask the radiology department?

• 4:21:00Speaker 02

  I was like, those bitches, they don't, it's like, I can't find anything from them in the J store. Like, what do they know? You know? So she calls and she's like, hey, they said that you can come up for a consultation on Wednesday and that they do this all the time. They can get it out. I was like, okay. So we go up there. And meanwhile, I'm still waiting on all my heart prognosis stuff, right? And we go up there and meet with the the radiologist and he's like, yeah, come in on Friday, we'll take it out.

• 4:21:29Speaker 02

  Why is it a radiologist? Uh, because the way the procedure works is they have to keep you awake and they put some shit in your uh, in your blood so they can see it.

• 4:21:42Speaker 02

  So he, he's like coming on Friday and meanwhile, my primary care physician told me he's like, man, you know, if you try to get this removed, your, your vena cava could rupture and you know, like you, there's no way to plug that and so I'm all like stressed out.

• 4:21:56Speaker 02

  Damn, bro, you can give me like a week to think. So it ended up getting pushed off until the next Friday. But I went in and they got that sucker out. It was like, I guess the way, the way this guy had done it was so that the top of that deal, there's like a little loop. And I mean, that's how it was designed to be able to be removed. If, so they push this thing onto it and try to squish it together like this, cause it looks almost like an umbrella without a skirt on it. So they would push a deal over it, it would kind of squish the umbrella together. And if that doesn't work, then there's a loop on top of the filter and they would try to hook a thing on it and pull it out with that. But if that thing, the reason that people weren't able to get them out is if that thing straightened out, now you just have like a sharp thing

• 4:22:41Speaker 02

  in there and like how to get it out. So what this guy had done, he must've grew up like blue collar or something because he was like, I'll just put a damn alligator clamp on there and just shove that bitch down. So that's what he did. He invented like this tool. Anyway, he got that out, which was great. I mean, it's like my arm was stuck like this for a couple of days, cause they go down your jugular to rip it out.

• 4:23:06Speaker 02

  So that was good. I just wanted to like update, it was good. That thing's out of there and I don't have to worry about dying, cause they, my freaking doctor, when I went in, he's like, he's like, well, eventually that, you know, that IVC filter will just plug up. I was like, well, how long? Yeah, what's that? Doesn't sound cool. Yeah, and he's like, 10, 15 more years probably, maybe 30. I'm like, bro, I'm freaking 31 years old, man. Like, or was I 20? Yeah, I'm probably 30 at the time.

• 4:23:35Speaker 02

  So anyway, they got that out, which was great. And then we pushed on, on the heart stuff and it turned out. Then my heart was actually okay. They one of the scans, so they did an echo and then whatever that other one is where they uh put you through a CT and they look at some shit. I forget, but anyway, they'd give you like a calcium score on your arteries and all this. And I had a calcium score of zero. I told my wife, I was like, I got goddamn baby arteries. Like, I want to hear no more shit about all my steaks. Is that because you had filter in there for so long? Or why is that? I don't know. I don't really care. I just, I don't like, I don't want to hear any more shit about bacon and eggs and fatty steaks. Jack. My shit's good. Bring up the ribeyes, son.

• 4:24:17Speaker 02

  That's right. So it turns, it actually, it turned out, I just had a scar on my heart from getting hit in the plates with a explosion. Oh, damn. So, so my heart's good now. What did your plates look like after that? Do you know? Yeah, I could, oh, I got them. Yeah, I'll show you a picture, actually. Were they jacked up? Not really. The, so I, my, the plates I had, had a steel backer on them. It's like, I think they were, I can't remember what level they were at the time. Um, my, my uncle was a Did you have side zappy plates in? No. No, I took everything on the front. Um, yeah, my uncle was like a, I can't remember if

• 4:24:57Speaker 02

  he's a major or light colonel in the air force, like a, a rec investigator or something. And he had just rotated out and he had bought these fancy ass plates. So he just mailed them to me. So I had those in, so it worked out. Cause I took, I can't remember if it's five or six in the plate. The craziest part is That's game over, man. Oh, you Hundred percent. Two of them are like right here. I mean, Right by the heart. You'd be toast. Like, almost dead before you hit the ground. Yeah. Yeah. And the craziest part about those plates is I didn't realize this until one of my engineer buddies came over the other day and he was like checking them out, put them on my counter and it's like warped, like wobbles. So it's like I hit hard enough to like tweak it.

• 4:25:42Speaker 02

  What was the range that you got hit from? Probably 15 meters ish. And luckily, you know, I had my head down like this, I guess like this. So probably my K pot took a lot of that concussion. Oh, yeah. Instead of taking it all right here.

• 4:26:02Speaker 02

  Man, um.

• 4:26:06Jocko Willink?

  Does that get us up to present day?

• 4:26:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, man. Everything's good now. I got four kids and life is fucking great.

• 4:26:14Jocko Willink?

  Freaking outstanding, man. Outstanding. Uh, if people want to find you, um, you got Braxton McCoy dot com.

• 4:26:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:26:22Jocko Willink?

  That's like a central location for you. On Instagram, you're at Braxton McCoy.

• 4:26:27Speaker 02

  Braxton dot McCoy.

• 4:26:28Jocko Willink?

  Oh, sorry. All right. Braxton McCoy. That's B R X T O N.

• 4:26:32Speaker 02

  B R A X.

• 4:26:34Jocko Willink?

  All right, cool. Uh, B R A X. Freaking people getting super sensitive about this.

• 4:26:42Jocko Willink?

  B R A X T O N dot McCoy. And on Twitter, you're Braxton underscore McCoy. If people want to follow you or, uh, find you, you can find in any of those places. And you're doing, you're still, are you still speaking to companies or speaking to people? Or not really?

• 4:26:58Speaker 02

  Coronavirus kinda killed it for me.

• 4:27:00Jocko Willink?

  Check, check. Um, Echo Charles?

• 4:27:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:27:04Jocko Willink?

  Got any questions over there?

• 4:27:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, remember we were talking about your IT band?

• 4:27:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:27:08Speaker 01

  So where are we at with that? I mean, does it get like jammed up or what? Cause that's kind of a big deal, right?

• 4:27:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:27:14Speaker 01

  Like split down the, down the middle kinda?

• 4:27:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, every morning I, I heat up a bath as hot as I can tolerate it.

• 4:27:23Speaker 01

  Every morning?

• 4:27:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. And I, I mean, like if I'm at a hunting or training camp, but otherwise, every morning, hard as I get it and sit in there for 20 minutes and just try to stretch it with my hands and then I get out and stretch as much as I can. And then I roll it and just hope for the best.

• 4:27:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Does it like, like after a bout of like physical activity, does it like act up or like right after or whatever?

• 4:27:45Speaker 02

  Especially hunting, especially, yeah. My knees get jacked and it starts to dig, dig with my hips too. And my low back starts to get weird even. Just, yeah, everything gets kinda just out of place.

• 4:27:57Speaker 01

  And then you said you have ball bearings in you still?

• 4:28:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:28:02Speaker 01

  Damn, how many?

• 4:28:04Speaker 02

  Uh, I think it's around eight or so. I have to, I got, there's a picture on my Instagram. I'll look and see.

• 4:28:10Speaker 01

  That's crazy. And how big are these?

• 4:28:13Speaker 02

  They're like, uh.

• 4:28:16Jocko Willink?

  Size of a pea?

• 4:28:17Speaker 02

  A little bigger than a pea. Yeah, that's a good.

• 4:28:19Jocko Willink?

  Marble?

• 4:28:21Speaker 02

  Smaller than a marble, slightly bigger than a pea.

• 4:28:26Speaker 02

  I'd say a pea, roughly a pea. Like, they're little, they're literally wheel bearings is what they are.

• 4:28:31Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 4:28:32Speaker 01

  That's crazy. That's pretty typical with S V S scenarios.

• 4:28:36Jocko Willink?

  But they could put, like you were saying earlier, like they could put like nails and just random like bolts, nuts, just any metal crap that'll freaking rip you apart.

• 4:28:45Speaker 01

  That's crazy, man. Good to meet you, bro.

• 4:28:48Jocko Willink?

  What have you done with Micah?

• 4:28:50Speaker 02

  Uh, I've done it. No, I have never met him. We just have a mutual friend. I know a guy that knows him.

• 4:28:56Jocko Willink?

  You guys definitely need to link up.

• 4:28:57Speaker 02

  That's what he said.

• 4:28:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he's freaking awesome. Uh, any, any closing thoughts, bro?

• 4:29:03Speaker 02

  No, just thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

• 4:29:06Jocko Willink?

  Well, I'm sorry it took so long and, uh, thanks for joining us. More important, obviously, man, thanks for what you did in Ramadiu, you and the rest of the guys in the two-two-eight. Did an incredible job taking the fight to the enemy and, um, prepared the battlefield for us when we got there. And, and also made incredible sacrifices and we will not forget what, what you guys did. And we'll never forget your sacrifice or the sacrifices of guys like Lieutenant Colonel Michael McCoughlin and Sergeant Adam Cam and so many of the other brave soldiers and Marines

• 4:29:48Jocko Willink?

  who sacrificed their lives for their brothers and we will live to honor them. And thank you for helping us find a way to do that. Appreciate it, brother.

• 4:30:01Speaker 02

  Thank you, sir. I appreciate you.

• 4:30:04Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Braxton McCoy has left the building.

• 4:30:10Jocko Willink?

  Freaking outstanding guy and.

• 4:30:16Jocko Willink?

  Get the book. The book is, is just, it's, it's a great book. I, look, we, we scratched the surface on it. There's so much stuff. It's, I feel like, I feel like I didn't do a good job. I didn't do the book justice in what I read. I don't know, because there's a lot in there, man. There's a lot in there. And, and part of it is because you gotta kind of tell the story. You know what I mean?

• 4:30:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:30:40Jocko Willink?

  You gotta, I mean, at least that's what I feel. I feel like you gotta kind of know what's going on. And that kind of leads me to read a little bit more of the what's going on stuff. As opposed to some of that internal dialogue and some of the discovery and stuff like that. So it's just an awesome book. Order the book.

• 4:30:57Speaker 01

  I, I feel like I enjoyed, related, maybe in a weird way, more than normal with Ellen. Maybe it was because of how he was too. I think just the whole thing together. I was like, I felt

• 4:31:14Speaker 01

  not, I mean, in a way more into it, but more like

• 4:31:18Jocko Willink?

  You connected.

• 4:31:18Speaker 01

  Like, I, I connected with it a lot, like a lot more than than normal, I guess, given the circumstances, you know?

• 4:31:27Jocko Willink?

  You think maybe it's because he's more your age?

• 4:31:30Speaker 01

  But actually he's not more my, how old?

• 4:31:32Jocko Willink?

  I mean, he's thirty six.

• 4:31:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm like forty six, eight years.

• 4:31:37Jocko Willink?

  How old are you?

• 4:31:38Speaker 01

  Forty four. I know, I'm very youthful. I know, I know.

• 4:31:42Jocko Willink?

  I wasn't thinking youthful.

• 4:31:43Speaker 01

  Immature.

• 4:31:44Jocko Willink?

  Yes, that I was thinking.

• 4:31:46Speaker 01

  Okay, there you go. Uh, but what, he, the, the part like how he, he's talking about like the alcoholism. And then like his anger at this and anger at that, for some reason, like the way he put it was like, that's so true. Like, almost like, not that I necessarily felt all of that, but it was like, I felt like, I can see how that could be. I could totally see how that could be. And this one part that I think he like nailed was when he was like, something about the existence of the devil. Where alcohol and drugs are like his tools. Bro, it's so true. Bro, it's so true. Like, I'm almost, I'm almost tempted to say, freak, that is the devil. That's like, you know, the devil's like spirit coming down.

• 4:32:28Speaker 01

  And like touching people and jamming them up. Cause it's true where, and he was saying this, I, I don't know if he said it on air, but he was saying, I think it was before we were recording and he was like, Hey, people in school, um, or people like teachers and stuff in school, people when you're young, they don't tell you that drugs are like kinda good, like they feel good. Did you say that?

• 4:32:49Jocko Willink?

  No, he did say it on there, yeah.

• 4:32:50Speaker 01

  Okay. It's like they don't tell you that.

• 4:32:53Jocko Willink?

  They lie, they lie.

• 4:32:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then it kinda jams you up.

• 4:32:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:32:56Speaker 01

  But it's true, though. It's like, and obviously, different people like different drugs. Like, I, you know, I don't have that much drug experience, but the very limited that I do, like, no drugs to me felt good at all. Not even like painkiller. I took the, all that oxy, like, not morphine, but like, you know, the ones they give you.

• 4:33:14Jocko Willink?

  For surgery?

• 4:33:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, after surgery, um, Vicodin, like, all these ones.

• 4:33:18Jocko Willink?

  I took, uh, when I got neck surgery, and I was like, I'm not taking anything, I'm so tough. And then, and then I got home and the stuff wore off, and I was like, give me whatever they gave you to my wife, as I give it to me now.

• 4:33:29Speaker 01

  That's true.

• 4:33:30Jocko Willink?

  Uh, but the weird thing is, it didn't feel like, it didn't, I didn't feel any, like, even he described, like, euphoria, I didn't feel any of that. I just felt like, okay, I can go to sleep now. You know, cuz I'm not in agony.

• 4:33:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, like, kills.

• 4:33:44Jocko Willink?

  So I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, I don't know.

• 4:33:46Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I felt a little bit like weird and woozy or whatever.

• 4:33:49Jocko Willink?

  I didn't even feel that.

• 4:33:49Speaker 01

  I didn't like it, though.

• 4:33:51Jocko Willink?

  I didn't really feel that either.

• 4:33:52Speaker 01

  But then even like, we, like weed and stuff like that, it's like, yeah, I don't, I don't like the feeling or whatever, except for alcohol.

• 4:34:00Jocko Willink?

  That's the one. That's your, that's your, that's where the devil gets you.

• 4:34:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that's where I experienced the devil scenario. Cuz it is, it's like, especially when you're having fun, or you're bonding with someone, and you guys are both going down memory lane all hardcore, and you just don't want it to end. You're like, oh, this is the best. Oh, this alcohol's helping it, it's helping me. You see what I'm saying? Helping me feel, and then like, the next day, that prey, I remember I was drinking with Kate Nuts. Right? I'm not gonna tell you when, doesn't matter when.

• 4:34:27Jocko Willink?

  Sounds like it was a very recent scenario.

• 4:34:32Jocko Willink?

  I'm working at the mustard.

• 4:34:36Speaker 01

  Like.

• 4:34:38Jocko Willink?

  Good thing you had that later flight on Saturday, huh?

• 4:34:40Speaker 01

  Yes, sir. Extending the good time like way past like the plan. And just, you know, and we're just, they were doing that going down memory lane, talking trash, having a laugh, huge laughs. Huge, oh man, it was the best. It was the best. And the next morning we're back because we're on the same, not on the same flight, but same time. So we're all going to the airport together. And like, we're sitting there. Bro, why do we even do that? Like, is it how I feel right now? It's like, not even worth it. Like, even last night was super good fun, but it's not even worth feeling like this.

• 4:35:09Jocko Willink?

  How much percentage of fun could you have had without alcohol the night before?

• 4:35:13Speaker 01

  Um, I, I don't know.

• 4:35:14Jocko Willink?

  Like, let's say you had, let's say you had 90% fun.

• 4:35:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:35:18Jocko Willink?

  Without alcohol the night before, how much fun would you have had?

• 4:35:21Speaker 01

  I don't know. Hey, I don't know. I mean, because I'm tempted to say, whoa, yeah, 90, probably 90 or 89 or whatever, because the.

• 4:35:29Jocko Willink?

  I think I can't.

• 4:35:30Speaker 01

  It could have been maybe like 25.

• 4:35:31Jocko Willink?

  I think I can truly have like 90%.

• 4:35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:35:35Jocko Willink?

  Like all the fun.

• 4:35:36Speaker 01

  I understand.

• 4:35:36Jocko Willink?

  With or without?

• 4:35:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, I understand, but like not everyone's like that.

• 4:35:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:35:40Speaker 01

  Straight up where just because like especially Kate, he's kind of a reserved like person.

• 4:35:44Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so you had to break down that.

• 4:35:46Speaker 01

  But when we're together, it's cool. But then you could tell because there's other people like main tie was with us at some point.

• 4:35:53Jocko Willink?

  It got that. It was like that, huh? We don't even know where main tie was. We don't know when he showed up, when he departed.

• 4:36:00Speaker 01

  Sorry to freaking bust and throw him under the bus, but nonetheless, it was like, you know, certain things you're like, oh, um.

• 4:36:07Jocko Willink?

  But the key point is the next day it wasn't even worth it.

• 4:36:09Speaker 01

  Wasn't worth it. And we were literally talking about how it's not worth it. So it's like a deal in the moment, it's more than worth it. Bro, you can, I'm thinking about the flight. It's a complete lie. It's a complete lie, but you feel it like to your, in your bones that it's worth it at the time. And the next day you know, the reality, that's the devil right there. That's how sneaky it is. It's true. And so how he put that, I was like, bro, you're spot on. Spot on.

• 4:36:34Jocko Willink?

  No, he definitely.

• 4:36:37Jocko Willink?

  You know, I even that last underground podcast we did where a guy asked, you know, hey, you know, how much drinking should I be doing? You know, I

• 4:36:45Speaker 01

  Right.

• 4:36:46Jocko Willink?

  I got the friend group. They would, they don't really want to drink. You know, hey, what's a good way for me to drink? And I'm just like, I can't even, I can't even give. As a matter of fact, I saw, I talked to somebody at the, at the muster, who was, you know, who's had issues. And he said, when he heard that question, he was like, please, Choco, please say, say the right thing, say the right thing. And I was like, you know, I can't even support. He's like, yes. He goes, you can't because it's a freaking lie.

• 4:37:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, it is. At the end of the day.

• 4:37:10Jocko Willink?

  It's a lie, man. Let's stay clean out there. Stay clean.

• 4:37:12Speaker 01

  Another thing he said about the ego, which like conceptually was like a lot of times, like you'll say this, but he said this very specific thing where he said, oh, the army should have kept me in, even though he knew he couldn't have dipped.

• 4:37:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:37:23Speaker 01

  But it's weird because like you kind of have that feeling. It's almost like, under certain circumstances, obviously, like, you know, it depends on who you are. But it's like, you know how, it's almost like a more advanced version of the, the simple idea of like, you know, the classic, like, oh, they didn't invite me to the party, even though I didn't want to go, but like, I still should be invited, you know, kind of because it's me. It's like a weird illusion.

• 4:37:48Jocko Willink?

  And if you really, if you really pull the string on that, like you can blame everything. Like, oh, they didn't keep me in the army. That's why I'm drinking right now.

• 4:37:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:37:56Jocko Willink?

  That's why I'm doing this. That's why I'm doing that. I'm out here. That's why I got, you know, that's why I'm in this relationship with this person. Like you can, but everything is just rooted in this one thing because they wouldn't keep me. That's a trap. And luckily he figured that out, man.

• 4:38:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:38:10Jocko Willink?

  Luckily he figured that out. And it's good that other people hopefully can recognize these things. You know, another big point, physical.

• 4:38:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:38:20Jocko Willink?

  The physical wellbeing is paramount. You gotta be, you gotta, man, you gotta get, gotta get up in the morning. You gotta get after it. You gotta get up at four thirty. No, you gotta be at five. No, but getting up consistently, doing some work. So good for you, man. So good for you. So ton of lessons there.

• 4:38:38Speaker 01

  So instead of drinking vodka.

• 4:38:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I got a better idea.

• 4:38:43Speaker 01

  We'll drink the discipline go.

• 4:38:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, drink a milk.

• 4:38:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, or a milk. Yeah.

• 4:38:47Jocko Willink?

  Drink a milk, drink some go, drink some, maybe even want to drink a little bit of that pre-workout discipline go.

• 4:38:55Speaker 01

  Sarah goes, uh, my wife says, um, she was like, you know what you should do? You should make a video. And it was, this is like such an old concept, seeing videos like this.

• 4:39:04Jocko Willink?

  Bless her. Don't do, don't do her like that right now. Such.

• 4:39:08Speaker 01

  She just doesn't.

• 4:39:09Jocko Willink?

  That idea. Go ahead. I like her idea. What was it?

• 4:39:12Speaker 01

  She doesn't watch that much TV like I do. But.

• 4:39:15Jocko Willink?

  I got you, sir.

• 4:39:16Speaker 01

  She was like, you know, she do, you should do a video like showing like how discipline go the energy drink is like it's an energy drink, but it doesn't have sugar in it. And then show this other energy drink that you can't show the label, label, of course. And then just show how much sugar is in it and then do the equivalent. You know how they used to do the scoops of sugar? And be like, this is how much sugar you're drinking. She's like, do a video like that. That would be good.

• 4:39:38Jocko Willink?

  You know, be funny is like we started the video like that, but then we started saying it like, oh, and here's a scoop of rat poison, arsenic. We just started pouring like actual.

• 4:39:46Speaker 01

  Probably.

• 4:39:46Jocko Willink?

  Poison there. We'll do it.

• 4:39:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Good idea. See? A D Jock over here.

• 4:39:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but it all originated with Sarah Charles, creative genius. And you're over there naysaying, maybe you need some discipline go, homie. Uh, if you want to get some discipline go, you want to get some milk, go to jockofool.com, hook that up, go to the vitamin shop, go to Wawa. Go to HEB down in Tejas. Yeah, we got it going on. So we're spreading. Check that stuff out. Also, Origin USA, OriginUSA.com. Forgot to tell Braxton that we got hunt gear coming. He will, he will get to hunt in some American made gear. You know, he doesn't want to buy stuff from China or from overseas. 100%. He, there's only one kind of hunting gear he is wanting, and that's American made hunting gear.

• 4:40:34Jocko Willink?

  So we'll get you some of that. OriginUSA.com. If you want some of that, if you need jujitsu gear, if you need a T-shirt, if you need a sweatshirt, if you need a pair of boots, jeans.

• 4:40:44Speaker 01

  Jeans. I got two pair on the way.

• 4:40:46Jocko Willink?

  I should, I should have talked to Braxton about that as well. Cause you know, he wants to wear American made everything.

• 4:40:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, I do. Fully.

• 4:40:54Jocko Willink?

  OriginUSA.com, jocko store.com. We'll get there.

• 4:40:57Speaker 01

  Got some. A lot of, uh, how should I say, there are various things, but mainly it's apparel. It's apparel. You're gonna represent on this path apparel, discipline equals freedom.

• 4:41:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:41:10Speaker 01

  Good. We're restocking some stuff. We're going hard.

• 4:41:13Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so we ran out of stock.

• 4:41:15Speaker 01

  We ran out of stock.

• 4:41:16Jocko Willink?

  From I said, you just put yourself on record.

• 4:41:19Speaker 01

  It's the life I live. Hey, look.

• 4:41:21Jocko Willink?

  It was pretty cool to see at the muster of people representing with the shirt locker shirts.

• 4:41:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:41:25Jocko Willink?

  You can see that those are, it seems like they're kind of hit it.

• 4:41:29Speaker 01

  Strong representation.

• 4:41:30Jocko Willink?

  As you like to say, landing.

• 4:41:31Speaker 01

  They're landing.

• 4:41:31Jocko Willink?

  People are kind of stoked. People are kind of stoked because that's just, that's just like full representation.

• 4:41:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:41:39Jocko Willink?

  Like, yeah, I'm in the game over here on my side. What about you?

• 4:41:42Speaker 01

  It's, it's funny too, because people will like come to me and ask me like, hey, where did that guy get that shirt? Shirt locker all day, bro.

• 4:41:51Jocko Willink?

  All day.

• 4:41:52Speaker 01

  But yeah, that's how like.

• 4:41:53Jocko Willink?

  So what's the deal? Can people buy one old shirt from the shirt locker if desired?

• 4:41:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. So basically it goes like this. Join shirt locker.

• 4:42:02Speaker 01

  Membership, subscription, thirty four a month. Yes. You get a new shirt every month and.

• 4:42:08Jocko Willink?

  If you want.

• 4:42:09Speaker 01

  If you want, you have access, exclusive access to like, yeah, all the, all the other stuff. It's like a private store. You can buy any one, anyone.

• 4:42:18Jocko Willink?

  See, that's, that's what it's called. Observing the feedback loop.

• 4:42:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:42:22Jocko Willink?

  The feedback loop was some people wanted some of those other shirts that were, had come out.

• 4:42:27Speaker 01

  Yeah. They, so they thought they missed it. So it's like, oh, I missed that one shirt. And that's kind of, you know, the one. And then maybe two, three months later, they're like, oh, I missed that one again. You see what I'm saying? So it's like they, they felt like apparently that was almost like a, like a gamble, you know? But it's not a gamble.

• 4:42:43Jocko Willink?

  There's no gamble. It's a win. It's a win-win. Uh, check that out. Subscribe to the podcast. Subscribe to Jocko Underground. JockoUnderground.com is where we're, we're answering a bunch of questions. We're talking about topics. We're getting deep into, uh, aspects that we might not hit here, but that are very integral to living and crushing and doing well. So jockunderground.com. It's also where we are because in case we get kicked off of this platform or some other platform. We got our own platform, jockunderground.com if you want to join, if you want to help out on that, $8.18 a month. And if you can't afford it, we, look, it's okay. We want you in the game. Email assistance at jockunderground.com. Check out the YouTube channel, check out Psychological Warfare, check out Flipside Canvas with Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff to hang on your wall.

• 4:43:29Jocko Willink?

  That's a good idea. Books, you can get a bunch of books. I wrote a bunch of them. Also, Braxton wrote one. It's called The Glass Factory. When I'm saying this right now, whenever you're listening to this, there's only 300 hardcovers left at braxtonmccoy.com. They ain't gonna last long. If they are, get one. That's a first edition that you ain't, you know, you ain't coming by again. If they don't have that, cool, get it from Amazon. You'll get a one that's printed on demand, which is still awesome because it's a great book. So many lessons on it. Only Cry For The Living. Check out Holly McKay's book. She's been on here before. Wrote a fantastic book. She risked her freaking life to write. So go check that one out. And then I've written a bunch of books. You know

• 4:44:09Jocko Willink?

  what they are. Get the kids books. I just realized I didn't give Braxton a copy of Mike and The Dragons. I'll have to send it to him. Braxton hit me up. So I've written a bunch of books. Check them out. Echelon Front Leadership Consultancy. Just finished the muster as we were just talking about. Next one is Atlanta. Hotlanta. October 12th through the 14th. We're gonna sell out. Covid's over now. Officially. A fish. Officially over. Because people do not care. And we're back to the pre-Covid numbers at muster. So it's gonna sell out. There you go.

• 4:44:51Jocko Willink?

  Battlefield. We're doing EF Battlefield at Little Big Horn. It's almost sold out. I think there's literally two more seats. Probably not by the time you listen to this. But if you want to go to Little Big Horn with us, check that out. All that stuff, echelonfront.com. Also, we have the Academy, extremeownership.com. We're teaching this stuff all the time. Just did a live event today, interacting with everybody that's on there. If you have questions on how to handle a situation, just go on there and you can ask me and we can interact. You can give me the details, the deets. Have you heard this expression?

• 4:45:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, from you.

• 4:45:24Jocko Willink?

  It's lame, isn't it?

• 4:45:25Speaker 01

  No, bro, I like it. Good, keep it.

• 4:45:27Jocko Willink?

  Uh, if you want to help out service members, active and retired, their families, Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee, she has an awesome charity organization. What she does is she helps people, helps veterans that need medical help that the government's not paying for. So if you help her, she will help veterans that need it. Americas Mighty Warriors.org. Also, we talked a couple of times about Micah today, his organization, Heroes and Horses.org. It's the first time I've gotten that thing right. So it's .org. He's taken vets up into the wilderness for 41 days, 41 days?

• 4:46:06Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 4:46:06Jocko Willink?

  41 days on a horseback? Dude, freaking awesome. And, uh, once again, Braxton, what a, what a, what a stud, what a hero, what an awesome guy. You can follow him. He's on the web if you want to talk to him, Braxton McCoy.com. His Instagram is Braxton dot McCoy. His Twitter is Braxton underscore McCoy. Hit him up. Of course, on the Twitter, on the Gram, on the Facebook. Echoes at Echo Charles. I'm at Jocko Willink. Listen, you go on there, cool. I don't mind you going. I don't mind you checking in. Don't, don't dwell. Don't hang out there. Don't move in there. Don't say, oh, I'm gonna look at this other thing and this other thing and this other thing.

• 4:46:51Jocko Willink?

  And just like that little dopamine grabs you by the, by the freaking throat and pulls you in there. Don't do it. Otherwise, like at my house right now, I had a couple of people, I had a couple of people from the underground. Dopamine, dopamine. So for those of you who don't know, that don't have the Jocko Underground.com, at my house right now, if you pull out your phone with my family, people just start going, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine, dopamine. So.

• 4:47:19Speaker 01

  It's real.

• 4:47:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's real. It's a real thing. It's, it's, it's what we're doing. It's keeping people in check. I'm putting my phone back away because it's annoying, right? So don't let that happen. Uh, but you can find us there. Just watch out for the algorithm. Special thanks to all the military personnel, personnel out there, especially our wounded warriors.

• 4:47:38Jocko Willink?

  Who continue to fight long after the war is over. We salute you and thank you for everything you have done and everything you continue to do for our country and our way of life. Thank you to the wounded vets and also to our police and law enforcement firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service, all the first responders out there. You also sacrifice every day to protect our way of life here at home. And we thank you for that. And to everybody else,

• 4:48:11Jocko Willink?

  remember these lessons learned from Braxton. They're, they're, they're so important. And look, they're so hard earned from Braxton for what he went through to figure these things out and then to pass them on to us. The lessons, do not lie to yourself. That will be the main source of your suffering. We often create the vast majority of our own problems. And listen, I get it. I get that you can't control everything. No one can control everything. But take ownership of what you can control. And it's usually a lot more than you think. And then sharpen your sword.

• 4:48:56Jocko Willink?

  Sharpen your sword. And by that, I mean your body, your mind, your spirit. And then go out there into the world and slay those dragons. And until next time, Zeko and Jaco out.