298: The Way of The Frogman. "By The Water Beneath The Walls" With Ben Milligan.

0:00:0 - Opening 0:10:10 - By Water Beneath The Walls. Ben Milligan 4:10:43 - How to stay on THE PATH. 4:26:00 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 298 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:08Jocko Willink?

  Within weeks of their arrival, the SEALs of Det Golf were shaking off their initial jitters and even displaying some measure of proficiency.

• 0:17Jocko Willink?

  Signs of this were apparent in every aspect of their operations. On ambush, no one cleared his throat, coughed, spit, sneezed, or even sniffled. On insert and extract, the men stepped heel to toe to reduce the sucking explosion of mud walking and above all avoided the footprints of the man in front to keep from sinking even deeper. To improve their infield support, the SEALs befriended the pilots and crews of the Navy's helicopter squadron at Knob Bay and overhauled the SEALs' denuded landing craft into an up-armored ironclad. Six heavy machine guns mounted to the gunwales, a 60mm mortar bolted to the rusted deck plate,

• 1:00Jocko Willink?

  and a bunker busting recoilless rifle pinioned to the top of the sandbag pilot house. It was so much armament that the men quickly recommissioned the LCM, the Mighty Moe. To it they added a canopy to block the sun and rain, a two-burner stove for meals, then draped hammocks between everything that didn't pivot or fire. Essentially turned it into a houseboat littered with empty hot sauce bottles, coffee cups, clotheslines, all aids to reduce the number of trips back to Knob Bay and increase the amount of time they could spend in the mission area. To improve the quality of their encounters with the enemy, they experimented with a variety of tactics. False insertions that made the Vietcong think the SEALs had landed where they hadn't. False extractions that made the Vietcong think the SEALs had left.

• 1:45Jocko Willink?

  And probably most important, squad-sized missions that half the SEALs punch but correspondingly increased their stealth and the amount of swampland they could cover, thus doubling their chances of Vietcong contact. No small challenge in an area as empty of the enemy as the rungs sat. And what did these innovations yield? A handful of captured documents and North Vietnamese currency, some freshwater wells, some rice caches, one so monstrous that it merited an airstrike. Then finally, after more than a month of frustrations, Det Golf landed a jackpot ambush of two sampanes that killed seven suspected Viet Cong guerrillas.

• 2:26Jocko Willink?

  The SEALs' reaction was the same as anyone who has just caught a hot streak. A little more than a week after their first coup, one squad pursued a tip from the crew of a hovering Navy gunship that had spotted several camouflage sampanes not far from Mighty Mo's anchorage. Despite having already blown their cover in that area from several days' worth of patrolling, the squad leader in full daylight, the squad landed in full daylight and fell in behind point man Billy Makin, a keen-eyed 28-year-old Texan, the father of a daughter and a five-week old boy he had never seen. Stepping alone into the middle of the sun-drenched clearing

• 3:10Jocko Willink?

  and spotting a Viet Cong bunker, Makin managed a single burst from his M16 before he was cut down by an eruption of machine gun fire that left him stranded.

• 3:22Jocko Willink?

  Hugging the ground to get under the rush of snapping bullets and splintering branches, the SEALs fell back on their training and clawed themselves into a rough firing line, but one that was not nearly stiff enough to break the wall of lead that blocked their way to the fallen comrade.

• 3:38Jocko Willink?

  To Tom Truxell, engaged in the untested platoon commander's perennial two-front war, the enemy and his own doubts, it seemed that the only recourse might be to pull back to the river and to the Mighty Mo's guns. That is, until one of his men fired a 40-millimeter grenade into the bunker's mouth. The shock forced a momentary flinch in the enemy's ambush, just long enough for the heavyweight Moscone to bowl a mad dash for Makin, who is carried to safety just in time to whisper a final message to his wife while the corpsman ransacked his tiger stripes to find his wounds.

• 4:19Jocko Willink?

  Considering that Makin's death was, considering that Makin's death in combat was not simply the first for the SEAL teams, but that it was also nearly a 2% manpower loss for SEAL Team 1, no one would have faulted Wires if he had forced a pause to assess the operation that had led to the tragedy. He didn't. The reason was no more complicated than the same one taught to anyone who has ever looked up to see the belly of the horse that just bucked them off. Wires ordered his men back to, back into their saddles and back into the rungsat. This perseverance would have payoffs. Within a month, the SEALs of Det Golf were expanding

• 5:04Jocko Willink?

  their operational repertoire from planned patrol and ambush to unplanned quick reaction counterattacks along the rungsats choke points. In theory, it was an operational expansion that finally fulfilled the Bucklew reports recommendation for Riverbank Raiders. In practice, it was a resurrection of the Navy's grapple swinging boarding parties. Encounters now included the inland pursuit and cornering of black pajama wearing attackers, firefights that varied from a few sharp rifle exchanges to 15-minute skirmishes, one of these against an enemy-packed haystack that did not stop firing until the SEALs launched 48 grenades into it.

• 5:50Jocko Willink?

  Before long, the operational impact of Det Golf's aggressiveness was considered so substantial that Admiral Ward approved its increase from two platoons to three, all but a guarantee of a corresponding increase in impact. While this blossomed, so too did the SEALs' confidence, best evidenced by their swagger around Na Bay, but also by a wooden sign above the entrance to their tent scrawled, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, because I'm the meanest bastard in the valley."

• 6:28Jocko Willink?

  Though the helmets and flak jackets of the un- of uncountable GIs would soon boast the same thing. By mid-autumn 1966, the SEALs' claim to "meanest in the valley" was undisputed. In the rung sat, no other unit was as lethal. And that right there is an excerpt from a book, and the book is called "By the Water Beneath the Walls: The Rise of the Navy SEALs." And it's written by a guy, Benjamin Milligan.

• 7:09Jocko Willink?

  And this book is a comprehensive history book about the origin of the SEAL teams. Now, that passage hit me because I trained throughout my entire career at a place called Camp Billy Macon out in the Imperial Valley of Southern California. And I knew the story of Billy Macon. He was awarded the Silver Star, and they have that citation out there at the desert training compound. They also have pictures of his platoon. And BTF Tony, Tony Affrati and I, we used to inspect those pictures, and we used to look at BM1 Moscone, and he was listed in that platoon picture.

• 7:53Jocko Willink?

  We used to talk about him. And he was this massive guy who stood out in the picture, and we used to think, what would, what would BM1 Moscone do right now in this situation? But that really is about all the information we had about Billy Macon and his platoon and what they did in Vietnam. Some word-of-mouth stories that we'd hear from some of the older Vietnam guys, but that's about it.

• 8:19Jocko Willink?

  But this book spells it out so much more and the book details the entire history of the SEAL teams from the scouts and raiders to the naval combat demolition units to the underwater demolition teams up to what we now know and where I served my adult life in the SEAL teams. Now, I normally don't cover history books on the podcast because I prefer to read first-person accounts of people that were actually there, people that understand what it's like to live through and experience things, not just research

• 8:58Jocko Willink?

  it. Well, this book is an exception because the author, Ben Milligan, was a SEAL, which adds a level of understanding and connection that comes across on every page of this book. It is also so thorough and extensive of history of the SEALs that it leaves no stone unturned and connects really to the soul of the modern-day SEAL, connects us with our frogmen forefathers. And I think this book should be required reading for all SEALs or anyone even remotely

• 9:39Jocko Willink?

  interested in the SEALs. So they understand where we came from and the sacrifices that were made to get us where we are today. And it just so happens that we have the honor of the author, Ben Milligan, here tonight to talk to us about his time in the teams and his amazing account of the history of the frogmen. Ben, thanks for joining us. Thanks, Jaco. Let's get a little, start off by getting a little background on you and where you came from. Before we get into the background and where the SEALs came from, let's figure out about where Ben Milligan came from. So where'd you grow up?

• 10:17Ben Milligan?

  Indianapolis, northeast side.

• 10:20Jocko Willink?

  And, and what was the situation you were, what did your mom and dad do?

• 10:24Ben Milligan?

  Uh, my dad was a ear, nose and throat surgeon. Worked in a small town in Indiana called Anderson. It was a small, uh, GM town. I think he was the only, it was him and one other ENT in town. So he was kinda like, uh, minor celebrity status.

• 10:49Ben Milligan?

  There wasn't a restaurant that we would go to in town where, um, you know, somebody didn't come up and say, hey, doc, thanks for, you know, such and such.

• 10:56Jocko Willink?

  Hey, doc, I got a sore nose, can you help me out?

• 10:59Ben Milligan?

  Yeah. And at one point, I think every, uh, single member in my family, except for my younger brother, worked, uh, in my dad's office. So we kinda grew up, uh, you know, in the, in the medical field.

• 11:09Jocko Willink?

  Welcome to, welcome to Doc Milligan's. Can you have a seat over there? Would you like a candy? That kinda thing?

• 11:14Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, kind of. I was probably the, uh, the worst of my dad's employees, but he was kind enough to keep me on. The worst example of nepotism.

• 11:23Jocko Willink?

  What, um, what about your mom? Did she, did she work? Was she a house, housewife?

• 11:27Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, housewife. She, uh, she looked after us. She was sort of three boys and, uh, one girl, so, uh, fair amount of work.

• 11:33Jocko Willink?

  What number were you?

• 11:34Ben Milligan?

  I was in the middle, so I have an older brother, a younger brother, and then baby sister.

• 11:37Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you were number two out of four?

• 11:39Ben Milligan?

  Right.

• 11:40Jocko Willink?

  What about, uh, what sports were you, were you playing growing up?

• 11:43Ben Milligan?

  Uh, I played soccer badly. Uh, I, they, I think they kept me on the team because we, uh, the, the school that I went to was so small, they, uh, they really had nobody else. Uh, yeah, but I, I didn't, uh, I didn't get to the SEAL teams through any athletic ability. I was a really good trier. So after, uh, at the end of every, uh, soccer season, uh, when they passed out awards, they would always give me like the Mr. Hustle or the most improved or some other, you know, just sort of, uh, you know, underhand award.

• 12:17Jocko Willink?

  What was the, anything else going on in high school? What kinda music did you like?

• 12:21Ben Milligan?

  Well, I, yeah, I ran track, so I was, I was a decent, uh, decent at track, but as far as music, uh... That's typical stuff. Nothing.

• 12:29Jocko Willink?

  Nothing crazy?

• 12:30Ben Milligan?

  Nothing crazy, nothing hip. You're looking at the lamest guy that ever got through.

• 12:38Jocko Willink?

  So you said you ran track or you ran cross country or both?

• 12:41Ben Milligan?

  I kinda did a little both. I did cross country my freshman year.

• 12:45Jocko Willink?

  What's the longest race you ran in cross country in high school? Isn't it only like three miles or something?

• 12:50Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, it's nothing overwhelming. I was good at it. I probably could have done that.

• 12:56Ben Milligan?

  But after my freshman year.

• 12:58Jocko Willink?

  How fast did you run a mile when you were in high school?

• 13:00Ben Milligan?

  I think the fastest I did it was something like 450, 448, something like that. But the only reason, I think that was as good as I was ever gonna get. When I raced, after every race, it was, I mean, the dry heaving, everything else. I couldn't, I would get so nervous before the race that I couldn't eat. I wouldn't sleep the night before. It was miserable.

• 13:24Jocko Willink?

  What were you nervous about?

• 13:26Ben Milligan?

  Oh, just brutal pain because I didn't have the natural talent to do this, so I just gutted it out.

• 13:31Jocko Willink?

  So you were nervous about the suffering you were gonna experience?

• 13:34Ben Milligan?

  Yeah.

• 13:37Jocko Willink?

  Which made you suffer even more.

• 13:38Ben Milligan?

  Jocko, I wish I was tougher.

• 13:43Jocko Willink?

  And so, did you have any inkling about going in the military when you were in high school?

• 13:49Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, I knew that I was gonna do that. I think I announced to my parents that I wanted to be a SEAL when I was 12. They didn't know what a SEAL was.

• 13:58Jocko Willink?

  How did you know what a SEAL was?

• 14:00Ben Milligan?

  I'd heard my older brother's friends talking about it. And prior to that, my grandpa had been a Marine in World War II. So, growing up until I was about 12, I'd wanted to be a Marine. Then I found out what Navy SEALs were. And then I also sort of found out right at the same time that after the Battle of Okinawa, my grandpa had volunteered. He was one of the few guys that could swim and they were so desperate for frogmen after Okinawa for the invasion of Japan that they had ransacked the ranks just looking for anybody that could swim and he had volunteered for the UDT. So he was one of the handful of non-Navy guys that actually joined. So he didn't do any operations as a frogman, but he was attached to a UDT, so.

• 14:43Jocko Willink?

  So you found that out, but?

• 14:45Ben Milligan?

  Found that out and, and I was like, well, you know, uh, impressionable age and like I, I, I'm, I'm gonna do that. So.

• 14:53Jocko Willink?

  What was your comfort level in the water?

• 14:55Ben Milligan?

  High comfort level. Uh, he was, um, my grandpa was, uh, um, I think we, we were at the pool every, every weekend. Uh, swimming was a big part of our, our, our growing up and then, so very comfortable, but I'd never raced in the water. Never, I never swam competitively. Like I said before, the school that I went to was so small. I think I had 54 kids in my graduating class. I mean, I played soccer because there was no football team. I ran track because we didn't have a wrestling team or anything like that. Have we had those? I probably would have done them, but, um, I did what I could. Uh, but when I got to Bud's, I, you know, uh, realized, uh, after Hell Week that I was easily the slowest swimmer that had made it through Hell Week. I just didn't know what the hell I was doing.

• 15:40Jocko Willink?

  So what, but you, didn't you go to college after you done with high school? And where'd you go to college?

• 15:44Ben Milligan?

  Purdue. Purdue studied history.

• 15:47Jocko Willink?

  Is that what you knew you wanted to do? Did you, did you, did you always have like an affinity for history?

• 15:52Ben Milligan?

  Always. Yeah. Uh, starting, uh, you know, my dad was always, uh, reading to us. My grandpa was always reading to us. Uh, we would, um, as a family, we would take trips and often we were hitting a battlefield along the way. When I, uh, hit junior high though, right at that, you know, uh, consequential point in my life, my grandpa, uh, every, uh, every fall, every fall break, he started taking me to a different, uh, cup for, you know, the, the long weekend. He would take me to a different civil war battlefield or some other, you know, revolutionary war battlefield. So it just kinda got, uh, I just got addicted. So it was just, I, I got caught his enthusiasm, I guess.

• 16:31Jocko Willink?

  So when you were going to college, were you actually learning and putting, see, when I went to college, I was just doing what I was told to do. I mean, I went, I was already in the Navy when I went to college, but I was just doing whatever I needed to do to get good grades. I didn't care about anything. I just was doing what I needed to do to get good grades. I wasn't like, oh, this is so interesting. I, I don't think I said that one single time. I was just like, do I need to memorize this? Cool. Give it to me. That was my attitude, but it seems like you might've had a different attitude.

• 17:00Ben Milligan?

  No, no, I, if you, uh, at least were trying to get good grades, you're better than me because I didn't care about that. Well, I mean, I You were just trying to pass? Well, my, so I had tried to enlist in, in the Navy my senior year of high school. I hadn't shown up after a soccer practice back home and I had gone directly from practice to the recruiter's office and I was getting ready to sign on the dotted line because I didn't want to go to college. I wanted to go right into the Navy. And the recruiter, to his credit, he stops me before I sign and he, you know, he points, you know, obviously behind me and he goes, "Do you know that woman?" I turn around and my mom has both hands on the window and she sobbed.

• 17:48Ben Milligan?

  So, I, I took a pause, went out in the parking lot, my mom and I had a conversation and she begged me not to join the, the military. Nobody had joined the military in our family since, you know, World War II. So, when I got out there, I said I would go to one year of college and after, if I did that one year of college, I would have their blessing. So, when I'd signed up for classes my first year, I had no, I, I had no plan. I just signed up for every class that looked interesting. I signed up for the history of World War II. I signed up for, I, I mean, I, I, I just, I had no, I just signed up for all these history classes and I went to the first one and I was hooked. And So you did kind of like your classes? I liked my history classes. Those were the only classes that I paid any attention

• 18:32Ben Milligan?

  to, but I loved them. And I had, I had great professors, the history and political science classes. So, there, there's really no military history classes or courses or left in the country. There's only a couple of institutions that do military history.

• 18:47Ben Milligan?

  So, they've, they've taken a lot of that military history curriculum and they've kind of farmed it out to different disciplines, political science being one of them. And so I would, you know, just look for all of these interesting classes, all the stuff that, you know, I was interested in. I managed to carve out a degree and when I graduated in, you know, 2000, I, I don't, somehow I managed to graduate in four years.

• 19:11Ben Milligan?

  Then I, I tried to go to OCS. I had no idea what I was doing. I'd never met another SEAL. My application to go to OCS and then get a BUDS contract afterwards was ridiculous. I mean, they asked, you know, on the application, now I know, you know, you need like an admiral or somebody to write a letter of recommendation.

• 19:31Jocko Willink?

  To everybody, Fred.

• 19:32Ben Milligan?

  I had my high school soccer coach. My application was pathetic.

• 19:38Jocko Willink?

  Especially, that was in 2000?

• 19:41Ben Milligan?

  Yeah.

• 19:41Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, 2000. The competition for the officer billets is insane.

• 19:45Ben Milligan?

  Insane.

• 19:46Jocko Willink?

  It's insane.

• 19:47Ben Milligan?

  So I just enlisted.

• 19:48Jocko Willink?

  And the freaking soccer coach just didn't cut it. Such a bummer.

• 19:54Ben Milligan?

  It was a very nice letter.

• 19:57Jocko Willink?

  So, so then you just said, cool, I'm enlisting?

• 20:00Ben Milligan?

  Yeah.

• 20:01Jocko Willink?

  Then?

• 20:02Ben Milligan?

  And my parents, you know.

• 20:03Jocko Willink?

  Did your mom break down again?

• 20:05Ben Milligan?

  You know, my parents were on a trip when, when this happened.

• 20:08Jocko Willink?

  Oh, dude, when she's gone.

• 20:09Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, well, my, my, yeah, my parents were gone. They knew how important this was to me. They knew that I really didn't have a plan afterwards. It's not like I'd, you know, been in some sort of apprenticeship to, you know, go to law school or anything like that. I wasn't prepared for anything. So when that, when I hit that roadblock, I called my parents. They were, you know, like I said, they weren't there. I talked to my dad and my dad, to his credit, just said, this is something you have to do. And so I went over and went to the enlisted recruiter and I signed that day. Two weeks, two weeks later, I was gone.

• 20:46Jocko Willink?

  That's freaking legit. And what year was that?

• 20:48Ben Milligan?

  2000. So I, I signed up in, uh, uh, early August of 2000. I was gone by the end of the month.

• 20:58Jocko Willink?

  That was 2000?

• 21:00Ben Milligan?

  Right.

• 21:00Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you show up in boot camp and you have that shock to your system. Did you say to yourself, what did I do? My mom was right?

• 21:09Ben Milligan?

  Oh, yeah.

• 21:12Ben Milligan?

  I was a college graduate. What the hell am I doing here? Yeah, but.

• 21:17Jocko Willink?

  Folding underwear?

• 21:19Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, I mean, I didn't have the worst boot camp experience. They, uh,

• 21:25Ben Milligan?

  early on, they had, you know, asked her if anybody here had, uh, college experience and I had raised my hand. So I got made the, the division yeoman. So I was able to kind of leave from time to time, carrying the mailbag and just.

• 21:39Jocko Willink?

  Carrying the mailbag for 45 minutes?

• 21:41Ben Milligan?

  I would just march around the base.

• 21:44Ben Milligan?

  Yeah.

• 21:46Jocko Willink?

  So you get to, what was your, uh, like pre-training, getting ready for BUDS? Did you do anything? Or were you just, hey, whatever?

• 21:53Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, I've been, uh, I've been following the, um, uh, the BUDS, uh, pre or the pre-BUDS training, uh, plan. You know, certain number of pull-ups, sit-ups, uh, push-ups, everything, and then running and swimming every day.

• 22:08Jocko Willink?

  So you felt like you were pretty good shape?

• 22:10Ben Milligan?

  No, I didn't. I, I thought I was in okay shape, uh, and I'd been doing it for a year and, uh,

• 22:18Ben Milligan?

  so about four months before I actually, uh, joined the Navy, I had, uh, linked up with the, uh, the Purdue ROTC guys, uh, that were all training to go to BUDS. And when I linked up with them, their training was on a completely other level. These guys were serious. They had, you know, they'd met SEALs before. I'd never met, met one. And so I did four months of, uh, training with them. I, I, I mean, these guys were all in ROTC. I had a ponytail, I had a beard. I just, I was just a, looked like a piece of shit. So.

• 22:51Ben Milligan?

  Like, who the hell is this guy?

• 22:53Jocko Willink?

  You had a ponytail and a beard?

• 22:55Ben Milligan?

  I don't want to talk about it. Yeah, it was, oh yeah, 1999. But what was funny is, uh, a year later, when I graduated BUDS, uh, two of these guys were show, were checking into BUDS the day I graduated.

• 23:08Jocko Willink?

  That's cool.

• 23:08Ben Milligan?

  And I burst into their room, uh, to say hi. And they had no idea who I was.

• 23:13Jocko Willink?

  Did they make it?

• 23:14Ben Milligan?

  They all made it, yeah.

• 23:15Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. Do, was, uh, any challenges in BUDS? Anything that gave you a struggle?

• 23:21Ben Milligan?

  Swimming, uh, yeah, I had to, uh,

• 23:26Ben Milligan?

  I expected that swimming would be just like it was, like running was for me. Like you'd start like running for me if I was gonna do a long run. Go out at a moderate pace, that moderate pace, the further you go, it would get harder to maintain. And then by the end of the race, you know, you're physically taxed, but you can, you know, gut through the last bit of pain. I swam like that. I swam at a moderate pace and by the end of it, I was, I was pretty well gassed. And it wasn't enough. So I started going every weekend in BUDs. I was linking up with Master Chief Nepper, who I didn't know at the time. I mean, I just knew that he was, you know, a guy that would, you know, take pity on all the shitty BUD swimmers.

• 24:11Ben Milligan?

  And so when everybody else was relaxing and kind of, you know, licking their wounds from the previous week, I was at the pool with Master Chief Nepper. And I would not be here, or I would never have made it through if it wasn't for his classes. And I mean, little did I know that, you know, he was, I mean, he's, you know, one of the oracles of SEAL history to this day.

• 24:30Jocko Willink?

  So, so you, when did you graduate from BUDs?

• 24:34Ben Milligan?

  Um, let's see, it was August of 2000, yeah. August 10th. My 20th year was, or 2001, 2001, yeah.

• 24:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you graduated August 2001. And then where'd you get stationed?

• 24:52Ben Milligan?

  Uh, I was supposed to go to SEAL Team 10, but I went to SEAL Team 4, East Coast.

• 24:56Jocko Willink?

  Just some paperwork mix-up or something?

• 24:59Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, the whole, half of our class was going to SEAL Team 5 and the other half was going to SEAL Team 10. For whatever reason, SEAL Team 10 hadn't quite stood up yet, so they switched us to Team 4.

• 25:08Jocko Willink?

  So you, so where are you in September? So you graduate in August of 2001. Where are you? Where, where are you actually standing when September 11th goes down?

• 25:19Ben Milligan?

  I was home, having just completed airborne.

• 25:26Ben Milligan?

  So I, I mean, like everybody else in my class, I'm, I, I immediately went, uh, went downstairs, packed my bag and was ready to go and no call came.

• 25:34Jocko Willink?

  Thought you were going to NOM, like I did.

• 25:37Ben Milligan?

  We all did.

• 25:37Jocko Willink?

  Man, I thought I was going to NOM in 1990 when I got in, man.

• 25:42Ben Milligan?

  We were going nowhere but disappointment.

• 25:44Jocko Willink?

  So you're at SEAL Team Four, you, you get into a platoon, what job, what job are you in the platoon?

• 25:51Ben Milligan?

  Uh, I was the, a sixty gunner.

• 25:54Jocko Willink?

  Pig gunner.

• 25:55Ben Milligan?

  Pig gunner, yeah.

• 25:55Jocko Willink?

  Freaking new guy.

• 25:57Ben Milligan?

  Yep, new guy, no, uh, no responsibility.

• 26:03Ben Milligan?

  I was the, uh, I was the intel rep of the platoon.

• 26:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right. They were like, oh, you went to college.

• 26:08Ben Milligan?

  Yeah.

• 26:08Jocko Willink?

  You can read.

• 26:09Ben Milligan?

  Right.

• 26:09Jocko Willink?

  Intel rep, post.

• 26:13Jocko Willink?

  What kind of platoon, so you're at Team Four, you get into a platoon, how is it? How's it work up? You having a good time?

• 26:18Ben Milligan?

  It was alright. I like, you know, there, there were some leadership challenges, but, uh, it was a good platoon. I mean, we had a good chief, we had a good OIC.

• 26:27Ben Milligan?

  We, uh, we didn't have a great mission. We were a, we were a MARG, so we got attached to a, uh, you know, a, a marine, what was it, LPD or LHA, something like that, and we were just sort of on call in the med. You know, and at that point, you know, both, uh, Afghanistan and Iraq were going on, it was just, you know, we were sitting, sitting out in the, in the med, just floating around. We didn't do anything until we, we got called to go do Liberia. It was the, uh, the Liberian Civil War, so we did some hydrographic reconnoiscences and stuff like that.

• 27:02Jocko Willink?

  You got your lead line and slayed out?

• 27:05Ben Milligan?

  I did.

• 27:05Jocko Willink?

  Right on.

• 27:06Ben Milligan?

  I did, and I was, uh, so, we had done, uh, probably half a dozen of these things, um, and then the, the last one that we were doing was, uh, directly in front of the, um,

• 27:19Ben Milligan?

  The US Embassy in Monrovia. And I was probably the closest swimmer to the beach, which meant I was the closest swimmer to the CNN cameras. They were out there and if anybody knew my, my history with swimming, they probably would have pushed me further back. But so I'm, you know, paralleling the beach as we're doing this and I know that, you know, the whole world is watching and at some point I got wrapped up in my lead line. I was like, oh my gosh. And I'm tied up in this thing. I can't swim. The, it's a really close shore break, so I'm getting hammered with waves. I bounced my head off a big rock. Like I've got to get out of this line. So I pull out my knife and I start cutting this thing. A wave is coming up on me and I'm getting ready to get slammed with this thing and I

• 28:04Ben Milligan?

  don't want to stab myself while I'm doing this. And so I look around, I got no, I'm holding the slate with one hand. I got the knife in the other and I need something to swim with. So I did the only thing I could do. I put my knife in my mouth and I started and I swam through this truck like how World War II frogman is doing.

• 28:25Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's frigging awesome. So you, you get done with that deployment. That was kind of the highlight of the deployment was doing hydrographic reconnaissance in Liberia.

• 28:36Ben Milligan?

  Well, I'm, I want to brag, but yeah.

• 28:38Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking legit. Hey, I did two ARG platoons out on the west coast and I've done so many hydrographic reconnaissances. It's ridiculous. But I guess I've never done like a, um, I did real ones, but they weren't in combat. They were like in Kuwait. We, it was real, like someone was going to land there. I mean, but didn't get, I never put my mouth in my, I made my knife in my teeth and swam out.

• 29:06Ben Milligan?

  But I think you could probably agree. It's not the reason you joined the SEAL teams.

• 29:10Jocko Willink?

  Not quite why I joined the SEAL teams. And that must be, so what'd you do after that?

• 29:16Ben Milligan?

  I had some, you know, sort of family challenges, so I briefly got out until figured out where I was going to be living. When I finally found out I was going to be living in San Diego, I put my OCS package back together. I really wanted to go back to the teams and be an officer.

• 29:34Jocko Willink?

  Soccer coach write you another letter of recommendation.

• 29:36Ben Milligan?

  I actually had a few decent letters and I was, I had just gotten to San Diego. I contracted in my, you know, during that year off, so Blackwater Triple Canopy.

• 29:48Jocko Willink?

  Where'd you go, Iraq?

• 29:51Ben Milligan?

  Iraq, yeah.

• 29:52Jocko Willink?

  And what were you doing, just PSD basically?

• 29:53Ben Milligan?

  PSD, yeah. But once we got into San Diego, I

• 29:58Jocko Willink?

  Where were you in, where in Iraq were you, what years?

• 30:03Ben Milligan?

  Well, that was 2004, 2004, 2005. I mean, I was, I guess it was 2005. I was back in the teams by 2006, so.

• 30:13Jocko Willink?

  What's PSD?

• 30:14Ben Milligan?

  Personal Security Detail.

• 30:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's like doing security for somebody. So that's what a lot of the contractors were doing. You're doing security for other government workers. Those government workers could be people working on telephone lines, they could be CIA people, they could be government people, but it's basically security.

• 30:34Ben Milligan?

  Gotcha.

• 30:35Jocko Willink?

  So that's what many of those contracting jobs were for guys that were in special operations, just doing security.

• 30:41Ben Milligan?

  Gotcha.

• 30:44Jocko Willink?

  So you, how long were you out for then?

• 30:47Ben Milligan?

  A year.

• 30:48Jocko Willink?

  Then you come back in. Wait, what happened with your OCS package?

• 30:52Ben Milligan?

  So I, my OCS package was, I really just needed my last letter of recommendation. So I was in the, the Group One Commander's Office for my, for my interview. He was kind enough to give me an interview. I had been getting ready for that interview for a while and the morning of the interview, I was contacted by SEAL Team 18 and said I was recalled. So I was like, well, it's not the end of the world, but let's see if I can get this, you know, OCS package signed off.

• 31:24Jocko Willink?

  So just so everyone knows, SEAL Team 18 is a reserve SEAL Team.

• 31:28Ben Milligan?

  Correct.

• 31:28Jocko Willink?

  Where if you're in the, if you get out of those teams and you want to stay connected, you can go in the reserves.

• 31:33Ben Milligan?

  Yeah.

• 31:33Jocko Willink?

  And that's what that is. So you got recalled.

• 31:35Speaker 02

  How many teams are there, like, altogether?

• 31:37Ben Milligan?

  There was eight SEAL teams. There were eight SEAL teams at the time, four on each coast, and then there's Dev Group. But then, in addition to the eight active duty teams plus Dev Group, there's, there were two reserve SEAL teams. It was sort of a new concept they were trying.

• 31:53Speaker 02

  So they got eight teams?

• 31:55Ben Milligan?

  Plus two reserve teams.

• 31:57Speaker 02

  So 10, and then Dev Group 11?

• 31:59Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, I guess.

• 32:01Speaker 02

  Essentially, yeah.

• 32:02Jocko Willink?

  Kind of.

• 32:03Ben Milligan?

  There's some other things, but yeah.

• 32:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. So, because, so when you say team, that's like a technical thing, like?

• 32:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, because you got SDV teams too.

• 32:10Ben Milligan?

  Right.

• 32:10Speaker 02

  Right.

• 32:11Jocko Willink?

  Which are also teams.

• 32:13Speaker 02

  Gotcha. But the numbers, though, because that's...

• 32:16Jocko Willink?

  Well, you got SDV Team 1 and SDV Team 2. So you got another two teams.

• 32:21Speaker 02

  Alright.

• 32:22Jocko Willink?

  This goes deep. You can't leave the SDVs out.

• 32:24Speaker 02

  I understand.

• 32:25Jocko Willink?

  Those boys are working hard.

• 32:26Ben Milligan?

  They're working hard. So I, I'm in the office, I'm, I, you know, I, I knew that, you know, I'd found out that morning I was getting recalled, but was still hoping that, you know, the, the captain could maybe figure something out. So I do the interview, interview goes great, I think. And he's like, do you have anything for me? And I said, well, sir, not for nothing, but I just got recalled this morning. I was wondering if there's anything you could do, you know, I'd really like to, you know, follow through on this OCS package and come back to the teams as an officer. And he just said, no, that sucks. So I found myself back in the team, but you know, it was the best thing that could have ever happened. I went to SEAL Team Five and jumped on a great platoon with great leadership and you know, we followed you.

• 33:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you guys relieved us, not my task unit, but you guys went to hobby, Habania.

• 33:16Ben Milligan?

  Yep.

• 33:17Jocko Willink?

  So you rolled out to Habania and you were a reservist that was activated?

• 33:21Ben Milligan?

  Yep.

• 33:21Jocko Willink?

  And they put you in a platoon?

• 33:23Ben Milligan?

  Yep.

• 33:23Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's freaking awesome.

• 33:24Ben Milligan?

  It was, yeah, it was great.

• 33:27Jocko Willink?

  Did you do any of the workup or anything?

• 33:28Ben Milligan?

  Yeah.

• 33:29Jocko Willink?

  So you did the workup, went on deployment, but you're a reservist, but you're in a platoon?

• 33:33Ben Milligan?

  Yeah.

• 33:34Jocko Willink?

  What was your job?

• 33:35Ben Milligan?

  Uh, RTO, or the radio telephone op. I was the comm guy, did a little bit of breaching, but then, you know, kind of taught myself how to be a JTAC, but.

• 33:43Jocko Willink?

  That's an interesting thing to try and teach yourself while you're on the ground in hobby.

• 33:46Ben Milligan?

  And not only that, but you know, they, you know, I knew that the platoon needed a comm guy. I'd been to comm school, never been a comm guy, but they asked if I was a comm guy. I said, yes, I'm the best comm guy. I was telling myself what to do.

• 34:00Jocko Willink?

  So. That's a good call.

• 34:02Ben Milligan?

  Yeah.

• 34:02Jocko Willink?

  How was that deployment?

• 34:04Ben Milligan?

  Uh, it was great.

• 34:06Jocko Willink?

  What were you guys doing hobby in oh six, oh seven? That was like the winter of oh six into oh seven, right?

• 34:11Ben Milligan?

  Correct.

• 34:12Jocko Willink?

  What was your missions? What were you guys doing?

• 34:14Ben Milligan?

  We were doing a lot of, uh, you know, sniper over watches and then, uh, just doing, going house after house, you know, uh, doing little, uh, little house to house raids, looking for Al Qaeda, just like you guys were.

• 34:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you're kind of living the dream.

• 34:28Ben Milligan?

  I was living, I was doing exactly what I thought I would be doing and when I enlisted in 2000.

• 34:35Ben Milligan?

  Yeah.

• 34:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's good. I, I, I always felt that way when I was in Iraq. I felt like I was so lucky to be where I was. And then I will say in Ramadi, it was a little next level because you know, when you're a kid, you, you kind of look, I, I was thinking NOM. You know, my whole life I was thinking NOM, right? But even there was something even a little bit more seemed like a little bit extra was straight up World War Two, right? You're thinking World War Two, you're thinking tanks and stuff. So in Ramadi, there was times where tanks were rolling down the street, rolling in, in through buildings, over walls. It was WWII.

• 35:16Jocko Willink?

  And man, it was freaking awesome.

• 35:19Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, but you're right. I mean, it was, I mean, I had that NOM expectation too. And when we got there, it was, it was a, it was a ground war. The only thing that made it sort of NOM like is the Euphrates River.

• 35:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, for sure.

• 35:33Ben Milligan?

  And we would use those SOC Rs to insert. And, you know, there's only so many boat guys on, on the SOC Rs. And sometimes they're alternating between right or port and starboard side guns. So if they didn't have anybody on, you know, a gun, you'd just stand up and you'd grab one. And, uh, yeah, you're in a T-shirt and rolling up the Euphrates River. And it was pretty.

• 35:54Jocko Willink?

  There was area, a whole AO called 1MC or MC1. I can't remember, but it was up north, kinda, kinda northeast of the town of Ramadi. And it was on the, on the north side of the river. And it looked like NOM. It was ridiculous. And plus we had the Marine Corps Hueys flying around. We called it Viet RAM because it was Ramadi, but it looked like Vietnam. And it was freaking crazy. Right on. And so you get done with that deployment and then what, what do you do when you get home?

• 36:29Ben Milligan?

  Uh, at that point, I, I started thinking about grad school.

• 36:34Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 36:35Ben Milligan?

  I was.

• 36:37Jocko Willink?

  So you were a reservist. So when you got home, were you released from active duty, kind of?

• 36:40Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, I went to, uh, but I managed to parlay that into going over to WarCom. So I worked for a couple of years over at WarCom. And I, uh, my platoon chief from SEAL Team Five was going over there to run the JTAC program. And, you know, I kind of taught myself how to do all that. So he, uh, he said, if you want, you can come over and work with me while you're going to grad school. And so we just, uh, we just did JTAC stuff for the next two years while I went through. Got my degree.

• 37:09Jocko Willink?

  Where'd you go to school?

• 37:10Ben Milligan?

  USD.

• 37:11Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I went to undergrad there.

• 37:15Ben Milligan?

  Did you?

• 37:15Jocko Willink?

  USD.

• 37:17Ben Milligan?

  Gorgeous.

• 37:18Jocko Willink?

  It's a nice place. And then were you thinking, hey, were you still thinking about trying to put that OCS package in or?

• 37:24Ben Milligan?

  I was. I mean, I had, it was on the sort of the back burner. I was trying to decide whether or not I was gonna go put the OCS package to go back active or do like an FTS package and get a commission in the reserves.

• 37:36Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 37:38Ben Milligan?

  So had my first kid and once I had the first kid, I was like, I don't want to leave this guy. So I, I went with the reserves. So I got a commission. So the day I left active duty, I, I got a commission in the reserves.

• 37:53Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so you did end up getting a commission in reserves?

• 37:55Ben Milligan?

  I did.

• 37:56Jocko Willink?

  You still have it right now?

• 37:57Ben Milligan?

  Well, I'm out of the reserves now.

• 37:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 37:59Ben Milligan?

  I left, left the reserves four years ago, or maybe a little more.

• 38:04Jocko Willink?

  So you, you get done and now you realize you want to stay home with the kid and so then what? You, you're, you're trying to put your life together on the outside. How's that go?

• 38:15Ben Milligan?

  No, great. Like any guy who leaves the, you know, their dream job and, you know, suddenly finds themselves doing something they never expected to do. It didn't go great, Jaco. I was, you know, like everybody, trying to figure out what my next, my next big thing was, looking for relevance in any, any area that I could find it. And I quickly realized that in my business life, I was not going to be successful.

• 38:46Jocko Willink?

  What businesses did you try?

• 38:48Ben Milligan?

  Well, I, first off, I started at a textile manufacturer in Philly. We were trying to get back to family because we had, you know, I had a new, new kid and probably another one on the way. So my wife at the time lived in South Jersey. So we, we went there.

• 39:06Ben Milligan?

  So I got a job at a textile manufacturer in Philly and they were great people and I really liked the company and I was just terrible at it. You know, they wanted to start like a tactical products line and I thought I'd try, you know, business and yeah, I didn't do well. I mean, I didn't do terrible, but I was just like, I don't, I don't know what I'm doing. So I started thinking about this right about then. I was like, there's only two things that I'm, I can do and you know, I don't want to leave the kid and, or I, you know, at that time it was, you know, one kid had become two. So I started thinking about this.

• 39:50Jocko Willink?

  What was the catalyst that made you actually do this? Get out your computer, open the word processor and start typing?

• 39:56Ben Milligan?

  Uh, that was probably extortion 17. So like everybody, I went to, you know, you know, quite a few of the funerals after that and uh, I went to JT's funeral, John Tumelson. He was, uh, he was from Rockford, Iowa. So I went to his funeral and uh, totally unexpected, but when I was there, I met Jim Hornfisher or James D. Hornfisher, that's his author name, but he is, uh, he was a literary agent.

• 40:37Ben Milligan?

  He was, but he was also a, probably the, you know, the greatest, you know, naval historian in the country. He'd written Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors, Neptune's Inferno. So when I got to JT's funeral, everybody's there, everybody's drinking. I see this guy who's totally out of place. He's six foot five, you know, wears glasses. He's just kind of not a team guy, clearly. And uh, one of my friends quickly, you know, realizes that, you know, he is, he has the two biggest nerds at the event and he introduces us and uh, within 30 seconds, I knew that this was a guy that was going to change my life.

• 41:18Ben Milligan?

  So we started talking naval history. We got, uh, got pretty lit up. I kept his business card in my pocket for the next year. Uh, was kinda, you know, secretly, uh, working on a, on an idea for a book. And, uh, after a year, I, uh, sent him a cold email and just, you know, here's a chapter, uh, want, take a look at it. And, uh, he sent an email back and he said, this is fantastic. And I spent the next six months putting a, an outline together, uh, for what the rest of the book would look like. And he took that to New York and I got a, got a contract. So they gave me a two-year contract to spend, you know, the next eight years working on it.

• 41:58Jocko Willink?

  They gave you a two-year contract?

• 42:01Ben Milligan?

  Yeah.

• 42:01Jocko Willink?

  And you just kept saying, hey, it's gonna, I gotta keep going.

• 42:05Ben Milligan?

  Well, I just kept thinking, I just kept thinking they were gonna, yeah. No, it wasn't that. It was like, I, I just, you know, they, they wanted, they wanted a product, uh, that I quickly realized I couldn't give them. So I, I knew that-

• 42:16Jocko Willink?

  What did they want?

• 42:17Ben Milligan?

  They wanted a, they wanted a history of the, of the teams, um, but they wanted it done quickly, like everybody. I mean, you can, um, so I knew that if I did that, then the history that I was going to write was going to be like every other history that had been written on the teams. Sort of just wave tops. Um, and I knew that it wasn't gonna be written with any sort of intent beyond, you know, just my own interest in each of the events. I knew I, that, I knew the teams deserved something like this. I just didn't know how to do this. So I just kinda broke the whole thing down. I found a bunch of, I, I found two or three books that I really liked. Uh, I read each of them,

• 42:58Ben Milligan?

  uh, three or four times. Uh, one of them I went through and I literally outlined it, you know, not page by page, but like chapter by chapter. It's like, this chapter's doing this, this chapter's doing this.

• 43:10Ben Milligan?

  And I just sort of broke it down. How does this author, you know, I found another author. How's this author introduce characters? Um, how do they, you know, how do they just, you know, structure or how do they, you know, weave multiple storylines together? Um, and I just kind of taught myself how to do this.

• 43:27Jocko Willink?

  Did you?

• 43:28Ben Milligan?

  But I knew, I knew that they, that, you know, uh, this was going to take me a lot longer than two years.

• 43:33Jocko Willink?

  So when they gave you two years, what did you, did you just sign the contract and just?

• 43:37Ben Milligan?

  I signed the contract.

• 43:37Jocko Willink?

  Knowing that you would?

• 43:39Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, I did the same thing I did at SEAL Team Five. You know, I said, yeah, I'm a calm guy.

• 43:44Jocko Willink?

  You said, yeah, I'll write this in two years?

• 43:46Ben Milligan?

  Yeah.

• 43:47Jocko Willink?

  How pissed were they when you kept missing the deadline by five years?

• 43:53Ben Milligan?

  You know, to their credit, they didn't bother me. Uh, they would check in. Um, and the only thing that they really did was, um, they, uh, they wanted to see the first chapter. So once the first chapter was finished, I sent that off and they said, okay, this is, and I, it took me between six and seven months to write that first chapter on the Raiders.

• 44:20Jocko Willink?

  How long, how many hours a day would you work?

• 44:23Ben Milligan?

  Uh, I would start at four 30 and I would work, uh, until about eight.

• 44:29Ben Milligan?

  And then I would, uh, you know, do the rest of my day and then I'd come home, I'd get my kids to bed. Uh, and then once I, once I put them to bed, I'd, I'd work as long as I could until I was just kind of smoked.

• 44:40Jocko Willink?

  So you're probably getting like five, six hours a day on the book?

• 44:43Ben Milligan?

  Yeah. For, yeah.

• 44:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I mean, I'll tell you what, we'll, we'll get into the book now, but before we do, the book is freaking, it's, it's an incredible book and the detail you go into, it's over 500 pages long. Uh, I'll read a fraction of that today. Um, I, I, it was so hard for me to figure out what to. What, what parts to read? Um, I, I guess I could have talked to you about it. Maybe we could have discussed it, but I just kinda like, there's, every page has got really important stuff on it. Um, the writing's terrific. Clearly, and unmistakably, you sourced it from a lot of first-person accounts, you know, captured documents,

• 45:29Jocko Willink?

  or, or information captured from documents, from official traffic, from interviews, from other sources. It reads like an action novel in many parts, except for the fact that it's all true, which makes it even better to read. So, this book, I, I can't recommend this book enough. Uh, just a fantastic history and it's not, it's not just about the SEALs because one of the premises of the book is that SEALs wouldn't exist if either, really, the Marine Corps or the Army would have stuck to and committed, committed to the idea of having these kind of direct action raiders, which is what the SEAL teams ends up being.

• 46:14Jocko Willink?

  And everybody's got it, kinda got it now, you could say, but for many years, there was many attempts at doing this. And they, they wouldn't work out for various reasons. Um, maybe a mission would go bad, or a war would end, or a combination of those two things. Or, you know, when you're in the Army and you're a general and you've got some, some cowboy-looking guy running around, and you're senior to that cowboy-looking guy, you think, I don't want this guy running around. I'm gonna disband his whole organization. Or you're in the Marine Corps, you do the same thing. Hey, you know, I was in the Marine Corps. Marine Corps is right and tight, you know, and now who's this guy running around with freaking long hair? No, I'm gonna disband that whole organization. And, and that seems to happen a lot. There's one group,

• 46:59Jocko Willink?

  the Navy, where you're, you're in the Navy, so you're sort of, you know, if you're an admiral in the Navy, you kinda wanna have some of these plaid hitters running around that can make something happen. And that's, I think, part of the, part of the genesis of the SEAL teams. So,

• 47:17Jocko Willink?

  book is fantastic.

• 47:20Jocko Willink?

  Let's get into some of this.

• 47:23Jocko Willink?

  So, here we go. On August 8th at 0900, both submarines departed subbase Pearl Harbor and made it for the open ocean. It was, in the lead was the Nautilus with Carlson and 87 Raiders of B Company. Following almost a day behind was the larger and slower Argonaut with Roosevelt and the remaining 134 men, the majority belonging to A Company. For eight sweltering days, the Raiders lived, crammed alongside each other. Anywhere they could stretch, each man, a prisoner to the heat, sweat and stink of the one next to him. After 2,000 miles of the Pacific's omnipotence, slightly farther than New York City to San Diego, the Nautilus finally arrived at its target on August 16th.

• 48:05Jocko Willink?

  So, these are Marine Raiders, group that had been put together to go out. They're conducting freaking sub operations in World War II.

• 48:15Jocko Willink?

  Um, fast forward, and that's, you know, obviously I'm only reading chunks of the book. So, it seems a little bit stilted or, or you don't recognize some of the names. Believe me, every person that's in this book is described. You give an incredible background on people, where they came from, how they got in the situation they're in. So, when you hear me jumping, you haven't heard of a character, it's just because I haven't read, I'm not reading you the entire book. Fast forward a little bit. Sensing his momentum eroding like the ground beneath him, Carlson sloth through the soft sand, hastening to gather his men before the sun rose. Obviously, they've been inserted at this point. If he could find and untangle his two reduced companies and point them in the direction of their targets, he might still have a chance.

• 48:56Jocko Willink?

  Because there had been no reconnaissance, however, no one knew for sure where or where, where they were or where to go. With four miles of beach to the left and another six miles to the right with targets, their targets could be anywhere, if their targets were there at all. Worse still, one whole boat crew was missing. Without target locations or knowledge of enemy strength, the 13 men, with 13 men unaccounted for and possibly drowned, Carlson was blind and groping for answers in an ever-brightening world, his men becoming ridiculously conspicuous along the white beaches in their uniforms of dyed black. So, this is already off to a bad start with these guys.

• 49:39Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, they, um, yeah, I don't know what to say. I mean, I, uh, the, um,

• 49:49Ben Milligan?

  I didn't, organizing the book, I knew where I needed the book to end. I knew that the book would end in Vietnam because in Vietnam, it's in Vietnam that the SEAL teams become what they are today. Land focus, go anywhere commandos. What he didn't know was how it happened. And I didn't have like, you know, in order to decide what a book's going to be, you've got to have a, you know, not just an end point, you've got to have a beginning point. So I needed to find that first instance where the Navy wanted, or the Navy had that desire to create some sort of raiding unit.

• 50:30Ben Milligan?

  Now, we all know that, you know, the Marine Corps is a department of the Navy. So the Navy has its own army. And so logically, the Marine Corps should have been able to field that first commando unit that worked directly for the Navy. The reason that they don't do that ultimately, happens, you know, in the opening days of World War II. It all happens because of this Macon Island raid. The Marine Corps doesn't want the raiders. The Marine Corps wants what it's always wanted, or not what it's always wanted, they want what they've wanted since World War I. In World War I, the Marine Corps becomes every bit as consequential as the US Army. So the leaders of the Marine Corps, who all fought on the battlefield of the First World

• 51:15Ben Milligan?

  War, they feel like when World War II happens, they can finally achieve the status that their service has long deserved. So they're not interested in being the Navy's anything. They're interested in being their own branch of service, completely, you know, subservient to themselves. So when the Navy says they want to spread the Japanese attention away from the Solomons or away from the South Pacific and do this raid, Marine Corps thinks, well, it's not really what we should be doing, but we'll do it just because the Navy wants it. So when it predictably, when they send these raiders up there with a commander that the

• 51:56Ben Milligan?

  Marine Corps really didn't want, they really didn't like Carlson, it goes predictably bad, and then the Marine Corps justifies the reason that they never wanted them in the first place.

• 52:07Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting, even, and I don't know if you'll remember this, because it might be a little bit, you didn't come in until 2000, yeah. When I came in, the Marine Corps attitude was, well, we don't need a special operations group inside the Marine Corps because all Marines are special.

• 52:27Ben Milligan?

  And that's the attitude.

• 52:28Jocko Willink?

  Hundred percent their attitude and they kept that like to the T when I was in. That was, that was just how they rolled was, was through that.

• 52:40Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, I mean, they, they have had that attitude since the first, well, since World War II, but it's in the first world war that they, they realize what they can be.

• 52:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 52:50Ben Milligan?

  Which is a parallel army.

• 52:52Jocko Willink?

  You, the, the, the work that you did to research these, these battles and you go into so much detail with them, I mean, here we're going back to the book real quick. For the next 30 minutes, A Company fought a suicidal enemy armed with four machine guns, two grenade throwers, automatic rifles and a flamethrower. Each time the Raiders managed to silence a machine gun nest, another Japanese gunner would step over the piled bodies surrounding it and bring it to life. Worst of all, unseen and inescapable were the snipers lashed to the tops of the palms. Not blinded by the sun and rewarded for their patience, each sniper sought out movement and took aim. "We pleaded with Thompson to stay down," one man remembered years later. "There were snipers within 50 yards of us. He did not.

• 53:34Jocko Willink?

  Compelled instead to shuttle between his men, pointing out targets as he went." His Medal of Honor was awarded posthumously. "We had Japs in front of us, above us, alongside us, to our left and behind us," remembered Corporal Young, exposed at the tip of the cul-de-sac. "Even when they managed to fight free of the Japanese around them, their good sense kept them nailed to the ground." "I lay as fat as, flat as I could and tried to shrink myself as narrow as possible," said Private Glenn Lincoln, playing possum under the palm trees and the scrutiny of two separate machine gun positions. "In 30 minutes, nine Raiders from 2nd Platoon were dead. So was Thompson. So was Lieutenant Jerry Holtham, the battalion intelligence officer, a child of missionaries

• 54:18Jocko Willink?

  and the one Raider who could speak Japanese. Also killed were four radio telephone operators, each one singled out by the antenna waggling above his shoulder, which was connected to a waterlogged radio that either lacked the power to reach Carlson's command post or did not work at all."

• 54:36Jocko Willink?

  So like you said, this is just a, a... A disaster, this situation.

• 54:42Ben Milligan?

  It's a disaster, but it, you know, it highlights, you know, even though each branch of service has leaders that have their own purposes for creating these units at various times for various reasons. In each instance, whether it's Raiders or Rangers or LRS or whatever, the guys on the ground, these are, I mean, every bit is heroic and deserving of, you know, our respect as the SEALs that their legacies ultimately funnel into. So it's just, I mean, the branches of service don't support their efforts for one, you know, various reasons, and it, you know, takes a long time to get there.

• 55:27Ben Milligan?

  But you're right, you said it, you know, in your opening remarks, I mean, this, this history or this institution, the SEAL teams could not have, would not have come to be, would not have come to be a land-focused commando unit had it not been for the gap that the Army and the Marine Corps and the CIA or the OSS continually provide over this 30-year period of history.

• 55:50Jocko Willink?

  So that kind of, as you mentioned, that kind of, that first raid, that Macon raid, kind of put a, put a damper on the enthusiasm of the Marine Corps to, to go out and make one of these units. Fast forward a little bit, you say this in the book, "In May 1942, in anticipation of the Army's need, the Navy issued a narrow call for volunteers to join something called the amphibious commandos. What made the call narrow was that it seemed to be directed at a single group. That group was, in the words of one reported, the 600 or so, quote, educated muscle men who had signed on as assistant instructors to the Navy's physical fitness program. These were led by the most educated muscle man of his day, Lieutenant Commander James

• 56:35Jocko Willink?

  Joseph Green Tooney. Am I saying that right, Tooney?

• 56:38Ben Milligan?

  Tony.

• 56:39Jocko Willink?

  Tony. Six feet tall, equipped with heavy fist-shaped chin and handsome smile that every man, woman, and child in the country recognized. Tony was known... Wait, did I get that right? Tony or Tooney?

• 56:51Ben Milligan?

  Tony.

• 56:51Jocko Willink?

  Tony. Tony was known as the great war machine turned heavyweight boxing champ, who had not once but twice defeated Jack Dempsey. Unlike many boxers of his day, whose training consisted of, in the words of one competitor, "a haircut and a shave", Tony had managed this feat by relentlessly conditioning his body during the day, and by reading Shakespeare every night. After winning his second fight, Tony had fought only once more, then quit the ring forever to follow what, to follow that irresistible pull, as one contemporary reporter noted, "to do something big in other fields." This had included lecturing on Richard III at Yale, and inventing the Gene Tony exerciser, a long board equipped with ropes and pulleys

• 57:36Jocko Willink?

  that would raise the feet and condition the abdomens. It sold for $3.

• 57:44Jocko Willink?

  Uh, biggest of all, he had swapped his old globe and anchor for the bronze oak leaves of a naval officer in order to rid his new service of what he considered its gravest threat, the potbelly. "I dare say that 50% of the officers enlisted men cannot properly stand at attention", said the newly-commissioned Tony in 1941, partly blaming their ill-fitting dungarees, which stretched too much and induced the wearer to stick out his belly and hold them up. Tony reasoned that the problem was actually a threat to national security, and would eventually lead, in his words, "to moral collapse". Believing like all Marines that a strong physique undergirded a strong character, Tony's initial efforts in the Navy had met with only moderate success because sailors were not Marines,

• 58:28Jocko Willink?

  and as such, had never cared much for either fitness or character.

• 58:35Jocko Willink?

  Uh, yeah, your dry humor comes through a lot in this book.

• 58:39Ben Milligan?

  I had to cut, I don't know, probably... Five, six pages of Tony out. I mean, the one, the one problem that you, you face when you're writing a book like this is that you, research is really seductive. You can

• 58:52Jocko Willink?

  Go down rabbit hole after rabbit hole.

• 58:54Ben Milligan?

  Keep going, you keep going. You find article after article after article and you wanna, you wanna cram all of this information into that, into that paragraph. And it doesn't take you anywhere. So you constantly have to be asking yourself, what is this? First of all, what's the book? I, I kept a note card on my desk when I started working on the book and the note card had three questions on it. It was pinned to the wall. It said, what's the purpose of the book? What's the purpose of the chapter? What's the purpose of this paragraph? And if the paragraph is not in support of the chapter, and if the chapter is not in support of the, the book, then you're not, you're doing it wrong. So, I mean, you, every character that you come across, you, you want to give them some sort

• 59:37Ben Milligan?

  of, sort of introduction. Tony's consequential in that he attracts all of these.

• 59:43Jocko Willink?

  Studs.

• 59:45Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, he brings all of these.

• 59:46Jocko Willink?

  Just freaking studs.

• 59:47Ben Milligan?

  But he doesn't have the program that's going to be able to contain these guys. So he attracts all of these, you know, you know, pro football players to his program that have, you know, they all want to, you know, serve their country, you know, in the most aggressive way possible. And they find out that they're gonna be calisthenics instructors. So of course, you know what's gonna happen. So Tony collects all these guys. And then, you know, I think the, anyway, go ahead.

• 1:00:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's, it's the, you know, I've, I've done a lot of reading about SOG and every, basically, I would say every SOG mission in Vietnam could be its own book. Just one, every single SOG mission. And that's the feeling I get when, when reading your book. Every one of these characters that you introduce could be their own book.

• 1:00:36Ben Milligan?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:37Jocko Willink?

  Just about every single character could be their own book.

• 1:00:39Ben Milligan?

  You just have to stop. You've got to, you've got to draw the line at some point and be like, yes, there's a book here clearly. But we're, you know, we're, we're going on to, you know, this objective. I never wanted to write a book with a thesis. That was never my objective. I didn't want to prove anything. But what I did find was that with a thesis, uh, with a thesis, I was able to connect all these disparate stories. I never would have, uh, formed a, you know, a comprehensive story. But with that thesis, by asking the question, how did the Navy come to create a land focus, go anywhere commando unit? I was able to stitch all these other, you know, Rangers and Raiders and all the other stories of, you know, the non SEAL units into a book about the SEALs, so.

• 1:01:21Jocko Willink?

  Here's another character that you introduce, um, that we all in the SEAL teams know. When 28-year-old Phil Buckley, a football star from Columbus, Ohio, had presented himself at an Army recruitment office immediately after Pearl Harbor to volunteer for the paratroopers. The recruiter had taken one look at his six foot two, 235 pound frame and said, I could, I could take two instead of you. Considering that the smallest soldier the Army could accept was a shadow heavier than 105 pounds. The recruiter's absolutely right. Disappointed to be passed up for the paratroopers and thus lose his chance to be dropped into a foreign land. Buckley had settled for the Navy, then settled again for the Tony program. Ostensibly the best place in the military for someone with his background.

• 1:02:03Jocko Willink?

  After playing for Xavier University in Cincinnati and then the for the Rams in Cleveland. Buckley had since gone on to raise money and recruit players for his own professional football team. Accomplishments that had demonstrated not only intelligence and toughness that Tony sought, but also leadership and the risk-taking of an entrepreneur. He was not the only footballer with hidden potential. Big John Trippson, a six foot five, bushy haired All-American from Mississippi, from Mississippi State, had already seen more of the country than most Americans ever would, having traded his life on the South Texas plains to play all pro tackle for the Detroit Lions. And Robert Herrick, a mountain of muscle from the mountains of Colorado,

• 1:02:42Jocko Willink?

  who stacked every bit as high as his Texas colleague, had enlisted in the Navy not only as a graduate of Colorado State, but as its head football coach. Essentially, he was a roster with more potential than Tony's program could tame.

• 1:02:57Jocko Willink?

  Just a bunch of freaking beasts. Got it, got to read this part two. So at the call for amphibious commandos Bucklew and nine other Titan athletes raised their hands when they reported to their next assignment. A chief petty officer with a knowledge of angling and the tunny regime took one look at the oversized arrivals and dubbed them the tuna fish.

• 1:03:21Jocko Willink?

  The name stuck.

• 1:03:24Jocko Willink?

  Um, you get another guy named Halperin in here who plays a huge role in all this.

• 1:03:30Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, he's indispensable.

• 1:03:34Ben Milligan?

  I mean, I, everybody, you know, the, the, um, the temptation when you're writing about these guys is to introduce them as they come. You know, you, you come to Bucklew, you want to introduce Bucklew because Bucklew is, you know, one of the most important people in the history of NSW. You come to him, you want to give him a good, you want to give him the introduction that he deserves. But he doesn't become, he doesn't become Phil Bucklew, the consequential Phil Bucklew until Vietnam. So you've got to hold your fire and you've got to, you know, sort of convince the reader that if you just hold on, we're going to get there. So, because the most consequential person, person of this period is the guy you just mentioned, which is Buck Halpern.

• 1:04:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you get this guy Buck Halpern at a mere six feet, 225 pounds. Guys were monsters. This is back in the day too. This is freaking like World War II. Guys are not jacked like they are now. Like if you're six foot, six feet, 225 back in the day, you are jacked. A hundred percent. Echo, can you confirm? Confirm. From the bro science perspective? Yes, sir. Okay, just making sure. At a mere six feet, 225 pounds, Robert Buck Halpern was easily the smallest of the group, but stood out from his fellow footballers for a string of peculiarities, not the least of which a face not unlike that of Hollywood's Robert Taylor. Besides this, he was half a decade older than the rest and had a personality that was not only as dry as Cabernet.

• 1:05:00Jocko Willink?

  But also incomparably unflappable. Most peculiar of all, he'd been raised and educated in the exclusive Chicago suburb of Oak Park, the second son of prominent Jewish immigrants. At the time, not exactly features that encourage friendships with working-class white footballers. But try telling that to Halperin. Unlike the son of Jewish immigrants, unlike many sons of Jewish immigrants, Halperin had been raised to speak no Yiddish, to practice no faith. A boy so adrift from any spiritual anchor that he adopted two regional substitutes as his sanctuaries. The first had been Lake Michigan, in which he swam so often and so well that he once caught the admiration of a waiting Al Capone, and upon which he had learned to sail, eventually reading the windy city's wind so well that he had taken

• 1:05:42Jocko Willink?

  up competitive racing. The other sanctuary, a high holy place if there ever was one, had been the Notre Dame Football Stadium. Asked why a Jew would submit himself to such a Christian university, Halperin had flatly replied, "Because it was the best."

• 1:06:01Ben Milligan?

  So this is another guy. Yeah. Just a character. And he starts, I mean, he starts like, you know, from nothing. He doesn't, he has no expectation. He's so old, when World War II starts, he's 34 years old when he enlists as a seaman in the Navy. But his brother had been a radiologist at Pearl Harbor. And so, you know, after you see your brother, you know, performing such service, what else are you gonna do? You've gotta do the same. So, he pulls every string he can, gets himself into the Navy, and, I don't know, I don't wanna give anything away, but he, I mean,

• 1:06:41Ben Milligan?

  he goes from the Tony program all the way to China. I mean, he becomes, you know, NSW's first ground force commander. It's freaking nuts.

• 1:06:54Jocko Willink?

  Last week of 19, August 1942, Buck Halpern and the rest of the tuna fish plus 36 enlisted sailors left the Solomon Islands where they were trucked more than 100 miles to a point where the lower lip of the Chesapeake Bay met the Atlantic Ocean. Here, the Virginia coast gave way to an isolated tidewater inlet called Little Creek and a dirt road based with dirt floor housing that made the Solomons look like San Francisco. Upon arrival, they were greeted by an Army officer, Lieutenant Lloyd Petticore Jr., a 29-year-old former commander of the Observer Group, who now wore knee-high leather boots of a horse soldier and, in spite of his small stature, when standing at attention looked like a nail waiting to be driven into a rail tie. His personality wasn't far off. As one of the few soldiers who had participated

• 1:07:39Jocko Willink?

  in the Marine Corps Flex Exercises, he knew all too well the challenges awaiting the men. He now welcomed to the intensely difficult course he had just created a course of soft sand runs, rubber boat races, and endless team calisthenics known as the Joint Army-Navy Amphibious Scouts and Raider School. At last, the Navy's Volunteers for Amphibious Commandos were about to come them.

• 1:08:02Jocko Willink?

  That's sort of the beginning. And there's something, you know what's interesting? I don't know. I'm think if you do those like psychological games where or psychological tests where somebody says something and it makes you think of whatever, you know, you have to say what it, but when you hear amphibious commando, who's not 100% in on that? Like, I think I knew what amphibious commando is when I was five years old and wanted in, you know?

• 1:08:32Jocko Willink?

  I had the, I had, I collected these little airfix soldiers, the little 1/32 second size little army men when I was a kid. My mom eventually threw them all the way, by the way, just a savage. I had hundreds of them. And I used to, you know, dream and talk and play with those things. But my favorite was the British Commandos. They had little Zodiacs and kayaks and little beanie caps. Like, that was the deal. And you see that, that was when I was a little kid, that was like, amphibious commandos.

• 1:09:08Jocko Willink?

  So, again, I can't read this whole book.

• 1:09:10Ben Milligan?

  I know, but yeah, Petticore, like he's a...

• 1:09:19Ben Milligan?

  Each of the people that I focus on in the book, I tried to drill down as close as I could. You know, the general rule of thumb is you start big and you go small. So you read whatever is available, the existing literature that's out there. And there have been a couple of books that have been published and Petticourt's a character. So you kind of trace those down. You know, Petticourt, Halpern, Buckley, whatever. You're trying to get as close you can to the person that you want to write about or the person that becomes the consequential person of the moment. So you're trying to learn about them in such a way that you can find out the traits in that person that made them consequential.

• 1:10:02Ben Milligan?

  And whether the traits that made, you know, somebody like Carlson a failure or the traits that made Petticourt or Buckley or Halpern a success. So oftentimes you'd hit a wall. There's no place, you know, there's no more information that's available in existing literature. So you've got to start digging into archival material. So I had learned pretty quickly, you know, what archives around the country usually had the most stuff. So I would go to those archives and I would dig.

• 1:10:31Jocko Willink?

  Like where is this? Is this a place you got to go to, like big libraries or something?

• 1:10:35Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, so the archives, I generally used about five different archives. The most, the best one was probably the National Archives in Maryland. They have the most stuff and they have the, it's accessible. When you start getting to the military archives, not the Army so much. The Army Archives is actually really a world-class institution. I loved going there. It's in Carlisle. The Marine Corps Archive in Quantico, another great archive. The Navy Yard, or the Naval Heritage and History Command Archive at the Navy Yard. That was a bit trickier.

• 1:11:17Ben Milligan?

  They had, for whatever reason, I think, a lot of it had to do with the fact that they had an active shooter there a few years before. So security on the base was tight, but they would really, it's a very close-held institution. So when you went there, you know, digging through their stuff could be a little complicated. You had to plan around it. But you'd find stuff. You'd find, you know, I found, uh, letters that Petticord had written. And you've got to really, you've got to look at the letter. You've got to read it once. You've got to, you know, highlight what's important and you've got to read it again and again. And figure out, you know, what you can learn about him from the letter, the way he talks, the way he writes, the way he thinks. When you run into that, uh, when you can't, you know, squeeze any more information out of that,

• 1:12:02Ben Milligan?

  uh, then you're, you're left with finding the family. And, you know, in this case, I found Petticord's family. Uh, I tried to find, you know, at least a family member for every, you know, person that I, uh, you know, focused on in the book. Um, had dinner with, uh, Buck Halpern's, uh, son last night. Still close friends with him. Uh, but Petticord's family, you know, some of these people, they don't realize like how important their dad or their grandfather was in this history. And they have no idea why you're calling them. Uh, and they, you know, they, you know, they, they would provide photos, they'd provide letters. Uh, sometimes they would let you come to their house and dig through their stuff.

• 1:12:46Ben Milligan?

  But yeah, uh, Petticord was one of those that, uh, I didn't expect to find as much as I did, but talking to him, I mean, you can get little details out of him. I found one photo of Petticord wearing those boots. And I, I knew that they were, uh, you know, the boots that Army Cavalry soldiers wore. Uh, and I, I didn't anticipate that they were boots that he wore, you know, through the rest of his career until I ran into, uh, an old scout and raider. It was a 96 year old guy, old Jim Barnes, is what they called him. I was like, you know, I, I'd sat down to interview Jim Barnes and I, you know, what do you remember about Petticord? And the first thing that he remembered were those boots. Damn.

• 1:13:31Ben Milligan?

  Little detail.

• 1:13:33Jocko Willink?

  Uh, um, after this here, you, you detail, you go through some of the details of Operation Torch, which is up in North Africa, the Sibiu River. Um, it's, it's a success, you know, it's a tough operation. Um, five of the 10 original tuna fish get the Navy Cross from that operation. And again, I'm skipping through some of that right now. Get the book. Get the book and read about that freaking operation because it's epic.

• 1:14:08Jocko Willink?

  The origination, and you know, we've said this a couple of times, but the origination of everything that goes on here is, is you, you have to tell, talk about the Raiders, you have to talk about the Rangers, you have to talk about why, why, why, what happened to them and why they didn't become SEALs, or at least the SEAL type thing. This is a section here where you start talking about the Rangers.

• 1:14:36Ben Milligan?

  Right, so the premise is, you know, that the Navy should never have had this capability. When I started trying to come up with a title for the book, I, one of my options for subtitles were like, something like, "The Origin Story of the Navy SEALs, A Unit That Should Not Exist," something like that, something as, you know, provocative like, like that. And the reason they shouldn't exist is because of the Army and the Marine Corps and the CIA. All of these institutions were better suited for this mission than the Navy was. So, in order to, you know, explain the question that I, you know, asked at the beginning, how the Navy, you know, come to field this, you know, land focus, go anywhere, command of force, the way that's phrased is, you have to understand why these other institutions

• 1:15:20Ben Milligan?

  didn't become that first, why they didn't block the Navy from becoming that. And only in understanding why they didn't become that, can you understand, really understand why the Navy did it, why the Navy felt like it had to do it.

• 1:15:33Jocko Willink?

  That includes the Rangers. Go into the book. "The Officer Selected to Command the Rangers, Thirty-One-Year-Old Major William Orlando Darby, born in Fort Smith, Arkansas, in 1911, the same guerrilla-studded year as Lord Lovat and Russell Volkman. Darby grew up believing that he was destined for greatness. Of average size and looks, his greatness lay below the surface. As it, as it is so often with tragic men, a war would be required to uncover it. Black-haired, blue-eyed, wide-mouthed as a duck, Darby had a ruddy face divided into equal parts, forehead and chin."

• 1:16:10Jocko Willink?

  His left cheek bore a mysterious brilliant red scar, not particularly muscular. He nevertheless affected chest out, shoulders back posture in which his arms seemed always cocked to the rear as if never more than a moment away from snapping to attention. Son of a printer and a musician, the second child between two sisters, he grew up scouting the Arkansas woods and playing the saxophone. While in high school, his older sister died. In Texas, he married then divorced. In spite of disappointment and tragedy, his attitude remained as it ever had been, good humored and irrepressible. In personality, just like his posture, he was direct, forceful, and never vacillating.

• 1:16:50Jocko Willink?

  Had the military gene not dominated and driven him to a life of soldiering, he would have made a born salesman. "He is the ideal commando leader," wrote Colonel Vaughn at the end of the course. "He possesses the energy, keenness, and personality which produces the best out of those under his command." Graduated from West Point in 1933 at the apex of the bell curve, ranked 177 out of 346, he was originally assigned as a field artillery officer. Fast forward a little bit, if the ideal army officer was equal parts confidence, bravery, energy, and obedience, Darby was all these things but perhaps too much the last. More than anything, he believed his men could and should perform any mission assigned to

• 1:17:33Jocko Willink?

  them, from the most audacious lightning raids to the most ignominious rear echelon duties to the most spectacular season hold operations. Because of this, no one would be more responsible for proving the value of the Rangers or for their downfall. So, you go into talking about their first experience, the Rangers' first combat experience, which was in Dieppe. Am I saying that right?

• 1:18:02Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, yep. That's, I think I said-

• 1:18:04Jocko Willink?

  France, 1942?

• 1:18:06Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, and that, that one sentence that I give Dieppe, that represents 20 pages of book that I had to cut out. Like, I spent-

• 1:18:19Ben Milligan?

  Like I said, the research is really seductive. I mean, you find something that is so, you know, what you think is meaningful, or what you think, you know, sort of shows you the direction that this whole thing is going in. You, I mean, the temptation is to really, really focus on it and drag your reader through this.

• 1:18:39Ben Milligan?

  But you have to remember that, you know, you're trying to get the reader someplace, and you don't want to front-load a chapter with 20 pages of battle, and introduce characters in this battle, or of this battle, that really aren't going to take you anywhere.

• 1:18:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. God, they're all so epic. Speaking of British commandos, Jaco's perhaps inspiration for being a commando himself. You got this quoted, I'm just gonna read one quote. This is what the Ranger said about the, about the commandos that they went into Dieppe with. "My God, those commandos can fight," remembered one Ranger after the battle. "They'd kneel down or lie down and fire, then stand up, grab an apple off a tree, and start firing again." Freaking Brits.

• 1:19:18Jocko Willink?

  Um, so you go through that raid, you go through another raid was even more dramatic. Victim of a winch that broke while lowering his landing craft, dumping him, his radios and equipment back into the ocean. Darby nevertheless scrambled back aboard his boat, then led four companies plus one chaplain ashore. There, despite squelching wet boots, he and his Rangers marched uphill for three miles, every man carrying a full load out of ammunition, plus fighting knives, bayonets, climbing ropes, one stick of dynamite, and two mortar rounds. The two unluckiest also pushed a mule cart, bulging with still more mortar rounds. When the Rangers arrived at Fort Dunord, they found it was surrounded by concentric circles of barbed wire as high as eight feet and as deep as 14. With every snip, each man's nerves, nerves cinched tighter. Just as they were about to reach the last ring,

• 1:20:03Jocko Willink?

  a machine gun barked and drove them to the ground. Darby, ever the artillery man, wasted no time. "Roy, pull up your, pull your company back a few yards, then hit 'em when the barrage stops." Lieutenant Murray had got, had hardly gotten his men untangled from the wire when the first rounds thumped into the battlements. Thus persuaded, the French defenders abandoned their machine guns and retreated, chased by Murray and his Rangers, shouting "Hi-ho, Silver, away."

• 1:20:31Jocko Willink?

  That's fighting against the, um, the French, the Vichy French.

• 1:20:38Ben Milligan?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:39Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little, go ahead.

• 1:20:40Ben Milligan?

  No, I mean, the, when you read that and when you, when you think about the Rangers, it just reinforces everything I said before. The SEALs should not exist.

• 1:20:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:50Ben Milligan?

  When you have, you know, what is clearly a naval commando force, a go-anywhere commando force, as capable as the Rangers were in 1942. This is a capability the Army had. They created it, they were smart enough to create it, and then they lost sight of the reasons that they created it and, or actually they didn't lose sight of the reasons. The, the reasons that they created it are the reason that they had the downfall. They didn't care about, you know, the Rangers' commando capability. They were more preoccupied with using the Rangers as a way to teach the rest of the Army how to fight. We want to integrate our Rangers with British Commandos, because the British Commandos are really the only English-speaking troops on the planet that knew how to fight.

• 1:21:35Ben Milligan?

  They wanted to, you know, George Marshall wants to take that experience and pass it along to the rest of the US infantry, or the Army infantry. And so by the time that the infantry starts to, you know, elevate itself to the capabilities of the Rangers, then divisional commanders start using the Rangers more as not commandos to go, you know, raid a, an artillery position or a command post. They just start pushing them ahead of the infantry, almost sort of like suicidal spearheaders. And when, you know, when the chapter ends, I mean, it's, it's just, it's so depressing, but so predictable.

• 1:22:19Jocko Willink?

  Let's get there.

• 1:22:22Jocko Willink?

  This is a massive mission, this is in Cisterna.

• 1:22:27Jocko Willink?

  You, you go through, I mean, I'm gonna, I'm gonna catch the last little bit of it. You go through the battle, you go through what unfolds. I mean, there's so many leadership lessons to learn in here. Obviously, I talk about leadership all the time. The amount of leadership lessons that are in this book is incredible.

• 1:22:45Jocko Willink?

  Kind of wrapping this up, since he'd been blown off the top of a smoking tank, Dobson had somehow made it back to his men near the Cala Caprini House. There, while organizing another defensive perimeter, he had taken more shrapnel to his right thigh, now lying in a ditch next to a burning self-propelled gun whose artillery rounds continued to cook off around him. He passed his command to Captain Charles Shunstrom, a Ranger since the Achanary days and Darby's tank-killing companion at Gala. Upon taking command, Shunstrom, as aggressive a soldier as the US Army had ever produced,

• 1:23:28Jocko Willink?

  shored up his position with several companies of the 3rd Battalion and even attempted a flanking movement to either break free of the encirclement or, believe it or not, take the town. None of it worked. At 10:45, solid communications were finally established between Darby and Shunstrom's radio, the care of which was now in the hands of Captain Edward Kitchens, Kitch to everyone who knew him, who was set up in the 1st Battalion's makeshift aid station and whose feet were gradually becoming more and more encumbered by wounded Rangers. At 11:15, Darby told Kitch to "hold on" and that the 4th Battalion was making slow but steady progress.

• 1:24:11Jocko Willink?

  Thirty minutes later, Darby reiterated his encouragements and even asked Kitch to put together a rescue party for 3rd Division's reconnaissance company that reportedly had been captured in his vicinity. "Maybe you can break up the thing and rescue them," Darby said, his suggestion as tone-deaf as his original expectations. Operationally employed like infantry, Darby's Rangers were now dying like them too. At the Cala Caprini House, alone lay some sixteen dead Rangers, another twenty-two wounded, and only five men still fighting, barely three loaded weapons among them.

• 1:24:51Jocko Willink?

  At 12:15, Kitch became so overwrought and weeping that he could no longer make himself understood. Darby asked for another voice, and Kitch quit the house altogether, preferring to die outside in battle rather than trapped inside manning the radio.

• 1:25:13Jocko Willink?

  Grasping the receiver now was a hulking Ranger, Master Sergeant Robert E. Halt from Brooklyn, New York, one of Darby's originals.

• 1:25:23Jocko Willink?

  "Some of the fellows are giving up, Colonel," said E. Halt, his voice scratching out of the speaker box. "We're awfully sorry. They can't help it, because we're running out of ammunition. But I ain't surrendering."

• 1:25:37Jocko Willink?

  In his farmhouse command post, Darby became frantic. "Don't let the boys give up," he pleaded. "Get the old men together, and lamb for it. How many men are still with you?"

• 1:25:49Jocko Willink?

  "They're coming into the building now," E. Halt replied, gunfire snapping in the background. "We're out of ammo, but they won't get us cheap. So long, Colonel. Maybe when it's all over, I'll see you again."

• 1:26:02Jocko Willink?

  With a violent "wham, wham!" E. Halt's transmission cut out.

• 1:26:08Jocko Willink?

  Darby squeezed the handset and steadied himself. "Use your head and do what is best. You're there and I'm here. Unfortunately, I can't help you."

• 1:26:20Jocko Willink?

  It stung to say the words into the dead line, his fourth battalion still a mile from Cisterna.

• 1:26:27Jocko Willink?

  "But whatever happens, God bless you. God bless all of you."

• 1:26:33Jocko Willink?

  With the mention of God, Darby's voice choked, his eyes watered. "E. Halt, I leave everything in your hands. Tell the men I am with them to the end."

• 1:26:46Jocko Willink?

  After a moment, he set down the handset. Bracing himself, he wrapped his hands around a telephone receiver and called General Truscott.

• 1:26:56Jocko Willink?

  "It apparently was too much for them," he said, muffling his emotions, replacing the receiver in its cradle. Darby asked his staff to leave the room.

• 1:27:06Jocko Willink?

  As enemy shells beat a steady tattoo around the house, he crumpled into a chair, dropped his head into his arms, and sobbed.

• 1:27:17Jocko Willink?

  Several minutes later, Darby appeared outside, his shoulders straight and his chin thrust forward defiantly.

• 1:27:26Jocko Willink?

  He was still in command, but in command of what? No one quite knew.

• 1:27:34Ben Milligan?

  I hate hearing that. I, uh, this, uh, this whole episode is based off of a couple of sources, one of them being Shunstrom's report that he wrote, I want to say three days after the battle, after surviving this thing, he was one of the few that escapes. And on a series of, uh, and on the, the radio transcription that they were keeping, uh, at Darby's, uh, headquarters. So you, you can actually see everything that was said on that radio and you can read it and it's, it's horrible.

• 1:28:11Ben Milligan?

  And you know, you know, I mean, no, you know, going into it, you know, where, you know, what is going to happen and where, um, it doesn't make it easier though.

• 1:28:25Jocko Willink?

  So despite these, um, these legendary heroics, like you said, I mean, the, the heroics of the troops are just undeniable. Just after World War II, all six Army Ranger battalions were disbanded. And, um, you say here, specifically superficially modeled on Churchill's butcher and bolt commandos, the US Army Rangers, by the time of their disbandment, looked nothing like them. This was in the end, the predictable result of different parents. Preoccupied with the readiness of his frontline soldiers, George Marshall had created the Rangers not to perfect the art of Churchill's coastal raids, but to serve his infantry. First, by gaining battlefield experience that could be transferred to the rest of his troops.

• 1:29:08Jocko Willink?

  Second, by handing them off to infantry commanders who committed the Rangers to missions with impossible odds and then either blamed them for their failures or diminished their uniqueness by using them no differently than regular infantry.

• 1:29:21Jocko Willink?

  Though no one could have guessed the consequences, it was prior, it was a prioritization that produced a lasting gap in the US military's order of battle for a unit that specialized in raiding, one that could best be filled by a branch of service less preoccupied, less preoccupied with his infantry. And there was only one branch that didn't have infantry.

• 1:29:45Jocko Willink?

  So there you are, setting up, um, setting up that one branch that doesn't have any infantry.

• 1:29:51Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, at the time, I mean, there's only three branches. The Air Force doesn't exist yet. It's the Army Air Corps. So of all three, the Army, Navy, and the Marine Corps, Navy's it. And you can, I mean, you can see where this is going before you even get out of World War II. You can see, uh, the cycle that's gonna, uh, that's gonna continue all the way until Vietnam.

• 1:30:13Ben Milligan?

  Commanders, uh, are going to, uh, identify a gap. They're going to create commandos, uh, to fill that gap. They're gonna commit them to action, often to disastrous results. And then they're going to, uh, reneg on their idea. They're gonna pull the rug out from under these guys. And every gap, every time that happens, it's often going to leave, uh, you know, their, the, that unit's commando partners in the lurch. And always that commando partner is the US Navy. And the Navy's just gonna get more frustrated, more frustrated, and they're gonna continue pushing their, uh, their units, their special units into that gap.

• 1:30:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the next, the next, uh, part of the book is called, uh, Opportunity. Chapter four, subtitled Draper Kaufman and the Course That Cracked the Atlantic Wall Then Laid the First Bricks of the Legend of Naval Special Warfare.

• 1:31:08Jocko Willink?

  Here we go.

• 1:31:09Ben Milligan?

  He's the weirdest guy in the book by far, but.

• 1:31:11Jocko Willink?

  Tall and thin, lanky even, with dark hair, a, a narrow face and a chin that stretched down like a teardrop draper. Lawrence Kaufman also possessed poor teeth and spectacles as thick as submarine glass. Given to bouts of indolence, he was absent-minded, a failure in any subject that not captures his interest, and alarmingly progressive on the issue of race, at least so fought his mother, a shrew on the topic.

• 1:31:37Jocko Willink?

  As a young man Kaufman had wanted nothing more than to attend the naval academy and command a destroyer as his father had. When poor eyesight threatened to torpedo his dream, he submitted himself to the doc- to doctor's orders, however medieval, and for one hour a day held a palm over each open eye. This, when his appointing congressman suddenly died, leaving his academy application in limbo, he told no one of his plan, escaped from his Connecticut boarding school, got a bunk at the Washington DC YMCA, and then walked the halls of Congress, slipping past secretaries and performing a rehearsed sob story until someone, anyone, gave him an appointment. Once finally accepted, he rode crew, acted in school dramas,

• 1:32:18Jocko Willink?

  and in cruel foreshadowing spent 30 days on a prison ship for sneaking off campus. When he graduated in 1933, a year when Navy pinchers stalked the ranks looking for any excess ballast to pitch over the side, he was given his diploma and a physical disqualification from the Navy, a steep four-year price to pay for, to achieve the rank of civilian. Thus betrayed his childhood dream Kaufman packed his pride, shelved any ideas of glory, and settled for an onshore operations job in the shipping industry, his life suddenly devoted to endless manifests for unloading and offloading of cargo. So there's your introduction, introduction of Draper Kaufman. I mean, there's so many characters and this guy's definitely one of

• 1:33:00Jocko Willink?

  them. Gets put on a six-month assignment to Europe while he's doing that, that shipping job. While he's in Germany, he witnesses Adolf Hitler giving speeches. He realizes that this guy's, what, he realizes what's coming. Yeah. Um, so, fast forward a little bit. He decides he wants to go and, and serve in the American Volunteer Ambulance Corps. To be accepted in the American Volunteer Ambulance Corps, a adjunct unit of the French Army, one was first required to submit a down payment of $3,500 to cover living expenses and the cost of one ambulance. In 1940, that was almost the price of a house. Even more than alarming volunteers were bound to follow orders of the French military. To a man with purpose in his boots and adventure

• 1:33:42Jocko Willink?

  in his guts, just the sort of Hemingway, Hemingway's the French cause had attracted in the last war, no price was too high. You say, "Actually, it was too high." That was a little... He had to beg, borrow, and steal to get this money. Imagine, you have to come up with the price of a house to go and serve in a freaking ambulance corps, where you're gonna get bombed or blown up.

• 1:34:03Ben Milligan?

  That...

• 1:34:04Jocko Willink?

  Working for the French.

• 1:34:05Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, I mean, we all know the, you know, Draper Kaufman's sort of biography. I mean, every... not everybody, but we get, um, you know, if you go to BUDs, you're gonna get the BUDs history class, or the SEAL history class. At some point, somebody's going to mention Draper Kaufman.

• 1:34:20Jocko Willink?

  There was no BUDs history class. There was no SEAL history class when I went through BUDs.

• 1:34:25Jocko Willink?

  You're saying... I'm saying there wasn't. I mean, it was 1990, so...

• 1:34:28Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, I know, and that's just gonna make me mad if we talk about it.

• 1:34:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:34:33Ben Milligan?

  No, but, uh, if you come across any sort of... any history book that's been written, Draper Kaufman's a character.

• 1:34:40Ben Milligan?

  And they're gonna hit, you know, like I said, they're gonna hit the wave tops of his, uh, of his biography, um, you know, before he becomes, uh, you know, the, um, a indispensable, uh, character in the, uh, in the UDT's, uh, Central Pacific campaigns. What they're not going to do is they're not going to put, uh, that biography in context. Um, and when you really dig into it, like, you know, yes, we know he was an ambulance driver, uh, on the Western Front in 1940. We don't know what sacrifice it actually cost him to put himself in that position. And the reality is so much more like me. I mean, you're right, I mean, he, you know, he cashed in everything he had, you know, to go do something that he believed in.

• 1:35:25Ben Milligan?

  Like, how many people do you know? I don't know anybody like that today that would, you know...

• 1:35:29Jocko Willink?

  Give away your house.

• 1:35:30Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, like, and it was all because he was just trying to, um... trying to do what he thought was right. He was trying to, you know, serve his country, even though his country wouldn't take him at the time, because he couldn't see anything.

• 1:35:45Ben Milligan?

  It's just, you know, the, you know, every character in this book, they have, um, you know... Everybody wants to do something in the book. Um, and most of them don't get to do the thing that they want. But all of us, we don't know, you know, what legacy we're going to have. Uh, and we don't know, like, um... What thing that we don't want to do that we have to do is going to be the most important part of our lives and that's what happens with Draper Kaufman. He doesn't want to do any of this. He doesn't want to be an ambulance driver. He doesn't want to be a bomb disposal guy in the blitz. He wants to be a naval officer. He wants to be on a destroyer. They won't let him, so he does all these other things to try and live up to what his dad has done. And he ends up being, you know, he becomes a legend because of it.

• 1:36:29Jocko Willink?

  So, just to dive into a little bit of Kaufman, what he did. On May 10th, 1940 Kaufman arrived at his post six miles beyond the protection of the Maginot Forts in the Saar River Valley in the northeast shoulder of France where the borders come to a point and jot like a salient into the ravenous mouth of Germany. The same day Hitler launched 100 divisions through the Ardennes Forest. As he, as he had known it would, the second war, Second World War had begun. Again and again, for two unrelenting weeks, Draper drove to the front, picked up survivors and returned the inside of his ambulance slippery with blood.

• 1:37:12Jocko Willink?

  The whole while, he sustained himself on bits of food and the horror of French cigarettes. The only sleep to be had was taken in snatches, never in a bed and never with his boots off. Responding to the deliberate fire of German MacGunnars, "Bosch Barbarians" he called them, he and his fellow ambulance drivers began draping dark blankets over the side of their vehicles to cover the giant Red Cross emblems. By the end of his third week in combat, two ambulances had been shot out from under him and he had lost 10 pounds. This is what he gave his a house worth of money to go do. On the afternoon of September 7th, 1940, a thousand German planes attacked London's and surrounding areas, killing 400

• 1:37:54Jocko Willink?

  men, women and children and wounding 1,200 more. The next day, 412 were killed, wounding nearly double that number. For 57 consecutive days, London was hit. Had he arrived any earlier, who knows what the Royal Navy's reaction would have been to his request. As it happened, as it always happened, when opportunity meets courage, Draper arrived at exactly the right moment. The day Draper Kaufman volunteered for the Royal Navy, he presented himself to the Admiralty at 9 o'clock in the morning. So he goes and volunteers to join the Navy.

• 1:38:25Jocko Willink?

  But because of his eyes by five that afternoon, young Draper Kaufman was a sub lieutenant in his majesty's navy. The only one hitch, once again, he was barred from duty at sea. Several weeks into his new career, a German bomb landed just outside the hotel in which Kaufman was billeted. Had it detonated upon impact, Kaufman's story would have been buried along with the hotel, another footnote in military history, nothing more. As it happened, the bomb hit did not, but did not detonate. Its only damage being a 30-foot tunnel gouged into the earth. Before long, an army bomb disposal team arrived, cordoned off the area and set to work. With hand tools alone, the squad painstakingly dug a path to the bomb, enlarged the hole, and shored up the sides in case of collapse. The objective: reach the bomb without disturbing

• 1:39:10Jocko Willink?

  it, gently unscrew the fuse, winch the inert remains from the dirt, and accompanied by police, and accompanied by police or sirens, by police car sirens and loudspeakers, unexploded bomb coming through, transport the carcass to a nearby cemetery. This, usually this method worked, in case it did not, the entire bomb disposal team was killed. The next day, Kaufman volunteered for bomb disposal. For eight months from September 1940 to May 1941, Hitler waged a war on the British people. More than 40,000 civilians were killed, more than 100,000 were injured. The instrument of all this destruction was the bomb. Many of these weapons were defective or, or deranged, as in they failed to detonate upon impact, or were timed to detonate after a bomb

• 1:39:55Jocko Willink?

  disposal team had arrived. So that's what he ends up doing. He ends up doing this bomb disposal duty. After a while of doing that, he decides he's going to go back to the States. Once he's back in the States, Japanese attack. After two years of waiting, the United States was finally at war. In a few days, the message, a message found Kaufman, ordering him to get out to Pearl Harbor right now. Imagining that Japanese trickery extended beyond strategy and into engineering, Draper prepared for the worst. When shown the 500-pound bomb at Schofield Barracks, he sent everyone else to cover, then examined it, sketched it, and telephoned each nail-biting step back to his controller. It had been dropped too low, he determined, landing on its side instead of its nose.

• 1:40:40Jocko Willink?

  What he had visualized as an old-fashioned Oriental puzzle turned out to be the easiest job he'd ever had. "I couldn't have set that bomb off if I had a sledgehammer," he said later. To those who witnessed the bespectacled master push past the line of gawkers to single-handedly disarm the bomb, there were few actions as deserving of praise. Couple headlines: "DC Man Takes Live Jap Bomb Apart Gets Navy Cross," ran the headline in the Washington Post. "All Florida Will Rejoice With Rear Admiral James L. Kaufman On Being The Father Of So Worthy A Son."

• 1:41:17Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. That's where Draper Kaufman comes from.

• 1:41:21Ben Milligan?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:28Ben Milligan?

  Draper is...

• 1:41:31Ben Milligan?

  There's some folks in the... That have spent their lives looking at the history of naval special warfare. And they know more about this history than even I do. I mean, they... You know, I specialized over the, like I said, the period from World War II to the period of Vietnam. They have an even fuller account than I do. And one of the things that annoys them is that Draper Kaufman has risen to this sort of, like I said, legendary status. He's considered by many the father of America's frogman. He's not. He doesn't create the UDT, he doesn't create the frogman.

• 1:42:12Ben Milligan?

  He happens to be the pivotal person at multiple points in that history. But he's not the godfather like everybody, or not like many people have suggested that he is, including his sister, who wrote a pretty decent biography of him. But, like I said, he is a consequential person. What's also interesting about him is that he is, like everybody else in this book, is he is... He's making decisions, or he's deciding to do everything he does. He's not a victim of history. He's not riding a wave like...

• 1:42:55Ben Milligan?

  Like a lot of people, you know, would suggest we're all sort of doing like the there's a there's a metaphor that people use to describe the the transformation of the SEAL teams and that's the evolution. We've all seen that sort of painting at Pease where you've got the, you know, the naked warrior crawling out of the surf and then you've got the sort of Vietnam guy sort of crouched and, you know, wearing his tiger stripe fatigues, you know, all and and next to the the SEAL in Iraq or Afghanistan wearing the body armor and everything. That they call that transformation, the evolution. Evolution sort of suggests, though, that this that this transformation was, one, inevitable

• 1:43:33Ben Milligan?

  and that it didn't require the the intent that all of these folks who have this consequential role in our history had. And they they clearly had intent. I mean, when Draper's going through his history or his biography, he's deciding that he's going to go serve in the French Army. And when the the Germans send him home after he's released from the POW camp and they, you know, make him sign this document that he's going to go back to the States and he'll never take up arms against the German Empire again, he intentionally decides that he's not going to do that. He's going to go join the British Navy and he's going to

• 1:44:15Ben Milligan?

  continue. He continually does this. And just like everybody in the book, they are they're not victims. They're each of these characters, they all have agency and they all decide that they're going to do these things for whatever reason. Mostly, it's the decision that they arrive at is to satisfy what they have decided is their version of relevance.

• 1:44:39Jocko Willink?

  There's a spot where you say, basically, Draper Kaufman is not really the godfather that people, some people give him credit for of the frogmen, but such a consequential guy.

• 1:44:56Ben Milligan?

  He is a consequential guy. And you're right, he's not the he's not the the father of America's frogmen. Kelly Turner is that Kelly Turner creates the UDTs. Nobody would have done it if it wasn't for Kelly Turner. He wants the UDTs because the Marine Corps, at every step, they they frustrate his plans to use reconnaissance troops. And Kelly Turner, he's

• 1:45:18Ben Milligan?

  Kelly Turner wants to control everything in his orbit. And so he creates the UDTs to do just that. He isn't, the demolition is sort of secondary. He wants a reconnaissance force that he owns. And Draper just happens to be the vehicle for, for Kelly Turner's.

• 1:45:35Ben Milligan?

  You know, once.

• 1:45:37Jocko Willink?

  We pick, we do pick up with, um, with Draper Kaufman, though, you say, as such, who better to start the Navy's underwater demolition course in the Second World War than the men who'd seen the most of it? The man who'd seen the most of it, a sailor for whom no barrier ever held, and who was about to squeeze his biography into a syllabus like none that had ever existed. To create the type of amphibious engineer that he envisioned, envisioned Kaufman needed elbow room. Like pedicord before him, he found his elbows had ample space in Fort Pierce, Florida. To create such a unit, he would require students with, in his words, both temperamental stability and individual initiative. To that end, Kaufman insisted that candidates be subjected to very heavy, heavy physical training.

• 1:46:22Jocko Willink?

  Very heavy, he emphasized again. As he knew from his own career, first in France, then in the Blitz, this type of experience would show students that they could push beyond their physical limits, doing without sleep and food and warmth, and still function without their arms falling off. More important, training of such intensity would create its, in its students, a sense of purpose and unity like nothing except actual war.

• 1:46:50Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit.

• 1:46:53Jocko Willink?

  Short on time, eager to screen out the obvious people that would not make it physically, and long on his desire to simulate an experience that was as close to war as possible, Kaufman decided that all three problems could be solved by the same solution. One week of misery. Never reluctant to ask for help, he walked south along tent row until he came to the section reserved for the scouts and raiders. There, still six months away from being transferred, Petticord listened to Kaufman's proposal. He had never been asked to compress the scouts and raiders' eight-week physical conditioning course into one block of uninterrupted training.

• 1:47:34Jocko Willink?

  Certainly, men could be pushed, indeed nearly broken, but what Kaufman had asked to do was another matter. In the end, Petticord agreed. What else could he do? This was Kaufman. The seas parted at his arrival. What Petticord did not know, no one did, was that he was about to help create the sacramental cup from which nearly all future naval commandos would drink. "You were wet, chafed with sand, just completely miserable," remembered Frank Kane years later. "In the daytime, men melted under the sun. At night, they shook so hard from the wet and cold that their hip flexors swelled and cramped. Their teeth chattered like jackhammers. Shouldering

• 1:48:18Jocko Willink?

  boats sloshing with water, they marched for miles in sand and dunes that collapsed beneath every step. Sodden fatigues adhered to the grit and sand, turning armpits, thighs, and scrotums into raw meat. If any instructor detected a student on the stealth and concealment problem as he wormed his chafed and dripping body to the plantation house, the man was punished by being sent to sit inside, where swarms of mosquitoes feasted on his misery." In addition to simple surf drills, rubber boat training included hours of paddling while harassed by the nearby air squadron's F-4 pilots, who would try to nail the floating

• 1:49:00Jocko Willink?

  rafts with sacks of flower bombs. Jetty landings and night portages were attuned by based ambulances and performed over boulders as broad as dinner tables, the endless surf smashing the paddles and men against the rocks. Intended to simulate the long drain of campaign march before battle, this seemingly endless harassment ultimately culminated in a day-long mock skirmish known as the Extended Order Problem, or to the students, So Soli Day. Beginning before dawn, students raced off the ramps of their landing craft just as the beach erupted in thundering sheets of flame. For a whole day, instructors armed with charges unleashed a torrent of exploding columns

• 1:49:43Jocko Willink?

  of water and showers of mud and debris. The students' belly crawled on throbbing knees and elbows into hip-deep mud, swamps, and surf as the explosions chased them from cover and foxholes. Until Kaufman's regime, no Navy unit had been subjected to training course whose essence so closely resembled that of real war. The frantic harassment, the inescapable cold, the relentless exhaustion, not only did it prepare men for what was to come, it set them apart from everyone else in the Navy. Even in the early classes, as many as half the men who started did not complete the week. That was entirely the point.

• 1:50:25Jocko Willink?

  Modeling his project on the culture of the corps franc, Kaufman had set out to forge both an esprit de corps and the reputation that always accompanies it: exclusivity. "If you haven't been through it," he would later say, "you're not a demolitioneer." In August 1943, Kaufman volunteered for his own program. At 32-years-old, with eyesight not good enough to qualify for his own demolition standards, he was hardly an ideal candidate. "I think I have never seen a man struggle so desperately," Warnock said after witnessing Kaufman's performance. The moment he finished his 10-mile beach run, he passed out. During the ocean swim, Warnock thought he would drown.

• 1:51:10Jocko Willink?

  "We all knew he wasn't a great athlete," said Frank Kane, "and we thought, hell, if he can make it, we can too." Throughout the training, Kaufman enlisted but never sank, alternately encouraging and bullying his boat crew from start to finish, as one remembered with his bloody battle cry of "Corps franc!"

• 1:51:29Jocko Willink?

  When men showed signs of cracking during another bone-trilling dip in the ocean, Kaufman turned it into a joke, annoyingly repeating the same mocking phrase, "The water", he boomed in his strong mid-Atlantic accent, "is never cold." The Monday after Kaufman completed this week, he was ordered to report to Captain Clarence Gulbrunson, the base commander of Fort Pierce. Swollen from head to foot, with fingers like sausages ready to burst, he crawled out of bed and staggered into the commander's office. "What's this I hear about forty percent of your class is either being in the sickbay or quitting?" the captain barked. "I don't think you have any idea what you're putting these men through, Draper." "I do," Kaufman responded.

• 1:52:13Jocko Willink?

  It was hell. When Kaufman's trainees completed Hell Week, the name his Week of Misery inevitably took on, their demolitions training program progressed to its next phase: two weeks of explosives, two weeks of reconnaissance, and three weeks of practical exercises. So there you go. Freaking Hell Week.

• 1:52:37Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, created by... I mean, we look around, I mean, how many team guys do you know that would fit his bill today? I mean, we kind of think that we sort of created ourselves. I mean, we have a lot of people that sort of came together to create this program, and they're not, they don't look like us. I mean, they were sailors, ship, fleet sailors, I mean, that put this thing together. And somebody who's, you know, the most unlikely person, I mean, Draper Kaufman is not what you would think of as a modern-day SEAL or modern-day frogman. In fact, he didn't want to be. He just, I mean, he's, he sort of continues to do the thing that he doesn't really want

• 1:53:22Ben Milligan?

  to do, because that's the right thing, that he, you know, it's the thing that's going to accomplish the mission that he's been given, which is to demolish Hitler's Atlantic Wall. And he doesn't know how else to do it, so he, you know, he squeezes every drop of his biography into this curriculum.

• 1:53:40Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, actually fast forward a pretty good chunk going into D-Day. And again, your detail and the research that you did to get here is just, it's unbelievable to read. "With terrified soldiers frozen in place, neither advancing or retreating, Freeman and Keaheli sprinted between posts yelling obscenities and kicking the infantry men away. Once clear, Freeman gave the signal, tossed a purple smoke grenade, and Petty Officer Bass pulled the fuse. Fire in the hole!" At 6:55, only 22 minutes after landing, the whole area exploded in a roar that drowned out the battle's din, shooting skyward a mixture

• 1:54:19Jocko Willink?

  of water, smoke, wood, sand, and steel high into the air. The defenders' response was vicious. As soon as the smoke and debris settled, the fire from the hills became unbearable. As Mingeldorf, the Georgian with a hole in his leg, crawled hand over hand to the seawall in safety, a round slammed through his helmet into his forehead, killing him instantly. With the obstacles blown and the beach cover gone, Petty Officer Bass, a former CB from Durham, North Carolina, resisted the urge to run and instead found Seaman Farrell alone, still writhing from the hole in his knee and with a fresh wound to his right eye. Bass bent down to cradle the boy to cover him, and as he did, a bullet tore through his back, entering just to the right of his spine and blowing a hole out his right shoulder.

• 1:55:04Jocko Willink?

  Sergeant Murphy, one of the Army's naval augmentees, found them both and dragged them to the seawall. Wounded himself, and with nearly everyone in his crew either shot or dead, Freeman was unstoppable, blasting obstacles, clearing out infantrymen before his charges blew, helping his wounded to cover. Though they had been cut to shreds, Gap Assault Team One had completed its mission. Their 50-yard...

• 1:55:28Jocko Willink?

  Gap was clear. And that's just one little chunk of the detail that you give on all these heroic acts that are going on. By fast forward by morning, by morning's end, with the help of Hall's destroyers, the Gap assault teams had partially cleared five of their 16 target sections along Omaha Beach. By nightfall, the total was 10. For the NCDUs, an accomplishment that came at a cost prematurely estimated at two dozen dead, at least that many wounded, and 15 more missing. These last had either been blown clear of their landing vessels and drowned, or, in the words of one writer, "had run off to fight with the army."

• 1:56:06Jocko Willink?

  In fact, some had done just that, or at least abandoned their section of beach. As a handful of planners had expected, the most difficult aspect of Rommel's Atlantic Wall had been the beach and the underwater obstacles, a problem that had been overcome only because of the Navy's commitment. First, in identifying the issue, next, in commissioning Kaufman to solve it, then in sharing those lessons with the Army's combat engineers. Ultimately, however, the Navy's greatest contribution had come from the NCDUs themselves. In addition to the Presidential Unit Citation, Admiral Hall had gone on to recognize the

• 1:56:46Jocko Willink?

  demolition ears by recommending them a trunk full of individual awards, individual awards, including six Navy Crosses, one of which went to Chief Petty Officer Bill Freeman. "I kick myself ever since that I had didn't recommend him for a Medal of Honor," Hall said later. "I never heard of anybody who did a greater job than that fellow did." Responsible for getting the Army past the underwater obstacles on Omaha Beach, the NCDU's achievement was, in the end, made possible only by their training at Fort Pierce. There, they had learned not only the technical skills of underwater demolition, the explosives, the pull fuses, the minimum safe distances, but also, as Kaufman had insisted, the ability

• 1:57:27Jocko Willink?

  to push past the limits of normal human endurance, to withstand cold, hunger, raw skin, exhaustion, even the chaos of combat, the kind of fortitude that made winning wars possible. "Only our vigorous training held us together," one survivor said afterward. But what about, but what about after that? With the collapse of the Atlantic Wall, the mission of the NCDUs had been accomplished, and therefore, no unit in the US military was in greater threat of disbandment. Or at least would have been had it not been for one final hang up. The Navy's planners were loath to disband a unit that had just performed so effectively. After all, the war was far from over and there was no shortage of needs for sailors so conditioned to the combat that lay ahead.

• 1:58:15Jocko Willink?

  Boom.

• 1:58:16Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, it's a, I mean, I don't know about you, but nobody ever connected Hell Week or the reason for Hell Week to Omaha Beach. But I don't think that we would have that crucible today if it wasn't for that. It justified everything that Kaufman did.

• 1:58:37Ben Milligan?

  I mean, we, later in the war, you see lots of people get pulled over to the UDT, whether they're Seabees or Marines or even soldiers in some instances. And those, you know, they don't necessarily go through Hell Week. If it had not been for that experience, it's likely that we would not have this, like, that crucible. And without that crucible, what would the SEAL teams be? I mean, they'd be another commando force, but would they be everything that we are today? I mean, that's the defining moment of training, right?

• 1:59:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, you called it the sacramental cup.

• 1:59:16Ben Milligan?

  It is the sacrament. I mean, we all have these, I mean, there's institutions all around us, whether it's institutions of the US Constitution or their, whatever, your Catholicism. I mean, that, your faith has these little institutions built into it. And, you know, if you're going to take the catechism, there's all these sacraments that you've got to do. And what's more, what's a bigger sacrament than, you know, the becoming of a SEAL than Hell Week?

• 1:59:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Not one.

• 1:59:51Jocko Willink?

  You get into next Tarawa and what happens at Tarawa, which is a total nightmare.

• 2:00:00Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if you had the chance, we had a guy, Dean Ladd, that was on this podcast and he was a Marine Corps.

• 2:00:06Ben Milligan?

  Wow.

• 2:00:07Jocko Willink?

  I think he was a, I think he was a first lieutenant by that time.

• 2:00:10Ben Milligan?

  Wow.

• 2:00:10Jocko Willink?

  Uh, that did a bunch of islands, including Tarawa, got gut shot Tarawa 800 yards from the beach. Two Marines disobeyed orders to leave him and move forward and dragged him back to a boat. He survived, ended up going back, but um, yeah, you detail what happened there, how bad it was. And basically, if you don't know, anyone that doesn't know, the, the Marine Corps hit reefs on the way in. And the boats got hung up and so the guys had to get out and walk with no protection whatsoever. Through the ocean, 800, it was around 800 yards to get to the beach where there was, wasn't the, once they got to the beach, it was hell as well. So.

• 2:00:53Ben Milligan?

  And we've always known that Tarawa is the moment that, you know, the, the need for UDTs is identified. We don't exactly know the reason though. I mean, cause the Marine Corps, they come up with the, the solution or what they perceive to be the solution. Before the Tarawa battle even commences and that, like I described, is the, the landing vehicle tractor, the, the LVT. It's a technical problem. They have a technical solution for it. The problem with that is Turner doesn't like their solution. Uh, Kelly Turner, uh, sees the cancer or sees the, the coral as a cancer. It is going to complicate everything, uh, as far as all the, the rest of the campaigns ahead of him.

• 2:01:33Ben Milligan?

  He doesn't want to deal with this. He wants to, he, he wants that coral out so he can get his Higgins boats to the beach. And the only way to do that is to find him.

• 2:01:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And what's interesting too is after Tarawa.

• 2:01:46Jocko Willink?

  The Marine Corps solution was, you know, like you said, it was just more.

• 2:01:51Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, more.

• 2:01:51Jocko Willink?

  You're just, okay, so we're gonna lose X percentage of boats on the way in, cool, more. We're gonna lose this many LTVs on the way in, cool, more, bring us more. That was their answer. And Turner was saying, hey, actually not a good answer. Well, let's, let's figure out how to solve this problem.

• 2:02:06Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, Churchill's quote, you know, we've, we've run out of money, now it's time to think. I mean, you could just, you could say, you know, just as, uh, just as much when it comes to logistics. There, I mean, there's nothing that compares with the US military's logistics and manufacturing might going into this, but we still have limits. You can't, these LVTs, they take up a ton of space on all the ships that the Navy's going to use to transport them. The Higgins boats, they, they're easier to carry, they're faster in the water. Uh, you can time everything from naval gunfire support to, uh, aircraft, uh, coming in to support the landings, if you have a faster vehicle to get them from the ships to the shores. Um, and that's what Turner wants. He wants to be able to get his ships as quickly to the beach as possible.

• 2:02:49Ben Milligan?

  It's the safest way, uh, it's the easiest to get everything there. And the only way to do that is to find the coral and get rid of it.

• 2:02:57Jocko Willink?

  We start training now, but under Turner's direction, we start training, we're training in Hawaii now. In May, a fresh batch of NCDU recruits arrived in Maui. Per the direction of Kohler and Kaufman, the men were told to abandon the bulk of their gear, their green fatigues, their boots, their Mae West life jackets, even their helmets and sidearms, and slip into a pair of black Maui swim trunks and dive masks. Their rough rubber edges sanded down to prevent them from biting into their face. What followed were nine seemingly endless days of training on how to systematically map an underwater landscape and blow it up. Rocks, coral, night swimming, blast, no rest, no sleep, suicide stuff, one trainee remembered.

• 2:03:38Jocko Willink?

  For fewer, for no fewer than six hours a day, recruits lived in the water, perfecting their strokes until they could swim a mile before breakfast. Their only day off was Monday, when possible. Seeing that this was the first time many of them had handled explosive fused or tied primer cord into a trunk line, accidents were routine. Fingers blown clear off or hanging by bloody shreds of skin. Asked how long he could swim underwater with a hundred pounds of powder, recruit Knorick replied, "With a hundred pounds of powder, I could probably stay under forever."

• 2:04:10Jocko Willink?

  So this is, I highlighted that part because this is a point now where we're starting to see, you know, the idea of the naked warrior. They're getting rid of all their gear. They're just wearing trunks.

• 2:04:20Jocko Willink?

  Saipan is where we get this recon. Like a legit recon going on. The closer his swimmers got to the beach, the more nervous Kaufman became. At 100 yards, he tried to turn them around, but most of them kept going. At 50 yards, some began to pivot back, but some didn't. Closing to within 30 yards of the shore and 40 yards of the guns. So close that they ceased swimming and dug their toes of their sneakers into the sand, pulling themselves along with their gloved hands. When that last line finally did run out of water, each man backed off slightly, turned left, then side stroked along the beach for 25 yards, edging his mask out of the water with every breath, careful to remember the locations of any gun positions under circumstances, not an easy thing to forget.

• 2:05:05Jocko Willink?

  On the swim back, each man ignored his exhaustion and worsening leg cramps and stayed as close as possible to the bottom. When they neared the reef, Kaufman reboarded his mattress and offered a nearby swimmer a toe. Get that damn thing out of here. This is, you go over this earlier, all the little rafts that they have were getting shot up. On the other side of the now surf slammed reef, each swimmer waited for pickup. When the landing craft arrived, the Coxins took turns motoring each man and either drop, drop them a Jacob's ladder or reversed engines until he could grab hold and pull himself up. Throughout this cumbersome boarding, a period packed with vociferous cursing, said one survivor. Every man aboard fully expected a mortar round to drop square into the boat.

• 2:05:49Jocko Willink?

  As soon as the last man was loaded, Kaufman tallied his numbers and realized that in addition to the officer killed on the air mattress, two of his swimmers were still missing. Pulled in separate directions by his instinct to rescue and his orders to rush back to the fleet, Kaufman looked around at his blue tinged, black striped men and chose the more painful option. With the fleet waiting for his information, Kaufman ordered his boats back to the APDs. When the men of UDT 7 arrived back at the Humphreys, they discovered something remarkable. Though several men had been wounded. Some with serious internal injuries from the mortar blast, not a single one of their swimmers had been lost. In fact, the only men that had been killed had been the ones who had remained on the LCPRs as they had waited for swimmers to return.

• 2:06:32Jocko Willink?

  Kaufman's UDT five swimmers had been slightly less fortunate with one killed, several more wounded, and two still missing. But it was nothing compared to the bloodbath that occurred just one week before at Normandy. So this is another methodology of executing these things.

• 2:06:49Ben Milligan?

  And it's sort of a metaphor for, you know, what actually happened, the entire history. So the, you know, the Navy intentionally creates all of these units. They create NCDUs, they create UDTs, they create the Scouts and Raiders. All of these units are created for a specific purpose. They're committed to action for a specific reason. But, once the Navy creates these things, the Navy can't necessarily predict how far the individuals that are, that belong to these institutions are going to push them. They're going to push those envelopes. So Kaufman, you know, when he's driving his men toward the beach, or he's pushing his men to swim, he also is trying to stop them. He's trying to stop them 50 yards from shore, they won't, they keep going 25 yards. So, you know, the SEAL teams are created by the Navy.

• 2:07:34Ben Milligan?

  They're created by the Navy for the Navy. But the, you know, you can sort of see it just in that moment. The SEAL teams become so much more because of the SEALs themselves. So the SEALs don't create, we don't. We're not responsible for our own institutions. We think we are, but we're not. But we are responsible for what that institution ultimately became.

• 2:07:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, there's an interesting tie-in that you make in the book, and I don't remember if it's in my notes to cover, so I'll just mention it now. The Navy, the Navy, just by nature of being disaggregated and being spread apart, especially back in the day, there was decentralized command, unlike, really unlike, any other organization.

• 2:08:17Ben Milligan?

  Absolutely.

• 2:08:18Jocko Willink?

  And that, that spirit of decentralized command of like, hey, you go and you make, you take the fight to the enemy. You get in this ship, or you get in this submarine, you go overseas and you take the fight to the enemy. That's

• 2:08:30Ben Milligan?

  You have mission-type orders.

• 2:08:31Jocko Willink?

  Right. And that's, that's the way the Navy had, had to exist back in the day. And that vein and that, that DNA remains. And that's why you get these guys that are very proactive and will, will, will be default aggressive out there on the battlefield.

• 2:08:47Ben Milligan?

  That's, that's exactly right. Default aggressive. Latitude only works if your default orientation or default setting is aggression. And if you read any like naval history book during like, you know, the Napoleonic Wars, or if you read, you know, the Patrick O'Brien Master and Commander series, like you're, you're never, you know, connected to your chain of command, whereas the Army always is.

• 2:09:14Jocko Willink?

  Always is, yeah.

• 2:09:14Ben Milligan?

  So that, you know, as technology has improved, or as technology's gotten better to connect commanders to their troops in the field, that chain of command has only thickened. Whereas in the Navy, I mean, we have all of this history behind us, or the Navy has all this history behind it of latitude, of mission-type orders, of relying on the aggressiveness of the individual commander. You just have to trust your guys. But you have to be specific about what you want.

• 2:09:41Jocko Willink?

  Oh, for sure. Otherwise you get rogue.

• 2:09:44Ben Milligan?

  Exactly.

• 2:09:44Jocko Willink?

  You do talk about what the UDTs brought back from that. And what they brought back was good information, good intel that they could then form into a, make a better battle plan. The invasion of Saipan goes smoother. Fast forward a little bit, by the fall of 1944, the Navy's underwater demolition teams were the most indispensable of all US military's special operations units. A facet directly attributed to the Central Pacific planners who would no longer go anywhere without their reconnaissance reports. "The UDTs were an essential part of our amphibious organization for the remainder of the war," wrote Turner on the last day of combat on Tinian. "It is, it is questionable if we could have made our landings

• 2:10:24Jocko Willink?

  except after the great losses, except after great losses if we had not had these teams to prepare the way." This assessment was immediately echoed by Admiral Connolly, who concluded his invasion in Guam by declaring that "Without UDT's discovery and demolition of some 640 obstacles along 3,000 yards of beaches, including the nearly car-sized coconut log cribs filled with loose coral, the landings, quote, would, could not have been made." There, in spite of orders forbidding them to do so, three demolition swimmers, including Gunner's First Mate, Gunner's Mate First Class Henry L. Green,

• 2:11:05Jocko Willink?

  had grown so convinced of the UDT's worth that they had planted a white butcher block sized sign at the water's edge with the following message, "U.S. Marine, welcome to the USO. Greetings from UDT 4." Hearing this, Admiral Connolly had summoned the team's commander to his state room in order to hand him a starch counseling, but instead had neutralized his own admonitions by stopping the young officer at the door declaring, "Wait till I tell Turner. Turner, he'll have those Marine generals eating crow."

• 2:11:40Ben Milligan?

  Um, it's so childish, but yeah.

• 2:11:43Jocko Willink?

  It's so childish, but that's.

• 2:11:44Ben Milligan?

  I mean, that's what it is. I mean, how many times have you in your service, you know, interacted with, you know, you know, a sister service? And I mean, the rivalry exists. Yeah. Like it's a, you know, it's a brotherhood, you know, on the battlefield, but still we're, you know, always chasing our institutional prerogatives or trying to, you know, push the boundaries of, uh, you know, our, our institutional authority.

• 2:12:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And what's interesting is when you get into the senior ranks, there becomes a real, there's a real tension between the services and the, and the amount of money that they get and, and it's a, becomes a real thing. Um, but yeah.

• 2:12:25Jocko Willink?

  You, you say here, "To recognize their contribution for taking of the Marianas, Turner showered the UDTs with awards. More than 60 Silver Stars, 300 Bronze Stars, reported the largest mass recommendation for sailors and Marines in the war up to that point. Given the importance of the job, Connolly would have pinned Navy Crosses on, on the commanding officers of UDT 3 and 4, but ended, in the end settled for Silver Stars, each of them presented by none other than Admiral Kaufman, Draper's father. As for Draper himself, rumors circulated about his nomination for the Medal of Honor, an accolade his father, Chairman of the Awards Board in the Pacific, lobbied against for fear of the medal's association with recklessness. In the end, Draper received a Navy Cross, his second pinned on by his father with a

• 2:13:07Jocko Willink?

  comment that allowed the photographer to catch the serious young man in a laugh. Thank the Lord you found a clean short."

• 2:13:17Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, that's a relationship I could have spent a lot more time on.

• 2:13:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:20Ben Milligan?

  I mean, he's, you know, Draper's dad is out there, you know, in the fleet. He's, he's a Commodore himself and, uh, you know, he knows exactly the risks that his son is taking and he does nothing during the entire war to either convince Turner, uh, you know, to have the UDTs take less risk. Uh, he, he just, he's as, uh, you know, I, I don't know, uh, as a father, and I know you're a father too, like, I don't know that I'd be able to, to keep myself disciplined enough to, to not interfere.

• 2:13:55Jocko Willink?

  Get him, you'd get him orders to, uh, the Washington DC, uh, admin spot.

• 2:14:01Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, I just don't know how, whatever that impulse, uh, you know, that, that those guys had, I, I don't know that it's, it exists today, but.

• 2:14:09Jocko Willink?

  Either that, you'd make him a freaking boat crew leader at UDT four, just freaking ready to get some, baby. Uh, this is just, you, you jump into this next part, chapter six, the contest for the guerrilla war in China and the organization that had no damn business fighting in it, the US Navy's army of sailors. This is just freaking buck wild, this whole section. I mean, you get this guy born Milton E. Roberts in 1900 in Jerome, Arizona. Miles spent his first years in a mountainside mining hub called by the New York sun in 1903, the wickedest town in the West. He was only a child, he was the only child of a lumber cutter who was nearly 30 years older than his mother. Before Miles was even eight, his father was dead, which was something of a blessing

• 2:14:53Jocko Willink?

  as it had given, given his mother an opportunity to move and remarry then in Seattle. His stepfather, Miles had received, from his stepfather, Miles had received the last name he would live with, but not much else. At 14, Miles ran away from home and you just set up this background with this guy. He enlisted in the Navy. He ends up doing, taking some test to get into the, in Ireland, to get into the naval academy. He gets in, goes to the naval academy, um, to gets, and then he gets deployed to China for a five-year tour. Ends up, um, you know, doing operations in the Yangtze River. This is the warlord period. He learns about leadership diplomacy, geography, small boat handling, how to shoot his way out of a holdup.

• 2:15:37Jocko Willink?

  Unlike most Westerners, uh, picks up various coastal dialects. So this dude's speaking freaking Chinese or Mandarin or whatever. Um.

• 2:15:46Ben Milligan?

  He, he's brilliant. I mean, I, there's nobody, I mean, like I say, you know, I mean, we got our history, not just from, you know, frogmen. We got it from, you know, just fleet sailors. And this is, I mean.

• 2:15:58Jocko Willink?

  Did you ever see the movie Sand Pebbles?

• 2:16:00Ben Milligan?

  Yeah. This is Sand Pebbles.

• 2:16:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is, so Sand Pebbles, go watch it if you haven't seen it. I know you haven't seen it, Echo Charles, because it's a classic. It's an actual good movie. There's no, there's not many like CGI explosions in it. But yeah, this is Sand Pebbles all day. We had the movie Sand Pebbles on one of my ARC deployments. This is back before internet or anything. So we just had videotapes. We would watch Sand Pebbles over and over again. Um, and that's what this guy is doing. He's in, so he ends up running these freaking guerrillas in China.

• 2:16:32Ben Milligan?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:32Jocko Willink?

  Which is nuts.

• 2:16:34Ben Milligan?

  Um, he's, I mean, nobody knows about him today. Like he's, he's completely forgotten to history, but I mean, he's every bit as consequential, at least as far as, uh, the Navy's, uh, journey from, uh, you know, the ocean to, to the land as, you know, say somebody like Lawrence of Arabia. He doesn't have the, the style of somebody like that, which is probably, you know, part of the reason that he's forgotten. And, you know, his book, uh, Different Kind of War is, you know, it's, it's not, you know, Seven Pillars of Wisdom. But, um, you know, the, he, he wrote that thing when he had been diagnosed with, uh, with prostate cancer. So he was racing against the clock to, to try and get this recorded. And he was, you know, he knew he only had maybe a year, uh, to live. And he's, you know, drafting this thing.

• 2:17:18Ben Milligan?

  He's typing up little sections of it. Uh, his wife, um, you know, is, is, uh, cutting these sections out to reorder them. And he's, she's putting these things together with Scotch tape. Uh, I actually found that record uh, in the, the National Archives. It still exists. So he talks about, or, uh, his, his wife, uh, wrote a, the foreword to the book to say, you know, how this was done, how it was cut, re-taped together, anything like that. And then to see that, to find that in the National Archives, to hold, you know, these re-taped together pages. Pretty incredible, but you know, like I said, this guy, he is the Navy's version of Lawrence of Arabia. He means the

• 2:17:56Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking crazy.

• 2:17:57Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, insane. And he's a flag officer.

• 2:18:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:02Ben Milligan?

  And he's involving himself in the entire war in these little mini skirmishes and ambushes. It's, I mean, he, he's almost killed three times just by assassins.

• 2:18:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's nuts. It's a freaking crazy story.

• 2:18:12Ben Milligan?

  And he loses his mind in the process.

• 2:18:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. You say this along with his promotion to Admiral King Elevated SECO, which is the Sino-American Cooperation Organization. This is this group that they got running all over China, to Naval Group China, an act that likewise elevated each camp to a formal, and they got all these camps, they got all these camps set up. He's running this network of camps.

• 2:18:35Jocko Willink?

  An act that likewise elevated each camp to a formal naval unit and invested Miles with the authority of a group commander, increasing his roles to 600 officers and 2, 2,400 enlisted men, about 300 more than allotted to a World War II battleship. And a commitment by the Navy that was further augmented by various numbers of Marines, Coast Guardsmen, and radio operators. To supply all these men, Miles received two planes, their engines rarely idle, to which ferryloads from Chungking to the various camps. The gas alone for these planes gobbled up as much as half of Miles' monthly tonnage allotment over the hump. But for the first time in the war, Sako camps began, began receiving at least a portion of what they deserved. So this guy is running a freaking crazy guerrilla war.

• 2:19:18Ben Milligan?

  He's running an army. He's a, he's a naval commander who's running an army like, like we talked about earlier. He's running, he has no communication with these units for the most part. So he's, he's, he's getting these commanders, mostly Marines, that are, that are coming to him. He's giving them a spine of sailors to go work with. And then this Marine commander and these Navy sailors are trucking sometimes three months at a time to get to their station in China. They set up a camp, they start training Chinese guerrillas, and then they commit them to action.

• 2:19:46Ben Milligan?

  And because he has no communication with them, he has to rely on the aggressiveness of each of these leaders. In some cases, it works out. Some cases, it doesn't. So really, all he's doing at this point is just managing his talent pool and assessing whether or not they're sending back aggressive enough reports about the operations that they're undertaking. Anyway.

• 2:20:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you cover it. I mean, it's just, it's an incredible story. Again, that's probably ten books in its own right.

• 2:20:16Ben Milligan?

  It's ten books. And the thing that I was blown away with, and I focused my attention of this chapter on Camp Six, because Camp Six is really the only unit in Sakko that is run by a member of Naval Special Warfare. Every other camp, except in rare instances, is run by a Marine. So the legacy of those camps is understandably a feather in the Marine Corps cap. They should be nothing but impressed with the legacy of the Marine Corps-led units. But Admiral King, towards the tail end of this period, they're running out of Marines to send. And not only that, but the Scouts and Raider Program is going

• 2:21:00Ben Milligan?

  away. Admiral King doesn't want it to go away. He wants to send quasi-Marine sailors to backfill the Marine commitment to Sakko. So he repurposes the Scouts and Raider School, turns it into the Amphibious Rudder School, and is trying to get as many Marine-type sailors into Sakko as possible to justify this course, so we don't have to get rid of this course after the end of World War II. And Camp Six becomes sort of the repository of all of that experience. Buck Houtman, who you mentioned at the beginning of the book, the Jewish Notre Dame quarterback, he gets sent there. Phil Bucklew comes west and starts leading

• 2:21:43Ben Milligan?

  reconnaissance and raiding operations. But yeah, Camp Six is the...

• 2:21:51Ben Milligan?

  Camp 6 is the first instance of naval special warfare really going ashore. And they do everything. They do raids, they do ship attacks by the end of the war. Halpern is literally leading from the saddle on a horse and pushing his guerrillas into action. It's incredible.

• 2:22:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's freaking, it's just a great story. And again, it, you know, I've often said that, you know, when I got in the teams, I don't know, when you got in this still, so was, there was no doctrine when you got in the teams. There was no doctrine when I got in the teams. You couldn't, if you wanted to know how to do an assault on a target, you couldn't look it up. Someone had to tell you, your platoon chief or your LPO was going to teach you how to do it. It wasn't written down anywhere. Whereas the Army and the Marine Corps, you can look up exactly how to do a target assault. It tells you step by step what to do. So we don't have any doctrine. We have more now, but that's one of, one of our biggest weaknesses is that we don't have any doctrine. One of our biggest strengths

• 2:22:54Jocko Willink?

  is that we don't have any doctrine. And, and that's why you get a freaking guy that's like, oh, cool. What we're gonna do? We're getting on a horseback raids? That's, that's what's happening? Cool. Let's figure out how to do it. And, and again, that decentralized command, the default aggressive attitude, that's, that's in, that's gotta be, that's the DNA of the SEAL teams. And it's rooted back to Camp 6.

• 2:23:15Ben Milligan?

  Camp 6. Nothing like it.

• 2:23:19Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward. "The end of the war should have been the happiest day of my life," wrote Miles afterward. "Tasked with an impossible mission and yoked to impossible partners, he had nevertheless achieved something greater than ever been asked of him: a Navy-run guerrilla army and intelligence infrastructure that had stretched from Indochina to the Gobi Desert. Assisted by Marines, his sailors had trained as many as 100,000 Chinese guerrillas, rescued airmen and missionaries, blasted open Japanese tanks, blown up some 158 bridges, derailed some 66 Japanese trains, sunk 35 Japanese ships, raided uncountable Japanese camps, and led at least one cavalry charge on camels."

• 2:24:03Jocko Willink?

  Best estimates at the time placed the number of Sako inflicted casualties at around 26,717 killed, 8,702 wounded, 346 captured. Of the roughly 2,500 Americans who served in Seiko, five were killed. That's amazing. That's amazing.

• 2:24:20Ben Milligan?

  And this isn't even considering the strategic impact of Sako because, you know, they're tying down a million Japanese troops the entire time.

• 2:24:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:24:29Ben Milligan?

  Troops that could be fighting on all those islands, the Marines just lugging across.

• 2:24:33Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 2:24:34Ben Milligan?

  But they can't.

• 2:24:35Jocko Willink?

  A million. I mean, there's, you know, when you think of there's 30 or 40,000 Japanese on these islands, when most of these islands, somewhere around that number, you know, if you have an extra million soldiers to throw into that mix. As was true of every successful general in history, Miles' success had come at the price of his sleep, his health, his family's happiness, and even his sanity. For his sacrifices, he had been kept not with praise and press releases, but with troubles, bureaucracy, and overweening scrutiny. In the end, Seiko, along with the Navy's guerrilla warfare effort, received a reward as glamorous as an obituary. As Miles bitterly concluded, "The month that followed the surrender of Japan was the worst through which I lived."

• 2:25:17Ben Milligan?

  Yeah.

• 2:25:23Jocko Willink?

  After hosting a dinner for many of his Seiko officers, this is after the war, this is right after the war, Miles began a rambling, seemingly endless lecture on what the atomic bomb would mean for the US Navy's future. As men awkwardly drifted out of the room, Miles continued unaware when every man had left and when the lights had been turned off. After the camp doctor confined him to his stateroom, Miles jumped from the window and took off sprinting through a rice paddy. Chased by a group of American advisors and Chinese guerrillas, he escaped past them all and stole a Jeep. As he rattled past his pursuers, he was heard muttering over and over, "I must get to the drill field." "Block the road, goddammit, that's an order," he shouted, shouted the camp's doctor to the driver of a six-by-six truck. When the Jeep reached the roadblock, Miles jumped

• 2:26:06Jocko Willink?

  out and ordered the truck driver to move. The doctor countermanded the order and told Miles to return to his quarters, whereupon Miles accused everyone of lying to him. "You're on the sick list," the doctor finally managed. "What are you saying, doctor?" "I'm all right." "I don't think you are, Admiral," the doctor replied nervously, "and have to officially inform you that you are on the sick list and have been relieved of your command."

• 2:26:29Jocko Willink?

  As the words drilled into Miles' delusion, the doctor could feel him shaking like a leaf. Finally, Miles relented, "I, I, doctor."

• 2:26:37Jocko Willink?

  He hopped back into the jeep, returned to his quarters. Next morning, he's placed under house arrest and is razor confiscated. In Washington, Metzl met Mrs. Billy Miles and informed her that her husband had a complete mental breakdown and that they could only hope he had not suffered permanent brain damage.

• 2:26:59Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, they broke him. I mean, he, he, he literally left everything in China. Uh, when he comes back, it takes months and months before he regains his sanity, but he, uh, you know, this whole theater of warfare was, I mean, and, and it's, uh, the, just dealing with the Chinese on a daily basis. I mean, so many, uh, other people have tried. Joe Stillwell tries to deal with Chiang Kai-shek. He, I mean, he's frustrated his entire war. He leaves, not in disgrace, but at least in, in massive frustration.

• 2:27:38Ben Milligan?

  Weidemeyer has the same headaches with the Chinese, but what Stillwell and Weidemeyer don't have to deal with is, uh, an oppressive, uh, the oppressive army scrutiny. And that when the army gets there, I mean, they see China as clearly, you know, their area of operations.

• 2:27:56Ben Milligan?

  And it is, I mean, they, you can't argue with it. I mean, it's, it's a, it's the land. I mean, just like if the army decided that they were going to, uh, seize control of the South China Sea, the Navy would certainly have something to say about it. But when they get there, you know, the Navy has this infrastructure in place and they don't know what to do with it. Uh, so they try to, uh, you know, progressively take control of, uh, Miles's organization. And, um, in the end, uh, Miles loses out, the army takes control of it, uh, and the only thing that stops them, um, from really seizing control is all of the trouble that Miles has had, which is geography. They can't seize control of this thing. Miles, uh, maintains his command over his organization for the remainder of the war.

• 2:28:43Ben Milligan?

  So the problem is the solution.

• 2:28:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's it. I gotta mention this this section here. At the time of the Japanese surrender, Rudy Bosch, a 17-year-old volunteer with the amphibious Rogers, looked up from the middle of the training exercise in the swamps near Lake Okichobi to hear the class instructor announce, "Stop what you're doing. The war is over." Told to return to Fort Pierce, Bosch and his classmates were then given a single final order, "Tear it down." What followed was the sacking of three years' worth of construction. Mess halls, classrooms, offices, ranges, towers, before a backdrop of flaming white tents, tents that at once proudly lined the roads, sheltering the nearly every, the nearly every special group in the US military, from the Rangers to the UDTs.

• 2:29:27Jocko Willink?

  The Rogers, who had not gotten a crack at China, took out their frustrations by demolishing everything with their bare hands. By the end of the week, the only thing that suggested the past experience of a naval base was the pool. Last to go were the men themselves. That's it. War's over.

• 2:29:42Ben Milligan?

  Yep. And with it, the Rogers too?

• 2:29:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we didn't even talk. Give us a quick brief on the Rogers.

• 2:29:51Ben Milligan?

  Well, the Rogers are the, sort of the natural culmination of the Scouts and Raider program. So the Scouts and Raiders, they're the, the name sort of doesn't make sense. I mean, the Scouts and Raiders seem like they would be reconnaissance troops and commandos. They really weren't. Scouts and Raiders are a joint unit created at the very beginning of the war, an Army-Navy unit. The idea is, we need Army Scout Boat Officers to take Army beach-marking troops ashore, so the Army can, you know, signal the landing fleet, signal the landing crafts, so troops can get into the right beaches. This is what they do in North Africa.

• 2:30:32Ben Milligan?

  The problem is after North Africa, the army starts to lose interest in this and they stop creating their portion of the scouts and raiders because they have enough beach marking troops for the remainder of the war. So they basically leave the entire schoolhouse in the hands of the Navy, which now the Navy has all this curriculum and they have no prohibition on what the Navy's portion of the scouts and raider program can do. So naturally, the Navy starts taking not just the transportation side of the mission, but they take the entire beach marking side of the mission. So they have troops that are quasi commandos that are trained to do beach marking, but

• 2:31:13Ben Milligan?

  at this point in the war, in 1945, when Sako has been created, they realize that they can use these troops, not just for beach marking anymore, but for straight up commando operations. They have the Army's curriculum, they have all the experience of working with Army commandos. So they train their sailors in everything that the Army commandos have been trained with, and the plan is to send these units to China, and that's the amphibious Rogers. So the scouts and raiders, naturally, I have a picture, I think, in the book of, there's a sign that says scouts and raiders, and then underneath it, the amphibious Rogers.

• 2:31:55Ben Milligan?

  Within months, there's no more scouts and raiders sign, it's the amphibious Rogers. Not the best name for a commando unit, but the idea was that these were the Navy's pirates. The Roger was the Jolly Roger. These guys are supposed to be the swaggering bushwhackers of the Pacific.

• 2:32:17Jocko Willink?

  Chapter seven, the US Navy's post-war plight and the sailor raiders who led her back to significance in Korea.

• 2:32:28Jocko Willink?

  Again, there's just so much detail that you put into this. It's absolutely fascinating to read. You end up highlighting, now we're in, I'll fast forward to, we're in Korea, um, Target Baker. This time, the scouts were accompanied by a boatload of Marines, who upon landing, established a hasty perimeter, then flashed seaward the signal for all clear. When the remaining boats hit the shore, the Marines secured a beachhead, then scouted inland for the tunnel entrance. As they did, two trains appeared and did the job for them, revealing the location of the two rail tunnels. To the southernmost, the scouts put to flight, one sentry armed with nothing but a wooden rifle and a bayonet. After securing the southern

• 2:33:10Jocko Willink?

  tunnel, the UDT swimmers slogged some 2,000 pounds of explosives 300 yards past the beach, where they stacked pack after pack into the tunnel's mouth and under a bridge. At 0305, the UDT swimmers pulled their fuses, initiating a hasty six-minute retreat to the beach and the boats, followed by a concert of oars through the surf. At 3:30, noted the Task Force Diary, "Charges exploded." 20 minutes later, the men of SOG climbed back into the Ba- into the Baas, which was the ship, and into history as the Navy's first successful Raiders of the modern area- era. For joy and for many of the Navy planners, it was just a start.

• 2:33:54Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, that was a tough chap- sorry, that was a tough chapter to sort of figure out what, where the center of gravity of this thing is, like what, because the, I mean, just the, the number of Raider organizations that the Navy sponsors during this period. They sponsor, uh, the Marine Corps UDT group, which is, uh, the Special Operations Group, at the time, the SOG, um, they sponsor, they sponsor, uh, UDT-led British Commandos, they sponsor, uh, Army Raiders, they, I mean, everybody is trying to figure out how to, uh, you know, um, do sort of what the Koreans were doing to the US military at that point, which is bottled up in the Pusam perimeter. There's, it's, it's like, uh, you know, we've been watching a Pusam perimeter moment in Afghanistan. They're, uh-

• 2:34:41Ben Milligan?

  Lack of leadership, lack of planning, lack of resourcing, you know, forces, Army or the US forces back into this small pocket and they're doing everything they can to sort of not necessarily break out of it, but at least, you know, not do nothing. And the not doing nothing is trying to, you know, cut the North Koreans' supply lines. And the one advantage that they have with the Korean Peninsula is all of these arteries, all these roads, because of the spine of the North Korean geography, is they push everything to the edges of the peninsula. So this is the first time the Navy really sees, you know, this huge opportunity to start, you know, sponsoring raids ashore.

• 2:35:26Ben Milligan?

  That's the first time that the UDT, which is the only special operations unit that survives disbandment in World War II, that's the moment that they cease to be just beach marking or just reconnaissance troops and demolition troops and they start going ashore. But they, you know, like every other instance, they are going ashore not alone. They're going ashore with the Marines, with British commandos, CIA operatives, partisans, and they're slowly learning this trade.

• 2:35:56Jocko Willink?

  You go into, uh, Chapter Eight here tells another story of the Rangers and the Army, resurrection of the Army Rangers and the guerrilla raid that failed to forestall their second death. Just another one of these, you got a guy named John Hugh McGee. These characters, all of them, they're freaking epic. I mean, what this guy did is just incredible, his career. You look at these guys' career.

• 2:36:40Ben Milligan?

  And some, and I mean, at least in John McGee's case, I mean, he, he's a totally, uh, I mean, he, he maybe has the worst World War II experience of anybody.

• 2:36:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, uh, let me just jump into that real quick. Um, a year later, McGee was at the epicenter of history, hopelessly commanding Moro troops in the Philippines against Japanese bombers in the snake choked, malarial hills around Del Monte Field, um, Del Monte Airfield at kilometer 117 of the Sayer Highway, becoming the only American of the 11 who fought to there to survive the war. After six months of resistance, on May 10th, 1942, McGee swallowed his pride, obeyed his superior, and with a humiliating, blindfolded salute, surrendered himself and his American and Filipino troops to imperious Japanese officer wearing a kimono. Many of the Filipinos were tied to stakes, shot, and buried in pits. The Japanese soldiers never bothering to confirm they were dead.

• 2:37:33Jocko Willink?

  At 33, McGee's dark brown hair had already faded into an iron gray. For the next 25 months, McGee survived beatings, trench foot, dysentery, malaria, mosquitoes, cages, and slavery. For nourishment, he and his fellow prisoners were fed a meager diet of rice and a few vegetables that occasionally included yams, dog meat, wafer thin candy bars, and cigarettes. The last two purchased were the monthly allotment of 40 pesos that the Japanese could turn into a lever to pry prisoners' submission. So sensitive did the men become to their hunger, that when fearful of transfer, they gorged themselves on every scrap they had hidden. One man even devouring a litter of puppies born the same day.

• 2:38:16Jocko Willink?

  Along with his Catholic faith to which he cleaved, McGee sustained his mind on a series of escape plans into the Philippine jungle, even making use of a urinary tract infection that kept him up at night to memorize the guideposts of the constellations. To each plan was attached an obvious color, col- cullery, obvious to him anyways.

• 2:38:38Jocko Willink?

  Once escaped, he would raise and lead an army of Filipino guerrillas against the Japanese. For two years, he plotted mentally choosing men for work details, not for strength, but for their knowledge in gunnery and logistics, men around whom he could build the guerrilla army in his mind. On the night of June 12th, two years, one month and two days after his capture, he finally got his chance. While anchored off the east coast of Zambuanga Peninsula on a prison transfer ship, McGee palmed off his rosary beads to a friend, dropped every stitch of his ragged clothing to the deck, then tiptoed over his sleeping comrades, placed a naked foot on top of the railing and dove into the racing current. Through an initial

• 2:39:18Jocko Willink?

  volley of bullets and past two other prison ships, McGee drifted for miles until rescued by a native in an outrigger, who paddled him to land, gave him a T-shirt, which McGee turned into a loin cloth. Ashore, two native boys eventually found, fed and clothed him, tied undersized sneakers to the bottom of his feet like heelless slippers, then pushed and pulled his emaciated frame over jungle trails lit by nothing more than a torch as bright as a cigar tip. And you go on from there, but you have to kind of realize what's happening with this guy and where this guy came from.

• 2:39:55Ben Milligan?

  And what he wants.

• 2:39:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:57Ben Milligan?

  He spends the entire war, you know, essentially just neutralized.

• 2:40:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, so he's in prison camp for two years. When he finally escapes, he wants to go run a freaking, an army, a guerrilla army. Well, there's other people that have already been running a guerrilla army and now they outrank him. They have the experience. And so he kind of gets sidelined the whole time.

• 2:40:17Ben Milligan?

  His war is just a series of disappointments.

• 2:40:22Ben Milligan?

  Yeah. So he, and when he gets back home, you know, he finally meets the daughter that his wife, he meets his daughter who he's never met before. And his reaction is immediately to volunteer for service back in the Pacific Theater. And the day he gets back, the day he takes command of his troops, they drop the bomb.

• 2:40:45Ben Milligan?

  And the entire time, I mean, that he's been, you know, neutralized this entire time facing these series of disbandments, his little brother has been one of Merrill's, uh, Merrill, uh, Merrill's Marauders, uh, most effective, uh, battalion commanders, which is a really frustrating thing for this poor guy.

• 2:41:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, man, the psychology behind that.

• 2:41:04Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, so when he finally gets to Korea, uh, and, you know, he has this, uh, new opportunity to prove himself, all he wants to do is create the, you know, the, the army that he had built in his mind, and he gets there and, or, uh, anyway, you have the...

• 2:41:21Jocko Willink?

  There's a, there's a, so they go, they end up, he ends up putting together kind of a, a group, McGee's Rangers, is that correct, accurate statement?

• 2:41:30Ben Milligan?

  I mean, he, uh, he's the, uh, um, he's the indispensable person when it comes to Army Special Operations in Korea. Everything sort of flows out of him. Uh, he has all of these ideas at the beginning of the war, and he, he puts them all in writing, and, um, so everything from the, uh, the Army Rangers are, uh, reconstituted based off of his recommendations. Uh, the partisan command is created, uh, based off of his recommendations. Uh, and he wants to sort of, uh, combine these, these units together. He's got this idea, it's sort of unformed, not, uh, it's not exactly what, you know, it's not a mature idea, uh, um, uh, in, at the beginning of the war. It becomes, you know, you, you see, when you, when you look through the structure of

• 2:42:13Ben Milligan?

  the institution that he had, uh, sort of created, you see, like, uh, like a siege of Sotomayor.

• 2:42:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like the components are there.

• 2:42:20Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, like they're there, like you can see, and, and every time that he constitutes this thing, he, the Navy is a critical part of his ideas. You can't do any of the types of things that he wants to do unless you have significant Navy support, Navy transports, uh, anyway, so, uh, the problem is, you know, the, the Army, uh, has moved, uh, moved past all of his ideas. They, you know, they, uh, they entertain him, they entertain these ideas for a period, uh, and, uh, as you see throughout, uh, uh, his service, the Army plucks these things off the table one at a time, leaving him, uh, to go back to, you know, the States, not in disgrace, but not, not to fulfill the thing that he wants.

• 2:43:02Jocko Willink?

  He got these, he's got these Ranger groups together again, and here's a, here's a section where the Rangers are, his, some of his McGee's Rangers are going out, they're on an operation. I'm gonna jump into the middle of this operation after a moment of intense argument. Watson ordered back one of the Koreans, they had left the radio. Watson ordered back one of the Koreans, Koreans to get the radio who, not surprisingly refused until Watson threatened to beat the man himself. Scrambling to the clearing, the Korean soldier seized the radio by the backstrap, then dragged it behind him, bouncing, rolling, smashing over rocks and leaving a trail of broken knobs, handles, and antenna. Bastards got his brains in his ass, seethed Watson as he watched. When the runner reached the trees and presented the radio, everyone could see that it was destroyed.

• 2:43:44Jocko Willink?

  With their only hope for survival, buoyed upon the ability to communicate their position to the Navy's fighters and helicopters, the radio's destruction meant Virginia, that's the name of the team, Virginias, was not far behind. Had Watson wanted to repay this cruelty and kind, his rage was instantly short circuited by the shredding sound of a machine gun fire and the terror of communist soldiers lunging across the body strewn clearing. Without a word, as Thornton recalled, the Virginia survivors plunged into the trees and careened down the hill in a wild melee. Stumbling, rising, running, and falling again, hoping with every bruise to break through to the valley floor before the enemy cinched the noose around their necks.

• 2:44:27Jocko Willink?

  After running for what seemed like a half a mile, the men collapsed into the relative protection and shadow of a ravine. As their lungs pumped, pumped miniature fog banks into the cold air, their ears caught the growing but unmistakable hum of, hum and chop of two helicopters echoing through the valley. When the first helicopter made it back to the clearing, its pilot edged into a hover, kicked out a bundle of supplies, then leaned out his window coming face to face with a volley of muzzle flashes. Banking hard, the pilot escaped and ambush, the ambush only barely. With the clearing obviously overrun, both pilots rolled, rolled their helicopters into an anxious racetrack, search around the mountains, flying so low that Thornton could easily make out each pilot's face.

• 2:45:11Jocko Willink?

  Without a radio, even, without even marking panels, the Virginia, Virginia survivors waved frantic arms but betrayed not a sound, since any noise would only alert their hunters, not the engine deafened pilots. For thirty or so minutes, the pilots searched, then ascended and retraced their path through the ocean. Virginia was alone, except for the blowing wind and the rustle of the leafless trees, remembered Thornton. There was silence, lonely, empty silence. They go on the run, you highlight, you go through some of that, and then finally, fast forward a little bit, on April 10th, ten hallucinatory days since the mountaintop battle

• 2:45:53Jocko Willink?

  in just two to three miles from UN lines, the last remaining members of Virginia mission were cornered in a cave, captured and ransacked, then beaten and bound with wire so tightly that Watson's arms soon swelled to twice their normal size. For the second time in his life, this veteran of the Darby's Rangers was a prisoner of war, as fate would have it, captured while escaping from a disaster as consequential for the Rangers as Sisterna had been. And this guy Watson, you introduce him later, and you have to get the book to see what this guy's about, but let me give you a little something. So this guy gets captured. In the 29 months since his capture, Corporal Martin R.

• 2:46:38Jocko Willink?

  Watson, a soldier no guard or prisoner believed was actually a corporal, had set an example for captivity that to this day has never been exceeded. Thirty days after he was captured, for 18 of which he had been starved in a cave to make his 240-pound size somewhat easier to handle, Watson and a South Korean comrade had knocked out a guard with a rock and made for the surrounding mountains, where they had survived for five days until their pursuers had disabled them by rolling a grenade into their hideout. Never medically treated, except with some shreds of brown paper to cover his wounds, Watson had nevertheless escaped again, this time by wriggling out of his rope restraints and jumping free of a moving truck as it slowed around a bend.

• 2:47:23Jocko Willink?

  This time, he survived a week before inadvertently walking right past a wide-eyed North Korean patrol. For these attempts and one other, plus an attempt at suicide with a piece of broken glass, he had been relentlessly beaten with rifle butts and boot heels and periodically starved and almost always isolated, once in an unsheltered hole for 72 days with rations described by the record as sparse.

• 2:47:51Jocko Willink?

  Rightly suspected as an OSS spy and saboteur, Watson had also been subjected to almost daily interrogation by North Koreans, Chinese, and even Russians who had drilled him up on his exposure to the Gestapo in World War II, but especially on the organization's methods and tactics of the paratroop unit to which they knew he belonged. Watson's response to these and other questions had been a mixture of stony silence or intentional contradiction, responses that had invariably earned him a switch across the eyes, a pistol barrel across the face, or hours of kneeling with his nose pressed against a wall, and then a stone on his head.

• 2:48:33Jocko Willink?

  Throughout these deprivations, Watson had never lost his bearing or conviction. Once standing during a packed camp lecture by a British speaker from the London Daily Worker to say that he didn't know what communism was and he didn't care to find out,

• 2:48:50Jocko Willink?

  nor did he and his fellow POWs want to listen to this traitor commie son of a bitch. For this affront, and as his example to other prisoners, he was eventually frogmarched before a military tribunal, informed of the armistice, then sentenced to death by firing squad.

• 2:49:13Jocko Willink?

  He still didn't talk.

• 2:49:16Jocko Willink?

  In the end, after having been starved from 240 pounds to 120, his was an example that earned him the final distinction as the second-to-last UN POW to be released across the Freedom Bridge. On the other side, he learned that the Rangers he had so steadfastly protected from exposure no longer existed.

• 2:49:40Jocko Willink?

  As far removed now from the Army's interest as was the man who had resurrected them from the grave, a man whose accomplishments had disappointingly matched those of his past. About the same time that Operation Spitfire had been unraveling, Colonel John Hugh McGee, the Korean War author of The Army, Rangers, and Korean Partisans, had presented himself for the third time to the Quanston Hut Maze of the 8th Army's Headquarters in Pusan, intent on securing a date for a partisan advance into North Korea, a date for which he had long been waiting.

• 2:50:16Jocko Willink?

  The reply from his superior had been simple: Never.

• 2:50:21Jocko Willink?

  After a year-long tour, McGee left Korea as dejected as he had left the Philippines, never again to have a chance to lead a partisan army on a campaign of liberation. On top of everything else, he was branded "the scapegoat" for the failure of Virginia and Spitfire, failures with consequences beyond a battered reputation.

• 2:50:45Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, the way that the Army is treating special operations in this period is similar to the way that they dealt with them in World War II. They created the Rangers, they attached them to divisions for control. In each instance, the divisional commanders, they don't see much distinction between the Rangers and their own infantry, so they treat them like infantry. And usually, they use them as their frontline infantry, and predictably, they get mauled, and then the commanders justify their own belief that they were just like infantry. So, the only thing that really could have kept the Rangers of the Army from disbanding

• 2:51:26Ben Milligan?

  them would have been the sort of raid that McGee sends Watson and his team to complete, which is a penetration raid, a deep penetration raid behind enemy lines to destroy a tunnel. For lots of reasons, the rug gets pulled out from under this team before they even go, and their chances of success before they even launch are diminished to almost nothing. They still go, and like you read, that passage that you read, I mean, the survival, the lengths that they go just to survive are incredible. And this mission is almost completely lost to history.

• 2:52:09Ben Milligan?

  I mean, when I started researching that mission and researching Watson, I... Didn't have a lot to go on. There's really only a couple of accounts about it. And I had, based off of what I had done, the research I'd done for my World War II chapters, I sort of knew, or I sort of suspected that there would be like some post POW report about Watson. Couldn't find it. Well, the first time I went to the archives, but I knew that these reports were roughly, you know, two pages. Whenever anybody was recovered from a POW camp, the military would interview them. They would put the circumstances of their capture and the circumstances of their captivity

• 2:52:51Ben Milligan?

  in these reports and, you know, they'd lock it away in an archive someplace.

• 2:52:57Ben Milligan?

  So I knew that this report probably existed. So I contacted the archives. They confirmed that the report did exist. And I, you know, being in Illinois at the time, it wasn't super convenient for me to go back. I expected that, you know, the two pages wouldn't provide a ton of detail anyway. But I asked them, "Could you take a look at it and then send me the pages that, you know, of his report?" The archivist was kind enough to do it. She went and she looked at the account and she said, "Yeah, the accounts in a file, you know, labeled such and such. It's the record of American POWs in the Korean War, but it's 750 pages. So I can't scan it and copy it and send it to you." I was like, "Well, can you just find his section and then send me those pages?" And she said,

• 2:53:42Ben Milligan?

  "No, it's 750 pages. It's not been cleared. You'd have to put a FOIA request in just to go through it to make sure that there's no, you know, classified information." So I put the FOIA request in. They go through, but they still won't send me the two pages. Anyway, I sort of forget about it. I sort of moved on to another chapter. I figure if I'm going to find anything on the Virginia One raid and it's going to be the, you know, the center of gravity of that chapter, I'll find it eventually. But I, it's sort of, like I said, I put it on the back burner. I've already moved on. So I come to the archive several months later and I remember I put this FOIA request in. So, you know, I do a double check on it. End of a long day. My back is aching because of all the pictures that I've taken. You have to stand over these tables and, you know, take picture after picture.

• 2:54:24Ben Milligan?

  And when I leave the archive after a day of research, I've got like 3,000 images. It's, you know, it's not fun. But at the end of the day, I think I've got about 30 minutes left. I find the archivist and like, "Hey, can you find this report for me? I'd like to take a look at it and see what it is."

• 2:54:44Ben Milligan?

  She comes back with the 750 pages. I open it up. It's not 750 pages of American POWs in the Korean War. It's 750 pages on Martin Watson.

• 2:54:54Jocko Willink?

  Jeez.

• 2:54:55Ben Milligan?

  And no one has ever gone through it. Not since the day that they took the reports and put it in the archive. And it is, it's a goldmine. I mean, it had everything from his police reports, the circumstances of his captivity in Soterna, because he was part of Darby's Rangers in World War II.

• 2:55:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 2:55:16Ben Milligan?

  And then the fact that this person, he's present not just for, you know, the consequential moment of the Rangers in World War II, but the consequential moment of the Rangers in the Korean War. Man, it's amazing. Account after account of all of the people that, you know, it's not just his interview, it's not just his post-captivity interview that's in the 750 pages. It's interview after interview by his fellow captives. And they all have the same story about this guy. He is incomparable. And he gets a Bronze Star.

• 2:55:46Jocko Willink?

  God.

• 2:55:47Ben Milligan?

  After his, you know, after his captivity. And he gets a promotion to Sergeant. I mean, I couldn't, I mean, maybe Freeman.

• 2:55:54Jocko Willink?

  God.

• 2:55:55Ben Milligan?

  In some instances, maybe Halpern, a couple of others. I mean, nobody that I come across in the, in the writing of that book is more deserving of the Medal of Honor. I mean, the, the lengths that he went to for his own, for his own men on that hilltop in the Virginia One mission. And then the lengths that he goes to just to survive in the POW camps and to escape, numerous escape paths. I mean, but yeah, he's, I mean, I've never-

• 2:56:22Jocko Willink?

  Do you have your next book identified yet? I got a good idea.

• 2:56:25Ben Milligan?

  The problem with the, the, the, um, the record is that there's no dates. And I've thought, you know, you could write a book about Martin Watson. I think you would have to make it fiction, though. You'd have enough material to write that, that book, but you couldn't write it with the same level of specificity that I wrote this. Because you need the chronology to tell that story. And the chronology is just-

• 2:56:51Jocko Willink?

  Don't you think you could piece together the chronology from the other, the events that he's actually in?

• 2:56:56Ben Milligan?

  You could, I've thought about it. And you would have to find, you'd have to go through each of the reports and, and track down, you know, the, you know, the 100, 150 guys and see who's still alive to see if they can put, you know, some chronology to it. You, it would- I don't know, I have, I've thought about it.

• 2:57:15Jocko Willink?

  What happened to him after the war, after he got out of the army, after he was meritoriously promoted to sergeant?

• 2:57:21Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, right. He is, uh, it doesn't have the, it's, it's not the best, uh, epitaph. He's, um, he ends up having some trouble. I mean, like, like I write in the book, uh, his interwar period between, uh, his, uh, release from, um, uh, the German POW camp in World War II and the, uh, his entrance back into the army, it's punctuated by some 76 arrests by the, uh, the Connecticut police. And yeah, ranging from fighting to drunkenness, back to fighting, to resisting arrest. I mean, he has no, uh, I mean, he clearly has, you know, post-traumatic stress, but he also, you know, that's just who he was. He'd grown up in this sort of like rough and tumble gang type environment.

• 2:58:06Ben Milligan?

  And, you know, he's, he's, you know, he would be a nightmare to command, but, you know, also, you know, incomparable in combat. But after the war, uh, he, he marries, uh, it doesn't, doesn't go well. Um, he's, you know, completely, you know, uh, broken from the war. He ends up, uh, having a couple of kids, um, uh, and then moving to Alaska to work on a pipeline. Uh, his son, who I, uh, have become, you know, friends with, uh, is every bit as big as his old man was. I mean, he's, uh, he's just, you know, some equally a monster.

• 2:58:46Ben Milligan?

  But the nicest guy that he'd ever made.

• 2:58:50Ben Milligan?

  But he, I think he met his dad, you know, maybe two dozen times in the course of his life. Uh, and then his, he passes away, I believe from lung cancer. He smoked his entire, entire life and, uh, the password that his son, uh, would have to use to get into his hospital room, uh, was courage.

• 2:59:10Ben Milligan?

  So.

• 2:59:17Jocko Willink?

  Korean War ends. Your next section is Arlie Burke, the Bay of Pigs, and the launching of the Navy's limited war SEALs. You talk about Arlie here. During the period of the CIA's preparations for the covert invasion of Cuba, the US Navy was led by Admiral Arlie Burke. The 58-year-old CNO, whose most conspicuous feature were a tight shock of curly bleached hair, a fist of a chin that fell into a loose and swollen neck, and a sizable bulk that had long since settled into his hips.

• 2:59:59Jocko Willink?

  A trait that gave, said one witness, "a C-roll to his stride and adjoin his shape, the impression of an upright base or a freighter." So there you got Arlie Burke.

• 3:00:15Ben Milligan?

  Not an attractive man.

• 3:00:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And here's an important part, and this is one of the parts where we start connecting this DNA of the SEAL teams to the DNA of the US Navy. In 1943, when Burke finally arrived in the South Pacific to take command of Destroyer Squadron 23, Desron 23, the Little Beavers, he pinned himself to a drop-leaf desk in the sweltering belly of his command ship and crammed into his head a year's worth of combat reports, every battle from Coral Sea to Savo Island. Appalled at the micromanagement of destroyers in which the permission to launch torpedoes against an already-discovered enemy fleet was denied for four immutable minutes, Burke crafted an entirely new doctrine of employment.

• 3:01:00Jocko Willink?

  Instead of spreading his destroyers around the fleet's larger ships as nighttime submarine pickets, all dependent on permission from above to break guard duty to engage the enemy, Burke proposed to concentrate his ships at the head of the fleet and to govern his skippers. Under what has since been called the doctrine of faith, an unprecedented delegation of authority in which an enemy sighting would be immediately followed by a coordinated torpedo attack without orders. The use of all caps was Burke's. To convey this attitude to his sailors, Burke issued them a 12-page mimeographed memo, whose very first lines read, "If it will help

• 3:01:45Jocko Willink?

  kill Japs, it's important. If it would not help kill Japs, it's not important. Keep your ship trained for battle." Burke's list of non-battle-related orders was succinct. There were none. Corrections to this section will not be permitted. Took less than a month to make his point. So, that's Burke. You go through this thing, and Burke is running the Navy, and, you know, clearly, he's an aggressive guy, and believes in decentralized command. You do a great job of covering what

• 3:02:26Jocko Willink?

  happened at the Bay of Pigs, how that ties into our history and the SEAL teams. Really, pretty interesting story, the way that unfolds. And, you know, it ends up with, well, it's a horrible situation, but we do gain some experience that we then take, we work with some of these, some of these Cuban nationalists that helped us out as well.

• 3:02:49Ben Milligan?

  Yeah. And this is the toughest chapter. Well, it's not the toughest chapter. Each of the chapters presented, you know, various challenges when it came to researching and trying to like, you know, craft the narrative or trying to figure out, like, like I said before, what's the, what's the point of this chapter? And how does this, how does, how does this serve the story? Or how did this push us forward? And you know, what aspects of, you know, Burke's personality or Burke's own history, how is that relevant? And absolutely, you're, you know, you hit the nail right on the head when it comes to, you know, Burke's, you know, emphasis on latitude and decentralized command. But the other thing about Burke that's really important, or that's essential about him,

• 3:03:31Ben Milligan?

  is that he refuses to allow the other branches of service to define what the Navy is. And, you know, in the revolt of the admirals or in that period during the, you know, the interwar period between World War II and the Korean War, you know, the other branches of service are trying to tell the Navy that, you know, we need to really dearm ourselves and become sort of just a, you know, more of a, you know, a merchant Marine, which to Burke is anathema. He has no interest in commanding a Navy that's just a support or a transport unit. To Burke, the Navy is nothing if it's not an instrument of offensive warfare. And so he's constantly, when he becomes the CNO, and he becomes a CNO for a period long,

• 3:04:16Ben Milligan?

  two years longer than even the closest, his closest competitor. It's a normally a two-year job. He's the CNO for six years. No one has the influence on the US Navy that Arlie Burke does. So when he becomes the CNO, he's constantly, the entire time, he's constantly looking for opportunities to push the Navy into, you know, a more offensive role. So he champions this, this limited war capability. You know, he sees enemies all over the globe and he's trying to figure out how the Navy can, you know, can either bring forces to bear, launch Marines, launch missiles, launch, you know, naval gunfire.

• 3:04:53Ben Milligan?

  And, and that, you know, orientation ultimately creates, creates this unit. But, like I said...

• 3:05:05Ben Milligan?

  Writing the book creates, you know, presents, you know, structuring and research challenges. You know, every chapter is hard to write. This chapter, though, this was probably the easiest chapter when it came to write the first draft. Because there's been so much produced about Harley Burke. Numerous books, a couple of them are pretty good, with, you know, lots and lots of corroborative detail in them. And then, you know, just finding, you know, his fingerprints all over those documents that create the SEAL teams, they're all over. I mean, everything, all the documents that his office is creating, but then you can see his little scratches, his pen scratches, in all these documents, because he writes with, I think it's a green pen, and you can see them still on the documents when you go to

• 3:05:49Ben Milligan?

  the Navy Yard today. The problem with this chapter, particularly the Bay of Pigs part, is just finding the material, because it's, you know, the CIA is still involved, and, you know, I can't tell you how many times I tried to get documents out of the CIA. It's a black hole. You just can't get them. So I finally was able to track down the actual Cuban frogmen that participated in the raid, and all of them were just, you know, totally generous with their time. So, you know, the book is written almost sequentially. There's a couple of chapters that I wrote out of order, but this chapter in particular is the one that just sort of kept me up at night until the end. So like, I know there's more material out there, and I've got to get it into the book.

• 3:06:30Ben Milligan?

  And, I mean, short of going down to Miami and meeting with the actual, because they closed the museum, they closed the Bay of Pigs museum, but I managed to find them, and their accounts are in there.

• 3:06:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's an epic, epic retelling of that. Again, that's why you've got to get this book to read these sections, because I'm not covered at all today. But we do get Kennedy, we get Kennedy, who now is really focused on this idea, the small war idea, the counterinsurgency idea, the guerrilla warfare idea, he's all over it. He starts pushing people in that direction. He needs someone to run the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, which is where the Green Berets come from, where they get, it's like their schoolhouse. He ends up talking to one of his friends, one of his military aides, who recommends a guy to run it, this guy named Colonel Bill Yarborough.

• 3:07:27Jocko Willink?

  Who's another character in the story? At the change of command ceremony, his soldiers observed him as he was. Average size, chest out, shoulders back, a rooster of a man. His narrowed eyes and pursed lips locked into a stoic gaze as revealing as a Roman bust. Son of an army Colonel, married to an army brat with a son on his way to an army commission and two daughters on their way to army husbands. Yarborough was the very picture of army tradition. Forty-eight years old now, in pressed slacks and blouse boots with no prior special, no prior experience in special forces. Nothing on the surface seemed to indicate anything besides a conventional background and a preference for more of the same, but that was just the surface.

• 3:08:10Jocko Willink?

  Beneath his obvious soldierly bearing was hidden an ambition for a military organization as unconventional as had ever existed. Born into a military family and predictably funneled into a West Point education where his only step out of formation seems to have been as a cartoonist on the school newspaper. Yarborough's early army career was in fact, a litany of non-conformities. Four years with the Philippines scouts, one of the most unconventional assignments in the US Army. Two years as a parachute test officer during which his creativity had burst open as wide as the thing he was testing. This had manifested in everything from redesigning the paratroopers pants to boots to promoting

• 3:08:52Jocko Willink?

  his untested unit by acting as a stunt double for a Hollywood movie for which he was afterwards afterward nicknamed Showbiz. And in creating a silver badge that looked like an ice cream cone shaped parachute flexed with winged angels that was ultimately adopted as the symbol for the entire airborne. In World War II, Yarborough survived incomparable five combat jumps, five campaigns, two combat commands, one of which had fought alongside Darby's Rangers at Sisterna and later earned a presidential unit citation and one crash landing. And except for a brief sidelining resulting from an outburst against his division commander, Matthew Ridgway, it was an almost unblemished record of direct action with a record, a record

• 3:09:37Jocko Willink?

  with honors so compelling that any normal soldier would have coveted its repetition. Yarborough wasn't normal.

• 3:09:46Jocko Willink?

  What was the outburst about Ridgway, remember?

• 3:09:50Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, I'm trying to think. It was a, it was a, it was an errant drop, um, I believe in Italy.

• 3:10:00Jocko Willink?

  An errant drop of the paratroopers or an errant drop of a bomb friendly fire situation?

• 3:10:05Ben Milligan?

  No, of paratroopers.

• 3:10:06Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:10:07Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, they, they landed them, uh, in a, in a place that they shouldn't have landed them and he, uh, returns from that and he, uh, he does something that you just can't do in the army. He, he, you know, lets his boss have it. And Matthew Ridgway is not, Matthew Ridgway is another, you know, hero of the story, but you know, and maybe not a hero of the story. He's a hero, he's an American hero, but he's an executioner of the Rangers in Korea. But he's also the executioner of, uh, Yarborough's, uh, sort of, uh, rise to infantry or, uh, paratrooper greatness. He, uh, he short circuits his career, sends him back to the States. I think, uh, the only way that Yarborough gets back into command is through, uh, Mark Clark. Um, but yeah, it was, um,

• 3:10:49Ben Milligan?

  uh, yeah, Yarborough, Yarborough, Yarborough. He is a,

• 3:10:56Ben Milligan?

  uh, probably next to Kaufman. I don't think I met anybody, uh, who was as tough to just sort of pin down. Like what does he want? Because I mean, his, his whole background seems to imply that he's, you know, just this conventional, you know, soldier, but he has no interest in it. And I, you know, I, I couldn't find, uh, you know, the letter, the document, uh, to, you know, suggest, you know, why he, um, was sort of turning his back on that and why he, you know, bought in so, you know, full-heartedly to this, uh, idea of counterinsurgency. But nevertheless, it's there. He becomes the biggest, uh, disciple or apostle, or whatever you want to call him,

• 3:11:37Ben Milligan?

  of counterinsurgency, of, you know, winning, uh, you know, the, the, the hearts and minds of the people, uh, and then turning them, or at least denying them to the enemy. And, uh, the way that you did that is not through combat. It's through all the stuff that nobody likes to do. Ditch digging, well, yeah.

• 3:11:55Jocko Willink?

  Digging it. It it becomes real obvious is you saying here Yarborough's first action as commander of the Naval Special Warfare Center and top train of special forces was to initiate a top to bottom review of training and curriculum, an effort to match his men with their mission. So here we go into fast forward a little bit before long, the Special Warfare Center began to feel less like a commando course and more like a college campus, complete with courses in bridge building, sanitation, animal husbandry, axsmithing, crop raising, pig pen construction, swine inoculation, leaflet creation, field irrigation, seed planting and rice cultivation. Not all of Yarborough and and of course there's resistance, not all of Yarborough's staff approved of the changes, particularly said Yarborough, the old jockstrap commandos, the ranger types,

• 3:12:39Jocko Willink?

  gallant blood letters and fighting machines to be sure, but men who were anything but diplomats and rejected any suggestion that they ought to be. They were, he continued, men devoid of the more humane qualities, compassion, pity and mercy. Men who bristled at the idea of lying on their bellies to teach an illiterate tribesman on how to aim a rifle.

• 3:12:58Jocko Willink?

  So he's got a totally different idea of really what the Green Berets should be. And he's got another little, he's got another little different opinion too here. Fast forward a little bit to convert his men to his new philosophy as warfare, my religion, he would one day call it, in which battles, the battle's objective was not the destruction of the enemy of an enemy's army, but the winning of indigenous minds and sympathies. That must be the precursor to hearts and minds. Yarborough enjoined every one of his officers above the rank of captain to accompany him into the Pine Barrens for what he called his Talk in the Woods.

• 3:13:37Jocko Willink?

  As long as I am charge of special forces, he would say, there will be no womanizing, no drunkenness, no wild parties, no adultery. There'll be no troublemakers, no wild men, that stuff is out. There will be moral standards, disciplinary standards, appearance standards. The rules are going to change, he would promise, there will be a new start.

• 3:14:00Jocko Willink?

  Coming hard.

• 3:14:01Ben Milligan?

  He's coming hard and that chapter in particular, so I've talked about some of the challenges of other chapters and you know either finding material or figuring out what the chapter's about and how that chapter served the larger story. The story of the special forces presented a problem that I was not prepared for. Every chapter took about you know between six, around six, seven months to write. When I got to, and they all followed a similar pattern, you know whether the, whether the unit was a Navy unit that we're talking about where it's being created, committed to action,

• 3:14:46Ben Milligan?

  and then it's retained in the order of battle, or whether it's an Army or Marine Corps unit that is created and then disbanded. There was this pattern that was sort of predictable, you know, Navy unit created, Army unit disbanded, or Marine Corps, whatever. When you get to, and it fit with you know my understanding of my thesis, which was the Navy's continuing to fill this gap in the order of battle. And that held until the special forces. When I get to the special forces, like my thesis sort of like started to crumble and I had this moment of like panic where I was like, I mean the only thing I can do is just

• 3:15:27Ben Milligan?

  ignore the entire existence of the special forces because it's, I mean it doesn't fit with what I've been doing for the past you know seven years. And when I, you know, obviously it's not what I did, because it's not the right thing to do, because you're telling a history, you have to you know understand the relationship.

• 3:15:47Jocko Willink?

  You can't just change history to figure a story.

• 3:15:49Ben Milligan?

  I mean you, I mean there's so many times if you're writing history that you know the temptation is there, you want to you know make the facts fit your narrative. It's not, that's not honest and it's not what you're supposed to do. So I ended up having to take an entire year and did nothing but you know really learn the history of the Army Special Forces, which is a fascinating history. But it also you know revealed within you know three or four months that it wasn't the fact that the special forces was you know created, committed to action and disbanded, it was that they were completely reoriented to a non-commando-type mission. And no one was more Consequential in that shift than Yarborough.

• 3:16:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they end up, the gap that all these other Raider units would fill and then get disbanded, he didn't go into that gap. He went into this other gap.

• 3:16:42Ben Milligan?

  He went into this other gap, and then there was a gap that was created by President Kennedy. And trying to connect those two people, I couldn't figure it out until I found that article about Spartacus, about Kennedy watching this movie.

• 3:16:56Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, tell that story. I'm not gonna cover it, but tell that story.

• 3:16:59Ben Milligan?

  In the months leading up to his inauguration, he's been elected, but he hasn't yet become president. He gets, his brother tells him how great the movie, the Kirk Douglas movie Spartacus is. And he, you know, his incoming Secretary of the Navy happens to be going as an extra ticket. You know, Mr. President, would you like to go? So he goes, and the movie's already started, the theater owner sees Kennedy come in, stops everything, brings him upstairs, they have a cup of coffee together. Everybody, all the other theater goers are just waiting for them to start. So goes down with his cup of coffee, restarts the movie, and he watches this thing, and he comes out.

• 3:17:42Ben Milligan?

  And he's, I mean, it's a, if you've ever seen Spartacus, it's, you know, it's the epic. I mean, when I was a kid, I saw it. It was, I mean, I've never seen anything like it.

• 3:17:55Ben Milligan?

  And it makes an impression on him. And where, you know, it's a slave army that, you know, is fighting across Italy, and they're liberating other slaves, and they're turning them into gladiators. And that's what Kennedy wants to do. And he sees in this movie, he sees an answer to his problem. You know, we're going to turn these, you know, legions of, you know, Third World, you know,

• 3:18:21Ben Milligan?

  people into, you know, our army of freedom.

• 3:18:24Jocko Willink?

  And Yarborough bought into that?

• 3:18:26Ben Milligan?

  Bought into it, oh yeah.

• 3:18:29Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, fast forward a little bit. Um, chapter 11. At 1 o'clock on January 1st, 1962, a Monday, SEAL Team 1 was, without fanfare of any kind, unceremoniously commissioned on naval amphibious base Coronado, right where the neck of San Diego's palm-treed resort island met the flat, seven-mile-long sandy isthmus called the Silver Strand. Located on this base, a peninsula of military-grade right angles that jutted out into the sparkling waters of San Diego Bay, the team's physical footprint was little more than a single World War II-era Quonset hut. The team's authorized strength was for 10 officers and 50 enlisted men, most of whom

• 3:19:14Jocko Willink?

  had not yet been pulled from their west coast underwater demolition teams. The man most responsible for recruiting, equipping, and training these men was their 29-year-old commanding officer, Lieutenant David Del Judas. Raised just outside of Newark, New Jersey, by Italian-speaking, working-class parents, Del Judas was of average height and athletic build, and like nearly every other frogman, well-tanned. Not me. Except for you. As an officer at UDT-12, he had been selected to lead a 10-man detachment to Vietnam on a two-week trip up the Mekong River to deliver landing craft to Laotian troops, troops that

• 3:19:58Jocko Willink?

  the Army Special Forces were already training for combat. Briefed on the insurgents and the menu of reptiles that he and his men were sure to encounter, they had seen neither, just 100 miles of mud-browned river. Now, Del Judas was in charge of a unit that had been created in no small part to return to that river, but to what end, no one quite knew. So, there you go. SEAL teams get commissioned.

• 3:20:27Ben Milligan?

  And this is when all the history finally, you know.

• 3:20:30Jocko Willink?

  Starts to collide.

• 3:20:31Ben Milligan?

  It collides, yeah. It culminates in this and, and you know, the, the, the individual that collides in is Phil Bucklew, who's, um, who's been there, uh, at the, literally from the beginning of Naval Special Warfare. And he, you know, I'm, there's, there's a reason that, you know, the Naval Special Warfare Center is named after this person.

• 3:20:52Jocko Willink?

  The Phil H. Bucklew Center for Naval Special Warfare.

• 3:20:55Ben Milligan?

  Yeah. I mean, it wouldn't, I mean, he, uh, he doesn't create, you know, the, the scouts and raiders, doesn't create the UDTs. He doesn't, uh, create the SEAL teams. Um, but he's there for these critical moments, uh, to help the SEAL teams along.

• 3:21:11Jocko Willink?

  And his, his ability to form relationships, his ability to write. Cause he was obviously, and he's super humble and, and is able to get his, convey his message apart.

• 3:21:26Ben Milligan?

  Yeah.

• 3:21:27Jocko Willink?

  Convey his message in such a way that really there's only one answer, but he never gives the answer. It's like he allows people to discover the truth for themselves, which is the best way to get people to discover the truths.

• 3:21:37Ben Milligan?

  Better than I could have said it. Yes. I wish I'd had that in there.

• 3:21:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. He writes these, uh, well, we'll, we'll get to it.

• 3:21:46Jocko Willink?

  Phil H. Bucklew, when he had left his house on December 7th, 1941, Phil Hinkle Bucklew was a six foot, two inch, 235 pound, former fullback for the Cleveland Rams, whose major concern that morning had been to choose one of the four football contracts, burning a hole in his pocket. With thinning hair and a heavy jaw, curled lip and downturned eyes, not to mention a torso as thick as a tree trunk, Bucklew at 26 looked 10 years older than he was and was 10 times as mean. While intimidating from a distance, Bucklew up close actually possessed a personality that accomplished the opposite. He had never attracted to his orbit enough players to found and coach his own football team.

• 3:22:26Jocko Willink?

  The, or sorry, he had even attracted enough players to his orbit to found and coach his own football team, the Columbus Bullies.

• 3:22:35Jocko Willink?

  A team on its way to another league championship had the Japanese not exploded the afternoon as they did. If I would have known about the Columbus Bullies, my task unit, Task Unit Bruiser, might've been the Task Unit Bullies instead. But one of those things.

• 3:22:51Jocko Willink?

  In the Sicily campaign, he had checked the beach himself, and fast forward a little bit, then signaled the fleet from the bobbing shell of a blackened kayak while screaming balls of fire skipped off the water around him. In the weeks before Normandy invasion, he skimmed to the coast and collected density testing bottom samples up to 20 yards from the shore, then evaded a flotilla of six enemy trawlers in a crash of bullet snaps from MG42 machine gun by escaping into the night and fog. On the smoke gray dawn of D-Day Bucklew and his LCT scout boat crew led the first wave of floating tanks to Omaha Beach, fired ear-splitting rockets and twin 50 cal machine guns to silence an enemy pillbox, then spent the day throttling through red clouded water and mine-topped obstacles to pluck drowning soldiers from

• 3:23:35Jocko Willink?

  burning landing craft.

• 3:23:39Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward, for his service in World War II, Bucklew had received an unheard of number of commendations: a Bronze Star for North Africa, a Silver Star for Salerno, and then a brace of Navy Crosses, one for Sicily, another for Omaha Beach. Not even his friend and fellow footballer Buck Halperin had been awarded as many. Naturally, such a record had opened doors to more unconventional opportunities, including two and a half years in Korea, more than twice the length of a standard war tour, where Bucklew had doubled as the Navy's representative to the CIA and led the Beach Jumpers, a Navy unit created to collect and jam the enemy's electronic communications or periodically mimic them to sow chaos in their transmissions. So, there's just some of the stuff that you talk about

• 3:24:22Jocko Willink?

  that Bucklew's got going on. And that's another one of those units too, the Beach Jumpers, right? Another one of these random units that the Navy puts together, freaking just get some. So, he's got to write this report. Talk about why he had to write this report?

• 3:24:41Ben Milligan?

  He had to write the report because the original commander got sent home. And the reason that the original commander, the commission or the survey team...

• 3:24:55Ben Milligan?

  We don't know if he was sent home for a health problem, or, as one person said, for closet drunkenness. But, they, I mean, the, the, the point of this report that they're sent to, to create, is to figure out what the hell the Navy's supposed to do in Vietnam. It's not, uh, it's not a theater that, uh, any naval commander is eager to, you know, insert himself into. Um, there, there's no Arlie Burke, uh, at the helm of the Navy at this point, so, uh, the, the character of, uh, you know, naval leadership is slightly different, maybe not as aggressive. Um, but they still wanna, you know, see what the Navy can do, so they send the survey team.

• 3:25:36Ben Milligan?

  Um, but the, the people that they select for this survey team are almost, um, you know, they're, they're sort of, uh, um, uh, they're wa, they're weighting the scales a little bit. I mean, they send, uh, David Del Judas, who is, uh, you know, he's the commanding officer of SEAL Team One. Uh, they send, uh, Phil Kahler, who's a former, uh, UDT guy from, uh, the Pacific Theater, Silver Star winner. And they send Phil Bucklew as the second-in-command, who is, you know, nobody has had a more inland, uh, naval experience, uh, in, you know, outside of the SEAL teams than this guy. Make him the number two. Uh, the commanding officer gets sent home, uh, putting Phil Bucklew in charge of this report. They spend the next, uh, six weeks, two months, uh, you know, hopscotching the country, trying to figure out what to do.

• 3:26:21Ben Milligan?

  And, um, the report that he creates is entirely his. I mean, uh, he lets no one else take the responsibility for this report. He drafts it himself, uh, he types it himself even, he doesn't have a yeoman to it. Did you see original copies of this thing? That's freaking legit. And it took a surprisingly long time to find it. I couldn't find it anywhere. And you have images of these things, right? You take pictures of all these things? Yeah. I have images of that, and I, um, yeah, I don't, uh, I don't have any of the original documents. There's, um, left everything at the archive where it should be, but... You didn't smuggle any out? Not saying that the temptation wasn't there because some of the archives that I went to,

• 3:27:03Ben Milligan?

  you know, they're, some of their record keeping, you know, has a little bit to be desired and you want to protect, you know, this history, you know, but no, I never know that it's all there. But yes, found the report and yeah, holding it is a little weird, holding a lot of these documents because you, you know, you haven't touched or most likely no one's touched some of this stuff since they were printed off or typed off or whatever.

• 3:27:31Jocko Willink?

  You have here, according to Bucklew, this is the report, according to Bucklew, the battle required something not unlike the riverine force used in the American Civil War in which, said Abraham Lincoln, Uncle Sam's web feet had fought not only in the deep sea and the broad bay, but also up the narrow muddy bayou and wherever the ground was a little damp. What a great, I mean, quotes freaking Abraham Lincoln in this report. This guy's crafty. For an unconventional example, in a modified amphibious environment, Bucklew could have drawn attention to his own legacy. He didn't. He never did. So the humility. Lincoln's fleet was example enough. In practical terms, his solution for the

• 3:28:12Jocko Willink?

  Navy, heretofore failure, was a comprehensive overhaul of the entire counter infiltration effort. And you talk about this idea of counter infiltration.

• 3:28:22Ben Milligan?

  As opposed to counter.

• 3:28:23Jocko Willink?

  As opposed to counter insurgency. They want to keep the infiltrators, the communists from pushing into South Vietnam.

• 3:28:29Ben Milligan?

  It's a blockade. I mean, that's, it's a traditional Navy mission. Navy doesn't understand counter insurgency. Navy is much more comfortable with a blockade.

• 3:28:39Jocko Willink?

  Right. And so therefore, according to their report, more Navy boats, more Navy boarding teams, more riverine checkpoints, submarine nets, navigation lights, a system for checking cargo manifests and enforcing curfews. And in exchange for all this, more Navy representation in forecourt planning. On the question of whether the Navy was missing the boat on counter insurgency, the winning of the locals' loyalty through civic action and leading the indigenous troops, Bucklew's report was comparatively silent, especially given the date, just 86 days since Kennedy's assassination. Though he recommended increased boat supports to special forces camps, he already judged the Green Berets' efforts as slow and time consuming and therefore ineffective.

• 3:29:25Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. In its forty-six pages, the report used the term counterinsurgency only two times, or sorry, only three times. A somewhat nebulous field, Buckley would one day call it, four fewer mentions than the term counter infiltration. The report's preferred mission, appearing a total of ten times, was a variant of the term raiding, a tactic that could, said the report, engender more fight-back spirit amongst the rag sailors, though those were the South Vietnamese-trained riverine sailors, but would require companies of pursuit raiders, preferably Marines or Rangers. And who would accompany such, and who would command such raids? On this question, the

• 3:30:10Jocko Willink?

  former scout raider-turned-Saco guerrilla did not blink. The over-water transport of raiding and landing forces should be a Navy responsibility.

• 3:30:22Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, that, I mean, that, that part alone, I mean, the fact that he doesn't even mention SEALs in that, I mean, clearly, the Navy thinks, like, I mean, if there's not, like, a little, you know, you know, the, when the teacher, you know, pounds on the chalkboard and says, hey, you might want to remember this for the test, like, that's what he's saying, like, hey, don't you guys think that you want to be doing this mission? And the Army and the Marine Corps is like, nah.

• 3:30:46Jocko Willink?

  Crazy. Nine days later, on February 25, 1964, the Buckley Report, the name by which even McNamara would refer to it, was officially distributed to leaders across the Navy, MACV, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, eventually rising to the Office of Secretary of Defense. It was handled, said Buckley, like a hot potato. Actually, it was more like a gauntlet, a challenge to the Navy's leaders to not only directly fight an inland river war, but to fight it in a way that mostly deviated from the consensus strategy of counterinsurgency. Over the next two years, this challenge would propel the Navy toward the development of new vessels, new organizations, and, most importantly, new missions, including the report's most recommended, raiding beyond the riverbanks.

• 3:31:33Jocko Willink?

  So there it is. From there, the SEALs start creeping inland. That's what starts happening. And here's the intro that I started this podcast out with, SEAL Team One, Det Golf, Billy Makin. That's what's happening. From there, they start making adjustments to training.

• 3:31:57Ben Milligan?

  Right. The Navy has set up the SEAL teams. They haven't created, I mean, they created the SEAL teams, but they haven't determined what the SEAL teams are going to be. They've raised them like a parent was going to raise a child.

• 3:32:06Jocko Willink?

  They like planted a seed.

• 3:32:07Ben Milligan?

  Right. But the child is ultimately going to be the one who decides what his future is going to be like. And all of this has come together into this last two chapters. Like, here we are.

• 3:32:19Ben Milligan?

  And they have trouble in the beginning. They were almost sent home. The SEALs almost completely missed the war.

• 3:32:27Jocko Willink?

  So the guys start coming back from those Vietnam deployments. And like I said, they start making adjustments because they're creeping more and more inland. I like this book. Some of these things, some of these things just warm my heart because I'm so connected to them, right? So here we go back to the book. Frustrated with the enemy's retreat from the rungsats riverbanks, Det Golf had already started pushing further inland, so far in fact that SEAL Team One's replacement platoons were now anticipating almost nothing but helicopter insertions. So we might not even be in the water at all, not even next to a river. To better prepare for this inland land warfare, SEAL Team One's Anderson

• 3:33:09Jocko Willink?

  had ordered Guy Stone, a former Korean War soldier and forward observer who had left the Army to become an enlisted SEAL, to create a six-week-long pre-deployment course in basic infantry tactics. With a training camp carved into the Chocolate Mountains, some 100 miles east of the Pacific Ocean, Stone had trained his Team One comrades in every skill of soldiering that he knew, everything from contour navigating to mortars, every skill a step closer to Navy infantrymen.

• 3:33:39Jocko Willink?

  To the commanders now convened in Coronado, such developments seem to justify an official revision to the SEALs Navy-imposed operational boundaries. In other words, what Del Judas, Anderson, and Early were describing as direct missions outside of a purely naval or maritime environment. As they already knew, there was only one other available area that could present a Navy unit with that kind of opportunity. An area contemporary described as the war's true bastion of iron, the Mekong Delta.

• 3:34:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I've had some Vietnam SEALs on here, but that connection to our west coast desert training facility, that's it, man. You go out there, and I had Roger Hayden on here, who was a Vietnam... Oh, Roger. Yeah, well, that's right, you worked at Warcom. But he'd start talking about being out there at the desert training facility. Like, they set up the point man course, where they put booby traps and targets and all that. Like, that's what I did. When I got SEAL Team One, you went out there and you did the point man course. Everybody did the point man course. That came directly from these guys in Vietnam. So, these things are... You can still have that thread. Yeah.

• 3:35:05Jocko Willink?

  Gonna push forward a little bit.

• 3:35:08Jocko Willink?

  Get into some of these stories that you get from the fighting that the SEALs start doing as they push in. And this is where the reputation really starts to stand strong. I'm gonna jump into the middle of a mission here. Realizing that the enemy was already moving to cut them off, Gallagher decided the only thing left to do was fight. This decision made, he directed his men to make for the only cover around a lone peasant's house, but twenty, just twenty uncomfortable yards away from the nearest tree line. When they reached it, their first job was to calm the family inside, not an easy task for any home invader, and one in which the squad was only partially successful as two

• 3:35:51Jocko Willink?

  children quickly escaped, sure to eventually tell the Vietcong their position. Next most important was to check the wounded. Ya's entire left side was starting to freeze up, and fix whatever was wrong with the radio, the same troubleshooting checklist of cleaning connectors, swapping out handsets, changing batteries, plus a healthy amount of cursing and praying. This troubleshooting, however, was only partially successful. When Ture finally got the radio back online, the only other person who could hear him was Jack Raul, the radio man for 7A, and they had problems of their own. At a little before 3am, Peterson and squad 7A considered themselves in a very difficult position. Everywhere they looked in the surrounding tree line, there was movement.

• 3:36:36Jocko Willink?

  At one point, Peterson had even seen torches, what seemed like hundreds of them moving toward their south. But as they were now finding out over the radio, it could have been even worse. Once Gallagher and 7B's situation was learned, Peterson was quick to count his blessing. First, he had none of Gallagher's casualties, except for the Lerp who had shot the man Peterson had meant to interrogate. Every one of his men still had a full load out of ammunition. Next was his position, clear fields of fire in every direction, and the cemetery's berm for cover, even concrete vaults if the enemy brought in his mortars. Most important of all, Raul's radio was now working as it should, putting the squad in

• 3:37:19Jocko Willink?

  reach of Army slicks and Navy Sea Wolves, who were, at that moment, on their way to 7A's rescue, or at least they had been.

• 3:37:29Jocko Willink?

  Recognizing 7B's overwhelming need, Peterson quickly made two decisions. First, he ordered Raoul to relay 7B's position to the helicopters, effectively putting his own squad at the back of the line. Second, and this decision was made by default of the first, 7A would now fight the encircling enemy alone. Just as Peterson's decision was made and the helicopters began diverting south, a group of some thirty Viet Cong fighters, as if sensing 7A's sudden vulnerability, stepped clear of the eastern wood line, spread themselves into a screen of skirmishers, and started forward. The first wave was coming, and no one knew what was coming behind it. Having been forced to spend the first few minutes at the farmhouse calming peasants,

• 3:38:14Jocko Willink?

  dressing wounds, and fixing the radio, Gallagher, despite shards of metal in his legs, was now checking each man's field of fire and telling him to hold that fire until he gave the order. As men organized their positions with easily accessible stacks of ammunition and grenades, they scanned their sectors for any sign of movement. They didn't have to scan line, scan long. Soon, between the rice bales, there was movement everywhere. "Look at them all," said Boynton. "It looks like hundreds of them." But as best he could tell, hundreds who, by their milling around, still had no idea where the Americans were. Right about the time that Boynton was making that assessment, Hook Tur received what they

• 3:38:57Jocko Willink?

  had been quietly desperate for: the check-in procedures from Lieutenant Commander Myers of the Navy Seawolves, who rattled off the loadout for his flight of two helicopters, wings racked with 2.75-inch rockets and machine guns, then gave his altitude and vicinity a racetrack in the sky far enough away so as to not reveal 7B's position. In response, Tur gave a physical description of the rice paddy and 7B's location in it, along with the rapidly deteriorating situation, multiple wounded, and enemy everywhere.

• 3:39:31Jocko Willink?

  The next call was the lead pilot of the Army's Flight of Slicks, who, upon hearing of 7B's situation, replied he would not be able to help as it was a "violation of squadron policy to land in a hot LZ." What happened next is a matter of some dispute. One account suggests that the Sea Wolf pilots may have shamed their Army peers by offering to pick up the SEALs themselves, or at least the wounded. The Navy fuselages could only handle one or two men. Another explicitly claims that the Sea Wolf commander told the Army pilot, "You're gonna go down, or I'm gonna shoot you down." Whatever the truth, within a few minutes, the matter was resolved and Gallagher told Tier to tell the helicopters what he wanted.

• 3:40:15Jocko Willink?

  At a little before 3:15 a.m., the moon behind him, two Sea Wolves started their attack run across the rice paddy. As they closed with the tree line, someone in the squad, there is some dispute as to who, stepped out of the farmhouse, ripped the pull ring on a Mark 13 signal flare and tossed it in the grass. Within a second, the flare ignited a bonfire-sized glow that told the pilots exactly where the SEALs were, but also drew the bullet snaps of every muzzle now blazing from the tree line. As the SEALs flinched beneath the fire and responded with their own, the world above them exploded with the womp-womp of the two gunships strafing the enemy's muzzle flashes with their rockets and four machine guns. With the landing skids directly above them,

• 3:40:57Jocko Willink?

  the combination of rotor blades and rocket exhaust nearly ripped the roof off the farmhouse. As the Sea Wolves unleashed this chaos, several SEALs got online and followed suit, launching grenades and shredding through belts of stone rounds they had so linked. "The noise was unbelievable," wrote one man afterward, "and it looked like something not of this world." Behind this cover, the Army pilot reluctantly landed his slick, and Gallagher directed the firing line of SEALs to begin bounding back toward it. While the firing line covered, Mike Boynton transformed himself into an ambulance, cradling Min from the hooch to the helicopter, then helping to shoulder Yaw to a seat crammed between the pilot and copilot.

• 3:41:41Jocko Willink?

  Finding Gallagher limping away from the firing line, his rifle still in hand, and compressing a fresh gunshot wound, and leaning into the rotor wash like it was a driving rain, Boynton picked him up and heaved him so hard into the helicopter's open door that he flew right out the other side. That accident forced Boynton to run all the way around the helicopter and repeat the effort, finally stashing Gallagher all the way in the back. Once everyone was finally loaded, the pilot eagerly applied his collective pitch control lever until several knocks on the helmet forced him to look back. "Hey, we still got men on the ground," Boynton yelled above the noise. At this, the pilot depressed his collective just in time for Roy Matthews, the barrel

• 3:42:22Jocko Willink?

  of his stoner glowing hot red, to dash from the hooch and clamber aboard, rounds now clanking against the fuselage. This time, the pilot's liftoff sent a shudder throughout the entire helicopter, prompting Yaw to crane his head toward the dash where he saw an RPM indicator flashing red. While gaining the next 100 feet of elevation, the helicopter shook like it would suddenly drop out of the sky, a feeling that only intensified when every gun still connected to a living communist finger started firing and surrounding the slick with green tracers. It was a barrage that had resulted from the near simultaneous liftoff of the Sea Wolves because they had somewhere else to be.

• 3:43:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, then you go into, um, talk about how they go now and take care of Peterson and Seven Alpha.

• 3:43:18Ben Milligan?

  I mean, the, uh, if I had written any slower, this would not have been written because the, uh, you know, a lot of the guys that gave me the stories from this thing are no longer here. Ron Yaw just passed away a couple of months ago. Min just died. Bob Gallagher just died. I mean, all this history is, you know, very, very slowly, but it's happening. I mean, one of the last things that Pete Peterson, well, one of the last interactions I had with Pete, because Pete was more than generous with his time to do interviews with us, but one of the last things that he did was, I sent him a Galley copy of the book before it was published, to get it in Bob Gallagher's hands, so he could see this. I wanted, you

• 3:44:02Ben Milligan?

  know, every, you know, all the folks that I interviewed from Seven Platoon, the one person that would not be interviewed was Bob Gallagher. He, that said, I still was anxious for him to know, you know, the legacy and the contribution that he had, you know, not just to the SEAL teams, but to, you know, establishing, you know, what ultimately the SEAL teams became, the mission that the SEAL teams have. So, sent the copy of the book to Pete. Pete drove it over to Bob's house. Pete, you know, didn't get any information on whether or not he actually read it, but after Bob passed, they found the, the copy

• 3:44:47Ben Milligan?

  of the book in his house, with a note inside that said to pass this book on to his best friend. So hopefully, very hopefully, he, he was able to at least see this.

• 3:44:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, then that's a good indication. You, you say here, "When this was done, he submitted awards." This is Peterson, "submitted awards up through CTF 116's chain of command. Bronze stars for just about everyone, every member of Seven Bravo, a Silver Star for Boynton, and for Gallagher, a Navy Cross, an award that he had to justify to an awards officer with multiple statements, but who responded by saying that the evidence could actually support a Medal of Honor."

• 3:45:26Ben Milligan?

  I hope it does. I mean, I, I think there, it would be, that would be really great if this could act as something of a record for maybe an adjustment of some of these awards.

• 3:45:39Ben Milligan?

  We'll see.

• 3:45:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I mean, right now, I think we got Gallagher and Watson.

• 3:45:46Ben Milligan?

  But, uh, yeah, and, you know, one of the, you know, great things, or one of the most interesting things about that episode is that Peterson submits himself for nothing.

• 3:45:56Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:45:57Ben Milligan?

  I mean, how many, uh, how many officers or how many people do we work with, you know, over the, you know, course of our careers that, you know, their preoccupation was, you know, what awards they're going to get out of this. Uh, awards are, um, are one of those funny things that, you know, they, they don't always necessarily, uh, you know, say what the person, you know, deserves. They often say, you know, how good their chain of command was in recognizing, you know, what they, you know, what they got.

• 3:46:25Jocko Willink?

  A hundred percent. Awards are crazy.

• 3:46:27Ben Milligan?

  Awards say just as, they say as much about, uh, the person that submits them for it as it does about the person himself.

• 3:46:34Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I had, I had a guy, a SOG, a guy on here, Dick Thompson, um, got, got into a helo to, to like set up the spy rig or something during a bright light operation. Ends up the helo just takes off. He's getting ready to go on leave. He's getting ready to go on liberty. So he doesn't even have his weapon. He doesn't have his gear with him. And the helo takes off to go on this bright light to go and rescue down guys. They can't get in. He ends up throwing a rope out, rappelling down, grabs the crew chief's gun, rappels down, no gloves, burns his hand, gets in there, rescues people, recovers body from two different helicopters. Completely, it's completely, oh, by the way, he, he dropped

• 3:47:14Jocko Willink?

  down, the rope ended and he drops into a hundred and fifty foot canopy, just drops, just lets go and just falls through the freaking jungle canopy to get in there. It's, it's totally insane. He gets done with that. I mean, there's no possible way he should have lived, number one.

• 3:47:31Jocko Willink?

  And no, no way should he have actually rescued guys. He lives, he rescued guys, he gets like a Bronze Star. It's freaking totally insane. And you know, here's the other thing about what's what, and you, you, you lay this out very clearly. A very important thing about this SEAL Team Two Seventh Platoon. What really, they were doing great operations, but what really made it important was that they were doing these intel-driven raids. Then they were gathering intelligence, they were exploiting that intelligence, and they were doing follow-on raids. So this set like a, a standard.

• 3:48:06Ben Milligan?

  It creates our cycle of operations. And what's important about that is, you know, we didn't, I, I try and tell everybody that I meet that the SEAL Teams, we didn't invent ourselves, we didn't, everything good about us, we took from somebody else. If anything, the SEAL Teams are just an aggregate of all the best pieces of all these other units that have come before us.

• 3:48:30Ben Milligan?

  And not just Navy units either. We took the best parts of the Rangers, we took the best parts of the Raiders, and we combined all that. And when we didn't know how to do something, we found the best person to teach us how to do it, and they taught us how to do it, and we took it.

• 3:48:45Ben Milligan?

  And same thing when it comes to this, this cycle of capture-kill. I mean, we, I mean, we sort of stumbled upon it, and I think, you know, with guys like Pete Peterson and Bob Gallagher, who are really, you know, leveraging the information that they can get from other units, and then aggregating that to, to drive their own operations. I mean, a guy like Bob Wagner, who's, you know, he is creating, essentially, single-handedly creates the PRUs. And the, the PRUs, the best part about that is, is this cycle of operations that they get, and that the SEAL Teams sort of notice. Like, we can do that too.

• 3:49:24Jocko Willink?

  So. Yeah, the use of interpreters, the use of the locals, but the use of the locals not to build a guerrilla force, but just to gather intelligence and then go do hits.

• 3:49:34Ben Milligan?

  And it's just, I mean, it's like, you know, it's, it's no different than what, you know, the police do in every major city across the country. You arrest somebody, you shake them down for information, and then you go get the next person. It's a cycle of operations that just keep perpetuating itself. So.

• 3:49:50Jocko Willink?

  Um, you've got incredible sections in here. And again, this whole book, we barely even touched the surface of what you've got in this book. But I want to finish off with this section here.

• 3:50:05Jocko Willink?

  It says this. Last section I'm going to read. In March of 1969, the Rand Corporation, a semi-private think tank that specialized in research and analysis for the Department of Defense, published a report titled, "The Navy SEAL Commandos: A Case Study of Military Decision-Making and Organizational Change." As far as I know, the first academic-level study of the SEAL teams. The report's author was Francis J. Bing West, a former Force Recon Marine in Vietnam War veteran, whose investigation had begun a year earlier. And by the way, you can read a bunch of his books right now. He wrote a bunch of other books, wrote books about Iraq.

• 3:50:52Jocko Willink?

  His investigation had begun a year earlier and whose research had produced a raft of documents, dozens of interviews, and the firsthand observation of several SEAL missions into the Rung-Sat and the Mekong Delta. So he went and observed what SEALs were doing. And this guy is a Force Recon Marine himself. From this research, West had produced an 18-page report, whose introduction provided a brief description of SEAL training. Training, he estimated, at a cost of around $14,000 per man, plus an overview of the SEALs' commitment to Vietnam at its height, a commitment that never exceeded 150 SEALs, or roughly 1,150 fewer than the in-country height of the Green

• 3:51:37Jocko Willink?

  Berets' total complement. It was a commitment that stood out in even starker relief when placed next to the author's obvious admiration for the SEALs' progression from lackluster coastal raiders to the war's most aggressive, direct-action commandos. Admittedly, commandos who had no, had had no business becoming such, and had thus drawn the interest of the same preeminent think tank that had created the US military's nuclear defense strategy.

• 3:52:09Jocko Willink?

  Intended as a study on organizational change, the report's true purpose had been to discover how the Navy could have possibly succeeded in creating a land-focused commando force, a force that even the Vietcong had reportedly dubbed "the men with green faces," a color not normally associated with the Navy's traditional medium. It was a puzzle of personal importance to the author. As the Marine Corps, the far more likely branch of service had never succeeded in creating anything similar. "How the concept was shepherded through the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Congress, I am still trying to determine," the author wrote.

• 3:52:53Jocko Willink?

  "For the mission of the SEALs exceeded the Charter of the US Navy. As best as he could tell, the legality of this infringement had been tolerated because of its negligible size, but later had been allowed to widen because of a series of factors, none of which at this point should come as a surprise." The first of these, now here you start talking about how we ended up with the SEAL teams. The first of these, at least in the Mekong Delta, submitted the author, had been the neglect of the US Army in general and the 9th Infantry Division in particular to push their commando-type units to "develop the same aggressive attitude towards ambushing

• 3:53:36Jocko Willink?

  that the SEALs had." It might further be added that neither entity had adequately prepared those commando-type units to make such a transition in the Delta environment, a claim best evidenced by one attempt to conceal the river insertion of five LERP soldiers by having them copy the SEAL method of jumping from the back of a moving boat, but that ultimately resulted in the drowning of all five men.

• 3:54:04Jocko Willink?

  The second factor that accounted for this infringement, the report continued, had been the Navy's senior officers, whose tours, by comparison, were mostly dreary affairs, a condition made more noticeable when, quote, "in the presence of generals," end quote. To compensate for this, the Navy's leaders had allowed the SEALs more latitude than they had their other units, a black market trade-off that had produced a steady supply of anecdotes for the Navy, and thereby, quote, "saved the pride of the admirals," end quote. That's an interesting concept, like the admirals wanted something to talk about.

• 3:54:46Jocko Willink?

  Ultimately, the author decided the most important factors, factor in the SEALs' infringement was owing to the SEALs themselves and the culture that weighed upon them. Drawn from a notorious selective training program that produced few qualified candidates, the SEALs naturally had had to find a mission that kept casualties low, a circumstance that might have pushed them, like the LERPs or Force Recon Marines, into a reconnaissance role that they had anyone to pass, had they had anyone to pass intelligence on to. So you're saying there, look, if you've got a small number of people, probably one of the safest missions you can do

• 3:55:30Jocko Willink?

  is, hey, we're gonna go and do reconnaissance where we're not supposed to be seen, we're not supposed to come in contact with the enemy. And Bing West is saying here, like, they could have gone in that direction. They could have gone into this reconnaissance role had they had anyone to pass the intelligence to. They hadn't. Nor had there been any great pressure from the Riverine Force to engage in any sort of Green Beret-style advisory duty or civic action. So they didn't go in that direction either, they didn't go where Yarborough went, hey, let's go raise a bunch of local guerrillas to fight.

• 3:56:05Jocko Willink?

  Organizational orphans with no larger force to support or control them and possessing, quote, "no love or admiration for the Vietnamese," end quote. "The SEALs had set out into the swamps not to prove themselves. Their training had already done that," said the author, "but, quote, 'because not to go, not to go would have been inexcusable to the others.'" "They had developed a collective value system which emphasized physical hardiness and courage, and they liked to fight."

• 3:56:45Jocko Willink?

  That's just a beautiful thing. So, so, so the SEALs, SEALs didn't have this, um, you know, you might talk to an Army Green Beret talking about, "Hey, I like my little people," you know, the, the SOG guys call them little people. They're, they're forming relationships with the locals. This is a quote, "The SEALs had, quote, 'no love or admiration for the Vietnamese,' end quote." That's crazy, right? And then, and then just to do that one more, to say that one more time, they weren't doing anything to prove themselves. They were doing it because, but, quote, "because not to go would have been inexcusable to the others." They, he's talking about the others, like it's inexcusable, if you don't go,

• 3:57:26Ben Milligan?

  You're not a SEAL.

• 3:57:27Jocko Willink?

  You're not a SEAL. It's inexcusable to the other SEALs. "They had developed a collective value system which emphasized physical hardiness and courage, and they liked to fight," end quote. "So, when the tactics of patrol and ambush had proved unproductive, nobody not a SEAL, meaning no Blue Water Superior Officer, had ordered them to try something else. They had just done it." "It was an exceptional adaptation," the Marine veteran author made a special note, "to point out that his fellow Marines had failed to mimic, and by following the previous logic, for reasons that blamed them for this,

• 3:58:10Jocko Willink?

  a sequence of attribution and blame that if the preceding pages have proved anything, was not a sufficient explanation."

• 3:58:20Jocko Willink?

  "What strikes me as most remarkable about the SEAL story," the author concluded, "is their performance and their ability to learn and adapt in a decentralized, sub-optimizing environment." Though all true and commendable, it was also an explanation that it considered only the record that came after 1966. Missing was any analysis that probed deeper than that top layer of history whose soil had fertilized this inland evolution. The Army's and Marine Corps' preceding 30 years of whipsawing interest in raids and raiders, and the Navy's perennial preoccupation with justifying its worth in offensive combat,

• 3:59:05Jocko Willink?

  a preoccupation that had combined with the Navy's traditional latitude and the UDD's traditional adaptability to create what several unidentified SEALs soon described to a documentary filmmaker as "the war's unsung soldier." And, quote, "what we consider without question the best troops that the country has." End quote. Both descriptions notable because they didn't use the word sailors. And just short of the Reader's Digest appraisal that had dubbed them "the war's, quote, "super commandos," by the end, these would be assessments that were next to impossible to dispute.

• 3:59:55Ben Milligan?

  You're kind to end on Bing West's report. That was one of the first things I found. I found that at the UDTCL Museum's archives. When I started this book, it was one of the first places I went to do research. And the archives at the UDTCL Museum are a little disorganized. In some cases, that provides opportunities that you didn't expect. And one of those was Bing West's report. And I had found it. I read it when I got it, but I hadn't thought about it. It had, you know, it had provided enough kind of food for thought that it just kind of stuck in the back of my head, stuck in the back of my head for at least eight years. And so when I was, you know, nearing the end of the book and I was trying to find a

• 4:00:40Ben Milligan?

  way to, you know, kind of summarize everything that had happened, um, you know, it suddenly dawned on me, you know, I'll, I'll go back to that report. And I knew that it had been written by Francis J. West. I didn't know it was Bing West. It's like, oh my gosh, it's Bing West. Like, and I've read, you know, books by Bing West. And not only that, but in a way that, you know, it made this thing even more like, uh, just strange that it had happened. But, uh, on one of the last ops that we did in Al Anbar province, we had gotten, uh, my, uh, platoon had been ambushed on a, on a rooftop, uh, sniper overwatch. And, uh, one of our, uh, one of our SEALs, Mark Robinson, had been shot through the,

• 4:01:23Ben Milligan?

  through the head. He, uh, took a bullet, a 762 round from a PKM through his right eye and exited the back of his head. And we were cut off from support. We couldn't get any, I was trying to get aircraft down to support us. They wouldn't come. They wouldn't come because there were so much, uh, you know, machine gunfire. Uh, and we were trying to, uh, uh, get the other SEAL, uh, element to, uh, fight to our position. And they were, they just were, uh, they were on foot and trying to get there as quickly as possible. So, uh, at one point, uh, I asked for a, you know, a marine QRF. And the marine QRF was separated, uh, from us, uh, at the FOB by this road that we, we called IED alley.

• 4:02:03Ben Milligan?

  We'd never known a vehicle to drive on this road, had not gotten IED. And, uh, one officer, uh, who was there, a major, he, uh, jumps in a Humvee, grabs another Humvee, and they start trucking down the road to, to get to our position. They get to us. They provide cover for the helicopter to get in. Uh, and we, Mark actually, you know, walks himself to the helicopter, uh, remarkably. He's still, uh, around. He's a Lake County cop now and, uh, um, but.

• 4:02:34Ben Milligan?

  What makes this story even more remarkable is that the Marine major who came to our rescue was Owen West, Bing West's son.

• 4:02:42Jocko Willink?

  As soon as you started telling that, I knew exactly where the story was going. I was like, this has to be Owen West, this has to be Bing's son.

• 4:02:48Ben Milligan?

  It's just incredible. Like, and Bing was, you know, the fact that Bing wrote this report, Bing had this interaction with the SEAL teams in 1960, 68, and then writes this report in 1969.

• 4:03:01Jocko Willink?

  Super humble report, too.

• 4:03:04Ben Milligan?

  Incredibly humble. Super generous. And I mean, you have so many opportunities to, you know, draw attention to other things, and he doesn't. I mean, he's truly impressed by this organization. What, you know, we, you know, as a, as a, as an institution have not done, which I think we should do at every opportunity, is recognize the influence that all of these other units had on our creation. You know, soldiers, Marines, Rangers, recon, everybody, they've all contributed to who we are. In some sense, our history, I think, it's, I mean, especially if you frame it in this way, it's not our history. It is our history, but it's a lens that you can use to look at the entire history of

• 4:03:49Ben Milligan?

  American Special Operations from World War II to Vietnam. We wouldn't be here without them, and in some ways, they would not have changed into the units, or they wouldn't have permanently created these units, had we not set an example for them to also follow.

• 4:04:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, it's, and you know, the thing with Bing West, and just that humble report that you can, you can, I mean, the Marine Corps is just so professional, and so many, reminds me of Dave Burke, who was a Top Gun pilot, F-18 pilot, Marine Corps fighter pilot, ended up being the senior instructor at Top Gun, F-35 pilot, F-22 pilot, just a total stud. And he worked with us, he was a FAC with us on the ground in the Battle of Monty. What's really interesting is, you know, he came from Top Gun, he was the senior instructor at Top Gun. I mean, you're not, you're not going to get any more professional of a human being as

• 4:04:47Jocko Willink?

  a Marine that is the senior instruction, instructor at Top Gun. And I was talking to him about when he came to one of our briefs for the first time, this is where in the Battle of Monty, we're doing a brief, some kind of an operation, and... He was just telling me right away, he was just so impressed with what with just how the brief was, just how the brief was, you know, this is young Lieutenant Leif Babbin and Chief Tony Affrati getting up there and talking about what we're gonna do, me giving the commander's intent and like, I remember him telling me that, this was 10 years later, he probably told me that, and just that humility to think, oh, these guys are doing something that is, that is squared away and for Bing to be able to recognize that and

• 4:05:31Jocko Willink?

  write that while the war's still going on, that's pretty impressive and, and you know, you say that he, he didn't really probe deeper than the layer of history that's prior to 1966, but um, I'll tell you what, that left plenty of room for you to do just that with this book and, and this book provides so much history, so much information.

• 4:05:56Ben Milligan?

  Thank you.

• 4:05:56Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, one thing that is awesome about the Marine Corps, and I've talked about this on this podcast before, and I actually talk a lot about it with clients, because the Marine Corps has an incredibly powerful culture. I think it might be the strongest culture in the world.

• 4:06:12Ben Milligan?

  Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. I, yeah, I, I've said it, you know, time and time again, like, pound for pound, there's no institution like the US Marine Corps. Their, their ability to, they, they require much more from everybody, from, from their, their troops than every other branch of service. The trade-off, though, with, with that, by requiring as much, is a level of responsibility that nobody else gets in the military. And the result is, it's initiative and courage.

• 4:06:47Jocko Willink?

  And that initiative and courage is part of, it's part of their culture. And if you, you know, I, I, I thought about this for years as I was doing this podcast and interviewing people, and what the Marine Corps has is this culture that is rooted.

• 4:07:03Jocko Willink?

  In the stories of their history. And I think that what you've done with this book. Will strengthen. The history of the Frogman and the SEAL Teams and it'll anchor our culture. To a past. That is. Filled with these qualities that we want, these qualities of bravery and heroism and and Adaptation and evolution. And pride from our successes and humility from our failures. And I think this book. Connects us with the individuals. Who paved the way for us that we are lucky enough to be associated with and lucky enough Really to call our brothers. And make this incredible group of individuals.

• 4:07:48Jocko Willink?

  That we call. The Teams. And it's an outstanding book, and I think you've done a real service to the community By writing this book. And anybody, if you're in the SEAL Teams. Absolutely just order this book immediately. There's an audio book version, which is outstanding As well. Get this book, anybody that has any interest in any. Military history. In the history of all special operations. Just get this book. There's so much information in it. It's. It's immaculately researched. And I just, I couldn't be, I couldn't be more impressed with it, man. And I'm. Look, I feel, I feel somewhat bad because I write books. Basically from my own head.

• 4:08:32Jocko Willink?

  And it feels like I have a much easier task than you do. I don't have to read anything. I just write what I already know or what I've lived through. And for you to dive so deep into this, it's just outstanding. And I think it's, it's A huge. A huge. A huge service to the Teams, man. Thank you. So thanks, Ben. Echo Charles, you got anything?

• 4:08:56Speaker 02

  Well, I think we covered it. Good to see you.

• 4:09:00Ben Milligan?

  Thank you. It's nice to see you again.

• 4:09:03Jocko Willink?

  Hey Ben, where can we find you? I know you got a Twitter, right? Is that pretty much your social media extent?

• 4:09:09Ben Milligan?

  I have a Twitter and an Instagram. I probably should create a Facebook because I think there's, you know, a few older people that would like this.

• 4:09:17Jocko Willink?

  What's your, I know your Twitter is Ben H. Milligan.

• 4:09:21Ben Milligan?

  Right.

• 4:09:21Jocko Willink?

  What's your, what's your gram?

• 4:09:25Ben Milligan?

  I'm noted, so please bear with me as I'm getting better. B. Milligan 3.

• 4:09:30Jocko Willink?

  B. Milligan 3.

• 4:09:31Ben Milligan?

  Yeah, B. Milligan, and then I've got three, I've got three little boys, so that's a...

• 4:09:36Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 4:09:37Ben Milligan?

  Yeah.

• 4:09:37Jocko Willink?

  And, um, do you have a website or anything?

• 4:09:40Ben Milligan?

  No, I don't have a website. I mean, I'm not, I'm just like the, I'm the most incapable person when it comes to social media and promotion. What I always say is the same personality traits that make it possible to write this book are the same personality traits that make it hard to promote it. So I, I'm doing the best I can. I appreciate you bringing me on here. The, yeah, I couldn't have done this without lots of people helping out and including everybody that, you know, came together to, you know, get this to Admiral McRaven, you know, to get that blur from him. And then, you know, I just couldn't have written it without just,

• 4:10:20Ben Milligan?

  you know, the support of all the people around me, including the three little guys that I wrote this for, so.

• 4:10:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, hey, man, once again, thanks for your, thanks for your service in the Navy. Great. Thanks for your service in the teams. Thanks for doing what you did. And, and really, truly, honestly, man, I can't thank you enough for writing this book. And it's, it's just, it's just an outstanding document. I hope everybody gets it. So much to learn and so much respect to be paid to the forefathers that brought us to where we are today. Thanks for shining a light on them for us.

• 4:10:55Ben Milligan?

  Thank you.

• 4:10:58Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Ben Milligan has left the building. Echo Charles.

• 4:11:04Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 4:11:05Jocko Willink?

  Need to uphold the legacy of the teams by getting better. What do you got for us?

• 4:11:12Speaker 02

  First off, side note, me and Ben have history. One of the first people that I met in San Diego when I moved here. Yep.

• 4:11:23Jocko Willink?

  Cause of a connection between Cake Nuts.

• 4:11:25Speaker 02

  Yep, through my Hawaii people, you know, that came to eventually become SEALs. He was one of the first.

• 4:11:31Jocko Willink?

  He didn't remember you though.

• 4:11:32Speaker 02

  Well, here's the thing, we both, we both would, no, no, no, no, no, zero is inaccurate. Zero is inaccurate. He was like looking at me, I was like, I was like, maybe a little something. Then later on the break, yeah, we reconnected.

• 4:11:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, once you described exactly the situation, because he didn't remember you.

• 4:11:48Speaker 02

  Either way, we're all trying to get better.

• 4:11:50Jocko Willink?

  Which is weird, you know, when someone's got such an eye for detail and he doesn't remember you at all. That's got to hurt a little bit.

• 4:11:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, especially all the, all the research he's done and like all the stuff that his brain is like capable of.

• 4:12:02Jocko Willink?

  You don't even make mustard in this raid.

• 4:12:08Speaker 02

  Mustard dang bro. Either way, we're connected now. We're pretty much boys again, so it's all good. And you know, we are trying to get better, as you mentioned. So boom, we're over here, we're working out, we're working out, we're reading, not as much as Ben, but we, well, most of us, not as much as Ben. But we're trying, gotta stay cognitively and physically in the game and improving ourselves slowly, quickly, whatever. See what I'm saying? Through this journey, we need supplementation. Good news, Jaco has supplements. Called Jaco Fuel, first one to talk about is the energy drink, new paradigm. I said it paradigm, new era of energy drinks. No longer are we burdened, burdened with the poisons and the aftermath and the price

• 4:12:55Speaker 02

  of bad energy drinks. It's all good, all good, tastes good, gives you the little boost we need.

• 4:13:02Speaker 02

  And healthy for you. Has electrolytes too, by the way. Which is, is that ever a thing? Electrolytes?

• 4:13:07Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes you need them.

• 4:13:08Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, no, no, to have them is a thing. Yes. But I didn't, I don't know if other energy drinks have electrolytes. Thing is, it doesn't even matter.

• 4:13:14Jocko Willink?

  They don't fit because there's too much poison in the other ones.

• 4:13:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:13:17Jocko Willink?

  Here's the interesting thing. You look at the way the SEAL teams came to fruition, right? There was a gap. There's gaps. And some people enter the gap, but then they leave it, right? They do that. But the SEAL teams are just there. The UDTs are just there. We're staying with it.

• 4:13:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:13:32Jocko Willink?

  That's sort of like this whole situation we're finding ourselves in. Because there was a little gap. Oh, no, everyone wants to make poison. Because it sells, put a bunch of sugar in it, put a bunch of caffeine in it, and just give people poison and don't care. That's the gap.

• 4:13:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's BS.

• 4:13:46Jocko Willink?

  The gap is like, hey, people might actually want something that's healthy.

• 4:13:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:13:50Jocko Willink?

  And so I've seen, now that we win in the gap, there's other people that are trying to get in there, but they don't believe in it.

• 4:13:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:13:56Jocko Willink?

  So as soon as they realize how expensive it is, how hard it is produced, as soon as they realize that, they just leave the gap. So we're just there, solo operation.

• 4:14:04Speaker 02

  Cruising in the gap.

• 4:14:05Jocko Willink?

  Standing tall, like the damn SEAL teams. This is the freaking SEAL teams of, of drinks right here. Jaco, discipline, go. That's what's happening.

• 4:14:14Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Delivering. And that's the thing. And you know what?

• 4:14:16Jocko Willink?

  Accomplishing the mission at all costs.

• 4:14:19Speaker 02

  I'm not telling anyone to be offended. I'm not saying that. In fact, I would never say that. I'm not telling people to be angry. I would never say that. I can't, I can't impose outrage on somebody. That being said, those other entities that created these old school, old era energy drinks, they're kind of playing on your weekend. They're, they're taking us for fools.

• 4:14:44Jocko Willink?

  They're taking advantage of humans.

• 4:14:45Speaker 02

  They're like, hey, hey, this is, this tastes real good. You know the guy in the alley, you know, with the red eyes or whatever?

• 4:14:50Jocko Willink?

  Giving away crack.

• 4:14:51Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, hey, hey, take the, bro, it tastes good. Tastes good. Can you do a nice, nice little boost? Meanwhile, you're like, cool. You buy it, you drink it, you enjoy the whatever you enjoy. And then later on, when that guy's long gone, you're over here paying the price.

• 4:15:04Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 4:15:04Speaker 02

  And it's not even like a monetary price. Addicted, less healthy, all this stuff. This, and here comes Jaco.

• 4:15:11Jocko Willink?

  Give me something that's good.

• 4:15:12Speaker 02

  Good, finally, finally.

• 4:15:14Jocko Willink?

  There we go. All right, we're on it.

• 4:15:15Speaker 02

  Discipline, go. In the can, boom. Uh, yeah, so discipline, also discipline the supplement itself. There's powder.

• 4:15:23Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 4:15:24Speaker 02

  There's capsules as well, just, you know, you're on the go, whatever, different, different deployment methods, you know, also joint warfare, krill oil, krill oil, these are for your joints, vitamin D3 and cholera is for your immunity. Milk, additional protein in the form of a dessert.

• 4:15:37Jocko Willink?

  God, so good.

• 4:15:38Speaker 02

  This will never change.

• 4:15:39Jocko Willink?

  It was so good.

• 4:15:40Speaker 02

  The only thing that will

• 4:15:41Jocko Willink?

  Once it hits the lips.

• 4:15:42Speaker 02

  Evolve with this is new flavors. I hear about new flavors. Maybe some cookies. I said it, I said it. I'm not saying, I'm just saying, I said it. Um, also, Jaco White Tea, if you know about that, that's the OG tea that Jaco drinks is in and was and still is into.

• 4:16:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:16:03Speaker 02

  It's good.

• 4:16:03Jocko Willink?

  Probably if you like deadlifting 8,000 pounds, you like that tea.

• 4:16:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, go, they go hand in hand, 100%. And you can get all these things at the energy drinks, wah wah. Everything else, including but not limited to the energy drinks, Jaco Fuel.com.

• 4:16:18Jocko Willink?

  Yep. If you subscribe to them, if you want them just to come to your house, like, like as reliable as a UDT frogman, get into the beach. If that's how you want your supplements to show up, just subscribe. Jaco Fuel.com, it'll go and be free shipping, by the way, because we're up against some, some competitors. We're up against the Imperial Japanese Army and the Nazis. So we're gonna, we're gonna have to sneak in under the radar here. That's what we're doing.

• 4:16:45Speaker 02

  I understand fully.

• 4:16:46Jocko Willink?

  Also Vitamin Shoppe, you can get the stuff at Vitamin Shoppe.

• 4:16:48Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 4:16:48Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 4:16:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, you just want to pop in and grab something, easy money, Vitamin Shoppe. Also, Origin, Origin USA, this is where you can get your American made stuff. Look, not, it's not just printed in America. It is printed in America, but not just printed in America, same saying, we go all the way back. OG to the roots. The seeds, the seeds of the plant that made the seeds. All, all made and planted, grown, sown in America, everything. American made denim. There's some leather in there. There's a lot of awesome materials, but you got boots, you got jeans, you got jujitsu stuff. You got a lot of stuff on there.

• 4:17:26Jocko Willink?

  Jujitsu stuff. There's a couple of places where they mentioned that's kind of training was going on back in the day. Back there like, can you just imagine these guys like, hey, we're going to train you in demolitions, blowing things up, underwater swimming, small boat handling, jujitsu. They're doing it all. So get some of that. OriginUSA.com.

• 4:17:46Speaker 02

  I did out some boots at camp. Hey, look, I'm not going to go into it, but those were some good boots. Yeah, impressive. I don't even really wear that many boots on that many occasions, but that one was like, that could coerce me into wearing boots.

• 4:17:59Jocko Willink?

  Look at you.

• 4:18:00Speaker 02

  As far as coercion goes.

• 4:18:01Jocko Willink?

  Check. OriginUSA.com by the way.

• 4:18:04Speaker 02

  Also, Jaco's a store. It's called Jaco's Store and this is where you can get your Discipline Equals Freedom stuff. Hats, hoodies, shirts. Also good. Also other stuff. There's good stuff on there. Little developments going on over there. Anyway, Jaco'sStore.com.

• 4:18:18Jocko Willink?

  Look at you like you're on the top secret mission.

• 4:18:20Speaker 02

  If you like something.

• 4:18:22Jocko Willink?

  You can't get it out of the national archives. What Echo's creating over here. Look at you.

• 4:18:26Speaker 02

  It's top secret until you go there, then it's like boom, secret is revealed.

• 4:18:30Jocko Willink?

  It's a real secret, but you can go on the website.

• 4:18:32Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Available to everybody. But.

• 4:18:35Jocko Willink?

  Hey, reveal your new shirt. Your shirt locker shirt.

• 4:18:39Speaker 02

  Oh, you like that?

• 4:18:40Jocko Willink?

  Because we're making the shirt locker. The shirt locker, if you want a cool t-shirt that, and this is, this is what I've leaned toward the whole time is shirts that are kind of tied to the podcast. And this is one of them right here, the Sea Wolves, 1966 to 1972. By the way, commissioned in combat, decommissioned in combat. That's the Sea Wolves. You heard about them today. They will go and get the SEALs out of the worst possible situations. Gunfire, don't care. So how do you get that shirt? Shirt locker?

• 4:19:10Speaker 02

  Yes, the, the, one of the homages to the Sea Wolves. Yeah, very much so. Oh, you can get this at the shirt locker on Jaco's Store. So yeah, you sign up for the shirt locker, you get a cool shirt. Cool. It's hard for me to explain how cool it is, varying levels of creativity. Either wear a school shirt, you get one every month, free shipping on that one as well. This is just one of them. I got a new feature that we're working on, it should be done, should be done within the next, I don't know. But if you're a member of the Shirt Locker, hey, look, you missed a shirt last month, five months ago, whatever, you'll have the option to get it if you remember.

• 4:19:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 4:19:49Speaker 02

  Yep, we're working on that one. Unless, yes.

• 4:19:52Jocko Willink?

  Very nice of you.

• 4:19:52Speaker 02

  This is a shirt, I'm glad you like it, Jaco, uh, seems, you know, people seem to like the designs overall. Well, you know, this is just one of them, so yeah.

• 4:19:58Jocko Willink?

  I bet people like that one a lot. Cause I like that one a lot.

• 4:20:04Speaker 02

  Well.

• 4:20:04Jocko Willink?

  Cause I'm a supporter of the Seawolves, Scramble the Seawolves. Hey, subscribe also to this podcast. We also have some other podcasts, Unraveling, that I do with my brother DC, Darryl Cooper. We got the Grounded Podcast, we got the Warrior Kid Podcast, we also have JacoUnderground.com, which we release a little, uh, what's it called? A little alternative podcast, a little complimentary podcast where we talk about some other adjacent items and we do some Q and A. And the reason we have that is in case these platforms, which we do not control, which we don't like, we want to be in control so that we can deliver.

• 4:20:45Jocko Willink?

  And if people start inserting advertisements into this podcast, we, we know you don't want that, we don't want it. We'd rather have you listen to a 74 minute advertisement at the end where Echo Charles is talking. Hey, $8.18 a month if you want to help us out with the Jaco Underground, go to JacoUnderground.com. If you can't afford it, no factor, we're, we, we're in this together. Email [email protected]. We also have a YouTube channel, subscribe to that. We make awesome videos where I am the assistant director and really the driving sort of creative force beside the awesomeness of most of the videos and then Echo does some editing for it.

• 4:21:24Speaker 02

  Brad, you're doing great work. Thank you.

• 4:21:26Jocko Willink?

  Origin USA, awesome. Origin USA, cool, uh, uh, channel, YouTube channel.

• 4:21:31Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, fully. Yeah, that's a good one. If you're interested in, in an American company, their ups and downs, challenges, successes. Yeah, that's a really good one.

• 4:21:40Jocko Willink?

  The whole nine yards.

• 4:21:41Speaker 02

  Yep. Also, Psychological Warfare, what that is, is an album with Jaco Trax on it. Trax on the album, Jaco talking, getting us through our moments of weakness, which we may or may not have. You know, either way, you can get that, uh, anywhere where you can get MP3s. Psychological Warfare, good one.

• 4:21:58Jocko Willink?

  If you want something to hang on your wall, which you probably do, you don't just want to have walls that are just plain and black.

• 4:22:05Speaker 02

  You do.

• 4:22:05Jocko Willink?

  Well, I guess I do, but if I didn't, then I would go to flipsidecanvas.com and I would get some cool stuff from my brother Dakota Meyer, who makes awesome stuff to hang on your wall. Got a bunch of books. Look, this book today, By Water Beneath the Walls, by Ben Milligan. This is an outstanding book. It is an outstanding book.

• 4:22:28Jocko Willink?

  I, I can't, I don't know what else to tell you. Get this book. It's so good. So much information, so much history. If you have any interest, if you listen to this podcast, let me put it this way, if you listen to this podcast, you will freaking love this book. I love this book. It is awesome. Get it. The, it's just an outstanding. Um, also have Final Spin coming out. This is a novel, apparently, allegedly, possibly a novel written by me.

• 4:22:55Jocko Willink?

  It's a story. It's available now for preorder. You want to get that first edition. I have people coming up to me now, they're, they're apologetic because they're bringing me second edition of Discipline Equals Freedom. Bringing second edition of Leadership Strategy Tactics. You don't want to be that person. You don't have that, that, that sort of sunken look on your face. You want to say, I'm in the game. Hey, we have a little connection. You got that first edition, we have a little connection. I'm not, I'm not saying, don't talk to me if you have a second edition, a third edition. It's okay. Look, I have an open mind. But if you want to, if you want to have that immediate connection, let's get that going.

• 4:23:33Jocko Willink?

  Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, The Code, The Evaluation, The Protocols, Discipline = Freedom Field Manual, Way of the Warrior Kid 1, 2, 3, and 4, Mikey and the Dragons, About Face by Hackworth. Almost brought that up today. I almost brought that up today. But you know, once you open that door, who knows when you're stopping. Because he's got, now that I think about it, he, I didn't even mention this, he's got it in here. What? Hackworth. Hackworth was running the Tiger Force. I can't believe I didn't bring that up. I'm sorry, Ben. I missed, there's so much, think about how much information is in there that I didn't bring up Hackworth. That's crazy. That's crazy. So he's got Hackworth, Tiger Force. What happened to them? Why did they come about? How did they do? Why did they get turned off?

• 4:24:17Jocko Willink?

  There's a whole story behind it. Once again, that's, that's By Water Beneath the Walls by Ben Milligan, About Face. I wrote the foreword to the newest version of that. We got Extreme Ownership and the Decotomy of Leadership. I have a leadership consulting company called Echelon Front. We solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details on that. That's where you can find out about the muster, the field training exercises, EF Battlefield. We have a, an event coming up in Las Vegas, October 28th and 29th. It's called the muster. Come and get it. We also have the FTX Field Training Exercise. That's happening. Next one is in St. Louis, September 20th and 21st. Probably closest sold out. I think we had a group of people that couldn't make it. So there

• 4:25:02Jocko Willink?

  might be some openings. Check it out. Go to, go to echelonfront.com. We also have online training, an online leadership training academy. You need to go to the gym to stay in shape. You need to go to extremeownership.com to keep your leadership in shape. Come and check it out. If you want to help service members, active and retired, their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. She does all kinds of incredible things for veterans. And if you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMyWarriors.org. And if you want any more of my monotonous, monotony, monotone, or you need more of Echo's mystified murmurs.

• 4:25:49Jocko Willink?

  You can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on the Gram and on Facebook. Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink and Ben Milligan is on Twitter at Ben H. Milligan and his Instagram is, what is it, Ben Mill 3? I don't know. Listen, rewind it. It's B Milligan. B Milligan 3. There you go. M I L L I G A N. Again, thanks once again to Ben for your service in the Navy, your service in the teams and now your incredible service to the teams by writing this incredible book that will solidify our roots, our culture and our history.

• 4:26:31Jocko Willink?

  Can't thank you enough and to all the military personnel out there on the front lines right now. Thank you for defending our freedom and our way of life and to police and law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics and EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, border patrol, secret service and all first responders. Thanks for keeping us safe here at home.

• 4:26:52Jocko Willink?

  And to everyone else out there, how about we all take a little lesson from these frogmen?

• 4:26:59Jocko Willink?

  How about we develop and embrace a collective value system that emphasizes physical hardiness and courage, an attitude that can press on through pain and suffering, a humble intellect that can adapt and overcome, a discipline that's unbreakable and an unwavering commitment to accomplish the mission.

• 4:27:24Jocko Willink?

  That is the way of the frogmen. That is an ideal example to follow and the one that I wake up and face every day to hold the line.

• 4:27:40Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Echo and Jaco. Out.