Jocko Podcast 24: Canadian Sniper-Jody Mitic, “Unflinching” Interview & Book Review

Jocko reviews excerpts from Canadian Sniper and Ottawa (CANADA) City Councilman, Jody Mitic's book, "Unflinching" with personal, in-depth commentary from Jody himself. 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 24 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. And our guest tonight is Jody Middick. Jody is a former Canadian Army soldier and sniper who served in Afghanistan. He now serves as an elected member of the Ottawa City Council. He got second place in a show called The Amazing Race. He authored a bestselling book about his experiences. He's a husband and a dad. And beyond all that, Jody is a real hero.

• 0:44Jocko Willink?

  An absolute inspiration to anybody that knows his story, which is what we'll be talking about tonight. Welcome to the show, Jody. Thank you, Jocko. Did I miss anything? Jocko mega fan? Thanks, man. No, I appreciate that. Also with us is Echo Charles. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. Now, before we dig into your book, I wanted to start off with an excerpt of a poem by Rudyard Kipling. And it's called "The Young British Soldier." And I think this is a little bit appropriate since Canada is a former part of the Commonwealth

• 1:29Jocko Willink?

  of England and now part of the Commonwealth. And while Kipling was never actually a soldier, he did attend a United Service College in England, which kind of prepared young men for the Army, although he never joined, but he did spend many years abroad in the British colonies. And he also lost his only son, John, in World War I at the Battle of Lous in September of 1915, where there was just about 100,000 casualties in a matter of days.

• 2:05Jocko Willink?

  And John Kipling was last seen lurching through the mud blindly, crying out in agony after his face had been ripped apart by an exploding shell.

• 2:22Jocko Willink?

  And this poem that I'm about to read a part of is not about World War I. It's about the British wars that took place from the 1830s to the early 1900s in a part of the world called Afghanistan.

• 2:41Jocko Willink?

  And here is this latter part of that poem.

• 2:49Jocko Willink?

  "When first under fire and you're wishful to duck, don't look nor take heed at the man that is struck. Be thankful you're living and trust to your luck and march to your front like a soldier. Front, front, front, like a soldier.

• 3:11Jocko Willink?

  If your officer's dead and the sergeants look white, remember it's a ruin to run from a fight. So take open order, lie down and sit tight and wait for supports, like a soldier. Wait, wait, wait, like a soldier.

• 3:33Jocko Willink?

  When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains and the women come out to cut up what remains, just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains and go to your god, like a soldier. Go, go, go, like a soldier."

• 4:06Jocko Willink?

  And I think that poem sets a tone

• 4:11Jocko Willink?

  for what kind of a place Afghanistan can be.

• 4:16Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 4:19Jody Mitic?

  It's been a while since I heard that.

• 4:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:22Jody Mitic?

  That last line's not a joke either.

• 4:25Jocko Willink?

  No, it isn't.

• 4:30Jocko Willink?

  And we're gonna get there in your book here in a minute. Your book is called Unflinching.

• 4:38Jocko Willink?

  This is the book right here. And

• 4:43Jocko Willink?

  I kinda made that connection with the unflinching part, you being a sniper. You obviously can't be flinching when you're taking a shot.

• 4:49Jody Mitic?

  Right.

• 4:49Jocko Willink?

  And this whole thing kicks off the first chapter, which the name of the first chapter is awesome, because this is something that I believe is something that a lot of people have. I know I damn sure did. The first chapter is called "The Soldier in the Child."

• 5:07Jocko Willink?

  And I think that describes a lot of people that join the military.

• 5:10Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 5:11Jocko Willink?

  It's the thing that's in there. It's, they're born with it. You were born with it. I know I was born with it.

• 5:16Jody Mitic?

  Yeah. It's all I ever wanted to do. It's all I wanna do. Believe me.

• 5:21Jocko Willink?

  Now, your mom, how did she feel about all that?

• 5:25Jody Mitic?

  She resisted, uh, like any eighties mom, right? You're, how old are you again?

• 5:31Jocko Willink?

  Forty-four.

• 5:32Jody Mitic?

  So you're a little older than I am, but... My mom, being a foster kid, read all the books. And all the books at the time said, "Boys should play with Barbies, and girls should play with Tonka Trucks, and, and treat them gender neutral, and blah, blah, blah." But guess what? If you put boys in a room, and girls in a room with toys, the boys play with Tonka Trucks, and the girls play with the Barbies. That's just the way it is.

• 5:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. As a matter of fact, my son, I had two, two daughters that were young, and our house, and I didn't want them, and I'm not gonna have them have all these Barbies. I don't even know where they came from, but they showed up at my house. And guess what? My son was born, and I was all worried, oh, he's gonna be playing with Barbies. That kid, that kid didn't care about Barbies. He didn't care about dolls.

• 6:10Jody Mitic?

  They don't even look at them.

• 6:10Jocko Willink?

  Anything that had wheels on it.

• 6:12Jody Mitic?

  Yeah. It's just, and it's just, boys and girls are different.

• 6:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they're just different.

• 6:15Jody Mitic?

  And, and, uh, you know what? I know lots of women that are great soldiers. Uh, I'm not saying that, that they don't have it, but mom wanted, you know, uh, no guns, uh, G.I. Joes, but no, you know, couldn't keep the weapons. Um, and, you know, and I, and I love her for it, because who knows who I would have been if she had, maybe if she had fostered it, it would've, it would've fizzled out. I don't know. Um, but... Yeah, all I wanna do was soldier, since I was a, since I was a little boy.

• 6:44Jocko Willink?

  So your mom had that attitude and then along came, uh, Uncle Jim.

• 6:47Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, yeah, Uncle Jim.

• 6:48Jocko Willink?

  And Uncle, tell, tell us a little bit about Uncle Jim.

• 6:50Jody Mitic?

  Well, I mean, I just saw him the, the last weekend, actually. He lives in Victoria where, where Mr. Echo was born and, um, he, when, when you're a child, right, there's nothing more impressionable than a three-year-old, really, right? And when I was three, he would, back then, uh, if you were in uniform, you could ride the train for free and get the bus for free. And so he would ride the train in uniform when he had his, uh, leave. And he'd show up at the house and he'd bring me teddy bears. And I was like, this is obviously the coolest dude ever. And whatever he does, I wanna do it. And he would tell stories about what he did, you know, and he was, you know, he was an infantry soldier. Same regiment that I joined.

• 7:30Jody Mitic?

  And, uh, and it been, that was the seed, I assume. No one really knows. This is just family lore.

• 7:36Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 7:37Jody Mitic?

  Where, cause mom didn't like it, dad was a blue collar autoworker. Uh, his dad was in the army, but it was like conscripted into the Serbian border guard. When the, when the, when the German army showed up, he basically threw his hands up, was like, yep, I'm cool. Don't shoot. Um, you know, mom's dad apparently was in the army, but no one knows, cause he died when she was ten. Um, no one's really sure what he did, you know, apparently he was in Korea, but there's no record of it, so. Um, anyway, it's just, it was there and Jim, I think, was the catalyst. That's, that sparked it. Sparked it when I was just a young, little impressionable boy.

• 8:14Jocko Willink?

  That happens. Now, when you got to be a teenager.

• 8:18Jody Mitic?

  Hmm.

• 8:19Jocko Willink?

  You know, you kinda sounded, in the book, you sound like, yes, you sound like a teenager.

• 8:24Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, oh yeah.

• 8:25Jocko Willink?

  And I mean, just to go here, in your book, you say, "I was a loner who didn't fit in."

• 8:31Jody Mitic?

  Hmm.

• 8:32Jocko Willink?

  "I still dreamt of being in the army, probably because I wanted to belong to something."

• 8:36Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 8:37Jocko Willink?

  "And it was definitely clear, I didn't belong in school."

• 8:40Jody Mitic?

  I hated school.

• 8:43Jody Mitic?

  I hate especially because when you get to high school and I don't know how you guys well I've I've heard you talk a little bit about it. It sounded like you had the same issues like.

• 8:51Jocko Willink?

  Definitely.

• 8:52Jody Mitic?

  Couldn't connect with any of your teachers. The only teacher I remember I had this one teacher. I forget his name, but he was Scottish originally. And he was my history teacher, like the only um subject I cared about was history, really. And he would tell stories about everything else he ever did in life before he was a teacher. And I was like, okay, this guy actually has some shit that I need to hear because he's been around the world and he's done everything. The rest of them. Ah, I joined, I became a teacher at a college and this is how you type and I'd be like, why am I even here? What am I doing here? Doing math, I I you know, snipers, you know, we eat ballistic charts for breakfast. And math was useless to me in high school.

• 9:35Jody Mitic?

  And uh, yeah, I just, the last thing I wanted to be was in school and I actually, because this this was the the nineties, right? So that was still when you could quit school to join the army.

• 9:44Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 9:44Jody Mitic?

  And I was like, oh, I'm just gonna quit school and join the army and my parents like basically had to beg me. To stay, they let me join the reserves. Which in Canada is called the militia and it's like once a week and a weekend a month. They're like, you can do that, but don't quit school, finish school. Alright. But it it was like completely against my will.

• 10:03Jocko Willink?

  But they finally got you, they finally let you join, you joined the militia.

• 10:07Jody Mitic?

  Right.

• 10:07Jocko Willink?

  And then, but but you weren't still weren't active duty.

• 10:10Jody Mitic?

  Well, the militia in Canada, you can be called up to active duty, but it's not like. We chatted a little bit about this on the way here where. You guys have a different system here because yours is much bigger, but also like the militia in Canada was the military. Before World War Two, basically. So regiments were local, uh, was a part-time thing, you know, it was kind of like, um, it was the, what is that? What do they call it? Citizen soldier. And uh, the regular army was just there to kind of give them an enemy force and and take care of the the the machine guns and the howitzers. Like the dozen there so that we had at the time. And it wasn't until after World War Two that it flipped. Because it was, you know, the Cold War started and all that jazz, so. You know, um.

• 10:56Jody Mitic?

  At any time, the regular army now into the nineties could say, you know what? We need ten reserve soldiers to to fill in a platoon here. And if you could volunteer. And I remember when I showed up to my my reserve unit, there were sergeants sewing private stripes onto their uniforms because they were called up to the regular army. But you're not a sergeant, you like you're qualified because to keep guys in those reserves, they promote them faster.

• 11:23Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 11:23Jody Mitic?

  But when you go work with the regs, like they're not gonna call you a sergeant. You've been in as long as Corporal Smith? Uh-uh, private stripes bitch.

• 11:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 11:31Jody Mitic?

  So, uh, but but guys, guys, we guys would fight each other to get those slots, though.

• 11:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 11:36Jody Mitic?

  Cause there was nothing better, more honorable than to deploy with a reg force regiment.

• 11:40Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 11:40Jody Mitic?

  And go, you know, peacekeeping, but you know, there's still a few gunfights here and there.

• 11:45Jocko Willink?

  I thought this was cool in the book. You talked about this here. You're basically starting boot camp and you say, you just get your haircut.

• 11:53Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 11:53Jocko Willink?

  You get your head shaved for the first time.

• 11:54Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 11:55Jocko Willink?

  Once the barber was done, I studied myself in his mirror. I barely recognized the young man staring back at me. The eyes were the same, but everything else was different. I wasn't Jody Middick, layabout loner, high school, good for nothing, another floundering adolescent with no ambition and no life plan. That kid was lying under a pile of hair on the floor. Looking back at me was Jody Middick, soldier in training.

• 12:26Jody Mitic?

  I had goosebumps.

• 12:27Jocko Willink?

  So legit.

• 12:28Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, well, so I had, at the time, Lethal Weapon Two was my favorite movie ever. So I had like attempted.

• 12:37Jocko Willink?

  You were getting your straight Mel Gibson hair on?

• 12:39Jody Mitic?

  Oh dude, it was glorious. Oh, you should have seen it.

• 12:42Jocko Willink?

  Who's next?

• 12:43Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, oh yeah, walking around smoking cigarettes and pretending, yeah, anyway, just being ridiculous, but.

• 12:51Jody Mitic?

  You know, it happened to me again recently, cuz I had grown my beard out and I had a bit of, I had some long hair. And I did, I did it. I shaved the beard down to nothing. And I went to the barber who usually like does his best to give me a little bit of length, but still make me look professional. And I said, I want you to give me a number one all around.

• 13:10Jocko Willink?

  That's what I'm talking about.

• 13:12Jody Mitic?

  And this was just, this was just like a month ago. And you know, he, she did all that, you know, your skin feels cold cuz now the, the air is on it. And I looked in the mirror and it was almost the same feeling. I went, oh, oh, there he is. I was like, there's that soldier. And I remember that feeling cuz it was, the guy's name was Marco. He was this Italian guy who cut my hair. And he couldn't believe it cuz he had fostered this ridiculous mullet for the last two years. And now I said, shave it off cuz I showed him a picture of a marine. I said, I wanna look like this guy. And when he shaved it and then it.

• 13:49Jody Mitic?

  It was like I was at the starting line. Of, of like the biggest race I'd ever gonna run in my life. And, and all I could think about was getting to the end and being successful. And it changed my life, man. It changed my life.

• 14:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, one, one thing that, cuz when, when I was a kid, you know, I was into, this is going a little bit tangential. But I was into the hardcore scene on the east coast.

• 14:11Jody Mitic?

  Yes.

• 14:11Jocko Willink?

  Hardcore music. That's what I grew up with. And it was like, yeah, shaved heads, getting after it. But one of my, my best friend at the time, he's like, listen, you know, we're part of this where there's nowhere to hide. You can't hide behind your bangs. It's all right there. You gotta face yourself.

• 14:27Jody Mitic?

  Thanks.

• 14:28Jocko Willink?

  And it also strips away, you know, any kind of, I mean, hair is basically a, a, what's that word? It's basically for show. I mean, that's what hair is. It has no purpose, other than I look good. So let's just go ahead and remove that. I don't care what I look like. I'm here to win.

• 14:47Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, I guess that might explain my haircut in some way.

• 14:52Jody Mitic?

  But I'm glad you picked that paragraph because when I did this a month ago was when I started my training for a bodybuilding show I decided to do.

• 15:03Jody Mitic?

  And I was having trouble getting into it, you know? Uh, I know how to do everything, I know how to eat well, I know how to work out, I've been working out since I was like sixteen. But I just wasn't, it wasn't clicking, you know? And I went to the barber and I did that and it was like the switch went off.

• 15:18Jocko Willink?

  Boom.

• 15:18Jody Mitic?

  And there it was, it was like, oh, I'm back at that starting line. I'm gonna be forty in January, so I want a six pack before I'm forty. I don't know. Since I got blown up, I haven't had one. It's been ten years.

• 15:31Jocko Willink?

  Right on. Alright, so now, we get into this next section, now you're kinda learning about what the Army's like. And here's some stuff that you said about it. There was a system for everything in the Army. A way to stand and a way to sit. A way to dress and a way to sleep. There's also a way to, a system for how to properly eat at the mess hall. Our routine was an endless monotonous cycle. We woke up, made our cots, folded our sleeping bags in the exact way we'd been taught. Once the tent was in shape, it was on to barrack boxes. We had to lay them out as instructed, with everything in its proper place, whether it made sense or not. We had to stand beside our kit and cots, everyone perfectly still, as the officer did inspection.

• 16:17Jocko Willink?

  At the time, I thought that so much of this discipline was overkill. Why did we have to stand at attention when the officer was on the other side of the tent looking at some other dude's cotton kit? Why did our barrack boxes have to be identical? It took me a couple of years to figure out that the skills they were drilling into us are actually really important for a combat leader. If you can't still stand still long enough for morning inspection, how can your commanders trust you to hold your post during a mortar barrage? How will a leader know he can count on you to be a useful soldier? If you can't even follow through on an order meant to keep you and your comrades safe? Even if you don't know it at the time? All these drills were training me to put self-discipline

• 17:01Jocko Willink?

  above my instinct to flinch or flee. When everything in me told me to break my posture, to stand down, I learned to obey a different order instead. It was basic training, but I was assimilating some important skills that would later make me a better sniper.

• 17:24Jocko Willink?

  Now, I talk about discipline all the time.

• 17:26Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 17:26Jocko Willink?

  And that's obviously why I honed in on this because you kind of captured the kind of things that they're teaching you discipline. They're teaching you discipline. And if you don't make that connection, for all you young troopers out there that are getting ready to join the military.

• 17:41Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 17:41Jocko Willink?

  There's a purpose. There's a reason behind it.

• 17:49Jocko Willink?

  A definite purpose.

• 17:53Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, that's part of my book is the book that I wrote with Leif. You know, one of the chapters called Discipline Equals Freedom.

• 18:00Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 18:00Jocko Willink?

  There's another chapter in there. It happens to be called Cover and Move.

• 18:04Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 18:04Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, we relate it to everything we do. To me, there's no other tactic. And again, I had to call this out in your book. And by the way, I'm reading your book right now.

• 18:14Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 18:15Jocko Willink?

  And I was trying to figure out how to do this.

• 18:18Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 18:18Jocko Willink?

  Like, should I say, okay, can you read this section? And then I thought to myself,

• 18:25Jocko Willink?

  it's going to be different for you to hear it coming from someone else to hear the words. And when I looked up at you after reading that first section, I was like, he just enjoyed that.

• 18:34Jody Mitic?

  I did.

• 18:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Because you're hearing it. You can't, you can never hear it. When you hear yourself read it, you're, it's like, I don't know.

• 18:40Jody Mitic?

  I have my own reaction because they're my words. But especially from someone like, like you, someone who's shared relatively common experiences.

• 18:53Jody Mitic?

  And you know, I was a sniper team leader. You were a, you were a task force leader. And for, for us to have a similar reaction to the same types of things is, it's very interesting for me to see as well, to see someone like Jocko, read the same thing that I went through and go, yes, exactly. Because you got it. It took me a couple of years to realize, like I said, why, why am I standing here? This is stupid. This is, just go out, let's just go out there and train. Well, you are training, bitch. You're learning how to do what you're told. And you're learning how to back, because if you take off from your barracks box, well, guess who's gonna pay for it? The guy next to you.

• 19:32Jocko Willink?

  And you know, beyond doing what you're told, even in that paragraph, you pointed out, look, the, the, the inspectors look in the other direction. You could easily break your posture.

• 19:42Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 19:42Jocko Willink?

  You know, he's not gonna see you. He's never gonna catch you. But guess what? You held the line.

• 19:46Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 19:47Jocko Willink?

  You held the line, and that's what you're learning, is that no matter what, no matter if people are looking or not, you're gonna do your job.

• 19:52Jody Mitic?

  That's your duty.

• 19:53Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 19:53Jody Mitic?

  It's your job. It's the job, right? It's the job. And people, what's the, what makes a good soldier? It's someone who, who understands their job is to be that soldier. And I know, okay, I know what I'm saying, and you know what I'm saying, but you gotta go through that to really understand it. And me and you can give advice all day to people, like, new, new guys, we get, when you tweeted out I was coming, "Oh, I'm getting ready to go on selection. I'm getting ready to go to, I wanna be a sniper. I'm joining the infantry. What do I do? What do I do?" I can give you advice all day. Jocko can give you advice all day. But man, there's some things you just gotta learn on your own. And that's that standing there with your boots polished, at full, at, you know, standing at the chow,

• 20:37Jody Mitic?

  wondering why you had to iron your shirt again, is gonna help you later on, when you're under enemy machine gun fire, and, and mortars are coming down. Trust me, that shit's gonna help you.

• 20:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 20:49Jody Mitic?

  But you're gonna learn that on your own.

• 20:51Jocko Willink?

  Now, back to cover and move. Uh, here you go, talking about cover and move. In our pairs, one guy would move forward while the other guy would shoot to provide cover. The mover would yell, "Moving!", and jump up and move forward about three steps, saying in his head, "Up, he sees me, down." While his partner covered him. At down, the mover would take cover, going to ground, taking up a firing position and yelling, "Covering!" once in position. Then his partner would move forward the same way. The idea was to always have a foot on the ground, which means one soldier is covering while the other is moving. Boom. And you just had to break that out on your own team at work now in the civilian sector, right?

• 21:31Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, we had lunch and, uh, the best thing I got out of reading your book.

• 21:39Jody Mitic?

  My transition was a weird one, okay? Politics is not business, but there are some business aspects in that I'm now dealing with people that aren't... You know, I'm used to working in small teams with people that are professionals at what we do, you know, so snipers. And even though that was 10 years ago, that's basically my last real working environment.

• 21:59Jocko Willink?

  That's what you know.

• 22:00Jody Mitic?

  That's what I know. So even if I'm the boss and you're my sniper, and I go, "Echo, I need you to take up this position," I can go away, come back, that position's taken. But when you're dealing with civilian staff who have never operated in that kind of, or we say operated, they've never worked in that kind of environment, if I tell them to do something and walk away, you better come back and check, because they're not used to that kind of freedom. Because it's discipline, but it's, you're giving them, I'm giving you the freedom to do the job I gave you. You don't need me to double-check that you took up the proper sniper position. And then, also, the fire and, the cover and move, the foot on the ground, I realized,

• 22:43Jody Mitic?

  after reading your book, I went, so Jocko just basically was like, "Listen, dummy." That's how I felt, I felt like a dummy. I'm like, "Of course I should have implemented this in the office." My people were operating in silos, because I had my, because I'm the sports commissioner for the city, so I had a sports, one of my assistants was on sports, one of my assistants was on the policy, and one of my assistants was on, um, constituency work, and that's where you deal with the voters who call in. But none of them were talking to each other, and I was only talking to them sporadically. So I said, "Okay, guys, from, starting today," I didn't tell them why, though, I wasn't like, I wasn't gonna say, "Hey, this guy Jocko gave me an idea," I said, "Hey, guys, I got an idea."

• 23:27Jody Mitic?

  From now on, CC, you're gonna CC him, and you're gonna CC him back whenever you send an email, and then I'm gonna CC you, and you're gonna CC me. Within that week, our productivity, like, 100% improvement. Because now, instead of, everyone was just aware of what the others were doing. And there are things that I already know, but now I gotta learn to apply them in my civilian life. Because I'm not working with highly-trained snipers anymore. I'm working with people that are good at their jobs, but not necessarily the way that I expect them to be. And, you know, there's so much, we were talking about it right before we pressed record, about why is, the last podcast was "The Art of War."

• 24:11Jody Mitic?

  And to us, it's kinda like a, you know, Joe Rogan says all the time, "It's a duh." That's a duh thing. But, there's so much you can take from that book, and there's a reason why Fortune 500 CEOs keep it in their desk. Because you can apply a lot of what Sun Tzu said 3,000 years ago to right now. And just to your daily life, to your interactions with your kids, interactions with your boss, or your subordinates, or your supplier, or your colleagues. It's all right there, it's just, you gotta translate it, you know, it's not difficult ground, it's, you know, it's a position you have to take on an issue.

• 24:50Jody Mitic?

  So, yeah, like, it's a trip to me, this whole life, this whole thing.

• 24:58Jocko Willink?

  It's, uh, it's human nature.

• 24:59Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 25:00Jocko Willink?

  That thread of human nature runs through, from 2,500 years ago at Sun Tzu, through war, through life, through business, through the relationships that you now have with your kids.

• 25:12Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 25:13Jocko Willink?

  It's everywhere.

• 25:13Jody Mitic?

  Kids.

• 25:18Jocko Willink?

  You, since you were a militia, you actually went back to school after you went to boot camp. And so you get back to school, and this is very typical. Before militia training, I'd been so bored at school and found everything tedious and pointless. But after eight weeks of soldier training, school seemed like a breeze. I started arriving on time and paying attention to lessons. In the military, you can direct your career according to your aptitudes and interests. So I decided to do the same at school. Instead of taking classes I hated, I picked ones I knew I would enjoy. My grades improved because I was doing more of what I wanted to do. For the first time, I had discipline and self-direction.

• 25:59Jocko Willink?

  And instead of all that energy being repressed or coming out the wrong way, I had focus. I went from being a loner and keeping to myself to becoming more outgoing and popular at school.

• 26:13Jocko Willink?

  That discipline goes a long way. It really goes a long. And see, I went to college after I'd been in the SEAL teams for eight years. No, sorry, ten years. So when I went to college, I was like, oh, bring it. Bring it on. I'm gonna study every little thing you say and I'm gonna know it better than you.

• 26:33Jody Mitic?

  But I found I was a better student.

• 26:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh, absolutely.

• 26:36Jody Mitic?

  After going through boot camp.

• 26:37Jocko Willink?

  No doubt about it.

• 26:38Jody Mitic?

  Uh, and basic training. It just, like, learning became easier.

• 26:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, oh, yeah, yeah.

• 26:44Jody Mitic?

  Even if I didn't wanna know what they were talking about.

• 26:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and that's something that the army imposes on you, is they'll teach you something. And for the first time, you, you, cause in civilian world, when you're a kid, they go, oh, you gotta learn this, and you don't study, and next thing you know, you don't really know it, and then you take the test and you fail, and you're like, oh, I'm not smart, I'm, I'm an idiot. And the army's like, no, you will learn this. And then, and then you learn it, and you say, oh, okay, that's how I learned. I actually have to apply myself and study, and now I'm gonna get an A.

• 27:10Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 27:10Jocko Willink?

  Which is awesome. So then, now you still weren't active in the military, and you went to get your factory work on.

• 27:17Jody Mitic?

  Yeah. Well, I was, I was as active as I had to be.

• 27:22Jocko Willink?

  Uh-huh.

• 27:22Jody Mitic?

  Cause it's, you know, it's part-time.

• 27:24Jocko Willink?

  Right, right.

• 27:24Jody Mitic?

  And then, you know, there was a girl.

• 27:28Jody Mitic?

  Just beautiful Russian girlfriend and um, you know dad got me a great paying job. But I'll let you, I'll let you say.

• 27:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, it's, that's good. And then finally you were like, okay, I'm ready to. I mean, you, you, you worked in that factory situation for so long that you said, I'm gonna go.

• 27:43Jody Mitic?

  Well, it's about a year and I was making money that like, it was like 25 bucks an hour.

• 27:49Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 27:50Jody Mitic?

  I was 19, what was it, 96, I think? And uh, I hated it. I'm sorry dad, if you're, if you hear this. Cause he got me the job and it was with his parent company, cause he was in the union. He was in the, we had the Canadian auto workers.

• 28:04Jocko Willink?

  Right, right.

• 28:05Jody Mitic?

  Down here, it's, it's the United Auto Workers.

• 28:09Jody Mitic?

  And uh, you just, it just, it just, it was soul crushing. For me, for me, and nothing against guys that can do it. There are guys that have worked there 30 years. They put the same rivet in over and over and over again for eight hours a day. And they're masters at it and they love it. And they punch their card and they go home and they do their thing.

• 28:31Jocko Willink?

  Wasn't for Jody.

• 28:32Jody Mitic?

  I know.

• 28:34Jocko Willink?

  So you get back, now you go full active duty.

• 28:38Jody Mitic?

  Yes, yeah.

• 28:39Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you become a soldier by profession.

• 28:42Jody Mitic?

  Right. So I, I, I do what we call a, a transfer to the regular force. And, and then on top of that, usually you're supposed to go through training again.

• 28:53Jody Mitic?

  Depending on your level of experience, cause I was only about three years. So I should have gone through what, what back, what's called battle school. And that's, that's the regular army's battle school to, to become an infantry soldier. For whatever reason, the decision was made that I wouldn't.

• 29:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So you don't go back in and, but you are back active duty and now. You'd think that Jody was all super squared away now, but you weren't, were you?

• 29:19Jody Mitic?

  Well, it was a, it was a rough transition, Jocko.

• 29:22Jocko Willink?

  You got arrested.

• 29:24Jody Mitic?

  Well, yeah, that came after.

• 29:27Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, we don't-

• 29:28Jocko Willink?

  You're active duty, right?

• 29:29Jody Mitic?

  Well, yeah, I'm a full-time private.

• 29:31Jocko Willink?

  Soldier.

• 29:31Jody Mitic?

  I was a corporal in the reserves, right? Busted back down to private. Show up. There's a lot of politics going on, uh, right now and at this time because the regular army's being told it has to take reserves. Whereas before it was like, if you need them, you can take them. Now it's, even if you don't need them, you're gonna take thirty percent. So you have a battalion of infantry guys, let's say, one RCR at full strength is usually, uh, at this time it was about seven hundred.

• 30:04Jody Mitic?

  Cut thirty percent off of active duty, good to go guys. And now they're put aside, and thirty percent reservists show up to take their spot.

• 30:15Jocko Willink?

  Ouch.

• 30:15Jody Mitic?

  Yeah. So, that, and this was mandated by our headquarters. And so, the politics within the unit was, can I, we're allowed to swear on this, right?

• 30:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 30:26Jody Mitic?

  Yeah. Uh, the reg force guys were all like, fuck you and the horse you came in on and, and that horse's mom, and anybody else associated with that horse. I show up, they thought, because I was a, they thought I was a reserve, because the, the RCR has a reserve battalion. So they, they thought I was a reserve RCR.

• 30:46Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 30:46Jody Mitic?

  And then when they found out I was a direct entry, which means I go directly from the reserves into the reg force-

• 30:51Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 30:52Jody Mitic?

  -without going through the RCR battle school? Huh? So they just gave you that cap badge? Well, well, yeah, but I did basic training in the reserves three years ago. Oh, you did, huh? And I got, man, it was rough.

• 31:08Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 31:09Jody Mitic?

  It was rough, but it, it-

• 31:11Jocko Willink?

  And it got rougher because you got in trouble.

• 31:14Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 31:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so I don't know why you, by the way, just so you know, you wrote this in the book that's been published.

• 31:19Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 31:20Jocko Willink?

  Acting like this didn't happen now is a little bit too late. You got arrested.

• 31:23Jody Mitic?

  I did get arrested. I don't trust anyone who hasn't at least been handcuffed.

• 31:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a good point.

• 31:28Jody Mitic?

  Right. Uh, I made a mistake, so, we were, now, well, I, the preamble to this was that I did eventually get sent to the RCR battle school. And that's where I, I did get arrested. Another, one of the trainees and I, uh, well, the, the whole platoon went out. Of course, being young men, we somehow found ourselves at a gentleman's nightclub. And we were enjoying our evening and one of the guys who decided he wanted to get some cocaine. And I was, how old was I, twenty? I had never even seen the stuff, except for in Miami Vice. And I'm like, what's the point, we're already here, we're having fun, I've already got a few drinks, got some girls sitting with us, why, why leave?

• 32:14Jody Mitic?

  And he was adamant. So I guess in his civilian life, this was something he got, got into. And in my mind, I was just like, okay, so he's gonna like leave on his own? And go somewhere where, you know, like in Miami Vice, it's always like the worst part of town.

• 32:31Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 32:31Jody Mitic?

  Guess what? It was the worst part of town. So I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go with ya. Uh, I don't, I don't need any, but, but I'll be there in case they try to mug ya or jump ya. Turns out he was buying it from an undercover cop. Cause, you know, like, who else are you gonna buy it off, right? And then, when, after they bust us, so we're like walking back to the club, I'm like, okay, finally, right, I can get back and start hanging with the girls again, start getting my drink on. We get tackled by guys bigger than you and I. Uh, and, and like, they're, so they're the undercover, they're the narc guys. And they're like, what are you doing, you're crazy? They look at our ID, they're, you guys are in the, in the army, and you're going to smoke crack? And I'm like, what? I look at the guy, I'm like, what's he talking about?

• 33:16Jody Mitic?

  He's like, well, I might have, they might not have had any coke, so I might have bought. And I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm just like,

• 33:24Jody Mitic?

  but now, that's the reality of my life.

• 33:26Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 33:27Jody Mitic?

  And I can't, there's no going back, there's no changing it. And it was, it was, at the time, I described it as the worst year of my life. But maybe it was the best, the, the subsequent year, because it taught me a lot about myself.

• 33:42Jocko Willink?

  It, yeah, and that's the main reason why I kinda wanted to tell that. Yeah, I wanted you to talk about that, because, number one, like you said, it's a mistake that you made that, you know, I've had that feeling too before, where you're, you're just like, okay, this is my reality now. There's no, you can't go backwards.

• 33:59Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 33:59Jocko Willink?

  You're cuffed.

• 34:00Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 34:01Jocko Willink?

  And yet, You had, you transitioned from it. And in the book, here's how you kind of talk about that transition. Cause they're gonna send you back to Meford. What's it Meford?

• 34:10Jody Mitic?

  Meford was the battle school.

• 34:12Jocko Willink?

  So they're gonna send you to the battle school for another crack at it. Your third crack at it.

• 34:17Jody Mitic?

  My second crack at battle school, but my third infantry course.

• 34:21Jocko Willink?

  Indoctrination.

• 34:22Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 34:23Jocko Willink?

  So here's what you did. And by the way, you were teeter tottering this whole time. They don't know if they're gonna kick you out. They might let you in. Because, just so everybody knows, the cops even took your side and you know, they said, hey, this guy didn't have anything to do with it. But it didn't matter. The military will sometimes.

• 34:35Jody Mitic?

  Guilty by association.

• 34:36Jocko Willink?

  Guilty by association.

• 34:37Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, so the, the, the police department was like, Jody, you clearly had nothing to do with it. But yeah, guilty by association.

• 34:45Jocko Willink?

  Right. And so they go back and forth. Finally, you get orders. Okay, we're gonna let you stay in. And now you say this, I had two choices. I could be pissed off forever and feel hard done by. Or I could go back to Meford with a new attitude and make the best of it. I could keep my head high and get off the bus with the shiniest boots, the best pressed uniform, the best laid out kit. And the best attitude and be in the best shape of anybody there.

• 35:15Jocko Willink?

  And that's what you did.

• 35:16Jody Mitic?

  That's what I did.

• 35:18Jocko Willink?

  So anybody that's out there that's listening to this podcast that hit a little bump in the road, that's what you do.

• 35:25Jocko Willink?

  You show up with the best attitude, the best shape.

• 35:31Jocko Willink?

  With your head held high and you get after it.

• 35:33Jody Mitic?

  Extreme ownership. You gotta own it.

• 35:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 35:35Jody Mitic?

  There's no hiding from it. There's no explaining your way out of it. There's no side, no sideways maneuver you're gonna make. You're that guy. I was that guy. Oh, there's that guy.

• 35:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So now fast forwarding a little bit, uh, you deploy, now you're, now you're legit part of the regiment.

• 35:55Jody Mitic?

  Yep, finally.

• 35:57Jocko Willink?

  And you deploy to Kosovo, which at the time was a real world mission. I'm sure you were fired up. I know I would have been fired. I didn't go to Kosovo. But I would have been fired up to go to Kosovo because it was the only game in town.

• 36:08Jody Mitic?

  I still remember when our C, when our commanding officer said, we got, we gathered up in the parade hall and he said, When RCR is going to Kosovo and I still remember I was, you know, where's, you know, I have it at easy, got your hand behind your back. My hand went into a fist and I had to stop myself from doing a fist bump. I was just like, yeah.

• 36:27Jocko Willink?

  You are gonna become James Bond, Chuck Norris and Rambo all in like one moment.

• 36:32Jody Mitic?

  Oh, it's gonna be glorious.

• 36:35Jocko Willink?

  So you go to Kosovo and, and you know what? We're kinda joking about it, but it was a legit mission at the time. There was, there was stuff that was happening there. I like this little section here. You got, you're talking about the Russians, cause you're stationed near some Russian folks and you said this, "We like to think we're tough as, as Canadians, but it turned out this Russian unit where we're Russian airborne who'd come from the fighting in Chechnya and we've gone into some pretty deep..."

• 37:00Jody Mitic?

  You did, I just talked about Chechnya.

• 37:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we talk about Chechnya in here. "These guys took things to a whole new level. They were hardcore soldiers. We would complain when our showers weren't giving us warm water. Then we'd look over to the Russian camp and see soldiers outside in minus 25 degrees washing themselves with snow or out in t-shirts, cutting firewood. These guys were sleeping in World War II era tents while we were sweating inside our heated barracks. And every morning they'd be outside in the ball freezing cold, running, doing chin-ups and bench pressing big truck tires."

• 37:38Jody Mitic?

  These guys were legit.

• 37:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 37:42Jody Mitic?

  And we didn't know, there is some, there was some stuff going on at the Pristina Airport at that time. That's why they were there. Do you remember, do you remember this situation at all?

• 37:50Jocko Willink?

  Brief me.

• 37:51Jody Mitic?

  So NATO did its bombing thing, right? Bombed the Serbians out of Kosovo, basically. And then it was like, okay, so a NATO stabilization force, K4, the Kosovo stabilizer, or whatever it was, um, was gonna move in and, you know, everyone was gonna get a sector, British, Russian, or British, Canadian, French, blah, blah, blah. Right as we're like loading up on our vehicles, that brigade or, I don't know how many big it was, of Russians just basically showed up in the middle of the night at the Pristina Airport, which was also a military airport. And they set up a perimeter around this like mountain bunker in there, which just recently I read an article about it and they were like, "Yeah, hey guys, it's been however, it's been 20 years. Uh, this is what was in there."

• 38:37Jody Mitic?

  Oh shit, it was full of stuff that shouldn't have been there. So that's, that's why everybody was like, "Well, what are they doing here? Why do they only wanna be there?" Cause they were like, "Yeah, we're here to help, guys. Uh, we're just gonna be right here in this area. Don't ever come in here, or we'll, or we'll kill ya. But we'll be right here, we're just here to help, no big deal. We wanna, we wanna be part of the, part of the exercise." But they were there to guard this, this like bunker. And there was like a lot of, there was like, I guess there was some nuclear and biological weapons in there? And, and some MiGs that should never have been in that part of Europe, apparently. And in the middle of the night, you'd hear planes taking off. And nobody knew what they were.

• 39:16Jocko Willink?

  Uh, but you know, uh, nothing really of substantial events happened in Kosovo.

• 39:23Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 39:23Jocko Willink?

  Um, you get home from that, and this is when you get the opportunity to go to sniper training. Which is, you know, outstanding. And, and I thought you did a great job here of pointing out what a sniper is. Cause people have little ideas in their heads about what a sniper is. And here's Jody's version of what a sniper is. "A true sniper is someone who's willing to do pretty much anything to accomplish the mission. The sniper has a particular mindset, and shooting is actually one of the easier parts of the role. I've seen men at the rifle range who are amazing marksmen, but who would be terrible snipers because they don't have the patience.

• 40:03Jocko Willink?

  They lack the ability to deny their own needs and to put the mission first. A true sniper will make himself uncomfortable just to make the shot."

• 40:18Jocko Willink?

  That is something so true, the guys think that the, that what a sniper is, someone that shoots really well.

• 40:23Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, yeah, that's, that's the least, that's the easiest thing I can teach you.

• 40:28Jocko Willink?

  Right, right.

• 40:29Jody Mitic?

  If I need you to be a sniper, that's the easiest thing I can get you to do. You, you know that movie Shooter? With our buddy Mark Wahlberg there?

• 40:37Jocko Willink?

  I, I have not seen it.

• 40:38Jody Mitic?

  It's based on a book about, uh, a Vietnamia sniper or something. But anyway, he, he takes this like guy who's just, teams up with him for the movie? And he makes him the shooter, like the, the, he teaches him how to shoot, cause that's the easy part.

• 40:52Jocko Willink?

  Uh.

• 40:53Jody Mitic?

  All that other stuff I, I talk about?

• 40:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 40:56Jody Mitic?

  That's the part I'm looking for. That's what I'm looking for in a sniper. You could shoot all day. I could put you on the range and you could shoot bullseyes from nine hundred meters all day. As long as you got your Gatorade, as long as you get your ten minute break, as long as I let you get up and go pee pee. But what if I don't let you do any of that stuff? Then what? Oh, is it sunny out on? That's too bad. Yeah, it's sunny out. Well, is it gonna rain? Yep. Don't get up. Your target might come up.

• 41:23Jocko Willink?

  But what if there's ants crawling and biting your eyes?

• 41:27Jody Mitic?

  The eyes is problematic. I would, I would, I would allow you to scratch the ants out of your eyes, but, but your target might come up while you're scratching.

• 41:36Jody Mitic?

  I wouldn't get up if I was you.

• 41:37Jocko Willink?

  The, all the sniper courses, definitely. And you talk about it in the book. You talk about stalking. That's something that no one. I haven't seen that movie, but no one really understands the difficulty and the challenging and the self-discipline. It's an exercise in self, self-discipline to crawl, you know, one meter every ten minutes.

• 41:56Jody Mitic?

  It's hard.

• 41:56Jocko Willink?

  To get to a position where you can see your target and take the shot.

• 42:00Jody Mitic?

  Because you have to, yeah, because you have to have the patience to, and the mindset too, like.

• 42:07Jody Mitic?

  I, I don't know if it made it into the book. I can't, I know, you should know your own book, but, um. I remember I was, I was leopard crawling with a guy and we were on, it wasn't even a sniper thing. It was just like a, a feel, uh, like a, like a field craft thing. So we were learning how to just stalk just as soldiers. And we were, we were side by side, but he was literally on an elevation, maybe four inches higher than me. And I remember I was looking at him and I was like, ah, that's, that's not a good spot to be. I see, freeze. Boom, Walker came over, got him. I was, I was in direct line of sight. But I was just that four inches lower. You gotta like have the patience to look at the ground and go, mm, I'm gonna go this way, even though it's

• 42:48Jody Mitic?

  uh, out of your way, because you can't be within sight of, of the spotters or of the enemy. And that guy went on to become our tier, he, he joined our tier one unit. He's a, he's a JTF guy. But I remember at that time, it's so it's not like he was a dummy or anything. And, and, and, and

• 43:06Jocko Willink?

  He might've learned a valuable lesson.

• 43:07Jody Mitic?

  He probably learned a lesson, but, but that's the mindset I'm looking for from day one from a guy that I'm gonna put through sniper school. Cause we don't, we don't have a lot of numbers in Canada, you know, like I was telling you. At any given time, there might be a hundred and fifty, maybe a hundred and eighty snipers active at any time in the, in the forces. And that might, and that, you know, if you add in our tier one, tier two guys, or maybe there's two hundred. So I don't have time to, to go looking for the best guys, you know. You have to come, you basically gotta come to, come to us. And, uh, and so I'm looking for the patience. I'm looking for the guy who's gonna take that extra five minutes. And look at the ground. He's, who's not gonna, when I tell him, okay, you can go, go start stalking.

• 43:50Jody Mitic?

  Who's gonna sit there for another five, 10 minutes, lose that time, but study the route on his map. You know, cause it's easy to start, run, and then you go, oh man, oh shit, I should know where I'm going and, no, no. Time spent on the map is time saved on the ground. Right? And you, so you're looking for that guy and the, and there's just, it's a, it's a, it's probably the same with SEALs. You just, you don't, it's hard to describe, but you know it when you see it.

• 44:18Jocko Willink?

  So you get done with sniper school. You spend some more time and then September 11th happens.

• 44:27Jody Mitic?

  Game on.

• 44:29Jocko Willink?

  And the opportunity comes up. For you to go on deployment. Now, you'd already been through sniper school, you were a sniper, but the opportunity, there's no opportunity for a sniper to play. What they need is a driver.

• 44:41Jody Mitic?

  Right.

• 44:42Jocko Willink?

  Which

• 44:44Jody Mitic?

  A driver slash, uh, security.

• 44:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, which is, which is, I mean, it's definitely a dangerous job. It's definitely a monotonous job. It's not, it's not a glorious job by any stretch. But, and, and also what's rough about being a driver is you have a lot less control over your own fate. I mean, you're basically in a defensive situation. When you're driving in a convoy, you're in a defensive situation. That's all there is to it. So here you are.

• 45:07Jody Mitic?

  And you're a target.

• 45:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're a target. You've been trained to be the hunter and now you get an offer to go on deployment to be the hunted.

• 45:15Jody Mitic?

  Basically.

• 45:15Jocko Willink?

  As a driver. And of course, because you're

• 45:20Jocko Willink?

  A warrior, you say, oh, you need a driver, you don't need a sniper, but I'm gonna go to Afghanistan? Alright, bring it on.

• 45:27Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, that was it. It was stay home or be a driver.

• 45:33Jocko Willink?

  Pretty easy choice for Jody.

• 45:34Jody Mitic?

  Pretty simple.

• 45:36Jocko Willink?

  So now you were, what were these little Jeeps you were driving?

• 45:39Jody Mitic?

  Altus, so uh, it's.

• 45:43Jody Mitic?

  What do you guys got that's comparable? Nothing, um.

• 45:47Jocko Willink?

  Is it just like a little Land Rover type vehicle?

• 45:49Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, but it's like not even, like, it's, it's, it's almost a class of its own.

• 45:54Jocko Willink?

  Is it armored?

• 45:54Jody Mitic?

  No, no, it's like a little, um, dune buggy looking thing. It had like a four cylinder engine built originally by Volkswagen. Um, we, they were roughly the same like look as the original Willie's Jeep.

• 46:10Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 46:11Jody Mitic?

  But that's where the similarities ended.

• 46:14Jocko Willink?

  And you get to Afghanistan and you're, you're driving, where, where are you? Where were you?

• 46:18Jody Mitic?

  Kabul, that was Kabul.

• 46:19Jocko Willink?

  And so you're driving people around the city?

• 46:21Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 46:21Jocko Willink?

  From base to wherever, they gotta go do.

• 46:23Jody Mitic?

  From the airport to our main base, which was, um, what was the name of that camp again?

• 46:31Jody Mitic?

  I'm sorry, I forget the main camp we had in Afghanistan, but it was between the King and Queen's Palace.

• 46:36Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 46:37Jody Mitic?

  And, uh, yeah, they'd go there or because it was, um, officers and liaison officers mostly that we worked with, right? So it'd be like go liaison with the Turkish guys, go liaison with the Germans, go liaison with this Afghan warlord.

• 46:51Jocko Willink?

  Dinner somewhere, you'd sit around wait, drive him back.

• 46:53Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, yeah, basically. And we'd be his bodyguards when he was there and stuff.

• 46:57Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, like we said, there's a threat. You, you obviously were prepared for anything, of course, but you, you know, there wasn't a super high threat.

• 47:08Jody Mitic?

  Right.

• 47:09Jocko Willink?

  However, there's always a threat and I'm going to the book here.

• 47:17Jocko Willink?

  The Iltis Jeeps were not designed to withstand an attack. This fact became starkly apparent when three, three RCR guys were driving to Iltis and hit a landmine. Two of them, Sergeant Robert Short and Corporal Rob Birnfinger, died immediately. And the driver, TJ Sterling, a friend of mine, survived though he was injured. After the incident TJ was brought to the hospital at Camp Warehouse, and me and another one of the guys from the regiment went to see him. This was the first time I'd seen one of our guys hit by a landmine. In fact, it was the first time I'd seen a casualty at all.

• 48:02Jocko Willink?

  TJ was pretty banged up. A couple of his teeth were broken and he may have had a broken jaw. He had lacerations all over. There's always a particular odor in the hospitals around people who have suffered traumatic injuries. I remember smelling that odor, like blood, or maybe just what I thought blood smelled like. TJ was on a stretcher with big wheels. We'd used this kind of stretcher before in training. To me, it was a kind of prop. This thing we used for simulations. But this was not a simulation. This was the real thing. TJ was still in shock. It had taken a few hours for him to be extracted from the scene of the explosion.

• 48:46Jocko Willink?

  "Shorty and Birnfinger are gone," he said. "Yeah, man," we replied. "We heard." "I need a smoke, man. I need a smoke," TJ said. The doctors and nurses wouldn't allow it, but as soon as they were out of the vicinity, we lit a cigarette for TJ and gave him a couple of drags. "Ah, that's way better, thanks." We stayed and chatted with TJ about some inconsequential things, trying to keep a fellow Royal in a good state of mind. For me personally, I was learning from what was happening. Facing the reality that when things go wrong, you have to get that smell in your nostrils and look those sights right in the eye.

• 49:30Jocko Willink?

  Sadly, a few years later, TJ ended up taking his own life.

• 49:36Jocko Willink?

  I was a pallbearer at his funeral, and as I carried his coffin, I wondered if he'd carried guilt for being the lone survivor in that incident.

• 49:54Jocko Willink?

  So really, to me, that's like your welcome to war.

• 49:57Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 50:01Jocko Willink?

  And

• 50:05Jocko Willink?

  when you talked about getting that smell in your nostrils and looking those sights right in the eyes, that's, I think, an important thing for people to remember.

• 50:15Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 50:16Jocko Willink?

  You know, when things are bad,

• 50:19Jocko Willink?

  some people want to deny that it's happening. They want to hold their nose and shield their eyes from it. Wrong answer. Breathe it in.

• 50:28Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, in our gig, especially.

• 50:31Jocko Willink?

  Breathe it in.

• 50:33Jody Mitic?

  You have to, that, you have, in our line of work, that's the norm.

• 50:42Jocko Willink?

  And I'll tell you, having worked with, worked with a bunch of different companies in a bunch of different industries,

• 50:52Jocko Willink?

  they run into these situations too, you know, where their company's going to fail, or there's a problem, there's, there's, things go wrong. And no, you know what? Lives are not at stake, and I say this all the time, but livelihoods are. And if you're the CEO of a company, you're going to have to now lay off 500 people, 1,000 people, three people. And now that person's not going to be able to afford their mortgage, or pay for their kids, or get food on the table. That is serious business. You're ruining someone's life. And if you want to shield your eyes at that moment, and you want to hold your nose so you don't have to smell it, you're wrong.

• 51:26Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 51:29Jocko Willink?

  And obviously, this too, here, for TJ.

• 51:36Jocko Willink?

  This is, you know, we're talking about the psychological wounds that people get.

• 51:40Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 51:41Jocko Willink?

  Which for him were worse than his physical wounds.

• 51:43Jody Mitic?

  He, I remember one time after I got hit, um, cause he, he, he actually came back with us in, in oh six on the tour I was wounded on. And he stayed in the talk the whole time, but, um. I remember we were back and I, you know, I was hit and we were at his house and we were having a little bit of a party and he, he was crying because he couldn't believe that he, cause he got, you know, he was wounded and he got a monthly stipend for, for his injuries. And he was still at, but he was still active duty and stuff. And, and, and I, when I got wounded, we had a new veterans system come in where I just got like a lump sum payment. And, and he was crying about, you know, how, how is it that he can get this money?

• 52:26Jody Mitic?

  But I only get this money and Jody, what happened to you is so much worse than what happened to me and I was, why are you worried about? I'm, I'm okay, man. I'm alive. We're here. We're having some drinks. But he was so tore up inside about what happened to me versus what happened to him, what happened to Shorty and Baron Finger. And, uh, he, he just carried that. And I've, and, and you hear about that survivor's guilt thing.

• 52:53Jody Mitic?

  And you don't realize how real it is till you see it. And even after I got wounded, when I came home, I felt like shit because my boys were still back there. And then when they went back in 2010, cause our unit rotated back into theater. It killed me. I was dying inside. That's my, those are my guys. You know, they're over there without me and I'm, I'm letting them down because I was, I told them I was going back with them. I said, don't worry guys, I'll get better. I'll go back. And I had to like really come to grips with that. And, you know. TJ couldn't. You know, we, we lose too many guys that's, to that stuff, but I've all.

• 53:34Jody Mitic?

  I don't know. I never had those thoughts. I never thought of, of ending my own life ever, but, um. I've known enough guys that have done it. That clearly. It becomes an option to some people. And I'm, I'm at the point with it, cause it, it just happened, uh, uh. Maybe a month ago with a, with a guy I, I worked with in the Green Berets and, uh. I, I just don't think we can save them all.

• 54:02Jody Mitic?

  I don't know if any of your guy, I mean, I think I texted you when it happened.

• 54:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you did. You texted me.

• 54:07Jody Mitic?

  And, and that one really, my wife, Alana, she's never seen me cry, and I cried that night. For Johnny. And, and it was because we, we thought we had him. He was living at one of the guy's house that was on the, the team that we, that we worked with. You know, uh, he had a girlfriend, and like, things were looking good. And, uh, you know, I've, I've, I've had to come to the conclusion in my own mind that

• 54:35Jody Mitic?

  we're not gonna, we're not gonna save them all. And this is a side effect of the gig, of the life we chose. That some of our comrades are gonna go that direction. And if you, if I was to dwell on it the way TJ did, then I, I would become like TJ. And I can't afford to do that.

• 54:51Jocko Willink?

  You know, you used the word dwell. And that's a, that's a word that I use as, as well. I use the word dwell, and I, and I, and I always say that you gotta face these things.

• 55:03Jody Mitic?

  Yep.

• 55:03Jocko Willink?

  You gotta understand these things. You gotta actually embrace these things. You gotta bring them in. But you can't dwell on them.

• 55:11Jody Mitic?

  That's right.

• 55:11Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's the key is to is honestly, to do what you, what you said, is to breathe it in, to look it in the eye. Deal with it. But don't dwell on it. Don't stay there.

• 55:26Jody Mitic?

  That's right. Move on. Accept it as a consequence of the actions you've chosen and move on to the next step. Otherwise, you'll be that guy talking about that high school football pass that you, that you caught. And it, it's, I know, it's an analogy that fits here.

• 55:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it does.

• 55:42Jody Mitic?

  Because we talked about this in your car. There's some guys, I was a sniper, I was a Navy SEAL, I was a paratrooper. I was a machine gunner. Whatever it is. I was a jujitsu black belt, you know, whatever it is. And that's where they're stuck. That's where they're dwelling. They're in purgatory. In that whatever ring of hell you wanna call it, stuck in that moment. And you gotta move on. You can't dwell because that's where you're, you're gonna die when you dwell.

• 56:11Jocko Willink?

  And real simply, what you gotta do is you gotta just take a step. You gotta take that step forward. You gotta, you gotta look, gotta look it in the eyes.

• 56:24Jocko Willink?

  Then you gotta walk away and you gotta walk forward and move forward and make some, make, go in another direction. Go forward.

• 56:32Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 56:32Jocko Willink?

  Don't go backwards, go forward.

• 56:34Jody Mitic?

  Yeah. And, and it, the other part is accept that maybe you can't change things.

• 56:42Jocko Willink?

  Well, you can't change what's happened in the past.

• 56:44Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 56:44Jocko Willink?

  You cannot do that. It happened. It happened.

• 56:48Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 56:48Jocko Willink?

  And, um, you're not gonna change it. So what are you gonna do? Are you gonna let it drag you down? Are you gonna dwell on it forever? Don't, don't do that. Man, I know, I know it gets a hold of you. I know it's a tough one.

• 57:03Jody Mitic?

  It can.

• 57:04Jocko Willink?

  But, deal with it. Accept that you can't change it. Accept that you're here for a reason. To do something, you have the opportunity that maybe your buddies didn't get, they didn't get, never mind maybe. You have an opportunity that your buddies did not get.

• 57:23Jocko Willink?

  You think they would want to have you kill yourself? No, they'd want you to live.

• 57:31Jocko Willink?

  And that's what you need to do.

• 57:32Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 57:34Jocko Willink?

  Honor them.

• 57:35Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 57:35Jocko Willink?

  By living an awesome life every day.

• 57:39Jody Mitic?

  Make the change, be the difference. You know, you can't change the world, but you could change, you could change somebody else's day. You can be the positive influence in your little tiny sphere. Your, my, my influence in the world, yours echoes. It's not the world, but it makes someone else happy.

• 57:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 57:59Jody Mitic?

  You could, you can be the difference between a good day and a bad day for someone.

• 58:03Jocko Willink?

  You know, when I, when I decided that I was gonna try and become an officer in the SEAL teams.

• 58:07Jody Mitic?

  Hmm.

• 58:08Jocko Willink?

  Part of that, part of my decision was, cause I, it's not like I was gonna be an admiral or whatever, it's gonna be like, just. And I said, you know what? Cause I had a prior enlisted officer that was, just made our lives awesome because he was such a great guy.

• 58:20Jody Mitic?

  Nice.

• 58:21Jocko Willink?

  And I said to myself, you know what? I might not change the world, but I'm gonna have a cool SEAL platoon one day and those guys are gonna, those guys are gonna be fired up. And we're gonna kick ass. Just my little world, just that little thing, and no matter where you are, you got that little world. Maybe like you said, maybe it's one other person, maybe it's just yourself. But you make that little part of your world a little bit better.

• 58:44Jody Mitic?

  Yeah. You, you, you wake up in the morning, I firmly believe you decide how that day's gonna go.

• 58:52Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 58:53Jody Mitic?

  Whether, you know, I missed, I missed my flight to come down, I should have been here yesterday, I missed my flight. I own that. I had a bad morning.

• 59:05Jody Mitic?

  And I was, I think I was even on the phone with you, and I said, yeah, extreme ownership, my fault. And you giggled at me and you said, yep, uh, own it, whatever.

• 59:17Jody Mitic?

  And then I, uh, my, my, my, my one assistant called me and I said, you know what? I'm done being pissed off. You know, cause I can't, I'm not gonna let this one thing ruin the rest of my day and the rest of my weekend.

• 59:30Jocko Willink?

  How's that helping you move forward? How's that helping the rest of your day? How's that help you get here right now? It doesn't help anything.

• 59:35Jody Mitic?

  That doesn't mean, that doesn't mean be a robot either, though.

• 59:39Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 59:39Jody Mitic?

  Deal, deal with it, process it, get, don't, don't get me wrong, I was really mad yesterday morning. Uh, and it takes a lot.

• 59:47Jocko Willink?

  Waiting for you down here, I had all kinds of good shit planned.

• 59:51Jody Mitic?

  I'm like, of, of all the things to be late for, yeah, that's right, a guy like, you want a guy like Jocko to think you're a shit, you know, you're a plug and can't make a timing. But.

• 1:00:01Jody Mitic?

  You know, uh, everything's gonna be okay.

• 1:00:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:04Jody Mitic?

  I'm here, we're still doing the podcast, it's beautiful weather, I got to see my kids, I got to pick them up from school, cause I, I didn't think I was gonna. I got to, you know, I got to see some friends, walk the dogs that day. And I, and I, I, but I made that decision myself, though I was sitting on my, on the edge of the bed, I, I didn't have my prosthetic legs on yet. And I said, okay, you did, you, you're pissed off, now you're done. And I got up and I carried on with the day because. And I, okay. It's easy to say.

• 1:00:35Jody Mitic?

  It's easy for us to say, take that step, don't dwell, move on. But I firmly believe if you decide you can change your circumstance, that's a decision you have to make in your own mind. I firmly believe it. And it might not feel like it today, but try again tomorrow.

• 1:00:55Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:00:55Jody Mitic?

  And then try again the next day. And you know what? Call me. Before you, before you make any decisions, just, just please, just call me first. Call, or if you're, if you have Jocko's number, call him. Because the world is definitely better with you here than without you.

• 1:01:12Jocko Willink?

  No doubt about it.

• 1:01:13Jody Mitic?

  And I, I hate to keep hammering this nail, but, but it's just a theme that I'm tired, you know, I'm tired of, of hearing. A buddy of mine, another sniper, had a heart attack, um, not long after the, that guy killed himself. He's a great dude. He's a legend in the Canadian sniper world. And he was diabetic and he smoked a thousand cigarettes a day and drank a million beers a week. And, uh, they said the heart attack was so fast, he probably was, cause they found him in bed. He was crawling into bed and probably went, and was dead before his head even hit the pillow. That's how massive a heart attack it was. When I heard it was a heart attack, I was actually happy.

• 1:01:54Jody Mitic?

  Because I, because when I heard it, I went, I just went, I just went shooting with him. He was in a great mood. They're like, oh, no, no, no. No, no, it was a heart attack. And I went, oh, thank God. That's, that's, that's the point I'm at with this, with that subject. So anyway, let's move on, man. Let's talk about puppy dogs and rainbows.

• 1:02:09Jocko Willink?

  Okay, we're not there yet.

• 1:02:10Speaker 02

  I felt like that was a good reference, you know, miss my flight, good. I can bring my kids to school, you know, all this good that came out of it.

• 1:02:19Jocko Willink?

  That's right.

• 1:02:21Jocko Willink?

  So I would like to go rainbows, but we're not there yet.

• 1:02:23Jody Mitic?

  All right, brother. Hit me.

• 1:02:26Jocko Willink?

  So now you're, you're coming back from Afghanistan.

• 1:02:30Jody Mitic?

  Hmm.

• 1:02:31Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, you've got your girlfriend and whatnot. And here we go. My first tour in Afghanistan ended a few weeks later and I headed back home.

• 1:02:44Jocko Willink?

  I was still haunted by all the things I had witnessed in Kabul. Images played over and over in my head, whether it was small children begging for money, a mother holding a dead baby in the streets, or my buddy TJ bloodied up from a roadside bombing. My girlfriend expected me to return as the same guy who had left six months earlier, but I was a different man now, a different Jody.

• 1:03:09Jocko Willink?

  Everything around me looked different, too. Maybe things hadn't changed much, but I felt like I was on an alien planet. My girlfriend had redecorated the house, moving some of the furniture around and repainting the bedroom, and I found it upset me. Life had gone on without me, and that fact was hard to take. People around me kept saying, "What's wrong with you, Jody? You've changed." And that would make me even more upset. Not because they were wrong, but because I thought I was the kind of soldier who could just walk it off. But few soldiers can. It takes time after a tour of duty for a soldier to readjust to civilian life, and I wish I'd known that earlier.

• 1:03:55Jocko Willink?

  I was expected to continue life just as I had lived it before my tour, but I couldn't. Not right away. I couldn't step back into my normal routine as if I hadn't witnessed anything on mission. I couldn't just hop in the car and go to the grocery shopping like everything was fine.

• 1:04:19Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting that you kind of felt like you were weak sauce because you were not the exact same before you went on deployment.

• 1:04:28Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, you feel like a pussy. Even though you know you shouldn't feel like a pussy.

• 1:04:33Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:04:34Jody Mitic?

  You feel like a pussy. It's the most frustrating... At the time, it was one of the most frustrating things because you want to be that guy for your woman. "Yeah, of course, I'm still that awesome alpha male that you fell in love with and can whatever, doesn't blink at anything." Except that water bottle at the side of the road right there. What is that pile of garbage doing right there? "What do you mean? I should just drive." "Oh, right, yeah, this is our street. Sorry, it's not a road in Kabul."

• 1:05:08Jody Mitic?

  And, uh...

• 1:05:11Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, I just...

• 1:05:13Jody Mitic?

  I wi- uh, like I said, I wish I'd had that advice that, you know, be prepared for the fact. Cause when I went to Kosovo, like, cause I've had the people ask me, well, you didn't have that reaction when you came back from Kosovo. Well, I lived in the barracks. All my shit was in storage. I didn't have a girlfriend. I had a girl that I was dating. She picked me up, uh, when we got home, but like, it's not like we were gonna get engaged or anything. And, you know, I didn't have any real belongings, you know, I, I, you know, I, I still lived at the unit. This was a house I had bought, uh, you know, my girlfriend had moved in, you know, she was talking about kids and marriage and we had da- we had a dog.

• 1:05:53Jody Mitic?

  And I came home and I was like, what happened to my house and what is going on and like,

• 1:06:01Jody Mitic?

  you know, what I told my dad when I went to Kosovo, um, you know, in the book, I talk about my dad. One of the three times I've seen him cry in my life was when I deployed to Kosovo for the first time. And, and I said, hey, man, don't worry about it. It's six months. Hey, what's six months, right? It's like, six haircuts, it's six, six mortgage payments. It's nothing. Don't worry about it. And then I come home and I couldn't even think that way myself.

• 1:06:27Jody Mitic?

  And, uh, you know, and I know I'm, I don't know if you felt like that after your first deployment. Um, but this one was different because I guess there, I had a life to come home to besides, besides the unit.

• 1:06:37Jocko Willink?

  I've always been very compartmentalized in the way I think.

• 1:06:41Jody Mitic?

  Right.

• 1:06:41Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes probably to a detriment to, um, my family a little bit. But I've always been very compartmentalized, like work, come home, I'm not, I'm not at work anymore. So just stop thinking about that stuff. And it's, it's, it's usually pretty positive, but the problem is, is that when you get to, you realize you're compartmentalizing your family out of the picture, kind of. Which I would have a tendency to do somewhat. And I mean, that's probably part of one of the things that.

• 1:07:11Jody Mitic?

  But even, even when you were a real young guy?

• 1:07:15Jody Mitic?

  Like, like, how long have you been married?

• 1:07:17Jocko Willink?

  I've been married for a long time.

• 1:07:19Jody Mitic?

  Okay.

• 1:07:19Jocko Willink?

  And, and I've always been like that.

• 1:07:21Jody Mitic?

  Okay.

• 1:07:22Jocko Willink?

  I, I honestly, it's wrong, I think, but the SEAL Teams was always the biggest priority in my life. And you know, people will be like, oh, family first.

• 1:07:33Jocko Willink?

  That was not true for me. And luckily, my wife understood that. And she didn't hold it against me.

• 1:07:40Jody Mitic?

  Right.

• 1:07:41Jocko Willink?

  She knew that someday, she knew the SEAL Teams wasn't gonna last forever. And all you guys in the military, I'll, I'll tell you what, the, the military does not last forever.

• 1:07:50Jody Mitic?

  Well, the big green machine rolls on.

• 1:07:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:52Jody Mitic?

  With or without you.

• 1:07:53Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 1:07:54Jody Mitic?

  And, and, and the people that are there when you're, when you fall off, those are the ones you gotta worry about when you're still on.

• 1:08:01Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And so, that's why I think I just was able to compartmentalize what, you know, away.

• 1:08:07Jody Mitic?

  Right.

• 1:08:08Jocko Willink?

  And I would basically be almost a schizophrenic of, this is a guy that works.

• 1:08:15Jocko Willink?

  And this is a guy that's at home, he's dad or whatever. And boom, I just had that really good split. And I think it was beneficial to me.

• 1:08:26Jody Mitic?

  Probably was, probably is.

• 1:08:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. I think it is.

• 1:08:30Jody Mitic?

  I guess I assumed I was that guy too. Because that's, I, you know, I approached most things that way, but maybe just having that little home of my own for that one tour. And then also, you know, losing a couple buddies.

• 1:08:44Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:08:45Jody Mitic?

  For the first time. Maybe, I don't know, I don't know what the thing, like, it's not like it, it didn't wreck anything, like, my career was fine, like, it was just, well, I mean, I lost a fiance out of it, but.

• 1:08:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. And that's what happens next. So, she announced, this is back to the book here, she announced that she was leaving. I was shocked because I didn't wanna break things off, I just wanted to postpone the wedding. But for her, this was all too much. Our relationship was over. While I was certain this was the right time to get, well, I wasn't certain this was the right time to get married. I was certain about one thing. I wanted to go back to Afghanistan. And this time, as a sniper. And that's something that...

• 1:09:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, that's something that's hard to reconcile. The feeling of just wanting to go back. I mean, that's

• 1:09:43Jody Mitic?

  I want, I want to go back right now.

• 1:09:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:09:45Jody Mitic?

  Like, people, hey, what's it like, you, you asked me, what's it like to be in politics? I go, I'd rather be killing ISIS.

• 1:09:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:51Jody Mitic?

  Uh, frankly, and I, you know, I'm not ashamed to say it. I was good at it and, and, and I love the people that are out there doing it for us. You know, even though I'm not one of them anymore. You know what, and we, we, we kind of skipped over, but nine eleven happened during my sniper course. And sniper courses, we don't just have a rotation going on in Canada. We're a very small military. If you're on a sniper course, holy shit, like you, you've got, you got there.

• 1:10:19Jocko Willink?

  They, they run like one or two a year or something?

• 1:10:21Jody Mitic?

  Maybe.

• 1:10:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so it's not even every year?

• 1:10:24Jody Mitic?

  No, they're, well, they're, now I think it is, but back then, mine was the first one in three years that had happened. Twenty-five of us tried out, three of us passed. So it's not like, uh, you get on it and it's okay, you just got to pass. So, but nine eleven happened on like day five or six or something. And, you know, it's, it, as the towers fell, we watched it fall on TV, like they interrupted a class. We thought it was like a Cessna, right? The guy comes, someone just flew a plane to the World Trade Center, we're, and we're in the middle of a, you don't interrupt a class. You know, right? You don't interrupt a, a, a training session. We're like, okay, man, thanks. And the duty sergeant runs off. And, but we think a drunk guy in a Cessna.

• 1:11:06Jody Mitic?

  And then he comes back and, and then, so we go down to watch at the duty station. And as the, as the towers are falling, I'm hearing like the starting bell. Right? I'm hearing like the horn at the start of the Super Bowl and I'm like, oh, it's on. Cause I was considering retiring because of the lack of action.

• 1:11:27Jocko Willink?

  So you did get your.

• 1:11:31Jocko Willink?

  I hate to call it a dream, but you got your dream. Going back to Afghanistan.

• 1:11:35Jody Mitic?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:11:36Jocko Willink?

  And this time you're going as a sniper.

• 1:11:38Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:38Jocko Willink?

  Which is awesome. You're back in Afghanistan. And there's some heavy fighting going on now. There's some legit fighting and and.

• 1:11:48Jocko Willink?

  The Canadians are actually leading operations, which is the first time in quite some time, I think, since Korea.

• 1:11:54Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, well, this this what what we what we this was the first time we'd led operations. That were non peacekeeping. Ever. Since Korea. Yeah, you're right. And this, but we what we walked into was the first offensive in NATO's history. Ever. Think about it, right? NATO has never been on the offensive except for in Afghanistan. Kind of weird, but North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But anyway.

• 1:12:22Jocko Willink?

  This one was called Operation Medusa.

• 1:12:26Jocko Willink?

  This Canadian led NATO operation was going to be different from anything we'd done so far. It was a bit of a wake up call. So was the fact that my buddy Jeff Walsh had been killed in friendly fire in an accident that happened in August. Clearly, we were entering a high risk situation. That didn't deter me in any way, in any way. If anything, it made my resolve stronger. I'd trained for this and I was ready.

• 1:12:54Jocko Willink?

  It's a good feeling.

• 1:12:57Jocko Willink?

  What uh what was the friendly fire? Was it aircraft or was it shooting?

• 1:13:00Jody Mitic?

  No, this one was unfortunately, uh, it was his buddy in the vehicle. They were sitting next to each other. And.

• 1:13:10Jody Mitic?

  I guess. He got in with his rifle. Not paying attention to the muzzle. And it went off and shot Jeff through the face and killed him.

• 1:13:22Jody Mitic?

  I that I I no one really knows exactly what happened, but that's basically pretty much what everyone figures happened.

• 1:13:31Jocko Willink?

  Muzzle discipline.

• 1:13:34Jocko Willink?

  Never point your weapon at something you do not want to destroy.

• 1:13:38Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:39Jocko Willink?

  And keep your finger off the trigger. Keep your weapon on safe.

• 1:13:45Jocko Willink?

  Alright, now as you guys are getting ready to go into this Operation Medusa, uh, one of the orders that comes out is if anybody gets hurt during this mission, we're gonna stop right away and take care of it. We're gonna make sure the casualties are dealt with and then reassess the situation be- before moving forward.

• 1:14:05Jody Mitic?

  That was during the, uh, the company commander's orders.

• 1:14:08Jocko Willink?

  Right, and you were kinda thinking, wait a second.

• 1:14:11Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for those of you that don't know, which is I'm sure people that aren't in the military, when you're going on an attack, your, your idea is to maintain the momentum of the attack. And you, you take casualties along the way while you're attacking, you keep attacking. You don't stop, you know, you're gonna take casualties. You're gonna, people are gonna get hit, things are gonna slow you down. You don't slow down, you try and keep pushing forward, you keep pushing forward. I've, I've said it on this podcast before, aggression will mitigate risk. So you get aggressive, you move through the target, you get the target secure, then you can deal with the, the guys that are down.

• 1:14:47Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:48Jocko Willink?

  Um, not that you're gonna ignore them and you can't drop off a medic here and there to, to handle a situation, but you're not gonna stop, I mean, literally, you know, stop, no.

• 1:14:58Jody Mitic?

  You can't stop the whole battle group.

• 1:15:00Jocko Willink?

  You can't stop.

• 1:15:01Jody Mitic?

  But, you know, the, I don't know if the order was delivered the way it was intended, but that's how it, that's basically what was, that's to paraphrase what was said.

• 1:15:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:11Jody Mitic?

  And that's why, you know, a couple of us were just kinda like...

• 1:15:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and what's really, what's really, uh, to your point of you're not sure if that's what was meant, what's really important is that the main thing you wanna get across to your troopers when you're going on to assault, is you want the main point to be get aggressive. That's the main point that you wanna get across to them, not, hey, the main point that you're gonna take away from this is if we take casualties, stop. Yeesh, no, we're gonna get aggressive, we're gonna finish through the target, we're gonna secure the target, and nothing's gonna stop us from doing that, I don't care what happens, that's what you wanna have going into an assault like this.

• 1:15:46Jody Mitic?

  That's, that, that's my, that was always my impression.

• 1:15:51Jody Mitic?

  I've never been a company commander, though.

• 1:15:53Jocko Willink?

  But you've received plenty of orders.

• 1:15:55Jody Mitic?

  Yes, sir.

• 1:15:56Jocko Willink?

  Alright. Now... We're starting it on the assault. The assault is going down. And here we go. Up ahead, the first vehicles were closing in on the white schoolhouse. The Zettelmeier cleared a way for the lead platoon comprising of four LA- LAVs and a G-Wagon to take position next to the schoolhouse. It was at this point that the Taliban decided to make their presence known by firing an anti-tank recoilless rifle round at the softest vehicle of this lead platoon, the G-Wagon. The round went right through the front windshield, causing immediate casualties. Next, our whole assault opened up all at once. Every cannon, every coaxial machine gun was firing. Taliban were coming out of the weeds all around us, out of tunnels, windows, mouseholes.

• 1:16:41Jocko Willink?

  They had their head in the... They had held their powder to the last second. And then it was game on. They had the defender's advantage, and they used it. The call went out on the radio that one of our vehicles was hit, and we had casualties. As this was happening, one of the LAVs that was stuck next to the schoolhouse went nose-first into a ditch and was stuck. I was trying to listen on the radio when suddenly the troops who were sticking out of the top hatches of our LAV yelled, "Holy fuck, they're right there!" They let go a burst from their C7s followed by grenade from a rifle-mounted grenade launcher. At that moment, our artillery began raining down and air support started dropping bombs on the Taliban.

• 1:17:24Jocko Willink?

  I felt helpless during all this chaos because the plan for us as snipers was to get involved only once objective rugby had been achieved. At that point, we would get up on the school's roof and provide cover for the bound to the next objective. But in this situation, Barry, Cash, those were your sniper teammates, Barry, Cash and I were stuck inside the LAV right at the time when our shooting skills were needed up top. Needed most up top. I was working the radio, doing my best to keep everyone in the vehicle informed of what was happening up ahead.

• 1:17:58Jocko Willink?

  "Okay, we've got three wounded in action and one killed in action," I said, relaying the message that there were three wounded soldiers and one who was killed in the G-Wagon that had been hit. Every soldier had a ZAP number, which would be used as an identifier in case you were wounded or killed in the field. Standard operating procedure was that if someone died in combat, you never revealed their name during the battle. At this point, we didn't know which soldier had been killed in that attack on the G-Wagon. And no one seemed to know the ZAP number either. Finally, the Major got on the radio, "I need to know now, who the fuck just got killed?" The radio crackled and a voice came on.

• 1:18:42Jocko Willink?

  "It was Warrant Officer Rick Nolan, sir."

• 1:18:46Jocko Willink?

  Rick Nolan was the soldier I had had a brief argument with the day before. I've always felt bad that our last conversation was a little strained. Rick was a good man and a great soldier. Sitting in the front seat of that G-Wagon, he had no chance of surviving a direct rocket hit. I looked at Barry and Cash. We were all stunned into silence. No matter how much you prepare for that moment when a soldier you know becomes a casualty, there's nothing that compares to the actual feeling. On top of that, it was jarring for all of us, because we just didn't expect a soldier with his level of experience and status to be the first one taken out on the mission.

• 1:19:35Jocko Willink?

  That section right there

• 1:19:40Jocko Willink?

  reminded me we were, I had guys out.

• 1:19:45Jocko Willink?

  They were clearing a sector of Ramadi. And a big gunfight broke out and I'm, I don't know, three or four hundred meters away. Maybe five hundred meters away, whatever it was. I can just hear gunfire, mayhem, radios. I get up to a rooftop and I'm,

• 1:20:07Jocko Willink?

  you know, "Hey, what's up?" And I hear the Element Commander got on the radio and he says, "Hey, we're gonna need casualty evacuation. We've got one killed and one wounded." And...

• 1:20:21Jocko Willink?

  They were with, I don't know, probably twenty Iraqi soldiers and five or six SEALs.

• 1:20:29Jocko Willink?

  But you don't know who it is, right? And so I'm waiting. And you don't want to say anything on the radio? And I'm waiting and I, and finally, I just said, is it Iraqi or American? It was like the longest pause I've ever heard in my life. And he comes back and he says, both Iraqi. And it was like, no offense to the Iraqi, but uh, to the Iraqi soldiers, but you know, I was

• 1:20:57Jody Mitic?

  Relieved.

• 1:20:58Jocko Willink?

  Very relieved at that point. And you talk about that too in here, how somebody gets hurt, or somebody gets wounded, or somebody gets killed, and you, you know it's one of your guys? And you feel guilty when you hear the name and it's not whatever, one of your, one of your better friends or whatever. And that's uh, one of those strange and freaking horrible things about war.

• 1:21:20Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:24Jocko Willink?

  You guys were,

• 1:21:27Jocko Willink?

  I mean, this was like a shit sandwich out of the gate.

• 1:21:30Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:33Jody Mitic?

  You gotta remember, this is the first time Canada's been on the offensive since Korea. And doesn't matter how much you train, uh, the first few minutes are gonna be sloppy until you get your shit together.

• 1:21:49Jocko Willink?

  Well, I, I shouldn't have even said shit sandwich. I should have said, this is combat.

• 1:21:55Jody Mitic?

  That's it.

• 1:21:55Jocko Willink?

  Because, I mean, it's gonna, you go into there, you're, you're setting up your positions, you're moving into position. The enemy hadn't really revealed himself, as you said in the book, they held their powder.

• 1:22:07Jody Mitic?

  Yeah. Well, we, we wondered if they were there at all, because the day before, we watched as they all drove out of the area. Fighting aged guys. Just drove away in trucks, trucks full. They left some guys behind. They actually, you know, the average Taliban guy, you know, you don't even have to duck if he's shooting at you really, I mean, you should duck, but the point is, he's probably not gonna hit you, but they, whoever they left behind, were guys that knew what the, knew what they were, knew what they were doing. And uh, and I give them credit for that, like.

• 1:22:42Jody Mitic?

  You know, they're not soldiers as we consider it, but they're they're tough guys, you know.

• 1:22:47Jocko Willink?

  And you guys, you sniper team, you guys didn't even have your body armor on.

• 1:22:52Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, well, cause it's cause it's part of the, you know, what's the three rules of special ops, right? Always look cool, always know where you are, and if you don't know where you are, make sure you look cool. Right? So, wearing ball caps and not having body armor makes you look cool.

• 1:23:08Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:23:08Jody Mitic?

  But also, in our minds, and we trained, we have enough shit to to hump. You know, why add body armor to it and and helmets? You know, we're gonna be in a position, we shouldn't. If we're being engaged, we fucked up.

• 1:23:24Jody Mitic?

  But I tell you, we, I I don't know if you're gonna read it, but there's a there's a few moment, few minutes later, where I'm like, I really wish I had some body armor and helmet on right now.

• 1:23:30Jocko Willink?

  Oh, no, that's why, I'm not gonna read it, but that's why I brought it up. And I was actually, I was actually not gonna bring it up.

• 1:23:36Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:36Jocko Willink?

  But then I circled to bring it up. You know why? Because there's somebody out there that's in the field right now, that's going on some operation. And they're thinking, you know what? I'd probably be better off if I didn't bring my body armor. And I'm gonna tell you, bring your body armor.

• 1:23:49Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:50Jocko Willink?

  Bring your body armor. I did one operation that, for a bunch of reasons, I decided that I didn't need body armor.

• 1:24:01Jody Mitic?

  Right.

• 1:24:02Jocko Willink?

  And, of course, ended up in a bad scenario. And the only thing I'm thinking, as I have, uh, as I'm, have a gun pointed at my chest, is, you're an idiot.

• 1:24:13Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:13Jocko Willink?

  And you don't have body armor on.

• 1:24:15Jody Mitic?

  We had, um, we had the strike plate in front of our chest rig, but we found out after, if we'd ever been struck in that plate, it, the spall from the plate would have killed us. Because it's designed to be inside the body armor.

• 1:24:32Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:24:32Jody Mitic?

  The the Kevlar. Cause it had a Kevlar wrap around it, around the, around the ceramic. Turns out, it's not. That wrap is there more just for aesthetics or something, I don't know, but anyway, so it's like, oh, no, no, no, it has to be inside the issued vest.

• 1:24:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:47Jody Mitic?

  In order for it to work, a pocket in your, in your chest rig, yeah, no, that's not.

• 1:24:52Jocko Willink?

  And the other crazy thing, again, for guys that are overseas right now, even if you think you're gonna be far enough away from a firefight, if you get hit with an IED, you want your body armor on.

• 1:25:02Jody Mitic?

  Hundred percent. Hundred percent. I always wear my body armor in a vehicle.

• 1:25:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:07Jody Mitic?

  Uh, it's after this, but, um, but even the night I was hit, I didn't have body armor on.

• 1:25:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:25:15Jody Mitic?

  I don't know, it was just a weird thing for me, but, but I, you know, like the Romans, eh, or no, the Greeks, uh, the Romans, they called it, you know, the first time you see combat, you know, seeing the elephant. So, you know, we, yeah, so let's go back to Rick. So Rick, he's a warrant officer, so do you guys, uh, maybe a petty officer, chief petty officer? Roughly, he's like a company, he was the company quartermaster, so he's not sergeant major, but he's like the next NCO down. I'm gonna guess he had about eighteen, twenty years, he would, he had been a recon guy most of it, you know, I trained under him, uh, mentored under him. You know, it's like,

• 1:25:57Jody Mitic?

  when you, when you imagine casualties, you're imagining Private Smith and Corporal Jones and, you know, whoever. But our first guy killed is a guy who trained his whole life for war, and he's the first guy gone. You know, like, there's no, uh, there's no, uh, status, there's no, uh, seniority in combat.

• 1:26:17Jocko Willink?

  Nope.

• 1:26:17Jody Mitic?

  It doesn't care if you've trained every day for a hundred years, or if you've trained one day for ever. That bullet is, if it's got your name on it, it's got your name on it.

• 1:26:26Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, bullets don't even have names on them.

• 1:26:29Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:29Jocko Willink?

  They're gonna hit who they're gonna hit.

• 1:26:31Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:31Jocko Willink?

  And that's why combat is so, that's one of the things about combat that makes it so, so damn awful is, like you said, you can train as hard as you can train, you can make no mistakes. You can be the perfect warrior.

• 1:26:49Jocko Willink?

  On the perfect mission and you can still get blown up, you can still get shot and there's nothing you can do about it. I mean, I hate to say it, there's nothing you can do about it. You're getting in, you're gonna be trading lead with other people and that bullet can hit you.

• 1:27:03Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, and even if they are, if they are dirt farmers with, with thirty year old AKs, if it's functioning, it's a threat. And you know, I, I've had chats with guys about why was, why was that vehicle even on the objective? When you had these perfectly good armored vehicles, now these are up armored Jeeps, the, these, these.

• 1:27:24Jocko Willink?

  The G wagons.

• 1:27:25Jody Mitic?

  It's, they're, they're, they're the German one, right?

• 1:27:29Jody Mitic?

  We'd only trained to this point, right? And, and, and in training, that vehicle went to the objective. So why wouldn't it? You know, until, until someone puts a recoilless rifle round through it and you go, might be best to leave that one behind and maybe just get another lav for the, for the company quarter master, which after that they did. But you know, some lessons have to be learned.

• 1:27:56Jocko Willink?

  So the mayhem continues.

• 1:27:59Jocko Willink?

  You end up helping and collect the casualties.

• 1:28:02Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:03Jocko Willink?

  And now you're sitting there, you're at the, what we would call a casualty collection point, do you use that term?

• 1:28:09Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:28:09Jocko Willink?

  We'd call it casualty.

• 1:28:10Jody Mitic?

  Isn't that what I call it?

• 1:28:10Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if you use that in here.

• 1:28:11Jody Mitic?

  CCP?

• 1:28:12Jocko Willink?

  So, okay, so you're at the CCP, the casualty collection point and here you go. One of the most important things in the field of battle is taking care of your dead. In fact, the creed of the Royals is never leave a royal behind. On the field, you want to get the bodies out of sight as quickly as possible. It's demoralizing for a soldier to witness a dead comrade during battle, especially when it's someone of Rick's stature. I went in the back of an LAV, grabbed a couple of body bags and got to work with some of our other guys. We picked up Rick and zipped him into a bag. One of the other fallen officers was Frank Mellish. For a second, I had a bit of hope because he was on a stretcher, which meant he might have only been wounded.

• 1:28:57Jocko Willink?

  But once I saw soldiers approach and check his dog tags, I knew he was gone. A casualty of the round that took out the Zettelmeier. The sad twist was that Frank Mellish and Rick Nolan had been friends for their whole careers, and now they were lying on the ground together. Next, I helped put Private William Cusily into a bag. I'll never forget looking directly into his still open eyes and saying, "Sorry, bro", as I zipped up his body bag.

• 1:29:38Jocko Willink?

  Now, that's obviously enough to crush

• 1:29:43Jocko Willink?

  some people mentally and emotionally at that point. But

• 1:29:50Jocko Willink?

  soldiers

• 1:29:55Jocko Willink?

  don't have time.

• 1:29:59Jocko Willink?

  And they have to do their jobs. I mean, what?

• 1:30:04Jocko Willink?

  As you went through that emotion,

• 1:30:09Jocko Willink?

  and then you turn around and you go, "Okay, what's next?"

• 1:30:12Jody Mitic?

  Yep.

• 1:30:13Jocko Willink?

  How's that work?

• 1:30:18Jody Mitic?

  That's what you do. If I had spent more than that one second saying, "Sorry, bro", what am I missing? I was doing... I couldn't get my snipers into a position to be useful, being snipers. So we were being useful in other ways. And once that problem was dealt with, because you could see the guy, like, you know, we were trying to reorganize ourselves here. We were in the reorg phase.

• 1:30:44Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:30:45Jody Mitic?

  You know, the guys are going the long way around of the vehicle because they were lined up next to the vehicle. And so me and a couple of guys were like, "Okay, we gotta fix this." We fixed it, and people, you felt people relax.

• 1:31:00Jody Mitic?

  And then my, my main concern was that's still our objective and we got to get to it. So what's next? And that's when I went looking for, like I'm not even sure who's in charge at this point because we'd had taken so much of our leadership had been hurt. The company sergeant major, two of the warrants, uh, you know, and we had, when that Zettelmeier got hit, um, you know, it, it wounded a bunch of guys. And you know, we had Afghans with us. We had some Americans with us, um, uh, what do you call the National Guard? I think they were National Guard mentors for the Afghans are with us.

• 1:31:38Jody Mitic?

  And, um, my biggest disappointment from that day, and I know I'm going to catch some, I might catch some shit from some guys, uh, that were there.

• 1:31:50Jody Mitic?

  We didn't take our objective to this day.

• 1:31:55Jody Mitic?

  You know, what 2016, you know, this is 10 years later, almost in September, it'll be 10 years. And to this day, I'm like, fuck, we didn't take our, we didn't take our objective.

• 1:32:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:11Jocko Willink?

  And part of that, you know, and, and, and for one thing, when I, when I, you know, was reading that in,

• 1:32:20Jocko Willink?

  I mean, obviously it's just emotional moment and I knew that you just had to detach from the emotion. I use that term all the time.

• 1:32:26Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:26Jocko Willink?

  You gotta just detach from it and you gotta be conscious of that. So like folks that are listening, that are thinking, how do you do that? That's how you do it. You cannot, you got, when you feel the emotion starting to override your logic and your ability to do your duty, that's what you have to, you have to go, okay, I gotta detach from those emotions and I gotta do my job now.

• 1:32:48Jody Mitic?

  Yeah. In that moment, like I actually don't remember, like I didn't really have any feelings. You know, I get more feeling now out of it, listening to you read it. Cause that.

• 1:33:02Jody Mitic?

  Starting with especially when TJ got got hurt, you know, that's our workspace. Yep. Like, you know, here we're in an office. You people typing, doors opening, closing, that's the normal sound and vibe of this workspace. We had burning vehicles, we had dead dead soldiers, we had wounded soldiers, we had about fifteen wounded by this point. Um, we had air support raining in, we had artillery support raining in, we had enemy mortars coming down and the, you know. That's the norm. That they don't like, when you sign up to be a Navy SEAL, they don't hide the fact that you might get in gunfights.

• 1:33:43Jody Mitic?

  It's like the first thing you read, it's in big, bold, black letters, you're gonna, you could get killed. It's not in the small print at the bottom of the contract, you know, clause B of section four, it's right there. That's what you signed up for. So. It's not abnormal for these things to be happening. What you have to do is accept that they happened and carry on with the job.

• 1:34:10Jody Mitic?

  And in that moment, I remember I said, sorry, bro, because I was, it was almost, I was almost, I was actually probably felt more like, hey, man, sorry, you're out of the game. Cause it's gonna get exciting from here. You know, I. Oh, a fallen soldier in combat to me is. Especially a volunteer. We weren't drafted. Did anyone make you join the Navy? No. I I fought with my parents to get into the Army. Yep. I I I would have, I would have fist, I would have fought ten of my best friends to get that job as that sniper team leader. And there was nowhere else I wanted to be.

• 1:34:49Jody Mitic?

  And a soldier falling in combat, doing the job he chose in a, in a, it's not of our choosing. Don't ever feel sorry for me because I went to Afghanistan, believe me, I wanted to be there. And for, and to fall.

• 1:35:05Jody Mitic?

  I get a lot of shit by some people, but that's it's one of the greatest things a soldier can do. Is to fall for it with his friends, doing the job that that he chose, or she chose. And uh.

• 1:35:20Jocko Willink?

  It's.

• 1:35:22Jody Mitic?

  I I get in shit sometimes because I think like this.

• 1:35:25Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's I think the reason that is is because it's so hard for people that. Don't know what that brotherhood is like. They don't know what it's like to want to do that. They don't understand that that's.

• 1:35:42Jocko Willink?

  That's the soldier in the child. That's the way you've wanted to be your whole life. That's the way I wanted to be my whole life. So to for these things to happen is is.

• 1:35:53Jocko Willink?

  It's like feeling bad for an MMA fighter because they got punched in the face. You signed up for it. You signed up for it and those guys, you know, they they're there to fight and the military. You're there to fight.

• 1:36:05Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:05Jocko Willink?

  And a byproduct of fighting in this situation can be injury. It can be death. And like you said, it's what we all signed up for.

• 1:36:17Jocko Willink?

  And you know, going back to the situation here, one of the things that. You talked about the fact that you guys didn't secure your objective and one of the reasons that you didn't secure your objective the next day. Is because you had another friendly fire incident.

• 1:36:33Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:36:34Jocko Willink?

  And this is awful and and you know, the book that I that I wrote uh with Leif starts off with with with a friendly fire scenario happening.

• 1:36:44Jocko Willink?

  And I wish I could explain to civilians. It's really hard for people to understand how these things happen. I mean, we've already talked about it. What? Two times in this book? Here's another one. Uh. A tens come in, you're you're you're basically like half awake. Trying to get trying to get a little bit of sleep.

• 1:37:01Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:01Jocko Willink?

  And all of a sudden, you know, you hear the gunfire, you hear things happening. All of a sudden you hear an A ten burst, go. And Cash, your your your teammate Cash, he's like, you're not going to believe this. But I think he just strafed our own guys. Strafed is when you fire. Machine gun, cannon, uh automatic weapon fires from an aircraft.

• 1:37:25Jocko Willink?

  And sure enough, thirty soldiers, more than thirty soldiers were injured.

• 1:37:31Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:31Jocko Willink?

  And one was killed. And by the way, the one that was killed was Private Mark Graham, who was a Olympic spreader for Canada, nineteen ninety-two in Barcelona.

• 1:37:40Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:46Jocko Willink?

  I mean, it's a nightmare.

• 1:37:48Jody Mitic?

  It was.

• 1:37:48Jocko Willink?

  It's a nightmare.

• 1:37:49Jody Mitic?

  It was.

• 1:37:51Jody Mitic?

  It was such a, I even got mad at Cash at first, because I was like, because I, I heard it, and you know that brat? That. It, it's actually a nice feeling.

• 1:38:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:02Jody Mitic?

  Until that happened. And that one sounded weird. Because I was half awake and we, and, and I, you know, they were doing strafing runs across, because we were on, each on each side of the Argandab River. So, you know, there's a bit of distance. And that one was like, like that was real close. That's kind of weird. And I'm trying to just, you know, wa- you know, wake up. And Cash says, yeah, they hit, they hit us. I go, what the, what are you talking about? Why would he? And I looked down from our sniper position to where the vehicles were, and that's exactly what had happened. And in my mind, I know what an A-ten strike does. I'm like, oh my God, he killed all my friends.

• 1:38:43Jody Mitic?

  And then through the dust and, so right away, I'm like, okay, well, if I'm the enemy, I know what I would do. Do, you know, sound the bugles, boys, we're attacking. They didn't do that. I, I, my theory is they had already left for, after the gunfight the day before and. So we re- reorientate all our focus to the front to keep an eye on the enemy and I, and I can't help but look down. We had a, a JTF sniper team directly to our left. And, and they left their spotters in place and the rest of them ran down with their medical kits. And, uh.

• 1:39:22Jody Mitic?

  And when they were walking away, when eventually the, the, the teen, you know, four guys walk away with a body bag and I'm like, oh, okay, that's it. And then the, you know, the radio.

• 1:39:34Jody Mitic?

  You know, then it's like, yeah, we're ten, ten wounded. Oh, okay, twelve, okay, seventeen, it's twenty-one and then I think we ended up at about thirty-four, thirty-five or so, and the entire leadership of the company is wiped out. Uh, in, with injury. And, uh, and that's it. That company is now combat ineffective.

• 1:39:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, which is, I mean, you hear that in the modern day. You don't hear that very often. Combat ineffective, meaning that they can no longer perform their duties. You just don't hear that.

• 1:40:03Jody Mitic?

  They just didn't have enough bodies left. Like, they just didn't have enough soldiers that were still functioning.

• 1:40:13Jody Mitic?

  And

• 1:40:16Jody Mitic?

  you know, we went to Afghanistan in two thousand and two with, uh, OP, was it Anaconda, I believe? We sent a battalion of, of Canadian soldiers with, um, and that's where the, a Canadian sniper set the new record. Beating Carlos Hath Cox that had stood since Vietnam and, um, but part of that mission was we lost four guys to an American F-16. And then this happened and people give, give a lot of shit to the American Air Force or, or aircraft.

• 1:40:48Jody Mitic?

  Mistakes happen. We almost got lit up by our own guys at the beginning of the assault. You know, we didn't talk about it, but I had to radio in and remind them, hey, guys, we're coming in from your flank.

• 1:41:00Jody Mitic?

  You've looked through thermal, I've looked through thermal. Did, did guys like us look anything like bad guys looking in through thermal? I don't know how it happens.

• 1:41:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:07Jody Mitic?

  But guys get so amped up and they're so ready to kill something, you just don't want it to be you.

• 1:41:13Jocko Willink?

  Hey, in, in Ramadi, there was incidents where Humvees engaged other Humvees.

• 1:41:19Jody Mitic?

  Right? Cause the enemy had

• 1:41:21Jocko Willink?

  There's no

• 1:41:22Jody Mitic?

  Does a helix look anything like a Humvee?

• 1:41:23Jocko Willink?

  There's no more distinctive vehicle in the world than a Humvee, right?

• 1:41:26Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:41:26Jocko Willink?

  Especially when you're in the military. And, but that's, to your point, that's the level of confusion and mayhem and chaos that happens and, and just the mentality of guys when they're scared and all of a sudden they see muzzle flash and okay, you know what? Boom. Oh, I see something over there. Engage.

• 1:41:45Jody Mitic?

  Everything looks like an, every, a shovel in someone's hand looks like an AK. So I don't lay any blame on the American pilot that did this.

• 1:41:57Jody Mitic?

  He was doing the job he was there to do and, and, and someone told him to do something and they, he queued off the wrong puff of smoke? And, and that's what happened. You know, it was just a literally, it was one of those.

• 1:42:12Jody Mitic?

  It was one of those, each little action led to it.

• 1:42:16Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:42:17Jody Mitic?

  You know, from mark lighting the, the garbage fire to, to him coming over the mountain and the, and the, and the sun is in his eyes.

• 1:42:27Jody Mitic?

  Hey, man.

• 1:42:28Jocko Willink?

  A bunch of, a bunch of small mistakes that compound, and not even mistakes, a bunch of situational actions.

• 1:42:35Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:36Jocko Willink?

  That compound into a tragic situation.

• 1:42:39Jody Mitic?

  But I, when you consider what a strafing run from an A-10 can do, for us to only have one killed.

• 1:42:46Jocko Willink?

  Is amazing.

• 1:42:47Jody Mitic?

  Is incredible. And, and, and only, you know, of those thirty something wounded, I might not have the right number, but if I understand correctly, maybe a dozen of them had to retire due to their injuries? Maybe?

• 1:43:03Jocko Willink?

  Crazy.

• 1:43:04Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:06Jocko Willink?

  So you guys continue doing sniper operations. You guys continue going on missions. You support SF, you support others. Lots of really solid missions and now you're out on another operation.

• 1:43:24Jocko Willink?

  You're patrolling through a village. And again, it's your, your team that you've been with the whole time. You're following Cash, your boy Cash. And I'm going to go to the book here.

• 1:43:40Jocko Willink?

  Once he was about ten meters ahead, I turned and took my first step forward.

• 1:43:48Jocko Willink?

  My right foot touched the ground and a massive orange fireball soared across my face. I didn't hear a sound. For a few seconds, I felt weightless, as if I was suspended in space. The next thing I knew, I was on the ground. My ears, nose, and mouth tasted like mud. And that's when the pain hit. A pain so intense that it completely overwhelmed my body and my silence. I started punching the ground and screaming, "Oh my god, oh my god!" It was the only time in my life I've ever uttered anything religious.

• 1:44:28Jocko Willink?

  The blast was so powerful that it knocked Cash down, and I saw him in the dirt up ahead of me. For a few seconds, I couldn't see Barry or Gord. They had probably done what good snipers are supposed to do upon hearing the explosion: Run for cover and prepare for an ambush. A few seconds later, once they realized what had happened, they came running back towards me.

• 1:44:55Jocko Willink?

  So there it is. Did you know it was an ID?

• 1:45:01Jody Mitic?

  Um, not...

• 1:45:08Jocko Willink?

  Could have been RPG, could have been somebody... For those of you that don't know, you don't know. Big booms are going off.

• 1:45:15Jody Mitic?

  I didn't hear anything. Right? Like I said, you're not gonna hear the one that gets you? In my case, it was real. But my hearing was fine. There was no ringing. There was no... And I've read, um... Colonel, um... Help me out. He wrote on killing.

• 1:45:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:45:35Jody Mitic?

  Anyway, so... I know your name, I just forget it right now. And he talks about that in his other book, On Combat.

• 1:45:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the little audible...

• 1:45:44Jody Mitic?

  The body will shut it off.

• 1:45:46Jocko Willink?

  For a split second.

• 1:45:46Jody Mitic?

  But anyway...

• 1:45:49Jody Mitic?

  I I knew I'd done something, something bad had happened. Once I, you know, my weapon was gone, you know, my night vision is gone, right? And the pain was so bad and, you know, it technically was an IED though. Under the technical definition, right? Because it was a an anti-personal landmine on top of a mortar bomb. Technically, we, you and I know that's an IED. But it's really two conventional munitions put together. And it did exactly what it was supposed to do.

• 1:46:22Jody Mitic?

  You know, um.

• 1:46:26Jody Mitic?

  It just, uh, it's one of those. It's one of those things of war where there's no rhyme or reason about who's gonna get what or when or where.

• 1:46:36Jocko Willink?

  Because everyone else in your patrol just walked over it.

• 1:46:39Jody Mitic?

  I was the last guy.

• 1:46:43Jocko Willink?

  I remember the first time, the first time I was ever getting shot, I was in Humvees. And I'm going over a bridge in Baghdad. And again, this is going back to what you were talking about, like when you don't really know what's combat's like.

• 1:46:55Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:55Jocko Willink?

  And I'm looking up ahead of me at the Humvee ahead of me. And I see these, like, someone's throwing cigarettes out the window and I go. I'm sitting there, it's like, who the hell is smoking? We don't even have any, like, who's smoking right now?

• 1:47:09Jody Mitic?

  And how are they smoking a thousand cigarettes at a time?

• 1:47:11Jocko Willink?

  Smoking so many cigarettes right now. And then why are there smoke, who, why are these things sparking when they hit the, the, the ground over there? And why is there sparks? Oh, okay. Newsflash, we're getting shot at.

• 1:47:22Jody Mitic?

  We're under effective fire.

• 1:47:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, uh, it's one of those things.

• 1:47:28Jocko Willink?

  But my point is that you don't always know what, what's happening. And, you know, in the urban environment, you didn't know where shots were coming from. You get, like, rounds would be going overhead. You could not tell where they were coming from.

• 1:47:39Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:39Jocko Willink?

  You know, if they're hitting something, you can kind of get a general idea. But you don't always know what's happening. And, all right. So now, going back to the book here. My mates were all around me now.

• 1:47:55Jocko Willink?

  The next hour was the longest of my life. I was in absolute agony and trying hard to stay positive. I was also trying hard not to think about the possibility of bleeding out. With each passing minute, I was growing weaker and weaker. Every time I closed my eyes, it was harder to open them again. I knew that if I lost consciousness, it was over. Barry and Gord were standing over me. "Do you think I'm going to make it?" I asked Gord. "Of course you're gonna make it. Never give up, bro. You know that."

• 1:48:39Jocko Willink?

  And you guys hadn't been to TCCC?

• 1:48:42Jody Mitic?

  None of us.

• 1:48:42Jocko Willink?

  So for those of you that don't know, there's something called TCCC, Tactical Combat Casualty Care. It's a very short course.

• 1:48:51Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, it's like maybe a week?

• 1:48:52Jocko Willink?

  It's two days, maybe three days. Because all they teach you is how to keep somebody alive when this stuff happens. That's what the goal is. And it doesn't take a super amount of knowledge. It takes some concepts. Number one, stop the bleeding. And, but none of your guys had been to it, but they still saved your life.

• 1:49:14Jody Mitic?

  I mean, between Barry, Gord and I, you know, like we're all experienced operators.

• 1:49:20Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:49:20Jody Mitic?

  And we still have enough first aid training. You know, the first thing they did is slap the tourniquets on.

• 1:49:27Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 1:49:27Jody Mitic?

  At the arteries in my thighs. And then they did their best from there. And we're snipers. We're not medics. And we don't bring, as awesome as medics are, they're kind of in the way when you're on a sneaky, sneaky mission, you know? That was what we, that's how we classified our missions. If they were sneaky, sneaky, sneaky, or really sneaky. If we're really sneaky sneaky, someone's gonna have a bad day.

• 1:49:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:54Jody Mitic?

  And this one was a middle sneaky and and and uh we were in a spot where there was no LZ. You're not getting a vehicle in there. Um, you know, and the closest medic was uh twelve fifteen hundred meters away on foot. At night through an Afghan village.

• 1:50:13Jocko Willink?

  Hours.

• 1:50:14Jody Mitic?

  Took him an hour.

• 1:50:16Jocko Willink?

  The recce platoon, just throwing this out there, they they just came. They just didn't even wait for orders, they were just coming.

• 1:50:22Jody Mitic?

  I love those guys.

• 1:50:23Jocko Willink?

  That's why, that's why I knew I had to say it.

• 1:50:25Jody Mitic?

  I love those guys. Every one, any one of them that listens. I love those guys. One hundred percent, I'd do anything for him.

• 1:50:35Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:50:38Jocko Willink?

  They get you, they do get you out.

• 1:50:40Jody Mitic?

  Yep.

• 1:50:40Jocko Willink?

  They. They put the phone in your hand. Before you go into surgery.

• 1:50:46Jody Mitic?

  Right, so we're back in Kandahar at the hospital and someone hands me a phone. And uh. I forget how it even went, like I was on a lot of drugs by this point. One thing about getting wounded is get to do a lot of good drugs.

• 1:51:01Jocko Willink?

  Um, here's what you told your dad.

• 1:51:02Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:03Jocko Willink?

  They got me dad, the Taliban. But I'm alive, going into surgery, I'm gonna get through this, don't worry.

• 1:51:15Jocko Willink?

  I kinda wanna compliment you right now. Because you always hear of end up basically complimenting like all my buddies. Anybody that knows that got wounded, they're like, hey, don't worry about it, I'm gonna be okay.

• 1:51:29Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:30Jocko Willink?

  And.

• 1:51:33Jocko Willink?

  At the same time.

• 1:51:36Jocko Willink?

  You called your dad like dad, I'm wounded, I'm going into surgery, don't worry about me. You know, uh, that's, that's why, actually, what's funny is uh Mikey Mansour, who was. One of my guys got killed in Ramadi and. I mean, they were in. grueling sustained combat every single day. Firefights. I mean, he went Winchester on his, on his heavy machine gun. So many times that I don't even know. Like, one time. I, I was, went to visit him in their camp, cause I was on the other side of town.

• 1:52:12Jody Mitic?

  Winchester means, completely out of ammo.

• 1:52:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, sorry. Winchester means you're out of ammo. So I went to see, I went to his camp pretty early in deployment, maybe. Three or four weeks into deployment. And I went over to their camp to see how things were going. And someone's like, oh, go check out the video that Mikey made. And I go, okay, cool. And Mikey shows me this video. And it's like a firefight happening.

• 1:52:36Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:52:36Jocko Willink?

  And he's filming, he's putting the, sticking the camera up above the, the wall. And then he turns it back on himself and he, and he says, uh, the name of the part of town that they were fighting in was called the Malab district.

• 1:52:49Jocko Willink?

  And Mikey points a camera at himself and he goes, it's the moolab. And so, I'm looking at him laughing and then, you know, me being Mr. Professional. And I go, hey, man. And he's a new guy, right? And I'm, you know, Jocko, you know? And so I go, hey, man. Wha- what are you doing filming when there's a firefight going on? I go, you need to get your gun up. Like, I don't want to see this again. And he's like, hey, sorry, sir. But I was Winchester. And I go, alright, man, film some video if that's all you got left.

• 1:53:18Jody Mitic?

  Be the history, be the document guy then. And just, like, in my opinion, to go Winchester for, for a SEAL. If he's anything like a, like our machine gunners, that's pretty tough to do.

• 1:53:28Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. It's not like Mikey wasn't carrying a ton of rounds. But like I said, my point of telling this story was that. You know, this was happening on a, you know, fairly regular basis. Definitely firefights. He wasn't going Winchester all the time, but he's been Winchester multiple times. And he was in, you know.

• 1:53:49Jocko Willink?

  Almost daily firefights, right? I remember for, for, to, this is an actual number, so the first 24 operations that that element went on in a row, they got into a firefight in the city.

• 1:54:01Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:01Jocko Willink?

  And then they had one where they didn't, and then they went right back to it again. So they were getting a lot of firefights and in a lot of danger. And, um, when we got home, when I got home and I, and I got to know his family a little bit, you know, his, his family was saying that when he'd call, they'd be like, what are you doing over there? And he'd say, oh, we're, we're just training some Iraqi soldiers. We're just on base. Just, you know, don't worry about anything. It's just fine.

• 1:54:26Jody Mitic?

  Typical combat soldiers. Stories to the family.

• 1:54:31Jocko Willink?

  Typical badass.

• 1:54:32Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:54:33Jocko Willink?

  So that reminds me of you, uh, yeah, don't worry about it, dad. I just got blown up.

• 1:54:37Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:54:38Jocko Willink?

  Um, then, here we go. I woke up with a doctor looming over me. Took a few moments for the anesthetics to wear off and for me to remember where I was and what was going on. Then it came back to me in a rush. The mission, the landmine, the pain, the surgery. The surgeon standing by my bed put it to me bluntly. I had to cut off both your feet.

• 1:55:12Jocko Willink?

  Boom.

• 1:55:14Jocko Willink?

  I believe earlier we were talking about irreversible situations.

• 1:55:20Jody Mitic?

  Yep.

• 1:55:20Jocko Willink?

  And here you were.

• 1:55:26Jocko Willink?

  Was that real to you at that time?

• 1:55:29Jocko Willink?

  Or were you basically, hey, I'm happy I'm alive. Like, I, I got a SEAL buddy that got blown up.

• 1:55:39Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 1:55:40Jocko Willink?

  And, uh,

• 1:55:42Jocko Willink?

  And actually he didn't get blown up, he got shot. And, um, anyways, one of my buddies was talking to him. And he's like, "Bro, man, I'm, I'm really sorry about, you know, because he lost his leg." He goes, "Bro, man, I'm really sorry about your leg," you know? And he goes, "Fuck my leg." "I'm happy to be alive." And...

• 1:56:04Jody Mitic?

  I gotta be honest, I didn't think that.

• 1:56:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:06Jody Mitic?

  Um, soldiering is done on your feet. And I immediately went into defensive mode. I, um, half my brain said, "You tell that fucking guy to go back and get that one of the feet." And put it back. And the other half is saying, "He's a pro, he knows what he's doing." If he took, because we knew one was gone.

• 1:56:34Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:56:35Jody Mitic?

  On the scene, that was the one that detonated the device. The landmine did exactly what it's supposed to do, it blew my foot off. The mortar bomb shredded my other foot. And on the scene, I remember as I was getting put onto the stretcher and getting put onto the ambulance that was finally able to get to us because they literally plowed a road to me with a combat bulldozer and had the ambulance behind it. Um, the medic from recy platoon said, "Hey, man, your left foot, we got it back into place, so it looks like it might be okay, so, uh, but your right foot's gone." And I was like, "Okay, whatever." Again, at this point, I'm like, so out of it. So when I woke up and he says, "Yeah, you know, I had to take both feet." Huh?

• 1:57:20Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:57:23Jody Mitic?

  And, and in my mind, I'm, I'm thinking like, "Well, how am I gonna, how am I gonna do this job?"

• 1:57:31Jody Mitic?

  Okay, and then, so then I go into, you know, depending on whose manual you're reading or which doctor wrote it, there's certain number of steps to, uh, grieving. And they say losing a part, a body part is like losing a family member or something. So now I'm dealing with two deaths in the family. And the first step is always denial. And, you know, and I'm like, "Ah, well, it's 2007." You know, how awesome, you know, guys are gonna be jealous I had my legs blown off. I'm gonna be like Robo, I'm gonna be like Astro Boy. Be flying around and shit, I'll have like Robocop legs or something. It's cool, it's 2007, right? Everything's digital.

• 1:58:11Jody Mitic?

  And I kinda, whether it was the drugs and or the endorphins from going through all that and but for that first. Until I was out of Kandahar, that was my attitude. You know, right up to the boys all came in uh to see me off cuz we went from so. I think I spent another day in Kandahar. They flew me to Bagram. And then I flew to Kuwait and then from Kuwait on to.

• 1:58:40Jocko Willink?

  Germany?

• 1:58:41Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, but uh Lanzstuhl.

• 1:58:42Jocko Willink?

  Lanzstuhl?

• 1:58:43Jody Mitic?

  And so every every stop that we picked up wounded American uh servicemen and I and I think there was one other Canadian but. So. I just, you know, that's how I felt, right? And and then and then once I was in Germany. Um.

• 1:59:05Jody Mitic?

  I was just trying to deal with every day by day. You know, uh I just was. You know, they put me in a room with another guy who had been hit in an IED strike on a on a so a Lav? You you were saying Lav earlier, so those are.

• 1:59:19Jocko Willink?

  The Marine Corps, they the Marine Corps has an acronym, so Lav, so that's why I was calling it that.

• 1:59:23Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, that's so it's light armored vehicle and you guys in the Army here, they're called strikers.

• 1:59:28Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:59:29Jody Mitic?

  Except ours have turrets and I think yours has like remote uh fifty cals or something. They're all made in uh London, Ontario, Canada, by the way. Um.

• 1:59:40Jody Mitic?

  So. Yeah, I was just trying to deal with each day as as it can cuz now I'm I've never, there's no you can't, there's no training for this. Right? And in casualty simulation, it stops once you're declared dead or evacuated, right? So now I'm at a stage where I'm like, okay, I'm in a room with another Canadian dude. Um, in an American Army hospital and uh. I don't know, what's next?

• 2:00:09Jody Mitic?

  And every time I'd look down, there's no toes to wiggle.

• 2:00:14Jody Mitic?

  It was just, so I'm like, okay, well, I'm just gonna try and deal with this. Just deal with it, just deal with it, just deal with it. And I was in that mode for, for weeks. You know. I wa- I'm waiti- I, I think I was waiting for a point where someone was gonna give me my diagnosis. You know, or my, the conclusion.

• 2:00:39Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm. Or like a prescription, like, okay, here's what you're gonna do now. This is what- Not just with your legs, but with your life.

• 2:00:45Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, this is what's gonna happen. You're gonna do this, you're gonna follow these steps, and at the end, you'll be deploying back to Afghanistan. Which is how it was going in my mind. You know, I don't know what you're gonna read next, but I was convinced, I'm going back to Afghanistan. That's it, like, it's just, that's it. Whenever, you know, the Navy or the Army wants to know something, they send you on course. So, you know, I was on sniper course, and then you go on, you go on driver course, you go on tac- tactical combat casualty care course, T-triple-C.

• 2:01:19Jocko Willink?

  So, so, as you're saying this, that's actually the next portion-

• 2:01:22Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:01:22Jocko Willink?

  -that I was gonna read. And here you go, exactly what you were just about to get into. From that point on, I made it my mission to learn to walk again. I treated rehab like a military course. When the military wants a soldier to learn something, they send him on a course. So that's the approach I took with my rehab. The mission mindset, right there.

• 2:01:42Jocko Willink?

  But at the same time, and now we start going into the fact that it was obvious that the military system, the military system just couldn't quite cope with my needs. Sure, I was offered help with all sorts of things, from rehab to finding a home, but no one truly understood the needs that are particular to a returning soldier. And neither did I.

• 2:02:08Jocko Willink?

  So you didn't even know. I mean, how do you know?

• 2:02:11Jody Mitic?

  That, but that's what I'm saying.

• 2:02:12Jocko Willink?

  How can you know?

• 2:02:12Jody Mitic?

  There's no course for that.

• 2:02:14Jocko Willink?

  Prescription, there's no course.

• 2:02:15Jody Mitic?

  There's no training.

• 2:02:20Jody Mitic?

  You know, and, and our military medical system was

• 2:02:25Jody Mitic?

  like, like the, we have lots of medics, we have doctors for things like sprained ankles and, and, and, and, and, uh, you know, you hurt your back on a ruck march, whatever, whatever. Lots of guys and girls that do that. No, you know, our physiotherapist, we've got physiotherapists, but they've been dealing with tennis elbow and sprained ankles for forty years. And it's no detriment to them. It's not their fault. It's, um, they're just, that's the military that they were in.

• 2:02:53Jocko Willink?

  And you compare that, in the book, you talk about when you went to the Center for Intrepid in San Antonio.

• 2:02:58Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:58Jocko Willink?

  And now you had the American system, which has been unfortunately dealing with thousands and thousands and thousands

• 2:03:08Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:03:09Jocko Willink?

  of wounded soldiers for

• 2:03:12Jody Mitic?

  At that point, I guess for you guys about four or five years.

• 2:03:15Jocko Willink?

  Okay, four or five years.

• 2:03:16Jody Mitic?

  Well, it was oh, well, oh seven, yeah. And I guess you guys started in oh one, right after the

• 2:03:21Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:03:22Jody Mitic?

  I, I don't know, whoever, whenever the guys first went in after the towers dropped.

• 2:03:26Jocko Willink?

  And so, so they had experience and they have a giant amount of money. I mean, this is America and we do have a lot of money and they put a lot of money into it. And, and at the same time, you had some Canadian folks that were like, ah, we don't need that kind of stuff. We don't need those kinds of things for rehab.

• 2:03:44Jody Mitic?

  Right, right. Well, again, I'm, you know, we have

• 2:03:49Jody Mitic?

  I'm trying to think of a correlation here, but anyway, we had these physiotherapists. It's a trade in the military. You're, you're a military physiotherapist and your job is to rehab guys like me. And I'm telling you, you, you can't do it. Or you, I'm telling you that you're failing. And this is why. So your reaction is going to be, well, I know how to do my job. And I don't, so I don't, at the time, I was furious. In retrospect, they didn't know any better.

• 2:04:20Jody Mitic?

  And that's why I started advocating so hard I I got because I got home. And I said, this is what we gotta do. There's not that many guys like me coming home. I mean, yeah, there's a lot more than there were last year because we're actually at war. The Center for the Intrepid, Walter Reed, and I believe there's one here, the Naval Medical.

• 2:04:39Jocko Willink?

  Balboa, yup.

• 2:04:40Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:04:40Jocko Willink?

  Naval Medical Center, Balboa, and there's Bethesda as well, so.

• 2:04:44Jody Mitic?

  Uh, well, I've heard of three.

• 2:04:45Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:04:46Jody Mitic?

  San Antonio, Walter Reed, and the one here.

• 2:04:48Jocko Willink?

  Those are the biggies.

• 2:04:49Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, tho- those are the ones where most of the traumatic injuries have been going from, from the, from, from you guys. So I said. Let's start sending a pair of physiotherapists down with like. For every physiotherapist we send down, or for every two casualties we send down. Let's send down one of our physiotherapists and in six months. That physiotherapist will get more experience dealing with more injuries at. With more patients than they could ever hope for on Base Petawawa. Where two brigade is. Because we're talking the difference between a couple of dozen soldiers getting hurt playing rugby. Or whatever, or ruck marching versus.

• 2:05:27Jocko Willink?

  Hundreds.

• 2:05:27Jody Mitic?

  Actually, uh, yeah, like a parade of guys get, who are getting smashed and IED strikes and air, you know, whatever was happening.

• 2:05:37Jody Mitic?

  You know, I was standing there and the guy who ran. Antonio at the ti- San Antonio at the time was. He was a Green Beret. Physiotherapist. So I don't know if he was one and then the other or how it worked, but. So he's the lead physiotherapist and I remember this Marine walked in to the, to the room. And he had both legs gone above the knee, so he's on the, the, the taller leg prosthetics.

• 2:06:03Jody Mitic?

  And, and he was blinded by it because he had been burned or whatever. And, and this guy, he's in full uniform. He like screams the guy's name. He's like Jones and he tackles him and they start wrestling. And I'm like. Yeah, I want that because the hospital I was in. And again, no offense to the hospital, I got great medical care.

• 2:06:26Jody Mitic?

  For the standard. Right, to their capability. To their capability. Understood at that time. And it's not like it was bad, but it wasn't what would have been best for me. Me being a soldier. So I'm like, cause I'm in a hospital where it's knee and hip replacements and amputations from diabetes. So it's a lot of older people. Um, I was probably one of the youngest people in the hospital at thirty. I was definitely in the best shape. You know, like I remember my, the first physiotherapy session. She hands me a four pound beanbag weight. With a strap on it. She says, oh, I strap that around your leg and you know, try and do like, you know, maybe,

• 2:07:07Jody Mitic?

  maybe fifteen or twenty uh leg raises if you think you can. And I'm like, uh huh. Where's the squat rack? Like, so I strap it. I'm like, four pounds? Is that enough? And she's like, oh yeah, we don't want to start too hard. Nice, sweet lady, great person. I loved her. The best she can with what she knows. She's doing what she knows. I strapped the thing to my stump and I start doing leg raises. And she comes back like ten minutes later. She's like, so how many did you get done? I'm like, I don't know. Four hundred and eighty seven. Maybe two hundred and fifty. She's like, oh, oh. And I'm like, yeah, like I'm, I'm in, I'm in shape. It was just meat and bone smash. Like I don't have any other injuries here.

• 2:07:49Jody Mitic?

  But there at San Antonio, the lead therapist is tackling and wrestling with a blind legless marine. And I'm like, that's what I need. I need to be around soldiers and people who know how I think. And I can't help, again, and I'm not trying to criticize or, or, or be overly, um detrimental to the results of what came, but imagine if I had had that treatment. What, you know, people would say, oh, Jody, you did fine. You did great. You're the poster boy. Imagine if I had been in San Antonio. You know, where

• 2:08:29Jocko Willink?

  Could have been faster, you think?

• 2:08:31Jody Mitic?

  Not well, the level of expectation where I was was very, very low. So they didn't like, so if I had been in San Antonio, they'd been like, oh, no, no, you will be walking by March. You will do this and you whereas where I was, because that's how they do it. It's like, well, we'll see where you're at. You know, and this and that and the, and there was no, there is no one for me to mentor under. Or be, you know, like there was

• 2:08:55Jocko Willink?

  Or no one to be compared to.

• 2:08:57Jody Mitic?

  Or to be compared

• 2:08:58Jocko Willink?

  Okay, look at this guy over here. He's grappling with another dude, even though he's blind, is missing a leg.

• 2:09:02Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:03Jocko Willink?

  And are you ready to get it on?

• 2:09:04Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, you know, another guy came in, I think he was a Marine too. And he was wearing, uh, it's just like a T-shirt.

• 2:09:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:09:12Jody Mitic?

  And the same guy is like, hey. Where's your issue PT kit?

• 2:09:17Jocko Willink?

  The Marine Corps doesn't play around.

• 2:09:19Jody Mitic?

  And well, this was the Green Beret guy, right?

• 2:09:20Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay, Roger that.

• 2:09:22Jody Mitic?

  Cause they're all, it's, it's a mixed force, right? There's Air Force, uh, Navy, Marine. Uh, whoever's there, there was a, there was a Navy, I believe she was Navy EOD who'd had her arms blown off. And she was recently in that Range 15 movie.

• 2:09:34Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:09:34Jody Mitic?

  I think it's the same girl. I've only met one girl who had both her arms blown off by, by an EOD, uh, by an IED, but so I imagine it's her, but anyway. Um, he expected you to be a soldier, regardless of what happened to you. You're gonna maintain that persona, son. And I was like, yeah, cause I could feel myself slipping at this other place, cause there's no expectations. You know? And you can only self mot- And

• 2:10:04Jody Mitic?

  Having never had my legs blown off before, I could only, me, self motivate to a point for so long. And, and, and be the guy, be my own drill sergeant and be my own, uh, in- inspector and

• 2:10:19Jocko Willink?

  There, there's a reason, and I say this all the time, there's a reason why the best athletes in the world

• 2:10:24Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:26Jocko Willink?

  Have coaches.

• 2:10:27Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:28Jocko Willink?

  It, that's the fact. It's because somebody has gotta like show you the way.

• 2:10:31Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:10:32Jocko Willink?

  And you can, and furthermore, you can only push yourself so hard. I know for a fact, you can only push yourself to a hundred and seven percent. A coach is gonna get you to a hundred and seventeen percent. They're gonna push you a little bit harder. They have no mercy. And so that's what you need, that's what everybody needs.

• 2:10:49Jody Mitic?

  Yeah. You know, and, and so, uh, but again, I try to give credit where credit's due and, and give. You know, you know, people were worried. When I wrote the book, there were people I heard that were worried.

• 2:11:00Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 2:11:01Jody Mitic?

  And I'm not, I don't wanna shit on anyone and I don't want it to seem like I'm blaming anyone for anything. I put myself there, I'm the one that wanted to be in that spot to step on that landmine. My only expectation was that others would have put the preparation into their mission as I put into mine. And I do feel that there were some at very high levels that maybe didn't take things as seriously as they should have, or realized the consequences of what was coming and take best practices from places like Walter Reed, San Antonio, because when I said, "Send me to San Antonio and send a Canadian physiotherapist with me and he or she's gonna learn

• 2:11:43Jody Mitic?

  in the three or six months I'm there more than she will in twenty years at any Canadian base." It was, "Oh, well, we appreciate that, Middick, but you know, we're, we're working on a Canadian solution." And I was like, "Well, that's gonna be awesome, once you figure out whatever the fuck that is."

• 2:12:00Jocko Willink?

  What about me, right now?

• 2:12:02Jody Mitic?

  Second, we have a facility willing to take us.

• 2:12:07Jocko Willink?

  So did they send PTs down there?

• 2:12:08Jody Mitic?

  No. Because, here's, here's the backroom stuff. The politics. Jody, what would the civilians think if we were sending our soldiers to a different country's medical centers?

• 2:12:22Jody Mitic?

  When we got hospitals right here.

• 2:12:25Jody Mitic?

  Now again, what we were getting at the hospital was not bad care.

• 2:12:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:32Jody Mitic?

  You know what I'm saying? Do you, do you understand the distinction?

• 2:12:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, no.

• 2:12:35Jody Mitic?

  Okay, okay.

• 2:12:36Jocko Willink?

  It was, it was the best care to the capability and the knowledge and understanding that they had, not only of their job, but of the people that they were working with.

• 2:12:48Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:12:49Jocko Willink?

  In other words, you got, if you got a seventy-two-year-old diabetic that has an amputation, the four-pound weight is good and that, you can try and transfer that over to Jody Middick, who just got off the battlefield three weeks ago.

• 2:13:02Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:03Jocko Willink?

  He's a different animal.

• 2:13:05Speaker 02

  Probably because you're an exception too, right? To like what they, what they're trained and what they're really good at caring for. You come in and this is like, this isn't really typical that we all have to deal with. So why are we gonna change our whole system? To accommodate this exception situation.

• 2:13:21Jody Mitic?

  But even things like, I remember the first couple nurses that came into my room. They were like, oh, hey, honey, what happened? Car accident, were you on a motorcycle? You're on a motor?

• 2:13:30Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 2:13:31Jody Mitic?

  Well, losing your foot is very typical of a motorcycle accident.

• 2:13:33Jocko Willink?

  But they didn't.

• 2:13:34Jody Mitic?

  And I'm like, oh, I stepped on a landmine in Afghanistan. Do we even have soldiers in Afghanistan?

• 2:13:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:13:43Jody Mitic?

  And I was like, ugh.

• 2:13:45Jocko Willink?

  So hence, hence this part of the book. Ironically, one of the biggest emotional problems I had to deal with was the anger I felt towards a medical system that did not seem to be able to respond appropriately to my needs.

• 2:14:01Jocko Willink?

  Now, you ended up putting on weight because you couldn't exercise. And you do give a little shout out right here to the Dairy Queen. And you say the Dairy Queen is delicious when you're depressed.

• 2:14:14Jody Mitic?

  Oh, it's so good.

• 2:14:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's so good. Once it hits the lips.

• 2:14:19Jody Mitic?

  Oh, with the peanut butter cups and the swirly ice cream.

• 2:14:24Jody Mitic?

  I might have to get one right after this, Jocko.

• 2:14:25Jocko Willink?

  We might have to find a Dairy Queen up in here. Uh, so in conjunction with the therapy sessions, I also started taking an antidepressant to start to help control my moods. And then there was the other kind of pain, the physical kind. I was still using painkillers to dull the pain that was there each and every day. I needed that relief so badly, but in the end, that too caused me tremendous suffering. And I turned into something I never thought I would be. An addict.

• 2:15:06Jocko Willink?

  We've definitely are seeing this happen with our wounded veterans. And here you go. In no time, I was taking more of the drug than I was supposed to in order to relieve my psychological and physical pain. The addiction worsened, and I started crushing the pills into a powder and snorting it to get a better high. Those pills gave me relief from my stress and mental pain, if only for a little while. But as soon as they wore off, my demons would return. I worried about my future.

• 2:15:48Jocko Willink?

  If I wasn't a soldier, who was I? And you've already said that a bunch of times. That feeling of, I mean, in everything you'd been in your life, from when you were a kid, that was what was inside of you, and then you were able to act on that and become that soldier. Serve in combat, get after it on the battlefield.

• 2:16:19Jody Mitic?

  My whole adult life, I became a man in the military. I joined as a seventeen-year-old, one hundred and seventy-four-pound, six-foot-four, skinny weakling. And I grew into the man that you see.

• 2:16:34Jocko Willink?

  And that question, you know, when I was reading that, when, you know, I had a buddy that retired the other day, you know, he'd twenty-five years. And I just said to him, I said, "How was it cleaning out your locker?" Because I don't know what it's like for you guys, but in the SEAL teams, you have a locker, and that's, your whole career is physically represented, and the lockers are big, they're walk-in lockers, they're awesome.

• 2:17:02Jody Mitic?

  Oh, wow. Like, each guy has a walk-in locker?

• 2:17:04Jocko Willink?

  Every guy has a big drying, we call them a drying cage, we call them cages, because it's just made with chain link, basically, material, basically.

• 2:17:10Jody Mitic?

  But each guy has his own.

• 2:17:11Jocko Willink?

  Everybody has their own, they're almost as big as this office.

• 2:17:14Jody Mitic?

  Right, right, right.

• 2:17:15Jocko Willink?

  And you've got cruise boxes in there, and it's, your whole career is physically representative of everything you've ever been issued, anything that you picked up along the way, trinkets, just everything is in your drying cage.

• 2:17:25Jody Mitic?

  Right.

• 2:17:26Jocko Willink?

  And when you retire... You go, you clean out your cage, it's empty, you sweep out the floor, you load it into your van. You drive home and that's it, it's over.

• 2:17:36Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:36Jocko Willink?

  And I, so I said to my buddy the other, I said, you know, how was it, uh? How was it cleaning out your drying cage? Cause I, that for me, I wasn't even worried about retiring, even think about retiring. I'm like, okay, I gotta go do this, gotta do this. I'm all good, come back. Cleaning out my cage and I'm like, oh, this is over. And for me, I spent eighteen out of twenty years out here on the west coast. And all within. Like a stone's throw of the different buildings. I mean, all within. These certain number of buildings.

• 2:18:05Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:06Jocko Willink?

  Since I was a kid.

• 2:18:07Jody Mitic?

  Yep.

• 2:18:08Jocko Willink?

  And the question, so when I was reading that you wrote this, that's what I was thinking about. If what my buddy was thinking.

• 2:18:17Jocko Willink?

  If I'm not a soldier, if I'm not a SEAL, then what am I?

• 2:18:22Jocko Willink?

  And that's a tough. Question to answer for a lot of guys.

• 2:18:28Jody Mitic?

  It's brutal and it comes back to what we were talking about before, dwelling.

• 2:18:33Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:18:35Jody Mitic?

  I, I, it was. Really. Hard for me because I didn't choose to leave. Right? I'd always imagined I'd be wounded. I don't know why, like, you know, visual visualization is very important in my opinion, in our line of work. And so I'd always tried to, you know, envision of getting being wounded. Okay. But it was like the cool scar across the cheek or like some. Shrapnel in the rib cage. I could show off at barbecues, you know, and talk about when I'm like eighty, I'll be like, yeah, I still got some Taliban metal in there, but. No, you know, like it's that or it's a body bag. You don't think about the in-between. Even our system, right? Our medical system in Canada.

• 2:19:16Jocko Willink?

  The in-between.

• 2:19:17Jody Mitic?

  Lots of body bags, lots of bandages.

• 2:19:21Jody Mitic?

  But the in-between part, they kind of dropped the ball.

• 2:19:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And years ago. World War One, probably World War Two, you wouldn't have made it. They wouldn't have had to deal with you.

• 2:19:32Jody Mitic?

  No.

• 2:19:32Jocko Willink?

  Because you would have bled out, they didn't know T-triple-C, they wouldn't have gotten you casvac. I mean, it would have been, you would have died. That's all there is to it.

• 2:19:39Jody Mitic?

  Double, yeah, double amputation. Yeah.

• 2:19:41Jocko Willink?

  And, uh. So they just didn't have that. Back then. Vietnam, it got a lot better in terms of the casvac situation. They get helicopters in there a lot faster. That's why you got a lot more wounded, but.

• 2:19:54Jocko Willink?

  Figuring out what you're gonna do next and you held on to it. You held on to it. You tried to hang on to it. Cause you decided, you know what? I'm gonna still be a soldier.

• 2:20:02Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:03Jocko Willink?

  You got done with, you did a half marathon.

• 2:20:05Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:06Jocko Willink?

  But after that half marathon, you were just too beat up.

• 2:20:10Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:10Jocko Willink?

  From that.

• 2:20:11Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:12Jocko Willink?

  And you decided that well, here's what you put in the book. I tell people that Jody, the soldier was wounded in January of 2007, but it took him about two years to die. To let the soldier in you.

• 2:20:27Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:20:28Jocko Willink?

  Go.

• 2:20:33Jocko Willink?

  And I'm gonna continue. Of course, this wasn't an easy decision for me and I was filled with rage and anger. And again, I started using OxyContin as a relief from the pain of loss. It became my problem yet again, but I deluded myself into believing I had it under my control.

• 2:21:00Jocko Willink?

  You, you talk about this thing where you're reading a Reader's Digest article.

• 2:21:04Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:04Jocko Willink?

  And there's an OxyContin addict in there.

• 2:21:07Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:07Jocko Willink?

  And he's talking about how he's shooting it up. And you said to yourself, you weren't thinking, oh, that's, that's horrible. I can't believe, you're like, hmm.

• 2:21:15Jody Mitic?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:21:16Jocko Willink?

  I didn't know you could.

• 2:21:17Jody Mitic?

  I hadn't thought of that. Huh.

• 2:21:18Jocko Willink?

  And that is what hits you.

• 2:21:20Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:22Jocko Willink?

  And I think

• 2:21:24Jocko Willink?

  that is what hits you. Realizing, that's when you realize you weren't in control, right? I mean, that's gotta be that moment.

• 2:21:31Jody Mitic?

  Well, cause it, the story was, he was a doctor, I believe, right? Injecting himself in the bathroom when his young daughter walked in. And I had now had a young daughter.

• 2:21:43Jody Mitic?

  And I could just, and now I'm like, and I, and in my mind, it wasn't, oh, imagine if my daughter caught me gonna eject. I went, oh, I can inject.

• 2:21:52Jody Mitic?

  And I remember, and I even went through a second where I remembered how great it was to get the intravenous drugs in the hospital. And then the next second was, oh, this is not good. This is not good. And then when I ended up buying, um,

• 2:22:09Jody Mitic?

  I ended up buying Percocet, which is like OxyContin, but like, from a guy that I knew through another guy, and it was, they were in Ziploc bags. Basically a drug deal. Remember that thing that got me arrested twenty years ago? And I went, okay. This is, this is it. This ends here.

• 2:22:29Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's an awesome. I mean, that's awesome credit to you on that, because so many people, unfortunately, they don't take ownership of that. They don't say to themselves, you know what? I am addicted and this thing is controlling me. And they always say things like just what you said, oh, I got this under control. I can stop if I want to. I just don't want to.

• 2:22:51Jody Mitic?

  I need it. I'm in pain.

• 2:22:53Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 2:22:54Jody Mitic?

  I, I had to take it. And I would ask the doctors. I would say, how do we get, how do we get me off this? And this was still, you know, oh, seven, oh, eight, nine, I think it was twenty eleven before I finished.

• 2:23:07Jody Mitic?

  Got off them. They still had, in Canada, anyway, hadn't realized what OxyContin was capable of.

• 2:23:15Jody Mitic?

  And, and so the doctors, ah, it's like three days of withdrawals. It's fine. Don't worry about it. Those withdrawals were worse than being wounded.

• 2:23:25Jocko Willink?

  Those three days, here's your quote, those three days were absolute horror. Quitting OxyContin was harder and more painful than getting blown up in Afghanistan.

• 2:23:41Jody Mitic?

  Because, because it was three days.

• 2:23:46Jody Mitic?

  Whereas I was in the worst Jocko Echo, I cannot tell you what the pain was like, because it was so bad.

• 2:23:53Jocko Willink?

  And that was the pain from going from withdrawals?

• 2:23:56Jody Mitic?

  No, the pain from getting blown up.

• 2:23:58Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so the pain from getting blown up was so bad.

• 2:24:00Jody Mitic?

  But the withdrawals lasted three days of that kind of pain. Because your body and your mind are trying to trick you. You're still in pain, man. You're still in pain. You should take him. You should take him. But once, you know what's funny though, the three days, it's almost like you hit a switch. And suddenly the pain starts to dissipate. The hollow feeling in your chest starts to fill back in. It, the ants stop crawling on your skin. Cause that's, you're going through all that. I was grinding the stumps of my legs into the couch. To give it some kind of other sensation, other than. I described it as like, it was like a dog. You ever watch a dog chew on a bone?

• 2:24:44Jody Mitic?

  When he's got it between his paws and he's just going to town like ah, ah, ah with his, with his teeth? That's what it felt like on the ends of my legs. Was like, I had like an animal just gnawing on my leg.

• 2:24:55Jody Mitic?

  And then, one day, you know, whatever the third or second, two and a half or three days later, I realized, I'm like, oh. Most of that's kinda, pretty much gone. That's crazy. And, uh, I tell you, there's Jody before he quit Ox Cotton, and then there's Jody, uh, Jody before. He quit, was still trying his best and doing well, and if you talked to anybody, was the guy a lot of people looked up to, but. You know, things really started to turn around after I quit. You know, I really started to become. Capable of a lot, in my, in my mind, I, I think there's a big difference. But man, that shit just, my buddy, he, he is a, he's a paratrooper, and, uh, he had to get some surgery on his knee.

• 2:25:39Jody Mitic?

  You know, paratroopers are always banging up their knees and, and the doctor gave him codeine or Tylenol three or something like that, and he. Literally took it and threw it in the garbage. He's like, I saw what happened to Jody. I was like, I don't even, I don't want anything. And, um, that's my advice, kids out there, uh. Do not take it if you don't, if you can grit your teeth enough, do not take that shit. Stay clean. Do your best. I, I, I wouldn't trust me around it now. If you had one, I might take it.

• 2:26:12Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm. I don't.

• 2:26:14Jody Mitic?

  Good. Let's just take some more of this alpha brain.

• 2:26:17Jocko Willink?

  Take the alpha brain.

• 2:26:18Jody Mitic?

  I'll get on it instead of getting addicted again.

• 2:26:21Jocko Willink?

  Get off it by getting on it.

• 2:26:27Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so now you get through it, you're not addicted to oxycontin anymore. And now it's what am I gonna do with my life?

• 2:26:38Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:38Jocko Willink?

  And here you go, what did I actually want and what was possible? And could I really put my military past behind me and pursue something else that would make me feel fulfilled? But it was time to stop asking questions. It was time to find some answers.

• 2:27:01Jocko Willink?

  And here you're kind of referring back, and it's the last chapter. Um, it's called On My Own Two Feet.

• 2:27:11Jocko Willink?

  I'm glad you still got a sense of humor after all this.

• 2:27:13Jody Mitic?

  Can't make fun of yourself, man. Taking life way too serious.

• 2:27:17Jocko Willink?

  So, a lot of professional athletes will tell you they miss two things when they retire. The competition on the field and the camaraderie with the teammates in the locker room. It's the exact same thing for soldiers after we leave the armed forces. When I see soldiers on parade, I still get chills down my spine because I loved it so much.

• 2:27:40Jocko Willink?

  Just letting everybody know that that's completely normal. For all you guys that got out for whatever reason, totally normal. Jody feels it, I feel it, we all feel that.

• 2:27:52Jocko Willink?

  So then you went and did the Amazing Race in Canada.

• 2:27:56Jody Mitic?

  Yeah, we had the...

• 2:27:58Jocko Willink?

  You got second place with your brother.

• 2:28:00Jody Mitic?

  Second place, and it was the first season, uh, because the American Amazing Race was the most popular show in Canada.

• 2:28:06Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 2:28:07Jody Mitic?

  So...

• 2:28:08Jocko Willink?

  Let's make a Canadian one.

• 2:28:09Jody Mitic?

  Let's make a Canadian one. If Canadians love anything more than the American version, it's the Canadian version.

• 2:28:14Jocko Willink?

  Then you ended up doing this city councillor thing.

• 2:28:17Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:19Jocko Willink?

  And...

• 2:28:23Jocko Willink?

  That's where you're at now.

• 2:28:24Jody Mitic?

  That's where I'm at now.

• 2:28:27Jody Mitic?

  You know, one, one part that we haven't talked about, and I'm gonna do a little bit of a, I'm gonna score a few brownie points here at home.

• 2:28:36Jody Mitic?

  So I, I said they had to plow a road to me.

• 2:28:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:39Jody Mitic?

  To, to rescue me, right? They literally plowed a road with a combat bulldozer, and right behind it was what we call a, uh, Bison ambulance, and it's an eight wheeled, almost built in the same factory as the LAV.

• 2:28:53Jocko Willink?

  In Ontario, Canada.

• 2:28:54Jody Mitic?

  In Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, by, uh, unionized workers, and, uh,

• 2:29:00Jody Mitic?

  and, and the commander of that vehicle was Master Corporal Alana Gilmore of the Canadian Forces Medical Corps, who is now my wife. Retired Sergeant Alana Gilmore of the Canadian Forces Medical Corps. Um, and we have two beautiful daughters, Ayla, seven, and Kira, four. And, uh,

• 2:29:27Jody Mitic?

  we, we ma- we managed to connect. I was wounded in January, we connected in September, October-ish of the sa- of 2007. My girlfriend that I had had when I got wounded had left, no fault of hers. I don't blame her one, one bit, you know, um,

• 2:29:48Jody Mitic?

  to get thrown into a situation where you have to care for a wounded soldier, that, a guy who be- before was like a rock, you know, and like, that's not what she signed up for.

• 2:29:58Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:29:59Jody Mitic?

  And, uh, and, and Alana had recently broken up with, with, with her partner as well, and when we found each other though, the fact that she was a hot Irish blonde was just really a bonus.

• 2:30:10Jocko Willink?

  Bonus.

• 2:30:11Jody Mitic?

  Gotta be honest, and, and, uh, she took one, you know, Jocko, I, I call medics, they're like our mommies. What do you, you guys have corpsmen, you call them?

• 2:30:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:22Jody Mitic?

  Cause combat guys were a little, what's that saying, if you're gonna be tough, or if you're gonna be dumb, you gotta be tough. If you're gonna be stupid, you gotta be tough. Yeah, and that's, and that's us. We need the corpsman or the medic to be like, hey, hey, hey, Jocko, why are you limping? What? Come here, come here, dummy, come here. No, no, no, not in front of the other troops, mom, stop it, stop it. And, and so that's their job. So she saw me, she took one look at me, she's like, you look terrible. I was surviving on vector cereal and drive-through sandwiches. Cause I was by myself, all the boys were still deployed or on course. And I was living in my own private, uh, house on base, so I'd moved on to base.

• 2:31:02Jody Mitic?

  I had this little puppy, uh, Charlie, who wasn't, he's not a service dog by any stretch, but he's the only reason I got out of bed in the morning. So I owe him, he's still my buddy, still at the, he's at the house right now. And, um, and she, so she went into medic mode, really. She went, you know what, you should come by my house, bring your dog, you can play with my dog and, and you know, let's just hang out. And when we got, when, when we saw each other though, it was camaraderie. She was one of the last people to see me on the battlefield. She carried my stretcher to the hel- to the, to the evac chopper.

• 2:31:37Jody Mitic?

  And, and you know, if you talk to her, the fact that I was, you know, uh, a bearded hot guy was just a bonus to her too.

• 2:31:46Jody Mitic?

  And you know, eventually I let her kiss me, guys. Okay? Passively, I'm sure. Yeah. No, she like, she, she, she's gonna ask me, did you tell Jocko the same joke you tell everyone else that I kissed you?

• 2:32:01Jody Mitic?

  But when we, we got pregnant a little quick. Ayla's birthday's September. Do the math. So, but you know, we realized, we talked about it when we talked about the survivor's guilt. You don't, you didn't survive.

• 2:32:22Jody Mitic?

  You know, your friends, live for your friends. I didn't survive and she didn't, like, her vehicle hit landmines and she was ambushes and all, you know. Near, near death on a battlefield is a bullet going an inch from your head. That's near death. Yeah, you laugh about it after, but that's, so she was in all that too. And so she's pregnant a- and I should have died and who knows what could have happened to her and who are we to deny what's happening? You know, so I, I have, I had to throw it out there that, you know, I have three beautiful blondes in my life with blue eyed blondes. That, you know, uh, keep me in check and, cause I.

• 2:33:05Jody Mitic?

  The, the feelings I had in the book, they're not all in the past. You know, I woke up. Ye- yesterday when I missed the flight, man, it. It was more that I was disappointing you. Right? And hear me out, right? Because I was just like, I was like.

• 2:33:25Jody Mitic?

  I'm the city counselor and, and a lot of guys look up to me and this and that and all the, you know, I got these kids and, you know, Atlanta and the. And I, I still can't make a fucking flight, you know, and I haven't even met the guy yet and I'm already disappointing him and that went through me. And it's all because I stepped on that stupid landmine. But I wouldn't even be here if I hadn't stepped on that landmine. I wouldn't have had these, I wouldn't have these kids if I hadn't stepped on that landmine. After my second fiance walked out of the house and my, you know, like all, I, that's my joke. I like all good soldiers. I have three ex-fiances and a dozen ex-girlfriends. Sacrifice to the queen. Cause we still swear allegiance to the queen. Because it's real. That's like you said, the teams come first.

• 2:34:06Jody Mitic?

  And, uh, I had said, well, I'm gonna retire at about forty-four with twenty-five years in. So why don't I just start kids and all that then? And I'm sure my life would be fine if I hadn't stepped on the landmine, but would it be as fulfilling? Would I be? As, as, as, as broad or? Would I be as complete?

• 2:34:30Jody Mitic?

  I'm sure I'd be a kick-ass spec op sniper somewhere doing something, but.

• 2:34:36Jody Mitic?

  I couldn't ima- like if, if I had a, a wish to not step on the mine, but I wouldn't get to keep the kids, I'd step on that mine ten times out of ten. And, um, so I had to, you know, I had to throw that in there. And give credit to Alana for what she did for me. And also my friends and family, right? This, nobody does it, no one's a rock. You know? So I, I just had to say all that.

• 2:35:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, and I actually, uh, I have a question about your wife and

• 2:35:08Jody Mitic?

  Okay.

• 2:35:09Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna give you an opportunity to-

• 2:35:10Jody Mitic?

  Did I steal some of your thunder?

• 2:35:11Jocko Willink?

  Not at all, not at all. Uh, I'm glad you, I'm glad you put that out there. And also, I didn't want to steal thunder from your book.

• 2:35:19Jody Mitic?

  Right.

• 2:35:19Jocko Willink?

  And that was one of the things that I was gonna tell people. I mean, obviously, I think people are just gonna buy this. I mean, obviously, I, there's, this is a, a big book, which I've taken some excerpts out of.

• 2:35:29Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:30Jocko Willink?

  And there's so much more in it when you read it and you get the whole, the whole package. One of which is you explaining these relationships with your wife, with your kids, and how that happened.

• 2:35:43Jocko Willink?

  Which is just, uh, I mean, for all practical purposes, let's just call it what it is. That's a miracle.

• 2:35:51Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:56Jocko Willink?

  Here's how it closes out.

• 2:36:00Jocko Willink?

  People often ask me if I regret my time in Afghanistan because it cost me my two feet and completely changed my life.

• 2:36:10Jocko Willink?

  If you live your life with regrets, then you never move forward. Those six months in Afghanistan before the explosion were some of the best times of my life. I can honestly say, as I look back on my life in the military, I wouldn't have changed a thing. If I hadn't stepped on that landmine, I would never have connected with Alana. I would never have had two beautiful daughters. My mind and body were pushed to the limit after my accident. And ironically, I came out on the other side a better, more complete person.

• 2:36:48Jocko Willink?

  Maybe life would be easier now if I hadn't lost a part of both legs. But it certainly wouldn't have been any more complete. When I am in public today advocating for veterans' rights or simply going about my daily life, people sometimes approach me to say, "Thank you for your service." Those five words mean more to me than anything else. And now I'd like to say something, Jody. From me,

• 2:37:32Jocko Willink?

  and on behalf of every American, Canadian, Brit, Australian, and the rest of the free world. Thank you for your service. And your inspiration. To all of us. To overcome obstacles. And to make a difference in the world. Thank you.

• 2:38:03Jody Mitic?

  Thank you, man. Now you got a tear in my eye right now.

• 2:38:07Jocko Willink?

  Don't do it. You're on YouTube.

• 2:38:09Jody Mitic?

  No doubt, no doubt. Thank you, Jocko. Thank you too, for your service.

• 2:38:17Jocko Willink?

  Don't thank me. And I think that's gonna be enough for tonight. So... If you haven't got this feeling yet, and you're listening to the podcast, I know you're gonna wanna go out and get this book. It's called Unflinching: The Making of a Canadian Sniper. By my man right here, Jody Middick. It's... It's what you wanna read about.

• 2:38:46Jody Mitic?

  That's right.

• 2:38:47Jocko Willink?

  And you can get it anywhere books are bought. You can get it on Amazon.

• 2:38:51Jody Mitic?

  I recommend, for my American cousins, use Amazon through, what is it? The Jocko Podcast?

• 2:38:57Jocko Willink?

  The Jocko Store? He wants to go through Jocko Store. I like your recommendations there.

• 2:39:01Jody Mitic?

  Go to the Jocko Store, click on the Amazon link, so Jocko gets a little piece of the pie. The paperback is out, so you save a few bucks, and it'd be an honor to have you guys read my book.

• 2:39:15Jocko Willink?

  If you, uh, you're on social media, the web.

• 2:39:18Jody Mitic?

  I do the webs, yep. Jody Mitic, J O D Y M I T I C. On Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat, and Facebook.

• 2:39:28Jocko Willink?

  Snapchat.

• 2:39:29Jody Mitic?

  I have no idea how Snapchat works.

• 2:39:32Speaker 02

  Evidently.

• 2:39:32Jody Mitic?

  Everybody uses it.

• 2:39:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:39:34Jocko Willink?

  Jody Mitic.

• 2:39:35Jody Mitic?

  Yeah.

• 2:39:36Jocko Willink?

  He's on Snapchat.

• 2:39:37Jody Mitic?

  It, people use it.

• 2:39:38Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:39:38Jody Mitic?

  Uh, I'm convinced it was.

• 2:39:41Jocko Willink?

  I'm not gonna judge.

• 2:39:42Jody Mitic?

  Okay.

• 2:39:42Jocko Willink?

  Not gonna judge.

• 2:39:44Jody Mitic?

  Um, yeah, I don't know.

• 2:39:45Jocko Willink?

  Jody Mitic on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. And for all you fourteen year olds out there, you can get him on Snapchat.

• 2:39:55Jody Mitic?

  Hey, the fourteen year olds need to hear this.

• 2:39:58Jocko Willink?

  That's true.

• 2:39:58Speaker 02

  No, that's a misconception, though.

• 2:40:00Jocko Willink?

  So Snapchat is becoming like a real thing now.

• 2:40:02Speaker 02

  Right, yeah, yeah. I think it originated as that kind of where it's like, hey, let me send you this. Isn't this kind of cool undercover and it goes away.

• 2:40:09Jody Mitic?

  I'm convinced it was a dick pic.

• 2:40:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, for these kids trying to sexting and whatnot. And then someone found a legit way to network or some, that's, that's.

• 2:40:18Jocko Willink?

  So it's a real deal now. Alright, well, so, so Snapchat.

• 2:40:21Jody Mitic?

  Is on the Snapchats.

• 2:40:23Jocko Willink?

  Right on, right on.

• 2:40:26Jody Mitic?

  An honor, sir. Um, I, um.

• 2:40:31Jody Mitic?

  The chances of me being here tonight are, are, are very limited. We have Twitter to thank, literally. One of my fans and one of your fans basically headlocked us on Twitter and made us talk to each other. And, uh, and I became a fan when you were on the Rogan Show and podcasting, you know, we talked a little bit at lunch. It, it really helped me when I was going through some rough times and, you know, I want to thank you for letting me come down here to this beautiful city and, and do this for me and, um, you know, thank you for writing your book. And being who you are and, and Echo, thanks for, for helping him make this happen and, you know, I got a podcast I'm starting, the Jody Mitic Podcast.

• 2:41:12Jody Mitic?

  And, uh, there may or may not be an episode up, uh, in the next couple of days, but if people want to look for me there as well, I'd be honored to try and entertain them, uh, as closely as you do and, uh, and as, and as all the other podcasts I love do and.

• 2:41:27Jody Mitic?

  You know, I just do this to try and be me. You know, I don't know who the new Jody Midag is. I call, I'm calling myself Jody 3.0 right now. Uh, and, and, uh, and this life is a trip. You know, I call myself a student of the human condition. And I'm always learning. I'm always learning and I, and I love to meet new people and, um, yeah. That's all I want to say right now, man. I appreciate this a lot. You have no idea.

• 2:41:53Jocko Willink?

  Well, we appreciate everything that you've done, as I've already said, to everybody else out there that's listening. I think we're gonna actually continue this on. And we're gonna go to a Q and A on the next podcast. And we'll just roll that out afterwards. But for right now, and for this evening, I think that's about all we've got. So everyone that's out there that listened to this, that knows that a person can go to some depths and can climb right back out of those depths. Get out there and get after it.

• 2:42:35Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Echo and Jody and Jocko. Out.