139: Whatever Darkness You Face, START WALKING. (The Bataan Death March)"A Soldier's Journal", James Bollich

0:00:00 - Opening 0:02:50 - James Bollich, "A Soldier's Journal" https://amzn.to/2wjmW3h 2:07:38 - Final Thoughts and Take-aways. 2:21:30 - Support. 2:49:58 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 139 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  I lived awhile on Kuregador Isle. That sun baked god cursed land. Where bomb and shell made life a hell with death on every hand.

• 0:28Jocko Willink?

  I got the thirst there of the cursed with no water to be had. I heard men scream in hellish dreams and watched my friends go mad.

• 0:41Jocko Willink?

  'Tis no man's fault the water salt or that the food is gone. The guns are manned by men full damned facing each new dawn.

• 0:57Jocko Willink?

  And when our bones blend with the stones you'll hear the parrots cry. The men who owned these splintered bones were not afraid to die.

• 1:16Jocko Willink?

  And that is a poem written on the back of a scrap of paper postmarked prisoner of war mail, March 1943. The note was addressed to James D. Culp, US Navy Gunners Mate First Class.

• 1:37Jocko Willink?

  Via his wife from the Red Cross while he was in a prisoner of war camp in Osaka, Japan. And the author is unknown, so it wasn't written by James D. Culp. It was sent to James D. Culp. The author is unknown, but is assumed to be one of Culp's fellow prisoners that was captured on the Philippine island of Kuregador.

• 2:06Jocko Willink?

  And

• 2:08Jocko Willink?

  the fall of the Philippines in World War II resulted in an absolutely horrific event that resulted in the deaths of thousands of American and Filipino service members. And there's not any great records of how many actually died

• 2:34Jocko Willink?

  in this terrible situation, but throughout the prisoner of war camps

• 2:43Jocko Willink?

  of the Japanese in World War II, the death rate was about 40%. It was a nightmare.

• 2:49Jocko Willink?

  And this is

• 2:54Jocko Willink?

  this is about the Baton Death March. And we've heard a little bit about what the Japanese did to prisoners of war in World War II. We, we read The Forgotten Highlander by Alistair Ukhart, and that was podcast number 12.

• 3:14Jocko Willink?

  And he didn't talk about the Baton Death March, but today we're going to hear from someone that did.

• 3:22Jocko Willink?

  The Baton Death March. A guy by the name of James Bollich, a young member of the Army Air Corps.

• 3:32Jocko Willink?

  Who

• 3:35Jocko Willink?

  suffered through that terrible situation and wrote a book about it. The book is called A Soldier's Journal by James Bollich. And let's get right into it.

• 3:49Jocko Willink?

  Go into the book.

• 3:52Jocko Willink?

  "I joined the service August 23rd, 1940, at Barksdale Field, Shreveport, Louisiana, and was assigned to the 16th Bomb Squadron, 27th Bomb Group. I joined because Paris had just fallen to the Germans and I felt we would soon be at war."

• 4:10Jocko Willink?

  I was in college at the time and just finished my third semester. All the talk around school was about war and it was hard to keep my mind on books. I was attending Southwestern Louisiana Institute in Lafayette through a government program called the N Y A, the National Youth Administration. We received thirty dollars a month and had to work a full eight hours every other day. Because of this, it was hard to schedule classes and hard to study properly. From our thirty dollar pay, we had to put about eighteen dollars each month for room and board, which left twelve dollars for other essentials such as books, paper, pencils, etc. Because going to college was so difficult under these circumstances,

• 4:54Jocko Willink?

  it seemed that the army could not be any worse. So, going to join the army. I went home and told my parents what I planned to do. My mother was horrified and strictly against it. At the time, I needed my parents' consent to join because of my age. I was nineteen. My father agreed to sign and convinced my mother to sign also. I remember her saying that if anything happened to me, she did not want to be blamed for letting me go in the army. I was sworn in with the rest of the recruits. I had a choice of joining a weather squadron or a bombardment squadron. Of course, I chose the bombardment squadron. I did not join the army to study the weather. I joined to fight. That is what I thought.

• 5:38Jocko Willink?

  I was therefore assigned to the sixteenth bomb squadron, the twenty-seventh bomb group. Army clothes and equipment at this time were in short supply and were not provided, and we were not provided with clothes, etc., for quite some time. Obviously, my statement that I always make is I'm skipping big chunks of this book and reading some of the highlights so you get the flow of the story before we get into the meat of the book. It's a, it's a great book. It's a relatively short read, but it's a great book.

• 6:12Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, the clothing we had was essentially still World War I. We had leggings, campaign hats, et cetera, at this time. And then he ends up going to a school to learn his skills about bombing. Back to the book, the school lasted about nine months and I came out knowing everything there was to know about an airplane. When school was over for my class, I was offered a position as instructor of drafting, but I turned it down. I wanted to get back with my outfit and his outfit was down in Savannah. When I got back to Savannah, I found out my, I found my outfit packing up to go on maneuvers in Louisiana. Within a few days, we were, we were on our way by army truck. At night, we would stop, set up our mess tent, eat and hit the sack.

• 6:56Jocko Willink?

  We slept on the ground under a pup tent. It took us through two or three days to reach our final stop, which was at the airfield at Lake Charles. Here, we lived in tents, again, just as our first days in Savannah. As far as I was concerned at the time, maneuvers were a joke. Instead of having actual machine guns, anti-aircraft guns, foxholes, et cetera. There were wooden signs all around to indicate these. If the air raid siren went off, we were supposed to run out to one of these signs. The way that one of the maneuvers did apparently help us with down the line was to adapt to hard, rough outdoor living. We were also on reduced rations, which helped prepare us for what was to come later on.

• 7:39Jocko Willink?

  We would fly over the enemy and drop small sacks of flour on them. Referees could tell if we hit or missed and the sides were scored accordingly. I don't remember how long these maneuvers lasted, but it seems like it was at least a month. So they're out there, I, I thought this was interesting because we do dumb stuff like that sometimes in the military where, well, you think it's dumb. But what you're really trying to do is get the broad muscle movements of a military organization working. So you say, okay, because it's not easy to get 500 men assembled and moved to a location that it takes practice. And so that they just run people through planning and training exercises that you're just trying to get these broad muscle movements, even though for the troops on the ground, sometimes I remember sometimes I'd be thinking, this is ridiculous.

• 8:23Jocko Willink?

  This is so unrealistic, but we weren't training the frontline troops. What they were training was the logistics of this giant scenario. So that's kind of what they're doing here.

• 8:33Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, we finally got word to pack up and headed back home to Savannah. We'd already gotten word that as soon as we reached Savannah, we would need to pack again. This time to go overseas, but no one knew where as yet. So again, Germany, France had fallen to Germany, or Paris had fallen to Germany, but we weren't in the war yet. So this is pre-World War II for America at this time. So he's just thinking he's going on a regular kind of deployment at this point. Back to the book, when we reached Savannah, we found that most of our gear that we had left behind was already crated and ready to go. As I recall, in about a week or so, we boarded the train for San Francisco. All of our crates were stenciled with the letter, letters P L U M, plum. But no one knew what it meant.

• 9:18Jocko Willink?

  I should mention here that before we left Savannah, I was called to the first sergeant's office and told that I did not have to go overseas if I did not want to. Of course, I immediately rejected the idea and said I definitely wanted to go. To this day, I don't know why this came up because in talking to others in my outfit, no one had had that opportunity.

• 9:37Jocko Willink?

  Since I had applied for flight school, it may be that I could have gone there. So he had, I didn't mention this part, but he wanted to be a pilot. So it could have been a possibility that they wanted to send him to flight school. But of course, like many young 19-year-old men, what you want to do is you want to stick with your unit. You want to go and fight and at this point, he doesn't know he's fighting, but he wants to go deploy with his guys.

• 10:00Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, I still don't know what plum stood for, but looking back now, apparently the P stood for Philippines. The L stood for the island of Luzon, but the U and M, I do not know.

• 10:13Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. Now they get to San Francisco eventually, and here we go. They're boarding the ship. Back to the book, the SS Coolidge was a lovely ship that normally carried civilian passengers to the Orient. But now it was being used to transport troops. We did not have staterooms, but slept in quarters comparable to regular army transports. About the third day, we found out where we were going. Up to this time, no one knew. Our squadron commander called us together and told us we were headed for the Philippine Islands. He told us that we were the first part of an expeditionary force being sent out to beef up the defenses of the Philippines. After this talk, I don't remember anyone getting very excited about it. We all went back to killing time and doing things that we were doing before.

• 10:57Jocko Willink?

  Some people read, some gambled, and some exercised. There was light boxing going on, so I decided I would participate. I boxed as a lightweight at 165 pounds. And I mentioned 165 pounds because that weight is gonna go away.

• 11:14Jocko Willink?

  Honolulu is a place where I finally learned the port and starboard sides of a ship. On large ships, I still get lost and confused. I had to go out on deck to see which way the boat was traveling to locate myself. This is funny, when you get first get on a ship, you have no idea where you are. And there's a, oh, there's a system in a ship that you can use to figure out and they mark. Well, Navy ships, they mark it very clearly, but it takes a little time to get used to. And apparently, he didn't get taught.

• 11:40Jocko Willink?

  We finally left the dock and as we pulled out of Pearl Harbor, saw the ships with our planes coming in.

• 11:48Jocko Willink?

  We never saw our planes again, and little did we realize what would happen to Pearl Harbor in just a few short weeks. So this is pre-Pearl Harbor.

• 11:58Jocko Willink?

  So they set sail, they're out at sea. Back to the book, one morning when I got up and went out on deck, I noticed islands all around us. We were finally in the Philippines. Just as soon as we got off the ship, we loaded into army trucks and were taken to Fort McKinley. I should point out here that during the peacetime, I like this part. I should point out here that during peacetime in the Philippines, prior to our arrival, the military was on duty only in the morning from 8 o'clock to 11 o'clock. It was thought that a white person could not survive in tropical sun after 11 o'clock. What a deal they had, and to top it off, time spent in the tropics, Hawaii included, counted as time and a half toward retirement. Another reason we were so hot is when we first arrived in the tropics

• 12:43Jocko Willink?

  was the fact that we still had our winter uniforms. So I thought that was, that was pretty funny to think about that. That's not that, this is 1940s, they're thinking, look, you're not gonna make it. Hey, listen up, white boy, you're not gonna make it past 11, and you need to go back in the shade.

• 13:00Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, as long as I was at Fort McKinley about two weeks, the only thing I ever did was dig trenches around the fort. These were not fo- foxholes, but long zigzag trenches. We were undoubtedly preparing for war. Then they go out, they're, they go out, they catch a movie. And back to the book, after the movie, we took a tram or trolley back to the gate at Fort McKinley. Before going to our tent, we decided to stop at the mess tent for something to drink before retiring. And that is when we heard that Pearl Harbor was being ju- bombed by the Japanese. This message came from a radio that was playing in a mess tent, and I suspect we were one of the first to hear the news. I was not terribly surprised or concerned because we'd been preparing for war, and now it was here.

• 13:43Jocko Willink?

  I was not frightened by the news and remember going to bed and immediately falling asleep because the hour was very late. I know I would have been frightened if I had known what terrible destruction the Japanese had inflicted on our forces at Pearl Harbor. We never knew about our terrible losses until the war was over. I am sure our top brass knew, but we were never told, which I am sure was best. I may not have been scared the night when I heard that the war started, but I would be lying if I said I was not scared when the second night rolled around. The day started with an early frantic call before breakfast for all to immediately assemble in front of the first sergeant's tent. I had a pretty good idea of what it was all about, but most of the outfit had not yet heard.

• 14:28Jocko Willink?

  Anyway, we were told we were now at war with Japan and would be issued arms and ammunition. So just like that, everything changes. I was issued a thirty caliber Springfield rifle and a forty-five caliber Colt automatic pistol. Since we were air corps personnel, we had never received instructions on firing a rifle. And a lot of these men had never had a rifle in their hands before. A lot were like me, however, they were farm boys who were brought up with guns and knew how to use them. So. Again, these guys, it's a peacetime, and even though they might have been preparing for war, it's a peacetime situation, and you know how I talk about when you're training in jujitsu,

• 15:11Jocko Willink?

  you can't train hard enough to be prepared for a car. You can't train the same way a competition feels, you just, you just can't. It's the same way here, when there's no war going on, I don't care how much you're trying to simulate it, if there's no war going on, you can't simulate it well enough. And that's kind of the situation that they were in. Guys hadn't even, some of the guys had never even shot a rifle before.

• 15:35Jocko Willink?

  This doesn't take long to escalate at all. Back to the book. That night, we all retired to our tents early because a total blackout was in effect. It really made no difference to us because we had no lights in the tents anyways. All of a sudden around midnight or so, there was a loud whistling and everyone outside, uh, loud whistling on the outside by our first sergeant. The whistling followed by shouts of "everyone up, everyone up, air raid." We could hear air raid sirens in the background, so we were sure it was the real thing. A lot of guys were up and dressed and out in minutes, but a lot of guys were slow and lagging around, they figured it was a dry run, so why hurry? Once out of the tents, we were told to go to the edge of the jungle nearby and get away from our tents because they would undoubtedly become a great target for the enemy.

• 16:19Jocko Willink?

  Everyone did as he was told, but before long, there was grumbling and people wanted to go back to bed. Eventually, we were given the order to return to our tents. Needless to say, we were ready. Once back in the dark tents, we got out of our clothes and before long, everyone was sound asleep again. I'm not sure how long we were asleep, but sometime later that night, we were awakened by horrendous sounds, the likes of which we had never heard before. Great explosions were going on all around us, and the ground was shaking as if an earthquake was taking place. Brilliant flashes of light could be seen through the thick canvas of our tents. By now, our first sergeant was out again, yelling for all to head for the jungle again. This time, there were no stragglers.

• 17:03Jocko Willink?

  A lot of the guys just took off in their underwear, some had pants, no shirt, some a shirt but no pants. I managed to get clothes on and untied shoes before leaving our tent, but once outside, I was stunned for a while by what I heard and saw. The sky was filled with bursting anti-aircraft fire, and tracer bullets could be seen headed up in all directions. The sound of straining aircraft could also be heard intermingled with the rumbling sound of exploding bombs. It looked like the world was coming to an end.

• 17:35Jocko Willink?

  So that's two days to go from, hey, we're going to a movie and we're, we're hanging out in the Philippines drinking some beers to this. That's, that's, that's completely insane to think about.

• 17:48Jocko Willink?

  War had now come to us with a bang and it was real.

• 17:54Jocko Willink?

  Again, fast forwarding. When we received word to pull out of Lipa, which is where they were, the reason given was that the Japanese had landed a few miles from us. And if we did not get out of there in a hurry, we might be overrun. So think about that. You know, here you are, you're American, you got the strongest military, you come from this giant country. And all of a sudden, the Japanese who you weren't even at war with five days ago, four days ago, now they're landing on beach and you're under the threat of being overrun.

• 18:28Jocko Willink?

  I look back now and think that the real story was that the Japs landed in force and they, our commanders wanted all of us evacuated to the Baton Peninsula as quickly as possible. So they move, they march, they end up in Baton, they no longer have tents and they're living basically outside in little shelters that they're building. And they're starting to get bombed all the time. Here we go back to the book. Bombs frightened the devil out of me. I figured there was no way I could survive so many close calls day after day. There was many, there was many a day when bombs fell within 20 or 30 feet of me and eventually some much closer. If it had not been for strategically located foxholes, I know I would not be here today.

• 19:13Jocko Willink?

  So these guys are getting just crushed. Because I didn't mention this part, but you remember when he said when he, when they left Pearl Harbor, they saw the ships with their planes on them? The planes never showed up. They got bombed in Pearl Harbor. So they had like just a few planes that had already been there in the Philippines. They didn't have an actual war loadout of planes. So the Japanese had total air superiority and that's why they were able to just bomb them with, with complete unrestricted violence.

• 19:44Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. During a bombing raid, I would normally peep over the edge of my foxhole to see where the planes were. At first, all you knew was that they were headed in your direction and you had better stay put. As they got closer and closer, you could tell better if they were going to pass to the side of you or if they were coming directly over. You remember that, you remember the book we, we read where I, where it builds up with the heavies coming? They, the big, slow roar. It's Ernie Pyle and he's talking about how the big, slow roar is coming and he looks up and he sees it's the heavies. And how the guys were just so happy that the bombers were coming. The, the big allied American bombers were coming to give them support.

• 20:29Jocko Willink?

  Well, this is the opposite. This is what it's like to be on the ground. And the heavies are coming, the Japanese bombers are coming. Here we go. Back to the book. If they were directly overhead, you began to sweat. Because that mean, meant you were about to take a pounding. As you watched the planes, you could all of a sudden see many small flashes of silver appear just below the planes. This meant that their bombs had been dropped and they were on their way down. These silver flashes were only visible for a few seconds, then disappeared. If you were still looking up, the next thing you saw and now heard were these large, black objects coming at you with a terrible hissing sound.

• 21:16Jocko Willink?

  In a fraction of a second, they were exploding with a terrific bang as they hit the ground. They did not go off simultaneously, but one at a time until they had all exploded. If the bombs were just in front of you, you could hear them getting closer and closer. And that was the scary part. It wasn't until you could hear the explosives go past you that you knew you were safe and could now relax. That's when you thanked God for foxholes. So. We've talked about similar before with people being in the trenches in World War I. I think it was Bobby Hoffman, or Bob Hoffman that was talking about in his book, I Remember the Last War, where when they would get mortared or hit with artillery,

• 21:57Jocko Willink?

  that's how artillery works. You fire around, then you move a little to the left, then you fire around, then you move a little to the left, then you fire around, then you move a little to the left. And so you knew, you could feel it's getting closer and closer and closer and closer. And until it goes by you, you're waiting to get blown up. You're waiting to die. And that's exactly what he's talking about here. Back to the book, besides bombs and enemy strafing, there was another danger coming from the air. It was the hot whistling metal fragments raining down on us from our own anti-aircraft guns at Corregidor. So Corregidor is not co-located with them.

• 22:34Jocko Willink?

  And Corregidor is firing anti-aircraft and some of the fragments from all that fire is raining down on these guys. It wasn't long before our food supply was practically gone. And we had to scrounge around to find something to eat. We eventually ate all of our horses that belonged to the cavalry and the mules that were used to pull their cannons. So they ran out of food very quickly.

• 23:04Jocko Willink?

  Although we were air corps, we were ultimately designated as infantry and carried on and fought as such. When the front lines were active, we could always hear the roar of cannons being fired and the noise of the resulting explosions. Many a night I fell asleep listening to this noise and especially during the last few weeks and days of our struggle. With this noise getting closer and closer as the front lines fell back, I never in my wildest dreams felt that we would be defeated.

• 23:36Jocko Willink?

  We were tired, hungry, and in many cases, sick, but we were still ready to fight. So, let me just break that down a little bit. There's infantry soldiers up that are closer to the enemy that are fighting and they can hear that fighting taking place and they're back at by, you know, in their airfield area trying to, well, they're holding security, but they're basically around an airfield and the infantry soldiers in the army are further away to the front. And they can hear day after day that frontline is getting closer and closer and closer to where they are because the Japanese are pushing them back and back and back.

• 24:16Jocko Willink?

  And it ends up like this, this is scary. Back to the book, "One day stray soldiers started appearing at our airstrip." And this surprised me because I had never seen this before. And talking to them, they said they had left the frontline looking for food. They were being constantly bombarded by Japanese guns and no food was getting to them. It was either go out and look for food or starve to death. So now, eventually, the guys that were out fighting the Japanese on frontline, now the stragglers starting to come back to the airfield because they're starving.

• 24:54Jocko Willink?

  "One day we got word to gas up the last P40s that we had, three as I recall, and get them ready for takeoff. We pulled them out of their hiding place in the jungle and down to the field where the pilots were waiting. Normally, the pilots wanted to jump in and take off immediately before the Japs saw them, but this time, it was different.

• 25:15Jocko Willink?

  They said they were leaving Baton and going to a field on one of the islands to the south, which was still in friendly hands. Before the pilot got in his plane, he asked me and a friend of mine if we wanted to send a message home. We said yes, because it was the first opportunity that we had had to do so since leaving the States. He had a pencil and I wrote a short note letting everyone know at home that I was well."

• 25:42Jocko Willink?

  When the last of our planes left, that was the beginning of the end. It may have been the same day or the day after, we were hurriedly taken back into camp and told to pack up. We were told only to bring the bare essentials, the clothes and shoes that we had on, toothbrushes, etc. Nothing else.

• 26:02Jocko Willink?

  So you know you're in a bad way when the planes are taking off and the guy's saying, "Hey, you want me to pass that message home? Because we're not coming back."

• 26:15Jocko Willink?

  And then to get told, "Hey, take just the clothes on your back, basically, we're leaving." By the time we finally pulled out, it was getting dark. The people that we got back from the field said that they could hear JAP tanks coming up the road and where, and they were near. For the last several days, the war had gotten much closer to us. Gunfire was almost constant. At night, you could see the flash of our cannons and hear the exploding shells of the enemy.

• 26:47Jocko Willink?

  It wasn't long before we could hear the drone of JAP bombers coming from a distance. We looked up and sure enough, they were headed our way. All of a sudden, we could hear the swishing of falling bombs. They started exploding as they hit the ground and each explosion kept getting closer and closer, working in our direction. I knew that we were in big trouble when I heard explosions getting louder and louder. Then almost immediately, we were practically obliterated by an exploding bomb that missed us by a few feet. When the bomb went off, it sent dirt and large rocks flying in the air in all directions and we were almost covered by falling debris.

• 27:26Jocko Willink?

  This bomb was actually closer to me than the other bomb that killed the engineer on our airstrip and peppered my arm with shrapnel. You could reach out from our foxhole and practically touch the edge of the large crater that it made. But none of us were seriously hurt.

• 27:45Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's crazy. So you've got giant bombs blowing up and you can touch the crater that it leaves and you're surviving. That's why you dig foxholes, by the way. That's why you dig foxholes, because they provide incredible amount of protection.

• 28:04Jocko Willink?

  That is when we decided we better go back and find our outfit. When we did find our outfit, we were flabbergasted by the news. We were surrendering. I could not believe it. All these men still with arms and now, under the protection of Corregidor's big guns, we were giving up.

• 28:26Jocko Willink?

  But it was true. We were told to destroy all of our weapons and ammunition immediately in any way that we could. Most people were disassembling their rifles and pistols and throwing them into the bay, so I did the same. It was the quickest way to get rid of them. I did not mind getting rid of my rifle, but I hated to throw away my pistol. We were told by our leaders to stay put until the Japs came in. And when they did, we would be taken to prisoner of war camps where we would sit out the rest of the war.

• 28:59Jocko Willink?

  I did not like this idea at all, but you could tell a lot of the guys felt relieved. They were dirty, tired, hungry, and had had enough of war. They felt now that they had survived and would soon be fed, sheltered, and given some long needed rest.

• 29:19Jocko Willink?

  Little did we know that we were headed for hell.

• 29:28Jocko Willink?

  And he goes into some... "You gotta get this book and read the whole book", because he goes into all the details of how this collapse kind of finalized.

• 29:40Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, "By the time we got back to the group, Japanese troops had arrived from the other direction. They were already lining people up to count us. Pretty soon, a Jap soldier came up to me muttering something and at the same time flapping his hand up and down. I looked at him with a puzzled look because I didn't have the slightest idea what he wanted." The Jap kept his puzzling gestures and I could tell that he was getting more furious by the minute.

• 30:09Jocko Willink?

  I turned around, looked at some of the guys and shrugged my shoulders, indicating that I did not know what the Jap wanted. Someone said, "He wants you to sit down." So I sat down immediately and received a crack across my head with a rifle butt. I knew then that that was not what he wanted, so I immediately got back up. That's when he gave me a shove, and the guy next to me a shove, and so on. He wanted us to start walking.

• 30:39Jocko Willink?

  That was the beginning of our march out of Baton, and I believe that I was the first one to start it.

• 30:49Jocko Willink?

  This is where my story is going to be difficult to tell for two reasons. The first being that we were told on our return to the US that we were not to speak to anyone about our experience as prisoners of war. Not the press, our family, or friends. The reason for this was that somewhere down the line, we might be in a war again, and undoubtedly more prisoners would be taken. If we revealed how we survived, this information would get into the hands of our enemy, which would then make it doubly tough on our prisoners. This made good sense, and I did abide by it. Over the years, however, our story has been told so many times, now I feel free to tell mine.

• 31:32Jocko Willink?

  The second reason is

• 31:35Jocko Willink?

  that I was, and still am, reluctant to tell about my experience as a POW, is the fact that I thought it would be impossible to describe what we went through. Impossible to tell and impossible to describe in written word.

• 31:54Jocko Willink?

  I have since read many good books on the subject, and seen film documentaries made, but you had to be there to experience it, to know what it was like.

• 32:06Jocko Willink?

  I know that my meager attempt will also fail, but I will write about it anyways.

• 32:16Jocko Willink?

  So now we're, we're clearly now we're starting this horrific situation. This is the, this is the baton death march.

• 32:26Jocko Willink?

  As we marched along the road, we soon, soon found ourselves without hats and something far more critical, water. The Japanese were quick to take our canteens and empty them on the road and knocked our steel helmets off with their rifle butts. We were marching through frontline troops that had just overpowered us. They were still inflicting punishment on us in any way that they could.

• 32:51Jocko Willink?

  We endured constant beatings, beatings, beatings every time we ran into a new group down the road.

• 32:59Jocko Willink?

  They hit us with rifles, sabers, sticks, and anything else they could get their hands on. We were half-starved and many so weak, they could barely walk, but they showed us no mercy.

• 33:16Jocko Willink?

  The day was torture.

• 33:20Jocko Willink?

  To begin with, we did not know where we were going. And we kept thinking surely it couldn't be much further, but it was.

• 33:29Jocko Willink?

  Much, much further.

• 33:32Jocko Willink?

  The sun on our bare heads was bad, but the worst was passing up water after water, but not allowed any.

• 33:41Jocko Willink?

  After marching well into the dark, that day, we finally stopped completely beat and exhausted. We felt we would surely now be given food and water, but that was not to be. They put us in a fenced off yard and told us through an interpreter that if any of us was found with a knife, razor blade, or anything that could be used as a weapon, he would be immediately shot.

• 34:04Jocko Willink?

  I thought to myself, they did not say compass, but I knew that I would be in big trouble if they found it. So he had taken a compass and, and he's keeping that on him in case he ever gets the chance to escape. This place was extremely dark, but there was enough light to see the Japanese soldiers with machine guns surrounding us. We were packed like sardines with barely enough room to stretch out and no latrine facilities. If you had to relieve yourself, you did it where you were.

• 34:31Jocko Willink?

  I had now gone 48 hours without food and what liquid I had before starting the march was long gone by way of sweat.

• 34:41Jocko Willink?

  There was a lot of talking and moaning going on, but it stopped immediately when we were told we would be shot if they heard any noises out of us again.

• 34:51Jocko Willink?

  Needless to say, things quieted down, and that is the last thing I remember that day.

• 35:00Jocko Willink?

  The next day, we were started on the road again before dawn without food or water. Same treatment by the troops heading into Baton, beatings, and more beatings.

• 35:10Jocko Willink?

  We were now plodding along like zombies. All we could think about was water.

• 35:18Jocko Willink?

  And he talks about the fact that they're passing these little wells, these little pumps, and they can see that there's water they could clearly have, and the Japanese are not allowing them to drink this water, and that was torture, is additional torture to what they were going through.

• 35:35Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, the countryside that we were now crossing was a total wreck. The forest was literally destroyed. It looked like a forest fire had gone through it, and all that was left was the skeleton of what was formerly giant trees. No remnants remained of what were once villages. The roadside was littered with burned-out trucks and cars, and an occasional tank could be seen. They looked like total destruction that it was.

• 36:04Jocko Willink?

  The worst part, however,

• 36:07Jocko Willink?

  was the dead bodies scattered all over.

• 36:11Jocko Willink?

  You could tell that they had been there for some time because they were all now black and bloated.

• 36:18Jocko Willink?

  The stench was horrible, and the sight was made more terrible by the swarm of flies around each body.

• 36:30Jocko Willink?

  Again, all day we staggered along that hot, dusty road, and though we passed running artisans' wells from time to time, we were not allowed to drink. We had long ago stopped thinking about food. Now it was water, water. You kept thinking, "Where are they taking us? When will it end?" You are thinking, "Surely they know we are exhausted to the point of death, and they would soon relent."

• 36:58Jocko Willink?

  But they did not. And we had to muster every bit of strength that we could carry on.

• 37:06Jocko Willink?

  Many of the sick and wounded had fallen out before now. And the world knows how they were executed as they fell.

• 37:16Jocko Willink?

  I saw some of this, but not nearly as much as the people bringing up the rear. I was fortunate in being near the front of the line and had the strength and fortitude to stay on my feet.

• 37:30Jocko Willink?

  All day, we looked forward to the end of the heat and misery, thinking that at nightfall we would stop like we did the night before. But this was not to be. Darkness came and we kept going.

• 37:46Jocko Willink?

  Long before now, we had dumped any excess baggage that we were carrying. A lot of people started the march with blankets, mosquito nets, etc.

• 37:55Jocko Willink?

  But by the end of the first day, this had all been discarded. It was hard enough carrying your own weight, much less anything additional. For the most part now, we were plodding along with strangers.

• 38:07Jocko Willink?

  We, when we found out we were surrendering, the squadron broke up and we were lucky if we ran into a buddy occasionally. Being together as a unit under such a trying situation would probably have helped. But that did not happen.

• 38:29Jocko Willink?

  So this is just, is a nightmare getting worse by the moment. And I, I didn't do a good job of explaining that going into this. It wasn't like they were well fed and well nourished going into this situation. They had already been under attack and they'd not had food. They'd run out of food very quickly. So these guys are already hungry and dehydrated when they started this thing and now it's just getting.

• 38:56Jocko Willink?

  It's just getting worse.

• 39:00Jocko Willink?

  I do think that the following took place shortly before dark on the third day. I was desperate for water, even though I had had some the night before. By now, many of the men were rushing every well that we came to, even though they were being shot at as they did so.

• 39:18Jocko Willink?

  There were one or two guards close enough to do the shooting, so if ten or twelve men went at once, the chances were six or eight would get back without being hit.

• 39:31Jocko Willink?

  I decided I would go for it, but would wait until late evening.

• 39:36Jocko Willink?

  The opportunity finally arrived. I made a dash for it with about ten or twelve others. Shots were fired, but I got a gulp of water without being hit.

• 39:53Jocko Willink?

  And this continues on and on.

• 39:58Jocko Willink?

  Word quickly spread that we were finally going to be fed and given water. How that rumor got started, I don't know, but it did not happen. After a period of about thirty or forty minutes, they started marching us out on the road again. The gate that we went in was the opening between one of the houses and the high vine-covered fence.

• 40:22Jocko Willink?

  As we approached this opening on our way out, I noticed an army canteen sitting on a small ledge on the side of the house. My first reaction was that the canteen was a trap. You would grab it, and the JAP guards would shoot you for stealing. I thought to myself, trap or no trap, I am going to grab it, which I did as I went by. It was in easy arms' reach away and somewhat concealed by more ivy growing on the side of the house.

• 40:49Jocko Willink?

  Another miracle. It was filled with water, but I dared not drink it then. I had to wait until dark to make sure that a JAP guard did not see me. It is unexpected happenings like this that helped us to survive.

• 41:05Jocko Willink?

  This is about the time that I started pulling out of it. By that, I mean, I no longer expected to stop just up the road to be fed and given water, but now knew that the Japanese intended to march us until we all finally perished.

• 41:25Jocko Willink?

  To this day, I still believe this to be true, but I was not going to give them that satisfaction.

• 41:37Jocko Willink?

  So, that's a, that's a hell of a mental transition to make. From, "Hey, when are they gonna stop? When are they gonna give us some food? When are they gonna give us some water?" to, "No, they're not going to. And they're gonna march us until we die." And you know what? I'm not giving in.

• 41:57Jocko Willink?

  Fast forwarding a bit here, the next day we reached the town of San Fernando. Where we finally stopped, at least for the rest of that day and for that night. Here, we were finally fed about a cup of, a cup of boiled rice and allowed to have water.

• 42:15Jocko Willink?

  At this point, many would have said that the rest was more important or appreciated than the food. Because many were suffering from incredibly blistered and bloody feet. My feet were badly blistered, but not as bad as some who had put on new shoes when they were told to pack up and get ready to break camp. I had no new shoes, otherwise I would have done the same. There's no way for a person to walk as far as we did without getting blistered feet.

• 42:44Jocko Willink?

  We spent the night at San Fernando, and the next day took off again. No breakfast, of course, but now at least I had a canteen full of water. By this time, we were in an area where the Filipinos had returned to their barrios and nipahuts bordering the road. Damage to property and terrain was not as bad as it was further to the south where more fighting had taken place. So now they're marching through sort of the, uh, the regular Philippine villages that weren't as decimated as the areas where the heavy fighting had taken place. There were Filipino men, women, and children watching us as we wearily walked along. And by the way, I, another thing I didn't explain very well.

• 43:23Jocko Willink?

  The Philip, the Filipino military men were also being marched it simultaneously, but they had them segregated. So this is from the American viewpoint. They could see that the Filipinos were getting treated equally brutal. And if not worse, and they took massive casualties. They took tens of thousands of deaths on this, on this march. Um, but these, but now they're walking through where these- Regular Filipino civilians are watching this death march take place. Back to the book, in several places, the women tried to hand food to us, but the Japanese guards would not allow it. They had bananas, mangoes, and coconuts, and it all looked so good.

• 44:07Jocko Willink?

  I never saw it happen, but supposedly several Filipinos lost their lives to Japanese bullets when they tried passing food to the Americans. This was the beginning of the end of the march out of Batan, but we did not know until sometime that afternoon when we arrived at Camp O'Donnell.

• 44:30Jocko Willink?

  So that kind of, like you said, this is the beginning of the end of the march. And here they end up at Camp O'Donnell. Camp O'Donnell was a training camp for the Philippine Army and was built just prior to the war. It consisted of a series of barracks built in typical Philippine style. The thatched roofs had bamboo-framed sides and floors and openings for windows, but no screens or shutters. Each barracks was about fifty feet long and could be called a double-decker because the attic was floored as well. The attic space may have been for storing personal gear in,

• 45:02Jocko Willink?

  instead of an area for sleeping. I say this because the highest point between the floor and the ceiling or the roof was about five feet. It would be cramped even for a short Filipino. I should know because that is where I slept.

• 45:16Jocko Willink?

  Once we passed through the gate, we were made to sit down in an open field where the law was laid down by the Japanese commander. I did not pay much attention to what he said, except to hear him say that if you did this, you would be shot, and if you did that, you would be shot.

• 45:32Jocko Willink?

  I wondered what we could do without being shot.

• 45:36Jocko Willink?

  After he was through, an American officer walked up and introduced himself as General King.

• 45:43Jocko Willink?

  He said that he was the general in charge of the troops on Batan, and he was solely responsible for our surrender.

• 45:51Jocko Willink?

  He told us not to feel bad or discouraged or guilty because we had nothing to do with it. It was his decision. And if any blame was to eventually come, it was his to face.

• 46:06Jocko Willink?

  That's some ownership right there.

• 46:09Jocko Willink?

  "I had never heard of the general before, but he struck me as a brave and sincere officer." Well, there you go.

• 46:16Jocko Willink?

  That's what happens when you take ownership. People, the people in your chain of command, look and think you're a brave and sincere officer. Imagine if he stood up and said, "We didn't get the support that we needed, and now we're in this position." It's like, no. "I later learned that he surrendered the troops on Baton without orders from General Wainwright and MacArthur when he realized that to continue fighting was useless considering the condition of the men under his command."

• 46:39Jocko Willink?

  "He thought for sure that he would be court martialed when the war was over because his last orders from MacArthur were to attack the enemy, an order which he chose to ignore." "He knew that it meant sending hundreds more to their deaths, something that he would not do."

• 46:56Jocko Willink?

  Needless to say, he was not court martialed at the end of the war because everyone by then realized that he did the right thing.

• 47:06Jocko Willink?

  "We were finally taken to a barracks, and I decided the best place was up in the loft. I figured it would be the quietest and least disturbed. I took my only possession from around my neck, my musette bag, placed it on the floor, and got some long-deserved rest."

• 47:23Jocko Willink?

  "The day was about over. Mosquitoes swarmed around my head before I fell asleep, but I did not have the energy to brush them off."

• 47:40Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes I think when I read these books about how pathetic

• 47:48Jocko Willink?

  I am.

• 47:50Jocko Willink?

  And you know how much like, there's a mosquito in your room and it drives you crazy and you have to wake up and go kill it? Because you just can't deal with one mosquito that might bite you.

• 48:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:01Jocko Willink?

  And here you are. Maybe, if you're, well, have you ever been in a subtropical place that has mosquitoes?

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, Kauai.

• 48:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so it can be crazy.

• 48:09Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 48:10Jocko Willink?

  It can be crazy. Do you have to sleep in a mosquito net there?

• 48:12Speaker 01

  Uh...

• 48:13Jocko Willink?

  In your house?

• 48:14Speaker 01

  No, not in the house, but there are some places where, yeah, they'll have mosquito net. And it depends on where you live, too. If you live more up in like a mountain jungly place, um, yeah, mosquito nets help. Sometimes.

• 48:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so I've been in places where you gotta sleep in a mosquito net?

• 48:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:29Jocko Willink?

  And, and... Even imagining, you think yourself, "Oh, well, this would be a nightmare if I didn't have a mosquito net." And these guys are, they don't have anything close to a mosquito. They don't even have sheets. They have nothing. They're, they have nothing to cover themselves from being bit. So you think about these little tiny things that are like a major trauma when you're in your normal life.

• 48:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:50Jocko Willink?

  It's a major trauma.

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:52Jocko Willink?

  Like, I can't believe there's mosquitoes out right now. You know?

• 48:57Speaker 01

  What's fun is you still, you mentioning the mosquitoes is still kinda bothering me right now. Like, the thought of mosquitoes being in the room now.

• 49:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 49:04Speaker 01

  It's kinda bothering.

• 49:04Jocko Willink?

  Like, we're sitting here letting it bother you, and then you imagine the situation these guys are in.

• 49:08Speaker 01

  And he's, he's like,

• 49:09Jocko Willink?

  There's no-

• 49:10Speaker 01

  Who cares about mosquitoes?

• 49:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. He's, he's not even brushing them off. He's too tired to brush them off. Man.

• 49:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:17Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. We were now being fed a meager amount of rice, but water situation was still critical. There was one very slow-running faucet out in the yard with a flow capacity of about a quart every fifteen minutes or so. The faucet was wide open, and that is still all it would deliver. So even now, if and when we got water, it had to be stringently conserved. There was a line at the faucet always twenty-four hours a day. Barely enough water to drink and definitely not enough to wash with. It had now been a week since we broke camp on Baton, and we had not been able to wash since. From here on, I won't be able to recount what happened on a day-to-day basis, but I will try to tell what was going on under, and under what conditions.

• 50:01Jocko Willink?

  As I mentioned earlier, we were now getting a small amount of rice each day, and for a change in menu, started getting vegetables. Not the part you would normally eat, but the part that was normally discarded. We were first given boiled carrot tops. I presume the Japanese were eating the carrots, and they generally generously gave us the tops. They might as well have kept them because they were inedible. They would not stay down. They were so horrible and strong, we would upchuck after a few swallows.

• 50:36Jocko Willink?

  By now, there were many sick people around with dysentery, malaria, and diphtheria. Every conceivable disease was surfacing because of the physical condition of the men and the unhealthy conditions under which they were living.

• 50:52Jocko Willink?

  The sick were in such bad shape that they no longer stayed in the barracks, but remained outside, some under the buildings to stay out of the sun, and some lying outside on the ground near the slit trenches.

• 51:05Jocko Willink?

  Their clothes were all covered with excrement, and some had discarded their clothes, preferring to be naked.

• 51:13Jocko Willink?

  These men had dysentery, and to die of dysentery was the most horrible way to go.

• 51:21Jocko Willink?

  They had to stay outside or near the latrines, because with dysentery, you pass blood and mucus every twenty minutes or so.

• 51:30Jocko Willink?

  There is no way to keep from it.

• 51:34Jocko Willink?

  I know these men would have preferred dying fighting, instead of in a horrible way that they were now going.

• 51:42Jocko Willink?

  Dysentery almost invariably meant death.

• 51:48Jocko Willink?

  I think I mentioned that my best friend had drunk polluted water, and had come down with dysentery. Well, I now had the initial symptoms even though I did not drink. I was lucky, if you want to call catching dysentery lucky, in that my symptoms were occurred a week or so after we reached O'Donnell. I was lucky because I found out that the leaves from the trees found on the prison grounds were a cure for dysentery.

• 52:14Jocko Willink?

  I was also lucky because there were still leaves to be found, and I was able to get a good pocketful of them which I immediately consumed. In a few days, my symptoms disappeared, and also in a few days, the trees were stripped bare. Apparently, word had gotten out around that the leaves were a medicine, but they were not enough to go around.

• 52:36Jocko Willink?

  Dysentery spread so rapidly because of the open latrines and the millions of flies around them. They were the same big green flies that we saw in the dead bodies as we walked out of Baton. There were so many that the branches of small trees around were bent to the ground.

• 52:57Jocko Willink?

  Sick men were also covered, especially those near the latrine, because the latrine itself held the greatest number.

• 53:06Jocko Willink?

  It was no wonder, under these conditions, that so many of the prisoners died.

• 53:15Jocko Willink?

  Besides the flies, the stench was something else that was always with us. It was everywhere. Inside, outside, on you and on everyone else. There was no way to get away from it. It came with a dysentery, and by now the dysentery was also causing the death of many, many prisoners. They were dying by the hundreds.

• 53:36Jocko Willink?

  We heard that as many as 400 were dying each day. And I remember I looked around to try and determine how many of us were still alive. I estimated that at the rate we were dying, we would all be gone within a month or so.

• 53:53Jocko Willink?

  It reached a point where there were so many sick that I decided, it was decided to put them in a separate section. It was called a hospital officially, but the prisoners called it the Zero Ward.

• 54:08Jocko Willink?

  When you went there, that was the beginning of the end.

• 54:12Jocko Willink?

  Most died within days.

• 54:17Jocko Willink?

  The dead were buried in mass graves of about 15 to 20 bodies in each. Each grave was about five or six feet wide, eight or 10 feet long, and about six or seven feet deep.

• 54:29Jocko Willink?

  About as soon as a grave was finished, there were bodies to fill it.

• 54:35Jocko Willink?

  Every morning a detail was sent to the hospital to collect the dead and then take them out to the graves for burial.

• 54:43Jocko Willink?

  I was on this detail several times, and it was gruesome.

• 54:48Jocko Willink?

  The dead that we picked up were all naked and were nothing but skin and bones.

• 54:55Jocko Willink?

  Several of the dead were from my squadron, and one I could only recognize from his teeth.

• 55:03Jocko Willink?

  Each body was carried by four men, although now they weighed practically nothing.

• 55:10Jocko Willink?

  The dead were carried on wicker racks, which at some time were probably used as a door or as a window shutter.

• 55:21Jocko Willink?

  When we reached the graves, we just dumped them in the open holes.

• 55:28Jocko Willink?

  You could hear the bones crack as bodies were dumped on bodies.

• 55:35Jocko Willink?

  This seemed like a terrible way to treat our dead buddies, but since they had all died of dysentery, it was wise to handle the bodies as little as possible.

• 55:45Jocko Willink?

  When the hole was full, it was then covered with dirt, but no prayer or religious service was given.

• 55:54Jocko Willink?

  Across the road from us, the Filipinos were doing the same as we, burying their dead by the hundreds.

• 56:03Jocko Willink?

  Diptheria was a big killer, as was cerebral malaria and beriberi in the early part of our confinement. There were two kinds of beriberi, wet and dry. With the wet, a person's hands and feet swelled enormously, and if the swelling progressed up the legs and into the abdomen, death resulted. With the dry form, there was no swelling, but it brought excruciating pain to the feet and hands with no letup. As far as I know, this type is not fatal. I came down with the wet type.

• 56:38Jocko Willink?

  Another killer was hepatitis or yellow jaundice. I caught it at prison camp.

• 56:46Jocko Willink?

  Next to dysentery, hepatitis was probably the number-two killer in the prison camps. It caused you to lose your appetite, which is one thing you could not afford to do, because the food that you were getting was barely enough to keep you alive as it was.

• 57:04Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's, when you think of, just again, putting this in perspective,

• 57:12Jocko Willink?

  you know, when we get sick, we, you know, we take a day off from work and you stay in your bed or whatever, and the, these guys, there's no, there's no medical treatment whatsoever. There's nothing.

• 57:32Jocko Willink?

  Up to now, no one had escaped. Again, I'm fast forwarding.

• 57:37Jocko Willink?

  Up to now, no one had escaped. But one night, it happened. It should not be called "escape", because these prisoners were caught trying to get back in the prison camp. There were three of them, and they had been out looking for food or medicine. I remember they were put in a cage near the gate where the prisoners going and coming to and from work details could see them. The cages were in the hot sun, and they were not given food or water.

• 58:05Jocko Willink?

  You could tell they were suffering miserably, but their suffering only lasted a day or two, as I recall, because late one evening, we were called out to witness their execution.

• 58:19Jocko Willink?

  They were made to dig their own graves, and fell into them when shot.

• 58:28Jocko Willink?

  After these men were shot, the Japanese came up with an idea that they thought would stop prisoners from trying to escape. They put us in what was called "blood brother groups", and if one of the group escaped or tried to escape, the rest would be shot, regardless of their complicity.

• 58:49Jocko Willink?

  Later escapes did cause the death of innocent people.

• 59:02Jocko Willink?

  Many of the men felt abandoned, and decided that such an existence as ours was not worth the price of survival, so they just gave up.

• 59:13Jocko Willink?

  Dying was it much easier than the fight to stay alive, and many chose this way out.

• 59:26Jocko Willink?

  Now, he gets assigned eventually to a bridge detail to build a bridge. And this is kind of like, you know, the bridge on the River Kwai type scenario. You've got to go work and help build this bridge. Back to the book, the work was a short distance from our school. That's where they were being held and turned out to be the rebuilding of an enormous bridge that had been destroyed during the war. When we were not carrying and placing timber, we were made to carry rocks from the riverbed up to the bridge level, a climb of probably thirty or forty feet, but it felt like scaling Mount Everest.

• 1:00:02Jocko Willink?

  Distentry soon weakened our workforce and before long prisoners were again dying like flies.

• 1:00:11Jocko Willink?

  I could not help but notice one guy's foot. It looked like it was rotting away and I'm sure he had gangrene. What impressed me about him was his attitude about his affliction. He seemed even jovial as we rode back to camp. I never saw him again, but it was a miracle if he survived.

• 1:00:31Jocko Willink?

  According to a book written by one of the guys on this bridge detail, only seven of us were alive at war's end.

• 1:00:39Jocko Willink?

  Another man had something terribly wrong with him. I was never sure what the problem was exactly, but it involved his stomach and I don't know if it was a war wound or what.

• 1:00:50Jocko Willink?

  He wore a very wide rubber band around his stomach and I was told it was to keep his intestines in.

• 1:00:58Jocko Willink?

  The rubber band was cut from a large inner tube that slipped, that he slipped into.

• 1:01:04Jocko Willink?

  I never did see his stomach beneath the rubber bandage, but I did see a Japanese guard make him show it to him and the guard stepped back horrified.

• 1:01:17Jocko Willink?

  I doubt if this prisoner survived.

• 1:01:23Jocko Willink?

  They end up at a different prison camp called Cabana Twan.

• 1:01:29Jocko Willink?

  Cabana Twan prison camp was just like O'Donnell and it is hard for me to separate them in my mind. I have trouble separating the two prison camps because one was just as bad as the other. Little water and dirty filthy living conditions. Back to rice, but now more soupy instead of dry. People were still dying with dysentery and other diseases. I was still in my dirty clothes, clothes that had not been off my body since leaving our camp on Baton.

• 1:02:04Jocko Willink?

  And now they're getting told that they're going to be transported back to the book. When we were told we were going to Japan, the Japanese made it sound like we were going to heaven. We'd be leaving this stifling tropical heat and going to a climate that was cool and comfortable. They get transported to Manila and eventually they get on a ship. The ship that we got on was large and apparently carried Japanese troops from place to place. I'm not sure how many prisoners boarded this ship, but the number was very high. A later estimation put the number at 2,000.

• 1:02:35Jocko Willink?

  We would end up like sardines, except we were packed vertically instead of horizontally.

• 1:02:41Jocko Willink?

  It turned out lucky that I was to be on the floor because even though I could not lie down and stretch out, I could at least sit and stand. People crowded in the sleeping bays also did not have room to stretch out, but they also did not have enough headspace to stand up. By now, the ship was getting unbearably hot from the heat of the tropical sun and the large number of prisoners in such a confined space added to it. It was quickly turning into agony.

• 1:03:09Jocko Willink?

  But we had not seen the worst.

• 1:03:12Jocko Willink?

  Because many of the prisoners were still coming down with dysentery, toilet facilities soon became a problem. All we had was a bucket on topside and the Japanese guards would only let about two people out at a time.

• 1:03:28Jocko Willink?

  It wasn't long before we were crowded at the ladder wanting to use the so-called facility.

• 1:03:35Jocko Willink?

  And it also wasn't long before the place became a stinking cesspool.

• 1:03:41Jocko Willink?

  People soiled their clothes and everyone and everything around them. If anything, it was worse than Camp O'Donnell because now everyone was confined in a small overcrowded space and you just could not get away from it.

• 1:03:56Jocko Willink?

  Getting drinking water was also just as bad because it was also topside and you got it when you went to the latrine.

• 1:04:06Jocko Willink?

  As expected, under such conditions, people began to die.

• 1:04:12Jocko Willink?

  At first, it was maybe one or two a day and some days none, but eventually it got up to several a day. Most of the dying occurred at night for some reason. And in the morning, they were passed up to the Japanese to be thrown overboard.

• 1:04:26Jocko Willink?

  Nights were probably more stressful because the hole that we occupied was in total darkness. You could not see a thing, but you could hear the constant moaning of men in agony.

• 1:04:41Jocko Willink?

  One night, all bedlam broke loose. There was loud screaming and thrashing of disturbed bodies, which caused a considerable uproar.

• 1:04:53Jocko Willink?

  In the dark, you could tell that many people were involved, even though they could not be seen.

• 1:05:00Jocko Willink?

  Next morning, we found out what happened. One of the prisoners had gone mad.

• 1:05:06Jocko Willink?

  And started attacking everyone around him with his canteen. When he severely hurt several around him, it was obvious that he could not be restrained.

• 1:05:18Jocko Willink?

  He was killed by those around him with his own canteen.

• 1:05:25Jocko Willink?

  Next morning, he was lifted out of the hole with several others and slipped overboard.

• 1:05:33Jocko Willink?

  His troubles were over.

• 1:05:41Jocko Willink?

  So, I don't know what is much worse than the situation that we're in right now. Um, when you have guys going crazy and the only choice that you're left as a fellow soldier is to kill your fellow soldier to prevent him from hurting anyone else.

• 1:06:07Jocko Willink?

  Eventually, after about three or four weeks, we came to a complete stop. We could hear voices on the outside of the ship as our ship was tied up. We soon learned that we were in a Taiwan harbor.

• 1:06:22Jocko Willink?

  Now that we were back out in the open and breathing again, fresh air felt like we had risen from the dead, so they get off the ship.

• 1:06:31Jocko Willink?

  And...

• 1:06:34Jocko Willink?

  They end up there, I mean, obviously, they're literally covered in shit. And, you know, when he talked about people with dysentery, you're relieving yourself and you're shitting out blood and mucus, and that's what they're just covered in.

• 1:06:55Jocko Willink?

  I don't know if this was their original intention, but after they saw how dirty and filthy we were, they decided to clean us up as well as the ship. They made us strip completely and then blasted us with water from fire hoses. The force of the water hurt and stung, but it felt good. We had no soap, but that was alright. This was the first water I'd had on my body since we left our bivouac on baton. We were also stomping on our wet clothes to hope to work out some of the dirt and crud, as well as that on our own bodies.

• 1:07:30Jocko Willink?

  While this was going on, there was a crowd of Taiwanese onlookers taking all this in. There were both men and women. It was about now that I noticed my own body.

• 1:07:42Jocko Willink?

  I was shocked and horrified by what I saw.

• 1:07:46Jocko Willink?

  It was not the dirty body as such, but the physical condition of that body.

• 1:07:52Jocko Willink?

  I had dwindled to skin and bones and had not been aware of it. My legs and arms were completely devoid of muscle and flesh and I looked like a living skeleton.

• 1:08:04Jocko Willink?

  I was as skinny as the men who had died of dysentery. It really shook me to discover this.

• 1:08:11Jocko Willink?

  And if you go on the internet, you can see pictures of guys that were involved in this and they look absolutely wretched. They actually look, some of them look exactly how he describes it as. They look like living skeletons. That's how much, how, how completely malnourished they were.

• 1:08:34Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, when we finally did get back on the ship,

• 1:08:38Jocko Willink?

  we found our so-called quarters still dripping wet and now very cold. Even after we were all back in, it did not, it still did not feel warm. By now, because of the number of prisoners that had died, there was a little more space for everyone.

• 1:08:52Jocko Willink?

  I remember the one guy who had a bunk position now had enough room to lie down. He was even kind enough to give me his space from time to time to stretch out and take a nap. It was funny because we never did learn each other's names. I think it was the best way. Because if the person died, you would not take it so hard. Just another stranger, gone.

• 1:09:16Jocko Willink?

  So, they go out at sea again. And then they pull into another port. Finally, after many days, I felt the ship slow and come to a halt. I thought Japan at last and now I might get medical help and medicine for my sickness and pain. Before long, prisoners were crawling up the ladder out of a hole until the place was almost empty. With my musette bag around my neck and my canteen in it, I made an attempt to cross over to the ladder, but that was not to be. I could not even raise, rise, much less walk. Pretty soon, two Japanese soldiers came down into the hole and started lifting the sick and dying to the other Japanese above. I was not the only one unable to move.

• 1:10:00Jocko Willink?

  When they came to get me, they lifted me to my feet and drug me over to the ladder. They wanted me to crawl up and out, but that was impossible.

• 1:10:09Jocko Willink?

  I was too weak and I hurt too much. When they saw I could not do it, each Japanese guard grabbed me by the arms, lifted my arms above my head, then handed me to waiting guards above. The Jap guards above grabbed me by my wrists and lifted me out.

• 1:10:26Jocko Willink?

  How I survived this ordeal, I shall never know. The pain that I felt when being lifted by the arms was excruciating.

• 1:10:36Jocko Willink?

  I had never felt anything like it before, nor have I felt anything come close since.

• 1:10:46Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:10:48Jocko Willink?

  I mean, he's just, he can't even stand up. He's just completely broken and starving and they have to drag him out there. Luckily, they didn't kill him. They load him onto a truck. Back to the book, the truck ride that followed was no joyful experience either. Now my bones began to take a beating as I lay on the metal bed of the truck. I was being bounced around because of a very rough road and I had no flesh on my bones to cushion each bounce. Again, pain and misery. When would it end?

• 1:11:17Jocko Willink?

  Finally, we arrived at what appeared to be an army camp and the trucks drove up to one of the barracks. Once inside, we found the place to be very clean and nice and warm. There was snow on the ground outside, which accounted for the heat inside. There were even straw-filled mattresses and blankets for each man.

• 1:11:36Jocko Willink?

  We learned a little later that we were not in Japan, but in a place called Pusan, Korea. I'd never heard of it before.

• 1:11:45Jocko Willink?

  So now they're, obviously they're in Korea now and you can see the treatment gets a little bit better. There's a little bit of influence from the Koreans trying to be a little bit more humane, I think.

• 1:11:57Jocko Willink?

  All, back to the book, as all, as in all the places I'd previously been, people were dying at the rate of two or three a day. They were picked up in the morning when the doctor came in and taken out and cremated.

• 1:12:10Jocko Willink?

  By then you could tell when a person was about to die.

• 1:12:15Jocko Willink?

  They had what we called a death grin. The skin was stretched so tightly across their fleshless faces that their mouths stayed permanently open as though grinning.

• 1:12:27Jocko Willink?

  A person in that condition was not long for this world. There was another condition that we called the death rattle. This also meant death within a few days. I was shocked beyond belief one morning when the person next to me said that during the night, I was making the rattling sound.

• 1:12:48Jocko Willink?

  After that, I was afraid to go to sleep because that was usually when a person died.

• 1:12:54Jocko Willink?

  I remember fighting to stay awake night after night. The night seemed to last an eternity and I remembered how glad I was to hear the sound of the crows in the distance. It meant morning was near and I was still around.

• 1:13:08Jocko Willink?

  You reach a point where dying becomes easy, but staying alive is a battle.

• 1:13:15Jocko Willink?

  Many chose not to fight any longer.

• 1:13:21Jocko Willink?

  I would say that after two or three weeks, the dying ceased.

• 1:13:26Jocko Willink?

  There were about 20 or 25 of us left and we were slowly starting to get out of bed and move around some. So like I said, they're starting to get a little bit more food, a little bit better treatment.

• 1:13:39Jocko Willink?

  One thing that I'm not sure of in my mind is when the Japanese finally gave us new clothes and shoes to wear. The clothes we were given were all Japanese army issue. Shoes, caps, shirt, pants, socks, underwear and coat. These were Japanese summer uniforms and clothes and not woolen uniforms that our guards were now wearing. We hated having to wear a Jap uniform, but we really had no choice.

• 1:14:05Jocko Willink?

  So...

• 1:14:09Jocko Willink?

  Now they actually end up getting on a train and they go for a long train lot ride. And when they finally get off, um, the place looked like and felt like the inside of a deep freezer. Everything was covered with snow and frozen solid.

• 1:14:29Jocko Willink?

  And then they get put into a truck after they get off the train in this frozen area. And they travel out from the train area, from the train station, away from the city. And they keep going and they keep going and finally they get to a place that looks like a prison.

• 1:14:48Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, I remember there were several buildings, possibly a dozen or more, but I am not sure of the exact number.

• 1:14:56Jocko Willink?

  The buildings were low to the ground and barely visible because of the thick blanket of snow that covered everything. We stopped shortly at one of the buildings and unloaded. Again, I needed assistance. I wasn't in the building more than five minutes when one of the men said that my nose was frozen or frostbitten. And I had better quickly do something about it.

• 1:15:16Jocko Willink?

  If I knew my frost, my nose was frost, uh, frozen, my feet surely were also. Both my nose and feet blistered horribly and turned black and blue like a bad bruise. The skin eventually peeled off and I was fine, except for some badly scarred feet. So I didn't go into enough detail, but while they're transporting in these trucks, it's freezing. And so you've got these guys that are in whatever summer uniforms. And by the way, they're, they weigh nothing. They have no, they literally have zero body fat on them. And they're freezing in these trucks and he gets frostbite. Back to the book, we also found out that we were near the city of Mukden, Manchuria.

• 1:15:58Jocko Willink?

  We had come from the furnace of the tropics into the deep freeze of the Arctic. And if you remember, that name might sound a little bit familiar. Mukden, Manchuria. That is one of the locations where the Japanese, the unit 731, did experiments on Caucasian. They wanted to have Caucasian prisoners to do experiments on to make sure that the reactions to biological and chemical weapons were the same as they were on the Asian prisoners that they had been using on them on, on the Chinese prisoners. They'd been using these, these chemical weapons on and these biological weapons on.

• 1:16:41Jocko Willink?

  And so that's where he is now.

• 1:16:52Jocko Willink?

  Settle in a little bit here. Before long, it was lights-out time. I again became aware of how weak I was. I tried to crawl under my blankets. When I read this, I was thinking about this. So, listen to this. "I tried to crawl under my blankets, but could not lift them. Eventually, with the help of others, I managed to make it. The covers felt good for a while, but before long, my body began to ache from the weight of the covers, and I had a miserable night. If I removed the blankets, I would freeze, and if I left them on, I would hurt. I decided hurting was better, because I was used to that by now." It was the next day, or close to it, that the Japanese came around and gave each man a number.

• 1:17:36Jocko Willink?

  Mine was 1439. About this time, we were also weighed. We were placed on a foot scale. I figured I weighed around 90 pounds, after subtracting for food, for shoes and clothing. So, if you remember, he was boxing at 165, and as you know, as a boxer, it's not like you're... You don't have a lot of weight on you. You're not sitting around with a bunch of extra weight. So, now, he's under 90 pounds. And why are they getting weighed? Well, he didn't know at the time. Why are they getting weighed? They're getting weighed because they're going to be experimented on. And he doesn't really connect the dots in this book, but, you know, obviously, they're

• 1:18:18Jocko Willink?

  getting weighed, because they're trying to figure out how much weight they're going to lose, and how much weight they're going to gain, and how long it takes them to get sick. And if you remember, in Unit 731, one of their goals was to keep the prisoners healthy enough that they could experiment on them. So, that is one, I guess, small benefit to this situation, if I could even call it that. I guess I can't, but there's one upside to this, is that, since they're going to be used as experiments... And again, he doesn't talk about it too much, and it's not very clear, but they start feeding them better. Back to the book, going to beans from rice, I am sure, saved many prisoners' lives, as

• 1:19:03Jocko Willink?

  I am almost positive it saved mine. Beans are rich in vitamins and protein, while rice is a starch or a carbohydrate, which we know is not good.

• 1:19:13Jocko Willink?

  Contrary to expectations, coming to a cold climate did not stop the dying. The first winter was the worst with the killers still being dysentery, hepatitis, and now pneumonia was added to the list. And again, who knows how many of these diseases were actually inflicted on, on the prisoners by the Japanese? Because they're in a cold climate, why are they getting these tropical diseases? Well, back to the book, here the sick and dying had a new scourge: body lice. They were crawling all over by the thousands, body, hair, clothes, you name it, they were there. In the heat of the tropics, it was flies, and here it was body lice.

• 1:19:55Jocko Willink?

  Body lice probably spread germs as readily as flies. Everyone had lice, but those who were well enough to keep the number of lice down. They got in the seams of your clothes when they went, when they were not biting you, and that is where you looked for them. As they were discovered, they were squashed between your fingernails, exposing the blood they had sucked from your body. The Chinese coolies did not let them get away with their blood because they ate them when they were discovered. A Chinese coolie at rest was always searching for lice. Come to think of it, we were too, at least at this time. During that first winter, all the dead were placed in a storage building. That was necessary because the ground was still frozen solid, making it impossible to dig graves.

• 1:20:40Jocko Willink?

  Burial could not therefore take place until mid to late spring. When the time arrived, a large burial detail was sent out to dig graves. Even when, even then digging was difficult because only the top eight to 10 inches of the ground had, was thawed with frozen rock-hard soil below. This was permafrost country. When the graves were finally dug, we went for the bodies. We found them stacked like cordwood. Again, this, this is remnants of Unit 731, because they were still frozen solid. As in the Philippines, they were all naked. They looked like skeletons with skin stretched over their bones. The one difference was many of the bodies were lemon-yellow.

• 1:21:22Jocko Willink?

  They had died from hepatitis or so-called yellow jaundice, although it was prevalent in the tropics, it was catching up with us now.

• 1:21:32Jocko Willink?

  Now, eventually, he gets well enough and they put him on a work detail in a factory. And

• 1:21:45Jocko Willink?

  still dealing with troubles. Back to the book. When we were in prison camps in the Philippines, our strongest want or desire was water. Food was secondary. Now that we had sufficient water, it was food that was constantly on our minds. I remember how we used to say that if we ever got back to the States, we would carry food with us wherever we went. If we had a house, it would be full. If we had a car, the trunk would be loaded. The pockets of our clothes would also be stuffed with candy bars and peanuts. We could at least dream if nothing else.

• 1:22:14Jocko Willink?

  And so this is pretty cool. They're in this factory and what they're doing is they're preparing, their, this work detail is to prepare a factory for the Japanese. And the, they're putting cement floor in and they've got these big machines that are going to be used to build whatever.

• 1:22:31Jocko Willink?

  And here we go. The machines that were in crates were brand new and consisted of metal lathes, large drill presses, extremely large shapers and others that I was not familiar with.

• 1:22:42Jocko Willink?

  Closer investigation, they found a little wooden box in the corner for each created machine. Closer investigation revealed that the wooden box contained handles, knobs, dials, screws, bolts, etc. In other words, precision tools and essential parts that went with the machine. Right away, we knew what we had to do with them. Get rid of them. We started by taking the smaller parts and dumping them in the latrine in the same old saddle trench style, but eventually got bolder. When a hole was completed and ready to be filled with concrete, someone would grab a bunch of parts and throw them in the hole where they would be quickly covered. Without these important parts, the machines would be useless. That's like hardcore. These guys are still resisting and still fighting. They want the Japanese

• 1:23:27Jocko Willink?

  to be able to build anything. So they destroy these parts. I mean, that's at risk of, obviously, that's at risk of death. If you get caught doing that, you're going to get killed.

• 1:23:40Jocko Willink?

  They eventually moved to a different camp.

• 1:23:45Jocko Willink?

  And this one looks, it's another one that looks just like a prison.

• 1:23:51Jocko Willink?

  And he talks about some of these other diseases. When I wrote, when I wrote earlier of diseases that existed among the prisoners in the Philippines, I forgot to mention that we also had much scurvy and something else called Guam blisters. They were like a raw sore without a scab. They started as small, as a small blister which would not heal, but kept getting bigger and bigger. Since there was no medication to cure them, they would eat away at the entire layer of skin, leaving the flesh below exposed. As the blister grew and devoured more skin, no scab formed, which made for an ugly looking sore. Where the good skin was being eaten away, there was always a small rim of pus.

• 1:24:35Jocko Willink?

  Some of these blisters has got as large as a silver dollar, and some of the prisoners had several at one time. I was lucky I did not have one, but I did have a very large ringworm on my stomach. It was about the size as a saucer and getting larger by the day. So there's something all of us Jiu Jitsu people can relate to. You get a ringworm that's the size of a dime and it's like a nightmare. And here you got a ringworm that's the size of a saucer. And it gets worse, here we go, here came the fleas. They only showed up in great numbers at night, but then it was by the hundreds.

• 1:25:20Jocko Willink?

  They were actually a lot more aggravating than the lice. Their bite was a lot more painful and they made it almost impossible to sleep at night. I reached a point where our, it reached a point where our underwear looked like it was made from polka dotted material, when in fact it was spotted with dry blood. Even though we were in much better quarters, our food had not improved. So we still had much sickness and some dying still. Tuberculosis was now killing people and Berre Bari was still prevalent. You know, I think I've been bitten by a flea five times in my whole entire life, maybe.

• 1:25:59Speaker 01

  Zero here.

• 1:26:00Jocko Willink?

  Zero for Echo Charles. And here are these things that are, they're biting you so much that your underwear looks like it's spotted, like it's polka dotted.

• 1:26:15Jocko Willink?

  Another person had dry berry berry so badly that he consented to be taken to a place in Mukden, where the nerves to his feet were severed. It apparently relieved his pain, but his now, his feet now looked floppy to me like he did not have any control of them anymore. Well, yeah, they cut his nerves.

• 1:26:37Jocko Willink?

  By now, by now, my main problem was with my teeth. I had developed bad cavities in two back teeth and they hurt constantly. So now, his teeth are all jacked up, so now he goes to a, to a supposed dentist.

• 1:26:54Jocko Willink?

  I sat down in the chair, one of the Japanese reached for an instrument and I instinctively opened my mouth. He reached in and immediately I felt this horrible pain. I thought, good, it is finally out. In another second or two, more pain, just like the first, and more and more. What was happening was that the Japanese was not pulling yet. He was just cutting the gum away from the tooth so he could reach way down on it and get a good grip for pulling.

• 1:27:22Jocko Willink?

  Luckily, it finally came out without an out any problem. The pulling was less painful than the cutting. I forgot to mention, there was no Novocain or other painkiller provided when the teeth were pulled.

• 1:27:38Jocko Willink?

  You don't like that one?

• 1:27:39Speaker 01

  No, sir, I don't.

• 1:27:40Jocko Willink?

  Man.

• 1:27:42Speaker 01

  Cause you know when you go to the dentist, it's nerve wracking even with it.

• 1:27:45Jocko Willink?

  You know, I, I actually considered whether or not I should put that in there cause I know there's some people that really don't like going to the dentist. I myself was never, never really cared. It was not that big of a deal to me to go to the dentist. But I know that some people have like a legitimate phobia of the dentist and I apologize. I'm sure that last little section isn't gonna help out.

• 1:28:04Speaker 01

  No, no, and I, I don't know that I have a phobia. I think I'm just like a normal dentist, um, regarder, I guess.

• 1:28:14Speaker 01

  But it is nerve wracking though. So you know, you know, well, the dentist, you know, when they, when they do put Novocain, right? That needle, for some reason, it doesn't hurt. I don't know. Does it hurt? I mean, you don't feel the needle, right?

• 1:28:24Jocko Willink?

  You feel it a little bit, but it's not.

• 1:28:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, like with less than like if you, even if you got like a blood test or something.

• 1:28:28Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  Like, anyway, so, so you're all numb. But when they bust out that drill and doing like all the stuff they do in there, it's nerve wracking because you're like, oh, I can feel it grinding my teeth out or whatever they're doing. And then, but you don't really feel the actual pain every once in a while, you know? So it's just, you're constantly at this high stress level. And then now this guy, no, Novocain. Basically, what you're at the stress level for, he's just taking it head on a hundred percent.

• 1:28:58Speaker 01

  And then he's like, hey, when they pulled out my tooth, it wasn't as bad as the cutting.

• 1:29:03Jocko Willink?

  No, cutting your gums is not gonna be a good situation.

• 1:29:06Speaker 01

  Yes. No, sir, it's not.

• 1:29:09Jocko Willink?

  For a very long time now, we had had no news about the progress of the war. The Japanese kept telling us that before long, they would be sitting in the White House in Washington. None of us believed this propaganda, but why was it taking the US so long to beat the Japanese? We did not, or at least I did not know about Pearl Harbor. And maybe that was a good thing not knowing. Had we known, I know that our morale would have sunk to the bottom of our toes. And he's just talking about the mass destruction that, that would, that happened.

• 1:29:39Jocko Willink?

  So far, I have not mentioned anything or very little about our thoughts of home and family. It was a personal thing with every one of, everyone and was little if ever discussed, but you can be sure that it was on everyone's mind. If others were like me, and I'm sure most were, you thought about your parents back home almost every night and knew how they were suffering, not knowing where you were or how you were, or even if you were alive or dead. This must have been an agony to them. The same could be said of brothers and sisters and wives and children.

• 1:30:14Jocko Willink?

  I always felt that the prisoners who suffered the most mentally were the ones with wives and children back home. I know it was extra hard on them, but they were few in number. Most of the men were young and not married. So that's interesting. If you remember when Captain Plum was on, I think those guys got to a level where they knew they were gonna survive and even Captain Plum said he didn't think he was gonna die. You know, he said, "I was going to live," like he thought that they were going to live through the war. But I think for these guys, it must be a different, and that's why the guys that were in, like the Hanoi Hilton, remember, they knew everything about everyone's life and every single story that you would try and remember

• 1:30:57Jocko Willink?

  every single possible thing that you could about your whole life and tell it to your roommate. But I think these guys are in such a state where survival is not a known entity. And so, I think it sounds like, and he mentioned earlier, that not knowing people was actually easier. So it's sort of a different psychological situation.

• 1:31:23Jocko Willink?

  Now he goes on, "I know everyone enjoyed going to sleep at night. And if you dreamed, it was usually always the same. But it left you extremely depressed the next day. In most dreams, you were at last freed from prison camp and back in the States and feeling euphoric. Free, free, free again." How wonderful.

• 1:31:52Jocko Willink?

  "But the shock of awakening was so heartbreaking when you found out you were still in prison.

• 1:32:00Jocko Willink?

  I believe these dreams actually did more harm than good. Even so, they came back time and time again. There was no getting away from them."

• 1:32:11Jocko Willink?

  Know that people not home were not forgotten and we knew they had not forgotten us.

• 1:32:18Jocko Willink?

  So that's you have these beautiful dreams that everything's cool and then you wake up and you're still in prison camp.

• 1:32:26Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, the Japanese put everyone to digging foxholes. They were not for us, but for the Japanese. Some were at the factory and some of on the Japanese side of the camp. None were on our none were on our side.

• 1:32:41Jocko Willink?

  When this work started, we knew that the Japanese were now expecting expecting possible air raids and we were excited because the war was getting closer. It wasn't too much longer after we finished digging all of the foxholes that we were required to cover them over. They were covered with heavy timbers and then further covered with a large amount of dirt. This told the Japanese that we were taking this told us that the Japanese were taking a pounding somewhere, which in our minds was great. At about the same time, the Japanese were becoming rather aggressive and there was a definite change in their attitude and treatment of us. We now had to really watch what we were doing and if we did anything illegal, make sure we were not caught.

• 1:33:24Jocko Willink?

  Some of the men were caught, however, and suffered the consequences. So this is great news. They're they're like, oh, you got to dig in. That means Americans are coming.

• 1:33:38Jocko Willink?

  One morning shortly after we had gone to work, air raid sirens started going off all over the city and everyone became very excited, especially the Japanese. We were quickly rounded up and made a double time back to camp. This time we were not searched, but sent immediately to our barracks and told to stay inside. We could still hear sirens going off in all directions. We had not been back to our barracks very long when the Japanese came back and sent everyone outside in the yard. Our yard was probably 150 to 200 feet long and perhaps 100 feet wide, more or less. When everyone was out, the Japanese made us lie down and then took off probably for their foxholes. It wasn't long before we could see a large formation of heavy bombers headed our way.

• 1:34:21Jocko Willink?

  They were up very high and each left a streak in the sky that extended for many miles behind it. It was a beautiful sight and we felt proud and excited. It had to be American planes and the war had reached Manchuria.

• 1:34:37Jocko Willink?

  We watched them slowly come our way, but the Japanese also saw them coming and sent up fighter planes to intercept them, which was a mistake. From the ground, it looked like a swarm of mosquitoes going after a flock of geese, and the comparison is good because that is about how effective the Jap fighters were.

• 1:34:57Jocko Willink?

  From the ground, we could see flashes of fire coming from the bombers and see Japanese planes go plunging down in smoke. Just about then, you could hear the roar of the guns from the bombers as the sound reached the ground. Time after time, the Japs moved in, but the results were the same: Japs going down in flame with no apparent damage to the bombers. What a fight!

• 1:35:21Jocko Willink?

  I would like to interrupt writing about this attack at this point to mention that our prison camp was in the middle of a heavy, a heavily industrialized area, which is, was against international rules of war. We should not have been imprisoned where we were. Right next to us was an ammunition factory and a short distance behind us, a tank factory. We were very close to an airplane factory and a major rail yard. There were numerous military targets for Americans to bomb, and unfortunately, we were right in the middle of them. Still lying on my back, I kept my eyes on the bombers and was impressed by the large number in the formation, about eighteen or twenty as I recall.

• 1:36:03Jocko Willink?

  Pretty soon, I could see the silver flashes of released bombs, and then in another few seconds, saw the sky filled with hundreds of bombs hurtling down on us and making their typical loud swishing sound. I knew they would not miss, and they did not.

• 1:36:21Jocko Willink?

  Three of the bombs from the plane on the outside of the formation hit our camp, and the destruction was horrible. One of the bombs landed near the high brick wall that surrounded our compound and knocked a big chunk out of its top. The bomb fell right in the yard where we were lying and instantly killed nineteen of us and severely wounded many more. The third bomb was an incendiary and fell on our barracks and set it on fire. It was a tragedy. Here we were, after so very long a time, excited beyond belief at watching our side win for a change, and look what happened. We could hardly believe it, but we were now being killed by our own bombs.

• 1:37:05Jocko Willink?

  Even though I was within 20 feet or so of the bomb, I was not hurt. I looked up. As I looked up, I saw men blackened from the blast, try to rise, but fall back terribly wounded or dead.

• 1:37:23Jocko Willink?

  Again, it's the heavies from the other, the other side, the other perspective. Now, at a certain point, one of those bombs, one of those bombers did get shot down and the, the air crew and pilots from the aircraft that got shot down, got captured.

• 1:37:43Jocko Willink?

  And so, here we go. These were men who had survived the blowing up of their B-29 bomber, and were now being held captive in a house within sight of our camp.

• 1:37:53Jocko Willink?

  They said they did not know of our prison camp, and then they get communication with them. They said they did not know of our prison camp, and in actuality, it was marked on their maps as a must-get target. This wasn't terribly reassuring, but they did pass on more cheering information than that. They said Japan was being defeated all over the Pacific, and it appeared that the war should not last too very much longer. By the action in the sky, we had already come to assume that. They also said that they were flying out of, from the island of Guam.

• 1:38:31Jocko Willink?

  There was always the poss- so they feel like the war, okay, but this is obviously a really positive side. The Japs, Japanese are getting beat all over the Pacific, the bombers are there. Even though it's horrible that they're getting bombed, they at least feel like the war is heading in the right direction. But then there's this, back to the book, there was always the possibility, we felt, that when the war was over, or about over, and the Japanese realized that they had lost, they may decide to execute all of us instead of letting us go free. So they got that in the back of their mind.

• 1:39:05Jocko Willink?

  Little section here, he gets in some trouble. One morning when we arrived at the factory and headed for our work in the lumberyard, we noticed Japanese soldiers all over the place. They were running and crawling and obviously playing war. So the Japanese were running a drill. We just ignored what was going on and walked right through them to get to our shack. When we were in the process of hanging up our coats, when a jet, we were in the process of hanging up our coats, when a Japanese officer burst in on us and he was mad, mad, mad.

• 1:39:35Jocko Willink?

  So, he gets in trouble. The, the Japanese officer that's all mad lines up everyone in the little shack. And he has his saber in his left hand and he started punching each guy in the face. And that's what, that's what he does. And he ends up, they end up getting in trouble. Because they got punched, I guess. They got in trouble because they got punched. And finally, that he's going to be questioned. And he's in this, going to get questioned in this guardhouse, which is sort of like where they do solitary confinement. In this, in this guardhouse. The prison within the prison. So the, so, James is about to get

• 1:40:17Jocko Willink?

  interrogated. Back to the book. He asked me if I thought that the Japanese officer at the factory had a right to hit us the way he did. I hesitated for a second, like I was pondering the question, then answered, "Well, I am not sure." Just as soon as these words came out of my mouth, I knew that I had answered wrong. But nothing happened. And I was questioned a bit further until the same question came up again. Did I think that the Japanese officer at the factory had the right to hit us the way he did? For a second, I was in a quandary. Should I just say, "Yes, sir?" Or should I repeat my first answer? I decided maybe being consistent was the way to go. So I repeated my original answer and that was a mistake. Almost instantly, I was hit on the right side of my jaw with a closed fist,

• 1:41:00Jocko Willink?

  not by the officer, but by the interpreter. From that point on, he decided to slap me in the face as hard as he could. I think he really hurt his fist when he hurt me the first time, which is why he changed to the slap. All the while, you were being beaten, you were being made to stand at attention. With this kind of beating, you don't give them the satisfaction of knowing you, letting them know you are hurt. You just don't let yourself fall down and moan. All I could think about was, "You little son of a bitch, if I could just get you alone under different circumstances, I would tear you apart."

• 1:41:40Jocko Willink?

  After the beating stopped, I was thrown into the guardhouse with the rest of the guys. The inside of my mouth was badly cut and I swallowed blood for several days. My face was swollen and I had black eyes. I stayed in the guardhouse for about three weeks. Conditions in the guardhouse were unbelievably cruel and I hope I can explain exactly what it was like. It was built similar to our barracks, except it had cells instead of separate sleeping quarters. There was a central hall with cells on either side. Each cell was about eight feet wide and probably 12 feet long, with a very narrow slit trench for a latrine in the back corner.

• 1:42:21Jocko Willink?

  The floor was concrete and that was it. No bed, blanket, chair, or anything else.

• 1:42:29Jocko Willink?

  The guard, the guardhouse was solitary confinement at its worst. I found the hardest thing to take was the boredom. You've heard the song "Time goes by so slowly"? Well, it certainly applied then. Standing in one place, even if not at attention, can be a killer. I used to watch a spot of light that came in through the crack on the boarded window and it almost drove me mad. I tried to ignore it, but I couldn't.

• 1:42:58Jocko Willink?

  It would be made to get up. I would be made to get up in the morning at 5 o'clock and several hours later, when there was sufficient light, the spot would appear. It first showed up on one side of my cell and then moved so terribly slowly across the other side until it finally disappeared. After it was gone, I knew I still had several hours to go before I would get rest. It was agony to watch and it was the same thing day after day after day.

• 1:43:29Jocko Willink?

  And then eventually, we were probably released when we were without the usual trial and sentencing because the Russians invaded Manchuria.

• 1:43:40Jocko Willink?

  And here we go. At this point, I would like to refer you to a diary that I started on August 15th, 1945, and continued until September 2nd, 1945. It tells the story as it was happening, which is much better than my trying to recall events 50 years later. The diary is short, but I think it's worth including here. So, basically, we, we end up with him getting released and he starts tracking what's happening because he can. There were some Americans that were brought into the situation and he starts keeping a little journal, as he said, and I'm just gonna read a little bit, a little bit from the journal.

• 1:44:24Jocko Willink?

  Americans working at the Japanese garage brought in news that about the same time that the war was definitely over. They said that a nip told them that Japan had surrendered at 9:30 o'clock on the 15th of August. These men were willing to bet anything on this dope. Yes, optimism reigned supreme and I had never seen excitement such as this before. But such a heart-rendering drop came a little while later when word was passed around that these six new men had been placed under lock and key in the guardhouse. Yes, morale rating was now zero minus. Now we'll go August 17th. This morning, we found out who these new men are.

• 1:45:07Jocko Willink?

  They are American volunteers who were flown over from China to take over this prison camp and to see that the Japanese did not mistreat us. Also, set up communications between here and our American forces. The story of their undertaking is very thrilling and these men deserve a word of praise and credit for their brave deed.

• 1:45:28Jocko Willink?

  And then this happens, the American Assembly call was blown about 8 o'clock and we formed outside where General Parker, the senior American official, made a speech. Before he would cut us in on the real dope, he told us that we must be calm and maintain a hold on ourselves. He emphatically stressed that there were to be no demonstrations. He proceeded to tell us of the armistice between America, England, the Netherlands, and Japan, which brought about a roaring cheer from the prisoners. But he warned us that we were still prisoners and that Japan and Russia were still at war. This little speech brought happiness to everyone, even though we knew what he was going to say before he started.

• 1:46:12Jocko Willink?

  This was the news that we had been waiting to hear for three and a half years and it was now official. Man, three and a half years. So I just buzzed through this in an hour and 47 minutes right now. And this is three and a half years. You gotta get the book and then you gotta think about even more than what you read about in the book. We were still under Japanese guard, but the administrative administration of the camp was taken over by Americans. We really, we really chowed like we should have now that we had the keys to the storeroom. So boom, let's go. There's, there's, they start seeing Russian pursuit planes over the camp.

• 1:46:56Jocko Willink?

  Sunday, the 19th, held church services to get today in Thanksgiving for our wars ending. More Russian planes overhead today. The men really got a thrill out of seeing friendly planes again. They're all anxious to see the American Air Force and its large bombers that they have heard so much about. Monday, August 20th, we were told today that the Russians would be in camp. Saw our first B-24 bomber today at around 4:30. The prisoners really went wild with joy. It circled over the camp three, two or three times and dropped leaflets telling us about the war being over. And for us to remain where we were until help arrived. These leaflets were late. They should have been dropped before the parachutists came in and that's the, the rumor mill.

• 1:47:41Jocko Willink?

  The guys that had come in earlier. The Russians came in at about 7 o'clock. And did they cause great excitement? There was a general and five or six officers. The general called us together and gave us a speech. An American prisoner acted as an interpreter. The general said that from this day on, we were free and no longer under the hand of the Japanese. The crowd went wild with joy. Cheer after cheer rang through the air. He told us how in the last 10 days, they had covered 1,000 kilometers of mountain streams in wilderness. More cheering from the crowd. He told us that he was in Berlin when Germany surrendered and met officers of the US 8th Army.

• 1:48:20Jocko Willink?

  He said that he would, he told them that he would soon be leaving to fight Japan and that he would set us free.

• 1:48:29Jocko Willink?

  Also had a ceremony of the surrender of the Japanese guards and the turning over of their sabers and arms to the American guards. It was quite an interesting and strange spectacle. What made it appear strange was that it was performed in the light of the moon. The Russian general presented General Parker with a Japanese revolver. The ceremony was completed by the Russian general, having the American guards parade the Japanese before the prisoners and off the parade ground.

• 1:49:02Jocko Willink?

  Man, the restraint is, is, is insane. I mean, I can't, I, it's hard for me. I'm, I've considered myself to be a pretty, you know, emotionally controlled person. And I think if I was in that prison for three and a half years and the war ended and the Japanese that had tortured and beat and starved, we might have a little something to talk about. I might have a little something for those guys, a little bit more than just marching them around the camp. But you know what that shows you? It shows you that that's the, that's how professional the American soldier is, man. It's, it's, it's amazing. It's amazing. We got this from, from Unit 731, those books as well.

• 1:49:45Jocko Willink?

  The people that were being tortured, they got turned over by the Russians and said, do what you want with them. And, and the, the determination was, we're gonna treat them humanely.

• 1:49:57Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, back to the diary. September 2nd, we have been moving, we have, we've been having moving pictures, means movies, for at least two nights. And I've never enjoyed anything so much before in all of my life. Being in prison camp for so long almost made me forget what was going on back in America. I am just beginning to realize now what I have missed. If I would have seen a movie two years ago, I'm afraid I would have tried to escape at any cost. If I would have realized what I was really missing, this long time in prison camp would have been much harder to bear. More sick left by plane today. Our new Colonel told us that we would probably be out of here, out here for at least another month.

• 1:50:42Jocko Willink?

  What's a measly month more after having been here for so long? In fact, it is good to know that we will be leaving for home in only a month's time.

• 1:50:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, when you kind of consider in his mind, it's either, it went from never

• 1:51:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:04Speaker 01

  to one month. So it's like, oh, alright, I could do that month.

• 1:51:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's also interesting how he, he got detached from what the world had and he actually found that beneficial. And I've talked about that, well, the first interview I did with Tim Ferriss, I talked about how I kind of detached from,

• 1:51:22Jocko Willink?

  from what's going on, you know, from like pictures of my kids and didn't hang them up because I didn't want to be thinking about that. Because I'm there to do the job. You can see that he's saying, he would have gone crazy and tried to escape if he'd known what he was missing.

• 1:51:35Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, when we finally got to see what the Japanese had on their side of the prison camp, we were astonished and mad. They had a room full of mail and packages from the states that they never delivered, plus a large quantity of Red Cross packages. We speculated that the Japanese were living off our Red Cross packages when food became scarce, food that was meant for us.

• 1:52:01Jocko Willink?

  By now, since we were all free to leave prison camp and wander, everyone was looking for a Japanese saber to take home as a souvenir from the war. It would show that at long last, in the end, we were the winners and they were vanquished.

• 1:52:21Jocko Willink?

  Eventually, and again, get the book, that he's leaving Mukden. I was on the last truck out, and as we pulled away, I saw the Russians come out of the front gate with the Japanese and walk on the outside of the brick wall toward the back of the camp. My impression was that they were going to line the Japanese up against a back brick wall and shoot them.

• 1:52:46Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:52:48Jocko Willink?

  I'm supporting the Russians in this one, I think.

• 1:52:55Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, they're, they end up in the, in the port in, in China, where they're gonna get their ride home on a ship. There was an American transport waiting for us at the dock, but when the ship captain saw all of us armed with rifles and sabers, he would not let us on the ship unless we gave up our weapons. We said, "No way, captain, these are ours and we're not going to part with them." He then said that he would safely store them for us and they would be returned when we docked. Our reply was an emphatic, "No." By now, we were looking for a place to sack out because we were not going to board that ship without our arms. Well, after a lengthy delay, the captain relented and we were finally allowed on the ship with our sabers clanking at our sides. They, he talks about, they go,

• 1:53:39Jocko Willink?

  they go through great efforts to get these Japanese sabers.

• 1:53:44Jocko Willink?

  Once on the ship, we were given a cursory medical check, de-loused and given clean clothes, I believe, before being taken to our living quarters. Our dispute with the captain of the ship wasn't over now and everyone could relax in clean quarters on a very comfortable bed. This was the first real mattress that I'd slept on since leaving the SS Coolidge almost four years ago.

• 1:54:05Jocko Willink?

  It felt great and the food provided was also very good. Now our minds and bodies were truly at ease. No mattress for, you know when you gotta like sleep in the airport or whatever? And you complain about it?

• 1:54:21Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:54:22Jocko Willink?

  That's a carpet. That's actually a pretty good deal and you've got a sweatshirt that you've wrapped up in and you put a little something under your head.

• 1:54:28Speaker 01

  A bathroom too, by the way.

• 1:54:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's a nice bathroom, right? There's not lice digging into your skin or fleas eating at your

• 1:54:37Jocko Willink?

  four years, four years on the dirt.

• 1:54:44Jocko Willink?

  Um, so now they get to, they sail from there to Okinawa. Once they're in Okinawa, they're doing a little bit of port time in Okinawa, getting some supplies. We're soon told that a strong typhoon was headed our way and the safest place for us was in the open water instead of the shallow bay. Before long, the island of Okinawa disappeared in the distance and night wasn't long in coming. So there's a big typhoon coming. They take, they get back on board this ship. They head out to sea. I must have fallen asleep eventually because about four o'clock in the morning, I was awakened when the ship was rocked by a tremendous explosion. I could not imagine what it was because it was a lot worse by far than an exploding depth charge.

• 1:55:25Jocko Willink?

  Before I got completely dressed, I could hear sailors working their way down toward us, shouting, everyone topside, everybody topside. And prepare to abandon ship.

• 1:55:37Jocko Willink?

  Everybody topside, hurry, hurry, hurry. And he goes through some of the details. We had hit a mine. Which tore a hole in the side of our ship and flooded the engine room and in turn knocked out our power. There was a possibility that this ship might sink, which is why we were all ordered topside and given life preservers. We had all, we had to be ready to abandon ship if needed. Even if we abandoned ship, I doubt many of us would have survived. It was still dark and on top of that, there was no possible way to lower the lifeboats. With the ship lurching back and forth as it was. Once on deck, we had to tie ourselves to something to keep from getting thrown off. At least that is what I did. I found a place where I could sit down and also tie myself with the straps of my life preserver.

• 1:56:23Jocko Willink?

  By now, everyone was wet from the driving rain and the wind whistled and howled. I thought to myself, is our misery ever going to end?

• 1:56:34Jocko Willink?

  When daylight came, I sort of wished it hadn't. What I saw was enough to scare a person to death. We were adrift in violent seas with 50-foot waves. You had to look almost straight up to see their crests when they came rolling toward you. They were much higher than the ship, especially when the ship was in a trough.

• 1:56:55Jocko Willink?

  So, they had hit this mine. Yeah. The engine room was flooded. They're still 200 miles from Okinawa. So, this is...

• 1:57:09Jocko Willink?

  The captain, the captain comes on as like confident, like, "Don't worry, we're only 200 miles from Okinawa." And he says, um, to himself, "Hey, I can't swim 200 miles. I don't know about you, Captain."

• 1:57:21Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Besides severely damaging the ship, the exploding mine was responsible for the deaths of about 10 ex-prisoners and several sailors that were in the engine room. The ex-prisoners were on the deck when the mine went off. The explosion slung landing ladders that were hanging on the side of the ship up and over the railing like lethal whips. These men were apparently killed instantly. These were the same ladders that we had used to board the ship just a few days earlier. I felt depressed and I'm sure that the other men felt the same. These were men who were on their way home after their terribly long and hard ordeal, and now they were dead.

• 1:58:02Jocko Willink?

  To get this far and still not make it was unbelievable. The Japs finally got them after all with their floating mine.

• 1:58:12Jocko Willink?

  I couldn't help but think of the poor parents and families back home. They had been notified that their son or husband or brother was on his way home. And you can imagine the joy that they felt. Now they had to be notified that they had been killed

• 1:58:28Jocko Willink?

  on the way home.

• 1:58:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. They eventually go from Okinawa to Manila and then from Manila. They're waiting for a ship to go back to the States. One day I finally saw my name on a list pinned to a bulletin board as I was leaving. As one leaving by ship for the States on such and such a date. Before long and he gets on the ship, before long the last of the tropical islands disappeared in the distance. We were now well out in the open ocean. There was nothing to do but eat, sleep and read and this would go on for several weeks. My body tingled in the dark when I thought about what the future might bring. Sitting out on the deck with a cool breeze blowing and the ship gently rocking.

• 1:59:14Jocko Willink?

  Made me feel a little guilty for having it so good.

• 1:59:22Jocko Willink?

  Goes on.

• 1:59:25Jocko Willink?

  They sail.

• 1:59:28Jocko Willink?

  One day we spotted land and before long we were going under the Golden Gate Bridge and into San Francisco Bay. We eventually docked at the same pier where we had taken off almost four years earlier. At the dock, many soldiers were met by their families and you could see the joy in their faces as they tightly embraced each other. They had been to war and survived.

• 1:59:52Jocko Willink?

  Now they check into a hospital. One of the first things that the doctor said when he saw me was you have hepatitis.

• 2:00:00Jocko Willink?

  Uh, we were fed four large meals a day. Between meals, nurses brought around ice cream, candy and cookies for anyone that was still hungry. They were obviously trying to fatten us up before we went home. Finally, he gets on a hospital train car. He heads for San Antonio, Texas. And then from there, he was finally given a pass to go home.

• 2:00:21Jocko Willink?

  And he's with a friend of his. Before we got to Lafayette, I talked my friend into staying overnight in Crowley so we could clean up and be rested for our trip home the next day. We spent the night at the Rice Hotel.

• 2:00:35Jocko Willink?

  Next morning I decided to get a haircut, so I went to a barber shop nearby. The barber started talking about the boys that had left to go to war, some of whom had been killed.

• 2:00:47Jocko Willink?

  He then talked about, about a family that lived near Moata that had two sons killed and another missing in action. He said that the one missing in action later turned out to be a prisoner of war of the Japanese. "I was shocked beyond belief, belief, and I know I turned pale because I was positive he was talking about me and my brothers even though he did not give names." This news came as a complete surprise, but I had begun to suspect something before now. In a letter or two that I sent home, I inquired about Andrew and Steven, but never got any

• 2:01:32Jocko Willink?

  information concerning them when I received mail in return. I thought maybe they had overlooked my questions, or at worst, or at worst, maybe they had been wounded in the war. I knew that Steven was in the service, but not Andrew. You can imagine my grief when I found out they had both been killed. Before long, I decided to call my sister Eunice to see if she could come and get me, and of course, she was overjoyed to hear my voice. She said that she would be over as soon as she could. Before long, she arrived, and some of her first words that she said were, "Pat, I'm afraid I have some bad news for you."

• 2:02:16Jocko Willink?

  Pat was a nickname that my family calls me. I knew what she was about to say, so I stopped her and said, "I already know about my brothers." I finally got to the farm. My mother met me at the front gate. She was crying, which I expected, and started to tell me about Andrew and Steven. I told her I knew everything, and everything would be alright, but she kept crying. We hugged each other for a while, and finally, I was able to shake hands with my father.

• 2:02:54Jocko Willink?

  He said one word, "Pat," and I said one, "Papa," and that was it. He was never much for talking, but I knew that he was glad to see me back.

• 2:03:16Jocko Willink?

  So after all that, he comes home and finds out that both of his brothers had been killed.

• 2:03:24Jocko Willink?

  His father says, "Hey, if you want to stay here and work at the farm and hang out, that's fine." And he tells his dad, "No, he's gonna go to college and finish his degree," and the G.I. bill covers his cost of his college.

• 2:03:42Jocko Willink?

  And he says, "There's not a great deal to do while home on leave. I walked in the woods a lot and visited our old swimming hole at the big cypress tree. I thought of the fun we used to have, and especially the mud fights that were so exciting.

• 2:04:00Jocko Willink?

  We were all grown up now, that is, the ones who were still alive.

• 2:04:06Jocko Willink?

  Such a change in five and one-half years.

• 2:04:13Jocko Willink?

  I was given my discharge on February 17, 1946. I'd been in the service for five and one-half years, and those are years I shall never forget. When I was in the service, I always felt so very young, because everyone else was older than me. Returning to college, I felt just the opposite. I felt so much older than most of my students, and of course, I was.

• 2:04:42Jocko Willink?

  One thing I never talked about while in college was my experience in the service. I would tell new friends that I was a veteran and had served overseas, but that was it. I was still abiding by the military's request not to tell about your POW experience to anyone. I may not have had trouble keeping my POW experiences to myself after my return, but one aspect of the experiences I did have trouble with, and that was my dreams at night.

• 2:05:14Jocko Willink?

  Almost every night, when I fell asleep, I found myself back in prison camp, and I would think to myself in my dream, "How did this happen?" I was sure I had been freed.

• 2:05:28Jocko Willink?

  It was heartbreaking to find that I was still a prisoner. It was just the reverse of what I had experienced in prison camp, when I always dreamed I was free.

• 2:05:41Jocko Willink?

  When I woke up during the war, I found I was still a prisoner.

• 2:05:46Jocko Willink?

  But at least when I woke up as a civilian, I found that I was free.

• 2:05:53Jocko Willink?

  As good as this felt, it was still very disturbing mentally because these dreams lasted for about ten years.

• 2:06:03Jocko Willink?

  For the first few years, I hated to go to sleep.

• 2:06:07Jocko Willink?

  But luckily, the dreams became less frequent.

• 2:06:12Jocko Willink?

  Even now, they are not completely gone.

• 2:06:18Jocko Willink?

  This dream tells me that in the recesses of my mind, I am still haunted by my participation and experiences during the Baton Death March.

• 2:06:30Jocko Willink?

  It is something that I will undoubtedly be there always.

• 2:06:37Jocko Willink?

  But even though I may not be able to control my dreams,

• 2:06:43Jocko Willink?

  I long ago learned to live with my life,

• 2:06:47Jocko Willink?

  as though none of this had ever happened.

• 2:06:52Jocko Willink?

  The dream that keeps coming back most often is one in which I find myself across a large body of water.

• 2:07:02Jocko Willink?

  I know that I must walk for miles and miles to return to where I want to be.

• 2:07:10Jocko Willink?

  In my mind, I know I have made this long, long walk before, and I know how difficult and time-consuming it will be.

• 2:07:22Jocko Willink?

  In my dream, I feel completely dejected because I wonder what could have happened to get me back to this place again.

• 2:07:35Jocko Willink?

  But in my dream,

• 2:07:40Jocko Willink?

  I start walking. I start walking.

• 2:07:50Jocko Willink?

  And I think that that right there, well, it wraps up the book and I think that is a a very powerful message for everyone.

• 2:08:04Jocko Willink?

  For everyone, no matter what you face.

• 2:08:10Jocko Willink?

  No matter how bad it is going to be. When there is a challenge.

• 2:08:20Jocko Willink?

  And by a challenge, I mean anything in life, any, any challenge. Anything that you're facing, the only way to overcome the challenges that you face

• 2:08:34Jocko Willink?

  is to start walking.

• 2:08:39Jocko Willink?

  Take that step.

• 2:08:44Jocko Willink?

  That is what James Bollich did.

• 2:08:52Jocko Willink?

  And the Baton Death March, it was absolutely ruled a war, war crime after the war.

• 2:09:01Jocko Willink?

  And the Japanese Lieutenant General, Homa Masaharu, who oversaw the march and oversaw the atrocities that took place during the march. He was put on trial. And he was found guilty of war crimes and he was executed April 3rd, 1946, just outside of Manila.

• 2:09:29Jocko Willink?

  But James Bollich lived.

• 2:09:33Jocko Willink?

  He survived the death march, he survived three and a half years in absolutely wretched conditions and

• 2:09:43Jocko Willink?

  James Bollich survives today.

• 2:09:47Jocko Willink?

  He's still alive and he lives in Louisiana, still. And as a matter of fact, on the 25th of May of this year, 2018, James Bollich was awarded the Congressional Gold Medal.

• 2:10:06Jocko Willink?

  The highest civilian award for the accomplishments that he achieved in his life and that he has achieved in his life. He's a retired geologist. He's written 11 books, including the one that I read from today, A Soldier's Journal. And actually, the copy that I got, which I got um, from a used bookstore. He's got a note, he's signed it. And his signature has a note and the note says,

• 2:10:39Jocko Willink?

  simply, "Respect the flag."

• 2:10:44Jocko Willink?

  Respect the flag.

• 2:10:48Jocko Willink?

  And I definitely recommend you pick up a copy of the book and I also recommend

• 2:10:57Jocko Willink?

  that you take his advice every day. No matter what you are facing. Get up

• 2:11:08Jocko Willink?

  and start walking.

• 2:11:12Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's all I've got for tonight. So, Echo Charles, I guess at this point.

• 2:11:22Jocko Willink?

  Maybe since we're talking about walking, you could, you know, tell us how to walk. Maybe not walk down the path a little bit.

• 2:11:29Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:11:29Jocko Willink?

  A little bit of an easier walk.

• 2:11:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, a little bit. That, um, there was another, actually a few other books where, where this was like that, where every, every situation he kind of goes through, you just get more and more exhausted, like you're exhausted. Cause you kind of think like, okay, it'll start to let up.

• 2:11:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:11:48Speaker 01

  You know, and then.

• 2:11:49Jocko Willink?

  It's cra- it's madness. It's madness.

• 2:11:53Speaker 01

  And then the storm and the.

• 2:11:54Jocko Willink?

  If you put this like, if it's, if you put this into a movie, you wouldn't believe it.

• 2:11:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:11:58Jocko Willink?

  You'd say, I don't know, oh, they're really gonna have a storm, oh, they're gonna hit a mine, come on.

• 2:12:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:12:02Jocko Willink?

  Like, I'm not buying that.

• 2:12:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:12:03Jocko Willink?

  No, it's true.

• 2:12:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, it literally does, it sound like something like someone would try to put in a movie to make it seem like, oh, his journey was so hard. Yeah, a real one, by the way.

• 2:12:14Speaker 01

  And you kind of feel when he starts talking about like, for some reason, I don't know, maybe it's because I'm kind of hungry right now, but when he's talking, Starred Man, I was feeling the star. And then when he, when he'd be like, yeah, when they switched.

• 2:12:26Jocko Willink?

  So, we're talking about a man that was, lost seventy-five pounds of body weight.

• 2:12:34Speaker 01

  Who was small to begin with, by the way.

• 2:12:36Jocko Willink?

  He wasn't eating and you haven't eaten in four hours and you're, you're throwing that out there.

• 2:12:41Speaker 01

  I'm not comparing, bro, I'm saying.

• 2:12:43Jocko Willink?

  You compared, actually you did.

• 2:12:45Speaker 01

  I'm not comparing, I'm saying, I kind of felt, I felt his, his situation. And I, and I, alright, that sounded bad.

• 2:12:51Jocko Willink?

  You might want to edit yourself out on that one.

• 2:12:53Speaker 01

  That sounded bad, hey, I dig it.

• 2:12:54Jocko Willink?

  I will say this, I will say this, you know what I'm looking forward to? Tonight is, I'm gonna go, first of all, I've been traveling, I am tired.

• 2:13:01Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:13:02Jocko Willink?

  And tonight, I'm gonna go enjoy my mattress and my bed.

• 2:13:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:07Jocko Willink?

  And I'm gonna think about that when I'm crawling, I got a, I got a pretty nice bed. It's nothing crazy, but it's nice.

• 2:13:13Speaker 01

  Better than the floor.

• 2:13:14Jocko Willink?

  You know what a California king is?

• 2:13:15Speaker 01

  I do, yes.

• 2:13:16Jocko Willink?

  That's the biggest bed you can get.

• 2:13:17Speaker 01

  It's the longest, yeah. Eastern King is wider.

• 2:13:20Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 2:13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, me and, my wife spent a lot of time trying to determine.

• 2:13:24Jocko Willink?

  Well, I've got the California king. And I'm gonna get in that thing tonight.

• 2:13:30Speaker 01

  You're already in that.

• 2:13:31Jocko Willink?

  With the nice bedspread on it.

• 2:13:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, so you felt you were feeling this pain a little bit extra too then? When he was talking about like the floor and all this stuff and then he finally got on that mattress that he hadn't been, you know, no mattresses for years.

• 2:13:44Jocko Willink?

  I think if you compare, if you compare anything that he, literally anything in that book, anything that he's talking about, you can just say, I have it good. I don't care who you are. I got it so good, I'm just in living in the lap of complete luxury.

• 2:13:59Speaker 01

  You, you have, you know the part when they're like, oh yeah, and then they'd feed us cookies and candy bars or whatever. When you're saying that, I was thinking tonight, if I want to, and I'm considering it too still, right now by the way, I can go to the store on the way home, by the way, and just pick up as many candy bars as I want right now.

• 2:14:17Jocko Willink?

  Just candy bars, steaks, ice cream.

• 2:14:19Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:14:20Jocko Willink?

  Just, you can pretty much, any possible thing you could possibly imagine, you can get it within three, within seven minutes of departing from this, this podcast.

• 2:14:30Speaker 01

  This place right now, on your way to your California king bed, by the way.

• 2:14:33Jocko Willink?

  California king bed.

• 2:14:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, and the sheets and you have the strength to put your blankets over yourself. That's cool too.

• 2:14:39Jocko Willink?

  It's nice to be able to pull your blankets over yourself because you're not so malnutritioned.

• 2:14:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, and when they, and when the blankets are on you, that's, that's kinda nice.

• 2:14:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it doesn't cause you pain.

• 2:14:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it doesn't like suffocate because you're gonna break your ribs or something like that. Yeah, bro, big time. And let me, and yeah, but you were feeling it though, I think.

• 2:14:57Jocko Willink?

  Oh, definitely.

• 2:14:57Speaker 01

  Okay, let me, okay, for the, for the people out there.

• 2:14:59Jocko Willink?

  Definitely feeling it.

• 2:15:01Speaker 01

  Okay, here's Jaco today, by the way. I, I witnessed his whole journey, well, more or less his whole journey because I, I follow him on Instagram. So, what, 3:50 recorded wake up. So you probably woke up at, at the very latest 3:45. Okay, so 3:45 wake up.

• 2:15:19Jocko Willink?

  I had to, I was in Denver and then, yeah, so I had to catch an early flight. Well, I wasn't, I actually wasn't in Denver. I was in Boulder. So I had to get a car from Boulder to Denver.

• 2:15:30Speaker 01

  One hour, that's one hour ahead?

• 2:15:32Jocko Willink?

  I, I put one, yeah, it's one hour ahead.

• 2:15:33Speaker 01

  Okay, so 2:50, uh, wake up.

• 2:15:35Jocko Willink?

  I didn't think about that. You gave me a little extra credit.

• 2:15:38Speaker 01

  You were taking away credit. Nonetheless, 2:50 wake up, travel. Which, like I said earlier, did trick you. Okay, so travel from Colorado to San Diego. To me, that's the day already. My day is done. You know, my work is done. The space that I gotta recover from that, that's me. Okay, you come home, you do what? A workout. Oh, on your way, help me prep.

• 2:16:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, I finished prep podcast and then when I got home, the first thing I did when I got home was finish the prep of the podcast. I had about another hour to do.

• 2:16:11Speaker 01

  Okay, then you shift mentally to a workout.

• 2:16:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:14Speaker 01

  Okay, so, so here's the thing, where, you know, a workout, cool, workout. I've worked out after, bro, when I worked at the, at the nightclubs, I'd work out after a whole day and at like three in the morning. And I trained jiu-jitsu before work, you know, so here's the thing, though. You make that mental shift where you're like, okay, you wake up at 2:50 a.m., you travel. To me, mentally traveling just, just kind of finishes me. You know, I gotta kind of recover, you know, unless I have something lingering or something like that. Okay, there's that. Then you, still working by the way, shift into workout mode. Still in the morning, by the way. Okay, so workout mode, you get your workout done, which is, we don't have to go into the details of, but it's a mini condish, it's a conditioning circuit.

• 2:16:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it pretty much took me, I don't know.

• 2:17:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:00Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, I got a good, solid little workout.

• 2:17:03Speaker 01

  If, if, personally, anyway, I'm speaking for myself, if I'm gonna skip a workout on a day where I don't feel like it is gonna be one of those workouts. One of those ones that you're doing like, you know, burpees and this, like the hard, the junk ones.

• 2:17:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:17:16Speaker 01

  They're painful. Anyway.

• 2:17:17Jocko Willink?

  The one that gives you a little bit of the get some.

• 2:17:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then some little get some, exactly, right. And then you go to jiu-jitsu.

• 2:17:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:24Speaker 01

  Do a bunch of rounds.

• 2:17:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:26Speaker 01

  A bunch of rounds, oh, well, over an hour of straight rolling.

• 2:17:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:17:29Speaker 01

  Or, I mean, you know, you have breaks between rounds.

• 2:17:32Jocko Willink?

  Between rounds.

• 2:17:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:33Jocko Willink?

  But it was an hour, it was about an hour and fifteen minutes.

• 2:17:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, okay, so that's a big deal. That's way, that's like maybe two or three times the amount of, we'll say, quote unquote, normal rolling, depending on who you are. Okay, and with like Andy, I saw Taylor here.

• 2:17:46Jocko Willink?

  And Ian Taylor.

• 2:17:47Speaker 01

  Oh, okay, so, all right, so it's not like you're going with some guy, good, maybe you'll catch a new girl or something like that. No. Okay, okay, here we go. Still on Jaco's schedule, by the way. Okay, and then now you gotta, now you gotta do a podcast. Okay, so. Guy, I'm trying to imagine your state of being in your mind, and then when he said. The part, actually, there's a bunch of parts when he's talking about on the ship and, you know, the breeze and the, basically the rest parts, I think you were feeling that.

• 2:18:16Jocko Willink?

  What do you mean I was feeling it?

• 2:18:17Speaker 01

  Cause you had that state, you have that state of like, you, you put in a lot of work and now you, you know, you're kinda on the backside to the recovery portion of the day.

• 2:18:25Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 2:18:25Speaker 01

  So I think that part resonated with you, is what I think.

• 2:18:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I guess so.

• 2:18:29Speaker 01

  Alright, well, there it is, boom. See? I know, long explanation, but still, just saying.

• 2:18:34Jocko Willink?

  I guess so, but you gotta remember that even like, like you just described my day, but there's people out there that did five times more than what I did today.

• 2:18:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:41Jocko Willink?

  There's, there's a, there's people everywhere that are getting after it super.

• 2:18:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:46Jocko Willink?

  More than me.

• 2:18:47Speaker 01

  Some people every single day, you know, day. Yeah, no, it's true. It's absolutely true. And it, it does. Bro, this and there's a lot of books like this, man, where the.

• 2:18:56Jocko Willink?

  You know what kinda got me fired up? Was Dan Bat.

• 2:19:00Speaker 01

  Dan Bat's here?

• 2:19:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:02Jocko Willink?

  And he.

• 2:19:02Speaker 01

  And the fam.

• 2:19:03Jocko Willink?

  It's funny, yeah, and the, and his, and his wife. And so, Dan Bat's a guy that's been like kinda in the game for, since day one.

• 2:19:11Speaker 01

  In the game, yeah.

• 2:19:12Jocko Willink?

  And, and so, I knew him from social media. And as soon as I saw him, he's like, hey, I'm, and I was like, oh, hey, what's up, man?

• 2:19:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:19:19Jocko Willink?

  We were old school. And, but then, you know, him and his brother, and, and, you know, Dan was in the Marine Corps, and now he's a, he's a government official still. He's still a, a, a, carries a gun for a living, right? And, and I was, you know, he was all just like, he's like, oh, you gonna record right now? And I was like, yeah. And he was pumped. And I was like, yeah.

• 2:19:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's good.

• 2:19:46Jocko Willink?

  That gets me, uh, I'm stoked when people are stoked. He goes, he goes, what? He goes, are you covering a book? Can you tell me? And I was like, yeah, I'm covering a soldier's journal. I go, it's awesome. I go, it's about a guy on the Baton Death March. He goes, I can't wait till Wednesday. And I was like, I'm gonna go in there and crush this thing. Yeah. So, yeah. Dan Bat, thanks for coming up and, uh, thanks for swinging by. The gym.

• 2:20:05Speaker 01

  Big time.

• 2:20:05Jocko Willink?

  He didn't come and get me to roll, though, unfortunately.

• 2:20:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, oh, wait, yeah, cause he was on the, on the.

• 2:20:10Jocko Willink?

  He was doing, he was doing no gi, I was doing the gi.

• 2:20:14Speaker 01

  The gi.

• 2:20:15Jocko Willink?

  The gi.

• 2:20:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's yeah, interesting, but is that, I mean, I know, we know and you know. So as like, okay, I'm Dan Bat, I'm coming in, I see Jaco for the first time, he's over there rolling with Andy and Taylor, by the way. And I'm over here doing no gi, a little bit early in in the jujitsu career, you know? Jaco's over there training hardcore. Do I walk over there and try to roll with Jaco? That's the question.

• 2:20:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, some people do, some people don't.

• 2:20:39Speaker 01

  Oh, bro, it's like, yeah, if I were to ask you that, you'd be like, yeah, come roll.

• 2:20:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:20:42Speaker 01

  But, like I said, if I'm Dan Bat, it's my first time at victory, I see you over there, do I do that?

• 2:20:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, maybe I overestimated the, I feel like I know him pretty well.

• 2:20:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, you do.

• 2:20:54Jocko Willink?

  And he probably feels, he probably feels like he knows us real well.

• 2:20:58Speaker 01

  Would be, he came up, he was like, my, my other friend Anthony, he was like, oh, yeah, that guy, he's, he's one from Buffalo. Jujitsu and all this stuff, his name is Dan, I was like, oh, yeah, cool, Dan, I meet him, I'll take, hey, Dan, because I didn't draw, I didn't make the connection that it's Dan Bat. Just say it's Dan Bat, because we all know, we've known Dan Bat from, from the beginning. Because for whatever, maybe, I'm not looking at his pictures close enough, or whatever, but, um, yeah, when you were like, yeah, Dan Bat, I was like, oh, this is Dan Bat, ah, and then I'm like cruising with him, you know?

• 2:21:24Jocko Willink?

  Then you're on the game, check.

• 2:21:26Speaker 01

  Anyway, Dan Bat is on the path.

• 2:21:29Jocko Willink?

  But.

• 2:21:30Speaker 01

  Still on the path.

• 2:21:31Jocko Willink?

  Way on the path, he's way on the path.

• 2:21:33Speaker 01

  More on the path, big time, and so are we, and we can talk about some stuff to, uh, help support the path and people's path.

• 2:21:41Jocko Willink?

  Support.

• 2:21:42Speaker 01

  You understand, alright, first we're gonna talk about Origin. So Origin, Origin is the company, the company, this is where you get your gi, when you're on jujitsu, okay, we're just, say, jujitsu real quick, so one, you take jujitsu, you need a gi. Because you're doing gi and no gi.

• 2:21:56Jocko Willink?

  Yes, that's a good idea.

• 2:21:58Speaker 01

  No one's gonna be mad at you if you just do gi, or if you just do no gi.

• 2:22:02Jocko Willink?

  Did you say everyone's gonna be mad at you?

• 2:22:04Speaker 01

  No one's gonna be mad at you, but as a strong recommendation, do both.

• 2:22:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:09Speaker 01

  So, when you do both, you're gonna need a gi.

• 2:22:12Speaker 01

  Origin gi, this is why you get an origin gi, no other gi, don't get any more, any other gi, you don't have to.

• 2:22:17Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:22:17Speaker 01

  I have other gis from before origin.

• 2:22:19Jocko Willink?

  You still have them?

• 2:22:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, they're in my laundry room, in fact, I got scolded from my wife. Why are those gis up there? They've been up there for how long?

• 2:22:26Jocko Willink?

  Your wife's in the game. She's like, get rid of them now.

• 2:22:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:30Jocko Willink?

  You're not gonna wear them.

• 2:22:31Speaker 01

  They're not welcome.

• 2:22:32Jocko Willink?

  You're legitimately not gonna wear them.

• 2:22:33Speaker 01

  Legitimately not gonna wear them.

• 2:22:34Jocko Willink?

  So there's no point in having them.

• 2:22:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's true.

• 2:22:36Jocko Willink?

  Goodwill.

• 2:22:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, goodwill, or even, you know, bring it to, I don't know.

• 2:22:40Jocko Willink?

  You know what's good? Bring it to your academy, and then they can use those as loner gis.

• 2:22:44Speaker 01

  Yep, exactly.

• 2:22:45Jocko Willink?

  There you go, that's what the old gis.

• 2:22:47Speaker 01

  So, and rash guards as well.

• 2:22:48Jocko Willink?

  The world needs loner gis too.

• 2:22:49Speaker 01

  That is true.

• 2:22:50Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:22:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, yeah, in the meantime, before people get an origin gi, makes sense.

• 2:22:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:56Speaker 01

  But yeah, all made in America, from the beginnings of the birth of the gi, is there a birth of the gi?

• 2:23:02Jocko Willink?

  Not really, but we'll go with it.

• 2:23:04Speaker 01

  Okay, well, the cotton has grown in America, how about that? That's how early on the made in America situation commences, anyway. All made in America, and by Pete and his team, who know about jujitsu, black belt in jujitsu, in the game of jujitsu from day one. So he knows all about it, make the connection, that's why, that's why they're the best gis.

• 2:23:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:27Speaker 01

  Overall, right there, boom, that's it. They also make rash guards as well, so gi, no gi, boom, gi, rash guard.

• 2:23:33Jocko Willink?

  Rash guards, and you can get all kinds of stuff on there too, t-shirts, um, they may have shorts now, do you have a pair of those shorts yet?

• 2:23:41Speaker 01

  No, I don't.

• 2:23:42Jocko Willink?

  I don't either, but I'm gonna get me some.

• 2:23:44Speaker 01

  You know what, I'm just, I was gonna like, send both of them a text, group text.

• 2:23:50Jocko Willink?

  A group text.

• 2:23:51Speaker 01

  And be like, hey, I'm looking outside the door, you know what I mean, like, oh, I'm getting other mail, no shorts, but, then again, origin, the immersion camp's coming up, I'm sure it's a thing, where the boom, and actually, that makes more sense, less packing there.

• 2:24:03Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:24:04Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying?

• 2:24:04Jocko Willink?

  Well, I'm still not happy about it.

• 2:24:06Speaker 01

  I'm, you know, I'm with you on that one.

• 2:24:08Jocko Willink?

  Not happy about it.

• 2:24:09Speaker 01

  So, yeah, some other stuff than, than just jujitsu stuff.

• 2:24:13Jocko Willink?

  Yes, beyond jujitsu.

• 2:24:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, beyond jujitsu.

• 2:24:15Jocko Willink?

  And, and really, the shorts are starting to get into like, uh, because they're not even, they're not for training, they're just for straight up wearing.

• 2:24:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:23Jocko Willink?

  Just for wearing around, plus there's supplements on there too, uh, we got joint warfare.

• 2:24:31Jocko Willink?

  Which is good for your joints. We got krill oil, which is also good for your joints. Was that the, was that the supplement that pushed you over the edge?

• 2:24:40Speaker 01

  What do you mean over the edge?

• 2:24:41Jocko Willink?

  That got you to start using supplements, krill oil?

• 2:24:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:24:45Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:24:46Speaker 01

  And that was like, what do you call it? It was like a gateway supplement.

• 2:24:49Jocko Willink?

  Gateway supplement.

• 2:24:50Speaker 01

  Actually, you know what? I don't know if that in and of itself was the gateway. So I think you were essentially the influence gateway, uh, entity, if you will.

• 2:24:58Jocko Willink?

  Right, but that was the one where you, when you started taking it and you were like, oh, this actually works. And so I'm gonna continue. And then, then when I was saying, you know what? I got something called joint warfare. And then you're like, I'm gonna start cracking down some of that too. And then you got your arm healed up and now you're a believer.

• 2:25:11Speaker 01

  Well, and the, and the thing about both of those things is, okay, glucosamine chondroitin is in joint warfare, right? It has other, other good stuff and stuff like that, but that was kinda the deal.

• 2:25:20Jocko Willink?

  It has in there, which is actually as big of a deal as the other two things that you just mentioned.

• 2:25:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, as it turns out. I didn't know this at the time. So you're like, yeah, joint warfare, krill oil, all this stuff. And these are things that I heard about before and I was like, cool, but you know, hey man, I don't, I don't need to take supplements. You just, you know, eat right and all this stuff.

• 2:25:36Jocko Willink?

  Maybe we wouldn't have multiple torn muscles if we took more of joint warfare. Anyways, we got that. We got discipline, which is good for, just good for mission, life, mission, getting after it.

• 2:25:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, Brian was explaining to me that it helps you, uh, hey, look, I'm gonna get terminology wrong. But, cause I'm doing this off memory, but it's like adaptogens or something. Basically it helps you manage any stress that comes to you.

• 2:26:04Jocko Willink?

  Look at you.

• 2:26:05Speaker 01

  You see what I'm saying?

• 2:26:05Jocko Willink?

  Adaptogens.

• 2:26:07Speaker 01

  I heard that before, I liked it. Anyway, it helps you manage stress. Um, and that goes for like physical and mental stress. So remember when, when I was telling you, yeah, like last time with Dean or whatever, when I was saying, when I took the three scoops, I felt like I could just deal with stuff better.

• 2:26:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh yeah, that's what it was.

• 2:26:23Speaker 01

  I like my patience was better.

• 2:26:28Speaker 01

  The adapted gins were in the house. And there it is. So Brian totally explained it. So I was like, oh, that makes sense.

• 2:26:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:33Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying? See, that's a little subtle. I think that that's a little subtle thing that, you know how it's like, yeah, I can remember words quicker and like all this stuff. Good, man. Good.

• 2:26:42Jocko Willink?

  You'd rather have the adapted gins for stress. I hear you.

• 2:26:44Speaker 01

  I'm not saying I'd rather or not, but I'm saying that's part that I think anyway, we all might kind of disregard, you know? You know, it's basically the opposite of having, you know, when you're like, what do you call it? When you're irritable? You know that?

• 2:26:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:59Speaker 01

  Okay. So consider when you're irritable. Not, I'm not gonna say you're gonna behave a certain way. Some people do though. When they're irritable, they're shorter, they have shorter temper.

• 2:27:06Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:27:07Speaker 01

  They, you know, when things don't go their way, you know?

• 2:27:09Jocko Willink?

  I, I consider that to be a weakness.

• 2:27:11Speaker 01

  Yes, okay.

• 2:27:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I consider that to be a weakness.

• 2:27:13Speaker 01

  Okay, so consider that.

• 2:27:15Jocko Willink?

  Like when I snap at someone.

• 2:27:16Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:27:17Jocko Willink?

  Which I, which I, I like rarely snap at someone.

• 2:27:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:19Jocko Willink?

  Because I consider, I don't know when I started thinking that way.

• 2:27:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:23Jocko Willink?

  Like, hey, just snapping at someone is just, when, if I snap at you, bro, there's, you did something really jacked up.

• 2:27:30Speaker 01

  Or maybe you're just super duper irritable.

• 2:27:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:34Speaker 01

  In general, I think you're right, though. Yeah.

• 2:27:36Jocko Willink?

  I'm literally sitting here trying to figure out the last time I've felt legitimately. Well, you know what? It'll be something, it'll, you know, you know what bothers me? It bothers me if I'm trying to work and people want to talk to me about stuff. So this is more of a, a home life scenario.

• 2:27:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:53Jocko Willink?

  And normally I schedule my situations that everyone's asleep or I'm separated. But sometimes people want to interact.

• 2:28:02Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:28:03Jocko Willink?

  And, and when I'm doing my work, you know, and, and I have something with, with my wife where, you know, you've seen the movie The Shining, right?

• 2:28:10Speaker 01

  Yes, sir, I have.

• 2:28:11Jocko Willink?

  I'll be, I'll be sitting there and I'll be working. I'm like, when you hear this noise, when you hear that, it means I'm typing. That is my typewriter.

• 2:28:24Jocko Willink?

  And that means I'm trying to work. And if you hear me working, then don't. And she starts laughing. So I throw a little Jack Nicholson.

• 2:28:32Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:28:32Jocko Willink?

  And she realizes that I'm trying to do what I do.

• 2:28:36Speaker 01

  Well, I will say that that's.

• 2:28:37Jocko Willink?

  Podcast prep, write books, whatever.

• 2:28:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, fully you get down and I dig it, but that's not really you snapping though, is it?

• 2:28:45Jocko Willink?

  No, no, no, no, no.

• 2:28:46Speaker 01

  Friendly version of saying, hey.

• 2:28:48Jocko Willink?

  It is my way of, of, let's say, projecting my frustration into a good, positive, humorous thing that releases the tension and gets the message across. Remember earlier today, we were talking about getting the message across without doing collateral damage?

• 2:29:07Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:29:08Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's what I'm talking about.

• 2:29:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:09Jocko Willink?

  So I just throw on a little bit of that. Did you hear this?

• 2:29:14Speaker 01

  Well, they actually, that's good because man, I was talking and I don't want to deviate too much, but.

• 2:29:18Jocko Willink?

  What do you mean? We're talking about a completely different subject. We've deviated so far, there's not even, I don't even know where we came from.

• 2:29:23Speaker 01

  It has to do with getting the message across, right? You can have the greatest info in the world, the most important info in the world, but if you can't get across, right? So it's like, yeah, man, important, super important, potentially. But here's the thing about information and what you say and how you say, it's like all this, it has to land, you know?

• 2:29:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:29:42Speaker 01

  So you can start throwing out info in it, but if it doesn't land, you might as well not have said nothing.

• 2:29:46Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so what just happened with the appended, whatever you were talking about earlier? With the, with the discipline, you were talking about the.

• 2:29:54Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, the adaptogens, okay.

• 2:29:55Jocko Willink?

  Adaptogens.

• 2:29:56Speaker 01

  That's a whole nother thing. We're on a different subject right now. We'll go back to the.

• 2:29:58Jocko Willink?

  How did that land?

• 2:29:59Speaker 01

  I, man, you, you were talking about you being Jack Nicholson.

• 2:30:02Jocko Willink?

  Adaptogens.

• 2:30:03Speaker 01

  And all this stuff. Okay, actually back to the point, back to the point.

• 2:30:06Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:30:06Speaker 01

  So the adaptogens, it's the opposite of being irritable. That's what I felt.

• 2:30:11Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 2:30:11Speaker 01

  And I think when we think about like discipline and you know, good nootropic health, brain health, all this stuff, we think about like remembering words, I mean sharper and quicker, but we don't think about like the opposite of being irritable. Well, I don't know if there's, is there a word for the opposite of irritable? Cause it's not the kind, oh, like it's just, okay, I'm cruising. It's not that feeling. It's more like.

• 2:30:31Jocko Willink?

  The opposite of irritable cruising?

• 2:30:33Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:30:35Jocko Willink?

  All right, speaking of information, why don't you give us some information about milk so we can move on?

• 2:30:39Speaker 01

  Okay, well, take the, don't, don't, don't slip on the discipline. Anyway, okay, okay, Molk, here's Molk.

• 2:30:45Jocko Willink?

  Cause you'll be the opposite of irritable. That's a good tagline. We should use that.

• 2:30:49Speaker 01

  Opposite of irritable. Yeah, man, it works. It works for me. Keep in mind, when you're irritable, that's not a good feeling.

• 2:30:56Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:30:56Speaker 01

  Most of us, if we don't get like enough sleep, or, or sometimes, well, I guess it depends on who you, but some people, when they get hangry, that's what that is. That's all it is. Not a good feeling. If you're opposite of that, it is a good feeling. See what I'm saying?

• 2:31:08Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:31:08Speaker 01

  Just simple math. Anyway, Molk. Okay, Molk. If you want some additional protein, this is a good way to get it.

• 2:31:17Jocko Willink?

  Can you imagine, remember how he was talking about if he's had seen movies while he was in prison camp, he would have tried to break out and go,

• 2:31:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:31:25Jocko Willink?

  If you were in that situation and you had had Molk before you went in, that would be horrible because you'd be thinking about not only like how

• 2:31:36Speaker 01

  Dreaming about Molk.

• 2:31:37Jocko Willink?

  feeling it is and how good it is, how tasty it is. It's like you're stuck there and you can't have it. That happened to me yesterday when I was on my trip.

• 2:31:45Speaker 01

  Oh dang, you didn't bring the Molk?

• 2:31:46Jocko Willink?

  I didn't bring Molk and I need to figure that situation out a little bit better, but, because that's a just, and I do, I do some, I've branched out a little bit. I normally always did two scoops of Molk in big glass of milk. And now I'm kind of doing little hitters.

• 2:32:03Speaker 01

  Like, oh, like mini shit, like shots of Molk poppers?

• 2:32:06Jocko Willink?

  Well, there's still, there's still one full scoop. I haven't gone below, I haven't done just like a straight up shot.

• 2:32:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:13Jocko Willink?

  But I've been doing little hitters, just one, just one scoop and.

• 2:32:16Speaker 01

  And what's the philosophy behind, you know, like what?

• 2:32:19Jocko Willink?

  You know why? Cause I, I'm so full when I get done with Molk. Like this morning when I got home, since I didn't have Molk on my trip, when I got home, before I started record, before I started prepping for the podcast, I had a little hitter of Molk, which by the way, I took hitter, that whole concept of using the word hitter from Theo Von.

• 2:32:40Speaker 01

  Same definition?

• 2:32:41Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah.

• 2:32:42Speaker 01

  Like a popper?

• 2:32:42Jocko Willink?

  I think he uses it for everything. Like, things can just be a hitter.

• 2:32:45Speaker 01

  Oh, just a little.

• 2:32:46Jocko Willink?

  I have a little hitter, a little one scoop hitter.

• 2:32:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:49Jocko Willink?

  Little one scoop hitter. That's what I do.

• 2:32:51Speaker 01

  Boom, there you go. That, that is odd. No, I don't wanna say that's odd.

• 2:32:56Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:32:56Speaker 01

  But it's the opposite of mine.

• 2:32:57Jocko Willink?

  There's something you have to be careful of. If you think in the future, you may be completely in a situation where you can't have milk, maybe it's better to never have it.

• 2:33:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:33:07Jocko Willink?

  So you don't have to always think about it forever.

• 2:33:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, like you can't, you can't miss what you don't know.

• 2:33:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:12Speaker 01

  Kind of scenario.

• 2:33:13Jocko Willink?

  It's just, yeah.

• 2:33:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm going, I'm going the opposite direction. I'm going, I'm making them bigger, just bigger, like last.

• 2:33:20Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 2:33:20Speaker 01

  And you know what's weird? So, like, I went to sleep kinda early, which is like, I'm not, you know, some people that they prefer to go sleep hungry, cuz it's like, you know, whatever their philosophy is. I'd prefer not to go sleep hungry. So I ate, I ate dinner and then I stayed up a couple hours and I'm like, oh, I either eat right now when I'm not really hungry or risk being hungry at some point very soon. So what I did is.

• 2:33:42Jocko Willink?

  I don't think you'd do well in prison camp, bro.

• 2:33:44Speaker 01

  Nah, nah.

• 2:33:45Jocko Willink?

  That would not work out well for you.

• 2:33:47Speaker 01

  It would be a struggle for me, for sure.

• 2:33:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:49Speaker 01

  Nonetheless, I take the milk, three scoops.

• 2:33:51Jocko Willink?

  Oh, God.

• 2:33:52Speaker 01

  Add peanut butter. Man, I don't know why, I, I mean, I do know why.

• 2:33:55Jocko Willink?

  Two peanut butter scoops?

• 2:33:56Speaker 01

  To the mint.

• 2:33:56Jocko Willink?

  Oh, to the mint?

• 2:33:57Speaker 01

  Bro, I'm, I'm total double dipping now.

• 2:33:59Jocko Willink?

  You're going crazy.

• 2:34:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. I don't know. It just, the thing is, I know how the experience.

• 2:34:04Jocko Willink?

  I don't even like the sound of that taste.

• 2:34:05Speaker 01

  But it's good, for real.

• 2:34:07Jocko Willink?

  Do tastes have sounds?

• 2:34:11Speaker 01

  It's gonna sound good nonetheless, but I, I've been doing it and it's the kind where it's like, what? I already know how it tastes, like, why would I not even do that?

• 2:34:19Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, like, I've said it and you actually, I said, "Don't cross the streams like Ghostbusters", and you said, "That's how they won"?

• 2:34:25Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:34:25Jocko Willink?

  So maybe you gotta cross the peanut butter and the mint. I don't know.

• 2:34:28Speaker 01

  Win all day.

• 2:34:29Jocko Willink?

  I'm not, I don't even think I'm gonna try it.

• 2:34:30Speaker 01

  Alright, that's up to you.

• 2:34:31Jocko Willink?

  Maybe it's one of those things, if I try it, then I'll have to carry around both types all the time for the rest of my life.

• 2:34:36Speaker 01

  Or you just mix them. You pour, you mix them up.

• 2:34:39Jocko Willink?

  Oh, man.

• 2:34:40Speaker 01

  Bro, that's up to you. Anyway, hey, milk, how you wanna milk? Milk up, bulk up? That's, that's good, right? That rhymes?

• 2:34:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:34:47Speaker 01

  Boka boka. Anyway, so, so I, so I hit it, it's the big, you know, our, our cups.

• 2:34:51Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you got the hitter.

• 2:34:52Speaker 01

  No, I, I hit it, so technically it maybe was a hitter, but it was huge, huge hitter, pounder.

• 2:34:58Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you got one of those big hitters.

• 2:35:00Speaker 01

  Boom, huge one, huge one. Pounded it, no problem.

• 2:35:02Jocko Willink?

  How much milk is gonna get consumed at the immersion camp, you think? I think it's gonna be a lot.

• 2:35:07Speaker 01

  Well, consider myself alone. I mean, man, I'm on the milk train big time, so that's every day. Yeah.

• 2:35:14Jocko Willink?

  Well, how many scoops, while we're at immersion camp, how many scoops of milk will you consume per day?

• 2:35:19Speaker 01

  Well, per day, I don't know. I'd just say six minimum because every day, well, you figure. I'm just saying.

• 2:35:25Jocko Willink?

  That's crazy.

• 2:35:26Speaker 01

  Well, you know, as much juice as going on, yeah, six, two scoops for one, two, three.

• 2:35:31Jocko Willink?

  I could see maybe doing four for me.

• 2:35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:35:34Jocko Willink?

  Maybe two in the morning, maybe two in the afternoon, maybe, maybe have a one more hitter in the middle somewhere.

• 2:35:39Speaker 01

  Yeah. Nonetheless, that's more good, good protein and it tastes good. See, and that's the thing. Well, if you do it as like someone who's texting me, oh, can you do it as a meal replacement? Can you do as a meal replacement? And the day before I got that text, Pete was saying, I said something, I forget what it was. And he said, ha, ha, yeah, you can use it as a meal replacement.

• 2:35:59Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, breakfast, milk and dinner.

• 2:36:02Speaker 01

  I think that's one of the reasons why I was texting Pete. Um, and then, so, yeah, so when you do it as a meal replacement, it's like, it's not the meal, it's like a dessert as a meal replacement.

• 2:36:14Jocko Willink?

  It's both.

• 2:36:14Speaker 01

  You see what I'm saying? It's like the treat you look forward to that one. Nonetheless, it's good.

• 2:36:18Jocko Willink?

  Good to go.

• 2:36:19Speaker 01

  Get all this at originmaine.com. That's where you can get all this stuff. Cool website.

• 2:36:26Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:36:27Speaker 01

  I would talk about the immersion camp, but it's sold out.

• 2:36:30Jocko Willink?

  Bummer.

• 2:36:31Speaker 01

  Here's the thing too, I was talking to Andy Burke about this. Not Dave Burke.

• 2:36:37Jocko Willink?

  Good deal, Dave?

• 2:36:38Speaker 01

  Good deal, Dave. Not good deal, Dave. Andy Burke. No relation. And we're talking about like, okay, so it's one thing to be like, hey, we're getting kind of full. We'll just get more mats. But then we're now we're talking about the camp.

• 2:36:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:49Speaker 01

  Being full.

• 2:36:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:36:50Speaker 01

  So it's, we're, we're full.

• 2:36:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we're full.

• 2:36:52Speaker 01

  Sold out, can't do it. Unless maybe like you, you bring your tent or something like that. Maybe. Nonetheless, sold out. So, yeah, maybe next year. There it is. All origin stuff. Good way to support as well. Shifting gears. Jaco is a store. It's called Jaco Store. So you go to jacostore.com. This is where you can get shirts.

• 2:37:15Speaker 01

  Hoodies, tank tops, some rash guards, more rash guards. Um, good way to support, like I said, this is where, if you want to represent, discipline equals freedom. Just the general concepts and, how should I say? Uh, philosophies of the game.

• 2:37:33Jocko Willink?

  Overall DEF core.

• 2:37:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:37:37Jocko Willink?

  Just overall.

• 2:37:38Speaker 01

  Just overall. If you want to represent, that's where you get it. JacoStore.com. Got some new designs on there. I was, I was gonna send out like an email to everybody that signed up for the email list. It's been a few months. So I might as well, so I'll probably send out something just to indicate, hey, we got some new stuff. Boom, there it is.

• 2:37:55Jocko Willink?

  If you want it.

• 2:37:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, if you want it, boom. Cause a lot of times it's like, it's not like people are just gonna be going Jaco Store every day, boom, boom, boom, you know?

• 2:38:02Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:38:03Speaker 01

  There's no reason to do that.

• 2:38:04Jocko Willink?

  When you don't put new stuff up very often, so why would they do that?

• 2:38:08Speaker 01

  We'll just say there's no, uh, uh, uh, strong reason to do it. So hey, I'll send an email, boom, let them know. Anyway, yeah, JacoStore.com, good way to support. Also, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. I know it seems obvious, but I think it is obvious. It's obvious.

• 2:38:28Jocko Willink?

  It's real obvious.

• 2:38:29Speaker 01

  But just to, just to let you know, if you don't know.

• 2:38:31Jocko Willink?

  So you know they're listening right now.

• 2:38:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:33Jocko Willink?

  Likely they, they subscribed.

• 2:38:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's true.

• 2:38:36Jocko Willink?

  And when you're subscribing to that, also there's a Warrior Kid podcast. So if you've got kids between the ages of four and 44, they can get something out of the Warrior Kid podcast. And you can subscribe to that. You can also subscribe to YouTube.

• 2:38:57Jocko Willink?

  And we're, we're discussing today, making some, some, these are, these are not even, these are in a different situation. What I briefed you on today about what we're gonna make, those are a different thing. They're a different thing. They're a different. They're not enhanced videos. They're not excerpts. They're a different, specific thing for a specific.

• 2:39:17Jocko Willink?

  Lessons learned, specific topics that I've discovered that I need to cover. And I think the best way to cover them is through video medium. So we're gonna do that. And that will be specific to YouTube. Actually, they will be very specific to YouTube because they're both involve graphics. You know, they involve, yeah, me explaining something utilizing graphics.

• 2:39:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:39:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Is that the right word? Graphics for what I was doing?

• 2:39:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:39:44Jocko Willink?

  Charts.

• 2:39:45Speaker 01

  Charts, diagrams, if you will.

• 2:39:48Jocko Willink?

  Things, yeah.

• 2:39:49Speaker 01

  But this is.

• 2:39:49Jocko Willink?

  Maneuvers.

• 2:39:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, and this is, it was funny, it's like you just say it like it's like, yeah, it'll be a cool addition to the thing. This like what you, what we talked about, where you explained is if I would have known this, it's almost like the secret to life.

• 2:40:08Jocko Willink?

  It is important. No, I know, I know. It's, so we'll put it, this means we're gonna have to put it together. Maybe we could do, could we do it while we're in Maine or something? It's not gonna, I don't wanna, I don't wanna get crazy with it. I just wanna put the word out there. I need a dry erase board. I need to explain it. I'll think through it a couple of times and then I'll put it out there. Cause it will help. It will definitely help.

• 2:40:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, fully.

• 2:40:30Jocko Willink?

  Both, both those topics, there's two topics that need to come out. And I'll discuss both of them. We'll put it on the YouTube and then, and then people can get them. So, so subscribe to the YouTube channel for that. It, the channel is called Jocko Podcast. And.

• 2:40:46Speaker 01

  Also, when I said subscribe, that's to the audio, you know, so YouTube's video, the audio is like iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, all these stuff. Wherever you listen to podcasts, but I know it seems obvious, but I might as well throw it in there just in case. Maybe someone's new to podcasting in general.

• 2:41:00Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:41:00Speaker 01

  You just never know.

• 2:41:01Jocko Willink?

  I'm just gonna be quiet.

• 2:41:02Speaker 01

  It's just a fun.

• 2:41:05Speaker 01

  Also, also, also, on it, so on it.com slash Jaco, by the way, you get 10% off of what? What do we get 10%? This way, so where.

• 2:41:18Speaker 01

  If you want to vary up your workout, I know I said it before, but vary up your workout kettlebell stuff, battle ropes stuff, I got some rings. Are you bringing your rings to Maine?

• 2:41:27Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:41:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, me too, I'm bringing mine.

• 2:41:30Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 2:41:30Speaker 01

  This is where you get it, go on it.com slash Jaco, really good stuff on there, good info as well. So if you're new to certain types of workouts, get the info first, you can enter it, you can enter into that workout situation educated, keep yourself safe and you know, boom, get the results without all the injuries, see what I'm saying?

• 2:41:50Jocko Willink?

  Also, we made a spoken word, spoken word.

• 2:41:55Speaker 01

  Album.

• 2:41:55Jocko Willink?

  Album.

• 2:41:56Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:41:57Jocko Willink?

  With tracks and it's, it's me, actually we made it, but it's me talking.

• 2:42:01Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:42:02Jocko Willink?

  And it's me just telling you not to be weak today, but to go doing what you're supposed to do. And we're going to make another one of those, working on it now, gathering the topics. So if you have topics for psychological warfare, then you can put them on the social media thing and I'll get them. We will assess if they are important topics or if they're important topics, either way.

• 2:42:26Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:42:26Jocko Willink?

  We'll figure it out.

• 2:42:27Speaker 01

  So basically if you're stru- not struggling, but yeah, if you're like kind of struggling something, if you have moments of weakness, what is it? What scenario are you in? What are you weak with?

• 2:42:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:37Speaker 01

  My sister used to say,

• 2:42:40Speaker 01

  uh, white rice is like her weakness.

• 2:42:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 2:42:43Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying? White rice.

• 2:42:44Jocko Willink?

  So I'm going to make a psychological warfare that says, the white rice that you're looking at right now?

• 2:42:49Speaker 01

  Put it to say if she was gonna enter.

• 2:42:50Jocko Willink?

  100% sugar, once it enters your stomach, walk away. Walk away from the white rice now.

• 2:42:58Speaker 01

  Actually, that's what you, that kind of would, because she said late at night. This was a long time ago, by the way. She said late at night. So yeah, she were to play it and you're like, walk away. She'd be walking away.

• 2:43:10Jocko Willink?

  See, that's all it is.

• 2:43:11Speaker 01

  See, that's how it starts.

• 2:43:12Jocko Willink?

  Psychological warfare. It's available on iTunes, Google Play, MP3 platforms, blah, blah, blah. Jocka White Tea. That you can get in a can, or you can get it in a tea bag. And you can get both those from Amazon. That's where they're at. So if you want to be able to deadlift no less than 8,000 pounds. 100% guaranteed. All you have to do is drink Jocka White. You don't have to work out even. You don't even have to lift weights. You just drink it and then you can deadlift 8,000 pounds. Don't worry. It's no problem.

• 2:43:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's good.

• 2:43:45Jocko Willink?

  Uh, books.

• 2:43:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:43:47Jocko Willink?

  I wrote some books. Wrote some kid books, actually.

• 2:43:51Speaker 01

  Way of the Warrior Kid.

• 2:43:52Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:43:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:43:53Jocko Willink?

  That's the first one.

• 2:43:54Speaker 01

  And Way of the, is the second, okay, the second one is Mark's Mission.

• 2:43:58Jocko Willink?

  The second one.

• 2:43:58Speaker 01

  But is it called Way of the Warrior Kid? Mark, Mark's Mission?

• 2:44:01Jocko Willink?

  I'm not sure. Let's look at the cover.

• 2:44:03Speaker 01

  Doesn't even matter.

• 2:44:03Jocko Willink?

  It does say Way of the Warrior Kid, Mark's Mission. So it is, it's Way of the Warrior Kid, Mark's Mission.

• 2:44:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44:08Jocko Willink?

  I think I should put a big one and two on them, so that it's more clear.

• 2:44:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44:13Jocko Willink?

  The next book, the next one that comes out, it will say three on it.

• 2:44:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, good idea because they are kinda, essentially the whole story and even the lessons, by the way, are

• 2:44:22Jocko Willink?

  They build.

• 2:44:23Speaker 01

  Chronological.

• 2:44:24Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 2:44:24Speaker 01

  See what I'm saying? So like the first one, the lessons and the struggles and the problems, whatever, are nine-year-old problems, right? I mean, give or take, you know, they're like a certain age.

• 2:44:33Jocko Willink?

  Ten-year-old problems, yeah.

• 2:44:34Speaker 01

  Type problems. And then they, so they get a little bit more sophisticated, you know? And the next one, more and more, so it's kinda chronological, and not to mention the story as well, so makes, makes sense.

• 2:44:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, do it that way. And that's if you want your kids to actually get after it, straight up. I get, I get the best feedback from those books.

• 2:44:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:44:56Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:44:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I could see why. I mean, shoot, I'm one of those people who's giving you the feedback because it's very well, very well done. I, my daughter is, very well, yeah, as a book, uh, what do you, what do you call?

• 2:45:06Jocko Willink?

  Critic.

• 2:45:07Speaker 01

  Critic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Someone who has, who has read a book before, um, you know, hey, it's good, it's a good book. I have it as like just a running theme, you know, like I just keep reading the book, just keep reading both of them. Boom, boom, boom, boom, that's how. So it becomes the ethos.

• 2:45:22Jocko Willink?

  That's why your daughter, which I primarily see your daughter more, she's like, you know, she gets after it.

• 2:45:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, she does get it after it.

• 2:45:29Jocko Willink?

  Does jits.

• 2:45:30Speaker 01

  Constant work though, man.

• 2:45:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, of course.

• 2:45:32Speaker 01

  This is big help, huge help, by the way. Also, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual.

• 2:45:39Jocko Willink?

  Who would have thought that that book would be popular? That people would be into it. That's what's cool.

• 2:45:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:45:48Jocko Willink?

  You you wouldn't think, see, most people don't think there's people that really want to get after it.

• 2:45:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:45:54Jocko Willink?

  No, but they do.

• 2:45:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:45:56Jocko Willink?

  And they don't know how.

• 2:45:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, when you think about it, it's gonna start to, it kind of makes sense, really, when you just like, okay, so it's field manual, right? You have a manual, a manual, because that's a lot of times, that's why people don't do stuff.

• 2:46:07Jocko Willink?

  Oh, because they don't know how to do it.

• 2:46:08Speaker 01

  They don't know how, and if I do stuff, and then I gotta look into it, then I keep, you know, looking into it. I wish I just had a manual. I wish I had a manual for life. How about that? I wish I had a manual for parenting. I wish I had a manual for life. I wish I had a manual for, you know, a bunch of other stuff. But if you wanna, what, get after it, whatever you wanna call it, right? You got a manual. You wanna stay disciplined and you want freedom directly from that discipline, boom, you got a manual right here.

• 2:46:31Jocko Willink?

  There you go. Also, Extreme Ownership, which is the first book that I wrote with my brother Leif Babin. It takes the combat principles that we learned on the battlefield and teaches you and shows you how you can apply them to your business and to your life. And then we got a follow on book to that coming out September 25th, The Dichotomy of Leadership. You can preorder it right now. So that way, the publishers who

• 2:46:56Jocko Willink?

  are pessimistic, that's that's how publishers are. They're just pessimistic.

• 2:47:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:47:00Jocko Willink?

  Because for them, they don't really care if you get, if you don't get the book right when it comes out. They're gonna make their their money either way. But when you, when the book comes out and you order it the day it comes out, and then it takes nine days to get to you because because they had to reprint them because they ran out. But I guess they're, I shouldn't say they're conservative. They're being all conservative. We're just not sure. And we don't want to spend a money on money on storage if these things. And then you're gonna have to wait to get your copies. Don't do that. You can preorder it. And Leif and I just did a podcast on what it's about. That's podcast number 138, if you haven't heard that one yet. Also, speaking of Leif, speaking of me, we have a leadership. Consulting company and it's not just me and Leif, it's also JP Denell, Dave Burke,

• 2:47:44Jocko Willink?

  Flynn Cochran, and also Mike Sorelli. And we come to your company and we'll help you with your leadership. We solve problems through leadership. Also, if you want one of us to just come speak at your company, don't call a speaking agency. You don't need to call a speaking agency. You don't need to call cool speakers.com. No, go to echelonfront.com and, and get the information there. Give the, give the info and that's how you get to us.

• 2:48:17Speaker 01

  Some people call me, by the way, or email me.

• 2:48:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and then you pass it on to Echelon Front.

• 2:48:21Speaker 01

  Which is cool.

• 2:48:22Jocko Willink?

  You like to get a little, little, little, you like to get in the game. [email protected] if you want to just email straight. Also, the muster 006, San Francisco, California, 17th and 18th. It's probably going to sell out pretty soon. The registration for that is at extremeownership.com. And also, there's registration for the roll call, roll call 001, which is for current uniformed personnel. So, military, law enforcement, border patrol, firefighters, paramedics, other first responders. We put together the roll call because you lead in dynamic situations. We want to do something a little bit cheaper, a little bit shorter, so you could get to it. It's September 21st, Dallas, Texas. And come on down to that.

• 2:49:04Jocko Willink?

  Finally, we have EF Overwatch, connecting spec ops and combat aviation folks from the military to companies that need leaders, need tested leaders. So, we've got great leaders out there that we know from our communities, and now we've got companies that we know from Echelon Front, and we are bringing them together. So, EFOverwatch.com if you want to, if you're either someone that wants to hire a badass leader, or if you're a badass leader that is retiring or getting out from your military service, get on there and fill out that information. And until we do see you at the muster, or at the roll call, or

• 2:49:49Jocko Willink?

  at the immersion camp, if you want to cruise with us, kind of hard, on the interwebs, we are there. We are on Instagram, Twitter, and on that Facebook, people.

• 2:50:03Jocko Willink?

  Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink and finally, thanks to all the military personnel that are listening. As you defend our great nation from threats around the world, thank you for standing the watch and here in America to the police, to law enforcement, to firefighters, to border patrol, paramedics, first responders. Thanks to you all as well for standing the watch here at home and keeping us safe. And thanks to everyone for listening and supporting and I know sometimes it can be hard to listen to stories from atrocities like the Baton Death March, I know that. But in listening,

• 2:50:50Jocko Willink?

  remember.

• 2:50:52Jocko Willink?

  Remember that evil does exist.

• 2:50:58Jocko Willink?

  Remember those that died standing up against that evil.

• 2:51:05Jocko Willink?

  And remember that even in the most wretched times, when you face darkness yourself, no matter how bad things get, remember.

• 2:51:19Jocko Willink?

  Remember not to stop, remember not to pause, remember not to hesitate, remember to put one foot in front of the other. Take that first step.

• 2:51:34Jocko Willink?

  And start walking.

• 2:51:37Jocko Willink?

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