192: Important Lessons of Outlaw Platoon's Long and Horrific Road w/ Sean Parnell

0:00:00 - Opening 0:10:46 - Sean Parnell 5:00:12 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 5:08:49 - How to stay on THE PATH. 5:20:43 - 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 192 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo.

• 0:07Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:11Jocko Willink?

  Time

• 0:15Jocko Willink?

  is supposed to be a constant.

• 0:18Jocko Willink?

  A day is a day and an hour is an hour and a second is supposed to be a second.

• 0:29Jocko Willink?

  At least that's the way it's supposed to be.

• 0:35Jocko Willink?

  And you get one life made up of years, hopefully,

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  that stack up on top of one another.

• 0:48Jocko Willink?

  And they are all supposed to measure the same amount of time, those years.

• 0:57Jocko Willink?

  But they don't always do that.

• 1:02Jocko Willink?

  There are days that seem to last forever.

• 1:08Jocko Willink?

  There are seconds that stall and remain suspended in some kind of bizarre, slow motion.

• 1:22Jocko Willink?

  And that's the way life actually is. Parts of it

• 1:27Jocko Willink?

  are bigger than other parts.

• 1:31Jocko Willink?

  They have more impact. The time continuum gets expanded.

• 1:38Jocko Willink?

  And hyper-awareness drags out the hours and the days. And they leave an indelible impression

• 1:49Jocko Willink?

  on your soul.

• 1:54Jocko Willink?

  And it could be a good thing that causes this. Maybe it was maybe it was winning the championship game in high school.

• 2:03Jocko Willink?

  Maybe it was surfing your first wave or your first parachute jump or maybe it was holding your newborn child for the first time.

• 2:16Jocko Willink?

  But maybe it was a bad thing.

• 2:20Jocko Willink?

  A car accident.

• 2:23Jocko Willink?

  A fire.

• 2:26Jocko Willink?

  Being told someone you someone you knew had a major health issue.

• 2:35Jocko Willink?

  Perhaps it was that moment when you were told that one of your loved ones

• 2:41Jocko Willink?

  had died.

• 2:44Jocko Willink?

  You remember where you were, the words you heard.

• 2:51Jocko Willink?

  And you remember the anguish you felt.

• 2:57Jocko Willink?

  And these incidents.

• 3:02Jocko Willink?

  Good or bad, they leave a mark.

• 3:08Jocko Willink?

  Most of these incidents are short, maybe a few minutes, maybe an hour.

• 3:14Jocko Willink?

  Maybe it stretches out to a day.

• 3:19Jocko Willink?

  But in combat, you experience these kind of impactful moments, day after day, week after week, month after month.

• 3:31Jocko Willink?

  You're regularly faced with highly charged emotions and life and death situations and shots of adrenaline.

• 3:42Jocko Willink?

  You don't get much sleep. And the food is horrible. And you live under the constant foreboding weight of one of your men being wounded or killed, and it doesn't stop.

• 3:56Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't let up.

• 3:59Jocko Willink?

  And the end of one operation is actually only just the beginning of another one, each one with its own risk.

• 4:10Jocko Willink?

  And each one with its own reward.

• 4:16Jocko Willink?

  And that risk and that reward is what you begin to live off of, like a gambling addict that can't walk away from the table. You can't bring yourself to walk away.

• 4:32Jocko Willink?

  So, you carry on.

• 4:39Jocko Willink?

  And eventually, you and the men by your side have lived lifetimes worth of life

• 4:46Jocko Willink?

  in a matter of months.

• 4:52Jocko Willink?

  And those men, the ones that survive, become your brothers.

• 5:02Jocko Willink?

  And the ones that don't survive

• 5:07Jocko Willink?

  become your heroes.

• 5:15Jocko Willink?

  And that part of your life,

• 5:19Jocko Willink?

  that part of your life becomes the standard to which all other parts are measured.

• 5:30Jocko Willink?

  Because when you're holding a machine gun in your hands,

• 5:35Jocko Willink?

  and you're with your brothers in arms,

• 5:40Jocko Willink?

  and there are other men out there with guns and bombs of their own, and they're looking to kill you.

• 5:49Jocko Willink?

  When your whole world can be reduced to what is happening right here, right now, in this moment.

• 6:01Jocko Willink?

  Well, when you experience that,

• 6:05Jocko Willink?

  then other

• 6:07Jocko Willink?

  so-called "normal" things can seem mundane.

• 6:18Jocko Willink?

  And yet,

• 6:20Jocko Willink?

  you carry on.

• 6:24Jocko Willink?

  You carry on with life, with work, with family, with birthdays and barbecues, and the days tick by.

• 6:34Jocko Willink?

  Then you get a little older.

• 6:39Jocko Willink?

  And when you pause,

• 6:42Jocko Willink?

  you can even see the end up there, in the distance. Still far enough off that you don't need to think about it too much,

• 6:51Jocko Willink?

  but close enough to let you know it's there.

• 6:57Jocko Willink?

  And you know you already got more time than you deserved.

• 7:05Jocko Willink?

  And you're thankful for that.

• 7:10Jocko Willink?

  And in your mind, you can still picture the faces of those

• 7:17Jocko Willink?

  who will not grow old.

• 7:22Jocko Willink?

  And they gave this to you.

• 7:30Jocko Willink?

  Those times and those men made you who you are.

• 7:38Jocko Willink?

  And you're thankful, thankful that you knew those men.

• 7:43Jocko Willink?

  Thankful that you got those moments. All of those moments.

• 7:50Jocko Willink?

  The exhilaration

• 7:53Jocko Willink?

  and the terror. The joy and the despair.

• 8:00Jocko Willink?

  The pride. And the humility.

• 8:07Jocko Willink?

  You're thankful you got to experience it all.

• 8:14Jocko Willink?

  And like I said, that experience leaves.

• 8:19Jocko Willink?

  It leaves a mark.

• 8:24Jocko Willink?

  It changes you. It changes you in some way.

• 8:33Jocko Willink?

  I was reading recently and I came across this.

• 8:41Jocko Willink?

  My old self and new self weren't compatible.

• 8:47Jocko Willink?

  I felt awkward.

• 8:51Jocko Willink?

  I missed my men badly.

• 8:56Jocko Willink?

  I felt a sense of loss at the same time I felt guilt and shame.

• 9:03Jocko Willink?

  It shouldn't have taken the army to wake me up to the shallow life I had.

• 9:09Jocko Willink?

  Right then, I knew coming home was going to be much harder on me than I had expected.

• 9:15Jocko Willink?

  I wanted to run.

• 9:18Jocko Willink?

  Find a place just for me and figure this all out in beautiful solitude.

• 9:25Jocko Willink?

  My old life was gone.

• 9:29Jocko Willink?

  Dead.

• 9:31Jocko Willink?

  Burned away by mortar fire and the sonic crack of AK rounds passing overhead.

• 9:40Jocko Willink?

  I began to wonder if any of it could be saved.

• 9:48Jocko Willink?

  Could I take the pieces with me into the future?

• 9:52Jocko Willink?

  Or was I going to have to rebuild from scratch?

• 10:02Jocko Willink?

  And that is from a book, from a book called Outlaw Platoon.

• 10:10Jocko Willink?

  Written by a soldier.

• 10:14Jocko Willink?

  A ranger, a leader, an infantry officer, and a platoon commander in the hallowed 10th Mountain Division in Afghanistan in 2006, 2007, and on top of all that.

• 10:31Jocko Willink?

  A father, a speaker, and an author of several books, a guy by the name of

• 10:39Jocko Willink?

  Sean Parnell, and we are lucky enough today to have Sean with us on the podcast.

• 10:47Jocko Willink?

  Sean, thanks for coming on, man.

• 10:50Speaker 02

  It's, uh, it's great to be here. I'm excited to be here.

• 10:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, uh, reading your book definitely brought back a lot of memories for me, and I never fought in Afghanistan. Uh, I fought in Iraq, but man, you really captured. You captured a lot. You captured the, the pressure. You captured the grind. You captured the drama. You captured the, the politics.

• 11:19Jocko Willink?

  And it was very interesting. I was probably about, I was probably about fifty pages in. And it occurred to me, I said, when has this taken place? Because I'd kind of, I'd kind of missed the very first thing. So I went back to the beginning just to read that opening line to find out when it was. And this, this whole thing took place, and the bulk of the fighting took place in 2006, in the summer of 2006, which is, which is exactly when I was in Ramadi. So you, you were, you were going through what you were going through the same exact time I was over in Ramadi. We were both fighting the same thing in different theaters or different, different countries.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I think, I just learned that now, but I mean, I remember hearing in Afghanistan that Ramadi was like, hell on earth, you know, in 2006, it was a really, really tough time. And this was around the time when, you know, Americans flipped on their TV sets and watched newscasters talk about the surge, day in and day out. Remember that? Like, the surge was the big policy debate on Capitol Hill.

• 12:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 12:23Speaker 02

  All this.

• 12:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they hadn't executed it yet. They were talking about it.

• 12:26Speaker 02

  Right. They didn't execute it, execute it until 2007, like when we were supposed to go home. We were, but they sent the unit to replace us over to Iraq as part and in support of the surge. But, you know, they had their own battles waged on Capitol Hill, and we were waged our own, our own life and death battles in Afghanistan and Iraq at the exact same time, you know?

• 12:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. And, but yeah, you did a, you did a ridiculously good job with this book. I, I was, I read it really fast and,

• 12:59Jocko Willink?

  I mean, let's just get into it, man.

• 13:00Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 13:00Jocko Willink?

  Let's just get into it.

• 13:03Jocko Willink?

  Here we go. Outlaw Platoon.

• 13:10Jocko Willink?

  Staff Sergeant Greg Grierson.

• 13:13Jocko Willink?

  Lieutenant Taylor's weapon squad leader shouted, shouted at us, incoming, get inside the wire now. His words acted like ice water to the face. Lieutenant Taylor and I sprinted our sergeants, after our sergeants and back to the FOB.

• 13:26Jocko Willink?

  With our new home at 7,000 feet, it took a few seconds before my lungs started to burn from lack of oxygen. I stopped at the concrete pad next to my gear and watched Greason and the other sergeants dash off toward the battalion aid station. Taylor bolted into the operations center. What the hell do I do? I felt rooted in place, observing the action around me with yet, yet with no purpose of my own. Captain Kennedy, am I saying that right? Yes. Captain Kennedy ran into view. Some kids got hit with those rounds. They're at the front gate. My legs started to move. I felt myself run after Kennedy, wanting to go faster but feeling an impenetrable wall between will and action.

• 14:09Jocko Willink?

  We rounded a corner, perhaps 50 yards away, I could see some of the 173rd Airborne soldiers opening the front gate. Crying, distraught Afghan civilians poured into the base. I kept running. Then I saw the kids. I heard their screams. A few thrashed in agony, others lay still in their parents' arms. I dropped my rifle, pulled my helmet off, and dumped my body armor in the dirt and sprinted the last stretch to the scene. One of the interpreters was shouting at an angry father. Two more Afghan dads ganged up on him, yelling insistently. Finally, a soldier demanded, "Abdul, what the hell are they saying?" Abdul, his face a mask of rage, replied, "They're telling me to make sure the boys get treated before the girls."

• 14:54Jocko Willink?

  Get them all to the battalion aid station. Abdul turned to the fathers and passed that order to them. They shook their heads and shouted them again. Abdul announced, "They refuse. They want the boys treated first." Grab them all, the soldiers roared. The soldier roared again. The other men at the gate picked up some of the wounded kids, perhaps seven were still alive. I scooped up the nearest child and turned to follow the other soldiers as they dashed for the aid station. I'd taken a half of a dozen steps before I realized I had a little girl in my arms. I looked down at her. She wore a tan dress that felt like burlap in my hands. The collar was ornate, red and green with little designs that converged on a V-neck. She felt so light. "It's okay, it's okay," I said to her.

• 15:37Jocko Willink?

  Her eyes were bright emerald green, deep and filled with pain. Her raven hair was splayed across her face and plastered to her skin by her tears. She keened hysterically, pain racked and panicked. Her pitch hurt my ears. I kept running, her head and shoulders cradled in my left hand. Her slight body pressed against my ribs, hip and thigh, and my right forearm. Her left flank, her left hand flailed. She gasped, then screamed again. It seemed to never end. It's okay, it's okay. I began to wonder who I was talking to. The girl, or myself? Keep running. Her breathing grew ragged. Her screams choppy. I glanced down at her. Her eyes were growing dull.

• 16:21Jocko Willink?

  She stared up at me, this stranger in uniform, and I could see the terror in those fading eyes. With my right hand, I tried to brush her hair off her face. Instead, my fingers smeared blood across her cheek.

• 16:33Jocko Willink?

  I sensed warmth on my thigh. What was that? I wanted to look down, but something stopped me. My legs carried us forward in autopilot mode as I fixed, as my eyes fixed on hers. She screamed again, hoarse and weak this time. The warmth spread to my hip and trickled past my knee. I couldn't bear to look. When I did, my brain didn't register what my eyes saw.

• 16:56Jocko Willink?

  One barefoot, tiny delicate toes covered in brown dust. Crimson dots splattered on her cocky dress, which now rode high above her knees. Tendrils of torn burnt flesh tapered below the other knee to a bleeding stump. A white stripe of bone projected through the ruined skin and muscle.

• 17:15Jocko Willink?

  I lost my stride and looked up to regain my balance. The little girl uttered a deep, guttural cry. One step, a second, perhaps a third, before I realized she wasn't screaming anymore.

• 17:30Jocko Willink?

  Aid station. We have to make it to the aid station. It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. Her hand felled away.

• 17:38Jocko Willink?

  Her neck grew slack in my cradling hand. This is not happening. How long did it take me to look down at her again? Her breath grew shallow. The warmth continued to spread.

• 17:51Jocko Willink?

  I looked down. Her fear was gone. The spark in her eyes snuffed out.

• 17:58Jocko Willink?

  The world around me went on, soldiers ran, parents cried, Abdul argued, Kennedy barked orders.

• 18:07Jocko Willink?

  And I held a dead child in my arms.

• 18:11Jocko Willink?

  I sleepwalked back to her parents. Her mother clad in a black berker that covered her face sobbed into her hands.

• 18:21Jocko Willink?

  Her father regarded me stoically.

• 18:25Jocko Willink?

  I realized that this little girl had inherited his green eyes.

• 18:30Jocko Willink?

  I handed him his daughter's body. He turned and walked through the gate, her barefoot. Those tiny sculpted toes dangled limply by his side.

• 18:44Jocko Willink?

  I watched them go. Stripped of words.

• 18:54Jocko Willink?

  So there's your welcome to Afghanistan.

• 18:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, all that, uh, all that on day one. You know, I mean, I mean, for me, you know, that was, that was the moment that begun inside myself. You know, a metamorphosis, you know, where, you know, one of the things that struck me about that moment was that like here. You know, I have a moment that is so jarring, shook me to my core of who I was, affected me to the very soul of the, the man that I was. And the world just kept ticking around you, you know, uh, the world is almost as if like the world didn't even notice that this little girl had died. And my very first day there and, you know, I remember bringing her back to her father, him stoically nodding at me.

• 19:40Speaker 02

  And I remember going back to my room. Uh, that my, that my newly assigned hooch, right of these just like plywood walls, you know? And I got this little bunk and little desk for my computer. I was the, I was the platoon that, or my platoon and get my little laptop there, picture my grandparents. And I just remember sitting against the corner of my bunk, you know, in this bloodstained uniform.

• 20:04Speaker 02

  For what felt like hours, right? And I just, I remember being sick to my stomach, took off that uniform, put on my PTs, intent to go to like, my intent was to go to the gym, blow off some steam, but I couldn't bring myself to do it. Just stared at that uniform on the floor of my, of my hooch. And I just like, how, trying to ask, you know, trying to, I feel like, answer a pretty simple question. And that, you know, I was 24 years old. I had never been in charge of anything before in my entire life. The job that I had before the one that I had right now was, you know, history major, you know, uh, the biggest responsibility that I had

• 20:44Speaker 02

  before taking over that platoon was trying to get to class on time, you know, and I just remember asking myself over and over and over again, it's like, how, how am I supposed to experience things like that? Moments like that? Um, but then lead my men with confidence, you know, be the decisive leader that they deserved, they deserve, right? Um, that they were trained to expect. Um, they deserved a leader that could handle moments like that and, and endure, you know, and I couldn't figure it out. And I really never, I don't

• 21:25Speaker 02

  feel like I ever, I ever had a healthy answer to that question. The, the, the way that I answered it in that moment was like, I'm just gonna take this experience and lock it away deep in the deepest recesses of myself and my mind and in my consciousness and never talk about it again. Pretend like it didn't happen. Flip that emotional switch, you know, shield myself from the pain of it. Um, and let's, you know, to me, to me, like, you know, this is not like a, by the way, this is not a poor me story. I volunteered for this. I do it all again in a second. I, I don't regret a single second of my experience. Um, the military does a damn good job training you to go shoot rifles and stuff, you know,

• 22:09Speaker 02

  train your men, shoot, move and communicate together. Great. Awesome. Hua. I love it. Every second of it. Um, but nothing can prepare you, a young 24 year old kid who's never left the country for a moment like that, you know, it just changes who you are to the very core of who you are. And so, yeah, I pretended like it didn't happen. I remember scooping that uniform up, walking it outside of my base, throwing it in this burn pit. On my first night in Afghanistan, I watched that bloody uniform burn. And inside me, and I think looking back, inside me, I remember feeling like, okay, there's some sort of metamorphosis happening here. And I look back now, it's almost as if, in a very literal sense, I was shedding this

• 22:51Speaker 02

  sort of insular, stateside skin that I had in the form of that bloody uniform. It's like, I am not the same person anymore. You know, the same guy that like went drinking with his buddies every Thursday, Thursday in the streets of Pittsburgh, like that guy is not, I'm not the same person anymore. And that experience was really, was the beginning of a metamorphosis inside me from an insulated American citizen to warrior, combat veteran. And that was the first of 485 days of absolute hell. And the hell, I mean, I don't lose a wink of sleep over the things that we did over

• 23:34Speaker 02

  there. I'm proud of every second of it, you know? There are a lot of people that we took off the face of this planet that didn't deserve to live, you know? They made their living praying on the weak. And they didn't deserve the life that they have. And I'm proud of the stuff that we did. But we never hurt civilians. It was always the kids and kids and civilians that were caught in the middle that you remember and think about. And that first experience, that first day, every single day of my life, I think about that. You know, I've got three amazing little kids of my own. And, you know, it's like, I can, this might sound, it probably won't sound strange to you, but you know, I look in the eyes of my kids, and there's like this spark of vitality

• 24:16Speaker 02

  there, right? That I almost envy in a lot of ways. It's, I should call it innocence, call it, you know, insulated existence in the best country in the face of the planet. I don't know. But I feel like I look in the mirror at myself and I don't have that anymore. And I remember watching that little, that little girl on my first day and her pass from this earth. And when she did, she didn't have that anymore either. And so...

• 24:43Speaker 02

  There's not a day that goes by that I don't think about that little Afghan girl and, and how she, she changed me in some way, that experience changed me in some way and how that in some way connects to my own kids and the type of father I'll be. I don't know. I don't have answers to any of these questions, but um, it's kind of crazy, man. Like I haven't, I haven't cracked that book since it, since I've finished writing it, you know? And so to hear it, to hear you read it here now is almost like surreal to me. It gives me goosebumps because it brings back my experience. So it's, it's so close to home. Um, but yeah, man, I, sometimes I forget getting farther and farther away from the war, how much it really did affect me.

• 25:32Jocko Willink?

  I was real lucky in the fact that I was old. Like when I was a task unit commander, when I was a platoon commander in Iraq, I was like 30 something years old when I was a task unit commander in Iraq. I'd been in the teams for 15 years. Do you know what I'm saying? Like, and yeah, I got really lucky in that regard. You know, I was a prior enlisted guy. So I had eight years of being enlisted. Yeah, you got thrown right in it, you know? And there's been quite a few guys I've had on this podcast. I know I had James Webb on here and he went, he went from, from OC, oh, from the academy to the basic school, got done with the basic school, had whatever, 12 days of leave, got to Vietnam. They, they brought

• 26:17Jocko Willink?

  him out on a patrol. They pointed at a ridge line and they said, your platoon's up there. And he, he walked up to his platoon and he took over a platoon. And the, there was no one to replace because the guy that he was replacing was either killed or wounded. So there was a sergeant running the platoon. And he said, he said, hey, I'm, I'm, you know, First Lieutenant Webb, I'm here to take over. And yeah, here we go. And then that night, they had a massive firefight and he had to call for close air support and everything else.

• 26:46Speaker 02

  Was he, was he an army guy?

• 26:47Jocko Willink?

  Marine Corps.

• 26:48Speaker 02

  So Marine Corps, Army, I mean, I feel like even Marine Corps, they send, I mean, First Lieutenant, right?

• 26:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 26:52Speaker 02

  You get to be a platoon commander in the Marine Corps, I think at First Lieutenant, like. Only the army where they send the brand new butter butter bars into.

• 27:00Jocko Willink?

  He might have been a second lieutenant. I was in Vietnam. Yeah, it might have actually was.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  But I mean, isn't that it's just, I just find that to be, you know, I had, I mean, I had, look, I, I'm telling you right now, I had absolutely no idea what the hell I was doing when I got to my platoon and, and I wasn't even, I wasn't even an infantry lieutenant, like one of the 16 or so branches at the time of the army infantry was one of them. I asked for it. I didn't get it. Um, I ended up begging, borrowing and stealing my way into the infantry. Um, I think there's a leadership lesson there, but I ended up begging to get into that branch. I did. I had no infantry training whatsoever. When I took over my platoon, they sent me like, I got basically a call from my infantry branch manager saying like, you know, hey, congratulations. You know, you got your branch transferred infantry. You're going to Ranger School in February. And I was like, oh shit, shit.

• 27:47Speaker 02

  And so I went to Ranger School, failed the first time, like, you know, pretty much I do everything in life, fail the first time, beg the commander to stay. He lets me stay. I recycle. I go back and I make it through and I get sent to my platoon. And I took over my platoon. No infantry experience whatsoever. I was sort of the black sheep at the battalion.

• 28:01Jocko Willink?

  Well, other than, other than Ranger School.

• 28:03Speaker 02

  Other than Ranger School. Yeah. I mean, but I mean.

• 28:05Jocko Willink?

  Solid baseline.

• 28:06Speaker 02

  Well, the officer base, of course, for infantry guys is 16 weeks, right? And so they, they get 16 weeks of what is essentially orders writing and Ranger prep and all that. I was an air defense artillery guy. Like, we didn't get any of that stuff. It was just like what we trained on. I was sure at short range, you know, air and missile defense, short range air defense and infantry platoons don't carry stingers anymore. I'm pretty sure SEAL, SEAL teams don't carry stingers anymore.

• 28:29Jocko Willink?

  I went to stinger school.

• 28:30Speaker 02

  You went to, so did I, so did I, I mean.

• 28:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Where's that in Texas?

• 28:34Speaker 02

  Yes, I was in El Paso. Yeah. That's where my first duty assignment. But that, yeah, but I, I ended up getting to my unit at the 10th Mountain Division.

• 28:42Speaker 02

  I didn't have any infantry training whatsoever. So it was like, talk about walking into an experience like, okay, I'm going to keep my mouth shut. Big eyes, big ears, listen, learn, and that's it.

• 28:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, that humility served you very well. And I, I hope if there's anyone, anyone listening that's a young leader going into position, have that attitude because that's, that's the way you do it. You stay humble. Going back to the book, we parked outside, so now you're, you're actually out on patrol. We parked outside the only modern structure within the fort. A single-story, double-cubed, concrete building with a few undersized windows. A pair of exhaust vents stuck out either side of the door and a smear of black soot streamed up along them on the concrete wall. This would be our home for the next few days. Our battalion had deployed to this part of Afghanistan for one purpose, to control the border with Pakistan. The mountain caves around here were insurgents' equivalent of forward operating bases.

• 29:33Jocko Willink?

  Pakistan was their safety zone, where they would resupply, rearm, and train between missions to Afghanistan. After sneaking across the frontier, they'd reoccupy their cave complexes and use them as springboards to launch attacks against coalition bases or units. They did, then they'd escape across the border to start the cycle all over again.

• 29:52Jocko Willink?

  Our job was to staunch the enemy flow of troops and supplies into Afghanistan. And Bandar was one of the key bases to support that intent. From here, from there, coalition troops could patrol the surrounding area and establish checkpoints on the road leading into Pakistan. Controlling the enemy and securing the populace are aggressive keystones of any successful counterinsurgency operation. By getting out there and actively patrolling, we could disrupt the rat lines and force them to react to us. So that's what you were doing.

• 30:25Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 30:28Jocko Willink?

  Now, at this point, you're meeting with like a friendly.

• 30:33Speaker 02

  And I. He's, he's Afghan, Afghan border policeman. His name was a major Alam Ghul, who had been fighting. I mean, the guy fought the Russians in the eighties and the Afghan civil war in the nineties. I mean, he was like 50 years old, just nothing but hardened warrior. And there I am, like 24 year old. I'm telling you, man, like I didn't really know what the hell I was doing. I was just shooting from the hip, like no pun intended, the whole time, you know, just trying to like, you know, puff my chest out and.

• 30:59Jocko Willink?

  And these guys that are these experienced like this border and again, and obviously people that listen to this podcast know I'm reading probably 10% of this book. The entire, you have to get this book to get all the nuance that you put in here. It's an incredible book, but you, you talk about that and I kind of, to sum that up quickly, I put, I wrote, in my notes, I wrote friendly Afghan border police, right? Because these guys are, these guys are kind of out to take care of themselves.

• 31:26Speaker 02

  They go to the higher bidder.

• 31:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they go to the higher. Exactly.

• 31:29Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 31:30Jocko Willink?

  Um, so you're there with this guy and Afghan border police strolled by regarding us curiously. So you guys are in their compound. I nodded to him and he returned my cautious greeting. He took a few more steps, then stopped and dropped his trousers. Right there in the open, he squatted and relieved himself. The men of my platoon paused in their work and took notice. A few lost their composure and gaped. The rest put on their game faces, turned away and returned to the task at hand. The border cop finished his business, wiped himself with his left hand and continued on his way. It was an unexpected cultural moment.

• 32:03Jocko Willink?

  So again, this is, this is the kind of things that people in America sometimes don't recognize. This is what's going on. This is life.

• 32:09Speaker 02

  It's true. I mean, we get down to Bandar and Bandar, the Bandar checkpoint is located like five kilometers from the, from the Pakistan border and it was in southern, like maybe mid to southern Gamal province. Um, and these Afghan border police were like, you know, left out there flapping, man. And the Afghan border police in Afghanistan were like the least well-funded of between the Afghan National Army, the Afghan police, the Afghan border police. The Afghan border police were like the redheaded stepchild of the Afghan government, man. They were just like left out there flapping. Their AKs were rusty hawks. I mean, there was no patrol discipline inside that base. And I'm telling you, man, there were shit piles everywhere. It was like, you know, no one wants to walk through a minefield. I think we all agree that's a terrible thing.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  And in Afghanistan, it can be a very real thing if you find, if you're, but this was an entirely different type of minefield that we thought like, you know, how do you explain to, how do you explain to the Afghan chief of police down there, the border police, like, hey, man, you gotta clean up some of this human shit around here. This is not, this is not healthy, but that's how they were like, piles of human shit everywhere. Big intense volleyball game, like, you know, the Afghan, I mean, it was just the craziest.

• 33:16Jocko Willink?

  It's crazy.

• 33:17Speaker 02

  The craziest shit you ever see in your life.

• 33:18Jocko Willink?

  It's crazy. It's weird. Like when we'd go and take over a building, like if we're going to stay in a building for a few days, within, I'm not kidding, within a half an hour, guys would be fixing stuff and like rerouting things. And hey, let's get this building. And you'd go into some Iraqi family, they'd been living there for however many, however many decades. And they would still have like, You know, in their kitchen, there'd be a little hole next to the wall where they would take a shit. And then they would kind of push it out through the hole in the wall. And, and that's just, that's just how it was. And I always thought to myself, Americans are kind of crazy in the other direction. Like, we look at something and go, oh, you know what? That's, I'm just gonna fix this. I'm wait, why would I shit in my own kitchen? No, this isn't making any sense.

• 34:03Jocko Willink?

  Okay, this is what we're gonna do. We're gonna get some kind of a contraption that's gonna carry this stuff outside. I mean, you know, you figure it out.

• 34:09Speaker 02

  Americans will walk, have you ever watched five minutes of HGTV? If there's some weird master bath right next to your kitchen sink, it's often a deal breaker. People won't even buy the house.

• 34:17Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 34:18Speaker 02

  Maybe Americans will say, you know, hell with it. I'm not even, I'm not even, I'm not even gonna buy this, let alone fix it. But you're so right, man. Like those, I feel like they've just been doing business.

• 34:27Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 34:27Speaker 02

  You know, get, no pun intended, for thousands of years, man. And like, that's just how it is. It's just how it is. And you know, that's what, what's now, what's truly crazy about that in terms of like a leadership challenge, right? Cause not only are you leading your troops, but you've got to establish a good cultural relationship with the people that you're, you're operating amongst, because otherwise you're not gonna have any success in finding and targeting the enemy. How do you talk about that without offending them? You know? You, you go into these meetings and you lead with that?

• 34:57Speaker 02

  You know what I mean? And then, and then he's cooking for you? Like scooping into this potted deer, have some chicken? There's like, you know, it's like, thank God for Cipro, man. Like, you know what I mean? Like, you just have to dive right in. You know, otherwise you're offending the local populace. And I mean, the consequences could be very real, man. You get your ass shot off by these guys that, you know? Like I say, they play both sides of the ball.

• 35:19Jocko Willink?

  Crazy. Moving on, you do a terrific job of, and in my notes, I just have written "the platoon", in quotes, right? Cause you do what everyone has to do, which is describe these guys that you're with. And it's, you know, that's another, referring to James Webb again, who wrote this book called Fields of Fire. And if you haven't read it, you should read it. It's a novel, but it's based on his time in Vietnam. And when you know his story, then you realize it actually was his time in Vietnam almost exactly. But he wrote that book before any of these other Vietnam War books came out. And in that book, he- He talks about, you know, he describes the platoon and it's all the stereotypical

• 36:00Jocko Willink?

  characters that are in a platoon. And what's, what's amazing about it is like they, those were the real guys that were in his platoon. Those are the characters he described. Those are the characters that are in every, every major Vietnam movie that there is from platoon to apocalypse. Now, like they all have this to, to Full Metal Jacket. They all have the same stereotypical American crosscut, right? The city slicker, the, the, the country kid, you know, like they're the, the chubby dumb kid that doesn't know, like they got all the stereotypes. And you know, as I'm reading your stuff, guess what? There it is again. And you did a great job of putting these guys out, going back to the book, Staff Sergeant, and I can't cover all of them. And you didn't even have the opportunity to cover all the guys that you had, but you, you hit some of the highlights. I'm gonna hit some of the

• 36:43Jocko Willink?

  highlights. Staff Sergeant Phil Baldwin, my second squad leader approached. Six foot four and built like a fullback. Baldwin, cutting, imposing figure in the growing darkness. At 34, he was the second oldest member of our platoon. He had joined the army in 2001 after watching the twin towers fall on nine 11 on TV in his house in small town Illinois. Other squad leaders, Staff Sergeant Campbell, Sabaki, is that what I'm saying?

• 37:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, Sabaki.

• 37:06Jocko Willink?

  Sabaki and Waits. Sabaki was a human tempest who blew through life fueled by a raging inner passion. While serving in a mechanized unit, he'd had Sabo tattooed in a half circle above his belly button, which is, which is anti-arm around. Waits was a leadership challenge. You talk about your platoon sniper, blue eyed, blond haired Sergeant Wheat. You know, you got the cast of characters and it is, it's legitimately like they're typecasted from, from, from Saving Private Ryan, from Band of Brothers, from the Pacific. Like that's America.

• 37:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. I'd be, I'm look, I'm, so I feel like when I waded into my platoon, it was, you know, the most diverse cross section of people that you can possibly imagine, you know? I mean, rich serving next to poor. Uh, northerner serving next to southerner like, you know, black, white, Asian, Hispanic, Muslim, Christian atheist, Sabo was a Satanist. I mean, all in the same foxhole, man. It's like, you know what I mean? Like in, in, in America, like, I feel like we're divided amongst those lines, but in an infantry platoon and in a combat unit, you address it directly. And in a way, you transcend those stupid petty differences. And this is like, why I always say like, real leaders unite. They don't, they don't, they don't divide. You know, and my, you know, my,

• 38:27Speaker 02

  my NCOs in my platoon were truly amazing. I mean, these guys came from every different walk of life. Their boots and t-shirts had more experience in the military than I did. And they had every reason in the world, right? To stick me in a corner office in my platoon CP and be like, just do the paperwork, sir. We got this. But they didn't. You know, they took me under the wing. They taught, coached and mentored me every step of the way. These are people that had, like I said, tons of experience in the military, far more than I did. They, most of them had chips on their shoulders as it, as it came to officers, you know? Um, but they were amazing, man. I mean, six of my guys in, in my platoon, six of them, weren't even citizens. I had a guy from Russia. I had a guy from Haiti. I had a guy from South

• 39:10Speaker 02

  Korea. I had a guy from South Vietnam. I had a guy from Mexico. I mean, I mean, I'm not joking. All these guys weren't even US citizens when they were, and they were in my platoon, you know? And, and again, you know, I'm, I'm like a city guy, like through and through. Like, I'm not like, you want to talk about the stereotypical, I'm not like, I feel like I'm not like you. I feel like you were the kind of like kick ass, take names leader. I was the guy in my unit that always needed a haircut, you know? Like, I didn't, I did, I was not like, I'm like the least tough person in the world. Like, I'm supposed to be in charge of these guys.

• 39:41Jocko Willink?

  You were like the stereotypical junior officer coming in from college, doesn't know anything, city slicker. That's so classic.

• 39:46Speaker 02

  It is, except for that, I really, really, really wanted to be right by these guys.

• 39:52Jocko Willink?

  And I'm telling you, um, your humility, from my perspective, On the outside looking in, because I trained a lot of junior officers and the junior officers that were humble like you were that were like, okay, I, I, this guy knows more than me, my start, those guys always do well. Well, most of the time they do well, not always, but a, a large percentage of time, those guys do well. The guys that do better, the guys like, look, I went to college. Look, I've been to Ranger School. I know this better than you. And that's the guys that get there horrible.

• 40:18Speaker 02

  Well, so look, I mean, I walk into my unit, my very, how could you not be humble? First of all, like I said, I mean, these guys had far more experience, you know, that in and of itself was intimidating. But I walk into my unit, my unit's going to the Joint Independence Trading Center, JRTC at Fort Polk and prep for this deployment. I, I had a choice. My commander's like, I'll just stay here, get your bear. I'm like, no, I'm going with my guys. I'm going to train with my men before we go to comm. So I don't even know the place. I put my stuff in storage and I'm at Fort Drum, which is like their two seasons there, like July and winter, right? And like, yeah, no, I know. And so they issue you, go to CIF and they issue you three shopping carts full of equipment that I don't even know. It's Molly gear? We didn't have Molly gear like when I was in training. So I had no idea how the hell to use it. And I get to my unit and like my NCOs like dump these three shopping carts

• 41:03Speaker 02

  and all my gears mixed up in a pile that's as tall as me. And I'm like, so guys, I'm just like, so I'm, I'm going on this deployment with you. My NCOs are like, God damn it. And they all start putting together my gear for me. And I'm just like standing in the middle of them twiddling my thumbs, thinking like, this is not the best way to earn the respect of your truth.

• 41:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You know what's awesome from a leadership perspective as well is and you, and your book shows us very clearly as this relationship develops between you and the NCOs. The NCOs, NCOs that have the attitude of, well, my officer doesn't know anything and screw him and I want to keep him over in the corner doing paperwork. Those guys end up with officers that suck.

• 41:42Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 41:43Jocko Willink?

  And they don't have a good working relationship.

• 41:45Speaker 02

  It's a self licking ice. It's a self, it's a self perpetuating thing. Like, you know?

• 41:49Jocko Willink?

  It's a loser. It's what it is.

• 41:50Speaker 02

  They've had a bad experience with an officer at a young, and then they said, they just said, screw officers. And then because they've said screw officers, every officer they get, they don't help. And then.

• 41:59Jocko Willink?

  And then those guys never become good officers.

• 42:01Speaker 02

  Yes, exactly.

• 42:02Jocko Willink?

  And that platoon is, is not as functional as a platoon where. The the NCOs do what they're supposed to do, which is help the junior officer learn their job.

• 42:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 42:11Jocko Willink?

  And advise them, and it's literally what their job is. In the, in the, in the Navy, we call it the senior enlisted advisor. That's what you have.

• 42:18Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 42:18Jocko Willink?

  Your platoon chief is your senior enlisted advisor that's supposed to advise you on what the hell to do. So when guys neglect that or they're anti-officer, they end up with a crappy platoon.

• 42:29Speaker 02

  Yeah. And, and you know, the, the guys that, the guys that neglect that end up with a crappy platoon. Um, or, you know, the guys that, you know, you get to Afghanistan or you get to Iraq, combat can be, you know, a great sifter of people, right? So the guys that maybe were that in your platoon that you couldn't quite like, move out of your platoon prior to deployment, or maybe you knew that they were a leadership challenge along the way. Combat has a way of, of sifting through those types of people as well.

• 42:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 42:59Jocko Willink?

  It does indeed. All right, continuing on. The men seem to be in good spirits. At the northeast corner of the perimeter, I found Sergeant Michael Emrick in the truck. In the truck commander's seat of the Humvee, hunched over a sketchpad that he's illuminated with his headlamp. We greeted each other. I leaned on the door to peer over to his shoulder, his latest creation. Emrick was an outstanding NCO and team leader who, whose men loved him. He was also a gifted artist. I'd re, uh, skill I'd recently tapped by asking him to create an emblem for our platoon.

• 43:32Jocko Willink?

  When we had a break in patrolling, we were going to paint it on each of our vehicles. "What's working on Emrick?" I asked. He showed me the sketchpad. "Jesus, man, that's outstanding," I said, looking at his creation. He'd drawn a fierce and toothy skull bursting from the O of outlaws. "Isn't finished yet, sir," Emrick said a little self-consciously. "Emrick, this is perfect. We'll put it on every truck. That way the enemy will always know who they're dealing with." "Thank you, sir." Like wheat, Emrick hailed from Louisiana, though he didn't have wheat's deep accent. "No, man. Thank you. That image is going to give us our identity." "When I'd first taken over the platoon, I wanted us to have our own unique persona. We'd settled on calling ourselves the Outlaws, and I'd paid out of pocket to have T-shirts made for everyone.

• 44:16Jocko Willink?

  We also came up with our own guide on. We were the only platoon with one. They're officially for company level and above. By the time we got out here, we were known as the Outlaw Platoon throughout the brigade. Now, thanks to Emrick's design, the enemy would know us as well." Boom. What made you decide to do that?

• 44:33Speaker 02

  You know, uh, we, well, in training, you know, one of the things that one of my NCOs said to me was that, "Hey, sir, you know, you know, when we're, we're here training, we have, we have a tremendous opportunity to take this group of individuals and make them into a team. And I gotta tell you, sir, you know, once that first bullet cracks by your head, you know, the individual does not matter anymore. The only thing that matters is, is this team and we're only as fast as our slowest person. And so at that moment, I said, "All right, so what do we do? You know, uh, how can we, how can we bring this? How can we, how can we sort of transcend the traditional training relationships or professional relationships

• 45:14Speaker 02

  that we have, right? So bringing all my squad leaders, uh, we started throwing around names for the platoon, uh, and we settled on the outlaws, uh, because that's sort of, that embodied the persona of my platoon. We were sort of the black sheep of the battalion in training. Um, I feel like everything we did was wrong. I mean, we, we get re-cocked on our live fire lanes like every time at 20, 30, 20, 30 times. Like, I mean, I was the black sheep of the lieutenant, a guy that didn't go to any infantry training, like, "Hey, keep an eye on this guy." So we're like, "We're the outlaws, you know, screw it." Like, that's who we're, that's who we're gonna be. Um, and you know, I'm telling you, my men, they took that, they embraced it, man. Like, they had these T-shirts and hoodies. They rocked them everywhere. They rocked them everywhere. Like, platoons aren't supposed to have guidons in companies. In fact, I remember running with my platoon, and they're all carrying this guy,

• 45:58Speaker 02

  and my battalion commander runs by and he's like, "What are these idiots doing?" And, "Hey, you know, you're not supposed to have a platoon." God, it didn't matter. Like, we carried it everywhere. And then, and when we got to Afghanistan, that, you know, I'll just say, it brought me on board with branding in a, in a big way, you know? They, these guys, that, that became their collective identity, you know? And that's the thing about the military that is truly remarkable, right? Like, they- They teach you to shoot movement, communicate together. And then you go to combat and you fight, bleed and die together. You know, and that's one of the things I always talk about, about going home is that when you come home, it's like, okay, now everyone goes their separate ways. It's like runs completely contrary to how you're trained, which is I think part of the reason why men struggle, men and women struggle so much.

• 46:40Speaker 02

  But, but yeah, Emmerich designed this outlaw platoon logo. And then they started, my men just started designing stencils of it and put it on the ballistic turrets of their trucks and their doors and it's like painted it on their four, their flicks or whatever. And I don't know what you guys call it, but flicks is what we called it. It just became who we were. And, you know, we, we got in a few fights and we started to, uh, you know, we started to have this reputation in our area of operations of like the green skulls. And it got to be, we would listen to the, the enemy's communications on their little eye comps. And they'd be like, oh, it's the green skulls. Like wait for another unit. We're like, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah.

• 47:21Jocko Willink?

  It's legit, man.

• 47:22Speaker 02

  It was, it was, it was, I mean, I can't like, I can't even over, I can't even believe that I lived this life. You know, I look back at it and I'm like, it seems surreal because it's not, you know, I'm not, I'm not the, you know, I feel like every veteran today has to be like a big MMA guy or like a suits rifles. And, you know, I saw something on your Instagram. I know, I love MMA. I'm just saying like, you know, your last Instagram, you have some video of you pulling back this big bow. I'm like, God damn, I gotta go on a podcast with this guy. Like, I was just playing Pokemon with my son. I'm not, this is not who I am, you know? This guy's gonna kill me.

• 48:00Jocko Willink?

  No, that's awesome. So yeah, I mean, I ripped off Colonel David Hackworth and Buck about face. He renames his, his battalion, the hardcore, right? And that's why when I took over tasking of Bravo at SEAL Team Three, I changed tasking of bruiser. Same thing. Like this is what we're gonna be. We're not gonna be normal.

• 48:20Speaker 02

  And it's like the person, did it become like almost the personality of your unit? Yeah, the bruisers, it matters a lot. I mean, I.

• 48:26Jocko Willink?

  It's a little, like I go out and work with companies. I'll go out and work with companies. I met this guy. He's like, we. Named are like construction shift shifts. So every shift has their own name. And then they're like trying to out compete each other on who can get more work done and stuff, right?

• 48:42Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, I mean, look, we had a battalion football game like, oh, we were the outlaws. They had their own little uniforms made. I mean, they, they rolled into that football game with some serious attitude, man. And we ended up winning. I mean, it's just, you know, it is powerful. I mean, it helps galvanize people under a common banner. I think that if your leader, you know, obviously humble, big eyes, big ears, listen, but like part of your job is to galvanize people, bring people together from all walks of life. And a great way to do it is to come up with a,

• 49:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 49:09Speaker 02

  A name, a unit, a symbol.

• 49:11Jocko Willink?

  No doubt about it.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  You know, and so,

• 49:12Jocko Willink?

  Us versus the world.

• 49:14Speaker 02

  I didn't know what the hell I was doing at the time. I just listened to my NCOs, but it seemed to work, you know?

• 49:18Jocko Willink?

  They were a hundred percent right.

• 49:21Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you're continuing to make in the rounds, talking to some of your guys in the platoon. You go up and talk to, a guy that's, well, I guess you wouldn't say in your platoons, your Terp, his name is Abdul. And you go up to him and you ask him, why do you do this job? He didn't speak at first. Instead, he dug into his MRE pouch and found a package of crackers. He, as he opened them, he said, at the beginning of the war, my father worked for the Americans at FOB's Skin. Am I saying that right?

• 49:46Speaker 02

  Skin, yes. Yep.

• 49:48Jocko Willink?

  I couldn't conceal my surprise in my voice. Really? Doing what? Interpreter. His answer intrigued me. Is he still working there? More silence. Abdul studied his exposed cracker, took a bite, then glanced back at me. He's dead.

• 50:05Jocko Willink?

  I didn't know what to say. He was killed by the Taliban four years ago. We received night letters.

• 50:13Jocko Willink?

  I sat down peering at Abdul intently.

• 50:18Jocko Willink?

  Is that why you do this? He nodded. Every mission I go on, I avenge my father's death. I am the head of the house now. It is my duty. That explained everything. His courage under fire. The trust Captain Kennedy had placed in him, his standing with the locals. I understood why he didn't cover his face. He wanted the enemy to know what he was doing. How about you, Lieutenant? Why are you here? I opened a bottle of water and down half of it, thinking back to the day I had found purpose in my life. Unconsciously, I touched the St. Christopher's medal at my throat. September 11th, I said simply.

• 51:00Jocko Willink?

  So Abdul.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:03Jocko Willink?

  A good guy.

• 51:04Speaker 02

  He's a great guy.

• 51:05Jocko Willink?

  And.

• 51:06Speaker 02

  Just great.

• 51:07Jocko Willink?

  Explain night letters a little bit.

• 51:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, night letters are, you know, if you're a, if you're known in country to be working with the Americans and the bad guys know that you're working with the Americans, they'll start finding out where you live and start sending letters to your family at night. And Abdul's family in this regard would wake up every day, walk out to their front door and there'd be a letter stapled or, you know, nailed to their front door, which is basically threats. Like if, if, if Abdul continues to work with and support the Americans, we're going to kill him and kill your family. And so Abdul would get word of these night letters on our base. Now, we were at Ford Operating Base Burmel, and so Burmel was about five clicks from the border and right south, just directly southeast of us where Skan, 45 minute drive south

• 51:53Speaker 02

  with Skan. And they would, Army Special Forces would rotate in and out of there. And Skan is sort of famous for being co-located with, with what they call in Afghanistan, the Alamo, which is a, like a little bee hut where like these, you know, secret squirrel types would sit there with like their little comm stuff and listen to like what the Taliban were talking about. But there, there was an outpost there and Abdul's family lived right there. So they lived right in the thick of it. And Abdul was a guy that he, he didn't, this was back in the day before the Americans did the hiring of the interpreters, like officially, like, you know, I think Task Force Titan was what they were in Afghanistan. Well, I mean, when I was in Afghanistan, it was like, hey, you know, you get 10,000 bucks from your talk, from your tactical operations center, pay the interpreters type thing for starting to go out and pay. And that's how we hired him. But Abdul was just a great find.

• 52:38Speaker 02

  And where we were in Afghanistan, specifically in Pakhtikha Province, they spoke Waziri. I mean, they didn't speak Pashto or Dari or Farsi. They spoke Waziri. So you would, you'd get an interpreter from Kabul or something like that. And they couldn't even speak the language. So you had to have somebody local. Abdul knew most of the bad guys that we were fighting, at least the, the bad guys that were local to the area. And he just, in a big FU to them, he's not wearing a mask. He's in the fight just like we are. And, you know, that's, that's, I realized in that moment that most Afghans are on the front lines, just like Americans. A lot of Afghans, they want, they want the same things that, that we have here, you know, and they're willing to fight for it. And Abdul was one of those people.

• 53:19Jocko Willink?

  So he's getting those night letters. Eventually, they escalate to a point where he bails and he leaves camp. Yes. And this, going back to the book, the next morning outlaw platoon rose early to prepare for another long patrol mission. This time we'd be out beyond the wire for another six days tasked with setting up snap checkpoints and observation posts all over our area of operations. We sorted beyond the wire, heading into our area of operations, five Humvees strong. We had gone, we hadn't gone far when I got a radio call from the base operations center telling us to turn around and come home. There was no explanation. We swung around and drove back through the main gate. Soldiers were running in different directions and there was a charged atmosphere that had been lacking when we left. We dismounted.

• 54:02Jocko Willink?

  Sabo and Baldwin linked up with me. "Any idea what's going on, sir?" Baldwin asked me. "No, let me see if I can find out." "Turn the trucks around and make sure everyone stays close." "Roger, sir." I walked to the operations center where they found First Sergeant Christopher, where I found First Sergeant Christopher overseeing controlled chaos. When I asked what was going on, he said, "Delta found the body of a local National."

• 54:28Jocko Willink?

  So you guys go out, they find a body along the road, they send you guys out to go and see what's going on, identify the body, see if you can figure anything out. And here you guys, you guys find the body, it's next to a bike alongside the road. And here we go back to the book. We drew alongside and stopped. Lieutenant Marbury had been right. The cyclist had been shot in the leg. It was twisted under him in an awkward position. "What do you think happened?" I asked. Waverly said nothing. His eyes were devoid of emotion. But I knew him to be a sensitive man. Inside, he must have been reeling. Leaders make decisions based on the best information available and a thorough game boarding of possible outcomes.

• 55:11Jocko Willink?

  But even the most competent leaders cannot account for everything. Life has a way of breeding unintended consequences. If it was Abdul, he would shoulder the guilt of this day for the rest of his life. Lieutenant Marbury looked back up the road and spoke softly. I'd say he was coming back north out of skin, was ambushed here. Maybe he tried to drive through it, but he got hit in the leg and fell off the bike. I nodded. "Made sense so far." "See how his leg is broken too? Probably happened when he hit the ground." Blood had congealed around the leg wound. Flies were lapping at it. Marbury continued, "He tried to get away, but they caught him, executed him. See the bullet hole in the back of his head?

• 55:54Jocko Willink?

  I hadn't seen it. I couldn't take my eyes off the flies. You have to look. If it's Abdul, at the very least, you owe him that. Some of the squad leaders had called Lieutenant Taylor and me Terp lovers. They'd been through a tour here already and they'd come away with disdain for and distrust of almost all Afghans. They'd seen betrayals. They'd seen that here. Loyalty shifted like the desert sands. As armor from such things, they'd built a wall between themselves and the people we were sent to protect. We bent down and unstrapped his helmet. When we pulled it off, black red pudding drizzled out of it. The lifeless head flopped into the dirt. Lieutenant Marbury was right. The man had been shot in the back of the head.

• 56:38Jocko Willink?

  I could see the entry ruins surrounded by matted black hair. It was Abdul.

• 56:49Jocko Willink?

  And then you guys actually went to his family's house?

• 56:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was a, that was a, that was a terrible day. I mean, you know.

• 56:58Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you have to deliver the body?

• 57:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 57:04Speaker 02

  And Abdul had, you know, I think, I mean, a brother that was probably like 10 years younger than him and younger sisters, younger than that. And, I mean, his, and his mom was like the, I mean, that little boy was like the patriarch of the family and his mom was sort of running the show. And I remember delivering the body to her and I remember just watching from afar, from far away. I think Lieutenant Marbury walked up with the body, uh, with, with our company commander. And I remember just watching her collapse at the front of her, at the front of her, uh, colot. Um, and I remember at least that the little boy ran around to this woodpile on the side and he collapsed on the side. I mean, it was just a terrible, it was just a terrible situation.

• 57:45Speaker 02

  And, you know, Abdul would complain about these night letters all the time and he would say, "I really need to get back to my house to take care of my family." He would talk to me, Commander Sean, like, "I need to get back there." And so we'd go to our commander and, and talk to him about it and say, "Look, we've got to give Abdul leave to go back and sort of take care of his family." And our commander ended up, he ended up shooting that down. Because in order for Abdul to get down there safely, down and back safely, we'd have to divert an infantry platoon to bring him to escort him. We simply did not have the combat power to do it.

• 58:13Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 58:14Speaker 02

  And Abdul ended up in the middle of the night because we denied it, hopped on his little dirt bike, drove down there, linked up with his family. He was ambushed somewhere on the way back to our base. And like, I mean, it happened exactly as I described. He gets shot in the leg, flips off the bike, tumbles off the bike, and takes a bullet right to the back of the head and was executed right there by people who wanted him dead. And they, they, they, you know, that was my, that was my first experience with losing somebody that, you know, he wasn't a member of my platoon, but he, he was fighting with us, you know, he's an ally. And man, I learned, I think, I think the title of that chapter was like, I remember thinking like, man, the enemy has a long, dark reach. They can hit you anywhere,

• 58:54Speaker 02

  anytime. And yeah, that's what they, they're sophisticated, they're smart fighters, they're, they're some of the world's best light infantry. They know how to, they know how to bait infantry platoons out of bases and bait people out of bases for that matter. They did that with Abdul. And they caught him in a, in a near ambush on the way back. And it sucked. It sucked. And so we were left with, we lost our best interpreter, which was the bridge between us and the local populace. And I feel like, I feel like things went downhill from there. I mean, because, you know, you never really know what these interpreters are saying, if the translation is accurate.

• 59:30Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 59:30Speaker 02

  And Abdul, I mean, there was, it was one of those things, like my platoon sergeant and some of my more seniors at NCOs never truly trusted any of our interpreters. But Abdul was one of the good ones. And when we lost him, shit just went downhill.

• 59:46Jocko Willink?

  You say in the book, the assassination, the assassination made the war personal for all of us. Suddenly Abdul's younger brother bolted through the front of the door and ran to a nearby woodpile. He dropped to his knees, covered his head with his arms and began to sob. The moment had no end. We stared our vigil, game faces secured, but beneath them, we seethed.

• 1:00:08Jocko Willink?

  The grief I'd felt as I stood in the ditch next to his body had given away to a slow burning rage, rage at the enemy, rage at the decision that had led to his death, rage that we had been unable to help the one Afghan upon whose loyalty we could always depend. Left without him, I feared what would happen the next time I had to interact with Major Ghul or any of his ilk. Yeah, because you literally, you put a lot of faith in those Terps, man.

• 1:00:33Speaker 02

  He was with us everywhere, man. And like, there were, you know, even the 173rd airborne that was there before us, like, they, this is a guy that would charge into ambushes with American troops. Like, the war was personal for him and, and in that moment, it was personal for us, too.

• 1:00:53Jocko Willink?

  So you're out on patrol, you're in the Humvees, and here we go, back to the book. The hackles on my neck stood, suddenly stood straight up. My nerves jangled, spellbound by a sensation unfelt before. What the hell? Perhaps I was getting de, seriously dehydrated. I opened the water bottle in my hands, my lips curled around its plastic rim, just as Baldwin's Humvee exploded. For a split second, a bubble of orange flame sprouted from its right side. The rig lurched hard left as its shock absorbed the violent blast. Another flame ball boiled underneath the Humvee. Gouts of dirt and smoke spewed horizontally from, out from between the tires. An instant later, the fire vanished, replaced by curls

• 1:01:38Jocko Willink?

  of black smoke, haloed by swirling dusk. McLeod, am I saying that right?

• 1:01:43Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:01:44Jocko Willink?

  McLeod, Baldwin's gunner, disappeared out of the turret, leaving the barrel of the, of his M2 50 cal heavy machine gun pointing skyward. Baldwin! I dropped the water bottle. Before it hit my lap, a third bloom of fire spraw, spawned midway between our two Humvees. My truck trembled and suddenly it sounded as if someone was making popcorn. Shrapnel on the armor plate. The smoke and dirt shrouded Baldwin's Humvee from view. I heard a sharp explosion behind us, quickly followed by several more. The ground quaked again. The water bottle shifted, fell over my thigh and spilled down my pant leg. Pinholt, is that right?

• 1:02:23Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:02:23Jocko Willink?

  Pinholt sat next to me with his gloved hands tied on the Humvee steering wheel. Sweat trickled down the side of his head, more beaded on his forehead just below the rim of his helmet. He looked at me, his face tense, but his eyes determined. He was waiting for me to make a decision. Ahead, more smoke swirled around Baldwin's Humvee. Beyond it, I could see our, I could see our Afghan National Army ANA cohorts bailing out of their Toyota Hilux pickup trucks toward the top of the knoll. The Afghan soldiers, never the pictures of discipline, ran this way and that with their weapons held at the low ready. A few flopped into the road, into the dirt on the either side of the vehicles. Others vanished off the road, sprinting as they fired randomly from the hip.

• 1:03:06Jocko Willink?

  Between the explosions, the drumbeat of machine guns rang out from both sides of us. This is just get some.

• 1:03:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, so.

• 1:03:18Speaker 02

  That was my first, this was my first firefight. This was the first time I was ever shot at and like, oh my gosh, I don't even know where to start. Uh, well, one, one of the things that I thought of first in that moment was like, holy shit, there is a group of people out there that wants me dead. They've never met me before, they don't know me, you know, but they want me dead. And like, when there's somebody out there trying to kill you, the first time you experience that sensation, it's just you've never felt it before in your life and uh, that's what I was feeling in that moment. And so just to give you sense, so.

• 1:03:59Speaker 02

  It was hilltop 2474, right on our military map. It's 2,474 feet above the 7,000 feet that we were already at. Our platoon was tasked with doing an observation post on the backside of that hill. And so we had to pull around that hill, right, to the eastern portion of that hill. So our Humvees in this big column pull around the hill. We drive down into what looks like this depression, almost like driving down into a gravy boat. We're at the bottom of that gravy boat. Outside the right of my door, I'm looking down and I couldn't even open my door and step out of it, right, because there was a sheer wadi right to my right and it ran. So you're stuck there. Yes. And then to the left was this cliff. And so we get around there and there are four

• 1:04:41Speaker 02

  ANA Hilux pickup trucks in front of us and just all hell breaks loose from both sides. The enemy that day had ambushed us from both sides, volley fired RPGs at both the front and rear of my Humvees, probably four or five RPGs right off the bat, and opened up with crew serve weapons. And I remember looking up from my Humvee to the left and to the right, and there were three crew serve machine guns on either ridge top. I could see their flickering of their firing and they were trained, they were barking the guns, which means that they had enough training to like, shoot the crew serve machine gun, let the barrel cool, next guy picks up the, I mean, it just was the craziest. They were good. They were good. They were good. And then another unit hit us in an L-shaped ambush.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  And so, so for me as a leader, I remember looking at Pinhold. Pinhold is looking at me. He's got these big, bright blue eyes. And it's like, you know, when you're in training, it's like, they always say, hey, make a decision, sir. Make a decision, make a decision. This was like my make a decision moment. And, you know, there's no assault through a near ambush. There's no dismounting in the middle of that and assaulting. I mean, they had planned this ambush in the perfect spot, knowing that I couldn't assault through it, right? There's no driving through it because they used the ANA as a roadblock. So we couldn't push through the kill zone, establish fire superiority on the high ground. I had, I had nothing, nothing. There was nothing in that moment that I could do or execute that was from a field manual that would have gotten us out alive. And so I knew that, you know, I only had seconds

• 1:06:07Speaker 02

  to make a decision. And I knew that whatever decision it was, it had to be bold. It had to be bold enough that my men saw it and. Not only did they have to see it, but they had to move out and draw fire with me. And so I got out of the truck in the middle of the kill zone and I remember, I remember getting out of the truck and so like, there's chaos in the truck and then there's chaos outside the truck. And I get out of the truck and it's just like shit is hitting the fan all around me, man. And I'm like looking around, I hear this big crack and turns out it's this Dragonoff sniper rifle. And I've got some sniper that's trying to shoot at me. I'm watching these rounds impact all around my feet. And my first thought was like, I immediately regret this decision, you know? And I like look at Penholdt and he's like, he's like, what are you doing?

• 1:06:50Speaker 02

  And I remember shutting the door and I just started hauling ass to the top of the hill because I knew I had to get the ANA into their trucks.

• 1:06:58Jocko Willink?

  So you hauled ass forward?

• 1:07:00Speaker 02

  Forward, up the hill.

• 1:07:01Jocko Willink?

  Up your, towards the front of your patrol, up the hill so you could get to the ANA.

• 1:07:05Speaker 02

  Yes, and I remember running past Baldwin's truck, which was smoking and on fire, but not out of the fight.

• 1:07:10Jocko Willink?

  With an RPG?

• 1:07:10Speaker 02

  Yes, yeah. And I'll tell you what, like those up armored Humvees, man, like that, they were still combat effective. They were all in that truck, the RPG, it was RPG 7, so it wasn't like anything armor piercing, but they were all still in the fight. And I remember looking in the window, I remember just banging on Baldwin's up armored Humvee window and I just sort of gave him the infantry follow me thing. There was so much smoke and there was so much shit going on, I didn't even know if he really saw. And I remember running up the hill and I'm like, my muscles were filled with lead. I mean, you're at 10,000 feet there. It's like mile high stadium football game times two. And I'm like, oh my God, like, you know, because as a young leader, you're always afraid of like making a mistake in combat and drawing the eye, just failing your troops.

• 1:07:55Speaker 02

  And I was, I'm not worried, I, I, I just, I remember worrying about, oh my God, man, did I just make the biggest mistake in my life? Did I just like totally make a stupid decision in combat? Are these guys gonna even follow me? I never gave them an order over the radio. In fact, I couldn't even use our radios because the, that hilltop was obscuring our line of sight comms to our base, you know, there was so much shit going down in the kill zone that my squad leaders were occupying the platoon net yelling back and forth or, I mean, it was just, so I'm halfway up, I'm like, Jesus Christ, I didn't give an order, am I, am I men even going to follow me? I'm like almost out of the fight, you know, I got rounds impacting all around me. And I remember turning around and I see Baldwin charging up the hill after me and then we

• 1:08:37Speaker 02

  charging up the hill after him and then my mortar guy with a 60 millimeter mortar in handheld, like slung over his back with mortar round, I mean, like my entire platoon started following me up that hill that day and, and it was one of those things, it was just like, um, you know, they followed me up to the top of the hill, uh, we all took cover up at the top, got the ANA back in their, in their trucks, um, had them pushed through the kill zone, we got our trucks up there, established fire superiority and then we just ran down into the teeth of the enemy and attacked them and killed those little bastards. It was like a three hour firefight, but we hunted them down, brought it, and after two or three hours, Apaches came in, so it helped us, so, so it helped us cut off their exfil routes and by the time we got up and were firing, uh, I mean, we had crew served machine guns and our weapons were rocking on the tops of our trucks, but we were able to establish

• 1:09:22Speaker 02

  comms with our base where we had two 105 millimeter howitzers that were firing and I already had-

• 1:09:26Jocko Willink?

  How long did it take to get the 105s up?

• 1:09:28Speaker 02

  But when we were up there, seconds, because I already had TRPs plotted on-

• 1:09:30Jocko Willink?

  So, once you got to the top of the hill-

• 1:09:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:09:33Jocko Willink?

  -and got radio comms-

• 1:09:34Speaker 02

  A minute, a minute after that and by the way-

• 1:09:36Jocko Willink?

  Outstanding.

• 1:09:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, it wa, I mean, but, but our gun bunnies were amazing, our, our artillery guys were incredible, but I had already coordinated with our tactical operations center on where I thought the enemy would exfil and I gave them, hey, if I say fire TRP one, like this is where you're, this is what you're firing-

• 1:09:51Jocko Willink?

  Pre-planned fires, yeah.

• 1:09:53Speaker 02

  It was, I mean, the, the object of the infantry is to kick boots on the objective, right? Like if we're in a fight, we're doing it wrong, you know, so, um, echelaman of fires was something that I, I was a big believer in, we didn't really get to execute it that day, but, you know, the goal is, is you know, you're, you know, you're, if we, if we know we're doing a movement to contact, I want to make sure that my howitzers are firing every second until my men get on that objective and then we stop firing with the guns and then we exploit with boot, with boots on the ground, right, to give the enemy very little reaction time. But that day, we didn't have that, so we improvised, we improvised and then I remember charging, um, charging directly east and I think we killed, I think- I mean, we got attacked by like probably 30 or 40 guys that day. I think that was what the report said in the aftermath, but I think we killed six or seven of them.

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  At least, you know, I mean, couldn't really find any, I mean, they're so good at Kazakh, but we killed at least six or seven of them that day. And for me, like, I remember coming back to the DFAC and at the end of that fight, I didn't even know if I still didn't know if I had made a colossal mistake. And I remember walking into DFAC. And it was like, it was like that moment in Hoosiers. You ever see that movie that who's like the slow clap? I like walk into the DFAC. I think my NCOs are gonna kick my ass and they just like Sabo stands up first and I'm like, oh, Jesus, this guy, you know, he's gonna kill me. He stands up, he starts clapping. It was like some goddamn thing out of Rudy or something, you know, like that guy were gonna carry me on their, so I mean, it was, I swear to Christ, you know, being a father is the greatest thing in the entire world, but that moment was one of,

• 1:11:22Speaker 02

  I don't think, there will never be a moment in my life that I think it professionally anyway, where that peaks that, you know, and my men. So, look, there's, there's earning your troops respect from shielding them from garrison bullshit and allowing them to train. I feel like that's an officer and leader's role. Like I'll handle the, I'll handle the collective stuff. You handle the individual training. You can earn your respect that way, right? But, you know, none of that shit matters. You get your, you get one chance in combat to do it. And I feel like that was my chance. It didn't, it didn't go perfect. I mean, we got shot up pretty bad, but I mean, we came out of there. It was like, it was most of our, it was most of our first experience getting shot at for the most part, you know, and like a really serious way like that. I mean, everyone has a couple of potshots fired at them. I think all my NCOs have had

• 1:12:07Speaker 02

  that, but man, that was like a four hour, I mean, we got trapped in the kill zone of an ambush, fought our way out of it. It was a nightmare. It was a nightmare. And we came out of that and it was like, I remember just being like ACUs were like, our army combat uniforms were like just, I was just drenched, you know, walking in, I mean, the DFAC, everyone's got their little trays and they're like high fiving everybody. It was like, you know, like, imagine being an artist, you're training to be an artist and never painting a painting, right? And we finally got to paint our painting, you know, we got, finally got to experience combat and it was a great thing. And it was pretty cool. I mean, it was cool for that, like one time. The hundreds of time after that, it gets uncool very quickly, but it was cool that one time, that victory.

• 1:12:49Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, Rudy.

• 1:12:52Jocko Willink?

  DFAC, as good as it gets. And I'm going back to the book here. After all this stuff goes down, later that night, as I lay in bed, unable to sleep despite my exhaustion, I felt the flip side of that victory.

• 1:13:07Jocko Willink?

  Bray's 50 thundered. A man's arm was torn from his body. I reveled in that moment. The mortar machine gun, the mortared machine gun nest was a charnel site. Men blown apart, leave a vile, stinking mess, ruined bowels, the copper scent of blood, bits and pieces, nothing more, defiled by firepower. I had watched Garrett score that hit and felt enraptured. Victory was evident in every kill. And none of my men had been hit. An infantry leader could not ask for anything more. But what about the man you are? I am a warrior. Where is the human side? Ugly thoughts boiled within me, unformed, terrifying. They swirled around in my head

• 1:13:50Jocko Willink?

  as if my mind had tumbled across some truth my subconscious could not face. Today I watched a man get blown to pieces. I did what I had to do as a soldier to win a desperate battle. Yes, but what about a man? What about the man you wanted to be? How did you serve him today? I tried to drive the thought from my mind. Can Sean the human coexist with Sean the combat leader?

• 1:14:17Jocko Willink?

  Today, we had felt the indescribable rush created by bloodlust, survival, and victory. It had bonded my platoon in ways I couldn't quite grasp. Now, as I tossed in my bed, I wondered how we would ever return to our former selves after what this fight had done to us. We were becoming exactly what I did not know yet. But just sensing the permanence of the transformation inspired more fear than anything else I had faced that day. Restless, I rose from bed and stepped into the black Afghan night. I'd never felt farther away from home than at that moment.

• 1:14:57Jocko Willink?

  Coming down.

• 1:14:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, I feel like, I mean, God, man, I remember like, I remember this just like it was yesterday, man, laying in that bed. I couldn't sleep. I mean, I was exhilarated, but I couldn't sleep. And it was like, one of those things, it's like, like, Jesus Christ, like, I sat, I was cheering, I was, I loved every second of killing the enemy. It was the greatest feeling up until that point in time in my life. It was the greatest feeling. But then I couldn't escape the fact of like, what does this say about who I am and the person that I'm becoming? And what does it mean about like, how are we as Americans? What are we different? How are we different on the battlefield? Like, the juxtaposition of two selves, like warrior and civilian, you know, uh, you know, just straight killer or liberator

• 1:15:43Speaker 02

  and protector. And like, to me, in that moment, you know, I think, just think the awesome responsibility of being a young leader, whether you're a young NCO, team leader, squad leader, platoon sergeant, platoon leader, didn't matter. Um, every leader in combat has a moral obligation to be the moral compass of their platoon, or their unit, their small unit. And that means that you've got to do everything that you can to keep those troops, when they're in the shit, uh, tethered to who they are, you know, not let them, uh, revel in the bloodlust too much. Because if you do that, you lose who you are, you lose, you lose what, you lose your human side. And for me, you know, I mean, God, man, like, we went through 485 days of that hell. And if we

• 1:16:27Speaker 02

  didn't, if we weren't constantly connected and tethered to our human side, that it would have been a fate, a terrible fate for every single member of that platoon, uh, the likes of which many of those men that I served with would not have been able to escape from, I feel like. And because, believe me, you know, you're there for eight months, man. If you're there for eight months, uh, you get attacked so much and so often, and the enemy never relents. But you have to stay disciplined. You have to, you have to stay above it. You have to, you have to make the hard right decision. You can't just open fire into a group of villagers, even though you know, they knew exactly where that ID was placed. And what, you know, I mean, you have to stay above it. You have

• 1:17:09Speaker 02

  to stay disciplined. You have to stay tethered to your human self. And in that moment, I had no idea what the hell I was becoming, but I knew that I was changing in a way that I might not like so much.

• 1:17:21Jocko Willink?

  And I'm glad, well, the good, the good part about this is you actually recognize this. Because this is a, this is something that you don't always recognize, right? I mean, you start getting angry at the enemy and the enemy, what the people that you are calling the enemy, that, that, that definition starts, can start to grow, right? It can start to grow to cover, like you just said, the villagers that knew the ID was there. Well, they knew that. Well, if they knew that, then they're the enemy. And it's really easy for that transition to take place and for that word to start to cover a much broader definition than what it should cover by the moral law and by the, the actual law.

• 1:18:04Speaker 02

  Absolutely, absolutely. And so the bottom line is, is that it's our job, it's our, you know, it's our job as, as in the infantry and I gotta believe in a SEAL platoon, even probably in a more precise way to close with, you know, find, fix, finish, close with destroy the enemy, kill them when they're on the battlefield. But when they're, you know, one of the things that I talked about with my men a lot, right? It was something that like, it, it, we trained all the time, by the way, and we addressed this in our training. The enemy would, would hone and evolve their TTPs and so we would as well. We never stopped training. And so that was how we were different from a lot of the other units in Afghanistan. They can come back on the base and just chill and relax. But no, you've got to train, you've got to train on escalation of force. And in that, as part of that training, whether you're evolving your TTPs or otherwise,

• 1:18:49Speaker 02

  you've got to talk to them about our responsibility on the battlefield to take care of the enemy if they're wounded. You know, I cannot tell you how many times I had, you know, I had troops that, soldiers that wanted to put a bullet in a guy that was wounded on the battlefield. Hell, I wanted to with every fiber of who I was, but you got to play the long game and think like, if, if you do take that person's life, who will you be 10 years from now? 20 years from now, will you regret that decision? And, you know, the charge of a leader, if you're going to be a leader of a small unit in combat, when you, when you're responsible for lives, you've got to be planning and thinking like that. And so, um, yeah, it'd be great to take that guy off the battlefield and put a bullet in their head, but you're not taking care of your troops if you allow your guys to do that as far as I'm concerned.

• 1:19:31Jocko Willink?

  Cause they're gonna end up in jail.

• 1:19:32Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 1:19:33Jocko Willink?

  I mean, and then, you know, that's, that's something.

• 1:19:36Jocko Willink?

  I

• 1:19:39Jocko Willink?

  we we we we received a a brief that we were supposed to give our guys and I did give it to my guys but the the the overall broad like meaning of the brief was take your morals on the battlefield right?

• 1:19:52Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:19:53Jocko Willink?

  And I actually said, hey, guys, this is what they're telling you to do. Take your morals on the battlefield. I'm going to tell you guys, don't do that. Don't do that. What I want you to do is I actually want you to follow the law because here's the deal. What you just said, what I just said, like morally, if you set an IED or you fired a RPG and you killed a bunch of my guys, I feel like morally I can kill you.

• 1:20:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:20:17Jocko Willink?

  And that's okay. But if you don't have a weapon anymore and you're surrendering, guess what? Legally, I can't kill you. And so what you actually have to do is you have to actually follow what the law is. And guys, you know, and I I know for I know the way I felt like when my guys got wounded, when my guys got killed, I'd wanted to kill everyone. Everyone, all of them, salt the earth, rubble the buildings and turn the whole city into just just destruction.

• 1:20:48Jocko Willink?

  And I told my guys that and I was like, but we cannot do that and we are not going to do that because that is not legal. And so what we do is we do the best we can with what the legalities are with the rules of engagement are, we'll follow them, we'll stick to them and we'll take the fight to the enemy. That's what we're going to do. But as I said, that line is really, really.

• 1:21:09Jocko Willink?

  It's one of those lines that if you don't pay attention to it, you can look up and you'd be way past that line.

• 1:21:15Speaker 02

  No question. I mean, for me as a leader, I was not willing to delegate that, you know? I feel like in other words, I always wanted to have, I always wanted to be, I always wanted to be a part of that. I always wanted to have some sort of command command supervisory authority on that aspect of, you know, I was always in the fight. I wanted to be in the fight. I wanted to be where contact was heaviest, but I also wanted to be involved in those types of decisions. And so I think, you know, you mentioned something about. Just talking to your guys about how you feel too. So many leaders in the military don't do that. And, and what I mean by that is they, especially in the infantry, where leaders don't share their own vulnerabilities. Like, hey, man, like, I feel the same way that you do. Like, I want to go out there and kill every one of those little bastards, you know?

• 1:21:57Speaker 02

  I feel the same pain that you do. This hurts me just as much to see these men get wounded and killed like. But we can't do that. And so just being able to identify with your men on that level is it not only does it bring you closer to them. I think it ingratiates them to you as a leader as well, where they think like, okay. You know, my leader's not some abstract person out there. He feels the same pain that we do. He's in this with us. And, you know, it all goes back to sort of the established and that collective identity. Like, if you're a part of that collective identity as a leader, I feel like those sorts of commands are more likely to be, to be followed in that line that you walk while it is certainly a fine one. Your best chance of staying on the right side of that is operating like that.

• 1:22:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. If you're not connected to your guys.

• 1:22:41Speaker 02

  You're screwed. You're screwed. Exactly. Exactly.

• 1:22:44Jocko Willink?

  So, and, and then, and I know you know this. You can go too far with that. And all of a sudden you become one of the guys that you can't differentiate yourself. And you've gone too far and you've crossed that line of the relationships. And you're their friend. And now all of a sudden, when you say, hey, this is what we're gonna do. You're not telling them that, them that from a leader. You're telling them that your opinion from another guy.

• 1:23:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:23:05Jocko Willink?

  And we don't necessarily have to listen to you because you're just, you know, I, I think different from you. Okay, well, I'm gonna do what I think.

• 1:23:09Speaker 02

  And then it becomes, hey, hey, you know, I need you to take that machine gun nest and I need you to take it now. Sit at the top of that hill, see, I'm pointing to it, go. And then you have a squad, oh, wait. You're not, you're sending me, you're not sending your buddy. And then you're like, you are in crisis as a leader. And to me, you're combat ineffective. The moment that that question is asked, if you're, the moment that question is asked, you need to be relieved of command. You know, um, yeah, leaders, yeah, don't mistake like leadership with friendship, that they're not synonymous at all. You, you know, you might be able to be a friend of your guys after the fact, like when we're retired, sitting around a table, smoking stogies and drinking beer. But not while you're in combat. It's just.

• 1:23:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:45Speaker 02

  That's why they say leadership is a lonely thing.

• 1:23:47Jocko Willink?

  You know, and, and, and like that, and I, because I get this question all the time. I had guys that worked for me that were absolutely my friends, 100%. That I did everything with, with surfing and drank beer and did jujitsu and hung out, 100%.

• 1:24:03Jocko Willink?

  And those guys, when I, when, when I said, hey, this is what we're doing, it was like Roger, no, no question. The thing is you don't know who's going to have the professionalism in your platoon to actually be able to do that with. And that's why you have to take that relationship building very, very slowly. And if you just decide you're going to be friends with everyone, there's going to be some guys that are going to take advantage of it. They're not going to be able to handle it. It's going to be cause major problems. And that means you can't be friends with anybody. And now you've created this distance and you'll, you won't have the connection that you want. So it's, man, this is why leadership is hard.

• 1:24:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, you, you raise a great point. I mean, I, you know, I was close with my guys. I loved my guys. They were like my brothers. In fact, I, I got two younger brothers and I love them too. But, you know, I can, I can tell you who each one of my men is in the dark as they're walking away from a hundred meters away, just by how they, just by their gait. You know, I just, you're so close to them. I had that bond with them and I feel like, you know, so much of leadership is just like showing up, you know, showing that you care, like trooping the line in combat or walking through the barracks at night, or just, you know, being there with them in those little moments where you're not maybe intimately involved pounding beers with them in the barracks. But you're like, they see you, they know you're there. Um, there is a, there, there is a way in which you can have a healthy, strong.

• 1:25:17Speaker 02

  All, I mean, I mean, probably in the SEAL teams, it's, it's, you know, it's a small, you're a smaller unit. You're, and plus the guys that make, you know, go through SEAL training and make it through SEAL training are probably a little bit older than that young 18 year old privates, right?

• 1:25:28Jocko Willink?

  You know, I always had guys in my, I would always have one or two guys that worked for me that were like, that were three, four echelons below me, right? That were E5s.

• 1:25:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:25:38Jocko Willink?

  And they were like fully trusted, right? Like I'd go and say, hey, man, what's going on with this guy over here? And they'd say, here's what's happening. And they would never take advantage of it. But what I'm saying is you can build those relationships, but you have to be very cautious when you do it because like you said, the minute, the moment that that relationships, that relationship that you have with one person negatively impacts the platoon, you are a disaster.

• 1:26:06Speaker 02

  And in combat, that hesitate, that split second hesitation or question could mean death.

• 1:26:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:10Speaker 02

  You know, and you can't have it, you know?

• 1:26:14Speaker 02

  But yeah, I mean, it's interesting that you talk about the dichotomy between friendship and leadership. Right? I mean, I feel like my, I'm so, I love my guys to this day, even Penhold. He was an E4. I was, I was a first lieutenant at that time. I mean, he was my RTO. He's my right-hand man. We talked about everything together from movies to TV shows to whatever. I mean, we had a great relationship together, but he knew that when I said jump, you better damn well jump, you know? And I think, I think a lot of that is also making unpopular decisions. He's like, hey, sir, I don't want to be the RTO. I'm like, hey, Parnell, guess what? I don't give a shit what you think. You're, you're my guy.

• 1:26:46Jocko Willink?

  And, and Parnell's a great example of that because Parnell was a guy who was mature for his age. He was smart and he got it, you know? And there's other guys that you couldn't form that kind of relationship with because they would immediately try and utilize that for their own benefit.

• 1:27:00Speaker 02

  No question about it.

• 1:27:01Jocko Willink?

  So that's, that's what I'm saying. I guess I just, I just, because sometimes I think when leaders hear, well, you can't be friends with anybody. They think, oh, I gotta be totally aloof and no one's gonna know me. And it's like, no, that's not it.

• 1:27:11Speaker 02

  You know what? You're exactly right about that, you know, because there are, you're exactly right. Some, some officers or, you know, leaders, NCOs, officers, they do interpret it as that. And then they're not involved at all, you know?

• 1:27:24Jocko Willink?

  That's horrible.

• 1:27:25Speaker 02

  And it is terrible.

• 1:27:26Jocko Willink?

  And there are going to be guys that if you buy him a beer, they're going to think you're best friends. They're going to think they're going to get preferential treatment on Monday.

• 1:27:33Speaker 02

  Calling you, texting you, hey, sir, what are you up to? You want to go out to the, but no, I'm like, yeah, exactly. It is a fine line. You really gotta walk it. Yeah. It is for sure.

• 1:27:43Jocko Willink?

  All right. Going back to the book, you guys had done that pretty, we'll call it a victory, for lack of a better word. Second platoon had, had had a, probably the opposite end of the spectrum. Here we go back to the book. Second platoon had taken a beating. We, we had two on May 7th, but their return to the FOB was totally different from ours. Why? It was all perception. Defeat comes in many forms, both physically and psychologically. Second platoon had arrived home a defeated force. Though we hadn't destroyed the entire enemy force on May 7th and our counterattack had hit thin air as Gulang's men broke contact with us. We'd still inflicted a lot of damage on them. More important, we stayed in the fight.

• 1:28:27Jocko Willink?

  That had given us a vital moral victory that second platoon hadn't experienced. Breaking contact on May 17th had been the right call, given the tactical circumstances, but its psychological effect it had on Burley's men was all too obvious. Their morale and confidence had taken significant hits. I could not let this happen to my guys ever.

• 1:28:51Speaker 02

  Hell yeah, that's exactly right. I mean, stay in the fight, the end. That was the lesson there for me. Like, I saw how some of, and again, right tactical decisions, sometimes you gotta break contact, right? I mean, but no, not for us. In that moment, like, we made, every single one of my non-commissioned officers and I looked at each other after, you know, after we got back from that first firefight. And we said to ourselves, you know, we saw how second platoon came back. We saw how their men were dejected. Uh, we saw that there are several different components to defeat, but certainly physical and psychological are two main, psychological defeat is oftentimes worse, right? And we just said to each other, like, I don't give a shit what happens. Like, I don't give a shit what the enemy throws at us. I don't care how they attack us. We're gonna stand and fight. We're always gonna stay in the fight.

• 1:29:34Speaker 02

  And we are not gonna be the first to leave the battlefield was the bottom line. Like, if the enemy's gonna attack us, we're gonna counter-attack them until they are dead, until they break contact from us. And that's what we did. Um, and that's, that's what we did. Sometimes it worked great, sometimes it didn't. Um, but we, we held true to that promise.

• 1:29:54Jocko Willink?

  That's one of those attitudes that, you know, I call that attitude being default aggressive. Like, our default mode is we're gonna attack you. That's the way it's gonna be. And if you have that, the, the, the amount of power that that gives to a, to a team is like, look, if we get pushed, we're gonna attack, that's what we're gonna do. If that's what everyone's thinking, it gives you like a superpower. Because that's just a unified attitude that we're gonna go attack you.

• 1:30:21Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And then, and here's the thing, it's, it's empowering, and you said it was empowering, because it, it, it empowers your soldiers or your troops to react on a second's notice. There can be no hesitation. When you're attacked, if you're, if you're positioned as default aggression, or in, in our case, in Outlaw Platoon, it's like, we're staying in the fight, we're in the fight until the very end. And your default is to attack all the time. Your men know exactly what they're supposed to do the moment that they get shot at, the moment that you're attacked, and it is to attack.

• 1:30:48Jocko Willink?

  And one thing that is infinitely easier is to, is to call guys and reel them in. Like say, okay, guys, oh, guess what? You know what? We're not going, like, when you make the decision, we're going to break contact instead. Okay, that's something that, whereas if people don't know what they're going to do, and then you're telling them, okay, now we're going to attack, and you're trying to force that, that's a very, that's infinitely more challenging than having to say, okay, guys, look, you put a lot of pressure on, that's cool, but I don't know what's over there, and we're going to break contact. And guys go, okay, well, I'm kind of bummed out because we were, we were feeling good, but okay, we'll break contact.

• 1:31:18Speaker 02

  That is, I didn't say this in the book, but I remember having this conversation, as part of this conversation was, we're sitting there talking to our leadership in the platoon. You've got E5 leaders who are team leaders, like, they got like three to five people under their command, and squad leaders who are nine to 12. And I remember telling my, my team leaders with my platoon sergeant, you, you all need to be team leaders, when people are on the front lines. Like, when they get shot at, they're the ones that are reacting oftentimes first. You're bulldogs on a chain, right? To use your vernacular default, like, that's what you need to be. Squad leaders, if you need to dial them back, dial them back, right? But they're the ones talking to me. So, look, to your point, like, if I'm on the radio saying, okay, let's pull back the team leaders, that's a hell of a lot easier than trying to get multiple units to attack.

• 1:32:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:32:03Speaker 02

  Right? Because as a leader, like, God, what people don't understand as, as a young leader in combat is, not only are you trying to maneuver your troops and identify where the enemy is to, to, to counterattack, you've got to de-conflict air corridors, you've got to bring, you've got, if you've got a mortar, and then you're firing a mortar, and an Apache comes in, you stop firing the mortar so you don't knock the Apache out of the sky. I mean, you've got to, there's all sorts of things you've got to take into consideration. So you have, you almost have to have a default position. And in combat, it sure as hell better be aggressive because like there's what else is there like default defensive? No, that's not a thing.

• 1:32:39Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, those those moments, those seconds that that it would take to give the order of hey, we're going to attack those seconds are the seconds where you actually win like those seconds are the times when it's like, oh yeah, we if we wait three seconds right now, we give up the we give up the superior position to the enemy right now.

• 1:33:02Speaker 02

  Oh my God, no question. I mean, at the at the at the height of our operational skill in Afghanistan, where we killed so many of the enemy and we were there for so long that we knew the terrain better than them. It was it was just, you know, say a battle drill, but it was almost like an our platoon as a collectively reacted on unconscious level to these attacks to where squad as team leaders and squads would attack instantly and I would have one oh fives down range in less than 10 seconds on target. I mean, and it was just a it was just methodical. It was just um, it was surgical. And I don't think I've ever so I always look at like, I've always been I've only been on like two championship sports teams in my life, right? Each time.

• 1:33:45Jocko Willink?

  That's two more than me.

• 1:33:48Speaker 02

  My only first place trophy in wrestling was my first year wrestling tournament. It was like this little trip. It's the only first one or only first place trophy I ever had. But it was just there was something special about those teams when we won championships. We just had it. We had something. I don't know what it was. Qualit qualitative quality to the to the team that made us successful. My platoon was like that. You know, it was like a.

• 1:34:12Jocko Willink?

  You know, there's another great leadership point in throughout this book in that is that you had this awesome decentralized command going on and you you explain it. You don't use the word decentralized command. I don't think but. You're explaining what's going on and you're like, oh, I got to the top of this perimeter. And when I got there, you know, Sergeant so and so was putting his machine gun over there. Sergeant so and so had this perimeter set up from Sergeant so and so was taking some high ground over there. Everyone, you hadn't told them to do a damn thing. All you said was like, go up there and everybody, okay, okay, the boss wants us to take the high ground. When they get up there, they look, well, obviously we could take the high ground. We're going to set up a perimeter. We're going to get security. We're going to set firing lanes. They did all that stuff themselves. And I used to explain that to these young, like task unit commanders.

• 1:34:57Jocko Willink?

  You know, they, where, where things would get bogged down and people would be waiting, like a fire team leader would be waiting to be told like, hey, get your, get your heavy weapon over on that corner. So you get good vantage point over this direction where we're looking down in this valley like, you, you can't tell eight fire team leaders what to do.

• 1:35:16Speaker 02

  I, I used to, I used to tell my, we used to train on this, right? I used to tell my team leaders and my subordinate leaders, like, first of all, I want you to have the freedom and flexibility to react on your own. But I need you to handle the implied task. If I tell you that you need to go from point A to point B and knock out that machine gun nest, I'm just going to tell you, go take out that machine gun nest. I'm not going to tell you to maneuver to the rock and then stop and then set up your machine. No, it's, it's up to you as a leader. I delegate that to you to just get it done because guess what? I don't have time for that shit. I got other things going on. So, and so that was to me was like, like anytime a soldier would come up to me and be, hey, sir, like, where do you want me to put them? Like, hey, man, I need you to handle the implied task, brother.

• 1:35:59Speaker 02

  Like, you know, go handle it, figure it out, you know? So there's command of execution, like my command of execution is knock out that machine gun nest or hold the line here. They gotta do what they gotta do to do it, you know? I don't need, yeah, you gotta, and so to that extent, I guess it is sort of decentralized.

• 1:36:17Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's absolutely decentralized. Your book is filled with decentralized command. You guys ran it beautifully.

• 1:36:21Speaker 02

  I just sort of stumbled upon it. I feel like you're the pro at it. I just sort of stumbled upon it.

• 1:36:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's really easy for me to recognize. It's real easy for me to recognize. And you know, somewhere along the line, someone told you like, hey, you better let your squad leaders do this. Or you figured out for yourself, hey, I can't, I can't tell you exactly what to do. I'm going to tell you, you need to figure out how you're going to get done.

• 1:36:40Speaker 02

  Absolutely. And when you do that, I mean, it's healthy for a unit and platoon and a team because there's a sense of accomplishment of your subordinate leaders when they get it done and do it right.

• 1:36:48Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. And also there's a little something called ownership, which is, you know, when you tell me to go do something and I go and figure out how I'm going to do it by myself. Then I actually take ownership of getting it done and I feel even more accomplishment because I'm not just accomplishing what you told me to do. I'm accomplishing what I figured out how we were going to do.

• 1:37:06Speaker 02

  No question. And then when that happens, it also makes people proud of their accomplishments. And then they start teaching their, their lower enlisted people on how to do it as well, right? And so like, that's our big thing is like, as a leader, right? I would tell all of my guys, like, I don't give, we don't train for what we think combat would be like. We train for, we trained to like, just react and react effectively. So in order to do that. Everybody in this platoon needs to know the job of the guy beneath them and the job of the guy above them. And we train on all that stuff. And so the hope was, is that we could establish some form of decentralized command. And each troop, each soldier in my platoon could perform the jobs that, I mean, God, you take, you take a casualty, somebody gets, God forbid, somebody gets killed.

• 1:37:49Speaker 02

  Somebody immediately has to step in that, step into that position, step into that leadership position with no hesitation and take it over, you know?

• 1:37:56Jocko Willink?

  So it's the way it's got to be.

• 1:37:57Speaker 02

  It's the way it's got to be.

• 1:37:59Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, and once again, I'm fast forwarding giant swaths of incredible information here.

• 1:38:09Jocko Willink?

  So get the book so you can hear it all. You're on a mountaintop. It's June 10.

• 1:38:16Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, All Elements. This is Black Hawk 3/6. We will be starting, we will be standing to in 15 mikes. My four other truck commanders acknowledged, we spent the night waiting for Gaylong? How do you say his name?

• 1:38:30Speaker 02

  Galang.

• 1:38:31Jocko Willink?

  Galang, and this guy is the, the bad guy in this book. And you, again, because I'm only reading little tiny parts of this incredible book. You have to get the book so you can get the full details of Galang.

• 1:38:41Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel like for you guys, he'd probably be a high value target, maybe MVT. I mean, but he was the local commander in our area and he was a badass man. He fought against the, I mean, he knew what he was doing.

• 1:38:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he was, he's like, he's the one that's setting up all these really good, like when, when that first ambush you were in.

• 1:38:58Jocko Willink?

  First of all, I'm surprised you guys got out of there.

• 1:39:00Speaker 02

  Me too.

• 1:39:00Jocko Willink?

  And I think to myself, if I could have been the ambusher in that, like, you know, you think, man, you're, you're going to kill everyone. Like, it's a miracle that you guys made it. Great leadership. It's great, uh, reaction by your troops. But that, this guy's a pro, is what I'm trying to say.

• 1:39:15Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 1:39:16Jocko Willink?

  This guy is a pro.

• 1:39:17Speaker 02

  I mean, look, man, they were hitting, like, there were bullet holes. We had Mark 19s, the feed trays, like, there were bullet holes stitched across the top of them. That's how close some of the rounds were coming to hitting my gunners. And I mean, all of that, I feel like is true, like a little bit of luck. I mean, there's something else out there. I feel like we were just blessed or lucky or whatever you want to call it, man.

• 1:39:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, we always, we always take blessings and luck, for sure.

• 1:39:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, we'll take that.

• 1:39:41Jocko Willink?

  Especially, especially when you're getting ambushed from three sides.

• 1:39:44Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:39:44Jocko Willink?

  From the high ground.

• 1:39:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So now the morning chill upon us, I shivered in my filthy clothes. We made it a standard practice to wake up an hour before dawn while out beyond the FOB like this. Experience had shown that the enemy loved to launch attacks at this time in the morning. Soon all 24 of my men were up in position, waiting to see what the enemy would make a move. I think I put, I think I circled that just because I always liked the idea of standing to.

• 1:40:14Speaker 02

  We did it all the time.

• 1:40:15Jocko Willink?

  And also because.

• 1:40:16Speaker 02

  My guys hated it. My guys hated it. But we did it all the time.

• 1:40:18Jocko Willink?

  You, I learned that from an old Australian SAS guy. He's like, you gotta wake up an hour before the sun comes up, be ready.

• 1:40:25Speaker 02

  You gotta be the first mover of the day, man. I mean, that's just, that was my thing. It's like, you set the tone, you set the tone early, right? And no one wants to do it. And, and typically to me, if it's uncomfortable like that and no one wants to do it, there's a reason why we do it, you know? And, and, and you hear all the time of complacency kills, right? Well, there's no way in hell that I was gonna allow that to happen to my troops.

• 1:40:46Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:40:46Speaker 02

  You know, if I, if I'm the cool guy, if I'm the guy letting, letting troopers get away with shit, like taking off their helmets or whatever, unbuttoning their helmet straps and their turrets, then, and someone gets killed, like, I'm the guy that has to live with that forever. So those tough decisions about, like, waking up early, staying in the proper uniform, wearing the right eye protection. I mean, come on, you let a soldier downgrade their uniform and downgrade their protective gear, someone gets hurt, I mean, it's just something that you don't want to ever have to live with.

• 1:41:13Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:41:16Jocko Willink?

  While you're up there on this observation point, you guys call for artillery on a ridge line and, because you, you suspected of being in an area where they were storing or launching rockets from.

• 1:41:28Speaker 02

  There was a big cave site there that we knew that they were using from one side of, they're entering the cave from Pakistan and exiting the cave from Afghanistan to stay, you know, we had ISR and Predator in the area and we're like, how are these guys smuggling these rockets in? Well, we ended up identifying a cave site where they were doing it from.

• 1:41:45Jocko Willink?

  So back to the book, a few minutes later, the first 105 millimeter artillery shell tore across the sky and exploded on the west slope of the mountain. More chains, more shells rained down. Our gunners at Burmel were dead on. Even better, they threw in a mix of ground and air bursts, creating a lethal artillery cocktail. I watched from the edge of our perimeter. Wondering how anyone could survive such firepower. Mission complete, sir. Sir, Reuter reported. That was your RTO?

• 1:42:14Speaker 02

  Reuter, yeah.

• 1:42:15Jocko Willink?

  Reuter, yeah. Reuter.

• 1:42:16Speaker 02

  He was my FO, my forward observer. So he would, I would, I would plot out the maps, I'd call it to him, he'd call it in. Yeah.

• 1:42:23Jocko Willink?

  He squared away throughout this book. He's just on it.

• 1:42:25Speaker 02

  He is. He's amazing. And he, I mean, he ended up be, he's like a pilot now. He's a Black Hawk pilot now, but yeah, he's amazing.

• 1:42:32Jocko Willink?

  I turned and started to walk back to my Humvee. "Ha ha, Reuter, how about that?" I asked with a smile. "Happiness is good indirect, sir," he replied. It was a standard refrain for our, for our forward observer liked to use. He was right, too. Indirect fire gave a platoon like ours an awesome amount of destructive power. I flicked a glance over my shoulder at the smoke-smothered mountaintop. "Your play, assholes." I'd walked about halfway back to my rig and was just passing a thick pine tree when I called out to Reuter again. "Let's see what those bastards are saying on their radios now." But before I, he could respond, Reuter and everything in my view disappeared as a curtain had just dropped before my eyes. Blackness. Nothing. Where am I?

• 1:43:14Jocko Willink?

  The morning scene in the Hindu Kush had vanished, replaced by an endless void. "Sean?" That voice. "Sean, you need to get up." "Grandpap?" "Sean, you have to wake up now." I struggled to see him, but he stayed cloaked in the velvet darkness. I was left only with the smooth comfort of his voice. "Get up, Sean. You gotta get up. Get up for me." Something stung my face. I tried to look and see what had just hit me, but I could not penetrate the void. "Am I dreaming?" I tried to shake my head, but I couldn't find, fire the right neurons. Instead, I floated, captive to whatever moment this was. Another sting on my face. At least I could feel something. I wanted to move my hand up and touch my cheek and defend against whatever kept hitting me. My hand refused to obey.

• 1:43:57Jocko Willink?

  I felt disembodied, as if somehow my conscious had been separated from my material form. "Sean, get up."

• 1:44:07Jocko Willink?

  A telephone buzzed in my ears now. The ringing was all I could hear. Disoriented, I tried to look around and realized I was flat on my back, perhaps fifteen feet from where I last remembered standing. The tree I'd been passing looked as though a giant had snapped it in half. Then I saw Sabaki. His face was smeared with blood, his IBA stained crimson with it. In a sudden rush, my hearing came back. I went from nothing but the telephone to a hurricane of sounds in my, in a heartbeat. The switch blitzed my nervous system. For an instant, I was helpless against the sentry overload swamped by staccato bursts of fifty cal explosions and screams. "Sir, sir, are you okay, Stotler?"

• 1:44:46Speaker 02

  "Stalter."

• 1:44:47Jocko Willink?

  "Stalter" shouted at me. Why wouldn't I be? He smacked me again. "Sir, you got blown the fuck up."

• 1:44:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's what... He was like laughing.

• 1:44:57Jocko Willink?

  What was it, a mortar?

• 1:44:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, uh, so, yes, it was an airburst mortar. Um, and so, we had heard... We had heard the enemy during our stand to, right, uh, talking on their ICOMs about moving the rockets to the cave. And I'm like, "Whoa, hot damn, I know exactly where you are." And so I called in the artillery. Um, but what we didn't realize was, is that the enemy had been planning attack there all night, right? And they were planning to attack us. They had identified our observation post, they had conducted reconnaissance on us all night. They identified who the key leaders were over several hours' worth of reconnaissance. We, we had no idea that we were there until the next morning, but we didn't realize that the ICOM chatter that we were hearing was them planning an attack.

• 1:45:42Speaker 02

  Now, that stand to is what saved us, because we got to hit them first. Um, and, but, it was base, it was like hitting a hornet's nest with a baseball bat, you know? They had, they had maneuvered.

• 1:45:55Jocko Willink?

  You're still gonna get stung.

• 1:45:56Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yes. And so I remember watching those rounds, which were fired charge eight, right? So we talk about charge eight on artillery is like rocket wrap, rocket assisted projectiles for artillery, that there's a tactical, inherent tactical risk involved there is that the rocket charge can flip the gun. So you have to balance as a leader... Um, will the tactical effects of this fire uh outweigh the potential tactical risk of the guns flipping and then being ineffective? I had to make that call, um, fire the guns. Uh, the rounds impacted right where I wanted them to walk back to my truck and just the entire, the whole world goes black for me in that moment. And I remember coming to Stalter, slapped my face and laughing and I'm like shaking, right? I could not, yeah, no, it's

• 1:46:41Speaker 02

  like that black sense of humor, you know?

• 1:46:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's funny because you didn't say in the book, he was laughing.

• 1:46:45Speaker 02

  He was like, yeah.

• 1:46:46Jocko Willink?

  But I know that attitude right there. He's got a chance to smack the LT.

• 1:46:51Speaker 02

  Yeah. And he's straddling my chest like he's like, so like it's, he's like straddling over me, like slap me in the face and um, and I'm like laying on my back and I'm looking to my left and the first thing that I see is my platoon sergeant, this is a guy who's been in the military for 20 plus years.

• 1:47:06Jocko Willink?

  This is Gresen?

• 1:47:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, Gresen, who's in Panama, jumped in with Panama, who's with the 7th. Yeah, yeah, he's old, old school, like you, like you, you know? Um, but he's um, he's, he's pointing to his back, taking cover behind this big tree, pointing to his back, had taken shrapnel there, his back is covered in blood, Sabo's wounded, who's my weapons squad leader, my second most senior NCO in the platoon. In fact, uh, every key leader of my platoon was wounded in the first 60 seconds of that engagement. Every, and I was down and out myself. And so, I mean, I'm looking around me.

• 1:47:39Jocko Willink?

  What were your wounds?

• 1:47:40Speaker 02

  At the time, I didn't know. Um, later it was, I ended up fracturing my skull in two, three different places and I had a cerebral spinal fluid leak. And so I was, when I sat up and the clear fluid that leaked was leaking out of my nose and was leaching out of my ears for a couple of weeks, it was as a result from those hairline fractures in my skull. And the cerebral spinal fluid is the stuff that cushions your brain from your skull and it was just leaking out like, you know, and that ended up peeling on its own. But again, this was back in 2005, like soldiers today are getting evac for injuries like that. But this was before TBI was even an acronym. It wasn't even a thing. So, so anyway, we're, we're like, I sit up and, and the rate of fire was so heavy. I mean, so.

• 1:48:26Speaker 02

  I'm watching these airburst mortars hit us and I know that they're not impacting on the ground, right? But they're hitting above us and I could be and I'm watching the tops of trees just explode. These are trees that had been untouched by humanity for what probably 150 years, you know, they're big, huge trees and watching these things explode. I'm looking at my hand, which is laying on the ground and there are rounds impacting like right between my forefinger. I mean, it was just insane. Everywhere I looked, it was like the dirt was on fire because machine gun rounds were just in our perimeter all around us. And I remember being Stalter grabs me by my body armor and pulls me up. It's clear

• 1:49:07Speaker 02

  fluid leaks out of my nose and I'm looking to the ridge lines and then in the darkness, I couldn't really tell it was a tactical mistake on my part that there were two hills directly east of our position that were taller than ours.

• 1:49:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. And from those hilltops, the enemy had three machine guns apiece like and they were, they were again, they were barking the guns, they were talking the guns and they were, they weren't just doing that. They were using plunging fire to drop the rounds into our position. So in other words, they were firing them on a trajectory where they would arc up and land in the middle of us. So that even if you were taking cover behind a deflate or something, the round could theoretically land on top of you. They were hitting us with airburst mortars. And as I'm sitting there trying to take in this fight, like holy shit, like they have us dead to rights here. There's no way we're getting out of this and

• 1:49:57Jocko Willink?

  And you guys are in a 360 degree perimeter.

• 1:49:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, I've got

• 1:50:00Jocko Willink?

  You've got five Humvees.

• 1:50:01Speaker 02

  Yep. Five gun trucks, 24 troops on the ground, one interpreter. I got two 50 caliber machine guns, one Mark 19, one 240 Bravo that's mounted and two other dismounted 240 Bravas in my trucks. So where the and they were positioned in 360 degree security on top of this big hilltop, big hilltop, I had

• 1:50:21Jocko Willink?

  The third biggest hilltop in the area.

• 1:50:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, must of my chagrin, the third biggest health up in the area. Yeah.

• 1:50:29Speaker 01

  Oh, man.

• 1:50:30Speaker 02

  And I got my troops interspersed and on the easternmost portion of that perimeter was Sabaki and Baldwin. And I looked towards there, uh, to where they are and their trucks are totally destroyed. Um, I see Baldwin, he's got a bullet in his shin and he's bleeding all over the Afghan dirt. And I remember like what struck me in that moment is that he's not trying to treat his own injury. He's trying to treat his team leader, who was Bennett Garvin, who had taken a tumbling AK round to the forearm and almost severed his arm. And the, the entry, entry wound itself was this big. The exit wound was even bigger. I mean, his arm was hanging by a thread. Baldwin was trying to get a tourniquet on there. I remember looking at Baldwin's face. He was just ghost white. He was bleeding out. Emrick was my, a gunner in one of my turrets. He's up in the turret on the 50

• 1:51:13Speaker 02

  cow. He gets shot in the head, drops in the turret. Um, he pops back up, gets on the gun. Uh, the kid that was in my platoon, it was his very first patrol. Kyle Lewis is on another gun. I watched him get shot in the head in the turret, him fall down, him get back up. And we're talking their helmets have like in and out, you know, from, from a bullet like, and somehow these dudes survive. Uh, my guy stayed in the fight somehow. But we ended up getting attacked that day by, I mean, you know, you, and the Predator analysis after the fight, once we finally got Predator on station, over 200 guys, that Sergeant Major's just counting them, one, two, three, four, five, over 200 to my 24. And so, so

• 1:51:54Speaker 02

  what was crazy about that attack was that the enemy had, the enemy had, they had simultaneously emplaced two support by fire positions. And they had us in a crossfire and they were hitting us with plunging fire. But in order to get those support by fire positions in place without us noticing them, they hit us with indirect air burst mortars, which is what kept our heads down, right? So we're, we're getting hit with our artillery. I'm knocked out. Everyone's taking cover. They emplace these support by fire positions. They put us in a crossfire and I'm thinking as a young lieutenant, like, okay, shit, like, we're dead to rights. What's next? And I'm realizing at the time that these guys are fighting just like we do. This is exactly what I would do in the same situation. And I'm thinking to myself, If I were them, I would attack.

• 1:52:38Speaker 02

  And it it wasn't but a minute that that thought had dawned on me that I see that we get attacked from those hilltops from two successive positions from forty man platoon sized elements like bounding down the hill into the valley below and up towards our position and it, I mean, I just, it just was so crazy. Uh, we started calling in fire danger close on our position and it was just, I was watching one oh five rounds vaporize men like on in the defilade in the low ground below, but it wasn't enough, it was not stopping and it didn't matter what we threw at them, there were just so many of them. We'd kill one, two more would replace it. They were, they had just amassed a force there that no matter what we threw at them, it wouldn't, it wasn't stopping them.

• 1:53:22Speaker 02

  We were, I mean, all around my perimeter, you know, we're going black on ammunition. I got my squad leader screaming that they're going black on ammunition. I'm thinking of like Joshua Chamberlain and like, holy shit, I'm gonna have to order a bayonet charge down into the teeth of the enemy. And then I remember sitting there at my trucks like thinking, Jesus Christ, the army doesn't issue us bayonets anymore. Like, this is like, this is crazy. So everyone starts grabbing their sidearms, uh, starts grabbing knives, getting ready to fight and then we fight them to a, al- almost like a stalemate. They, they didn't quite get to the top of our hill. We're blowing claymore mines, we're yelling back and forth. And I remember sitting on the easternmost perimeter with my guys, you could see these long knives hanging from their belts. We fight them to a stalemate and I'm starting thinking like, okay, I gotta start getting these casualties out of here because they're all bleeding to death.

• 1:54:06Speaker 02

  So we start trying to evacuate Baldwin, um, or evacuate Garvin. We get over there, Baldwin's like, take Garvin first. So our medic, Doc Pantoja grabs him, picks him up, starts carrying him back and boom, watch Pantoja, our medic, uh, get shot in the face and drop and thinking, my medic is dead, Jesus Christ. Like, and this whole time, I'm just- What's the timeframe that we're talking about right now? Like, how long has this been going on? Uh, probably up until this point, probably at least an hour and a half. We couldn't get close air support either because our, like rotor wing and fixed wing support were diverted down south to our troops in contact where a battalion and brigade commander were involved in. So we were like, just left out there flapping and, um- Who cares about-

• 1:54:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:54:52Jocko Willink?

  First Lieutenant.

• 1:54:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, right. I mean, and so Baldwin, you know, Pantoja goes down and I watch him stand up. And I'm just like, I couldn't believe that this kid was still alive. The entire like, you know, right side of his face is ruined from this bullet hole. It picks up Garvin, gets him to the aid station. We run back for Baldwin, get hit with another RP, get hit with an RPG this time. I, I go flying, Pantoja goes flying. We get back up, grab Baldwin, get him to the casualty collection point. Um, then we start trying to prep them for evac, get tourniquets on, render first aid.

• 1:55:27Jocko Willink?

  And what was the Kazevac plan? How were you going to get him out of there?

• 1:55:31Speaker 02

  Well, the Kazevac plan, we were trying to coordinate with the Marines and ANA back at the base to come out here and link up.

• 1:55:36Jocko Willink?

  So it was a vehicular.

• 1:55:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:55:38Jocko Willink?

  Kazevac. It wasn't, it wasn't going to be helicopters coming in.

• 1:55:41Speaker 02

  Correct. And that, that is the, the truly difficult thing about Afghanistan and the challenges that you face with the terrain there. Sometimes in the weather, right? So if the weather is cloudy and there's a low ceiling, the birds aren't flying, you're out there operating, somebody gets shot, severs an artery, the birds aren't coming. And there's no way you're going to evac them back to a level of care where they're going to survive. The tactical risk in Afghanistan in this regard is just, is just astronomical with regards to casualties. And on that day, I mean, the, the fighting was so heavy, there was no way we were getting a Black Hawk in there to evacuate him. There's no way we could have a Black Hawk lauter and get a jungle penetrator in to get a guy. There's no way in hell, no one was coming. So it had to be vehicular Kazevac, conduct link up on the westernmost

• 1:56:25Speaker 02

  portion of our perimeter. Um, with Marines and ANA.

• 1:56:29Jocko Willink?

  Kazevac slash QRF, because you guys needed like legitimate quick reaction force help.

• 1:56:35Speaker 02

  Oh, we were.

• 1:56:35Jocko Willink?

  This is, this is a great, and I'm telling you, you've got to read this book, but here's a part that's. So the enemy is closing in, like you said, Pinhole appeared beside me. "Sir, we're about to be overrun. We need to Z our radios." Which, for those of you civilians that don't know, your radios have a little switch on them that you can turn that erases all the cryptographic material, all the secret material, all the code, the special code. Comsec, yeah. The special code that you've got in your radio that allows you to understand other American radios. When you turn this thing to zero, then it's gone. That means the enemy can't take your radio and listen. So, but you have that switch. In the event that you think you're gonna get overrun, the last thing you're gonna do,

• 1:57:20Jocko Willink?

  like literally, the last thing you will do is zeroize your radio so that the enemy can't get on the friendly frequencies and listen, or talk, or disrupt them in any way. So Pinhole tells you, "We need to Z our radios", which is, which means that he, in his mind, thinks, "You guys are done." We were. "You guys are done." Because there's no, that, once you zeroize your radio, you can't talk anymore. Can't talk to your own elements, right. So he's just saying, "Look, we're done. We're gonna be overrun. We need to zeroize our radios so the enemy doesn't get them, and we're all gonna die here in the next whatever." That's where he was at mentally. "You come back." "No way," I said instinctively. "In worst-case scenarios, we were trained to erase the frequencies on our communication system so the enemy could not listen to our chatter.

• 1:58:02Jocko Willink?

  By doing so, we would lose all ability to call for more fire support." "Sir, we need to do it." He actually pushed back. "Sir, we need to do it," Pinhole insisted. "No, we cannot lose our link to the FOB." "Both enemy assault elements had cleared their own slopes now and were pouring across the valley floor, a hundred men at least." "How many did we have left? A dozen? Maybe Pinhole was right."

• 1:58:26Jocko Willink?

  "We lose our radio link, we all die." "Rooter," I shouted, turning to my forward observer, who was sitting in my Humvee with the radio handset to his mouth. "Sir, call in anything you can. Work the fire missions. Danger close. Got it?" "Yes, sir." He keyed the handset and began barking coordinates. I looked at my RTO. "Do not Z these radios. They go down, we all go down. Got it?" "Yes, sir." "Good. Grab a radio and come with me."

• 1:58:55Speaker 02

  I can't, I can't, I mean, I can't believe that, that that, I mean, Jesus, man, I, uh, yeah, that's where, you know, my men, I remember the feeling on top of that hill that day. My men all had, you know, nine mils in the truck with just, just enough rounds to take their own life should be overrun because we were not going to allow ourselves to be taken caftan by these guys. I know that sounds morbid, but that was just the truth, you know? Um, and that's where a lot of the guys were. I mean, they were still in the fight, right? They were still going to fight to the very bitter end, but it comes a point in time where you're out of ammo and they got more ammo than you and they're, they're among you. Um, that's where we were. That's where we were.

• 1:59:38Jocko Willink?

  I checked with Ruder. Any birds en route? Negative, sir. All the air assets are tied up elsewhere. Keep trying. I huddle up with Gresen. A good dynamic existed between the two of us. I was always the hot one. He ran cold and kept me grounded. We'd become so close, we could finish each other's thoughts. Throughout the fight, we didn't even have to communicate much, but all along, we functioned smoothly as a team. Gresen? Yeah, sir, he growled through dirt crusted lips. What's our next play? Somebody screamed, they're coming again. The sound of gunfire grew fast and desperate. The tempo of the fight was changed, was changing, building. I looked at Gresen and saw relentless determination etched on his face, but also I saw a touch of fear. Fuck. I don't know, sir. Shoot back.

• 2:00:22Jocko Willink?

  That was his plan, which is where you guys were at.

• 2:00:24Speaker 02

  And, and, and I, I tried, what, yeah, when he said that I was, at that point, I was like, holy shit, you know, like for a lieutenant, like my biggest weapon is my radio. And if it's time for like me to start shooting back, it's a, it's a real, real bad day for everybody, but that's where we were.

• 2:00:43Jocko Willink?

  You could hear these guys, not only, and you detail this in the book, it's scary. You hear them calling out Al Akbar, which, okay, but then what, what, because we've all heard that, but then you, you heard the, uh, the squad and their squad and fire team leaders giving out orders. You could hear that too.

• 2:01:04Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah. It was, it was, um, and we were yelling back and forth, screaming, calling them names and stuff, and they're yelling back at us and when we fought them to a stalemate. And this was the first, this was the fight, you know, after Gresen's like, shoot back and I run out to where Baldwin was because again, My big thing is that if you are a leader, it is your job to be where the contact is heaviest. You know, yeah, you have to coordinate other aspects of the fight, but you better be on the knife's edge of where the hep fighting is heaviest. And so, you know, ran back out to the easternmost portion of the perimeter and that's where I first, that's, that's when I first pulled my trigger and took a life was in that engagement at that moment. And it was at the moment where we're watching and witnessing these, um, these, their team leaders, I mean, their chain of

• 2:01:47Speaker 02

  command yelling fire commands and bound commands and maneuver commands to their subordinate team leaders. And it was just, I mean, we knew that they were well trained because of the first engagement that we were in with them, right? We knew that they know how to fight, but it was a whole nother thing to see their command and control and how fast they were on the battlefield. They were way faster than we were.

• 2:02:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, they're a lot lighter, too.

• 2:02:11Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 2:02:11Jocko Willink?

  Right? I mean, that's one thing. They have this huge advantage because we wear ourselves down because we value human life. So we wear body armor and we carry radios and they carry, what?

• 2:02:22Speaker 02

  AK-47.

• 2:02:23Jocko Willink?

  AK-47 mags, some frags.

• 2:02:26Speaker 02

  And, and they're acclimatized, like they're all used to running around at 12,000 feet, you know, so they scale up the side of a mountain better than a mountain goat can, you know, and that these are the people that we were fighting, you know, and what we had started to see on the battlefield, you know, anytime you're in Afghanistan, it's like you deal with, you know, anything from Al Qaeda to the Akhni Network to Hekmati or to the Taliban. Sometimes in this engagement, what we were seeing was cross training. And so you'd see Al Qaeda foreign commanders, you know, commanding and leading ground troops who were just local Taliban. And man, it was, it was just a wicked, wicked, wicked fight.

• 2:03:06Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes people will say, you know, Jaco, you talk a lot about tactics. Like, don't you think the enemy is gonna, gonna like learn these tactics? I'm like, the enemy absolutely knows these tactics. The tactics I talk about are cover and move, you know, set up support by fire positions, maneuver through, you know, like that's what I talk about all the time. There's no secret to this stuff. You either know how to do it. And if you do it, how well can you do it? Or you don't know it and then you get slaughtered. But yeah, there's, but, but to hear, that's exactly everything that you just said. Everything that you've experienced so far is exactly what. We do. That's what we do. Like, that's what we do. We set up ambushes. We set up L ambushes. We set up, we want to get to high ground. We set up support by fire positions. We bound in maneuvering leapfrog elements. We cover and move for each other. That's what we do.

• 2:03:50Speaker 02

  And, and, and, and knowing the tactics, um, and being entrenched in them is not enough. You know, um, and so you have, of course, the enemy knows everything that we do. Our FMs are on the internet, of course, like, you know, but, but knowing that you have to be able to take that the tactics are just a baseline. You've got to train and evolve and watch the enemy and, and adapt. And, and so anytime anybody asks me a question about tactics too, it's like, yeah, of course the enemy knows our tactics, but that's not enough. And if you're even asking that question, it means you're a slave to the tactics, which you can't be. The tactics are a baseline. And that's just like any leadership. You have to be able to make command decisions on the fly, evolve, adapt and operate in the field. And that's what you have to do to be effective in combat.

• 2:04:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And as you put, as you, as you related that first ambush that you got caught in, there's no manual that gives the answer that you gave. There's no manual that you can say, okay, if this is where you're at, first of all, how are you going to describe that? How are you going to, how are you going to describe or give a scenario for every single possible combat situation that's going to be? It's literally impossible to do because you, God knows what's going to happen out on the battlefield. God knows that you're going to be in a situation like that, right there, in that particular environment, in that particular scenario, with that particular terrain, with the enemy in their situation, with your troops, you know, arraigned the way they are, like, that's only going to happen one time. And if all you know is the basic fundamental tactics, without knowing how to deviate from those tactics,

• 2:05:15Jocko Willink?

  you're going to get killed. But if you truly understand the principles of the tactics, then you can go, oh, okay, here's what's going on. I'm trapped. We, I better get the high ground and I better get it now.

• 2:05:25Speaker 02

  That's exactly right. I mean, if you're, if you, if the tactics are the only thing that you understand, then you're in a near ambush, you're, you're, you know, react to near ambush, charging into the, I mean, you're dead. You're dead. If that's your, bottom line is tactics are a baseline. You've got to understand the principles and be able to adapt and maneuver, uh, using and understanding what those principles are. Otherwise you're done.

• 2:05:45Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:05:46Speaker 02

  You know, because the one thing that combat does better than anything else is throw you a curveball every single day. I mean, you, you'd be at the top of your game and all of a sudden, like, one of your trucks, your rear differential on your Humvee breaks and you're stuck on the side of a mountaintop for three days. It's like, what do you, what do you do with that? It's absolute chaos. And, you know, What tactics bring and what training brings is a certain amount of order to that chaos. And that fine line in between order and chaos is where survival is.

• 2:06:14Jocko Willink?

  And, and like you said, the same thing, I think we both just said the exact same thing. Knowing the tactics, knowing where the X's and zeros move on a, on a chalkboard is part of understanding, but you have to understand the actual principles that you're trying to, to enforce on the battlefield. That's what you have to, you have to understand what are the principles? You have to understand those principles. Once you understand those principles, then you can adapt those tactics and you can maneuver and you can make things happen, which, which like you said, just knowing the tactics isn't good enough. You have to understand the principles of why you're employing those tactics and then you can make calls and decisions that will allow you to win.

• 2:06:58Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, "The enemy wouldn't quit. The fight grew even more intense. Delta Platoon anchored us, or we would have gone down for sure. Still, we couldn't hold the enemy off indefinitely. We needed more firepower and more men. On a hill a few hundred meters to our northwest, to our northwest, a head appeared over the crest, then another. Soon a dozen figures flowed over the hilltop and down the slope facing us. They were carrying AKs. More followed, a dozen, two dozen. The lead element opened fire on the run, shooting from the hip like something straight out of a movie. I had one mag left. I'd given all my others away. Even with Delta's trucks, we couldn't stop this fresh threat.

• 2:07:41Jocko Willink?

  Unconsciously, I cl- clutched my Gerber knife. I can't believe it has come to this. More men poured over the crest. And then, I saw a Marine in their ranks. Their ANA, I said to myself. Combat whipsaws your emotions in an extreme way that nothing else can. I'd gone from despair to euphoria in a matter of seconds. The Afghan troops sprinted into our perimeter and counterassaulted the enemy through our firing line. Galang's men reeled from the blow and fell back pell-mell to the base of the hill. Several more Marine Humvees and ANA Toyota trucks joined us from the northwest. We'd gone from having five trucks, three of which had been rendered immobile

• 2:08:26Jocko Willink?

  by damage, to having 14."

• 2:08:32Speaker 02

  I mean, that combat really is an emotional roller coaster, man. You go from thinking that you're dead one second to, you know, having a shot at getting out of there alive. And I remember, I will never forget this ANA dude like cresting the top of that hill. He's just screaming at the top of his lungs, got his AK-47 down on his side. He's screaming. And as he's running, he's shooting the ground in front of him. Like that's, I'm like thinking, oh my God, like he's just shooting like right in the ground. I'm like, oh my God, like we're getting overrun. And come to find out, it was, it was the Marines and the ANA. And it was just, you know, they augment our position and, you know, they, they augment our position. We start cross loading ammunition and then we fought them to a stalemate for like another

• 2:09:14Speaker 02

  four or five hours, you know? And we ended up getting an Apache on station, an A-10, and then we had a, um, a B1, a B1 strategic Lancer on station where we dropped, I want to say, I think we dropped at least 11 2,000 pound JDAMs on that cave site and on that ridge line. And it was only after that, that we could get them to even break contact in the first place.

• 2:09:39Jocko Willink?

  They were determined.

• 2:09:40Speaker 02

  It was unbelievable. They were determined to overrun an American platoon and behead us. That was what we learned. That was what they wanted to do. And from then on out, that's, that's the enemy that we were fighting. And, and they were utterly relentless in every way. And if we weren't ready to face them, every time we left the wire, we, again, we were dead to rights.

• 2:10:00Jocko Willink?

  Just before you guys got the air support, you had this unfold. I'm going back to the book. We got to get them to the trucks, grease and order. Dixon, now sheet white from blood loss, lifted Baldwin's wounded leg with his unwounded arm. The rest of us picked him up as well. Staying low, we moved as fast as we could off the lip of the hill, down the northwest slope to the waiting Humvees. Before we could slide him inside the truck, Baldwin cried, sir, sir. The terror in his voice made us freeze. I'm fucked up. Mouth open, shallow, rapid bleeding. He was going into shock. I could see Afghan dirt around, ground into his teeth. You're gonna be okay, bro, I said. I'm shot in the back. What? When we all went down, Baldwin took a round at the base of his spine. We had no idea until that moment. I can't feel my legs.

• 2:10:48Jocko Willink?

  He seized my hand with his and as he stared at me with saucer eyes, he squeezed it hard. As weak as he had been, the fear assailing him now evoked one last birth of strength. No words came. I held my brother's hand until they pulled me from him. Door closed, driver gunning the engine, the Humvee lumbered off for FOB Brumel. The second one carrying Garvin and Dixon soon followed. I watched them go. Greason and Sabo standing beside me, the blood of our brothers drawing on our hands and arms.

• 2:11:22Jocko Willink?

  So as you guys were carrying out, as you guys were carrying out Baldwin, you guys got riddled with machine guns. Didn't you take one through the pant leg or something?

• 2:11:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, I so, okay, so we were dropping JDAMs on him. We thought we had, we thought we had driven the enemy back and given enough tactical space to start evac and our casualties in a way that we thought was as safe as we could possibly do it. I mean, you say safe, but you know what I mean. It was the best time. And so we start picking up, we rushed Garvin down to the trucks and we come back for Baldwin on the second trip. Because again Baldwin assisted that we, that we get Garvin first. And so all of us grab Baldwin, Baldwin again, 6'4", 250, huge guy. So I grab, I grab him, Sabo grabs him, Sergeant Dixon grabs him, Greason grabs him. And as we're carrying Baldwin to the truck and down the hill, we get hit by machine gun fire from a rogue,

• 2:12:15Speaker 02

  you know, one of those machine gun nests that wasn't destroyed. A round went through the back plate of my IBA and down through Sergeant Dixon's arm as we were carrying him. And I just remember watching Sergeant Dixon get shot right in the forearm. And I mean, he just, we just watched the blood spurt out of his arm and his face goes white. And we dropped Baldwin. It was sort of chaos. And then all I remember though is, is Pantoja coming out of nowhere, his face is still ruined. Throws a tourniquet on Dixon and Dixon runs over to the other side of Baldwin and grabs him with his gun hand. And we all pick him up and we get him to the trucks and we get him down to the truck and. And Baldwin just kept saying to me over and over again, sir, sir. And I'm just like, it's okay.

• 2:12:57Speaker 02

  You're gonna be good. You're gonna be good. Cause he was, he was so white. He had lost so much blood already from the bullet wound to his leg. And the thing is, is that the bullet wound to his leg, he lost a lot of blood, but he never, he was never out of the fight. He never once stopped shooting and tried to get him off the line. It was, he was like, God, he was a pain in the ass that day. And I tell him that to this day, you know? I could not get him off the line and he's just ghost white. And to this day, all I remember really a lot about that moment is just this, you know, around the whites of his teeth, he's just had this Afghan dirt just caked to his teeth. And he just said, sir, you know, I'm really fucked up. And I said, you're gonna be fine. I promise you're gonna be good. And I'm like holding his hand like this. And he goes, no, sir, no, sir. I, I've been shot in the back. I can't feel my legs. And then the Humvees whisked him away.

• 2:13:42Speaker 02

  And we, I never really, I never saw him again. And not until we got, had been back months. You know, we knew he was okay. We knew he was gonna survive. We got an updates on his condition throughout the course of our deployment. Um, but man, that was, Baldwin was one of those guys in my platoon that was just a, man, all my NCOs were just so great. And to lose any one of them like that, uh, was really challenging. It was really tough.

• 2:14:11Jocko Willink?

  You guys got Apaches, you guys got A10s, and you guys got the B1. When you heard you got the B1, you said the wrath of God.

• 2:14:19Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. You know, the fact that, uh, you know, an infantry platoon on the border of Afghanistan got a B1 strategic Lancer capable, dropping like, you know, I don't even know. I couldn't even tell you, like 20, 30 JDAMs, you know, JDAM is a joint direct attack munition on target. Um, I mean, we, I'm telling you, we must have at least 11, probably more like 22, we dropped over the course of that engagement. It was just, you know, because it didn't just end after the enemy broke contact, right? They were still taking pot shots well after the, the initial force had broken contact. Cause we had to get a wrecker up there to get our trucks out, you know, get a wrecker up to the top of this mountain to get our, it just took forever.

• 2:14:58Jocko Willink?

  Completely secure this whole AO.

• 2:15:00Speaker 02

  Just took forever. It just took forever. And we were out there for hours and hours and hours. And, uh, eventually after we had, uh, hooked up our last Humvee, we all limped out of there.

• 2:15:15Jocko Willink?

  When it was over, the silence was almost unbearable. Galang's force had been pulverized. The fighting had lasted almost six hours. Exhausted, we hooked up our three disabled rigs and towed them off the hilltop for home. Our long column traveled west with barely a word shared among us. Empty shell casings littered our Humvee floorboards. And as we bounced along the rugged Afghan roads, they jingled like sleigh bells. When we reached Brummel, the homebodies turned out in force. The divide between combat troops and the men who work behind the wire grows wider in moments such as those. Band of brothers? No. Battle sifts those relationships like nothing else. We called them POGs, which stands for Personnel Other Than Grunts, or FOBBITS.

• 2:15:57Jocko Willink?

  They smiled and laughed and took photos of our battered trucks as we parked out on the maintenance pad. They spent the night safe inside the base, uniforms clean, body armor stowed under their bunks.

• 2:16:12Jocko Willink?

  And you actually decided to become a smoker right then?

• 2:16:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:16:16Jocko Willink?

  Started smoking cigarettes?

• 2:16:18Speaker 02

  Yes, I did. I did. I absolutely did. And, um, you know, that part of the book, I sort of, I mean, it happened exactly like that. You come back, you're shot to shit. You come back and you have these guys, Americans, that greet you and they look at you like you're in, like a zoo. You know, they want to see the devastation of the trucks. Every single window of our up-armored shot out completely. I mean, we had, we had the up-armored ballistic glass, thank God for that. But, I mean, they were all just shot out completely. I mean, almost every single member of my platoon was wounded in that engagement. And like, guys were bloodied and battered. And so you got these guys taking pictures of you that you know they're going to send to their family and be like, "Look at how bad we have it over here."

• 2:17:00Speaker 02

  But these are guys that are like, three hots in a cot every day, you know? They're taking warm showers. And then you think about it like this, you know, you get back from, uh, from being outside the wire for 10 days and you haven't had a shower in 10 days and there's, we don't have running water on the base. So there's a finite amount of it to begin with. You get back and there's nothing but cold showers because these guys who stay on the base all the time use all the hot water. And then you go in and you try to call your family and these guys who were on the base are clogging up the phones. You've been gone for 10 days on a mission. You can't even call your family. And then you get out there and all the foods, I mean, it was just so- I, I, I, looking back on it now, I, I sort of regret that because I, I don't, I, I do value, I mean, it does take for every one of us in the field, it takes three of them and it's one team, one fight. I believe that to every, with every fiber of my being, but that is how it was at

• 2:17:45Speaker 02

  the time. We were really pissed.

• 2:17:46Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, you know, it's like, like when I was talking about that definition of enemy expanding, sometimes that definition of enemy can expand inside the, inside the wire a little bit.

• 2:17:55Speaker 02

  No doubt about it.

• 2:17:56Jocko Willink?

  And actually, you know, you, you did an amazing thing and it's at the back of this book, you have a letter from a, from a, a guy that was one of the,

• 2:18:05Speaker 02

  Our supply guy, my, our private, a young private, it was a supply guy who everyone gave him a hard time, but he was just a great kid.

• 2:18:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And he wrote you a letter and said like, cause he read the book apparently and said like, hey, man, I just read this book and you're talking about how horrible we were, how horrible the pogs were. And he explained his story, which was, I think after September 11th, he like, you know, was out of shape and worked out and trained and got in shape so that he could join the army. And he took a job that he thought he could be able to handle, which was being a supply guy. And meanwhile, the girl that he was in love with, who was going to marry him, he went on deployment and got extended and she said, you know, I'm not going to marry you. And so he lost, gave up his love of his life and had no future.

• 2:18:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:18:47Jocko Willink?

  And he's like, Hey, I just want you to know, we all sacrificed.

• 2:18:50Speaker 02

  Exactly.

• 2:18:51Jocko Willink?

  And you actually, I thought it was awesome. You publish, that is in the back, that letter's in the back of this book, you know, because as you just said, you know, you wrote the way it was then.

• 2:19:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, I, I'm, yeah, right, right.

• 2:19:05Jocko Willink?

  And, and man, those, those things are real. And you know, it takes both sides, right?

• 2:19:10Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 2:19:11Jocko Willink?

  Both sides. If you're a support person, you gotta remember what the hell the guys in the field are doing. And if you're in the field, you gotta remember, okay, well, these guys aren't experiencing what we're experiencing. So they're, they're going to have a hard time relating to it. And it's hard to build that bridge. I mean, if you're, honestly, with me, I had 40 SEALs and I had 60 support people that, you know, were running all of our stuff. And it was pretty easy for me because I saw them all the time. And you know, it was a much smaller little element. And but I you know, I told I told my support guys, the only reason that we're here is to get those guys whatever they need to do their job, whatever they need to do their job.

• 2:19:51Jocko Willink?

  We're here. They are our masters. We are here to support them. Those two platoons, those that's that's who we that's what we're here for.

• 2:19:58Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 2:19:59Jocko Willink?

  And and the guys got it. And that meant, you know, I said, listen, if it means if if you see them eating and they're done with their tray, you pick up that tray and you carry it and you put it away for them. You do that for them so that they can spend an extra three seconds prepping their gear for their operation. And so the the support people understood that because it's real easy for the support people to get isolated. And they're not going in the field. So they're looking at you. Hey, I'm playing a video game tonight. I don't know what these other guys are doing. They don't understand it. And so they start to have an attitude when some when someone comes back from being in the field for four days and says, hey, get let me take a shower. And they go, it's my turn. No, that's not the right answer. The right answer is, sorry, let me go get you some soap. That's the right answer.

• 2:20:43Speaker 02

  Exactly right. I mean, that's exactly right. And I feel like to our first sergeant's credit, you know, he did everything that he could to like treat the operational troops in our base exactly like that. But as our base grew, I mean, it was a company sized base, which mean it facilitated 120 infantrymen and maybe some and and the support guys, right? So we probably had 300 people on our base. But as the base grew with our footprint in Afghanistan, the longer we were there, we had units that were there that were not under his, you know, purview, right? One part of our command. So, you know, you have these guys that would like the support personnel that would roll into the showers, use all the hot water first sergeant be like, what? What are you doing, man? Like, you're doing this wrong. And they'd be like, F you. Talk to my commander. And it's just like, well,

• 2:21:25Speaker 02

  you know, and it and it just comes down to like some what battles are worth fighting and what battles aren't, you know, as an infantry guy. You know, one of the things that you know is like you're not, you're rarely going to get credit for the things that you do. Uh, it's a thankless job and it just sucks. And in like the, you've heard the term embrace the suck. Well, this is, this is why, this is why we get the quest, why we wear the blue cord. That's why we get CIBs, you know, because our job is harder than everybody else's. And I don't mean from a financial standpoint, because guess what? Like they're getting the same combat pay that we're getting. Okay. You know, um, and, and that's sort of the, the dynamic that we took going forward from that engagement is that like, yeah, like this, this shit sucks. It's gonna get harder. Right? Um, but we took

• 2:22:06Speaker 02

  a sort of like black, uh, like a perverse sense of pride out of that and that like, we were the, we ended up being the best unit on our base. And because of that, we were always the forward unit. We were the lead element in every single division level operation in Afghanistan. It was my little platoon on the tip of the spear. And so we were the ones getting our asses shot up all the time. So as a leader, it would be really easy for me to turn around and be like, well, damn it, man. You know, look at all these other platoons that they're, they're infantry, infantry platoons too. They get to slack off all the time. They get to sit on base all the time. And look, they're not licking their wounds. They're not getting hurt. But at the same time, I like being the best too. And so did my guys. So it was just like, yeah, okay. Like, yeah, it sucks being out here, getting shot at all the time, getting shot up all the time. I mean, I'm not joking. We took

• 2:22:49Speaker 02

  85% casualties. I had guys wounded two and three times. I had six guys get shot in the head. Six guys, they all survived. Every gunner in my platoon was wounded. Everybody that manned a machine gun was wounded and we loved it. I mean, it was just, I mean, we hated it, right? We hated it, but like, we didn't want anyone else doing that job.

• 2:23:05Jocko Willink?

  You hated it, but you guys were the outlaws.

• 2:23:07Speaker 02

  That's it. That's it, man. We, we, we, look, I'm telling you, there were times, I mean, I'm telling you, my guys would complain, ah, sir, why do we gotta be the lead element? No one likes being the lead element on a division level operation, right? They're the first, you're the first unit that gets blown up, shot at every single time. You know, the buck stopped with us. I mean, I have my NCOs, god damn it, sir. Like, cause if you have an entire battalion of like 800 plus troops on an infantry battalion operation, the lead point man in Afghanistan, well, the, I mean, the Russian era maps, like you make one wrong turn. Like there's no roads, there's no roadside. The entire battalion gets thrown off. So I remember my squad leader, Chris Cowan, he's now a SWAT guy with the Syracuse PD. He'd be like, sir, god damn it, can't you just make somebody else the

• 2:23:49Speaker 02

  point man? Just one operation, just one. So we had to deal with that a lot, which is a, a fun leadership challenge to have. But it, it, I always talk to companies about this. It's that you've got to. You gotta be careful that you're, you know, in a, in a dynamic, in a corporate setting where, you know, the hardest working person, because they're the most competent, you end up relying on a lot more. And then the person sitting next to him skates most of the time. And so as a leader, you have, you really like should identify those things and not put too much on the person that's, that's moving out and drawing fire every day, doing the right thing every day. You gotta hold people accountable that aren't doing the right thing. But at the same time, we like being.

• 2:24:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And the other thing you do as leaders, you protect the guys from the chicken shit stuff that's going on.

• 2:24:33Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 2:24:34Jocko Willink?

  As much as you can. And as you guys lost control of that base because other people started moving in, that's become, became harder and harder to do.

• 2:24:40Speaker 02

  For sure.

• 2:24:41Jocko Willink?

  Which is, which is a problem.

• 2:24:45Jocko Willink?

  So, um,

• 2:24:48Jocko Willink?

  going back to the book, I've been writing to my dad every chance I had. Most soldiers tell their family, none of what happens in combat. They fear how they will react to the details. I hadn't been doing that. My dad had asked and I'd been, had never been anything but totally honest with him. In the past months, the bond between us had grown even deeper as we exchanged emails between patrols. By nature, leaders live a lonely life. As close as we can be to our men and NCOs, there is still an invisible wall that can never be broken down, lest a lieutenant grow too familiar with his men. Familiarity can breed contempt. In a fight, that could lead to hesitation to follow orders. Plus, a lieutenant who is too emotionally invested in his men, might make the wrong decision in combat. In trying to spare their lives, he could actually make the mistake that ends up getting them all killed.

• 2:25:34Jocko Willink?

  My dad's emails and our few phone conversations had bombed some of the tense sense of isolation I'd been feeling. I pulled up his email address. I wouldn't write him about Lieutenant Taylor and what he had said. That sort of company business needed to stay within the company, at least for now. Right then, a bolt of homesickness left me almost breathless. Words began pouring out. Dad, the enemy meant business and didn't stop coming. It was like the Russian horde. Eventually, we were going to run out of ammo and they were going to overrun us. I'm a damn platoon leader and I had one magazine left when our QRF, Quick Reaction Force, arrived. We killed tons of them and they just kept coming wave after wave. Half of my platoon will get Purple Hearts.

• 2:26:17Jocko Willink?

  My shrapnel wounds are healing fast. My headache is going away, but I still can't hear out of my right ear and the ringing is annoying as hell.

• 2:26:27Jocko Willink?

  I paused and reread the words, "As a soldier and a leader, I cannot complain or show weakness to anyone." Such a revelation here would destroy my ability to command in battle and ruin the hard one respect I'd earned from the men. Leadership exists on a knife edge. Any sign of hesitation, doubt, or inability to hack it would have pushed me out of the platoon's inner circle. I could deal with getting shot at. I could deal with the threat of capture and beheading while my empty M4 lay at my side. I could deal with the pain in my head, the vertigo, the sleepless nights where the buzzing in my ears kept me company. The one thing I could not deal with was being pushed out.

• 2:27:08Jocko Willink?

  Shaun, the leader, had to be tough. Shaun, the man, needed to unburden himself. As I started typing again, I realized that just by reading my words, my father was performing a noble and selfless service for me. Somewhere on the other side of the world, somebody I loved knew what I was going through. And he was standing strong for me.

• 2:27:29Speaker 02

  I mean, I feel like that was a, I feel like I needed it in the moment, but I, I hear it again today and I feel like, and I know now, you know, what my dad went through and now, you know, I know why guys go and talk about it. You know what I mean? It was stupid. I shouldn't have, I should have never done it. It almost, it almost, I don't want to say it like it destroyed my father. That's, that's a bit much, but it, it took a serious, serious toll on him to where I didn't know this, this dynamic until I got home, but my mom was just, she was the rock of my family that kept it all together. I mean, this deployment was just, it was so hard on my family and I was exacerbated by

• 2:28:13Speaker 02

  these stupid emails I'd send to my dad, but I, I just felt, you know, Although I was the only lieutenant that made it through the entire deployment. I was the only officer that made it through the entire deployment in my entire company. The either guys either moved out to a different duty assignment or were wounded. I mean, I was a platoon leader with my men for thirty-three months, which is unheard of in the army. Like a second lieutenant takes a platoon for twelve months to eighteen months tops. I was there for thirty-three months. And so,

• 2:28:41Speaker 02

  when shit started hitting the fan real bad, my battalion commander's like, we gotta keep our leadership in place, you know? But so because of that dynamic, right or wrong, and I largely think it was a really, it was a piss poor decision now thinking, thinking back on it, but I was lonely, man, not to sound like I didn't have anybody to talk to. I didn't, I didn't have the kind of relationship with my company commander where I can go and vent to him. You know, I just didn't. He was, he had been there for a couple of months and he was a great guy, but we just didn't have that kind of relationship. And I'm sure as hell wasn't going to gripe to my platoon sergeant or down. And I didn't really have any contemporaries either because they were wounded and being moved out or moved around, you know, or moved around the battalion.

• 2:29:19Speaker 02

  In fact, I mean, actually, it was more like, I think we had a lieutenant go home because he had a real sickness in his family, like his father got sick and was in the hospital. So we had to leave. So that platoon was being run by an NCO and the other one was wounded. It was just like, I didn't have anybody to talk to. So I was talking to my dad. And it was a mistake. I mean, it was, I mean, if I, if I had a mulligan on that one, I would not have done that.

• 2:29:39Jocko Willink?

  So you were giving him pretty much detailed ops sums of everything that was going on?

• 2:29:43Speaker 02

  Not, you know, like unclassified versions, sort of, but I would just be like, sort of, I mean, I think, yeah, yeah. I think I still, I mean, that's the actual email I sent him, you know? And I think I sort of dialed it back.

• 2:29:56Jocko Willink?

  Was your dad in the military at all?

• 2:29:58Speaker 02

  My dad went to the Naval Academy and stayed until he was a sophomore, but then left after that. And I got.

• 2:30:04Jocko Willink?

  What year? What, like what year did you go to Naval Academy?

• 2:30:06Speaker 02

  It was the first year that he allowed females. So I don't remember what that was. I think he would say it was like nineteen seventy-eight or something, but that was his, that was his plebe year in the Naval Academy. But I mean, I don't come from a military family, you know, I'm like.

• 2:30:18Jocko Willink?

  But your dad at least had the understanding, or I should say, I say at least, your dad understood like the military broadly.

• 2:30:27Speaker 02

  Oh, a hundred percent. Yeah. And I think that he knew the role that he was fulfilling, but I think that it was slowly destroying him. I mean, because I remember there were times we'd go on missions and there was this, um, we lost an entire battalion staff and 371 cavalry, Colonel Fenty of an O5 went down with his battalion staff. Um, this was before my first firefight in May, but my first firefight overlapped with that. So we were outside the wire, uh, for 10, 11 days and back stateside, it was like all they were getting on the ticker was CH40 helicopter crash goes down, 20 troops from the 10th Mountain

• 2:31:05Speaker 02

  are dead in eastern Afghanistan. And so my parents were just like beside themself. I mean, I can't imagine what they went through for that. And then part of this was this, all this, well, I wish they would have, I would have just let them live in the matrix, if that makes sense. Like just let them like, this is why troops don't talk to their families when they're in combat. This is why they don't tell them the details of the operation ultimately is because they, I think, maybe they know this, maybe it's conscious, maybe it's not, but it, it, this, this type of shit can really destroy someone who loves you deeply, you know? And I'm telling you, I know it's, I, I, it's like one of those things I really wish I would have done differently, you know?

• 2:31:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, um, that may sound harsh, but I agree a hundred percent. And I never told anyone, my wife, anything of anything that was going on ever. Now, you know, it was hard like for my wife, cause I'm like telling her nothing, but then like my guys are coming home wounded or my, she's going to my guys' funerals and that's like the reality. But even then it was, I was just, I didn't tell her anything. My parents, same thing. I didn't tell them anything. Cause for this very reason, um, I can't, it seemed like it would be bird, too, too much of a burden.

• 2:32:21Speaker 02

  It is. I mean, it was a huge mistake. I mean, now though, now that I'm out, I do think it's incredibly important for people to know. What our men and women go through, but when you're there and people are, you know, it was like, so we had AOL Instant Messenger back then. And, you know, that's how we would communicate with home and like my dad, he would tell me later that he would sit there. And he would turn on the AOL Instant Messenger chime. Because he in the, you know how you would like go idle and your name, your username would get, he would stare at the computer, turn the volume up on the computers all around the house. So when I instant, yes. And so the AOL Instant Messenger chime became almost like, you know, angel bells to him.

• 2:33:06Speaker 02

  And like to, to think about what that experience was like for him on a day to day basis. And then him having to be a father to my sister and two younger brothers and a husband and work, I, I don't know how he could have done it.

• 2:33:21Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:33:25Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, the special forces lieutenant colonel regarded me with skepticism behind us, the rest of his team huddled around the laptop silencers on their weapon. Cool guy gear dangling from their chest rigs before we left Burmel. I wanted to tell them that all this, all that stuff would just slow them down where we were going. No matter how fit a soldier is at 10,000 feet, the only thing you can afford to carry is water, ammo and your weapon. Everything else just drags you down.

• 2:33:51Jocko Willink?

  So that was them, that was the May 7th fight, I concluded. I'd been instructed to give the special forces team a brief on my, on the combat my platoon had experienced. I started to explain June 10th and the lieutenant colonel's look of disbelief solidified. I concealed my frustration and continued the brief, the special operators had been pushed over, pushed down to Burmel to get a better feel for the amount of enemy activity. Captain died, asked me to take them out on patrol with us for the next few cycles, something I was not looking forward to doing. We had some friction with the other special forces teams in our area, and as a result, my men did not hold them in high regard. There were attitude differences between us, regular line infantry and the SF guys. And I'd come to regard any liaison effort with them as a ponderous and difficult task.

• 2:34:36Jocko Willink?

  The ones we had encountered seemed all to have the elite attitude without the tactical acumen needed to keep them alive while on patrol. Rather than focusing on the enemy, they seemed to go, they seemed to us to be preoccupied with frivolous and extraneous details such as what color they should paint their weapons. We also didn't, we also didn't think much of them and their refusal to wear protective gear such as helmets. Most of the time, they walked around nonchalantly in baseball caps. After what we'd gone through, that sort of theatrical stuff came across as sheer stupidity. So, you're gonna take these SF guys out and I actually, I really like Captain Die's decision of like, "Oh, you, you wanna go on some patrols with my guys? Cool."

• 2:35:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, look, I mean, it was frustrating. I mean, just from an operational standpoint, some of the SF teams, because they would rotate in and out of skin, the base, and that was just like a really bad area, you know? And we're talking 10 feet from a Pakistani mail, a PAC mail checkpoint. I mean, they would be right on the border. But some of the SF teams were great. They shared intel, great. They would tell us when they were in our area of operations. I mean, these are, these are baseline things that I feel if you're a commander and you're in a battle space and you're calling for fire and you don't know an SF team is out there, somebody could die. I can't tell you how many times we'd have SF teams rolling around with quads and shit in our area of operations. We're like, "Dude, what are you guys doing?" Or new SF teams would roll in and we'd go down and brief them, right? And I'm just some stupid infantry

• 2:35:59Speaker 02

  lieutenant. But I'd been through some shit and I knew, I knew the area that we were fighting in really well and I'd be talking to these guys. And it's almost like they didn't believe how terrible it was. And I can, I can count on one hand, I mean, probably four or five times at least, where we had to go out and bail out an SF team because they'd roll outside the wire with four dudes in a pickup truck with a teeny pinwheel-mounted saw on the back of their pickup truck. I mean, it looked like something out of Star Wars. It looked really cool. But we would tell them like, "Man, like, if you're gonna be in a turret, you gotta wear your helmet. You can't go out there with your New York Yankees baseball hat on. Like, I know that looks cool, but that's not, you, you really need to listen to what we're saying." And I feel like some of them really paid the price. I mean, they, I know for a fact that we had, they, they were overrun

• 2:36:44Speaker 02

  in a couple of different situations. And I guess we just, at that point in time of the deployment, over, over time, it just got annoying going out and bailing them out all the time, you know?

• 2:36:54Speaker 02

  SF teams have, you know, they're small, foreign internal defense is their mission. They're, they work with indigenous populace. They don't have the combat power of a traditional infantry platoon. And again, some of them are great, some of them not so much. And my men didn't really hold them in high regard, just because they were very dismissive of the stuff that they had experienced. And so Captain Dog was like, yeah, take this SF Colonel out with you. And of course, as I'm like, damn it, you know, no one likes to babysit anybody on a combat patrol, especially if they're not trained with your guys. I don't know, I know his name. He was just like this one, this specific Lieutenant Colonel was, uh, he was just a singleton guy. Like he was just a singleton, he had some, he had a team with him, but he was a singleton guy. He would go outside the wire on his own.

• 2:37:37Speaker 02

  Um, we took him outside the wire and we just got lit up and he was just, he just, he just couldn't believe it. He was like, this is the greatest shit I've experienced since Columbia. And I'm like, all right, sir, calm down. Let's like, let's let, you know, like, he was like, what are we gonna do? What are we gonna do? Are we gonna counterattack? We need to take the fight to him. I'm like, okay, sir, yeah, we're gonna do that, but like, just calm down for us. I mean, he was so into it. And at the end of that engagement, he was just like, he was, he was a believer, man. He was like, I cannot believe the shit that you guys are in down here all the time. I can't, you know, I've got to go back and I've got to tell General Frakely about this. He was our 10th Mountain Division Commander at the time. He was like, I gotta tell him about this. I gotta tell him.

• 2:38:18Speaker 02

  I'm like, yeah, sir, yeah, we're, I'm, I told you in, in your, in, in my briefing to you, like, it's, it's no joke around here.

• 2:38:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a, we, we, uh, we had a great relationship with all the conventional forces that we worked alongside. We pretty much acted as close as we could to acting like them. You know, we all wore the same uniforms as them. We all had the same grooming standards as them. We, yeah, that's what we did and.

• 2:38:44Speaker 02

  We never, we never got an opportunity to even work with SEALs in Eastern Afghanistan.

• 2:38:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. I mean, who knows what the, what the layout of the guys were at the time, but I, I. My point is, we had guys, Army guys and Marines, primarily Army, that had definitely, we had to overcome a prejudice against special operations because they had had real bad kind of experiences that you're talking about in there. And again, like you said, you know what, there's great SF teams, there's, there's great SEAL teams, there's horrible ones. Just like there's great infantry battalions and great infantry companies and there's shady ones as well.

• 2:39:18Speaker 02

  Absolutely.

• 2:39:19Jocko Willink?

  You kind of, you, you kind of just have to, you have to look at what you're dealing with. But my point is, if you're out there, be one of the good ones. Be someone that's going to listen. You know, when we got to Ramadi, there was a, it was a National Guard unit on the ground out of Pennsylvania, the 228.

• 2:39:35Speaker 02

  I know. That was, that was a guy that went to ROTC was a platoon leader.

• 2:39:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, we probably worked with them.

• 2:39:42Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:39:42Jocko Willink?

  When we showed up there, those guys were freaking awesome. They had been there for like a year or 14 months or something like that. And we went in with, hey, what, what do you want to tell us? How can we learn from you?

• 2:39:54Speaker 02

  That was the exact right attitude. I mean, I, that's the, I mean, again, humility. You go in, big eyes, big ears, humble, self-effacing, listen, you know, and what, what I, I remember telling specifically one special forces commander when I was down there, who he had a great relationship with, because he sort of came into it with that attitude. And I was like, you know, you guys are awesome. You know, I know you guys have got some serious hardcore, cool guy training, you know, but a bullet kills you just the same as it's going to kill me, man. You know, and so at a very minimum, listen to some of the intel that I got, that, that may help you get your people out of here alive, right? And you got your own TTPs, you operate your own way, but there are things very specifically that you need

• 2:40:39Speaker 02

  to do here in this area of operations that will give you a much better chance of surviving. And he listened. And, and we had a great relationship because of that. We shared intel. And I mean, that was a great combat multiplier for us because, you know, we knew where the high value targets were. I mean, as a conventional infantry guy, like, you know, I mean, we would get in the big kinetic fights and stuff, but it's really not our job to go out unless we're doing an outer corridor. It's not our job to go after high value targets. And if we get too close to them, we could spook them and they could, they could leave. So these are, these are, I share these things for, for the listeners, the reason, this is why intel sharing to a certain extent is really important.

• 2:41:13Jocko Willink?

  Let's work together.

• 2:41:14Speaker 02

  It's really important. Yeah, exactly.

• 2:41:17Jocko Willink?

  So another thing that happened with that special forces Colonel is he actually, they had some intel for you. And you talked about earlier, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna cover it real quick anyways, because it's, he gave you the intel and then here's you briefing the guys going back to the book. We know the enemy's intentions now, I said, that got everyone's attention. They are seeking a decisive victory over an American platoon. They want to pin us in a kill zone by disabling our vehicles, then overrun us and kill us to the last man. They plan to behead anyone they capture. If they catch us in an observation point again, they will try a direct assault, just like do June 10th. Sabo growled, guess we'll ratchet things up.

• 2:42:00Jocko Willink?

  So that's what, that's what you've been contending with this whole time.

• 2:42:03Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 2:42:04Jocko Willink?

  And it's real clear, looking in the rearview mirror, obviously that's what they were trying to do.

• 2:42:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. I mean, I was, I was watching you read that and you smile when you said Sabo says ratchet things up. Cause I feel like that, that phrase, like everything about you is ratchet things up, like default aggressive, default aggressive. But yeah, I mean, we, I mean, when we heard that intel from that special forces, Lieutenant Colonel, and I still remember him by name, but I'm not going to say it because he's, I think he's still active. But, um, I mean, okay, so you know, they're trying to kill you. But once you know what their mission is every time they attack you, they want to overrun you and cut off your heads and put them on stakes. And we heard them say it over and over again on this, this Lieutenant, this Colonel gave us radio, let us listen to the recordings.

• 2:42:54Speaker 02

  I mean, we heard them say it and then, and then after a while, we'd see these DVD videos trickle down to our base of attacks where they did just that in RAO of other coalition troops, meaning like, you know, other Afghan national troops out there. It starts to hit pretty close to home and we thought the war was personal when we lost Abdul. Now it really was, you know, I mean, war, life, death issues are always intimately personal, but there's something about knowing the enemy's mission and knowing what they want to do and knowing how they want to do it. That just, it can rattle you a little bit. I mean, I feel like to this day, the idea of, I mean, look, have you ever seen those videos of America? I mean, I'm sure you had, they're terrifying.

• 2:43:40Speaker 02

  I mean, It's, you know, the idea of getting beheaded with like a butter knife is not something that like, you know, it's a scary way to go.

• 2:43:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and as far as I'm concerned, and as far as I was concerned, that was absolutely the goal of everyone I ever looked at on the battlefield like that. And you know, when you, I don't know if you, did you do, did you guys capture a lot of bad guys?

• 2:44:01Speaker 02

  We did. We captured a few of them, but we would just give, we'd talk to them and get the intel that we could and we'd give them to the ANA.

• 2:44:07Jocko Willink?

  Like, sometimes we would capture a bad guy, and actually Echo was asking me about this earlier today. He's like, what were they like? And some of them, they had a look in their eyes like you know 100% that if the tables were turned, they would 100% be sawing off your head.

• 2:44:23Speaker 02

  No doubt about it. You can see it in their eyes. They're just, they're just black with hate. I don't know where that hate comes from, a lifetime of indoctrination, but that you just see something in their eyes where you know that they would, if the tables were turned, they would absolutely cut your head off. No question about it.

• 2:44:41Jocko Willink?

  So I kind of always thought that that's what, what would happen. Um, you guys, so that had a little, I guess we'll say a psychological impact on you guys now knowing this 100%, but there was nothing more evident of a, I'll call it a negative psychological impact, than a, you guys were on a little outpost and you guys get hit with a massive rocket attack and you guys are completely pinned down. You're taking rocket after rocket after rocket after rocket after rocket after rocket. And finally you get the call in to Captain Die, and you know, you want indirect fire. You want to put this, snuff this problem out.

• 2:45:24Jocko Willink?

  And he comes back on the radio and says, negative 36. That's Pakistani territory. Another rocket skittered past low and fast. Everyone molded himself against the HESCO bag wall as it spewed shrapnel and flame across the outpost. The explosion sent peals of terror through us. We can't shoot back.

• 2:45:46Jocko Willink?

  All we could do is lie there, captives. I saw the platoon change. The men's eyes grew hollowed and wide. We'd been through dangerous encounters before, but we'd always been able to fight back. That gave us something to do and occupied our minds. Our inability to act now exposed us to terror's fullest effects.

• 2:46:09Jocko Willink?

  A platoon's morale is an elastic quality. From its baseline, events affecting the men can cause it to bend in different directions. Mail gives it a boost. So does hot chow after a long day. A small gesture by a first sergeant showing that he has the well-being of the men in mind can also go a long way. A victory in combat can bring euphoria. A defeat will bring despair and doubt. We'd seen or experienced the gamut, and the men had always returned to their baseline, laughing irreverent selves after a little while. It was our natural state. But something happened under those rockets. We'd never felt so utterly helpless. Being unable to fight back had stripped us of our aggressive spirit.

• 2:46:53Jocko Willink?

  It had left us feeling impotent, mere observers of death and destruction thrown our way.

• 2:47:02Speaker 02

  That's, I mean, to me, I feel like that's the, the opposite of default aggressive, right? I mean, that's like, there's nothing worse than being on the receiving end of indirect fire and not have the ability to, you don't have the ability to do anything about it, you know? This particular engagement happened at Fobshkin at the Alamo, which is, you, you look, I mean, it's a stone's throw away from a pack mill checkpoint. That is, that is, you know, there are probably two or three discos pointed right at the Alamo, this basically this colot, you know, and with four guard towers around it. You're, you know, the pack mill have, uh, they're on the high ground all around you, right? Looking right down into your base.

• 2:47:46Speaker 02

  And the Taliban, whoever's firing indirect at us that day, were using and cooperating with the pack mill, using them as shields, knowing that we wouldn't be able to shoot back, you know? So this was a new, evolving threat, the first time that we had faced it. What they were trying to do was get us to open up on a pack mill checkpoint, cause some international incident. Um, it'd be all over the news in America. We'd get blamed for it. You know, the Taliban, Al Qaeda, whoever conducted the attack, you'd never hear mention of them. Um, and... We were spread out from our trucks and the indirect was so heavy that we couldn't get back to them. And so, God, man, it's just you never feel so helpless than you're just sitting there. You know, tucked up against the HESCO wall.

• 2:48:31Speaker 02

  And just hoping that a rocket doesn't land on your head. There's nothing that you can do about it, but just like, let go, you know? What was the trajectory, the rockets? They were coming in flat trajectory? Like, high to low. They were being shot from an elevated position right into us. But it was direct fire? There was direct fire. Yeah, no question. And so, one of the rockets hit. An A and A guard tower, like a wooden guard tower, just blew it to smithereens, which is right by the exit. So. The, the base was just basically, it was a square with a square colot on the inside. Our trucks were lined up in a row. Uh, right next to the compound. And they were just taking trap. And when we were spread out all over the base, we, we couldn't even get back to our trucks to exfil.

• 2:49:13Speaker 02

  Um, and I think we fired a couple of 60 millimeter mortars in the handheld just to make them think that we were shooting back. Eventually, after a while, after about an hour of that, I mean, God, man, the longest hour of your life. Hour? An hour, an hour. We got an Apache. We got an Apache to come down and just do a show of force, but we couldn't, we couldn't engage with it. So when the Apache got down and did the show of force. It, it bought us enough time, uh, to run to our trucks and get the hell out of Dodge. And I remember rolling back into the base, man, I'm telling you, it was just. I mean, God, it's like. You had this sinking feeling in your heart that it's only a matter of time.

• 2:49:56Speaker 02

  And I remember walking back into my hooch and I, the mail was there and it was on my desk. And I remember opening up this little letter from my cousin Freddie. And he had drawn this American soldier with this flag. It was the 4th of July and I didn't even realize it, you know?

• 2:50:12Speaker 02

  And I just sat there and I looked at it and I thought of it and I thought of like home and I missed home and I thought of the Steelers and I thought of going to Pirates games and a big Pittsburgh sports fan. And all the things that reminded me of home like hamburgers, hot dogs, whatever, you know, beer, music. And I just thought to myself like, you know, if it's only a matter of time, like I cannot allow myself to think of any of this stuff anymore. You know, I basically, in order to survive in an environment where your day to day life is it's only a matter of time. Hope can be a caustic quality in combat. You know, hope leads to fear and that fear can lead to hesitation on the battlefield

• 2:50:57Speaker 02

  or not doing what needs to be done at the moment it needs to be done. And when that happens, uh, men die. And so I remember very, very distinctly folding up that picture instead of hanging it on my wall, folding up that picture and putting it in my foot locker and just, just, you know, keeping it there. If I made it home, great, I'd have it for later, but if not, I could not allow myself to think back to those fleeting moments of home. I just had to basically just give up hope that I would ever make it home. It's a, it's a weird way to live, man. But when the only thing that you're worried about is living or dying, once you flip that switch, it's a hard one to, it's a hard one to turn back on.

• 2:51:36Jocko Willink?

  My wife, when I was in Ramadi, my wife sent me an email and said, hey, the kids want to see a picture of, you know, where you sleep at night. And I was like, okay, you know, I had in this old Saddam regime building, I had a room and it had a plywood, whatever bed and part of the plywood bed was, you know, sticking up almost like a headboard. So anyways, I was just going to take a picture of it and I looked at it and it was just completely empty and I said, oh, that's not good. So I took, opened a drawer, took out a folder, took a picture of my wife and kids and hung them up, took a picture of my bed with those pictures in it, took the pictures down, put them back in the folder and put them back in the drawer. Like same exact thoughts that you had, like there are just way too many decisions that

• 2:52:20Jocko Willink?

  need to be made that the last thing I need to be thinking about is my wife and family back home and the only thing I need to be thinking about is these guys on the ground with me, a hundred percent.

• 2:52:32Speaker 02

  And it's because I feel like if you start longing for home and you start missing those things, it distracts you from the mission that needs to be done.

• 2:52:41Jocko Willink?

  I gotten, when I saw guys get in that mindset, when I saw my guys starting to, you know, stare at the pictures of home, that made me super nervous, you know, and I would like do things, I'd, you know, maybe try and pull them off, let them, you know, get some, you know, some time back in camp or whatever, try and get them to get over that because I totally agree. If you're, if that's what's in the front of your mind, that's not going to be good for you.

• 2:53:08Speaker 02

  And it's

• 2:53:08Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna, it's gonna, it's gonna inhibit your default aggressive attitude. And then all those things that we talked about, the positives of being default aggressive are all going to disappear because now you're going to be default hesitant.

• 2:53:18Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, default hesitant, default defensive. In that case, you see in that specific chapter, how caustic and destructive default defensive or default hesitant can be, how it, how it goes, how it destroys morale, how it can shake the hearts of men at the time where you need them to be the most formidable. It can make them question what they're doing. It can make them think of home. It can make them hesitate in their actions and all of those things threaten the success of the mission.

• 2:53:48Jocko Willink?

  And just imagine World War One, just going 28 months of that.

• 2:53:54Speaker 02

  Of that, of that. That's, that's, that, in fact, I did, exactly. It is a nightmare. Every single day, just not knowing if a round's going to land on your head is the worst, it's the worst position to be in.

• 2:54:09Jocko Willink?

  Indirect fire. You get back to base. You see, you see Captain Die. Shaun, you all right? I turned to see Captain Die regarding me with concern. Yeah, I'm okay. I guess we found out today why they moved Fob's skin away from the border. I guess so. I'm sorry. I couldn't give you any indirect. Thank you, pack mill assholes. Allies my ass. You sure you're okay? He asked again. Your hands are shaking. I'll be all right, sir. I lied. It was just rough having to take it for so long and not being able to shoot back. He put his hand on my shoulder and shook me gently. If you need anything, let me know. Thank you, sir. And the unspoken was, we're infantry.

• 2:54:55Jocko Willink?

  Handle it.

• 2:54:57Speaker 02

  Exactly, exactly. We're infantry handle it, you know?

• 2:55:01Jocko Willink?

  Like, hey, if you need anything, let me know. But the unspoken is, hey,

• 2:55:04Speaker 02

  But hey, brother, this is the job. So, you know, get your shit together, you know?

• 2:55:11Speaker 02

  And I remember when we had that conversation, we were standing outside our tactical operation operation center around the backside of where the officers were staying. And I was just standing out there smoking a cigarette and my hands were shaking and he could see it. You know, I I looked back on that moment and I was really thankful that he that he said something, you know? I needed to hear that. I needed to hear suck it up, handle it. I needed that. And I think that was a really strong leadership moment for him, you know, to even just have the emotional intelligence to see that one of his subordinate leaders was struggling and come over and address it immediately. Even if it was handle it, at least I knew

• 2:55:53Speaker 02

  he was, he was keeping an eye on things, that it mattered, you know? And I think that's important for soldiers.

• 2:56:01Jocko Willink?

  You talk in the book about when you're on the FOB and what's going on in the FOB. And one of the things you got on the FOB, which I think is just a common thing for all Americans at war, is you had dogs, little pet dogs that you guys adopted and kind of have fun with. And it gives you a little break from the monotony and it gives you a little warmth in your world. And I know when we always had dogs, my first deployment, we had dogs. We had a dog named RPG and a dog named Morder. Cute little bastards.

• 2:56:29Speaker 02

  Ours was Trigger.

• 2:56:31Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 2:56:31Speaker 02

  Trigger.

• 2:56:34Jocko Willink?

  You guys are out on an op. And actually, prior to this, one of the dogs had like growled at one of the females. She complained, blah, blah, blah. And you explain this all in the book. But what it leads to is this. The leadership on the FOB took all the dogs and killed them and burned the bodies while you guys were out in the field.

• 2:57:03Jocko Willink?

  You guys come back and I'm going to the book anger and indignation I could work with. The infantry feeds on such emotions. It motivates and makes us eager to release violence upon our foe. There was no fight in Chris that morning. He's one of your troops. And he was the barometer of the platoon's morale. I saw his resignation reflected on everyone's faces. Cowan moved like a sleepwalker. Even Sabo appeared affected. As I watched the platoon struggle that morning, I realized that I had overlooked the reality of Afghanistan. We were facing two enemies, not one. The Haqqani networks fighters we could handle. Anytime they chose to challenge us, we could smite them with firepower and make them pay for the effort. We would not give ground and I knew we would never know defeat. But this other enemy was more devious.

• 2:57:48Jocko Willink?

  How does one do battle with FOB politics? At the moment, I was at a complete loss. Without a doubt, we needed to figure out a way to do it because more blows like this and it could tear the platoon apart. It was with relief that we put bermel in our rearview mirrors. The countryside was ours. You guys are rolling out another op. Devoid of politip, devoid of politics, stupid rules and petty slights. It was the one place where we knew. It was the one place where most feared to tread. We were among our own kind, depending on men we trusted and loved. And the danger the insurgents presented at every turn seemed a small price to pay for these respite. So there you are.

• 2:58:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:58:33Jocko Willink?

  It's better just to get off base and go into the field so you can get away from the FOB politics.

• 2:58:39Speaker 02

  It was. I mean, those dogs were members of our platoon. I mean, my men would come back from patrols. The first thing that they would do is look for those dogs, you know, and they'd sleep in the barracks with them and you know, there's this rule, general order number one, or some part of general order number one, no dogs on the bases because you know, out of fear that they'd have some disease and so the decision that was, the decision to put them down was made. Um, the dog growled at one of the male clerks who wasn't even a part of our base, wasn't on our base, who flew in on a ring route and got growled at and then went and told her higher, our brigade uh, headquarters elements and they flew medics down to our base that weren't stationed on our base that killed the dogs the moment we left out of the wire and we came back, man, and it just.

• 2:59:23Speaker 02

  We weren't supposed to have them, right? But our medics had also vaccinated them, you know, our medics had made it safe. So it was one of those things that was just like, God damn it, can't you just give us this small thing, you know?

• 2:59:41Speaker 02

  Rules and regulations are important.

• 2:59:44Speaker 02

  I think it's of the utmost importance to follow them even if you disagree with them, you know? But some things like this, when you're trying desperately to have soldiers cling to what little humanity that they might have left in a savage land, like, Jesus Christ, just give us the dogs, you know? They couldn't even give them that. And the way that they took them from us was even worse, you know? To come back and have, you know, wait at the barracks, hey, where are the dogs? Oh, hey, they, they killed them and then they threw them on the burn pits. You know, my guys like ran out to the burn pit. I mean, my men were ready to kill somebody, you know? And I just remember like, Jesus, you know?

• 3:00:22Speaker 02

  You fight the enemy out there, it's at least, you know, it's, it's life and death and there's elegance in that simplicity, right? Your only thing you're worried about is living or dying and the man next to you. But when you come back on the bases, how do you fight against that shit? How do you deal with that stuff? Those, those things are morale killers and I'd rather control for that by being outside the wire and be, you know, call my own shots and my men were familiar with the terrain. We know that we had each other's backs. We know that we weren't going to stab each other in the back like that, you know? I mean, it's like those FOB politics, like door kickers, warriors, they don't deal well with stuff like that.

• 3:01:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it's like a glimpse of the rest of the normal world.

• 3:01:04Speaker 02

  It absolutely is, yeah.

• 3:01:06Jocko Willink?

  The FOB is one removed from the normal world because you get a little bit, but it still is a reflection of life, just normal, everyday political crap that runs around.

• 3:01:18Jocko Willink?

  You guys get out on patrol. And you guys are driving and you see a boy, like a young boy alone. And you stop the vehicles. And here we go to the book, something ain't right, sir. Greason said in that sleepy Sam Elliott voice of his. The years of smoking and drinking had given it a gravely rugged quality. Indomitable, really. Nope, I said, shaking my head under my helmet. Campbell was kneeling in front of the boy now, talking in a low, comforting voice. The boy whined, his head waving from side to side. He seemed disengaged, lost in his own tormented world. World. Who the hell would give dope to a little kid? Would the ANA do something like that? I thought fifteen feet from the boy.

• 3:02:03Jocko Willink?

  We both gasped and stopped in our tracks.

• 3:02:08Jocko Willink?

  Under a shock of dirt encrusted black hair. We saw a disfigured face about six years old.

• 3:02:17Jocko Willink?

  His eyes had been gouged out. The sockets burned black by whatever heated implement had been used to do the deed.

• 3:02:27Jocko Willink?

  Next to me, Greason exhaled sharply, Jesus Christ, what is this? The boy opened his mouth again. Another wine spilled out between cracked lips. Behind them, we saw ruptured gums. And no teeth. You're fucking kidding me, Greason said. Get Yusuf and Doc Panjota. Panto, how you say his name? Pantoja. Pantoja. I said to my platoon sergeant. Yusuf reached us first and looked down at the boy. Either he'd seen this sort of thing before, or a half a decade of war had steeled him to such sights. The boy's condition evoked no visible emotions in my terp. He stood quietly next to me, his used car salesman.

• 3:03:14Jocko Willink?

  Affection stowed for the moment. And we haven't really talked about Yusef much, but when you lost Abdul, Yusef moved up into the primary interpreter position. And you described him as a used car salesman. He's one of those guys that seems a little bit shady, but you're working with what you got.

• 3:03:31Speaker 02

  That's right, yeah.

• 3:03:32Jocko Willink?

  You end up taking the boy to a nearby village. And here you describe the village, "The village was a frightful sight. A clean bed would have been a priceless luxury in this place. The mud-walled huts were barren of even the most basic essentials. Little food, no clean water. The ground between the dwellings was riddled with human feces, animal dung, and filth. The smell of such a place is one that none of us will ever forget. It lingered like a tangible presence in the air. I could feel it seeping into my clothing. For a second, I flashed back to my first day in country. After the girl had died in my arms, I had burned my blood-soaked ACUs. No amount of cleaning would ever get out this stench. A boy, perhaps six years old, limped out of a nearby hut

• 3:04:15Jocko Willink?

  and took station near one corner, watching us with burnished, black eyes. There was a wary worldliness in them that I'd never seen back home. Welts and bruises ran the length of his face, neck, and arms. He'd been badly beaten."

• 3:04:35Jocko Willink?

  And then an ancient man clad in dirt-marred clothes emerged from one mud hut. His beard was dyed red, something that all village elders do to show their status as community leaders. When he saw us, he paused and offered a guarded greeting. Then he saw the eyeless boy. His composure cracked, and a look of pure love and relief crossed his face. He hurried over and wrapped the boy in his arms. The two shared words, and the elder held the boy in a fierce, protective embrace. He looked at me, the boy's head tucked under his jaw and pressed hard against his neck, and I could see that the old man's eyes had grown wet. He began to speak to me.

• 3:05:17Jocko Willink?

  Yusef listened, and then said in a clipped and professional tone, "The village elder thanks you. This boy is his grandson." Grierson, his voice barely a whisper, said, "Yusef, find out what happened to this kid." Yusef nodded and engaged the vill- the vill- the village elder in a long discussion. We listened as the two conversed in their native language, anxiously awaiting the answer. At last, Yusef turned his attention to us, his face a mask, and matter-of-factly told us the elder's story. The enemy had swept into the village a few weeks ago, bent on punishing its inhabitants for supporting the coalition.

• 3:06:02Jocko Willink?

  I doubted that any Americans had ever visited this place. The enemy had kidnapped the elder's oldest grandson. He was the future of the family, the boy most cherished and revered in Afghan culture. Taking him was a blow that nobody in the village would forget. They had taken the elder's grandson back to one of their mountain hideouts, where they gouged out his eyes. They had turned him into a sexual plaything, knocking out his teeth to increase their pleasure with him. They had raped this six-year-old boy for weeks.

• 3:07:05Jocko Willink?

  So that's what you're dealing with?

• 3:07:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, uh, you know, the enemy that we face over there, that's what they're capable of. In, in this village, there's no way that, I mean, we had never even come into contact with them. There were so many small border villages, uh, in the Hindu Kush Mountains that have not even talked to a tribe that's a click down the road, let alone ever seen an American troop. There's no, just the mere thought that they may have been working with Americans was enough to cause something like that. It just shows you the depth and depravity of the enemy that we're fighting. This is why we fight against them. This is why Americans are there. This is why we matter. This is the why the way that we fight matters.

• 3:07:51Speaker 02

  You know, there is a right and wrong to how the world... You know, conducts itself, you know, I firmly believe that, you know, some cultures are better than others, you know, I think our Western culture should be preserved and fought for and protected and promulgated as much as possible. We live in the best country on the face of the earth, why shouldn't we try to do that for other people? If and when we can. I know that that's probably a controversial view, but, you know, those, I know that those people in Afghanistan, this village in particular, was so grateful for what we brought to them, how we helped them, we did a med cap in their village. So much of what we did in Afghanistan was taking care of the people.

• 3:08:35Speaker 02

  That was like a, that was really important to us. I mean, we were the, we were the, we were, we were the main power brokers in the A O, there's no question about that. We dominated the terrain, we kicked the enemy's ass, but we really did care about the Afghan people. In fact, that first engagement that we, that we talked about today, we were going to do a humanitarian, our initial tasking was to do an observation post, yes, but we were stopping off in a village to do a humanitarian distribution, you know, blankets, food, rice, coloring books, crayons for kids. And I remember like getting back from that mission, pulling out this Crayola crayon box with a center punch, center punched pole, a seven, center punched hole of a 762 round, right through the center of it. And so, we cared a lot about the people, man.

• 3:09:20Speaker 02

  And, you know, the enemy in that first rocket attack where they killed a bunch of those kids, didn't matter, they knew that those rockets had landed in a school, they kept firing at us, you know? There was, there was an informant, a human intelligence informant, that we were working with to help exploit high value targets on the border, early on in the deployment. He was one of the few people that lived in the mountainous border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, had the courage to stay there throughout it all. Enemy found out that he was working and helping, helping us, and they threw a grenade in the middle of his compound and killed a newborn baby, killed his baby. I mean, they just do terrible things to their kids. And...

• 3:09:57Speaker 02

  That's the kind of shit that stays with you forever. It's, it's, you know, I'm telling you, I, like I said before, I don't lose a wink of sleep over the bad guys that we killed over there. I not, don't lose a wink of sleep over it. But it's moments like this that stay with you forever. It's, you see, and I think like, you get a lot of time to think about this sort of shit when you're over there. Because like, when you look at the kids and you're driving through these villages and, you know, they liked American troops, you know, they appreciated what we did. They appreciated how we protected them. The people in Afghanistan and those children, they have nothing, nothing. There's no running water. There's no electricity. There's no roads. There's no economy. There's no jobs.

• 3:10:35Speaker 02

  The men all summer long go out there and they cut wood. So they have enough wood to keep their family warm during the winter and then the cycle starts again. And so these kids though. I remember watching them, uh, from an observation post one day early on, like just watching them run around and play soccer with this deflated soccer ball and bare feet in the mountains, like running on these like, rocks that had to be razor sharp. And I just thinking to myself like, damn it, man. Kids are the most amazing thing in the world, you know, it's because, because here they are. They don't even know, they have nothing. They literally have nothing. And probably one of the most dangerous places in the face of the planet. And here they are running around playing soccer. They don't even have shoes, you know? Run around playing soccer, being kids, you know, they're so awesome, you know, and that's why we were there to protect them. And then, and then to see,

• 3:11:20Speaker 02

  to see, you know, the way that the enemy treated them. I knew we just had to kill as many of them as humanly possible. Like for the year that we were supposed to be there, we ended up being there a year and a half, but the year that we were there, I just felt from this point forward, like, yeah, we were in fights. You know, we weren't going to draw our weapon unless we were fired upon first, but all that changed after this.

• 3:11:47Jocko Willink?

  You, you continue on here. More members of the elders family ventured out. They came to the boy to hug and reassure him. He whimpered softly. And I wondered if he was crying. Then I realized he couldn't cry.

• 3:12:00Jocko Willink?

  His tear ducts had been burned away.

• 3:12:09Speaker 02

  I mean, don't people that do that to young children? You know? Don't people like that deserve to die?

• 3:12:16Jocko Willink?

  Yes, 100%.

• 3:12:17Speaker 02

  I mean, they don't deserve... Life is a privilege. Every single waking breath that you have is a privilege. You know? Um, and they certainly don't earn it.

• 3:12:36Jocko Willink?

  Moving through. Moving on back to the book. Penhold and I sat together watching an episode of the TV series The Office. We howled with laughter and thought about how foreign the world of cubicle land was to us. "This is the greatest show ever," I told Penhold. "I knew you'd like it, sir." Was that your first time seeing it?

• 3:12:54Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:12:55Jocko Willink?

  How far away from Scranton did you grow up?

• 3:12:58Speaker 02

  I'm from Pittsburgh.

• 3:12:59Jocko Willink?

  Oh, there you go.

• 3:13:00Speaker 02

  Couple hours. You know, but we did, I mean, we watched it, man, I'm telling you. So, we were into all kinds of shows over there, you know? The whole platoon would gather around. This is like, I mean, we had these like little laptop computers. We all sit around like, screen that's big and watch these shows. But The Office was one of those things. That it was just like, "Holy shit." Like, look at what we just talked about. How much of a, I mean, it's just the most sad, depressing thing. I mean, but people actually live like this. Like, I know people like Dwight in, in, in real life that work as, you know what I mean? Like, this is, I, I just thought it was such a crazy, like, comparatively. Here we are doing this and Americans actually live like this.

• 3:13:42Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 3:13:43Speaker 02

  This is where they go to work every day.

• 3:13:44Jocko Willink?

  Completely crazy.

• 3:13:45Speaker 02

  You know?

• 3:13:45Jocko Willink?

  It's completely crazy. You got a kid who's had his eyes burned out. He's had his teeth pulled so he could be a sex toy for these savages.

• 3:13:53Speaker 02

  We found, we found kids like that, other units, all over Afghanistan.

• 3:13:57Jocko Willink?

  It's heinous.

• 3:13:59Speaker 02

  And then, and then the movie, um, Slumdog Millionaire came out a few years later and that happens in that movie too. It's, it's, it's just...

• 3:14:11Speaker 02

  I mean, it's just a, I don't understand it. I don't understand. It's just, people that do that to children do not deserve to breathe. They don't deserve to live.

• 3:14:21Jocko Willink?

  No, zero.

• 3:14:25Jocko Willink?

  So you guys are, you guys are carrying on. For rare change of pace, we were inside the wire with a day off. We had desperately needed to break. The men were relaxing, sleeping, and lifting weights. The episode ended. Got any more, I asked. Whole first season, sir. You're awesome. We started another episode. Midway through, Pinhole wrinkled his nose and looked at me.

• 3:14:45Speaker 02

  Wait, are you, are you an Office fan?

• 3:14:48Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 3:14:48Speaker 02

  You are?

• 3:14:49Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 3:14:50Speaker 02

  It's like my favorite show.

• 3:14:51Jocko Willink?

  Have you ever watched The British Office?

• 3:14:53Speaker 02

  Yes, I don't think it's as funny.

• 3:14:54Jocko Willink?

  It's not as funny.

• 3:14:55Speaker 02

  I don't find British people as funny.

• 3:14:56Jocko Willink?

  And you know which one I like more? The British one.

• 3:14:58Speaker 02

  You do?

• 3:14:59Jocko Willink?

  Because the British one is, is...

• 3:15:02Speaker 02

  I don't like this, I don't like this hot Jaco take. I don't like this.

• 3:15:05Jocko Willink?

  It's kinda depressing. The British one is kinda depressing.

• 3:15:08Speaker 02

  Dystopian?

• 3:15:09Jocko Willink?

  Because, no, because in the American one, it's funny. And it's, it's funny because you're like, oh, this is a little bit, this is a little bit, um... It's a little bit too much, right? Michael Scott is a little bit too much.

• 3:15:26Speaker 02

  He's my favorite, he's my favorite. I love him.

• 3:15:28Jocko Willink?

  Not tons too much, but he's just a little bit too much and you go, okay, he's a caricature. He's, he's an extreme version for comic effect, right? That's what you get when you watch The American Office and all the characters. You know Dwight? He's, he's, he's like, you know a guy like Dwight? But Dwight is like, is like one level up from that. That's what makes him funny, right? So you, and then you mix in kind of the regular, kind of normal characters and we know people like them. And so then you get to see this story unfold, but it's all slightly beyond actual belief.

• 3:16:00Speaker 02

  I feel like I know bosses like Michael Scott. I feel like I see them sometimes. I'm like, oh my God.

• 3:16:04Jocko Willink?

  You do see them, you see them in little bits and pieces, but The British Office... You're like, hey, this is, this is like what a guy is really like. This guy's really like delusional and this guy, it's just to me, it has this sting to it that I, that I like. I like the fact that, you know, I heard this said about, um, singers, really good singers, have a hint of sadness in their voice. When you hear, when you hear a really good singer sing, you'll think it's really good if they have a hint of sadness in their voice. And I think the British Office has like a hint of sadness in it that to me, makes it better.

• 3:16:44Speaker 02

  You like the sadness? The sadness makes you happy?

• 3:16:47Jocko Willink?

  No, I don't know if it makes me happy, but it hits me in a, in a way that I feel is, is,

• 3:16:54Jocko Willink?

  I think it hits me in a, in a, in a stronger way.

• 3:16:57Speaker 02

  This is, this is some, this is some deep Jaco stuff here. I didn't really expect to get that deep into your emotional response to the Office. Here we are, exactly. Here we are indeed.

• 3:17:06Jocko Willink?

  We're, we're at Shrewd Farms right now.

• 3:17:12Speaker 02

  Am I, am I Mo's? Are you Dwight? Am I Mo's?

• 3:17:16Jocko Willink?

  I think you're my Mo's, yeah. Quit talking. Uh, the funny thing is my family, my whole family likes The Office. So we've had, you know, if we're gonna watch a TV show, that's probably, actually, I don't even know if we watch anymore TV, any other TV shows.

• 3:17:29Speaker 01

  Office Space, the movie?

• 3:17:31Jocko Willink?

  I've watched the Office Space movie many times. Yes.

• 3:17:34Speaker 01

  Cause Office, I forget which is which, but The Office, the show, and Office Space, one was made to be like, like Office Space was made to be the movie version of The Office, or vice versa, I forget which one.

• 3:17:45Jocko Willink?

  No, the, well, maybe, but the British Office came out and that is what The Office in America is based on. It is the same.

• 3:17:53Speaker 02

  Office Space was based on a cartoon, like a comic strip.

• 3:17:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it was like, so it might've been vice versa, but basically one was like the, the movie version of the other.

• 3:18:04Jocko Willink?

  Ricky Gervais in England wrote the original Office and, and that's ones in England and then they took it and revamped it a little bit, made it a little bit happier for the US of A. We like to smile and laugh and we want to make sure Sean Parnell's getting his, getting his humor on over there. And the rest of Al Wapo too.

• 3:18:23Speaker 02

  You know what? You know what, Jaco? The sadness doesn't make me happy. I feel like, I feel like there needs to be another podcast exploring that.

• 3:18:31Jocko Willink?

  Well, we'll go into that. But speaking of just things not being funny. Going back to the book, uh, sir, that's pretty nasty. What? That shit coming out of your ear? I reached up and felt something like jello coming out of my, on my neck. I, it was pink and red and streaked with yellow. It smells like bananas, sir, he added. I got up and wiped it off thoroughly embarrassed. Sir, you need to get that checked out. I nodded as I sat back down. I know. I'll get a scan at Burger, at Bagram, at Bagram, a few days when I head home on leave. Thank you. Everyone's worried about you. I was worried too. But I knew if a real doc examined me, he'd never let me return to the men. I was having bouts of double vision and frequent migraines.

• 3:19:17Jocko Willink?

  And at times I was having trouble remembering things. As a result, I made an obsessive effort to write everything down before missions. We finished the second episode and I said goodbye to Pinhole, headed back to my room. Lieutenant! A deep and booming voice called. A staff sergeant was walking down the hallway in our hooch, a cigarette dangling from his tight lips. About my age with receding brown, black hair, he walked with gravitas, as if he were made of chiseled granite. He had a rounded face with sharp cheeks, eyes partially concealed by a squint, a ranger tab on his shoulder. What can I do you for, Sergeant? Who the hell is this guy? Jeff Hall. I'm your new squad leader, sir. He stuck out his hand. I shook it and nearly had my fingers squashed like sausages.

• 3:20:01Jocko Willink?

  Glad to meet you, Hall. Welcome to Al-Wal Platoon. Thank you, sir. And this, that's your introduction, introduction to this guy Hall, who seemed like he was just a highly motivated individual.

• 3:20:13Speaker 02

  He was, man. And he's, I, I, I don't know if, I don't know if we're going to talk about it or not, but he saved this Marine's life. Marine gets shot in the pelvis, is, uh,

• 3:20:20Jocko Willink?

  Bleeding out?

• 3:20:21Speaker 02

  From oral artery, it was severed, retracted up into his pelvis, bleeding out, like, guy wouldn't have survived if it wasn't for Jeff Hall. And man, was he a character, that's for sure.

• 3:20:31Jocko Willink?

  You're you're out in the field and we'll just jump right into it. We triggered the ambush early and from a different direction than they'd expected. As we pulled into perimeter around the village, their fire was disjointed and not nearly as accurate as usual. We'd thrown them off guard and they'd reflexively opened fire. They had waited, they had they waited until we were in the northern part of the ambush, we would have been hit as they originally designed. For a moment, I wish Captain Die was here. Having two platoons to manage was awkward since I couldn't really give orders to Delta. I could only give the platoon squad leaders guidance. So you're out there with two platoons at this point?

• 3:21:07Speaker 02

  I was a senior officer on the ground, but it's not my, it's not my job to maneuver more than my platoon. I'll do it and I'll do it well, but it's, it was a leadership challenge for sure because those guys don't, they're not under my command.

• 3:21:22Jocko Willink?

  Was there officer out there too?

• 3:21:27Speaker 02

  It's hard, no, I, they had an officer. I wasn't sure if he was out here for the, for this specific engagement. I think that he was, which is why it makes it awkward because we were the same rank, you know? I was the senior platoon leader, senior lieutenant out there on the ground, but still, this is why captains exists and you know, this is why company commanders exist to maneuver companies, you know, lieutenants exist in the army anyway to maneuver platoons. So it would have been great to have a company commander out there maneuvering these elements. He, but in Captain Die's defense, and I, I know that he believed this, he believed us to be, you know, he didn't micromanage us, you know, he, yeah, he knew us to be competent and he let us do our, he let us do our job and he felt that he could maneuver us from the fob, which is his prerogative and he

• 3:22:11Speaker 02

  could, he could do that.

• 3:22:13Jocko Willink?

  So you guys are in this, it's like another scenario unfolding where clearly these guys are looking to come and cut all your heads off, which is a real reassuring thing. And here we go. You guys are going back and forth, going out, going out to the perimeter, like assessing, making sure you guys are doing a good job. And then you're coming back into the middle, kind of debriefing each other on what's happening with, with the fire team leaders or the, or actually the, I guess, the squad leaders. And you're doing that a couple of times. And then finally, it gets to a point, just as our leaders returned to the middle of the perimeter, the enemy commander made his move. Hall, whose rig was on the eastern side of the perimeter, said calmly, "Sir, they're rushing us, coming at your, coming at our hill now." The two enemy forces struck the northeast and southeast parts of our perimeter in one pell-mell

• 3:22:55Jocko Willink?

  charge. This time, they did not bound as on June 10th. Instead, they ran straight for us. We picked out a leader and sniped him in the mid-stroke, in mid-stride. He went down with a wound to the shoulder. In a flash, two insurgents grabbed their fallen comrade and whisked him to the rear. Their casualty evacuation was stunningly fast. I'm thinking, when I was reading this, I was thinking, oh, these guys aren't as good as the guys you killed last time, right?

• 3:23:18Speaker 02

  They weren't. They weren't.

• 3:23:18Jocko Willink?

  You guys killed the good guys.

• 3:23:19Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 3:23:20Jocko Willink?

  And now they had inexperienced guys that were just bum rushing.

• 3:23:23Speaker 02

  You know what? You're one of the few people that has ever picked that up in the book. Yes, we killed so many of them. And look, we were getting intel around this time that the Pakistani Taliban, the tribes in Pakistan, they were no longer willing to commit their sons to the fight in our area of operations, because we were just killing them and stacking bodies so high, they couldn't keep up. And they didn't want to commit their sons to a losing fight. We were killing all the good ones. And now, we reached a point in time in our deployment where we were starting to know the terrain better than the enemy. We'd been there and operated there longer, and this is what you're seeing in this chapter.

• 3:23:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I'm just thinking to myself, you think about our view of terrain over time. We're looking at maps. We're seeing imagery, one meter imagery. We're plotting points on it. I mean, and you're out there every day. Yeah, you're gonna have good terrain knowledge after however many eight months you've been there at this point.

• 3:24:14Speaker 02

  We did. They couldn't hide from us. They couldn't hide from us. And we would, we would, we would roll up on them and disrupt their operations, just, and just surprise them, you know? So whereas, early on in deployment, we were the ones getting ambushed. Now, we were the ones rolling up in the middle of them, trying to lay an ambush. And we were laying waste to them while they did it.

• 3:24:32Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Right then, the first 105 shells exploded in their midst. We'd called for fire dangerously close. Captain Dai, who was the operations center, who was at the operations center in Brummel, had made sure we had ample support again. The gunners back on base had poured it on, mixing high explosive shells with white phosphorus, the dreaded Willie Pete. The gunners called this deadly mixture shake and bake. The high explosives shook the ground and the Willie Pete cooked anything it touched. A curtain of fire and steel streak with tendrils of white phosphorus erupted behind the enemy's main line of advance. We pinned them against us. It, we pinned them against us. If they tried to break contact, they would be massacred by artillery fire. If they stayed in place, they'd be mowed down by our men. If they tried to close, we'd mow them down faster. Desperate now,

• 3:25:17Jocko Willink?

  the trapped insurgents bolted for us. They're wounded and dying carpeting the hillside in their wake. There was a confidence in the men we'd lacked on June 10th. We'd seen this drill before with a more talented enemy force and the men reacted with ruthless violence. No shouting this time. No euphoric moments or episodes of narrowed despair. Our emotions remained even keeled, cold, but laced with controlled rage that had been bottled up inside us for weeks. We unleashed it all in a merciless torrent. The enemy closed to 25 meters. We could see those wicked eight inch knives dangling from their belts. Insight, inside, oh, the sight infuriated us. The men fired and reloaded with accomplished

• 3:26:00Jocko Willink?

  speed. The artillery rain grew ever more intense. Over the radio, Captain Dai reported that he dispatched second platoon as our quick reaction force. 20 minutes later, the NCOs returned to the middle of the perimeter. A lull had descended on the battlefield as the enemy's lead waves had been killed almost to the last man. One at a time, our squad leaders reported the situation to be well in hand. Hall triumphantly announced, "We're fucking wasting them, sir." "Yeah," Campbell echoed. "The men are slaughtering them." Behind us, the moon rose over the endless ridges of the Hindu Kush, brightening the battlefield with a silvery glow. "They're coming again, sir. You know what to do." The huddle broke. And back into the action they went. The slaughter continued unabated for almost three hours.

• 3:26:46Jocko Willink?

  We killed so many of them that their casualty evacuation plan collapsed. They simply didn't have the manpower to left to pull their men out. Torn bodies laid uncollected on the hillside, bits of white phosphorus embedded within them. Their fat sizzled and popped for hours until the metallic stench of the Willie Peak blended with the sticky odor of burned flesh. Hell's barbecue.

• 3:27:09Jocko Willink?

  Second platoon arrived, Burley all over the top energy. His voice echoed over the hilltop as he bellowed orders at his men. Greason jumped out of this, one of second platoon's trucks and on the, and on bow leg sauntered over to us. "Hey, sir," he said, sounding like Sling Blade, "look at you acting all John Wayne out here without me." "Where the hell have you been?" I asked. It had taken forty-five minutes to get this, to this abandoned village after leaving Burmel. It had taken Burley and our quick reaction force, three and a half hours to go the same distance. Greason later told me that Burley had called up a possible roadside bomb a few kilometers away from our fight. He had ordered the platoon to stop. They sat parked on the road out of the fight.

• 3:27:49Jocko Willink?

  Greason grew increasingly frustrated. He saw no evidence of a roadside bomb and nothing was being done to investigate or clear anything in the road. But since he was only a passenger, he could not do anything about it. As soon as the assault against us has ended, had ended, Burley declared the road ahead clear and the platoon had continued on its way.

• 3:28:10Jocko Willink?

  Not the kind of support you're looking for.

• 3:28:12Speaker 02

  No, no, uh, you know, and that's, you know, not everybody that, that, that puts on the uniform is beyond reproach. We all make mistakes and you know, uh, that initial ambush, that second platoon got caught in, set the tone for that platoon. Not the men, the men, they wanted, they wanted to do the job and do the job well, but- For the leadership, it set the tone for the leadership and the culture of that platoon to where they wanted to avoid contact at all costs. You know, they were playing the long game insofar as, you know, they didn't want to be in the fight because they didn't want to take the risk of losing or having guys wounded, hurt, killed, and I get that, I do.

• 3:28:54Speaker 02

  And, you know, in this, in this particular, and one of, for example, one of the leaders of that platoon had a, had a wife that was pregnant and he, you know, he wanted to go home, and I get that, but that is not unlike the situation of every single one of my soldiers who are out there bleeding on the line and need help. In this particular instance, we had it well in hand, but the fact of the matter is, when you call for a QRF, it's a no bullshit, like, we need you as fast as humanly possible. Now, there is, I mean, God, I mean,

• 3:29:21Jocko Willink?

  Things need to happen.

• 3:29:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, how many times is a QRF hit with an IED because the enemy knows that that's our battle drill? I do get that, and it's nighttime. But Gresen was on the ground with him and he said that it took a long time, to, to, over three, three and a half hours to get to us on the battlefield that night. And, and really that drove a rift between our platoons, it really did. And I think that the, I think that the, that what we learned that day is that, like, we really have to rely on, we, we really can only count on ourselves, you know? We, we operated with Delta, the Delta platoon out there, they always had our backs. Second platoon did as well. I mean, I don't want to, I don't want to, I don't want to say that they, they, they

• 3:30:04Speaker 02

  didn't do the job, but the leadership culture was different. It was a different culture.

• 3:30:08Jocko Willink?

  You're now back on base, and it's actually, it's actually time for you to go on leave. And so here we go back to the book. The next day, our once overweight forward observer, Cole, came to see me. He'd been working out nonstop since arriving at Bremel several months before. He'd dropped more than 20 pounds, looked lean and mean, and was all set to go out on patrol with us. The first sergeant had cleared him to roll beyond the wire, and he was eager to rejoin us and be part of our band again. A few more days in the gym, a couple more after that for final preparations, and he transitioned back to us. In the meantime, he was still working with the aviation guys to schedule seats on available helicopters. Sir, we have a bird coming in an hour. Aren't you supposed to go on leave? Do you want a slot?

• 3:30:53Jocko Willink?

  Cole was wearing ridiculous yellow sneakers. Through my exhaustion, I gaped at them. Uh, yeah, Cole, that'd be great, but what the hell? I said, pointing at his shoes. He grinned. They're cool. Cole, they look like Big Bird shoes. They make me run like the wind, sir. Run like the wind. I had no time to shower, barely get time to unpack. I threw a few things into a bag. I changed my uniform later. Cole checked back with me about a half an hour later. Sir, the flight's full, but I'm gonna get you on it. Don't worry. He told me to get out to the landing zone and wait for the helicopter. I said a hasty goodbye to the platoon. I had no time to do anything else and made my way to the pad. The abrupt farewell, even if it was temporary, felt jagged and raw. Truth was, as much as I wanted to see my family back home, I didn't want to leave the one I had here.

• 3:31:40Jocko Willink?

  So the helicopters come in. Cole dashed up to me a moment after they touched down. Got a spot for you, sir. You know, I always take care of you. I was profoundly grateful. Yeah, Cole, you sure do. I'll see you when I get back. He smiled and waved. Can't wait to be out there with you, sir. I shook his hand and thanked him for all he'd done for us. He, he seemed embarrassed. He hated to have attention drawn to himself and felt most comfortable working in the background, taking care of the platoon any way he could. So you take off. The first stop is in, is at Bagram. You get there and of course, you're walking around and you get this. Lieutenant? A US Army major demanded. He stood staring at me, hands on hips, a look of disgust on his face.

• 3:32:22Jocko Willink?

  His ACUs were so clean and well-fitting that I assumed they had been tailored and pressed. He wore no combat badges, no sign that he was a Ranger or even infantry. He had never, I had never noticed that sort of thing until that moment. I wondered if he was going to be salsa dancing tonight.

• 3:32:40Jocko Willink?

  Yes, sir? I asked warily. Clean yourself up. Your uniform's a disgrace. His war and mine were, his war and mine were so different that there was no way for our worlds to meet. I didn't even have the energy to try.

• 3:32:56Speaker 02

  Good times. I know. So go back in Bagram. I mean, they had salsa dancing night. Oh. Yeah, that's, I mean, you go in Bagram, I mean, like those, I mean, again, this is the divide between warfighters and, and the rear, you know, it's like you get back and like, I, I remember I didn't have time to change. I still got blood on my FLC and on my body armor. One of my squad leaders had been shot in the ankle. I'm rushing to get on these ring routes because they only come out to these outlying fobs so often, you know? You might, you've got to get on the bird when it shows up or you might not get another one for a month. My whole family's expecting me to be home. So I rush, I get off the bird. First thing that I see is this major right on Steel Beach and I'm like, I see this guy, I just, he's got like this eye for me. And I'm like, god damn. I'm like trying to like not look at him and he like makes a beeline right for me.

• 3:33:40Speaker 02

  And the first thing he says is, you know, your uniform is a disgrace. You gotta get, you gotta get your ass cleaned up. I know, I know that, you know, you're probably out there. Um, he gave me the whole, I know you're probably, I'm like, sir, I just, I mean, like thinking to myself, I'm like, sir, I just got off a goddamn bird. Like, Jesus, like, and then of course he's like yelling at me about taking the magazine out of my weapon, like, cause you're not supposed to have a magazine on your weapon at Bagram. You're supposed to wear a road guard belt everywhere you go. I mean, it, there are more regulations in Bagram Air Force Base in Afghanistan than there are in Fort Drum or any military base back here in the States. And so, I mean, it was just like, I, I, so like, I got prison strong when I was in Afghanistan. So when we weren't on operations, all we did was lifting our gym, you know, and our, and, and it was like, it was ghetto, but it worked. We made it work. It was great, you know?

• 3:34:25Speaker 02

  And so we get back to Bagram though, man. And it's like, it's like amazing, you know, there, there are, I'm like walking down, I'm like covered in dirt filled with blood and muck. I take a warm shower. There's much hot water as you'd want. They got these like sauna like wood panels. I'm walking on, I'm like, this is great. I'm in there, I'm, you know, I'm in the bathroom. There are actual toilets. We would, we would go and like, the first experience that I had, like going to the bathroom in Afghanistan after MREs, I'm like, you're sitting on this little concrete square, right? With a little toilet seat over and all of a sudden I just hear this like, Like, and I look down and I see these two hands, man, pulling this big pot of shit out from my, I'm like, oh my God, Jesus, like, that was my first experience. And I'm back in Bagram. This is a place like a medical spa, like a spa. And I'm walking to these gyms. There are world-class

• 3:35:10Speaker 02

  gyms, at least three of them on Bagram. I mean, seriously, with all this hardcore, awesome weight equipment, I mean, serious like peck decks, cable cry, I mean, everything you could possibly imagine. There's water coolers on every corner. There's green bean coffee. There's Burger King. There's salsa night. There's movie night. I'm like, people that come to Bagram should pay the military to go to Bagram. This place is awesome. I just want to take my family here on vacation. It's so nice. I mean, it really was nice. And I'm just thinking like, people that are, like, there are infantry staff members or staff officers that go to this, they make the same amount of combat pay that I do.

• 3:35:44Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:35:45Speaker 02

  It's a totally different deployment.

• 3:35:47Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's worlds.

• 3:35:49Speaker 02

  It is.

• 3:35:50Jocko Willink?

  It's universes.

• 3:35:51Speaker 02

  And I'm sorry, like, you know, it, it, so I write about the resentment, right, that we felt at the time. I know it's not mature. I know it's not nuanced and complex, but probably not right, right? But I only wrote it that way, not because, just because of how I felt in the moment, right? I look back and I'm so thankful for all those guys now, but I, the truth of the matter was, is you get highly pissed. This dude's making the same as I am, and I got shot in the chest last week in my body armor. You know what I mean? There's a, there's a qualitative difference in experience that the military does not recognize with pay, and that pissed me off. It just upset me.

• 3:36:26Jocko Willink?

  You're, you see, you, this deployment went down in 2006. You said you started writing this in 2008. Luckily for me, Leif and I didn't start writing Extreme Ownership until like 2014. So we had enough time to like, get over it. One of my friends.

• 3:36:44Speaker 02

  I'm still, I'm still like, you get over it, and I'm still like all fired up.

• 3:36:48Jocko Willink?

  Blood on your boots. Somebody gave me a copy of an email that I had sent while I was in.

• 3:36:57Jocko Willink?

  Ramadi to my Commodore, who was a friend of mine, who I had a great relationship with, but I couldn't believe that I wrote it. I mean, it was one of those, it was like, I literally didn't care. Like, hey, you know, it was like a, he had sent out an email and I sent, he'd sent out like kind of a group-wide email to all the officers, you know, asking for some feedback. And I gave it to him. And I was a straight shooter, you know, everyone knew I was a straight shooter. And like I said, I had a great relationship with him. But like, this guy told me the email that I sent. I was like, wow. You know, it started off with something along the line. Because, you know, he was questioning, hey, how can we get more seals? And like, my opening line was, we don't need more seals, we needed better seals and tougher seals. I like, that was my opening line. I was like, okay.

• 3:37:41Speaker 02

  That's a Chaco opening line. That's everything I expected to say.

• 3:37:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. But I, you know, probably not, I wouldn't have addressed it the same way if you took me out of Ramadi, like, and I was sitting in a, what'd you say, a salsa night dance or whatever?

• 3:37:57Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:37:58Jocko Willink?

  Would have been probably a little bit, okay, here's some ways we could think about recruiting, you know, it wouldn't have been just coming off.

• 3:38:03Speaker 02

  Salsa night, of course.

• 3:38:04Jocko Willink?

  So yeah, you, you wrote this book. You said you started writing in 2008?

• 3:38:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I actually started the writing process in 2007.

• 3:38:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so this thing was fresh. You were surprisingly gentle then.

• 3:38:16Speaker 02

  I mean, I really wanted, I wanted it to be a warts and all story, like my failures. But I mean, look, I got a piece of advice from John, my co-author on this book. And he said, look, this country is awash of World War II memoirs written by generals that feel, make you feel like the war was just a chessboard. Like, I maneuvered this unit here and we did this. And the truth of the matter is, is you can, we cannot write a book like that. It has to be a warts and all, blood and guts type story. And so that's what we set out to do.

• 3:38:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, those are the kind of books that we don't cover on this podcast. Books by, by the rear echelon. Like, we literally, I don't think I've covered, I mean, I covered patents, because patents, and I've covered some other senior generals from older times, when you don't have any first-person accounts from privates, because a lot of times the privates weren't educated enough to write a book. The few that are out there, that I've definitely, we've definitely nailed some of those. We've got Napoleonic foot soldier. Yeah, that's a foot soldier. So yes, that's what this book comes across. Like, you get, you get it right. Um, so now you're on leave. By the way, which people may not understand, leave is absolutely mandatory. When you're on a one-year deployment in the army.

• 3:39:22Speaker 02

  That's right. Yeah. Two weeks of R and R, rest and relaxation leave.

• 3:39:26Jocko Willink?

  There was a, I didn't, I didn't know that. And the commander of the first of the 506th, who was the best guy, the like, one of just the best combat leaders ever, leaders, period.

• 3:39:38Speaker 02

  For one 506, really?

• 3:39:40Jocko Willink?

  First of the 506th in Ramadi, just totally, just an awesome guy. And I didn't know that it was mandatory, but all of a sudden he was on leave. And I was kind of like, well, that's, that's kind of a, that's kind of a let down. You know, I thought to myself, what, I can't believe he took leave. Cause in the SEAL teams, we don't do that. Cause we are on short, much shorter deployments. Anyways, then someone's like, oh yeah, he's on leave. He had, he had to leave.

• 3:40:02Speaker 02

  That's interesting. I didn't even think about that. I figured it would be mandatory for you too.

• 3:40:05Jocko Willink?

  Our deployments are generally six, seven months. So we're not going on 14, 16 month deployments like they do in the army. And the Marine Corps is the same way. The Marine Corps goes on like six, seven month deployments. You know, that's kind of.

• 3:40:15Speaker 02

  They don't get, they don't get mid tour leave? They don't get?

• 3:40:17Jocko Willink?

  You're only gone for six months, bro.

• 3:40:19Speaker 02

  I mean, you don't, there's no four, I mean, I had never even really thought about this. Yeah. I guess if you're only gone six months, you, you don't get anything? Nothing?

• 3:40:26Jocko Willink?

  No, no.

• 3:40:27Speaker 02

  I don't know what would be better. I, I think a six-month deployment with no leave would be better than a 16-month deployment with two weeks in the middle.

• 3:40:34Jocko Willink?

  I would say that that's rough. And even reading your, your thing, like, there's no way I would have wanted to go on leave. It would.

• 3:40:40Speaker 02

  I didn't.

• 3:40:40Jocko Willink?

  I, I, it would have driven me crazy from an infinite number of ways, but just, I don't want to taste like, I don't want to taste chocolate chip cookies.

• 3:40:51Speaker 02

  I know.

• 3:40:52Jocko Willink?

  If they're not going to be like, if I'm not going to have at least the whole chocolate chip cookie, right? You know, I don't want to taste of it. I don't want to taste of it. Just give me an MRE and I'll keep eating that. I don't want to know what this other thing tastes like.

• 3:41:02Speaker 02

  Yeah. Leave me in the suck. I know. Don't, don't, don't take me out of the suck and expect me to want to go back to the suck. That was one of the hardest things ever.

• 3:41:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:41:09Speaker 02

  I mean, you're right about that.

• 3:41:10Jocko Willink?

  I can't even, you know what they do in, in basic SEAL training? We were going through this thing called Hell Week, which is like five days where you're up the whole time and it's cold and wet miserable. At some point during that, they go, okay, guys, you know what? We've pushed you guys too hard. And the, the, uh, the captain, he says, you know, we need to, we need to get you guys a rest. So it's our fault. Look, go change into dry uniforms and we're gonna put you guys to bed. You guys are gonna get six hours because we've, we shouldn't have done this. We shouldn't have pushed you guys like this. And you're like, whoa, okay, cool. So you get in dry clothes and then they put you in bed. And this is one of the times where you get to sleep, but you're, you don't go to sleep for half, for six hours. You go to sleep for about 15 minutes and then they come in and they're lying and they're just,

• 3:41:51Jocko Willink?

  but what's interesting is, what's interesting is so many people quit right then. Because you're cold, wet, miserable for like a day and a half, maybe two days. Then they tell you, okay, sorry, that was, that was a mistake. We need to give you guys a rest. They get you dry. They get you warm. They get you sleeping. Only so they can wake you up and put you right back in the cold water. And so many people quit right then.

• 3:42:14Speaker 02

  God, man, this is a fascinating parallel because,

• 3:42:17Jocko Willink?

  It is.

• 3:42:17Speaker 02

  because, I mean, you're, you're, you're speaking to some deep fundamental truth of the human condition. Yet leave is mandatory for Army. And I have to tell you, man, I didn't want to leave. It was, it was terrible. Right? Um, I went home. I could, there was rest and relaxation. It's like, what? Right? Yeah. Like you, there's no relaxing at all. And then going back though, was the hardest. It was so hard. Right? It was just so challenging. So there is something to that.

• 3:42:49Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. Yeah.

• 3:42:50Speaker 02

  And it's, you know what's amazing?

• 3:42:51Jocko Willink?

  Stay in the suck.

• 3:42:52Speaker 02

  Yeah. There were, yes, exactly. Stay in the suck. Keep me in the suck. And you know, what's amazing though, is that there was, there was not more AWOLs.

• 3:42:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that is shocking.

• 3:43:00Speaker 02

  I mean, for real.

• 3:43:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that is shocking. Well, I guess partly because we have an all volunteer force.

• 3:43:04Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:43:05Jocko Willink?

  And people know what they're doing.

• 3:43:06Speaker 02

  I think that is, I think that is a major component of it. If it was a all draft force, the AWOL number would be significantly higher. I think.

• 3:43:13Jocko Willink?

  I don't know though. Man, I talked to the leaders that I talked to from the Vietnam War. The draftees were awesome. Unless you were a crappy leader and then they were horrible. And guess what? Everyone that worked for you was horrible because you sucked.

• 3:43:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:43:25Jocko Willink?

  Interesting. Uh, so you are in Ocean City, Maryland.

• 3:43:28Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:43:30Jocko Willink?

  Down on the water.

• 3:43:31Speaker 02

  That's where my family's gone for the vacation.

• 3:43:33Jocko Willink?

  So this is just hitting every, every damn sentimental thought that you have is all getting hit. Going back to the book here. What? Go ahead.

• 3:43:43Speaker 02

  No, yes, you're exactly right. You're hitting the nail on the head, man. Yeah. Everything that I've experienced my entire childhood.

• 3:43:49Jocko Willink?

  That is good.

• 3:43:50Speaker 02

  Coupled with the shame and guilt of leaving my troops. It was just hell. It was horrible. Oh, and I had to try to pretend like it wasn't. That's the thing, right?

• 3:43:59Jocko Willink?

  Act like your family, like, oh, yeah, yeah.

• 3:44:01Speaker 02

  Mini golf is fun, which it is, you know, because I always win, but it wasn't fun when I was on leave, you know?

• 3:44:07Jocko Willink?

  I rose from the bed and went to the open window. My family had rented a place on Maryland shore in honor of my temporary home con, meaning we'd be there for a week, then I would return to the war. The altar smelled divine. I closed my eyes and filled my lungs with each exhale. I tried to purge my mind of the foul odors I had stowed away with every Afghan breath. Burnt flesh, white phosphorus, and steaming bodies rent asunder. Filth, sewage, mold, and decay. And then you go on, but at the same time, I felt disconnected, unplugged from my hive at Burma. Burma. Now all my instincts telegraphed that something had gone terribly wrong and I wasn't there to help out.

• 3:44:48Jocko Willink?

  Somewhere on the far side of the planet, I imagined a platoon cleaning weapons and getting ready for chow. I loved being home. I hated being home.

• 3:44:59Jocko Willink?

  My folks appeared in the kitchen and my grandmother wished them good morning. I went back to watching Fox News, savoring every bite of my home-cooked breakfast. The little things matter the most after combat. The news anchor began talking about two Fox reporters who'd been kidnapped at gunpoint the day before in Gaza.

• 3:45:18Jocko Willink?

  Then the news ticker at the bottom of the screen caught my attention. American soldier killed by enemy mind strike in eastern Afghanistan.

• 3:45:28Jocko Willink?

  The wires inside my head were screaming now. I stared at the screen and listed all the reasons why this couldn't have happened to anyone I knew. The outlaws were a tiny unit, just a platoon. There were thousands of US troops fighting in eastern Afghanistan. The chances that was one of my men were astronomically small.

• 3:45:46Jocko Willink?

  Then you obviously run, get your laptop. I sat down and started my laptop as soon as I logged into Yahoo Instant Messenger. A conversation box popped up. It was Rowley. "Hey, sir." "Rowley, everything okay?" "Actually, no." "What's wrong?" I received no immediate reply. I waited in dreadful suspense. And then finally, Cole is dead. Rowley sent a file. The download took forever.

• 3:46:24Jocko Willink?

  When it finally finished, I opened it up and saw a photograph of one of our Humvees blown to broken junk.

• 3:46:35Speaker 02

  I had a, uh, I had a dream that day. Yeah, I don't know if y'all believe in this sort of thing, but I had a dream that day that something was wrong in Afghanistan. I just, I could not sleep. It plagued me all night. It was a dream about being overrun and all this other stuff. It's just hard sometimes to get centered when you come back from combat, especially on R and R and you know you're going back. But just something in me was screaming that something isn't right. Something's not right. I don't, and I sort of just wrote it off as like, hey, you know, you just don't want to be here. You want to be back with the guys, like just sort of try, let it go. Try to let your guard down, right? Try to relax, but I couldn't let it go. And I remember waking up that morning, having pancakes.

• 3:47:19Speaker 02

  Uh, my mom makes amazing pancakes. That's like our thing when we go on vacation, right? So I'm just like crushing some pancakes or whatever. And I'm like watching Fox News and I still could not shake this feeling that something was wrong. And I see that ticker and immediately I knew, I knew it was my, I knew it was my platoon. A hundred percent just knew it in my heart of hearts. And I run over, I mean, this is back in 2006 where wifi wasn't everywhere. You know what I mean? Like I had to go find a place that had wifi, some coffee shop across the street. I got my like, my laptop. I sprint across the street to get there, hook up, find out that I lost one of my soldiers in my only two weeks, in my two weeks that I was gone. It was just one of the most devastating experiences of my life because...

• 3:48:03Speaker 02

  By this time, I realized that, you know, sending, I'd seen the toll that the emails had taken on my dad firsthand now. Like, he didn't talk about it. He didn't complain to me about it, but I saw it, you know, I could feel it. And so by this time in the deployment, I just, I just sucked it up. You know, I found out that Cole, I had to keep it a secret for the rest of the time. You know, and my, I think my family knew something was wrong. They didn't really ask me any questions about it. But like, we were going mini golf and having family dinners, walking on the boardwalk, and I just had to just not say a word about it. It was just, it was just the hardest thing in the world, man. And Cole was just such a great guy. Like, he had a newborn baby before we deployed.

• 3:48:44Speaker 02

  The reason why he gained all that weight is it was, he was gained all the weight because he was, he gained sympathy weight during the pregnancy. And he couldn't shake, he couldn't lose it. And so he had to stay back, see the birth of his kid. I remember our battalion commander said, yeah, we're gonna let you stay back. You know, take care of your family, have this baby, because when you come to Afghanistan, we need you. 100% focused on the mission. So thank God he got to stay back and, and watch his baby be born and come back up. He got to the base overweight. He couldn't really like go on patrol with us because he was overweight, but he took it in stride. He didn't get dejected. He looked for other ways to help, you know, like we'd get back from base, he'd run over the truck, start grabbing and throwing MREs in if we needed MREs. He looked for a way to be functional, man, and the platoon just adored him.

• 3:49:26Speaker 02

  And finally ends up in the gym, losing all this weight, gets these stupid big bird shoes, think it makes him run fast and stuff. He was just a character, man. He was really funny. Finally loses all the weight. And, you know, I left on leave, like something like August 12th. His first patrol was August 15th. He was killed August 16th.

• 3:49:45Speaker 02

  It was just, and I, I to this day, it's just, it's the worst, it's just, I missed his funeral. I missed his, I missed the, you know, the salute, the funeral, the memorial service, the bagpipes, the, you know.

• 3:50:01Speaker 02

  His casket being flown from Brumel back to Bogra, it was just, it was just the worst, it was just the worst experience, you know, just to not be there. You know, as a leader, like, you know, you always want to make sure that you're there, you know, where the contact is heaviest, right? That's my, you know, on the battlefield where the contact is heaviest, but it's not, sometimes it's not just enemy contact. Sometimes it's emotional and psychological contact as well. The leader has to be there, has to be, cannot be detached, must be involved. And this was one of those moments for me and I'm like, I was screaming inside. I'm like, god damn it, this is where my platoon needs me the most. I need to be there for them. I need to be struggling through this with them. And I totally missed the entire thing. By the time I got back to the base, Cole on the base, I mean, never be forgotten, his,

• 3:50:45Speaker 02

  his, his name was just painted on our wall. It was just one of the fallen that we had lost in the deployment. And it just killed me inside not to be able to be a part of it. You know, and it would end up being my truck, you know, my truck that was attacked. I mean, there's a whole story behind it, which I'm sure we're going to get into, but it ended up being my truck that was attacked. It was a targeted attack at the command vehicle. So it was just, it just sucked. I wish I was out there.

• 3:51:07Jocko Willink?

  That was, that was your truck in the line of march that got hit?

• 3:51:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:51:11Jocko Willink?

  And that's what he was in? What position was he in in the vehicle?

• 3:51:14Speaker 02

  Uh, he would, he was sitting behind the driver. So, um, when I was on leave, Greason took over the truck commander position in the command truck, which is typically in a convoy. The way that we did it is I was right behind the point man in the truck. So, um,

• 3:51:29Jocko Willink?

  Would you be in the lead truck?

• 3:51:31Speaker 02

  I wouldn't be in the lead truck. I'd be in the truck right behind the lead. So, Chris

• 3:51:34Jocko Willink?

  Same thing as us then?

• 3:51:35Speaker 02

  Yeah. So I was sitting in the TC spot directly next to the driver. Cole was sitting behind the driver. Chris Brown was my gunner and I have a pinhole or router in the truck behind me. So, um, I was on leave, Greason was in that truck fulfilling that role, but it was that truck that was hit. It was a targeted attack.

• 3:52:02Jocko Willink?

  So you get back.

• 3:52:07Jocko Willink?

  You're back in Burmel. "Hey, sir, I need to talk to you, Griesen," said to me as I entered our hooch. His room was across the hall from mine. He was supposed to get evacuated back to Bagram so his head wound could be treated. Instead, he refused to leave the men and continued to lead them after the aid station at Fob Solerno had patched him up as best they could. And those were wounds that he got from that same ID box.

• 3:52:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, he got, he, I think this is his second or third Purple Heart on this deployment.

• 3:52:34Jocko Willink?

  "We'd just come back from my first patrol since I had returned from leave.

• 3:52:40Jocko Willink?

  Sir, what I'm about to tell you cannot be mentioned to anyone." His preface caught me off guard. "Okay," I said cautiously. "It's about one of our interpreters." He had my attention now. Quietly, he began to talk unbeknownst to us. Some top-secret national-level assets had been tracking unusual communications coming from our area. Over the past several months, they had narrowed those transmissions down to Fob Burmel. Somebody on post had been using our sat phones to contact an Iranian bomb-making cell operating out of a madrasa just over the Pakistani border.

• 3:53:13Jocko Willink?

  We had an enemy mole in our midsts. Yusef fell under suspicion. He'd been observed asking questions he shouldn't have been asking. He had often wanted to know where we were going before we left the wire, something that had annoyed us throughout the deployment. A quiet investigation had revealed that he was the only local national on base who could have had knowledge of the platoon's destination. Plus, Griesen had caught him talking on a phone, introducing himself with a different name to whoever was on the other end of the connection. When Griesen said, "Hey, I thought your name was Yusef," our head TIRP offered a wide suspicious grin and replied, "That's just my stage name." Greason finished the story. Captain Dai is going to take him to Oregon E. Is that how you say it? Oregon E, yeah. Oregon E later today to arrest him.

• 3:53:57Jocko Willink?

  Nobody can know about this. We can't risk spooking, spooking Yusef and causing him to bolt. "I want to go to Oregon E," I said in a furious voice. Greason growled, "Fuck no, sir. You're way too close to this." "So am I. Let Captain Dai handle this." He was right. As the news sank in, my own responsibility in this disaster became apparent. I had become complacent with the cozy nature of Yusef's relationships with the men. He'd been too close to them for many months, and every time I'd seen him around the barracks, hanging out with them, it had, it had rankled me. Greason had noted it too, urging me to put it, put a stop to it. And although I'd mentioned it to the platoon in passing, I'd not done so with any conviction. When it continued, I should have put my foot down hard and ended it.

• 3:54:41Jocko Willink?

  Fraternization with a local national, no matter how much he was trusted, was an operational security breach, plain and simple. Even more damning was his use of satellite phones. That never should have happened. Though we had told him he couldn't use them, he still had access to soldiers who worked in the operations center and he could get his hands on the phones whenever he wanted. It had always seemed like a minor problem, and my plate had been so full with that. Dealing with Yusef's behavior had ended up on the bottom of my priority list. I'd never gotten around to dealing with it. And now, what Greason told me, revealed the consequences of that failure. It had gotten Cole killed. No, I had gotten Cole killed.

• 3:55:23Jocko Willink?

  This was not on the men. This wasn't on Greason. This was my cross to bear. I don't remember much of the morning after that. I know I went to my room to change out of my filthy uniform. I know I felt my strength failing me as I faced the totality of my guilt. Another part of me slipped away and died. I hadn't, didn't even have the will to fight for it this time. The war had sucked me dry.

• 3:55:55Jocko Willink?

  So this, this Judas, in the purest sense of the word Judas, Yusef, had, had betrayed everyone, obviously. And you know, in my mind, I was wondering, okay, I wonder how like, how they knew, like, okay, they got some very good evidence, but in the back of my mind, I was thinking still, like, you're gonna, you're gonna go, how do you really know? And then I read this. Later that day, Captain Dieh assembled a patrol from part of my platoon and part of the headquarters element. Yusef was assigned to be the Terp. He suspected nothing and climbed onboard one of the Humvees. At Oregon E, he was confronted with the evidence against him. At first, he denied everything, but when the sat phone was mentioned, he

• 3:56:38Jocko Willink?

  laughingly confessed, yes, yes, you got me. I did it. His attitude earned him a face plant on the hood of the Humvee. Our men zip cuffed him and pulled him into the battalion detention center. Later that night, he was flown, flown to Bagram. In any other time, in the hands of any other army, Yusef's body would never have been found. He'd have been dispatched and dumped, his corpse left for scavengers. Nobody would have known or cared that an enemy spy had vanished, vanished. Discipline was the only thing that saved his life. Instead of a bullet to the brain, he faced due process in a prison cell. In the days ahead, I wondered if that was a weakness or a strength. There's a certain

• 3:57:21Jocko Willink?

  elegance to outlaw justice. Besides, the enemy would have afforded us no mercy had the roles been reversed.

• 3:57:32Jocko Willink?

  And then later, you find out that he actually also was the one that got Abdul killed.

• 3:57:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, he, he was responsible for the assassination of Abdul, baiting him outside the wire, had a hand in the night letters, just so he could ascend to the head Terp and ingratiate himself to the sensitivity of some of our mission sensitive, mission sensitive intelligence. And so, this is, this, this is a hundred percent on me, a hundred percent. I mean, throughout the course of the deployment, like, we get there, even myself, we're like, oh, my gosh, this is a totally different culture. Look, we're having fun, we're having tea together, we're friends, we're out there serving together, you know? After a while, these Terps would show up for our convoy briefs and they'd listen in and Greason would be like, hey, they can't be having these guys listen to our convoy briefs. And I'd say, okay, I'd talk to the squad leaders about it, but again, no conviction.

• 3:58:24Speaker 02

  You know, we'd have interpreters for a while, sitting in my truck, in the command truck, to listen, so I could react in real time to the ICOM chatter we were listening, because he would listen to the enemy and I'd hear about it, I'd call and fire. But he was also hearing sensitive commo coming back from me on the TacSat and stuff like that. Greason was like, you can't do that, you can't do that. So we moved into a different truck, but again, I never addressed this issue with any real conviction. And, and because of that, he coordinated with this Iranian IED cell. They, he knew exactly where we were going, what OP we were sitting on, he had the eight digit grid, he knew where my truck would be, that provided the greatest, it was just the best position for the command truck to be. We'd been at this location before, so we'd know.

• 3:59:09Speaker 02

  So he seeded the area with a couple of different plastic Italian TC6 anti-tank mines. So even we had these metal detectors for that purpose, to detect mines, there was more metal in a pack of cigarettes than there is in this mine. And my truck, with Cole in it, rolled over that mine, totally destroyed it, killed Cole in an instant, wounded Doc Pantoja for a second time, wounded Greason for the second or third time, blew Colt Wallace out of the turret, he was wounded another time. And it was just an absolute disaster. And it was 100% on my failure to address this specific issue, and failure to protect operational security around mission-sensitive things.

• 3:59:53Speaker 02

  And, you know, it, it, it just, God, it just bothers me to this day. You know, because, you know, man, regret is life's worst poison. It just is. It eats at you, it eats at you forever, for the rest of your life. You never want to look back in your life and say the word "should." "Should" is like, one of my least favorite words in the English language. "Yeah, sure, I, yes, sir, I should be able to do that." "No." Or, "Can you do it, or can you not do it? Because you can't do it, I'm gonna find somebody else who can." I hate the word "should." My kids say, "Yeah, I should." "No." I don't want to hear "should." "Yes or no." I hate that word. Well, I also hate it, because I don't want to ever look back on my life and said, and say, God, I should have done some, I should have done this differently, you know?

• 4:00:33Speaker 02

  Um, and I have to say that with regard to Cole. I mean, his death is on me, no one else but me. And his death rests solely at my feet and I've got to live with that pain for the rest of my life. Losing a soldier when I knew it could have been preventable had I, you know, I think I look back, I look back on it and I think I just, you know, part of me just wanted to be liked by the guys. You know what I mean? Like they thought it was, they thought it was cool to go sit and have tea with the interpreters and stuff. And I just didn't want to, you know, I think that was it. I think part of me just didn't want to make that hard decision. I didn't want to take that away from them. I wanted to be cool. I wanted to be liked. And ultimately that's what that, that right there is what got one of my soldiers killed.

• 4:01:17Speaker 02

  And something like I said, I have to live with for the rest of my life. Every day I think of that, every day I wish I could have done something different.

• 4:01:25Jocko Willink?

  I talked about that on a recent podcast, like this idea

• 4:01:31Jocko Willink?

  that, and it's the same thing that you and I have been talking about because this idea of like, I'm going to be friends with the people. And which I clearly said, and will freely say that I absolutely had friends in all, every unit I was ever with, I had real good friends up. When I was a junior guy, guess what? When I was a junior guy, when I was the youngest guy in my platoon, I had great friends that were what we call khakis, you know, whether they were the chief or the assistant platoon commander, the platoon commander, like they were my real true friends, like real legit friends. And that was when I was really young. So I, I always had it there. But man, the bleed over, the mistake that people make where they, where they say, you know what?

• 4:02:14Jocko Willink?

  And I know the feeling. I know this uncomfortable feeling of.

• 4:02:20Jocko Willink?

  You know, the guys want to do this and I don't think it's the right thing to do, but I don't feel strongly enough about it that I'm actually going to say anything. And this to me, like I said, I had a real advantage because I was older and I'd been in the teams for a long time. You know, I had a lot of experience in the teams. So it was easy for me as a junior officer to hold the line. I didn't always, and I look back and I can tell you a thousand stories of times where I should have done something better than I did. And I didn't, and I should have, and it was a mistake. And I explained that to these young officers. When I talk to the officers now, I'm like, you're the guy. You're the one that has to make these hard decisions. And you know what?

• 4:03:03Jocko Willink?

  This is the part that's, that's good for them to understand. It's counterintuitive. What's counterintuitive when you're in a leadership position and you actually say, hey, guys, we're not doing that. You're afraid that they're not going to like you. You're afraid that they're not going to respect you. They actually respect you more.

• 4:03:22Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 4:03:22Jocko Willink?

  They actually respect you more. Like you know, looking back now, if you'd have gone, guys, hey, listen, this is OPSEC. We're not playing. I'm not going to have foreign nationals know our routes. It's not happening. Everyone in that platoon would have gone, hey, boss is on it. You know what I mean? But we don't know that and it's easy to look back hindsight's 2020, man.

• 4:03:42Speaker 02

  Hey, you're, you're a hundred percent right. A hundred percent right. You know, and I think part of me, it was just like, you know, you, you laid it out there perfectly. Like the guys really want to do this, but I know this ain't the right thing. And maybe 99% of the time, if I don't say something, it might be okay.

• 4:04:04Jocko Willink?

  It's no big deal.

• 4:04:04Speaker 02

  You know, but it's that 1% of the time where if you don't say something and tragedy strikes and then, you know, I, I, when I talk to young officers about it, I'd say the exact same thing that you do. The buck stops with you. You are the guy. Do not seek popularity, popularity for popularity's sake. You know, be the leader, be the strong leader that your men know, need and deserve.

• 4:04:27Jocko Willink?

  And that's the counterintuitive part. The counterintuitive part is that if you do, if you hold the line, the, your respect actually goes up. Now, can you go overboard with that? Yes, you absolutely can. And everyone can hate you because you just.

• 4:04:39Speaker 02

  And it happens.

• 4:04:39Jocko Willink?

  It happens a lot.

• 4:04:40Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:04:41Jocko Willink?

  But the other thing I think was playing against you in this situation. Is

• 4:04:52Jocko Willink?

  it kinda doesn't seem like that could really happen. You know what I mean? Like, I look at some things that I experienced in combat and I'm like, you know, if somebody would have told me that that could actually happen, I would have said, it's like, it's like you're watching a movie, you go, yeah, but that would never happen, right? That could never actually happen. And it seems like that's a situation where you're like, listen, what are the chances that of all the thousands of people that could be assigned to us out here, we're gonna get this, this spy, right? A spy, that's what's gonna happen? That has access to Iranians? Like, you can't, if you wrote a book about that, you'd be like, okay, that's a cool plot for a movie.

• 4:05:31Speaker 02

  I know.

• 4:05:31Jocko Willink?

  But in our minds, we're like, hey, and that's why I reached a point, and I'll tell you, I reached a point, I can't really talk about what happened, but I had some intel that was not the way it should be. And I learned that lesson one time. And from that point on, I never doubted that these things could go the way they did. And I, and I, all these little suspicions that I thought maybe, and it happened to me luckily on my first deployment to Iraq, where I was like, okay, yeah, I dropped the ball on that one. We got away with it. It'll never happen again. You know, so I think that's another thing that was playing against you is it seems kind of like far-fetched, unrealistic.

• 4:06:12Speaker 02

  It does.

• 4:06:12Jocko Willink?

  You've got James Bond.

• 4:06:13Speaker 02

  Well, it does.

• 4:06:14Jocko Willink?

  You've got the Afghan James Bond in your, in your troop.

• 4:06:16Speaker 02

  And, and the thing is, is I think it's even more nuanced than that. I think he was, he, he, you know, maybe for a time, he was a legit interpreter, you know, worked with Americans for five years, you know? And I think he just was unhappy with his pay and the enemy said they were gonna pay him more and the guy's trying to feed his family and these people are perpetual fence sitters, like, you know, it's the graveyard of empires. They're, that sort of attitude is ingrained into the soul of every tribe in the country of Afghanistan. And so, um, I think that he just flipped and his flipping Was more of a cultural thing and less of a loy- I mean, it was a loyalty thing to us, right? But to him, it's just like, business as usual.

• 4:07:00Jocko Willink?

  That's the other piece playing against you.

• 4:07:01Speaker 02

  I, yeah.

• 4:07:02Jocko Willink?

  Because we don't do that.

• 4:07:03Speaker 02

  I don't get, yeah.

• 4:07:04Jocko Willink?

  We don't do that.

• 4:07:05Speaker 02

  I didn't, it didn't even register with me, although it should have because you have Abdul telling me literally, you know, you guys gotta watch this guy, be, keep an eye on this guy, this guy's all about the money. You know, and again, I'm just thinking like, well, I know a thousand guys like that, that are all about the money. They're not gonna like, turn on you. And then you look at the war since I've been home and, God, man, the war is awash with green on blue incidents. It happens all the time. But to me, in the moment, as a young inexperienced leader, who wanted to be popular, didn't want to make the hard decision, maybe just consciously or unconsciously blew it off, it bit me in the ass, you know? And it, and it got one of my guys killed and got four of them wounded. And it was just, it just is the worst feeling in the world, you know?

• 4:07:50Jocko Willink?

  Well, the good thing is you're in here right now and you wrote this book to teach these lessons to young, young JOs that are out there and NCOs that are out there that have to hold the line.

• 4:08:05Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, Enough Was Enough, Lieutenant Colonel Toner coordinated a battalion-sized mission to clear, and this, again, so this is jumping, now we're on page 322 of this, whatever it is, book. Because now we're getting to a point where you've been through all this crap over and over and over and over again. And the enemies, they're getting theirs. I mean, you guys are kicking their ass, but as, as a battalion, the enemy is, they're hostile.

• 4:08:29Speaker 02

  Look, we had taken, in that year, we took over three or four thousand rockets. And at this point, this is around October, November timeframe, they were hitting us with 122 millimeter rockets. I don't know if you, if you know what that looks like. Those are six foot long rockets.

• 4:08:45Jocko Willink?

  It's a freaking nightmare.

• 4:08:46Speaker 02

  It's the only one that has ever been used with a launcher in Afghanistan and we could not find them. And every single day, 122s were pounding our base. We fired more artillery that year in Afghanistan, trying to find this 122 launcher and take it out, than both Iraq and Afghanistan combined. It was just an insane amount of 105s dropped. And so every single day, we had this old school. World War II air raid siren on our base and every single day that thing would go off at a different time and guys would run to the bunker. It just got to the point where it was like October, November, our battalion commander was just like, to hell with this. We're mustering the entire battalion in your area of operations and we're walking online all the way to the

• 4:09:30Speaker 02

  border until we find this thing and kill the people who own it.

• 4:09:33Jocko Willink?

  It's legit.

• 4:09:34Speaker 02

  That was, that was our mission. And who was leading that operation was my platoon was, was responsible for pushing all the way to the border. And it was like a four or five day mission. I mean, we, I mean, God, it was cool to be a part of, man, to see four, four different companies and another company directly attached, six companies total, all in line, walking, you know, A and A and the Marines are on the high ground. We've got my trucks in the low ground and then we'd rotate. We'd be, I mean, it was just like something out of World War II. And we, I mean, look, we were doing trench clearing. I mean, the, the enemy had, we, we were walking in areas that no American troops had ever been in and there were enemy trenches and we were doing trench clearing. It was, it was awesome. I mean, what other infantry unit is

• 4:10:18Speaker 02

  doing trench clearing? We were. And I mean, man, we rounded those little assholes out, man. We did.

• 4:10:24Jocko Willink?

  I was so lucky to, in Ramadi, we were doing brigade sized operations and it was so awesome.

• 4:10:31Speaker 02

  Yeah. I was gonna say, do SEALs get to see that? Do you guys do that kind of stuff?

• 4:10:35Jocko Willink?

  Not, not a lot, but like we even, we didn't execute, but there was a big like division operation that was going on. And I sat through this big briefing.

• 4:10:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're cool, man.

• 4:10:44Jocko Willink?

  And I'm thinking to myself, this is so awesome. And you know, for us, it was like World War II because we had tanks and the tanks are rolling through, smashing buildings and firing their main guns.

• 4:10:53Speaker 02

  I can't imagine that.

• 4:10:54Jocko Willink?

  It was really cool to be a part of.

• 4:10:56Speaker 02

  I mean.

• 4:10:57Jocko Willink?

  Be a little tiny, tiny part of that was awesome.

• 4:10:59Speaker 02

  To see, you know, for me, yeah, right. To be a tiny part of that is awesome. And to see the combined arms power of the United States military brought to bear in an enemy. Oh my God. So brigade battalion level operations are no joke. I mean,

• 4:11:17Speaker 02

  The Apaches and A-10s, we had a British tornado, tornado, whatever, how you go British tornado, come do a show of force in a Wadi system and those British pilots are crazy freaks, man. Flying down, I mean, it looked like you could reach up and touch this jet, come screaming down overhead and peel up away. And I'm like, this, this is something like I've never experienced. One thing to be in a kill zone, platoon versus platoon with an enemy, but seeing a battalion, brigade, division level operation and to be a part of it, it is, I mean, we'd go to bed at night and it would be like something out of Saving Private Ryan. We'd be sleeping on this ridgeline. The, the horizon would be a wash, would be like light up every now and again with 105s. Boom, boom. You can feel that shudder in your bones. You can feel it clatter your teeth and it's just,

• 4:12:00Speaker 02

  you can feel the crump of it. And then all of a sudden, you know, it's AC 130 Spectre gunship would come on station. Yes. And I'd be the guy on the front, like coordinating targets with it, with a JTAC, like hitting targets. And we'd just fall asleep to that all night. And then we'd get up and we'd do a sensitive site exploitation like at night or the next day. It was just like, we just methodically took out everyone.

• 4:12:21Jocko Willink?

  What was the resistance that you guys pushed through this?

• 4:12:24Speaker 02

  Oh, so we, the very first day, we, we, we go, we went down a route called Route Trans Am. And that was the, that was the main route all the way to the border that we found, that we had most of the issues with the enemy on. And the Marines were on the high ground with the ANA. We were on the low ground. We, entire battalion mustered right behind us. My platoon pushes into the, the mall of this Wadi system in Route Trans Am. And three dudes in black man jams, RPGs, AK-47s run out from this side road and just start like waving their weapons. And the ANA on the high ground just start chasing them. And I'm just like, I get on the radio, the Marines, I'm like, stop, stop the ANA, stop, stop. And

• 4:13:08Jocko Willink?

  Too obvious.

• 4:13:09Speaker 02

  They got baited into an ambush. They got surrounded and cut off. All, all the Marines that are with them that were wounded, the Marine commander on the ground was shot in the pelvis. This is the guy I was telling you about. My platoon, like our battalion commander and our company commander come running up to us. So what's going on? I gave them the situation and they're trying to figure out a CASVAC situation. I'm like, send us in, we'll go get them right now. Send us in. And so they sent us in and we drive into this kill zone. We start taking fire from all, I mean, it was just crazy. Start taking fire from all sides. I'm watching my truck, the truck in front of me, windows shattering all around it. I'm looking up in the trees, the wadi system is real tight, right? And these guys are just perched up on trees on these cliff sides, just taking pot shots at our gunners. And we couldn't traverse our guns, we couldn't traverse them high enough to actually make.

• 4:13:54Speaker 02

  So guys were coming up with their rifles and trying to shoot them and stuff. It was crazy. So I watched the gunner in Saint Jean, John Saint Jean from Haiti get shot in the head, dropping the turret. So get this, when we eventually evac'd him, the bullet punctured his helmet. His helmet slowed the round enough that the round still punctured his skin, but stopped on his skull, skirted around his skin on his, like around the outside of his skull and back out the other side. I mean, this is like, this is the kind of shit that you expect. I mean, it's like, how is he alive?

• 4:14:23Jocko Willink?

  Happened to a guy.

• 4:14:24Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 4:14:25Jocko Willink?

  I had the exact same thing.

• 4:14:26Speaker 02

  It's just crazy.

• 4:14:26Jocko Willink?

  Didn't come out the other side of the skin. The medic, the corpsman just came over and like pushed the bullet round back up to the entry point and squeezed the bullet out like a zip.

• 4:14:38Speaker 02

  Oh God, that bullet zip. That's gross. Oh God. But so, so we end up being in the kill zone. We can't get to the Marines where he's completely cut off. And so we pull out, we got like four or five casualties I had to evacuate. We got them out, we got them treated.

• 4:14:53Jocko Willink?

  This is when Hall.

• 4:14:54Speaker 02

  And this is when Hall says, I'm going up to get him, sir. Give me, give me five guys from second platoon. I'll take my squad up and get him. And he fought up there, he fought up the hill, fought through two flanks of the enemy. All the way, I know, I know, just like, I have a picture of him assenting the hill, like looking back down the hill, like doing this number. I don't know how we got that picture, but it's, it's, Hall was just a badass and fought through two flanks of the enemy. Gets to this Marine, treats his wounds, leads in a jungle penetrator. A Blackhawk helicopter comes in, two Apaches for an escort. They get a jungle penetrator in, both Apaches take shots. They have to pull off station, the Blackhawk gets shot up. They get the guy, the Marine on the jungle penetrator and flying back.

• 4:15:38Speaker 02

  But I mean, our, our birds got shot up. I mean, so we ended up killing a bunch of the bad guys. This, this is when, when Saint Jean got shot in the head. He fired and the guy that shot him fired, they hit each other, right? And Saint Jean hit the guy in the stomach and this guy tumbles down right next to our truck. And that's when I see him, like looking in this guy's eyes. He's got this gaping stomach wound. He's like bleeding to death right there in the dirt. There's no question he's gonna die. And he's just looking at me and I'm just like looking at him. And there is just no remorse in this guy's eyes. If it were reversed, he's just the most evil. There's no, no redeeming, no redemption in those eyes, you know? And over the radio, Stalters on the radio, the guy that saved me on June 10th, he pulled me up.

• 4:16:21Speaker 02

  That guy's on the radio, he's got a shotgun leaning out his window. He's like, let me take him out. Let me take him out. Let me take him out. And I'm sitting there, I'm like, no, no. Come on, sir, why? Let me take him out. And my gunner's like, sir, because he's got a shotgun. He's like, sir, he's right there. Let me kill him. Let me kill him. And I'm like, no. We're not doing that. We're not doing that. And I just not, I just remember thinking this was just like a, this was like a split second thing too, like not happening. I had to reinforce it several times. They're like, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. I'm like, no, you're not. Um, I just felt in the clearest, it was like divine clarity or whatever. I just did not want this shithead. I don't want this guy's soul, this terrible, evil, disgusting human being soul on the hearts of these men. You know, my men are worth so much more, you know?

• 4:17:05Speaker 02

  And so we go out, we evacuate our casualties and we go back in, right? We evac our casualties, go back in, try to get the marine. We couldn't do it, but the guy was gone. He'd be in evac. There's just a puddle of blood there, but still like, these guys evac this guy up what was like a sheer cliff face. You know what I mean? So that was on, that was first five minutes of the battalion operation. Just to give you a sense of the enemy we faced, you know, we got an entire battalion of infantry brought to bear. That was the first five minutes. So we took those guys out and that's when we did the trench clearing on the next ridge line. So these guys were shooting us from these trenches and I got all this, this crazy pictures of this trench complex. And we're like, like, you know, just like room clearing with number one man just kind of marching down the trench and stuff.

• 4:17:47Speaker 02

  It's the craziest shit ever. I mean, we, we did trench clearing once at JRTC. It's not like it's something that we trained for, you know what I mean? But it was just crazy that there we were, no shit, doing trench clearing, you know? And people, people will criticize, enemy really in the trenches? I'm like, yeah, we really were in the trenches fighting these guys. And then we'd take over the trenches and light infantry. We'd stay there. We'd hold the line there. It was just crazy. And um, we ended up fighting all the way to the border and we found a bunch of their camps. And this was our thing, like, Halfway through the deployment, we just started burning their camps to the ground, shooting their livestock, you know, killing their livestock, burning their camps, taking their guns, ammunition, whatever, whatever intel we could exploit from their camps and just burn the rest of the ground. And man, that pissed them off. And we found their final camp right on the border.

• 4:18:32Speaker 02

  Ended up getting like in one final attack with them, uh, ended up killing them. But along the way, we found, uh, the 122 launcher, killed the guys that were operating it, captured it. Yeah, we captured the launcher, first ever captured in Afghanistan. And then we found this 107 launcher that had been using that they had like a dummy cord of wires. And we got in this crazy, we got in this crazy like, okay, corral shootout with the guys. We're like, I'm on a dismounted patrol and I got a fire team with me and my platoon behind me and I'm on point with them. And I just like, give the freeze, right? And everyone takes a knee and I pick up this like little piece of yellow wire that's this long. And I'm like, I mean, honestly, I didn't think anything of it. I should have, but I'm like this, this and that, that this doesn't feel right. And all of a sudden we look up and Konton Nguyen, my guy from, uh, South Vietnam is

• 4:19:17Speaker 02

  like, he's like, Dr. Jones, Dr. Jones, like that guy. He's like, so, so we got, got, and like, all of a sudden, it was like they're 10 feet away from us. It was like, like, okay, corral shootout right there. And Konton like ended up pegging the guy and chasing a bonsai charge him and everything else. And we're like, running after these guys. It was crazy. This was my life, dude. And this is not the kind of, I mean, I cannot believe that I went through some of this shit, man. I mean, this is not the kind of, you know?

• 4:19:43Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:19:44Speaker 02

  And so this was, we pushed them out, then we went to Christmas and then, and then, um, and then we got, like, we, we got attacked one more time by like a big, big, big, big, big force.

• 4:19:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you guys, you guys, I mean, when you guys closed it out, I mean, you get to the point where you close out, you're like their last stand. On the final day, we seize the high ground overlooking the frontier. We remain, the remaining enemy soldiers chose to make their last stand here between us and Pakistan Army border checkpoint. They marshaled their remaining weapons and in place their machine guns with their usual tactical cunning. We'd been under fire for almost a week, filthy, reeking of gunpowder and body odor, constipated by MREs. We'd spent Operation Catamount Blitz, sleeping in our rigs between skirmishes. Now came the climactic moment. We'd spent all year making last stands against their furious assaults. Here, the roles were reversed and they would die in place.

• 4:20:36Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. It was awesome. It was awesome.

• 4:20:39Jocko Willink?

  Our forward air controllers called in a final series of airstrikes. The A-10 pilots were unleashed to do, were unleashed to do what they do best. With J dams and 30 millimeter strafing runs, the warthogs pulverized the enemy. When it was over, there was no need to assault their last stand. Not an insurgent remained upright. Captain Dai and Lieutenant Colonel Toner walked to our ridge. They'd been working the radios with the forward air controllers and now gaze down into the smoke shrouded valley. The last A-10 swept past its chain guns, throwing lead in one final act of overkill. As it pulled up and raised skyward, Dai and Toner erupted in cheers. Soon, all along our line, the men joined in.

• 4:21:23Speaker 02

  Mm-hmm. It was crazy. It was like-

• 4:21:24Jocko Willink?

  Victory cures all pain.

• 4:21:26Speaker 02

  I'm saying, I'm telling you, man. Victory cures all pain. It's the truth. I mean, we had, we had been on the receiving end of this shit for almost a year. We finally drove those little bastards back to Pakistan and we cheered. It was like something out of a movie, man. It was like, everyone's like holding their rifle up in the air and cheering. And we thought that was the last attack, but it wasn't. We thought that was their last stand, but then they threw, I'm telling you, they threw everything but the kitchen sink at us in January, right? Right, two days before, like-

• 4:21:54Jocko Willink?

  Is this where you got the heads up from intel?

• 4:21:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:21:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so you're, you're out in an OP, right? And, and you're-

• 4:22:01Speaker 02

  We built, this was the very first combat outpost-

• 4:22:03Jocko Willink?

  That's right, it was the little compound outpost that you guys built.

• 4:22:05Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we built it and we were there with these engineers, right? And we're like, it was built in the, literally the worst place you could possibly imagine. I'm like, sir, this is fucking, this is stupid. Like, this is not a good place to put a base. No, we gotta put it here. Brigade says we gotta put it here. Okay, so we'll put it there. So we bring these engineers in to do this and we get, like, we get attacked. There's like some stupid rocket attack or something and we all go to bed. We all go to bed and like, keep in mind, we're like, this is like one of the most dangerous places in Afghanistan. I got like four gun trucks up there with me. So I got 16 guys or six, something like 16 guys on the ground. And I got a bunch of engineers filling these HESCO walls. Well, we wake up, right? The night after the, the first attack and it was like a nothing burger attack. And we wake up and all the engineers are gone. They had Diddy Mount in the middle of the night and left us there. They left us there with half filled HESCO walls. The base wasn't even complete.

• 4:22:49Speaker 02

  So now we're really stranded. There's nowhere we can go.

• 4:22:51Jocko Willink?

  So there's 16 of you?

• 4:22:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, so we had to call-

• 4:22:53Jocko Willink?

  Four gun trucks?

• 4:22:54Speaker 02

  Yes, yes.

• 4:22:55Jocko Willink?

  So do you have any Afghan with you? Any A or anything?

• 4:22:57Speaker 02

  No, no, they didn't want to go out there and patrol. This was up in Margad. Margad was right on the border. And so we had to call for reinforcements, get a couple more trucks up there. I got like, now I've got like 26, 27 guys up there. And it's like, we're going home in two weeks, right? Everyone is like, checked out at this point, like they just want to go home, go home safely. And I get this call, like, no bullshit, this call, I'm in my truck at like three in the morning. I get a call from my S2, uh, my intelligence guys up at battalion saying, hey, uh, Blackhawk 36, this is Catamount 2, you know, just, I, I, just, I, I don't want to alarm you, but there are 350 guys coming to attack your position right now.

• 4:23:39Speaker 02

  And I, I just was like, I like, I like, take the hand mic and I just like, do you ever see the Hitler memes where he takes his glasses off slowly? He's like, oh, you know, it's like that moment for me, I just like, okay, just, okay, Roger. And I put the hand mic slow and I like sleptwalk over to Greece and I said, hey, yeah, did you hear that? And he's like, mm-hmm, I heard it. I'm like, so what do we, what do we do? What do we do about that? He's like, he did, he literally just goes, ah, I don't know. So I go back over to my truck and I call, I said, I said, what's going on? He said, he's like, look, we're going to stack up air for you. We're going to make sure that you have air. All we need you to do is observe. We've got a predator in the air. We've got predator up, you've got a force coming from, uh, directly from the east,

• 4:24:21Speaker 02

  marching down this route just north of Route Trans Am where we had thought we'd wiped out the enemy, a force of 250 coming from that direction and another 50, force of 50 coming in from the northwest. So in a massive sort of pincer movement, um, into our, into our platoon. They had marked them on the FBCB2, like, do you guys have those too? Like, yeah, like, yeah, they were watching these like little red marks coming to our, you know, come to our position.

• 4:24:43Jocko Willink?

  How often did you see that?

• 4:24:46Speaker 02

  Did see that, see that.

• 4:24:47Jocko Willink?

  See them actually marking their like.

• 4:24:48Speaker 02

  I never, never have, have to like, we'd never even really, I mean, look, the entire battalion was in here. So they had, they had predator, they had two predators out there on the objective under NOS. They were sprinkling where they, the bad guys were. And, and look later, I, I still have, I still have the, the predator feed from that. You can count all 250 of them. So they stacked up all this air and we waited for them to get a kilometer away from where we were. And the last thing they said before we dropped probably 150 rounds of 105s on them, simultaneous three or four 2,000 pound bombs on them. They said like, when you, you know, when you get, they said something like,

• 4:25:25Jocko Willink?

  Here's what you wrote in the book.

• 4:25:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, what did I write?

• 4:25:27Jocko Willink?

  When you overrun the Americans, cut their heads off and mount them on stakes.

• 4:25:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:25:31Jocko Willink?

  Good luck and I'll see you on the objective.

• 4:25:33Speaker 02

  I'll see you on the objective.

• 4:25:35Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys get that intel report while you were out there?

• 4:25:37Speaker 02

  Yes. And then, and then, so we dropped, okay, so we, we kicked off the engagement. We had a B1 on station. Kicked off the engagement. I have, I have, I have the predator of all this. I have the predator of the entire, of the JDAMs falling, everything. And the bad guys scaring, it's the craziest shit you'd ever see. And like three or four right in a row. They were all marching in a tactical column. So one bomb, boom, boom, boom, all the way down the column, right? And you see these, it's like, it's on white hot. So the explosion is just blazing in on the predator. You see these guys running around and then a specter comes in and starts lighting these guys up. And Apache takes on this force from the, I mean, it was the craziest, I'm telling you, and an A10 coming in. And then the predator gets in with the hell fires. It got the whole thing on predator.

• 4:26:19Speaker 02

  And it's just that we went on the objective that the very next day, and this went on all night. We just lit these mother up all night long and, and we get on the objective and it was, it was the most gnarly thing I'd ever seen. Just do an SSC, like a sensitive site exploitation. We get on the objective and there are literal body parts hanging up in the trees. There are human body parts that stretch from where they were about to pre-put an attack on us, stretched back two kilometers. Two kilometers of just utter gore and devastation. And there were one survivor when we get back there and the ANAs like, like hitting this guy with the buttstock of an AK-47.

• 4:27:01Speaker 02

  The guy's barely clinging to life. Really wasn't worth much to us anyway. But what we found was these guys had better Mero combat boots than we did. They were all wearing body armor. They had helmets on, their rifles were fresh, still with the packing grease, Iranian serial numbers, right? And I mean, their equipment was better, just, just as good, if not better than ours. I'm surprised that they didn't have night vision and some of them had PACMIL Military Frontier Corps ID cards.

• 4:27:30Speaker 02

  And we sent all this intel up higher and I swear to God, two days later, we get a call back to the, to the, uh, the 82nd Airborne comes in to relieve us. My guys start getting sent home one at a time and it, no bullshit. Like my guys are in various phases of redeployment. Like I'm the last one with the grease on the base, right? And I'm like thinking, Jesus Christ, I'm surrounded by all these guys.

• 4:27:49Jocko Willink?

  Cause your deployment's over at this.

• 4:27:51Speaker 02

  It's over at this point.

• 4:27:52Jocko Willink?

  You've started to, you started to send guys on once and people, a lot of times people think so. The military, you know, just everyone will come in and leave at the same time. No, but it's sort of a trickle thing. You gotta get, squeeze people in where you can get rid of.

• 4:28:03Speaker 02

  Correct.

• 4:28:04Jocko Willink?

  People are just trying to head home at this point.

• 4:28:05Speaker 02

  Correct. And so I got guys home that have already made it home. They've already reunited with their families. I got guys in Bagram, ready to fly home. I got guys in the air. I mean, they're spread out all over. It's just me and Greece and left on the base with a bunch of 82nd Airborne guys.

• 4:28:18Jocko Willink?

  And you're going to do some turnover ops with them?

• 4:28:20Speaker 02

  Yep. We did what's called like in the army, like a Riptoa, uh, relief in place.

• 4:28:24Jocko Willink?

  So now it's just you and Greece and everyone else is gone.

• 4:28:27Speaker 02

  Everyone else is gone.

• 4:28:28Jocko Willink?

  In various stages of getting home or they're actually home. And then this happens. Five days later, 0300, Greece and I were roused from restless sleep and told to report to the operations center. We rushed over to find Lieutenant Colonel Toner waiting for us on our computerized conference system. When Captain Die joined us, Lieutenant Colonel said, men, I'm going to read to you a quote from the former Marine Corps Commandant, General Charles C. Krulak. And here's the quote, "When the hard times come, and they will, people will cling to leaders they know and trust, to those who are not detached but involved, and to those who have consciences. They will seek out leaders who stand for something bigger

• 4:29:12Jocko Willink?

  than themselves and who have the moral courage and strength of character to do what they know in their hearts to be the right thing."

• 4:29:22Jocko Willink?

  And you're thinking, "What the hell is this?" And then he says, "Men, we have been extended for 120 days." He let that sink in. Thoughts of home vanished, as I did the math. June, we would be here until June. We would have to survive another spring offensive. What were the odds of that? The room spun. The men around me looked ashen. After Lieutenant Colonel Tomer signed off, Greason let out one of his classic sling blade laughs, as if he didn't have a care in the world. "I need a cigarette," he growled as he stepped out into the night. I followed furious at his reaction. "What the hell is wrong with you?" I yelled. "How can you not be pissed off at this?"

• 4:30:03Jocko Willink?

  Greason just shook his head. "Sir, every deployment I've ever been on has been extended. It don't mean nothing. It just means we get to play army for four more months."

• 4:30:13Jocko Willink?

  Over the next 48 hours, my platoon reassembled at Fob Brummel. Most of the men had learned the bad news at Bagram, as they were waiting for their flights home. They were reissued their body armor, helmets, and gear and thrown back into a Chinook. Others had already made it back to the United States. Military police knocked on their doors or met them at the airport and told them the news. They were told to pack and escorted onto the first available flights out. They came back sullen, fearful, and devoid of hope. Everyone knew the odds. We had all had close encounters with death. A few inches of one way, a failure to duck, a turn to the left instead of the right, and death would have had us. We cheated it so many times that it seemed

• 4:30:53Jocko Willink?

  inconceivable that luck would have our backs now. When we all gathered back at Brummel, Captain Day addressed us. "Men," he announced brusquely, "we will begin continuous combat operations tonight. We're back on it. Suck it up."

• 4:31:13Jocko Willink?

  We became a platoon of condemned. As darkness fell, our bullet scarred Humvees awaited us. In ones and twos, the platoons gathered around them. Drivers slipped behind the wheels. Gunners climbed into the turrets and loaded their weapons. My dismounts stacked extra ammunition into their rigs. Greason smoked and stalked around with his near beer, unflappable as ever. Sabo blew a fuse and yelled at one of his men. I watched the familiar scene and felt nothing but abiding love for these incredible human beings. Did America know the Medal of her warrior sons? Not a man refused his duty. Despite everything, we had not lost the one thing that mattered most: faith in one another.

• 4:31:57Jocko Willink?

  Chris Brown stood in my turret, shoulders sagging. As I opened my door, I asked him, "How you doing, brother?" He looked down at me with young man's eyes, a thousand years old. "We got this, sir. No worries." "We got this, sir. No worries." And I actually wanted to call that out specifically because to me, that little statement from him, it reflects the main, broad, overarching spirit of the soldiers and sailors and airmen and Marines that I worked with.

• 4:32:39Jocko Willink?

  Their collective response to whatever the world throws at them. Is that right there? "We got this. No worries." And then, you know, you asked the question right there. "Does America know the Medal of her warriors?" And that's another thing. And that's why I'm glad that you wrote this book. And I'm glad when people come out and explain what it's like for real on the front lines.

• 4:33:14Jocko Willink?

  Because you know, we just talked about that that psychological thing of getting home or getting to get to sleep and be warm and comfortable. And then having to go back and you guys got that to the nth degree.

• 4:33:27Speaker 02

  I I think it was by far the most difficult part of our entire deployment because if you think about the history of any military, you know, in the days of Sparta, like and you were called to arms, like you were directly responsible for how good you were with your weapon system. You had your own weapon system. You trained on it. You lived or died by it, you know? And in many ways, you were accountable, almost directly responsible and accountable for how you performed on the battlefield. Right? But in the modern day army is like these things are issued to you, you know, and you're issued your weapon, you're issued three meals a day, you're given shelter, the army itself in in an abstract way

• 4:34:08Speaker 02

  almost fulfills an almost paternal like role to a lot of these soldiers. So when when we were extended, you know, guy like Greason, who's been there, done that, he knows it's a possibility, right? But young guys like me who made up most of the platoon like we didn't and it it felt like a betrayal. You know, almost by like a parent and that violation of trust, you know, how we felt about it at the time. Anyway, it was almost insurmountable to come. You know, there's something that happens when you get back to Bagram and you turn in your armor piercing sappy plates and all your your ammo and you, you know? Um, you know, you're going on, you just say, you say to yourself, okay, I made it and I psychologically made it and you brain dump stuff. You let your hair down a little bit, you kick back, you smile, you

• 4:34:53Speaker 02

  everything just feels a little bit better. Life, the world just feels a little bit more colorful, like you're not looking through you know, a dirt encrusted window all the time, right? That everything it's like everything's amazing. Food tastes better, water tastes better, your workouts are better, like everything is better, you know, and to find out that like all of that has been pulled out from underneath you and you somehow you have to go back into the fray. And survive another spring offensive. Or I get more volley fires of RPGs, more listen to those assholes on ICOM. I mean, seriously, more rockets, more air raid siren going off in the middle of the night. It was just, it was the greatest leadership challenge that I've ever had to endure.

• 4:35:39Speaker 02

  To see those guys get off the Chinook with, again, young man's eyes, a thousand years old. This is, this is, this is the plight of, I think, the warrior in, in general, in that we come back to the States and like, we might, you know, and age wise be 20 something, but we've, we've lived the lives of someone who's a thousand years old and lost just as many people, senior citizens on our own country, you know? Um, and so this is, this is what I had in my platoon, a group of men, a group of boys who would really had the life experience, lifetime of experiences, a man, you know, a man, grown man. Uh, and at the end of the day, it was, you know, the love and brotherhood that we shared for one another, you know?

• 4:36:22Speaker 02

  You always hear like the, the, the might of the American military and the things that we can bring to bear and we got the best equipment and we have the, you know, the best rifles and the best technology and you're on the cutting edge of everything and all that's great, but really what makes the American military the best in the history of the world, it, you know, our secret weapon, our real secret weapon is the grit, the love, the brotherhood that we share for one another. And it's that attitude, it's that attitude and that love that we share for one another that allows us to accomplish anything on the battlefield. You know, we rely, we don't want to fail the man and woman to the left or the right of us, you know? And that love drives us to do extraordinary things. And that's what I saw. I mean, look, this, the outlaw platoon, these weren't Navy SEALs. These were kids, you know?

• 4:37:06Speaker 02

  A lot of my machine gunners who performed the most heroic acts you can possibly imagine. I've never seen, never seen 18 year old kids do the things that I saw that my men do in that platoon. The jobs that they had before toting a, a machine gun in the mountains of Afghanistan was high school shortstop. Yet somehow these guys came out and they brought it every single day, you know, ordinary men doing extraordinary things. You know, the greatest triumphs of the human spirit were the things that I saw in combat every day. So, you know, combat can be.

• 4:37:36Speaker 02

  I mean, obviously, it's hell on earth. It's destructive. It's terrible. People get hurt, wounded, killed. But I also saw some of the greatest, most beautiful triumphs of the human spirit as well, all in a motley group of infantry guys that different races, socioeconomic statuses, different countries, whatever, different religions, come together and accomplish amazing things. And, you know, really, if it weren't for them, I mean, I'll tell you right now, in a very literal sense, if it weren't for them, I wouldn't be here. I mean, I had one of my soldiers save my life on the battlefield when I hurt, when I got wounded. But, I mean, I owe them everything. And that's what that book is about. That book is a testament to their, to their legacy. I mean, I remember getting back, you know, I go to my R and R league and leave. And actually, my soldiers would

• 4:38:21Speaker 02

  go on their leave. And Americans would be like, so where were you deployed? Oh, thank you for your service, right? And we're great. I'm grateful that we live in a country that's like that. They'd be like, oh, oh, you're in Afghan? Oh, good. You're in Afghanistan. Oh, just thank God you're not in Iraq. Iraq is just so bad, you know? And my guys would be like, Jesus, I just got shot in the head last week. And they'd come home and be like, sir, Americans have no idea what the hell we're doing over here. So I just felt like it's some, some, it's my job as the leader to step up and try to capture their legacy and write a book and make sure that their heroism on the battlefield does not, is not lost through the ages. Like, I want, I want their exploits to be written so that we can pass down the heroic exploits down to future generations. And that, that's

• 4:39:05Speaker 02

  what that book is. It's their story. It's not mine.

• 4:39:09Jocko Willink?

  And so you guys wrapped up the next four months. How was the last four months?

• 4:39:13Speaker 02

  Hell, it was terrible. I mean, we still got attacked, you know? I mean, and the thing is, the people that we attacked were not nearly as good. They weren't nearly as well trained. But, you know, stray bullet's a stray bullet.

• 4:39:24Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't matter.

• 4:39:25Speaker 02

  You know, it doesn't matter. You know, catch a ricochet off a ballistic shield, hits you in the head underneath your helmet, you're dead, you know? So. It was still pretty rough. I didn't write about it in that book, but it was still pretty rough. And somehow, you know, I had some crazy, also, the combat was crazy, but I also had some crazy leadership experiences as well because of the surge. All the units that were sent to, were supposed to replace us, went to Iraq instead. That's why we were extended. There was literally nobody to replace us. Well, they ended up tagging the 173rd Airborne, the guys that we had relieved going in to come back. And they were tasked with going to Iraq. And so they were in Germany at CMTC, training, just a month prior to the deployment, just to get ready for an eventual,

• 4:40:09Speaker 02

  eventual deployment to Afghanistan. They, they hadn't been training for that area of operations. So they plucked one lieutenant and one senior non-commission officer from the battalion to go and train these guys in Germany on a moment's notice. And it was me. So three weeks, so for three weeks, just prior to the second spring offensive, I found myself boots on the ground in Germany, training 173rd Airborne guys embedded with a company in Germany. I mean, it was just, this has never happened before. This has never happened before, you know? I mean, in Army, I mean, we, our deployment was 485 days, man. I mean, like, Easy Company, the 101st Airborne jumped into Normandy and fought to Hitler's eagles nest in less time than

• 4:40:49Speaker 02

  485 days. We're just out there flapping in the wind that whole time, man. And, and, you know, and then I get, we get extended the last day, go to Germany, like,

• 4:41:00Jocko Willink?

  If you put that in a movie, you wouldn't believe it. You'd be like, oh, yeah.

• 4:41:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, right. Exactly.

• 4:41:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the guys are back in America. Now they're getting told, no, that's not gonna happen.

• 4:41:07Speaker 02

  That is what I think about now. I look back on this experience and I'm like, oh my God, this truth is stranger than fiction, man.

• 4:41:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And then you guys get, you guys eventually do get home and they start their workup, but you're, you're like non-deployable now because you're, because of all those wounds that you talked about. Your brain, your fractures to your skull, your brain, you're licking, leaking fluid out of your ears.

• 4:41:29Speaker 02

  I had cerebral spinal fluid dry. It healed. I was, I was able to function in combat. And by the way, I'll tell you, I, since that book has come out, I've been criticized a lot about, hey, man, like, you're a leader, you gotta take care, if you can't take care of yourself, can't take care of your own injuries, how are you expected to take care of your troops? And that's a, that's a good, that's a good criticism. It's a valid criticism. I just respond, you know, and I think it's, I kind of want to address it here, going off script a little bit, I had guys getting shot in the head every day, wrapping up their heads like mummies and going back out on patrol. You know, how, I'm their leader.

• 4:42:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:42:01Speaker 02

  How can I leave them when they're doing that? And so that's my, that's my response to that. Like, look at my, at the, I would have done it the same way now. Well, I'm not leaving them, no matter how badly I was hurt, you know?

• 4:42:14Speaker 02

  But I get the criticism. I do. And so when I get back to Fort Drum, you know, I start having vertigo and all these issues. I ended up having surgery to get all the cerebral spinal fluid removed from my sinus cavities because it's right in there. That was terrible. Ended up going back to the traumatic brain injury clinic at Fort Drum and occupational therapy, physical therapy, like find motor skill stuff, speech therapy. It was just this round robin thing and my battalion was working up to go back again. I was made the rear detachment commander. That was the worst job ever where I was doing all casualty notification for the guy. So the crazy thing, and again, I don't talk about this.

• 4:42:48Jocko Willink?

  You just like flew through that. Your, your guys deploy again.

• 4:42:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, my platoon, yeah.

• 4:42:53Jocko Willink?

  You can't deploy because of your injuries. And so now you're stuck back in the rear. And the job they assign you with is what we call, in the Navy, we call it CAO, casualty assistance calls officer. What do you guys call it in the Army?

• 4:43:09Speaker 02

  Well, yeah, so we call it a CAO, casualty assistance officer, but I was the rear detachment commander as well. So it was my job to liaise with all the wives and train the new recruits to go and take care of the wounded ones when they came back. So every single soldier that was wounded, it was my job to call and notify the family, right? And the casualty assistance officer was like an every other month thing. So we'd rotate, there'd be one casualty assistance officer from the brigade and it'd rotate through the battalions. So every couple of months I'd be the CAO where you're going to the doors and notifying family members. I ended up going, I have to tell you that that, that was, that duty position was worse than combat because, you know, it's like when you're there.

• 4:43:50Speaker 02

  It's like you just, I just want to be the best leader that I can be to get as many men as home as possible, right? Kill as many bad guys as we can, accomplish the mission, get my boys home. And then you come back.

• 4:44:02Speaker 02

  And get assigned the rear D commander job. My men are given a different platoon leader. They're, you know, a good platoon leader, you know? Uh, where they train up, they go back and now I'm the rear D commander and I have to watch from afar as my platoon gets torn, torn apart. Just torn apart. Jeff Hall died in that next deployment. Five of my guys died in that next deployment. It was just, I had to go to their funerals. I had to meet with their families. I had, and it's like, here I did 485 days of absolute hell where I would have done anything for these guys to get them home alive. We finally do and we go back to, we go back to Afghanistan nine months later and our platoon just gets torn up, just torn up. And I have to watch from afar as it happens. It was just, just hell. It was just hell, man.

• 4:44:43Speaker 02

  I just, it's, those guys went through so much and they still, they still, they still struggling. We've lost men since and I think, I mean, to this day, we've lost more soldiers to suicide and accidents and things after the war than we actually have in combat, which is crazy.

• 4:45:07Jocko Willink?

  You're, you're on that duty and this is the last thing I'm going to read from the book.

• 4:45:12Jocko Willink?

  Two years earlier, a young man had walked into my office at Fort Drum. Fresh faced and all smiles, the kid had saluted me and told me that his uncle had told him to seek me out. "Who's your uncle?" I asked. "Philip Baldwin, sir. I want to serve with you in his old platoon. I'm Baldwin." Stunned, I said to him, "Do you know your uncle was a hero?" He shook his head. I told him the story of what Baldwin had done on June 10th. When I finished, I said to him, "You have some really big shoes to fill. If I put you in the platoon, you need to measure up." Resolute, steady eyes greeted those words. I could see he'd been cut from the same mold as his uncle. Not only did he join Third Platoon, his brother-in-law, Private Matthew Wilson, did as well.

• 4:45:56Jocko Willink?

  Third Platoon had become more than a brotherhood. It had become a family.

• 4:46:03Jocko Willink?

  Private Wilson was killed in action during the same attack that claimed Sergeant Hall. Baldwin's family had paid a terrible price for their love of country.

• 4:46:15Jocko Willink?

  Now Wilson's coffin lay before us, sealed with his body inside. We stood back in the crowd, alone with our thoughts. That's when we noticed him. A tall man, wearing a black suit. He had a goatee now, and he leaned heavily on a cane. "Is that Baldwin?" I asked. He saw us and hobbled over. Before words were exchanged, our arms wrapped around each other in a fierce embrace. Long into that desperate and sad moment, I could only think of how I'd last seen him. "I can't feel my legs, sir. I can't feel my legs." As we talked among the crosses, Baldwin's mother and grandmother walked up to us.

• 4:46:57Jocko Willink?

  Philip turned to them and said, "Mom, Grandma, I want you to meet the man who pulled me off the battlefield and saved my life."

• 4:47:08Jocko Willink?

  They drew me into their arms and told me I was family. I held them close, total strangers, but still connected in ways most people will never fathom. "Thank you. Thank you for what you did for Phil," they said through streaming tears.

• 4:47:25Jocko Willink?

  "He is my brother."

• 4:47:28Jocko Willink?

  Was all I could manage.

• 4:47:31Jocko Willink?

  I held on, and never wanted to let go.

• 4:47:41Jocko Willink?

  And I think you're right about that. I think that most people

• 4:47:47Jocko Willink?

  will not ever be able to fathom that emotion right there.

• 4:47:54Jocko Willink?

  And you were

• 4:47:59Jocko Willink?

  kind of forced to leave that at the end of the day. You were medically retired?

• 4:48:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, it was, you know, my battalion got back from the second deployment. They were gearing up for the third deployment, you know, and I was, I was put out.

• 4:48:14Speaker 02

  I was put out, I was medically retired. It was terrible, the way that it happened too, went down, it's just like, you know, you come down red as a captain in a battalion. A senior captain on my way to O four, on my way to major.

• 4:48:29Speaker 02

  In a battalion, like, there are only so many senior captain O four slots, come down red on a PowerPoint slide, it's like, we gotta get this guy out of here. And it's like, I can't move any faster than the med board process, you know, it's like, once it gets up to the big army, it's just a waiting game. Well, it takes forever, you know, there are a lot of guys wounded, a lot of guys being medically retired. The system was slow. And so I was basically given, okay, once my medical retirement paperwork came down and was approved, my battalion commander, like, trying to get me out and get a new captain in, gave me two days to clear Fort Drum, got put out of the army, two days. And look, this isn't a sob story, but it's like, two days to say goodbye to everybody that I had lived my life with for the last six and a half years. But that's the military, man, you know, there's a mission and that, that, you know, we moved.

• 4:49:11Jocko Willink?

  The machine keeps rolling.

• 4:49:12Speaker 02

  Yes, we moved to that mission like a locomotive freight train, and if you're wounded or you're hurt, like, I get that, I love that, I respect that, you know, but you gotta get out of the way of the train, man. That's what it is, so.

• 4:49:24Jocko Willink?

  And so then, so then, so now what year is it?

• 4:49:28Speaker 02

  I was put out, December 19th, 2010.

• 4:49:32Jocko Willink?

  And then what? Had you already started writing the book?

• 4:49:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I was in the, I was in the process of cobbling together the chapters and the outlines with minimal success, you know, I.

• 4:49:43Jocko Willink?

  Because you're not a writer.

• 4:49:44Speaker 02

  No.

• 4:49:45Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you weren't a writer.

• 4:49:46Speaker 02

  And I didn't understand the process, the agent, I mean, it was like, it was like drinking from a fire hose.

• 4:49:50Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you know that you wanted a book to be published, that's what was the purpose of what you were doing?

• 4:49:54Speaker 02

  Absolutely, I mean, I knew it was my job, is, I mean, the charge of command, the charge of leadership is lifelong, you have that, that you will always be seen as, as a leader of your men as long as you breathe. And so it was my job, if that's how I'm approaching a leadership philosophy, it's my job to also make sure that their legacy is captured and enshrined on the page. And so, yeah, I wanted, I wanted to. I wanted to write a book and I wanted it to be published and I wanted to be in the Library of Congress. So if people wanted to learn about what my men did in the War of Afghanistan, they could pull out Outlaw Batoon and read it. And it was hard, man. It was like, writing a book is really challenging, selling, getting an agent's even harder and then finding a publisher, the publisher shit is even harder than that. And so, it's just like.

• 4:50:36Jocko Willink?

  Did you just start writing and figure that the rest of that stuff would come together as it came together? The agent and the publisher and all this other stuff?

• 4:50:44Speaker 02

  I started writing and writing and writing and wrote a proposal, submitted it to agents, got rejected by everyone I submitted it to, rewrote it, submitted it to agents, got rejected by everyone I submitted it to. And eventually I just, you know, it was like a learning experience for me. It's like, I don't have this skill set. I need help, you know? And so then I started reading these military memoirs, researching the market, like doing everything I could to just soak up knowledge, learn everything I could about the phases of publishing. And I ended up reading House to House and a couple of other books that John Bruning had wrote. And I'm like, I love this. This guy's perfect. And this is before like Facebook was a thing. This was like, it was like Facebook was in its infancy, you know? And like, I'm like on MySpace, like trying to find the guy. And I end up finding this, this is no, like,

• 4:51:27Speaker 02

  I end up stumbling across, this is like my, me sleuthing on the internet, you know, stumbling across some cat website. And I see the name Shirley, I see the name Bruning, right? Sally Bruning, I can't remember what his sister's name. And it turns out to be his sister. I'm on this cat website, picture of these cats. Ma'am, I wrote her this email on her website. And I'm like, ma'am, you know, my name's Sean Parnell, the whole shtick, like my guys were in Afghanistan, we had a tough deployment. I'm desperate to meet your brother. If, if you are indeed his sister, and I think you might be, can you please put me in contact with him? It's like long shot, man. And I remember like sitting there in front of the computer. I'm like, ah damn, I don't want to send this email. I sound like a tool, like he's not gonna want to work.

• 4:52:08Jocko Willink?

  She's gonna call the cops.

• 4:52:09Speaker 02

  Yeah. It's this cat website. Yeah. And so I did. And a week later, I get an email from Bruning and I had a phone call with him and. After I

• 4:52:19Jocko Willink?

  How long did it take for him to comprehend the story that you had?

• 4:52:23Speaker 02

  And I, I told him briefly, we had about, we had an hour phone conversation. He goes, this is, this is like the craziest infantry story I've ever heard. He's like this, this, we need to get this book out there. And John just became, I mean, he just was so inspired by my men. He went to Afghanistan himself just to do the research to learn about it, just the smells, the sights, the sounds. He just wanted to experience it. And I mean, he just, he was all in, man. And when, when, when he was all in, we had a great creative vibe, you know? And that, that, that's really hard to come by, you know? It's hard to come by a guy that's just, your personality's mesh, that creatives mesh.

• 4:53:05Speaker 02

  And I mean, we worked 12 hours a day on that book and ended up signing with an agent and, and then the agent that had rejected me two or three times already. But it's like, that's life, man. You know, so much of life is like, you know, how many times you knock on that door? And the answer is until your knuckles bleed and if that don't work, you gotta kick that fucker in.

• 4:53:23Jocko Willink?

  Breach your up.

• 4:53:23Speaker 02

  Yeah. Sorry for dropping F bombs on your podcast, but, but I promised I wouldn't do that. No. But I, but so I ended up submitting this proposal, which I thought was awesome to all the big five publishers. Gets rejected by every one of them. At least I thought every one of them at the time. And I'm like up in some, you know, Walmart pool, like crying in my beer. I'm like, I failed my mission, but still like I'm publishing this. I don't care if I have to self-publish it. Three or four months go by, I hear nothing. You know how that process goes, you know, and you're never just did, I hadn't heard anything. I get a call from my agent and he's like, hey, you know, David Hyphill from William Morrow, Harper Collins, like love this.

• 4:54:03Speaker 02

  Like he wants to buy it. And I ended up reading the email. He's like, I've been on vacation abroad for a while. I stumbled across this. I don't think that there's no way that this could still be available, but I want it. And so sold it to David. And I've been publishing with William Morrow ever since and.

• 4:54:20Speaker 02

  It was just, I'm sort of giving the Cliff Notes version of the, of my publishing experience up into that point, trying to get an agent, trying to get a publisher. Oh my God, the game is exhausting. But you know, bringing Bruning on board was what really made it happen. I didn't have that skillset to do it. He, you know, I can write a good op ed, like a good history paper, but that writing a good story is a whole different thing.

• 4:54:40Jocko Willink?

  He did a great job. I mean, just talking to you for the last however many hours, 12 or whatever it's been, we've been sitting here.

• 4:54:47Speaker 02

  A week long podcast, like.

• 4:54:49Jocko Willink?

  But, but he did a great job because you know, the book sounds like you. The book reads like you.

• 4:54:53Speaker 02

  Yeah. He's, he's, he's since become just an amazing friend and he's a, he's, he's the most prolific military writer. I mean, he's, he wrote The Trident too with Jay Redman and um, he's, you know, oh my gosh, uh, uh, Level Zero Heroes, Gomblewski, about marine raiders. Uh, I mean, he's, he's written a couple of SEAL books. I mean, the guy's just, uh, writes about World War II, the latest, the latest book is indestructible. I mean, the guy's just prolific. He's awesome. He's a great writer and he, and, and more than that, he's a, he's a legit historian that knows his stuff with a deep reverence for the military and the legacy of the warrior. And he's just, he gets it. He just gets it.

• 4:55:34Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. And so the book comes out, the book, the book does great, right? New York Times bestseller.

• 4:55:41Speaker 02

  It did, it did, but it was like, it was not expected to like, it's so, it was not expected to, nobody, I mean, like, I was the newbie, I was the captain, like, nobody really knew what to do. They changed the cover five times, like, I didn't have any media contacts or anything. And the book comes out and it debuted on the list. Like, it debuted on the New York Times bestseller list. I think, I don't think it did, I think it was like 10, might've even been 12 or something, but I was like, holy shit, like, this is crazy. And not only that, it started ascending as the weeks went on. And so it was the New York Times bestseller list, I think, I think it were like 28 weeks or something like that. Again, I, I mean, no one expected it. Um, and then it came off the list and then around Christmas time that year, it went back

• 4:56:25Speaker 02

  on the list. And it's been boomeranging on and off the list ever since, which is just sort of crazy.

• 4:56:30Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 4:56:32Speaker 02

  You know, I think, you know, at the end of the day, people just, they just. They take the book, they read it and they pass it on to their friend and that's, that's what it's all about. That's why I wrote that book, you know, and so.

• 4:56:43Jocko Willink?

  And so then you also started working with businesses, started talking, started doing speaking engagements and that's what you're still doing.

• 4:56:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, that's what I do. I talk about, I, I talk about, you know, my experience in the military. I tell, tell combat stories, talk about leadership as well, servant leadership is, you know, is sort of the style that I stumbled upon. Um, and I talk about that, talk about with the corporations and, you know, I've sort of started doing some executive coaching as well, which I'm sort of like, I'm kind of like that. I just like dialogue, like rapping about leadership and stuff.

• 4:57:15Speaker 02

  More than that is like having the opportunity to learn with people that are a lot smarter than me too, you know? So coaching isn't a one-way street. You get to learn, you know, from each other. And so it's, it's great to be able to learn from some leaders that have been able to hone their skills in the corporate world for a really long time. And, uh, and I've got a nonprofit now where, where, well, I'm, I'm part of, I say I'm, I'm part of a nonprofit now.

• 4:57:37Jocko Willink?

  And that's AmericanWarriorInitiative.com?

• 4:57:40Speaker 02

  Yes, yes, yeah.

• 4:57:41Jocko Willink?

  So tell us a little bit about that.

• 4:57:43Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, so we were partnered with an amazing mortgage company, Fairway Mortgage. You spoke at their event. They're like.

• 4:57:50Jocko Willink?

  Great crew, great group of people.

• 4:57:52Speaker 02

  And look, man, people, people don't realize how special that company truly is. And I mean it from a cultural leadership standpoint that they are a, they are not like a bank, you know? They're not like Bank of America, Wells Fargo, Chase, but they're the fourth or fifth largest mortgage company in the world. Precisely because everybody wants to work for them.

• 4:58:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, great, great attitude.

• 4:58:12Speaker 02

  They're just awesome. I mean, I just, I just love them. I love them and I've been working with them since, um, I've been working with them since the book came out, 2012. I met the C, uh, CEO, Steve Jacobson, that company had 638 people. Now the company has over 7,000 people. It's just.

• 4:58:27Jocko Willink?

  Awesome.

• 4:58:27Speaker 02

  And so Jake just basically told Louise Thaxton, who is my co-founder, she said, look, you know, they served us. Now it's our turn to serve them, figure out a program where we can give back, take this, make something out of it, Louise. And Louise did, and she brought me on and we've been doing it ever since and. Gave a hundred percent of the proceeds and donations to veterans and now we sort of pivoted to giving away service dogs to vets and it's been awesome. It's been, it's been an amazing thing to be able to give back to people who have given everything.

• 4:58:56Jocko Willink?

  And then at some point along the way, you decided you were going to write more books?

• 4:59:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, must of my chagrin. Yeah, I told you about how the writing process is, you know, it's like,

• 4:59:06Jocko Willink?

  You're a glutton for punishment.

• 4:59:08Speaker 02

  It's like learning to ride a bicycle without a seat while on fire, you know? Yeah, I did. You know, I did.

• 4:59:15Jocko Willink?

  So you wrote, the first one that you wrote after Outlaw was Man of War.

• 4:59:18Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 4:59:19Jocko Willink?

  And these are, these are now novels.

• 4:59:20Speaker 02

  Yes, they're thrillers. Yeah. So I always wanted to, like, I'm from Pittsburgh, so like, I'm a big Steelers fan. My protagonist, my hero's name is Eric Steele. And also, also secretly, like, I had this brigade commander in Afghanistan in the 82nd Airborne. He came in, his name was Colonel Steele, S.T.E.E.L.E. And the guy was like 6'8", massive. I'm like, you know what, man? If I ever, if I ever accomplish my dreams and start writing fiction, you know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna name my protagonist Steele, because it works at a lot of different levels. So I did. And, you know, I just,

• 4:59:50Jocko Willink?

  And what's Eric Steele's background?

• 4:59:53Speaker 02

  So Eric Steele is a former special forces guy, former Green Beret. His special forces team gets overrun in Afghanistan. He's, he's one of two survivors, put in for the Medal of Honor. The award itself has stopped in its tracks and he's recruited for a secret government program called the Alpha Program. And the Alpha Program, there's nine alphas at any given time in the world, each responsible for a different geographic area of the world. And it's based, the alphas are basically the president's third option, where, you know, all out war, diplomacy fails, the president sends in an alpha to kick ass and take names and fix a situation. And there's only nine of them. Eric Steele is the youngest, most talented operator. And so Man of War throws

• 5:00:37Speaker 02

  Eric into a situation, it's my first book, throws Eric into an impossible situation against somebody that's an impossible enemy. He ends up establishing himself and learning a very important lesson that most warriors aren't on the battlefield, is that no matter how hard you try, you can't save everybody, you know? Mostly the reason why I wanted to create this character is because I feel like, you know,

• 5:00:59Speaker 02

  Our culture in this genre specifically is awash with like the anti-heroes, you know?

• 5:01:05Jocko Willink?

  Ragged edge.

• 5:01:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, he drinks a lot, but he's got a heart of gold, you know, like that guy, you know? And I just wanted to create a character who was good, who's good to the core of his being. And that good is exploited, right? In a number of different ways, bad guys finally seize upon it, exploit that goodness.

• 5:01:21Jocko Willink?

  There's the storyline.

• 5:01:22Speaker 02

  They put him in impossible situations, you know? You choose between the Syrian woman being raped and the mission. What do you choose, right? But the reason why I did this and I wanted to create this character is because he embodies the greatness and the heroism of what I, of the, of the men that I witnessed on the battlefield. These guys deserve, and I think our country to a certain extent deserves a mainstream fiction hero that embodies honor, integrity, selflessness, duty, love of country, uh, and love of the preservation of innocent life, right? I think at the core of the American warrior, we are protectors and we are liberators, right? That's part of who we are and that's who he is as well. And I think Eric Steele, you know, he's, he's the biggest, fastest, strongest, smartest guy.

• 5:02:06Speaker 02

  And oftentimes he can, you know, he can save the woman in Syria who's being raped and still accomplish the mission because he is who he is, right?

• 5:02:16Speaker 02

  But sometimes, as you know, in combat, like there are impossible situations, you know, where you have to choose very literally between human life and the mission. And sometimes as leaders, we have to make those calculations on a split second basis. And so Eric Steele is presented with those situations time and time again in these books. In the first book, he is, he figures out he can't save everybody. In the second book, the theme is, you know, and themes are oftentimes like in the background, maybe they're not consciously recognized as a reader of fiction, but the theme is, are you a man or are you a slave? You know? And the villain that he faces in the book is like the bad version of himself that's been tasked out by the Russian government to find and kill and target enemies of, of Russia. And the villain that he faces, it's like sick and tired of being a slave. So he's just going to take the fight to everybody that he deems a king.

• 5:03:02Speaker 02

  And Eric Steele is sort of, it's the same thing, right? Like Eric Steele is a servant to the United States and the difference is he's a servant, not a slave. And so that's the theme and, you know, I always try to pit Eric Steele up against villains that would be his greatest enemy. And again, not unlike situations that soldiers face in the battlefield all the time.

• 5:03:19Jocko Willink?

  So that's the one that's coming out. Yeah.

• 5:03:23Speaker 02

  All Out War comes out on September 3rd. Yeah. Man of War came out last year.

• 5:03:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Here's a little excerpt, because sometimes I just get fired up to read a little.

• 5:03:32Speaker 02

  I, I, you, you basically read half of Outlaw Platoon on the air and it was awesome. And I'm like, I want you to read all my audiobooks now. No offense to R.C. Bray, who's epic, but you know, you got a thing going there. I think you should, I think you could do it.

• 5:03:43Jocko Willink?

  So we're digging into this. This is All Out War. Thap. Steele dove behind the Peugeot and yanked the high power from his waistband. He crawled toward the engine block, heart hammering in his chest at the realization that someone had just tried to kill him in broad daylight. The Metropolitan Police didn't hide the fact that they installed cameras on every block. They operated on the theory that if criminals knew they were going to be recorded, they might think twice before breaking the law. Whoever had taken a shot at him didn't give a shit. Because instead of running away, the shooter flicked the selector switch to full auto and opened up on Steele's hiding place. Thap, flap, the Peugeot swayed under the onslaught.

• 5:04:24Jocko Willink?

  The car rocked on its hinges, the bullets blasting star-shaped holes through the aluminum skin as the shooter raked the car from stem to stern. Steele's plan was to hit him on the reload, but he never got the chance. Before the shooter ran through his first magazine, his second opened up. The bullets cut across the hood, punching through the metal with the sound of rocks on a tin roof. Steele judged that he had been under fire for less than 30 seconds. But in a gunfight, time was subjective.

• 5:04:58Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 5:04:59Speaker 02

  You got a knack for this, man.

• 5:05:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 5:05:01Speaker 02

  You got a knack for it.

• 5:05:01Jocko Willink?

  Well, I like, you know, I started this whole thing off about talking about the, the way that time slows down.

• 5:05:07Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 5:05:08Jocko Willink?

  And that's what I liked about this piece. It's like, yes, you, someone that's writing this, that actually understands that, that understands what it's like to have bullets cut, you know, hitting the roof, like, that's what I think makes these, that's where the power comes from in these things, right? You've got the character that's truly good. And you've got someone that's writing them that's been through these situations, so.

• 5:05:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, I hope, I mean, I think people, I mean, people like these books so far. I'm writing a third one. There's gonna be at least two more out. And, you know, I just feel like this country, we talk a lot about, we ask the question, does America understand the medal of her warrior sons, right? That's a question I've asked myself since Outlaw Platoon came out. This character embodies all the greatest aspects of the warrior ethos that I witnessed in my soldiers on the battlefield. And all of these books, the whole reason I write them is to help answer that question. Does America understand the medal of her warrior sons, right? You know, writing nonfiction is one way, right, to do that. People can

• 5:06:17Speaker 02

  pick up Outlaw Platoon, they can read it, they can get a sense of what it was like on the battlefield, boots on the ground. A lot of people don't read nonfiction. And fiction is another way, another audience, it's another way to get that, those types of values in front of Americans to help them understand, to help that bridge that cultural gap between, you know, veterans and warriors in society and people and citizens who reap the blessings of freedom on a day-to-day basis. You know, it's all about reaching a wider audience. And I think these books give people an opportunity to do that.

• 5:06:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, well, that's, yeah, that's awesome. So, we got the books. People will get these books. They'll definitely get Outlaw Platoon. Like I said, I read a fraction of it today. You said I read half of it. I didn't even come close. But, because there's so much more in there. And I'll tell you what, it was really hard for me to pick out what sections I wanted to read, because so many sections, there's so much information there, not just about what happened and the experiences, but about, but about leadership. So, yeah, awesome books. And I think, I think you're gonna see some people trying to get a hold of them. What else? You got the AmericanWarriorInitiative.com. Is there like, can you donate on that page? Is that possible?

• 5:07:31Speaker 02

  Yes, yes. And one of the things that our charity does is it gives you the opportunity to earmark your donation. So if you want to donate for a service dog, pick a time and event that you want that money to go to. And when we award the service dog, you know that your money went to that dog. So, we just want to give people a sense that if they want to donate to us, and we're honored to have it, we want to make sure that people are getting the best bang for their buck. And we want people to feel like they're a part of it.

• 5:07:55Jocko Willink?

  And, anything else on the horizon that we need to know about?

• 5:07:59Speaker 02

  Well, no, just my All Out War is coming out in, in, I think, two weeks exactly, right?

• 5:08:05Jocko Willink?

  Just give the date, what, September?

• 5:08:07Speaker 02

  September 3rd, yeah, oh yeah, All Out War is coming out September 3rd.

• 5:08:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 5:08:11Speaker 02

  You know, so, um, I'm excited about that, you know, I'm on, I'm on Instagram, OfficialSeanParnell, I'm on Twitter, SeanParnellUSA.

• 5:08:18Jocko Willink?

  And for your speaking engagements, Sean, OfficialSeanParnell.co.

• 5:08:23Speaker 02

  Co.

• 5:08:24Jocko Willink?

  Dot co. This is a little trick.

• 5:08:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:08:26Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 5:08:27Speaker 02

  So, the co is the new thing. Co is the, all the dot coms are taken, so snatch up the dot co's while you can. But I also own OfficialSeanParnell.com as well.

• 5:08:36Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 5:08:36Speaker 02

  But my website's OfficialSeanParnell.co.

• 5:08:38Jocko Willink?

  C O.

• 5:08:39Speaker 02

  Yes, and so, yeah, you can reach out to book me there too for speaking, yes.

• 5:08:43Jocko Willink?

  That is awesome. I, this, I think we've covered a decent amount. I think we're going on five hours? Little over five hours.

• 5:08:50Speaker 02

  This was awesome, man.

• 5:08:51Jocko Willink?

  You have now set the record for the longest podcast, All Out War. Speaking of All Out War, Echo Charles, you know that we are currently, you know, us collectively in the crew here, the kind of trooper zone that we're kind of within.

• 5:09:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:09:07Jocko Willink?

  We're kind of conducting an all-out war on weakness.

• 5:09:09Speaker 02

  On weakness, yeah.

• 5:09:10Jocko Willink?

  Do you have any, you know, kind of recommendations on how we could press forward with the war on weakness?

• 5:09:16Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure.

• 5:09:17Jocko Willink?

  What do you got?

• 5:09:18Speaker 02

  Oh, well, a few things. Kind of hard to transition, you know, we go through, you know, through this heavy stuff, which is heavy. And now we're going to talk about, I guess, some more lighthearted stuff. He's got a knife to your throat. Yeah, I'm sort of used to that.

• 5:09:34Jocko Willink?

  I should say, we are five hours deep.

• 5:09:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:09:36Jocko Willink?

  Maybe this is one of our more abbreviated, one of our more abbreviated, you know, scenarios.

• 5:09:43Speaker 02

  Alright, so, yeah, we can make it quick, but it's still important, though.

• 5:09:46Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 5:09:46Speaker 02

  So, we're not gonna, you see what I'm saying? Anyway, alright, we're against weakness. Alright, first step, take jujitsu if you haven't already. Jujitsu? I can do it, yeah, did it in the army. There you go.

• 5:09:57Jocko Willink?

  And he wrestled.

• 5:09:58Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, boom.

• 5:09:59Jocko Willink?

  In Pennsylvania.

• 5:10:00Speaker 02

  So, when you do jujitsu, if you do gi, which are, we collectively recommend gi and no gi, you're gonna need a gi. What gi do we get? Origin. Origin gi, made in America, American cotton, American...

• 5:10:17Speaker 01

  Threads all the way up to the gee boom yeah so not not cotton from somewhere else and then American made no American made from the ground up boom origin

• 5:10:28Jocko Willink?

  Kind of a big deal so yeah origin main.com if you ever want to come up we got a factory in Maine we're resurrecting manufacturing in America yes we are we have 50 people up there at the factory building the best gees we started with gees but guess what else we're making now jeans t-shirts sweatshirts we're making everything we're gonna rebuild this country from the inside out watch and in the meantime if you want to support you go to origin main.com

• 5:10:57Speaker 01

  Yep speaking all this stuff and not to mention supplements or should I say to mention supplement

• 5:11:02Jocko Willink?

  Yes supplements supplementation

• 5:11:05Speaker 01

  Yeah for yeah for physicality if you will

• 5:11:09Jocko Willink?

  And cognitive cognitive

• 5:11:11Speaker 01

  So mental and physical okay what do we got we got joint warfare which joint warfare and krill oil kinda brothers and sisters as far as supplements go if you well cousins

• 5:11:22Jocko Willink?

  Cousins

• 5:11:23Speaker 01

  Either way they're related because they help support your joints which in my opinion has has kinda sorted itself out to be the most important supplement

• 5:11:33Jocko Willink?

  We we we agree

• 5:11:34Speaker 01

  From the ground up boom keeps you in the game yeah keeps your joints good

• 5:11:38Jocko Willink?

  Some cognitive enhancement discipline and discipline go so we got that going on we got milk

• 5:11:43Speaker 01

  Additional protein

• 5:11:45Jocko Willink?

  Additional what what's your favorite flavor ice cream Sean Parnell

• 5:11:50Speaker 01

  Cookies and cream

• 5:11:51Jocko Willink?

  Cookies and cream

• 5:11:52Speaker 01

  Hundred percent

• 5:11:53Jocko Willink?

  Okay we don't have cookies and cream

• 5:11:55Speaker 01

  Well we gotta

• 5:11:59Jocko Willink?

  What's your second favorite ice cream flavor

• 5:12:01Speaker 01

  Cookie dough

• 5:12:01Jocko Willink?

  We don't have that either

• 5:12:03Speaker 01

  Okay chocolate chocolate

• 5:12:06Jocko Willink?

  We need to get some cookies

• 5:12:07Speaker 01

  Well of course yeah

• 5:12:08Jocko Willink?

  Get some cookies in the game

• 5:12:09Speaker 01

  We all need some cookies

• 5:12:10Jocko Willink?

  Do you like mint chocolate chip do you like

• 5:12:12Speaker 01

  I can do mint chocolate chip

• 5:12:13Jocko Willink?

  Oh that was weak

• 5:12:14Speaker 01

  Yeah that's

• 5:12:14Jocko Willink?

  Maybe milk isn't for you it's cool maybe milk

• 5:12:17Speaker 01

  It's for me I wanna it's gonna be for me

• 5:12:21Jocko Willink?

  Chocolate yes we do have chocolate we have strawberry which is amazing we have peanut butter which is equally amazing strawberry might be the most amazing and then we have mint chocolate chip which is see this is what's nice If you would have started a supplement company, guess what flavor you would have?

• 5:12:37Speaker 02

  Cookies and cream.

• 5:12:38Jocko Willink?

  Chocolate cookie cream dough, whatever you just said.

• 5:12:40Speaker 02

  It's just not.

• 5:12:40Jocko Willink?

  Guess who started the supplement company? I did. So guess what we have? Number one, mint chocolate chip. That's my favorite flavor.

• 5:12:45Speaker 02

  Is that your favorite flavor?

• 5:12:46Jocko Willink?

  Hell, yeah. Number two, peanut butter. What's my second favorite? Yes, that's number two. Number three, strawberry. So we went right in the orders of things that I like. Now, since you're kind of on board with it.

• 5:12:57Speaker 02

  You created it in your image.

• 5:12:58Jocko Willink?

  If you're kind of on board with the program, we can work on some cookies and cream.

• 5:13:01Speaker 02

  Of course I'm on board. I mean, I feel like cookies and cream is a very mainstream idea and concept. It's a very mainstream taste.

• 5:13:07Speaker 01

  I would agree with that. Um, well, it just sort of maybe slipped under the radar, right? Cause you like cookies and cream.

• 5:13:13Jocko Willink?

  Not, not, not, not gonna buy it like actively. So maybe not.

• 5:13:16Speaker 01

  I would. It's odd that, that Sean's like, oh, I can do mint chocolate chip. Cause usually, usually mint chocolate chip is either like, oh, man, I don't mess with the mint chocolate. That's just junk or that's my favorite one. Usually it's really polar like that.

• 5:13:30Speaker 02

  Yeah, I feel like why go with mint chocolate chip when there are so many good chocolatey goodness tastes? Like chocolate, regular chocolate or cookies and cream or cookie dough.

• 5:13:38Jocko Willink?

  Look, this may be not a topic we need to talk about right now, cause I'm starting to get a little bit, you know, frustrated at the whole situation here. People being anti mint chocolate chip.

• 5:13:46Speaker 01

  I know that is pretty psychotic in my opinion too, but I feel the same way about them.

• 5:13:50Jocko Willink?

  Let's go. So get all that, we got Jocko White Tea. Also, you've been drinking Jocko White Tea. This we know.

• 5:13:55Speaker 02

  I have. Drink like eight of them. Oh my God, it's amazing. I did, I drank 14 of them. That's like 14,000 grams of caffeine.

• 5:14:05Jocko Willink?

  There's 60 grams, there's 60 grams per can. So, yeah. So there's that.

• 5:14:09Speaker 02

  Plus the antioxidants.

• 5:14:11Jocko Willink?

  That's the thing that you felt kicking. Honestly.

• 5:14:13Speaker 02

  I can feel the antioxidants. It's like a super soldier serum.

• 5:14:17Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 5:14:18Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, it's a good way to put it.

• 5:14:19Jocko Willink?

  So that's orjamine.com if you want any of that stuff.

• 5:14:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Also, Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko Store. And this is where you can get more rash guards for jujitsu and for a lot, like, I was, I was looking on, uh, I think it was Twitter. Anyway, somebody who's using it for like a shooting competition, rash guard for shooting competition, for jujitsu and for something else too. So it's multi-purpose is what I'm saying. Also t-shirts.

• 5:14:45Jocko Willink?

  JockoStore.com. T-shirts, rash guards, trucker hats.

• 5:14:48Speaker 01

  Discipline equals freedom.

• 5:14:49Jocko Willink?

  Beanies, hoodies, all that kind of stuff. Also subscribe to the podcast if you haven't, have not subscribed to it yet, which is just absolutely crazy. But as Echo has proved to me, sometimes it happens. And don't forget that we also have the Warrior Kid Podcast.

• 5:15:03Speaker 02

  You do Warrior Kid?

• 5:15:04Jocko Willink?

  Warrior Kid Podcast.

• 5:15:06Speaker 02

  I'd be perfect for that podcast because I'm basically, I don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

• 5:15:10Jocko Willink?

  Yes, you, you could, you could pretend to be the 10 year old that you are.

• 5:15:15Speaker 02

  I am a 10 year old. I have no issue. I, I, I could rock that podcast.

• 5:15:20Jocko Willink?

  The Warrior Kid Podcast. And if you want to support the Warrior Kid Podcast, you can support a Warrior Kid. Aiden, who's making soap from goat milk. Irishoaksranch.com. Don't forget, we have a YouTube channel. If you want to see Echo's legit videos, we also have Psychological Warfare. If you need a little spot, psychological spot on your life.

• 5:15:42Speaker 01

  Moments of weakness.

• 5:15:43Jocko Willink?

  Moments of weakness need to be overcome. iTunes, Google Play, MP3 of all kinds, Psychological Warfare. The artist's name is

• 5:15:52Speaker 01

  Jaco.

• 5:15:52Jocko Willink?

  Jocko Willink.

• 5:15:55Jocko Willink?

  Flipside Canvas, my brother Dakota Meyer makes things for you to hang on your wall. Some people call it art. I call it things you hang on your wall. And they say stuff that will keep you on the path. So you can check that out.

• 5:16:08Speaker 02

  Dakota's amazing and those flipside canvases are pretty cool.

• 5:16:11Jocko Willink?

  They are awesome. Yes, for sure.

• 5:16:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%. Also, Onnit, Onnit.com slash Jaco, this is where you can get workout gear. Some cool green supplements as well. A lot of good stuff on there. That's where I get pretty much, not pretty much, 100% my kettlebells. And I got rings, of course, too. Best workout equipment. Onnit.com slash Jaco.

• 5:16:31Jocko Willink?

  And don't forget books. We got some books. We have Outlaw Platoon. We have Man of War and we have All Out War. Those are Sean's books. Freaking get them. I have a new book that has been unleashed into the world. It is called Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. It is available for preorder right now. You guys know the deal. You want that first edition and you know it. You want to get that first edition. Otherwise, when you come to a muster in a year and you're like, hey, can you sign this? And I'll, if it's a first edition, I'll be like, yeah, absolutely, bro, first edition.

• 5:17:09Jocko Willink?

  Or if you have second a dish, I'll say, oh, cool. Yeah, I'll sign it. Cool. Whatever. Obviously, you weren't in the game. You weren't supporting. You weren't trying to help us out. So Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, you can preorder that right now. Way of the Warrior Kid 3, Way of the Warrior Kid 2, and Way of the Warrior Kid 1. Get your kids on the path. Get your neighbors' kids on the path. Your neighbors, look at your neighbor. He's out there not paying attention to his kids. He's, he's watching the game instead of out there getting after it with his kids, right? Don't let it happen. You just, you just, just get an old Amazon box, put, put them in there and just put it on there like they just showed up.

• 5:17:49Speaker 02

  You have to be involved in the trajectory of the lives of your children. You have to be actively involved and engaged.

• 5:17:54Jocko Willink?

  Yes, and sometimes you see someone that doesn't have someone, right? There's no one there, man. Maybe the dad's just working hard. That happens. Hey, I know what dad that works hard. This one. I was gone all the time. And I would have loved to have had these books when my kids were younger, but I didn't. So I wrote them. So there you go. Way of the Warrior Kid. Get the series. Also, we've got a little kid. Who, how old's your youngest?

• 5:18:14Speaker 02

  Six.

• 5:18:15Jocko Willink?

  Six. Oh, yeah. We got Mikey and the Dragons for the little one. Is that a girl or a boy?

• 5:18:19Speaker 02

  A boy.

• 5:18:20Jocko Willink?

  Okay, cool. Yeah, Mikey and the Dragons. We'll, we'll get that going on. That's for the little bit younger, just a little bit younger than Warrior Kids. You can order that one as well. Discipline Goes Freedom Field Manual.

• 5:18:28Speaker 02

  Overcoming Fear. That's what Mikey and the Dragons is.

• 5:18:30Jocko Willink?

  Yep, it is indeed. Very helpful.

• 5:18:33Speaker 02

  Good.

• 5:18:33Jocko Willink?

  Some people say it's a kid's book. Other people say it's for everyone. Discipline Goes Freedom Field Manual, The Way to Get After It as a Grown Human. But that one gets give, given to like 15, 16 year old kids.

• 5:18:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:18:49Jocko Willink?

  That are just needing a little bit of, or sometimes they're on the path, but they want to stay on the path. So.

• 5:18:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 5:18:53Jocko Willink?

  Discipline Goes Freedom Field Manual. That audio is not on Audible. It's, it's an album with tracks. MP3, wherever you get them. Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership, the first two books that I wrote with my brother, Leif Babin. And those are about taking all these principles that we talked about today, about combat and how they apply to leadership in the world. We got Echelon Front. That's my leadership consultancy. And what we do is solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com for details. EF Online, this is where you can train your leadership in an interactive online situation because leadership training is not an inoculation. You don't learn it in one shot.

• 5:19:31Jocko Willink?

  You gotta study it. You gotta understand the principles like Sean and I were talking about earlier. You gotta understand the principles. The only way you do that is by going through them over and over again. And getting put in scenarios where you have to make decisions as a leader. And that's what happens in EF Online. We got the muster. Chicago's done. Denver sold out. Sorry. And then Sydney, Australia. That's once December 4th and 5th. That's the only one you have the opportunity to go to now. So if you want to come and you missed the other ones, come to Sydney, Australia. Go to extremeownership.com for details and we have EF Overwatch. Where we're taking proven leaders from Spec Ops and from Combat Aviation and placing them into companies in the civilian sector. And since

• 5:20:13Jocko Willink?

  communication isn't important in the field, you gotta be able to communicate and in life, you gotta be able to communicate. So if you want to communicate with us some more, because five hours isn't enough to hang out with Echo and Sean and Jocko. That just wasn't enough. You need some more. Sean is at officialseanparnell.co.co

• 5:20:31Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 5:20:32Jocko Willink?

  His Twitter is Sean Parnell USA. His Instagram is officialseanparnell. His Facebook is officialseanparnell. For Echo and I, we are also on Twitter, on Instagram. We're also on dein frusen breiki.

• 5:20:51Jocko Willink?

  Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. Echo. You've been very talkative today. Got anything else?

• 5:20:56Speaker 01

  No, I'm all talked out.

• 5:21:00Jocko Willink?

  Sean. Any, any closing thoughts?

• 5:21:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, man, I'm just, uh, it's, it's a blessing to come back from Afghanistan. I think like anybody that's been to war and come home knows that every day you gotta wake up, you gotta earn it, every single breath. Uh, live a life worthy of the sacrifice of the people that you fought with over there. And part of that means like being there for your kids and thanking God that I was able to come back and have kids and be able to pass on that warrior generation and then these types of mindsets to them. Um, so I'm excited to, to get back to my kids and be a dad and do cool stuff with them, you know? Play some Pokemon, you know, I know you do that too, Jaco, don't try to be tough.

• 5:21:44Jocko Willink?

  You can either play Pokemon, or you can teach him, you know, jiu-jitsu and how to shoot a bow and arrow.

• 5:21:49Speaker 02

  I can do that too. Don't judge me with your judging eyes.

• 5:21:54Jocko Willink?

  Always judging.

• 5:21:56Speaker 02

  Always, always watching. Shoot, shoot the bow, shoot the bow.

• 5:22:00Jocko Willink?

  But, hey man, seriously, uh, thanks for coming on. I know people have been trying to set this up over social media for a long time.

• 5:22:07Speaker 02

  A long time, years. I feel like it's been years.

• 5:22:10Jocko Willink?

  It has been years. I bet if we went back and did the research, probably been a couple of years that people have been trying to get you to come on here. I've been just, you know, the door's been open and finally we're able to get you out here, which is awesome. And, uh, thanks for your service. Thanks to Outlaw Platoon, Bravo Company, Second Battalion, Eighty-seventh Infantry Regiment of the famed Tenth Mountain Division.

• 5:22:33Jocko Willink?

  Thanks to all you guys for your service and to the rest of our military members out there who face incredible challenges day in and day out. And no matter what comes their way, they look at it and they say, "We got this." No worries. And think about that, America, when you're lying safely in your bed at night. And to our police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service and all the first responders out there. You all have that same attitude on our home front. That you got this.

• 5:23:16Jocko Willink?

  So, thank you for keeping us safe and to everyone else out there.

• 5:23:23Jocko Willink?

  Life can be rough. And there are times that life can seem like sustained combat operations, but in most cases, there's no one trying to kill you. There's no one assaulting you and your team with a wide array of devastating weapons looking to come and cut your head off.

• 5:23:44Jocko Willink?

  But whatever you are facing, you can make it through and the best way to do that is to do what outlaw platoon did. Take the fight to the enemy, be default aggressive, don't sit back and allow bad things to put you on your heels. Go on the offense, counter attack aggressively and get after it. And until next time, this is Sean Parnell and Echo and Jaco out.