39: Brave Men

0:00:00 - Opening / Brave Men by E. Pyle 1:33:37 - Cool Internet / Onnit Stuff 1:54:35 - end of podcast 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 39 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo.

• 0:09Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:14Jocko Willink?

  I heard of a high British officer. Who went over the battlefield just after the action was over. American boys were still lying dead in their foxholes, their rifles still grasped and firing position in their dead hands.

• 0:35Jocko Willink?

  And the veteran English soldier remarked time and again, in a sort of hushed eulogy, spoken only to himself. Brave men.

• 0:49Jocko Willink?

  Brave men.

• 0:54Jocko Willink?

  And that is the name of the book we are going to delve into now.

• 1:01Jocko Willink?

  Brave men. And a few episodes ago, we talked with. Kiran Dharde.

• 1:11Jocko Willink?

  War photographer. And when we talked with him, we talked about war correspondents as well. And I wanted to.

• 1:24Jocko Willink?

  Get. A war correspondent here. And in this case, the one that we're going to be talking to.

• 1:35Jocko Willink?

  Is possibly. The most famous war correspondent ever. Guy by the name of Ernie Pyle.

• 1:46Jocko Willink?

  And we will join him now. On a warship. Steaming. Towards an inevitable invasion.

• 2:08Jocko Willink?

  The frontline soldier I knew lived for months like an animal and was a veteran in the cruel fierce world of death. Everything was abnormal and unstable in his life. He was filthy, dirty, ate if and when, slept on hard ground without cover. His clothes were greasy and he lived in a constant haze of dust pestered by flies and heat, moving constantly deprived of all things that once meant stability. Things such as walls, chairs, floors, windows, faucets, shelves, Coca-Cola.

• 2:51Jocko Willink?

  And the little matter of knowing that he would go to bed at night in the same place he had left in the morning. The frontline soldier has to harden his inside as well as his outside or he would crack under the strain.

• 3:09Jocko Willink?

  Some thoughts from Ernie Pyle. Out on a ship, getting ready for this invasion, talking about what the soldiers were like, and he'd been in Africa. And now he's out there with sailors and he has something to say about the sailors as well. Of course, when sailors die, death for them is just as horrible. And sometimes they die in greater masses than soldiers. But until the enemy comes over the horizon, a sailor doesn't have to fight. A frontline soldier has to fight everything all the time. It makes a difference in a man's character.

• 3:49Jocko Willink?

  And Ernie Pyle goes on to talk about

• 3:53Jocko Willink?

  what he thinks of the frontline soldier. Everyone by now knows how I feel about the infantry. I'm a rabid one-man movement bent on tracking down and stamping out everybody else in the world who doesn't fully appreciate the common frontline soldier.

• 4:13Jocko Willink?

  And if I haven't made myself perfectly clear

• 4:19Jocko Willink?

  in everything I say and everything I do, that's the same exact feeling that I have about the infantry.

• 4:29Jocko Willink?

  Respect and admiration.

• 4:33Jocko Willink?

  And now he's talking about what it was like, what's going through their minds as they're gonna partake in this, our invasion. And you gotta remember, he's going on invasion too. But when, when he, when these things are happening, this is a war correspondent. This isn't somebody that's reporting from some safe position and you, and you're gonna see plenty of that here. He's going in. So he can relate to what the troopers are going through mentally.

• 5:04Jocko Willink?

  And this is a very, really accurate

• 5:10Jocko Willink?

  description. Back to the book. "I don't believe one of us was afraid of the physical part of dying. That isn't the way it is. The emotion is rather one of almost desperate reluctance to give up the future."

• 5:27Jocko Willink?

  They're not afraid of the physical stuff. It's the reluctance to give up the future.

• 5:34Jocko Willink?

  "I suppose that's splitting hairs and that it really all comes under the heading of fear. Yet somehow, there is a difference. These gravely yearned-for futures of men going into battle include so many things. Things such as seeing the old lady again, of going to college, of staying in the Navy for a career, of holding on your knee just once to your own kid whom you've never seen, of again becoming champion salesman of your territory, or driving a cold truck around streets of Kansas City once more, and yes, even just sitting in the sun once more on the south side of a house in New Mexico.

• 6:17Jocko Willink?

  When we huddled around together on the dark decks, it was these little hopes and ambitions that made up the sum total of our worry at leaving, rather than any visualization of physical agony to come."

• 6:36Jocko Willink?

  Very, very accurate.

• 6:42Jocko Willink?

  Now, and I, I gotta say that with this book, this is a fairly, fairly thick book. What do we got? Almost 500 pages. And I had to burn through big chunks of it.

• 6:58Jocko Willink?

  To get to some of the stuff that I wanted to cover. But there's a lot of very important detail in here. And one of the things that Ernie Pyle was known for was capturing what it was like, not for the big, general, not for the big strategist, but what it was like to live every day as a grunt.

• 7:21Jocko Willink?

  So, the invasion takes place, and I think this was the, uh, they, they went into Italy. And Ernie actually spent that invasion on the ship, the initial part of the invasion, and then he goes ashore. And for whatever reason, he gets sick. Gets like, sick, ill. Doesn't get wounded, but he just gets ill, and he ends up in a field hospital.

• 7:44Jocko Willink?

  And we've had several, several books take us into field hospitals, and we know that they are a horrible, horrible place.

• 7:54Jocko Willink?

  But there is

• 7:57Jocko Willink?

  some pretty glorious things that come out of those two, and I'll go to the book here. It was flabbergassing to me to lie there and hear wounded soldiers cuss and beg to be sent right back to the fight. Of course, not all of them did that. It depended on the severity of their wounds and on their individual personalities, just as it would in peacetime. But at least a third of the less severely wounded men asked if they couldn't return to duty immediately.

• 8:31Jocko Willink?

  So all those fears that we just talked about, and then you go into battle and you get wounded? And the first thing you do when you get back to the aid station and say, "Send me back to the front."

• 8:43Jocko Willink?

  He goes into a specific case here. One big blond infantryman had slight flesh wounds in the face and the back of his neck. He had a patch on his upper lip which prevented him from moving it and made him talk in a grave, straight-faced manner that was comical. "I've never seen anybody so mad in my life." He went from one doctor to another trying to get somebody to sign his card, returning him to duty. The doctors explained patiently that if he returned to the front, his wounds would become infected and he would be a burden to his company instead of a help. They tried to entice him by telling him there would be nurses back in the hospital, but in his peaceful Oklahoma drawl, he retorted to hell with the nurses. "I want to get back to fightin'."

• 9:27Jocko Willink?

  Dying men were brought into our tent. Men whose death rattle silenced the conversation and made us all thoughtful. When a man was almost gone, the surgeons would put a piece of gauze over his face. He could breathe through it, but we couldn't see his face well. Twice within five minutes, chaplains came running. One of those occasions haunted me for hours. The wounded man was still semi-conscious. The chaplain knelt down beside him and two ward boys squatted nearby. The chaplain said, "John, I'm going to say a prayer for you." Somehow, this stark announcement hit me like a hammer.

• 10:10Jocko Willink?

  It didn't say, "I'm going to pray for you to get well." He just said he was going to say a prayer. And it was obvious to me that he meant a final prayer. He voiced the prayer and the weak, gasping man tried vainly to repeat the words after him. When he had finished, the chaplain added, "John, you're doing fine. You're doing fine." Then he rose and dashed off on some other call and the ward boys went about their duties. The dying man was left utterly alone. Just lying there on his litter on the ground, lying in an aisle because the tent was full.

• 10:56Jocko Willink?

  Of course, it couldn't be otherwise. But the aloneness of that man as he went through the last few minutes of his life was what tormented me.

• 11:07Jocko Willink?

  I felt like going over and at least holding his hand while he died. But it would have been out of order and I didn't do it.

• 11:18Jocko Willink?

  I wish now I had.

• 11:33Jocko Willink?

  In addition to talking about the infantry. He also talks about the engineers and for those of you that don't know, engineers are basically military construction people that build things. They also do other jobs like getting rid of mines and doing mine clearance. They do that often as well.

• 11:59Jocko Willink?

  And

• 12:02Jocko Willink?

  we'll go back to the book. During the latter days of the Sicilian campaign, I spent all my time with combat engineers of two different divisions. The engineers were in it up to their ears. Scores of times during the Sicilian fighting, I heard everybody from generals to privates remark that this is certainly an engineer's war. And indeed it was. Every foot of our advance upon the gradually withdrawing enemy was measured by the speed with which our engineers could open the highways, clear the mines, and bypass the blown bridges.

• 12:34Jocko Willink?

  And this, this was the same thing that we, we had in Ramadi. The, the engineers were just absolutely. First of all, they were incredibly professional and their job was incredibly dangerous. They were clearing mines. They were doing these, building these combat outposts in the city.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Are they armed the engineer like in your case?

• 12:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, they are, but you know, picture a guy that has to go and and move sandbags to the top of a building. He's he's carrying a, you know, a sixty pound sandbag. He's got all of his gear on and and it's a semi protected area. Not fully protected, but so a lot of times, hey, they're they're they might have a pistol on them, but they're working their construction work. They're working construction. You know, now that doesn't mean that they're not also picking up security when they have to. But man, it's a it's a grueling, grueling job and and so incredibly dangerous. And

• 13:34Jocko Willink?

  the book also talks about other pieces, you know, again, we talk about infantry, but there's other pieces. There's engineers who are doing all this building. There's artillery, which is, you know, dropping bombs on the enemy and and actually that was another. Surprisingly, there was art we utilized. They utilized artillery fairly significantly in Ramadi.

• 13:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, that that it's when you think about that, like the engineers in a war zone, right? It's not like compared to like MMA fight, right? The cut man where he's like facilitating all these things, giving water, whatever, but that's between rounds. He's not part of the fight. The engineer guys, they're straight up. Yeah, they're gonna get hit, but here's the thing, they're they're not there specifically to fight. They're there to do some other stuff. So it's like, man, they can get blindsided like all that stuff.

• 14:23Jocko Willink?

  It's incredibly and and yet, you know, you think, oh, it's engineers, they're construction guys. You you maybe people don't don't see them in the light of being legit combat warriors. And I'm here to tell you one hundred percent without any shred of doubt. Those guys are hardcore combat warriors that have an incredibly tough job. And obviously, the American engineers have been just outstanding. World War Two, I mean, and when I saw them in Ramadi, they were a sight to behold without question. And same thing, like I said, I was talking about the artillery. They used artillery in in Ramadi as well, which was which was.

• 15:05Jocko Willink?

  It was pretty cool for me, right? Cause you know, I always grew up watching World War II movies and, and you know, there I was in Ramadi, man, we had tanks out there in the streets, smashing through, smashing through buildings and firing their main gun rounds. And then we had engineers out there rebuilding bridges and building combat outposts. And then we had artillery that was firing counter battery out at the enemy that was shooting mortars at us. And at nighttime, sometimes we'd fire illumination rounds, just like a big assault in a World War II. So it was very, I was, I feel very lucky to have been able to experience that, that almost,

• 15:47Jocko Willink?

  you know, World War II type feeling. Now again, I'm not comparing anything that I did to a veteran from World War II by any stretch of the imagination. But it was cool to get a little taste of it, just a little, just a little taste of it, just a little taste of it and understand, I mean, I can't, you know, we were, you know, the, the, imagine fighting against other troops that were as well trained as you were, which is what you're doing in Germany when you're, when you're invading France, you're going against, I mean, the insurgents, they're, they're a hard fight. They're an enemy that I respect their capabilities, but they're not as well trained or as well organized or as well

• 16:26Jocko Willink?

  led as let's say the German army in World War II, right? So it's a tough enemy.

• 16:35Jocko Willink?

  And so as he continues through the book, and as I said, I, this is a big, thick book, and I had to really be selective about what to call out. And he talks about the various phases of the war. He talks a pretty big chunk about the air war.

• 16:54Jocko Willink?

  But really, it's all leading towards one thing. It's all leading towards one event. It's all leading towards one invasion and that's D-Day. And he spends time in England, you know, they're doing the preparation and they're having, they're doing what the Americans did in England when they were getting ready. And then finally, they get the word that the mission is going to commence.

• 17:24Jocko Willink?

  And we'll go to the book.

• 17:26Jocko Willink?

  We felt our chances were not very good and we were not happy about it. Men like Don Whitehead and Clark Lee, who had been through the mill so long and so boldly, began to get nerves. Frankly, I was the worst of the lot and continued to be. I began having terrible periods of depression and often would dream hideous dreams. All the time fear lay blackly deep upon our consciousness. It bore down on our hearts like an all-consuming weight. People would talk to us and we wouldn't want to hear what they were saying.

• 18:08Jocko Willink?

  Now those, again, those are the correspondents. Those are the war correspondents. That's who he's talking about. When they, when they bring them together, they're talking like a squad or a platoon of war correspondents. And they are scared to death.

• 18:25Jocko Willink?

  The army said they would try and give us 24 hours notice of departure. Actually, the call came at nine o'clock one morning and we were ordered to be at a certain place with full field kit at 10:30 a.m. We threw our stuff together.

• 18:42Jocko Willink?

  Probably a smart way to do it. You know, hey, we'll give you 24 hours advance notice. Don't worry, you know, we'll let you know. Hey, report in an hour. Cause, cause, and he's gonna talk about this, the waiting isn't, is not good. That is, that is the stress part. And it's the same thing with everything. Anything that you, actually, you know, like a jujitsu tournament, when you're waiting to compete, that's the worst part. Once you, once you go, okay, your mind is free and you're just doing what you do, even during a workout. If you got a hard workout that you're gonna do, you're dreading it. And I do this. I'll be like, like if I have squats, and I'm sitting there, I'll make all kinds of, maybe I need to stretch a little bit more. You know what? Let me just grab a little bit more water.

• 19:27Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, and then let me check the lineup of the music that's gonna play and just make sure that that's good to go. And hold on, is this, is this bumper plate look straight? I'm gonna straighten that out. So you just sit there and hem and haw. And then finally you walk over, you press, you press your start on your stopwatch. And then there's no stopping. You just go. And it, half an hour later.

• 19:48Jocko Willink?

  The deed is done.

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 19:49Jocko Willink?

  But the waiting.

• 19:51Speaker 01

  Yep, it's good, yeah. If it's going down, let's get it over with, kind of thing.

• 19:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know what? This is that Shakespeare quote that I read one time on here, that that moment in between taking the action. And when you think of the action, and when you take the action, that moment is an eternity.

• 20:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:05Jocko Willink?

  An abyss.

• 20:08Jocko Willink?

  So you gotta close the distance on that thing. Which is exactly what they did. Oh, we'll give you 24 hours. Nowhere to close the distance. You got an hour and a half. Be here with your gear. Ready to get it on. Back to the book. Bill Stoneman, another correspondent who had been wounded once, never showed the slightest concern. Whether he felt any concern or not, I could not tell. Bill had a humorous, sardonic manner. While we were waiting for departure into the unknown, he took out a pencil and a notebook.

• 20:37Jocko Willink?

  As though starting to interview me. Tell me, Mr. Pyle, how does it feel to be an assault correspondent? Being a man of few words, I said, it feels awful.

• 20:52Jocko Willink?

  We had hardly got aboard when the lines were cast off and we pulled out. That evening, the Colonel commanding the troops on our ship gave me the whole invasion plan in detail. The secret the whole world had waited years to hear. Once a man had heard it, it became permanently part of it. He became permanently part of it. Then he was committed. It was too late to back out, even if his heart failed him. I asked a good many questions. I realized my voice was shaking when I spoke, but I couldn't help it. Yes, it would be tough, the Colonel admitted. Our own part would be precarious.

• 21:33Jocko Willink?

  He hoped to go in with as few casualties as possible, but there would be casualties.

• 21:40Jocko Willink?

  From a vague anticipatory dread, the invasion now turned into a horrible reality for me. In a matter of hours, the Holocaust of our own planning would swirl over us. No man could guarantee his own fate. It was almost too much for me. A feeling of utter desperation obsessed me throughout the night. It was nearly 4:00 a.m. before I got to sleep. And then it was asleep, harassed and torn by an awful knowledge.

• 22:17Jocko Willink?

  My devastating sense of fear and depression disappeared when we approached the beachhead.

• 22:26Jocko Willink?

  There was the old familiar crack and roar of big guns all around us and the shore was a great brown haze of smoke and dust and we knew that the bombers would be over us that night, yet all the haunting premonition, the soul-consuming dread was gone. The war was prosaic to me again, and I believe that was true of everyone aboard, even those who had never been in combat before. So, again, once this gig kicks off, all that horror is gone and now it's time to get the job done. So, when you're out there in the world and you're feeling that dread and you're feeling

• 23:05Jocko Willink?

  that hesitation, just step. Go. It's not helping you to sit around and be nervous. It's not helping you to see if you need another little sip of water before you start doing what you're doing. There's bad news to deliver in your business, there's no sense in doing another pace lap outside the room where people are waiting to hear from you. Get in and get it going.

• 23:31Jocko Willink?

  Now, he does a great job here telling about how hard this actually was. Because you know, we go, "Oh, D-Day, yeah, oh yeah, it was a tough fight." Here's some detail on that. "I want to tell you what the opening of the second front in that one sector entailed so that you can know and appreciate and forever be humbly grateful to those, both dead and alive, who did it for you. Ashore, facing us, were more enemy troops than we had in our assault waves. The advantages were all theirs, the disadvantages, all ours. The Germans were dug into positions they had been working on for months, although

• 24:16Jocko Willink?

  they were not entirely complete. A 100-foot bluff, a couple of hundred yards back from the beach, had great concrete gun emplacements built right into the hilltop. These opened to the sides instead of the front, thus making it hard for naval fire from the sea to reach them. They could shoot parallel to the shore and cover every foot of it for miles with artillery fire." Hundred foot cliff, by the way. Just don't, let's not even worry about the enemy, a hundred foot cliff after you come out of the water. That's what you're facing. Then you put pillboxes and you put Germans in those pillboxes. By the way, more Germans than there are Americans.

• 24:59Jocko Willink?

  It's a nightmare. Back to the book. Then they had hidden machine gun nests on the forward slopes with crossfire taking in every inch of the beach. These nests were connected by networks of trenches so that the German gunners could move about without exposing themselves. Throughout the length of the beach running zigzag, a couple hundred yards back from the shoreline was an immense V-shaped ditch fifteen feet deep. Nothing could cross it, not even men on foot until it fill, until fills had been made. And in other places at the far end of the beach where the ground was flatter, they had concrete walls. These were blasted by our naval gunfire or by explosives by hand after we got ashore.

• 25:41Jocko Willink?

  Our only exits from the beach were several swales or valleys, each one about a hundred yards wide. The Germans made the most of those funnel-like traps, sewing them with buried mines. They also contained barbed wire entanglements with mines attached, hidden ditches, and machine guns firing from the slopes.

• 26:03Jocko Willink?

  This is just, it's, it's, it's unbelievable. It's unbelievable. The amount of defenses that were in place and the fact that we pushed through it. And I humbly use the term "we."

• 26:20Jocko Willink?

  All this was done on the shore, but our men had to go through a maze nearly as deadly before they even got ashore. Underwater obstacles were terrific. Under the water, the Germans had whole fields of evil devices to catch our boats. Several days after landing, we had cleared only channels through them. And still could not approach through the whole length of the beach with our ships. Even then, some ship or boat would hit one of those mines and be knocked out of commission. The Germans had masses of great six-pronged spiders made of railroad iron. And standing shoulder-high just beneath the surface of the water for our landing craft to run into. They had huge logs buried in the sand, pointing upward and outward, their tops just below the water.

• 27:06Jocko Willink?

  Attached to the logs were mines.

• 27:10Jocko Willink?

  In addition to these obstacles, they had floating mines offshore, landmines buried in the sand of the beach, and more mines checkerboard in checkerboard rows in the tall grass beyond the sand. And the enemy had four men on shore for every three men we had approaching the shore. And yet, we got on. Going against a defended position is so very difficult. The odds, well, in doctrinally, in urban warfare, you're supposed to have ten men for every one defender. Ten men for every one defender.

• 27:51Jocko Willink?

  And here we were, outmanned, against a heavily defended fortified position.

• 28:00Jocko Willink?

  So how do you do it? Well, back to the book. As one officer said, "The only way to take a beach is to face it and keep going. It is costly at first, but that's the only way. If the men are pinned down on the beach dug in and out of action, they may as well not be there at all. They hold up the waves behind them, and nothing is being gained." So, art of war, Sun Tzu attack, well, guess what? There's only one way to do this. You gotta do it. Now he talks about, as the carnage.

• 28:44Jocko Willink?

  After the initial beach had been taken, he talks about some of the carnage that remains there. "In this shoreline museum of carnage, there were abandoned rolls of barbed wire and smashed boulders, and big stacks of thrown away life belts and piles of shells still waiting to be moved. In the water floated empty life rafts, and soldiers' packs, and ration boxes, and mysterious oranges. On the beach lay snarled rolls of telephone wire, and big rolls of steel matting, and stacks of broken, rusting rifles."

• 29:21Jocko Willink?

  But there was another and more human litter. It extended in a thin little line, just like a high-water mark from miles along the beach. This was the strewn personal gear, gear that would never be needed again by those who fought and died to give us our entrance into Europe.

• 29:41Jocko Willink?

  There, in a jumbled row for mile on mile, were soldiers packs. There were socks and shoe polish, sewing kits, diaries, bibles, hands grenades. There were the latest letters from home, with the address on each one neatly razored out, one of the security precautions enforced before the boys embarked. There were toothbrushes and razors and snapshots of families back home staring up at you from the sand.

• 30:12Jocko Willink?

  There were pocketbooks, metal mirrors, extra trousers, and bloody abandoned shoes. There were broken-handled shovels and portable radios smashed almost beyond recognition and mine detectors twisted and ruined.

• 30:30Jocko Willink?

  There were torn pistol belts and canvas water buckets, first aid kits, and jumbled heaps of life belts. I picked up a pocket bible with a soldier's name in it and put it in my jacket. I carried it half a mile or so and then put it back down on the beach. I don't know why I picked it up, or why I put it down again. Soldiers carry strange things with them ashore. In every invasion, there's at least one soldier hitting the beach at eight hour with a banjo slung over his shoulder. The most ironic piece of equipment marking our beach, the first, this beach, first of

• 31:13Jocko Willink?

  despair, then of victory, was a tennis racket that some soldier had brought along. It lay lonesomely on the sand, clamped in its press, not a string broken.

• 31:26Jocko Willink?

  Two of the most dominant items on the beach refuse, in the beach refuse, were cigarettes and writing paper. Each soldier was issued a carton of cigarettes just before he started. That day, those cartons, by the thousand, water-soaked and spilled out, marked the line of our first savage blow.

• 31:48Jocko Willink?

  Writing paper and airmail envelopes came second. The boys intended to do a lot of writing in France. Imagine the letters, now forever incapable of being written, that might have filled those blank, abandoned pages.

• 32:15Jocko Willink?

  Now,

• 32:18Jocko Willink?

  talking a little bit about the German prisoners as they start to roll up German prisoners. Some of the German officers were pleased at being captured. But the dyed-in-the-wool Nazi was not. They brought in a young one who was furious. He considered it thoroughly unethical for us to fight so hard.

• 32:41Jocko Willink?

  That's right. Did you heard what I said? He thought it was unethical how hard the Americans fought.

• 32:49Jocko Willink?

  The Americans had attacked all night and the Germans don't like a night attacks. We're coming to get you. And this special fellow was brought in. When this special fellow was brought in, he protested and raged. "You Americans, the way you fight, that is, this is not war. This is madness." The German was so outraged, he never even got the irony of his own remarks. That madness, though it were, it worked.

• 33:17Jocko Willink?

  Another high-ranking officer was brought in and the first thing he asked was the whereabouts of his personal orderly. When told that his orderly was deader than a mackerel, he flew off the handle and accused us of depriving him of his personal comfort. "Who's going to dig my foxhole for me?" he demanded. Little German aristocracy going on in the ranks. But what a testament. You know, I was just kind of talking about how tough the Germans were, which they certainly were. But here's the German saying, "Good Lord, it's unethical that you fight this hard." That's right.

• 33:57Speaker 01

  The Germans thought they were rolling light, you know, you know, hey, let's roll light. And Americans were like, no, we're going ADCC style.

• 34:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, no, it's on. This is the world championships.

• 34:07Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 34:07Jocko Willink?

  Literally, the world championships. I always, uh, you know, American, the American fighting spirit is a powerful, powerful force. And sometimes people don't recognize that. Cause you know what? We're living here pretty good. And even back then, now we're coming out of the depression. So you did have some hard living back in America.

• 34:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:32Jocko Willink?

  But you can trace that pre-depression, Americans fight hard. There's no doubt about it. And I can, I've personally, personally witnessed the spirit of the American soldier. And it is a damn impressive thing.

• 34:53Jocko Willink?

  Going to get into some, well, the name of the chapter here is street fighting.

• 35:01Jocko Willink?

  One of, one of the favorite generals among war correspondents was Major General Manten S. Eddie, commander of the ninth division. We liked him because he was absolutely honest with us, because he was sort of an old shoe and easy to talk with. And because we thought he was a mighty good general. General Eddie looked more like a school teacher than a soldier. He was a big, tall man, but he wore glasses and his eyes had a sort of squint. Being a mid-westerner, he talked like one. He still claims Chicago is home, although he'd been an army officer for 28 years. He was wounded in the last war. He was not glib, but he talked well and laughed easily.

• 35:44Jocko Willink?

  In spite of being a professional soldier, he despised war and like any ordinary soul was appalled by the waste and tragedy of it. He wanted to win and get home just as badly as anybody else.

• 36:01Jocko Willink?

  General Eddie especially liked to show up in places where his soldiers wouldn't expect to see him. Little leadership lessons right now from General Eddie. Nothing wrong with smiling, talking with the boys, knowing what's going on. And then boom, show up in places where his soldiers wouldn't expect to see him. He knew it helped the soldiers' spirits to see their commanding general right up there at the front where it was hot. So he walked around the front with his long stride, never ducking or appearing to be concerned at all. One day I rode around with him on one of his tours. We stopped at a command post and were sitting on the grass under a tree, looking at maps with a group of officers around us. Our own military was banging nearby, but nothing was coming our way.

• 36:43Jocko Willink?

  Then, like a flash of lightning, there came a shell just over our heads, so low it went right through the treetops, it seemed. It didn't whine, it wished. It swished. Everybody, including full colonels, flopped over and began grabbing grass. The shell exploded in the next orchard. General Eddie didn't move. He just said, "That was one of our shells."

• 37:08Jocko Willink?

  The general also liked to get up at four o'clock in the morning. Once in a while, to go poking around into the message centers and mess halls, giving the boys a start.

• 37:20Jocko Willink?

  Sounds like he was a little bit of an early riser. Trying to be up before the enemy. He was definitely up before the enemy. Well, apparently, you know, the Germans, they were saying, "Hey, it's nighttime." Yeah, yeah. Leave some rest over here.

• 37:33Jocko Willink?

  During the Cherbourg Peninsula campaign, I spent nine days with the Ninth Infantry Division, the division that cut the peninsula, and one of the three that overwhelmed the great port of Cherbourg.

• 37:46Jocko Willink?

  The Ninth is one of our best divisions. It landed in Africa and fought through Tunisia and Sicily. Then it went to England in the fall of 1943 and trained all winter for the invasion of France. It was one of the American divisions in the invasion that had previous battle experience. The Ninth did something in that campaign that we hadn't always done in the past. It kept tenaciously on the enemy's neck.

• 38:11Jocko Willink?

  When the Germans would withdraw a little, the Ninth was right on top of them. It never gave them a chance to reassemble or get their balance. The Ninth moved so fast it got to be funny. I was based at the division command post and we struck our tents and moved forward six times in seven days. That worked the daylights out of the boys who took down and put up the tents. I overheard one of the boys saying, "I'd rather be with Ringling Brothers."

• 38:38Jocko Willink?

  But that's a little strategic importance there.

• 38:43Jocko Willink?

  The Ninth was just, "Oh, we're gonna get you and we're gonna come after you and we're not gonna stop." You're not gonna get a chance to recover, you're not gonna get a chance to rest. Sometimes you gotta go in that mode, no matter what you're doing in life. Sometimes you gotta go in that mode. You don't back off, and I'll tell you what, you wanna rest. People wanna rest.

• 39:04Jocko Willink?

  But sometimes you can't. Sometimes you need to keep the pressure on.

• 39:09Jocko Willink?

  Kinda like you and Twitter. Yes, had to keep some pressure on.

• 39:15Jocko Willink?

  One day I went along quite accidentally, I assure you, with an infantry company that had been assigned to clean out a pocket in the suburbs of Cherbourg. Since the episode was typically of the way an infantry advanced into the city held by an enemy, I would like to try and give you a picture of it. So he's gonna try and like, explain what that was like. The soldiers around us had two weeks' growth of beard. And before he talks about the result, he kinda gives you a little update on the frontline infantry troops. The soldiers around us had two weeks' growth of beard. Their uniforms were worn slick and very dirty, the uncomfortable, gas-impregnated clothes they'd come ashore in.

• 39:59Jocko Willink?

  The boys were tired. They had been fighting and moving constantly forward on foot for nearly three weeks without rest. Sleeping on the ground, wet most of the time, always tense, eating cold ration, seeing their friends die.

• 40:14Jocko Willink?

  One of them came up to me and said almost belligerently, "Why don't you tell the folks back home what this is like? All they hear about is victories and a lot of the glory stuff. They don't know that for every hundred yards we advance, somebody gets killed. Why don't you tell them how tough this life is?" I told him that I tried to do that all the time. This fellow was pretty fed up with it all. He said he didn't see why his outfit wasn't sent home. They had done all the fighting. That wasn't true at all, for there were other divisions that had fought more and taken heavier casualties. Exhaustion will make a man feel like that. A few days rest

• 40:59Jocko Willink?

  usually has him smiling again. You know, we've heard this time and time again. Sometimes you start get that mental fatigue. You gotta take a little breather. So yeah, like the ninth, sometimes you gotta keep the pressure on, but if you start to break people, maybe it's time, especially an individual. And you know, Dick Winters did this. Band of Brothers, Dick Winters, beyond, beyond the Band of Brothers, he talked about, "Hey, I got this guy that's a little loose in the bubble. I'm gonna pull him back. Hey, you got some admin stuff to do in the rear. Why don't you go ahead and take care of that?" Boom, done. Let this guy heal up. That's what this guy needs. He needs a break. He needs a rest.

• 41:38Jocko Willink?

  And here we get the little briefing. Little briefing from the lieutenant, who's gonna tell them how they're gonna push through this little, and clear out this little pocket of enemy resistance. "This is how we'll do it," the lieutenant said. "A rifle platoon goes first. Right behind them will go a part of the heavy weapons platoon with machine guns to cover the first platoon. Then comes another rifle platoon, then a small section with mortars in case they run into something pretty heavy. Then another rifle platoon, and bringing up the rear, the rest of the heavy weapons outfit to protect us from behind. We don't know what we'll run into, and I don't want to stick right out in front, so why don't you come along with me?" So he's talking to Ernie Pyle at that point, saying, "Listen, I don't know what's gonna be up front,

• 42:21Jocko Willink?

  you stick with me. We'll go in the middle of the company." I said, "Okay." By this time, I wasn't scared. You seldom are once you're into something. Anticipation is the worst. Fortunately, this little foray came up so suddenly there wasn't time for much anticipation. The waiting.

• 42:44Jocko Willink?

  So they take, they start taking a little fire and finally the shells stop. And here we go, the shells stopped and finally the order to start was given. As we left the protection of the high wall, we had to cross a little culvert right out in the open and then make a turn in the road. The men went forward one at a time. They crouched and ran ape-like, ape-like across this dangerous space. Then beyond the culvert, they filtered to either side of the road, stopping and squatting down every now and then to wait a few moments. The lieutenant kept yelling at them as they started, "Spread it out now." "Do you want to draw fire at yourselves? "Don't bunch up like that. Keep five yards apart. Spread it out, damn it." There's an almost irresistible pull to get close to somebody when you're in danger.

• 43:30Jocko Willink?

  In spite of themselves, the men would run up close to the fellow ahead of them for company. But obviously, if you're close to your, you're close to people and one, well, first of all, one bullet can kill two people. But you get hit with a bomb, you get hit with a grenade, you're gonna kill multiple people. So you want to disperse, you want to keep your dispersion, you want to spread out. But there's this little thing that people want to just get close to other people. And everybody knows it's wrong. And actually, if you remember in the, uh, in The Beloved Captain, that's what he was constantly saying, "Guys, spread out in the trench. Don't, hey, don't bunch up." And they, and, and the author was saying, "We all just wanted to huddle together. You want to get close together, you're in fear. "So you want to huddle, and it's the wrong move."

• 44:17Jocko Willink?

  Now we get into a description of the men as they're making this cross. "The men didn't talk amongst themselves. "They just went. "They weren't heroic figures as they moved forward one at a time, a few seconds apart. "You think of attackers as being savage and bold. "These men were hesitant and cautious. "They were really the hunters, but they looked like the hunted. "There was a confused excitement into grim anxiety in their faces.

• 44:51Jocko Willink?

  "They seemed terribly pathetic to me. "They weren't warriors. They were American boys who by mere chance of fate had wound up with guns in their hands, "sneaking up death-laden street in a strange and shattered city in a faraway country in a driving rain."

• 45:09Jocko Willink?

  They were afraid, but it was beyond their power to quit. They had no choice. They were good boys. I talked with them all afternoon as we sneaked slowly inward along the mysterious and rubble street, and I know they were good boys. And even though they weren't warriors born to kill, they won their battles.

• 45:36Jocko Willink?

  That's the point.

• 45:43Jocko Willink?

  Regular guys, World War II, regular guys. And, and it's, it's not depicted, they'll throw a character like that into a movie. You know, oh, he's, you know, just it looks like a regular guy, but most of the guys don't, they don't look like regular guys. They look like badass war hero guys. And this is such a, you don't hear this description where he's literally saying, um, they weren't warriors. They seemed terribly pathetic. And so you picture these guys that got this scared, strange look on their face. And guess what? They do their job. And they do it well.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's strange. It's almost like you can look at them in both ways, because on one hand, they're just regular guys. But when you see them in action kind of thing, you're like, oh dang, they're getting at their warriors, you know?

• 46:34Jocko Willink?

  It's true.

• 46:34Speaker 01

  I mean, I.

• 46:35Jocko Willink?

  And clearly they're warriors, that like he said, they win their battles.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:40Jocko Willink?

  And even what they're doing right now takes massive courage. You're just getting ready to step across the street where you know there's a machine gun. Fire could open up and take your life or take your legs or, you know, wound you. That, that takes some will, that takes some discipline.

• 46:55Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, how can you not just cower in the first corner you see, really? You know, when you compare it to everyday life, man. I mean, I don't, I hate to, I don't hate to, but I, I can't help but compare it to Saving Private Ryan, that, that movie. Right? And, and there's a part where they indicate that everyone's been trying to guess.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  The, the, the job of the.

• 47:19Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yes.

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Miller or whatever.

• 47:20Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 47:21Speaker 01

  They're trying to guess it, right? And so that was like an exposure of. Like, yeah, this is back in the, yeah, you know, back in the, and then he's like, yeah, I'm a school teacher. And all this stuff, all this like normal stuff. And then meanwhile, as the movie kind of progressed, you see him in action. It's like dang, for a school teacher, these guys are, you know, they're really getting the job done.

• 47:41Jocko Willink?

  Well, I'll tell you, man, we were, when I first got to Ramadi, we were there with the, uh, the two, two, eight, which is a, which is a reserve unit from Pennsylvania, the iron soldiers. And led by a guy at the time was named Colonel Gronski. He's now a general. But those guys were school teachers. They were, I mean, cause they were reservists. So there was guys that were school teachers. There was guys there that were plumbers. There was guys there that were cable installers. There were guys there that were mechanics. There was guys there that were lawyers. They're just every job.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:11Jocko Willink?

  And yet these guys were there fighting.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  Straight up warriors.

• 48:14Jocko Willink?

  And getting after it, by the way, battle hardened.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:18Jocko Willink?

  And re- really, they were, they were so impressive. We were so humbled by these guys, these reservists. They were badass. Nothing but again, nothing but respect and admiration for them on the battlefield.

• 48:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, seeing that exactly where if, let's say you didn't know their job outside of the, you know, the battle. And you see him, you're like dang, these guys are straight up, this is their thing. This is what their, their primary career is, you know? That's what it seems like.

• 48:46Jocko Willink?

  And I'll tell you, I mean, I just was out in Mississippi. And I was with a bunch of guys that were reservists in Mississippi and one of the guys I was talking to, I mean, mo- multiple guys that I was talking to, they had multiple deployments to Iraq. And, and these are 12 month deployment, 14 month deployments. These guys were awesome, awesome guys, awesome professionals who had taken the fight to the enemy. So it's amazing that, that America has these, these reservists that live their lives. And then, oh, by the way, you're going to go on deployment to Iraq for 14 months right now and get after it. And then you're going to come back and, and go into your normal job again.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Follow right back in. Yeah. And go and just be straight up effective.

• 49:27Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Not like they're there like timid, you know, cause I'm, hey, I'm just here for 14 months back home. I'm, you know, I'm, I work at offices. They're like, nope. Watch me work.

• 49:38Jocko Willink?

  Watch me get it, watch me get it on. So, um.

• 49:44Jocko Willink?

  We get to a point now, you know, that street fight continues, they take down, they clear that pocket, there's more combat description, but now they're getting ready to push out of Normandy Beach, they've taken the beach, they've secured it, they've taken some hedgerows, they've got it locked in, it's been, it's been, you know, some time, but now they're getting ready to start making the push, making the push out of there. And so that's what this is, this is gonna be a massive, massive attack. And they're getting ready to get a brief, and here we go, back to the book. "The regimental colonel stood in the center of the officers and went over the orders in detail. Battalion commanders took down notes in their little

• 50:26Jocko Willink?

  books. Then General Barton arrived. The Colonel called, 'Attention!' And everybody stood rigid until the general gave them, 'Carry on.' An enlisted man ran to the mess truck and got a folding stool for the general to sit on. He sat listening intently while the Colonel wound up his instructions. The general stepped into the center of the circle. He stood at a slouch on one foot, with the other leg far out like a brace. He looked all around him as he talked. He didn't talk long. He said, 'This is one of the finest regiments in the American Army. It was the last regiment out of France in the last war, it was the

• 51:11Jocko Willink?

  first regiment into France in this war. It has spearheaded every one of the division's attacks in Normandy. It will spearhead this one.' For many years, this was my regiment, and I feel very close to you and very proud." The general's lined face was a study in emotion. Sincerity and deep sentiment were in every contour, and they shone from his eyes. General Barton was a man of deep affections. The tragedy of war, both personal and impersonal,

• 51:50Jocko Willink?

  hurt him. At the end, his voice almost broke, and I for one, had a lump in my throat. He ended, "That's all. God bless you and good luck."

• 52:12Jocko Willink?

  And with that, they begin this massive operation.

• 52:19Jocko Willink?

  The first planes of the mass onslaught came over a little before 10 a.m. They were the fighters and dive bombers. The main road running crosswise in front of us was their bomb line. They were to bomb only on the far side of that road. Our infantry had been pulled back a few hundred yards from the near side of the road. Everyone in the area had been given the strictest orders to be in foxholes for high-level bombers can and do quite excusably make mistakes. So, did you understand that right there? Mm-hmm. So, there's a very clear road. And they say, "Listen, the bombers are gonna be bombing the other side of that road.

• 53:03Jocko Willink?

  But we're gonna back further away from the road, just in case something goes wrong. Just in case bombs get dropped early."

• 53:16Jocko Willink?

  Obviously, this indicates, I'm pointing that out for a reason. Cause this gets horrible.

• 53:23Jocko Willink?

  Our front lines were marked by long strips of colored cloth laid on the ground with colored smoke to guide our airmen during the mass bombers bombing. Dive bombers hit it just right. We stood and watched them barrel nearly straight down out of the sky.

• 53:41Jocko Willink?

  They were bombing about a half a mile ahead of where we stood. They came in groups diving in every direction. Perfectly timed, one after another. Everywhere we looked, separate groups of planes were on their way down, or on their way back up, or slanting over for a dive, or circling, circling, circling over our heads and waiting for their turn.

• 54:05Jocko Willink?

  So I want you to picture what this is like. Picture what this is like. And you don't, don't picture that you're watching it in a movie. Cause that's, I understand that it's easy to picture it. Okay? I want you to put your mind in this situation. Can you imagine what that looks like? These, your, the plane, the, the, the sky is basically filling with planes. And they're making these incredibly aggressive attacks. And this piece, which I'm about to read a big chunk. This is one of the most magnificent descriptions of war I have read.

• 54:48Jocko Willink?

  Here we go. "The air was full of sharp and distinct sounds of cracking bombs and the heavy rips of the planes, machine guns, and the splintering screams of diving wings. It was all fast and furious, yet distinct. And then, a new sound gradually droned into our ears. A deep sound and all encompassing with no notes in it. Just a gigantic, faraway surge of doom-like sound.

• 55:23Jocko Willink?

  It was the heavies."

• 55:26Jocko Willink?

  And so now he's talking about the heavy bombers that are gonna bring the thunder. And there's so many of them and they're so loud, it just drones out every other sound. Until just this massive, faraway surge of a doom-like sound. "It was the heavies. They came from directly behind us. At first, they were the merest dots in the sky. We could see the clots of them against the far heavens. Too tiny to count individually, they came on with a terrible slowness. They came in flights of twelve, three flights to a group, and in groups stretched out across the sky.

• 56:09Jocko Willink?

  They came in families of about seventy planes each. Maybe those gigantic waves were two miles apart, maybe they were ten miles, I don't know. But I do know, they came in constant procession, and I thought it would never end. What the Germans must have thought is beyond comprehension."

• 56:34Jocko Willink?

  The flight across the sky was slow and studied. I've never known a storm, or a machine, or any resolve of man that had about at the aura of such a ghastly relentlessness. I had the feeling that even had God appeared beseechingly before them in the sky with palms outstretched to persuade them back, they would not have had the power within them to turn from their irresistible course.

• 57:11Jocko Willink?

  This is just, that's such an incredible description of this impending doom.

• 57:21Jocko Willink?

  I stood with a little group of men, ranging from colonels to privates, back to the stone farmhouse.

• 57:29Jocko Willink?

  Slit trenches were all around the edges of the farmyard, and a dugout with a tin roof was nearby. But we were so fascinated by the spectacle overhead that it never occurred to us that we might need the foxholes. The first huge flight passed directly overhead, and others followed. We spread our feet and leaned far back, trying to look straight up until our steel helmets fell off. We'd cup our fingers around our eyes like field glasses for a clearer view.

• 58:03Jocko Willink?

  And then, the bombs came. They began like the crackle of popcorn, and almost instantly swelled into a monstrous fury of noise that seemed surely to destroy all the world ahead of us.

• 58:19Jocko Willink?

  From then on, for an hour and a half that had in it the agonies of centuries, the bombs came down.

• 58:28Jocko Willink?

  A wall of smoke and dust erected by them grew high in the sky. It filtered along the ground, back through our orchards. It sifted around us and into our noses. The bright day grew slowly dark from it. By now, everything was an indescribable cauldron of sounds. Individual noises did not exist. The thundering of the motors in the sky and the roar of bombs ahead filled all the space for noise on the earth. Our own heavy artillery was crashing all around us, yet we could hardly hear it. The Germans began to shoot heavy, high ak ak.

• 59:11Jocko Willink?

  Great puffs of, of it by the score speckled the sky until it was hard to distinguish smoke puffs from planes. And then someone shouted that one of the planes was smoking. Yes, we could all see it. A faint line of black smoke stretched straight for a mile behind one of them. And as we watched, there were gigantic sweep of flame over the plane. From nose to tail. It disappeared in flame and it slanted slowly down and banked around the sky in great wide curves this way and that as rhythmically and gracefully, gracefully as in a slow motion waltz. Then suddenly it seemed to change its mind and swept upward steeper and steeper and ever slower until finally it seemed poised, motionless on its own black pillar of smoke.

• 59:57Jocko Willink?

  And then, just as slowly as it had turned over and dived for the earth. A golden spearhead on the straight black shaft of its own creation. And disappeared behind the treetops. But before it was down, there were more cries of, there's another one smoking and there's a third one now. Shoots came out of some of the planes. Out of some came no shoots at all. One of the white silk. Caught on the tail of a plane. Men with binoculars could see him fighting to get loose until flames swept over him. And then a tiny black dot fell through space. All alone.

• 1:00:41Jocko Willink?

  And all that time, the great flat ceiling of the sky was roofed by other planes that didn't go down, plowing their way forward as if there were no turmoil in the world. Nothing deviated them by the slightest. They stalked on, slowly and with a dreadful pall of sound, as though they were seeing only something at a great distance and nothing existed between. God, how we admired those men up there and sickened for the ones who fell.

• 1:01:17Jocko Willink?

  Incredible.

• 1:01:21Jocko Willink?

  It is possible to become so enthralled by some of the spectacles of war that man is momentarily captivated away from his own danger. That's what happened to our little groups of, group of soldiers as we stood watching the mighty bombing. But that benign state didn't last long. As we watched, there crept into our consciousness a realization that the windrows of exploding bombs were easing back towards us, flight by flight, instead of gradually forward as the plan called for. Then, we were horrified by the suspicion that those machines, high in the sky and completely detached from us, were

• 1:02:02Jocko Willink?

  aiming their bombs at the smoke line on the ground, and a gentle breeze was drifting the smoke line back over us. An indescribable kind of panic came over us. We stood tensed in muscle and frozen in intellect, watching each flight approach and pass over, feeling trapped and completely helpless. And then, all of an instant, the universe became filled with gigantic rattling of, as it, of huge ripe seeds in a mammoth dry gourd. I doubt that any of us had ever heard that sound before, but instinct told us what it was.

• 1:02:43Jocko Willink?

  It was bombs by the hundred, hurtling down through the air above us. Many times I'd heard bombs whistle or swish or rustle, but never before had I heard bombs rattle. I still don't know what the explanation of it. But it was an awful sound. We dived. Some got into a dugout, others made foxholes and ditches and some got behind a garden wall, although which side would be behind was anybody's guess. I was too late for the dugout. The nearest place was a wagon shed which formed on one end of the stone house.

• 1:03:22Jocko Willink?

  The rattle was right down upon us. I remember hitting the ground flat, all spread out like the cartoons of people flattened by steamrollers, and then squirming like an eel to get under one of the heavy wagons in the shed. An officer whom I didn't know was wriggling beside me. We stopped at the same time, simultaneously feeling it was hopeless to move further. The bombs were already crashing around us. We lay with our heads slightly up like two snakes staring at each other. I know it was in both our minds and in our eyes, asking each other what to do. Neither of us knew. We said nothing. We just lay, sprawled, gaping at each other in a futile appeal,

• 1:04:08Jocko Willink?

  our faces about a foot apart, until it was over.

• 1:04:13Jocko Willink?

  There is no description of the sound and fury of those bombs, except to say it was chaos and awaiting for darkness.

• 1:04:23Jocko Willink?

  The feeling of the blast was sensational. The air struck us in hundreds of continuing flutters. Our ears drummed and rang. We could feel quick little waves of concussion on our chest and in our eyes. At last, the sound died down, and we looked at each other in disbelief. Gradually, we left the foxholes and sprawling places and came out to see what the sky had in store for us. As far as we could see, other waves were approaching from behind. When a wave would pass a little to the side of us, we were grateful, for most of them flew directly overhead.

• 1:05:02Jocko Willink?

  Time and time again, the rattle came down over us. Bombs struck in the orchard to our left. They struck into the orchards ahead of us. They struck as far as a mile behind us. Everything about us was shaken, but our group came through unhurt.

• 1:05:19Jocko Willink?

  I can't record what any of us actually felt or thought during those horrible climaxes. I believe a person's feelings at such time are kaleidoscopic and indefinable. He just waits, that's all, with an inhuman tenseness of muscle and nerves.

• 1:05:43Jocko Willink?

  An hour or so later, I began to get sore all over, and by mid-afternoon, my back and shoulders ached as though I'd been beaten with a club. It was simply the result of muscles tensing themselves too tight for too long against anticipated shock.

• 1:06:00Jocko Willink?

  When we came out of our sprawling and stood up again to watch, we knew that the error had been caught and checked. The bombs were falling again where they were intended, a mile or so ahead. Even at a mile away, a thousand bombs hitting within a few seconds can shake the earth and shatter the air. There was still a dread in our hearts, but it gradually eased as the tumult and destruction moved slightly forward.

• 1:06:32Jocko Willink?

  It seems incredible to me that any German could have come out of that bombardment with his sanity. When it was over, even I was grateful, in a chastened way that I had never experienced before, for just being alive. I thought an attack by our troops was impossible then, for it is an unnerving thing to be bombed by your own planes. During the bad part, a colonel I had known a long time was walking up and down behind the farmhouse, snapping his fingers and saying over and over again to himself, "God damn it, god damn it", as he passed me once, he stopped and stared and said, "God damn it!"

• 1:07:12Jocko Willink?

  And I said, "There can't be any attack now, can there?" And he said, "No", and began walking again, snapping his fingers and tossing his arms as though he were throwing rocks at the ground. The leading company of our battalion was to spearhead the attack forty minutes after the heavy bombing ceased. The company had been hit directly by our bombs. Their casualties, including casualties in shock, were heavy. Men went to pieces and had to be sent back. The company was shattered and shaken. Yet Company B attacked, and on time to the minute. They attacked and within the hour, sent back word that they advanced eight hundred yards

• 1:07:57Jocko Willink?

  through German territory and were still going. Around our farmyard, men with stars on their shoulders almost wept when the word came over the portable radio. The American soldier can be majestic when he needs to be. I'm sure that back in England that night, other men, bomber crews, wept.

• 1:08:20Jocko Willink?

  And maybe they did, really, in the awful knowledge that they had killed our own American troops. But the chaos and bitterness there in the orchards and between the hedgerows that afternoon soon passed. After the bitterness came, the sober remembrance that the Air Force was the strong right arm in front of us, not only at the beginning, but ceaselessly and everlastingly, every moment of the faintest daylight, the Air Force was up there banging away ahead of us.

• 1:08:53Jocko Willink?

  Anybody made mistakes, the enemy made them just the same as we did. The smoke and confusion of battle bewildered us on the ground as well in the air. And in this case, the percentage of error was really very small compared to the colossal storm of bombs that fell upon the enemy.

• 1:09:13Jocko Willink?

  The Air Force was wonderful throughout the invasion, and the men on the ground appreciated it.

• 1:09:22Jocko Willink?

  So, obviously, we talk about blue on blue a lot here. I think that's about as an extreme example as I've ever heard of.

• 1:09:32Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, the blue on blue thing is such a nightmare because it's your own people. It's your own people and it's a lack of communication and it's the fog of war. Then you can't do anything. You can't shoot back.

• 1:09:53Jocko Willink?

  All you can do is sit there and wait. And it's amazing, one of those company that was scheduled to attack is so shaken up that they can't go forward, but then the other company just, "We got this." Step aside.

• 1:10:11Jocko Willink?

  Now, the attack starts pushing forward. And we get a little description of one of the commanders. "The commander of the regiment was one of my favorites. He was a regular army colonel and he was overseas in the last war, too. His division commander said the only trouble with him was that he got too bold and if he weren't careful, he was liable to get clipped some fine day. When tired and dirty, he could have played a movie gangster, but either way, his eyes always twinkled. He had a faculty for direct thought that was outstanding. The colonel went from one battalion to another during the battle, during battle, from early light until darkness. He

• 1:10:54Jocko Willink?

  wore a new type field jacket that fitted him like a sack and he carried a long stick that Teddy Roosevelt had given to him. He kept constantly prodding his commanders to push hard, not to let up and keep driving and driving. He was impatient with his commanders who lost the main point of the war by getting involved in the details. The main point, of course, being to kill Germans. His philosophy of war was expressed in the simple formula of, "Shoot the son of bitches." Once I was at a battalion command post when we got word that 60 Germans were coming down the road in a counterattack. Everybody got excited. They called the colonel on the field

• 1:11:35Jocko Willink?

  phone, gave him details and asked him what to do. He had the solution in a nutshell. He said, "Shoot the sons of bitches," and hung up.

• 1:11:48Jocko Willink?

  Gotta keep things simple. And you gotta keep your, your tasks very focused. You know? What's all this complication? We're here to kill Germans, so kill them sons of bitches.

• 1:12:05Jocko Willink?

  Now we get to a

• 1:12:08Jocko Willink?

  younger soldier that he goes through a description of. Clayton's weirdest, this guy named Clayton, Clayton's weirdest experience would be funny if it weren't so filled with pathos. He was returning with a patrol one moonlit night when the enemy opened up on them. Tommy leaped right through a hedge and spotting a foxhole plunged into it. To his amazement and fright, there was a German in that foxhole, sitting pretty, holding a machine pistol in his hands. Clayton shot him three times in the chest before you could say scat. The German hardly moved.

• 1:12:44Jocko Willink?

  And then Tommy realized the man had been killed earlier. He had been shooting a corpse. All his experiences seem to have had no effect on his mild, on this mild soldier from Indiana, except perhaps to make him even quieter than before. The worst experience of all is just the accumulated blur and the hurting vagueness of being too long in the lines, the everlasting alertness, the noise and fear, the cell by cell exhaustion, the thinning of surrounding ranks as day follows nameless day.

• 1:13:24Jocko Willink?

  And the constant march into eternity of one's own small quota of chances for survival.

• 1:13:33Jocko Willink?

  Those are the things that hurt and destroy. And soldiers like Tommy Clayton went back to them because they were good soldiers and they had a duty they could not define.

• 1:13:51Jocko Willink?

  Mental stress.

• 1:13:58Jocko Willink?

  Now,

• 1:14:00Jocko Willink?

  they continue to push through, they take Paris and it's really incredible to hear what that was like. Then you should definitely buy this book

• 1:14:11Jocko Willink?

  and read it. And here's how he closes it out.

• 1:14:18Jocko Willink?

  "The final chapter is being written in the latter part of August 1944. It is being written under an apple tree in a lovely green orchard on the interior of France. It could well be that the European war will be over and done by the time you read this book. Or it might not.

• 1:14:37Jocko Willink?

  But the end is inevitable. And it cannot be put off for long. The German is beaten and he knows it. It will seem odd when, at some given hour, the shooting stops. And everything suddenly changes again. It will be odd to drive down an unknown road without that little knot of fear in your stomach. Odd not to listen with animal-like alertness for the meaning of every distant sound. Odd not to have your spirit, odd to have your spirit released

• 1:15:17Jocko Willink?

  from the perpetual weight that is compounded of fear and death and dirt and noise and anguish.

• 1:15:28Jocko Willink?

  The end of war will be a gigantic relief, but it cannot be a matter of hilarity for most of us. Somehow, it would seem sacrilegious to sing and dance when the great day comes. There are so many who can never sing and dance again.

• 1:15:49Jocko Willink?

  Many, many thousands of Americans

• 1:15:53Jocko Willink?

  have come to join the ones who have already slept in France for a quarter of a century."

• 1:16:01Jocko Willink?

  For some of us, the war has already gone on too long. Our feelings have been wrung and drained. They cringe from the effort of coming alive again. Even the approach of the end seems to have brought little inner elation. It has only brought a tired sense of relief. I do not pretend that my own feeling is the spirit of our armies. If it were, we probably would not have the power to win. Most men are stronger. Our soldiers still can hate, or glorify, or be glad with true emotion.

• 1:16:45Jocko Willink?

  For them, death has a pang, and victory a sweet scent. But for me, war has become a fiat. Black depression without highlights, a revulsion of the mind and exhaustion of the spirit. The war in France has been especially vicious because it was one of the enemy's last stands. We have won because of many things. We have won partly because the enemy was weakened from our other battles. The war in France is our grand finale, but the victory here is the result of all other victories that went before.

• 1:17:28Jocko Willink?

  It is a result of Russia, and the Western Desert, and the bombings, and the blocking of the sea. It is a result of Tunisia, and Sicily, and Italy. We must never forget or belittle those campaigns. We have won because we have had magnificent top leadership at home, and in our allies, and with ourselves overseas. Surely, America made its two perfect choices in General Eisenhower and General Bradley. They are great men, to me doubly great because they are direct and kind.

• 1:18:04Jocko Willink?

  We won because we are audacious. One could not help but be moved by the colossus of our invasion. It was a bold and mighty thing, one of the epics of all history. In the emergency of war, our nation's powers are unbelievable. The strength we have spread around the world is appalling even to those who make up the individual cells of that strength. I am sure that in the past two years, I have heard soldiers say a thousand times, "If only we could have created all this energy for something good." But we rise above our normal powers only in times of destruction.

• 1:18:48Jocko Willink?

  We have won this war because our men are brave. And because of many other things, because of Russia, and England, and the passage of time, and the gifts of nature's materials. We did not win it because destiny created us better than all other peoples. I hope that in victory, we are more grateful than we are proud. I hope we can rejoice in victory, but humbly. The dead men would not want us to gloat. The end of one war is a great fetter broken from around our lives.

• 1:19:33Jocko Willink?

  But there is still another to be broken. The Pacific War may yet be long and bloody. Nobody can foresee, but it would be disastrous to approach it with easy hopes. Our next few months at home will be torn between the new spiritual freedom of half-peace and the old grinding blur of half-war. It will be a confusing period for us. Thousands of men will be returning to you soon. They have been gone a long time.

• 1:20:09Jocko Willink?

  And they have seen and done things and felt things you cannot know.

• 1:20:15Jocko Willink?

  They will be changed. They will have to learn how to adjust themselves to peace. Last night, we had a violent electrical storm around our countryside. The storm was half over before we realized that the flashes and the crashings around us were not artillery, but plain old fashioned thunder and lightning. It will be odd to hear only thunder again. You must remember that such little things as that are in our souls and will take time.

• 1:20:49Jocko Willink?

  And all of us together will have to learn how to reassemble our broken world into a pattern so firm and so fair that another great war cannot soon be possible. To tell the simple truth, most of us over in France don't pretend to know the right answer. Submersion in war does not necessarily qualify a man to be the master of peace. All we can do is fumble and try once more, try out of the memory of our anguish,

• 1:21:21Jocko Willink?

  and be as tolerant with each other as we can.

• 1:21:33Jocko Willink?

  And this book was dedicated by Ernie Pyle, and I'm gonna read the dedication now.

• 1:21:42Jocko Willink?

  "In solemn salute to those thousands of our comrades, great brave men that they were, for whom there will be no homecoming, ever."

• 1:22:06Jocko Willink?

  And

• 1:22:09Jocko Willink?

  Ernie Pyle

• 1:22:12Jocko Willink?

  Did get to experience homecoming.

• 1:22:18Jocko Willink?

  Unfortunately, it was not joyous.

• 1:22:23Jocko Willink?

  And it was not long.

• 1:22:26Jocko Willink?

  He He battled with depression and emotional turmoil.

• 1:22:36Jocko Willink?

  Over his experiences in war and you could hear him talking about those and also his wife. Who had some kind of mental issues and she'd actually been hospitalized and so he was distressed and depressed about that.

• 1:22:56Jocko Willink?

  And on top of that.

• 1:22:59Jocko Willink?

  The war was not over for him. And he mentioned there in the end that there's only half peace because there was still a war in the Pacific and he knew that.

• 1:23:14Jocko Willink?

  And in personal letters and in conversations that he had with his friends. He explained a personal

• 1:23:25Jocko Willink?

  foreboding. A sense that he would not live through the war.

• 1:23:32Jocko Willink?

  But when he was asked by the Department of the Navy. To join the battle against Imperial Japan in the Pacific. He reluctantly. Maybe fearfully, but dutifully. Agreed to go.

• 1:23:57Jocko Willink?

  And it was there.

• 1:24:00Jocko Willink?

  In the Pacific. On a tiny island called Ishima just off the coast of Okinawa.

• 1:24:10Jocko Willink?

  That Ernie Pyle was shot and killed.

• 1:24:15Jocko Willink?

  By a single sniper bullet.

• 1:24:20Jocko Willink?

  And members of the 77th Infantry Division who had been there with for the operation quickly marked where he was killed with a sign that read at this spot. The 77th Infantry Division lost a buddy, Ernie Pyle, on 18 April 1945.

• 1:24:59Jocko Willink?

  So, Mr. Pyle, thank you for your service and your sacrifice.

• 1:25:15Jocko Willink?

  And to the journalists that are out there now in this day, especially the war journalists who take risks to record and report history.

• 1:25:31Jocko Willink?

  Thank you for what you do.

• 1:25:39Jocko Willink?

  Again, the book is called Brave Men by Ernie Pyle, and it will give you some real insight into the nature of war.

• 1:26:01Jocko Willink?

  Echo.

• 1:26:05Jocko Willink?

  The world is a crazy place.

• 1:26:08Jocko Willink?

  And it's amazing that you can live the life that we live.

• 1:26:17Jocko Willink?

  And some people go through lives, their life without ever even

• 1:26:25Jocko Willink?

  even just brushing against this madness.

• 1:26:32Jocko Willink?

  And I'll say this for the thousandth time.

• 1:26:38Jocko Willink?

  I believe that it is important

• 1:26:42Jocko Willink?

  to delve into these things. So that you learn

• 1:26:49Jocko Willink?

  not just about leadership, but about life.

• 1:26:55Jocko Willink?

  And how precious and glorious

• 1:27:03Jocko Willink?

  life is.

• 1:27:12Jocko Willink?

  And life has ups and downs. It has good and bad. It has darkness and light and everybody's life makes those transitions.

• 1:27:34Jocko Willink?

  And having darkness in the world or in your life does not exclude

• 1:27:45Jocko Willink?

  the light.

• 1:27:48Jocko Willink?

  In fact, I think it makes that light just a little bit brighter.

• 1:27:55Jocko Willink?

  And so when we we don't have to stay here in the darkness. We can go. We've paid our respects and we will continue to pay our respects

• 1:28:10Jocko Willink?

  as we go forward.

• 1:28:14Jocko Willink?

  And with that, I guess it's a good time to answer some questions from.

• 1:28:23Speaker 01

  The interwebs.

• 1:28:24Jocko Willink?

  From the interwebs.

• 1:28:27Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:28:30Jocko Willink?

  And actually, before we get into questions from the interwebs.

• 1:28:34Speaker 01

  Speaking of interwebs.

• 1:28:36Jocko Willink?

  There's kind of some ways that you can utilize the other way, the interwebs for other things.

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:28:43Speaker 01

  One of them is.

• 1:28:45Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, this, for those of you that don't know,

• 1:28:50Jocko Willink?

  now Echo is gonna say some stuff about the interwebs and about supporting the podcast. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm gonna, I'm gonna like, I'm gonna hit a switch and do a little decompression. I'm gonna drink some, I'm gonna drink some white tea over here with a little pomegranate in it. And I'm gonna get a little adjustment, a little mindset change, get into the zone for answering some questions.

• 1:29:11Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 1:29:12Jocko Willink?

  So there's, there's actually a dual purpose for Echo's discussion of how to support the podcast. Yes, it shows you how to support the podcast, which is much appreciated. Also, I can decompress for a minute.

• 1:29:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:29:30Jocko Willink?

  From being bombed by my own planes, from being stressed, from being back in the war zone, World War II style.

• 1:29:42Speaker 01

  Bro, how he describes it, I mean, you could, you know, writers in general are just really good at explaining stuff.

• 1:29:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:51Speaker 01

  I mean, it, yeah, pretty much alright. And you can see the difference in the way they, man, this one in particular, really to, to me anyway, really, really delivered with the, with the descriptions and stuff. And it was like.

• 1:30:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's so many one-liners in there. When I'm listening, when I was reading it, I have certain ways of, um, I have certain ways of notating kind of what I'm gonna read and, and that, you know, some of the stuff's just circled and some of it's this and that. But, but occasionally, if something to me, if I, if it hits me, I put one single red line underneath each individual word.

• 1:30:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:30:31Jocko Willink?

  That I'm going to read.

• 1:30:35Jocko Willink?

  And I normally I might do that like once or twice a book, but there's a couple paragraphs where I had done it multiple times because those lines are just powerful. Like the, the one that I just opened the book back up to re.

• 1:30:51Speaker 01

  Can't put it down.

• 1:30:52Jocko Willink?

  But, but you know, when he's like, um, and then a new sound gradually droned into our ears, a sound deep and all encompassing with no notes in it, just a gigantic faraway surge of doom like sound. And this is the part that I underlined. It was the heavies. And you just the power of that, just knowing like these are the heavy bombers, which you know, it's no big deal to us now because we have giant machines, but a heavy bomber back then was like a, uh, it was just this ultimate modern machine that had been created that nothing could destroy what these things, nothing was close to it.

• 1:31:32Jocko Willink?

  And not only have we created one of these insane power machines, we'd created hundreds and hundreds. And actually we created thousands of them and they were all amassed and coming to destroy this little section. It was the heavies. God.

• 1:31:54Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, it's a, it's a book that definitely draws you in and his writing that he, the, the fact that he writes very, um, straightforward, very, very plain and direct English is I think one of the things that makes it so powerful.

• 1:32:09Speaker 01

  I love how we compare, uh, where he compares like, and a lot of writers do this and when you can do it good, it's really powerful where, um, like for example, the, uh, he talked about the, the one plane that I think he got hit or was crashing and he compared to be, he said it was a spear, a, a light lit spear with the, the smoke trail. It's like, dang, you can see exactly what that looks like, you know, it just.

• 1:32:31Jocko Willink?

  And it's weird too, because although you can go watch this, I mean, they have film footage of this stuff, but that, that takes you there visually, but I think what reading and listening does, it takes you there mentally. It takes you there in your head, which is, which is more, which is more powerful than, and this happens to me all the time when I'm. When I'm reading and I'm getting better, when we started this podcast, I could tell like, oh, that's powerful. Like, oh yeah, that's gonna be, that's a really powerful statement. And then sometimes I would read it and it would be 12 more times more powerful where I'd be like, oh my God, I'd be getting just power. Because when you read it aloud, and now I'm a little bit more aware that, hey, you're gonna have to read this.

• 1:33:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:33:16Jocko Willink?

  Bro, you better, you better get your head in the game because it's gonna be powerful.

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:23Jocko Willink?

  So that's something I've become more aware of as we've done this more and more and as I've read all these books and gone through them and underlined the stuff and thought about the way it's gonna sound and thought about what it means to say it was the heavies.

• 1:33:41Jocko Willink?

  Awesome.

• 1:33:43Jocko Willink?

  So while I attempt to decompress over here.

• 1:33:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:33:48Jocko Willink?

  Go.

• 1:33:49Speaker 01

  Well, speaking of interwebs and awesome, by the way.

• 1:33:55Speaker 01

  Let's talk about supplements as we do a lot of the time at this time. So Onnit, right? Best supplements, we all know that. Even though we already know that, that is a big deal because of the nature of the supplement companies in general. So rest assured, Onnit, best one. That's it. Onnit Supplements, you can get 10% off because of the Jaco link, which is Onnit.com/Jaco. 10% off, boom. Supplement your wallet a little bit, supplement your, your body and

• 1:34:26Jocko Willink?

  And your mind.

• 1:34:28Speaker 01

  And your mind.

• 1:34:29Jocko Willink?

  Alpha brain.

• 1:34:30Speaker 01

  Alpha brain.

• 1:34:30Jocko Willink?

  For sure.

• 1:34:32Speaker 01

  But notably, I'm gonna admit, so I didn't take krill oil.

• 1:34:36Jocko Willink?

  When? Until when?

• 1:34:38Speaker 01

  Till recently. So remember, okay, in the, in the spirit of extreme ownership, apparently I, I was not clear enough to you of, you know, about the fact that I wanted it.

• 1:34:51Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. When you would send me a text like, hey, bruh, you got near that krill oil stuff.

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, I wasn't just wondering, I kinda wanted some. Anyway, all I, I didn't take that. Alpha brain, take.

• 1:35:01Jocko Willink?

  That's real easy. Jaco, bring me krill oil now.

• 1:35:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know. I think I said that a few times.

• 1:35:07Jocko Willink?

  So now are you on it?

• 1:35:08Speaker 01

  Okay, so I take the krill oil and I'm not, I'm not this guy who's like, has all these nagging joint pains when I go work out. Cause really, that's really when I think, okay, do I have joint pain? No, no, no, I work out good, hard, I roll jujitsu, I do all stuff, I don't have joint pain. But here's the thing, I do have joint pain. When I wake up in the morning. And the thing is, like I said, when you're, like, when I think of, when someone says, do you have joint pain? I'm thinking when I work out, that's it. I don't think like, you know, other times, unless they're, they're asking specifically. So like my daughter, she's three and a half now. She's kind of like a bigger three and a half too. And she comes, runs up, wakes me up a lot of times and is like, hey, carry me downstairs. So when I sit up, she jumps on my back. She weighs forty pounds.

• 1:35:54Speaker 01

  I'm not saying I'm, you know, a powerlifter or nothing, but forty pounds is not.

• 1:35:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:36:00Speaker 01

  Forty pounds, I don't think even has anywhere.

• 1:36:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no.

• 1:36:03Speaker 01

  In my workout.

• 1:36:04Jocko Willink?

  Is meaningless.

• 1:36:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:07Speaker 01

  She's forty pounds, she jumps on my back, I'm like, oh, I gotta focus, I gotta focus on like my, yeah, just because of the stiffness. Not necessarily pain, but just like stiff. You know how like if you just didn't warm up at all, you can't just jump. It's like that feeling. And then recently my, my ankle got jacked up one day. And I have like, I think there's torn ligament, so.

• 1:36:24Jocko Willink?

  You gotta watch out there for locke.

• 1:36:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, but I, it had already been jacked, by the way. So it got foot locked and then it like inflamed it. So now I gotta walk downstairs with this girl on my back. With my stiffness and I'm like, oh, hey, no problem. I do it almost every day, no problem, but let's face it.

• 1:36:44Jocko Willink?

  Those are all.

• 1:36:45Speaker 01

  It's a little bit of a challenge. Yeah, yeah. But I take the krill oil, not the first day, not even the second day, but it was maybe a few days later. She jumps on my back. I'm still working out hard, by the way. So it's not like, oh, you recovered. She jumps on my back, I'm like, dang, I feel solid. I can go like, when I stand up, I'm like, boom, popping up. noticeably reduced. Still there, my ankle's still there. Even right now, it's still, but bro, this was like, I would say maybe four or five days. And this is when I know, I was like, dang, this is, this is good.

• 1:37:17Jocko Willink?

  Krill oil is real.

• 1:37:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:37:18Jocko Willink?

  And there's been a bunch of, a bunch of people on Twitter have come back and said, hey, I started taking krill oil. And then, you know, a week later, they're like, man, my shoulder's good to go. You know, it really works. So it does really work. It really does.

• 1:37:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then, like I said, that mean, and here, my wife's dad was like telling her, long this is years ago, saying, no krill oil. No, not fish oil. Fish oil was good. Krill oil is that. And I'm like, Krill, look up krill. It's the trim. Like, oh, sweet. It's joint pain. It's all this stuff or whatever. And like I said, even back then, right now, same thing. When I work out, I don't have joint pain. Maybe if I have a strain or something, but that's not joint pain general, you know? So I'm like, all right, good for you. Knock yourself out with a krill oil. When I need it and then I'm going to come, well, maybe I'll ask you about some stuff. So, you know, I see it and it's cool, good, but this is the first time I really like, all right, all right, I get, I got you. The krill oil.

• 1:38:09Jocko Willink?

  Now you get that, now you get that.

• 1:38:11Speaker 01

  So when I run out, go ahead, give me another krill oil. Okay?

• 1:38:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:38:14Speaker 01

  That's clear. Yeah. I mean, cool.

• 1:38:15Jocko Willink?

  Let me know.

• 1:38:17Speaker 01

  I'll sell you some. Back to the book.

• 1:38:20Jocko Willink?

  What else?

• 1:38:20Speaker 01

  Warrior bars. And this is what we, I think warrior bars are made out of buffalo meat.

• 1:38:24Jocko Willink?

  They are. They are. Yes, they are.

• 1:38:27Speaker 01

  We never said that.

• 1:38:28Jocko Willink?

  Oh, well, my boss.

• 1:38:29Speaker 01

  Does that even matter? You know?

• 1:38:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Because it's, because you're eating buffalo, which must have some glorious properties to make you stronger.

• 1:38:36Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, but nonetheless, to me, that makes it even more awesome. Not because, I mean, not for any specific reason other than maybe novelty, but it's still pretty dope, in my opinion. So it still tastes really good. Best meal replacement. Someone asked me on Twitter, hey, do you, you know, what meal replacement or protein shakes or whatever would you recommend if any? I said, none.

• 1:39:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, that's what I said too, is someone said the same thing to me.

• 1:39:04Speaker 01

  You know, meal replacement.

• 1:39:06Jocko Willink?

  I said, why would you replace a steak? You may have a steak, brother.

• 1:39:09Speaker 01

  Exactly. But in the event of, really the answer to that is, hey, man, I'm out.

• 1:39:13Jocko Willink?

  Were gross or disgusting or horrible, maybe you'd want to replace them.

• 1:39:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. But. Or, or you don't have to, you, look, I'm driving a truck. I'm driving a, I don't know, airplane or something for a long time, something.

• 1:39:23Jocko Willink?

  I don't want you driving my airplane. All due respect.

• 1:39:28Speaker 01

  Probably right. Good idea.

• 1:39:30Jocko Willink?

  But, but, okay.

• 1:39:31Speaker 01

  There you go, warrior bar. That's the answer right there.

• 1:39:34Jocko Willink?

  Filler.

• 1:39:36Speaker 01

  Eat two of them. That's a big filler.

• 1:39:37Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:39:38Speaker 01

  They're pretty big too. They're like, they're not messing around and they're good. That's the thing. Like, remember back in the day, the, the, you know, the, the bars?

• 1:39:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:39:47Speaker 01

  I don't even, not even back then, even right now, you eat one of those like, alright, I see where you're going with it. You're trying to make it like a candy bar, or you're trying to, it's not like that at all. This is good.

• 1:39:58Speaker 01

  Anyway, dude, warrior bar, solid. Another way you can support the podcast, in the event of you being in the mood to support the podcast, is, next time you shopping at amazon.com, click through one of our links. It's like a passive way, actively aggressively efficient way to support, and super easy. It doesn't cost you anything. You click through, you do your shopping, boom, it's like we get like a little referral thing.

• 1:40:26Jocko Willink?

  What I like about that is because I don't want to ask people, like, a lot of people, they want to donate money. I don't want you to donate money to us. If you want to give us money, that's awesome, but I'd rather you buy a t-shirt if you can afford it. But if, let's say you can't afford anything because you're broke, that's okay. When you order something from Amazon, this is just free money that you give to us, so it's all good.

• 1:40:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, in a way, it's almost like a collective, like, hey, we all shop at Amazon, we're in this thing together, you know, kind of thing. I don't know, I don't know, it's, it's.

• 1:40:59Jocko Willink?

  And Amazon, obviously, they can spare the change, right? They can spare a little something for the Jocko podcast. You're actively making Amazon give us money. How's that for getting after it?

• 1:41:10Speaker 01

  But then, but, but they're, you know, so it's like this weird, like, circle almost, you know, they, you know, they buy from Amazon, we're like, hey, go to Amazon, but go through us, and Amazon's like, hey, thanks for buying, thanks for sending them.

• 1:41:21Jocko Willink?

  We're supporting Amazon.

• 1:41:22Speaker 01

  Whether it be books or whatever, doc, all this stuff.

• 1:41:25Jocko Willink?

  Because we're making people want to buy stuff from Amazon, i.e. books, you know?

• 1:41:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Nonetheless.

• 1:41:31Jocko Willink?

  Other things, pretty soon people are going to be buying Jocko White Tea from Amazon too, which is coming so good.

• 1:41:36Speaker 01

  Yep, there you go.

• 1:41:37Jocko Willink?

  Full on brew. So good. It came out so good. I'm pumped.

• 1:41:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's gonna be solid there. That is solid currently. That's solid. But yeah, the Amazon, eh eh anyway, guys, support that way. Um, like I always say, a big part of that, or a big, not issue, but a thi- a thing in there is remembering to do it. If you want to do this, the remembering to do it. So, we do have what's called the Trooper Tool. All it is, you go, you you download it. It's basically you click on it. It's Amazon Trooper or Trooper Tool Chrome Extension. Click on it, accept it. It's on your thing. It automatically does it for you. From here on out. It's dope. It's like a little official thing to bring it up. So solid. Um, and we, we're trying to update. I've been talking to them. We're trying to update it for

• 1:42:28Speaker 01

  Canada, UK, so they can have the tool for themselves as well. That's cool. Cause I, yeah. Yeah. So we're working on that one. But yeah, that's good. Trooper Tool, you don't have to remember it anymore. You remember it one time. That's all. Shop at Amazon, still support aggressively, efficiently.

• 1:42:48Speaker 01

  And of course, um, support by subscribing to the podcast on iTunes and YouTube channel. Subscribe to the YouTube channel. Yeah. That's legit. And of course, the Jaco Store. Oh. I think we're tr- I'm not, I think, I know that we're trying, we are trying our best to provide multi-dimensional items. Like even in a simple t-shirt, there's multi- multiple dimensions to it, you know? It's not just, hey, that's a cool thing. The saying is important and extends way beyond what you'd expect on the surface. That goes for all the shirts. So. Including the rash cards. Including the rash cards. Okay, so new stuff.

• 1:43:33Speaker 01

  New stuff. Rash guards. The rash guards are good. As far as the fit. Of course. And the, man, they're good. And what I, what what's cool about?

• 1:43:45Jocko Willink?

  I mean, here's the reality. When you, when you, when you put on a uniform, when you put on a uniform, you change your mentality a little bit. Just factually, factually. And so when people are like, oh, man, I was wearing the discipline equals t, discipline equals freedom t-shirt today. I got my PR on clean and jerk. And I'm like, yeah.

• 1:44:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:44:08Jocko Willink?

  You, you put on your uniform and there's a mental like state of mind that makes a little adjustment in the brain.

• 1:44:15Speaker 01

  You know, it's real funny about that exact notion. When I, when we first got the first shirts in, discipline equals freedom. Put on the gray one and I get, I know that, that thing, that it's a, it's a psychological thing, you know?

• 1:44:28Jocko Willink?

  It's real.

• 1:44:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Which is, by the way, one of the most powerful things in your whole life, psychological. Anyway, so I put it on. I was like, yeah, I'm going to take a picture. You know, of me in the new shirt kind of thing. And I put it on and I, and I was going to work out anyway. And man, I put it on. I was like, yeah, I felt that exactly on the shirt that I made, you know? Anyway, yeah, it's so true. And the rash guard, I'm not going to go into the story, but I put on the rash guard yesterday.

• 1:44:52Jocko Willink?

  It worked out.

• 1:44:53Speaker 01

  It did. It worked out very, I did very well.

• 1:44:55Jocko Willink?

  So there's some sort of a subliminal power that you can gain.

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  Yes. So true. And when, when I was thinking rash.

• 1:45:04Jocko Willink?

  Is this false advertising? Hey, if you wear this rash, this rash guard, your jujitsu will improve 19%.

• 1:45:10Speaker 01

  No, it's not false at all.

• 1:45:11Jocko Willink?

  It's not even false.

• 1:45:13Speaker 01

  I want to say 19%. And I went into the whole rash guard situation, like, oh yeah, we need rash guards because people were saying, hey, we need like this rash guards. And there were jujitsu people.

• 1:45:22Jocko Willink?

  There was a demand signal.

• 1:45:22Speaker 01

  But here's the thing.

• 1:45:25Speaker 01

  Like rash guards, like the short sleeve, all that, bruh, this is like, if you go like biking and stuff, that's really what it's for. It's like biking, uh, like CrossFit, anything where you, you're like.

• 1:45:35Jocko Willink?

  Water.

• 1:45:35Speaker 01

  Exactly right. Surfing. That's really what rash guards are for. I mean, jujitsu now, because there's jujitsu now.

• 1:45:41Jocko Willink?

  Well, we used to, back in the day. Back in the day, we used to just wear, we, if people were wearing rash guards, there was no such thing as Jiu Jitsu rash guard.

• 1:45:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:45:50Jocko Willink?

  There was only actual rash guards.

• 1:45:52Speaker 01

  You know what it is for body boarding is what it is. Yeah.

• 1:45:57Jocko Willink?

  For, for all means of water sports.

• 1:46:01Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. And my, my little brother, he's a diver. He dives spearfishing and goes diving. He's dope too. He thought, he forgot this. Anyway, he's on quiet. So, um, same thing, like you go diving, water. So it's like, that's what this is for. Including, but not limited to Jiu Jitsu.

• 1:46:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Jiu Jitsu is a complete bonus on the tail end of that.

• 1:46:21Speaker 01

  But if you wear this.

• 1:46:21Jocko Willink?

  Now, these are specifically designed for Jiu Jitsu.

• 1:46:26Speaker 01

  They're designed for everything.

• 1:46:27Jocko Willink?

  They're just multi-person, might multi-purpose.

• 1:46:30Speaker 01

  Yep. And, and straight up, if you wear it for Jiu Jitsu, you're gonna do better. I'm making that claim. Straight up.

• 1:46:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, I love it. I love it.

• 1:46:39Speaker 01

  Um, nonetheless.

• 1:46:40Jocko Willink?

  I've enrolled with you while you're wearing it yet.

• 1:46:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. Good luck. Good luck with that one.

• 1:46:46Jocko Willink?

  We will go to the gym.

• 1:46:49Speaker 01

  Also new, that's out is patches for Jiu Jitsu, for anything. They're just patches you can sew on. They're iron on, but you sew them on, sew them on, sew them on. Yeah. Um, patches, discipline equals freedom. There is a Jiu Jitsu specific patch. It says Jiu Jitsu, you know, discipline. Anyway, go on jockoesther.com, you can see them all.

• 1:47:09Jocko Willink?

  And women's shirts.

• 1:47:10Speaker 01

  Women's shirts are new. Oh wait, back to the patches real quick. So I got a recommendation for the Velcro one.

• 1:47:15Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 1:47:16Speaker 01

  Which is, bro, I don't even know why I didn't, like, it didn't.

• 1:47:19Jocko Willink?

  You know why? Cause you don't wear a hat.

• 1:47:21Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:22Jocko Willink?

  You don't wear hats.

• 1:47:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, but still.

• 1:47:24Jocko Willink?

  I wear a hat all the time. I, there's always space for a, a patch on there. So.

• 1:47:29Speaker 01

  Bro, I'm gonna put it on everything.

• 1:47:31Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 1:47:32Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 1:47:33Jocko Willink?

  What about the women's shirts?

• 1:47:34Speaker 01

  Women's shirts. Okay. Yes. Thank you, Debbie and, um, you know, all you guys.

• 1:47:40Jocko Willink?

  Every one of them.

• 1:47:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:41Jocko Willink?

  Female troopers.

• 1:47:42Speaker 01

  Hey, I got it.

• 1:47:42Jocko Willink?

  Getting after it.

• 1:47:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, Lisa.

• 1:47:47Jocko Willink?

  Sarah, Lisa, yeah. They're on you.

• 1:47:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:51Jocko Willink?

  They bring the heat.

• 1:47:52Speaker 01

  No, they bring very good input and I thank them and I respect their tenacity.

• 1:47:56Jocko Willink?

  Did you feel threatened?

• 1:47:57Speaker 01

  No, no, I felt that we were all in this together, you know? Um, but yeah, thank you. So yes, they are coming here. Here's the thing. They're not T-shirts. They're tank tops.

• 1:48:06Jocko Willink?

  Cool.

• 1:48:07Speaker 01

  Do we want T-shirts?

• 1:48:08Jocko Willink?

  I don't know.

• 1:48:09Speaker 01

  If we do, then we're gonna get T-shirts as well. Good.

• 1:48:11Jocko Willink?

  Ask, ask the females, female troopers.

• 1:48:14Speaker 01

  Maybe we'll do a pink?

• 1:48:16Jocko Willink?

  We will not.

• 1:48:16Speaker 01

  Maybe we will though. That's the thing.

• 1:48:19Jocko Willink?

  We will not.

• 1:48:20Speaker 01

  Either way, they are in the, literally in the works, submitted.

• 1:48:23Jocko Willink?

  That Lisa's like, pink, pink, pink, pink.

• 1:48:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, ooh, ooh, me, me.

• 1:48:26Jocko Willink?

  Not happening.

• 1:48:27Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:48:28Jocko Willink?

  Vetted.

• 1:48:29Speaker 01

  I didn't really feel like doing the pink either. So guess what I did? The pink.

• 1:48:33Jocko Willink?

  Ah.

• 1:48:34Speaker 01

  Actually, I didn't do the pink, but it's in the works still. Nonetheless, they're on the way, straight up on the way.

• 1:48:38Jocko Willink?

  You know what? This is decentralized command, folks. I'm not micromanaging Echo. He's got the creative brain, so let them run with it.

• 1:48:45Speaker 01

  And humility, because just because it's not your specific opinion, doesn't mean it's, you know?

• 1:48:51Jocko Willink?

  But there's just. There is a standard of, yeah, so hopefully you maintain it. I guess I'd just be, you know, I'll try and give you the proper guidance.

• 1:49:03Speaker 01

  Well, there you go.

• 1:49:04Jocko Willink?

  To make that happen. Anything else?

• 1:49:05Speaker 01

  Jaco store.com. That's it. That's where they all are.

• 1:49:09Jocko Willink?

  And thanks everyone for shopping and supporting. It's awesome. And should we go to the questions?

• 1:49:16Speaker 01

  Oh, wait, wait. One more thing. Just a little technical thing. Okay. Outside of the US. If you're outside of US, Canada, Australia, anywhere outside of the US, um. I put a little thing on there because just as far as just the shipping process, technical thing, um, for customs. They want your phone number to create the shipping label. I need your phone number.

• 1:49:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 1:49:36Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna give the phone number out. I'm not gonna call no one, text nobody, but they just need it for the customs thing.

• 1:49:41Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:49:42Speaker 01

  So I've tried to put a thing on there, but hey, look, you're shopping. You just want to check out and be done with it. I understand, but if if possible, try to try to remember that one.

• 1:49:52Jocko Willink?

  Otherwise, you gotta email them.

• 1:49:53Speaker 01

  Oh, it's no problem. I'll email for for good.

• 1:49:55Jocko Willink?

  We want the stuff now.

• 1:49:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, hey, look.

• 1:49:57Jocko Willink?

  Especially it's got to ship a long way.

• 1:49:59Speaker 01

  Exactly right.

• 1:50:00Jocko Willink?

  The Clio in Holland.

• 1:50:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:50:03Jocko Willink?

  It's so there's so many people. This is what's really cool is getting feedback from people all over. All over the world. That's crazy, right?

• 1:50:10Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:50:11Jocko Willink?

  That's kind of crazy, right?

• 1:50:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 1:50:12Jocko Willink?

  It's all over the world. Troopers getting after it.

• 1:50:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, it it makes sense when you think about it.

• 1:50:18Jocko Willink?

  People come in from um. Sweden.

• 1:50:22Speaker 01

  Yep. Oh, they came in?

• 1:50:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, came to the gym, didn't roll though. But we hung out. We talk about physics.

• 1:50:28Speaker 01

  Properties of physics, for sure.

• 1:50:31Jocko Willink?

  Physicist, listen, physicist, that guess what he likes to listen to? The podcast. We don't talk about physics.

• 1:50:40Speaker 01

  Okay, yeah.

• 1:50:41Jocko Willink?

  No, we don't.

• 1:50:42Speaker 01

  Indirectly, we do. But yeah, i- if you can, outside of US, try to remember the phone number. So it just it saves a step. And boom, it's on it's on its way to you quicker.

• 1:50:52Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 1:50:53Speaker 01

  I don't mind emailing though. In fact, I get a lot of cool little conversations, like the Australia guys, for some reason. I love those guys. They'll be like, hey, and they'll say the Australian stuff. I was in Australia, you know, a couple of years ago, whatever. And um, met this guy, Jason. He's a black belt under Hickson.

• 1:51:08Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:51:08Speaker 01

  And he has a anyway, I was um, I was with him doing some stuff and he would teach me all the Australian stuff then. Some I didn't know, like Too Easy. For example, Too Easy is like.

• 1:51:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I got this.

• 1:51:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, like all good. Yeah, it's it's just this real, it's kind of ambiguous, but it, you know. I love that phrase. Anyway, nonetheless, you know, you get into fun conversations with people and you email them for for the simple stuff.

• 1:51:29Jocko Willink?

  You're about to get ten million emails now.

• 1:51:31Speaker 01

  I know, I know, whatever. Good, good.

• 1:51:35Jocko Willink?

  How long have we been? How long if? How long did that go?

• 1:51:40Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah. Roughly two hours, roughly.

• 1:51:46Jocko Willink?

  Alright, well, I actually got a pretty good stack of questions.

• 1:51:52Jocko Willink?

  I'm thinking that for today, we wrap it. And hold off on Q and A until the next one, and we'll just do all Q and A on the next one. I don't, to be quite frank with you, it's kinda tough to even follow up with this book. So.

• 1:52:19Jocko Willink?

  So with that, thanks, everybody out there for, for listening, for supporting the podcast. Thanks for taking the time to learn with me, to remember with us.

• 1:52:42Jocko Willink?

  The depth of the world, the depth of the darkness. And the sacrifices.

• 1:52:57Jocko Willink?

  That have been made for us.

• 1:53:07Jocko Willink?

  And remember that.

• 1:53:15Jocko Willink?

  Remember that. Remember these men and what they were really, truly afraid of. Not afraid of physical agony, not afraid of death itself, but they feared losing their future.

• 1:53:39Jocko Willink?

  They feared losing their future.

• 1:53:44Jocko Willink?

  So, we here, sitting here today.

• 1:53:54Jocko Willink?

  We have a future. We have that opportunity.

• 1:54:01Jocko Willink?

  So make sure you take every possible advantage of the opportunity that you have.

• 1:54:14Jocko Willink?

  And that you have in the future.

• 1:54:21Jocko Willink?

  And you know how to do that.

• 1:54:25Jocko Willink?

  You do that by getting out there.

• 1:54:31Jocko Willink?

  And getting after it.

• 1:54:36Jocko Willink?

  And so, until next time.

• 1:54:42Jocko Willink?

  This is Echo and Jaco.

• 1:54:46Jocko Willink?

  Out.