486: Warfare: The Missions, The Men, and The Movie. W/ Elliott Miller and Joe Hildebrand.

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe Two of the US Navy SEALS that were in the Battle of Ramadi in the events depicted in the Movie "Warfare". 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 486 with me Jocko Willink. In October of 2006, Task Unit Bruiser was turning over with our replacements from SEAL Team 5. And Leif had been at Team 5 and had just deployed with Team 5 and Tony had been at Team 5 and, you know, it's the team, so we kind of know some of their boys and their task unit. But it was definitely going to be a different type of turnover because it had been a different type of deployment. And the guys from Team 5 had been back in San Diego, reading the after-action reports for months. And they'd read about what had been happening in Ramadi, the enemy contacts, the gunfights,

• 0:43Jocko Willink?

  the killing, the casualties, the enemy casualties, and of course, the friendlies killed in action and wounded in action. And these guys from Team 5 had, many of them gone to the funerals and memorial services for our guys from Task Unit Bruiser. And when they showed up, of course, we wanted to stay longer, we wanted to keep fighting, but that's not the way it works. And we spent, I don't know, a couple of weeks downloading as much information as we could to them, trying to give them a good turnover. And I remember the first kind of full muster when all the guys, because guys come, guys

• 1:28Jocko Willink?

  show up in theater in bits and pieces, many cases. So it was like the first full muster of the Team 5 task unit. And I was, we were kind of giving the official turnover brief and I was talking about the op tempo and I was talking about the relationships with the Army and the Marine Corps and how important those were and I was talking about the strategic impact of the battle. And I remember telling them something very direct.

• 1:58Jocko Willink?

  I told them, "You will take casualties."

• 2:03Jocko Willink?

  And it seemed a little strange telling them that because I wondered to myself, you know, before I told them that, is this defeatist to tell them that? Is it like it's unavoidable, it's a foregone conclusion? Maybe it would scare some of the guys? And I kind of debated whether I should tell them that or not, but I decided ultimately that it was the right thing to do.

• 2:28Jocko Willink?

  Because it was the truth. The fighting was so heavy. The enemy was so immersed in the city. If you were out there, day after day, night after night, eventually the odds would come into play.

• 2:42Jocko Willink?

  And men would be wounded or killed and they needed to know that. And I thought to myself that at a minimum, they would think about how to handle it when it did happen. And I hoped it would land hard enough that it would maximize their focus for planning and preparation and execution. And like I said, we poured into them, you know, at every level, the comm guys talking to comm guys, the snipers talking to the snipers, the senior enlisted guys talking to senior enlisted guys, the officers talking to the officers, trying to turn over the tactics, the techniques, the procedures that we were using, the loopholes, the radio procedures, the breaching protocols, the common enemy tactics,

• 3:24Jocko Willink?

  the best practices for planning and executing operations, everything that we could,

• 3:30Jocko Willink?

  we tried to give to them.

• 3:35Jocko Willink?

  And then we said,

• 3:38Jocko Willink?

  "Good luck, Godspeed." And I left with the last group of troops from Task Unit Bruiser, because we also go home sort of in bits. And I left with the last group of Task Unit Bruiser guys on October 21st, 2006. And we get home and of course, it's

• 4:00Jocko Willink?

  it's a whole nother kind of administrative drama going home. You got to do turn in gear and you got to do debriefs and there's a bunch of administrative things you got to turn over. But of course, we're tracking, trying to pay attention to what's going on with the boys that relieved us, the guys from Team Five. But you're also, you know, interacting with your family again. And so you're, you're, you have other things to do. But a few weeks later, on November 19th, 2006, we got word that an operation for them had gone sideways.

• 4:34Jocko Willink?

  An Overwatch position had been hit. There was, you know, we got reports that there was grenades. There were small arms, massive IED,

• 4:43Jocko Willink?

  severely wounded guys. It was

• 4:46Jocko Willink?

  really kind of heart wrenching to hear it. And also because the, the military rumor mill, it was hard to figure out what actually was going on. The story was all over the police place. You know, some of it was like a bunch of guys were dead. Then another one was no guys were dead and then no one was wounded that bad. And then guys were wounded really bad. And it took a while for the information to settle. And with something like this, the guys were out on an Overwatch position and they'd been attacked. A guy got wounded and then they called the army for casualty evacuation. And when they were going to load the evacuation vehicle, hit a massive IED and it killed some Iraqi soldiers and severely wounded two SEALs.

• 5:32Jocko Willink?

  And it sounded like a nightmare and that nightmare has now been captured for everyone to see in a movie that just came out and it's called Warfare. And it was written and directed by a guy named Ray Mendoza, Ray Ray. He, he's also a guy that made a

• 5:52Jocko Willink?

  a while ago, he made a show on the History Channel called Warfighters and he did one episode that was called Charlie Platoon and the Story of Mark Lee. Well, he was also wrote and directed this movie Warfare and this movie Warfare, he was on that operation. And this movie depicts that single operation and it's really depicts it with no holds barred.

• 6:20Jocko Willink?

  Uh, there's no, there's no sugar coating anything that goes on in that movie. It is ground truth. It is rough to watch and it includes everything, includes the horrible wounds that were suffered by the two SEALs that day, Elliott Miller and Joe Hildebrand. And Joe received devastating injuries to his legs. And Elliot suffered severe injuries throughout his body. He got shrapnel, he got grievous burns, wounds that eventually resulted in the loss of his leg. And he also received traumatic brain injury that impaired his motor skills and significantly inhibited his ability to speak.

• 7:03Jocko Willink?

  But thankfully, both of them survived. Through the hard work of the guys on the ground with them and the Army and the Marine Corps, risking their lives to go and help out. They made it and it's an honor to have both of them here to share their stories, their lessons learned, and their thoughts on the movie that captures this horrific story. Joe, Elliot, thanks for joining us. Appreciate it, boys. Um, now for Elliot, since his speech is inhibited by his brain injury, I asked him a bunch of questions beforehand and he wrote out some answers, um, which I'm going to read through and then he's got also got an iPad

• 7:46Jocko Willink?

  that he uses to communicate and insult the people around him and make fun of everybody, which is fine. But, uh, let's get into it, let's get into some background. So thanks for coming down, guys. Really appreciate it. It's good to, it's good to see you both. Um, let's start with you, Elliot. So I was asking about where you, where you, what your background was, where you came from. And you said this, uh, "I was born the third out of four kids into a modest family. We lived on a small farm in Southern Illinois, where we had some heads of cattle as well as a little amount of agricultural land. It was there that I developed my love of the outdoors and hunt, shooting and hunting." I was always very interested in firearms as my grandmother on my mom's side was a marine.

• 8:30Jocko Willink?

  Or sorry, my grandfather on my mom's side was a marine. He was probably the reason I had become a marine, which we're going to find out that you you joined the Marine Corps. And I had and he had fought on the island of Tarawa and Saipan too, I believe. He had a small shop in town where he sold guns and other knickknacks. I was thinking, what do you what's besides like, what do you sell guns and like, uh, ramen noodles? What's going on there?

• 8:56Speaker 01

  Zipper lighters?

• 8:57Jocko Willink?

  Zipper lighters and ramen noodles. Uh, it's like a country store where you happen to have 12 gauges in the in the back.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Plug a tobacco.

• 9:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, and he also sold some food as well.

• 9:12Jocko Willink?

  Check. So you can get a ham hamburger at a nine mil.

• 9:19Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you say my my younger brother and I would go to work for him almost every day during the summer. And then one day he just decided he was going to retire. So we had a big auction where he sold. Oh, hell, I don't know. Let's just say somewhere in the neighborhood between four and 500 or so firearms as well as some other stuff that he acquired over the years, but I don't require, I don't recall anything other than that. You say I was also in the scouts where I had obtained the rank of Eagle Scout, which would pay off for me in the very near future as I was promoted to E2 right out of boot camp. You put in a lot of work to make Eagle Scout and just get E2 out of it. That's harder work than going to college and those people get a commission.

• 9:59Speaker 01

  Which is just an eight month, you know, eight months later, you get advanced.

• 10:05Jocko Willink?

  Uh, which in that back in those days meant around 150 bucks a month raise, which was a lot.

• 10:12Jocko Willink?

  So what about you, Joe? Where'd you grow up?

• 10:15Speaker 01

  So I grew up in Arkansas, small town, 556 people. Definitely country living.

• 10:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. What'd your parents do?

• 10:22Speaker 01

  So my dad didn't really do a lot of work outside of he was retired from a Caterpillar tractor company. And my mom worked for a, uh, she does like used cars.

• 10:31Jocko Willink?

  How many brothers and sisters?

• 10:32Speaker 01

  I got one brother. He's older.

• 10:34Jocko Willink?

  And what what sports were you? You playing growing up?

• 10:36Speaker 01

  So I played baseball.

• 10:38Jocko Willink?

  Any good?

• 10:39Speaker 01

  It's pretty good. Yeah. I mean, I was, I was pretty decent. I liked it. Um, but as I got a little older, I figured out I could, I could do work instead of play baseball. And fund, uh, you know, some, some beverages for the weekends and pay for gas. So I could go dirt roading with my friends.

• 10:52Jocko Willink?

  What kind of car did you have?

• 10:54Speaker 01

  I had a, uh, well, my first vehicle was a 1979 Chevy Love. I traded a horse for it.

• 10:58Jocko Willink?

  A 19, that was that that little tiny, uh, truck?

• 11:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. I had a Mitsubishi motor in it. The hood opened backwards like a Corvette. Had big buckshot mutters on it.

• 11:09Jocko Willink?

  Elliot, first vehicle, what was it? Maybe you had some kind of a pimp car, like, you know, like a Camaro or something like that.

• 11:16Speaker 01

  It's a Chevy. Oh, S10. I was close.

• 11:18Jocko Willink?

  There you go. That's, that's, that's, that's the Chevy's version.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, that's actually the version ahead of my, my Chevy Love. The next thing was an S10.

• 11:30Jocko Willink?

  That's a, that's a womanizing vehicle right there, bro.

• 11:37Jocko Willink?

  How did you find out about the, so you didn't, I know you, you end up joining, um, just the regular Navy.

• 11:44Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 11:45Jocko Willink?

  Did you know you wanted to be a CB?

• 11:46Speaker 01

  No.

• 11:47Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 11:47Speaker 01

  No. So I was, you know, post-high school, small town.

• 11:51Jocko Willink?

  Was white?

• 11:55Speaker 01

  So small town Arkansas, there wasn't much future there. So you either, you know, go get out of high school and just go to work at a local whatever company and stay there or, and I didn't, I didn't want to do that. So I knew the Navy was a way to get out of there and go do something. And I'd, I had read some books about the SEAL teams and that was something that was pretty interesting to me. Um, but at the time I just needed to, to get out of the town. And I was doing construction. So kind of the easy translation was Navy Seabees.

• 12:22Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Yeah. The Seabees is a great job, a great job for people to get and a great opportunity. And they, they had a cool job in the military too. Like, one thing that's cool about the Seabees is you, you get to do your job for real all the time. You're building stuff. So. All right, Elliot. So you obviously didn't know about the SEAL teams yet because you ended up joining the Marine Corps.

• 12:46Jocko Willink?

  You say this, so I joined the Marine Corps in 1980, 1996, straight out of high school as an infantryman, but I was actually just like a lav crewman, light armored vehicle crewman, went on two deployments to Oki, one in 97 and again in 99, but on number two, I was the mute, the mute platoon. So I got to go to Australia, South Korea and the Philippines, no combat or anything like that. I mean, that was the Clinton era.

• 13:17Jocko Willink?

  That was me too. Uh, I did, I did some time in the, in the, actually, I actually got the tail end of the first Bush, 19, I joined in 1990. So yeah, not a lot going on, but I'm sure there was things, some things going on in Australia and the Philippines.

• 13:36Jocko Willink?

  From that smirk. For Lance Corporal, Corporal Elliot over here, Corporal Miller. Uh, you say then, then I got out of the crotch, which is a slang term for the Marine Corps. I got out of the crotch and moved back home, Southern Illinois to go to college at SIU for just one year, but I couldn't stand not having to carry a weapon. So I got the harebrained idea that I would become an LAPD officer. How come you didn't want to come a local officer?

• 14:05Speaker 02

  Because I wanted some action.

• 14:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, that's true. I remember in the nineties, you know, we would look at the LAPD, the LAPD SWAT team, the SEALs would work with them back in the day and they were getting, you know, they'd do a bunch of hits every month. So pretty good call. You, you figured that out. Back to what you were saying here. So I packed my shit along with a friend and we set out for LA. Then along the way, and I mean that too, as we were driving through Arizona, those chicken fuckers flew into the World Trade Center. So almost immediately I went into recruiter's office there in Redondo Beach and my original intention was to reenlist the Marines, but they told me that if I was to reenlist, I would have to go back to E3. So I told them to get fucked.

• 14:52Jocko Willink?

  And walked right next door to the Navy and told them that I wanted BUDS and corpsman too. So I had to go to corps school in Great Lakes first, which was a joke. But I got, I got that done and reported a BUDS in March of oh two and finished in November that same year. Yeah, dude, that's right. No rollbacks for me. You made it through in one shot, huh? It's legit. So you must have been what 24, 23?

• 15:18Speaker 02

  24 years old when I graduated BUDS.

• 15:22Jocko Willink?

  So that's, that's probably average. I don't know. That's probably average because there's not many guys that actually graduate that are young. Most of the guys are like 23, 24, 25. I think those are the kind of prime years.

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially back then.

• 15:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Um, and so, but you Joe, so that's what you did. So Joe, you joined the Navy. You go to boot camp, you end up in the CBS. And then how long you, how long did you spend in the CBS for?

• 15:51Speaker 01

  So about almost six years. So, because I went, I went to Camp David. So I didn't really get into the full CB work. Like in a battalion. So I went to Camp David, worked for the president there, uh, did that for two years.

• 16:04Jocko Willink?

  What'd you do there?

• 16:05Speaker 01

  So Camp David's a hundred, well, it's 99% military. So there's one person that comes and plays in Oregon, you know, for church. But everybody else is military. So you maintain the whole facility.

• 16:14Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 16:14Speaker 01

  So I was brand new to the Navy. So I was the junior guy at the camp. So basically all the young guys are mowing grass and I got to go, uh, learn how to take care of a golf green. So I took care of the president's golf green. There's two of us and there was only one green.

• 16:26Jocko Willink?

  Damn dude.

• 16:27Speaker 01

  Seven, seven Ts.

• 16:29Jocko Willink?

  What a weird way to kick off your Navy career, huh?

• 16:32Speaker 01

  Really weird, really weird. But it was, it was, it was cool. It was fun. I enjoyed it. Looking back, it was a great, great time.

• 16:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And then from there you went to a CB battalion?

• 16:40Speaker 01

  So I ended up going to Guam. So I went, I headed overseas and did, um, worked in Guam and then from there. Back to a CB unit and then to BUDS from there.

• 16:50Jocko Willink?

  At what point did you like make the decision that you were going?

• 16:53Speaker 01

  So going to BUDS?

• 16:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 16:56Speaker 01

  So early on, you know, every, every day was a battle. Like you love the Navy, you hate the Navy. And I can't wait to get out, can't, you know, and then, and then I realized, you know, I was in the CBs. I love, I love the CBs, but I realized if I wanted to join the Marine Corps, I would join the Marine Corps. So, cause they're very structured and then I saw a SEAL platoon and I'm like, I'm like, you know, you knew what SEALs do. Cause you read the books, but when you actually see them, you're like, wow, you guys are grownups. They treat you like grownups. You talk to each other like grownups. I'm like, that's what I want to do. So then I went to, I was at self-help, which is a CB bay or CB job in Point Loma. And then I got my orders to BUDS from there.

• 17:34Jocko Willink?

  And what class were you in?

• 17:35Speaker 01

  Two, four, four. I was just, just, just behind Elliott, a couple of classes.

• 17:39Jocko Willink?

  Right on, right on.

• 17:41Jocko Willink?

  Any big challenges for you? You're like a freaking stud athlete.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  I tried to be, yeah.

• 17:48Jocko Willink?

  Like, okay, you're being humble, but you're even, even like talking to guys, talking to Leif from Team Five. He's like, yeah, you'd go on a, like they'd be doing an ocean swim. Team Five would do an ocean swim and you would do the ocean swim with no fins and still beat 90% of the people. Which is totally ridiculous. That's like being on a motorcycle versus a bicycle. And he said, and anyone that you didn't beat, or anyone that beat you on the swim, you would just destroy them on the run. And where did, were you, did you do triathlons or something?

• 18:17Speaker 01

  I did. Yeah. So I did. Just, I enjoyed it. You know, I enjoyed working out and that was just kind of part of my life. Post small town living and you know, once I got in the military, I'm like, God, you know, I enjoy this. I'm actually, I realized I'm actually kind of good at it. So, yeah.

• 18:32Jocko Willink?

  So you didn't start that until, you didn't, you didn't run track or cross country in high school or anything? No swim team, nothing like that?

• 18:37Speaker 01

  Well, so I, I was on a track team in, in high school for a short amount of time, but we, I was a fat kid. So we weren't, you know, I wasn't out crushing it. So matter of fact, our town, I mean, I told you, it's 556 people. One of the, you know, so we didn't even have a track.

• 18:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  So I got on this track team. I don't know how I got on it. And we had a little, there was a little road just by the school that we would go run our track on. But there was a little restaurant there. So I would go over there and just sit and eat ice cream at this little store. I wasn't even running. And then, and then I had this big event. It was the mile and I was going to run the mile and I'm sitting on the bus, you know, track meets are all day long. You're sitting there and I'm just sitting on the bus, waiting for my time to go. Well, I ended up getting in a fight with a kid. So I punched him in the face and then the, the coach wouldn't let me go run my one event. So I, that was my whole track career. So I ended up, yeah, not running track. But you know, to be fair, as I got a little bit older in, in high school, um, I didn't, I did not like being overweight. So I figured that, I figured out real quick, if I go run, you know, it was helping me manage that weight and get back,

• 19:37Speaker 01

  to get into some sort of shape. And then it became something that I don't know if I just internally challenged myself, but it became easy. And then when I did eventually run with people in the Navy, I was like, wow, these people are slow. I didn't know I was, I didn't know I was fast. I thought, wow, you know, these people are slow. And then I realized, actually, you know, was a pretty decent runner. It's more of a natural thing.

• 19:55Jocko Willink?

  So was BUDS, what, what challenged you in BUDS? Like if you're good at running and swimming.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:01Jocko Willink?

  That's real nice.

• 20:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was real nice. Well, yes, and then, you know, because I ran so much, lower extremity injuries wasn't, I was not prone to those. So I didn't, you know, I had no, I had no issues. I thought BUDS was, well, for me, coming from the Seabees, had a good work ethic to start with. I just remember, you know, just laying in the water and people quitting and thinking, well, I'm getting paid to do this. And I could see where I just came from across the bay there in Point Loma. And I'm like, I'm not going back to that. So, you know, I did not think BUDS was that hard. I think if I was to boil it down, the hardest challenge for me in BUDS was the dirty name. And that was something, and that was something I got over real quick. You know, I cracked some ribs on it to start with. I didn't understand it, but after that, yeah, I thought BUDS was fun.

• 20:40Jocko Willink?

  Well, what was your biggest challenge Elliot? In BUDS? Leif said it was keeping your mouth shut.

• 20:45Speaker 01

  Still his challenge.

• 20:47Jocko Willink?

  Probably the swimming. Yeah. That's what I'm surprised with you, Joe, like for someone that didn't grow up in the water, didn't grow up on the swim, for to win swims is a big deal. Like, that's a big deal. That's challenging.

• 21:00Speaker 01

  I spent a lot of time in the water. So I've always been comfortable in the water and always been good swimming. So I started doing Ironman. So I did five Ironman before I went to BUDS.

• 21:08Jocko Willink?

  Damn, dude.

• 21:09Speaker 01

  As a disclaimer, I did them all in one year. So, yeah, I got trained up, just started crushing them.

• 21:14Jocko Willink?

  Freaking epic.

• 21:15Speaker 01

  But I think for me, if you, to boil it down, the hardest challenge for me is I was 27 in BUDS. So those are dog years. Anything over, you know, anything over 25 is dog years. So, you know, those young kids are, you know, they'll go get beat up during the day and then they go out and drink at night. And I'm like icing, like, okay, it's not the same.

• 21:35Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. So you guys get done with BUDS. Elliot, you say after that, so you get done with BUDS, after that, I got my jump wings at Fort Benning, Georgia. It was back to Coronado so I could get my Trident, which I did in May of 03. Since I was a corpsman, I had to go back across the country yet again for my additional medical training at Fort Bragg, North Cackalacky, for about another six or so months. So after that, I got sent back to Coronado to Team Five and was assigned to Bravo Platoon, where I did two platoons, the first of which was split. The first part, we did PSD for the interim VP of Iraq. And yeah, that sucked. But that only lasted a couple of months because then we got slotted to go to PACOM. We left Iraq and headed to Guam.

• 22:19Jocko Willink?

  And so, this is kind of, this is how you knew Leif. Did you, were you in BUDS with Leif too? So you guys were in BUDS together. And I think Leif actually knew that you were, when you were at medical school, he kind of talked and figured out a way to get you put into his platoon with Zawi and Ray Ray. And so you guys got a little core group of new guys in there. Was that, were you a new guy in that platoon too?

• 22:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, this first platoon.

• 22:45Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 22:46Speaker 02

  Yes, Ray Bob, that's right.

• 22:52Jocko Willink?

  You guys had a good little crew then.

• 22:55Jocko Willink?

  Um, you say from there I'd gone to Thailand, South Korea, and finally to Singapore. Also whilst in Guam, I was heloed down on the USS San Francisco. It was a submarine that had actually hit an underwater sea mountain. And one of the crew had smashed his head into something and in doing so that pretty much killed him. But that doesn't mean I didn't try everything I could to save him up to and including giving him a tracheotomy. But that was no avail. So I had to pack him up and send him off to get pronounced dead. So this was a interesting event that took place. It was eighth January, 2005, the USS San Francisco was going max speed. And I think that's classified, but it's fast.

• 23:34Jocko Willink?

  And it hit a, a damn undersea mountain that wasn't on the charts or, and it was at a depth of 525 feet. They, they almost lost the vessel. It was a, and I was looking at pictures of it yesterday, like it was all jacked up. Oh, yeah. It looked like a car getting in a head on collision, going 50 miles or probably 45 or 50 miles an hour. That's how bad it looked. Uh, were you the, were you the only guy that went on or did send all the medics you had?

• 24:06Speaker 02

  No, we also got the group dive medical officer down there too.

• 24:10Jocko Willink?

  Got it, got it. Um, ultimately, like you said, machinist mate, second class Joseph Ashley, 24 of Akron, Ohio, was killed in that, in that tragedy. Um, and so he's a medic. What was your job in platoons in your first platoon?

• 24:29Speaker 01

  So because I was so senior, um, I was in E6 going through BUDS. So I eventually become the LPO in my first platoon.

• 24:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 24:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:35Jocko Willink?

  When you say eventually, did someone make chief or?

• 24:38Speaker 01

  No, so our LPO got relieved.

• 24:40Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 24:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I just kind of took over.

• 24:42Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's pretty impressive to step up.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  But that was all because I believed that the seas were too rough.

• 24:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:53Speaker 01

  So I started off as first lieutenant.

• 24:54Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  So I was running first lieutenant and then eventually I just took over the LPO.

• 24:58Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm. Yeah, that's, that's, that's a big step, man.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:03Jocko Willink?

  To go from new guy to LPO.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:06Jocko Willink?

  How'd the boys like that?

• 25:07Speaker 01

  So the interesting thing is, you know, we're talking about the core guys, you know, all of us new guys that got there. We were new to the SEAL teams, but we, none of us were new to the military. So everybody had some, you know, life experience and military experience. So there was a lot of maturity there. To be honest, I think the core group getting there had more maturity than some of the older guys. And, uh, well, to be honest, it's a hundred percent true. So the core, you know, we all, there was not a power struggle. I think when the LPO was relieved, I think everybody was kinda, you know how it is, like you have that person, everybody already knows they need to be relieved. And then once he was relieved, it was kinda like this sigh of relief. And the two senior guys we had, it was really, really one senior guy. They didn't want the responsibility, you know, so they, they were kinda like all about just, you know, following in line.

• 25:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it, it, the dynamics in a SEAL platoon, and it's, I've now that I've seen so much leadership in so many different organizations. It's like if someone is stepping up, if there's a leadership vacuum and someone steps up and is gonna make things happen and they're, they're listening, they're not being arrogant. It's like, it works fine. In fact, that's what, that's what officers do, right? The officer, the junior officers, they don't have any experience and yet they're supposed to step up and lead. And as long as they do it and humble and they listen, they take advice, like, it works.

• 26:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, I felt like it was, you know, they, the guys want leadership and they don't care where it come from.

• 26:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  So it didn't have to have, you know, have the, because I certainly didn't have the experience, the team experience, but I had leadership experience from being in the SEBs for so long, so.

• 26:30Jocko Willink?

  And that first deployment, you guys did half the time in Iraq doing PSD and half the time in Guam doing exercises.

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 26:40Jocko Willink?

  And I know, uh, Leif was telling me that he, he and a couple other guys, and Ellie was one of them, went up to Samara and did some sniper operations. Not, nothing really huge, great happened, but he was, uh, at least excited to be able to do that. Did you guys, did you get in on some DAs at least or something like that?

• 26:56Speaker 01

  In Iraq?

• 26:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 26:58Speaker 01

  So unfortunately I did not because I was, I eventually. Me and Kevin K D R O I C. We took the principal. He was from London. So we ended up spending, we did a whirlwind tour of London and Saudi Arabia and all these places. But we moved the platoon over to, um, to where they could do DAs of Team Three, because Team Three was deployed at the same time that we were there doing PSD. So they got to go do some DAs.

• 27:20Jocko Willink?

  So you were like doing full on, just diplomatic, wearing a suit, the whole nine yards, huh?

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Yes. But it was, you know, it wasn't too bad. We got to some countries like, you know, England, you just turn them right over to Scotland Yard, you know, where the soft is like hanging out. So.

• 27:33Jocko Willink?

  That's crazy. You had a freaking weird career. Like, that's weird. Doing the freaking golf course thing.

• 27:39Speaker 01

  I know.

• 27:39Jocko Willink?

  And then, and now you're going to London.

• 27:41Speaker 01

  It gets weirder. Yeah, it's a big field of party. It gets weirder. Yeah.

• 27:47Jocko Willink?

  So you guys get done with that deployment. Uh, you get home, Elliot, you say, after I got done with my first platoon, I'd gone to sniper school as well as some other schools and then deployed to Iraq in the fall of oh six, where we were supporting the Army's First Brigade, First Armored Division, providing sniper, sniper overwatch. You say, now this is where things get funky, because I don't have any kind of recollection of what happened to me on my alive day. The last memory I have of Iraq is that of my room and all the pornographic photos I had up on my wall in my little cubby.

• 28:23Jocko Willink?

  None of, nothing of any missions that I had gone on, and especially nothing, and I mean zero recollection of the day when I was blowed up. So they say that it'll come back, but I'm not buying it. Just because Joe Hildebrand, who was also injured, though not nearly to the extent that I was, has told me the story probably a dozen fucking times. And then I'll just like, forget. Yeah, dude, TBI is a real fucking bitch.

• 28:56Jocko Willink?

  I want to talk a little bit about preparing, uh, preparing for Ramadi as you guys are getting ready to go there. As I mentioned earlier, you know, and I didn't really think too much about this while I was in Ramadi. That our after actions reports, like one of my buddies, when I got back, he's like, dude, we were reading those things to the command daily.

• 29:17Jocko Willink?

  What was that like for you? Like as you're hearing the shit that's going on and, and you guys know where you're going?

• 29:22Speaker 01

  So I can, I can probably speak for the whole platoon at the time. You know, we were reading that stuff and it was the most real anything had ever been in our lives because we know what we're preparing to go do. And there was no shortcuts. We were, you know, we were honing our skills. We were sharpening our knives, um, learning how to keep our powder dry every single day. And it was not, you know, ULT was a whole new beast for us at the time because, you know, we'd taken diving out, we just whittled it down to like what really is important. And then we were taking that time for sit, which it wasn't called sit back then, but we were taking that, that integration time to really hone down on what we're learning from your after action reports and, uh, to try to be as, as mentally and physically and, you know, tactically prepared as we possibly could be. And, you know, even

• 30:06Speaker 01

  for the rest of my career, I don't know, you know, we always, you always think, you know, even as platoon chief, I was trying to focus my platoon on what really matters. But that was a time where, you know, you were really paying attention to, to every little detail.

• 30:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I think that, I mean, I did seven deployments and it, there was no time where I was in your guys' shoes, which is like even when we were going to Ramadi, oh, I knew it was bad, but it was sort of bad in a good way, you know, oh, there's lots of bad guys there and it's going to be a great deployment. And so I kind of had that feeling, not the, and by the way, we only found out we were going to Ramadi two weeks before we deployed. So we were really focused on Baghdad and Baghdad, I'd been to Baghdad and kind of done the same kind of operations that were done in Baghdad. So it was very much, okay, cool. Like it's going to be a great deployment, but then we find out we're going to Ramadi. And, you know, we get, we barely even had time to talk to guys that

• 31:02Jocko Willink?

  were over there. No, uh, pre-deployment site survey. We just show up and it was real obvious when we got there though. Like, okay. And I, and I knew it. I, I mean, I knew how bad it was because you're, you're seeing the casualty reports in Al-Lanbar province and most of them are, most of the casualties are in Ramadi. But I don't, I never went on a deployment where like you guys knew 100% what you were getting into as much as a human being can know what it's going to be like. And there's only so much you can convey. You know, I was talking to a kid that was going through pool comp. He was gonna go through pool comp. And I said, hey, man, like it is, pool comp is really, really messed up in BUDS.

• 31:46Jocko Willink?

  And you know, the kid's like, you know, he's a surfer and comfortable in the water and he was doing good and all the other aspects. And he's like, oh, you know, how bad can it be type thing? And he failed it. He failed the first one, failed the second one, finally passed on the third try. And I said to him, I was like, hey, you know, I tried to tell you how messed up pool comp was. And he looked at me and said, nothing you could have told me would have conveyed to me how fucked up pool comp is. And so I feel like that was kind of where you guys were at. Like we're trying, we're telling you guys, hey, you know, it's gnarly. And as much as you guys could possibly understand that, you guys understood it.

• 32:27Speaker 01

  Well, you know, I, I think we fully understood it because, you know, after action reports, you're always getting and they're always inflated. They're always, you know, trying to make something, you know, we did this J set or whatever, and you build it up to do it. We did all these things. But this was the first time that we were reading these after action reports. We knew it was true. These things were very truthful. And this is what we were preparing to go do. And I think that was across the board. Everybody knew that.

• 32:51Jocko Willink?

  I got some, uh, I got some emails between Elliot and Leif and Leif and Elliot.

• 32:58Jocko Willink?

  This one is from Elliot to Leif, May 17th. So this is like, we're only a couple, we're like a month and a half into deployment. From Elliot to Leif, damn dude, what are you tasking a bruiser dudes doing over there? All the different rumors and stories we're getting back here on the strand make it sound like blood, spit and ass are just flying everywhere you go, including Chow. Good stuff. Too bad about Cowie. So Cowie was in your BUDS class with Leif and Elliot. And he was wounded bad in May of 2006. You said, too bad about Cowie anyways, dude. Anyway, dude, holler back whenever you get the chance.

• 33:39Jocko Willink?

  And then Leif wrote back that day, Brosef, what's happening? You guys finished up with ULT? We're doing a lot, man. There's a few places out here, there in Cowtown that are gonna need a little remodeling. If you guys are headed out to relieve us, then you are set. Cause this is the place to be. Downtown has got some crazy shit going on.

• 34:00Jocko Willink?

  How are things in Sand Dog?

• 34:03Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, July 24th from Elliot. Dude, and I'm not 100% sure what this means. Dude, you boys got the top down with your lean on or what?

• 34:18Jocko Willink?

  Uh, for those of you that don't know, and I'm assuming this is a gangster rap thing. Cause Leif Babin is like a gangster rap affectionado. And uh, so I'm assuming that's a gangster rap thing. Got your top down with your lean on.

• 34:40Jocko Willink?

  We be hearing good stuff coming out of your hood. Just try and save some for your old boys in Bravo. We don't want to get over there. You guys have turned that place into a ghost town. All the fellows are doing good though, and everyone gives you a shout. I'll tell them you said, what's up? Anyhow, take care dude. And it's funny, this, you can't, it's very hard to understand the mind of teen guys where that's, you know, he's kinda half joking. Elliot's kinda half joking, but like leave some for us. Like, you know what I mean? That's the attitude. Leif replied, Elliot, all is good here. Lots of shooting going on regularly. Always a good time. Be ready to get your sniper on. Make sure the 300 wind mag is doped in as you should be putting her to good use.

• 35:25Jocko Willink?

  Slap Al in the nuts for me. Keep it real and take it to the house.

• 35:33Jocko Willink?

  Uh, fast forward a little bit. And again, this is what's happening as you guys are preparing to deploy. And do you know when you guys found out you were going to relieve us when that like got confirmed?

• 35:44Speaker 01

  I don't remember exactly when it was. I mean, it was, I think it was like later in ULT, but we knew, I think, because you know, um, our leadership was very keen on people knowing where they're going, or is it possible? It wasn't that little game at the end, you know?

• 35:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 35:57Speaker 02

  I think about six months out was when we knew.

• 36:00Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 36:03Jocko Willink?

  Um, yeah, and that's basically when we got there. So as we got there, you guys were probably, all right, let's see what these guys are doing. And then you're tracking. Uh, here's another email. This one's from August 19th from Elliot. Sorry to hear about everything. And that right there is just a reference to Mark Lee and Ryan Job, you know, uh, Ryan getting wounded so bad and Mark getting killed on August 2nd. Uh, but I'm glad to hear you're all right. Everyone is pretty anxious to get over there and replace you guys so we can put a little hurt on too. Got to admit though, TU Bruiser has set a hard, uh, ho- set the bar good and high.

• 36:39Jocko Willink?

  But who are we kidding? You're only as good as I taught you, young Jedi.

• 36:44Jocko Willink?

  Well, as usual, I don't have much to say. Take care, brother. And always remember Elvis isn't dead. Mickey Mouse is really a master conspirator of commu- communism and Chuck Norris is just a fucking actor. Have fun, dude.

• 36:58Jocko Willink?

  Leif replied the same day. E-Rex, which is one of your nicknames. Your other nickname is Booger, which you get that, got that from your parents? No, who gave you the nickname Booger? One of the things he wrote, E-Rex, thanks for your words, brother. Rough times here, but we are driving on with the mission. There will be a lot-

• 37:16Speaker 02

  I don't remember.

• 37:17Jocko Willink?

  Just, you just became Booger at some point.

• 37:21Speaker 02

  But I think that it was Dave Tyndall and Zoe who gave me that nickname because I had said one time that I wanted to booger some chicks. And then it stuck with me.

• 37:32Jocko Willink?

  Fair enough.

• 37:36Jocko Willink?

  Reply to that email. Another nickname that you had was E-Rex. It said, this is from Leif, "E-Rex, thanks for your words, brother. Rough times, but we are driving on with the mission. There will be lots to do here, as long as your headshed lets you do it. Depends on how much risk they want to run. Obviously, it's some dangerous shit. As always, I'm still your daddy. Enjoy your last six weeks in the world, and we'll see you out here soonest. Give a shout out to Al, Ray Ray, Casey, JoJo, and Baby Lou for me. Peace out, your grandpappy."

• 38:12Jocko Willink?

  So, there was still the rest of, that was, that was in August that you sent that email. There's still August, the rest of August, September, October, before you guys deployed. And we would send home more wounded. And of course, September 29th, Mikey Monsor was killed. Were you guys still?

• 38:31Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys go to his funeral?

• 38:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:36Jocko Willink?

  That, I mean, I just can't imagine a more sobering pre-deployment event.

• 38:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was tough. It was tough watching the guys, too. You know, we're getting ready to step out the door and seeing that, and seeing him come back and go to his funeral. And yeah, it was hard. It was hard to keep, keep focused on what was, on what was going on, or where we're going. But it was also a good way to focus on where we're going. So, it was, it was, it was a hard time, though.

• 39:01Jocko Willink?

  So you guys show up.

• 39:04Jocko Willink?

  Do you get, do you remember me saying like, "Hey, you're gonna take casualties?" I don't know.

• 39:07Speaker 01

  I do. Yeah. Yeah, that happened right as we got there. We, we did a quick, so Elliot and I, when we got on the ground there, we got back over to Markley. And we reorged really quick, because we headed to Carrigador to go turn over Seth. So, yeah, that happened really quick when we were there.

• 39:27Jocko Willink?

  How was the turnover?

• 39:29Speaker 01

  It was good. Yeah, I mean, it was a typical Seth turnover, you know, we uh, we walked right onto a gunfight like, what are we doing? We just went out and uh, on the turnover op, we just went out just blowing loopholes everywhere, just getting after it. And I remember we got back, we're like, what the hell just happened? Like, but it was a good turnover, you know, we got out and um, cause you know, none of us had been um, in any real gunfights up to that point. So that was a good way for us to like, kind of break into it and then um, and then they, they were gone. You know that, you know how fast that rip happened? We, we basically got a lay of the land one night, two nights, and it was like, okay, we're out. And you know, normally you have these long turnovers in places that doesn't even really matter. And this is one of them that

• 40:13Speaker 01

  really mattered. And but then again, it's good to get that leadership, to get those people out of the way. So you can, you know, start focusing on what's next.

• 40:20Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 40:22Jocko Willink?

  It definitely felt like we wanted to give you more turnover.

• 40:25Speaker 01

  Oh, absolutely.

• 40:26Jocko Willink?

  Like, I remember, uh, so I don't know, maybe a couple of weeks before you guys started showing up, we were out doing some operation and I, I was like out there with the platoon and we're, we're peeling back and I'm looking at the platoon, you know, I'd happen to be like holding security or waiting for my turn. And I'm watching the platoon and you could see like they're just freaking good, you know, everyone is just so in the game mode that, and everyone had learned a million little tiny lessons, a million little tiny lessons. Every guy had their own little thing that they'd figured out and shared, but it's just like the experience.

• 41:08Jocko Willink?

  There's no other way to get it, you know, and I just remember thinking like, ah, man, like, like just praying, like, please, like, let it, let you guys get some time to kind of.

• 41:23Jocko Willink?

  Uh, uh, get more experienced, you know, like let you get some time before shit hits the fan. And unfortunately, it just doesn't work that way. The enemy doesn't give a shit. In fact, the enemy knows and they can see they, they have their own little intel network and they all the new new group took over. They did that shit all the time when, when, when, uh, the army would start to turn over with the Iraqis somewhere or a new unit came in, it was like guaranteed you're getting hit. Yeah. And, um, they did that when the one one eighty showed up, like new, new, oh, new Humvees. Yep. Are, are out in town. Although that means there's new people. That means they don't know they're not experienced yet and, and they hit them. Um, and I remember actually Leif was talking about it with me, uh, yesterday, you know,

• 42:08Jocko Willink?

  he was watching, you guys were getting ready to head over Corregidor. And, you know, he was just telling me like how Elliot, you were so like fired up because after however many years in the military, you're gonna go and you're a sniper, you're gonna go do a hundred percent, you're gonna go do the thing that we trained to do. And he's, he was telling me, he was watching you, you guys were getting ready to take your convoy over to Corregidor. And he's like watching you in the fifty cal turret and lock and loading your, he's, he's just sitting there looking at you and he was telling me he could see how freaking stoked you are and he was super pumped. But at the same time, he was just like, man, like it's the same feeling we all had.

• 42:54Jocko Willink?

  Like it's, it's freaking, it's, it's real, man. And it's gonna, it's, it's real. And just pray, like, we're praying for you guys. Please just like let these guys, let these guys get, get their bearings and what, please let them, you know, you just, you feel like no matter what we did in that short period of time, you just leave going, damn it, you know, just, you know, you're out in the streets in Ramadi and I don't even know if you guys had the opportunity to get there. We were out there so much. It was like, we know exactly, you could just drop us off anywhere and it'd be like getting dropped off and, you know, by my local freaking, um, uh, uh, Starbucks. I think I know exactly where I am. I can walk home. I can go.

• 43:35Jocko Willink?

  And, but it takes a little bit of time to get that, but it's so useful to have that when you know exactly, like you know the, we knew the building numbers, you know, we know the building numbers without having to look at a battle map. That's just time. And uh, yeah, it was definitely, it was hard to leave. It was hard to leave. Um.

• 43:57Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, one interesting fact that I always like to point out, we were, we, we had the C G Sodif came down to do a visit with us. We were like, had been there for maybe a month. And the C G Sodif came down to visit and we were giving him a brief and I was in the middle of telling the, the Colonel that the guys out at Corregidor had done 23 straight operations and had been in enemy contact on 23 straight operations. And I'm not kidding and I didn't plan this, but as I'm saying that, the TAC chief comes in and is like, hey, boss, just a heads up. The guys in Corregidor are on a tick right now. And I'm like, Roger. And I looked at the Colonel, I said, make that 24 straight.

• 44:41Jocko Willink?

  And because that's the level of enemy contact that was happening. So for you guys to roll out with Seth on your first operation to get in a big gunfight, it's like, welcome to Corregidor, welcome to the moolab.

• 44:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's exactly what it was. But you know, what you were saying is interesting, you know, combat maturity, you know, that's something that you don't typically have, you know, unless you've been in a lot of combat. And even if you had, every, every, every conflict's different. So getting that, that, and every deployment's different. Getting your, your bearings and getting that combat maturity. We just didn't have it, you know, we got there and, and you know, unfortunately, these, these rips happen on a timeline, you know, it's the, you know, the, the air force is directing, you know, how we're going to move our troops around. And this was a time that, you know, had we had the opportunity to push back and keep two platoons or, or two teams deployed at one time and have that overlap like by a month. You know, something, you know, I think that was, that would have been important, but you know, like team guys do, we figured, we figured it out.

• 45:37Speaker 01

  And luckily, you know, we, you learn those lessons because there's a lot, there's a lot of risk in learning those small little lessons and there's no way to pass that, you know, that knowledge quickly. You know, especially in a couple of day, you know, turnover. So. But you know, God loves frogmen and you know, we were, we were pretty lucky, you know, so we, we, we learned along the same, same lines.

• 45:55Jocko Willink?

  And what was your op tempo like when those first out at Corregidor, those first?

• 45:59Speaker 01

  We just right into it, burning right into it. You know, one of the, one of the last things Seth told us and he did just right on our turnover op. He's pointing on a map like Papa Ten. He's like, where Mikey got killed and it's where we got hurt. He's like, don't go there. He's like Papa Ten. He's like, it's, it's bad. He goes, unless you want to go there. You know, he's like such a Seth thing to say. He's like, don't go there. It's bad. Unless you want to go there, then go there. It's gonna be, it's gonna be good, you know? So we, the next time we went in there was when we got hurt. So that was definitely a gnarly little area.

• 46:28Jocko Willink?

  What was the, so like, how many, how many ops did you guys think you did between, between when you landed and November 19th? Probably like 10, 12, 15, like a bunch. So you guys were racking them up?

• 46:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cause you know, sometimes you go direct action into an Overwatch. So you know, it's like multiple operations going on. Yeah.

• 46:51Jocko Willink?

  All right. Let's talk about this, this operation. That's the, the subject of the movie. And if you haven't gone to see the movie, go see the movie. Go see it. Well, it's in the theaters.

• 46:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. IMAX.

• 47:01Jocko Willink?

  It is, it is, I didn't get to do the IMAX thing. Maybe I'll try and find that.

• 47:05Speaker 01

  So I actually went with my wife and watched it on IMAX when it came out. Totally different than seeing it, um, you know, in a regular theater. But theater's still a million times better than on TV.

• 47:18Jocko Willink?

  Normal, you guys are planning for it. Um, planning cycle goes, you probably aren't, that's, that's the other thing. And some, some people talk to me about the movie. They're like, well, it just kind of started and ended. I'm like, exactly. Yeah. I'm like, that's exactly right. This is one day in.

• 47:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 47:35Jocko Willink?

  It's one day and there was many, many, many, many days like this.

• 47:40Jocko Willink?

  You guys do nighttime insert, nighttime infiltration, you know, and this was, this was something that was kind of new. At the time, like going into a building, you know, what we learned in the, in the nineties, you know, you're breaching everything and even, even. Up until that time, a lot of people, everything that you go in, you're gonna smash the door and you're gonna kick the door in. And we probably turned over with you guys, hey, listen.

• 48:05Jocko Willink?

  If your Iraqi soldiers are good for anything, it's they know how to get in and out of these houses. So they know how to open the doors, they know how to, they know how to deal with, you know, what's gonna be in the courtyard and all that stuff. And that's portrayed pretty cool in the film.

• 48:18Speaker 01

  But we didn't start off that way. We, you know, we got on the ground there and it's just like always, you know, we're like, hey, let's blow this front door through the house at 3,000 miles an hour. And then we learned real quick, like, hey, did you check to see if doors open? You know, it's like, there's, there's a lot better way. But again, that's had operational maturity.

• 48:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. And this is another thing is, I mean, we had to have told you guys, hey, listen, if you can, go quiet.

• 48:42Speaker 01

  Oh, you did.

• 48:43Jocko Willink?

  But guess what a breacher wants to do?

• 48:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 48:46Jocko Willink?

  And, and the other thing is your, your propensity for risk, you know, it seems like, are you serious? You're gonna walk in there like quietly? That seems crazy. Let's breach the freaking door and get the advantage. And that seems like a logical thing until you realize that you, it's pretty easy to sneak in those houses. And when you breach the door, now all of a sudden you're giving away your position, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

• 49:07Jocko Willink?

  And what's interesting about the movie is you're in, there's, there's actually two elements out there. You're set up, set up in mutually supporting Overwatch positions.

• 49:18Jocko Willink?

  And they only show, they only show your guys' house. That's, that's the, that's the whole movie.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  There's actually, actually three elements.

• 49:24Jocko Willink?

  There's three elements.

• 49:25Speaker 01

  There's three they talk about in the movie, OP one, OP two, but there is a, there is a scene in the movie where the two elements that are moving to us.

• 49:31Jocko Willink?

  They link up.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  They link up. Yeah.

• 49:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. One thing I've been telling people about the movie is that it doesn't give the audience any clues.

• 49:38Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 49:39Jocko Willink?

  There's no clues for the audience. Like, a, a great example of that is there's Anglico.

• 49:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 49:44Jocko Willink?

  In the building with you guys that play a pivotal role. Anglico played a pivotal role with us. Like, we, um, one of my great friends right now is Dave Burke, who is one of our Anglico guys. And, you know, they did scores of missions with us.

• 50:01Jocko Willink?

  There's no way that anybody that's watching that movie that doesn't know like what Jocko Willink knows, knows that that's an Angloco guy. And there's no hint. You know, you know, a normal movie, they'd say, hey, throw a piece of dialogue in there to explain that those are Angloco Marines. Like, you know, and someone would say, hey, check with the Angloco Marines and see what they say. Hey, Angloco Marine, what's the deal here? Well, here's what's happening, but there's none of that. No. They're just, they're just like, we're moving forward and, and there's no clues for the audience. Just like, there's no clues about what's, you know, what's the plan? Well, no, you're on the mission. There's no clues and it's, it's, um, it's a different feeling for watching a movie. And I'm, I have it with all my knowledge, like, oh, I know exactly what they're doing.

• 50:46Jocko Willink?

  I freaking know that A O, I know like, oh, you didn't pop a ten, like, oh, yeah. I was looking at some of the scenes and I was like, wait, they might've used pictures of my guys on, on some of those street corners. Cause like we have, there's good pictures of Tasmanian Bridge. I was like, they might've used, it looks exactly like that. It was exactly like it. Yeah, it's the same stuff. But the way the movie is done, you don't get those clues as the audience. You, you're just immersed in it and it's a really powerful thing.

• 51:17Jocko Willink?

  You know, they did a great job of your, the, the first half hour of the movie is just like, sitting on an Overwatch position. Yeah, boring, boring, slow. Yeah. And I was like, man, if they, they should do this for a long time and they did. Yeah. And the other interesting thing, there's no soundtrack. Nope. No, there's just the noises and I was, I was, uh, reading an, uh, interview, I think it was with Ray Ray. And they would, like, when a Hollywood, Hollywood makes a movie, a shot is like one minute. Yeah. They were doing like 12, 15 minute shots because they would capture what the guys were really doing.

• 51:59Jocko Willink?

  They're hot, they're, they're uncomfortable, they're itching their head, they're adjusting their gear. Like, that's what a actual Overwatch is like and they captured it all. They got Elliot sitting on the gun, looking, scanning, man. You want to talk about getting the blood flowing, like I'm sitting there watching this stuff and just like, yeah. Um.

• 52:21Jocko Willink?

  Called prayer comes. This stuff is just so emblematic of what these operations were like. Called a prayer comes, interpreter comes in, hey, here's what they're saying. That's. Those called a prayer would be followed by like, hey, it's time to get our jihad on.

• 52:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:38Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. Um.

• 52:43Jocko Willink?

  Finally end up after this massive suspenseful, and do I need to say spoiler alert? Is that a thing? Cause we're about to talk about this whole freaking movie.

• 52:51Speaker 01

  No, I think the trailer shows it all, I think.

• 52:55Jocko Willink?

  Spoiler alert. So grenade comes in, um, Elliot gets wounded. Now, when Elliot gets wounded, what was the, what were those initial wounds?

• 53:05Speaker 01

  He just had just some frag in his, in his upper arm, like underneath. It was nothing, uh, you know, the interesting thing, there's three guys in that room. And that frag came in, it wasn't a big room and it only hurt just, just Elliot. And, uh, it takes me back to like, there was a lot of things that we would talk about sitting around the platoon space or, you know, sitting around the, uh, the little hooch there. And Elliot used to say as a medic, you get hurt, you get shot, you get hit in the street, you better get your ass off the street. He goes, you better start getting, we're not coming to get you. We come get you, we're gonna get shot too, you know? And that wasn't a selfish thing. That was like, just a kind of a wise, like, hey, start trying to get out of the street. And then, uh, the same thing with the grenade, cause you know, Full Metal Jacket there at Carrigador, we got, we got, um, mortared that every day.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  And, you know, we would go up on the roof and see where the mortars would hit and there was always this, they would hit and then it would spray upwards. So Elliott say, hey, just lay on the ground. If you, you know, if a mortar comes in or grenade, just lay on the ground. Don't jump on top of it. Just lay on the ground and it'll hopefully get around you. And that's what they did. And three people in a small room with a grenade and it only hit Elliot and it didn't even hit him bad. He was fine. He would have been fine.

• 54:11Jocko Willink?

  Um. That being said.

• 54:15Jocko Willink?

  The call gets made like, hey, he might be fine, but we need to make sure let's, let's casavack him.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. So the plan was we were, he'd been hit. So we needed to get him out of there no matter what.

• 54:25Jocko Willink?

  And obviously now you're fully compromised when they're putting grenades into your.

• 54:29Speaker 01

  The mission was pretty much over anyway. You know, this was kind of typical like, hey, we need to, it's time to just go ahead and call it anyway. We've done what we need to do. And, you know, because we always got shot off target. By the end of the, the end of the overwatch, it was always like, okay, we're, you know, we're going to leave, you know, we'll extract hot, you know, and we'll get out of there. So this was time to get him out of there. He'd been hurt. No reason to keep him there. So the, the plan was call in a section of Radleys, get him in a Bradley, get him out of there, link up all of our units, call in more Bradleys and get out of there or leave on foot. Cause we, we patrolled in on foot. We were, we were just down the street from Eagles Nest.

• 55:01Jocko Willink?

  That's another crazy thing is like, you, you're probably 300, 400 meters away from like full friendly forces. I mean, Eagles Nest was a fully, you know, ah man.

• 55:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was just right down the street.

• 55:16Jocko Willink?

  Freaking what a wild scene to be in.

• 55:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:21Jocko Willink?

  So that was the plan. We're going to get him out of here and then we'll.

• 55:26Speaker 01

  We're either foot patrol out. Either foot patrol or consolidate the troops. Cause we knew at that point it was consolidated or a coordinated attack. Cause they had just contacted Alpha Platoon, which was over at Mark Lee and they pulled our air over to support them. So we could only suspect that they knew what they were doing. So pull our air so they could get on our roof and get a grenade through a loophole.

• 55:49Jocko Willink?

  They were good.

• 55:50Speaker 01

  They were. They were. And, you know, I think that's something that we back year after actions, you know, up until that point, you know, we like to call them booger eaters. And I think you downplay your enemy a lot, especially going, you know, through the whole pipeline of buds and, you know, instructors are always talking about how, you know, they're, the enemy's stupid or whatever. They're not. And, and if you underestimate them, you will have a bad day.

• 56:10Jocko Willink?

  I would tell guys, they did everything that we did, meaning they had comms. They didn't have cell phones, but they had radios. They would call for reinforcements. You could watch reinforcements come in. They had casavack. They would take guys and that were wounded and bring them up to the Ramadi General Hospital before it was secured by the Marines. So. Every and and they did uh supporting arms.

• 56:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 56:33Jocko Willink?

  And and coordinated arms. So they'd start an attack with machine gun fire, get the heads down, then RPGs to get the heads even further down. And then in would come mortars and the final thing would be a vehicle borne ID. That's like, that's what they were doing. That is advanced combined arms operations by the enemy. Uh, and this is a classic case, like what you just said, they do an attack somewhere else. Get air support pulled off and then now they can get to rooftops. They can, they can maneuver on your element. So that's a lot of coordination that has to happen.

• 57:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:08Jocko Willink?

  You guys recognize what was happening. It's like, all right, we're calling it. And and that's a, there's no right answer. It was always, you know, okay, do we stay here? Cause we don't want to leave in the daytime. Cause we, we generally speaking, didn't want to leave an Overwatch during the daytime.

• 57:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 57:26Jocko Willink?

  But at a certain point, like this is no longer, or this won't be a defendable position much longer. Let's get out of here. And it's always, it's, it's a, it's a decision.

• 57:35Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 57:35Jocko Willink?

  And there's no right answer. And sometimes you're gonna be right. Sometimes you're gonna be wrong. That's the way it is. Same thing with being on a rooftop. This is another debate we would have.

• 57:44Jocko Willink?

  You put a guys, you can put guys on the rooftop. They're exposed to grenades. If you put them on the top floor inside the building, well, you're blowing loopholes, but you still don't have quite the same amount of angles that you can see. So there's more threat. So you're, it was a constant game of, of, okay, what, well, you know, what risk do we want to take?

• 58:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 58:04Jocko Willink?

  Do we want to take the risk of putting guys on the rooftop? Or do we want to take the risk of putting guys uh one level down where now we don't have the full visibility?

• 58:12Speaker 01

  And and that's what, that's what we had to calculate that night is because we typically were on the rooftops. But this time in Papa 10, that's where, you know, Mikey had got a grenade thrown up on the roof. So we're like, hey, let's go the one, the top story below the roof. And we definitely lost a lot of situational awareness by that. And you know, the, and then, you know, those roofs were really close together.

• 58:31Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 58:31Speaker 01

  So they were able to just kind of step roof to, you know, roof to roof. And we couldn't see him without our air support.

• 58:37Jocko Willink?

  So the decision gets made. Bradley's are coming. And by the way, this is something I always point out. And I've heard Ray talking about it. Of course, again, there's no clues. You don't get these clues in the movie. It doesn't spell everything out for you. When we would call the Army or the Marine Corps for a Kazovac or for fire support.

• 59:01Jocko Willink?

  They would risk their lives to come and give that to us. Those roads that they were coming down, the, the 11 AD lost nine Abrams man, main battle tanks and 15 Bradley fighting vehicles while we were there. So when these guys were jumping in their vehicles to come and rescue us, it was at great peril and risk to themselves, their vehicles, their, their forces. But they did it over and over and over again, and they did it here.

• 59:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, without, without hesitation.

• 59:33Jocko Willink?

  Yep. No hesitation ever. It was just the, the, just awesome, awesome that these guys would, and you know, sometimes you're calling a Kazovac from some company or element that you'd never met before. You haven't worked with them before. Over time, you get to know them, but they don't care. They don't care if they know you or not. You're an American. They're going to come and do everything they can to help you. So that's the situation you guys are in.

• 59:59Jocko Willink?

  So they come in and what is, who's, you, you guys are just going to break out. It's like a couple Iraqis go first or a few Iraqis go first?

• 1:00:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had four, yeah, four Iraqi scouts.

• 1:00:10Jocko Willink?

  And then you two.

• 1:00:11Speaker 01

  And then me and Elliot.

• 1:00:12Jocko Willink?

  And are you just going to throw him in the back of the Brad?

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're just getting him, get him into Brad and then we're going to head back in the house.

• 1:00:17Jocko Willink?

  What do you remember about what happened next?

• 1:00:20Speaker 01

  So I remember, I mean, I remember pretty, pretty well, most everything, but a lot of smoke. And we got our smokes out and heading to the Bradley. I just remember we stacked up in the, you know, in the house. We got our scouts out first and then, you know, Elliot and I, we're going to go to, we're going to go to Bradley. So even though I, like I said earlier, he was barely wounded, but he was still wounded. I wanted to keep him close because of the smoke. So I had my hand on his shoulder as we went out the gate. And then as soon as we got right to that Bradley, because the Bradley was just right there. Soon as we got to the Bradley ramp down, that's when the blast came in. And, uh, yeah, and that's when, yeah, everything started to go south.

• 1:00:58Jocko Willink?

  The way it's portrayed in the film.

• 1:01:02Jocko Willink?

  Like slow motion, overwhelming noise, but then overwhelming like silence and slow and muffled. What, how does that compare? And I think you, you worked with them to try and

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:16Jocko Willink?

  Give your perspective on it.

• 1:01:17Speaker 01

  Absolutely. And that's, you know, that's exact, it's kind of how it plays out in the movie. It's very realistic to me. You know, I mean, that's, that's the way it seemed, that slow motion. There's a lot of pain that's coming. It's like when you stub your toe and you don't know, you know, it's going to hurt here in a minute, but it's not hurting yet. Same thing, you know, you, you have that, that deafening, um, you know, slow motion pain, but the pain's like dull. And it's starting to come more and more acute as, as, as the seconds go on. Um, and you start to, as the seconds go, move, start going on, you start to realize that, you know, things start to speed back up. You're starting to hear things like gunfire. Um, and you're starting to see a little bit better because the smoke's starting to clear. And you're, you're, you're kind of, your haze is starting to go away a little bit.

• 1:02:00Speaker 01

  And then you start, and I started to realize kind of where I was as far as, you know, in a, in a bad place. But to be honest, my very first thought, and I don't know why I remember this, but I thought that I got hit by an RPG seven. I thought it had landed right at my feet. Um, because we had just been talking about these RPG sevens and how much more powerful they were than, you know? So that in my mind, I had just got hit with an RPG seven, which obviously was not the case.

• 1:02:28Jocko Willink?

  And what was your recognition that your legs were jacked?

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I, I knew that immediately because, uh, you know, obviously the pain, but I remember it being real, like real smoky. Not just from our smokes, but just from the blast and the, the dust. And, and I remember I could see the sun up in the sky. And I remember raising, trying to raise my feet up a little bit, sort of my legs up so I could see. You know, to be fair, I've been watching Band of Brothers, you know, so, you know, I just expected this gruesome, you know, this is it. But as I could see, my pants just kind of went up and fell. So I thought, I thought my feet were both gone. Uh, you know, I mean, in my mind, like they're not there. So, but that's not something you're really worried about at the time. More worried about, you know, getting shot at still, you know, and so getting back in.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  And that's something that we don't, it doesn't, you know, Ray and I talked about this later, but you know, I remember telling Ray, cause he said, I was fine. He's like, you're gonna be fine. He remember he checked and he's like, your junk's still there. And then I remember like, I appreciate that, you know, cause we talked about these things. But I remember saying that my feet were gone and I remember him looking, he's like, no, they're there. They're in the wrong place. Cause they were like pretty, pretty jacked up.

• 1:03:34Jocko Willink?

  And how many Iraqis got killed?

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  Two.

• 1:03:37Jocko Willink?

  So two, so you, you, just to clarify for people that don't know, you said scouts, you said scouts went out and those were Iraqi soldiers that were like a scout platoon. And so we'd call them scouts. And that, so two of those guys were killed.

• 1:03:56Jocko Willink?

  Your OIC is like concussed, bad. And um, they get you guys inside. And again, uh, you go, go see the movie. We could sit here and talk about it. Go see the movie. We're sitting here with two guys that were there that, and, and the movie was made by a guy that was there. And we're not going to do it justice. We're not going to do the movie justice. And you know, it's, it's funny. I've, I've, I put it out on social media and people were saying like, well, I guess, you know, I, I'm, I haven't approved, I don't approve a lot of war movies, right? Like, oh, this is a good one. But man, this is a good one. And, and like I said, there's no punches pulled. And so getting the details of that, uh, go see the movie.

• 1:04:41Jocko Willink?

  You end up, you guys both end up, you're in pain. You guys get morphine. There's confusion. There's chaos. And it really is portrayed well in the film.

• 1:04:51Jocko Willink?

  Like the mayhem.

• 1:04:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:53Jocko Willink?

  And at one point, I, I was, I was really paying attention to it, but they have all, all the radio calls are coming in and radio calls, radio calls. And they start with radio calls on top of radio calls on top of radio calls, which is. A hundred percent what can happen in chaotic situations and it's 100% what's happening. And finally, Ray just unplugs his headphones because he can't like he needs to just get to the what's right in front of him.

• 1:05:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:22Jocko Willink?

  Uh, but they did a great job of portraying that and you notice it because all of a sudden he pulls that out, all that crazy traffic stops.

• 1:05:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:05:31Jocko Willink?

  And you know, I, I had like in my, in my platoon, in my tasking, like you weren't allowed to talk on the radio, like you, no one talked on the radio. It was like, unless you had something just level 10 critical, but that doesn't apply to everybody because you've got different units that are out there and they're trying to figure out what's going on. They're trying to coordinate there. They got wounded. There's other firefights going on.

• 1:05:52Jocko Willink?

  Um, finally the other squad, and again, I, I'm just, go see the movie. This is, this is as good as you're going to get. The guy that was there made the movie. The guy that was there that made the movie, got the input from all the guys that were there. Like it's, and he had pretty free rein, it sounds like to do what he wanted to do.

• 1:06:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:15Jocko Willink?

  And so go see it. Finally, the other, the other, like you'd mentioned earlier, there's actually two other Overwatch positions. They consolidate. They moved to your position. Um, how freaking stoked were you to see those guys?

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Really stoked. Um, let's take a step, a quick step back here. You know, so one thing the movie does not capture and, uh, we had one medic. Elliot was our medic. So now we're, you know, we're in a really bad place. Um, we have two wounded SEALs. The rest of them are either holding some sort of Overwatch or keeping us alive. So we were in desperate need of getting these other guys consolidate us, which they're in a tick. And you know, these bad guys were talking about being, you know, coordinated. It's, it's as if they were coordinated enough to keep them from coming to us. That was their goal was not necessarily to kill them. I mean, that was their overall goal, but to prevent them from consolidating on us, to give them an opportunity to get into, in, in, on top of us

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  and, and do what they needed to do there. But yeah, so the movie doesn't even start to allude to Elliot being our medic. Elliot was our medic. So, you know, we had Ray working on me, which is a calm guy, and then Anglica working on Elliot because they thought Elliot was going to die. You know, and, and I hate to say it that way, but he did not look like there was anything they could do to help him. So that's why Anglica was working on him. So yeah, we were in, we were in pretty dire straits. We went through every contingency you could possibly go through at that point.

• 1:07:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, it's dire in the movie. You're definitely feeling it. And you know, I don't know, I don't know from being in the teams myself, if it seems worse in the movie, or if a civilian would look at it and go, that's level 10 bad. Or if they'd be like, well, probably like a level seven, or if they're like, no, that's a 12. Or if, you know, I would, I don't know how a civilian, but reading reviews of it, people get the message like this is a terrible, terrible situation. And yeah, just to, just to give a little more clarity. You got two severely wounded guys. You got guys trying to keep them alive. There's not that many freaking people on the team. The Iraqi soldiers, you, there's, they're gone, they bailed.

• 1:08:21Speaker 01

  Two, two dead, two gone.

• 1:08:22Jocko Willink?

  Two gone. You cannot hold security barely in a building like that. Like basically you can't. So you're trying to, you know, the enemy's closing in on you. Uh, just a, it's just a nightmare.

• 1:08:39Jocko Willink?

  The other, the other squads consolidate, they show up.

• 1:08:45Jocko Willink?

  They, now they can start to actually make progress. It's like you guys as a, as a smaller element, you guys are just treading water, just barely keeping your head above water.

• 1:08:53Speaker 01

  Just your lips.

• 1:08:54Jocko Willink?

  And yeah, just your lips, barely, one nostril. And so finally, when the other guys show up, now you can start making progress towards coordinating and getting out of there.

• 1:09:04Speaker 01

  That's right.

• 1:09:04Jocko Willink?

  And, um.

• 1:09:06Speaker 01

  But that was a, that was a glorious moment when they came in. Cause you could hear the gunfire coming and you could tell it was our gunfire. And then when they got there, they set security and then you could hear those 60s rocking and rolling and it's a good feeling. And then you get, you know, these fast movers doing show of forces and I've never had an aircraft that, you know, a fast mover that low. I thought the buildings were going to collapse. I mean, it felt like they were going to collapse.

• 1:09:34Jocko Willink?

  You guys get extract.

• 1:09:37Jocko Willink?

  And then, like I mentioned earlier, the movie, look, they show the family come out, the family's kind of looking around like, damn, what the hell just happened? And then they show the insurgents kind of coming out and debriefing, walking around, seeing what's happening. And then just the movie ends.

• 1:09:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:58Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, I've read, I've actually not just read, but I've been talking to people and they're like, well, it just kind of ended and, and my response is like, this is just another day. And these freaking extreme heroics by the army guys that came to get you out, by your guys, but by you guys being there, by the people trying to keep you alive, by the other squad maneuvering to you, like those heroics.

• 1:10:23Jocko Willink?

  That's what happened on a daily basis, almost a daily basis in that city.

• 1:10:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:29Jocko Willink?

  And so to say, yep, it's over, there's no, there's no like, oh, we, we go back and we're going to have a party now and we're going to celebrate our heroics. It's like, no, actually you're going to go back, debrief and go out the next day.

• 1:10:43Jocko Willink?

  And the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that. And

• 1:10:50Jocko Willink?

  that's to me one of the most important messages is like, no, we're not, we're not glorifying this one day. It's like, these guys did heroic things and made huge sacrifices. And yep, we're on to the next day.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:11:14Jocko Willink?

  When you went, so you went and saw the movie? Well, did you see it with civilians like a normal day?

• 1:11:19Speaker 01

  So I've seen it, you know, I, I saw it several times, you know, through the process. I actually went to the, the red carpet and watched Elliot and his, all his picture taken there. But, uh, yeah, so I, you know, I was able to see the movie several times. But yeah, when it came out, my wife and I decided like, hey, let's, let's go watch it on IMAX. And, uh, yeah, just a bunch of civilians. Um, but funny is they put our pictures at the end of the movie. Well, all these clowns, you don't think anybody recognizes, you know, I don't think I would see somebody and be like, oh, that's him. They knew, they knew right away to the end of the movie. People started looking at me like, hey, that's, that's you. So it's pretty interesting, but when IMAX, um, yeah, it was really cool, loud.

• 1:11:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So I went down opening night. My wife and I went down. I sit down in the theater and sure enough. All of a sudden guy comes over to taps me on the shoulder. What's up, bro? And it's one of my brothers from Tasker Bruiser and his wife. And we sat there and watched this thing like totally uncoordinated, but um, yeah, it was, it was, uh,

• 1:12:22Jocko Willink?

  definitely, it's wild to see. And plus, because like, just knowing, you know, everybody, you know, knowing all you guys. I'm not like best friends with anyone, but know all those guys, worked with all like all those guys and over the years. So knowing and, and seeing it and seeing what you guys went through is freaking.

• 1:12:48Jocko Willink?

  Definitely go see the movie.

• 1:12:52Jocko Willink?

  You guys get evacuated. Uh, where'd you go? When you guys get evacuated?

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  So we kind of stayed together for quite a while, actually all the way to out of country. So from there, you know, we went back to the, to the med station across the street from Krigador. And that's where we, we left, you know, went there for just a hot minute. They got us in a 46 and flew us. I think it was a 46. I know I eventually ended up in a 46 at some point.

• 1:13:17Speaker 01

  Because yeah, so they flew us from there to TQ and then TQ to Balad. And then while we're in Balad, we're there for maybe four or five days, got stable there and then flew to Germany.

• 1:13:29Jocko Willink?

  By the time you guys, um,

• 1:13:32Jocko Willink?

  you know, we're, we're getting this word like I mentioned earlier, I'm, I'm going to go to Elliot a little bit. By the time you get back, um, so Leif, you know, who's your brother Leif, um, he was like immediately engaged. And, uh, you know, it was interesting talking to Leif, he, cause you ended up in San Antonio pretty quickly. Elliot and talking to Leif, like when Leif got his stuff together to go to San Antonio, he packed his blues.

• 1:14:02Jocko Willink?

  And for those of you that aren't in the military or in the Navy, like when you pack your blues, that means there's only one reason, there's two reasons you put your blues on. Uh, wedding, funeral. And so here's your brother Leif, like back here in San Diego, getting ready to go and he, he packs his blues because from the reports that we're getting, it was not looking good for Elliot. He wrote this to a group of us on, uh, December 2nd. Leif did kinda send out the email. He said, "What's happening brothers? I'm in San Antonio with Elliot. I wish I could say things were better than they are. It's, it's a fucking bad, bad deal and it hit me like a freight train when I walked in there to see him early this morning. He has suffered some brain damage, so no one can say for sure how minor or severe it

• 1:14:47Jocko Willink?

  will be. A distant second is that the doctors have not made a decision yet on whether or not he will keep his left leg. This problem however, seems insignificant to the brain injury. There are some small signs of hope however. Eye movement responds to pain. We are all just hoping and praying that he wakes up and comes, and slowly comes back to the Elliot we all know and love. As bad as all this sounds, he certainly has a fighting chance and the fact that he's probably the toughest, most bullheaded bastard I know, gives me confidence that if anybody can pull through it, he will." It's time to get down on our knees and ask Almighty God with all our hearts to heal

• 1:15:26Jocko Willink?

  our friend and brother, Leif. Here's what you write about this time, Elliot. You say, "I woke up in the ICU room in Brook Army Medical Center in San Antonio with my left leg still attached, though it was pretty much useless because it was just a big club of a foot and my calf was also blown off and surgically reattached with a giant fixator on my left leg and also I had one on my right arm too. They told me that I would probably need an amputation, but I declined at first. I guess that I was actually just hoping that it would get better and I would be able

• 1:16:10Jocko Willink?

  to join my team and finish my 20 years and retire. However, looking back now, I see just how naive of thinking it was because I've never seen a one-legged frogman that couldn't speak. Have you? Didn't think so."

• 1:16:27Jocko Willink?

  I know one of my, my, one of my old assistant platoon commanders from SEAL Team Seven, he actually brought his whole platoon out. Uh, they were in Texas doing training and he brought his whole platoon. They all like scrubbed, all went into CU. Um, and what was the nature of your injuries? Like how, you're, you're, I thought you were losing both your legs. That was kind of the reports that I was getting.

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:48Jocko Willink?

  How'd they save them?

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  I don't know. You know, I mean, at first, I mean, by grace of God and the, and the right, the right surgeons and all me, or all reasonable, all reasonable, um, I guess, they, they, they should have just taken them off in Iraq. And that's what my doctors here were like, hey, they kept them on. Um, they kept it on through Germany. So we're gonna, we'll see what we can do, um, to, to fix them. So just a lot of surgery. And then eventually they, they put nails in them, rods in both tibias and, and one fibula. So one of my fibulas is still broken. Um, and just a lot of hardware and then just a lot of rehab.

• 1:17:25Jocko Willink?

  Just metal.

• 1:17:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Metal and riggers tape.

• 1:17:29Speaker 01

  That's right. Some paling wire in there. But yeah, I mean, they, they, they really probably should have, for simplicity, just taken at least my left one off in, in Iraq, but.

• 1:17:38Jocko Willink?

  And was it just broken bones?

• 1:17:40Speaker 01

  Broken bones, a lot of flesh missing. Um, so they eventually had to, to harvest, um, so the, the inner gastrocath muscle to put over, to flap over the front. Cause you could just see my tibia. There was just a big hole where my tibia was, was there. And you know, you could see the tendon that went down to my big toe, which traveled right along the, the tibia, which did not get injured, which is crazy because it was just exposed. Um, but they, they were able to cover it up and yeah, get it, get it up and going. So bilateral tib fractures, um, missing a lot of flesh.

• 1:18:10Jocko Willink?

  How long was, like when they started putting your legs back together, how long did that take to put them back together? Where you could walk again? When could you run again?

• 1:18:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, so this, after all the surgeries, um, I was in the hospital here in San Diego. I eventually made it back to San Diego for my surgery. So I did all my big surgeries here. So I was in the hospital up until almost Christmas time and then I had to break out of the hospital. I could not stand the hospital anymore. And then it was a few more months where I was able to kind of stand on a walker. And then, yeah, so probably running was a while. So they, they ended up, group one bought a underwater treadmill, which I thought was really cool. State of the art at the time, not so state of the art anymore. So I was able to kind of get in this treadmill, you know, flood it with water and, and run. But to actually be on my feet, like not, non-assisted, it was probably, I think, six months or a little better.

• 1:19:02Jocko Willink?

  Was the prognosis from the beginning like, hey, like you're going to be, you'll be able to walk again or where they kind of?

• 1:19:09Speaker 01

  No, everybody was, you know, and I don't know why these, they, they, some of these surgeons or these doctors were just kind of default to the, the worst. And at first they're like, you're probably not going to walk, you know, normal with the way your legs are, you know? And then as I started kind of getting better, it's like, well, you're going to always walk with a limp, but you won't run, you know? And all these things and, and not to take them and turn them into a, you know, a kind of a motivational thing. But it was more of like, okay, I didn't, I didn't believe them, you know? I'm like, well, we'll see, you know, we'll, we'll see what we can do. And then to find, you know, that new, uh, you know, cause basically you got to find where you can work from. Cause I didn't know where my, where my baseline was now. Once I found my baseline and started working.

• 1:19:49Speaker 02

  Can I caveat that real quick before we move on? I also suffered an injury to my junk too. And when I was in the hospital there in Iraq, I believe. But anywho, there was a surgeon there who was a urologist and he put my junk back together for me.

• 1:20:06Jocko Willink?

  God bless that guy.

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:10Jocko Willink?

  We need to give that guy at least an A the achievement medal.

• 1:20:13Speaker 01

  At least.

• 1:20:15Jocko Willink?

  If you're out there and you're listening and you did that, you'll, we want to have you on the podcast to talk about the heroic achievement. Especially that type of micro surgery on Elliot's junk.

• 1:20:29Jocko Willink?

  Here's another update email from Leif. And I remember this one, the subject line was, "Booger is still in there." It says, "The miraculous breakthrough that we had been praying for happened tonight. Me, Dave, and Elliot's dad, Joe Miller, went to see Elliot tonight and immediately noticed that his eyes were wide open, much more so than before, and was clearly looking around. He very perceptibly looked over at each of us as we talked to him and focused on us. I asked him to blink for me if he clear, and he clearly responded. His dad talked to him, let him know where he was and that he had been out for a while. He asked him to blink twice if his name was Sue. No response. He asked him to blink twice if his name was Elliot.

• 1:21:15Jocko Willink?

  Two definite blinks. He then indicated that he knew it was his dad, me, and Dave. Elliot has always given me a lot of shit from my Lone Star State heritage. And I told him that since we were in San Antonio, when he's well enough, I would take him to the Alamo to pay his respects. He clearly furrowed his brow at me. First indicators that I have seen that Booger is still there. I can't describe how incredibly uplifting it was to witness this. While he still has a long road ahead and many challenges ahead for recovery, just knowing that Elliot is in there, that he hears us, and that he knows who he is and who we are, is a huge step in the right direction. I hope all is well with each of you, and we'll keep you updated as often as I can. Word to your moms, Leif."

• 1:22:03Jocko Willink?

  And then, in January, you got a visit from your platoon commander, who is actually the platoon commander that's in the movie that's on the mission, the guy that was severely concussed.

• 1:22:16Jocko Willink?

  And he wrote an update to the guys in Ramadi and some of us

• 1:22:22Jocko Willink?

  about both, both of you guys. And this is, this is what he said. And he's still active duty, obviously, we're not using his name, you don't need to use his name in the movie.

• 1:22:32Jocko Willink?

  "Joe is awesome physically, mentally, spiritually. He makes me feel like a little bitch. He is kicking ass, and I'll put money down that he will be walking unassisted when we all return from deployment. Joe and I went and visited Elliot this weekend. We spent two days with him and left amazed. Elliot makes Joe feel like a bitch, so where does that put me?"

• 1:22:51Jocko Willink?

  When we all talk about Elliot, you have to understand that his improvement is all relative. That doesn't discredit his progress, though. I think some of the things have gotten lost in the rumor mill and the email chain, so I want to try and paint an accurate but relative picture. To do that, I have to go back, give a little background that I didn't quite know all the details about. When Elliot finally made it to San Antonio, he was an intensive care unit and his parents and life didn't know if he was going to live through the night. He was rough, so many wounds, so much trauma to the body and brain, so many complications and treatments were slowed and put on hold until his body could handle the extra stress. He was in a coma, had brain swelling, his stomach sliced open to see if he had any internal damage, covered in burns, had pockets of swelling where the pressure had to be relieved

• 1:23:36Jocko Willink?

  by cutting open his skin, etc. Now, let me tell you the awesome shit. Three days ago, he was moved out of the ICU, which means he's going to make it. He's still drugged up on pain medication and gets extra when they change his bandages or have to do something that they know is going to hurt. This makes him pretty incoherent. He goes in and out of conscious and sleeps a lot. When he isn't too drugged up, he's totally different. From the coma and from having tubes down his throat for so long, all the muscles in his bodies have atrophied. His speech suffers from this, but if you spent even just a little time with him, you know Elliot is in there. He mumbles a lot and repeats things, which I think he does because he knows people can't understand him very well. That being said, Joe and I had some alone time with him and we had some awesome short conversations where

• 1:24:21Jocko Willink?

  we could totally understand him. No shit, he listed all the guys at Camp Corregidor and his close friends at Camp Mark Lee, and he said he missed them. We think he has some short-term memory issues, but I think a lot has to do with the drugs he's on. You just can't always tell if he's listening or on a morphine trip, so that's probably why he forgets things. The second we came in, he recognized us. His eyes widened like hockey pucks. He looked at his dad and then back at us in amazement. We were fired up and took, and it took everything we had to keep the tears away.

• 1:24:56Jocko Willink?

  I'm not gonna lie, he's not in the shape that I expected. I was not prepared for the scene, but when you hear the state he was in only weeks ago, he is doing awesome. Elliot gets the best care in the building, just because his dad is by his side every second he can be. There's no one that I want more to be with Elliot than his dad. Elliot makes me so fucking proud because he's fighting hard. Last night around 11pm, he asked Joe and I to take him to the gym. You already know this, he is an absolute beast. Joe and I did our best to represent you guys. We told him, everyone loves him about a thousand times. He said, he loves us too.

• 1:25:46Jocko Willink?

  So progress is being made. It's slow.

• 1:25:52Jocko Willink?

  But it's there. You say this Elliot. After I spent two to three months down there, I'd gone up to San Francisco to the VA Poly Trauma Center at Palo Alto because of my TBI. I was there for another three or four months, which totally sucked ass. So after about five or six months in a goddamn hospital, I finally got back to SD Balboa, to be exact. And before you returned to San Diego, you sent an email to everybody on 24 May 2007. You said, "Hey everyone, I'm coming home in like in a week and a half for good. So put the women and children to bed because it's gonna be on like Donkey Kong.

• 1:26:31Jocko Willink?

  No, but seriously, I will be home soon enough. Can't wait to see all of you again."

• 1:26:38Jocko Willink?

  And you get home, you got after it. This is how it looked. This is another thing you say here. It was, it was there that I decided to go ahead and get my leg chopped off almost nine months after my actual alive day. So I went under the knife for the second time, for the second to the last time in July and got my leg amputated. I went to rehab there at Balboa, which is where I met my wife, as she was my physical therapist. But we didn't start dating until about, until about a little over a year and a half after we met, because I'd gone to Omaha, Nebraska for another rehab center. It was then that we started dating. So like a typical frogman, you go and you start going out with your freaking physical therapist.

• 1:27:21Jocko Willink?

  And you hook up with her.

• 1:27:25Jocko Willink?

  And eventually get married to her. Awesome woman. Kids? Two kids. So that the surgeon in Balad or wherever did a good job. Fully functional fire equipment.

• 1:27:46Jocko Willink?

  And then after, after I was done with all my rehab centers and whatnot, I finally returned to SD to begin my retirement process almost two years after I was injured.

• 1:28:00Jocko Willink?

  What, what did you do afterwards, Joe? So you get, you get healed up?

• 1:28:04Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:28:04Jocko Willink?

  Takes what? A year before you're functional again?

• 1:28:07Speaker 01

  It does. It takes a while. So funny, the first phase though, which I never met the guy up into this point. He get, he actually came to Balboa to the hospital and he offered me a job. He's like, hey, cause he knew the platoon was gone. He knew the team was gone and he knew I was going to be in a pretty dark spot or pretty dark place. And, uh, you know, looking back at the time, I had no idea that he, you know, it's pretty, that he, that he was thinking like that far ahead, you know? Yeah. And anyway, so once I got out, the day I got out of the hospital, checked into physical therapy, um, in the trailer, you know, it's like, we think of the SEAL teams having this like state of the art that which they do now.

• 1:28:42Jocko Willink?

  They do now.

• 1:28:43Speaker 01

  But then it was a trailer, um, and behind team five and checked in there, started my rehab, or at least started the process and then.

• 1:28:51Jocko Willink?

  Freaking Jason.

• 1:28:52Speaker 01

  That's right. Jason. Yeah.

• 1:28:53Jocko Willink?

  The man.

• 1:28:53Speaker 01

  He is. Yeah. That guy. Incredible. Um, I just talked to him the other day in Coronado. I hadn't seen him and he's like, what? He, he didn't even know I was part of this. He's like, you got hurt there? I'm like, Jason, what do you think you were, you know, what were you doing the whole time? Yeah. But anyway, um, so then I went to Bud's and I'm in Bud's, I met Bud's first phase in a wheelchair, you know, and it was just a liability, but I at least was there and around all those young men and it was interesting. But, um, yeah. So I did that. I did that. And then, uh, once I was able to, to be back on my feet, I got orders to Bud's. So I did the next few years of the first phase instructor, which really helped me, um, get back on my feet. Cause you gotta, you know, you're in front of these students, you know, you can't

• 1:29:35Speaker 01

  let them, you know, push you around, you know, you can't be the weak, the weak guy around there. So you gotta, you gotta heal up. But funny story is the first class, I don't remember what class it was, but there in Hell Week, I was out there on my crutches and there was a Hildebrand and a Miller and they're in the same boat group. And they both quit during Hell Week at the same time.

• 1:29:52Jocko Willink?

  Freaking shame.

• 1:29:53Speaker 01

  I remember telling Elliot like, hey, our replacements are here. And they both quit. I said, they're out of here. So.

• 1:29:59Jocko Willink?

  Can't replace you two now.

• 1:30:01Speaker 01

  Well, it was weird because, you know, it's like both of them in the same book or two. So, yeah. But anyway, so I stayed at Bud's for a few years and then, once I was really fully healed up, then I was off to, I did my platoon chief at Team One.

• 1:30:12Jocko Willink?

  How is it going back to a team you're, you're, you're now like, you got this experience and you're going to be put in charge this time, kind of.

• 1:30:22Speaker 01

  Not getting thrown in the last minute as LPO, but you're platoon chief, man.

• 1:30:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:26Speaker 01

  Like God in a SEAL platoon. Yeah. Well, so actually that was my second LPO when I got hurt. So that was our second platoon.

• 1:30:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right. That's right.

• 1:30:32Speaker 01

  So I did, I did a partial, full one. Yeah. But I think, you know, preparing a platoon is a little different now. As a platoon chief, I had a whole different mindset on what is important, you know, and what you should be preparing towards. So we did a lot of. And actually, Flynn was my platoon commander. So, yeah, so we had a good time. We had a good time, but we were able to focus on what was really important. Yeah, for the platoon.

• 1:30:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And we, you know, the things that we did in trade at, you know, when I got back and just really stepping it up to try and. Make sure guys were as ready as we possibly could, you know, give them everything we could.

• 1:31:09Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. We've carried our whole platoon through Nighland for you.

• 1:31:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And it's like, you know, it's, it's, it's one of those things where.

• 1:31:20Jocko Willink?

  In the nineties in the teams, like a down man, like, okay, you're like, oh yeah, well.

• 1:31:24Speaker 01

  Find the lightest guy.

• 1:31:25Jocko Willink?

  Find the lightest guy and put him down and he can help you get up and all this stuff. And, and by the way, you know, in the nineties, there was no body armor.

• 1:31:33Jocko Willink?

  It just was a totally, no helmets. It just, it was, not every single guy had a radio. So, you know, you're picking up like a 200 pound guy. Okay, cool. Well, now you get to the, the war and now the guys wearing body armor, he has a radio, he has a helmet, he has night vision. This guy all of a sudden weighs 250 pounds. And, and by the way, as it's depicted in the, in the movie.

• 1:31:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:31:58Jocko Willink?

  It ain't freaking easy to carry a down man.

• 1:32:00Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:32:01Jocko Willink?

  And. We did a lot of down man.

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, it's, it's important, you know, I mean, like you, like you said, it, it's not so easy picking up a down man. Not when they're not assisting you, not when they really weigh a bunch. They have gear. Um, and you don't, the adrenaline doesn't kick in and you have superhuman strength. Yeah, it just doesn't happen.

• 1:32:21Jocko Willink?

  You get done with Appleton, what's next after that?

• 1:32:24Speaker 01

  So did Appleton and then I went off to Kodiak for a couple of years.

• 1:32:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh, nice.

• 1:32:27Speaker 01

  Yep. So, and then, so I was a senior chief out there and then Kodiak came back, did my troop chief at Team Three.

• 1:32:34Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  Yep. Did that. And then after troop chief, I ran SQT for a year and then I was made mass chief there and then back over Team One, Ops Mass Chief, CMC.

• 1:32:43Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 1:32:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:45Jocko Willink?

  And finished out your career.

• 1:32:46Speaker 01

  Yep. Finished out there.

• 1:32:49Jocko Willink?

  And then what do you, you retired out of there?

• 1:32:51Speaker 01

  I did. So I retired in September 21. And then I just, I work here at a tech company here in San Diego.

• 1:32:58Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:32:58Speaker 01

  And, uh, yeah, floating around here.

• 1:33:00Jocko Willink?

  Just working at a tech company now.

• 1:33:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:03Jocko Willink?

  Isn't that weird to go to? What's your job at the tech company?

• 1:33:05Speaker 01

  I'm a trainer. So I, I work a lot with special operations still.

• 1:33:08Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:33:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:08Jocko Willink?

  Chuck.

• 1:33:09Speaker 01

  So I'm not the techie kind of guy.

• 1:33:10Jocko Willink?

  I was gonna say, if you're like, hey, go check with that guy Joe and see if he can get your computer back up.

• 1:33:15Speaker 01

  I can't even get my computer back up. That's, that's always the jokes. Like my little, my little group of people are a bunch of, you know, prior SEALs is like, we don't know anything about computers. We work at a tech company.

• 1:33:26Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. Um.

• 1:33:30Jocko Willink?

  Any other, any, any closing thoughts from you, Joe?

• 1:33:36Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, just, you know, this whole process, you know, like Ray writing the story, uh, or I guess he didn't write the story, but telling the story. You know, getting it out there. It's definitely been very therapeutic, I think, for most of us, if not all of us, because as you know, these operations, we all carry a certain amount of guilt with us, a certain amount of, you know, that, that baggage. That, um, you know, we never had an opportunity to kind of decompress it and like lay it out on the table. So I think we all carried a certain amount and through this process, we're able to kind of lay it out there. And, uh, and realize like, hey, you know, there's a, there were a lot of, you know, bad things that happened that weren't people's decision process that got us there. So we're able to, to kind of lay all that out and that's been very therapeutic for all of us.

• 1:34:19Speaker 01

  And then just, you know, for Elliot, for him to finally be able to really see on the screen, you know, what, what happened.

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's been, it's been a huge thing.

• 1:34:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the decision part, you know, we kind of talked about this a little bit, but you know, like I said, you go on the roof or do you go on the top floor in the building? Which one of those is correct? Yeah. Well, you don't know. Do you leave during, do you leave during the day or do you hold out all night? You don't know. You're making a decision with the information that you have at the time and you're going to make the best decision you can. And you might, you might get it right.

• 1:34:58Jocko Willink?

  And you might extract and you get in Bradleys and everyone's okay and that happens and it happened plenty of times. And you might, it might not happen that way. You might walk out there, hit an ID, you might lose a guy in a firefight, you know, we, all those decisions are, they're decisions that are being made at the time with the most information that you have, uh, with the information that you have available at the time. And the, uh, the other option is no decision, which that, that doesn't work. You can't just sit there. You have to make a decision of what we're going to do. I think that, and this is something that I learned, um,

• 1:35:36Jocko Willink?

  you know, when, when I lost guys and I lost friends, uh, for some reason I ended up a lot of times being the, the guy that was delivering like the eulogy at the memorial service. And

• 1:35:48Jocko Willink?

  so what does that mean? That means 12 hours after you lose one of your friends, you're sitting down, I'm sitting down writing thoughts. And I didn't think about this at all at the time, but over time I recognized that sitting down and writing down what my thoughts were, what my feelings were, what I was thinking, what I'm going to miss about them, what good memories I have.

• 1:36:12Jocko Willink?

  That seemed to be a therapeutic thing. Yeah. And, and then, you know, writing about the stuff and talking about on the podcast with, with different people and being able to talk through what our experiences were, I think was very helpful to me. Being able to, for you guys to have never sat down and talked about it. Uh, that I can't imagine, you know, you're thinking, well, what if I would have done this? It's like, all you need is someone to say, actually, Joe, you couldn't have done that because of this thing over here. You go, shit, I didn't know that. Or, well, what if I think we should have done this? Well, we couldn't have done that because of this thing over here. And people's perception.

• 1:36:49Jocko Willink?

  You know, what do we do as SEALs? A lot of times we just look at what, okay, this is what I did wrong. This is on me. I wrote a freaking book about it, Extreme Ownership, like this is on me. But if you take that and you go, oh, this all happened because of me. And someone goes, hey, actually, Joe, like, you couldn't have done anything over there. Or, yeah, that didn't happen that way. And so I think the fact that this is, that you guys were able to sit down, rehash it, see all the different perspectives and go, all right, and get to a point, for lack of a better word, get to a point of like, get to a point of forgiveness. Forgive yourself, forgive your teammate, forgive your, you know, whoever.

• 1:37:34Jocko Willink?

  And go, yeah, this is what happened. There's nothing we can do to change it. We all were doing everything we could at the time that we were capable of doing to, to try and get through this situation. That's what happened. And I think that's a huge part of overcoming and, and, and, uh, what's that word? I think it's a huge part of processing these situations. Is the recognition that everyone was doing the best they could, including myself, including yourself, everyone's doing the best they could at the time. And this is the shit sandwich that happened.

• 1:38:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, you're right. And just, just writing it down, you know, and having Ray write it down for us here. You know, so that, you know, this was the beginning of our journeys, you know, like this, this, like, you know, talk about the snapshot of the movie, that is a snapshot of, you know, us getting hurt. But that was kind of the, that's one battle, stepping into the next battle. And I've been, you know, writing kind of a memoir on that for my kids, because my kids, my older kids are kind of, you know, they, they, they kind of lived a lot of it there, or at least were around it. I've got two younger kids. I've got one that's two and one that's seven months. So I've been kind of jotting it all down to try to put it into perspective. So they can see with that process, that next battle was really like. And so that's kind of progressing. And I think I'm going to release that out as an actual, an actual, like more like a self-help book,

• 1:38:58Speaker 01

  not a SEAL book, but more of like, hey, this is what you have to do, um, when you kind of hit bottom. You find your bottom, whether it's through war, through trauma, you know, loss, failure. How do you find a new roadmap? How do you find that blueprint to get out of that, um, and claw your way back? To be in a new normal person, you know, maybe somebody that's stronger, um, more wise. So, yeah, kind of working on that right now.

• 1:39:23Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that sounds awesome. Um, yeah, it's, it's another thing is the expectations in going into the, like the movie. I mean, of course, people get portrayed in the military as superheroes.

• 1:39:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:35Jocko Willink?

  And like, oh yeah, they're gonna do everything awesome and they're gonna be awesome. It's like, oh no, it's, it's like, you just got your freaking legs blown in half. Like, what's gonna happen now? And the, the realism of the movie in that perspective is freaking legit.

• 1:39:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:39:50Jocko Willink?

  Uh, how far are you, how deep are you into that book?

• 1:39:53Speaker 01

  I'm pretty deep. So it's, it's not hard to write. I'm not a writer. Um, but it's not hard to write when it's kind of a, it's a true story. So, yeah, and you know, I'm tied on a loan in the platoon space because I think that's something that we, we kind of miss a lot. We think that we're, you know, you, people can help you on these recovery paths. Nobody can help you. You're, you're, you're by yourself. People can be around you and root you on. Um, but you gotta find your own, you know, you can't quit on your own. You gotta find your own, your own grit to, to kind of, you know, get through those, those hard times. People can rally around you all they want, but you have to do it yourself.

• 1:40:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:40:26Speaker 01

  And I think that's a culture, or that's a thing that we've got in our culture now where we try to, you know, we, we ask for all this help. Nobody can really help you. They can provide you things. They can provide you assistance. You know, they can give you resources, but they can't do it for you. So.

• 1:40:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Uh, Dan Conawson, you know, Dan, right? So, yeah, probably five, six years ago, we, we met up, Leif and I were in wherever he was. I think we were in Colorado and we meet up with him. We go out to dinner, blah, blah, blah. And we're talking, you know, of course, it's like heavy, heavy talk about what's happening. And, you know, at the end of the night, he was kind of like, he said something along the lines of like, hey, when, when I go home, like when I head home right now, I still don't have legs. And, you know, we sit there and interact with him for an hour and two hours, dinner and like, oh yeah, you're doing this, you're doing that.

• 1:41:18Jocko Willink?

  And hey, you're training for this. And he just was letting us know that, like, this is the everyday thing that he deals with every single day. And that's just what I thought of when you said alone in the platoon space. Like, look, your platoon mates, they want to help you. But ultimately, you're gonna be alone in that platoon space. Dan can awesome dump. I didn't go home with him that night and help him, you know, get in and out of his car. And he did all that stuff himself.

• 1:41:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:45Jocko Willink?

  And that's, uh, so that's a powerful, uh, concept that you're talking about there.

• 1:41:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:50Jocko Willink?

  Definitely.

• 1:41:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, trying to get out there. I'm actually wanting to get it out by November 19th. That's kind of what I'm looking at.

• 1:41:57Jocko Willink?

  Right on, right on.

• 1:41:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, kind of a special day for us.

• 1:42:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure, for sure.

• 1:42:02Speaker 01

  But I, I think it's gonna be helpful for people, you know, I mean, cause it's not about a, it's not about a seal. It's about being human, you know, and humans have, you gotta fight through things and just not quit.

• 1:42:13Jocko Willink?

  I want to close this out and, and by the way, when you, when that comes out, we'll have you back on here. We'll go into the details of the rest of this stuff, um, uh, but I want to close out with what Elliot, uh, closed out his notes to me.

• 1:42:28Jocko Willink?

  He said, "Today I'm just waking up each and every day with the memory of my old self, thinking, what if? What if I just shot that dude? Would have made any difference. I don't know, but maybe, just maybe it would.

• 1:42:41Jocko Willink?

  But I'm doubtful because I know now that it was just an IED. And even, and that even if I had gotten the shot, it still would have caught up to me. I mean, those IEDs don't give two shits whom they get. And I guess that it was just my time. Better me than anyone else, eh? I'm glad that it happened to me and not anyone else, just because I don't think that anyone else would have the intestinal fortitude to be able to handle what I've gone through. And I'm referring to all the surgeries and rehab and the worst part of all was the separation anxiety that I suffered from my teammates who were still fighting the enemy. And still are to this day.

• 1:43:29Jocko Willink?

  Well Elliot, I agree. I don't think I know anyone else that could have gone through what you went through and what you've gone through with the same intestinal fortitude and the same incredible attitude that you have. And I, and I actually know this, and you should know this, that while you were forced off the battlefield, you continued to inspire your teammates. And to this day, to this day, the next generation is inspired by you and the example that you have set as a true frogman.

• 1:44:08Jocko Willink?

  And it's shown, it's shown in the movie, and it's shown in what you've done since then. And it's an inspiration.

• 1:44:21Jocko Willink?

  Thanks to both of you guys for coming out, for joining us. Um, thanks for your service. Thanks for your sacrifice for the nation, for the Navy, and for the teams.

• 1:44:31Speaker 02

  Thank you for your kind words. I don't know what else to say, other than thank you for the opportunity to be able to share my story and experiences. I'm not a talker. But before we go, you wanna hear a funny story about my stay in the hospital there in San Antonio? I had recently seen a pic of me with Joe and Clint, where I am staring off into space. And when I asked my dad about the picture, he said, morphine, it's a hell of a drug. I've got it in my phone if you guys wanna see it. After we're done?

• 1:45:09Jocko Willink?

  Outstanding, man.

• 1:45:13Jocko Willink?

  I guess that says it, man. Um, yeah, awesome. It's an honor to be able to share your story. I'm glad that your story of your, of your platoons getting out there to the world. Thanks to Ray Ray for making that happen and all the, all the people that put that thing together. It's, it's really gonna help people understand the, the, the nature of warfare.

• 1:45:34Speaker 02

  Also, one more thing real quick like a bunny. But if anyone from Brown Ability is listening to this podcast, I've got just two words for you. Fuck you. And I really do mean that too. Because you guys just plain old suck. I've sent you a couple emails, but since you guys probably have a lot of complaints about your product, I guess that it just fell on deaf ears.

• 1:45:57Jocko Willink?

  Never miss an opportunity to talk shit.

• 1:46:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, they're the makers of the wheelchair lift that I've got for my truck.

• 1:46:04Jocko Willink?

  Roger that.

• 1:46:07Jocko Willink?

  We can, I'm sure we can put some pressure on them and get you a wheelchair, kick ass wheelchair lift for your truck. We'll do it, brother. Right on. Awesome, fellas. Thanks for coming out, man. Yeah, thanks for having us.

• 1:46:21Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:46:22Jocko Willink?

  Right on, brother. Thank you, guys. And with that, Elliot and Joe have left the building and also we have left the building. We've relocated back to our normal studio closet. Sure. If you're watching this on video apparatus, you'll see that.

• 1:46:46Jocko Willink?

  And interestingly, you know, talking to the, talking to the boys afterwards.

• 1:46:51Jocko Willink?

  As as hard as that mission was, as hard as Bud's is, as hard as SEAL training is, all that stuff. The recovery, both those guys, the recovery that they went through. You know, they're both saying the recovery is the hardest part of the story.

• 1:47:15Jocko Willink?

  So, you know, Joe having to get his legs repaired, Elliot having to get his leg amputated, relearn just life, re, both of them, you've got a new starting point. So for both them to go through what they went through. It's a pretty awesome to be able to sit down and talk with those boys.

• 1:47:38Jocko Willink?

  And especially because I haven't seen him in, you know, quite a few years now. Yeah. Seen Elliot a little bit more often. I haven't seen Joe in a bit. But.

• 1:47:51Jocko Willink?

  If they can go through that,

• 1:47:54Jocko Willink?

  I think that we can all

• 1:47:57Jocko Willink?

  step up and work a little harder.

• 1:47:59Speaker 03

  If you remember correctly, it's been, I remember after we did episode 50. That's when you, that was when you first introduced the idea of Elliot coming on.

• 1:48:11Jocko Willink?

  Really? How do you remember that?

• 1:48:12Speaker 03

  Cause you said you were like, hey, he has an iPad to talk and it'll like, you're explaining that.

• 1:48:17Jocko Willink?

  Did I say that on the podcast? Well, how come you remember it?

• 1:48:21Speaker 03

  Cause I remember thinking that's a very unique approach for an all audio scenario. And then we were kind of spitballing it for a little bit and you're explaining kind of what happened. I was like, man, that could come out kind of crazy. Oh, but yeah, so yeah, I always remembered that. And it was interesting to connect all the dots with like the movie. Cause I saw the trailer for that movie when it like, this is before you, when it first came out, you didn't talk about it at all. I just saw it. And I was like, damn, this is like very, a very well done promo, like trailer, you know? You know, that's my jam, the trailers, let's face it. Um, and yeah, the way that came out was so good. So that was always on my radar. Like, okay, this is going to be like a different kind of presentation for a, for a war movie, you know?

• 1:49:06Jocko Willink?

  It's a different kind of presentation for any kind of movie.

• 1:49:08Speaker 03

  Yeah. And then just with the hype or whatever. And then it's like, okay, that was about Elliot, the guy Jocko was talking about back then. So I'm like connecting the dots. I'm like, wow, that's crazy. That's cool though.

• 1:49:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And I had some emails going back and forth with Elliot for years of like, you know, hey dude, you need to get on here. You need to come on the podcast. And then he was fired up, you know, like, so I'm glad we were able to finally get it done. And you know, I think people hearing that part of the story, even especially after seeing the movie Warfare, after seeing the movie and then listening to this, or maybe they'll listen to this and then go see the movie. But either way you get a more, you get a bigger connection. You get more context, I should say, more context to the whole thing.

• 1:49:54Speaker 03

  Um, when Joe was talking about recovering and you know, the doctors tell him like, hey, you won't really walk that good again, or you won't walk, or then you'll always walk with a limp or whatever. And so I was, I think I was talking to Kate Cora about this.

• 1:50:08Jocko Willink?

  Cake nuts?

• 1:50:09Speaker 03

  Cake nuts, Elliot. And he had his pack reattached because he had, you know, tore it or whatever. And then, you know, they give you your percentages and all this stuff. And we're kind of, I don't know if this is true, but I think this is true. This is something to think about. And what Joe was talking about really reminded me of this, made me think even more about it. Where when the doctors tell you, oh yeah, you have like a 25% chance or 1% chance or whatever, right? It's based on the past. It's not based on like other stuff that you, that might land as actual probability goes. It's based on the past. So it's essentially, let's say a hundred people got this particular ailment that, that you got. Out of those hundred people, 25 have gotten to a certain level of recovery.

• 1:50:52Jocko Willink?

  That's for the sake of this discussion, say a hundred, 25% get full recovery.

• 1:50:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:50:57Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:50:58Speaker 03

  And then they'll say you have about a 25% chance of going full recovery, right? So it's kind of like, okay, cool. That, that actually does make sense, right? Cause the only, we'll say factor that they're kind of considering is your injury. And out of a hundred people, you know, we'll say roughly 25%, so that's 25% chance. Okay. So it doesn't really take into consideration your approach, your mindset, your, your work ethic, which is a big one. Cause they told me that when I broke, blew out my knee. They're like, oh yeah, it'll be about a nine month recovery. That's how it is. Like a nine month recovery. So I'm like, all right. I was like, what are the chances of me getting like back cleared to play? Meaning you gotta pass all these physical tests and stuff before that. They're like, mm, it goes down and all this stuff. They give me all this probability.

• 1:51:44Speaker 03

  So freaking three and a half months, I was cleared to play. Three and a half months. But it's because I approached it like a, like an actual like fitness program that I had a goal, you know? And I was like, I remember thinking, again, I made up my own fitness program. So I was like, all right, I feel like, that's when I first started believing, okay, they didn't take into consideration the work ethic that people take. Cause everyone takes different work ethic. You see what I'm saying? They have different work ethic and they approach it differently. Now, when you consider an injury as like a, let's say, let's say I'm a 47 year old average person. And I get a pack tear or whatever at work. And you're not used to being into fitness or whatever, you're going to approach it way different. So they're taking into consideration those people as well in that 25%, see what I'm saying?

• 1:52:28Speaker 03

  So it kind of in a way doesn't apply to you if you don't let it. Which is kind of the point of kind of Joe's thing. Not even kind of, that's straight up the point where. Joe probably was hitting on this notion without even knowing it where it's like I didn't believe the straight up doctor now. I didn't believe it because this doctor doesn't know me. He doesn't know my work ethic, right? That's what he was thinking. Guess what? He was right. He's absolutely right. And I think that applies to everybody because it's true. They don't know your work ethic, you know?

• 1:52:57Jocko Willink?

  That being said, I'm sure that the doctors are trying to set expectations properly, right?

• 1:53:02Speaker 03

  I imagine so.

• 1:53:03Jocko Willink?

  Because what I don't want to say is like, don't worry, you'll be back to 100% and you never get there and now you're mad. That being said, I would hope that someone say, hey, listen, you got a 25% chance of getting full recovery from your PEC tear, but if you apply discipline, work ethic, follow the protocols, you're going to increase that by a lot. And so then they at least recognize that it's kind of, that it's on them. You know, that's the thing. Physical therapy is on you, you know, physical therapy is on you. You gotta, you gotta fix it and you gotta protect it. You know, you gotta be the, use your judgment to know when, because like, I'm glad you got cleared at three and a half months, but sometimes people think they're okay

• 1:53:46Jocko Willink?

  and they start doing stuff when they shouldn't be doing stuff. And something's not fully healed and they do it anyways and they can get hurt. Or they don't do things soon enough and now they're not pushing. Now the thing doesn't heal right. So.

• 1:53:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, fully. And, oh, I don't doubt that. And I don't doubt that there's probably even more to it than that. But I'm saying this factor, when you're, when you have like a really, really strong work ethic and you know a lot about, you know, physical, like, training and stuff like that, you're lumped in with the rest of the people who got that same exact ailment and don't have your work ethic. See what I'm saying? So you're part of that 25%. But if you just isolated you and everyone like you, right? It might not be 25%. And we don't know what that is. I get it. Of course, we don't. All I'm saying, what I'm saying is probably what Joe's thinking in his brain where it's like, I don't care. You give me a 1%, guess who's the 1%? Me. See what I'm saying? And now it. If you kind of do the numbers kind of in retrospect after you he can walk again, it's kind of like, well, isn't that a hundred percent?

• 1:54:42Speaker 03

  Cause I'm the, I'm the, what do you call the, the sample size, me, hundred percent. See what I'm saying? And everyone like me, one hundred percent. So it's not, you know, it's not a cut and dry thing, but it is almost like a, in a way like a um, practical and logical way to look at these quote unquote odds that people can impose on you.

• 1:54:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't listen to the odds on anything.

• 1:55:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, cause they kind of like, you know, they don't have to apply it, they don't accept it.

• 1:55:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but it not only boils down to discipline and work ethic, it also boils down to fuel. Got to have the right fuel. So imagine you're got some kind of a physical ailment. Get the right, get the right fuel. We recommend Jocko Fuel. Check it out. Get the, get the, get the Jocko Protein, Molk Protein, ready to drink powders. We got new flavors of powders coming out. We got, it just, it just tastes delicious, by the way. Joint Warfare, Super Krill. These are things you should take every day. Time War. These are things you should take every day. These are things that are so helpful. I got, I'm so stoked, like my kids who are young adults, they're all on it.

• 1:55:48Jocko Willink?

  Cause Rana, like a few months ago, she's like, dude, oh no, this is more than a few months ago, but she's like, I see you rolling with freaking Miha, Wes, Dean, uh, young bucks, right? People that are Sloan.

• 1:56:12Jocko Willink?

  Wyatt, like people that are legit competitive grapplers. She's like, I see you doing that and you're almost 54 years old. She's like, how is that? I said, lift weights. I said, never stop lifting weights, never stop working out. And take the stuff that I take. Take Joint Warfare, take Super Krill, take Time War, please. I go, if you do that, it's gonna just. Make you so much more durable over time.

• 1:56:40Speaker 03

  Keep you right in the game.

• 1:56:41Jocko Willink?

  Keep you in the game, bro. You gotta stay in the game. Uh, so we got all that stuff. We got hydration. We got greens, creatine. I'm on the mega creatine right now.

• 1:56:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, with you.

• 1:56:52Jocko Willink?

  You're with me.

• 1:56:53Speaker 03

  Well, you know, I

• 1:56:53Jocko Willink?

  10 grams a day?

• 1:56:54Speaker 03

  I just got back from the, I know.

• 1:56:58Jocko Willink?

  We call that the land.

• 1:56:58Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, the land. And I failed to bring the creatine. So the moment I got back, I started double.

• 1:57:03Jocko Willink?

  Creatine sticks, by the way. We have the little creatine stick packs now. So it's so awesome. So I go on travel. And I just, oh, I'm going for four days. Cool. Eight creatine stick packs. Boom, done. Easy. 10 grams a day. We're in the game. And then I get home, because the creatine stick packs are obviously a little bit more expensive because it's packaging. But then when I get home, you get the big bucket. It's like, well, it's not a big bucket. I have a small, like a small bucket. Of creatine, morning and night, five grams, five grams. I'm even thinking, I was listening to Rhonda Patrick, you know who that is?

• 1:57:35Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:35Jocko Willink?

  She was talking about, she had an individual on there. She's talking about like, oh, sleep deprivation, up your creatine. I'm like, cool. I'm in the game.

• 1:57:43Speaker 03

  Oh, if you don't get that much.

• 1:57:44Jocko Willink?

  Don't get that much sleep, more creatine.

• 1:57:46Speaker 03

  Oh, that helps. Okay. All right. Good to know.

• 1:57:48Jocko Willink?

  See what I'm saying?

• 1:57:48Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:57:48Jocko Willink?

  Good to know. So now when I travel, I'm probably going to put two extra stick packs. So I can do a little, maybe a 15, maybe a 20. Because sometimes that jet lag, you stayed up too late, still gotta get up early. So get yourself some creatine.

• 1:58:01Speaker 03

  So the packs of creatine is 10? 10 grams?

• 1:58:05Jocko Willink?

  No, it's five.

• 1:58:06Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 1:58:06Jocko Willink?

  So I bring, if I'm going for four days, I bring eight. So I have one in the morning, one at night. And by the way, I'm just straight dry scooping this all the time. I'm mixing it with water or nothing, just pouring it in my mouth and then drinking some water. That's what we're doing.

• 1:58:19Speaker 03

  Hey, do it, man. I don't know if I can get there, but all good.

• 1:58:22Jocko Willink?

  You can get all this stuff that you need here, jockofuel.com. You can also get it at Walmart, Wawa Vitamin Shop, GNC, Military Commissaries, AFE's, Hanford Dash Stores in Maryland, Wake Forest, ShopRite, HEB down in Texas. Has walls of Jocko Fuel. Thank you, Texas. Meyer has walls of Jocko Fuel up in the, up in the Midwest. Wegmans, pallets of Jocko Fuel, Harris Teeter, Publix, Publi- hey, Florida. What's happening, Florida? Publix crushing. Thank you, Florida. If you want Jocko Fuel, go to, go to Publix. You can get it. Lifetime Fitness Shields and whatever gym you're at. Hopefully they have Jocko Fuel. If they don't, email [email protected]. We'll hook you up. Also.

• 1:59:06Jocko Willink?

  America.

• 1:59:08Jocko Willink?

  We have people that fought for America. And yet, there's people that take their money and spend it in a foreign country.

• 1:59:17Jocko Willink?

  A communist country. A country. Do you like communism?

• 1:59:20Speaker 03

  I, I don't, you know, no, not really.

• 1:59:23Jocko Willink?

  Okay, you don't like communism. Do you like slavery?

• 1:59:26Speaker 03

  No, I don't.

• 1:59:26Jocko Willink?

  Okay, do you like child abuse?

• 1:59:28Speaker 03

  No.

• 1:59:28Jocko Willink?

  Okay, you see what I'm saying? You see where I'm going with this?

• 1:59:30Speaker 03

  I see where you're going.

• 1:59:31Jocko Willink?

  There are nations in the world that that's what, that's how they roll. Communist slavery, child labor, child abuse. It's heinous. And yet, just giving them money. Just giving them money. You don't need to do that anymore. Origin USA, originusa.com. Go there, you need jeans, gi for jiu jitsu, rash guard,

• 1:59:58Jocko Willink?

  hoodie, t-shirt, pants. Uh, we got different types of pants too, by the way. We got like, hey, I'm gonna go casual day.

• 2:00:07Speaker 03

  Sure, casual.

• 2:00:08Jocko Willink?

  We got, I'm gonna go adventuring. Like, I'm gonna be, you know, possibly sweating, possibly maybe getting wet, possibly having to leap over small things.

• 2:00:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:00:18Jocko Willink?

  We got you. Hunt gear. We got what you need, boots, and it's all 100% made in America with American-made materiel.

• 2:00:29Jocko Willink?

  So don't support communism, don't support child labor, don't support slave labor. Support America. Support your America. OriginUSA.com, go check it out.

• 2:00:41Speaker 03

  Shoot, also, I've got a store called Jocko's Store. So it's Jocko's Store. Anyway, you wanna represent, discipline equals freedom? We've got your shirts there, merch there. Uh, the idea of good, we got those shirts as well, a few, a few options there. Uh, we got some socks on there, hyped about the socks.

• 2:01:01Jocko Willink?

  Socks are on there right now?

• 2:01:02Speaker 03

  And hats. They're on there right now. Yeah.

• 2:01:04Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Send me some socks.

• 2:01:06Speaker 03

  I will.

• 2:01:06Jocko Willink?

  Just like two pairs.

• 2:01:07Speaker 03

  Two pair. You got it. And then yeah, also the short locker, which is a different shirt design every month. It's a subscription scenario. People seem to like that one. A little bit different types of design, but still designs representative of the path big time. So check that out. You go on Jocko store.com, click on the top. It says shirt locker. You can kind of see the some of the past designs. See what it's all about. Anyway, check it out. If you like something, get something.

• 2:01:29Jocko Willink?

  Also check out primalbeef.com and coloradocraftbeef.com. Awesome people, awesome steaks, awesome jerky, meat sticks, beef tallow. What do you need? We got you. Primalbeef.com, coloradocraftbeef.com. Also subscribe to the podcast. Check out Jocko Underground.com. It's another little podcast that we do answering your questions. Check out our YouTube channel. Jocko Fuel YouTube channel, Origin USA YouTube channel. Check out some books, Final Spin. The Way of the Warrior Kid books. We got a movie coming with that. Mikey and the Dragons. I just read through that the other day randomly.

• 2:02:10Speaker 03

  It's a good one.

• 2:02:11Jocko Willink?

  It's a good one, man. It's a good one. Get that for your kid. Get that for your neighbors.

• 2:02:18Jocko Willink?

  It's gonna, it's gonna help them. Also Echelon Front, we have a leadership consultancy. We solve problems through leadership. All the things we talked about today. The combat that we went through. The combat that we went through required leadership and we utilized leadership principles that were tested on the battlefield and now we teach them to people. If you need them inside your organization, go to echelonfront.com. If you want to come to our, one of our events, go to echelonfront.com. You want to come to the muster. The next muster, April 29th through May 1st. There still are some seats available. You need to get there quickly. Check it out. Echelonfront.com. We also have an online training academy.

• 2:02:58Jocko Willink?

  Extremeownership.com. Learn these leadership principles through the online academy, interact, live questions and answers, tests. It's, it's an awesome program and you can learn these actual principles so you can have a better life.

• 2:03:16Jocko Willink?

  And if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got an incredible charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to Americas Mighty Warriors.org and check that out. Also, Heroes and Horses.org. Micah Fink, helping our vets find themselves up in the wilderness. And finally, Jimmy May. Jimmy May's got an organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. And actually, I didn't mention this today, forgot about it in the moment. Jimmy May was in Ramadi with Tasking the Bruiser. He joined us probably halfway through deployment. And then he stayed a little extra time. Remember how I was saying like, we didn't want to go home? Well, because Jimmy hadn't been there long, he didn't have to go home.

• 2:04:01Jocko Willink?

  So he stayed a little bit longer and he actually got shot. I want to say a couple of days before November 19th, but he wasn't wounded too badly. Thank God.

• 2:04:13Jocko Willink?

  But he was gonna leave, so he wasn't on this operation. And when these guys got hurt, he's the one that escorted him home. So Jimmy May, he's got his organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. And if you want to connect with us, first of all, for Elliott Miller. If you want to follow Elliott Miller, he is on Instagram. He is at DudeBro78. D U D E B R O underscore 78.

• 2:04:45Jocko Willink?

  I don't have, I don't have Joe's. We figured out, we'll, we'll link everybody. And also for the movie, the Warfare movie on Instagram, it's at WarfareMovie. And then for us, you can check out Jaco.com and on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink. And Echo is at Echo Charles. Just be careful because there's an algorithm there trying to destroy your life. Don't let it. And thanks to all of our military around the globe right now. And a special thanks, obviously, to Joe Hildebrand and Elliott Miller. So severely wounded, but who survived. Thanks to their teammates from SEAL Team Five. And to the Army and the Marine Corps.

• 2:05:29Jocko Willink?

  You saw the Anglico in action in the movie. You saw the Army in action in the movie. That happened time and time and time again.

• 2:05:39Jocko Willink?

  Our service members, working together as a team. That was the Ready First Brigade Combat Team. We thank you all for taking care of our teammates. And thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, officers of Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for taking care of us here at home. And for everyone else out there, do you need a better example of fortitude and perseverance than Elliott Miller? Because if you need someone better than that, I don't have anything for you.

• 2:06:19Jocko Willink?

  If he can get up and drive on every day and get married and have kids and carry on. If he can do that, then we have no excuses and we have no other option other than to get up every day and get after it. Thanks Elliot, thanks Joe. That's all I've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.