200: Are We Doing Everything We Are Capable of? With Jim Sursely

0:00:00 - Opening 0:01:44 - James Sursely. 1:40:18 - Final Thoughts and Take-aways. 1:43:23 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:03:20 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 200 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.

• 0:11Jocko Willink?

  In the morning after my swim, I sit down and have a cup of coffee and think Jim,

• 0:20Jocko Willink?

  you're the luckiest guy in the world.

• 0:24Jocko Willink?

  And that is a quote from a man named James Sersli, a man who served his country. As a soldier in the US Army, so he volunteered for the Army and then volunteered to go fight in Vietnam, a man who made incredible sacrifices and who faced incredible challenges.

• 0:53Jocko Willink?

  Challenges that would overwhelm most people.

• 1:00Jocko Willink?

  And yet, he carried on.

• 1:05Jocko Willink?

  And he proved and is still proving that the human will is stronger than many of us ever realize.

• 1:20Jocko Willink?

  And that if you have the right attitude, you can look at a harrowing situation.

• 1:30Jocko Willink?

  And still call it lucky.

• 1:35Jocko Willink?

  And it is an honor to have this man with us tonight to talk about his experiences and how he has overcome so much adversity, Mr. James Sersli. Welcome to the show.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  Thank you. Great to be here, Jaco.

• 1:52Jocko Willink?

  Sir, honored to have you on. And I apologize that the fact that you had to travel all the way out here from sunny Florida to sunny San Diego, but I'm honored that you were able to make the trip.

• 2:03Speaker 01

  I'm honored to be here. Again, thanks for asking.

• 2:06Jocko Willink?

  And um. I like to start at the beginning about, you know, just where you came from, where you grew up. And I think we're, we're talking about Minnesota, right?

• 2:16Speaker 01

  We are.

• 2:16Jocko Willink?

  Somehow you cover up that accent pretty well.

• 2:19Speaker 01

  Well, I've been living in Florida since 1971, so I'd hope I get rid of some of that.

• 2:25Jocko Willink?

  So you grew up, what kind of, what was the family situation growing up? What'd your, what'd your dad do and whatnot?

• 2:29Speaker 01

  My dad was a barber in Rochester, Minnesota, and my mother, for the most part, was a, a mother and a housewife. And, uh, worked a little bit of part-time when I got into my teenage years. Along with my older sister, who was also a couple of years older than me.

• 2:43Jocko Willink?

  And, and what's Rochester, Minnesota like?

• 2:47Speaker 01

  Well, Rochester, Minnesota is home of the Mayo Clinic. So, I mean, it's probably, that's the biggest thing in town and IBM, but it's rural, southeastern corner of Minnesota. Just a great bunch of patriotic Americans is what I was accustomed to growing up.

• 3:03Jocko Willink?

  And your dad served, if I'm correct, your dad served in the Army Air Corps?

• 3:08Speaker 01

  He did, was a radio operator on B-17s and B-24s during World War II.

• 3:15Jocko Willink?

  Now, how much did he talk about that when you were growing up?

• 3:17Speaker 01

  You know, not really a whole lot. I think the biggest thing that I experienced with him was he had a, a foot locker that he brought back home. And I can remember probably as a nine or 10-year-old kid, trying to put on that stuff and have the jacket draped all over me and the pants too big and huge boots and everything else. But he never really said too much about it, other than, you know, where he experienced training in different parts of the United States and that type of thing.

• 3:41Jocko Willink?

  And, but, but he was a, you said B-17 radio operator?

• 3:45Speaker 01

  And B-24.

• 3:46Jocko Willink?

  And B-24.

• 3:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, bombers.

• 3:48Jocko Willink?

  So was he doing the missions into Europe?

• 3:50Speaker 01

  He did not do, he, he never left the United States.

• 3:53Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:53Speaker 01

  Because when he, when he finished whatever training he had, they made him a trainer of other radio operators.

• 4:00Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 4:01Speaker 01

  So he was lucky.

• 4:01Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, otherwise there's a good chance you wouldn't even be here right now.

• 4:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 4:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, those are the, those are the guys that were doing, if you did 25 missions, you got to go home. But there wasn't too many people that got to go home.

• 4:15Jocko Willink?

  So when you were growing up, I mean, going to high school, what was it your, what was your, what were you into growing up?

• 4:23Speaker 01

  Football, basketball, and baseball, and girls. I'm not sure which one was the greatest priority.

• 4:30Jocko Willink?

  And were you any good?

• 4:32Speaker 01

  I mean, I was starting fullback on a football team for three different, you know, sophomore, junior, and senior year, and probably could have gone to college, but I wasn't exactly the greatest student in the world, so I didn't make myself eligible to go on to college.

• 4:48Jocko Willink?

  You were focused on studying female anatomy at this point?

• 4:52Speaker 01

  That's correct. Yep, that'd be a good interpretation.

• 4:55Jocko Willink?

  So, so were you planning to go to college? Were you thinking about going to college? Were your parents edging you towards college?

• 5:03Speaker 01

  My parents really never said too much about that. My older sister was already two years into college at that point. My thing was if there'd have been a place where I could have gone to play football, but I didn't have to go to school, I'd have been the first one in line for that location.

• 5:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 5:22Speaker 01

  And as I got closer to, you know, finish school in May of 1966, and as I got into September of 66, I kind of thought about it, and I said, you know what I might do is I might just join the military, do three years in the army, come back home, use the GI Bill and go to school wherever I wanted to, because I knew the army would get me a GED just about as quick as I got in there. So that was kind of some of my thoughts when I, as I got ready to join the military.

• 5:52Jocko Willink?

  So, so what year were you set to graduate from high school? Was that 1967?

• 5:57Speaker 01

  No, no, 66. May of 66.

• 5:59Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so May of 66, you started saying to yourself, all right, when I get done, I'll just, I'll just join the, join the army.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Well, and I don't know if I even really did that. I mean, it's, it's probably even more simple than that. I don't know whether I was a forward enough thinker to actually be in that direction. I actually drove by the post office in downtown Rochester, Minnesota. There's one of those signs that were on a spring, and it had Uncle Sam, red, white, and blue, and the big top hat, and his finger was pointed right at the windshield of my car, and it said, Uncle Sam needs you. And I circled the block, went in and talked to the army recruiter, not really with any great intentions of joining, but just to kind of see what, what that process was all about and what maybe I could do if I did join the army.

• 6:48Jocko Willink?

  When that recruiter saw you come through the door, he was thinking something completely different. He said, I got this guy.

• 6:54Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, they were probably tremendously in need of warm bodies at that point in time during the Vietnam era.

• 7:01Jocko Willink?

  So, so this is 1966. So, how much were you aware of what was going on in Vietnam at this time? How much were you watching the news? How much were you seeing as far as, as far as the Vietnam War goes? Cause it had definitely escalated by 1966. I mean, I, I had a, one of my friends who was, who was a pilot in Vietnam, but he was in, in the Naval Academy. And 1965, he, they, they said they didn't even talk about Vietnam in, at the Naval Academy at all. It wasn't until they got to close to the end of their senior year that they started going, oh, there's, there's a war going on. But by 1966, it had absolutely escalated. And so what were your thoughts? Were you thinking, hey,

• 7:46Jocko Willink?

  this is, if I go in, then I know what's gonna happen. I know I'm gonna be going to war.

• 7:50Speaker 01

  I mean, there was some discussion with fellow classmates and, and I went to a parochial school and there was a bigger, a public school that was there in town. And a lot of those guys were talking about, let's all go in on the buddy system, whether the Marine Corps, the Army or something. And I didn't want to have anything to do with that. I mean, that, that was my answer to everybody that ever raised that, that proposition. But we were aware of what was going on and probably as you'd pass through the living room, your parents would have the television on. You'd see it on the six o'clock or the 10 o'clock news. So you knew there was activity going on, but it wasn't like, it didn't scare me, but it also wasn't attractive to send me down to the army recruiters.

• 8:31Jocko Willink?

  So after that first visit to the army recruiter, after you, after Uncle Sam called you out as you drove down the street, at, at what point, so you go to see him and how much longer was it before you signed the dotted line?

• 8:44Speaker 01

  Well, I went home and talked to my parents about it and it's kind of one of those things where I think they probably really focused on the news much more than I ever did. And I mean, the first thing that I, I mentioned about, about the possibility during the army, my mother was in tears. I'm sure because of what you see on television. My dad, having been former member of the military, was not quite that way, but just said, hey, you know, you know, there's the Navy, there's the Air Force, there's a lot of different possibilities. Why don't you give that some thought? And I just kind of told them if I did join, what I thought I would want to do, and that was to be like a, a mechanic. That was something that I enjoyed doing on my own with vehicles and motorcycles that we had. So, I mean, I

• 9:29Speaker 01

  never thought about joining to be a combat soldier. And again, I probably gave myself about two weeks, had a little bit more discussion with my parents, and that's probably when I decided to go down and join. Again, I was 18 years old, so it wasn't, wasn't like I needed permission to join. I could have done it on my own. And that's basically what I did.

• 9:49Jocko Willink?

  So did you, you were into cars then? Did you have your own car?

• 9:53Speaker 01

  I did.

• 9:54Jocko Willink?

  Did you have multiple cars?

• 9:55Speaker 01

  I had two cars and a motorcycle.

• 9:57Jocko Willink?

  And what were they?

• 9:58Speaker 01

  A 1957 Chevy, a 1964 Chevy and a Yamaha 250 motorcycle.

• 10:06Jocko Willink?

  So you had.

• 10:06Speaker 01

  And girls, did I mention girls?

• 10:10Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you did a little bit, yes. Um, and, and nothing about the Navy, the Marine Corps? You, did they, did they give you a contract in the Army where you were going to become a mechanic? Did they do that back then?

• 10:22Speaker 01

  They did.

• 10:23Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you knew right away, hey, you're going to go in, we're going to make you a mechanic, and that sounds like a pretty good plan.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:31Jocko Willink?

  Especially because I'm, I'm just thinking, like, when I joined the Navy.

• 10:36Jocko Willink?

  All other prospects in life didn't seem as cool as that. They didn't seem, you know, when you said you wish there was a place where you could just go and play football? Well, I wanted a place where I could just go and play commando and there was a place like that. It was called the Navy. That's how I ended up joining. And it seems like, yeah, I don't know. I'm not saying I didn't have any other options, but it just seemed like such a good option for me. It's so simple and straightforward. And that's actually one of the things that I liked about the Navy was when I joined, nothing else, none, none, none of my previous life mattered. It was just here you go. Here's what you have to do. So, so, did your, did your mind shift at all about your decision when you showed up to boot camp?

• 11:20Speaker 01

  No.

• 11:20Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  And, and I think really because, you know, when I reflect on that now and look back that there was a lot of guys who'd never left their hometown, never done anything when they got drafted and, and I don't know what 40% of the people in my basic training were probably drafted, didn't want to be there, never had any intentions of being in the military. It also scared the living crap out of them. I mean, there was people that cried half the night, all night in basic training, you know, they were away from home for the first time. They weren't physical type of people to start with. And it was just extremely difficult to watch a lot of that while I went through basic training.

• 11:59Jocko Willink?

  Wow. So where did you go to basic training?

• 12:02Speaker 01

  Fort Polk, Louisiana.

• 12:04Jocko Willink?

  Now, were most of the kids that you went through, uh, boot camp with, did they send them, were they kids that were from that area? Did you go to boot camp like regionally? Or was it people from all over the country?

• 12:15Speaker 01

  People from all over the country. I think your induction and where you go for basic training in the army at that time depended on the timing of when you got drafted or when you joined. Could have been to Fort Stewart, Georgia. I think there were places out here in California where they actually had basic. Um, Fort Lewis, Washington had basic, all over the place. Fort Dix, New Jersey.

• 12:36Jocko Willink?

  So you're in there with people that had been drafted. You said 40%.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  I think roughly at that time. Yeah.

• 12:42Jocko Willink?

  And there's.

• 12:45Jocko Willink?

  I mean, this is where people start doing crazy things just to get out like, you know, wet their bed or whatever, sleepwalk and all this kind of thing. So they just would get out of their service. Did you see that kind of thing?

• 12:56Speaker 01

  We had three guys that actually went AWOL and stayed underneath one of those elevated wood frame, World War II barracks for three days. Because even if they'd have got out from underneath the barracks, they wouldn't have known how to get out of Louisiana to get back where they were from. So people brought them food for three days and then they finally decided to surrender.

• 13:19Jocko Willink?

  And that's the other interesting thing about, so this is 1960, this is still 1966?

• 13:25Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 13:26Jocko Willink?

  And so the anti-war movement wasn't in full swing yet, was it? As far as just open hippies in the streets and those kinds of things. That wasn't really happening in 66, was it?

• 13:38Speaker 01

  No, more like 68 and 69 is when it really got cranked up.

• 13:42Jocko Willink?

  So these kids that were coming in, they were just horrified about what was gonna happen?

• 13:47Speaker 01

  And I don't know whether it was even a fear of going to Vietnam, if it was just a fear of being away from home, the physicality of, of basic training and people screaming and hollering in your face and everything else. I mean, I think that's what scared them more than anything else.

• 14:02Jocko Willink?

  You know, that's one thing that they can never put back in the bottle is these days, well, first of all, it's all volunteer. But second of all, we've seen, when I joined the Navy, I had seen, you know, military boot camp movies since I was born. I mean, we just knew every little trick and anticipated everything that was gonna happen. And it seems like if you were a kid from wherever and you got drafted and you'd never left home and then you show up and you got some drill sergeant going nuts in your face, yeah, that's totally different. That's, that's, that's a, that's a, that's a shock to the system.

• 14:43Speaker 01

  And that was before you could play that card, I guess, that they use now. You know, there's a timeout card in a lot of different branches of the military where you can go over and make a phone call and call your congressman if you want. If you're being mistreated, you can call home and report it. Well, they used to say over there, we'll take you to the phone booth, but I'm not sure you'll ever make it back to the unit.

• 15:09Jocko Willink?

  So, but you were, you're an athlete, you're a three sport athlete, you were used to working and so it wasn't a big deal for you to go through and you, and you volunteered to do it.

• 15:21Speaker 01

  Right.

• 15:22Jocko Willink?

  So you get done with boot camp and then what's next? You must have to go to some kind of MOS school to learn your trade, right?

• 15:28Speaker 01

  I stayed at Fort Polk, Louisiana for wheeled vehicle repair school. And that was another, I think, eight weeks or seven weeks. And then after that, they decided I was a pretty good mechanic. So they sent me to Fort Sill, Oklahoma for track vehicle repair school, which was everything that the army owned that had a track on it. You know, self-propelled howitzers and armored personnel carriers, tanks, you name it. Anything that had a, had a track on it.

• 15:58Jocko Willink?

  Did you enjoy all that?

• 16:00Speaker 01

  I did.

• 16:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like I have a nephew that he's just loves all kinds of big machinery. You know, he just, anything that, any caterpillar, any big piece of machinery, he just loves it. And I could see him joining the army to be a, a tank repairman. And then, so how long has that school lasted?

• 16:17Speaker 01

  Another eight weeks.

• 16:19Jocko Willink?

  And at, at this point, are, are you?

• 16:23Jocko Willink?

  I mean, with the war going on, are you starting to be more aware of possibilities of where you could end up?

• 16:30Speaker 01

  Well, you would hear people talking about it and some of the people that I took the track vehicle school with were people that had been in the military for a year, year and a half, two years. Were already E5 or some of them actually even E6, who had had the wheeled part of it, but never the track part. And I think they were kind of merging those two MOSs. So that's why they were training in both, both categories.

• 16:53Jocko Willink?

  Did you have any guys in those schools that had already been to Vietnam?

• 16:57Speaker 01

  We did not, not in either one of those schools, but I did. My first assignment was to the 24th Infantry Division in Germany. And there were Vietnam veterans in our unit in Germany.

• 17:06Jocko Willink?

  So you wrap up your school and that's your first, your first, uh, permanent duty is over in Germany? And you show up there, which has got to be a good time.

• 17:17Speaker 01

  It's pretty decent.

• 17:18Jocko Willink?

  19, so are we in the 67 yet?

• 17:21Speaker 01

  Yep, we're in 67.

• 17:22Jocko Willink?

  So 1967, how old are you?

• 17:24Speaker 01

  Uh, 19.

• 17:26Jocko Willink?

  19 years old and you get stationed where in Germany?

• 17:28Speaker 01

  Augsburg.

• 17:31Jocko Willink?

  Did you, did you drink any beer while you were there?

• 17:33Speaker 01

  A little bit, yeah.

• 17:37Speaker 01

  I think everything right outside the gate, just like the military bases here in this country. All the pubs are right outside the gate.

• 17:46Jocko Willink?

  And you're 19 years old, you got more, you're the richest human being in the world because you got that, what, were you the E3?

• 17:53Speaker 01

  Uh, ninety-seven dollars a month is what it paid when I joined the army. I quit a hundred and fifty dollar a week job to get ninety-seven dollars a month. But I got all the clothes and free food I wanted.

• 18:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was looking at one of my pay stubs the other day from when I first joined the Navy and it was, I want to say it was like seven hundred bucks a month or six hundred and forty-two dollars a month. And I was looking at it going, dang, they really, they got me pretty good, didn't they? For a month. But you're in Germany and, and what, what's your job there? I mean, you're, you're, you're working on tracks like you were supposed to, that's what you're doing.

• 18:27Speaker 01

  Well, I did, I did a little bit of that and what the assignment to do was run the TI Bay Technical Inspection on all the vehicles. You know, you know, having been around the military, every vehicle has to have a logbook. All the logbooks have to be up to date with repairs and maintenance on them. So my job was to sort of ferret out what needed to be done, making sure the driver took care of it. And if not, then we sent the rest over with a work order over to the regular mechanics and they'd replace or fix something that was damaged at that point.

• 18:56Jocko Willink?

  Now, are you doing any time in the field at this point?

• 18:59Speaker 01

  We used to go to Grafenwehr, Hohenfelds, Wildflicken and do, do training out, out that way.

• 19:04Jocko Willink?

  So you'd go out and do a big exercise? And when you would do those exercises, would you be, would you, would you, would you be a, one of the crew on any of the tracks? Or would you be standing by to, to repair them?

• 19:16Speaker 01

  Only standing by to repair them. Because the motor pool was battalion motor pool and it was big enough that you were, you know, you had the, the full contingent of mechanics, welders and everything else.

• 19:29Jocko Willink?

  And um, and then how long did you spend in Germany?

• 19:34Speaker 01

  I spent about eight months in Germany before I volunteered to go to Vietnam.

• 19:39Jocko Willink?

  Now, at this point, you said you did have guys that had been in Vietnam and they were with you. And what were they, what was the feedback they were giving you?

• 19:49Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, they weren't negative about it. They weren't trying to make it overly scary. I think they were realistic and honest about it. But I think one of the things that when I look back at that now, they were okay and they were alive. So, you know, maybe it's really not that bad.

• 20:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 20:07Speaker 01

  But I mean, if it'd been somebody that had been seriously injured.

• 20:11Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Maybe it'd be going, maybe I need to think about this a little bit more.

• 20:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 20:15Speaker 01

  I mean, I was kind of determined to go. And the reason that I was because I felt like when I was in Germany, I felt like I had a civilian job with a green uniform. I, I didn't figure I was being utilized or I was using myself to the best of my ability. I, I joined because I wanted to make some kind of a contribution. It what, you know, wasn't a John Wayne kind of story or anything that big, but I just didn't feel like I was accomplishing that there. And the first sergeant talked to me about it and said, you know, you need to think about this. I'm going to give you three or four days. Talk to some of the guys that have been in Vietnam.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Cause I mean, I think he'd been, and it wasn't anything. He just wanted to rubber stamp and put you on a plane, send you back and get you ready to go. He was really a genuine kind of person who felt like, hey, make sure this is what you want before we actually sign the paperwork and send you on.

• 21:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's, there's also different. People have different experiences in war and I know in Iraq, there was places in Iraq where the living conditions were better than most, than much of the living conditions that I experienced in my normal life in America. And then you go 10 miles away or sometimes even three miles from that point. And you're outside at, at some forward operating base and it's really dangerous and really hard living. Conditions and it just depends on on where you are. And I think the other thing you were just talking about, I think they call it survivor's bias, which is the only people that we get to talk to, like it happens with businesses. You know, someone says, oh, I did this with my business and and that's why I'm a multimillionaire now and says, everyone says, well, that must have worked, so I'll do it.

• 21:57Jocko Willink?

  What you don't get to talk to is all the people that they tried that and it failed. So yeah, from your perspective, you're hearing from guys that were in Vietnam and like you said, they, I don't want to say they had a good time, but it wasn't that bad. Because they were coming back to be able to tell you about it. So you you thought about it for a few days. What were you seeing on the news at this point?

• 22:16Speaker 01

  You didn't see much news at all when I was in Germany. I mean, I don't know whether I ever watched a television all the while I was there.

• 22:25Jocko Willink?

  And were there, were there any, uh, like intel reports, were there casualty reports? Were you seeing, like, I remember for me in Iraq, I was always paying attention to how many, how many people were getting killed every month. I mean, I I tracked that all the time and, you know, you'd see those numbers creeping up and they crept up and they crept up and I paid attention to that. Was that something that you were looking at thinking? Well, hey, that could be me.

• 22:55Speaker 01

  Never saw any or never heard any reports of that at all. I mean, I think there were, there was information shared that people were dying in Vietnam, but there wasn't any statistical paperwork that actually would bear out the all those numbers.

• 23:11Jocko Willink?

  So you you talked to the first sergeant, he tells you, give it a few days, you give it a few days and you and you say, yep, I'm still in. I want to go do this. Did you, when you go volunteer, what do they do? Are they assigning you to a specific unit? Are they just shipping you off to Vietnam and you're going to sign when you get there?

• 23:28Speaker 01

  That's what happens. Your replacement troop. See, basically, I think when when Vietnam first got started, whole units went to Vietnam. But as time went on, everybody became a replacement troop. Somebody would rotate out tomorrow, another guy would come in. Three days later, another guy would rotate month, you know what I mean? It just went on that way all the while I was in country.

• 23:51Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 23:53Jocko Willink?

  How long did they give you to prepare? Did you do anything different to prepare? You just, how long did it take from the time you said, "Hey, I want to go"? Yep. And then how long was it before you left?

• 24:02Speaker 01

  It was about two weeks before I actually got orders that came down from battalion or brigade. Went home on a 30-day leave back to Minnesota during the month of February of 1968. And then I reported to Fort Lewis, Washington on the last couple of days of February 68, was in country by March the 1st of 68.

• 24:25Jocko Willink?

  Did you fly over on civilian aircraft?

• 24:27Speaker 01

  I did.

• 24:28Jocko Willink?

  With stewardesses and?

• 24:30Speaker 01

  Braniff Airlines, if I remember correctly, which is not even in existence anymore.

• 24:34Jocko Willink?

  What was it called?

• 24:35Speaker 01

  Braniff.

• 24:36Jocko Willink?

  Braniff Airlines. And that was... What about saying goodbye to your parents? Was your dad nervous? Was your mom a disaster since she was already sad when you joined the Army in the first place?

• 24:49Speaker 01

  It was pretty hard on my mom. And I mean, I think it was difficult for my dad, too, because I'm sure they probably both thought I was just absolutely crazy for volunteering to go. I mean, I could have stayed in Germany, ran out my three years and got out of the military, but I just couldn't see myself doing that. So it was difficult for them.

• 25:11Jocko Willink?

  So civilian flight, you get over there, you know, again, talking about movies, and we all see the movies, and, you know, I watched all those Vietnam War movies growing up, and they always have the iconic scenes of the new guys in their fresh camouflage uniforms, getting off the bird, and there's the hardened veterans that are heading home after a year of combat, and they look like they've been through a year of combat. Did you, did you see that?

• 25:43Speaker 01

  I did. Yeah, they were actually loading planes on the same location that we were offloading, so just exactly like you described is what took place.

• 25:53Jocko Willink?

  Anybody talk to you about anything? Anybody say anything to you?

• 25:56Speaker 01

  Um, I mean, usually they're kind of giving you just a thumbs up and they're great big smile on their face because they know they're loading the burden going home. So they're happy to be getting out of there.

• 26:07Jocko Willink?

  And the attitude with the guys that you were with, you know, you already talked about the draftees and boot camp that are freaking out. Was there any guys now that are heading to Vietnam and they're, and some of those guys probably just got out of advanced infantry training or whatever the, and had been in the army for whatever, four months.

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, four months and then maybe a 30 day leave at home and on their way to Vietnam. And, and again, that same kind of situation. And I think there, whether you joined the army or you got drafted, I think there's still that fear, even though that's what you signed up for, if you enlisted, there's that fear of the unknown that you've gotten off this plane and what's going to happen next.

• 26:47Jocko Willink?

  It's weird because there's the, I think a lot of this, your attitude goes a long way because there's definitely people and times and myself included where I would think there's nothing's going to happen to me. Like it'll happen to anyone else. I've talked about this before, like I always feel if I'm on a commercial airline and it blows up in the sky that I'm going to live. Like I'm going to, I'm going to grab the seat cushion or something. I'm going to figure it out. So there's that kind of stupid ignorance that, that I know I had, especially when I was younger, like nothing was ever going to happen to me. And I, I would see that in my guys, you know, when I was older, I didn't

• 27:29Jocko Willink?

  go to war until I was, you know, older. And I, I saw some of the guys that you could tell they didn't, they didn't think anything was going to happen to them. And I had other guys where you would swear in their mind, they had a, a, a target on the back of their head every step that they took. And so you get a drastic difference between people's attitudes. Did you see that between, did you see that with different guys? And what did you think yourself?

• 27:54Speaker 01

  I, I did see that same thing. I don't think that's changed any from Vietnam to the generation that served in Iraq or Afghanistan. I think that mixture and that percentage is probably still the same all the time. Certainly, a lot of people who had a certain MOS, but maybe they had some other kind of a job in the States would say, "Well, I might be 11 Bravo, which is a grunt, but I'm not going to have to do that because I was the company armor and I'll be, I'll be running, distributing weapons and stuff like that." But you'd see them out in the field sometime later, they'd be humping the bush with a 65-pound pack on their back. So, I mean, I think there was a certain fear, but a certain courage as well, too, that

• 28:38Speaker 01

  I think most of the people that I ever served with displayed. And I think even the guys that got drafted came to the resolve that, you know, "Look at I, I'm here, I might as well make the best of this. There's no sense in complaining or whining, and let's just go ahead and get our year in, get my two years in in the military and get it over with, and I can go home." So, I mean, I've always said that the people that I served with were tremendously courageous and extremely brave individuals. I never saw anything that I would ever be afraid to serve alongside of that person.

• 29:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's powerful. That's the American, that's the American serviceman right there. Because even when I was talking about guys that I knew that would, and I had friends that would verbally, you know, they'd say, "I don't know, I'm not feeling good about tonight, man." They would say that stuff.

• 29:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 29:30Jocko Willink?

  And guess what? They'd get on their gear and they'd go out night after night. And I actually have to give them more credit because sometimes I think, "Well, I'm not I'm, I think I'm going to be fine. It doesn't take me that much courage to overcome that." And here's a guy that has that feeling night after night. But like you said, every time, night after night, they're getting their gear on, they're going out and doing their job. How did you get assigned? So now you show up, this is just, this is like, this is what the Army has the reputation of. The big Army, "Hey, you're a piece, you're a piece, you're a cog in the machine." You give them your, I mean, how did that process work?

• 30:11Speaker 01

  Well, you get to Vietnam, you do a three-day in-country orientation where they teach you all about snakes and bamboo vipers and all that crazy stuff and what not to do and Punji steaks and all that. And then, I'm sure that while you're there, they're working on who needs a track vehicle mechanic or who needs infantryman, whichever the case may be. And they just put me on a plane and flew me up to Da Nang, or actually flew me to Chulai on that one, and then helicoptered me to LZ Baldi out in the middle of nowhere. And that's how I got to the unit I served with.

• 30:43Jocko Willink?

  Now, as you're getting further and further away from civilization, did the hair on the back of your neck start to stand up straighter?

• 30:51Speaker 01

  Well, I'm probably a little bit on the crazy side, and I think the curiosity factor I was okay with, you know? I mean, I'm like you're talking about, I've never felt like, I'm not gonna say I've never felt fear, but I've always just been excited about what's gonna happen next. I never worried when I was in country about dying. That thought never crossed my mind. I just felt like if I did what I knew to do and used the experiences that I had and everything else and applied them the way you're supposed to, I was gonna be okay.

• 31:24Jocko Willink?

  So you're rolling into LZ Baldi. Whereabouts in Vietnam was that?

• 31:30Speaker 01

  That's in the I Corps area, closer up to the DMZ. It's about seventeen kilometers southwest of Da Nang.

• 31:37Jocko Willink?

  And so, it's a pretty remote location, then?

• 31:39Speaker 01

  Called the Quayson Valley is our area of operation. I mean, a lot of Viet Cong, a lot of NVA in that area, especially in sixty-eight and sixty-nine.

• 31:48Jocko Willink?

  And how big was that, was the forward operating base that you were staying at? How big was it?

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Not very big. I mean, battalion headquarters was on it.

• 31:58Jocko Willink?

  Battalion headquarters.

• 31:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 32:00Jocko Willink?

  And then, so you check in there, you land on your airplane, you land on the helicopter, get out of the helicopter, and then what happens?

• 32:08Speaker 01

  Well, I go to F Troops Company Headquarters, report to the First Sergeant, tell him who I am and what I am, and the First Sergeant called everybody "Son." So he said, "Son." I told him I was a track vehicle mechanic, and if he'd point me in the direction of the motor pool, I'd go report to the motor sergeant. He said, "Son, we really don't have a motor pool here in Vietnam." He said, "There is a guy that runs the maintenance department. He's Spec 5 So-and-so." And he said, "You can, you'll see him at Chao tonight, but you'll be a machine gunner on a 11381 and we'll make sure you get a toolbox. So if anything goes wrong while you're out there, that's your job to fix them."

• 32:53Jocko Willink?

  So there's the wake-up call. The, uh, you know, I fought in the battle of Ramadi in 2006. And you know what vehicle we used for casualty evacuation? 113s. Yep, the exact same, uh, vehicle. So that's where you got assigned. You got assigned to a 113, which is an armored personnel carry, carrier made out of aluminum, if I'm correct.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  I'm not sure. Probably. Wouldn't be bit surprised though.

• 33:21Jocko Willink?

  And they're very, they're like a, they're basically a box with tracks. That's basically what they look like.

• 33:29Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 33:30Jocko Willink?

  It's a box with tracks on them. They're not huge. They're not as big as a tank. How many people you think they hold? Maybe?

• 33:36Speaker 01

  You could probably put eight or 10 on the inside.

• 33:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. We used to, our joke about armored personnel carriers was how many people can you fit into them? One more. Uh, so, so that's where you get assigned. So now you realize, okay, there's no motor pool here. There's no, that's not happening. You, he says you're going to be a machine gunner on one of these 113s. So you check in. Who, so who are you checking in with now? Are you?

• 34:02Speaker 01

  Well, when, when my unit, uh, my platoon was out in the field and they came back in for Chao that night, that's when I was introduced to the LT and the, and the platoon sergeant. And then, I don't know, they just picked a track that was short one guy and that's the one I went to.

• 34:17Jocko Willink?

  And how many, how many tracks did you have in your platoon?

• 34:19Speaker 01

  Nine.

• 34:20Jocko Willink?

  Wow, that's a pretty big platoon.

• 34:23Speaker 01

  Well, it's 18 M60 machine guns, 950 caliber and 1106 recoilless rifle. So it's, it's a lot of firepower.

• 34:31Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's, that's serious business. I didn't think they had that many in, in one platoon. And so then, okay, so now you settle in and, and what kind of, what kind of missions were you guys doing?

• 34:44Speaker 01

  Well, when I originally got in country, they called them Search and Destroy. And then I think somebody in Washington decided, we need to change it to Search and Clear. It didn't sound quite as disastrous if you called it Search and Clear. But the mission was exactly the same thing. You still went out, checked all the villages, checked all the people, anybody that was out working in the fields, looking for caches of rice, looking for weapons that were hidden in different villages and that type of thing. Sometimes you'd have intelligence reports that would send you somewhere, where maybe they had some information that there was something bad going on. Sometimes it was there, sometimes it wasn't. The area of operation that I actually worked in was exactly the same one. My Lai was in my area of operation.

• 35:29Speaker 01

  We called it the Pinkville on our map. And I think Lieutenant Kelly's thing had happened three weeks or four weeks after I got in country, or something like in third week in March, or maybe around the first of April. You're familiar with that story? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then... But you guys, did you guys hear anything about it? I think we heard a little bit about it, but communication back then was not the same as it is today. I mean, obviously, nobody had cell phones or anything like that. You didn't have pictures or any information. We just knew there was a lot of people in that village, and it was, I mean, it was a sizable village for as remote as it was.

• 36:11Speaker 01

  Most of them were just all rice farmers that were out there, so all they'd do is harvest rice and carry it to market. But we'd been through there a number of different times, before and after the actual My Lai massacre. And I think the thing that was interesting about Vietnam was for villagers, if I used an interpreter to ask somebody a question in a village about would they rather have the NVA in charge, or would they rather have the Americans or the South Vietnamese military in charge? And they were really always reluctant to answer that question, because I don't think there was a good answer they could give me. You know, if they answered it one way, it kind of meant they were Vietnamese, NVA sympathizers.

• 36:55Speaker 01

  And if they answered it the other way, then that meant they were totally opposed and they would support us. But we know that wasn't the way it happened either. They were just trying to go rice and stay alive. So I mean, if we would leave them alone and the NVA would leave them alone, they'd be the happiest people on the face of the earth, but it didn't happen that way. We didn't abuse them, but the NVA abused them all the time, not only for their rice, but you know, for shelter and everything else.

• 37:21Jocko Willink?

  How, what was your op tempo like? And so, so how long would you go out on a mission for?

• 37:27Speaker 01

  I mean, probably a standard time is about 20 to 22 days at a time. And then we get resupplied in the field with, with Chinooks for fuel and for water and food and everything.

• 37:38Jocko Willink?

  So this forward operating base that you were out, that, that you were out of, when that platoon came back, they'd been out for a long time? They'd been out for?

• 37:45Speaker 01

  And, and I, on that particular one, I don't know, but I would have to guess they probably were at least a two week period of time. Once you went out and you started through the area of operation, you usually didn't come back until you covered the whole thing.

• 37:58Jocko Willink?

  And, but you guys are living, do you have, do you have dismounts with you? Or is everyone on, is everyone in the platoon traveling inside the track and sleeping inside the track? And you got water? I mean, what's like the daily routine like?

• 38:15Speaker 01

  Well, you get up and fix breakfast, you know, fix some coffee or some C rations. And, uh, you know, easy to carry it because your armored personnel carriers, weight didn't make a whole lot of difference to us. Um, we'd have, somebody would fix this, somebody would fix the coffee. We'd all kind of share the meal together because you didn't have any food that came out to the field very often. And, uh, we'd just sit down maybe the night before that morning with the LT and go over what the daily operation was and follow up with a Mylar cover on the map sheet and a grease pencil and, you know, go through the checkpoints throughout the course of the day. And, you know, if you faced any, any difficulties, you, you know, just faced it head on, returned fire, called in

• 38:58Speaker 01

  artillery. Uh, maybe you'd get a call an infantry unit to be pinned down. Nice part about being armored personnel carriers, you could move real fast, lay down a lot of suppressing fire and let them back out and save them. We did that for Marines as well as United States Army.

• 39:17Jocko Willink?

  Then, um, and then this is just what you do. This is just the day in, day out.

• 39:22Speaker 01

  All day, every day.

• 39:24Jocko Willink?

  And you're, during the nighttime, you, you stay, you know, you stay on watch, but you're in a perimeter somehow and...

• 39:29Speaker 01

  Circle up, just like wagon trains in an old, uh, western television program.

• 39:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 39:34Speaker 01

  Like John Wayne and the guys and, and then everybody would stay up on the track. There'd be two hour segments from ten to midnight on down to six o'clock in the morning. You'd rotate every two hours and you'd just be, you know, you'd have claymores out and set up your perimeter defense and everything. You'd call in Detcons so that you had positions available for local artillery could drop stuff real quick if you needed to have it.

• 39:59Jocko Willink?

  Now, it seems like it would not be a great move for the Vietcong or for the NVA to attack, you know, this, you guys. I mean, how, how often did they attack?

• 40:13Speaker 01

  Never. Well, I was there, but I think the, the big thing is, is that one of the things you have going for you is you have the speed of movement that you could travel with an armored personnel carrier. So there really wasn't any way that they could pattern you and go set up in front of you or follow you fast enough to be, even if they probably walked through the night to get you, which might've been possible, but it never happened. I just don't think they ever tried to do that. When they had enough infantry units and Marines that were in the area and they were walking slower and their movement was slower, that's who they would set up on.

• 40:53Jocko Willink?

  And then you guys would utilize your firepower to go help out. If some infantry unit called for help, you guys would roll in and, and lay down the thunder, which you guys most certainly had. That weapons package is no, is no joke right there. Wow.

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Well, when you talked about it before, when we rode two machine gunners, the hatch was always open on an APC and two machine gunners sat on, on the back on that hatch with the guns out to the right and left. Of course, the, the turret was in the center with the 50 caliber. And you you never got down inside. Meaning only if maybe if you were taking fire, you'd get down and get behind the the the M60. But you stayed up on top all the time. Because I guess if you were ever going to hit a landmine, which is, you know, something that happened quite often. You didn't want to be down inside with stuff exploding from from that explosion. You wanted to be on the top and maybe get blown clear of it.

• 41:51Jocko Willink?

  So that was out. Was that the biggest threat to the tracks was get hit in some kind of landmine?

• 41:57Speaker 01

  Or an RPG rocket from a wood line.

• 42:00Jocko Willink?

  The um. Yeah, I mean, obviously, in in Iraq and Afghanistan, really, I mean, I can really only talk about Iraq from my experience. But yeah, the obviously, the roadside bombs were what they what they did. That was what they did, and they did it well. And, you know, the the bigger vehicles that we got, the bigger bombs they built. And so when it started, my first deployment, we were in Humvees with. We didn't have, we literally didn't have doors on our Humvees. We actually turned the seats to face outboard. So that we could present our weapon and that we could present our our front plate of our of our body armor. And then eventually, we we put we welded doors together and put steel doors on.

• 42:43Jocko Willink?

  And then by the time I got back to Iraq, we had armored Humvees. And then after that came the big giant mine resistant vehicles. And the whole time, the enemy just kept building bigger and bigger and bigger bombs. But we were always, we were oftentimes, not always, but we were oftentimes channelized on roads because of bridges or because of because of just being in the city. Whereas you guys, did you guys, you guys with tracks in the jungle? Or, you know, you guys could just go wherever you wanted to, is that right?

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Pretty much so. The biggest thing that we had to do, and I mean, that was the number one thing in part of the training with you drove or you were commanding a track was you never take the same stream crossing twice. You you track the vehicle right directly in front of you. You never get outside of the lead tracks, tracks in the ground. And we'd stay in the patties or around the patties as much as possible because they weren't very likely to to put a landmine in the rice paddies, it would be on the road or the edge of the road. Or maybe on a rice paddy dyke, but we never never went in that direction very often either.

• 43:51Jocko Willink?

  What was your, what was your leadership like? You know, your, your young lieutenant platoon commander? What was he like? What was your platoon sergeant like? What did, what was your interaction with those guys like? And even your vehicle. So who was in charge of, of your track? Was he?

• 44:07Speaker 01

  Was a young E5, probably 21 or 22 years old at that time. And the leadership in my platoon, the platoon leader was a, was a great first lieutenant. And I mean, it was one of those things that I learned very early on. The best thing that I could do for the first three or four months was just shut up and listen and watch what was going on and follow the lead of the people that really knew what was going on. The platoon sergeant was that same kind of a person. The difference with the platoon sergeant was that he was probably in his 30s. He was married. He had children back home. So I don't think it was as easy for him to be a strong leader and a strong decision maker.

• 44:51Speaker 01

  Because I think that was on his mind a lot. The LT was not that way and everybody that we served with was not that way. I don't know if I know anybody else that I served with for 10 and a half months that was married other than most of the platoon sergeants or the first sergeant.

• 45:12Jocko Willink?

  So they have that in the back of their mind. They're thinking about, you, you can sense that they're maybe leaning a little bit towards trying to stay alive and trying to take less risk.

• 45:23Speaker 01

  And, and you, you know too, how that works is that's not always the best person to have for a leader. If you're not tuned in 24/7 while you're there, you're in trouble. You know, that's the only way to survive. You have to be conscious of every fly that lands on, on your food. You know what I mean? You're just, you just got that heightened sense of awareness that it's probably lucky you can even go to sleep when you lay down at night because you're, the adrenaline is pumped so much all day long.

• 45:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Something else that I always felt, and I don't know if I'm right or wrong, but I always felt. That if you were thinking about other things like family, that was gonna make you less aggressive. And as far as I can tell, if you're aggression, if you're not aggressive on the battlefield, that has a higher probability of getting you killed than if you're aggressive. I think that hesitation is a bad thing. And, and I'm, look, I'm not saying, and I used to try and make this clear all the time. I'm not talking about, you know, being hyper aggressive and running to your death. That's not what I'm talking about. But if there's something going on and you're nervous about making a move,

• 46:40Jocko Willink?

  that's not a good thing to have happening. And it would make, when I would have guys that I could see were thinking about other things, it would make me nervous that they were gonna hesitate when they needed to move or needed to make something happen.

• 46:56Speaker 01

  I, I agree a hundred percent because we experienced a lot of that. And the only thing I would do when I got to a position where I was an E5 or eventually became an E6 was to identify those people and try to utilize them in some spot where they weren't gonna get anybody else killed. That wasn't always real easy to do, short of actually sending them back to the rear area and not let him come out in, out in the field with us. But if you were short of people, you didn't have that option very often either.

• 47:25Jocko Willink?

  So you, you were an E, were you an E4 when you got in country?

• 47:29Speaker 01

  I was.

• 47:30Jocko Willink?

  And then you got promoted to E5?

• 47:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 47:33Jocko Willink?

  Did that change your position in the, in the track at all?

• 47:37Speaker 01

  It took me off the machine gun and put me behind the 50.

• 47:42Jocko Willink?

  That's good. Did you, uh, and then did you eventually make E6?

• 47:47Speaker 01

  I did.

• 47:48Jocko Willink?

  And did that change your position again? At some point, did you become like the vehicle commander?

• 47:52Speaker 01

  I, I became what was called the Field First Sergeant, what they called Six Alpha in the, in the Army. I was on the command track out in the field with, with the company commander and then two other machine gunners on our track.

• 48:05Jocko Willink?

  So you, did you leave your platoon to go and be with the company commander?

• 48:09Speaker 01

  I did.

• 48:10Jocko Willink?

  And what's your, what's your job when you're in that position?

• 48:15Speaker 01

  Well, basically, everything you do for the daily operation, you're kind of in charge of or overseeing everything, you know, because keep in mind now, we've got not just my third platoon out there, but the second and the first might be with us, or they might be off on an operation of their own. Sometimes two platoons that go out together and want to go a different direction. So you had to be cognizant of where everybody was all the time and what they were doing and any difficulties that they were having. And it was a brand-new company commander who did not have any Vietnam experience. So then it was almost like having to train the CO once he got there. So I think the fact that I got assigned to that track was what the first sergeant felt enough confidence in

• 49:00Speaker 01

  me that I could do that and not be a jerk to him, or not worry about him being a captain versus me being an E6. I mean, that part never bothered me anyway. You know, I mean, I never paid much attention to that.

• 49:15Jocko Willink?

  How long had you been in Vietnam when you got moved to that assignment?

• 49:18Speaker 01

  Um, I had been in country about eight and a half months.

• 49:24Jocko Willink?

  So that was, that's like, perfect then. You got a, you know, your experience and the company commander didn't have any experience. I know I always had a, I had a special vehicle. We, in a Humvee, the vehicle commander sits in the, in the, basically the front right passenger seat, and you know, you're the one that's supposed to be kind of directing the vehicle. And, and I would always have to do other things because I was either an Assault Force commander, Ground Force commander, or whatever. So I always had, I always took the best, smartest driver, so that I didn't have to do, worry about him, you know. And it's kind of the same relationship, you know, he knew that, hey, he needed to handle all

• 50:05Jocko Willink?

  the stuff going on with the vehicle. But that's, um, that's like the way the military does things. The military does things like that right there, where they take the, the new company commander that doesn't have any experience, and they give him a guy that can help advise him in a, in a, in a positive way to make sure he doesn't, for lack of a better word, screw anything up.

• 50:30Speaker 01

  I thought it was a very enjoyable process because I mean, I didn't intend to be a career soldier. So I mean, I just knew that I had X number of ti- amount of time, days, months, whatever it was. But I've just always felt like if I'm gonna do something, I'm gonna do it to the best of my ability. I'm sure I didn't have all the answers, but I also knew who to talk to, who'd still been around even longer than I had, some guys who had extended, been there 14, 15 months already. You know, and had a great deal more experience than I did. I would ask. I'm not afraid to get information from somebody. I mean, that's, that's, that knowledge could save a lot of people's lives and that's

• 51:15Speaker 01

  a big part of what I felt like I was responsible for. Now I'm responsible for the whole company, which is, you know, I don't know, 210 people, I guess, at that point.

• 51:25Jocko Willink?

  Now, you mentioned that the, the, the enemy was not outright openly attacking you, but you guys were responding. What was the casualty rate for F Troop while you were there?

• 51:43Jocko Willink?

  I mean, just in terms of how often were you guys taking casualties? And I know, I looked, there's a, a really good website that you guys have from F Troop in Vietnam. And it, in, why have the numbers written down? In 1967, so before you showed up, there was, there was four people from, from F Troop that were killed in action. In 1968, so the year that you were there, that number went up five times. These were, and according to that document, it said that there was 20, 20 men killed in action in, in 1968.

• 52:23Jocko Willink?

  So that is some heavy contact. I mean, that's more than 10%, that's more than 10%. That's not, that's not counting wounded in action. That's all killed in action. So even though you said the enemy wasn't attacking you very often, you guys must have been in some significant enemy contacts to be taking those, those kind of casualties.

• 52:43Speaker 01

  Well, and I think most of those that I'm familiar with were all landmines. And they were landmines for people on the vehicles where it blew the M1113 to pieces.

• 52:55Speaker 01

  I mean, the reason we had a new company commander in the fall of 68 was because the company commander had directed a new driver to do a stream crossing that we knew you shouldn't cross a second or third time. And it blew, they hit a 500 pounder. And I mean, it just killed all four people on the track. And it blew the captain off. He was riding on the driver's hatch that was open, blew him clear, but injured him seriously. That's why we ended up with a new company commander. And then Jim Starkey was from San Jose, California, was a real good friend of mine, was killed in April of 1968 shortly after, you know, like six weeks after I got in country. But he was just one of those guys that loved

• 53:39Speaker 01

  girls and played sports. So immediately became a great friend.

• 53:43Jocko Willink?

  That's one of the, one of the horrible things about the 113. And it's really the same thing with a Humvee. They built those things to have a low profile. Because when you're talking about tank battles, what you want to have is you want to have a low profile so that you can hide behind, you can take the vehicle and you can, you can sink it into a depression, you can get behind some kind of a terrain feature and not get shot at. The problem with designing vehicles with an extremely low profile is that they have no ground clearance. And so when there's a landmine underneath them, it just, it just

• 54:22Jocko Willink?

  wrecks those vehicles. And that's why the, the new vehicles, the mine resistant vehicles, they're super tall off the ground. They have these big V shaped holes that literally deflects some of the power of the bombs that the, that the enemy plants. So that's one of the problems with these 113s is there's not much ground clearance on them. And so when they get hit with a, with a mine, it does catastrophic damage often. And so that was what you, you guys, that was the major threat from the enemy was, was hitting these, these bombs.

• 54:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I would have to guess, I mean, I had never heard that number before that we lost in 1968. But I would have to guess it may be two or three of those might have been small arms fire. And the rest were all from their vehicles being blown up.

• 55:11Jocko Willink?

  How did that grate on your nerves?

• 55:16Speaker 01

  The land mine explosions?

• 55:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 55:20Speaker 01

  Well, again, you still just do everything to the best of your ability. You have to track that vehicle in front of you. Now, obviously, if you're the lead track, and that changes periodically, but, you know, you're in greater jeopardy that you could hit something because there's no way in the world that you can, you can't, can't go out and do, you know, mine detectors and stuff. You're out in the middle of nowhere. You'd probably get shot off the track trying to run detectors than you would just running through it. But, and most of ours were not that kind of explosion. They were more bad choices by people who thought this time it's going to be okay.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  And you just can't do things that way. It's never going to be okay. It's always going to be bad. And if you think that direction, you'll usually be safe 90% of the time. And like I say, when the captain made that decision, my best friend from Waukesha, Texas, Chris Wendler, was his driver. And Chris would have never crossed that stream as his driver. But he had a replacement because Chris was back home in Texas on a 30-day extension leave. And I mean, I've asked Chris that question over all the years, you know, would you have crossed it? He said, but Captain Davis probably would have listened to me, but he probably wouldn't

• 56:46Speaker 01

  listen to anybody else because Chris had a great deal of experience driving for him.

• 56:52Jocko Willink?

  That's one of the misconceptions about the military. And it's really one of the misconceptions about leadership is, is the last thing that I want as a leader is to have a bunch of yes-men that are just going to do what I tell them to do because I told them to do it. I want people that are gonna say, "Hey Jaco, I don't know if that's the best idea." Or, "Hey, that we should do this a different way." And, and people don't think that that's gonna happen in the military. That's what you want. You want that kind of environment inside the military. And the good thing is, that way, when I would make a call and guys would execute, I knew it was a good call, cuz no one gave me any pushback. Cuz believe me, I had a relationship with my guys. If I was saying, telling them to do something stupid, they'd say, "Hey boss, we need to, we need to go, go on hold right now and, and figure this out.

• 57:37Jocko Willink?

  There's gotta be a better way." So, that's the way, that's how I, that's how I make good decisions. Not cuz I'm great, it's cuz I got a bunch of great guys working for me that are gonna tell me, "Hey, that's not the right call." And that's a classic example right there. You know, if, if Chris, who had the experience and had the, the, the, the wherewithal to say, "Hey boss, we don't wanna cross right there. It's not a good call. Let's just go 10 meters down, mix it up a little bit." That's the kinda thing where that, that would save lives. And the other thing that you just talked about, this is another thing that people get really surprised about.

• 58:12Jocko Willink?

  Is even, cuz we work, I work with a lot of companies and businesses. And people say, "Well, you know, my guys get complacement, get complacent with things because, you know, there's, there's..." It's not combat, so people get complacent. And I always have to explain, people get complacent in combat too. You go on, you go on your 14th patrol on a row, in a row, and nothing's happened for the last 13 patrols. And you think, "Oh, you know, we can, we can cross here, or we, we don't need to, uh, we don't need to pack extra ammo, or I don't need to carry that extra radio battery cuz I haven't needed it yet." And when you cut those corners, when you get complacent,

• 58:53Jocko Willink?

  that's when these horrible things happen. You cannot get complacent. And all those, all those servicemen out there right now, servicemen and women, don't cut corners. Don't do it. You gotta hold the line. And if you see people cutting corners, call them out.

• 59:10Speaker 01

  One of the biggest things that some of the infantry units used to do was get complacent and not put claymores out when they set up for the night. And just like you mentioned, it might have worked 12 or 13 times before, but the one time you decide you're going to leave it in your pack, that's exactly when Charlie decides to come through the perimeter. Not that he knew, but you weren't prepared.

• 59:31Jocko Willink?

  Yep. That's, that's the guaranteed way to get attacked. Don't set up claymores. Every time you set up claymores and you're prepared and everyone's standing watch correctly, that's how you don't get attacked. The minute that someone slacks off, yeah, that's, that's what, that's what sends you going sideways. Now, you mentioned the draftees that pretty much when you were there, once you guys were in country, once you were doing your job, did you, could you even tell the difference between who was a draftee and who wasn't?

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  Only if you would ask them if that was the case, because there was no other identification to anybody. But, you know, again, I, I say this because in 10 and a half months period of time, they were still the most courageous and brave people that I've ever served with. I think they resolved all that draft stuff and I don't want to be here before they got in country or right after they got in country because they were, they were not complacent at all once, once I started to work with them.

• 1:00:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I had a, a retired general who is, who is one of David Hackworth's company commanders in Vietnam. And I asked him about the draftees and he said he couldn't tell who was a draftee and who wasn't. And, and I always, you know, I hear a lot of people ask me about, again, this is getting into the business world, people ask me about what it's like to, or, you know, how, how do you handle these millennials? And I always bring up people like Hackworth, who says, Hackworth said he loved his draftees. I mean, I don't think you can get a harder workforce to deal with than someone that was drafted to Vietnam, that doesn't believe in the war, that doesn't want to be there,

• 1:01:07Jocko Willink?

  and who can lose their life doing this job. Okay, I get it, the millennial might like looking at his phone or whatever, but that still is a completely different deal. But if you have good leadership and you explain to them why it's important, and you get them involved and give them ownership, they'll step up. And, and you're the, you're, you're another example of someone looking at me and saying, hey, the draftees, if they knew what was going on. We couldn't tell who is who. And that's again, a testament, not only to good leadership, but it's a testament to, to the American soldier.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:01:41Jocko Willink?

  And what we do here.

• 1:01:44Jocko Willink?

  When you, you, you said you got shifted into that new job with the company commander at eight and a half months. Are you starting, you know, and we said this a little bit. Not as much as you guys, not as much as I hear about it in Vietnam, but we might've had this creep into our head a little bit of the idea of, you know, you got short time and it's almost time to go home and, and did that start creeping into your mind at all at eight and a half months? Or was that too far away where you're not even thinking about it yet?

• 1:02:17Speaker 01

  I honestly never gave it any thought at all. I mean, I knew what my rotation date was, but a lot of guys actually made what was called a short time calendar.

• 1:02:26Jocko Willink?

  That's a bad idea in my opinion.

• 1:02:27Speaker 01

  Never, never did that at all.

• 1:02:30Jocko Willink?

  So you just, every day was a new day. You're gonna do your best job. And if you're doing what you're doing, that's the best you can do. And that's one more thing. I wanted to say this because again, we got young folks in the military out there. When I was talking about, hey, some people are afraid, some people aren't afraid, some people think it's gonna happen to them, some people think it'll never happen to them. Look, wherever you are on that spectrum, what, what I can say is this. There's things that you can control and there's things that you can't control. And as you're going into combat, before you go into combat, train hard, be prepared, know your weapon systems, know your immediate action controls, then that's, that's the best you can do. You've done everything

• 1:03:13Jocko Willink?

  you can to take control over what you can control. Once you're in combat, there's some things that you're not going to be able to control. And if you worry about those things, it's actually a set, it actually negatively impacts you. If you're worried about things that you can't control, if you're worried about what's going on at home, if you're worried about me, all those things that are gonna take away your aggressiveness, take, take away your awareness, take away your attention, those things are gonna drag you in the wrong direction. So don't worry about the things that you can't control. It's okay to be afraid too. Like, hey, if you're, if you're scared, guess what? It's normal. You're going into a hard situation. It's normal. You're gonna be, you're gonna feel that. You're gonna feel your guts, gonna feel, uh,

• 1:03:56Jocko Willink?

  what do they say? Butterflies in your stomach. That's normal. It's okay. It's no big deal. That's what people feel. You don't need to think you're you're weak because you're feeling that you're just going into survival mode. You got butterflies in your stomach because your blood's drawn away from there because you want to focus on other things. It's a positive thing. So, don't worry about those things you can't control. Focus on what you can control. And if you're if you're feeling a little bit afraid, good. That means your your mind is in the right place. You're aware and you're in a hyper sensory mode. So you can survive out on the battlefield. That's what's going on.

• 1:04:36Jocko Willink?

  What was the what was going on with the mission where you got wounded?

• 1:04:42Speaker 01

  We'd been out on a searching clear for that whole day. I mean, probably had been out in the field for six or seven days at that point. I had picked the night logger position. We set up that evening about 5:30 or 6 o'clock. We were supposed to get resupply and get get hot chow that night brought out by helicopter. And so what I was doing was once the platoons got set up on the perimeter and our command track was in the center of the circle, I went out to check the claymores and all the perimeter defense to make sure that everybody put out what I mean, because I just did that before. I don't know whether that was my responsibility is in my new position. But I probably slept much better knowing that I had checked it.

• 1:05:27Speaker 01

  And that's when I stepped on a landmine was checking the perimeter.

• 1:05:31Jocko Willink?

  And what do you what do you remember about stepping on a landmine?

• 1:05:34Speaker 01

  I don't remember it blowing. I remember going up in the air and I remember coming back down. I never lost consciousness, you know, from the from the explosion. But when I laid on my back and the medic came over and I'd known the medic for seven or eight months and and tears were running running down his face and he was telling me I was going to be okay. I knew it wasn't real good.

• 1:05:57Jocko Willink?

  Not what you want to hear from the medic huh? At what point, so then what happens?

• 1:06:02Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I laid there for a little bit while he's trying to do stuff. The interesting thing that happened with my explosion was all powder. There was no shrapnel to it whatsoever. Must have just been a bag of HE, you know? So when it blew, it actually blew in a gigantic ball of flame and it partially cauterized my arteries that were exposed and probably actually saved my life at the same time that amputated both of my legs and my arm. Because I didn't lose consciousness and he wasn't forced to do tourniquets and all kinds of other stuff to try to save me. So, you know, whatever time I spent on the ground, then a dust-off helicopter and about a 12-minute ride to the 95th evac and that's kind of the way that one worked.

• 1:06:44Jocko Willink?

  He didn't even put tourniquets on you?

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  Didn't have to.

• 1:06:47Jocko Willink?

  So you lost both legs, you lost your arm, you didn't put tourniquets on anything?

• 1:06:51Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:06:52Jocko Willink?

  That's crazy.

• 1:06:53Speaker 01

  It had burned shut.

• 1:06:54Jocko Willink?

  Wow.

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:56Jocko Willink?

  And were you burned anywhere else on your body?

• 1:06:58Speaker 01

  Some, you know, down my chest and under this arm because most of the blast came up the left-hand side. That's what saved my right arm, I guess.

• 1:07:07Jocko Willink?

  Were you wearing a flak jacket?

• 1:07:09Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:07:09Jocko Willink?

  Did you, how often were you guys wearing flak jackets?

• 1:07:12Speaker 01

  When you were on the track and rolling. But just out walking around generally didn't, you know, you wouldn't even, you'd roll up your pant legs because it was so hot. You'd just wear a t-shirt and carry your weapon.

• 1:07:25Jocko Willink?

  So 12-minute flight and where'd they take you?

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  To the 95th evac in Da Nang evac hospital.

• 1:07:32Jocko Willink?

  And were you still conscious at this point?

• 1:07:34Speaker 01

  No, I lost consciousness on the flight because I knew I went into shock because it felt like I was going to freeze to death as soon as the chopper lifted off. And then I remember maybe a little bit of consciousness when I first got to the 95th evac. Don't know exactly what they did there, but it was a real slow night, so it wasn't like there was a lot of casualties and they didn't have to triage. You never know how that might work out either if they have to pick and choose who they're going to work on. So they just took me right in and, you know, got me right up on the table to begin with and went to work.

• 1:08:04Jocko Willink?

  Did you know, did you know while you were conscious that you lost your legs and your arm?

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  The only thing I remember is when I was laying on my back out in the field after the explosion was I reached down with my good arm and I could touch, this stump is long enough that if I'm laying on my back, I can probably touch it, but not all the way to the end. So I felt like I still had this leg. I couldn't reach the other side. I didn't know how badly damaged all of this was. Didn't know that till I actually got to Japan, quite some time after, you know, the evac hospital and a bunch of surgeries in Japan.

• 1:08:40Jocko Willink?

  So when they, when you, so when you lose consciousness, they put you in a medically-induced coma?

• 1:08:47Speaker 01

  They didn't do that when I was at the 95th evac in Da Nang, but they did it shortly after I got to the 106th general in Yokohama, Japan. And, and I was unconscious from the 14th of January of 69 to the 15th of February of 69. Thirty-one days.

• 1:09:05Jocko Willink?

  Thirty-one days, that's a medically-induced coma. And then you wake up and you're in Japan?

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:09:11Jocko Willink?

  And what, what is, what kind of a shock was that when you woke up?

• 1:09:16Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I really didn't know for sure exactly where I was when I woke up, but, you know, I mean, it doesn't take you too long to figure out because the nurses are all coming around and they would actually straight up ask you, do you know where you are? You know, so if you didn't, they tell you. And, you know, that was more, for me to spend five weeks there was highly unusual. Normally, all you did was come through the 106 or Camp Zama in Japan for the army, and they'd stabilize, make sure you're going to be strong enough to make the trip back across the Pacific to get, get to, back to the States. And I think they just, once they got started with me and on any surgeries, I think somebody just made a decision, let's just do all of them right here. Let's not

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  worry about waiting while we've got him in the position that we have him in. Let's just keep him there and go in and out of surgery. So, I mean, I'm actually probably pretty fortunate that they did. And then the, you know, like a, a week after I came out of the coma, they tried to feed you regular food, but I'll guarantee you that when you haven't eaten for five weeks, nothing looks real good. It doesn't taste very good either. So, but I did regain enough strength to make the trip back across the Pacific. Went to,

• 1:10:30Speaker 01

  Landed in California at Travis Air Force Base in California and spent the night and then went on to Fitzsimmons General Hospital in Aurora, Colorado. That's where I did the rest of my rehab for another nine months.

• 1:10:43Jocko Willink?

  So when you, when you figure out that, you know, you lost both your legs, you lost your arm, what, what are you thinking at this point?

• 1:10:50Speaker 01

  I mean, there's a lot of stuff. When I, when I got back to the States, I actually got sick, whether an airborne thing or whatever it was. And I, I mean, I was to the point where not only could I not eat whole food, but I couldn't even really drink hardly any liquid. It wouldn't stay down either. So they kind of estimate I went from 220 pounds before the explosion to about 150 after the explosion. And then from the time they put me on the plane in Japan and sent me back to the States, they figure I probably weighed about 135 pounds. And then after I got sick at Fitzsimmons until I, you know, actually started being able to eat again, I weighed about 95 or 98 pounds. So I, I think, did

• 1:11:35Speaker 01

  they share some photos with you?

• 1:11:36Jocko Willink?

  I did. I saw, yeah, I saw some.

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And that, that one is kind of a scary, I mean, it's kind of a Auschwitz-like looking photograph, I guess is the way I describe it. Yeah.

• 1:11:48Jocko Willink?

  And, and when you were going through that, are you thinking, I mean, is it, is it that you can't hold your food down? Is it that you're, you don't have an appetite?

• 1:12:01Speaker 01

  I think it was probably a combination of a lot of things, but they think I had some sort of a virus or something that, you know, because I'd really only been back to the States for 30 days in an almost a two-year period of time, something that I picked up somewhere, could have even been in the hospital in Japan. Cause I mean, I ate food for a week in Japan before I got on the flight back to the States. And when I got back to Fitzsimmons, I was just sick. I mean, I couldn't, horrible sick, enough to lose like 40 more pounds.

• 1:12:36Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's, that's crazy. Now, did you get like the phantom pain in your limbs and stuff?

• 1:12:44Speaker 01

  For the first five years, it's really pretty bad. I mean, because it's like you still feel like you have those limbs, like you feel like you need to scratch behind your knee or scratch, you know, your hand is itching, that type of thing. It's almost like you're balled up in a fist where your fingernails are pushed into your hand type of thing. And little by little, I think, as those nerve endings recede from the surgery and the amputations, a lot of that relaxes and changes. I don't get that at all anymore, but I mean, it's been 50 years now, so.

• 1:13:15Jocko Willink?

  So when you get to the Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center to start your rehab, I mean, at this point, there must have been not too many guys that were in worse shape than you are at 90 pounds and sick and missing three limbs. I mean, you must have been comparatively, and the reason I say that is because, you know, with the moderate advances with combat trauma and how quickly we can medevac guys off the battlefield, and we get guys that are in horrible, suffering horrible wounds, but they're able to survive because of the medical advancement that we have. But for you, it was like a miracle through the type of blast. I mean, because if that would have been any other type of blast, the chances

• 1:14:00Jocko Willink?

  of you being alive are very slim. So when you got there, what were the other guys thinking?

• 1:14:07Speaker 01

  I mean, there was two other triple amputees that were already at Fitzsimmons at the time. The orthopedic wards were full of single leg and double leg amputations, because I mean, that's exactly what took place in Vietnam all the time. Not much different than Iraq and Afghanistan, where we watched a lot of young guys come back with multiple amputations. So I mean, I think you cared for one another is where you got your support. I mean, the hospital staff did everything they possibly could. They were incredible, doctors, nurses, you know, aides, whatever it was. But actually, another triple amputee was more beneficial to my survival, someone who'd been there for two months, three months, or four months

• 1:14:51Speaker 01

  before I got hurt. You know, then you could at least you could emulate and say, you know, look, if this guy can make it, I can make it. I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the rest of my life, but I think I'm going to be okay. I'm going to be alive.

• 1:15:04Jocko Willink?

  And then how long, how long was that rehab at Fitzsimmons?

• 1:15:08Speaker 01

  That was nine months total because I got discharged from the military on the 22nd of November 1969. And that's occupational therapy, working with a prosthetic arm, making sure that you can use it and function with it. I had prosthetic legs, walked in the parallel bars, but, but not a, it's not anything you're going to use the rest of your life. And even if you fast forward today's modern limbs with computers in them and everything else, it still wouldn't work for a triple amputee in, in my condition. And you wouldn't be able to function the same way that I do today to be able to get out and go and do things and, and be aggressive.

• 1:15:51Speaker 01

  If you had to worry about trying to put those things on, deal with them all day long, worry about falling somewhere, not being able to get back up. So, I mean, it was a real easy decision for me in like October, early November 69 that we'll just put those in a trunk someplace and have great memories about walking in the parallel bars.

• 1:16:11Jocko Willink?

  So you were done with rehab in nine months?

• 1:16:15Speaker 01

  Well, really, once you heal, and if you're not going to do anything further with prosthetic legs, and they need a bed because you're still killing and injuring a lot of people in Vietnam in November 1969, you, you know, you gotta move on, something's gotta happen.

• 1:16:32Jocko Willink?

  So 1969, this is, this is at the height of, of like anti-war protests and Woodstock was in, Woodstock was in August of 1969. Are you paying attention to any of that? Is that entering your world at all?

• 1:16:47Speaker 01

  Well, we're, we're watching it on the ward in the day room and probably just getting a tremendous amount of enjoyment out of it because we're all sitting around, we're all Vietnam combat soldiers, you know, on the ward, so, you know, I think some people actually talked about, maybe we should go to Woodstock. I don't think anybody did though.

• 1:17:07Jocko Willink?

  Ed, but did you feel like, um, like I know that our treatment from the wars, from the wars that we've been in in the last couple of decades, you know, we've had great treatment from, for the most part, we've had incredibly, incredible treatment from, not just from, um, well, from, from people, from normal citizens, you know, that it's thank you for your service, it's thank you for what you did, regardless of whatever their political beliefs are as well. It's like, most people say, hey, we know that you were doing your job and, and that's, thank you. Did you feel that or did you feel, did you feel like it was, did you get the negative feedback that we often hear about, um, from Vietnam vets?

• 1:17:46Speaker 01

  I never got any of the negative personally. I know a lot of people who did, and most of that was people who came back uninjured, who got off of that same transport at Travis Air Force Base, or, or up at Fort Lewis, Washington, and moved to a civilian aircraft. Most of them would change out of their military clothing into civilian clothing so that they couldn't be recognized, or wouldn't be readily identified as being, returning from Vietnam. The only thing that I ever really experienced, and I didn't know this until after I got to Fitzsimmons, was Lowry Air Force Base used to be right in downtown Denver, and that's normally where the transport would have brought me, would have been to Lowry. But

• 1:18:26Speaker 01

  because they were having protesters outside the gate at Lowry Air Force Base, they landed in an old World War II field called Buckley Field outside of Denver, and the protesters never knew where that was at. So then they'd load you on the, on the hospital bus and take you right to the hospital.

• 1:18:43Jocko Willink?

  Luckily, the protesters weren't smart enough to figure that out. So you get done with this, you get discharged from the Army, that's it. And now it's, and now, and now what's your, what's your plan now?

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  Didn't have the faintest idea.

• 1:18:58Speaker 01

  Wish I could tell you, I'd really thought that went out in a big way, but I mean, I think you're, you're kinda still in a form of survival mode at that point, you know what I mean? Each, each new experience, I mean, getting in and out of the shower, getting on and off of a commode, feeding yourself, putting clothes on, wondering if you're gonna be able to drive again, are the things that are paramount in your mind at that point, because you know what it takes to do stuff out there in the world. And, and, I mean, I would, I would go to physical therapy, I'd go to occupational therapy,

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  I'd come back to the ward, and I'd be thinking about things, and my, my Catholic upbringing in, in Minnesota, and the Bible, and, and things that take place, I'm waiting for something outside my hospital ward window, like a burning bush, or a bolt of lightning, and there's gonna be a revelation, Jim Sursely, this is what you're gonna do for the rest of your life. It never happened. It didn't come. So, you know, now I'm still praying, but I'm actually getting angry with God at this point, because I'm not getting any answers. And, and maybe he's answering things, but I'm not smart enough to recognize it, I don't know.

• 1:20:24Speaker 01

  But I think what I actually did at that point, which I think is my, my survival, and what allowed me to move forward with my life, was I surrendered. I just said, I said to God, here's the deal, your job is to take care of a vision, or things that you have in store for me for the rest of my life. My job is to do occupational therapy, physical therapy, and maybe as new guys come in, my job is to help inspire them to realize that there's still gonna be a life beyond the injuries you've sustained. And, I mean, it's not like you did that one day, and the next day it was perfect. You know, it was, it was still a process, every day you'd have to kinda go through

• 1:21:07Speaker 01

  that little bit of surrender all the time, until you finally just came to the conclusion that if you just relax, do what you're supposed to do, everything else is gonna be okay. And it truly turned out that way.

• 1:21:21Jocko Willink?

  So that when you were going to occupational therapy, is that when you're, are you still at Fitzsimmons? When you were talking about that?

• 1:21:29Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:21:30Jocko Willink?

  And so now you're helping people out, you get this kind of point in your life where you say, okay, I'm gonna do my part and I'm gonna let God handle his part. I'm not gonna worry about what he's gonna do with me. I'm gonna do what I'm supposed to do right now.

• 1:21:46Jocko Willink?

  You do that for nine months. When you get done at Fitzsimmons, where do you go?

• 1:21:52Speaker 01

  I went back home to Rochester, Minnesota and stayed at my parents' house. And I remember specifically the chief of physical medicine said to my mom when they were there said, now whatever you do, when you get him home, I don't want you to wait on him all the time because that's the worst thing you can possibly do. And you know, they're explaining that to your mother and you're 21 years old and she knows this guy's full of shit because I'm gonna go home and just baby him like he was two years old. So I sat on the couch for, I mean, not every day, but on the couch and I tell her to bring me the remote and change the channel and get me a Pepsi and do all that kind of stuff. And finally about 30 days into it, I said something to her one day and she said,

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  why don't you get off your sorry ass and get it yourself? And I said, Mom, I just can't believe it took you 30 days to give me that response.

• 1:22:46Jocko Willink?

  You milked it as long as you could.

• 1:22:48Speaker 01

  I said, well, I don't know if you knew it, Mom, but I overheard the chief of physical medicine tell you that. So I had to use it.

• 1:22:55Jocko Willink?

  So then once, so you're living at home and what did that, what did that look like?

• 1:23:02Speaker 01

  Um, it's kind of a scary experience because you're going back to an able-bodied world, even though the male clinics there in Rochester, Minnesota, they're still, streets don't have curb cuts. Buildings are not level to the ground. Every building doesn't have an elevator to get you to the second floor. The Americas with Disability Act didn't come into play until the late seventies or early eighties. So, I mean, it wasn't like anybody had to do anything to accommodate disabled people. There were not a lot of disabled people on the street, out in public, either working or going to school or anything else.

• 1:23:44Speaker 01

  They had, there was a system off to the side, I think, for disabled people. But I think Vietnam veterans came back and were vocal and pushy and just decided, "We weren't willing to accept that as being the standard, and that's not what I want to do for the rest of my life." So primarily, I came back and I started junior college. And then at least when you're in school, there's vet groups at school. So you had that sharing again. I mean, if I had difficulty getting from one location to another, I could holler at somebody, they'd give me a push to my next class, or carry books and I'd push, whatever. So, I mean, little by little, you realized you gotta swallow a little bit of pride, and you may need that help

• 1:24:29Speaker 01

  at times if you're gonna get back into civilian life, if you're gonna be part of it, and if you want to join the human race, that's what you're gonna have to do, is accept some help and some guidance along the way. So, that's what I did. And little by little, that just gets better every day and every week and every year. So you start, so what did you start studying in school? Well, I wanted to be a CPA until I actually got to all those big, long ledger sheets and I said, "Oh, my God, really? I don't want to do this for the rest of my life." So just, I just changed to general business. General business, and then you graduate from junior college? Graduated from junior college,

• 1:25:13Speaker 01

  went to, um, what's now called the University of Central Florida. It was called F T U at the time. Continued towards a business degree, but did not finish and get a degree, but I finished about halfway through my senior year. And then, and then what did you do? I went to work. And what'd you go to work doing? Well, I've been a real estate agent for forty years in Florida. And then I'm also a real estate investor and I have a small roofing company.

• 1:25:40Jocko Willink?

  So, straight from school, you, you must have started to delve into real estate before you decided you were going to leave school?

• 1:25:48Speaker 01

  Um, I had actually, the guy, I knew the guy real well that owned the real estate company. And he had asked me, because they had a van, which a lot of, you know, people with wheelchairs use. We would carry his real estate signs out, the bigger ones and smaller ones, and I would, I would drive and he would put up the signs. He was fairly new in the business, too. So I think that just sort of got me excited about what he was doing. And I, he would say, "You need to go get your real estate license." I said, "Yeah." "When was the last time you bought a house from a guy in a wheelchair, missing two legs and an arm?" He goes, "Ah, don't worry about it. They'll never even notice." I mean, that's just the kind of guy he was.

• 1:26:26Jocko Willink?

  It sounds like he was right.

• 1:26:27Speaker 01

  He was, absolutely. Um, it doesn't take arms and a leg to explain to people that this thing has a bathroom, central air and heat, three bedrooms and all that kind of stuff. Usually, most people are pretty intelligent, unless they're blind and they can't see it, they can pretty well figure out what it is. My pointing those things out doesn't make them want to buy it. What it is and where it is is usually why they buy it.

• 1:26:52Jocko Willink?

  And that was, is that, is that what you ended up doing for your whole career? You said you've been doing it for forty, or you did it for forty years, or?

• 1:27:00Speaker 01

  Um, I got my real estate license in 1978. And then, of course, is, is part of selling things, deals come along that are worth owning. So I would buy them, kept them for rental property and still have all those today.

• 1:27:15Jocko Willink?

  Nice moves. I gotta ask you this, because, you know, a lot of, a lot of vets, listen to this. What did you see in terms of alcohol and drugs, especially when you were in rehab, when you're coming out of rehab? What did you see? What was your attitude? How did you avoid going down the path of where, where, where people end up, you know, either addicted to alcohol or addicted to drugs?

• 1:27:47Speaker 01

  You know, and that's a kind of a good question because there was a lot of that. There were a lot of guys, especially alcohol, because you could just go off the base and and go someplace in the evening. The drugs, I think they were a little less likely to give you more than you actually needed during the Vietnam era. That was my experience. And my father was an alcoholic, so I'm sure probably in the back of my mind, the use of it or abuse of it was probably something I was conscious of all the time. But that never really looked like that was a great alternative path. I mean, I thought that was fairly easy to recognize that that wasn't good.

• 1:28:29Speaker 01

  And I'm not critical of anyone that chose that because everybody's psyche and the way they're handling things at that time, the difficulties you're going through, or just being out in public, missing two legs and an arm, maybe you need to be high to do that. I never felt that way. I didn't feel like I needed to explain anything to anybody, had to put on any particular performance or airs to make people accept me. If you didn't accept me, I'm okay with that, too. You know what I mean? That was fine. Because I'm just going to do what I need to do for my survival and for me to move forward. And I had a lot of support from family and friends that allowed me to be that way.

• 1:29:08Jocko Willink?

  Man, I wish I could spread that word to basically everyone, you know? Not to worry about what other people are thinking. Do what you're supposed to do. At what point did you, at what point did you, did you link up with the, with the DAV?

• 1:29:26Speaker 01

  Well, the DAV initially gave me what they call a complimentary membership. All Vietnam era veterans that were injured got that. That was in 1970. And then I moved from Minnesota to Florida in March of 1971. And my wife at the time said, what are you going to do about that membership in the DAV? And I said, you know, I really hadn't given it much thought. I was busy with, with the job that I had moved there for. And I don't know, she looked it up, I think, one time and said, well, there's a chapter in Sanford. So I actually started going. Welcomed me with open arms. It was a nice friendly group of people. And I mean, it was a great, great.

• 1:30:10Speaker 01

  A great relationship with them and I needed that. So maybe she was even smarter than I was to recognize that. It's nice to be able to go back and associate with other disabled veterans because you're actually there to lift that person up and bring them along and they're there to do the same thing for you. If you can be an inspiration, great. If not, maybe you can be inspired by somebody that's there. So that's my initial strong involvement on the local chapter level was in Sanford, Florida, Seminole, Chapter 30. And then you stayed involved constantly. I mean, you know, we're 50 years this year. DAV is going to celebrate their 100th anniversary.

• 1:30:53Speaker 01

  I'm going to celebrate my 50th anniversary being a member of the DAV. Now, you mentioned that in that whole thing that you got married at some point. What year was that? I got married in February in 1970 to a young lady that I met in the community of Denver, Colorado.

• 1:31:13Speaker 01

  So that was while you were at Fitzsimmons? No, I was home. Okay. Met her when I was at Fitzsimmons. Got it. Got married back in Rochester, Minnesota. Got it. And then did you, you ended up having kids with her? Two children, two, two boys. We're now 44 and, or 45 and 43 years old.

• 1:31:34Speaker 01

  That's awesome. Then you moved up through the ranks of the DAV, correct? Well, I did a lot of stuff in the local chapter. Then I got involved on the department level, which is what we call our state organizations. Became an officer in the state, went through all the chairs and became, you know, a department commander. And then obviously people who had been in the national organization before recognized that maybe I could be a, a national officer. Asked me if I would consider doing that. So in 1999, I initially got elected to what we call the fourth junior vice commander, the beginning of your working your way up to be a national commander.

• 1:32:14Jocko Willink?

  So now we're talking 1999. Where were you on, on September 11th, 2001?

• 1:32:23Speaker 01

  I was home in Apapka.

• 1:32:25Jocko Willink?

  And what did that, when you saw that, I mean, obviously you must have heard the war drums like everybody else. What were, what were you thinking?

• 1:32:34Speaker 01

  I mean, almost unbelievable to begin with that that could ever happen here on American soil. And then I, I don't know where I was originally, but then my wife had hollered to me and, and the plane was at the second building by the time I got in front of the television. And I mean, we, we knew it was real. I mean, it's, it's a shock to think that anything like that can happen in two buildings full of people. Um, just unbelievable.

• 1:33:01Jocko Willink?

  Now, did you immediately, I mean, we were in Afghanistan by October. Were you thinking to yourself, where there's war, there's going to be wounded? And the DAV and, and you're, you know, you talked about how much it helped you to meet somebody that was a triple amputee, two months before you, three months before you. They didn't even have much experience with it, but it was enough to make you say, okay, if they can make it, I can make it. Did you think to yourself, here we go again?

• 1:33:33Speaker 01

  I don't know whether I ever came to that conclusion that early on, but as you know, it didn't take long before we started getting wounded back. And as long as I was a national officer, I always asked if I could go up to DC and spend a day or two, so I could go through Walter Reed and spend time visiting young men and women coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. So I, I looked forward to having that opportunity to do that. And, uh, one of the guys, I mean, this is fast forwarding some, but a young man, um, came back, got injured in September of 2004, and he was also a triple amputee, lost both legs and an arm. And you, because of the HIPAA

• 1:34:14Speaker 01

  laws, you had to go through and get permission to visit people in the hospital. Well, he had originally been on our list and then he'd scratched, uh, the DAV off of that because they were kind of getting tired of politicians just coming in doing photo ops with seriously injured vets. So he kind of thought that's what it was. Well, we were visiting another young guy that was a single leg amputee on the, on the, um, A physical therapy ward and he was in a bed, maybe fifteen feet away. So he called the officer over that was with us and said, who the hell's that guy? Said, well, that's the guy who was gonna come to visit you and goes, oh, hell, I'll see him. You know, because we were, we were one and the same. So my wife was with me on that trip as well, too.

• 1:34:59Speaker 01

  So we went over to the bed when we finished with this first young man and talked to him a little bit. And, and it's not a matter that you're, you're gonna be doing any great and wonderful pep talk. It's kinda just more a matter of explaining, I'm just exactly like you are. I've been in that bed. It was back in, in, you know, nineteen sixty-nine. I've been through a lot of difficulties, but you're gonna be okay. You're alive. His mother and his fiance were standing at the end of the bed and my wife was talking to them. And I truly believe that she was probably more inspirational and more informative to them than I ever was with him in that one initial meeting. He'd have to, we'd have to see each other multiple times.

• 1:35:44Speaker 01

  As he started to grow a little bit and get out of bed and get into a wheelchair, where he, where he pretty well understands it is gonna be okay. It is gonna be better. And today, which is, I don't know, how many years ago is that? Twenty-five or something, maybe more than that? He's college educated, got a wife, two children, hugely successful. And, you know, I could probably say, well, part of that was my inspiration. But I think part of that was the grit. He was raised with a kid from Michigan as well, too. He was probably gonna be okay no matter what happened. But, you know, to see him do that makes me feel extremely good that the younger generation is picking up on that and they're moving forward and getting along with their lives as well, too.

• 1:36:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, that's.

• 1:36:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's unbelievable. I mean, obviously, um, you, you, you, you might not feel like, you may feel like you would have done it anyways, but you know, anything that you do in life, when you see that someone else has done it and, and you know it's possible. I mean, that's so much of the battle right there is just knowing that something can be done. And for someone to look at you and see that you got kids and you got wife and you got business and you got damn apartment complexes and whatnot and, and you carry, you carry on for someone that's however old, 19, 20, 23 years old and say, okay, I've been put in this rough spot, but I can, but I

• 1:37:13Jocko Willink?

  can do this. He did it. If he did it, I can do it. That's a, man, that's, that's, that's worth its weight in gold. Um, is there anything that, that we can do to help out the, the DAV? Anything that, um, that just people that are listening to this show that, that recognize the, the benefits that, that the DAV provides? What's the best thing for people to do, to do to support it?

• 1:37:44Speaker 01

  Well, I mean, I think there's a lot of different things in their local community. There's opportunities at local chapters. There's department level donations to our national organization that allow us to continue to do great things every single day. I think the numbers we're talking about right now is we provide service to over a million veterans every single year. And it may not be the same service of service work when the claims representation. It might be transportation to and from VA medical centers for guys that don't have a way to get there for their doctor's appointments. They might, we might be volunteers in hospitals. We can use help in all those areas from the American public.

• 1:38:28Jocko Willink?

  So the, the, the website is D A V dot org. They're actually quite high speed on their social media. They have Twitter, which is at D A V H Q. They have Instagram, which is also at D A V H Q. And then they have Facebook, which is just at D A V. And anyone can get on there. They have pretty good, um, you know, it's pretty, pretty simple to figure out how you can help, how you can volunteer, how you can do donate to that, to that awesome cause. And, you know, I, I, I started off this podcast with a quote from you when you were talking about how lucky you were. And, and even just before we, before we pressed record today,

• 1:39:13Jocko Willink?

  you were, you were explaining, you were just saying to me, you know, you've had this life that you wouldn't trade any part of it. And I think anybody that's, that's listening to you, seeing you talk, hearing you talk, to have that attitude and maintain that attitude. That is, that is the most powerful thing that a person can have. For you to be in the situation that you were in 90 pounds, lost both your legs, lost your arm, and to get up and move forward. I mean, that, that mentality is, it's, it's, it's unbelievable.

• 1:39:54Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's, it's miraculous and it's, and it's, it's inspirational. When you look back now, do you ever feel, do you feel like this was the way it was meant to be?

• 1:40:12Speaker 01

  Well, I think because of my faith in God, I believe that nothing happens to you that, that he doesn't think you can handle. That's the way I prayed my entire life is, is not, I don't pray so that I wake up tomorrow morning and I've got two legs and an arm. I pray that I have the same opportunity tomorrow that I had today, or maybe, maybe something more I can do tomorrow. Not so much that I'm asking for something. So I think. Really, truly, the best thing that I can say is my injury is from the neck down, but my ability to continue on is from the neck up. It's the way you think and what you want to do is again from the neck up.

• 1:40:54Speaker 01

  If somebody said, "Well, how in the world can you have a roofing company?" Well, that's real easy. I don't get on the roof. You know what I mean? That doesn't look like that'd be a whole lot of fun. It's easier for me to get customers, do the estimates, and do the money part of it, and hire people that do the work. So, but I never looked at that and said, "Well, you can't do that if you're missing two legs and an arm." Sure, you can. You can do anything if you're missing two legs and an arm. Anybody out there, our DAV members, or anybody that sustained any form of an injury that wants to give up, I'm just here to tell you, you don't need to give up. Don't ever give up. There's a challenge out there. Just accept the challenge and move forward.

• 1:41:36Jocko Willink?

  Well, I don't think I have anything else to say after that. You got anything else? That's... The floor is yours.

• 1:41:48Speaker 01

  I just want to thank you again. I know we did at the beginning of the podcast, but thank you for the opportunity for allowing DAV and me to come as a representative to be on the program with you. I hope we got millions of people out there that heard the podcast or will hear it in the future, and that they'll remember that the DAV is... If they're a veteran, it's there for them and their family independence. If they're a member of the American public that would just like to reach out and do something to help their fellow disabled veterans, you can get over to dav.org, just like you mentioned before. We would welcome the opportunity that you would come to us and offer to help.

• 1:42:28Jocko Willink?

  Well, I'm sure that folks will definitely do that. And I know you're thanking me for for having you out here, but this is it's absolute honor for me to be able to sit here and talk with you. And thank you for coming on the show and thanks for sharing your experiences and more important, thank you for your service, for your sacrifice and not just what you did. You know, in Vietnam, but for what you've done with the DAV. And what you've done to help, you know, my generation of warriors who have suffered greatly. And who are able to look at you as a mentor and as an inspiration so that they can do exactly what you said.

• 1:43:13Jocko Willink?

  Which is never give up and keep moving forward. So with that, thank you for coming on the show and thank you for everything. Thank you, Jack. We appreciate it.

• 1:43:29Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Mr. Sersli has left the building.

• 1:43:37Jocko Willink?

  How does that man not change your attitude about just about everything that you do on a day to day basis?

• 1:43:44Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. Big time. And he said something that kinda, this was real small. But I was like, this is different when you're talking about how or when he was talking about how he didn't drink and do that and his dad's alcoholic. So that's like, that's not just, oh, yeah, I just didn't. But the way he said it was this, he was like, I knew that that wasn't a path I was gonna go go down, right? But then he said, and I wanna kinda let, I'm paraphrasing, obviously. I wanna let everyone know that you don't, you don't have to give up or something. He said, he didn't say, don't give up like this big thing. It's like, oh, he said, you don't need to give up.

• 1:44:22Speaker 02

  Kind of thing. Because it, in my mind, anyway, it seemed like, like giving up seems like such a viable option, you know?

• 1:44:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 1:44:33Speaker 02

  And he's like, oh, no, you don't need to do that. You don't need to do that. Like, kinda like, no, you can actually do this other thing, kind of thing. Like, he made it sound so casual, but almost like, hey, It it's almost like he he reversed it all the way back down to the bare decision making of it, you know, rather than like, oh, this hard battle or whatever. It's hard battle 100%, but that's not what he was focusing on with the way he said it. That's what it sounded like. And I was like, oh, man, that's kind of a interesting sort of way to present it.

• 1:45:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:45:03Speaker 02

  You don't need to give up.

• 1:45:04Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes we stop record too, because he just told a really cool story about the fact that his first sergeant was telling him, hey, if you stay in, you get a $10,000 reenlistment bonus and a cor- a brand new Corvette, which you can order here, will get delivered to your house for 5,500 bucks.

• 1:45:23Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:24Jocko Willink?

  And you know what he said? Hey, hey, listen, first sergeant, there's people here trying to kill me. If I'm good.

• 1:45:32Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:45:33Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:45:34Speaker 02

  I'll buy my own Corvette.

• 1:45:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'll buy my own Corvette when I get home. So, you know, and that's when you when you hear a guy like him, you just realize that there's so much more that we're capable of overcoming. And and he's saying he's lucky and it's just if he's lucky to be here, we're all lucky to be here.

• 1:45:54Speaker 02

  Mm hmm.

• 1:45:55Jocko Willink?

  We and what we need to do is make sure we take advantage of the opportunities that we have. Getting our attitude straight. Being on the path, staying on the path. So, Echo Charles.

• 1:46:11Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:46:12Jocko Willink?

  Speaking of the path.

• 1:46:13Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:46:14Jocko Willink?

  What can we do?

• 1:46:15Speaker 02

  Well, as we always talk about first, jujitsu, we can do jujitsu. We're at Victory MMA in the main, what do we call this corridor? We call it a corridor?

• 1:46:26Jocko Willink?

  We're in the kind of lounge, this is the lounge area. Oddly enough, I have to admit that I have a lounge area in my gym, right? Instead of having more squat racks.

• 1:46:37Speaker 02

  Just in case you got a lounge.

• 1:46:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I got a lounge area.

• 1:46:39Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:46:40Jocko Willink?

  This is the Echo Charles lounge area.

• 1:46:41Speaker 02

  I prefer to call it the recovery area.

• 1:46:44Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So anyways, we've got nice couches.

• 1:46:47Speaker 02

  Unless we're here.

• 1:46:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:50Speaker 02

  Uh, and yes, so this is where we can do jujitsu. Kudos, more mat space here, by the way. Side note.

• 1:46:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:57Speaker 02

  More jujitsu.

• 1:46:58Jocko Willink?

  We got a lot of jujitsu going on here.

• 1:46:59Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:47:00Jocko Willink?

  You can pretty much do jujitsu a lot here.

• 1:47:02Speaker 02

  Yes, sir, you can. Which I dig.

• 1:47:05Jocko Willink?

  And you can get, you know what else you can get here? Origin gees.

• 1:47:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:07Jocko Willink?

  You can come here to Victory MMA in San Diego and get an Origin gi right here. And if that's a far trip for you, guess what? You can go to originmaine.com, you can get an Origin gi.

• 1:47:20Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:47:20Jocko Willink?

  You can get an Origin rash guard. You can get Origin jeans. And guess what you can get?

• 1:47:27Speaker 02

  Well, I can easily guess you can get boots because guess who just got their boots?

• 1:47:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh, did you get your Origin boots?

• 1:47:32Speaker 02

  Yes, sir, I did.

• 1:47:33Jocko Willink?

  How sweet are they?

• 1:47:36Speaker 02

  Extra sweet.

• 1:47:36Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's kinda crazy, right? When you look at those boots and you think we just started that process? And I'm throwing that we out there. I'm taking like, I'm, I'm throwing my name in there.

• 1:47:48Speaker 02

  You did not make those boots for me, no.

• 1:47:50Jocko Willink?

  But

• 1:47:52Jocko Willink?

  we got them made.

• 1:47:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:54Jocko Willink?

  Like, American people got them made.

• 1:47:56Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:47:56Jocko Willink?

  Pete, the crew, the folks up there. It's awesome. So, yes, originmaine.com, you can get all kinds of clothing. T-shirts, hoodies, all that.

• 1:48:08Speaker 02

  And supplements. Important supplements, critical supplements to stay in the game. And if you don't think they're critical, try not taking them.

• 1:48:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's not a good idea.

• 1:48:16Speaker 02

  Joint warfare, cruel oil combo, my suggestion.

• 1:48:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:48:20Speaker 02

  Recommendation, strong recommendation.

• 1:48:22Jocko Willink?

  Uh, one more thing we've got right now. So we have discipline in a powder form. And it's sort of like a pre-mission cognitive and physical enhancement. So we just came out with a new flavor. The new flavor is called Jaco Palmer. It's 50% iced tea, 50% lemonade.

• 1:48:44Jocko Willink?

  And it's really, really, really good. It's in fact, it's all I'm drinking right now, unless I'm having a discipline go in a can.

• 1:48:51Speaker 02

  Wait, so the, the one you have, the, the Jaco Palmer, that's the powder one. They don't have, it's not discipline go, it's discipline.

• 1:48:59Jocko Willink?

  Yes, and discipline go in a can, Jaco Palmer is coming.

• 1:49:03Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 1:49:03Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna cover all the bases. We also got Dak Savage.

• 1:49:08Speaker 02

  Dak Savage, well, what is that?

• 1:49:09Jocko Willink?

  That's Dakota Meyer's, Dakota Meyer's custom, wait, no, no, no, wait, better, a signature.

• 1:49:17Speaker 02

  Signature.

• 1:49:18Jocko Willink?

  Signature from Dakota.

• 1:49:20Speaker 02

  What flavor?

• 1:49:21Jocko Willink?

  The flavor is called cherry vanilla, which if you know anything about flavors, that's basically a Dr. Pepper.

• 1:49:30Speaker 02

  What, okay, so it's, so Dak Savage is the name of the flavor of discipline from Dakota Meyer that tastes like Dr. Pepper.

• 1:49:41Jocko Willink?

  Dakota Meyer signature.

• 1:49:43Speaker 02

  Signature flavor, yeah.

• 1:49:44Jocko Willink?

  Signature flavor. So anyways, that one's coming out soon. And we also got Molk for your protein. Or you can call it protein, or you can just call it dessert.

• 1:49:53Speaker 02

  Dessert.

• 1:49:54Jocko Willink?

  I prefer to call it dessert, because that's basically what it tastes like.

• 1:49:57Speaker 02

  Would you ever, and, and this thought flashed in my head last night, almost, almost not gonna admit it, but I'm gonna tell you, because you know, I've known you for a long time, so I trust you. So I had a little thing of leftover Rocky Road ice cream. Not for me, it was, it was my son's birthday a while back, and my wife's birthday.

• 1:50:17Jocko Willink?

  Why not give him a bunch of, you know, sugar?

• 1:50:19Speaker 02

  Well, there was a lot left. We didn't eat that much. But, so I busted it out, left it on the counter, kinda ate some and sort of forgot about it, and my, whatever, it melted.

• 1:50:28Jocko Willink?

  Oh.

• 1:50:29Speaker 02

  But it's in the, what do you call, I don't know if it's a pint, the bigger one, but it's a little bigger than a pint.

• 1:50:34Jocko Willink?

  Half gallon, half gallon, yep, coming in hot.

• 1:50:36Speaker 02

  So I'm like, alright, whatever.

• 1:50:37Jocko Willink?

  You got yourself a milkshake, involuntary milkshake.

• 1:50:40Speaker 02

  That's exactly what I got. So I'm pounding this Rocky Road ice cream milkshake out of the container, by the way, it's nighttime, nobody saw, but. I'm pounding marsh, there's little marshmallows in there, little nuts. What's in Rocky Road? Like almonds or not almonds, uh walnuts?

• 1:50:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I wanna say some kinda nuts.

• 1:50:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, nuts.

• 1:50:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:58Speaker 02

  And, uh, marshmallows.

• 1:51:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:01Speaker 02

  And they're all soft now. Anyway, it was not bad. It was good.

• 1:51:05Jocko Willink?

  Did you put milk in there?

• 1:51:05Speaker 02

  But I'm thinking, no, I didn't. See, I could've, but it was sort of what it did. But what if you put marshmallows and nuts in milk?

• 1:51:13Jocko Willink?

  You could do that.

• 1:51:14Speaker 02

  It'd kinda be the same thing.

• 1:51:15Jocko Willink?

  I don't like marshmallows, by the way.

• 1:51:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't either.

• 1:51:18Jocko Willink?

  I don't like marshmallows. I don't like any marshmallows, except, let's face it, whatever those kinds of marshmallows are that are in Lucky Charms. Remember when you were a kid? Oh, yeah, those things. When I was a kid, I was, I was all about those Lucky Charms. And the crazy thing is, it was just normal. You just, Saturday morning, this is a thing. It used to be a thing. Cartoons, Saturday morning, that's what, that's what kids did.

• 1:51:40Speaker 02

  Yeah, those Lucky Charms and marshmallows, though, they're kinda odd, cuz like, I mean, I guess, hey, if you dig them, I dig it, but those, the dehydrated ones, when you eat them, you get that, you know that like nails against the chalkboard feeling when you chomp those dehydrated mushrooms?

• 1:51:53Jocko Willink?

  I probably haven't had any of that since I was in Iraq. It's probably the last time I had some Lucky Charms, like there was some box in the, whatever.

• 1:52:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know, man.

• 1:52:02Jocko Willink?

  And I was like, yeah.

• 1:52:04Speaker 02

  What about cinnamon toast crunch? I think that cinnamon toast crunch back in the, I think that was like the weakness cereal, the one, oh, you know, this is bad, but it's.

• 1:52:11Jocko Willink?

  I think we might've just gotten off track, cuz we're talking about Lucky Charms and cinnamon crunch.

• 1:52:14Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, that is not on the path. What are we even talking about? Yeah, milk, milk. Additional protein taste delicious.

• 1:52:20Jocko Willink?

  And for kids, instead of feeding your kids cereal or Rocky Road ice cream, give, if you would've told your son, hey, that's your birthday, here's a strawberry milkshake.

• 1:52:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:52:28Jocko Willink?

  And you gave him strawberry milk, he would've been totally pumped and healthy and stronger when you didn't do that. Uh, don't forget about Jocko White Tea as well.

• 1:52:37Jocko Willink?

  So, check it out, originmaine.com.

• 1:52:41Speaker 02

  Dot com. Yes. Also, Jocko is a store. It's called Jocko Store, and this is where you can get, and I know, we are, me saying this again, it feels like, hey, everyone knows, but here's the thing, not everyone knows. So anyway, Jocko is a store. It's called Jocko Store. JockoStore.com is where you can get t-shirts, Discipline Equals Freedom, if you wanna represent while you're on the path.

• 1:53:02Jocko Willink?

  There's a new t-shirt, by the way.

• 1:53:03Speaker 02

  Yes. Discipline Equals Freedom. It's a, I call it.

• 1:53:08Speaker 02

  I don't even know what to call it. Deaf. Discipline equals freedom. Cause it has an X. You know, the X over the D that that's layers right there.

• 1:53:15Jocko Willink?

  It is.

• 1:53:16Speaker 02

  Not going to disclose what the X is for. Some people know. Some people know already. Actually on Twitter, someone was like, hey, I see you did the, the, and he explained what it was. I was like, ooh, this guy knows. Nonetheless, yes. New shirt, discipline equals freedom. It's on there. Chalka store. We got hoodies on there.

• 1:53:30Jocko Willink?

  Yep. Truckers hats. Flex fit hats.

• 1:53:35Speaker 02

  Beanie's on the way. I swit like I, we were out of beanies for a while.

• 1:53:39Jocko Willink?

  You don't need to say that like that's a big surprise that we ran out of stuff because you don't do a good job of keeping up stock. I don't do a good job of explaining to you how important it is. So it's my fault.

• 1:53:48Speaker 02

  No, but we are doing, we.

• 1:53:50Jocko Willink?

  When people put me up, hit me up on social media and say, oh, there's, oh yeah, there's eight things I want to get in the store and there's none of them there. And I go, that's my fault.

• 1:53:57Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 1:53:58Jocko Willink?

  And then I tag you and say, it's my fault.

• 1:53:59Speaker 02

  My fault. It is my fault.

• 1:54:00Jocko Willink?

  No, it's my fault.

• 1:54:01Speaker 02

  We collectively could do a lot better. And the beanies are on their way. There was, there was a thing. There was a little curve, little, little that we had to kind of maneuver and get the beanies.

• 1:54:11Jocko Willink?

  Sound effects?

• 1:54:12Speaker 02

  A little bit, a little bit. Yeah. But unless we're getting it sorted out, unless they will be available.

• 1:54:17Jocko Willink?

  Chalka store.com.

• 1:54:18Speaker 02

  Good place to get stuff.

• 1:54:20Jocko Willink?

  Also subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. Echo thinks that you may not have. I have faith in you that you subscribe to the podcast.

• 1:54:29Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 1:54:30Jocko Willink?

  Don't forget about the Warrior Kid podcast. Also.

• 1:54:35Jocko Willink?

  Also subscribe to that one. He's working on some new ones. I haven't seen that for a while. Don't forget to get some Warrior Kid soap from IrishOaksRanch.com. Uh, Young Aiden has sold, sold his 1,000th bar of soap.

• 1:54:51Jocko Willink?

  That's entrepreneurship.

• 1:54:52Speaker 02

  Man, yeah. And even just as impressive as, or maybe even more impressive of the fact that we has his own business. Cause when I was 13, cause that's when he started when he was 13, right? Or 12, 13. Yeah. So when I was at, yeah, and I was 12 too.

• 1:55:06Jocko Willink?

  Eleven.

• 1:55:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:55:07Jocko Willink?

  What was your business?

• 1:55:08Speaker 02

  Buttons.

• 1:55:10Jocko Willink?

  What about buttons?

• 1:55:10Speaker 02

  I used to sell buttons, like not the, not for your shirt, but you know, the pins, you know, a pin.

• 1:55:15Jocko Willink?

  Vote for Pedro.

• 1:55:17Speaker 02

  We had the, we had the old, uh, well, my mom did the little button maker. Yeah. You buy all the little raw supplies for like.

• 1:55:23Jocko Willink?

  Dude, the Echo fans are going nuts right now because you're saying button over and over again.

• 1:55:27Speaker 02

  Anyway, so I used to, we'd draw, you know, you'd make the design.

• 1:55:32Jocko Willink?

  Designs for what?

• 1:55:33Speaker 02

  The button.

• 1:55:36Speaker 02

  Button, the button.

• 1:55:38Jocko Willink?

  Oh, there you go.

• 1:55:39Speaker 02

  Make this anyway, and you clamp it and you do and you make the but you know, and people wouldn't make customer and I'd sell them for like seventy five cents or something like that.

• 1:55:47Jocko Willink?

  They cost a dollar each, but it's all good.

• 1:55:48Speaker 02

  No, it's like a dollar for the whole material, raw material bucket.

• 1:55:54Speaker 02

  Nonetheless, I was like, yeah, that's cool. And it is cool to have a little business where but Aiden's making bro, let's face it, man. If someone goes without their budget, it's like, who cares? But soap, that's like, you can't just make soap, you know, you gotta know how to do that stuff. And then he's making soap from actual goat's milk that he raises.

• 1:56:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:15Speaker 02

  So it's he's way advanced, man.

• 1:56:17Jocko Willink?

  Irishoaksranch.com. Stay clean.

• 1:56:20Speaker 02

  Sir. Also, we have a YouTube channel. Do you want to see what everybody looks like if you care? I dig it if you don't, but nonetheless, you want to see the video version of this podcast, that's where you go.

• 1:56:29Jocko Willink?

  Jim has a good voice.

• 1:56:31Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:56:31Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't he?

• 1:56:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:56:33Jocko Willink?

  Like he that is a powerful voice.

• 1:56:34Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, you can tell he was like a he said he was what two twenty.

• 1:56:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:39Speaker 02

  When he was in.

• 1:56:40Jocko Willink?

  That was in nineteen sixty, whatever. Nineteen sixty nine, guys weren't as big as they are now.

• 1:56:45Speaker 02

  Yeah, but you can tell he's big when you shake his hand. He's like, like Dean Lister hands.

• 1:56:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:56:49Speaker 02

  So you know.

• 1:56:50Jocko Willink?

  Uh, psychological, that's the YouTube channel.

• 1:56:52Speaker 02

  YouTube channel.

• 1:56:53Jocko Willink?

  If you want to see what Jim looks like.

• 1:56:54Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:56:55Jocko Willink?

  And if you want to see Echo's enhanced videos, where he's starting to work with CGI now. So now I think the.

• 1:57:02Speaker 02

  They're gonna be enhanced, enhanced.

• 1:57:04Jocko Willink?

  It's just gonna get stupid.

• 1:57:05Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:06Jocko Willink?

  There's gonna be things going on that no one could imagine.

• 1:57:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:57:09Jocko Willink?

  You know what's funny is I don't like CGI and I generally don't like any movies with a lot of explosions in them. And that is like your thing.

• 1:57:17Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 1:57:18Jocko Willink?

  So there's gonna if you it's gonna get to a certain point where we're no longer like gonna be able to work things out.

• 1:57:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, we're gonna have some problem. But hey, look, I think I'm gonna make it work. I think so.

• 1:57:27Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:57:28Speaker 02

  Put it this way, I won't do all explosions in CGI.

• 1:57:31Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:57:31Speaker 02

  Maybe I will. I don't know. But let's just say that that's not the concrete plan.

• 1:57:36Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, we got psychological warfare as well, which is an album with tracks where you can get a little.

• 1:57:43Speaker 02

  Little hitter, little boost.

• 1:57:45Jocko Willink?

  Oh, did you say hitter?

• 1:57:46Speaker 02

  You know, you were on the Theo Von situation. It was good. I enjoyed it.

• 1:57:50Jocko Willink?

  Did you listen to it?

• 1:57:52Speaker 02

  Not the whole thing, just little excerpts that, you know, have been put out. But yeah, they influenced me and yeah, man, I said it hitter.

• 1:57:58Jocko Willink?

  You didn't say mulk hitter today. No. Get that one scoop hitter. So if you need a little psychological hitter to get you through a moment of weakness, you can check out psychological warfare, or if you need an alarm clock

• 1:58:12Jocko Willink?

  for your iPhone or your Android phone, you can put psychological warfare on there now and I will personally wake you up in the morning, every morning. Don't get mad at me if you are married to someone that's doing this. It's not my fault. I do not take ownership. I'm running away. Alright, so yes, also flip side canvas, speaking of Dakota Meyer, Dak Savage. He has got a little company where he makes, we'll call it artistic hitters.

• 1:58:45Jocko Willink?

  The joke already played out. Okay, cool. Yeah, check it out, flipsidecanvas.com to get things, graphic designs to hang up in your house so that you can stay on the path. Also, I've written a bunch of books. The next one that's coming out is called Leadership Strategy and Tactics. And it is available for preorder right now. It is a field manual of how to lead.

• 1:59:14Jocko Willink?

  Pragmatically, how to lead, actual instructions and actual field manual on how to lead. Also have Way of the Warrior Kid 1, 2, and 3. Get those books for every kid you know and the library and the school. Because every kid should be reading those. I hear that at least once a day. Someone tells me every kid should get issued these books. I agree. Why? Because we all wish we had the Way of the Warrior Kid books when we were kids. We didn't have them and we suffer the consequences. Don't, don't punish the children of the world. Get them the books. And also, if you've got a younger kid. Get a Mikey and the Dragons, which by the way, somebody bought the flip side canvas,

• 1:59:58Jocko Willink?

  Mikey and the Dragons poster, uh, and said that this was the, this was the, what they read with their son before the son went on deployment. So it's like, oh yeah, overcome your fears. That doesn't, that's not only for kids. Mikey and the Dragons. Get that book. Read it. And the Discipline Equals Freedom field manual, how to get after it. The audio version is on iTunes and MP3 things. Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership, the first two books I wrote with my brother Leif Babin. These are all the leadership principles that we talk about all the time on this podcast for your business and for your life. Check those out. Echelon Front, that is our leadership consultancy

• 2:00:43Jocko Willink?

  and what we do is solve problems through leadership. If you need help with your company, go to echelonfront.com. We have EF Online if you need to get additional training, which you do. You can't get complacency with complacent with your leadership attitude. So get EF Online, interactive online training to keep you, to keep you honed, to keep your leadership skills honed. Check out EFOnline.com. If you've got a big company, this is another one. This is the reason we created it originally is so that companies with 38,000 employees can get everyone in their

• 2:01:25Jocko Willink?

  company aligned when it comes to leadership. So check out EFOnline.com. We have one more muster left this year. It is in Sydney, Australia. We are not going to go back to Sydney, Australia for a long time. So if you want to come check us out, and we're also not going to go to Perth, and we're not going to go to Brisbane, and we're not going to go to anywhere else in Australia. So if you're like, oh, well, I'll just wait until they come to my hometown in Australia. We're not even going to your hometown in America, if you're in America. It's not happening. We're not a rock band on tour. We're not playing every club. We can't do it. We don't have the time. So if you want to come to the muster in Sydney, Australia, it's December 4th and 5th, go to extremeownership.com.

• 2:02:08Jocko Willink?

  Every muster we've done has sold out. So, register early. We also have EF Overwatch. So if you have a company and you want Spec Ops or Combat Aviation leaders coming into your company to help with your leadership, then go to EFOverwatch.com

• 2:02:30Jocko Willink?

  to connect and find one of those leaders to come into your company. And if you have comments or questions or answers for us, you can find them on the interwebs.

• 2:02:43Jocko Willink?

  You can find us on the interwebs. We are on Twitter, we are on Instagram, and we are on Facebook.

• 2:02:51Jocko Willink?

  Key.

• 2:02:55Jocko Willink?

  For the disabled American veterans, they are @DAVHQ on Instagram and on Twitter and then on Facebooky. They are just @DAV and Echo is @EchoCharles and I am @JockoWilling. And once again, thanks to Mr. Jim Sersli for sharing his story with us.

• 2:03:20Jocko Willink?

  And I am... It's such an honor for me to be able to talk with such men and women who have given so much and yet they continue to give.

• 2:03:32Jocko Willink?

  And to all the other veterans out there, to those that have served and those that are serving and those that are holding the line as we speak.

• 2:03:42Jocko Willink?

  Thanks to each one of you for fighting for our freedom and to our police and law enforcement and firefighters and paramedics and EMTs and dispatchers and correctional officers and Border Patrol and Secret Service and all the first responders. Each of you work so hard and give so much to keep us safe here at home. So thanks to all of you as well for your service and to everyone else out there. You just heard another example

• 2:04:13Jocko Willink?

  of what the human will is capable of.

• 2:04:19Jocko Willink?

  And even when facing

• 2:04:22Jocko Willink?

  the most unimaginable challenges, even when ripped apart by a bomb, the will to live and the will to fight and the will to overcome

• 2:04:34Jocko Willink?

  is unstoppable.

• 2:04:37Jocko Willink?

  And what that, what that makes me wonder,

• 2:04:42Jocko Willink?

  makes me wonder,

• 2:04:45Jocko Willink?

  what are we capable of?

• 2:04:49Jocko Willink?

  What are we capable of if we summoned the kind of will that Jim Sersli has?

• 2:04:59Jocko Willink?

  Are we doing everything right now that we are capable of doing? Are we reaching our potential?

• 2:05:11Jocko Willink?

  How much more could we do?

• 2:05:15Jocko Willink?

  How much more could we do? There's only one way to find out, and that is to step up into the breach, to put yourself out there every day and do everything you possibly can

• 2:05:32Jocko Willink?

  to get after it.

• 2:05:35Jocko Willink?

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