534: Soldiers, SEALs, and Ramadi. Leading In The Most Challenging Combat Environment. With Company Commander, Jason Pelletier

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe A U. S. Army infantry officer forged by a brutal childhood and hardened in the Battle of Ramadi, Jason Pelletier shares how his unit fought, adapted, and passed on hard-earned lessons that helped keep SEALs and soldiers alive in one of Iraq’s most violent cities. 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 534 with Echo Charles and me, Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. 365 dawns carved us a hollow until we became strangers wearing familiar faces to the families we left behind. Dawn by dawn until the ground we held lived within us as much as we lived within it. A different kind of becoming. Survival evolved instinct into intelligence. We learned to hear threat in the absence of children's laughter, to taste menace in

• 0:38Jocko Willink?

  a sea of glances. We felt danger in the wrongness of an afternoon shadow. We were students of each other's breaking points. We had trust. When everything went sideways, we could remain steady. Our faithful judgment, the last thing standing when solutions failed. By the end, we carried the city with us. Every building, a reminder of families caught between our mission and our enemy. Every intersection, the memory of a friend gone. Every smell,

• 1:22Jocko Willink?

  a moment shared with death. The terrible alchemy of the experience, making us unbreakable,

• 1:31Jocko Willink?

  but sending us home as strangers to ourselves.

• 1:38Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is a poem called "Familiar Faces," which is written by Jerry Altieri, who was a soldier, a team and squad leader with Team Catamount during the Battle of Ramadien. He was there with the 2nd Brigade, 28th Infantry Division, Pennsylvania National Guard, and those are soldiers that did a valiant job taking the fight to the enemy and setting conditions for victory in that city.

• 2:10Jocko Willink?

  And we've heard from, well, we've heard from the commander of that brigade, General John Gronski. We also heard from General Greg Knight, who was a task force battle captain during that deployment. And tonight we have Jason Pelletier, who served as a company commander in Ramadi. And led through some of the most challenging combat environments imaginable. And he worked very closely with my friend Dave Burke. When Dave Burke showed up in Ramadi with his Anglico team. And then eventually my task unit arrived in Ramadi and Dave will tell you without question that it was Jason Pelletier and his guys that taught him how to fight and kept him alive.

• 2:54Jocko Willink?

  And the same can be said for us and Task Unit Bruiser. Once we arrived, Jason Pelletier and his men from the 1172, they gave my guys guidance and lessons learned that without question, not only improved our operational capabilities, but no doubt helped keep SEALs from Task Unit Bruiser alive.

• 3:21Jocko Willink?

  And we are forever indebted to the soldiers of the 172nd Infantry Regiment and the 3rd Battalion of the 172 and the lessons that they passed on to us. It's an honor tonight to have Jason Pelletier to share his experiences and some of the knowledge he garnered along the way. So Jason, it's great to see you, man. And thanks for joining us. Yeah, no, thanks for having me, Jack. I appreciate it. You know, talking to, talking to Leif and Dave, they just, each one of those guys will just go on and on about the, the importance of what you turned, what you and your guys turned over to them in terms of what the battlefield was like, what to watch out for, how to lead.

• 4:07Jocko Willink?

  How did the tactics of the scenarios, the areas of town to stay away from, the area of town to get into, what, you know, just how to do things, how to fight. And so it's awesome to have you sitting here today. And be able to share some of those lessons with everybody else out there. So thanks for coming out, man.

• 4:25Speaker 01

  I appreciate having you.

• 4:26Jocko Willink?

  Making the journey. So we got a lot to talk about. Let's just get a little bit of background. You're a New Englander. Like myself.

• 4:34Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 4:34Jocko Willink?

  So growing up, you were born, what, 1973 or a couple of years younger than me, I think. I was born in 71.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:40Jocko Willink?

  Born in 73, where?

• 4:42Speaker 01

  Southern New Hampshire.

• 4:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And then what was the kind of a wild ride for you in those early years? Tell us about that.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little, little non-standard path less taken.

• 4:57Speaker 01

  So, single kid to a single mother. Never knew my dad, no siblings. So my mom, who I still have some memories of,

• 5:12Speaker 01

  was a wild child. She was a free spirit. And so

• 5:18Speaker 01

  she dragged me around the country a little bit.

• 5:22Jocko Willink?

  You think she was like a hippie?

• 5:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, hippie vibe-ish.

• 5:25Jocko Willink?

  So this is like 19, yeah, this is 1970s, early 70s. So yeah, she might have been a hippie.

• 5:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, a little, little bohemian probably. Yeah, just absolutely fearless. Yeah, yeah, it just threw me in the, threw me in the kid carrier and, you know, we launched across the country and just no problem. Just we'll make it up as we go along. I definitely inherited to a degree some of that. And so, yeah, so

• 5:50Speaker 01

  kind of bounced around. She was into a bunch of things, got her commercial driver's license. I mean, I don't even know what that looks like, but it's kind of awesome.

• 6:01Jocko Willink?

  So she became a truck driver?

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then her partner was a truck driver and they were doing truck driver things at, I was like five.

• 6:12Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I had the opportunity to

• 6:16Speaker 01

  to, to learn some really tough lessons early on about resilience and just kind of being alone and life can be tough sometimes and that's okay, right?

• 6:29Speaker 01

  Until it's not. So, um, when I was seven, in the fall of seventy nine, mom picked me up from the bus stop, pulled in to get the mail, uh, pulled out, got T-bones. The last thing I saw was the car smashing into her side. So, uh, I woke up a couple of days later in a hospital. Uh, my mother was gone. She didn't make it. So, um,

• 6:56Speaker 01

  yeah, so I'm just alone in a hospital.

• 6:59Jocko Willink?

  What does, what does a doctor say to you when you're seven years old and you got no siblings? You don't have a dad around and your mom's dead. Do you, you remember what they say to you in that moment?

• 7:12Speaker 01

  I didn't have the ability to process anything. So I just reverted to the mean, which was my emotions. And, uh, I think I remember having to get restrained as a seven year old kid because I absolutely lost it when they told me and, uh, I flipped out. Um, which is pretty wild for a bunch of grown adults to have like a look of dread and fear in their eyes within, you know, with a seven year old kid flipping out in front of them. So, um, so, um,

• 7:47Speaker 01

  every story has a, a silver lining, right? So my godparents, um, my aunt and my uncle, um, to be specific, my mom's little sister, um, she had, uh, I think probably less than a year earlier had made her promise if something ever happened to her that they would take me in and they honored that promise. And so, yeah, they flew down to Oklahoma, scooped me up and, uh, brought me back to New Hampshire. Um, so it came full circle. I was born there and, and that's where I arrived seven years later.

• 8:20Jocko Willink?

  So you're seven years old and you show up in a, it sounds like they had a, a stable kind of big family. What was the, the bunch of kids and whatnot, right?

• 8:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a wolf pack. Uh, so I went from being a feral little loner to, uh, having to be domesticated with a quickness. And as you might imagine, that did not work out very well, uh, for a while.

• 8:45Speaker 01

  And so I went from, from what I described to having three sisters and a brother. I was the middle of five, oldest boy in a house of seven now. So there was a lot going on and I did not assimilate very well. And

• 9:06Jocko Willink?

  It's a tough challenge for parents. Like, what do you do? Like, you feel bad for the kid, right? You're like, hey, he lost his mom, don't know where his dad is. He, okay, what do we do? Do we, do we like impose discipline on him? No, you don't really do that. But then he starts acting up. So now it's a tough, that's a tough role.

• 9:23Speaker 01

  Right. Yeah, there was that period you're describing, right? Where the feel sorry for you thing. And then thankfully, my dad decided to call bullshit on that. And so he went with the tough love route, which in the moment was not awesome, you know, but looking back, it's the greatest gift he could have ever given me. And yeah, it was, he took me to the woodshed a bunch. And me being the aforementioned feral kid, you know, I was like, bring it on. You know, so it was this weird dynamic of like, I would screw up, he would hold me accountable. And I'd be like, yeah, is that all you got? And it was just this weird interplay for years. It went on like that to where I was like, because I was just waiting for it to blow up again, right?

• 10:08Speaker 01

  It was just like, okay, how long before this all gets taken away from me, right? It was just this childhood trauma thing that, you know, no one was telling me what to do with. I was kind of having to figure it out on my own.

• 10:18Jocko Willink?

  This is what like, they probably didn't even use those words, childhood trauma. Like, they probably didn't have those words yet, you know, people talk about like the, the way things impact you. But back in what 1980, whatever, they're like, hey, deal with it.

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's like the sex talk, right? It's like, you just don't have it.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  Right. So yeah, it's all screwed up, but like, we're just gonna pretend it didn't happen. So, and I was like, all right, fine. Well, you know, we'll, we'll see how that goes. But uh,

• 10:46Jocko Willink?

  What were you, were you like getting in fights? Were you just breaking shit? What were you doing from a rebellious standpoint?

• 10:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, all of it.

• 10:52Jocko Willink?

  All the above?

• 10:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I was not fit for captivity at that point. I mean, I was just a barefoot kid. I was running around in Oklahoma, you know, catching, you know, water moccasins at like six, you know, it's like a Swiss army knife and a BB gun. I go out there and just smoke snakes and stuff. I have zero supervision. It was wild.

• 11:15Speaker 01

  You know, again, not maybe the best parenting move, but like made me a really tough, scrappy kid. But now you want me to play house and get along and, you know, not break stuff and, you know, of course I lied. Yeah, that's what you do. And you just get an angle. You get away with stuff, you know? And so, yeah, I was all the wrong lessons early on, but there were survival instincts, right? This is what you do. And then, and uh, took a long time to like, believe that this was like legit, real, like it wasn't gonna go away. Like this was just my new life. I was like, huh. All right, maybe.

• 11:47Jocko Willink?

  At what age did you start to sort of recognize that there were some benefits to being a normal kid of more, more, more, uh, what's a housebroken kid?

• 12:00Speaker 01

  Oh, boy. It's embarrassing. Um,

• 12:06Speaker 01

  freshman year of high school? Yeah. So it was a long, deep run from like seven to 14, 15.

• 12:13Jocko Willink?

  Was there a certain event that happened that like flipped the switch in your mind? Or was it just sort of a slow learning process?

• 12:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm definitely a slow learner, but uh, yeah, I was in junior high. I was in the transition phase, I would say. It's uh, I knew I couldn't stay where I was, but I didn't know where to go. Hanging out with the wrong folks. Didn't understand the idea of who you are, who you hang out with just yet. So my dad just made the the last big hard call and he sent me to an all boys Catholic high school. And so I went from wearing like Metallica t shirts and whatever to to wear on a tie and a jacket and shoes. And I was a dork and it was horrible.

• 12:59Jocko Willink?

  So you were a little bit of a metalhead in eighth grade, seventh grade.

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 13:05Jocko Willink?

  Maybe a lot of bit of a metalhead.

• 13:07Speaker 01

  It it made sense to me.

• 13:09Jocko Willink?

  I'll tell you, it makes sense to me and also, you know, what I think of when I think about like our timeframe of growing up. Like if you were a really crazy rebellious kid, okay, you're wearing a Metallica, you know, jean jacket. Maybe you're cut in school, maybe you're smoking some cigarettes.

• 13:31Jocko Willink?

  All that, all those are things that you can get through and get by, but things that kids do nowadays are like can dramatically change the entire course of their life when they're thirteen. So definitely it seems like there was better guardrails back then because you can take a kid, you know, like this. It's not that bad. Bad wasn't that bad, at least in my opinion, back then, right? Compared to what it can be now.

• 13:57Jocko Willink?

  So you show up to the Catholic school. What did you, how hard did you fight against that?

• 14:04Speaker 01

  Initially, it was a big push. I hit the beachhead pretty hard and and I just got wrecked. It was, you know, it was made clear to me that this was not a discussion. There was no negotiating room and that I would thank him later.

• 14:20Jocko Willink?

  Was it a boarding school?

• 14:22Speaker 01

  Nope, it was one town over, great school, Bishop Gerton High School in Nashua, New Hampshire. And all I knew is, you know, I didn't have many friends, but they were going to the public school and I wanted to stay with them. And I was still pretty introverted and had no social skill and pretty angry, so.

• 14:41Speaker 01

  I don't know, I was just scared, you know, again, you know, very scarcity mindset, but you know, you cover that up with the whole, you know, bravado and the whole tough guy. Yeah, so went over there and then instantly.

• 14:56Speaker 01

  I was angry and I was rebellious for a little bit and then quickly that faded and I just found some new friends and they weren't, they weren't tools. Yeah, they were, they're good dudes. I was like, oh, okay, I could, I could roll with these guys. And then sports became my new thing, right? That was my path out. Was it mandatory sports at school? Strongly encouraged. Yeah, I quickly realized there was the haves and the have nots in that school. Like it was all the brothers, you know, walking around in the robes who were the teachers and whatnot. So you could tell real quickly, like the kids that were getting the high fives from the brothers in the hallway, those are the athletes and the guys that weren't getting the high fives. Yeah, they were the, you know, whatever, the B team. So I was like, okay, I want to be on the A team. So that's, I gotta play sports.

• 15:41Speaker 01

  So what, what sports were you, were you into? Football, played four years, little guy, but folks were still growing back then. So believe it or not, I was the quarterback freshman year, which is hilarious. And by sophomore year, I couldn't see over the offensive line. So I was like, all right, I need a new position to play. But yeah, running back defense, I played both ways and then natural transition. So that whole crew that played football or a lot of them just naturally matriculated into wrestling over the winter. So we went from bulking up and the, you know, living in the weight room in the fall, you know, summer in the fall to like cutting weight, like on a criminal level.

• 16:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Once again, this is the, this is where things are the other direction. What they were doing to cut weight back then, not healthy. I was playing senior year, I think I was playing football at like 175, probably pushing up towards 180 maybe on a good day. And, and then we would play our final big game on Thanksgiving against the crosstown rivals. And then wrestling would start immediately. And I wrestled 140 and on certain meets, the coach would be like, I need you to suck to 35 because, you know, he needed a stick at 35 and it was a points thing, right? You

• 17:03Speaker 01

  know, it goes. So I was like, oh my God. And that was just for four years. I was just a cycle, right? You just, you bulk up and then you cut and then, you know, and then you just hang on for track and field season in the spring. You're like, Jesus, yes, finally.

• 17:21Jocko Willink?

  And what was your plan for when you graduated? Like, what did you, did you have anything you wanted to do?

• 17:26Speaker 01

  In high school was just go to college. Um, I would have liked to have wrestled, but I went to the University of New Hampshire, in Durham, New Hampshire, and, um, and they cut the program. So, um, you know, I got a nomination to the Air Force Academy when I was coming out. You know, I thought I might go military, but, um, looking back, I don't know if I'm smart enough for that. So I was like, yeah, I'm probably a state college guy, you know, and, uh, they had a good business school. So I'm like, yeah, this will work. Close to home. And, uh, and then I, I saw, um, so let me back up. So when I went to school, it was late going to college. It was, um,

• 18:06Speaker 01

  89 was like a big crash. My dad owned a business. So it was a disaster for people that were like in the real estate and small business owners. And so, but he always found a way and, but I knew they were hurting. So I was looking for a way to help out. So, yeah, just saw this tactical flyer sitting on a telephone pole. It's like, you know, big pitch, right? Like, hey, you know, are you game? Are you, you know, you like being outside and kicking ass? And it's like, who me? You know, yeah, hell yeah. You know, and, uh, and then the last thing was like, and do you need money for college? I'm like, oh, I'm, I'm your guy.

• 18:43Jocko Willink?

  Hook, line and sinker.

• 18:43Speaker 01

  Where do I go? All the fun stuff, plus money? Yeah, let's do it. And, uh, so, yeah.

• 18:48Jocko Willink?

  And so then, all right, so you start, you start going to ROTC. That's your freshman year? You get an ROTC?

• 18:53Speaker 01

  Yep. Went right, went right over first semester.

• 18:55Jocko Willink?

  And you start taking classes and all this stuff and?

• 18:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 18:58Jocko Willink?

  Do they like issue you a uniform and stuff like that when you?

• 19:01Speaker 01

  Oh, hell yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I took an oath of office. I signed like an enlistment contract. Oh yeah. I got a three year scholarship.

• 19:08Jocko Willink?

  Oh, boom.

• 19:08Speaker 01

  Oh yeah. I was, and I was all in. I mean, yeah, the money is obviously helpful. I felt good about being able to help my parents who had adopted me and given me everything and paid for my, you know, high school and everything. Cause that, you know, that was a lot. They didn't have to do any of that for me, right? But they raised me and treated me like their own and they always have. And, uh, just indescribably grateful for that. And, uh,

• 19:32Speaker 01

  So yeah, you know, I walked through the doors at Zayas Hall at UNH and I met this E7 Sergeant Frosch class carry. And it's hilarious because I didn't know anything about the military. And I was like, hey, the fly, I think I ripped it off the pole. I'm like, hey, this, you know, it's still kind of feral. And, and that dude looked right back at me. He's like, who, who are you? What are you? Like, why are you in my building? And I'm like, this, I'm like, pointing at the flyer. He's like, use words. Like, what is wrong with you? Didn't think that through. Very impulsive. That was, that was a react, not a response. So I was so, I didn't even know what he was,

• 20:13Speaker 01

  but I was just instantly, like, snapped into whatever aura this guy was putting out.

• 20:19Jocko Willink?

  There's some kind of genetic thing going on. I'm telling you, there's something in a young man, when they see, a certain type of young man, when they see a dude, like a military dude that's squared away, there's, I don't know where we get programmed. I don't know if it's instinctive, but like, it's unstoppable. You know, somebody asked me the other day, like, what would you, if you wouldn't have gone in the Navy, what would you done? You know, I knew a guy that was a Marine Corps drill instructor. And bro, if you think that I didn't see him when I was whatever, nine years old and just be like, okay, that's what I'm doing in my life, you know, you see the guy one time in his dress blues, you're like, okay, whatever that guy is, I'm gonna go do that thing. So there's definitely, there's something, there's something there, man. There's something to the

• 20:58Jocko Willink?

  whole, the whole genetic coding of a man to be, see someone that you go, oh, that looks like the good path right there.

• 21:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, instantly drawn to whatever he was. And it's to your point, right? It's like, you just completely cast, like, it's reckless abandon. Like, I don't even know what he is. I don't know how he became what he did, but I'm willing to go do that. Like, whatever, you know, broken glass I need to crawl through, sign me up. And yeah, so he was just back in the old days, you know, it was the spits and starches. And he just looked like that guy on the poster, but he's just grizzled, just tougher than woodpecker lips. And then, and then I had the,

• 21:39Speaker 01

  as if that wasn't cool enough, my freshman year instructor, they called us, called us MS1s. We didn't know anything. We could barely spell army. But we were really enthusiastic. And so, every class has an NCO and an officer that teaches them. So our freshman instructor, officer instructor, was a guy named Captain Tom Vandal. And uh.

• 22:02Jocko Willink?

  It's a hundred percent score.

• 22:04Speaker 01

  His name.

• 22:05Jocko Willink?

  It's just.

• 22:06Speaker 01

  Captain Tom Vandal.

• 22:07Jocko Willink?

  Bro, you can't, you can't make up a character better than that. That's epic.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable. And the coolest thing is sometimes you see somebody with a cool name like that, and they don't really live up to the hype and it's kind of a bummer. Oh, no. Uh, this guy took that, that his name very seriously. So he walks in and he's, you know, about the size of you guys. I mean, just jacked. Um, and then we found out he was a West Point graduate and he went to, uh, back when they were insane and letting cadets go to Ranger school. He did that shit.

• 22:36Jocko Willink?

  Chuck.

• 22:37Speaker 01

  So he was just a killer. Fast forward, our class from ROTC went on to, um, proportionately just smash. It was insane. I mean, everybody to virtually the man went on to Ranger Regiment, Special Forces, active duty infantry leaders and just successful across the board, FBI. Um, but then if you look back, you're like, oh, okay, I get it. We weren't special. He was special. These guys were special and they just imprinted on us. And, uh, he went on to be a three star active duty. He commanded Fort, Fort Sill, Oklahoma was his last, uh,

• 23:19Speaker 01

  you know, so he was an artillery officer and he ended up being the commanding general for all artillery in the United States Army. So, I, I was my freshman instructor. So what I, just what a gift, right? Better to be lucky than good.

• 23:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's incredible how much, you know, when you're young and you get that, I always say like your first SEAL platoon, and when you're in your first SEAL platoon or at your first SEAL team, you just get so much of your DNA from it. Your mind is just getting molded. And that's what happened to you. You know, you get in there, you see these guys, you're like, okay, that's what I'm doing. That's what, that's where, that's where I'm heading. And he obviously just didn't do that to you. He did like the, all your class, which is amazing. Leadership goes a long way. So you, did you go to any of those schools or anything when you were going through ROTC? Anything that you gained from in terms of scale or knowledge?

• 24:05Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, like I said, I was a, I was a really enthusiastic young lad and, uh, I signed up for everything. So they were like, hey, we got this and you know, and it's kind of funny, but it's cool because it's. Looking back now, you can see it was like humble beginnings, but at the time it was like the most important thing in my world. I was like, I was at school to go to college and get a degree, but now it's like, whatever, because this ROTC Army thing became like my whole world. So they were like, hey, there's this thing called Ranger Challenge and it gets clowned on, right? But it's like, it gets clowned on because there's Rangers and then there's Ranger Challenge,

• 24:46Speaker 01

  right? So that's adorable. But it's something the cadets do. And it's just if you want to sign up, be part of this competitive team. And I was, I was a sport guy in high school. So I'm like, cool, this is my college sport. And you just train all the time. We trained like almost every day. It's core group of guys. And, and it was, the competition was like two days and it was just everything, right? It was shooting, it was rucking, it was orienteering, it was the PT test, it was one rope bridge for time. It was, it's kind of awesome, actually. And we'd have to be like on point, 10 out of 10 for everything. So these are the best kids from every program who were like-

• 25:26Jocko Willink?

  We need that for kid, we need that for like, younger kids. We need that for 14 year olds.

• 25:32Speaker 01

  Like 100%.

• 25:33Jocko Willink?

  I'm working on it.

• 25:34Speaker 01

  Oh, amazing. Yeah. So, so I did that for four years and we did well, you know, we, we won our region, we went to nationals and it was, it's pretty cool. But, you know, and again, I, people clown on it, but like as an example, the culminating event, they don't even let them do it anymore, I don't think. Somebody call me on this in the comments if you want. But the last event after two days of just going hard, pretty much around the clock was a 10K ruck run. And it was full kit, helmet, you know, 35, 40 pound pack, you know, boots. And you just go. I mean, it's as fast as you can go. And I mean, that doesn't sound like

• 26:15Speaker 01

  much like, oh, you're just out there shuffling and you know, it's like, uh, these are young kids and we want to win. So we were flying and we're screaming at each other like, let's go pick it up, you know, and there's other teams that are coming up behind us. And I'm like, you know, we got the guide on, everybody carries their stick. And it was, it was just an awesome space for young leaders to just cut their teeth and, and lean in. Wasn't required, but if you wanted to, right? It was there for you. And I, things like that got me so prepared for what was to come next, right? Which is the commission and the military career.

• 26:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you get commissioned. You get commissioned. Did you get commissioned to active duty?

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:00Jocko Willink?

  Right out of the gate. So then, and then as an infantry officer?

• 27:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:03Jocko Willink?

  So then what's next? Infantry officer, basic course?

• 27:05Speaker 01

  Uh, school for boys. Yeah. For Benning. Uh, spent a year plus down there goofing around. So the infantry officer, basic course, infantry mortar leader course, because all the Okonas guys got to go to mortar school. So I was going to Alaska, which is technically-

• 27:23Jocko Willink?

  How were those courses when you were going? How was like, you know, this, what year is this?

• 27:26Speaker 01

  Uh, this is 95. So yeah, graduated, uh, May 20, 95. I was in Benning 72 hours later. So just light it up.

• 27:36Jocko Willink?

  And you know, talking to guys in the midst of Vietnam, like 10 years into Vietnam, whatever, four years into Vietnam, with guys that went to officer candidate school, or the Marine Corps basic school, or the Marine Corps infantry officer school, whatever. Those guys were so prepared because you had all these veterans that were just like, oh, you're going to go be a platoon commander in whatever, 14 weeks or 28 weeks, you will be ready. And they were. You talk to those guys like they were able to prepare them for combat. What was it? How was it going through infantry officer, basic school in 95, when there's no wars going on? I guess you might've had a couple, like maybe some Panama veterans or something like that. But you wouldn't have, you wouldn't be surrounded like by,

• 28:21Jocko Willink?

  like the guys were during the Vietnam period where everybody there is a, like a legit combat veteran, just a different time.

• 28:28Speaker 01

  Hmm. Yeah, it's, it's a great question. Once again, I lucked out. I don't know what the rest of it looked like, but for me, um, I had a young- At the time, young captain coming out of the 75th as my platoon OIC.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Guy named Captain Megardishian, Arag Megardishian, and a super hard charger and the NCOs were equally as tough and I don't know what happened. Maybe they decided since nothing was going on to send all the pipe hitters to the schoolhouse, but yeah, it was no, no quarter asked, none given. And they rode us like donkeys and we got worked. So it was great. And, you know, I had the opportunity to go to air assault school as a cadet and almost failed out, which was brutal. How'd you almost fail out?

• 29:22Speaker 01

  Part of the course is you gotta, you gotta inspect and call out gigs on sling loads for helicopters. And you gotta find all the mistakes. They put the gigs in there. That's like being a jump master, same thing. They put gigs in. Correct. Yeah. So as a 19 year old, first year. You didn't quite have the eye for it. Yeah, I was kind of still figuring out how to wear my boots. So, you know, public service announcement, kids, air assault school, not a great choice with a whole year of ROTC under your belt. So I failed three out of the four first time through. So I basically was blade running.

• 30:05Speaker 01

  And I had to go pass all three on the second runner. I was going home and got the first one, got the second one. And then on the last retest, I had a couple instructors that were just screaming at my face about what a waste of taxpayer money I was and just hurry up and fail, et cetera. And yeah, with a few seconds left, I found the last one and then I blacked out. I didn't even know it was happening. It's like, this is insane. So yeah, that, that, and then so fast forward to, back to Benning, went to mortar school. That was tough. I don't do math. So that was brutal. But we got through it and then airborne school, which is pretty straightforward. What year? Did you go to airborne school?

• 30:49Speaker 01

  I think that was, oh boy, was that early? Yeah. I think that was early 96. Okay. I went to airborne school in like 1990.

• 31:01Jocko Willink?

  One, so.

• 31:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:03Jocko Willink?

  Yep. I forget that I'm not only older than you, but I was also an enlisted guy. So I didn't have four years of college. Yeah, check.

• 31:08Speaker 01

  Right, right. Yeah. And that's the thing, right? Like, so you're even further ahead in terms of your career.

• 31:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 31:13Speaker 01

  Um, than I was. And then, uh, and then of course, waiting at the end of all that nonsense was Ranger School. So went and got that thing done and, uh.

• 31:22Jocko Willink?

  Did you, you know, nowadays there's all kinds of information out there about Ranger School and what it is and how to prepare. Same thing with like SEAL training things. Same thing with SF selection. Like there's, there's freaking paid courses you can do for those things. When I went to Buzz, I didn't know a damn thing about Buzz. I didn't know, I knew you did pull ups, push ups, and I knew you ran and swim. And so what I, to get ready for Buzz, I like did pull ups, push ups and ran and swam. But, you know, I, if I did a pull up workout, I'd go and do like four sets of pull ups. And I thought I was pretty good to go. I didn't realize that what you were going to be doing, literally hundreds of sets of, you were going to do hundreds of pull ups in a workout. You know, I would do like 27 pull ups or something. Be like, oh, pretty good, pretty good to go, you know?

• 32:07Jocko Willink?

  You just didn't know. And swimming, like, oh yeah, I swam, you know, the, the test is 500 meters. So I'll swim 500 meters and I'll do that twice. I didn't know I was going to be swimming five, five nautical, or whatever it is, five nautical miles or.

• 32:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:21Jocko Willink?

  You're just like totally different. How much did you know about Ranger School? What'd you do to prepare for it?

• 32:26Speaker 01

  What I could read, um, the interwebs wasn't really a thing back then. So, you know, thankfully, when I was in, um, ROTC in college, you know, we were, that court group I talked about, um, they were all my best friends. And, uh, so not only was it Ranger Challenge, but we also had like a military fraternity. It's called the 10th New Hampshire Volunteers, based on a, a tip of the hat to the, um, to the Civil War era, uh, division from New Hampshire and, uh.

• 32:57Speaker 01

  So yeah, we, you know, standard fraternal organization, you know, pledged in and had to know the Ranger creed and studied SH 2176 Ranger handbook. So I had a real cheat code. So by the time we all got to Ranger school, it was, we were way ahead of our peers and everybody from my crew at UNH, RTC was a first time goes zero recycler. Damn dude, that's impressive. And that's credit to the program. I mean, it was that good if you stepped into it, took what it had to offer and we all took everything it had to offer, you know? And so yeah, we had a unfair advantage. Didn't make it suck any less, you know, but, but you know, it sucks way less when you don't recycle.

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was gonna say it sucks. It does suck less. It sucks about half when you only have to do it once. So really no factor though. Uh, just don't quit. Uh, one day at a time. Um, it's gonna be super hard. Just make peace with that going in. How much weight do you lose? Forty. Damn. Yeah, it was like another weight cut. I think my body was set up all those years later. It was like muscle memory, maybe? For a weight cut? Yeah, cause my body for years had done a weight cut for wrestling. So when I got back in that, my body was like, oh, I know what this is. And I was like, no, don't do that. Uh, but yeah, 40 pounds. Cause you don't get the recycle, the fat and back up and you know, kind of move forward. That's the only upside of recycling is you get to kinda.

• 34:25Speaker 01

  Would you start at like a 180? You started at that, you think? Uh, probably about 170. So yeah. So you were 130? Oh yeah. It was full on rib cage. Just, yeah, it was, there was nothing left. They, so we were the anniversary class. I don't know if you remember in 95,

• 34:45Speaker 01

  uh, four Ranger students died in, uh, down in, uh, Swamp, Swamp Phase down in Florida. From exposure. They, they hyped out, right? Yeah, they got lost in a patrol. Uh, they got turned around in the water, couldn't get out. And you know, by then you're like, there's nothing to you. There's no way to stay warm.

• 35:05Speaker 01

  So we were the anniversary class. Congressional mandate was that. They study, the army, you know, have docs and stuff come in and study. They wanted to use us as kind of a benchmark to say like, okay, a year ago this happened. What have we done to mitigate this? So every phase, when we checked in and then every phase, we got like a whole series of tests done to us. There's these little pods we go in and sit in and then take all of our, you know, whatever, I don't know, data. And so at the end of it, we got out briefed. So it was, you know, it's the stuff you don't want to know, right? It's like, all right. So, you know, 72 days later, you, uh, you've lost 40 pounds, you're 3.1% body fat.

• 35:44Speaker 01

  And you've taken an average of, I forget what the number was, but it was like something like eight years off your life or some crazy thing like that. And I'm like, why are you telling me this? Like, cause we have to, right? So it was, it was kind of nutty. I, I don't know if that ever happened with other classes, but that's something I didn't see coming, wasn't expecting. And, you know, I was like, huh, okay. Well, let's not do this again. That wasn't, that wasn't very helpful. Yeah. Effectively your body's dying. I mean, you know, the dealer, right? Training, I mean, at a certain point, it's not sustainable.

• 36:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's weird. The big, the big difference with SEAL training is, um, you know, they feed you. They feed you during SEAL training and they feed you a lot. Like it's, it's incredible, but they, they completely physically destroy you over and over and over and over and over again. So personally, I'll take the food, you know, I, I think I, I think I picked the right service, you know, when it comes to my, you know, my least favorite inconvenience in life. Like I like to eat and so I think that makes it good, but damn, they, but they definitely beat the living shit out of you in basic SEAL training, no doubt.

• 36:53Jocko Willink?

  You know, they, they figure out a way and all the selections, you know, people always ask me about the selections, like they, the instructors, there's, they figure out a way. They're going to get rid of people that don't really want to be there. And that's all there is to it. Um, so then where'd, where'd you get assigned after this? Get done with Ranger School?

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Uh, yep. Um, was, uh, driving out of Benning, heading back up to the Northeast, Sea Family, um, checking real quick.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Drop by Delana to see all my buddies that I left in mountains because they were getting ready to go to Florida. So I dropped by and I paid them a visit and it's kind of neat because I had my tab, you know, rolled in, got to put my rank back on my uniform. So I rolled into all of, all the black hats that I had just, you know, all the ranger instructors and all that, you know, that was, that was a cool dynamic. But I said, hey, can I go down and just, you know, knock those guys up, wish them, wish them well. And so I smuggled in like six dozen Dunkin' Donuts and I let those boys just, I turned them loose. And I'm sure the, I'm sure the instructors kind of might've had an idea of what I was up to, but they kind of, you know, looked the other way. So yeah, it was like, there was just jelly and powder and just inside my Jeep, you know, I was like, boys, come out

• 38:02Speaker 01

  here, man, check out my Jeep. And they're like, we don't want it, man. We're tired. I'm like, no, no, seriously. Open up the door. They're like, and it looked like there was like a, like a couple velociraptors inside my Jeep. The whole thing was just bananas. They walked out of there like, oh, yeah. So I kind of funny story, but like I always thought, you know, man, if I could ever pull this off and get in here and hook these boys up, that'd be pretty cool. So it was kind of neat. But yeah, I flew up to New Hampshire, saw everybody, which was great. And then I, I drove my Jeep almost 7,000 miles up to Fairbanks, Alaska, took the Alaska Canadian Highway, just paper maps, no GPS, just kind of me and Alanis Morissette on the CD player. That was it.

• 38:45Jocko Willink?

  I'm trying to think of a really catchy tune, man, because that was a big one.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 38:50Jocko Willink?

  You want to know? Was it, you want to know? Don't want to know?

• 38:52Speaker 01

  I think it's you ought to know.

• 38:53Jocko Willink?

  You ought to know. There you go. Coming with the clutch, clutch memory over there, bro. Nicely done.

• 38:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:00Jocko Willink?

  Whatever happened to Alanis Morissette? Dang, I don't know. I'll have to go search. I'm sure there's 30 different YouTube videos about what happened to Alanis Morissette. I did see a YouTube video, now that I think about it, about, there's like a guy that she wrote that song about. It's like a known, like there was some guy, and this poor dude's out there like, bruh, hey, I just didn't, I didn't think we were a good fit. You know what I mean? And she's like, you ought to know.

• 39:28Speaker 01

  It wasn't you, it was me.

• 39:31Jocko Willink?

  Oh, props to Alana, Alana's Morissette. All right. So now you get up there. So your first job is what is platoon? You platoon right out of the gate?

• 39:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it jumped me into a platoon.

• 39:44Speaker 01

  Charlie Company, one seventeen infantry, Artic light, sixth infantry division.

• 39:48Jocko Willink?

  Did you have any, did you have a choice to go to Alaska or was that just what you got assigned?

• 39:51Speaker 01

  It's my number one choice.

• 39:53Jocko Willink?

  And why was that? You wanted to do cold weather? You wanted to, what was the reason?

• 39:58Speaker 01

  Call of the wild, Jack London, and just growing up in New England. I was like, this is going to be awesome. The last frontier. I just wanted to see it, experience it.

• 40:06Jocko Willink?

  Was that your first time going out? Oh, because you did Oklahoma. Did you ever see the Rockies, though?

• 40:11Speaker 01

  And I was too young. Yeah.

• 40:13Jocko Willink?

  So when you were driving out west, it's freaking kind of epic, huh?

• 40:18Speaker 01

  Unbelievable. Yeah.

• 40:20Jocko Willink?

  Bro, I took, I took Pete Roberts, who's from Maine, who's at origin. And we went, we went up to Montana and it was like his first time going out west. And you know, he lives in the, what the foothills of eastern Maine, right? Like it's, it's mountainous rugged terrain for New England. But he was like, God, like I forget the tallest, the tallest mountain. I forget how tall it is in Maine. It's tumble down mountain and I forget what the altitude of it is, but it was like where, where we were staying in Montana

• 41:00Jocko Willink?

  was twice the altitude of the tallest mountain in Maine. And it was not even like close to the top of the mountain itself. So yeah, going out west, man, is a whole, it's, it must've been for you as a person that likes the outdoors. And you're driving out there. You must've been just going, oh yeah, this is what we came for.

• 41:19Speaker 01

  It was amazing. Everybody was like, you're an idiot. Why did you pick Alaska? They were picking eighty second, hundred and first, twenty fifth and Hawaii. I'm like, come on. I'm like the fishing, the hunting, the mountains. Are you kidding me? They're like the cold, the darkness. I'm like, it's fine. It'll be fine. It's all good.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  And the idea of just being a extreme cold weather mountain leader really appealed to me. I'm like, okay, I did airborne school, eighty second, whatever. Cool. Check that block. It's whatever. Hundred and first air assault, neat, but Kentucky, no thanks. So I just kind of worked through it and I'm like, it just always seemed like. The clear option for me. I was like, this is incredible. I get to go to, paid to go to Alaska and do all this cool stuff. So yeah, hunted and fished the whole deal. Got to be a PL. You know, went to the National Training Center. I went to the jungle, jungle survival school in SEER in Malaysia. That was kind of neat. Yeah. And hunted and fished my ass off for four years, which was incredible. You know, Mount McKinley, just seeing it in person is.

• 42:25Jocko Willink?

  And so are you thinking the army as a career at this point?

• 42:28Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. And, and specifically to your question, it was on brand at this point, right? Onward and upward. So what's next? Right?

• 42:42Speaker 01

  Went to Ranger School, fine. PL time, cool. When am I eligible to go to selection? Like that was always the path. There was no, it's amazing, you know, how, what clarity you get with no options. So I just never had another option. I'm like, I'm going to selection. I did O2P, right? First Lieutenant Promotable. Had to wait. Did XO time, whatever. And I'm like, okay. And then I, and then the wild card got played. And I met someone who would become my future wife. And, and then as things happen, big jobs. We got pregnant and my daughter was born in, in Fairbanks. So she's an Alaska kid. And as y'all know, you know, that, that changes everything. The calculus got totally changed at that juncture. So.

• 43:29Speaker 01

  You know, I had to get sober real fast on, you know, my priorities, like what's important, what matters? You know, I'm like a 26 year old kid trying to figure that out, you know, good luck. And talked to some guys who were in SF and they were like, yeah, bro, it's awesome. Like the training, the kit, the deployment, like it's all awesome. It's everything like you'd think it is. It's, it's, you know.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  But it's not super awesome for families. So you gotta just know that upfront. So, yeah, I made like probably the toughest professional decision to that point in my life. And I just said, all right, I'm gonna give up the dream. I'm gonna choose my family. And I resigned my active duty commission.

• 44:10Jocko Willink?

  Did you have a plan on what you were gonna do like for a job?

• 44:15Speaker 01

  It's gonna be an Alaska state trooper.

• 44:17Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 44:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that didn't work out when my wife told me that she was not staying in Alaska.

• 44:25Jocko Willink?

  Was she not from Alaska?

• 44:27Speaker 01

  No, she's from Alabama.

• 44:28Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 44:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, boy. So, so we went back to New England because that's where my roots were. And I'm like, all right, good launch point. We'll, we'll reassess and then we'll go from there. So I was gonna go into law enforcement, applying for a bunch of cop jobs, state, local, federal. And, uh, but I was drilling this, uh, this old NCO in Alaska when I was getting done. He had to go around and do the sign out checklist. And he's like, hey, you want to think about the guard? And I'm like, of course, I'm an active duty punk kid. So I'm like, they're losers or whatever. I said, right. Weekend warriors, some trope.

• 45:11Speaker 01

  And, uh, and he's like, hey, don't sleep on it, man. You got four years in, you know? You can just do this as a side hustle, you know, get your 20 down the road. Who knows? And I owe that man a beer because I said, you know what? Why not? And, uh, I said, what do you got for infantry in the air? He goes, I got this three, one, seven, two infantry mountain thing. And I'm like, I don't even know what that is, but sign me up, man. It sounds cool. And, uh, so I went back there, started drilling with those cats. First drill showed up and I was like, hey, this kind of feels like home because they had a lot of the kit that we had in Alaska. And Akiyo ten stove rubs, snowshoes, skis, you know, over whites, the whole deal. And I'm like, oh, this is awesome.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  Except they did the mountaineering thing too. So they got, you know, they climb rock, ice, all this cool. I'm like, this is awesome.

• 46:04Speaker 01

  And but I did walk in with a little bit of chip on my shoulder too, right? Coming off active duty with all the all the Gucci flag on the uniform, you know? And and I was immediately humbled. These guys were just really good and coming from all parts, right? I mean, there's a ton of active duty, you know, army dudes, Marines, everybody, right? So this unit was kind of like an aggregator for like all service talent. Like if you were kind of a pipe hitter, a go getter, like this was the unit you kind of jumped into. Because you didn't come to drill weekend for, you know,

• 46:38Jocko Willink?

  To sit around or whatever.

• 46:39Speaker 01

  Football and beer and barbecue, like you came to get wrecked. And we worked people, you know, like guys went home.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Empty and they loved it, you know? That's what they were expecting. So great, great initial impression. And then after a few drills with those cats, they're like, hey, what are you doing? I'm like, I don't know, I'm gonna be a cop. And they're like, you want to put your boots back on full time? I'm like, is that a thing? They're like, yeah. I was like, okay.

• 47:06Jocko Willink?

  What percentage of people do that?

• 47:08Speaker 01

  Small number. I don't know exactly, but probably depends on the size of the organization and guard. Vermont's tiny, but it's got a huge guard. So, you know, if I had to guess, I'd probably say 10 percentage.

• 47:19Jocko Willink?

  Is it, are they like, is it hard for them to recruit to get guys to do that?

• 47:23Speaker 01

  No.

• 47:24Jocko Willink?

  Or is it easy?

• 47:24Speaker 01

  Oh, no, it's a very sought after thing.

• 47:27Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 47:28Speaker 01

  Folks who know better, been around for a while, they're constantly, you know, putting in for those. That's this big aspiration for a lot of folks. They're like, hey, I want to go full time, you know? And some of them have been active duty before, some of them haven't. But for me, I was just getting off and I didn't even know you could be full time in the guard. I just thought everybody was, you know, obviously it makes sense. Someone's got to be around to keep the toilet paper in the bathroom, right? So it's, so yeah, so I said, you know what? These LE pipelines are like so slow and the process is just brutal. And I have a family to support. So packed my shit and went to Vermont.

• 48:01Jocko Willink?

  Boom.

• 48:02Speaker 01

  Yep, done.

• 48:04Jocko Willink?

  What year is this?

• 48:06Speaker 01

  Ninety nine.

• 48:07Jocko Willink?

  So ninety nine, are there things like deployments that happened in the nineties with when there's no war going on? Or was it all just kind of like, oh, we'll go on a, you know, like a one month deployment to whatever Italy or something like that? Is that pretty much what it was like?

• 48:24Speaker 01

  An active duty, yeah, yeah, it was just the user pack exercises, CTCs, things like that. And the guard, um, we, uh, there's a lot going on in terms of, I mean, obviously we had a lot less time to work with, right? We only had them one week in a month and two weeks continuous during the year. But we maximized, we had great relationships kind of around the globe. We had great partnerships with some active duty units. You know, we ended up, as an example, we had a great relationship with the one seventy third in Vincenza, Italy. Went over there and did some, you know, training with them, some mountaineering training with their, their folks, spinning them up for Afghanistan. And went to CMTC with them, did a rotation with them, um, Alpha Company did, so, yeah.

• 49:04Jocko Willink?

  So where are you when September eleventh happens?

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Guarding the state headquarters. So, uh, yeah, when that went down, they immediately, the, the adjutant general gave the call and said, hey, I want the infantry guys spun up. And so, yeah, we were guarding critical infrastructure. Cause nobody knew what was going on, right? So, um, yeah, we immediately got mobilized locally and, and took care of that mission.

• 49:31Jocko Willink?

  How long did it take before you were like, oh, this is gonna last for a while and I'm probably gonna go to war?

• 49:37Speaker 01

  Not very, but we didn't know, so like I said, we helped spin up some of the units that were going out the door to like Operation Anaconda in early, early Afghanistan.

• 49:47Jocko Willink?

  Didn't you think it was gonna be like, oh, this will be over in two months?

• 49:51Speaker 01

  We didn't know what to think, honestly, there was no precedent, right? I mean, I, I remember Gulf War one and that was.

• 49:56Jocko Willink?

  Three days?

• 49:57Speaker 01

  Operation Steamroller, yeah, that was quick. Uh, and with the guard, and I'm not active duty anymore, so I'm like, all right, you know, maybe help get some guys ready, you know, I don't know.

• 50:11Speaker 01

  And then it started dawning on us that yeah, there was some serious mission creep and this thing was expanding and we were probably gonna get pulled in at some point, some way. And then way earlier than we expected, Vermont got sourced. And somehow I got pulled onto that team to go over to Afghanistan with them.

• 50:32Jocko Willink?

  And what was that deployment like? What was your mission?

• 50:37Speaker 01

  The mission, as I recall it, was to be a member of a, what we called the ANA TAG, the Afghan National Army Training Assistance Group. So of course, my mind immediately went to, you know, MACV SOG. You know, I'm like, it was not that. They deployed us with pistols.

• 51:01Jocko Willink?

  Oh shit.

• 51:02Speaker 01

  I kid you not. We literally deployed to Afghanistan with M9s.

• 51:09Speaker 01

  So not MACV SOG.

• 51:13Speaker 01

  Whatever the opposite of MACV SOG is, that's what we were. So yeah, Training Assistance Group, we were part of CJTF Phoenix, Combined Joint Task Force Phoenix, big old tent with a bunch of folks under it. ISAF, the International Security Assistance Forces was there.

• 51:31Jocko Willink?

  And what was your job?

• 51:33Speaker 01

  So I was a embedded trainer, specifically with the enlisted side of the Afghan National Army. So myself and a small rabble of folks built a little compound down in the vicinity of where the barracks were for all the enlisted guys and called it the Alamo. And we ripped out with, I believe it was guys from 3rd Group who were doing that, you know, that's kind of their gig, right? So they were doing that, but they had to free them up to go do other stuff. So we came in and took the torch and we just worked with our Afghan counterparts, officers, NCOs, the Brits had the NCOs, the French had the officers.

• 52:17Speaker 01

  So it was kind of, oh yes, NCOES and then basic training. So we got the JNDIs, the enlisted kids. So.

• 52:28Speaker 01

  We had an amazing interpreter, so don't sleep on that. That's, that's huge. Um, he was amazing. And, uh, in fact, he's now a US citizen, working on his PhD, uh, for, uh, I believe Boeing, uh, married, got a couple of kids and he absolutely loves this country. Like more than most Americans I know. It's, it's pretty awesome. Yeah.

• 52:52Jocko Willink?

  So did you guys, do you guys just train them? Did you guys go out in the operations, advise and assist or anything like that or no?

• 52:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we did. Specifically, we were, um, creating what would be their kind of trade off, if you will, for the enlisted folks. So, basic rifle marksmanship. AK-47. What does that look like? So, you know, we were literally starting at square one, right? And, and it was a wicked steep learning curve. We had to get targets and then we figured out there was a special tool to adjust the front sight post and

• 53:26Jocko Willink?

  That they didn't have.

• 53:28Speaker 01

  How do we source? Oh no, of course they didn't, right? Uh, which was great when they were shooting at us. Um, and you know, PT, we had to develop the ANA physical fitness program.

• 53:38Jocko Willink?

  That must have been amazing.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  It was awesome. Um, if you've ever seen them do jumping jacks, it's like the greatest show on earth and, uh, and, uh, so yeah, so we, we did the PT testing, rifle marksmanship thing, the basic tactics. We'd go out and do sticks lanes and sand tables and kind of work them through the basics of maneuver and we knew that there was definitely some bad actors embedded with, uh, folks and we were just trying to figure out who was who in the zoo with the interpreters and, uh, still running around with our pistols, you know, so we're just, uh, it was a little weird. Um, but we were making, making the most of it and getting after it and, uh,

• 54:21Speaker 01

  And they eventually did, I think the chief of National Guard Bureau, General Blum came over and he's like, why do you, why are you carrying an AK? I'm like, well, actually, sir, this is an AMD-64. It's a commando AK. He's like, same question. So I was like, cause I got deployed with a pistol. So he fixed that in a hurry. So it was nice to have an M4.

• 54:45Speaker 01

  And yeah, so we went out and we did all that training with them. Didn't really see a whole bunch in terms of kinetics, you know, it was more of a trained, advised support.

• 54:55Jocko Willink?

  How long was the deployment?

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Seven months. Yeah, seven months. I mean, it's not that it wasn't kinetic. I mean, a whole bus full of Germans got, you know, dusted going into KIA on their way home, which was brutal. That was our first day in the battle space. We were flying in, they were flying out and they just, there was like a smoldering bus at the entrance to the airport as we were driving out to go to Camp Phoenix. So, welcome to Afghanistan, right? So it wasn't that it wasn't nothing, but it just, you know,

• 55:23Speaker 01

  and I think we got in like one firefight and it wasn't that big a deal and, you know, so, seven months tip to tail. And got home and carried on.

• 55:34Jocko Willink?

  And then, did you immediately roll into now take company command? When you got home?

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I'd already commanded HHC in the mountain battalion, 3172. Then I went to Afghanistan, came back and they left me in charge, big mistake of what was left of the battalion.

• 55:54Speaker 01

  And so I was having a blast, like just coming back from deployment, the battalion command group was forward in Afghanistan. So I was like, this is awesome. I just get to be in charge of this awesome toy. So AT is like two weeks. That's what everybody knows, right? Guards two weeks. So I was like, hey, we're doing a split AT. And everybody's like, what's that? And I'm like, oh, wait for it. So we did a week of winter AT where we did like what I call the winter Olympics. I borrowed it from Alaska. It was like the coolest thing. We did like Akio sled races and ski races and just all kinds of cool stuff. And it was a blast. Did you ski growing up? I did. So you knew how to ski and that's a big bonus.

• 56:36Speaker 01

  Oh, it is. Yeah. I grew up in the cold and the snow. So I was in my element. And then we took the other week. And so that was like in January, February. So I got back in December. I think I got back on Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve, one of those. So I mean, this is like the next month we're doing AT. And then so fast forward to the summer, we do the other week and I took the battalion minus up into the White Mountains in New Hampshire. And we broke into small unit teams, like three to six man teams. And we started on the north end of the Presidential Mountain Range, which is the highest range in the north on the East Coast. And turned the boys loose. I hacked up the night before and just checked them in as they came across the top of Mount Madison. And they just, I turned

• 57:21Speaker 01

  them loose on the entire range. And I said, two and a half days, we meet on the summit of Mount Washington, boys, don't be late. And they just got after it and it was awesome. And, and then we met there for a ceremony to commemorate the World War II 10th Mountain Vets. So every year they go up there and they have a wreath and they honor those warriors. And so we got to participate in that after, you know, getting after it up there for almost three days in the mountains, getting rained on and just brutal terrain up above tree line. And it was awesome. And I think the boys had a good time. And yeah, I just remember one of the old timers, like 90 years old, one of the World War II vets, mountain guy, Mount Belvedere, and you know, that kind of deal. Looks at my rucksack. And by then

• 58:06Speaker 01

  it'd be being rained on and it's just nasty. It's probably, I don't know, 50, 60 pounds at that point. He says, you mind if I try that on? And I said, sure, it's a little heavy though. And he's like, he laughs at me, like 90 years old. He leans into it, picks it up, bounces it a couple of times on our shoulders. He goes, oh, that's nice.

• 58:26Speaker 01

  He's like, the old leather straps used to just chew right into our shoulders. You guys got it good. I'm like,

• 58:33Speaker 01

  Man, just when you thought you were like stud now, you're just like, you just felt so small in this man's presence. And so, yeah, just an honor to be there to celebrate that with them, to honor them.

• 58:46Jocko Willink?

  So then, when did you start getting word that you're gonna deploy again?

• 58:51Speaker 01

  It was shortly before that, I believe. So that was like summer, we did that. And shortly before, shortly after. So I'd been over at six months, seven months, whatever at that point. And then it's, yeah, we got sourced, the armor battalion 1172, Colonel Michael Lovejoy's battalion. And then he and leadership decided, hey, we need an infantry company to fill out, right? The rest of Task Force Sabre 1172. So we got told, hey, Alpha Company's going. I was asked to step back up and go back over to Iraq this time.

• 59:34Speaker 01

  It just made sense. Options were limited. We had a bunch of folks forward in Afghanistan at the time. And I was one of the few guys with, you know, recent or post 911 deployment experience.

• 59:49Speaker 01

  Needless to say, my wife was not thrilled.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  But she supported me, which I really appreciate. Because I don't know who else was really there. But it was, it was clear to me, like, it was obvious, like, you need to step up and do this thing.

• 1:00:04Jocko Willink?

  So then, once you find out that, so again, this was a little, we were talking about it before we hit record. So the 1172, which is an armor unit, gets tasked to go on deployment with the 228. They need infantry guys to go with them. And so, but they don't have them. So they pulled you guys from the 3172 to kind of task organize under the 1172 to go on this deployment. And how much, like, how much time did you have, once you get that order, do they tell you, okay, you're gonna have this much time to do a workup and prepare for deployment? And how much time do you get for that?

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, they did, they do. And it was a lot.

• 1:00:49Speaker 01

  From notification, home station, notification, the selection of my team. That was shortish, you know, probably four months, 120 days or so. It was great. Got to pick who I wanted. So it was, you know, merit based and who was available too. But I definitely got to pick, you know,

• 1:01:10Speaker 01

  those folks who I thought were going to be equal to the And how many, how big was your, how many guys were in your company? So at the time, Alpha Company was probably close to 150, but we had to fall in on a tank manning document, staffing document, which was called it an MTO, which was 63. So it was like less than a half of what we're typically used to. So bad news, didn't have the numbers. Good news, I got to pick the, you know, the right folks. And that's not to say folks that didn't go weren't studs, but just I had a limited number of slots. And so, but I'm like, but we're not in tanks. I'm like, we're infantry. We're going to be in Humvees. I'm not, I'm not putting infantry dudes in tanks.

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  I don't make this make sense, right? And it's like, oh, you'll, we'll figure it out. We got plenty of time. So we went to Camp Shelby, Mississippi. That's the MOB station. So for the guard folks, I don't know what active duty looks like, but for the guard folks, they make us go to this, at least at that time, they made us go to these mobilization stations. And I'd never been to Mississippi, unique experience. And there was a very substantial prescribed training plan that would validate all of the deploying units to make sure we were ready to go. And it was run by First Army, I believe. And most of the folks that were running it were all like reserve instructors and whatnot.

• 1:02:38Speaker 01

  So it was just super interesting in terms of, and again, I say this with, you know, just a mountain of humility, but like the unit, the mountain battalion 3172 is just, they're just different, right?

• 1:02:53Speaker 01

  So that's probably fair, right? To have this really long prescriptive.

• 1:02:59Speaker 01

  Training program that you just run everybody through because you gotta make sure folks don't go up there and get wrecked.

• 1:03:04Jocko Willink?

  Setting a baseline of combat skills.

• 1:03:07Speaker 01

  Exactly. So the problem with that for us was we already held ourselves to a very high standard. So

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  it was humbling. We learned a lot about patience and just having to reframe everything and hunt the good. It was, it was a tough.

• 1:03:25Jocko Willink?

  Were you working with the, with the 1172 down there?

• 1:03:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, we were all down there together with the 228. General Gronski was there. We were all there together, right? But it's just, units are different levels, right? So it was probably great for, you know.

• 1:03:38Jocko Willink?

  But at least you got interoperability with the 1172. At least you guys got to see tanks and Bradleys. Did they, they had tanks, their tanks and Bradleys down there?

• 1:03:44Speaker 01

  We, we saw them. Uh, yep. Interesting. Uh, you know, they shook the ground. They were loud. We were like, ooh, ah, you know, dumbfounded guys. It was though, an amazing time.

• 1:03:57Speaker 01

  And I learned this, that the, the opportunity, that the value in that experience wasn't necessarily like the horse blanket, right? It's this huge five month training plan where they got stuff for us every day. Wasn't that. What's, there's sort of some good stuff there? Sure. Right? The real value is in all the space between, right? It's, it's, you know, downtime. Uh-uh. There was really no downtime for us. Everything was uptime. So we would find space to work on the things that we knew we needed to work on, you know, things like,

• 1:04:28Speaker 01

  you know, what are we gonna do?

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  What does vehicle recovery look like? What does it really look like? So IED strike, boom, right? How are we gonna self-recover? What's, what kind of injuries are we anticipating, right? How do we deal with that? And so, and that was all the guys. That was all my NCOs, my junior leaders. Like they were so game. They would be out there just. Just making things up. I mean, they were drafting SOPs. They were creating these really cool like, okay, we hook it up. I mean, we were, they were already pulling Humvees across the lawn outside the barracks, trying to figure out what would work. And, you know, or they'd be like running each other around in stretchers, trying to stick each other and just, you know, all right, put them in the back of the truck. And they were trying to do live sticks while we were rolling down the roads or, you know, flying around in a helicopter. So, so yeah, just all those opportunities to like, you know, okay, fine, we gotta go check the block here. But like, let's do some cool.

• 1:05:16Jocko Willink?

  So you guys did training beyond the, the prescribed training? And that's where you really started to gain some skillsets?

• 1:05:22Speaker 01

  Correct. And that's where, that's really what defined this organization. Like at every level enlisted, you know, the NCOs, the officers, they, everybody prescribed to that, right? It wasn't just, what's the minimum block I need to check? It was more like the PT test. What's the max? How many do I have to do to get a hundred percent? Right? That was the mentality. And, um, so there was a lot of good stuff. We did some combatives. Um, I tore my knee before we deployed.

• 1:05:46Jocko Willink?

  Good job.

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  So yeah, awesome. Just over, overachiever, you know?

• 1:05:50Jocko Willink?

  And, and how was it working with, uh, Colonel Gronski?

• 1:05:54Speaker 01

  Uh, good. Yeah. Uh, getting to know everybody. Didn't see him a whole lot. He's a busy guy. Obviously got a whole brigade combat team to deploy. Um, but what I saw him was solid, super high energy guy. Um, seemed really authentic. And, uh, I would learn, um, months later, when we did our final task organization, that I owed that man a huge debt of gratitude for the combat power that he eventually gave me. So.

• 1:06:23Jocko Willink?

  And now, do you guys know, at what point do you find out where you're deploying to?

• 1:06:28Speaker 01

  Uh, heard about it before. We went to Mobe Station, got it confirmed while we were at Mobe Station. And, uh, that's when it got real.

• 1:06:36Jocko Willink?

  So you guys know that you're going to Ramadi?

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:06:38Jocko Willink?

  And what do you see? This is what, 2004, 2005?

• 1:06:43Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we got to Mobe Station, January 2005. So Phantom Fury and Fallujah just happened. So.

• 1:06:50Jocko Willink?

  So you couldn't really identify how bad Ramadi was gonna be? Yet.

• 1:06:57Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:06:58Jocko Willink?

  I mean, Ramadi was bad. I mean, I remember 2003, 2004, Ramadi was bad. Ramadi and Fallujah, Fallujah definitely had a worse reputation going into, into Fallujah was like definitely a, a thing. And then, cause my first deployment was in Baghdad, but we'd travel all over the place. But Fallujah was like, oh yeah, this is the, this is the really bad area you don't want to go. Oh yeah. And then there's this other place, Ramadi next to it. You, you really don't want to go there either. So, but it didn't have the, the full on reputation that would come later for both those cities, you know, eventually. Because what happened was when Phantom Fury took place, all those bad guys that left Fallujah, they rolled right over to Ramadi and set up shop. So.

• 1:07:37Speaker 01

  Thank you, Marine Corps brothers.

• 1:07:42Jocko Willink?

  So you, so you get done with like this big block of training and then you're getting ready, you, you go on deployment. Is there any final prep that you remember? Anything else you need to talk about?

• 1:07:53Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah. Again, I'll just share this because it, um, it represents what's possible. Um, and again, I'm speaking more from like a, maybe a guard units perspective, um, but maybe for AC2. So there's this prescribed training, you stick to it, you don't deviate, whatever. I don't know how it happened still. Um, whoever I owe ultimate credit to, thank you. I'll give it to, you know, Mark Lovejoy as my commander, cause he blessed off on it. Um, but thank you to the leadership in Vermont too, because they sent a couple of hooligans down in a 15 packs van, um, with a, an enormous amount of training resources. And, uh, we got permission to bug out from Camp Shelby for a week and we went north

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  to a little guard base called, uh, post called Camp McCain. And, uh, we ran a one week, uh, what we call one of our NCOs who would go on to be one of my platoon leaders in Ramadi. He ran my blue platoon, Eric Duncan and Chad Dearborn. Um, they created what they called the gunfighter course. And so these cats came down in a van full of ammo and we met at this little guard base and we just went for it and the boys, non-stop shooting, daytime, nighttime, just, I mean, just tens of thousands of rounds and it was, and it wasn't just the shooting, it was the combat mindset. It was kind of a 101 on, you know, Grossman's book, you

• 1:09:19Speaker 01

  know, on killing and, you know, talking about the Oodle Loop and emotional regulation. And so we really got into the science, not just the, you know, the art and the science really, but not just trigger time, right? It wasn't just shooting rounds to shoot rounds or whatever. It was like, understanding what your body's doing when it's happening, right? Auditory exclusion, slow motion, you know, fine motor manipulation degradation, you know, all those things like just, and it was so powerful because talking to the guys later, like when we got into it, they were like, okay, I know what's happening to me right now.

• 1:09:49Jocko Willink?

  That was that.

• 1:09:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's happening, right? The thing. So that, more than anything, looking back, you know, was the greatest thing that we did during those, you know, five, six months of workup.

• 1:10:01Jocko Willink?

  Nice. And then how did you, how did you guys end up going to employment? How did you get there? Where'd you fly out of?

• 1:10:06Speaker 01

  Some Air Force facility in Georgia, I believe it was, and, you know, went over through Europe, down into Kuwait, got off the plane, insta-melted, never felt heat like that in my life.

• 1:10:24Jocko Willink?

  What month was it when you showed up?

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  Early June, early June. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I'm a New Hampshire, Alaska guy. Like, this was just ungodly. I'm like, something's wrong. Like, this is, this is, this can't, this can't be right. Like, like, nobody can survive in this.

• 1:10:41Jocko Willink?

  And that's only June.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  I know.

• 1:10:42Jocko Willink?

  It was coming.

• 1:10:43Speaker 01

  So, very, very small acclimatization window in Kuwait as we got ready to push north and...

• 1:10:54Speaker 01

  The elephant in the room, the whole time we were, you know, at Camp Shelby and the National Training Center doing our validation exercise was what's our final task org? Like, what are we gonna, you know, we knew we couldn't go in pure. I'm not just going with 63 dudes and Humvees. I was told I was gonna be the main effort for the task force. So I'm like, looking at the map like, oh, like I'm gonna have, like I got city. So would have loved to have done more urban workup, you know? But we'd done enough, right? There were some shoot houses in Kuwait we got to go do some work in.

• 1:11:31Speaker 01

  But yeah, we got Western Ramadi. So I was like, okay, something, I'm gonna need more ass. So in Kuwait, they finally made the call and they gave me, and this is where I thank you, I just threw out comes, comes from. So I ended up, on the downside, I lost one of my platoons, more organic platoons, which was Mark Prokopio's platoon. I asked my platoon leaders one night, we're out there at one of the shoot sites and I'm like, hey, I gotta give up a platoon. I hate it. I know you do too. I'm gonna ask for volunteers. If I get none, I'm just gonna pick. And Mark Prokopio, the platoon leader stepped in and said, I'll jump on the grenades here. It's me. So, respect to Mark for doing that. I knew he didn't want to.

• 1:12:12Jocko Willink?

  Where'd he go to? Where'd he get task organized to?

• 1:12:14Speaker 01

  So he got cross leveled over to Bravo 109 because first, the 109th was, was another battalion, recognized battalion within the 228.

• 1:12:26Speaker 01

  And I think most of their battalion got assigned out of sector, like in Al Asad Air Base, I think they were doing a Sec Four mission up there, I think. But one of their, their companies, their BCO was down, working MC3, which was kind of north of Far Ramadi. So we, right?

• 1:12:44Jocko Willink?

  Vietnam, we call that area, like Nam, bro.

• 1:12:48Speaker 01

  It's so dead. And, you know, as bad as the city was, like, there's a lot of days. I was glad I didn't have to deal with that.

• 1:12:54Jocko Willink?

  There was days where there was like Hueys flying, like Huey, like Marine Corps Hueys flying and you, it was 100% looked like Nam, dude. Rice patties. It was like palm trees. You're like, yo, this is the, this is, this is Vietnam. Yeah.

• 1:13:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. It's, uh, they had a totally different mission up there, but So yeah, we gave up a platoon and then we got a mechanized platoon. So that was the Bradleys. And then, and then we got some tanks.

• 1:13:27Speaker 01

  Again, did not train with Bradleys or tanks the whole time.

• 1:13:33Speaker 01

  Didn't know anything about them. I've been light infantry my whole career. So, you know, I was trying to be calm and cool on the surface, but I had the duck legs going like it was insane and I was trying to do research best I could, but like, it's like, you know, trying to cram for the test like five minutes before. It's like, just close the book, man. Like, it's not gonna help.

• 1:13:56Jocko Willink?

  It's crazy. Like when I got back from Ramadi, I was running training. I did everything I could to get armor. And the main reason I wanted to get armor for our guys to work with was so they realized to stay the hell away from armor. Cause like you, you don't think about it. You know, you walk in front of a car, you're an American pedestrian. You walk in front of a car, that car's stopping, right? You got to right away of a pedestrian. Like a tank or a Brad, it don't give a shit. They don't even know you're there. Like you think, oh, I'll just walk over here. This thing's gonna stop. No, it ain't gonna stop at all. It's gonna kill you. So that was like, what am I made? They just get armor so those guys could realize like, cause SEALs were never around armor, you know, in the early 2000s. It was like never even, I never worked with armor.

• 1:14:41Jocko Willink?

  I guess I worked with AAVs, the Marine Corps, which if you want to call that armor, it's similar, that they wouldn't stop for you. They couldn't see you. But most SEALs, they're never going to be around armored vehicles of any kind. And so that was why I wanted to get into work with it. But that's some shit people don't think of. Like you don't think about that. Or like where you're standing if their main gun goes off. Cause that'll rock your world too. That's a real thing. Yeah. So, so you find out you're getting this mech, mech platoon and what did you get a section of tanks?

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got a tank section. That was from 1172 Task Force Saber. So those were our Vermont tankers. So we, we sort of knew those boys and they were, they were good boys and they, boy, could they fight tanks?

• 1:15:25Jocko Willink?

  Hell yeah.

• 1:15:26Speaker 01

  And, um, and then we got, uh, another platoon of, I think mostly, um, like fire supporters out of the, first the 101st, I think it was, 1101, uh, FA out of the Massachusetts Guard. Right? Uh, and, and they were my great platoon, uh, basically my Coist platoon. So they were doing, uh, like, you know, civil affairs, CERF funds, like all that stuff, right? Atmospherics, intel fusion, detainee stuff. They were doing all the, you know, um, it was like the hearts and minds platoon, right? But they did kinetic stuff too when I needed them to. So it's like, they were like my Swiss Army knife, right? Like it's whatever I needed. Um, and, uh,

• 1:16:12Speaker 01

  you know, um, I put those guys in a tough spot. I kind of jammed them because it's a, the other platoon's like pretty straightforward, right? Like kill, capture, dominate, you know, don't get dead kind of stuff. But, uh, those guys were like, uh, you know, like doing the book, book bag drops, you know, at the schools. And, uh, it's like, you know, they, they came back a couple of days. I'm like, hey, how'd the book bag drop go? They're like, book bag drop equals dead teachers, sir. I'm like, what? They're like, yeah. So the learning curve was so steep on like, you know, it's Americans were coming in there thinking like, hey, book bags, soccer balls, like, we're going to be, you know, put a smiley face on this thing. And it's like, oh, that's how it works. Okay. We gotta be super intentional and really deliberate about

• 1:16:55Speaker 01

  everything we do, who we talk to, who sees us with somebody. Like it was, it was very different. And, and I did not anticipate that. Like I didn't see that one coming. So that was one of those in real time flex things that we had to just figure it out. Um, and then I ended up getting, uh, lastly, what I called my green platoon, which was, uh, still to this day, I have no idea why General Gronski gave them to me, but God bless you, Sarah. Thank you. Uh, those were the 28th Division Lurss, uh, scout snipers and they were.

• 1:17:29Jocko Willink?

  Awesome.

• 1:17:30Speaker 01

  And so I ended up breaking those cats up into three teams.

• 1:17:36Speaker 01

  And horse sage in Vegas and they owned the night.

• 1:17:43Speaker 01

  And that little thing I gave you was from one of those teams.

• 1:17:46Jocko Willink?

  This was one of the first things I remember. If you're listening to this, if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see it, but it's one of the first things I remember. We got to Ramadi, seeing these, these little handouts, which is like an owl's, is it an owl? It's like an owl's eyes, very determined and sinister looking. Peering and peering at you when you look at this, at this image. And then below it, there's some Arabic writing, which I didn't know what it said, because I don't speak Arabic or read Arabic. But very quickly I was informed that it says, what, we're watching you? And, you know, this was like awesome psyops. And just to know that we were doing this kind of shit when I got there, I was like, oh, hell, yeah, it's on.

• 1:18:28Jocko Willink?

  And yeah, your, your scout sniper team was out there just dropping these everywhere, just letting the enemy know. You're not going to be safe. We're watching you. It's freaking epic. And I, I was soon as I saw this thing today, man, because of course you don't save anything. Well, at least I didn't, I never saved shit like I don't, I don't save stuff. I don't have the big sentimental, you know, wall with all my stuff from, from the military service. But man, seeing this thing is awesome. I'm putting that somewhere safe.

• 1:18:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's, like I said, that's from Sergeant Tim Flannan. You know, those are like the little things though, right? We're talking about the patches before we got going. It's a, they're little things, right? They are, but they're, they're actually, they're the big things. There's like a, there's like a paradox there, right? It's like the, the little things actually end up being oftentimes the big thing. So, yeah, and I just turned the guys loose and let them, you know, gave them a lot of rope on stuff like that to like, you know, whether it was like tagging up their vehicles with like platoon symbols. And they took a lot of pride in that or with their call signs, you know, like I gave them boring call signs, you know, it was like call colors, right? Like red, blue, white, green, whatever. But then, you know, then they had like, you know, death dealers or heartbreakers or, you know, the punishers or whatever, right? So it's.

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  And it's just, you know, what I learned is, is it's fine. Like, it's fine. Just, you know, like, no, pick your fights. You know, like, as long as they're getting after it, call yourself whatever you want.

• 1:19:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was, you know, I had all kinds of fun with this, uh, cause you know, I'm a big, um, whatever mentee of Colonel David Hackworth. And he gave his guys patches and he named his, you know, his, his companies or his battalions. But, and then I had my guys who, of course, they went totally overboard with patches. You know, they made patches that were, this is while we were still stateside, patches that were so wildly. It wasn't, if they were taken out of context, it would have been, they just can't wear them. You just can't do that. And so I put the kibosh on that. Of course, you know, you've heard the story of Leif and Seth, like, no, we're gonna make bad. And they snuck them behind my back. But the other big thing they did was the, the Punisher skulls on the body armor with spray paint.

• 1:20:37Jocko Willink?

  And these are not small patches. This was like the entire body armor. And the, the kind of, they did it to the Humvees too. And I made them repaint the Humvees. Because, you know, you're now you're running around and you really stand out when you have a Punisher skull. Now, look, we, every other, every other, I mean, everybody had something on their Humvees. So we were kind of, we probably stood out more for not having something. But, uh, but yeah, the, the thing that was with the body armor and the Punisher skull on it was like, first of all, when you wear your, when you wear your rig, you can't see it too clearly.

• 1:21:13Speaker 01

  Check.

• 1:21:14Jocko Willink?

  Right? So it was like, okay. And plus by that time, by the time that that went down, it was like, we were already, they kind of, for lack of a better way of saying it, like, uh, they earned it, you know? It was like, hey, the boys want to put some, put a kick ass Punisher skull on their, on their body armor? I'm kind of cool with it. I didn't be like, hey, guys, you're good to go, but I wasn't gonna, I wasn't gonna stop them because, like you said, it meant a lot to them, you know, it means a lot. And that's, and it was one of those things where. You know, it was like psy ops, not just for against the enemy, but like with our brothers in the in the army and the Marine Corps. It's like, oh yeah, we know who those guys are. Yeah. Yeah, cool, cool.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:53Jocko Willink?

  So how did you get, did you guys, did you guys do a ground movement up to Ramadi?

• 1:21:58Speaker 01

  We did. We drove up, yeah, right up Tampa and then we hit Michigan and cruised down over.

• 1:22:03Jocko Willink?

  And then what do you, what do you remember about, who'd you, who'd you guys turn over with?

• 1:22:07Speaker 01

  Uh, Alpha, Alpha Company one nine. They called themselves the Wild Bunch. And these cats are out of Korea, active duty guys. And it's my understanding that they had to come in and replace another company that was in there before they were. So they got, you know, they got in there, they got scuffed up. So Alpha one nine, the Wild Bunch came in and took over for them before the end of the tour.

• 1:22:37Speaker 01

  And they were pipe hitters in the most literal sense. Their commander was exceptional.

• 1:22:46Speaker 01

  It was our first day in country, you know, got there, middle of the night, woke up, like, get up, go. There was no like ease in, no in brief, no like, hey, where's your kit? You know, you ready? And, uh, yeah, I went out, rode in his truck. He showed me the ropes, went out, kicked doors, like full ops.

• 1:23:05Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys go right into Tamim? Is that where you guys started out?

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. Just right in there. And, uh, you know, it wasn't like a, you know, like the white glove tour, like this is what the battle space looks like.

• 1:23:17Speaker 01

  They were all very much on edge, which was hyper unsettling for me. So I was telling the boys like, hey, this is awesome. Lean in. These guys are fired up. They're like, they're taking us out right now. Like grab your shit, go. But like in my mind, I was thinking like, good God, like this is wild. Like nothing we did, despite my best efforts, nothing we did prepared us for that moment. Like I had no idea we're going to be in the battle space in 24 hours of getting there on, on like real world live ops in such a, you know, violent space. So, but again, you know, it's one of those things like. All right, you're here.

• 1:23:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, there's.

• 1:23:50Speaker 01

  Deal with it.

• 1:23:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's like getting in, getting in cold water. You might as well just jump in the freaking cold water. Cause that's what's happening.

• 1:23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:57Jocko Willink?

  And there's no two ways around. So that's your first night, you show up there and you guys roll out immediately.

• 1:24:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, immediately. And it's, uh, again, you know, just one of those themes that keep showing up over and over again. It's amazing what you can do and you just don't have any other options, right?

• 1:24:10Jocko Willink?

  It's like, that's another thing that like the fact that you can be, you get on base and then you get your Humvees. And then you go down whatever road it was to get to the main gate. They, they open the main gate for you. And then 50 yards later, you're in like Indian country and there's bad shit can happen real quick. And then you go out, you patrol and they come back and they open that gate. You're like, okay, we're back. It's freaking weird that it was just so night and day. And look, we got mortared on base and people got killed on base from, from indirect fire and stuff. But just the fact that you're just the other side of the wire, like literally the other side of the wire is the city where this shit's going down.

• 1:24:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:24:53Jocko Willink?

  How'd your boys handle it?

• 1:24:58Speaker 01

  They were fired up, um, but to be fair,

• 1:25:04Speaker 01

  they were still in the, God bless them. They were still in the, this is going to be awesome phase of the deployment. Like there was no sip of reality yet. So it was all books I've read.

• 1:25:19Speaker 01

  Call of Duty, you know, movies. It was all that shit, right? It was all the, I can't wait to go to war. Cause I've never been to war thing.

• 1:25:31Speaker 01

  But they were ready and they were standing tall and they were running and gunning from day one. Which I think really looking back, set the tone that that set conditions for, you know, any and all of the success that we had going forward was the fact that we literally burst out of the gates in a dead sprint. You know, I could have been like, whoa, whoa, whoa, we got a whole year here, boys. Cool your jets, tap the brakes. No, no, no, no. I was like, let them cook. Let them eat. Like, this is good. And so we got to climatize the battle space immediately. I would say first seventy-two hours. Like, you saw it already happening, where it was like, this is awesome, till like, they already started to get that fog of war look, like, where am I? What's happening? None of it makes sense, like, you know?

• 1:26:14Speaker 01

  And because we'd already gotten, you know, jacked. I mean, boys are getting blown up, out in sector with the, you know, with the guys we were replacing. They're full, every day, full-on engagements. And I'm like, yeah, it's real, boys. We're in it. This is what we've been training for. And it's just, you know, I don't know if you ever experienced that, where it's like, when you go from the whole idea of it to just doing the thing?

• 1:26:35Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:26:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And like you said, that, that seventy-two hours where you go, oh, it's been seventy-two hours. We've already had X number of contacts. And we're gonna be here for, for you guys, it's another three hundred and sixty-five days. Like, that's a long, you start looking at that's going, oh, that's gonna be a long, long, long time. And, and it is gonna be a long time. I mean, for us, it's only six months for you guys a year. But I think that, that, that's where that, that's where you see that look on their face. Where they go, holy shit, this is gonna be, I gotta do this three hundred and sixty-two more times? That's, that's a lot. That's a lot. When, um, when, when you guys, how long did you guys do turnover? Like, how, how long did you do right seat, left seat with the guys that you turned with the one-nine?

• 1:27:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we had about a week, maybe change. Um, not much. But to their credit, you know, that's, we went super hard. Um, so it felt like more. Like, we, we got everything we needed from them, right? Um, and we took their playbook and then we just, you know, then we had an internal discussion about, all right, so that's how Wild Bunch did it. How are we gonna do it? You know? Um, sustains, you know, pivots. Okay, they did it this way. We're, this is gonna be our version of that. Um, at least it was a starting point, you know?

• 1:27:51Jocko Willink?

  Did the enemy hit you guys hard within, like, once the turnover was complete? Because that's a pattern that I saw, because I got to see all the turnovers take place when you guys left eventually. And you would see Like the enemy would know, oh, these are new guys. As soon as the old guys would leave, the new guys would get hit really hard. Uh, did you guys experience that?

• 1:28:14Speaker 01

  We did not, and that's one of the more interesting points. You know, looking back, thinking about this is

• 1:28:25Speaker 01

  like make that make sense, right? Like I, because obviously we were all there together in June 06. When I gave the battle space to the guys that replaced us and they wasted zero time, right? Getting after it.

• 1:28:41Speaker 01

  So I don't understand why we were allowed. And I'll say that, you know, I give full credit to the enemy. They were formidable. Um, no disrespect to them. They, they were legit. They knew how to, they were very committed. Um, they were good at what they did.

• 1:28:59Speaker 01

  The only thing that makes sense to me over the years, thinking about it a million times is I think, Alpha 19 had them on their heels. I think they just pounded them.

• 1:29:11Jocko Willink?

  And also if they were that aggressive with the turnover, you know, it's like the enemy might not even have time to be like, oh, this, oh, oh, wait, oh, okay, wait, they're already, they're already kind of on track with not making like mistakes or not being unfamiliar with how to react to certain situations. So that might've, that might've been it too. Cause certainly, I mean, uh, like there was even a mid team got hit. When in like the ongoing, oncoming mid guy got killed and the offgoing mid guy got killed. It was like, good lord. And anytime, just about anytime, uh, uh, an outstation got turned over completely to the Iraqis.

• 1:29:52Jocko Willink?

  That was never, that didn't last long, you know, like they would get hit so freaking hard. And again, because the enemy's watching going, oh, oh, I don't see any Americans there. Cool. That means it's going to take them an extra whatever, five minutes to react and get, get support out there. So we'll hit them right now. We'll hit them hard. So it was definitely a pattern that, that we saw.

• 1:30:13Jocko Willink?

  So what, so you, the mission that you guys get assigned is what? Is it, is it to meme? Is it just trying to stabilize to meme?

• 1:30:23Speaker 01

  In a nutshell, check.

• 1:30:27Speaker 01

  Officially, something along the lines of, you know, you own Western Ramadi.

• 1:30:35Speaker 01

  AO Catamount was roughly 350,000 square kilometers on the map.

• 1:30:44Speaker 01

  For a company sized element, right?

• 1:30:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:46Speaker 01

  Roger. So that basically meant, yeah, Tamim and 5Kilo, Route Michigan, you know, Al Imar University, you know, the Iraqi police station, Al Haria. So, you know, it was, uh, it was ginormous, but we basically were told focus on the urban. We did some out of sector, you know, type stuff, you know, with Tway, the fishing village.

• 1:31:08Jocko Willink?

  How many, so you said you had 63 guys. How, what was this total task force looking like? Once you, what did Catamount, how many guys did you have?

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  We went from 63, when we did all the task reorg, I explained to you earlier, we jumped up to around one 60 plus. And then I got another platoon about halfway through the deployment, my black platoon. And that was another mech platoon, Bradley's and Humvees. So we got up to almost 200. I think we were pushing up against 200.

• 1:31:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It would take 200 guys to control like any portion of Tamim or any portion of 5K. The fact that you were assigned that whole battle space, not to mention the however many 350,000 square kilometers to the west of that, because that's what it is Echo Charles. You've got like a, like a city and then the city just kind of stops and then it's just open desert for a really long, well, 350,000 square miles.

• 1:32:04Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, so, so as you looked at that, how did you break it down from, you know, your operational perspective of like, okay, this is what we got to control. What, what, what, what was your approach?

• 1:32:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So zoom out, big picture, urban coin, right? That's pretty straightforward. And then it's like, all right, so what matters in the battle space? Quick assessment was route security was everything because we were mostly mounted, minus the green teams, you know, the scout sniper teams. And even that was, you know, vehicle, you know, insertions and videos, they'd walk in sometimes too, but, um, so the routes had to stay as clean as possible. That said,

• 1:32:44Speaker 01

  You know, I think it was around 130 IED strikes, you know, over the year. So I mean, despite our best efforts with that focus on the routes, we found another over 100 IEDs, right? Another 130 more found us. So specifically Michigan, which, you know, ran through center sector and right through our AO was strategic in terms of that was the main route. And it was just a hell of a gauntlet to try to run. And it was a fight for that road, right? Like some days they won, some days we won, right? But then I had another north-south running road called Route

• 1:33:22Speaker 01

  Jones. We had inherited the map where our predecessors had named every single road into Meme and 5Kilo, which came in super handy for, for mounted navigation or even for the folks in the sky. You know, even the pilots had those maps. And so that was super effective. Dave was able to work with those guys and really get them dialed in quick on the deck. And we did that through a combination of mounted OPs. So we had like static OPs. So for example, like OP Jones, OP Jones Carter, right? And they, and then OP 2903, middle OP. So these were all like typically

• 1:34:02Speaker 01

  Bradleys or two Humvees that would sit static, which is really uncomfortable in this battle space. But they would all overwatch. So everybody had to see everyone else, right? So there was no visual cutoff. And then we had roving patrols that would circulate all throughout the battle space, right? So you had these static OPs all mutually supporting. And then you had these little, you know, typically a section of Humvees that would be lurking around in the back alleys and side streets. And then you'd have the dismounted teams, you know, taking a hide in a building. So everybody was kind of watching everybody else's back. Some was covert, some was overt, but everybody had everybody's six.

• 1:34:41Jocko Willink?

  So did you rotate? Well, so what was the op tempo like for the guys?

• 1:34:45Speaker 01

  Brutal. Absolutely brutal. I owe, to this day, I owe them all an apology. My vigilant hunters in particular. So those, I had three core platoons, eventually four. But for most of the deployment, it was three platoons, red, white, and blue.

• 1:35:05Speaker 01

  Who had two that were Bradleys and Humvees and one that was tanks and Humvees. And they would rotate on eight hour shifts, 24 hours a day. And we did that for 365 days. So those boys were never out of the battle space. And someone's on QRF for guys that are out there? Absolutely, yeah, which happened all the time. Anytime we had a big tick, everybody got, you know, woken up and everybody rallied. And then we also had a task force QRF. It was called Storm and they were fight enders. They were just two M1 tanks that came in and just ended fights. Didn't matter what was going on, like they were there. And like I would just, to your point about, you know, getting your SEALs around tanks. My boys knew the drill was, you know, when Storm's like 30 seconds out, clear out.

• 1:35:50Speaker 01

  And those boys would just show up on station and just end it. And we loved them. They were great. So that was really it, you know, we had static OPs, we had roving patrols, we had eyes in the sky. We had, you know, and then all the enablers, my God, there was just so many of them out there, you know, that were helping out with us as well. So, but it was, you know, working the population, the fights for hearts and minds, of course, dealing with the insurgency. Did you have any JUNDs that you were working with? So 117 out of Camp Defender, yep. They were, they were led by the MIT team Marines. But we supplemented them. We gave them some folks too to help out. So God bless those guys, my guys that I had to give up to go down there and work that mission.

• 1:36:33Speaker 01

  They were absolute heroes and unsung heroes, right? Because they watched us going out there, doing the mission and they were just doing this, you know, what needed to be done. And like I said, I'm just really grateful those guys, you know, stood tall, you know, chin in the air and just went out there and did what I asked them to do, what we asked them to do. It was dangerous as hell. They had to, you know, be down there with all those folks and you didn't know who was who. And they had NDs like every other day. Every other clearance of their weapon. Yeah, no, it was super dangerous. It was way more dangerous down there working with those guys than it was for us out in, out in sector. But, and they'd go out and do just dismounted patrols, right?

• 1:37:16Speaker 01

  Which is just insane in that battle space. Like that's just not a great idea. But they were in the fight, you know, and we built them a couple of combat outposts, like we call them ECPs. And so they got in the fight, they were out there mating these little Alamos, these little. Hardened, you know, the engineers came out and did their engineer thing and it's pretty impressive, you know, barriers and all the HESCOs and everything and they're pretty solid, you know, but it was nice to see them out there though, right? And they'd rotate in and out of their, these little compounds. They'd do some limited, you know, dismounted patrols. But all the mounted stuff was, was my guys.

• 1:37:54Jocko Willink?

  How long did it take before you suffered your first wounded guys?

• 1:37:59Speaker 01

  So to your question earlier, you know, in terms of, you know, how we came into the battle space, it was unexpectedly quiet. Almost to the point where I was like, I think the guys we replaced were maybe exaggerating a little bit. Like, you know, like we were new and it seemed wild, but you know, once we got our feet under us, I was like, this isn't that bad. Like, yeah, we're getting blown up and shot at, but like, I was just too naive. That was, that was silly, early deployment thinking, like, oh, because it's this way right now, it's going to be this way forever. Like, we just got it. False sense of security, I think, to your question, I think that's where I've arrived now. Why

• 1:38:42Speaker 01

  they didn't come after us right away? They lulled us into a little bit of, you know, we thought we were a little, you know, we thought we were a little better than we really were. And we did start getting a little, we started assuming incrementally over months, started assuming more and more risk, you know, that confidence, fine line between that and arrogance and hubris. And so we started flirting with the line and maybe I'm giving them too much credit, but, you know, I think that might've been part of it, you know, it's like, okay, just walk you right into that, you know, and, and so, you know, we got blown up a bunch, a bunch of tics, you know, troops in contact, June, July, August,

• 1:39:26Speaker 01

  some near misses, but you get used to that too, right? It's like, all right, yeah, it's just part of doing business.

• 1:39:31Jocko Willink?

  We're always going to be lucky.

• 1:39:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, until we're not, right? And so 20th of August.

• 1:39:42Speaker 01

  There was an Iraqi army kinda key leader engagement thing going on in my battle space. I think we called it the DMV, the Department of Motor Vehicles, TMEAM. It was right across actually from Five Kilo, right at the corner, just off Michigan and broad daylight, right across from Five Kilo and the apartments over there, which is just, we knew there was nothing good happening there and, you know, this is gonna be a recurring theme throughout the deployment in Ramadi for me, you know, I don't know if you, I'm sure you did, but I don't wanna assume or deal with a lot of, hey, I don't think that's a good idea. Hey, I really don't think that's a good idea. Hey, if you give me a minute,

• 1:40:25Speaker 01

  I just, can you hear me out? Okay, you're gonna do what you're gonna do. Got it. Check. So that was one of those, like, I get it, you wanna go out, you wanna do the thing.

• 1:40:37Speaker 01

  I don't know if this is the best way to do the thing. And, uh, yeah, they were out there in broad daylight, meeting in front of this place and, uh, two rounds, coordinated sniper fire. It was actually, um, no love for the insurgents, but like, that was really well done. They broke two rounds at the same time and they scored two hits. So, one was on a Marine Corps gunny. Um, grace of God clipped him in like the side of the plate, split his plate from the side and, you know, he did, you know, got a big chunk taken out of his chest. I mean, it was no joke, but it wasn't terminal. And the other one unfortunately was, uh, was a great shot. It was right between the plates and, uh, turned off Chris Chapin

• 1:41:22Speaker 01

  and, uh, it was surreal. It wasn't, it didn't feel real. It was the first one in my battle space. So, um, I was like, nah, nah, we'll save him. Nah, we got, we got great docs. We got the Charlie Med, you know, get him in there, docs will get him patched up. And, uh, met him over there. He was coming in from sector and, you know, they called it almost immediately. Um, Mark Lebjoy, Colonel Lebjoy was there, you know, and we just kinda stood there in disbelief, like.

• 1:41:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's, that's when it started to get really real for me, you know, as the battle space owner. Because the response would be like, okay, how did this happen? And this is on you. He wasn't your, like, so Chris and I were actually in Afghanistan together. He was one of the NCOs on my team training the Afghans. So I had known Chris, I'd deployed with him. And, but he wasn't part of Alpha Company at the time. He was with the, with the MiG guys. And, but it was my dirt. So it was my responsibility. Bottom line, I owned it. And I'm like, okay, we got to be better. I got to do better. What could I have done to prevent this, you know? And that sort of became a recurring theme in my head, like every day. Like when I got up till the time I went to bed, it's like, what do I, what

• 1:42:38Speaker 01

  do I not see coming? What am I not anticipating? Who's out there in my battle space that could be doing things differently? That might get a different outcome? So it's just this, you know, game you play in your head where you're just trying to, you know, the crystal ball, or, you know, whatever. It's, you know, what I learned is it was like, I wasn't ever any good at it. I think I got better over the course of the year. But you try to look at what's happened. And you try to be present. And you try to use A plus B to inform C, right? Which is what's going to happen next. And that was the constant loop as a, as the commander, you know, battle space owner that I was in, was like, let me use what just happened and what's happening right now to kind of try to best guess my

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  way. You know, and that's, you know, for all the different missions, right? That's, that's for the vigilant hunters. And that's for the, you know, the coast guys doing the CA, SIOP stuff. That's for the, the snipers doing their thing, right? Et cetera. So, yeah, it's a relentless, merciless, endless process of observe, assess, reorient, and just keep repeating for 365 days, best you can. So.

• 1:43:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I'm thinking.

• 1:43:53Jocko Willink?

  I didn't really recognize that you guys had like a like a more slowly escalating, you know, entry into the battle space. It kind of reminds me, you know, you watch MMA sometimes and, you know, they'll, they'll, the announcers will be saying, oh, they're feeling, they're feeling it out, right? Because, you know, some fights you watch, they just immediately are attacking each other. But sometimes you see a couple of guys that get in there and they're kind of like, so it might have been, you know, the, the fact that the insurgents at that time not quite as cohesive as they would get over time. So they might have been watching you like, okay, who's these new guys? And a little feeling out period before they started upping their game and, and

• 1:44:33Jocko Willink?

  then obviously continued to escalate. And they probably started seeing, because the way that different units would rip out, right? They started going, oh, that's a thing, right? Oh, oh, so these guys are going to leave and there's new guys taking their place. And when those new guys take their place, oh, they're not gonna know their way around the neighborhood as well, or they're not gonna QRF as quickly or whatever. So they probably, those are probably little things that what you're saying you were doing, they're doing, you know, they're learning from us, they're watching us and figuring out how they're going to best, you know, commit their offense on us.

• 1:45:13Jocko Willink?

  So how the, how the, how the guys react, you know, when, when now you've, you've got, you've lost a guy? How was the, how was, you know, for the, the

• 1:45:25Jocko Willink?

  current warfighters that are out there right now? How can you help them prepare for when that happens to them?

• 1:45:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, the guys, uh, so, you know, I talked about early on in the rip, when, you know, a few days in, when it got real, that's when it got the rest of the way real. Um, three days before, Chris, um, who was just a great dude, typical Vermonter, just, you know, helping everybody and, you know, um, dedicated to service, just, golly.

• 1:46:00Speaker 01

  So on the 20th of August, an Iraqi army soldier, first one killed in my battle space, got headshot right in front of the police station. And it was literally right across the street from where Chris and the gunner got shot. So it's, you know, when you're green and new, looking back, it's like, golly, it was screaming in your face, you know, what were we doing? But, um, so don't rush to failure is a big takeaway, you know? It's like temper your aggressiveness, like, yeah, you gotta lean in, but, you know, don't blow by the huge red flags either. Like, take the time to assess and understand what's going on, what happened, why did it happen? How could it be avoided?

• 1:46:41Speaker 01

  Like, ask yourself the questions and do it in good faith, right? Like, no ego, no humility, can't be like, oh, whose fault was that, that the Iraqi, you know, guy got shot? Well, you know, the bottom line is it's my fault because I'm the battle space owner. It wasn't my guy, but, you know, I'm overall, anybody, you know, anything in my battle space is my responsibility. So, so I took that pretty seriously, um, but didn't get there quick enough, you know, or wasn't forceful enough in terms of advising other folks. And you're going to see this theme, Jocko, as we go through the rest of the deployment. So I own the battle space. My guys were out there 24/7 for a year. We never came out of the battle space.

• 1:47:25Speaker 01

  But the majority of the casualties, overwhelming, were folks who were not my guys. They were not Alpha Company guys. So square that circle. The guys that are out there 365, 24/7, you know, take a fraction of the overall casualties. So it says a lot about the nature of the battle space.

• 1:47:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:44Speaker 01

  Um, and of course, it'll always leave me thinking, what more could I have done? Right? Like, I took care of my dudes. That's, they were my responsibility. This was my battle space. I handled my business. Yeah, I wish it was that simple. I mean, the reality is anybody that steps foot in my dirt, they're my responsibility. I should have been more, should have leaned in harder on that, um, thought more about that, been more thoughtful about that.

• 1:48:09Jocko Willink?

  That's probably a regret that I've got. You know, you were talking about that might not be the best idea. Are you sure you want to do that? And you're the guy that told that to us. You know, I know Leif came to us with some plans and proposals that we were getting, we were getting offered or whatnot. And, you know, I remember Leif coming back to me and just saying, hey, man, like, I'm talking to Pelletier and Major Pelletier, and he's not thinking that this is a good plan at all. And, you know, what does he think? He's like, if, he said, if, if we want to get guys killed, go do that.

• 1:48:51Jocko Willink?

  I was like, okay, I understand that. You don't need to be any more clear than that. So for us, listening to what the guys that were on the ground, and there is something to say for, you know,

• 1:49:05Jocko Willink?

  any, any bad situation that you can be in, you know, like a good one is skydiving, right? If you, if you jump all the time, you get good at jumping. And the chances, you know, you take some guy that jumps once, you know, some guy that jumps five times a year versus a guy that jumps 100 times a year. It might seem weird, but the guy that jumps five times a year is probably more apt to have an accident or get killed than the guy that jumps 100 times a year because he understands it. He's used to it. He knows what to look for. He knows what to watch out for. So your guys that are out in sector, even going back to that poem that I read at the beginning, if you think about what he's actually saying in that poem, it's like, uh, instinct becomes intelligence.

• 1:49:48Jocko Willink?

  He's talking about hearing a threat in the absence of children's laughter. What does that mean? So if you've never been in, in the, in the battle space before and all of a sudden, you know, there's no noise or the civilians clear out of the streets, you might not think anything of it. But your guys who live there 24 hours a day are like, oh, that's a problem. Taste menace in a sea of glances. Like, what is that? You go into a place and you've never been there before and people are looking at you weird. They must have never seen someone that like, looks like me before. Oh, no, they're plotting bad things. The wrongness of an afternoon shadow. What does that mean? Oh, what does that mean? It means you look at a road and you go, wait, I've never seen that shadow on the dirt before. I mean, he's got all these great.

• 1:50:30Jocko Willink?

  Comments in there, but that's exactly what it is. And so the persistent presence in that battle space, doing that thing, you're going to get better at it and you're going to see things that other people aren't going to see. And that's probably more than anything else is driving the numbers that you're talking about of people getting caught off guard because they're not, they didn't really know what they're looking for.

• 1:50:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it's exactly right. And, you know, there's another paradox, right? Or dichotomy, if you will, it's, it's a lot of contact, right? It's, you know, and there's just, there's over 500, you know, SIGACs, troops in contact over the course of, you know, the year. And at first place, you'd be like, well, wow, that's a problem. Like, that's a lot of contact. Like, that's, that's, that's a net negative, right? But to your point, there's the other side of that coin, which is like, it's that volume and intensity of violence and consistent contact and time in the battle space that is actually what

• 1:51:37Speaker 01

  kept us safe and made us so good. And then, you know, that sounds subjective, right? So, but that, that data point, right? You know, 32 KIA in the battle space in a year and four were mine. So, you know, that underpins really that, that idea of the best way to stay safe in the space is to be in the space, to experience, to expose yourself to it. You must become one with it.

• 1:52:11Jocko Willink?

  That's life right there. You sent me some battle stats here. Complex attacks, 16 of those. Complex attacks, this is like you're getting hit with probably some machine gun fire to kick it off, followed by mortars, maybe RPGs and maneuvering elements trying to get in on you and possibly finishing all that out with a VBIED. Which, by the way, for you, for you guys, it was three VBIEDs, which is vehicle borne IEDs. How devastating were those? How did you guys manage through those VBIEDs?

• 1:52:49Speaker 01

  Yeah catastrophic, you know, kind of jump into to your to your previous point about understanding why things, conditions were so the way they were on our, when we were coming into the battle space versus coming out of the battle space. Your team, your SEALs that were working the intel side were, I don't even have words to describe how good they were at their job and and I can give a million examples of how good they were, but but one of the things towards the end of the deployment, I think it was in May, they had like double sourced intel that basically said they'd waved the white flag into Meme and Five Kilo. It is no longer safe, right? This is the insurgents

• 1:53:33Speaker 01

  talking about themselves. This was internal communication they intercepted and shared with us. It's no longer safe to work in in this AO, like bug out.

• 1:53:44Speaker 01

  And so initially I was like, yeah, and I shared that with the guys and we were like, let's go, you know, it's it's the whole, it was the whole aim, right? Like, you know, some days they win, some days we win, but like clearly like we we won.

• 1:54:00Speaker 01

  But what I didn't realize is, you know, I took away all their cards except for one.

• 1:54:05Speaker 01

  So they only had one card they left they could play and it was the big one. So yeah, we talked earlier about how we built up these little combat outposts for the Iraqi Army folks. And we had one on Michigan called 2903 and we had one down, you know, the railroad tracks that went over the canal called ECP3 and 2903 got hit in May.

• 1:54:28Speaker 01

  IDF to get the heads down, small arms fire, and they drove a dump truck right through the front door. And it was just devastating. You could feel it from the FOB. And my command post actually overlooked Five Kilo, so I could literally see it. I knew what it was almost right away.

• 1:54:49Speaker 01

  Took some pretty serious damage out there, but, but to the point is, to your question, excuse me,

• 1:54:57Speaker 01

  that, that was all they had left in their quiver. Cause all the other stuff they had tried and, you know, one by one, we just kept taking things away from them. We're like, nah, small arms fire now, IEDs now. Nope, we got you. We get, we know how you do it. We know where you do it. And their hit rate was like getting really low. Like they were losing way more than they were like getting us. So, and then the last one came, uh,

• 1:55:20Speaker 01

  ECP three came, like literally on my last day in the battle space. Yeah.

• 1:55:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that was,

• 1:55:27Jocko Willink?

  man, seeing that and, you know, reading the reports and talking to guys like yourself of, oh, what happened? It's like, here's what the enemy did. And you go, holy shit. You know, the enemy, like I just said, you know, they use combined arms, basically, combined arms to, to execute a devastating attack on a, a control point that we Americans have. And that's when you real, that's, you know, that was one of those moments for me where it's like, okay, this is, the, the enemy is determined and the enemy is coordinated. And the enemy is going to do the things that we do. And this is something I would brief the SEALs when I got back.

• 1:56:08Jocko Willink?

  All the things that we do, they do. So, oh, we get into a gunfight, we call for QRF. They call for QRF. We get casualties, they, we call for casualty evacuation, they call for casualty evacuation. We call for reinforcements, they call for reinforcements. We use combined arms, they use combined arms. The things they, they're gonna, they're fighters and they're gonna fight the way we would fight. And that was a, a wake up call of the level that they would take it to. And, you know, and this was, you guys ended up with, um, three of these VB IED attacks while you're there. And then not to mention, you know, just going through the rest of these numbers, 127 IED attacks, 180 gunfights, um,

• 1:56:54Jocko Willink?

  small arms fire attacks, 86 of those. You found another 101 IEDs, 31 RPG attacks, 18 weapons caches found, indirect fire attacks, 18, and rocket attacks, eight. So that's a total reported enemy attacks of 588 while you're there.

• 1:57:17Jocko Willink?

  That's a lot to have going on.

• 1:57:21Jocko Willink?

  And that the numbers end up, like you said, um, enemy killed in action 132. Enemy wounded in action 29, friendly killed in action 32. Of which, like you said, four of them were your guys and then friendly, friendly wounded is 71. It's just, this is, this is hard, hard fighting that you guys were going through. Again, 365 days, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. There are no, there are no Sundays, there are no, uh, holidays. It was on.

• 1:57:57Jocko Willink?

  As things, um, towards the end, what did it feel like the short time ended deployment type, type thing?

• 1:58:06Jocko Willink?

  What was the mentality? How did you handle that from a leadership perspective? Like for me, I never told guys when they were going on their last mission. Cause I felt like it was like, no, we're just going to keep going. And then finally guys would come back and whoever, you know, whoever was going home at certain times. Hey, by the way, you can pack up your shit, you're done. You know, as opposed to like, hey, this is your last mission, be really careful, which I always felt like would not be a good, uh, methodology. So I was always like, hey, we're going to keep going and when it's your time to go home, you'll get on a plane and leave. What did you see from your guys as the clock ticked down?

• 1:58:43Speaker 01

  They're excited, but they knew better than to, you know, at that point they were way too smart to, you know, as things have let their guard down or celebrate too early or whatever. So they, they'd become, um,

• 1:59:01Speaker 01

  different people than they were when they arrived. Um, part of that, and I shared this with them, um,

• 1:59:09Speaker 01

  was this weird felt sense that we didn't want to go home. Like the replacements were coming, we're like, nah, it's our battle space. You can't have it. You don't deserve it. You haven't earned it. We'll keep it. Cause we had invested, you know, we took it from where it was to where it, you know, where it was now, like all that progress. And we're like, we know how to run this battle space. Like we can keep ourselves safe. We can get after the bad guys. We don't want, it's just, I can't even explain it. It's the strangest thing, but we all felt it. We all talked about it. As much as we missed home, we missed our families who wanted to go home. There was part of us that wanted to stay, you know?

• 1:59:51Jocko Willink?

  When, uh, when you met, what'd you think when you met Dave Burke from Anglico? He, again, just absolutely singing your praises and so thankful for the turnover that you gave him, the, the lessons that you taught to him. What do you remember about meeting good deal Dave Burke?

• 2:00:08Speaker 01

  Salt six. Uh, yeah, Top Gun. He, uh, shockingly humble, like shockingly ordinary. Like threw me for a loop when I found out who he really was.

• 2:00:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, me too.

• 2:00:21Speaker 01

  It just blew me away. I was like,

• 2:00:22Jocko Willink?

  I didn't know any of that stuff.

• 2:00:23Speaker 01

  Who's this cat? You know, he's just the, the new, you know, uh, airplane guy from the Marines, you know? And I mean, at the time I, you know, there's a lot of stuff going on. So I was just like, who are you again? What do you do? You know? Cause it's just at this point that the team was huge and I had people, cause not just the core group, but like all the, you know, SIGINT, humans, CICI Ops, you know, the engineers, Task Force Dagger, you know? I tried to talk to you guys almost every day, you know? It said a lot of mouths to feed, right? So I was like, who are you and what can you do for us? And he was ready to answer that question and he gave me a whole capabilities deal. And I was just like, oh man, all right. You have my attention. Who, who are you again?

• 2:01:07Speaker 01

  And then eventually I found out what, you know, what his resume was.

• 2:01:10Jocko Willink?

  Dude, I never knew about his resume till we were like 10 years post Ramadi. It was like, we were hanging out again. Like, wait a second. Oh, you're a Top Gun? Oh, that's cool. Oh, you're a Top Gun instructor? Oh, that's cool. Oh, you're a Top Gun senior instructor? Oh, I guess that's pretty cool. Oh, you flew the F-18, the F-16, the F-22 and the F-35? Hmm. Bro.

• 2:01:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I think he's, I want to say he said to me that the first time he ever went in the field was with you. So, yeah, I'm not sure if that's a hundred percent right, but that's what he, if I remember correctly.

• 2:01:42Speaker 01

  I, I believe it is. That's the way I remember it. And I also remember we took contact. And I also remember in that moment him telling me, That that was the first time that he like, and it was like a, what am I doing here? Like, I'm supposed to be up there and I don't know why the stupid Marine Corps puts pilots out the ground. Like, it was this hilarious, gallows humor kind of, you know, thing while, you know, bullets are flying and, you know, things are crazy and we're just kind of like, you know, riffing back and forth. And I'm like, you're gonna be fine. This is great, you know? Can you fetch an airplane? And then he ended up knowing the dude in the cockpit. That's so awesome. Like, he just recognized his voice. And he's like, yo, dude, is this you? This is Chip. And, and it was just like, really neat for me to listen to that over the shoulder and be like, oh, this is gonna be awesome. Yeah.

• 2:02:27Speaker 01

  Dude, don't get much better than that. No, no. So, but his guys were amazing. He was amazing. He is amazing. I didn't know how much so at the time.

• 2:02:40Speaker 01

  But it was like he,

• 2:02:43Speaker 01

  he fit in from day one. Like, he just got it. Like, he and his team just immediately plugged into the culture of like, what we were doing. And didn't miss a beat, you know, like, hey, keep up, no problem. Like, he, and it was whether he was out forward with us, whether he was in the talk, you know, working rover, you know, you know, airplane TV, doing his thing there. So technically, sharp, super humble, always like, how can I help? How can my team help? Like, he's always looking to add value.

• 2:03:14Speaker 01

  And, and never disappointed.

• 2:03:18Speaker 01

  Including allowing us to take one of his guys who had this incredibly cool, I didn't even know this, and I never would have if you wouldn't have told me. He's like, hey, my guy's got, we got these really cool cameras, these like, big telephoto lenses and stuff like that. And I'm like, okay. He's like, could you use those? And I'm like, I don't know. Hey, guys, could we use these? And then my scout snipers were like, ah, yeah, we could definitely use that. So, they started taking Chris Lunsford out in sector with them on missions and ultimately gathering a lot of really good intel, pictures of, you know, who's who in the zoo, what's going down. And ultimately, they got. You know, the law of average, they got out there on target and they really, you know,

• 2:04:00Speaker 01

  get photos of a very elusive, high value target that led to some good things, so.

• 2:04:05Jocko Willink?

  And then what about Leif? I know I was, you know, obviously I, out of the gate, like, was just, uh, went and met with Colonel Gronski, General Gronski, and, you know, told him, hey, we're here to support. What do you need? And kind of the, the talk, talking to Leif and Seth, it was like, hey, these, these conventional guys, they need, they need help, they need our support. Go see how you can help them out. And I think he just went out and found you at some point. And how was that linking up with Leif?

• 2:04:32Speaker 01

  Uh, awesome. Unexpected. I didn't really, we, we didn't have, um, the kind of relationship that we had with Task Unit Bruiser. We didn't have that with the former, um, group. And that's not a good thing or a bad thing. It's just different. That's all. Um, and we were the newer folks. They were, I think, already there when we got there. So there was a little bit of that probably. Um, the intel guys were the, was the continuity. We had a great relationship with those across the teams. And, uh, they, they were phenomenal.

• 2:05:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, my intel guys and the previous intel guys, you know, obviously, um, I don't talk a lot about, I don't give them any credit. I don't talk about them a lot because a lot of what they do is stuff that you don't talk about. So, but, uh, they were freaking just outstanding. And it like, I still touch base with those guys. They were just great. And the, the amount that they brought to the table was, was just unbelievable for everybody. And the things that we were able to do, because we had, you know, we had some things that other people didn't have. And so, yeah, uh, just loved those guys. They were freaking outstanding. They worked 24 hours a day. Like they, those guys were working 24 hours a day, whether

• 2:05:43Jocko Willink?

  they were sitting in interrogations, doing interrogations, uh, rifling through intel, gathering intel, meeting with people, like they worked 24 hours a day. They were freaking outstanding. Um, and, you know, you sitting here talking about them is, is the most credit they've gotten. I've thrown it out there sometimes, but again, a lot of the stuff that they do, as you know, is stuff that you don't really talk about. So, uh, yeah, I appreciate you giving that feedback. And, and they knew it, like, they had a seat at the table, you know, with all the intel people. They were, they had incredible, done an incredible job doing what they do. Um, but yeah.

• 2:06:18Speaker 01

  And they deserve all that credit and more. And I. You know, everything from, you know, they PID'd, you know, that big HVT that we had. So, so I give credit to Salt Six and Chip and Lunsford, right? They got the picture, but then I wouldn't have, we couldn't have done anything with that without your guys PID. And then I was like, oh, boy, you know, so it was one team, one fight, right? But it was only because everybody was able to pocket their egos and be humble and make it all about the mission and getting after it together. It wasn't about who gets credit, you know, nobody cared. Like your guys were like, okay, we PID the guys, so what? Like you guys go get them and like they were cheering us on and it was awesome. And like the trigger targets that your guys were building for us.

• 2:07:01Speaker 01

  I mean, towards the end, again, that's how we rolled this momentum, right? Because we went from reacting to certain things in the battle space to actually rolling out every shift with targets six, 11, and 14. And so that was part of the pre-patrol workup. Guys had full essay on the target, where it was, what was, you know, all of it. And then, you know, your guys were working the sources and then you'd just source it and confirm it and it'd be like, target 11, go. It was so good. And we couldn't have done that without you and your guys.

• 2:07:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And what's crazy about that is so, you know, doing direct action missions like that, that's kind of, you know, if you, if you think about what a SEAL does, that's kind of what people think a SEAL does. There's a bad guy in this location, we go get him. For us to go and execute those missions was, I mean, just, just logistically, just let's talk travel. It would take us 38 minutes to get there. We could call you guys, they're like, yeah, we'll be there in, in two minutes and 30 seconds. It was awesome and we, we ended up doing that with everybody across the battle space. We would figure out where the bad guys were and just be able to tell the Army or the Marine Corps, hey, there's a bad guy in this building, go get him. And they'd be like, cool, we'll call you in 15 minutes. And they'd send us a picture in 15 minutes, be like, is this him? Yep, that's him. Cool. It was awesome.

• 2:08:16Jocko Willink?

  And, and again, like you said, like no egos, we didn't care. It's, it's a cool mission and sometimes it would make sense for us to do a mission, you know? Sometimes for whatever reason, maybe it was the location, maybe it was the timing, maybe it was you might, you know, the conventional guys might not have the assets. They might have something else going on. Cool. We can go down there and get it done. But just working together and covering move for each other was just awesome.

• 2:08:40Speaker 01

  It was. Yeah, it was amazing. And It got to the point now where it's like, almost every night, your guys would come over, you know, cruise over in their little Beamer, whatever they had that, you know, they'd come over, you know, come on in, like, you know, midnight, one in the morning, two in the morning, whatever. And they'd be like, all right, I'm like, you got the, you got the gouge? You got the scoop? They'd be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it just became this, this rhythm, you know, that we got in of information sharing and collaboration. And, you know, again, that wasn't something they talked about at Mob Station. Hey, so, uh, check it out, uh, guard guy, you're gonna be, uh, collabing with some SEALs and you're gonna be working with, you know, uh, Hument. I mean, that was, so again, this was all just, it happened so organically,

• 2:09:21Speaker 01

  and I'm so grateful. But, you know, it would be, um, dis genuine, um, to take credit for all of the success that we had in AOCAD amount, because it was an absolute joint team effort up and down, you know, the, the board. So.

• 2:09:39Jocko Willink?

  It was indeed. And you, you know, like I said, you, you, uh, advising Leif and talking to Leif, man, he was, again, to this day, like, he's so grateful for the turnover that you gave him, and, and explaining things to him and talking him through things, you know, having an open mind, like, you know, and, and him having an open mind going, okay, if this is what you're saying, hey, you've been here for however many months it's been, we're gonna listen to you.

• 2:10:06Speaker 01

  And he, and he did, Jocko, absolutely. I mean, from day one, too, it wasn't like, you know, hey, I don't know what's up with this guard guy, let me, let me feel him out and build some trust over time. Like, from day one, I mean, it was like pride in pocket, like, we're the FNGs and, and these guys have been, you know, hanging out here for a while. And, you know, so, yeah, we're SEALs and they're guard guys, but we're, I mean, it was just the most amazing, unexpected thing. And I embraced the hell out of it. And, you know, and, and he's hilarious. I think it was like in, uh, I think it was like in dichotomy, um, I think it was chapter 10, he talked about, um,

• 2:10:39Speaker 01

  About pain and suffering can be a remarkable teacher. You know, that's like the overprepared, right? And then the underprepared is, you know, despite titles and training, ego and and lack of experience will get you smoked in a hurry. And so both those things showed up, you know, there and it was just an absolute pleasure to work with him and his guys. They understood that from day one. And it was all about getting after it from day one, like, let's just get after it, right? Like, we don't want to get killed, obviously. There's a force pro side of this, but like, like, how can we add value? How can we be a combat multiplier, right? And and then we did that university hostage rescue

• 2:11:23Speaker 01

  deal and you guys were on point for that one. And we were, you know, just, you know, the outer, you know, 360 security. And, you know, I think we had snipers over watching, but, you know, and it was cool. And it flowed back and it flowed, you know, forth and it didn't matter like who was in the lead and who wasn't like it was.

• 2:11:40Speaker 01

  I wish I could have captured that. It was like lightning in a bottle, you know? Just what we were doing there was special.

• 2:11:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the old hostage rescue at the university. That was, that was cool. Many, many, many cool things happened on that operation. You know, getting coordinated with you guys, you know, the, I remember like the university was off limits to use to go through. And we were like, hmm, it makes so much tactical sense to go through the university that we're going to go through the university and we're going to set up a sniper overwatch in the university over it. We, there's like kind of things where, you know, from a leadership perspective, for me, it's like, okay, if something goes sideways and I've got to stand in front of, you know, my superiors and explain why I made this decision,

• 2:12:28Jocko Willink?

  I'm going to be able to do it with complete, like, good conscience, like, oh, you wanted me to risk going over here and go and do this and do the, put more risk over here and more risk over here or just make this happen. Yeah, I, I'll stand by what we did, you know? And I always, you always have to weigh that when you're in a leadership position, like, there's some rules, you're gonna, you're gonna bend some rules sometimes. And if you can, like, you know, I was thinking about this earlier, you were talking about carrying AK-47 over in Afghanistan because you got sent on deployment with pistols.

• 2:12:58Jocko Willink?

  We, we had interpreters in Ramadi that were embedded with us. And interpreters aren't allowed to carry weapons, or they weren't allowed to carry weapons. And it was like, okay, so you want me to take this, this guy from, either from America, or from some Gulf state who is risking his life to come over here and help us? And you want me to tell him, I, I want you to go in the field where there's active gunfights going on? And you just don't carry a weapon. How's that feel? Like, no, actually, we're gonna get some captured AK-47s. And we're gonna make sure you know how to shoot them. And we're gonna make sure you're safe. And you're gonna be able to defend yourself if something goes sideways. So those are the kind of, and I, I feel like, you know, if I would have been, if something would have gone sideways, I would have been able to talk and explain that.

• 2:13:41Jocko Willink?

  And I also feel like I had the trust of my chain of command that they would have been like, all right, we, we get it. We get it. So.

• 2:13:47Speaker 01

  We did the same thing.

• 2:13:50Speaker 01

  And to your point, I, I,

• 2:13:53Speaker 01

  a lot of what we were able to do in the battle space, and I think you just touched on it. Your leadership really supported you and your guys and they trusted you.

• 2:14:02Speaker 01

  And I hope that it was trust on my end too, but regardless of, of why, I, I got a, I got effectively all the rope, you know, that I needed to work. I mean, I was, my leadership gave me space to work.

• 2:14:15Speaker 01

  It would have been really easy to micromanage, you know, a task force main effort. Especially when there are a bunch of crazy infantry guys and you're an armor officer and you know, the reputation that, you know, sometimes infantry guys have. And there was a lot of stuff going on, right? So if you were, you know, if you're watching from, you know, the headquarters, it could look like shenanigans, right? Like, what's go, what are you guys doing out there? Like, this is crazy. Like, you guys are out of control. But no, Colonel Upjoy, he really trusted us, trusted me.

• 2:14:44Speaker 01

  That we were doing what we needed to do without getting in my, getting in my swim lane. And he just backed off, resourced me, gave me everything I could have asked for.

• 2:14:55Speaker 01

  Backed my decisions, even when he didn't maybe understand them or you agree with it all the way. So I just, I can't, you know, a lot, again, a lot of the success we had was due to, you know, leadership's, you know, ability to just step way back and let us do what we needed to do. Yeah, cuz I, we couldn't have done what we did if we were restrained. So.

• 2:15:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:15:19Jocko Willink?

  Great examples from the 228 from Colonel Gronski, Colonel Lovejoy, like you saw that. You, you, if you tried to micromanage those battle spaces, you would have been just frozen, you know, and it would have been devastating and just having great guys like that to work for and, and really execute leadership the way it should be executed was just, what a blessing that all was. Uh, so you turned over with the 135, right? With, uh, with Colonel Dean?

• 2:15:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, Colonel Dean, yep.

• 2:15:45Jocko Willink?

  Which is also interesting because he had a battalion to put in there and you had a, a company.

• 2:15:50Speaker 01

  He did.

• 2:15:50Jocko Willink?

  You know?

• 2:15:51Speaker 01

  He did. And, and that was the recommendation that we, uh, that we gave and I was grateful to see that he took it, but they, it's my limited understanding. There was, uh, there was still an economy of force type situation going on where they still had to cut out some forces up to MC3 and, um, whatnot, mobile, um, security, so.

• 2:16:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, some of those, um, those guys, they, they really, the, the enemy turned it up when that turnover took place and they, they took significant casualties in like the first 48, 72 hours, um, as, as they entered the battle space. It was, it was definitely rough. Uh, so you're, you're heading home. How was it? How was it going back to America?

• 2:16:35Speaker 01

  Um, bittersweet, um, bittersweet. Um, you know, I, I mentioned the, uh, you know, this felt sense of, um, wanting to go home, but not ready to go home. Um, not knowing what's going to happen to our, to our battle space, which is so silly looking back on it now, you know, it's a.

• 2:17:00Jocko Willink?

  It's like Bridge on the River Kwai. Do you remember that movie?

• 2:17:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:17:04Jocko Willink?

  So Brid, do you remember that movie Echo Charles?

• 2:17:06Speaker 01

  No, I've never seen it.

• 2:17:07Jocko Willink?

  So it's, they're basically the Japanese Imperial Army has these soldiers building bridges. Then they build this massive bridge to help the Japanese. They're, they're, they're prisoners of war and a commando force shows up to blow up the bridge. That's going to hurt the Japanese army, but the.

• 2:17:27Jocko Willink?

  The British Colonel was like, what, what's happening? They're gonna blow up our bridge. Our bridge.

• 2:17:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:17:33Jocko Willink?

  Right? Yeah, we built this thing and luckily he is, he figures out how much he just screwed up because he, he kinda uncovers it. It's a great movie. Bridge on the River Kwai. That's one of, that's one of those classic military movies. But yeah, so this is, even as you just said, you're like, what's gonna happen to our battle space?

• 2:17:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:17:52Jocko Willink?

  You know?

• 2:17:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, we, we put our

• 2:17:58Speaker 01

  fingerprints on that battle. You know, you can't spend a year out there doing what we did and not have some type of weird

• 2:18:07Speaker 01

  disordered relationship with this space. We owned it. We recognized it. It was strange, but it was what it was too, right? Like you don't pretend it doesn't exist. We all talked about it. So we packed our stuff, we get out of there.

• 2:18:24Speaker 01

  And we're in Kuwait, processing out through there, getting ready to, to head home. We kept getting reports about what was going on in Ramadi, which was tough to hear. So there's the, we don't know why, but we don't want to leave there. We do want to go home and we're supposed to be excited about that and we are, but not as much as we should be. Make it make sense. And then we're getting these trickle reports about, you know, like I said, my last day in the battle space was the SV bit at ECP3. Yeah, that was brutal. And then, you know, we're in Kuwait and we hear more about more, you know, friendly BDA. Then we get back stateside to Camp Shelby, where it's our demobilization station. And

• 2:19:08Speaker 01

  and we're hearing more reports. So it's just, it's just flowing and we're hearing it the whole time. And I mean, even the first day we gave over the battle space, it was literally the day we gave over the battle space, you know, it's, they lost their first two guys. So it was just, it just never stopped from the, it was eight hours in from changeover and it just kept flowing and flowing. So the level of regret, not regret, that's a bad word. Just the weight of it all. Like I had no ability to control any of it, right? It's like, you're going home, get out, the new folks are here. Like, there's no choice here, but it's still felt bad.

• 2:19:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it was definitely, you know, for us, we turned over with guys from Team Five and you're like,

• 2:19:52Jocko Willink?

  You you wish you could do like a matrix brain download of here's all the stuff that we know, all the stuff that uh that poem points out like the shadow here, the people moving over there, what that building should look like, like all those little things you wish you could just download them, but you can't. You turn over as much as you possibly can.

• 2:20:12Jocko Willink?

  And you know that they don't know what you know. Great guys, like these guys are, that's one thing that you know, you turn over with guys that you don't really know. We turn over with guys like Leif had done a platoon with a bunch of those guys, went through BUDS with a bunch of those guys. I knew a decent amount of those guys, you know, like these guys are like guys we know, we've known for a long, long time for for eight years, 10 years. And you you know that there's things that you that they just don't know yet. And then boom, you're gone. And so, yeah, it's it's a, yeah, I don't know, the word isn't regret, but it's like you wish that you could help more the guys that are still there. And like you said, you can't. You just, that's the way it goes. You do everything you can to do the best turnover

• 2:20:57Jocko Willink?

  possible. And and then you get on an airplane and you leave.

• 2:21:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and I do, I can say with confidence that I know, you know, my guidance to the boys when they showed up was, you know, empty the tank, like just go whatever you got left, leave it on the field for these guys. They need everything you got. And that meant, you know, going out double shift sometimes, that meant staying in the left seat, you know, like even when they took it, we still had NCOs out there with them. So when they got hit, you know, there was guys there to help them work through that, right, to figure that out. But once we were gone, to your point, Jocko, we were gone. And it just felt helpless to help them or to do anything. And it just, I didn't know what to do with any of those feelings. And then I know the guys felt it too. I mean, it was tearing everybody up, you know. So it was hard to be happy to be going home when we're hearing about this.

• 2:21:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, it was brutal. But I think to to early earlier in your conversation.

• 2:21:51Speaker 01

  You know, I think what they learned from us coming in right behind Alpha 19 was maybe, maybe the soft integration into the battle space wasn't the way to go because ultimately we ended up knocking their roof in.

• 2:22:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:05Speaker 01

  So maybe they switched tactics and decided to just send it.

• 2:22:09Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:22:10Speaker 01

  And they did. I mean, at noon, we switched over. They recognized it and by 2000 that evening was the first hit. So again, I'm not, you know, I don't like these people. I don't, you know, necessarily, you know, I don't agree with their ideology. Obviously they were our enemy, but I do admire, you know, as a, as a warrior, I do admire their, and to your point earlier, right? They do all the same stuff we do, right? Including pay attention and notice when the guys that have been here, the grizzled vets of the last year are jumping on a plane and the new guys are showing up. And it's.

• 2:22:46Jocko Willink?

  That's a little seam and they're gonna, they're gonna do their best to exploit that thing. And yeah, it was rough, watching, watching the 135 and watching other units get hit really hard in that timeframe. It was definitely really, really hard to watch them go through that. And then they were, of course, you know, what do they do? They Charlie Mike and get, get out there and get back after it. Um, what about, what was it like driving around on a, you know, driving your car down the, down the freeway when you got back to America?

• 2:23:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's same as it was for all of us. Strange, weird, you know, wife wouldn't let me drive, you know, pull this thing over right now kind of stuff. Um, normal, totally normal. I mean, they tell you, but you don't believe them. Um, they want to talk to you, but if they weren't there, you know, get bent, not talking to you. Um, so yeah, it's weird. It's all weird, right? It's just different. You know, you came back a different person than you went over and nobody gave you the memo on that and nobody kind of tells you what to do about that. Um, and some different versions are great and some different versions are.

• 2:24:01Speaker 01

  Great over there, but not great here, right? And everything in between. So, but yeah, for me, it was not a big deal. You know, I came back and I was mostly, I think it was no big deal because not because I'm great, because I'm not, I'm wholly unremarkable. But I was so focused on the boys. I didn't, you know, it's amazing when you don't worry about your own bullshit, you know, you're, you can be fine, right? It's when you spend too much time inside your own head worrying about yourself. So, you know, I was checking in, making the rounds, just kind of trying to keep an eye on everybody. You know, I say that not to the extent that I wish I could have. I wish I could have been there for everyone forever, you know, like that was kind of the aspiration. But what I learned

• 2:24:45Speaker 01

  very quickly when I got home is like one of me, you know, almost a couple hundred of them and they were from PA and Mass and, you know.

• 2:24:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, that's definitely rough for you guys that come back and you come back with a active duty unit. It's like you're all going to be together. And, you know, sure, a couple of guys will PCS go somewhere else, but for the, but just to be cast to the four or five different states or whatever. And all of a sudden you're rolling back into your, whatever plumbing company where you're a plumber or you're an insurance salesman and you're rolling in there and, and whatever, a week ago, you were, you were on Route Michigan, getting blowed up. That's, that's a rough transition.

• 2:25:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think it's, I mean, obviously I'm biased by my own experience, but I feel like it's a pretty accurate take is there's no rougher, more vertical transition or retransition than for National Guard or Reserve soldiers because to your point, you know, they don't have that home station continuity and support that active duty folks would have, right? And yeah, you get sent home to your family, but like, hey, in the morning I'll be back at PT with the boys and, you know, we'll, we'll, you know, so every day you have a touch point, somebody else that was there, shared experience, you know, you go back and you're just looking at your wife and your kids and your boss and your friends in the neighborhood and you're like, none of you get it. Like none of you. And I have no,

• 2:26:12Speaker 01

  and they're kind, right? They're like, hey, how was it?

• 2:26:17Speaker 01

  I mean, howdy. It's, they're asking in good faith. Like, I appreciate the question, right? But like, you know, no, we're not, we're not doing that. Like, so, um, I joked with somebody before this. I said, uh, I'm gonna talk more about Ramadi, my tour in Ramadi, and however many hours I spent with Jocko and Echo than I've spent talking about Ramadi in the last 20 years. That's what's about to happen. So that's because unless you're face to face or on the phone with somebody who gets it, who was there, like, you know?

• 2:26:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:26:53Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 2:26:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that, that is definitely, you know, the, the guys from World War II, the example always comes up. The guys from World War II, they got done fighting, they got on a ship, they spent six weeks debriefing with each other and counseling each other. And get to Vietnam, it's like, same, the Vietnam guys were the same way. They were fighting, and all, one day, they just packed up their, walked out of the field with their rucksack, went to Saigon, flew home, and they're in Main Street, USA, 48 hours later. No connection to anybody, you know, not, not wearing their uniform, probably threw their uniform away in many cases, and they're just isolated. Once again, showing up as the, you know, to apply for a job at a, at a electrical place and, or a hardware store or whatever.

• 2:27:38Jocko Willink?

  And, yeah, where you been? Uh, Vietnam? Oh, how was it?

• 2:27:43Speaker 01

  Hmm. More things change the more they stay the same. And, uh, you know, the one thing I will say is, you know, eternal respect and gratitude for those Vietnam vets for coming home under the conditions that they came to, because we had the, the blessing and gift of coming home to yellow ribbons, and hey, can I buy you a cup of coffee, um, et cetera. And that felt so damn good. Um, you know, despite the loss and the suffering and everything, you know, um, that was, and I immediately thought about those vets, right, coming home under, you know, now that I'm experiencing what they should have experienced, you know, it made it even heavier when I'd see a Vietnam vet, and I'd just really go

• 2:28:24Speaker 01

  out of my way to thank them, let them know that their service mattered, and, um, and then I also, you know, absolutely love the- You know, the renewed focus on the Gold Star families and, you know, I know Mama Lee and the crew are really, you know, near and dear to your heart and, you know, I've got our Gold Star families, you know, and they're all amazing. They're just incredible people who are so resilient and have found a way to move forward and just honored to be able to be part of their lives and support them as best I can as someone who is there, maybe still be a connection to them, to the ones that they loved and lost or, you know.

• 2:29:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Every little story that you can share, every memory that you can share is like a blessing to them when they hear it and some ask, because, you know, we all spent more time with these guys in the last year of their lives than certainly than if the family didn't have a chance, couldn't couldn't compete with, you know, being in a platoon with somebody. And so to be able to share stuff is, yeah, it's like a real blessing for us to have the opportunity to be able to do that. I got some, this is President Bush at Arlington Cemetery, May 29th, 2006, and this is him talking and he brings up one of your platoon leaders, First Lieutenant Mark Dooley.

• 2:29:47Jocko Willink?

  And President Bush said this, "In this place where valor sleeps, we find strength in knowing that those serving freedom's cause have acted with principle and steadfast faith." Second Lieutenant Jack Lundberg was killed two weeks after D-Day toward the end of World War II. He wrote his mom and dad a letter to be opened in the event he did not come home. He wrote, quote, "I am sorry to add to your grief, but we of the United States have something to fight for. Never more fully have I realized that the United States of America is worth the sacrifice," end quote. And President Bush continued, "That same feeling moves those who are now fighting the war on terror."

• 2:30:31Jocko Willink?

  First Lieutenant Mark Dooley was killed by a terrorist bomb last September in the Iraqi city of Ramadi. Before he left for his tour, he gave his parents a last letter, just in case. He wrote, "Remember that my leaving was in the service of something that we loved and be proud."

• 2:30:56Jocko Willink?

  The best way to pay respect is to value why a sacrifice was made.

• 2:31:10Jocko Willink?

  And that, um, that day when, when Lieutenant Dooley was killed, this is a, there's a famous picture of, uh, of, uh, Gunny Michael Berghardt, um, Iron Mike, and it's, he's the EOD guy. And I actually talked about this with Colonel Gronski on the podcast as well. You know, he was out there diffusing the ID into meme and, um, it, it went off and he gets thrown through the air. 10 feet in the air and he gets burns and strap the wounds and momentarily lost feeling in his legs and, um, but he, he refused to like be carried out on a stretcher. And he stood up and walked to the medevac helicopter.

• 2:31:54Jocko Willink?

  And the famous picture is him flipping off the enemy as he left, uh, one final act of defiance. Were you down at Arlington for that ceremony?

• 2:32:06Speaker 01

  Uh, I wasn't able to make the, um, ceremony itself, um, for Mark's interment, but, uh, been, been down there several times to pay a visit as have the boys. And it's kind of a running thing where, um, you know, it's somebody's down there, they snap a picture, they'll send it to the whole group and, you know, various,

• 2:32:29Speaker 01

  you know, different things that will, will leave there. Um, it's been a bunch of whiskey drank and poured out on that spot.

• 2:32:38Speaker 01

  And, uh, yeah, yeah, Mark's, uh, his dad's a retired, uh, Air Force Colonel pilot, uh, mom's school teacher. Salt of the earth, you know, Norwich, Norwich kid. Got in trouble in Norwich his senior year, got booted out. So he had to go to OCS. Uh, so he went through like two commissioning programs, basically, but, uh, yeah, went down, got his Ranger tab. And ultimately, um, you know, I made him the platoon leader of those, uh, those hooligans over in that lurs, uh, lurs platoon. And they, they took to him pretty well and he took to them. And, uh, so, yeah. Just another great example of, uh, you know, putting the right folks together, you know, letting the magic happen. And, uh, but yeah, that was, uh,

• 2:33:23Speaker 01

  That was a tough day out there. It was pure chaos out there on that site. That was the biggest ID we saw in the entire year. And EOD guys, they said that would have killed an M1. So I mean, it didn't matter what rolled over that thing. It would have, you know, and then, uh, yeah, everything changed that day. That was the day that changed everything. 19th September, 2005 for us. And, uh, we never saw things the same after that. And, um, the sacrifice of those three guys on that day,

• 2:33:54Speaker 01

  was tragic, but, uh, I think it was also the catalyst that, you know, really took us to a different level in terms of how we saw the fight and how we prosecuted that fight going forward.

• 2:34:09Speaker 01

  Which was without hesitation, fully committed every single day. No downtime, no days off, just full tilt. And yeah, there were still days that were tough and we took losses, but,

• 2:34:22Speaker 01

  yeah, that was a tough day. In fact, I said we were in the battle space 365. I take that back one edit. We, we were given the next day off for the memorial service to pay respects to our three guys that we lost on the 19th. So,

• 2:34:39Speaker 01

  yeah, General Gronski and Colonel Abjoy cobbled together some troops and just kind of put them out there on the OPs. Just kind of maintain the space for 24 hours for us to do that. And then, uh, we kitted out, went right back out.

• 2:34:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, you, the, uh, conventional forces who do not get the, uh, don't get the credit that they deserve. You know, it's, we're sitting here talking and you're talking about the fact that you took, you know, one day off. After you lost three guys out there, massive ID,

• 2:35:12Jocko Willink?

  you took one day off and like, A, in special operations, like, You guys are out there 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, 364 days a year, you know, like, we would go out for three days into an overwatch position, come back and spend, you know, at least a night, two, maybe two, and get refreshed, sleep in air conditioning, eat a good meal, you know, get totally rehydrated, have time to plan for the next mission. And, you know, so we, and we recognize that while we were there, like, we, we knew, like, we, we had, we had beds, you know, we had air conditioning back at base, we had

• 2:35:52Jocko Willink?

  internet, you know, and conventional guys were just like, oh, you know, I haven't called home in three weeks because of whatever, I haven't gotten email, I haven't gotten mail, haven't gotten anything, so, you know, the, the fact that you guys just went night after night, after day after day, after night after night, just, we, we were always admired that so much, and same thing with the 118D when they showed up, it was the same thing, like, we would go out and do our thing, we'd spend a day in the field, two days in the field, maybe three, and then we'd go back, we'd get a little bit of downtime, so, nothing but respect and admiration for, for the conventional forces that were out there holding it down, man, holding it down.

• 2:36:40Jocko Willink?

  What was, so what, what job did you pick up when you got back?

• 2:36:45Speaker 01

  You like you, we were talking before we came on, and I was on a bit of a free role, two deployments early, you know, two company commands, one over there, so, you know, through circumstances, you know, it was going pretty well at that point, resume wise, and so I got offered, it was kind of a whatever job you want kind of deal when I got back, and, which I'm very grateful for, and so I went over and I was a chief of training at the mountain warfare school in Jericho, Vermont, which was pretty awesome, kind of, that's my version of your trade at gig, which was fantastic, and just the best military mountain air instructors in the, in the army, and, so that was awesome, did that, and then I got to, uh,

• 2:37:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, Nate Fry was saying that's like the best kept secret in the army.

• 2:37:33Speaker 01

  Oh, it is.

• 2:37:33Jocko Willink?

  Is that school?

• 2:37:34Speaker 01

  Oh, it absolutely is, yeah, and that's the thing, right, nobody understands that, and why would they, by the way, right? Why would anybody know and or care but um yeah, I mean, they are to use geek speak. They're the executive agents for military mountaineering for the United States Army. So it's everybody knows, you know, Colorado, everybody knows Bridgeport, the Marine School. Everybody knows, you know, Delana, um, phase two of Ranger School, right? Those are all kind of mountain community schools. But the school in Jericho is kind of provides oversight overall, right? For the most part, so um, which is so unexpected, right?

• 2:38:16Speaker 01

  Why would this National Guard School have a role like that? And the in the in the answer is because they have continuity. Because unlike active duty where folks, you know, move out every two to three to four years, whatever it is, um, there are some instructors have been there 10, 15 years. That's all they do and you just can't compete with that. I don't care who you are, how good you are, dedicated you are. Like if a dude's been doing a thing for a decade and a half, like you're not gonna touch him. Like he's just gonna be so good at his craft and that's all these guys did all day long was just climb ice, climb rock. I mean, the knot work, the rope work was just 10 out of 10 and then they were really good at what they did. So, yeah, got to do that and then I went over and got to pay it back or forward um,

• 2:39:01Speaker 01

  at ROTC. So I was a product of that. So I had to go over and be a assistant professor of military studies at ROTC, which was

• 2:39:09Jocko Willink?

  Was that the University of Vermont?

• 2:39:11Speaker 01

  It was, yeah, yeah. And then I got to

• 2:39:13Jocko Willink?

  Dude, that's like a, yeah, that's like when you're a student, you're looking at you like you're this combat experienced guy that they must have been pumped to have you in there.

• 2:39:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, they uh, I think they were, I'm pretty sure they were most days anyways. But yeah, it it it's

• 2:39:34Speaker 01

  You know, and I get it. I got the job when I came back from, you know, like the what do you want to do job? But then it was like, okay, you know, you're home. You got the job you wanted. Now it's time to come back to the brigade or whatever, you know, and do more grind, you know, type of stuff. And I just, I don't think I made some people happy on that one. But I'm like, this was like a one time career opportunity. And I just wanted to get back to the program that gave me, gave me everything. So I think, you know, back to back, like trade doc or training jobs was like not ideal for the track I was in. But I was like, hey, it's now or never. So, yeah, so, uh, yeah, we stood back up to Ranger Challenge program, which I mentioned I was part of. So I got to captain that team and, and then those kids went on and did a bunch of great stuff. A bunch of them went in the guard and have gone on to do some really great stuff.

• 2:40:18Speaker 01

  So, uh, that, that was like back to back, like really satisfying.

• 2:40:23Jocko Willink?

  How long was each one of those tours?

• 2:40:24Speaker 01

  Couple of years. Yeah. So it's about four years. So then about 2010 is when it was kind of time to get back to, back to the operational side of things.

• 2:40:35Jocko Willink?

  They're like, hey, uh, you gotta come back now.

• 2:40:38Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:40:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I got the, uh, I had worked for the Admiral's, the Admiral's aide in 2005, 2004, 2005. I was the Admiral's aide. And so, yeah, you know, come back from Ramadi, he's like, what job do you want? And same thing. I'm like, with everything I just learned, there's only one place I should be. And that is teaching the guys that are getting ready to deploy. And so we ended up going to trade at, and, um, yeah, but same thing, you know, it's like, this is, this is where I can transfer the, the most amount of information that I picked up and on to the next generation. So that was kind of a no brainer for me.

• 2:41:16Jocko Willink?

  So then when they, when they told, when they knocked on your door and said, it's time to go to work again, where'd you go?

• 2:41:22Speaker 01

  So in the transition from coming into the guard back in 99.

• 2:41:29Speaker 01

  3172 Mountain Battalion. There was this initiative to transfer or transition, excuse me, the 86 Armor Brigade to the 86 Infantry Brigade Combat Team Mountain. So it went from a Mountain Battalion to a Mountain Brigade.

• 2:41:42Jocko Willink?

  Oh dang, okay.

• 2:41:43Speaker 01

  Pretty cool. Good for an IFTR guy, not good for the Armor guys. They started reclassing with a quickness. And so.

• 2:41:51Jocko Willink?

  Get that ruck out.

• 2:41:54Speaker 01

  What's a blue cord? So I went over to the Brigade and I got to be the Brigade's full-time kind of training officer, operations guy. Lot of fun, lot of cool stuff. Did some operational stuff, did some disaster, real-world disaster, emergency relief back, it was like, I think it was 2011, tropical storm, Hurricane Irene, massive devastation, flooding.

• 2:42:20Jocko Willink?

  Is that when it hit New Jersey?

• 2:42:22Speaker 01

  All the way up to East Coast, Vermont got smashed. So the guard took lead, I was stuck there, like the operations center at the Brigade headquarters. We were liaising with state and local authorities, FEMA, like it was, there was entire towns that were cut off. So we were having to fly in supplies, medevac, fly people in and out. So, you know, that's that guard mission, right?

• 2:42:43Jocko Willink?

  That's freaking awesome though. That's such a cool part of, it's kind of too bad the military can't do, like the regular military. When something goes sideways, like you should be able to just pick, okay, cool. I mean, the guard, the fact that the guard does it is awesome. I always looked at that as such a good opportunity because you have to do, like, one half of combat is like task organizing and moving people and setting up logistics. And like, that's a good thing to know how to do and it's a good thing to rehearse. But you don't even have to set up scenarios to rehearse. You just take advantage of real things that happen. Wish we did more of that. And how long was that gig for?

• 2:43:24Speaker 01

  A couple of years. Then I moved on. Had an opportunity to command the Mountain Battalion. So I did, which was great and surreal.

• 2:43:40Speaker 01

  You know, from being a.

• 2:43:42Speaker 01

  Platoon leader to be in the commander, company commander in Alpha Company in HHC to now, you know, commanding the battalion was wild because technically the reason I was an O4 in Ramadi was because I got selected to be the battalion S3, the battalion operations officer before the alert order came down and the battalion commander, who's now major general, retired Will Roy, he said, I'm not going to penalize you for taking command and going overseas. So he let me have the control grade, the O4. And it's, I know a lot of people were like, why is this piloteer guy a major as a company commander? That's weird. Were we in the British Army or something? Like, what's, what's happening here? So that's what

• 2:44:24Speaker 01

  happened. But that ended up being a huge combat multiplier on the deployment as well, especially as the task force main effort. So, yeah, so I got to command the battalion. Super grateful for that opportunity. Went to JRTC, had a great rotation.

• 2:44:43Jocko Willink?

  Where'd you guys go to for JRTC?

• 2:44:45Speaker 01

  Down at Fort Polk, Louisiana. Yep. So just full blown brigade rotation. A lot of the, a lot of the, I mean, I just had like the A-team for staff and commanders. I mean, it was just one of those dream things where it just lined up. Like every critical billet was filled by like a, just a monster. So usually, you know, you go to combat training center and the OP-4 just runs up the scoreboard on you because it's their home turf and, you know, our boys are just getting after it. Wasn't happening. 3172, boys. Yeah. So it was hilarious. I had one of my commanders, Travis Myers up front, just laying waste to the OP-4. He was way ahead of the scripted timeline. They were out of OP-4. So the COG actually came running up with the brigade commander. He's like, shut

• 2:45:28Speaker 01

  them down. Hit pause. I'm like, what are you talking? We're about to run these guys over. So they did like a POSX to give like their call at OP-4 out of their rear to get them brought up. It was hilarious.

• 2:45:39Jocko Willink?

  That's a win right there.

• 2:45:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. But again, that's just another example of the mentality of, you know, the guys in this organization. I mean, they just, there was only one speed for these cats. It was just full throttle. Like, that was it. So my job was easy. It was fun. And they did great. And I came out of battalion command and

• 2:46:05Speaker 01

  Unfortunately, got divorced while I was in battalion command. So 16 years, two kids. You know, you know, nobody gets married to get divorced, but you know, kid's mom's great. We're still great friends. My kids are amazing.

• 2:46:22Speaker 01

  It's the coolest thing I ever did in my life. So no regrets, you know.

• 2:46:28Speaker 01

  But I went to a staff gig to, to just kind of cool my jets after, you know, infantry command. And we, we had an indiscretion or an incident in our recruiting command that required a replacement battalion commander. So front office, the senior command said, hey, who've we got? Who's in the, who's in the bullpen? And I'm like, please, no. They're like, yeah, it's you. So grabbed a, grabbed a fire extinguisher in each hand and walked down to that dumpster fire and did my best to put it out. And, you know, but, um, so it was basically back to back battalion commands. And, uh, and then, uh, I don't know, like it was phenomenal,

• 2:47:08Speaker 01

  you know, but, uh, you know, when you know, and I just, it, uh, that's second gig in recruiting kind of wore me a bit. And then, uh, and then it's coming up. I mean, I basically hit 20. I locked in and I just kind of was looking around like, eh, it's been a great run. I mean, I was a, I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat, you know, super grateful, but like, you know, when you know, and I was like, I just think it's time to move on. Didn't have a plan. Didn't know what I was going to. Just, I knew that, uh, you know, and then, and I also didn't want to hang around and jam things up either. The way it works in the guard, there's like a limited number of slots. You know, they're called control grade resources. So if I'm sitting in an O5 slot, that means like the O4 is the deserving

• 2:47:53Speaker 01

  stud O4s. Just got to wait in line behind me.

• 2:47:56Jocko Willink?

  Wait for you to die.

• 2:47:58Speaker 01

  That's right. And I, you know, and I was doing the same thing with the O6s in front of me. And, uh, yeah. And they stepped some other guy in front of me, which meant I was going to be waiting there for like another two or three years. And I just didn't have the heart to sit. I'm like, hey, the only reason that stud behind me isn't going to get promoted to colonel like he deserves is if I stay here. So I just pulled the pin on myself, blew myself in place, got out of the way and, uh, and, and, you know, moved on and it, and it worked out.

• 2:48:23Jocko Willink?

  So what'd you end up doing when you retired?

• 2:48:25Speaker 01

  Uh, relationship for everything, right? So I stayed in touch with some amazing people that I'd served with.

• 2:48:33Speaker 01

  And friends in the community and they were amazing. And was thinking about working in private sector. Which sounded cool, but I had no experience there. And then another former mentor of mine and another colleague of mine were working over at Department of Homeland Security. And they said, hey, what are you doing? I said, I don't know. And so we started talking and next thing you know, they offered me a gig, an opportunity to come over to civil service. So ended up having about 45 days of terminal leave to do nothing, which was weird. But it was good. It was like a retirement tryout, I like to say, you know, like some people are like, I don't know if I'm going to do okay in retirement.

• 2:49:15Speaker 01

  I'm like, so I've test driven retirement. I'm retirement certified. I think I'm going to be fine. And yeah, I've been working for DHS for 10 years, a little over 10 years now.

• 2:49:26Jocko Willink?

  Nice. And, and so that's like a second, full second career.

• 2:49:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:49:31Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:49:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:49:32Jocko Willink?

  And what, what do you do on, like to keep yourself busy outside of work?

• 2:49:38Speaker 01

  Hmm. So, so as I was saying to you earlier, so there had to be an accountability plan. There was no getting out. That was a condition on me allowing myself to retire was like, there's got to be an accountability off ramp to something else. Cause I was not going to allow myself to, you know, be that guy. So what I came up with was, and I started to get into it right at the tail end before I retired. So I got into triathlon, Ironman and Spartan racing and things of that variety. So no more, you know, rucking or PT test or whatever, but like, but, but, but that was something, right? Like that was good. Like that would, there's a lot of suck there.

• 2:50:21Speaker 01

  And, and there's a big ladder of progression. You know, you start small and you keep working yourself up into bigger races. I'm like, oh, this is a long runway. Like there's plenty of pain and misery here to keep me busy for a very long time. So, so, and it served its purpose. Yeah. I raced for like 10. Plus years.

• 2:50:37Jocko Willink?

  Have you tried skimo?

• 2:50:39Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:50:40Jocko Willink?

  Bro, ski mountaineering? You haven't heard of this? You haven't seen this? So.

• 2:50:45Speaker 01

  Were you talking to Nate about it?

• 2:50:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:50:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 2:50:47Jocko Willink?

  We, I think we talked about it, but it's, it's basically you, you know, you skin up your skis and you race up the mountain. Sometimes you get to things that are so steep that you can't ski up them. So you take off your skis and you run up the mountain. And then when you get to the top of the mountain, you put your skis back on, you take the skins off and you ski down the mountain. When you get down the mountain, you start skiing back up the mountain and you put your skins back on. And you know, it's, it made it into the Olympics this year, but it was, I, I, I don't know if I saw all of it. The ones that I saw were like sprint races. So they took like four or five minutes to get it done.

• 2:51:24Jocko Willink?

  Like I was at a, they have it at Mammoth, they have it at Big Sky, like it is abs, it looks absolutely freaking like the maximum endurance test of anything. So you see these guys like, you know, you know what it's like, you and I know what it's like walking up a mountain, right? You're like, okay, cool. And if you've ever tried cross-country skiing, you're like, okay, if you've ever tried to put skins on and you like slowly like, like when I've skinned up mountains, I'm doing it like I'm hiking. I'm like, you know, enjoying the scenery. These freaking dudes, they are sprinting, running, you know, with their, with their skis on. It's, it's crazy. I bet if you did triathlon and you like skiing, if you check out skimo,

• 2:52:07Jocko Willink?

  you're gonna be hook, line and sinker. See, me, I am not a triathlete.

• 2:52:12Jocko Willink?

  And so I, I like watching it. I think I, I appreciate the pain and suffering. Cause I'm watching it going, oh, I know how much that sucks. Like I've, I've hiked up enough freaking shitty terrain in my time to know that what they're doing right now completely sucks and I will watch it from here.

• 2:52:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you should check out Schemo.

• 2:52:33Speaker 01

  I will.

• 2:52:34Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking badass.

• 2:52:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:52:35Jocko Willink?

  You know, I, yeah. Maybe that's like in a few years, maybe I'll start giving that a run like, you know, a little bit, a little bit down the road. Echo shaking his head.

• 2:52:45Speaker 01

  Not even close.

• 2:52:46Jocko Willink?

  Not even close.

• 2:52:47Speaker 01

  For me personally.

• 2:52:48Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah, yeah. For you personally.

• 2:52:49Speaker 01

  For you. Oh, yeah. Hell, yeah. I get it, bro.

• 2:52:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. But you know, when you see Schemo guys, they're built like triathletes, you know, they're

• 2:52:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:52:55Jocko Willink?

  smaller dudes for the most part. Uh, yeah. So you're gonna have to check that out. And, um, and then what about your kids both went in, huh?

• 2:53:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53:05Jocko Willink?

  Both kids military service?

• 2:53:07Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah. Apples didn't fall far from the tree, at least in that regard. Um, and, uh, you know, no overt influence, but you know, what you realize as a military dad is you've cast a shadow whether you want to or not, right? And some cast a longer one than others. But, uh, so you don't really need to say anything. It's just kind of there. Um, so yeah, my daughter joined the Air National Guard in New Hampshire, uh, did a hitch. Um, and, uh, got out. Um, and my son just, uh, he just got done basic training and he's going to officer candidate school next month. And, uh, he's gonna join the dark side right out of the blocks and go be an O.

• 2:53:52Speaker 01

  Um, and he's also, uh, pursuing law enforcement as well, which is ironic because that was kind of the dual track career that I was, get my transition, you know, that's what I was looking to do as well. So, um, both better versions of me. Um, and you know, that's the goal, right? As a parent, you know?

• 2:54:10Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. Awesome. Well, right on, man. Does that get us up to speed?

• 2:54:14Speaker 01

  I think so.

• 2:54:15Jocko Willink?

  Um, people can find you. I look, I searched for you on, you have the lowest profile I think of anyone I've had on the podcast. The only place I could find you is on LinkedIn. And, and believe it or not, there's a lot of people out there named Jason Pelletier. Did you know that?

• 2:54:30Speaker 01

  Uh, I didn't. I don't search for myself. Uh, that's correct. I, I ghosted social media probably four years ago. It was one of the best decisions I ever made.

• 2:54:39Jocko Willink?

  Good call.

• 2:54:41Speaker 01

  And, uh, yeah, I'm just a, I'm just an old army guy that lives in the woods, uh, you know, and splits wood and hangs out with the beavers and just, I just, I'm really low key, off radar. Um, and I have nothing to rap or sell or whatever, but, uh, yeah, if you want me, find me on LinkedIn. But, uh, this was just about, and, and I really, I cannot say thanks enough to you, Jocko, for giving me this opportunity to tell the story that I've, um, haven't been brave enough to tell until now, the 20th anniversary. You know, we came home in June, June 06, uh, and so here we are 20 years later and it's just time to man up and, you know, I couldn't have done that without you.

• 2:55:23Speaker 01

  And I know this means a lot to the guys and to our Gold Star families to have this kind of untold portion of the story of the Battle of Ramadi finally told.

• 2:55:33Speaker 01

  And, uh, and that was the whole point of this exercise. So, thank you.

• 2:55:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, just, um, amazing guys over there and, you know, getting the story out there and, and making sure people understand what you guys did, I think is, that's why it's such an honor for me to have, have you on here to, to share that from your perspective. And by the way, any of your guys wants to come on here, it's an open invite, you know, any of them. Um, open invite to come on here and, and share their experiences. So, um, Echo Charles, you got any questions?

• 2:56:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, I do. You said something real quick. I didn't want to interrupt the, uh, the story, of course. Um, you said something about dropping off a book bag and then the book bag, drop off book bag equals dead teacher. Hmm. What do you mean by that? I think I know, but I, I don't, I'm not sure.

• 2:56:21Speaker 01

  It's a great question. Yeah. Some more context would be helpful.

• 2:56:25Speaker 02

  Yeah, in that particular.

• 2:56:26Speaker 01

  Sorry. Sometimes I don't hear myself. Um, so we had a platoon, our great platoon. Um, that was run by Bob Dexter and Jesse Vanco and, and Sergeant First Class James. And, and they, they had a really complicated mission. They, they were doing, it's like a company level up, um, intelligence support team. They, they handled like, uh, the funds, the money, um, to compensate families when we, you know, when there were civilian casualties, collateral damage.

• 2:56:57Speaker 01

  So there's multiple occasions where, as an example, they went to go pay, um, SERP funds, right? This is the reparation funds.

• 2:57:04Speaker 02

  With the book bag or the backpack.

• 2:57:07Speaker 01

  To a family, yeah.

• 2:57:08Jocko Willink?

  The backpack's like a, uh, It's like an example of, so there's a bunch of things that they're doing. Everything from like, oh, we accidentally ran a freaking tank through your front yard and knocked through the fence. Cool. Here's whatever amount of money. Um, oh, you know, we found out that this kid needs some medical help. Cool. We're gonna get some medical help out to him. Oh, we found out that the power's down. We can help our engineers get out there and restore the power. Oh, what, there was a civilian casualty. Someone got hit with a, you know, a, a, a round in the leg. And well, medical treatment, but also money and occasionally civilians get killed. You gotta, you know, go out there and explain to the family what happened and pay them money. And on top of that, like, oh, soccer balls for the kids.

• 2:57:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:57:52Jocko Willink?

  And that's where the, the bookbag is like an example of soccer balls, you know, uh, food and then bookbags. So.

• 2:57:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:57:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:58:00Speaker 01

  That's exactly right. Yeah. So you try to do good as the American. You go over there and you try to do good. Give school, you know, school bags to, to kids and the law of unintended consequences shows up until you understand what the second and third order effects of those things that you're doing is. So, yeah.

• 2:58:18Jocko Willink?

  And the second or third order effects being if the insurgents see you, see one of the civilians there receiving gifts from coalition forces, oh, they must be providing information. They go in there and kill them. And this is, you've heard me say this before, uh, at some, uh, when I, when I talk about the battle is like, when we later on, when, when I was there, um, like now in the summer of 2006, when we started going into a lot of houses, like the, when we first would go into someone's house, you know, the, the, the dad would like take the family and like huddle them in a corner. They wouldn't even look at us.

• 2:58:54Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:58:55Jocko Willink?

  And I always ask, you know, when I'm talking to a group of people, why do you think they did that? And they, people say, oh, they were scared. And I said, what do you think they were scared of? And they say, well, they're scared of you and your platoon. No. What they were scared of is if they got seen talking to coalition forces. The insurgents would come back that night and murder the whole family, or they'd murder the dad, or they'd whatever. So that's the reality of the situation that the insurgents are there persistently. And if they see and they think that that's the last thing they want, is they, the last thing they want is the civilian populace to coordinate or build relationships with coalition forces. And in fact, that really was the tipping point

• 2:59:37Jocko Willink?

  of the battle the next summer was as we were there on a more persistent way. Because, you know, you take what we just talked about here. You know, Jason had 150 guys to cover a massive area. You know, it's like, imagine covering downtown, downtown San Diego is not a great example, but imagine covering like 50 blocks of Pacific Beach. You know, all those people, all those roads, all those houses, you're doing that with 200 guys. Like, this is a dramatic challenge. So when the 135 came in and took over, all of a sudden, they had 500 guys. And a lot more vehicles, a lot more tanks. So then it was,

• 3:00:22Jocko Willink?

  oh, not only are we going to be on this checkpoint, this checkpoint, this checkpoint, but now we're going to be in combat outposts, and we can start doing, and that's what allowed the civilian populace to not be scared anymore. So that's a very long answer to your question. Did I?

• 3:00:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's absolutely perfect. Yeah. And I mean, even something as, you know, complicated is, you know, trying to give money to a woman whose husband got killed the way Jocko described. So we're trying to still make it right, even though we didn't kill him.

• 3:00:50Jocko Willink?

  Right, right.

• 3:00:50Speaker 01

  And he's getting his ass kicked by a lady with a broom, who's like beating him up and screaming at him. And it's just, so it's complicated, right? But like, it's, it takes you a while, despite all your training, to figure out what that all means, those second and third order effects, how to mitigate those, how to do it the right way. But then you can also flip it, like we developed a TTP, to where when we had people at the DIF, that we were going to catch and release out in sector, we'd make sure for a daylight intersection. Have a nice day.

• 3:01:19Jocko Willink?

  It's kinda like you see in cop movies, right? Like you see in cop movies, like, oh yeah, we, we're letting this guy go. Why are they letting it go? He must have cooperated. Oh yeah, you create that little bit of hate and discontent.

• 3:01:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:01:30Jocko Willink?

  There was some of those activities were going on.

• 3:01:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. Cool. Right on. Yeah. Good to see you.

• 3:01:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, likewise.

• 3:01:38Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 3:01:38Jocko Willink?

  Right on, man. Any, any closing thoughts, Jason?

• 3:01:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, thanks. Um, for sure. You know, obviously I'd be remiss if I didn't bring up, um, you know, those boys and you've given, tribute and mention to, to some of them, um, who gave the ultimate sacrifice over there in the fight. So, um, you know, we talked about Mark Dooley and his family a little bit on 19 September. And I talked about how that was the day that, you know, kinda changed everything for us. And, um, he was out there that day with a couple of guys from the Lurs, um, platoon, right? So for anybody listening, they might be like, well, that doesn't make sense. Why would the Lurs guys be out there on a roving patrol in the middle of the day?

• 3:02:22Speaker 01

  Just a, one of many examples of the ethos and the culture that existed within the company. So not only were those guys going out doing scout sniper missions, they would volunteer with my roving platoons, my vigilant hunters to take, to, to give one of their crews a day down, a down day. And they would have volunteered to go take a truck. And so on that day, 19 September, oh five, Mark asked two of his guys, who wants to step up and go man this truck with me and we're gonna go out with, with red platoon and do an eight hour shift with those boys. And, uh, he was the two truck, the tail man in a, in a section that was, um,

• 3:03:05Speaker 01

  was, was down near the railroad tracks in Southern Tamim on the dirt. And, uh, he was, uh, joined by Sergeant Michael Egan and Specialist Will Fernandez. Great guys from the PA Lurs, uh, unit. And, uh, And then we talked a little bit about the rest of that day from, you know, the catastrophic ID to, you know, the response to that. And listen, just like you owned your blue on blue and, you know, chapter one of ownership, you know, we, we had one that day too, because we got on both sides of the tracks and comms were down and it was crazy. And I might've stepped out with a VS-17 panel at one point to check fire, but it was just a crazy day

• 3:03:45Speaker 01

  full of insane emotion. And like I said, you know, the blessing of, if there is a blessing, if there is a silver lining, it's the relationships that you make and you sustain with the families when you come back. And, and so I've gotten very close over the years with Mark Dooley's family, his friends. Same thing, you know, Mike Egan's wife, Maria and his daughter Sam, Samantha, just talked to her recently as well. And, and so I never would have known

• 3:04:23Speaker 01

  them otherwise. And gotta hunt the good, I guess, or at least try to. But like I said, that changed everything that day for us. And it was a, it was a big scrap and it was brutal and dark, but we learned a lot. And then, but then there was a really tough run at the end of September where a couple of days later, we lost another guy in Mobile. Four days later, we lost, you know, five guys in Bradley catastrophic loss, just right on the railroad tracks, just, you know, maybe 500 meters away. So, and then we spun into November where another one of my platoon leaders, the one I mentioned to you that volunteered to go over and work up in MC3, yeah, coming off shift, downed Cobra in that

• 3:05:08Speaker 01

  battlespace Marine Corps aviators. And he was coming off shift. All he had to do was drive through the gate. And he heard it come over the radio and he just went towards the sound of guns and he drove down there out of sector. And, and then he jumped onto the, the main road down there, which is a dirt road and he got hit. So, you know, that's the stuff we talk about theoretically, right? Like, you know, didn't have to, but did, right? Like, chosen courage and whatever. What was his name? That was Lieutenant Mark Procopio and his dad, son of a 06 Colonel in the Vermont

• 3:05:50Speaker 01

  Guard, his wife Erica was lieutenant at the time. She's lieutenant colonel now. It's crazy. I have the privilege of being the godfather to her oldest son, Mark Jr. And so at that point, you know, my two, those were two of my original lieutenants, Mark Dooley and Mark Procopio from Camp Shelby, the original origin, you know, the original 63. And so by November, first week of November, they were both gone. And one of the replacement lieutenants I got, Chris Carbone, was there for three weeks.

• 3:06:32Speaker 01

  He got blown up, sent home, evacuated out. He almost lost his life on 23 October as well, right before that. And so it's, it's, it was just a very interesting period of time where the enemy showed its teeth. You know, at that point, they were just this, they were, they were this agents of chaos that we were just having a tough time keeping our hands around. And so, and then I think you, did you have Braxton McCoy on? Yep. Yeah. So Glass Factory on 5 January, that's my battle space. So, you know, listening to him talk about that was a little surreal. You know, we lost some good folks that day.

• 3:07:13Speaker 01

  And my guys were the ones who were responding to, obviously it's our A.O., it's our responsibility. So it was, however bad you think it was, it was worse. That was just a tough day. And then not too long after that, on 25 January, Sergeant Joshua Johnson was a truck commander, leading an Iraqi army group of soldiers down to transition to shift change down at ECP3. We usually have tanks. And that morning, they weren't available. Leadership failure on me. I should have stood the mission down. I didn't. And

• 3:07:54Speaker 01

  I said it'll probably be fine. Boys were like, yeah, no factor, sir. We got this. We'll handle it. Easy peasy. And yeah, he's lead truck going down and there was an EFP right on the corner and hit the truck, hit the gunner in the legs, hit Josh, just and had him stable for a bit, but lost him in transit. And he was a good, good boy. He was an active duty 10th Mountain guy. He was over in Afghanistan. So it was the second tour. He's one of the few guys that had post nine 11 deployment experience, just a pipe hitter from Northern Vermont, real good kid, raised by his grandparents.

• 3:08:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I remember like the week, I think it was a week or two before that happened. I'd saw him, he just grabbed me, I was going to some brief. Always on the way to something and he just randomly had his laptop open and he's like, yeah, Lisa, come here. And I was like, what? Talking to me, Josh? He said, yeah, I gotta show you something. I said, what do you got? He says, you know, he shows a picture of this girl. He goes, this is my girlfriend. This is my new girlfriend. He was all excited. Yeah, just like, I don't know. It was like a wholesome, really cool, unexpected moment. And that's my, my last memory. You know, it's like, all right, man. Well, good luck. You know, she looks sweet. And, and then you just blink and shit happens and it's terrible and you

• 3:09:22Speaker 01

  can't do shit about it, you know, except for try to get ahead of the next one, which we did slowly but surely, you know, we started to. So that's a whole lot of unfortunate. But it led to a lot of figuring things out, you know, developing TTPs, counter TTPs. That really, I think, saved a lot of lives going forward. So I like to think about, you know, what Mark said, you know, and President Bush's comments, you know, it's like understanding why a sacrifice was made and contributed to something bigger, greater. We miss him, but it mattered. It did. It achieved that result. It really did. And so, as you said, you know, you all were the beneficiary of a lot of that really brutal, hard learning

• 3:10:07Speaker 01

  that occurred before your arrival in the battle space. So.

• 3:10:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, that's a great way to close it out, remembering those guys that made the ultimate sacrifice. And like you said, and like I started this podcast with, you know, their their sacrifice was what kept so many other people alive. You know, and that's one of the, you know, one of the solid things to remember is, you know, when you're over there and you're fighting, the old cliche of, you know, it's, you know, it's not about whatever political thing, it's about the guy to your left and to your right. And it's not just about that. It's also the guy to your left, the guy to your right, and the guy that's inbound, the guy that's going to show up here. What can we do to make the battle space safer? And what can we do to make sure that they're as prepared as they possibly can? And so,

• 3:10:57Jocko Willink?

  the sacrifices of your guys, no doubt, no doubt, kept so many others alive. So, we won't forget them. We won't forget your, your company, what they did, the sacrifices that they made. And they will live on with us forever. So, thanks for coming out. Thanks for joining us. And thanks for sharing these lessons. And once again, thank you for all the sacrifice that was made by you and by your men. Thank you, Jocko. Appreciate it.

• 3:11:33Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Jason Pelletier has left the building. Certainly, really, really awesome to have him on. And just an opportunity and an honor to have him on and be able to honor the work that they did. The effort that they put in on the battlefield and obviously, the, the incredible sacrifices that were made. So, can't thank him enough for coming on. Just incredible. So, thanks, Jason.

• 3:12:15Jocko Willink?

  With that, you know, one of the things that he talked about was, what did he say? An accountability program. He knew, like, he needed to be doing something, tracking something. And he went into the, he went into the triathlon game, went into the obstacle course Spartan race game. So, that's good. You gotta have something in your life. You gotta have that thing. You gotta be, you know what, you gotta, you gotta kind of be chasing something. Gotta kind of be chasing something.

• 3:12:45Speaker 02

  I never heard of that expression, accountability program. I liked it.

• 3:12:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:12:50Speaker 02

  It kind of put a name to something that I feel like is, has been existing, you know, kind of a thing. Where it's like, yeah, you need something, something, yeah, it's gonna be hard, whatever, but it's like constructive, you know, so it's constructive that you stick with, kind of a thing.

• 3:13:06Jocko Willink?

  Yep. And you know what's, you know what's weird is I think in, in life, you know, like, you know, they say, oh, you better sign up for something. You sign up for a tournament, sign up for a race, sign up for a whatever. And those things are really, really good because they kind of are the accountability program.

• 3:13:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, fully.

• 3:13:25Jocko Willink?

  Cause on that day, you're gonna have to get out, run that race, swim that thing, uh, compete in that jujitsu tournament, wrestling tournament, weightlifting tournament, whatever, name it.

• 3:13:37Jocko Willink?

  But when you don't have that, you gotta think about that long-term, like, hey, every day counts. Every day counts. And you gotta, you gotta make sure that you are fighting against the clock every single day. I think, I definitely think about that. I definitely think about like, oh, do I really need to do this today? Oh yeah, you do. You really do. And those little, the, there's compounding.

• 3:14:05Jocko Willink?

  Impacts, negative and positive. Compounding impacts, like you can only train one day in the next four days because of whatever. Okay, cool. Get that day in. It's a real easy rationalization. Well, you know, I haven't trained for four days, three days, so I might as well not train this day. Nope, it's the wrong answer. You gotta make it, you gotta fight against the clock every single day and stay with it. And you're gonna be, by the way, maybe a little bit sore. There's a baseline, like you were talking about earlier, uh, before we hit record today. That there's like a baseline, like when you were playing football. Just the baseline level of, of low level awareness of suffering.

• 3:14:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:14:51Jocko Willink?

  Same thing with jiu jitsu, like you're training. And I don't know, you know, probably in anything that you're doing. If you're going, if you're pushing, there's gonna be a baseline level of like, yep, um, this is tweaked, this is sore, this is tired, that's just the way it is. And in our, can that get to a point where you need to take a day? You need to eat some steak or whatever? That happens, but a lot of times you gotta remember that's what it's kinda supposed to be like.

• 3:15:19Speaker 02

  Right, exactly. There's a, it's kinda like, it's more of like, in principle, it's kinda like, uh, when you're, I don't know, running, walking, doing something and you're kinda breathing hard. You know, where it's like, it doesn't bother you, but it like indicates that you're, you're in it, you know, kind of a thing? But it's on the physical side. See what I'm saying? The physical soreness side.

• 3:15:44Jocko Willink?

  Just a little bit of underlying physical. And it's also good because if you are competing in something, you're not, you're never gonna feel a hundred percent going in. You know, you're always gonna be tweaked this, sore that, that's the way it is. So, we're training. We're lifting, running, sprinting, training jiu jitsu, swimming, surfing, hiking, skimo.

• 3:16:06Speaker 02

  Do you know what shuttle runs are?

• 3:16:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:08Speaker 02

  Shuttle run. So I just incorporated that into the, the program I do with my son. I remember in PE back in the day, high school, junior high, elementary, shuttle one with the erasers.

• 3:16:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:16:19Speaker 02

  I remember being like, kind of good and thinking that was kind of fun. For no good reason. I mean, I don't know why, but it's fun. I don't know. So I was like, all right, we'll do it across the yard. And, uh, and I'd time my kids and they have fun with it. Like, bro, this is like, good. It's so good for agility and stuff like that. So boom, hey, roll that in, bro. It's good times.

• 3:16:38Jocko Willink?

  The shuttle runs, the shuttle runs are good to go. And when you're doing that, any of that, getting you fuel, we recommend Jocko Fuel. Protein, you need protein to recover. I'm drinking a milk shake right now. Thirty grams of protein. Taste delicious. I feel like I'm eating dessert, even though, you know, it's not time for dessert. I haven't eaten dinner yet, but I'm already having dessert. That's what we're doing. Also, uh, check out Muscle Drive. So this is the interesting byproduct. It's got amino acids in there. It's got, uh, HMB, like it's, it's meant to help you when you're a little bit undernourished. Maybe you're cutting weight type scenario, but even if you're not cutting weight, it's just powerful.

• 3:17:23Jocko Willink?

  But one thing I've noticed about it is you kind of, you kind of feel full when you have it. It's like, it's like nutrients. It's like nutrients that your body wants and it gets them. And it's super happy and it keeps you feeling good. So Muscle Drive, got energy, we got hydration. We got, you know, you're probably gonna need a little bit of that super krill. Probably gonna need, probably need some joint warfare. I know I need joint warfare. Can't survive without it.

• 3:17:50Jocko Willink?

  All the stuff, wherever you shop should be there. Grocery stores, wherever. Check out JacoFuel.com. Also, we're going to, uh, Texas, on HEB in Texas. Melissa, Texas.

• 3:18:07Speaker 02

  Melissa.

• 3:18:07Jocko Willink?

  We're doing a four thirty-four workout.

• 3:18:09Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:18:10Jocko Willink?

  April 11th, I believe. So come and join us. Come and join us down there in Melissa, Texas for a little zero four thirty-four workout. We're gonna get some. You can register at jockofuel.com because you gotta sign a waiver.

• 3:18:29Speaker 02

  Oh yeah.

• 3:18:30Jocko Willink?

  In case it gets too wild.

• 3:18:33Jocko Willink?

  Jockofuel.com, check it out. Come see us in, uh, Melissa, Texas at HEB. Get some. Also, Origin USA.

• 3:18:41Jocko Willink?

  We make everything. Um, Jason Pelletier was representing hardcore.

• 3:18:45Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:18:45Jocko Willink?

  With some Origin clothing, including Origin boots, by the way.

• 3:18:49Speaker 02

  Yep, saw that.

• 3:18:50Jocko Willink?

  Just representing. We get everything that you need, made a hundred percent here in America. Jeans, boots, t-shirts, gees, rash guards, training gear, hoodies.

• 3:19:00Jocko Willink?

  Whatever you need. Go check out originusa.com and buy something that's American made a hundred percent with American made materials. That's what we're doing. Originusa.com. Check it out.

• 3:19:11Speaker 02

  It's true. And speaking of representing, don't forget about Jocko's store. Discipline equals freedom. Good. Stand by to get some and get after it.

• 3:19:19Jocko Willink?

  Those are the kind of the staples.

• 3:19:20Speaker 02

  That's the staples. Exactly. Get after it version two. New.

• 3:19:26Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it's out.

• 3:19:27Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 3:19:28Jocko Willink?

  Oh, get after it. Go to, so go, get after it. Version one has been just.

• 3:19:32Speaker 02

  Just in the games for years.

• 3:19:33Jocko Willink?

  Long time, long time hater.

• 3:19:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, you are correct. And then so get after it. Version 2.0 is out. Boom, brand new. Good. Version 3.0 out, new, good to go, ready, available. Discipline equals freedom 5.0.

• 3:19:52Jocko Willink?

  Is that what you're wearing right now?

• 3:19:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, it is. As a matter of fact. Uh, four colors, the black on black. People seem to like, uh, like that one. I reordered. Those ones sold out fast, the black on black, because you can wear them anywhere. You're representing, not doing too much, but not too little either, as you're saying. Anyway, yes. So, yeah, oh, there's other stuff there too. Oh, but yeah, if you like something, get something. Also, the shirt locker, which is a new design. Every month, subscription scenario. Check out those. You can check it out on the shirt locker on Jocko's store. So, see what that's all about. Yeah, if you like something, get some.

• 3:20:23Jocko Willink?

  I like it. What about soglegacy.com?

• 3:20:25Speaker 02

  Sog Legacy. Yeah.

• 3:20:26Jocko Willink?

  Cause when you say black on black.

• 3:20:28Speaker 02

  Yep, yep.

• 3:20:28Jocko Willink?

  My mind only goes to one place. Soglegacy.com.

• 3:20:32Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, coincidentally, and good news, yes. So, sog legacy. That's like sog merch. Not if you're in sog necessarily, as you're saying, that's different. See what I'm saying? But if you want to represent, you want to support or whatever. Boom. That's where you can get it. So yeah, there's uh, I think we got two or no three or three or four different designs on there, but it's Sog representation. Hell yeah. Um, one of them is the black on black. That's the good news.

• 3:20:58Jocko Willink?

  Sog support all day.

• 3:21:02Jocko Willink?

  Check. Also, uh, check out Ask Jaco.ai. You can ask questions and an AI version of me will answer. See if you can stump the chump. Check that out. We got a bunch of books. I've written a bunch of books about leadership. I've written a bunch of kids books. Check those out. Also, Put Your Legs On by Rob Jones, Need to Lead by Dave Burke. We have a leadership consultancy, Echelonfront.com. Check that out if you need leadership inside your organization. If you have problems inside your organization, those problems are leadership problems and we can help you solve those problems through leadership. We also have a online training academy, ExtremeOwnership.com. This is where you can learn the skills of leadership through online

• 3:21:46Jocko Willink?

  instruction and interaction. So check that out as well. Also, if you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families. Jason mentioned the Gold Star families today. Well, Mama Lee does a ton for Gold Star families. Check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. That's an incredible charity organization. It does so much for, for our, our veterans and their families and the Gold Star families. Please check it out. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to AmericasMightyWarriors.org. Also, check out HeroesAndHorses.org and Jimmy May's organization, BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. And if you want to connect with us, if you want to connect with Jason, you got to go to Vermont,

• 3:22:31Jocko Willink?

  into the woods somewhere and find him where he's at. What'd he say? Cutting wood and eating beavers? See, it's so crazy. He's doing something crazy up there. He is on LinkedIn, Jason Pelletier. Um, so you can find him on there, but there's a bunch of different Jason Pelletiers. But if you, if you need to connect with him or you want to connect with him, you can reach out to him there. Also for us, you know, check out Jaco.com and then on social media, I'm at Jocko Willink, Echoes@EchoCharles.

• 3:22:58Jocko Willink?

  Just be careful for the time warp that your brain will get sucked into and you will no longer have a life because it's been stolen by the algorithm. So be careful. Thanks to all of our service members around the globe in harm's way right now, out there holding the line. We thank you and we also give a salute to the 1172 and the 3172, the National Guard out of Vermont. Thank you for what you've done. Thank you for what you do and you taught us lessons that kept us alive in Ramadi and we are grateful for that. Also, thanks to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers,

• 3:23:40Jocko Willink?

  correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as all other first responders. Thank you for keeping us safe here on the home front and everyone else out there. Let's remember that guidance from First Lieutenant Mark Dooley in his last letter to his parents. Quote, "Remember that my leaving was in the service of something that we loved and be proud. The best way to pay respect is to value why a sacrifice was made." End quote.

• 3:24:20Jocko Willink?

  Please remember and please value that sacrifice and do something every day and live in a way that earns it. That's all I've got for tonight and until next time, this is Echo and Jocko, out.