115: Into the Fire, and Beyond the Call of Duty, with Medal of Honor Recipient, Dakota Meyer

0:00:00 - Opening 0:04:21 - Dakota Meyer. 0:11:00 - "Into The Fire", by Dakota Meyer. 0:23:35 - Deployed to Iraq. 0:26:35 - Deployed to Afghanistan. 3:01:54 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 3:12:50 - Support: JockoStore http://www.jockostore.com stuff, Super Krill Oil and Joint Warfare and Discipline Pre-Mission http://originmaine.com/origin-labs/jocko/, THE MUSTER 005 in DC http://www.extremeownership.com/washington-dc-005. Origin Brand Apparel and Jocko Gi http://www.originmaine.com, withJocko White Tea http://www.jockotea.com, Onnit Fitness stuff, http://www.onnit.com/jocko and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes) https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/psychological-warfare/id1183222322. Extreme Ownership (book) http://amzn.to/2jonHTx, The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual, http://amzn.to/2szgaEj and Jocko Soap. https://irishoaksranch.com/storefront/jocko-soap 3:40:37 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 115 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo.

• 0:08Speaker 01

  Good evening.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  War is different for everyone who experiences it.

• 0:19Jocko Willink?

  On one end of the spectrum, there are some people who deploy to a safe area and protected by concrete and steel and barbed wire and their job, which is definitely an important part of the machine, but it just doesn't require them to be put into direct combat. And then with a little luck because of that situation, they can easily complete a wartime deployment with little or no contact with the enemy whatsoever.

• 0:58Jocko Willink?

  But they did their part and we are thankful for that.

• 1:04Jocko Willink?

  On the other end of the spectrum, there are some people that end up in anything but a safe area. They end up in the belly of the beast.

• 1:20Jocko Willink?

  They are called on to do more than is required and much more than could be expected.

• 1:32Jocko Willink?

  And that situation also creates a spectrum.

• 1:38Jocko Willink?

  Some men find it to be too much.

• 1:44Jocko Willink?

  And instincts of self-preservation take over and they go into survival mode and they cower and they hide and they give up and they wait for the inevitable.

• 2:03Jocko Willink?

  But others do what they can. They try to do their duty. They put one foot in front of the other and they reload their weapon and they try to keep firing.

• 2:16Jocko Willink?

  And that's the middle of the spectrum. And then at the

• 2:22Jocko Willink?

  far end of the spectrum,

• 2:25Jocko Willink?

  there are those men that step up and go forward

• 2:35Jocko Willink?

  across the threshold, really across the threshold of life and they go into the fire and into the flame and toward the unknown and toward death. Not to save themselves,

• 2:52Jocko Willink?

  but they disregard their own safety and their own life to save their friends, their brothers

• 3:04Jocko Willink?

  and their comrades in arms.

• 3:10Jocko Willink?

  And then beyond even that,

• 3:15Jocko Willink?

  almost off the spectrum,

• 3:20Jocko Willink?

  there are those men that take that step across the threshold of life and death over and over and over again. Not because they were ordered to, not for a medal, not because of some manufactured set of ideals, but simply because that is who they are.

• 3:43Jocko Willink?

  And I'm honored to have one of those men here with me today.

• 3:50Jocko Willink?

  A son, a father,

• 3:54Jocko Willink?

  an American,

• 3:57Jocko Willink?

  a United States Marine.

• 4:02Jocko Willink?

  A man by the name of Mr. Dakota Meyer.

• 4:07Jocko Willink?

  Dakota, welcome to the podcast and thank you for coming on.

• 4:13Dakota Meyer?

  No, thank you so much for having me. I'm telling you, I'm honored. I'm honored.

• 4:17Jocko Willink?

  All right. As we normally do, let's start from where you started. Tell us a little bit about, about Columbia, Kentucky.

• 4:28Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. You know, it's a, it's a small town. You know, I grew up in Columbia, Kentucky. You know, I grew up in the first half of my life with my mother and ended up going and living with my father. And, um, you know, I didn't, didn't come from money. It didn't come from anything nice, you know? I ended up living with my father. I'm adopted on my father's side and you grew up on a farm.

• 4:52Dakota Meyer?

  You know, it's just, just, uh, just, um, you know, I'm, I'm, I'm a simple guy. It's a simple, it's a simple way of life. You know what I mean? And that's, that's just how we grew up. We, you know, my dad, you know, he always instilled in me. And, you know, my, I have to give, you know, so much credit to my father and my grandfather. I mean, I might, you know? I mean, they just, they instilled so much in me of what's right and what mattered, you know?

• 5:13Jocko Willink?

  You know, uh,

• 5:16Jocko Willink?

  we're talking, a lot of your childhood was, and I wrote down these notes, farm work, football and females.

• 5:24Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's a, that, I, I told you, I'm simple.

• 5:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 5:30Dakota Meyer?

  That's it. That's, you know, there's not much else in Columbia, Kentucky though.

• 5:36Jocko Willink?

  And, uh, you, you know, you, you wrote, you, you wrote a book. The book is called Into the Fire. And that's where I'm getting some of my information from. And I, and I would say that in the early descriptions, the way you describe yourself, not exactly Mr. Sensitive is, is what we were dealing with back then.

• 5:50Dakota Meyer?

  Uh, no, not at all. Um, you know, I was no, I wasn't sensitive. I was, um, I was just a hard-headed kid, you know, set in my ways. I, you know, my dad just instilled it in me. My dad instilled, I mean, you know, my dad is a man who doesn't, you know, he doesn't care the social status. He's not a, you know, you know, and I watch it from him. He's just a hard, hard, hard guy, you know what I mean? And so there's not, living in a house of two men, right? You know, me, just my dad.

• 6:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 6:19Dakota Meyer?

  There's not, you know, there's not very many feelings.

• 6:21Jocko Willink?

  There wasn't, there wasn't a real nourishment to your sensitive side.

• 6:24Dakota Meyer?

  There was a, there was not much nourishment.

• 6:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, he was, there's one part of there talking about you're in a football game and you jack up your elbow real bad. And so the coach got you in the locker room or whatever?

• 6:34Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, yeah. So I was, I was sitting in the locker room and I mean, I had carried the ball probably eighteen, nineteen times the first half. And I go in there and my elbows are like just jacked, right? I mean, you know, just, we were just getting pounded. And I remember sitting in there and the coach like, hey, don't come out next half, right? You know, you just look, you know, because it was a JV game and he's like, you know, don't come out next half. And I'm gonna tell you something, my dad seen that I didn't come off and we were warming up for second half. And I mean, he came in there and that was not, that was not acceptable. But one thing my dad taught me is you start it, you finish it.

• 7:08Jocko Willink?

  Check, check. Now, what happened to that football career? Would you get, you did get some like legitimate injuries, right?

• 7:15Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, yeah, no, I got, you know, I banged my knee up real bad all my sophomore year, between my sophomore and junior year. Never really recovered from it, you know? And so, I mean, I could have went and played somewhere. Like, I'm not gonna, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you I'd had full scholarships or anything, but I could have, I could have walked on somewhere, you know, probably played outside linebacker or, you know, a strong safety. But, you know, I just, I was gonna go play football and I had planned on that. I'd been through the clearinghouse. I mean, I'd done everything I needed to do to go and, you know, my senior year and I just, and I ended up going the Marine Corps route.

• 7:48Jocko Willink?

  Now, I've, I've talked a few times down here about the effectiveness of the Marine Corps recruiting program, which they, they have like the best recruiting numbers, but they spend the least on recruiting of, of any of the military service branches. And it sounds like you got rolled right into that.

• 8:05Dakota Meyer?

  I did. They got me. They got me. Let me tell you something. They, they got me, you know? But, but, but I think, look, I, You know, the product's the product with them, right? Like, you know, you know, you're either, you're either gonna be a Marine or you're not gonna be a Marine, right? Like, you either have it in you or you don't. Like, it's not, you know, they just, they just know how to talk to their own, right? And I think that's what they're so good at is, is that they know how, they know what would have fired them up. And so they say the same thing that would have fired them up. And, and if you bite on it, then you're the type of person that needs to be a Marine. If you don't, they don't want you anyway. You know what I mean?

• 8:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, that's a perfect way to put it. And this is 2006.

• 8:43Dakota Meyer?

  2006.

• 8:43Jocko Willink?

  2006, so, and again, this is something I always have to remind myself, and I'll remind everyone else while I'm at it, is, you know, when I joined the Navy in 1990, there was no war going on, right? There was no war going on, it was just, you know, peacetime. And you're joining in 2006, we're, we're at war in two different countries.

• 9:02Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 9:03Jocko Willink?

  And 2006, things are not going well. They're, they're a little quiet in Afghanistan at that time, but Iraq is full bore. I mean, that's when I was in Ramadi, it was, it was a real hard fighting was taking place. And Al-Anbar Province, the rest of Iraq was pretty bad. So you know, for you, you know you're going, and you know you're gonna go to combat. I mean, that's just like kind of a given.

• 9:23Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I mean, I, um, I don't know that I ever really understood that though, until I was in. You know what I mean? I think that, I don't think it ever really hit me. Um, I, I never really, I didn't really join, I can't sit here and give you some motto story that I joined to go, you know, to avenge 9/11, right?

• 9:38Jocko Willink?

  You wanna hear something that's jacked up?

• 9:39Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 9:39Jocko Willink?

  Is, I joined in 1990, and I had the opposite viewpoint, which is, I didn't even know there was no war going on. I was 100% sure I was going to war. I was like, oh, it's on, I'm going, the SEALs gotta be doing things all over the world. They're doing stuff we don't even hear about. That's what my attitude was. And here you are staring at a war in two different, two different zones, and you're like, I don't know if it'll really happen.

• 9:57Dakota Meyer?

  Well, you know, cause, I mean, honestly, I did, I, I know it sounds dumb, but I mean, like, I, you know, by that time, we're five years past it.

• 10:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 10:06Dakota Meyer?

  And people had already got used to it, right? It was no longer like... Oh shit, right? You know, in, in like the population, you know, in the just, you know, the average civilian, right? It wasn't, you know, because they'd been doing it for what? Five years?

• 10:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 10:18Dakota Meyer?

  And, um, so, you know, I didn't really think about it. You know, I, I honestly, and, you know, I joined, I, you know, I wanted to go infantry. I wanted to fight.

• 10:26Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:26Dakota Meyer?

  Um, but I didn't really, I don't think it ever really hit me until I got into bootcamp, you know, and then I, I really started understanding what.

• 10:32Jocko Willink?

  And when you were going through bootcamp at that time, basically every drill instructor must have been coming back from the battlefield.

• 10:38Dakota Meyer?

  All of them.

• 10:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 10:39Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, I'm telling you, uh, everybody, especially, uh, especially in, uh, a school of infantry.

• 10:45Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 10:46Dakota Meyer?

  They'd all, every, every one of them had been.

• 10:48Jocko Willink?

  They were in Fallujah.

• 10:49Dakota Meyer?

  Yes.

• 10:49Jocko Willink?

  They were, yeah.

• 10:50Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, every one of them been in the shit.

• 10:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 10:52Dakota Meyer?

  You know, even my recruiter, my recruiter had just got back from Fallujah.

• 10:55Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 10:56Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. And he'd been in the shit.

• 10:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Dang. Yeah. So with that, I'm going to take you to the book right now because, you know, I think I was never in the Marine Corps. I'm, I'm pretty sad about that sometimes. But I have like read so much about the Marine Corps over my life and hung around with so many Marines and worked with Marines so much. So whenever I get to Marine Corps bootcamp, it like strikes a romantic side of me. It just, it just wants to at least get a little taste. And, and you did it really fast, which is great. But here, here it is. And it's just like exactly what, we're going to the book. Again, this book is Into the Fire by Dakota

• 11:36Jocko Willink?

  Meyer. And here we go. So it began. Close haircuts to strip away your old identity. Exercises to prove you're not half as strong as you figured. Simple tasks to show you that you're mentally weak. Drill instructors who mock your attempts to look tough. It's right out of the movies, but it never stops.

• 11:56Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 11:57Jocko Willink?

  And there you go. You know what's coming. How many times did you watch Full Metal Jacket before you went in?

• 12:01Dakota Meyer?

  A ton.

• 12:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. I mean.

• 12:03Dakota Meyer?

  A ton.

• 12:03Jocko Willink?

  You know exactly what's gonna happen.

• 12:05Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 12:05Jocko Willink?

  Does that even help?

• 12:07Dakota Meyer?

  Uh, no.

• 12:08Jocko Willink?

  It's just still.

• 12:08Dakota Meyer?

  No, you, you could, I mean, you know, I, like during bootcamp, it was the hardest thing I'd ever been through.

• 12:15Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 12:16Dakota Meyer?

  But when I look at everything I did in the Marine Corps, it was the easiest.

• 12:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. That's the same thing with BUDS. So first of all, when I went through BUDS and I didn't know anything about BUDS. No one knew anything about BUDS in 1990 when I joined the Navy. Didn't know anything about it. And, and so I always think that the guys that are coming in now, you can basically watch the entire BUDS. You can watch the whole thing. You know what? They, they, the students eventually captured the schedules.

• 12:39Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 12:39Jocko Willink?

  And so they'd actually know what's coming. And you know, you know how many people it keeps from quitting? None. It's still the same attrition rate. Like, okay, so it's gonna suck really bad and now you know it. You didn't know it before.

• 12:50Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. You even know when it's gonna end. You know what I mean?

• 12:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. All right. Uh, back to the book. The second month is the turnaround. When they build you back up. Sergeant Brady made me a squad leader, meaning he yelled at me for the mistakes of the other 10 recruits. That was all right. He had his job. I had mine. You bust it through. You get to graduation day, which was obviously awesome. And then it's, I spent the next two months at SOI School of Infantry. Only 15% of the Marine Corps and the Army are in the infantry. In today's military, there are more combat pilots than infantry squad leaders. Dang.

• 13:29Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 13:30Jocko Willink?

  Ah, man. That's crazy. 15% of the Marine Corps and the Army are infantry troops for the ground. That's, that's a interesting figure. In Vietnam, and I, I was talking about this with Leif and with actually the whole echelon front team the other day. I'd heard this somewhere. I heard it from Hackworth, that in Vietnam, the height of the Vietnam War, there was a little over 500,000 troops on the ground and it was only 10% of those troops that were, you know, infantry units that were on the ground in combat.

• 13:57Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. You, you know what I find so interesting about that fact and that stat when I looked at it, you know, like I, I didn't understand it obviously when I was in. But you know, what I look at it is, is to understand like how much it truly, you know, as, as the warfighter, you know, I think we take for granted so many times of what it really takes for us to be able to do our job effectively. I mean, you take, you, I mean, it takes, you know, 85% of the organization just to support that 15%.

• 14:20Jocko Willink?

  To put you

• 14:21Dakota Meyer?

  Yes.

• 14:21Jocko Willink?

  face to face with the enemy.

• 14:23Dakota Meyer?

  Yes.

• 14:23Jocko Willink?

  There's gotta be another, yeah.

• 14:26Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, you look at

• 14:26Jocko Willink?

  It's 10 to 1, 15 to 1 or something like that.

• 14:28Dakota Meyer?

  Crazy.

• 14:29Jocko Willink?

  10 to 1, that's gotta put you up there.

• 14:30Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 14:32Jocko Willink?

  But that's what works and that's well, here we go. Breaking down, breaking down a little bit of what the Marine Corps is like. A Marine squad is comprised of three four man fire teams. Everything you do as a rifleman revolves around that four man team. One man carries a weapon more powerful than those of the others, but that's a minor point. In the field, you don't do anything without those three other guys. You don't shit, sleep, eat, or move without the other three knowing about it.

• 14:57Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 14:57Jocko Willink?

  A Marine squad with those three fire teams is like a boxer with three arms. One arm jabs with bursts of fire to keep the opponent off balance while the other arm loops around with a left hook. With the third arm ready to follow up wherever there's an opening. If one arm is wounded, the other two can keep fighting. Fire to pin down the enemy, maneuver to finish him off. Fire, maneuver, fire, maneuver, fire, maneuver. And I always have to point this out.

• 15:23Jocko Willink?

  Extreme ownership, but you know, this is cover move. This is what I always talk about the fundamental, that's the fundamental gunfighting tactic.

• 15:29Dakota Meyer?

  Yes.

• 15:30Jocko Willink?

  Fire maneuver. I always called it cover move. So you get done with SOI and you head out to the third Marine Regiment in Hawaii.

• 15:43Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 15:44Jocko Willink?

  That's how was that when you're checking in?

• 15:46Dakota Meyer?

  Oh, yeah. Well, we pulled in and as soon as we pulled the bus in, the seniors, you know, they're all, they had all just got back from Haditha, the triad. And had a hard deployment. They got, they got the shit kicked out of them. And, and so we pull in and they, you know, there's no empathy there. And so we pull in and they're throwing beer bottles off the deck and they are all hammered. It's in the middle of the night and you know, so it's like, welcome.

• 16:15Dakota Meyer?

  You know, but it was awesome. You know, I was honored to be out there.

• 16:18Jocko Willink?

  And then how long did it take for the sniper billet to open up and for you to get that?

• 16:22Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. So it was, I think it was like around February. So I got there in October. So September, October. So I got there in October, November, so November timeframe. I think I got to Hawaii October and November timeframe and then I it opened in January, February timeframe.

• 16:37Jocko Willink?

  Is it hard to get a sniper, isn't it hard to get a sniper bill? Did you get lucky? Being a new guy getting a sniper bill?

• 16:42Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, so I did. So I was actually the youngest sniper in the Marine Corps in 2007. So what happened was is I had ran the indock. So you have to run an indock to be part of the platoon. So you come in and then like you you're on probation. So you run a huge indock. You come in, you go on probation. And then you start, um, you know, usually you were going deployment and then after deployment you go to school. Well, they had a couple of school slots open up and uh, and they basically gave me the option of you can either go home on pre-deployment leave because we were heading to Iraq. You can either go on pre-deployment leave or you can go to sniper school.

• 17:13Jocko Willink?

  How old were you?

• 17:14Dakota Meyer?

  I was eighteen.

• 17:15Jocko Willink?

  How how many milliseconds did it take you to make that decision?

• 17:18Dakota Meyer?

  I said, I said, I've been with my family for eighteen years. I'm I'm all good.

• 17:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh, man. That's awesome. And then Marine Corps Sniper School, um, that's a that's a hardcore school.

• 17:29Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 17:30Jocko Willink?

  And fifty percent attrition rate.

• 17:32Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. We had SEALs in it with us.

• 17:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And then, you know, our early SEAL snipers, uh, you know, and I don't know the full, I'll bring a sniper on here someday that knows the whole history of the SEAL sniper program. But it's deeply rooted in the Marine Corps Sniper Program, deeply rooted, just like all of our training is rooted in the Marine Corps Scouts and Raiders. There's a lot of crossover in those early days. But Marine, the Marine Corps Sniper Program. Now, everyone's gonna think that's a civilian's gonna think like, oh, you're sitting on a gun shooting. But but that's not really the hardest part, is it?

• 18:00Dakota Meyer?

  That's like five percent of the job. Like, it's like the, it's, I would say, I would say it's less than that, you know? It, you know, I mean, you got, I mean, the the communication piece of it, the mission planning, the, I mean, there's so much, I mean, you you literally, you literally are the, uh, you know, the commanders, the battalion commanders, trigger finger.

• 18:21Jocko Willink?

  You guys do heavy stalking, right?

• 18:23Dakota Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 18:23Jocko Willink?

  That's just a gut check. And how much did you weigh at this point?

• 18:27Dakota Meyer?

  Uh, probably about a hundred and eighty, a hundred and eighty-five.

• 18:29Jocko Willink?

  And it's, um, where do you guys do your stocks?

• 18:32Dakota Meyer?

  Uh, so we we were in Hawaii. So I went to Hawaii Sniper School.

• 18:35Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 18:35Dakota Meyer?

  Um, and we we do them out in the Kahuku's out in.

• 18:38Jocko Willink?

  Just dripping sweat?

• 18:40Dakota Meyer?

  Oh, it's terrible.

• 18:41Jocko Willink?

  Crawling?

• 18:42Dakota Meyer?

  Stalking is terrible.

• 18:43Jocko Willink?

  Crawling for four hours and going thirty-five meters?

• 18:47Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I mean, just like, you know, you know, you start off, you got a thousand meter lane, you know, and they're, they put an observer up and they're using the best glass there is and they're sitting on this truck. And, uh, you have to, you have to move up and, um, You gotta get within, uh, you know, a certain distance and whatever they tell you and then you got, you know, you'll have to veg up and whatever you take shot, you can do whatever you, you know, you just, you take a shot with a blank, okay? And then they come over and so, uh,

• 19:16Jocko Willink?

  They put a walker on you.

• 19:17Dakota Meyer?

  A walker on you and then they try to walk, you know, back and forth. They try to find you and if they see you or anything, then you know, you lose. Um, and then you gotta take a second shot while they're, you know, cause that walker gets within the vicinity of you. And like, it's like 10 or 20 meters and then you take a second shot and if they see anything, then you, you know, you, you, you, you fail too. So it's, you know.

• 19:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 19:40Dakota Meyer?

  What's a walker? So basically they bring a guy out who is like, who, you know, has like a stick or something and they can see him. And then they try to say, so they go, okay, I think I see him here. So I need you to take left, three steps and then back four steps. They try to walk him on you. Gotcha, gotcha.

• 19:55Jocko Willink?

  This will be interesting. When, when they get to you, do they say sniper at your feet to the guy?

• 20:01Dakota Meyer?

  Huh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you have to say it sniper at your feet.

• 20:04Jocko Willink?

  So that's, that's, that's, that's the same thing that they say in the SEAL Sniper School.

• 20:07Dakota Meyer?

  That's what they say.

• 20:07Jocko Willink?

  They get there and they go, okay, sniper at your feet. And they go, yep, you're busted, you fail.

• 20:10Dakota Meyer?

  Three, three steps left, two steps up, sniper at your feet.

• 20:13Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 20:13Dakota Meyer?

  And they'll say, nope, you know what I mean?

• 20:15Jocko Willink?

  So there's, there's the crossover. That shows you that that's, that stuff is rooted together. And there's a guy by the name of Skinta, who was one of your instructors, you were one of your instructors, right?

• 20:24Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 20:25Jocko Willink?

  And here's a, here's a, going back to the book, Skinta told us about a sniper team in an Overwatch in a half-constructed building in Ramadi in 2004. It was a warm, dull day and after several hours, they dozed off and never awakened. Insurgents sneaked up and shot all four Marines in the head. They left behind a high-powered M48A3 and its excellent Schmidt and Bender scope. Over the course of the next year, they allegedly killed two more Americans before a Marine sniper took them out and recovered the rifle. Skinta hammered home his message, know every aspect of your job and never, never let down your guard.

• 21:00Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 21:00Jocko Willink?

  If you slack off or you take things for granted, you die.

• 21:04Dakota Meyer?

  He um, I had a lot, look, I was fortunate to have a lot of people around me that influenced me. I mean, I'm, I'm, I'm nothing special. I'm a product in my environment. I'm, I'm direct reflection in my leadership. I'm so fortunate. But I'll tell you right now that um, what I did that day um, was because of him. Was, was because of the mentality that he instilled in me. Of knowing your job, knowing it and obsessing with it and knowing every aspect of it and knowing everybody else's job around you. And then, when you know your job and you know what's right, you, you do that. You don't worry about what everybody else says.

• 21:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the, the non-commissioned officers that, again, they're saying guys that raised me in the SEAL teams, have such a huge impact. And what, what I also found interesting about this, was this story about these snipers, when I got to Ramadi in 2006, we heard this exact story. And, you know, it was another thing that made us more paranoid and made my guys more paranoid being out there. And we actually had thought, I didn't, this says 2004, we thought it happened a little bit later and closer to our deployment. But um, yeah, man, just a, just a nightmare.

• 22:13Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:16Jocko Willink?

  Another little commentary from you here. Back to the book. Shooting another human being was a math problem. You were either right or wrong, with no subjective in-between decided by someone else. I liked problems that were black and white, life or death. Before taking a shot at a target 1,000 meters away, you had to calculate the effects of the light, air at altitude, wind, humidity, angle of fire, cartridge velocity and gravity. You had to align the target, the background, the terrain, the weather, the noise and the weapon. You had to work in concert with others. At the same time, the target enemy was figuring out how to kill you. Combat was a zero-sum decision-making, played for the highest stakes. Live or die.

• 22:59Jocko Willink?

  And thirty-one people started the course and thirteen people graduated. So that that should tell everyone why that sniper designation is so damn hard to get.

• 23:11Dakota Meyer?

  It is.

• 23:11Jocko Willink?

  Cause it's no joke.

• 23:12Dakota Meyer?

  And there's usually at any point in time, there's not, there's usually around three hundred school-trained snipers in the Marine Corps at any time.

• 23:18Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 23:19Dakota Meyer?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:19Jocko Willink?

  Dang.

• 23:20Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 23:21Jocko Willink?

  That's, in my task unit, which is about forty SEALs, we had thirteen snipers.

• 23:25Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. That was so awesome.

• 23:28Jocko Willink?

  Killers. Killers. I got lucky, you know, I got lucky, the stars aligned. Okay, so now you're trained up and then in two thousand and seven, you deploy, you deploy to Iraq.

• 23:38Dakota Meyer?

  I did.

• 23:39Jocko Willink?

  First deployment, how pumped were you?

• 23:41Dakota Meyer?

  I was pumped, I, you know, I just, I just got out of school-trained sniper, man, you know, I'm ready to go, I'm ready to go, turn the heat up, right? And, um, and where we were going was actually a bad spot, I mean, we were in karma.

• 23:52Jocko Willink?

  Yup.

• 23:52Dakota Meyer?

  And, uh, it, it had, it had been bad, but it was like, we were part of that surge.

• 23:56Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 23:57Dakota Meyer?

  And, uh, when we got there, we took some contact once and it just like the waterfalls had turned off.

• 24:04Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 24:05Dakota Meyer?

  You know, you go from streets that you were fighting down to, next thing you know, you, I mean, you could walk down with no gear.

• 24:10Jocko Willink?

  And so what were you guys doing, just doing patrols?

• 24:12Dakota Meyer?

  We were doing a lot of dwell ops.

• 24:14Jocko Willink?

  Which is what?

• 24:14Dakota Meyer?

  We would go out, basically what they were, the, the theory on this was, we would go out off the fob and stay like four or five days in a house and, you know, um, you know, we, we would get hit by indirect fire, uh, you know, some, uh, but, I mean, but I was only there for like forty-five days.

• 24:29Jocko Willink?

  And then you got, what, hit in the hand with a what, a spider?

• 24:33Dakota Meyer?

  I got bit on the right, my right hand by a spider and, uh, actually suffered severe nerve damage, lost the movement in my last three fingers and, uh...

• 24:41Jocko Willink?

  They CASVAC'd you for this?

• 24:42Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 24:43Jocko Willink?

  Or MEDVAC'd you back to Germany?

• 24:44Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, so they, they sent me to Al Asad and tried to fix it there. I did, I, they, they rushed me in, I had two surgeries in Camp Fallujah. And then, um, they, they moved me to Al Asad and then they sent me back to Germany and I was there for like twenty-five days in the hospital in Germany.

• 24:58Jocko Willink?

  Trying to save your hand, basically.

• 24:59Dakota Meyer?

  And then they sent me home and then I was having to do occupational therapy to get, you know, to get my fingers back, they wouldn't move, you know?

• 25:06Jocko Willink?

  When, so were you back in Kentucky?

• 25:08Dakota Meyer?

  No, I was back at Hawaii.

• 25:10Jocko Willink?

  Okay, back to Hawaii.

• 25:11Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, back in my unit.

• 25:12Jocko Willink?

  And, but you did have a little bit of Kentucky with you there in the form of bourbon.

• 25:17Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, yeah, a lot of it. I was drinking. I was a drinker.

• 25:20Jocko Willink?

  Started getting after it a little bit.

• 25:21Dakota Meyer?

  I did.

• 25:22Jocko Willink?

  Even a little bit too much?

• 25:23Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, too much. You know, I started, you know, it was hard. It was hard coming home and knowing my teammates were still over there and knowing that my unit was still there and I wasn't part of it, you know?

• 25:32Jocko Willink?

  And then, uh, did you go, did you have to go back or you came back to the States like on leave?

• 25:38Dakota Meyer?

  Uh, no, no.

• 25:39Jocko Willink?

  After you were, after your hand was hurt?

• 25:41Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I came back to Kentucky.

• 25:43Jocko Willink?

  Got it. And you hung out there for a while. And actually, you lost a couple of friends at that time period, didn't you?

• 25:48Dakota Meyer?

  I did. Gosh, it was terrible.

• 25:49Jocko Willink?

  Tragic, tragic situations?

• 25:51Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, it was terrible. You know, I had a guy, the guy, you know, actually, you know, his name's on my chest and, um, we played football together and, uh, he had called me, I was leaving the hospital and I was coming home that weekend and he had called me, um, he had called me right before I was on the way to the hospital and said, hey, hey, man, we're gonna go to this football game, you know, we're gonna watch my little brother play, you know, all that. And I got a call as soon as I was leaving the hospital and he had, uh, he'd had a wreck and got killed. Yeah, a close, close friend. And I lost a, um, another friend. She got, she got killed in December.

• 26:24Jocko Willink?

  Dang. Not, not exactly what you want to go home on leave for, man. That's harsh.

• 26:29Dakota Meyer?

  No, no, no, but you know, it's, it's just the way, the way it goes, you know?

• 26:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And, and then, so you spent that time at home, you go back, you rejoin your platoon, and this is when you find out that they want volunteers to go help out in Afghanistan?

• 26:41Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, so we had built up, we, I was back probably a year, year and a half, went to mountain sniper school and, um, you know, I became in charge of my own team. Um, got, we got meritfully promoted. Um, I was, you know, I was a Lance Corporal leading a five man team with a sergeant on it, you know? And, uh, you know, I, I, uh, ended up taking like, I had the worst, like, I got like the newest guys. They gave me the newest guys. And, uh, we ended up being the, um, general support team. So we, we moved all the way up through the platoon and ended up being, you know, one of the best, one of the best teams in the platoon. And, um, yeah, so we're out at Twenty-Nine Palms doing our final train up to go back to Iraq. And this was when nothing was going on, 2009. I mean, they weren't letting you leave the wire, right? And, uh, we had no mission, so it kind of sucked, right?

• 27:23Dakota Meyer?

  And, uh, they came and said, we need five volunteers to go to Afghanistan. And I said, what's the mission? They said, we don't know, but we just need five bodies. And I raised my hand and said, yeah, I'm, I'm ready to go.

• 27:35Jocko Willink?

  Again, like how many milliseconds to take to make that decision? And so what you were volunteering for, you find out later, is an embedded training team?

• 27:43Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, advisory team.

• 27:44Jocko Willink?

  Explain what that's all about.

• 27:45Dakota Meyer?

  So, an embedded training team is where they take, you know, they take different ranks and different skill sets of Marines and they put them, or you know, whatever, you know, military unit, and they put them together and they embed them with, you know, an Afghan unit, you know, so we were embedded with eighty Afghans, a whole, not a, it was a company. And so, that's, that's, we just lived, we did everything with them. We did everything from, you know, teaching them weapons tactics and, and, you know, shooting, shooting, we, I did the changeover for the NATO weapons, right? So, we took them from the Soviets to NATO weapons, and that's another key factor that we need to bring up to talk about in that gunfight. So, we were, you know, teaching them on that, qualifying them all on that, you know, everything from everything.

• 28:30Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, we did everything with these guys.

• 28:31Jocko Willink?

  Just because, and then, because you, did you do any kind of workup before you went over?

• 28:37Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, so we-

• 28:38Jocko Willink?

  With that, was it with that team?

• 28:39Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 28:40Jocko Willink?

  That your actual team that you were going to deploy with?

• 28:41Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, so we did, we did a workup with them. Actually, you know, I'd just left Twenty-Nine Palms. I go back and we trained for like a month or two in Okinawa, Japan with this new team. And then we head back to Twenty-Nine Palms. And then we go from, well, we went back, so we went to Bridgeport, and then we came down to Twenty-Nine Palms. We did all our mountain stuff at Bridgeport, all our mules and all that stuff, you know, packing, and then we came down and did it, ended in Twenty-Nine Palms, and then we headed over.

• 29:07Jocko Willink?

  And that was with that four-man team?

• 29:09Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, with Lieutenant Johnson, Gunny Kennifick, and Doc Layton, myself.

• 29:15Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna talk about those guys a little bit here in the book. Lieutenant Mike Johnson's four-man team at Monty, this is where you end up, place called Monty, which is ten miles worth north of another FOB called Joyce. Lieutenant Johnson, sunny and smiling with an easy laugh, but completely professional, with the highest standards. I'd climbed mountains with him in California, of course, and I knew he was as strong physically as he was mentally. Staff Sergeant Aaron Kennifick was a personnel specialist with eight years' expertise in administration, so his job was to bring some order to the Afghan personnel procedures and pay records.

• 29:56Jocko Willink?

  Doc Layton, our corpsman, would provide some basic medical care to the Afghans in the villages, but his primary job was to be ready in case any advisors or Afghan soldiers were wounded. I had a job too. Lieutenant Johnson put me in charge of tactics, operations, and weapons training. Before each patrol, I approved of the Afghan scheme of maneuver, inspected the radios and guns, coordinated fire support, and planned an emergency escape route. This was far easier than planning the sniper missions I had been trained for.

• 30:25Jocko Willink?

  So you were, you were kind of the most tactically savvy guy in the group being a sniper already deployed to Iraq?

• 30:33Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, no, I was. And you know, and what prepared me was my training that I did with my team, um, you know, my sniper team. I mean, look, I had, you know, people thought I was crazy. They thought I was crazy the way that I was training in my platoon before you're like, we're going to Iraq, we're not gonna do anything. I'm like, I don't give a shit. Right? Like, I'm, I was still learning TACSAT, and I was still learning, you know, SATCOM, and I was still learning HF, and I was still learning how to load crypto. I mean, I wanted to know every aspect of every part of the job. I was learning every, I was going over to the, to the BAS and learning, you know, all the medical stuff that I could. And I was, you know, I mean, everything I could do, like, if I could get just a little nugget of knowledge and better myself in every aspect, I was doing it. And, um, so, yeah, so when

• 31:11Dakota Meyer?

  I got over to this team, I mean, you know, I, I was the only tactical guy in there, you know, and, uh, yeah, and it was, you know, they, they, when it came to the tactics, when it came to making sure that the weapons were ready, when it came to making sure that the vehicles were ready, that, that, that the, you know, that the, the jammers were working, that, you know, if anything that mattered in the patrol, it was on me.

• 31:37Jocko Willink?

  It was on you.

• 31:38Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. The trucks were loaded.

• 31:40Jocko Willink?

  And the, the reason that the Marine Corps put the teams together like this is because, well, that they're trying to develop the whole Afghan army, every aspect of it, not just the tactical side, but they want, like, the administration so that the people can start getting paid on time, and the organization so they got the lieutenant in there. And at the same time, they want to help the villagers, so they put a corpsman in there to do medical work. So that's kind of, just in any way, if anyone's thinking, why the hell would you put together a team like that? It's because the people that are supposed to do the fighting are actually supposed to be the Afghans, right?

• 32:08Dakota Meyer?

  Yes.

• 32:09Jocko Willink?

  And, and, and the team is there to support them, help them, train them, and get them ready.

• 32:13Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, and that's, that's the mind, that's the theory.

• 32:16Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 32:16Dakota Meyer?

  The theory is, is that you train them.

• 32:18Jocko Willink?

  I should've said that, yeah, that's the theory.

• 32:19Dakota Meyer?

  You train them and they do the fighting and you're just there to advise them.

• 32:23Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 32:24Dakota Meyer?

  But it never works that way.

• 32:25Jocko Willink?

  It doesn't, it didn't work that way in Iraq and, and one of the things that I pointed out many times was, you know, what kind of, you, you're, you want to develop a relationship with, with a group, right? And, and now you say, okay, we're going to train you, but when it comes time to do something dangerous, you guys just go by yourselves? That's not, you're not building a relationship, you're, you're, in fact, you're going backwards.

• 32:43Dakota Meyer?

  No, it's, yeah, it's the same way.

• 32:45Jocko Willink?

  So you get there and you start doing, you're just kind of going on patrols. You're going on patrols with the, with the Afghan Army Company.

• 32:54Dakota Meyer?

  It was kind of interesting, you know, because I was kind of the high strung one on the team, you know, like I was like the one that always was, you know, we need to be ready to fight. You know, I don't know how many arguments I got into with some of the, the, the leadership in, in teams. You know, because we, we were a 21 man team, but we were broken into four man elements and spread out, you know, in this area. And I don't know how many times I got into arguments with people in the team of, you know, hey, this is how we need to do it. We need to stay up. I mean, I was, I was trying to train them. I was doing stuff of, you know, trying to train them to do IVs at night with, with nods. And they're like, why the hell are we doing this? You know what I mean? Like, a, a, and a lot of people, you know, looked down on it and, uh, and, and I said, I'm going to prepare to fight. And they said, you know, we're not, you know, they, so many times the leadership got on me. You, you, we're not going over there to fight, we're going to advise.

• 33:36Dakota Meyer?

  And that was the mindset of a lot of this, and I'm not going to say my team, but a lot of the team. And, uh, and it showed.

• 33:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, you know, for everyone out there that's wearing a uniform right now, man, be ready for the worst case scenario all the time. Be ready for it.

• 33:54Dakota Meyer?

  You know what I tell them is, I said, you know, Lieutenant Johnson was a, was a, a comm guy, satellite guy. Doc Layton was a blue side corpsman and Gunny Kinific was an S1 guy. And, you know, and I always wonder, do you think that they ever thought they'd be in one of the deadliest battles in Afghanistan? Do you think they ever thought, they didn't. You know, you don't know where you're going to be at, but one day you're going to be tested.

• 34:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 34:20Dakota Meyer?

  And you better be ready.

• 34:22Jocko Willink?

  So you guys are rolling out on these patrols. Here's a good kind of aspect of what you see on those patrols. And you call the army, the Afghan army soldiers, Ascar's? Am I saying that right?

• 34:32Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, they're called Ascar's.

• 34:33Jocko Willink?

  Ascar's. Alright, here we go. Back to the book. When we walked into some hamlets, you could feel something was wrong. When kids threw rocks at you, you knew what the parents were telling them. Sometimes the Ascar's grabbed the kids' soccer balls and sliced them apart. This didn't win any hearts and minds, but it did stop the rocks. Whenever the elders hurried through the ceremonial tea, though, I'd watch the Ascar's. When any soldier senses danger, he crouches down a few inches to make himself less of a target. When the Ascar's did that, I went on full alert. Hafiz? Am I saying that right?

• 35:11Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, so his name's Fazal, so I had named him Hafiz in that, to protect him.

• 35:14Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 35:15Dakota Meyer?

  He's here in America now.

• 35:16Jocko Willink?

  Okay, well, good. Hafiz was our lead interpreter, and we quickly learned our best warning system. A 37-year-old sergeant major retired from the Afghan army. Hafiz had served in Kunar for three years with advisor teams. The Afghan soldiers distrusted him because he refused to support their never-ending schemes to skim off the Americans. So he's your most trusted advisor. Interesting that you point out how, when soldiers sense danger... And I was telling you about JP, my lead sniper, one of my two platoons in TU Bruiser. And when he came on the podcast, I described him walking through the streets. And I, because, like I told you, man, I didn't think JP was gonna live, because JP was too brave for his own damn good.

• 36:00Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 36:00Jocko Willink?

  But when I, you know, I'd be watching, I'd be like, like, holding security and watching a patrol go. And you'd see, you know, I'd see guys moving with that little crouch, because everyone's expecting that the shooting's gonna start. And I'd see JP, man, walking with his head up and his chest out, like, ready to get something.

• 36:15Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 36:16Jocko Willink?

  Man, it's nice to be 23 years old and not think you can die. So that's my brother JP.

• 36:22Dakota Meyer?

  That's awesome.

• 36:23Jocko Willink?

  And the other thing that, you know, when you're in these foreign countries, when you're in Iraq, you're in Afghanistan, the locals, we can't tell the difference between, we really can't tell the difference between a good guy and a bad guy. Now, you learn some sense of it, where you go, okay, that guy looks shady. And you're probably pretty accurate, but a guy like Hafiz, you're gonna know.

• 36:42Dakota Meyer?

  No, instantly.

• 36:45Jocko Willink?

  He was the unofficial fifth member of our team inside a hamlet. If he shook his head at us, we knew it was time to forget the tea and get out. So, how much good, how much, how often would you go into a hamlet and the people were cool and all good and drinking tea and?

• 37:01Dakota Meyer?

  You know, most time. I mean, most time, look, I mean, look, I, you know, the people there want it to be better. I mean, they live in the shit.

• 37:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 37:09Dakota Meyer?

  They live there. They want it to be better. You know, they're just caught in a bad situation. It's not, it's not, it's not a simple equation. You know, there's nothing simple about the life that they have to live.

• 37:21Jocko Willink?

  You made some friends. Going back to the book, in the hills along the Pakistani border, no Afghan military or civilian had much of anything. I think practically every American soldier or marine tried to help in some way. We purchased candy and trinkets in the markets to give to the kids. I soon had two little buddies, boys about 10 or 11. They'd hang around the main gate yelling, "Maeda, Maeda," trying to say your name, when they saw me. At first I'd buy them cokes and then started sharing my care packages from home, soap, candy, peanuts, gum. Maybe a decade from now, some kids remember that some Americans were kind to them, even when their older brothers were shooting at them. Maybe not. You don't help out because you expect something in return.

• 38:03Jocko Willink?

  So you're, you're a human being, man. Trying to, trying to take care of some kids out there.

• 38:12Jocko Willink?

  I think this is getting into your first sort of legit,

• 38:18Jocko Willink?

  we'll call it combat.

• 38:19Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 38:20Jocko Willink?

  And you're taking some small arms fire. I'm going to the book here. Staff Sergeant Keneffick was standing outside a bunker about 100 feet from me. "Meyer, we're under attack," he yelled. "Technically, yes, but the shepherd, there's some shepherd out there, but the shepherd was shooting without poking his head up to aim. He had one chance in a thousand of hitting us. A second harmless burst followed, the bullets cracking more than 10 feet above our head." "Call for arty now," Staff Sergeant Keneffick yelled, holding the radio headset out towards me. "Oh, nice. Staff Sergeant, soon to be Gunnerie Sergeant Keneffick, needed the lowly corporal's help." "I trotted toward him, stopped, assumed parade rest postures, arm locked behind my back, chest pushed forward in the wide open, and pasted a respectful expression on my face."

• 39:06Jocko Willink?

  What does the staff sergeant wish the corporal to do? Another burst from the AK. This is no time to be a smart ass Meyer. A few more rounds, still way too high. I'm locked at parade rest. Hi, staff sergeant. He balanced the headset considering whether to throw it at me. Meyer, hurry up. He had started calling in the artillery mission. And when I got to him, he was asking me, what do I say now? Left 100, drop 200, I said. He repeated it on the radio. What now? He asked. Fire for effect, I said. Should be dead on. Okay, fire for effect, he repeated over the radio. And that's it. You hit the guy, but uh. It's funny that you, even in that situation, um, you were talking about being a kind of a wise ass when you were a kid. You're still a wise ass.

• 39:51Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, you know, the thing about Kenneth Fick was me and him were butting heads real hard at that time. You know, we were butting heads. Um, you, you know how some people just take over like he, he, he took over and tried to make up for his lack of, you know, nothing against him. And he wasn't a combat. I mean, it wasn't his job, but what he tried to make up for in the lack of his combat knowledge was his authority, right? And so, you know, he, he had kind of pissed me off pretty bad about, you know, asking me to do, you know, you, you know, you need to stand at parade rest, like he was all big on it, right? And it's like, we're on, we're on a cop. Like, you know, you, you know, you still need to, you know, customs and courtesies, right? And so I, I used that, that situation to make a point, you know? He just kind of pushed me over the edge and, but after that, we were.

• 40:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what kind of broed you guys out, right?

• 40:35Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, it broke us.

• 40:35Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. That's awesome.

• 40:37Dakota Meyer?

  Great.

• 40:37Jocko Willink?

  You had some good Afghan soldiers and I knew you were talking to me about them early. One guy that by the name of Dodd Ali. Here you go. He was fun to talk to, open, friendly and fearless. We'd sit around talking and asking questions of each other like kids in middle school, learning as much as we could about each other. He proudly cleaned his saw five times a day and absorbed every tip I gave him about shooting. He was the most disciplined Askar on base. That's why we gave him the saw in the first place. So you had good relationship with that.

• 41:03Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I mean, I had a good relationship with all my Afghans. I mean, I, I, I, I ate at least two meals a day with them. Um, you know, usually I didn't eat breakfast with them. I would eat it over at the, uh, over at the, uh, you know, the chow hall. Um, but I used, you know, that was my, that was my policy. I mean, every night I eat dinner with them, every single night. I would eat dinner with my Afghan soldiers. Cause I was no better than them.

• 41:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, man. You know, sometimes I hear.

• 41:31Jocko Willink?

  I hear people, you know, people that don't understand at all what was going on in Iraq or Afghanistan. They'll, you know, we were, you know, America was occupiers and how could you do that? And it's like, I always remind them, like, we were fighting alongside the Iraqi soldiers, fighting alongside the Afghan soldiers.

• 41:46Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 41:46Jocko Willink?

  I mean, spilling blood.

• 41:48Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I mean, we weren't, I mean, just because it was Iraq and Afghanistan war, we weren't fighting Iraq and Afghanistan. We were fighting with them.

• 41:55Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:55Dakota Meyer?

  We weren't fighting against Iraq or Afghanistan.

• 41:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 41:58Dakota Meyer?

  We were fighting next to them, you know, we were helping them against the same enemy.

• 42:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 42:03Dakota Meyer?

  You know?

• 42:03Jocko Willink?

  So many people miss that point, man, and it's like, it's a, it's an important point to be missing.

• 42:08Dakota Meyer?

  It's a, it's a big, it's a big fact.

• 42:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Man, I hear that and it just turns my stomach, man. Um, now I kind of joked about that, that first situation being your first combat, and now you had legit your first kind of trial by fire.

• 42:23Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 42:24Jocko Willink?

  Um, you're at combat, you're at the outpost at COP Monte, and you're under attack. You actually got some wounded, some Ascar's are wounded, and you're, you were going back to the book. "Where's Staff Sergeant Keneffick?" I yelled. Doc Layton pointed toward the northeast tower. "Get over there and stay with him," I yelled. Suicide bombers sometimes rush the wire trying to take an infidel with them as they evaporated in a red flash. Without hesitating, Doc Layton ran down the stairs across the open space and into the tower with Staff Sergeant Keneffick. Two or three seconds later, a rocket slammed into their bunker, exploding into pieces. An Afghan worker huddled there beside the sandbags. Smoke rolled out of the tower. "They're gone," I yelled to Johnson, not believing what I had just seen. I resumed firing, "It's all you can do."

• 43:09Jocko Willink?

  The best first aid at that point was to return fire. Johnson worked the radio. "Fox 3-1, Fox 3-1, this is Fox 3. Staff Sergeant Keneffick, Doc Layton, come on, answer up." We kept firing, but it seemed unworldly now. We were on automatic. Lieutenant Johnson got on the radio again. "3-1, Fox 3-1, this is Fox 3. Staff Sergeant Keneffick, Doc Layton, come on, man, answer up." Then finally, "Yeah, yeah, this is 3-1, we're good."

• 43:39Jocko Willink?

  Ten minutes later, our attack helicopters began strafing runs, low rumbling burrs like a giant burping. Incredible firepower, those lovely birds. Enemy fire ceased. Attack over. Johnson and I ran over to the bunker as Staff Sergeant Keneffick and Doc Layton stumbled out. The four of us sat on the bloody sandbags in the growing dusk, talking about it. Their eyes were slightly glazed and wide, wide open. Lieutenant Johnson, Staff Sergeant Keneffick, and Doc Layton weren't infantry. They had considered that by coming to Afghanistan, they might die, but it hadn't kicked in until now. Now they had heard the screams and seen the blood. Everybody soot-covered understood now that if we went home together, it might not be alive.

• 44:23Jocko Willink?

  The Ascar's were cleaning up the bloody mess not six feet from us, taking away the ripped-up body of their friend. We mumbled some stuff. All of us were too embarrassed to talk about our feelings, but we knew what we were all thinking. This shit was for real, and there were only four of us. "We'll be there for each other," Doc Layton said. The surfer dude surprised me. He had said the one thing that made any sense.

• 44:48Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, that was, um... That was the Sunday before. Uh, so, Gangesal was on a, on a Tuesday. That was September 6th of 2009. It was a huge rocket attack. I mean, they were dialed in. It was terrible. Like, I can remember it as if I was there. It was terrible.

• 45:13Jocko Willink?

  How many rockets did they fire?

• 45:14Dakota Meyer?

  Uh, I think we had nine that hit, that, 107s, that hit dead-on, like, in, not just, nine that hit just inside of, of not the whole base, but just my Afghan base. It's, it's probably, this, you know, where we're at right now is probably bigger than that. It was terrible.

• 45:32Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm. And that was a wake-up call?

• 45:34Dakota Meyer?

  Oh, it was for all of us. I mean, it, it was for all of us, and it was for them, and, you know, I'll never forget, um...

• 45:44Dakota Meyer?

  You know, I'll never forget talking. I mean, we finally sit down and talked about what do we do if we lose one of, you know, what do we want? And um, gosh, it was so real. And you know, I'll never forget, Kenneth Fick, I had, I had medevac'd out a guy, a wounded soldier that day. And he was putting me in for a Bronze Star. And I'll never forget, we were just walking through in the, in the little hooch, and he said, and where we lived at. And he was just, you know, kind of joking a little bit later on that day, he's like, "Hell, Meyer, you know, the way shit's going for you, and as unlucky as you are," he goes, "you'll probably be in for a Medal of Honor before this deployment's over with."

• 46:27Dakota Meyer?

  And uh, it's just crazy.

• 46:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So that's two days before you guys head down to Ganges.

• 46:35Dakota Meyer?

  We'd actually got the call that night that we were supposed to go to Ganges on the 7th. And they ended up pushing it right to the 8th. So we left the next day.

• 46:46Jocko Willink?

  We talk about a little bit here. Ganges lay two miles north of Joyce, and we drove right by the mouth of the valley. Ganes sounded like the name of an Irish town full of smiling faces and friendly pubs. I could see a few of the larger compounds far back on a hillside nestled against steep ridge lines. "Bad place," Hafez muttered. "Bad people." So you're getting right away, getting told that.

• 47:10Dakota Meyer?

  No, no, I mean, I mean, we were told instantly. I mean, we were told, like, I mean, we, we, I mean, yeah, there was no doubt.

• 47:16Jocko Willink?

  Now, one thing that I think made you feel more calm, a little bit more comfortable, you talk about in the book. Historically, the Taliban had not sprung ambushes from inside villages. So that wasn't discussed at the briefing. Plus, we were going in with 90 Afghans and 15 advisors with a platoon from 132 deployed behind us in a quick reaction force. This shows us, this show belongs to the, to our Afghan counterparts. Fabio, am I saying that right?

• 47:43Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, Fabio.

• 47:44Jocko Willink?

  Fabio said, "We advisors will stand off to the side and let them talk with the elders. We're not in the lead, we're assisting." That made no sense, I thought, considering who is doing the briefing and who is hearing it. We were in the tactical lead, even if we claimed otherwise. That's a little, that's a political thing.

• 48:04Dakota Meyer?

  Um, yeah, I mean, I, I think it's an ignorance thing.

• 48:08Jocko Willink?

  Well, I, I think it's an ignorant thing too, but the reason it happens.

• 48:10Dakota Meyer?

  No, no, no, of course. I mean, technically, we fail under, so, I mean, technically, the way that this works, as crazy as this sounds, I was working for, like, my commander was Afghan commander. Whatever the Afghan commander told me was what I was supposed to do.

• 48:23Jocko Willink?

  Right. I mean, I'm saying that's a political thing for us to say, politically, look, the Afghans are running this operation.

• 48:29Dakota Meyer?

  Yes, yes, yes. I mean, that, you know, but that, um, if you remember what I said a little bit earlier about, you know, hey, we're not going to do the fighting. I mean, that, that's the mentality of the leadership of the team.

• 48:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 48:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Not good. And as you just said here, that, that made no sense, I thought, and you were a corporal. Twenty, how old were you?

• 48:52Dakota Meyer?

  I was, uh, twenty-one.

• 48:54Jocko Willink?

  Twenty-one years old, and you're looking at this going, hey, man, this doesn't make any sense. We're the ones that are sitting here briefing it. You know, we're the ones that know how to call for fire.

• 49:01Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I mean, and I brought, well, I mean, first off, first off, the Afghans can't even talk to anybody that calls for fire, or the helicopters. I mean, they don't even have any comms with them. They're on HF. You, you know what I mean?

• 49:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 49:14Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, I, I, so the, the three main factors that I brought up in the brief, and I brought up that, look, we're only, everybody's going in, we have over twelve different moving elements between the OPs and different teams inside this patrol, all on one frequency. I brought that up. I brought up the fact that, um, that we didn't have direct air supporters on fifteen-minute strip alert, and that's in Jalalabad. So, all, and, you know, so they were taking it as if the birds would be there within fifteen minutes. I said, that's not what fifteen-minute strip alert means.

• 49:46Jocko Willink?

  They're up.

• 49:46Dakota Meyer?

  That means off the ground in fifteen minutes, and then they still got nine, probably sixty minutes to get from Jalalabad to us. And so, you know, that was another factor. And then the other thing that I brought up was, um, why would we put our snipers two thousand meters away from the village?

• 50:02Jocko Willink?

  Outside of their effective range of their weapons.

• 50:04Dakota Meyer?

  There you go. But here's what I was told. I'm an E4 in the United States Marine Corps. What do I know about mission planning?

• 50:12Dakota Meyer?

  And that's why I was taken out of the team.

• 50:14Jocko Willink?

  Chuck. So, um, when you say, when you talk about getting taken out of the team, explain how that went down a little bit. So you got your four man team, Team Monty.

• 50:25Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, Team Monty. And so what they did was, is, you know, they had, there's like, they would put the teams, you know, you would go with your Afghans in here to do their part.

• 50:36Dakota Meyer?

  So our team was supposed to go to the back of the village, cover the backside of it, and then we were going to search a couple of houses up there for a machine gun. And while the meeting went on, and they took me out of the team because I brought up those concerns. And, um, you know, they, they kind of took it as me going against the orders, questioning their authority. And they replaced me with Gunny, Gunny Johnson.

• 51:02Jocko Willink?

  So I'm just, I just have to say this right now. So I talk about this all the time, man. If you're in a leadership position, you don't want yes men. You don't want yes men. You want the, the corporal that says, hey, boss, I don't understand why you do that right now. And if your answer to your subordinate is because I said so, or it's you're an E4, be quiet, or you're an E5, be quiet, if that's what your answer is, that means you don't have a real answer. That means that what you're doing is probably wrong.

• 51:29Jocko Willink?

  So surround yourself, the best people you can have on your team are the people that are going to question what, what it is that your, your plan is. And if they question it and you can't, don't have a good logical answer and your plan doesn't stand on its own two feet.

• 51:42Jocko Willink?

  Well, think about it and reassess it and take some advice from down the chain of command on how, what we could do to change this plan up.

• 51:50Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I mean, it was, look, they're complacent. You know, that's, that's the type of mentality that you have when you don't expect to go get your ass handed to you. That's why you need to expect to get your ass handed to you every day and train like it.

• 52:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You know, I, I, I used to, when I was running training, we trained for worst case scenario all the time. It was like worst, I mean, you know what, and it, it was, it was insane. Like, we had great, we had great financing for our training, so the training was awesome. We had mayhem going on, we had paintballs, and we had laser, this multi-million dollar laser tag system. We had role players, and it was awesome, and I wanted mayhem, and we had, we would put guys down, and you'd have to carry them out, and it was a, it'd be like a, it'd be mayhem. And sometimes guys go, "Well, this is kind of unrealistic, and what are the chances of this really happening?"

• 52:38Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 52:39Jocko Willink?

  And I'd be like, "Look, if this doesn't happen, great. You don't ever have to worry about it happening for real, but if it happens, you'll be ready for it, at least as ready as you can be."

• 52:48Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 52:52Jocko Willink?

  So you get pulled off the team?

• 52:54Dakota Meyer?

  I got pulled off the team, and my job was gonna be to stay with the vehicle. So like, basically, we were gonna drive vehicles in, park the vehicles, and that was the other thing I said. I said, "This is dumb. Why, why would we leave our up-armored guns a couple miles away?"

• 53:09Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:10Dakota Meyer?

  And they said, "You mean, you ready for the response here? You ready?

• 53:13Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 53:14Dakota Meyer?

  Uh, "Well, Dakota, uh, because we want to go into the village clandestine,

• 53:20Dakota Meyer?

  you have a ninety-man patrol."

• 53:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, that's not gonna happen. Uh, just to paint the picture for everyone, basically, there's a deep ravine, walls on either side. At the top of the ravine, it kind of splits into two other ravines, and there's kind of villages on both sides of that.

• 53:37Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, it splits into, it splits into two, like, it's kind of like two valleys inside of a big valley.

• 53:41Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 53:41Dakota Meyer?

  And on the right-hand side was another bad valley, but we were going in the left-hand side, and that was Gangesaw. And, um, I mean, this, this terrain was built to fight. It was built to fight. I mean, they had trenches in it. There were trenches in it that they used to fight out of. I mean, it's nuts.

• 54:01Jocko Willink?

  And, obviously, you're walking up the valley, which means automatically you're in the low ground, which is not where we want to be, ever.

• 54:09Jocko Willink?

  All right. Now, you, one of the guys you were gonna be working with

• 54:16Jocko Willink?

  in the Hummers was Staff Sergeant Juan Rodriguez Chavez. Here we go back to the book. I sought out Staff Sergeant Juan Rodriguez Chavez, our motor transport chief. I'd known him for five months. He didn't stand on rank and we traded stories about growing up on farms. He had grown up on a ranch in Mexico, having a similar approach to life. Rod and I had become friends. He was in the eighth grade when his family moved to Texas where he learned English, played football, earned good grades, and roped cows in rodeos. Our team called him Hot Rod. He laughed a lot, bragged about how smart his two daughters were, and kept all our vehicles in top condition. "Rod, this mission is fucked up. If the shit hits the fan," I said, "we're going in. My team's walking point and they'll get cut off.

• 55:02Jocko Willink?

  We have to go in and get them out."

• 55:06Jocko Willink?

  And he looked back at you. "Devil dog," Rod said, "say the word and I'll do the driving."

• 55:15Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 55:15Jocko Willink?

  That's legit.

• 55:16Dakota Meyer?

  He's the man. He is the man.

• 55:20Jocko Willink?

  And continuing on, you say, "having some sort of contingency plan." Now, I walked back to the advisor headquarters and briefed Lieutenant Johnson. By the way, Lieutenant Johnson didn't want you out of the team either, right? He wanted you to stay with him.

• 55:31Dakota Meyer?

  No, no, no. And we can't think we're pissed.

• 55:32Jocko Willink?

  He knew that you should be with the team.

• 55:36Jocko Willink?

  "If things get hairy," I said, "I'm coming in. Rod will drive. Radio your coordinates and get down to the wash. Fucking climb in and we'll haul us back to the main body because they were gonna be exposed on the far end of that wash."

• 55:46Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, so I, I, so everything that I did was planned out the night before.

• 55:51Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 55:52Dakota Meyer?

  Everything that I did was planned out the night before. And it was all in our team. I mean, I told him, I mean, I told him, I said, you know, "you say the word and I'll head in there. I don't care. And I'm coming to get you." And, I mean, that, we, we had this all planned out. Like, all they had to do was get to the road and I would be there.

• 56:13Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on, back to the book. In the talk, a report about Ghanjigal had come in via Brigade Internet. A special forces team reported that thirty-two fighters were moving from Pakistan to reinforce Ghanjigal. Half an hour later, the video feed from an unmanned aerial vehicle showed a man with a mortar tube on his back entering a known safe house two kilometers north of Ghanjigal village. Ten minutes later, four more men entered the same house. So you're, you're watching this?

• 56:39Dakota Meyer?

  Well, so here's the crazy part. Nobody told us.

• 56:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so you didn't even get that report?

• 56:44Dakota Meyer?

  Nobody told us.

• 56:48Jocko Willink?

  Check. Um, and I gotta point out to everyone, I'm, I'm obviously skipping giant chunks of this book. And there's a awesome amount of detail that, that Dakota goes into in, in how this is going down. And I'm kind of hitting the wave tops to get, to get the story there, but, uh, okay. You don't even get that intel, but it doesn't matter because the next day, I guess where you're going into the valley.

• 57:15Jocko Willink?

  You got a guy with you named Swenson. He's in charge of some border police, some Afghan border police. Is that right?

• 57:20Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 57:21Jocko Willink?

  So Swenson's border police turned to Hafez when the lights went out. Dushmen, he said. Am I saying that right? Dushmen?

• 57:29Dakota Meyer?

  Dushmen.

• 57:29Jocko Willink?

  Dushmen. Dushmen, which is another term for-

• 57:31Dakota Meyer?

  Enemy.

• 57:32Jocko Willink?

  For enemy. Dushmen, they said, "We must turn back." So they're already freaking out.

• 57:37Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, yeah. So they, I think, I, I think that they, they were, uh, like, some of the police had already knew they had leaked-

• 57:44Jocko Willink?

  Oh, tipped it off?

• 57:44Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 57:45Jocko Willink?

  They, they had information one way or the other?

• 57:47Dakota Meyer?

  They had leaked when we were coming in. They had leaked the plan. So I think that that's why they were trying to bail out, in my opinion, was because they knew what was already there.

• 57:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Got it. And, um, just before five in the morning, Rod and I heard gravel crunching, crunching on the trail. So now you're actually in position. You dropped off the guys and now, uh, the, the Afghan team with some of the advisors, including Team Monty, are heading up the valley and you're waiting at, at the bottom end of the valley.

• 58:14Dakota Meyer?

  I'm sitting back at the, you know, back at the trucks and they're going, you know, they're going into the valley. And, um, at this point, now everybody's leaving the valley.

• 58:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this, this part. Just before five in the morning, Rod and I heard gravel crunching on the trail. Men, women, children, sheep and goats suddenly hurried by our trucks heading out of the valley.

• 58:34Jocko Willink?

  Pre-dawn always brought the first sing-song called "The Prayer", followed by people scurrying about. And, and this is just, you knew right then, right?

• 58:42Dakota Meyer?

  Oh.

• 58:42Jocko Willink?

  A hundred percent that it's on.

• 58:43Dakota Meyer?

  No, a hundred and ten percent. Oh, yeah, no doubt.

• 58:46Jocko Willink?

  So this, you know, just for anyone that's listening that isn't putting two and two together here, there's a village with a bunch of civilians in it, and the civilians all leave and they take their animals with them.

• 58:57Dakota Meyer?

  They take all their, they take everything that's worth, worth anything with them.

• 59:01Jocko Willink?

  So they know that there's, it's on. Going back to the book, as Lieutenant Johnson approached the first row of houses he radioed back to Garza that he and Lieutenant Rula were heading toward the house of an Imam, one of the village elders. Seconds later, an RPG streaked in from the east, followed by a burst of PKM, a Russian-made machine gun that shoots a hefty 7.62 millimeter cartridge. It started tearing up the ground and the adobe walls. As the men took cover among the terrace walls, more PKM fire came in from the northeast, joined by AKs at a closer range. Enemy fighters were crouched inside the houses and below the windows of the schoolhouse on the southern ridge. They were hiding in the alleyways and dug in behind the stone terrace walls to the east.

• 59:45Jocko Willink?

  They had a dozen fixed positions and were shooting downhill with the sun behind them.

• 59:52Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, they knew what they were doing.

• 59:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is, um, again, um, do any kind of, anybody with any kind of military knowledge whatsoever, when you read that paragraph or that, that those two paragraphs right there, you see that you are in a horrible, horrible scenario. Multiple enemy machine gun positions in elevated, coordinated attack.

• 1:00:17Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:19Jocko Willink?

  Horrible.

• 1:00:22Jocko Willink?

  And here's your thoughts, back to the book. I waited for the firing to die down, but it didn't. The chaos of the RPG explosions, PKM machine guns, AKs and M16s increased. I heard the report of a recoilless rifle, basically a hundred-pound shoulder or tripod-mounted cannon, and a sure sign of a planned ambush as the douche men don't lug that over the hills for an exercise. Then I heard the krump krump of their mortar shells. There was a wide babble of voices on the command radio, advisors yelling at each other to clear the net. No one was taking charge. There was no central command. I was pacing around frustrated, being out of the fight and not being able to help.

• 1:01:03Jocko Willink?

  So you'd seen enough of like little firefights that would be a little burst of fire and then people are gonna run away.

• 1:01:08Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I mean, you know, like they're gonna just they they blow their load like right in the beginning and then, you know, they don't have enough. They're like they're not able to, like us, resupply. They don't sustain anything.

• 1:01:20Dakota Meyer?

  This was endless.

• 1:01:21Jocko Willink?

  And then you you mentioned this earlier and again, just to kind of point out to people so they so they understand what you were talking about. You said, hey, there's gonna be fourteen different maneuver elements?

• 1:01:31Dakota Meyer?

  Twelve.

• 1:01:32Jocko Willink?

  Twelve different maneuver elements and they're all on the same net. And what that means is they're all on the same radio frequency. So picture this. You you're trying to have a conversation on the phone, but so are twelve other people. Eleven other people all trying to have a conversation on the phone at the same time.

• 1:01:47Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, with their with their nerves.

• 1:01:50Jocko Willink?

  With their nerves while they're while chaos is happening.

• 1:01:53Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:54Jocko Willink?

  And so this is what you end up doing is actually on a phone, you have a better chance because a phone will kind of kind of let some of that traffic through. But when you start stepping on each other on the radio, they just cut each other off and you can't hear anything.

• 1:02:09Dakota Meyer?

  And that's exactly what happened. And the other piece of it was, it's not just that. It was all that one frequency. Everything had to be relayed through those snipers.

• 1:02:18Jocko Willink?

  Oh, because they were in the elevated high ground. To get back to the could you? Did you have direct comms with the guys on the ground?

• 1:02:23Dakota Meyer?

  Yes, I did. But I'm saying like to get to the command. So if you like, you know, and the big thing I brought up was was, you know, what happens if you're calling in a medevac and you're calling in? Call for fire.

• 1:02:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you're trying to that's that's like trying to call the fire department and the ambulance and and you're trying to call them at the same time. Like you gotta you gotta separate them. Actually, that's not a good example. It's trying to call the ambulance and an active shooter and trying to maneuver all that stuff happening at the same time.

• 1:02:48Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:02:52Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Soon both ridge lines were sparkling with fire as the Azghars and Dushmen engaged each other with rocket propelled grenades. Smoke and shrapnel filled the air.

• 1:03:05Jocko Willink?

  Swenson, he's, he's on, this is Highlander 6, he yelled over the din. Forward, forward line of troops pinned down at X-ray delta. Heavy enemy fire, request immediate suppression. Fire kilo echo, we'll adjust. So he's trying to call fire. You're back and you, and Rod says, what do you think? Rod said, if the Dusman cut around the rear, I said, and closed the back door, they'll catch our people in a fire sack. This is deep shit. They gotta get out of there. The way to break up an ambush is to hammer it with heavy fire. The Humvee gave us armor, mobility, and a heavy gun. We would roll in and bring Team Monty back to the location of the command group.

• 1:03:48Jocko Willink?

  I grabbed the radio and called Fox 3, Lieutenant Fabio. No reply. I tried Fox 6, Williams, and then Fox 9, First Sergeant Garza. No one replied. I was calling for permission to enter the valley, asking for it from anyone who would answer. Finally, Fox 7, Valdez, up on the northern ridge, answered on the net. Fox 3-3, your requests to enter the valley are denied. Fox 9 says you are to stay at your present location. And again, I'm throwing out a bunch of different names here. These are all the different leaders that are out there on these different 12 elements. And when you read the book for yourself, you can kind of catch and understand exactly what was happening there.

• 1:04:29Jocko Willink?

  But the, the, the, basically what was going on was your calling to whoever would answer to get permission to drive up the valley and go give a hand. Yeah, I was trying to get permission. I put down the handset and sat there, listening as the dozen, as a dozen advisors tried to talk over a single radio channel. It was sheer bedlam. This is bullshit, Rod. I rechecked the ammo belt in the Mark 19. Rod sat in the driver's seat. You ready, Rod? Give it a few more minutes, Meyer. You'll fry for this, he said. He was right. I'd get sent home for disobeying a direct order. There was no question in my mind about that. I was already on thin ice with Garza, Fabio, and Williams. So I sat there frustrated, listening to the shooting, flexing my hands on the grips of the Mark 19, and breathing hard. I tried to calm down.

• 1:05:14Jocko Willink?

  Maybe the battle sounded worse on the radio than it really was. Son of a bitch. Inside the Tactical Operations Center at Joyce, so Joyce is a couple miles away, and the Tactical Operations Center is, is where they're running this, they're, they're supposed to have, um... Kind of situational awareness of everything that's happening and they're supposed to be able to supply fire support. So that's when we're talking about the tactical operations center at Joyce, that's what it is. Captain Aaron Harding was a senior officer on duty from midnight to eight in the morning, the battle captain. He'd been in Afghanistan for eight months, but had rarely controlled fires and certainly not, and certainly none like this. As artillery stood by at Joyce, a few miles away and at Assadabad, a few miles away, Harding asked

• 1:05:59Jocko Willink?

  for more and more information from the men on the long table. Who was requesting the fire missions? Was it Shadow Four, Highlander Five, or Fox Three? What had they heard from Fox Six? Who was presently in charge? The Marine advisors or the Afghan army? Did the ground commander know where all his troops were? Had they double-checked the grids of the KEs? He asked question after question. At Joyce, 120 millimeters, millimeter mortars were fired for, fired 15 minutes after Fabio requested. The first shell, though, struck within 50 meters of the enemy position. The next flurry of shells was on target. That would be the only effective fire mission of the entire day. And this is one of the

• 1:06:43Jocko Willink?

  things that you're going to get more into. We actually recently talked about the battle in the Idrang Valley, and those guys would absolutely 100% have been overrun and what saved their ass over and over again was artillery and fire support. That's the biggest advantage that we have on the battlefield as Americans.

• 1:07:01Dakota Meyer?

  100%.

• 1:07:02Jocko Willink?

  And your team is calling for it. The advisors are calling for it. They're not getting it.

• 1:07:09Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, they're not getting it. I mean, they shut it down. And to try to give the benefit of the doubt here, right, of why they shut it down, I totally understand it. But it goes back to the one thing I said, right? I mean, they couldn't, probably couldn't figure out who the hell was calling what and where what was where. I mean, I don't know that I could have confidently fired around. And, but part of it was because of the layout of everybody on one frequency. You know, it goes back to that initial problem. Like, I don't know if I could have fired around. Now, am I pissed that they didn't fire rounds? Absolutely. Like, it was wrong. It was wrong for the reasons they did it. But, you know, the confusion was so chaotic, in the beginning especially. But I can tell you this, that if they had got the rounds...

• 1:07:55Dakota Meyer?

  It had broke the enemy.

• 1:07:57Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm. And, you know, again, to, to advance your point of giving the benefit of the doubt. If they have no idea where friendlies are, they could have fired rounds on friendly forces as well.

• 1:08:08Dakota Meyer?

  Well, exactly. And, and then, you know, they'd have been accountable for that.

• 1:08:11Jocko Willink?

  And, and I'll tell you, that's, um, that's a hard decision to make to, to possibly, you know, fratricide, blue on blue is, is, in my opinion, that's, you know, it's the worst thing that can happen in war. And so what these guys are being asked to possibly do is, is, is risk a fratricide.

• 1:08:30Dakota Meyer?

  Yes.

• 1:08:31Jocko Willink?

  Which in their minds, and most probably a lot of military minds, I think mine included. Well, it's hard to say. What's better? You know, risk fratricide or risk, uh, getting overrun? Now, if we know for a fact people are getting overrun, then you're like, okay, we'll risk fratricide. And that's why that happens sometimes where people say, drop that bomb no matter what. But to say, I'm not a hundred percent sure people are gonna go overrun, but I'm still gonna take the risk of fratricide. At this point, that's probably why they're holding off.

• 1:09:01Dakota Meyer?

  It is in the beginning.

• 1:09:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:03Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:09:04Jocko Willink?

  And they get to a point where they call the danger close rounds and try and take responsibility and we'll, we'll get there.

• 1:09:10Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, the enemy above, the enemy above worked their way around the edges of the valley, shooting downhill. The Taliban machine gunners tracked in on one Ascar, then another, then another. It was a killing ground. They're all over the place. Swenson was thinking to himself, I may not make it out of here.

• 1:09:27Jocko Willink?

  If you hunker down and don't shoot back, you will surely die. The other side gains confidence and rushes forward. In the frenzy of combat, soldiers act like sharks. They sense weakness and circle in, picking off the wounded and the defenseless. Slowly, the douche men were closing in from both sides of the wash. So they were ready.

• 1:09:49Dakota Meyer?

  Oh, let me tell you something. They were good. They were good. They were trained. They had gear. You know, they had, they had plate carriers. They were taking the uniforms off our dead guys. Um, you know, they put Kevlars on and shit. They were good.

• 1:10:08Jocko Willink?

  Still trying to get fire support here. Swenson had identified enemy positions at four grid positions. There are two basic ways of calling in artillery. You can give the grid coordinates of the target or the Kilo Echo number for a grid and adjust after the initial round, or you can give your own location and a compass bearing and distant to the target. The second technique is called a polar mission, provides the guns with the locations of both the friendly observer and the target. Tell the TAC I'll send it polar, Swenson radioed to Kaplan. It's on me. Give them my initials. I'm making the decision, not them. Assuming accurate fire, the US mortars were less than two miles away. The only target endangered by the polar plot was the enemy. By sending his initials, Swenson was taking full responsibility.

• 1:10:52Jocko Willink?

  If anything went wrong, if a friendly soldier or civilian were hit, the burden rested squarely on Swenson, not with the TAC in the rear. The TAC responded to the polar request by asking again for information that was impossible to provide. Where were all the friendly troops? What was the forward line of trace of the friendly units? Was everyone accounted for? Were any civilians endangered?

• 1:11:15Jocko Willink?

  Kaplan told Shadow, the relay team above him, tell the TAC that it's critical. I repeat, critical. We have advisors pinned down. The TAC denied Shadow's fire mission. Furious Sergeant Summers at Shadow Four pressed back against the TAC. The main element is being hit from the north, east, and south. All elements are engaged. I repeat, all elements are heavily engaged. We need fire missions now.

• 1:11:41Jocko Willink?

  The NCOs inside the TAC were doing their job, and the artillery and mortar crews wanted to oblige, yet it seemed to Sergeant Summers that every time he relayed a fire mission, the TAC asked him 20 questions. A second string was running the show here, and not well.

• 1:11:58Jocko Willink?

  In firefights, it's not unusual for 200 to 2,000 artillery shells to be fired. Over the course of the first hour of the battle at Gondigal, when men lay trapped and dying, the TAC at Joyce allowed only 21 artillery shells to be fired.

• 1:12:17Jocko Willink?

  Since World War II, forward observers had received artillery fire under the rule of silence is consent. When an observer called for fire, the mission went by radio to the operation center and to the guns. Silence by the op center constituted consent for the guns to fire. In the 21st century, with computers making instant firing calculations, within two minutes shells could be hitting the target. But beginning about 2006, sergeants and lieutenants on the front lines were trusted less. The High Command believed the grunts were too quick to call in fires that endangered civilians, resulting in an embittered population that supported the insurgency. The solution was to apply a strict new rule.

• 1:13:02Jocko Willink?

  Two months before Gadjagul, General Stanley McChrystal, the senior commander in Afghanistan, issued a directive that forbade the use of artillery against or near any structure likely to contain civilians unless the higher, the next higher headquarters commander had approved. That ended silence is consent. The High Command had shifted decision-making from the battlefield to the staff. Swenson was not trusted to make the hard decisions. Instead, officers in the talk with a confused idea of the battlefield had to decide whether to honor his requests for fire.

• 1:13:41Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, and that's where my problem comes in, right? Is, you know, if the doctrine is that you, I give my initials, I take the responsibility. Well, then follow the doctrine.

• 1:13:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:53Dakota Meyer?

  You know, that's, there's, there's where they went wrong.

• 1:13:56Jocko Willink?

  And, and I'll, I'll tell you something else that, you know, you talked about how confusing it was over the net, and, and clearly it was obviously very confusing. How long would it take to verbally explain the layout of this whole situation?

• 1:14:11Dakota Meyer?

  Uh oh.

• 1:14:12Jocko Willink?

  It would take a very long time.

• 1:14:14Dakota Meyer?

  Oh.

• 1:14:15Jocko Willink?

  It would take an extremely eloquent person who had the time to kind of compose himself and, and, and sit there and try and explain it. That's why you make kilo echoes. That's why you have these pre-planned fire positions, so that you don't have to think anymore.

• 1:14:27Dakota Meyer?

  Yes.

• 1:14:28Jocko Willink?

  We can direct fires. And, and what, instead of having to communicate what the situation on the ground is, what you communicate is this is what we need.

• 1:14:34Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:35Jocko Willink?

  And this is where you need to put it.

• 1:14:36Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, that's 100% it. I mean, that's 100% it is, is, you know, um, you could never, first off, you could never relay all that information there. And guess what? And at the end of the day, it was irrelevant to what they were needing to do.

• 1:14:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And also by the time you, if you could relay it, by the time you relayed it, it would be different. Because what are you going to tell everyone to sit still for a minute? While I explain where you are? That doesn't work. That's why, that's why decentralized command is so important on the battlefield. This is the exact reason why decentralized command is so important on the battlefield. When you centralize command, people, people that actually are there, that need to be able to make decisions, make things happen, can't do it.

• 1:15:13Dakota Meyer?

  Yep.

• 1:15:15Jocko Willink?

  Um, and by the way, how do you overcome a situation like this? How do you overcome a situation where, okay, you're my subordinate. You work for me. And I don't, I don't want you to be able to have the ability to fire because I'm afraid you're going to hurt civilians. How do I solve that? The way to solve it is not to say, no, I don't give you that authority. The way I solve it is to say, okay, Dakota, let me explain some things to you. We need to protect the civilian populace. We need to make sure we don't damage any infrastructure to the best of our ability. I want you to understand how strategically important that is. Do you understand? Let me put you through some scenarios. What if you were here and this happened, what would you do? What if you were here and this happened, what would you do? I train you and I build trust so that I can decentralize the command. That's

• 1:15:58Jocko Willink?

  how you overcome it. You don't overcome it. It's a shortcut to try and centralize and it ends up getting people killed.

• 1:16:05Dakota Meyer?

  100%.

• 1:16:10Jocko Willink?

  All right.

• 1:16:14Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, Fox 31, Lieutenant Johnson finally came up on the radio. We're pinned down in a house, receiving accurate fire from the next house. We have to get out of here. He was cut off by others pushing to use the same frequency. Three or four advisors were trying to talk, stepping on each other. I could hear the strain in their voices, the lack of crisp borders, the frantic yelling of men who were pinned down. After a few minutes, Fox 32, Staff Sergeant Keneffick tried to pass his location on the grid to Fabio. "I can't shoot back," Aaron said, "because I'm pinned down. They're shooting at me from the house. It's so close. Grid."

• 1:16:52Jocko Willink?

  32, this is 33, radio staff sergeant, Kenefik, "Repeat your grid, repeat your grid." Or you radioed to Kenefik, "Repeat your grid, repeat your grid." So he faded as he was trying to tell you his grid. Nothing after that but static and garbled voices. That broke it for me. I had promised my team I would be there. As far as I was concerned, my command element wasn't in command.

• 1:17:26Jocko Willink?

  Twice I had heard Shadow say that air would be on station in 15 minutes. Nothing happened. How long do you do nothing while your friends are fighting for their lives? Fox 7, this is 33, sitting here is stupid, we're going in. Rod and I were on the net with Valdez. There was no dispute among us. It was about 0600 time to move. I was the vehicle commander, so the fault lay with me for disobeying orders if I arrived in the valley and discovered that the command group had had the situation under control. I knew there was a good chance I'd be sent back to the States in disgrace. When I shouted to Ascar's to follow us, they looked confused. Up on the north outpost, Valdez grabbed a senior Afghan sergeant. The sergeant radioed to the Afghan drivers clustered around our truck urging them in

• 1:18:10Jocko Willink?

  Pashto to follow me. Mortar shells were falling a football field away to our west. The enemy knew our trucks were somewhere on the path but uncertain just where. The explosions made the Ascar's jumpy, just the same, some of them jumped into two Humvees and roared into position behind us. "Rod, let's go," I said. He put it in gear.

• 1:18:34Jocko Willink?

  Now by that time, you start actually going into the valley. And as you're going in, by that time, several Ascar's were stumbling out of the battlefield, some bleeding, a few without their rifles, all exhausted. "Where Americani?" I yelled, "Dos, dos." The Ascar's pointed up toward the village. So as you're driving in, you're seeing guys fleeing the battlefield?

• 1:18:56Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, it was like, it was terrible. Like as we go in, you're just seeing these guys come out. It's in Ramadan, so they won't eat or they won't drink any water. And they're coming out of this battle and they're just like, you're not even close to the valley yet and they're coming out of this battle, they don't have any weapons on them. They're just broken, they're bloodied, they're been shot. They've just, I mean, you're carrying each other and you're just like...

• 1:19:22Dakota Meyer?

  What are we going into?

• 1:19:27Jocko Willink?

  Somewhere behind us was a US Army platoon. It seemed to me to be a time for them to make a move. They were the quick reaction force. Our insurance policy. Valdez was on the radio arguing with Dog 36, the quick reaction Army platoon commander. Dog 36, this is Fox 7, Valdez radioed. You need to get in there, man. Fox 33 is to your front and Humvee, drive east until you link up with them. Fox 7, this is Dog 36, said the lieutenant. Our vehicles are too big for the mission. We were driving on a footpath that was barely wide enough for our Humvee. Valdez came up with an alternative. Dog 36, this is Fox 7. I understand. Drive forward until you reach the Afghan vehicles. Use them to get into the fight. There are people out there dying. The platoon leader said he had to wait for clearance from the Tockit, Joyce.

• 1:20:13Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:16Jocko Willink?

  What kind of vehicles did the QRF have?

• 1:20:18Dakota Meyer?

  They were MRAPs.

• 1:20:19Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:20:24Jocko Willink?

  God, I mean.

• 1:20:25Dakota Meyer?

  It was an excuse.

• 1:20:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, how awesome would it be to have an MRAP roll into this situation?

• 1:20:30Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, and I don't think they could have. The road wouldn't have held up.

• 1:20:32Jocko Willink?

  Too small?

• 1:20:33Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, because they ended up coming in in one of those, it looks like a tank, but it's on wheels. And it ended up flipping over off the bank, but they, like, at the end of the day, we had a ton of Humvees. I mean, we just brought in 90 people. Sitting right there. They could have jumped in the Humvees and came.

• 1:20:54Jocko Willink?

  The helicopter ops center called back saying the re-tasking of the birds had been canceled because Lance had not called his own brigade headquarters to ask permission and because another mission north of Gangegal was of higher priority. So one of the guys in the in the ops center had actually said, you know what, screw it. I'm calling for helos. And but he hadn't called the brigade and run through the proper chain of command and they they shut him down.

• 1:21:20Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:21:24Jocko Willink?

  So here we go. More than an hour into the fight, the situation was as follows. Team Monty was trapped in a house and the US and Afghan commanders were pinned down by shooters closing in on them from three sides.

• 1:21:37Jocko Willink?

  The north and south observation posts were under fire. The Ascar's were caught in the open with nowhere to hide. Rod and I hadn't reached the wash. The 132 quick reaction platoon was not quick reacting. The Tok at Joyce was paralyzed, preventing artillery support. And the helicopter gunships had not arrived.

• 1:22:02Dakota Meyer?

  It was a perfect storm.

• 1:22:06Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:22:10Jocko Willink?

  That's just, um...

• 1:22:13Jocko Willink?

  There's absolutely, there's nothing else can go wrong right now.

• 1:22:16Dakota Meyer?

  It's a perfect storm. It is the absolute perfect storm.

• 1:22:24Jocko Willink?

  Swenson wanted a massive artillery barrage. Because the douche men didn't have overhead cover, artillery airbursts would send millions of lancets raining down toward them. Hundreds of shells had to shake the mountains and roll thunder down the valley. The douche men were zealots, but they weren't crazy. Once artillery began exploding overhead, gunmen with AKs wouldn't get up and run forward in the open.

• 1:22:49Jocko Willink?

  Yet the Tok refused to fire at Gondral only a few miles from Camp Joyce. Unleasing a barrage in your own backyard wouldn't win any applause at higher headquarters. The directive from the High Command was so clear. "Do not employ air-to-ground or indirect fires against residential compounds defined as any structure or building known or likely to contain civilians, unless the ground force commander has verified that no civilians are present."

• 1:23:23Dakota Meyer?

  It's terrible.

• 1:23:26Dakota Meyer?

  And I mean, you know, and there's that, you know, that rule right there is written so impossible. You know, what do you do? I mean, the village you're getting shot at, so you run through there and you civilian or you shoot at me?

• 1:23:40Jocko Willink?

  You know, um, I have to look, do like a full review of the ROEs or the specific directive, but you know, normally the self-defense thing trumps everything.

• 1:23:50Dakota Meyer?

  Well, usually, and that's what I always say, right? I always talk about ROEs and you know, ROEs will say, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But then at the end of it, it always ends, it says, or hostile act, hostile intent.

• 1:24:05Dakota Meyer?

  But it's all by interpretation. I mean, that it goes back to the commanders. I mean,

• 1:24:10Dakota Meyer?

  you know, I don't blame the ROE that Stanley McChrystal put in place for what happened that day. I blame the people, the leadership who was incompetent to make a decision.

• 1:24:24Dakota Meyer?

  You know what I mean? Like, like, it's like, nobody wants to just own it and take accountability and take responsibility and say, you know what? I'm doing this because it's the right thing to do. They want to be able to say, well, I didn't do it because, well, this is the order. Come on, come on. You know, if you're in a leadership position, take, take responsibility.

• 1:24:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:24:51Jocko Willink?

  You gotta do the right thing. That's the bottom line, and that's what makes leadership hard. And sometimes the right thing is to break rules. Sometimes the right thing is to not follow orders. Sometimes orders are wrong. And you shouldn't follow them. And Napoleon said, if you, if you're in charge and you get tasked with something that's wrong and you execute it, you're culpable. Doesn't matter if you get ordered or not.

• 1:25:14Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes you break the rules. Going right back to the yes man thing, right? And I guarantee, I guarantee the intent of Stan McChrystal putting this ROE in place wasn't to deny guys that were pinned down by enemy fire, but again, how are we communicating it? And are we putting, are we putting the priorities in place correctly so that everybody knows?

• 1:25:38Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I mean, you know, when it's put out in an email, it's kind of like it's as dangerous as you interpreting me a text.

• 1:25:48Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, everybody looks at it different.

• 1:25:49Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 1:25:55Jocko Willink?

  And you know what? That's why things like commander's intent are so important. If I know what it is, like you're, if I know what it is that you want done and my job is to get it done and you give me parameters to do it within, I'll stay within those parameters and I'll get the job done. And I'll come back to you and say, hey, boss, I had to, I had to bend the rules a little bit here, but I got the mission done. Or I might call you back and say, hey, I'm getting ready to break the rules to get the mission done. Do you want me to break them or not?

• 1:26:22Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:26:26Jocko Willink?

  All right. Back to the book. Shadow, the army outpost on the southern ridge replied that the talk at Joyce said the fire mission was too close to the village. Too close to the village, Lieutenant Johnson said. If you don't give me these rounds right now, I'm gonna die.

• 1:26:47Jocko Willink?

  Try your best.

• 1:26:50Jocko Willink?

  Shadow replied, knowing the talk wouldn't fire.

• 1:26:55Jocko Willink?

  Try your best.

• 1:26:58Dakota Meyer?

  Try your best.

• 1:27:03Jocko Willink?

  From the tone of Shadow's voice, I knew he was on the verge of complete rage. He wanted to strangle the officers in the Tocatay Joyce. I felt the same way. This couldn't be happening. We were on the same side. We weren't Marines or soldiers. We weren't Americans or Ascar's. We were one lone group fighting desperately to stay alive. The villagers weren't our friends. This was a war, and my team was on the verge of dying. Whose side was the Toc on? Radio call after radio call Swenson kept requesting smoke. Finally, around 0630, the Tocatay Joyce permitted four white phosphorus rounds to be fired into the southeast backside of the village, too far away to conceal my team.

• 1:27:49Jocko Willink?

  Those were the last rounds fired during the battle.

• 1:27:54Jocko Willink?

  At about 0640, the Tocatay Joyce forbade any more artillery support, citing garbled communications, incomplete calls for fire procedures, and a lack of situational awareness on the part of those trapped in the valley.

• 1:28:12Jocko Willink?

  So there's the reasons from their perspective.

• 1:28:18Jocko Willink?

  Garbled communications, incomplete calls for fire procedures, and a lack of situational awareness on the part of those trapped in the valley.

• 1:28:34Jocko Willink?

  Meanwhile, during this time, you've been moving up, grabbing bodies, coming back.

• 1:28:41Jocko Willink?

  And here we go again. As we moved forward for a third time, the Toc had finally ordered the Army Platoon, Dog 32, to move forward. They pulled in behind us with the platoon leader in a Humvee with an anti-tank tow missile on the roof. The tow made no sense to me, but the truck was equipped with a 240 machine gun. Behind them were 20 US soldiers and four heavily armored vehicles. You rolling with me, Lieutenant? I was confirming what I took for granted. I'll scout the route first before I bring my platoon in. The terrain may be too tough. He refused to put his soldiers into the Afghan vehicles. I could understand that. "Okay, I go first," I said. "You cover our six. The Afghans will be behind you."

• 1:29:19Jocko Willink?

  As we bounced forward, I heard Team Monty again come up on the radio. "We're under fire," Lieutenant Johnson said. "We're surrounded."

• 1:29:31Jocko Willink?

  So now you're heading back in.

• 1:29:33Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, yeah, and I, um, yeah, my whole goal was just to get them, you know, was to get them to the road.

• 1:29:42Dakota Meyer?

  And, uh,

• 1:29:45Dakota Meyer?

  yeah, I mean, that was their goal. If they could get to the road, they could get in the vehicles. They were good. So I was trying to push. I thought that they had took over a house, right? I thought they had pushed into the village and took over a house.

• 1:29:59Jocko Willink?

  Strong point of the house.

• 1:30:00Dakota Meyer?

  And that's what I thought they had done. And I lost, I lost communications with them. That's what I thought they had done. You know, when Kenneth Fick was trying to give that grid, I was trying to write it down. Because I knew if I could get that grid, I'd know where they were at. I could plot it. I could be there and go get them. And, um, you know, the, the one part I don't talk about in there is probably the hardest part of the whole deal is, is that the first trip that I made in,

• 1:30:31Dakota Meyer?

  I was probably seventy, sixty to seventy meters from them.

• 1:30:38Dakota Meyer?

  They're still alive.

• 1:30:59Jocko Willink?

  So you're in the valley now.

• 1:31:04Jocko Willink?

  You're with a group of guys. Going back to the book here, a bullet had entered Westbrook's neck near the shoulder blade and ricocheted downward. A dan- a dangerous but not fatal wound. Swenson applied quick clot powder and a bandage to seal off the bleeding. The fight had been raging for over ninety minutes and the chain of command throughout Kunar Province was on alert. Procedures for releasing helicopters had been unsnarled and two OH-58 Kiows were en route to the valley. At zero seven fifteen, they contacted Swenson. Highlander, this is Pale Horse. The PC Pilot Command radioed. What do you need? Pale Horse. Swenson replied, "I am under heavy fire from the village and the hills to the east and on both sides. Request immediate suppression while we pull back."

• 1:31:48Jocko Willink?

  The Kiowa Squadron had been in Kunar for ten months. The pilots knew the terrain and the enemy habits. They intended to swoop in low and crisscrossing strafing runs deliberately swerving and cutting back at odd angles. They didn't care whether they hit the douche men. They wanted to force them to crouch down and cease firing. The aerial tactics would allow the command group to pull back westward to draw down under reduced enemy pressure. As Swenson moved, he called for a medevac. Shadow radioed back that the TAC wanted questions answered before calling for one. "Is he Army or Marine?" Shadow said. Swenson cursed. Major Williams was more diplomatic. "This is Fox Six," Williams

• 1:32:31Jocko Willink?

  radioed. "It doesn't matter his service. He's US." There was a pause, then Shadow reluctantly radioed, "Repeat. TAC needs to know if he's Army or Marine. It's in the regulations."

• 1:32:43Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, it was, um...

• 1:32:48Jocko Willink?

  You get a guy calling for medevac, and you're getting asked, "Hey, is the person that needs, is the casualty Army or Marine Corps?"

• 1:32:57Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, and it really did matter to them. It really did matter to them.

• 1:33:03Jocko Willink?

  You're saying it mattered?

• 1:33:05Dakota Meyer?

  I'm saying it to who was asking. They really, their decisions were based off of who it was.

• 1:33:20Jocko Willink?

  Alright. Um, at this point, you're, you're, you, I think, you're, you're going back and forth, going back in the valley, getting bodies, helping wounded, coming back out. You're under fire the whole time. Rod is getting after it with you. Sometimes you have some US people with you, sometimes you don't. And again, these are things, you have to buy this book and to get these details out of it and read it so you understand the full magnitude of what we're talking about here.

• 1:33:52Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, Hafiz left the command group to sort itself out, helping a wounded Ascar. Was headed back west to the operational release point when I had stopped them. "I need you to come back in with me. I can't find them without you," I said. Hafiz was married, recently. He was wounded and exhausted. He could now go home and have a life. If today is my time to die, then I die. So he's rolling with you.

• 1:34:21Dakota Meyer?

  He had, he rolled with me the whole time.

• 1:34:24Jocko Willink?

  Again, to all those, uh, people out there that...

• 1:34:30Jocko Willink?

  Well, I guess, I, I should just say, for the people out there that have a hard time understanding what's going on overseas, um, you know, here's an Afghan soldier that is now gonna risk his life to help an American Marine go and find his friends.

• 1:34:47Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, cuz we were brothers.

• 1:34:58Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, shortly after we headed again down the valley, we bumped into another group of wounded Ascars. Rod recognized the first sergeant who was dripping blood down the right side of his trousers. He was waving his arms, begging us to stop. Four Ascars hobbled over and threw themselves into the backseat, splashing blood all over the place. We drove them back to the collection point. The first sergeant was blubbering, begging us not to go back in. I was a little rough, shoving him out of the truck. I was running out of time and patience. Once we dropped them off, we gunned it back down the track.

• 1:35:38Jocko Willink?

  We were getting to a place where we couldn't turn around and couldn't dodge and weave the art as the RPG smoke trails came at us. "We could get pretty stuck in here," Rod yelled. The truck had very little traction and absolutely no cover. "Then I guess we'll die with them," I yelled back. What else could I say? So we weren't going back. Rod shifted into low gear and we bounced forward.

• 1:36:07Jocko Willink?

  You, I noticed this throughout the book, you have a hard time, like anytime you saw wounded guys, you were like, alright, well, we gotta make another trip now, we gotta make another trip, even with those wounded Afghan guys, like you wanna go help your guys, but at the same time you see these guys, you're like, alright, get in the truck and we'll take these guys back. You got a big heart, bro. You got a big heart.

• 1:36:26Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, look, you know, I didn't just lose, um, I didn't just lose, uh, four guys that day.

• 1:36:35Dakota Meyer?

  I lost ten guys, cuz I lost six Afghans. I lost ten brothers. You know what I mean? I mean, those guys were just as close to me. My Afghans were just as close to me as any Marines I ever served with.

• 1:36:53Jocko Willink?

  And that's why they're joining you to go back in there and fight?

• 1:36:55Dakota Meyer?

  That's exa- and that's why I'm alive today.

• 1:36:59Dakota Meyer?

  Uh, I mean, that's, that's the relationships that I had with them and the brotherhood that I had for them, with them, is why I'm alive today. I mean, they, they are incredible human beings.

• 1:37:18Jocko Willink?

  So you're driving around in here.

• 1:37:21Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, only Rod's skill at the wheel was preventing me from being hit again and again. Bullets make different sounds when they pass by you. The cracks of bullets breaking the sound barrier mean they're high, maybe five or ten feet over your head. The bullets that snap close by your ears are the real killers. A few, losing power and slowing down, made a low buzzing sound. Strange though it may seem, I wasn't scared or angry. I was beyond that. I didn't think I was going to die, I knew I was dead. There wasn't anything I could do about it. I wasn't a thinking human being. I had gone elsewhere. I wasn't firing the machine gun, I was the machine gun. Rod wasn't driving the truck, Rod was the truck. I had melded with my weapon.

• 1:38:06Jocko Willink?

  I was no more human than a five-foot machine gun I was embracing. We were locked together, metal and flesh. Without that fifty cal, I would've quivered like the Haskars, helpless in the storm. But with that weapon, I felt transported. I had something to do, until the blackness came.

• 1:38:28Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I just kept, I kept, like the bullets were hitting inside the turret. They had elevation on us. And so they were hitting inside the turret. And, um, man, you could hear them coming by. And I just, I remember sitting there. You know, cause if you get down, I mean, you know, you, you know, your, your instinct is to duck down the turret. But you do that, they'll overrun you. I mean, they were running at the truck. So, yup, but you duck down, they're full sprint. And you're never gonna come back up, you know what I mean? And, um, I just kept waiting for a bullet. I, I just knew it was just gonna hit me in the face. I just kept waiting for a bullet to hit me, lights out.

• 1:39:08Dakota Meyer?

  Like I just, I just, there was no doubt in my mind that I was gonna die. Zero. Zero doubt.

• 1:39:18Dakota Meyer?

  But I was gonna make this son of a bitch's earn it.

• 1:39:21Dakota Meyer?

  They had it to do.

• 1:39:25Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 1:39:31Jocko Willink?

  I wasn't paying attention to the Afghan soldiers. Rod and I planned to keep driving east until we obliterated, until we were obliterated or we found my team. Suddenly with no warning, five or six Ascar's who were lying in a terrorist about a hundred meters away leapt up and raced towards our truck. One was shot back and pitched forward. Wham, a second man went down screaming, wham, a third, then a fourth and a fifth. I'd never seen anything like it. Five men down in five seconds. There was so much screeching and shooting that I couldn't, couldn't pick out the location of the weapon that had shot them. To deliver such lethal grazing fire, the machine gunner must have been hidden only a few hundred meters away with a clear line of sight and his bipod firmly anchored. Yet whoever shot those men didn't raise his gun, sights and stitch me.

• 1:40:16Jocko Willink?

  I knew he was looking at me, but I couldn't see him. There was nothing I could do. He let me live. Not one of his rounds even struck our truck. I can't explain it.

• 1:40:27Jocko Willink?

  We used to call the trucks bullet magnets.

• 1:40:30Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, they are.

• 1:40:30Jocko Willink?

  I mean, it's like the ripest target and a freak, you're the turret gunner. You're like the, the icing on the cake. You're the cherry on the icing on the cake.

• 1:40:39Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, cuz that truck gets over, if they take the gun out, that truck doesn't come out of there. It's overran.

• 1:40:44Jocko Willink?

  Oh, hell yeah, yeah.

• 1:40:46Dakota Meyer?

  But, you know, even though it's a bullet magnet, I mean, you know, just like right there. I think that kind of paints the picture. I mean, it's the, it's the only chance you have.

• 1:40:56Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:40:57Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, you're, you're out. I mean, that's how dialed in they are.

• 1:41:01Jocko Willink?

  It's, it's.

• 1:41:03Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, I was literally watching guys.

• 1:41:04Jocko Willink?

  People throw the term miracle around all the time. Like the fact that you, right here, there's five guys within, you know, spitting distance from you and they all go down and you're the, the most prime target and you, and you don't get shot, man.

• 1:41:19Dakota Meyer?

  You wanna talk about helpless, the most helpless feeling you got is watching guys trying to get to you and just getting mowed down. I mean, you wanna talk about helpless and you don't even know where it's coming from. I mean, you wanna talk about helpless is watching another human being run directly at you to get help and you're just watching them just go down one after the other, after the other.

• 1:41:57Jocko Willink?

  Can't even imagine it, dude.

• 1:41:59Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, it's just, you know, it's, it's, they were good that day.

• 1:42:05Jocko Willink?

  You get this call from Valdez. They're coming at you. I can see them closing from both sides. They're swarming you.

• 1:42:12Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:42:14Jocko Willink?

  In front of our truck, I saw you guys sprinting across the wash from left to right, heads low. I don't think they saw us coming up behind them or if they heard the truck engine over the din of the gunfire. They scurried too quickly for me to get off a burst. Glancing to my right, I looked smack into the eyes of five or six men in dirty man dresses, crouched alongside a drainage ditch not 10 meters away. When I gaped at them, they ducked down like they were playing hide and seek. It took me a few seconds to realize that they were spreading out to seal off the open end of the horseshoe valley, zip locking the frozen ascars inside a fire sack.

• 1:42:47Jocko Willink?

  Rod and I had blundered into their rear. So they were about to, they were about to surround everybody.

• 1:42:52Dakota Meyer?

  So they, that's what they were doing. There was a trench and they were closing it. They were closing the gate. And, and we, that truck.

• 1:42:59Jocko Willink?

  You happened to be there.

• 1:43:01Dakota Meyer?

  To be right in it.

• 1:43:02Jocko Willink?

  Damn. Firesack is a, is a doctrinal term actually, which means you're surrounded. And they're gonna shoot into the sack and kill everyone.

• 1:43:10Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:43:13Jocko Willink?

  We were bouncing over the rocks no faster than a man can run when a bearded douche man clutching an AK leapt out of a ditch and sprinted after us like a man trying to catch his, catch a bus. My gun almost wouldn't swivel low enough to shoot him. The barrel was tilted down as far as it could go. I fired into his chest and he went down like he'd hit a glass wall. A bullet doesn't blow a man back like in the movies. Either he stumbles on or he falls dead. This man fall, fell dead. Rod was yelling at me. Maybe I was hypnotized for a second by the death. There was a guy trying to open the right door. I couldn't depress the 50 cal that low. I can't get him, I yelled. The gun won't go down low enough. It takes the brain 12 thousandths of a second to react to danger.

• 1:43:55Jocko Willink?

  My mind was a complete blank. I had fired so many thousands of rounds that I didn't think what I was doing. Once you've practiced a motion long enough, it becomes second nature. Some researchers, researchers call it expertise induced amnesia. Athletes call it being in the zone. I call it self preservation. I grabbed my M4, leaned out and shot the guy four or five times in the shoulder and neck. It was like shooting a zombie. There was no shock power in the little five, five, six millimeter bullets. He fell to the ground.

• 1:44:26Jocko Willink?

  I pivoted back to the 50 cal and grabbed the spade handle. The weapon, my hands and my eyes were working as a trained unit independent of my brain. Man, sight, picture, shoot. Man, sight, picture, shoot. You don't really look at the target. The enemy remains out of focus. You concentrate on the sight picture. Man, sight, picture, shoot. I hit one or two guys next to the truck and the others ducked back into the ditch. Valdez came back on the radio. Rod, watch your front. Rod was focused on keeping traction in the loose gravel. If the truck got stuck even for a moment, we'd be toast. He looked ahead to see a bearded hatless man in his mid 30s dressed in a brick red man jams with a green chest rig full of ammo, running toward the truck and firing an AK at us from the hip. Hold on, homie, Rod yelled.

• 1:45:11Jocko Willink?

  He hit the accelerator. The truck hit the man squarely in the chest. There was a bump and then another bump under the tires. Holy shit, Rod yelled. I just ran over a guy. Back up and do it again.

• 1:45:26Jocko Willink?

  I'd been shot in the elbow. A bleeder that did no real damage. The bone was fine. In a fight, adrenaline deadens the pain. I did a little rapping and got back to shooting. The more fucked up things got, the more Rod and I started laughing. He was staring away from RPGs streaming at us and laughing, and I was shooting the big gun and laughing. Definitely crazy, but your emotions have to go somewhere.

• 1:45:51Jocko Willink?

  The enemy fire slackened on us as the Kiowa darted around. They were like a steel umbrella over us. A few minutes later, Pale Horse came back on my net. 3-3 were Winchester. We'll be back in 15 mikes. Winchester meant they'd expended all their ammunition. They were too light to carry much, and they'd been shooting at targets wherever they looked. The firing picked up. We were again the pinata. I climbed down from the turret to talk to Rod and Hafiz. We had started with six ammo cans. We were now down to one. I had fired more than 2,000 rounds. Guys, we need a new gun, I said. It was three steps forward, two steps back. As we turned, I saw an Ascar free, crawling feebly toward the road. We stopped and I hopped out.

• 1:46:33Jocko Willink?

  A PKM machine gun was tilling the ground around me, so I dodged back and forth until I reached him. One Kiowa out of ammo hovered above me and distracted the enemy, ignoring the RPG shells exploding in the air. I turned the Ascar onto his back. Hit by three rounds in his upper chest and neck, he was gurgling and drowning in his own blood. I rolled him onto his side. And he died before I could pick him up.

• 1:47:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like,

• 1:47:10Jocko Willink?

  you can see I kinda circle things that I'm gonna read.

• 1:47:13Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:13Jocko Willink?

  And I just was like circling giant chunks.

• 1:47:16Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:47:17Jocko Willink?

  So people can understand what... I mean, I know that people aren't gonna understand really the kinda chronological evolution and maybe the mechanics of what was happening, but I want people at least to understand until they read this book themselves the freaking situation that you were in, which was beyond mayhem.

• 1:47:35Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, you know, you talk about training like to the worst-case scenario. I always had done the same thing.

• 1:47:41Dakota Meyer?

  And this was worse than any worst-case scenario that I could have ever, ever dreamed up of, of ever being in. It was the worst of any situation. I could have never sit here and you said, "Give me the worst thing you could just come up with", and I could have never done it. I could have never, I could have never done it. Of just... I mean, you just, I mean, it's just like, I mean, I just felt like everybody was dying. Like, I mean, it was just, I mean, there were, like, literally, there were bodies everywhere. I mean, you couldn't turn around and look and there not be a body somewhere.

• 1:48:28Jocko Willink?

  And you just pretty much figured you were gonna be joining them soon enough.

• 1:48:33Dakota Meyer?

  No, I did. I mean, there was no doubt. There was no doubt in my mind I wasn't making it out of there.

• 1:48:40Dakota Meyer?

  And you know, I walked in that day, and this just shows you how ignorant I was. Like, when you talk about your buddy who was kinda like puffed his chest up, right? That was me. I literally, I'm gonna tell you, I'm gonna just tell you how ignorant I was. I walked in that day and I, I, there was not a situation that I was ever gonna see that I couldn't get us out of.

• 1:49:05Dakota Meyer?

  There wasn't one. There wasn't one.

• 1:49:09Dakota Meyer?

  And it was like,

• 1:49:14Dakota Meyer?

  you know, it was like God showing me just how small it was.

• 1:49:26Dakota Meyer?

  You know, you gotta take, I mean, these Afghan soldiers, I mean, they were my buddies.

• 1:49:31Dakota Meyer?

  You know, and part of the problem was-

• 1:49:32Jocko Willink?

  How long into deployment was this?

• 1:49:34Dakota Meyer?

  Supposed to have been nine months.

• 1:49:36Jocko Willink?

  And how long, when did this happen?

• 1:49:38Dakota Meyer?

  Uh, we got there in July, August, September, so-

• 1:49:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so this is like two, three months into deployment?

• 1:49:44Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, and, um, part of the problem was, we'd just done the NATO transition, and they were using weapon systems that they weren't used to.

• 1:49:53Jocko Willink?

  That should have smaller round.

• 1:49:55Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, yeah, a lot. But they weren't used to these weapons. They weren't even used to M4s.

• 1:50:01Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:50:02Dakota Meyer?

  I mean-

• 1:50:03Jocko Willink?

  And M4s are so much more fickle-

• 1:50:05Dakota Meyer?

  M16s, M16s, so yeah.

• 1:50:07Jocko Willink?

  M16s are, well, even more so than an M4. M16s are so much more fickle than an AK. They must have been cursing them, damn it, M16s.

• 1:50:15Dakota Meyer?

  Oh, they, they were, I mean, they were, oh yeah, I mean, they, you know, they would have something go wrong and they would just drop the magazine. I mean, I mean, they were just-

• 1:50:27Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. So they were so, like, like I'm telling you, if you say everything, like, we had just, so we just hit Ramadan, so none of them were drinking water, none of them were eating. We had just, I mean, you look at every factor to this, it was the perfect storm. And we had just transitioned, this is the first mission, first or second mission that we had ever went on with all NATO weapons. I mean, you look at all these factors, and it was, it was perfect.

• 1:50:53Jocko Willink?

  Had you ever worked with the QRF before?

• 1:50:57Dakota Meyer?

  Uh, not, not that one. I was used to the ones, you know, up near where we were at.

• 1:51:01Jocko Willink?

  But you hadn't, had done no interoperability with those guys before?

• 1:51:05Dakota Meyer?

  No, and, uh, they got shut down, so after the talk learned that it was Marines, they got shut down. All support stopped.

• 1:51:17Dakota Meyer?

  All support stopped.

• 1:51:29Jocko Willink?

  Alright.

• 1:51:35Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes I got nothing to say, and that's one of them. I can't even comprehend that.

• 1:51:41Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:51:45Jocko Willink?

  Alright, we're going back to the book. We turned left out of the wash, onto the narrow track, back to the casualty collection point. I looked around for Major Williams, he was sitting off to one side wounded and in shock. There were four or five vehicles and at least twenty Ascar's milling around. These were our Afghans, we'd come down from Monty together. I glanced hopefully from the group, from group to group. Hafiz was asking if they'd seen Lieutenant Johnson. "They say Lieutenant is back in Ghanjagall," Hafiz said. "The team didn't make it out." Shit.

• 1:52:16Jocko Willink?

  Somewhere farther up the wash, my team was fighting to stay alive. I'd promised to get them, and Rod, and I had the only gun truck willing to, and able to go in.

• 1:52:30Jocko Willink?

  I climbed down from the turret and ran over to the Ascar. He'd taken a bullet in the thigh and he was slowly bleeding out. I kept a stack of tourniquets in my med pack and knew how to apply them. I wrapped the tourniquet around his thigh and in my frustration, I twisted it extra tight, and he screamed, "Hafiz, tell him to shut up," I said. "Hurting is better than dying."

• 1:52:49Jocko Willink?

  If you're a grunt, you'll come face to face with horrendous gore. You have to steel yourself to seeing mangled bodies and smelling blood. Doctors and nurses cope with screaming and suffering every day. I had dressed out dozens of deer. You learn to disassociate from the task when you're pulling out warm guts or cutting off slabs of dripping meat with the blood sticking to your hands.

• 1:53:12Jocko Willink?

  You went through something like fifteen tourniquets?

• 1:53:15Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, at least. Quite a few vials of morphine.

• 1:53:21Dakota Meyer?

  A couple of needle decompressions.

• 1:53:27Dakota Meyer?

  NPAs. Quite a few NPAs. Nasals.

• 1:53:35Jocko Willink?

  The Kiwas had rearmed and come back on station, directing us toward another wounded. Like it or not, we had been pressed into ambulance business. The Kiowa commanded by Chief Warrant Officer Yasarian Solano. A good name for a guy in a crazy war, had been a Marine grunt before becoming an Army pilot. His bird was easy to talk to, and he directed me where to go, sometimes hovering so low, I could just about reach up and touch his skids. He was covering my rear area when I got out of the truck. The pilots were fearless. Knowing my team was lost, they were running search patterns twenty feet off the ground so they could identify each body. Damn.

• 1:54:16Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I mean, and he did that, like, you know, they were, so his commander, he was having problems with his commander. And the guy who was leading those birds, you know, because they fly in two birds.

• 1:54:25Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:54:25Dakota Meyer?

  And, uh, so the... But when I told him that it was Marines missing,

• 1:54:32Dakota Meyer?

  like, he dropped down and covered me the whole time.

• 1:54:35Jocko Willink?

  You ever meet him?

• 1:54:37Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:54:38Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 1:54:39Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, he's incredible. I just seen him, um... Seen him like around Thanksgiving.

• 1:54:45Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:54:45Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, he is an incredible human being.

• 1:54:48Jocko Willink?

  But just so everyone knows, like, just because you're in a helicopter does not make you safe at all. Especially a Kiowa. Like, maybe you're a little bit safer in Apache because you've got some armor. I don't know, how much armor's in a Kiowa? Zero, right? They look like little...

• 1:54:59Dakota Meyer?

  And I don't know how many... His bird was shot to shit.

• 1:55:03Jocko Willink?

  No kidding?

• 1:55:04Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it was shot to pieces.

• 1:55:13Jocko Willink?

  I climbed up a terrace wall and followed the contours of the field around a corner to find a body lying face down. On the man's hands were green gloves with the fingers cut. I knew before I even rolled him over that it was Da'ad Ali, my closest Afghan friend. He was due to take leave in a few weeks. He had left on brad terms with his mother, who was sure he would be killed. Finally, after two years, she had relented and invited him back to the farm for a visit. He'd been hit in the face. When I looked at his dull eyes, I lost my concentration and knelt there for a moment oblivious. He was a little guy too small for his body armor. He and I had rigged up two tourniquets to hold the body armor in place close to his chest.

• 1:55:57Jocko Willink?

  I knelt down to untie the tourniquets. I needed them for other guys and I needed to get the heavy armor off him. So I could carry him to the truck.

• 1:56:09Jocko Willink?

  I felt a tap as something hit my left shoulder. It didn't register at first. It was like I'd been hit with a light stone. I glanced up to see a tough-looking Afghan with a long, black beard glaring down at me. He was wearing a dirty gray man dress, a flak jacket, and an Afghan army helmet. He was pointing an AK at my head, gesturing for me to stand up. In broken English, he was telling me to drop my rifle. "Come," he said, waving the barrel of his AK in my face.

• 1:56:40Jocko Willink?

  I couldn't believe that I'd screwed up so badly. All I could think of was that my head would be sawed off and held up on TV.

• 1:56:50Jocko Willink?

  No way.

• 1:56:52Jocko Willink?

  I'd die right where I was, right now. I had been dead for a few hours anyways. The borrowed time was up, that's all. My rifle was resting on my left thigh, pointing in his direction. The stubby grenade launcher was attached to the underside of the barrel. I raised one arm like I was going to surrender and pulled the trigger of the launcher with my free thumb. The forty-millimeter grenade shot forward two feet to his armored vest. It didn't explode. Instead, it knocked him back, stunned him with the breath, slammed out of him. He staggered back and fell on his side. For a few seconds, I thought the blow had killed him. No such luck. I pushed myself erect. As I pushed myself erect, he drew in a big breath and stirred.

• 1:57:35Jocko Willink?

  I kicked at his face, losing my balance and falling on top of him. We were both on the ground wrestling. Afghan tribesmen have legs like steel from climbing mountains all day, all their lives, so I had to keep his legs off me. I pinned his elbows and blocked his reach for his AK. I was pushing my helmeted head into his chest so he couldn't gouge at my eyes. Any second, I figured that grenade would explode and both of us could stop worrying about any of this. I pawed the ground with my right hand and found a rock the size of a baseball. I clutched it and swung blindly at his face. The blow stunned him. Before he could recover, I pushed off of his chest, lifted the rock high in my right fist, and smashed it down like a hammer breaking his front teeth. He looked me in the eyes, the fight knocked out of him, his head not moving.

• 1:58:20Jocko Willink?

  We both knew it was over. I drew back my arm and drove the stone down, crushing his left cheekbone. He went limp. I pushed up on my knees and I hit him with more force. The blow caved in the left side of his forehead. I smashed his face again and again, driven by pure animal rage.

• 1:58:53Jocko Willink?

  That's close combat, obviously, when you're killing another human being with a rock.

• 1:58:58Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 1:59:03Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, it's real.

• 1:59:09Dakota Meyer?

  You know, I just, I just remember his face, you know, and, uh... I mean, look, let me just state this upfront. First off, I feel no remorse at all.

• 1:59:22Dakota Meyer?

  But I think it was at, it was at that, at that point to where it humanized it. Does that make sense? Like, it humanized the fact of taking another person's life. Like, I would remember the look in his eyes when he knew he was gonna die. And at that point, like, you know, I, obviously, I didn't think of it then. But, you know, when I still see that face, I still think about, you know, he was a father. There was somebody at home that wanted him to come home, just as bad as somebody wanted me to come home.

• 1:59:54Dakota Meyer?

  You know, whether you agree with his beliefs or not, people don't agree with their beliefs and, you know... But at the end of the day, he believed in his beliefs just as much as I did. We're both human beings. We're both fighting for a cause that neither one of us can see, that we both just believe in.

• 2:00:13Dakota Meyer?

  And it had to be one of us.

• 2:00:16Jocko Willink?

  And my guess is, and you can, maybe I'm wrong, but my guess is, the reason he didn't just straight kill you is because he had you, had the drop on you.

• 2:00:27Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:28Jocko Willink?

  And, and, and having you as a trophy in an orange jumpsuit would have, would have been much more impactful for him and their cause.

• 2:00:37Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I mean, he could have easily, um, it would have took him no time to get me across the border. We were right on the border. That's what he would have done. He would have took me across the border, he'd have sold me. Um, and he would have been a hero. He'd have probably been promoted in whatever, you know, network he was in. I mean, he would have been the man and, um, I was worth a lot more to him alive than I was dead.

• 2:00:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:00:56Dakota Meyer?

  And, you know, but, but then on the backside, I mean, I've questioned it so many times, like, you know, was it that or was it, maybe, maybe he was trying to bluff me, he didn't have bullets. I mean, I don't know. I, I don't, I don't know, like, and, you know, there's so many times in this whole battle that I just wonder, like, like, why? Why, why not me?

• 2:01:16Jocko Willink?

  You know, uh, I mean, war, and I guess you could apply this to all life, but it becomes very clear in war. It's like inches, millimeters, you know, what, what, sure, you could say you got missed by, by a round, by a foot, a couple inches, but when you take that back to a person's weapon, you got missed by a millimeter.

• 2:01:35Dakota Meyer?

  A millimeter.

• 2:01:36Jocko Willink?

  A meter of aim. That's what it is.

• 2:01:39Dakota Meyer?

  You could have got, you, you could have got missed by a gust of wind.

• 2:01:44Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:01:47Dakota Meyer?

  Literally. You could have, you could have been missed by the wind picking up.

• 2:01:55Jocko Willink?

  So while all that's going on, back to the book, Highlander was the radio call sign for Captain Swenson. He was trying to gather reinforcements. He pulled aside the lieutenant in charge of the quick reaction platoon, "Mount up, Swenson," and told him, "You're no help back here. We need your firepower." "I can't," the lieutenant said. The talk says we're to cover the vehicles. Swenson grabbed the lieutenant's 50 watt radio and called to Joyce. The talk told the platoon to move into the valley. Swenson, Fabio, Rod, and Hafiz then hopped into an undamaged Humvee to drive back in. But the platoon did not follow. Instead, the platoon leader

• 2:02:36Jocko Willink?

  again called back to Joyce and somehow received permission to remain in the rear out of the fight.

• 2:02:45Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, it was frustrating.

• 2:02:48Dakota Meyer?

  It was frustrating. It was frustrating that...

• 2:02:53Dakota Meyer?

  You know, and I, I, I met that guy a few years ago. We ran into, we were in the same meeting.

• 2:03:02Dakota Meyer?

  It was frustrating. Every bit of it was frustrating. It was so, I mean, every single bit of it was unnecessary and frustrating.

• 2:03:21Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. "I started the day with fourteen or sixteen tourniquets. I used them all. I put four on one guy who'd lost his left arm and his left leg below the knee. He survived. One Ascar shot in the neck, sounded like he was slurping through a straw. There was nothing I could do except listen to him, strangled to death."

• 2:03:42Jocko Willink?

  "At 1.215 F-15s roared low through the valley, opening their afterburners to create a hell of a lion's roar.

• 2:03:51Jocko Willink?

  The pilots wouldn't drop any bombs."

• 2:03:59Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I mean, you know, usually, but, but at this point, you know, the only show of force ever works is, is, I mean, they had so much momentum at this time. I mean, it was like momentum, right? So it started out as fighters, like as fighters that came across the border. And then what it turned into was when they seen that we weren't getting the support and when they seen that we weren't getting control of the situation and fires weren't coming.

• 2:04:20Jocko Willink?

  They escalated and they gained momentum.

• 2:04:21Dakota Meyer?

  Well, everybody else joined in. You take, so you had the guys that showed up to fight. And then you have the opportunist of the villagers that turn into fighters instantly because they have the upper hand. And so they start gaining momentum of more people fighting you every single minute. Cause all they gotta do is pick up the gun off the dead person, you know what I mean? Literally, I mean, there were literally women running through, uh, the village with like these bowls. And, you know, you look at them, you know, you, well, you know, she's just a woman with a bowl, running. Rocket comes in, she drops a bowl and it's full of grenades and ammunition. The women were running up and resupplying all these guys.

• 2:05:09Jocko Willink?

  The Kiawas were still supporting you. Back to the book. Inside the villages, the army pilots ran astonishing risks to find my team. A Kiawa had swooped down toward the compound, flared back at rooftop level, and puttered down the alleyways at twenty miles an hour, allowing the pilots to peer into every backyard and into every window.

• 2:05:32Jocko Willink?

  As the day grew hotter, we gradually cleared the valley of casualties. Over thirty wounded or dead were evacuated.

• 2:05:45Jocko Willink?

  We watched as Solano, the lead pilot, brought his Kiawa down to a few feet above a trench and hovered there.

• 2:05:52Jocko Willink?

  Highlander, we spotted five bodies. I'd heard all I needed. I jumped out the door and sprinted across the field to the right, opening some distance before Swenson yelled at me. I ignored him, knowing he'd be right behind me. A PKM shifted to me when I was halfway across the terrace. I hopped over a terrace wall and fell into a deep, well-constructed trench.

• 2:06:20Jocko Willink?

  I landed next to Gunny Johnson, and my heart stopped.

• 2:06:25Jocko Willink?

  He was lying on his back with his arms outspread, his eyes open, but never to see anything again on this earth.

• 2:06:34Jocko Willink?

  A few feet further on, I came across the body of an Afghan interpreter who had traveled with our team. I felt sick to my stomach. I knew what I would see next.

• 2:06:49Jocko Willink?

  Lieutenant Johnson lay on his back with his eyes closed.

• 2:06:54Jocko Willink?

  He looked peaceful despite the entry wounds in his right shoulder.

• 2:06:59Jocko Willink?

  Doc Layton lay on top of him with medical supplies scattered around.

• 2:07:05Jocko Willink?

  I rolled him over.

• 2:07:08Jocko Willink?

  Doc had taken a three-round burst in the right cheek.

• 2:07:14Jocko Willink?

  Off to the right, Staff Sergeant Keneffick was lying face down, his GPS with a busted screen clenched in his left hand. His mouth was open and full of dirt. I think he was yelling out his grid location, the numbers I heard over the radio four hours earlier, when he was shot in the back of his head. The team was wiped out. Their bodies were stiff and cold, most of their gear was gone, weapons, helmets, radios. The two forty machine gun was missing, but Lieutenant Johnson's pack was filled with link ammo.

• 2:07:58Jocko Willink?

  No one had fired the gun I was supposed to be carrying. I had never believed it would end like this. My mind refused to accept what I was seeing. Hour after hour, I'd imagined them holed up inside a stone house, shielded from RPG blasts, exchanging gunfire with a douche man who were, who knew better than to rush them. Swenson was standing above the trench, we were taking random incoming, and he was watching for movement among the houses. He talked into his radio for a few seconds, then bent down and picked up some of the team's gear. He didn't say a word. He left me alone with them.

• 2:08:41Jocko Willink?

  I hoisted the Staff Sergeant over my right shoulder. He was heavy and I fell once. He landed on top of me. I got up and carried him to an Afghan truck, carefully tucking him into the open bed. I stood there for a minute, suddenly beat, as I turned away from the truck. Hafez put his hand on my shoulder. "The Ascarz say you carried out their dead. Now they want to help you." Five or six of us returned to the trench, while the damn PKM kept shooting at us. I carried Duney Johnson back. The Ascarz took Lieutenant Johnson and Doc Layton. Swenson lugged back the rest of the equipment.

• 2:09:26Jocko Willink?

  After six hours, it was over. And I felt empty as a balloon without air. Hafiz took me aside. "They've gone to a better place," he said. "Don't cry. The Ascar's will take it as weakness."

• 2:09:44Jocko Willink?

  No way I was going to cry, but at that moment, I didn't feel like killing anyone either. I wasn't angry or bitter, just afflicted and exhausted as though I had run a marathon and couldn't remember why I wanted to do it.

• 2:09:58Jocko Willink?

  I was too damn tired to stand. Still taking fire, we left the valley in a convoy of about four trucks. Rod stopped near the casualty collection point where we talked with Captain Kaplan and Captain and Corporal Norman, who had walked down from their observation posts. Staff Sergeants Valdez and Miller radioed that they were coming down from their perch too. Everyone was accounted for. We had shuttled in and out of the valley five, six, or seven times that morning, depending on which one of us you asked. It was all a fog.

• 2:10:31Jocko Willink?

  No senior American officer or pursuit force had come forward from Camp Joyce.

• 2:10:38Jocko Willink?

  Captain Swenson said he would try to wrap things up. Hafiz and I climbed into the back of an Afghan truck carrying my dead brothers.

• 2:10:48Jocko Willink?

  I held Staff Sergeant Keneffick with my left hand, and Lieutenant Johnson rested on my right arm.

• 2:10:55Jocko Willink?

  As we bounced down the track, we passed villagers returning to Ganjagul.

• 2:11:01Jocko Willink?

  Some started to laugh, pointing at my dead friends. I reached for my rifle.

• 2:11:08Jocko Willink?

  "Don't," Hafiz said, holding my arm. "Not worth it."

• 2:11:17Jocko Willink?

  When we arrived back at Camp Joyce, I walked into the battalion aid station to get body bags. Major Williams rushed up and clutched at my body armor, telling me they're not all dead, not all of them.

• 2:11:30Jocko Willink?

  "They're all dead," I said, removing his hand.

• 2:11:35Jocko Willink?

  I walked outside, where my friend Sergeant Charles Bokus was waiting.

• 2:11:41Jocko Willink?

  Bokus said, "I'll give you a hand."

• 2:11:46Jocko Willink?

  We walked back to the bodies.

• 2:11:50Jocko Willink?

  Sergeant Major Jimmy Carbello, the top enlisted man at Joyce, hastened up and put his hands firmly on my shoulders trying to steer me away. "You don't have to do this, Devil Dog." "My guys will make sure it's done right."

• 2:12:05Jocko Willink?

  That wasn't how to end it. "If I had died, I'd want Lieutenant Johnson and Staff Sergeant Canafick to put me in the bag." "I'll finish it," I said.

• 2:12:16Jocko Willink?

  Bocus and I carried the bodies

• 2:12:20Jocko Willink?

  back next to the freezers, take off their battle gear and dig through their pockets marking items for shipment to their families. I take a chevron from Staff Sergeant Canafick and attach it to my dog tags. Funny, we had started out not liking each other a thousand years ago.

• 2:12:49Jocko Willink?

  We clean them up as best we can, wiping the blood and dirt off their faces, taking off their field gear, straightening out their camouflage uniforms, and placing each in a black body bag.

• 2:13:04Jocko Willink?

  We mark the name at the head, drape an American flag over each bag, bow our heads in prayer,

• 2:13:16Jocko Willink?

  and drive them out to the helipad.

• 2:13:27Jocko Willink?

  Ghanja Ghal was one of the deadliest small arms battles of the Afghanistan War.

• 2:13:34Jocko Willink?

  We lost five advisors. In addition to Team Monty, Army Sergeant First Class Westbrook had died of his wounds.

• 2:13:44Jocko Willink?

  Eight Ascar's were killed and thirteen seriously wounded by rifle, machine gun, and RPG fire.

• 2:13:51Jocko Willink?

  Enemy losses to small arms were probably of a similar number. There were no IEDs, no bombs, and very few artillery shells. Bullets caused most of the casualties. Ghanja Ghal was a mountain fight from an earlier century.

• 2:14:15Jocko Willink?

  And

• 2:14:22Jocko Willink?

  it's a fight from an earlier century.

• 2:14:28Jocko Willink?

  But, uh

• 2:14:42Jocko Willink?

  but some things don't change.

• 2:14:45Dakota Meyer?

  That's a fact.

• 2:14:52Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, it was, uh gosh.

• 2:14:58Dakota Meyer?

  You know, I say it and I don't think people understand it, but you know, I might not physically die that day. But I died.

• 2:15:09Dakota Meyer?

  Right there next to him. I mean, you talk about

• 2:15:14Dakota Meyer?

  you know.

• 2:15:18Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, it's one thing to lose one person.

• 2:15:21Dakota Meyer?

  But everybody. I mean, it's

• 2:15:27Dakota Meyer?

  it, I mean.

• 2:15:30Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, that's the worst case scenario.

• 2:15:34Dakota Meyer?

  You're living it. You know, I mean, you're literally you don't even have anybody from your own team to put your dead on the bird.

• 2:15:44Dakota Meyer?

  You know? And, you know.

• 2:15:48Jocko Willink?

  How old are you at this point?

• 2:15:50Dakota Meyer?

  Twenty-one.

• 2:15:52Jocko Willink?

  Twenty-one years old.

• 2:15:54Dakota Meyer?

  Twenty-one.

• 2:15:57Dakota Meyer?

  Twenty-one.

• 2:16:00Dakota Meyer?

  You know, and I I don't know if it talks about it in the book, you know. After I did that with my teammates. I went straight from there and I went to, um, so, or the Afghan side.

• 2:16:15Dakota Meyer?

  And I did it with all their guys too. And usually what they do with their guys is they just call the families and they got so many days to come get them. And I wasn't allowing that. I went back and I took body bags up there and we gave them the exact same respect that we gave my guys. And we put them in the freezers until their families came and got them. And, um, you know, I didn't go, I didn't go start worrying about my stuff until we had taken care of all the, all the guys, you know? And it's just, it was, it was a long day. It was a long day.

• 2:16:57Jocko Willink?

  And

• 2:17:02Jocko Willink?

  I mean,

• 2:17:04Jocko Willink?

  you, you do, you, you're just like, okay.

• 2:17:08Jocko Willink?

  You still have a job to do.

• 2:17:11Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, so I don't know if it talks about it in there, but they, you know, they tried to put me on the helicopter with them to go back to, uh, Bagram. And then wanted me to fly home to do the ramp ceremonies and wanted me to fly home with them.

• 2:17:27Dakota Meyer?

  And I actually put them on there and I told them I would be right back and I knew those birds had to take off because they weren't, the PJs weren't going to stay on the flight line very long. And I, I just made sure that I knew that they took off before I got around anybody else because, I mean, they were dead. I mean, I still had guys that still needed me. And they didn't need me anymore.

• 2:17:53Dakota Meyer?

  And so I, you know,

• 2:17:57Dakota Meyer?

  I just, you know, I knew my Afghan soldiers needed me. They needed to see that, that they weren't alone. They needed to see that, that we're in this together, you know? And that was what, that was what mattered to me, what the guys I still had left.

• 2:18:12Jocko Willink?

  How did the Afghan, your Afghan soldiers respond to this whole situation? You know, sometimes in Iraq, there'd be a mass casualty like this and we'd lose a whole, there was actually in Ramadi, we lost a whole battalion. They all, they all left.

• 2:18:28Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, they quit.

• 2:18:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Were, were your guys, how did it affect them?

• 2:18:36Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, they stuck it out, you know, they stuck it out.

• 2:18:42Dakota Meyer?

  Um, they did. I mean, I'm telling you, they are some of the most incredible human beings I've ever seen. You know, we come in and deploy, we're there for a certain amount of time, they live it forever. And they responded, I mean, they, you know, they got their shit together. Um, and, I mean, we were back in the fight three days later.

• 2:19:06Dakota Meyer?

  You know, and they don't get, they don't get the, they don't get the support we do. You know, they don't get, I mean, they don't get anything we get, you know what I mean? And, and it's just, you know, but we, but we stuck together, you know, they helped me, they helped me get through it. Um, and I hope I helped them, but I think the most incredible thing was, it was at that point that,

• 2:19:29Dakota Meyer?

  that they brought me into their, I was accepted as one of them.

• 2:19:32Jocko Willink?

  You were one of them, yeah.

• 2:19:34Dakota Meyer?

  And that was probably the most rewarding piece of it to me, you know? Was that I, I had finally proven myself to them that, that I was one of them.

• 2:19:48Jocko Willink?

  And deployment wasn't over yet, and, you know, there was more fighting to be done.

• 2:19:57Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, army, an army convoy had been ambushed north of Monty. Lieutenant Kern, Captain Bryant, the company commander, were on their way to assist. I looked at Colonel Yu, who nodded in agreement minutes later. Yu, Bacchus, Staff Sergeant Richards, and some of the Colonel's guys that came with him, a dozen Ascar's, and I were headed out the gate.

• 2:20:24Jocko Willink?

  And basically what you run into is there's a, a huge kind of, what, did somebody hit an IED? Is that what had happened or was it?

• 2:20:31Dakota Meyer?

  No, they ambushed them on the side of this and they, what they done, they blew the jingo trucks up and blocked the road. So that, you know, they intertwined those jingo trucks in between the US convoy. And it's so stupid. And so the jingo truck is blown up and it's blocking the road. So guess what happens to the rest of them?

• 2:20:48Jocko Willink?

  They're all sitting.

• 2:20:49Dakota Meyer?

  And you can't go around it because it's about a 250 foot drop off into the Kunar River on the side. So they're stuck on the side of this and I've been listening to it on the radio for a long time. And I knew they were gonna get slaughtered. I knew that you weren't just gonna sit there. And they had buttoned up.

• 2:21:07Jocko Willink?

  So that's what you were talking about earlier. You button up and you wait. Well, now they're gonna maneuver on you.

• 2:21:11Dakota Meyer?

  Yep, and that's what they were doing. And that's what they were doing. So the guys in the jingo trucks had jumped out. And I kept, I kept asking over the radio, you know, because I could monitor. And I kept asking over the radio, and I could see the smoke from where I was at. And I kept asking over the radio as a clip platoon, and I kept, combat logistics platoon, and I kept asking over the radio, how many rounds have you fired? Because I was afraid they were gonna get low on ammo. Zero.

• 2:21:37Jocko Willink?

  Damn. So that's when you rolled out.

• 2:21:43Jocko Willink?

  You get out there and...

• 2:21:45Dakota Meyer?

  This is three days after Gangesgol.

• 2:21:47Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 2:21:49Jocko Willink?

  PKMs and AKs were hammering down on this mess with little return fire. It would be crazy to drive into that tangle of vehicles. Is it Bokus or Bakus?

• 2:21:58Dakota Meyer?

  Bokus, yeah.

• 2:21:58Jocko Willink?

  Bokus. Bokus was on the Mark 19 on our truck. He couldn't shoot because of the angles of fire. Richard stayed in the driver's seat while I advanced on foot by bounds into the wreckage. Our Ascar's ran forward with us, but their light M16s didn't impress the Taliban machine gun crew. I was quickly pinned behind a disabled truck. Looking up, I could see the PKM was shooting from a thick stone house 200 meters up slope. I exited to have a target, excited to have a target so close, I fired about five shells from my grenade launcher before my common sense kicked in. "What am I doing?" I thought. "I'm outmatched by a machine gun, but there's an army Humvee sitting next to me with no one in the 50 cal turret." You run over there. "Man, your 50 cal," I yelled. "Where logistics?" came the muffled reply. "We don't fight."

• 2:22:43Jocko Willink?

  "Some supply guys can't wait to get into the action, but not this gang. I wasn't worried though. Wildman Kerr would soon have air on station." Bodies were scattered all over the road, all civilians lying face down next to me alongside the army truck was a skinny teenager in a t-shirt bleeding from shrapnel in his chest and his left arm. He was a pathetic sight sprawled on his back in his filthy brown shorts, an orange tipped needle protruding from above his heart and a plastic stopper shoved above his left nostril. He didn't weigh as much as I ate in a day. His hands and feet were uglier than the dirt from his efforts to crawl out of the line of fire. He wasn't old enough to grow a beard but he had a full shock of black hair, not a bad-looking kid. Once he was cleaned up at the aid station and had some ice cream, he'd

• 2:23:28Jocko Willink?

  be okay. I felt good, in fact, I was pumped. I'd applied dozens of tourniquets but this was the first time I had smelt death hiss out, and that's because you needled him down. And I didn't cover that part, you had a sucking chest wound and you, you gave him a decompression. I had saved a human being, a poor scrawny kid eking out a living by driving a banged-up truck past known ambush sites. Would he even, would he eventually join the Taliban and betray an American convoy? I had no idea. Sure, some of the villagers at Ganjagul had been real pricks, but why should I hold it against this kid? I ran back down the road, hoisted up another wounded truck driver and carried him back. Then I stopped to check on the skinny kid. I wanted to pat him on the shoulder to make

• 2:24:12Jocko Willink?

  myself feel good for my supposedly wonderful deed. Only, he was dead. He had bled to death from the wound to his left arm. The crew in the army truck had let him bleed out not five feet away because he was an Afghan and they were afraid. Damn it. The Afghan drivers were all huddled together in a ditch by the river. The ambush had been sprung about ninety minutes earlier. By now, they had pissed themselves dry and had nowhere to go. I banged my rifle on, I banged my rifle butt on an army truck, yelling to the soldiers to open up. "At least give me some water for those poor bastards," I shouted. A sheepish medic got out of the truck with several bottles of water and his med pack

• 2:24:55Jocko Willink?

  and ran over the ditch. I knelt there looking at the bloodstained stains from the kid right beside the truck door. I banged on the steel door again. It opened a crack. Fuck you, I said to the captain inside.

• 2:25:16Jocko Willink?

  As the traffic jam was sorted out, Colonel, you and I walked back to our Humvee. The dead kid lay on the hood and rather than ride to base with a corpse between us, we wedge the body in the trunk. Sometimes you laugh, sometimes you wanna cry. Before dropping a shell down a mortar tube, the gunner levels the bubbles on his sight. If he loses the bubbles, then the tube is pointed at a crazy angle. After Gangegal, I was losing the bubble. So investigations take place, there's accusations and excuses and

• 2:25:58Jocko Willink?

  one of the terms that was in there that was, it was being said that there was poor battle management. Yeah. And you're talking to a psychologist on site at this time and you know, that's some of the support you were talking about that we might have that an Afghan kid in the Afghan army might not have. And it was a female? Yeah, Colonel, Captain Katie Cop. And she was making some assessments. Yeah. Back to the book, "It's true, I didn't feel connected with others. The Ascar's were smoking hash, jabbering on their cellphones and wandering around in flip flops. The American soldiers were playing video games, stuffing themselves at dinner and laughing too loudly at nothing.

• 2:26:38Jocko Willink?

  We weren't fighting a war, we were holding a few acres of dirt while the war swirled around outside our barbed wire. There were douche men in every valley. Drink tea with the villagers, pay forty dollars for a chicken, we were in Kumar to fight, let's get it on. That was my attitude. The psychologist insisted that I go back to the States for treatment. No thanks. As a captain, she had the rank to make her recommendations stick, but she wanted my agreement. So she challenged me. We would play a game of ping pong. If I won, I could stay. I lost by one point. She was very good and she really was worried about me and cared about me. I knew that. It was my time to go home.

• 2:27:27Jocko Willink?

  A ping pong game? Was she like a legit ping pong player?

• 2:27:30Dakota Meyer?

  No, I thought I had her.

• 2:27:33Dakota Meyer?

  You know, it was only, you know, it was either, you know, I,

• 2:27:40Dakota Meyer?

  it was probably best I went home.

• 2:27:45Dakota Meyer?

  I would say if it wasn't, if I didn't go home, I, I would have never came home.

• 2:27:53Dakota Meyer?

  You know, I was just getting wound tighter and tighter. I mean, I was,

• 2:28:01Dakota Meyer?

  you couldn't tell me. You couldn't tell me I was not, I wasn't, I wasn't commanded, like you couldn't, you couldn't tell me what to do.

• 2:28:09Jocko Willink?

  You were out of control.

• 2:28:10Dakota Meyer?

  I was, I was out of control.

• 2:28:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:28:13Dakota Meyer?

  I, I mean, you know, I wasn't doing anything, any, nothing, you know, immorally unethical, right? Like nothing, I was doing my job, but as far as like commanding me, you couldn't.

• 2:28:24Jocko Willink?

  You, you were gonna do what you were gonna do.

• 2:28:27Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I was, you know, I was at the point to where I had no, I had no, uh, I didn't trust my command. I didn't trust anybody. I didn't trust anybody was gonna, I mean, it was, I, I was a one, you know, not a one man, I was a three man operation, right? I mean, I was a, but I was a one man, I was a one man wrecking crew. Right? Like I was, I mean, I was gonna do, you weren't gonna tell me anything. I mean, there was, it, it was pretty bad. I mean, I was fighting, you know, fist fighting.

• 2:28:57Jocko Willink?

  How much longer, how much longer was it that you actually lost the ping pong match and got sent home?

• 2:29:02Dakota Meyer?

  I lost it right, um, a couple of days before Thanksgiving.

• 2:29:05Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So it was like you were, you were there for another, what's Thanksgiving now? End, end of?

• 2:29:10Dakota Meyer?

  Yes, and we, and we fought our ass off.

• 2:29:13Jocko Willink?

  The whole time?

• 2:29:13Dakota Meyer?

  The whole time. It was, it was, we fought her asses off almost every single day and sometimes three and four times a day.

• 2:29:24Jocko Willink?

  Well, that momentum that you talked about in the valley?

• 2:29:27Dakota Meyer?

  They built it.

• 2:29:28Jocko Willink?

  It keeps coming, right?

• 2:29:29Dakota Meyer?

  It keeps coming, cause right after that, they overrun Keating. Right after, I mean, it's all that, all of it, you know, they just built so much momentum and they were hammering us. I mean, hammering us every day. And, um,

• 2:29:43Dakota Meyer?

  you know, it was,

• 2:29:45Dakota Meyer?

  it was pretty bad.

• 2:29:48Jocko Willink?

  So you get sent home. Here we go. Back to the book. When I got home in December, I felt like I landed on the moon.

• 2:29:55Jocko Willink?

  Everyone around me was excited about football, Christmas, and other normal things. I was looking at the clapboard houses and the cars thinking, man, that's so flimsy. They wouldn't give Coverworth shit in a firefight. It was an exposed feeling. And where were my machine guns? I found my old pistol and kept it around like a rabbit's foot, but I missed my two 40s and my 50 cal something awful. It seems weird, I'm sure, but I really just wasn't buying that there wasn't some enemy about to come over the green hills. And I felt so unprepared. I wouldn't be any good to protect anybody. I was soon sent off to Fort Thomas, Kentucky for PTSD therapy. Maybe that would settle me down and let me get some sleep and stop feeling so depressed and angry at every little thing.

• 2:30:40Jocko Willink?

  Some guys really go nuts when they come back, and I wasn't in danger of that, but I could feel the kind of crazy things that maybe got the better of them.

• 2:30:50Jocko Willink?

  You're over there long enough and under such constant battle stress that it resets all your settings the way way into the red. And they're very hard to set back. The main thing knowing was that I didn't get my friends out as I had promised.

• 2:31:09Jocko Willink?

  I'd spent a good part of my 21 years being pretty critical of other people who failed at their responsibilities. And now it was all coming back on me in a big dump truck.

• 2:31:31Jocko Willink?

  Every day, the psychologist urged us to step back and identify why we were experiencing negative emotions. In other words, take a minute to really be conscious of the emotion instead of just letting it seep in. Don't let your mind stay in neutral. Watch your thoughts. And by the way, I'm hitting this stuff pretty hard because a lot of people that listen to this podcast are thinking these things right here. I think that's an important part. Don't let your mind stay in neutral. Watch your thoughts. Refusing to get out of bed, or go to work, or smile at others are all decisions. Find the reasons those decisions and turn negative feelings into positive actions. It's not enough to identify why you're feeling bad. It's about having the character to do something positive to take up that space.

• 2:32:16Jocko Willink?

  Don't wallow in your misery, which is just selfish childish self-absorption. It was all good stuff. All I ever need is a good operating manual. So you're getting some good instructions?

• 2:32:28Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah. No, it was, you know, I can't say that the PTSD center helped me. But what it did is it educated me. It educated me on why I was feeling the way I was. And what it was, and then therefore that helped me deal with it, right?

• 2:32:45Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:32:45Dakota Meyer?

  Um, it kinda like, you know, uh, you know, you know, you know, kinda like how you know a diet that works for you?

• 2:32:52Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 2:32:53Dakota Meyer?

  You know, like you can look in the mirror, how you feel after you eat it, right?

• 2:32:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:32:58Dakota Meyer?

  It's kinda the same thing, like it educates you on why your body's doing this, or why you're having this reaction, you know? And, and that it's normal, and it's just, you know, and this is why it's doing it, and this is how you help counter it, right? And that was kinda, that was kinda what it did for me. It didn't, I don't think it really, it didn't, it didn't fix anything. It just educated me on what the problem was.

• 2:33:20Jocko Willink?

  So you could start to identify the problem?

• 2:33:22Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, so I could identify the problem. I could identify why I was feeling this way. And then, you know, I could make decisions based of, of how I could.

• 2:33:31Jocko Willink?

  Was it, when you look at the root of that problem?

• 2:33:33Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:34Jocko Willink?

  Was it that feeling of like, hey, the, the promise that you made was I'll get you guys out?

• 2:33:38Dakota Meyer?

  No, I mean, no, I mean, the facts of the facts are like here, here's, I get so frustrated with people who wanna like, like I'm, I'm a factual guy, like, you know, I mean, I, I, I'm, everything to me is black and white. And I'm, I'm a fact-based, like I, I went in that day to go get my teammates out. I failed. I failed. There's no, you can't jump around it. You can't, you can't ignore the facts of what happened. I failed. I failed miserably.

• 2:34:08Dakota Meyer?

  And so, you know, you, you, if you tell your, if I tell myself I didn't fail, I lie, I'm lying to myself. So for me, you know, um,

• 2:34:22Dakota Meyer?

  I failed. I was tested and I failed. And now I have to figure out what to do with that. And that's part of it.

• 2:34:33Dakota Meyer?

  You know, and, and that, and that's where I get so upset about like, you know, the counselors or whatever, right? Well, you didn't fail. No, no, no. Like, as soon as they say that to me, I, I'm done. I'm done. Cause no, that's, I'm not gonna lie to myself. I failed and now I need to deal with it. I need to deal with it.

• 2:34:53Dakota Meyer?

  You know, I, I can't lie.

• 2:34:56Dakota Meyer?

  And, and that's, and I mean, look, I mean, it's,

• 2:35:00Dakota Meyer?

  I always say the equivalent to try to make people understand like, how, how I feel about it and the situation is. It would be like,

• 2:35:11Dakota Meyer?

  you inside of a house and your family's there. And the house catches on fire.

• 2:35:17Dakota Meyer?

  And you end up getting out. Thinking that maybe they're all out. And you can't get back in there and they all burned to death.

• 2:35:28Dakota Meyer?

  That's kind of the equivalent of it. And, you know, so I just have to deal with it. And, and you know, I deal with it the best I can every day. I, I learn from it. I try to turn it into something good. But at the end of the day, I still failed. And,

• 2:35:47Dakota Meyer?

  you know, that's, that's the way it goes.

• 2:36:01Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, man.

• 2:36:05Jocko Willink?

  After my two months at the clinic, my my enlistment term was, in fact, coming to an end. It didn't take a genius to see it. I'd BBN, I'd end up behind a desk, so I chose not to reenlist. I love the Corps, so it hurt. Before joining the Corps, I had three concussions, mononucleosis, and an operation on my right knee. When I mustered out four years later, I'd added two operations on my right hand, a right rotator cuff operation, a fourth concussion from an RPG, a dislocated shoulder, and two herniated discs from clumsily lifting the dead and wounded. One vertebrae had given way in Ganja Gao when I picked up an Ascar and slipped in the bloody mud under him. I have no idea when the second vertebrae went out during the battle.

• 2:36:50Jocko Willink?

  I had that nick in my arm from a bullet or shrapnel, but that hadn't been anything. I was in decent shape for construction work, I figured.

• 2:37:04Jocko Willink?

  After the PTSD clinic, I returned to Kentucky. It was the winter of 2010, and I warmed myself up by slipping back into hard drinking each night.

• 2:37:17Jocko Willink?

  I hadn't seen an active-duty grunt in months. Fabio and Rodriguez Chavez were due to receive the Navy Crosses at the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, but I couldn't get enough time off to fly back east. Were you working construction at this point? And your boys are getting Navy Crosses. You can't get time off from work.

• 2:37:36Jocko Willink?

  Swenson and I had been recommended for the Medal of Honor. We knew that, no, we knew though, that the award was usually downgraded upon review. When I drank, which was too much, I'd laugh at the absurdity. I had screwed up big time. My achievement...

• 2:37:56Jocko Willink?

  Was losing my brothers.

• 2:38:00Jocko Willink?

  The Marine Corps would come to its senses and I'd never hear another word from another devil dog. I had no idea what was in front of me and I didn't care.

• 2:38:13Jocko Willink?

  I couldn't take a walk, turn on the TV or read a book to distract my mind. The emptiness of my life was the dark all around me with nothing to see in any direction. Four years ago, I'd left the farm for an adventure and a new beginning. The Corps had shaped me and I had arrived in Afghanistan, confident I'd do well in combat. Sure enough, up at Monty, I had emerged as the young gun. Every day brought fun and danger against the backdrop of spectacular mountains. It was fun stuff, shooting thousands of rounds, not losing many people, and seeing the damage you inflicted. There was no weapon I couldn't handle, and my team trusted me to get them out of any hot spot my cockiness put us in.

• 2:38:58Jocko Willink?

  But when it counted most, I wasn't with them.

• 2:39:03Jocko Willink?

  They weren't trained to do my job. Gunny Johnson didn't spend every day behind a 240. Staff Sergeant Kennefick wasn't comfortable with weapons or angles of fire. Doc Layton wasn't a fighter and Lieutenant Johnson didn't adjust fire missions. We aren't worried. We know you'll get us out if anything goes bad, Meyer.

• 2:39:25Jocko Willink?

  Well, I didn't, Lieutenant. I was a load of worthless shit, not there when you needed me.

• 2:39:34Jocko Willink?

  Around 3:00 in the morning, I pulled my truck into the driveway of a shop owned by my high school friend Derek Yates and cut the engine.

• 2:39:44Jocko Willink?

  I turned on the cab light and fished out my cellphone.

• 2:39:49Jocko Willink?

  It wasn't right to burn my dad, but I wanted to connect one last time with someone.

• 2:39:55Jocko Willink?

  I pecked out a text message to my friends Anne and Toby. They had known me since I was a toddler, but they didn't know me that well, did they?

• 2:40:06Jocko Willink?

  Here I was, back where I had started, with an aluminum bracelet, with two names on each wrist.

• 2:40:16Jocko Willink?

  That's what I had done with my life: lost four brothers.

• 2:40:23Jocko Willink?

  I can't do it anymore.

• 2:40:32Jocko Willink?

  I typed.

• 2:40:36Jocko Willink?

  I reached into the glove compartment where I kept my Glock.

• 2:40:41Jocko Willink?

  I always kept a full magazine with a round chambered in the pistol.

• 2:40:47Jocko Willink?

  A Glock doesn't have a safety. You pull the trigger

• 2:40:53Jocko Willink?

  and the weapon fires.

• 2:40:59Jocko Willink?

  I stuck the gun to my head and squeezed the trigger.

• 2:41:07Jocko Willink?

  Click.

• 2:41:11Jocko Willink?

  Nothing.

• 2:41:14Jocko Willink?

  Nada.

• 2:41:17Jocko Willink?

  No round in the chamber. As you can imagine, I sat there quite sobered up and in double shock.

• 2:41:27Jocko Willink?

  Suicide is terminal self-revulsion.

• 2:41:33Jocko Willink?

  I was mixed up, but I knew my team would be disappointed in me.

• 2:41:40Jocko Willink?

  Staff Sergeant Keneffek would give me hell, which is where I would be, bad ending.

• 2:41:47Jocko Willink?

  That was not going to happen.

• 2:41:54Jocko Willink?

  But who had unloaded my pistol? Right on the spot, I knew who had done it. Have I ever talked to that person about it? No.

• 2:42:08Jocko Willink?

  I put away the pistol and drove home.

• 2:42:12Jocko Willink?

  That night, I experienced no sudden change of direction in my life. I didn't know where I was headed in the future, but I knew, I, I knew quitting wasn't right.

• 2:42:25Jocko Willink?

  Not that night.

• 2:42:29Jocko Willink?

  Not ever.

• 2:42:39Dakota Meyer?

  You know, I had never told, um...

• 2:42:44Dakota Meyer?

  I had never told anybody about that night until it was published in the book.

• 2:42:50Dakota Meyer?

  And, uh... I just...

• 2:42:55Dakota Meyer?

  You know, I just felt like it was important to the story because I didn't want people to read the story. And then just think that it was all okay when I came home. I didn't want to give them that perspective and there's so many guys out there that write these books of the crazy shit that they do. But they never talk about what...

• 2:43:15Jocko Willink?

  What that crazy shit does to them.

• 2:43:18Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, they never talk about that and so what happens is, is...

• 2:43:23Dakota Meyer?

  People read that and they're like, "Holy shit, that's... That's crazy." I could never do that because I deal with problems. And it's like... Yeah, we all do. And, you know, I had to put it into... I wanted people to know that I'm just a human. I'm no different than them. And I, I felt like that I couldn't put in the, the, if you want to call it, good stuff. And not put in the bad stuff.

• 2:43:53Jocko Willink?

  It's...

• 2:43:55Jocko Willink?

  I'm sure there's some psychologist that could figure something out about this, but you got to the point, right? And you made the decision clearly.

• 2:44:04Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 2:44:06Jocko Willink?

  And you came out the other side. By the grace of God, whoever knew you well enough to, to figure out that they needed to make sure you didn't have a loaded gun.

• 2:44:18Jocko Willink?

  But that's a message for anybody that feels like they're in the same situation you felt like you were in, which is that this is not, not going to get any better.

• 2:44:28Jocko Willink?

  Is like, "Okay. Come out the other side, man. Come out the other side." And it was like, I mean, like, like you said, it's not a sudden change in, in direction, but you, but you knew.

• 2:44:42Dakota Meyer?

  I, uh...

• 2:44:43Jocko Willink?

  That you couldn't quit.

• 2:44:44Dakota Meyer?

  I always like to say that, you know, sometimes you find yourself in the middle of nowhere. And sometimes in the middle of nowhere, you find yourself.

• 2:44:54Dakota Meyer?

  And, uh, you know...

• 2:44:57Dakota Meyer?

  I uh, I mean, I had no idea where my life was going. I made a deal with myself, you know? I had sat there and uh, I had said, if I'm gonna keep living this life this way, rack it back and get over with.

• 2:45:16Dakota Meyer?

  But I said, if I ever put the car in drive, I'll never look back. And I sat there, I'm not gonna lie to you, I probably sat there for five, 10 minutes. And I had done it at my buddy's shop because I knew he'd be there at 8 o'clock in the morning and he could just find me. And uh,

• 2:45:34Dakota Meyer?

  I put it in drive and I just, I never looked back, you know? I, you know, and it's, I'm lucky, I'm fortunate that the gun didn't go off, right?

• 2:45:46Dakota Meyer?

  But,

• 2:45:49Dakota Meyer?

  you know, I think that, you know, you always gotta hit that rock bottom, you know? I think that, and that was, for me, that was it. That was the rock bottom. And it, you know, it changed it.

• 2:46:01Jocko Willink?

  And, I mean, again, I just wanna stress this as much as I can to, cuz believe me, I hear from people, especially from veterans, that are, that are walking this line, man. They're walking this line. And if you're walking that line, hold it.

• 2:46:20Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, listen. It's not worth it. I mean, it's not like, you know, I had to change, honestly, I had to change the way that I looked at life. The only problem there was is me. You know, instead of just facing it and saying, hey, look, I wanna fix this problem, I was blaming everybody else for my problems. And what I had to do was, I had to say, you know, okay, if, you know, if the things that I seen were so bad, I've seen what freedom cost firsthand. That's what's got me there.

• 2:46:58Dakota Meyer?

  So if anything, I have more reason than anybody else on the face of this planet to go out and make the most of my life because I've seen it firsthand of what it cost.

• 2:47:08Dakota Meyer?

  So instead of walking around and feeling, like, you know, I'm not feeling sorry for my teammates because they're in a better place. They don't feel anymore. I'm really just feeling sorry for myself. And then by doing that, I'm sac- I'm wasting the sacrifices that they made on my behalf. And I had to change the way I looked at it. Instead of using it as my excuse, I had to use it as my fuel. And that's a choice. That is a conscious choice. You wake up every day and you decide how you look at the situation. You decide what you do with it. You decide whether you use it as your excuse to hold you back, or you use it as your easy, you know, valve of hiding who you are,

• 2:47:50Dakota Meyer?

  or you use it as your fuel to go out and be the best that you can be. You decide that, nobody does. Nobody else does. You do every day. And it is a conscious choice. I mean, I still deal with it, but I still make the choice.

• 2:48:07Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome. That's awesome. And anybody that's listening, like I said, anybody that's listening that's walking that line, there you go. Make the right choice.

• 2:48:18Dakota Meyer?

  Make the right choice. Make the choice. Make the right choice. And you know what the right choice is.

• 2:48:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I mean, you're talking about how much, and I feel this too. Like, every day, how much am I letting down my friends that didn't come home if I'm not doing everything I can to take advantage of the gift they gave me to be sitting here right now?

• 2:48:41Dakota Meyer?

  Right. I mean, I mean, any day that I don't want to go on and push on for myself, I can look down and I'll bet you anything. I got four reasons right here that would switch me one day. They would switch me my worst day to have one more day. You know, and I just, you know, I'm not okay with letting their sacrifices be wasted. I'm not okay with watching anybody else waste them, so why would I be okay with letting myself waste them?

• 2:49:22Jocko Willink?

  Well.

• 2:49:28Dakota Meyer?

  Another thing I want to say is like, walking that line, I want to say this and get it out there. It's normal. It's normal. It doesn't mean you're weak. It doesn't, I want to get that stigma out there. You know, I want to get that off the books is it's, it is a normal, like, I don't understand why, why it's okay in our society or in the military. A guy breaks his leg.

• 2:49:53Dakota Meyer?

  Okay, do you go make him run tomorrow? He puts a cast on it. He rehabs it. It's the same thing with the mind. It's the same thing. It's the same thing. You go in and you watch. The people you have to worry about are the ones that go watch their close friends and they watch human beings and they watch this evil and people die and suffer and don't have a reaction. Those are the ones you have to worry about.

• 2:50:28Dakota Meyer?

  It is a normal reaction to a not normal situation and it's okay. It's okay. It is 110% okay.

• 2:50:40Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely, man. Absolutely.

• 2:50:46Jocko Willink?

  As you, we mentioned quickly, you know, there was some buzz possibly about, about you getting Medal of Honor.

• 2:50:55Jocko Willink?

  And.

• 2:50:56Dakota Meyer?

  But you know how it goes, like it was all, I didn't believe it. I never, I never had any idea. You know, you hear talk about it Silver Star, Medal of Honor, Navy Cross, whatever, right?

• 2:51:11Dakota Meyer?

  I didn't care. I didn't ca- I I promised the last thing that I ever thought about was an award. An award. That's the last thing.

• 2:51:25Jocko Willink?

  Well, it gets approved.

• 2:51:29Jocko Willink?

  And going back to the book, when the president hung that medal around my neck, I felt glum. I couldn't smile, and I said nothing. I gave no remarks and avoided the press. As a Marine, you either bring your team home alive, or you die trying.

• 2:51:51Jocko Willink?

  My country was recognizing me for being a failure. And for the worst day of my life.

• 2:52:00Jocko Willink?

  The Marine Commandant, General Jim Amos, and General Joseph Dunford attended the ceremony. Throughout the years after Gadjigaw, the Marine Corps leadership has provided consistent support, not just to me, but to all who fought there.

• 2:52:16Jocko Willink?

  The top enlisted man in the Marine Corps, Sergeant Major Mike Barrett, twice came to our farm to meet my dad and granddad and to encourage me.

• 2:52:26Jocko Willink?

  There's no such thing as a former Marine. Fifty years after they have left active duty, Marines still sign emails to each other with SF, Semper Fidelis, always faithful. Of course, we have among us those who failed themselves, their family, and society. The fact remains, though, that the Corps expects every Marine to live by a set of core values. In turn, the Corps keeps its side of the bargain. You could not ask anything more of an organization than that. The Medal of Honor, given in the name of the Congress of the United States of America, symbolizes the courage and determination of our entire country.

• 2:53:10Jocko Willink?

  And, speaking of the country you were in,

• 2:53:17Jocko Willink?

  New York. I was in New York City,

• 2:53:22Jocko Willink?

  at the Twin Towers site, Ground Zero, with Gunny Joshua Peterson, someone I knew from my first days in the Corps. We were greeted by hundreds of police, firemen, construction workers, Wall Street guys in suits, city officials, and the families of the fallen.

• 2:53:41Jocko Willink?

  "Meyer, I can't believe this scene," Gunny Peterson said.

• 2:53:45Jocko Willink?

  "Make sure your ribbons are squared away."

• 2:53:50Jocko Willink?

  We stood side by side, two grunts in sharply ironed khakis, waving like we had won an election. I thought of my sad, fumbling meetings with the family of Team Monty, the families of Team Monty, when I couldn't think of much to say.

• 2:54:09Jocko Willink?

  I was alive and their loved ones were not. Now here I was, standing before a monument for 3,000 dead.

• 2:54:20Jocko Willink?

  I saw some big ironworkers in hard hats, standing off to one side.

• 2:54:26Jocko Willink?

  When the ceremony ended, they sneaked me in, onto a work elevator.

• 2:54:32Jocko Willink?

  Up we went to the top of the ride, where we then climbed wooden ladders until we couldn't go any further. And there weren't any guardrails.

• 2:54:42Jocko Willink?

  I stood there, looking out at the most beautiful country in the world, trying to make sense of my feelings.

• 2:54:49Jocko Willink?

  This was where it had all started. So many good people lost, the people who'd been working here, and the people I had known, who had not gone blindly into uniform. They had reasoned why

• 2:55:02Jocko Willink?

  Americans do that.

• 2:55:05Jocko Willink?

  What they had gone ahead to do, and to die.

• 2:55:13Jocko Willink?

  An ironworker handed me a silver marker.

• 2:55:20Jocko Willink?

  And I wrote on a girder,

• 2:55:24Jocko Willink?

  "For those who gave

• 2:55:29Jocko Willink?

  all."

• 2:55:43Jocko Willink?

  For those who gave all.

• 2:55:51Jocko Willink?

  And that wraps up the book and

• 2:55:59Jocko Willink?

  you know, you're talking about awards and what you hear and what happens and all that. And I wanted to say this as well, on the battlefield, on that battlefield and on every battle, there are acts of extreme valor that no one will ever know about. I'm talking about an infinite number.

• 2:56:27Jocko Willink?

  No one's ever gonna know about them.

• 2:56:31Jocko Willink?

  And it's important to know this, that our military men and women don't do what they do for medals or ribbons. They do what they do because they love freedom, because they love America, because they love their comrades in arms. And that right there is why our country thrives in battle.

• 2:56:54Jocko Willink?

  Not because of technological advances, not because of superior weaponry, not even the size of our military. It's because of the bond that is shared between warriors. That is our real strength.

• 2:57:13Jocko Willink?

  And Dakota, that's something that you represent in spades.

• 2:57:20Jocko Willink?

  And you know, I want to thank you for coming on the podcast.

• 2:57:26Jocko Willink?

  And sharing this incredible story and I know it's not only a story of you, but it's a story of all the men, American and Afghan as well, that rode into battle with you that day and showed once again what it is that makes America a place of

• 2:57:44Jocko Willink?

  of hope and of freedom. It's because of

• 2:57:52Jocko Willink?

  It's because of men, it's because of individual men that in their heart and even in the face of death

• 2:58:02Jocko Willink?

  actually live, actually live the ideals of this great nation.

• 2:58:12Jocko Willink?

  Not only in their words, but in their actions, in the way that they live and in the way

• 2:58:21Jocko Willink?

  that they die.

• 2:58:26Jocko Willink?

  God bless all.

• 2:58:31Dakota Meyer?

  They're incredible.

• 2:58:34Dakota Meyer?

  You know, I mean, you're exactly right, like, I mean, there's so many stories that are, I mean, people have done

• 2:58:44Dakota Meyer?

  so many stories of people doing such incredible stuff. And, you know, it's, it's, it's literally out of the love of another human being. It's literally out of the love of making the world a better place. That's really, that's really all we do. That's all we do. I mean, we join.

• 2:59:08Dakota Meyer?

  Nobody joins, okay, to go just shoot people or fight.

• 2:59:13Dakota Meyer?

  They literally join to, to try to make the world around them a better place. Whether it's passing out aid, whether it's rendering aid to a civilian or to a, you know, a fellow American, or whether it's taking out the bully that's inflicting fear in that place. Everything that we do

• 2:59:39Dakota Meyer?

  is to try to make the world just a little bit better. That's it.

• 2:59:47Jocko Willink?

  You know, as I was reading about when you got back to your team. You could see, I mean, just from the way the guys were laid out. You know, Staff Sergeant was trying to get comms and trying to pass grids and Doc was working on the boss. I mean, everyone was trying to make things happen and who knows what those moments were like, you know, but there's moments of there's there's heroism there that we're never gonna know about.

• 3:00:14Dakota Meyer?

  No, I mean, I mean, a hundred percent. I mean, Doc Layton was rendering aid, you know, what stopped him was because Fazel was with him.

• 3:00:23Dakota Meyer?

  What stopped him of getting to the road

• 3:00:27Dakota Meyer?

  was Lieutenant Johnson got hit.

• 3:00:30Dakota Meyer?

  And Gunny Kinnefick and Gunny Johnson were on either side providing security while Doc Layton worked on him. And that was the medevac we heard called in from Gunny Kinnefick was trying to call that medevac in for Lieutenant Johnson.

• 3:00:45Dakota Meyer?

  And

• 3:00:48Dakota Meyer?

  you know, but they weren't gonna, they weren't gonna leave him behind.

• 3:00:54Dakota Meyer?

  Even more, even more of not leaving him behind. They weren't gonna just throw him over his shoulder and get him out. They were gonna try to fix him.

• 3:01:07Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, what do you say?

• 3:01:10Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, what do you say? I mean, you know, that right there. I mean, that right there is everything. I mean, you take that, you take. I mean, there's so many actions. I mean, I've watched people do such incredible things.

• 3:01:24Dakota Meyer?

  Such incredible things that just make what I do, I mean. Nah, you know. No, it makes me look like I, you know, I've done nothing. I've seen it, you know, people are incredible.

• 3:01:38Jocko Willink?

  Well, again, man, I can't thank you enough for coming on.

• 3:01:44Dakota Meyer?

  No, thank you.

• 3:01:44Jocko Willink?

  On, on the podcast and hanging out and being out there, kicking ass and talking smack to people. I like that too.

• 3:02:00Jocko Willink?

  Did I miss anything? Anything else?

• 3:02:01Dakota Meyer?

  No, no, I mean, you, I think, I think you covered it all.

• 3:02:05Jocko Willink?

  Think we might have covered some subjects.

• 3:02:07Dakota Meyer?

  I think you got, I, I, uh, I think you covered it.

• 3:02:10Jocko Willink?

  You know, Echo?

• 3:02:12Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:02:13Jocko Willink?

  You, you got any questions for the man over there?

• 3:02:16Speaker 01

  No, usually I come up with some lighthearted question, but man, I'm out of words, to be honest with you.

• 3:02:22Jocko Willink?

  We took that little, uh, break and Echo's like, man, he's like, I just keep, he's like, I, I'm, I'm sitting there thinking to myself, this really happened, man. And I'm like, yeah, I told, I gave, I give Echo heads up sometimes, you know, I say, hey, man, it's gonna be a heavy one or whatever. And I was like, told him this afternoon, I'm like, hey, man, it's gonna be a heavy one, you know, stand by. And, you know, we're downstairs, we were taking that break and he's like, man, all, all this really happened. I said, yeah, and you know who it happened to? The guy we're sitting in the room with and his friends, like, that's what happened. So, uh, you know, early on, when I started this podcast, I'd be reading a book from night, from World War One.

• 3:03:05Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:06Jocko Willink?

  Or I'd be reading a book from World War Two or Vietnam or whatever. And I'd, I'd like, after, I don't know how many podcasts, but like seven or eight podcasts, I was like, hey, I just wanna stop for a second.

• 3:03:17Jocko Willink?

  And remind everybody that the, the, the, the characters that I'm talking about in these books, these characters, they're not characters in a movie. They're, they're people, they're, they're humans. And this stuff that we're talking about really happened to these people. So, again, it's obviously having you sitting here and I was talking to you about when, when Colonel William Reader was in here. And, you know, you're like, you're reading stuff that happened to him, he was tortured, he was mock executed, he had, he had.

• 3:03:51Jocko Willink?

  He was locked in a bam- a two foot tall bamboo cage in the jungles in Vietnam and he's got his legs in shackles and the- he's trying to sleep and he's getting woken up by the rats that are eating the wounds in his legs. And it's like, tha- that's just inconceivable.

• 3:04:11Dakota Meyer?

  I mean-

• 3:04:11Jocko Willink?

  And it happened.

• 3:04:13Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I mean, and that's, you know, I hear stories like that and it's just, you know, that's real people. These are real people, just like us.

• 3:04:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and, and, and honestly, man, I mean, I'm sure you saw me, like, sometimes, uh, you know, I'm, yeah, I'm getting, I get emotional when I read your story, but why do I get emotional when I read your stories? Because I'm thinking of everything I've been through, thinking of my, my friends, and I'm just like, it's,

• 3:04:44Jocko Willink?

  man, you know, it's, uh,

• 3:04:48Jocko Willink?

  it's real. And, and for those of you people that, um, are listening to this, and I talked to, I addressed like the veterans out there a bunch today, um, but, you know, to those of you that didn't have the opportunity to serve for whatever reason, you know, if I could relate something to you, it's like, yeah, these, these people, these lieutenants, these sergeants, these staff sergeants, man, they're people, man. They're people.

• 3:05:18Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, they're just, they're just people.

• 3:05:21Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:05:21Dakota Meyer?

  They're just people. I mean, that's, they're just people. They're just, and, and, you know, and I think that that's kind of what makes it hard for society of, is that they see so many of these movies and they read these books and,

• 3:05:39Dakota Meyer?

  you know, they read it, but what they don't understand is that somebody lived it.

• 3:05:46Dakota Meyer?

  You know, and I think that that's a perspective that you always have to remind yourself of is that Yeah, you're reading it and but somebody lived it.

• 3:05:56Dakota Meyer?

  Do you know?

• 3:05:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:06:00Speaker 01

  Then you kind of see.

• 3:06:03Speaker 01

  You know. On the news like, oh, yeah, the Medal of Honor ceremony and the pictures, you know, of you getting the And you know, you see the president putting it on. It's like, wow, that's so great or whatever. And What you don't. What we don't see, you know, people who haven't served. Is like what really happened to to to arrive at that one quote unquote glorious moment where you get the medal. Oh, my gosh, thank you. Let's go party or so. I don't know, something, you know, like it's this. It's like dang, bro, did.

• 3:06:36Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, people think it's just so great, you know, and

• 3:06:41Dakota Meyer?

  Like I despise everything that medal stands for.

• 3:06:45Dakota Meyer?

  For me, you know, I mean, not anybody else. But I.

• 3:06:51Dakota Meyer?

  You know, when I put that medal around my neck.

• 3:06:55Dakota Meyer?

  To me, it's literally here's the stamp to show the world how bad I felt.

• 3:07:03Dakota Meyer?

  Here's the.

• 3:07:05Dakota Meyer?

  You know.

• 3:07:08Dakota Meyer?

  That's why I don't I don't wear it. I don't. I don't wear it because.

• 3:07:13Dakota Meyer?

  You know, it's the worst day of my life. And I lost everything that day. I lost not just my team. I lost my career in the Marine Corps.

• 3:07:24Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, everything that I wanted to be.

• 3:07:27Dakota Meyer?

  Was gone. Within one day. And, you know, and then I get recognized for it. You know, so not only do you have to live with it. But now you have to live with it in the face of the nation.

• 3:07:45Jocko Willink?

  Well, from that perspective, from, from my perspective, looking at that,

• 3:07:54Jocko Willink?

  for one thing, the, the medal, yeah, I mean, it was put around your neck, but I believe that medal represents everyone that was with your team.

• 3:08:04Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:08:04Jocko Willink?

  And you, you might have gotten the, the, the medal put around your neck, but it's, it represents, that story's gonna be told over and over again.

• 3:08:14Jocko Willink?

  And your name might be at the top of the list, but every name is gonna be on that list. Everyone's gonna know. And, I, I mean, obviously, I can't imagine the burden that comes with that medal that you live with, but at the same time, being able to have that, have your brothers remembered,

• 3:08:37Jocko Willink?

  I think that it makes it worthwhile.

• 3:08:39Dakota Meyer?

  And, and you know, and that, and that's the piece of it, you're right. I mean, so on the selfish, you know, when I, what I just said was on the selfish side of it, right? That, that, that is for me. That, that is the only reason I did accept the medal, was because I, I want my teammates to live on forever. I want people to know who they were, cuz the day that I stop speaking their name is the day they truly die.

• 3:09:05Dakota Meyer?

  And I have an obligation that as long as I can still breathe, that their names are still need to be told. And, um, so that's what that medal allows me to do.

• 3:09:16Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:09:17Dakota Meyer?

  And it is their medal. I mean, it's, it's for them.

• 3:09:21Dakota Meyer?

  But, yeah, I mean, you know, you, you don't, it's just, it goes against, you know, and I think the one thing, you know, that, that's so hard for us to wrap around is, how many times in your training, did you, how many times did you sit, like, when you were training guys and this and that, how many times did you ever set them up for when they did everything that they could, they failed?

• 3:09:49Jocko Willink?

  Hey, to be honest with you, when I was running training, I did that all the time.

• 3:09:54Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:09:54Jocko Willink?

  I'm not kidding. I mean, you can talk to anybody that went through training when I ran it. It was, it was just mayhem. And it was, you were gonna, you know, you were gonna carry out bodies. You, you had 16 guys in a platoon, you were gonna be carrying six bodies.

• 3:10:07Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:08Jocko Willink?

  Out. And you're gonna be carrying them for four kilometers to a helicopter extract, which wasn't gonna show up, and you're gonna have to go another six. It wa- it was brutal.

• 3:10:16Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:17Jocko Willink?

  And there was times, there was times where I'd kill every single, you know, training, I'd kill every single SEAL, because they were not doing what they were supposed to do, or they were making mistakes, or the leadership wasn't stepping up. I did that all the time.

• 3:10:27Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:28Jocko Willink?

  I did it all the time.

• 3:10:31Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I ca- I, I came back from Ramadi, where, where my guys were in some really bad situations. And I wanted everyone to be ready for that, man. And like, that was, it was, I mean, I was not...

• 3:10:47Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I, I came back from Pullman and got put in, put in charge of training. It was awesome. It was the best thing that I ever could have done for me, and, and I, I thought it was the best thing I could do for my teammates.

• 3:10:57Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:10:57Jocko Willink?

  Was to be like, okay, we're gonna make this training hard, really hard. And, and so, probably not, you probably thought I was gonna say never, but man, when I was running training...

• 3:11:06Dakota Meyer?

  And, and, and that's, that's awesome.

• 3:11:08Jocko Willink?

  And I had got, I mean, I had many guys that came back from Iraq and Afghanistan, and, and would say like, yeah, hey, man, we got, we got hammered hard in this situation, and we were ready. Nothing as bad as your situation, but, yeah.

• 3:11:26Dakota Meyer?

  But the mentality of it is, you know, there are some situations you're not gonna win. There are some situations where you show up, and you're not gonna win.

• 3:11:38Dakota Meyer?

  And that's against everything that we believe, and everything that we're taught. You know what I mean? That, that if we do our job, and we do it right, and you still lose...

• 3:11:51Dakota Meyer?

  It doesn't make sense.

• 3:11:53Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's, that's something I've told many guys is, man, you, you can do everything right. You can make no mistakes and you can still get killed. You can still, you can still think, you know, there's decisions that you make on the battlefield. You say, if you say, okay, go left, you can go left and everyone could be great and it's the best decision ever. You could say, go left and everyone could die and it's the worst decision ever. There's, there's things that you can't control inside of combat. So you prepare and train as hard as you can. And, and the other thing you do is you get the leadership in the situ, in a mentality that they're not going to put themselves. This is like, if my guys planned something that was stupid, I'd let them execute. I mean, this is in training. If they came up with a dumb plan, they were going to execute that plan. I wasn't going to stop them and they were going to get slaughtered.

• 3:12:37Jocko Willink?

  So they'd learn some lessons. But that's why that training is so important and it's important in everything.

• 3:12:44Dakota Meyer?

  A hundred percent, a hundred percent. I appreciate you having me on.

• 3:12:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, man. Thanks for coming on, brother.

• 3:12:51Dakota Meyer?

  Thanks so much, man. It's awesome. You're the man.

• 3:12:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, right. I do not accept that from you.

• 3:12:58Dakota Meyer?

  You are the man.

• 3:13:00Jocko Willink?

  All right, Echo.

• 3:13:01Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 3:13:01Jocko Willink?

  Talk about something good.

• 3:13:04Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 3:13:04Jocko Willink?

  Chill.

• 3:13:06Speaker 01

  Little bit. Okay. What do you mean? Okay. So we'll shift gears, kind of a rough transition.

• 3:13:12Jocko Willink?

  And I'll let you know that we're like three hours plus right now. So you could talk quickly if you want.

• 3:13:17Speaker 01

  If I want.

• 3:13:17Jocko Willink?

  Please. See how I kind of recommend that.

• 3:13:20Speaker 01

  Well, I feel like me and Dakota, we have some catching up to do. You guys have been talking. So, you know, I might drag this out a little bit.

• 3:13:27Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 3:13:27Speaker 01

  Okay. So, Origin Maine, this is where you get Jocko supplements, krill oil, joint warfare, it's free joints, free joints.

• 3:13:35Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 3:13:36Speaker 01

  Important supplement.

• 3:13:38Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 3:13:38Speaker 01

  Important supplement.

• 3:13:40Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:13:41Speaker 01

  Also, he has one called Discipline's a cognitive and physical enhancement supplement, pre-workout, pre-mission. So it's called, it's a good one. Also at Origin Maine, it's originmaine.com, Maine, the state, not like the Maine one.

• 3:13:57Dakota Meyer?

  I like it.

• 3:13:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's good. You got gis on there for jujitsu. You train jujitsu, right?

• 3:14:03Dakota Meyer?

  I do.

• 3:14:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. So if you get the Origin gi, those are all made in America. Everything in Origin.

• 3:14:09Jocko Willink?

  We best get you an Origin gi since they are made in America and you gotta represent some Americans.

• 3:14:15Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I like it.

• 3:14:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, from threads, from the cotton, by the way. They grow the cotton in America. Not the kind they import the fabric and we assemble them there. Everything. From seed, what is it? From seeds to?

• 3:14:27Jocko Willink?

  From seed, from?

• 3:14:29Speaker 01

  Dirt to shirt. Dirt to shirt. Dirt to shirt. Pretty good, right? Yeah, it was good. I liked it. Uh, they got some rash guards on there, spats.

• 3:14:38Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:14:39Jocko Willink?

  He doesn't know what spats are.

• 3:14:41Speaker 01

  You know what spats are?

• 3:14:42Dakota Meyer?

  No.

• 3:14:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, we didn't really either.

• 3:14:44Jocko Willink?

  We had to kinda?

• 3:14:44Speaker 01

  We had to research it. Arrived at spats.

• 3:14:48Jocko Willink?

  Here's the bottom line.

• 3:14:48Speaker 01

  They're spandex pants.

• 3:14:49Jocko Willink?

  They're spandex, they're tights, basically.

• 3:14:51Speaker 01

  Compression gear.

• 3:14:52Jocko Willink?

  Do you, where, do you train, do you train at 10th Planet?

• 3:14:55Dakota Meyer?

  Uh, yeah, some.

• 3:14:56Jocko Willink?

  Sometimes. So you've seen dudes down there playing with?

• 3:14:58Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, yeah, I know what you're talking about.

• 3:14:59Jocko Willink?

  Cause 10th Planet, it's all about them.

• 3:15:01Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:15:01Jocko Willink?

  They're all up on the spats.

• 3:15:03Dakota Meyer?

  They're all about the spats.

• 3:15:04Jocko Willink?

  I was worried about, I was worried about using the word spats, cause I didn't, it sounded like maybe it was some kinda like?

• 3:15:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:15:11Jocko Willink?

  Let's just say, it sounded kinda girlish, like some girl, like, like a girl would be like, oh, I'm gonna wear?

• 3:15:16Speaker 01

  You thought they were Spanx.

• 3:15:18Jocko Willink?

  What are those?

• 3:15:18Speaker 01

  Cause it sounds like Spanx. I don't know, something girls wear, right?

• 3:15:21Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, Spanx are real tight. Like the, like it, it's kinda like?

• 3:15:24Speaker 01

  It's essentially compression gear.

• 3:15:25Dakota Meyer?

  It is, it's compression gear, like, like, so like?

• 3:15:27Jocko Willink?

  To compress?

• 3:15:28Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, don't, yeah.

• 3:15:30Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:15:30Speaker 01

  To compress.

• 3:15:31Dakota Meyer?

  They should be, they should be illegal.

• 3:15:33Jocko Willink?

  I figured out somebody?

• 3:15:34Dakota Meyer?

  They should be illegal because it's like selling.

• 3:15:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it's, it's false advertising. I, I, I was on, we were on like some kinda live broadcast and someone, spats is, comes from what soldiers, cavalry soldiers in World War I wore like leggings and they were called spats. And I was like, okay, it's cool. Well, we'll say it now.

• 3:15:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:15:54Dakota Meyer?

  I like it.

• 3:15:54Speaker 01

  They weren't really even legging, they're just, it's like this lower, you know that lower part that covers the boot?

• 3:15:59Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:15:59Speaker 01

  It's that.

• 3:16:00Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:00Speaker 01

  Straight up.

• 3:16:02Jocko Willink?

  That is not spats, that's something else. What are those things called? Did you ever do honor guard? You had to wear those things?

• 3:16:07Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:16:07Jocko Willink?

  I think they were actually called leggings.

• 3:16:09Speaker 01

  Wait, so we're, so we're unclear about what?

• 3:16:11Jocko Willink?

  No, I know what spats are.

• 3:16:12Speaker 01

  I mean, I am, I'm unclear.

• 3:16:14Jocko Willink?

  Very unclear.

• 3:16:15Speaker 01

  Well, cause in football, you tape your shoe and your?

• 3:16:17Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:16:18Speaker 01

  Ankle.

• 3:16:19Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:16:19Speaker 01

  That's spats. So I just, you know?

• 3:16:21Dakota Meyer?

  I like it. Hey, you know what? It works. It works.

• 3:16:24Speaker 01

  It does, right? Yeah.

• 3:16:25Dakota Meyer?

  See?

• 3:16:26Speaker 01

  Who knows? Nonetheless, Origin has some spats, some compression gear rash guards. It's all made in America. Good stuff. originmaine.com. Go on there, check out all their stuff. If you like something, get something. Also, for the kettlebells that I have.

• 3:16:43Speaker 01

  Train it.

• 3:16:44Dakota Meyer?

  On it.

• 3:16:45Speaker 01

  Planet, yeah, on it. You know, the kettlebells, Primal Bells?

• 3:16:48Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:48Speaker 01

  Got the whole set.

• 3:16:50Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:16:50Jocko Willink?

  He's very proud of that.

• 3:16:51Speaker 01

  Whatever. You see the smile on his face. He was like, yeah, dang, that's solid.

• 3:16:54Dakota Meyer?

  You know Primos Swolger?

• 3:16:56Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:16:57Dakota Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:16:57Speaker 01

  What is that? Primal what?

• 3:16:58Dakota Meyer?

  Swolger.

• 3:16:59Speaker 01

  Swolger.

• 3:17:00Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, you gotta check him out. He works out down at Onnit. Like, he's a big kettlebell guy.

• 3:17:05Speaker 01

  Okay, boom. Yeah, sounds appealing to me.

• 3:17:08Dakota Meyer?

  Swolger.

• 3:17:08Jocko Willink?

  Swolger. Okay.

• 3:17:10Dakota Meyer?

  Primos.

• 3:17:11Speaker 01

  Swolger. Boom. So he'd, yeah, so anyway, Onnit.com slash Jocko, that's where you get the kettlebells. You wanna get the whole set like me?

• 3:17:19Speaker 01

  Or, you know, or other stuff. Like I said, um, if you, actually, I said this before, you wanna vary up your workout, make it more interesting.

• 3:17:29Speaker 01

  Jocko likes boring workouts. That's cool, too. But if you wanna make it more interesting, get the mace. Get, you know, some of these, some more, uh, what do you call it? Like more creative?

• 3:17:37Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, the mace.

• 3:17:38Speaker 01

  Fitness, uh, equipment.

• 3:17:40Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:17:41Speaker 01

  Onnit.com slash Jocko, it's a good spot. Also, when you buy the book Into the Fire,

• 3:17:49Speaker 01

  Dakota Meyer. Don't worry, I got it listed on our website, JacoPodcast.com. Buy episode, by the way, along with all the books that we go over on this podcast. Boom, just click through there. Take it to Amazon shop. Continue doing shopping if you want. Good way to support. Also, subscribe to the podcast if you haven't already. Stitcher, iTunes, Google Play, Spotify.

• 3:18:18Dakota Meyer?

  I just learned, I just learned what Spotify was today.

• 3:18:21Speaker 01

  Me too.

• 3:18:21Jocko Willink?

  I'm not even 100% sure I know what it is.

• 3:18:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:18:24Jocko Willink?

  It's some kind of music feed thing. But we're on it.

• 3:18:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:18:28Jocko Willink?

  We're also on Alexa. You have Alexa?

• 3:18:31Dakota Meyer?

  Never heard of her.

• 3:18:31Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:18:32Speaker 01

  It's Amazon Echo.

• 3:18:34Jocko Willink?

  Oh, well, you can ask it to play Jocko Podcast.

• 3:18:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:18:38Dakota Meyer?

  No way.

• 3:18:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:18:39Dakota Meyer?

  I'm gonna buy one just for that.

• 3:18:40Jocko Willink?

  You can just be like, Alexa, play Jocko Podcast. And then it says, playing the latest episode of Jocko Podcast.

• 3:18:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:18:47Jocko Willink?

  And you go, yeah.

• 3:18:50Jocko Willink?

  That's so cool.

• 3:18:51Speaker 01

  And you always say, do you have Alexa? That's like saying, hey, do you have, or you should go buy a Siri. You can't buy Siri. Siri comes with your phone. No, no, no.

• 3:19:01Dakota Meyer?

  You can buy Alexa.

• 3:19:03Speaker 01

  No, you cannot buy an Alexa. You buy an Amazon Echo.

• 3:19:06Jocko Willink?

  No one calls it that, though. No one talks about that.

• 3:19:09Speaker 01

  Maybe they should, because that's the correct thing. We don't want to confuse people.

• 3:19:12Jocko Willink?

  No, the only one that's confused here is you.

• 3:19:14Speaker 01

  No, no, no. You do want to confuse people.

• 3:19:16Jocko Willink?

  We're talking about Alexa.

• 3:19:17Speaker 01

  I know that. I'm trying to edge it.

• 3:19:20Jocko Willink?

  All right, if you're gonna dig in on this, I'm gonna let it go.

• 3:19:22Speaker 01

  It's Amazon Echo. Believe me, I know. It's a tube, an intelligent tube.

• 3:19:26Dakota Meyer?

  Why does it have to be all about you?

• 3:19:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's what it comes down to. He's man, it's not his name. That's what it is. Okay, good. Look how happy Jocko is.

• 3:19:36Dakota Meyer?

  Jocko, give him a little love. Give him a little love.

• 3:19:38Speaker 01

  Look how happy he is.

• 3:19:39Jocko Willink?

  Get that Amazon Echo.

• 3:19:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and then you ask Alexa. So essentially Alexa's in the Amazon Echo.

• 3:19:46Dakota Meyer?

  What if I wanted to ask Echo?

• 3:19:47Speaker 01

  It won't, it won't respond. You can call me out whenever, I'll respond. Amazon Echo will not respond to the name Echo. Alexa lives in Amazon Echo. Just like Siri lives in your iPhone.

• 3:19:57Jocko Willink?

  There's nothing living in my iPhone. It's a machine.

• 3:19:59Speaker 01

  It's artificial life intelligence. Nonetheless, subscribe if you haven't already. Also subscribe, subscribe to YouTube. We'll have the video version of this podcast and excerpts on there as well. And enhanced excerpts as well. If you're into that, subscribe YouTube if you're into YouTube. Also, Jocko has a store. It's called Jocko Store. It's like, it's called Jocko Podcast, Jocko Store, because it's a store.

• 3:20:27Dakota Meyer?

  I like it.

• 3:20:28Jocko Willink?

  That thing's just called Jocko.

• 3:20:29Dakota Meyer?

  I like it.

• 3:20:30Jocko Willink?

  I'm not that creative.

• 3:20:31Dakota Meyer?

  If I had, if I had a badass name like Jocko.

• 3:20:34Jocko Willink?

  Dude, your name is Dakota. Come on, man.

• 3:20:36Dakota Meyer?

  I know, everybody thinks it's like a girl, though.

• 3:20:38Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really? Is that a girl's name Dakota?

• 3:20:40Dakota Meyer?

  Dakota Fanning.

• 3:20:41Jocko Willink?

  Oh, dang.

• 3:20:42Dakota Meyer?

  Like, I pick up the phone and they're like, ma'am? And I'm like, uh, no.

• 3:20:48Jocko Willink?

  I didn't even know there was a girl's name Dakota.

• 3:20:50Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:20:51Jocko Willink?

  Well, sorry, man.

• 3:20:52Dakota Meyer?

  That sucks.

• 3:20:52Jocko Willink?

  Do you like a girl named Sue? Is that why you turned out so badass?

• 3:20:58Speaker 01

  That is awesome.

• 3:20:59Jocko Willink?

  Like Johnny Cash, yeah, there you go.

• 3:21:01Speaker 01

  I kinda feel like when it came down to Jocko to name his own store and stuff, he was all cool. But when Amazon names their thing Echo, it's like, you know, you guys kinda turned on me a little bit.

• 3:21:10Dakota Meyer?

  See?

• 3:21:11Speaker 01

  Messed up.

• 3:21:11Dakota Meyer?

  No, I was on your team.

• 3:21:14Speaker 01

  No, no, you kinda called me out, remember? At that moment. Nonetheless, hey man, I dig it either way. jockostore.com. This is where you can get shirts, Discipline Equals Freedom, good shirt, the good shirt. And when I say the good shirt, it's the shirt with Jocko's head on it. It says good, backwards. So when you look in the mirror, he's telling you good, you know?

• 3:21:31Dakota Meyer?

  I like that.

• 3:21:32Speaker 01

  It's pretty good, right?

• 3:21:33Dakota Meyer?

  I'm gonna get one.

• 3:21:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got you. I got you one too. You're too nice. I got you too.

• 3:21:38Jocko Willink?

  Alexa will take care of you.

• 3:21:42Speaker 01

  Bro, that doesn't even make sense as a joke. Nonetheless, jockostore.com, there's some rash cards on there, some hoodies, some hats, patches. I gotta restock the patches. I restocked everything on there. Got the patches.

• 3:21:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:21:55Speaker 01

  Hey, look, I'm trying over here.

• 3:21:58Jocko Willink?

  And there's a system in place now to restock automatically. Am I correct?

• 3:22:02Speaker 01

  Well...

• 3:22:03Jocko Willink?

  Okay, I'm not correct. Okay, forget it.

• 3:22:05Speaker 01

  Depends on what you mean by automatically.

• 3:22:07Jocko Willink?

  I just mean, things will be in stock from now on. That's what I mean.

• 3:22:09Speaker 01

  We'll just say more often.

• 3:22:11Jocko Willink?

  Bro.

• 3:22:12Speaker 01

  We'll just say it better.

• 3:22:14Jocko Willink?

  You had one job.

• 3:22:16Speaker 01

  You had one. Okay, you know what? Forget it, we're not...

• 3:22:20Jocko Willink?

  Actually, he's got two jobs. Make videos and keep the store stocked.

• 3:22:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:22:23Jocko Willink?

  How's he doing? 0 for 2?

• 3:22:27Speaker 01

  You like it? You guys having fun now?

• 3:22:29Jocko Willink?

  Okay, cool.

• 3:22:30Speaker 01

  jockostore.com, that's the website. Anyway, I'm not saying go buy something. I'm saying, look, check it out. If you want something, get something. Good way to support. Also, good way to support Psychological Warfare. Support yourself. You know, in your campaign, we call it a campaign against weakness. Makes sense.

• 3:22:48Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I like it.

• 3:22:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, we liked it too. So it was suggested to us. You know those days where you kinda don't feel like it, right? And who better to ask for a little assist on those days than Jocko, right? In theory, good theory, right? I mean, I agree. So boom, now we have this album with tracks. Jocko tracks telling you to get, how to get past moments of weakness that may come up. Waking up early, skipping workouts, you know, diet stuff, all that. Works pretty good. That's badass. Ten for ten results. You'll never skip a workout.

• 3:23:24Jocko Willink?

  So I made this, Echo was like, asked me, asked me a question one time like, "Why do you not skip, how do you not skip workouts?" And I was like, "Oh, I just boom, boom, boom."

• 3:23:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, when you don't feel like it.

• 3:23:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and he's like, "Dude, I need to record that." And then he just like asked me a bunch of random questions and then we made it into a recording. And we put it on iTunes for sale. It was the number one spoken word on iTunes for, I think,

• 3:23:50Speaker 01

  I think until your book came out.

• 3:23:51Jocko Willink?

  I think eleven months. It finally got knocked out of number one spoken word by, when I released this book, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual on iTunes as a spoken word album. So I'm just saying, it's like so random.

• 3:24:06Speaker 01

  Very effective.

• 3:24:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:24:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's not him saying, "Rah, rah, do this."

• 3:24:10Jocko Willink?

  No, no, I just talk. I'm not a yeller.

• 3:24:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, you don't seem like a yeller. You don't have to yell. Yeah. You don't have to yell.

• 3:24:15Jocko Willink?

  I used to tell the guys, hey, I mean, obviously you gotta yell on the battlefield and you gotta yell people so they can hear you. That's one thing, but yeah, I mean, I always used to tell guys, if you have to yell at someone, man, you've really screwed something up as a leader.

• 3:24:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:24:26Jocko Willink?

  If I gotta yell at you, if I gotta be like, "Eh."

• 3:24:29Speaker 01

  Yeah. Nonetheless, it's, uh, yeah, very effective. Like if you, he'll be like, "Uh, there's this one called Sugar Coated Lies." And it's about like, you know how like when you're at work?

• 3:24:42Jocko Willink?

  You were talking about the Good video.

• 3:24:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:24:44Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 3:24:45Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:24:45Jocko Willink?

  So this is the same thing, but it's like a track you can get. You can get, actually this, the Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual album has Good on there as a track. Just a track, boom, there you go. So you can put it in your whatever. And you can say, so, and, cause I had people going, "You should make an alarm clock, you should make an alarm clock." So when we did the album with tracks and when you could use that thing as an alarm clock. So when people ask me for an alarm clock, I'm like, "Go get the albums." There's three albums now.

• 3:25:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:25:06Jocko Willink?

  By the way, three albums.

• 3:25:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:25:08Jocko Willink?

  Psychological Warfare and this one is in two different albums. You really only need the first album of Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual.

• 3:25:13Speaker 01

  For the, for the audio?

• 3:25:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You can get, well, there's, there's, well, if you want the knowledge parts, that's, that's the second video, the second, the second album.

• 3:25:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:25:23Jocko Willink?

  You didn't know I was over here. So this is where, this is where Echo started hammer, hammer me because you know, when they list you, they list like psychological warfare and then they have to list who made it and it was artist Jocko Willink. And I was like, no, no, no, no, I'm not an artist. I just, I'm just speaking. I'm just saying words. That's not art. No. It's like, no, no, no, you're an artist. So you didn't know that, man?

• 3:25:46Speaker 01

  I never, I never, I promise I never, I never looked at you and said, wow, look at the artist.

• 3:25:51Jocko Willink?

  That's some artist. Artsy guy.

• 3:25:53Speaker 01

  Nonetheless, very effective, very effective. Good way to support too, by the way.

• 3:25:58Jocko Willink?

  Check. Also on Amazon through Alexa, if you want, you can order Jocko White Tea.

• 3:26:07Speaker 01

  Amazon Echo.

• 3:26:08Jocko Willink?

  And, and, and by the way, I don't know if, I'll give you some Jocko White Tea and the reason I'll give it to you isn't, I don't care if you like tea. You might, you might hate tea, but what this tea does is it's guaranteed, it's guaranteed to give you an eight thousand pound deadlift. It's scientifically proven over and over again, double blind, double blind, placebo tested right there. Jocko White Tea, eight thousand pound deadlift.

• 3:26:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So you got that. Also books, the books, um, yes, get into the fire by Dakota Meyer and Bing West. Get it through our website. It's, it's an awesome read, man. We, we, I covered less than 10% of the book today. You only understand 10% of what the whole situation was by listening to this podcast. Get the book, support the podcast, support Dakota, learn about what these brave Americans and Afghans went through.

• 3:27:06Jocko Willink?

  Way the warrior kid.

• 3:27:08Jocko Willink?

  There's a book I wrote for kids. Why? Cause who's, what kinda kids, what kinda books were kids reading? I know, cause I got four kids. My kids were reading books about lame people that were being encouraged to be weak.

• 3:27:21Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:27:22Jocko Willink?

  Instead of like, hey, you know what? It's okay to actually get after it and try and be smarter and try and be stronger. So if you want your kid to be smarter and stronger and eat healthier and work harder. If that's what you want, get the kid way of the warrior kid. If you want to make your child weak and undisciplined, that's cool. You can buy any other book for a kid and that's what you get. And that book did good with people. And I wrote another one. It's called Way of the Warrior Kid Two. It's called Mark's Mission. And it's got a whole new genre of issues that Mark has to face with his Uncle Jake. Uncle Jake comes to help out young Mark.

• 3:28:06Dakota Meyer?

  Would you call them more advanced issues?

• 3:28:08Jocko Willink?

  They are slightly more advanced. Let me tell you which one of them, one of the, one of the issues that young Mark, so Mark's in sixth grade now in book two. He, he loses his temper sometimes. And he gets in trouble at school for hucking a papier-mache pumpkin at another kid's head. And it deflects off his head and hits the teacher in the face.

• 3:28:28Dakota Meyer?

  Oh, man.

• 3:28:29Jocko Willink?

  He gets, he gets sent home from school, last day of school. Anyways, he has to learn to control his temper, just like all kids do. And I know this because I got kids and I know this because I was a kid. And you remember when you were a little kid and you lose your temper and you do dumb stuff even? And when I say little kid, I'm talking like 23 years old.

• 3:28:43Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I was like, sure. I was like, say. Yeah, I do.

• 3:28:48Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm talking about. Don't worry, I got you, I'll get you a copy. Uh, his uncle in the book is, is a seal, was a seal. And he comes to stay with him for the summer and helps him square away these little problems he's got. Yeah, yeah. So that's what that one's about. He also learns about working hard. He gets a job, starts a business. He's. 11 years old, has his own business mowing lawns and pulling weeds. That's way the warrior kid. And way the warrior kid to Mark's mission. You can also get, speaking of which warrior kids. From Irish Oaks Ranch, there's a young warrior kid, 12 years old, business owner. He makes soap.

• 3:29:30Jocko Willink?

  From goat milk, right here in California, on his farm. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, well, it seems like, well, how are you, how does he even? Why are you talking about this? He got in touch with me and said, I want to make good soap. Jocko soap. And I was like, well, who are you? He's like, I'm a 12 year old kid named Aiden. I live on a farm. I'm starting a business. I figure you might want in on the action, Jocko. And I was like, hey, what dude, I'm in. Let's do this. Make some soap.

• 3:30:03Dakota Meyer?

  You might want in on the action.

• 3:30:05Jocko Willink?

  He offered me a piece of the action. I was like, oh, I guess I'm in, man. Warrior kid getting after it. And so, yeah, you can order that soap. At Irish Oaks Ranch, he's dot com. It's, you know, no big deal, soap empire, right? What is, like Johnson and Johnson probably started off making soap. Ivory soap, you think Ivory soap doesn't have some good profitability?

• 3:30:28Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, and the only difference is, the only difference is this kid's starting at 12. You guarantee Johnson Johnson didn't start at 12.

• 3:30:33Jocko Willink?

  No, no.

• 3:30:34Dakota Meyer?

  This kid started 12.

• 3:30:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:30:36Dakota Meyer?

  Oh, yeah.

• 3:30:36Jocko Willink?

  Get on there, just order some of it.

• 3:30:38Dakota Meyer?

  He'll have the kinks worked out before he can even drive.

• 3:30:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, he's all over it.

• 3:30:43Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, I mean, I'm telling you.

• 3:30:44Jocko Willink?

  He's manufacturing soap.

• 3:30:46Dakota Meyer?

  Yep.

• 3:30:47Jocko Willink?

  Think about when you were, I'm, I'm, I mean, let's just, let's just get all of our own loser.

• 3:30:54Jocko Willink?

  Our own loser selves out on the table here. What were you doing when you were 12?

• 3:30:57Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah.

• 3:30:58Jocko Willink?

  Right? I was like smearing buggers on my sister's.

• 3:31:01Dakota Meyer?

  I was still eating dirt.

• 3:31:02Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 3:31:03Dakota Meyer?

  I was still eating dirt.

• 3:31:04Jocko Willink?

  We're just talking losers.

• 3:31:05Dakota Meyer?

  I mean, I was eating dirt. I didn't know what soap was. Like, I was still, I'm telling you, I was eating dirt.

• 3:31:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I, I made up the slogan too. Simple slogan. Simple slogan. And it's, it's actually a great slogan. You know what it is? Jocko Stope. Stay clean.

• 3:31:25Jocko Willink?

  You gotta admit it, man. You gotta admit it.

• 3:31:28Dakota Meyer?

  I gotta tell you.

• 3:31:29Jocko Willink?

  You gotta admit it.

• 3:31:30Dakota Meyer?

  It's a good slogan.

• 3:31:31Jocko Willink?

  The good slogan.

• 3:31:31Dakota Meyer?

  I don't know. I don't know how you came up with that.

• 3:31:36Jocko Willink?

  I'm telling you. Jocko Stope. Stay clean. Right?

• 3:31:39Dakota Meyer?

  Man.

• 3:31:39Speaker 01

  Same way he came up with Jocko Store.

• 3:31:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Jocko Store. Uh, real, I'm real creative when it comes to them, them names. Uh, also, hey, another book, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. If you need to get on the path, stay on the path, be on the path. Move further down the path. If you're having trouble getting after it in life, get the book Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. And then, don't just get the book and read it. You have to actually do something that's in it. But it's pretty clear, it's a field manual. Echo claims to know all about field manuals.

• 3:32:12Dakota Meyer?

  My favorite kind of manual.

• 3:32:13Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You actually know about field manuals. Go into a field manual that tells you how to get after it, so you can do that. The audio version of that is not on Audible. You can't find it there. Why? Because you couldn't cut it up into tracks, which is what you all asked for. It is on Amazon Music, Google Play, iTunes as an MP3. Also, Extreme Ownership. The book that Leif Babin and I wrote. It's about combat leadership. Some of the, actually every topic that we talked about today when it came to leadership and organizational issues. It's all, it's all things that are inside Extreme Ownership. Get that. And it's not just about war, but it's about life, it's about business.

• 3:32:56Jocko Willink?

  And on top of that, we have a leadership and management consulting company. It's called Echelon Front. We solve problems through leadership. Every problem that any organization has can be solved through one thing and one thing only. Leadership. That's it. So if you got problems, call us. Echelon Front, me, Leif Babin, JP Danelle, Dave Burke.

• 3:33:23Jocko Willink?

  Echelonfront.com. Of course, also, we have the muster. It's a leadership gathering. It's a leadership gathering, seminar, conference, gathering. And that's what we do. We, we get together. We have all kinds of leaders come. We present, we talk about issues, we give pragmatic, actual tactics and techniques on how to lead people. If you want to like, come to a conference and get all happy and clappy and make hugging promises to the guy that's sitting next to you, don't come to this conference. That's not what this conference is. We're not singing and dancing at all. No.

• 3:34:06Jocko Willink?

  We talk about, we talk about how to lead. That's what it is. So if you want to learn how to lead, come to the, to the muster. There's only two of them in 2018. Only two of them. One of them, Washington DC, May 17th and 18th. One of them, San Francisco, October 17th and 18th. That's it. We're not going to, what's the name of your hometown? Columbia, Kentucky. We're not going to Columbia, Kentucky for the muster. Why not? We couldn't find, we couldn't, we couldn't, your barn wasn't big enough to hold it in. Can we expand it? Yeah, I'll, I'll work on it for next year. Work on it. Uh, we actually did one in Austin. If I'd known you at the time, you would have been there. Yeah, awesome. And let me know if you want to come to one of these. We're, but we're not doing it in Columbia, Kentucky.

• 3:34:51Jocko Willink?

  Wow. We're, we're not doing it in, what's another random place? Omaa Kauai Hawaii. We're not doing it in Hawaii. If you want to come, you gotta come to one of those to register. By the way, they've all sold out. We've done four of them. They've all sold out. This one's going to sell out too. Register extremeownership.com. And we, okay, we raised the prices.

• 3:35:14Jocko Willink?

  Once we hit a certain date, why do we do that? Why do we raise the prices once we hit a certain date? To make more money? No. No, I'm just kidding. No, we actually don't want people to do that. Because what the reason we do is we want to incentivize people to register early so that we can block enough room, order enough food. Plan. Plan correctly, get the venue set up the right way. So, we're trying to make people come early. So, we, it's actually a penal, we're penalizing you. Yeah, yeah. For being slow. Prefer procrastinating. Yes, procrastination, you're gonna pay. That's right. Oh, it's a procrastination penalty. I like where you're coming from.

• 3:35:50Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, that's good.

• 3:35:51Jocko Willink?

  If you wait, you pay. I'll take credit for that. We like people that get after it. Don't put that as one of Jocko's, okay? Okay, you'll get credit. You'll get credit, I think.

• 3:36:00Dakota Meyer?

  Sounds good.

• 3:36:01Jocko Willink?

  But you'll get a percentage. Because you're running off my lead and I get a little cut. Ah, I like it. Alright, so that is that. And until the muster, if you have questions or feedback for us, we are, we are ready to receive on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on... Dash, Facebook, y'boah. Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink and Dakota is on the interwebs in a big way. In a big way. On Twitter, at Dakota underscore Meyer. That's how we linked up, by the way, via Twitter. It is, it is. Like, I can't believe you responded to me, it's so cool. And I'm like, I can't believe you said something to me. Couple little kids.

• 3:36:45Jocko Willink?

  On Instagram, Dakota Meyer, oh three seventeen. Sniper. No, just oh three seventeen. Dakota Meyer, that's, that's Instagram. On Facebook, Sergeant Dakota Meyer. You can just look Dakota Meyer and it pops right up, because you're kind of the man. You have a podcast? I do. You have your own podcast? It's called Owning It. Owning It, with Dakota Meyer. Now, you, you kind of took that from my book, Extreme Ownership. No big deal. I did. Take a little slice of that. That's cool. You have Dakota Meyer dot com is another place. So like I said, that's why I said you're all over the interwebs. Cause clearly you are all over the interwebs. You got a YouTube channel?

• 3:37:22Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, I got a YouTube channel.

• 3:37:23Jocko Willink?

  What's that called?

• 3:37:24Dakota Meyer?

  Uh, it's, it's just Dakota Meyer. So I've got the YouTube channel, just Dakota Meyer where my podcast goes up. It's on Own the Dash.

• 3:37:31Jocko Willink?

  Own the Dash, what does that mean?

• 3:37:32Dakota Meyer?

  Uh, so you know, Own the Dash comes from a poem Lynda Ellis had wrote called The Dash and uh, you know, I, I felt like, I felt like people in America just needed something to hold on to and uh, you know, so I, I always look at what is success and how do I want to be remembered? And that's kind of like a big thing for me and I uh, so Lynda Ellis wrote her poem and talked about how like at a funeral, you know, a man stood to speak and he referred to the dates, you know, on the tombstone from the beginning. You know, with the, the date, the, the person was born, the day he died. And really those are the two, only two days in your life that you don't make any decisions or have any control of.

• 3:38:11Dakota Meyer?

  And everything else, what matters is that dash in between. And so how are you going to own your dash? What is your dash going to look like? Because you can control that. You can control what that dash looks like, how, you know, how fulfilling it is, how selfish it is, how giving it is. I mean, you control it by your decisions every single day. And what do you want your dash to look like? How do you want to be remembered? Because it doesn't matter how much money you have. It doesn't matter how, whatever you did, the empires you built, what matters is how you changed people's lives. And that's how you're remembered. And where your true success in my mind is you'll be defined will be what people say about you at your funeral. And so that's where it comes to me is, is Own the Dash. It's where the idea of it came from. So own your dash, you know?

• 3:38:54Jocko Willink?

  And you do public speaking as well?

• 3:38:56Dakota Meyer?

  I do. I do public speaking. I go around and do.

• 3:38:58Jocko Willink?

  You get in there and talk to businesses and teams?

• 3:39:01Dakota Meyer?

  Yeah, you know, I come in, talk to businesses, teams, give my leadership principles of, you know, what I believe to make success, you know, I'm, listen, I'm simple though. But you know, what, what I feel like, you know, my life, I, I talk about my story and kind of what happened to me. And then I come around and I, what does that mean to me? Right? What does that mean? Like, you know, every story without uh, every story or experience that you go through that doesn't have a meaning afterwards is a wasted experience. And uh, so I talk about that and I just, you know, do a lot, do a lot of public speaking, trying to, I just want to inspire people. I'm like, I just, you know, I just want to, honestly, I just want to change the world.

• 3:39:37Jocko Willink?

  No big deal, just want to change the world, that's it.

• 3:39:39Dakota Meyer?

  No, I just want to change the world.

• 3:39:40Jocko Willink?

  Awesome, man, awesome. Did I miss anything else?

• 3:39:44Dakota Meyer?

  No, I don't think so, I think that's, I think that's everything, um, yeah.

• 3:39:47Jocko Willink?

  Anything, any other projects, anything else everybody needs to know about?

• 3:39:52Dakota Meyer?

  No, no, listen, I can't, I can't tell you how much I appreciate you having me on.

• 3:39:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's an honor to have you on. Echo, you got anything else?

• 3:39:58Dakota Meyer?

  No, thank you very much for coming on. Thank you.

• 3:40:01Jocko Willink?

  Closing thoughts, Dakota?

• 3:40:03Dakota Meyer?

  You know, listen, it's, uh, I, I got a lot out of this podcast, I got a lot of, uh, you know, just hearing your perspective and, you know, uh, I just, I, I just want people out there to know that, you know, I'm no different than anybody else. The only difference is opportunities that's been put in front of me. And, um, you know, I appreciate you having me on.

• 3:40:27Jocko Willink?

  Well, man, it's, it's obviously an honor to have you on, um,

• 3:40:33Jocko Willink?

  thank you for your, thank you for your service, uh, both in the Marine Corps, and what you continue to do now to try and help people and, and just change the world, which is what you're trying to do now, which is awesome, and

• 3:40:51Jocko Willink?

  it's been a true honor to have you on, again, you know, to be sitting across the table from you, and knowing what you've been through, and to see where you are now is, is awesome. And it's, it's my honor to be sitting here.

• 3:41:06Jocko Willink?

  And of course, to all the servicemen and women on the battlefields around the world, doing what must be done to protect us.

• 3:41:21Jocko Willink?

  Thanks to all of you.

• 3:41:25Jocko Willink?

  And finally,

• 3:41:28Jocko Willink?

  to those service members that made the ultimate sacrifice.

• 3:41:36Jocko Willink?

  Who gave the last full measure for us.

• 3:41:44Jocko Willink?

  Thank you.

• 3:41:48Jocko Willink?

  May you rest in peace and know without question

• 3:41:57Jocko Willink?

  that we will never forget.

• 3:42:03Jocko Willink?

  And until next time, this is Dakota Meyer,

• 3:42:08Jocko Willink?

  and Echo, and Jocko.

• 3:42:12Jocko Willink?

  Out.