444: When Outnumbered and Outgunned, FIX BAYONETS, Attack, and KEEP ATTACKING. W/ Brian Wood.

>Join Jocko Underground< https://www.jockounderground.com/subscribe former soldier in the Princess of Wale's Royal Regiment who was awarded the Military Cross https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Military_Cross for gallantry in the Battle of Danny Boy. 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 444 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening. Before I knew it, we were heading down Route 6, getting ready to extract casualties. The back of the Warrior as always was hot, dark, sticky, uncomfortable. Stick was giving me, Taylor and JC, constant updates, what we were going to do when we got there. When boom, out of nowhere, the vehicle is hit by overwhelming firepower. The armor of a Warrior is thick, but as I knew from previous engagements, it is not impenetrable.

• 0:37Jocko Willink?

  The vehicle skidded to a halt as the ambush continued, rocking from the rat-a-tat-tat of gunfire and the boom of RPGs. Jesus, Stick. I could hear Jean-Claude Fowler, the gunner, shout, "Contact, wait, out." Stick issued a fire control order, then JC started to return fire, engaging the militia stronghold. We'd been shot so many times over the previous weeks, the fact that someone was firing at us didn't faze me. What was difficult and what made me more concerned was where we were being fired at from. It was normal for someone to take a pot shot from a window or rooftop.

• 1:19Jocko Willink?

  It felt unusual for it to happen in the middle of nowhere. Where the fuck were we? The only info I had was that we were going to extract two casualties, but this firefight was nowhere near our rendezvous. It was all a bit mixed up and confusing. Stick and JC continued communicating with each other while they tried to work out what was going on and how many enemy positions there were. All I could do was sit there, listening to the rounds spraying up against the vehicle. With a clunk, I could hear the chain gun failing to fire, a fuck from JC, and a grab for his LMG. He switched from using that on the turret to dropping down and firing the 30mm cannon.

• 2:01Jocko Willink?

  I kept my mouth shut. That's your job at that point. There's so much radio feed and the gunners really need to concentrate. So you have to give them that time, let them get on with it, rather than bombarding them with questions.

• 2:15Jocko Willink?

  Eventually, after what seemed like an age of being bombarded, I asked Stick what was going on. A stronghold, he told me. Looks like they were dug in. There were a lot of militia fighters, ten to fifteen, Stick estimated, and a load of weaponry around their position. Wait out, Stick said. The firefight continued. I sat there poised, taking in the information Stick had just told me. Then I passed it on to the others in the back. There's a stronghold, ten to fifteen militia. We are engaging. Wait out, lads. Woody, Stick said over the intercom, prepare you and your men to dismount. Whoa, dismount? Say that again, I said, as the engagement continued to boom away outside.

• 3:01Jocko Willink?

  I want you to prepare to dismount, Stick repeated. We're not having any effect here. There's in these zigzag type trench positions, just popping up, engaging, getting down again. Let me know when you're ready. I'd been told. I explained Stick's command to the others in the back. They had the same what the fuck response I had had. You want us to go out into that?

• 3:25Jocko Willink?

  As I was telling them, I could feel my heart going ten to the dozen, smashing up against my body armor. Holy fuck, I was thinking. We need boots on the ground, I told the boys. We're going to get out of this vehicle and launch a close quarters counterattack onto that stronghold, okay? Stand by and get ready to go.

• 3:46Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is an excerpt from a book which is called Double Crossed, written by Brian Wood MC. Now, if you're familiar with the acronym MC, you know what stands for Military Cross, which is a British military award for gallantry during active operations against the enemy. It's the third highest military decoration in the British military.

• 4:13Jocko Willink?

  There's only been three hundred and seventy five of them awarded since nineteen seventy nine for actions in Northern Ireland, the Falkland Islands, the Persian Gulf War, and of course, the modern wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. And Brian Wood certainly earned his award, and we will get into that. But on top of that, he and his fellow soldiers were wrongfully accused of war crimes, smeared in the press, shamed in public, berated by lawyers, before eventually being completely cleared of all wrongdoings and restored to their rightful

• 4:55Jocko Willink?

  place as heroes and patriots. And it's an honor to have Brian Wood here with us tonight to share his experiences and lessons learned. So Brian, thanks for joining us.

• 5:09Speaker 01

  Thank you for having me.

• 5:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this has been a long time because several years ago, I read a quote from your, from you at, on the battlefield at Gettysburg, and somebody filmed it, and somebody posted it, and you saw it.

• 5:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:27Jocko Willink?

  And that's, that's how we originally linked up.

• 5:29Speaker 01

  I was actually running, and I never really look at my phone when I'm running it. I'm in the zone, but my, it just kept on pinging and pinging in my leg, and I thought that there's obviously something wrong with the family. So I've stopped, which I wasn't happy about. I've stopped my stopwatch, and I looked at my phone, and I just see tagged Jocko, Jocko, Jocko, and I was like, what? And I'm like, this is insane. So, and then I messaged you to say thank you. And it's already humbling experience for you to read and extract out from the Battle of Danny Boy. And, and then here we are, a couple of years later.

• 6:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's been, it's been quite a few years for that. Yeah, so I'm, I'm super stoked that you could make it here. And obviously, this book is, it's called Double Crossed. It came out in two thousand and nineteen. If people don't have it yet, then get it. It's a fantastic book. It's part, it's like part war and part, what are those? courtroom drama because of of this whole situation that took place which we'll get into. But um, you know, I figure we might wanna start start time, start the beginning, start at the beginning of of this whole scene. How it all started for you, uh, and like a British person, I guess.

• 6:39Jocko Willink?

  The chap, the first chapter is called kicking off, which is a little bit of a reference to what we would call soccer, what you would call football. You say, I didn't want to be a soldier. When I was growing up, I won, I wanted, I was desperate to be a footballer. And so you were good too. Clearly you were good. You were, you were in the Headley under tens.

• 6:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 6:58Jocko Willink?

  And then you got picked up, a couple of you and your, a couple of your buddies get picked up by Aldershot. What's that like a, just another town, another city?

• 7:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, Aldershot's just another town up the way with just a better prospect for for developing as a football player.

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  And this is when you're like ten, eleven, twelve years old, something like that?

• 7:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:16Jocko Willink?

  And it's, it's the main sport in England, kind of by a long shot, right?

• 7:22Speaker 01

  It's huge. I mean, soccer is everything in the UK.

• 7:25Jocko Willink?

  I mean, in America, we have baseball, we have football, we have basketball. And those three are huge and those three are probably all pretty equal. And then you, of course, you have hockey, you have so many sports here in America.

• 7:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:36Jocko Willink?

  But in England, it's like soccer.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:40Jocko Willink?

  That's what you're doing.

• 7:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's the governor of sports. So, yeah, I mean, you know, I was playing at a decent level and I was getting fast bowled really. To getting pushed because, you know, I was just a little, I don't know, a little bit better than than my peers and I actually was playing above my age group as well. And then, um, yeah, just get.

• 8:00Jocko Willink?

  And you get offered, what's, what's the Chelsea School of Excellence?

• 8:04Speaker 01

  So it's for talented kids to go into this school of excellence, which is just then focused on developing the talent. And with Chelsea being a Premier League football club, it's, it was huge.

• 8:19Jocko Willink?

  Is, are those two attached? Is the premier club attached to the Chelsea School of Excellence?

• 8:24Speaker 01

  Uh, the Premier League is the league and Chelsea is within the league, but it's developed by like the FA, which is a football association. And there's, you know, the Premier League will oversee it with that umbrella. So.

• 8:38Jocko Willink?

  And then you had a hard time getting to that because it was too far for you guys to commute. And your dad was in the army.

• 8:42Speaker 01

  That's right. My dad was serving. My dad, you know, has a vision. To be honest, he's like my hero. I know it's a bit of a cliche, but my dad really was my idol. And I witnessed him from, you know, putting on his uniform to looking after himself physically for really testing himself. And he called me his shadow. I just followed him everywhere. Because I just really worshipped the ground he walked on. And he was trying his hardest with me with training. But it was over the other side of London and TM twenty five. Those who you know, it's like the biggest car park in the world. So you just, it was a struggle because I would get to training and then I was late.

• 9:26Speaker 01

  I was having to warm myself up, then try and get in the zone. And it's hard performing at the highest level, even at that young age, you're on it. And it was so difficult for me to, to get to the performance where I needed to be in such a small space of time when they've had twenty minutes on me. It's just, it was tough. So we had to make a decision after that year. And um, yeah, my dad just couldn't afford to take the time off and he was relying on friends to take me across and my mom was working. So it was just, it was unfortunate, but it's, it's life.

• 10:00Jocko Willink?

  And then the next step, so you end up playing a place closer to home, right? Is that?

• 10:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, Reading.

• 10:04Jocko Willink?

  Reading?

• 10:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:06Jocko Willink?

  And then you get picked up for the youth training scheme.

• 10:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:11Jocko Willink?

  And, and that you say in the book is the last step before being offered a professional contract. Can you get signed as a footballer in England as a, as like a young kid? Don't young kids get signed?

• 10:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can now. I mean, it's crazy what happens now. I mean, they are looked after. Cotton wool, they've just, as a young prospect, they're just guided and nurtured. But only like two percent will make it. So it's, it's a, it's a small percentage. I bet like special forces, only a small percentage will make the cut.

• 10:43Jocko Willink?

  So you end up getting into that system and I guess you write about in the book that the system culminates in a match between these two different academies and the match comes, it's a rainy day and you play kinda okay, but you don't play great and then you get called by the coaches, all the players are sat down or gonna get called in one by one of the coaches, you say in the book, one after another, the players were called in to see if the coaches who were sat waiting for us, they sat me down and told me what a pleasure it had been to see me grow and excel while part of their school of excellence, but the coach continued, I'm afraid we're not going to take you on. The reason they gave me was my build, that I was too skinny and too lightweight on the ball. We have got someone else in your position,

• 11:26Jocko Willink?

  the coach said, who is a lot stronger and more developed, so we are going to go with him. I was devastated massively so. So how old are you at this point?

• 11:35Speaker 01

  14, 15. So 16 is when you go into, you know, full contract mode.

• 11:41Jocko Willink?

  And you couldn't go on like a pizza and beer diet to gain weight? They do that with, they do that with basketball players in America. If they're really, because guys will grow and they'll be super tall and they'll be too small, too skinny and they'll put them on, on like a full pizza and beer diet just to gain weight. They didn't have that program for you?

• 11:59Speaker 01

  But do you know what? If I had have gone through now, this is what they want. They want 0% body fat, quick, nimble, strong, you know, with, with, with corn. And obviously, I just missed that, that cut by a couple of decades, but it was my first experience of not making the cut and how adversity looks to, to get over that heartbreak because I only knew football. It was my life.

• 12:27Jocko Willink?

  But isn't there, you can't say, all right, well, I'll be back next year. I'm gonna go gain weight. I'll be better. I'm not, is it, or is it kinda like, once you don't make it, you're probably not gonna make it?

• 12:38Speaker 01

  No, I mean, my dad. Brings it up now and again about should I wait, be patient, but I felt left out at home where my brother was serving within one Scots. My brother, my dad was serving and then there was me kind of not in this conversation. And I'm thinking, right, and I just had the biggest knockback I've ever experienced. And I thought, I'm going to go and do something about this. I want to be on that table, having these conversations with the people that I look up to the most.

• 13:09Jocko Willink?

  And that was your dad, your dad you talk about in the book. He joined the army. He grew up in like housing estate or council estate in Glasgow.

• 13:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:19Jocko Willink?

  Um, rough upbringing. And you say he joined the army, joining the army got him away from home, but the hardness he experienced there continued in the military. He lost his mate to an IRA ambush in Northern Ireland. He'd been out patrolling my dad's sections. My dad's section and his mates were covering each other across open ground when there was gunfire. My dad was asked to stop all traffic in and out of town. He then got a message over the radio to say that two men were down. His friend had been killed by the IRA. The military funeral that followed was something that will stay with him forever. My dad couldn't bring himself to go back to his friend's graveside until the fortieth anniversary of his death. And he laid a poppy wreath.

• 14:01Jocko Willink?

  So clearly the military had a huge influence on you. Your dad had a huge influence on you. And then you go off by yourself to the army careers office in Aldershot. And there he speaks to the recruiter. The recruiters have a reputation, recruiters in America, I'm, I don't know if you know this, but the recruiters in America have the reputation of like, they'll do anything to get you to join.

• 14:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 14:24Jocko Willink?

  Is it the same thing?

• 14:25Speaker 01

  He's held me the dream.

• 14:28Jocko Willink?

  Uh, he talks to you, he's from the Princess of Wales Royal Regiment, the PWRR. And he tells you, you'll feel a part of something, he told me. You'll feel, you'll be fighting along some of the bravest men you'll ever meet in your life. The regiment was nicknamed the Tigers for a reason. You'll forge relationships that will be with you for life. You'll end up leaving the regiment one day, but being a part of the regiment will never leave you. I was sold. I wanted to sign there and then, but because I was still 16, about three months short of my 17th birthday, I had to have the parent's signature to do so.

• 15:02Jocko Willink?

  So you have to tell your mom about this, right? How did your mom feel about it?

• 15:07Speaker 01

  I tried to get my dad to tell her, but he was like, no, this is something you need to do. Cause my mom already lost a son to the, to the army. My brother was away serving and I was the only, you know, her son left remaining really. And I was like, mom, she knew, she knew, she just said, when I spoke to her, she just had this like feeling of drainedness come away from her body. When I was like, I'm off. And, um, and she was like, look, if you thought about this, what about your football? And I was like, I'm going, I'm like, gone, I'm done. I just need your signature. My dad was like.

• 15:43Jocko Willink?

  And this is pre-war, so this is 1997.

• 15:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 15:48Jocko Willink?

  So that's it, you go.

• 15:49Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 15:50Jocko Willink?

  You're, are you even 17 yet when you actually leave?

• 15:53Speaker 01

  I just turned 17, yeah.

• 15:55Jocko Willink?

  You end up going to, uh, Basingbourne, am I saying that right?

• 15:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:59Jocko Willink?

  September 1997, that's your basic training.

• 16:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 16:01Jocko Willink?

  And you got P T, physical training, you're, this is your boot camp, so how's boot camp?

• 16:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, it was a challenge. I was only young and I was having to figure out values, standards, which was not a problem for me because my dad's values and standards at home was formidable. I mean, they were just on another level and it was great because I was molded quite well from home. And then getting to understand the values that the British Army instill. And everything what comes with it, the physical fitness, the navigation, the lockers inspections and all that sort of stuff just kind of fell into place. But yeah, it was a little bit of a shock to the system initially, but you have to adapt and we had, we didn't have mobile phones them days. So I, once a week I'd get on like the, the phone box outside and

• 16:51Speaker 01

  just wait to speak to my mom and dad and say, look, all's good, don't worry. Um, I'm attacking each day. I'm trying my best and yeah, it's all good.

• 16:59Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so you get done with boot camp, then then you go to um the infantry training center at Cataric.

• 17:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:07Jocko Willink?

  You say here, here the training was more fine tuned and focused on your particular trade. For me, that was infantry being a front line soldier. That's what you knew what was your dad infantry?

• 17:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, and my brother.

• 17:17Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you didn't really have a choice in this?

• 17:19Speaker 01

  No.

• 17:19Jocko Willink?

  That's what you were doing?

• 17:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:22Jocko Willink?

  Uh, and how was that training?

• 17:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like my trade training. It was the fundamentals of closing with and destroying the enemy. That's our mission statement. And um, yeah, it was a demand. It was a like a whole different step up from what I was used to in Bazenborn. Because it was all infantry, it was infantry instructors and you were learning your craft, sharpish. And um, yeah, you were you were tested and you got to feel uncomfortable. To the point where you were comfortable being uncomfortable in a long stage of the training. And um, just try to embrace it. I was like anyone. I was making a lot of mistakes. I was figuring my way out. But I made sure I showed up on parade with a purpose and with a desire to pass.

• 18:08Speaker 01

  And that was my sort of, yeah, the way I thought about things.

• 18:12Jocko Willink?

  Now, did you, are you getting taught by veterans from the Falklands and from Northern Ireland? So there was, there's guys that have combat experience that are teaching you?

• 18:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, and there was a an expectation because they'd been there, they'd seen it, they'd smell it and they'd delivered. And um, and there was boundaries and you just couldn't drop below the boundaries. Otherwise, you're accountable for that. Because they had so much credibility of operating on operations that you listened because it was real. And um, you know, you sat up and they come into the room. And yeah, just try to be the best that you could be as an individual. And like I said, there was loads of times that I was on show parade because I got something wrong or forgot something and. But it's part and parcel of building you up and creating this character that needs to take hard hits, needs to learn from mistakes.

• 19:03Speaker 01

  But the fundamental is you've just got to keep going and hang in there.

• 19:10Jocko Willink?

  So you get done with that and you get assigned to your regiment and they're part of the five airborne brigade, they're down in Canterbury and you got some good advice from your dad. You say, my dad said to me, remember that you're going into a rigid and structured organization. Don't open your mouth, don't say the wrong thing, keep your head down for the first six months and you'll be, and you'll be on to a winner. The other bit of advice my dad gave me was to make sure that I kept fit. If you are fit, you'll be sorted, he said. What you didn't want was to find yourself singled out as a weak link at the start. Once that happened and you identified yourself as a potential target, that's when you'd start attracting unwanted attention. I knuckled down, made sure I was

• 19:52Jocko Willink?

  in the top 10 of any physical exercises that we did and I was left alone. In fact, the only way I didn't keep my head down was with my football. So you end up, so you stay in great shape, but you end up playing football for the regiment.

• 20:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 20:07Jocko Willink?

  And of course, you're gonna, there was guys, there was guys that would have, have that happen in the SEAL teams where they would be good at like swimming. There was a whole team of, some country has a event, like a military event, it's running and swimming in this little obstacle course. And if guys were really good athletes, they'd go there and do that. And you know, for the, for the guys that weren't doing it, they'd say, oh, you know, you're going to train again. Cause we gotta go out and lug our freaking weapons around in the desert. And yeah, so it sounds like this was a similar situation. You guys are getting kitted up to go out and train for operations and you're running around the football field with your shorts on.

• 20:47Speaker 01

  I've got a, an experience, we were just about to go away for two weeks and it was a hard exercise. And I packed my kit, it was all on the hull underneath the coaches and I was on the back of the coach. And then the company sergeant major comes on the coach and says, where's Wood? And I was a private soldier, a young lad. And the whole coach went silent. I thought, oh no. And he's like, get off the coach. You're gonna go and play football for two weeks. And I could try to do the gauntlet because everyone was just smashing me, dead legs, grabbing me, like giving me a shake. And then I'm a little bit cheeky. So when I got off the coach, I got my bags off the hold and as it drove past, I just stuck my thumb in the air. Say all the best lads.

• 21:33Jocko Willink?

  You end up doing some good stuff. You play in South Africa. You end up going to Brazil and playing. It seemed like kind of a cool, kind of a cool experience. You enjoyed the experience. Then you say this, but I'd also joined to see some action. I was desperate to experience that. As the millennium drew to a close and a new one began, I was about to get my wish and then some. So you end up going to Kosovo.

• 21:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:56Jocko Willink?

  In 2000, you're 20 years old, which is pretty awesome. You do some pre-deployment training, you know, with your, with your platoons, soldiering, tactics, planning. And then you end up on, on this tour. You say it was a three-pronged tour in what we had, in that we had three locations that we rotated around each fortnight. First, we were in base camp as QRF. Second, we were based in the town's police station, offering protection to some of the city's residents. On the third rotation, we were based at gate three, which was on the border crossing between Kosovo and Serbia. How's your op tempo on that deployment?

• 22:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, for me, it was the foundations of understanding what it takes to go on ops. I was 20. I'd not experienced this before and pre-deployment was probably about four months. And there is no gray areas. You've got to be on it, even as a private soldier. Be hypervigilant, listen to what's been, you know, told and directed and coached and mentored. And, um, and take action on that. So that was a really sort of first time that I knew that I needed to perform at a high level. And, um, like I said, it was good foundations for me to build me up as a, as an individual, as a young soldier, just about to go on to operations. And, um, going on operations, understanding local culture, what we're there for.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  Um, and, you know, what tasks that we were expected to carry out. It was challenging initially to understand, um, having Serbian residents in an Albanian, you know, where we were and what that took and the rotations that were involved within that. Cause we were actually staying with some of the grannies. So we would actually in the granny's house and she had like. All these flea biting cats. We were sleeping bags. It was so random. Honestly, it's like there's a portaloop that we could use and then we would just garden her. Because they are opportunists. They just they they don't want them within, you know, their country. So it was a.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  It was it was different to what I was thinking. I thought peacekeeping, it would be just, you know, dominating the ground. Getting engaged with village elders or trying to understand what they needed to be restructured or rebuilt and then mentoring. You know, their police and and their army. But I was staggering on some granny. You know, for for a long period of time. We had two. We had a granny's house and then we had a granny flat. And honestly, Jocko, I staggered on this granny flat for probably four months and I didn't see her once. And I honestly thought this is a wind up. There's no one in there. And then one day.

• 24:42Speaker 01

  She looked and she said something to me, pointed her walking stick and shut the shut the door. And that was the last time I seen her, literally once, the six month tour.

• 24:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So that's what it was, a six month tour?

• 24:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:54Jocko Willink?

  You end up meeting Lucy in what was in the year two thousand?

• 24:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:58Jocko Willink?

  And that that this is, well, she's a huge part of the story because she ended up getting married to her.

• 25:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:03Jocko Willink?

  Um, was and that was what in between in between tours?

• 25:07Speaker 01

  Yes, I actually met her just before I went away to Kosovo.

• 25:10Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  And then on my R and R, we we took a big risk and we went away together because we hadn't been dating for that long. And then I had two weeks of rest and recuperation and we went away.

• 25:21Jocko Willink?

  Oh, in the middle of your deployment?

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:22Jocko Willink?

  Oh, sweet.

• 25:23Speaker 01

  And we went away to Future Ventura and just took a risk because the bottom line is it's either gonna work or it's not. Yeah, massively.

• 25:33Jocko Willink?

  Also, fast forward a little bit. By the way, I'm not obviously wrong reading the whole book. Get the book so you can get all the details. But um, you say in between the two tours of Kosovo, because you end up going back to Kosovo, the whole political landscape shifted in September two thousand one. I was back in the UK training with the army football team in Aldershot. I was in the showers when somebody came in and said an aeroplane. Just hit the Twin Towers. At this point, I must confess that I don't didn't even know where the Twin Towers were in New York, you idiot. I got showered and dressed and went out to watch the events unfold on TV. Because it was the army team, it was a real cross section of soldiers from all sorts of regiments. There from the infantry to the Royal Engineers. Like the rest of the world, it was difficult to take in exactly what we were seeing. But unlike the rest of the world, everyone in that room had a slightly different emotion.

• 26:18Jocko Willink?

  As well as the shock and horror at what we were seeing on the screen. There's a definite sense that we were that there was going to be a response to what was happening. As the US as the US's strongest ally. The British were likely to be there alongside her. That meant war. And that meant us.

• 26:37Jocko Willink?

  So you did you have that feeling? You know, when you say that that meant war, that meant us. What did you think? Did you? Cause I'll tell you after September 11th for me, I thought, hey, we're gonna do some strikes. We're gonna, you know, hit some terrorist camps, drop some bombs. No way would I have predicted freaking 20 years of war, which is what we got. What were you thinking?

• 27:01Speaker 01

  I knew there was gonna be a big response. I knew it was gonna be a massive response because what was unfolding in front of my eyes. I've never seen anything like it and I don't think we will. You know, and hopefully we won't in the foreseeable, but. I knew there was gonna be a huge response and everyone in. That that arena, that. Area that we were all watching it from, they knew they were like, we're going. We're gonna be going sharpish as well. And to be honest, it that's what it was. And yeah, we were sort of packing our kit. And figuring out whether or not going to Iraq. Or to go out to to Afghanistan, it was.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I I didn't think we were gonna be there for two decades, if I'm honest, but I knew there was gonna be an overwhelming. Sense of aggression from us, which we were entitled to do.

• 27:53Jocko Willink?

  You end up getting married, but and then you go back to Kosovo again.

• 27:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:58Jocko Willink?

  Um, you say I went back to Kosovo again for my second tour in June two thousand two. This time it was based in Pristina. And because of my promotion, I had more responsibilities to deal with. I had four guys to look after now. I'd get clear direction from my section commander who then feed this back down the line to my lads, who would carry out what needed to happen. There was more general patrolling on this tour. I was out on foot and in the Land Rovers and Warriors and a lot more not a lot more stop in search of vehicles. The regiment had some good finds, big lorries full of weapon systems. A lot of the regiment had previously been out in Northern Ireland, where they'd been used to this sort of setup and activity, but I was new to it all. So continue to learn. I spent some time listening to others who had operational experience as the sort of things to look out for.

• 28:43Jocko Willink?

  So sounded like that that patrol or that deployment was a little bit of a step up in your soldiering.

• 28:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was in I was in a command appointment. So I was a leader instead of a follower. So I had more responsibilities. I needed to tune in. I was, I'm still am now.

• 29:04Speaker 01

  A sponge. I need to know constantly all the time. If I'm going into a new environment, I want to learn. I want to know. And that's how I was like, I knew there was so much experience within what we had with Northern Ireland. The Falklands that I just really wanted to soak up, you know, what they would do, you know, using the Winthorpe theory. For an example, that was used a lot in Northern Ireland. That was basically if you were the enemy, where would I go? What would I do? And that was a big thing for us. And we, we did quite well from just using that basic theory.

• 29:37Jocko Willink?

  What'd you call the theory?

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Winthorpe.

• 29:39Jocko Willink?

  Winthorpe.

• 29:39Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:40Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:41Jocko Willink?

  I actually never heard of that before.

• 29:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a big thing in Northern Ireland. So basically if you're the enemy, where would you choose to to lie in wait?

• 29:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, we definitely use that theory, but I never heard it called that before.

• 29:50Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, yeah, I was just digging out and desperate for information and and to develop myself as well. Because it's, I believe no one is the universal soldier. People are very good with what they do and what they deliver. And I was trying to to be one of them individuals. I always looked up to certain individuals because they inspired me. They motivated me to be a better individual and a better leader. So it was important for me to. To just gain as much as I could at such a young age.

• 30:21Jocko Willink?

  And are you, while you're in Kosovo, are you thinking at some point we're going to Iraq or we're going to Afghanistan?

• 30:26Speaker 01

  Cause we were armored vehicles as well. Um, I was just kind of waiting.

• 30:31Jocko Willink?

  So did you think it would more likely be Iraq?

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, because of the layout of the ground. Um, and we've kind of been sort of given a pre-brief on that, that it looks like the country of operations will be Iraq, just due to our brigade, we're a, um, I think it was twenty armored brigade at that time. And yeah, we're, because we integrate with Challenger battle tanks. And it would just, it was a perfect fit for, for us.

• 31:02Jocko Willink?

  All right. So you get home from Kosovo in two thousand and three and

• 31:10Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna go here, back to the book. On November fifth, two thousand and three, my regiment was called to a scale A parade at the large gymnasium, gymnasium in Tidworth.

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's it.

• 31:21Jocko Willink?

  Rumors were everywhere. If there's one thing a military organization likes, it's a rumor. If you believed everything you heard, we'd be about, we'd be about to be fighting seven wars simultaneously. But obviously expectations were high. We were in the middle of one of the most active periods of the army had seen in years, if not decades, Kosovo, Afghanistan, and now Iraq, falling on quickly from each other. As I said earlier, the Afghanistan terrain wasn't an obvious fit for us, but Iraq seemed like it might be. Like many of my fellow soldiers, I was hoping that we were about to get the call. The gymnasium was packed and crackling with anticipation. The officers sat in rows in front and the rest of us were stood up in company lines behind. After what seemed like an age, our new CO, Lieutenant Colonel Matt Mayer, am I saying that right?

• 32:04Jocko Willink?

  Matt Mayer finally appeared. He walked to the front and up onto the stage. There were not microphones or anything, but we could all hear what he said. My, my name is Lieutenant Colonel Matt Mayer, he began introducing himself to those who, who he hadn't met before. I'm your new commanding officer and in 20 weeks' time, we will deploy on operations in southern Iraq. It will be a tour like no other. It was a speech that everyone who was in that room would never forget. Mayer spoke powerfully in a way that really captured the drama of the moment. It was an inspira-, it was an inspiring talk, but also one that made clear the realities of the situation we were going to face. Look to your left and to your right, he said. Unfortunately, there are going to be people in this room

• 32:47Jocko Willink?

  who won't be returning home. He confirmed a lot of the rumors that had been doing the rounds and gave us an overview of the situation out there at this point. Overall, the speech was stirring. This is why we joined the military, he told us. By the time he finished, you could hear a pin drop in that place. There were no questions, just the regimental Sergeant Major Chocky White telling us to fall out. So you get the word?

• 33:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:16Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting too, because for that battalion commander, it was, it was like, this will be a deployment like no other, which is what everyone thought. When I deployed to Baghdad for the first time, I was like, oh, I'm so lucky to be here, no one's gonna be able to get to do this, you know, very few. And we ended up doing this for decades, which is, which is wild.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:38Jocko Willink?

  And certainly unexpected. So then you guys go into a workup cycle and training and preparing?

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:43Jocko Willink?

  And how's that, how's the intensity during that?

• 33:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's intense because we have members who were in country fly back and basically assess and test what's going on. So you're under the scrutiny from dismount commanders, which, which was me, to vehicle commanders, to the whole delivery of operations, there'll be officers there watching us go into, you know, I don't know, a deliberate attack or, you know, whatever, whatever sort of exercises that we were conducting. And it will be observed and then we'll go into an After action review and they'll just talk about what's happening out there and what we need to change tweak.

• 34:26Speaker 01

  And um and be better at. So it was all real time, which is great because they've got credibility. They've just they've got. You know, tan faces, the tanned, you know, where they've been with their sleeves up. They've got they've been away. You can see that. And you can see the look in their eyes that, you know, the level that you need to be at because of what's happening out there.

• 34:53Jocko Willink?

  I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. By the time it was announced that we were going to Iraq, Lucy and I were living together in married quarters quarters in Tidworth. And she was expecting. We talked about having kids and wanted them quite quickly. I wanted to be a young dad. I thought that was important because I wanted to be able to compete with them when they were older. Not to be some old dad in his chair when they want to go out and play football. Bailey was a leap year baby born twenty nine February two thousand four. So you got a lot going on.

• 35:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 35:18Jocko Willink?

  And how old are you at this point?

• 35:20Speaker 01

  Twenty three.

• 35:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you definitely have a lot going on. Um, and then it's time to eat again. The book covers all kinds of awesome details about the. Preparation about what was happening with relationship wise. I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. For your your heading to Iraq, you go from Tidworth, you go to RAF Brisnorton. Is that how you say that right? Brisnorton. You go from there to Qatar to Basra, um, a little bit from the book. As soon as as soon as we arrived, everyone was told to put their helmet and body armor on. Then we were escorted onto a coach, which was all blacked out with curtains pulled shut. There was no air con. It was absolutely boiling. Welcome to Iraq. From there, you go to a runway, Sparrowhawk. From there, you get picked up and you get put in the back of warriors.

• 36:05Jocko Willink?

  Which are your armored personnel carrier and you go to Camp Abu Najee. Is that how you say it?

• 36:12Speaker 01

  Abu Najee, yeah.

• 36:12Jocko Willink?

  Abu Najee. You're home for the next few months. So that's where you end up. You end up in this place, Abu Najee. Um. You get there and you, well, I'll get right into it. If I was any, if I was under any illusion about the challenge we faced, that soon went away when we were attacked on 18 April. The first full day that our battle group had taken responsibility for the Maison Province. Cap Abu Najji was situated about seven kilometers to the south, in the center of which was the Simak House, a forward operating base. Getting between the two had always has the potential of being a risky venture. Al Amra was a town on the edge.

• 36:54Jocko Willink?

  A fortnight before we arrived, there had been a riot in the town involving about 3,000 people stirred up by about 300 members of Al Sadr's Mahdi army. So you and I were talking about this before we hit record. So I had just left Iraq. Yeah. Or I probably was leaving it around, I don't know, sometime in April we left. But one of the last missions that we did as SEALs on the ground was we, so we had targeted, everyone had been targeting Sadr for a long time, but the, the, the higher ups were nervous about actually going in and snatching him. And so eventually they figured out, hey, well, we'll try and see what happens if we get one of his lieutenants.

• 37:35Jocko Willink?

  So one of his lieutenants was this guy named Yakubi and my platoon went and captured Yakubi down in Najaf. And when that happened, it was like, it was, it really created a firestorm in the country. It was complete, complete chaos after that. Radically different. So one example I talk about is, you know, we were, we had a little base in Baghdad at Baghdad International Airport and it was just not that big of a deal. It was pretty, pretty mellow there. And as soon as we did that operation, the, the gates were getting attacked. I went up into the towers and like, there's just smoking vehicles on the highways. It was a radical change that took place. Probably not the smartest move.

• 38:20Jocko Willink?

  And again, it was, we were, we were, no one knew what was going to happen. But the military should have at least put the word out of what we were doing, or at least as soon as we did it, put the word out because a lot of, a lot of ground units got caught off guard. Yeah. And they, they got caught, you know, kind of, kind of a little bit relaxed because everything was, was relatively calm. So this is what you show up to. And by the way, you know, that area that you're talking about, the area where you are is like ground zero for the Shia and the Mahdi army. So, uh, Mukhtada al-Sadr, he had this Mahdi army, this Mahdi militia. Yeah. And this is where they were located primarily.

• 39:04Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so this is what you show up to. You show up to the chaos that had just kind of really kicked off.

• 39:13Jocko Willink?

  So going into this thing here, when this, this is happening, you say, that day I was in the back of a warrior on a familiarization patrol with some light, with some of the light infantry. There were three dismounts from the light infantry along with the, a commander and three of us from the PWRR in there. The idea was that we should, this was to be a routine patrol where we would be taken to different spot codes, get out, have a look around, get our bearings, learn the landmarks. And by spot codes, I mean that Al, Al Amara was divided up on the map into different colors and numbers. So one position would be red three, another would be blue five and so forth. We got to this particular point, yellow three, which was on route to the Simic house. Just as the door was open for us to get out, the place exploded into a riot of noise.

• 39:57Jocko Willink?

  We had barely got out of the vehicle before the air was filled with the boom and smoke of RPG fire and mortar attack. Wow. The attack was deafening and really concentrated. We were getting smashed, so everyone dived back into the vehicle. We didn't return fire ourselves, but left it to the gunners and the warrior to respond. I sat there in the darkness of the back of the vehicle, my heart thumping ten to the dozen, and listened to the battle exploding all around us. This is how it's been for the last two weeks, the commander's in the back of the warrior explained. So, like I said, it's like the last two weeks have been like that.

• 40:33Jocko Willink?

  This had to be a little bit of an eye opener for you. Is that your first time getting shot at right there? And you can't even, you don't even have the opportunity to return, return fire, you just dive back in the vehicles. Yeah. How's that feeling?

• 40:46Speaker 01

  I was like, what is going on here? I was so confused, disorientated because in the back of an armored vehicle, there's only one glass thick armored window and with grit and condensation, you can't see nothing of it. So when you're getting told to get out and the noise and everything else was going on, you're like, what? And then someone else is screaming, get back in. So there was a lot of confusion and this was new to, you could see it. I mean, I was doing stuff like knee jerk reaction sort of stuff, not having like a bit of a soak period or a bit of a commodity control period. I was like a bit of a rabbit in headlights and the other lads who'd been and been there for six months, cool as cucumbers. They're like, relax, this is what needs to happen. Get

• 41:29Speaker 01

  back in, chill out, let's see where the firing points are and then we'll make an estimate. And I was like, like, yeah, hair on fire sort of material. But yeah, that was the first real experience of of being under fire. And that was, yeah, the first which led into every day.

• 41:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you say in the book, I ended the day no wiser than I had been before as to the terrain I was facing. I just had the general sense of it being hostile and hard and unforgiving. We quickly, we quickly got into a routine of doing regular patrols. We were in rotation, a platoon out in the ground on patrol, another on five minutes QRF, which meant five minutes notice to move, and another on 20 minutes notice to move. Only on the last rotation could you take your kit off, your boots off, otherwise you were prepped and ready to go. Yeah, it is crazy being in the back of an armored vehicle. Like I would travel in the back of Bradleys and you just, you just have no idea what's happening. It's freaking terrible.

• 42:25Speaker 01

  I tried to do like the map appreciation, the map to ground, but you just have got no idea. It's so confusing. I found it very, very hard.

• 42:32Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah. It's, I never liked getting in any vehicles. I would prefer to be on feet all day long. Um, well, this is what you end up doing. So this is a, this is a pretty hardcore rotation. You're either on patrol or you're on five minutes QRF or you're on 20 minutes QRF, which is probably when you're sleeping or whatever, because you can take your kit off.

• 42:52Jocko Willink?

  You talk about doing SNAP VCPs, vehicle checkpoints. You're getting stuff thrown at you out in the town. Kids thinking it's funny to throw stuff at you. You, you talk about this, there were a lot of attempts at hearts and minds stuff. Matt Merrow was in the thick of that, trying to have meetings with local leaders, talk the situation through with them. We were given the task of trying to integrate and working alongside the newly formed local police force. We'd take them and give them training at Abu Naji. We'd show them how to set up VCPs, how to spot something which is out of the ordinary. We tried to give them useful information without giving them too much detail on our SOPs. A steer essentially on what was expected without giving too much information away. Yeah, I remember that feeling.

• 43:37Jocko Willink?

  Like you know, you're training these guys. You have to train them in some form or fashion, but you can't give them

• 43:46Jocko Willink?

  information that's going to put you at jeopardy. Yeah. That's a rough one. I, I know we, we, uh, we're getting encouraged to teach,

• 43:56Jocko Willink?

  to form sniper elements and teach these guys like legitimate long range shooting. Yeah. We did not do that. We, we nodded our heads and kind of said, okay, for the long range shooting, we got you. Like, how does 70, 70 meters sound? Like, that would be the long range shooting for them and that's where we train them in. Cause snipers are so scary. And actually train a sniper that could possibly be used against American forces, not happening.

• 44:26Jocko Willink?

  You say in the book, there's a phrase that did the rounds at that time that summed up the experience of being a soldier in these circumstances. Smile, shoot, smile. We were there to try and reassure and rebuild this community and you couldn't do that by being aggressive the whole time. But such was the strength of the insurgency that you couldn't turn the other cheek either. So you'd find yourself switching from a firefight back to shaking hands and smiling at kids and back again. That was how we wanted to approach things. But the longer the tour went on, the harder that was to maintain. Friends of mine were getting hurt by the people you were expected to smile at. That made it difficult to carry on for sure, a real test of your professionalism.

• 45:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's it's it's difficult to explain that you go out on patrol and you are literally scanning with your weapon and there's kids and families and then there's like a Mujahideen fighter or in your case a Mahdi Army militia guy and that's what you're dealing with and they may or may not be carrying a weapon they may or may not be waving at you yeah this is rough um you say by the start of May it was decided that a stronger response to the growing unrest and rising insurgency was needed the consequence of all this was the decision to take the fight to the insurgents and so you guys end up planning a bunch of operations

• 45:51Jocko Willink?

  uh the first one Pimlico is that right Pimlico was slated for uh first of May and they were gonna go out into town arrest a bunch of insurgents you know bomb makers and Mahdi militia commanders and whatnot and there was a group of one company um company one PWRR they were tasked with actually going out and you guys you were gonna be on the QRF ready to go yeah how was the planning for this were you sitting like so so what are you are you a a section leader at this point a squad leader what are you yeah dismount commander so I dealt with anything will dismount outside of a vehicle I'll be in control of and how many guys would you have initially three because of our manpower and then sometimes if there was others on the ground which happened regularly and with

• 46:35Jocko Willink?

  the confusion I'll end up with a couple of blokes from a different platoon because man away or they've gone in for a strike and someone's not followed up and there's been no comms and communication so it's a little bit disorganized how many people can you fit in the back of the warrior eight and you would still you'd still only have like three or four in there yeah me plus two or me plus three sometimes yeah we manpower was strapped why was the manpower so strapped we took 15% casualties within I think the first month and we didn't get the BCRs out till a long time after I just don't I think we were ill prepared for what we're going into and we sort of took it for granted that it was gonna be fine we'll get out there we'll have a tear up with the

• 47:16Jocko Willink?

  enemy for two weeks and then it will all be settled we'll take control of the city wrong answer So when you're, when these briefs are coming down, who are you hearing the briefing from? Is it your platoon leader?

• 47:28Speaker 01

  My vehicle commander. So he'll be on the radio to me, sort of give me a bit of a steer, or if we're in contact, he'll try and PID the enemy like.

• 47:37Jocko Willink?

  What about prior to going out? So in the planning, like in the planning for this mission?

• 47:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll do like rock drills in camp. So big rock drills and then everyone will go into their own level of detail. So even I would stand up in front of all of these senior commanders and give my perspective from the ground at certain areas, whether it's me conducting snap VCPs, a mini raid or, you know, an outer cordon, I'll be expected to deliver, to deliver what I, my responsibilities as a junior commander would be on, you know, them VCPs or, I don't know, a snap ambush. So you're, you're very involved, it's very inclusive at this point. Everyone needs to know their, their role and responsibilities.

• 48:22Speaker 01

  And then you make sure you question the young 18 year olds who, in my case, who are with me to make sure they know what's expected and what's going on. And you can get a feeling of the pattern. That's why we do orders, isn't it? Because you, you want to understand actually where you're at within that full set of orders. And if something goes wrong, which obviously it does a lot, no real plan survives a set of orders. That's why we have to be flexible and, and have contingencies and courses of action. So I learned a lot because I was heavily involved in things and I would also ask a lot of questions to, you know, full corporals. I was only a lance corporal. So if I was, if I was unsure, I wasn't too scared or proud to ask questions if it was going to have an effect and a better effect on the enemy.

• 49:07Speaker 01

  So, yeah, it was very well planned.

• 49:10Jocko Willink?

  It seems like from, from when I've worked with the Brits over the years, which it wasn't a ton, but I definitely did some operations with them.

• 49:19Jocko Willink?

  They always seem to be just very professional and there seem to be a lot less. For lack of a better word, like political happenings. You know, I always, and it might be just because you see more behind the scenes when you're part of, you know, like the American military, you know, I'm working with the army, I'm working with the Marine Corps and I'm much more embedded with them and the SEAL teams. So I'm much more embedded with them. I would always see these like political undercurrents and I would never see that with the Brits.

• 49:49Speaker 01

  No.

• 49:50Jocko Willink?

  Is that an accurate assessment?

• 49:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's not spoken about. It's we're there to do a job and it's two different things in the UK.

• 50:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 50:01Speaker 01

  You know, we've just got to get on with our task at hand and, you know, and a lot of it as well is having the confidence to believe what you're doing is right. And it affected me and I will speak about it, but with the inquiry that affected my confidence to do what was right because I ended up going on two more tours under allegations. So it's, yeah. But what I will say is we are very, very diligent and professional, like, like the Americans I've worked with. I've got a great story that I'm sure we'll talk about when we had a SEAL team attached to us on my second tour, which was pretty epic. And they lived off, I'll digress slightly, but I'm on it now. So they come and joined us

• 50:42Speaker 01

  and they'll work in the waterways from the River Tigris. And we all, my responsibility was as a platoon sergeant at this time was to feed them and give them accommodation in this compound on Leaf Island. And they came and within like two weeks, they were coming up to me and goes, Woody, are we going to get some rations changed? Because I was feeding them and the British rations are basically one menu, corned beef hash, bacon and beans, and something random, treacle pudding. But we had it for two weeks on the bounce. And we were kind of used to it. It's like, whatever. But what they did do is, do you know what? I wish I remembered his name. When they were tied to Exfil, he said to me, he's going to get an underslung and get some Gatorade, 10 man rations. And do you know what? A man of his word.

• 51:27Jocko Willink?

  He did it.

• 51:28Speaker 01

  He'd come over. Yeah. I mean, we were due, Sangha One radioed into me and said, look, we're due an underslung. And I was like, no, we're definitely not. It's not my board. Because I controlled the board of movements to make sure that we were there securing the, you know, the drop zone and stuff. And. They come over, they kick these pallets off and I was like, that is unreal. But do you know what I did? When I got back to Shire Barog Base, I went and got these buses with my, with my men and we drove over to the American Sector. And I managed to get hold of him and say, look, what he did, that small act of kindness was a massive morale. So we still had another, you know, two months on that leaf island. So it was brilliant from him, but I made sure that I went and said, thank you, because that

• 52:09Speaker 01

  it was a big gratitude from, from me for him. And I was like, probably easy for him to do. But it was just like another sort of two weeks and we didn't have to eat these same menu. So yeah, it was a kudos to them.

• 52:23Jocko Willink?

  Ah, that's awesome. Um, going back to this mission. This, this first mission that you guys run, that's the sort of a big, sort of a deliberate mission. You say the troops set off from Abu Najeeh at zero two hundred, the arrest of part of the operation went well. They, but when they come back, they're, they do it under sustained heavy fire. The Madi Army weren't going to let this incursion go without a response. Three members of the Iraqi police have been taken hostage. And unless the detainees were released immediately, they would be killed. All entrances to the cities had been barricaded. To make it worse, the Simic House was revealed to be dangerously low on both food and ammunition. Now supplies need to get through and fast. So again, just to lay this out, the Simic House is in the town.

• 53:07Jocko Willink?

  You guys on the outskirts of the town, the Simic House is like a forward operating base. They're kind of on their own a little bit and you, at this point, they're, they're running low on ammunition. And you say, that's where we came in. I was asked to change call signs to be a dismount commander for whiskey two zero, the vehicle call sign. Because they didn't have a commander, having already, having been ready to go out in as a QRF overnight, we are now assigned to head into town in broad daylight. A lot of what happened, a lot of what was happening was out of my control. I was in the back of an armored vehicle and at the mercy of events. As we drove in, I could hear Second Lieutenant Richard Dean chatting to us over the intercom. He was our eyes as to what was happening.

• 53:50Jocko Willink?

  As we approached a point known as Blue Seven, it was as clear that our situation was starting to get serious. "There's barricades," he said, "burning tires in the middle of the road." I remember him pausing. "This is a come on," he said. At that point, all hell broke loose. The Warrior got absolutely smashed in a way I'd never experienced before. Two missiles and a load of RPGs. It's difficult to be precise as to exactly what happened because of the wall of noise that exploded and ripped its way into the back of the Warrior. There was this blast of heat and a wave that smacked across me. One of the missiles had made its way through the thick armor of the Warrior and I could feel this burning sensation across my face and hair. My skin pricked and stabbed with shrapnel.

• 54:32Jocko Willink?

  It was difficult to see anything because the whole back was immediately filled with thick smoke, but the stench of burning was really strong. I was coughing away. It was so confusing that for a second I wasn't even sure if I was dead or alive. As the smoke started to clear a little, I could see Crucifix. Is that how you say his name? Crucifix. One of the other soldiers in the back who was sat opposite me. He'd got this big chunk of shrapnel embedded in his nose. Irvin, also in the back, had been hit in the leg and was going wild with his LMG. He wanted to get out there and fight back. "Mate," I said, "can you hear it out there?" As the ringing of our ears from the explosion started to quiet down, the heavy noise of gunfire continued, rocking and shaking the vehicle. "We're staying put," I said. Meanwhile, I could hear screaming.

• 55:17Jocko Willink?

  It was Sammy in the gun turret. "I'm burning," he was shouting. "There's a fire. Someone help me." I grabbed the fire extinguisher that was situated above the back door. It was different to the ones where you press a nozzle down and spray. Instead, you smash the bottom of it and throw it into the fire. It sucks all the oxygen away from the fire and that puts it out. As soon as I smashed it, it instantly froze to my hand. I had to throw it off, feeling it rip my skin in the process. Being in that confined space meant that the extinguisher sucked away all our oxygen as well. With that and the smoke, I was finding it difficult to breathe. I got these rags and wetted them down with water from our drinking bottles. The water was hot from being in the back of the vehicle, but was the best I could do.

• 56:01Jocko Willink?

  I passed them around to everyone and told them to cover their faces with them. Throughout all of this, I'd heard nothing from Dean and knew that he must have been hit. In fact, he'd been knocked out by the blast. Sammy meanwhile, had got himself to Dean's rifle and was attempting to return fire to those who had attacked us. It was a disparate situation. The fact that they'd got through the vehicle's armor was frightening. Fucking hell, I thought. I'm not sure we're going to get out of this. I shouted to the driver, Johnson, be Harry. Saying that right?

• 56:29Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 56:30Jocko Willink?

  B nickname, just to drive anywhere and get us out of there. Anywhere, I shouted, just get us the fuck away from the killing area. With a thump and a lurch, Bahary took us forward. There was an almighty smack and a shudder and I realized that he must have driven us straight through the barricade that had been set up. The gunfire echoed on as we lurched forward and the warrior continued to shake. I kept tabs on the others in the back and as I did, I heard sloshing coming from around my feet. Then I smelled it. I looked down and saw the floor of the warrior was starting to fill with diesel. The tank must have been hit and the fuel was pouring in. It was like being driven around in a bomb. One spark of flame and the whole thing could go up.

• 57:11Jocko Willink?

  I can't remember much of the journey to Simic House, to be honest, quite a while, or quite how Barry got us there. Bahary got us there. I knew from accounts afterwards that we'd lost all communication with the rest of our company and that Bahary drove for much of the journey with his hatch open so he could see out of the smoke that was still billowing out, which was incredibly dangerous, given what we were facing. He also helped to get Richard Dean down from his turret before safely getting the warrior to Simic, into Simic House. It was outstanding bravery and he was rewarded with the Victoria Cross for his efforts. I remember when we got there. That the back of the Warrior was opened up by Steve Cornhill, a much more experienced soldier than me,

• 57:53Jocko Willink?

  who looked up to what, who I looked up to when I'd first joined. He opened the door and the look on his face told me everything I needed to know about how bad the situation was. "What the fuck?" he said before helping me get the other dismounts out. I got crucifix out and got him some treatment. A bit of shrapnel he had in his face was from the rocket strike the size of a credit card where he was bleeding quite badly. Eventually, one of the medics took me aside and had a look at me. I had a bit of shrapnel in my arm, a bit of metal. I thought I would be able to pluck it out, but the medic had a look and said it was too deep and right into the bone and that I might need to go back where the main medical center was and have it removed properly.

• 58:36Jocko Willink?

  That's a rough evolution. How freaking, how damn horrified are you when you're in a vehicle that's filling up with diesel?

• 58:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I had no control over that situation, which really panicked me. And that's when I had to be calm in chaos because there were so many different moving parts. But the biggest thing for me was I can't do anything about this situation because the ambush that we're in was so violent, I could hear everything getting, we've had two AT4 Soviet Union missiles coming straight through the side of the armored vehicle and penetrated it, caused devastation in the back with shrapnel. And I just knew the only person I could count on was the driver, who was a young private soldier to get us out of this chaos. And I was just screaming at him, "Drive, just get us out of the killing area."

• 59:28Speaker 01

  And then the diesel was filling up, the smoke from, because we had respirators in there and they were melting and it was just so thick. And it's the only time that I thought.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'm testing, I'm testing my, my nine lives at the moment massively.

• 59:48Jocko Willink?

  This is like three of lives getting checked off.

• 59:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:51Jocko Willink?

  Getting hit with a rocket that penetrates the armour.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:55Jocko Willink?

  Driving around with a bunch of diesel in the back of a vehicle.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  My, my gunner was burnt, he was, he had severe burns, he was on fire and um. My platoon commander was unresponsive on the turret floor. And I was just like, right, this is where we've got to really be calm because panic and flapping is infectious. And it's not good. You've just got to give clear direction, a bit of clarity when all around you is falling apart. And at a young age, I understood that. So I just reassured everyone that it's gonna be okay. You can't get out and have a fight because Irvin was with his LMG over the top of me. Wanted to get out the back door. I was like, sit down, calm down. Crucifix had like his nose was dangling down, not on his lips, just opened up, blood everywhere.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  And um, I said to him, oh, you've got like a, a bit of a nick on your nose, I'm gonna sort it out. And he just looked non-emotional, hard New Zealand guy, unit, just looked at me and was like, yeah, okay, whatever. It's not a nick, is it? I was like, mm, no, but I'm gonna square it away. And then I watched a film called Backdraft. And it was Kirk Russell and in one of the scenes, they wet cloths and I watched this when I was a young boy. And in absolute devastation, I remembered this, he soaked all these cloths and used it as a filter. I didn't even know it worked. I just thought, you know, I remember watching it and it was so thick, so I thought, all right, get this on your faces. Put it on my face and actually, you know, it felt like it worked. It may be a bit of a mental thing, but it made, yeah, a bit of a difference.

• 1:01:28Speaker 01

  And um, yeah, like a hard day in the office.

• 1:01:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I would think if you've got their vehicle filling up with diesel and you either you get hit with something.

• 1:01:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:39Jocko Willink?

  Or you start shooting from in there.

• 1:01:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:41Jocko Willink?

  Or you even get out of the vehicle and you're covered in diesel, like you're gonna catch on fire.

• 1:01:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:45Jocko Willink?

  This is a freaking nightmare.

• 1:01:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a nightmare, absolute nightmare. And I think by when Stephen Cornhill opened the door, this is someone who's a hard man, non-emotional. And he was like, what is this? Blood, diesel, casualties, holes in vehicles, which like these vehicles were meant to be unpenetrable. Two massive gaping holes through the side, like of our Chobham armor, which is our special armor, tested to the extreme, gone. So, yeah, I was like, wow.

• 1:02:17Jocko Willink?

  And you didn't, you guys didn't even get out of the vehicle and shoot?

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 1:02:21Jocko Willink?

  This is all just, just taking it.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, taking a beating massively.

• 1:02:29Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, you also go into this in the book, even though you took a piece of frag in your arm, also your eyes were messed up.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, because of the blast. I honestly thought we hit an anti-tank mine because of the heatwave. The heat went through and just burned. I looked like I had alopecia because chunks of my hair was like gone because the blast come straight through and I even overpowered us. And I was like, shit, we've hit a, you know, an anti-tank mine. And I was then trying to get my bearings and then, you know, tried to, to, to figure it out, but, yeah.

• 1:03:06Jocko Willink?

  And your eyes had been like scratched, your irises had been scratched.

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was basically just the blast and the metal and the frags just ripped through my face and, and I was pebble dashed and because of adrenaline, obviously, it's just like a, I, when I deliver talks, I try to like put into context that it's a drug like no other. I can't explain it. It's like an out-to-body experience, like, and we know a lot of people have been hit and don't realize they've been hit because of adrenaline. And this is like crazy situation. And when I calmed down, because I knew your mind is a weapon. System in its own right. As soon as I was out and I was safe, then the pain started to like start to feel the pain in my eyes were just, I couldn't even blink. It was like glass every time. And I said to one of the lads,

• 1:03:56Speaker 01

  I've damaged my eyes quite bad. I think I can't even blink properly. And they tried to wash them out with um eye wash. And they were just like scratched and damaged. So it was just so painful to blink. And then I was gutted because I was gonna end up being extracted as a casualty, which that happened.

• 1:04:13Jocko Willink?

  Luckily, it wasn't that bad. They were just like pretty minor scratches. Um, well, you did get extracted for a while. You're away from camp for a few days. Um, fast forwarding the book a little bit, they do another operation. Knightsbridge, which you miss, which is on three May. And again, this is this is involving the whole ba- the of the battle group with tanks. This is just to go and resupply the Simic House again. They also wanted to send a little psychological message to the Mahdi army that, hey, we've got power and we're we're in control. And even though they did get the the supplies to the Simic House, it it didn't seem like it left the impact of control.

• 1:04:59Jocko Willink?

  And that made the leadership say, all right, we're gonna do another operation. And this one was gonna be called Operation Waterloo.

• 1:05:06Speaker 01

  So these operations are all London Underground.

• 1:05:10Jocko Willink?

  They're all, oh, yeah, okay.

• 1:05:11Speaker 01

  So it's quite cool.

• 1:05:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Uh, my my buddy would name our his operations from his element when we were in Iraq all after surf spots and around the world. So, um, so Operation Waterloo is next, eight May. And going to the book here, oper- Operation Waterloo involved the whole of C Company, that's twelve warriors, together with a further four Challenger two tanks. That's a big convoy, a real show of strength. We met up at Sparrow Hawk, the airstrip, and got ourselves into assault formation. At zero two hundred hours, we started to rumble into town. The lights of the Iraqi National Guard camp flashed as we went past. Everybody knew we were coming.

• 1:05:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a, that's a pretty good little, uh, show of force going in.

• 1:05:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:06:00Jocko Willink?

  12 warriors, two challenger tanks. It's on. I'm fast forwarding a little bit. We dismounted to check the bridge. I went out with one of the Fijians, Bruce, as a pair, primarily to have a look for wires to make sure the bridges didn't have any IDs or anything attached. Suddenly there was gunfire. We took over and tried to return fire. Work out where they were, where they'd engaged us from. That's difficult enough, but especially in the dark. All you can see is people skipping from building rooftop to building rooftop. They're never in position for a long period of time, so it's all but impossible to get a proper fix on them. All you could do is engage in the general direction of the gunman who were shooting at you. A shout came over the radio. Diff, Corporal Difford, had been hit. Originally it sounded as though he'd been hit in the throat, but it turned out he'd been hit in the foot.

• 1:06:41Jocko Willink?

  He was evacuated. Sergeant Major, Company Sergeant Major Falconer, had a warrior which had been turned into a sort of makeshift ambulance, the Millennium Falconer.

• 1:06:53Jocko Willink?

  And he swept Diff up. Meanwhile, a message came over the radio to mount up. This was easier said than done. By this point, we were about 100 meters away from our vehicles with gunfire blasting away at us. Running back, you really, you're really exposed. I ran head down as hard as I could, probably the fastest 100 meters I'd ever run. Luckily, I made it back. We got over the bridge in the warriors and drove onto Simic House. That was chaos. We remained under attack and just wanted to get the supplies over and back and get back. Remember, at this point, the security of the challenger battle tanks was sitting on the other side of the bridge. Simic House can only take a couple of warriors, so those that could drove, could drive, drove in. The rest of us were ordered to park outside and throw stuff over the walls. That was mental.

• 1:07:35Jocko Willink?

  We were hurling it over. Between the gunfire, we could hear it land with a thud and someone on the other side shouting, cheers, mate.

• 1:07:45Jocko Willink?

  That's about an epic freaking British thing right there. All this gunfire and chaos going over. You guys are throwing stuff over the walls and there's guys going, guys inside saying cheers.

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  Literally like ghetto cakes over the wall. I mean, they were just gonna be all over the floor, but the morale, I didn't even know who's over the other side of the wall. They're like, any, any fags, Woody, any cigarettes, whatever, throwing them over the wall. Just, yeah, you couldn't write it. It was, but that's how intense it was. It was just like you're here, undo the back and get everything out over the walls. And we're just launching like rations of bacon. Anything we had, water, ammunition, just over the top of this wall.

• 1:08:22Jocko Willink?

  How many people were in Simic House? Was it like a company?

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:08:26Jocko Willink?

  So they had, they had a decent amount of people.

• 1:08:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, but they were, they reckon Simic House is similar to Rorke's Drift. They were just under the cosh every day. I mean, there's an incredible book written by Sergeant Dan Mills, who was a sniper, who gives an incredible account of what it was like to operate in Simic House. It was wild.

• 1:08:47Jocko Willink?

  I'll have to check out that book.

• 1:08:48Speaker 01

  It's amazing.

• 1:08:51Jocko Willink?

  Job done, we mounted up, fast forward a little bit. At one point, we got the order to get back in the vehicles and batten down. Someone called in air support, American AC 130 Spectre. I think it was the only time we had that sort of cover while out there. It's amazing thing to behold. They'd got a lock on some of the mortar teams. We'd been fighting and blasted them. The explosions were enormous, the whole ground shook. Have you ever been in an AC 130 before?

• 1:09:11Speaker 01

  No, but it shook this 33 ton armored vehicle that I was in and like it was a ragdoll. And I, we got told to batten down, like this 500 pound is coming in. It was the only 500 pound that was dropped in Alamarra. And it felt like it was right next to me. The whole thing like shook, but it was like, it was quite decent.

• 1:09:32Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit, there was, there was a real buzz about the place after Waterloo. It finally felt like we were achieving, taking the fight to the Mahdi army and asserting our control over Alamarra. That feeling lasted less than 24 hours with no let up in pace. We were back out on patrol the following day and in a convoy with a couple of other warriors in the Challenger two tank. We were heading towards another junction, Blue Eight, when there was this huge fireball. It wasn't us who'd been hit, but one of the other warriors. Sergeant Chris Broome gave a shout. Then the intercom disconnected. What happened? I shouted. It's Louis, someone said. He's been hit. He's on fire. Louis was Sergeant Adam Llewellyn, our platoon sergeant, who is in the vehicle in the front.

• 1:10:16Jocko Willink?

  The man we all looked up to, a real operator. I dismounted and ran out to try and help. Fuck. Louis's warrior had been hit by a petrol bomb. Louis was in the turret and he'd been consumed by the flames. Somehow he'd got out and extinguished himself. It was the most surreal, sickening sight. Stick was running there as well with a fire extinguisher in hand. He used that to put out the flames on the vehicle, which was still on fire. I ran over to where Louis was. It was difficult. It's difficult to describe what a horrific sight it was. The skin was dripping off him, like melting off his body. Just this red, raw, steaming, burning flesh underneath. He was dripping all over the road. The burns were everywhere.

• 1:10:58Jocko Willink?

  His arms were a mess. His eyes were screwed shut and he was screaming for water, for morphine, for anything.

• 1:11:12Jocko Willink?

  You actually try and get him morphine. You're looking for his morphine because that's what the standard operating procedure is. You can't find his morphine. You use your own morphine.

• 1:11:23Jocko Willink?

  You put out the fire. You get him and Stick is also wounded. You get these guys cas of act. Fast forward a little bit. You said there was a lot of upset and anger over what happened to Louis. He was the ultimate professional. I looked up to him. You couldn't wish what had happened to him on anyone. But there was something specifically about it being him that had been hit that stuck with us.

• 1:11:49Jocko Willink?

  The strike rate of people being injured felt disconcertingly high. Diff the day before, now Louis. It was difficult to shake the feeling who was going to be hit next. But what really, really stung was that the petrol bomb had been thrown by a child. A boy no older than 10. That was really hard to get your head around. How someone so young, just a kid, could do that much damage to a guy so big and professional as Louis.

• 1:12:17Jocko Willink?

  How someone so young could be mixed up in this, could feel that way about us. Operation Waterloo had been meant to sort everything out. We'd done the show of strength thing and proved that we could take on the Mahdi army and win. Their response had been to fight back like this, to respond by using the eight, ten year old kid to get back at us. It was sickening.

• 1:12:44Jocko Willink?

  So this is like a mental turning point for you.

• 1:12:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was tough because I said before, going through my career, there was always people that inspired me, motivated me, and I wanted to imitate what I was seeing each day. And Adam was one of them. And when I seen how vulnerable he was, I just, it, it hurt, it hurt. And I just knew from then on, if he can be hit, then it can happen to anyone because he's the ultimate professional and he's gone. His tour has ended. He's got life changing injuries and he's off. And you have to acknowledge that and accept what's happened.

• 1:13:34Speaker 01

  Draw a line and you've got to go forward and be robust and professional as you can. But I'm not gonna lie, it hurts when you see someone in so much pain and the only water you have is boiling hot. And he's screaming and crying for cold water. And you're just spraying red hot water on him. And 20 milligrams of morphine is not even touching the sides and and then we've got my platoon sergeant now with inhalation problems. And he's now casualty act. So we've lost two platoon sergeants who are operators in the space of, you know, five minutes by one child.

• 1:14:19Jocko Willink?

  And you've only been on the ground for what, a few weeks?

• 1:14:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:14:25Jocko Willink?

  You have to start thinking, like, this is a numbers game.

• 1:14:29Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:14:29Jocko Willink?

  You know, if we keep this up, we're losing two, three guys every two, three days. We're gonna make it.

• 1:14:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, and at this point, I was like,

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  we're just very fortunate to have no one killed. I think the day after that Baz Bliss was shot and had a second chest wound, and he still survived. And I was thinking, we've just got to remain positive in such demanding circumstances. But you're right, it's like it was starting to become a numbers game.

• 1:15:04Jocko Willink?

  And then you got the kid.

• 1:15:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, which is difficult to deal with. Um, how do you deal with that?

• 1:15:14Speaker 01

  I haven't got the answers to it. You know, you can eliminate the threat, which is a difficult one to pull that trigger. Yeah, or you deal with someone whose life changed also. So it's a tough, it's a, it's a, it's a tough one, but then also that's what you're up against now. So the tactics had changed because we were having an effect. They were just clutching at straws and sending the kids to do their dirty work. And it's hard, it's hard.

• 1:15:51Jocko Willink?

  So I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. In the days after Operation Waterloo, um, there's more heavy fighting. You got, you got Mu'tar Al-Sadr, he's riling up his, his supporters in Najaf. The Imam Ali shrine, which is like a huge landmark for them. That, that's, that becomes a huge kind of

• 1:16:15Jocko Willink?

  trigger for what's happening. There's a bunch of fighting in Nazari as well, so things are just, they're escalating a lot. And then in Al Almara, a patrol from Simic House was set upon news, the news that members of A and SH, is that how you say it? Argo, Argyle, Southern, Southern Highlanders?

• 1:16:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, Argyle and Southern Highlanders, yeah.

• 1:16:39Jocko Willink?

  What's the abbreviation then?

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  A and H.

• 1:16:41Jocko Willink?

  A and H, A and SH?

• 1:16:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:16:45Jocko Willink?

  They'd been attacked close to a vehicle checkpoint known as Danny Boy. Danny Boy is on Route 6 south of Al Almara. So this is May 14th, started like so many others with a rocket attack. We were sent in, out in our Warrior to do a SNAP VCP to try and see if we could stop and apprehend this mortar team. It was while we were doing this that we got word about the attack near checkpoint Danny Boy. That came from Major Adam Griffiths, Commander of B Company of A and SH. He'd been ambushed next to Danny Boy by what he estimated were 10 men. His men had fired back and hit two before they'd managed to escape from the ambush.

• 1:17:27Jocko Willink?

  So you're out doing a SNAP VCP, looking for these people that had attacked your base.

• 1:17:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:32Jocko Willink?

  While you're out there, you get word that this other element had been ambushed and it's out by this, by this checkpoint called Danny Boy.

• 1:17:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:17:43Jocko Willink?

  And this is where I kind of started this podcast out. I read that, read that section where you're heading down Route 6 when your vehicle's hit by overwhelming firepower. You're in the back, all this chaos is going on. And this is when Stick says, you know, hey, prepare you and your men to dismount. And you say, say that again. And he says, I want you to prepare to dismount. We are not having any effect here. They're in these zigzagging type transpositions, just popping up, engaging, getting down again. Let me know when you're ready. I'd been told. I explained Stick's command to the others in the back. They had the same what the fuck response I had. You want us to go out into that? I could feel my heart going ten to the dozen smashing up against my body armor.

• 1:18:27Jocko Willink?

  Holy fuck, I was thinking we need boots on the ground. I told the boys we're going to get out of this vehicle and launch a close quarter counter attack on the stronghold. Okay. Stand by and get ready to go. While they were prepping, I was talking back with stick. What kind of weapons have they got? I asked. Though from the sounds hitting the warrior, I had a reasonably good idea. RPGs, PKMs, AK-47s. It all sounds pretty punchy. We'll support you, stick said. We'll be on a rapid rate of fire before you open the door. So when you leave the vehicle, the enemy will have its head down and you can get out. There's a gully, he continued about 10 o'clock. You'll see it straight away when you step out of the back door. If you go for it, you'll get at least a bit of cover fire from there. I relayed all this back to my dismounts. They

• 1:19:10Jocko Willink?

  were still looking at me as though I was mad. Lads, I snapped, this is happening. At that point, they tuned in, got their heads together and their kits prepped.

• 1:19:23Jocko Willink?

  So you know you're going?

• 1:19:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:25Jocko Willink?

  Rounds are hitting the warrior and you still can't really see anything.

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:19:29Jocko Willink?

  Which is hard for people to understand what it's like being in the back of a vehicle like that. How, what kind of a door does the warrior have on it?

• 1:19:37Speaker 01

  It's, it's a, it's a hydraulic door.

• 1:19:40Jocko Willink?

  Is it a ramp?

• 1:19:41Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 1:19:42Jocko Willink?

  Or is it a swinging door?

• 1:19:42Speaker 01

  It basically, no, hydraulics kick in and push the door out.

• 1:19:46Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:19:46Speaker 01

  With the hydraulics because it's so thick, but it goes rapid. So once, so for me at this point, I know I'm going, I'm speaking to the commanders, the lads, you know, are prepping for a CQB, which is bayonets being fixed. If your weapon system allows bayonets to be fixed. I had a underslung grenade launcher, so you can't fix a bayonet to an unders, if you, if you have an underslung on your weapon system. So, but others had weapon systems that needed their bayonets to be fixed because we're gonna go close quarter fighting now. And.

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  For me, it was just to reassure the guys that everything's gonna be okay. I I broke the ground down in my head into like phases. So phase one was to get from the back of this vehicle, because we're disoriented, into a holding position. That was phase one. So I just broke everything down because it was important. Like, the bigger picture overwhelmed me so much because there was three against fifteen and it managed, it ended up being twenty eight plus nine P A Ws, twenty eight were killed, nine P A Ws. So it was a lot bigger than actually what we had P I D'd. So phase one was to leave this armored vehicle, go to the stronghold.

• 1:21:04Jocko Willink?

  And the stronghold would be that trench that's supposed to be at ten o'clock when you get out, is that what you're thinking?

• 1:21:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was dried out irrigation ditch and

• 1:21:12Speaker 01

  I was so scared. I mean, fear was threatening to make decisions for me. And it was that moment that I had to grab hold of it, suppress it, but use it to my benefit, i.e. get me out of the vehicle first, because as a leader, I would never ask someone to do something that I'm not prepared to do myself and I should be empowering that. I needed to look at the guys' eyes because in the moment, firefighting is still a big thing. And I just hoped that I would do enough for them to follow me into this holding position before we launched forward, like the Second World War type stuff, of course, open ground.

• 1:21:53Speaker 01

  And I went, are we good? They give me the nod. I said to Chris, we're good, stick. And um he gave a mini H hour from five. So the only person who can open this door is either me or the driver. So the driver has got headsets on like we're wearing now. So I can hear the driver, I can hear Chris, the gunner and me on intercom. The others are going to verbally brief. So I've said, okay, we're good to go. Five, four, and the driver goes early. He's opened the door because he's obviously can hear what's going on and he's adrenaline. And he's gone on three. I was expecting to one. So the door was opened and it's just come into this.

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  The brightest and noisiest situation I've ever, ever been involved in. And then Sticks done a six round emergency shoot with the Raden, which is a thirty millimetre Raden. And the whole dust is gone up, shaking the vehicle. This, the chain gun seven six two is also going. Because they're suppressing the enemy while we deceptionally go into this holding position. And I've committed and I've just ran hard and fast, dived onto my front. And then I've looked back and I seen the two of the bravest men follow me. They come into this holding position. And I don't wear ear defence because I can't control and manage with them on it.

• 1:23:21Speaker 01

  I've never been one for it and I'm probably paying the price now, but I lo-, I feel in control without wearing them. The, the normal standard issue ear defence, it, I don't like it. So I didn't have them on and my ears were just in terrible state with ringing. And I've managed to compose myself and had a cigar moment at this point because I don't care what situation you're in within business. Or in, on the battlefield, you're still entitled to your pause two, three cigar moment. And this is mine. So we're there, the vehicle's going berserk, returning and suppressing the enemy. I'm now in this ditch position, still don't know where the enemy are. So I took a few breaths, had a look and done blood spots, checks to make sure none of us were hit.

• 1:24:06Speaker 01

  And then I need to go and get eyes on because at this point I still didn't know where they were. And I've crawled up and I've peered over like a meerkat, head up. And initially I thought.

• 1:24:18Speaker 01

  That's a big ask. That's a big ask, but I can't go back and say to the guys, it's a suicide mission. So I crawled back and I said, look, I've seen where the position is. It's a hundred and twenty metres to our front. It is heavily defended, but it's achievable if we really work hard. And we show that courage, that tenacity and a bit of teamwork, we can definitely get this job done. And then we had a little sort of a mini estimate. Can we go right flanking? I didn't know what was out on the flanks at this point with interference. So I was like, it's a big risk. And there wasn't no cover.

• 1:24:57Speaker 01

  Down the middle was hard, fast and aggressive. We can ramp up the the time and just go for it. Or we go left flanking, but I was really conscious of a blue on blue, friendly on friendly. Because of the vehicles are firing straight over our heads into this position. So I said, look, we're gonna initially work as a three, because there's only three of us at this point. And we're gonna go as a two and then a one and leapfrog. So we're still managing a bit of teamwork. And as I was happy.

• 1:25:27Speaker 01

  Two other guys turned up from a second vehicle. And he was a full corporal, more experienced than me. And Begsey was another lad, just a private soldier with incredible courage and determination. We had a confab. I said, look, this is what I think we should do. He then had a look around and was like, yeah, we just roll it up. We just go. And I was like.

• 1:25:58Speaker 01

  I can't even explain that the adrenaline, the fear. At this point, because I knew as soon as we broke cover, it was now a two-way engagement. I'm just about to carry out. The infantry's mission for real to close with and destroy the enemy conducting trench warfare. Hasn't been done since the Falklands or the our greatest generation. This was like game on. And I knew as soon as we broke cover, it was full on, full on warfighting. But we've just got to be the aggressors.

• 1:26:29Jocko Willink?

  Were you gonna, was the vehicle, were the vehicles gonna be able to support you with suppressive fire?

• 1:26:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, the reason why normally what we'll do is under situations like that. Cause I get asked this a lot, why don't you just roll it up with your vehicle? But on Route Six, there was a steep concrete incline. That if the warrior tried to go down there, it would flip and roll. So it was, it, it basically, it was stuck where it was. But it could suppress us overhead and I'm talking. Overhead was danger close, like real dangerous. But I just believed in that, how professional the guys were in the turret and how good they were. And basically we said, right, we wished each other all the best. Our S O P for casualties was, we'll get the defensive position cleared and then we'll come back for the casualties because we're light scales.

• 1:27:19Speaker 01

  Our main effort was to close and destroy that enemy position. And we wished each other all the very best. We were gonna work as a three, my, my team from my vehicle. And then the other guys who'd just joined us, we're gonna work as a two and just leapfrog each for hard, fast and aggressive. And um.

• 1:27:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're good to go. And we broke cover. And I was, I was really at fault for an extra large bound. I shouldn't have bounded, but I was just so caught up in the moment. I just bound too much. And then I was on my knee suppressing and it was like a two-way engagement now, just zinging past your ears, kind of. Dreading the man down, but we're fully committed. Obviously, once we commit, we don't go back. We're there. And then they then bounded past us, suppressed, one foot on the ground and we just started rolling. And we was like fifty metres away. And I could see like enemy combatants now bobbling with the, no visual, just bobbing heads.

• 1:28:24Speaker 01

  And then seventy metres and I thought, actually we've got a chance. We've now got real good momentum and a good bit of battle rhythm here and we're now the aggressors. And then as I made another bound, I could start to see some of the militia withdrawing, which was massive for us, huge. You obviously get the extremists who will stay and fight and I knew that. But we've got others who, that was it, they'd gotten up, so they were up and they were withdrawing. It just kept on moving forward and then as I like, probably, I think it was maybe eighty metres away, I started to see the first time I've seen enemy dead close up like this. And their wounds were like, real bad.

• 1:29:05Speaker 01

  But you've just, I knew I had to switch off from that and just keep engaging and keep taking targets on the approach. And that's what we were doing. And Mark Miles shouted, um, pess, pess, pess. And that's then, conventionally, all of you are in a line and you go up. And you go in there and eliminate every bit of threat that's left with automatic fire. And if you've got a bayonet, then if you need to use it, you engage it. And um, it was shouted. And as we were just about to, because it was on a like a, this, this, this trench system was on a big dugout lip.

• 1:29:50Speaker 01

  And as we went over the lip, they'd all then threw their weapon systems down and surrendered. And I talk about this often as well. This is courageous restraint at the highest level. And, and I know, having been in this situation, how sometimes we can get it wrong, because when you're fighting against evil, when you are so much demand and you wanna stay alive. You've been fighting for everything that you're worth. I know sometimes you can get it wrong. But we seized fire. And then I'm gonna, I'll be straight up, you know, I didn't even know what to do at this point. I see bodies everywhere, dead.

• 1:30:34Speaker 01

  Like torsos, arms, parts everywhere. Militia fighters who were in there screaming at me in Arabic and our weapon systems laid out for an ambush. Still warheads on RPGs and everything. And I was like, what do I even do? And I stood on this top, I wasn't even in the trench at this point, I stood on the top. And I was, I I sort of froze, didn't really, I was like, I've never done this before. I was like, what's going on? And then we were then engaged by depth. So we had no choice now to get in. And so now we were in this like a zigzag type position. Bodies everywhere, and I mean everywhere. There was hand to hand fighting going on in the trench because the other lads were trying to get control of the situation.

• 1:31:18Speaker 01

  I mean, being the aggressors and having to, you know, manhandle these individuals and and you know, make sure that they're not going to be opportunists because these people are. And I had a bit of a like a moment, right? Snap out of it, figure this out. And that's when I said to the guys, look, move the weapon systems, unload them, bring them over here, segregate them. Search the enemy dead, that they're not laying on any grenades or anything like that, just do that how we've been trained. Trying to like calm the situation down, arrest the POWs, which was, there was nine. Try and figure that out. And then we need to have a bit of a cigar moment. And figure out what the second course or second phase of this battle is, because at the moment I'm not too sure, because it is wild. And what we just conducted, we were so lucky to be alive.

• 1:32:03Speaker 01

  I mean, they say effective enemy fire is rounds landing in and around your feet, or you're taking casualties. And we had that for a hundred and twenty meters and we, none of it had been hit. And now I'm in this position thinking.

• 1:32:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, carnage.

• 1:32:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's um.

• 1:32:28Jocko Willink?

  That's the, you guys did the classic.

• 1:32:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:32Jocko Willink?

  Infantry assault, cover and move for a hundred and twenty meters. No one got hit with all that enemy fire coming your way.

• 1:32:43Jocko Willink?

  Once you you you get this moment settled, right? And this is when the the company sergeant major shows up, right? And he he basically asked you, hey, are we clear? Is the battlefield clear?

• 1:32:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:32:57Jocko Willink?

  And this for you was like an integrity check.

• 1:32:59Speaker 01

  Massive integrity question. He asked me, because I wanted to say it was.

• 1:33:04Speaker 01

  To be honest, Jock, I wanted to say it was because we'd been so lucky, but I knew I'd seen what I'd seen. And because of my values and what we stand for, I was like, it's not clear. And he was like, outstanding. Fresh, fresh magazine on. We go and clear again. And I, I believe that we made a, a small error because it was just you, him and me what went forward to up a gully.

• 1:33:30Jocko Willink?

  But you had to leave guys back to control all the POWs.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  Yes, absolutely. We had to have an element of control and reorganization and regrouping. Um, but maybe we could have waited for reinforcements and QRF to turn up. But listen, we do things in the moment and you've got to figure it out. And this is another, you know, this is another one of these situations and with ninety meters of creeping up this wadi, it was now going down at individual and pairs CQB lane that we only do in training. And now we're doing this for like, for real. And ninety meters, enemy combatant, coming start major, three rounds to the chest, target down.

• 1:34:13Speaker 01

  Then I basically bound forward and I could have tripped over this young fighter who was just about to engage me. And I engaged him into the chest and then one to the throat, which played a little bit of havoc with me later on because he was choking and he couldn't breathe. But I was in this fight moment again now. So I was bounded past him, nearly tripped over him, put three rounds into his chest and throat and then basically bounded past his head. And as I took a knee, I could just hear gargling and gasping for, for breath. I knew he was dying. But I was in this moment that we need to keep clearing. And then he then bounced past me again and I had a bit of a moral sort of courage moment.

• 1:34:57Speaker 01

  I said, so we've got to go back. We've just been engaged again twice. There's more out here because I've seen more fall back. We've got to go and get some extra manpower because this is a horrendous situation to be in, just you and me. And he agreed. And then on the way back, I see a flicker movement. I spun around, brought my weapon to bear. And it was two more combatants which threw their weapons down and surrendered. So we brung them in, made them lift up themselves, dish dash to make sure they weren't rigged up with anything. And as I, as I was bringing him in, I thought, I recognize you. I recognize you. And it was one of the Iraqi policemen that I'd been mentoring from day one. That was part of the ambush against us. This is what you deal with.

• 1:35:42Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:35:47Jocko Willink?

  Um.

• 1:35:51Jocko Willink?

  Then, so, so you go through, this is about as, you know, about as intensive combat as you could possibly get into.

• 1:35:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:58Jocko Willink?

  And so, so when you get back to the trench, the medics are now there, supports there. And you say in the book, you're properly exhausted.

• 1:36:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:08Jocko Willink?

  Mentally and physically drained. And then, this, this, you know, and I, I had known about, you know, clearly I knew about this, this assault.

• 1:36:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:36:17Jocko Willink?

  But I didn't know about the next thing that happened in this, which is, uh, it couldn't, it couldn't have been very long resting up before the sergeant major came over to me. Woody, he said, we need to go collect, we need to go and collect these bodies. Say again, sir, I asked. We need to do what? We've got to collect the bodies, he repeated. The call has come through from brigade. They think that Bravo One, which is the guy you're looking for, might be among the fighters. If he'd been apprehended or killed, that would be a big deal. Gathering the bodies and returning them to camp for identification purposes was an unusual request. That wasn't what we normally did, but it was such importance of working out if this individual had been part of the battle. That this was decided, it needed to be done.

• 1:37:01Jocko Willink?

  It was a horrific task. There were lots of bodies and they were seriously messed up from the gun battle. The bodies were heavy, even when a few of us were carrying and they were covered in blood, wounds exposed. At first, we didn't want to make skin to skin contact with the bodies and try to carry them by their clothes, their cuffs. But their clothing was loose and started to come off, so we just had to grab them. Some of the bodies were so disfigured, opened up. That you had to be careful just to try and keep the parts intact. Horrible, horrible details that really lodged firm in my headspace. Some of them were really young. That's what I remember thinking. We're talking seventeen, eighteen year olds, old kids, really. I knew that if we hadn't killed them, they would have killed us, but even so. Having fought these individuals, gone through the battle, then looking at the bodies afterwards, it was brutal.

• 1:37:46Jocko Willink?

  To take another person's life is a lot to process. To pick up that body afterwards, it makes what you've done hang heavy on your shoulders. I wish, wouldn't wish that upon my worst enemy. Out of everything that happened that afternoon, this was the part that I've struggled with the most.

• 1:38:04Jocko Willink?

  So yeah, this is like a terrible scene.

• 1:38:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:08Jocko Willink?

  And these guys were wounded, not just from your weapon systems, but from the warrior weapon systems as well. Those are what thirty, thirty million mini cannon and the seven six two machine guns. These guys are.

• 1:38:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. We had clear bags and I, to be honest, Jock, I wasn't even sure if I was putting

• 1:38:29Speaker 01

  the full body in the right bag or if I was decontaminating body parts. That's how brutal it was. It was, yeah.

• 1:38:43Jocko Willink?

  You get done with this, you actually have to load them into your warriors into these vehicles. This means you're taking different vehicles back. It's kind of a, it's kind of a confusing scene.

• 1:38:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:56Jocko Willink?

  You say, when I got back to the R A P, which was all flood, flood that there was an army doctor waiting for us. He told us what we need to do with the bodies, getting them out, laying them on the body bags. Those were all laid out in a strip on the side. We went around the back of the warrior to open the back door. The door is open from a sort of hydraulic ram. You press the button. The power kicks in the hydraulic ram pushes the armored door open. It needs a kick like that because it's so heavy. You can open it manually from inside, but it takes time and effort. We went to open the door. I can't remember who pushed the button. But when they did so, nothing happened. The power had gone. Fuck, they said. So what do we do now? And so someone's got to crawl back inside the warrior through the turret and get inside and manually open the door. Uh, none of you want to do it because you're crawling through a bunch of bodies and body parts in there.

• 1:39:40Jocko Willink?

  Um, you guys draw straw for it and the driver Taylor loses.

• 1:39:47Jocko Willink?

  You say we watched him go down and make his way into the back of the warrior. He got to the door where he started to handcrack it open. This is sort of supersized Allen key that you turn. And as Taylor did so, the door started to inch open. The rest of us outside recoiled as the stench from the bodies hit us. I was talking, I was talking Taylor through, you're doing great, mate. Keep, that's it, keep doing it, almost done. And the door continued to widen then. Well, I'm not quite sure what was happening because out of nowhere, Taylor started shouting. He was shoving for the door and pushing himself out. He's alive, he shouted, barging past us and running off. And it turns out he was just like black humor, making a joke.

• 1:40:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was Rushi what made a joke. I mean, the nature, when I looked in, the nature of his head injuries, I knew he was, he was dead. He was just sat up bolt right with his eyes open. That freaked, that freaked Rushi out, but thought it would be a good crack to shout, he's alive. And the doctor was like, not happy. He was going wild. But it's how we deal with things, which is so extraordinary, difficult, traumatic. And the lads just find a way to try and lighten up what chaos we were experiencing.

• 1:41:00Jocko Willink?

  You guys undo the, there's like access plates underneath the warrior. You take those off and there's just blood and fat and just pouring out of there. Um, smells disgusting. Uh, finally, one of the medics says, uh, one of the medics looked at my kit, which was at this point covered in blood. You'll need to bag that up and take it to the incinerator. And he said, we'll need to test you as well. That happened a couple of days later. I was told there's a small possibility I might have contracted hepatitis B and was given a course of injections. Uh, you take a shower. You say, I got in stripped and leaned against the wall and the plastic sheeting as the water showered me down. I could see this mixture of blood and sand and grit washing off me and swirling away down the plug hole as I just stood there dazed and trying to make sense of everything that had happened to me

• 1:41:44Jocko Willink?

  and on this most fucked up of days.

• 1:41:51Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:41:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And this is another thing that I think people might have the wrong idea, especially from the eighties and nineties war movies. Is when you get done with an operation like this. Which is a. A historical kind of pivotal pivotal and hugely personally impactful operation.

• 1:42:16Jocko Willink?

  You're going back out on patrol like the war continues on. And in this case, even more so because this operation lasted a long time and went longer than everyone thought it was going to be. You guys didn't really even do a debrief. No. After the operation. So there's no real. Immediate. Hey, we need to stand down like taking a guy that you just killed a bunch of people, you handled their bodies. You risked your life, like all those things had happened. And it's like, okay. In any normal traumatic event like that, someone would say, hey, maybe we need to give this guy a breather. I mean, in America, I don't know what they do in England, but in America, when a officer, a police officer is involved in a shooting.

• 1:42:56Jocko Willink?

  Like they're on administer, like if they shoot, they don't even have to kill somebody. If they shoot their weapon, they're going on like a. Immediate administrative stand down. And here you are, kill a bunch of people. Risk your life. Load bodies covered in blood. And it's like, cool. Take a shower and get your gear ready to go again. Yeah. That's what's happening.

• 1:43:22Jocko Willink?

  They do need to capture some of the information. So you say a couple of days later, the RMP arrived, which is Royal Military Police. Arrived to take statements from everyone about what happened at Danny boy. This was all handled quite cac handle or all quite cac handledly done. What does cac handledly mean?

• 1:43:42Speaker 01

  Poorly.

• 1:43:43Jocko Willink?

  Poorly done.

• 1:43:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, they were just all over the place. They just, and I don't want to put any blame on them. They, it was just, it was very cack-handed. It was like, you go and ask him a few questions, you go and do this. And we were still fighting like mad. We was on five minutes notice to move, answering these SIB questions. It's like, we are warfighting. Can this wait?

• 1:44:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:44:05Speaker 01

  And it was all, but it come to haunt me later on.

• 1:44:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Um, we were still on routine when they appeared to talk to me and I was on immediate QRF. Five minutes notice to move. So I did my statement in the room here, there, in the QRF room with one of the guys on the clock the whole time. It wasn't very thorough. I guess they'd obviously heard a lot about the battle and by the time they got to me, they'd seen the state of all of us as well. I think they understood the nature of our tour and as a result, gave us about a bit of leeway in the questioning rather than really grilling us at the time. That was fine by me. It just felt like a bit of an admin to get done and the quicker I could get through it. And rejoin the boys, the better. Looking back, it would have been much better for everyone concerned if they had been more rigorous in their approach. That might have saved everyone a lot of grief and hassle, but no one was thinking in that way at the time.

• 1:44:49Jocko Willink?

  It was more job done, on with the next. Yeah, that's huge. I, we had a, uh, we killed a lot of bad guys in the Battle of Ramadi. My, my task unit.

• 1:45:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:00Jocko Willink?

  And right out of the gate, we started getting, um, really scrutinized. And one of the things that we had, were, we were made to do was fill out shooter statements for everyone that we killed. And at first, you know, the guys were kind of like, what do we, you know, why do we have to fill out these shooter statements? This is, you know, a bunch of admin work, right? And I realized, luckily, again, I'm thankful that I had this moment of clarity. I realized that, oh, this is legal documentation. So if anyone ever says, hey, well, someone died on this date by a sniper round, who did it? We'd be able to say, oh, it was either us or it wasn't us and here's why, here's what the rules of engagement were.

• 1:45:45Jocko Willink?

  Here's what the enemy TTP that was identified and here's why the shot was taken. So.

• 1:45:51Jocko Willink?

  Putting that time and effort in is really important.

• 1:45:54Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:45:54Jocko Willink?

  Now, in this scenario, you guys are on QRF, so it's a little difficult to do that. But for anyone that's listening right now, when you're out there, when you're doing something, if you can document it correctly at the time, it's going to be very beneficial if anything ever comes of it. And I think that's probably a lot of what this is. Like, it's very low probability, I would say, that what happened to you with the inquiry and all that, that's a low probability. You just happen to be someone that made some little accusation, it got traction, you had this lawyer that was, already had a good reputation for it. It was like a bunch of things had to go wrong for this to matter, but when it mattered, it mattered a lot.

• 1:46:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:41Jocko Willink?

  So, you go on to say, I didn't even talk about Danny Boy with the other guys. I didn't talk about it with Lucy. You say, I still wouldn't go into details with my dad, but he knew from what he'd read and how I spoke that we were in a situation, he wouldn't talk specifics, but he would offer me reassurance and support. He'd always sign his letters off the same way. Stay low, move fast. Great advice.

• 1:46:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:00Jocko Willink?

  So, even amongst your guys, you don't really have time to sit down and debrief.

• 1:47:05Speaker 01

  No. To be honest, we wanted that gone. We wanted to get just gone. We weren't going to focus on that. It was just a bad day at the office and it tested all of us to the extreme. So, we need to just e-purge that for now, move on to the next battle.

• 1:47:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I was actually thinking about that. It's interesting, when you were talking about being in the back of, going back to the moment there, you were talking about being in the back and you're getting told, hey, you're gonna go. And there's a, for the idea of fear to come into your head, there needs to be enough time for it to come in there.

• 1:47:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:42Jocko Willink?

  And so...

• 1:47:45Jocko Willink?

  I was really thinking through when you're getting told, hey, you're gonna go and assault this thing. It's gonna be in, whether it's one minute, 30 seconds. Once the door opens, you're like, you're going, that's what's happening. So you, you have, once that door opens, your fear goes aside and you go. But then you get to the trench, and now you're settled there for a second, and you have a little more time to think, alright. So you got put into multiple times where I think you, you, the phrase you use, that you had to like, get a hold of your fear and suppress it. Yeah. Because when you're walking down through the trench, and someone pops out, there's no time to think about, you're not like, oh, maybe this guy's gonna shoot me. No, you do your job, and you get it done. There's no time to process the fear. But it's very interesting that you had a few moments where, again, and I, I've been out on operations where we're no going, we know we're

• 1:48:30Jocko Willink?

  going into a really bad area, and we know we're leaving in four hours. That's four hours to think about all the bad things that can happen. Sometimes you have 30 seconds to think about the bad things that can happen. Sometimes you have an hour, sometimes, and the best case scenario is you don't have any time. The door opens, you go. The shooting starts, you return fire. Like, there's no time for fear. So it's interesting that in this situation, you had these, these little three minute, two minute, one minute windows to feel the fear and say, alright, I know what that is, that's gotta be suppressed. I had a guy that I know is a SEAL, he's a Medal of Honor recipient, but did an incredible, like, risked his life over and over again, trying to save his, his platoon

• 1:49:14Jocko Willink?

  leader. And, you know, I asked him, were you afraid? Or were you scared? He's like, no, I didn't have time to be afraid. And just, like, oh, my guy's up there, I'm gonna go get him. Oh, we're getting shot at here? Oh, I'm gonna go kill those guys. And he just did it without, he didn't have the time. So it's interesting that you have these, in this particular situation, you had these moments to experience the fear, noted, got it, understood. Now you, fear needs to go aside, because I gotta go do my job.

• 1:49:45Jocko Willink?

  So you get done with Danny Boy, you say two weeks after Danny Boy, it was my platoons turned to do it, our stint at Broadmoor. So what was going on at Broadmoor?

• 1:49:52Speaker 01

  Broadmoor was a prison that we occupied and it was the fusiliers had these Saxon vehicles, they were operating from there. It was a good forming up point for us because it was like only five minutes from the city of Alamarra and if we were in Abu Najji, we were 20 minutes. So we just needed to get forward. So, once the rockets were landed into camp, we can go and fire fix and destroy the mortar base bait teams. And yeah, we were just on a QRF at Broadmoor Prison.

• 1:50:26Jocko Willink?

  Was there anyone, was there prisoners at the prison?

• 1:50:28Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:50:29Jocko Willink?

  It was just a friendly base?

• 1:50:31Speaker 01

  It was actually quite nice because we slept in the cells and actually on the marble on the floor because it was so hot. It was just a nice bit of respite to get away from just the solid heat all the time from the back of the vehicle.

• 1:50:45Jocko Willink?

  You guys were on five minute QRF there or 20 minute QRF?

• 1:50:50Speaker 01

  Five, I think it was at the gates at this point. I mean, it was a mixture, but I think at this point, when the rockets started to come in, we were because we had a runner in the ops room. Yeah. So we were five minutes notice.

• 1:51:01Jocko Willink?

  So that's what's happened. You guys are sitting around, you're waiting for this call or waiting for, you know, if anything happens and it turns out that Abu Najji is getting, starts getting hit with mortars and you guys get the call, hey, well, you guys can go out, you guys can, we, we think we know where this mortar team is. You can go out, confirm that they're there and get them, basically. You say it was dark, it was late, dark, pitch black, moonless night as we drove out into Broadmoor and towards Alamarra. We were in two warriors. I was in whiskey two, two with Stick, who had been with us at Danny Boy. The other warrior whiskey two, zero was being driven by Johnson B Behary and was under the command of Second Lieutenant Dean.

• 1:51:44Jocko Willink?

  Uh, fast forward a little bit. So you get called. That's where you guys are going. We're coming up towards Red Eight when there was an almighty explosion. Something had been hit. A hail of fire rained down from the rooftops. I, in the back of the warrior, I was shouting, asking what was going on. But there was so much gunfire, it completely disoriented everyone. We were getting smashed from the rooftops. It was impossible to get a fix. I could hear Stick shouting too. Radioing the other warrior to see if they were okay. Fucking hell, Stick suddenly shouted. The boss's wagon's taken a direct hit. Two of them, direct to the turret. He radioed them again. No answer. You can hear comms because you're the leader in the back, right? So you're hearing this happen. Yeah. Woody, Stick shouted. I want you and Coops to step out. Go, uh, go on up to the top deck and see what's happening. Sure.

• 1:52:28Jocko Willink?

  Uh, this is after you backed your warrior up next to their warrior. Sure. I turned to Coops, Private Cooper, who was sat next to me. We're gonna jump out, go and have a look. Coops was cool. No worries. He, he nodded. Let's go. That's freaking professionalism right there. Yeah. No worries. All this chaos is going on. You're like, hey, we're getting out. He just looks at you. No worries. Yeah. Um, as soon as the back of the warrior opened, the noise ratcheted up. And by the way, this is another thing I wanted to mention. We have a vehicle like this, at least in Iraq. Vehicles, we call them bullet magnets and RPG magnets, RPG magnets, because the enemy wants, yeah, they want to kill people.

• 1:53:05Jocko Willink?

  They want to kill soldiers. They want to kill Americans. They want to kill Brits. But a prize that looks great on Al Jazeera is a burning vehicle in the street. Yeah. So that, so that's why when all these rounds are hitting your, your vehicles, that's what's happening. They want to stop those vehicles. They want that trophy. Yeah. Um, and then of course, when the vehicles open up, now you've got an opportunity to kill some Americans too, or, or in your case, some Brits. As soon as the back of the warrior opened, the noise ratcheted up. Inside the vehicle, the sound of gunfire and mortar was all muffled out in the open. It was deafening, disoriented. With the streetlights out, the only real light was from the tracers coming from the AK-47s. That and the sparks flying from the bullets hitting the vehicles and the ting ting ting as they hit the framework was incessant.

• 1:53:50Jocko Willink?

  I looked into the, so you get over to their vehicle. I looked in the driver's hatch and immediately the reason why the vehicle wasn't moving was clear. There was blood everywhere. B was sat there completely out of it. Big gashes all over his head where he'd been struck. He, the hit had come through the hatch and RPG had exploded about a foot from his face. It had got hit so bad that he, that shrapnel went into his skull. B, I shouted, trying to get a response, but there was nothing. I checked his pulse. He was alive just about.

• 1:54:16Jocko Willink?

  But little more than that. I knew at that point we had to get him out of there. At a stroke, the mission changed. The mortar team we'd been sent to take out were forgotten. Now it was all about getting B back to Broadmoor as quickly as we could. It sounds strange with bullet flying, bullets flying around, but I really wasn't worried about my own safety. I was too concentrated on B and just how we were gonna get him out. We undid the belt, the seatbelt and Coops and I grabbed his arms and dragged him out, carried him over to the back of our vehicle. Someone is going to need to drive that warrior back to Broadmoor, I said. I assumed that was going to be me, but Coops stepped up to do it. Turned out a few weeks before the incident, B had taken the privates for a lesson on how to drive the vehicle. So they know how to do, know what to do in precisely this situation. I was a train driver, but Coops was insistent.

• 1:55:02Jocko Willink?

  B showed me how to drive a couple of weeks ago. He said, I'm all over this. Okay, I said, look, just follow us. If there's any issue, I'll take over. We drove off. That, I thought that was just a great example of, you know, of someone in a leadership position saying, hey, we all need to know how to do this and training him and then sure enough.

• 1:55:19Speaker 01

  Yep, sure.

• 1:55:20Jocko Willink?

  It happens.

• 1:55:21Speaker 01

  Yeah. Let me just, um, so fair play to Johnson for B for having that foresight and that worst case for him getting hit, who's gonna, who's gonna drive. So he made sure that everyone was, you know, could drive this armored vehicle, but in that situation, he was following on, but as you go into Broadmoor, there's two sangas left and right, but it's quite tight. So with adrenaline, he was, I'm not a train driver, but just being fat. Basically just give a quick famine on how to to drive this armored vehicle. He's come, we've gone straight through because we've got a train driver who's our driver. And they've got, you've got Coops who is in this massive battle armored capability.

• 1:56:04Speaker 01

  And he's not, doesn't know the like the width of it and he's taking this Sanger clean out, like clean off. Luckily, the Sanger had any minor injuries, but in the, in the moment, he's come through, bang, hit the Sanger. The lad in the Sanger duty is like on the floor now and he's gone in and goes, ah, I didn't realise how, how wide the vehicle was and I was like. Fair play, smegger. So, yeah.

• 1:56:31Jocko Willink?

  You guys get, get B, casual faculty out, he, he's on the helicopter.

• 1:56:38Jocko Willink?

  And you say this, I remember feeling really gutted afterwards when the helicopter went off. Up to that point, I was so hyped trying to get a response and doing what I could do to keep him alive that I didn't have time to think. Now, though, all I could do was think, fucking hell, another one, another guy who was a great asset to the company, taken away from us.

• 1:57:00Jocko Willink?

  So, fast forward a little bit, um, in the book now, you, you get done with that tour.

• 1:57:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:57:07Jocko Willink?

  Did it settle down at all in that tour?

• 1:57:10Speaker 01

  Not really. I mean, that tour was like no other. It was just constant. It was just like, yeah. It was just the hornet's nest, like all the time. So it didn't, it didn't calm down.

• 1:57:24Jocko Willink?

  You get home, eh, but you actually come home early from Iraq because you've got, you're supposed to go to a course.

• 1:57:30Speaker 01

  This is, this was like, it really hurt me, if I'm honest to, I've done so much. I was in a command responsibility. And being told by my OC that you're going back to go on to Brecon in Wales to.

• 1:57:47Speaker 01

  Go on your promotional course. I was like, can it not wait? But everyone's got, he's got a duty of care for my career. And if I hadn't gone on my timeline, I would have slipped. So he was like, look, we're we're replaceable. If I'm honest, someone another commander comes in and you you rip out and you go on your course. But.

• 1:58:07Jocko Willink?

  How early did you have to go home?

• 1:58:09Speaker 01

  So I.

• 1:58:10Jocko Willink?

  Was it like a month?

• 1:58:11Speaker 01

  No, well, I I did just over four months and that was it. That was my that Iraq tour done. And then someone else flew in. And took over my place.

• 1:58:25Jocko Willink?

  You say in the book, I thought this was great. As soon as I got home, however, something wasn't right. And that something was me.

• 1:58:36Jocko Willink?

  You go from, what's the transitional period? You just getting in a in a plane?

• 1:58:40Speaker 01

  I didn't even have any decompression. I just normally the guys will fly back and and spend some time in Cyprus. But.

• 1:58:46Jocko Willink?

  How much time did they suspend in Cyprus?

• 1:58:48Speaker 01

  I think it's about ten days.

• 1:58:50Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 1:58:50Speaker 01

  Of decompression, yeah.

• 1:58:51Jocko Willink?

  They've tried that. They tried that with us. They tried to send guys. They were stopping in Germany, but it was only like two days.

• 1:58:57Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:58:58Jocko Willink?

  And guys are just thinking, well, I just want to go see my family.

• 1:59:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, of course.

• 1:59:01Jocko Willink?

  And so what are you going to do in Germany for two or three days? Well, you're going to drink and act like an idiot. And that's pretty much what was happening.

• 1:59:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:59:08Jocko Willink?

  They stopped those decompress. But it seems like if you did ten days.

• 1:59:12Speaker 01

  It's actually quite good.

• 1:59:13Jocko Willink?

  And in a controlled, more controlled environment with a plan, because I don't think we had a plan. I think someone said, hey, these guys need to decompress. Send them to Germany for two days or three days.

• 1:59:21Speaker 01

  I don't think we got it right until a few years after. I just don't think we did. I mean, it was just like they sort of encouraged beer to be drunk. Have a tear up with each other. If you've got any gripes, do it on the island. And then we fly back. Hopefully, it's all out of your system. But no one, it was all swag work. No one really knew. So everyone was like having a scrap with each other, thinking, yeah, that's decompression. Right, go home. It doesn't work like that. But I missed that anyway. So I just, one day, I was. Broadmoor the next day. Like the sacrifices that, you know, our servicemen and women, you know, take, I left.

• 1:59:56Speaker 01

  When he was three weeks old, come back and I left him in the Moses basket and got home. And like, he's in a pushchair. So I'm like, that doesn't sit right with me. So it's difficult. That's. They're they're quite hard, but that's a sacrifice that we we, you know, people miss their births.

• 2:00:13Jocko Willink?

  My first deployment to Iraq, when I left my son, I've got four kids. When I left my son, I got three daughters and one son. My son couldn't wa- couldn't crawl.

• 2:00:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:23Jocko Willink?

  And when I got home, he's walking around.

• 2:00:24Speaker 01

  It's mad.

• 2:00:25Jocko Willink?

  And I was like.

• 2:00:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:26Jocko Willink?

  Yo. And then actually, my second deployment to Iraq, I left to Iraq and when I come home, when I came home, he could swim. And, you know, I'm a frogman.

• 2:00:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:35Jocko Willink?

  And a surfer and a waterman and some other lifeguard at the Navy base taught my son how to swim. It was definitely not a good feeling.

• 2:00:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:45Jocko Willink?

  So you basically get on a plane. Did you fly to like Kuwait and then Kuwait back to America? Or sorry, back to England?

• 2:00:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:00:52Jocko Willink?

  It's like, that's not even a long flight, right? That's like a ten hour flight or something like this?

• 2:00:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, seven hours.

• 2:00:58Jocko Willink?

  At least when you're flying back to America, you've got a, well, it's like a longer flight.

• 2:01:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:01:03Jocko Willink?

  Takes a day or something. So you get home, um, Bailey, your your son's looking at you like. Doesn't really know who you are, yeah, of course. And then you have the anger, you have the frustration, you have, you're short tempered.

• 2:01:19Jocko Willink?

  You give the classic, the classic statement to your wife, which is, have you had any idea? Have you any idea what I've been through? This shit just doesn't matter. You said the loud part, you said the quiet part out loud. You're not supposed to say that. You're not supposed to say this shit doesn't matter. I understand that you're gonna feel it.

• 2:01:41Jocko Willink?

  You can't say it, and you said it.

• 2:01:43Speaker 01

  I know. It was for me, it was like, it wasn't important because, but I I was young and I was a young dad. I was twenty three. I'd just seen and did so much. I come home, I put my day sack and my boots at the front door. And she told me to move them and put them in the cupboard. And I was like, what?

• 2:02:03Speaker 01

  You just don't know what I've just been through. And you're asking me, this shit just doesn't matter? And then it was real friction and I was trying to. I was trying to play catch up as a dad because I'd missed so much. I didn't know how to be a dad if I'm honest. And I was like, wanted to be fully invested in involved, but it just frustrated me even more because the more I tried to like, feed him, the milk's too hot and she's telling me, Lucy's like, trying to coach me and mentor me and I'm like smashing it against the kitchen. So you feed him. Or speaking to her so bad. I mean, I was never physically, but abuse like mentally,

• 2:02:45Speaker 01

  verbally with her. It's one thing I wish I could take away because it's just, it's just not fair. But I just didn't know how to sort of cope with everything that was going on and it was just, yeah, a bit of a difficult sort of bedding in period.

• 2:03:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you just, even this is for me, pre-war, I'd been in the SEAL team since I was a teenager. And then I went to college. So for the first time in my life, I didn't, I wasn't with a SEAL platoon all day. And I was going to college and I was living, you know, my wife, I was married and we had one kid at the beginning and what I realized is the way you interact with your friends at work, which is you're, you know, making fun of them, they're making fun of you. It's constant banter and it's very hostile, at least in the SEAL platoon, it's very hostile. And so then all of a sudden I didn't have that. And so then who was I getting hostile with? I was getting hostile with my wife. And so after about three months of me going to college, I was still in the Navy, but the Navy's paying me to go to college.

• 2:03:46Jocko Willink?

  After about a few months, I said something to my wife about the dinner that she had made or something about the overcooked chicken or something. And she just looked at me and she said, she said, you know, I'm not, she said, she's not a SEAL.

• 2:04:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:01Jocko Willink?

  And she shouldn't, I shouldn't treat her like one. And she was a hundred percent right, a hundred percent right. And it sounds like, and again, I was, I mean, you're only twenty-three. This is when I was twenty-eight, right? So five years makes a difference. And, and so this, for you, like, you're basically probably saying things to her that you would say to one of your soldiers. You know, hey, don't put that over there. Like, no, you move it. It's like, that's how you're accustomed to talking, especially when there's so much pressure and you don't have time to discuss the reasons for something. And so that's what's happening.

• 2:04:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:04:43Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit.

• 2:04:48Jocko Willink?

  After five days of trying to, trying and fail to cope, I got a phone call from Sergeant Major Spicer. Woody, he said, "How are you doing?" "Great," I said, lying through my teeth. "It's really going well." "Listen, I hate to interrupt you on your family time, but I've got some really sad news." "It's Chris Raymond." "He's been killed."

• 2:05:06Jocko Willink?

  I took that like a blow to the stomach. "Ray was a good guy, young like me, a real-life and soul type, always filled with humor and optimism." "He was a big Charlton Athletic fan, wouldn't shut up about them, had always been there with a bit of banter about football and what have you." "Hearing the news back in my own house, it felt like the war was creeping into my life even here." "I couldn't get away from it." "How did he die?" I asked. "This, this in a way was the worst bit. Ray hadn't been killed in battle." "His death was a tragic accident." "He'd been at the Simic house and one of the vehicles that was leaving got caught up in a wire, which brought down the security barrier." "And it slammed right on top of him." "It was just awful." "You survive everything the militia could throw at you, and then you die like that."

• 2:05:51Jocko Willink?

  "The guy was just 22." "It was heartbreaking, hearing the news." "An absolute bloody waste." "We're going to have to repatriate him," the Sergeant Major explained. "I want you and the repatriation party to be there when they bring his body back."

• 2:06:08Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. It was a cool summer's day as I stood at RAF Brides Norton.

• 2:06:15Jocko Willink?

  Watched the Herc do a circle of the base before coming into land. It parked up and the tail came down. We marched on, six of us, two ranks of three, and up to where the coffin was.

• 2:06:29Jocko Willink?

  It was just an awful moment. Seeing it there draped in a Union Jack. I had to give myself a real talking to. You owe it to Ray to give him the best send-off you can. The Union Jack didn't go all the way over the coffin, just up to where the plaque was with his name on. "Don't look at it," I thought. "Just don't look at it." Of course, I looked at it. I read the brass plaque, Ray's name, the dates. I could feel myself starting to go.

• 2:06:56Jocko Willink?

  Take a moment, boys, the Sergeant Major said. Compose yourselves. I was grateful for his intervention. Did that blinking back thing. Tried to clear my head. Come on, Woody, get a grip. What would Ray say if he saw you like this now? One of the RAF crew, aircrew, pulled the Union Jack fully over the coffin.

• 2:07:16Jocko Willink?

  Prepare to lift, the Sergeant Major said. That was it. I clicked into action, into the routine we'd practiced in unison. The six of us put our hands under the coffin. I was in the middle, on the right-hand side, under the Sergeant Major's command. We lifted in unison up and onto our shoulders.

• 2:07:33Jocko Willink?

  They're heavy things, coffins. If you've ever carried one, you'll know. Heavy twice over.

• 2:07:41Jocko Willink?

  We did a right turn and then started to slow march carefully, respectfully, down the ramp, onto the tarmac below. The journey across to the hearse felt as though it took forever. We could see the black of the vehicle glinting in the sunshine, could hear Ray's family, the crying, the wailing as we got closer.

• 2:08:02Jocko Willink?

  I had to blank that out, stare off into someplace else. Otherwise, I would have gone myself.

• 2:08:15Jocko Willink?

  So that's only five days after you get home.

• 2:08:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, um, it was a tough one, to be honest, especially the way he lost his life and he'd fought so hard with so much courage, day in, day out. And he was the most infectious kid out there with a great smile and very kind individual.

• 2:08:44Speaker 01

  I'm just glad that, you know, we give him such a good send-off. So professional, he absolutely deserved it. But it was so difficult, really, really hard. Um, I know it's realities of war, I totally get it, I absolutely understand it, but it doesn't make it any easier. It's hard.

• 2:09:10Speaker 01

  Sometimes makes you question as well, one, well, how was it not me after everything I'd been through in the scrapes that I was in? How did I survive? I don't know, there's like a little bit of guilt sort of creeps in when you think about stuff, but.

• 2:09:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:09:31Jocko Willink?

  You continue on here a little bit further on the book. Ray's was the first military funeral I'd been to. Five days later, I went to my second. This time it was Leo Callahan. Killed in an attack on his vehicle by insurgents. Lee was only 20. He was football mad. Supported Millwall FC. And was good to kick a ball around with as well.

• 2:09:54Jocko Willink?

  Because we'd been drilled already, I got a phone call from the sergeant major and went through the whole thing again. Lee's funeral was huge. He was from a big Catholic family. And the church was packed out.

• 2:10:06Jocko Willink?

  I felt guilty. That I was alive and Ray and Lee were dead. But more than that, I couldn't shake the feeling that it could have been me. On top of everything I'd been through, it was a lot of pro- a lot to process, to be frank. And to be frank, as a 23 year old, I didn't really have the tools to do it. Not that I was offered at the time by the army. But even if I, if it had been available, I wouldn't have had. The, the nose to ask for it. I'm a soldier. I thought. I will deal with it myself. It's not right to go and talk to anyone. That's not what we do.

• 2:10:49Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:10:53Jocko Willink?

  You gotta go to that battle course that you came home to go to.

• 2:10:59Jocko Willink?

  You get into that course. And like a couple of days into the course. The SIB, which is the Special Investigations Branch shows up and they're looking for Lance Corporal Brian Wood. They're looking for you. And they say. We need to talk to you about the Battle of Danny Boy. One of the officers said he pulled a folder out of his bag. I recognized the document. It was my handwriting. It was a statement of what happened that day. There are just a few discrepancies. We need to hear to clear that up. And so they sit down with you on a fast forward a little bit. The questioning wasn't aggressive. It felt more bizarre and random. I couldn't understand why I'd been pulled out of a lesson to be sat in front of a computer. They wanted me to give them answers. I couldn't give because I couldn't remember what the dead looked like or because it wasn't true, or I couldn't remember.

• 2:11:42Jocko Willink?

  There were no accusations at that time, not directly, but there must have been someone saying something somewhere. They wouldn't have asked me questions on my statement otherwise. Some suggestion of mistreatment must have come from somewhere. They must have done it for a reason. Looking back, this was the start of it.

• 2:12:04Jocko Willink?

  And you probably had no idea like what this thing was gonna turn into.

• 2:12:07Speaker 01

  No, and I could not believe I was on a career course and those in the infantry back at home will know how demanding junior brecon is. It is such a tough, tough, demanding course. Tactics wise, weapon training wise, and fit and robust. You've got to be super on it. And then for them to play with my headspace just at the beginning of that course, I thought was very unprofessional. They could have waited until that was done. They know what junior brecon is and what it looks like. It's a tough course and for them to get involved and drag me out of lessons, I just thought it's unforgivable.

• 2:12:48Jocko Willink?

  And you also think like, well, you know what happened. You were there. You went through it. So when they come and ask you questions, you're like, yeah, here's what happens. Like this, I don't remember that, but I remember this. It's, it, it probably didn't, well, and you said, looking back, you recognize that it was the beginning of this whole drama that you were gonna go, but at the time.

• 2:13:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, didn't have a clue.

• 2:13:08Jocko Willink?

  You think, yeah, well, okay, here's what happened.

• 2:13:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:13:10Jocko Willink?

  You know, you guys did the right thing. You guys know you did the right things. Hey, did you make some little mistakes? Of course, you know, but that's what happens in combat. But you knew that by and large, you guys have done the right things. And you say, okay, you want to ask me some questions? Fine. And then you didn't think much more about it.

• 2:13:32Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. When it was announced that I'd been awarded the Military Cross, I must confess that I was so naive, I didn't even know what a citation was. I certainly didn't know that anyone had written a citation about my own actions. So when it transpired I was going to be awarded the medal, it took me completely by surprise. So you end up being put in for this, you know, the Military Cross, which I kind of went over in the beginning of this thing. Fast forward a little bit. It's a big deal. You're at Buckingham Palace. The wait seemed to go on forever before I was called to get my medal. But then my name was read out and the usher told me to go in. The hall where the medals were being awarded was huge and there was this big crowd of people watching, but to be honest,

• 2:14:15Jocko Willink?

  I didn't really take, take any of that in or notice where Lucy and my parents were. I was super nervous and concentrating real hard on not doing anything stupid like falling over or making a fool of myself in front of the Queen. When I got to the step, the Queen spoke briefly to me as she awarded me my medal. She said to me that it was so rare for her to hand out these awards for bravery. As she pinned the medal, medal on my chest, she told me to wear it with pride and I promised her that I would. And then you say, there's a line that Winston Churchill once said about such awards, "A medal glitters, but it also casts a shadow."

• 2:14:58Jocko Willink?

  So you get this award, and then you get offered a place to teach recruits at the Training Center at Katerick. Yeah. Which is a big deal. Yeah. You say it's the gold standard of instruction in Army terms and as a young junior NCO, it was an offer that was difficult to turn down. With my experiences in Iraq, particularly at Danny Boy, I was right, I was the right fit. The fact that I'd won the Military Cross too, meant that there was probably a bit of poster boy element to it as well. Here's Woody. He's been there and done that. He's been honored for it. So I find myself talking about what I'd been through, instructing on how to fight in close quarters and hand-to-hand combat. And this, the, the, that award ceremony is televised, right? Like the whole, the whole freaking nation knows who you are.

• 2:15:42Speaker 01

  Can I just tell you one thing quickly? So the morning that we were going to Buckingham Palace, I was a young, you know, twenty three year old. Didn't have a lot of money, had this like little Corsa, Vauxhall Corsa car. And um, oh, my dad was, you know, is in his suit. My mum and my, uh, Lucy, my wife, they were all, you know, long dress and looking stunning. And I was in full service kit and my dad was driving in London, so.

• 2:16:12Speaker 01

  He's got quite a short temper, he's quite fiery, my dad, being a Glaswegian. So we're going into, we're driving to Buckingham Palace and I'm saying to my dad, dad, get out the bus lanes. Cause you're gonna get fined and it's a hundred quid if you're in the bus lanes. And he's like, don't tell me what to do. I said, but you're gonna, I'm gonna have to get, pay the fine dad. So just calm down and come away from the bus lanes. And then we were turning this big roundabout on the way to the gates and he veered back into the bus lane. This is a true story, I said to my dad, get out the bus lanes. And he's like, and me and him are quite fiery as well. So he's like, I'll tell you what, I'll fucking pull this over and you drive. I said, pull over then, pull over. This is like, so we're having an argument on the way to Buckingham Palace.

• 2:16:54Speaker 01

  Pull the car over, puts it in like neutral, handbrake on, gets out, we traverse around the car. I can barely even move in my service dress and my boots on as well. But I'm so like, I'm, I'm, I'm doing this now, like let's go. And I'm trying to get in gear, but show like no emotion. I'm like, well, just go. And then I went to the wrong gate and I was like, fuck. I was like, I turned up at the wrong gate, there's no, no, you've got to go round the other side. I was like, shit. And then I got round and my dad's like, five nine, stocky, fit man, doesn't drink, doesn't smoke. Like relentless on his fit, fitness. And we were walking through the gates, still not talking.

• 2:17:35Speaker 01

  And I was in front, he can walk in behind me and said to me, son.

• 2:17:43Speaker 01

  I'm five foot eight. He said, today, I feel sixteen foot five. He said, I love you. I just thought it was just spectacular, because he doesn't, he never really said much about like constructive. It was just like, you go and earn it, you work hard, this is, this is the way forward. So when he, when he said that just before, I was like, that's bang on for my dad. It's like, yeah, cheers dad, I appreciate that. So yeah, so yeah, into complete randomness to then my dad stepping up and saying, I'm walking on the clouds at the moment. That was quite class.

• 2:18:23Jocko Willink?

  Had your dad had retired from the army at this point?

• 2:18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was fully done.

• 2:18:27Jocko Willink?

  But, like I said, the whole world is, everyone in England's watching this happen.

• 2:18:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's huge. Yeah, it's huge. So you get to stay in the Ritz Hotel the night before. The officers aren't allowed. So it's only the, you know, non-commissioned officers which get this treatment. And you go in, and it's hard to take it in once, because you're so nervous. You go through these gates and the guards are out there and you get ushered in and it's all super incredible. And there's a big sort of arena where the, the parents and their loved ones sit down to watch you come in. And you go up to the usher and you bow and then you walk to the, there's like a mark on the floor. And you, everything's televised. And then you stop and then you then turn left,

• 2:19:17Speaker 01

  bow your head to the queen and then walk up and she's on the second stool. And you walk up and yeah, she's just, I don't know, it's just, I can't explain it if I'm honest, how

• 2:19:30Speaker 01

  it makes you feel. It's like, I don't know.

• 2:19:35Speaker 01

  It's special.

• 2:19:37Speaker 01

  It's a special day with special people.

• 2:19:41Jocko Willink?

  And then you go back to like the army, everyone knows who you are, you got this award. There's gotta be a bit of, that's gotta be a little bit strange, right?

• 2:19:51Speaker 01

  Yes, definitely.

• 2:19:52Jocko Willink?

  Because you, you were, you know, Lance Corporal, kinda no one knows who you are. Now, everybody knows who you are.

• 2:19:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I was pulled from pilot to post to go and deliver bayonet fighting for, you know, everyone's. I think it was, in looking back, it was, I think it was too much, um, because everyone's got their own instructors.

• 2:20:15Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:20:16Speaker 01

  But, and I do understand it's realities of war and someone who we've got to inspire the recruits we need to use. But I didn't realize how much I was gonna get used and I was bouncing around delivering twice a day, yeah, most days.

• 2:20:33Jocko Willink?

  Like, how long were you doing that for?

• 2:20:34Speaker 01

  Oh, so bayonet fighting is a long, it's a half a day to a full day instructional, cause you, ah, it's such a long process to get everyone up and they are worked so hard to their threshold physically wise. And then they then go into the bayonet lane, do bayonet fighting, and then they do the ball ring, which is unclipping the bayonet and going to crawl up and destroy the dummies, but it takes a long time. So it's physically and mentally exhausting, even for the instructors.

• 2:21:04Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm. But then you were doing this at different, for different recruits or?

• 2:21:07Speaker 01

  Regiments, different regiments.

• 2:21:08Jocko Willink?

  Just going around the country?

• 2:21:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:10Jocko Willink?

  To different regiments?

• 2:21:11Speaker 01

  One location.

• 2:21:12Jocko Willink?

  Oh, one location, but they're bringing regiments through?

• 2:21:14Speaker 01

  But they're bringing regiments through.

• 2:21:15Jocko Willink?

  You're the guy.

• 2:21:16Speaker 01

  And I was like the main man to go around and I was like, I'm exhausted from doing all this.

• 2:21:19Jocko Willink?

  How often are you doing that?

• 2:21:20Speaker 01

  A lot, probably four times a week.

• 2:21:23Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so that was your job?

• 2:21:24Speaker 01

  It wasn't meant to be, but it turned out to be pretty much, yeah, my, my job to.

• 2:21:29Jocko Willink?

  How, how many months did you have this job for?

• 2:21:33Speaker 01

  Um, well, I was meant to have it for two years, but I just needed a break.

• 2:21:39Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:21:40Speaker 01

  So, yeah, I was, I was there for, I think, seven, seven months before I come away for a break.

• 2:21:48Jocko Willink?

  And you, you, you talk about this in the book. Um, as soon as I told Lucy I'd been offered that job.

• 2:21:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:21:54Jocko Willink?

  Uh, she asked me not to take it. It would be uprooting us, taking us away, taking us up north away from friends and family. I won't know anyone. Lucy said I won't have any support. She begged me, she cried, but I was so fixated on my job, so caught up in all of that. I wouldn't listen to her. We're going, I told her. It's my career. Lucy was right. Not for the last time. She foresaw exactly what was going to happen. I did the training and the dark thoughts about Iraq got worse. I continued to be short and sharp with her. The situation at home deteriorated. I couldn't give her the help she needed with Bailey because of where my head was at. She couldn't turn to her parents or her friends for help and, and ended up being completely isolated. We reached a breaking point. Lucy turned to me one day and said, I can't do this anymore. I snapped back at her. Well, go then.

• 2:22:37Jocko Willink?

  And she did. Back down south, taking Bailey with her. So.

• 2:22:45Jocko Willink?

  That kind of came to a head.

• 2:22:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:22:48Jocko Willink?

  Um, and then you had this thought of what, what would it be like? Maybe I shouldn't have joined the army or maybe I should get out of the army. Maybe I should see what it's like in the civilian sector. And you end up making the decision to go to get out of the army.

• 2:23:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:03Jocko Willink?

  How did the army take that?

• 2:23:06Speaker 01

  Not good.

• 2:23:08Speaker 01

  I mean, they, they sort of had my path marked out for me.

• 2:23:12Speaker 01

  I just had so much going on. I just sort of had a break with Lucy at this point. I'd been like so.

• 2:23:23Speaker 01

  Pushed and pushed with everything that I'd been involved in on operations to instruct and. Um, my head was just a bit chaotic and I just needed to, to do something different, maybe figure it out. And I didn't know what I needed and what I wanted. So I just thought, you know, let's take a risk and get out and see what that is.

• 2:23:44Jocko Willink?

  Do, do they have jobs that you can get in the army if, if, let's say you were still in the army and you were commander and you had a young. Private that came back or a Lance Corporal or Corporal that came back was in a tough situation. And you could, you knew and understood, you could be like, hey, man, I'm gonna send you over to this job over here where you're whatever, doing something like counting pencils or something like that, like something where they could have given, given you a mental break and a physical break. Is there nothing like that? You're off, if you do that, you're off track.

• 2:24:13Speaker 01

  I think now you can get a sabbatical for a year. So you can go traveling or go and do something different for one year and then come back in and carry on normal jogging. But back in the day, it was like, okay, go. That's it. You've made your choice. You're a number.

• 2:24:28Jocko Willink?

  So that's what you do?

• 2:24:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:24:29Jocko Willink?

  Two thousand, October two thousand five. How many years had you done at this point?

• 2:24:32Speaker 01

  I'd done.

• 2:24:33Jocko Willink?

  Nineteen ninety seven to two thousand five, what's that, eight, eight years?

• 2:24:36Speaker 01

  Years, yeah.

• 2:24:40Jocko Willink?

  You get out. Now, are, are you and Lucy separated?

• 2:24:43Speaker 01

  At this point.

• 2:24:44Jocko Willink?

  But you're not divorced?

• 2:24:46Speaker 01

  No, not, not divorced, just, yeah, having some time away to try and figure it out. It was me what needed to figure it out. And so she had the place in Hampshire where, where we, where we have our house now. And I lived in North London because of the job that I'd taken.

• 2:25:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you, there's a, through the infantry football club, the chairman of that was a guy named Colonel Richard, Richard Kemp, and he knew this wealthy businessman, this guy Lloyd Dorfman, Dorfman, who now is Sir Lloyd Dorf, Dorfman. But he was a, a businessman, an entrepreneur. He'd set up this business, a currency exchange, and it'd grown a bunch. And it was now an international company. It's called Travel X. And so he needed someone to sort of be his right-hand man.

• 2:25:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:35Jocko Willink?

  You got connected with him and you end up doing that. You end up

• 2:25:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:38Jocko Willink?

  sort of, you're like a chauffeur, bodyguard.

• 2:25:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:42Jocko Willink?

  Admin, just kind of doing everything.

• 2:25:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:47Jocko Willink?

  And you spend a year with him. You go into some good detail about that in the book. You spend a year with him. You're learning a lot about business. You actually get back together with Lucy.

• 2:25:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:54Jocko Willink?

  Which is pretty amazing. What marriage counseling do you have for the troops out here? Because that's pretty impressive.

• 2:26:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it is impressive. And like, John, my, my good friend, actually said to me yesterday. She's like gold standard. Like, you've got an absolute keeper. And I know that now. I'm, I'm in, I know this is a bit.

• 2:26:15Jocko Willink?

  Even in the book, like, I'm, she, well, so my wife's a Brit and people will say that my wife, my wife's name is Helen. They'll call her Saint Helen because like, she's an absolute saint to have been putting up with me for all these years.

• 2:26:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:26:28Jocko Willink?

  And it sounds like Lucy might be a saint as well.

• 2:26:31Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I think it's, I'm in love with her more now than I ever have been. I think we were young and it's, it's difficult to figure what a relationship is and we've been through quite a lot. But now I know. And what she's done with my two boys is just incredible. Like, my oldest now is serving. And he serves in second battalion, the parachute regiment. So, you know, what a. Yeah. And that's a lot to do with Lucy.

• 2:26:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:27:00Speaker 01

  I wasn't there a long time with him. You know, I was away. And then for her, for her to take on that responsibility, for them, him to grow into a real fine young man and say, I'm gonna go and serve my country. But I'm gonna do better than my dad. And I'm actually gonna go into the parachute regiment and call my dad a hat.

• 2:27:17Speaker 01

  But I just absolutely love what he's doing. It's a, it's a fine regiment. He chose to go and test himself to the extreme. And he went and done it. Not me. He did it. And it's a lot to do with Lucy.

• 2:27:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's outstanding. You, so you get back together with her. You got this job. You know, obviously there's opportunity in the civilian sector. But you miss the army.

• 2:27:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 2:27:43Jocko Willink?

  You miss the army and you, you go back in the army.

• 2:27:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:27:49Jocko Willink?

  Is that hard to do?

• 2:27:51Speaker 01

  No, I mean.

• 2:27:54Speaker 01

  Oh, I did miss it. I missed testing myself, competing, leading,

• 2:28:02Speaker 01

  and being involved in a belonging like no other. Cause when you're doing one to one stuff, you're isolated, you've got no identity, you aren't Woody, you're just a normal bloke. No one cares. No one cares. They're like, and what? Just go and do the ironing or go and collect this. And you're like, yeah, it's irrelevant. And I thought, mm, I need to go back, back into an environment where I know I can hustle and I know I can, you know, really go on an incredible mission with like-minded people. So I was like, I was in a swimming pool doing lifesaving drills with him and I got on with him and his family really well. They looked after me incredibly, but it was time. And I was doing lifesaving drills. We finished the P T session.

• 2:28:47Speaker 01

  And I was like, sir, I always called him sir, never Lloyd, never, you know, it was just sir. I treated him like a, a senior officer. I said, sir, and he's like, the time is now. Cause he, he had an E no. And I was like, yeah, I'm off. And I actually got a little bit emotional and I said, yeah. And he said, look, I'll support you no matter what. And then I got hold of Catrick, said I'm gonna come back in. Then there was a little bit of time period. I had to go and do my start standard to make sure I was fit and met the criteria again. And then, um, yeah, rejoined. And then, um.

• 2:29:19Jocko Willink?

  Any, any retraining?

• 2:29:21Speaker 01

  A little bit, a little bit, yeah. You go on a two week reimbursement course and, um,

• 2:29:29Speaker 01

  yeah, just worked hard, you know, tried to maintain the standards, um, before I got out. And then, uh, yeah, went back into, into my regiment.

• 2:29:38Jocko Willink?

  And then it's, um, basically back to Iraq.

• 2:29:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:43Jocko Willink?

  Two thousand, uh, what is it? Two thousand eight, two thousand nine, you do your second tour in Iraq.

• 2:29:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:29:48Jocko Willink?

  It's a lot different. A lot different. Two thousand, by, by two thousand eight, two thousand nine, two thousand eight, there was still a lot of, you know, there were, obviously Baghdad was still going crazy, that we had the surge happen. But for where you guys were, it was. It was ready to leave, it was just about to conduct the exfil. You said the only time we went out really was when the UK's special forces were involved and they needed, Cordon created. You're staying on this big camp. There's a Pizza Hut, there's a Burger King, there's a Subway. Everyone smiles when I tell them that, you know, like, it, it was crazy. Yeah, it is.

• 2:30:24Jocko Willink?

  You'd have missing people sometimes, and it's because they. They go to the American sector. They go where the Americans are, they're absolutely loving their best life.

• 2:30:35Jocko Willink?

  So it's a pretty mellow deployment. You know, but you're still in a leadership position.

• 2:30:41Jocko Willink?

  And then this happens, as platoon sergeant, I was going to inspect my men and the vehicles, that all correct equipment and kit was in place, there were two cook houses we used at the camp, one at the north, other at the south, this particular morning, I'd been breakfast in the northern one. I'd finished that and then headed back to my tented accommodation to collect the rest of my kit, as I leant over the wall, the wall by my bed to grab my body armor and webbing, I heard what sounded like a machine gun. It didn't sound right. Dull and muffled, but I was instantly on alert. In camp, we were unloaded, so no one should have had a loaded weapon with them, never mind it being made ready. I knew immediately that something was serious must have happened, I ran out. And as I did so, I heard someone shouting, he's killed himself, he's killed himself.

• 2:31:23Jocko Willink?

  From the next tent door, from the tent next door to mine. I ran to where the shouts were coming from, the first person I saw was Corporal Keynes. He had his hands on his heads, I asked him what happened and he told me, Raph Hall had killed himself. I entered the tent and couldn't believe what I saw, there was a soldier dead on the floor, and the stench of burning flesh, crouched by him was his platoon sergeant, Dan Davy. He was shouting at Raph Hall, why have you done this?

• 2:31:51Jocko Willink?

  What the fucks happened, I said, but looking at the body on the floor, the answer was fairly clear. The soldier, Private Ryan Rathall, had loaded his LMG, put it in his mouth and fired. It was a horrific scene. I remember a medic rushing in, seeing the body on the floor and fainting. Dan, I think it was, handed me the LMG and I took it outside to unload it. Rathall had disconnected the belt from the LMG and put five rounds into the feed tray. A full belt would carry a hundred rounds. If that went off, you could end up with a runaway gun and all kinds of carnage. Sox knew that and knew what he wanted to do, so he'd loaded up the weapon accordingly. The RMP appeared, so I handed the weapon over to them. They looked at me and said, "You better go wash your hands." I looked down and realized they were covered in blood. I went off to the

• 2:32:35Jocko Willink?

  toilets and tried to scrub myself clean. Sox, as Ryan was known, wasn't in my platoon, so I didn't know him well, but he'd been part of my company and living in the tent next to mine. So I knew who he was. It was a shocking incident and just desperately sad. I believe that he'd lost his dad earlier in the year. He'd been incredibly close to his father. Later it was discovered that he'd taken a large dose of morphine that morning before fatally shooting himself. The incident shook everyone up. Patrols were canceled. The padre was brought in and he spoke to the soldiers, tried to make sense of it all. For me, it was something I had wished that I hadn't experienced. Another image from Iraq that was set to haunt me, like the deaths and dead bodies from before. Those memories, I had them from before. They started to surface back up again.

• 2:33:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, even, this is, um, when we were talking about Danny Boy and the, the post Danny Boy debriefs and whatnot, there wasn't any. And here, a guy kills himself and because the op tempo's so low, they bring in the padre, they're doing these debriefs and stuff, they're trying to handle this traumatic situation properly.

• 2:33:49Jocko Willink?

  You come back from this deployment and there you you end up going to become an instructor on the Royal Marines Senior Command Course.

• 2:34:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:01Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 2:34:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:03Jocko Willink?

  When you're there, there's a there's a Royal Marines instructor that you that you're talking to, and he'd been through this thing, this trauma risk management.

• 2:34:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:11Jocko Willink?

  Which is called TRIM. He'd been through this course and kind of recognized that maybe maybe you could use a little bit of trauma risk management.

• 2:34:22Jocko Willink?

  He tells you the best thing you can do, he said, is go and try and get some direction on your headspace and have a couple of sessions and see what happens. So this is the first guy that kind of

• 2:34:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:34:31Jocko Willink?

  told you you might could use someone to talk to.

• 2:34:33Speaker 01

  Yeah. I mean, I was handpicked by the army to go in because the Royal Marine, the Royal Marines are on the naval establishment and obviously within the British Army. So I was handpicked to go and fill a post down there and instruct to make sure doctrinally we're teaching the same on Brecon and Senior Brecon is what we're doing down there on their Senior Command Course. So it was a real honor for one to be handpicked. And then I needed to go and do the commando course to earn my Green Beret. I didn't need to, but for credibility, I absolutely went down there and and and spent nine weeks of of of hard work and and graft. And then I was awarded my Green Beret and then went down and started bedding.

• 2:35:18Speaker 01

  So we moved as a family down there right next to the coast, next to the water. It was my best post I've ever had. It was incredible. And one of my good friends who I still speak to now was like, yeah, what do you need to just maybe kind of have a conversation? Because a lot of the stuff that we kind of maybe touch on is really raw. And I don't feel that you've sort of opened up about a few things which will definitely help. And look, I'm happy to take you down and and introduce you to like the commandant, who is the main like main sheriff down there. He was like the governor, you know, the the top brass.

• 2:36:02Speaker 01

  And I was really scared because I was on an e-posting, we call it, external posting. I was there representing not just my regiment, the British Army, and all of a sudden, already. I wanna speak to someone about some legacy stuff like didn't sit right with me. I thought I'm gonna get returned to unit for being not capable, a jelly head, not good enough. But when I went into the initial um sort of interviews slash chats, it was flipped to

• 2:36:38Speaker 01

  a better leader, um, someone who inspired others to maybe do the same if you need to. And that's who we want in this training establishment. So straight away, he made me feel that you know, this is what we want and you have done the right thing. And that really so it changed and helped me so much that actually I wouldn't mind going to have a conversation if that's okay, because it absolutely could grow me as a person and I could be better than who I am at the moment. And I think that's important to try and better yourself and and I went on a bit of a journey with that.

• 2:37:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, one of the things I think as you write about it in the book, um, you know, you start talking to this this lieutenant colonel and you tell him what's going on with football and the boys and you start telling him about Danny boy and all those things. And and then he says something that I think is really important. He says it's okay to have these emotions.

• 2:37:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:37:41Jocko Willink?

  It's what makes you human. It doesn't matter what sort of character you are, what organization you're in. When you go through this sort of stuff you've been through, it's gonna latch on.

• 2:37:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:37:49Jocko Willink?

  So that idea of like this stuff happens and then he recommends you to go to like a regular, I guess, a therapist, a civilian type therapist therapist.

• 2:38:03Jocko Willink?

  You say the therapist went into more detail than the lieutenant colonel had done. He really drilled down, went a lot deeper on a number of issues. He really concentrated on my feelings and emotions and tried to get to the bottom of those, just like the lieutenant colonel. He told me that it was okay to feel like this. And repeated that I wasn't the only soldier going through this. What he said was different to what my lieutenant colonel had said was that he brought uh he brought in my family. So again, this is totally different than the attitude that you had yourself, which is I'm a soldier.

• 2:38:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:33Jocko Willink?

  I'll just freaking deal with this.

• 2:38:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:36Jocko Willink?

  Um, we get to, so now you, you, you end up back at a unit where you're going to go back on deployment again. So you, you finish up your time with the, with the Marines.

• 2:38:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:38:49Jocko Willink?

  And, and again, it's a great section in there. You, you give a lot of credit to the course that you go through to get your green bread.

• 2:38:54Speaker 01

  Do you know what? The Royal Marines are, yeah, exceptional. I loved my time down there. And I even flirted with transferring, but it wasn't the right time and it was, yeah. But there was a few conversations about that. They just got me. I mean, their, their, their mentality is different to the army. They're very much laid back, trustworthy, don't, don't really micromanage. And it's kind of what I like to do. You give someone direction and clarity and the tools they need to, and then let them, if they need a support, they ask, but let them go. Army's sometimes a little bit different.

• 2:39:38Jocko Willink?

  How long did you do that instruction?

• 2:39:39Speaker 01

  Two years.

• 2:39:40Jocko Willink?

  Instructing for?

• 2:39:40Speaker 01

  Two years. It was brilliant. It was proper tactitional instructing as well. So them to be sergeants. And it was, and I was quite young. I was a young color sergeant. So I was instructing Royal Marine commandos who were like thirty five, thirty eight, and I was twenty nine. But I believed in myself and, you know, so they got it. They were like, yeah. And I just had an amazing two years down there.

• 2:40:05Jocko Willink?

  Did you wear their beret when you're teaching?

• 2:40:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:40:07Jocko Willink?

  What about when you're back on the army base?

• 2:40:10Speaker 01

  No. I wear my, um,

• 2:40:12Jocko Willink?

  They have an insignia or something?

• 2:40:13Speaker 01

  They have a dagger, yeah, commando dagger with army commando across like there. And I was the only person in my regiment to have that. So it's quite cool. Yeah.

• 2:40:24Jocko Willink?

  When I was a little kid, I had, I collected little toy soldiers, the little tiny ones. And they were actually representative of real units. And so I had, you know, Nazis and Brits and Americans and Russians. But the ones that I had, I had the British commandos and they had like little beanies on. And they had little rubber boats and kayaks. And that was my favorite. I was like, that's what I want to do. And we didn't have the British Commandos in America, but we had the SEAL teams.

• 2:40:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:40:56Jocko Willink?

  So that's my first memory of wanting to be some kind of a maritime commando was from the British Commandos.

• 2:41:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:41:05Jocko Willink?

  So then you go back to a unit and you're, you say, my battalion was, what, you go back, would you go back to?

• 2:41:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, one PWR.

• 2:41:12Jocko Willink?

  Got it. My battalion was already in Afghanistan and I was put on the BCR battlefield casualty replacement list. I was told I was going to take over as a CQMS company quartermaster sergeant. So this is like the person that's in charge of logistics and supply.

• 2:41:28Speaker 01

  From warfighting to like, oh, it's a, anyone, it's just natural progression, but it's not a job that you want to be doing really.

• 2:41:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And you're only on standby to go, but unfortunately a guy, Tom Lake.

• 2:41:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:41:42Jocko Willink?

  Gets hit by an ID, he's killed. There's five other casualties. So now you go.

• 2:41:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:41:48Jocko Willink?

  You end up, like I said, this is more of a administrative role that you're in. It's your first time kind of being in this administrative role. You say, my, my role in the store is a support role rather than a fighting soldier's role, but I'd still have the security compound, go out either in a Husky vehicle or a quad bike with a trailer to do resupplies. You say, it was an odd feeling being out and not being at the sharp end.

• 2:42:15Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:42:15Jocko Willink?

  Talk to any commander and nine times out of 10, they'll tell you they'd rather be out there themselves.

• 2:42:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a tough gig.

• 2:42:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:42:21Speaker 01

  I was, you know, sustaining the fight rather than being in the fight and the roles had reversed slightly, but you've just got to be professional in that role and that's what I tried to do.

• 2:42:31Jocko Willink?

  And the good thing is since you've been on the front lines, you know what it takes. You know what it needs. You know how important the support and logistics are. So you do a, you know, you do, like you said, professional job at that. Uh, the terrain in Afghanistan was completely different. The Iraq tour was about city fighting, which is really hard. It was rooftop to rooftop to rooftop. We were getting engaged from an alleyways, Afghanistan, or where I was anyways, didn't have those demands of urban fighting. We were down in the valleys. There were mountains all around, but we were really, where we were wasn't really that hilly, but what there was, which Iraq didn't have so much was IEDs. The place was riddled with them. In Iraq, there were a few more remote IEDs in Afghanistan. They were everywhere. So just different terrain.

• 2:43:16Jocko Willink?

  And then we get into the so you um I think you get home from that.

• 2:43:23Jocko Willink?

  Um, and this is where you start hearing about this or no, it's actually while you were at the commando course is where you start first hearing about this. How do you say it? Al Sweedy? Al Sweedy inquiry. Yeah. The Al Sweedy inquiry. So this is while you're at the commando course. Yeah. Um, you.

• 2:43:44Jocko Willink?

  You say this in the years after the Battle of Danny Boy, there had been an increasing clamor for some sort of inquiry into the events that had taken place that day, both in terms of the actions on the battlefield and also what had happened on our return to Camp Abu Najee.

• 2:43:59Jocko Willink?

  In the immediate aftermath of the battle, Camp Abu Najee had been visited by the ICRC, which is the International Committee of the Red Cross. Allegations had been made by the Iraqi prisoners and the IRC ICRC had asked the British to investigate. They did in the form of the RMP, the Royal Military Police, who had turned who had then turned up to interview me and the other soldiers involved first at Abu Najee and then later when I was at at Brecken in the training course. Those initial investigations produced little to back up the allegations, but the claims continued and were picked up by human rights lawyers, in particular, Phil Shiner, who ran a firm called Public Interest Lawyers and Martin Day of the firm Lee Day.

• 2:44:43Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:44:45Jocko Willink?

  This, there's little rumors. Yeah. Coming from these Iraqis and the Red Cross kind of hears about it. They say, hey, we should look into this. And then you've got these human rights lawyers who we'll get into.

• 2:44:58Jocko Willink?

  Phil Shiner, um, and this other guy, Martin Day. And Phil Shiner had been involved in this case of Baha Musa. Yeah. Uh, is an Iraqi guy. He died in British custody in 2003. His autopsy showed that he'd received a number of injuries and a number of soldiers in 2006 were charged with assault and inhumane treatment of the detainees. He, uh, in 2008, the military of defense,

• 2:45:27Jocko Willink?

  pays just under three million pounds in compensation to the family. So that that case was run by this guy, Phil Shiner. So he had clout. He had credibility. But it didn't have anything to do with that happening at Danny Boy. Yeah. So you had that happening. And then, of course, in America, we had problems. We had the Abu Ghraib in particular. We had that whole thing. So with all of this, all of these negative press, which was based in real, which is real things that happened. You say on the back of all this, the accusations about Danny Boy resurfaced. A group of six Iraqis, five involved in the battle, and the uncle of Hamid Al-Swedi,

• 2:46:11Jocko Willink?

  one of those killed, claimed that they had been ill-treated by British troops. Rather than being insurgent fighters, they said they were innocent civilians, farm workers, who had been caught up in the crossfire. Rather than the insurgents being killed on the battlefield, the men claimed they had been captured alive and then murdered back at the British base.

• 2:46:30Jocko Willink?

  So again, when I hear this kind of stuff, it's so ludicrous to like. But I understand that people that aren't in the military, they could somehow conceive that this could be a real thing. Like, this can't be real. Like, bringing guys back to base and executing, it's not happening. Yeah. It's just not happening. And that's why, and you say here, the MoD dismissed the allegations, right? No credible evidence. Phil Shiner, however, disagreed. He claimed there was very credible evidence

• 2:47:03Jocko Willink?

  that there was ill-treatment. He said that these allegations are incredibly serious, and yet the government has continuously delayed dealing with them since they were first made in 2004. He wanted a public inquiry to look into these accusations. And because of his involvement with the Baha Musa case, he had a lot of credibility, like you mentioned. So in February of 2008, he published a dossier of allegations about Danny Boy. There were accusations of torture by British troops, the mutilation of bodies, and the suggestion that up to 20 Iraqi captives may have been executed. Martin Day claimed that, quote, "The nature of a number of these inquiries of the Iraqis would seem to us to be highly unusual in a battlefield."

• 2:47:46Jocko Willink?

  He went on to suggest that Danny Boy might be, quote, "One of the most atrocious episodes in British Army history," end quote. He said, quote, "The burning question for us as a nation is whether these 24 hours represented the British Army at its best or the British Army at its worst," end quote.

• 2:48:07Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:48:10Jocko Willink?

  What I, what I. What I find so like um. Hard about this is you were there, you know what happened, you know what you did, you think, oh, these things don't, whatever, like, this is ridiculous.

• 2:48:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:48:23Jocko Willink?

  And then. It gets traction.

• 2:48:26Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yep.

• 2:48:28Jocko Willink?

  It gets traction, you, you must have just been thinking, are you? People crazy?

• 2:48:32Speaker 01

  I couldn't believe it, I couldn't believe it, and then they released it on Panorama, which is a massive, massive. Program that the whole of the UK will watch. And it made us out to look like barbaric murderers and that's. What followed. Was the most pressure I've ever been under, being on the battlefield and leading. I, I'm trained to do that, I understand. The whole concept and the characteristics of warfighting and leading. This. I didn't have a clue what to do and it was. So much pressure.

• 2:49:07Jocko Willink?

  So you're not sleeping at night?

• 2:49:09Speaker 01

  No, I mean, this was on another level, media outside the house. Trying to capture um my bro- my brother for quotes. Just couldn't go anywhere and then. It's, it's, it's tough because when something like that, it goes out to the nation and your name is linked to it. It just degrades everything, this is how I felt, I can't speak for the others, but I just felt that it just degraded everything that I stood for.

• 2:49:35Speaker 01

  Jocko, echo, like. I was prepared. To lose everything. On the battlefield. And leave my son without a dad, unquestionable. I was prepared to do that. And. Then have these. Lies. And then. Having my son, who was a lot older by now, in two thousand and nine. You know, schoolyard gossip, I get it.

• 2:50:04Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 2:50:04Speaker 01

  But they're saying, your dad's killed innocent civilians and.

• 2:50:14Speaker 01

  How do you deal with that to like sit down with your son and say, you know, you've just got to be strong and you know, weather the storm and it's hard, it's hard work, especially when you know what you've done is completely different to what's been said. And then I'm having friends who I thought were friends texting me saying, am I reading in the paper true? So I was having to justify all of that as well. It was just like, I thought, how can, how can my own country do this to me? When I was prepared to leave it all on the battlefield and when I needed a little bit of help, just a little bit of help to,

• 2:50:54Speaker 01

  you know, tell me that everything's going to be okay, that, you know, reassure me and do I need some support from what's going on this media storm? Not one person reached out, not one person from the government, from the M O D. My regiment were going through it. My regiment were all in the tabloids for being this potentially disgraced regiment for doing these barbaric accusations. So I just didn't know really what to do, if I'm honest, I was struggling.

• 2:51:21Jocko Willink?

  Did the regiment go on the offence at all?

• 2:51:24Speaker 01

  The regiment is difficult, Jocko, because everyone moves on after two years. So Matt Mayer was in America in an appointment out here. James Coop, my O C, was somewhere in Staff College. And then we've got this dossier that was put in front of us that we can't communicate and speak. So the people that I was involved in.

• 2:51:45Jocko Willink?

  Wait, you mean they told you legally you're not allowed to talk?

• 2:51:47Speaker 01

  We're not allowed to talk because we're now into this whole inquiry. So I can't even speak to people who have been through this with me. So people who don't know or don't get it, it's hard to like speak because they just don't understand. So I had nothing, not one thing. And then.

• 2:52:06Speaker 01

  Um, they found some documents in London when they, when the, um, when the police done a hit on a suspect terror, you know, a terrorist. They found the other commander who was with me that day in Danny Boy, documents on him with name, where he lives to do a hit. And then it puts Lucy into a flat spin saying they're coming for us. So then my head goes into sort of like hypervigilant mode, five and twenties every morning outside my house, looking for wise, are they gonna, how are they gonna approach this house? Like made me go a little bit mad really because of these documents, then he got put into a safe house. I never did.

• 2:52:49Speaker 01

  And I was like, they're gonna come and get me. I was just, it was, it was chaotic. What it done for me personally was.

• 2:52:59Speaker 01

  Oh yeah, I can't even like put, I can't even describe it. It was mad.

• 2:53:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you have the, um, I don't know if you have this expression in America, in England, we have an expression in America of where there's smoke, there's fire.

• 2:53:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53:15Jocko Willink?

  Which means, well, if they're saying this stuff about you, that it must, there, there must be some truth to it, right? So it's like there's, it's like you can't, and every time you say, well, actually, no, we did the right thing. People, oh, you're just being defensive. Of course, you're gonna say that like that whole thing. So you're in a freaking terrible scenario.

• 2:53:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53:34Jocko Willink?

  Um. The, I'm just gonna, the Greater Manchester Police were brought in to look at their original RMP investigations. You have like a real police department coming to look at what the Royal Police did. And they look at it and say, you guys didn't do a good job with your investigation. So then that kind of looks suspicious. And then, uh, so they kind of get in trouble. In October two thousand nine, three High Court judges ruled against the Ministry of Defence, accusing it of lamentable behaviour and serious breaches of duty over its investigation at any bar. So this thing where you were in the QRF and people are coming in like, hey, how'd it go down? And you gave them quick answers. They're now going through that with a fine tooth comb, saying, oh, you guys were covering something up.

• 2:54:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:54:19Jocko Willink?

  Um. In November two thousand nine, the Defence Secretary Bob Ainsworth announced that a public inquiry would be held. It would be called the Al Sweedy Inquiry after one of the Iraqis who've been killed. This is freaking, um, crazy.

• 2:54:36Jocko Willink?

  You say I was dumbfounded firstly because of the nature of the allegations in comparison to the events that had taken place. But secondly, because I had no inkling that this inquiry was about to happen. So you're, you're just saying, you guys are freaking crazy.

• 2:54:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:54:47Jocko Willink?

  Like this idea that you executed these civilians or these, these prisoners, like it's, it's completely absurd.

• 2:54:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:54:55Jocko Willink?

  Reposters.

• 2:55:02Jocko Willink?

  So now, here's some of the things you write. Iraqi prisoners were openly be openly being called victims.

• 2:55:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:55:10Jocko Willink?

  Without any evidence to back up that claim. Anyone who didn't know what had happened, looked at those reports and thought, fucking hell, they were unlawfully killed. They must be innocent civilians caught up in this. Otherwise, why would they be media be calling them victims?

• 2:55:23Speaker 01

  And that's how it was on the press. So all of this was all over the place. And I was like, oh my God, how, how do I even get out of this now? I'm really having to dig in with my teeth because this is serious, serious, real serious. And it frustrated me so much because I was like, you just don't know what we went through to even achieve what we achieved. We achieved what on paper was unachievable. We done everything and we're prepared to leave everything. And now I'm having to like fight for my honor. That's how it felt. I was fighting for everything that I stood for, my integrity, who I was as Brian Wood, just everything. And I was exhausted, if I'm honest.

• 2:56:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is what you were talking about earlier. We were British soldiers. We were sent to do, we were sent to war to do what we've been told by the politicians only come back and find ourselves fighting another battle to clear our names.

• 2:56:17Jocko Willink?

  After Danny Boy, some of the Iraqis claimed that we'd taken the prisoners back and killed them in camp.

• 2:56:23Jocko Willink?

  The next day, we were hit doubly hard. That is how it was. People making up lies to, to cause a stir and getting people to fight. But the truth was that we were trained, we were prepped before any tour. You do your pre-deployment training, which is about four and a half months long. You go through all sorts of scenarios, all sorts of situations in terms of how you should treat prisoners. You're told about the Geneva Convention. You talk about the rules of engagement and the, the guidance card alpha, which outlines what you can and cannot do. This is all spoken about and you adhere to it.

• 2:56:50Jocko Willink?

  Back home, people read the papers, watch TV and drew their own conclusions. And you talk about that situation with your son, like having people there, talk to him, you talk about how, how you were now thinking you're going to be targeted.

• 2:57:05Jocko Willink?

  You get a bunch of letters of people wanting you to clarify these statements. Every question was like flicking a switch. I'm only human. So as soon as I got a letter asked me to recollect a particular detail or I was right back there, I found myself revisiting Danny Boy again and again.

• 2:57:22Jocko Willink?

  So finally, we get to this point where you're actually going to get called and you, again, there's so much detail in this and it's such a great read to understand what this stuff looks like from the inside, from your perspective. You end up, you're going to go before, go before this inquiry. Yeah. My appearance was scheduled for Monday, fourth of November, two thousand thirteen. I was serving in Germany at the time, which was a bit of a blessing, being out there made it a bit easier to be away from it all, out of sight and all that. I flew back to the UK at the end of the previous week so I could spend some time prepping with the lawyers for what was going to happen.

• 2:57:55Jocko Willink?

  What was the lawyers? Were the lawyers? Your lawyers were positive. I know they were trying to help you, but

• 2:58:01Speaker 01

  The MOD lawyer, I seen her five minutes before we went in.

• 2:58:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's it. That's the prep.

• 2:58:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, five minutes before.

• 2:58:06Jocko Willink?

  Why is that?

• 2:58:07Speaker 01

  I just don't know. I don't know. She come in to introduce herself and I speak about it in the book. I said, you know, five minutes I, I got with the lawyer from the MOD, so she's not going to be representing me.

• 2:58:18Jocko Willink?

  Do you think that they thought, did you think that they believed the accusations in some way?

• 2:58:24Speaker 01

  Do you know what? I really don't know. I don't know, Jocko. It's just everything was all over the place with who I trusted, who I didn't, who I could lean on, who I could say something to. It just played havoc with me as a person to trust. It was just difficult, but then introducing me just before I was going to get cross-examined, five minutes before I was going in. My lawyers were, were good, the civvies, civilian lawyers. They were

• 2:58:50Jocko Willink?

  So you had to pay, you had to get

• 2:58:52Speaker 01

  The MOD paid, paid for the civilian, civilian lawyers, the MOD lawyer. I mean, she must have just got past a bunch of files from the lawyers that were with us. And then just come in and see me five minutes before and introduce herself. And I was like, yeah, whatever.

• 2:59:08Jocko Willink?

  Like I said, there's, there's a whole courtroom drama. I don't use that term lightly. There's a whole story of the courtroom, the people that you introduce all these characters. And I'm going to fast forward a bit into the courtroom. There's press, there's lawyers, there's journalists, there's soldiers, like it's a whole scenario, the whole world's watching this. It's a huge.

• 2:59:28Speaker 01

  It's a public inquiry. Everyone could come in, get amongst it. So it just opened the gates. I mean, the bleachers had to put in extra bleachers. For people to come in. I was like, what is this? This is wild. Yeah.

• 2:59:43Jocko Willink?

  And no one from the military was like.

• 2:59:45Speaker 01

  No, I, I think I say, I just needed someone who was a figurehead, who understood warfare, understood what was going on to stand up, smash on his table and put something into context. I wasn't smart enough to do that. I tried. With the answers, all the questions and the cross examination, I was a lot older now as well, and I was a lot more mature and battle hardened and had a lot of experience. But I would still find it tough to actually bring the courtroom into the battlefield, into context. And it was difficult. I just needed someone there who was going to be on my shoulder, who was

• 3:00:22Speaker 01

  a senior officer that had been there and done it and wanted to help me. But the ones that were there were on the allegation themselves. So I didn't have it.

• 3:00:33Jocko Willink?

  There's a character named Beer. He's one of the lawyers. I'm going to get to, I'm not going to introduce every character. You do it in the book and it's great. Um, you say Beer can, Beer, the lawyer continued to question me as to our whereabouts before the incident. Where we were when the call came in about the ambush. All of this had been covered in my statement, but he asked anyway, presumably to set the scene. Could I remember where I was when the tasking came in? No. Was it on Route six? Yes. Did you travel south on Route six? I don't know. Did you travel towards Danny Boy? By the time he asked me that last question, I could feel myself getting irritated. You know I fucking did, I thought. I was involved in the Battle of Danny Boy. But you can't answer like that. You have to keep your composure. So I just answered yes and we moved on. Okay, Beer said. He said okay, a lot.

• 3:01:16Jocko Willink?

  And then, and a lot of them were the okays where you weren't quite sure how okay he thought your answer actually was. I'm gonna fast forward a little bit. The questions felt as though he was walking, felt as though I was walking through a minefield. Beer asked me about our vehicle returning fire. To which direction was it engaging? Left, right, or straight on? It was right, I replied. I do know in my statement I have said left, but it was, it was to the right-hand side. I think you were referring to the Royal Military Police statement, is that right? Yes. Is that incorrect? I've just said that, haven't I? That is incorrect, yes. Okay, Beer. Like, he is just freaking trying to set you up. Uh, the way he was questioning was making me out as though I couldn't tell left from right.

• 3:01:59Jocko Willink?

  Um, fast forward a little bit. The same was true over his questions on the use of bayonets. Beer quoted a line from my statement where Sergeant Broome gave me the order, Woody, "Get, get the blokes prepped." "What does that mean?" Beer asked. So I explained. "Just make sure that their kit is fitted, you know, and they were all good to go because being in a warrior in the middle of summer in Iraq heat, it's close to the boiling point." "Fixing bayonets on your rifle, it was SOP." "It is a close-quarter battle drill. If you are going out there and closing with the enemy, you fix a bayonet. If you don't, you're not doing your drills right." "It is a tradition as an infantry soldier that you do that because what happens if you approach the enemy position and you get a stoppage or run out of ammunition, you use your bayonet."

• 3:02:41Jocko Willink?

  "It is procedure. You do it time and time again in training, no big deal." But the fact that Beer would focus on it, it just suggested a lack of understanding of what the situation was really like. "There is a quote attributed to you on a BBC website," Beer continued. "It is said that you said, 'We've got a lot of firepower with a warrior, so I never dreamt we'd be told to dismount and engage in close-quarters battles.'" "It hadn't happened since the Falklands War," he paused. "Is that something you said to a journalist?" Maybe words to that effect, I replied. "But clearly journalists will be journalists." "I was being honest there." "I probably did say that." But I didn't like him linking the two up suggesting that what was SOP was in fact

• 3:03:25Jocko Willink?

  something highly unusual. Doesn't it follow that the order to dismount into the battle rather surprised you, Bear asked? That's what we do, I replied. We're infantry soldiers, so we train to close with and destroy the enemy. So it was just a shock because it's not every day you get an order like that.

• 3:03:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:03:50Jocko Willink?

  Fast forward a little bit. This is the kind of stuff you're dealing with. The accusations continued. Al Behed Ali alleged that he was kicked more than twice while blindfolded and cuffed on the floor. A second detainee said that soldiers pushed his head hard onto the ground with a hand on his neck, stepped on the back of his knees and dragged him across the ground by his ankles. A third detainee alleged a black soldier had kicked him in the chest, punched him twice on the jaw and struck him on the head with a rifle. A fourth detainee said a black soldier punched him repeatedly in the face and was kicked by a number of soldiers until he lost consciousness. I'd seen nothing of the sort and told Bear so. The specifics of the claims made me suspicious.

• 3:04:31Jocko Willink?

  I was sat there being careful and measured with my answers, all couched in what I could and couldn't recall. Yet here the accusations were in crystal clear detail. It was all a fucking bluff. Nothing of that sort happened. If anything of that sort had happened, it would have been stopped straight off on a purely tactical, practical level. There simply wasn't the time. The battlefield wasn't cleared. Would professional soldiers really risk their lives filling people in when the enemy was still out there? It just wouldn't happen and it didn't happen. So having these questions and accusations thrown about me and my men really got to me.

• 3:05:12Jocko Willink?

  Freaking ridiculous. Yep. Um, you say no one else in that room had been a frontline soldier and that made the situation difficult. This is what you were talking about earlier. Without that experience, how would you promptly understand what we'd been faced with? It's hard to sit, it's not hard to sit in an air-conditioned inquiry room and make comments about blindfolds and plastic cuffs and insinuate that our behavior was brutal and barbaric. But the lack of understanding of being in that situation, the context of how the army carries out its instructions, that I did find shocking. War isn't a contract negotiation. You're not sat there dotting every last I and crossing every last T until agreement is reached. You're under threat. You're under fire. Life is danger, is in danger. You rely on gut and instinct to get through,

• 3:05:55Jocko Willink?

  do what you have to do in order to survive. That's the basics of what being a soldier is all about. That's what it felt like, as though I was defending. And that's what I felt, as though no one in that inquiry room properly understood.

• 3:06:10Jocko Willink?

  Dude, it was hard for me to read this. Like, um, you get to another point where Beer's concocting some sort of conspiracy between you and Falconer over what we had told the RMP. He's basically trying to make it sound like you guys plotted this story out. Yeah. You say Beer was eager to point out, "In this statement, you don't describe the incident where somebody was bringing an RPG into the firing line and you engaging them and the other person that Sergeant Major Falconer engaged and dropped," as you put it. Is there any reason for that?

• 3:06:43Jocko Willink?

  "For all my lawyer's advice of keeping calm and keeping it simple, I couldn't contain myself. I wasn't going to let him get away with these suggestions." So what were the reasons behind the statements being different? Collusion? Cover-up? My response was short and sharp. RMP didn't doing, RMP not doing their job properly? That was the truth. Those first statements were a bit of shambles. We were tired and under pressure. Getting those statements done was not a priority. In the light of day now, I wish we would have done them properly, as it would have made all of what happened next much easier. Instead, those statements were just sketched, essentially a shorthand of what happened, which left holes for any lawyer who wanted to, to get to digging. And that's where a lot of this crap comes from.

• 3:07:26Jocko Willink?

  Um, there's this whole like crazy idea and they start asking you about like, well, how close were the weapons to the guys, you know, and what do they look like they could have been possibly doing something else and all this, it's just garbage.

• 3:07:44Jocko Willink?

  Were the weapons loaded? How far were they from the guys?

• 3:07:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:07:47Jocko Willink?

  You say the accusations from the Iraqis that they'd been innocent farmers somehow picked up, picked on and unilaterally attacked by us were laughable. The fact that the inquiry was running with this idea, that this suggestion was even half taken seriously, felt disrespectful to everything we'd done that day. If those lawyers had been in the middle of what we've been in the middle of, the sheer wildness of that engagement, they wouldn't have been stood there asking me these questions. We're the British Army. We're trained professional soldiers. We didn't just drive down the road to randomly pick a fight with some civilian farmers for shits and giggles. We'd been ambushed by militia and we were lucky to have come out alive.

• 3:08:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Again, to you, even to me, I wasn't there. I've been to Iraq. I can tell you that this whole fantasy that they have is so like completely ridiculous. And here you are in a room under inquiry being asked these ridiculous questions.

• 3:08:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:08:46Jocko Willink?

  Your, your like faith in humanity must have been going down at some juncture here.

• 3:08:50Speaker 01

  I couldn't believe it. It's three and a half hours of nonsense, in my opinion, and I had to just really try and keep my patience, but it's difficult when these people with small glasses and big reputations want to bring you down for all you're worth and it's just not happening.

• 3:09:10Jocko Willink?

  Um, there's like this whole plethora of accusations. I mean, everything from literally, you're putting your, your cuffs on too tight.

• 3:09:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:09:21Jocko Willink?

  To a guy wanting water and getting, you not giving him water while he's on a 10 minute ride back to base like.

• 3:09:29Speaker 01

  Fucking's getting no water.

• 3:09:30Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 3:09:30Speaker 01

  Nothing. That's for my guys.

• 3:09:32Jocko Willink?

  It's freaking ridiculous.

• 3:09:33Speaker 01

  Not a fucking chance.

• 3:09:34Jocko Willink?

  And this, to them, this is, you know, crimes against humanity.

• 3:09:37Speaker 01

  Inhumane, yeah. Inhumane treatment.

• 3:09:40Speaker 01

  But what what what we didn't speak about, which I think is very important as well, is Phil Shiner went to Istanbul into a into a link up with agents. So because he was getting so much money for this inquiry, he was, and it's actually in the film, he was in Istanbul and getting basically processing all these people because each referral that he got, it was like big money. Money. So all he was doing and I could not believe it. So he would chat to these militia and they're like, yeah, but what about my mom? Don't worry, we'll compensate her as well. If you if you were involved, then we'll look after you and your mom. So just keep these referrals coming.

• 3:10:23Speaker 01

  Like this is human life you're playing with. And that lizard is out there, you know, conducting these referrals for money. It's just, I just, it just goes beyond me.

• 3:10:37Jocko Willink?

  It's it's absolutely, it's disgusting. It's disgusting. It's disgusting.

• 3:10:44Jocko Willink?

  Again, get the book, everybody, so you can read through this. This is freaking, it's crazy to read. It's kind of hard to read, but it's very informative. And and you, you, you said it was like going through a minefield. Well, you went through the minefield and the truth is on your side. Yeah. And you finally get done testifying and and I'll go here. Caller Sergeant, the chairman turned to me. That completes your evidence to the inquiry. Thank you very much for having come here in order to give your evidence to me. I am very grateful to you for that. I'm also very grateful for your patience and courtesy and the way you have listened to and answered the questions which you have been asked in the way that you have done. Thank you very much. Indeed, you are free to go and I wish you well for your

• 3:11:27Jocko Willink?

  future. By the time I stood down, was taken back to the holding room, I was exhausted. It had been hours of questioning, being made to relive things I didn't want to relive. I felt drained. I could feel my head throbbing for all from all the intensity of it. My lawyer, Neil Sheldon, seemed pleased. He echoed what the chairman had said, told me I'd handle myself with great dignity and I presented myself well. So that's that.

• 3:11:55Jocko Willink?

  You end up leaving the army in two thousand fourteen again. And and this is partially because of all this that's happening. And it's also something that happened with your pension, which was another thing that was crazy to me.

• 3:12:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:12:10Jocko Willink?

  So explain what happened with your pension.

• 3:12:12Speaker 01

  Because I had a break in service, um, my pension wasn't going to carry on. From what so basically what what's normally happening is when you rejoin, it just continues. But they they've done a new regulation pension wise. And um, yeah, I then found out through my own homework that I wasn't going to get my full military pension. And it was going to be like probably half or three quarters of, you know, I was going to get half or three quarters of my pension.

• 3:12:42Jocko Willink?

  And you wouldn't start getting paid until you're sixty five.

• 3:12:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, sixty five, yeah, yeah. So, you know, for for this broke me and.

• 3:12:54Speaker 01

  Or I also like needed to write about it because there's a lot of corruption. I I thought I'm I'm not one to to to stick the bayonet and twist it like with Shiner. I could have rinsed him, I could have destroyed him in the book, but I'm a man of honour. He knows what he's done, he's got to live with that. I could have destroyed and went in on the MOD's duty of care, protection, you know, and loyalty. I didn't, I highlighted lessons learned. And if I did that, hopefully others wouldn't go through the same as what we went through. So it's important for me to to to then, yeah, speak about how I felt and with the pension. And with everything that was then announced by the chairman to be wholly without foundation, deliberate lies,

• 3:13:38Speaker 01

  reckless speculation and ingrained hostility. It's done, and I tell you how it got done is the public interest lawyers shredded a key document, which stated all the militia fighters and where their militia groups were. So it's basically in in the UK military or the US military, it's your name, rank and number and where what base you're at. So they've they had this, they shredded it to to keep this going because of money. It ended up being thirty three million pounds worth of taxpayers' money, the inquiry. But on the archives, there was a photocopy of it. And so I went on to the stand the day after they found this archive and it was done because it was lies.

• 3:14:23Jocko Willink?

  Um.

• 3:14:26Jocko Willink?

  Once you get out, um, yeah, that this, this. I'll, I'll actually memorize that. I hated reading the part of the book where you were on the stand and all those accusations coming. And then when it got to the, the way it all came down, I was like reading it with glorious emotions. Um. You know, some of the, the O' Connor, who's the guy, uh, he says the Iraqi core participants will not submit that. Oh, this happened earlier. So, so, uh, one of the guys from, um, I think PIL. The Iraqi core participants will not submit that on the balance of probabilities lives. Live Iraqis captured during the course of the battle on 14 May 2004 died or were killed at camp.

• 3:15:11Jocko Willink?

  At Camp Abu Naji. So this is one of the first things that happened is they, after a year of these accusations, they said, well, maybe no one was killed on camp. Yeah. We're not going to pursue that charge. So that was the first time that you kind of noticed that. Um.

• 3:15:26Jocko Willink?

  And then you talk about in the book that, that they had that document, by the way. Yeah. For six years. Yeah. So they had Echo Charles. They had a document that had the names of the militia members. So these guys that were saying it's like, oh, Echo Charles, he says he's a farmer. He says he shouldn't have been attacked, shouldn't have been captured, any of that. And then they have a document that says Echo Charles was Mahdi militia part of this group. When you say they had it, your accusers had it? Yes. Well, the lawyers. The lawyer. Had that document that confirmed who these bad guys were, who these Mahdi militia, and they buried the evidence. Like on purpose. Yeah, they shredded it.

• 3:16:07Speaker 01

  Money. They shredded. Then they said it was human error.

• 3:16:13Jocko Willink?

  They start going pretty hard and so finally Sir Thane Forbes' final report on Al Sweedy inquiry was released on 17 December 2014, a year and a month after you'd given evidence. But this has been going on for five years of your name being dragged through the mud, of your reputation being hurt. He certainly had a lot of material to work with. 169 days of hearings, evidence from 55 Iraqi witnesses, 222 service personnel, and four expert witnesses, and a further chunk of written statements from another 328 witnesses. The final report

• 3:16:53Jocko Willink?

  he produced ran 1,200 pages and had to be printed in two separate volumes. That's what this guy was looking at. And that's, you know, when you see all these witnesses, you think, you think, wow, they had a lot of witnesses. Yeah, because they were getting paid by the witness. Freaking ridiculous. The report, his report, kind of starts off a little bit, you know, you're reading it, starts off a little bit rough. It says something like, hey, the conduct of various military soldiers may not have met the high standards. But then he goes, "I've come to the firm conclusion that the vast majority of the allegations made against the British military, which this inquiry was required to investigate,

• 3:17:35Jocko Willink?

  including without exception, all the most serious allegations, were wholly and entirely without merit or foundation. Very many of these baseless allegations were the product of deliberate and calculated lies on the part of those who made them, and who then gave evidence to this inquiry in order to support and perpetuate them. Other false allegations were the result of inappropriate and reckless speculation on the part of the witnesses. I've also come to the firm conclusion that the approach of the detainees and that a number of the other Iraqi witnesses to giving of their evidence was both unprincipled, in the extreme, and wholly without regard for the truth. Such was the extent to which

• 3:18:19Jocko Willink?

  some of these witnesses told deliberate and calculated lies to this inquiry that I felt necessary to indicate that such was the case." So it's total freaking lies. Forbes's conclusion couldn't have been clearer. The work of this inquiry has established beyond doubt that all the most serious allegations made against the British soldiers involved in the Battle of Danny Boy and its aftermath, and which have been hanging over these soldiers for the last 10 years, have been found to be wholly without foundation and entirely the product of deliberate lies, reckless speculation, and ingrained hostility. End quote.

• 3:19:00Jocko Willink?

  For the accusations to have been withdrawn and refuted as comprehensively as this was an amazing feeling. I cannot describe what it was like to feel that weight lifting off my shoulders. It was immense. I wasn't sure what I was expecting to happen that day. If the findings had gone the other way, who knows what might have happened next? So for the inquiry to come up with these conclusions to back everything I'd said, it felt liberating, a release.

• 3:19:26Jocko Willink?

  Then you go on to say some of the more minor claims and what we were talking about. They should have been given drink. And you're like, you say, I could have given them water. And you say, you know, I can look back and see that I should have given them some water. Bro, I'm going to tell you right now, no one is getting water. So maybe you put that in the book. Maybe you're trying to be nice. These guys are not getting any water from me after they freaking tried to kill us. It ain't happening. I mean, I'll put a tourniquet off. They're going to die, but they're not going to die on a seven minute drive back to the compound.

• 3:19:56Jocko Willink?

  You say, I felt bad in a strange way. The public purse had been spent $31 million.

• 3:20:03Jocko Willink?

  So that pissed off some, that pissed off some politicians. And then they started to go hard. House of Commons Secretary of State for Defense, Michael Fallon. Fallon was sharply critical of both the Iraqi witnesses and their legal team. The Iraqi detainees, their accomplices, and their lawyers must bear the brunt of the criticism for this protracted nature and 31 million pound cost of this inquiry. He revealed that the Solicitors Regulation Authority, the SRA, people that track the lawyers, had decided to investigate two firms. Phil Shiner's Public Interest Lawyers and Lee Day, the firm that it's the so-called militia list for breaches of professional standards. So they go after these guys with the, with the governing act of lawyers over in your country.

• 3:20:50Jocko Willink?

  Fallon saved one of his most powerful observations until the very end. I add only one final comment. Following the Battle of Danny Boy, five soldiers were awarded the Military Cross and won the conspicuous Gallantry Cross for their conduct there and in other engagements in early 2004. Other acts of bravery emerged clearly in the accounts of the battle. This is who our servicemen and women are. The reputation of our armed forces has been hard-won in the service of our nation. It will survive the baseless slurs of those who seek to undermine those on whom we all depend.

• 3:21:32Jocko Willink?

  You go on to say, "The only sour note that entire December day was the reaction of the lawyers involved." Fucking right, I thought, when Fallon said they owed the soldiers an apology, but PIL rejected that suggestion. These guys didn't even freaking apologize. They're scum. Yeah.

• 3:21:50Jocko Willink?

  The SRA, the Solicitors Regulation Authority, they go hard. Although they do, Lee Day gets off. Am I saying that right? Yeah, Lee Day, yeah. Lee Day gets off. They're cleared by the SRA. I was kind of bummed when I saw that. They were charged 19 charges of professional conduct. They got off somehow. PIL, though, the government's evidence made a number of claims, but two are particularly shocking. First, it suggested that PIL had misgivings over the credibility of the evidence of its clients in March 2013, but it was a full 12 months before it withdrew the allegations of unlawful killing. So they knew that people weren't unlawfully killed, and for a year, they just kept saying it. Secondly, the dossier claimed that PIL had used a fixer or agent

• 3:22:34Jocko Willink?

  in Iraq who had made what it described as unsolicited approaches to potential victims. The result of this deeply unethical process had been explosion in the number of cases that the PIL had filed against British forces. So Phil Shiner, meanwhile, he gets charged 24 counts.

• 3:22:50Jocko Willink?

  You didn't have to say anything about that about Phil Shiner. This is so good. You just had to state the facts on this scumbag. He tried and failed to have his disciplinary held in private, thankfully.

• 3:23:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:23:02Jocko Willink?

  Put him in public like everyone else.

• 3:23:03Speaker 01

  I was actually, so that how the role role was reversed, I went to the courtroom.

• 3:23:08Jocko Willink?

  Oh, beautiful.

• 3:23:09Speaker 01

  When he was up in the dock, so.

• 3:23:12Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yes.

• 3:23:13Speaker 01

  The roles are reversed, so I'm in the bleachers and he's there.

• 3:23:17Jocko Willink?

  Did he make eye contact with you?

• 3:23:18Speaker 01

  Nah, nah, he's a weak man, weak man. And so he's.

• 3:23:23Jocko Willink?

  I saw a picture of him.

• 3:23:23Speaker 01

  He's now waiting for his trial date.

• 3:23:27Jocko Willink?

  Oh, right now?

• 3:23:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, right now in the High Court, so the highest court in in the UK. He'll go down. So, yeah, we're just, um.

• 3:23:34Jocko Willink?

  Wait, you said he'll go down or he'll get out?

• 3:23:36Speaker 01

  No, he'll go down.

• 3:23:37Jocko Willink?

  He's going down.

• 3:23:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. The evidence is too credible. I mean, it's mad, but it was like, it's very surreal. So I wore my regimental tie, blue, blue, yellow, blue, and I sat there and I just looked at him. And he was just a little weasel, you know? But it's karma, you know?

• 3:23:57Jocko Willink?

  Uh, he gets charged with 24 counts, um, 24 charges leveled against him, of which Shiner denied six, admitted nine counts of acting without integrity and one count of acting recklessly, and partly accepted additional nine.

• 3:24:15Jocko Willink?

  So he admitted he paid a fixture over $25,000 in referral fees. God, he admitted paying witness to change their evidence.

• 3:24:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:24:24Jocko Willink?

  Shiner attempted to tell the tribunal that because he was under a lot of stress, he was not responsible for his actions. And as a result, his actions were not dishonest. And then, but then they had all these emails, like well articulated emails of how he wanted things to go down.

• 3:24:37Jocko Willink?

  The tribunal tribunal also heard a written statement from Colonel James Coot, who'd been in command at Danny Boy. The false allegations leveled against the soldiers in my command were among the most serious against the British Army since the Second World War. I didn't think soldier solicitors could simply make or endorse false statements. I recall my sense of anger and dismay about those allegations. The nature of those false allegations raised at a press press conference resulted in extremely stressful and demoralizing decade for me and other soldiers. Four days later, the tribunal concluded finding Shiner guilty of 22 misconduct charges with the remaining two left on file.

• 3:25:16Jocko Willink?

  He was struck off as a solicitor and ordered to pay the cost of the prosecution, beginning with a down payment of 250,000 pounds. Yes. After the case, Colonel Coote said that Shiner should now apologize. It would be appropriate if Shiner apologized now to the soldiers and their families for what they have been through. So did the Secretary of Defense, Michael Fallon. Phil Shiner made soldiers' lives a misery by pursuing false claims of torture and murder. Now he should apologize. Phil Shiner did not apologize. I hope they televised it. It was on my film. What about the case that's coming? I might fly to England to catch that. I want to see this guy go down.

• 3:26:01Jocko Willink?

  This is cool too. This is what a slimeball this guy is. One month after being struck off, Phil Shiner declared bankruptcy. One year later, the Insolvency Service discovered a series of financial deals, including transferring his $300,000 family home, a couple of guitars, a family. He put it all into a family trust. The terms of trust allowed him to continue living in the house. He sold two properties, referring them on the PIL. Basically, he just tried to do a big shell game with his money. Yeah. Justin Dionne, the official receiver, said, "Mr. Shiner thought he could be clever by giving away his assets to his family members. So when he declared himself bankrupt, there wasn't anything to pay his creditors with. Sadly, he was mistaken, as all his activities were easily spotted." The Insolvency Service has said it has recovered just under 500,000, but Shiner's outstanding

• 3:26:44Jocko Willink?

  debts remain at 6.5 million pounds. Yes.

• 3:26:50Jocko Willink?

  "When Shiner was struck off, I was pleased. He could never now do again what he'd been doing and put people like me through the years of hell that he dragged us through. He never apologized. Even if he did now, I think it's too late." I agree. "There was a time and place to do so, but he decided not to. I think he's heartless and a coward for not having done so. The contrast with the bravery shown by the troops at Danny Boy couldn't be sharper."

• 3:27:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Having the accusations out there and given credence by the public inquiry. See, that's it meant to tarnish your names. And that's like.

• 3:27:24Jocko Willink?

  I guarantee you right now, there's people in England that are go, oh, Brian Wood. Oh, he's that war criminal.

• 3:27:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:27:28Jocko Willink?

  Like right now.

• 3:27:29Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:27:29Jocko Willink?

  Maybe the movie helped or whatever, but like there's still people that, oh yeah, those guys killed.

• 3:27:33Speaker 01

  Mudsticks.

• 3:27:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:27:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it even hurts now, like my medals. They're in my sock drawer. At home. Do you know, and I just don't feel.

• 3:27:46Speaker 01

  I don't know.

• 3:27:48Speaker 01

  There's a lot that's. I don't know. There's a, there's a shadow still where I start, put them on for remembrance, but they're not displayed anywhere. They're just in my, in a pouch in my sock drawer. Because, I don't know. It's just been a long slog and. Albeit it was all done and. Yeah, Shiner. Was then accountable for what he put us through, but. I don't know. One day I will mount them and put them somewhere that my kids can, can see. But yeah, they're still. In my sock drawer, in my, in my bedroom.

• 3:28:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, like you said, the book Mudsticks, the, the fact that the government allowed the, the inquiry to happy makes me so angry. The fact that they did so and then failed to offer us any support or backup. Like it would have been so easy for them to snuff this out.

• 3:28:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:28:40Jocko Willink?

  They have all this information.

• 3:28:45Jocko Willink?

  Some of those accusations, I can't believe that someone didn't smell a rat. One of the detainees claimed he'd been out grazing cows on the battlefield when the action took place. Another claimed he'd been there because he'd been out buying forty litres of yogurt for a wedding. A guy without transportation, making a fifteen kilometer round trip to buy industrial quantities of yogurt in the middle of nowhere. Where was the yogurt? Did the cows eat it all? More seriously, someone should have looked at the stuff and at the start and said, there's nothing to this, move on.

• 3:29:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:29:11Jocko Willink?

  Like that would have been so.

• 3:29:12Speaker 01

  The thing, even if, if, if. Anyone is interested, if they were to go on to. My social media on Instagram and have a look at the photos from the twentieth anniversary, which is not long gone, May. And if you look at the photos, you'll be like. How did this even from the photos and the engagements on the videos? How did this even go?

• 3:29:35Jocko Willink?

  Hmm.

• 3:29:36Speaker 01

  That how far it went? Because you can see just in them clips. How brutal and how ready they were. It's just, I just don't get it.

• 3:29:45Jocko Willink?

  They might have been farmers.

• 3:29:47Speaker 01

  That's what they reckon, yeah. There was not one farming tool. I said that in the courtroom. I said, show me the farming tools.

• 3:29:51Jocko Willink?

  That was like such a classic part of the book. Cause when you started getting a little more uppity about it, you're like, oh, I didn't see. Maybe they were planting, you know, seeds with their freaking machine guns or something, but.

• 3:30:02Speaker 01

  And that's what it was.

• 3:30:03Jocko Willink?

  No hose, there was no rakes, there was no shovels.

• 3:30:05Speaker 01

  Not one thing.

• 3:30:07Jocko Willink?

  God, um.

• 3:30:10Jocko Willink?

  You get an email from Major General Chalmers?

• 3:30:13Speaker 01

  Chalmers.

• 3:30:14Jocko Willink?

  Chalmers.

• 3:30:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, Doug Chalmers.

• 3:30:17Jocko Willink?

  He was the Colonel of the regiment. And he sends you, I'll close out the book and again, get the book, but I'm going to close out. There's a ton more in it, but he sends you an email and he says, you have given up a considerable amount of your own time recently to explain to the public. What you have all been through and the impact it has had on you, your family and others involved. Those that have seen, heard or read your interviews tell me that you maintained your dignity and composure despite the pressure. Despite the pressure and that you were a superb ambassador for the soldiers, the army and the regiment. Hopefully you may now be able to put the inquiry behind you all, allowing you and the others involved. To get on with your lives.

• 3:31:04Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 3:31:06Jocko Willink?

  Um.

• 3:31:08Jocko Willink?

  That's kind of what you did. Once this was over, you got on with your life.

• 3:31:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:31:14Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you did end up getting out of the army. And. Immediately started doing, well, you joined the charity.

• 3:31:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, for the regimental charity.

• 3:31:22Jocko Willink?

  For the regimental charity.

• 3:31:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:31:23Jocko Willink?

  And how, that sounded like a. Pretty uh good passion project for you to get into.

• 3:31:28Speaker 01

  Massively. It was such a good purpose and the why was just incredible. So we've done a load of good stuff, including cycling across America.

• 3:31:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, with uh Jay Baldwin.

• 3:31:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:31:39Jocko Willink?

  Guy was a double amputee.

• 3:31:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, and just chugged it out on his arms. I mean, some days I felt sorry for myself and John, he's actually in the studio, my good buddy. And uh we were both in the same same team. And some days we wanted to moan, but Jay didn't even moan about one thing. So who am I?

• 3:31:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:31:57Speaker 01

  To my moment, he's just there.

• 3:31:58Jocko Willink?

  Keep pedaling.

• 3:31:59Speaker 01

  And then we were going through West Virginia and then he gets hit by a dog. You know, a dog latches on to his arm and then he's unclipped. He's like, no legs. He's like, I'm going home. Get me home. I'm bad enough. Why is it always me? And we just have a bit of banter and then he's back on the next day. He got stitched up.

• 3:32:15Jocko Willink?

  I actually, when I read that part of the book and he's like, he said he wanted to go home. I was like, oh damn, I guess this is like a failure, you know, I guess. But then, nope, he straps back on and gets back to it.

• 3:32:25Speaker 01

  And next day he's out grinding. And that was just a real incredible experience because I was involved with people who I fought hard with. People with life-changing injuries and people who, you know, have got, you know, sort of mental, you know, injuries from what they've. And we've just all gone out on this incredible journey. And we managed to raise enough money to send Jay to uh Australia for osteointegration, which is pioneering surgery to insert titanium legs. Through the femurs up to his pelvis, which will allow him to um to stand up, to go for a pee or to tuck his kids in or play some golf. Because his sockets, he wasn't getting on with because of the tissue that was so thin.

• 3:33:10Speaker 01

  It was just causing him infections and sores. So he needed a specialist's treatment. So we rallied the troops and went on this incredible journey across. And it actually was Jay, which said, we'll do it in a headwind. So instead of doing the opposite way, we went like, and I was. Human.

• 3:33:26Jocko Willink?

  I bet you said.

• 3:33:27Speaker 01

  Honestly, yeah. I was pissed. I was like, why you, why have we done this this way? He's like, well, we might as well just do it.

• 3:33:34Jocko Willink?

  With this, with those titanium things, uh, is there any part of the titanium that leaves the skin? Or is it, or is it internal?

• 3:33:40Speaker 01

  Crazy. No, it's internal. So you basically unclip your um, quick release catch. And then if you're sleeping and then you want to go for a walk, reclip and then you're off. They're thin legs. But they're just so good. And it changed. It was game changer for him. He knew he needed it.

• 3:33:55Jocko Willink?

  Uh, wh- wh- why do you need surgery for it?

• 3:33:58Speaker 01

  Cause it comes up through your femur bone.

• 3:34:00Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay.

• 3:34:00Speaker 01

  All the way up inside. It goes straight through your femur to your pelvis. It's inside. And then there's a little bit of um, the, the sort of titanium which comes out about that much.

• 3:34:12Jocko Willink?

  So there is titanium that leaves your body?

• 3:34:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, sticking out all the time, sticking out and he just clips in and then off he walks. It's amazing. It's like really, and it helped him out so much. But again, we had to go and raise the money for it. You know, he's given so much to his, you know, to his country that, that they should be looking after that for him. But unfortunately, that doesn't happen. That's not the case. And we have to go and raise the money. Which is incredible. But for me, like, I'm on this sort of post-traumatic growth. I'm on a journey now and I love giving back. It's a big, I, I always believe we're two mistakes away from being in a hole. And I would like to know that if I ended up in that hole, there'll be some good people

• 3:34:58Speaker 01

  who would get around me and try and drag me out. So that's what I try and do. And I did in two thousand and one.

• 3:35:05Speaker 01

  I did, um, it was called the ultimate sacrifice. I basically ran for the fallen. We lost six hundred and thirty five men and women um, in Afghanistan, in Iraq. And I wanted to do something unique and fitting for remembrance. So I.

• 3:35:25Speaker 01

  Went live with it that I would run one mile for each serving personnel that had paid the ultimate sacrifice and it was twenty five days and I was gonna run no less than twenty six point two miles a day. So twenty six names, fresh names were on my top, imprinted, inscribed. And then each mile, I would read the individual who lost their life. I went on this incredible journey of remembrance. I just thought I had sort of, I think it was twenty thousand pounds was my target and I thought it was unrealistic. If I'm honest, I thought that's a big ask. But do you know what? Punchy target, small change, big differences, regardless, it's fine. And then I started going and then it got a little bit of traction

• 3:36:10Speaker 01

  and it started to grow. And then I was, Ben Shepherd, who is a good friend of mine, he got me on the TV. And I'd spoke about this journey of remembrance on TV and then it went mad. But I was like, struggling, a marathon a day consecutive, it takes its toll on the body. And I started to then get messages from loved ones saying, Brian, today you're running for my husband. Thank you so much for remembering him and his kids are up in the morning, waiting for you to release names. And just thank you. So then I knew I had to, I had to do it because there was people waiting for me because on Instagram,

• 3:36:55Speaker 01

  I'll take a photo of my shirt and then post it. And I was having people messaging me saying, oh, I'm waiting for my dad. You know, this young kid waiting for his dad to come up on my shirt. Sorry. So I knew I was doing, making a like real big difference. So what all the pain that I was going through was irrelevant to the pain that they were going through, you know, losing their loved ones. And I was on this mad journey. And then, yeah, I managed to, to get to the end. And raised, I think it was a hundred and seventy thousand for Walking with the Wounded Charity. And then I went again in two thousand and twenty two, but I brought on the Falklands campaign. And I went on this brilliant journey and I actually, I was more robust.

• 3:37:39Speaker 01

  And I was flying each marathon, I was flying. And then the RAF got hold of me and said, we want to fly you out to the Falkland Islands to do four on there because it's really poignant. And I was like, let's do it. Literally landed, took my dad, phoned my dad with, phoned my dad up when they phoned me and said, dad, do you want to come to the Falklands with me? Because if there's anyone who knows me the best, it's you. And if there's anyone who can help me, it's you. And he was like, I'm there, son. Let's go. They flew me out to the Falklands. I landed, put my kit on. We had a hired vehicle, they sorted out. We drove down this one road from the, the airport to Port Stanley. And I ran, and I just ran the hardest, the hardest I could. And it was horrendous elevation, the wind, the rain, the snow, all in, four seasons in one.

• 3:38:25Speaker 01

  And I just got on it and just get it done. And, um, you know, I finished that and I was like, just overwhelmed of, yeah, everyone getting involved is brilliant. It looked like Forrest Gump, all the people running with me. It was amazing. I had like, mums who'd lost their son, you know, everyone joining me with their, their son's T-shirt from their regiments that they were, you know, that who, who they were serving. It just was like this incredible military community come together and just pushed on. And I was like, this is brilliant. And then recently I did the Marathon de Sabyls, just went out there and got amongst it in that desert and it was tough.

• 3:39:04Speaker 01

  But it's good for me to have this purpose and this, you know, reason to train and reason to compete with my sons. So I think my youngest will go in to the parachute regiment and I want to be fit and robust enough to push him and, and test him and guide him. And if I stop, then I'm not doing my kids the justice that they need from me. And that's when I launched, and if you don't mind, is it okay to speak about my business now? Of course. So I, I knew I wasn't the only person to go through some hard yards and.

• 3:39:41Speaker 01

  A mantra that really helped me through some daunting times is keep attacking. Just get up, show up and attack the day and just keep attacking them. If I'm in that mindset, that no matter what I'm going through, if I keep on it and keep going, that it will surpass. And I thought, I'm not the only person to go through some hard yards. So what I'm gonna do is, I've got no money. I don't really understand business, but I'm gonna do like a pre-order. So I've got some like clothing, did a lot pre-order because I didn't have the cash in the bank. And I just thought, you know what, if it's cool and a little side hustle, it's fine. And then I launched it and it just went out of control, to be honest. I was like,

• 3:40:21Speaker 01

  I'm under more pressure now than I was during the Balladanyboy because everyone was in demand for it. And I was like, oh my god, I'm like three weeks in the rears. Told my wife to quit what she was doing because she needs to come in and help me and support me and do all of the admin. Package up orders, man. Basically, all the backend stuff. So, and then we've just gone into like team wear. So we do bespoke, um, sort of soccer kits, rugby, tennis, golf, or every sport you can think of. And this is a body armour. Like, I, I believe it.

• 3:40:56Speaker 01

  Put your body armour on and move with a purpose and you go. And sometimes it's not as easy as that, but you re-cock and re-engage and you go. And um, now I'm really, really proud of where we're at at the moment. Like I said, I've made loads of mistakes in business. It's but, you know, I mean, trying to enjoy the process and, and supporting others, which is a big thing for me. And uh, and just trying each day. You know, we all go through a lot of hard yards. Life is beautiful, but it's a real demand. However, you can't let what you've gone through define who you are. And there's, there's good things out there if you don't play the victim. No one owes you nothing. You've got to work hard and just keep working. And the harder you work, the luckier you become sometimes.

• 3:41:40Jocko Willink?

  At what point did you decide to write the book? Did you get approached by a publisher? I imagine they must have been banging down your door.

• 3:41:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did. I had a conversation with my dad whether or not to write the book. And and he said, look, it's completely up to you. And I said, I'm a stickler for the truth. And there was stuff out there which wasn't the truth, and I wanted it from the horse's mouth. So I thought about it, then I then reached out to a publicist, because I'm not clever enough to negotiate stuff like that. So the publishers was like, yes, this is gold. It's like Pandora's box. Leave it with me. And then there was four publishers that came in. And we went with Penguin Random House. And I couldn't even believe it. It's like, I I personally don't think,

• 3:42:30Speaker 01

  if I'm honest, warrant being here on this table, having this conversation with you guys. I just don't think I qualify to do that, if I'm honest. And then to have a book or people have conversations about a book, I'm like, I mean, that's like, that's not me. I don't think that's who I should be, or I don't deserve to to have that. But sometimes, you know, you've got to take opportunities, and this was one. We went with Penguin Random House, book was published. Then end up going into the Sunday Times Bestseller in number three. I got to number two, and Michelle Obama was number one. I was getting nowhere near that. So I was like, you know, if we're gonna come second best, then it's okay, it's fine, for Michelle Obama. So now it's incredible. And then not long after that, it was optioned

• 3:43:14Speaker 01

  for film. And that was a whole another journey, which I was like, that's never gonna happen. It's never gonna happen, because only, I think it's, well, you'll know this. I think it's like two percent of stories or fiction to get made into a film is great greenlit.

• 3:43:29Jocko Willink?

  It's less than that.

• 3:43:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's overly, no, it's so.

• 3:43:33Jocko Willink?

  Well, maybe I don't know what is in England.

• 3:43:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:43:36Jocko Willink?

  But in America.

• 3:43:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:43:38Jocko Willink?

  Those those people have screenplays.

• 3:43:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:43:41Jocko Willink?

  Tens of thousands of screenplays.

• 3:43:43Speaker 01

  Phone in there.

• 3:43:43Jocko Willink?

  All the time.

• 3:43:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:43:45Jocko Willink?

  And tens of thousands of books that get optioned and and even if you get optioned, that doesn't mean anything.

• 3:43:50Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:43:50Jocko Willink?

  Doesn't mean a damn thing.

• 3:43:51Speaker 01

  I went all through this and I was like, it's never gonna happen. It's never gonna happen. And then I was delivering a a talk on resilience to a business in London. And I was on the way to the train and my phone was ringing. I answered the phone and I said, listen, we're greenlit. We're done. We're going to start filming. Um, in a month. So they got the cast together and the the guy what played me, Anthony Boyle, is, um.

• 3:44:14Jocko Willink?

  He played in, um, Masters of the Air.

• 3:44:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:44:17Jocko Willink?

  That's how that's how, because I haven't watched your, uh, show yet because I couldn't find it.

• 3:44:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's difficult in the States.

• 3:44:23Jocko Willink?

  On YouTube.

• 3:44:24Speaker 01

  It's on YouTube.

• 3:44:24Jocko Willink?

  I searched like I was like searching all the back channel things. I should have texted Echo Charles. I was trying to find a pirated version at least, right?

• 3:44:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:44:32Jocko Willink?

  So can you just rent it on?

• 3:44:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:44:34Jocko Willink?

  On YouTube?

• 3:44:34Speaker 01

  Two ninety nine on on YouTube. Yeah. So I got to know Anthony Boyle, such a talent. I mean, he will go to the, he's already like doing manhunt, Masters of the Air. He's flying, but I turned up and he's an Irish lad.

• 3:44:47Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:44:47Speaker 01

  And I turned up, he started like speaking like me. He's he was in character with me and I was like, calm down. So he knew me more than I knew myself. And he was just the best, best kid. And I just loved working with him. Sam Miller, the director, was brilliant with me because the most important thing I needed to get right was the battle scene.

• 3:45:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:45:06Speaker 01

  The insignia, because it stresses me out when people are, when the insignia are wrong or the weapon handling is wrong. It kills me. It destroys me. So I was accountable for that. So I said to Sam, as long as I can consult on every military aspect, you can not do what you want, but you can go on this journey with the story. But I need to, I won't sign this off until I'm fully in charge of this military consultant because I'm quite rigid and it needs to be done properly. So I was just thrashing the lads on fire maneuver, like drills, like it needs to be proper, but they were invested in it. They wanted to work.

• 3:45:42Jocko Willink?

  Dude, I'm gonna go over and watch this. Like, I'm fired up right now. How long did it take to do the filming?

• 3:45:50Speaker 01

  So we done it through Covid, believe it or not. So we're meant to go to Jordan to do the battle scene of Danny Boy. But that was cancelled, but the budget had to be used in a, I don't know how it works, but the budget had to be used in a period of time. And our budget was launched to us or released to us because it was a BBC drama, ninety minute drama. It wasn't a cinematic, which there's elements of, am I happy with the film? I'm happy with the film, but they didn't go into the courtroom and they missed, no, they missed the trick. The, the, the last scene is me at court just about to go in. And I was like, you're waiting for someone else to pick that up now.

• 3:46:26Jocko Willink?

  Oh, because now they're gonna get a sequel.

• 3:46:28Speaker 01

  Cool. Absolutely. Yeah, well, maybe. Yeah. Well, it's, it's opened up for it and in our. When I went through and done the negotiations, I left it allowing myself to do that if something did happen down the line. But they missed it out. However, am I pleased? I am really pleased with it. It's, look. I got to be involved in something which I never thought was even capable. So of course I'm going to be pleased. And I'm pleased with the work that I put in for it because I worked a lot of hours on it. And like I said, who would imagine, would he, you know, to even write a book or to, to do that? It was very, very surreal.

• 3:47:05Jocko Willink?

  So how long did it take to film?

• 3:47:06Speaker 01

  Um, I think it was about four, five months, four or five months.

• 3:47:12Jocko Willink?

  That's a long time.

• 3:47:13Speaker 01

  But I think a lot of it was because of Covid as well. Movement was.

• 3:47:17Jocko Willink?

  Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense. Um, and then how was it received when it came out?

• 3:47:23Speaker 01

  Really good. I mean, there's a few, good few million that watched it and I was under pressure because everyone who was, I was representing instead of life. So everyone in the Battle of Danny Boy and now there was a lot. I mean, there was only a few of us who were done, conducted trench warfare. But there was a lot firing us in. There was a lot involved in the prisoner exchange. There was a lot. And it's a British Army, you know, current big battle that people talk about. So I hope I was under pressure, but. The feedback was was really, really good. Cause the thing is, I toned it down a little bit as well.

• 3:47:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:47:56Speaker 01

  To the the battle scene, when you watch it, you're like, that's tasty, but I reined it in.

• 3:48:00Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:48:00Speaker 01

  Cause I didn't want it to be.

• 3:48:01Jocko Willink?

  Over the top.

• 3:48:02Speaker 01

  Too over the top. It needs to be like reined in and properly done. And um. Yeah, it was really well received from the regiment and from the lads. Couple weren't overly happy, but you can't. You can't.

• 3:48:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:48:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, you can't please everyone, but they're the people which which I think it should have been them that had been doing the book.

• 3:48:24Speaker 01

  Listen, I can't control that. I've just got to be true to who I am.

• 3:48:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you can definitely get some um some resentment happening.

• 3:48:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:48:33Jocko Willink?

  You know, because everyone makes sacrifices. They were there.

• 3:48:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. One hundred percent.

• 3:48:37Jocko Willink?

  It's the same thing you were talking about earlier is like, oh, well, why did you come home?

• 3:48:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:48:41Jocko Willink?

  Why why did why did someone else die and I didn't? And so now you can look, why did you? Why did you get to write this book? Why did you get to be in this movie or have this movie? So that can cause some some definite resentment.

• 3:48:54Speaker 01

  My answer to that is I put myself out there and wrote the book. I'm not I'm not stopping you from doing the same. Go and do it. But you've got to take, you've got to take a lot of time. It's hard to get through it and it's it's a process and, you know, go and do it.

• 3:49:07Jocko Willink?

  What was your process for writing the book?

• 3:49:09Speaker 01

  It was hard. It was cathartic, but it was very, very hard. I had someone come in and structure it for me because I'm not overly intelligent. So I done, I had thoughts. I put the collateral and the content was all in sync how I wanted it to be. And someone who Penguin Random House got, who was brilliant, come in and made it as an even flow.

• 3:49:33Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 3:49:33Speaker 01

  Flowed it. So it's as it's a it's a flow read, a flow read, where I would I would have just, I would have written it how I would say it. And that's just what I do. It's like what I say, what I see, basically. And he obviously done his, what he was, you know, there to do.

• 3:49:49Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. Um. I mean, that's awesome. And then and then you've got the whole, you do like speaking as well. That's why you're out here in America right now. You're speaking to a company, your buddy's company.

• 3:49:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:49:58Jocko Willink?

  Which is, which is pretty awesome.

• 3:49:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:50:02Jocko Willink?

  Does that get us up to speed? Does that get us to present day? We there? What else we got?

• 3:50:05Speaker 01

  That's yeah, present day. I mean, I'm going away next year, early next year, doing a five hundred kilometer um, challenge in Lapland. So it's gonna be a cold challenge. But it's to support military charities and give back, which I'm looking forward to. I actually wanna get back from here. I'm going to do two stages of Tour de France. Um, cycling. So that'd be an experience. So yeah, keeping myself.

• 3:50:30Jocko Willink?

  One of the mountain phases of the Tour de France? What are you doing?

• 3:50:32Speaker 01

  Nah, it's not mountain, mountain phase. I'm doing uh, six and seven stages.

• 3:50:37Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:50:37Speaker 01

  So not the Pyrenees. Maybe next time. I'm not, I'm not bike fit, like uber bike fit.

• 3:50:43Jocko Willink?

  What you're, what you're like, uh, so you're clearly, you're focused on sort of, what is it? Distance and that type of training?

• 3:50:51Speaker 01

  Endurance is a, endurance is, yeah, endurance is a good thing for me. I'm quite, I'm quite decent long distance on the bike and running.

• 3:51:01Jocko Willink?

  Soccer is awesome for that.

• 3:51:03Speaker 01

  Brilliant.

• 3:51:04Jocko Willink?

  Cause it's what, ninety minutes of sprinting and running and sprinting and running and explosive?

• 3:51:07Speaker 01

  And there's no, there's no stopping in football, other than a throw in or a free kick. You're, you're on it all of the time. So it definitely stayed being good fit. Even for the military to start on the start line with my kit on, with my helmet, doing a two mile. I wanted to win. And I tell you what, if I didn't win, you would have to work hard to beat me. So that's with my kids now. If we go out. We, there's no such thing as an easy session. We go out and we grind. And, you know, I, I like to think I helped Bailey before he went into the parachute regiment. I got him up to a standard where I could release him, knowing that I think I've done my job as a dad.

• 3:51:42Jocko Willink?

  How old was he when he joined?

• 3:51:44Speaker 01

  Boy. So I went to Harrogate at sixteen, and then went there for a year, Army Foundation College. As a sort of pre-para. And then at seventeen, he then went across to ParaDepot, which is the men. And it was a massive change for him, like completely different level. And he had to, he sold his soul, basically. He, but I'm glad that.

• 3:52:09Jocko Willink?

  He sold his soul.

• 3:52:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, as in he had to. Dig out everything that he had in his, in his locker.

• 3:52:17Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 3:52:17Speaker 01

  And there wasn't much because he's a fresh seventeen year old against like real robust. You know, twenty three, twenty four year old and, you know, and, and he passed, you know. P company, which is a massive week of tests for them. And now he's like jumping in, um, you know, doing his jumps, he's been to Cyprus on, he's, he's just been like overly busy. He's going to come out to the States and doing a, a big sort of joint exercise with a, uh. U S airborne.

• 3:52:46Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 3:52:46Speaker 01

  You know, so he's.

• 3:52:47Jocko Willink?

  What do they call you when you're not airborne in the British Army?

• 3:52:50Speaker 01

  Crap hat.

• 3:52:50Jocko Willink?

  Crap hat.

• 3:52:51Speaker 01

  Breaks me as well.

• 3:52:52Jocko Willink?

  Oh, he just gets on you with that?

• 3:52:54Speaker 01

  No, because I think he's got too much respect.

• 3:52:56Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:52:56Speaker 01

  Because I'll be like, okay, that's fine, but let's go for a twenty mile.

• 3:52:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:52:59Speaker 01

  And then we'll see who the hat is at the end of that twenty mile. Because I think I still could, can, you know, test him at distance. Mentally, I can grind it.

• 3:53:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:53:09Speaker 01

  But, but, and I, so I'll tell you a funny story, but just before he went off on his journey.

• 3:53:16Speaker 01

  We were on and off on ten Ks racing against each other. And I kind of knew he was surpassing me, but I just wanted to, a last leveler. And it was near Christmas, so he was on leave. And I said to him, let's go, one final winner takes all. Ten K, six miles of grind. And he was like, love that. And we went off. And for four miles, I was like really, really in the hurt locker. And I could look to him, I was trying to gauge where he is facially and his, you know, his expressions and how he was breathing. And I thought, oh, he's, he's doing all right there. So I thought my last call now is to try and break him mentally and get in his head.

• 3:54:00Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 3:54:00Speaker 01

  So I said to him, so I looked at him and I was on my threshold, but I looked at him, I said, right, Bailey, we need to up this. Increase this pace. And we were doing like seven minute miles, so quick. And I looked at him, I said, we need to up this because I've got a lot more in the tank. Do you fancy it? Thinking then I would got him mentally and he was like, that's not a problem. And I was like, then he broke me. It's a reverse psychology. He done me and I was like, oh no. And then off he went and I was like, there you go, you've earned it.

• 3:54:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:54:27Speaker 01

  Got, yeah, he beat me probably about forty five seconds, got to the finish line at home, shook his hand. And I was like, proud of you.

• 3:54:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:54:35Speaker 01

  You've done it. Let's go.

• 3:54:38Speaker 01

  And Charlie, he's fifteen now, so he looks at his brother, they got on really well.

• 3:54:42Jocko Willink?

  No pressure.

• 3:54:43Speaker 01

  There's not a lot, I know, yeah, there's, but Charlie's robust, he's gritty, you know. Bailey has gone through that stage, but he wasn't streetwise like Charlie's streetwise. But Charlie just needs more encouragement, like Bailey will shut the door, he'll be running and won't even tell anyone, he'll be gone. Where Charlie, it's like, come on, you can do it, there's more encouragement, but as soon as he's on the start line, his mentality is he's not gonna lose, but it's getting into the start line. But like I said, he sees his brothers, you know, when, when he comes home and his way of life, that's what he wants. And I'm so proud, because people think, oh my god, you've gone through all that, why are you letting your sons join?

• 3:55:24Speaker 01

  And I was like, I would never stand in the way of them serving their country, not a chance. I mean, I was a little bit unlucky. They are good kids who want to, you know, serve their country. And I would never stand in the way of that. And I love it, and I'll try and support them as much as I can, when I can. So I'm, I'm really proud of them.

• 3:55:47Jocko Willink?

  Outstanding, outstanding.

• 3:55:51Jocko Willink?

  People can find you, you've got brianwoodmc.co.uk.

• 3:55:58Speaker 01

  Brian Wood, yeah, brianwoodmc.co.uk is my personal website.

• 3:56:03Jocko Willink?

  Then you, you're on Facebook, Twitter, Twitter X, and Instagram, that's all at Brian Wood Mc.

• 3:56:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:56:12Jocko Willink?

  People wanna connect with you, you've got everything on there, you've got your, um, your keep attacking.

• 3:56:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:56:18Jocko Willink?

  Stuff on there, you've got your public speaking stuff on there. So if people wanna find you, they can, they can connect through any of those various methods and get the book, you can order the book there. Now we know that you can watch the movie on YouTube, so America can watch this movie too. BBC doesn't hook it up for America.

• 3:56:33Speaker 01

  Nah.

• 3:56:34Jocko Willink?

  We, I don't know why.

• 3:56:35Speaker 01

  They're not, they're not great at that whole spiel, but I, you know, it is what it is, there's nothing I can do.

• 3:56:41Jocko Willink?

  You know the show, This is England? Have you ever seen that show?

• 3:56:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:56:44Jocko Willink?

  They don't have it in America. It's like you can't watch it on anything. They have like the movie, but they don't have the show.

• 3:56:49Speaker 01

  Can you watch anything in the?

• 3:56:51Jocko Willink?

  They have some of it. I don't know. They got, there's gotta be some deal that works out, but.

• 3:56:55Speaker 01

  I think it's.

• 3:56:55Jocko Willink?

  It's not good. Uh, but we'll watch this one on YouTube for sure. Echo Charles.

• 3:57:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:57:01Jocko Willink?

  You have any questions?

• 3:57:02Speaker 02

  Yes, I do.

• 3:57:02Jocko Willink?

  Uh oh.

• 3:57:03Speaker 02

  So this Phil Shiner?

• 3:57:05Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 3:57:05Speaker 02

  Shiner?

• 3:57:05Jocko Willink?

  Oh, we got, we got a lot of hate covered over here. We got a lot of hate for Phil Shiner.

• 3:57:09Speaker 02

  What's he do? You said he's waiting for his trial or whatever?

• 3:57:13Speaker 01

  Up for two accounts and to, do you know what? I'm not too sure what the actual accounts were because he was up for a few and then it got like whittled down, but he's going into the dock soon in the Crown Court, which is our biggest court in London.

• 3:57:29Speaker 02

  Hmm.

• 3:57:30Speaker 01

  To then get cross-examined or, you know, the whole trial will, will um play out.

• 3:57:37Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:57:37Speaker 01

  And I'll go down. I'll go down and see how, how this plays out.

• 3:57:40Jocko Willink?

  I wanna come watch. I legitimately wanna come watch and my wife's uh Brit, so maybe I can organize some kind of a trip so I can go over there and watch and maybe I can cheer or I can have signs or something like that too. Do some American activities, yeah.

• 3:57:53Speaker 02

  So let's say he goes down. What does he get? I mean, I guess you'd have to know the count, like the, all the charges and stuff, right? But you know, what are we going for? We're going for criminal, like time or what? He's going to jail or what?

• 3:58:05Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think he might worm out. I think, I think he might worm out of time because he's health.

• 3:58:11Speaker 02

  Oh, worm out of time.

• 3:58:12Speaker 01

  So he's, yeah, he, and he, he's a solicitor himself, so he knows exactly how to, he's delayed it already for god knows how long.

• 3:58:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:58:19Speaker 01

  So he knows, you know, what to do.

• 3:58:22Speaker 02

  What's his, in your opinion or or hypothesis, what, like what's his motivation to do that? I mean, cause it's just straight up like, oh, I'm gonna milk this scenario. How can I make some money?

• 3:58:35Speaker 01

  Money mode.

• 3:58:35Speaker 02

  Who cares who it hurts?

• 3:58:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:58:37Speaker 02

  Damn, it's crazy.

• 3:58:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:58:39Jocko Willink?

  Is he kind of an anti, like anti-English, anti-Britain type guy as well?

• 3:58:47Speaker 01

  I don't even know him as an individual, Jocko, so I'm not too, I can't state that. But to go against, you know, the soldiers who go out and sacrifice everything, it's crazy.

• 3:58:58Speaker 02

  Cause that starts to make, I'm not saying it makes sense, but it starts to make sense if he had that like original attitude, you know, where it's like, hey, I'm kinda, I'm real hard on like conduct and you know, I'm one of those guys to begin with. And so he's this, you know, kinda watchdog in that way and then uses that positioning to then get some money like, okay, I see, I see the shtick there.

• 3:59:20Speaker 01

  I think he's seen loopholes as well. I think he's seen areas that he could target to make some good money, some fast money.

• 3:59:27Jocko Willink?

  I bet you on that first case, he probably saw like, oh, he made a lot of money from that first case.

• 3:59:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, Bahamusa, yeah.

• 3:59:34Jocko Willink?

  And then he's like, oh, if I can gin up a couple more of these things, he turns into not an ambulance chaser, but like a war crimes chaser. And if you're a war crimes chaser and there's no war crimes, well, you try and create some, you know what I'm saying?

• 3:59:46Speaker 02

  You can jump some up.

• 3:59:47Jocko Willink?

  What else?

• 3:59:48Speaker 02

  You kinda use this, and this is in the spirit of clarity on, on my part. On our part collectively, I go, you, you used the term, uh, cigar moment.

• 3:59:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:59:58Speaker 02

  What does that mean?

• 4:00:00Speaker 01

  So when you're under the most extreme pressure, you can still have a pause two, three, breather. A bit of a think tank.

• 4:00:09Speaker 02

  Like a moment of clarity where I can think and.

• 4:00:11Speaker 01

  Sure. So in that, when I was in that sort of ditch, cover from view and cover from fire. That was my moment of cigar, cause it takes long to smoke a cigar. So it's like pause two, three, suck it in. Right. Now we need to go into a planning.

• 4:00:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:00:30Speaker 01

  And then execution phase. So that's how that you're still entitled to your moment, no matter if it's in a boardroom or on the battlefield. When you're under extreme pressure, you're still allowing yourself a moment of clarity.

• 4:00:42Speaker 02

  So kinda like the old, uh, what to relax, look around, make a call scenario.

• 4:00:47Speaker 01

  Definitely.

• 4:00:49Speaker 02

  I understand now.

• 4:00:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's it.

• 4:00:51Speaker 02

  Good to meet you, brother.

• 4:00:55Jocko Willink?

  Brian, any closing thoughts?

• 4:00:56Speaker 01

  No, honestly, it's for me to come here and to be on your podcast and meet Echo. It's honestly, it's so humbling and I know I don't deserve to be here, but I've given my best and I really thank you for inviting me to share my story to a completely different audience. And yeah, thank you for that.

• 4:01:18Jocko Willink?

  Well, thank you for joining us. Thanks for you for sharing your lessons learned and most important, thanks for your service to the country, to the country that is our strongest ally. And you've been through a couple of world wars with us and a bunch of smaller wars around the world and obviously in Iraq and Afghanistan. And thank you for setting an example of courage, of professionalism and integrity that stands regardless of what gets thrown at it. It's an honor to meet you and thanks for coming out here.

• 4:01:49Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 4:01:51Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Brian Wood, M.C. has left the building.

• 4:01:59Jocko Willink?

  I'm very amped to go watch Danny Boy is the name of the film, by the way, on YouTube.

• 4:02:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:02:08Jocko Willink?

  Are you gonna watch it immediately when you leave here?

• 4:02:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, probably. What is Danny Boy? I heard that somewhere else. That's another thing, right?

• 4:02:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's a bunch of, there's a bunch of things called Danny Boy. Like there's songs, there's other movies called Danny Boy. There's Danny Boy is not uncommon.

• 4:02:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:02:23Jocko Willink?

  But, yeah, I'm gonna go watch it on YouTube.

• 4:02:26Speaker 01

  This one, it's different. Yeah.

• 4:02:28Jocko Willink?

  What a story. What a, what a great dude. And that whole courtroom drama.

• 4:02:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:02:36Jocko Willink?

  Which the, which apparently the movie doesn't cover. Look, I'm hyped to see the battle and see how they did it and see.

• 4:02:44Jocko Willink?

  What it's like, you know, cause even he said they softened it up a little bit, you know? But yeah, I'm definitely excited to see that. I I saw that the TV show called Masters of the Air, which is a very good series about the air war over Europe. It's fantastic. And the guy that's in that plays Brian Wood, so.

• 4:03:08Jocko Willink?

  The but the legal stuff in the book and just it's so crazy.

• 4:03:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:03:14Jocko Willink?

  Like that you can just throw out those accusations.

• 4:03:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:03:17Jocko Willink?

  And they get a little bit of traction and then it's just like a little more traction, a little more traction. And they're so obviously not true.

• 4:03:24Speaker 02

  Yeah. Yeah, and.

• 4:03:26Jocko Willink?

  And he had to. He had to him and all his guys had to suffer for. I mean, ten years.

• 4:03:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:03:34Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I don't think they were suffering for the whole ten years, but probably like five.

• 4:03:37Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:03:38Jocko Willink?

  Where they're, hey, this is the.

• 4:03:42Jocko Willink?

  And can you imagine you're sitting there and they're reading things that are just lies?

• 4:03:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, so that's not the confusing part. So I I dig it, man, and it does suck for sure, but. The I am trying kinda to be honest with you. More fascinated as far as like really curious as to the other guy, the this dude Phil, whatever. Shiner.

• 4:04:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, Shiner.

• 4:04:08Speaker 02

  Like, why I don't get tha- that part of it to like follow through it. Look, I can say, look, you're drunk at a party. You're hating on the guy for whatever reason, and I even dig like if you're just jealous of him. I dig, man, I understand. I see how you could get there because jealousy, that's a real thing. I get it, man. And you know, you're drunk at a party, you say some stuff to some girl. I don't know, whatever. Or to some guy to reduce his status or something like this, but to like follow through with it like that hardcore, it doesn't make sense.

• 4:04:37Jocko Willink?

  Well, there's thirty one million dollars, right? So that so there's a lot of money. There's. Dude, you're shaking your head like that's no big deal. Thirty one million dollars.

• 4:04:45Speaker 02

  I know, but to get like, yeah, yeah, I mean, eventually I guess, but still, right? It doesn't. I don't know, bro. I can't get there. It doesn't make sense. Like unless you're like a sociopath, then it's like, alright, bro.

• 4:04:59Jocko Willink?

  Well, I think it's a combination of two things. He probably is is like an anti-colonial, anti-England, anti-Britain type of guy anyways, right? Like, let's face it, there's people in America right now that jump on any opportunity to do to go and make this happen, right? Against the, against the American troops.

• 4:05:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, I guess so.

• 4:05:18Jocko Willink?

  So, he probably had some level of that.

• 4:05:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:05:22Jocko Willink?

  And then they had, he had a case that they won, right? And then somebody gets paid three million dollars. Well, he's a lawyer. He's getting a cut of that three million dollars.

• 4:05:29Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:05:30Jocko Willink?

  So now he's like, hmm, and he probably, they probably need to reopen that case, right?

• 4:05:36Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:05:37Jocko Willink?

  Cause who knows what he did to, you know, when a, when like a district attorney or a prosecutor gets found for doing something wrong in a case, dude, they take, they undo all those cases that went in the past.

• 4:05:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:05:50Jocko Willink?

  They're like, oh yeah, we're going to, we're going back.

• 4:05:51Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:05:52Jocko Willink?

  Cause what did you do to me?

• 4:05:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:05:54Jocko Willink?

  So, I mean, they did drop something like a, the guy had hundreds of cases that he was running.

• 4:06:00Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:06:00Jocko Willink?

  Plus this guy had, this guy's a scum, but.

• 4:06:04Speaker 02

  Now that actually you're kind of laying it out a little bit, I, I could see how in the big picture it would get to that point where after a while, you know how like you, you win a case, right? At first, you know, the, you know, the bright eyed lawyer is trying to do some justice or whatever, right? And you win, you win the case and you're like, oh, sweet, I've made, you know, I, I, I made a difference, but I won that case. So you got, you got that payoff mentally, emotionally of doing a good deed, because you got the bad guy. But that separate one of just being a winner, you know, I won the case, I won the case. And then you got paid for it. So now you got that passion going in, one case, two cases, 10 cases, 100 cases. Now it starts, certain things start to fade a little bit, start to become, you know, you adapt to it, right?

• 4:06:49Speaker 02

  Where it's like, so this whole doing good thing? It's like, cool, but-

• 4:06:54Jocko Willink?

  If you don't like the military already, and you don't think that England should go into some other country.

• 4:06:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:06:59Jocko Willink?

  You, this was wrong, and these are colonial activities, and it's bad. You have that, you're just like, okay, cool. None of it, we're going, we actually are, in, in this guy's mind, he's going after the quote, bad guys.

• 4:07:12Speaker 02

  Right, but-

• 4:07:13Jocko Willink?

  But then he's gonna get paid to do it.

• 4:07:16Speaker 02

  I think that-

• 4:07:16Jocko Willink?

  Dude, there's all kinds of moral slippage going on with this dude.

• 4:07:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, and that's really what it is, that it's a, the result of a slippery slope, or could be, I don't know. I don't know this guy's exact scenario, but I'm just saying I could get there now because, yeah, okay, he can be an anti guy, that still doesn't justify like shredding documents and like, hey, I know like, brother's kind of proof that this happened, you know?

• 4:07:37Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's where your, your own personal morals aren't even allowing you to see, like, what other people think, like, there's people that think the ends justify the means, right? If we, if I can get rid of this guy, it doesn't matter what I have to do to get rid of him.

• 4:07:51Speaker 02

  Right, because they're all doing the wrong-

• 4:07:52Jocko Willink?

  They're all doing the wrong thing, they're all bad, so whatever I need to do, if I need to be bad to, to, to prevent that person from being recognized or whatever, doesn't matter.

• 4:08:01Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:08:01Jocko Willink?

  Let's just go.

• 4:08:02Speaker 02

  Yep, yeah, that's true, I could see it, I could see it.

• 4:08:05Jocko Willink?

  But, um, you know, I mentioned this a little bit, the, the British military, I've worked with them on occasion, and just always had the utmost respect for their professionalism, the way they behaved, and I thought it was awesome, Brian Wood just represented that in full form. Starting with his dad, right? Starting with his dad, who gave him some good advice along the way, one of them!

• 4:08:29Jocko Willink?

  If you are fit, you'll be sorted.

• 4:08:30Speaker 02

  You'll be sorted, yeah.

• 4:08:32Jocko Willink?

  You know what I'm saying?

• 4:08:33Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 4:08:33Jocko Willink?

  So that's what we're doing. I really appreciate Brian Wood coming on, awesome representation of military personnel, and shout out to all those troops that were down there, um, doing what they were doing. So, with that, we're trying to stay fit, are we not?

• 4:08:48Speaker 02

  We are, big time, squats yesterday, by the way.

• 4:08:50Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you need fuel, what kind of fuel are you gonna take?

• 4:08:53Speaker 02

  Doc fuel all day, you know it.

• 4:08:55Jocko Willink?

  Yep, get into it, uh, docfuel.com, come check it out, we've got, well, I'm drinking a hydrate right now, we got an awesome hydration, best in the business, best out there, nothing else even comes close. By the way, we have the best protein, by the way, we have the best energy drink, which you can barely call an energy drink, because it's just better, better for you.

• 4:09:14Jocko Willink?

  We have stuff for your joints. We got everything that you need. So check it out jocko fuel.com or you can go to Wawa, get the, get the protein shake at Wawa. You can go to vitamin shop, get the products, GNC, Military Commissaries, Afees, Hanford, Dash Stores in Maryland, Wake Firm, ShopRite, ATB down in Tejas, Meyer in the Midwest, Wegmans out there on the East Coast, Harris Teeter, Lifetime Fitness, we're, we're, we're there, Shields, we're in there, small gyms, everywhere. We got our boys out there on the road making it happen. Vic is out there making it happen. Dave, Action Jackson, Jared, they're out there making it happen. Hey, if you, if you want stuff inside your school, your jiu jitsu school, your CrossFit Academy, whatever, email jfsales@jocko

• 4:09:57Jocko Willink?

  fuel.com. I guess I said CrossFit Academy. I should have said CrossFit Gym Jiu Jitsu Academy. So that's what we're doing. jocko fuel.com. Check it out. That's what we're doing.

• 4:10:08Speaker 02

  Also, Origin USA, if you want, it starts with Jiu Jitsu Gi's. You want a gi, these are all, this is all made in America stuff, by the way, but you want a Jiu Jitsu gi, all different kinds of best Gi's. So you say best in the business. These are legitimately best in the business, Jiu Jitsu gi. So yeah, you get them, want at least one of those. Need some jeans, best in the business as well, by the way. Multiple options on that one. But they got a bunch of stuff, hoodies, some belts on there, by the way, which I don't think we mentioned enough because I got an Origin belt and it's the best in the business as well. But they got a lot of cool stuff on there.

• 4:10:41Jocko Willink?

  Hey, by the way, I was just up at Total Archery Challenge, TAC, and we saw a lot of people wearing that Origin USA Hunt gear. Myself included, head to toe.

• 4:10:52Speaker 02

  I saw that.

• 4:10:54Jocko Willink?

  Head to toe. Yeah, we got such, we got such good stuff coming. So check that out. That's what we're doing. OriginUSA.com, all made in America. Hundred percent made in America. Even the rivets on the jeans, the drawstrings on the shorts, it's all, every little fiber made in America. So check out OriginUSA.com to support freedom.

• 4:11:16Jocko Willink?

  In the world. Also, we have some, some law enforcement training, August 27th through August 31st up in Maine. We have Jiu Jitsu camp before that, that's sold out, but we still got some openings in the law enforcement, first responders, military zone there. So check that out. All at originusa.com. Get some.

• 4:11:33Speaker 02

  Also, Jocko has a store.

• 4:11:35Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm.

• 4:11:35Speaker 02

  It's called Jocko Store. Anyway, this is where you can get your stuff.

• 4:11:39Jocko Willink?

  444 episodes deep and you're still entertaining yourself with that, that line.

• 4:11:44Speaker 02

  It's a good line. It's a great line, actually. Nonetheless, Jocko Store.

• 4:11:48Jocko Willink?

  No one is listening anymore.

• 4:11:49Speaker 02

  Okay, you could go to defcore.com too then. How about that?

• 4:11:52Jocko Willink?

  Okay, see?

• 4:11:53Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 4:11:54Jocko Willink?

  See, there we go. All I need is to put a little pressure on you. Make a diamond.

• 4:11:58Speaker 02

  Whichever one you prefer, either one you go to, because it's the same spot, by the way. Um, this is where you can get your shirts and hats and hoodies, the where you can represent this discipline equals freedom. You can represent this notion. That's a freaking critical.

• 4:12:11Jocko Willink?

  It's a good notion.

• 4:12:12Speaker 02

  Problem here to tell you. Um, also a lot of other stuff on there. But yeah, this is the whole, the whole deal here. Okay. So, so the subscription area, subscription scenario called the Shirt Locker. That's a new design every, every week. Sorry, every month. That's what I meant. Not every week, every month. Good designs, by the way. Um, did you?

• 4:12:35Speaker 02

  Good deal, Dave.

• 4:12:36Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 4:12:37Speaker 02

  Texted me a picture of last month's one. Actually, sorry, this month. Yeah, technically it's still this month.

• 4:12:42Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 4:12:43Speaker 02

  And by the time this comes out, it's next month. And he just put, dude.

• 4:12:48Jocko Willink?

  What is it?

• 4:12:49Speaker 02

  Full approval. Back to the book.

• 4:12:50Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right. It's a Back to the Future, Back to the Book thing. Yeah.

• 4:12:53Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 4:12:54Jocko Willink?

  My daughter, Rana.

• 4:12:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, Rana, hell yeah.

• 4:12:57Jocko Willink?

  Mm hmm. She came home from La Jiu Jitsu the other day and she was wearing a Shirt Locker shirt that had me on a tank with a carbine weapon in each hand, firing.

• 4:13:11Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 4:13:12Jocko Willink?

  Uh, the tank was firing. There was kettlebells flying around. What was that shirt? Was that toxic productivity? What was, what was the purpose of that shirt?

• 4:13:20Speaker 02

  That was just.

• 4:13:21Jocko Willink?

  It looks like a comic book.

• 4:13:22Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:13:23Jocko Willink?

  It looks like an old eighties comic book.

• 4:13:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:13:25Jocko Willink?

  Seventies comic book.

• 4:13:26Speaker 02

  Like hardcore discipline in your face. Good to go. All go, no stop, no quit.

• 4:13:32Jocko Willink?

  Gas, no brakes.

• 4:13:33Speaker 02

  Freedom, exactly.

• 4:13:34Jocko Willink?

  There you go.

• 4:13:35Speaker 02

  Nonetheless, cool designs. People seem to like them, but that's, yeah, it's a new design every, uh, every month. Um, it's all on JacoStore.com.

• 4:13:42Jocko Willink?

  All right. Also. Primalbeef.com and ColoradoCraftBeef.com. You need steak in your life. It's gonna make you stronger, smarter, faster, just better.

• 4:13:56Speaker 02

  Do you eat sloppy Joes? You know what sloppy Joes are?

• 4:13:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, I don't. I know what they are, but I don't eat them.

• 4:14:02Speaker 02

  Really?

• 4:14:02Jocko Willink?

  I don't like beans.

• 4:14:04Speaker 02

  Oh, I never had beans in a sloppy Joe before.

• 4:14:07Jocko Willink?

  You've never had a sloppy Joe then?

• 4:14:08Speaker 02

  Maybe there's something different.

• 4:14:09Jocko Willink?

  No, I guess you could. I have had sloppy Joes with no beans, I do believe. And maybe I'm wrong about the beans. I'm not 100% sure. Anyways, okay, sloppy Joes.

• 4:14:18Speaker 02

  I had a sloppy Joes last night with Colorado Craft Beef.

• 4:14:24Jocko Willink?

  And how'd it go?

• 4:14:25Speaker 02

  Outstanding. Extra chunky, by the way.

• 4:14:28Jocko Willink?

  I like it. So, check those out. Great companies, great steak.

• 4:14:34Speaker 02

  Thanks for your support on that one.

• 4:14:37Jocko Willink?

  We'll move on. Like I said, I'm glad no one's listening, because if anyone is listening, they're really not impressed by your gig.

• 4:14:43Speaker 02

  Bro, I wanted to share with you, with us, you know?

• 4:14:46Jocko Willink?

  Bro, stories have to have a point.

• 4:14:51Jocko Willink?

  They don't have to, but they should. Hey, subscribe to the podcast, subscribe to Jocko Underground, subscribe to the YouTube channels, Psychological Warfare, FlipsideCanvas.com, Dakota Meyer, making cool stuff to hang on your wall. Hey, books. Double Crossed by Brian Wood. Check that one out. It's an outstanding book. It's a fast read, like you'll be page turning, especially when you know a little bit of the background, because I knew the background, so you kind of want to get to the goods. So, check that out also. I've written a bunch of books about leadership. You can check those out. Bunch of kids books too. Where the Warrior Kid, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. We got Mikey and the Dragons. We got a movie coming, by the way. Do you know that?

• 4:15:28Jocko Willink?

  Got a movie coming called Way of the Warrior Kid, so check that out. It's gonna be coming probably in about a year. Starring Chris Pratt. You know Chris Pratt?

• 4:15:36Speaker 02

  I do.

• 4:15:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right, you're friends with him.

• 4:15:39Jocko Willink?

  Directed by Mick G.

• 4:15:41Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 4:15:41Jocko Willink?

  You approve of Mick G?

• 4:15:42Speaker 02

  Big time. Terminator Salvation, bro, come on.

• 4:15:45Jocko Willink?

  Lots of good. When I saw Terminator Salvation, I thought, yeah, he can make anything happen that needs to happen on the screen. Like, if you can make that movie, you can make some stuff happen.

• 4:15:55Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:15:56Jocko Willink?

  So anyways, that's coming. Mikey and the Dragons, Bout Faced by Hackworth. Anyways, I've written a bunch of books. You guys know them. Check them out. Also, we have a leadership consultancy, Echelon Front. We solve problems through leadership. If you have problems in your life, in your business, in your world, there are leadership problems. We can teach you leadership so you can work through those problems. Check out echelonfront.com. Also, we have an online training academy, extremeownership.com, where you can learn these leadership skills. Leadership is not an inherited trait.

• 4:16:26Jocko Willink?

  It's not something that you only use when you're on the wire diagram as the senior person in charge. Nope, no matter where you are, it doesn't even matter if you work. You have leadership requirements in life, in your relationships, in your family. It's everywhere. So learn the leadership skills. You don't have to go through life guessing. We'll tell you what to do. We'll tell you how to do it. Go to extremeownership.com to check that out. If you want to help service members, active and retired, you want to help their families, you want to help Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. If you want to donate or you want to get involved, go to americasmightywarriors.org. So you can help Mama Lee help our heroes.

• 4:17:10Jocko Willink?

  Also, heroesandhorses.org, Micah Fink up there in the mountains, helping veterans find themselves. And Jimmy May has his organization, beyondthebrotherhood.org, taking people out of SEALs, out of SEAL teams, out of special operations, and placing them with guidance and screening into companies, organizations, teams where they can excel.

• 4:17:34Jocko Willink?

  BeyondTheBrotherhood.org. Check that out. If you want to connect with Brian Wood, once again, on the interwebs, go to BrianWoodMC.co.uk. He is on Facebook, he is on Twitter X, he's on the Gram, @BrianWoodMC. And for us, I'm over there at Jaco.com. I'm also on social media, @JacoWilling. Echo is also on social media occasionally. He's at Echo Charles. Just be careful because there's an algorithm on there and its whole purpose for existing is to waste your time and ruin your life. So don't let it. Go in there, get what you want to get and then get out of there.

• 4:18:15Jocko Willink?

  Hand to Brian Wood. Once again, thank you for coming. Thank you for joining. Thank you for sharing your lessons learned. Thanks for your bravery and leadership on the battlefield and off the battlefield as well. And thanks to our military personnel around the world, American and our allies, especially Great Britain for tonight. Thank you for your bravery and your professionalism on whatever battlefield you find yourselves on. We thank you for your service. And the same goes to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, as well as other first responders. Thank you for your bravery and professionalism here at home.

• 4:18:57Jocko Willink?

  And everyone else out there, keep that, keep that lesson, that mindset lesson in mind that we got from Brian Wood and from his mates as well. Sometimes when the odds are not looking good, like 15 to 3 or 28 to 5, when you're outnumbered and you're outgunned, do not run away. Do not try and avoid the problem. Instead, fix bayonets. Get aggressive. Go on the attack and then keep attacking.

• 4:19:35Jocko Willink?

  And that's all we've got for tonight. And until next time, this is Echo and Jocko, out.