105: Discipline, Guts, and The Will To Win. "We Were Soldiers Once... and Young"

0:00:00 - Opening 0:08:26 - "We Were Soldiers Once... And Young", by Gen. Hal Moore and Joe Galloway. http://amzn.to/2BkfKcK 2:01:16 - Final Thoughts and Take-aways. 2:03:34 - Support: JockoStore http://www.jockostore.com stuff, Super Krill Oil and Joint Warfare and Discipline Pre-Mission http://originmaine.com/origin-labs/jocko/, Origin Brand Apparel and Jocko Gi http://www.originmaine.com, withJocko White Tea http://www.jockotea.com, Onnit Fitness stuff, http://www.onnit.com/jocko and Psychological Warfare (on iTunes) https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/psychological-warfare/id1183222322. Extreme Ownership (book) http://amzn.to/2jonHTx, The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. http://amzn.to/2szgaEj 2:17:04 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcasts number 105 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:10Jocko Willink?

  Specialist Vieira was witness to scenes of horror.

• 0:15Jocko Willink?

  The enemy was all over, at least a couple hundred of them walking around for three or four minutes. It seemed like three or four hours.

• 0:24Jocko Willink?

  They were shooting and machine gunning our wounded and laughing and giggling.

• 0:30Jocko Willink?

  I knew they'd kill me if they saw I was alive.

• 0:34Jocko Willink?

  When they got near, I played dead.

• 0:37Jocko Willink?

  I kept my eyes open and stared at a small tree.

• 0:42Jocko Willink?

  I knew that dead men had their eyes open.

• 0:47Jocko Willink?

  Vieira continues, "Then one of the North Vietnamese came up, looked at me, then kicked me, and I flopped over. I guess he thought I was dead. There was blood running out of my mouth, my arm, my legs.

• 1:02Jocko Willink?

  He took my watch and my 45 caliber pistol and walked on. I watched them strip off all our weapons. They left, then they left back where they came from. I remember the artillery, the bombs, the napalm everywhere real close around me.

• 1:22Jocko Willink?

  It shook the ground underneath me.

• 1:25Jocko Willink?

  But it was coming in on the North Vietnamese soldiers too."

• 1:30Jocko Willink?

  All this and more, much more, took place between 6:50 a.m. and 7:40 a.m. on November 15th, 1965. The agonies of Charlie Company occurred over 140 yards of the line.

• 1:48Jocko Willink?

  But men were fighting and dying on three sides of our thinly held American perimeter.

• 1:54Jocko Willink?

  In the center, I held the lives of all of these men in my hands.

• 2:01Jocko Willink?

  The badly wounded Captain Bob Edwards was on the radio now asking for reinforcements. The only reserve I had was reconnaissance platoon, 22 men.

• 2:12Jocko Willink?

  Was the attack on Charlie Company the main enemy threat? Delta Company and the combined mortar position were also under attack now. Reluctantly, I told Captain Edwards that his company would have to fight on alone for the time being. The din of the battle was unbelievable. Rifles and machine guns and mortars and grenades rattled, banged and boomed.

• 2:38Jocko Willink?

  Two batteries of 105 millimeter howitzers, 12 big guns located on another landing zone, five miles distant, were firing nonstop, their shells exploding no more than 50 yards outside the ring of shallow foxholes.

• 2:54Jocko Willink?

  Beside me in the battalion command post, the Air Force Forward Controller Lieutenant Charlie W. Hastings, 26 from La Mesa, New Mexico, radioed a special code word, "broken arrow", meaning "American unit in danger of being overrun". And within a short period of time, every available fighter bomber in South Vietnam was stacked overhead at a thousand-foot intervals from 7,000 feet to 35,000 feet, waiting its turn to deliver bombs and napalm to the battlefield.

• 3:27Jocko Willink?

  Among my sergeants, there were three war men, men who parachuted into Normandy on D-Day and had survived the war in Korea. And those old veterans were shocked by the savagery and hellish noise of this battle.

• 3:43Jocko Willink?

  Choking clouds of smoke and dust obscured the killing ground.

• 3:48Jocko Willink?

  We were dry-mouthed and our bowels churned with fear and still, the enemy came on in waves.

• 4:03Jocko Willink?

  And that right there is from the opening chapter of the book "We Were Soldiers Once and Young", by General Hal Moore and Joe Galloway. And the book, which was turned into a movie,

• 4:21Jocko Willink?

  which I saw when it came out in 2002, Mel Gibson.

• 4:27Jocko Willink?

  It's a good movie, for sure. But it's also a Hollywood movie. And Hollywood movies, they're forced to fit into two hours and they gotta follow some kind of a plot and they can't dig into the details and they can't really give you a comprehensive understanding of the events. And I purposely did not watch this movie again while preparing for this podcast because I didn't want it in there.

• 4:55Jocko Willink?

  I didn't want it in my brain, the movie's interpretation of the characters in it and the way that they were portrayed. And the book is so good.

• 5:07Jocko Willink?

  And it's so packed with detail and drama and action and

• 5:15Jocko Willink?

  an utterly incomprehensible heroism.

• 5:21Jocko Willink?

  Everyone should read this book.

• 5:24Jocko Willink?

  Everyone. It it starts off, it explains the way the battle unfolded and it talks how it went tactically, operationally and strategically. Goes through all those levels of warfare. And you can see in the book how strategy unfolds at the tactical level and how tactical situations impact strategy as well. You can see it on both sides. And there's also, which is interesting, there's significant commentary from the Vietnamese enemy leadership that they went back and interviewed after the war was over. Which just makes it an incredible book. And like I said, everyone should read it. So it tells the story of operations in the Idrang Valley

• 6:06Jocko Willink?

  in 1965, from November 14th until November 18th. So, five days.

• 6:14Jocko Willink?

  But, the fighting, as was noted in that opening chapter, is absolutely brutal. Leadership is tested over and over and over again.

• 6:28Jocko Willink?

  And this battle took place with battalions and companies from the 7th Cavalry Regiment. And if you remember the books we covered on General George Custer, he was a officer that led 7th Cavalry troops in the Battle of Little Big Horn, where he was surrounded and he was killed along with 267 of his soldiers, all of them dead by the Native American warriors on the suicide from the Lakota and the Dakota and the Northern Cheyenne and the Arapaho tribes. And cavalry in those days meant horseback. That's what it meant. That's what mounted cavalry, that's what it was.

• 7:12Jocko Willink?

  And in 1965, they adopted cavalry to a new kind of steed, a new form of transport, and this was the helicopter. And in 1965, they converted the 11th Air Assault Test Division to the 1st Cavalry Division. And the 1st and 2nd battalions of the 1st Cavalry Division soon took on the historical name of General Custer's unit. And, and by the way, General Custer, the 7th Cav, even though that's kind of the most famous, along with this, I guess, along with the Idrang Valley, but they, the, the 7th Cav served in World War II and Korea,

• 7:57Jocko Willink?

  all kinds of incredible service there. And, and a lot of that is covered in the book. But again, we'll have to move through this a little bit more quickly. Otherwise, go read the book, which I highly recommend. But let's get into it, uh, starting about where Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore takes over the 1st Battalion 7th Cavalry. Going back to the book. "On Monday, June 29th, as scheduled, I took command of my battalion. I was 42 years old, a West Point graduate of the class of 1945, with 19 years commissioned service, including 14-month tour in Korea.

• 8:42Jocko Willink?

  Combat tour in Korea. In a brief talk to the troops afterward, I told them that this was a good battalion, but it would get better. 'I will do my best,' I said, 'and I expect the same from each of you.'"

• 8:57Jocko Willink?

  Before taking command, I had a long talk with the most important man in any battalion, the Sergeant Major Basil L. Plumlee. Forty-four years old and a six-foot-two-inch bear of a man hailed from West Virginia. The men sometimes called him Old Ironjaw, but never in his hearing. Plumlee was a two-worn man and wore master parachute wings with his five combat jump stars. He was what the young airborne types called a four-jump bastard. Plumlee had survived all four combat jumps of the 82nd Airborne Division in World War II,

• 9:38Jocko Willink?

  Sicily and Salerno in 1943, and then in 1944, D-Day at Normandy, and Market Garden in the Netherlands. For that matter, he also made one combat parachute jump in the Korean War with the 187th Airborne Infantry Regiment. He ended World War II a buck sergeant and was promoted to Sergeant Major in 1961. So let's think about that for a minute. Let's think about that. I mean, we've talked, we've definitely talked about Normandy, we've definitely talked about Market Garden. He jumped into both those and jumped into Sicily and Salerno and jumped into combat in the Korean War?

• 10:21Jocko Willink?

  Unbelievable. Going back to the book, the Sergeant Major was a no-bullshit guy who believed, as I did, in tough training, tough discipline, and tough physical conditioning. To this day, there are veterans of the battalion who are convinced that God may look like Sergeant Major Basil Plumlee, but he isn't nearly as tough as the Sergeant Major on sins, small or large. Privately, I thanked my lucky stars that I had inherited such a treasure. I told Sergeant Major Plumlee that he had unrestricted access to me at any time on any subject he wished to raise. After the ceremony, the company commanders and the battalion staff got a look at their

• 11:05Jocko Willink?

  new boss and a word on my standards. They were fairly simple. Only first place trophies will be displayed, accepted, or presented in this battalion. Second place in our line of work is defeat of the unit on the battlefield and death for the individual in combat. No fat troops or officers. Decision making will be decentralized. Push the power down. It pays off in wartime. Loyalty flows down as well. I check up on everything. I am available day or night to talk with any officer of this battalion. Finally, the sergeant major works for only for me and takes orders only for me. He is my right hand man.

• 11:49Jocko Willink?

  So he's setting the stage.

• 11:53Jocko Willink?

  Pretty interesting.

• 11:56Jocko Willink?

  No, only first place trophies. Second place, no.

• 12:01Jocko Willink?

  Not happening here.

• 12:04Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, the officers of my new battalion were the usual great army mix of men who had come from their jobs, come to their jobs from West Point, ROTC, Officer Candidate School, and military schools like the Citadel. Most of the young second lieutenants had come through OCS and college ROTC programs. There were three rifle companies in the battalion. Alpha, Bravo, and Charlie companies, each at full strength, supposed to have six officers and 164 enlisted men. They were my maneuver elements. Each rifle company had three rifle platoons, plus one platoon of three 81 millimeter mortar squads for fire support. Each rifle platoon in turn had three rifle squads, plus a weapon squad of two M60 machine guns for fire support.

• 12:48Jocko Willink?

  So there's, there's the breakdown right there. And they also had a, another combat support company, Delta Company, which had a recon platoon, a mortar platoon, and an anti-tank platoon. And they converted the unneeded anti-tank platoons into machine gun platoon for, for duty in Vietnam because there was no enemy tanks going up against. So that's, that's what the battalion was looking like.

• 13:10Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book during the during those first 14 months, so now he's going to talk about their workup a little bit, how they got ready for combat. Back to the book, during those 14 months before we sailed for Vietnam, we spent most of the time in the field practicing assault landings from helicopters and the incredibly complex coordination of artillery, tactical air support and aerial rocket artillery, with the all-important flow of helicopters into and out of the battle zone. Commanders had to learn to see terrain differently, to add a constant scan for landing zones, which are called LZs, and pickup zones, PZs, to all the other features they had to keep in mind. We practiced rapid loading and unloading of men and materiel to reduce the helicopter's window of vulnerability.

• 13:56Jocko Willink?

  Total flexibility was the watchword in planning and attitude. There was one bit of sobering reality that I insisted be introduced at every level in this training. We would declare a platoon commander dead and let his sergeant take over and carry out the mission, or declare a sergeant dead and have one of his PFCs take over running the squad. We were training for war and leaders are killed in battle. I wanted every man trained for and capable of taking over the job of the man above him. So they're they're working a whole new gig here. They'd never, no one had really done this before, riding, everyone's going into combat on helicopters. And obviously helicopters give you a great amount of maneuverability. You can be up vertically and take off

• 14:39Jocko Willink?

  and travel a great distance and set down anywhere, or not anywhere, just about anywhere. You can set down in a lot of places, I should say, because you can't set down anywhere, especially in the jungle where you've got trees and all kinds of obstacles. And then you've got enemy on top of that, and helicopters are are pretty vulnerable flying machines. And so this idea, what what they were practicing was this massive movement, move all the troops into the combat zone very quickly, and the enemy doesn't expect you, and you can just show up there. So it's that's what they're practicing over and over again. And clearly, You know, a Korean War veteran like Hal Moore was, he knows that leaders can get killed in combat. And so he's sometimes killing the leaders in training and that's a tradition we still had. We did that all the time when I was running, training the SEAL teams.

• 15:25Jocko Willink?

  The minute the leader started to get a grip on things, it was like, okay, you're dead. Next man's got to step up. And sometimes that would just wreck a platoon or a task unit. The leader dies if they're a good leader and they're not, and no one is used to stepping up. It'd be problematic, but sometimes it would actually be beneficial. You get some guy that's a micromanager, kill him and then watch everything run smoothly. And you come back and you go, dude, you better back off a little bit because this guy's running a better show than you are. And it's really clear. So sometimes we teach guys lessons that way.

• 15:57Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, unfortunately, my battalion and every other in the division now began to suffer the consequences of President Johnson's refusal to declare a state of emergency and extend the active duty tours of draftees and reserve officers. The order came down, any soldier who had less of less, who had 60 days or less left to serve on his enlistment as of the date of deployment, August 16th, must be left behind. We were sick at heart. We were being shipped off to war sadly under strength and crippled by the loss of almost a hundred troopers in my battalion alone. The very men who would be the most useful in combat, those who had trained the longest

• 16:38Jocko Willink?

  in the new techniques of helicopter warfare were by this order taken away from us. It made no sense then, it makes no sense now. So again, I talked about the strategic kind of implications that these guys felt. And this is one of them. And obviously I'm jumping through the book. They talks more about the workup and what they did to prepare. But now he's getting to this point where President Johnson doesn't declare a state of emergency and keep these guys in. And so, you know, that's a political decision, obviously. But what, where does it impact? Sure, it impacts the guys on the front line. That's where it impacts.

• 17:14Jocko Willink?

  Now, like I said, this book is written not only by, not only by Lieutenant General Hal Moore, is how he retired in this book. I'll refer to him as Lieutenant Colonel, or sometimes I guess I'm just disrespectful and call him Hal Moore. I don't mean it disrespectfully, but anyways, Hal Moore wrote the book, but he also wrote the book along with another guy named Joe Galloway. And you know, you know what a ghostwriter is?

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, ghostwriter. Well, this is, so a ghostwriter writes a person's book, but no one's supposed to know it. And then there's people that write the book, but they get credit for it. And you might think that's a situation here, looking at the title, because you've got Lieutenant General Harold Moore retired and Joseph L. Galloway. Like, you know, it doesn't say any servicing. Well,

• 18:04Jocko Willink?

  in this particular case, that could give you an absolutely wrong impression because Joe Galloway was a reporter, a combat reporter, who was, obviously, he was very courageous and, and basically got after it, for lack of a better word. So I'll go on where they introduce him a little bit. Back to the book. UPI reporter Joe Galloway, a 23-year-old native of Refugio, Texas, marched with us. When he hooked up with us, he carried on his shoulder an M16 rifle, which the Special Forces Commander, Major Charles Beckwith, had handed him when the fight was over. Galloway told Beckwith that, strictly speaking,

• 18:45Jocko Willink?

  under the Geneva Convention, he was a civilian noncombatant. Beckwith's response, "No such thing in these mountains, boy. Take that rifle." So if you know anything about Charles Beckwith, Major Charlie Beckwith, it's the guy that created Delta Force, complete badass warrior. And he was a Special Forces Commander in Vietnam and, and was one of the first people that apparently Galloway worked with. And Galloway said, you know, "You better arm yourself."

• 19:14Jocko Willink?

  So here's Galloway talking. Galloway remembers. My first time out with Hal Moore's First Battalion Seventh Cavalry was a hellish walk into the sun to a remote Montagard mountain village. We got into a patch of brush and wait a minute vines so thick and thorny that every step had to be carved out with machetes. We covered maybe 300 yards in four hours and forded a fast running chest deep mountain stream just as darkness fell, then huddled in our ponchos wet and freezing all night long. At first light, I pinched off a small piece of C4 plastic explosive from the emergency supply in my pack and used it to boil up a canteen of water for coffee.

• 19:54Jocko Willink?

  If you lit C4 very carefully, you could be drinking hot coffee in maybe 30 seconds. If you were careless, it blew off your arm. Over a first cigarette, I watched Moore's men. First, they shaved. Shaved? Up here? I was amazed. Then the Colonel himself, blond, jawed and very intense, a son of Bardstown, Kentucky and West Point, walked by on this morning rounds with Sergeant Major Plumley. Moore looked me over and said, "We all shave in my outfit, reporters included." My steaming coffee water went for a wash and a shave, and I gained a measure of respect for the man.

• 20:38Jocko Willink?

  Daily discipline in all things. You know, that's another thing that I failed to mention, but it's very clear when you read the book is this is 1965 and the war had not escalated at all. And it wasn't the, the meat grinder that it turned into. So these guys, you know, in their workup, they, they knew that they were going to fight, but they didn't, they didn't know. It wasn't the Vietnam that we think of now where there's a lot of casualties happening. It hadn't gotten there yet. And as a matter of fact, this battle is really the first one where that, where you start seeing very significant American casualties.

• 21:18Jocko Willink?

  The guy that's in charge over Hal, over Hal Moore is a guy named Colonel Brown and he shows up going back to the book, not long after Colonel Brown flew in, checked on the situation with Alpha Company and then called me aside. Hal, I'm moving your battalion west tomorrow morning, he said, unfolding his map. Here is your area of operations, north of Chupong in the Idrang Valley. Your mission is the same one you have now. Find and kill the enemy. He rapidly outlined the scope of operations and the resources he could spare. 16 UH-1D Hueys. So that's a Huey helicopter. It's the most, I guess, the most iconic helicopter,

• 22:03Jocko Willink?

  probably of any military and certainly of Vietnam, the Huey helicopter is, is completely iconic. 16 Hueys to move my troops, two 105 howitzer batteries within range to support us in at least two days on the ground patrolling. He added that Alpha Company of the 229th helicopter, Assault Helicopter Battalion would provide the helicopters. The 229th A Company Commander, Major Bruce Crandall was on his way now. One more thing, Hal. In that area, be sure your companies are close enough for mutual support. So, the reason

• 22:40Jocko Willink?

  I highlighted that, a lot of times, people have a tendency in, in combat situations, especially when planning, to get too far apart from each other. And I would see this all the time. And what happens is it, it seems to make sense because you cover more ground or you have better angles and it seems like a good idea, like, hey, we'll just split up and you can take care of your guys and I'll take care of my guys. But you always need to stay within a position where you can mutually support each other, where if we get in trouble, we can cover and move. That, that's what it is. You, you want to be able to cover to move, cover and move. So, the minute you're out of sight, out of line of sight, out of radio, out of the, out of a, a distance where your weapons can be used to support, you're

• 23:24Jocko Willink?

  alone. That's the thing. You, you get away from line of sight, radio contact, the distance that weapons can be shot effectively from the other unit that you're out there with, now you are alone. So when you're planning, make sure, and he's saying in that area, I always use that rule. Always, as often as possible. Are there times where you can, you can, you can flex that rule a little bit? Of course there are. There are situations you can get into and you can, it might be a better tactical call. But always keep in mind what you're doing and what you're sacrificing when you can no longer mutually support the other units that you're out with. And they can't mutually support you. You're alone.

• 24:12Jocko Willink?

  So he knows this is going to be a little bit of a hot area. At least he suspects it. Going back to the book, how ready was my battalion for combat? We had never maneuvered in combat as an entire battalion, although all three rifle companies had been minor scrapes. So they'd been in Vietnam for a while. They'd been in a little bit of contact, but nothing too major. And like he just said, none of them, none of them had been, been been out as a group, as a battalion. Back to the book, most of the men had never seen an enemy soldier dead or alive. We had killed fewer than 10 black pajama guerrillas in the get acquainted patrols and small operations since our arrival. The four line companies had 20 of their authorized 23 officers, but the enlisted ranks had been

• 24:53Jocko Willink?

  badly whittled down by expiring enlistments, malaria cases, and requirements for base camp guards and workers back in Anh K. Alpha Company had 115 men, 49 fewer than authorized. Bravo Company had 114 men, was 50 short. Charlie Company had 106 men, down by 58. And the weapons company, Delta, had only 76 men, 42 fewer than authorized. Headquarters Company was also under strength and I had been forced to draw it down further by sending men out to fill crucial medical and communications vacancies in the line companies. I didn't like being shorthanded, but things had been no different in the Korean War and somehow

• 25:38Jocko Willink?

  we made do. You just suck it up and do it. And we would do the same, we do the same way in the Idrang. The officers and NCOs would do what they could to make up the slack, just as we had done in Korea. So my point of reading that, these guys are heavily undermanned. They're supposed to have 150 people and they have, you know, 100, 105, whatever. And there's nothing they could do about it. And it's also interesting and worth noting that he has a headquarters company. So you've got the battalion commander and he's got a group of guys that do weapons for him and also communications and he's pushed those guys out. So instead of keeping those guys

• 26:18Jocko Willink?

  and making him his, his own team, all fat and happy. Nope. He makes his team thin and gives as much as he can to the, to the forces that are out in the field. So another good note on leadership. Now they're getting ready to roll in and we will talk about, he's kind of going through the plan a little bit. Here we go back to the book. I would personally land on the first helicopter piloted by Bruce Crandall and Bruce Crandall is the commander of the helicopters that are flying them in. That would permit me a final low level look at the landing zone and surrounding terrain. And with Crandall in the front seat and me in the back, we could work out on the spot, any last minute diversion to an alternate landers, landing zone if necessary,

• 27:01Jocko Willink?

  and fix any other problems with the lift. In the American Civil War, it was a matter of principle that a good officer rode his horse as little as possible. There were sound reasons for this. If you are riding and your soldiers are marching, how can you judge how tired they are? How thirsty? How heavy their packs weigh on their shoulders? I applied the same philosophy in Vietnam, where every battalion commander had his own command and control helicopter. Some commanders use their helicopter as their personal mount.

• 27:33Jocko Willink?

  I never believed in that. You had to get on the ground with your troops to see and hear what was happening. You have to soak up firsthand information for your instincts to operate accurately. Besides, it's too easy to be crisp, cool, and detached at 1,500 feet. Too easy to demand the impossible of your troops. Too easy to make mistakes that are fatal only to those souls far below in the mud, the blood, and confusion. So this is something we talk about all the time from a leadership perspective. You cannot be, you know, it's the dichotomy of detachment, right? It does pay, and there are certain times where you can tell in these situations, if you're in the command helicopter that's up above the fighting, well, you're de facto.

• 28:17Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you are detached from the situation and you can see what's happening and you have,

• 28:23Jocko Willink?

  you have a good view of what's going on. But even though you have a good view, you're also missing a bunch. You're missing what it's like down there. You're missing what the men are seeing. You're missing what it looks like to them. You're missing the communication breakdowns that are happening down there. So you have to find that balance between these two. And he clearly is aware of that.

• 28:46Jocko Willink?

  He's preparing for this and he's got a book called Street Without Joy by a guy named Bernard Fall. And it's, it's a book about Vietnam. It's a book about the tragedy that the French troops went through fighting the Vietnamese. And he says that he took one lesson away from that book. And this is the lesson. Death is the price you pay for underestimating this tenacious enemy. So he was aware and like General Mattis said, you know, not too long ago, they were talking about General Mattis and how come he reads so many books? And he says, because I get to see, I get to learn. And this is a classic case.

• 29:28Jocko Willink?

  He knew, he read books about the French that had fought the Vietnamese, what, 10 years earlier, 11 years earlier? And that made him more prepared.

• 29:40Jocko Willink?

  Now, talking a little bit, like I said, there's a, there's great information in here about the enemy. And like I said, they went and interviewed and got reports from the enemy. And here we go, a little bit about the enemy. Back to the book, the soldiers commanded by Brigadier General Chu Hui Man had been training for more than 18 months. When they joined the People's Army, each recruit was issued two khaki shirts, two pairs of khaki trousers, a sewing kit, and a pair of Ho Chi Minh sandals cut from used tire trucks. Those uniforms were expected to last five years. Basic training lasted 13 weeks, six days a week, 6:00 a.m. to 9:15 p.m.

• 30:23Jocko Willink?

  The instructors emphasized weapons and tactics, the hows of warfare, while the political commissars had time, had time set aside each day to lecture on the whys of this war. The recruits were reminded constantly that their fathers had beaten the French colonialists. Now it was their duty to defeat the American imperialists. They were imbued with Ho Chi Minh's dictum, "Nothing is more precious than freedom and independence." After basic training, some were selected for six months of NCO school and would emerge as new corporals. For the rest, advanced infantry training included familiarization with all weapons, the use of explosive, ambush tactics, reconnaissance tactics, adjusting mortar fire and patrol tactics.

• 31:06Jocko Willink?

  In June of 1964, Man soldiers moved up into the mountains of North Vietnam, terrain similar to that in western highlands of South Vietnam. Here, physical conditioning was emphasized. They scaled steep slopes while wearing rucksacks loaded with 50 to 60 pounds of rocks. Their advanced training now also focused on the art of camouflage. When the time came for them to begin the arduous two-month journey down the Ho Chi Minh Trail through Laos, General Man's regiment broke down into battalions for security purposes, each moving separately at least three days ahead of the next. Each soldier carried four pounds of rice, seven days' rations, plus another eight pounds of foodstuffs that were expected to last him the whole trip.

• 31:50Jocko Willink?

  Two pounds of salt, two pounds of wheat flour, and four pounds of salt pork. One man in every squad carried the aluminum cook pot that would, that the squad's rice would be boiled in. Each man also carried 50 anti-malaria pills, one for each day on the trail, and 100 vitamin B1 tabs to be taken at the rate of three per week. Despite the pills, virtually every man who walked the trail contracted malaria, and on average, three or four soldiers of each 160-man company would die on the journey. Malaria, diarrhea, accidents, poisonous snakes, and American-era raids took their toll.

• 32:30Jocko Willink?

  Man's soldiers marched nine miles each day, the distance between rest camps where they spent each night. Every day, every fourth day, they stayed in camp, taking the day off to rest up, wash their clothes, and tend to minor medical problems. So this is a legit enemy we're looking at. Legit enemy, organized, well-trained, hard, tough, well-led,

• 32:58Jocko Willink?

  and, and ready. And you can't ever, you know, this is one of the biggest problems with fighting a counterinsurgency, is you're going against someone that's fighting on their home turf. And that is just, you can't, how do you overcome that advantage? Well, you overcome that advantage with firepower and with some technology, but that is a hard advantage to overcome.

• 33:20Jocko Willink?

  And here's a quote from General An. "When you landed there, you landed right in the middle of three of our battalions of the 66th Regiment, our service, our reserve force. It was the strongest we had. At full strength, the battalions each had about 450 men. Also, there was a headquarters battalion. The regiment's total strength was about 1,600 men." So they're kind of by chance set up on the same spot where these guys are gonna go in, which is LZ X-ray, Landing Zone X-ray.

• 33:59Jocko Willink?

  And here, these, they're flying in into the LZ X-ray. Captain John Heron, whose Bravo Company troops filled the helicopter, recalls, "It was a cool, it was a misty, cool morning with some low-hanging fog when we lifted off. But shortly after takeoff, we broke into the clear, and you could see the 105 artillery pounding the areas around the LZ as we headed in. Vietnam, even in war, was scenic, with green jungle, heavy forested mountains, and wild-looking rivers crisscrossing the terrain."

• 34:33Jocko Willink?

  Now the helicopters of the aerial rocket artillery slam the perimeter with rockets, grenades and machine gun fire using 24 of the 48 2.7 inch rockets they carried. So it's the it's the same thing that we've heard before. It's a cover move, right? As you come into a landing zone like they did in D-Day, what do you do first? You bomb the crap out of it. You hit it with naval gunfire and they're doing the same thing here. They're prepping the landing zone by dropping a bunch of 105 howitzers into the around the surrounding area around the landing zone and then the helicopters, once it's too close and the and the howitzers have to turn off, then the helicopters start shooting and they do their best to clear the area around the landing zone. That's what's going on.

• 35:21Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, the People's Army Commander on the battlefield, then Senior Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Hu An says, "When you dropped troops into X-ray, I was on Chupong Mountain. We had a very strong position and a strong mobile command group. We were ready. We were ready, had prepared for you and expected you to come. The only question was when. The trees and bush limited our view of the helicopter's landing, but we had an observation post on top of the mountain and they reported to us when you dropped troops and when you moved them." So, man, you know, I talk about all the time about having the high ground. Well, when these guys are landing in a valley and they're surrounded by high ground.

• 36:05Jocko Willink?

  So it's a you're at a you're at a tactical disadvantage there.

• 36:11Jocko Willink?

  Right as soon as just about as soon as they hit the ground, they're there for a little while and they get a prisoner. The the Americans get a prisoner and here's there's a translator and he translates the prisoner's words and here's what the prisoner says. Well, here's what the translator says. He says, "There are three battalions on the mountain who want very much to kill Americans but have not been able to find any."

• 36:35Jocko Willink?

  Now, you take that with a grain of salt because it's coming from a prisoner, but it's not nothing. I'll put it to you that way. It's something. Back to the book, suddenly a few rifle shots rang out in the area where the prisoner had been captured. Sergeant Gilreth's men were in contact. It was now 12:15 PM. We had to move fast if we were going to survive, had to get off the landing zone and hit them before they could hit us. Only if we brought the enemy to battle deep in the trees and brush, could we stand even a slim chance of holding on to the clearing and getting the rest of the battalion landed. That football field sized clearing was our lifeline and our supply line. If the enemy closed the way to the helicopters, all of us would die in this place. So that's one of the, one of the hard

• 37:20Jocko Willink?

  things about helicopter warfare, especially in Vietnam, well, actually anywhere is you, you, that's great. You can go a long distance and get in there, but then once you're there, there's, if the helicopters can't come get you out, or they can't resupply you, you're in real problem. You're, you're back to the word that I said earlier, you're alone.

• 37:39Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, even as the first shots rang out, I was radioing Heron to saddle up the rest of Bravo Company, the rest of his, his Bravo Company men and move out fast toward the mountain to develop the situation. Turning to Nadal and he's, again, I, there's all these characters. I mean, there's, there's all the company commanders, the platoon commanders, the, the platoon leaders, the platoon sergeants, there's the ground troops, there's all these characters and, and the book does an outstanding job of detailing who all these individuals were, what their background was, where they came from. And I, I just don't, we, we can't do that right now. Uh, but that's why you buy the book and you read the book. But this guy Nadal is one of the company commanders.

• 38:19Jocko Willink?

  So here we go. Turning to Nadal, I told him that the original plan was out the window, that his Alpha Company should immediately take over LC's security and get ready to move up on Bravo Company's left when Charlie, when enough of Charlie Company had arrived on the next lift to assume the job of securing and clearing. So. Classic. You hit the ground and, and now all of a sudden the plan is out the window, right? Out the window. We're going with our standard operating procedures, which is, hey, we're going to move a company here. You're going to set up perimeter security and go. Back to the book in the small cops, the other two platoon, platoons of Bravo Company men had opened C ration cans and were grabbing a bite when they heard the first shots in the brush.

• 39:03Jocko Willink?

  The older sergeants glanced at one another and nodded. Eat fast, they told the men and get ready to move. The battle of LZ X-ray had just begun.

• 39:16Jocko Willink?

  And it, it doesn't take long to begin going back to the book, says Sergeant Gilreath. We were virtually pinned to the ground and taking casualties. Lieutenant Dennis Deal remembers that moment. Devney's platoon was taking moderate fire. We could all hear it through the foliage and I heard it crackling on my radio. Al was in some sort of trouble. The firing increased in volume and intensity. Then I saw my first wounded trooper, probably the first American wounded in LZ X-ray. He was shot in the neck or mouth or both, was still carrying his rifle, was ambulatory and appeared stunned at what had happened to him. When he asked where to go, I put my arm around him and pointed to where I'd

• 39:58Jocko Willink?

  last seen the battalion commander. So it's immediately on and, and you, of course it is because there's, there's three battalions of Vietnamese soldiers there.

• 40:16Jocko Willink?

  And this is, this is Hal Moore talking, back to the book, the military historian S L A Marshall wrote that at the beginning of a battle, units fractionalized groping between the antagonists takes place and the battle takes form from all of this. Marshall had it right. That is precisely what was happening up in the scrub brush above, above landing zone X-ray this day. And no other single event would have greater impact on the shape of this battle than what Lieutenant Henry Herrick was in the process of doing. Herrick charged right past Lieutenant Devney's men, swung his platoon to the right in hot pursuit of a few fleeting enemy soldiers and disappeared from sight into the bush.

• 40:58Jocko Willink?

  Says Sergeant Ernie Savage of Herrick's Orders, "He made a bad decision and we knew at the time it was a bad decision. We were breaking contact with the rest of the company. We were supposed to come up on the flank of First Platoon. In fact, we were moving away from them. We lost contact with everyone, everybody." So, again, this is what I just talked about.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:19Jocko Willink?

  And it's, you're gonna see throughout this book, all these principles that we talk about all the time, that, that we taught and that we lived through, you can see that these types of things happen. And here's a classic thing I was just talking about. Like, when you get out of distance from your supporting elements, you're now alone.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 41:39Jocko Willink?

  And that's a bad situation to be in.

• 41:45Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Now, John Herron was up on my radio reporting that his men were under heavy attack by at least two enemy companies and that his second platoon was in danger of being surrounded and cut off from the rest of the company. Even as he spoke, mortar and rocket rounds hit in the clearing where I stood. My worst-case scenario had just come to pass. We were now in heavy contact before all my battalion was on the ground. And now, I had to deal with a cutoff platoon. My response was an angry shit.

• 42:15Jocko Willink?

  Captain John Herron's estimate that his Bravo Company men were trying to deal with two enemy companies was slightly off. One full enemy battalion, more than 500 determined enemy soldiers, was boiling down the mountain toward Herrick's trapped second platoon and maneuvering near Al Davini's pinned-down first platoon. Again, here's something that I failed to talk about with helicopter warfare. So, he's got a battalion of 500 guys, 550 guys. You can't fit all those guys on 16 helicopters. So, you've got to do multiple laps. And that's what he's, he's worried, he was worried about it going in, that, "Hey, I want to get my whole battalion on the ground before the fighting

• 42:56Jocko Willink?

  starts." He's already failed to do that. Or, I mean, he hasn't failed to do it, but it didn't happen.

• 43:02Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:05Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. I was tempted to join the Dolls or Edwards men, but resisted the temptation. I had no business getting involved with the actions of only one company. I might get pinned down and simply become another rifleman. My duty was to lead riflemen. So there's a, you know, we talked about the detachment. That he said, hey, look, I'm not going to be up in the helicopter. But right now he's saying, look, I'm not going to be in the helicopter overhead at 1500 feet. But I'm not going to be sitting in a platoon as a rifleman slugging it out with the enemy. That's not the right place to be either. You have to lead and in order to lead, you have to take a step back. You have to detach and he does that to the best of his ability. And here we go back to the book. Just now the snaps and cracks of the rounds passing nearby took on a distinctly different sound like a swarm of bees around our heads.

• 43:50Jocko Willink?

  I was on the radio trying to hear a transmission over the noise when I felt a firm hand on my right soldier, shoulder. It was Sergeant Major Plumlee's. He shouted over the racket of the firefight, sir, if you don't find some cover, you're going to go down. And if you go down, we all go down.

• 44:07Jocko Willink?

  Plumlee was right as always. Anyone waving, yelling, hand signaling, or talking on the radio was instantly targeted by the enemy. These guys were quick to spot and shoot leaders, radio operators and medics. I had never fretted about being wounded in combat in Korea or here, but Plumlee brought me up short. The game was just beginning. This was no time for me to go out of it. The Sergeant Major pointed to a large termite hill, six or seven feet high, located in some trees in the wastes between the two open areas of the landing zone. It was about 30 yards away and three of us turned and ran toward it with bullets kicking up red dirt around our feet and the bees still buzzing around our heads.

• 44:50Jocko Willink?

  That termite hill, the size of a large automobile would become the battalion command post. The aid station, the supply point, the collection area for enemy prisoners, weapons and equipment. And the place where our dead were brought.

• 45:05Jocko Willink?

  Casualties were now beginning to pile up. As we dropped behind that termite hill, I fleetingly thought about an illustration, an illustrious predecessor of mine in the 7th Cavalry Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his final stay/stand in the Valley of Little Bingham Horn in Montana 89 years earlier. I was determined that history would not repeat itself in the Valley of the I-Drang. We were a tight, well-trained and disciplined fighting force and we had one thing George Custer did not have: fire support.

• 45:42Jocko Willink?

  Fire support plays a, it's beyond critical. I mean, they would not have been able to do this without fire support and that's the one thing that's gonna save them. I mean, obviously the discipline, obviously the training, obviously the bravery, but the fire support is a gift.

• 46:04Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Sergeant Steve Hanson was behind and to the right of Lieutenant Taft. He says, "We moved at a trot across the open grass toward the tree line and heard fire up on the finger to the west where we were headed. My radio operator friend, Specialist 4 Ray Tanner and I crossed the stream bed. Captain Nadal's party and the two other platoons were off to the right. Lieutenant Taft was well forward as we crossed over into the trees. Sergeant 1st Class Lorenzo Nathan, Ray Turner and I were close, maybe 10 yards behind. We

• 46:42Jocko Willink?

  were moving fast. Specialist Spec 4 Pete Winter was near me. We ran into a wall of lead. Every man in the lead squad was shot. From the time we got the order to move to the time where men were dying was only five minutes. The enemy were very close to us and overran some of our dead. The firing was heavy. Sergeant Nathan pulled us back out of the woods of the stream bed."

• 47:13Jocko Willink?

  Bob Hazen, Bob Taft's radio operator recalls Lieutenant Taft got out in front of me. I was off to his left. He had his, he had his radio, he had the radio handset in his left hand connected to the radio on my back with that flexible rubber wire. It got tight and I pulled back on the lieutenant and hollered, "We're getting offline." He glanced back at me, turned back to his front and took four more steps. Then he fired two shots at something. I couldn't see what. Then he dropped face down on the ground. Lieutenant Taft was hit. I didn't realize how bad until I rolled him over. He was shot in the throat and the round had ricocheted down and come out his left side. He was dead and it was difficult to roll him over, even though he was a slightly built man.

• 47:58Jocko Willink?

  Captain Nadal says, "The enemy on the mountain started moving down rapidly in somewhat uncoordinated attacks. They streamed down the hill and down the creek bed. The enemy knew the area. They came down the best covered route."

• 48:13Jocko Willink?

  "The third platoon was heavily engaged and the volume of firing reached a crescendo on my left. At this time, I lost radio contact with Taft's platoon." "In the center of that fury, Bob Hazen struggled and rolled his dead platoon leader over. He was gone and there was nothing we could do. The first thing I thought of was what they taught me. Never let the enemy get his hands on a map or the signals code book." I got those from Lieutenant Taft and was kneeling over to try and pull his body back. That's when my radio was hit and the shrapnel from the radio hit me in the back of the head. It didn't really hurt. All of a sudden, I was just laying face down on the ground next to Lieutenant Taft. I felt something running down my tree, down my neck, reached

• 48:58Jocko Willink?

  back and came out with a handful of blood." Carmen Micali was on Hazen's right. We knew what had happened. The word passed fast. They got Lieutenant Taft.

• 49:10Jocko Willink?

  Again, we're talking within minutes of these guys arriving. This is going completely sideways.

• 49:19Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, Captain Nadal out of radio contact with Taft's platoon moved toward the furious firing on his left flank to find out what was happening. Nadal says, "My radio operator, Sergeant Jack E. Gell, the company communications chief who had volunteered to carry one of my two radios, ran with me out from out of the creek bed and into the open area toward Taft's position. We ran into Sergeant Nathan and I asked him what was happening. He said the platoon had been attacked on the left flank, the left squad had taken a number of casualties and had pulled back out of the creek bed, refusing their left enemy, their left flank to the enemy. Nathan said Taft had been hit and was left in the creek bed. That made me angry.

• 50:02Jocko Willink?

  We had been taught never to leave any wounded or dead on the battlefield. Sergeant Gell and I crawled forward of our lines to that creek bed where the enemy were to find Taft. We came under grenade attack from the west side of the creek bed, but had some cover from a few trees. We located Taft, dead. While bringing him back, we saw another soldier who had been left behind. After leaving Taft's body with his platoon, Gell and I went back again and we picked up the other man." Back to the book, Dennis Deal remembers, "We moved online for about 100 or 150 yards before the volume of firing forced us to stop.

• 50:47Jocko Willink?

  We were taking too many casualties. I radioed Herrick's platoon and said, "I think we're getting close to you. Shoot one round off, wait to the count of three and shoot two more." The radio man or whoever was on the radio did that, so we had a pretty good fix on where he was. We got up and started the assault again. We went about 10 yards and the whole thing just blew in our faces, blew up in our faces. The enemy had infiltrated between Herrick's platoon and us, and now we're starting to come behind us. So, that platoon that had gotten separated, this element with Dennis Deal was going out to try and get contact with them and bring them back inside the perimeter. They meet, they, they, they're assaulting, they go 100 yards, 150 yards, and they start getting mowed down.

• 51:32Jocko Willink?

  And now they realize that in between, they've got bad guys in between where Herrick's platoon is and where the rest of the perimeter is set up because they do have kind of a rough perimeter on this, on this landing zone and the landing zone, apologize for not explaining this. I mean, in order to bring in helicopters in the jungle, you need some open space. So the landing zone, LZ X-ray has an area where there's not much foliage for whatever reason. And so that's where they've kind of consolidated their forces only because they can't go anywhere else. They hit the ground, they start getting shot at. So now they're setting up what's called a perimeter. And obviously Herrick's platoon is outside the perimeter.

• 52:10Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, Lieutenant Deal adds that he and another, he and the other two platoon leaders now began planning yet another attempt to break through and rescue Herrick's men. Leaders were running back and forth coordinating when all of a sudden firing began. The lull dissipated quickly. It was at this time, my weapons squad leader Sergeant Curry, the chief, was killed. His last words were, "Those bastards are trying to get me." He was caught rolling around on the ground.

• 52:39Jocko Willink?

  Later on, as my men were carrying him back, I had them put him down and turn his face toward me and looked at him. I could not conceive of the chief being dead. Staff Sergeant Wilbur Curry, Jr. of Buffalo, New York, was 35 years old.

• 53:03Jocko Willink?

  Herrick and the other two squads were holding precariously to the small knoll near the bottom of the finger. Savage, so a kid named Savage is out there with Herrick's platoon and he ends up running a lot of stuff and you'll find that out. But here, here we start hearing a little bit of him right now. Savage teamed up with McHenry's squad, which was pinned to the ground. Herrick was with that squad. Sergeant Zalen's squad was off to the left rear. Savage checked on his men when he tied up with McHenry. He knew that spec four Robert M. Hill, M79 Grenadier, was no longer with them. He got killed in there somewhere. He had his M79 and a 45 caliber pistol

• 53:47Jocko Willink?

  and he was firing both at the same time. The 23-year-old Hill came from Starkville, Mississippi.

• 53:56Jocko Willink?

  And here's Sergeant Savage talking, explaining some more. Back to the book. The enemy was past the machine gun before it ever quit firing. I could hear Sergeant Hurdle down there cursing. Even, even over the firefight, I heard him. He was famous for that. Motherfucker, son of a bitch. I could hear him hollering that down there. When they threw, then they threw grenades on him. Hurdle 36 was from Washington DC. Baron Baum 24 was a native of New York City. PFC Donald Roddy 22 hailed from Ann Arbor, Michigan. The three of them died in a hail

• 54:31Jocko Willink?

  of rifle fire and enemy grenades. The enemy down below turned Sergeant Hurdle's M60 around and began using it on the Americans on the Knoll. So that causes all kinds of confusion. You can tell the difference between different types of weapons by the way they sound when they shoot and when someone starts shooting a friendly weapon at you, it's caused a lot of confusion. And the M60 is a beast of a weapon. Belt-fed machine gun. And it's when I got in the SEAL teams, that was the, that was the machine gun that, that we used was the M60 machine gun. And it's a devastating weapon. Back to the book. The enemy, more than 150

• 55:16Jocko Willink?

  strong, now attacked the Knoll from three sides, north, south, and east. And soldiers on both sides were falling. Lieutenant Herrick ran from trooper to trooper, trying to get a defense organized. An enemy volley cut across Herrick, his radio operator specialist, John R. Stewart, and the three, and the artillery recon sergeant, Sergeant John T. Brown, wounding all three. Herrick and Brown, seriously. Stewart took a single bullet through the leg. Herrick radioed Bravo Company Commander John Heron and told him he had been hit and he was turning command of the platoon over to Sergeant Carl Palmer. Herrick then gave explicit instructions to his

• 55:57Jocko Willink?

  men to destroy the signals codes, redistribute the ammunition, and call in artillery, and if possible, make a break for it. Heron says, "I give Herrick all the credit in the world for pulling that platoon together so they could make their stand."

• 56:12Jocko Willink?

  So should we all. Savage and Zaln paint a clear picture of a green, young lieutenant, who did a superb job in a hailstorm of enemy fire. His platoon stopped a very large North Vietnamese unit clearly heading down to join the attack on the landing zone. I long ago concluded that the very presence of this platoon so far to the northwest confused the enemy commander as to exactly where we were and how far we had penetrated in all directions and thus helped us, helped us as the battle built. Sergeant Savage recounts the final moments of Henry Herrick's life. He was lying beside me on the hill and he said, "If I have to die, I'm glad to give my life for my

• 56:53Jocko Willink?

  country." I remember him saying that. He was going into shock, hit in the hip and in a lot of pain. He didn't live long. He died early in the fight next to a little brush pile.

• 57:07Jocko Willink?

  Spec 4 Charles R. Lowe's 22 of Mobile, Alabama was the new platoon medic. He joined the platoon only a few days earlier. Lieutenant Herrick was kneeling when hit. He had a bullet wound to the hip. He told me to go help the other wounded.

• 57:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's, we have to remember that this guy Herrick is like 22, 23 year old, fresh out of him, he's a first, he might even be 21. And he made that majorly offensive move and pursued and got out of touch, but what Hal Moore is saying, hey, that confused the enemy, even though it confused the friendlies too, it confused the enemy as well. So there's some, there's some good that came out of it.

• 57:58Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Sergeant Reuben Thomas was struck by a bullet above his heart that exited under his left arm. Bleeding heavily, he grabbed a rifle and fought on. The encircled infantry men of the lost platoon refused to give up. Here's what Specialist Dorman said. "We were all on the ground now, and if you moved, you got hit. Our training really showed then, we shifted into defensive positions. We had five men killed in 25 minutes. Then all of a sudden, they tried a mass assault from three directions, rushing from bush to bush, laying fire on us. We put our M16s on full automatic and killed most of them."

• 58:35Jocko Willink?

  Another guy named Galen Bung, Bungman, Bungum, said,

• 58:41Jocko Willink?

  "We gathered up all the full magazines we could find and stacked them up in front of us. There was no way we could dig a foxhole. The handle was blown off my entrenching tool and one of my canteens had a hole blown through it. The fire was so heavy that if you tried to raise up to dig, you were dead. There was death and destruction all around.

• 59:00Jocko Willink?

  By now, eight men of the platoon's 29 had been killed in action. Another 13 were wounded. The 25-yard-wide perimeter was a circle of pain, death, fear, and raw courage. Medic Charlie Lowe's crawled from man to man throughout the raging firefight, doing his best to patch the wounded with limited supplies in his medical pack.

• 59:23Jocko Willink?

  Although he himself was wounded twice, Lowe's never slowed his pace. He would keep all 13 of the wounded alive for the, for 26 long, harrowing hours. Lowe's says, "On several occasions, I had to stand or sit up to treat the wounded. Each time, the VC fired heavily at me."

• 59:44Jocko Willink?

  Lowe's used his .45 and M16 rifle to help defend his patients.

• 59:53Jocko Willink?

  Getting attacked from three sides, 13 wounded, eight dead, was it nine dead?

• 1:00:04Jocko Willink?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:00:07Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Command had passed. So this is talking about, you know, when, when someone, if, if the leader gets killed, it goes to the next person. That person gets killed, it goes to the next person. So here's what's happening in Herrick's platoon, the lost platoon. Back to the book. Command had passed from Lieutenant Henry Herrick to Sergeant Carl Palmer, to Sergeant Robert Stokes, and each in turn died fighting.

• 1:00:30Jocko Willink?

  Now it was the turn of Buck Sergeant Ernie Savage. Sergeant Savage came up on the radio, Captain Herron recalls. He said Herrick, Palmer, and Stokes were dead. To give him more artillery and he would direct it in as close as possible. We could never establish the platoon's exact position, but Lieutenant Riddle could adjust fire on Savage's sensing, and he began to do that.

• 1:00:53Jocko Willink?

  The extraordinary unyielding resistance that the dozen or so effective fighters were putting up, plus the artillery barrages that Ernie Savage was bringing down, finally beat off the heavy enemy attack. Ernie Savage and his small band hunkered down, determined to hold their ground to the end. Yeah, and these guys are calling in to danger close. Have we ever talked about danger close? No, not. Okay, danger close is when you're calling in fire support and you want it to be very close to where you are and you on the ground have to take responsibility for it. So in other words, the person, whether it's artillery, whether it's aircraft, you have to call in, say, danger close, yes, send the rounds, we know it's close.

• 1:01:38Jocko Willink?

  It's, we take responsibility for what happens.

• 1:01:44Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, going back to the book, as this fifth lift of the day roared out at treetop level, the landing zone was suddenly turned red hot. So they haven't even landed everyone yet. So this is going on, they haven't even gotten everyone on the landing zone yet.

• 1:01:58Jocko Willink?

  And here's Crandall talking, and again, he's the pilot, unbelievably heroic pilot and commanding officer of this helicopter unit. Says Crandall, as I was flaring out to touchdown, we started receiving heavy, heavy ground fire. I had three dead and three wounded on my bird. The wounded included my crew chief, who had been hit in the throat. When we landed, we saw that every bullet had struck the wounded in the head or neck. Excellent marksmanship by the other side, and not a happy thought for a helicopter pilot, to say the least.

• 1:02:33Jocko Willink?

  So the enemy's taking headshots.

• 1:02:36Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, with Crandall, flying serpent yellow three were chief warrant officers, Ricardo J. Lombardo, 34, of Hartford, Connecticut, and Alex S. Popjekel, 43, of Seattle, Washington. Popjekel was a father of nine children. During World War II, at the age of 20, he had flown B-24s out of England and B-29s during the post-war years until he left the service in 1950. Popjekel re-enlisted in 1952 and had been flying helicopters since 1963. Popjekel keyed the intercom and said, I flew 31 missions in B-24s in World War II, and that's the closest I've ever come to swallowing my balls.

• 1:03:19Jocko Willink?

  So these, these landing zones were crazy with these helicopter pilots flying in there. It's a, it's your, your, you're getting there as fast as you can, but there's not much you can do. You know, you bring it in as fast as you can. You try and get loaded up quick and you try and take off, but it's not like you're able to shoot back. Even once you're on the ground, your machine gunners in the Hueys, they can't shoot anymore because you don't know where the friendly troops are. So you're a sitting duck, literally a sitting duck. And these pilots going in time and time and time again. This goes to the Delta Company Commander, La Febrera. And here's what's going on. La Febrera, seriously wounded, was phasing, was fading fast. I had lost a lot of blood. I could see people shooting, but I couldn't hear any sounds anymore.

• 1:04:05Jocko Willink?

  I told John Heron, somebody had to take over. I called again Colonel Moore and told him that I was going to turn over the company to Sergeant Gonzalez.

• 1:04:14Jocko Willink?

  Then the medic arrived to bandage my wound. Shortly after, I remember someone putting me in a poncho and hauling me over to the area of the battalion command post. When I saw Lieutenant Taboda again, later, we never did talk much about it. It was just too damn close to the real thing.

• 1:04:31Jocko Willink?

  Ray La Febrera and his handful of Delta Company troopers had unknowingly joined the Alpha Company fight at a crucial moment. About thirty North Vietnamese were flanking Nadal's men on their left and Captain La Febrera, La Febrera's party ran smack into them and killed most of them. Nadal's men dispatched the rest. Unknown to La Febrera, Sergeant Gonzalez had been hit in the face by an enemy bullet. Gonzalez simply said, Roger, when La Febrera told him he was now in command. And for the next hour and a half, he ran Delta Company.

• 1:05:06Jocko Willink?

  Sergeant Gonzalez, shot in the face, no factor. I'm still going to take leadership right now.

• 1:05:18Jocko Willink?

  Going back to the book, it was during all this horror that Beck remembers fear coming over him. And here's Beck talking, "While Doc Knoll was here with me working on Russell, fear, real fear hit me. Fear like I had never known before. Fear comes and once you recognize it and accept it, it passes just as fast as it comes and you really don't have to think about it anymore. You just do what you have to do, but you learn the real meaning of fear and life and death. For the next two hours, I was alone on that gun, shooting the enemy. Enemy were shooting at me and bullets were hitting the ground beside me and cracking above my head. They were attacking me and I fired as fast as I could in long bursts. My M60 was cooking.

• 1:05:59Jocko Willink?

  I had to take a crap and a leak bad, so I pulled my pants down while laying on my side and did it on my side, taking fire at the time."

• 1:06:08Jocko Willink?

  Now, we're going back to Hal Moore talking here.

• 1:06:12Jocko Willink?

  "From my command post at the Termite Hill, the enemy were clearly visible 100 yards to the south. They were damned good soldiers, used cover and concealment to perfection and were deadly shots. Most of my dead and wounded soldiers had been shot in the head or upper body. The North Vietnamese paid particular attention to radio operators and leaders. They did not appear to have radios themselves. They controlled their men by shouts, waves, pointing, whistles, and sometimes bugle calls. It was 2:45 PM. All three of my rifle companies were heavily engaged. We had lost the use of the larger clearing for the helicopter landings. Wounded were streaming into the command post aid station. We were in a desperate fix and I was worried that it could become even more desperate.

• 1:06:57Jocko Willink?

  By now, I believed we were fighting at least two People's Army's battalions. Turns out, it was three. They were very determined to wipe us out, but a major difference between Lieutenant Colonel Nguyen Hu An of the People's Army of Vietnam and Lieutenant Colonel Hal Moore of the 1st Cavalry Division was that I had major fire support and he didn't. Air Force Captain Bruce Wallace and his fellow A1E Skyraider pilots, as well as the jet fighter bombers from all three services helped provide that edge, flying 50 sorties in close air support that Sunday afternoon." Says Wallace, "The importance of airplanes in a vulgar brawl is to be down among the palm trees with the troops putting ordinance on the ground

• 1:07:39Jocko Willink?

  at the exact time and in the precise place that the ground command needs it."

• 1:07:46Jocko Willink?

  And then, so they're in these old school, uh, Sky Raiders, but then Captain Wallace is talking about what it was like watching the helicopters back to the book with it. It was different with a Huey. To watch four or eight of them at a time maneuvering up and down and laterally and even backwards boggles the fighter pilot's mind. Those guys swarm a target like bees over honey. I had to hand it to those Huey guys. They really got down there in the trees with the troops.

• 1:08:17Jocko Willink?

  Then this is Hal Moore talking again. The field artillery, what we called tube artillery to distinguish how it's our folks from the helicopter rocket folks proudly calls itself the king of battle. The brave cannon cockers and LZ Falcon went without sleep for three days and three nights to help keep us surrounded by a wall of steel. Those two batteries, 12 guns fired more than 4,000 rounds of high explosive shells on the first day alone.

• 1:08:45Jocko Willink?

  Says Barker. On the first afternoon, both batteries fired for effect directly on target for five straight hours. One of Bruce Crandall's Huey slick pilots, Captain Paul Winkle touched down at Falcon briefly that first afternoon and was astounded by what he saw. There were stacks of shell casings at least 10 feet high and exhausted gun crews. They had fired for effect for three straight hours by then without even pausing to level the bubbles. One tube was burned out, two had busted hydraulics. That's some shooting.

• 1:09:19Jocko Willink?

  No matter how bad things got for Americans fighting for their lives on the X-ray perimeter, we could look out into the scrub brush in every direction into that seething inferno of exploding artillery shells, 2.75 inch rockets, napalm canisters, 250 and 500 pound bombs and 20 millimeter cannon fire and thank God and our lucky stars that we didn't have to walk through that to get to work.

• 1:09:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so like I said, the, the close air support is absolute, or the close air support, the artillery is absolutely what, and that's, that's been happened many, on many occasions for, for American soldiers, sailors, Marines, overseas, fighting, you know, the Air Force, the Navy pilots, the Marine Corps pilots coming in, and actually the guy on the ground controlling these guys is a Air Force pilot as well. So having that air superiority is a wonderful thing. Now, speaking of the aviators, going back to the helicopters, chapter nine in this book is called Brave Aviators, and it, again, these sitting ducks coming in is crazy to read

• 1:10:31Jocko Willink?

  about. Going back to the book, "Over the 20 months of air mobile training, a bond had been welded between the infantry and their rides, the Huey helicopter pilots and crewmen. Now the strength of that bond would be tested in the hottest of fires. If the air bridge failed," so the, the, meaning the helicopter's ability to get in there, "if the air bridge failed, the embattled men of 1st Battalion 7th Cav would certainly die in much the same way George Armstrong Custer's cavalrymen died at Little Big Horn. Cut off, surrounded by numerically superior forces, overrun, and butchered to the last man. I asked Bruce Crandall's brave air crews of Alpha Company, the 229th Aviation Battalion, for the last

• 1:11:15Jocko Willink?

  measure of devotion for service far beyond the limits of duty and mission, and they came through as I knew they would." And so, so, again, you're basically asking these guys to get shot down every time they fly in, and this is interesting. Back to the book, "This was early in the war, and the medevac commanders had decreed that their birds would not land in hot landing zones. In other words, that they would not go where they would needed, when, when they were needed the most. Even before I asked, Bruce Crandall had already decided to begin doing everything that had to be done."

• 1:11:54Jocko Willink?

  Staying with it, Crandall now dropped his Huey loaded with casualties on the red dirt strip. When we, and this is, this is Crandall talking. When we hit the ground, we were met by medics and infantry troops still waiting to be lifted into x-ray. So that's another crazy thing to think about. You're, you're unloading wounded men and you're, and you're getting on that aircraft that's going to go pick up more wounded men, but you're going to stay. So the troops that aren't on the ground yet, think about what's going through their minds. They, they removed the dead and you want to know what's going through their minds? I actually, I actually know what's going through their mind. They're going, most of those guys are saying, get me in there as fast as you can. That's what they're saying. These are their brothers out there.

• 1:12:37Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. They removed the dead and wounded from my bird and this act is engraved in my mind deeper than any other experience in my two tours in Vietnam. A huge black enlisted man clad only in shorts and boots, hands bigger than dinner plates, reached into my helicopter to pick up one of the dead white soldiers. He had tears streaming down his face and he tenderly cradled, cradled that dead soldier to his chest as he walked slowly from the aircraft to the medical station. I never knew if the man he picked up was his buddy or not. I suspect not. His grief was for a fallen comrade and for the agony that violent death brings to those who witness it.

• 1:13:22Jocko Willink?

  More about the helicopters. Back to the book. One of the ships brought in Larry Litten, who immediately took over command of Delta Company from the wounded Sergeant Gonzalez. I told him to add the four Delta mortars to consolidate mortar position set up by Captain Edwards and to control all seven mortars from a single fire direction center. Principal direction of the fire was towards Alpha and Bravo companies and the mortar men would also have the mission of defending our two chopper landing zones from the east. And the reason I highlighted that is even though I talk about decentralized command all the time and Hal Moore starts off the book talking about how important decentralized command is. He's right now, in that, in that moment, he's centralizing command.

• 1:14:04Jocko Willink?

  He needs to get control of all the mortars so that they can use it correctly. So again, that's why it's the dichotomy of leadership. Because you can, there's times when you, most of the time you decentralize, but you can actually decentralize too much. And if you don't coordinate the efforts of these mortars, you're not going to use them effectively. So he centralizes the command of the mortars, brings them all into one location and starts using them effectively. So that's a good note for leaders to remember.

• 1:14:32Jocko Willink?

  Now here's another platoon commander, Joe Marm. Joe Marm describes the situation in his platoon. "My platoon medic was a short timer and did not accompany us to Chupong."

• 1:14:44Jocko Willink?

  Sergeant First Class George McCully, the platoon sergeant, carried the aid kit and we planned to use Staff Sergeant Thomas Tolliver as our medic when the need arose. He had been a combat medic during the Korean War and was well qualified. Still, we did not have enough medics to go around, so we sent down Specialist Booknight and Specialist Charles Lowe, who's a senior medical aid man, as platoon medics to Bravo Company. Now Calvin Booknight, still alive but mortally wounded, was laid gently on the ground in his blood-filled rubber poncho before the medical platoon sergeant, Sergeant First Class Keaton, his friend and comrade for the last two years. And here's what Keaton says.

• 1:15:28Jocko Willink?

  "Booknight wasn't dead. He was shot right between the soldiers, right directly between the shoulders. He reached up and took my hand and said, 'Sarge, I didn't make it.'" "We got an IV started on him and put a pressure bandage over his back wound. There was just no hope. We were able to get him on an evac ship, but he died." The scriptures say that there is no greater love than to lay down your life for your friends. This is what Calvin Booknight did in that fire-filled jungle. He sheltered the wounded he was treating with his own body, his back to the enemy guns, completely vulnerable.

• 1:16:22Jocko Willink?

  And here's how more. It was now 3:45 PM.

• 1:16:27Jocko Willink?

  And except for the predicament of Sergeant Savage and the cutoff platoon, I was feeling a good deal better about the situation. We had all of our men in. Massive firepower had been deployed. A company of reinforcements was on the way. Our two chopper lifeline landing zone was secure. Most of our wounded were either evacuated or awaiting evacuation and we were holding tough.

• 1:16:48Jocko Willink?

  I was determined to make one more attempt to rescue Sergeant Savage and all his wounded and dead on the slope. I ordered Alpha and Bravo companies to evacuate their casualties, withdraw out of close contact with the enemy under covering fires and prepare to launch a coordinated attack supported by heavy preparatory artillery fire to reach the cutoff platoon. I was tortured by the fate of those men and the need to rescue them. And chapter 10 is called Fix Bayonets, which can give you an indication.

• 1:17:21Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book, Alpha and Bravo companies, the first units to land, had now been locked in violent battle for more than two hours, had suffered no small number of casualties, especially among the sergeants and radio operators, and had shot up most of their ammunition. And that's another thing we gotta remember. The movies, they never run out of ammunition, right? Unless it makes some theatrical point.

• 1:17:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, plot point.

• 1:17:42Jocko Willink?

  Right. They also, in the movies, there's plenty of water. Oh, they're in the jungle, they got plenty of water. These guys don't have water out here.

• 1:17:51Jocko Willink?

  No water, no food, and now they're running out of ammunition. The two commanders, Tony Nadal and John Heron, needed time to evacuate their dead and wounded, to reorganize and regroup their diminished platoons, and designate new leaders, and to replenish stocks of ammunition of ammunition and grenades. They would have 40 minutes to accomplish this, then heavy artillery fire would lane down ahead of them as they kicked off one more attempt to break through the ring of enemy troops and rescue the survivors of Lieutenant Henry Herrick's second platoon. Meanwhile, help was on the way. Back at 3rd Brigade Headquarters in the T Plantation, the orders were going out. Our sister battalion, the 2nd Battalion 7th Cav, was informed that one of its companies,

• 1:18:32Jocko Willink?

  Bravo, was being detached and sent to Landing Zone X-Ray to reinforce. On arrival in X-Ray, Bravo Company 2nd Battalion would come under my operational control for the duration of the fight. So, there's two battalions. Each battalion has a number of companies in them and they're going to take one of the companies from the other battalion and let them come in as reinforcements. Captain Myron DeDurek, Bravo Company troops, won the toss hand down. So, there was a bunch of different companies there and they were all doing various things,

• 1:19:12Jocko Willink?

  but Myron DeDurek's company was actually, I think they were standing guard or they were closest by, and so they were the ones that were going. And it's probably a good thing because this guy, Captain DeDurek, is a complete badass, as we'll see. Bravo Company 2nd Battalion had good, solid, professional non-coms and its troops had served together for a long time. It was a good rifle company and I was happy to get it. Captain DeDurek was 27 years old, a native-born Ukrainian who had come to the United States with his family in 1950. He was an ROTC graduate from St. Peter's College in Jersey City, New Jersey, and was commissioned in July of 1960. He'd completed paratrooper and ranger training and had served tours in Germany and at Fort

• 1:19:57Jocko Willink?

  Benning. DeDurek was married and the father of two children. While our reinforcements were saddling up, my Alpha and Bravo companies were about to launch their second attempt to break through Lieutenant Herrick's trap platoon. John Herron and Tony Nadal had pulled their men back to the Dry Creek Bed during the lull so they would begin the attack from there. Platoon Sergeant Troy Miller remembers the scene. Our morale was very high after the first contact. Before we went after the cutoff platoon, Captain Nadal got us together and said, "Men, we've got an American platoon cutoff out there and we're going after them." The replies were, "Yeah, and let's go get them." And Gary Owen, and Gary Owen is the- It's like the war cry of the cavalry.

• 1:20:42Jocko Willink?

  So, and there's a, comes from an old song and it's, it's just a historical thing and that's why you read the book. You can find out about Gary Owen.

• 1:20:52Jocko Willink?

  It's their marching song.

• 1:20:55Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Captain Tony Nadal, Alpha Company, was the first man out of the creek bed, leading first platoon in the assault. He recalls, "We moved about 50 yards when we ran into the enemy force which had come down the mountain. I presumed they were preparing to launch their attack about the time we launched ours. The fighting quickly became very vicious at close range. We took many casualties. Lieutenant Wayne Johnson, the first platoon leader, was hit. At least three other squad leaders were also hit, two of them killed. One while going forward in an attempt to rescue one of his soldiers against direct orders."

• 1:21:37Jocko Willink?

  Against direct orders. I'm going out to get my buddy.

• 1:21:46Jocko Willink?

  Tony Nadal had ordered his men to fix bayonets for the attack. Bill Beck, firing a burst from his M60 machine gun to his right front, was transfixed by what he saw just forward. A tall, thin sergeant bayoneting a North Vietnamese in the chest. It was just like practiced against the straw dummies. Forward, thrust, pull out, move on. One, two, three. Captain Tony Nadal had four men in his command group as he charged into the brush. Two radio operators, Sergeant Jack Gell and a 25-year-old native New Yorker, and Specialist Spec 4 John Clark of Michigan, plus the company's artillery forward observer Lieutenant Timothy

• 1:22:26Jocko Willink?

  M. Blake, 24, from Charleston, West Virginia, and Blake's recon sergeant, Sergeant Floyd L. Reed, Jr., 27 years old, of Hef, Arkansas.

• 1:22:38Jocko Willink?

  As they moved up, Nadal had the radio handset to his ear. A burst of enemy machine gun fire swept across the group. Sergeant Gell was hit and dropped without a sound. Nadal...

• 1:22:50Jocko Willink?

  Kept moving until the long black cord pulled back on him. He was looking around to see what was wrong. The same burst that killed Sergeant Gell had also killed Lieutenant Blake and struck Sergeant Reed, who died shortly thereafter.

• 1:23:06Jocko Willink?

  Sergeant Sam Holman, a native of Pennsylvania, knelt beside his mortally wounded buddy, Jack Gell, and heard him gasp, "Tell my wife I love her."

• 1:23:26Jocko Willink?

  Tony Nadal had no time to mourn Jack Gell, a man he greatly respected. Too many other lives were in his hands.

• 1:23:36Jocko Willink?

  On the right flank

• 1:23:39Jocko Willink?

  of the Bravo line, Lieutenant Deal was now rolling around on the ground desperately trying to dodge a valley of machine gun slugs cutting through the grass all around him. Suddenly, 25 yards away, Deal saw an American get up and charge forward while everyone around him was flat on his belly. Says Deal, "I saw him throw a grenade behind an anthill and empty his weapon into it. Then he fell to his knees. I said to myself, 'Please get up. Don't be hurt.' I didn't know who it was. I couldn't make out the form. There was so much battlefield haze, dust, and smoke."

• 1:24:11Jocko Willink?

  It was Lieutenant Joe Marm. He had spotted an enemy machine gun dug into a big termite hill. It was chewing up both Bravo Company platoons. After failing to knock it out with a law rocket and a grenade and a thrown grenade, he decided to deal with it directly. He charged through the fire, tossed a hand grenade behind the hill, and then cleaned up the survivors with his M16 rifle.

• 1:24:35Jocko Willink?

  The following day, Lieutenant Al Davini found a dead North Vietnamese officer and 11 enemy soldiers sprawled behind that termite mound.

• 1:24:45Jocko Willink?

  Says Deal, Joe Marm saved my life and the lives of many others.

• 1:24:51Jocko Willink?

  Lieutenant Marm staggered back to his position with a bullet wound to his jaw and neck. He joined a growing stream of walking wounded flowing back toward the battalion aid station. Sergeant Keaton treated Marm's wound and one of Bruce Crandell's Hueys evacuated him to the rear. Within days Lieutenant Joe Marm was recuperating at Valley Forge Army Hospital near his home in Pennsylvania. In December of 1966, Joe Marm reported to the Pentagon where the Secretary of the Army, acting on behalf of President Lyndon Johnson, presented him with the Medal of Honor. The nation's highest award for valor.

• 1:25:41Jocko Willink?

  Joe Marm's heroic action unfortunately failed to open the door to the cutoff platoon. Bravo Company had progressed only about 75 yards, Alpha Company a bit further. All three of Nadal's platoon leaders were now either dead or wounded, as were many of his non-coms. Worse yet, Alpha Company's first platoon had gotten out ahead of the two other and was heavily engaged with perhaps 100 enemy. Some of the north, some of the Alpha Troopers bypassed the enemy in dense brush and those North Vietnamese had opened up on them.

• 1:26:17Jocko Willink?

  Not only were we unable to punch through to rescue Herrick's platoon, we were now in danger of having another platoon cut off. And again, I apologize, it's one of the things I should have talked about was the way this terrain is set up. It's, there's a lot of grass, like I would say waist-high grass, maybe a little bit taller than waist-high. And if you take cover, you can't see anything.

• 1:26:41Jocko Willink?

  Because you're in grass. If you stand up, you get shot. So it's, it's a terrible catch-22. Do you stand up so you can see what's happening and see where people are going and see where the enemy's maneuvering? And you might get shot, or do you lay down where you take cover and you have a better chance of not getting shot, but you can't see anything?

• 1:26:58Jocko Willink?

  Captain De Duric ran up to me and shouted, Gary Owen, sir. Now, this is, this is awesome. So Captain De Duric is the guy that's coming in to, he's from 27. He's coming in as reinforcements. And like I said, Gary Owen is like their war cry. So here we go. Captain De Duric ran up to me and shouted, so this is Hal Moore talking. He's on this embroiled war zone, been taking so many casualties. And here's what Hal Moore says. Captain De Duric ran up to me and shouted, Gary Owen, sir. Captain De Duric and Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 7th Cavalry, 120 men strong, reporting for duty.

• 1:27:33Jocko Willink?

  His eyes sparkled with excitement and the challenge of the situation. I told De Duric to assemble his men in a clump of trees 30 yards northwest of the command post to act as a battalion reserve for the time being. It's awesome. Come in, report to Gary Owen, Gary Owen, sir.

• 1:27:52Jocko Willink?

  Captain De Doll says, the fight continued for another 20 or 30 minutes with neither side making headway. It was getting dark and casualties mounted and I decided we were not going to be able to break through. I called Colonel Moore and asked for permission to pull back. And here's what Colonel Moore says, with night approaching, there was no real choice. I did not want to get into the hours of darkness with my battalion fragmented, with the companies incapable of mutual support and subject to defeat in detail.

• 1:28:21Jocko Willink?

  Word came over the radio and this, and so now this is a specialist, Galen Bungam, who's out there with the lost platoon. Back to the book, word came over the radio that we would have to hang on till morning. I could not believe what I heard. I thought there was no way we would be able to do that. Others thought the same thing. Clark kept asking me, do you think we'll make it? I didn't know, but I said, we have to pray and pray hard. It was a big question mark in all of our minds. We had to keep our cool and bear down. And now we hear from Hal Moore again. I now considered the toll this day's fighting had taken.

• 1:29:02Jocko Willink?

  Tonya De Doll's Alpha Company had lost three officers and 31 enlisted men killed or wounded.

• 1:29:10Jocko Willink?

  And now reported effective strength of two officers and eighty-four enlisted. John Heron's Bravo Company had lost one officer and forty-six enlisted men killed or wounded. It was down to four officers and sixty-eight enlisted men with one platoon, Hericks, trapped outside the perimeter.

• 1:29:30Jocko Willink?

  For almost eight hours, I had been involved in the minute-to-minute direction of the battle. Now I wanted to personally walk the perimeter and check the preparations for what promised to be a tough night and another tough day tomorrow. Just before dark, Sergeant Major Plumlee and I broke away from the command post and set out to check the perimeter, talking with the troopers and getting for a feel for the situation on the ground. What concerned me the most was the morale of the men, how well the companies were tied in, their defensive fire plans, and the situation with ammunition and water supplies.

• 1:30:06Jocko Willink?

  Morale among the men was high, although there was understandable grief over the friends we had lost.

• 1:30:13Jocko Willink?

  The men and I talked.

• 1:30:16Jocko Willink?

  The men I talked with realized that we were facing a fierce, determined enemy, but he failed to break through our lines. They knew the fight wasn't over. I heard weary soldiers saying things like, "We'll get him, sir, and they won't get through us, sir."

• 1:30:31Jocko Willink?

  Their fighting spirit had not dimmed, and they made me proud and humble.

• 1:30:38Jocko Willink?

  In every one of my companies that had landed in this place this morning, there were fifteen to twenty soldiers who had less than two weeks left to go in the Army. Some of those men now lay dead, wrapped in ponchos near my command post. The rest of them were out on that perimeter, standing shoulder to shoulder with their buddies, ready to continue the fight.

• 1:31:10Jocko Willink?

  Thirty-seven miles to the northeast. Bruce Crandall and Big Ed Freeman finally shut down their Hueys at a large, at a huge helicopter pad nicknamed "The Turkey Farm" outside the wire at Camp Holloway. They had been flying non-stop since 6:00 a.m. It was after 10:00 p.m. when Crandall shut down and tried to get out of the aircraft.

• 1:31:33Jocko Willink?

  That is when the day's activities caught up with me. My legs gave out as I stepped on the skid and I fell to the ground. For the next few minutes, I vomited. I was very embarrassed and it took some time to regain my composure. Someone slipped me a bottle of cognac into my hand and I took a big slug. It was a waste of good booze. It came up as fast as it went down.

• 1:31:58Jocko Willink?

  I finally quit shaking and made it to the operations tent to recap the day and plan the next. The aviation unit had quite a day. We had not suffered a single fatality and we had not left a mission undone.

• 1:32:13Jocko Willink?

  When our infantry brothers called, we hauled. The standard for combat assaults with helicopters had been set on this day.

• 1:32:23Jocko Willink?

  I wondered about tomorrow. Would it be worse? I wasn't sure I could handle another day like today.

• 1:32:31Jocko Willink?

  Then again,

• 1:32:33Jocko Willink?

  I thought about the troops in X-Ray. And the choice was not mine to make.

• 1:32:49Jocko Willink?

  And here's how more talking about the wounded, back to the book, all of the wounded, all of our wounded flown out of X-Ray by Crandall's Hueys ended up at Charlie Company, 15th Medical Battalion, 1st Cavalry Division, which was temporarily set up in tents at Camp Holloway. The executive officer of Charlie Med was Captain George H. Kelling, 28, from St. Louis, Missouri. Charlie Med's five surgeons tried to stabilize the soldiers coming off the helicopters. The treatment we provided, says Kelling, was designed to keep the blood flowing through the patient's system until he could be gotten to a hospital, which had the personnel and equipment to perform definitive surgery.

• 1:33:29Jocko Willink?

  Charlie Meds doctors tied off perforated blood vessels to stop the hemorrhaging and then pumped in whole blood. Kelling recalls that many of the casualties were rapidly bleeding to death, so it was a race against time to get blood into the soldier faster than he was losing it, even while the surgeons were trying to tie off bleeders. "We threw caution to the wind and gave a patient four cut downs," which is an intravenous tube tied into blood vessels, "with four cormans squeezing the blood bags as hard as they could. It was not unusual for the patient to shiver and quake and lose body temperature from the rapid transfusion of so much cold blood. But the alternative was to let him die."

• 1:34:14Jocko Willink?

  So they're giving blood directly into the veins, and they've got cormans standing there, squeezing the bags of blood to try and keep people alive. Back on LZ, here's Sergeant John Stedlin talking. "They probed us all night long, we had a few men wounded. I'd never been in a situation like that. When they would come at us, they would come screaming and we could hear bugles." As darkness fell, Savage was on the radio with Lieutenant Bill Riddle, Heron's artillery

• 1:34:57Jocko Willink?

  forward observer, walking the high explosive barrages all around the cutoff platoon. "All of us were lifted off the ground by the impact and covered with dirt and branches," Bungam recalls. "Savage told them on the radio, 'That was right where we want them.' We hollered that it was too close, but I looked back where those first rounds hit and saw three men running towards us. We opened up. They must have been crawling up on our position when that artillery came in. They would sneak in as close as 10 yards or less, and many times just stand up to laugh at us. We would mow them down. It begins to work on your mind, what are they laughing at? I couldn't believe it."

• 1:35:43Jocko Willink?

  The North Vietnamese launched three separate attacks to keep the pressure on the trapped second platoon during that long night, each time sending about 50 men against the Americans and each time being beaten back by artillery and rifle fire. Savage had seven men unhurt and 13 wounded. Nine others were dead. Some of the lost platoons wounded continued to fight, including Sergeant Reuben Thompson, who had been shot through the chest. The platoon later heard still another large enemy force moving down the northern trail toward X-Ray and again brought artillery fire down on them. This was followed by a flurry of hand grenades back and forth at about 4:30 a.m.

• 1:36:25Jocko Willink?

  Within an hour, the first light in the eastern sky revealed dozens of khaki clad enemy dead scattered all around the Little Knoll. The trapped platoon had survived the longest night any of them would ever know. They checked their ammunition and prepared to receive a dawn attack. And here's one of the platoon sergeants talking. Platoon Sergeant Robert Gemmison. Gemmison. At first light, we sent out a patrol. Staff Sergeant Sidney Cohen, Spec 4 Arthur L. Bronson, and three other men were picked to go, says Gemmison. They saved us from being surprised. They spotted the enemy on their way back into an attack position.

• 1:37:10Jocko Willink?

  They came running back with Bronson screaming, "They're coming, Sarge, a lot of them, get ready." I told the machine gunners to hold their fire until they were close. PFC Willie F. Godbolt, 24 of Jacksonville, Florida, was hit while firing from his position 20 yards to Sergeant Gemmison's right. Gemmison remembers Godbolt was hollering, "Somebody help me." I yelled, "I'll go get him." Lieutenant Joe Jagan yelled back, "No, I will." Joe Jagan moved out of his position in the foxhole to help Godbolt and was shot. This was 10 minutes or so from the time the firing first broke out.

• 1:37:50Jocko Willink?

  Struck in the back of the head, Lieutenant John Lance "Jack" Joe Jagan was killed instantly. The man he was trying to save, PFC Godbolt, died of his wounds shortly afterward.

• 1:38:06Jocko Willink?

  The enemy was now closed to within seventy-five yards of Edward's line. They were firing furiously, some crouched low and at times crawling on their hands and knees. Others, no taller than the elephant grass they were passing through, came on standing up and shooting. They advanced screaming at each other and Edward's men. Leaders were blowing whistles and using hand and arm signals. A few were even carrying eighty-two millimeter mortar tubes and base plates. This was clearly a no-hit-run affair. They'd come to stay.

• 1:38:43Jocko Willink?

  And here's Joe Stetland talking. Or Sergeant John, sorry, John Stetland, here's John Stetland talking. "It seemed like half a battalion hit us all at once. He hit us headlong and he hit us strong. I thought we were going to be overrun. When Charlie hit us, he had this strange grazing fire. He shot right at ground level trying to cut off your legs, or if you weren't deep enough in your foxhole, he shot your head off. When he started firing at us, it came like torrents of rain. You just couldn't get your head long up long enough to shoot back. You just stuck up your weapon, pulled the trigger, and emptied the magazine."

• 1:39:24Jocko Willink?

  Lieutenant Charlie Hastings, our forward air controller, had already swung into action. Sensing disaster, Hastings made an immediate instinctive decision. "I used the code word 'broken arrow', which meant the American unit in contact was in danger of being overrun, and we received all available aircraft in South Vietnam for close air support. We had aircraft stacked at a thousand-foot intervals from seven thousand feet to thirty-five thousand feet, each waiting to receive a target and deliver their ordnance."

• 1:39:57Jocko Willink?

  And here's hell more. "By now I was convinced that the enemy was making a primary effort to overrun us from the south and southeast, and I alerted the reserve platoon for probable commitment into Charlie or Delta Company sectors. The noise of the battle was unbelievable. Never before or since in two wars have I heard anything equal to it."

• 1:40:21Jocko Willink?

  And here's Specialist Arthur Viera. The gunfire was very loud. We were getting overrun on the right side. Lieutenant Kroger came out into the open in all this. I thought that was pretty good. He yelled at me. I got up to hear him. He hollered at me to help cover the left sector. I ran over to him and by the time I got there, he was dead. He had lasted a half an hour. I knelt beside him, took off his dog tags and put them in my shirt pocket. I went back to firing my M79 and got shot right in the elbow. My M79 went flying and I was knocked over and fell backward over the lieutenant.

• 1:40:59Jocko Willink?

  Viera now grabbed his 45 pistol and began firing it left-handed.

• 1:41:04Jocko Willink?

  And he says, "Then I got hit in the neck and the bullet went right through. I couldn't talk or make a sound. I got up and tried to take charge and we shot with a third round. That one blew up my right leg and put me down. It went in my leg, above the ankle, traveled up, came back out, then went into my groin and ended up in my back, close to my spine. Just then two stick grenades blew up right over me and tore up both of my legs. I reached down with my left hand and touched grenade fragments on my left leg and it felt like I had touched a red hot poker.

• 1:41:41Jocko Willink?

  My hands just sizzled."

• 1:41:49Jocko Willink?

  Unbelievable attack. And I think that description right there really spells out how intense this was. And obviously when you got Colonel Moore saying that this is the loudest thing he's ever heard in two wars.

• 1:42:05Jocko Willink?

  That also confirms what we're dealing with here. Back to the book. At 7:45 a.m., the enemy struck at the left flank of Tony Nadal's Alpha Company at the critical elbow where Alpha and Charlie Companies were tied in. We were now under attack from three directions. Grazing fire from rifles and machine guns shredded the elephant grass and swept over the battalion command post and aid station. Leaves, bark and small branches fluttered down on us. Several troopers were wounded in the same command post and at least one was killed.

• 1:42:39Jocko Willink?

  My radio operator, Spec 4, Robert Piolet.

• 1:42:44Jocko Willink?

  23 years old, had a bespectacled six footer from Madawaska, Maine, was hit and slumped over in a sprawl, unmoving and seemingly dead. I kept the handset to my ear.

• 1:42:58Jocko Willink?

  And here's Joe Galloway, the reporter. "The incoming fire was only a couple of feet off the ground and I was down as flat as I could get when I felt the toe of a combat boot in my ribs. I turned my head sideways and looked up. There, standing tall, was Sergeant Major Basil Plumlee." Plumlee leaned down and shouted over the noise of the guns, "You can't take no pictures laying down there on the ground, sonny." He was calm, fearless, and grinning. I thought, "He's right. We're all going to die anyways, so I might as well take mine, standing up." I got up and began taking a few photographs. Plumlee moved over to the aid station, pulled out his .45, chambered around, and informed Dr. Carrera and his medics, "Gentlemen, prepare to defend yourselves."

• 1:43:46Jocko Willink?

  So Plumlee thought, "They're getting overrun too, or at least gonna get close. You're in the aid station, that's in the center of this whole perimeter." And he's pulling out his .45 and saying, "Prepare to defend yourselves." You can't make that up.

• 1:44:03Jocko Willink?

  Specialist Willard F. Parrish, 24 years old and a native of Bristow, Oklahoma, was an assistant squad leader of one of Charlie Company's 81mm mortar squads. Parrish was one of the mortar men who had been outfitted with the spare machine guns and rifles, collected from our casualties and put on the Delta Company perimeter.

• 1:44:23Jocko Willink?

  Parrish recalls, "When we were hit, I remember all the tracer rounds and I wondered how even an ant could get through that."

• 1:44:30Jocko Willink?

  Back to our right, we started hearing the guys hollering, "They're coming around, they're coming around." I was in a foxhole with a guy from Chicago, PFC James E. Coleman, and he had an M16, I had my .45 and his .45 and I had an M60 machine gun. We were set up facing out into the tall grass. I was looking out front and I could see some of the grass going down, like someone was crawling in it. I hollered, "Who's out there?" Nobody answered and I hollered again. No answer. I turned to, I turned to Coleman, "Burn his ass." Coleman said, "My rifle's jammed." I looked at him and him at me. Then I looked to the front and they were growing out of the weeds. I just remember getting that machine gun from there on out.

• 1:45:12Jocko Willink?

  And the training takes over and you put your mind somewhere else because I really don't remember what specifically I did. I was totally unaware of the time, the conditions. On that M60 machine gun, according to the extracts from his Silver Star citation, Specialist Parrish, Parrish delivered lethal fire on wave after wave of the enemy until he ran out of ammunition. Then, standing up under fire with a 45 pistol in each hand, Parrish fired clip after clip into the enemy who were 20 yards out and he stopped their attack. Says Parrish, "I feel like I didn't do any more than anybody else did up there." I remember a lot of noise, a lot of yelling, and then all at once it was quiet.

• 1:45:59Jocko Willink?

  The silence out in front of Willard Parrish was that of the cemetery. More than a hundred dead North Vietnamese were later found where they had fallen in a semicircle around his foxhole.

• 1:46:15Jocko Willink?

  Forty-five in each hand.

• 1:46:20Jocko Willink?

  That's, that's crazy, actually. I mean, you, yeah, he's, he's going to a whole nother level.

• 1:46:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:46:31Jocko Willink?

  Because you can't reload, you know, you can't reload your pistol. So maybe he, maybe he would stand up, fire both, just dump a mag in each round, in each pistol, get back down, reload them both.

• 1:46:43Jocko Willink?

  But then he got up, well, that's after he used all of his 60 ammo.

• 1:46:48Jocko Willink?

  George Fox, 25, and Nathaniel Byrd, 22, were slumped across their silent M60 machine gun, surrounded by heaps of empty shell casings and empty ammunition cans. They had died together, shoulder to so, shoulder. Sergeant Jemison pays them the ultimate compliment of a professional soldier. Byrd and Fox did a great job. They kept firing that gun and didn't leave it.

• 1:47:15Jocko Willink?

  They stayed on it to the end.

• 1:47:25Jocko Willink?

  So, all this close air support's coming in this whole time, artillery's coming in the whole time, and all of a sudden, they get a situation where they start, they see aircraft coming overhead with jets coming overhead, low pass, and they're, they're heading towards them, and they drop some napalm.

• 1:47:45Jocko Willink?

  So, here's how more, I yelled to the top of my lungs to Charlie Hastings, the Air Force FAC, "Call that son of a bitch off, call him off." Joe Galloway heard Hastings screaming in the radio, "Pull up, pull up." Matt Dillon says, "I can still see the canisters tumbling toward us." I remember thinking, "Turn your eyes away, so you won't be blinded." I put my face into a reporter's shoulder to hide my eyes. It was Joe Galloway's. I could hear good time Charlie Hastings shouting into his radio, "Pull up." The second jet did. The napalm from the first hit some people and caught some ammo on fire. Sergeant Major Plumley jumped out to put the fire, put out the fire around the ammunition.

• 1:48:28Jocko Willink?

  I ran out into the LZ to put an air panel out. Sergeant Nye says, "Two of my people, PFC Jimmy D. Nakayama and Specialist Five, James Clark, were on the other side of me, several yards away." Somebody was hollering, and Colonel Moore was standing up there, hollering about, something about a wingman, and I looked up, there were two planes coming, and one of them had already dropped his napalm, and everything seemed to go in slow motion. Everything was on fire. Nakayama was all black, and Clark was burned and bleeding.

• 1:49:05Jocko Willink?

  And here's Joe Galloway, "Before I had walked over and talked to the engineer guys in their little foxholes, now those same men were dancing in fire. Their hair burned off in an instant, their clothes were incinerated. One was a mass of blisters, the other not quite so bad, but he had breathed fire into his lungs. When the flames died down, we all ran out into the burning grass. Somebody yelled at me to grab the feet of one of the charred soldiers. When I got him, the boots crumbled, and the flesh came off, and I could feel bare bones of his ankles in the palms of my hands." We carried him to the aid station.

• 1:49:46Jocko Willink?

  I can still hear their screams.

• 1:49:51Jocko Willink?

  Spec 4 Thomas E. Burlisle, a medical man from Bravo Company 2nd Battalion, rushed out into the clearing with his kit bag to help the napalm victims. Burlisle was shot in the head and died within minutes in Lieutenant Raskorla's arms.

• 1:50:08Jocko Willink?

  An Oklahoma man Burlisle had turned 23 years old just four days before he was killed.

• 1:50:17Jocko Willink?

  Back in the command post, our Air Force FAC Charlie Hastings was stunned by all the consequences of the misplaced airstrike.

• 1:50:27Jocko Willink?

  Hastings recalls, "After the napalm strike, Colonel Moore looked at me and said something that I never forgot.

• 1:50:34Jocko Willink?

  Don't worry about that one, Charlie. Just keep them coming."

• 1:50:48Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:50:50Jocko Willink?

  I mean, he knows what he's got to do. He's got Hastings that just killed some of his own men, wounded some of his own men by fire, and he's freaking out, probably doesn't want to call any more bombs on. And Hal Moore realizes that's what's keeping him alive.

• 1:51:05Jocko Willink?

  "Don't worry about that one.

• 1:51:08Jocko Willink?

  Just keep them coming."

• 1:51:15Jocko Willink?

  Charlie Company 1st Battalion 7th Cavalry had begun its day with five officers and 106 men.

• 1:51:22Jocko Willink?

  By noon, it had no officers left and only 49 men unhurt. A total of 42 officers and men had been killed and 20 more wounded in two and a half hours of vicious hand-to-hand fighting.

• 1:51:34Jocko Willink?

  The bodies of hundreds of slain Vietnamese, North Vietnamese littered the bloody battleground.

• 1:51:45Jocko Willink?

  Spec 4 Pat Selick, 24 and a native of Mount Kisco, New York, says, "I remember one guy had a small American flag on the back of his pack.

• 1:51:56Jocko Willink?

  When I saw that, I felt very proud. It's something that always stuck with me. This American flag was put on top of a blown up tree, just like Iwo Jima."

• 1:52:07Jocko Willink?

  Another battle we had won for the United States.

• 1:52:11Jocko Willink?

  That little flag flew over landing zone X-ray for the rest of the fight, raising all our spirits."

• 1:52:20Jocko Willink?

  And now there's a lull in the fighting.

• 1:52:27Jocko Willink?

  And here we go, back to the book. "During this lull, the saddest, most painful and hardest duty to endure was collecting our dead and loading them onboard the helicopters. There were so many that the brigade ordered the big choppers, the CH-47 Chinooks. One such helicopter lifted out all 42 of the dead from Charlie Company.

• 1:52:48Jocko Willink?

  They came in together, died together, and now left together, wrapped in their green rubber ponchos."

• 1:52:57Jocko Willink?

  Spec 4 Vincent Cantu says, "We were picking up our dead and placing them in the choppers.

• 1:53:04Jocko Willink?

  Some of these guys I had known for two years, yet I could recognize them only by their name tags.

• 1:53:11Jocko Willink?

  Their faces were blown off.

• 1:53:14Jocko Willink?

  It was hard not to get sick.

• 1:53:17Jocko Willink?

  We would look at each other and without saying a word, just continue putting our dead on the choppers."

• 1:53:37Jocko Willink?

  Now...

• 1:53:40Jocko Willink?

  The Colonel that's in charge of the both, both battalions. He makes a visit and here we go. Mid morning before Tully arrived, Colonel Tim Brown flew in for a visit. Plumley recalls Lieutenant Colonel Moore saluted Brown and said, I told you not to come in here. It's not safe. Brown picked up his right collar lapel and waggled his full Colonel's eagle at Moore and said, sorry about that. Dylan and I gave him a situation report. Brown asked whether he should stay in X-ray, establish a small brigade command post and run the show. We, we recommended against that. I knew the area and Bob Tully and I got along just fine. Brown agi- agreed.

• 1:54:22Jocko Willink?

  Lieutenant Dick Merchant says Colonel Brown had trust and confidence in his commanders. I'm aware that some felt he should have landed in X-ray and established a command post. I've never accepted that. The first battalion, seventh cavalry was probably the finest battalion in Vietnam, well-trained, superbly led with outstanding officers and NCOs throughout the unit. Brown would have been out of place in X-ray. Besides, there was no room for a brigade CP. I recall it being rather crowded behind that anthill. So the reason I put that in there is because here's the, the guy that's, you know, Hal Moore's boss comes in to, to check on the scene. And some people say, oh, he should have stayed there because it was a bad fight.

• 1:55:04Jocko Willink?

  And he, in this, um, Dick Merchant said, no, like he shouldn't have stayed there. He, he did the right thing. He came, visited and left. And by the way, you want to set up a brigade command post? You, you need to find your own little anthill because this one's all, this one's, you know, the size of, yeah, it's full. And it's the size of a car and we got dead and wounded everywhere and, uh. So, but it's, it's the important point there from my perspective is, you know, the key thing is that he had trust and confidence in his officers. He didn't need to go out there and micromanage them. And I'm not saying you could never do that. I'm definitely not saying that's the dichotomy of leadership. You know, sometimes you might look out there and say, there's something going on. I need to get out there, need to get in the weeds and, and get this problem handled. I need to come out there and support.

• 1:55:49Jocko Willink?

  In this particular case, probably wouldn't have been a good idea. Hal Moore had it under control at this point. That's why they're landing a Chinook, which is a CH-47 giant helicopter, much bigger than a Huey. You know, it's slower and at least on approach, it's slower. So yeah, there's a time to get out there and micromanage and there's a time when you let your teams lead.

• 1:56:12Jocko Willink?

  Okay, going back to the book in Myron DeDurek and Lieutenant Rick Rascolla. So these are the two guys that came from the 2nd Battalion 7th Cav. And he just talks about them a little bit. And I think it's worth mentioning Rick Rascolla and Myron DeDurek. Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, had two foreign-born officers whose accents and gung-ho attitudes lent a touch of foreign legion flair. The Ukrainian DeDurek and the Englishman Rascolla were destined over the next 72 hours to become battlefield legends in the 7th Cav, as much for their style as their fearless leadership under fire. And

• 1:56:52Jocko Willink?

  yeah, it's, it's, it's, you can see what these leaders do and you do get to see it.

• 1:57:00Jocko Willink?

  But here's when, when DeDurek, remember he touched down and he was told, hey, go, go set up security and here we go. Myron DeDurek and his soldiers had not yet been sorely tested, but they soon would be. During that lull, DeDurek made certain that fields of fire and observation were cleared out to beyond 200 yards, that good fighting positions were dug, that machine guns were placed in positions that assured flanking interlocking fire, that trip flares and anti-intrusion devices were installed as far as 300 yards out, that every man was locked down, loaded down with ammunition and that ammo resupply points were designated, that all radios were checked and double-checked. Then DeDurek worked very carefully with his artillery forward observer registering pre-planned fires across the front. The officer, the officer Lieutenant William Lund had four batteries, 24 howitzers registered

• 1:57:44Jocko Willink?

  and adjusted on call. So that's, you ever wonder what, what a military leader does? That's what he does right there. Dials everything in.

• 1:57:56Jocko Willink?

  And here he's talking about, uh, so one of the Durex platoon leaders was Rick Rascorla. And here's what he says about Rick Rascorla. Rick Rascorla, first platoon leader was six months out of OCS at the infantry school at Fort Benning, but he had arrived there with a wealth of good training already in, in, under his belt. He had served in the British Army in Cyprus and with the colonial police in Rhodesia, and he knew what soldiering was all about. What he did to prepare his position and his men speaks for his professionalism. So here's what Rascorla did. Rascorla walked the terrain and tried to see it from the enemy's point of view. That's critical. What's the enemy thinking? Scrub brush, elephant grant, grass, ant hills, and some ground cover stretched to the front. The ground was not as flat as it first appeared, but had

• 1:58:40Jocko Willink?

  seams and thick rut stretching off to the south with a slight incline away from his positions. The hasty prone shelters dug by Charlie Company, First Battalion, had been dug after nightfall under enemy pressure. Rascorla moved his men back 50 yards, which not only shortened the sector, but meant the enemy would now have to leave the trees and cross 40 yards of mostly open area to reach Bravo Company foxholes. Rascorla recalls, because of our shortened lines, I decreased the number of foxholes. Three man holes were constructed. The M60 machine guns were set on principal directions of fire from which they could switch to final protective grazing fire, interlocking with each other and with the machine guns on our flanks.

• 1:59:22Jocko Willink?

  Foxholes and parapets were built in detail. I tested the holes. Some were so deep the occupants could not even see the pair over the parapet. In these cases, firing steps were built back up. Two hours before dusk, Sergeant Eschbach, A27, and Sergeant Thompson organized a booby trap detail. Carefully, they rigged grenades and trip flares far out on the main avenues of approach. Claimer mines, claimer mines would have iced the cake, but somewhere they had been lost. A screw up, but I felt we were ready to tangle with the best of the North Vietnamese. And again, these guys are luckily, there's a lull and they have all the time to prepare this and get it all set up. And that's a big difference from what happened when these guys hit the LZ and they didn't have any of this stuff. They didn't have any of the terrain figured

• 2:00:07Jocko Willink?

  out. They didn't have a chance to send in their personnel up. And these guys are taking advantage of that tactical situation to get up there and make things right. And You know, both those guys, you can see, that's what a leader does. That's what a leader does. They make sure things are right. They make sure you're ready to win. And you can do that, and that applies to every, every leader in every position, in every industry, in every team in the world, that the leader is stepping up and making sure we are going to be prepared to win.

• 2:00:37Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, this Rick Rascorla, and this is a little bit of a side note, he ended up working for Morgan Stanley as the head of security for Morgan Stanley.

• 2:00:49Jocko Willink?

  And they worked at the Twin Towers in New York City. That's where Morgan Stanley was. And he felt like they needed to do drills, like they needed to prepare, and that like, well, what happened if the towers came under attack? And they ran a bunch of drills. And when September 11th came, they ran those drills and got everyone evacuated. And

• 2:01:12Jocko Willink?

  Rick Rascorla was last seen on the 10th floor, going back up into the building to do a final check and make sure that everyone was out. And the tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m. And he saved a lot of lives that day, not only through his actions on the day of, but through his actions in preparing.

• 2:01:39Jocko Willink?

  Now,

• 2:01:41Jocko Willink?

  the Vietnamese come, the North Vietnamese come, and they bring it. Here we go. "The first rush by at least 300 North Vietnamese was beaten off in less than 10 minutes by small arms, machine gun, and artillery fire from the alert and well-prepared Bravo Company 2nd Battalion troops. At 4:31 a.m., 20 minutes later, they came back." De Durek said, "The intensity of their attack increased, and I was under the, under assault aimed at my three left platoon sectors." "Screams, shouts, and whistles split the night as NVA swept down the mountain straight into the smoke-clouded killing ground. Now, all the mortars of my battalion and tullies were turned loose, adding their 81mm

• 2:02:26Jocko Willink?

  high explosive shells to the general mayhem."

• 2:02:30Jocko Willink?

  Rifleman John Martin, who is in Dederic's lines, says, "We kept pouring rifle and machine gun fire and artillery on them, and they broke and ran. I don't think we had any casualties, but they were catching hell." So now it's a totally different story. These guys are dug in, they have all their artillery dialed in, they've got their fields of fire set up, and the attacks come, well organized attacks with 300 people, they don't make it happen. The Vietnamese don't make it happen.

• 2:02:58Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:03:02Jocko Willink?

  Back to the book. Over on the perimeter, Ascorla's men fought on. "Our M79 switched to direct fire. Fire delivered to a visible target and lobbed rounds out between 75 and 100 yards. Still, the shadowy clumps moved closer. RPGs and machine guns crackled as they blasted us from the dark line of ground cover. Across open fields, they came in a ragged line. The first groups cut down after a few yards. A few surged right on, sliding down behind their dead comrades for cover." An amazing, highly disciplined enemy. A trooper cursed and pleaded in a high pitched voice, "God damn it, stop the bastards." So here they are, they're attacking, and when the North Vietnamese soldiers get hit, their buddies are coming up behind them, taking cover behind their bodies and continuing

• 2:03:47Jocko Willink?

  to assault. So this is an indicator, you know, like I said, this was early in the war, this is 1965, and, you know, we didn't know this determined enemy yet. We didn't understand that yet. And here we're seeing it for the first time. This is how determined these guys are. They are going to attack, they're gonna attack through whatever we put at them. Here's another situation. Stedalen, this is Stedalen, whispered orders to his squad, telling men on either side of him to hold their fire, not to shoot until the enemy stepped out into that open space right in front. Suddenly, a flare and a booby trap went off, and they were there in the grass, shooting at us. I took a round just above the elbow, nothing really, just a stitch or two and a piece of tape after the fight.

• 2:04:32Jocko Willink?

  Nobody shot back. Then they stepped into that open area. The flares were burning, they were lit up, and it was easy. We opened up and picked them off. It was a light attack. Then they hit us harder 30 minutes later, blowing bugles, blowing whistles. We killed them all. Then some white phosphorus came in, about 15 in front of my hole, and I lost most of my web gear and my shirt." Had about eight burns on one arm. John Stetlin sat there under the light of the flares and used the point of his bayonet to quickly dig the still burning Willie Pete fragments out of his flesh. So white phosphorus is a type of munition that that we use and it's it's white phosphorus and it hits and blows up and it's on fire. It's a little pieces of burning hot metal.

• 2:05:17Jocko Willink?

  And he's picking it out of his arm. During the two and a half hours of the attack against De Deric Sector, the rest of the X-ray perimeter had been quiet, too quiet. Dylan and I discussed the possibility of conducting a reconnaissance by fire to check for presence of the enemy elsewhere on the line. We had plenty of ammunition and what the hell, the enemy knew where our lines were by now as well as I did. We passed the word on the battalion net. At precisely 6:55 a.m., every man on the perimeter would fire his individual weapon and all machine guns for a full two minutes on full automatic. The word was to shoot up trees, anthills, bushes and high grass forward of the forward

• 2:06:02Jocko Willink?

  of and above the American positions. Gunners would shoot anything that worried them. By now, we had learned to our sorrow that the enemy used the night to put snipers in trees ready to do damage at first light. Now was the time to clean up out front. At the stated time, our perimeter erupted in an ear splitting uproar. And immediately, a force of 30 to 50 North Vietnamese rose from a cover 150 yards forward of Joe Sodini's Alpha Company, Second Battalion lines, and began shooting back. The mad minute of firing triggered their attack prematurely. Artillery fire was instantly brought in on them and the attack was beaten off.

• 2:06:45Jocko Willink?

  When the shooting stopped, one dead sniper dangled by his rope from a tree in forward of De Deric's leftmost position. Another dropped dead out of a tree almost immediately forward of John Harrow's, John Heron's Bravo Company, First Battalion Command Post. A third North Vietnamese sniper was killed an hour later when he tried to climb down for from his tree and run for it. Sergeant Stedlin's arm speckled with white phosphorus burns began hurting him now. I was sent back to the aid station where my arm was bandaged and I was waiting to be medevac'd out. The more I sat there, the more I realized I couldn't in good faith get on a chopper and fly out there and leave those guys behind.

• 2:07:29Jocko Willink?

  So I took the sling off my arm and went back out. Somebody asked, "Where are you going?" I said, "Back to my foxhole." Nobody said anything else. So obviously, these guys now have gained some, some good fire superiority, the upper hand in the battle. Back to the book. Raskolnik and his men had been watching the airshow appreciatively. We gathered for the last sweep. Suddenly, a fighter bomber plowed down on us from above. We buried our noses in the holes. An express train screamed down and the explosion shook the earth. The bomb landed thirty yards from our holes.

• 2:08:13Jocko Willink?

  We came up cursing in the dust and debris. The call came to move out. Every available trooper, including Colonel Moore, pushed the perimeter out. This time, it was no contest at all. We killed twenty-seven more enemy and crushed all resistance. I looked over the field, littered with enemy dead, sprawled by ones and twos and heaps across a torn, gouged land. Blood, body fragments, torn uniforms, shattered weapons littered the landscape. It was a sobering sight. Those men, our enemies, had mothers too. But we had done what we had to do.

• 2:08:54Jocko Willink?

  Aside from wanting to make certain that DeDerek and his men did a clean, safe job, I had one reason for joining the final assault personally. This is, this is Colonel Moore talking, and then it goes to Rick Raskolnik. Rick Raskolnik watched. Colonel Moore in our sector was rushing up the clumps of bodies, pulling them apart. "What the hell is the Colonel doing up there?" Sergeant Thompson asked. I shook my head. Later, we saw him coming back at the head of men carrying ponchos. By ten thirty AM, Colonel Moore had found what he was looking for. Three dead American troops were no longer missing in action. Now they were on their way home to their loved ones.

• 2:09:40Jocko Willink?

  By now, late morning Tuesday, November 16th, the personality of Landing Zone X-Ray had changed. What previously had been a killing field had become something else. We moved without impunity in places where movement had meant death only hours before. Except for our own artillery and air, there was nothing to be heard. It was just too quiet, too sudden, and it made me uneasy. That old principle, nothing was wrong except that nothing was wrong. Where was the enemy? Headed back to Cambodia? Still on the mountain preparing to attack again? Headed north to the eye-drang and its precious water? And again, the old question. Where were the enemy 12.7mm heavy anti-aircraft machine guns?

• 2:10:23Jocko Willink?

  If the enemy commander brought those weapons to bear on us from the mountain above, LZ X-Ray with three American battalions crowding the clearing would present a beautiful target. I told Dylan to step up the harassing artillery fire and to keep the airstrikes coming in the slopes above us. I told him I wanted a picture-perfect helicopter extraction covered by all the firepower we could bring to bear. So, yeah, tides have turned completely, and in fact, they've turned so completely that a Chinook, which is the big helicopter, flies in with a bunch of photographers and television crews and reporters. And they surround... They surround... Colonel Moore, and here we go, back to the book.

• 2:11:08Jocko Willink?

  The other reporters now clustered around me. I told them that this had been a bitterly contested battle, that clearly we were up against a brave, determined, and very tough enemy in the North Vietnamese soldiers. But that American firepower, discipline, guts, and will to win had carried the day at LZ X-Ray. Brave American soldiers, and the M16 rifle won a victory here, I said. My voice choked and my eyes filled with tears as I told the reporters that many of my men, who had been killed in this place, were only a matter of days away from completing their service in the Army, but they fought and died bravely. As I stood there, I knew that the telegrams that would shatter

• 2:11:52Jocko Willink?

  the hearts and lives of scores of American families were already being drafted.

• 2:12:00Jocko Willink?

  Now came the body count. And if you remember, we've talked about this before. Everyone was always, they wanted to talk about the body count in Vietnam, even at this early stage. And he was thinking about that. Back to the book. Now came the body count. From the beginning of the fight, I had known that higher headquarters would eventually want to know what damage we had done to the enemy. So after each major action in this battle, hating it, I asked my company commanders for their best estimates of enemy killed. The battle raging back and forth over three days and two nights, it was anything but orderly. There was no referee to call timeout for a body count. We did the best we could to keep a realistic count of the enemy dead. In the end, it added up to 834 dead by body

• 2:12:41Jocko Willink?

  count with an additional 1,215 estimated killed and wounded by artillery, air attacks, and aerial rocket attacks. On my own, I cut the 834 figure back to 634, a personal allowance for the confusion and fog of war, and let the 1,215 estimated stand. We captured and evacuated six enemy prisoners on our side. We had lost 79 Americans killed in action, 121 wounded, and none missing.

• 2:13:25Jocko Willink?

  And at this point, they get extracted off the battlefield, including Colonel Moore. He's the last man to leave from his battalion. And here we go back to the book. It was a short, fast ride to landing zone Falcon, just five and a half miles east of X-Ray. As we landed among the artillery pieces, I saw 75 yards away, a group of my troopers off in the northwestern edge of the LZ. Dean Brellis, an NBC news correspondent, was in LZ Falcon that afternoon. He captured the scene in his 1967 book, The Face of South Vietnam. And here's what Dean Brellis wrote.

• 2:14:11Jocko Willink?

  Hal Moore was the last man to come out of the battle.

• 2:14:15Jocko Willink?

  It was the biggest battle he had ever fought.

• 2:14:18Jocko Willink?

  He was a lieutenant colonel and he carried himself like a proud man.

• 2:14:23Jocko Willink?

  His sergeant major was at his side.

• 2:14:27Jocko Willink?

  It would need a Shakespeare to describe what happened then. But it was something that was love and manliness and pride.

• 2:14:36Jocko Willink?

  It was the moment of the brave.

• 2:14:40Jocko Willink?

  Hal Moore turned and went from group to group of his men. And only a few bothered to get up because there was no exclusivity now, no rank. And Hal Moore did not want them to stand and salute.

• 2:14:52Jocko Willink?

  He was saluting them. He talked with them. He thanked them. He was not solemn and he did not bring to his greetings the salutations of a politi- of a politician.

• 2:15:05Jocko Willink?

  There was no poverty of spirit in his handshake. And he shook every man's hand.

• 2:15:12Jocko Willink?

  It was a union of men who had met and defeated the enemy, not forever. Not in a victory that ended the war, but in a victory over their uncertainty.

• 2:15:24Jocko Willink?

  When their hour had come, they had done their job. And it was this thought too, that Al Moore, Hal Moore, had in his mind.

• 2:15:36Jocko Willink?

  And he said that if they had won no one else's gratitude,

• 2:15:42Jocko Willink?

  they had his.

• 2:15:52Jocko Willink?

  And I think that these men,

• 2:15:57Jocko Willink?

  all these men have our absolute

• 2:16:02Jocko Willink?

  gratitude.

• 2:16:07Jocko Willink?

  For fighting for freedom, for fighting for each other, for fighting for us. And, and actually, the, the story doesn't end there.

• 2:16:17Jocko Willink?

  Nor does the book.

• 2:16:20Jocko Willink?

  And we're gonna save it for the next podcast, but we're gonna hear about the story of LZ Albany, which is a few miles to the north, in still inside the Idrang Valley, where Second Battalion of the Seventh Cav moved in and fought. And it's...

• 2:16:45Jocko Willink?

  There's so much that I didn't cover in this, in this, what I just covered. There's so much I didn't cover. I mean, I didn't even cover the lost platoon, who does eventually get recovered. Read the book. I should have left that out. Spoiler alert. But there's so much in there. There's so much...

• 2:17:03Jocko Willink?

  So many lessons learned, so much action, so much good description, and so many heroes and so much sacrifice. I don't even think gratitude...

• 2:17:19Jocko Willink?

  I don't even think gratitude's enough. I think we owe them more than just gratitude. We owe them our best.

• 2:17:30Jocko Willink?

  We owe them our lives, our best lives every day.

• 2:17:38Jocko Willink?

  Every moment.

• 2:17:43Jocko Willink?

  To remember this sacrifice.

• 2:17:48Jocko Willink?

  And what we owe them is we owe them to live our best lives.

• 2:18:01Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's all I've got for tonight. So Echo, um, yeah, while I decompress over here, maybe you can give some input on how to support this podcast or support yourself if you want to.

• 2:18:19Speaker 01

  Sure. Yeah. If you want to. So of course, the first way is supporting your joints. I always talk about supplements. Jocko has supplements, best kind. Jocko joint warfare and super krill, krill oil. Omega threes, very good for you. If you want some of that, get it at originmaine.com. Right there in the front, or you just click on labs. It's right there. Also, there's some good, uh, geez, but before that, you have a new product.

• 2:18:55Jocko Willink?

  We do. A new product.

• 2:18:57Speaker 01

  Out.

• 2:18:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah. A new class of product.

• 2:18:59Speaker 01

  Class of product.

• 2:19:01Jocko Willink?

  I'm on it right now.

• 2:19:03Speaker 01

  You're on it.

• 2:19:03Jocko Willink?

  I'm on it right now. Yeah.

• 2:19:04Speaker 01

  Buzzing on it right now.

• 2:19:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:07Speaker 01

  So, discipline. It's a pre-workout.

• 2:19:10Jocko Willink?

  Wait, are you just saying that's a cool word or that's the name?

• 2:19:13Speaker 01

  Both. Both. So it's called discipline, right? So it's pre, technically they call it a pre-workout, but we're calling it a pre-mission.

• 2:19:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:23Speaker 01

  Supplement.

• 2:19:24Jocko Willink?

  Well, pre-workout would help you with your physical activity.

• 2:19:27Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:19:28Jocko Willink?

  But the discipline has cognitive enhancers in it as well.

• 2:19:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 2:19:33Jocko Willink?

  Cause when you're on a mission, you just don't need physical strength. You need mental strength.

• 2:19:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:38Jocko Willink?

  So this gives you both.

• 2:19:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. So if your mission is to work out, boom, there you go. It's a pre-workout. If your mission is a exam.

• 2:19:47Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:19:48Speaker 01

  It's a pre-exam.

• 2:19:49Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:19:49Speaker 01

  Supplement.

• 2:19:50Jocko Willink?

  If your, if your mission is a mission, well, you're good to go.

• 2:19:54Speaker 01

  Straight up, pre-mission. There you go. Boom. Uh, yeah, get that one. Um, I too can vouch for this cause I'm on it too. Cause it should perform well to, you know, display its effects. Um, also, geez and rash guards at Origin Maine, all made in America.

• 2:20:13Speaker 01

  The more I think about that, the more of a big deal that is.

• 2:20:16Jocko Willink?

  It's a real big deal.

• 2:20:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, cuz it's from like I always say, the cotton to the

• 2:20:21Jocko Willink?

  Gee.

• 2:20:22Speaker 01

  The gee, or the, you know, the other stuff that, there's a lot of cool stuff on there, gee's, rash guards, even apparel, all made in America. originmaine.com is the spot to get them. If you want them. I want them. I like them. It's funny, like every once in a while, I'll find myself just wearing all Origin stuff. Not on purpose, too. It's the kind of, okay, my favorite shorts, even though they don't have them, I know. I'm wearing that, I wear them every other day approximately. And, you know, you just find yourself in the stuff cuz it's so good. That's my opinion. Also, for fitness gear, cool fitness gear, if you wanna, even if you're just doing kettlebells, I say get the artistic kettlebells from Onnit.

• 2:21:03Speaker 01

  Onnit.com slash Jocko. That's where you get them. There's all other creative workout stuff on there, maces and cool jump ropes and battle ropes and whatnot. Pretty much anything, if you're getting bored with the workout and you wanna enhance it in some creative way. But go there, Onnit.com slash Jocko. Uh, don't get addicted to the website cuz a lot of good information, so it's kind of a catch 22. Good, you can get info on there. A lot of good info, interesting info, but you might spend a lot of time there, so be careful. Also, when you buy this book, We Were Soldiers Once and Young by General Hallmore and Joe Galloway. You know what I was thinking?

• 2:21:47Jocko Willink?

  I have no idea what you're thinking.

• 2:21:49Speaker 01

  So.

• 2:21:50Jocko Willink?

  Something tells me I'm about to hear though.

• 2:21:51Speaker 01

  If you watch the movie A Few Good Men,

• 2:21:55Speaker 01

  I think it's Demi Moore. Yes. She plays a, like.

• 2:22:00Jocko Willink?

  She plays a JAG lieutenant, yeah.

• 2:22:02Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 2:22:02Jocko Willink?

  I've seen the movie.

• 2:22:03Speaker 01

  Her name, the character name is Joanne Galloway, but call her Jo. So her name is Joe Galloway.

• 2:22:11Jocko Willink?

  I noticed that.

• 2:22:13Speaker 01

  Anyway, when you buy this book.

• 2:22:15Jocko Willink?

  Layers?

• 2:22:16Speaker 01

  There's some layers that they, those are interpreted layers.

• 2:22:20Jocko Willink?

  Those are not layers. Those are coincidences. There's a big difference.

• 2:22:25Speaker 01

  It's a fine line.

• 2:22:26Jocko Willink?

  Charlie Beckwith, that formed up Delta Force.

• 2:22:29Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 2:22:30Jocko Willink?

  Being in this book, that's layers.

• 2:22:32Speaker 01

  That's layers.

• 2:22:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:22:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I would, I would confirm those layers for sure.

• 2:22:36Jocko Willink?

  Layers for sure.

• 2:22:37Speaker 01

  I don't know. I, I still feel like Joe Galloway's a layer or something like that.

• 2:22:42Jocko Willink?

  Negative.

• 2:22:42Speaker 01

  I don't know. What if they?

• 2:22:44Jocko Willink?

  Negative.

• 2:22:45Speaker 01

  Know of this, these stories and they, and they named the, they could have.

• 2:22:51Jocko Willink?

  Negative.

• 2:22:53Speaker 01

  Maybe, maybe not.

• 2:22:54Jocko Willink?

  And if they did, they failed.

• 2:22:55Speaker 01

  They failed.

• 2:22:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, cuz Joe Galloway got after it.

• 2:22:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:23:00Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 2:23:01Speaker 01

  Well, Joanne Galloway kinda got it, huh? No, not really. Wait, she convinced.

• 2:23:06Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 2:23:07Speaker 01

  Alright. Either way. I still think it's layers. Either way, when you, um, when you buy this, when you buy this book, we have it listed on our website along with all the books that Jocko reviews. It's on the website, JacoPodcast.com. In the section, open the top menu, click Books from Podcasts. Boom, it's all there by episode. Click through there. Good way to support. Get it from Amazon, you know, all that stuff. And then, you know, continue, do, do more shopping if you want, if you want. Just carry on. There you go. Good way to support. Also, subscribe to the podcast. iTunes, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify confirmed. Someone sent me the actual link. Visual, I saw it visually. Visual confirmation, Spotify, boom.

• 2:23:51Speaker 01

  And other podcasting providing platforms. Just subscribe. I know you have already, but let's say in the unlikely, unlikely, uh, chance that you didn't subscribe, go ahead, subscribe. Good way to support if you want. Also, subscribe to YouTube. If you like the vis- the visual, the video version of this podcast. You wanna see what Jocko looks like? You wanna see what I look like? If you care about that sort of thing? Boom.

• 2:24:19Jocko Willink?

  Most people don't care what we look like.

• 2:24:21Speaker 01

  No, I, I don't, I don't think so. It makes sense that they don't care cuz it doesn't matter. They just care about the content of your character. Subscribe to YouTube. That's the point if you do care about what we look like also. There's excerpts on there. Good way to get little bits of lessons, messages from Jocko. Shareable, so you don't have to share the whole two and a half ish hour podcast. You can just share the excerpts, pass them on, you know? Let someone else learn these lessons with you. Also, Jocko's a store. It's called Jocko's Store. Named after him. Jaco'sStore.com.

• 2:25:05Speaker 01

  That is where you can get the cool shirts. I think they're cool.

• 2:25:10Speaker 01

  And I think it goes beyond just my opinion because people have emailed me and been like, hey, these are cool. Because I made sure they're not the low quality. You know, people when they start a shirt, brand, or if they're printing shirt, they're like, hey, let me get the cheap ones. So I don't have to spend a lot of money, play it safe, all this stuff. I didn't do that. I got the good ones. Stuff that I would actually wear regardless of what's printed. Like wearable, they're wearable. That's how I put it. Anyway, that's how I know they're good.

• 2:25:39Jocko Willink?

  I'm wearing one right now.

• 2:25:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, correct. Me too. Boom. See, I wouldn't wear it if I didn't want to wear it. So anyway, they're very good. That's where you can get the shirts. There's women's stuff on there. Also, there's rash guards on there for activities such as surfing, jiu-jitsu.

• 2:25:54Jocko Willink?

  Warrior kid rash guard out there, yeah?

• 2:25:56Speaker 01

  Warrior kid rash guard should be on there. Should be on there. I vowed to get them in in time to ship for Christmas. So that would be like today. So go on there and you know, that's the my vow. Is that the right word? Vow? I vowed to do this?

• 2:26:17Jocko Willink?

  That means you better succeed.

• 2:26:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, that's my vow. Okay. So anyway, yeah, yeah, some rash guards on there for jiu-jitsu surfing, any kind of cool activity, cycling, whatever. Anything you want range of motion to be maintained 100% and performance be increased by 19%. I think it's up to 21%.

• 2:26:34Jocko Willink?

  Reports back from the field.

• 2:26:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I think that kind of average because some people a little bit more, you know? So those people, they push the average up. I think that's how it works. Anyway, cool stuff on there. Check it out. I'm not saying get something, but if you want something. Then you get something and it supports podcasts. Good way to support. Hoodies on there as well, thicker ones. They might be running low, I might have to get some more. It is winter, I get it. But they're the thicker ones, like I said. Also, psychological warfare. What that is, if you don't know, I know, we all know what it is already. It's been number one and I, well, it might not be number one anymore. That's a long story. Anyway, if you don't know what it is, the unlikely event that you don't know what it is, is what it is.

• 2:27:21Speaker 01

  It's an album with tracks, Jocko tracks. Each track is designed to help you through moments of weakness when you're on your path. When you're on your warpath. I haven't used that one yet. Wait, maybe I have, I don't know. Nonetheless, when you're on the path of discipline, right? You're on the program, you're on your campaign against weakness. You hit little, it's not just one smooth road and it's not a one straight road either. And it's riddled, riddled every day. Probably every minute, literally riddled with distractions.

• 2:28:03Speaker 01

  Every once in a while, you'll hit moments of weakness, whether it's a speed bump, distraction, lack of energy, boredom, repetitiveness, tediousness, tediousness. That's a word, right? That's what psychological warfare is for. It's a little spot for those moments. You don't want to wake up early every single day. Ah, we got the solution for that. Listen to the little track. Jocko pragmatically telling you. I can't get over that little moment of weakness. Same thing with wanting to skip the workout for the day. That was mine. That was mine. Not anymore.

• 2:28:43Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:28:44Speaker 01

  And yeah, there's a bunch of them for all kinds of stuff. Skipping on the diet is a good one. That's what psychological warfare is. Very effective, 100% effectiveness.

• 2:28:52Jocko Willink?

  That's a bold statement. You can get Jocko White Tea on Amazon, which will make you deadlift 8,000 pounds factually.

• 2:28:59Speaker 01

  Confirmed.

• 2:29:00Jocko Willink?

  Confirmed. You can get some books on there. Way of the Warrior Kid, good Christmas gift. And it's also a good whatever gift. So get a kid on the path. Get them on the path. Got so much great feedback on that. Extreme Ownership, this is for leading at every level

• 2:29:19Jocko Willink?

  in combat, in business, and in life. Extreme Ownership, written by me and my brother Leif Babin. Also, from an individual perspective,

• 2:29:29Jocko Willink?

  if you want to get yourself on the path, there's no better gift than discipline. The Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. Everyone that asks me for workouts, that's where they are. Everyone asks me what I eat, that's where it is. Everyone asks me how much I sleep, that's where it is. So get that. If you want the audio version, the audio version is not on Audible. The audio version of Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual is on iTunes, Amazon Music, Google Play, and all those other MP3 distributing platforms.

• 2:29:58Jocko Willink?

  There's another muster. The muster, which is Echelon Front Leadership Conference. There's two of them, gonna be only two of them in 2018.

• 2:30:08Jocko Willink?

  We don't have enough room in the schedule to fit three.

• 2:30:12Jocko Willink?

  One, Washington DC, or sorry, this is actually not one, it's number five. So number five, Washington DC, May 17th and 18th. And then number six, San Francisco, October 17th and 18th. Come and get it. You can register for those at extremeownership.com.

• 2:30:29Speaker 01

  Is, are they gonna be like bigger, you know, like you'll have two now next year, are they gonna have more people?

• 2:30:34Jocko Willink?

  We have a, we have a little bit bigger capacity.

• 2:30:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:30:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but we just, we don't have time in the schedule anymore.

• 2:30:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I dig it.

• 2:30:41Jocko Willink?

  And we are gonna do the roll call for law enforcement, military, firefighters. We're gonna do that as well, but we haven't locked a date on that one yet. Also, for leadership, in addition to this podcast, in addition to the books, in addition to the muster, we have a leadership and management consulting company, and you can hire us. To me, Leif Babin, JP Denell, Dave Burke, email [email protected]. If you want us to come and speak at an event, don't call a speaker's bureau. Don't call a speaker's agency. Just go to, just go to echelonfront.com.

• 2:31:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, they've been calling me sometimes.

• 2:31:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, don't do that. That's what we do. And if you have comments or questions or answers for us, we can be found on the interwebs, on Twitter, on Instagram, and on the Facebook. Echo is at Echo, Charles and I am at Jocko Willink and thanks to those people, those soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines that sign up, that sign up and volunteer to make the ultimate sacrifice. Thank you all for protecting us and our freedoms. And to police and law enforcement, thanks for protecting us from crime

• 2:32:04Jocko Willink?

  and criminals and terrorists right here at home. To paramedics, thanks for coming to us in our time of need when we call and to the firefighters right now out there on the line, especially in our state right here of California, CAL FIRE. Thanks for your service and your sacrifice and my condolences to those who have fallen in recent days and weeks and our thoughts are with the families of the fallen. And for everyone else that's listening, when you see what men can do when pushed beyond the limit of human capacity, when you see that, when you hear about it, when you read about it,

• 2:32:51Jocko Willink?

  well then remember to push yourself.

• 2:32:57Jocko Willink?

  Push yourself every day, every moment. Get out there and get after it.

• 2:33:05Jocko Willink?

  And so until next time, this is Echo and Jocko. Out.