203: One Man Can Make a Difference. USMC Corporal Jason Dunham and The Ultimate Sacrifice

0:00:00 - Opening. 0:02:36 - The story of Jason Dunham, with Bill Hampton, Kelly Miller, John Ferguson, Trent Gibson. 3:34:07 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 3:38:20 - How to stay on THE PATH. 4:12:00 - Closing Gratitude. Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 203 with me Jocko Willink.

• 0:12Jocko Willink?

  "I want to make sure everyone makes it home alive." Corporal Jason Dunham told his friend Lance Corporal Mark Dean.

• 0:25Jocko Willink?

  He was explaining to Dean why he was extending his enlistment.

• 0:31Jocko Willink?

  Their battalion was headed for a six-month deployment to Iraq. Jason was due to get out of the Marine Corps in a couple of months into that deployment.

• 0:41Jocko Willink?

  Which meant his time was up.

• 0:45Jocko Willink?

  And he could carry on with his life.

• 0:50Jocko Willink?

  He had honorably served his country.

• 0:55Jocko Willink?

  Done what his country had asked him to do.

• 1:03Jocko Willink?

  But it wasn't enough for him.

• 1:09Jocko Willink?

  So he signed on for enough time to complete that deployment.

• 1:16Jocko Willink?

  In order to make sure that his friends, his comrades, his fellow Marines made it home alive.

• 1:32Jocko Willink?

  And that's what he did.

• 1:36Jocko Willink?

  He took care of his men.

• 1:40Jocko Willink?

  He led them.

• 1:44Jocko Willink?

  He protected them.

• 1:49Jocko Willink?

  And he gave them and all of us.

• 1:57Jocko Willink?

  Everything.

• 2:03Jocko Willink?

  And it is an honor tonight to have some of those men with us. To tell us about Jason Dunham.

• 2:15Jocko Willink?

  How he lived.

• 2:18Jocko Willink?

  How he served.

• 2:21Jocko Willink?

  And how he died.

• 2:24Jocko Willink?

  A man. A Marine.

• 2:29Jocko Willink?

  And a hero.

• 2:33Jocko Willink?

  We have with us Corporal Kelly Miller. Sergeant Bill Hampton. Staff Sergeant John Ferguson. And Lieutenant Colonel Trent Gibson.

• 2:47Jocko Willink?

  Gentlemen. Thank you for showing up here. Thanks for coming down. Thanks for making the trip. And thanks for sitting in those seats to talk about this.

• 3:02Jocko Willink?

  And I want to get right into it.

• 3:05Jocko Willink?

  Let's go back to 2003.

• 3:09Jocko Willink?

  And you guys are. You guys are in the best place in the world to be.

• 3:19Jocko Willink?

  A Marine Infantry Battalion, 37 Marines. A little place called 29 Palms. And you're all in Kilo Company, I believe. Is that right? You were all in Kilo Company at the time?

• 3:32Speaker 01

  I was not at the time. I came in in late May of 03. I was at EWS, the Captain's Career Course. TMO was packing my shit and I got a call from the Battalion XO, Major Anthony Henderson, and he says, hey, we need you over here. You're flying out of LAX in two weeks. So. These guys had already been in country for the whole fucking march up. We're already back in Karbala, south of Baghdad, doing stability and security operations.

• 4:09Speaker 01

  So I came in late May, took command of the company. Spent three months with Kilo until August when we redeployed. We were the second to last Marine Battalion back out. One seven stayed down in Najaf, I think. And so that was August oh three.

• 4:32Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  And Dunham was still a member of three, four. Kilo three, four at the time.

• 4:38Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 4:38Speaker 01

  But these guys, Miller, I'm sorry Hampton and Ferg, they were there for the whole fucking march up and the rest of it.

• 4:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 4:50Speaker 01

  And then Miller came on.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  August oh three is when I graduated. No, I was at School of Infantry. I went to boot camp in June of oh three, graduated September 11th of oh three, went to the School of Infantry. I didn't get to Twenty-Nine Palms until, I think it was first month of December or first, first of December of two thousand and three. So I joined during the workup for the deployment.

• 5:17Jocko Willink?

  So tell me a little bit about the workup for that deployment. Let's just jump into that.

• 5:21Speaker 02

  I remember taking a bus ride to literally the middle of nowhere, which was Twenty-Nine Palms. And as soon as we hit the ground, Sergeant Trejo took all of us around because it was a big, it was a big dump. I think you guys got like twenty guys? No, we got thirty. Thirty, okay. And so literally we got off the bus and instantly went to SIF and got our gear. And we went and got our rifles, we got our sapu plates, and by the end of the day, we were up in the sand hills.

• 5:56Jocko Willink?

  So you're a boot at this point?

• 5:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't know.

• 5:59Jocko Willink?

  And you're checking in and it's, it's legit, like here's your gear and now we're going on some training exercises now?

• 6:05Speaker 02

  Yes. Literally, so that day we graduated the School of Infantry at three o'clock.

• 6:13Speaker 02

  By 10 o'clock at night, I'm up on a sand hill attached to a platoon getting ready to get some.

• 6:21Jocko Willink?

  And what were you doing at this time, Ferg?

• 6:24Speaker 03

  Well, um, I'll take it back to October of oh two because I was on security forces cadre duty at a little place called Little Creek, which I'm sure you're familiar with.

• 6:32Jocko Willink?

  Indeed.

• 6:34Speaker 03

  And then I checked into the battalion and then we did the quick workup and then we did the push. But what was crazy about three, seven is I remember we were there for so long. We were the first infantry unit in the desert. And then slowly the entire division built up around us. And then on the push up to Baghdad, we were the first ones across the breach, took Saffron Hill. And then the whole snake head of the division just passed us and we fell in trail. And we didn't get to the lead element until we were just about to go into Baghdad again. But, uh, what was unique is that we did.

• 7:07Jocko Willink?

  What were you, what were you at that time?

• 7:08Speaker 03

  I was a staff sergeant. I was a platoon sergeant.

• 7:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 7:11Speaker 03

  For, um, Kilo one at the time.

• 7:13Jocko Willink?

  Roger.

• 7:13Speaker 03

  And I had a, a good man, Lieutenant Dave Fleming as my platoon commander. And then I had, um, Wild Bill here. He was one of my, uh, top sawgunners for that deployment. So I got to do nine months with him.

• 7:26Jocko Willink?

  All praise the sawgunners of the world.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  Winning doubt. That's all.

• 7:31Speaker 04

  That thing can sing. I'll tell you, just take care of her. She'll sing all day for you.

• 7:36Jocko Willink?

  Indeed. So, so you were on that push up too, Bill?

• 7:40Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 7:41Jocko Willink?

  And now you guys are all back. So, so you guys get done with that deployment and you guys are doing a quick turnaround to go back again, right?

• 7:48Speaker 03

  I think one of the quickest ones, we did nine months and then our workup and everything, we only did five months back in the States. And went back again for OIF two for an additional eight months. So in a 22 period or 22 month time, we were deployed for 17 of those. It was unreal. And then I remember too, that the day that they told us we were going back for OIF two, it was on a Friday and it was just before the ball weekend.

• 8:12Jocko Willink?

  Get some.

• 8:12Speaker 03

  So then, yeah, and then the wives find out about all this and then, so they're not too mad. You're supposed to have a good time at the ball. Then a lot of them, all they can think about is, well, you just got back and they told, I was thinking that maybe they should have.

• 8:24Jocko Willink?

  Wait till Monday.

• 8:24Speaker 03

  Not told us, wait till Tuesday after the 72, you know, but.

• 8:28Jocko Willink?

  Let us have a good weekend with the ladies.

• 8:30Speaker 03

  Good old military, you know, green weenie.

• 8:34Jocko Willink?

  Check. Uh, so that's, that's the time you're going back. Hey, what do you guys remember about, um, when you're meeting Jason for the first time?

• 8:43Speaker 01

  So, if I can put this in perspectives. So Miller is talking about graduating SOI in the afternoon and then being up on goddamn, what, cardiac kill that fucking knife. So, this is a full five-day battalion-level training exercise that we're conducting. It's station training. It's being facilitated by our Sergeant Battalion 17, who was the last battalion out in OF1. But we're gonna be the first battalion back, so they've been over backwards to set up this training for us.

• 9:27Speaker 01

  And, once that Friday hits, we're on a two-week leave block for Christmas. Then, on the 2nd of January, we're gonna be at March Air Force Base for one more battalion-level training exercise, and that's the last battalion-level training we've got before we push. And I'm gonna wind up going on an advanced party on fucking Valentine's Day, right? Get some. So, it's happening, it's happening quick, and we ain't got no, we got no freaking time. So, that afternoon, I'll never forget, I'm, we're up on the hill above, this is row of

• 10:09Speaker 01

  barracks where 37 is billeted. And we're running through the stations, and First Sergeant comes up to me, he says, "Hey, sir, we're getting, uh, we're getting thirty boots from SOI. Tonight." Fucking, "Excuse me?" "Thanks for the heads up, First Sergeant." You know, and I know I'm shooting the messenger, but what the fuck?

• 10:35Speaker 01

  I'm not complaining, we're getting thirty new Marines, but Jesus Christ, can we get a little heads up? So, those Marines are gonna get plugged right into the training, right? And so I've got a decision to make about how I'm gonna plug thirty brand-new Marines into the company, which, right now, is really imbalanced. There was a huge loss of NCOs at the end of OF1. As, in of any deployment, right? You're either EASN or PCSN.

• 11:18Speaker 01

  So, we don't have an even spread of leadership ranks in the platoons. We don't have even spread of experience in the platoons. You know, I think Second Platoon had like twenty Marines in it, Third Platoon had twenty-five at the time. So, I've got a decision to make. Do I just top everyone off at thirty-something Marines, you know? And overnight, if I did that, Kilo Two overnight is gonna be twice as inexperienced as, say, Kilo Three. So, I knew there was gonna have to be some manpower shifting in order to be able to absorb

• 12:01Speaker 01

  the new blood evenly, without putting a platoon at a deficit, right? And on top of that, from my three months in country at the end of OF1, the thing that I was never happy with was Weapons Platoon. Because they're a Weapons Platoon, they're not organized as a standard rifle platoon. And in the environment that we were operating, that conventional task organization had no place. It was wholly impractical and unwieldy.

• 12:40Speaker 01

  If Weapons Platoon was tasked with doing a patrol in Karbala, they had to borrow rifles from another rifle platoon in order to go on a patrol. And on the other hand, if Kilo Two was on perimeter security...

• 13:02Speaker 01

  They're gonna have to pull Marines out of weapons platoon to man the machine guns that I've got on the freaking posts, right? So, it just, it made no sense. It was a clusterfuck. So, I knew we were heading into an unconventional operating environment. And I thought, well, looking at OF1, we needed weapons guys in the rifle squads, right? And we needed riflemen in the weapons platoon. So, why don't I just make four fucking rifle platoons? And I'm gonna put weapons specialists in every squad.

• 13:45Speaker 01

  So, if they're rolling in, in trucks, and I got a machine gun on a truck, then that squad can man their own vehicles, right? Or if they're on a damn perimeter post with a 240 golf, they don't have to pull a Marine from weapons platoon out of the rotation to man the damn gun. So, I did what was at the time, probably the most unpopular thing in the history of Kilo Company. And when the word got out that I was gonna reorganize the company, the NCOs just threw a fucking shit fit.

• 14:28Jocko Willink?

  What about up the chain of command? What did your battalion commander think of this idea?

• 14:31Speaker 01

  He didn't know.

• 14:32Jocko Willink?

  Chuck?

• 14:33Speaker 01

  It didn't even occur to me to tell him until my good friend George Schreffler, the operations officer, pulls me aside one day, says, "Hey Trent, I hear you reorganized the company." "Yeah, yes, sir." Says, "Tell the boss about that?" "Uh, no." "You think you ought to?" Um...

• 14:58Jocko Willink?

  There's only one right answer to that question.

• 15:02Speaker 01

  I'm guessing the answer to that is yes. So, I grabbed the first word and I said, "Look, I want you to, you're gonna dump the company in a fucking pile, okay?"

• 15:13Speaker 01

  At the time, with the thirty new Marines, we had about a hundred and twenty something Marines slated to deploy. That was, a hundred and twenty-two trigger pullers was all I was gonna have. So, you divide that equally amongst four rifle platoons, that gives you twelve ten-man squads. So, I want you to print out a list of every Marine in the company, Sarden on down. We had two Sardens at the time, a dozen Corporals and all the rest, Lance Corporals and below. And, you're gonna hold NFL-style draft.

• 15:55Speaker 01

  And, to make this fair, Kilo One will get first pick, first round. Kilo Four will get fourth pick, first round. For the second round, Kilo Four will get first pick. And we'll just go back and forth. You're gonna fill in squad leaders first, then fire team leaders, then weapons specialists in every fucking squad, and then fill in the rest of the fire teams.

• 16:22Speaker 01

  And, at the time, we only had two lieutenants, Dave Fleming, Kilo One, and Jay Johnson had Kilo Two. But, our Kilo Three platoon commander had rotated out, and the weapons platoon commander had fleeted up his XO, Rudy Salsio. So, Ferg was covering down as platoon commander for Kilo Four. And, he became the Kilo Four platoon commander. So now, it wasn't just Kilo One through Three, and Whiskey, he was Kilo Four.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  So, fourth pick, first round, he picked Corporal Travis Strucker, wrestler out of Iowa.

• 17:11Speaker 03

  Good call.

• 17:13Speaker 01

  Right? And then...

• 17:15Speaker 03

  He was another one of my sawgunners that I had through the OIF One, so I knew he was a solid guy, leadership-wise and everything.

• 17:22Speaker 01

  Awesome. And then, first pick, second round, Ferg picked an O331 machine gun, Corporal Dunham.

• 17:32Jocko Willink?

  And what was that based on?

• 17:34Speaker 03

  Well, during the, uh, that five months that we had, I, I had the, uh, weapons platoon. So I got to work with Jason Dunham and I got to see his leadership and the kid just had that it factor. And I think the biggest thing about him was, um, well, one of the abilities, he could laugh at himself. But the thing is, I think his leadership was so awesome because he would tailor it to each individual Marine. We all know he can have a certain style of leadership, but, um, I really liked the way he did that. And it took me, um, almost three years at the School of Infantry from Corporal to Sergeant to get that. Cause I had 50 different cycles. So I could play good cop, bad cop. I can experience, but one of the biggest things I found out, even with brand new Marines,

• 18:15Speaker 03

  if you give them a reason why, or you tell them what's going on, they work that much better for you. So if, if this is with a bunch of boots that are just out of boot camp and they perform that much better for you, then imagine what that's going to do for a bunch of Fleet Lance Corporals and Corporals. And, um, I just liked his style and I know I was taking, taking a chance because I even got laughed at by some peers because we had a company full of combat veterans and they're like, oh, whoa, you use your second pick to, to pick Jason Dunham, a guy from security forces that had no combat experience. But I'm like, that's one of my picks. That's who I want as a squad leader. And, uh, one of the great things that they did though, they, they did spread out the talent. Cause what they did is Kilo one through four, they put the senior platoon commander in Kilo one.

• 19:00Speaker 03

  And then all the way, and then, then Kilo four had the boot platoon commander, the juniors guy. And then for the staff NCOs, we did the opposite, the brand newer, the juniors one was in Kilo one. And I was the senior staff NCO. So I had Kilo four.

• 19:14Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 19:14Speaker 03

  And that was good, but also with the draft, one of the big things, um, that Kilo six, uh, forgot to mention, one of the nights we were almost going to do it at night, but we were working on godly hours, training and everything. And I'm like, you know, I need a couple of hours for this because myself and, uh, Gunny Walker took it seriously. At the time, Staff Sergeant Walker, he, uh, I went home and I basically took, I got a company roster and I put everybody into four categories from, uh, must have, great, average, hell no.

• 19:49Speaker 03

  And then I evenly did this and I put that and then even once they're in these categories, I ranked them one through thirty or whatever. So when I went in there, I was ready with all my picks. I was going right down the list and then boom, then I had like little triangles or squares for saw gunners or O three thirty ones and fifty ones. And restructuring the company at the time, it was kind of like a groundbreaking, but it was by far one of the best decisions we ever did. And me spending three hours that night, my wife was mad at me doing that, that set up the foundation for having a great platoon because who gets to pick their own platoon? And I got to experience a lot of these guys in real world combat ops and real world training.

• 20:32Speaker 03

  So I felt very fortunate and um, yeah.

• 20:36Jocko Willink?

  Yes, kind of like an unfair advantage for you to, because you knew the guys, you knew the guys better than the officers would, right?

• 20:44Speaker 03

  Right. And then also with the other platoon commanders are uh, I knew like their two top squad leaders too, so that you know, their picks would be, so I wouldn't even put those guys on my board because I anticipated them get taking their first one, two or three guys. And so it it just worked out really well for uh, myself personally, the platoon and then also for the company.

• 21:06Jocko Willink?

  And Ferg with the strategic maneuvers out there.

• 21:08Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 21:09Jocko Willink?

  You gotta watch out for those staff sergeants, they're gonna, they're gonna make it happen.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  I'll tell you, it was, it was impressive because the, the two guys who took that draft the most seriously were Ferg and Walker. And you could tell when you, when the first sergeant put the final rosters in front of me, you could tell who had put the most work into it. And it's a testament to, to this man's sense of commitment and responsibility, you know, his degree of ownership to.

• 21:43Speaker 01

  Put that much time into it and we didn't, we didn't have any goddamn time. I made this decision on a Wednesday, Thursday, right of our second to last week of training. And the, we pulled the trigger on Friday, right? So by the time the Marines went on their two week Christmas leave block, the new squad organizations had been announced. But the first time that those squad leaders stood in front of their Marines was on the 2nd of January at March Air Force Base on the first day of the last five days of battalion level training that we were gonna have before we fucking deploy.

• 22:27Speaker 01

  So we accepted a degree of risk in it, but in the end, getting that spread of talent, experience, leadership, and fresh blood, spreading it evenly across the company, I felt quite confident going into OAF2 that I could plug any rifle squad into a mission and that they'd be able to pull it off.

• 22:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you kind of ripped the Band-Aid off just like, hey, we're just gonna do this. We gotta do it.

• 22:57Speaker 01

  We got no choice.

• 22:58Jocko Willink?

  Otherwise you wait till in country and all of a sudden you're looking around going, damn, this isn't working the way it's supposed to work and I need to start moving people around. And that's infinitely worse than just getting it done. So, so Bill and Kelly, you guys, were you guys immediately in Jason's squad? Is that how that worked?

• 23:15Speaker 02

  When I first arrived, I was in first platoon for the first battalion ops that lasted five days before Christmas leave. So no, I, I'd seen him, but I didn't know who he was. I didn't know who Bill was. I was, I only knew the guys I showed up with.

• 23:34Jocko Willink?

  You're keeping your mouth shut and your ears open.

• 23:36Speaker 02

  I was really good at keeping my mouth shut and my ears open, do what you're told. So I got, I mean, I got put in charge of a couple of the other boots to make sure they were squared away when I got there. My most memorable memory actually of when we first showed up is I met First Sergeant Templeton at the time. And at the time, Captain Gibson comes over and addresses us, and I just remember, it's the weirdest memory. He stood with the sun directly eyes back. I had no fucking idea what he looked like. At all. I couldn't, I couldn't see him. I couldn't see features. I couldn't see anything, but if you ever met this man, when he talks, you listen. And I just remember like the presence he had. I was like, I'll go to war with this guy. I like this guy.

• 24:18Jocko Willink?

  And what'd you think about the reorg bill?

• 24:22Speaker 01

  Be honest.

• 24:25Speaker 04

  I think, I think Carvajal and I were, we had choice words for ourselves that we kept to ourselves. But in the end, entrusted Staff Sergeant Ferguson, we were.

• 24:38Speaker 03

  No, and I can elaborate on that too, because if you think you got these two guys that have been through nine months, and they know the drill, and then they got this brand new security force corporal coming in. And I, I saw there's some animosity, and obviously if they were senior to him, then these guys by all right would have had that. But Jason had the rank and everything, and I saw the leadership, so I had to take that chance. And it was weird to see the bond because the two fire team leaders, like I said, they were a little butthurt. A little bit about that. But then the way Jason eventually won them over and everything is just his smile is leadership. He just did that to people.

• 25:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's a tough spot to get put into. You're, you got no combat experience, you're rolling in here, and you're gonna start taking over for guys that do have combat experience, that certainly think that they. Deserve that role. That's a, that's a tough one.

• 25:29Speaker 02

  One of the things that didn't got brought up about the reorganization, like from a brand new boot who doesn't know anything. As soon as the reorganization happened, one of the side effects was I learned how to shoot machine guns because I was surrounded by a couple of machine gunners. I learned about mortars. I learned about demo. You know, by the time I deployed, I had had a Dunham had grilled me so hard about machine guns, I could clear and operate a two forty. I understood like the basics to shooting a fifty cal if I had to in a pinch, you know, like I, I had more knowledge than I was trained for at the school of infantry. So like that reorganization really started to crossbreed us in everything. And it, I wasn't just no three eleven, I was more of an O three everything because I could function in more than one situation with one weapon.

• 26:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, that's, that's good across the board. So, uh, so you guys did that reorg January?

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Um, right after leave. Well, it before. We pulled the trigger on it the, the day before they went on two weeks of leave.

• 26:33Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 26:33Speaker 01

  For Christmas.

• 26:34Jocko Willink?

  For Christmas. Got it.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  The first time those squads stood, the new squad stood together was on day one of training on second of January.

• 26:42Jocko Willink?

  Got it. And then you guys come back. When you got, when you guys come back, you said you'd do one more battalion, big battalion exercise in January?

• 26:51Speaker 01

  That was it. Second, second through the sixth. Yeah.

• 26:54Jocko Willink?

  And then, and then just it's loadout time because you guys are deploying in February. Andy, did you guys know where you were going on deployment to?

• 27:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 27:05Jocko Willink?

  What was the, uh, what was the kind of thoughts heading out there? How much did you guys know about it?

• 27:12Speaker 01

  We started.

• 27:13Jocko Willink?

  Headed out to Alkine. That's where, that's where you're getting told. You're going out to Alkine.

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Yeah. Uh, the battalion was already leaning into a George Schreffler was the operations officer. He'd had Lima company during the march up and he's hands down the most comprehensively proficient, professional Marine I've ever been honored to serve with. And so he was getting as much intel as he could from the cavalry squadron that we were turning over with, first to the third ACR was up in Alkine. By the time we got there, they'd been in country for eleven freaking months. And they were operating, um,

• 27:53Speaker 01

  Out of their, they had a base up on the Syrian border at Yuseba, and then their cavalry headquarters was at the train station in Al-Kaim, which was about, I don't know, 28 miles southeast of the border post at Yuseba. So, we knew that things were going to hell in a handbasket up there, and across Iraq as a whole, if you were listening to news reports, I'd listen to NPR every morning coming in, and if you were paying attention, you knew that this was going to be a Wild West, and it wasn't going to be the same kind of environment that

• 28:37Speaker 01

  we had experienced at the end of the push-up, you know, in the last three months of OF-1. And it really hit me one day while I was coming in, listening to NPR news, and an Army rifle company commander had been killed that week. And to hear that on the radio, knowing that a rifle company commander is killed, that you know that this is going to be a different fucking show altogether.

• 29:06Jocko Willink?

  What's your deployment, the actual logistics of the deployment, you guys are flying over?

• 29:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so, we flew in, I went ahead of the battalion main body, our company gunny, Elia Fontecchio, was killed on the 4th of August. He and I went over with the rest of the other company commanders and company gunnies to get things ready. So, we went into Al-Kaim, we were there probably a week, I think, before the battalion's main body started echeloning in. Flew him into Kuwait and then trucked all the way up from Kuwait. So these guys, these guys were pretty tired by the time they got up there.

• 29:57Speaker 01

  So we fell in on the train station. We knew that Kilo was going to be taken over for, was it Fox Troop? I think. I believe so. Yeah, they had, their air responsibility was roughly the same as the one we were taking over, which was Karabla and Sada, which were sprawling settlements east of the border town of Huseba. So we went in and started a turnover with that cavalry troop.

• 30:36Speaker 01

  And they ran us through some basic things like, just some basic patrolling through the zone, doing vehicle searches, how to cordon off a road, conduct vehicle searches, hasty house searches, whatever. And in the process of that turnover, I had to give up two platoons, and I knew that was coming. I had four rifle platoons, right, that I'd just organized for this fight, and then I was told that I was giving up two of them to the battalion main effort, which was Lima

• 31:20Speaker 01

  Company in Huseba. So that was the battalion main effort. So I gave him my best platoon commander, Dave Fleming, Kilo One. And then to make it equal, I just said, alright, Kilo One's going, then I'll send Kilo Four to go with him, which gave me...

• 31:43Speaker 01

  Kilo two and Kilo three.

• 31:47Speaker 01

  During that turnover.

• 31:49Jocko Willink?

  How long were they gonna be, um, you know, take on to this other, to this other company?

• 31:56Speaker 01

  Ten Colonel Lopez promised that I could have Kilo four back after a month. But Rick Gannon in Lima company, he needed as much ass as possible that that first month just to to get their feet wet and get established.

• 32:10Jocko Willink?

  And this was because they were gonna be rolling in and and trying to, this is in in Huseba?

• 32:15Speaker 01

  In Huseba, and and so Huseba was the center of gravity for the battalion AO, right? So, and and it's the border crossing point with Syria, so they were determined to be the the battalion main effort, and so he just loaded him with as much manpower as possible in order to make the transition as seamless as possible when when we took over the AO from the army, because, you know, the, anytime there's a unit turnover in country, the moose fucking know, right? And and you're gonna get tested.

• 32:52Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 32:52Speaker 01

  And so, Colonel knew that going into it, so he wanted to make sure that that Lima had as much ass as possible, so they could go in as heavy as possible to establish a strong presence and get things going without getting bloody too bad. And so for the first month, the, uh, in Huseba, they ran platoon-sized patrols. They didn't run squad patrols. The lightest unit that ever stepped into zone was a fucking platoon. Meanwhile, in my zone, I, I had fucking, uh, six squads to hold, hold down the holy hill with, and so we were rolling in squad-sized patrols from the outset.

• 33:37Jocko Willink?

  So what were some of these patrols, Ferg, that you guys were going in? What were you guys doing?

• 33:41Speaker 03

  A lot of it was just getting familiar with the area and then because we did have platoons, we would do the satellite patrolling where even though we're all going the same direction, we maybe have one squad on this street, the other squad on this street still keeping visual eye to eye and having phase lines and checking in. And other than that, we're just getting to know the AO. And I remember that it was, it was quiet for a while because we just relieved an army mechanized unit and now you got Marines boots on the ground. So you could tell like insurgents were taken back a little bit and, and nothing happened for a few days and then all of a sudden it just started and just the kinetics just kept flowing and it was like cat and mouse games back and forth.

• 34:22Jocko Willink?

  Now, we're talking early 04, so one thing that's interesting is there were IEDs, but they weren't as bad as they got. I mean, they weren't as bad as they got in 05, in 06, in 07. I mean, they, they just got worse and worse. So at this time, you're, I mean, obviously, like I said, I'm not saying there wasn't any IEDs, but was that, would you, would you consider rolling out into town? Your main threat was IEDs or was it, you know, a friend or, or just small arms fire?

• 34:51Speaker 03

  I would say it's a little bit of both, but you're absolutely right. Um, some of them were buried too deep or backwards. I know on the Battle of the 17th, myself and Carbehall, there was one between us and one of, somebody kicked the blasting cap out and all we heard was a little small pop and like one of those pucker factors, but yeah. In the middle of a, a battalion attack to clear the town.

• 35:16Jocko Willink?

  And so you guys are rolling in, how often, what's your op tempo like?

• 35:20Speaker 03

  Uh, I don't, you want to take that one, Bill?

• 35:23Speaker 04

  Our op tempo?

• 35:24Speaker 03

  Mm-hmm.

• 35:24Jocko Willink?

  Meaning like how often were you guys doing ops?

• 35:33Speaker 03

  We were doing them.

• 35:34Speaker 02

  It was about two a day, six hours each.

• 35:37Speaker 04

  It was about a day in the night patrol.

• 35:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, each patrol is about six hours because we'd go from, we'd go through the whole town and back.

• 35:44Speaker 03

  Well, another thing that was crazy is you, you know, you have a set mission and then something would happen. You would have to secure a vehicle that got hit by an IED. Or you'd have, you'd get this new Frago to go to this house that you heard could have been a torture chamber or had insurgents. So I remember going out there and then um, a four hour patrol would turn into an eight hour patrol. And I remember at the time I was just 28, but I remember my back was killing me because I had extra large sappy plates. And you're walking all the time. And later on, we learned that from the uh, the warfighting lab came out when we were attached back to Kilo. They came and weighed us. And I remember I was about 225 at the time, but me and my first sergeant were one of those two only Marines that were over 300 pounds

• 36:28Speaker 03

  with full combat frags and all that stuff. And we'd laugh about it because at the time, you know, some of those anti-tank mines, you just need 300 pounds of pressure. So I'm like, damn. Me and first sergeant.

• 36:38Speaker 02

  You passed that threshold.

• 36:40Speaker 03

  If Sig stepped on it, he'd be good. He could jump up and down on that, but me and Templeton, we had to worry about it.

• 36:47Speaker 02

  Go ahead.

• 36:48Speaker 01

  To your question about the evolution of the ID. It was, it was fascinating to come in there and see that the, the ID threat that first the third was dealing with.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  82 mortar rounds, 152 artillery shells, uh, all usually primed with deck cord. This uh, Soviet style red deck cord. And so when the Moos were first employees, they didn't know enough to bury the fucking deck cord. So they'd be rolling into town and they'd see this string of red, right? Coming out of the desert, terminating at the roadside. They're like, oh gee, what, what do you know? Maybe we shouldn't drive over there. But uh, you know, by the time we left, it had already evolved into command debt via uh, not cell phones, but cordless phones, kind of cordless phone you'd have in your house, right? VTAC or whatever.

• 37:51Speaker 01

  But when we came in there, the, the Moos were used to dealing with an armored threat. And the thing that scared the soldiers the most from the cavalry was a 62 millimeter Chinese rocket, right? This thing had showed up in zone several months earlier and the Mooges were affixing these things to walls. They would, they would mortar in around this thing. So all you could see is a circle, right? And they'd set it up about base of the turret height and wait for a vehicle to roll by.

• 38:33Speaker 01

  And they were poking holes in main battle tanks with these things. In one side and outside the other of a Bradley fighting vehicle. So the Army were scared shitless of these things. And I remember they put, had a display in the makeshift chow hall there in the battalion CP of ID, different types of IDs that they, they had encountered during their tour, which was really instructive for us because Marines got to get eyes on them, right? So that one of those was a Chinese rocket. And we're like, holy fucking Jesus. You know, we're rolling out Humvees. And the day, the day of the relief in place, when it was finally effective and First and

• 39:14Speaker 01

  Third was rolling out, I climbed up onto the Bradley from the Fox Troop Commander, who was my counterpart during the turnover, to shake his hand and thank him for the turnover. He looks behind me at our row of Humvees, which were soft skin Humvees. We had four up armored that the First and the Third's organic self-propelled battery had used. They turned in their self-propelled howitzers for Humvees once they went into the end of OF1. And thank God they gave us four of them, right? We spread them out amongst the battalion. So four came to kilo.

• 39:58Speaker 01

  And the, the soft skin Humvees, my Marines were in the process of strapping used Army road wheels that they had scavenged from the fucking scrap heap and strapping those with cargo straps to the side of our Humvees so we had some armor.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  And he looks at that and he looks at me and he says, "I don't know how you're gonna fucking do it." "So that's how we roll. You got no choice, right?"

• 40:28Speaker 01

  And within a few weeks, a Chinese rocket disappeared. Because it needed.

• 40:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 40:37Speaker 01

  That 152-82 mortar round, it'd do just fine. And they had their hands full of anti-tank mines.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  And they put those to good effect. They learned to plant them upside down. So you could get a rear roll strike on a Humvee instead of a front roll strike. Because they know if you get a front roll strike on a Humvee with a mine, it's gonna kill the vehicle, right? But, most likely, you know, you got guys may get a broken foot or a broken leg. But if you get a rear roll strike,

• 41:14Speaker 01

  you're gonna kill at least one marine and probably two.

• 41:18Speaker 01

  So they figured that shit out. And on the last day of our turnover with Charlie Company 17, First Sergeant Templeton stepped on one of those damn things. Left his size 14 fucking footprint right in the middle of it.

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Thank God, it was planted upside down, it had been there awhile. But this Lance Corporal engineer comes up, yanks his helmet off, gets down there face first with this fucking anti-tank mine, breaks out his K-bar, starts unearthing it. And he says, "I'll be damned." I said, "What do you got?" I said, "Don't tell me." "It's upside down, right?" He goes, "This thing's fucking upside down." Lieutenant Justin Engelhardt, Cat Red, figured that out about five months into the deployment.

• 42:11Jocko Willink?

  Well, did you guys, did you guys prefer to be in vehicles or on foot?

• 42:17Speaker 02

  Foot, definitely on foot.

• 42:19Speaker 03

  Well, we, we had a unique situation because we were attached to the main effort Lima Company for a while. So we were used to patrolling on foot and then we had great dispersion and stuff. And then going back to the vehicles, it took a while because yeah, we just wasn't comfortable.

• 42:35Jocko Willink?

  I mean, in Ramadi, we, uh, we didn't like beating vehicles.

• 42:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 42:40Jocko Willink?

  I mean, cause you just don't have any control, you know? I mean, I was a damn vehicle commander and I didn't feel like I had any control because you just can't see what's happening fast enough. You can't see an IED fast enough, whatever. Uh, and so I always felt, and we pretty much did everything we could to take the vehicles to where we needed to take them to and then get out of those things and walk. Was that the same thing you guys were feeling?

• 43:03Speaker 04

  Yeah, we, we'd get dropped off. We could get, we'd get dropped off and they'd go and all right, well, they'd go back and, uh, uh, support QRF or, or whatever, wait, or wait to go get us or they'd go check out another spot over on the other side of town while we're satellite to them.

• 43:24Jocko Willink?

  Got it. What'd you like better though, Bill? Did you like better sitting in the Humvee? Waiting to suck start an IED? That's what I always felt like.

• 43:31Speaker 02

  Well, and the thing you gotta, for us, we weren't rolling in a regular Ford or a Humvee. We were in highbacks. So in the back of the Humvee, there was six of us, seven? Crammed in there, you know, like tuna and you're just, you can't drive slow because then you're an easy target. So you drive fast and you're, what can you identify going forty-five, fifty, fast enough to stop to not hit it. And so I always preferred to be on the ground. It felt like I had more control.

• 43:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 43:58Speaker 01

  So we came up with a method of employment that involved what I came to call split sections. So we'd have two gun trucks.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Escorting two highbacks, right? So you'd put an up armored up front because it had armor if you were going to hit an ID. And then two damn highbacks and one rifle squad, which was organized into two fire teams. Because we didn't have large enough squads to have three fire teams, right? So you'd put a fire team in each Vic. And by the time we were in country long enough, we figured out you'd take your third squad and those guys are going to man the vehicle itself. They'll drive it, they'll vehicle command it, and they'll gun it. We got two 40s eventually mounted on the tops of these things.

• 44:50Speaker 01

  And then that left you with two full dismounted rifle fire teams, one in each truck, right? And then you had another gun truck in trail. So you get to where you're going, the fucking squad dismounts, and then those four trucks could satellite around the dismounts to keep the enemy guessing while these guys did their work.

• 45:18Jocko Willink?

  What was the, how long did it take for you guys to take casualties rolling in there? Do you remember?

• 45:28Speaker 01

  Battalion's first casualties were on St. Patty's Day, if I recall.

• 45:35Jocko Willink?

  So you guys got there in February and St. Patty's Day is what, end of March? Middle of March, end of March?

• 45:41Speaker 01

  The actual effective transfer of authority day, I think, was the damn, I think the first week of March, maybe the same. It wasn't long before we took our first casualties. Cat Red took an ID up at checkpoint 51 in my zone. Marines were still rolling around with windows down. Marine took a hit to the elbow. Another Marine took shrapnel through the window into the back of his leg, the gunner did.

• 46:17Speaker 01

  And then it was either the same day or right after that, that Potentik's first KIA, two killed in a rear role mine strike in the HK triangle, which was the western end of Kilo's zone, right up against the Wadi that delineated the eastern edge of Huseba and Lehman Company Zone. So the HK was this sort of no man's land, right, between mine and Kilo or Lehman's zone, but it belonged to me. But at the end of the day, at the end of that deployment, the vast majority of the battalion's casualties had occurred in the HK.

• 47:07Jocko Willink?

  Kelly, how old are you at this point?

• 47:10Speaker 02

  I turned 21 on April 2nd.

• 47:14Jocko Willink?

  So like a couple, so in country, you turned 21?

• 47:20Speaker 02

  I got pulled out of my, I got pulled out of my bed by a head first to my sleeping bag and I was given my 21 happy birthdays.

• 47:30Jocko Willink?

  And what are you thinking at this point? Now you, how much did it change your perception, perception and perspective when all of a sudden you're, you know that the battalion has taken casualties?

• 47:46Speaker 02

  I came from a military family. I mean, I got, my grandpa was in World War II in the Navy. My dad and my uncle were in Vietnam, a cousin in Desert Storm, and then I have law enforcement everywhere. So I grew up with an understanding of service and when I joined the Marines, we were already in country, casualties were happening and my recruiter made no bones about it when I told him I wanted to be in the infantry. He's like, you do know you're going to deploy? I was like, yeah, I'm well aware. I didn't go in blind. You know, there's some guys that they joined the Marines and they're like,

• 48:28Speaker 02

  I don't want to go to Iraq. I'm like, why the fuck did you join? Watch the news, pick up a newspaper. So I knew, I knew what I was getting myself into it. And that never prepares you for it. But luckily I was surrounded by such good leadership. You know, I was only for four years. I had three different command sets. Um, and my first one was of the highest quality, literally. And I never, I always felt oddly taken care of and at ease through it all because I believed in the guys that were above me. It made it easier if, in a really weird sense, I always felt calm. I never went out nervous.

• 49:10Speaker 02

  Um, the brotherhood of the Marines. It's like you're going out and you know that every single guy you're going out is going to do everything in their power to make sure you make it home and make it back. Um, and the confidence and calm, you know, I, I never felt uneasy. I was never scared. I, I was just there to do a job.

• 49:31Speaker 04

  Espi de corps.

• 49:32Speaker 02

  Exactly. Yes. Thank you, Bill.

• 49:34Jocko Willink?

  How old were you at this point, Bill?

• 49:38Speaker 04

  Twenty-two.

• 49:39Jocko Willink?

  Twenty-two. Get some. You know, talking to a lot of these guys that I've brought on that were going into the most horrible situations. Whether it was Tarawa, Guadalcanal, wherever. You know, there's a, there's something that the young man has. Which I think we all know, which is it's going to happen to someone else. Like, hey, people are going to get hurt. People are going to get wounded. People are going to get killed. Not going to be me. And, and I was just telling you guys about Dean Ladd, who I just had on the podcast. Who is Guadalcanal, Tarawa, Saipan, and Tinian. And he's never even thought about, you know, he was like, oh yeah, I'm sure some, we're going to take casualties as we cross the beach to Guadalcanal.

• 50:20Jocko Willink?

  And I'll try and help those other guys as much as I can because it's not happening to me. So, and then, and then I know you guys know this too. I had guys, and I'm sure you guys knew guys, that thought they were the one that was absolutely gonna be the one that gets hit, like that was in their mind, and God bless them. Cause I don't know how they did it day after day, but they'd go, yeah, you know, it was the guy that was going, "I got a bad feeling about this one, man. I got a bad feeling." Hey, you're gonna be okay, bro. It's gonna be alright. They always strapped it on and it got their helmet back on, you know? But to me, it seemed like people fell into those camps for the most part, and I'm sure, you know, occasionally someone goes, "You know, if we're taking casualties, I could be one of them."

• 51:03Jocko Willink?

  But for the most part, I think people are either, "Hey, probably gonna happen to someone else." Or, "It's gonna happen to me." So, I don't know, that's kinda what I see.

• 51:13Speaker 03

  Jaco, I think you're like 100% right, and I've been fortunate or unfortunate to see combat in my early twenties with Somalia, at 28 in Iraq, and then 38 in Afghanistan. And I think as a young twenties, you feel invincible, and you don't think it's gonna happen to you, or you just operate, and you're there, you wanna be the one to kick the door in, you wanna be then clear the room. And then at 28, I started leading more Marines, and I become, you understand your mortality, and what we're doing is not normal, and, you know, firing stuff and explosions. And then when I was a company first sergeant for 21, then I just wanted to be that father figure,

• 51:55Speaker 03

  and take care of them all. And all these young Marines, they just wanna see that grizzly, that combat. And then, you know, but you know it's not what it's cracked up to be, and that grizzly's powerful and can fight back.

• 52:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I definitely, from my perspective, it was always, "Hey, I'm not worried about me, I'm worried about my guys." You know, and, and I was always in a leadership position, cause I was a platoon commander, I was a tasking commander. So for me, it was always, "I'm worried about my guys," you know?

• 52:20Speaker 02

  Well, I can, Ferg's absolutely right. I mean, I was 21, I was on the, "I never thought it was gonna be me" bandwagon. And I mean, that's why I frequently ran point. I was like, "I wanna be the first one, I wanna be in the lead, I'm gonna be checked for IDs. Something happens, it's gonna shoot at me, I know how fast I am, I can get behind a wall." You know, I never, ever, it never crossed my mind. I didn't even, in a really weird way, even with all the casualties that happened, I didn't think it was an option.

• 52:50Speaker 01

  I think that, at least from my experience, but I got this sense from other Marines, as casualties started ramping up, Lima was taking the vast majority of the brunt. And I was probably technically incorrect in that statement about the HK casualties. There had to have been more in Husebou, probably. But anyway, as they started happening on a regular basis, at least for me, it was no longer a question of if, it was just a question of when. So I eventually just decided, well, it's gonna happen, right?

• 53:29Speaker 01

  I mean, Rick Gannon, Lima Company Commander, and four of the Marines killed in the opening stages of the Battle for Husebou on the 17th, three days after Dunham was hit. You know, Company Commander gone, just like that. So it wasn't a question of if it was gonna happen. So, at least for me, I just resolved that it was gonna happen. So once I accepted that, it was easier to operate, because then you didn't have that uncertainty about whether or not it would happen. So it was just like, well, when it comes, it comes, there's nothing I can fucking do about it, so it's just time to get this thing done.

• 54:10Speaker 01

  And I think there's, I would say to a large degree, an acceptance amongst the Marines, because we didn't pull back. Because one day, we didn't fucking operate in that seven-month deployment. One day, and that was after we lost three Marines on the damn 5th of July. It's the one day we did not send a patrol into zone.

• 54:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I know, I know for us certainly rolling into Ramadi in 2006. You know, there was, there was memorial services going on every other day, every two days for soldiers and Marines that were getting killed. I mean, it was, it was that. And so, much like you're talking about, I knew every time we rolled out the gate, or every time my guys rolled out the gate, there's a decent chance that something bad was gonna happen. And you, well, all you can do is do everything you can to mitigate that risk. But there's no possible way to mitigate all the risk. That just doesn't happen.

• 55:22Jocko Willink?

  Even, even if you say, you know what, we're gonna stay in camp, there, you're gonna get mortared. So, my attitude was default aggressive. We're gonna go and take the fight to the enemy. And that was certainly the attitude of the troops that were in Ramadi was, we're not gonna sit back and wait for it. We're gonna take the fight to the enemy. And, and I believe that's the best thing you can do.

• 55:42Speaker 01

  You have to, I think. And the most inspiring thing to me

• 55:50Speaker 01

  was watching these Marines day in and day out, every fucking day, despite the danger, despite the casualties, despite what at times I'm sure seemed like a ridiculous mission. Despite all of that, the cold resolve to do the job and keep each other safe in the process

• 56:17Speaker 01

  was, it was humbling.

• 56:21Speaker 01

  American sons out there devoid of any political context.

• 56:29Speaker 01

  What they were doing, they were doing for each other.

• 56:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. It's also interesting to think about when you say American sons. Look, Americans come from all different kinds of backgrounds, but the fact of the matter is, when you live in America, you are a privileged human being. Like, you have opportunity. Hey, even if you're...

• 56:52Jocko Willink?

  The most unmotivated person in America, you still can live a pretty decent life. When you compare it to that of a grunt overseas, living in some outstation somewhere off of MREs and crappy bottled water, shitting in a damn outhouse, burning, I mean, just the whole nine yards. So, when, when these, you know, it's not like, hey, people joined the military. Maybe there's that idea, hey, I'm trying to get out of my hometown, which I know I certainly did. Hey, I want to get out of my hometown. I want to go somewhere. I want to be in the world. But you're signing up to, to put all that American privilege on hold.

• 57:34Jocko Willink?

  You're gonna put it on hold and you're gonna go out there and you're gonna live in horrible situations with the threat of being wounded and killed, and that's the way it is. And, and so, yeah, when you see that, and when you see those service members rolling out like that, day after day after day, and that's, you know, I've talked about this in Ramadi. You, you might remember this, Kelly, but they had the, uh, the vehicle graveyard, the vehicle graveyard of all these blown up vehicles was on the road that headed to the main gate. So, when you were driving to go out into town, you were driving past destroyed, not just destroyed Humvees.

• 58:17Speaker 02

  Seven ton.

• 58:18Jocko Willink?

  Seven tons, um, tanks that they dragged back in. So, that was your, that was your little send off every time you left the gate at Camp Ramadi. Oh, there's 75 or 100 vehicles that have been destroyed and you know that each one of those meant some level of casualties.

• 58:35Speaker 02

  Well, and you know, it got real because there was the two EOD vehicles that were in the graveyard that had the V barrels.

• 58:40Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 58:41Speaker 02

  Bearcats, I think they're called.

• 58:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, those, those big mine resistant vehicles, they were, they blew one of those things in half. So, yeah, that's, uh, that's what you're signing up for. And yet, Americans sign up for it voluntarily every single day. And then they go out there and do the work. What was morale overall? Strong. That's what I'm hearing. Strong.

• 59:13Speaker 01

  It was resolved.

• 59:17Speaker 01

  In my assessment, it was just fucking resolved. We're in this, we're not getting out of it, right? We got a fucking job to do. We're gonna get it done. We're not gonna let up. The enemy wants us to fucking take a break. They want us to feel sorry for ourselves. Turn our fucking backs for a minute. And we're not gonna fucking give it to them. Period. They will not win.

• 59:41Speaker 02

  Well,

• 59:43Speaker 02

  I don't know. We'll call this a boots perspective, but a really weird thing happens. Bad shit starts to happen. You go out on patrol, you get shot at. An IED goes off, doesn't take you out. There was one situation where an RPG hit the vehicle, but the guy didn't arm it. What do you do when you get back to base? You and your buddies, you sit around? And you fucking laugh about it. It's a joke. And you laugh about it. And I've told that to a lot of people and people look at you like you're crazy, but the reality to it is, you do that because by making it a joke, it's not serious. And now you can go out and do it again tomorrow.

• 1:00:18Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. We actually have video of one of my small elements was out in Ramadi, got into a big gunfight. They were with some Iraqi soldiers. One Iraqi soldier got wounded, one Iraqi soldier got killed, got called in the tanks, the tanks went in, escorted them, put down fire, evacuated, the whole nine yards. As they're patrolling back in, one of the Overwatch, the SEAL Overwatch positions was videoing them. And as they're coming in like World War II style in a column in between two tanks. And they're foot patrolling back and the video, the video cameras are tracking them. And you can hear the platoon chief, Tony Affrati, looks up at the camera and yells, "Everything's a big joke."

• 1:01:03Jocko Willink?

  That's how, so to your sentiment exactly, yes. If you take everything too seriously, you're gonna go crazy. So there's, that's another thing that can't be stopped. The American resolve can't be stopped and the American sense of humor can't be stopped.

• 1:01:19Jocko Willink?

  No doubt about it.

• 1:01:22Jocko Willink?

  All right, let's roll into, let's roll into April 14th. So, April 14th, this is pretty much, what are we dealing with? Another day at the races for you guys is what you're looking at. Nothing abnormal. It seems like pretty standard type of operations that you guys were doing at the time?

• 1:01:42Speaker 03

  Yes, the only difference is that, because now we were back with our Kilo company proper. So we're back with six and the way we looked at it is instead of walking outside the gate to work, we get a ride to work and then we do our patrols. But yeah, that's the only thing that was different that day.

• 1:01:57Speaker 01

  And squad size, vice platoon size.

• 1:02:00Speaker 03

  What you were saying, yeah, yes.

• 1:02:02Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so now you, now you got into?

• 1:02:05Speaker 01

  Well, Kilo, in our zone, we didn't have enough ass to roll out in a platoon. Because I only had two rifle platoons, right? So for the first six weeks, I was pumping out at least a patrol a day. For the first four weeks, we ran four patrols a day with six squads. And they, they were smoked. Every Marine in the, in the company was sick. It was like a freaking sick ward in that warehouse. It, it was heartbreaking at night to listen to all those Marines coughing and hacking and not fucking sleeping and knowing that I was going to send them out on the next fucking patrol, regardless of what state they were in.

• 1:02:49Speaker 01

  So, we had no choice but to roll in squad size patrols. So, Kilo IV actually got a bit of a break in coming out of Huseva because now the op tempo may be the same, but now instead of having to send the whole damn platoon out, now, you know, you could rotate it and do one squad at a time. So, the battalion had just...

• 1:03:15Speaker 01

  Graduated the first class of Iraqi policemen from this police academy that Ten Colonel Lopez thought up. We had an attached MP platoon and he understood that policing by the Iraqis was the key to the whole thing, right?

• 1:03:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's some impressive foresight right there. Because I was thinking about that when I was reading this book. This idea of the Iraqi police became a national program in 2006. Before that, it had become something called, it was something called Desert Protector, which was sort of the same thing, like we're gonna get homegrown kids, young men, to help police. And a lot of that, from what I've been told, came from Al-Kaim, when the push happened through Al-Kaim, but that was in 2005, that the big push happened in Al-Kaim was Operation Matador. And those Marines got, civilians that came up and said, hey, there's bad guys over there, hey, there's bad guys over there. And the idea was, okay, let's get, let's hire those people. So we're talking

• 1:04:20Jocko Willink?

  now 2004, and your battalion commander, Colonel Lopez, was already in the game thinking that way. That's impressive foresight right there. That's outstanding.

• 1:04:30Speaker 01

  And that guy had incredible sense of ownership. He never waited for permission to do anything. He's just like, you know, okay, we need a fucking police academy, we're gonna have one. And so, his MPs knocked that shit out. They did a three-week course. And at the end of the course, Colonel calls me in and he says, hey, Captain Gibson, tomorrow we're going in zone. I'm gonna pay the first two weeks of pay for these policemen. I'm gonna turn that over to the police chief. We've got 33 police recruits that we just graduated, and I'm giving them all to the Karabala police. It wasn't up to the Iraqi police chiefs to determine where their manpower was going. Colonel Lopez decided, they're

• 1:05:13Speaker 01

  going to Karabala. So, Kilo, you got them. And what I want you to do, to reinforce the skills they just learned in this police academy, you're gonna conduct around-the-clock patrolling with these guys for a four-day period to show the people of Karabala, Marines and police working side by side, and Iraqis doing their job.

• 1:05:34Jocko Willink?

  Man, this is incredible foresight from Colonel Lopez, for sure. That's brilliant.

• 1:05:41Speaker 01

  So, he said, "I, we're going in zone and I'll meet you in there," right? So, at the same time, I need you to identify a prospective location for a company patrol base to carry this patrolling operation out of, so...

• 1:05:58Jocko Willink?

  Was that gonna be a permanent base? Like, "Hey, we're looking for somewhere..."

• 1:06:01Speaker 01

  Four days.

• 1:06:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay, okay. But you were looking for something for four days?

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  Yeah. General Mattis at the time forbade the permanent establishment of anything below the size of a battalion in zone, right? So, he says, "You're taking the company in, four days straight, you patrol." Got it. So I came back and I grabbed Bull, Lieutenant Robinson, Kilo Four, since they were on the rotation now, and I said, "Hey, I need a fucking squad to get me into zone tomorrow. And, by the way, I'm also picking you because during this patrolling operation, Kilo Four is gonna be perimeter security for the patrol base. So I need you guys to get eyes on this water shooting plant and confirm for me whether

• 1:06:47Speaker 01

  or not it's gonna answer the mail for us from a security standpoint."

• 1:06:51Jocko Willink?

  So for you guys, this was like a recon to find out where you could establish this four-day fire base, and then you were gonna conduct patrols out of there for four days with the Iraqi police?

• 1:07:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it was right, situated right behind the police station, so it made perfect sense. Because we're gonna, I grabbed Kilo Two, they were gonna be the patrol platoon, they would have a squad-sized patrol around the fucking clock with policemen embedded in it. Kilo Three, you're gonna be local security patrols for ninety-six hours straight, outside the perimeter, to keep the enemy off our fucking backs. And Kilo Four, you've got the perimeter security for the patrol base itself.

• 1:07:38Jocko Willink?

  Alright, so you guys roll in. Did you roll in with the Colonel's, with his convoy?

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  Negative. We met his patrol onsite at the police station.

• 1:07:49Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you, who showed up first? Do you guys?

• 1:07:52Speaker 01

  No, Colonel Lopez was there.

• 1:07:53Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so Colonel Lopez was there. They're doing their meet and greet. He's paying people. He's shaking hands and establishing that, and then you guys roll in there afterwards. Meet with him, and now you're doing your assessment.

• 1:08:08Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:08:11Jocko Willink?

  And you have, who's the element that's with you right now, with just you? Who is it? Is it?

• 1:08:17Speaker 01

  Kilo 42.

• 1:08:18Jocko Willink?

  So it's Kilo 42. That's who you have. They were your escort going in there, basically.

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  Correct. So, in addition to Dunham's squad proper, we had attachments, right? Ferg being one of them, because he was gonna be the platoon sergeant in charge of perimeter security. So he wanted fucking eyes on.

• 1:08:36Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:08:36Speaker 01

  To get a good idea of exactly what he was gonna need to pull off a perimeter security plan, right? And then we had Stessart Biato, right? From the S3. Yep. We also had the paymaster for the battalion was brought along, because he was the one turning over the cash. For sure. And we had, we brought along. We had Sergeant Reynolds. One or two snipers, yep. Because as part of the defensive plan, I was also gonna put in sniper hides.

• 1:09:11Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:09:12Speaker 01

  Because I wanted, I wanted no interference whatsoever with this patrolling operation. And based on the feedback we had gotten from First to the Third, they'd gone in a couple times to try and establish patrol bases. And every time, they weren't in there a couple hours before they were taking mortars, right? Turns out, at the end of the day, I think they didn't have strong enough.

• 1:09:40Speaker 01

  Local security, right? I think their sense, inherent sense of protection that came with an armored unit. They, I think they took some things for granted that it, that a regular rifle company wasn't taken for granted.

• 1:09:58Jocko Willink?

  You get a little bit detached when you're inside armor, right? There's a, there's a connection missing between you and the local populace if you're not careful about it.

• 1:10:04Speaker 01

  Right. And a certain sense of invincibility, I think.

• 1:10:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, yeah, for sure. For sure. The Abrams main battle tank is a, is a badass machine. It can, it can give anyone a sense of invincibility until, of course, they hit IEDs that can take them out. So you guys get there and now you're, you know, the Colonel's doing his kind of thing and then at, at some point he's gonna leave, or he leaves, and you guys are now doing a deeper assessment. You're checking things out, probably looking where you're gonna set up sniper over watches and whatnot.

• 1:10:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we had, we had transitioned over to the treatment plant by then and battalion commander's patrol continued to Husaber, per his plan, to visit the new Iraqi police station and then continue on to Lima.

• 1:10:59Jocko Willink?

  Got it. So heading into this, heading into this mission where you're gonna, where you're gonna stay for a few days, was there anything from a planning perspective that, that was different or that you noticed heading into it?

• 1:11:16Speaker 01

  Well, for me, I, I hadn't even, I'd started the draft of the company order for that. I knew enough that already what I was assigned each platoon to do, right? And I'd, I'd be fleshing that out in the days ahead, but of most immediate concern was the, the patrol the next day that was getting us in there to conduct the recon. And that mission planning fell on Dunham.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  And it was up to him as the rifle squad leader in charge of the patrol, he had more than just his Marines he was responsible for. He had another ten Marines in escort from the CAT split section, in addition to another squad minus that was going to be manning the trucks that was getting his squad into zone. So, all told, he had something like twenty-five Marines that he was responsible for in that patrol. And it was his first time doing it, because prior to that, in Huseba, it was always up to Lieutenant Robinson,

• 1:12:29Speaker 01

  right? Because it was a platoon-sized patrol the whole time they were up there. So, in addition to that, there was a bit of angst, or not angst, but concern in the air of the company as a whole, because we just fired two rifle squad leaders, both from the same platoon, Kilo Three, two corporals that had talked a good game, came across as knowing their shit, you know, during the training back in Twin Iron Palms, and were selected

• 1:13:08Speaker 01

  as squad leaders, Kilo Three One and Kilo Three Three. And by the time we were in our third week of operations in Al Kaim, you could tell in the mission brief prior to step off, whether that squad leader knew what the fuck he was doing or not, whether he had put the time and effort into preparing his Marines for that fucking patrol. And these two Marines, these two corporals weren't taking it seriously enough. They didn't grasp

• 1:13:51Speaker 01

  the gravity of the situation. They thought they could just bullshit their way through it.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  And so we fired him. And we put a Lance Corporal in charge of Kilo 33. Danny Santos. Salvadoran from East LA. Fucking libo risk till the cows come home, but that fucker could fight. And he had an extremely strong sense of ownership that I saw. It stood out to me during our training at March Air Force Base in early January. Just pulling new guys in before and after every training patrol. Just teaching them everything he fucking knew to get them up to speed without arrogance. And when I saw that, I said, you know what?

• 1:14:42Speaker 01

  That guy, he needs to be a fucking squad leader. Because it shook out. He didn't get selected. But when the opportunity arose and those two Corporals got fired, it didn't even need to be said. It was a foregone conclusion that Danny Santos was taking 33. And then PFC Matthew Royer took Kilo 31. He should have been a Corporal. He did coke between, like, the 401F1, right? He'd been busted down. So he was in the same group as some of the other Corporal squad leaders, but he was a PFC. But it didn't matter to me. Because the guy knew his shit.

• 1:15:27Speaker 01

  And he wasn't afraid to stand up and open his mouth. Right? So to me, it was far more important to have a Marine who knew his shit and wanted it to be in charge of that fucking squad than anyone with fucking rank. It didn't matter to me. It was performance-based rewards, right? At that point. The only thing that matters is fucking performance. I don't care what your rank is.

• 1:15:56Speaker 01

  So, this was hanging over the company, right? And when your squad leaders see other squad leaders getting fired, they know that they would have their shit in one bag, right? And I could tell that Dunham was nervous about that. He cared so fucking much, you know? And he didn't want to screw anything up and let there be any doubt in my mind that he deserved to be a squad leader, right? That he deserved that role he was in.

• 1:16:32Speaker 03

  It was so obvious that he was nervous, and I think the Marine, or just military in general puts this fear in you that you don't want to let anybody down. And just if you have self-respect, you want to be prepared, and you don't want to look like an asshat, and you just want to have all your eggs in one basket. And he was nervous. Didn't help that our skipper here was, you know, he just, his last duty station, he was an instructor at the Infantry I O C, right? And so he's a little intense, so Dunham was a little bit worried about that. But I'm like, Jason, just do what you've done, do what you're taught, go down the checklist, hit everything up, you know, we'll help you out, whatever you need.

• 1:17:09Speaker 01

  So this patrol was due to step at zero eight, right? And it's midnight on the thirteenth of April. And I'm in the C O C. I got a radio operator, Cresswell, I think, is on the radio. So it's just me, Cress, and Dunham. And we had this makeshift picnic table that we had inherited from the Fox Troop, and had a laminated copy of the damn Company A O in satellite imagery on the whole table, right?

• 1:17:53Speaker 01

  So that was the table covering. So it was a useful planning tool. Dunham was sitting there, and he was writing his order. It was fucking midnight.

• 1:18:02Speaker 01

  So he'd spent the whole damn day getting his squad ready for that freaking patrol. He hadn't bothered with the paperwork, you know, but he knew that he needed to give an order the next morning, right? So he'd spent the whole damn time getting them ready for the mission. And so there he was, gonna be losing a lot of sleep in order to make sure that they also had proper freaking order before they stepped. So I'm sitting there, watching him, bare-chested, it's hot, fucking hot.

• 1:18:43Speaker 01

  Boots and nudes, bare chest, working on his order. And it's midnight, and goddamn Hampton and Carbehall come in, Dunham's two fire team leaders.

• 1:19:00Speaker 04

  We did what we do best, raided the chow hall.

• 1:19:04Speaker 01

  So they come walking in with this cardboard tray with some tray rat fucking eggs and probably a slab of damn ham, right, or something? Whatever they could scrounge, which wasn't a whole lot.

• 1:19:21Speaker 04

  No, I remember the sausage looked like cat poop. Yeah, but I remember there was sausage on it and, and those nasty eggs. And that hash, that beef hash.

• 1:19:36Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's terrible.

• 1:19:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, but...

• 1:19:39Jocko Willink?

  The horrors of war.

• 1:19:40Speaker 01

  So they walk in there, and I look up, and I realize it, it's just two fucking fire team leaders, and they've got a plate of chow for him. And he looks up and he says, "What's this?" And Hampton says, "You spent your day taking care of us, and we know you haven't had time to take care of yourself." So we're eating chow.

• 1:20:11Speaker 01

  And I always remember being a student at TBS, you know, as a second lieutenant, and hearing stories from instructors about being a good leader as an officer. And if you're doing your job and taking care of your Marines, they're gonna take care of you back, right? Like, if you're digging into the D, you've got more important shit to do than dig your own fucking hole. There was a story about their, about a platoon commander who'd come back to find his Marines finishing up his freaking hole for him, because he was too busy taking care of them, you know, to worry about protecting himself.

• 1:20:56Speaker 01

  And that came back to me in a flash. And to me, the imagery of them presenting him with that plated chow, it was symbolic. And to me, what I saw wasn't them giving him a plated chow, it was them putting the crown on his head and saying, "You're a fucking leader."

• 1:21:31Speaker 01

  And it was in that moment, and I'd been a Marine since 87, it wasn't until that very moment that I realized that the only one who can designate you as a leader is your fucking Marines. Your peers can say you've got leadership qualities, and your seniors can see the same thing, but the only one who gives you that title is the one you earn it from. And that struck me.

• 1:22:13Speaker 01

  And I was sitting there, and I thought, "Jesus Christ, would I ever do if I lost a Marine like that?"

• 1:22:38Speaker 01

  And I thought I should take a photo of him.

• 1:22:44Speaker 01

  I was fucking tired.

• 1:22:50Speaker 01

  And I didn't fucking do it.

• 1:22:54Speaker 01

  It would've been the last photo of him.

• 1:22:59Speaker 01

  And I fucking regret that.

• 1:23:16Speaker 01

  These guys taught me a lot.

• 1:23:19Speaker 01

  That was

• 1:23:21Speaker 01

  probably the most important lesson I ever got as a leader. Was seeing these two crown him.

• 1:23:32Speaker 04

  A lot of that in part two was Carbehall and I kept coming to him and trying to help him with the order, because the first deployment, that's all

• 1:23:47Speaker 04

  Sergeant Trejo had us do. That's all we did, was we did map overlays, we patrol orders, and

• 1:23:56Speaker 04

  so we knew it, we had it down, and we were kept coming in, "Hey, you want us to help you, you want us to help you, you want us to do something that, you know, you need to get done, but you're doing this, so we'll do those." "Nope, don't touch it, this is gonna be all mine."

• 1:24:14Speaker 04

  "Roger that, let us know if you need us." And I think after that, that was when I was like, "Yeah, let's go get it, Chow."

• 1:24:22Speaker 02

  Well, because he knew that the way we were gonna get split up, that I was gonna have to run point that day. So he ended up having me do the patrol overlay. He already had the route mapped out, but he made me do the overlay. And the whole time, he was asking me questions about where we're going, what are we doing next? If we get in, I remember him asking me, "If we get here, what LZ are we going to, you know, and stuff?" And I had to turn that into the COC with all the radio frequencies. Because he knew I wanted to know, like, that's how it was. I always wanted to know. I didn't want to know my team leader's job. I wanted to know my squad leader's job, like, I wanted, you know? And I remember when he pulled me in, I was like, I felt rewarded to get to do this, you know, because he trusted me to do it. It was a big deal to me.

• 1:25:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, Ferg was talking earlier about, you know, making sure that people understand why they're doing what they're doing. And how important that is. No doubt, you know, for me, that's the key of decentralized command is making sure that everyone knows why they're doing what they're doing. But the other thing that happens is when, like what you're saying, when you give people the opportunity to come up with part of the plan. It's like, it's elevates them and makes them, it's, they have ownership of the plan because they made it up. You know, they made it up. And so that's, that's exactly what you're talking about. And, and those are the kind of things that, those are the kind of things that make, you know, young, young troopers crown their leader.

• 1:25:52Jocko Willink?

  Not because their leader's barking at them, but because their leader's going, hey, I, I'll do this. I'll take care of this. I'll handle it. You guys get some rest. You guys take care of yourselves. And at the same time, hey, here's this piece of the mission. You come up with a plan for this. You make sure we know what we're doing. And, you know, I had, I had a guy on the podcast, uh, named Mukuyama, who retired as a general, General Mukuyama, but. You know, he made, he made this statement that I've underplayed over and over again. But for him, he's like, oh, you know what leadership boils down to is that you care about your men. You care about your men because if you care about your men and your men know that, then it goes back to what you said, Trent.

• 1:26:36Jocko Willink?

  If you take care of your men, then your men are going to take care of you.

• 1:26:41Jocko Willink?

  And the minute you see a leader that's walking around barking orders, thinking of themselves, and by the way, anybody that thinks they can, they can plot a little good agenda for themselves and their team isn't going to see it. You're wrong all day long today and twice on Sunday. That's what's going to happen. But that leader that's going, hey, I'm doing this for the good of the team, that's the one that will get the crown of leadership.

• 1:27:08Speaker 02

  There's one story that sticks out to me and it was when we first got in his zone where Lima was setting up base. There wasn't one. Um, so when we weren't doing a patrol, we were setting up HESCO barriers.

• 1:27:22Speaker 01

  And fill in them?

• 1:27:23Speaker 02

  Fill in them by hand. And you get a working party together, go to do it. Well, who does working parties? The juniors, you know, um, but there's this one day. Almost everybody in the platoon is out there doing it. Most of the squad leaders are working on patrol orders or getting things together. And outcomes is Dunham. Comes joins all of us, starts putting in the work by hand. And we're filling these, he's the only squad leader in our platoon that's out there helping us fill these HESCO barriers this time. And I just remember thinking, I was like, he's because this is, it's miserable. It's fucking awful. And I just remember thinking, I'm like, he doesn't have to be out here doing it. But he's doing it because we're doing it, you know?

• 1:28:08Speaker 02

  And I could give countless examples of that. That was the exact reason why everybody in his squad would have ran through a wall for him every day. You know, he took care of you. He took care of the junior Marines really well. He took us aside and he would always tell us, you know, if anybody's like stepping over the line, just to let him know to come talk to him. You know, I remember him telling that like, you know, if you're stressed out, come talk to me. I want to know about it. And he was just always available and it made you want to please him, you know? Like I, I remember distinctly, I like, I want this guy to look at me and be like, be impressed. Like I want him to like me, you know? But not, not, I don't like, not as a friend. I just want him to look at me like, that's a fucking good Marine. I, you know, that's one of my Marines.

• 1:28:52Speaker 02

  And so you're trying to live up to this bar he sets and it made us all better.

• 1:28:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:29:01Jocko Willink?

  So, taking us back now, you've executed the plan and now we're out in the field. We're in that. So are you in the police station or are you in the water treatment facility? What's the difference between the two? What's going on right now?

• 1:29:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, so the commanding officer had finished his business with the police chief. So he was heading to Husaba and we walked out the back of the police station right across an alley and into the water treatment plant, which was unoccupied at the time. It wasn't in use, but it had been, actually was occupied by an Iraqi family who were squatting in one of the buildings, like the headquarters building of the treatment plant. So this thing had been built, it had just never been used. And so Ferg was doing his

• 1:30:02Speaker 01

  thing, getting eyes on the perimeter of the entire structure. And I had gone up to the roof of this headquarters building. Seems it was a three-story, so...

• 1:30:18Jocko Willink?

  That's correct. You were on the roof and I remember it all. His, Dunham's radio operator, Jason Sanders, was paying, had good SA and he was listening to what was going on in Husaba with some of the other stuff and chatter, just like a good young Marine does. He brought it to his squad leader. Squad leader Dunham came and brought it to me and I'm like, Roger, let six know, because he's got to have an SA of what's going on. And then that's how that started. And by the way, I kind of skipped right into Colonel Lopez's convoy that had left that police station and was headed out. But there was a whole other scenario unfolding where they had casualties in Husaba, casualties, they had a sniper overwatch position getting

• 1:31:02Jocko Willink?

  hit, they had wounded Marines. I mean, it was, so all that chaos is breaking out in the morning, kind of all morning, right?

• 1:31:11Speaker 01

  Right.

• 1:31:12Jocko Willink?

  So we know this is a, we're going into, we're going into a rough day in the city.

• 1:31:15Speaker 01

  Yeah. And Lima Three had been in contact, I think, for, since sometime between 09 and 1000 that morning. But I didn't have any vis on that.

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  But as I was standing on top of that building, looking west, just checking out the general layout from that vantage point, we heard explosions to the west. And my first thought with these explosions was that Lehman Company was getting mortared again. They'd been getting mortared every day for about two weeks straight. Twenty-two days straight. Twenty-two days straight. Okay. But they had yet been able to get the jump on these guys. So I thought, shit, you know, we're actually in zone right now.

• 1:32:10Speaker 01

  Lehman's getting mortared. We may be in a position to interdict these guys. So Dunham came running up the ladder well. Still hear these explosions. And I turned to him and I said, "What do you think?" And he says, "I think Lehman's getting hit." I said, "Well, let's go get those motherfuckers." So we called his boys and told them they were saddling up and pushing out. And our vehicles had been satelliteing at the time on a certain radius outside of our position. So we started moving out onto Route Diamond.

• 1:32:53Speaker 01

  That was an MSR that would lead us west into Lehman Company's paws. And we started running because there was a sense of urgency. You know, when a fucking sister unit's getting hit, you want to fucking help. So we started running down Diamond and Sanders, on the run, got a hold of the gun trucks and got them to link up with us on Diamond. So before long, the trucks showed up, we mounted up, and then started racing west.

• 1:33:32Speaker 01

  And within moments, an RPG flew over one of the highbacks, right over Carver Hall's head. And we knew he had arrived at the ambush site. By the time we got in the trucks, we heard on the radio net that it wasn't Lehman getting mortared, it was the battalion commander's patrol had just gotten hit outside the arches, which is the, almost the eastern periphery of Huseba. So it was the direction we were headed. And then, we were there before we knew it.

• 1:34:10Jocko Willink?

  And they got hit hard. And they took multiple casualties and had pushed, they pushed through the kill zone though, right?

• 1:34:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:34:21Jocko Willink?

  But now they had casualties and, and that's, so you guys drove through the exact same kill zone?

• 1:34:27Speaker 01

  We rolled into it. As, in my assessment, that the ambushing element was unassamed, the ambush zone, but I'm sure they weren't expecting us to arrive. And I thought, oh shit, you know, some fresh meat, let's fucking launch another RPG.

• 1:34:45Jocko Willink?

  Bonus.

• 1:34:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. So we started taking fire immediately. And the first thing, like we talked about earlier, get out of the fucking truck, right? So, we got out of the trucks and got up against the wall.

• 1:35:01Jocko Willink?

  Did the trucks leave?

• 1:35:02Speaker 01

  No, they stayed there initially.

• 1:35:05Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:35:06Speaker 01

  And we all got up against the wall to give us some cover from the fire that was actually then coming over from behind that wall and down the whole row of buildings there towards the arches. Dunham and I got up against the wall, wound up right next to him. And decided we need to get the... The only way to do it was to clear these fuckers out on foot, right? And I had seen the battle drill before, on my first day in zone, before the company even got there, when we were doing an orientation patrol with First to the Third, we got hit in the HK in damn near the same spot.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  And the guys that we were on that patrol with were the self-propelled battery that was organic to First to the Third. And they were the only guys, I think, in that... They're definitely the only guys in that squadron who were employed in Humvees. So they were the closest thing to grunts as First to the Third had. And they knew their shit. They called an immediate audible when we got hit with the NAD and started taking fire. And those troopers immediately pushed south to the elevated train tracks on the south

• 1:36:36Speaker 01

  side of HK that was delineating the southern edge of that village. And they pushed south to coordinate and to then dismount and start sweeping. And in the process, they killed one Moog and captured two more. So my first thought was, hey, same thing. Cordon's on the south, sweep from north to south. And Dunham said, "All right, I'm taking Hampton. You go with Carball. Roger that. Get those trucks to the south and let's do it."

• 1:37:14Speaker 01

  And so then Hampton, Ferg, and Dunham, and Miller.

• 1:37:24Speaker 01

  Sectors. Sergeant Reynolds. Cesar Ambiato. That whole element started pushing south and

• 1:37:34Speaker 01

  we, myself with Carver Hall, we wound up sweeping more to the west initially, as these guys were clearing to the south.

• 1:37:49Jocko Willink?

  Now,

• 1:37:51Jocko Willink?

  there's a book. There's a book called The Gift of Valor, and it's a book written by a guy named Michael Phillips, who's a Wall Street Journal reporter, which may make you think, oh, well, what is that? Well, he actually did four tours in Iraq. And he was with the 370 a bunch. And he did a great job of interviewing so many people to kind of capture this story. The book is called The Gift of Valor. And he spells out this section, well, pretty good, pretty comprehensively. And I'm sure you guys will have stuff to add, but

• 1:38:37Jocko Willink?

  I'm actually gonna go and, and, and read a little bit of this book, picking up from, from that situation.

• 1:38:45Jocko Willink?

  So here we go. At about 12:20 PM, the Marines reached the next cross street where the alleyway hit a T-junction. On the left before the junction was an unfinished, single-story home made of a tan stone and poured concrete with med- with red metal doors and window grates. On the right, the alleyway widened out into the courtyard of a concrete and cinder block house, of rusty, twisted car chassis, lying forlornly amid the trash. Straight ahead, over some buildings, and about a block away, they could see the top of the water treatment plant. The dirt lane that crossed in front of them was deeply rutted. To their right was bordered on the north side by a tumble-down stone wall, and a couple dozen yards further to the west, a straight-ahead cinder block wall.

• 1:39:28Jocko Willink?

  Stopped in the lane were eight vehicles pointing from east, pointing east toward the approaching Marines. From the corner, Dunham and his men could see a small bus, a van, a white Toyota Land Cruiser, a second SUV, a red tractor, a black BMW, a white truck frozen in the middle of an attempt to turn around in a narrow lane, and finally, a white sedan with all four doors open. The point man Miller had just reached the T-junction when Staff Sergeant Ferguson, a few dozen yards back, noticed the lineups, lineup of vehicles. "What's going on?" he asked Corporal Dunham.

• 1:40:09Jocko Willink?

  "What are you doing?" Dunham wanted to keep moving, but Ferguson recalled the white SUV that Sergeant Reynolds had seen high-tailing across Jade a few minutes earlier, and thought the cars were worth a quick look. "No," Ferguson told Dunham, "we're gonna search these calls, cars."

• 1:40:32Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. You guys, and I, you know, we didn't really cover that part of the story, but there have been vehicles that were PID, leaving the ambush site, and so that's what you're seeing, positively identifying, or at least suspected vehicles, that had left the ambush site. Because Trent, as you said, the ambush was probably over when you guys showed up, or at least they were trying to wrap it up. You guys showed up, they got a little bonus secondary, but most likely, they're all leaving. That's what you guys are thinking, heading out. And now you see these vehicles lined up, and they're, they're looking sketchy.

• 1:41:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, that was the assumption that they would try to leave the area, and I figured they got caught up in the, uh, the log jam right there. And I knew, because we had patrolled that area before with Lima Company, so we were familiar with that area, I knew it was the other water treatment plant, and then on the opposite side of that would just be the railroad train tracks. So I thought that was our best course of action at the time. And I remember when I told him that, he was looking at me and then also looking down the rows of cars. So something was going on down there that had his attention as well, and then he's, he started beelining down that way.

• 1:41:36Speaker 02

  I remember you yelled out for hasty vehicle searches, because we were essentially pushing to contact, so it was like a, we needed to search.

• 1:41:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was just quick, hasty searches.

• 1:41:48Jocko Willink?

  Hampton walked alongside the small bus and peered through the windows. He saw only women and children and decided not to bother searching the interior. The driver of the second vehicle, the tan, the van, was middle aged with a younger man next to him. "Search vehicle," Hampton said in Arabic, a phrase he'd picked up from the Marines' pocket language cards. He saw no weapons in the driver's laps, so he opened the sliding door on the van's right side. The cargo space contained nothing suspect.

• 1:42:16Jocko Willink?

  I always felt like when I spoke Arabic to Iraqis, that it didn't really seem right coming out of my big white head, and that they never understood a thing I was saying.

• 1:42:28Speaker 04

  I wasn't sure if they were just shocked that I said something to them.

• 1:42:33Jocko Willink?

  That's the look I got. That's the look I always got.

• 1:42:36Speaker 04

  Dude, did this guy just tell me he's gonna search my car? Wow. Or did he just tell me the dog is brown? And I don't understand why I need to tie my shoes. Nobody here has laces.

• 1:42:55Speaker 04

  I just, yeah.

• 1:42:56Jocko Willink?

  So, quick vehicle search. That's what you guys are doing.

• 1:43:02Jocko Willink?

  Pretty straightforward. Back to the book, Corporal Dunham and PFC Miller moved quickly up the street until they came to the elderly white Land Cruiser, which was some fifty yards from the intersection where the alleyway met the road. Miller edged along the passenger side and saw the muzzle and wood front grip of an AK-47 rifle poking out from under the floor mat. He looked up in time to see the driver, a young Iraqi man in a black tracksuit, open the door and lunge at Dunham.

• 1:43:38Jocko Willink?

  People, uh...

• 1:43:41Jocko Willink?

  The people, a lot of people don't know about the Mujahideen uniform of the tracksuit. The tracksuit, so you see the guy in the tracksuit.

• 1:43:53Jocko Willink?

  Again, this is, these things you can't, when you explain them to people, it's almost like a bad movie, right? Like you see the AK-47 hidden under a floor mat. Like you guys are gonna get away with this.

• 1:44:04Speaker 02

  Well, he, he had multiple. Like, it was a small cache, four or five guns, I think there was an RPG. And

• 1:44:15Speaker 02

  cuz I was passing by, peering in the windows, you know, passenger window. And I hit the second window in the vehicle and I saw them. And it's like instantaneous, as I'm looking up to say something. They start fighting. And I didn't have a chance to like say anything, you know, I just reacted to go around and assist.

• 1:44:36Jocko Willink?

  How many guys were in the vehicle?

• 1:44:37Speaker 02

  One.

• 1:44:38Jocko Willink?

  Oh, so it was just one guy in the vehicle. So as you're coming up on the passenger side, you look in one window, you see it. Next thing you know, you look up, the driver in a tracksuit gets out. And he's on Dunham, like, in an instant.

• 1:44:51Speaker 02

  Yes. Yes.

• 1:44:55Speaker 01

  There had been more guys in that vic. But they unasked it by the time Dunham got to it.

• 1:45:00Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:45:01Speaker 01

  Cuz

• 1:45:02Speaker 03

  That in the far, in the far vehicle as well. That was trying to turn around, they just unasked and ran.

• 1:45:09Speaker 02

  Yeah, the vehicle behind the forerunner, everybody.

• 1:45:12Speaker 01

  T D M.

• 1:45:13Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:45:14Jocko Willink?

  I guess they have the same thoughts about being in vehicles as we do. Let's get out of this thing. It's about to become a bullet sponge.

• 1:45:21Speaker 01

  Well, and those vehicles were stuck. They were all stuck. And in hindsight, they were, there were, you know, maybe a couple of those vics were filled with insurgents and all the rest of them were just fucking innocent people who were trying to get Through the HK around this site of the ambush that had just been unleashed up on Diamond, right, so that they weren't going to try and drive through that thing. So they were just trying to bounce around through the village to carry on with their life's business. And, you know, stuck in the middle of them were a couple of vics with insurgents.

• 1:46:02Speaker 01

  And, and a correction on, on Mike's terminology in the book. What we discovered later was by the 17th, three days later, the Battle for Husebba kicked off, was that this guy wasn't Iraqi. He was a foreign fighter. They had, they had infiltrated through Syria by the hundreds to kick off an offensive across the entire province. They were there to fight.

• 1:46:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. So continuing on, the Iraqi, which again, as you just point out, pointed out, this guy is a foreign fighter from any number of countries, wrapped his left arm around the back of Dunham's neck and cocked his right arm to punch the corporal in the face. Dunham caught the man's fist to block the swing. The two stumbled toward the Land Cruiser. Dunham pulled his right knee up and drove into the Iraqi's stomach. The Iraqi doubled over from the blow and the men fell to the ground in an angry embrace. Miller's brother, a sheriff's deputy in California, had bought Kelly a telescoping police baton and shipped

• 1:47:13Jocko Willink?

  it to Iraq. Miller didn't really think he'd ever need it, but he liked the idea of having one and kept it in a holster zip tied to his flak vest. Up until that point, Miller used it mostly to fend off stray dogs. But as he ran around the front of the SUV toward Dunham and the Iraqi, again, foreign fighter, he pulled the baton out and snapped it down to his side to extend it to its full length. Miller saw the Iraqi lying on his back, his head toward the rear of the Land Cruiser. Dunham was face down on top of him, torso rotated slightly counterclockwise.

• 1:47:50Jocko Willink?

  Miller planted his left knee in the Iraqi's ribs. Bracing his left hand on Dunham's back, he slammed the butt of the baton as hard as he could into the Iraqi's forehead. The blow was so sharp that the metal baton collapsed back into itself. Miller was amazed the man was still conscious, much less still fighting. He drove the baton into the Iraqi's forehead again, then jabbed it into the left side of the man's neck, a blood choke he'd been told would pinch off circulation to the brain through the carotid artery.

• 1:48:26Jocko Willink?

  Lance Corporal Hampton saw the melee and charged around the van and up the street, his adrenaline surging. All he could hear was the loud pounding of his own pulse as he searched for an open shot on the Iraqi to hit. "Shoot him in the head," he said to himself. He aimed his rifle but worried that any shot might go through the Iraqi and hit Miller. "Hell," he thought, "I'll muzzle thump." Marines are taught to poke their rifle barrels into the eyes of their enemies to make sure they're dead. Only the dead or comatose could resist flinching when poked hard in the eye with a long piece of metal. The muzzle thump could also be delivered to the chest to get someone aggressive to back off without resorting to deadly force. Hampton planned to thump the Iraqi in the temple. If it knocked him out, fine.

• 1:49:10Jocko Willink?

  If it killed him, that was fine with Bill too. Hampton picked out a spot on the wriggling Iraqi's temple and pulled his rifle back to get some force behind it.

• 1:49:21Speaker 01

  Is that right, Bill? You're shaking your head.

• 1:49:23Speaker 04

  Uh, I was, I was gonna, I was gonna put that thing through his head. I was put it through his eye.

• 1:49:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:49:30Speaker 04

  I wasn't gonna put it through his temple. I was going right here.

• 1:49:33Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 1:49:33Speaker 04

  And I was just gonna go right here and try and push that rifle back out this way.

• 1:49:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, uh, it's hairy, those, the grappling situation. When that's going down and you have a weapon and you're, you're, you know, one of your guys is grappling with an insurgent, that can, that's a, that's a tough shot to take 'cause it's not like a, a movie where the bad guy's holding the hostage still. 'Cause this is a fight that's going on and, you know, anything could happen at any point.

• 1:50:08Jocko Willink?

  And the other thing is, I mean, you guys are,

• 1:50:13Jocko Willink?

  you gotta think, you know, I'd be thinking to myself, okay, well, this guy didn't shoot us. He didn't, he didn't blow, he didn't, he didn't blow us up. So how do we know this guy's armed or not? That's another question that can be going through your head.

• 1:50:26Jocko Willink?

  I'm sure people sit back and say, oh, I'll just kill him. Yeah, that's something that is, is a decision that's getting made. But when you, your first instinct in that situation, you got your buddy on top of him. You don't know if the guy's armed. There's a lot of things going on to just start unloading your weapon.

• 1:50:45Jocko Willink?

  And, and that's where I'm thinking, both you guys are thinking, well, you're kind of got your thought in your mind, I'll shoot this guy. And you guys, but, but both of you are going non-lethal at this point in time.

• 1:50:55Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 1:50:56Speaker 02

  I was just trying, like, my thought process was if I hit him hard enough, I'd knock him out. I mean, I'm hitting him with a metal baton and I hit him the first time and he was still struggling. So I came in for the second one and at that time you could see that I had split his forehead wide open and fractured his skull. And he was still fighting. And so I was like, okay, I like, I need to do something different. And I always remember in boot camp, they talk about the blood choke. So I just started to put pressure across this carotid with all my weight. And then by then I think Bill had just, when I started to apply the choke, that's when Bill had come up. And that's when the rest happened.

• 1:51:40Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you know, again, for young people in any employment like this, whether you're a cop or you're a soldier, you're a marine, whatever situation you're in, well, this is one thing that we learned. There's this idea that when you hit someone, if you hit them hard enough, they're going to get knocked out. And we learned this over and over again, that it's not true. And there's a chance when you hit someone, you can knock them out. But there's a chance that they don't get knocked out. One of my, my assistant platoon commander entered a room. We, we were taking down a building and there was a, a, a combative, in a combative insurgent in there.

• 1:52:21Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, we had learned muzzle strike, muzzle strike, you know, muzzle strike to the face. It'll, it'll knock him out for sure. It may kill him. So you gotta be a little bit careful, whatever. My assistant platoon commander did the hardest muzzle strike I think a person could. He, he took a running start of about eight yards and fully cocked back his weapon and then drove it into this guy's head. And, and it deflected a little bit like around the brow and carved out a big giant chunk of his scalp. No factor. The guy, he's bleeding like a stuck pig, but he kept fighting.

• 1:53:02Jocko Willink?

  So, all that's going on, and here we go back to the book. While Dunham, Miller, and Hampton wrestled with the Iraqi, Sergeant Reynolds, the sniper, told Sanders to provide cover in case the Iraqi had friends around. So Sanders was more than a dozen, dozen yards away from the fight when he heard Dunham yell a warning, "No, no, no, watch his hand." Hampton heard nothing except the beating of his own heart. But he kept, caught a fleeting glimpse of Dunham's helmet on the ground next to the Iraqi. Dunham was on his stomach with his arms outstretched in front of him and wrapped around the sides of his helmet as if he were holding it down on top of something.

• 1:53:49Jocko Willink?

  Then came the explosion.

• 1:53:55Jocko Willink?

  Bill Hampton saw a flash of light, but it, the explosion didn't sound very loud to him. His vision blurred and he knew that something had happened to him. He just didn't know what. His first thought was whether his teeth had been hit. He ran his tongue along them and was relieved to find them all in place, but his face, leg, and arm leaked red. The concussion had broken his nose. One tiny metal fragment hit him under the nostrils and another embedded itself in his top lip. A piece of shrapnel about the size of a pen tip had it, hit him in the right knuckle. Several shards of metal hit him in the left arm and left leg. One piece hit a bone in his forearm, broke up and opened an inch wide hole as it exited. Another traveled up his arm and cut away, cut its way out

• 1:54:38Jocko Willink?

  the middle of his elbow, leaving an X-shaped tear, tear, then lodged in his bicep.

• 1:54:46Jocko Willink?

  He remembered that slowing his breathing would slow the bleeding and he tried to do so. He staggered against the cinder block wall and back toward the intersection. He couldn't lift his rifle with his left arm, so he held it in his right by the trigger guard and pistol grip, trying to keep an eye out for enemy fighters.

• 1:55:08Jocko Willink?

  A boom and a flash.

• 1:55:14Jocko Willink?

  Kelly Miller saw the explosion and its aftermath in a series of still frames. First he saw Dunham tipping over, his radio headset still on, but his helmet gone. Then Miller saw the sky as he fell over backwards onto the rocket launcher slung from his shoulder. He heard a steady ring like the sound of a hospital heart monitor makes when the patient flatlines. Miller's face hurt and felt hot as if he had a bad somber. He tasted blood in his mouth and had the vague feeling he was being shot at. His left arm hurt next. He tried to grab his rifle with his left hand, but nothing happened. He wondered why his arm wasn't working. He looked down to see blood streaming off the fingertips.

• 1:55:57Jocko Willink?

  One piece of hot metal had hit Miller's upper lip, traveled inside his right cheek and shattered a molar before coming to rest inside of his back cheek. Other fragments peppered around the area around his eyes, left cheek and forehead. The blast blew out his left eardrum. One piece of grenade shrapnel went clean through his right tricep, side to side, and punctured the brachial artery. But for some reason it didn't hurt as badly as his upper left arm, which had been hit by five or six big chunks of metal and sprayed with pebble sized fragments.

• 1:56:32Jocko Willink?

  The explosion left Sanders, the radio operator, temporarily deaf. He saw Dunham, Miller and Hampton knocked back by the blast and thought,

• 1:56:44Jocko Willink?

  "They're all fucking dead."

• 1:56:57Jocko Willink?

  So

• 1:57:00Jocko Willink?

  with that, the insurgent

• 1:57:04Jocko Willink?

  that was laying there actually gets up and runs. And Sanders, the radio operator, then unloads on him and kills him. But it's interesting, in the book, it was like Sanders didn't really understand, he was looking for someone else as well. He thought there's no way that whoever was there survived. So he was looking for someone else, another insurgent.

• 1:57:28Jocko Willink?

  And that leaves you, Ferg, kind of trying to organize a casuvac at this point, right?

• 1:57:34Speaker 03

  Well, yeah, I just went from a seven-man team to three Marines getting wounded, so we're almost combat ineffective. So my main thing was try to set up a casualty collection point around the back of the fence line right there and get these Marines tended to.

• 1:57:52Jocko Willink?

  Could you guys?

• 1:57:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. In the book, it says, "I felt..." like, it's accurate, but I could feel the bullets passing me. And I was incredibly disoriented, never lost consciousness, but I'm looking down on the ground and I can see the bullets striking. And so

• 1:58:13Speaker 02

  I got my rifle with my right arm because it still worked, and I actually knelt behind the... I knelt at the front of the white Land Rover and tried to hold security one-handed. And it was... it felt like an eternity, let me tell you what, but it was probably seconds passed and my adrenaline started to wane. And then I actually had to go back. I kept moving back down the line of cars the way we came because with every passing second, my pain level started to skyrocket. And I actually puked right there at the white Land Rover. And then I made it back behind the red vehicle, and I puked again, and that's when Sanders came up. And he was passing by, and I was in actually so much pain, I asked him to knock me out

• 1:58:59Speaker 02

  because I just wanted it to stop. Like, I was... I couldn't stop puking because the pain was so bad.

• 1:59:07Speaker 02

  And then I think I saw Ferg moving up past me as well. And then Sergeant Reynolds guided me to where the casualty collection point was and just put me up against a wall, the pile of goo I was at this point. And then Hampton joined me. And I remember the thing that I cared about most, and Bill was the same way. I didn't give two fucks about myself. I never asked how I was. I never asked how Bill was because I could see him. How, where's Dunham? How's Dunham? You know? That was the only thing I could care about because like, I'm, I could tell, like, I'm still talking, I can think, I'm fine enough. I could see Bill, he was talking, looking at me. He was gonna be okay.

• 1:59:52Speaker 02

  But both Bill and I were, just wanted to know. Where was Dunham? How was Dunham? And like, that was like a theme almost, because nobody knew.

• 2:00:01Jocko Willink?

  How'd you guys get, so did you get, did you bring Dunham back over to the casualty collection point, Ferg?

• 2:00:06Speaker 03

  Uh, what it was is actually Jason Sanders was moving him when they were fired upon, and he had gotten him back, uh, around to the wall. But I can't stress enough, because I was at the, I just passed the first headlight of the vehicle when it exploded, and it's absolutely amazing. I thought I had three wound, or three KIA's on my hand, because, or, the amount of concussion that I felt, and I had the vehicle between me, and just reverberating off the walls and that, and it even says in the book, you could feel how hollow your chest cavity is. And it knocked me back a few feet too, and I had to get my orientation. So the fact that these guys, any of them were able to get up is like, yeah.

• 2:00:46Speaker 02

  The only thing that stopped me was the wall behind me. I like, I put a nice little body imprint into it, because I went into its heart, and I was on one knee, hunched over.

• 2:00:59Speaker 02

  So it was powerful.

• 2:01:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it would make sense, you know, when you start talking about getting shot at. Obviously, if you're those insurgents that bailed out of those first, the sedan, and then the other guys that jumped out of the Land Cruiser, they know what's about to happen and they're gonna set up on you. As soon as they get a good distance, they're gonna set up positions so they can start shooting at you. Once this suicide guy gets, does, executes his part of the mission, they're gonna be coming in hot.

• 2:01:24Speaker 02

  It was, it was one of the indescribable eerie things because my hearing from the explosion was so fucked. I couldn't hear being shot at. I actually had no idea I was being shot at through hearing. The only reason I knew I couldn't be there is because I could feel it and I saw the dirt strike marks.

• 2:01:46Jocko Willink?

  Same with you, Bill?

• 2:01:47Speaker 04

  I didn't see anybody shooting and it just baffles me because I stood up and I walked back towards Staff Sergeant Ferguson and they're telling me now that I walked through bullets.

• 2:02:02Speaker 04

  And I had no clue. I couldn't hear anything. It was ringing. My, I mean, I got slapped in the face. It felt like I got slapped in the face with a shovel. I mean, whoever did it got a full swing with that shovel.

• 2:02:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:02:17Speaker 04

  Because that's, I can't explain it any other way. It was just, you got hit with a shovel in the face.

• 2:02:22Speaker 03

  They were almost like walking zombies, obviously, because of that concussion and that. And then he just, you know, it was like, it fucking hurts. Are you gonna be all right? And I could tell the way they were holding their arms and which arms were hurt and which arms were damaged. And then I could see some other visual wounds and I was just like, hey, gonna be fine when we get you back there.

• 2:02:40Jocko Willink?

  What about your brachial artery being hit? How bad is that bleeding?

• 2:02:44Speaker 02

  Oh, it's like a waterfall going down my arm.

• 2:02:47Speaker 04

  He puts his arms up and goes, ah, fuck.

• 2:02:51Speaker 02

  Well, I, all three of my nerves in my left arm were damaged, a high bicep. So I had no function from my shoulder down. I couldn't move my fingers, couldn't bend it. I also had no feeling because your nerves tell you when shit hurts. They're, I'm getting buddy aid and they're, I'm like, Hampton's like his left arm, his left arm. I'm like, no, my left arm's fine. My right arm hurts. And they're like, no, no, your left arm. And all of a sudden I just look and my camis red and I'm like, it's like somebody took a water bottle and it's holding it on your shoulder. And it's just flooding down.

• 2:03:25Speaker 04

  I watched it, just watched his camis just soaked and I was like.

• 2:03:31Speaker 02

  I actually got hit in both brachials because I lifted my right arm up after he cut my sleeve off and it was a squirter.

• 2:03:39Speaker 02

  So I hadn't, I ended up getting tourniquets on both arms.

• 2:03:42Speaker 04

  And while certain Reynolds was doing that, was Reynolds?

• 2:03:45Speaker 02

  Reynolds buddy aided me.

• 2:03:47Speaker 04

  Okay. And then I self aided my leg and then I think he helped me with my arm. But I self aided my leg while he was doing that with Miller and then, and then I had to pee.

• 2:04:00Speaker 02

  And he had to pee.

• 2:04:02Speaker 02

  You know, not as serious as rest, but the things you worry about after you get hurt, don't make any sense. Bill and I both took off our watches because we didn't want to cut it off. I was pissed off because I hadn't showered in 30 days and I'd showered the day before. So I was wearing clean camis.

• 2:04:18Speaker 04

  They took my blouse off, they ripped it and all the buttons went off. My first, I'm like, motherfucker.

• 2:04:24Speaker 02

  You know, I looked at Bill and I told him I was like.

• 2:04:27Speaker 04

  They cut my boots off. I was pissed about my boots getting cut off. There's laces. Cut the laces. Pull it off. I want those back.

• 2:04:34Speaker 02

  You know, I looked at Bill and I told him my mom was going to be pissed. You know.

• 2:04:39Jocko Willink?

  You were probably right about that.

• 2:04:40Speaker 02

  Oh, she was. But it's amazing what the mind can do. I'm sitting there with both my brachials damaged, two tourniquets on. I've lost units of blood. And I'm worried about the most trivial things because again, I'm a 21 year old who thinks I'm pretty invincible, but it fucking hurts right now.

• 2:05:01Jocko Willink?

  How long did it take to get the CASVAC going, Ferg?

• 2:05:05Speaker 03

  They were there in a matter of minutes. We used our VIX to get out and Jason Sanders, once again, he was awesome because he had that all set up. The only thing he asked me to what clarification, I said one urgent surgical, two routine. And he took care of all that. And a lot of it is the way the skipper broke down our company because it was really, it was groundbreaking because I always felt comfortable that no matter what the mission, I had 50 ones with me that could breach or demo or C4, anything. My mortar men, there were call for fire specialists and they were also medevac guys. And then 31s, when we were at Lima Company, us and Kilo One, we're the only ones, we didn't

• 2:05:48Speaker 03

  need no help from Lima. We could man whatever position, Mark 19, 240 golf. So the way we did that, it was awesome. And that paid off dividends because of having Jason Sanders. And I didn't have to tell him anything except for the clarification.

• 2:06:01Jocko Willink?

  How many vehicles came in to get you?

• 2:06:03Speaker 03

  It was our, what was it? It was Corporal Self, right?

• 2:06:07Jocko Willink?

  Cat White picked up Dunham because Stout was there.

• 2:06:10Speaker 01

  McManus and Self came in.

• 2:06:12Jocko Willink?

  With two?

• 2:06:13Speaker 01

  Four VIX.

• 2:06:13Jocko Willink?

  Four vehicles.

• 2:06:14Speaker 01

  They'd been in an overwatch position.

• 2:06:16Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:06:17Speaker 01

  We kept them, anytime we had a Union Zone, and even while we were out of, out of zone, God, for the first two months, we had a CAT section in zone around the clock as, as a ready QRF in case the battalion, any unit in the battalion came into contact. There was always someone in zone who could fucking respond.

• 2:06:44Speaker 02

  Well, for me, it wasn't until Cat White came and picked up Dunham that I actually realized how bad I was hurt. Like I'd got the buddy aid and, you know, I had the tourniquets on, but Stout was a gunner for Cat White and him and I went to the School of Infantry at the same time. And his vehicle parked right by the wall and he could see me. And I looked at him, he was like, and he looks down and he's like, "Hey, Miller, you're gonna be fine. We're gonna get you out of here." And he was like, you know, trying to instill confidence, but it was the look on his face when he was looking at me. And that, that was when I was like...

• 2:07:17Speaker 02

  It sunk in, I was like, I must not be as okay as I think I am right now.

• 2:07:23Jocko Willink?

  The thing no one wants to hear, you're gonna be okay, we're gonna get you out of here.

• 2:07:27Speaker 03

  That was the thing too, I was worried about it, because my facial expressions, I could tell, and I told Sergeant Reynolds, hey look, because I was worried we might have to tourniquet that or something, because I knew he was bleeding bad. And, um, but the weird thing I remember is because everything was going off in Huseba, and we just had that incident, we didn't know what was going on at the time. So I'm like, I remember loading these guys up, I'm like, hey, we don't know how much security we're gonna have for you, you guys might have to go down Market Street in the middle of this stuff, so you have to be prepared to fight, you know, until you get to the LZ. And they're like, Roger that, they just got their weapons ready and loaded them up. We couldn't send anybody with them, because we had our ground element, so it was just the cat guys and...

• 2:08:05Speaker 02

  And we ended up, we went back train though.

• 2:08:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, we went, we went, we went down the train, everybody stayed off of Market.

• 2:08:12Speaker 02

  We asked, and they're like, why are we going back? And they're like, route train, and both Bill and I were like, fuck. Because there was IEDs all the time on train, and I was like, great, I'm gonna get blown up fucking twice.

• 2:08:24Speaker 01

  Yes, it wasn't just the Cat White that responded, it was also our highbacks, gunning Fontecchio or company gunning. And he got, he heard the call when Sanders contacted Cat Whites, he was on the platoon net. So, he bounced down there as well, and it was our own highbacks that, they loaded the casualties up into, to get them back to the casualty back LZ in Huseba.

• 2:08:53Jocko Willink?

  And so what did you, Ferg, you stayed out there?

• 2:08:56Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 2:08:57Jocko Willink?

  With, with, with what, you, Sanders, there's three of you now?

• 2:09:01Speaker 03

  Um, yes, and, uh, yeah, Sergeant Biato, and what we did is I waited till, um, the cat guys came, and they moved forward, and we just went around to that position just to clear those two houses, and then we got some, uh, enemy P O Ws from there.

• 2:09:16Speaker 01

  And...

• 2:09:18Speaker 01

  I was with Carver Hall's team, right? We were on the western edge of the HK at an old abandoned mosque overlooking the Wadi and Husebba to the west when we heard the gunfire. I never, actually, I never heard a fucking grenade. I never heard a blast at all. All I heard was small arms fire. And there was a corpsman there with me and Sam, our Arab-hating atheistic Kurd linguist that we inherited from First to the Third, thank God.

• 2:09:57Speaker 01

  And so I grabbed those two and yelled at Carver Hall and we ran towards the sound of the fire. And there was a black sedan that was backing up out of that, off that road, that line of vehicles was stacked on. So there was a vehicle trying to get the fuck out of Dodge in reverse. We stopped it, Sam was there, we started searching the trunk, and he says, "Hey, sir, they're going to a fucking wedding." So let them go. So we let them go.

• 2:10:37Speaker 01

  And I looked down the road and Sergeant Reynolds, the sniper that we'd brought along, I could see him next to a line of vehicles and he yelled at me to cut off a white pickup truck that was headed south. So all I could grasp of the situation at the time was that they'd made contact with insurgents and there was at least one vehicle trying to get out of there that we needed to cut off. So I grabbed Carver Hall, who was, who had gotten to where we were at that sedan by that time, and we pushed all the way south to the train tracks.

• 2:11:19Speaker 01

  As we were pushing south, we saw Cat White racing from the direction of East End and Husebba, just across the Wadi, they were flying.

• 2:11:36Speaker 01

  Flying east beneath the train tracks. And we didn't, we, I had no comms, I had no fucking radio comms, so I still had no clue. That that was your boys being evacuated? Correct.

• 2:11:54Speaker 01

  So we got into the water treatment plant and Carver Hall had no comms on his inter-squad radio with- Were you guys carrying embers? For work radios? No, uh-uh. We were still using-

• 2:12:08Jocko Willink?

  PRRs.

• 2:12:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, PRRs at that time. So, we needed elevation to be able to get comms with Dunham.

• 2:12:19Speaker 01

  So, we got to the water treatment plant, which was the tallest, had the tallest building around, and Carver Hall scrambled up to one of the roofs, got a hold of Sanders. And, uh, then, one of the Marines, Carver Hall actually got a vis on, so we could tell from his perspective how we could get to where they were. So he came back down and then we arrived on foot at the site. And when we got to the site, Ferg was standing there in the middle of the road in front of that, uh, or maybe behind the, that white tortellano cruiser.

• 2:13:03Speaker 01

  And I'll never forget, he had, he had those Wiley X goggles on, and he came up to me and he said,

• 2:13:13Speaker 01

  "Hey, sir, Miller and Hampton are gonna be alright."

• 2:13:20Speaker 01

  And there's something about his tone

• 2:13:25Speaker 01

  that implied that Miller and Hampton weren't the object of that fucking statement.

• 2:13:35Speaker 01

  And I looked him in the eyes and I said, "What the fuck are you saying?"

• 2:13:40Speaker 01

  He says, "It's Dunham."

• 2:14:00Speaker 01

  So, I did a largely unpopular thing and said, "We gotta clear these fucking houses." So, I stood post on top of one of the buildings while these guys cleared out the rest of the houses in the vicinity. And... We pulled in some EPWs from that, right? Mm-hmm. I said, "By the time they finished and got back to the site..." Ferg was explaining to me what had happened.

• 2:14:42Speaker 01

  And I was looking around and they had taken the weapons out of that Land Cruiser and stacked them up against the wall. And, as I recall, there were a couple AKs, a couple RPGs, a Mark I grenade, Millsbomb, British-made grenade. Looks like a pineapple grenade, like, from WWII, you know? And I saw something else. I saw what looked like a large chunk of Kevlar.

• 2:15:19Speaker 01

  And I already knew that the Moog was scrubbing sites of contact when Cat Red lost that Marine... Two Marines, PFC Smith and, I can't remember, the second Marine that was killed in that rear roll mine strike in the HK, just fucking, maybe 200 meters from where this thing occurred, back on St. Patty's Day or sometime around then. Two days after that incident, Staff Sergeant Lasher, the platoon sergeant for Cat White, was on patrol up on Diamond and they rolled up a couple of Moog in a black BMW with a

• 2:16:03Speaker 01

  pistol, GPS, and, as I recall, there were grids saved to that GPS that were inside the fucking battalion.

• 2:16:18Speaker 01

  Patrol base in, at the train station in Alkheim. And, and one of those, one of those guys had PFC Smith's ID card. So, they had scrubbed the side of that mine strike. And, uh, my first thought was that was probably a piece of Kevlar from the inside, uh, of one of those Humvee doors. Cause uparm and Humvees are, those doors are armored with Kevlar on the inside. So my first thought was that it's probably where it came from. But as I'm looking at it, I see it's got a familiar shape to it.

• 2:17:00Speaker 01

  And that's the ear scoop on the side of the, the Kevlar where it drops down from the visor to cover the ear. And I realized I was holding a fucking piece of a Kevlar helmet. And I started looking around and I noticed that there were tiny scraps of Kevlar covering that fucking road from wall to wall. It was probably covering a, a dam, at least a hundred, if not greater, square foot area. There was Kevlar scraps everywhere.

• 2:17:45Speaker 01

  And I called over to Ferg and I said, "Where's Dunham's helmet?" And Ferg called to his guys and they grabbed, uh, and they went to where everyone's gear was still staged at the CCP behind that wall. And there was no helmet. They couldn't, they found the rest of his gear, but no helmet. And I realized that that was, his helmet was all over that fucking road. And I looked at Ferg and I said, "Let's get this shit picked up."

• 2:18:24Speaker 01

  The last thing I wanted those fuckers to see, the goddamn moog, was that they could get to us. I wanted no sign of weakness that they could latch on to.

• 2:18:42Speaker 01

  And one of the Marines had a couple of two gallon Ziploc bags in his butt pack. You know, for waterproofing, fucking whatever gear he was carrying.

• 2:18:55Speaker 01

  And we filled

• 2:18:58Speaker 01

  two, two gallon Ziploc bags

• 2:19:02Speaker 01

  with pieces of Dunham's helmet.

• 2:19:06Speaker 01

  Four gallons of fucking Kevlar. We pleased off that rope.

• 2:19:13Speaker 01

  So, my assumption was that, based on the injuries that Ferg told me about that Dunham had sustained, it was that he was probably facing a grenade when it went off. And I just assumed that the blast had ripped the helmet off his head and blown it apart.

• 2:19:34Speaker 01

  And it wasn't until two days later, when I was sitting down with Sanders in the fourth platoon space there, we'd

• 2:19:47Speaker 01

  built dividers within that warehouse to give at least the platoons their own fucking space.

• 2:19:57Speaker 01

  And I was sitting with Sanders on his cot. And Ferg was there.

• 2:20:06Speaker 01

  And

• 2:20:11Speaker 01

  we were talking about Dunham. And Sanders, he tells me a story about a fucking conversation that occurred like two weeks earlier. When, when Kilo Four was still attached to Lima. You know, during a break between patrols, they were

• 2:20:34Speaker 01

  resting in the damn platoon space.

• 2:20:38Speaker 04

  Doing the dart tournament. That dart tournament, we had the whiteboard up and, oh man, and Jason, always at the dartboard practicing or just schooling people.

• 2:20:52Speaker 01

  So this, this conversation comes up. And it's the type of conversation that combat Marines have. Combatants, period.

• 2:21:02Speaker 01

  You take that, that Medal of Honor citation book. This is thicker than a freaking bible.

• 2:21:11Speaker 01

  In my estimation, and I used to read from that thing all the time as a instructor at the basic school.

• 2:21:18Speaker 01

  Probably half the citations in that damn book are from Marines and soldiers. Covering the fucking grenade, right?

• 2:21:29Speaker 01

  So it's something Marines think about.

• 2:21:36Speaker 01

  And I'll let Ferg take it from here, because he was there for the conversation.

• 2:21:41Speaker 03

  Well, it was actually the conversation, were you there with them? When they did that? Because I remember, uh, platoon commander.

• 2:21:48Speaker 04

  You all turned and looked at me and you, "What do you think, Hampton?" Jason said he would cover it up. I said I'd kick it back or pick it up and throw it back.

• 2:21:59Speaker 01

  The topic was, "What do you do with a live grenade?"

• 2:22:01Speaker 04

  What do you do when it rolls to your feet? What do you do? You run?

• 2:22:08Speaker 04

  I mean, I had, I just assumed, "Kick it. Get it away from us."

• 2:22:13Speaker 03

  Yeah, Dunham had a theory that if you put the helmet on it and then you shoot your body on top of it with the sappy plate, the helmet and the flak. But I'm like, the concussion from it is still gonna, yeah, rock your world. But that's what they were talking about.

• 2:22:30Speaker 01

  And Lieutenant Robinson says, "Besides, it doesn't really matter, because the grenade's only got a three to five second fuse. And you wouldn't have time to cover it with a helmet anyway." And then Dunham looks at him and says, "Really?" He says, "I'll be back in a second." And he goes back to his gear and he shows back up with his freaking helmet on. And he looks at the lieutenant and he says, "Time me."

• 2:22:54Speaker 01

  So Bull breaks out his G-Shock and he says, "Go." And within a second, Dunham had tilted his head forward, chin strap off the chin, and he'd slapped the helmet on the deck.

• 2:23:08Speaker 01

  It ain't something he'd just thought about. He fucking rehearsed that shit.

• 2:23:15Speaker 01

  He...

• 2:23:18Speaker 01

  He was so comprehensive in his concern for his Marines. He was practicing what to do with a fucking live grenade. And my fucking jaw dropped when Sanders told me this story. And I got right the fuck up and I walked right into the damn battalion CP. Lieutenant Colonel Lopez was in his office. I knocked on the hatch and I said, "Sir, I just found out what happened to Dunham."

• 2:24:01Speaker 01

  And I explained to him what I had just heard from Sanders. He looked at me and he says, "Okay, get it written up." So I went back to the fucking company space and I grabbed Bull, who'd been a platoon commander for all of fucking four months. Goddamn second lieutenant, being told by his company commander to draft a Medal of Honor citation. There are many lieutenants who ever get thrust into that situation.

• 2:24:49Jocko Willink?

  And all this is unfolding while Kelly and Bill, you guys are getting evacuated out of country.

• 2:24:58Speaker 04

  We're probably by the... Oh, no, we didn't. We went to Anaconda first, or I did.

• 2:25:04Speaker 02

  I went back to Alheim, the battalion aid station. I was there for, fuck, I don't know, maybe a couple hours.

• 2:25:11Speaker 04

  Yeah, Alheim, the aid station, and then...

• 2:25:13Speaker 02

  And then I went, from there, I went to Al Asad.

• 2:25:17Speaker 04

  We're being transported in the, to the helicopter, in the aid Humvee, where they can stack us. And Miller's on top, I'm on the bottom. He goes, "Let's go to Hampton." "What, Miller?" "Am I still a boot?" "No, Miller."

• 2:25:41Speaker 02

  I just needed clarification.

• 2:25:47Jocko Willink?

  As, again, now it's, you say it's two days after this event that you're getting, you start, you piece this together, you know, it's like, you had one, and now you get the other one, and now you got one and one equals two. You got Bull starting to write up the citation for forwarding up the chain of command. But, but one thing that a lot of people, especially civilians, don't understand is that there's still missions to do, and there's still work to be done. And it, the enemy, when the enemy gets a win, they don't back off. In fact,

• 2:26:26Jocko Willink?

  oftentimes, they step it up, which means we get no rest. From a leadership perspective, you guys now looking at your troops going, okay, here's what happened, we have ops to do. What did that look like from your all's perspective?

• 2:26:51Speaker 01

  It was a really busy time. We knew that Dunham had been casualty backed, and eventually it made it back stateside to Bethesda. But we're in the, we're in the fucking middle of it. And on the 17th, all hell broke loose. And that was the day that Rick Gannon and four of his Marines from Weapons Patrol and Lima Company were killed. And that, that kicked

• 2:27:27Speaker 01

  off the battle for Huseba. And that lasted for three freaking days. We came out of there on the, on the 19th. And, so that, that was a conventional attack and defense, followed by a sweep and clear within the entire town of Huseba. But then it was back to patrolling again, right back to it. There was no, no break. And, and there was, the last thing...

• 2:28:09Speaker 01

  That I was gonna take was a break, right? Because now, now we know what the fucking score is. We've just... We've lost a Marine on the ninth in a massive ambush. Now we've lost Dunham. The rest of the battalion is taking casualties. Ramadi is blowing up. My good friend, Chris Bronzy, who takes the 15th Mew actually on the 13th.

• 2:28:47Speaker 01

  Company Commander 2-4 is in there and they're in a fight for their fucking lives. It's going to hell in a handbasket across all Ombar Province. So, there was no rest. We were in it. And we eventually got word on the 22nd that Dunham passed when he was removed from life support.

• 2:29:24Speaker 01

  So, he lived for eight days from point of injury to being removed from life support with his parents at his side and the Commandant of the Marine Corps there as well. But this was all, for us, anecdotal because we're in the middle of it, there's no fucking break. It was just something else that we had to absorb.

• 2:30:01Speaker 01

  And when I got the word that evening, when we had a break in patrols, I pulled the whole company in and gave them the news.

• 2:30:21Jocko Willink?

  You know, one of the things that really

• 2:30:29Jocko Willink?

  they, this, this guy, Phillips, he, he literally interviewed

• 2:30:37Jocko Willink?

  like everyone that, that came in contact with Jason over that time period.

• 2:30:44Jocko Willink?

  And this, this, the story as it unfolds is, is very, well, it's, it's so detailed and it lets you, it gives people an insight in, into not just the frontline troops, whatever that's, that's in that, that's in the service and what they're doing, the medical folks.

• 2:31:07Jocko Willink?

  There's a section right here that, that hearkens back a little bit to that.

• 2:31:15Jocko Willink?

  It says, "Al Asad, Iraq, on the morning of April 14th, Becky Sparks, Commander of Alpha Surgical Company, received an email with new instructions from the Chief Surgeon of the First Marine Expeditionary Force. The title, "Treatment of expectant patients." Patients would have struck a civilian as out of place in a hospital in the middle of a combat zone. But in battlefield medicine, expectant means quite the opposite of what it does in the faraway world of maternity wards and delivery rooms. An expectant mother is expected to create life. An expected soldier

• 2:31:53Jocko Willink?

  is expected to die.

• 2:31:58Jocko Willink?

  So here's the email, "Occasionally, in our triage of patients, in the combat environment, we classify patients as expectant." The Chief Surgeon wrote. "With multiple casualties, these patients have our lowest priority for care, but they have the highest priority for care for another member of our Navy-Marine Corps team, the chaplain."

• 2:32:21Jocko Willink?

  An expectant patient does not always die. Expectant means you expect something to happen and most often it is death, but sometimes after the higher priority patients have been treated, an expectant patient survives. Their care should be continued with the resources that can be committed. Heroic efforts may seem to be helpful in the short run, but if resources are expended when the next patient arrives, then you have not helped this latter patient. This is when judgments are critical and I would dare say that very, very few of us have enough experience to make these decisions easily. When the decisions must be made, talk about it, include your entire team in your decisions and move on.

• 2:33:01Jocko Willink?

  If the patient is expectant, make sure that he is comfortable and that someone stays with him until something happens. If the patient does die, document the death appropriately.

• 2:33:16Jocko Willink?

  At the 7:00 AM staff meeting, Commander Sparks, a brisk woman who's auburn hair and bright lipstick stood out next to the black 9mm pistol hanging from her shoulder, passed the chief surgeon's message along to her physicians. She briefly discussed it with them, highlighting the advice that doctors revisit the expectant once, once they have treated the other patients.

• 2:33:39Jocko Willink?

  Then she moved on to other issues.

• 2:33:43Jocko Willink?

  That afternoon, Jason Dunham arrived at Alpha Surgical Company.

• 2:33:51Jocko Willink?

  Expected to die.

• 2:33:57Jocko Willink?

  In Alpha Surgical Company's contingency plan for dealing with mass casualty event, responsibility for the expectant ward fell on the Navy Dental Team.

• 2:34:08Jocko Willink?

  They had enough general knowledge to push intravenous fluids into a dying man, but not enough to be much use in the trauma ward operating room or intensive care unit. Dental technician first class Christopher Graham, who had helped carry Jason Stretcher in from the helicopter, had been waiting outside the emergency room while the doctors completed their triage. After 15 minutes, the door opened and an order emerged from the chaos.

• 2:34:35Jocko Willink?

  Please take this patient to the expectant ward.

• 2:34:40Jocko Willink?

  Graham and three other Graham and three others carried Corporal Dunham's litter to a dim, white tiled room with a pair of broken shower stalls. A tape above the door read "Wash Room." All the sawhorses were in use elsewhere, so the litter team carefully placed the stretcher on the floor. Graham sat by Corporals, by the Corporal's side, across from Rachel Sterling, a 21-year-old dental technician, 3rd class. Sterling had chosen service in the Navy because her grandfather and great uncle had been sailors. Navy Lieutenant James L. Harris III, a 32-year-old Dennis from Crockett, Texas, joined them in the expectant ward and did as the Chaplain, as did the Chaplain Lieutenant Lentz.

• 2:35:24Jocko Willink?

  Then they waited for Corporal Dunham to die. For 45 minutes, they spoke to him in soft voices, holding his hands and stroking his limp muscular arms, as Lieutenant Harris pushed fluids and painkillers into his veins from an IV sac. "The Marine Corps is proud of you, and we're all proud of you," Graham told him.

• 2:36:02Jocko Willink?

  Well, obviously, Dunham was a fighter and wasn't, wasn't, wasn't going to give up. Makes it to Germany. And, you know, again, I think, um... Shows up in Germany. And this is the, uh, situation he was in. Jason was hooked up to a plethora of medical equipment over the course of the day. There was an intercranial pressure monitor. There was a catheter that passed through his urethra to drain his bladder into a bag.

• 2:36:46Jocko Willink?

  A line ran into his left femoral artery to monitor his blood pressure and allow the nurses to draw blood samples easily. He had a rectal temperature probe. On the right side of his groin was a triple-headed catheter running into a vein for IV fluids and drugs. There was an endotracheal tube in his mouth to facilitate the passage of air between the ventilator and his lungs, plus a suction tube to draw excess fluid from his lungs, and an oral gastric tube to suck out stomach acid. Compressant sleeves on both caps alternately squeezed and relaxed to keep blood moving through his legs to prevent clots. Five pads on his chest monitor his heart rate.

• 2:37:27Jocko Willink?

  A blood oxygen monitor was clipped onto his finger. A blood pressure cuff was on his arm in case the automatic reading failed.

• 2:37:35Jocko Willink?

  The nurses put a sterile plastic cup under each ear to collect the cerebrospinal fluid that continued to drain out of his eardrums.

• 2:38:08Jocko Willink?

  So, he's in horrible condition.

• 2:38:14Jocko Willink?

  Horrible condition.

• 2:38:17Jocko Willink?

  And...

• 2:38:33Jocko Willink?

  He's on the brink of dying this whole time. These, uh, medical folks in the military are doing everything they can. They're making heroic efforts.

• 2:38:51Jocko Willink?

  And they they want to get him stable enough. So that they can get him back to America. At a minimum. And they're they're actually able to do that. And of course, at this time. Jason's mom and dad had been notified of of that their son had been wounded. And this is one thing that's. I don't know what the protocol is. When someone gets killed, there's there's a knock on the door. When someone's wounded. Depending on the severity and how well it's known, and and I don't know what they do in the Marine Corps.

• 2:39:36Jocko Willink?

  In the SEAL teams, they're going to still try and give someone a knock on the door. But what Deb and Dan got was a phone call. Hey. We don't know what's going on. We don't have much information. But Jason's been wounded. And and if I remember correctly, they didn't even get like a massive amount of. Criticality, you know, they didn't. They weren't quite sure.

• 2:40:02Jocko Willink?

  But they. They do find out that he's coming. They get down to DC Bethesda area.

• 2:40:13Jocko Willink?

  And.

• 2:40:16Jocko Willink?

  And Jason, the the medical personnel in Germany are able to get him stable enough to.

• 2:40:23Jocko Willink?

  Send him back.

• 2:40:27Jocko Willink?

  And. When he lands back in America.

• 2:40:35Jocko Willink?

  Um, this is what unfolds.

• 2:40:39Jocko Willink?

  Thirty nine year old Lieutenant Colonel Jim Byrne was working as a federal prosecutor. Going after Colombian drug traffickers when he volunteered for active duty. He expected to end up at the naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba prosecuting the Taliban and Al Qaeda suspects. Instead, the Marines sent him to Bethesda to head the liaison unit. Burns drove to Andrews Air Force Base Wednesday night. To meet the plane from Germany and watch the crew load Corporal Dunham's litter into a private ambulance waiting on the tarmac.

• 2:41:13Jocko Willink?

  The Colonel sat for a few minutes next to Jason. The noise from the plane was deafening. And Byrne leaned over to speak into his ear.

• 2:41:29Jocko Willink?

  "Welcome back, hero. We're gonna take care of you."

• 2:41:34Jocko Willink?

  There was the Colonel's standard greening for a wounded man. Byrne had no idea if Jason could hear him. But just in case, he explained that they were at the airbase where the President's plane landed. And that he was going to be taken to the Naval Hospital in Bethesda.

• 2:42:05Jocko Willink?

  And when he gets there,

• 2:42:10Jocko Willink?

  this is where his mom and dad, Jason's mom and dad, Dan and Deb finally get to see him.

• 2:42:20Jocko Willink?

  Dan and Deb walked into the room and saw Jason lying naked on his back, a towel covering his groin and a catheter tube running to a urine bag by the foot of his bed.

• 2:42:30Jocko Willink?

  His head was wrapped in gauze.

• 2:42:34Jocko Willink?

  And the left side of his face was a mask of purple and red. He wore a neck brace that tilted his head slightly. Both eyes were still swollen shut. And the Dunham's imagined an empty left eye socket beneath the inflammation. His lips and tongue, which protruded next to the plastic breathing tube, looked parched. The ventilator moved his chest up and down in perfect robotic rhythm.

• 2:42:57Jocko Willink?

  His feet curled down towards each other in an exaggerated pigeon-toed position. Dan thought he looked thin, as if his muscles were already fading. Deb thought he looked cold. "I'd love to put a blanket on him," she said. "I know that's the instinct," the nurse responded, "but we're trying to keep him cool."

• 2:43:20Jocko Willink?

  Deb sat in a chair on Jason's more heavily damaged left side and Dan sat across from her. They each held one of Jason's hands and they held each other's hands across Jason's stomach. "We love you," Dan assured Jason. "You're gonna be alright."

• 2:43:36Jocko Willink?

  "Hi honey," Deb said.

• 2:43:40Jocko Willink?

  "We're here."

• 2:43:45Jocko Willink?

  "You're home and we're here."

• 2:44:02Jocko Willink?

  So...

• 2:44:07Jocko Willink?

  Again, at this point, I mean, you guys still are working.

• 2:44:15Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys have...

• 2:44:18Jocko Willink?

  I mean, Ferg, you had seen, you had seen Jason and probably were the most...

• 2:44:26Jocko Willink?

  Whatever, aware, you know, mentally while you're getting him casavacked. What were you thinking? Do you think, did you think he was gonna live? Did you think...

• 2:44:38Speaker 03

  What I had told the platoon and what I was thinking is like, if he survived the first 24 hours, that kinda going along with the no news was good news thing. So it was like day four or five and we started having really a lot of hope. You know, because at that time, he obviously stabilized. We haven't heard nothing by then. So that's what I kinda told the platoon.

• 2:44:59Speaker 03

  When I had seen him, I really, you couldn't tell a lot of his damages and at the time...

• 2:45:06Speaker 03

  Kilo Six had told me later that a piece had come up through on the bottom of his throat. Went straight up. We did not know that at the time. Because it was just, it was all red, the capillary bleeding. I was worried as long as that the pressure from the grenade, and like I said, every day that he lived, I was, I was hopeful for it. And that's the only thing I could tell the platoon, because you know, they'd ask every day for updates. And but, I was just... And the biggest thing is we, you know, still had to go work. And everything and I remember on the fourteenth because your body goes through these physiological changes that you really can't describe to you do it and when everything happened you just go off your training and then you don't think about it but I remember us being at Camp Ganon there at Lima's pause

• 2:45:51Speaker 03

  and it was just about the sun was gonna set here another hour or so but we had to roll back roll through that dams town again and go back to our train station but I remember then I felt sick and I had to switch spots with the marine from sitting in the back up against the cab of the Humvee to the end so I could dry heave and you know and then I remember going back that night I wrote up a statement that was a page and a half long because I I knew what had happened and I knew it was gonna be Medal of Honor or Navy Cross for for what he did I was hoping

• 2:46:27Speaker 03

  but I also remember too waking up in the middle of the night and that train station violently just from the explosion again and hearing that and just sitting upright violently and you know it's like you can train yourself for that but until you experience that it's just you can't help that

• 2:46:45Speaker 03

  and then I remember some of the Marines being angry and they wanted like retaliation especially since we had those three enemy POWs but you know like you can't we gotta get them back intel clutch all that stuff the bigger picture thing but yeah there was some tough days for the company

• 2:47:06Jocko Willink?

  one thing that um it's interesting both both you guys mentioned is like and this is a double edged sword but I'll take it is you had work to do and we we're gonna have to deal with these things at some point but you know when I lost my first guy Mark Lee we had there's no instruction manual on protocols to follow um there's no there's no uh book procedure that we could follow there was nothing like that

• 2:47:40Jocko Willink?

  and it was just me and and you know Mark was the first SEAL killed in Iraq and you know there wasn't a lot of experience in dealing with that

• 2:47:52Jocko Willink?

  and what I said to the guys was

• 2:47:57Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna go back to work. That's what we're gonna do. We're gonna go back to work. And I, I believe there is a, a something beneficial to that. And one of the things that I notice a lot when guys do get,

• 2:48:14Jocko Willink?

  when they have a hard time, a lot of times I see it's guys that don't have a new mission of some kind. What is your new mission gonna be? And that's one of the things that I advise, you know, military folks that are, that are transitioning out of the military. You need a new mission. You gotta have something else to focus on. Because if you don't do that, then you're stuck. You're stuck thinking about this stuff. And those thoughts, you have to have them, right? You have to have them. You're gonna have them over time. You know, we were talking about this earlier. You're gonna have those thoughts over time. You gotta sort this out in your head. But just like when you have, when you get sick and you take medicine, you don't take all the medicine at once.

• 2:48:59Jocko Willink?

  You don't take all the medicine at once. You take it a little bit at a time and you bring it back a little bit of time and you, you heal up over time. And I, I believe

• 2:49:08Jocko Willink?

  that's a good thing about having, when you're on deployment, like, oh, guess what we're gonna do? We're gonna have a ceremony and then we're gonna get back to work tomorrow afternoon.

• 2:49:19Jocko Willink?

  And I think that's beneficial. And we don't always get that opportunity. And especially guys that get home and get out, it can be really hard because they don't have a new mission and they're, they're, they try and take all that medicine at once, which is, which is hard to take. Hard to take all that medicine at the same time. Hey, the medicine is gonna be there. Like it's, your, your, your brain has to get sorted out over time. But take your time with it. And one of the only ways to do that is if you have a new mission, something else to focus on.

• 2:49:51Jocko Willink?

  And you guys getting evacuated home. What was that process like?

• 2:49:58Speaker 02

  We got split up at Battalion Aid because I was a little more severe than Bill.

• 2:50:03Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:50:04Speaker 02

  So.

• 2:50:07Speaker 02

  I remember getting picked up from LZ Parrot and they stuck me at the very roof of the Black Hawk. All I could see was the ceiling and all I could hear was the blades. And then. I must have passed out a little bit on that flight because it was really short. I remember waking up in Battalion Aid.

• 2:50:27Speaker 02

  And they were working on my arms.

• 2:50:31Speaker 02

  I still couldn't hear for shit and I was really just out of it. But I wasn't. It was like.

• 2:50:39Speaker 02

  It felt very surreal, like I could. Sense everything that was going on and I could see people doing stuff, but at the same time, like I just wasn't mentally processing what was going on. Like, um. The doctors asked me if anything was wrong with my mouth. And I didn't say anything. I just reached in and pulled out a tooth fragment and showed it to him.

• 2:51:00Jocko Willink?

  It's a non-verbal answer.

• 2:51:03Speaker 02

  So.

• 2:51:05Speaker 02

  I believe. Gibson. And, uh, for certain, did you guys come into BAS and see me before I flew out of Battalion Aid?

• 2:51:15Speaker 01

  Negative.

• 2:51:16Speaker 02

  Then it must have been.

• 2:51:17Speaker 01

  It must have been Templeton.

• 2:51:19Speaker 02

  Okay. Because.

• 2:51:20Speaker 01

  We were in zone until.

• 2:51:22Speaker 02

  It might have been him and Rob. I can't remember.

• 2:51:24Speaker 01

  It was Rob's.

• 2:51:25Speaker 02

  Okay. I remember them coming in and it was right before I was getting pushed out to Al Asad. Um, because I think I needed some debridation surgeries, which I got in Al Asad. Um, and basically, once I left Battalion Aid, I was by myself. I didn't have anybody else. Um, in Al Asad, I got sweatpants because I was. In just boxers. And, um. One of the. Navy. People there let me use a sat phone and I called home. Unfortunately, I regret that because I left my dad out to dry on that one. Sorry, Dad.

• 2:52:01Jocko Willink?

  What was the message? Hey, Dad got wounded. Uh, guess you're not home. Sorry. Bye.

• 2:52:05Speaker 02

  No, he answered. He answered and it was daytime, so my mom was at work. So I called my dad.

• 2:52:14Speaker 02

  I called home and my dad answered and I was like, hey dad. I just wanna let you know. I got hurt. I'm okay. I'm gonna end up in Germany soon. I don't know when.

• 2:52:29Speaker 02

  But I wanted to let you know. And that was it. He said, okay, I love you. You know, and everything. The problem was my mom had a lot more questions. And he didn't have any answers, you know. He was just happy that I called and told him I was okay. He didn't think to ask stuff, so I kinda left my dad out to drive on that one.

• 2:52:51Speaker 02

  But I think I was in Al Asad for two days. I had two debridement surgeries and then they.

• 2:52:58Speaker 02

  Casually backed me off to Germany. In Germany, I had two more debridement surgeries.

• 2:53:05Speaker 02

  Bandage changes. And I was there for five days. And I was actually paired up with one of the guys that was on the roof that got hit. Yeah, and he had taken a bullet in the hip and it traveled down his leg bones and came out his pinky toe.

• 2:53:25Speaker 01

  That was, that was the damn sniper team that was supporting the three that morning?

• 2:53:30Speaker 02

  Yes, I can't remember his name. He ended up. Yes, and he casually backed to Texas from Germany, cuz that's where he was from. So. Once I left Germany, I hit Bethesda for four days. I had one more debridement surgery. And. That was it there. And then I hit Balboa in San Diego. And in Bethesda, my mom actually had flown out to Maryland. And she was there in Bethesda with me and she flew on the military flight from Bethesda to San Diego.

• 2:54:05Speaker 02

  Was she pissed? Uh, she didn't show it.

• 2:54:10Speaker 02

  She was. She was amazing. The hoops she jumped through to find out when I was getting to Bethesda were pretty impressive. She had an old friend who was retired Air Force Colonel. She got ahold of him. He actually found out what Casavac flight I was on. And then she rallied her friends to get air miles and flew out and met me there. Outstanding. Yeah. And then in Balboa, I had two oral surgeries and like a seventh debridement surgery because my arm had gotten hit so bad, I was in swelling, I was basically pushing the muscle out of the wounds. So they had to clean that up and I had no function. And I was in San Diego. You beat me to San, Bill beat me to San Diego.

• 2:54:55Speaker 02

  Because I actually linked up with him there because I was there for a week and a half before they sent me home unconvalescently because I couldn't take care of myself. So they just literally, here's 60 days, go home. So I am back home to Eureka and then in Eureka I had four more surgeries. Two days from being home, I reached out to grab a glass of water with my right arm and I had a piece of metal sitting right on my brachial artery on my right hand side. Deflexing from the muscle, pushed the piece of shut mode down. Ruptured my brachial and my arm swole up huge and just caused increased amount of pain. So I had to have emergency surgery that night. That was a 12 hour vascular surgery on my right arm where I got a vein from my ankle graft in and a whole bunch of stuff.

• 2:55:41Speaker 02

  And then two weeks later on my follow up for that, the doctor, I had just my question to doctor about my left arm because there was this weird vibration in my armpit I could feel with my right hand. He puts his hand on there, he's like, you have an AV fissula, you're going in for surgery tonight. So. You had a what, what was it? It's an AV fissula. So my brachial artery had a hole in it. And also my vein had a hole in it. So blood's coming out of my brachial artery and going back into my vein. It's not traveling down my arm like it's supposed to. And it creates like a really low, they call it a thrill, but it vibrates and you can feel it. And it was bad enough. So that was 16 hours. Surgery happened that night. And then the rehab started for me.

• 2:56:24Speaker 02

  That was eight months of physical therapy, two more surgeries. A lot of cussing, lots of cussing.

• 2:56:37Speaker 02

  But uh, and so like my recovery process is after the surgeries is the Marine Corps tried to medically discharge me because I was a broken Marine. That was unacceptable to me. So Captain Gibson at the time, he put me into company office staff. I was the scribe. And so I did that while I was rehabbing and when he rotated out, we got a new captain, Captain Gibson, who was our new company commander, and he allowed me to stay on and keep rehabbing. Oh yeah, Ash, sorry, Captain Ash. And it got to the point where I was banned

• 2:57:18Speaker 02

  from his office because he was tired of me asking to go back to my platoon. And it took me nine months of physical therapy and rehab and a lot of getting yelled at to stop asking. And Captain Ash told me that I better not bring it up again unless I had a note from my doctor, my physical therapist, and my mom telling me I was okay enough to go back to the platoon.

• 2:57:43Speaker 04

  And your mom.

• 2:57:44Speaker 02

  And my mom. I think I shocked him the next day when I came into the office with a note from my doctor, my physical therapist, and my mom. I'm surprised you got your mom to sign off, but that's all good. She knew I had to because we were gearing up to deploy to Ramadi. And the whole time I was like, I signed up to serve my four years. I'm not getting medically discharged. I signed up to do my four years. So, and she kind of, she didn't like it, but she respected it, I think. And so he let me go back to my platoon and I deployed again, but it was,

• 2:58:24Speaker 02

  it was a need. I needed to prove to myself I wasn't meant to die there. I had to go back and make sure all my brothers made it back, you know? I had to do what Dunham did for me. I had to make sure everybody made it back. And I just, I had to serve my four years. It was this espiritual core drive to do what I signed up to do. And I, the whole time I-

• 2:58:55Speaker 02

  I went through the emotional rainbow on this journey. It wasn't an easy journey at all. I went from self-destructive to depression to I thought I was invincible. Lot of, lot of bad choices, but in the end, I, I found this path of I'm not fucking hurt. I'm not fucking hurt. I got staples in my arm and I played in a slow pitch softball tournament at home. Got yelled at by my mom. Try being 21 on a field with 20 of your friends and your mom shows up and starts fucking yelling at you. It's embarrassing. But that's how

• 2:59:32Speaker 02

  I healed is I got so fed up with being hurt that I said, fuck it. I'm not hurt. I'll play, I'll play one-handed. I would have deployed one-handed. I mean, shit, I mostly deployed with arm in a two-thirds because my left arm wasn't strong. I still didn't have full range of mobility. I was good enough to fake it and make it look good, you know? But it was just about like coping and I had to be around my brothers because if I wasn't around them, I probably wouldn't. I would have killed myself some way, somehow. And I needed them to help me keep grounded to give me a mission, you know? And my mission was they're gonna make it through this one. So.

• 3:00:19Jocko Willink?

  That was a lot of surgeries.

• 3:00:21Speaker 02

  Yeah, a lot. I had to go in for a shoulder surgery because the wall fucked my back and shoulder up pretty good. And the anesthesiologist, you know, they gotta talk to you before you go into surgery. She's like, have you ever had anesthesia for? And I just got this huge grin. She's like, what? I'm like, I'm an anesthesia pro. I'm good. Don't worry about me. I wake up from it just fine. She's like, how do you know? And I was like, mm, I'm about 16 surgeries deep. A lot of metal.

• 3:00:55Jocko Willink?

  And Bill, you get casavacked?

• 3:00:59Speaker 04

  I got casavacked. I think I went to, after the battalion aid station and Miller and I got on the helicopter.

• 3:01:10Speaker 04

  From there, I went to Anaconda and they pulled some metal out of my leg. And stitched me up and then a day later or a couple hours later, I was on a flight up to Landstuhl. And then from there, I went straight into San Diego. Stayed there for about a week or two, just getting made sure that my hole in my arm wasn't gonna be detrimental and then they'd sent me on my convo convo leave.

• 3:01:50Jocko Willink?

  Where'd you go on convo leave?

• 3:01:55Speaker 04

  Uh, back home up to Washington.

• 3:01:58Jocko Willink?

  Washington, nice place to convo, huh?

• 3:02:00Speaker 04

  Mm-hmm.

• 3:02:02Speaker 02

  And well, one of the hardest things through my whole like giving medevac out was nobody had any answers for me. Battalion A didn't know, nobody else saw, I knew it because I kept asking about Jason. I wanted to know. My mom had during the deployment became in contact with Deb and Dan and they kind of became, you know, a marine family. And my mom was the one that actually told me Jason passed when I was in, I think I was in Bethesda, but I was still in the hospital when she told me. I remember it was like crushing. It was basically just reliving it all again.

• 3:02:46Speaker 02

  Cause the whole time I wanted to know and the only news I got really was the bad news.

• 3:02:49Jocko Willink?

  And Bill, you, you're, it sounds like you're the one that actually saw, oh, you saw him with his helmet reached out and you're probably the first person that said, I know what just happened.

• 3:03:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, I, my sister broke the news to me on the 22nd or 23rd, 24th, whatever. They came down to and stayed at the Fisher House. At Balboa.

• 3:03:29Speaker 04

  Yeah, when I pulled that rifle back and I was thinking in my head, my eyes had gone down and he was right there with, right there in front and I didn't, I thought his helmet had come off during the, during the fight. And, uh, and I was like, alright, hold him. There we go, I'll do this. And then it went out.

• 3:03:54Jocko Willink?

  Boom.

• 3:03:55Speaker 04

  Yep.

• 3:04:02Jocko Willink?

  You know, uh, I know, talk a lot about, uh, decision making and, and as combat leaders, you gotta make decisions. You gotta make decisions, you gotta make hard decisions. And as hard as those decisions are, I, I, there's a, the absolute most horrible of all decisions that I can't even fathom trying to make is one that Dan and Deb were faced with.

• 3:04:44Jocko Willink?

  And, and this is based on the fact that they're getting told that, I mean, this, this is what they get told. Dr. Dunn introduced himself and Dr. Mulligan joined them back in the waiting room. Deb thought the 35-year-old Mulligan was pretty. Dan thought she seemed awfully young for a neurosurgeon. Dr. Mulligan spent little time on pleasantries. "The prognosis for your son is grim," she said. She explained that the biggest grenade fat fragment had caused so much damage that even if he survived, Jason would likely be paralyzed on one side and unable to speak or understand those who spoke to him. The swelling of his brain stem had destroyed its ability to keep the body alive unless a machine did his breathing for him. "What you see is what you have," she said.

• 3:05:27Jocko Willink?

  "He will never be able to hear you or know you are there." Mulligan said there was an operation she could do to relieve the pressure in Jason's brain, but she warned she wasn't sure that Jason was strong enough to survive the surgery or that it would do any good even if he did survive. The damage, she believed, had already been done and could not be reversed. The chances for a full neurological recovery are, are nonexistent.

• 3:05:53Jocko Willink?

  The doctors then mentioned the unmentionable. The Dunhams should consider taking Jason off of life support.

• 3:06:10Jocko Willink?

  So. They pulled out a copy of Jason's living will, which he had signed while serving at the sub-basin Georgia. They read it together in silence. "If at any time I should have a terminal condition, become in a coma with no reasonable expectation of regaining consciousness, or become in a persistent vegetative state with no reasonable expectation of regaining significant cognitive function, then in any such event,

• 3:06:36Jocko Willink?

  I direct that the application of life-sustaining procedures to my body be withheld and withdrawn,

• 3:06:45Jocko Willink?

  and that I be permitted to die."

• 3:07:12Jocko Willink?

  So they make that decision.

• 3:07:17Jocko Willink?

  The Dunhams thought that Jason's breathing seemed more labored than before, even through the ventilator.

• 3:07:25Jocko Willink?

  "I can't sit here and watch this anymore," Dan told Deb. Dr. Dunn described how they would disconnect the ventilator and what would happen afterward.

• 3:07:34Jocko Willink?

  A nurse hooked up a morphine drip to Jason's IV. "Is he going to feel anything?" Deb asked.

• 3:07:42Jocko Willink?

  The doctors assured her that he would not.

• 3:07:47Jocko Willink?

  The Dunhams stepped out of the room. The medical staff pulled the curtain closed, and at 4:35 PM, the respiratory therapist slid the tube from Jason's throat.

• 3:07:57Jocko Willink?

  The nurse turned off the alarm on his heart monitor.

• 3:08:03Jocko Willink?

  Deb sat on Jason's right side, across from Dan.

• 3:08:07Jocko Willink?

  Dr. Dunn stood at the foot of the bed, watching Jason and the monitors.

• 3:08:13Jocko Willink?

  Lieutenant Colonel Byrne and two of his men stood there in silence.

• 3:08:20Jocko Willink?

  The Colonel knew he was intruding on a private moment and considered leaving, but this bed was Corporal Dunham's final battlefield, he thought.

• 3:08:39Jocko Willink?

  And Marines don't abandon their brothers on the battlefield.

• 3:08:45Jocko Willink?

  A chaplain administered last rites. Then he leaned over to help Deb remove her gloves, and she once again felt Jason's skin as she held his hand. Sometimes she reached across and held Dan's hand, sometimes she placed her own on Jason's heart. "We're proud of you, Dan," said.

• 3:09:04Jocko Willink?

  "We love you."

• 3:09:07Jocko Willink?

  Deb touched the side,

• 3:09:10Jocko Willink?

  and the bridge of Jason's nose stroked his arms and said, "It's okay, honey.

• 3:09:15Jocko Willink?

  You can go now."

• 3:09:18Jocko Willink?

  Doctor Dunn watched as the blue line on the monitor screen showed plunging levels in oxygen in Jason's blood. His heart rate fell until the green line went silently flat. Dunn stepped forward and bent down to listen to Jason's lungs and heart.

• 3:09:36Jocko Willink?

  He straightened up, removed the stethoscope from his ears, and said, "He's gone."

• 3:09:45Jocko Willink?

  It was 4:43 PM,

• 3:09:48Jocko Willink?

  April 22nd, 2004.

• 3:09:53Jocko Willink?

  Jason's body relaxed,

• 3:09:56Jocko Willink?

  and Dan thought his son looked like himself again.

• 3:10:03Jocko Willink?

  Deb put a photo of the Dunham family in Jason's hand.

• 3:10:44Jocko Willink?

  I know we were

• 3:10:47Jocko Willink?

  talking before we kicked this thing off.

• 3:10:54Jocko Willink?

  And um

• 3:11:03Jocko Willink?

  we were talking about the fact that there's always things that we can look at.

• 3:11:09Jocko Willink?

  From whether it's a decision you made, whether it's a meaningless decision or one that matters, you know. Hey, do we step here? Do we go there? Do we put this unit over here? Do we go over there? Do we go down this road? Do I go on this side of the vehicle? Like, there's a million little decisions that we all make, that we all made.

• 3:11:29Jocko Willink?

  And it's something that can absolutely

• 3:11:38Jocko Willink?

  it's something that

• 3:11:44Jocko Willink?

  none of us can change. And it's something that if we, if you knew the outcome.

• 3:11:52Jocko Willink?

  If any of us knew the outcome of the situations that we've been through. Sure, you look back and say, oh, go left instead of right. Go forward instead of back. Go to that vehicle instead of this vehicle.

• 3:12:08Jocko Willink?

  But we don't have that luxury.

• 3:12:13Jocko Willink?

  We don't have that luxury of knowing what the outcome is gonna be. Of every decision that we make.

• 3:12:27Jocko Willink?

  But we do have

• 3:12:33Jocko Willink?

  We do have control over the decisions we make now.

• 3:12:38Jocko Willink?

  The decisions that we make

• 3:12:42Jocko Willink?

  with what we do now.

• 3:12:45Jocko Willink?

  And how we handle

• 3:12:49Jocko Willink?

  the things that we've been through.

• 3:12:55Jocko Willink?

  And as I hear this story unfold and sit here with you guys, you know, that's what I think about. Is not so much the fact that, "Look, there's a million decisions we all made that led to this point in our world."

• 3:13:15Jocko Willink?

  That we can't control them, we can't take them back, and even if we could, we didn't know the outcome.

• 3:13:25Jocko Willink?

  But we have the opportunity to make decisions now. And to move forward

• 3:13:32Jocko Willink?

  in the right direction.

• 3:13:57Jocko Willink?

  You know, we've been, um, we've been going for a while.

• 3:14:01Jocko Willink?

  And, and I told you guys in the beginning, I was like, "Yeah, this is gonna suck."

• 3:14:10Jocko Willink?

  And I was also talking about the fact that, like anything that sucks, you know, you, you gain something from it. You, you make progress.

• 3:14:20Jocko Willink?

  You become stronger, is the bottom line. You know, you do something hard. As an individual, when you do something hard, you become stronger. As a unit, as you do something hard, you become stronger. These things that we go through make us stronger, they make us better.

• 3:14:41Jocko Willink?

  And you know, before, before we close out, you know, I don't know if I just, if you guys want to have one last thought, you know, about Jason, about his impact on you

• 3:14:58Jocko Willink?

  and the decisions that you make now in your life.

• 3:15:06Jocko Willink?

  Bill,

• 3:15:09Jocko Willink?

  what do you got, brother?

• 3:15:14Speaker 04

  Occupy myself, occupies myself with four kids, two acres and a small farm.

• 3:15:24Speaker 04

  I've, I didn't grow up hunting.

• 3:15:29Speaker 04

  But when I got out of the Marine Corps, I took up hunting. I got into it. I got my certificate and then went out and applied more or less my infantry to hunting.

• 3:15:45Speaker 04

  I found

• 3:15:48Speaker 04

  that the more time I'm in the woods and the more time I'm out there,

• 3:15:56Speaker 04

  it's so quiet that I can find myself and I can find peace. And when you get, it's, it's, is it a challenge though, when you're climbing up a hill?

• 3:16:14Speaker 04

  If you love that hill? Is that really work? Is that, you get to the top of that hill and I'm up there because Jason, I've got kids to teach and to teach how to hunt and they love the idea of it all.

• 3:16:36Speaker 04

  I've got things to do now because of Jason.

• 3:16:41Speaker 04

  I've got a life to live. I've got four to raise. And I got my best friend that helps me. And she's an incredible woman altogether on her own. That's.

• 3:17:02Speaker 04

  Yeah, she's, she's been holding me together quite a bit and we're going almost 14 years now.

• 3:17:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, everything you just said, from the farm, to the hunting, to raising four. And raising four, four kids that will reflect and, and never forget. And that's outstanding.

• 3:17:33Jocko Willink?

  Outstanding.

• 3:17:35Jocko Willink?

  And, and yes, your wife must be pretty incredible to put up with you.

• 3:17:41Speaker 03

  Pinker.

• 3:17:45Jocko Willink?

  Ferg.

• 3:17:47Speaker 03

  This definitely sucked, and I knew this was going to, but uh, I think you gotta look at the big picture and tell his story. Everything and just like, on that dusty road that day, these three still have my back. And it was tough for all of us to be here today, some more than others. And the main thing is just, don't take things for granted, to be grateful.

• 3:18:16Speaker 03

  These guys have families, kids, great lives because of the sacrifice what Jason did. We all know that's the greatest act of humanity I've ever witnessed or probably ever will. But it's like, his legacy lives on through these guys and what they stand for. And you know, just try to take that strength sometimes and go forward. But it's amazing with veterans, what happens on a, on a grassy knoll, in a wadi, in a valley, on a dusty road, on the Syrian-Iraq border will live with us until we die. And it's, I don't know, the brotherhood helps. And you know, we love and we miss Jason. Happy birthday and thank you for having us.

• 3:18:56Jocko Willink?

  Honor to have you guys. Kelly, boot, which I guess you got promoted from boot after you got your freaking arms bout blown off. You almost made it past boot, that's outstanding.

• 3:19:11Speaker 02

  You know, for me, my path was uh, it was long.

• 3:19:19Speaker 02

  After I got hurt and healed and deployed again and came back, I...

• 3:19:26Speaker 02

  Was very, very, very self-destructive. Thought I was invincible.

• 3:19:34Speaker 02

  But I was lucky enough to wake up and move on. And a lot like Bill, I found a woman in my life who

• 3:19:46Speaker 02

  supports me unconditionally, but challenges me to not be crippled by what I've been through. Otherwise, I probably would be. She pushes me to get help and to do things for myself. But at the same time, she requires me to be selfless and be present and not get wrapped up in the wash. So I'm very fortunate for that. And then because of Jason, I have a little seven-year-old who is my best friend. You know, we run amok together, drive mom crazy, laugh, wrestle, hang out,

• 3:20:26Speaker 02

  fucking live. I get to live because of him.

• 3:20:41Speaker 02

  Living is the greatest gift, but it's also the biggest burden.

• 3:20:55Speaker 02

  I've gone through a lot of nights where I wish I was the one. I was the boot. I should have taken the grenade, you know?

• 3:21:04Speaker 02

  But because of my family,

• 3:21:08Speaker 02

  I don't wish to do more.

• 3:21:23Speaker 02

  I love him and I'll always love him because of what I have. It's not always easy to have.

• 3:21:37Jocko Willink?

  Well, you know, the best thing to do with that gift he gave you and you know that every day.

• 3:21:43Speaker 02

  Enjoy it.

• 3:21:44Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely. You you take that little boy Jet, then you raise him into a man.

• 3:21:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. Trust me, he doesn't take it easy on me.

• 3:21:57Speaker 02

  I feel bad for Rick right now. Last time I heard he had the boxing gloves on, so.

• 3:22:04Speaker 02

  No, I just. If it wasn't for him, I wouldn't have my wife. I wouldn't have my son and.

• 3:22:12Speaker 02

  The memories I've been able to get from them. How fill the hole created from the loss.

• 3:22:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, like I said, it's a gift and and just seeing your boy. Out there, uh, who, by the way, I I said, hey, kid, you know, I've written a bunch of books for kids. You want to read them? And he goes, nope. He's the first person that's ever said that to me. You know, most people at least have a little thing in the back of their head to say, hey, I'm getting something for free. I'll take it. Not Jet. Jet said, I'm not here to read. I said, cool. I got some padded rooms out there. You can go run around. And he said, I'll do that instead.

• 3:22:55Speaker 02

  He found your speed bag and he already asked me if he could get one.

• 3:22:58Jocko Willink?

  We'll we'll sponsor that.

• 3:23:02Jocko Willink?

  Awesome, man. And Trent, what do you got?

• 3:23:19Speaker 01

  When we were on post-deployment leave between OF1 and OF2, we just came back from Carla. My XO Rudy Salsito was Battalion Officer of the Day one day. I was down in Palm Springs at my house. He calls me up and he said, "Hey, sir, 3-4 just dumped 34 Marines on our doorstep. There's 34 Marines from our sister battalion. We don't have enough time with 3-4 to deploy with them, so they're cross-decking them

• 3:24:03Speaker 01

  to 3-7, and they'll deploy with us. So some of those Marines are going to be coming to Kilo." I said, "All right." And on the first day back from that leave block, at the end of the day, I had to first Sergeant hold a company formation up by the barracks. Because we had seven new NCOs, seven new corporals came to us from 3-4, we got seven of those.

• 3:24:41Speaker 01

  And I wanted to formally welcome them to the family. So we held the formation. I welcomed them aboard, and I turned over the formation to First Sergeant, and I had him send me those seven NCOs. So I stepped back a bit from the formation, standing there in a ditch outside the barracks. And I felt it was important to say something to them, something significant.

• 3:25:26Speaker 01

  So I told him the same thing that I told Kilo the day I took command in Carbola back in early June of '03. I told him, "I believe in three things." As a Marine. Is that I believe in leadership by example? I believe in self-sacrifice for the greater good. And I believe that one man can make a difference.

• 3:26:10Speaker 01

  That's what I'm expecting from you, and that's what you should expect from me. And two years later, I found myself preparing a speech for the town people of Syo, New York, during a ceremony in which they would dedicate their post office to their son, Jason Donovan. And Dave Fleming was there, Rudy was there.

• 3:26:53Speaker 01

  Several Marines were able to make it up for that. And Dave had been as a platoon commander for a short time with weapons before he reorganized the company. And Dave was sharing with me the memory of some anecdote during that time. And it stirred in me the memory of my talk with those seven NCOs that day. And one of those seven was Donovan.

• 3:27:32Speaker 01

  And I realized in a flash that in that moment of utter selflessness

• 3:27:43Speaker 01

  that he embodied the very essence of those three virtues.

• 3:27:54Speaker 01

  Leadership by example. Self-sacrifice for the greater good.

• 3:28:02Speaker 01

  And one man making a difference.

• 3:28:09Speaker 01

  And as Ferk said, he could think of no

• 3:28:14Speaker 01

  more profound example of humanity. The

• 3:28:26Speaker 01

  the acme of human existence.

• 3:28:36Speaker 01

  Give your life for another.

• 3:28:44Speaker 01

  Hampton's got three girls and a fucking boy named Jason.

• 3:28:48Speaker 04

  Two boys, two girls, two boys.

• 3:28:51Speaker 01

  Two and two.

• 3:28:53Speaker 04

  Melanie, Addison, William, and Jason.

• 3:29:00Speaker 01

  We got Jet downstairs working a fucking heavy bag.

• 3:29:08Speaker 02

  Jet Jason.

• 3:29:12Speaker 01

  Jet Jason Miller.

• 3:29:16Speaker 01

  Life begets life.

• 3:29:22Speaker 01

  I spent

• 3:29:26Speaker 01

  a couple of years.

• 3:29:38Speaker 01

  Couple of awkward years

• 3:29:46Speaker 01

  as the company commander of a Medal of Honor recipient.

• 3:29:59Speaker 01

  Something I didn't want.

• 3:30:04Speaker 01

  I

• 3:30:07Speaker 01

  I just wished that

• 3:30:11Speaker 01

  that could have fucking

• 3:30:14Speaker 01

  going for Christmas.

• 3:30:21Speaker 01

  And then one day

• 3:30:25Speaker 01

  I walked up a pier

• 3:30:29Speaker 01

  at Bath Iron Works in Maine.

• 3:30:34Speaker 01

  I was there for the mass stepping ceremony of DDU 109 USS Jason Thunam.

• 3:30:45Speaker 01

  And nothing can repair you

• 3:30:51Speaker 01

  to see your Marine's name

• 3:30:58Speaker 01

  on the transom of a fucking naval vessel.

• 3:31:08Speaker 01

  And I realized in that moment when I saw his name

• 3:31:15Speaker 01

  that in that moment of selflessness

• 3:31:25Speaker 01

  he transformed

• 3:31:30Speaker 01

  an object of personal protection

• 3:31:39Speaker 01

  into an instrument of protection of others.

• 3:31:48Speaker 01

  And in that moment,

• 3:31:54Speaker 01

  he, his actions have created

• 3:32:00Speaker 01

  far-reaching consequences

• 3:32:06Speaker 01

  that he never could have duplicated in life.

• 3:32:18Speaker 01

  In that moment, he

• 3:32:27Speaker 01

  was born into the heritage of our Corps.

• 3:32:34Speaker 01

  And his example will stand alongside of the countless others

• 3:32:44Speaker 01

  who've created that heritage

• 3:32:48Speaker 01

  and will continue to inspire Marines and sailors and anyone else who hears his story

• 3:32:57Speaker 01

  for years and years and years.

• 3:33:14Speaker 01

  It's an impact that I still can't fathom.

• 3:33:26Speaker 01

  But he is leading by example every day still.

• 3:33:35Speaker 01

  And today, he's 38 years old.

• 3:33:43Speaker 01

  On the 244th anniversary of the birth of our Corps.

• 3:33:57Speaker 01

  And if that isn't something,

• 3:34:03Speaker 01

  I don't know what is.

• 3:34:22Jocko Willink?

  It's um

• 3:34:31Jocko Willink?

  It can be, you know, use the term overwhelming.

• 3:34:35Jocko Willink?

  And it's pretty easy to be overwhelmed by something like this.

• 3:34:45Jocko Willink?

  It's easy to be overwhelmed by an act of such

• 3:34:52Jocko Willink?

  selflessness. To make the ultimate sacrifice. It's easy to look at that and get overwhelmed by it.

• 3:35:03Jocko Willink?

  And maybe think to yourself, "Well, you know, that was..."

• 3:35:09Jocko Willink?

  "That was something else. That's something I don't understand. That's something I can't relate to. That's something I don't need to think about."

• 3:35:17Jocko Willink?

  And I would actually say to you, "No."

• 3:35:23Jocko Willink?

  "That actually is something you should think about. That actually is something you should relate to. That is something you should try and pursue

• 3:35:32Jocko Willink?

  every single day

• 3:35:35Jocko Willink?

  to think about. To think about every single day that there's a person.

• 3:35:43Jocko Willink?

  A person

• 3:35:46Jocko Willink?

  flesh and blood with one life to live."

• 3:35:56Jocko Willink?

  And who gave his life

• 3:36:01Jocko Willink?

  for his friends.

• 3:36:08Jocko Willink?

  And maybe every day.

• 3:36:13Jocko Willink?

  If you think about not what you can take from the world.

• 3:36:21Jocko Willink?

  But what you can give.

• 3:36:26Jocko Willink?

  And if you can do that right there, if you can give a little bit.

• 3:36:35Jocko Willink?

  And reflect a little bit of Jason Dunham back into the world.

• 3:36:46Jocko Willink?

  Then the world will be a better place for it.

• 3:37:01Jocko Willink?

  And with that.

• 3:37:05Jocko Willink?

  We've been at it for a while.

• 3:37:08Jocko Willink?

  And I just want to thank all of you guys for coming on here for sharing some of these things that you learned from him, from sharing it with other people.

• 3:37:20Jocko Willink?

  And, and thank you all, of course, individually for what you all did. I could talk to each one of you individually separately for hours to, to hear about what you guys have been through. What you've seen.

• 3:37:36Jocko Willink?

  So thanks for your service and sacrifice, but thank you for coming here and for honoring your brother.

• 3:37:45Jocko Willink?

  Not only in the ways that you're living your lives right now, raising your children.

• 3:37:55Jocko Willink?

  But also by telling the story of his life and ensuring that no one ever forgets the sacrifice that he made.

• 3:38:07Jocko Willink?

  And I can promise you, we will never forget him.

• 3:38:16Jocko Willink?

  So thanks for coming on. Happy birthday to the Marine Corps. Happy birthday to Jason Dunham. And of course, Semper Fidelis. Semper Fi. Semper Fi. And with that, our guests have left the building. Sergeant Bill Hampton, Corporal Kelly Miller, Staff Sergeant John Ferg Ferguson, and Lieutenant Colonel Trent Gibson. Thanks to all of them for coming on.

• 3:38:58Jocko Willink?

  And Echo Charles has joined us at the table. Good evening, Echo. Good evening. You were in the support role on that podcast. Yes, sir. So appreciate you manning the controls in the back. Keeping things running smoothly. Obviously, an honor for us to be able to sit here and talk with those men. And once again, when we turned off the recorders and we were kind of helping those guys, you

• 3:39:40Jocko Willink?

  know, get on out of here and all that, they all had places to be and whatnot, but, you know, you could see that they were happy to come on and happy to share the story. And I said, guys, and I never really thought about this before, but I said, guys, imagine if you could sit down and put some headphones on and listen to the platoon commander, the machine gunner, the platoon sergeant that was out there with John Baslow. Imagine if you could do that. Imagine what that would mean to you. And that's what it is like for them to come on here and share the story of Jason Dunham.

• 3:40:22Jocko Willink?

  So it's an honor for me to be sitting here and to be able to meet with those guys and share that story, heavy as it is. You know, and I know it's...

• 3:40:37Jocko Willink?

  One of the heaviest stories that a person can share. And to have those guys sit down and go through this, I just wanted to say thanks to them once again.

• 3:40:50Jocko Willink?

  And you know, I, one of the most important things that I need to put out about this is that there are some people right now trying to put together a documentary about the life of Jason Dunham. And what he did, how it all happened. And so the documentary is going to be called The Gift. And it's a couple vets, a couple vets are trying to make the documentary. So if you want to support them, you can go to Facebook or Instagram. They have at The Gift Documentary. And then what they're trying to do is fund it.

• 3:41:35Jocko Willink?

  And they're trying to fund it through an Indiegogo campaign. So if you go to Indiegogo, which is a website where they take donations to make things happen. And in that camp, in that, on that Indiegogo campaign, it is called The Gift Documentary. So if you can, try and provide some support so that this story can be told in detail and rolled out to an even larger audience. So check that out. And if you can, try and help them out to move forward with this project.

• 3:42:19Jocko Willink?

  In hearing this story, I guess, Echo, you know, I also told those guys about how we sort of decompress after these things and how that is an actual. Thing and and what we just did is we just decompressed with the guys, you know, as once we got done, we kinda took a breath, we walked outside, we we started having some normal conversations about life and and while Bill was showing me pictures of hunting and his kids and we're running around with Jet and just doing a decompression. So that's awesome. You got to do that. And that's sort of how we started this whole support. Part. Support. Segment. Segment, yeah, was we did a podcast. It was one of the early podcasts that was

• 3:43:04Jocko Willink?

  really heavy. And when we got done, I was like, hey, I need a moment over here to decompress. Why don't you talk for a minute? And so that's kind of where it came from. And the good thing is, if you don't want to listen to this, it's fine. You don't need to. You can just press stop and we're we're good. You can go carry on with your day. If you need to decompress a little bit with us, cool, you can hang out. We're we're gonna hang out for a little bit till we get a little decompressed. And, you know, one of the things that it is good to reflect on, how do we take what we just heard, which is heavy, and turn it into something that we can actually utilize? As far as I'm concerned, we got, you know, when you hear a story like Jason Dunham, we get charged with

• 3:43:49Jocko Willink?

  living the best lives we can, being the best people we can. And you heard this from all these guys. It's like, hey, how can we live better, do better? So that's what we're here for. You know, and look at look at our lives and say, what can we do better in our lives? How can we get better? How can we be better? That's what we're looking at. And I know you know some ways, Echo Charles. Yes, sir.

• 3:44:12Jocko Willink?

  To get better. What's one of the primary ways that you can think of? Jiu-jitsu. Okay, so. Here's the thing, you get asked this, I get asked this the other day. Someone somebody presented this problem to me, this whole problem of like, look.

• 3:44:28Jocko Willink?

  We are tribal in nature and the tribes are gone and we used to hunt and all these things that we've it's all gone and now we got cell phones and people don't talk this whole big this whole big societal problem.

• 3:44:39Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 3:44:40Jocko Willink?

  And said, what do you think we should do about this incredibly powerful societal problem that we've got of people being disconnected and not needing to hunt not being formed into tribes anymore. The whole litany of problems and I was like, oh yeah, all that just trained jujitsu.

• 3:44:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:44:57Jocko Willink?

  And I'm not even kidding.

• 3:44:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:44:58Jocko Willink?

  I'm actually serious.

• 3:44:59Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:45:00Jocko Willink?

  Oh, you got you want to connect with people, you want to be part of a tribe, you want to be healthy, you want to hunt, you want to get out your aggression. Cool. I got an answer for all those things. You want to be intellectually stimulated? Cool. I got an answer for that. What else? I got an answer for it. It's called jujitsu. So go find a jujitsu gym. Start training is what I'm saying.

• 3:45:20Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 3:45:20Jocko Willink?

  Do you concur?

• 3:45:21Speaker 05

  Like a hundred, one percent agree.

• 3:45:23Jocko Willink?

  That's good. I'm glad I got that extra one percent.

• 3:45:26Speaker 05

  So as well, you know, it's one of these things where, you know, I'm over here estimating your passion and your, uh, um, how should you, you know, your enthusiasm for the whole situation. So, and then you asked me if I agree. So I do agree 100% numerically and technically. The extra one percent is because your enthusiasm, I, I, I, I'm reflecting at 100%.

• 3:45:47Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 3:45:48Speaker 05

  Plus one.

• 3:45:48Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 3:45:49Speaker 05

  Even I feel even stronger in my estimation now.

• 3:45:51Jocko Willink?

  I like it.

• 3:45:52Speaker 05

  I am not going to tell you how you feel, of course, but given my interpretation. So I'm looking at Instagram. I don't call it the gram. Instagram.

• 3:46:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay, you're changing.

• 3:46:03Speaker 05

  I'm looking at Instagram and I follow this one. I forget what it's called. It's called like houses or something like this one. You know, the ones with all the nice houses on the Instagram, right?

• 3:46:13Jocko Willink?

  It's called houses. Okay.

• 3:46:14Speaker 05

  Maybe. I don't know what it's called. It's called something.

• 3:46:16Jocko Willink?

  Houses.

• 3:46:17Speaker 05

  But they're like huge like mansions.

• 3:46:19Jocko Willink?

  Mansions.

• 3:46:20Speaker 05

  So this one I'm looking at is 25 million dollars. Huge. Just like it's a hotel sized house.

• 3:46:26Jocko Willink?

  In the market, are you?

• 3:46:27Speaker 05

  I don't.

• 3:46:30Jocko Willink?

  Got your Zillow qualification set at 25 mil. I like it.

• 3:46:34Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 3:46:34Jocko Willink?

  Is that your max price? You don't want to go over that?

• 3:46:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, I gotta be a little bit reasonable. So, um, I'm thinking to myself, you know, you thoughts, they just roll through your head. You know, all of, you know, a bunch. And then, so I'm thinking, I wonder who owns that house right now, selling it right now for 25 million dollars? Who owns a 25 million dollar house and why? And what are they doing in there?

• 3:46:57Jocko Willink?

  Do they have mats?

• 3:46:58Speaker 05

  Do they?

• 3:47:00Jocko Willink?

  Are there pull-up bars?

• 3:47:01Speaker 05

  Yes. So, yeah, sure. Yes, that too. But at the end, I concluded with this sort of thought that drifted me off of the current house I was looking at. I was like, okay, what if, what, what kind of money do you have to have to be like, sure, I'll buy that 25 million dollar house? So, let's say that, let's say you have five billion dollars. Let's just say, for example, whether you think that's a lot or not, the five billion dollars. The average person, namely me.

• 3:47:28Jocko Willink?

  Does not have five billion.

• 3:47:29Speaker 05

  I don't have five billion dollars. Would five billion dollars make a difference in my life financially? Well, yeah, but what if someone offered you, this is just a thought I arrived at, what if someone offered you five billion dollars? So you could afford to buy that house, by the way, put as many mats as you want to say. What if they offered you five billion dollars, but here's the thing, you could never train jujitsu again?

• 3:47:49Jocko Willink?

  We have no reason for the mats in the house.

• 3:47:51Speaker 05

  Yes, no reason, but so would you take that five billion dollars?

• 3:47:54Jocko Willink?

  And I'll tell you why not. Not only on the premise and principle, but also then you're putting your soul at hazard. You, you just, you can be bought now.

• 3:48:07Speaker 05

  Well, yeah.

• 3:48:07Jocko Willink?

  You sold out.

• 3:48:08Speaker 05

  There is that.

• 3:48:09Jocko Willink?

  Cause next thing they're gonna be coming now. Don't, don't, don't, I'm not, that's a slippery slope. It's a slippery slope. So don't give up the jujitsu for anything, no amount of money.

• 3:48:17Speaker 05

  Yeah, no amount of money.

• 3:48:18Jocko Willink?

  Don't give up yourself.

• 3:48:19Speaker 05

  Yourself for money.

• 3:48:20Jocko Willink?

  Right, for money.

• 3:48:20Speaker 05

  But that aside.

• 3:48:22Jocko Willink?

  By the way, 25 million dollar house in California, just FYI, 1.1% sales tax or a property tax. You're paying what? Two, over 250,000 dollars a year.

• 3:48:35Jocko Willink?

  In property tax on that property. So just, just FYI, if you're in the market for the 25 million dollar house, think about how you're gonna cover that tax scenario. Cause it's not a good scenario.

• 3:48:48Speaker 05

  Right. So if you have 25 million dollars in the bank and you'll be like, hey, I'll just buy the house and I'll be good. I got 25 million dollars, it's just in the form of a house. No. There's gonna be some taxes on that one.

• 3:48:57Jocko Willink?

  Yes, a lot of them.

• 3:48:58Speaker 05

  Be hardcore too. So, but okay, you got it. I dig it and I agree. Don't sell your soul for money.

• 3:49:04Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 3:49:05Speaker 05

  Don't do that. Just the fact of you selling yourself for money, that's a bad thing. I get it.

• 3:49:08Jocko Willink?

  It actually made me angry as you, as you, as you approached the offer, which I kinda knew was coming. That actually made me mad. Just, just the fact that you were gonna approach me with that was making me mad.

• 3:49:20Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:49:21Jocko Willink?

  Like, like, oh, you think you can buy me?

• 3:49:23Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, technically I was not approaching you. I, I approached myself with it when I was laying in bed, looking at Instagram houses. But nonetheless, here's the question is, would you do it? That, that, the soul selling thing aside. Principle, principally, the principle of that, that aside, would you do it? Like basically you're giving up jujitsu for something massive in your life, some massive like improvement in your life. Thing is, no, I, and I wouldn't, and I didn't even have to think about, no, no ways. That's like saying, would you kill your mother kind of, well, I guess it depends on who you are. But it's like one of those deals where it's like no amount of money, you know? And that's just to train, not to mention like, oh, you lose all your jujitsu knowledge or something. Well, I was thinking about a lot of things.

• 3:50:05Jocko Willink?

  You, you went deep on this one.

• 3:50:08Speaker 05

  Nonetheless.

• 3:50:09Jocko Willink?

  I'm glad you're sitting around thinking about this kind of stuff, cause I'm not. I'm over here trying to make things happen, but it's all good.

• 3:50:13Speaker 05

  Yeah. So, hey, you know, so.

• 3:50:16Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so we're gonna keep training jujitsu. We, we establish that point?

• 3:50:19Speaker 05

  That's how much jujitsu it, uh, means.

• 3:50:22Jocko Willink?

  Five billion dollar price tag on it, at a minimum.

• 3:50:24Speaker 05

  Not even close.

• 3:50:25Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 3:50:26Speaker 05

  All the money in the world. No, negative. Nonetheless, so, and people who train jujitsu, they know this stuff. Maybe they have that feeling, maybe they don't. Nonetheless, jujitsu in your life, improvement, 100% improvement, if not more. Agree or concur?

• 3:50:41Jocko Willink?

  101%.

• 3:50:44Speaker 05

  Boom, there you go. So when you do jujitsu, when we do jujitsu, we're gonna wear the gi, cause we're not doing just no gi, right? Maybe, maybe good, I guess, but.

• 3:50:52Jocko Willink?

  You could, but we advise.

• 3:50:53Speaker 05

  Get the origin gi, 100%, various options there. So, originmaine.com is where you get all this stuff. We're about to talk about originmaine.com has.

• 3:51:04Speaker 05

  American-made stuff.

• 3:51:06Jocko Willink?

  Which, which reminds me, you know, we were talking on the podcast, you know, with this crew that was in here about what these young Americans do stepping up and making something. It's also, we got Americans, young Americans in our workforce, and guess what they're doing? Stepping up and rebuilding the country. Up in Maine, what do we got? We got, we got Americans of all ages up there, working, bringing manufacturing back to America. So you don't necessarily have to go overseas to represent, to support our country. You're at here, here in our country, building our economy, that's what you're doing.

• 3:51:46Jocko Willink?

  And if you want to help build our economy and bring manufacturing back from overseas and rebuild communities that were devastated,

• 3:51:54Jocko Willink?

  go to originmaine.com. Get a gi, get a rash guard, by the way, for no gi. Get a rash guard. You can get jeans.

• 3:52:03Speaker 05

  Yes, sir, you can.

• 3:52:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Now, if you're an American, we know factually you have jeans, probably three pairs.

• 3:52:09Speaker 05

  At least.

• 3:52:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Get a pair of jeans. Don't just settle on a pair of jeans made in China.

• 3:52:16Speaker 05

  See, yeah, and I was gonna say something like that too, but I'm like, wait, but I don't want to like, you know.

• 3:52:21Jocko Willink?

  Disparage?

• 3:52:21Speaker 05

  Disparage China as a, but here's the thing, though.

• 3:52:26Speaker 05

  When you look at your gi, you know, or your jeans, like, man, there's a difference, because I have other jeans. Let's face it, I'm, you know, I'm, I'm old school.

• 3:52:34Jocko Willink?

  You do, huh? You didn't put those in the fire? Okay, cool.

• 3:52:37Speaker 05

  Not yet.

• 3:52:37Jocko Willink?

  That's cool.

• 3:52:38Speaker 05

  But you look at it, and one is made straight up, the cotton, like, one is made in America, grown in America, from the seeds, from the cotton, you know, all that stuff. One is that, and then one is sort of made in China, how you said it. It's like, man, it's, you kind of want to throw them away, you see what I'm saying? So it's like, okay, I'm gonna choose, hey, look, I dig it, like, if you're going budget or something like this, like, like, super budget, and I, I get it, but, let's face it, at the end of the day, you don't want that one, you want the American-made ones. I think we do.

• 3:53:06Jocko Willink?

  You want to support freedom.

• 3:53:09Speaker 05

  That's, that's part of the whole gig, yeah.

• 3:53:11Jocko Willink?

  America. You want to support democracy? You get yourself a pair of Origin jeans.

• 3:53:16Speaker 05

  I think so too, yeah.

• 3:53:18Jocko Willink?

  I think that's what we're talking about.

• 3:53:19Speaker 05

  Yes, sir.

• 3:53:20Jocko Willink?

  T-shirts. If you wear joggers, which I don't.

• 3:53:23Speaker 05

  Good idea.

• 3:53:24Jocko Willink?

  You know, so I'm not gonna sit here and tell you to get joggers. I don't wear them.

• 3:53:27Speaker 05

  I think you should wear joggers.

• 3:53:28Jocko Willink?

  And when I wore joggers, one time I tried them on, was laughing, and I showed my family, and they were laughing, and my, my, my wife was like, uh, please. And I said, no problem. I took them off, never to be worn again. But you wear joggers.

• 3:53:41Speaker 05

  Well, I wear them a lot less now, because.

• 3:53:44Jocko Willink?

  Jeans?

• 3:53:45Speaker 05

  I don't know. Yeah, probably because of the jean. Uh, I've been wearing the shorts. Origin shorts, by the way. But I wore joggers the other day when I was working out. Working out, joggers are good, especially for jogging. Imagine that. But I don't do as much jogging anymore. No, that's, I was wearing them the other day, working out. But I don't wear them as much. I wear the shorts, origin shorts, like, anyway. Other stuff too, supplements. Okay, so supplementation, it, it's just been proven, it's like, what do you, you know, when you, uh, bang your head against a brick wall, right? That expression. I'm accidentally doing that every time. Like, I'll forget to be in the routine of taking the krill oil and the joint warfarin. I'll forget. Then I'll get these aches and be like, oh, then you remember, oh, I'm not as consistent. Right? When you get back consistent, it like, it'll, all your little pains go away.

• 3:54:30Jocko Willink?

  It's for real.

• 3:54:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, so it's like, okay, me forgetting to take it, you know, a day, two days, three days, four days, or whatever, just that little thing is jamming, jamming up my whole physical, like, element of my whole thing. And it's, and it's essentially just remembering.

• 3:54:45Jocko Willink?

  You need to take some discipline go, or discipline of any kind, which will help your, your, your motor neurons, or your, your neurons in your brain to remember to take your other supplements, so you don't get aches and pains.

• 3:54:58Speaker 05

  Here's, here's why, and I kind of analyzed it like, literally 10 seconds before I started talking about it.

• 3:55:04Jocko Willink?

  Which is scary.

• 3:55:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, well, you know, that's my typical time of analysis before stuff. So that, uh, what it, what I do is, I take, and I'm good. I don't have any aches and pains. So why, what, it won't be on the front of my mind. You see what I'm saying? If I do have an ache, I'm like, oh, I better take this joint warfarin to freaking help this problem I have. No problem, no problem. Forget about that thing. What do you call it? Out of, out of sight.

• 3:55:27Jocko Willink?

  Out of sight, out of mind.

• 3:55:28Speaker 05

  Out of mind.

• 3:55:29Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 3:55:30Speaker 05

  Unless.

• 3:55:30Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 3:55:31Speaker 05

  Get that.

• 3:55:31Jocko Willink?

  Get some of that, get some milk for your additional protein that literally tastes like dessert. My daughter. I've got two daughters in college right now. She sent me a, we'll call it a text message.

• 3:55:44Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 3:55:44Jocko Willink?

  That was a picture of a peanut butter milkshake. And of course, since she's a eighteen year old girl.

• 3:55:51Speaker 05

  Sure.

• 3:55:52Jocko Willink?

  The caption on it said, literally a peanut butter chocolate milkshake.

• 3:55:59Speaker 05

  Literally.

• 3:56:00Jocko Willink?

  That's what she wrote. And then she called me to tell me about it.

• 3:56:02Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 3:56:03Jocko Willink?

  She said, she was like, Dad, it's literally. She said, it's literally. She mixed it with coconut milk, regular milk, ice cubes, peanut butter milk. Literally.

• 3:56:18Speaker 05

  Literally, yeah.

• 3:56:19Jocko Willink?

  Literally, a peanut butter chocolate milkshake.

• 3:56:23Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:56:24Jocko Willink?

  So that's two.

• 3:56:25Speaker 05

  Is there a re- there is, in my experience, there's a resurgence of the word literally. The kids are saying it nowadays.

• 3:56:31Jocko Willink?

  Are you serious right now? You that you're just noticing that?

• 3:56:33Speaker 05

  Well.

• 3:56:33Jocko Willink?

  What are you talking about?

• 3:56:34Speaker 05

  I noticed it a little bit ago, but since you sort of, you know, jogged my memory.

• 3:56:39Jocko Willink?

  You can't say it anymore. Don't say it.

• 3:56:41Speaker 05

  Well.

• 3:56:41Jocko Willink?

  It's off limits now.

• 3:56:43Speaker 05

  Why?

• 3:56:44Jocko Willink?

  Because that's what these, that's what the, that's what my eighteen and twenty year old daughters say.

• 3:56:49Speaker 05

  Right. So people think that you're like trying to be trendy saying it.

• 3:56:52Jocko Willink?

  Or they just think you're dumb.

• 3:56:54Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 3:56:54Jocko Willink?

  Because what I do with my kids is I won't even say any other part of the sentence. I'll just say, literally.

• 3:57:00Speaker 05

  Yeah. Well, I wouldn't recommend that, but here's the thing about the word literally, li- literally.

• 3:57:06Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 3:57:06Speaker 05

  It has another definition now. It's just like an exaggeration of emphasis.

• 3:57:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 3:57:11Speaker 05

  It's like it doesn't mean literally anymore.

• 3:57:13Jocko Willink?

  That happens. That happens.

• 3:57:14Speaker 05

  That's crazy.

• 3:57:15Jocko Willink?

  That's the way the English language evolves. That's why when I was studying English, I realized English was like jujitsu. Because it adopts other words from other languages and they become a part. And the languages, the words that are in the language can morph and change as needed.

• 3:57:30Speaker 05

  Yeah, but this case is kind of particular because literally means something that's either it is or it isn't. Like all these other ones, most other words, they sort of like, hey, I can see what you mean by that, but let's say this, you know?

• 3:57:42Jocko Willink?

  Here's, here's two examples. Like and goes.

• 3:57:47Speaker 05

  Goes.

• 3:57:48Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 3:57:48Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 3:57:49Jocko Willink?

  Because.

• 3:57:51Jocko Willink?

  Whatever, thirty years ago, goes, there was zero definition for goes that meant he said this.

• 3:57:58Speaker 05

  All right.

• 3:57:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, cuz now it's, oh, then he goes.

• 3:58:01Speaker 05

  And then he was like, and then she was all.

• 3:58:03Jocko Willink?

  Those are the two. So there you go. Oh, yeah, that's another one. All.

• 3:58:05Speaker 05

  All, she was all, all like, all like this. She goes all like this. Well, here, yes, but I mean in a different way. Because literally means something. It's like turning the word yes into no officially. You know what I'm saying? So literally means literally. There's no version of literally, either it's literal, the literal sense of something, or it's simply not. There's no in-between. See what I'm saying? But now literally, literally doesn't mean literally anymore. Literally. So literally just means very much so, or I felt it very much so, see what I'm saying? And the kids, they're researching that definition. That's how they're saying it.

• 3:58:39Jocko Willink?

  Well, you should.

• 3:58:40Speaker 05

  I was literally dying when I saw this. Yeah.

• 3:58:43Jocko Willink?

  No, you weren't.

• 3:58:43Speaker 05

  You weren't literally dying.

• 3:58:44Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 3:58:44Speaker 05

  You were barely excited.

• 3:58:46Jocko Willink?

  So that's that.

• 3:58:47Speaker 05

  That is that.

• 3:58:48Jocko Willink?

  Originmain.com and get some Jaco White Tea while you're there, which is, which will literally give you an eight thousand pound deadlift.

• 3:58:58Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. In the first and foremost meanings of the word definition, literally, you will actually and literally be able to guaranteed deadlift eight thousand pounds. Cool.

• 3:59:09Speaker 05

  Hundred percent. Also, when you get the gift of valor or any other books, we got it on the website, jacopodcast.com, and the little section says, books from podcasts from the episodes. Also, if you really want to support, there's a good support role you can play. So when you shop on Amazon, instead of going to amazon.com, go to the website, click through one of those books in that section I just mentioned. Click through there. On that landing page, when it lands on Amazon, save that to your favorites. So now when you go shop, you click on that. So it helps support this podcast very much. So that's a good way to support. Very good. Also, we have a store. Jaco has a store. It's called Jaco Store and it's at jacostore.com.

• 3:59:52Speaker 05

  Got some stuff there if you want to represent t-shirts and whatnot, discipline equals freedom, hoodies, light and heavy.

• 3:59:58Jocko Willink?

  Rash guards.

• 3:59:59Speaker 05

  Rash guards, more rash guards, yes, representative, more directly of the path. We saw some representation today out on the mat, saw it, noticed it.

• 4:00:10Jocko Willink?

  Check. Hats, hoodies, uh, what else?

• 4:00:15Speaker 05

  Some, just some good stuff on there, you know, so yeah, check it out, chaco store.com if you want to represent while supporting while on the path. That's where you can do it, big time. Also subscribe to this podcast if you haven't already.

• 4:00:30Speaker 05

  I'm not going to say you have to subscribe and I'm not going to say I want, I wanted you to have to subscribe. I've not seen that.

• 4:00:38Speaker 05

  I'm saying if you want to subscribe, subscribe.

• 4:00:40Jocko Willink?

  Fair enough. And also if you want to subscribe to the grounded podcast, we actually have another podcast, if you can imagine that. We talk about life, we talk about jujitsu and it's a little more free flowing, we'll say.

• 4:00:54Speaker 05

  Free flowing.

• 4:00:54Jocko Willink?

  Light, what was it?

• 4:00:56Speaker 05

  Light hearted, light hearted, that was the term.

• 4:00:58Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, okay. Uh, so that's the grounded podcast.

• 4:01:00Speaker 05

  It's a little bit more like, um, like, uh, like the format, I guess, or the content isn't like as, I don't know. For lack of a better word, heavy or even official or varying levels of officiality, you know? But it's more, yeah, you'll go off on tangents and whatnot.

• 4:01:19Jocko Willink?

  And then there's the Warrior Kid podcast.

• 4:01:21Speaker 05

  Yes.

• 4:01:21Jocko Willink?

  Which someone told me on Twitter that it's been so long since they got a Warrior Kid podcast that their kids stopped asking about it. So that hurts and I'm working. I recorded another one, so we'll release, we should probably just release, uh, those couple. And then you've got warrior kid soap at irishoaksranch.com. If you need to stay clean, you might as well use the soap that young Aiden, the Warrior Kid is making. And then don't forget about YouTube, which we have a YouTube channel. Where you can see what Bill Hampton, Kelly Miller, Ferg and Trent Gibson, you can see what everyone looks like.

• 4:02:03Jocko Willink?

  During this podcast and also Echo Charles makes highly enhanced videos with lots of explosions, special effects and other, what's it called when you make the words move around typography?

• 4:02:20Speaker 05

  Yeah, typography.

• 4:02:21Jocko Willink?

  Typography, he does a lot of that too.

• 4:02:22Speaker 05

  Kinetic. Kinetic typography.

• 4:02:24Jocko Willink?

  Kinetic, there you go. So you can watch, you can check that out. There's a lot of people watching the YouTube, you know, there's, we have a ton of videos.

• 4:02:34Speaker 05

  We have a lot of videos.

• 4:02:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's a lot of videos. I don't know the number, but it's a lot of videos.

• 4:02:39Speaker 05

  Yeah, you can check for that number. Yeah, because we do excerpts as well on there, that's why.

• 4:02:43Jocko Willink?

  Oh, like little excerpts of this?

• 4:02:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know.

• 4:02:45Jocko Willink?

  What's weird is most people, when they think of an excerpt, they think two minutes. And for some reason, when you think of an excerpt, you think 14 minutes.

• 4:02:53Speaker 05

  Sometimes, yeah. You know why? Because the definition of excerpt just changed when I started uploading stuff, just like literally. It literally changed excerpts, excerpts. 13 minutes, that's part of the definition now?

• 4:03:05Jocko Willink?

  No. I have, I have a thing called psychological warfare that is short, very, very short things. One to two minutes long that you can press play on your recorder or whatever, iPhone, Android, Samsung, whatever. You can, you can press play on that and it'll give you a little boost if you need a little psychological warfare against weakness because it's going on all the time. MP3, whatever, wherever you get your MP3 plus stuff, there it is. We've got flip side canvas as well, which is visual cues, visual spots to help you come over, overcome psychological weakness.

• 4:03:48Jocko Willink?

  Or if you just want really badass stuff hanging up in your place of work or home. My brother Dakota Meyer.

• 4:03:56Jocko Willink?

  Is making those down in Texas, made in America. So get some of that. We got some books. This book right here that I referenced and read a bunch from today on this podcast. It's called The Gift of Valor, A War Story by Michael M. Phillips. It's, and you could see, I mean, I, I, I read a tiny fraction of the book. And even with the four guys that were there in the room, there's still details that this book goes into. Michael Phillips did incredible job researching this. He, he says he interviewed every person that's named in the book he talked to. So think about that. And there is name after name after name. So fantastic book. Check that one out. And then of course I have a new book coming out.

• 4:04:42Jocko Willink?

  It's called Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual. It's coming out January 14th. Here's the deal. If you want it, order it now for two reasons. Number one, you'll get the first edition.

• 4:04:58Jocko Willink?

  Which you want. And number two, you'll get it when it comes out. Otherwise, if you don't order it now, you're going to be on that group of people that get hit that week. They go, oh, it's out now. I'm going to press, I'm going to press buy right now. And then they press it and it says, oh, shipping in three weeks. Why is that? Cause they sold out. Why did it sell out? Cause you didn't press buy that thing pre-order. That's what you need to do, pre-order. So pre-order that way also, look, I'm not going to say anything to you. When you bring that book to me to sign, I'm not going to say, oh, I'm not, I'm not inspecting, really.

• 4:05:33Speaker 05

  Externally, you know?

• 4:05:34Jocko Willink?

  But they did in this particular one, they made for me, it literally says on the inside flap, it says first edition. They did that for me.

• 4:05:47Speaker 05

  Good.

• 4:05:47Jocko Willink?

  So that way I don't, I don't have to be all obvious about it, but I'm gonna know where you stand.

• 4:05:51Speaker 05

  What are you gonna do? Are you gonna like, let's say you're like, hey, Chaco signed my book or whatever?

• 4:05:54Jocko Willink?

  I'm just gonna initial next to it.

• 4:05:55Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:05:56Jocko Willink?

  I'm just gonna initial.

• 4:05:56Speaker 05

  Circle in.

• 4:05:57Jocko Willink?

  You know what TSA does? They do like a little check of your, your boarding pass?

• 4:06:02Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:06:02Jocko Willink?

  And they do a little initial next to it?

• 4:06:04Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:06:04Jocko Willink?

  I'm just gonna do that. Like, oh, first edition, cool, you're good.

• 4:06:06Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 4:06:07Jocko Willink?

  I'm not gonna throw it in your face.

• 4:06:08Speaker 05

  So you're not gonna point out the second edition, third scenario?

• 4:06:11Jocko Willink?

  I'm not gonna call people out for it, but I'm gonna know and they're gonna know.

• 4:06:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 4:06:15Jocko Willink?

  We're all gonna know. And you're not gonna feel comfortable with it.

• 4:06:17Speaker 05

  You're gonna go to like, initial the second edition, then you're gonna like, um, overtly like, not do it.

• 4:06:22Jocko Willink?

  Yes, I'll be like, oh, and I'll just give you a little signature over here. That's fine. I don't, don't not like you, but we all know where you stand. So if you want that Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, you've, you've now read it.

• 4:06:36Speaker 05

  Yes, sir, I have.

• 4:06:37Jocko Willink?

  Where are you at?

• 4:06:38Speaker 05

  Well, evaluation wise, here's the thing, I don't wanna run the risk of disparaging any of your other books, but I'm saying, this seems to be the frontrunner.

• 4:06:46Jocko Willink?

  Damn.

• 4:06:47Speaker 05

  Sorry, guys.

• 4:06:48Jocko Willink?

  Ouch.

• 4:06:50Speaker 05

  Here's the thing.

• 4:06:50Jocko Willink?

  Cold blooded.

• 4:06:52Speaker 05

  Extreme Ownership, I didn't get to reading until I already knew Extreme Ownership. You know what I'm saying? So I'm reading, I'm like, cool, cool, cool, I know, cool. I didn't say I know, but I get it. It was familiar. Then dichotomy, I was like, okay, this is impressive, I dig it, but it was, you did always talk about that.

• 4:07:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 4:07:08Speaker 05

  No. So I'm, I'm thinking, I'm not saying this wasn't the case for this, but just the way it's laid out in this cohesive way, this is like, ah, it seems like a little bit more like, um, given the time that I wrote or read it, given the sequence of how like the chapters are or whatever, given my very specific experience, I enjoyed it a lot better, sorry. That's the truth, it's really, it's good.

• 4:07:31Jocko Willink?

  Check. You're gonna be dead to Leif, but that's on.

• 4:07:35Speaker 05

  I know, man, I know, sorry.

• 4:07:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's cold blooded. Uh, also got some kids books, Way of the Warrior Kid 3, Where There's a Will, that is out there, and that means we also have Way of the Warrior Kid, Mark's Mission. Also, those two books are available, it's a series. And then we got Mikey and the Dragons, For the Little Ones. Order that, get it. And then we have the original field manual, Field Manual 001, which is called Discipline Equals Freedom. Which is still.

• 4:08:06Jocko Willink?

  A great book to get for people.

• 4:08:10Jocko Willink?

  That you know, I mean, I can't even narrow it down. I was gonna try and narrow it down, but then I'm like, well, is it the person that's on the path, off the path? No, no, it's like everyone.

• 4:08:16Speaker 05

  Everybody, yeah.

• 4:08:17Jocko Willink?

  Everyone.

• 4:08:18Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 4:08:19Jocko Willink?

  So there's that. And the audio version of that is actually on MP3. And oh, we have people that are wondering leadership, strategy and tactics. Yes, I am reading the audio. So there's that. We also have Extreme Ownership. And Dichotomy of Leadership, the first books I wrote with my brother Leif Babin, who contrary to what Echo says, those books.

• 4:08:42Speaker 05

  Yeah. Saying it all.

• 4:08:44Jocko Willink?

  Are powerful.

• 4:08:44Speaker 05

  That is literally not what I'm saying at all.

• 4:08:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, it kind of sounded that way.

• 4:08:48Speaker 05

  I understand.

• 4:08:49Jocko Willink?

  By the way, no big deal. Extreme Ownership is like

• 4:08:53Jocko Willink?

  the number one selling business book since it came out, but apparently that wasn't good enough.

• 4:08:59Speaker 05

  Uh, but you know, from my very specific experience, I'm just saying, you know how like, let's say you eat, you know, sushi.

• 4:09:05Jocko Willink?

  Just own it, dude.

• 4:09:07Jocko Willink?

  You should have learned from that book. Just own it.

• 4:09:09Speaker 05

  In the spirit of accuracy, uh, maybe I won't own it as much as maybe I should, but nonetheless, I was telling the truth, given my time and the, my personal experience, it gave me more like.

• 4:09:21Jocko Willink?

  What backpedaling sounds like, this is it. Leif's not buying it. Check. And the dichotomy of leadership, those, those, those books are the roots of the lessons that we learned in combat that you can then take and apply to your business, to your life, to your world. We also have Echelon Front, which is our leadership consultancy. And what we do is solve problems through leadership. Go to echelonfront.com. If you want to have me or any of the team come and speak at your company. Go to echelonfront.com. Don't Google Jaco Speaker, because they're going to get through a speakers agency. And it's a, a middleman. You don't need the middleman. You can go to echelonfront.com. That's my company.

• 4:10:02Jocko Willink?

  And we will get it booked and come and make it happen. We also have EF Online, which is online training for leadership. And it's efonline.com. This is how you can get your entire company aligned behind the same leadership principles. So check that out if you need it. We have the muster coming up. The next one that we're doing is December 4th and 5th in Sydney, Australia. Listen, every time I say we're going to Sydney, Australia, 100 people ask me, "What about Brisbane? What about Taiwan? What about..." They ask me all over Southeast Asia. And as a matter of fact, a guy just wrote to me on Twitter, "Only..." Because I said, "No, we're only going to Sydney."

• 4:10:46Jocko Willink?

  And someone said, "Only going to Sydney is like doing a tour of the New York, of a tour of the United States and only going to New York." And I haven't responded yet, but that's actually what we do. We don't, like, the first, we did one muster. "Oh, we did it in San Diego." The next year, we did another muster. We did it in New York, and then we did another one. We did two the next year, something like that. So, the guy's right. That is what, we're not, we're not going on tour. We're not a rock band. As much as, as much as we may be feeling like it, we're not a rock band. We have jobs, and the jobs are Echelon Front. So, we're out working with companies all the time. What we do is occasionally, we take the time to go and do an event for a large group of people. That is what the muster is. We're not going to Taiwan.

• 4:11:31Jocko Willink?

  We're not going to Hong Kong. We're not going to Melbourne. We're not going to Perth. We're not going to Brizzy. We're going to Sydney. That's where we're going. So, if you want to come, come.

• 4:11:41Jocko Willink?

  And that is at ExtremeOwnership.com. And of course, now we have EF Overwatch, and we also now have EF Legion. So, if you need to hire people for your company, go to EF Overwatch or EF Legion. Check out what we've got going on. We're taking combat-proven leaders and placing them into civilian companies. And for you vets out there, go to those websites and get your information put in there for when you transition.

• 4:12:15Jocko Willink?

  That's what we do. EFOverwatch.com and EF Legion. And if you want to have more information from myself, if you want to have more information or random thoughts from Echo Charles, we are available on the interwebs. We are on Twitter, on Instagram, and on...

• 4:12:44Jocko Willink?

  Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink and once again The Gift to support that. The Facebook is, the Facebook and Instagram is at The Gift Documentary and the Indiegogo campaign is The Gift Documentary. So, check those out.

• 4:13:04Jocko Willink?

  And once again, thanks to the 37 Marines that joined us today. Kelly Miller, Bill Hampton, John Ferguson, Trent Gibson, and to the rest of our service members that are out there in the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, and Coast Guard. Thanks to all of you for what you do every day. And to Corporal Jason Dunham.

• 4:13:35Jocko Willink?

  Thank you for giving us all an example to follow, an example of courage and leadership and humility, an example as a warrior and as a human being.

• 4:13:52Jocko Willink?

  You are a true hero and an inspiration and we will do our utmost to live a life worthy of your sacrifice.

• 4:14:07Jocko Willink?

  Semper Fidelis.

• 4:14:11Jocko Willink?

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