#257 Jocko Willink - Commander of SEAL Team-3 Task Unit Bruiser aka "The Punishers"

Jocko Willink is a retired U. S. Navy SEAL officer, bestselling author, and leadership expert with a 20-year military career. Enlisting at 19, he completed BUD/S class 177, served with SEAL Teams One and Two, and later commissioned as an officer with deployments across Asia, the Middle East, and Europe. He led SEAL Team Three’s Task Unit Bruiser in the Battle of Ramadi during Operation Iraqi Freedom, earning the Silver Star while commanding the war’s most decorated Special Operations unit. After retiring in 2010 as a lieutenant commander, Willink became a Brazilian jiu-jitsu black belt and advocate of disciplined 4:30 a.m. routines. He co-founded Echelon Front, advising companies worldwide, and launched the Jocko Podcast in 2015, surpassing 1 billion downloads. He co-owns Origin USA, founded Jocko Fuel, and operates Victory MMA & Fitness in San Diego. His books—Extreme Ownership, Discipline Equals Freedom, and the Way of the Warrior Kid series—share his principles of leadership and personal discipline. Willink is a partner in the San Diego FC ownership group and host of the FOX special Above, Below and Beyond, honoring 250 years of the U. S. Navy and Marine Corps. He lives in California with his wife, Hellene, and their four children. Shawn Ryan Show Sponsors: https://USCCA.com/srs ⁠https://tryarmra.com/srs⁠ ⁠https://betterhelp.com/srs⁠ This episode is sponsored. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/srs and get on your way to being your best self. ⁠https://blackbuffalo.com⁠ ⁠https://shawnlikesgold.com⁠ ⁠https://ketone.com/srs⁠ Visit https://ketone.com/srs for 30% OFF your subscription order. ⁠https://ROKA.com⁠ – USE CODE SRS ⁠https://gemini.com/srs⁠ Sign up for the Gemini Credit Card: https://Gemini.com/SRS #GeminiCreditCard #CryptoRewards #Advertisement This video is sponsored by Gemini. All opinions expressed by the content creator are their own and not influenced or endorsed by Gemini. The Bitcoin Credit Card™ is a trademark of Gemini used in connection with the Gemini Credit Card®, which is issued by WebBank. For more information regarding fees, interest, and other cost information, see Rates and Fees: gemini.com/legal/cardholder-agreement Some exclusions apply to instant rewards; these are deposited when the transaction posts. 4% back is available on up to $300 in spend per month for a year (then 1% on all other Gas, EV charging, and transit purchases that month). Spend cycle will refresh on the 1st of each calendar month. See Rewards Program Terms for details: gemini.com/legal/credit-card-rewards-agreement Checking if you’re eligible will not impact your credit score. If you’re eligible and choose to proceed, a hard credit inquiry will be conducted that can impact your credit score. Eligibility does not guarantee approval. The appreciation of cardholder rewards reflects a subset of Gemini Cardholders from 10/08/2021 to 04/06/2025 who held Bitcoin rewards for at least one year. Individual results will vary based on spending, selected crypto, and market performance. Cryptocurrency is highly volatile and may result in gains or losses. This information is for general informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Consult with your tax or financial professional before investing. Jocko Willink Links: X -https://x.com/jockowillink IG - https://www.instagram.com/jockowillink YT - https://www.youtube.com/@JockoPodcastOfficial LI - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jocko-willink-260b289 GYM -https://victorygyms.com/person/john-jocko-willink JOCKO FUEL - https://jockofuel.com Echelon Front - https://events.echelonfront.com/product/muster-023 Amazon Author - https://www.amazon.com/stores/Jocko-Willink/author/B00ZY7MWW8 San Diego Futbol Club - https://www.sandiegofc.com/club/ownership Streaming Special - https://nation.foxnews.com/watch/f906bbf75deeb400207c23761349eef5 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:43Speaker 00

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• 0:46Speaker 01

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• 0:50Speaker 00

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 0:53Speaker 01

  I'm not the first then.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 1:04Shawn Ryan?

  Jocko Willink, welcome to the show, man.

• 1:07Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it.

• 1:10Shawn Ryan?

  It's an honor to have you. It's an honor to have you. I can't believe it took this long. But, um, but here we are. And, uh, seriously, man, I've been watching you for a very long time. I mean, I've heard about you when I was in the SEAL Teams. And, you know, even though we've never met, I just want you to know that I have a tremendous amount of respect for you and a lot of the guys that I went through BUDs with, uh, served with you, under you. And, uh, and you just, you just have a reputation as a leader that is, is unmatched. And, um, I just want to say, it truly is, man. It's an honor to be sitting across from you today. So, thank you for making the time.

• 1:50Speaker 01

  Well, I appreciate it. I was very lucky to. Learn from some really great people and be surrounded by a bunch of awesome, awesome dudes and awesome to see what you're doing these days, getting after it for sure.

• 2:01Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you, thank you. But um, yeah, so everybody starts with an introduction here. Jocko Willink, a retired Navy SEAL and Silver Star recipient. Commanded the SEAL Team 3's Task Unit Bruiser in Ramadi, Iraq. The most highly decorated special operations unit in the entire Iraq war. I did not know that until today. Um, number one New York Times bestselling author, Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu black belt. You also own an MMA and fitness gym in San Diego. You're an OG podcaster with over a billion views. Hosted the presidential special Above Below and Beyond, celebrating 250 years of the US Navy and Marine Corps,

• 2:46Shawn Ryan?

  which is streaming now. A business titan with everything from leadership consulting to American main clothing and supplements to a soccer club in your portfolio. Husband to Helene and father of four, most importantly, you're a Christian. And um, you know, Jocko, every year since I started this, I started this in Christmas of 2019. And you know, we were still at war back then. I guess we are kind of still right now too, but, but uh, meaning like, you know, Afghanistan, the same war that we were involved in and, you know, when I started this, it was, uh, it was pretty much all for veterans and,

• 3:26Shawn Ryan?

  and I wanted to make the biggest episodes, the Christmas and the Thanksgiving episode, because I remember what it's like to be deployed overseas, sitting on your ass. Or maybe not sitting on your ass, but without your family uh, on Christmas and Thanksgiving. And so I always make it a point every year uh, to bring something inspiring, motivational, somebody that everybody that can look up, can look up to. And uh, and you're the perfect man for uh, this year's Thanksgiving episode. So I just want to say thank you again.

• 3:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, appreciate it for the, for all the guys and men and women that are overseas right now. Yeah, I did some deployments during those timeframes and it's always a good time to focus on work a lot, so you don't have to think about it very much, because you're missing out.

• 4:12Shawn Ryan?

  But uh, but uh, I thought, if it's okay with you, I thought maybe we could open this episode with a prayer.

• 4:19Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 4:19Shawn Ryan?

  Perfect.

• 4:23Shawn Ryan?

  Jesus, I just want to say thank you for having Jocko here today and um you know we're gonna release this on Thanksgiving and Thanksgiving is just a holiday that's that's full of love, family and friends and um both Jocko and I both know as well as a lot of people that a lot of people are not able to enjoy those those things on Thanksgiving uh for whatever reason whether they are first responder, police officer and they're out or they're in the military and they're deployed or maybe they just have a lot of loss and uh not a lot of people around them but whatever those reasons are we want this episode to reach them to to to bring them

• 5:06Shawn Ryan?

  joy on Thanksgiving and and just something that that they can look forward to and hopefully they can take something out of this and and that's also just for everybody in general. I know this is gonna be an extremely powerful episode. There's gonna be a lot of life lessons in here and and just little nuggets that people can take with them and better their life with them and that's that's what we intend to do here today so please please make that happen. Amen.

• 5:35Shawn Ryan?

  But um alright Jocko, well got a couple of things to crank out here before we start the big interview. So I got a couple of gifts for you. One of them

• 5:47Speaker 01

  The famous uh the famous gummies.

• 5:50Shawn Ryan?

  Famous Vigilance League gummy bears legal in all 50 states still. No funny business. It's just candy. I know you're not a big sweets guy but maybe give them a try on the flight home. So.

• 6:04Speaker 01

  Thanks man.

• 6:05Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah. And then um I have another gift for you. This is from my friends over at USCCA.

• 6:15Shawn Ryan?

  They wanted me to give you a lifelong membership. So basically what USCCA does, you're a concealed carry

• 6:23Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 6:24Shawn Ryan?

  permit holder, which I don't know if you are in California. If you're not, I know Newsome, I can maybe make an introduction. But um, but uh, but no, if, look, bottom line, if you ever have to defend yourself, your family, your friends, if you ever have to get into some type of an engagement with a bad guy, these people have your ass. They're gonna take care of all of the, the, the, the legal fees and coach you how to get through it. And uh, they're a huge fan of yours. And so I just wanted to present.

• 6:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's awesome. When you go through the concealed weapons, the concealed carry course in California, the state mandated one, most of the course is them telling you what a problem it's going to be if you ever have to use your weapon. So it's nice to have these guys as backup, man. Thank you.

• 7:07Shawn Ryan?

  You're welcome. And then last thing before we move on here, I have a Patreon account. It's a subscription account. A lot of these guys and girls have been with me since the very beginning when I was doing this in my attic and we've turned it into quite the community. So what we do is we offer them the opportunity to ask every guest a question. This is a good one. Has to do with leadership. This is from Nick Farrell. Looking back at your career now, what was your greatest flaw as a leader? What advice would you have given yourself as a young officer?

• 7:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, for me, fortunately, I didn't have to experience much time as a young officer because I was a prime enlisted guy. But when I look back at my career, one of the biggest things that I noticed um, is that I never really cared about where guy, what guys, what, what happened after the teams? For me, it was just about the teams and I didn't really think about it for myself. I didn't really think about it for anybody else. So, you know, for a guy, like I, for instance, I never gave anyone any financial advice. I never said, hey, you might not want to buy that brand new F-350 Super Duty that's $70,000 and you're going to spend your whole reenlistment bonus on it. You should probably do something else with that.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  And I never really did that and never really encouraged anyone to get an education. You know, when someone came to me about getting an education, I'd say, do you want to go to sniper school? Do you want to go to breacher school? You know, we got you. And so I was very, very focused on the teams and, and you know, That's just the way I was and I recognize when I retired that there is something after the teams and so I wish I would have paid a little bit more attention to that especially for the guys that that I was responsible for and I didn't do a great job of that.

• 8:56Shawn Ryan?

  So you're saying in a nutshell, you would have taken more of a stake in their personal lives to watch them succeed?

• 9:03Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 9:03Shawn Ryan?

  Interesting. Do you feel like, do you, I'm learning a lot of leadership lessons right now and do you feel, and I do that with, with, with, I would say the majority of my team, I take a great interest in their personal lives because I want them to succeed. Do you feel, but there's a, there's a caveat to this that I have learned throughout doing this. Does that blur the lines?

• 9:33Speaker 01

  No.

• 9:34Shawn Ryan?

  Blur the lines of leadership?

• 9:35Speaker 01

  No, and, and again, look, as far as their personal, like if a guy was having problems with his marriage or problems with his kids or something like that, I would do whatever I could to help him out with that. But I'm saying as far as planning outside, planning life outside of the teams, I just didn't, I didn't think much about it. And so, and, and even if a guy was having a problem with his wife or with his kids, my focus would be, okay, how can we get that fixed? So you can go on deployments. So you can get back to being in a platoon, which is what everybody, everybody wants to be doing anyways, most of the time.

• 10:09Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha, gotcha. Well, thank you for that. Let's move into, let's move into your life story. So this, I want to do a life story on you. It's going to be a long one. And there's quite a few rabbit holes that I'd like to go down with you and, and, and, and I want to use this interview for, I want to learn a lot about leadership for myself. So I know I have a lot to work on.

• 10:34Speaker 01

  You and me both.

• 10:35Shawn Ryan?

  But where'd you grow up?

• 10:37Speaker 01

  I grew up in a small town in New England on a dirt road and both my parents were schoolteachers. Pretty normal. My mom taught English and my dad taught history and I was not interested in either one of those things. So I was kind of a rebellious kid, but you know, nothing totally out of bounds. You know, I liked, I had a lot of energy and probably a lot of aggression and so.

• 11:04Speaker 01

  It it, you know, I was kinda looking to get out of that town as soon as I could when I was growing up. And that's why the military is a nice opportunity to do that.

• 11:12Shawn Ryan?

  Siblings?

• 11:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, I got an older sister and a younger sister.

• 11:15Shawn Ryan?

  So you're a middle child?

• 11:16Speaker 01

  Yup, middle child.

• 11:17Shawn Ryan?

  No shit, I was not expecting that one.

• 11:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, and yeah, I forget what the middle child is supposed to be like. Am I not like the middle child?

• 11:26Shawn Ryan?

  Nah, that I wouldn't, I wouldn't consider you to be a middle child, but uh, but there is a thing.

• 11:32Speaker 01

  What's the characteristics of the middle child?

• 11:35Shawn Ryan?

  I don't know how to articulate that, but.

• 11:40Shawn Ryan?

  I think that the characteristics of a middle child would be bouncing around a lot from thing to thing. And um, and trying to find your place.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I found my place.

• 11:52Shawn Ryan?

  I know you did, I know you did.

• 11:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:57Shawn Ryan?

  What were you into as a kid?

• 11:59Speaker 01

  You know, I wasn't really great at any sports, you know, I played soccer and basketball, I wasn't really good at either one of them, I was okay. Um, but not, definitely not great, um, I liked music, I liked hardcore music and heavy metal. And that's where I spent a lot of my time listening to hardcore music and heavy metal when I was a kid. Um, surfed luckily, skateboarded.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  Um, went to hardcore shows in New York City when I was a young kid, which was amazing. And, you know, that kinda uh, scratched my rebellious, I've always been a little bit of a rebellious kid. And so that kinda made me feel like I was scratching that itch. And I just related to it, you know, I related to the first time I heard like heavy music. It, I, I, it sounded right to me.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  As opposed to a lot of the, you know, other music that was out there, you know, like pop music, I just didn't, it didn't sound right to me. But hardcore and heavy metal sounded right to me and, and there was a lot of that uh, kind of.

• 13:10Speaker 01

  Push yourself, also like a DIY ethic of, hey, you gotta do stuff yourself. If you wanna, if you wanna do something, if you want something, you gotta go make it happen. And that, that stuck with me, for sure. When did, uh, when did jujitsu start for you? My first platoon. Oh, it didn't start until your first platoon, okay. Yeah, jujitsu was not even remotely a thing when I was growing up. It wasn't, like, Brazilian jujitsu was completely unheard of. This is in the, in the eighties. In America, there was no Brazilian jujitsu. It wasn't even in the magazines yet. It was nowhere. So that wasn't, it wasn't until my first platoon where I got introduced to Brazilian jujitsu. What about wrestling? Didn't wrestle. Oh shit. My high school was too, my high school didn't even have a wrestling team. How big was your town?

• 13:54Speaker 01

  Graduated with eighty-five people in my class. Yep. It's like where I grew up. Yep, small, small town. What, what, uh, what got your interest in the military then? I do not remember actually wanting any, to do anything else. The only thing I ever wanted to do, as far as a job goes, was be some kind of commando. And I collected little soldiers when I was a little kid. I had the, the, the British commandos from World War II. I had a little airfix set, one thirty-second size of British commandos. And they had Zodiac boats, and they had kayaks, and they had, you know, the black watch caps on.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  And I thought that that was the coolest thing. And eventually I figured out that you could have that as an actual job.

• 14:47Speaker 01

  Very cool, very. Let's, I wanna go back real quick to the rebellious. What, why do you think you were so rebellious? I don't know. I don't know. I think part of it's like psychologically, right? You, I think all, all kids will have this. You have to rebel against your parents at some point because you have to get out of there. You have to leave them. And so you kinda create friction so that you can release. So I think that was part of it.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  And I also think I just looked around at the world and just, you know, had the angst of a young teenage child. You know, you got a lot of testosterone flowing through your blood and you just wanna fight and get after it. And that's kind of, that's kind of what I did. Were you a troublemaker? I was, I was a borderline troublemaker, but also...

• 15:37Speaker 01

  Like I didn't drink, didn't do any drugs. Um, there was a whole like subgenre of music called straight edge music, which I wasn't fully into that, but straight edge music is like no drinking, no drugs. And, but I was close enough to it that I, that's the way I heard that messaging of, you know, drinking and drugs were bad. That's kind of a weak thing to do. And so never did, never did, never drank and never did drugs in, in high school.

• 16:06Shawn Ryan?

  How would you rebel? Would it be violence?

• 16:09Speaker 01

  Yeah, going to hardcore shows, listening to punk rock music, listening to hardcore music, shaving my head, you know, getting in fights, just that kind of stuff.

• 16:18Shawn Ryan?

  Right.

• 16:20Shawn Ryan?

  That kind of stuff. Where did, where did Christianity get rooted into you?

• 16:26Speaker 01

  So I was, you know, we, we went to a church growing up. We went to St. Michael's Church and probably, probably did,

• 16:35Speaker 01

  maybe three, three to five years of that where, and you know, when you look back, you know, people go, where do you get your values from? And I think that's pretty much as a, as an American, that's where our values come from, you know, it's like, that's what you're hearing. And

• 16:51Speaker 01

  so that's probably the time that was, that's the time where I was going to church. And, you know, you're gonna, you're gonna absorb those values.

• 16:59Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm. Do you, I mean, did you, do you feel like you had a strong faith as a kid or did that come later on or?

• 17:10Speaker 01

  For, for where I'm from, that's just kind of normal, man.

• 17:13Shawn Ryan?

  Yep.

• 17:14Speaker 01

  It's just, it's not some, you know, big deal.

• 17:18Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  It's like this is, this is, this is what you do. Um, and like I said, when you get, you know, I always talk about the fact that you learn a lot when you're, you, you get a lot of your DNA when you're in your first SEAL platoon. Because it's all new and so it imprints on you. And I think that's just growing up, you know, you go to church, it's imprinting on you and that's where, that's what stays with you.

• 17:40Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 17:42Shawn Ryan?

  So let's move back to the, the moving into the military. So what drew you to the SEALs?

• 17:52Speaker 01

  Man, um, I had a friend that did the army program, used to be able to go enjoy the army reserves and in between your junior and your senior year, you'd go to boot camp. And I had a friend that did that. And when he came back, he told, he told me this story and I've, I've joked about it because I don't know if it's true or not. It's probably not, at least it's not totally true. But this guy told me that when he was in boot camp, they were out on this track, they were out in Fort Benning and they're, they're, they're out there doing morning PT or something like that. And there's a guy with cami pants on, combat boots, a T-shirt and a rucksack

• 18:33Speaker 01

  and a ponytail and he's long hair and a ponytail and he's running around this track. And this friend tells me the story that he asked the drill sergeant, he said, "Drill Sergeant, who's that?" And the drill sergeant, without looking back, just keeps looking forward and goes, "Delta." And then my buddy goes, "Drill Sergeant, is there anyone that's tougher than Delta?" And the drill sergeant, without looking back at him, just says, "SEAL Team." And so I heard that story, dude, I'm a freaking young kid and, and, and that was it, man. Again, you know, I'm, I don't even know if that actually happened, but you want to know where I first started thinking about the SEAL teams, that was it. And like I said, I

• 19:18Speaker 01

  grew up in the water, so knowing that the SEALs worked in the water, you know, I, I surfed as a kid up in Maine, which was awesome. And so just having that tied to the water. And then the SEAL teams were stationed, I figured out that the SEAL teams were either in San Diego or Virginia Beach, both of which were cool places in my mind. And so I said, "That sounds awesome. Join the SEAL teams and get stationed either in San Diego or Virginia Beach. You can surf and do commando stuff in the water." Like, it's a literal no brainer to me. Yeah. Did you look at it? Did you look at any of the other branches or you were just like, "I'm going to do that." You know, of course, the Marine Corps is always tempting for a young kid because

• 19:59Speaker 01

  the Marine Corps presents such an awesome image and they're such an awesome unit. But I, I saw the SEAL teams as, again, it just fit with everything that, that I thought about being a, a military personnel would be, would be that. What age did you enlist? Eighteen? Eighteen? Yeah. What did your parents think? Uh, I think they were pretty happy. Were they really? Yeah, yeah, because I was, you know, i- it's like you have a plan. That's a... I love the military. The military gave me everything. The Navy gave me everything. But initially, what they gave me was a plan. This is what you have to do. If you do these things, you're gonna be successful.

• 20:39Speaker 01

  And you get a blank slate when you go in there. No one cares what your background is. No one cares who your parents are. No one cares what grade you got in high school. They just, this is what you gotta do. And so, yeah, my parents were stoked. My dad did say, uh... He said, "You're not gonna like it."

• 20:56Speaker 01

  And I said, "Why not?" And he said, "Because you don't like authority and you don't let, you don't listen to anyone else." And of course, since I knew everything. I looked at him, I said, "Hey, you know, Dad, it's not like that in the SEAL teams. It's a team." And there's no bosses. You do everything together, so... That's how ignorant I was. But, yeah, you know, pretty, pretty ignorant going in, into the military. You know, not growing up around it. My, my dad got kicked out of ROTC, as a matter of fact. Oh, no kidding. My grandfather was in the Army. He was, he was a twenty-year Army guy, but I didn't know him very well. He died when I was about ten. So, didn't have a lot of military information. And just thought that the SEAL teams sounded like a good fit for me. And you joined in, was it ninety?

• 21:41Speaker 01

  Nineteen ninety. Nineteen ninety. What was going on in the world in nineteen ninety? Yeah, so... Well, the Gulf War, the original Gulf War. The buildup for the Gulf War was starting, and that's where I was, thought I'd be going. Yeah. I was pretty, pretty stoked about that. Right on. Because Panama had happened in eighty-nine. Yeah. And that was another thing that made me think, "W-w-wait a second. These guys are out fighting and dying for our country, and I'm sitting not doing that. They're, this is, this is embarrassing. So how do I get in? Who are those guys? And how do I go join them?"

• 22:20Shawn Ryan?

  So you enlisted eighteen, nineteen ninety, go to boot camp.

• 22:28Shawn Ryan?

  Where do we go from there?

• 22:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I was really stoked when I got to boot camp, you know? Because again, for me, it was like blank slate. Here we go. I had one buddy that rode on the bus with me, uh, who was, he looked at me. And he goes, are you going SEALs? And I said, yeah. And he said, me too. And so we just, we just hit it off real quick. And he had been through college already. He had, he had knowledge, you know, um, he understood more than I did. I think he had a mentor that was a SEAL. And so, but he, he, we brought up real quick and he ended up making it through maybe a class behind me. And, uh, he ended up, you know, as a master chief in the SEAL teams, but just a great dude. Um, you know, he wrestled in college, just a great guy. So, you know, went to boot camp and, and then

• 23:16Speaker 01

  again, I was super,

• 23:20Speaker 01

  you know, just so, uh, open minded to like what was coming and happy about being there. And just stoked to go to Bud's and then showing up at Bud's, it was like

• 23:34Speaker 01

  the best thing ever.

• 23:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, man. Did you, I mean, I'm, did you have, did you meet an actual SEAL at all before you? No shit. So you showed up.

• 23:44Speaker 01

  Saw one in boot camp. And I just saw one in boot camp. And I think it was a guy that I met later who was getting reprocessed. He had been out of the SEAL teams for a while and then he'd coming back in. And I kind of recognized him because, you know, I saw one SEAL when I was in boot camp. And I recognized him later and I talked to him. He's just a super chill guy, but in my mind, you know, he's this SEAL. So you think he's, you know, the coolest thing in the world.

• 24:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, damn.

• 24:14Speaker 01

  But no, I never knew any SEALs before I joined.

• 24:17Shawn Ryan?

  So how was it showing up for Bud's here for you?

• 24:20Speaker 01

  It was awesome.

• 24:21Shawn Ryan?

  Were you intimidated?

• 24:25Speaker 01

  I mean, I would say not really. I wasn't really intimidated. But I definitely didn't know much about what was going on. Uh, when I showed up, there was a, there was a poster in medical. They had a Texas Chainsaw Massacre poster in medical. But they'd crossed out Texas Chainsaw Massacre and they replaced it said Bud's Pool Comp. And they put like a snorkel or whatever, a mask on the kid. And I didn't even know what pool comp was, you know, I didn't know anything about it. And I was, hmm, that's interesting.

• 24:58Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I guess they didn't have.

• 25:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:01Shawn Ryan?

  There's many of the documentaries or any of that kind of stuff out.

• 25:04Speaker 01

  Nothing. So I wasn't really intimidated, but I was just excited, man. I was just excited. And you know, like I said, I wasn't the fastest runner, wasn't the fastest swimmer. I wasn't, I wasn't really that good at anything in particular, but I wasn't that bad at anything in particular either. And I was young, I could recover quick. I was fired up. I was very used to the cold.

• 25:27Speaker 01

  But you know, you're meeting guys that are total studs, you know, you're meeting guys that are D1 athletes and whatever. I had Olympic, I had an Olympic alternate in my Bud's class for gymnastics, like, how fast can that guy do the O course compared to me? You know what I'm saying? And some D1 water polo players and, you know, just the whole, the whole nine yards. And I was just young and just fired up to be there, stoked.

• 25:53Shawn Ryan?

  How many people were in there? Do you remember?

• 25:57Speaker 01

  I don't really know. Probably, I don't know. Couple, I mean, 150, I actually don't know.

• 26:05Shawn Ryan?

  A lot of people.

• 26:05Speaker 01

  I'd have to, I'd have to look at it, but.

• 26:09Shawn Ryan?

  How did you, I mean, did you measure yourself up against the people that you were seeing when you showed up like, oh, fuck. That guy's gonna make it. That guy's not gonna make it. If that guy made it, you know what I'm talking about?

• 26:21Speaker 01

  There was a couple of guys that, you know, uh, seemed like studs that quit. The gymnast that I was talking about, Olympic gymnast or Olympic alternate gymnast quit. I had a D1 water polo player that quit. I had, there was definitely some studs that quit and I realized, oh, there's a wrestler from Iowa that quit. Not, not, not the college, but he was a stud. So yeah, I realized that this isn't all about, you know, what your athletic background is. Because it's about being cold, wet, miserable and suffering. And if you don't like that, you're gonna have problems. Did you have any problems? I failed, I failed to run, I failed to swim, I failed to no course, I failed pool comp. I failed like everything.

• 27:06Speaker 01

  When I went through, if you failed something twice, you got rolled. But if you failed something once, you could stay with the class. And so if you failed two runs, you got rolled. And then if you failed one in the next class, you got dropped. So I only failed one of everything. And, and some of the ones were, you know, like there were some swims that pretty much almost everyone in the class failed because the tide or the current or whatever. There were some runs where a lot of people failed because it maybe wasn't quite four miles. Maybe a little over? Yeah, yeah, it was a little over. But, so I failed a little bit of everything, but not enough to get me rolled. Um, and I stayed with my class the whole time, made it through one shot. How did you deal with failure?

• 27:52Speaker 01

  Just, just tried to go harder. You know, I failed a run, I paced myself on a run. Which I wasn't fast enough to pace myself. I needed, for basically everything that I did in Buzz, I just need to go a hundred percent. And probably, I don't know, my third or fourth run in first phase. I was kind of like, oh, I, I'll try pacing myself. And so I went at a pace and I just was wrong and failed. And so I never paced myself again on those runs. I just ran as hard as I could. Because that's the only thing I wanted to do, man, was get through that training and, and be a SEAL. So I just put out hard and that's, that's how I overcame, I overcame failure just by pure,

• 28:33Speaker 01

  just aggressive hard work, man. We got, I failed pool comp and me and my, one of my buddies, we got, this shouldn't even be legal, but we got, we got dive equipment from dive phase to practice with, but we wore it in the dip tank. So we were pool, we were pool comping each other in the dip tank on a weekend. And, and then got, got through it on Monday, you know, so.

• 29:04Shawn Ryan?

  So for those that are listening, pool comp is an exercise that you do in second phase. It's open circuit diving and it's one of the more strenuous weeks that you go through in BUDS. A lot of people fail and it's, a lot of people say that pool comp, they basically beat the shit out of you underwater with tanks on. A lot of people say that pool comp is the, is the last major hurdle that you're going to have to pass, uh, to get through BUDS. So.

• 29:34Shawn Ryan?

  But how did you, I mean, how did you deal with the mental stress? Did that affect you at all? Or was it, was it the physical stuff? Or was it both?

• 29:44Speaker 01

  Man, I had fun. You know, I'm not, and I'm not saying it wasn't hard. Like, hell weeks, hell weeks hard. You're, it's cold, wet, miserable. But I mean, I wasn't really mentally stressed. I was kind of having fun, you know, I enjoyed it. Like, man, you're going to get to be a frog man. You know, I'll do it. I would have done whatever they told me to do. Like, I think there's some people that show up to BUDS that they, they would rather die. And I, I was definitely in that category. So, you know, and I think they figured that out. You know, I think they figured out with guys, they go, yep, this guy, we're not going to break this guy. Cause they'll try, you know, but eventually they go, yeah, we can maybe hurt him physically, but we're not going to break him

• 30:29Speaker 01

  mentally.

• 30:30Shawn Ryan?

  So for somebody that's going through BUDS right now, would you have any advice for them? Or what would your one piece of advice?

• 30:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I tell people this one piece of advice all the time. Don't quit.

• 30:42Speaker 01

  Love it. You know, and that statistically is right because the vast majority of people that make it through BUDs, they quit. They don't get performa- if you like, if you get rolled for a run, you're gonna have six weeks to get better at running. You'll, you, you can pass the runs. If you get rolled for swimming, if you get rolled for pool comp, you're gonna get good at pool comp for the next six weeks until you start up with your next class. What'd you do for those six weeks? You practiced pool comp over and over and over again. So the people that don't make it, generally speaking, quit. So if you don't quit, you should be in a pretty good spot. So don't quit. Yeah, it's a good point.

• 31:23Speaker 01

  So where do you go after BUDs? Got done with BUDs and I went to SEAL Team One. How was that? Did you pick one? Yes. Well, I didn't pick one, but I picked West Coast. And you know, it's, I was gonna say this when you talked about being intimidated showing up to BUDs. And I was kinda like, well, not really, because it's a big game and it's, you know, get wet and be cold and do pushups. It's kinda fun. But when I got to SEAL Team One, I was definitely, it was intimidating going to SEAL Team One. I was definitely, uh, the, the atmosphere for a new guy at SEAL Team One was intimidating. I've heard the stories.

• 32:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was definitely intimidating. We, we went, myself and, uh, two other new guys, we're checking into the Master Chief. We're standing outside of his door in our uniforms and parade rest and he calls us in there. We go to attention. We, we walk in, we're standing at attention. And he says, uh, he says, fuck you, fuck you, fuck you. Everyone here has been to BUDs. It doesn't mean shit. Get out of here. Cool. So then the next, we had like all the new guys assembled together and that Master Chief came in and said, um, he said, don't be late, don't forget anything and keep

• 32:52Speaker 01

  your mouth shut and your ears open. Those are really, that's really good advice. Don't be late, don't be light and, and keep your mouth shut and your ears open. And that's the way, that's the way it was, you know, that's the way it was. Keep your mouth shut, keep your ears open and try and absorb everything that's going on. And again, this is 1991, man, like the Gulf War that I thought I was going to be in, that they were reporting, that there's going to be 30 or 40,000 casualties was over in 72 hours. I missed the whole thing. So, this is just a peacetime organization. And even, even with that, it was pretty, pretty, pretty intimidating to walk into.

• 33:33Shawn Ryan?

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• 34:55Shawn Ryan?

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• 35:07Shawn Ryan?

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• 35:35Shawn Ryan?

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• 35:47Shawn Ryan?

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• 35:56Shawn Ryan?

  Real quick, I just want to go back to Bud's graduation. I mean, it sounds like the majority of your childhood, you wanted to get into the military. You found the teams, which, you know, is the, if not one of the best, you know, SOF units to be in. I mean, what did it feel like for you to graduate?

• 36:17Speaker 01

  You know, back then, we didn't get our Trident or anything, you know, we just graduated, and you still had a lot of hurdles to overcome. I was always pretty paranoid, you know, you asked, like, when I failed something, I was very paranoid about failing, not wanting to fail. And so, even going to, knowing that I was going to SEAL Team One, knowing I graduated Bud's, it felt good, but it didn't feel like I had completed the journey at all. It felt like, okay, now you got to get through SEAL tactical training, and you got to get through your board with the team. So I didn't have some, you know, elevated feeling of, I made it. I never really got that feeling in my 20 years.

• 36:55Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha, gotcha. All right, back to Team One. I mean, so you get into Team One, what kind of, what kind of team guys are there? What had they been through? I mean, we're in peacetime, we talked about Gulf War, you know, that was pretty short. What kind of experience was in SEAL Team One when you showed up?

• 37:15Speaker 01

  Other than a couple Vietnam guys, there was, relatively speaking, almost no experience, almost no combat experience.

• 37:22Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Yep. And so, it was kind of weird, because the way we trained... You were training for something that no one really understood. And as much as like the Vietnam guys passed down as much as they could, but it still was like, you, you, you didn't really know what it was you were training for. And that made us train very, very hard because it seemed like combat was this unfathomable, tough thing. And so we better train as hard as we possibly could. And we thought we hoped and prayed that we would get to do one mission.

• 38:05Speaker 01

  You know, that was the, the hope and the prayer was maybe we'll get to do one, what we used to call a real world mission. Yeah. You know, real world mission. We would hope and pray that we would get to do some real world mission. And we trained as hard as we possibly could. Everyone was very, there was a lot of, team one was very, they called it stalag team one. And there's another name for it, but it was very strict. I've always heard no fun one. No fun one. Yep. They had a bunch of names, a bunch of names for no, no fun one, stalag team one. And yet in my first platoon, the older guys would say team one.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  It's not just a number, it's an attitude. Which again, now that I, you know, when I got older, but I was young, dude, I was like, that's a real thing. Like this is, this is our attitude. And so, you know, we literally had haircut inspections every two weeks. Uniform inspections with our cammies. Like it was, we had command PT every day. Everything was very professional and that's how I fit in well with that, you know? And, or I should say it fit me well because I liked the military and that's what we were doing. That's interesting considering you don't like authority. Yeah, yeah.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  I think maybe at this point I had recognized that this was, this was, that professionalism was part of the job for me. You know, for like that, that level of professionalism that I saw was that was what we were supposed to be like, that was the job. So I bought into it, man.

• 39:58Shawn Ryan?

  You know, it sounds like

• 40:03Shawn Ryan?

  when you went to one, when you got into the teams, it sounds maybe, maybe similar to what guys might experience today. You know, you've, you've got a lot of past experience. It sounds like when you came in, it was a little bit of past experience with the Vietnam guys. But I mean, you know, the GWOG guys, it's every day, there's got to be more and more guys, you know, retiring, calling it a day, moving on with their, with their lives. And now you have this younger generation that's coming in that, you know, isn't they're not do, I don't know, maybe they are doing a lot, but I don't think they're doing a lot. I don't think we got a lot of guys in Ukraine and, and so, you know, I mean, and do you think it's, are we have a similar time today?

• 40:46Speaker 01

  It's a very similar time, a very similar time. I tell those young guys now, I didn't shoot my weapon at the enemy for 13 years. And, and the way you just expressed that,

• 41:00Speaker 01

  I would have never expressed that because I was having a freaking great time. We were training hard, we're jumping out airplanes, we were, you know, diving and shooting machine guns and blowing things up. And like, that's what we were getting ready, getting ready, getting ready. And so I understand the expression because now, of course, we all look back like, gosh, how could you wait around for 13 years? But that's what it was. That's what we lived in. That's the water that we drank. That's what, and so it was, hey, this is what we're doing. And by the way, you're with an awesome bunch of guys. We have fun. Everything is like super professional and also super fun. You, you know what's, it's being in a SEAL platoon, man.

• 41:39Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 41:39Speaker 01

  There's, I don't, I would rather, if I could just, heaven for me would be just like SEAL, SEAL platoon. SEAL platoon forever. That's what we're doing. And we go to war, cool. We go train, cool. That's what we're doing. It's the best job. And so I didn't, I didn't know enough to go, I can't believe I gotta go on deployment again. No, I want to go on deployment. Oh, there's nothing happening? Cool. We're going on deployment. We're going to go to this country, that country, we're going to work with these group, that group, maybe something will happen. And if it doesn't, we're still going to be out here doing our best. So I didn't, I, I didn't.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  I had a good attitude the whole time. Like it was exactly where I wanted to be. Being in the SEAL platoon was just as good as it gets, man.

• 42:22Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I guess, you know, I could totally see that. I mean, I guess that that attitude probably came in with my generation when we came in. It was it had, I mean, I joined in 2000, July of 2001. And so by the time, actually, like, two days after I graduated boot camp, the towers went down. So I knew, I guess I didn't know.

• 42:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's a different level of frustration, right? Where if your country is at war and you joined the teams to go to war, if you're not going, yeah, there's gonna be, that's gonna, that's gonna be angst, right? That's gonna be problematic, for sure. And but when there's nothing going on, just, I didn't, I didn't know enough to be frustrated about it. Yeah, we're having a good time.

• 43:08Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, I think that would come in too. I mean, is, is, I think that attitude comes in as well when you, when you see platoons go out and do something and you haven't yet. And then that creates, you know, I don't, I don't know if jealousy is the right, I mean, yes, it definitely creates jealousy and, and, and maybe some discontent throughout the community. But so where did you go? Where, where was your first deployment?

• 43:34Speaker 01

  First deployment was to Guam. And this is where I got introduced to jujitsu.

• 43:40Shawn Ryan?

  How did that happen?

• 43:41Speaker 01

  Uh, there was, we show up in Guam, and this is after our workup. So we're there and we're sitting in our platoon hut one morning, and this master chief comes in, this old master chief, like, he had to be at least like, 39 years old or something like that, but he looked like an old man, and he's old lanky old guy. And he says, who wants to learn how to fight?

• 44:06Speaker 01

  And I'm like, I don't know what this old guy thinks he's gonna teach me, but me and a few other guys, new guys, we raised our hands and alright, so we went to uh, the Navy base had like a judo training mat. And he told us to meet in there at a certain time. And this guy's name was Steve Bailey. He was a awesome master chief in the SEAL teams. And he was a Muay Thai fighter and he had been training Jiu Jitsu with the Gracies in Torrance in the late eighties. So he was like,

• 44:36Speaker 01

  what right now would be considered like a mid-level white belt in Jiu Jitsu. And he just lined us up and just tapped us all out over and over again. It's it's hard to explain to people how little we, how little human beings knew about fighting in 1992 before the UFC. Like, no one even understood the guard or the mount or the rear naked choke or the kimura, the arm lock. It was, it didn't even exist. It wasn't, it wasn't even, it didn't even exist, man. And so this guy, you don't even know that he's passing your guard. You don't even know what the guard is. You don't know that he's mounted because you don't even know what the mount is.

• 45:20Speaker 01

  You don't know that he's taking your arm. You don't, you have no comprehension of what's happening. And so he just annihilated us. And to me, I just thought to myself, this whatever this freaking guy knows, I will do whatever I can to learn it. And so we started training with him. That was my introduction to Jiu Jitsu. Wow, he just stuck with you ever since. Yeah. So how long has it been since then?

• 45:42Speaker 01

  Well, that was in 1992, 1993, so. Wow, so what, 20, no, holy shit, 30? Yeah. Whatever, 33 years? Is that right? Something like that. Wow, 33 fucking years. Yeah. Yeah, there was something that I recognized very quickly that it was,

• 46:04Speaker 01

  I had to learn this thing, this stuff. Yeah. And now you're a black belt? Yeah, yep.

• 46:13Speaker 01

  So that was my first platoon. We go to Guam and this is 93. There's, you know, we go and do exercises. We work with other, you know, host nations. Again, I'm having a good time. Um, you know, we're training hard. We're, we're partying hard. We're doing what kind of like young SEALs do. Um, but you know, there's no war going on except for there were some things that were happening in Somalia.

• 46:44Speaker 01

  And so there was some guys on board ship

• 46:50Speaker 01

  from the east coast and the west coast that did some kind of operations in Somalia. Then they went from the ship to go do these operations. Now SEALs back in the 90s, no one wanted to go on the ship, right? And so I got back from that first platoon and me and a few of my buddies, we were like, hey, we know what we did in Guam, which was nothing. And we know what the guys that were on the ships, they went to Somalia. Let's go on the ships. And so me and a few of my buddies from that first platoon that I'd gone through buds with and we'd done that first platoon, we volunteered to go on a shipboard deployment. And everyone's like, what are you guys doing? We're like, that's seems to have the best chance. So that's what we did. We did, we volunteered

• 47:34Speaker 01

  for what was called an ARG platoon on the east coast. It's called a MARG platoon. We volunteered for the ARG platoon and we went and did a shipboard deployment, which for me was awesome because we had a lot of assets to train with. We worked very closely with the Marine Corps, which was awesome. We did, you know, we trained, we did like their shooting package with the force recon guys. We trained with them. We did ship boarding with them. We, we did, we did stuff, a lot of stuff at Camp Pendleton after our own workup. And I also got to learn and understand the structure of the Marine Corps and how they operated, which gave me an insight onto conventional forces at large and what they were doing, interacting with the Navy. It was very, very beneficial for me. I was a, I was a primary comms guy in my first platoon. For whatever reason, they didn't have a primary, primary comms guy.

• 48:19Speaker 01

  And I'd gone to comm school, as a matter of fact, on the east coast. The SEAL comm school on the east coast, which was awesome. And so then I was a primary comms guy in my first platoon. So now I'm the primary comms guy in my second platoon, which means I'm sitting with the officers during planning. I'm, you know, uh, learning how the communications work, learning about contingencies, learning about loss of comms plan, learning about QRFs, like I was learning things that I wouldn't have been learning if I had been a machine gunner.

• 48:50Speaker 01

  So I got very lucky that I was a comms guy and I had volunteered to be a comms guy. And the reason I had volunteered to be a comms guy was my third day at SEAL Team One, I had quarter deck watch back when we used to stand watches. And the officer of the deck, which was another SEAL, said, hey, new guy. I was like, hey, sir. And he said, uh, if you want to be on every mission, be a comms guy because uh, no matter what the mission is, you will get to go because if you know how to work comms. And the next morning when we woke up, I went up to the comm shack and I said, hey, I want to be a comms guy. Which again, no one had ever volunteered to be a comms guy. So I volunteered to be a comms guy. And then I was a primary comms guy in my first platoon and now I was a primary comms guy in my second platoon. And then probably

• 49:36Speaker 01

  one of the most influential things of my life happened in my, in my second platoon. So there was actually a couple pretty pivotal moments. The first one was, um, we had a, we had an assistant platoon commander in my second platoon. His name was Alton Lee Grizzard. And he was an absolute freaking stud. Just, he was the quarterback at the Naval Academy. He was a record setting, like he broke Roger Staubach's records at the Naval Academy. He was complete charismatic guy. Fun, nice, uh, charismatic, the whole nine yards. And I was really good friends with him, really good friends with him and

• 50:22Speaker 01

  He got killed. He got murdered. He got murdered? He got murdered in a murder-suicide. So, uh, you can go back and look at the news on this, but- What is a murder-suicide? Meaning, a guy- Suicide by a cop or something? No, he, he was, he was... There was a guy from the Naval Academy, another guy from the Naval Academy who was a submariner, who had been dating a girl from the Naval Academy, who I think was a surface warfare officer. They had been dating. They broke up.

• 50:55Speaker 01

  Griz had been like hanging out with her, and this guy showed up at the BOQ, the Bachelor Officers' Quarter on, on, um, Coronado, banged on the door, and Griz opened the door, and the guy shot Griz, shot the girl, and killed himself. Holy shit. And so, re- really heartbreaking, terrible scenario, and...

• 51:24Speaker 01

  I was really good friends with him. And we'd had, we'd had, he was one of the first people that had a video camera, like a normal person with a video camera, and we had made this video, we were down in, um, Panama doing jungle warfare training, and we'd gone out, and there was this song that said "Whoop, there it is", you remember this song?

• 51:48Speaker 01

  And so he had filmed, we were hanging out with these Panamanian girls, and these girls were saying "Whoop, a-a", because they didn't speak English. And we're just like in a, you know, partying with these girls and, and he had taken this video and he'd shown his dad, and his dad was a, a warrant officer in the Navy. And his, you know, his dad, he'd grown up in Japan for the most part. And so Griz had showed this video to his dad of me and him, you know, with these Panamanian girls laughing in a bar, saying "Whoop, a-a", because we were just laughing. So, when we go to, they had a big service at the Naval Academy, because he's a hero at the Naval Academy. And I met his dad, and, you know, his dad recognized me. And, um,

• 52:34Speaker 01

  you know, I told his dad- Because he had told me, because I said to him, I said to him one day, I told his dad, I said, you know, I said to your son one day, I said, hey, you grew up in Japan. Like you're going to Japanese high school. How did you learn to play football? And he said, my old, my old man taught me.

• 52:58Speaker 01

  And

• 53:03Speaker 01

  as that happened,

• 53:06Speaker 01

  you know, I got, I was very, uh, you know, obviously we're all, we're all broken up from this, but I don't know, I don't, I wasn't behaving properly. And my, my run inmate from the SEAL teams, who I went through Buzz with, I went through S T with, I did three platoons with this guy. I was in training cell. And this guy was my roommate the whole time, just like my, my, my run inmate. And he, he pulled me aside and he was like, hey, Grizz didn't, you're not the only one that lost Grizz.

• 53:46Speaker 01

  And I thought to myself, um, he's a hundred percent right. And what it made me aware of is that the way you perceive yourself is not going to be accurate all the time. And you have to be very cautious in the way you behave because

• 54:05Speaker 01

  you, you think you're behaving a certain way, but the other people's perception is going to be different. And there's a really good chance that their perception is more accurate than your own.

• 54:21Speaker 01

  And that, that struck me. And this guy was, you know, this guy was my best friend and, and he's telling me like, hey, bro,

• 54:28Speaker 01

  you're not the only one that lost Grizz. And I'm acting like I was, like he, like I was the only one that lost Grizz. So it made me aware of that, that again, just the way you perceive yourself is not the way other people are going to perceive you.

• 54:44Speaker 01

  So we go through that.

• 54:46Shawn Ryan?

  How do you, hold on, um, this is, how do you find, how do you today? I mean, that's a big fucking lesson. I, I would take that as a big lesson. It was like you did as well.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  It was a huge lesson.

• 54:57Shawn Ryan?

  So how did you, moving forward from that, how did you, how do you find out how people are perceive, are perceiving what you're projecting?

• 55:06Speaker 01

  I think it's generally speaking, they're gonna pursue, you, you, my assumption is that what I'm doing is viewed as negative. My assumption is that if I'm doing something, the, the, the assumption is it's viewed as negative. And so if you assume that what you're doing is being perceived as negative, it keeps me in check from behaving in a way

• 55:34Speaker 01

  that is going to be perceived as negative. I mean, to the best of your ability. I'm not saying, you know, of course, just like every other human, you, we're all gonna slip up, but recognizing that like, man, and I think, I'm so thankful that my, that I was, had a good enough relationship with this guy to, to tell me that. Because otherwise I never would have, you never would see this disconnect between how you're perceived and what you think you're being perceived as. And it was something, it wasn't like I thought to myself, oh, here's how people are seeing me. I was just acting the way I was acting. But it was being perceived in a way that I didn't mean at all, didn't have any intention. But I could see as soon as he said it, I go, oh yeah, that's right. That's right.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  You, you, you, you, you need to look at yourself, you need to detach from, you know, the sadness and go, oh yeah. What does it look like? What does it, what does it feel like? Never mind what it looks like, because their perceptions are not wrong. Like I said, their perceptions are right.

• 56:35Speaker 01

  Oh, I had this video. His dad recognized me. I must be, you know what I mean? Like, that's all, that's all bad stuff. And I didn't recognize it until my, my buddy let me know. And I was very, very grateful. And it definitely made me recognize that, yeah, people's perception of you is not what you think it is. And that's, if, if you're not careful, you can really get yourself a bad reputation.

• 57:01Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm.

• 57:01Speaker 01

  And, and obviously, as you know, reputation in SEAL teams is everything. You know, your reputation in SEAL teams is everything. So I was just very thankful that he gave me that heads up. Um, and then, again, what made this platoon very impactful for me, SEAL Team One Alpha Platoon, we had a platoon, our platoon officer, our OIC, was pretty much a new guy who had flat transferred from another part of the Navy. And he had come in as our platoon commander. And, which is no big deal, right? It's really no big deal. Like, officers don't have a lot of experience. It's not that big of a deal. They listen to what you have to say. They listen to the platoon chief.

• 57:44Speaker 01

  They listen to the LPO and they figure it out. Except for this guy didn't really want to listen. And so it ended up causing some friction in the platoon. He, you know, was one of those guys where, again, he probably didn't realize how he was being perceived. And he was being perceived as arrogant, being perceived as conceited, being perceived as not listening to the rest of the platoon, including the platoon chief, including the platoon LPO. And he was dictating, you know, like, this is how we're gonna do this. And this is the way it needs to be. And just wasn't listening. So it's problematic, but you know, we're, what are you gonna do? Carry on. Well, then we had a, we were at desert warfare training.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  And he presented some plan to us and it was a bad plan. And the LPO had like, had enough of it, was like, sort of, this plan is stupid. And, you know, since the guy had a big ego, they got in each other's faces. And then the, the OIC takes a swing at the LPO. And we split them up, yeah, it's, which, again, we've seen plenty of inter-platoon fights. I mean, it's a thing. It's almost like its own sport, right? But when there's this much tension and negativity, it's a problem. And so we got done with that and we we go back and we kind of had like a platoon meeting without the platoon commander.

• 59:12Speaker 01

  And we told the platoon chief, like, we don't want to work with this guy. Platoon chief brings it up the chain of command and we have a, we request captain's mask, like, not official, but we want, we request to go talk to the CO. So we go into the CO's office and the CO like lines us up, you know, from the chief on down. And he goes down the line like, what's the problem? What's the problem? What's the problem? And we're all saying the same stuff. This guy is arrogant. He doesn't listen to us. It's his way or the highway. And we get done. And the CO says, you know what this sounds like to me? This sounds like a mutiny. We don't have mutinies in the Navy. We're not going to have a mutiny at my SEAL team. Guys, go figure this out. Cool.

• 59:57Speaker 01

  We walk out of the office and the CO was a good guy who started to pull the thread. You know, once we left his office and talked to the training cadre and talked, figured more about the guy's reputation and talked to the guy himself. And he realized like two or three days later, he fired him. And so big win for the E5 Mafia. We're all fired up that we get this guy fired. And we proceed and now we get our new assignment for our new platoon commander. We find out who our new platoon commander is going to be. And our new platoon commander is a legendary SEAL. Who I had never met him, but I had heard his name. Everybody kind of heard his name.

• 1:00:40Speaker 01

  He had been, he had been a prior enlisted senior chief. So he went up all the way to senior chief. He was at UDT. He was a plank owner at Dam Neck. He was at SDV. He was at a boat team. He was at Team One. He had done everything in his career. Everything you could possibly fucking want as a, in a leader. He had combat experience from Grenada. So everything that you could want as a leader, he comes in and, and I'm thinking, everyone's like fired up and I go, hold on a second, guys. This is, this is happening for a reason. This is because we're a bunch of mutineers that got our last boss fired and they're sending this guy down because he's going to crush us and like get us in line.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  And so when he shows up,

• 1:01:29Speaker 01

  this guy, um,

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  I'm expecting, you know, a six foot, five, 270 pound beast. And this guy shows up and he's like five, eight and maybe 150 pounds. And he looks like he's about, he's like the oldest guy I've ever seen in the SEAL teams, which was probably like, you know, 37 or something like that.

• 1:01:53Speaker 01

  Gray, graying hair and all the whole nine yards. And he walked into our platoon space and I'm like, who is this freaking, this guy's supposed to be the legend? He walks into our platoon space and he says, something along the lines of like, hey, I'm sorry to hear about your last platoon commander, but I'm not worried about it. I'm just looking forward to working with you guys. And right there, like the fact that he didn't come in and say, you know, I'm taking over, I'm in charge as a new sheriff in town. He said, I'm looking forward to working with you guys. And I realized, oh, this guy is different.

• 1:02:29Speaker 01

  And then that afternoon, he's taking out the garbage. You know, sweeping up the platoon space, he's taking out the garbage. I'm like, whoa. That's a new, that's, that's not just a new guy's job. That's like a new guy that's in trouble's job. And then a couple of days later, we had our first training mission. And he put me and my running mate in charge of the mission. Which was awesome and crazy. Like from, you know, hey, here's the mission. You guys figure out how you want to do it. And he just put that, that responsibility and gave us ownership. And so that guy,

• 1:03:11Speaker 01

  you know, when I was watching him and as I went through that platoon, he was just awesome. And he made our lives awesome. And you know, when you're, when your SEAL platoon is your life and your SEAL platoon is your religion and you have a guy like that take over and the contrast between the guy that was arrogant and didn't listen to us and, and held on to all the power himself. I learned so much from seeing that contrast between these two guys. And so.

• 1:03:40Speaker 01

  As time went on, that's, that guy left me with a lot of, a lot of lessons. And one of the most, one of the most important lessons that he taught me was we were, we're working with the Marines. We, like I said, we were in our platoon. So we were ships off the coast of San Diego. We're doing like the Marine Corps workup with them. For Marine Corps workup, they gotta do beach landings. Red Beach up in Camp Pendleton. And before the red, before the beach landing goes down, SEALs, back in the old days, we went out with a lead line and slate like World War II and did a hydrographic reconnaissance. And that is a gut check of an operation, especially in a big sea state, especially off Camp Pendleton.

• 1:04:20Speaker 01

  In whatever month it was, it's cold, giant waves, we're in our, you know, Zodiacs. It's such a gut check of an operation. It takes five or six hours to do. You're freezing the whole time. And you take a, you know, a lead line and a slate. So you take a lead line and you dip it in the water. And it's got little markings on it to show you how deep the water is. And then you have this slate on your arm where you're writing down how deep the water is. And you do this whole, your whole platoon is doing it at the same time. And it's just a gut check. And we get done that night. And then you have to take all the, all the slates with all the information on them. And you bring them back to the ship. And then the cartographers, which are the guys in the platoon that like take all that information, they build a chart to give to the Marine Corps.

• 1:05:03Speaker 01

  And we go through all that. And then that day, early morning, we then go out and mark the beach lanes. So we swim across the beach again, and we set up the beach lanes, and we mark them for the Marines, and the Marines come in and land. And so now it's like 48 hours of continuous operations, freezing cold, gut check. And we get done and get a few hours into the beach landing. And the Marine Corps decides that they didn't like their landing. And so they said, we didn't, you know, we, we missed our timeline. We didn't bring the vehicles in the right direction, whatever the, the problems they had. We're doing it again. We're reloading the ships and we're doing it again.

• 1:05:42Speaker 01

  Which is like mammoth, ballsy for the Marine Corps Colonel to say like, hey, I didn't like it. We're doing it again. This is massive. So we reload on the ships and we start the whole thing again. And we go out to do the hydrographic reconnaissance. And we're in our little boat pool, you know, we've launched from the big ships, we go on the Zodiacs, we get to the point, it's been all night. And we're getting ready to get in the water. And we're in our little boat pool. And again, we just did this 48 hours ago. And someone in the platoon, it wasn't me, thank God, someone in the platoon says, are we really gonna do this again?

• 1:06:25Speaker 01

  And the platoon commander just quietly says, he says, well, you know, we don't have to.

• 1:06:33Speaker 01

  But would that be the right thing to do?

• 1:06:40Speaker 01

  And not another word was said, we got in the water. Because

• 1:06:46Speaker 01

  you have to do the right thing. You're a frogman, you're a SEAL, you have to do the right thing. It's the hard choice right now. We just did it 48 hours ago. There's been no shift in the, in the sand. There's been no obstacles put in. But this is what we do. And for me, that statement, is it the right thing to do? It's stuck with me for the rest of my career. And this guy, you know, I remember getting towards the end of that platoon. And again, when you're, when your platoon is your life and somebody makes it that good. And that was the first, the first thought that I had about trying to become an officer.

• 1:07:29Speaker 01

  Because I said to myself, this guy made life so good

• 1:07:36Speaker 01

  for me and these 16 guys in this platoon. Someday, if I can, I want to make life good for 16 guys in a platoon. And that was the very first thought that I had of following his path. And that's what I did. That's what I eventually did. I followed his path and I, I did, always did my best to emulate, you know, never be as good as him. But I always did my best to emulate his leadership.

• 1:08:07Speaker 01

  Do you think he knows this about you? Yes.

• 1:08:11Speaker 01

  Yep. Can I ask what his name is? I, I'd rather not say. Okay. But he's, he's a well-known in the SEAL teams. That's pretty cool. Yep. He's, he has no, uh, you know, he's very low profile. Very low profile guy. That's even cooler. Yep. And I mean, the, the best of us are, right?

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• 1:11:25Shawn Ryan?

  You know, I'm just curious, when you, when you make a switch, you know, when, when, how fast did you see morale recharge, you know, on that platoon when you saw the leadership change? And when he came in and said, I'm excited to work with you.

• 1:11:38Speaker 01

  Overnight.

• 1:11:39Shawn Ryan?

  Overnight. Like that fast?

• 1:11:41Speaker 01

  Instant. Instant. Yep. And that was just instant.

• 1:11:50Speaker 01

  And then that deployment, you know, again, we were on board a ship. We were actually, we were actually staged off the coast of Africa when the Rwanda genocide was going on. And we were like planning to go and getting our gear ready. And of course we never went. This is where, you know, the, the face that you made earlier that I, where you went, like, that's how, that's the first time I felt that of like, wait a second. There's, I think it ended up being 800,000 people slaughtered in a hundred days. But we were there. We were off the coast and we didn't do anything. Why didn't we do anything? Well, what had just happened in Somalia the year prior?

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  It was Black Hawk Down. It was like, yeah, they were not willing to take that risk. We did the same thing. There was a couple of missions we got spun up for in Somalia. And had our gear loaded, had 40 mic mic. I remember loading out 40 mic mic for the first time for real. And being like, oh yeah, we're going and we didn't go. So that was probably the first time that I felt that level of frustration of. You know, why, why aren't they sending us like we can help? And that's the way it was, you know? Definitely a letdown. How did that platoon end? That was it. You know, we went on deployment. I think we spent, we spent some ridiculous amount of time because they call them gator squares, which is when you're just going around in a circle off the coast of, we did

• 1:13:18Speaker 01

  gator squares off the coast of Rwanda or off the coast of, uh, not off the coast of Rwanda, but off the coast of, um, Kenya. For several months and then we did gator squares off the coast of Somalia for another period of time. And then we went up into the Persian Gulf because at some point, I think it was this platoon, there was something going on like Saddam had pushed troops, moved troops or something going on. So we went up and, and did gator squares in the Persian Gulf for a while. So I think we were at sea like a hundred and seventy-four days out of a hundred and eighty or something totally insane like that. Yeah. Just riding that ship, lifting all day, shooting off the fantail. Again, did we have fun while we're doing it? Yeah, dude, we had a blast. We had a blast.

• 1:14:02Speaker 01

  Also, in the couple of days that we were not on the ship, I met my wife. So How'd you meet your wife? We went into Bahrain for like so, some training and

• 1:14:16Speaker 01

  the boys, we went out and I, I met, uh, I met my wife who was a stewardess at the time. Really? Yeah. How'd you make the approach?

• 1:14:27Speaker 01

  Um, oh, man.

• 1:14:34Speaker 01

  So Squad Two had spent a couple of days, they went off the ship before us.

• 1:14:41Speaker 01

  And Squad One still had some, whatever we were doing, some, some work to do. And so when we flew into Bahrain, because we flew to Bahrain and we didn't know what Bahrain was, I mean, a country. But we didn't know that Bahrain at the time was like the Las Vegas of the Persian Gulf. Meaning they had, it was like somewhat westernized. They had bars and stuff like this. And so when we, when squad one, when we landed in the helicopters, squad two is like running to help us move our bags and stuff. We're like, what's going on? And they're like, there's girls here. It tells me, yeah, you know, there's these girls here. There's these two girls. I've seen them each night and like, I know you're gonna go and you're gonna go talk to them and like,

• 1:15:24Speaker 01

  they haven't even given me the time of day. And I was like, bro, if there's girls, you know, I'm, I'll leave them alone. They're, they're yours. You handle it. And so we go to a, we go to this bar. I know you're gonna talk to. Yeah, yeah. Oh shit. I look across the bar and there's this like shockingly, uh, stunningly beautiful girl with blonde hair and uh, like a white freaking skin tight gorgeous outfit on. And so I started, I just walked over to her and um, yeah, this is the embarrassing part is uh,

• 1:15:55Speaker 01

  you know, when you're on a ship back then, there, there wasn't internet. And so we had a limited number of video cassettes. There's no DVDs, no streaming. And one of the movies that we had was Ace Ventura Pet Detective. And so we had, I had watched that movie at this point, like hundreds of times. And uh, I walked up to this beautiful blonde girl and, and I said in like a Jim Carrey style, I said, you must be Aphrodite's goddess of love. And uh, she, she looked at me like I was an idiot and then laughed and you know, we started talking, but that was the, the, I don't know whether it's more embarrassing that I said it to her or that she fell for it.

• 1:16:40Speaker 01

  I'm sure she's pretty embarrassed that she fell for it. But yeah, so we ended up, you know, having a long distance relationship and, and um, but that's, came home from that deployment and you know, go in another platoon. Right off the bat. Yeah, you know, this was, this was the nineties, you know? Just go on deployment, go on deployment as much as you can and hope that something happens. And so, so that's what I did. Just went back into another platoon, did another arc platoon. So right back into the arc platoon. New leadership? Yep. Got a new platoon commander. Um, got a new platoon chief, new platoon LPO and all, all, all good dudes, you know, this was just, it was just

• 1:17:20Speaker 01

  good. Team one was, was a great team to grow up in for me, you know, they just had a, other than that one officer, everyone else was, was just good, good people and everyone was just hardworking frogmen, you know? It was good. Anything significant on deployment three? You know, the, the only thing I can say was cool about that third deployment was that, um, we did some, we did like, I don't know, some, I think we did one ship boarding, like a real ship boarding. And I think we ran some security operations means, and then again, this is how desperate we were. We locked and loaded our weapons and drove our ribs around like the boats, the shit, the Navy ships. And I was kind of fired up. You know? Yeah. This is literally,

• 1:18:08Speaker 01

  to me it was, it was real. We locked and loaded our weapons and then we did one ship boarding that was, you know, real. And again, in, in the nineties, I was freaking stoked that I got to lock and load my MP5. Cause we used MP5s back then. Nice. Yep. Got to lock and load my MP5 and, and board a ship and get control of the vessel and turn it over to the authorities and it ended up, it wasn't even like a, it was just some weird situation where they were making some kind of a distress call, but people thought they might be, you know, it might be a hostage situation. So, or, or some kind of, not a hostage, but some kind, some, they didn't know what was happening.

• 1:18:51Shawn Ryan?

  What kind of ship was it?

• 1:18:52Speaker 01

  Some random.

• 1:18:53Shawn Ryan?

  Was it a foreign ship?

• 1:18:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, just some random, uh, you know.

• 1:18:57Shawn Ryan?

  Like Amerisk or something?

• 1:18:58Speaker 01

  And smaller. It was a pretty, it wasn't that big. They're probably, they're probably uh, moving dates or whatever, whatever kind of produce from one of the Arab countries. It was nothing, it was literally nothing. I'm, I'm like bringing it up because it's funny that I was excited about it. And that's kind of how naive and, and into the teams I was.

• 1:19:19Shawn Ryan?

  Did you board it?

• 1:19:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:19:21Shawn Ryan?

  How'd it go?

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Cool. We took it over, you know?

• 1:19:26Shawn Ryan?

  What, what happened when you took it over?

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  Just walked up.

• 1:19:30Shawn Ryan?

  They were like, oh, we're not in distress?

• 1:19:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, we figured out that they weren't in distress.

• 1:19:34Shawn Ryan?

  But we are now?

• 1:19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, that we stressed them out. They were actually thankful. I think they had some kind of problems, you know, some kind of problems with their engine or something like that. So we showed up and, you know, it was a non-opposed boarding. But, you know, we got to hook and climb on a, you know, we put our little, uh, uh, water ski ladder, like we had little water ski ladders. We just hooked it on and climbed up. It was cool.

• 1:19:56Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 1:19:57Speaker 01

  I was happy, happy to do something for real, you know? That's one thing, uh, the Coast Guard, the Coast Guard, one thing that's cool about the Coast Guard is no matter what's going on in the world, the Coast Guard's doing real stuff. You know, Coast Guard's always doing, saving people, you know, the ocean is mean. Yeah. So if there's a war going on or not, if you're in the Coast Guard, you can still do some really impactful things. Of course, now they're doing all kinds of drug interdiction too.

• 1:20:20Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I love that. Have you seen that video that those guys that jump on that damn submarine and open it up?

• 1:20:25Speaker 01

  Oh, no, I haven't seen that.

• 1:20:26Shawn Ryan?

  It's, it's fucking awesome. It's fucking awesome.

• 1:20:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:20:31Shawn Ryan?

  But, all right, so when do you, when did you move over to two?

• 1:20:35Speaker 01

  So I got done with that platoon and I went into training cell at SEAL Team One. When I was at training cell SEAL Team One again, I'm still like single and I taught everything, you know, we just, we do everything. Do land warfare, taught diving, comms, CQC, we do, we just teach everything because we just didn't, we didn't have anything else to do. Wasn't like, hey, what do you want to do this week when you're home? No, I'll go to an island or I'll go to wherever to go make stuff happen. So I stayed in that mode and then again, from my second platoon, I had, there was, there was a officer program.

• 1:21:11Speaker 01

  That was called the Seaman to Admiral program and it was started by a guy named Jim Borda, Admiral Borda.

• 1:21:18Speaker 01

  Who, if you know anything about him, um, he killed himself.

• 1:21:22Shawn Ryan?

  I didn't. I don't know anything about him.

• 1:21:24Speaker 01

  So this is again, there's all these weird threads through people's lives, but one of the weird threads through my, my life is that, uh, one of my biggest mentors and heroes is a guy named Colonel David Hackworth and Colonel David Hackworth was a, wrote the book about face and he was a Korean War veteran and a Vietnam War veteran. He was one of the most decorated army soldiers.

• 1:21:47Speaker 01

  And he, when he retired, he had retired because during the Vietnam War, he did an interview where he said, if we don't change the way we're fighting, we're going to lose. That's basically what he said. And he got drummed out of the army for saying that because he was a colonel. He was a senior officer. He was the first senior officer to speak out against the war. And the way we were fighting it. And when he got out, he, you know, he, he kind of, he wrote books, but he was a little bit of a journalist and a little bit of a, you know, uh, yeah, kind of like a journalist. And he reported that Admiral Borda

• 1:22:25Speaker 01

  was wearing a V on his Navy Commendation Medal. So a Navy Comm with a V. And he said he didn't rate it because V is an award for valor and you know, like that's a big deal. Um, it doesn't stand for valor. It stands for combat distinguishing device, but it's a V. And that story came out and Admiral Borda killed himself. Um, but prior to that happening, Admiral Borda had started a program called the Seaman Admiral Program because Admiral Borda was a prior enlisted guy. And so he wanted to offer that to other troops. And so they started this program and it was 50 sailors from the US Navy.

• 1:23:11Speaker 01

  Would get selected and I heard about the program and actually one of my officers said, hey, they've got this program going on. You should do it. And I did it and I didn't get picked up, but I got slated as an alternate, which was no, there were no alternate spots that opened up because everyone took it. But I was an alternate. So I knew I had a decent chance. And, um, and then the guy actually sent a note back to my commanding officer that said, make sure this guy applies next year. And so I applied again the next year and I got picked up for that program.

• 1:23:44Shawn Ryan?

  No shit. Well, I'm just curious. I mean, we, a lot of us know, you know, where this story is headed into Ramadi, but you know, and maybe the knowledge wasn't there, but you know, I mean, now, you know, actually, maybe it was there because this was after your second platoon or during your second platoon. I mean, it's pretty common knowledge that, you know, officers, you join the SEALs to go to war. That's what you wanted to do. Now, leadership package is presented to you, you take it. Did you know, you know, that, that you would have more time in a combat role as an enlisted guy than you would as an officer if?

• 1:24:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. At that juncture in my career and the way the teams were, this is 1998. You know, I had done three platoons. So I maybe had an LPO and a platoon chief left. So I basically looked at it as, oh, instead of doing an LPO and a platoon chief, you're going to do an AIC and an OIC.

• 1:24:42Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:24:43Speaker 01

  And so it wasn't really, didn't really make that much of a difference to me. Um, you know, when guys ask me now, like, what, what should you do? Or what, you know, if they say, hey, I want to go in the SEAL teams, what should I do? I, I, I mean, my career couldn't have gone any better. Like, it was great. But to your point.

• 1:25:08Speaker 01

  If you want to do the trade of being a SEAL, then you should enlist. Yep, um, that's just how.

• 1:25:17Shawn Ryan?

  Why did you decide to take a leadership role?

• 1:25:20Speaker 01

  It all just boiled back to working for that platoon commander that made life in a platoon awesome. And I, I thought if I can make, if I can make platoon awesome, if I can make life awesome for 16 guys in this platoon, I'm gonna do it. And, and yeah, that was it. That was it.

• 1:25:40Shawn Ryan?

  A damn good reason.

• 1:25:41Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:25:43Shawn Ryan?

  So when did you go?

• 1:25:44Speaker 01

  I went to officer candidate school in 1998. Yep, early 1998, I went to officer candidate school. And, you know, that was, you know, you're pretty much, we had, we had a decent number of prior enlisted guys in my class, but most, most of them, I'd say 70% of them were kids out of college going OCS. And so, you know, I show up there, I'm a SEAL and the drill instructors, the Marine Corps drill instructors down at OCS and

• 1:26:13Speaker 01

  great, great interaction with the Marine Corps drill instructors, you know, I became the class president, which seemed pretty obvious, I guess. But, uh, most of the class presidents are only class president for like three days in the first few weeks because they just, they're just firing them. But I became class president and I just stayed. So I was a class president and then, um, went through OCS, you know, folding underwear. Literally with a ruler, they have a ruler.

• 1:26:40Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 1:26:40Speaker 01

  Yep. Um, yeah. So, you know, graduated from OCS and then went to team two.

• 1:26:49Shawn Ryan?

  Did you learn anything significant in OCS?

• 1:26:54Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, you know, I, leadership, leadership was a, it was a cool leadership challenge going OCS and being the, being the class president, you make things happen and um, it was cool to work, you know, it's, it's, people are, and this is another thing that, you know, I've learned along the way is like, people aren't going to be perfect and they're going to make mistakes and I'm going to make mistakes and um, as long as their intention isn't bad, then, you know, I get it. And also. You know, to ask someone to perform like or behave

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  in a way that they have to surmount their innate like habits as a human being. It's a lot to ask of someone. So when someone gets mad, when someone gets frustrated, when you see someone's ego come out, when you see someone look out for themselves, you I kind of understand that that's the way people are. And I'm not going to be mad about it. I understand that people get, you know, there's, there's.

• 1:28:08Speaker 01

  People do crazy things, man. People do crazy things and I understand. And I think that going to OCS was one of those things that said, yep, there's kids were trying, but the kids were also doing things where you go, I see what he's doing, man. He's worried about this test and he's looking out for himself right now and I get it. I get it. And I think just a little bit of um

• 1:28:32Speaker 01

  understanding other people's perspective. It was good for me to continue to be able to understand other people's perspective. Because if you don't understand other people's perspectives, you're going to be very judgmental. And if you're very judgmental, you're going to have a hard time interacting with other people. And when you're in a leadership position and you're having a hard time interacting with other people, that's not going to be good.

• 1:28:57Shawn Ryan?

  Why did you? Why did you go to two? I'm just curious why you went east coast versus west coast when you could have reintegrated back in with your old guys, you know what I mean?

• 1:29:09Speaker 01

  At the time, the officer community, if you went from enlisted to officer, they made you switch coasts.

• 1:29:15Shawn Ryan?

  Gotcha.

• 1:29:16Speaker 01

  And I wanted to go to the east coast because I hadn't been out there. I'd spent all my time in the west coast. And so and team two, I came from team one. Team one was the traditional team on the on the west coast. And the east coast from my friends that I knew out there was the same way. Team two was the traditional team. It was the old school team, you know, and that's where I wanted to go. So I got got to go to team two.

• 1:29:40Shawn Ryan?

  How was it as an officer? I mean, how what is it like walking through those doors as a prior enlisted guy now as a as a as a junior officer?

• 1:29:48Speaker 01

  It was pretty much this, pretty much the same, you know, um.

• 1:29:56Speaker 01

  When I was

• 1:29:59Speaker 01

  an E5 or an E4, you know, I worked with, like I said, I was the primary comms guy in my first platoon. I had a really good relationship with my platoon commander. My second platoon, good relationship with my platoon commander. And then when he got fired, I had a good relationship with the guy that took over. So, and, and I didn't, it seemed like good, good guys, they would just treat you like, you know, like mutual, you know? So I never really had a huge difference between the way I saw other people or the way, you know, I always just saw myself as another team guy. That's, this is my job. You know, when I was a comm guy, my job was to make sure the radios were good. When I was an officer, it's like, okay, I gotta make sure that the plan is good. Make sure we have contingencies.

• 1:30:42Speaker 01

  Like there was other things I was going to be charged with, but I'm still just a part of the machine that's gonna take care of this. And if one part of the machine fails, the whole machine fails. So it was fine, you know? And, you know, team two was great. I had a bunch of good guys there and, and

• 1:31:00Speaker 01

  yeah, and, and there was, um, like you hear about the differences between the East Coast and the West Coast. And they were team guys. You know, they were, they were team guys that lived in Virginia as opposed to team guys that lived in, in, uh, San Diego and a bunch of great dudes. And I ended up almost immediately deploying to Germany.

• 1:31:26Speaker 01

  My, the chief of my second platoon was the master chief in Germany. And they had been calling back for ops support. They wanted, they wanted a JO to, to go over to Germany to help with ops support. And he told me this later, they were in like a morning meeting. And they said, yeah, we finally got ops support coming. From, from the beach and they go, who is it? And they go, it's, it's a, it's an Ensign Willink. And the, the ops officer is like, what are you, what are you talking about? They're sending us an Ensign like we need an ops guy. And he, and the match chief goes, hold on a second. What's that guy's name? He goes, Ensign Willink. He goes, we want this guy.

• 1:32:07Speaker 01

  And so, so I showed up and again, there was my, my old platoon chief who was, who was like a great guy who had a great relationship with, like awesome friend of mine. He's the command master chief. And so I show up and develop a great relationship with the commanding officer there and the executive officer there just and the, the ops chief there became awesome friends. And it's just great, you know, just great opportunities and work with these guys that are, again, man, just dedicated to the teams, you know, just dedicated to the teams. And I think that's the main thing is, you know, you get guys that the best, the, the good guys, their, their commitment is to the teams. And so you got a bunch of guys, they're just committed to the teams and want to do a good job. And that's so went over to Germany and

• 1:32:54Speaker 01

  we actually like did some little mini deployments from Germany. That were really cool and learned a lot. And my, the skipper was a great guy and he ended up, you know, becoming the officer detailer later, which, you know, again, it's beneficial and the, and the SEAL Team Two executive officer, again, developed a great relationship with them. Just a good guy that, you know, I was a hard worker and that he moved from group from unit two. So I was with the XO in Germany and then he becomes the XO at Team Two. So like, when I get back there, I immediately get back put into a platoon. So I do a platoon at SEAL Team Two

• 1:33:38Speaker 01

  and a strike platoon off the aircraft carrier.

• 1:33:41Shawn Ryan?

  Right on, right on.

• 1:33:43Speaker 01

  Which was again, working with a lot of assets and going over and doing VBSS over in the Persian Gulf, which again, at the time was a real thing.

• 1:33:52Shawn Ryan?

  Did you get a lot of leadership experience as the, as the opso in Germany or, or was that kind of just? You know, getting you ready.

• 1:34:01Speaker 01

  As far as leadership of troops, no, but understanding of the bigger picture, yes. Because the guy that I worked for there, again, he's a friend of mine and just a great guy.

• 1:34:16Speaker 01

  And he, he had, you know, a lot of experience himself at the time, right? Not experienced like guys have now, but at the time he had experience. And like, there was one time we were, we were on a big exercise, a big joint exercise. And we, we like, put together a talk, tactical operations center. What's interesting about this is man, you think of a talk now, like you think of what a mobile talk would look like now. I'm not kidding. Well, I, I put together a mobile talk and I was the, like, the, the ops officer for this operation, this training operation. And I had the talk in my backpack. It was like three radios, two maps, some magic markers, some pens, like that's what we rolled with. And that's what we set up, you know, that's what we did.

• 1:35:00Speaker 01

  But there was a time where there's a platoon in the field and there, there's multiple elements that are getting ready to do target hits. And we're waiting for like a pro word from this platoon that's supposed to be set up and,

• 1:35:14Speaker 01

  and we're waiting and I go, sir, can I pimp them for this pro word? And he's like, give them another minute. And I was like, Roger that. And 45 seconds later, the guys passed the pro word and it just reminded me that like, those guys out in the field, you gotta listen to what they're doing. You gotta give them the benefit of the doubt. And that's what my boss was telling me, like, hey, those guys got, they're not sitting in the talk right now. They're not, they, they, they're making decisions. So just good experience from that perspective and seeing, you know, the way the, the SOC worked was good. So.

• 1:35:47Shawn Ryan?

  When did your, I mean, if this happened, which I think it would happen, I mean, when did, you know, as an enlisted guys, we always have a lot of gripes and bitches and shit like that about, you know, the leadership. And so, you know, kind of where I'm going with this is when did your mind kind of expand? And realize, you know, what the opposition is and okay, like there's a lot more to this than I ever gave a credit for as an enlisted guy.

• 1:36:13Speaker 01

  Yep. That happened.

• 1:36:16Speaker 01

  It happened on that deployment, right? And I think where, I think what was good was I was bilingual. Meaning I spoke two languages.

• 1:36:24Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean Mustangs, prior enlisted officers have fucking tremendous amount of respect in the enlisted man's eyes.

• 1:36:32Speaker 01

  So since I was bilingual and I could speak two languages. And I had to learn the officer language, but I spoke, I was fluent in E-Dog language. I mean, I was completely fluent. I was E-Dog Mafia. If you go talk to anybody that was a SEAL Team One in between 1991 and 1998. I was a made man in the SEAL Team One E5 Mafia, a hundred percent. There's no one that would ever deny that. And so I spoke fluent E5 Mafia language. And then as I started to learn the officer language, what I think I was able to do was translate what was happening with the officers to the E-Dogs, which I think a lot of times gets missed. To this day, gets missed. Because it's, it really is two different perspectives that are happening.

• 1:37:17Speaker 01

  And there's a lot of things that happen at the officer level that don't ever get told to the E-Dogs. And that does create frustration and angst amongst the troops because they don't understand what the hell is going on. And when that happens, man, they get pissed. And I got pissed when I was, you know, when I was an E-Dog and we weren't being told what was happening. We're freaking pissed, you know, I tell this one story where we were on a ship, this is my third platoon, and we got told, hey, you guys are gonna launch your Zodiacs off the ship. We go, cool. So we drag all the stuff upstairs. It takes an hour and a half. Got to bring the fuel up, which means you gotta, you gotta notify the fire party and they gotta set up all their stuff so you can bring the fuel up to the top deck.

• 1:38:01Speaker 01

  So you can launch the boats inside the ribs. And two or three hours into this, they're like, actually, you're gonna launch off of the well deck. Oh, bring everything back downstairs. Another two or three hours. Later, they say, oh, you're gonna use helicopters. Now we gotta break off, so we're getting whipped around the whole time. And this is, by the way, someone just saying, oh, why don't they use the helicopters? Okay, cool, I'll tell them. And they think it's just like this, but it's not. So I always remembered what it was like. I also always remember, you know, when I was in STT, SEAL Tactical Training, we had to walk in every position in a platoon. So sometimes you'd be point man, sometimes you'd be the PL, sometimes you'd be the radio man, sometimes you'd be a machine gunner. And I remember

• 1:38:43Speaker 01

  Luckily or unluckily for me, we did a long patrol and I was rear security. And I had no idea where we were. I had no idea where we were going. I had no idea we were gonna stop again. If we got contacted, I might as well have just like started running around like a chicken with my head cut off because I didn't know where the rally ports were. I didn't even know where the target was. And I hated that feeling. And I always said to myself, I am gonna make sure that I keep the guys informed of what is happening. That is so important. It gets dropped all the time. Because you get focused on like, whoa, hold on, how much longer to the next, this is the platoon commander talking. He's only talking to the point man. And so now, when he stops talking to the rest of the platoon, they lose track of what's happening and it's just a cluster.

• 1:39:25Speaker 01

  And so, even as an enlisted guy, I realized that you have to make a concerted effort to explain to the guys what is happening. And if you fail to do that, they'll have no idea and you won't know that they don't know. And that's, that's a disaster. So now, when you move me up into this officer position, now I'm saying, oh yeah, I bet the platoon has no idea what, why they're having the helos move to this position, or why they're being told they have to stand down from this operation, or, because they don't. They don't get told, oh, the chargé de affairs in this country just said that we can't do it and here's the risk that they don't, aren't willing to take. They just hear, hey, it's a cank bird.

• 1:40:09Speaker 01

  And they go, so we just spent four hours doing this and now it's just nothing. But they don't understand why. And so it's incumbent upon the leadership to make sure that everyone in the chain of command understands not just what we're doing, but why we're doing it and why these changes get, these changes happen. Because as you know, these changes happen all the time. They happen all the time. And so, yes, I, I think that one of the things that I had the capability of doing is I was bilingual. I talked E5 and eventually I learned how to, how to speak officer as well. And I could also bring the problems at the E5 level to my boss and explain to them in a way that they could understand that, hey, when you tell my guys...

• 1:40:55Speaker 01

  We're not allowed to explosively breach anymore. Let me tell you what that means.

• 1:41:01Speaker 01

  And then they say, oh, okay, well, I didn't understand that. Thank you. Or when I get told, hey, you need to have this number of Iraqis with you, friendly Iraqi soldiers with you on every operation.

• 1:41:15Speaker 01

  I need to explain to my boss what that means on the ground. And if you have a good relationship, which I always had a good relationship with my boss. So when I would, I would explain something to my boss, my boss will listen to me. My boss, because also I wouldn't complain about stuff. Like I wasn't going to complain. If I was going to my boss and telling them that something didn't make sense, they, they would listen to me because I would only say it if it was true. And so I just developed that good amount of trust with my chain of command and, and it worked, it would work out well. So yes, as I got

• 1:41:48Speaker 01

  into that officer role, I started to see, oh, okay, I can understand why. If the troops would have known that it was the Commodore of the ARG that now wanted to use helicopters because it's something they have to get checked off the box before they're allowed to go on deployment. If the guys understood that, they'd be like, oh yeah, well, we gotta get quals done too. And this is the quals that they gotta get. Cool. Let's make it happen. But a lot of times, you know, we, we fail as leaders to let people know. And then when I got to in the platoon at SEAL Team Two, again, now we're on a strike aircraft. We got a lot of assets. We're, we're with, you know, a carrier air group, which is a, an awesome

• 1:42:33Speaker 01

  like projection of power, unbeatable projection of power. But we're a little cog in that machine and helping the platoon understand what we're doing, why we're doing it was beneficial.

• 1:42:43Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think that the

• 1:42:47Shawn Ryan?

  maybe they are doing it, but they definitely weren't doing it when I was in them. Not to, I mean, it seems like with what you just described, prior enlist, Mustangs, prior enlisted going to officer, I mean, it's, that could alleviate a lot of communication issues within the military. Why do you think that they aren't, if they aren't?

• 1:43:11Shawn Ryan?

  Motivating people enlisted guys to become officers. Why aren't they, why aren't they giving more billets? I mean, this, this seems like if it could be a key component to a

• 1:43:22Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:22Shawn Ryan?

  250 year communication issue.

• 1:43:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. There are. You know, it's, it's with prior enlisted officers. Some of the best officers I ever worked for or worked with were prior enlisted officers. Some of the worst officers I worked with were prior enlisted officers. So I, I think it's more of an educational thing and more of an understanding. That explaining to people that, hey, man, this, this communication that goes up and down the chain of command is, it needs to happen. It's a real thing. And when you're, when your platoon is complaining about something, you should listen to what they have to say. Because they're doing it for a reason. Uh, and of course. If you're asking me if they should take more prior enlisted guys and make them into officers, absolutely. That's awesome. I wish they would do that all the time. It's a great move.

• 1:44:12Shawn Ryan?

  Anything significant on the strike? Deployment? Or the, the mark, excuse me?

• 1:44:18Speaker 01

  Uh, it was a strike deployment. It wasn't a mark, but it was, you know, it was cool. We did, we did a VBSS overseas. Again, this was like. When doing VBSS was as real as it gets. Get to lock and load your weapon and board a ship and. Get control of the ship and it's, uh. As good as you could hope for, you know, we took down a big Russian ship, which was, which was at the time was like on CNN, you know, it was a.

• 1:44:40Shawn Ryan?

  Wait, what?

• 1:44:41Speaker 01

  We took down like, there was a Russian ship that was smuggling oil. And so we, we, we boarded that ship and got control and turned it over to the authorities. So, you know, that was kind of a, a cool op to do in the nineties, you know, in the nineties, some things that. Aren't that big of a deal seemed pretty cool.

• 1:45:02Shawn Ryan?

  What year? So what year is this?

• 1:45:05Speaker 01

  That, that was a millennium deployment. So we were on, we were deployed 99 to 2000. It was like the winter of 99, 2000.

• 1:45:14Shawn Ryan?

  Where were you when September 11th, 2001 happened?

• 1:45:18Speaker 01

  So I get home from that deployment and I have to go to college because I didn't have any college. And again, this is why they changed that whole officer program that I did. I was, I was in E5 at SEAL Team 1. I went to 13 weeks of OCS, no college, and then I went to SEAL Team 2 as an officer. So it was awesome. But when I got done, they're like, yo, you, you don't have any college. You have to go to college to be an officer. And I was like, oh, no, I don't need to go. I can go when I'm I've already been doing, I'm already doing the job. And the officer detailer was like, no, no, you have to go to college. So I went back to San Diego to go to College University of San Diego.

• 1:45:57Speaker 01

  And I did that primarily because of jujitsu. I knew I was going to be, I knew I was going to be having some time during this three years of going to college. So I went back out to San Diego. So I get my own training, get with my old training partners and stuff. And then, so I got back out there in 2000 and I'm in the middle of college when September 11th happens. And when September 11th happened, my commanding officer or the commanding officer of unit two, who I was deployed with as an ops O, not the ops O, but as an ops J O. He was the detailer and I was friends with him and I called him and I said, can you please give me back to a SEAL team right now?

• 1:46:41Speaker 01

  And he said, Jocko, this war is going to last a long time.

• 1:46:48Speaker 01

  Finish college. And I said, sir, I can finish when I, I can do online, like whatever. And he goes, finish college. This war is going to last a long time. And I didn't believe him at all. But he was right. And, and I always want to make sure I make this point. He told me later that everybody called him. Everybody that wasn't at a team, everyone called him. I was just one of the other guys that called him. It wasn't like I was extra motivated. No, I was just as motivated as everybody wanted to get back to a team. And so he sent me, when I finished college, 2003.

• 1:47:23Speaker 01

  Again, like, awesome. He sent me to SEAL Team Seven. SEAL Team Seven was like the next deploying team. I got SEAL Team Seven and my old XO from SEAL Team Two was the commanding officer.

• 1:47:37Speaker 01

  And he welcomed me aboard and then a week or two later, he fired a platoon commander and put me in charge.

• 1:47:45Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 1:47:46Speaker 01

  And so, and we were slated to go to Iraq. And we left, I don't know, a few months later. Yeah. Actually, probably quite a few months later because I graduated in like June, July, showed up at the team and we went on deployment in September. So, that's, um, you know, good relationships with people, work hard and, and, you know, he had a platoon commander that wasn't doing a good job. So he put me in there.

• 1:48:18Shawn Ryan?

  This was in 2003?

• 1:48:19Speaker 01

  2003. Eternally grateful. Yep.

• 1:48:22Shawn Ryan?

  So were you on the invasion?

• 1:48:23Speaker 01

  No. So SEAL Team.

• 1:48:27Shawn Ryan?

  Three.

• 1:48:27Speaker 01

  SEAL Team Three did the invasion. SEAL Team Five had kind of established Baghdad and then I went in and relieved them.

• 1:48:37Shawn Ryan?

  How was it?

• 1:48:39Speaker 01

  It was the best thing ever. It was awesome. I mean, and there was a.

• 1:48:46Shawn Ryan?

  So you've done, you've done basically five deployments?

• 1:48:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. So this was my, yeah. So this was my fifth deployment. No, my, no, this was my sixth deployment.

• 1:49:00Shawn Ryan?

  Sixth.

• 1:49:00Speaker 01

  Yes, this was my sixth deployment. Yep.

• 1:49:04Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, dude, what's it feel? I mean, five fucking deployments of, I mean, you did some stuff, but now you're.

• 1:49:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:49:11Shawn Ryan?

  Nine 11 happens, we've invaded Iraq and you're in fucking Baghdad. I think you're in Baghdad.

• 1:49:16Speaker 01

  Yes, I'm in Baghdad and I'm in heaven. Yep. I was totally stoked. Um, and for, so there was actually like, there was, I had a sister platoon at SEAL Team Seven and they went to Baghdad and then we replaced them in like, or we kind of like, it was weird. We kind of replaced them within. Weeks like we started augmenting them and then kind of replaced them. And after a little while, like after a month or so. We were the only platoon in we were only SEAL platoon in Iraq.

• 1:49:51Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit.

• 1:49:52Speaker 01

  For a short period of time. And and so, you know, we were we were just doing, you know, what the team five guys had had established. And then my sister platoon at SEAL Team Seven had kept up the pace. And it was just, you know. Baghdad SWAT is pretty much what it was. It was get intel from various sources. Find out where a enemy was located and then go get them. And we we had a lot of targets and we got to do a ton of it. And it was.

• 1:50:23Speaker 01

  It was like what it was what we all joined the teams to do, you know? So it was awesome.

• 1:50:31Shawn Ryan?

  Do you remember your first operation where you had an engagement?

• 1:50:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, actually, the first opera, the first time I left the wire in Baghdad. My the the troop SEA was a friend of mine. Like we were E five mobsters at Team One. And he had been there for like a month. And so we show up and he goes. There was like a mortar attack or something. And he was like, hey, go take your platoon and go like. Check these roads in this place and and. We went out, you know, we went out the wire and like check these roads and drove to here, drove to there. And then we came back and.

• 1:51:16Speaker 01

  He was like, you good? And I was like, yeah, yeah. He was like, that was just kind of a shakeout. And I was like, good call, dude, you know, like it was him. Saying, hey, like, there's nothing, there's nothing gonna happen. We're gonna, we're not sending you on a wild goose chase, but, you know, go to these couple of points and check them for whatever. So it was just a good break in of, you know, getting the guys, getting the platoon, getting the vehicles loaded up. Went out, drove around outside the wire. That was kind of the first time leaving the wire with my nods on. The first time we got shot at, I was in a Humvee and I'm looking at the Humvee in front of me. And I'm like, I see like sparks.

• 1:51:58Speaker 01

  And I'm like, why, why, why is someone smoking? Like, why is someone flicking their, throwing their cigarettes out of the vehicle? And I'm like, oh, those are bullets, aren't they? And sure enough, uh, one of the guys, um, one of the guys got caught like a ricochet in the head. Totally good to go. It like entered his, went through his skin and then like kind of wrapped around his skull and, um, but he was fine. You know, we, we still took him to Charlie Med, but, and then, you know, we,

• 1:52:29Speaker 01

  it was kind of, that's kind of like the first time and we got, you know,

• 1:52:34Speaker 01

  that, that deployment was relatively chill. Um,

• 1:52:37Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, what's that feel like though? I mean, five deployments, you join to go to war when you're 18,

• 1:52:45Shawn Ryan?

  don't see any. Now you're in charge of your platoon, straight after college, after nine 11, and you're fucking leading a platoon into battle in Iraq. I mean, that's fucking, did it even hit you? Was it surreal at the time or are you just so in it? You're like, all right, this is the deal. Let's go.

• 1:53:07Speaker 01

  I knew. Like I, I knew, I think I'm very lucky because I was older, you know, I think I was what 33, 32 or something like that point. So I knew how rare this was. I thought the war was going to be over in a couple of months. Like, I was very, very grateful for everything that we got to do. And I knew that every night, every night I was, you know, like, playing the Super Bowl game every night, you know, like, that's what I felt like. I was very grateful the whole time and, and I had a great bunch of guys, great bunch of guys, like that were just hard charging and just, it was awesome. It was, it was great.

• 1:53:50Speaker 01

  And we, we did a lot of direct action missions, you know, and so we did, we kind of got close a couple of times

• 1:53:59Speaker 01

  to the idea of sniper overwatching.

• 1:54:04Speaker 01

  We did it a couple of times. But it kind of left an imprint of my mind of what capability we had. But we were primarily just a DA force and we would just roll out and hit targets. And I mean, it's. Yeah, I don't know if there's anything else I can say to make it for me to explain how happy I was. But that to me was just the most awesome thing.

• 1:54:31Shawn Ryan?

  What about the pressure? I mean, I've always thought about, you know, I mean, I always felt a lot of pressure just going out the door. You know, do the right thing, you know? But I mean, what is the pressure like? And you don't really have any other reference because you hadn't gone on any kinetic operations until this point. But I mean, what is the pressure like as an officer leading 16, 20 guys into battle? At the beginning of a war where there's not a lot of lessons learned. There's not a lot of new tactics developed yet.

• 1:55:02Speaker 01

  Yeah, the pressure I felt was just wanting to do a good job. You know, not wanting to do anything, not wanting to. I wouldn't say not make any mistakes because I was not a risk averse person, you know? Like I recognize that you roll out on an operation, things can go wrong. And I understood that and I understood that risk. So, but yeah, you know, you worried about guys getting wounded. You worried about guys getting killed. Um, a little bit of a very distant idea to me. Guys getting wounded or killed, it could happen, I thought, but it was. Man, this is early in the war. The IED threat was relatively small.

• 1:55:44Speaker 01

  We would drive very aggressively at night on nods. We got ambushed a few times, but it was like no factor RPGs going over the, you know, lucky RPGs going over the convoy. You know, machine gun fire going between vehicles like we got, we got lucky. God's a frogman. But it was still a little bit distant to me that someone could get wounded or killed. It was there, but not.

• 1:56:15Speaker 01

  We, we really dominated the battle space like coalition forces dominated the battle space. And so I didn't have that much of that kind of pressure in my, in my head.

• 1:56:28Shawn Ryan?

  What about the pressure of winning your, your men over, winning their trust, winning?

• 1:56:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:56:37Shawn Ryan?

  You mean, you want to be the fucking leader that everybody wants to follow into battle? You know, that, that stuff I would imagine has to be going through your head. Am I making the right calls? How do my men? I mean, we have talked about perception earlier and that conversation I want to bring up, you know, more towards the end. But you know, I mean, are you, are you worried about the, the guy's perception of how you're leading?

• 1:56:58Speaker 01

  These guys are my bros and these guys are my friends. And when I took over that platoon, we were the first, like the first, maybe the first or second thing we did was a nighttime OTB in San Diego pilot recovery, training operation. So I had done three shipboard deployments, man. I know how to do over the beach. And we go over the beach and one of our boats like capsizes or die or the motor dies. I forget which, I think it just the motor died. And we're, we get the pilot and we come back and now we got a down boat.

• 1:57:41Speaker 01

  And, um, the guys who, when I took over the platoon, some of the guys were kind of friends with the old officer. And so there was a little bit of that. And some of the guys didn't like the old officer. And so there was a little bit of a friction, right? And I, so this boat's down and the guys that were in a perimeter, the guy's like, dude, we gotta call admin. We gotta call the trucks down here and get this boat towed back. And I was like, we're not doing that. And they're like, well, what are we going to do? And I go, this is what we're doing. And I gave him the plan. And I

• 1:58:16Speaker 01

  I put on my fins and took the boat and I was like, hey, guys, I'm gonna, you guys are gonna paddle this boat. They're like, they're looking at me like I'm crazy, like paddling a boat through the surf like this is Bud's. And I said, we're gonna, and as soon as we get like, deep enough, we'll set up a tow line. And we did have a good tow, long tow line. And I remember I put, beater my weapon into the boat and I got in the water. And I'm keeping the bow into the wave so we don't flip over. And then we get the other boat comes in, I get those lines secured. And then they start towing us out and then the guys drag me back into the boat. But like, one of the guys in that platoon was like, after you did that, that night, like, we'll do anything for you.

• 1:58:58Speaker 01

  Because, because I kind of, they had kind of said like, oh, we gotta call admin. And I'm like, no, we're not calling that, we're gonna make this happen. But there was all kinds of stuff like that, like, step up and do the, do the right thing. And yeah, these guys are my friends. You know why these guys listen to me? Cause I listen to them. You know why these guys treated me with respect? Cause I treat you them with respect. You know why they trust me? Cause I trusted them. And, and when you, that's what you do. That's, that's how it is. And that was the attitude that I had. I wasn't really concerned about that. These guys were my guys and I trusted them, they trusted me.

• 1:59:33Shawn Ryan?

  And you didn't know any of them prior to you coming into that platoon?

• 1:59:36Speaker 01

  I knew the platoon chief. Yep, the platoon chief was another, you know, team one, E5 mafia guy. From, from back in the day. So it was great. It was great to have that instant connection. But I don't believe I knew one single other person in that platoon because I'd been out on the east coast and then I've been in college. So I don't think I knew once the sister platoon, this, my sister platoon. My old running mate, the guy that told me, hey, you're not the only one that lost Grizz. He was the LPO in my sister platoon.

• 2:00:06Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 2:00:08Speaker 01

  And I got to do some ops with him.

• 2:00:09Shawn Ryan?

  Nice.

• 2:00:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, which was as good as it gets.

• 2:00:12Shawn Ryan?

  Nice. What would, what would you say your most memorable experience of that deployment is?

• 2:00:21Speaker 01

  There was, there was a few things that happened where you, you like, uh, there was the CPA in Najaf was being overrun. And we needed, they needed QRF. Najaf is five hours away by Humvee. And they need a QRF and they called us. And I'm like, hey, there's like three other units between us and Najaf. Like why? And they, they're like, I don't know, but you guys are going. And, uh, I remember my, my, the SEA of that troop, who like I said, was the guy that was like, hey, go on this mission, which was kind of for no reason.

• 2:01:02Speaker 01

  He was a, he's a great friend of mine to this day, but I came out of like the talk and I was like, hey, guys, load up all the rockets, load up all ammunition you can fit in the trucks. This is what's happening. We're going to QRF, we're going into Jaff. CPA has been overrun. And we, 20 minutes later, we're jocked up and that guy, that guy hugged me. And I was like, hmm, this is interesting. And cause he was, he usually went with us, but he wasn't going with us. And so he like hugged me and I was like, hmm, interesting. Long story, no big deal. We got to Najaf, the, the QR, they didn't need a QRF. The, I think, I want to say Blackwater actually came in with their helo.

• 2:01:46Speaker 01

  Is that what that, I was wondering if that's what that was. Um, so we went down there, we spent the night, didn't do anything and then drove back. But, you know, I remember thinking, hmm, that's, that's interesting. I'm getting this hug from my bro. We ended up doing towards the end of the deployment, there was a, uh, there was a, one of Soters, Maktado Asotar was the leader of the Shiites in Iraq. And we coalition forces had been targeting him for months. Our whole deployment, he was being targeted, but

• 2:02:21Speaker 01

  they didn't want to hit him because they didn't know what the reaction would be. And so just before we were going home,

• 2:02:30Speaker 01

  we, we got tasked with hitting one of his top lieutenants. And it's a big operation, lot of visibility on it. And we went down and that was also, I want to say that was in Najaf, that was in Najaf. We went down, we captured this guy. And when we came back.

• 2:02:50Speaker 01

  It was kind of, once it got out, it was kind of the beginning or one of the triggering points of the true insurgency in Iraq. Like, I woke up that morning and there was like, you could look out on the, from our base and you could see like fires from the highways, vehicles were being ID'd and stuff. And it was, it was the beginning of the real formation of the insurgency, which I wasn't really quite a hundred percent sure on. But you could see something was changed. Something just changed and you could feel it. And I don't think America was ready for that. We weren't, you know, we'd already made all kinds of mistakes, you know, standing down the bath, the bath soldiers and the, the army, signing down our Iraqi army,

• 2:03:32Speaker 01

  like all, we made all kinds of mistakes. Out of arrogance as a country. Um, but I don't, really don't think that we saw like, oh damn, this is about to get really, really bad. And that was in the spring of 2004. And that is truly when things started to spiral.

• 2:03:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yep. Yep. Well, Jocko, I know it's getting ready to get heavy with Tasking and Bruiser. Um, let's just take a quick break. When we come back, we'll pick up right here.

• 2:04:01Speaker 01

  Let's do it, man.

• 2:04:05Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:05:29Shawn Ryan?

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• 2:06:14Shawn Ryan?

  won't find anywhere else. So subscribe to the Vigilance Elite newsletter right now.

• 2:06:27Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Jocko, we're back from the break. It's about to get real heavy here, but this is where you go to SEAL Team 3, take task unit bruiser as the task unit commander, correct?

• 2:06:41Speaker 01

  Not quite.

• 2:06:42Shawn Ryan?

  Not quite.

• 2:06:43Speaker 01

  Because as I'm finishing my deployment with SEAL Team 7, um, my commanding officer, again, who is my ops officer in Unit 2, my executive officer at SEAL Team 2, now he's my commanding officer. And he says, "The last thing I do as a commanding officer is I'm gonna make sure that you become the Admiral's aide."

• 2:07:16Speaker 01

  No one wants to be the Admiral's aide, of course, because, uh, you know, it's an administrative job.

• 2:07:23Speaker 01

  But there's a reason why he wanted me to go be the Admiral's aide. And it is because at that point in time, at that moment, I was gonna come straight off the battlefield. You know, this is 2003, 2004. There hadn't been that many platoons gone over there. I'm gonna go straight off the battlefield and work directly for the Admiral. And that's what they want. They want somebody that has fresh combat experience that can tell him what is happening. And I, you know, I did all kinds of excuses and tap dancing to try and get out of it, but, uh, it was, it was happening. So, and, and, you know, it's part of it is, it's very,

• 2:08:06Speaker 01

  it's outstanding professional development because you're gonna see things that you would not see without doing it. So I, that's what I get. I get home, uh, from deployment and I check in to be the Admiral's aide. And

• 2:08:28Speaker 01

  yeah, it was, uh, it was definitely a wake-up call because, you know, we always, we had a thing was if, you know, avoid wearing a uniform at all costs. If you have to wear, make it perfect, right? That was kinda like a thing at SEAL Team 1. And I was really good at avoiding wearing a uniform. Like, I didn't even like to wear a shirt at work, you know, as little as possible. And the first trip I went on with the Admiral, I think I had four uniforms with me. Like khakis for the Pentagon, camis for Fort Bragg, dress blues for a ceremony and civilian clothes.

• 2:09:14Speaker 01

  That's like one trip.

• 2:09:16Shawn Ryan?

  Damn.

• 2:09:16Speaker 01

  So I check in to be the Admiral and

• 2:09:22Speaker 01

  you know, it was definitely an eye opener of what's happening in the community and what's going on and what's happening at that, that level.

• 2:09:31Speaker 01

  And it was, yeah, a massive learning experience. And again, you know, I had the E5 mafia language down. Now I learned the officer language and now it was learning, I don't know what to call the next level up of officer language, but it's like

• 2:09:50Shawn Ryan?

  Flag officer language.

• 2:09:51Speaker 01

  Flag officer language. Because for that year I was in the Pentagon, I was, you know, and you'd be, it's weird when you're an aide. It's kind of like you don't exist, but you do. And I don't mean that in a bad way. My boss was a great guy. He was, you know, just a great guy, nice guy, cared about me a lot. But like when you're in a room with a four star general, like the aides are kind of these sub humans in the back, but you're listening to everything, you're seeing everything. And so it was a very educational experience as to what's happening at those levels. You know, you're going to meetings at the Pentagon, JSOC, like just really educational.

• 2:10:33Shawn Ryan?

  Lot of inside baseball going on.

• 2:10:36Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, you know, for, for us in the SEAL teams, we don't realize often how much visibility we have, especially back then. Look, and I guess now it's pretty obvious we have a lot of visibility. But back then, you know, you wouldn't think that a E5 in a SEAL platoon doing something dumb on liberty would get a phone call.

• 2:11:05Speaker 01

  To the Admiral, from the vice CNO, or the CNO, or the SecNav, like, these things are a big deal. And so that's what I learned. I learned the amount of scrutiny that we're under.

• 2:11:24Speaker 01

  The SEAL Team Five guys, they had a, someone in that platoon uploaded digital pictures of their deployment to a website that was supposed to be secure, that got breached. And so these pictures went out over the internet. And the pictures, so I'm there when the CNO is calling the Admiral to ask him about each of these individual pictures, what is going on in these pictures? And implied in that was like, what is wrong with your troops? Example, there's

• 2:12:04Speaker 01

  an image of a guy, an Iraqi guy, he's being held by the jaw, and he's got a pistol to his head with a flashlight in his eyes. And the CNO is like, what is going on in this picture? And the Admiral like, hits the mute button, and I'm like, sir, they don't like to have their picture taken, so you gotta face their picture to the camera, you gotta face their face into the camera, and the light is so that you can illuminate the camera, you can illuminate the picture, that's why the closest flashlight you got is pistol, that's what he's doing. Boom, Admiral tells him what's going on. Next picture, a guy with

• 2:12:48Speaker 01

  a sandbag over his head, cuffed, blood coming out of the sandbag. What's going on with this picture? Hey, sir, that guy resisted, he got subdued, he probably could have been shot, but our troops are disciplined, and instead of shooting him, they captured him, they had to subdue him, they used minimum force required, and now they've got him handled, and now they take a picture of it. So like, these little things where I realized, that's the level of scrutiny we're under. And That's why, again, when I became a troop commander, being able to translate and explain to the guys what is going on and what the visibility is and how much it matters, what

• 2:13:32Speaker 01

  you do as an E4, as an E5 in a SEAL platoon, it has a strategic impact for the nation in some cases, and that was really clear with Abu Ghraib, but also for the SEAL community. And if we are not professional, we don't get work. And that's not, I'm not saying that for the benefit of the SEAL teams, I'm saying that for the benefit of the country because SEALs are good at what we do. And if we're not getting jobs that we should be getting because of these kind of ancillary actions, it's bad for the country. It's bad

• 2:14:17Speaker 01

  for our warfighting capabilities. So I learned a lot about that when I was, when I was the Admiral's aide. And there was another, there was another couple of huge cases. There was, there was, you know, I got to hear about what was happening from a legal perspective. Like there were some guys that shot someone, this wasn't SEALs, this was Army guys, regular Army guys, conventional Army guys, shot someone in south of Baghdad somewhere, and I don't quote me on the story, but they had planted a gun on him. And they, they were going to jail, like they were under trial for murder. And I just would hear that and go, what were

• 2:15:02Speaker 01

  these guys thinking? You know what? Why would they be doing this? And the immediate answer is, well, because they're afraid they're going to get in trouble, right? Oh, they're afraid that the ROE didn't allow them to shoot this guy, and now they're trying to cover it up. The reality of this scenario is, the ROE, if someone is, uh, there's, I'm trying to think of the exact terminology, reasonable certainty that they're committing hostile intent, not a hostile act, hostile intent. So if I think you're going to do something and I'm reasonably certain that, I can shoot you, whether you have a gun or not. And yet we have guys, this, this particular case, these guys were getting in trouble because.

• 2:15:48Speaker 01

  They planted a gun. They didn't need to do that. So that was like another just learning about how much scrutiny the military. So like I initially saw like, oh, there's the the SEAL teams is under scrutiny. But then I realized it's not just the SEAL teams. There's a lot of scrutiny on everything that we do. And the Abu Ghraib scandal, that caused so many people that that fueled the insurgency so much. And I saw that it fueled the insurgency. So what a couple, you know, 18, 19, 20 year old privates were doing in a prison fueled the insurgency. And the Al Qaeda took advantage of it. They propagated those pictures. They propagated those pictures from Team Five. Like, that's what happens. And so I guess

• 2:16:31Speaker 01

  I realized how the tactical actions of our units, SEAL teams, Marines, Army soldiers, has a strategic impact. And we have to think about what we're doing.

• 2:16:47Shawn Ryan?

  That is something I never thought of. Where does the scrutiny come from?

• 2:16:56Speaker 01

  I mean, it's the law of armed conflict, right? It's like the Geneva Convention, the law of armed conflict. There are people that are in place to make sure that we are conducting war in a forthright and just manner, if there is such a thing. You know, can we go back to the quote from Apocalypse Now? Like, you know, handing out charges for murder around here is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indianapolis 500. You can take that approach, but it's not going to help you. It's not going to help you. You there's there's rules, and we have just got to follow the rules. And if the rules don't make sense, then you got to raise your hand and say, hey, these rules don't make sense.

• 2:17:36Speaker 01

  And I did that. For instance, and I brought this up earlier, breaching. So when I first got to Iraq, that first deployment, we're breaching every door, of course, right? Well, so is everybody else. Everyone's just breaching the hell out of everything. You're going to enter a building, you breach the door, because it gives you a tactical advantage, right?

• 2:17:57Speaker 01

  So guys, civilians were getting injured by breaches. And eventually, they said, hey, no more breaching, no more explosive breaching, done. So I get this word, and you know, I talked to my guys, no more explosive breaching. And you know, what's their reaction gonna be? Not good. Totally not good, right? Hey, and, and it's exactly what,

• 2:18:22Speaker 01

  it's exactly what you would think it would be. Hey, wait a second, you want us to be at more risk? You don't care about us, you don't understand what it's like down here. This is a problem, you, you don't, you don't understand the battlefield, screw you. That's basically the response. So, and I'm thinking the same thing, right? But now I'm thinking, wait a second, does my boss want to put my guys at risk? What do you think? Really? Does my boss want? No, no, actually, no, I don't believe my boss wants to do that. There's gotta be something else going on. Hey, boss, what's the deal with explosive breaching? Why are we being told we're not, why are you telling me we can't explosively breach anymore? And he's like, here's what's happening. Here's the amount of casualties from breaches. Here's the civilians injured by breaches.

• 2:19:05Speaker 01

  Here's, you know, the number of breaches that are happening every night in Baghdad or the surrounding areas. And the civilian casualties are so high that

• 2:19:17Speaker 01

  the generals are saying, don't do this anymore. And I said, okay. Now, boss, if I'm going on to a target where the intel represents a higher probability of there being some kind of resistance on the target, can I breach? And he's like, well, what do you mean? I said, well, if I get this intel that says that they're expecting them to have bodyguards or they expect there to be IEDs, can I use breach, explosive breaches to mitigate that risk? And he's like, yeah, that makes sense. And that's what we did. And that's also when we started doing callouts, which initially,

• 2:19:54Shawn Ryan?

  Guys were doing callouts?

• 2:19:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:56Shawn Ryan?

  All the way back then?

• 2:19:57Speaker 01

  Yep. We started doing that.

• 2:19:59Shawn Ryan?

  Holy shit. I did not know that.

• 2:20:00Speaker 01

  Doing callouts. And it was like, we were figuring out how to do it. Okay, what are we gonna do? Because from my perspective now, alright, so I'm not gonna explosively breach this door. So we're not gonna really have the element of surprise that we want, because when we're sitting there with a sledgehammer, or what even a lockpick is, or you know, anything's gonna make noise. We're gonna alert them that we're there. So now we've got guys in the stack or waiting outside this building. They're not behind cover. This is a problem. How can we mitigate that risk? Well, since we have to wake them up to breach the door anyways with a freaking sledgehammer, let's just get a little safe distance, set up our vehicles, and wake them up. And say, hey, you gotta come out. And that's exactly what we started doing.

• 2:20:42Speaker 01

  And then, so what we ended up with was a good variety of tactics of sometimes we do a callout, sometimes we just mechanically breach the door, and sometimes we explosively breach the door. But all those things were a result of me talking to my boss, and then talking to the guys and saying, guys, here's why we can't breach. This is bullshit. Okay, well,

• 2:21:03Speaker 01

  we can't. Oh, there's a huge, super high risk? Explain that risk to me. And they explained to me, you know what? I agree with you guys. Boss, we're gonna explosively breach tonight. Boss says, cool. My boss never told me no. Um, so those kind of things, I think, again, where we get into the, hey, do, just do what I'm telling you to do, both up and down the chain of command. I don't want my, I want my guys to resist me. I want them to say, we should be able to explosively breach. Okay, tell me why. And I should be able to look at my boss. Here's why. And by the way, if my guys explain to me, hey, we should explosively breach, and here's why, and I explain it to my boss, and my boss says, no. Okay, do I have an argument?

• 2:21:49Speaker 01

  No? Okay. Well, then how can I mitigate this? Well, I can mitigate it by not stacking my platoon up in front of the door or outside the building and doing a, doing a callout. So those kind of things, I think, get lost when it comes to communicating up and down the chain of command.

• 2:22:07Shawn Ryan?

  I got a question for you. I mean, earlier, when we were talking, I can't remember at what point we brought this up, but we were talking about leadership. I believe you, you.

• 2:22:17Shawn Ryan?

  You've just gotten through OCS. Anyways, you had said that trust your guys and that's how they trust you, right? And so

• 2:22:29Shawn Ryan?

  big proponent of that.

• 2:22:32Shawn Ryan?

  How do you just trust your guys? I mean, do they have to earn your trust? Or do you give them the trust and let them fuck that up?

• 2:22:39Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:22:40Shawn Ryan?

  Or give them the opportunity to fuck that up? I'm asking because for my own learning.

• 2:22:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:22:47Shawn Ryan?

  I want to learn from you.

• 2:22:48Speaker 01

  The way you do it is a little bit of trust at a time. So if you started working for me, I wouldn't be like, hey, Sean, we got this op tonight. Why don't you take lead on that? I'm going to sit in the talk.

• 2:22:58Speaker 01

  I've never worked with you before and I'm just going to let you go take lead on a mission? No, it's like, hey, Sean, we got this op tonight. Can you run external security for me? Or can you clear this back, you know, out house? With your fire team and you're like, cool, got it, boss. And you do it, you do it well. And then the next time, hey, you're in charge of external security and the next time, hey, you're in charge of vehicles and next time, hey, you're in charge of the breach team. So it's like, I'm going to give you a little more trust each time. And then you keep making good calls. Maybe sometimes I have to tighten you up like, hey, what were you doing going to clear this other building that wasn't part of the target? Yeah, but I saw a guy over there, but I don't care about that, but you didn't tell me. Yeah, but I didn't have time. Well, what if we have a blue on blue because this? Oh, good point.

• 2:23:38Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:23:39Speaker 01

  So, you know, you learned a little bit. I took a little bit of risk. Maybe a little bit of a little outside the zone. So that's what you do. Just a little bit of trust at a time. You build it, build it over time. But I have to trust you. And actually, what's funny is I thought where you're going with that question is if my guys are telling me like, we need to explosively breach this target. Do I have to trust them? And the answer is yeah.

• 2:24:01Shawn Ryan?

  Well, I mean, then you get a guy like me that works for you and we have to explosive breach every single fucking time. How do you trust me?

• 2:24:08Speaker 01

  Yep. And then I go, hey, hey, Sean. If we do another one of these explosively explosive breaches, we're probably not going to get approved for our next missions.

• 2:24:16Shawn Ryan?

  Hmm.

• 2:24:18Speaker 01

  And you go, what do you mean? I said, well, they've had a bunch of collateral damage. They've had a bunch of people in the, in the Baghdad General Hospital that are wounded civilians from breaching charges. And we're just going to get told no. So now what are you gonna do? I'm telling, I'm, I trust you, but do you trust me?

• 2:24:35Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 2:24:37Speaker 01

  And, okay, well, that makes sense, Jocko. Okay, can we mitigate it? How can we mitigate it?

• 2:24:43Speaker 01

  Well, we could do a call out. We could throw flash crashes through the windows. Like, there's a bunch of ways we could figure out ways to mitigate things. But if I don't talk to you and you don't talk to me and I don't explain to you what's happening, how can we expect to be aligned? It's just not gonna happen. And so that, that open mindedness and having good relationships with people is what it's all about. And by the way, this extends to like the other units that you work with. Right? The other military, army and Marine Corps units that you work with. You gotta listen to what they're saying about their AO. Cause that's gonna have an impact as well.

• 2:25:19Shawn Ryan?

  Makes sense. Makes sense.

• 2:25:23Shawn Ryan?

  And I can't believe you guys were doing callouts back then.

• 2:25:25Speaker 01

  Mm hmm.

• 2:25:25Shawn Ryan?

  How would you do it?

• 2:25:28Speaker 01

  Ah, set the vehicles in a, either usually an L type scenario, you know? So we'd be able to see the, the black side of the building, but we wouldn't set ourselves up in an envelopment. And then we'd get on the radio and say, hey, you're surrounded. You know, and our TERP would do it. Hey, you're surrounded. Come out.

• 2:25:45Shawn Ryan?

  How would that work? Would they come out?

• 2:25:47Speaker 01

  Usually, yeah.

• 2:25:48Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 2:25:49Speaker 01

  Occasionally, there would be no one there.

• 2:25:51Shawn Ryan?

  What was the ultimatum?

• 2:25:54Speaker 01

  Ah.

• 2:25:57Speaker 01

  I don't know if we ever even reached an ultimatum. I think we had a couple where there was no one home and we eventually breached, which again, which is a good escalation, right? I guess depending on how you look at it, but if they wouldn't come out. And now when we explosively breach this thing, we'd, we'd explosively breach it like big.

• 2:26:19Shawn Ryan?

  So there were some very valuable lessons in the Admiral's aide slot.

• 2:26:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And, and again, even that first deployment to Iraq, these kind of conversations, you know? These kind of things, understanding what my boss was having to deal with.

• 2:26:38Shawn Ryan?

  Do you, do you feel, I mean, it sounds like you, it sounds like you had a great relationship with him, but it.

• 2:26:48Shawn Ryan?

  What I want to ask is,

• 2:26:53Shawn Ryan?

  how is it? I've always expected my leadership to have more experience than myself. And so you're showing up

• 2:27:04Shawn Ryan?

  at a slot to be the aide for the admiral with more combat experience than the admiral has. That's that's an assumption. Maybe he was a Vietnam guy. I don't know.

• 2:27:13Speaker 01

  It's a correct assumption.

• 2:27:14Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, how how?

• 2:27:15Speaker 01

  By the way, my commanding officer, remember I said I was the only platoon in in Iraq? For like a month or two? When my skipper showed up, he was no combat experience. And you remember what I was saying earlier about like?

• 2:27:31Speaker 01

  I understand. You know, like, I don't expect my boss, who's never been okay. Like, oh, sir, let me explain to you. Why don't you come on an op and you can see what this looks like? Like that kind of attitude as opposed to which is really easy from a judgmental perspective to say,

• 2:27:50Speaker 01

  why the hell are you in charge? Or, hey, I'm trying to run operations down here. You're asking me a bunch of questions. Like, hmm, no, actually, come on down. Let's sit through our brief. Tell me what you think.

• 2:28:02Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, I guess that's what I'm. I mean, I've had both leaders too. And I think I've always paid a lot of attention to how how my leadership approaches me with with with with certain issues and are they open to? Are they open? That's really it. Or, I mean, when you have a leader that comes in with a with a little to no experience, I mean, that it's it's once again, how are they going to project that? Are they going to project that and lean on us? Or are they going to are they going to fucking hide from their inexperience and and? You know what I'm getting at and and and and present like an overinflated?

• 2:28:45Shawn Ryan?

  Overinflated bullshit confidence.

• 2:28:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. And what do you so how do you deal with that? It's like, hey, boss, that sounds like a good suggestion. Let me let me bring that to boys and see how see how we can make that work.

• 2:28:57Speaker 01

  You know, it's like, what am I supposed to say? Boss, you haven't been here as long as I have. You don't know what you're talking about? Where's that going to get me?

• 2:29:03Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:29:04Speaker 01

  So it's like, hey, boss, it sounds like a good suggestion. Let me get with the guys and let's figure out how we can implement that. Hey, boss, I was talking to the guys and I just want to go over a couple of things. There's a couple of secondary and tertiary effects are going to happen if we do what it is you were saying. It's going to cause this and it's going to cause that. I'm good. We got to mitigate this one, but I just want to let you know that's what's going to happen. I didn't know that. How do you recommend? Oh, here's what I recommend, boss. You see what I'm saying? So again, if I don't listen to him, he's not going to listen to me. If he if I don't put some trust in him, he's not going to trust me.

• 2:29:37Shawn Ryan?

  Makes sense. Makes sense.

• 2:29:41Shawn Ryan?

  So how does tasking a bruiser come about?

• 2:29:44Speaker 01

  So, um, yeah, I do that year at the Admiral's office and then the next the next billet is to be a task unit commander. And a billet opened up at SEAL Team Three. And so SEAL Team Three, here I come.

• 2:30:01Shawn Ryan?

  Could you explain what a task unit is to the audience?

• 2:30:04Speaker 01

  Task unit is the old name. Now it's called a troop, but it's the old name for two platoons combined together with a little headquarters element above it. So it's about it's about thirty six guys, but it really can be anywhere between thirty and fifty or seventy, you know, it's it's it's

• 2:30:21Speaker 01

  I think people are always surprised that the variables inside the military, like a infantry company can be eighty guys or can be two hundred and eighty guys, you know, there's a big variation. But generally speaking, a task unit is two platoons or a troop is two platoons with between sixteen and twenty guys in each platoon.

• 2:30:42Shawn Ryan?

  And so you you are tasked with with leading the task unit.

• 2:30:46Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:30:46Shawn Ryan?

  Two platoons. Man, I just had so many

• 2:30:52Shawn Ryan?

  friends slash, you know, Bud's classmates that were in that, I mean, Cowie, Mark Lee.

• 2:31:02Shawn Ryan?

  Leif Babbin, Seth Stone, I think, I don't want to mention his name, he might still be in there. Uh, Andrew Paul, but fucking ton of them, man. I think, uh, Melendez maybe was Mario Melendez with you guys? But, um,

• 2:31:17Shawn Ryan?

  yeah.

• 2:31:19Shawn Ryan?

  A lot of these guys, plus a lot more enlisted, but I don't want to say all their names because I don't know who's in and who's not anymore, but, um, but, and this is where, man, you is,

• 2:31:34Shawn Ryan?

  your guys just have all positive things to say about you. I've never heard anything negative about you from anybody that you've served with, and that is, that is fucking incredible.

• 2:31:45Speaker 01

  Yep. I've worked with some awesome guys, man, for sure.

• 2:31:48Shawn Ryan?

  And you guys seem really tight, and that is cool to see, too.

• 2:31:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a great crew of guys, man. Great crew of guys.

• 2:31:56Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, it's almost like you took your task unit with you into your business career.

• 2:31:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:32:00Shawn Ryan?

  There's a lot of those guys that, you know, that are in there, but, but, um, I don't know where to start with this, so I'll let you start.

• 2:32:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, for me, it was, uh,

• 2:32:15Speaker 01

  you know, I thought that this may be,

• 2:32:20Speaker 01

  this, this could be getting towards the end of my operational career.

• 2:32:25Speaker 01

  Uh, there were some couple other options that may play out or not, but at this point, you know, just for me, this is a, this is just an awesome opportunity, you know, an awesome opportunity, and I love the SEAL teams, and

• 2:32:41Speaker 01

  to be a troop commander, tasking commander for me was just, was awesome. I was, again, I guess I find myself, uh, struggling for words when it, for me to be able to describe.

• 2:32:55Speaker 01

  The things that I've had in my life, like being a platoon commander in Iraq when there's one platoon in Iraq, like this is just, this is like if you played football your whole life and you get to go to the Super Bowl, you know, or you you get, you know, you you are in a rock band and you get to play Madison Square Garden. That's what it was for me. This is the only thing I ever dreamed of doing. The only thing I wanted to do was be in the teams and now I'm in the teams. And now I'm getting to get to be in charge of some team guys. And yeah, it was, it was awesome from the word go, you know, showed up and I like I stole a lot of stuff from Colonel David Hackworth. And one of the, one of the key components that I stole from David Hackworth was he would rename

• 2:33:41Speaker 01

  the units that he would take over. So when he was in Korea, he took over Fox Company, he changed it to Fighter Company. When he was in Vietnam, he was in charge of the 439th, which was called the Hard Luck Battalion, and he changed it to the Hardcore Battalion. And he did that, even with each of his subordinate elements, he would change their name to something cool. And so when I took over, Task Unit Bravo was the original Alpha Bravo Charlie, and I took over for Task Unit Bravo, and the first thing I did was change the name to Bruiser. And it's totally unofficial. And I just went with it. And that's what we got. So. Where'd you come up with Bruiser? Had to begin with B. And there was an old band friend of mine had called The Bruisers.

• 2:34:26Speaker 01

  And I was like, that's too easy. So there we go. Right on. Bruiser, coming in hot. And I mean, let's face it, it's a

• 2:34:36Speaker 01

  it's a pretty good theme. It is a damn good theme. It's a pretty good theme. And again, just something that I took from Colonel David Hackworth, and and it does have. I've worked with all kinds of companies now, you know, at Echelon Front, and there's so many companies that have told me that their sales team gave themselves this name, or their concrete team gave themselves a name. Like, this happens all the time now, and people report back that, yeah, man, it has an impact. You're not just Team Alpha or Team Bravo. You're tasking a bruiser. Let's go.

• 2:35:09Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. Right on. I mean, did you know, did you know you were going to Ramadi when you took it?

• 2:35:15Speaker 01

  No. We didn't know where we were going at first.

• 2:35:19Shawn Ryan?

  Anywhere? Like, or anywhere in Iraq?

• 2:35:21Speaker 01

  So there was one task unit that was designated to go to Iraq, and that was Alpha. And Bruiser and Charlie, one of us, one of those task units was going to go to PACOM, meaning no war. And so my commanding officer and master chief, they brought us all back. They brought the headshed from each task unit back. And they said, hey, we, if you want, we can take and we can split up the task units so that whoever hasn't been to Iraq, we can all put them in one task unit and they can all go to Iraq. And then the other guys that already have been to Iraq can go to PACOM,

• 2:36:04Speaker 01

  which is the fair fairy, right? Like, when the fair fairy shows up to try and make everything fair? And, uh,

• 2:36:11Speaker 01

  the fair fairy? Yeah. I was, so I had my opinion, but I went back and asked the guys, because we were just starting our land warfare. And I said, hey, here's what they're offering. They're offering for us to split up, and guys that haven't been to Iraq can go, or we stay together and they send whoever performs the best to Iraq. And I kind of smiled. And they're all like, hell, yeah, let's go. So it was, you know, a little bit of a competition to see who goes to Iraq. And, you know, we were, we were very hardworking.

• 2:36:42Shawn Ryan?

  Sounds like it. I mean, fuck, man, so many legends. Chris Kyle, Eli Crane's in there. I mean,

• 2:36:49Speaker 01

  Eli wasn't with us.

• 2:36:50Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, he wasn't? Mike Mansour?

• 2:36:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:36:53Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, wow. Wow.

• 2:36:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, a bunch of, uh, and, and you know, a bunch of guys that, whose names people don't know, um, who are just awesome guys. And I think, so Tony Affrati, he, he's the, might be the one guy that I, we were E5 Mafia Team One, me and Tony. And I'm trying to think if I knew anyone else in there. I might have known the,

• 2:37:21Speaker 01

  I think I knew who the other platoon chief was, another good guy. I think, but we weren't ever at the same team, but I knew him. But other than that, I don't think I knew one single person in there.

• 2:37:30Shawn Ryan?

  What do you think your, what do you think your reputation was for them? What did they think they were walking into with you as their tasking commander?

• 2:37:39Speaker 01

  I mean, Tony knew me. I mean, he knew exactly who I was.

• 2:37:42Shawn Ryan?

  So he got the word out?

• 2:37:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, yeah. I mean, Tony, Tony's as hard as they come. And Tony had, has an outstanding reputation and had an outstanding reputation. And so, you know, he knew me. And so that was that. And, you know, my, my platoon in, in Baghdad had done a lot of stuff. And so we, we, you know, had a lot of experience at that time, you know? At that time, it was a lot of experience. And, you know, like I said, I was a, I was a, unless it's Team Guy for eight years. So I, at a minimum, you couldn't lie to me about what the radios could or could not do. You couldn't lie to me about like, basic Team Guy stuff.

• 2:38:25Speaker 01

  You had to tell me what was what. Had to tell me the truth about stuff.

• 2:38:31Shawn Ryan?

  When did you find out you were going to Baghdad?

• 2:38:34Speaker 01

  So,

• 2:38:35Shawn Ryan?

  or not Baghdad, excuse me, Ramadi.

• 2:38:37Speaker 01

  So I would say about halfway through the workup, they said, all right, you guys, Bruiser's going. And look, Bruiser's going to Iraq. We're like, yeah.

• 2:38:51Speaker 01

  So we were planning to go to Baghdad and work with the ICTF, which is the Iraqi Counter Terror Force. I went on Advon, actually, as a matter of fact, and I went and did some ops with those guys and saw what they were doing and started the turnover with their task unit commander. And that's what that was like, kind of a very looked like it was going to be an awesome deployment. Like those guys had a good force that they were working with. They had a good op tempo. They just had good stuff going on. So it looked like that's where we're going. And when we, when I got home from that PDSS, they wanted to align all

• 2:39:32Speaker 01

  of, because the east and west coast were both in Iraq at the same time. And yet, the the west coast had Western Iraq, except for they had an element in Baghdad. And then the east coast had Eastern Iraq, except for they had an element in Ramadi. And you can already see this doesn't make much sense, right? So as the, as the two commanding officers were getting ready to deploy, they talked about it. And we're like, wait a second, why do we have our forces kind of disjointed? West coast, you take Western Iraq, that's

• 2:40:15Speaker 01

  like Fallujah, Habenia, Ramadi. East coast, you take Baghdad, which includes the ICTF, and then the other stations that they were had. And it makes sense, you know, like there's no two ways about it. And when I heard that, I, I was on, I wasn't on leave, but my guys were on leave, pre-deployment leave. Like, we were that ready to go to Baghdad. And my skipper called me to the office and said, hey, what do you think about going to Ramadi? And I was like, I knew exactly what was going on in Ramadi. I mean, the intel reports were very clear that Ramadi was a total, total war zone, total disaster. And it was...

• 2:40:56Speaker 01

  The worst area in Iraq. And I said, yeah, Roger that. And I tried to. Inside, I was like, oh, hell, yeah. Outside, I said, well, sir, you know, there's a couple more things I need, and I bargained to get like a few. I bargained to get a few more people. I bargained to get like some. Computer stuff that we needed for our. You know.

• 2:41:18Speaker 01

  For our. Communication stuff. And he was like, yeah, I can get you that. I can get you that. I can get you these other people. And I said, I'm in. And that was it. Going to Ramadi.

• 2:41:30Shawn Ryan?

  Did you know this was going to be? This was it? As far as kinetic? Deployments?

• 2:41:36Speaker 01

  Yes. Yep, I mean. There was.

• 2:41:42Speaker 01

  Sustained. Fighting.

• 2:41:46Speaker 01

  Every day. Like. There was. Soldiers and Marines getting wounded and killed. Every day, and this isn't a big area. Ramadi is not a big city. It's small.

• 2:41:59Speaker 01

  IEDs were totally out of control.

• 2:42:02Shawn Ryan?

  So you had a pretty good idea what you were walking into?

• 2:42:04Speaker 01

  A hundred percent. Yeah, well, not a hundred percent because you know, there's still. Some things you're going to learn, but I knew. I knew what was happening. I was. Again, thankfully, I had done that deployment to Baghdad. I had, you know, experience as a as an enlisted SEAL. Working for the Admiral, like, these are all things that helped me. Understand. It's like, it's like, I was just a little bit ahead of the power curve. You know what I mean? Just just enough ahead of the power curve. You know? Did you ever get rolled back in BUDs?

• 2:42:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yes.

• 2:42:37Speaker 01

  I didn't get rolled back in BUDs, but you could tell the guys that got rolled back, they were like, okay. Like pool comp, they know what's coming. They're just a little bit ahead. And that's how I felt like I was going in Ramadi. It was just. Ahead enough to know like, okay, I know what's coming. And. And I told, you know, once the tasking was on the ground, I'm like, this is going to be.

• 2:42:57Speaker 01

  A historical deployment. How do you? Which is a big statement. That's not a small statement. I don't didn't throw that a word around, but. I knew.

• 2:43:09Speaker 01

  I knew.

• 2:43:10Shawn Ryan?

  How many guys did you have that had experience? Like actual experience?

• 2:43:16Speaker 01

  Every guy that wasn't a new guy had been to Iraq.

• 2:43:21Shawn Ryan?

  You had a lot of new guys, I think.

• 2:43:24Speaker 01

  We had a decent amount of new guys. We had a decent, it wasn't overwhelming, but we had a solid, probably normal, average number of new guys.

• 2:43:31Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 2:43:32Speaker 01

  Three, four guys per platoon, new guys, something like that. So not overwhelming and all, all great guys.

• 2:43:40Shawn Ryan?

  I mean, if you know what you're walking, how many, how, let me ask this, how many guys on your team or in your task unit? Had an idea of what they were walking into?

• 2:43:51Speaker 01

  I don't know if anybody did.

• 2:43:54Speaker 01

  I don't know if anybody did.

• 2:43:56Shawn Ryan?

  How do you prepare these guys for that?

• 2:43:59Speaker 01

  Um. I mean, the, just telling them what's happening, you know, you, you, you put the SIGACs, the significant activities, which are basically enemy attacks. Brief the SIGACs in the last 24 hours. And then you brief them the SIGACs in the last seven days, and then you brief them SIGACs in the last month. And it doesn't take a rocket scientist, because in the last 24 hours, there was three guys wounded, one guy killed, you know,

• 2:44:27Speaker 01

  38 enemy attacks. And you think, whoa, that's a rough day, but then you realize it's every day for seven days, and then you realize it's every day for seven months.

• 2:44:34Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck.

• 2:44:35Speaker 01

  Or for, for a month, and then it's, that's how it's been. And just before we showed up, like, the 38 Marines had had a terrible, about a, about a week where they had lost

• 2:44:49Speaker 01

  four or five guys in that week before we showed up. And they lost a couple more before that, but you know, that's, that's what we're getting into.

• 2:44:59Shawn Ryan?

  Who are your tasking at, uh, excuse me, who are your platoon commanders?

• 2:45:04Speaker 01

  Leif Babbin and Seth Stone. Yeah, my brothers. Yeah, two guys, um.

• 2:45:13Shawn Ryan?

  You didn't know them before.

• 2:45:14Speaker 01

  Didn't know them. Met them. And two guys from the Naval Academy. Neither one of them got selected out of the Naval Academy. They both had fought their way back from the fleet to get to the SEAL Teams. Both of them from Texas. Both of them surfed. Um, neither one of them had much experience at all. But they were, dude, they just, they wanted to be good. They wanted to be good team guys. And they wanted to, they wanted to fight. They wanted to fight for God and country. And um, they were tough. They listened. Yeah. Yeah, they were, couldn't, couldn't ask for better,

• 2:45:55Speaker 01

  for better guys to work with, you know, for the, for the two platoon commanders. And you know, it's funny because Leif will tell the story about when I met those guys. And how A, I didn't smile to them and I wasn't nice to them. And B, Seth thought I was gonna fire him. And I hated him. And it's actually true.

• 2:46:23Shawn Ryan?

  Is it really?

• 2:46:24Speaker 01

  It's actually true. Not that I hated them, but that I might fire them. I didn't know who they were. I didn't know what their attitudes were. I didn't, I didn't have high expectations that they were gonna be, you know, successful or good. And so, and, and you know what? This is another thing I stole from Hackworth. This is exactly what Hackworth would do. Hackworth's like, yeah, when I meet guys, I don't know who they are. I don't know what they're gonna do. I'm not gonna become friends with them. Because if they're not capable of doing the job, I'm gonna get rid of them. And so, yeah, there's a reason why I didn't like bro out with them

• 2:47:04Speaker 01

  when I first met them. Because I will fire them if they're not gonna do their job correctly. Or if they're more concerned about themselves than they are about the platoon. If you're more concerned about yourself than, than your platoon, you, you will not work for me. You will not work for me. And I will do everything I can to like, get you out of the SEAL Teams. So luckily, and thankfully, those guys didn't have an ounce of that in them. You know, they wanted to take care of their platoons. They wanted to fight. They wanted, that's what they wanted.

• 2:47:42Speaker 01

  And uh, they did.

• 2:47:49Speaker 01

  Who are your chiefs? Well, the, the, you know, the one chief is, is um, uh,

• 2:47:57Speaker 01

  was Seth's chief and he's, he's not in the public light. Uh, and the other chief was Tony Affrati and you know Seth's chief was a, a great combination with Seth. Hardworking guy and um, a good compliment to Seth and then Tony, Tony Affrati was Leif's chief, who again, he was E5 mob with me at SEAL Team One. And uh, like, just, just, just, just a stud dude. I mean, honestly, he's on the, on the platoon list that you form up for the apocalypse. Like Tony's, he's on the top of the list, you know, because he's not gonna back down.

• 2:48:41Speaker 01

  And he's, and he's great. You know, there's a situation when we were in um, going through workup. And I was watching Tony and Leif, they were getting ready to do some training op. Just a real simple training op, you know, target, like a, like a iteration training on a target assault, something like that. And they're sitting there in the, you know, in the sand, you know, with the freaking sticks. And Tony tells him like, hey, hey, sir, we should come in from here, set up a base over here, move through here, rally point over here. That's what we should do. And Leif's like, hey, that sounds really good. Why don't you tell the guys? And uh, Tony goes, I think it'd be good if it came from you.

• 2:49:23Speaker 01

  And I was like, damn dude, that's a professional. He's trying to elevate the platoon commander. Instead of him being like, I want to show these guys that I'm the real guy in charge. Instead of doing that, he elevated Leif. Just in that little moment, that's one little, one little moment in time where you see a guy that's like a real, true professional, whose ego is totally out of it. He wants to have a good platoon.

• 2:49:46Speaker 01

  So, yeah, just epic. And you know, since I was, you know, I'm good friends with Tony. You know, I grew up with Tony. And so we had a great relationship. Yep. Do you?

• 2:50:05Shawn Ryan?

  Before we go to Ramadi, I just want to ask if if there was, how did you address your team? When you knew that's where you were going? What was the, how did you tell them?

• 2:50:15Speaker 01

  Stand by to get some, boys.

• 2:50:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's weird. There was a, there was a time earlier. Cause I knew that Ramadi was the worst place and I had said at some point. Like we're, we're gonna end up in Ramadi. I had said that, like I kind of knew it. And so the guys were tracking. The guys knew what was what and, bro, the idea. You know, it's like I, I had a guy named Dean Ladd on my podcast, who is a marine officer in World War II. And like, he's going into Tarawa. And they're, the threat brief that they're getting for Tarawa is like totally out of control. You can see it. The Japanese are dug in. They got mortars trained on the beach. They got machine gun pillboxes, the whole nine yards.

• 2:51:03Speaker 01

  And Tarawa was tiny. And I asked him the same kind of probing questions that you're asking me of like, well, how did you, you know, how did you feel? And I was like, well, were you nervous? Were you scared about getting wounded or killed? And he goes, that always happens to the other guy. And that's exactly, you know, that's how I felt. That's how I, I, I can just about guarantee you. Every guy in tasking a bruiser, when they heard we're going to Ramadi, was like, hell yeah. Every single one of them was like, hell yeah. Nothing bad is gonna happen. We're gonna go and kick ass. That's what we do. Which is exactly what you want.

• 2:51:43Shawn Ryan?

  Fucking awesome.

• 2:51:44Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're frogmen, dude. This is what we do. This is an opportunity, you know, that the storied legacy.

• 2:51:58Speaker 01

  That the guys in Vietnam built that we got to, you know, get to walk around in Coronado with a trident. I mean, not you're not walking around, but guys know you're a SEAL. You go into a McPhee's on a Thursday night, which I'm sorry you missed out on. But back in the day, you go into a McPhee's on a Thursday night. Like, you know, you're a badass and I didn't do anything to earn that. Nothing. I got to live off the reputation of the guys that came before us. So to have an opportunity, get some of that back. Yeah, that's a, that's a, it's a huge, uh, opportunity. And it's a heavy weight.

• 2:52:35Speaker 01

  We gotta hold the line.

• 2:52:36Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:52:39Shawn Ryan?

  So you get to, you get to Iraq. You're in Ramadi.

• 2:52:45Shawn Ryan?

  Let's talk about day one.

• 2:52:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we were on the PDSS. Or no, uh, the Advon, right? So a few of us came over on the Advon and yeah, it, everything I had read about was going on there, it was going on there. And, you know,

• 2:53:06Speaker 01

  what day it was, I don't know, but we were going to a memorial service. Like, almost out of the game.

• 2:53:12Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 2:53:13Speaker 01

  And again, what was, what was,

• 2:53:18Speaker 01

  what left a mark was I could tell in the memorial service that this was a routine.

• 2:53:27Speaker 01

  Like, it wasn't an ad hoc thing. Like, I'm looking around and I go, this is not an ad hoc thing. I've been in the military for, at this point, 15 years. I know what it looks like when you throw together a ceremony at last minute and you get in there and you do something. This was not that. I'm looking at like the setup where they have the memorial crosses. Those things are not, those things are used.

• 2:53:51Speaker 01

  I'm looking at where the preacher's talking from. I'm like, oh, he's delivering remarks again. So that's this, that's the, my first memory of Ramadi was that, was going, yeah, these guys,

• 2:54:07Speaker 01

  these, you know, we're showing up here, these guys from the 228 under Colonel Gronski, they've been here for 14 months. They've taken, they've lost almost 100 guys. They've, uh, taken hundreds and hundreds of casualties. And we're, we need to do what we can to help them. That was my attitude. I was like, we need to help these guys as much as we possibly can.

• 2:54:32Shawn Ryan?

  Damn. And I'd like to, I just want to remind the audience, I mean, your task in it, the most decorated SOF unit out of the entire Iraq war. That's what we're walking into.

• 2:54:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, we had, um,

• 2:54:53Speaker 01

  for some reason, we had 13 snipers. And I say for some reason, because that wasn't normal, you know, both the platoon chiefs were snipers. We just had, we were overloaded with snipers, which was a real blessing.

• 2:55:07Speaker 01

  And that seeing, remember I talked about being in Baghdad and we did a couple of operations where I kind of caught a glimpse of what we could do with snipers, like a little, a little glimpse. And when I saw what was happening there, I thought to myself, oh, I, I, I think I have an idea of what we can do here. And

• 2:55:31Speaker 01

  the, the turnover with the guys from team two, great, great bunch of dudes.

• 2:55:39Speaker 01

  It was like, there was areas where

• 2:55:43Speaker 01

  And same thing with what the coalition forces were telling us, the 228 was like, hey, this area here, you can't go there. It's, it's not passable areas, you know, there, there are too many IEDs to go down there, period.

• 2:55:57Speaker 01

  So it was, um, we knew, I knew, I knew it was gonna be a fight. Cause it was all around us. We lived. It's another weird thing. It was like growing up, watching war movies. It was usually like, good guys are over here. Bad guys are over there. You go over to fight the bad guys. Like, okay, World War I was trench warfare. Even the trenches seemed like they were a little bit far apart. And Ramadi was like, oh, the other side of this wall right here, there's bad guys. It's like the other side of that wall, there's bad guys. And when you go out the gate, you, you go out the gate.

• 2:56:39Speaker 01

  And there it is. You're in it. You're in Ramadi. And, you know, there's, there was people killed on Ramadi. You know, from mortars and rocket strikes and stuff like that. So it was all around you.

• 2:56:49Shawn Ryan?

  How big was Ramadi? I never made it out.

• 2:56:51Speaker 01

  Like four miles across.

• 2:56:53Shawn Ryan?

  That's it?

• 2:56:53Speaker 01

  Yep. 350,000 people, roughly speaking of civilians.

• 2:56:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Camp Ramadi was a pretty big base. Cause it was a former Iraqi army, army base. It was a pretty big base and we had a little annex to that base. Right on the Euphrates River, as frogmen should be. And within, once the whole task unit showed up.

• 2:57:18Speaker 01

  Like the night the task unit showed up, there was like a coordinated attack on various bases, ours being one of them. And like every guy in our task unit, the first night that they showed up in Ramadi was on the roof of our building, just getting after it.

• 2:57:34Shawn Ryan?

  Oh shit.

• 2:57:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that was kind of a good welcome to Ramadi as well.

• 2:57:38Shawn Ryan?

  So you, okay. So you're not in the middle of some big base. I mean, it's, you go on the rooftop and you can engage.

• 2:57:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:57:47Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:57:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And we did. Yeah.

• 2:57:55Shawn Ryan?

  Day one.

• 2:57:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it's funny too, now that you mentioned it, the the Commodore at the time, who was the detailer that I asked to send me back to a SEAL Team ASAP, who was the commanding officer when I was in Europe. So this guy's a friend of mine and before we left, he it to a speech to the whole team, and I harass him about this to this day, he's like, hey, the chances are none of you are going to shoot your weapons like this is a different time and all this stuff. And I think I sent him an email or a webby thing. And I said, hey, sir, we've been here for 48 hours. Every single guy in my task unit and some of the techs have have engaged. And he was, he was like, yeah, Roger. Great guy. Great guy.

• 2:58:38Shawn Ryan?

  So what was the mission set? Was it was it very specific? Or was it always something different?

• 2:58:43Speaker 01

  It ended up being pretty specific. And that is setting up sniper overwatch positions in support of the army elements on the ground. That's kind of one. We did do direct action missions with our Iraqi counterparts. We did the overwatches with Iraqi counterparts. And we did, you know, clearance operations, patrols to contact reconnaissance missions, demo raids. We kind of got full spectrum frogman activities. Yeah.

• 2:59:18Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 2:59:19Speaker 01

  Yeah. It was the the 228, who is the brigade that was on the ground when we got there. They they had pretty much secured the outskirts of the city. And so there was just starting to initiate the idea of pushing into the city. And it seemed like, and as a matter of fact, while my guys before my guys arrived, we were getting word that one of the courses of action was a Fallujah type clearance of Ramadi. And so now I'm like, oh, it's completely on, right? It is completely on. But Maliki, who is the president.

• 3:00:05Speaker 01

  Just been elected. He said, I don't want to do that type of assault on Fallujah because it'll cause a separation between the Sunnis and the Shias and this will be, this will be a civil war. Is there another way to do it? And so this is where, when the 118D showed up, which is the first brigade, first armored division, ready first brigade, when they showed up, they had a plan that had been used in northern Iraq, a Tal Afar, to clear the city like a small section at a time. And that's the, what we ended up implementing. Do you think that was the right call? Uh, yes, yes, I do.

• 3:00:49Speaker 01

  I do, because it would have caused so much destruction in the city that it, it would have caused mass civilian casualties, displacement of people. It would have been very problematic had we done a Fallujah type clearance of Ramadi. So, and I, I think there actually would have probably been more casualties had we done it that way on the US side. Certainly on the Iraqi civilian side, it would have been, it would have been rough. So I thought it was a good plan. What was the first operation that you took your task in and on? We started doing some, like almost immediately, some small DAs and stuff like that.

• 3:01:32Speaker 01

  Like I remember the first DA that LEAF was going on, and this was, we had a, when we first got there, the first couple of weeks, we were still under command of SEAL Team One. So my skipper hadn't taken over yet. So I had taken over the, the Ramadi, Task Unit Ramadi space, but my SEAL wasn't in charge yet. And so my goal was to do as many missions as we could for the SEAL Team One CO, so that my CO would be like, Jocko knows what he's doing. And that's what we did. And I had a good relationship. I, I had known the CO from SEAL Team One, and when he came out and I met with him and I kind of presented the case and explained to him what I saw and how we're going to

• 3:02:17Speaker 01

  operate, he was just, we got along great. And so when I started running up, you know, missions that we were going to do, he was, he was approving them. And, and that was very cool and we got very aggressive out of the gate. And like, but I remember LEAF's first direct action mission. And he he may have never done a direct action mission before. And I'm the task leader commander, but this thing was pretty close to the front gate. And I'm like, he can, he can go do this thing. And so he's putting together the plan and there's like a lot of stuff to organize. And he came to me and he's like, hey, bro. He's like, I don't know if we're gonna be ready for this. And I'm like, bro, you're gonna be fine. You're totally good to go. You got this. And he was like, you know, he trusted me, man. And I trusted him.

• 3:03:02Speaker 01

  That's why I was going. But he looked at me like with that kind of like, like, okay, if you say so type thing. And he went out and did it, you know, and it's all good to go. So we ran some missions like that. And then what happened was

• 3:03:19Speaker 01

  when I met the, the Colonel, Colonel Gronski. This is before the 1180 showed up because you're asking about the first missions that we did. So I had put Tony Frady had taken a little sniper element with some Marines and him and some SEALs and a couple Iraqi soldiers out to this area where the Marines had been IED and lost Marines in early April. And so Tony went out there, they're in Overwatch for 48 hours or something like that. 24 hours, 36 hours. Nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing. I go to meet the brigade commander. And as I'm going to meet the brigade commander, I'm walking through his talk.

• 3:04:04Speaker 01

  Like this is out of a movie. I'm walking through his talk and they're announcing like through the radios that the SEALs just engaged two IED emplacers at this location where that IED had taken place. And I walk into his office and he goes, are those your guys? And I'm like, yes, sir. And he said, I need you over in Eastern Ramadi. And I said, Roger that, sir. Let me, let me get it fixed. Let me get, let me get it together. And, you know, we, we chatted and he explained to me what was going on. This area called the Malab district, run by the first of the 506. Band of Brothers, outstanding, outstanding army unit. I mean, just as awesome as it gets.

• 3:04:46Speaker 01

  They were in control of this or working to get control of this place called Malab district. And they were just getting annihilated with IEDs. I mean, it was absolutely horrible. And so went back and I put together a crew. And to go over to Eastern Ramadi and conduct a massive clearance with them.

• 3:05:10Speaker 01

  So we're over there for a few days. We're getting to know the Iraqi troops. We're planning this big, giant operation. And again, bro, when we're in the SEAL teams and we think of a big operation, we think of like a task unit, right? Maybe a task unit plus a company of Rangers or, you know, a company of maybe a platoon of infantry guys. When I say big, bro, I'm talking like

• 3:05:33Speaker 01

  thousands, not thousands, but hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of soldiers. So we're planning this operation and it's weird. So see now we're talking about what is the headshed doing like?

• 3:05:50Speaker 01

  So in Ramadi,

• 3:05:53Speaker 01

  the leadership had had figured or made a decision that they didn't want any battalion sized operations

• 3:06:03Speaker 01

  conducted in Ramadi. But this clearance was going to take that whole battalion plus to get it done. And they run it up the chain of command. Hey, we want to do this battalion sweep of this area. And it comes back, hey, no battalion sized operations. And so they said, okay, so we took and broke up this battalion sized operation into like multiple smaller operations that were company plus sized operations. It's a little bit of a shell game is what I'm getting at, but it was the mandate that had come down and the commanding officer of the battalion said, okay, that's the mandate we got to meet. Here's how we can, here's how we can maneuver around that and still accomplish the mission.

• 3:06:45Speaker 01

  So that's what we ended up doing. And this is, this is, you know, you're talking about the first major operation. So this is the first major operation that we're doing. We're planning to sweep a certain section of the city first thing in the morning. Then we're going to reset, do another section of the city, then do another section. What do you mean by sweep? Are you talking about like route reconnaissance, sniper overwatch? I'm talking the Iraqi soldiers with the US Army, but primarily the Iraqi soldiers in the lead are going to enter every building in a area. It's a clearance operation. Okay.

• 3:07:26Speaker 01

  Meet with the people, see if they have weapons, talk to them about we'll get atmospherics, and then go to the next building, and go to the next building, and go to the next building. So as they do this, they know that they're going to get attacked. So in order to interdict the attacks, and they also know that once you clear a street of IEDs in a matter of hours, they come out and we call it reseeding the IEDs, which is, it's, it happens so much that they have a term for it, it's reseeding the IEDs. So they know that if we clear a road and get rid of the IEDs, the enemy will come back in and put IEDs. So when we put together this plan, I have a group of SEALs that are going to go with

• 3:08:09Speaker 01

  the Iraqi soldiers to help them and do C2 for their clearance operation. And then I have two elements of SEALs that are going to go out, and one of them is going to overwatch one of these long access roads, and the other one's going to overwatch a shorter access road, but also the Ramadi Soccer Stadium, which is a staging area for the enemy.

• 3:08:31Speaker 01

  And then I am going to be with the company commander, who's an awesome guy, Joe Claiborne, crazy, crazy Joe Claiborne. I'm going to be with him because he's helping C2 and the Iraqi soldiers with elements of his company.

• 3:08:48Speaker 01

  There's a lot going on, man. Yeah, no kidding. So, we launch pre-dawn, and this is another thing.

• 3:08:57Speaker 01

  Pre-dawn operation, and, and we had done, Stoner had taken guys out with Clayburn, with Joe Clayburn, like a few days earlier, and he had gotten a big gunfight, and when they came back,

• 3:09:14Speaker 01

  I was standing at the gate waiting for them to came back, and I, you know, he's like, totally impressed, and I walk with him to his battalion commander, and this guy, this company commander, Joe Clayburn, who's been in Iraq for four or five months at this point, he's lost two guys, I think, he's had a bunch of guys wounded. I think at that point, like 20% of his guys have been wounded or killed. And he goes to the battalion commander, and he says, "I want SEALs with me on every operation I do from here on out." From one engagement with my guys. He was impressed, and we were, I mean, I was overwhelmingly impressed with him and his guys. They, they were outstanding, but that's how much we hit it off with these guys. And I, I've told him since that that was the best compliment I've ever got in my life,

• 3:10:00Speaker 01

  was when a, was when an army company commander goes and tells his battalion commander, "I want SEALs with us on every operation we do from here on out." After just getting in a major engagement.

• 3:10:11Speaker 01

  So now you fast forward a few days, and we're going on this mission, and as we're driving in, it's eerie, and the, what the Moog would do is they would light, uh, tires on fire. And so, you're rolling into town, it's black smoke everywhere, there's fires burning, very, very eerie as we roll in, and I have, already have my sniper elements had inserted at this point.

• 3:10:41Speaker 01

  And one of, they, they were inserting on the mine clearance vehicles. So it's a pretty sneaky little operation, you know, the mine clearance vehicle goes by, it stops to clear a mine, but then some SEALs get out of the back and go set up an overwatch position. Very cool.

• 3:10:56Speaker 01

  So.

• 3:10:58Speaker 01

  They're in position. The one by the soccer stadium is in position. The other group gets in their spot and the building that they had selected was not the way it looked like it was going to look on paper. Or the way it looked on the overhead imagery. They didn't have a good view of this long axis road that was going to be utilized for the clearance, which was bad because it was going to get cleared. And then it would be hours before the op started. And now we'd have possible IDs getting re-seated. That's a problem. Didn't want that to happen. So that element decided to move. And now there's a lot of time compression. The sun's starting to come up.

• 3:11:40Speaker 01

  And we're like, as they realize the sun's coming up, they're like, oh, we don't have good visibility of the road that we need. That's our, that's, that's their commander's intent is to watch this road. They can't see the road. They decide to move. As they move, they go into a building that is just outside the limit of advance. And I'm sorry for civilians that I'm talking in military jargon, but there's a point where the clearance operation was supposed to stop. And so they're on the other side of, it's a road. It's like, okay, the clearance operation, they will not go past this road. So now, as things start to develop, I've got my guys, my sniper element over by the soccer stadium, they're starting to engage enemy.

• 3:12:19Speaker 01

  The SEALs that are pushing through, they're starting to experience resistance and they're starting to engage with my little element, starting to engage. So there's a lot of enemy fighters out there. And at some point, one of the Iraqi elements, which I don't know why they did this. Or I did not know, no one knew that they were going to do this. They had decided that they were going to set their own cordon around the area that was being cleared.

• 3:12:55Speaker 01

  So by themselves, they ran from where the clearance was taking place, all the way to the limit of advanced road. And they went across it to enter the building and set up an overwatch position for themselves.

• 3:13:14Speaker 01

  That's where my guys were. So, one of my guys, and again, there's so many little details that go into this, but we had seen, they give us intel, pictures, and intel pictures have body armor and helmets and AK-47s and chocolate chip camis that the enemy has. So, we know that the enemy can be wearing body armor, chocolate chip camis, helmets, and we know they carry AK-47s. So, one of my guys is in that Overwatch, and they're looking out the bottom floor, and they see a guy with an AK-47. Again, it's like not quite NOD's time, it's the worst time of day, dude. And the guy sees a guy with an AK-47 maneuvering

• 3:13:57Speaker 01

  through the courtyard, which they had zip tied the courtyard shut. So, this guy had actively entered the courtyard and was now maneuvering, and my guy shot him.

• 3:14:10Speaker 01

  Obviously, looking back, this was a, this was one of those Iraqi soldiers that had run up there. So now, him and his Iraqi soldiers, and there was a small marine element that had gone with us, an Anglico element, had gone with these guys, because the job of the Anglico is to keep track of the frontline trace of where friendly forces are. So, they see these Iraqi soldiers run off, and they followed them because they're freaking awesome Marines, and they're doing their job. So now, they get up to where this, where this guy is, where the small element is, and they're like, what's going on? They're like, hey, you know, broken English, the whole nine yards. One of our guys went in that compound, he got shot. And so then, what do they do? They all start shooting.

• 3:14:53Speaker 01

  So, what we end up with, now we're entering the blue on blue. This is a blue on blue happening, and as my guys in the Overwatch position are now returning fire at the Iraqis that are dumping down rounds, trying to get their guy out of the courtyard. The Iraqis call for the QRF. So, now a QRF launches to go down, and it gets to that corner.

• 3:15:25Speaker 01

  50 caliber machine gun puts it on the on the overwatch my overwatch position and again this overwatch positions Iraqi soldiers and seals and starts engaging with 50 cal into this overwatch position as this is happening now my guys call the heavy QRF which is tanks and as this happens I look at the company commander Joe Claiborne I'm like hey those are my guys calling QRF let's go like follow these tanks down there Roger that so we kind of break contact over here and we pull out onto that main road Farouk way is what it

• 3:16:06Speaker 01

  was called and as we're driving down this road I'm looking at I see the tank and I see red smoke which is what we use for emergencies and I see the tank and I'm I just as soon as I looked around I didn't know exactly what was going on but I knew something my gut instinct was telling me there's something something is wrong so I get out of the Humvee and I'm with my SEAs great dude and I I look and I see the gunny sergeant from Anglico and I'm like what's happening and he goes there's moose in that building right there he goes

• 3:16:49Speaker 01

  we're he's like we're gonna call for fire like we gotta take him out I'm like okay stand by because I didn't feel comfortable and looked at my like SEA gave him like the head nod and he like got on my gave me the squeeze and I started walking up and as I'm walking up to this compound I see a white on the ground and on the door I see a white zip tie and I'm like my guys are in here and I kicked the door open and when I kicked the door open I saw a team chief Tony Fraddy standing there and he's like stoked to see me because they called the QRF he's thinking I'm the QRF and I go what happened and he

• 3:17:34Speaker 01

  said hey guy was coming guy was coming through the courtyard we engaged him and then they brought it and I looked at him I said it was a blue on blue and he looked at me like totally confused

• 3:17:51Speaker 01

  And he said, can we get the guys out of here? I said, yeah, and we had a 113 was down there as a Kazakh already. So got the SEALs and the Iraqi soldiers that were in there. Put them in the 113 to get them out of there. And Tony stayed with me because Tony's like, there's a reason why I said Tony's like top of the list because Tony just got 150 rounds shot at him through a 50 cal. By the way, one of my other guys, Matt Hasby, he got fragged in the face. I, I don't, he was so, had so accepted his death. It was wild, but Tony through all that was just like, hey, I'm staying with you, boss. I'm like, check, no factor. Those guys go back and I went up then to the company commander.

• 3:18:34Speaker 01

  And, uh, same thing. I looked at him and said, hey, that was blue and blue. And he's same, same look like what? And I said, it was a blue and blue. And he radioed it in. So, and by, as soon as I saw that white zip tie, I, I had figured out what had happened. You know, I was like, oh, and I saw the building from the map where my guys were supposed to be, where they were originally planning to be. I knew that I was at the limit advance. Like I knew what had happened and then talking to that Angloco guy was like, yeah, the, the Iraqis pushed down here. And I was like, oh. So we finished the clearance, you know, because that's what you do. Like there's still a mission going on.

• 3:19:12Speaker 01

  We finished the clearance and as we finished the clearance, we then we're, we're now like, some elements stay out there, but the bulk of the clearance force is now going back to base. I go back to base and what myself and the company commander go to the same battalion commander that he had just told he wanted SEALs with us on all of his operations. And this battalion commander is one of the best guys.

• 3:19:43Speaker 01

  But seriously, one of the best leaders I've ever met. And he looked at me and he looked at, he looked at Joe and he's like, what happened out there? And there was a giant battle map, like literally wallpaper. And I just walked through with him. I was like, hey, sir, I had an element here, I had an element here. Uh, my, my element moved to here, this Iraqi element pushed down. He goes, they, they went past the limited advance. My guys didn't know who they were, engaged them. Uh, they called the QRF. My guys got engaged by the QRF. My guys called the heavy QRF. I came down and made the connection and he was like. And this guy was, you know, he'd been in Ramadi for six months as a battalion commander

• 3:20:28Speaker 01

  or five months or whatever it was at that time. I guess they got there in December, yes, it would have been like four or five months. He was just awesome. And he was like, okay. He's like, we learned from that. Don't let it happen again. We got another mission to do. And I was like, Roger that, sir. And so we went, rejock, went out again, did a whole nother operation. Got done with that clearance sector. And again, now everything's, you know, we, we didn't have any more of these things happen. And then we came back, did it again, boom, rolled out. So we end up doing clearances the whole day, engaging all kinds of enemy fighters, the whole nine yards. And then I get back, once the last mission is done, because these were daytime operations,

• 3:21:13Speaker 01

  you know, other than us inserting at night, once the sun was setting, the Iraqi soldiers can't clear it at night. So it's a daytime operation. That's why. Then I get back and I opened up my, uh, my, uh, field computer. And needless to say, I had some emails and some, some texts, you know, the webby texts to explain that, hey, stand down. Uh, investigation is commencing as, as to what happened. I'm like, yeah, Roger that. So.

• 3:21:49Speaker 01

  We consolidate and we go back over to uh, Western Ramadi, Camp Ramadi, Camp Mark, what we end up calling Camp Mark Lee. And now I'm getting ready to debrief and my, my skipper sends me an email like, hey, we'll be out there tomorrow, be ready to debrief. And now I'm trying, so now one Iraqi soldier's dead, multiple Iraqi soldiers wounded and one of my guys wounded. Blue on blue, dude, it's a freaking nightmare. So it's a nightmare. So I spend the next however many hours trying to figure out who is to blame for this.

• 3:22:32Speaker 01

  I'm, my assumption is someone's getting fired, right? Because you can't have a blue on blue and no one gets fired. My assumption is someone's getting fired. So it's kind of the question is who's getting fired?

• 3:22:45Speaker 01

  So I go down the list of like the element leader that was in charge of the Iraqi soldiers.

• 3:22:52Speaker 01

  Guess what he didn't do? He didn't keep control of those soldiers and let them go down and leave the limit of events. The radio man that was in charge of that element that moved positions didn't tell me or anyone else where he's going. He just did it.

• 3:23:07Speaker 01

  Shooter shot a guy without doing a good PID. Like I went down the list and was figuring out who was to blame. And there was something in my gut that felt so disgusted by my thoughts.

• 3:23:27Speaker 01

  And it, I was probably, you know, a half an hour away from when the CEO arrived. And I couldn't figure out why I felt so disgusted in this debrief.

• 3:23:41Speaker 01

  And it occurred to me like a giant slap upside my head that the reason I felt disgusted is because I was trying to blame people for things that were my fault. Because this operation, like every operation, when you are the senior leader on the battlefield, you're in charge of everything. And every one of those mistakes that happened are because of me. They're because of me because I failed as a leader to convey how important it was to pass your location. I failed to convey as a leader how important the limit of advance was.

• 3:24:23Speaker 01

  I failed to convey how important it was to keep control of those Iraqi soldiers. Those things are my fault that that's happened. Not any one of those guys.

• 3:24:35Speaker 01

  And so when the commanding officer showed up and the command master chief and the investigating officer and they're sitting there in the room

• 3:24:44Speaker 01

  with my wounded guy who's got his head bandaged up. It's Matt Hasbury, you know Matt, right? Matt was my swim buddy in second base. So I'm looking at Matt in the back. I mean, it's only a miracle that he's alive, right? He had 50 cal punching through the roof. He's laying there. He drew out his pistol so he could like fend for himself as he got overrun. Fuck.

• 3:25:07Speaker 01

  So

• 3:25:09Speaker 01

  and I will say that moment when I realized why I felt disgusted, I felt so relieved like, oh, you're an idiot.

• 3:25:21Speaker 01

  This is you. And I felt, okay, this is you. This is what you did. You're in charge, you're responsible, and this is what the leader does. And so I went in the room and, you know, I asked that question. Whose fault was this?

• 3:25:36Speaker 01

  And

• 3:25:38Speaker 01

  there was a pretty good moment of silence. And

• 3:25:43Speaker 01

  then some, you know, someone chimed in, well, hey, it was my fault. I did this. And I was like, no, it wasn't your fault. And then the raiding said, no, it was my fault. I said, no, it wasn't your fault. Your whole team was in there. Oh, yeah. Yeah, everyone in tasking a bruiser was in there and the command master chief and the skipper and the investigating officer.

• 3:26:02Speaker 01

  And I went around the room and asked, you know, whose fault is this? And everybody, you know, whether it was they wanted to blame the Iraqis, whether they want to take ownership themselves. Everybody was chiming in on whose fault it was. And then I said, no, it wasn't your fault. It wasn't your fault. It wasn't your fault. There's only one person to blame and that person's me. And that is the truth. That is the truth. When you are in charge of a team and something goes wrong, it is your fault.

• 3:26:28Speaker 01

  And then I said, and here's some things that we're going to do to make sure that this doesn't happen again. And I started talking about time and space deconfliction. I started talking about how we were going to overly signal. We went through some protocols. But

• 3:26:43Speaker 01

  that was it. And, you know, my boss, who I already had a great relationship with and the Master Chief, who's a great, you know, legendary Master Chief. He, you know, those guys.

• 3:26:58Speaker 01

  My, my relationship and trust with them went up in both directions. Because they understood what, they understood what had happened. They understood that I understood.

• 3:27:14Speaker 01

  And I think, you know, if they would have, they, they would, they would have been in their rights to say, hey, Jocko, you're done. Or they could have fired anyone in that long chain of command. I would have,

• 3:27:28Speaker 01

  I would have protested with my own job if they would have tried to fire someone else besides me. But, you know, I had a good relationship with, with them. They understood how complicated it was. They saw all these little things. There's, there's a, a million other little elements I can tell you about, like the fact that Matt Hasby, who was getting shot at with a 50 caliber machine gun, which you'd think, hey dude, you're getting shot at with a 50 cal. That's, that's an American weapon. Like, that's not common. Well,

• 3:28:00Speaker 01

  12 hours prior to this, he was in a sniper tower. And he got engaged with a Dishka 12.7 machine gun by the enemy. And he was, he told me he was literally up there thinking, I can't believe these guys with the Dishka found me again, because otherwise, if you think you're getting shot at with a 50 cal, you call cease fire, you throw a red smoke, you do something to stop it. He had no idea. And so that's, you know, to um to the credit of my command master chief and my commanding officer, they listened to me. I listened to them and we carried on. And that was a very rough way to begin the deployment.

• 3:28:42Shawn Ryan?

  Do you have any idea how much credibility was boosted within you with your team that day?

• 3:28:51Speaker 01

  I don't know, um, but I can tell you that you and I have both sat in rooms where some officer blamed someone else other than themselves. And you and I both know that that is disgusting. And I, that's what disgusted me, the fact that I was even having those thoughts. You know, part of it was me trying to truly figure out what happened, but part of it was like, oh yeah, this is you trying to look for someone to blame. There's no one to blame. You're in charge.

• 3:29:21Speaker 01

  So, you know, I, the guys in the troop, the guys in the task unit, like

• 3:29:28Speaker 01

  these guys, I'm not a hard person to figure out. I'm not maneuvering in some way. I'm not, I'm, I am who I am. And I'm, those guys knew that. And so I think I would have lost a lot of respect. I think I did what they probably expected I was going to do. You know, maybe some of them were pleasantly surprised, but I think most of them knew me. They didn't, you know, I think I would have been a

• 3:29:56Speaker 01

  It would have been, we would have been very out of character if I'd have gone in there and blamed someone else. That's not, that's not how, that's not how it works. You know, again, this goes back to that, uh, platoon commander I had. You know, that guy, he was responsible for everything. When we screwed something up, even when we screwed something up, even when, one time, one of my friends got in trouble, like on Liberty, and he wasn't even there. He wasn't even there. And he's like, yeah, you know, I should have seen this coming. I was like, check. So, uh, when things go wrong, you better take ownership of it. And they certainly went wrong in that scenario. And,

• 3:30:39Speaker 01

  you know, there's another, um, the Commodore of Group Two at the time, who was a guy that was a legendary, legendary leader in the SEAL Teams. And he had been a Marine in Vietnam, and he had come in at the tail end of Way City. And I don't, I can't remember if I talked to him or if he emailed me. But he said something along the lines of, hey, Jocko, I don't know if you know about me. I'm, yes, I know about you, sir. I was in the tail end of Way City in Vietnam. I saw, he, you know, he was one of those guys that made it very clear that he was not in the Battle of Way City, but he showed up there afterwards, or he's at the tail end of it. And he said, um,

• 3:31:25Speaker 01

  he rattled off the percentage, like a third of the casualties in Way City were, were fratricide. That's just one battle. It's like this complicated stuff. And it was the first, he was, he let me know, like, okay, this stuff, this is war. And by the way, the Army, like that battalion commander, Blue on Blue was a part of Ramadi. You know, we think of in the SEAL Teams, we think of Blue on Blue. It's like, you're getting kicked out of the SEAL Teams. Like, if you and I are running around with Sim and I shoot you, there's a decent chance I'm getting, get kicked out of the SEAL Teams. Like, that's how much of a mortal sin it is.

• 3:32:06Speaker 01

  And the army and the Marine Corps, they're like, it's just like, we have to mitigate it as much as we can, but if you can't, it can happen. This is part of it. It's part of it. And it's a horrible part of it. And look, we, we had other blue on blues that potentially could happen. We had shots fired, but we never had it escalate like that one did. And that's because we learned a lot of lessons from that one. And we prevented all kinds that never escalated at all, that never happened. But, you know, it's one of those, it's funny, we, in extreme ownership, Leif and I were writing our kind of chapters independently. And it ends up, there's three chapters in there that are about blue on blue.

• 3:32:51Speaker 01

  One of them was Chris Kyle with a PID on a guy with a scoped weapon. And he's telling Leif, like, hey, I got a guy with a scoped weapon in this building. Is there any friendlies in that building? And Leif's calling the company commander, hey, do you got any friendlies in this building? And the guy's like, no, he's, we got a guy with a scoped weapon. He's like, kill him. Because there's snipers that are killing Americans. And Chris, like, didn't quite feel comfortable. And Leif was like, hey, same, we're cleared. And goes back and forth. And finally Leif's like, hey, we don't feel comfortable taking the shot. And the guy's kind of pissed. And this is a great company commander. Guy's kind of pissed. And he's like, okay, well, we'll go clear it. And Leif's like, Roger, we got, you know, we'll, we'll tell you what we see.

• 3:33:36Speaker 01

  And a few minutes later, the army goes to assault that building, but they come out of the building that they were going to assault. There was a, they didn't know, we miscounted the buildings or they miscounted the building. I forget what it was. But that right there, man, if Chris, Chris could have shot one of the friendlies, but you, we had to be so careful about these engagements. Damn. And then there was another one that I wrote about where we had a element, sniper element on a rooftop and there's a Bradley fighting vehicle on a intersection. And he calls back like, hey, we got, we see bad, bad guys on the building, a building 48J or whatever the building was. And the company commander's like, you got any guys on that building? I'm like, mm.

• 3:34:18Speaker 01

  Hold on. I'm like, because it's, you know, multiple guys with scope weapons on top of a building. I'm like, do me a favor. Have the Bradley count the number of buildings he sees till he gets to that target. And he's like, what? And I go, please. He's like, okay. Says, all right, hey, whatever, dash one, count the number of buildings you see before you get to that target building. Guys like, what? He said, count the number of buildings, counts the number of buildings, come back, he said, uh, hey, we misid the number of the, the building. It's actually building 32. Like, yeah, we got friendlies on that building. Do not engage. So that's what we were dealing with a lot. And there was cases in Ramadi of people engaging

• 3:35:01Speaker 01

  Humvees. Like, there's probably no vehicle in the world with a more distinct silhouette than a Humvee. And we had guys in, we, there was soldiers and Marines that engaged Humvees because of the confusion and chaos of the battlefield. So that's how we started off with a massive lesson learned.

• 3:35:24Shawn Ryan?

  With a lesson learned like that, and you took ownership of that. I mean, and, and this is, this is advice for future, future leaders in war. I mean, how do you, how do you brush that off and get your head back in the game?

• 3:35:42Speaker 01

  Well, what are we going to do to prevent it? You know, like, we got lessons learned. And, you know, I think when you're shooting headplates, and you miss one, if you start thinking about the one that you just missed, you're going to miss two more. And I think that's a really important thing to be able to do with other factors in your life of, hey, look, this happened. It went bad. We need to fix it. We need to fix it, and we need to move on. If you live in the past on stuff, it without, you know, you learn from it, but you can't, it's like I say about when, when you, with, with losing people. If you lose someone, like your friend, your, your parents, your brother, your sister, whoever, someone close to you dies.

• 3:36:27Speaker 01

  You gotta remember them, but you can't dwell on the past. You can't just, you can't just be there forever because then you're not moving forward. So I think it's the similar activity here. From my standpoint is like, okay, like this is what we did wrong. This is the lessons that we learned. And here's how we, we move forward.

• 3:36:44Shawn Ryan?

  Did you feel any type of reluctance to, to address your men as a, is, is their leader again? After that? Immediately after that?

• 3:36:57Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:37:01Speaker 01

  No. I, man. I was really close with these guys, you know, up and down the chain of command. Um, these guys had, we did a workup together. They've seen me in every different type of scenario. They're not like, these are, these are my brothers. Um, what a great relationships, you know? So I wasn't. I, if I would have blamed one of these guys, I would have been ashamed to show my face.

• 3:37:30Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:37:31Speaker 01

  You know what I mean?

• 3:37:32Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 3:37:32Speaker 01

  But they were more like,

• 3:37:36Speaker 01

  hey, this wasn't your fault. Like, yes, it was like they've tried to re-explain to me. You know?

• 3:37:41Shawn Ryan?

  Well, the other thing is they're all thinking, he's got our fucking back. And that's really,

• 3:37:51Shawn Ryan?

  definitely one of the most important attributes of a good leader. Is knowing that your guys, your boss has your fucking back.

• 3:37:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yes, it is absolutely. And, and, you gotta know that they have your back. And this is, you know, this is one of those things where it turns into, or you have to watch out. Because if you work for me and your impression of me that I give you is that, no matter what you do, I'll cover for you? Now we get into a bad zone. Because you have to know that if you do something that's immoral, illegal or unethical.

• 3:38:38Speaker 01

  I'm not gonna have your back. Now, if you explain to me what happened and what went wrong and you had a what we what we learned from the army, which is a good shot, bad result, a hundred percent, a hundred percent. But if you are doing things that are illegal, immoral, unethical, you need to know that I will not have your back. And even something, even you know, even this isn't that extreme, but like I would tell guys, hey, you get a DUI. It doesn't matter what I do to your back because you're it's gonna be in the system and you're gonna get in trouble and there's nothing I can do about it. Like, there's nothing I can do. Like, I can go and be a character witness and tell you tell the Commodore how great you are,

• 3:39:21Speaker 01

  but the Commodore is gonna go, oh, yeah, you had a DUI, you're getting you're getting busted down and you were pulling you from your platoon. And I have it doesn't matter how much I have your back. This that's what's happening. So, yes, you're right. But as a leader, you've got to put those parameters up to make sure that guys understand what the left and right lateral limits are. And they can be big. But they're not infinite. And that's why I need to know that you have my back because if you're out doing something that you shouldn't be doing, what are you doing to me, man? Because I am gonna I'm gonna get take the fall as well. It's not like I'm just gonna be like, oh, no, he did it because I I am responsible. You do something stupid or you do something illegal and you get rolled up, I'm going down

• 3:40:04Speaker 01

  too, as I should, because I let it happen. So, yes, hundred percent. And these guys knew that. These guys knew that. That is how we have to operate. And luckily for me, like I said, I did that tour as the Admiral's aide. I understood what what those left and right lateral limits were. I understood that very well. And that was a real blessing because there were no there wasn't really any ambiguity about that. If you do some something that's outside the box, I will not have your back.

• 3:40:45Speaker 01

  Anything you do inside the box, and like I said, it's a big box, a big box, I got you. But you better be to the wrong building. Yep, they're gonna happen. These these there are things that are gonna happen.

• 3:40:59Speaker 01

  And I will have your back. As long as your intent was good, as long as you were doing the right thing for the right reasons. All day. And yeah, my guys knew that for sure. And I knew that with them.

• 3:41:17Shawn Ryan?

  How was it working with Chris Kyle?

• 3:41:19Speaker 01

  Great. Yeah. It's great. He was a very dedicated sniper. He was a wise ass. He was funny as hell. He was a shit talker. Um, in like a good team guy way. And he was just a great guy to have in a platoon. Yeah, man. Like you'd see him and Tony looking at imagery for hours, trying to figure out what building would be best. Looking at the angles, looking at the distances, looking at the long axis, like that's what they did. And, you know, he, he was good, man. He was good.

• 3:42:03Speaker 01

  He would spend, you know, a long time on his gun. In sniper Overwatch positions. And he would set himself up for some good positions. You know what I mean? Like, he would set himself up on some long axis positions where he can see four or five blocks. And meanwhile, like a new guy sniper might see half of an alley. So, but he earned that position, you know? He earned it with his patience and his, and his discrepancy. Like he was, he was very, very good. He was as good as it gets.

• 3:42:37Shawn Ryan?

  Was he good at passing on wisdom?

• 3:42:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, you know, I, I'd say I was a little bit out of the line of fire of him passing on wisdom because I wasn't a sniper. Um, but, you know, he, he'd pass on some hassle into these new guys, I can tell you that. The, the funny thing is, you know, they, um, he liked to do, this is weird, but he liked to do like pranks. Like a, like a grade school kid, like he would prank people, do funny stuff like that's, that's what he was like. So he wasn't the, you know, in the movie, they make him out to be like super serious all the time and all this stuff. And he was actually just a funny, great guy to be around that brought a lot of, uh,

• 3:43:20Speaker 01

  Brought a lot of entertainment with him, you know, a lot of entertainment.

• 3:43:25Shawn Ryan?

  Right on.

• 3:43:26Speaker 01

  And we had, you know, and we had a good crew of guys that was, you know,

• 3:43:31Speaker 01

  that's a SEAL platoon, man. It's a SEAL platoon. I was, I guess they're SEAL platoons where they're not

• 3:43:40Speaker 01

  like having fun and, and ribbing each other and, you know, being brothers.

• 3:43:48Speaker 01

  But I was never in a platoon like that. I was always in a platoon that was freaking awesome to hang around. And, you know,

• 3:43:58Speaker 01

  when I was a young SEAL, what did I do on the weekends? Went to the team.

• 3:44:04Speaker 01

  You went to the team on the weekends. Went to team on Saturday and worked on your gear. Went to the team on Sunday and, and worked out with your buddies. That's all we did. That's what we did. Cause there wasn't anything else. And once I had a family, I had to like, at least take a little bit of time. But even then, I was, my family was second to my platoon, to my task unit, to the teams. I, I would love to tell you that I'm embarrassed to admit that or that that's not the right thing. But when you're in the SEAL teams, I think that is the thing.

• 3:44:33Shawn Ryan?

  Fucking way it is, man.

• 3:44:35Speaker 01

  That's the way it is. And, and, you know, God bless my wife who was just like a saint. But she handled the family stuff and I handled the war stuff.

• 3:44:47Shawn Ryan?

  Were you, were you married at this time?

• 3:44:49Speaker 01

  Yep. So going to Ramadi, I had

• 3:44:53Speaker 01

  three kids at that time.

• 3:44:54Shawn Ryan?

  You had three kids?

• 3:44:58Shawn Ryan?

  How were you handling, I mean, how was, how long, how many deployments had you done married with kids? And or with kids?

• 3:45:06Speaker 01

  Well, no, one, uh, three, three. So my daughter was born, my oldest daughter was born the day before I went on the strike deployment in, at team two. She was born and I left, never changed a diaper. And then while I was in college, I had two more kids. Cause I was home. And then, um,

• 3:45:28Speaker 01

  and yeah, I mean,

• 3:45:32Speaker 01

  I was, I was in the SEAL teams, man. Like, we go on deployment, we go to war. And you want, you want to be with your kids, but you're not going to be with your kids in the SEAL teams. It's not a good, it's not a good family environment. Now, if you have a strong family, you know, uh, men have been going, you know, on some form of deployment since the beginning of time.

• 3:45:58Shawn Ryan?

  You said this at breakfast, and I fucking love this.

• 3:46:00Speaker 01

  I mean, because I hear sometimes people like, oh, you know, the father's got to be around, but I wasn't around.

• 3:46:08Speaker 01

  You know, and a lot of dads weren't around, and they raised some awesome kids. And so, yeah, guys have been going on the hunt, on the sea voyage, on the crusade, whatever you're going on. Men have been going on that stuff for a long time. And the, the, the kids understand that. And the, the moms understand it, and they raise warriors.

• 3:46:35Shawn Ryan?

  How long have you been married?

• 3:46:40Speaker 01

  Uh, I think 28 years.

• 3:46:42Shawn Ryan?

  What is the secret to a successful marriage?

• 3:46:46Speaker 01

  Uh, there's a couple, but number one is marry like a pretty awesome woman.

• 3:46:54Speaker 01

  And then, you know, just apply the principles of leadership to your, to your marriage. You know, it's the same principles that you want your wife to listen to you, you better listen to her. You want your wife to trust you, you better trust her. You want your wife to respect you, you better treat her with respect.

• 3:47:11Speaker 01

  You want your wife to care about you, you better care about her. You do, if something goes wrong, you better take ownership.

• 3:47:19Speaker 01

  So that's worked out great for me, and my wife's a saint.

• 3:47:24Speaker 01

  My wife's a saint.

• 3:47:26Shawn Ryan?

  I'm sure she is.

• 3:47:30Shawn Ryan?

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• 3:48:51Speaker 01

  You know, when you were asking me about

• 3:48:56Speaker 01

  the pressure on my first deployment to Iraq, and I told you that I didn't really feel

• 3:49:04Speaker 01

  this, wasn't the idea of someone getting wounded or killed was kind of

• 3:49:12Speaker 01

  a little bit of a distant thing in the back of my mind.

• 3:49:17Speaker 01

  And in Ramadi,

• 3:49:20Speaker 01

  it was front of mind.

• 3:49:26Speaker 01

  And

• 3:49:30Speaker 01

  when you see that many casualties happening,

• 3:49:35Speaker 01

  like on a daily basis,

• 3:49:39Speaker 01

  there is, the odds are going to catch you.

• 3:49:46Speaker 01

  And of course, do you hope, am I fatalistic? Because that was my thought process, maybe. But it was also just numbers, man. It was just the numbers. You just look at the numbers and every day, every time you leave the wire, there is, there is a chance.

• 3:50:09Speaker 01

  And so

• 3:50:11Speaker 01

  it's a daily basis. And listen,

• 3:50:16Speaker 01

  the Army and the Marine Corps are just making the most incredible sacrifices.

• 3:50:26Speaker 01

  You see it. You go to their memorials, you hear it on the radio. That's one thing that was, you know, you'd hear it on the radios.

• 3:50:34Speaker 01

  You'd hear, hey, there's one K heading back to Camp Ramadi, heading to, or three wounded heading to Charlie Med. Like you would hear these things. It's just constant.

• 3:50:42Shawn Ryan?

  This is daily.

• 3:50:43Speaker 01

  Daily. So

• 3:50:50Speaker 01

  and, you know, I try and give as much

• 3:50:55Speaker 01

  admiration to the Army and the Marine Corps, who

• 3:51:02Speaker 01

  fought so hard in such terrible conditions.

• 3:51:09Speaker 01

  And that's what they were facing every day. And that's what we were facing. And

• 3:51:19Speaker 01

  We had the blue on blue happen.

• 3:51:24Speaker 01

  Almost pretty quickly thereafter.

• 3:51:28Speaker 01

  Cowie got wounded, bad. And, you know, Cowie's just a stud.

• 3:51:35Speaker 01

  And he's in Charlie Med. He's all doped up on morphine. The doc pulls me aside and he's like, hey, I don't know if this leg's gonna make it.

• 3:51:47Speaker 01

  Roger.

• 3:51:49Speaker 01

  And Cowie like, I, you know, bend over to like, hold his hand and he's like, the first thing's out of his mouth.

• 3:51:58Speaker 01

  Let me stay.

• 3:52:04Speaker 00

  Damn.

• 3:52:13Speaker 01

  So that's the kind of guys you got, you know?

• 3:52:18Speaker 01

  Let me stay.

• 3:52:22Speaker 01

  So.

• 3:52:24Speaker 01

  You know, this is, um. Once the 11 AD shows up with Colonel McFarland, later General McFarland, you know, that's when we start pressing in to the city.

• 3:52:37Speaker 01

  That's when we start supporting these combat overwatch or the, yeah, these combat outposts being built in the city, which is a huge construction project.

• 3:52:46Speaker 01

  And there's a time period when they're building these combat outposts in the city that they're extremely vulnerable. Because they're doing a construction project in the middle of a war zone. And so what can we do to help that is we can set up sniper overwatch positions and when the enemy would maneuver in to attack them. We would kill them. And it was actually General McFarland. He, he, he wrote in an article.

• 3:53:15Speaker 01

  It's like those combat outposts being built were bait. You know, he didn't put them out there as bait. He put them out there on the grand strategy of taking over the city, but. He's like a salt lick, you know, you start building this construction project in the middle of downtown Ramadi. The insurgents are absolutely going to attack you. And when they do.

• 3:53:37Speaker 01

  My guys would be in an offset position 200 meters away, 300 meters away, 400 meters away, looking down a long axis avenue of approach where the Moos would come and they'd kill them. And it was, you know, an ideal setup for us. Yeah, and it was when we started doing this, like the amount of, the amount of scrutiny for the 111 AD, for General McFarland, you know, he was getting scrutinized on the amount of combat that his guys were getting, the amount of casualties and the amount of killing that he was doing.

• 3:54:21Speaker 01

  He was getting that scrutiny from his, from the, from the MEF. And I was feeling the same thing. Um, and it was always like, please come see, come and see, come and see what's happening here. You'll, it doesn't take long to figure out. And thankfully, you know, they did, you know, I had the, the CJ sort of commander, who's a great guy at the time, came down, visited the, you know, the Commodore visited, the SOCOM commander visited, you know, General, General Brown, SOCOM commander. He came to see us in Ramadi. We've got 35 SEALs, bro. He's in charge of all of the world of special operations. He came to Ramadi to see what we were doing, to talk to the conventionals, make sure that they were getting what we needed.

• 3:55:05Speaker 01

  So there was a lot of eyes on what we were doing. And part of that was because of the amount of people we were killing. And part of it was because they were very risky operations.

• 3:55:17Shawn Ryan?

  Can I, I want to ask a question.

• 3:55:20Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 3:55:21Shawn Ryan?

  You'd been studying this, you'd been studying Ramadi since before you got there. It's, you know, SEALs have what, year and a half workup? You started studying, it sounds like, I think, what did you say, maybe you maybe found out six months into workup that you were going to Ramadi?

• 3:55:37Speaker 01

  No, we didn't know we were going to Ramadi until like a couple of weeks before.

• 3:55:40Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 3:55:41Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:55:42Shawn Ryan?

  Well, you're talking about doing dailies, weeklies, monthlies of troops in contact, casualties. You've studied, you've, you've studied this fucking battle space. It's very obvious it's hot.

• 3:55:59Shawn Ryan?

  Why are you, why would anybody be under scrutiny for the amount of combat that they're seeing? When they want you to incrementally take over a fucking city? That makes zero sense to me.

• 3:56:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yep.

• 3:56:16Speaker 01

  And again, it wasn't just me and special operations. General McFarland was feeling the same thing. And again, just like General McFarland had a great relationship with the MEF commander, I had a great relationship with my commanding officer. And so when I explained to him what was happening, you know, we started probably a few weeks, like three weeks into these sniper over watches that we were doing. This was early in deployment. And we'd killed, I don't know how many, probably, I don't know, 10, 15, something, mostly IED emplacers. And I talked to my headquarters and they're like, hey, you know, you're killing these IED emplacers, but the IEDs haven't gone down yet.

• 3:57:01Speaker 01

  And I said, hey, sir, the, uh, the average insurgency, according to the counter insurgency manual, last seven years. It's been three weeks. Can I get some more time to work? And he's like, yeah, check. But yeah, I mean, it, it, well, you know what it's like, you know what it was like for a SEAL rotation at the time. You know, you, you went to Iraq, right?

• 3:57:26Speaker 01

  There's not a lot of

• 3:57:29Speaker 01

  direct enemy contact. And there's not a lot of killing. Most of the time, you're doing DAs, they don't want to fight. Do, do they get killed sometimes? Yes. But most of the time, they don't really want to fight. So they surrender. And you capture. The capture kill part is mostly capture. For me, on my first deployment, it was almost all capture. Killed very few. Well, now you're in this zone where there's enemy that are, like I said, like us go into a salt lick. They are maneuvering through the streets and we're in.

• 3:58:06Speaker 01

  Locations with tactical advantage that we selected with long access down multiple roads, you're gonna start killing a lot of enemy fighters. And it was abnormal. It was abnormal. And so, you know, the, the scrutiny came, but I welcomed it. It's no factor. You know, we had to, we had to have guys sign a shooter statement for every buddy that we killed. There was like a sworn shooter statement. And at first guys like, well, you know, why we gotta do this? It's like, hey, because in five years, or 10 years, or 15

• 3:58:46Speaker 01

  years, or 20 years, someone's gonna come back and say, this person died here. Who did it? And we'll say either, oh yeah, that was us because this is why, or no, that wasn't us. So I, again, luckily for me that I had seen the, the, the officer side of things, I understood that. And I was able to explain it to the guys. Explain it to the guys like, hey, there's a reason we're seeing this scrutiny. It's because we're killing a lot of bad guys. And they, the chain of command needs to make sure that we're doing the right thing for the right reasons. We are. And they see that. And we got, we got such a great support from

• 3:59:29Speaker 01

  the Siege SOTF, from my chain of command, from the, the special operation chain of command, for sure. Like I said, General Brown came out. And, and by the way, the, the Army and the Marine Corps was like epic. Um, you know, I had the Colonel that was in charge, General Sean McFarland had him on my podcast. And, you know, like, you can tell, it was as good as it gets. And so, yeah, there's, there's scrutiny. Cause you're killing a lot of bad guys. And there's also scrutiny because these are risky freaking operations. And you know, a big one was going out in the daytime. Why would you give up the tactical

• 4:00:13Speaker 01

  advantage of going out at night, which we have because we got night vision, we got lasers, the whole nine yards. Why would we make that mistake? Well, there's a bunch of reasons. You know, there's a bunch of reasons. Number one, our mission from the CGSOTIF was to train and fight company and platoon-sized elements of Iraqi soldiers. So that means we are supposed to train them and go and fight with them. Company and platoon-sized elements, not special mission units, not DA units, company and platoon-sized elements of infantry soldiers. That's what we're supposed, that's what our task was. We put together some scouts, we put together some, some special mission units, but that was our task. They don't have night vision.

• 4:00:57Speaker 01

  They didn't even have flashlights. We used to give like a fire team of Iraqis a flashlight. So for them to do a clearance operation at night was like just a non-starter. So that means they're going to go out in the day. Well, since we're training and fighting them, guess who's out in the day? We are. So now, since I got my guys out in the field during the day, I want to protect them. So what am I doing? Overwatch positions. What time is it? Daytime.

• 4:01:22Speaker 01

  And by the way, we killed 99% of the enemy was during the daytime. Because at nighttime, the enemy came out a lot less.

• 4:01:31Speaker 01

  So that, and again, one of the, one of the big mistakes that I made was I never really explained that outside of my chain of command. Like, so to the teams at large, most of the guys go, what were you doing? Oh, here's what we're doing. I think, oh, cool, cool. Occasionally you get a guy like, that doesn't know what was happening, doesn't know how bad it was, couldn't conceive a reason to go out in the daytime. Or couldn't conceive how it's possible to kill that many enemy fighters. Bro, they are everywhere. And so I should have done a better job of communicating that aspect of things.

• 4:02:13Speaker 01

  But I didn't really recognize it because my chain of command, they knew, and most of the, you know, the people that were around me that were actually talking to me, they, they would be like, oh yeah, that makes sense. We get it. Include, like I said, including the chain of command on both special operation side and the conventional side.

• 4:02:34Speaker 01

  But you're going into these areas. And the army's taking casualties, Marine Corps is taking casualties. And I know that at some point, we're going to take casualties. And

• 4:02:48Speaker 01

  the, we, you know, like I said, we had a couple of guys wounded, Cowie was wounded bad. But um, on August 2nd, that's when Ryan Job got wounded severely.

• 4:03:02Speaker 01

  And, you know, he was shot in the face. And I know when you had, when you had Leif on the podcast, Leif gave you a pretty detailed description. But you had, you know, a guy like Ryan Job who, I had his parents on my podcast, just,

• 4:03:20Speaker 01

  man, you can't, you can't even describe just what a,

• 4:03:34Speaker 01

  what a

• 4:03:39Speaker 01

  being of light. You know, just tough, funny.

• 4:03:47Speaker 01

  Like, will literally do anything for you.

• 4:03:51Speaker 01

  Just as good as they come. And

• 4:03:55Speaker 01

  he gets shot. Thankfully, he was, had his weapon right up in his cheek while where he's supposed to have it. You know, three hours into a clearance operation on a rooftop and he still is a disciplined machine gunner. He has his weapon up in his cheek while he, a single shot hits his rifle, hits his machine gun and hits him in the face and just devastating damage to his face and um,

• 4:04:26Speaker 01

  Leif, you know, they, they casavack him.

• 4:04:30Speaker 01

  And this kind of initiates one of the larger.

• 4:04:38Speaker 01

  Battles in the Battle of Ramadi was was on August 2nd.

• 4:04:46Speaker 01

  And

• 4:04:49Speaker 01

  Leif and his guys go back to Cop Falcon, which is a combat outpost. And we have a great relationship with the 137 and Leif's great friends with their company commander, Mike Baima, and I'm great friends with Colonel Tedesco. And now they're they're they're starting to take heavies out there in the field. It's a big gunfight and Leif gets Ryan Kazavak and it didn't look good.

• 4:05:18Speaker 01

  Although he did stabilize, but you know, Leif did not think he was gonna make it for a bit.

• 4:05:30Speaker 01

  And these guys are back there and the army, our brothers in the army said, hey, we we're taking contact from some of these buildings. We think this is where these insurgents are.

• 4:05:43Speaker 01

  Can you help us? And you know, Leif called me on the on the radio and he's like, hey, here's what's happening. The army needs our help.

• 4:05:57Speaker 01

  They want us to go hit some buildings and I'm like, you good? He said, I'm good. I'm like, execute.

• 4:06:07Speaker 01

  And

• 4:06:09Speaker 01

  they went out to hit those buildings and you know, it's already, like I said, one of the biggest battles and you know, Leif and Tony and you know, Tony was the platoon chief down there and just no, no hesitation from any of the boys roll out.

• 4:06:29Speaker 01

  They softened up the target with the Brad's, you know, 25 millimeter chain gun. And I think they went in the first building and cleared it. The second building they go into and they take fire from an adjacent building and Mark,

• 4:06:46Speaker 01

  Mark Lee.

• 4:06:54Speaker 01

  Who's another guy that's

• 4:06:59Speaker 01

  just all good? Like in his, in his whole being, in his soul, he's good.

• 4:07:09Speaker 01

  And he gets shot, killed.

• 4:07:14Speaker 01

  And, uh,

• 4:07:21Speaker 01

  I was actually, I was in the talk and I'm watching this happen.

• 4:07:26Speaker 01

  Watching this happen and I see,

• 4:07:29Speaker 01

  I see them carrying on ISR, I see them carrying a guy out. And, uh, one of the guys in the talk goes, maybe it's an Iraqi. And I actually knew that it wasn't because I knew that Leif didn't have any Iraqis with him. So I knew it was one of our guys. And

• 4:07:49Speaker 01

  Leif gets back to, um, Cop Falcon. He calls me up and he told me what happened. Said we had one KIA and I said, who? And he said Charlie one four.

• 4:08:15Shawn Ryan?

  I'm sorry, man.

• 4:08:24Speaker 01

  So

• 4:08:29Speaker 01

  got their guys together, you know, and

• 4:08:33Speaker 01

  came back to base.

• 4:08:37Speaker 01

  And, um,

• 4:08:41Speaker 01

  you know, I mentioned General Brown

• 4:08:45Speaker 01

  had come, came to visit. He came to visit on August 2nd. Just, that was just when the scheduled visit was. And he came to the flight line

• 4:08:57Speaker 01

  for the Angel Flight. And

• 4:09:02Speaker 01

  Earlier that morning, you know, one of the Marine elements that we worked with from 38, there was a fourth platoon, I think it was Lima Company, and Tony and Leif and those guys had done a bunch of operations with them and gotten to know them and their assistant platoon commander, or their platoon commander, you know, he was kind of bro-ing out friends with Tony because Tony's Tony, you know?

• 4:09:28Speaker 01

  And, you know, it's weird, I heard this story from both guys at a later time, but when Tony gets up there and he sees the platoon commander from fourth platoon, and he's like, dang, they must have heard about Mark.

• 4:09:46Speaker 01

  And the platoon commander told me later that he saw Tony, and he said, dang, they must have heard about Joe. Because that morning, Joe Tomsey from 38, he was killed.

• 4:10:04Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 4:10:09Speaker 01

  So SEALs, Marine and Army, we stood there on that fight line and loaded those boys up to go home.

• 4:10:25Speaker 01

  And the war doesn't stop.

• 4:10:31Speaker 01

  And

• 4:10:35Speaker 01

  that was a shortfall for

• 4:10:40Speaker 01

  the SEAL teams out of the 90s, you know, you think you do an operation and when, you know, when the operation's over, it's over. And if you lose a guy, well, it doesn't really, I mean, it matters, but the operation's over. But we never really thought about that. And guess what? The Army and the Marine Corps, they understood that. We had to learn that immediately.

• 4:11:07Speaker 01

  How are you holding it together?

• 4:11:10Speaker 01

  I had to focus on the job. Um. You know, I had to focus on work.

• 4:11:20Speaker 01

  We did the memorial service.

• 4:11:24Speaker 01

  Um.

• 4:11:28Speaker 01

  Told some stories about Mark at the memorial service.

• 4:11:32Speaker 01

  We were in Vegas. And he was like a maniac dude. Just hilarious. He's gambling. And, um.

• 4:11:43Speaker 01

  He would like, I'd walk. I'd walk through the casino and I'd see him gambling and he'd be like, hey, sir. When are the new Cadillacs coming out? I'm winning big over here. Like he was just that guy.

• 4:11:55Speaker 01

  And, uh. Or if you're playing blackjack with him and the dealer would bust, you know, he'd yell out, everybody's a winner and he'd get the whole casino saying that stuff. So we got to tell some stories about Mark. Um.

• 4:12:12Speaker 01

  And then I also remember that day.

• 4:12:16Speaker 01

  Seth, he had an operation planned on Eastern Ramadi. And.

• 4:12:22Speaker 01

  This was like the day Mark got killed before the memorial service. And he, and he sent me like a webby, which for those of you don't, it's like text messaging. He sends me a webby, he's like, hey, we're.

• 4:12:34Speaker 01

  We're not going to do this operation tonight. And I was like, hey. You're good to go, man. Like, I understand that, like, chain of command, don't worry, I got it. Like, you're clear to go. And he's like, he's like, no, no. We're not going to do it. And I said, no, no, you're cleared. Like, you can do it. And he called me on the field phone. And he's like, hey, bro, I don't want to take the guys out right now. I was like, oh, got it. He's like, guys aren't in the mental state. We need 24 hours. But. Again, for Seth Stone to be so in tune with his guys. Recognizing like they're not in a good psychological position to go out. So he calls me up and tells me like it's a no go. Like, that's leadership.

• 4:13:24Speaker 01

  And you know, it's just devastating, man. It's devastating because again, Mark, you know, we didn't, it seemed like Ryan was gonna live, you know, and we didn't really know he was gonna be blind yet, but it seemed like he would live. And, um, but Mark,

• 4:13:41Speaker 01

  you know, this is

• 4:13:43Speaker 01

  again, just a terrible,

• 4:13:46Speaker 01

  undescribable loss. And when you talk to the army guys too, it hit all them. Because

• 4:13:56Speaker 01

  we were, we were getting after it, you know, and like I told you earlier, when, when, when something happened there on the radio, like everyone would kind of hear it. You might not hear it directly, but if you're in my platoon and you hear, you'd hear reports. And if I'm an army guy and you're my platoon sergeant, and I hear, oh, we just got mortared an hour ago. And then I hear on my radio, hey, SEALs just took out, or it's like, TU ramped, engaged three mortar men with mortar tubes with three rounds of uh, seven, uh, 300 wind mag resulting in three EKIA. Bro, I'm going right over you. I'm like, hey, the SEALs just whacked those dudes and that happened a lot. And

• 4:14:42Speaker 01

  you know, we had been very lucky.

• 4:14:45Speaker 01

  And we had been very lucky for months. And so talking to the army guys, you know, when, when Mark got killed, it was like the invincibility was shattered.

• 4:15:00Speaker 01

  But the war does continue.

• 4:15:04Speaker 01

  And so we stood down for like a day. Then they did the memorial service the next day.

• 4:15:14Speaker 01

  And then

• 4:15:16Speaker 01

  we got our gear back on.

• 4:15:19Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck, man.

• 4:15:22Shawn Ryan?

  As a leader,

• 4:15:26Shawn Ryan?

  what do you say to your men?

• 4:15:29Shawn Ryan?

  For them to keep it together?

• 4:15:36Speaker 01

  I told them the truth. And that was that I did not know what to do. Except for one thing. Work. And I knew that every day that we weren't doing our job, there was going to be soldiers and Marines that were going to pay the price for it. And I knew 100% that what Mark would want us to do, would go. Go. Go and fight. And by the way, Mark's brother's a Marine. And by the way, Ryan Job's brother's a Marine. Like, you don't think that they want us to go out there and do everything we can? Seth Stone's brother in the Army.

• 4:16:20Speaker 01

  Like, this is... We... There was only one thing to do. Do I know... Did I know how to mourn? Did I know how to say the right thing about loss and death and life and all those things? No. I'll tell you what, I told them exactly, "I don't know what to tell you. All I know is what I know how to do." And that's work. We're gonna go back to work. And we're gonna take the fight to these moog. And we're gonna kill as many of them as we can.

• 4:16:51Shawn Ryan?

  With as much loss as you've experienced up to this day, would you have changed anything? Would you have told them anything different?

• 4:17:07Speaker 01

  Maybe. But I don't know that there's anything else to do in a situation like that. I could tell them what we were talking about earlier, like, "Remember Dunkwell," and that kind of stuff, but these are... You know, we're all very focused at this time on what's happening. Very focused on what's happening. And so I don't know what the broader, you know, life impact of that, you know... Could I say some philosophical thing? I don't think so, man.

• 4:17:49Speaker 01

  I think I actually said the philosophical thing. We're gonna get back to work. We're gonna get our gear on. We're gonna lock and load our weapons. And we go do what we're supposed to do, because we're frogmen.

• 4:18:04Shawn Ryan?

  I can't think of anything better to say, to be honest with you.

• 4:18:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 4:18:14Speaker 01

  We're frogmen.

• 4:18:17Speaker 01

  This is what we do. This is who we are. This is what every one of us signed up for.

• 4:18:26Speaker 01

  This is it.

• 4:18:37Shawn Ryan?

  Do you want to talk about Cowie?

• 4:18:42Speaker 01

  Well, Cowie, he was home, man. Cowie, you know, like I said earlier, he said, let me stay. And I was like, bro, go heal up. And, you know, he wasn't going to heal up. Not in four more months or five more months. His, dude, he took a freaking armor piercing round to the femur. There was chunks of leg gone. Like, it's a miracle he kept his leg. Props to the, the Charlie Med, the docs that worked on him and all the people at Walter Reed or wherever else, Bethesda, like, they kept his leg, man. But, you know, it was terrible for Cowie because I think Cowie wasn't there, you know?

• 4:19:27Speaker 01

  And dude, he wanted to be there. You know, he wanted to be there. He would have given anything to be there.

• 4:19:35Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:19:37Speaker 01

  And, and then, you know, you get Leif, Leif,

• 4:19:43Speaker 01

  just the same responsibility

• 4:19:47Speaker 01

  that I talked about when it comes to taking ownership of thing. Well, there's Leif, man. And Leif is taking ownership of having one of his guys severely wounded and having one of them killed. And me too. Like, this is us. I approved all these operations. I came up with this whole damn idea.

• 4:20:11Speaker 01

  And Leif called me, can we go? And I said, yes. Leif came up with this idea. And I said, yes. And this is on us.

• 4:20:24Speaker 01

  That's the way it is, man. That's the burden of command. That's the way it is. And Leif was devastated, of course.

• 4:20:33Speaker 01

  Leif was completely devastated.

• 4:20:36Speaker 01

  And, you know, when, when, when he talked to me about it, you know, he said something along the lines of like, I don't know.

• 4:20:47Speaker 01

  I don't know if I made the right decision in going back out there.

• 4:21:04Speaker 01

  And I told him there was no decision to make.

• 4:21:08Speaker 01

  That's not a decision. There are Army brothers that have gone out over and over again to pull us out of bad situations. And these fellow Americans are asking for our help.

• 4:21:24Speaker 01

  That is not a decision. That is what we do.

• 4:21:30Speaker 01

  That is what we do, and we do it. Every time. You ever talk to Vietnam guys? Vietnam guys, if it was a platoon in trouble or a down pilot, they were going.

• 4:21:44Speaker 01

  Same thing with the Sea Wolf pilots, by the way. SEAL platoon in trouble, they're going. That's what they're doing.

• 4:21:53Speaker 01

  And when our Army brothers are asking us for help, we go.

• 4:21:59Speaker 01

  That's not a decision. That is duty. That is being a frogman. And I also told them if we had a crystal ball and we could tell when something bad was going to happen, of course, we wouldn't do that thing, whatever that thing was, but we don't have a crystal ball.

• 4:22:17Speaker 01

  And combat is inherently freaking dangerous.

• 4:22:24Speaker 01

  And Leif understood that.

• 4:22:27Speaker 01

  Leif understood that. It didn't make it any easier for his soul, for his heart that was broken, but he understood.

• 4:22:36Speaker 01

  He understood that. That's what Mark, you know, I was talking to Mark's mom the other day.

• 4:22:42Speaker 01

  And Mark has had a huge impact now. America's Mighty Warriors, like is incredible organization that's helped out so many, not just SEALs, but other people. And she, you know, she said, you know, if, if I could talk to Mark and Mark had a chance to go back and not sacrifice his life on that day, but none of this other stuff would have happened, he wouldn't, he wouldn't come back. I'm like, I know.

• 4:23:13Speaker 01

  So this is what we do.

• 4:23:20Speaker 01

  This is what we sign up for. And

• 4:23:28Speaker 01

  that's part of being a frogman. And look, we, we had some, you know, we, we had the, the eighties and the nineties.

• 4:23:39Speaker 01

  And man, like, there was nothing going on. And Mark was the first, you know, Mark was the first SEAL killed in Iraq. And again, you'd like, why? Well, look at the battle space, man. Look at the battle space. It was a complete war zone. Why did the 111 AD lose that many guys? Why did the first of the 506 lose that many guys? Why did the 137? Why did the 38 Marines? Like, just losses? Why? Well, it was a freaking war zone, man.

• 4:24:18Speaker 01

  And

• 4:24:20Speaker 01

  the war didn't stop. So it was back to operations. And

• 4:24:29Speaker 01

  that's what we did.

• 4:24:32Speaker 01

  Got, got our gear back on, locked and loaded our weapons and, and back to the field. Back to conducting these operations.

• 4:24:46Speaker 01

  You know, and as far as what did we change? We honestly, there was, after that one, it was like, we were so used to the city, you know? My first deployment to Iraq, we went all over the place. We went all the way from Najaf down south, all the way to Hadith up north.

• 4:25:07Speaker 01

  We went east of Baghdad, west of Baghdad, we went out to Ramadi. I was all over the place. This whole deployment, I only left Ramadi one time. To like go to Balad for one meeting, the first three days, four days of deployment, and I was back in Ramadi the whole time. So we knew what was going on. And so we continued to push. And, you know, the guys,

• 4:25:39Speaker 01

  every one of those guys, night after night, day after day, jocked up, getting in a Humvee, driving past the damn vehicle graveyard that had seventy-five or a hundred destroyed vehicles in it from IEDs, out again, out again, out again. The Army, the Marine Corps, and us. It's the way it was.

• 4:26:06Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck, man.

• 4:26:09Shawn Ryan?

  Jocko, what was your, what were you awarded the Silver Star for?

• 4:26:14Speaker 01

  Well, just this deployment.

• 4:26:16Shawn Ryan?

  The whole deployment?

• 4:26:17Speaker 01

  Basically this deployment, yeah.

• 4:26:19Shawn Ryan?

  How did the deployment end?

• 4:26:25Speaker 01

  Well, we were, we continued to push operations. We continued to eliminate enemy fighters. We saw the beginning of the Anbar Awakening, which was an incredible process that took place. And again, General McFarlane and I talked about it for a long time on the podcast I did with him. But the local populace began to turn against the insurgents, which was the goal. And as this happened, we started seeing, you know, intel would come in that there's enemy fighters in this area, or there's a enemy fighter in this area, or there's a group of IED makers over here.

• 4:27:10Speaker 01

  So we started pushing, when I say we, like coalition forces, we started really pushing and taking it to the enemy.

• 4:27:20Speaker 01

  We had, we, we had started really pushing some good operations and eliminating a lot, a lot of bad guys.

• 4:27:33Speaker 01

  And we were getting towards the end of deployment.

• 4:27:39Speaker 01

  And you know, again, man, I'm talking about, I'm just talking about this, my guys. But there are so many stories, you know?

• 4:27:50Speaker 01

  There was so much loss there and so much heroism there. You're hearing one person, I've had a bunch of guys on my podcast that were everybody from brigade commander, company commanders, battalion commanders, and gunners and medics to tell their little tiny part of the story. Their little tiny part of the story, you know?

• 4:28:13Speaker 01

  The brigade reconnaissance element.

• 4:28:18Speaker 01

  Dan Pinion, he was like the sergeant major and like they had the heaviest casualties of any group, any company sized element. He had, he has a guy named Marquis Quick that jumped on a grenade to save some of his other teammates. And like it, it kind of just happened and almost got overlooked. And they're trying to get him the Medal of Honor now, but that's a one, that's a one, and I didn't know about that. I didn't know about that until he came on my podcast and told me about it. And I didn't know about it. So my, my point in saying all this, man, is I'm giving you like a little fraction of

• 4:29:01Speaker 01

  my view and I had 40 SEALs in Ramadi.

• 4:29:06Speaker 01

  And I just want you and everybody to know that there was the companies and platoons from the army and the marine corps that were out there all day, every day, and they were taking the fight to the enemy and they did an outstanding job and they suffered insane casualties over and over and over again. And I've tried to tell as many people as I can about that. There's a reunion coming in Texas, January 16th, 2026, the 20 year reunion of

• 4:29:44Speaker 01

  Ramadi. It's January 16th and 17th. But I hope that as many people that were there can go to that. That is fucking cool. Yes, and it's it's General McFarland is leading it. And

• 4:30:02Speaker 01

  there was just so much heroism in in that city. And to be able to witness some of it with my guys and with other groups, it was just, it was just, it was, it was, it's amazing to look back on. So much sacrifice and such, you know, such such incredible Americans.

• 4:30:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's

• 4:30:32Speaker 01

  it's humbling to think about.

• 4:30:36Speaker 01

  And so as this deployment for us is now starting, we're starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. And one of the things that I I did on my last deployment, I I always figured I'd never would tell someone like, hey, this is the last op, because I think that's like bad luck. I didn't want them to freak out. I didn't mind bad luck, but I didn't want everyone else to feel bad luck. So we're getting kind of towards the end of deployment and

• 4:31:07Speaker 01

  Seth, who, you know, is just

• 4:31:11Speaker 01

  um incredible and he's out there and he's in Corregidor, he and his guys. And they do a, an operation in support of the first of 506. Who again, can't say enough good stuff, can't say enough good things about the first of 506, the battalion commander, their company commanders. Their company sergeants, their, their e-dogs, I mean, just, just awesome.

• 4:31:39Speaker 01

  And, and I think part of this is when you get into like, a real fight like this.

• 4:31:45Speaker 01

  Dude, everyone is just, like, wants to help out and if you can help out, I, I'm thankful.

• 4:31:53Speaker 01

  And Seth and his guys had been out there with the first of 506 for pretty much the entire deployment for them. And um

• 4:32:02Speaker 01

  they planned an operation, um, set up two overwatch positions, mutually supporting overwatch positions. Down in the Malab district, south Malab district.

• 4:32:15Speaker 01

  And

• 4:32:17Speaker 01

  Seth was in one overwatch position. And the other overwatch position got attacked, it got attacked, they were getting attacked through the morning, you know, like RPGs, small arms fire, things were starting to escalate.

• 4:32:32Speaker 01

  And the, somebody through dead space, like, got close enough to throw a grenade and threw a grenade. And um, Mikey Montessor, who, again, just, just as solid as they come, man, as solid as they come.

• 4:32:50Speaker 01

  He saw the grenade.

• 4:32:55Speaker 01

  Yelled out grenade. The way he was positioned on that rooftop. He was the one that could have gotten away from it. And he could have left his guys exposed, but um instead he jumped on it.

• 4:33:15Speaker 01

  The other guys were wounded bad, though.

• 4:33:19Speaker 01

  And called over to Seth and Seth assembled his guys, left his Iraqis there, left their gear there, just brought their, you know, their primary kit, rolled over, fought their way to that position and then, you know, got that under control, organized and

• 4:33:44Speaker 01

  got them Kazevacked out and got back to base, Camp Corregidor. And then Seth had to take

• 4:33:56Speaker 01

  some of his guys that could still function mentally back to get the Iraqis and back to get the gear. So, you know, Seth just stepping up and it was the, it was the battalion commander.

• 4:34:18Speaker 01

  He called me up and told me, um, hey, he told, because I could hear what was happening over the radio. But once they were out of the field, he called me and he said, um, gave me a sit rep on, on the guys. Um, one guy was like pretty good to go. Two guys were wounded.

• 4:34:42Speaker 01

  You know, they were going to get, they were going to get medevaced and he said, he didn't think Mikey was going to make it.

• 4:34:52Speaker 01

  He said they were doing CPR on him. He didn't think he was going to make it.

• 4:35:00Speaker 01

  And he was right.

• 4:35:11Speaker 01

  So.

• 4:35:14Speaker 01

  It was, um.

• 4:35:18Speaker 01

  I mean, immediately.

• 4:35:22Speaker 01

  I immediately knew that that he had jumped on the grenade. And, uh. I talked to the guys once they got to Germany. The guys that had been evacuated.

• 4:35:32Speaker 01

  And they told me, you know, and they were like sending me sketches of what happened immediately. And so. It was like. About as clear of a Medal of Honor.

• 4:35:46Speaker 01

  Action that you could you could think of. And luckily, like I said, for, um. For Dan Pinion and his guy, Mark, um, Marquise Quick. They were in the middle of deployment. You know, for me, we were. Almost done.

• 4:36:03Speaker 01

  So started putting. Started putting that award together.

• 4:36:09Speaker 01

  And, um. Did you write that award? Seth did. And he got the input from.

• 4:36:17Speaker 01

  Mike. And. Doug, who were like. And. Benny, who were the guys that were saved?

• 4:36:28Speaker 01

  And, uh. Yeah, he he put it together. He started writing it and then I mean, I chopped it. Edited it or whatever. But. Yeah, it was.

• 4:36:42Speaker 01

  The, you know, and talking to Mikey's sister. It's like. I mean, many conversations over the years, but one of the things that always stuck with me was she was just like. It was not a surprise.

• 4:36:56Speaker 01

  Meaning like, that's Mikey. So I'm a surprise. Think he's gonna. What do you think he's gonna do? Save his teammates or save himself? Six, six, we weren't surprised by it. It's fucking incredible, man.

• 4:37:12Speaker 01

  Yep, I mean, uh. The families of those guys are just all just amazing people. And, uh.

• 4:37:23Speaker 01

  You know that maybe a day later Seth had to come, he needed to come talk to me about something. And like, I remember they, it was to get down, to get to from Camp Corregidor to Camp Ramadi was down Route Michigan, which was like, not a good place to drive down. And he came to see me and when he did the

• 4:38:03Speaker 01

  The battalion commander sent him in a section of tanks.

• 4:38:14Speaker 01

  To make sure he'd be alright, you know?

• 4:38:27Speaker 01

  And that's, you know, that's why that, that bond with those guys is so strong, you know? The, um, just being in that battle space with those guys, that what they would do for us was just so like, you could just tell that they were, they cared about us as much as we cared about them. And, you know, they, they put, they put Mikey Montsors on the, first of the 506 on their memorial wall. The guys that they lost, he's one of them. Wow.

• 4:39:06Speaker 01

  And now, at this point in the deployment, you know, we were, that was September 29th and, um, we, we were kind of running low on guys, man.

• 4:39:26Speaker 01

  But we, we kept doing whatever we could do.

• 4:39:30Speaker 01

  Uh, guys from team five showed up. And man, they were fired up, man.

• 4:39:38Speaker 01

  And I remember telling those guys.

• 4:39:42Speaker 01

  Like to their task unit, their whole task unit. You will take casualties.

• 4:39:50Speaker 01

  Which is. A horrible thing to say. And I'm looking at him and it's like, as you're looking at him, you're like, I don't know if they really believe me. And those guys, God bless them, man. They went to Mikey Montsour's funeral. They went to Mark Lee's funeral. But they had just gone to Mikey's funeral.

• 4:40:09Speaker 01

  They were showing up maybe a week or two later, like their ad van.

• 4:40:14Speaker 01

  And.

• 4:40:17Speaker 01

  Yeah. But they were, man, they, they were, um.

• 4:40:22Speaker 01

  They were, they were fired up. And we turned over the best we possibly could with those guys. And you, you know so much.

• 4:40:32Speaker 01

  And. You keep, just can't like, download enough information. I remember I was like, I don't know, maybe this before Mikey got killed, but we were doing some big clearance operation and I'm like. Ended up in some rear security. While we're doing clearance, but we had done the clearance. Now we're moving back and I'm in this, you know, just like a nug.

• 4:40:55Speaker 01

  Because I'm out there, but I'm out there. Kind of just to be out there. You know, Leif and Tony have got it. But I'm watching as the platoon is like moving through the streets. And you think. Freaking guys are good right now. Like it's.

• 4:41:14Speaker 01

  It was a very. Awesome thing to be witness to. And the reputation, you know, that we had earned was like, I, I could see it. I could feel it. The way the army treated us, the way the Marine Corps treated us, it was like.

• 4:41:31Speaker 01

  It was awesome.

• 4:41:32Shawn Ryan?

  It's fucking incredible, man. Like I'm, I'm, I have to say it is fucking incredible. I mean. The deployment that you had, the losses that you took, the action that you saw, the lives that you guys took, I mean.

• 4:41:48Shawn Ryan?

  It's a fucking hard deployment and

• 4:41:55Shawn Ryan?

  I just want to commend you and all of you guys, man. I mean, you know, from from an outsider looking in, you know, you see, especially nowadays, I mean, we're kind of talking about this this morning. I mean, you see a lot of you just see so much of fucking animosity within the veteran community. It's a real fucking shame and um

• 4:42:16Shawn Ryan?

  man, like the tasking a bruiser guys, man, I'm you guys are fucking tight. I mean, I'm not aware of any

• 4:42:27Shawn Ryan?

  you guys just seem really tight and um you know, to have an appointment like that with

• 4:42:35Shawn Ryan?

  that that kinetic

• 4:42:38Shawn Ryan?

  it's the loss that you guys have experienced and

• 4:42:43Shawn Ryan?

  the respect, you know, that your guys have for you and that you have for them is truly fucking unmatched.

• 4:42:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was a it was an honor. It was the boys, you know, um

• 4:42:58Shawn Ryan?

  I've never seen anything like it.

• 4:43:00Speaker 01

  When uh you asked me if I kind of knew what was happening in my first deployment, like I was in I was in Baghdad, we were doing DAs and I was like, yeah, I knew. And on this deployment, I really knew, like every day. I knew that every day this was um this was going to be, this was the highlight of my life. This was the most thing, this was the most this was the highlight of my life. I knew it every single day. I knew every every time I went out. Every time I saw the boys off, I knew that this was the most important thing I would do in my life was this. And you know, one thing that I leaned on

• 4:43:40Speaker 01

  because you know, you

• 4:43:45Speaker 01

  There's the whole political aspect of this thing of like, oh, why were we there? What was it worth? All that kind of thing. And one of the things that the brigade commander said to me as I was leaving, and you know, he, we had a four-minute brigade meeting of a 30-minute brigade meeting, he spent three minutes talking to me and, and, and, you know, kind of saying, hey, this group of SEALs is leaving us. The tasking the bruiser guys are gone. And, you know, he presented me with this like wooden tank that they had made, like a little cool little sculpture of a wooden tank, which by the way, the guy that

• 4:44:27Speaker 01

  was in charge of getting those tanks made was one of the brigade staff who was killed in combat.

• 4:44:34Speaker 01

  But he said, uh,

• 4:44:45Speaker 01

  he said, "Your guys kept hundreds of my soldiers and Marines alive.

• 4:44:51Speaker 01

  And when I got home, and I talked to Mark's mom, I talked to Mikey's mom, and talked to Ryan's mom, that's the one thing that I felt I could indisputably tell them about their sons.

• 4:45:18Speaker 01

  Politics, Iraq, Al Qaeda, whatever, your sons made sure that hundreds of American soldiers and Marines were able to go home to their families. And by the way, those soldiers and Marines made sure that my SEALs were able to come home to their families."

• 4:45:45Speaker 01

  Because the Kazavaks and the QRFs and the fire support was all them every single time. And tanks, they lost nine main battle tanks. So you think you're doing okay? Like, I'm happy they sent Seth Stone down to see me in a section of tanks, but we lost nine tanks when we were there.

• 4:46:06Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 4:46:07Speaker 01

  And those guys sent those tanks out and those Bradleys out and those soldiers and Marines over and over again to support my guys, Kazavak my guys, extract my guys, fire support for my guys, over and over and over again. And the fact that we were able to repay that in some way, killing IED emplacers, killing mortar men, killing RPG and machine gunners enemy, it's, it's at least, I know that that's meaningful. I know it's meaningful.

• 4:46:45Shawn Ryan?

  Mm-hmm. Thanks for sticking with me on that, man. You wanna take a break? Sure, let's take a break.

• 4:48:17Shawn Ryan?

  See you later.

• 4:48:21Shawn Ryan?

  Look, Saul's building. What do you think, Sean? We're high.

• 4:48:47Shawn Ryan?

  It's not that impressive. I live here.

• 4:48:53Shawn Ryan?

  All right, Jocko, we're back from the break. Nice shooting, man.

• 4:48:57Speaker 01

  Oh, right on.

• 4:48:58Shawn Ryan?

  Nice shooting. But, um, so we're wrapping up Task Unit Bruiser's deployment and, um, you know, one thing that I, one thing I wanted to ask is, and I, I think, you know, throughout the four or five hours I've been interviewing you, I think I know, but I'm curious what your perspective is.

• 4:49:23Shawn Ryan?

  Why do you think that your men have such a deep respect for you as a leader?

• 4:49:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's one I said earlier, you know, I treated them with respect. I listened to what they had to say.

• 4:49:39Speaker 01

  I put my trust in them and when you give those things to people, they give them back. No, it's not a guarantee. They could be a nefarious, bad person, you know, and that that happens. But those guys, they were just, you know,

• 4:49:58Speaker 01

  it's what the teams for me was always supposed to be. And what it was, you know, that was that that was that is the teams to me. When I think about the teams, best job ever, best guys ever.

• 4:50:17Speaker 01

  And all my platoons, I had like just great people. And

• 4:50:28Speaker 01

  yeah, I think,

• 4:50:31Speaker 01

  you know, kind of, I

• 4:50:36Speaker 01

  everything for me was kind of a bonus. Like, you know, I enlisted in the Navy when I was 18 years old, you know, and now I'm an officer, hadn't even been to college, like, that's a pretty cool bonus. And now I get to lead troops in combat. That's a pretty cool bonus. Now I'm in Iraq, that's a bonus and tasking a bruiser in a in an incredible

• 4:51:01Speaker 01

  war zone.

• 4:51:05Speaker 01

  It's just all a bonus. And my point in saying all that was, it wasn't like I was going to be Admiral. You know what I mean? Like, it wasn't, I wasn't going to be Admiral. Well, I mean, I guess I could have been Admiral, but I wasn't, that wasn't my goal. That was never, that was never really something I thought too much about. My career was really about just being with the platoons.

• 4:51:28Shawn Ryan?

  About the fucking job.

• 4:51:30Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 4:51:32Shawn Ryan?

  The same reason you joined.

• 4:51:34Speaker 01

  Yes. And I get it, you know, it's another thing when I was, when I was the Admiral's aide, I saw what the Admiral did, you know, and it was, he had a great attitude about it, you know. On September 11th, I think he started his job in the Pentagon as an acquisitions officer.

• 4:51:53Speaker 01

  And one thing he told me, he said, when, when September 11th happened, I checked into my job as the acquisitions officer. Last job in the world I wanted to do. You know, cause he joined, he probably got in the teams in 1976 or something. No Vietnam.

• 4:52:08Speaker 01

  I don't think he, no Gulf War. And now this big war starts and he's in the Pentagon doing acquisitions. And he said, you know what, Jocko? I said, this is my foxhole. And I'm gonna fight. And that's what he did. And I think that attitude, regardless of where you are, you know, sometimes I get people that were in the military and they, they didn't deploy to combat. And they're like borderline ashamed about it. And I'm like, hey, man, you signed that dotted line. And you did what your country needed you to do. So,

• 4:52:40Speaker 01

  you know, thank you for your service.

• 4:52:43Speaker 01

  But, yeah, for me, I think that I, I really just love the teams. And the teams,

• 4:52:54Speaker 01

  man, every day was, was awesome.

• 4:52:57Shawn Ryan?

  Why did you decide to separate? I mean, I think you just kind of just said it, but

• 4:53:02Shawn Ryan?

  the, the, the reason I'm asking Jocko is, you know, to have, um,

• 4:53:09Shawn Ryan?

  and I mean this in the best, most respectable way. It is a real fucking shame

• 4:53:18Shawn Ryan?

  for the SEAL teams, for the Navy, for the United States to lose a leader like you. And so, and you know, there's a lot of frustrations that I think you know, there's a lot of, there's always has been, there always will be, right? There's a lot of frustrations, but especially, especially in the last eight years. You know, there's a lot of frustration, um, within, you know, the military ranks. I hear it. I'm sure you fucking hear it all the time too. And, and, you know, it, it seems like,

• 4:53:52Shawn Ryan?

  The best leaders,

• 4:53:55Shawn Ryan?

  in my opinion, always wind up leaving early.

• 4:54:00Speaker 01

  It can definitely happen. I mean, we do have some amazing leaders in the SEAL teams.

• 4:54:06Speaker 01

  But, you know, for me personally, so I get done with that task unit, I'll come back. The Admiral, who, you know, I had worked for was still in charge. And, you know, he, he, he met me on the plane when we landed. And he told me later that he's like, when he got on the plane, because he got on the plane, like, the plane lands, he got on the plane, his family are outside.

• 4:54:32Speaker 01

  And he said, when he saw me on the plane, he was like, oh, like, uh-oh.

• 4:54:39Speaker 01

  Because, bro, we, we were, you know, we were in the game. And, you know, at a certain point, you, you don't care about anything else. You know what I mean? And I was definitely at that point, by a long shot.

• 4:54:56Speaker 01

  And, you know, of course, respectful to the Admiral, said hi and thanks for coming and, and I got off and I saw my family and he said, when I saw your family, I was like, oh, he's gonna be fine.

• 4:55:06Speaker 01

  Um, and so, he, he also said, where do you, what do you want to do?

• 4:55:12Speaker 01

  Like, it was awesome.

• 4:55:15Speaker 01

  You know, and he, when, when Mark died, I talked to him. When Ryan was wounded, like, he was, he was just awesome, supporting. And, again, my whole chain of command, you know, the Commodore, the Admiral, my commanding officer, like, everyone, the, the senior enlisted guys, because I knew all the, all the senior enlisted Master Chiefs as well. And everyone was just very, very supportive. And so when I got done with that deployment, he, um, he said, where, where do you want to go? And I knew where I wanted to go, because Ramadi was not over yet. And it, we saw like a glimpse of change, but they did some of the heaviest fighting after we left. And so...

• 4:56:03Speaker 01

  I knew, because I was in training cell at SEAL Team One, and when I was in the training cell at SEAL Team One, I learned so much and it was so important. I realized how important it was to train. And then having my guys, Leif and Seth and the rest of the JOs and the E-Dogs, like, bringing them up in the teams, I knew that I needed to do that for more guys. And so I knew that the one place that I could do that was going to Trade-Ed. And so, I said to the boss, the Admiral, I said, you know, I want to go to the Trade-Ed. And he said, cool. And he gave me orders to Trade-Ed. And when I got there, it was

• 4:56:44Speaker 01

  exactly, you know, what I, what I knew it was. You know, I knew that we had guys, and, you know, we, we got home, October 21st, or when we left Ramadi, October 21st, the guys from Team Five that are depicted in the movie Warfare, that happened November 19th. So, you know, we had just left, and those guys got blown up and, yeah, Elliot and Joe, you know, got severely wounded, which was horrible. But I knew that that's what I need to prepare guys for. And I knew that there was no better place to do that than Trade-Ed. And so that's what I did. I went to Trade-Ed, and, you know, it really

• 4:57:25Speaker 01

  turned out to be even better than I thought it was going to be. Because now, now I have so much context in my head about leadership, about combat leadership, about the big army, the Marine Corps, the Navy, the battle space, everything from CQC to RECONs, just every type of operation that we could do, I kinda, I felt pretty good about. And so, I went in there and started teaching, you know, started teaching leadership and started running training. And it was, it was awesome. It was awesome to be a part of. It was awesome to, yeah, awesome to be a part of. And it was, it was a little weird, too. Like...

• 4:58:13Speaker 01

  We'd be doing mount training, urban training, and I'd be watching and I'd see like some new guy standing in the middle of the street and I would get like a like a sick like knot in my stomach. And I would like go over to him and like, bro, get out of the street, man. You're gonna get shot out here. And like, I really. Fuck, man. Yeah, it was it was definitely, you know, it was it was perfect place for me to be. Because I cared about the guys more than anything and I just had a bunch of experience with this exact thing that everyone was going to do. So, you know, that's what I did. And when you asked me about why I why I ended up retiring.

• 4:58:55Speaker 01

  So I showed up there and I was probably at like seventeen years or something like that. And, you know, it's just, okay, this is what we're doing next. Do this for a while.

• 4:59:06Speaker 01

  And then I started. There's one thing that

• 4:59:11Speaker 01

  I didn't like when I came home from deployment.

• 4:59:15Speaker 01

  When I was gone on that deployment to Ramadi. When I left.

• 4:59:21Speaker 01

  On my first, sorry, my first deployment to Iraq, when I left, my son couldn't crawl. When I got home, he could crawl and he could walk.

• 4:59:33Speaker 01

  So I was like, hmm, that sucks. In Ramadi, which was, and I also, you know, of course, you miss all the holidays, whatever. But then I, when I got home from Ramadi.

• 4:59:44Speaker 01

  He could swim.

• 4:59:51Speaker 01

  I remember asking my wife, like, who taught him how to swim? And she's like, oh, it was, you know, one of the lifeguards down at the base. And I'm like, dude, I'm a frogman and someone else taught my son how to swim.

• 5:00:04Speaker 01

  That sucks. So that was like a little deposit in the back of my head. And, you know, it was a trade at and just, you know, you were gone all the time at trade up. And as I started to, and I got, you know, I, I had the luckiest career ever. I got, um, deep selected oh four, like I very, you know, everything had always gone well for me in my Navy career from, you know, be being selected for the, the semen admiral program in the first place, which was probably because I was sailor of the year of SEAL Team One, where I was an E5. Like I'd been doing, I was on a very good trajectory.

• 5:00:44Speaker 01

  But I also looked at it and I was like, okay, what's my next billet? And you started looking at the billets and like, there, there weren't jobs that I was super excited to go do. Um, and then I was thinking, well, okay, what's after that job? And it turned out when I measured it out, I was about seven years at that time from,

• 5:01:09Speaker 01

  from being a, like a SEAL Team CO.

• 5:01:13Speaker 01

  And

• 5:01:16Speaker 01

  now, fast forward a little bit because I'd come home from Ramadi the war circle, but now it had started to like draw down. And I'm like, man, I could hold on for seven more years. By that time I was like five more years. And then what will I be doing? Okay. But I love the teams.

• 5:01:35Speaker 01

  But what about these people that live in your house?

• 5:01:41Speaker 01

  You know, who are these people that live in your house? And why don't they really know you?

• 5:01:52Speaker 01

  So I just did the, ran the numbers mentally on what that was. And, um, I just decided I'd done 20 years.

• 5:02:04Speaker 01

  I'm gonna go focus on my family. I did not focus on my family when I was in the SEAL Teams. At all.

• 5:02:12Speaker 01

  Um.

• 5:02:14Speaker 01

  The teams was. I was married to the teams. I was married to the teams and and my wife and family came second and that's not.

• 5:02:24Speaker 01

  I think I needed to give something to them. Maybe if I'd been more balanced, you know? Maybe I could have. Sorted it out, but I wasn't very balanced. I was in the teams and I love the teams. And I feel felt like, yeah, if I can't give the teams everything, then it's probably not. Gonna be the best. Thing.

• 5:02:50Shawn Ryan?

  Do you still battle with that decision?

• 5:02:52Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, I do. I. Yeah.

• 5:03:00Shawn Ryan?

  Oh, shit.

• 5:03:00Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:03:01Shawn Ryan?

  When did you retire?

• 5:03:03Speaker 01

  Twenty ten.

• 5:03:04Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck.

• 5:03:05Speaker 01

  Fifteen years.

• 5:03:05Shawn Ryan?

  Fifteen years, you're still. Battling that decision.

• 5:03:08Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 5:03:10Shawn Ryan?

  Why?

• 5:03:12Speaker 01

  The teams gave me everything.

• 5:03:15Shawn Ryan?

  You gave the teams everything?

• 5:03:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:03:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, there's nothing better than going to work in the teams. You know? You and I just got all giddy going out to dump some rounds out there. You know what I mean? You and me were kind of like in a different like we were like a couple of kids out there. And you and I used to do that all day, every day until we were sick of it.

• 5:03:38Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:03:39Speaker 01

  You know? So.

• 5:03:42Speaker 01

  Uh. Yeah, and it was hard because I, you know, I had to go. Tell my chain of command. And and. It was hard for me to go tell the Admiral. Uh.

• 5:03:55Speaker 01

  Go tell the Commodore. Then and then tell. My teammates. You know, that that sucked. Because. You're a quitter. You know? And I was not a quitter, but now I'm gonna quit. When I left team one. You know, they used to say if you got out of the teams, you're a quitter, right? And and I said, uh. When I left team one, I said, because I was an enlisted guy and I was going to become an officer and I said, hey, the only thing worse than a quitter is a traitor. And I'm now going to the dark side, you know? But. Yeah, quitting the teams was was, uh. Bad. But at the same time, I. You know, I remember cleaned out my cage the last day and had a great, you know, I had a great time at Trade Ed and.

• 5:04:40Speaker 01

  You know, it was that's when when Ryan, Ryan Job, who had been wounded so bad, he died from complications from his medical stuff, you know, that was while I was at trade at. And, you know, again, that was one of those things where it was really, it almost like hooked me back in, you know, because just knowing that Ryan, you know, he's another guy, like he was blind, bro. And I talked to him on the phone. He's like, can I come back? He wants to come back to Ramadi. He can't see. He wants to come back to Ramadi. Like, this is the kind of guy that I'm gonna abandon right now to get out of the Navy and do some other whatever, like nothing else matters. So that was, you know, another thing

• 5:05:23Speaker 01

  that kind of almost hooked me. But again, I'd go home and see my, see my kids, see my son, you know, you have a, you know, three daughters or, yeah, I had three daughters and one son at this point, go home and see them and they're like, what's your name again? Or who, who are you again? Like, that is an equal thing that's starting to pull.

• 5:05:44Shawn Ryan?

  How old was your oldest?

• 5:05:46Speaker 01

  She was born in 1999. So she was 11.

• 5:05:53Shawn Ryan?

  Wow.

• 5:05:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And my youngest doesn't even like, no. My son can remember because I would like, he, he was at, he was on training trips as a young kid. That's like a little kid. He was hucking grenades and shooting machine guns and paintballs and all that stuff. So he, he remembers all that stuff.

• 5:06:15Shawn Ryan?

  Did you have a tough time integrating him with your family?

• 5:06:18Speaker 01

  Not really.

• 5:06:20Shawn Ryan?

  Did they have a tough time integrating with you?

• 5:06:23Speaker 01

  Not really.

• 5:06:24Shawn Ryan?

  That's good. You don't hear that very often.

• 5:06:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, I always left my work at work, you know, I always tell like, police officers and. Military people like take your uniform off when you go home. Don't leave it on. Take it off and put on a pair of, you know, for me, it's flip flop shirt, surf shorts and a T-shirt. And be in that mode as opposed to keeping your uniform on. So I felt like it was pretty, um, yeah. And another weird thing that always freaked out like Leif and Seth is I never swore in front of my family. Yeah, I would, and you know, meanwhile, in the teams, you know, every third word was an F-bomb. And I'd come home and just never swear. Cause it's all, it's almost like I had a, uh, you know, like a mental deviation when I went home and I was that guy.

• 5:07:11Speaker 01

  And then at work I was the team guy.

• 5:07:13Shawn Ryan?

  Man, I wish I could do that. Maybe I can try harder. But, um, I mean, what did you, did you struggle with, did you struggle with the transition? I mean, we both know a lot of guys struggle with the transition. Did you have any plan when you got out?

• 5:07:30Speaker 01

  I didn't, didn't really have, my plan was to surf, change jiu-jitsu and hang out with my wife and kids. That was my plan.

• 5:07:36Shawn Ryan?

  It's a good plan.

• 5:07:37Speaker 01

  And you know,

• 5:07:40Speaker 01

  and then I, I opened a jiu-jitsu gym. So I figured I'd be able to teach jiu-jitsu and hang out surf with my kids, surf. And that's what my plan was.

• 5:07:54Speaker 01

  Probably about six months before I retired, I had a friend that owned a big company. And he asked me to come and talk to his executive team about leadership. And I knew him from jiu-jitsu. I was like, yeah, cool. And I went up and I

• 5:08:12Speaker 01

  gave of like the kind of leadership brief that I gave to the SEAL platoons.

• 5:08:20Speaker 01

  And, and I think in his mind, I was going to get up and be like, you need to do pushups or whatever. And all of a sudden I'm talking about decentralized command and taking ownership and prioritize and executing all these things. And then they start Q and A and they start asking me about leadership and I'm answering all these questions. And by the time I got done, he's like, I want you to talk to every division I have in my company. And I was like, well, I'm retiring and you know, and he's like, I will pay you. And I was like, well, he's like, oh, let's make a deal. I said, okay. So I started going around talking to all of his divisions and at one of those divisional meetings, his, the CEO of the parent company was there. And the guy came up to me afterwards and said, I want you to come talk to all my CEOs. And he owned like forty five or fifty companies at the time. And I went and did that. And then it just started happening.

• 5:09:05Speaker 01

  And I eventually was getting like business, you know? And Leif had gotten out of the arm, the Navy, the Army. Leif had gotten out of the Navy and he was like, kind of considering going to law school. I think at the time and his wife was, you know, gainfully employed at Fox News. And, uh, you know, I was like, hey, man, I need some fire support over here. And he's like, we'll do a leadership company. And I, I'd kind of talked about it with him before because when I started talking to these

• 5:09:42Speaker 01

  civilian companies, I realized that everything I had learned about leadership applied to all leadership. It wasn't unique to combat. It was, it was, leadership was leadership. And once I realized that, I realized that I had something that would be useful for a lot of people. And so then, like I said, it just grew word of mouth. And from there, this is kind of how all this stuff eventually happened because as Leif and I would talk to different companies and they would come up afterwards and be like, hey, do you have this stuff written down anywhere? Do you have a pamphlet you can give us? And so we wrote it down and then I want to, I, I think one of Leif's wife's friends

• 5:10:24Speaker 01

  or something was a literary agent was like, this could be a book type thing. And so we wrote a book proposal and yeah, uh, the book agent shopped it around and one of the people, I think the third, fourth, fourth or fifth person at St. Martin's Press was like, well, we'll take it. And so we wrote the book and, you know, um, the book came out and it was, really did well. So.

• 5:10:51Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, it did.

• 5:10:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:10:52Shawn Ryan?

  It did really fucking well.

• 5:10:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:10:56Shawn Ryan?

  Man. And then, I mean, you've created, I mean, I think I counted seven businesses. I'm probably off, but am I off?

• 5:11:07Speaker 01

  Um.

• 5:11:08Shawn Ryan?

  You get the podcast, Extreme Ownership, the kid's book, which is gonna be a movie, Origin, Jocko Fuel. Fuck, what am I missing?

• 5:11:18Speaker 01

  Jocko Publishing.

• 5:11:19Shawn Ryan?

  Jocko Publishing.

• 5:11:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:11:21Shawn Ryan?

  The Soccer Club.

• 5:11:23Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:11:23Shawn Ryan?

  Jiu Jitsu Gym.

• 5:11:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:11:24Shawn Ryan?

  There's a.

• 5:11:26Speaker 01

  That's true. Guess there's something.

• 5:11:27Shawn Ryan?

  You lost count.

• 5:11:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, um. Yeah, I, I, I look at it and people ask me about this, so. The podcast thing, you know, I went on Ro, I went on Tim Ferriss's podcast. And when we got done, he said, hey dude, you should start a podcast. And then I went on. Joe Rogan heard that podcast and was like, invited me on his podcast. And this was 2015, like podcasts weren't really a thing yet.

• 5:11:52Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, you're, you're, you are an OG podcast.

• 5:11:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:11:56Shawn Ryan?

  Way before anybody knew what the hell it was.

• 5:11:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. I, I think, I think the numbers at the time, there was about 15% of the population of America was listening to podcasts. I don't know if it's 100% now, but it's pretty much everybody. But I went on Rogan, in the middle of Rogan's show, he's like, you should start a podcast. Of course, Rogan tells that to everybody. But, uh. He told me that and I said, all right, so I got Tim Ferriss and Joe Rogan, like two massive podcasts are telling me I should start a podcast. So. I talked to my buddy Echo Charles and I said, you know how to do this? And he said, I'll figure it out. And then next day he came back and was like, all right, I know how to do this. And I said, cool. He said, can I be on it?

• 5:12:34Speaker 01

  And I said, what are you gonna do? And he said, you be Jocko and I'll be normal. And I was like, okay, cool. And so that's how the podcast started. And then once the podcast started, it was just. You know, people would ask me about like, what kind of.

• 5:12:50Speaker 01

  Supplements I used. And I was like, well.

• 5:12:54Speaker 01

  Here's what I would like to use, you know? And why don't I make what I like? And then people would ask me about Jiu Jitsu Gis and. My, there was a company up in Maine, you know, uh, New England where I'm from. And this guy Pete was up there making Jiu Jitsu Gis 100% in America. And I was like. Get those kind of gees, because those are American made. And I ended up linking up with him and. Origin kind of took off and Jocko Fuel kind of took off and it was just, uh, yeah. And then the kids books were somewhere in there, you know, I. There's.

• 5:13:28Speaker 01

  I went, I was trying to get my son, my son was not like a reader, right? Was his little kid. So I went to try and find him like something that he might be interested in, right? And I picked up this book and it was like a pirate book. And I was like, cool, you know, pirates. What young boy isn't going to be into pirates? And I read this, this book. And it was the lamest, weakest, most pathetic pirates ever.

• 5:13:58Speaker 01

  And I'm like, yeah, I'm not going to read this to my son. And I decided I'll write my own books for kids. And so, and the idea of the first Warrior Kid book was just like immediately in my mind. Uh, the whole thing, like start to finish. I had the whole thing in my mind almost immediately. And it's a real. It seems obvious, right? Like there's a kid, like all kids, who can't do any pull-ups, doesn't know his times tables, doesn't know how to swim, and he's getting picked on by the school bully, right? That's, you go to anyone, any kid in the world, they've got one of those problems or a problem like those problems.

• 5:14:39Speaker 01

  And so I put those problems in the book and then I brought in a character, Uncle Jake, who's a SEAL, who is going to come stay with, you know, the family for the summer. And he's going to teach this kid how to fight, how to eat right, how to exercise, how to study, and how to swim. And that's the first book. And, uh, it, you know, the feedback of all, you know, of all the things that I'm currently doing, getting feedback from like a 10-year-old kid that says, writes me a letter and says, I did my first pull-up, or I got an A on this math test, or I started training jujitsu and I did my first competition.

• 5:15:22Speaker 01

  Those are the most epic things to receive. I love that, man. Yeah, there's. That's awesome. Yeah, there's not a lot of, uh, oh, there, I should, shouldn't say that. There is a lot of guidance out there in the world right now. Not a lot of it is good guidance, you know? And so the values that kids should be receiving, in many cases, they're not receiving. So I tried to give it to them in a fun way. They're funny books, but they're powerful, too.

• 5:15:52Shawn Ryan?

  When did the first one come out?

• 5:15:54Speaker 01

  I think it was two, I think it was 2017 because I was almost done writing it as Extreme Ownership was coming out.

• 5:16:04Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 5:16:07Shawn Ryan?

  That's pretty cool, man.

• 5:16:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 5:16:10Shawn Ryan?

  You're touching a lot of people. I know you know that.

• 5:16:15Shawn Ryan?

  I would venture to guess that you...

• 5:16:20Shawn Ryan?

  It's hard to, it's hard to, it's hard to grasp that. And, uh, but you're a huge motivation for me. And, um, I hear about you all the time and, and it's, man, I just, I just, it's fucking cool what you're doing. You're pumping a lot of good into the world. You're pumping a lot of what people need into the world, whether that's adults or children and, and, um, man, there's just, there's just, um,

• 5:16:51Shawn Ryan?

  there's just that, that many

• 5:16:55Shawn Ryan?

  great role models for young people to look up to these days, and you're one of them, and that's fucking cool.

• 5:17:01Speaker 01

  Well, like I said, I had some great role models in, in the teams. Um, and left me with some, you know, especially the guys that I lost, you know? Those guys were just great, great role models. And,

• 5:17:19Speaker 01

  you know, um, sometimes people ask, like, if having kids made you more nervous about going to war? And for me, it didn't. Like, I felt like happy that I had kids. And, uh, Mikey and Mark, you know, they, they didn't, they didn't have kids, man. And, uh, it's, you know, it breaks my heart. And luckily, Ryan, you know, Ryan, before he died, he, his wife got pregnant and that's just awesome to see, but, you know, passing on what example those guys were. And, you know, the, the, the character in this book right here, the Warrior Kid book, the main character is named Mark. And there's another book I wrote for kids called Mikey and the Dragons.

• 5:18:03Speaker 01

  And clearly, the main carrier character in that book is named Mikey. And so those guys doing doing my best to make sure that, you know, people remember them and and learn some of those things that represent their values of what they were like as people. So it's an honor to be able to share their memories and and make sure that their their names are are never forgotten.

• 5:18:28Shawn Ryan?

  And this is turning into a movie.

• 5:18:30Speaker 01

  Yes, it is. Yes, the movie has been filmed. And it will be coming out next year.

• 5:18:38Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome. Congratulations.

• 5:18:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's it was pretty, pretty interesting experience to to see and a pretty awesome experience.

• 5:18:48Shawn Ryan?

  Is it an animation or?

• 5:18:49Speaker 01

  Nope, it's real people.

• 5:18:50Shawn Ryan?

  No kidding. Are you in it?

• 5:18:52Speaker 01

  I am in it. Yep.

• 5:18:53Shawn Ryan?

  Fuck, yeah, man. That's awesome.

• 5:18:55Speaker 01

  I'm in it, but I don't play Uncle Jake. Uncle Jake is played by Chris Pratt. So and, you know, Uncle Jake and Chris Pratt, Chris Pratt's just just such a such a great guy. Such, oh, he's unbelievable guy. Just, just. The first time I met him, I was going to UFC with Jack Carr and some of the other actors from The Terminal List. It was like the promotion for The Terminal List. And I didn't know, I didn't know Chris Pratt at all, but I'm kind of like going and, you know, I'm like, oh, you know, I'm gonna meet this Hollywood guy or whatever.

• 5:19:32Speaker 01

  And just super humble, super nice, super cool, self-deprecating humor, and super charismatic. Like, there's a reason why that guy is who he is, you know, funny, charismatic, just cool. And so I was really, really stoked. And what happened was he had, we were, we were kind of connected on.

• 5:19:56Speaker 01

  Through Jared, who was training him to get him in shape for Terminal List. And while he was training him, he was giving him Jocko Fuel. And so he really liked the taste of Jocko Fuel and how it impacted and got him in shape for that movie. And then he also was like wearing Origin clothes because he's a patriotic guy. He wanted American made. Cause now Origin makes jeans and t-shirts and hoodies and boots and we make everything. And he wanted to support America. And then he had a little break in between work, movies. And he was talking to his business people and they're like, hey, uh, you know, you need to find some more sponsors and this kind of thing. And he goes, you know, why am I out looking for sponsors when like, I like Jocko Fuel and I like Origin. Why don't I

• 5:20:40Speaker 01

  connect with Jocko? Cause I'm, he met me one, you know, I met that guy. He seemed nice enough or whatever. So he called me and he said, Hey, man. And I was like in the mountains. And he said, Hey, do you want to do something with Jocko Fuel and Origin? I'm like, hmm. Sure. You know, it's pretty awesome. And so we ended up connecting on that. And as our business teams were working through the business deal to kind of figure out what that looked like. I had been starting down the process of making the movie with a, a guy from Hollywood.

• 5:21:15Speaker 01

  Who had walked into his kid's bedroom and his kids were doing pushups. And he's like, what are you, what are you guys doing? They're like, we want to be warriors. We want to be warrior kids. He's like, what are you talking about? He gave the kids, gave, gave their dad, this guy Ben Everard, the book and said, like, we want to be warrior kids, like this guy. So he reads the book and he's like, oh, I gotta get this turned into a movie. And so he, friend of a friend of a friend searched me out, came to my gym. And I had been offered like to buy the movie rights to Warrior Kid. I don't know, like maybe four or five times, but that's a real weird thing anyways. But he came down to my gym and set up a meeting with me and said, I want to talk to you about this.

• 5:21:58Speaker 01

  And he like got the vision, saw the vision. So he and I had been, we'd gotten the screenplay written from a screenplay writer named Will Staples. So we kind of started moving. Meanwhile, I'm talking to Chris Pratt about Origin and Jocko Fuel, right?

• 5:22:13Speaker 01

  And Ben is like, you gotta get Chris this script. And I'm like, dude, I am not giving Chris the script. I'm like, I'm not doing that because he was like a friend, you know? I'm not like, I mean, I, at the time, I didn't know him that well, but he was like a friend. And I just. You didn't want to ask him for shit. Bro, I don't want to ask him. You know how many people these, these Hollywood? Could you just, could you? Yeah, hey, can I? So I just didn't. I'm like, I'm not giving it to him. Well, my business team had told his business team. Yeah. Well, you know, Jocko's, he's making this movie. And they're like, well, what movie is he making? Well, why don't we know about that? And then was it making a kid's movie, blah, blah, blah, blah? And they're like, well, where's that? Well, he's got the screenplay. So they give my business team gives his business team the screenplay.

• 5:22:59Speaker 01

  And they read it and they're like,

• 5:23:04Speaker 01

  okay, this is good. And they gave it to Chris's film manager. And it's a woman named Julie. And I found this out later. They called Julie Doctor No, because she says no to everything.

• 5:23:19Speaker 01

  And so, but she got this script and she read it. And when I met her for the first time, the first time we, the first big meeting we had about trying to make this happen. She was in the, in the room and she, she met me. She was super cool. She's like, my dad listens to you or my husband listens to your podcast, my kid listens to your podcast. Like she was, she, she knew kind of the background. And, uh, she said, I got done reading this script. I wiped the tears from my eyes and I sent it to Chris and said, you better make this movie. No shit. And then Chris said, he said, yeah, I read the script and I was like, okay, we're going to do this. And then I wish it was as easy as I just said it, because then, you know, the cool thing is, Chris and I shook hands. We're going to do this.

• 5:24:04Speaker 01

  And that handshake encompassed origin, encompassed Jocko Fuel, and it encompassed the movie. And two guys, we shook hands. And that handshake. Held the whole thing together because, bro, you get into this Hollywood and lawyers and ownership and it was crazy. But that handshake and, you know, him being a good person and a man of his word and me being a man of my word. And despite all the chaos, we, we got through and, and now Chris is like a part owner of Jocko Fuel, a part owner of Origin USA. And he plays Uncle Jake in the movie Way of the Warrior Kid.

• 5:24:42Shawn Ryan?

  That is awesome, man. That's a hell of a story.

• 5:24:45Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's, I can't wait for it to come out.

• 5:24:49Shawn Ryan?

  When does it come out?

• 5:24:51Speaker 01

  Sometime next year. You know, it's, it's weird, but the way they make movies, um, and the time it takes for them to then edit and assemble it and then the, the, uh, advertisement of it, the marketing of it takes months and months. And so, you know, they want it to be released in a big season, you know, because they think it's going to be a big movie because it's, it's, I've seen, like, I've seen it, you know, not a fully edited version, but I've seen it and it's, it's awesome. It is, it is awesome.

• 5:25:25Shawn Ryan?

  Congratulations.

• 5:25:26Speaker 01

  It'll make you laugh, it'll make you cry, it'll, it's really powerful.

• 5:25:29Shawn Ryan?

  Very cool.

• 5:25:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:25:31Shawn Ryan?

  Man, that's what I'm talking about, man. I mean, everybody, I don't talk to anybody that's happy about what's going on in Hollywood, what's being pumped into the theaters, what's on Netflix, nobody. And so to see like something like that, you know what I mean, come out, that's like, I mean, that's a feat in itself, you know, and so, and then, and then, you know, congratulations.

• 5:25:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, it was, um, you know, Skydance eventually came in, it's Skydance and Apple. And you're right, it's a movie that we haven't seen this type of movie in a long time, you know, the kind of movie that's gonna, you know, leave that impact on, on, and it's, I'm telling you, like everyone in the family, the parents will love it, the kids will love it. That's.

• 5:26:16Shawn Ryan?

  Old school family, good entertainment.

• 5:26:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 5:26:19Shawn Ryan?

  That you're probably gonna learn something from.

• 5:26:21Speaker 01

  Yes, indeed.

• 5:26:22Shawn Ryan?

  So, yeah, kudos to you. Let's talk about Origin. What's, that's a fucking awesome company.

• 5:26:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, it really is, man. It really is. And, you know, growing up in New England.

• 5:26:35Speaker 01

  In the seventies and eighties, and this is when everything was being sold overseas. All the, all the big corporations just took and gutted all the American factories. Literally took the machines out of them and sold them overseas and started making stuff overseas so that they could make more money for the corporate headquarters. And it just gutted a lot of, a lot of New England. It gutted a lot of the southeast, you know, the big textile mills just got annihilated. And I mentioned this earlier, but when, when I had the podcast and I was talking to people about jujitsu a lot, and people were asking, where should, where should I get a jujitsu gi? And I had seen this company, Origin, this guy Pete Roberts was up there and he was making these gis in America, a hundred percent in America.

• 5:27:19Speaker 01

  And so I started telling everyone, hey, if you gotta get a gi, get an Origin gi. And I started trying to reach out to him to see if like, I could meet him or find out what's going on. And I had never heard back from him. And finally, I was on a Facebook Live one day. And somebody asked me, hey, what kind of gi should I get? And I said, yeah, I get an Origin gi, go to Origin, I think it was Origin Maine at the time, originmaine.com and that guy makes stuff in America. And I said, and by the way, if anyone here can find that guy, I think his, I said, his name is Pete, tell him I want to talk to him. And a woman that was on that, who I since got to know, named Sarah, like used her contacts and got in touch with him and said, hey, there's this guy, Jocko, he wants to talk to you. He's got a huge podcast. And Pete says, what, what's a podcast?

• 5:28:04Speaker 01

  Cause he's up in Maine. That's awesome. So eventually we link up and we have a conversation and I could see, you know, he's just a patriotic guy that's trying to rebuild manufacturing in America. I flew up to Maine. We, same thing, as a matter of fact, we had a steak and we had a handshake and we, we teamed up. And basically you had, he had this ability to manufacture and I had an ability to talk to people. And so those two things together were like a perfect storm. When we joined forces, I want to say there was like six employees at Origin making.

• 5:28:41Speaker 01

  It was something like a hundred garments a week. And right now, we've got almost 500 employees and we make like 15,000 to 20,000 garments a week. So it's a totally different ballgame. And it's awesome because, you know, we have, we had lost the ability to manufacture in America. And the corporations just lied.

• 5:29:04Speaker 01

  Because they say, we can't do this in America. They would literally say, we can't make this in America. We can't do that. This is America. You tell me we can't make things in America. This is what, this is how, this is how we won wars. This is how we won World War II. We made stuff in America. So don't tell me we can't make a pair of jeans in America. Just like they've been saying for the past 10 years that we can't make any of these electronic components in America. Well, look who's coming back now. Right? So it's an awesome company. Got, you know, we're going to continue to grow. It's hard. It's very hard, especially because we're so strict about American made. So, you know, you got to get the cotton. Where's the cotton coming from?

• 5:29:47Shawn Ryan?

  Where's it? Literally everything.

• 5:29:48Speaker 01

  Literally everything. The zipper, the boots, these, these rivets, everything that the sole, everything, the thread is 100% made in America. And if we can't find a component that's made in America, we either make it ourselves or we'll find someone that we can convince to make it.

• 5:30:03Speaker 01

  What you have to do, you have to hold the standard. And it's good to see other people are coming back to America now. Good. Good. Bring it back. This is what we should be doing. This is how we rebuild our country. This is how we rebuild America. And if we don't have the ability to make things, to be self-sufficient, we will lose. So it's a huge part of, it's a huge part of me, of how I feel I can give back to what this country's given me.

• 5:30:34Shawn Ryan?

  You definitely lead by example. That's for damn sure. You put your fucking mouth where your money is and that's awesome. It's hard to find these days.

• 5:30:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, I mean, that's literally what you just said.

• 5:30:47Speaker 01

  We put all of our money back into these businesses, all of it. You know, now we have four factories, like we, we put all of it back in there. And, and we bet on it, you know, this is, this is where we put our, our soul is into these companies. Because we believe in them and we're patriotic. We love America. We love the people we work with. And this is what we have to do.

• 5:31:14Shawn Ryan?

  Once again, congratulations.

• 5:31:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:31:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then out of that spawned Jocko Fuel. Because, you know, one of the guys at Origin, Brian, he had worked in the supplement industry and he was like, hey, you know, we, we can make supplements. We do jujitsu and they had like made some supplements before. And you, how would you feel about making supplements? And I said, if we can make them

• 5:31:43Speaker 01

  good and healthy, yes. I, look, I've been over, I've been overseas drinking Red Bull and Reddit and rip it and whatever frigging tiger's blood they were giving us over there.

• 5:31:55Speaker 01

  And that stuff's just not healthy, you know? And so I didn't, and I, you know, we talk about people that, we talk about like veterans, you know, you were mentioning veterans that are, you know, I know you had some friends that had some bad experiences with drug addiction, alcohol addiction. Bro, I have friends that were drinking five, six, seven, eight monsters a day. That's, that's, that's horrible.

• 5:32:16Speaker 01

  And so we started the, the Jocko Fuel and, you know, we just kept things as clean as we possibly could. And, you know, believe it or not, there's a market for it. Believe it or not, Americans want to be healthy. And we probably timed it very well because as COVID came out and people got more concerned about their health. Uh, people were paying attention.

• 5:32:39Shawn Ryan?

  Is that the latest flavor?

• 5:32:41Speaker 01

  That's one of the latest flavors. Yeah.

• 5:32:43Shawn Ryan?

  Can I give it a, can I try it?

• 5:32:44Speaker 01

  Dude, yeah, yeah, there you go, man.

• 5:32:47Speaker 01

  It's a little iced tea lemonade.

• 5:32:48Shawn Ryan?

  Iced tea lemonade.

• 5:32:59Shawn Ryan?

  It's pretty damn good.

• 5:33:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, and it's uh no artificial sweeteners. We had to, this is the extent that we go. So when you make a drink like this, you've got to put preservatives in it so that it has shelf life.

• 5:33:13Shawn Ryan?

  Mm hmm.

• 5:33:14Speaker 01

  Well, those preservatives, as you might imagine, might not be too good for you. And I wanted to figure it out a different way. And so Brian figured out a way to pasteurize it.

• 5:33:24Speaker 01

  In other words, you like basically cook it. So anything that could be in there that would interfere with its shelf life, won't be in there anymore. It'll be dead.

• 5:33:32Shawn Ryan?

  No shit.

• 5:33:34Speaker 01

  And so we had to find a line, we had to wait like nine months to get a company that, you know, bottles these or cans these to put a line in to pasteurize them so that we could make them as healthy as possible. That's like what we're doing across the board. And yeah, that's what we're doing, man.

• 5:33:53Shawn Ryan?

  That's awesome, dude.

• 5:33:56Shawn Ryan?

  Would, you know, we're kind of wrapping up the interview here, Jocko, but you know, originally I'd reached out to you several months ago and I had saw a tweet that you put out on X about our mutual friend now, Braxton McCoy, about the land grab. And, you know, like, like I had mentioned, we'd never met, but I've always been watching you from afar. And that tweet, basically, all you said, I think, is pay attention to this guy. So looked him up, paid attention to him, saw the sale of public land. And I was like, fuck it, let's bring him in here. Maybe we can have an impact on this. And, you know, collaboratively, we did. They, it got pulled.

• 5:34:40Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 5:34:41Shawn Ryan?

  And.

• 5:34:41Speaker 01

  Huge deal, man.

• 5:34:43Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah.

• 5:34:43Speaker 01

  Thanks for doing that.

• 5:34:45Shawn Ryan?

  It's my pleasure.

• 5:34:46Speaker 01

  Yeah. And thanks to Braxton.

• 5:34:49Shawn Ryan?

  That guy's.

• 5:34:50Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 5:34:51Shawn Ryan?

  What a dude.

• 5:34:52Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 5:34:53Shawn Ryan?

  But, but you know, I just, especially ever since COVID, you know, I think, whatever, everybody knows, you know, things aren't, things aren't going great. And, and you, you, you're just always a, a voice of reason, a stoic, a voice of reason that makes a lot of sense. And, and so I just want to ask you, you know,

• 5:35:18Shawn Ryan?

  What are, what are, what are some of the top things on your mind on what's going on in our country? And, and what are we doing wrong? What do we need to get back to?

• 5:35:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think there's a lot of amplification of emotions and ego that happens through online platforms. So through social media, right?

• 5:35:40Speaker 01

  And

• 5:35:43Speaker 01

  when that happens, when you're not interacting with another human being, but you're interacting with a, you know, a fake human being or a bot or someone that you can actually see or talk to.

• 5:35:55Speaker 01

  And someone that it's very easy for you to say, oh, this person's bad. Or you just ignore what their perspective is, which is what I talked about, whatever, how many hours ago? We started this thing is understanding other people's perspectives and knowing that people see the world differently, man. Like, and there's a reason that someone sees it that way. And instead of just saying the way that they see the world is bad and the way I see the world is good. Or the way they see the world is wrong and the way I see the world is right. Saying like, oh,

• 5:36:33Speaker 01

  it's interesting that they see the world that way. I wonder why.

• 5:36:38Speaker 01

  And as I've said this whole podcast, if you listen to what other people have to say, they're going to listen to you more. If you say, shut up, you're wrong, that they're never going to listen to a word that you have to say. But if you say, hey, what, what, what makes you think like that? And they explain it to you. And instead of you trying to figure out why, where they're wrong, try and figure out where they're right. And in most cases,

• 5:37:02Speaker 01

  in most cases, there'll be some kind of common ground, in most cases.

• 5:37:07Speaker 01

  Hey, are there some people that are just evil? Yeah. If you're ISIS or you're like a communist, it's probably going to be hard to find some common ground. But if you're in between those and I mean, I've

• 5:37:23Speaker 01

  I mean, I guess, like I said, you can say ISIS.

• 5:37:27Speaker 01

  But most people would say, oh, you got family? Do you want your kids to

• 5:37:35Speaker 01

  um, have a nice place to live? Almost all people will say, yeah.

• 5:37:40Speaker 01

  Almost all people will say, yeah, well, I want them to, you know, be healthy. So at least we have that common ground. Now, so if we, if we look for that, as opposed to looking for all the reasons why I should hate you and you should hate me, I just, that's, that's not beneficial. So, and I think social media amplifies a lot of that. And also, social media is not real, right? And so people will say, our, our, our country is so divided. Yeah, on Twitter it is. But I talk to people, I travel all over the country. I have a leadership consulting business. I work with companies of every description.

• 5:38:24Speaker 01

  Energy companies with people out on oil rigs. Construction companies with people pouring concrete. Finance companies in New York where they're doing deals for billions of dollars, all every, and everyone in between. And the vast majority of people that I meet are like, what are they focused on? Oh, yeah, they want to take care of their family. They want to do a little bit better at work. They want to make some more money. They want to be healthy. That like, that's what people are doing. And it's very strange that we forget about that. And, and as I travel around the country and I meet all these different people, I see people that they, they have common goals. They have common goals. And if they have the same common goal as me, how we get there? You know, we'll, we'll try and figure out the best solution.

• 5:39:10Speaker 01

  And I don't see a lot of that. You know, if you say something that I disagree with, I hate you. Hmm. And that's, that's, doesn't, that doesn't bode well. But like I said, I think for the most part, that's online. Now, look, you can go, show me, we can go look at riots in the streets of people that are, you know, actively trying to hurt other people. Like, okay, yep, you're right. That's, there are, there are people that are out there on the fringes for sure.

• 5:39:41Speaker 01

  But that's a small group. There's three hundred and fifty million people in America. You want to show me a riot that has three thousand people in it? Yeah, that's bad, but it's not America. And so I would say, open your eyes, open your ears, listen more, try and understand other people's perspectives. Try and figure out where you can agree with them, which can be difficult.

• 5:40:09Speaker 01

  But usually you can. And if you can listen to what they have to say and ask earnest questions about what they believe, a lot of times you can figure out, oh yeah, there's some common ground. I understand them a little bit better now, and maybe I can, maybe I can move a little bit. And maybe I can help them see something that I see because they actually want to hear my perspective now.

• 5:40:34Speaker 01

  Barking at people and trying to shove your perspective down their throat might feel good at the time, but it doesn't change any minds. So.

• 5:40:45Shawn Ryan?

  It's great perspective. Do you think this is happening because of the absence of the human connection? Because of social media?

• 5:40:54Speaker 01

  Social media certainly amplifies it.

• 5:40:58Speaker 01

  But also, it's the way the algorithm is constructed. The algorithm is constructed. When I see something that makes me emotional, I share it. So your goal is to post something that makes me feel emotional. What's the easiest emotion to trigger in me?

• 5:41:21Shawn Ryan?

  Anger.

• 5:41:22Speaker 01

  It's definitely anger because it's hard to pull at my heartstrings. You don't really know me. You don't know what, like, maybe if I had a dog that I lost, but you don't know that. Or maybe I had, you know, whatever, something happened to me in my past and, oh, that, thank you for sending me that. It's good. Makes me, you know, connect with these emotions. That's hard to do. But how hard is it to make me mad? It's not hard at all. You know, I'm a military guy. You can, you can figure out 20 things out of the gate, right? Figure 20 things out of the gate that can make me mad if I'm a normal person. If I'm a normal, you know, military person. Or if you, if you're a, what is it? You can tell me 15 things right now that will make a conservative mad. And you can tell me 15 things that will make a liberal mad.

• 5:42:04Speaker 01

  And so if you want to get reactions, make people mad. And so that's what the algorithm is set up for. And when you make me mad, I share it. If I have a strong opinion about it, I share it. And so that's what the algorithm does. It just amplifies strong emotions. And strong emotions aren't a good way to make decisions. And the strong emotions become polarizing. And so when people are polarized, they're not listening anymore. And everything I just talked about goes out the window.

• 5:42:37Shawn Ryan?

  There's been a lot of talk about, I mean, I see it all over your comments section. There's, I mean, there's fucking hashtags about a Jocko for president. I mean, do you, do you see yourself ever getting involved in US politics?

• 5:42:51Speaker 01

  I certainly hope not. I don't, I don't, I don't really have any desire to do that. And I don't, I think that, I mean, I think that. I guess it just depends. You know, because every time you think that things will settle down, the pendulum will go swinging back in the other direction and back in the other direction. So I certainly hope not, man. I don't, I don't like politics. I don't think I, I don't think I would like to do that.

• 5:43:18Shawn Ryan?

  I don't think you would like to do that either.

• 5:43:22Speaker 01

  You know?

• 5:43:23Shawn Ryan?

  But I think that's the problem. Is everybody that's in there, that there's nothing else they'd rather be doing than sitting on their fucking ass on the floor of Congress or the Senate or higher.

• 5:43:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, hopefully we get some of these term limits and things like that because career politicians are definitely problematic. And, but, you know, who knows? That means they have to vote themselves out of a job. What are the chances of that?

• 5:43:50Shawn Ryan?

  Slim to none, slim to none. But, um, you know, you get the Warrior Kids series movie coming out.

• 5:44:00Shawn Ryan?

  The upcoming generation is Generation Z. They get a lot of shit. You know, what are your, what are your thoughts on Gen Z? What do they need to be looking out for? What's your advice to them?

• 5:44:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think when I look at it, I forget, it's actually, I think Gen A, Gen Alpha is now, I want to say those are teenagers right now.

• 5:44:20Shawn Ryan?

  Okay.

• 5:44:20Speaker 01

  It's like Zen Alpha, Gen Alpha, and then Gen Z is sort of above them, maybe twenties? You think that's right?

• 5:44:26Shawn Ryan?

  I think Gen Z is, they're, they're, they're, they're entering the workforce and are already in the workforce.

• 5:44:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, man, um, this is America. And you can do, you can, can you do anything you want? Nope. No, you can't do anything you want, but you, you have a lot of opportunity in this country. You know, I was talking to a kid the other day and I was just like, man, he, he's a, in the fire department. And, you know, like, there's a salary cap in the fire department, right? And I said, hey, man, like, save your money. Figure out something else you can do. You, in the fire department, you've got time to do other things. What do you do in your spare time? Uh, right there. I already know you're not doing much. So what can you do?

• 5:45:17Speaker 01

  And I kind of said, you know, like, we're, we're at my gym and I said, look, you see all this? I go, all this was just like an idea at some point. Just a little tiny idea with no true value whatsoever. Nothing. And here you are in a gym. And that's the same for everything that, that I have in my life. Everything was just like nothing. But if you apply it and you execute on it, now all of a sudden they start to grow value. And so, you know, it's, it's always surprising to me that the opportunity that we have in this country. So are you going to get it given to you? No. Is it going to take hard work? Yes. Will you have setbacks? Yes, you will. Yes, you will.

• 5:46:04Speaker 01

  Enjoy it. Enjoy it. Like, this is what, uh, here's a Gen Alpha Tour term lore. You heard this lore?

• 5:46:14Speaker 00

  No.

• 5:46:14Speaker 01

  So like creating lore. So you're, if you look at when you have problems, those problems are how you create lore about what you did with your life. The kind of thing you can tell your grandkids, the kind of things you can tell your kids. Hey, this is what happened. Oh yeah, I remember, I remember

• 5:46:33Speaker 01

  when I had my wife and my four kids in a 934 square foot house. That's lore, man. My kids are kind of fired up for that. Like, there was two girls sharing a bedroom. I took the converted garage and split it in half. One for my son and one for my youngest daughter. That's, that's what we're doing. That's cool. At the time, would I rather had, you know, some mansion? Sure. But that wouldn't have got me no lore. So when you go through challenges, you face things in life, look at it as an opportunity to make some lore for your existence. It's going to be a struggle. But with America, if you work hard, you will be rewarded.

• 5:47:17Speaker 01

  And you're gonna, look, it's not like a guarantee. But if you work hard, you, you have to make sure you're playing the right game too. So I had this conversation with a guy, actually two guys consecutively a few years ago. And they were both hard workers in two totally separate industries. Two hard workers, working very hard and not able to get to where they wanted to go. And they're putting in, you know, 50 hour weeks, 60 hour weeks, 70 hour weeks, like really getting after it. And I said, hey, listen, if that's what's happening, you gotta check what game you're playing. Because if you put a lot of effort, the example I use was soccer and basketball. If you put a lot of effort into basketball,

• 5:48:02Speaker 01

  how many points can you score in a game? 30, 40, 50? You get 50 points in one game as an individual player. If you're playing soccer, how many points can you get in a game? Maybe one or two. So if you realize that you're not getting the points that you want to get, you might have to say, I, I need to get into a different game. So you have to be smart. Hard work isn't rewarded so low. You have to also, you know, detach, look around and say like, okay, is this game that I'm playing? The right game to get where I want to go. So you have to keep that in mind too, but this is America. If you play the game and you play the right game and you play it hard, you're going to end up in a good spot.

• 5:48:46Speaker 01

  Which is all we could ever ask for.

• 5:48:50Speaker 01

  Another great point, D.

• 5:48:55Speaker 01

  I would say, first I'll give you the easy shot, uh, JP Denell.

• 5:49:03Speaker 01

  Next I'll go.

• 5:49:07Speaker 01

  Debbie Lee.

• 5:49:10Speaker 01

  And then I'll go.

• 5:49:17Speaker 01

  Johnny Clark. Johnny Clark. Who was a Marine in Vietnam. And he was a grunt. And. You know, our, our, our special operations guys.

• 5:49:31Speaker 01

  Get a lot of credit. Well deserved. But. Sometimes, oftentimes, and I tried to give as much credit as I could today to our conventional, Army and Marine Corps brothers and sisters that fought. But it's, they don't often get the credit that they deserve. And Johnny Clark wrote a book called Guns Up. In, when he got back from Vietnam and he got wounded three times. The third time he got wounded, when he finally got pulled out, he had lost like 40 pounds, 35 or 40 pounds. Patrolling in the jungle. Damn. For 14 days, 17 days, 20 days at a time.

• 5:50:17Speaker 01

  And he just, he's an incredible guy. It's a legendary book in the Marine Corps.

• 5:50:24Speaker 01

  You know, I, I got to shout out guns up. I did that, that event for the Marine Corps birthday up in Camp Pendleton. And I was able to get a guns up. Semper Fi, happy birthday. Semper Fi, guns up. But Johnny Clark, just an amazing guy and has had a really incredible voyage in his life that I, I think would, I think everyone would be blessed to be able to hear his story. And I think that it would give a lot of people credit. You know, we've, we've, I had the honor of bringing the, a lot of the SOG guys into the forefront for

• 5:51:03Speaker 01

  the things that they did in Vietnam. And most certainly, you know, the most epic guys. But I always want to remember these, these grunts, the infantrymen.

• 5:51:16Shawn Ryan?

  Thank you for saying that. And by the way, you did a fantastic job giving those guys credit. I, I talk about the exact same thing on here a lot about those guys never get the credit they deserve. You talk a lot about special operations, nonprofits. And it's like, yeah, great. We got another one. We don't fucking need anymore. These guys need them. You know, and, and so it's pretty fucking cool you're doing that. And, and that, that actually is a segment that I planned on covering, but it slipped my mind is the SOG guys. I mean, I started interviewing this year, um, a couple of Vietnam guys and got inspired

• 5:52:00Shawn Ryan?

  from what you and John Stryker Meyer are doing over there. And, and, and, you know, and, and, and for me, I mean, those guys, that is, that is the generation that motivated me, that made me want to, want to serve the country, go to war and ultimately, you know, become a SEAL. And was, man, those guys are fucking something, aren't they?

• 5:52:24Speaker 01

  Yeah. As I've told John Stryker Meyer, and I've told the rest of them, like, as a, as a task unit commander, I wouldn't have proved, I wouldn't have approved any of those missions. I was like, yo, you're going out where? Wait, across enemy lines? You got three Americans and four Vietnamese and you're going out there into wherever with no ground support?

• 5:52:51Shawn Ryan?

  You sure about that?

• 5:52:53Speaker 01

  But, uh, those guys were in a different, a different breed.

• 5:52:55Shawn Ryan?

  Yeah, they are.

• 5:52:56Speaker 01

  God bless them all, man. They were just, just epic. And like I said, the, the infantry grunts in, in Vietnam, uh, they were what they suffered through. And you know, it's a small percentage of them, right? Just like, just like any of these wars, there's a small percentage of people that fight them. There's a lot of people in the military, there's a small percentage of people that, that fight those wars. And the grunts in, in Vietnam, you know, even Hackworth, Hackworth who was in, he was at the end of World War II. He didn't really fight in World War II, but he was there for the end of it. Korea, like full on in Korea and Vietnam. And he was said that the Vietnam soldiers had the worst conditions,

• 5:53:37Speaker 01

  which is coming from a guy that was speaking from a place where he could make a statement like that. So the grunts from Vietnam, Johnny Clark, guns up. Yeah, if you could, I'm sure he'd be honored to come on here and share his story of,

• 5:53:52Speaker 01

  of his life, which is, like I said, it's an epic story.

• 5:53:54Shawn Ryan?

  Right on. We'll reach out. Well, Jocko, thank you again for being here, man. And, and, um, like I said, man, it, it, thank you for, for taking that trip with me today. I know that was really fucking tough. Um, but you know, the beginning of this, we prayed, uh, that this would reach the right people and that this interview would, would touch a lot of people. And it's going to, man. And, um, you're just a hell of a guy.

• 5:54:26Shawn Ryan?

  Super thankful that we connected.

• 5:54:28Speaker 01

  It's an honor to get, to be able to share these guys' stories, you know, again, not just my guys, but the, the, the whole team that was there. And, you know, again, I talked about me talking about these little fractions of guys, small group in, in Ramadi, that was my guys, and there was all kinds of those guys. But man, you talk about, there was guys all over Iraq, there was guys all over Afghanistan that were in terrible situations, suffered through so much. And they, they sacrificed for what we have and what we're,

• 5:54:58Speaker 01

  we have the opportunity and that opportunity is based on the sacrifices that these men and women have made. And, you know, you asked me right, right before a break, or right, right as we took a break, you were like, you okay? And I said, yeah.

• 5:55:16Speaker 01

  And I did a podcast with a guy named Tom Fife. And Tom Fife was in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. And he got a Purple Heart in World War II, Korea and Vietnam. And I was talking to him and we talked about World War II and he got commissioned for Korea. And by the time he was in Vietnam, he was a battalion commander. And we were talking through the different types of missions and all good. And um, we got, I, I just was curious about, you know, what, what the operations were like. And I ended up saying, you know, well, how many casualties did you take? As a battalion commander?

• 5:56:00Speaker 01

  And he got choked up.

• 5:56:05Speaker 01

  And I was sitting there watching him get choked up and I was like, oh, this is

• 5:56:11Speaker 01

  50 years ago?

• 5:56:14Speaker 01

  And he's getting choked up thinking about his guys?

• 5:56:18Speaker 01

  And that was a moment for me that I realized that's okay.

• 5:56:25Speaker 01

  And I think

• 5:56:28Speaker 01

  we've been told that there's something wrong with us, but there's not.

• 5:56:36Speaker 01

  Like you get sad when you think about your friends, it's okay.

• 5:56:41Speaker 01

  You get a tear in your eye when you hear the National Anthem? It's all right, man. And you sometimes spend a little too much time thinking about something that you went through? It's okay. And I think it's important for

• 5:56:56Speaker 01

  us, our generation of veterans to recognize you went through some tough stuff. Think about it sometimes. It's hard. And that's okay, man. That's okay. Thank you.

• 5:57:10Speaker 01

  Thanks for having me, man. Appreciate it. God bless you, man. Back at you. Happy Thanksgiving.

• 5:57:16Speaker 01

  Appreciate it.

• 5:57:30Shawn Ryan?

  No matter where you're watching Sean Ryan's show from, if you get anything out of this, please like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can. And if you're feeling extra generous, please leave us a review on Apple and Spotify Podcasts.