311: The Luckiest Man In The World On D-Day. Papa Jake Larson

0:00:00 - Opening 0:02:51 - Jake Larsen 2:06:35 - How to stay on THE PATH. 2:40:34 - Closing Gratitude Support this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/jocko-podcast/exclusive-content

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

• 0:00Jocko Willink?

  This is Jocko Podcast number 311 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening Echo. Good evening.

• 0:09Jocko Willink?

  June 6, 1944.

• 0:13Jocko Willink?

  D-Day. The largest seaborne invasion in history.

• 0:21Jocko Willink?

  Almost 7,000 ships and landing vessels, almost 200,000 naval personnel and 150,000 ground troops.

• 0:31Jocko Willink?

  Attacking the heavily fortified beaches of the Nazis' Atlantic Wall in France.

• 0:40Jocko Willink?

  In doing so, Allied forces suffered over 10,000 casualties, including 4,414 killed in action.

• 0:52Jocko Willink?

  It was a brutal assault, but the beachhead was secured.

• 1:00Jocko Willink?

  However, the fighting was not over, far from it. There was much fighting to be done.

• 1:11Jocko Willink?

  The fight through the Villers-Bocage, the assault on the city of Caen in Cherbourg, the battle to seize the village of Saint-Lô, the fight to close the Faillée's Gap, the liberation of Paris, the advance to the Rhine,

• 1:28Jocko Willink?

  Operation Market Garden, and the Battle of Arnhem.

• 1:33Jocko Willink?

  Battles at Morbih, Overloon, the Hurtgen Forest, and all the way to the Battle of the Bulge in the Ardennes Forest.

• 1:46Jocko Willink?

  The Battle of the Bulge, the largest battle fought by Americans in World War II. December 1944 through January 1945

• 1:56Jocko Willink?

  included a million Allied troops, 500,000 Americans.

• 2:02Jocko Willink?

  Resulted in more than 47,000 wounded, over 23,000 missing, and 19,000 killed in action.

• 2:13Jocko Willink?

  But in the Battle of the Bulge, once again, victory was achieved.

• 2:20Jocko Willink?

  And eventually, victory in Europe was achieved, and then Japan. And that victory was achieved by what is now known as the Greatest Generation.

• 2:32Jocko Willink?

  And it is an absolute honor for us tonight to have one of those men here with us. A man that landed on D-Day. And fought all the way to the Battle of the Bulge. His name is Mr. Jake Larson, also known as Papa Jake. And he is here with us, sir. Thank you for coming. It is an honor to have you here.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  Well, it's an honor to be here.

• 3:01Speaker 01

  Thank you very much for the introduction. And I don't think I'm any one special, but of all the people I was with. And I started

• 3:17Speaker 01

  at a young age, when I was 15, I joined the National Guard and

• 3:24Speaker 01

  I

• 3:26Speaker 01

  I was in Camp Claiborne, Louisiana

• 3:32Speaker 01

  for nearly a year when the Japanese hit Pearl Harbor.

• 3:37Speaker 01

  So I go back a few years. And as I look back, every person that I was with in three different units. Company F, 135th Infantry Regiment. Company H, Headquarters Company, 135th Infantry Regiment. And Fifth Corps. Every person I was with is gone.

• 4:10Speaker 01

  Why I'm here now? Maybe in a few days, I'm gonna be 99 years old.

• 4:21Speaker 01

  Ninety-nine years, I can't believe it myself.

• 4:28Speaker 01

  I don't have aches and pains like other people have.

• 4:33Speaker 01

  No arthritis, no stiff thing. I get up out of bed, I'm wide awake. It's crazy.

• 4:46Speaker 01

  I think my life is governed from above. And I thank those up there who are doing this to me, who are sitting with me right now.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  I thank them for helping me.

• 5:04Jocko Willink?

  Well, sir, you said you don't think you're anything special, which I guess we could argue that point, but I'm not here to argue with you, sir. However, you have to admit that you are lucky, and in fact, you did admit it. You have a book that you wrote, which is called "The Luckiest Man in the World", and I think you're definitely in the running for it.

• 5:28Speaker 01

  Well, I appreciate that, but you have to read the book. I can't sit here and start telling you how lucky I am. But even before D-Day, a month before D-Day,

• 5:49Speaker 01

  if anything was happening that had to do with exercises, I attended firing every kind of weapon because I came from the infantry.

• 6:06Speaker 01

  So I was down to Land's End, shooting 50-caliber

• 6:14Speaker 01

  water-cooled machine guns at toad targets. And then the British had this little exercise out slapped in sands, and they were going to greet us with live fire.

• 6:36Speaker 01

  Pretty interesting there. I was one chosen from G3 to go down there as sergeant. And I was one of others from the landing. There was 400 of us on this landing ship.

• 7:01Jocko Willink?

  And this was, we'll get to that part of the story, but what you're talking about, this exercise that slapped in sands, this was just a preparatory event to get ready for D-Day. And yet, where you were doing this training, there was enemy there. There was enemy vessels.

• 7:18Speaker 01

  There was two E-boats, German E-boats, came in there and sank two of those landing ship tanks right alongside of me and shot up the armed guard on top of the one I was in. And we had no air. We were 400 of us laying there on the floor, suffering from diesel gas and vomiting. I don't know how we made it back to Plymouth, England.

• 7:56Speaker 01

  But when we got to Plymouth, a full bird colonel came out, called us to attention and swore us to secrecy. We could not even discuss this with our superior officers when we got back. And this, I didn't know anything about this or tell anyone about it for 40 years. Forty years that British brought it up. People started calling me a liar because nothing like that ever happened. Well, I was there. I was there. It happened to me.

• 8:40Speaker 01

  And I found out that 400 of those guys that had sank, there were 795 casualties there. 400 was from the 4th Infantry Division, which was supposed to land.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Alongside of us on D-Day.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable to think about now. No mention of these guys. They're all buried over in England. And they were put on the record as being lost.

• 9:29Speaker 01

  Coming to shore on D-Day.

• 9:33Speaker 01

  Crazy, crazy.

• 9:37Jocko Willink?

  And that's one of the many stories you have in this book. And the book is a phenomenal book. And I wanted to kind of go back in time a little bit and just talk about where you came from. And read a little bit from the book. And I'll skip around so everyone that's out there, if you, you have to get the whole book. I'm only going to read some little pieces of it today. But just wanted to talk to you about some of the things that you talk about in the book. You say here, "My birthday in December 1922 had a huge effect on my life because I was younger than most of my classmates who were born earlier in the year. All this meant, however, was that I learned how to get things done." Now, you grew up with seven, seven brothers and sisters.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 10:19Jocko Willink?

  You had Todd, Earl, Evan, Leo, Merle, Eleanor, and Bobby. And you note in here, you say, "I remember asking Leo how I was born. And he told me that a crow shit on a fence post and the sun hatched me out. Whenever I saw a crow, I wondered if it was the one responsible for my birth. Living on a farm, I saw plenty of chickens hatch, so the story made sense to me." So I think your brother Leo had you fooled for a little while.

• 10:49Speaker 01

  Well, he was 10 years older than me. And when you're five and somebody is 15,

• 10:59Speaker 01

  you look for somebody that is going to enlighten you.

• 11:04Jocko Willink?

  Indeed. So you, your parents started off on a homestead in South Dakota and you talk about that some in here, but then eventually Grandma Larson, who lived in Hope, Minnesota, wrote to my father and her husband's, after her husband's death, asking if he could move to Hope to run the farm. My parents packed their bags once again and moved to the 240 acre farm. Aunt Bertha got 80 acres and we got the rest. The downstairs included the living room, along with Pa and mother's bedrooms and the kitchen, which had a wood stove equipped with burners and oven and a 30 gallon reservoir. You say Pa's bedroom was off the kitchen and mom's room was by the living room. They didn't sleep in the same bed, but managed to have eight kids anyways.

• 11:50Jocko Willink?

  And then all the kids' rooms were upstairs.

• 11:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, yes, yep.

• 11:55Jocko Willink?

  And you, you went through, I know we're going through a pandemic right now, but you went through the, or your parents began running the farm after the flu pandemic of 1918.

• 12:07Speaker 01

  And that, that took my only living grandparent at the time. It was my, my grandmother, grandmother Larson. Her husband, my grandfather, died in his 40s. He came in, they said he came in from the barn complaining that he had a pain in his stomach, sharp pain, and they thought a horse kicked him in the stomach. And I was a victim of appendicitis. My oldest brother was a, so it

• 12:48Speaker 01

  was appendicitis that killed him. It broke. And I, I went through that same thing. So.

• 12:58Jocko Willink?

  So growing up on the farm, you say life on the farm was not easy. It was plain hard work. Every member of the family had chores. We'd get up at about 6 a.m., drink hot cocoa, then do chores, like milking cows, caring feed for the cattle, cleaning the stalls, adding in the new straw, separating milk and cream. The milk went to the hogs and the cream went to the house. We poured cream into cans, dropping them into the well to keep them cool. We milked 30 to 32 cows by hand every morning and night. I was about six years old when I started milking cows.

• 13:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's a crazy life, but we didn't think anything about it. It was our life and the neighbors were living the same way we were. So it was pretty natural and we didn't have a lot of extra money for good clothes. If our overalls got a hole in it from wear or from tear. My mother was an excellent seamstress and sewing machine operator. Everything done with a pedal sewing machine.

• 14:14Speaker 01

  So.

• 14:16Jocko Willink?

  So you had all that going on, plus you had turkeys, geese, pigs, horses, ducks, and you planted wheat and corn and barley and oats and alfalfa and soybeans, tomatoes, potatoes, carrots, turnips. You had everything going on.

• 14:33Speaker 01

  We lived out of fruit jars. That was the thing. We lived out of fruit jars and they were picking tomatoes when my brother Bob climbed up on the windmill and maybe he could bring that up.

• 14:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's one of the crazy accidents that you saw when you were growing up. Before we get to that, you had a section in here and the section, this chapter of the book is called "Moonshine." And you say, "Pa made moonshine long before I was born. He was accommodating people who needed to drink but had to seek other means of getting it due to prohibition. I helped bottle the moonshine when I was eight. It was double pure, pretty close to 200%, but he used distilled water to cut it down to 85% alcohol." You tell a story in here about the first time you got drunk, which was around age five.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Coffee punch.

• 15:42Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:43Jocko Willink?

  And it's funny, we're chuckling about it now, but you say in here at one point, it happened. One of dad's so-called, so-called friends turned him in. And he got six months in Austin City Jail for selling moonshine. Though the original sentence was up to two years at Leavenworth Penitentiary. So your dad ended up going into jail for a while.

• 16:04Speaker 01

  Six months. Six months, so celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary.

• 16:13Speaker 01

  In Austin City Jail.

• 16:18Speaker 01

  And I remember. On the way down there, we, we had a Jewett car sedan. My brother Leo was driving. I was eight years old at that time. And.

• 16:35Speaker 01

  My brother Leo was driving. My mother did not drive. But she was alongside, and she had a, a cake, anniversary cake to take along to, to my dad. And she said, Leo said, look ma, we're going a mile a minute now. Wow, that, that was moving 60 miles an hour.

• 17:01Speaker 01

  Man, what, what an advance from the horse buggy.

• 17:07Jocko Willink?

  That's amazing. Uh, you, you mentioned some of these accidents, you know, you mentioned the windmill one, but it's a whole set. You've got a whole section in the book of when you're growing up just called accidents. You had your sister get, get injured by a manure spreader. You had a kid that got hit by lightning. Um, you had one of your brothers hit you in the face with a piece of, you know, they're getting some kind of a rock fight, yeah, a lot of dirt. Uh, you guys were using dynamite when you were kids to blow stumps out of the ground.

• 17:42Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:45Jocko Willink?

  Um, yeah, you talked about in here. So your, your brother Bobby. Uh, there's a windmill out by your house about 60 feet tall.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  Exactly sixty foot.

• 17:58Jocko Willink?

  And there's a plank up forty-five feet. And Bobby was up there. Climbed up there. You're telling him to get down before mom comes home. And, you know, he says, I don't worry about it. I'll be down by the time she gets here.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  And he did.

• 18:15Jocko Willink?

  Well.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  One step.

• 18:16Jocko Willink?

  Again, it's, I guess it's, we're kind of chuckling about it now, but man, in the book here, let me, let me read a little section from the book.

• 18:25Jocko Willink?

  They heard him fall, ran over and brought him into the house, carrying him into the kitchen. His eyeballs were out of their sockets on his sheets and blood shot out of his ears whenever his heart beat. He was out cold. Leo ran to Uncle Charlie's house because he had a phone to call Dr. Erdl, who put his eyeballs back into their sockets and cotton into his ears to slow the bleeding. The doctor said his broken right arm, splinting it with cob, cardboard. I didn't think it could get any worse, but the fall cracked his head too. The doctor instructed us, get ice packs on his head. Elmer Steele had an ice house about a mile from us, so we got the ice from there. Mom packed Bobby's ice head in ice, held on with cloth diapers.

• 19:06Jocko Willink?

  My mom tied him to the bed so he wouldn't move around, feeding him soup and taking care of him. There's no nurse like a mother. He was her baby. For what seemed like a month, he lapsed in and out of consciousness until one day he sat up in bed, asking, where's Jake? I want to play with Jake. And he was okay.

• 19:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:26Speaker 01

  He, he, he lived till he was seventy-five. He, he caught every disease that was known to man. And I, I, I worked right by him and, took, took baths in the same tub, wash tub as he did. He had the measles. I never got them. I, I never had a childhood disease. Until I was thirty-four years old and I got, got the lumps from my son, bringing them home from school.

• 19:58Jocko Willink?

  Ah, yeah, you you got some incredible detail about that stuff in the book, too. Um, you ended up going to, uh, grammar school. You went to, what is it, Lemon Township?

• 20:10Speaker 01

  Le Mon.

• 20:11Jocko Willink?

  Le Mon Township. You say you did homework by the kerosene lamplight.

• 20:16Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 20:17Jocko Willink?

  And that's, you you're talking about how that lamplight would get dirty. You have to clean it before you start your homework.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  The the wick would would cloud the lamp glass. That that was clear glass lamp thing. That that was, it was better than a candle.

• 20:45Jocko Willink?

  I guess the candles can only get so bright. Kerosene lights can get pretty bright.

• 20:49Speaker 01

  Well, a lot brighter than anything else. It's, uh, that we we thought nothing of it. We thought it was a modern age at that time. And we we weren't the only ones. Everybody that around, every farmer, and we were just farmers. Everybody lived the same way. They had to go through the same thing. We weren't any different than anyone else. So if you're not any different, you don't know the difference.

• 21:28Jocko Willink?

  Now, it sounds like what was normal for you, for you guys back then was when you got done with kind of grammar school, when you got done with eighth grade, sometimes you didn't, you didn't continue on with school. You didn't go to high school.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  There was no such thing as anybody going to high school. It was very unusual that that someone would go to high school.

• 21:50Jocko Willink?

  And and for you, you had Mrs. Jeffrey, who sent a note home that said, I recommend that you let Jake go to high school because he's a fast learner.

• 21:57Speaker 01

  That's it, yeah. Oh, do I remember that's like yesterday.

• 22:02Jocko Willink?

  And how'd your dad react to that?

• 22:03Speaker 01

  My dad says, "There's no high school for you. You've got chores to do. You've got chores to do."

• 22:11Jocko Willink?

  And eventually, it was your brother Earl.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  Who was fourteen years older than me, Earl was. And he was a horseman. We had thirty horses at that time. There was no thing as tractors or anything. Everything was done by horse-drawn machinery. And Earl was, took care of the horses and shoot them and did doctoring on them and broke them. From wild horses to working in the harness.

• 22:48Jocko Willink?

  And he ended up telling your dad that he would help with the work so that you would be able to go to school?

• 22:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, he would do my chores for me if I got a chance to go to school. Yes. And he did. I dedicated part of this book to Earl. Because I would not be here today if he hadn't done my chores.

• 23:15Jocko Willink?

  Then the high school that you went to, you had to go and live somewhere else, right?

• 23:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, fourteen miles away and the roads are not open in the wintertime there. It was all done with horses and sleighs, so...

• 23:31Speaker 01

  You can't go fourteen miles every day, morning and night in a sleigh, so you had to stay in town with someone.

• 23:42Jocko Willink?

  And then you ended up, in order to pay for your room and board, you ended up pretty much working for one of your friend's moms who had a little place to stay? And you helped out there?

• 23:54Speaker 01

  One of my lucky breaks again.

• 24:00Speaker 01

  Couldn't go out for any sports, because I had to run home at noon and put the meals on the table. We had eight room and boarders that I...

• 24:14Speaker 01

  Helped take care of and I started high school when I was 12 years old. I graduated 8th grade at 12 and being born in December, I'm still 12 when I start high school in September and it's crazy. People say, "Well..." But when you tell people, "You're born in 1922." I didn't say, tell them that I only had 11 days in 1922. You know, I was born in December 20th. So I was only 11 days old in 1922. They called it

• 24:59Speaker 01

  a full year mentally.

• 25:04Jocko Willink?

  So I gotta go to the book here, this section here, because it kind of starts off your military career. It says, "In 1938, I was walking around town on a Saturday afternoon with my cousin Chick. Outside Roxy Theater, we saw a sign, 'Saturday Matinee, Gene Autry, America's Number One Cowboy.' It cost 10 cents, but we didn't have a penny between us. Chick suggested, 'Jake, let's join the National Guard. They pay $12 every 3 months.' It sounded like a great way to ensure a steady income, but I pointed out, 'Chick, we're 15. You have to be 18.' Chick was a lot taller and heavier set than me. We were like Mutt and Jeff. He answered, 'When they ask how old we are, just say 18. The worst they can do

• 25:49Jocko Willink?

  is kick us out. They aren't going to arrest us.'" So we walked into the office at the armory, and I still remember the stocky captain's name, Captain Hugh H. Soper. He looked at, he looked up from his desk, asking, "What can I do for you?" Sir, we'd like to join the National Guard. I was expecting him to ask how old we were, and I was ready to say eighteen. He looked me in the eyes and asked, "What year were you born?" Wow, I had to think quick. Nineteen twenty-two, nineteen twenty-three? Nineteen nineteen, sir. Chick had it easy, since he was just standing behind me. He just followed suit and answered the same thing. So, Soper stamped out our enlistment papers, and we were in. It was as easy as that, no physical or test required.

• 26:33Jocko Willink?

  I joined Company F, Hundred Thirty-Fifth Infantry Regiment of the Thirty-Fourth Infantry Division, the Red Bulls. So you're fifteen years old?

• 26:43Speaker 01

  Fifteen years old.

• 26:44Jocko Willink?

  Were you, did you look young?

• 26:46Speaker 01

  And, no, farmers looked rough.

• 26:50Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you looked a little bit older.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  We looked older, yeah. And, at that time, the National Guard, this is when Hitler was taken to the Sudetenland, and had just the next Austria, in nineteen thirty-eight. So, our, our country was strictly against war. Strictly against war. They didn't, they didn't want anything to do with going to Europe and messing up with Hitler. Hitler was, was pretty well-known.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  He wasn't known at that time of all the killings and labor camps that he had, where forced labor. That all came out later, and when stuff like that comes out, it's like it is right now. It is hard to believe that a person can be that way. So, the National Guard was trying to fill its units, to get up to full strength, so that in case of war, they had the strength.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  The army was only about a hundred and fifty thousand strong at that time. Army, the whole army in the United States was a hundred and fifty thousand. And, that's when President Roosevelt...

• 28:32Speaker 01

  Put twenty-eight or twenty-nine National Guard units into federal service. That was February 10th, 1941. I had just turned eighteen in December 20th, 1940. And we were put into federal service and shipped down to Camp Claiborne, Louisiana. So, my God, I had nearly a year in there.

• 29:08Speaker 01

  Went through the Louisiana maneuvers, belly up, belly down, in chigger-infested land. Poisonous snakes. What a place. It was a hellhole.

• 29:29Jocko Willink?

  You say in here, "I learned as much about training for war combat as I did about coping with chiggers, ticks, and intense humidity."

• 29:37Speaker 01

  Oh, God, it was terrible. It was terrible.

• 29:41Jocko Willink?

  And so that, you left for that February 1941. And so we still weren't at war yet.

• 29:48Speaker 01

  No.

• 29:48Jocko Willink?

  But you, but the country looked like we were heading in that direction. I know you mentioned in here, one of your friends, Carlos.

• 29:56Speaker 01

  Carlos Bokey.

• 29:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, Carlos Bokey, he told me, "Jake, let's join the Air Force." I asked him why, and he said, "The money is better, and we'll get to be officers." I thought that sounded good. At the time, I was a corporal getting forty-two dollars a month, while a private earned thirty dollars a month. Carlos and I decided to try and enlist. So, we went through the physicals and written tests. The physicals involved an eye exam. Carlos passed his, but they told me I was colorblind. I had no idea. Then I found out my brother Todd was also colorblind. So, you tried to join the Air Force, but you couldn't see colors. They wouldn't let you in, so you stayed in the Army.

• 30:27Speaker 01

  So, I stayed in the Army. And I'm here today. There's another thing. The luckiest man in the world. I turned out to be colorblind. But the Army didn't know that. I had never had a physical for colorblindness. And the Air Corps didn't tell them that I was colorblind. But it's an interesting thing there. If you want me to relate, on Carlos Bokey.

• 31:01Speaker 01

  I will tell you that I am lucky probably that I didn't join the

• 31:11Speaker 01

  get into the aviation. Carlos Bokey died on his graduation day in a flyby.

• 31:24Speaker 01

  Two planes collided and burned. They don't even know which body they ship back to bury.

• 31:35Speaker 01

  Here I am. He was 19 years old at the time. Here I am, going on 99 with a family.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  A family, grandchildren, great grandchildren.

• 31:58Speaker 01

  Can you question why I say I'm the luckiest man in the world?

• 32:07Jocko Willink?

  No questions from my side of the table, sir.

• 32:13Jocko Willink?

  You, so Pearl Harbor happens, December 7th, 1941.

• 32:20Jocko Willink?

  I kind of wanted to portray a little bit of your, let's say,

• 32:27Jocko Willink?

  let's say your rebellious spirit. You had a little rebellious spirit when you were younger. Colonel Schmidt, 135th Infantry Commanding Officer, announced that all the company clerks he had authority over were authorized 15-day furlough. So you were going to get 15 days of leave. Now Captain Erickson told you, hey, get everyone set. Only give people seven days. And you told him, sir, everyone will have to turn around and come home before they even get there. And he said, Corporal, I'm your commanding officer. You will do as you are told.

• 33:01Jocko Willink?

  And so you do what you're told, except for on your papers, you give yourself 15 days of leave so you can get back home, spend some time, then come back. And he just went through the stack of papers and signed them all. And you took your 15 days.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  That changed my life. Captain Erickson was killed in the North Africa invasion. The 34th Division went down to North Africa, Morocco or Algeria there. And he was killed down there. And the company clerk is close to your captain.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  In the meantime, I got transferred into Fifth Corps.

• 33:49Jocko Willink?

  Right. He was trying to punish you by

• 33:52Speaker 01

  He was trying to punish me.

• 33:53Jocko Willink?

  Moving you away from him.

• 33:55Speaker 01

  I was gonna be climbing poles and stringing wire, according to Captain Erickson.

• 34:06Jocko Willink?

  But then you ended up, you ended up going into the G3, into operations.

• 34:13Speaker 01

  I was the only operations sergeant there.

• 34:18Jocko Willink?

  Now, is that because you knew how to type?

• 34:20Speaker 01

  That's because I was an expert typer.

• 34:24Jocko Willink?

  Where did you learn how to type?

• 34:25Speaker 01

  I had one year of typing in high school.

• 34:31Speaker 01

  Elective. I was the only boy in a class of 30.

• 34:37Jocko Willink?

  It ended up being an extremely important skill for your whole life.

• 34:41Speaker 01

  It changed my life.

• 34:44Jocko Willink?

  Being able to type. You say here, being part of the G3, so G3 for people that don't know, this is operations. These are people that are coming up with the plans and directing how these operations are gonna go. And you say here, man, being a part of G3 was a whole different world. Instead of reporting to a captain or lieutenant, I had to report to a full-bird colonel or a lieutenant colonel.

• 35:07Jocko Willink?

  You said, "Once I was part of G3, I met who would become one of my closest friends while in the service, Corporal Madison Rich. He was from New Jersey and was a skilled typist just like myself." You said, "When I had free time," by the way, this is when you're, I fast forward past this part, but this is when you're overseas, you're now in Ireland and England, and you guys are preparing for the invasion. You say, "When I had free time, I'd hang out with my other pals Corporal Cray and Staff Sergeant Robert Jeffrey. Cray was the cockiest Irishman I ever met while Jeffrey was subdued. I was only 19 at the time, and they were both much older than me. Because of my slight stature, they nicknamed me Bony Ass."

• 35:49Speaker 01

  Well, I was 5'10", weighed 120 pounds.

• 35:59Speaker 01

  Luckiest man in the world.

• 36:02Speaker 01

  When I landed on D-Day, we were under a lot of fire. I had two of those MG42 machine guns shooting at me. And they only shoot 1,200 rounds a minute, each one. So when you double it, it's quite a thing. But the Germans were not used to shooting at toothpicks, so I made it through.

• 36:36Jocko Willink?

  Before you get to D-Day, you have one incident that I just, I had to bring up because it is another thing that had a big impact on your life. You were taking some pictures, and there was a major that you were with.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Major Ridgeway.

• 36:52Jocko Willink?

  And you say, "He had gotten out of his Jeep while he was talking to me, so I sat down in the Jeep and handed him my 35mm Argus camera. Here, Major, can you take a picture of me sitting in your Jeep?" What's funny about the picture is that it was the only Jeep I ever sat in while I was in the service. I sent that picture along with other pictures to my mother. My dad looked through them and picked the picture of me sitting in the Jeep to bring to the photo news. They liked it well enough to put in their paper, adding a blurb about Corporal Jake Larson in North Ireland. I was unaware of it at the time, but that picture being published in the paper would lead me to the love of my life, and we'll get to that later.

• 37:35Jocko Willink?

  At this point, now you guys are, and again, I'm gonna fast forward a little bit, but now you leave to go to Portsmouth to start the planning for

• 37:44Speaker 01

  Portsmouth.

• 37:45Jocko Willink?

  Portsmouth, okay. I'll, I'll say it that way. So you guys go to Portsmouth to, uh, start the planning. You're promoted to sergeant and, and this is where you, you participate in that operation or the training operation at Slapton Sands, which you talked about earlier. Just an unbelievable travesty. You go on this training mission. These, these, these ships are filled with soldiers to practice D-Day and the Germans actually sank some of those ships, two of those ships. 795 people killed before D-Day even happened during a training operation.

• 38:29Speaker 01

  One month before D-Day.

• 38:33Jocko Willink?

  And they, the Americans that died during that, they reported, they told the, the families that they died during D-Day.

• 38:41Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah.

• 38:46Jocko Willink?

  And that brings us to D-Day. And I just wanna read some of this and, and just get your feedback on it. Um, D-Day was supposed to be June 5th, so all the troops were loaded into ships the day before, including me. The sea was getting rougher and rougher, so they called it off and we had to return. They had a British weather master who told Eisenhower there would be a break in the weather in the morning, so he decided to have the invasion go on June 6th. By the time of the change, I hadn't slept for 72 hours, just running on adrenaline. There are 7,000 ships on the move with 158,000 troops and our destination about 170 miles away. Everywhere you looked, there was a ship and they were going to different

• 39:31Jocko Willink?

  beaches. Everything was programmed. I went in with the members of the 1st Infantry Division on the USS Ancon, which was the command ship. About eight miles from shore, the landing craft pulled up alongside us, so we had to climb down rope ladders into the boat carrying 75 pounds of gear and our rifles. Then we dropped into the landing craft, which was bobbing up and down in three to four foot waves.

• 40:00Jocko Willink?

  You know, we see images produced by computers to simulate what it looked like with all those ships on D-Day. That must have been an incredible sight.

• 40:13Speaker 01

  That's the most unbelievable thing. It's even hard to describe. How do you describe that one? Every place you look, there's a ship, and behind it, another ship, and behind that, more ships, and more ships, and more ships. How do you crowd 7,000 ships into a small area like that there? And I'm on the Ancon. That's where Eisenhower was on. The

• 40:50Speaker 01

  commander, the little farm boy from Hope, Minnesota, only graduated high school. And I'm a sergeant, man. I worked on the invasion with Colonel Hill. I got the Bronze Star for what I did, worked on. I didn't even know I was gonna get it. But it's crazy.

• 41:26Jocko Willink?

  Did you guys, since you were part of the planning, you must have had very good awareness of what you were going into in terms of the enemy positions?

• 41:37Speaker 01

  Oh, yes.

• 41:39Jocko Willink?

  It seems like you would have known even more what you were facing than the normal soldiers who maybe weren't as involved in the planning.

• 41:46Speaker 01

  I was not a normal soldier at that time. I was the highest classified person you can get. I was top secret bigot, B-I-G-O-T. Most people don't even know what bigot is. But that's the highest rating you can get. Think of it. Little farm boy from Hope, Minnesota.

• 42:14Speaker 01

  When I told people that afterwards that I was classified top secret bigot. Yeah, what's that? You know, it didn't mean anything to them.

• 42:28Jocko Willink?

  And this was your first combat operation was D-Day?

• 42:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. It was the first for all of our troops.

• 42:38Jocko Willink?

  What was the, what was the fear level for you?

• 42:42Speaker 01

  There was no fear level. We wanted, we'd been over to England then for two and a half years. We'd been over there planning this thing and we wanted to get it done. Get it done. They kept putting it off and putting it off. And finally, when we got to go, the weather wasn't very good. But in the long run, the weather kind of helped us. It took the Germans off guard.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  Even Rommel, who was guarding that part, went home to celebrate his wife's birthday.

• 43:30Jocko Willink?

  You say here, "I was the last off, last one off the ship when they dumped us out too far. We marched off the ramp into the water and all walked in a line. I made my way into the icy water that reached up to my chin, holding my rifle over my head, but I wasn't thinking about the water's temperature. I just wanted to get through it alive. The section of shore I landed on was known as Easy Red. We were supposed to be able to walk through the surf and find bomb holes, which would be shelters for us. The air corps totally missed Omaha Beach, so there was no protection for us. Those beaches were all mined. I would find out later in life that there were millions of mines on that beach. If you stepped on one of those babies, it was a quick trip to heaven. I was more afraid of stepping on a mine than being shot at.

• 44:16Jocko Willink?

  I ran toward the cliffs, making sure to step in the same footprints as the man in front of me made. What in the hell am I doing here? The thought pounded in my head as I dodged bullets, determined to stay focused on reaching the safety of the cliffs. How did a simple farm boy from Minnesota land on Omaha Beach on D-Day?"

• 44:38Jocko Willink?

  Machine guns were firing in all directions with bodies everywhere. Those MG42 machine guns shot 1,200 to 1,500 rounds per minute. I ran and dodged, finally making my way to a sand berm. The bullets were blasting off the berm as I ducked into it. I wasn't going to get out of that hole no matter what. I smoked at that time and I had my cigarettes in this plastic bag so they wouldn't get wet. Unfortunately, I didn't have a match. I remember then that I started shaking. Before that moment, I had felt no fear. I turned to my left and saw a soldier lying down with his back toward me. I called out, "Hey buddy, do you have a match?"

• 45:22Jocko Willink?

  Then I noticed there was no head underneath the helmet. That got me moving. "Jake, move," I told myself. I got up and dashed for the bottom of the cliff wall about 200 yards away. I remember saying to myself, "Jake, what the hell are you doing here? You're running for your life so nobody can shoot at you, but everybody can shoot at you." I only weighed 120 pounds soaking wet, so that was an advantage since it's hard to shoot at a toothpick. After what seemed like an eternity, I made it to the cliff wall where I was safe. From what I've read, over 2,500 died at Omaha Beach that day.

• 46:03Speaker 01

  That was on Easy Red where I went in.

• 46:16Speaker 01

  I looked back, I went back to Omaha Beach on the 75th anniversary of D-Day. And I had five different TV stations. BBC, France 1, France 2, CBS, NBC.

• 46:46Speaker 01

  Waiting at the cemetery of an Omaha Beach cemetery. I have never been in a military cemetery at the time. And they said, "We want you to walk out there and look at one of the tombstones and stand there while we take pictures." I walked out there. I came, I told you, I came in with the first, with part of the first division, the 16th Infantry Regiment. And the first tombstone I landed, looked at,

• 47:30Speaker 01

  said, "Here, this private from the 16th Infantry Regiment was buried there." I'm standing there with my hat on and coat. I didn't know, you don't salute that thing. So I raised my right hand with my hat above my head. That picture went viral all over the world.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  It's like the ghosts of those guys buried there that day were down there watching me. And when I raised my hat in a salute to them, it was like a response that I got from the guys. After all, I'm not the hero. Those guys that are buried there are the heroes. I made it through because they put their life up for me.

• 48:47Speaker 01

  I keep telling people, "I am not the hero. I'm a here-to, I told you." Yeah, I changed from hero to here-to. They said, "What is a here-to?" I said, "I'm here to tell you the story of my life, and it's unbelievable, but I'm here because of that." And that's what's got me through life.

• 49:18Jocko Willink?

  So, when you got to the cliff, and now, you're, so you're, I guess you're a little bit out of the enemy fire, or is there still enemy fire coming at you?

• 49:28Speaker 01

  They kept firing down underneath themselves.

• 49:31Jocko Willink?

  Got it. But you still have to push through barbed wire, and the guys start getting out the Bangalore torpedoes, right?

• 49:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, and that was a dangerous one, because the guy that shoved those Bangalore torpedoes up, two of them were killed right there. But as quick as they went off, and we started to go up above, and got behind the Germans, they have no protection. They cleared out fast. So it didn't take long. And then we got to set up, I have periods of total blankness, and this is one of them. The next thing I knew, we had set up the command post, I don't even remember setting it up.

• 50:17Speaker 01

  And I was digging a foxhole with Corporal Rich. And that's a kind of an interesting thing, too.

• 50:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, so you're setting up this command post, you don't remember a lot of it, and you say, "I was relieved to see my good friend Corporal Madison Rich, who arrived in a different landing craft than I." That right there must have been amazing, to see all these guys get killed, and you happen to, one of your other friends from a different landing craft, happens to make it.

• 50:54Jocko Willink?

  He stayed in the foxhole next to mine and I had my litter down in my foxhole. A litter was just a canvas cloth fastened between two removable sticks on either side. I slept on top of it to keep moisture and dampness off my body. We didn't have sleeping bags. We made our own with wool blankets provided, calling them fart sacks. Which by the way, we still called sleeping bags fart sacks in the military when I was in. Uh, once I found out, I had to work that night. I told Corporal Rich, "You can sleep in my foxhole tonight. I've got the litter in there." "Thanks Jake, I got my fart sack all made up now. I'm not changing it." Nevertheless, he laid his M1 rifle on my litter and went to sleep. That night, the Germans wanted to see what we were up to.

• 51:39Jocko Willink?

  So they sent over reconnaissance planes, dropping flares to take pictures after midnight. They lit up the beach like daylight. Our anti-aircraft started shooting it up at those planes. Well, what goes up must come down. So when Matty Rich got up in the morning, he went to pick up his rifle in my foxhole, only for it to fall in two pieces. The shrapnel from our men shooting at the Germans had hit his rifle during the night. Talk about luck. They had called on me to work that night and he's fortunate he didn't take me up on my offer of sleeping there. So there you go.

• 52:16Speaker 01

  It seems like it's a story of my life. To be in the right place at the right time.

• 52:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so we're in your bed where you were going to sleep that night. The rifle that was sitting on your bed was snapped in half.

• 52:34Speaker 01

  Fell in two, yep. And if you ever saw a M1 gran, that's a pretty hefty gun. Pretty hefty rifle. It weighs eight pounds. So, uh, it had to take some kind of a direct hit to be able to fall in two.

• 53:00Jocko Willink?

  And during this time, you're supposed to be working during the day and then getting some sleep at night. But what's happening for these first five, six, seven days, you're working during the day and then at night you all have to move. So you're not getting any sleep at all.

• 53:15Speaker 01

  Well, I, the action all took place during the day. Very little action during the night. So when I'd try to sleep during the day, the Germans would tell us. That was right at Saint Lo then was the place we were trying to capture. They told us it was going to take a few days to capture. Took us a month. Took us a month. The Germans don't like to

• 53:56Speaker 01

  give up. And they are great fighters, man. We had our hands full. But

• 54:05Jocko Willink?

  We, we covered a book on this podcast called The Clay Pigeons of Saint Lo by Glover Johns, who was one of the officers that, that fought there. And, and so you were there for that. You say about a month after D-Day, we were supposed to capture a little town called Saint Lo. We moved from the cliffs to the hedgerows of the town. We planned to capture it without delay, but it took us about a month because the Germans put up such stiff resistance. We put out orders and then different units under our command carried them out. At that time, other infantry units had landed on D-Day with us and those troops were under our control. We would storm them or open fire. Civilians didn't count. They didn't factor into the

• 54:46Jocko Willink?

  equation. You have to take that position in war. If they're in the way or on the road, you just rush them off. That's why so many civilians were killed during the war.

• 54:57Jocko Willink?

  We tore the hell out of Saint Lo. I spent most of my time during the daylight thinking of getting some sleep, but again, we were always on the move. We were captured, after we captured Saint Lo, I went to bed in the morning and woke up at 2 a.m. unable to remember how I got there. I had been numb, thinking only of sleep, sleep, sleep. Each soldier, each soldier carries a tent shell, half tent shell. So I put my shelter half in a ditch and there was three feet high next to the road. If you don't have another soldier with you, you have to make do with you half a tent. I was thinking about brushing my teeth and shaving. I noticed another soldier walking around carrying something. I took the liner out of my helmet and poured some water into it, so I could brush my teeth.

• 55:40Jocko Willink?

  And was just about to shave when one of the soldiers asked, "Hey, what the hell are you doing here?" I explained, "I'm going to shave. I work at night. I just woke up." He said, "This is supposed to be all clear. There's a 155 meter, uh, shell, millimeter shell laying on the road and we're sandbagging it to detonate it." So there you were, going to brush your teeth and there's a, an exploded shell. You happened to run into these guys.

• 56:04Speaker 01

  Not, not any close, not any farther away than you and I sitting right now.

• 56:11Jocko Willink?

  I don't think, if that thing went off, I don't think even the luck would get you through that one.

• 56:15Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 56:16Jocko Willink?

  Not the 155.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  My luck held though.

• 56:19Jocko Willink?

  Your luck held.

• 56:24Jocko Willink?

  Here's another one, and then another, another piece of evidence for the luckiest man in the world. Colonel Hill asked me what I was doing. I said, "I was thinking about getting something to eat." He said, "I got a Jeep coming up from the motor pool and I'll, I'll, I'd like to, you to ride along with it to look at our next command post. Check it out." For Colonel Hill, I would do anything. The guy saved, saved my life a few times by putting me in charge of the night shift. I responded gladly, sir. We had a hand drawn map of the area. A private drove the Jeep as I looked at the map. Suddenly I realized we missed the turnoff. So I said to the private, I think we missed the turnoff. It was, there was a ditch there. The culvert indicated the road's entrance. So, just as he got the Jeep turned around,

• 57:08Jocko Willink?

  another Jeep turned down that road, hit a landmine, and blew up. That was the place we were supposed to turn. Somebody was looking out for me, I swear. I went, we went back to Colonel Hill reporting the incident. He uttered, "You're like a cat with nine lives."

• 57:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You're using up some of those nine lives in these events.

• 57:39Speaker 01

  Didn't get a scratch. Didn't get a scratch. Look, I came up to the the Battle of the Bulge and I was one of, one of the first ones.

• 57:52Speaker 01

  After the Battle of the Bulge. Think of it, I'm one of the first ones to get leave, to come home before the war is over. Forty-five days. Unbelievable lucky. But I, I had a, it was on the point system.

• 58:11Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 58:12Speaker 01

  And I had a hundred and twenty-seven points.

• 58:16Jocko Willink?

  And you were at the top of the list.

• 58:17Speaker 01

  I was at the top of the list.

• 58:19Jocko Willink?

  Cause the points were based on how long you've been there.

• 58:22Speaker 01

  In the service and how long overseas and... Yeah.

• 58:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and before you even get to the Battle of the Bulge, shortly after that, we moved through a narrow valley called the Failes Gap.

• 58:35Speaker 01

  Failes.

• 58:36Jocko Willink?

  Failes Gap, where we had a German army partially trapped. The English came in from the west while we came in from the southeast. Part of Patton's troops was there, plus the five corps. We captured fifty thousand German soldiers and killed nearly that many. We bombarded them from three sides. When we got there, the shooting was over. That's the first time I ever walked over dead people and around dead horses. When we landed on Omaha Beach, I had never stepped over any of our soldier, soldiers. That's like stepping on your brother. I didn't get the same feeling walking over the enemy.

• 59:19Jocko Willink?

  What was the, what was the, um,

• 59:23Jocko Willink?

  what was the feeling about Patton? Did you guys all know who, was he as legendary back then for you guys?

• 59:29Speaker 01

  Well, Patton,

• 59:34Speaker 01

  First Army was the one that landed on D-Day. First Army and Fifth Corps and Seventh Corps were the two corps under First Army. Now Fifth Corps had Omaha Beach, all of Omaha Beach. I was the only operations sergeant in Fifth Corps, G3. So, think of it, this little farm boy from Hope, Minnesota,

• 1:00:14Speaker 01

  miniscule police, 100 occupants there.

• 1:00:21Speaker 01

  Farmers was in charge of that every night. Think of that. How is that possible?

• 1:00:33Speaker 01

  Because Earl volunteered to do my chores for me. And I got a, I took typing one, one year. It's crazy when you look back at it. It's, it's plain crazy.

• 1:00:51Speaker 01

  It's hard for me to understand how this, it's hard for me to be here. I'm gonna be turning 99. I cannot believe that I am here. I'm, I'm the only one left of all the people I was in the service with. There's nobody else that I was in with alive. And sitting here, gonna be 99, without an ache or a pain in my body. How is that possible? There's got to be an answer somehow. And I say, "There is a God." That's my favorite saying.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  "There is a God."

• 1:01:37Jocko Willink?

  And he certainly looks out for you, that's for sure.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  If he's been taking care of me, great.

• 1:01:44Jocko Willink?

  The next thing that you did was the capture of Paris, the liberation of Paris. What was that like?

• 1:01:54Speaker 01

  There was another thing, the Free French. When we came in, the Germans had gave up. The generals called it off. He wasn't fight back. But the Free French came in there and while the Germans were evacuating, they came in there and threw those Molotov cocktails into their trucks and everything. But if you'd have been treated like the French were treated for four years, I have a different

• 1:02:37Speaker 01

  view, see, where I'm coming in. I wasn't subjected to any of the Germans or anything. We were there just to fight them. So it was kind of hard for me to realize that these people suffered, suffered. There were thousands and thousands of them who were drafted and put into the army with the Germans.

• 1:03:16Speaker 01

  Being an American and with the liberties that we have, it's hard to transform your opinions when you're being killed and shot at and abused.

• 1:03:37Speaker 01

  I just don't know how to put it.

• 1:03:41Jocko Willink?

  And you as a farm boy from Hope, Minnesota, ended up having a pretty nice office once you got in the

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's General, Marshal Patahn's office. How did things like this happen? It's crazy.

• 1:04:04Jocko Willink?

  So Marshal Patahn was the guy in charge of the Vichy French?

• 1:04:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, the Vichy.

• 1:04:12Jocko Willink?

  The Vichy French.

• 1:04:14Speaker 01

  He was the one that led the French through the First World War.

• 1:04:20Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 1:04:21Speaker 01

  And I sat at his desk and it was loaded with medals of all kinds.

• 1:04:31Speaker 01

  Now, the French gave me the Legion of Honor.

• 1:04:39Speaker 01

  In 2014, they announced that I would have the Legion of Honor. And in 2015, February, we went to San Francisco to the French, where their officials were. And there was 10 of us that sat there and we were each presented with the Legion of Honor. Besides the Legion of Honor, I was the only one to receive

• 1:05:26Speaker 01

  the French Retired Soldier Badge. I'm an honorary French Retired Soldier.

• 1:05:40Speaker 01

  That's that little red, white, and blue one right there.

• 1:05:47Speaker 01

  It's one of the, I'm proud of that.

• 1:05:55Speaker 01

  Beyond being proud, I'm mostly proud to be American. But the French recognized that I had been working for them and gave me that along with the Legion of Honor.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  I don't know of any other soldier in the American Army that has to receive that honorary French soldier.

• 1:06:26Jocko Willink?

  That's definitely an honor.

• 1:06:30Jocko Willink?

  And even as, you know, you say the Germans kind of gave up Paris, but it wasn't over yet.

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:37Jocko Willink?

  And you had even more close calls. You say this here, "After we moved out of Paris, we ended up in Luxembourg. Since I worked nights, after I'd get some rest during the day, I'd have some free time to walk on the cobblestone streets. We were in a valley and I came to an intersection at the foot of a hill. I had just started crossing the road when an English Spitfire and a German Messerschmitt right on its tail shot over the hill, the Messerschmitt firing its cannon at the Spitfire. When they came down the hill, the cannon shot right in front of me, shattering the cobblestones into pieces. I landed on my face in the cobblestones and got the hell out of there. Once again, it was unbelievable how lucky I was."

• 1:07:27Speaker 01

  I say this, "Close only counts in horseshoe and grenades."

• 1:07:36Jocko Willink?

  You mentioned the Battle of the Bulge earlier. "On December 16th at 2:00 in the morning, I was on duty when a corporal drove up to the command post, came in and reported. He was so excited that he saluted me, a staff sergeant. He declared, 'I'm at guard post number six.'" And of course, we got out the operations map so I could see right where he was, just south of Monchou. Monchou?

• 1:07:56Speaker 01

  Monchou.

• 1:07:58Jocko Willink?

  He told me that the German paratroopers were coming down. I asked, "When you saw them coming down, what did you do?" "I got in the Jeep and came right here."

• 1:08:07Jocko Willink?

  So that was the beginning of the Battle of the

• 1:08:09Speaker 01

  That was the beginning.

• 1:08:12Jocko Willink?

  And the, uh, the Germans put, had, had POWs, American POWs, took their uniforms and then went out into this area and started changing the road signs and doing, they were spying and stuff. And you talked about the fact that if you caught those people, when those people were caught, they were shot.

• 1:08:35Jocko Willink?

  No trials necessary for those men.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  They were killed on the spot.

• 1:08:40Jocko Willink?

  Killed on the spot.

• 1:08:43Jocko Willink?

  And then the German tanks started to roll through.

• 1:08:50Speaker 01

  Malbey, they lined up all these guys that were artillery observers.

• 1:09:01Speaker 01

  They caught, I think a hundred and eighty, eighty of our, our guys were, were caught there and lined up in the ditch with their hands over their head. And it was snowing at the time when, when the German tanks rolled by and Colonel Pfeiffer

• 1:09:23Speaker 01

  of the, who led the Germans at that time, ordered those tanks to fire their machine guns at these guys in the ditch.

• 1:09:36Speaker 01

  That's, that's called the Malbey massacre.

• 1:09:40Jocko Willink?

  Now, did you hear, how long did it take for you to hear about that?

• 1:09:42Speaker 01

  Oh, about an hour, about an hour. That word got back fast. We, we were, we were cut off from the first army when they went to there. And we, we, we ended up being part of General Montgomery's 21st Army Group.

• 1:10:14Speaker 01

  And talk about luck.

• 1:10:19Speaker 01

  Patton was, they ordered to get help from Patton from the 3rd Army. That was a long ways away, but by the time Patton got there, Montgomery, we were part of Montgomery's 21st Army Group. Think, we're the 5th Corps was the only one that was part of Patton's 21st Army. And we had the 1st and 29th, I think, or 29th or 28th Division.

• 1:10:58Speaker 01

  Either one, one of those others at the time. It slipped my mind.

• 1:11:06Speaker 01

  My mind is pretty full of stuff, but I can't tell you for sure which one. But anyway, we put the squeeze on the Germans from two sides. They had nowhere to go, except drop their weapons and march out.

• 1:11:27Jocko Willink?

  And they ran out of fuel too in their tanks.

• 1:11:30Speaker 01

  They left all their vehicles right there. They walked out.

• 1:11:36Jocko Willink?

  I was reading some history about this. And I guess 6 different occasions, this was Hitler's plan was to push into, you know, to push, push and split. Yep, to push through there. And 6 times, his generals objected to the plan and said, this isn't a good idea. We shouldn't do this. And 6 times he said, no, we're doing it anyways. Not listening, he was not listening to his, his, his subordinates as they tried to push back.

• 1:12:04Speaker 01

  Did he ever?

• 1:12:04Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:12:05Speaker 01

  He just fired him.

• 1:12:09Jocko Willink?

  So as they pushed back and that, that battle, the Battle of the Bulge lasted almost a month and a half, something like that.

• 1:12:17Speaker 01

  Well, I got out of there December 31st.

• 1:12:22Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 1:12:24Speaker 01

  That's when I got 45 days leave.

• 1:12:30Speaker 01

  I'll tell you the story of that.

• 1:12:35Speaker 01

  December 31st.

• 1:12:39Speaker 01

  Colonel Hill called me in and said, I got a furlough for you.

• 1:12:47Speaker 01

  You're gonna go home for forty-five days.

• 1:12:52Speaker 01

  And

• 1:12:55Speaker 01

  Oh my God, I couldn't believe it. I had rifles and stuff under Colonel Hill's bed. He had this truck that his bed and everything was in that. And it was a good place to store stuff, so he didn't mind sleeping over. But I left that stuff over there. When I was going just on furlough, see? I thought I'd be back to pick that up.

• 1:13:32Speaker 01

  So it took me fifty-one days to get home.

• 1:13:44Jocko Willink?

  And And part of that was transporting wounded, right?

• 1:13:48Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah. From La Harve, yeah, from La Harve to Portsmouth.

• 1:13:57Speaker 01

  I think two or three shiploads of wounded.

• 1:14:02Jocko Willink?

  So you, as you tried to leave, there's, like we mentioned, like I mentioned earlier, there was forty-seven thousand wounded during the Battle of the Bulge. So instead of the ships being able to take people home on furlough, you ended up on these ships, getting people transported where, back to England?

• 1:14:21Speaker 01

  To, yeah, to Portsmouth thing on Portsmouth thing on, that's where we'd stop and unload the ships again. And then go back and get another load, see? And here, I'm supposed to be headed across the Atlantic. And

• 1:14:44Speaker 01

  But think of this.

• 1:14:48Speaker 01

  When I do get home, when I do get home and spend my forty-five days at home, I go up to Fort Snelling and a captain calls me in. He says, Sergeant, ten minutes, ten minutes ago, I got a call from the Pentagon and they told me that I, they, they, they let me, I could stay home or go back to Germany. My God, after three years over there, there's no way I'm going back to Germany.

• 1:15:32Speaker 01

  So all, all the relics that I had under Colonel Hill's bed, they were given up. Don't know what happened and I don't miss one of them.

• 1:15:46Jocko Willink?

  So that, that's a, as you, as you get home, I can't even imagine going from that many months of direct combat and just getting on a ship, getting back to America. What was it like when you got home, especially before you found out that you were going to get to stay home?

• 1:16:10Speaker 01

  Oh, my, my, my mother was dying from a heart disease called leakage of the heart. It was a valve in there. And I, I never thought I'd see her anymore, but she was still living. And she lived for five years after that. She saw her grandchildren, two of her grandchildren at that time. And I say there is a God.

• 1:16:49Speaker 01

  But, but two weeks after my mother passed away, Dr. Hoffnagle in Washington DC invented this valve that would have cured her.

• 1:17:05Speaker 01

  But you can't turn back time. It's like crying over spilt milk, see. You can't pick it up. It's done.

• 1:17:24Jocko Willink?

  So was there anything else about the war when you were there? Like on a day-to-day basis? How did you handle that? How did you face? You know, you said when you were going to D-Day, you weren't really afraid. Then, once you were getting shot at behind this berm.

• 1:17:44Speaker 01

  I asked, "What the hell am I doing here?" If you're in that position, you want to be able to fight back. Well, there's no way you can fight back there. They're protected from fire and you have to know exactly where they are, what little hole they're shooting out of. And it's pretty hard to determine when you're running for your life and dodging. It's a circumstance you don't ever want to be in. But you're not the only one.

• 1:18:27Speaker 01

  Mind you, you've got all the guys around you that are doing the same thing. And some of them being shot, that'll spur you on a little bit, too. When somebody gets shot. Puts a little bit of umpteenth in you, but...

• 1:18:49Jocko Willink?

  So when you get back, and now you find out that...

• 1:18:56Jocko Willink?

  That you, they're gonna discharge you. You're done with the army. You're done with the army. Uh, you say that here, you say, "I was done." That was April 13th, 1945, and the war ended in May. I was just 22 years old with seven years of soldiering under my belt. It's crazy when you think about that. So, that's it. The war's over for you.

• 1:19:21Jocko Willink?

  And now it's, uh, you start off by going back to farm life, right?

• 1:19:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. I've started helping my dad by rebuilding the hog shed, cementing and everything. And then, uh, I started to think, "I'm gonna have to have some kind of occupation." They don't like, uh, they don't care about, uh, hiring somebody for just shooting people, you know? And, uh, so, I enrolled in Dunwoody Institute.

• 1:19:58Speaker 01

  I took training in electricity.

• 1:20:07Speaker 01

  Radio, TV, anything to have to do with electricity.

• 1:20:15Speaker 01

  I did. And, in fact, after I got out of there, I had my own service station for a while. And, uh, man.

• 1:20:33Speaker 01

  Having a service station, making a center gallon.

• 1:20:41Speaker 01

  And when, when they rebuild a highway alongside of you, and no one can get in there except from the back streets.

• 1:20:52Speaker 01

  And they said they were gonna dump 30,000 gallons on me a month.

• 1:20:59Speaker 01

  I told him that we're to shove that service station and I went and got a job in Austin, Minnesota as a lineman, climbing poles and stringing wires. I did that for four years. I'm a journeyman lineman. I got a journeyman license and

• 1:21:24Jocko Willink?

  So Captain Erickson finally got his wish of you being up in the

• 1:21:28Speaker 01

  Up climbing poles and stringing wires.

• 1:21:31Jocko Willink?

  That's a hard job. And meanwhile, you also met Lola.

• 1:21:37Speaker 01

  Oh, God, yes, I fell in love.

• 1:21:42Jocko Willink?

  You said you were you were going out in September 1945. Soon thereafter, we were going out every night. In October, I got an engagement ring and asked her to marry me. It seemed rapid to me, but I was infatuated. October went by, then November came along, and I told Lola that it was killing me and that we had to do something about it. We arranged to have a wedding at the Lutheran Church in Austin where my sister Peg and my brother-in-law lived. November 23rd, simple wedding.

• 1:22:12Jocko Willink?

  She moved in and she and I slept in a closet on a bed no wider than a couch.

• 1:22:19Speaker 01

  Worked out great for a while.

• 1:22:22Jocko Willink?

  And plus, we're lucky you don't take up much room.

• 1:22:28Jocko Willink?

  You say this, when I got when I came home from the service, I had the shakes, but nobody visited doctors for post-traumatic stress disorder back then. I woke up one night and I was choking Lola. So we got separate beds. She realized what I had gone through. She was there for me 100%. I had to learn how to drink coffee with my left hand because my right hand shook so much.

• 1:22:53Jocko Willink?

  I started taking, what is that, prop- pro- propananol?

• 1:22:57Speaker 01

  Propananol.

• 1:22:58Jocko Willink?

  Propananol for that and still take it to this day.

• 1:23:05Jocko Willink?

  So there's definitely, even though you came home from the war, the war was kinda still going on in some ways.

• 1:23:11Speaker 01

  None of WWII veterans had medical help like that. In fact, when I went to get medical help, I had, I got 11 stents in me. 11.

• 1:23:35Jocko Willink?

  In your heart?

• 1:23:36Speaker 01

  Well, around my heart.

• 1:23:38Jocko Willink?

  Around your heart, okay.

• 1:23:40Speaker 01

  I was feeling faint and went down to the hospital and they were checking me out and they couldn't figure out what was wrong with me and they wanted to keep me overnight. There is a God. So they kept me in the hospital and hooked me up to kind of a thing, wires all over me. The next morning, I woke up in a neighboring hospital instead of Walnut Creek, Kaiser.

• 1:24:23Speaker 01

  I woke up in Mount Diablo in Concord, 25 miles away. At 2 o'clock in the morning, that alarm went off. I had cardiac arrest. That means I was dead for a while.

• 1:24:45Jocko Willink?

  But you were hooked up to a machine and they got to work on you immediately.

• 1:24:50Speaker 01

  And got me, got me crazy.

• 1:24:57Jocko Willink?

  You tell the story in here, I mentioned that picture earlier that the major took of you while you were sitting in the Jeep and that picture got published in the newspaper.

• 1:25:09Jocko Willink?

  And then you say this, "One day I came home from work, finding Lola changing her wallet. She had all the remains of her old wallet dispersed across the table. I walked by thinking nothing of it until something caught my eye. I noticed a picture of a young soldier sitting inside an army jeep. But that wasn't just any soldier, that was me." She had the picture of me and her wallet from years ago, when I was in Major Ridgway's jeep, the one that was in the local paper. I asked her, "Where did you get that picture?" And she told me that she cut it out of the paper and put it in her wallet. I said, "You didn't even know me." She said, "No, but I met your brother Bob and he was talking about you." At the time, she was a sophomore going to high school. Her family had just moved two

• 1:25:53Jocko Willink?

  farms north of us, near Hope. I never met her or her family and didn't even know she existed. While she was in high school, one of her girlfriends questioned her for keeping the photo and asked, "Who's the guy in this picture?" She announced, "That is the guy I am going to marry."

• 1:26:10Speaker 01

  How can you make up something like that? My life is unbelievable until then. It keeps on being unbelievable.

• 1:26:23Jocko Willink?

  So you have your first son Kurt in 1948. You end up with that lineman job. You have your second child Linda. And then you go, you go, you become a TV, radio repairman after you do the service station. You end up moving to California. When you get to California, you're doing, you're working for Sears as a TV repairman for $2.35 an hour. Your brother-in-law has a print shop up in Northern California. He offers you a hefty raise up to $3.42 an hour. And so you go up there and do that. You, you end up also

• 1:27:07Jocko Willink?

  doing TV repair on the side, working with, you know, replacing people's tubes and whatnot. So now it's, years go by, and, and you say this, "While working for my brother-in-law, I'd come home about 3:30 or 4:00 every day, and then worked fixing televisions. One particular day, I'll never forget, I came home from the print shop and Lola met me at the door. I said, 'Hi hun.'"

• 1:27:31Speaker 01

  Don't

• 1:27:31Jocko Willink?

  Don't hon me, you son of a gun.

• 1:27:35Speaker 01

  She put in son of a bitch.

• 1:27:38Jocko Willink?

  He's, you say, wow, that shook me up. What's the problem, honey? The problem is I'm pregnant, you son of a bitch.

• 1:27:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:46Jocko Willink?

  Pregnant, you had better get the doctor to make sure. Well, the reason she was, because this is what, 10 years after your last kid?

• 1:27:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, 10 years, exactly, 10 years.

• 1:27:57Jocko Willink?

  Um, so that's, you end up having another, another baby.

• 1:28:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:02Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you go to

• 1:28:03Speaker 01

  And there is a God.

• 1:28:07Jocko Willink?

  You work at Jonas Printing, you work at Harrington McGinnis Printing for a while. Um, you end up getting a, a house. Uh, here's a conversation. In 1990, we were still living in Pleasant Hill, California. As usual, it went to, uh, I, I still went to the flea market every Sunday in January. Carlin found me and said, Mom wants to talk to you. Lola was sitting in the car. The first word out of her mouth, I knew I didn't have a chance. I knew I was screwed. She looked at me and said, Father, I've found my dream house.

• 1:28:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, Father, that, that melted me. So.

• 1:28:45Jocko Willink?

  What do you mean by dream house? A house we can live in with my two sons and their families. I want you to come look at it. All I could think was, man, this is gonna cost me a lot.

• 1:28:56Jocko Willink?

  Uh, so you say, the place was gonna take a lot of work, so it seemed ridiculous to me to buy a new home when I was in my late 60s because I didn't know how long I'd be living. But you end up buying the house. Lola moved into the house in Martinez during the construction renovations, followed by Carlin and Kim, then Kurt. Linda wasn't interested in moving in because she already had a home with her husband and family. I lived in Pleasant Hill while our house was up for sale. The housing market was slow at the time because the interest rate was at 12%.

• 1:29:32Jocko Willink?

  While I stayed at Pleasant Hill, the house and Martinez really came together. All of Lola's ideas coming to life. I was starting to see what she saw in that house. So you end up with a compound for the family.

• 1:29:43Speaker 01

  Yes, and it's kept me alive. I had another incident where I couldn't get out of bed in the morning. The alarm went off. The radio alarm, just the radio came on loud. And I'm laying there thinking, like, right here, right now. As sharp as, my mind was as sharp as it is right now. But I couldn't move a muscle. I had a telephone right alongside of me.

• 1:30:26Speaker 01

  To call my kids. I couldn't move. And I said, "What the hell am I gonna do now?" "Your bladder starts talking to you. Get me to the bathroom." "Or you're gonna be sorry." And the next thing I knew, my oldest son came down from upstairs. And he says, the radio was going. He says, "Dad, have you got a problem?" "Kurt, I can't move."

• 1:31:11Speaker 01

  "I gotta get to the bathroom." He says, "I'll go get Carolyn." So when they started moving me, I passed out. The next thing I knew, I was woke up in Kaiser Warner Creek.

• 1:31:34Speaker 01

  I had a stroke.

• 1:31:40Speaker 01

  And they said, if I'd have been any later, it would have affected me. I'm, right now, I have a little

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  kind of a

• 1:31:59Speaker 01

  my left side. I got my, my left hand. It's wrinkled in there. And my left foot, I kind of dragged my left foot.

• 1:32:17Speaker 01

  But

• 1:32:20Speaker 01

  there is a God, I'll tell you that.

• 1:32:25Speaker 01

  Does it affect me? My mind complete.

• 1:32:30Jocko Willink?

  So while you were living in Pleasant Hill, you got a call, one day Lola called me and said, Father, I want you to come down there and stay with, I want to come down there and stay with you, go to work to get a rollaway bed.

• 1:32:45Speaker 01

  I hate to even talk about that day.

• 1:32:49Jocko Willink?

  She said, I'm losing too much weight because I miss your cooking. I asked how much weight she lost. I lost forty pounds last month.

• 1:32:59Speaker 01

  Forty pounds.

• 1:33:05Jocko Willink?

  You say they found out she had stomach cancer.

• 1:33:09Jocko Willink?

  Don't worry, Dad, Linda said they're gonna operate. They think they can get it all. They might have to take some of her stomach out, but she can live a normal life. She would have to eat less, but more often. I just wanted anything and everything done for her to keep going.

• 1:33:26Jocko Willink?

  The doctors opened her up, discovering that it had spread to her intestines. They gave her six weeks to live, but she lived a little longer than expected.

• 1:33:34Jocko Willink?

  Kurt and Carlin fixed up the room in the house that looked towards Mount Diablo so she could look out the window and enjoy the view. One of the last things she saw was that view. It's a beautiful sight.

• 1:33:54Jocko Willink?

  A day doesn't go by when I don't think of her knowing that she's guiding me.

• 1:34:02Jocko Willink?

  She wrote a poem about me.

• 1:34:06Jocko Willink?

  "I never was much on poetry, but Lola loved to write." She titled the poem "One of the Lucky."

• 1:34:16Jocko Willink?

  "My husband was one of many, a Second World War volunteer, who left home to go serve his country, this land that we all love so dear. He never complained, he was lonesome, surrounded by enemy guns. The letters he wrote home were cheerful, like the battle was only fun. In his foxhole there, death sat beside him, with shells whistling over his head. He tried to remember his childhood, tucked safely away in his bed.

• 1:34:50Jocko Willink?

  His buddies they fell by the dozen, on the beach their lives ebbing away.

• 1:34:56Jocko Willink?

  In my heart, I think God had watched over him, when he made it to cover that day. Time and again, he was lucky. He still ran when his best buddies fell. A dodging and jumping and dying, in this man-made inferno to hell.

• 1:35:18Jocko Willink?

  But the day came when his nerves had shattered, and the general so plainly could see. This boy should no longer see battle. So they sent him home safely, to me."

• 1:35:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:35:38Jocko Willink?

  Beautiful poem.

• 1:35:51Speaker 01

  Shakes me up, shakes me up.

• 1:35:56Jocko Willink?

  Well, you, you, uh, you were very lucky not just to avoid machine guns and bombs and everything else. You were also very lucky that you met your beautiful wife and you were able to spend so much time with her.

• 1:36:14Speaker 01

  I, I tell you, somebody up there likes me. I, I can't figure it out. Somebody must like me. Or like what I, way I do things.

• 1:36:30Jocko Willink?

  Um, even after Lola died, you kept working. And then finally in 1995, when you were 73, your boy said, Dad, we don't want you to work anymore.

• 1:36:42Jocko Willink?

  You retired after working for 19 years at Harrington McGinnis. But then you still kept a schedule. So how, how old were you when you retired? Oh, 73. But you, you'd run errands and, and cook for the family.

• 1:37:01Jocko Willink?

  Taking the kids all over the place to different schools and stuff.

• 1:37:06Jocko Willink?

  Had to, you had to stay focused, had a new mission.

• 1:37:10Speaker 01

  I had, I had a new responsibility in life. I, I, I had a granddaughter. Who, who was three when I was 73. And I became the sole raiser of her.

• 1:37:27Speaker 01

  She, she's a dancer on a cruise ship now, dancer singer. And she is the one responsible for putting me on TikTok. I would not be here right now. She, she's mostly responsible for this book.

• 1:37:52Speaker 01

  It's unbelievable.

• 1:37:58Jocko Willink?

  It is unbelievable. Luckily, you're sitting here to see that it is believable.

• 1:38:02Speaker 01

  Yes, it's crazy, crazy.

• 1:38:09Jocko Willink?

  You know, a little earlier in the book, you were talking about having the shakes in your hand. And you say, I came out of World War II with the shakes in my right arm. I couldn't pick up a cup of coffee without shaking, without my hand shaking, so I learned to drink with my left hand. I took medication for it, but it didn't alleviate it completely. And then one time you fell down.

• 1:38:33Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:38:33Jocko Willink?

  And when you fell down, you went to the hospital, you were knocked out, you went to the hospital, you got thirty stitches.

• 1:38:40Jocko Willink?

  Thirty stitches in your head.

• 1:38:42Speaker 01

  In the side of my head.

• 1:38:43Jocko Willink?

  And twenty-nine stitches in your right hand. You went, they got a bunch of MRIs and whatnot.

• 1:38:52Jocko Willink?

  Before you went in the MRI machine, I gotta read this part. He said, I got down to the MRI room and the guy who was operating the MRI machine said, I have to ask you a few questions before I put you in the machine. I replied, go right ahead. He asked me a series of questions, like what year is it, etc. Then he asked, are you pregnant? I answered, I've been screwed so many times, I ought to be.

• 1:39:16Jocko Willink?

  Well, the MRI came back without any problems, but you, the shake went away after seventy years.

• 1:39:23Speaker 01

  No, no, we're sitting here, I want you to look at this. I could be an eye doctor.

• 1:39:32Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 1:39:37Speaker 01

  Think about it, I couldn't hold a cup of coffee in that hand before I fell on my left side. And left side, right hand, it correlates.

• 1:39:49Jocko Willink?

  It's a miracle.

• 1:39:51Speaker 01

  I am a miracle itself, it's crazy.

• 1:39:55Jocko Willink?

  And so then you end up getting cataract surgery. You've been colorblind your whole life, and what happens after cataract surgery?

• 1:40:02Speaker 01

  I get my color vision back on Easter Sunday, it's Easter Sunday.

• 1:40:11Speaker 01

  Crazy.

• 1:40:12Jocko Willink?

  So you can see color now?

• 1:40:14Speaker 01

  I, I can see color now.

• 1:40:16Jocko Willink?

  You were colorblind your whole life?

• 1:40:18Speaker 01

  I, see, you see, you see all these colors? I can't tell you what color that is, but it's kind of an orangey-red.

• 1:40:30Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh, yes it is.

• 1:40:31Speaker 01

  But, and that's a blue.

• 1:40:35Jocko Willink?

  Yes it is.

• 1:40:38Speaker 01

  But, but I, I, I see all these colors. I don't know the names of them because I was brought up without color.

• 1:40:51Jocko Willink?

  Unbelievable.

• 1:40:53Speaker 01

  It's crazy.

• 1:40:55Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, you mentioned earlier going over, going, being, having the opportunity to go to the 75th anniversary of D-Day. Part of that was because of a, of a donations on a GoFundMe to get you sent over there.

• 1:41:12Speaker 01

  That, that's a very interesting thing because all my service records were burned up in Kentucky in 1973. The L's and the M's were burned up.

• 1:41:29Speaker 01

  So, I, I, I don't know if I put this in, about the...

• 1:41:39Speaker 01

  One medal I, I did get, the Bronze Star.

• 1:41:45Speaker 01

  Earl Heaps was a newcomer to the bagel shop group. And he, he was a sergeant in Korea. And he says, "You ever get any medals, Jake?" "Yeah," he said, "I got the Bronze Star." He says, "Bring, bring it in."

• 1:42:13Speaker 01

  I've never seen the Bronze Star.

• 1:42:17Speaker 01

  We had just moved from Pleasant Hill into...

• 1:42:23Speaker 01

  Our home in Martinez. So I looked for that Bronze Star. I could not find it. I looked every place. Where would I... My God, what happened to that thing? Then my daughter said, Linda says, "Dad, don't worry about it. I'll just write to the Army and have it replaced." I says, "You can do that?" "Oh, yeah, they'll replace it for you." So I went up and told Earl Heaps that I couldn't find it,

• 1:43:07Speaker 01

  that they were gonna replace it. A month later, Linda came to me and says, "Dad, they don't know anything about your Bronze Star. All your records were burned in Kentucky, and they don't even know if you served in the service." Man, that's a shaker upper.

• 1:43:47Speaker 01

  So I tried to find out, and man, I'm a GI, three years overseas. I don't even have VA help for a doctor or anything. And it's probably a damn good thing because I'm still alive.

• 1:44:13Speaker 01

  I don't think they'd have given a loving sense to me in the VA.

• 1:44:22Jocko Willink?

  You, uh, but they ended up raising money for you and you found your Bronze Star.

• 1:44:26Speaker 01

  I found.

• 1:44:27Jocko Willink?

  It's in the book, you found your Bronze Star.

• 1:44:29Speaker 01

  I gotta tell you about this.

• 1:44:34Speaker 01

  When I went back and told Earl Heaps that my Bronze Star was lost and they, they, they told me, we, we don't even know if you served in the service. And Earl Heaps says, well, then we don't have to believe a damn thing you've told us. You've been telling us. Ah, man, that's a stabber.

• 1:45:03Jocko Willink?

  But you did find the Bronze Star.

• 1:45:04Speaker 01

  Oh, we found the Bronze.

• 1:45:05Jocko Willink?

  In an old ammo can or something.

• 1:45:08Speaker 01

  In an ammunition box and here's irony to think. It was some forty caliber ammunition and I asked who, who wanted that ammunition? I didn't want that around. I had some handguns that fit and I've got too many grandchildren. So Earl Heaps says, I'll, I'll take it. I've got some here. Earl Heaps, the one who told me, we don't have to believe a damn thing you told us. I opened that ammunition box and there that Bronze Star was laying in the box right on top.

• 1:45:53Speaker 01

  I, I don't remember putting it on in there and no one else did too. But when I could produce the Bronze Star.

• 1:46:08Jocko Willink?

  Earl had to eat his words.

• 1:46:09Speaker 01

  He had to eat his words. Did I say that? Yeah, yeah, he did.

• 1:46:18Jocko Willink?

  So you raise the money, you end up going to Normandy, and you talked about this, but I just want to read this section because it's so moving. You say, "We drove straight from Paris to Normandy to the American cemetery. The first grave I saw was a private from the 1st Infantry Division. That choked me up because I went in on D-Day with members of the 1st Infantry Division, and now I was looking down at his grave 75 years later. It's kind of a weird feeling. I made it, and he didn't. Look at the family I have while he has nothing. War is so unfair. I took off my hat, thanking him for paving the way for me. I teared up

• 1:46:59Jocko Willink?

  and walked away. I never realized the cemetery had over 9,000 Americans. I was never one for visiting cemeteries. There are souls still hanging around, but this visit was different. I owed it to those who had been killed to pay my respects." And as you mentioned earlier, you ended up doing a bunch of interviews for French TV and CBS and...

• 1:47:30Speaker 01

  I want to add too, one that you'll never hear anybody else say. From Russia, from Moscow, a young girl came up to me after the five other ones were done. She came up and said, "I'm from Moscow, Russia, and I'd like to interview you." Perfect English. I've

• 1:48:09Speaker 01

  never heard that, anyone being interviewed from anybody from Russia. It's crazy.

• 1:48:25Jocko Willink?

  You also went back to Omaha Beach itself, and you say here, "I returned to a section of Omaha Beach where I walked on the sand for the first time in 75 years with my family and news groups."

• 1:48:36Speaker 01

  That borough, I found that borough.

• 1:48:42Speaker 01

  I tell you, it's hard for me to talk about it.

• 1:48:48Speaker 01

  You can't imagine what will go through, the memories that come back to you.

• 1:48:58Speaker 01

  And here I'm standing there with my son, my two sons.

• 1:49:07Jocko Willink?

  Because you ended up seeing a berm that was basically exactly what you had hid behind.

• 1:49:11Speaker 01

  It's like, like it was recreated for me.

• 1:49:18Speaker 01

  How is that possible?

• 1:49:28Jocko Willink?

  They had a big ceremony.

• 1:49:32Jocko Willink?

  You shook the president's hand at the ceremony.

• 1:49:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, President Trump's hand.

• 1:49:39Jocko Willink?

  Did a bunch more interviews.

• 1:49:43Jocko Willink?

  And you say this, "The D-Day anniversary trip was the trip of a lifetime that I will never forget. What a moving memory, surpassing D-Day in my mind.

• 1:49:55Jocko Willink?

  There was no killing, and we were celebrating. It was the epitome of my life. I'm so grateful for all the people who came together in order for me to make it back there. I never in my life thought I would return to that beach, but I'm glad that I did. I did not return for myself, but instead for my fellow soldiers who did not make it."

• 1:50:18Jocko Willink?

  And all those interviews that you did, you know, the word spread, you ended up hearing from Corporal Madison Rich. You ended up hearing from his kids.

• 1:50:28Speaker 01

  About the gun incident breaking into.

• 1:50:34Speaker 01

  Man, he told his children about that. I didn't, I never had much contact. We were working when we got out of our service. We didn't have time for messing around, talking about what we did in the service. But after he passed away, his wife contacted me.

• 1:51:07Speaker 01

  And I kept in contact with her for the years and then she passed away. And man, all of a sudden, I'm over in Europe. I'm in Europe celebrating the 75th anniversary of D-Day. And in New York, a man there is listening. Jake Larson they're talking about, Jake Larson. So he calls his brother in New Jersey.

• 1:51:49Speaker 01

  He says, Frank, are you watching that thing about D-Day, the 75th anniversary of D? Yeah, he says, I am. I wonder if that Jake Larson they're talking about is the same one Dad used to talk about when the rifle broke into and he was, laid his rifle under. So they got ahold of my youngest son, Carlin. He's kind of, takes care of all my appointments and things. And they called him and he told him, hey, I wonder if that Jake Larson is the same guy

• 1:52:33Speaker 01

  that my dad was talking about. And Carlin said, well, what's your dad's name? He says, Madison Rich. Carlin said, that's the same one. I personally got in contact, those two girls and two boys of Madison Rich contacted me. We talked on the phone, face to face. And the oldest boy came down and saw me personally. What a wonderful thing. What a wonderful thing.

• 1:53:13Speaker 01

  Madison Rich did not make 70 years old. My God, I worked till I was 73. And here I sit going on 99.

• 1:53:30Speaker 01

  There's something wrong in the equation.

• 1:53:36Speaker 01

  How one person could do these things?

• 1:53:44Speaker 01

  I need help.

• 1:53:48Speaker 01

  Why am I still here? How come I don't have extra pains like anybody else?

• 1:53:59Speaker 01

  Life is crazy.

• 1:54:02Speaker 01

  There is a God.

• 1:54:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and there is somebody that, somebody, I guess if you look at the world, there's gotta be somebody that actually is the luckiest man in the world. That's the name of the book. I think we're finding out it's nonfiction.

• 1:54:17Speaker 01

  It certainly isn't nonfiction. And I'm not a writer.

• 1:54:26Speaker 01

  I'm just telling you stories of my life. The way they come up. I don't have big words.

• 1:54:36Speaker 01

  You don't see anything big in there, but it's the way I talk.

• 1:54:44Speaker 01

  That's the only way I know how to write. I'm not right to impress anybody with my verbiage.

• 1:54:54Jocko Willink?

  The stories themselves are impressive enough. The verbiage is secondary.

• 1:55:01Jocko Willink?

  The stories are amazing in here. Yeah.

• 1:55:07Jocko Willink?

  Another thing that you did was take an Honor Flight, and the Honor Flight is a nonprofit organization, great people, and they provide, their mission is to provide veterans with honor and closure. And so they fly veterans to Washington DC to see the war memorials. And your name came up on there. And so you ended up going to Washington DC, thanks to the private donations to the Honor Flight organization, which is a great organization, like I said.

• 1:55:43Jocko Willink?

  And you said this when you got there. I was ticked off because they took so long to complete the World War II memorial, only opening in 2004. By that time, most of the men from the war were gone and will never have the chance to see it. Carlin convinced me that I should go in their memory, so that's why I went. The irony is that the 135th Infantry, which is part of the 34th Division, has a shield that says "To the Last Man." I was 15 years old the first time I saw that. Well, they are all gone, except me.

• 1:56:21Jocko Willink?

  Who would ever imagine that I would actually be the last man?

• 1:56:30Speaker 01

  I got that shield right here on my jacket.

• 1:56:36Jocko Willink?

  And then came the Battle of the Bulge 75th Anniversary.

• 1:56:43Jocko Willink?

  And, and there's a guy named Mitch Mendler.

• 1:56:47Jocko Willink?

  Firefighter, paramedic here, right here in San Diego, as a matter of fact.

• 1:56:51Speaker 01

  I was with him last night.

• 1:56:52Jocko Willink?

  And he's the president of a nonprofit organization called World Memorials. And doing great work with that. And they volunteered to sponsor you to get you out to the, to the 75th Anniversary of the Battle of the Bulge.

• 1:57:10Jocko Willink?

  And, um, you say here, "When we went to the airport, flew down to Los Angeles, I was met at the gate by my sponsor group who introduced me to two of the men entrusted to travel with me. Colonel Mike Droll of the Arizona Rangers and Rick Cochran, the Executive Director, Hispanic Medal of Honor. Joshua Kaufman, a Holocaust survivor who survived five concentration camps, was amongst the group. When US troops liberated him at the age of 16, he weighed a mere 55 pounds. His daughter interpreted it for him in Yiddish, informing him that I was going back for D-Day.

• 1:57:54Jocko Willink?

  When she communicated that I was the only one left in my company."

• 1:58:01Jocko Willink?

  He, Joshua Kaufman, got down on his hands and knees and kissed my feet.

• 1:58:09Jocko Willink?

  That choked me up. He got up and grabbed my hand and said, "Love you," and squeezed my hand. We were both crying.

• 1:58:24Jocko Willink?

  Hmm, that's some incredible, uh, you know, they mentioned closure. Actually, meeting an individual that had been in the concentration camps and was liberated by Americans such as yourself. That's amazing.

• 1:58:43Speaker 01

  It did only seven years difference in my life. I was twenty-two.

• 1:58:52Speaker 01

  When that happened.

• 1:58:54Jocko Willink?

  You know, I've, I've read a bunch of this book so far, um, tonight, and I know we've been talking for a while, but I wanted to close the book out with this, this last section that I'll read. And again, there's so much more in this book. I've only cut, covered a couple of the, the highlights, but there's, it was hard to even select which highlights to cover because it's all just incredible stories. But I wanted to close with this quote here. It says, "It's mind boggling to have someone kiss your feet in thanks for what those soldiers did. I am not the one to be kissed. I'm representing all the guys who freed all the concentration camp victims. It was their actions. I'm not a hero, I'm here too.

• 1:59:40Jocko Willink?

  I'm here to tell you what I went through. All these people are gone and I'm left alone. I can't see where I deserve the credit for that. I'm the last one alive to represent these guys that gave their lives over there. So I could relate, relate this story to everyone."

• 2:00:05Jocko Willink?

  And again, the, the story is incredible, you know, you lived it and you're sitting across the table from me and you even realize how incredible and almost unbelievable it is. And you are doing an outstanding job carrying on and passing on the story of your, your brothers, your comrades in arms.

• 2:00:30Speaker 01

  They're the heroes. They're the heroes.

• 2:00:33Jocko Willink?

  And, and so you're carrying on that story and that's not the end of the story, by the way, because like you said earlier, you're very popular on social media. You're a TikTok star. You're on Instagram. You're on YouTube. It's all under the same title, which is Storytime with Papa Jake. You have hundreds of thousands of followers and you have millions of views on some of your stories. Of course, this book, but it's just a, it's incredible and the story's not over yet.

• 2:01:06Speaker 01

  Well, I hope it is. I hope it isn't for, for a while, but.

• 2:01:13Jocko Willink?

  How did it start with the TikTok thing?

• 2:01:15Speaker 01

  My granddaughter, I told you I raised, since she was three years old, dances on a cruise ship. Coronavirus came. Cruise ships quit. She came home. She's a very special person to, to, to her grandpa. And she, she, she came over one more, one morning and sat there. She says, Papa, I put you on TikTok with me. What in the hell is TikTok? I, TikTok,

• 2:01:58Speaker 01

  she says, it's, it's a radio thing, she says. And I said, why'd you put me on TikTok? She says, well, while you were talking to me about one of your things happening, I, I recorded it and put it on TikTok.

• 2:02:23Speaker 01

  End of the week, she came over, she says, Papa, I'm taking you, taking you off of my TikTok and putting you on your own. What, what are you doing that for? My God, leave it alone. I says, you're opening a can of worms here.

• 2:02:42Speaker 01

  She says, Papa, it took me seven months to get 10,000 viewers. Seven months. She says, you surpassed me in one week.

• 2:02:57Speaker 01

  I said, what, what does that mean? She says, it means that people like to hear you tell stories.

• 2:03:06Speaker 01

  So that's where I'm at right now.

• 2:03:11Jocko Willink?

  Well, it's an amazing story. And you're on, you're not just on TikTok, you're on Instagram. There's a YouTube channel that people can, if people don't have TikTok, they can watch it on YouTube. They can watch it on Instagram.

• 2:03:24Speaker 01

  They can even Google me and get a response. It's crazy.

• 2:03:29Jocko Willink?

  The book is called The Luckiest Man in the World. It's a fantastic read. It's just, it's, it's an unbelievable story. And if it wasn't, if we weren't sitting here talking to the man himself, you'd have a hard time believing it. But, but there he is. And so, so definitely pick up the book and, and it's just incredible. Echo.

• 2:03:51Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:03:52Jocko Willink?

  Do you have any questions at this time?

• 2:03:53Speaker 02

  I do not have any questions at this time.

• 2:03:55Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 2:03:55Speaker 02

  Thank you, sir.

• 2:03:56Jocko Willink?

  Echo usually asks like some kind of interesting question at the end, but maybe today we didn't just, you know.

• 2:04:02Speaker 02

  We covered it.

• 2:04:03Jocko Willink?

  I'm surprised he, he, cause I'm surprised, I thought you were gonna ask farming questions. I thought you were gonna talk about chickens or horses.

• 2:04:11Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 2:04:11Jocko Willink?

  Or something like that. Nothing, huh?

• 2:04:13Speaker 02

  Pretty straightforward, I think, at this time.

• 2:04:15Jocko Willink?

  Papa Jake's, Papa Jake Larson, we've had you for two hours right now. I want to be respectful of your time, but if there's any other final thoughts you want to share?

• 2:04:26Speaker 01

  Amazon is the printer of my book. So, and make sure you mention my name. There is another book called The Luckiest Man in the World. We found out because somebody ordered that book and the wrong book came to him.

• 2:04:47Jocko Willink?

  So. Are we gonna have to have a contest between you two to see who's actually luckier?

• 2:04:52Speaker 01

  I don't know. I haven't even read it. So, but I want to thank you for the honor of sitting here. It is an honor for me. Because I think by telling this story, you will more honor those who gave their lives. For me to be here, I would not be here without those guys that sacrificed themselves for me. There is a God. That's my final word.

• 2:05:37Jocko Willink?

  Well, sir, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for your family for getting us down here. Our friend Jack that connected us. Thanks for being here and thanks for sharing your wisdom. But most important, thank you for your service to this great nation. You and your friends and your generation stood against tyranny and evil and allow us to live under this blessing of freedom today. So we thank you and all of your brothers in arms.

• 2:06:12Speaker 01

  Well, thank you, sir, for allowing me to do this. And I appreciate very much what you're doing for me.

• 2:06:24Jocko Willink?

  Well, we are grateful. Grateful for you and grateful for your service and sacrifice and the service and sacrifice of all of your comrades in arms. And especially, as you have mentioned, the real heroes that did not come home.

• 2:06:40Speaker 01

  They're the ones. God bless them all.

• 2:06:45Jocko Willink?

  Indeed, sir. Thank you.

• 2:06:48Jocko Willink?

  And with that Papa Jake Larson has left the building. And clearly, um, an honor to be able to have him on and hear those stories. And you know, talking to him before and after, man, you know, he, he kept saying he doesn't have any pain and, and he's doing great. He's doing great. Cause you know, during the podcast, we weren't, we're not really yucking it up. We're cracking jokes, but we're downstairs. He's, we're cracking jokes and even before the podcast started, I, he said something about me.

• 2:07:28Jocko Willink?

  Like he, he took a shot at me and I went right back at him talking about being bald and he like laughing and he just totally sharp.

• 2:07:39Jocko Willink?

  Man, just an honor to be able to have him on here and you didn't have any questions. That was kind of surprising to me.

• 2:07:46Speaker 02

  No, like my, I, I was wondering, and actually now like kind of thinking, but thinking about it more, let's say clearly or whatever. You always kind of wonder about the experience from, what would it be in the boat, you know, landing and then going on. He did, you know, he talked about it kind of for lack of a better term, kind of vaguely where it'd be like, yeah, I'm dodging bullets. Yeah, I'm running, I'm running, trying to get away, whatever. That was sort of it. It wasn't like a, like a narrative, like of boom, landing. Like what happened? You know, I'm thinking save it private, saving private right. And all this stuff, you know, I want to hear that, you know, because there was a lot of reflections of saving private.

• 2:08:25Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, it's freaking D day.

• 2:08:27Speaker 02

  Yeah. He, the shakes, like that thing. Um, there was another one too. Oh, when he went and when he was looking for a match, right? For his cigarettes and then he goes, oh, hey, you got a match. He didn't say you got a match on saving private, right? But, but he does, he was like, hey, something and he looks, boom, the guy, no face.

• 2:08:43Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:08:43Speaker 02

  Boom. That's crazy.

• 2:08:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The book and, and the book has more details and, and you know, it's, it's, there's a balance, right? Of wanting to read some of the book and then getting some of his reflections on what he went through. So, um, but just, it's just awesome to have someone like that. I mean, literally to go from D day to the battle of the bulge is crazy. It's crazy and.

• 2:09:17Jocko Willink?

  You know, he has this jacket, which I'll post on the interwebs or whatever, but it has all the little campaigns that he was in. This, you know, D-Day, Saint Lo, going right down, Paris. I kind of rattled him off, you know? But it's unbelievable. It's an honor. Obviously, a ton to learn and a ton to reflect on. So, thanks, uh, thanks to Jack out there in the, in the, in the world who put this together. One of our jujitsu bros made the connection, told you, told you we could possibly, you know, get in touch with him. And then you were kind enough to respond to him seven months after he sent his initial, you know, email, which was good.

• 2:10:01Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 2:10:02Jocko Willink?

  We liked that timing and stuff.

• 2:10:05Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:10:10Jocko Willink?

  What, when I walk away from this, I just think to myself, you know, as, as Papa Jake kept saying, you know, all these, all these other individuals that didn't make it, you know, he's looking at that gravestone thinking, this guy didn't get to have the family, the life. And he did get to have that chance. And guess what? So do we. So it seems like we should be doing our best to live a life that is worthy of those sacrifices.

• 2:10:42Jocko Willink?

  Seems like a good plan.

• 2:10:43Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's, it's crazy to, to think, you know, now being the age that we are,

• 2:10:50Speaker 02

  to think like how he mentioned his friend in the air force who died at like 19 years old. That's not even half your life, Paul. That's like you're technically, you're not even a full adult, really. And just that's, you know, that's the end.

• 2:11:05Jocko Willink?

  I guess you're a full adult if you're in Hope, Minnesota, because you're up at, you're six years old, milking 32 cows every morning and at night.

• 2:11:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's really, it's so cool to read that stuff. It's cool to read that stuff in the book, for sure. What it was like living back then.

• 2:11:22Jocko Willink?

  They didn't have electricity. He, he, they didn't have electricity in their house until he got out of the service in nineteen forty-five.

• 2:11:28Speaker 02

  It's crazy.

• 2:11:29Jocko Willink?

  Or, yeah, forty-five.

• 2:11:30Speaker 02

  He's all like, oh, that was a big jump from the horse and buggy.

• 2:11:33Jocko Willink?

  Yup. Yup.

• 2:11:35Speaker 02

  That was life.

• 2:11:36Jocko Willink?

  We think, we think like, oh, I went from a, you know, a V-six to a V-eight. Whoa, that was amazing change. And I'm so much better off now.

• 2:11:45Speaker 02

  Got that GPS now.

• 2:11:46Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I got that GPS system. They're in horse and buggy. What about, what about this whole scenario? Well, you know, my school is fourteen miles away. And in the wintertime, the only way to get there is by horse and sleigh. Sleigh.

• 2:12:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 2:12:03Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, another thing, they don't, they're not wearing Gore-Tex.

• 2:12:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:07Jocko Willink?

  Fincelate freaking, you know, pile polyester, they're in wool.

• 2:12:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:12:15Jocko Willink?

  At best, some canvas jacket, right? Just a different time.

• 2:12:21Speaker 02

  Different time.

• 2:12:21Jocko Willink?

  Freaking epic.

• 2:12:23Speaker 02

  It's crazy how he, uh, you know, he's colorblind, like all this stuff. And then he falls down. He didn't say how he fell down. That was the question I should have asked. Like, why did he fall down? Like, how did he fall just randomly?

• 2:12:32Jocko Willink?

  He tripped over a curb.

• 2:12:34Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 2:12:34Jocko Willink?

  So, you know, a parking curb?

• 2:12:36Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:12:37Jocko Willink?

  He tripped over one of those. He was just like looking off ahead and just hit it.

• 2:12:40Speaker 02

  Boom. Hits his head. Colorblindness cured. And what else was cured?

• 2:12:44Jocko Willink?

  No, the, the colorblindness was cured when he got cataract surgery.

• 2:12:48Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 2:12:49Jocko Willink?

  There's a section in the book called Medical Miracles or something like that. And it covers all these things. He mentioned some of them.

• 2:12:55Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah. His shakes got cured.

• 2:12:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, shakes got cured, cured when he got hit in the head.

• 2:12:59Speaker 02

  Okay, so you're, you, yeah, you're the correct generation. Okay, you remember Nintendo Entertainment System, the original NES?

• 2:13:05Jocko Willink?

  I, I remember it, but I don't, I remember that it was a thing, but it's not something that I had.

• 2:13:10Speaker 02

  That wasn't your jam. All right.

• 2:13:11Jocko Willink?

  Because we didn't have electricity in my house.

• 2:13:15Speaker 02

  So.

• 2:13:17Jocko Willink?

  No, we we didn't have any money for that kind of thing. But the I that might be too strong. My dad was like a computer, he was into computers before computers were really a thing. And so he had old school computers. But because you have an old school computer, you're not getting some game system, right? Yeah, so he was and plus he thought that a computer was for computing, right? Not for playing a game.

• 2:13:44Speaker 02

  Gotcha.

• 2:13:45Jocko Willink?

  So there was no, we never had any of those systems. Now, we have one game playing system, but we did have a computer. Do you know, do you know about old, old school computers?

• 2:13:54Speaker 02

  I do, yes.

• 2:13:54Jocko Willink?

  Do you know what a Commodore Vic twenty is?

• 2:13:57Speaker 02

  Well, you know, the that model specifically, you know.

• 2:14:00Jocko Willink?

  It's the first model.

• 2:14:01Speaker 02

  Okay, Commodore for sure.

• 2:14:02Jocko Willink?

  First model. I want to say that the in the memory that came with the machine itself. Was two K.

• 2:14:12Jocko Willink?

  And then there was some cartridge that you plugged in that gave you an extra four K.

• 2:14:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:14:18Jocko Willink?

  This computer was weak.

• 2:14:19Speaker 02

  Yes, very weak. Either way.

• 2:14:21Jocko Willink?

  Atari.

• 2:14:23Speaker 02

  So you didn't even have Atari then?

• 2:14:25Jocko Willink?

  Nope.

• 2:14:25Speaker 02

  No Atari.

• 2:14:25Jocko Willink?

  Nope, no Atari.

• 2:14:26Speaker 02

  Brutal. It's kind of abuse.

• 2:14:27Jocko Willink?

  And eventually we had, we had. Like versions of the games that were on Atari. But instead of it being called Pac-Man, it was a generic version called like Snack Man. You know what I'm saying? Cause my dad.

• 2:14:45Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:14:45Jocko Willink?

  My dad was a cheap human.

• 2:14:47Speaker 02

  I understand.

• 2:14:47Jocko Willink?

  He's not, you're not spending money on anything. This was when you get, he he was part of like a sharing group where they would trade cassette tapes that had this information on it that you could play the game.

• 2:14:59Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:15:00Jocko Willink?

  So we're talking this.

• 2:15:01Speaker 02

  Okay. So, okay.

• 2:15:03Jocko Willink?

  This might not be horse and buggy, but we're.

• 2:15:05Speaker 02

  I understand fully, yep. And yeah, you lived on a dirt road too, so hey, man, I get it. Um, well, either way, the the rest of the ninety nine point nine percent of us that got our Nintendo entertainment system know that there's when you're in, when you Nintendo got kind of older.

• 2:15:22Speaker 02

  And it would jam up, right? You put the game in, you stuff it down and it, and it, it blinks or whatever. It doesn't turn on. So there's two, two methods to get it going. Everyone knows the, the one you take the game out, you blow it, blow on it because there might be dust in there. I don't know. I think it's psychological. Either way, now you put it back in, it usually works. Second method is you turn it off and you hit the side of the thing. You hit it just like a, even like a TV.

• 2:15:45Jocko Willink?

  For real, knowing technique.

• 2:15:47Speaker 02

  Yeah. Oh yeah. We do it all the time. Um, TV's kind of like that too. I think that's what Papa Jake's head was. You hit his head, boom, shakes, gone. See what I'm saying? Maybe they should have blew in his eyes or something. Maybe that would have worked. I'm just saying Nintendo, Papa Jake. These lessons are everywhere.

• 2:16:05Jocko Willink?

  Lessons are everywhere, but um, you know what is incredible is he is real, just incredibly sharp and healthy, walking up and down the stairs, no factor.

• 2:16:14Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:16:14Jocko Willink?

  Just awesome. Um, makes me think about health.

• 2:16:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:16:20Jocko Willink?

  Mental and physical health.

• 2:16:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:16:23Jocko Willink?

  How we can try and maintain that as long as possible.

• 2:16:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's true. Alright, well, we got some solutions to that.

• 2:16:29Jocko Willink?

  Look at that segue. Look at that segue. Oh, I kind of threw you a nice little softball. You're just rolling.

• 2:16:35Speaker 02

  Well, hey, we're working out.

• 2:16:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:16:37Speaker 02

  Right? We're, shoot, Papa Jake was.

• 2:16:39Jocko Willink?

  If I don't make us, let's face it, if there's no, if there's not a segue, we're talking about, we, I mean, we were just talking about Commodore Vic twenties.

• 2:16:46Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:16:46Jocko Willink?

  Right? We were way off base.

• 2:16:48Speaker 02

  Well.

• 2:16:49Jocko Willink?

  So if there's no segue to get us back, you know, who knows what's happening.

• 2:16:52Speaker 02

  I understand. You're correct.

• 2:16:53Jocko Willink?

  So a segue occurred.

• 2:16:54Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:16:55Jocko Willink?

  Now we're, we're back on track.

• 2:16:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, back into the workouts.

• 2:16:57Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:16:58Speaker 02

  Papa Jake was a hundred twenty pounds. See, that's another thing you gotta remember where it's not like, it's like freaking Jaco rolling up through, you know, you know how you guys talk about like all the gear that you guys carry or whatever? It's like, bro, one twenty carrying gear, bro, that's like some effort.

• 2:17:12Jocko Willink?

  Well, he said he had seventy five pounds of gear plus his weapon. So we're talking, that's a massive amount. That's the over double body weight.

• 2:17:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:17:22Jocko Willink?

  Now I did, I can tell you that guys nowadays carry way more gear than they did back then.

• 2:17:27Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:17:27Jocko Willink?

  For the most, for the most part, especially like in Nam. In Nam, you were just carrying two, well, let me, let me get more specific here. The SEALs in Vietnam. One canteen, four grenades, a bunch of mags and your weapon like those guys rolled light,

• 2:17:45Speaker 02

  Light.

• 2:17:45Jocko Willink?

  Light. And nowadays, man, you're going, you got radios, you got so much ammo, you got body armor, you got a helmet, you got night vision, you got lasers, you got extra batteries for everything. It's just a lot more.

• 2:17:58Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:17:58Jocko Willink?

  Which is not good, by the way, in many cases. So.

• 2:18:01Speaker 02

  Makes sense. Either way, when you're 120.

• 2:18:03Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:18:04Speaker 02

  Bro, you better be going extra light, otherwise that's gonna take some effort. So nonetheless, that's neither here nor there as far as right now. Right now, we're trying to be as strong as we can. I don't care 120, 180, 190, two bills, whatever. We're trying to be as strong as we can over here and as smart as we can, all this stuff, right?

• 2:18:24Jocko Willink?

  Yes.

• 2:18:24Speaker 02

  Not all of us are gonna reach 99, by the way. Hey, this is just the reality of the situation, but we're gonna try. Cool. So we gotta do good stuff for our minds and our body. Don't worry, we got you. Don't worry. Choco has supplements.

• 2:18:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:36Speaker 02

  We got you, including energy drinks. Sure, we all know about it, but we're gonna go over it. Okay. Energy drinks with sugar, bad. I'm gonna simplify it. Bad. Energy drinks with preservatives and poisons, bad. Energy drinks without preservatives and poisons, good. As long as there's no sugar, good. Okay, perfect. Choco, discipline, go. Energy drink sweetened with monk fruit, fruit, natural, no preservatives, pasteurized, an actual healthy energy drink. Bacopa, Alpha GPC. These are good things for you.

• 2:19:10Jocko Willink?

  Literally good for you.

• 2:19:11Speaker 02

  Literally good.

• 2:19:12Jocko Willink?

  Oh, but what about the, what about the downside?

• 2:19:14Speaker 02

  I, I have yet to find a downside at all.

• 2:19:16Jocko Willink?

  Oh, wait, there's no downside.

• 2:19:17Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, when you run out, that's the downside.

• 2:19:19Jocko Willink?

  We have to be watching out for downsides. What can be the downside? I can tell you what the downside is. Possibly. If you drink it too late in the afternoon, you might not go to sleep very early.

• 2:19:28Speaker 02

  Well, yeah.

• 2:19:30Jocko Willink?

  You can actually put yourself into a tough situation if you have one at, let's say, six o'clock or seven o'clock at night.

• 2:19:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, and, and here's the thing, there's a disclaimer with that too, because that depends on your tolerance for caffeine.

• 2:19:39Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 2:19:40Speaker 02

  So you gotta have, kind of be sensitive to it to actually have that problem, because it's only 95 milligrams. It's like a regular, it's actually not even that big of a cup of coffee. It's like a

• 2:19:48Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 2:19:49Speaker 02

  Regular, like, cup cup. Does anyone drink one cup of coffee anymore?

• 2:19:53Jocko Willink?

  I don't know.

• 2:19:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't think so, not that I know, but I don't know, either way.

• 2:19:57Jocko Willink?

  Nonetheless.

• 2:19:58Speaker 02

  Nonetheless.

• 2:19:59Jocko Willink?

  As they say.

• 2:19:59Speaker 02

  Nonetheless, it does have a little bit of caffeine for the little, little boost, but all the other good stuff is a healthy thing. I was in Hawaii, Kauai, my homeland.

• 2:20:08Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we were.

• 2:20:09Speaker 02

  And I was talking to my dad, my dad's seventy-five. So I'm telling him about him about my energy drink, but like kind of in the beginning, I was like, this is not gonna apply to him.

• 2:20:17Jocko Willink?

  You keep saying Jaco has an energy drink, but I'm not the only one at this table that has an energy drink.

• 2:20:21Speaker 02

  It's true, and I'm preaching it.

• 2:20:22Jocko Willink?

  Cause there's an Echo Charles energy drink.

• 2:20:24Speaker 02

  And I'm preaching it, but at first I'm like, oh man, why am I even telling you about this, I'm fighting, I'm not gonna drink energy drinks, but then I'm thinking, wait, yeah. He can, he can straight up drink this energy drink and be good, good to go. So yeah.

• 2:20:37Jocko Willink?

  BC.

• 2:20:38Speaker 02

  That's a BC, yep, a wise man.

• 2:20:41Jocko Willink?

  So you can get that.

• 2:20:42Speaker 02

  Yes, many different flavors, you mentioned mine, mine is mango, the best, bro, ask around, it's the best.

• 2:20:48Jocko Willink?

  Interesting.

• 2:20:48Speaker 02

  Maybe not too.

• 2:20:49Jocko Willink?

  Conceptually.

• 2:20:50Speaker 02

  Unless if you don't like the mango, there's all kinds of other flavors too, sour apple, sniper, orange, all this stuff, look into it. Chocofuel.com, so you can get this stuff, also for your joints, bro. Uh, Papa Jake's talking about his joints, don't even hurt.

• 2:21:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:03Speaker 02

  Okay, that's how I wanna be.

• 2:21:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:05Speaker 02

  See what I'm saying? And currently, that's how I am, my joints don't hurt either, see what I'm saying? It's because of the joint warfare and the super krill oil, I didn't bring any in Hawaii.

• 2:21:15Jocko Willink?

  Did you feel it? How long, how many days did it take before you felt it?

• 2:21:17Speaker 02

  Four.

• 2:21:18Jocko Willink?

  Four days.

• 2:21:18Speaker 02

  Four days, yep. It could have been the bed I was sleeping on didn't help either, but it was a little, one time I felt it in my knee though.

• 2:21:25Jocko Willink?

  That's not a bed, bro.

• 2:21:26Speaker 02

  Yeah, no, the bed cannot make you need.

• 2:21:28Jocko Willink?

  And plus you got the loose knees, the loose skinny knees.

• 2:21:31Speaker 02

  Whenever I was doing squats too though, squats on vacation, I'm just saying.

• 2:21:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:21:34Speaker 02

  You wanna stay in the game, squats on vacation.

• 2:21:36Jocko Willink?

  When you travel or just general life.

• 2:21:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:39Jocko Willink?

  Protect yourself, immune wise, vitamin D, D3, you can get that, you can get Cold War. I just had to jack some Cold War up.

• 2:21:47Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:21:47Jocko Willink?

  Right now, cause you know you get that little.

• 2:21:50Jocko Willink?

  To me, when I feel that, I'm like, where's that Cold War started hitting it hard? Molt. By the way, we're just having a discussion. And look, we all know that you have your favorite.

• 2:22:02Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:22:03Jocko Willink?

  Which is fine. You might maybe your favorite is peanut butter, strawberry, whatever. That's cool. The fact is, after a month, it's good to have that alternate, alternate opportunity to get into some, you know, it's good to have that alternate opportunity to get into some get into some vanilla, get into some chocolate, get into some banana cream, which is out now, by the way. Have you had the banana cream yet?

• 2:22:25Speaker 02

  I have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to have banana bomber.

• 2:22:31Jocko Willink?

  And your assessment is?

• 2:22:33Speaker 02

  Well, I didn't taste it yet. I just came in like, it came in while I was gone and I opened it.

• 2:22:37Jocko Willink?

  I have, I have a very strong assessment team.

• 2:22:44Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:22:44Jocko Willink?

  To taste things. It's my family.

• 2:22:46Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:22:46Jocko Willink?

  Cause they don't care about anything. They will smack me with whatever and banana bomber, boom. Five stars across the board, which is legit. Cause they will, like I said, they have no issue with telling me if something sucks.

• 2:23:03Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:23:04Jocko Willink?

  They'll be all into it. And plus they're also into stuff. They're, is it a thing? Okay, I am, you know, you know what a foodie is?

• 2:23:12Speaker 02

  Yes, I do. Yeah.

• 2:23:13Jocko Willink?

  Right? It's a thing, right?

• 2:23:14Speaker 02

  It's a thing.

• 2:23:15Jocko Willink?

  And I think it's more of a thing now than it ever was like when we were younger.

• 2:23:19Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:23:19Jocko Willink?

  There wasn't a thing. No one would ever say I'm really into food. They wouldn't even say that.

• 2:23:23Speaker 02

  Right, right, right.

• 2:23:24Jocko Willink?

  There was no thing like that. It was just like food.

• 2:23:27Speaker 02

  It's like wine taster, right? Like I'm into wine tasting, but instead of wine is food. I think.

• 2:23:32Jocko Willink?

  So I think people, kids, younger people these days have more, more appreciation and sensitivity to taste.

• 2:23:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think so.

• 2:23:43Jocko Willink?

  So because I'm kind of like, hmm.

• 2:23:47Jocko Willink?

  If I can stomach it, it tastes good.

• 2:23:49Speaker 02

  Straight up insensitive.

• 2:23:52Jocko Willink?

  If I can stomach it, it tastes good. If I can't, then it's not good, right? Those are pretty binary.

• 2:23:56Speaker 02

  I understand.

• 2:23:57Jocko Willink?

  But my kids, man, they're freaking. So when they start getting kind of hyped about something, I know it's good. So banana bomber.

• 2:24:04Speaker 02

  Yeah, and banana is one of those, and I don't know, maybe I'm alone on this, but maybe I'm not. Banana is a kind of where it's like, okay, banana's good, it's fine, it's fine. But let's say, you know, when you got your more exotic fruits. You don't want to ruin it with some banana.

• 2:24:18Jocko Willink?

  Add bananas sometimes.

• 2:24:20Speaker 02

  Oddly, yes, and that that's not normal.

• 2:24:22Jocko Willink?

  We gotta send some to Tulsi because Tulsi is kind of the original banana adder, right?

• 2:24:27Speaker 02

  Sure, she had the specific method, yeah, they're very innovative, yeah, for sure.

• 2:24:31Jocko Willink?

  She's always on top of things, she's just out ahead of the curve.

• 2:24:35Jocko Willink?

  Just in the game, she's got an open mind and she looks and she assesses and she comes up with a solution set.

• 2:24:40Speaker 02

  You got the frozen banana, you're right.

• 2:24:41Jocko Willink?

  So frozen rotten banana, is it rotten?

• 2:24:44Speaker 02

  We'll say extremely right, but but the banana, okay, so oddly, banana is like whatever.

• 2:24:50Jocko Willink?

  We should have made the signature flavor for Tulsi, banana.

• 2:24:53Speaker 02

  Yeah, frozen banana. But it's like cucumber, where it's like, cool cucumber is fine. But if you get something that's like way better than cucumber and then you add cucumber, cucumber makes it go to the middle of the road with it. So it kind of brings it down. That's the nature of cucumbers and that's the nature of bananas too.

• 2:25:11Jocko Willink?

  Have you ever been to a fancy hotel where they have water and there's cucumbers in the water?

• 2:25:16Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:25:16Jocko Willink?

  Do you like that?

• 2:25:18Speaker 02

  I like I like the effort for sure, but I like the lemons like better.

• 2:25:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, lemon's way better, strawberry way better.

• 2:25:23Speaker 02

  Pineapple.

• 2:25:24Jocko Willink?

  Pineapple all day.

• 2:25:25Speaker 02

  But, okay.

• 2:25:25Jocko Willink?

  Cucumbers to me, bring me some plain water, honestly.

• 2:25:28Speaker 02

  You know, they tried the cucumber Gatorade too, remember back when I was young and younger than I am now, but.

• 2:25:35Jocko Willink?

  Cucumber Gatorade?

• 2:25:36Speaker 02

  No, correct, you're.

• 2:25:37Jocko Willink?

  Who's the freaking idiot on the marketing crew that was like, hey, let's make cucumber Gatorade?

• 2:25:43Speaker 02

  I don't have that info.

• 2:25:45Jocko Willink?

  Fired.

• 2:25:46Speaker 02

  But surprisingly, so the point is with the banana surprisingly and actually not so surprisingly. So I like banana. Okay, cool, fine, but it brings things to banana level if it's better than banana, which is a bad thing, but you go banana cream. You ever had banana cream pie?

• 2:25:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 2:26:00Speaker 02

  Freaking legit. It's almost like it kind of supersedes, it transcends the banana stigma. I'm over here just here to tell you. I'm just here to tell you and this banana cream. This is what I expect. I didn't taste it yet, but this is what I expect. That's what I expect with the banana cream.

• 2:26:18Jocko Willink?

  You know what's interesting about this? You can tell you've been gone for a while because you and I are talking to go. And it's also funny because you'd think maybe we had something, you know, interesting to talk about.

• 2:26:27Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 2:26:27Jocko Willink?

  In a broad sense, no, we're literally talking about cucumbers and bananas, which is Jackdaw. We're hurting people's lives right now. We're taking time away from them. So check it out. Get Molk. You get this stuff from jockofuel.com. You can get it. You get the drinks at Wawa. You can get everything at the vitamin shop. Go hit that stuff up. Go get it. And by the way, jockofuel.com, if you subscribe to any of these things, you get the shipping for free. That way we can compete with the large global corporations that are trying to take over the world.

• 2:26:59Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 2:27:00Jocko Willink?

  Help us compete. Go subscribe.

• 2:27:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, man. It's true.

• 2:27:03Jocko Willink?

  We can help you stay healthy.

• 2:27:04Speaker 02

  Yep. Speaking of large, global, well, corporations taking over the world, you know, how they, you know, use, you know, but what, what they do is they do this mass thing where they get the labor for as cheap as they can.

• 2:27:16Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:27:17Speaker 02

  They get it free if they, they can.

• 2:27:18Jocko Willink?

  They will try for sure.

• 2:27:20Speaker 02

  Yeah, if they can. See, it doesn't work like that. It's not sustainable. See what I'm saying? Unlike Origin. See, that is sustainable. I'll tell you why. It's all made in America, everything, all their stuff. Got denim jeans, got gi's, jujitsu stuff, got boots, wallets, what, uh, is there belts? They got a belt, right?

• 2:27:38Jocko Willink?

  Wallets, beanies, sweatshirts, shorts.

• 2:27:42Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:27:43Jocko Willink?

  Pants work. And we got more stuff coming.

• 2:27:45Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:27:45Jocko Willink?

  We got the hunt line coming, which the hunt line gonna be versatile too.

• 2:27:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:27:51Jocko Willink?

  I was talking to Pete. I'm like, hey, you know, like the puffy jackets that everyone wears? Every, a lot of people wear.

• 2:27:57Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 2:27:57Jocko Willink?

  Not super puffy, but like a thin puff.

• 2:27:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. Like when you go snowboarding.

• 2:28:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. But that kind of thing?

• 2:28:06Jocko Willink?

  When you go anywhere cold, people are wearing that all everywhere, right? I say, hey, we need that. Well, we're on that. So we're gonna be able to have an American-made one. Because these people are like, oh, well, you know, we support the environment. We give some of our, um, some of our, our 1% of our profits to the environmental causes. Oh, cool. Meanwhile, you're supporting a freaking factory in China that's putting more crap into the air than your 1% could ever cover. And by the way, the people that are breathing that in is not just the people that live there. It's also worldwide and the slave labor that they have making these things. So we get it. You wanna, you wanna say how nice you are? We get it. You wanna talk about your, how positive you're doing for the environment?

• 2:28:49Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:28:50Jocko Willink?

  You're not telling the truth.

• 2:28:52Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:28:53Jocko Willink?

  So we're gonna, we got, we got you covered. Origin USA.

• 2:28:56Speaker 02

  So there's an expression, BTN, right? BTN stands for better than nothing, right? So people use that in a good way, like it's better than nothing, right? Yeah. You think workouts, freaking, um, paying attention to your kids, uh, like all this stuff. You can use BTN, the BTN method, it's better than nothing. It's like looking at the bright side of things, which is, it's not all bad. You see what I'm saying? That's what makes it a tricky thing, but let's face it, you really wanna go, what do you, how'd you do it? The low res, the freaking black, real black and white, right? BTN is not good. You wanna do the best you can, straight up.

• 2:29:31Jocko Willink?

  Yep.

• 2:29:31Speaker 02

  Alright, so you start giving 1% to something that is a 50% detriment. That's BTN, that's bad. You see what I'm saying?

• 2:29:39Jocko Willink?

  Better than nothing, true.

• 2:29:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:29:41Jocko Willink?

  It's also 49% bad. Freaking savages.

• 2:29:46Speaker 02

  So Origin USA, supply chain, taking care of.

• 2:29:50Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm.

• 2:29:50Speaker 02

  American-made, taking care of.

• 2:29:52Jocko Willink?

  Taking care of.

• 2:29:53Speaker 02

  American economy being stimulated.

• 2:29:55Jocko Willink?

  Taking care of.

• 2:29:56Speaker 02

  Taking care of.

• 2:29:57Jocko Willink?

  Jobs being created.

• 2:29:58Speaker 02

  Yes, sir. Good jobs.

• 2:29:59Jocko Willink?

  Environment being saved.

• 2:30:01Speaker 02

  Good job. You talk to all our people there, making stuff, bro, they'll tell you all about it, smiling the whole time.

• 2:30:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:30:07Speaker 02

  Oh, man. Here to tell you.

• 2:30:08Jocko Willink?

  OriginUSA.com.

• 2:30:10Speaker 02

  Dot com, that's where you get it. Also, Jaco's store called Jaco Store, JacoStore.com. It's where you can get your Discipline Equals Freedom shirts, hats, hoodies, that kinda cool stuff, uh, stuff that is good. It's one you wanna represent, and we're representing on this path.

• 2:30:27Jocko Willink?

  You know what decentralized command is?

• 2:30:29Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:30:30Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so sometimes, is there such a thing as too much decentralized command?

• 2:30:33Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:30:33Jocko Willink?

  So. The, there happens to be Warrior Kid Soap. We're down with that, right? Young Aiden out there, decentralized command, making stuff happen.

• 2:30:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:30:42Jocko Willink?

  Guess what else he made?

• 2:30:43Speaker 02

  Hmm, oh, yeah.

• 2:30:44Jocko Willink?

  Candles.

• 2:30:47Jocko Willink?

  So, it's funny, cuz in my house, I don't like candles.

• 2:30:51Speaker 02

  We're banned.

• 2:30:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I don't like the smell of them. I don't like the more heat being produced in my house. I don't like a fire hazard up in here, right? I don't like the, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, what's that word? The atmosphere that it gives off, right?

• 2:31:06Speaker 02

  Way too soft.

• 2:31:06Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, right? You wanna make fire? We'll make a fire. We're good with that. A candle?

• 2:31:11Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:31:12Jocko Willink?

  No, we're not happening. But decentralized command, all of a sudden, we got a Jaco candle, and apparently, we have an Echo candle too.

• 2:31:16Speaker 02

  Yes, sir, yeah.

• 2:31:17Jocko Willink?

  So that's out there.

• 2:31:18Speaker 02

  And Echo Soap, too, by the way. So, you know, hey, man, do your thing. Sounds good. BTN.

• 2:31:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:26Speaker 02

  You know?

• 2:31:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:31:27Speaker 02

  In a good way, this time. Um, but yeah, there's good stuff on there. Jaco Store. Also, on Jaco Store. Shirt, the Shirt Locker. Lot of updates to that one. Upgrades.

• 2:31:38Jocko Willink?

  Upgrades.

• 2:31:38Speaker 02

  Update sounds like, you know, just maybe, just, you know, some bad things that are now not bad.

• 2:31:44Jocko Willink?

  I like the way you take your ideas and post them on the world.

• 2:31:48Jocko Willink?

  It's kinda funny how you do that.

• 2:31:50Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm try, I'm trying to help over here. You see what I'm saying? Either way, upgrades on the Shirt Locker. Check those out. Shirt Locker, if you don't know what that is, that's a new shirt every month. Subscription situation, every month. They're all cool. They're, they're a little bit more creative, you know?

• 2:32:05Jocko Willink?

  You know what Jack Daniel does?

• 2:32:08Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:32:09Jocko Willink?

  Well, no, he gets the, he's, he has enough shirts, right?

• 2:32:12Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 2:32:13Jocko Willink?

  Which is pretty common in, in America, you have enough shirts.

• 2:32:15Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:32:16Jocko Willink?

  But he still wants to support, and he's seen some shirts that have come out where he's been like, "That one would've been nice."

• 2:32:22Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:32:22Jocko Willink?

  So he gift, he gets them, and then he gifts them to the appropriate person.

• 2:32:26Speaker 02

  Right, yeah. That makes sense to me, fully.

• 2:32:29Jocko Willink?

  JD. Making it happen, subscribe to the podcast, speaking of subscriptions, wherever you subscribe to podcasts, we were just talking about podcast reviews. It's cool, you want to leave a review, it's cool. What's interesting about the reviews is they're permanent. On the Apple reviews, they're permanent. So you can go back in time and you can go read early reviews about Echo Charles, man, the world was a ruthless place.

• 2:32:51Speaker 02

  That is totally, it was totally my fault. I, I, you know, I got, what do you call, I, I started on the wrong foot. What's that expression? Anyway, got off on the wrong foot. This is why my first analogy, if I remember correctly, was like, you know, you got to balance the dichotomies or whatever you were talking about back then. And I made the analogy of a glob of mercury on a trash can lid.

• 2:33:13Jocko Willink?

  That's right.

• 2:33:14Speaker 02

  And bro, I'm just saying, imagine that, try to balance it, it's the same thing. It's a perfect analogy when you think about it, it's just kind of, kind of out from fucking left field or whatever. And I get it.

• 2:33:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:33:24Speaker 02

  And I took heed for it.

• 2:33:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you did. You took some heavies in the early days. Doing better now. K-Dog was on the other day. He got his first taste of, uh, social media, you know, attacks. He, K-Dog. So anyways, subscribe to this, check out Jaco Unraveling, we're recording another one tomorrow. So those should be up, hitting some pretty interesting, uh, topics with my brother Daryl Cooper, Grounded Podcast, The Warrior Kid Podcast, and we have Jaco Underground. JacoUnderground.com, this is our alternative platform in case we get attacked, banned, shadow banned, which apparently is a thing now, which has happened. Have you been shadow banned?

• 2:34:08Speaker 02

  I, I don't think I'm that influential.

• 2:34:11Jocko Willink?

  And you never know, bro. Maybe I need to take over your page and start posting all my controversial stuff.

• 2:34:16Speaker 02

  Oh yeah, so controversial.

• 2:34:17Jocko Willink?

  Um, well, it is interesting, you know, it is interesting, but you wouldn't think that there'd be anything that they would look at me and go, yeah, we need to suppress this guy, but hey, here we are, literally being suppressed.

• 2:34:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 2:34:30Jocko Willink?

  So we have to have a backup plan, we have to have a contingency plan in place. So that's why we have JacoUnderground.com. If you want to help us build and maintain that, it costs eighteen dollars, eight dollars and eighteen cents a month. That helps us build it and maintain it. We give you back another additional podcast. Do you need more podcasts? Probably not, maybe not, but maybe you like to chill, maybe you like to hear about some alternative topics and maybe you just want to support. Either way, we appreciate it. Also, if you can't support us, we'll support you. If you can't afford $8.18 a month, it's cool. Email assistance at jockounderground.com. We have a YouTube channel.

• 2:35:09Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 2:35:10Jocko Willink?

  Which, there's some really good videos on there and most of the really good videos have that extra little component, that extra thing that just makes them hit.

• 2:35:22Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:35:23Jocko Willink?

  And that thing usually comes from me.

• 2:35:26Jocko Willink?

  The assistant director.

• 2:35:28Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 2:35:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I had to, well, when Kerry was in the hot seat, K-Dog, I had to kind of, I had to go a little bit deep on that one.

• 2:35:36Speaker 02

  Yeah, you've, uh, you've embraced that role quite nicely and we're happy with that.

• 2:35:41Jocko Willink?

  That's just the way it works.

• 2:35:42Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 2:35:43Jocko Willink?

  So, subscribe to the YouTube channel, check out the videos. Also, you can, you can see what Papa Jake looks like and...

• 2:35:51Speaker 02

  99 years old, getting it.

• 2:35:53Jocko Willink?

  99 years old.

• 2:35:55Speaker 02

  Impressive. Also, Psychological Warfare, it's an album we did back in the day. Very useful album, gets us past our moments of weakness. You ever think about, and I'm not saying you, Jaco, I'm saying to our people, you ever think about the day where you're about to slip or you're about to skip the workout? What if Jaco's like right there? Not yelling, not yelling by the way, just telling you, hey, like, hey, let's not skip this workout. In fact, here's some good reasons why you shouldn't skip this workout. See what I'm saying? And he was just telling you practical, practical advice to not skip the workout.

• 2:36:26Jocko Willink?

  You'd probably do the workout.

• 2:36:27Speaker 02

  You'd probably do the workout and in fact, you will do the workout. That's what Psychological Warfare is, straight up. So you get that, you get that wherever you can get MP3s. It's a good one.

• 2:36:36Jocko Willink?

  Also, if you want to hang something awesome on your wall, go to flipsidecanvas.com, which is Dakota Meyer's company and he makes awesome stuff to hang on your wall. That's what it is, made in America. Got some books, obviously. First book, Luckiest Man in the World. Stories from the Life of Papa Jake by, by Jake Larson. It's a great book. We skimmed the surface today. Go check it out. Support the man himself. Also, final spin, had that story come out, had that book come out and...

• 2:37:09Jocko Willink?

  Check that one out if you want to check that one out. I would recommend you don't read it on a plane like JP Denell if you're gonna get embarrassed when you're crying. I'm not saying you're gonna cry, but I'm saying.

• 2:37:21Jocko Willink?

  It's an emotional book. It's an emotional roller coaster. So check that out. There's some lessons in there. Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual, The Code, The Evaluation, The Protocol, Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. Way of the Warrior Kid, one, two, three. Christmas is coming. I don't care what you could, you could be a billionaire. You can't get a kid a better gift than those four books. That is a fact. There's nothing you can get a kid. That you know. Better than those books. Nothing, nothing. There's nothing better. That's a bold statement and I just said it. And I, and I stand by it a hundred percent. There's nothing that could have better influence on a kid than those four books.

• 2:37:58Speaker 02

  When, okay, do you remember the date that part one, Way of the Warrior Kid came out?

• 2:38:02Jocko Willink?

  I want to say 2016.

• 2:38:03Speaker 02

  Okay, 16. So we got what, five years in the, in the bank? Maybe a little bit more than five years. My daughter was eight now, still demands I read. Every single night. Part one, we just finished it. Again, by the way, yeah.

• 2:38:21Jocko Willink?

  Just the best gift you can give for a kid. So hook that up. Also, Mikey and the Dragons for the little, little kids. Best little kids book that's ever been written. So that's what I've been hearing a lot of.

• 2:38:33Jocko Willink?

  You know, when dads post and say they have a hard time making it through the book without tearing up. That's where we're at.

• 2:38:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, if you let it for sure.

• 2:38:44Jocko Willink?

  That's kind of where we're at. About Face by Hackworth and then Extreme Ownership and the Dichotomy of Leadership. Also, we have Echelon Front, which is a leadership consultancy. We. Solve problems through leadership. Leadership is the solution. If you need help with the leadership inside your organization, go to echelonfront.com. You can also find out about our live events there, whether it's. The muster, whether it's field training exercises, EF Battlefield. You can check that out. Next muster is in Dallas, Texas, by the way, March 24th and 25th. We have online training program. You can't get good at jujitsu.

• 2:39:22Jocko Willink?

  In one day, you can't get good at basketball in one day. You can't get good at guitar in one day. You can't get good at leadership in one day. You also can't get good at leadership from reading one book, one time and thinking you got it. Now, it doesn't work like that. That's why we made the Extreme Ownership Academy. If you want to come, you want to ask questions, you want to interact with me, with Leif, with the rest of the EF team, come on there. Extremeownership.com. And if you want to help service members, active and retired, their families, Gold Star families, check out Mark Lee's mom, Mama Lee. She's got a charity organization. And if you want to donate, or you want to get involved, you want to help

• 2:39:58Jocko Willink?

  veterans, go to Americas Mighty Warriors.org. And if you want more of my over emotional episodes, or you need more of Echo's exasperating explorations, you can find us on the interwebs, on Twitter, on the Gram, and on Facebook. Echo's at Echo Charles. I am at Jocko Willink. And don't forget that you can also check out Storytime with Papa Jake on Instagram, on TikTok, on YouTube. Great, great stuff to watch. And to all the service, men and women,

• 2:40:43Jocko Willink?

  past, present, and future, thank you. And especially to those of you that served in World War II, whether you're here with us in this life, or you've moved on to the next, we will not forget what you did for us and for mankind. And to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, dispatchers, correctional officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, and all the first responders out there, thank you for your service, which keeps us safe here on the home front. And everyone else out there.

• 2:41:26Jocko Willink?

  This life is a gift.

• 2:41:29Jocko Willink?

  It's a gift, and I'll tell you something else, it is a fleeting gift. And every day that we have is one day closer to death. And as Papa Jake said, you can't turn back time.

• 2:41:45Jocko Willink?

  You cannot turn back time, and in the end, even forever is too short.

• 2:41:53Jocko Willink?

  So follow the example of this brave man that we heard from today, Jake Larson, and live every day to the utmost. And you do that by going out there and getting after it.

• 2:42:10Jocko Willink?

  Until next time, this is Echo and Jaco out.