209: The Crafty Rogues of the French Foreign Legion w/ Legionnaire, Joel Struthers

0:0:0:00 - Opening 0:03:39 - The Foreign French Legion w/ Joel Struthers. 3:36:58 - Final thoughts and take-aways. 3:47:14 - How to stay on THE PATH. 4:11:08 - 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 209 with Echo Charles and me Jocko Willink. Good evening, Echo. Good evening.

• 0:09Jocko Willink?

  We are crafty. We are rogues. We are no ordinary men. We've often got our black moods for we are legionnaires. In Tonkin, the immortal Legion honored our flag at Tinguan. Heroes of Cameron and Model Brothers sleep in peace in your tombs.

• 0:38Jocko Willink?

  Our ancestors knew to die for the glory of the Legion.

• 0:44Jocko Willink?

  We will know to perish according to tradition.

• 0:50Jocko Willink?

  During our far-off campaigns facing fever and fire. Let us forget, along with our hardships, death. Which forgets us so little.

• 1:04Jocko Willink?

  For we are

• 1:07Jocko Willink?

  the Legion.

• 1:12Jocko Willink?

  And those right there are the verses

• 1:17Jocko Willink?

  to the famous song Le Boudin. Which is, I think, the most famous of the songs of the French Foreign Legion. And the French Foreign Legion is a famous hallowed military organization with a history steeped in traditions of bravery and courage. And there's a lot of mystique around it. It's also a very unique organization because the men of the French Foreign Legion

• 1:55Jocko Willink?

  generally are not French.

• 1:58Jocko Willink?

  And one of their mottos which kind of reflects that is

• 2:04Jocko Willink?

  Legio Patria Nostra, which translates to the Legion is our Fatherland.

• 2:14Jocko Willink?

  And when I was a kid growing up, I was always kind of, you'd hear, I heard about the French Foreign Legion. And there was definitely a reputation of, kind of the reputation is that you could be just a criminal somewhere and escape prison and get to France and you could join the French Foreign Legion. And that's what, that's what the French Foreign Legion was filled with. So that always had that kind of mystique around it and aura around it. And I read a book

• 2:47Jocko Willink?

  a long time ago called Legionnaire by Simon Murray, which is a great book and gives an incredible account. And Simon Murray is a fascinating guy. And I read another book

• 3:00Jocko Willink?

  that was called Mouthful of Rocks, which was by a guy named Christian Jennings. And that one was, is actually from a guy that the main, the main theme of that book was do not join the French Foreign Legion. He was a deserter who ended up leaving it. But, but those books definitely left an impression on me about the French Foreign Legion. But today we're actually going to review another book by a Legionnaire. It's called Appel. A French, a Canadian in the French Foreign Legion. It's written by a guy named Joel Struthers. And it just turns out that we are lucky enough to have Joel here with us

• 3:41Jocko Willink?

  to discuss his book and his experiences as a Legionnaire. So Joel, welcome to the show, man.

• 3:52Speaker 01

  Thank you, sir. It's an honor, gentlemen.

• 3:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, thanks for coming down. It's a, how did you end up? Did you send me this book? How did this connect?

• 4:00Speaker 01

  I did. I've, I've obviously watched your, familiar with your, your history, your name and the podcast and. Yeah, it was a Hail Mary. I thought maybe I'll send him a book. Um, and maybe you'd take interest in the, uh, in the subject matter. Um, yeah, as you know, marketing books these days, it takes a lot of the efforts on the, the writer themselves, the author. So that was, uh, yeah, my objective was to get it to you and hopefully this would happen. Here we are. And again, I appreciate the opportunity.

• 4:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, it's a great book. And I mean, I've, like I said, opening up, the, the French Foreign Legion has such a mystique about it. That the opportunity to sit down with someone that did time and, and served and fought with the French Foreign Legion seemed to me a awesome opportunity. So, um, so yeah, that's, that's where it starts. Uh, and speaking of where it starts, let's get to, let's get to it, man. Let's get to your start.

• 4:52Speaker 01

  Let's do it.

• 4:55Jocko Willink?

  Did I say the word right? Appel?

• 4:56Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 4:57Jocko Willink?

  Is that right?

• 4:57Speaker 01

  Appel.

• 4:59Jocko Willink?

  Which basically means it's what we, in America, we call it quarters or like a, a stand to attention.

• 5:06Speaker 01

  A roll call.

• 5:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, roll call, something like that. But it, doesn't it literally mean stomp your foot or something like that?

• 5:11Speaker 01

  It could also be used as a call out. Um, you know, double word. Um, but yeah.

• 5:17Jocko Willink?

  Meaning you just yell appel and everyone?

• 5:19Speaker 01

  And then everyone comes and yeah, you're accounted for. You count down the line. And that's what it's predominantly used.

• 5:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Check. All right. So let's get to, let's get to the book here a little bit. You say, "My parents met as students at Canadian Forces Base Petawa."

• 5:34Speaker 01

  Petawa.

• 5:34Jocko Willink?

  Petawawa in Ontario, Canada, "and started dating in grade 11. As a son of a fighter pilot in the Canadian Air Force, I lived an itinerant lifestyle, moving from one CFB to another. 1989, when my father retired as the commanding officer of 441 Tactical Fighter Squadron, CFB Cold Lake, Alberta, we settled down in British Columbia, Canada." So you grew up kind of military brat is what we call it in America.

• 5:58Speaker 01

  Spent most of my time in Germany. Uh, my dad flew the, uh, the 104, the Widowmaker.

• 6:03Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 6:03Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then retired as a full Colonel or a light Colonel, sorry, the CO 441, F-18s. So yeah, it was every three years we would move. Um.

• 6:12Jocko Willink?

  Did you have any brothers or sisters?

• 6:13Speaker 01

  No, sibling.

• 6:14Jocko Willink?

  Solo operations?

• 6:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, lone wolf.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  Probably explains a lot.

• 6:21Jocko Willink?

  From my earliest days, I remember being interested in everything in the military. At school, I spent most of my time in classes drawing castles, tanks and airplanes. Is there anyone that didn't do that? Echo, wait, you might be the one.

• 6:32Speaker 01

  I think doctors and lawyers were the ones.

• 6:33Jocko Willink?

  Even I did that, yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's just like tanks. Yeah. Airplanes, battleships. I can still draw pretty good. Just wars. Yeah, I hear you. I trust you can.

• 6:44Jocko Willink?

  I visited countless museums and castles and played in old trenches and bunkers all over Europe. Once I found a key in a tower of the walled city of Rothenburg in Bavaria, I was certain it would open a dungeon. My fascination with the military deepened with age. So did my interest in sports. My mother was very athletic. She enrolled me from an early age in soccer, basketball, judo, swimming and hockey. How much judo?

• 7:06Speaker 01

  Not enough.

• 7:08Jocko Willink?

  Good answer. There can never be enough. But were you, were you serious about judo?

• 7:13Speaker 01

  No, hockey took over pretty much early on.

• 7:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh, that's right. You're Canadian.

• 7:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 7:16Jocko Willink?

  It was just like hockey or nothing. She was also an avid animal lover and I became one too. Aside from my mother, my role models were predominantly fighter pilots and soldiers. My dad and his friends, as well as his dad, his friend, as well as my friends' dads and my grandfathers. Even my hockey coaches were soldiers. The military was in my blood. And you actually, I skipped over it, but you actually have deep military blood in your family. And so that would seem like, it seemed like you got those genes.

• 7:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, for sure. Definitely in the DNA somewhere. Yeah, yeah.

• 7:52Jocko Willink?

  After my first season playing AAA hockey, I was invited to the Western Hockey League's Regina Pat's tryout camp. But my parents didn't let me attend because my school marks were too low. The fact that I had been expelled from high school for a week for fighting helped my cause. So you were, I'm taking it you weren't exactly the model of behavior as a child.

• 8:14Speaker 01

  Um, yeah, I don't know. I mean, I wasn't a bad kid, a bad seed, but I think I hit an age, as we all do, where I started to try to push barriers and figure out what I was made of.

• 8:25Speaker 01

  And being a hockey fan, there were certain type of players that I respected or I wanted to emulate. And I didn't necessarily have the size or the chin to do so. So my game kind of changed unfortunately for me. But yeah, that's kind of the early onset to a pal is a young man trying to figure out what he's capable of and who he is.

• 8:45Jocko Willink?

  Now. It's weird too that, you know, you had your dad was a, would you say he was a full Colonel?

• 8:51Speaker 01

  I like Colonel.

• 8:52Jocko Willink?

  Lieutenant Colonel retired. Like some kids that are, grow up in that atmosphere, they become kind of on the straight and narrow path. You know what I mean? And then some kids have a little bit of that rebellion in them. It sounds like you were a little bit more on the rebellion side.

• 9:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, possibly. But they, they checked that. Um, and I think deep down I knew what was, I was wrong. Like I was raised properly, had, you know, good parents. But as you do, you check, you check yourself and you're trying to figure out what you're made of. And yeah, I figured out that that wasn't me. I wasn't, you know, a badass per se. Certainly wasn't going to make the NHL with my, uh, my size of my hands and chin.

• 9:31Jocko Willink?

  You, you go on a little bit about this, you know, you talk about getting ejected for fighting a lot from hockey games. And then you say that the trouble started when I was fresh out of Langley Secondary School without hockey, experienced a loss of direction. A mix, mix of immaturity, trying to impress friends and girls and reacting to other idiots all took their toll. I was hanging out with the wrong crowd and these so-called friends were leading me nowhere. The final twist in my downward spiral came when I was confronted by a RCMP, Royal Canadian Mountain Police, Special Investigation Officer, revolver drawn. I was lucky I didn't end up in prison. What, what, what happened?

• 10:11Speaker 01

  Check. Um, I don't think the why matters or the what, it's more the why. Um, it was, it was nothing. You know, I'm sure imaginations will flow. There's no, it's not drug related. It's not, you know, anything. But, um, it was dumb enough that the police took interest in my, my association with their certain people. And, uh, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't charged or anything, but it was a, it was a good kick in the ass. I experienced sitting down with my father who was visibly upset, um, at the fact that potentially I'd be going to jail, ruin your life. And that, uh, yeah, that set me straight. Seeing that reaction was sobering, I guess would be the word. And from there, I took, uh, took ownership. And uh, there you go.

• 10:52Jocko Willink?

  Good call. Yeah, this is, this is a big point. You know, you say here, I realized that I needed to change and fast. So I contacted the Canadian Armed Forces Recruitment Center in Vancouver. Unfortunately, the Canadian Armed Forces were no longer accepting applicants for regular force infantry positions. My only option was to join a Canadian reserve unit and hope to be at the front of the recruitment line when the regular forces started to expand. So I, I mean, you get to this point and this is, man, it's so, you're lucky, right? You're lucky. You're actually lucky that this guy drew down on you. You're lucky that you did something bad enough to, to get you to a point where you said, all right, this is not going to end well.

• 11:33Jocko Willink?

  And not every kid gets that opportunity and it'd be nice if a kid like listening to this right now can foresee that they're going to end up in that position. And just go, okay, you know what? I need to change. I need to make a change right now. Cause I know, man, the best thing that happened in my life was joining the military. I would have been a total loser. I would have just ended up doing, I was just doing dumb stuff and I would have just continued down that path. And I don't know if I had a, a moment in time like you did where I said, okay, I gotta stop this. But I definitely looked around at, at the people I was hanging around with and said, yeah, this isn't going to end up well.

• 12:14Jocko Willink?

  It'd be nice if kids that are 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 years old. Instead of waiting for that moment to arrive where they realize that A, they're not as smart as they think they are. And B, the direction that they're heading is not going to end up well that they go, you know what? I, I need to kind of change direction here and boy, the military offers especially, I mean, it's, it's crazy too. Like in Canada, you can't even join regular force infantry. I mean, let's face it, in America. I'm not saying you can be, they'll take anyone, but if you want to be a grunt in the army or the Marine Corps, like, there's a decent chance that you can do it.

• 12:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, fair one. And this, keep in mind, this is early 90s, so, nothing was going on. The government at the time was, you know, checking their, their budgets, so it was cost cutting. So yeah, there wasn't an opportunity to go reg force. There was other positions, like radar tech or Navy, whatever, but I wasn't, you know, unfortunately, I had a VHS, VHS tape of Hamburger Hill, and I watched the shit out of that thing. And that was all about the infantry, you know? And my grandfather, who was my dad's dad, Third Wave, Juneau Beach, he had given me, I didn't put it in the book, but he'd given me a jump smog from 101st Airborne Soldier, pre-D-Day, so when they're in England, training. And I wore, I wore that, and I think that was the, the jump in me

• 13:34Speaker 01

  that, you know what I mean, I was, but, um, yeah, I agree to your point, the military, and certainly the Legion, got my shit together. And that's a big reason for the book, is I owe the Legion and France a lot for myself for how it, it changed my life, and that was my effort, was to do something, or give something back. Albeit small, it certainly showed my appreciation.

• 13:54Jocko Willink?

  So, when you sign up, you said, you say, uh, "I signed up with the Royal Westminster Regiment, Westies, based in New Westminster, British Columbia. The Westies were assigned to support Canadian Airborne Regiment, setting me on the path to become a paratrooper, something I was interested in." So this is, you, you're a reservist?

• 14:11Speaker 01

  That's correct.

• 14:12Jocko Willink?

  So you still go to boot camp?

• 14:13Speaker 01

  Yeah, you do the same battle school. Basic is different, but you go and do the same battle school. And from there, you'd support the PPCLI, if they had any taskings overseas or whatever, you would be, that's the way the Canadian military was working, there would be one-third percent would be reservist, militia, in our case. So that, that was the objective. And then, if positions came available for reg force, you would be top of the list to, to get into the reg force.

• 14:37Jocko Willink?

  To get in there? And then they end up, what, they end up disbanding this regiment?

• 14:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Somalia, the Canadian Airborne Regiment, they, um, they had that incident in Somalia, and it resulted in them being disbanded.

• 14:48Jocko Willink?

  Which incident?

• 14:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, they, there was a, they caught a local trying to steal food, and they signed their camp, and he was, uh, I think it was four soldiers, um, they tortured him, and in the end, he, he died, and that got into the media, and obviously, as a result, the government disbanded the complete regiment. So, while that was happening, all jump courses were put on standby, and us as a regiment, we were retasked to be anti-tank.

• 15:15Speaker 01

  Basically, which was a hard moment for the regiment and wasn't obviously appealing. And for me, that was, you know, I was, I was gone. But I was, I had to find something else.

• 15:24Jocko Willink?

  You, you mentally checked out?

• 15:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I called, actually, I called the, um, a Marine Corps recruiter. And, uh, yeah. And the-

• 15:32Jocko Willink?

  What can Canadians do?

• 15:33Speaker 01

  Well, at the time, no, you'd have to go through the whole process of applying for a green card. So it would take, he, he said like two years minimum. So I was like, you know, you're young and zero patience.

• 15:42Jocko Willink?

  Two years is like the rest of your entire life. You can never wait two years. But you could do it, actually. So if there's a young Canadian right now that's thinking Marine Corps.

• 15:51Speaker 01

  Well, I think now it's a lot easier. But again, at the time, there wasn't a lot going on, so they're a little more selective. But, uh, yeah, that's what I was told, two years minimum.

• 15:58Jocko Willink?

  All right, so then you say, during my time at PPCI Battle School, one of our NCOs mentioned that a colleague of his had recently returned from France after serving in the French Foreign Legion's parachute regiment. I was intrigued. True, I'd heard of the Legion before, but never really thought more of it or took it seriously, to be honest. But more recently, the idea of being able to join an airborne regiment in a foreign country piqued my sense of adventure, something that was seriously lacking in my life. I eventually wrote to the French Foreign Legion's headquarters in France, expressing my interest in joining. This brought a quick reply from the Legion. So, so you wrote, you write them a letter?

• 16:37Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 16:37Jocko Willink?

  And then they write you back?

• 16:38Speaker 01

  So I actually went down to the French consulate in Vancouver and, uh, went to the front desk and asked the question. Kind of a strange look that I got back from the nice lady, but they gave me an address. And, uh, yeah, I wrote a letter and the letter came back with all the, um, information needed to, to join. So I, uh, I read that a million times. And, uh, yeah, I was like, I'm going. That was it.

• 17:05Jocko Willink?

  Uh, how do you say the Legion étrangère in French?

• 17:09Speaker 01

  So it's Legion étrangère.

• 17:10Jocko Willink?

  Oh, God, I'm not even gonna try that. I'm not, I'm not even gonna try it. So the French Foreign Legion is known the world over.

• 17:18Jocko Willink?

  And fixing the popular minds are images of legionnaires wearing the characteristic white keppy, is that right? Yep. Keppy caps trudging across African deserts under merciless sun to defend an outpost. These men were petty thieves and criminals with dark pasts, as well as deserters from foreign armies who had found a new home and life in the ranks of the legion. Some would call these men mercenaries. What caught my attention, though, were history books filled with black and white pictures of the legion's first battalion, étrangers des parachutistes. Nicely done. Nailed it. So do you say B E P or do you say B E P? B E P, exactly.

• 17:58Jocko Willink?

  So the first B E P and the second battalion, étrangers des parachutistes, or second B E P, jumping in French Indochina. The legion I was interested in joining had evolved into a modern elite fighting force. So I was restless, not willing to settle for average life. My mind was made up, I was going to join the French Foreign Legion. Dad looked at me sternly and shook my hand. He wished me luck, saying, "Call us when you get the chance." I made my way to the train station to continue my journey to Strasbourg, France. Second thoughts, anxiety and excitement were fighting in my mind, but there was no way I was turning back. And I always have to say this, obviously, I'm not reading this whole book right now.

• 18:42Jocko Willink?

  I'm skipping over big chunks where you have really interesting details, you kind of spell it out, like your dad was airline pilot, so you had the opportunities to get over there. And this is when you get, and the reason I think I highlighted this was because, once again, I think a lot of people that listen to this are, well, they're young individuals thinking about joining the military. I was going to say young men, but I just met a female in Australia that was like, "Oh, I joined the Air Force because of your podcast." I'm in the Air Force right now. She's like, "From listening to your podcast." And I was like, "Oh, that's awesome." So, young people, when they're thinking about joining the military and they have exactly

• 19:23Jocko Willink?

  what you have, second thoughts, anxiety and excitement, we're all fighting because you're excited to do it, but then you're scared, you're nervous, so. There's, I guess my point in saying this is that it's pretty normal to have those feelings.

• 19:38Speaker 01

  True, albeit I'm in France, I can't go home. So, there's that difference. Yeah.

• 19:44Jocko Willink?

  Alright, go.

• 19:45Speaker 01

  If I may interject, my grandfather, my mom's dad, who retired a three-star, um, before I left, he, he was my hero, as I mentioned in the other book, um, won the DSO, um, he had said to me, are you sure? And when I said, yes, I'm sure this is what I'm doing, he said, well, if you do, go there and represent your country well. So I always had that in the back of my mind is, you know, as soon as I knocked on that door, I was representing Canada somewhat.

• 20:12Speaker 01

  And yeah, but I, as you know, I mentioned the book, I sat there across the street for, for a good chunk of time looking at that door thinking, damn, I've got myself in quite the situation here, but it's time to pull through.

• 20:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, uh, you're at the Stroutsburg train station, waved down a taxi driver in rusty French. How good was your French?

• 20:33Speaker 01

  I took it, the Canadian military school system is French immersion. So I took, which is basically half English, half French. I took that to grade eight. So I had a good base, which I think was a huge factor in my decision to go. That's a challenge if you don't speak the language.

• 20:46Jocko Willink?

  In rusty French, he explained my destination to the driver, the Legion's recruitment depot. Looking surprised, he turned to me and asked, are you certain? La Legion is a tough life. When I said, yes, he replied, you crazy? Then he turned back around, put the car in gear and accelerated into Stroutsburg's evening traffic. How proud were you to say, take me to the Legion? I mean, when I was a kid, I remember we got this, uh, when we got done with the dive phase of SEAL training, they gave us this little, the US Navy qualified diver card and it, and the specification, I think it said, five, three, two, zero, which meant we were in, still in training because five, three, two, six would be you're a SEAL.

• 21:28Jocko Willink?

  But five, three, two, zero, and then it said like in parentheses, something like combat diver. And so we got this card, I mean, I'm nineteen years old and I pretty much thought I was the coolest guy in the world. Like if somebody needed to see my ID, maybe I'd have to use that one.

• 21:44Jocko Willink?

  But even just that right there of, yeah, feeling, how did that feel?

• 21:49Speaker 01

  I think I was more thinking about what's, what's coming next. Couldn't really give a shit about the taxi driver, but, uh, yeah.

• 21:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Me, I wanted to impress that taxi driver. Take me to the Legion.

• 22:05Jocko Willink?

  The, yeah, man, when you're nineteen, eighteen, you're dumb. Well, maybe you, you, it sounds like you were

• 22:10Speaker 01

  I was a bit older.

• 22:10Jocko Willink?

  smarter than I.

• 22:11Speaker 01

  Well, I was, but I was twenty, twenty-two.

• 22:14Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 22:14Speaker 01

  So I was a bit older.

• 22:15Jocko Willink?

  Preservist for a little.

• 22:15Speaker 01

  But I wasn't. I was still dumb. Yeah, there's no question.

• 22:19Jocko Willink?

  The Strasbourg Legion Recruitment Depot was a First World War era whitewashed three-story building facing a large parade ground, a partially abandoned barracks. It's now used as a post de recrutement de la Legion l'étrangère. Am I saying that right?

• 22:35Speaker 01

  Yes, sir.

• 22:36Jocko Willink?

  With the Cold War over, there was no longer a need for large military units and therefore sprawling military barracks. The entrance to the P R L E was a metal door set into a three-meter-high wall topped with razor wire. A solitary light glared down from above. Inscribed on the door were three words. Les géopatries nostres. How do you say that?

• 22:59Speaker 01

  Les géopatries nostres.

• 23:01Jocko Willink?

  Okay. The Legion is our fatherland. Which is a, which is a bold statement, you know? It's their way of saying, you're gonna be from all these different countries and, but those aren't, those aren't your fatherland anymore. Your fatherland is not.

• 23:16Speaker 01

  Those days are over.

• 23:17Jocko Willink?

  The Legion.

• 23:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 23:20Jocko Willink?

  So, yeah, then you talked about your stalling, sitting across the street, looking at the door, knowing that after you go in there.

• 23:27Speaker 01

  Suck it up, man. Just go for it. You came all this way. But yeah, I definitely.

• 23:31Jocko Willink?

  How long did you sit there for?

• 23:33Speaker 01

  I think it was more than an hour. Enough time to, to get bored of sitting there. Um, yeah.

• 23:39Jocko Willink?

  Last moments of freedom. How much intel did you have?

• 23:42Speaker 01

  Not much, because that was the issue. This is pre-internet, really. There was Legionnaire that you mentioned in the book, um, which I had read. And that was definitely a, a big part of my joining. I read The Mouthful of Rocks, but again, as you mentioned, deserter, didn't take into account. It was just, you know, someone writing their own narrative. Um, and then the history books, you know, seeing the, the BEPS jumping into China and then Algeria. That, for me, was the.

• 24:07Speaker 01

  The main, I guess, history and knowledge that I could gain. And from there, it was just mostly visual, you know, that looked cool, I'm going. There wasn't a ton of more.

• 24:18Jocko Willink?

  What about intel as far as what the indoctrination phases were going to be like?

• 24:22Speaker 01

  I didn't know much, whatever the books talked about, and all that being said, Legionnaire was the sixties, that was the French into China or the French Algerian war. So time had passed, but I didn't know much. That was the big question mark is what comes next?

• 24:36Jocko Willink?

  Same for me going to SEAL training nowadays, obviously, you can pretty much observe SEAL training on YouTube. You can see what's going on. I had no, no, zero idea. There was one like fifteen minute video that the recruiter would show, but it didn't show you very much. And I don't know whether that's better or worse, because you don't even know, you just, you just, like you said, you get ready to suck it up and just whatever they throw at me is fine. You have, you can't even look at the long term suffering because you didn't even know what it's, what's going to come, so.

• 25:06Speaker 01

  And at that age, we don't, we don't think much far ahead, do we? It's just more action.

• 25:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, and I, as I was saying before we started recording, like, I didn't care. What they were going to do to me, it didn't, didn't matter, just even if they, even if they were going to kill me, it was like, okay, well, bring it.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, and at that point, I did know too that this wasn't a given. You don't just show up and join, they take everybody. There was a selection process. Uh, I think the big one for me was, you know, get in, because I didn't want to go back with my tail between my legs and I didn't even get in, you know what I mean? That would be a huge. Yeah. Issue for me.

• 25:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you don't want to see, go back and see your grandfather.

• 25:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't even get in the French war.

• 25:46Jocko Willink?

  So here we go. I stood up enough stalling, I told myself, I crossed the street, walked to the door, rang the doorbell. It didn't make any noise. After what seemed like minutes, a large man taller than me and a lot more imposing, dressed in khaki green army combat uniform finally opened the door. He asked to see my passport. I handed it to him. You join Legion? He asked in broken English. We, I replied. He glanced at my passport again. Canadian? We. And so then you roll in and they put in a video cassette that was giving you basically the the outline of the Legion's history.

• 26:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, they had a cassette for every language in the old VHS machine and old TV and you sit there for whatever it took 25 minutes and you just watch their presentation on what you're about to join. Yeah. So that was actually my first real bit of lessons on the on the totality of what the Legion was. But in it, there was, you know, shots of the the rep jumping. And so I was just like, yeah, that's we're good. Let's I don't need to watch this tape. But you got to you're not going to say shit to the gentleman that put it in.

• 26:46Jocko Willink?

  Uh, carries on a bit. Why do you want to join the Legion? I want a soldier, I replied. No one can do a poker face like a foreign Legion recruitment NCO. Without speaking, he placed a document in front of me that stated my acceptance into the pre-volunteer phase of the Legion's initial five-year contract. He motioned for me to sign it, marking my first major step into the ranks of the Legion. I was aware of the initial five-year commitment. The letter I received from the Legion prior to flying to France clearly outlined what was expected. Without hesitation, I leaned forward and signed the document. It was September 8, 1994. So there you go. You're in.

• 27:23Speaker 01

  Ish.

• 27:24Jocko Willink?

  Well, you're in for for if you make it through the selection phase.

• 27:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, correct. Yeah.

• 27:30Jocko Willink?

  Is that just the way to put it?

• 27:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 27:32Jocko Willink?

  And the weird thing is, you're in, I mean, we'll talk more about it, but there's people deserting all the time, like just like just leaving, escaping.

• 27:42Speaker 01

  Basically.

• 27:43Jocko Willink?

  Which is kind of funny.

• 27:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:46Jocko Willink?

  Uh, because and and you know, you we'll cover it, but you don't want a guy that that wants to leave. You don't want a guy that's not doesn't want to be there to be there.

• 27:56Speaker 01

  No. And they've been doing this for a long time. They know what it takes and the right type of candidate to choose. So that's the first step. They look at the basic information that they have. And they go from there. And they've been fairly successful at what they do. So.

• 28:09Jocko Willink?

  So now you go to Obanya.

• 28:11Speaker 01

  Obain, correct.

• 28:12Jocko Willink?

  Obain.

• 28:13Speaker 01

  Obain. So they do a pre-medical exam prior to that. So they really check the sound of body and all that kind of stuff to make sure that you're physically fit. And then off you go to Aubameyang.

• 28:22Jocko Willink?

  And did you say, did you say like if you had broken bones, you couldn't join?

• 28:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, bad teeth was a big one, too. Yeah, they look for the basics, any scars showing, you know, previous injuries.

• 28:32Jocko Willink?

  What do you mean bad teeth, like crooked teeth?

• 28:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know what exactly look for, but they spent a lot of time, we sit in a dentist's chair and they go, they go at it and guys were, were cut because they had bad teeth. Now, I don't know if that shows bad bone structure, bad DNA, or it's going to cause them problems down the road where they have to do dental work, but especially overseas, I think that's, they take teeth into consideration.

• 28:54Jocko Willink?

  Oh, yeah.

• 28:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 28:58Jocko Willink?

  So now you end up in Aubameyang.

• 29:00Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 29:01Jocko Willink?

  Am I getting that right?

• 29:01Speaker 01

  That's correct, yeah.

• 29:03Jocko Willink?

  Uh, we joined groups of volunteers from other recruitment centers numbering well over a hundred and lined up in single file on the parade square opposite the basement entrance of a single story building. Our wallets, money and watches were taken away and sealed inside individually labeled manila envelopes. Clothes and shoes were also taken from us and stored either in military duffel bags or if deemed adequate, our civilian bags. We were then issued personal toiletries, T-shirts, a pair of white sports shorts, socks, underwear, a single towel and a small padlock for our personal locker in the barracks rooms. Those without proper running shoes were handed hard sold Adidas runners. Around us, men were speaking in a variety of languages unfamiliar to me.

• 29:45Jocko Willink?

  All orders were and other information were given in French and quickly translated to uh, to the others by those who understood. So this is your kind of a standard boot camp scenario. We're going to get rid of your, get rid of your individuality somewhat.

• 30:03Speaker 01

  Still at the recruiting phase, so we're not even, when you do get chosen, you go off and do your basic, which is four months at another regiment. This is just screening, really.

• 30:11Jocko Willink?

  So still screening?

• 30:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, so all the different recruitment, uh, sites that they have in France, they all ship the volunteers to Aubameyang and then they, they start doing their triage, basically would be the right word. And from there they'll do their selection, background checks, more medical stuff, physical fitness, uh, reviews and from there they'll pick their, their legionnaires, yeah, or to be.

• 30:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 30:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:34Jocko Willink?

  To be attempted.

• 30:35Speaker 01

  Correct, yeah.

• 30:36Jocko Willink?

  The final phase of the evaluation referred to as the Gestapo was the most discussed among potential recruits. The officer and NCOs conducting this phase were from the legionnaires. Internal security. This immediately dispelled one of the Legion's greatest myths, no questions asked. In fact, the Gestapo asked plenty of questions and dug deep, clearing our names through Interpol. So that, what I was saying earlier about how you could be this random criminal and just go join the French Foreign Legion and your pass is erased, it's not like that, apparently.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Not anymore. Originally, back when it was initially designed, it was to have soldiers to go do France's dirty work that weren't French. So they would take whoever they could, or they would give criminals the opportunity to not serve their time in prison and join the Legion. But, you know, as the Legion grew and became a little more professional and a part of the French military, then it was, it was a different system. They basically selected what they could, the best of what showed up. So this is the process they start doing there. Through background checks and make sure that you, you need a valid passport, obviously. No major criminal offenses. And then have the physical attributes to, to make a good soldier. And they take one in, one in 12, I think, when I was there. One in 12 applicants get through.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Now it's more one in 15.

• 31:51Jocko Willink?

  Wow.

• 31:51Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:52Jocko Willink?

  So that's one in 12 that actually show up?

• 31:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, correct, yeah.

• 31:57Jocko Willink?

  The biggest groups hailed from the former Eastern Bloc countries: Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Hung- Hungary, Slovakia and Czech Republic. We commonly, we, we commonly refer to them as les communistes, the communists, which I got a kick out of.

• 32:13Speaker 01

  And this is when, it's the 90s, so the walls come down.

• 32:15Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 32:15Speaker 01

  And there's a lot of guys coming down to join, just to get a, a meal ticket and to get out of tough times up, up across the, the old wall.

• 32:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 32:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 32:25Jocko Willink?

  When they get done, when you get done, do you, do you become a French citizen when you're done?

• 32:30Speaker 01

  You can apply. Um, I didn't, for example, but yeah, you can apply. It's not a given. Uh, if you're injured in battle, you are given French citizenship. Um, but yeah, most of the people will apply after five years and they're pretty, they're pretty good at, at issuing.

• 32:44Jocko Willink?

  Three weeks in, it was a great relief that I was called out of the ranks with several others and issued secondhand combat pants, jacket, a belt and boots. Our heads were shaved and we moved to a cramped, smelly building in the volunteer compound, which we spent our time trying to clean. A few days later, we were, several of us from the group were issued a red, plastic epaulet. We were now rouge, signifying that we had passed the Legion recruitment process and we were bound for basic training. Now known as Les Rogues, we passed individually before a Colonel in the regiment's HQ to sign our initial five-year

• 33:22Jocko Willink?

  contract with the Legion. We also received our Legion service numbers. Mine was 1-8-5-6-8-9.

• 33:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we're through. So I'm in. And that was probably the worst part of my experience in the Legion. Not that it was a bad experience, but that was definitely the least enjoyable.

• 33:40Jocko Willink?

  Where just the whole

• 33:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, the atmosphere.

• 33:42Jocko Willink?

  In-processing.

• 33:42Speaker 01

  If, I don't know what prison's like, but that was kind of my, my go-to experience. Yeah. You know, there's just a bunch of meatheads around. Everyone's kind of, you don't know what's happening. Yeah.

• 33:51Jocko Willink?

  And they're only taking one out of every 12.

• 33:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And then every day, there'd be a roll call. They'll yell out a whole bunch of names and those guys, you're out. You just go off to the side to go back and get your kit and they'll send you back to your original spot that you applied and that's it. You're done. So every day you'd be in roll call and you'd be just hoping your name didn't get called.

• 34:09Jocko Willink?

  And how long was this time period?

• 34:11Speaker 01

  It took about a month for this to happen. Yeah. It varies.

• 34:18Jocko Willink?

  And then there's another, you say at this point, a Legion myth was dispelled. For a short administrative period of time, we were Omns Sans Nom, men without names. And those who needed an alias would be provided with one. And so that, so it used to be that you could just go in there and change your name. And it sounds like you still could if you wanted to.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:41Jocko Willink?

  But it's not mandatory.

• 34:42Speaker 01

  Exactly. So for the Eastern countries, it's illegal for them to serve in a foreign military. So for that reason, the Legion will issue them a false name. Typically a Swiss, based on a Swiss passport, Canadian passport. And they use that for a duration of their career before they can go through an administrative process to get their name back. In my case, I was Canadian. That's not an issue. So I kept my name. Yeah.

• 35:08Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 35:09Speaker 01

  But if the country finds out what that name was and they call and ask Legion is, you know, Simon Murray in your ranks, they'll have to say yes. So it's up to you to, to maintain the anonymity, I guess would be the word.

• 35:23Jocko Willink?

  It was alarming how quickly I'd become detached from my previous life and tethered to a new one that was still being shaped. While cleaning the center, two guys in our group were caught speaking Polish to each other. Although talking in any language besides French had been accepted over the past few weeks, we soon learned that it was no longer tolerated. To demonstrate his displeasure, a corporal kneed one of the poles in his midsection and then ordered him to do pushups. While he was doing pushups, the corporal kicked him in his ribs, demanding that he pick up the pace. This was our first taste of the Legion's discipline and a revelation.

• 35:54Speaker 01

  Indeed. So yeah, our corporal's a sergeant and our corporal showed up from the Ketskram Arrow, which is the training regiment that we'll be going to. And this is them taking us for a run and, or taking us out. And this is where we see the first sign of what's to come. It was interesting. I thought it was actually kinda, kinda cool. I know that sounds right, but it was more like, yeah, this is, you know, my experience in Canadian military was, was good, but it wasn't tough, if that's the right word. And this seemed to me like the right attitude.

• 36:24Jocko Willink?

  And plus, you just spent like, uh, whatever, three or four weeks in this kinda jail scenario and not doing any real training and then all of a sudden it's starting.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  It's starting, exactly. So you got momentum. It's, you're going, you're in the right direction. So it's, it's all good.

• 36:39Jocko Willink?

  Isn't it interesting that, that that's just in your mind, you're thinking, right on. Cause that's what I'm thinking. I'm like, yeah.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  Or especially if they deserve it.

• 36:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Well, for sure.

• 36:53Speaker 01

  Yeah. And it's, as I said, they, they know what they're doing. This is how they weed out the, uh, the weak or those that aren't meant to be there. If you can't handle. Need of the gut and some kick to the side, you know, what good are you in the trenches when shit goes wrong, you know?

• 37:07Jocko Willink?

  What good are you in life?

• 37:08Speaker 01

  Exactly. Own it.

• 37:13Jocko Willink?

  Awesome. Now, let's see, I think this is when you get to a Castel.

• 37:17Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 37:18Jocko Willink?

  Saying that right?

• 37:19Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 37:19Jocko Willink?

  So the Castel is, this is where sort of we're starting.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  That is the real training. Yep, correct. Basic training.

• 37:25Jocko Willink?

  Our first lesson in how life would be as a recruit in Castel came via a ritual known as Appel. All 25 of us lined up in the hallway, along the wall, shoulders touching. We then counted off in French, each yelling the number, the next number in succession, to ensure all section members were present and accounted for. The corporal prowled up and down the ranks, inflicting immediate punishment in the form of a slap to the face or a knee to the stomach if there was a miscount. At one point, Alastair, after receiving a verbal lashing and a hard, open-handed slap across the face for getting his number wrong, said to the corporal, "But I don't speak French, corporal." I couldn't help but laugh just a little. It's the French Foreign Legion after all. I was damn lucky to have basic French knowledge on my side.

• 38:05Jocko Willink?

  Appel would become a routine in our lives. Its intent was to quickly identify anyone who might have decided to desert. It was also a fast and effective way to gather a section together to issue orders. Our first morning Appel, Alastair and a Norwegian were missing, deserted. Apparently, they had jumped the regiment wall just hours prior. This seems strange to me, like, what had they been expecting with basic training? They hadn't even lasted 24 hours in Castel. Morning, noon, and night, our section, now 23 men, would form up and march from the company barracks to the mess hall. A corporal would set the pace, calling out the slow legion pace at 88 steps per minute.

• 38:45Jocko Willink?

  During the first few days, our attempt to maintain the timing, as well as the proper intervals between our rows, were ragged. In hindsight, it was comical. The other corporals, positioned at our size, attempted to instill order by yelling at us and hitting anyone who fell out of step. Whether being struck and shouted at helped anyone improve was debatable.

• 39:08Jocko Willink?

  So this is where it kicks off. And if you see the French Foreign Legion marching, you guys march at 88 beats per minute, which is, which is like a third, maybe or a quarter slower than a normal

• 39:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, correct, yeah.

• 39:19Jocko Willink?

  march. Is that, is that harder? Is that out of sync with normal walking?

• 39:26Speaker 01

  It is. Yeah, I think that's the challenge is you gotta slow yourself down.

• 39:31Speaker 01

  And then they introduce the music. We'll get there.

• 39:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 39:37Jocko Willink?

  When it wasn't possible for us to do a single more push up, again, I'm fast forwarding, but when it wasn't possible for us to do a single more push up, we were made to assume stress positions in push up stance, knees off the ground with our asses in the air. Anyone who faltered and dropped was kicked until he managed to regain his, his stance. Yes.

• 39:54Speaker 01

  Yeah. So there's not, I mean, there's nothing mean about it. They're just trying to figure out whether or not you want to be there. And if you don't, well, you know, well, that being said, you, you gotta do your, your four months of basic, you can decide to, to leave at the end of basic, but they're, they're definitely putting the, the pressure on early.

• 40:11Speaker 01

  And if people desert, they, they know, but they don't, you've done them a favor, really.

• 40:16Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you made it easy for them.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 40:18Jocko Willink?

  The punishments varied and largely came down to the corporal's imagination, which I can only imagine what that, what that ends up looking like.

• 40:31Jocko Willink?

  So then, when did you go to the farm? When does that happen?

• 40:34Speaker 01

  Once we were, we had 50, uh, the next group showed up. So I think I was there for a couple of weeks before we were a complete section and then off you go.

• 40:42Jocko Willink?

  So then you go to a place called the farm. And here you say the next four weeks would be our first real challenge in basic training. It's supposed to weed out anyone deemed unfit for the Legion. We would be presented with our white capis only when we completed the farm.

• 40:55Speaker 01

  And that was super foreign to me, coming from the Canadian system, albeit short. You know, they had said, we're, you guys, we go into the farm for a month. I was like, you know, what? And, uh, yeah, it was, it was definitely an eye opener, but effective.

• 41:06Jocko Willink?

  Well, what, what part was, was strange to you?

• 41:09Speaker 01

  Well, just the term farm, like, well, you know, we're gonna go farming. Um, and then we show up and it actually looks like a French farming building and landscape around it. But, um, it's an effective tool. You're there for a month and you just get beastied on and they show you the way of, of the Legionnaire. And if you can hack it, good for you. If not, off you go.

• 41:30Jocko Willink?

  How often are people quitting?

• 41:32Speaker 01

  Um, we had a handful, probably every week, one or two would desert.

• 41:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it was kind of, as I mentioned, you know, kind of a, an understood thing. If it's not for you and you deserted, off you go. If the gendarmes pick you up, they would, you know, be sent back to the legion. They'd do their time in the jail and then they'd release them. Uh, it's not like there's any criminal aspect to it. But yeah, it's just part of the system. You weed out the weak.

• 41:56Jocko Willink?

  And they start to build that, uh, teamwork here based on this kind of thing. Back to the book, any error, collective or individual resulted in shared punishment. We were only as good as our weakest member, so those who were stronger had best help the less capable. But those of us who were stronger and more capable soon lost patience when the guys making our days a lot harder. It wasn't long before a clear hierarchy of ability became evident within our group.

• 42:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, same. They're really, uh, trying to figure out who's, who's supposed to be there.

• 42:26Jocko Willink?

  Mm-hmm. The tough routine brought the expected result. During our first week, another Brit, an Australian and a New Zealander from the latest group to join were missing at morning appelle. Once again, the realization that they had deserted struck me as odd. The corporals' reactions were minimal. Ultimately, no one wants a deserter in the ranks. And then you could get to this, we were broken down into binomes. Am I saying that right?

• 42:53Speaker 01

  Binomes.

• 42:54Jocko Willink?

  Binomes.

• 42:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 42:56Jocko Willink?

  Or groups of two. This is a tradition that dates back to the Roman legions whereby two soldiers were designated to guard each other's backs in battles. And in SEAL training, we have swim buddies, which is the same thing, like in the Marine Corps, the Army, I think they call them battle buddies, but.

• 43:12Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 43:14Jocko Willink?

  So that's a, another word for you need a, you need a, you need a swim buddy, you need a partner.

• 43:18Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 43:18Jocko Willink?

  At all the time.

• 43:21Jocko Willink?

  You had another partner at all time, and that was hunger. Hunger was a constant companion. The combination of physical fitness, long hours in the classroom, and seemingly ended, endless pushups took its toll on everyone. How much, how much did you guys eat?

• 43:35Speaker 01

  Enough. We definitely weren't eating enough to compensate for the calories you're burning, but that was also part of it, trying to turn us down, get us into the right shape. And reference the, the deserters, I think I mentioned that it seemed like it was more that the Brits, the Kiwis, the Aussies, the Western era, you know, the. Non eastern blockers that were were deserting and I think that's because

• 43:54Jocko Willink?

  They had something to go home to?

• 43:55Speaker 01

  They have yeah, they have it easier at home. Whereas eastern blockers, where are they gonna go? You know, they they got no choice. So it's a it's an effective system, but it's not perfect because you know, potentially they're losing good soldiers, but they're just not ready to put up with certain bullshit.

• 44:09Speaker 01

  Early on.

• 44:10Jocko Willink?

  And now we get to, I think, what, well, marching songs. Marching songs are an important legion tradition. And throughout its history, regiments have marched into battle singing. Most songs tell the stories of former campaigns and battles. Although I respected the legion's history, I disliked singing as it was completely alien to my concept of what soldiering should be. My previous exposure to army life had been an entirely different experience. So you guys are singing these songs. Here's an example. I won't do the French version. I'll read the English. The English translation. Against the Vietts, against the enemy, wherever duty calls. Soldiers of France, soldiers of the country.

• 44:50Jocko Willink?

  We march toward the front. Legionnaires, the battle that begins places enthusiasm and courage in our souls. It may rain grenades and gravel. Our victory will be sweeter. But if death strikes us down, if our bloody fingers stiffen on the ground, one last raid, farewell, and tomorrow, we will wish to train. Despite the bullets and the shells, under fire and bombs, we will advance toward the same goal, ignoring the call of the grave.

• 45:18Speaker 01

  Roger. Now, I I shit talk it, but I respect it and it has its place and its purpose and it's effective. And that's, you know, that's the history of the legion. So it's it's what they what they do and what they use.

• 45:31Jocko Willink?

  They, I mean, there's, there's, what do they call that? There's some, there's some thing where you say the same thing over and over again.

• 45:40Speaker 01

  Start to believe it?

• 45:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you start to believe it. I believe it's just called straight up brainwashing. Right?

• 45:46Speaker 01

  And it's effective.

• 45:47Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, there's some, but yeah, that's that's what they're doing, right? You're singing these songs. The cadences that we used to sing, we sang some cadences that were completely not okay. Meaning they were just over the top with.

• 46:04Jocko Willink?

  Just wrong and they don't do them anymore. It's been interesting. When I went back and I talked to guys like, oh, do you guys still sing that cadence? Kind of thinking to myself, they probably don't and they don't. There's cadences that they banished.

• 46:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 46:15Jocko Willink?

  Cause they were so bad. Uh, but there's still cadences that you sing and like things like this. Hey, this is what we do.

• 46:22Speaker 01

  But it builds cohesion, right? There's the teamwork. It's learning, figuring it out together. Um, you know, pulling along the weakest link. But when you do finally get it, you start marching together collectively as a group, there is that pride like, yeah, we nailed this. We got it. And it, it's effective. And as I mentioned, we, we march into the, into the regiment four weeks later as a cohesive group in step, singing in the right tune. And yeah, it's, it's impressive that they can do that in a short amount of time with, you know, all these different nationalities and people that don't speak French. They have different alphabets. Like it's, it's a, it's an effective system.

• 46:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. No, the, the, the learning French part has got to be huge.

• 47:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, especially with Russians. I mean, they had different alphabet. We had Koreans. I mean, I had it easy and I, and I say that having that base made it hell of a lot easier for me. I didn't have to worry, but I could just focus on the, the soldiering and the, not getting beasted on.

• 47:12Jocko Willink?

  How good does someone's French get in four weeks? Or I guess now it's been what? Eight weeks that they've been here?

• 47:19Speaker 01

  Depends on the individual. Obviously there's some that pick it up quicker than others. If you're cleaning toilets all the time and working in the kitchen, you might want to put a little more effort into it. There's certain nationalities like the Romanians that have that Latin base that pick it up quite well. Um, and yeah, it's down to each individual to put in the time and effort.

• 47:37Jocko Willink?

  What about just fast forward real quick, three years down the line? Does everyone fluent in French?

• 47:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, quicker than that. By the time you're done basic, you have, and that's part of their, their, the system within those four months, you have a basic level of French before you can go to the, the next step to your regiment. And that being said, about a third of the, the men in the ranks are also French. So what they'll do, as I mentioned in the book, is they'll put those who speak French, you'll be a binome with a, a non-French speaker, and you have to assist. And if they're not pulling-

• 48:07Jocko Willink?

  So what did they class you as?

• 48:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was given that. So I was given, um, a couple of Anglophones, a Brit, um, to help out. And if they're not pulling their weight, I'm cleaning toilets and working in the kitchen with them. So the onus is there to, to get them along.

• 48:19Jocko Willink?

  Even with the Brit, you guys have a common language because you can transfer to English.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:23Jocko Willink?

  Right?

• 48:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:24Jocko Willink?

  But you could be with a Korean that speaks no English and then-

• 48:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, tough.

• 48:28Jocko Willink?

  It's just-

• 48:30Speaker 01

  And we would be in the classroom with Sergeant Schmidt that we mentioned there, or others. And they would just teach you, fork, fork, fucking figure it out, fork. If you don't, you know, the old open hand would come and you'd learn fork. Fork, there you go. Or kuto knife, I guess, wrong choice.

• 48:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You say, "It seemed like we spent more time singing than soldiering each song as songs, so the tune matches the slow pace of the Legion's march. In some cases, secondary singers are assigned specific tenor choruses filling in the background. Most of the recruits agreed that Legion training was far from what we had expected. The emphasis on singing and the constant hunger that gnawed at our guts didn't help. We were blissfully ignorant of the fact that this was all part of the training. Things improved somewhat when we started concentrating on elementary combat skills. We also started marching for several hours a night, complete, as a complete section with our FAMA. How do you, what do you say there?

• 49:26Speaker 01

  Uh, Famas.

• 49:27Jocko Willink?

  So you say Famas?

• 49:28Speaker 01

  Famas, yeah.

• 49:29Jocko Willink?

  Famas, which is your weapon, uh, webbing and backpacks.

• 49:34Jocko Willink?

  With each passing march, the dur, the duration extended until we spent most of a night marching, passing through local villages, forests, and fields. I enjoyed the marches and didn't find them too difficult, but some of the guys developed large blisters from the friction, friction of our stiff, stiff leather boots. Nobody showed them much sympathy, suffer in silence, that was the attitude. Cumulative fatigue meant we were usually in a state of semi-sleep, simply following the man in front of us. So you guys are humping.

• 50:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:04Jocko Willink?

  How many, how many clicks were you doing tonight?

• 50:06Speaker 01

  I can't, you know, I don't, to be honest, I don't remember the exact number. Um, enough to, it would progressively increase. You know, once we got our legs and behind us and we'd be marching all night, get back early. And the next NCO will be there saying, glad you had a good night's sleep, let's get to it.

• 50:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 50:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Oldest trick in the

• 50:27Speaker 01

  Oh, I know, yeah, exactly.

• 50:29Jocko Willink?

  You know

• 50:29Speaker 01

  We all fall for it. What, what are you?

• 50:31Jocko Willink?

  In the Marine Corps, uh, like the drill instructors, they change shirts. So you never see them sweating. So it doesn't matter what they're doing, they'll come in like looking totally fresh.

• 50:42Speaker 01

  Good to go. Smart.

• 50:46Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on our time, so again skipping through a bunch of stuff here, our time at the farm was finished and the final three days involved the forced march, meaning a march of longer duration than we had been used to. It was called la marche keppi. Because it was after this that you earned the right to wear the coveted white keppi and be promoted to the rank of legionnaire.

• 51:06Jocko Willink?

  Deuxième, what's that?

• 51:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, second class, exactly.

• 51:09Jocko Willink?

  Did I say that right? Do, how do you say?

• 51:10Speaker 01

  Deuxième.

• 51:11Jocko Willink?

  Deuxième.

• 51:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:12Jocko Willink?

  Class, second class legionnaire.

• 51:17Jocko Willink?

  Then you guys are sort of in a graduation and someone steps forward and reads the first line of legionnaires code of honor.

• 51:25Speaker 01

  Benny.

• 51:26Jocko Willink?

  And then the rest of you, who, what's his, what's that?

• 51:28Speaker 01

  Benny, the Scott.

• 51:30Jocko Willink?

  Oh, he was the guy that, was that, I mean, he was the honor grad or something?

• 51:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. Eventually quit, but, yeah.

• 51:38Jocko Willink?

  So you guys step forward and here's the legionnaires code. Legionnaire, you are a volunteer serving France with honor and loyalty. Every legionnaire is your brother in arms irrespective of his nationality, race or religion. You will show him the same solidarity as that which bonds a family.

• 51:59Jocko Willink?

  Respectful of traditions, loyal to your commanders, discipline and camaraderie are your force, courage and loyalty, your virtues. Proud of your status as a legionnaire, you express this through your uniform, always smart, your behavior dignified but modest and your quarters always clean. As an elite soldier, you train rigorously. You maintain your weapon as your most precious possession and you're always mindful of your physical condition. The mission is sacred, you will execute to the end at all costs. In combat, you act without emotion or hatred, you respect the defeated enemy and you never abandon your dead, your wounded or your weapons.

• 52:45Jocko Willink?

  After completing the code, we were ordered to place our keppis on our heads and the order was given to present arms to the commanding officer. We were now legionnaires.

• 52:58Jocko Willink?

  Pretty awesome code there.

• 53:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. Has its place in history, definitely.

• 53:07Jocko Willink?

  It's

• 53:09Jocko Willink?

  It's interesting. They got that last line in there in combat. You act without emotion or hatred. You respect the defeated enemy and you never abandon. You're dead, you're wounded. It's interesting the respecting of the defeated enemy. I wonder when that was added. Do you know?

• 53:21Speaker 01

  I don't. Definitely you're representing France, the flag, so your actions. They speak for themselves. Um, I don't know exactly historically when that was added.

• 53:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 53:35Jocko Willink?

  So now it's time to check in. Right? Check in with third company, third section. With With your regiment.

• 53:47Speaker 01

  So basic continues. We basically have three months left.

• 53:50Jocko Willink?

  Oh, really?

• 53:51Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it's, yeah, you finish the farm and then you go back to Castel. For three months and then you start your, your training as a legionnaire, as an infantryman. And they basically set you up. So depending on what regiment you go to, you have the base skills needed for them to, to work with you.

• 54:07Jocko Willink?

  So when you go to third company, third section, are you still in basic training?

• 54:10Speaker 01

  Still basic training. Yep.

• 54:12Jocko Willink?

  So you're still not, you're still not done yet?

• 54:14Speaker 01

  No, no.

• 54:17Jocko Willink?

  What's the total training time that it's gonna take?

• 54:18Speaker 01

  Four months.

• 54:19Jocko Willink?

  Okay. I think that's, yeah, it's about the same time as maybe the Marine Corps boot camp. Marine Corps boot camp's 13 weeks.

• 54:33Jocko Willink?

  So that, and that just completes more of your kind of basic military training?

• 54:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're getting more into the infantry's type of stuff.

• 54:40Jocko Willink?

  Okay, so you are doing combat skills?

• 54:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 54:43Jocko Willink?

  And then?

• 54:43Speaker 01

  The farm was just a, the beastiest, show you what, what a legionnaire should deal with and take.

• 54:50Speaker 01

  There's not a lot of, as you know, mentioned, if there's the basics, but it's not, it's just more about the discipline.

• 54:55Jocko Willink?

  Right.

• 54:55Speaker 01

  Learning the Tools of the trade. And then when you get back to the regiment for the last three months, then it's more focused on the soldier.

• 55:02Jocko Willink?

  Actually becoming, learning the tactical skills.

• 55:04Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 55:05Jocko Willink?

  And then, uh, you're assigned to the sports monitor course.

• 55:11Jocko Willink?

  And the military driver course. And then you're gonna get sent to a second rep. So explain that to me.

• 55:18Speaker 01

  So I finished, I finished first. Um, and hats off, I mentioned Benny, he was an ex uh. Uh, British soldier, served in uh. Um, over in Ireland, a good guy and he was my, you know, go to during training. You know, he had his. History and stories and he had a bad knee, so he decided at the end of your basic training, you can decide to. Call it quits and he did and we had a, you know, I think it was seventeen that did, I don't remember the exact figure I mentioned, but there was a chunk that decided it wasn't for them. I finished first and generally how it works is depending on where you finish, you can pick and decide where you want to go. The different regiments. In the Legion, there's one airborne regiment, the rep. And that was my, my choice, my only choice. However, because I had finished first and I had the French, the language ability.

• 56:03Speaker 01

  They wanted me to stay on as a foot foot. Now, it may, it's in the book. We have these acting corporals that aren't corporals, but they've been given that. Grade or. Ability based on their. Language or language skills and they could be. Fox, am I allowed to say that? Some of them took advantage of their, their authority and dealt out punishment, which was unfair because they haven't done shit. Um, so they had a bad name for themselves. And we all picked up on that and we had one in particular that I had no time for and never ran into again, which is probably a good thing, but. They wanted me to stay as a foot foot. And I think my head NCO. Could tell.

• 56:45Speaker 01

  Based on my reaction, that wasn't, I didn't want that, I didn't come all this way to be a foot foot, I wanted to go to the rep. So they came up with a solution was if I went did my sports monitor course, I could go to the rep.

• 56:54Jocko Willink?

  What's the sports monitor course?

• 56:56Speaker 01

  It's basically in the regiment, you'll have your sports bureau. And they dictate, you know, just the athleticism of all the legionnaires, they do all the planning for sports events.

• 57:06Speaker 01

  Yeah, basically just run the sports bureau. So that would be a, a course that gave you that qualification to be a part of the, the regiment sports bureaus.

• 57:13Jocko Willink?

  Got it. So you're learning more about the physical training aspects. So when you get to a regiment, you can then go, hey. Joel, you got this, you know, set up our physical training, make sure we're good to go.

• 57:24Speaker 01

  So I was able, you know, I had the, the athleticism and I was able to, you know, do well enough that they, I guess, saw the. That part of, of me as a soldier. And that was the option I was given and I, and I took it.

• 57:36Jocko Willink?

  And then we graduated number one. What's that? That's based on just every aspect that you're

• 57:42Speaker 01

  I think it looks in general. Everything I just

• 57:45Jocko Willink?

  Just across the board.

• 57:46Speaker 01

  They at the end, they have an evaluation.

• 57:48Jocko Willink?

  What were you good at?

• 57:50Speaker 01

  Um, I could run. It started to come on. You know, I was heavier when I joined, you know, being a Canadian Hawk. Cause I had a bit of muscle on me and they they told me down pretty good. So I picked up the running. I did well. And the big staple.

• 58:04Speaker 01

  Physical side for the Legion is the eight kilometer run with rucksack and weapon. You actually do a 1500 meter sprint. There's a, I think a five minute break and then you do eight kilometers. There's that. There's the rope. Then there's the obstacle course and, uh, you know, I was able to, to do well on those. So with that, on the range, I was consistent. Um, obviously I had the, the language, my kit was in gear. You know, I wasn't a problem.

• 58:29Jocko Willink?

  Was there anything that you were not good at? Anything you struggled with?

• 58:34Speaker 01

  I could, um, but yeah, that was not, uh, my forte.

• 58:40Jocko Willink?

  But as far as the actual soldiering stuff, there was nothing that really gave you a problem?

• 58:46Speaker 01

  No, not, obviously. I mean, I, there's room for improvement and everything, but, uh, overall, no, I wasn't, I was enjoying it. You know, I was, I wanted to soldier and that's what we were doing. I could see the, the progression and where I wanted to go was, was coming. Uh, I was getting to that spot. So I think I had the right attitude. Obviously like in anything, attitude is, is a huge factor. I think I just put my head down and soldiered on and that was looked upon positively.

• 59:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. People are always surprised when, you know, for, for SEAL training anyways, you know, I would say like, if you're a okay high school athlete, you'll be fine. Like you don't need to be some superhuman because you just need to be able to do the stuff. And then obviously if you've got an aptitude towards running, you're going to be better at that or aptitude towards the obstacle course. You're going to be better at that, but you don't need to be some super stud to make it through.

• 59:36Speaker 01

  Exactly. And consistent is always better than excellent. One thing and then weak and others. Like if you got that, you can build on those. But if you're, I think. Most NCOs and stuff appreciate that, you know, you're always, you're always there in that top group, kind of pulling your weight.

• 59:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, for sure. I think it's better to be well-rounded than a special specialty at swimming or specialty at running. Cause if you're not good at one of those things, or if you're bad at one of those things, you can, you're not gonna make it. I mean, it's much better to be average, and I was average. I was a strong average.

• 1:00:09Jocko Willink?

  Hand-to-hand combat instructors demonstrations were full-on. Despite his name, Sergeant Chief La Gros, the Big, was a small, wiry Frenchman. He was aggressive. During his demonstrations, he kicked a corporal in the groin while we all watched it all. Sergeant Chef Chief then asked for the next volunteer. All our hands shot up immediately. We knew full well that if we didn't volunteer, we would be chosen. The next guy was thrown to the ground hard or something, just as fun to watch. So you guys were getting some actual hand-to-hand training?

• 1:00:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, the French have that, they call it corps de corps, which is somewhat based off of the Israeli Krav America. But it's just your basic hand-to-hand, and things get tight, close, whatever, you have that ability to look after yourself. But yeah, there was a bit. Yeah, and there'd be an evaluation at the end. And part of the sports course, you had to have a minimum level so that you could teach it.

• 1:01:00Jocko Willink?

  Did you know, did you remember enough judo to like make it help?

• 1:01:04Speaker 01

  Uh, some of the basics, but no, not really. I mean, my white belt in judo wasn't really impressive very much.

• 1:01:11Jocko Willink?

  Old Sergeant Chief, the big, he didn't, he didn't care about your judo white belt?

• 1:01:16Speaker 01

  No, not at all.

• 1:01:20Jocko Willink?

  This is another situation. You're in, an older man and his family approached us from the side of the chateau. We introduced ourselves and Mac explained to me that the man was what the French referred to as a pied noir. What does that mean, blackfoot?

• 1:01:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 1:01:33Jocko Willink?

  A French national born in Algeria, North Africa. This was history I knew little about, aside from reading Legionnaire. But it was important in understanding the Legion and the second rep in particular. Mac asked if we could go, if we could camp on the chateau's grounds that night, and the gentleman agreed. That evening, we sat around the campfire with the gentleman and his family, drinking wine and listening to his stories like one in which he vividly described a battle where his regiment was saved by the Legion, which had apparently marched into battle singing. He was emotional telling it. He had been a French officer in the Algerian war nineteen fifty four to nineteen sixty two. What I didn't fully understand at the time was that in nineteen sixty

• 1:02:17Jocko Willink?

  one dissident French regiments, including the Legion's one rep, had aligned with anti Gaulists and seized power in Algiers during a coup d'etat. In part, the one rep's objective was to jump into and seize Paris to remove President Charles de Gaulle from power. The push, a German term for a coup d'etat, but used by Legion, failed before it began, and the one rep was later disbanded.

• 1:02:43Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 1:02:44Jocko Willink?

  That's a, that's a crazy story.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  It is. And prior to that, the Legion had its own air force or its own airplanes. After that, they were, that control was taken away. Now, Matt, you mentioned McNair. So after my Sports Monitor course, I go to, back to Aubing, which is the headquarters for the Legion. And I'm there for the summer as lifeguard. I called it Operation Lifeguard. But the promise was, once I did the summer, I could go to the rep. McNair was a Canadian soldier that had left, and he was actually the guy that did my B2 interview. And I saw him at the pool with his wife and child, and I introduced myself, and he kind of took me under his wing. And during our time off, we'd go on hikes, and that's one of the hikes. So we go to this chateau, and the gentleman

• 1:03:31Speaker 01

  living there was an old French officer that had been in jail for numerous years as a result of the putsch. And what happened is the Pinoires were French citizens, French blood, that were born and raised in Algeria, part of the French military, but that was their home. And after their time in prison in France, they couldn't go back to Algeria because the civil war was over, and they weren't necessarily welcome. They didn't have any family or place to be in France. So what a lot of them did was take over these chateaus that were owned by the Algerian government, and just decided, okay, these are now our homes, and they would live there with their families. And there are, you know, they didn't have the money, so they're all... Broken down old chateaus, but no one wanted to take responsibility. So this was an old

• 1:04:15Speaker 01

  Puchist and yeah, he told us some of his stories and this for me and why it's mentioned in the book is it's a history lesson on on the Legion and certainly the rep.

• 1:04:23Jocko Willink?

  Now, one thing that I've and that I've, the way I always kind of perceived that that coup d'etat or the push was that France had decided, you know what, we're not going to fight for Algeria anymore. We're going to get it back. And the Legionnaires who had fought and died and lost their friends to to keep Algiers said, you know what? No, we're we're hanging on to this.

• 1:04:49Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:04:49Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, oh, you don't want to do it? Fine. We're going to literally fly to France. We're going to do a parachute drop into France. We're going to take Paris.

• 1:04:57Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:04:58Jocko Willink?

  And we're going to get rid of Charles de Gaulle, the president.

• 1:05:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. Hundred percent. And there's some history from Indochina that played its part too, because a lot of families were left behind, local, national families, and they paid the price and Algeria would descend. A lot of them were married to Algerian women, had families. They wouldn't have the ability to bring them back to. So yeah, there was a lot of lot of history there and they definitely didn't agree with de Gaulle's decision. So and it wasn't just the rep. There were several other regiments. And yeah, de Gaulle figured it out beforehand and got to the right people and said, stand down. And they did. And yeah, a lot of a lot of people went to jail and there are some stories of of worse. But again, there's no.

• 1:05:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's hard to even fathom that. It's hard to fathom that. I mean, it's hard to fathom that like in America, right? Thinking that the hundred and first airborne division was going to say, okay, you know what? We're going to drop. We're going to do a parachute drop into Washington DC. We're going to take the White House. We're going to get rid of the president. I mean, that's, that's what that's what this is. This is exactly what this is doing, what we're saying here.

• 1:05:58Speaker 01

  A putsch.

• 1:05:58Jocko Willink?

  It's it's crazy to think that.

• 1:06:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:06:01Jocko Willink?

  And this was only when? 1960 something?

• 1:06:04Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:05Jocko Willink?

  This isn't like the Revolutionary War.

• 1:06:08Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:09Jocko Willink?

  That's a crazy story. I'm going to have to dive into that story on the podcast.

• 1:06:13Speaker 01

  And that's Simon Murray's period. That's that's ongoing in Legionnaire.

• 1:06:19Jocko Willink?

  All right.

• 1:06:23Jocko Willink?

  How were the guys from the, how were they viewed? In other words, when you, when you would meet these guys that were like part of pusher, when you would talk about these guys, would people say, oh, they were wrong? Or would people say, we understand?

• 1:06:37Speaker 01

  I think they understand. Certainly now. With time, people kind of see the reasoning and, and the history and, and the reason for why things occurred. And I would also say probably at the time, a lot of information wasn't being shared. So they probably just thought they wanted to replace the Gaul. They didn't necessarily know the, the history of the reasoning. But I think as soldiers, we all, certainly I, I respect that. The reason behind or what they're doing isn't really a factor. It's more just that they were, they were there, they experienced it and I don't judge. But for me, it was, you know, I didn't know a lot about the, the Legion's history, certainly France's history. So that was all something new to me. And as I learned, I kind of, it helped me understand what I was a part of and what I was joining, which is important.

• 1:07:19Jocko Willink?

  But the, but the, as you would hear these stories, it was sort of, was it, was it, was there a level of respect when you would talk about the?

• 1:07:26Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. Yeah. Oh. And those were the pictures that I'd seen in the encyclopedias and stuff was them jumping in into China, Dim Dim Fu, and then Algeria during the war. And that is what became the BEPS turned into what the rep is today. Oh, a hundred percent. I thought it was cool as.

• 1:07:43Jocko Willink?

  And they disbanded completely one rep.

• 1:07:45Speaker 01

  They did.

• 1:07:46Jocko Willink?

  Gone forever.

• 1:07:47Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:07:47Jocko Willink?

  Like that history is dead.

• 1:07:48Speaker 01

  They were, yep.

• 1:07:49Jocko Willink?

  They said no more.

• 1:07:50Speaker 01

  Done.

• 1:07:51Jocko Willink?

  I mean, it's actually kind of crazy that they kept the, anything. I mean, you can't, can you imagine the Gaul? He must've said, that, that's, I mean, he must've, I guess they must've done a good job of isolating, saying, no, that was these guys over here. You can keep the rest of us. We're cool.

• 1:08:05Speaker 01

  Definitely. Yep.

• 1:08:07Jocko Willink?

  Cause if I was him, I'd be thinking, wait a second, these guys are a unified.

• 1:08:12Speaker 01

  And they were kitted up waiting at the airport. The planes didn't show up. That's, he got to the air force general and said, stand down. I know what's, yeah, they were, they were close. Would've been exciting. But yeah.

• 1:08:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:23Speaker 01

  It's interesting, a part of history for sure.

• 1:08:25Jocko Willink?

  No.

• 1:08:25Speaker 01

  And I talked about a lot. To be honest with you, there's a lot of stuff there that I learned being there and being surrounded by it and asking questions, but it's not sure.

• 1:08:33Jocko Willink?

  Well, yeah, and the I'm sure I'll go into it at some point in Legionnaire, but that war in Algeria was vicious.

• 1:08:38Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:08:39Jocko Willink?

  And it was a true like counter insurgency going on and there was a lot of, you know, there was, there was the insurgent tactics of, you know, booby traps and IEDs and things like that. It was brutal.

• 1:08:52Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 1:08:53Jocko Willink?

  It was brutal. Great movie about it, too.

• 1:08:55Speaker 01

  It's quite a bit of, yeah, I am for you.

• 1:08:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:08:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. No, it's interesting. I worked in Algeria for years after the military and again, you know, just seeing some of the spots he talked about when our camp was right next to his camp in Philville and yeah, I, for me, history is, is something I'm always fascinated with. So it's interesting to, to see and hear and then be in spots and put them all together.

• 1:09:16Jocko Willink?

  Little, little battlefield walks.

• 1:09:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:09:18Jocko Willink?

  That's awesome.

• 1:09:18Speaker 01

  Hundred percent, yeah.

• 1:09:20Jocko Willink?

  All right, back to the book here. My summer passed quickly enough, even though, and I was given three weeks and told that I could return. On my return, I would be departing for the parachute regiment. Home wasn't quite what I expected because you went, you ended up going home. Seeing family was great. Ultimately, things change with time and people move on. Janelle, which was the, the female you were involved with, had a new boyfriend.

• 1:09:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, as they do.

• 1:09:45Jocko Willink?

  And my friends were either working or going to school. Not a lot of common interests or experiences. Trying to explain how I'd spent the last year was difficult, if not pointless, really. People just didn't get it. My time at home only reinforced my original goal to jump from a military airplane.

• 1:10:00Speaker 01

  Yeah. So it was like a reset. You miss home as you, I mean, at that point it'd been well over a year, but you go home and it's the same shit. There's a reason why you left. I hadn't achieved, obviously, what I'd gone there to do. So that check wasn't in the box, but it kind of gave me that reset, new vigor and off I went.

• 1:10:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:21Speaker 01

  And Janelle, you know, shit happens.

• 1:10:24Jocko Willink?

  Best thing ever.

• 1:10:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:10:25Jocko Willink?

  See you later, Janelle. Have fun with Fred over there.

• 1:10:29Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 1:10:30Jocko Willink?

  Uh, you saw the GCP for the first time.

• 1:10:37Speaker 01

  So yeah, I joined the airborne regiment, which are

• 1:10:41Jocko Willink?

  Not even trying.

• 1:10:42Speaker 01

  Based on the island of Corsica and Calvi, which is a Mediterranean island off the coast of, it's actually closer to Italy, but it's part of France. So I joined the rep, I do my, my jump course, it's about three weeks, and I joined the first company, which specializes in night ops, urban combat. And, you know, every week here, typically every week here, you're jumping, and when we're at the airport getting kitted up, this truck pulls up and all these guys jump out. And it's a mix of corporals, sergeants, senior NCOs, and a lieutenant and a captain. And they're the equivalency of the pathfinders in the British or Canadian system. In the French system, they're considered pathfinders for the regiment.

• 1:11:24Speaker 01

  But in the French military, there's nine airborne regiments in total. One of them is the legion's rep. So they're part of the battalion. Each regiment has a GCP team, and they create the GCP group. So they can work together and support the French Special Operations Command. So they can either be working for the regiment as pathfinders, or separately as the group supporting French Special Operations Command. So I didn't obviously know this at the time. I see them jump out. They seem more relaxed, like the legion way, it's certainly the rep and a combat company, it's very, wah, you know. These guys jump out slack, you know, kind of, they got their jumpsuits on, they grab their rigs, and they're just kind of hanging out. And it seemed to me that the NCOs, the officers, and the junior ranks

• 1:12:08Speaker 01

  were all kind of mingling, which doesn't happen typically or ever in a combat company. And so I asked our corporal, you know, who was, who was that? And he said, yeah, that was the GCP. So that was the first time I saw something, I was like, something I didn't know about, but I was like, damn, that, that looks like I need to get some, if I can. Yeah, as you do, right?

• 1:12:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's what happens. So you get done with that jump school. I presented myself to, now you're back, I think this is when you're checking into your duties, your section. I presented myself to the first section duty NCO in the section hallway, and the duty corporal, Corporal Rake, who was formerly in the British parachute regiment.

• 1:12:45Speaker 01

  Correct, yep. So I'd just joined the first company, done basic training, we're all going to the first company. This is me showing up, Mr. Rookie.

• 1:12:51Jocko Willink?

  With beer case in hand, he provided me with some quick advice, toe the line, work hard. This simple insight into section life was pretty much the norm for all legionnaires. There was no room for discussion.

• 1:13:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we have to show up with a case of Kronenberg, which they sell at the, in fact, the Legion is stake owner in Kronenberg. Which is interesting, but that's, you gotta show up with your case of beer and hand it over. If you don't, you'll just be going straight back to get your beer. So, but we all know this. So yeah, that's. And Rick, yeah, Rick was good shit. Um, yeah.

• 1:13:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, work hard. Yeah, pretty, pretty straightforward. Really good advice.

• 1:13:26Speaker 01

  Shut up and just do as you're told.

• 1:13:28Jocko Willink?

  That's really good advice for all of life. Life in the company didn't differ much from basic training. Appell was done at section and company levels in the company parade squares and section hallways in the mornings. The company would parade at zero seven twenty hours. Section duty corporals would present to duty section sergeants, who would present to section head NCOs, who in turn would present to the section commanding officer, usually lieutenant. So you guys are still rigid.

• 1:13:54Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:13:56Jocko Willink?

  It's, yeah. I mean, cause checking into a SEAL team, like those days are like even, I was a new guy checking into SEAL team. We're not reporting anything like that.

• 1:14:06Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, at this point, I mean, it's, it's infantry. It's a typical army regiment. It's just regimented.

• 1:14:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:12Speaker 01

  Controlled and then, yeah, making sure that their legionnaires don't do dumb things. That's.

• 1:14:18Jocko Willink?

  And you're living in barracks.

• 1:14:20Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. Yep. There's the regiment there.

• 1:14:22Jocko Willink?

  Open bay barracks? Meaning, do you have your own room or like four to a room or something?

• 1:14:26Speaker 01

  There was typically about six. No, it wasn't. Yeah, it wasn't a ton, but yeah.

• 1:14:30Jocko Willink?

  And could you bring females back on base?

• 1:14:32Speaker 01

  No. Good one, John. No, no, no, no.

• 1:14:37Jocko Willink?

  So what did you get? Hotel rooms on the weekends when you get, will go out?

• 1:14:40Speaker 01

  Well, we get, you get into, if you want to go out, you have to go through a, a procedure where you apply for permission. So every day in the morning, if you want to go at the end of the day, if you're allowed, you fill out a form and it's a little square piece of paper. You gotta use a ruler to write it straight. If not, they'll just rip it up in front of you. You hand that to your corporal, that goes to your sergeant, then it goes to the lieutenant. If he approves, he signs it, it goes to the captain, he signs it and it comes back. And then at the end of the day, when the workday is over, they give you your titre de permission. You have to get your uniform on because as a legionnaire for the first five years, you can't wear civvies. So you're in uniform. So you get on your uniform, you go down to the.

• 1:15:21Speaker 01

  The NCO on duty in your company and he'll check your T to permission, he'll check your uniform to make sure that it's squared away.

• 1:15:28Jocko Willink?

  Bro, I don't want to go out already.

• 1:15:29Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. I'm done. And then if he says it's good, then you go to the front gate and the duty NCO and sergeant there do the same thing. They look at your... And then when you're in town, there's the military police that are patrolling. And if they catch you out of sorts, or, you know, it's jail. So, yeah, it's seriously controlled. Now, as I said, you know, things have lightened up a bit now, but during the time, it's, yeah. You didn't want to go for that. Weekends, sure, but...

• 1:15:55Jocko Willink?

  My first deployment in the SEAL teams, I deployed in what we used to call a spec ops platoon, which sounds a lot cooler than it actually was, just meant that we were deployed, we deployed to Guam. And so when we get there, I mean, I'm 20 or 21 years old, and it was pretty much like, hey, you do your job and then do whatever you want, which in Guam meant we were gonna go, I mean, we're young, male, human beings, we were gonna go and get after it. And if you, if you had to meet at 8 o'clock the next morning, you could show back up, you could leave at, as soon as the work was done, you could go do whatever you wanted, as long as it was borderline legal. And then when you got done, you could, if you were meeting at 8 o'clock in the morning,

• 1:16:37Jocko Willink?

  you come, roll back in at 7:59, and no one cared what you did, it was total mayhem. It was total mayhem. And then what was interesting, my next deployment, I went onboard a ship with a SEAL platoon. And if you were an E4 below, which I was, you had to be back on the ship by, it was either 9 or 10 o'clock at night.

• 1:17:01Speaker 01

  Is that when you took your riding gear?

• 1:17:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, that is when I took the riding gear. But, but it was, it was like completely crazy to me that a year prior, I had been literally doing whatever I could imagine doing for... And by the way, it wasn't like, you know, we'd have entire weekends, or we'd get a three day or a four day weekend and just go do, I mean, just get crazy, just go and just do whatever you want. And then here I was a year later, now I'm like 22 or 23 years old and they're saying, well, this is with my workup and deployment. That's why it's fast forwarding 18 months, two years, but it now all of a sudden, hey, no, you gotta be back by, by, by 10 o'clock at night.

• 1:17:43Jocko Willink?

  I mean, I was in Thailand on rogue solo missions in the middle of nowhere, you know? And then fast forward, I'm on a ship and they're like, hey, you gotta be back by 10 o'clock. And it was cra- it was seemed crazy to me. And that's why, you know, earlier you and I were talking about like when you join the military and how much it, how much, how it is for you mentally? And just to have experienced the kind of freedom that I experienced early on and then get that tightened back up was a lot harder. That's why I think when you're 18 years old, like I was when I joined the military, I, I wasn't fully, I didn't fully understand freedom anyways. So it was like, okay, cool. You want me to do whatever? You want me to fill out 19 forms

• 1:18:26Jocko Willink?

  before I can go have a beer with a female out in town? Cool. Bring me the forms. I'll do it.

• 1:18:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it's, it's, and I, you know, that's why I tried to get into that when I mentioned, because as we say, you know, you're a young man, you join, there are certain things that you don't necessarily think about when you go there. Like, oh, you know, I want to join the Legion, be a soldier, but you're a young man, you got other objectives too, at the end of the day. And it's not the greatest environment for other objectives, which is a result of probably the high turnover. You know, when you do meet a girl, you're like, fuck, I'm not going back to that. And that's why they, they lost a lot of guys. Um, that's, as I said, that's changed, but I try to get that into the book to show that there's other aspects of the mental game that are there. It's, you know, sure, pushups or get beastied on and whatever, but there's also, there's other parts to a human being and it's tough sometimes to, to deal or get, get to that, you know? So that's the, the idea behind some of the.

• 1:19:16Jocko Willink?

  Now, as you get, that's your first five years, you can't go out without your uniform on.

• 1:19:22Speaker 01

  Garrison, no. Now, if you're on leave and you get a three week leave period, you can go off. Theoretically, you can't leave France.

• 1:19:28Jocko Willink?

  How much leave do you get a year?

• 1:19:29Speaker 01

  Uh, typically about three weeks.

• 1:19:34Jocko Willink?

  It's the life, man.

• 1:19:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, now if you go on operation, you'll get additional. I think you're guaranteed three weeks, but if you go overseas on tour, when you come back, you'll get another three. So it depends if if you're busy, you get, you know, more. But yeah, it's not, that's not their objective is to give you leave. It's to to use your services.

• 1:19:55Jocko Willink?

  Then, uh.

• 1:19:56Speaker 01

  And that's the challenge of writing, telling the stories. I gotta, you gotta cover all the things that people don't think about. So it's, you know, it's figuring out.

• 1:20:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Well, what's interesting is I always tell people, hey, you know, look, the military is not like boot camp. Meaning, hey, when you get done with boot camp, which yeah, boot camp is, you're going to be all regimented and all that. But I always say, you know, military is not really like boot camp. Well, that's also coming from my perspective as a SEAL, which really is not very much like boot camp at all when you get to a SEAL team. But and then you get to, you know, the regular Navy or the regular Army or the Marine Corps. There's more aspects to it that are more similar to boot camp. Like you gotta fill out a CHIT to go to, to go on Liberty or something like that. But this is leaning towards boot camp. I mean, this is like, you know, this is definitely, and like a Ranger Regiment, Ranger Regiment, they're, they're

• 1:20:47Jocko Willink?

  freaking hardcore too. And they, you know, you're still dropping down and doing pushups for people when you're at Ranger Battalion. Whereas in the SEAL teams, like people don't drop you down to do pushups. There's no punishment like that. I mean, you can get in trouble, but your troubles is just going to be like a normal, uh, like you get written up or something like that. If you do something really egregious, but you gotta do something pretty egregious to get written up. I don't think I ever got written up.

• 1:21:14Speaker 01

  And that's the environment too, right? Is that when I get to the GCP, which is considered as, it's a team thing and the onus is on you to, you gotta, you gotta show up. If you don't show up, well, you get, you get kicked out of the team. And so they're not quite as.

• 1:21:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's part of it too, is, is even in, this is another thing that comes to a big surprise for people is during SEAL training. There's a majority of the weekends, you have the weekends off.

• 1:21:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:21:36Jocko Willink?

  Like you can, once again, if you wanted to, you could go like when I went through guys, some guys would go down to Mexico, go down to Tijuana and party the whole weekend long and come. Now I wouldn't do that. A because I was like younger and B because I was paranoid about not making it through. So I would sit there and sharpen my knife all weekend long and polish my boots and, and press my uniforms. Because I was super paranoid about not making it, but some guys, they, they just, they would be gone the whole weekend. And there's, here's the deal, some guys would get in trouble and then they wouldn't make it to the SEAL teams. So there was a test of your maturity and of your own personal discipline. Whether you could make that Monday morning, zero, four, 30 timed run on the beach. Hey, if you're late, dude, that's it. You fail, you're out.

• 1:22:20Jocko Willink?

  Or you spend the weekend doing something stupid and you can't perform, you're out. Or you suck it up and you stay there and you polish your boots and you get ready for Monday, which is what you really should be doing. Um, but yeah, that, that, the, the, the individual freedom that you get in SEAL training is a test. It's a test to see if you can handle it or not. Cause once you get to a SEAL team and you're in a SEAL platoon, you, you got all kinds of freedom. It's kind of crazy when, when you think about it, you've got all kinds of freedom. You're in a foreign country, you've got all, you've got money, you've got, you know, access to gear. And if you do, if you wanted to be stupid, you could get really stupid really quick and you could cause some real problems.

• 1:22:58Speaker 01

  Yeah. Testosterone has its effects 100%.

• 1:23:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:01Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:23:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. But these guys are keeping you all tight.

• 1:23:07Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah.

• 1:23:10Speaker 01

  And that's, then that's the system, you know, as you mentioned, obviously yours, the SEAL system is effective. And that's the way it is. It weeds out. The Legion system has that history where they probably initially had the type of people where you had to be on them all the time. And that's, it's what it is. And that's, you know, as I mentioned, they've, they're kind of lighting up on it now that things have changed and they're busy.

• 1:23:31Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:31Speaker 01

  They don't have to be quite as stringent on the guys because of the turnover, but yeah, it's, it's definitely controlled. And that's something you gotta keep in mind. If you're gonna go there, like it's not. Yeah.

• 1:23:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:42Speaker 01

  There's that prison.

• 1:23:43Jocko Willink?

  You get that idea of iron discipline. And you, when you go back in history, and I've talked about this before. Well, one of the reasons that you needed iron discipline back in the day, because you're literally dealing with conscripts. That don't want to be there at all. Like you've taken them, they're basically slaves that are going to fight for you. So you have to impose some kind of discipline. Now, you can also find many examples where past leaders that were even leading conscripts, but they led that they cared about their men. It was more positive, it was a better outcome. But unless you're that charismatic leader that can pull that off, well, you're left with one choice. And it's like, okay, I'm gonna, these guys are gonna do what I tell them, or I'm gonna beat them. I'm gonna lead with fear. It's always better to leave with caring for your guys. But when people don't have that capability, what do they do?

• 1:24:27Jocko Willink?

  They, they default to, I'm just gonna lead by fear.

• 1:24:31Speaker 01

  Or if it stings you. If you give them that latitude or options or room, and then they come back and fuck you over.

• 1:24:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, then you drop the hammer again and no one's allowed to do anything.

• 1:24:42Speaker 01

  And I think in the system too, you see the NCOs, as you rise in rank, your freedoms increase. So then the onus is on you to get there. And obviously that's what the, the reason I was looking for is, you know, is NCOs and leaders. So they're hard on you at the beginning, but there's a reason for that. If you want to get to the top, well, then put in the time and effort and tell us, show us that you're capable and you'll get those, those freedoms.

• 1:25:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And what about like the, like you mentioned earlier, that less of the Eastern Bloc guys would desert because they're just used to a harsher lifestyle. It seems like if I was an Eastern Bloc guy and now I'm getting, I think you say the pay is like 1,200 bucks a month or something like that. Good money. I'm sitting here, oh, you want me to fill out a thing? Cool, I'll fill out a thing all day long, I don't care.

• 1:25:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. And a big part of the, the, you know, the, the size of the wrapper, a lot of legion regiments during that phase were Eastern Bloc. Polacks and Romanians, Czechs, Slavs, everything. They, they took up a big part of the, the rank. And yeah, exactly as you say, it was a good, a good option for them considering the, the time.

• 1:25:45Jocko Willink?

  Man, I had a guy from a dairy farm in Minnesota.

• 1:25:50Jocko Willink?

  Bro, this kid was, this kid was basically slave labor growing up.

• 1:25:53Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:25:53Jocko Willink?

  He told me, literally, I will do whatever you want me to do, as long as it doesn't have to do with cows. And he was right. He hated cows, but he would do, he was just a hard worker.

• 1:26:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:26:03Jocko Willink?

  Like, he would have lived this lifestyle like it was a joke. He was ready a hundred percent, because he grew up just harsh. But if you grew up kinda pampered, it might be a little bit rough.

• 1:26:14Speaker 01

  A hundred percent, yeah. And that's the thing too with these some oxen, they grew up hard. So they were some tough, tough guys. You got some Polish corporals and some of the combat companies, they're, yeah, you don't fuck around, excuse my French. Yeah. And they have the freedom to ruin your day, you know? So, yeah, you learn that pretty quick.

• 1:26:28Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I had a Polish national awesome guy named Drago. I did a platoon with him and he was just so legit. But he's the same way, like, oh, what do you want me to do? He will do it, man. He will make it happen. So, yeah, there we go. All right. You end up doing some cool stuff, though. Here's part of it. Over the next three weeks, we learned how to both telemark and downhill ski with winter survival and Alpine battle drills, culminating in a final exercise with live fire. Our French instructors, who wore oversized white berets, got to work introducing us to telemark skiing in the forest surround, surrounding the fort. So you're doing some winter warfare training?

• 1:27:06Speaker 01

  Correct, yep.

• 1:27:07Jocko Willink?

  Since I could already ski, everything came easily enough to me, but one day I made the soldier's mistake, a serious one. While inside my shelter after patrol, I had removed the magazine from my Famas,

• 1:27:18Jocko Willink?

  but I forgot to clear it and check prior to releasing its action and bang, an accidental discharge, A D, albeit with a blank round. Regardless, Lieutenant de Mesme wasn't impressed. I explained my mistake and he gave me a look of parental disappointment. To my surprise, nothing more was said about the incident.

• 1:27:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:27:37Jocko Willink?

  You had that mighty A D.

• 1:27:39Speaker 01

  I did. Lesson learnt. And I always remember, because Benny during basic training had told me where one of his buddies had been shot and is lying in his bed after patrol in Ireland. One of the teams came back and the guy had an N D and basically shot his friend through the head. And it stuck with me and that was, you know, a story that sunk. And so when I had that N D, I thought, man, fuck, I just, you know, didn't do the same thing, but that's exactly how it happens. And at that point, I'd been pulling my weight. Um, having the, being blessed and raised as a, you know, an officer's son, whatever. In Europe, we were skiing in the Alps every winter, so I could, I was a good skier. And so I was pulling my weight.

• 1:28:17Speaker 01

  Not causing to me any problems. So that part, I think he could tell that I was, I was hard enough on myself. He didn't really say much. What are you gonna say? But yeah, it was, it was definitely a good lesson for me. Hundred percent. And every time after that, when I, you know, took my mag off, I'm thinking right away, fucking clear. Like it just sunk and that's, that's how you learn, right? You make the mistakes.

• 1:28:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Clear your weapon.

• 1:28:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:28:41Jocko Willink?

  Young soldiers, young troopers out there don't have the A D. It's really, uh, bad.

• 1:28:48Jocko Willink?

  Uh, here's another situation where you, you, you tried to, you tried to get to, uh, like a, to leave to ski early. And some N C O stopped you and then we go here, this guy. And so now you can't leave to go skiing early. You gotta go with everyone else. He kind of crossed your plans and you say back in our barracks room, it was, I was mid complaint about this rude disruption to my life. When the N C O walked past within earshot, he marched into our barracks room and I paid for my belly aching with a headbutt to the mouth. Not a word was said. In reaction, I automatically brought up my guard to which the N C O responded by grabbing a metal stool from the corner, strongly suggesting, I don't bother taking it any further.

• 1:29:32Speaker 01

  Check.

• 1:29:34Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 1:29:34Speaker 01

  My fault. I brought it on myself. I was trying to leave early. There was a bus scheduled for everyone to leave at, I think it was two or something. And I had this great idea, you know, that I was gonna go out at, skip lunch and just go out and yeah, he put a kibosh to that. And walked by the hall when I was bitching about it to my other friends and, uh, yeah, came up and just basically, you know, it was quite a bit bigger, but hats off to him. He just headbutt to the mouth, which shocked me, man. My initial reaction was just, you know, guard, right? Like or, and yeah, that's when he looked to the side and took that, you know, those old nineteen forties French army stools, you know, it's a metal. The wood, he just took that and he was like, yeah, I'm good, man. We're understood.

• 1:30:15Jocko Willink?

  And that was just like no factor. That's just day, day in the life.

• 1:30:18Speaker 01

  Yeah. Who knows? Maybe he had it out for me. I don't know. I don't recall, but, uh, yeah, he checked my, uh, my attitude and noted.

• 1:30:26Jocko Willink?

  All right. Back in Calvi, we squared away our kit and went straight back into the company routine. An entry level company sniper course was scheduled and I was informed I was one of the two legionnaires chosen from our section to attend, joining nine other legionnaires and corporals. So you go to sniper school, you learn about the sniper weapons, then you also do everything else that we do, which is sniping, infiltrating, building observation posts, shooting from them, technical training, crawling into our OPs, looking downrange, designated for arc of fire. This is standard.

• 1:30:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was technically the first phase of sniper qualification. It was tiered elite. So it was more learning, it was more of the shooting side of things, the basics, but you would follow up on that and go to the actual sniper course after. So it was a second part of the qualification. So it's split in two and yeah, that was the first part.

• 1:31:18Jocko Willink?

  Then you continue on with section training and you say here, section training continued for nearly 10 months during which I notched 36 jumps. Soldier well, hold your own physically and you're left alone by the corporals, NCOs and officers. This wasn't overly complicated. One morning during a run, our head NCO said that in light of my general performance, I should consider volunteering for the GCP selection process. I wasn't aware that one could just volunteer, but I took his advice and passed before Lieutenant Dismesme.

• 1:31:48Speaker 01

  De Mesme.

• 1:31:49Jocko Willink?

  Correct. And asked for his approval to volunteer for GCP pre-selection, which he duly approved.

• 1:31:55Speaker 01

  Cool.

• 1:31:56Jocko Willink?

  You're getting that going. Corporal Nagasi, Nagasa?

• 1:32:01Speaker 01

  Nagasi, yeah. Nagasa.

• 1:32:03Jocko Willink?

  Nagasa was our duty corporal that week. This is just another story, transferring, fast forwarding. He was Japanese and his French was less than stellar. I approached him in the hallway and asked why I was supposed to be cleaning toilets. This is again, a little fast forward jump. He took exception to me questioning his directive and after a short back and forth, he gave me a push saying, that's an order. Nagasaw was shorter than me but stocky. I was pissed off at being told to clean toilets after ten, ten months in the section. Fuck that, I thought. This push pissed me off too. An unwritten rule exists within the lower ranks that in a confrontation that that's perhaps more personal, you can suggest the higher rank, higher rank, remove his rank, which I did.

• 1:32:47Jocko Willink?

  Nagasaw removed his rank and pushed me again, this time harder. I responded with a left to the side of his face. He dropped to the floor, then curled up into the fetal position, holding his right cheek. I immediately felt bad and concerned. What had just happened was a huge mistake on my part.

• 1:33:03Speaker 01

  Roger that.

• 1:33:04Jocko Willink?

  And then you fast forward, you see him kind of all bandaged up, and you say Nagasaw wasn't a bad guy, really. My emotions had gotten the better of me, and over something that wasn't a big deal at all. The captain was right. Who did I think I was? This was the type of thing that had got me into trouble before the legion, and I needed to stop making these kind of stupid mistakes.

• 1:33:25Jocko Willink?

  So there you go.

• 1:33:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:33:26Jocko Willink?

  Another good lesson learned. Man, I wish these lesson learns, lesson learned, lessons learned that you put in this book about just growing up. I wish there was some way that a young man could actually heed these warnings.

• 1:33:40Speaker 01

  Or they could buy the book.

• 1:33:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, definitely. You can buy the book, and I hope they do. But, you know, like.

• 1:33:47Speaker 01

  And in my defense, if I may, you know, I'm not a psychopath. I'm not just punching people. There was some history there.

• 1:33:51Jocko Willink?

  Uh huh.

• 1:33:52Speaker 01

  And new legionnaires joined the the section every week or second week. So we had ample new guys that would be cleaning toilets. That was, I could tell that.

• 1:34:01Jocko Willink?

  Why did he make you do it?

• 1:34:02Speaker 01

  It was personal. It was probably, who knows? I don't recall. But he obviously had an issue with me. And that's what I noted. And then so when I questioned it, typically, his, his response was clearly, you know, push minutes in order. I could tell that it's, it's personal. And then, yeah, the rest is history. But yeah, I certainly regret it. And, um, yeah, and the captain, it was actually the, the company captain that.

• 1:34:26Speaker 01

  They basically told me like, who the fuck do you think you are? But Saving Grace was, and, and the corporal had the same story. He agreed that we'd both removed our ranks, or he had removed his ranks. So I was, you know, typically not at fault, but still my attitude was in question.

• 1:34:40Jocko Willink?

  What, what do you think made you, how do you think you were able to self-reflect and actually see that you were wrong? I mean, cause I hear this story over and over and over and over again from people that they can't, they can't put their ego aside and just say, you know what? That I was actually a jackass here.

• 1:34:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, he was, at the end of the day, he was the corporal. He put on the orders, I clean toilets, I just clean toilets. Who am I to question his orders? That's his role. When I'm in a corporal, I can, you know, choose and decide what I want to do. But in that situation, he was the, the higher ranking, junior rank and, uh, yeah, I was wrong to question it and I was certainly wrong to, to go beyond that. It doesn't, and the, the idea would be like, if that's in a, an operation or things going on, you don't question orders. And that's, you know, the idea for ranks and, and orders is you told to do something, you do it. There's no room for questioning. That just gets people killed. So I was, you know, it was a red flag for me as, as a character thing. And certainly as a, you know, an up and coming soldier

• 1:35:41Speaker 01

  within the regiment is you don't, it's just, it's a wrong choice at the end of the day and I regret it and I could tell right away. And that was just old muscle memory. You know what I mean? Problem.

• 1:35:53Jocko Willink?

  And that's, I think that's, that's one thing that, you know, I mean, I talk about all the time on here is like, well, you actually do question orders and you do say, hey, boss, why are we doing it this way? And a good leader says, oh, well, what do you think? Why do you think that?

• 1:36:10Jocko Willink?

  And there's a time and a place for that.

• 1:36:11Speaker 01

  Got you.

• 1:36:12Jocko Willink?

  But with this one, this is a classic example. You don't have a relationship with this guy at all. He doesn't like you for whatever reason and. Instead of trying to build that relationship, which would eventually, because what if you're on an operation and this guy, you're working for this guy and he makes a bad decision and says, "Hey, charge that machine gun nest." And you're like, "Okay." And now you all get killed because you charged a machine gun nest. We want to have a relationship to a point where I can say, "Hey, hey, Nagasen, hey, we need to, we need to flank this guy, or we need to get better cover fire or something." As opposed to, "Hey, Roger that. I'm gonna do what you told me to do." If you, if you had no relationship with him, even in a combat situation, he tells you to do something and you say, "That's not a good call." He says, "Shut up and go do it."

• 1:36:53Jocko Willink?

  Like now we're in a really bad standoff situation. You're disobeying a direct order in a combat situation. This is horrible. Whereas if you do these little things, like, "Hey, you want me to clean the..." Because he's, what, what, what he's really doing is testing you, right? Whatever reason he didn't like you. You were a good skier and he struggled skiing or whatever, and he's jealous and he's like, "Oh, yeah, you grew up, you probably, you grew up skiing the French Alps and I grew up whatever, not doing that." And so he's jealous of that. And so now he wants to get, God's opportunity to put it on you. And if your character, if you can show him that your character's, "Hey, Roger that. Boss, got it. I'll clean those toilets. Hey, yep, don't worry about it. You, yep, I'm, I'm humble. I'm good. I know I can ski good, but I can also clean toilets. Good.

• 1:37:36Jocko Willink?

  Watch this." And you start to build that up where you can eventually say, now, now he probably will look at you and his respect for you goes up. Because he says, "Oh, he grew up kind of a rich kid skiing the Alps, but he doesn't mind cleaning toilets. A, not a bad guy." And then you can eventually build that into someone you can communicate with. Whereas this doesn't turn out that way.

• 1:37:57Speaker 01

  No, exactly. And something to be said about peacetime army, wartime army, is there's those different ways of figuring out who's, who's what and where they should be in the hierarchy of things. And, um, yeah, as I said, I don't know what, like I say, was made of. He didn't know what I was necessarily made of. But in that situation, you know, I, I had pulled my weight for the duration that I was there and, yeah, it came to that and result, wrong choice. But you learn from it and you move on. And that was the last time I, I made that type of error.

• 1:38:27Jocko Willink?

  And it's a classic, it's a classic ego scenario, right? This is a classic ego scenario. And, and there's some, there's a, there, right now, I guarantee there's a 20-year-old listening to this. Going, what are you talking about, man? That guy's gonna make me clean toilets, I'm gonna bow up to him. And it's like that guy, in five years, that guy's gonna go, oh yeah, I remember thinking that.

• 1:38:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:38:48Jocko Willink?

  Cause you have to just mature through this, that's why I'm saying, hey, I'm glad guys are gonna read this book. But you have to really read it and think about it. You have to really try and think about it, think about what you're saying. Cause man, we are genetically programmed to a certain way. And that certain way is not always the best way.

• 1:39:07Speaker 01

  Yep, no exactly. And so it's, I'm in the French Foreign Legion, there's obviously a reason that I've gotten there in life. Maybe some of my choices weren't the wisest, so I need to start learning and, you know, using this to my advantage, not making the same mistakes all the time.

• 1:39:22Jocko Willink?

  Did you have, like you said, it was the captain that pulled your son, said, who do you think you are? Did you have anyone that was like, hey, man? Hey, man, what are you doing? You've got a lot of potential, why are you doing this?

• 1:39:31Speaker 01

  I had to, yeah, dressed in uniform, wait outside, he called me and I go and present myself. And then he basically, you know, asked me what occurred. At the end of that, all the corporals came to me while I was cleaning toilets and said, if you do that again, you know, you'll pay the price. So it was made quite clear that you don't question corporals in the, in the section. Fair enough. And I cleaned those toilets, so, you know, end result, I didn't win, I just, and I jeopardized my, potentially my chance to do selection for the GCP. So I was on all levels down to myself.

• 1:40:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and you just said, you said, you just said, I didn't win. Which is, which is like, you're not gonna win that situation. And that takes, that takes a little bit of insight to understand, hey, you can stand up, you can bow up, you can act like a tough guy, you could even beat the shit out of him, right? You could have knocked him out and you're still gonna lose. You're still gonna be cleaning toilets for longer with probably the reduction in rank and possibly prison time. Which, that's another thing, we, you mentioned a couple times, but you guys get sent to jail.

• 1:40:32Speaker 01

  You do, yeah. It doesn't take much.

• 1:40:34Jocko Willink?

  They utilize, you said it doesn't happen much?

• 1:40:36Speaker 01

  No, it doesn't take much.

• 1:40:37Jocko Willink?

  Oh, it doesn't take much?

• 1:40:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was lucky. I, you know, I toe the line pretty good and I'm surprised I didn't go to jail there. But again, the fact that he took his rank off was my saving grace. But yeah, if you do anything that's deemed unacceptable. There's different amount of days they can give you, but they have a prison in the regiment and you're basically used as a groundskeeper. So you'll do an eight kilometer run every morning. They shave your head. You're in combat with your typical HSE vest. And you're basically running around cleaning up the camp and you do that for a week, two weeks, depending on your sentence.

• 1:41:07Jocko Willink?

  And it doesn't take much, right? Like missing, like you're.

• 1:41:10Speaker 01

  Yeah. If you go out for the night with your teeth and you're late, boom, weekend.

• 1:41:13Jocko Willink?

  Seven days.

• 1:41:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:14Jocko Willink?

  In jail.

• 1:41:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:18Jocko Willink?

  You know, the Navy does that. The Navy has, the Navy can put you on bread and water. Like in this, like right now. There's some, probably someone right now that's on bread and water for.

• 1:41:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:41:27Jocko Willink?

  So doing something stupid.

• 1:41:28Speaker 01

  And there's guys I would see that were always in jail. I remember thinking to myself like, why, why do you come all this way jointly and then spend your time in jail? Like it just.

• 1:41:34Jocko Willink?

  You mean like repeat offenders?

• 1:41:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, like they're just always the same guy. You see him run by, you know, it's like, geez, then.

• 1:41:39Jocko Willink?

  Those are the people that are not introspective that don't.

• 1:41:41Speaker 01

  They're not learning their lesson.

• 1:41:42Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 1:41:44Jocko Willink?

  Uh, check. All right. Next you go to pre-selection. Is this pre-selection for um, GCP?

• 1:41:50Speaker 01

  Yep, correct. Yep. So now it's pre-selection.

• 1:41:52Jocko Willink?

  Starts off, you're doing weapons assembly, you're working with all the different weapons, um.

• 1:42:00Jocko Willink?

  Humps, thirty click humps.

• 1:42:02Speaker 01

  Yeah. So that's the big ones. You gotta do a thirty K run with rucksack, gear, helmet. And yeah, that is.

• 1:42:10Jocko Willink?

  And this is still just GCP selection?

• 1:42:12Speaker 01

  Yep, correct. So each combat company in the regiment, there's five now. When I was there, there's four. But um, based on your performance within the section, you can request selection. If your lieutenant approves and then your captain approves, then you, you can go and do selection and they'll, they'll get a, you know, thirty odd guys and then the GCP is looking for two new recruits or two new operators, whatever. They'll, they'll take what they need based on if it's, you know, medics they need, radio comms, whatever. They'll, they'll pick and choose, but you're there based on your performance. So it's not, it's not an open selection. It's, you pulled your weight and you're, you've requested selection. So.

• 1:42:50Jocko Willink?

  And did you have a specialty at this point? Like you just mentioned comms, medic?

• 1:42:54Speaker 01

  No, I had, obviously I was first company. So we were urban combat night and I had my, you know, the first part of the, the sniper course. Uh, that was it.

• 1:43:03Jocko Willink?

  And you had driver qual, right?

• 1:43:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:43:05Jocko Willink?

  Some kind of mill. Is that, is that not a big deal?

• 1:43:07Speaker 01

  No, no, it's just basic driving qualification. I had my sports monitor course, which doesn't, you know, help, but it shows that there's a bit of. Fitness behind, yeah. But they take the, the pre-selection phase to, to put you through the, uh, the tests and then figure out, you know, what, uh, what you're made of. Um, and then they'll, you will join the team on training and to see if you have the, the character and the personality to gel with the other guys. So it's, they're not really questioning your ability. There is the, the physical aspect where they, they make you do the entry test and all that kind of stuff to see who's the better. But a lot of times the guys that were better at the pushups, the rope and all that kind of stuff on the range, they would not quite pull their weight. So it was again, being consistent across the mark. And then

• 1:43:50Speaker 01

  when you start training with the teams, uh, they pick up on, you know, whether or not you're able to pick up on the, the, the lessons they're teaching you. And then if you gel with the, with the other guys. And that's kind of, I think their, their selection process.

• 1:44:02Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You mentioned that, you mentioned that quite a few times in the book and I, I know I've highlighted somewhere, but just this idea of like, hey, just because you can run fast, just because you can do the 30 click hump with the required time, or even the fastest of the bunch, doesn't necessarily mean we want you on this team because the most important thing is how do you interact with these other human beings that you're going to put your lives in the hands of?

• 1:44:23Speaker 01

  Yep. Agreed. What are the odds you're going to do 30 kilometers together? If you're there first, well, it doesn't really help the last guy, you know, but it shows your, your willingness and it's a mental thing to 30 Ks at the end, you're, you're slogging along.

• 1:44:35Jocko Willink?

  It says something, but it's not everything. It shows something, but it's not everything. Uh, yeah, there's some guys that make it through basic seal training who are total studs, but they're kind of are duds as seals because they just couldn't work well with other people or they were getting in trouble. And, you know, I had, I had a guy that was a great, great athlete and a good enough guy, but he just would like get in trouble. It's like the guy that you, guys that you said you'd see him go to jail over and over again. You're like, man, just don't do that stuff, man. You've got all kinds of potential, but I don't know. I guess that's, uh, you mentioned testosterone earlier and I guess that can be hard to rein.

• 1:45:13Speaker 01

  Yeah. And people, they're hard to change. So, you know, they just, they do what they do.

• 1:45:17Jocko Willink?

  Yes, they do. Uh, so you passed the GCP class.

• 1:45:23Speaker 01

  I do, yeah, I get in. Um. And they send me off to do my, you have to, minimum rank in the team is corporal. So they, they actually pull me off of the, the selection early. And I thought I was getting the good newses and yeah, you're not.

• 1:45:37Jocko Willink?

  Getting axed?

• 1:45:38Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:45:39Jocko Willink?

  But they were actually just.

• 1:45:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're, yeah, they're sending me off corporal's course, yeah, that was starting, so.

• 1:45:42Jocko Willink?

  How long was the corporal's course?

• 1:45:43Speaker 01

  I think it was a month, if I remember, yeah, four weeks.

• 1:45:45Jocko Willink?

  And this is now where we're starting to get into a little bit of leadership training?

• 1:45:48Speaker 01

  Uh, ish, yeah, more beasting.

• 1:45:51Jocko Willink?

  Really?

• 1:45:52Speaker 01

  More beasting and how to beast others. There's a bit of leadership, um, there's, you know, giving orders, drill, that kind of stuff. But yeah, so you go back to, uh, Castel, which is the training regimen for four weeks. And, uh, yeah, learn the, the trade as a corporal. But it's, yeah, it's heavy on the, the beasting and the singing, unfortunately, which I get into. But our training NCO, um, was a lunatic. Qualified and good at what he did.

• 1:46:17Jocko Willink?

  What's the name in the book?

• 1:46:18Speaker 01

  Um, it was, uh, Mady Rira. He had, he had done the command of course and, uh, um, down in South America. Man, uh, I forget the name, but it's renowned as a tough command of course, um, um, Manhouse. Ever heard?

• 1:46:33Jocko Willink?

  Is it, is it, what country is it?

• 1:46:35Speaker 01

  I think it's in Brazil.

• 1:46:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, Manhouse, yeah. Anyway, he.

• 1:46:38Jocko Willink?

  You know, I, I think Sarge did that.

• 1:46:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's.

• 1:46:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:42Speaker 01

  There's a prisoner of war phase where a lot of guys just lose it.

• 1:46:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 1:46:46Speaker 01

  They got you in those, you know, Vietnam era cages in the water, you know, with no rats swimming around. But still, anyway, some of the guys, it's renowned for its effectiveness, but he had done that.

• 1:46:54Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I think Sarge did that. Well, and Sarge, my buddy Sarge, who's a black belt in jujitsu and he's, he, he went through one of those courses. It might've been the Ranger School though, but anyways, he went through one of the renownedly hard courses. And he's a, he's a maniac anyways.

• 1:47:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:47:10Jocko Willink?

  He, you know, he was probably in the prisoner of war section, like, enjoying it.

• 1:47:15Speaker 01

  This is good shit, yeah.

• 1:47:16Jocko Willink?

  Exactly.

• 1:47:16Speaker 01

  But I think Mady Rira was never, had never less the, left the course. He was always, he was always there. We were just part of his course, yeah. But he was effective, he was, you know, he was, he was a character in hence.

• 1:47:25Jocko Willink?

  And that was just for your corporal's course?

• 1:47:27Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:47:27Jocko Willink?

  Good times. Uh, now you're, now you're joining the GCP finally. And here we go, I presented myself to the duty office and I was told.

• 1:47:37Jocko Willink?

  I was going to the Central African Republic or CAR tomorrow to join the section. Bangui, is that right?

• 1:47:44Speaker 01

  Bungie, yeah.

• 1:47:45Jocko Willink?

  Bungie.

• 1:47:45Speaker 01

  Central Africa.

• 1:47:47Jocko Willink?

  The country's capital was in turmoil after a military rebellion.

• 1:47:52Speaker 01

  So this is, I'm coming back from corporate course, they're already there. I'm not part of the team. Next thing would be my command of course, and then my halo course before you're an actual team member in the GCP. So this was a surprise because they're asking me to go to join them. So it's unusual, but it's a good opportunity, but I'm not a team member yet.

• 1:48:10Jocko Willink?

  What made them, they just needed, they just needed a person?

• 1:48:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, correct, yeah.

• 1:48:15Jocko Willink?

  So on November 21st.

• 1:48:16Speaker 01

  Saying was.

• 1:48:17Jocko Willink?

  Your singing was.

• 1:48:17Speaker 01

  Exemplary of a corporate course.

• 1:48:20Jocko Willink?

  On November 21st, 1996, I joined a dozen legionnaires and NCOs from the second CIE who are on their way to Chad. Now you get Captain Raoul.

• 1:48:32Speaker 01

  Yep, Captain Raoul.

• 1:48:33Jocko Willink?

  Captain Raoul pulled me aside and told me that I wasn't a qualified section member yet. I was to watch and learn from the others. He then quickly briefed me on the situation. The army of CAR elected president Patas was divided.

• 1:48:50Jocko Willink?

  And the rebels who opposed him had taken the Pativo district on the southwestern edge of the city. The rebels consisted of army officers as well as soldiers who are well armed and capable. What I didn't know was that the conflict wasn't new to the rebels and there were undesirables within the mix. Locals were being robbed and raped and there were rumors of summary executions.

• 1:49:17Jocko Willink?

  So this is it. You're, you just went from.

• 1:49:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, from, yeah, Castel to Bungie and within, within a week.

• 1:49:25Jocko Willink?

  And never really, uh, done any operations yet.

• 1:49:28Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:49:29Jocko Willink?

  Had you even, had you deployed out of France yet at this point?

• 1:49:31Speaker 01

  No.

• 1:49:31Jocko Willink?

  This is your first deployment. This is a good one.

• 1:49:33Speaker 01

  Thrown right in there.

• 1:49:33Jocko Willink?

  Good way to kick it off.

• 1:49:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, agreed.

• 1:49:35Jocko Willink?

  And here's your first operation. As we approached the ex patriot neighborhood, there were shot, where shots had been reported, my new teammates flicked off their Famas safeties. I did the same. This was my first time with a live weapon outside of a supervised shoot. The V L R A rolled to a stop, which is your, uh, vehicle. We jumped out and started searching the neighborhood's main road and smaller adjoining alleyways. I was partnered with Lasco and followed his lead. As we, as I walked down the road, weapon at the ready, locals glared at me and ran away. With nothing to see, we got back in the V L R A and made our way to P K zero, which is the road. This wide avenue was lined with large irrigation ditches and a mix of fields and homes, all of which were either abandoned or derelict.

• 1:50:16Jocko Willink?

  Everything seemed eerily quiet to me. We returned to camp, debriefed, and I got into my sleeping bag. As I lay there, I reveled in my new surroundings before falling asleep. Africa was clearly new, but also no one was barking orders at me and there was no appelle or parade in the morning. The only requirement was to be ready for zero nine hundred. So that's your first real mission that you rolled out on? A very nice.

• 1:50:39Speaker 01

  Culture shock. Yeah, just kind of. Yeah, more just head on a swivel like what, you know, everything's new.

• 1:50:44Jocko Willink?

  But it's it's a nice break in mission.

• 1:50:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, agreed. It was simple and.

• 1:50:49Jocko Willink?

  It's like you go out, nothing happens. You get some of those jitters, first mission jitters.

• 1:50:55Speaker 01

  And the guys don't know me either that well. They might have seen me during the pre-selection, but as a person, they don't really, they don't know me. So I'm.

• 1:51:03Speaker 01

  Consciousness of that fact is I'm the new guy. You gotta try not to stick out, not do anything dumb and just. Yeah, that was my focus really and then trying to keep up with what was happening because they had been there a while. So at that point they'd, you know, had some, some contacts and stuff. So they were in the game and I'm just not obviously.

• 1:51:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is, this is something, again, I was, as I was reading this book, I was like, and we're going to go into this more, but just these.

• 1:51:28Jocko Willink?

  When I think about what it feels like, like even this first time you rolled out, I remember the first time I rolled out in Baghdad. It was, luckily it was the same type of operation. We went out, nothing happened, rolled back, but even just the, the.

• 1:51:47Jocko Willink?

  The amount of vision that I had, the amount of awareness that I had wasn't as good as it should have been, you know, I was like a little bit too amped. And it's like, okay, how can talking about that, hopefully guys can take a step back and be like, all right, cool. Look, this is what's going on. You know, here's what it's going to be and that's what you want, but it's hard, it's hard to, it's hard to train, even train for that.

• 1:52:10Speaker 01

  I mean, you gotta do it.

• 1:52:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you gotta do it. You gotta do it.

• 1:52:13Speaker 01

  And that click, it's a whole different boom. Now you're at a different, it's no more fun and games. They're, you know, theoretically it's, your life's on the line.

• 1:52:20Jocko Willink?

  It's on.

• 1:52:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:52:22Jocko Willink?

  All right.

• 1:52:25Jocko Willink?

  Going on, you get another tasking, an undisclosed number of rebels were pillaging the home of a high-ranking car official. We approached the target slowly and deliberately. An SUV was parked outside a white colonial house framed by large trees and thick elephant grass. We could see movement on the inside of the residence. Over the radio, Captain Raul ordered two leads approach the target more closely while the rest of us formed a defensive semicircle. The stillness of the night was quickly shattered by a burst of AK-47 fire. At close range, it certainly had my undivided attention. The first rounds landed at the feet of our two teammates approaching the target, Lasko and Corporal Chief Prigent, a French Tahitian. They immediately returned fire. Tracer rounds cut through the darkness and some hit the ground and trees surrounding us.

• 1:53:09Jocko Willink?

  Instinctively, those of us within with line of sight with the rebels returned fire, but it was difficult to tell exactly where the rounds were coming from and who is who. Cease fire, Captain Raul shouted. We were told to secure our perimeter. This was my first firefight. I kept my focus despite the chaotic atmosphere where everyone was trying to gauge the situation, do as they were told, and look out for the bad guy. The house was cleared and its external floodlights were turned on. Unfortunately, our night vision then became useless. This in turn did wonders for my natural night vision. Although I could see the surrounding wooded area, my eyesight was off. Everything was out of focus. Kneeling over kneeling by a tree for cover with my Famas shouldered at the ready, watching my arc, I caught slight movement within my peripheral vision.

• 1:53:54Jocko Willink?

  The motion came from a dark area within the taller trees. What is it? My blood was racing from the intensity of the firefight and my eyes were still adjusting. What was what I saw actually anything? Looking over the barrel of my weapon, I stood up and took three steps toward a more pronounced tree line. The only sound was the faint crunch of dead grass underfoot and my heartbeat steadily thumping in my ears. Then I saw it again, a movement near a tree. Now it was clear to me, the silhouette of a man was crouching. Taking up the slack on the trigger as I made my approach, my concern was twofold. Was this a rebel or a teammate? If he was a rebel and I opened fire, that would be my teammate's response, or what would be my teammate's response this close to my arc of fire? I approached.

• 1:54:39Jocko Willink?

  As I approached, it became obvious that the silhouette was a rebel bent over his weapon with his head down. At this range, approximately three meters, I knew I had the upper hand. This all unfolded within a minute or two of our initial contact with the rebels, all of which had been chaotic. I approached the rebel from the side at a faster pace, pointing my weapon at his midsection and spitting out the words "Bouge pas", "Don't move." Most Central Africans speak some French and he twitched his head slightly to the side as if to acknowledge my presence and the command. He seemed stiff and afraid to move. Keeping my eyes and famas pointed at the rebel, I shouted to Captain Raul, asking him to come to my position. He was visibly shocked to see that I had captured a rebel.

• 1:55:21Jocko Willink?

  Captain Raul immediately kicked the AK-47 from the rebel's grip, grabbed the man by his arm and threw him to the ground and kicked him in the back of his head, driving his face hard into the dirt. We secured his arms and legs using tie straps attached to my webbing. The rebel, wearing his car-army uniform, looked up at me. I could see fear in his eyes. The team searched the surrounding area. Once it was cleared, we loaded our captive into the VLRA. Lasko and I followed behind in the SUV we recovered from the rebels. Since the rebels were treated as common criminals, we handed the guy over to the local police station, then made our way back to the section's tent and parked the SUV beside Colonel Puga's command tent. Colonel Puga thanked the section for a job well done.

• 1:56:03Jocko Willink?

  Captain Raul's debrief was short and to the point. It was a close call and could have easily gone bad. It was a good lesson for all of us. As an aside, Captain Raul told me that my reaction could have been a lot better. He was right. I should have dealt with the rebel more aggressively. True, I had been in good position to engage the rebel, but the situation didn't necessarily require deadly force. Having to make a life-or-death decision was new to me. Shooting or killing a fellow human being isn't a natural act or a first reaction for a kid from Canada. It is a conscious and considered act. After all, that's what separates professional soldiers from others. Our work would continue to provide me with opportunities to refine my new profession. The following day, two rebels were found dead in the tall elephant grass.

• 1:56:45Jocko Willink?

  The rebel whose life I had spared, the police executed him. It was quick and brutal justice and one all too familiar in this part of the world.

• 1:56:56Speaker 01

  Roger, learning curves. Lasco, I mentioned Laskowski, his grandfather was a Polish legionnaire. Married a lady in Indochina, Vietnamese, and that's the history of his, so he looks, he's French, he looks Vietnamese with a Polish last name. He's like the, all of it in one, the legionnaire with the history. But, um, yeah, that situation was definitely, you know, I'm thrown into the, the den, learning curve, lack of training, uh, lack of experience. Turned out well, but again, lesson learned and took that with me to the next job.

• 1:57:35Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this, uh, again, for me, this is really good sort of escalation of your, of your learning, right? Like even the, even the first night where, or maybe it was the few, the very first mission you did where like nothing really happened. Luckily this didn't happen that night because you had just a little bit more experience, a little bit more ready for it. And, uh, you know, it's like we talk about with jiu jitsu sometimes, like, or, or any type of combatives training, you get used to it. So now when somebody grabs you in a street fight for real, you're like, oh, okay, I know what to do, but even if you're on the mat all the time, even if you're a black belt in jiu jitsu, if you haven't been in a real fight before, there's still that last little

• 1:58:20Jocko Willink?

  thing, that last little hurdle to overcome mentally where you, you need to act decisively and make things happen. Whereas that's not what's happening on the training mat. It's just not, a real fight has, it's different. And so the only way to overcome that is you gotta like overcome it. That's why you hope the first fight you get in is with a guy that was an NCAA collegiate wrestler or a Golden Gloves boxer. Cause you

• 1:58:50Speaker 01

  You won't learn much.

• 1:58:51Jocko Willink?

  You won't learn much. You'll learn that you don't know anything. Whereas if the first fight you get in is against some drunk guy that's, you know, acting like an idiot who doesn't know how to fight, cool. You learn and you can, you can move in the right direction.

• 1:59:04Speaker 01

  Add it to the logbook.

• 1:59:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, you can improve your game without, with very limited risk. So.

• 1:59:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it was, uh, yeah, definite learning curve there. Everything's new.

• 1:59:17Speaker 01

  But soldiering, at least I'm learning the trade. And that's part of, you know, becoming a soldier and growing as a, as a young man is, you know, you think, okay, I want to be a soldier and you got these visions of things that you will be doing or want to do, but life will check that and show you what you're, you're made of and what you're capable of. And that's what I'm, I'm seeing, what I'm made of, what I'm capable of. Some of it's good, some of it's bad, but growing up is learning and taking with that or with from that what you can.

• 1:59:45Jocko Willink?

  And are you just completely stoked at this point though? I mean, from a perspective of like-

• 1:59:49Speaker 01

  I think I'm more focused on not fucking up.

• 1:59:51Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 1:59:52Speaker 01

  You know, I'm new to the team. I'm not theoretically a team member yet. I'm just this replacement. Fortunate to be there, but I know eyes are on me. Certainly the captain's watching me as are the other guys. I mean, that's key is your, your peers, right? The guys that are with you. So I'm just trying not to, to screw up. Yeah. And that, that worked in my favor, albeit, you know, maybe my reaction wasn't textbook, but whatever end result was successful and, you know, once, once you're, once you're part of a little something, then you're, you gain that little bit of traction with the team. They start to know what you're made of and, and then continues on.

• 2:00:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's good. Um, yeah, you know, we trained so realistic. We were so lucky, like the, the capability that we had with training was just awesome. Like we'd be doing paintball and, and this multimillion dollar laser tag system and explosions going off, special effects. It was really, really good and it would really mitigate this kind of opening shock that guys would get. And that, that was always my goal when I was running training was to mitigate that opening shock. And you know, where you see this a lot is with like, you know, with police officers that don't get great training. They, their day-to-day job.

• 2:01:13Jocko Willink?

  will escalate into a life or death they'll go they'll go 300 days or two or three or five years without ever drawing their weapon without with that with that idea you know coming out of the academy and every day that that idea of drawing their weapon goes deeper and deeper deeper deeper into the negative possibilities of it happening and then all of a sudden it boom it escalates and you can see that once again this opening shock of wait a second you know there's someone with a gun or there's a bad situation or there's a woman screaming or that whatever it is

• 2:01:52Jocko Willink?

  they can't process it quickly enough and they don't have experience processing it and that's a real problem and that's why these you know I what I've said before is like I think police should should train one one fifth of the time like well 20% of the time they should be training so five days at work cool one of those days you're just going through eight hours of training and who would you rather have policing your neighborhood 10 cops at the same time that are all haven't trained in a year or eight cops who have all trained a bunch the answer is so clear but man it just doesn't happen

• 2:02:31Speaker 01

  no they can never train I mean that's how you feel too and I mentioned later on is you know you this is where you realize that shit I should have maybe spent a little more time on certain things on the range um on the job training isn't necessarily the best system but that's their system and that being said too is you know I've just come off it's not like I just I was on time off and they throwing me into into bungee I've been you know going full on for almost a year now um so it is what it is and budget is obviously we don't quite have the same budget or they don't have the same budget as as a seal team obviously and the technology So they they make it work. Um, and yeah, it seems to seems to come together. It's not perfect, but it's that's how their their system works.

• 2:03:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the the thing that really for a young or for anyone, anyone going into these stressful situations, the ability to take a step back and detach from what's happening is like ninety seven percent of the battle in these situations to take a step back and go, okay, I see what's happening right now. Oh, I got we got enemy shooting inside this house. Okay, instead of me focusing on that, I'm just gonna take a second. I'm gonna take a step back. Everyone else is returning fire. That's awesome. I don't need to return fire. I'm gonna take cover behind this tree and I'm gonna take a look around. The ability to do that is so powerful compared to, oh, there's shooting going on. I'm gonna return fire. It's like that that what that does to your brain. Same thing in the street fight, like the ability

• 2:03:56Jocko Willink?

  to go, okay, wait a second. This guy is approaching me right now. He's clearly drunk. He's got friends. I see that his friends over there. This is gonna be a bad situation if I get into it. Like, just the ability, instead of looking, oh, this guy's coming at me. Really, you want some? That's not the way to go. And then same thing with being a being a cop or law enforcement, where you see something unfolding, instead of jumping into it, which is what your instinct is, take a step back instead and and take a look around. And that's a lesson that I was lucky enough to learn early on. And then I did get a nice gradual ramp up in combat operations where it was like, okay, yep, I came back on. Okay, you know what? I need to take a step back, take a wrap off. Yep, you were

• 2:04:41Jocko Willink?

  cool. You saw what was going on, but you could do better. And and I'm very thankful that that happened. But, you know, even like the first time we were ever getting shot at, I was like, okay, I see what's going on here. Take a step back. I wasn't freaking out. I was like, okay, cool, we can we can. Here's what I need to be doing, because I'm in a leadership position. Why don't you actually look around? And it was like, okay. But that ability to take a step back, detach, and look at what's going on is So important and you know you're a free fall guy. It's like your first free fall jump where what do you see on your first free fall jump? You see your altimeter and your altimeter and your ripcord and then your altimeter and your ripcord and you don't see much. And then as you get better.

• 2:05:22Speaker 01

  Hopefully if you're not tumbling.

• 2:05:25Speaker 01

  That's a good thing if you can see altimeter.

• 2:05:27Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, but as you get better, you can see everything and all of a sudden these one minute free falls from 13,000 feet seem like a really nice long time and you get to observe all this stuff.

• 2:05:35Speaker 01

  Enjoy it.

• 2:05:36Jocko Willink?

  But yeah, but the that's what you need to do is take that step back and train yourself to do that. You have to train yourself to do that. You have to train yourself to take a step back off the firing line. Quit staring down your gun. Look at the situation that's unfolding. Don't jump into the situation. Take a step back.

• 2:05:53Speaker 01

  And I think in the training, the pre-selection, obviously, we spent time, you know, clearing houses on the range, shoots, all that type of stuff. So I think they're able to to see the demeanor of the guys and see that you're not a, you know, a twitchy character. That you're, you know, you're thinking about things, um, which, you know, would get you into the team. So I was, I wasn't prone to just, you know, go in full auto and.

• 2:06:15Jocko Willink?

  Well, no, you, you handled this situation.

• 2:06:17Speaker 01

  But I was more concerned about, obviously, not fucking up more than.

• 2:06:21Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:06:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, that was my.

• 2:06:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I mean, your instincts are, you know, you're like, you didn't freak out in this situation. You, you made a decision now whether Kaepernick agreed with exactly what you did. It's like, okay. Uh, maybe he was pissed because you, because he still had his weapon or maybe he thought you should have just killed him. Which, you know, is six and one half dozen the other, what you could have done there, what you should have done there. If you killed the guy and it ended up, he was carrying a stick or whatever, then you're all of a sudden, you're the bad guy for killing some civilian that was hiding in the woods. Carrying his baby or whatever, right? I mean, you were.

• 2:06:54Speaker 01

  Or worst case, a teammate in that way.

• 2:06:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, or worst case, you're a blue on blue situation, which is.

• 2:06:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:06:59Jocko Willink?

  So, uh, you know, you were, you were cognizant of what was going on, like just the simple fact that you recognized it could be a teammate. Man, there's some people that don't, they go straight from zero to 100 miles an hour and they're just thinking, oh, that's a bad guy. They're shooting going on and they're pulling that trigger before they think about it. So you were thinking through it. And it shows that the training that you did go through, even though it might not have been this, uh, this simulated combat that we did.

• 2:07:26Jocko Willink?

  You know, when you're jumping out of airplanes, when you're clearing rooms all the time, you have to learn to do that somewhat. And obviously you had at this point.

• 2:07:33Speaker 01

  And I was putting, you know, on that patrol, I was in the rear, a position that was less, you know.

• 2:07:39Speaker 01

  Well, with responsibility, but, but yeah.

• 2:07:41Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure. Great call, right? If I'm the leader of that, you're a new guy. You just showed up here. I'm absolutely.

• 2:07:46Speaker 01

  He was no fool. He was obviously there for a reason. So he was, yeah. Um, yeah, I was learning my trade, my craft. Welcome to the combat arms.

• 2:07:55Jocko Willink?

  Good way to learn.

• 2:07:56Speaker 01

  If it was easy, yeah, everyone would do it, I guess.

• 2:07:58Jocko Willink?

  Uh, now the situation starts to intensify embassy and foreign national neighborhoods were placed under permanent guard and French military checkpoints were established along the city's main arteries and roads leading to international airport. The airport terminal was secured by French Foreign Legion and the, uh, French Marines. Rebels had been firing RPG rockets and mortar rounds from their side of, uh, PK zero into pro government neighborhoods and locals were being killed. Our new task was to deter this behavior. So here's another operation. Our objective was to find a good vantage point. And neutralize anyone with a weapon either on PK zero or on the other side.

• 2:08:39Jocko Willink?

  So this is, you're going into a sniper overwatch type position. We found a suitable site behind a small but sufficient retaining wall. And agreed on arcs of fire. Within minutes, bullets cracked overhead. The shots were off target, but they clearly aimed at our position. Seconds later, I saw a figure standing in a small opening. Between buildings. He let out a short reckless burst of fire in our general direction before disappearing. The distance and lack of light made it hard to see, but the AK sound was definitive. I waited. Sure enough, the stupid fucker fired at us again. My response was quick. I fired a succession of single action shots at the target. Did I hit my mark? I wouldn't have been far off. I knew that. He didn't step out again.

• 2:09:23Jocko Willink?

  We then moved a short distance away and sought better cover. The plan was to cross PK zero and start clearing buildings and general area from where we had been targeted. We put down effective covering fire, shooting through gaps in the wall directly at our target. Two well-placed AC 58 anti-personnel grenades flew straight, hitting their mark. The enemy ceased.

• 2:09:47Jocko Willink?

  Half of our section then made a short sprint across PK zero under the other half's covering fire. Then the remainder crossed. We waited in the dark. No shots, no rebel scene, nothing. Putting on our night vision goggles, we made our way down a dark embankment into taller elephant grass, leading into a large, open field. Without warning, a high pitched scream stopped us in our tracks. Our lead had surprised a local with his pants down, relieving himself. Daylight was approaching and we checked the area to make sure he hadn't thrown a weapon into the grass. Then we called it a night and returned to our sleeping bags.

• 2:10:21Speaker 01

  Yeah, so we called after the initial, I guess, call and contact. We radioed for the rest of the team to come and they came and then we, we crossed the, the avenue. But yeah, it was another, I guess, experience in soldiering and the chance to use my weapon for the first time. And learning from, I guess, the time before, you know, there's no second guessing. I knew what I was looking at. And yeah, did my, did my job.

• 2:10:52Jocko Willink?

  And of course, I love this section because guess what you guys are doing? Covered and moving. Fundamental, fundamental combat tactic. And that's exactly what you guys are doing. Putting down covering fire, maneuvering, and that's what you have to do. That's the, that's the way it works. It doesn't matter if you're in the French Forward Legion, if you're in the Marine Corps, if you're in the SEAL Teams, that's what you do.

• 2:11:13Speaker 01

  And I think with the cross training, we learned from, from others, the best method of getting the job done. And yeah, we'd been training on fire movement and stuff for, for a while. Yeah. Which is good.

• 2:11:26Jocko Willink?

  Got to do it.

• 2:11:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:11:28Jocko Willink?

  You guys get back on base and while lying in bed and you're writing, you're actually writing a letter, you're back on base, lying in bed, writing and sweating in the central African heat. Increased radio chatter from the command tent got my attention. It wasn't long before an NCO stuck his head into our tent and said, "Let's go." With the VLRA loaded, we drove at speed to where Third Company Section had ventured too close to Camp Cassie and came under heavy caliber fire. Passing Third's VAB, we disembarked and made our way through the bush to the high ground where the rebel fire had originated. I heard the distinct double tap of a Famas. Am I saying that right?

• 2:12:05Speaker 01

  Yep, Famas.

• 2:12:06Jocko Willink?

  Famas up ahead. Cause it's, it's an FA, right?

• 2:12:11Jocko Willink?

  It's the rifle where like the magazine is out, or sorry, behind, is it behind your trigger?

• 2:12:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly.

• 2:12:17Jocko Willink?

  It's kind of a funky setup.

• 2:12:18Speaker 01

  Yeah, they've replaced it since, but it's a good weapon.

• 2:12:23Jocko Willink?

  As I arrived on scene, Brooke and Pridgen were standing next to a four by four pickup truck with a 50 caliber machine gun mounted in its bed. A rebel fighter was lying face down in a ditch. He was alive but suffering the effects of Brooke's double tap. A few days later, our third company came under fire in the same place. Once again, we deployed. The third cut down a rebel with their VAB mounted 50 caliber. He was lying on the road, clearly dead. The 50 caliber round had done serious damage, ripping half his chest away. It wasn't a pretty sight.

• 2:12:54Jocko Willink?

  And then you're proceeding, another situation. After clearing the hut, I stepped out to the sound of an RPG rocket flying directly over our position, exploding well behind us. We took cover at the same time, trying to pinpoint the origin. Quickly regrouping, we continued our advance using fire and movement drills, one covering the other in short bounds. This is classic cover and move. But as we progressed, the shout grenade sent everyone diving. I threw myself on the ground, covering my head in a natural and time honored fashion. A friendly high explosive AC-58 anti-personnel grenade detonated on the ground, sending dirt and shrapnel flying in all directions. In the heat of battle, the AC-58 had mistakenly been fired vertically

• 2:13:39Jocko Willink?

  by one of our team. I lay still for a few seconds, and after everyone confirmed the okay, we resumed our advance. So there you go. Somebody had an AD with the...

• 2:13:51Speaker 01

  Human error, it always creeps up.

• 2:13:53Jocko Willink?

  At least they had the sense to call it out, huh?

• 2:13:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 2:13:58Jocko Willink?

  That's a, that's a decision making. Like, hey, do I tell everyone how stupid I just was?

• 2:14:03Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah.

• 2:14:04Jocko Willink?

  Cause you, that you, cause you think yourself, well, what are the chances? If you, if you had any kind of angle on that thing, you'd be fine. But if you fired that thing straight up,

• 2:14:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:14:14Jocko Willink?

  That thing's coming back down.

• 2:14:16Speaker 01

  Nightmare scenario, yeah. Luckily, you know. Pound out. No one was injured. Lesson, lesson learned.

• 2:14:23Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for everybody. For those of you that we just kind of skipped past understanding what happened. The guy had a grenade launcher.

• 2:14:31Speaker 01

  It's actually, it's a anti-personnel grenade that goes on the end of your Famas and you can shoot it.

• 2:14:35Jocko Willink?

  So it's like a rifle fired grenade.

• 2:14:37Speaker 01

  Exactly, yeah.

• 2:14:37Jocko Willink?

  So it's a rifle fired grenade that can, that way you can get, and you don't have to throw a grenade. You can use your rifle to shoot it, basically. And the guy had an accidental discharge, had it pointed at Highport up of the sky and shot it straight up in the air. Well, what goes up must come down.

• 2:14:53Speaker 01

  Must come down, yeah.

• 2:14:55Jocko Willink?

  And so luckily, he called out grenade. Because if he wouldn't have done that, then you're, if you're standing up when that thing hits.

• 2:15:01Speaker 01

  Oh, yeah.

• 2:15:02Jocko Willink?

  The, the frag pattern of a grenade is up and out.

• 2:15:05Speaker 01

  Do exactly what it's designed for you.

• 2:15:09Jocko Willink?

  Sure that debrief was fun.

• 2:15:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, Captain Raul had his

• 2:15:14Speaker 01

  handful.

• 2:15:17Jocko Willink?

  This is where things start to get even more intense. A French military delegation had met with rebel commanders at the gas station to discuss certain terms, and it didn't go well. As the French staff car left, the rebels opened fire.

• 2:15:32Jocko Willink?

  Uh, some RPIM snipers positioned in an apartment complex covering the meeting had reacted appropriately. The dead rebels at our feet were the result of their effective marksmanship. It wasn't long before two rebel commanders and their subordinates returned to the scene, apparently under, under an agreed truce. Our photo ops cell, NCO Sergeant Chief Testanier.

• 2:15:56Speaker 01

  Testanier.

• 2:15:57Jocko Willink?

  Testanier was instructed to take pictures for future reference. So as you guys got called out to see what had gone down. Later that evening, we gathered in our OP and we could sense that things had changed. Captain Raul gave his orders. A COS Super Puma armed with 20mm cannon would engage the city's main power station in the early hours of the morning. It was our single, or it was our signal to assault the Pont Jackson bunker site and adjacent buildings. Once that objective was achieved, we would venture deeper into rebel-held territory. My initial responsibility in all this was to drive the P4 behind the team's VAB and use it as cover. Once the VAB had smashed through the makeshift barricade of burned-out

• 2:16:41Jocko Willink?

  cars on the bridge, I was to break left and assault the building adjacent to the rebel bunker. The second P4 following behind us would stop short of the bunker. My second responsibility, once I brought the P4 to a stop, was to dismount and fire an AC-58 anti-personnel grenade into the building's left window. Another teammate, El Wahidi, would do the same to the right window, and then we would clear the building. The VAB would stop and unload its personnel to clear the second target building to the right of the main road, and then, if needed, provide close-fire support for the team with its 50-cal. We discussed our fallback positions, dealing with trauma, and other details or scenarios.

• 2:17:24Jocko Willink?

  Once the briefing was completed, we were told to go kit up. With the P4 positioned behind the VAB, I dropped the hinged windshield forward, flat onto the hood. The call to prayer rang out, reverberating off in the distance. I found myself considering my current situation. Having joined the French Foreign Legion only two years ago, I was about to assault a rebel-held position in Central Africa with the regiment's GCP. I was full of emotions, nervousness, uncertainty, and excitement at what lay ahead. Fear was a factor, too. I wasn't afraid of dying, per se, but I didn't want to screw up. We were all being counted on. We were, after all, a team.

• 2:18:08Jocko Willink?

  Check. This is a legit operation, right here.

• 2:18:11Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah, it's, uh, it's good shit. For, you know, a young, young soldier that's out there to test himself and apply the tools to his trade, this is, this is... Getting there.

• 2:18:22Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, this is, this is a legit operation.

• 2:18:24Speaker 01

  And I'm honored to, you know, a lot of the guys are like L Y D what told me he was a senior engineer. He was like, this doesn't happen all the time, man. You're, you're fortunate to be here. So consider yourself lucky, which I did.

• 2:18:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:18:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:34Jocko Willink?

  I mean, you got.

• 2:18:35Speaker 01

  Then again, all the more owners to, to pull your weight.

• 2:18:38Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, you got the air support. They're actually going to start with 20 millimeter cannon, taking out this. I mean, this is a, this is a nice op.

• 2:18:45Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:18:45Jocko Willink?

  It's a quality operation.

• 2:18:46Speaker 01

  The 20 milli can, that's on another position, but it's our signal to go.

• 2:18:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. But I'm saying it's a big coordinated operation and you guys are doing a full on assault. That's commencing with grenades.

• 2:18:57Speaker 01

  Hey, you don't shoot French officers in the back.

• 2:18:59Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:19:00Speaker 01

  Time to pay. Fair enough.

• 2:19:03Jocko Willink?

  And um.

• 2:19:06Jocko Willink?

  A little nervousness, a little uncertainty, and then the standard, and I'm, I'm not trying to uh.

• 2:19:13Jocko Willink?

  Take anything away from that, but everybody says, myself included, like what you're afraid of is letting, letting someone down.

• 2:19:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's definitely.

• 2:19:19Jocko Willink?

  Letting down the team.

• 2:19:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:24Jocko Willink?

  So how, also, what was the planning like? Like, did you, did you guys participate in the plan?

• 2:19:29Speaker 01

  No. So. Earlier in the day, French Jaguars had gone over and they had photos of the, of the site, which Captain Rule had. And he basically briefed us there with the pictures we went through. So there was minimal time spent really going over it. But it wasn't complicated.

• 2:19:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, this is straightforward.

• 2:19:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:19:47Jocko Willink?

  Boom, we're coming in.

• 2:19:48Speaker 01

  We all knew our responsibilities and. There we go.

• 2:19:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Continuing on, as I sat there visualizing a walk through the plan, I detected a sound. I listened again carefully to make sure my adrenaline kicked in and I was certain I could hear the quiet thud of a Puma helicopter's rotor blades in the distance. Here we go.

• 2:20:07Speaker 01

  There we go.

• 2:20:07Jocko Willink?

  Word came over the radio to start our engines. We looked at one another and smiled. The OP gates were open and the V A B pulled out. With its distinctive turbo diesel engine whistling as it kicked in and accelerated down P K zero. The V A B then made its right turn onto the dirt road that led to Pont Jackson. Its 50 caliber opened up. The sound of the initial burst drowning out everything else. Shell casing bounced off the road, hitting the hood of the P four and the pungent smell of gunpowder flooded our nostrils. The V A B then hit the bridge's barricade, sending the wrecked cars flying. Driving over the bridge, I felt a blow to our right side. The impact hit hard enough that I had to fight to keep the vehicle straight. I managed to make the hard left turn then slammed on the brakes.

• 2:20:52Jocko Willink?

  A yawning second of silence followed as the P4 came to a complete stop in a whirlwind of red dust. We were now at our most vulnerable, no longer covered by the VAB and right on top of the target. Testan Yer on our P4's rear-mounted 762 machine gun laid down covering fire and El Wahidi jumped out of the P4. I picked up my Famas in the heat of the, but in the heat of the moment, I took the wrong one. A spare carried up front. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion. Noticing my error, I grabbed the correct Famas, Famas with the AC-58 loaded on the muzzle. Taking a step forward as El Wahidi, as El Wahidi's AC-58 left his weapon, I located my target and fired.

• 2:21:35Jocko Willink?

  Then I reconfigured the Famas. I was farther away than planned, but the AC-58 flew straight and hit the window's lower corner exploding and sending shards of cinder block, concrete, wood and glass onto the road. I quickly rechecked my magazine, nodded to El Wahidi that we were good to go and we advanced to the building's main entrance using fire and movement. We reached the door and I kicked in as hard as I could, three or four times until it finally gave way. This wasn't ideal, but it was reality, not a Hollywood movie. We then cleared the building room by room.

• 2:22:08Jocko Willink?

  That's a wicked good assault kickoff.

• 2:22:11Speaker 01

  A sledgehammer would have been.

• 2:22:12Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, a sledgehammer would have been good.

• 2:22:14Speaker 01

  Standing in front of a door, kicking is not, as you know, a good place to be, whatever, or learning.

• 2:22:19Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, I've had that feeling before of standing there kicking a door on a target, waiting for an AK-47 to enter my back. But um, you know what it makes you do? Kick harder.

• 2:22:29Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 2:22:31Jocko Willink?

  Afterwards, we joined our two teammates outside. They had detained three adolescent boys who were kneeling on the ground, hands on their heads, visibly scared. Children were used by rebels as errand boys or whatever was needed. These kids smartly had hidden when we launched the assaults and the rebels fled. After being searched, they were told to clear out. The boys ran off and disappeared into the darkness. Theirs was a childhood worlds apart from what I had experienced growing up. Our team regrouped, however, I noticed my P4 had a nice little flat tire as the section, what did that?

• 2:23:03Speaker 01

  I think it was just one of the. Vehicles that we'd smashed by, you know, a piece or whatever, something else.

• 2:23:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:23:10Speaker 01

  Slipped there.

• 2:23:11Jocko Willink?

  Um, as the section continued up the road, I was left behind with Sikorlan.

• 2:23:16Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:23:16Jocko Willink?

  Sir Karlan to cover, uh, as I changed the tire. The Puma flew a loose orbit overhead, hammering rebel positions in the distance with its 20 millimeter cannon. With the tire replaced, we drove up the road to rejoin the section waiting some 500 meters away. Driving through a smaller crossroads, we came under fire from a heavy caliber type round. Thank God their, their aim was off. I watched a red tracer round cut past our front. A Marine VAB 20 millimeter at another intersection had mistaken us for a rebel vehicle. This potentially fatal error didn't really sink in right away and we both laughed nervously once we were clear of danger.

• 2:23:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know how close it was. It was close enough to get our attention, obviously. And I accelerated. But yeah, they definitely had, had us coined for someone else and it, yeah, got our attention.

• 2:24:09Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and it, it's, it's crazy.

• 2:24:14Jocko Willink?

  You know, I've, I've told this story before. There was a blue on blue and when I was in the battle of Ramadi, there was a, nothing happened, but there was a, a, a Humvee that engaged another Humvee. Like shot at another Humvee. I don't think they hit it.

• 2:24:27Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 2:24:28Jocko Willink?

  But that shows you, I mean, a Humvee is one of the most distinctive vehicles there is. You know, especially with the 50 caliber and the turd. I mean, it's really obvious what it is. And in Ramadi, they didn't have any tactical vehicles. Like you guys were going against some people with tech. There weren't, the enemy didn't have to, they had vehicle borne IEDs. But they didn't have weapons mounted on them and they damn sure didn't look anything like a Humvee. And so think about what the mental state of a young soldier is that he's out in a Humvee in the city. He sees another Humvee and, and shoots at it.

• 2:25:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:25:04Jocko Willink?

  Like that's, that's how amped up people get that. And this is.

• 2:25:07Speaker 01

  In all fairness to the French, the, the rebels had Pcats, the same type of vehicle because they're obviously supplied for the, the French military. You know, these things happen. Luckily, you know, it fared well. But yeah, it certainly got our attention. And something you don't think about is, you know, when you're you're on this op, whatever, you're thinking the bad guy, you're not thinking the good guy and wham, you know, shit, I gotta be thinking about the good guy too.

• 2:25:29Jocko Willink?

  Yes, you do. That's one of the things that we realized being in combat was you had to do at least as much planning to de-conflict with the friendly forces than as you did worried about what the enemy was gonna do.

• 2:25:43Speaker 01

  Defensive soldiering, I don't know if that term even exists, but you gotta think about, you know, the mistakes that others are gonna make, not not just the enemy.

• 2:25:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. And by the way, I'd rather get shot at all day by the enemy than than the friendly who actually hit their target more often. True. So here we are back to the book, regrouping with our section. We waited at the intersection and it wasn't long before the early morning light brought with it civilian casualties caught in the crossfire and family members asking for help. We radioed for assistance and a French military ambulance arrived as the evening adrenaline wore off and we sat idly watching it hit home that these people, some seriously injured, were innocent victims.

• 2:26:22Jocko Willink?

  We were soon replaced by a section from the fourth company and made our way back to the Jackson bunker site where we put where we were put on standby for a few hours. On further search of the bunker and building, several weapons and small ammunition caches were recovered. Afterward, I sat in the driver's seat of my P4 drinking coffee as two teammates used to use the Peugeot rear hold to clear the recovered weapons. Suddenly, a loud shot rang out. An old French bolt action rifle had accidentally been discharged. Captain Raul had a lot to say about that error. Personally, I was also unimpressed. I had coffee all over my combat vest, pants and webbing.

• 2:27:04Speaker 01

  Fresh brew too.

• 2:27:06Jocko Willink?

  We eventually returned to our own beds and I slept like the dead. Adrenaline affects people in different ways, but this adrenaline dump took it to a whole new level. After we had time to rest, we were debriefed. The operation had achieved its objective. The rebels had fled Bangui, how do you say it?

• 2:27:20Speaker 01

  Bungie.

• 2:27:21Jocko Willink?

  Bungie with their commanders retreating to their native villages.

• 2:27:27Jocko Willink?

  The first R P I M A, the Marines and the rep didn't suffer any losses although two crew members in a Sangui armored vehicle were injured due to a friendly fire incident with the Puma overhead. The rebels suffered losses. So again, we get a blue on blue scenario.

• 2:27:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, and I'm hopefully I'm not focusing too much on the the human error on our side, but that is a part of soldier, especially when you're you're doing it for real. People screw up and it's and it's learning from it and it, you know, it was there. And I was also aware of my surroundings, you know, I wasn't dumb enough to to not see that the locals were suffering, that they have a tough life. I'm a fortunate kid from, you know, Western Canada, privileged upbringing, and I was there, you know, supporting obviously the French efforts, but at the same time, I could see that there's other people in this world that don't have it quite as well, and they suffer the the consequences of bullshit. Yeah, so that was always part of my time there. I'm not just queued up soldiering time, I'm also looking around at my surroundings,

• 2:28:30Speaker 01

  thinking, you know, I'm a lucky guy. This is, you know, some people have it tough in life.

• 2:28:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, no, I traveling the world is definitely left an impact on me in terms of how awesome it is to grow up well for me in America. And the the thing about human error, like, I don't think you're focused too much on human error. I think you're focusing enough on human error that hopefully people that listen to this go, oh, we better not assume that someone in a helicopter that's flying around at night looking at the ground is going to be able to discriminate which one of these vehicles is good guys and which one is bad guys, even though it might seem real obvious, it's not.

• 2:29:05Speaker 01

  Or when you get lazy on the range in your training, think to yourself, when it's real, you don't want to be the one screwing up because the consequences are high. So take your your training seriously.

• 2:29:14Jocko Willink?

  I was out in the desert, just on a training operation. It was daytime, and I'm trying to signal, I was a radio man, I was a young enlisted SEAL, I was trying to signal a helicopter to come pick us up. The helicopters probably at an altitude of like, no more than a thousand feet. It's low. I have a smoke out. I've got like a red smoke out on the ground and I'm waving an aircraft plant panel around and there's two helicopters, a section of helicopters, and they can't see me. And and I just, I couldn't believe it.

• 2:29:43Speaker 01

  Good helicopter pilots, you just can't.

• 2:29:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. And what I realized is like, oh, to me, it's real obvious because I'm looking at the sky and there's only one thing to look at, these two helicopters. For them. I mean, they got, I'm like, well, I'm by the knoll. How many knolls do they see? You know, uh, past the ravine, how many ravines do they see? They see literally miles and miles and miles of square. And I mean, eventually they did, but it cued me in that man, it thing, you gotta understand other people's perspective. What are they seeing? And same thing from a leadership perspective, like what does my grunt think? What are they seeing out of this situation? Does it make any sense to them? Have I explained it clearly enough? Like actually probably no, you haven't. So getting to know other people's perspective or looking at things from other people's perspective

• 2:30:29Jocko Willink?

  is an important tool. And what you're saying here, you know, focusing on human errors, like people are gonna make mistakes. I mean, people are gonna make mistakes, whether it's a negligent discharge with some recovered weapon or it's shooting friendly forces. I mean, like that's gonna happen and you have to do everything you can to plan to mitigate that as much as possible. It's hard. It's a hard job.

• 2:30:51Speaker 01

  Roger that.

• 2:30:53Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, I mean, when I was, before the war started, I didn't think that, that, uh, blue on blue was a possible thing to really happen. And, you know, Jason Gardner, who's an awesome guy who's been on this podcast and, uh, he's telling, he's talking about having a blue on blue during training. I was running training and he's, he's kinda telling the story about how this blue on blue unfolded. And he was the same way when I said, "Look, you know what? People are gonna have blue on blues." And he kinda was rolling his eyes thinking, "Everyone else must suck so bad, you know? That's ridiculous." And sure enough, you put that pressure on them and

• 2:31:34Jocko Willink?

  man, things get complicated and people make mistakes and the world looks different through night vision and the world looks different from different angles.

• 2:31:43Jocko Willink?

  That's why you gotta keep things simple. By the way, law of combat.

• 2:31:49Speaker 01

  Train hard, fight easy.

• 2:31:50Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Continuing on being left alone for a few days with ample time for sports, sleep, general recovery, and a beer or two at the camp's foyer was a much-needed reprieve, but it wasn't long before we were briefed on our next task. So here comes another one. Approaching our target, a home built better than others, we waited outside its entrance until signaled to enter. As we broke through the door, it was obvious that our target wasn't there, but his family was, and they were terrified. The younger children were shaken to the bone, and the mom and an older sister were trying to comfort the kids to no effect. Who could blame them? Here we were, a bunch of foreign soldiers with weird equipment on our heads, bursting into their simple life. We left the family with bottles of water and some wise advice for the woman's husband.

• 2:32:33Jocko Willink?

  Our efforts continued, and we set ambushes on remote trails leading to rebel villages, hiding in the bush through the night, cradling my weapon and wearing NVGs, my eyes started to play tricks. Shadows on the trail began to look like rebels slowly sneaking up on me, not to mention the bugs relentlessly buzzing around and crawling on me. These were long nights and all in vain. Our stay in the car was coming to an end, and the rep was going to be relieved by another French regiment. Ammunition that would soon expire needed to be spent, so we just dedicated an entire day to working on our contact drills, firing as many rounds as we could. Captain Raoul arrived later in the day, and I was duly summoned with an order to stand attention.

• 2:33:15Jocko Willink?

  I was promoted to corporal. He removed the Velcro premier class patch from my combat vest and replaced it with corporal rank, accompanied with a solid punch to the chest, so it stuck properly.

• 2:33:28Jocko Willink?

  So there you go. Get your, uh, get your promotion. And then it was back home. Well, back to Calvi.

• 2:33:36Speaker 01

  Back to Calvi.

• 2:33:38Jocko Willink?

  Back in Calvi, everyone was given leave except moi.

• 2:33:42Jocko Willink?

  Salak Garcia, both fresh off leave and I were going to the Centre National de Trainement Commando. So Commando Training, correct, yeah. CNEC. We passed the pre-entrance exam consisting of a timed relay with sprints, push-ups, sit-ups, chin-ups, and the obligatory rope climb at the regiment gym. We then left for Marseille by overnight ferry on towards, toward Toulouse. So what's this course all about?

• 2:34:14Speaker 01

  So this is the French Commando Course. They have three levels, one, two, and three. In order to be a GCP team member, you have to be Level 2 Commando qualified, and then obviously your HALO qualification.

• 2:34:25Jocko Willink?

  So is this Level 1?

• 2:34:27Speaker 01

  Two. Okay. I had done my Level 1 with the first company.

• 2:34:30Jocko Willink?

  Got it.

• 2:34:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, so this is Level 2. But it's done for the COS, which is the French Special Operations Command. So everything from their GJN, which is their French anti-terrorist team, to Air Force, Fort Air Controllers, regular army, and then their Commando Marines, which is based off, similar to the SEALs.

• 2:34:48Jocko Willink?

  Is that Commando Hubert?

• 2:34:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, Hubert. There's a couple, there's four. But yeah, so we'd all come together and do the course.

• 2:34:54Jocko Willink?

  Well, that's, yeah, pretty good to have a unified course.

• 2:34:57Speaker 01

  It was, and my first, you know, time to, to see other soldiers. Because I'm still junior at this point, and I haven't done any courses except with other Legionnaires. So this is the first time I kind of get thrown into the mesh with other French, actual French soldiers.

• 2:35:11Jocko Willink?

  Now, are you looking at their lifestyle, seeing a difference?

• 2:35:14Speaker 01

  It's starting. I've been busy.

• 2:35:17Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:35:17Speaker 01

  I can't complain, but yeah, you start to fatigue and it starts to kick in, and here I am, you know, starting a course.

• 2:35:25Jocko Willink?

  And you must be feeling good, too. Like, I mean, just from that one deployment to the car, right? That's gotta, that's, that's pretty, that's an awesome deployment for 19, whatever. What was this, 1995?

• 2:35:35Speaker 01

  Six.

• 2:35:36Jocko Willink?

  1996? That's a freaking good deployment for 1996.

• 2:35:39Speaker 01

  It is, agreed, yeah. And I'm fortunate that I, as I said, got to partake, and it wasn't the...

• 2:35:42Jocko Willink?

  I mean, that wasn't a normal deployment, I'm assuming?

• 2:35:44Speaker 01

  No, no. And then the fact that I'm not a qualified team member. So I'm fortunate that I've gotten thrown into the team that way. But I don't think I'm there mentally. I'm thinking, I need my Commando Course, I need to get to the, the jump course, I need to, you know, be a proper team member and pull my weight. So I'm thinking more just, I gotta cover these, these courses, these checks and the boxes. I'm not really looking back thinking, oh, this is great. You know, this will be Chapter 7.

• 2:36:08Speaker 01

  Not at all.

• 2:36:09Jocko Willink?

  It sounds like, uh, it sounds like you did some more maritime stuff with this. I'll go to the book here. A Navy Whaler and six man Zodiacs were introduced into the training. We sat in the craft's lower deck and guys got seasick from surging swells. At times, this made vomiting contagious. Finally, never soon enough, the boat's alarm would sound and we would make our way onto the deck of, in teams of six. Zodiacs were thrown overboard at speed and we followed, jumping into the sea, wearing our wetsuits. Zodiacs were deliberately flipped upside down and we waited beneath them. Our bodies shaking in the chat, in teeth chattering uncontrollably from the cold. If we were too slow, the instructors would keep us in the water for longer periods of time. The least, my least favorite training experience by far was swerve on my fucking nerve.

• 2:36:54Jocko Willink?

  This is, this is the, is that what you guys called this training evolution? That's what you made up? Okay, jammed inside the tarp covered trucks with our backpacks, the vehicle would speed off. And then we were ordered to put on our wetsuits in the dark cramped moving space. The driver purposely swerved violently back and forth, sending us crashing into the sides or piling up to the front as he braked hard. The tactic that, the tactic was that half the group would make themselves as small as possible in the corners or sides of the truck. So the guys in, on the inside could change, then we'd switch out. Tempers flared, but we got it done. Yeah, that's just a typical freaking.

• 2:37:32Speaker 01

  Just fuck with you.

• 2:37:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, absolutely.

• 2:37:34Speaker 01

  But yeah, tempers would flare. I mean, you get a, an elbow across the side of the head, you know, things got, yeah. And you have to figure that out for yourselves. A way to get it done.

• 2:37:43Jocko Willink?

  Uh, first thing Monday is again, I'm skipping broad swaths of this book, but I'm just hitting some of the highlights. First thing on Monday morning, we took part in hand to hand combat drills to get us back on track. Then we went straight on to an obstacle course. Rock climbing was on the curriculum. With a fascinating lesson on knots, which we immediately forgot, but would be tested on later. In the classroom, we worked on explosive charge calculations and reviewed the explosives range safety rules.

• 2:38:10Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on a bit, that evening we were woken by stun grenades and German shepherds barking in the barracks doorway. Instructors in balaclavas dragged us outside and covered our heads with potato sacks. The trucks had their high beams directed at us and we were put in stress positions with dogs barking on our faces. Our personal belongings such as compass, knife and flashlight or lighter were taken. This was the prisoner of war phase of training. Stress positions were quite annoying, which is the idea. And if an instructor noticed you slacking off, he would slap you upside the head and make you either correct the position or change to another one. The exaggerated push-up position with your rear end as high as you could get it was effective. The slaps were not overly hard. I certainly don't think any of us were close to quitting. We knew this was coming. So you're just getting your-

• 2:38:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, they're just playing with us. We saw you. Nothing.

• 2:38:58Jocko Willink?

  They didn't slap you hard, huh?

• 2:39:00Speaker 01

  Uh.

• 2:39:01Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. The first slap that I got at SERE School, which was our pr- I got slapped so hard, I was not expecting it. You know, I kinda had, I think I had like a, cause I was nineteen, I think I had a good cocky look on my face, like, whatever dude, I got you.

• 2:39:16Speaker 01

  Keep in mind, these, the training NCOs are reg force. It's not legion anymore, right? So they're not quite as apt at smacking you a good one and getting you with it, so.

• 2:39:25Jocko Willink?

  This was a regular Navy guy. This guy, the guy that slapped me in the face was a regular Navy guy. And I'm sure he had rec- read my dossier and said, oh, here comes Rambo.

• 2:39:34Speaker 01

  Let's check him.

• 2:39:35Jocko Willink?

  We're gonna get some of that. Yeah, and so I was giving some cocky answer. You know, he's like, what's your, what is your name? Cause it was a Eastern Bloc simulation. So they're all speaking with fake Russian accents. So he's like, what is your name? And I'm like, what are you worried about? Quack! I mean, full, I don't think, I think he, I think he honestly slapped me as hard as he could. Like, I mean, it was that hard.

• 2:39:54Speaker 02

  But was it the kind with his palm or like-

• 2:39:57Jocko Willink?

  He slapped me as hard as he could.

• 2:39:59Speaker 02

  You know how like, but there's a difference though. You ever watch those slapping competitions, right? You get the good guys and they get you with this part. Yeah, but if you get this part, it's just, that's so superficial.

• 2:40:08Jocko Willink?

  He slapped me, uh, I'm not sure which part of the hand.

• 2:40:12Speaker 01

  But good enough that you know.

• 2:40:14Jocko Willink?

  Let me put it this way, it kinda rang my bell a little bit, right?

• 2:40:17Speaker 02

  He probably got you with the professional part.

• 2:40:18Jocko Willink?

  There was a little bit of professionalism in that slap.

• 2:40:21Speaker 02

  Yes, I think so.

• 2:40:22Speaker 01

  Effective.

• 2:40:23Jocko Willink?

  Check.

• 2:40:25Jocko Willink?

  Two of our larger course mates were, this is again, fast forward, two of our larger course mates were told to retrieve jerry cans of water stashed roadside, a detonation of white powder followed, simulating two casualties. Using our combat vests and metal poles provided for stretchers, we extracted for what I assumed was several kilometers. At some point, I could see headlights in the dark down the road. As we arrived, I realized it was a military transport. The instructors then casually told us that we were done. Confused, I asked the instructor if he was sure. We were exhausted.

• 2:40:55Jocko Willink?

  And then completing the commando brevet, is that what you say?

• 2:40:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, brevet, exactly.

• 2:40:59Jocko Willink?

  Was physically challenging, and that was something I liked, having the feeling of being pushed to my limits. So you get done with this, that's phase two?

• 2:41:08Speaker 01

  That's phase two, yeah. So that's my commando qualification now would be the jump course, to be a qualified GCPT member.

• 2:41:17Jocko Willink?

  Now you're back on base in Calvi.

• 2:41:21Jocko Willink?

  I was summoned to the CEA company building and presented myself to the duty NCO sitting behind his desk. He ordered me to get gills, is that how you say it?

• 2:41:30Speaker 01

  Uh, gil.

• 2:41:30Jocko Willink?

  Gil. He ordered me to get Gil's dressed uniform and keppy from his locker. It was an unusual request. I asked why, what's going on? Without even looking up from his paperwork, the NCO replied casually, "He's dead."

• 2:41:47Jocko Willink?

  I was stunned. That shock was compounded by the cavalier, even callous way the NCO had broken the news. I was angry, but controlled my feelings and went to Gil's room.

• 2:42:01Jocko Willink?

  I recovered his uniform and keppy from his locker. Inside were photos of his fiancee, Stephanie. I quickly networked with others to find out what the hell had happened. News eventually trickled back to the regiment.

• 2:42:15Jocko Willink?

  The CEA first company and section had been deployed to Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo, fighting between government troops and militiamen. Loyalty to the former leader had escalated, requiring evacuation of some 6,000 expats caught up in the civil war. Gil's had been killed during expatriation efforts. His body was due to arrive in Calvi from Africa the next evening, and corporals from the CEA's rear guard would man his honor guard while he lay at rest in the regimental chapel.

• 2:42:50Jocko Willink?

  Six of us were designated to carry his coffin onto the parade square for the regimental ceremony scheduled for the following day. I was excused from course to get my uniform ready and assist in the preparations. A small private ceremony for Gilles' family and Stephanie was held before the regimental parade, where all the companies not on tour were present in full parade uniform. Gilles' coffin was moved from the chapel to the center of the parade square. The French Minister of Defense awarded Gilles the posthumous Croix de Valeur Militaire, the Military Medal. The Cross of Valor.

• 2:43:33Jocko Willink?

  Then the regiment sang a regimental song. You could have heard a pin drop when it was over. It was a moving moment. Captain Raul indicated that I was to attend dinner that evening in Calvi for Gilles' and Stephanie's families. Stephanie seemed to be taking everything in stride, but I'm sure she was doing her best to put up a strong front. I could see that Gilles' family was hurting. Everyone was. I wasn't really sure what to say or how to act. Gilles, who was a good man, a good soldier, and like many other legionnaires before him,

• 2:44:17Jocko Willink?

  had made the ultimate sacrifice.

• 2:44:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, so Gilles I had befriended when I got to Bunge. He was new on the team, but had completed all his prereqs at courses. So he kind of took me, not under his wing, but we'd run together. He kind of briefed me on what to expect in the commando course, the jump course, some of the personalities within the team, like be careful of this guy, he doesn't like, you know. And so, yeah, he was a, he was a good guy. And when we got back to France, Stephanie had met us at one of the French Air Force bases and brought sandwiches for us to eat. So I got to meet her. So when I came back from commando course, I was doing my medics course that they were running on the, in Calvi.

• 2:44:59Speaker 01

  And that's when I was summoned to the, the front desk and controlled my, my temper.

• 2:45:07Speaker 01

  Which is mentioned because sometimes a legion can be that way, cold and callous is what it is. And yeah, Jules was a good man. He was actually former French airborne, quit the French military to join the legion because he wanted to give her to go and had paid the ultimate sacrifice. So it was, I thought, an important story to share because a lot of people don't think or see that when they think of the Legion, that there's good men out there risking their lives and some of them pay for it.

• 2:45:36Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and I didn't read it, but you you go through pretty good detail of what had happened. And so that's another reason for people to to get the book so you can get that story.

• 2:45:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, and they're out there supporting valid efforts. It's not this misconception that the Legion is, you know, out there doing they're they're supporting humanity and helping where they can.

• 2:45:57Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, absolutely. Did that, I mean, now is your is your viewpoint of what you're doing changed at all at this point?

• 2:46:07Speaker 01

  In which way?

• 2:46:08Jocko Willink?

  In other words,

• 2:46:11Jocko Willink?

  did you have any feelings of, hey, I'm I'm a legionnaire, we deploy, I've been in firefights, I can't be killed, nothing can happen to me? Did you have any thoughts like, well, actually?

• 2:46:24Speaker 01

  Hundred percent. That was definitely an eye opener where this is, yeah, serious outcomes. Um, yeah, it was sobering, I guess, to a certain point and you realize that, yeah, there's a risk out there. Something you take for granted. Yeah, especially in a peacetime army. Because really, things hadn't ramped up at that point. Afghanistan hadn't kicked off Iraq. So, you know, it was not a common occurrence for

• 2:46:48Speaker 01

  a soldier from the rep to be killed in action. So.

• 2:46:50Jocko Willink?

  Do you know when the last one that was killed in action?

• 2:46:53Speaker 01

  Uh, prior to Jules?

• 2:46:57Speaker 01

  I don't, I couldn't list it off.

• 2:46:59Jocko Willink?

  Had there been any others while you were there?

• 2:47:03Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:47:03Jocko Willink?

  So it'd been like two, at least two or three years.

• 2:47:06Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:47:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it wasn't, wasn't common occurrence by any means.

• 2:47:11Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, you, you don't expect it, right?

• 2:47:12Speaker 01

  No.

• 2:47:13Jocko Willink?

  Because there's no active, full

• 2:47:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:47:15Jocko Willink?

  wars going on.

• 2:47:17Speaker 01

  And the reception was good to see, you know, how he was treated. The, the efforts of the, the government, the French military and the regiment itself, you know, it was nice to see that he was thought about after and given the proper honor deserved, which is nice. Yeah.

• 2:47:30Jocko Willink?

  How many people leave the French military to join the Legion?

• 2:47:34Speaker 01

  There's a chunk, as I said, in the ranks, about a third are French nationals. Obviously, all the officers are

• 2:47:39Jocko Willink?

  And what, what was his reason behind it?

• 2:47:42Speaker 01

  I would assume that when you're in a French regiment, the rep is kind of the, the level to attain in the Legion. It has a different history and, and discipline. So I'm guessing, based on what he told me, he just wanted to come and give it a run for himself. Yeah. Because we'll work together, right? So they'll see it. Um, and they'll march by at, I don't know how many steps a minute and high pitched voices in their songs, and then the Legion's turn, and it's slow and deep, well, it's, it's impressive, to be honest with you. So I think that, you know, not necessarily that, but just the whole, the whole vision is tempting or appealing.

• 2:48:16Jocko Willink?

  He, he wanted what the young man wants.

• 2:48:18Speaker 01

  Yes, to go try it.

• 2:48:23Jocko Willink?

  Awesome salute.

• 2:48:27Jocko Willink?

  At this point,

• 2:48:30Jocko Willink?

  you're told that the section's qualified medics were headed to Marseille to spend a week with the city's military firefighters as paramedics. And this is something that we do in America too. We'll take our, well, at least the SEAL teams do it. We take our young SEAL medics and send them out to Compton, California, or Detroit, or Baltimore to be in really bad neighborhoods to get to work on

• 2:48:54Speaker 01

  Cross training.

• 2:48:55Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, to get to use their craft live.

• 2:48:59Jocko Willink?

  Marseille's firefighters were renowned for their professionalism and you got some good, well not good, you got some pretty heavy stories in here. Our next call was to assist a young boy who hadn't been able to reach his grandfather. We met the nine year old outside his grandfather's large apartment building, which was one of the cities, which is in one of the city's tougher housing projects, where his parents were, I had no idea, but it wasn't my place to ask, really. We took the elevator to one of the upper floors and knocked on the grandfather's door. Nothing. We knocked again several times, still nothing. The NCO checked the handle, the door was unlocked. Calling inside, he took two steps through the doorway and then turned around, ordering one of the paramedics to take the boy back to the elevators and wait with him there. The NCO indicated that

• 2:49:44Jocko Willink?

  I entered the apartment, saying, "Don't touch anything." I immediately recognized the smell. As I was walking inside, I noticed a plastic shotgun casing on the floor, then two legs partially obscured behind a corner. When I looked around the corner, the grandfather's body was lying there. The part, the upper part of his skull was missing. Blood and brain matter covered the walls and the balcony's glass sliding door. A shotgun lay next to him. I then realized I was standing on some of his teeth. It was a graphic and sickening sight and the last thing I had expected when riding up the elevator. Another incident made an even bigger impression. A young girl, maybe seven or eight years of age, couldn't wake up her mother. The doctor pronounced the mother deceased as

• 2:50:29Jocko Willink?

  the girl stood in the doorway watching. An empty bottle of pills was recovered from her mother's bedside. Then you continue on another. "Dealing with the city's street people was also something new to me. Quite often, these were the same individuals, day after day, night after night. The homeless, drug addicts, drunks, or people suffering from mental illness, most likely all four." It was an eye opener. "I watched a male patient in his late 40s unravel as we tried to administer first aid to his self-inflicted knife wound. The paramedic's actions and attitudes were always professional. Here was a guy who had just urinated, defecated, and cut himself, yet the paramedics remained polite and firm with him while trying to help."

• 2:51:12Jocko Willink?

  The NCO was tougher, more direct. I guess you had to be in that type of role.

• 2:51:19Jocko Willink?

  And that's, you know, I always say thanks to the firefighters and paramedics on the show, but you know, and I know this because when, when our guys would go out and work with, you know, the paramedics and firefighters in big cities or even in small cities, like this is what you deal with and you deal with it all day long.

• 2:51:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:51:36Jocko Willink?

  And it's the freaking hard job.

• 2:51:39Speaker 01

  Depressing too. That's what I think, you know, why I kind of mentioned is you're, you're in a regiment, you're amongst your peers that everyone's kind of, you know, physically fit, type A possibly. And then you get thrown into the real world and you see kind of the, the sad side of humanity and the suffering of certain people and you kind of forget about that. And then you see the realities. You're like, shit, man, you know, there's more out there than, than I'm aware of. So it was a good learning experience, empathy, but also, you know, also recheck me as I'm, you know, do I want to be a civvy or am I happy doing what I'm doing?

• 2:52:15Jocko Willink?

  What did that, what did that experience lean you towards?

• 2:52:17Speaker 01

  Um, definitely happy with my choice of direction at that, at that point. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of big cities and crowds anyway. It was a good experience. Not something I certainly wanted to get out and become a paramedic myself. But it's nice to see other people doing their trades, learning from them. As a medic, I, you know, mentioned the book, that's not something that I wanted to do, but I thought it was, it was definitely a good skill to have as a soldier, just for yourself, but also for your, your teammates. But, uh, you know, hospitals, all that kind of just people with, you know, mental, it's sad and I'm not a huge fan. So it was, it was a good eye opener for me to see what's out there. Yeah.

• 2:52:58Speaker 01

  And count myself lucky, you know, albeit I'm in the French Foreign Legion, I'm still a healthy individual and yeah, could be worse.

• 2:53:05Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. Surrounded by a bunch of healthy individuals. It's like a good life.

• 2:53:09Speaker 01

  Yep. People you can trust.

• 2:53:10Jocko Willink?

  Comparatively.

• 2:53:14Jocko Willink?

  After that, you get sent to the SOGH, which is basically Halo School, right?

• 2:53:19Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it's a free fall school, yeah. In fact, the SAS used to go there for their training until they started doing their own.

• 2:53:24Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 2:53:25Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 2:53:25Jocko Willink?

  And it sounds like it's kind of a gentleman's course. And what I mean by that in America means it's not like boot camp at all. It's the other end of the spectrum. Like, hey, you do, you do what you're supposed to do. Everyone's cool. The instructors are there to help you and they're not talking down to you or anything like that.

• 2:53:39Speaker 01

  Exactly. So that's the ATAP. This course is for the CUSO, everyone from, as I mentioned, same as a command of course. It's a French base reg force done for the training for the French airborne. So yeah, it's super laid back and a bit of a change for me going from the rep.

• 2:53:55Jocko Willink?

  That was like a shock to your system, too.

• 2:53:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. This is military.

• 2:54:02Jocko Willink?

  As you're finishing up that school, here we go to the book. "Parachutes were returned, and I thanked the course commanding officer and instructors for how well they had treated me. I left a brand new Legionnaire's keppy with a Canadian flag inside it at the instructor's bar." It's cool. "I said my goodbyes to my coursemates and then caught a ride back to Commander Hubert Base at Toulon Naval Shipyard where France's new aircraft carrier was docked. Hubert's base was off on its own in a wooden area, hidden away from the rest of the naval yard. I had looked at its miniature submarines and high-speed Zodiacs, all of the impressive state-of-the-art equipment. What really caught my attention was a US nuclear attack submarine

• 2:54:45Jocko Willink?

  docked along jetty below Hubert's main training building. A US SEAL team was in town to cross train with them. I was envious, to say the least, but I had no time for envy. I needed to mentally prepare for returning to the Legion way of doing things. It's a fact that in a bid to set itself apart from the rest, the Legion maintains iron discipline and places heavy restrictions on personal freedoms. Although this works as a short-term solution, it results in a high turnover." I also need to get a proper haircut before making my way back to Calvi.

• 2:55:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I've gotten in trouble for that during the course. I'd let it go and the officer in charge was like, you know, keep him on your sole legionnaire or something. Fine.

• 2:55:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, that's where you know what we were talking about earlier. I mean, this is, this is how, this is how so many people, for instance, so many SEALs stay in the SEALs for 20 years. Because there is a lot of personal freedom. Now, look, the standard is high and if you drop below that standard, it's not going to be good for you. It's not going to work out well. But if you're doing your job and you're doing it well, you get a lot of personal freedom and it's awesome.

• 2:55:57Jocko Willink?

  But, I mean, and like we already talked about, I mean, you kind of select for it because you give a certain amount of freedom along the way. But yeah, the, uh, the Legion doesn't do that.

• 2:56:08Speaker 01

  No, and I'm starting to pick up on that. You know, during this course, I was there for, for a chunk, a couple of months. So, working with, you know, the guys from HUBER and other regiments, you see what a normal military life is like. You know, they go home and stuff. And that's the thing you mentioned, I didn't, you didn't mention, but like on the Commander Course and during the Free Fall Courses, on the weekends, all the guys go home to their girlfriends, families or whatever. I don't. So, that's something for, you know, a Legionnaire, that has to be taken into consideration. It's, it's, it's full on. You're not going home on the weekends. And that has its effects. So, I'm starting to see.

• 2:56:40Jocko Willink?

  Now, when you're going to the Commander Course or even this Free Fall Course, you're not going home on the weekends just because you have nowhere to go. Are you still restricted? You're not restricted.

• 2:56:48Speaker 01

  We were afraid I would go down to, we would go into Spain and take advantage of our freedom. And that was another aspect of it. I hope, you know, you meet, people of the other, you know, you meet, you make friends and you do things that, you know, young, young men do. And I know I'm going back to Calvi, which is no longer going to be that way. So, I'm starting to look around thinking, hmm, you know, long-term, is this what I want to be doing? Albeit, I'm somewhat fresh to the team, but it's, it's still that. I had to sign for next year, so I was going to be doing six years, but I'm starting to think already, is this something I want to do as a career? Become an NCO and do, in the French system, you need 15 years to, to get a retirement.

• 2:57:23Jocko Willink?

  You got a little taste of Spain and freedom and just.

• 2:57:27Speaker 01

  Yes, exactly. Yeah, I'm starting to think. Which is tough on the mental side of things, right? If you're not in, you're not in. So, it's starting there.

• 2:57:37Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, it's almost better not to see.

• 2:57:40Speaker 01

  And as mentioned. The Legion has changed since. They're not quite as aggressive and stringent on the thing. For that reason, the turnover is to give the guys a little more leeway to keep the guys around, especially now that they're active and busy.

• 2:57:51Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 2:57:52Speaker 01

  There's, yeah, there's no real need for that.

• 2:57:53Jocko Willink?

  Do you have any idea what percentage of people go past their first investment?

• 2:57:57Speaker 01

  To be honest, yeah, I'm not sure.

• 2:58:02Jocko Willink?

  Check. All right.

• 2:58:06Jocko Willink?

  Back again. The second and fourth companies were headed to Chad, Africa, for a four-month torn supportive operation. Epivier.

• 2:58:15Speaker 01

  Epivier, yeah.

• 2:58:18Jocko Willink?

  Its objective was to prevent Libya from destabilizing Chad and threatening France's interests. So, back in the game again. We boarded an Airbus A300 on September 12, 1998.

• 2:58:34Jocko Willink?

  And on the east coast of Corsica, flew over the mountains of North Africa and across the rusty dunes of the Algerian Sahara into northern Chad. You get to Chad.

• 2:58:46Jocko Willink?

  You're on the ground. Here we go. Next on the agenda was a three-day section training exercise. We loaded the VLRAs and started a three-hour drive east to a shooting range. The paved roads soon turned into a dirt track with large sun-baked ruts that had been carved out by larger transport trucks during the rainy season. It was a nightmare to drive on, and every bump reverberated in my back. We drove through flat and arid country, passing through small villages. Where smiling locals waved at us. Their lifestyle, with the most basic of amenities, was practically primitive compared to what I had seen before, even in Central Africa. But they looked happy. These images stuck with me. I knew I had opportunities in life well beyond what these people could even dream of.

• 2:59:30Jocko Willink?

  So, you say that in there, and I kind of highlighted it, thinking, these are all things that are starting to kind of assemble in your head, that you're thinking maybe that there could be a life outside the Legion.

• 2:59:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, 100%.

• 2:59:46Jocko Willink?

  Something I found different and interesting, now we're back in this camp that you are in Chad, something I found different and interesting was the camp's employment program, where local men, women and teenagers, or boys as they were referred to, were hired to wash our clothing and clean our barracks rooms. They were paid a set wage controlled by the camp's administration. It was a good service and injected some much-needed money into the local economy. So we hired Abbo. He worked hard and we gave him any extras we had, or things we didn't really need that he could use. On weekends, legionnaires could frequent the city's authorized bars and restaurants, all of which were within a small city block. On weeknights, we were confined to camp or the Rose de Vents. Rose de Vents. Rose de Vents.

• 3:00:29Jocko Willink?

  A local restaurant and bar with a dance floor and working girls. This was new to me too. CFB Wainwright didn't have a Rose de Vents. In the age of AIDS awareness, the women were subject to medical checks by the French military hospital if they wanted to frequent the Rose. Sexual encounters were not advised, but it was a reality, so the French military exercised precautions. The women were ostensibly self-employed. Private contractors, I guess you could say. And the military's only involvement was providing free medical visits. A lot of women were from Somalia and Ethiopia. Some were tall, elegant and attractive, and they put in a lot of effort to dress the part.

• 3:01:11Jocko Willink?

  Inevitably, it wasn't long before legionnaires were getting into trouble at the Rose de Vents. So, that's another thing that's just... Different, yeah. Yeah. Not really, not really seen much of the Ethiopian prostitutes in Western Canada. No, no.

• 3:01:32Jocko Willink?

  But trouble follows. Here's another scenario that unfolded while you're down there. I was awoken by a P4 approaching at speed, honking its horns, shouts for a medic soon followed. I jumped out of bed, threw on my combat pants and runners and sprinted outside. A panicked regular force corporal chief asked me to follow him. Dimitri and I grabbed our webbing and jumped into our P4 with Smithy at the wheel. We followed the corporal chief to the garrison's medical building where we found several people standing around another P4. Dimitri approached the casualty who was lying in the back of the vehicle. I could see his legs hanging out the rear door clad in torn, blood-soaked pants. My assumption was that he had been hit and dragged by a vehicle in town. Dmitri yelled for an IV which I prepared and handed him.

• 3:02:16Jocko Willink?

  I was then able to see what we were dealing with. The victim's right arm was severed at the elbow. His bare chest was pockmarked with impacts and his face was missing from the chin up. The footwell of the P4 was filled with blood. A quick assessment revealed that his jugular had been severed and his circulatory system had collapsed due to massive blood loss. The military doctor arrived soon after us, pronouncing the victim deceased almost immediately. His body was quickly covered with a sheet and we moved him from the P4 to the medical building, and that was that. Apparently during a live fire exercise that morning, an AC-58 anti-tank grenade hadn't detonated on impact. The range procedure is to wait 30 minutes and then destroy the grenade in a controlled explosion, but you don't touch it.

• 3:03:01Jocko Willink?

  For some unknown reason, the victim had picked up the grenade and it exploded. When I heard his name, it rang a bell. He had been an NCO in the first company and left behind a wife and two daughters. This tragedy was a timely reminder to all of us that if you get complacent, it can kill you.

• 3:03:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, dumb.

• 3:03:24Speaker 01

  But

• 3:03:27Speaker 01

  at this point in the story, in my career, I'm kind of tired of the training. I don't know if I was spoiled because of Bungie. But yeah, I'm trying to not get lazy, but um, there's a bit of complacency coming. I'm just like, ah, we're going through the motions here. You know, let's, let's soldier not pretend.

• 3:03:45Speaker 01

  And yeah, Chad wasn't necessarily a highlight experience. There was some, I don't get into too much, but within the, the section, there was some negative stuff going on, which is hard on any team. More about just I think the lack of stuff that was going on. We had a new CO that wanted us to march and sing more. I don't get into it because it's not really my place to to mention or to comment on, but Chad was kind of a pivotal.

• 3:04:16Speaker 01

  Tour where I was like I was starting to slide on the downward trend towards leaving. It was a good experience. We did jump out of the back of the helicopters a lot. And that's where I started watching them thinking that's pretty and that'll come towards the end.

• 3:04:38Speaker 01

  And the Rose de Vol, sorry, it's in the book as we become the military police for the Rose de Vol, not a personal.

• 3:04:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. You mentioned that is that's why I try to leave it at like, hey, this they're they're caused trouble. And then eventually you guys have to become military police there and.

• 3:04:54Speaker 01

  But at least I think of me, you send legionnaires twenty, you know, twenty to twenty five year old into a African country for four months. You need an outlet. It's just a fact of.

• 3:05:04Jocko Willink?

  Well, you know.

• 3:05:04Speaker 01

  If not, they'll find it elsewhere and they get problems, right?

• 3:05:06Jocko Willink?

  You mentioned the one legionnaire who was. His dad was a Polish legionnaire and his mom was a Vietnamese. Well, there's think of all the American, you know. The the American. Uh, service members that have got wives over the past however many years, wives from Japan, wives from the Philippines, wives from Germany. What, I mean, the SEAL teams used to be up in Scotland. There was a bunch of guys that had wives from Scotland. Like you put guys in the Middle East places. Well, they're going to meet the girls. That's what's going to happen.

• 3:05:35Speaker 01

  Roger.

• 3:05:36Jocko Willink?

  So.

• 3:05:37Speaker 01

  So at least they had the fort, you know, forward thinking, think, listen, we got to protect our guys. They're going to go out there and find it if they we don't. So.

• 3:05:42Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:05:43Speaker 01

  So it's, yeah, it's smart.

• 3:05:44Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, the American military does not do that.

• 3:05:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:05:46Jocko Willink?

  The American military does not do, uh. Medical checks and brothels. No, you're not getting that. No, it's not happening.

• 3:05:58Jocko Willink?

  All right. So now you're at an another military ski school. And you're actually seeing Saving Private Ryan and you get a recall. One of the other guys gets a phone call and here we go. When we arrived, Captain Martin briefed us on the situation. A French. Gendarme, how do you say that?

• 3:06:17Speaker 01

  Gendarme.

• 3:06:17Jocko Willink?

  Gendarme. I swear I looked at I listened to that word getting played like nineteen times. And it's exactly how it looks like it says, but I keep screwing up. Gendarme at the French ambassador's residence in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo, had been shot dead by a military rebel. The cause first R P I M A had been sent to secure the ambassador's residence and the G C P would relieve them. Captain Martin designated those of us who needed to return to Calvi the following day to prepare. I was chosen. We were dismissed and told to be ready in the morning. I handed my handed in my issued kit, collected my Famas from the armory and packed my gear.

• 3:07:01Jocko Willink?

  Dmitri wasn't chosen. He looked like he might jump from the barracks second story window. I felt his pain. The final B S M exercise, which ran the entire following week, didn't inspire anyone. And so, so this is another thing I just got to point out, like I'm throwing in these names like Dmitri and you, you talk about these guys throughout the book and I'm not doing justice of the other characters that are in here. So I apologize. That's why people need to get the book to, to learn about all these different guys. And that's just a, that situation where here you are getting called into a critical combat scenario where, you know, there's going to be risk. And of course, what's Dmitri? He's not going and he's pissed.

• 3:07:40Speaker 01

  It sucks. Yeah.

• 3:07:43Jocko Willink?

  Then you have one more little thing in here. You tell the story about these military issue sunglasses that sucked. And you are constantly wearing your civilian sunglasses, which work. And there's a, one of the N C O's instructors is kind of like giving you a hard time.

• 3:08:00Speaker 01

  The captain from the second company. So.

• 3:08:02Jocko Willink?

  Okay. So exactly. The officer. He's giving you a hard time about it. And then, and finally, what you do is you just kind of do what you're supposed to do. And you carry two sunglasses. Whenever he's around, you put on the, the correct military issued ones. But you have a little quote here. It says cooperate, graduate.

• 3:08:16Speaker 01

  Roger.

• 3:08:17Jocko Willink?

  And, you know, I just wrote next to that, play the game. And it's like, you know, some people, they want to let their ego get in the way. And sometimes you've got to put your ego in check and just play the game. Just cooperate, play the little stupid, you want to wear that sunglasses? Cool.

• 3:08:30Speaker 01

  And the thing was during the, the pre-training, we had, I had worn the issued ones and I had sunburnt my eyes, which is painful if you've, if you have that experience. So the first thing

• 3:08:38Jocko Willink?

  I did. I had not sunburnt.

• 3:08:39Speaker 01

  Oh, it's brutal. They close up.

• 3:08:41Jocko Willink?

  This happened when you were skiing?

• 3:08:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. The pre-train up to the course, we went up to the mountains in, in Corsica and Virgil, they have a, like a, the rep has a chalet there for training. And I'd done exactly that. It it had rained, so all the snow on the mountain was ice. So it reflected the the sun the next day. And it went, it would go right through the glasses or underneath.

• 3:09:00Jocko Willink?

  So you're sunburning the flesh, the skin around your eyes?

• 3:09:03Speaker 01

  No, the actual, the eyeball, the iris. And it basically just closes up. It's painful. It's it's not much fun. Hence, my acquisition of the best glasses possible right away.

• 3:09:11Jocko Willink?

  Which were what?

• 3:09:12Speaker 01

  Just your civilian.

• 3:09:13Jocko Willink?

  Just some nice UV blocking, blah, blah, blah.

• 3:09:15Speaker 01

  They weren't from leftovers from the M M F U, you know? As military issue type stuff is. And, um, yeah, so I had those on and he was like, yeah, those are military issues. So I just.

• 3:09:25Jocko Willink?

  Play the game.

• 3:09:26Speaker 01

  When he was around, I would, yeah, throw them on. Anyway.

• 3:09:29Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, play the game.

• 3:09:30Speaker 01

  It wasn't vain. It was, yeah, it was more effectiveness of the glasses.

• 3:09:34Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, after.

• 3:09:35Speaker 01

  And they look better too. That's true.

• 3:09:37Jocko Willink?

  Of course, but just when you give me sunburned eyes, like I'm not wanting none of that.

• 3:09:41Speaker 01

  No.

• 3:09:42Jocko Willink?

  Snow blind. Uh, so here we go. We're rolling now into into the D rock, right? The Republic of Congo. Is that where we're going?

• 3:09:52Speaker 01

  Yep, correct, Roswell.

• 3:09:53Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, we called that the D rock. Um. As I stepped off the ramp, I noticed that the airport tower and terminal were stippled with impacts of different calibers from recent fighting.

• 3:10:06Jocko Willink?

  President, uh, President Dennis Sasu Nguesso.

• 3:10:13Jocko Willink?

  His paramilitary group referred to as the Cobras.

• 3:10:17Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:10:18Jocko Willink?

  Controlled certain neighborhoods within the city as well as the airport. Other areas were controlled by groups with similarly absurd names like the ninjas or the Rambo's. But they were no joke. Life here was cheap and these groups had been all been involved in combat. And numerous atrocities as we approached the city center, Smithy pointed out. The buildings used by the Congolese army as firing positions during the ambush. He showed us the exact area where Giles had been killed.

• 3:10:51Jocko Willink?

  I could feel the weight of that section's history among my teammates, many of whom had been there that day. We entered the M Poco neighborhood where the presidential palace and government buildings were located. And the area most heavily affected by the recent fighting. And Poco was a ghost town. We wove our way between scorched, scorched and abandoned vehicles alongside burned out houses.

• 3:11:17Jocko Willink?

  My first, so now you guys are doing like um

• 3:11:22Jocko Willink?

  some duty. My first guard shift was that evening. Armed with my Famas, NVGs webbing a small ops pack, I made the short walk by my observation bunker on the perimeters or to my observation bunker on the perimeter's wall. I was already sweating from the humidity. Days prior, we had been freezing in the Alps. Tonight, we were roasting in the Congo. Gunfire within a couple hundred meters of me caught my full attention. I heard a crack and a thump of the bullet. There was some shouting, then silence. Nothing came of it. This was additional background noise you got used to. I watched the shadows, listening and trying to get a feeling for my surroundings. Then came another sudden explosion of noise. Something had hit the OP roof above me, hard.

• 3:12:03Jocko Willink?

  Immediately, my heart rate went well past the red line into transient. I instinctively ducked down and took off, took my Famas off safety. What the fuck was that? As I tried to figure out what had just happened, I heard something heavy rolling on the tin roof above me. The softball-sized object dropped off the ledge with a dull thud. I immediately realized what it was. A ripe mango that had fallen from the tree above. Many more mango alerts followed, but I kept my cool.

• 3:12:38Jocko Willink?

  And actually, you actually mentioned on there that when the next guy came to turn over, you didn't tell him anything about the back.

• 3:12:46Speaker 01

  Let him enjoy that experience.

• 3:12:49Jocko Willink?

  Our captain was, he was talking about a little about your leadership here. Our captain was more flight than fight. That's how I felt anyway. It was his attitude.

• 3:12:58Speaker 01

  This is a new, sorry, this is a new officer.

• 3:12:59Jocko Willink?

  Yep, yep. If we thought of ourselves as elite, we should act it. I looked at soldiering as a combination of aptitude and the access to the right training, but most importantly, one's attitude. When, when getting thrown into, into the shit, reaction comes down to a fight or flight instinct. I believe we're born with that. It's not taught, but it is refined with training. Just because I can run thirty kilometers with a backpack, backpack doesn't mean I'm a better soldier than the next guy or vice versa. A soldier prepares for the fight and it doesn't stop.

• 3:13:38Jocko Willink?

  Continuing this guard duty, I was partnered with Sergeant Chief de la Chappelle, whom I found to be smart and very easygoing. His father, in fact, had spent time in a military prison for his part in the Algerian push. Pooch. Pooch. I turned 28. There was no cake or celebration, just more guard duty and maybe the runs. Oh, yeah. When our three months in Brazzaville were up, a replacement team arrived, but several months later, we returned, same job. This time, though, the rains had transformed the city into a lush mix of vegetation. The neighborhood around the Casa de Gaulle had been cleaned of rubble and garbage. As we drove down the road, I saw that shops and bars had sprung

• 3:14:23Jocko Willink?

  up alongside. Brazzaville was alive once more. People were drinking and listening to loud music. Soccer fields were full of kids and adults playing. What a difference a few months of relative calm in the city make. These were happier times.

• 3:14:37Jocko Willink?

  With the monotony, so now you're on this deployment, there's much more peaceful. With the monotony, physical activity was the only way for us to keep sane and burn off plenty of negative energy. Ursa, who had been, become a good friend, boxed prior to joining Legion, and he was my coach and sparring partner for the duration of the tour, so you're getting your boxing on. Brazzaville stabilized, and we were free to visit the city when we weren't on duty. Ursa, Smithy, Smithy, and I took that opportunity one evening, as everyone did. And again, you talk about what, what, what young men do. As, as with most short-term remedies, alcohol in these nighttime diversions led to problems. Sergeant Prejean, while returning

• 3:15:22Jocko Willink?

  from town late one evening, made a condescending comment to Salak, to Salak, who was on guard duty at breakfast the following morning. Black Eye was a topic of great discussion. It wasn't long before Captain Martin warned all of us that if something like this happened again, both participants would be flown back to Calvi and charged regardless of who was at fault. This made me start to consider my life long term. Thirty years of age was just around the corner. Did I want to be a legionnaire for the better part of it? I wasn't convinced that I did. Two Russian-made Mi-24 hind gunships, hired by the local government and flown by foreign pilots, appeared over the Casada Galle every few days. I always made an effort to get out onto the grass field and watch them

• 3:16:06Jocko Willink?

  fly over. The upper portions of the fuselage were painted in jungle camo. The underbelly was light blue, and they made a hell of a racket. One afternoon, as I stood looking up at one fly over to low level, I thought to myself, "I want to fly helicopters." Our last month passed without further fisticuffs, and we were eventually replaced. For me, it couldn't have happened soon enough.

• 3:16:33Jocko Willink?

  And then you're on leave, you're snowboarding, and now you start planning my legion exit strategy. I completed the administrative application process for the Vancouver Island Helicopters Flight Training Program in Victoria, British Columbia. So that last trip down there, you're feeling like you're done?

• 3:16:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think I can see the repetitive type. You start looking at your peers at the job. I could see that it was becoming repetitive. The lack of action was obviously having its effects, and other guys are getting on each other's case. Do I want to be an NCO? Is that something that I want to do with the rest of my life? Because you can see your peers, what they're going to go through, and basically you can see your career in front of you, just watching the other guys. And I figured that at that age, it was time to make a choice. I was still young enough to make a change, but... You know, getting on that I need to do so sooner than later. So I made the, made the call.

• 3:17:31Jocko Willink?

  What was that term you told me earlier about someone that's unfit for return to civilian?

• 3:17:36Speaker 01

  Yeah, in up civil. So.

• 3:17:38Jocko Willink?

  What does that translate to directly?

• 3:17:39Speaker 01

  It would be incapable of civilian life. So if you basically spend too much time in the system, you just won't survive out in the civilian world.

• 3:17:48Jocko Willink?

  Institutionalized.

• 3:17:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, institutionalized, exactly. So, you know, at that point, I'm coming up in six years. I have options. That's how I'm lucky. You know, I'm Canadian. I can go home. There's, there's lots of, lots of stuff.

• 3:17:59Jocko Willink?

  What's the retirement for?

• 3:18:01Speaker 01

  Uh, it was fifteen years. It's not a huge chunk of money. I mean, you still have to work after that. And that's definitely, that was definitely not a factor. Um, even after eight years, I think you recover all your taxes that you paid into the system. So you get a chunk of change. They had offered me to go down to Djibouti to be an instructor on their Art of Plage Commando Course, which was tempting, but um.

• 3:18:23Jocko Willink?

  Djibouti was tempting?

• 3:18:25Speaker 01

  Well, I mean.

• 3:18:25Jocko Willink?

  Bro.

• 3:18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, fair one. But, you know, it was, but that would have got me to the eight years. So I would have had a chunk of money, which would have helped with the flight training.

• 3:18:33Jocko Willink?

  And it's instructor duty, which I'm sure is a little bit.

• 3:18:34Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. But at that point, I had made my mind up and off. I was, I was out, which was tough. You feel like, you know, you're, they've put the time and effort, as I mentioned, you know, they, they obviously get you trained up with time and effort and.

• 3:18:47Jocko Willink?

  And you got friends.

• 3:18:48Speaker 01

  You got friends and you feel like you're bumming out on guys that are counting on you. But there's life too, more to, more to life than, than that.

• 3:18:57Jocko Willink?

  Um, yeah, there is. It's kind of crazy. It's kind of hard to see that when you're in. You are doing a demonstration jump on Cameroon Day and your parents were actually there. And, uh, I wanted to bring this point up because that evening you, you go for like a dinner and there's a lot of veterans there and you say this, the veteran legionnaires of the Indo-China and Algeria campaigns. In post Second World War France, German POWs were given the option of joining the Legion. And this influx had far-reaching influences on the organization to this day. Rep's second company song is the former Wehrmacht marching song, "Adelweis."

• 3:19:39Jocko Willink?

  It was sung several times during the night and brought up emotions for our veteran guests. During the evening, some of them shared their experiences recounting past exploits in vivid detail. Others just listened, content to sit among fellow Legionnaires, paratroopers again. As German paratrooper Major Rudolf Bulmer said, "The secret of a paratrooper's success can be summed up in three words: comradeship, esprit de corps, and efficiency."

• 3:20:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, those were the real Legionnaires: into China, Algeria. Previously, obviously, Wehrmacht, like tough, tough guys, so, yeah. And, yeah, some of them were just happy to be amongst peers again and not say much and enjoy their wine or whatever. And others would share stories, but I definitely respected the, the history.

• 3:20:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, and that's just the fact that post-Second World War II, German POWs, so these are men that fought to the death, or almost to the death, against France. And now they're getting told, "Yep, if you want to join the Legion, come on over."

• 3:20:40Speaker 01

  Exactly. And there's a lot of wordage, for example, "Achtung" is used all the time. Yeah, there's tons of German words that are in the Legion vernacular and all that they get used, and that's from them, you know? Yeah, it's neat. And they had, you know, obviously good soldiers, so they brought them, with them, a lot of good tools and...

• 3:20:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, for sure.

• 3:20:59Jocko Willink?

  You go on here. "I passed before Captain Desmoulais not long afterwards and was asked if I was resigning. I needed to confirm yes or no. I duly informed Captain Desmoulais that I wasn't extending past the six-year mark. I'd given a lot of thought and I told him that I had applied to be a Canadian helicopter... I had applied to a Canadian helicopter flight training program and that I'd been accepted, which was true. Six years in the Legion wasn't something you just walk away from easily. Nevertheless, I felt I needed to move on." And then you told the company captain the same thing, and he's the one that offered you the commando course.

• 3:21:34Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 3:21:36Jocko Willink?

  "Which you didn't expect, but standing in that office, my Kepi at my side, my pull to move on was stronger. I was almost 29 and at a crossroads. I respectfully declined. The captain accepted my choice."

• 3:21:50Speaker 01

  Demul, he went on to lead the regiment when they jumped into Mali, Timbuktu and Goa, and wrote the foreword on the book, which gives it its legitimacy. He'll be a general here. He's doing, he's on the right track, yeah.

• 3:22:05Jocko Willink?

  We have to have him on the podcast at some point.

• 3:22:06Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 3:22:09Jocko Willink?

  Continuing on again, jumping forward a little bit, it was time to close this chapter on my life in the Legion. The following morning, this is after you kind of got back and you're getting cycled out, the following morning, as per my orders, I passed before Captain Desmule. So am I saying that right?

• 3:22:22Speaker 01

  Demul.

• 3:22:23Jocko Willink?

  Demul.

• 3:22:25Jocko Willink?

  And I thought I was nailing it too.

• 3:22:28Speaker 01

  Close.

• 3:22:28Jocko Willink?

  I threw like a little something on it and thought I was doing all right. Not even close. Demul. And he gave me a GCP section plaque and wished me good luck. I said goodbye to my teammates and wished them a safe but operational future. That's a freaking great line. I wished them a safe but operational future. It felt like I was betraying them somewhat, but everyone has to make choices and I made mine. I boarded the ferry in Bastia on August 31st, 2000, leaving behind Corsica. It had been my home for five years. I'd miss it in the days I spent swimming along its beaches, hiking and running in the wooded trails, skiing the carved mountains, driving the narrow roads and embracing Corsica's unique approach to life. It was a place I wouldn't forget anytime soon.

• 3:23:13Jocko Willink?

  Arriving where my journey had started six years ago as a younger man with less, with a less worldly outlook and experience, I joined a group of 25 other legionnaires from various regiments. They were also going civil in a few days. We were subjected to final medical and more administrative protocols before presenting ourselves in the offices of a Colonel. He asked if I was certain about my decision to leave the Legion. It felt like a lifetime ago that I stood in front of that whitewashed three-story building, staring at the words, "Legio Patria Nostra." On that September day in 1994, almost six years ago, my hand hovered over the push-button doorbell as I hesitated, unsure if I could commit to what lay ahead. Today, however,

• 3:23:58Jocko Willink?

  my resolve was firm. And then you go forward. That day finally arrived. One by one, we entered the office of the Legion's commanding general and presented ourselves. His office was quite large, so most of the time was spent walking to and from the spot where we were to present ourselves. It was a quick yes, sir, no, sir affair. The commanding general wished me good luck and that was it. Our group was taken to the Legion Museum to see Captain Dan Jus. Is saying that right? Uh, Don Jus. Don Jus Wooden Hand. And you tell that story. It's a great story about Captain Dan Jus and his wooden hand and its historical significance. And we finished up by joining the general for a group photo in front of the monument for the dead.

• 3:24:42Jocko Willink?

  When I got back to the barracks, I took off my uniform for the very last time and changed into my civilian clothes. With my bags packed, I walked to the regiment's front gate, perhaps a little faster than normal. I had a train to catch. I presented my authorization slip to the duty sergeant at the front gate, looked down at my new light blue nikes and walked outside. I was a civilian once again.

• 3:25:10Jocko Willink?

  Boom. Boom. That's a rap. That's a rap.

• 3:25:14Jocko Willink?

  You, uh, I thought that was a rap when I read. I was like, I was like, okay, that's a good place to end the podcast, but I actually, I gotta go a little bit more. I mean, there's more. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, but that is, that is, that is a rap. I mean, obviously that's a rap on a huge part of your life and something that's left a huge impact on you. Uh, I always remember cleaning out the final bits of my operational gear from my locker, loading it into my van and driving off base for the last time and thinking, well, that was a Tough. And I spent, well, kind of like you spent six years based out of Corsica. I spent eighteen out of twenty years based in Coronado, California, and really probably

• 3:25:53Jocko Willink?

  most of those years in like a span of like three or four buildings that were all right next to each other. So a vast majority of my career was in these three or four buildings and that's where I checked out of and left. Not easy to do. No.

• 3:26:08Jocko Willink?

  And thank you for your service, by the way. You mentioned that on the card. No, that was a, that was an honor.

• 3:26:15Jocko Willink?

  Here you say, before I returned to Canada, I needed to pay my respects. After several hours on the train and a short taxi ride, ride, I arrived in the village of Riviers.

• 3:26:26Jocko Willink?

  Approved?

• 3:26:27Speaker 01

  Approved.

• 3:26:28Jocko Willink?

  Here I walked the length of 2,049 headstones at the Canadian War Cemetery, where Canadian soldiers who fell at Normandy had been laid to rest. On its rolling hills, I looked at the soldiers' names and ages and was humbled by their sacrifice. I then walked along Juno Beach, where my paternal grandfather landed on June 6th, 1944, D-Day. Not far away was Sword Beach, where my maternal grandfather drove his Sherman Tank off the boat only a few days later. On that day, more than a half a century later, I was prouder than ever of my family's military heritage and Canadian history. On my flight back to Canada, I wasn't celebrating my return home. My future was uncertain.

• 3:27:10Jocko Willink?

  But the Legion's System D, and that stands for Demerit?

• 3:27:17Speaker 01

  Demerit, exactly.

• 3:27:18Jocko Willink?

  Which means shit, right?

• 3:27:20Speaker 01

  Um, merit is shit. Demerit is more like, figure it out.

• 3:27:24Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's, okay, so merit means shit, and demerit means, it's basically, work shit out.

• 3:27:30Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 3:27:31Jocko Willink?

  Within weeks, I started flight training in Victoria, British Columbia. Adjusting civilian life took time. There were no more whistles or night jumps over a Mediterranean island. The uncertainty of employment and novelty of paying bills were my new reality.

• 3:27:44Speaker 01

  Roger that.

• 3:27:45Jocko Willink?

  You must save a lot of money in the Legion since you don't have to pay for anything.

• 3:27:48Speaker 01

  No, I think you probably take advantage of your time off and spend more than you should.

• 3:27:52Jocko Willink?

  You're just the richest man in the bar.

• 3:27:53Speaker 01

  I did. I had enough, I sent money home. My dad was wise enough to help me and he invested, and it paid for my helicopter training, which was a chunk. So yeah, I was able to

• 3:28:04Speaker 01

  finance the exit strategy.

• 3:28:06Jocko Willink?

  Another good section here, talking about your grandfather. I didn't ask my grandfather enough about his experience. At the time, I felt that he would share more if he really wanted to discuss these things. Sadly, he passed and my hero was lost. In his memoir, entitled "An Amateur Soldier," my grandfather doesn't say much about "Dernier Puis." However, he wrote, "Any kind of flying in 1954 was a novel to me, but first class on Air France was something else again." I was served a hot toddy of brandy and milk by a super stewardess and delicious meals are things I long remember. I guess that after years of war, your immediate priorities change. Why focus on the negatives? My grandfather also wrote, "People often ask veterans what

• 3:28:51Jocko Willink?

  feelings they have when they know that they survived the horrors of a dreadful war." Surprisingly enough, a good many answer, a sense of guilt.

• 3:29:03Speaker 01

  Roger. Yeah. Can I comment on?

• 3:29:07Jocko Willink?

  Absolutely.

• 3:29:08Speaker 01

  So, before going to Legion, obviously I'd seen pictures of the rep jumping into Dambimfu, which is where the regiment, the rep was decimated, or the precursor to the rep. And those, you know, that history, those pictures were something that were definitely a big part of me joining. When I was going to flight school and I would go and have lunch or dinner with my grandparents, he mentioned that he had flown into Dambimfu, but a week after the capitulation of the French, and he was there as a 2IC for the precursor to the UN. So that blew me away, that, I don't know if there's a connection there, but just the fact that, you know, I was taken by the Dambimfu, I go and serve in the French Foreign Legion, and my grandfather had actually been there, you know, a week after the war had

• 3:29:50Speaker 01

  ended, or that particular battle had ended. And that just, for whatever reason, that just really hit home. I don't know if that was, it meant anything, but it was just, it was a big part of this book.

• 3:30:04Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, I mean, think about what he thought was you going to join the rep, and he knew that they had been decimated.

• 3:30:13Speaker 01

  So at the beginning, he was, you know, a wise man, he didn't say much. He just said, "If you go there, make sure you're going for the right reasons and represent your country well," but he didn't go into, because he did have some, some ideas on the, on what the Legion was, based on his experience at Dambimfu. And then, when I was, you mentioned I was writing letters, those letters were going to him when I was in Central Africa. At the end, he, as I did, learned more about the Legion and respected a little more and got a better picture of what I was doing. So, as a result, he was more open about some of his experiences during the war, because he felt that, I think, is my small taste, albeit nowhere near what my grandfather experienced, but I had that small taste of, as a soldier can, you can talk to another soldier when you've been in similar scenarios.

• 3:30:56Jocko Willink?

  So did he tell you more about World War II, once you came back?

• 3:30:58Speaker 01

  He did. Not in much detail.

• 3:31:02Jocko Willink?

  And how about his book?

• 3:31:04Speaker 01

  His book, yeah. So he was doing his, he was actually doing his degree in history and writing his memoirs. And as I mentioned there, he hadn't-

• 3:31:11Jocko Willink?

  Can you get me a copy?

• 3:31:12Speaker 01

  By all means, a hundred percent, yeah. I have, I have, yeah. I'll ship it to you if you want, and if you promise to, I'm sure you will, send it back.

• 3:31:20Jocko Willink?

  Oh, there's that few copies of it?

• 3:31:22Speaker 01

  Unless, I could probably figure something else, but if you want, I can ship you my-

• 3:31:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:31:25Speaker 01

  Anyway.

• 3:31:26Jocko Willink?

  We'll get it figured out.

• 3:31:27Speaker 01

  Figure it out. He, um, he hadn't kept a diary during the war, and when he was writing his memoirs, he said to me, Joel, any advice, just write down your memories now, because if you don't, you'll regret it. So I took him up on that, and that's when I wrote everything down.

• 3:31:39Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that's how you get dates.

• 3:31:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:31:41Jocko Willink?

  You get dates throughout this book and accurate.

• 3:31:43Speaker 01

  Exactly. And there was obviously more af- after the fact, you know, the research and friends helping and then getting all the, uh, the information I needed. But he, he was the precursor to me putting this story to, to paper. And it sat for a decade, like it was a hundred and fifty thousand words on a Word document. No respect for the English language or punctuation or anything, it was just, rah, verbal diarrhea. And, uh, over, you know, the decade with age and experience and, you know, things came up. Uh, my perspective changed and nothing came out that was representative of a Legionnaire yet, since Legionnaire. And I kept on waiting and then I thought, hey, maybe it's on me. Um, so I started putting in the, the, the time and effort to, to work on the story and it, it took a chunk of time, but

• 3:32:24Speaker 01

  I'm proud of the, uh, the end result and the fact that the Legion approved its narrative.

• 3:32:30Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:32:30Speaker 01

  I have a foreword from obviously my former commanding officer, which is a first for a book of its type. It gives it its legitimacy and then the fact that Wilford Laurie was able to, or willing to, to publish it. That was two factors I needed. I needed the Legion's background or the backing and then a respectable publisher to give it that. Cause then I knew that it was a good story if Wilford Laurie was willing to put their name on it. I knew that it was, it was sound.

• 3:32:52Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:32:53Speaker 01

  And I had help. Um, I'm a soldier, not a, a writer, you know, so there's-

• 3:32:57Jocko Willink?

  Well, it came out great. I mean, it's a, it's a fantastic book. Um, yeah, you continue on a little bit here. Flying helicopters commercially meant that initially limited opportunities were afforded to low-time pilots along with low wages. So in slower winter seasons, I worked as a security contractor for a British forum based in London, England, supporting exploration efforts in North Africa and later government contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan. So you went on the contractor circuit for a while too, huh?

• 3:33:24Speaker 01

  I did, yeah.

• 3:33:25Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:33:27Jocko Willink?

  That had to be interesting as well. Many legionnaires?

• 3:33:31Speaker 01

  Not a ton. The Algeria stuff, yeah, Armor Group, they no longer exist. They're bought out by G4S. But they would hire a lot of ex legionnaires because of obviously the French, the English. Supporting Halliburton Oil had quite a few rigs in Algeria. So you'd be there as an operation liaison coordinator, basically just. The rigs because of the terrorism issue in Algeria, they would be secured by the Algerian army. So you'd just be the liaison between the army and the client. So that was about it. But when Iraq kicked off. It was more an interest in seeing what else, how else things were done. That was the interest going there.

• 3:34:06Jocko Willink?

  And what years were you there?

• 3:34:07Speaker 01

  It was late or really early 2004. So it was fresh. Just when.

• 3:34:12Jocko Willink?

  I was there when you were there.

• 3:34:14Speaker 01

  Yeah. So initially it was, Kelly Brown Root had gotten the, because we looked after KBR in Algeria.

• 3:34:21Speaker 01

  They're a part of Halliburton Oil at one point. In fact, Dick Cheney, I think that was a C O R. They got the log cap contract to build all the bases for the American military in Iraq. The defacs, supply all the fuel. So we went over there initially. We had three floors at the Sheraton. And we hired a whole bunch of local nationals and the idea was to train them up on close protection. And then when the executives from KBR came in and went to all these different spots, we would, we would take them. So that was my initial introduction to. And at that point, 2004, things were, were really. That busy for people on the ground. There was no IED issue. And then I came back the next year and things were a little busier in Baghdad and we were doing low profile PSD. So at that point.

• 3:35:05Speaker 01

  There was quite a few companies that were a little bit aggressive in their. Approach or their rules of engagement. And as you know better than I, the Baathists or the. Terrorists, whatever, they were, they decided to go after the PSD teams. So what we were doing is we were doing the low profile PSD. So we had just buy local.

• 3:35:25Speaker 01

  Mercedes, BMWs, and we tried to blend in. So it'd be. Yeah, exactly. Just try to blend in and it would be two expats and Iraqis. And we had our DOD badges, like we're all. And we'd have a nice Union Jack plastified in the front with us and if when your patrol's pulled up beside us or God forbid Blackwater or another PSD team like that, we'd be on the windows right away because if they look down and see an Iraqi with an AK on their lap, they're not gonna ask questions. So, yeah, I did that. And then I was up in Tukret for a while and then Afghanistan kicked off and I did that for a full year down in Helmand.

• 3:36:02Jocko Willink?

  And what were you doing there?

• 3:36:03Speaker 01

  There they had, again, armor group got the, um, the contract for the British Embassy, FCO, Foreign Commonwealth Office. And the Brits had Helmand Province, so this, they sent down an advisor to the governor of Helmand. So we were embedded with the, initially it was the, uh, the Parage and then the Royal Marines. And we just basically, we had a small compound within their PRT, which is their little base they had in the center of town. And then we had a house attached to the governor's compound. And we just, the, our client's name was Tom. We'd just take him, he had a floor underneath the governor's, uh, floor, office.

• 3:36:40Speaker 01

  And basically it was just back and forth, taking where he had to go. We'd fly out to, uh, some of the areas sometimes with the Brits. Uh, you know, at that point, Garesk was going off, uh, Sangin'. So there's a lot of, you know, efforts going on to figure that out. So we did that for a year.

• 3:36:55Speaker 01

  Um, and I started to, uh, yeah, I missed the flying. I'd been there, seen it. It was interesting, good experience, but kind of felt mad enough and went back to flying full time in Canada.

• 3:37:05Jocko Willink?

  So actually I did wanna, when I read the closing of this book, I wanted to at least bring it home because I think it's, I think it's awesome.

• 3:37:15Jocko Willink?

  And so here's what's going on. You're in France, you're with your kids, uh, you meet with some of your old Legion friends. And again, I'm not going to cover every, the detail that you give is great in the book. Um, but you know, you, they, the old Legion friends kind of invite you to.

• 3:37:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, the CEO.

• 3:37:33Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, if the CEO invites you to see the regiment in in Calvi. And so you're going to drive there with your children and you're thinking you're going to show them the regiment and it says this, driving the final stretch of Corsica's coastal road. We descended into Calvi Bay on the same road I had taken all those years ago as a young legionnaire. After several, are we there yet? I told my kids, shut your mouth and put on your keppies. Approaching the regiment's front gate, I slowed right down, looking into its parade square in passing. The emotions I felt at that exact moment are difficult to explain. We drove past, checked into our Calvi hotel and spent the rest of the day swimming at the beach.

• 3:38:18Jocko Willink?

  The next morning, after some delicious croissants, orange juice and two strong cafe creams for me. At one of the Citadel cafes, we drove to the regiment. Parked outside the regiment's gates, noting the new rep insignia painted on its water tower. I asked my kids what they wanted to do. Visit the regiment or go snorkeling at the beach. Perhaps they could sense the answer I was looking for. The rep was in my past and the regiment was busy doing real work. My focus now was on my son, Carter and daughter Kyle and snorkeling.

• 3:39:01Speaker 01

  Shout out to Carter and Kyle.

• 3:39:03Jocko Willink?

  Long live the Legion. And that's how you wrap it up. And I thought that that was that idea of yeah, long live the Legion. But at the same time, you got your new focus now, which is your son and your daughter. And I thought that that's a, a lot of people have a hard time doing that. Shifting their focus from their past to their present and then to their future. So I thought that that was a, an awesome way to tie it together and put things in perspective. I appreciate that. So. What, we've been going for a long time, but before we do wrap it up completely, let's talk a little bit about what you're up to now.

• 3:39:44Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 3:39:44Jocko Willink?

  So, I know you've got a risk mitigation firm.

• 3:39:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, so I fly helicopters commercially for a company called Mustang out of Alberta. So that's my full-time job.

• 3:39:54Jocko Willink?

  And what kind of helicopter flights are those?

• 3:39:55Speaker 01

  We do firefighting in the summer.

• 3:39:57Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 3:39:58Speaker 01

  This summer I did rappel, so the Alberta government has a rappel program where they initial attack, they rappel into the fires. In fact, they just cancelled the, but do that and then winters we heli-ski, so when I go back.

• 3:40:10Jocko Willink?

  Oh, interesting.

• 3:40:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that starts.

• 3:40:12Jocko Willink?

  Whereabouts is this?

• 3:40:13Speaker 01

  Revelstoke, yeah, Revelstoke, BC.

• 3:40:15Jocko Willink?

  Oh, right on.

• 3:40:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, we got four 205s and four A stars busy and we do that all year and actually the season started yesterday. That's why I did my, my training last week and when I get home, be back into it. And then, yeah, as you mentioned, I'm a partner in a risk mitigation company. Two of the names in the book, they're partners in the company, but we're just, you know, a small, it's Ravenhill Risk Control, the name is the VC that's in the family.

• 3:40:40Jocko Willink?

  And, uh. George A. Raven.

• 3:40:41Speaker 01

  George A. Raven.

• 3:40:42Jocko Willink?

  George A. Ravenhill.

• 3:40:43Speaker 01

  One of eight recipients to have the medal taken back. It's a sad story, it's a definitely, he went on, you know, that's the Boer War where he won the VC, went on the fight in the First World War.

• 3:40:53Jocko Willink?

  So he's completely awarded the VC?

• 3:40:55Speaker 01

  Awarded the VC, shot through the arm and back then, as I mentioned, he won of eight, he was, came back from the, well, obviously suffered and he was in like a penal regiment for some of his transgressions, whatever. I think he was on the sauce drinking and they weren't paying him his, his monthly wage that he felt they were supposed to be. And he went and he stole two pence, I think, or it was 12 pence worth of steel in Birmingham. And it was basically the cell to pay for food for his family. And he was caught and for that, they took the medal back. He went on to, they had to send four of his kids to orphanages in US and Canada and he died at my age, destitute, sad story. But you know, a brave, brave soldier did his, did his thing for his country and, and paid

• 3:41:38Speaker 01

  the, paid the price. So I used, yeah, Raven Hill is the name out of respect.

• 3:41:42Jocko Willink?

  You said there's eight people that have had their VCs revoked?

• 3:41:45Speaker 01

  Taken back.

• 3:41:46Jocko Willink?

  Was that all the same?

• 3:41:47Speaker 01

  They changed, no, different over time, but the government changed.

• 3:41:50Jocko Willink?

  Eight people have had their victorious crosses revoked.

• 3:41:53Speaker 01

  Correct, yeah, taken back.

• 3:41:54Jocko Willink?

  Have they, have they changed that back and given it back to him now?

• 3:41:57Speaker 01

  Uh, it's in the, uh, the museum in Birmingham, the regiment museum that he was part of, they have it.

• 3:42:02Jocko Willink?

  But they, but is he recognized now?

• 3:42:04Speaker 01

  Yeah, he's a VC winner, a hundred percent. Yeah, he did the deed, I mean.

• 3:42:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, of course, obviously.

• 3:42:11Jocko Willink?

  Okay, and then also you've started off a, uh, a PTSD organization?

• 3:42:16Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, it's, yeah, Legion Engineered, um, it's early days, within the next couple of months here, it'll be a foundation. And the idea is just to sell apparel online, um, to support Veteran Affairs PTSD type efforts, regardless of where the soldiers come from, um, the idea being if there's more sales from the US, we would send it to Veteran Affairs program in the US, if it's more from the UK, Canada, whatever. But, uh, yeah, the effort's more just to get awareness out there. I was recently invited to, uh, be the guest speaker at my old regiment, the Royal Westminster Regiment's, their Senior NCO Dinner. And, uh, yeah, it seemed like PTSD is just rampant. I don't, I don't know what the reason for. They had a couple of young guys that came back from Afghanistan and decided they couldn't take anymore and shot themselves.

• 3:42:59Speaker 01

  And I was like, you know, I was looking for something to do that wasn't just all about, you know, we have the business, but it's, that's about making money. It's just selfish at the end of the day. And, uh, this idea of Legion Engineered had been there for a while. I was like, you know what, why don't I just put those two together? So that's the objective is to build it and hopefully, uh, you know, if it's just a small amount of money, but at least it's something that I can do to, to give back. And certainly, you know, obviously PTSD has its history in the family, so, yeah, that's the objective.

• 3:43:28Jocko Willink?

  And that's LegionEngineered.com?

• 3:43:30Speaker 01

  That is correct, sure, yeah.

• 3:43:31Jocko Willink?

  And then the, the other one is Raven Hill Risk Control.

• 3:43:34Speaker 01

  Raven Hill Risk Control, yeah. And we're a licensed security company in, in BC.

• 3:43:39Jocko Willink?

  Is that, is that only in, uh, British Columbia? Is that?

• 3:43:42Speaker 01

  Well, Canada, Canada, but we, we're mostly domestic. We support, uh, a couple of projects. There's a company that has a, a gold mine and we facilitate the movement of, of gold ready to be. Um, there's an NHL team that uses us. When the owners fly over to France, for example, to go to the, uh, Cannes Film Festival, they'll Will you us use us for our networking because we can reach out from guys that we had met during our our courses and say, hey, you know, you interested in working for the couple of weeks and so, yeah, we have that that ability to reach on network with the people that we had met from our time in, which is our our success.

• 3:44:14Jocko Willink?

  Nice.

• 3:44:14Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:44:15Jocko Willink?

  And then on Instagram, is that your main social media?

• 3:44:19Speaker 01

  You know, I'm I'm new. That was a a learning curve for the book. I didn't have a Facebook before Appel. Yeah, Joel Struthers for like a Facebook and Instagram and then there's at or Legion Engineered.

• 3:44:32Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, at Legion Engineered.

• 3:44:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, correct.

• 3:44:34Jocko Willink?

  At Joel Struthers.

• 3:44:35Speaker 01

  Correct.

• 3:44:36Jocko Willink?

  And what's at Appel W L U Press?

• 3:44:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, so that's just for the book itself. Correct, yeah. Yeah.

• 3:44:44Jocko Willink?

  Let's focus on at Joel Struthers. That would be my recommendation.

• 3:44:48Speaker 01

  I appreciate that, gents. Thank you.

• 3:44:50Jocko Willink?

  Just because you'll write another book or you'll do something else and that that just for the book. I'll just focus on Joel Struthers, at Joel Struthers. Eckor, you got anything else?

• 3:45:01Speaker 02

  You still play hockey?

• 3:45:02Speaker 01

  I don't, you know, no, no. I went to I had a midlife and I went back and played rugby.

• 3:45:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:45:08Speaker 01

  And

• 3:45:09Speaker 02

  Did he get hurt?

• 3:45:09Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 3:45:10Speaker 02

  You got hurt, huh?

• 3:45:10Speaker 01

  Even my kids say, why are you doing this? I blew up my lateral.

• 3:45:13Speaker 02

  See, okay, yeah, so I I did both of mine, by the way. Not doing that, though, but my little brother plays this football game. We used to play football. Plays this football game. He's like, you know, thirty something, which I guess now doesn't seem that old, but compared to high school, you know, yeah, different times, but he thinks he's back in the game, right? Terrence's pack.

• 3:45:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:45:32Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 3:45:33Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, I'm no, it's a

• 3:45:35Speaker 02

  Rugby too, that's bold.

• 3:45:37Speaker 01

  It was, but it was, yeah, not a wise decision.

• 3:45:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, man.

• 3:45:39Speaker 01

  It it taught me pretty quick that, yeah, you're no longer there. As life does, he'll check you.

• 3:45:45Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, yeah. Right on. Joe, you got any other final thoughts?

• 3:45:49Speaker 01

  No, sir. Um, maybe a final thing, just I'm humbled for the opportunity. Obviously, I've watched your podcast. I've seen the guests on here and just to be among some of the names and stories and medals that have been in this chair, I'm I'm more than humbled. Um, so I appreciate the opportunity and the objective of the book was to educate. If people are interested in the subject matter and they want to know the truth, it certainly tries to do that for them. And that is, yeah, all. Thank you.

• 3:46:20Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, well, thanks for coming on. The book is fantastic. I really, I really loved reading it. And thanks for writing that book. Thanks for coming on here, obviously sharing your story. Thanks for your, thanks for your sacrifice. You know, you mentioned that what the Legion does around the world is like, it's real stuff, and it is protecting freedom, and it is protecting innocent people, and it is protecting democracy. And so, thanks for your service there. Thanks for your service as a contractor as well, because that's an unsung position. And look, there's all kinds of crazy things that happen with contractors, and there's, there's bad views of them and good views of them. But I, I know this. It's a hard job. It's a job that people don't want to do. It's a huge risk when you do it.

• 3:47:04Jocko Willink?

  And what you're doing is trying to help forward the positive things in the world. America's goals, the freedoms goals around the world. So, thanks for what you did there. So, thanks for supporting America and our allies, both as a contractor. And of course, I guess I'll close with, uh, long live the Legion.

• 3:47:23Speaker 01

  Thanks, sir. Appreciate it.

• 3:47:25Jocko Willink?

  Thanks for coming on, man.

• 3:47:26Speaker 01

  My pleasure.

• 3:47:28Jocko Willink?

  And with that, Joel Struthers has left the building.

• 3:47:35Jocko Willink?

  Some great insight on the Legion from someone who lived it.

• 3:47:42Jocko Willink?

  And we are definitely lucky to hear from these men in person, live. And speaking of live,

• 3:47:53Jocko Willink?

  I'm doing some live gigs, January 6th in DC. I'm going to be January 11th in Austin. I'm going to be January 16th in New York. I'm going to be January 20th in LA. I'm going to be January 27th in Seattle, Washington, and I'm going to be January 28th in SF.

• 3:48:17Jocko Willink?

  Decisive engagement.

• 3:48:21Jocko Willink?

  I am going to talk, words and thoughts.

• 3:48:25Jocko Willink?

  Some of these gigs are already sold out. I have seen that there are tickets available on the secondary market. Do you know what that is, Echo Charles?

• 3:48:32Speaker 02

  Like a scalping scenario?

• 3:48:33Jocko Willink?

  Yes, yes. So there are tickets available on the secondary market. Prices are getting jacked. On the secondary market, so if you're in one of the cities, you want to come, uh, go check it out because otherwise you might get shifted onto the secondary market and you're going to pay a higher price point.

• 3:48:56Jocko Willink?

  So, check it out. Now, uh,

• 3:49:00Jocko Willink?

  today, awesome to have Joel on, talk about the Legion many times today. I used the term, "Long live the Legion." I made that statement. And that's good. I'm a supporter. Long live the Legion. What about us?

• 3:49:16Jocko Willink?

  How do we make our lives longer and better? Let me ask you that. Echo Charles, what do you got?

• 3:49:22Speaker 02

  Uh, well, the easy, the quick, short answer is health. Health. What does that mean though? Health. Stress, that's a good one. Stress management.

• 3:49:34Jocko Willink?

  A guy just asked me on Twitter, "Can you give me an example that's not physical where stress will, will help you?"

• 3:49:41Speaker 02

  Not physical.

• 3:49:42Jocko Willink?

  Like not physical, like, okay, I get it. If I work out, I'm going to get stronger. If I run hard, I'm going to get healthier, whatever. And he said, "Can you give me an example where, where it's not physical, but stress helps you?"

• 3:49:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, all kinds of stress helps you in the same way.

• 3:49:56Jocko Willink?

  You can overload it. I mean, I used a very simple example of speaking in front of people, which is stressful for some people. And if it's stressful for you and you do it, it'll become less stressful over time. So, stress is good.

• 3:50:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, you, basically the, the basic formula is stress and then recovery from stress with healthy recovery.

• 3:50:16Jocko Willink?

  Sleep.

• 3:50:16Speaker 02

  Physically, yes. Nutrition, sleep, exactly right. And we'll just call it recovery effective or correct recovery from the stress equals strength. Yes, and that goes for non-physical as well, yeah, 100%. But, and the same goes inversely. If you don't have any stress at all, it's like if you don't have any exercise. So sure, you're more comfortable, you're more, you know, these things, less stressed, but when life, so unless you live, unless you're living in a bunker.

• 3:50:46Speaker 02

  When the stress of life comes.

• 3:50:47Jocko Willink?

  You just painted yourself with your corner on that one.

• 3:50:48Speaker 02

  No, no, no. You see what I'm saying?

• 3:50:49Jocko Willink?

  Less of these things.

• 3:50:50Speaker 02

  These things, all that stuff. Yeah.

• 3:50:52Jocko Willink?

  All those things. Can't think of any right now, but all of them.

• 3:50:56Speaker 02

  You understand what I'm saying?

• 3:50:58Jocko Willink?

  I do. Speaking of speaking in public.

• 3:51:01Jocko Willink?

  Where you at?

• 3:51:01Speaker 02

  When they come into your life, you're not gonna be able to deal with them. You can be weak. They're gonna crumble you, potentially. Same goes for if you don't effectively recover from stress. That's why people like non-physical stress, people always regard it. It's like, oh my gosh, my life is stressed because most times when you have too much stress or chronic stress, it's the same thing. It's like chronic exercise. Bro, you can't exercise all day, every day. You gotta rest from this stuff. You gotta recover from it. Rest between sets, all that stuff. So the same kind of deal, except for when people say, oh, it's just stressful. It's like they, they, they look at it as a, as a different kind of stress, even though at the end of the day, it's, it's essentially the same thing.

• 3:51:39Jocko Willink?

  We need stress. In order to get better.

• 3:51:43Speaker 02

  Stress.

• 3:51:43Jocko Willink?

  One good form of stress that you can participate in, and it's very rewarding, is jujitsu.

• 3:51:49Speaker 02

  Jujitsu. See, and jujitsu in a way is kind of the opposite of what we'd regard like stress. Like, people go to jujitsu to relieve stress, but technically, that's not what stress is. Like, stress is just basically a, a sort of like a challenge, right? Yeah, like a resistance, yeah.

• 3:52:06Jocko Willink?

  And there's certainly resistance in jujitsu.

• 3:52:08Speaker 02

  Yes, there is.

• 3:52:08Jocko Willink?

  And it is resistance that will make you stronger, better, smarter, faster, just better.

• 3:52:14Speaker 02

  Better in every single capacity. Oh, yeah, man. So you, and you, you'll do this every once in a while. You'll just have this emotional outburst.

• 3:52:22Jocko Willink?

  This is me?

• 3:52:23Speaker 02

  You, in this way.

• 3:52:24Jocko Willink?

  On the mats of justice?

• 3:52:25Speaker 02

  No, no, no, no, no. And the, here's the thing. Me saying emotional outbursts is like, it's kind of misleading. Like, you know, when you think of emotional outbursts, it's like, it's like a bad thing almost. But you'll just break out, out of nowhere and be like, I just love jujitsu. That's an emotional outburst. So like, yeah, like in New York, you said that, but bro, I feel that. I, I think that in my head so much, even though like. Even not even necessarily when I'm doing it. A lot of times when I'm done doing it. Man, it's so crazy how this exists. Just for everybody.

• 3:52:56Jocko Willink?

  It is out there. The craziest, funnest thing.

• 3:52:59Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's weird like certain times you can go to jujitsu and be in such a good mood. You can see yourself behaving in almost like a weird childish way because you're so happy.

• 3:53:08Jocko Willink?

  Like a little excited child.

• 3:53:10Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:53:10Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, that is, that is a true statement.

• 3:53:13Speaker 02

  Yeah, anyway, so if you're not doing jujitsu, just do some juju, just try, man. Bring a friend, bring a friend. That's actually a good way to maximize, bring your friend. Or your husband or wife or whatever.

• 3:53:23Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 3:53:24Speaker 02

  It's a good way. Anyway, when you do it, you're gonna need a gi, best gi in the world, factually is an Origin gi. You get these at originmaine.com. So why is it the best in the world? Well, one, because it's made in America, you know.

• 3:53:36Jocko Willink?

  It's weird that you put that number one. Because there's some people that say number one, it's the best functionality. Strength, performance, it's the best. For some people, that's number one. And that's a strong case. You can build a strong case for that all day long. I actually support that case. If you wanted to pick one reason and say, hey, here's why you should get an Origin gi. Look, I don't care about anything else. I care about jujitsu and want the best possible gi I can get. Okay, I'm getting an Origin gi. There happens to be a bonus on top of that.

• 3:54:06Jocko Willink?

  That it's made in America.

• 3:54:07Speaker 02

  Yeah, that's kind of like the roots to the whole scenario. You see what I'm saying? Because all the things about my selfish like uh uh benefits of having this gi and wearing this gi or whatever. Sure, there's some front end stuff, front end benefits are huge, huge. But when you talk about made in America, the American economy, American industry, all this stuff. This is all going on, you know, as roots of this scenario. See what I'm saying? So yeah, man, I dig it. Whatever way you want to look at it. I'll, I'll even, I'll go one further as far as the selfish benefits of these Origin gees. So I'm cleaning out my closet, literally yesterday, yesterday, day before yesterday, I don't know, doesn't matter. Really recently and I have an old geese in there. Brad put out, I was like, man, look at that. You know, like, oh shit, I remember this guy.

• 3:54:52Speaker 02

  Put it on. I was like, oh damn. This is terrible. I would never wear this thing. It was borderline torturous to wear it. It was bad.

• 3:55:01Jocko Willink?

  All right. So get an Origin gi for the performance. And by the way, yes, when you get one, you are supporting this podcast. Most important, when you get a gi, from a support perspective, you're supporting yourself and you're supporting the United States of America and its economy. We're rebuilding a community.

• 3:55:16Speaker 02

  It's true.

• 3:55:17Jocko Willink?

  Plus, if you don't necessarily want to wear a gi to the supermarket, to the club.

• 3:55:25Speaker 02

  As far as clubs go, yeah.

• 3:55:26Jocko Willink?

  Yeah. You don't want to wear a gi there. You can wear Origin t-shirts. You can wear Origin sweatshirts. You can wear Origin jeans. By the way.

• 3:55:35Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:55:35Jocko Willink?

  Pete's mad at me.

• 3:55:37Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 3:55:37Jocko Willink?

  Okay. Cause I announced Delta 68, lightweight jeans with a little bit of stretch in them. Now, all Origin jeans have a little bit of stretch in them, but they are super comfortable, little lightweight, because I'm not a person that gets cold legs. I know it's weird and I know it's a dichotomy that I want heavyweight shirt, heavyweight sweatshirt, heavyweight hoodie, lightweight jeans. But that's how I am.

• 3:56:02Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:56:02Jocko Willink?

  Here I am. So check out the jeans and also we got supplements up there, which are important.

• 3:56:08Speaker 02

  Big time, especially for longevity, long life, right?

• 3:56:12Jocko Willink?

  True.

• 3:56:12Speaker 02

  Supplements, big time. They keep you in the game. So, man.

• 3:56:17Speaker 02

  I'm not going to tell you how old I am, even though we already know, but I'm older than I was before.

• 3:56:28Speaker 02

  And I can't, I don't want to say I surprised myself. I'm not saying that, but I'm very happy with where I am physically capability wise. Like able to maintain, well, let's say we're not mad. How about that? We're not mad at it.

• 3:56:42Jocko Willink?

  You're content.

• 3:56:43Speaker 02

  Where capability wise, you know, I can do essentially the same things as far as I can remember that I was doing back in the day.

• 3:56:52Jocko Willink?

  When?

• 3:56:53Speaker 02

  Back in the

• 3:56:55Speaker 02

  You see what I'm saying?

• 3:56:56Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:56:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, so, and of course, because of joint warfare, krill oil, and actually, you know what I take almost not every day, but like really often, even though I don't quote unquote need it, is Cold War.

• 3:57:07Jocko Willink?

  Yeah.

• 3:57:08Speaker 02

  They mean.

• 3:57:08Jocko Willink?

  It's nice to have that little kicker.

• 3:57:11Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:57:12Jocko Willink?

  That little Cold War kicker.

• 3:57:14Speaker 02

  Well, the ingredients are beneficial, just generally.

• 3:57:18Jocko Willink?

  General benefits, yeah. Yeah, good, good stuff. Also, discipline and discipline go in the can, by the way, which you can just crack open at almost any moment. Well, pretty much any moment.

• 3:57:31Speaker 02

  Pretty much any moment.

• 3:57:32Jocko Willink?

  And then there's a discipline go, the powder, which is a good little pre-jiu-jitsu scenario.

• 3:57:38Speaker 02

  Oh, wait, it's not discipline go, it's just discipline.

• 3:57:40Jocko Willink?

  Just discipline. And, and my personal favorite flavor of any drink, by the way, is Jaco Palmer.

• 3:57:49Jocko Willink?

  Just tasty. And then, of course, you got extra, um, let's call it protein.

• 3:57:55Jocko Willink?

  Let me ask you this, if you were gonna have protein, would you want it to taste like cardboard? A, B, um, saltwater, or C, a dessert? Which one would you want?

• 3:58:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay, we're real self-examined around that one.

• 3:58:11Jocko Willink?

  So get mulk, get yourself some mulk, and get some Warrior Kid mulk for your children. Don't give them poison.

• 3:58:16Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:58:17Jocko Willink?

  Actual poison, don't.

• 3:58:19Speaker 02

  No, no, no.

• 3:58:20Jocko Willink?

  Give them something tasty.

• 3:58:22Speaker 02

  Agree. Anyway, originmaine.com is where you can get.

• 3:58:25Jocko Willink?

  White tea. Did you mention white tea?

• 3:58:27Speaker 02

  No, not yet.

• 3:58:28Jocko Willink?

  It is winter time. Sometimes you need that little warm hitter.

• 3:58:31Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:58:32Jocko Willink?

  Get yourself some Jaco White Tea.

• 3:58:34Speaker 02

  Very good.

• 3:58:34Jocko Willink?

  All right.

• 3:58:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, sir, just today was like, oh, this Jaco White Tea is good. It's like, mm, and I didn't really know what she meant, cause, you know, she's been in the.

• 3:58:42Jocko Willink?

  Who is this?

• 3:58:43Speaker 02

  My lovely wife. Because we've been drinking this stuff for a long time. So it's almost like

• 3:58:50Jocko Willink?

  She had an emotional outburst. This Jaco White Tea is so good.

• 3:58:55Speaker 02

  She did. Actually, it just so happens that I got the new shipment in, so she might have been out of the game for a little bit. You see what I'm saying? And then she revisited it and then was like, you know, had that outburst.

• 3:59:07Jocko Willink?

  I gotta say, it is refreshing.

• 3:59:09Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 3:59:09Jocko Willink?

  The cans, refreshing.

• 3:59:11Speaker 02

  Yeah, 100% yes.

• 3:59:13Jocko Willink?

  More refreshing. Remember when you were a kid and you would drink Gatorade?

• 3:59:16Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 3:59:16Jocko Willink?

  And it kind of left that syrupy taste in your mouth and it's not refreshing.

• 3:59:20Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 3:59:21Jocko Willink?

  Was it refreshed to you?

• 3:59:24Speaker 02

  It depends on the circumstances, but yeah, man.

• 3:59:26Jocko Willink?

  Well, you're not gonna need any circumstantial issues going on.

• 3:59:29Speaker 02

  Got it.

• 3:59:29Jocko Willink?

  Crack open the Jaco White Tea.

• 3:59:31Speaker 02

  100%.

• 3:59:32Jocko Willink?

  Refreshed. 100% refreshed.

• 3:59:33Speaker 02

  Yeah, under all circumstances.

• 3:59:36Jocko Willink?

  All circumstances covered.

• 3:59:37Speaker 02

  I dig it. Also, if you or when you pick up a Pel, how do you?

• 3:59:45Jocko Willink?

  A Pel, yeah.

• 3:59:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, A P P E.

• 3:59:47Jocko Willink?

  Take it from me.

• 3:59:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah, la français.

• 3:59:49Jocko Willink?

  La français.

• 3:59:50Speaker 02

  Poly, poly view. Anyway,

• 3:59:54Speaker 02

  we got it on our website, JacoStore.com. Click through, books from episodes, you know, I'll have it listed there. Click through there. Take you to Amazon. Boom, there you can get it there. Good way to, you know, give a little bit of support to the podcast if you want to. Also, if you want to do that in a real simple way, kind of,

• 4:00:11Speaker 02

  for lack of a better term, ongoing, what you do is you save the landing page there on Amazon. Just save it to your bookmarks. And then when you go shop, Amazon, boom, you click through there.

• 4:00:21Jocko Willink?

  That seems like it's not a big deal.

• 4:00:23Speaker 02

  It's not a big deal at all. To do, no, not at all.

• 4:00:25Jocko Willink?

  But then what about on the backside? Is it a big deal as far as support goes?

• 4:00:28Speaker 02

  Huge deal.

• 4:00:29Jocko Willink?

  Provides big support.

• 4:00:31Speaker 02

  Massive support.

• 4:00:32Jocko Willink?

  Does it cost anyone anything?

• 4:00:34Speaker 02

  Negative.

• 4:00:35Jocko Willink?

  Cost them two clicks?

• 4:00:37Speaker 02

  Two clicks at first. Yeah, total. That's it. Done. After that. Yeah, man, that's a good, good, great way to support this whole, what do you call, scenario.

• 4:00:47Jocko Willink?

  This is a scenario.

• 4:00:49Speaker 02

  Also, Jaco has a store and it's called Jaco Store. We're sticking with Jaco Store, I think. Very creative name. JacoStore.com. This is where you can get more Ash Guards.

• 4:01:01Speaker 02

  More representative of the path specifically. Also, you know, shirts, hoodies, discipline equals freedom stuff. If you want to represent while you're on this path. It's never ending perpetual path.

• 4:01:15Jocko Willink?

  You can get official death core.

• 4:01:18Speaker 02

  All that. Oh, yeah. Big then. Anyway, jocko.com, check it out. Yeah, man, if you want something, get something. You get some work, get stuff on there as well. Yeah, good way. Support yourself, represent, all that.

• 4:01:29Jocko Willink?

  Also subscribe to this podcast, which if you haven't by now, then you may want to actually just check yourself into some sort of rehabilitation program to make sure that you're okay mentally. Because if you haven't, if you've listened to 7,000 hours or whatever it is of this podcast and you haven't hit subscribe yet, you're, you're, you're really avoiding commitment.

• 4:01:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's interesting.

• 4:01:49Jocko Willink?

  You're not really committed. You need to get committed. So anyways, yeah, subscribe to the podcast. On whatever medium you listen to podcasts on.

• 4:02:00Speaker 02

  Yeah. Also, this isn't the only podcast in this whole scenario.

• 4:02:06Jocko Willink?

  Okay.

• 4:02:07Speaker 02

  Grounded podcast. If you're interested in something a little bit more loose, free flowing. I was gonna say magical, but that doesn't make sense. But, you know, a little, little, little less structured, less heavy for sure.

• 4:02:20Jocko Willink?

  Definitely less heavy.

• 4:02:21Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 4:02:21Jocko Willink?

  We have not, you have not cried on the grounded podcast yet. Which isn't saying much, but it is saying something. All right.

• 4:02:33Speaker 02

  Thank you, Jocko, for that. Although technically it is true. So I haven't cried on the Warrior Kid podcast either. I don't think I've even been on the Warrior.

• 4:02:43Jocko Willink?

  No, you haven't been on it, but you've been listening and I've seen you get close.

• 4:02:46Speaker 02

  Well.

• 4:02:47Jocko Willink?

  On the Warrior Kid podcast? Have you been close?

• 4:02:48Speaker 02

  That's classified, but nonetheless, Warrior Kid podcast does exist. And that's a good one too for the kids and for yourself.

• 4:02:55Jocko Willink?

  And by the way, there are four new Warrior Kid podcasts out at this time.

• 4:03:01Speaker 02

  Very good.

• 4:03:02Jocko Willink?

  Yes, four new Warrior Kid podcasts out at this time. So sorry it takes so long, but there they are. And you can get those. And also speaking of Warrior Kids, don't forget to get yourself some Warrior Kids soap from irishoaksranch.com, where young Aiden, a Warrior Kid, is making soap on his farm in central California. Cause that's what you do. You get to work and you make something that will help everyone in the world.

• 4:03:30Jocko Willink?

  Stay clean.

• 4:03:34Speaker 02

  Very true. Also, we have YouTube channel if you're interested in the video version of what we're doing here. You wanna see what Joel looks like? You wanna see what Jaco looks like?

• 4:03:44Jocko Willink?

  If you wanna see what Echo looks like, and apparently Echo doesn't look like what he sounds like.

• 4:03:50Speaker 02

  In the unlikely event that you wanna see what it looks like. Yes, we have YouTube channel. Also, some excerpts on there. If, maybe you're not in the mood to watch the whole 12-hour podcast that we do sometimes.

• 4:04:03Jocko Willink?

  Yeah, so we have really short excerpts that Echo makes that are only like 27 minutes.

• 4:04:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure. Just, you know, shorten them up a little bit. It's cool.

• 4:04:11Jocko Willink?

  In my opinion, please let us know via social media if you think an excerpt should be four minutes or 14. I'll tell you what I think, and we all know what Echo thinks.

• 4:04:22Speaker 02

  Well, I, my, my opinion has been refined recently.

• 4:04:27Jocko Willink?

  What is it now focused on?

• 4:04:28Speaker 02

  There is no time constraint or recommended guideline. It's however long it takes to get an effective message across.

• 4:04:37Jocko Willink?

  What I would like to see, just a suggestion from my, I don't wanna interfere with your business over there with what you do. Really taking so much time and effort to cut out a 19-minute section and just put it up there. What if you just edited it down? So it was like, here's the point, here's the question, here's the point. What if it was three minutes long?

• 4:04:54Speaker 02

  Well, you know, I don't know.

• 4:04:55Jocko Willink?

  Wouldn't that be more like an excerpt?

• 4:04:58Speaker 02

  I think it's all excerpt. Well, technically, what does excerpt mean? It just means like a part of something. So it can be a 19-minute part, fine. If the close, if the point takes 19 minutes to talk about.

• 4:05:07Jocko Willink?

  I don't think the point takes 19 minutes in most cases. So I'm just saying, reassess is all I'm saying. Let's not, let's not, not let our ego get in the way of making good decisions.

• 4:05:17Speaker 02

  Put it this way, the jury's still out on that one, so we're gonna keep moving forward and try to figure out the best way to do it.

• 4:05:23Jocko Willink?

  Subscribe to the YouTube channel so you can watch 19-minute excerpts. Thank you.

• 4:05:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's more stuff on there.

• 4:05:29Jocko Willink?

  I know, I know, I know.

• 4:05:30Speaker 02

  Anyway, yeah, if you, if you want, we do have.

• 4:05:32Jocko Willink?

  If you want something shorter to listen to, go to Psychological Warfare. It's an MP3 album. It has tracks where whatever moment of weakness you are experiencing, I will personally come through your headphones and help you overcome that moment of weakness by speaking words into your ears and telling you to stay on the path.

• 4:05:56Jocko Willink?

  And don't forget, if you need a visual representation of the path and a reminder to stay on it, check out flipsidecanvas.com, which is run by my brother Dakota Meyer, where he makes things that are sometimes referred to as graphic art. And you can hang them on your walls and they say things like, "Good", or "Get after it", or "Discipline equals freedom", or you can tell Dakota what you want. As far as books go, first of all, the book that we covered today, Appel, A Canadian in the French Foreign Legion by Joel Struthers, awesome book, very cool. I left out so many good stories, obviously, but it's a great book. So you can pick that up, click through the Amazon link. Also, we got Leadership Strategy and Tactics Field Manual,

• 4:06:40Jocko Willink?

  which you can actually order now. And you should order now because if you don't, when it finally gets released, you go, "Oh, cool, now I'm gonna order it", and then Amazon or Barnes and Nobles will say, "Oh, cool, yeah, we'll get it to you as soon as we get it", which is gonna be in four weeks. Because of you. Actually, because of me. I did a bad job of explaining to you how important it was. It's my fault. It's my fault. So right now, what I'm trying to do is explain to you that if you don't order it, you won't get it. And then, if you do order it, life will be good. Leadership Strategies and Tactics Field Manual.

• 4:07:22Jocko Willink?

  We got the Way of the Warrior Kid books, three, two, and one, all out. Teach your kids how to stay on the path. We got the Mikey and the Dragons. If you want your kids to learn the most basic foundational thing that they need to know as a kid, how to overcome fear, they can learn it right there, Mikey and the Dragons. Incredible feedback on that book all the time. It is not rare that a grown human, male or female,

• 4:07:51Jocko Willink?

  Cries while reading that book.

• 4:07:52Speaker 02

  No kidding.

• 4:07:53Jocko Willink?

  You, you had an emotional outburst, right?

• 4:07:55Speaker 02

  It wasn't, it wasn't an outburst, but we'll just say it was something.

• 4:07:59Jocko Willink?

  Was it your brother Jay Charles?

• 4:08:01Speaker 02

  Well, same, same kind of deal.

• 4:08:03Jocko Willink?

  Emotional outburst?

• 4:08:04Speaker 02

  There was an emotional, what do you call it? When the needle moves or you know, one of, one of those situations. Yeah. Well, I think that when you have kids, well, when I say I think, I believe so far. That when you have kids, like certain things will affect you differently, you know? So anytime it makes you think of your kids in this certain context or whatever, like, yeah, that's what it sort of induces. So that's what it did. Simply put.

• 4:08:30Jocko Willink?

  Check, and then we got Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. This is the book, you know, the, you know, the person you're not sure what to get them? For Christmas?

• 4:08:39Jocko Willink?

  This is the book you get them for New Year's, even better. You just go, hey, here you go. I got you this little book. You get a little reminder of what it's like to be on the path, staying on the path. So that's Discipline Equals Freedom Field Manual. The audio version of that is actually an MP3. So you gotta go to iTunes or Amazon Music to get that. And of course we have Extreme Ownership and The Dichotomy of Leadership, the two books that I wrote with my brother Leif Babin. They are leadership books. How to take the lessons that we learned on the battlefield and apply them to your business and your life. We also have a leadership consulting company. It's called Echelon Front. Go to echelonfront.com. If your company, your business, your team needs to improve and dominate, they're going to do it through leadership.

• 4:09:24Jocko Willink?

  That's what we do.

• 4:09:27Jocko Willink?

  So we will help you lead better, which will in turn lead to victory on all fronts. We have EF Online, which is a leadership training program. I used to be able to tell people, oh, you want some little advanced help with your leadership? Cool, listen to my podcast. Cause there's seven of them. It'll take you 14 hours.

• 4:09:49Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 4:09:49Jocko Willink?

  You know, you got 14 hours to spare. People go, yeah, I can, I can squeeze that in. Right now it's like, oh, you want some leadership help? Cool, listen to my podcast. It's 700 hours or whatever. I can't, it's not specific enough. Now there's lessons in all of them. So EF Online, let's take the lessons, condense them down, distill them down so people can go through them in a timely fashion, eight hours. 10 hours of online training where you're actually, the other thing is that the podcast, I know it feels like it might be interactive, you might feel like you're sitting in between me and Echo right now, listening, maybe you want to chime in and tell Echo like to make those excerpts a little bit shorter. You probably are thinking that. Sure. But you can't really interact with us.

• 4:10:34Jocko Willink?

  Except for on the interwebs, I guess. But with the EF Online, you're actually put in leadership positions, you've got to make decisions, you've got to figure out what the best call is. If you make a bad call, you're going to hear about it. Things are going to go sideways. If you make a good call, you're going to progress. So EF Online, check that out. EFOnline.com. And then we have the muster dates coming soon. Leadership Training Event, Leadership Training Conference.

• 4:11:03Jocko Willink?

  Where we going next year? I believe the locations are Dallas, Phoenix, and Orlando, Florida. Dates to come. Check ExtremeOwnership.com. And then, of course, we have EF Overwatch and EF Legion. These are platforms to take military personnel with leadership experience that understand the principles that we talk about and place them into the civilian sector, civilian companies, civilian businesses. Go to EF Overwatch or EF Legion to make that happen. And if you want to communicate with us some more, Joel, Joel is actually new

• 4:11:42Jocko Willink?

  to social media, Joel Struthers. You can find him on Instagram and Facebook, Joel Struthers, @JoelStruthers. And then his nonprofit is @LegionEngineered. And his website for that is @Legion, is LegionEngineered.com. And then he's got RavenHillRiskControl.com. And of course, the two of us are on the interwebs as well.

• 4:12:09Jocko Willink?

  We're on JacoPodcast.com. So if you want to check out that site. And then on Twitter, Instagram, and on Le Livre de Visage.

• 4:12:22Jocko Willink?

  Which is French for Book of Face. See, no big deal.

• 4:12:29Speaker 02

  Nah, that's good.

• 4:12:30Jocko Willink?

  If you want to check that out, Echo is at Echo Charles and I am at Jocko Willink. Thanks once again to Joel Struthers for joining us and thanks to him for his service. As a contractor for his service in the French Foreign Legion and to all the Legionnaires out there, past and present. And especially those that sleep at peace in their tombs, we salute all of you.

• 4:12:55Jocko Willink?

  And to the rest of the men and women around the world in uniform that protect the freedoms we all hold sacred, thanks to you and to our police, law enforcement, firefighters, paramedics, and EMTs, talked about y'all today, dispatchers, corrections officers, Border Patrol, Secret Service, all first responders out there. Thank you for the sacrifices you make to serve mankind, to keep us safe and keep us protected. And to everyone else out there.

• 4:13:32Jocko Willink?

  Let's remember the power of the Legionnaires' code. And the parts of that code that apply to all of us, that discipline is our strength, that courage and loyalty are our virtues, that we have to display dignified but modest behavior, gotta balance that dichotomy, that we have to take constant care of our physical form.

• 4:13:59Jocko Willink?

  That means we have to train rigorously.

• 4:14:02Jocko Willink?

  We have to remember that our mission is sacred.

• 4:14:08Jocko Willink?

  Your mission is sacred, you carry it out until the end and you know you have a mission.

• 4:14:16Jocko Willink?

  You know you do.

• 4:14:19Jocko Willink?

  And whatever that mission is, go out there. And get after it.

• 4:14:27Jocko Willink?

  And until next time. This is Echo and Jaco. Out.